DJP
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Don’t know about Fredrid Jameson or what he says.There are numerous guides to Capital out there, of the ones I’ve read Ben Fine’s and Alfredo Saad-Filho’s is probably the best:http://www.scribd.com/doc/27910148/Ben-Fine-Guide-to-Marx-s-CapitalOr this unpublished guide by Simon Clarke is pretty good:http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~syrbe/mst/Capital.doc
Re-reading the page I linked to above it would seem I got the wrong impression that they are suggesting a transitional society at all. Still there are some obvious differences.
ALB wrote:But does anyone know what he means by socialism? Is it the same as us?They definately see communism as a moneyless, stateless society. Though they may think that a transitionary society is necessary. See this section of their website:http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/alternatives-to-capital/what-must-be-changed-in-order-to-transcend-capitalism.html
Ozymandias wrote:I was going to post this myself since I got the email from the MHI. I read the synopsis of the book with great interest although I get confused by a lot of the technical details sometimes. What is the Party’s position to what Kliman is saying? He rejects under-consumptionist ideas.From what I have read of the book, the first 3 chapters, there would be know major quibbles with his views on the crises. The Socialist Party does not subscribe to underconsumptionist ideas either, that’s best left to the ICC or SWP.Where the difference is more in terms of political ideas, Kliman is a founder of the Marxist-Humanist Initiative which seems to have some funny ideas.
There’s a new audio interview with Kliman here:http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/the-failure-of-capitalist-production-interview-with-andrew-kliman/
I think this was touched on in the past but not sure how far it was pursued. Can’t we bring a case against them (SPEW) for identity theft? We are registered with the electoral commision as ‘The Socialist Party’ after all.
robbo203 wrote:On your final point , yes. by ” people on the ground” I mean basically the people working in the factories or whatever – the people at the coal face so to speak – who have to make practical day to day decisions. In the face of multiple demands that exceed the supplies of the available product that is made in the factory itself.I’d add a further point of clarification here. A communized system of production would see the end of the individual enterprise as a separate body from the whole of society. Just because some people currently happen to be working in the production of a certain good or raw material does not mean that they would be able to dictate to society where these goods or raw materials went. Ultimately the whole of society has a say in this. If there was a shortage of materials or labour this would be communicated to society at large and the distribution of labour would adjust accordingly.In short “workers control of industry” is not socialism / communism as it still maintains the separation of control from the whole of society.The Italian communist Bordiga wrote a few things on this subject, though his support of the vanguard party should be rejected.
And there’s more…http://www.philosophynow.org/podcasts
Generally those who speak of “the collapse of capitalism” are usually speaking about something automatically occurring out of the workings of capitalism itself. People who don’t know how to read properly think that Marx says this in Capital, when he in fact says the opposite. The problem with these collapse theories is that they lead to incorrect practice.When I’ve been speaking to Occupy people there is a similar problem with regards to common misunderstandings regarding bankers and the banking system. You have to be careful to not look like you are defending banking capitalist when explaining how things are, but at the same time point to the real problem.Capitalism won’t collapse of its own accord, it needs to be pushed over.
Looks like an interesting piece, I’ll have to print it out to read it all though.’Zombie Capitalism’ was a great name for a book though, but perhaps ‘Vampire Capitalism’ is a more acurate description.Knight’s ideas do seem out on a limb, from what little I know of the subject (not much) but of course that in itself does not mean that they are wrong…
There’s an interesting interview with ‘Marxist’ anthropologist Chris Knight here:http://en.internationalism.org/world-revolution-radioOf particular interest is his treatment / analysis of ancient myth.
Just picked up a copy of Kliman’s new book the other day. There’s a lot of empirical stuff in there and won’t be able to give it the attention it needs for a couple of months but a few interesting things from the first chapter.Kliman pays attention to the falling rate of profit, though not claiming that this leads to the ultimate collapse of capitalism, argues that such a thing is a background factor to the present crisis.Another section of the book is a critique of various underconsumptionist theories.An initial impression is that Kliman may not be too far away from the views expressed in this SPGB study guide:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/study-guides/study-guide-economic-crises
An interesting subject for sure. Another well known pop-psychology book that deals with related books is “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” by Malcolm Gladwell. As to illustrate one of the examples in this book by making things easier for people will increase your success; since the membership application form has been available online we have recieved as many membership applications in 2 months as I believe we had in the last year or so.But, as we are not pushing a belief or faith, we should also be critically looking not just on how we say things but what we say as well. “Irrationality” by Stuart Sutherland is a good read on this subject. I’ve downloaded the book but don’t have an e-reader so don’t know if I’ll get chance to read it, laptop screens are painful to read text from over a long period of time.
I think that articles just a bit of hype, though interesting. More people have tweets with ‘Karl Marx’ in themhttps://twitter.com/#!/search/karl%20marx
robbo203 wrote:Just noticed your comment above. I don’t want to put words in your mouth but are you suggesting that a socialist society would be unable to determine whether a luxury yacht, say, was more important than an ambulance? Agreed, these determinations are subjective but then that is the whole point, isn’t it – its a question of values and values cannot really be measured. We can say that one thing is more “valuable” than another but we cannot definitively say by how much. Even von Mises conceded that some things cannot be subject to calculationIt depends on how many yachts or ambulances society already has or needs. A socialised mode of production requires and makes possible a free flow of information, this is what will guide production. Producers and consumers (who are of course the same people) will vote with their feet as to what they want to produce and consume, that’s how society will determine what is important.I don’t think we have much to gain by trying to incorporate spurious models from capitalist economics into projections of how a future society may work.Sorry if this sounds brief but I don’t have the time to write long forum posts at the minute.
