Readin', Readin', Readin'...

All right, I am reading a bunch of shit. For schoolz, I'm reading Oedipius the King and Oedipius at Colonus in addition to The Fellowship of the Ring and The Picture of Dorian Grey. For pleazure and self-learning, I'm readin' Eat, Shoots & Leaves and Capital Vol. I.

On my reading list:

1. The Art of Loving
2. One-Dimensional Man
3. The Interpretation of Dreams

Does anyone have suggestions for other books I should read? I am particulary interested in a book similar to Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States but more condensed.

Debord, Marx, and Freud walk into a bar...

Yeah, so... in the world divorced from the infinite nexus of data, i.e. the real world, I've been working my ass off (not really) on preparing for the ACT. Yesterday, I received my scores from my second practice test: English, 30; Math, 26; Reading, 30; Science, 25; Composite, 28;

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The concept of spectacle unifies and explains a great diversity of apparent phenomena. The diversity and the contrasts are appearances of a socially organized appearance, the general truth of which must itself be recognized. Considered in its own terms, the spectacle is affirmation of appearance and affirmation of all human life, namely social life, as mere appearance. But the critique which reaches the truth of the spectacle exposes it as the visible negation of life, as a negation of life which has become visible. (Debord)

Capitalism commodifies existence, but it goes one step further. Capitalism commodifies fantasy and sells it by the billions — million dollar paintings, shows exploring survivalism [Survivor, Lost], television exploring superhuman powers [Superman, X-Men, The 4400], etc. Like all commodities produced by capitalism, commodified-fantasy possesses two values, use-value and exchange-value.

The utility of a thing makes it a use-value. But this utility is not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical properties of the commodity, it has no existence apart from that commodity. A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use-value, something useful.(Marx)

The use-value of film and television, as opposed to its exchange-value of commercials and product placements, is the actualization of some human need. To say that some commodity does not actualize a human need is to place capitalism "...itself as an independent realm in the clouds."
But what need does film and television actualize?

It is easy to show that the wish-fulfillment in dreams is often undisguised and easy to recognize, so that one may wonder why the language of dreams has not long since been understood. There is, for example, a dream which I can evoke as often as I please, experimentally, as it were. If, in the evening, I eat anchovies, olives, or other strongly salted foods, I am thirsty at night, and therefore I wake. The waking, however, is preceded by a dream, which has always the same content, namely, that I am drinking. (Freud)

The use-value of television is wish-fulfillment. I watch Teal'c kick Goa'uld ass because in real life, I would like to experience the bodily satisfaction — adrenaline — of kicking Goaass.

( Indeed. )

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Debord, Guy. “Society of the Spectacle” Marxists Internet Archive. 1967. 20 June 2006.
<http://marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm>.

Freud, Sigmund. “The Interpretation of Dreams” Biblomania. 1899. 20 June 2006.
<http://www.bibliomania.com/2/1/68/115/frameset.html>.

Marx, Karl. “Capital Vol. I” Marxists Internet Archive. 1867. 20 June 2006.
<http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1>.

To be lost in the forest...

The greatest conquest of the developing proletarian movement has been the discovery of grounds of support for the realisation of socialism in the economic condition of capitalist society. As a result of this discovery, socialism was changed from an "ideal" dreamt of by humanity for thousands of years to a thing of historic necessity.

Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. (Marx)

Consequently, the economic notion of "capitalist" no longer signifies an isolated individual. The industrial capitalist of today is a collective person composed of hundreds and even of thousands of individuals. The category "capitalist" has itself become a social category. It has become "socialised"–within the frame-work of capitalist society.

This is ever the more true now. Today, we do not even conceive of capitalists in terms of nations. The capitalists are a unified organism of the propertied with feelers in each nation.

Bernstein’s socialism is to be realised with the aid of these two instruments: labour unions–or as Bernstein himself characterises them, economic democracy–and co-operatives. The first will suppress industrial profit; the second will do away with commercial profit.

So that’s a ‘no’ to trade unions and cooperatives. “O’ but dear Rosa, we love you” says the anarchists of the mutualistic and syndicalist tendencies. Well, the truth is she doesn’t love you.

Every legal constitution is the product of a revolution. In the history of classes, revolution is the act of political creation, while legislation is the political expression of the life of a society that has already come into being. Work for reform does not contain its own force independent from revolution. During every historic period, work for reforms is carried on only in the direction given to it by the impetus of the last revolution and continues as long as the impulsion from the last revolution continues to make itself felt. Or, to put it more concretely, in each historic period work for reforms is carried on only in the framework of the social form created by the last revolution. Here is the kernel of the problem.

Reform brings about a more humane bourgeois society. If reform could do otherwise, we wouldn’t be living under capitalist society. At best the struggle for reforms is the struggle for the amelioration of the proletariat; however, amelioration isn’t political power and, therefore, the struggle for reforms should be secondary to struggle for revolution.

Thus these "premature" attacks of the proletariat against the State power are in themselves important historic factors helping to provoke and determine the point of the definite victory.

‘aufheben’

Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution? is a well thought out and excellent polemic against social democracy and for revolutionary socialism. Though portions of her work seem irrelevant today, if we were to replace Bernstein’s name for Blair’s or Dean’s the work would at large still make sense.

The most antiquated bits come from Luxemburg’s critique of Bernstein’s economism; however, today instead of the trade-union struggle we have the anti-globalisation movement. Social democracy is no longer considered with trade unions and cooperatives but instead welfare and fair trade.

My recommendation? I suggest that we Marxists create an updated version of Rosa’s work. By historical necessity, her work neglects corporations and modern globalisation. It is, therefore, our task to update Rosa’s work featuring the same form: a dialectical and materialist critique of reform incorporating all aspects of reform, revolution, the anti-globalisation movement, etc.

Until that time has come, I recommend that every person that is new to Marxism read Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution?

Also, I apologize for the lack of detail in this post. I’m taking summer courses, which take up my time and energy, that are supposed to help me improve my ACT score. Insomniacs and overachievers of the world, unite (and proceed to crash)!

p.s. I also suck at citing sources

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Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. “The German Ideology” Marxists Internet Archive 1932. 15 June 2006.
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm>.

You are the bluest light...

Observations on Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution? Part One.

That is all true, to be sure. It is also true that every new movement, when it first elaborates its theory and policy, begins by finding support in the preceding movement, though it may be in direct contradiction with the latter. It begins by suiting itself to the forms found at hand and by speaking the language spoken hereto. In time the new grain breaks through the old husk. The new movement finds its forms and its own language.

I love this quote, because it is so ‘aufheben’. I quote it for this purpose, and this purpose alone. When it comes to combating idealism, we are all Luxemburgists.

It is, therefore, in the interest of the proletarian mass of the Party to become acquainted, actively and in detail, with the present theoretic knowledge remains the privilege of a handful of "academicians" in the Party, the latter will face the danger of going astray. Only when the great mass of workers take the keen and dependable weapons of scientific socialism in their own hands, will all the petty-bourgeois inclinations, all the opportunistic currents, come to naught.

Leninism pure and simple, building a socialist vanguard of workers equipped with the knowledge of scientific socialism. In fact, here Luxemburg describes the one of the faults of the Soviet Union: Marxism became the ideology of the ‘most advanced’ theoreticians while the masses were oblivious as to the Marxist fundamentals and Leninist’s praxis.

If Bernstein’s revisionism merely consisted in affirming that the march of capitalist development is slower than was thought before, he would merely be presenting an argument for adjourning the conquest of power by the proletariat, on which everybody agreed up to now. Its only consequence would be a slowing up of the pace of the struggle.

In many ways Rosa Luxemburg predicts the coming war of position. Even more so here,

The scientific basis of socialism rests, as is well known, on three principal results of capitalist development. First, on the growing anarchy of capitalist economy, leading inevitably to its ruin.

Capitalism inevitably will exhaust itself. The general pace of capitalism increases with the further and further anarchization of the means of production. Capitalists must more and more ferociously oppose other capitalists creating a ‘dog-eat-dog’ world. The big capitalists eat up as many small enterprises as they can in an effort to claim new territory. What is the consequence of this? Rosa’s prediction:

The progressive disappearance of the middle-size enterprise–in the absolute sense considered by Bernstein–means not, as he things, the revolutionary course of capitalist development, but precisely the contrary, the cessation, the slowing up of development.

Small-time capitalists are the innovators. The newest inventions come from the lower group of capitalists — Benz’s automobile, Apple Computer’s Apple II, etc. These examples are similar to similar in products in infrastructural business: they started as small innovations but they were either bought out or grew into corporations. Through monopolies and near-monopolies, computers and automobiles stagnate, growing only as big capital sees fit. Thus capitalism creates economic growth with technological stagnation.

Second, on the progressive socialisation of the process of production, which creates the germs of the future social order.

Indeed, like Lenin, Luxemburg believes that capitalism sows its own replacement. In the early-1900s, socialistic management of cartels, syndicates, banks was the replacement for capitalism. For us, socialistic management via the internet will be capitalism’s replacement.

And third, on the increased organisation and consciousness of the proletarian class, which constitutes the active factor in the coming revolution.

In short: winning the war of position, bringing class consciousness not out of the barrel of the gun but through workers’ education. The most-advanced proletarians win the battle of democracy through education of the masses in scientific socialistic theory and through organization of the working class into an armed body.

We see that credit, instead of being an instrument for the suppression or the attenuation of crises, is on the contrary a particularly mighty instrument for the formation of crises. It cannot be anything else. Credit eliminates the remaining rigidity of capitalist relationships. It introduces everywhere the greatest elasticity possible. It renders all capitalist forces extensible, relative and mutually sensitive to the highest degree. Doing this, it facilitates and aggravates crises, which are nothing

more or less than the periodic collisions of the contradictory forces of capitalist economy.
Red Rosa hit the nail on the head. In the 1920s, by buying and investing on credit, capitalists boldly and unscrupulously utilized the property of entrepreneurs to acquire profit. This led to mere ‘speculation’, and brought the ‘extremely complex and artificial mechanism’, the stock market, to a crash. This crash was one of the initiating factors of one of the greatest crises of American capitalism, The Great Depression.

Again, the ‘dot-com boom’ proved Rosa’s theory of credit. After the advent of the internet, there was a sudden growth of ‘internet capitalism’ and once again, a growth in stockholding and speculation. The result is well known: the dot-com bubble burst resulting in e-bankruptcy.

So that the scope of trade unions is limited essentially to a struggle for an increase of wages and the reduction of labour time, that is to say, to efforts at regulating capitalist exploitation as they are made necessary by the momentary situation of the old world market. But labour unions can in no way influence the process of production itself.

Put in modern terms the scope of the anti-globalization movement is limited essentially to a struggle for an increase of employment and the reduction of corporate power, a struggle that is part of class war but not the war in its totality.

While industry does not need tariff barriers for its development, the entrepreneurs need tariffs to protect their markets. This signifies that at present tariffs no longer serve as a means of protecting a developing capitalist section against a more advanced section. They are now the arm used by one national group of capitalists against another group.

O’ Sweet Jesus! The first time I read this I thought I was reading an expose on globalisation. If tariffs are the weapons of one group of national capitalists against another, then the capitalists have laid down their arms and now hold each other arm-in-arm. However, this is a consequence of something within the nation: small time capitalists for the most part disappeared in the First World. I remember Rosa saying that this disappearance means something, ‘the cessation, the slowing up of development.’


( This is for your own good! )

However, the matter appears entirely different when considered from the standpoint of the capitalist class. For the latter militarism has become indispensable. First, as a means of struggle for the defence of "national" interests in competition against other "national" groups. Second, as a method of placement for financial and industrial capital. Third, as an instrument of class domination over the labouring population inside the country.

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