ALB
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I see from something Wez has found (chapter 6 of this book) that I have been/am a “consequentialist” without knowing it, i.e have been arguing that the important thing about a political revolution that removes obstacles to capitalist development is not so much who carries out the revolution or what their intentions are but the outcome.
Anyway, here’s how that view is explained:
“While the bourgeoisie did in fact play some role in the classical revolutions, as we examine below, this agent-centred conceptualisation of bourgeois revolutions is itself unnecessary, if not unhelpful. Rather than looking at the intentions or composition of the agents involved in the making of revolutions, there is a veritable tradition of thinking (Marxist and non-Marxist) that conceptualises revolutions in terms of their socio-economic and political consequences. The most significant factor for this ‘consequentialist’ school of thought in classifying a revolution as ‘bourgeois’ is whether or not it removed the sociopolitical and ideological ‘obstacles’ (notably, the pre-capitalist state) to the development and consolidation of capitalism thereby establishing the state as an autonomous site of capital accumulation. For ‘f the definition of a bourgeois revolution is restricted to the successful installation of a legal and political framework in which the free development of capitalist property relations is assured’, Gareth Stedman Jones writes, ‘there is then no necessary reason why a “bourgeois revolution” need be the direct work of a bourgeoisie’. Bourgeois revolutions are therefore best understood ‘not as revolutions consciously made by capitalist agents’, but in terms of their developmental outcomes: revolutions that in one form or another promote the further development of capitalism. This then shifts the definitional content of the concept from the class that makes the revolution to the effects a revolution has in promoting and/or consolidating a distinctly capitalist form of state, which will in turn benefit the capitalist class irrespective of any role it played in the revolution. Bourgeois or capitalist revolutions therefore denote a sociopolitical transformation – ‘a change in state power, which is the precondition for large scale capital accumulation and the establishment of the bourgeoisie as the dominant class’.
The Lesser Awful argument, I like it. Perhaps we should adopt it instead of the Lesser Evil so as to avoid any theological implications.
Actually, Chomsky’s argument here is not as straightforward as he is suggesting as it’s not just voting against the Most Awful candidate but voting for the one of the other awful candidates more likely to defeat him. In fact, voting for them even if there’s a candidate standing who you might not consider awful at all.
The media are also reporting:
”Mr Sunak promised the “overwhelming might of the British state will be placed at your service” to those struggling financially,”
Oh yes? What is this “overwhelming might”? As experience over many years has shown, the state does not have the might to overcome the economic laws of capitalism. Those struggling financially will continue to struggle financially if the operation of capitalism brings about a higher level of unemployment — and the supposedly mighty state won’t be able to do anything to stop it.
Sunak’s statement about the “overwhelming might of the British state” rivals for hubris Gordon Brown’s claim to have ended the boom/slump.
That’s good and could even be the last word as far as we’re concerned as the author clearly knows more about Chinese history and society than all of us put together !
Anyway, whatever Chinese society was it wasn’t feudal as the landlord class wasn’t the ruling class. According to the author, it was the state bureaucracy that was:
”The bureaucratic state is best understood not as an instrument of the rule of a private landowning class, but as a ruling class in its own right.”
It is probably not without significance that the Trotskyist site concerned is that of the SWP which was ahead of the other Trotskyist groups in recognising that Russia was state capitalist with a bureaucratic ruling class. As we did too.
Just read about Chancellor Rishi Sunsk’s speech to the Tory virtual Conference (not to be confused with the virtual Tory conference that sir Keith Starmer addressed a couple of week ago) at which he spoke about the having a “sacred responsibility” to balance the books:
He is being touted as Boris’s successor. This speech shows that he certainly has the same ability to waffle as Boris. Far from there being anything sacred about “balancing the books”, that’s
what has to happen.The books have to balance. The question is how. The government’s books balance with its spending on the expenditure side and taxes and borrowing on the income side. This says nothing about how much comes from taxes and how much from borrowing. The books can be balanced — in fact must be balanced — at any level of expenditure and at any proportions of borrowing tax revenue.
Of course Sunak meant what he said to be understood that he would balance expenditure and tax revenue and so without needing to resort to borrowing. This hardly ever happens and isn’t necessary even from a capitalist point of view. But it’s not what he said, so he can get out of it if he doesn’t do it (as he probably won’t),
I don’t know whether this is good news or bad news. Good news for the animals anyway:
Researchers rush to test coronavirus vaccine in people without knowing how well it works in animals
Animal testing is self-imposed by pharma companies in order to minimise the chance of being sued. I am not sure that it is strictly necessary. Better to test on human volunteers. Fortunately there are plenty of them.
He will have as much chance as that being implemented as he has had in stopping catholics using contraceptives.
Unrealisticus reformismus est.,
To respond to Alan’s interjection of “what about the workers?”, whatever we call these pre-capitalist societies — whether feudalism, AMP or whatever — they are all based on the exploitation of the direct producers. What these produce over and above what is required to meet their immediate subsistence needs is taken from them in one way or another and used to maintain a privileged, ruling class. Before any such society can be classified how precisely this surplus labour is extracted and used needs to be established empirically.
As Marx put it:
”The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus-labour is pumped out of direct producers, determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and, in turn, reacts upon it as a determining element. Upon this, however, is founded the entire formation of the economic community which grows up out of the production relations themselves, thereby simultaneously its specific political form. It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers — a relation always naturally corresponding to a definite stage in the development of the methods of labour and thereby its social productivity — which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure and with it the political form of the relation of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of the state. This does not prevent the same economic basis — the same from the standpoint of its main conditions — due to innumerable different empirical circumstances, natural environment, racial relations, external historical influences, etc. from showing infinite variations and gradations in appearance, which can be ascertained only by analysis of the empirically given circumstances.” (Capital, vol III, ch 47, section on labour rent)
I don’t mind the word “despotism”. It’s the suggestion that this is only “oriental” that seems unfair as there are and have been plenty of Occidental despots !
I deliberately used the the word “Stalinist” to describe the theory that there was no such thing as the Asiatic Mode of Production and that pre-capitalist societies all over the world were feudalism. This was never the view of the second generation of those in the Marxist tradition such as Kautsky and Plekhanov and… before 1917 Lenin.
This article argues that Lenin not only accepted the AMP but even argued that the social system under Tsarism had aspects of it:
https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv14n2/asiatic.htm
It is true that, once in power and needing the support of revolutionaries in Asia to come to the rescue of the Bolshevik regime, he was a bit embarrassed about associating “Asiatic” with backwardness.
Come to think of it, so should we as well as for associating “oriental” with “despotism”. We need a better term. But whatever it is it can’t be “feudalism”.
“What, then, about other Asian lands? The Islamic? Are we to assume that Tibetan serfdom is another Maoist lie?“
No idea but that’s not relevant since the argument is not that there are no examples outside Europe of what might be called feudalism but that there are some, perhaps most, that this description does not fit.
Each case needs to be decided on the evidence of an empirical study. So if there is evidence that something akin to European feudalism existed in Japan or Tibet does not mean that it did in China,
The Wikipedia entry on the Asiatic Mode of Production is quite good:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiatic_mode_of_production
I would highlight these two passages.
”In the 1920s, Soviet authors strongly debated about the use of the term. Some completely rejected it. Others, Soviet experts on China referred to as “Aziatchiki”, suggested that Chinese land ownership structures had once resembled the AMP, but they were accused of Trotskyism and discussion of AMP was effectively banned in the USSR from 1931 until the Khrushchev period”.
”The theory was rejected in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Karl August Wittfogel suggested in his 1957 book, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power, that his concept of Oriental despotism showed that this was because of the similarity between the AMP and the reality of Stalin’s Russia; he saw the authoritarian nature of communism as an extension of the need of totalitarian rule to control water in “the Orient”.”
I am inclined to agree with Wittfogel.
Mao has just put the orthodox Stalinist view that China was feudal ( because there wasn’t anything else, according to their theory, that it could have been).
This link you posted in the other thread puts the case against calling China feudal:
