babyhueypnewton posted:

Also, has anyone read Andrew Kliman's: the Failure of Capitalist Production (other than McCain )? I think the argument that "globalization" and "finance capitalism" are populist garbage left over from the neo-keynsean critique of Marxism to be fascinating, it would radically change left strategy.

yeah i did. im not sure what you mean by "globalization" and "finance capitalism" being populist garbage? there is a pretty compelling argument to be made that the financialization of capital and the expansion of production to a truly global scale represents a meaningful qualitative shift in the mode of production. and i dont think kliman disputes that, although he takes issue with certain conclusions drawn from these arguments, such as the claim that financial payments have diverted value away from productive investment and that this is the cause of the declining profit rate. the general thrust of his argument is that the declining rate of profit seen in the US (alongside a global decline which has only been tentatively established empirically) are entirely endogenous to the production of value and not a consequence of outside forces. harvey and others like him make the analytic mistake, as a consequence of their internalization of the 70's marxist/okishio critique of the LTFRP, that limits in the form of labor power, nature, and spatial expansion constitute the basis of crisis in capitalism, as opposed to the inherent contradictions of value production that kliman points to.

Edited by statickinetics (Sept. 18, 2012 01:33:28)

statickinetics posted:

maybe it's possible to think about capitalism and the political response to it without having to see it through the lenses of stalinism, trotskyism or any irrelevant historical paradigm that only old people who "forgot to die" (heh, zizeK) still cling to??? like almost as if global capitalism is in a qualitatively different form today than it was in the pre-1970's era (let alone since the formation of the USSR) and our analysis of it/political action needs to reflect that? maybe none of this shit matters at all?!!

oh noooooooooooooooooooooooo

statickinetics posted:

maybe it's possible to think about capitalism and the political response to it without having to see it through the lenses of stalinism, trotskyism or any irrelevant historical paradigm that only old people who "forgot to die" (heh, zizeK) still cling to??? like almost as if global capitalism is in a qualitatively different form today than it was in the pre-1970's era (let alone since the formation of the USSR) and our analysis of it/political action needs to reflect that? maybe none of this shit matters at all?!!

the Preobrazhensky model of socialist economic development is highly relevant for any attempt at global justice beyond enriching the 1st world further. setting the record straight on societ economic development is extremely important, because in absence of socialist development, absurd theories of decentralization, people's assemblies, and eco-friendly economics have infected the left.

in addition, the mania of the 1st world left on Stalin disguises a far more fundamental and dangerous mania, an obsession with losing and persecution. Practically, trots are straight up CIA assets which is obviously a relevant issue. theoretically, trots and most communist parties in the Us/Britain oppose Chavez, oppose Nepal, oppose Castro, oppose the anti-imperialist alliance, oppose self-determination, and are basically worthless at best.

whether we choose to call it trotskyism or liberalism or anything else is irrelevant, though I am attempting to trace a direct path from Trotsky to the modern 1st world left. also without a principled defense of Stalin and serious understanding of his legacy, you end up with people like Zizek who see the limit of the left as contrarian trolls (something this forum is familiar with)

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

elemennop posted:

AmericanNazbro posted:
statickinetics posted:
maybe it's possible to think about capitalism and the political response to it without having to see it through the lenses of stalinism, trotskyism or any irrelevant historical paradigm that only old people who "forgot to die" (heh, zizeK) still cling to??? like almost as if global capitalism is in a qualitatively different form today than it was in the pre-1970's era (let alone since the formation of the USSR) and our analysis of it/political action needs to reflect that? maybe none of this shit matters at all?!!
agreed: global islamic caliphate


bah, a bunch of degenerate merchants who are gonna drown in their deserts. i'm cool with turks for the most part tho

the incoming Caliphate will turn the Danube red with Slavic blood

i welcome it, at least a caliphate is an enemy you can fight with steel and inat as opposed to the slow demographic death by the tentacles of capitalism

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

SHE may be the youngest voice of Islamic fundamentalism to be broadcast in Australia.

This is a recording of 8-year-old Ruqaya urging other children to join the fight for a global Islamic state. As she sees it, “nobody is too young”.

Ruqaya delivered her speech to an audience of 600 at a conference called Muslims Rise, hosted by an Islamic group called Hizb ut-Tahrir. It was held in Bankstown in Sydney’s west on Sunday.

Muslims Rise advocates the restoration of the Islamic caliphate - a global government for all muslims, operating under strict sharia law.

Ruqaya was one of nine speakers in a considerable line-up, which included a controversial keynote from Taji Mustafa, described by the Opposition as a "hate preacher".

"My dear brothers and sisters in Islam, as the world gathers against the believers in Syria ... seeking to hijack our sincere and blessed uprisings, children in Sydney would like to send their message of hope and support to the Muslims of (Syria), especially to the children and mothers," Ruqaya said in her speech.

"These uprisings have demonstrated that this umma (global Muslim community) is alive and well, her love is for jihad, she is unshackled herself from the fear which she held, and she yearns to once again live under the banner of (the Islamic state).

"Children as young as myself can be seen on the streets joining the uprisings, risking their lives to bring food, water and medicine to their wounded family members, some of them never returning to their mothers ... Nobody is too young," she said.

How you gonna fight that when YOUR female children are too busy dancing to turbofolk and getting addicted to handbags and coke

HuT and MB and all those neo-Qutbi/Maududist/Khomeinist Islamists are basically crypto-stalinists or fascists. They don't represent a real "Islamic caliphate" to me, obsessed as they are with articulating the most superficial veneer of shari'a into what is otherwise modern capitalism.

Edited by babyfinland (Sept. 18, 2012 02:12:03)

statickinetics posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

Also, has anyone read Andrew Kliman's: the Failure of Capitalist Production (other than McCain )? I think the argument that "globalization" and "finance capitalism" are populist garbage left over from the neo-keynsean critique of Marxism to be fascinating, it would radically change left strategy.

yeah i did. im not sure what you mean by "globalization" and "finance capitalism" being populist garbage? there is a pretty compelling argument to be made that the financialization of capital and the expansion of production to a truly global scale represents a meaningful qualitative shift in the mode of production. and i dont think kliman disputes that, although he takes issue with certain conclusions drawn from these arguments, such as the claim that financial payments have diverted value away from productive investment and that this is the cause of the declining profit rate. the general thrust of his argument is that the declining rate of profit seen in the US (alongside a global decline which has only been tentatively established empirically) are entirely endogenous to the production of value and not a consequence of outside forces. harvey and others like him make the analytic mistake, as a consequence of their internalization of the 70's marxist/okishio critique of the LTFRP, that limits in the form of labor power, nature, and spatial expansion constitute the basis of crisis in capitalism, as opposed to the inherent contradictions of value production that kliman points to.

I'm going by this reply from Kliman:

http://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/the-failure-of-capitalist-production-by-andrew-kliman-part-3/

(1) the share of corporations’ output (net value added) that paid out as compensation of employees was trendless after 1970, and it was lower in the early postwar period.

(2) The available data suggest that the hourly compensation received by people in “management, business, and financial operations” occupations did not increase much faster than hourly compensation of other employees between the end of 1985 (when the data set begins) and the end of 2007. This suggests that these other employees’ share of corporate output declined only slightly.

(3) Expressed as a percentage of national income, the income of the working class--measured as the sum of (a) wages and salaries, (b) nonwage compensation (retirement and health benefits) paid by employers, and (c) and receipt of government social benefits (minus tax contributions that partly pay for them) such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployent insurance-- rose substantially between 1960 and 1970 and was basically flat from 1970 to 2007.

(4) Inflation-adjusted hourly compensation of all workers, and of “regular” (production and nonsupervisory) workers, both increased substantially between 1980 and 2009, by anywhere from 25% to 37%, depending on the group of workers and the inflation measure.

(5) Inflation-adjusted hourly wages and salaries rose between 1981, when Reagan took office, and 2009.

Beyond his critique of Harvey's consumption based theory of crisis, he fundamentally critiques the populist narrative of a radical shift in wage structure under "finance capitalism" and increased exploitation. I believe his point to be that the falling rate of profit has remained unchanged as the driving force of capitalism, and that there is no "qualitative shift" between the industrial economy of the 70s and the financial economy of the 80s. Like I said though, I havent read it and I'm open to comments.

babyhueypnewton posted:

statickinetics posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

Also, has anyone read Andrew Kliman's: the Failure of Capitalist Production (other than McCain )? I think the argument that "globalization" and "finance capitalism" are populist garbage left over from the neo-keynsean critique of Marxism to be fascinating, it would radically change left strategy.

yeah i did. im not sure what you mean by "globalization" and "finance capitalism" being populist garbage? there is a pretty compelling argument to be made that the financialization of capital and the expansion of production to a truly global scale represents a meaningful qualitative shift in the mode of production. and i dont think kliman disputes that, although he takes issue with certain conclusions drawn from these arguments, such as the claim that financial payments have diverted value away from productive investment and that this is the cause of the declining profit rate. the general thrust of his argument is that the declining rate of profit seen in the US (alongside a global decline which has only been tentatively established empirically) are entirely endogenous to the production of value and not a consequence of outside forces. harvey and others like him make the analytic mistake, as a consequence of their internalization of the 70's marxist/okishio critique of the LTFRP, that limits in the form of labor power, nature, and spatial expansion constitute the basis of crisis in capitalism, as opposed to the inherent contradictions of value production that kliman points to.



I'm going by this reply from Kliman:

http://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/the-failure-of-capitalist-production-by-andrew-kliman-part-3/

(1) the share of corporations’ output (net value added) that paid out as compensation of employees was trendless after 1970, and it was lower in the early postwar period.

(2) The available data suggest that the hourly compensation received by people in “management, business, and financial operations” occupations did not increase much faster than hourly compensation of other employees between the end of 1985 (when the data set begins) and the end of 2007. This suggests that these other employees’ share of corporate output declined only slightly.

(3) Expressed as a percentage of national income, the income of the working class--measured as the sum of (a) wages and salaries, (b) nonwage compensation (retirement and health benefits) paid by employers, and (c) and receipt of government social benefits (minus tax contributions that partly pay for them) such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployent insurance-- rose substantially between 1960 and 1970 and was basically flat from 1970 to 2007.

(4) Inflation-adjusted hourly compensation of all workers, and of “regular” (production and nonsupervisory) workers, both increased substantially between 1980 and 2009, by anywhere from 25% to 37%, depending on the group of workers and the inflation measure.

(5) Inflation-adjusted hourly wages and salaries rose between 1981, when Reagan took office, and 2009.



Beyond his critique of Harvey's consumption based theory of crisis, he fundamentally critiques the populist narrative of a radical shift in wage structure under "finance capitalism" and increased exploitation. I believe his point to be that the falling rate of profit has remained unchanged as the driving force of capitalism, and that there is no "qualitative shift" between the industrial economy of the 70s and the financial economy of the 80s. Like I said though, I havent read it and I'm open to comments.

yes, this is kliman's major critique of the dominant neoliberalism/financialization narrative advanced by harvey. at the same time, he (as well as alan freeman his colleague) recognize that finance has played an important role in changing the power structure of global capitalism. others, like william robinson, have made pretty compelling arguments that the globalization of production itself and the formation of a truly transnational capitalist class have created a qualitative shift in the productivity technology of commodity production and the power relations between nations as well as the traditional notions of imperialism. this is different than pre-70's "international capitalism", wherein capital is largely embedded in the national structure with relations between sovereigns and into a largely disembedded "globalized capitalism" wherein capital transcends national representatives and seeks to create a global regulation network in the form of transnational governance. the interlocking at the management level of the commodity production chain and the free movement of capital creates serious problems for contestation at the national level for political projects and demands an international workings class response that does not fit most traditional political responses. klassen and carroll have done a lot of work ( http://jwsr.ucr.edu/archive/vol17/Klassen_Carroll-vol17n2.pdf ) on this issue.

a more recent critique by kliman of the financialization narrative is here: http://akliman.squarespace.com/writings/Kliman-Williams%205.8.12.docx

my general thesis is that the contradictions of value production that kliman highlights, combined with the secondary and tertiary limitations harvey sees, as well as the upscaling of production and class formation to the global level are all relevant to our understanding of present capitalism. my general critique of kliman is that he also needs to upscale his analysis to the global level for it to be truly relevant. at the same time, most liberal-progressives that i run into on a daily basis do not see or understand the underlying issue of falling profit rates so that is something that needs to be driven home. otherwise we can easily revert back to the keynesian paradigm of trying to re-embed liberalism in the national/social structure a la a new bretton woods. and this is obviously not a revolutionary platform.

statickinetics posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

e Preobrazhensky model of socialist economic development is highly relevant for any attempt at global justice beyond enriching the 1st world further. setting the record straight on societ economic development is extremely important, because in absence of socialist development, absurd theories of decentralization, people's assemblies, and eco-friendly economics have infected the left.

in addition, the mania of the 1st world left on Stalin disguises a far more fundamental and dangerous mania, an obsession with losing and persecution. Practically, trots are straight up CIA assets which is obviously a relevant issue. theoretically, trots and most communist parties in the Us/Britain oppose Chavez, oppose Nepal, oppose Castro, oppose the anti-imperialist alliance, oppose self-determination, and are basically worthless at best.

whether we choose to call it trotskyism or liberalism or anything else is irrelevant, though I am attempting to trace a direct path from Trotsky to the modern 1st world left. also without a principled defense of Stalin and serious understanding of his legacy, you end up with people like Zizek who see the limit of the left as contrarian trolls (something this forum is familiar with)

i mean, this is great and all but i really hate to be the one to tell you that a "principled defense of stalin" isn't going to get you or any working class person in the 21st century anywhere. you can in fact critique modern liberalism in its entirety without even investigating either stalinism or trotskyism because neither paradigms have any relevance, at all, either to working people or to whatever vanguard party takes form or is in form today. global capitalism is not what it was, the USSR was a very specific experiment in the socialist project that is useful in the historical sense to understand, but beyond that i really struggle to see how it is relevant to the present conditions. at most, my concern is over how the centralized planning system worked and ultimately failed on a material level and i really don't see these symbolic arguments over the merits of trotsky or stalin or even the present state of trotskyism at large having any effect on that analysis. if/when the revolution comes, trots and stalinists wont be the leaders. at best we can try to understand how they will interpret events in the present but beyond that im pretty lost as to their importance here.

what im saying is, i dont find any of this relevant or useful unless you happen to be unfortunate enough to run into some newspaper waving trots at your local study group. either way they (and most stalinists as well) will be summarily ignored, so what is the point?

this is not moving on to the 21st century, this is simply capitulation to the bourgeoisie. marxism is not about working within the system (both practically and ideologically) but creating alternative hegemonic structures. no one has argued that the primary argument today is between M-L and trots, what I am saying is that a proper understanding of scientific socialism will include a proper understanding of Trotsky and Lenin. implicit in the conception of stalin that liberals and trots share is a bourgeois ideology of democracy and human rights (as well as a utopian socialist view of socialism which Marx himself critiqued) and the success of the new left (and trots) is precisely because they capitulated on these essential questions.

the maoists in Nepal are not defending Stalin and Mao because it is politically convenient to do so, but simply because a scientific analysis of the USSR makes it self-evident, and this same devotion to science makes them the most successful communist party in the country. the bankrupcy of trots and will be self evident when a new left rises most likely around immigrants and blacks who already support anti-imperialism and the legacy of Stalin and Mao, but the scientific analysis that makes it self-evident needs to be done

e: I guess the important difference here is that you say that Stalinists won't be leading the revolution, and I say that Lenin's theory of the vanguard party with Stalin's economic policy of primitive socialist accumulation under a dictatorship of the proletariat has been the only successful model for revolution in history. There are alternative ideas which are interesting to discuss, but "Stalinism" has led to the majority of the world population living under actually existing socialism. Let's repeat that for the strangely pessimistic leftists on this board: combining Maoist China, the USSR, most of Africa, large sections of India, large sections of Latin America, and various socialist regimes around the world THE MAJORITY OF THE WORLD'S POPULATION HAS LIVED UNDER ACTUALLY EXISTING SOCIALISM. the negativity of this board is another mental illness worth looking at.

Edited by babyhueypnewton (Sept. 18, 2012 02:30:36)

statickinetics posted:

maybe it's possible to think about capitalism and the political response to it without having to see it through the lenses of stalinism, trotskyism or any irrelevant historical paradigm that only old people who "forgot to die" (heh, zizeK) still cling to??? like almost as if global capitalism is in a qualitatively different form today than it was in the pre-1970's era (let alone since the formation of the USSR) and our analysis of it/political action needs to reflect that? maybe none of this shit matters at all?!!

Roseanne Barr to join 11 other presidential candidates on Florida ballot

When they go to vote for president on Election Day, Florida voters are likely to find something funny about their ballots.

Well, make that someone funny.

getfiscal posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

combining Maoist China, the USSR, most of Africa, large sections of India, large sections of Latin America, and various socialist regimes around the world THE MAJORITY OF THE WORLD'S POPULATION HAS LIVED UNDER ACTUALLY EXISTING SOCIALISM. the negativity of this board is another mental illness worth looking at.

lollll you didn't tell us you're a brezhnevite. you believe all those countries were socialist? then you aren't a maoist dude.

nah if someone were to ask me to point out specific countries I consider socialist I would be far more restrictive. the point I was making is that the overhwelming majority of the world sees socialism as the main revolutionary alternative to capitalism, sees Stalin, Mao, Castro, etc as anti-imperialist heroes, views trotskyism as a minor sect, and has direct experience living under a "communist" regime. what got me was the idea that stalin is the past, we don't know the future of the revolution, we're completely irrelevant and impotent, and the world economy is in a totally new place, when these are the concerns of a small section of the world who happen to think they are the only people who matter.

the negativity confuses me, and the impatience from even the most revolutionary leftists who couldn't make it through the 80s makes me sad. even someone like eric hobsbawm who's seen it all is now just a bitter old coot, I guess negativity and depression are also traits of trotskyism.

babyfinland posted:

why didnt socialism conquer the planet if the most of the world was socialist and lovin' it

um Trots are you not paying attention