|
Some Links And Open Thread
The Arab Counterrevolution – NYRB
The Arab world’s immediate future will very likely unfold in a complex tussle between the army, remnants of old regimes, and the Islamists, all of them with roots, resources, as well as the ability and willpower to shape events. Regional parties will have influence and international powers will not refrain from involvement. There are many possible outcomes—from restoration of the old order to military takeover, from unruly fragmentation and civil war to creeping Islamization. But the result that many outsiders had hoped for—a victory by the original protesters—is almost certainly foreclosed.
Analysis / Crises with Turkey and Egypt represent a political tsunami for Israel – Aluf Ben/Haartez
Germany Said to Ready Plan to Help Banks If Greece Defaults, Greek Credit Swaps Surge to Record, Signal 91% Chance of Default – Bloomberg
Greece is broke and only needs to acknowledge it. Other countries will follow. This is good. The debt bubble that clogs the global economy can not be solved without forgiving debt. Greece will only be the starting point for that process.
On 9/11: Ten Lost Years – Jakob Augstein/Spiegel
giap, I really don’t care about the personalities involved. It’s the theory propagated and the implications of that theory put into practice that concern me most. As you say, The Soviet Union was not about one person, two people, or even three. It was about untold numbers of people, many whose names will never be known, yet their sacrifices were crucial to the overthrow of the Old Order. What makes me so damn mad is that those sacrifices, and they were myriad, were rendered in vain, because those in significant positions of power in the Soviet Government, including Lenin and Stalin, betrayed the Revolution, and all those who sacrificed…..for what? State Capitalism? Seriously? I understand that the Revolution was under attack from its inception, and that even when the Old Order was eliminated, the West was making every attempt to sow discord and upend the noble effort, but that doesn’t justify betraying the Revolution by turning to State Capitalism to save the the Revolution. These individuals, especially Lenin, had to have known that was pure folly. I believe some of them did know, but for reasons political, changed their theories to accommodate the political climate of the moment. It’s either that, or they deluded themselves. I believe in the case of Trotsky, he deluded himself, and in the case of Lenin, he knew deep in his heart where this would go, but his hands were tied. He either went along, or he would be cast out. Ironically, he was cast out anyway, so he should have stick to his convictions.
In the final analysis, I agree with Mattick.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1937/11/revolution-betrayed.htm
Trotsky denies the state capitalist character of Russian economy by reducing the term state capitalism to a meaningless phrase. That is, he sees in the concept no more than was seen in it prior to the Russian revolution, or than is seen in it today with reference to the state capitalist tendencies of the fascist countries.
Since it is clear that Russia today is dominated by an economy different from what is implied by the term state capitalism in fascist or general bourgeois society, Trotsky is enabled to win his argument by posing the question to suit his convenience. But a full-fledged state capitalist system is surely something other than state capitalist tendencies, or state enterprises, or even state control in an otherwise bourgeois society. State capitalism as a social system presupposes the expropriation of the individual capitalists, that is, a revolution in property relations.
While the capitalist mode of production grew up historically on the basis of individual ownership of the means of production, the Russian revolution has shown that under certain conditions the capitalist mode of production can continue to exist even though the individual proprietors are eliminated and replaced by a collective exploiting apparatus where factories are not owned by capitalist “X” or “Y” but are “controlled” (i. e. owned) by the State (i. e. the controlling classes).
The Russian revolution changed property relations, replacing individual proprietors by the Bolsheviks and their allies, substituting new “revolutionary” phrases for the old pep slogans, erecting the hammer and sickle over the Kremlin where the Czarist Eagle once stood, but the Bolshevik seizure of power did not change the capitalist mode of production. That is to say, under the Bolsheviks, there remains, as formerly, the system of wage labor and the appropriation by the exploiting class of surplus value which is profit. And, what is done with such profit is exactly what was done with it under the system of individual capitalists, allowing, of course, for the special character of state capitalism.
Such surplus value is distributed according to the needs of the total capital in the interests of further capital accumulation and to safeguard the state capitalist apparatus by increasing its power and prestige.
Only a change in the mode of production can bring about socialism; otherwise, as far as the workers are concerned, they will have only exchanged one set of exploiters for another. Under the conditions of state capitalism the process of accumulation, the development of the productive forces by wage labor is bound up, as in the case of “regular” capitalism, with an increased appropriation of surplus value, with further exploitation, and hence with the development of new classes, of new vested interests in order to continue this process since the working class cannot exploit itself.
This capitalist necessity serves to explain Russian development; no other “line,” no other “policy” could have essentially changed this development. By failing to recognize the state capitalist character of Russia, by regarding its present economy as a transitional step to socialism, Trotsky merely indicates his readiness to precipitate a new state capitalist revolution which must lead to a new Stalinism – another betrayal of the Revolution.
Posted by: Morocco Bama | Sep 10 2011 23:27 utc | 6
|
