The Real Movement

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Month: April, 2014

April 30, 2014

Anselm Jappe and the end of the wertkritik school?

JappeI might turn out to be wrong, but based on my reading of Anselm Jappe’s “Towards a History of the Critique of Value”, I think wertkritik has encountered its limits. In the essay, Jappe shows that all you can get from wertkritik is an ever longer laundry list of dumb shit that will go when labor goes. This effort played a crucial role historically by challenging Marxism in all of its varieties, but it cannot do what we need right now — indicate a path forward.

Jappe states wertkritik has refused to come up with practical actions based on its methodology, but this is a specious argument: What he should have said is what the critics say themselves: wertkritik cannot provide a practical guide to action.

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April 28, 2014

Response to the critics of the term “fascist state”

I have received a large amount of criticism from Marxists regarding my insistence that the present state is fully fascist in every sense of the term. The most recent comes in the form of criticism that I am somehow being dishonest in my employment of the term fascist state and designation of Keynesian economic policies as essentially fascist:

People need to stop villainising Keynes. There’s an entire branch of economics that merges Keynes with Marx. The workers were hardly the most screwed by Keynesian policy: the petite bourgeoisie, with their vast savings, were far worse off (relative to what they had been before). Post-war Europe was one of the better times to be a worker in capitalism, far better than modern neoclassical neoliberalism.

Also, stop calling modern governments “fascist”. It’s just intellectually dishonest.

presidents1The resistance of the Left to the term fascism is understandable for reason I will show. However, I insist my use of the term fully conforms with historical materialism, no matter how grating it may be for “progressives” and other Leftists. I base my assessment of the present state wholly on the argument made by Marx and Engels throughout their entire careers. In particular, I base it on the explicit argument made by Engels in Socialism, Utopian and Scientific. I offer my take in hope it will spark a discussion on the subject of the nature of the present state and the impossibility the state can in any way serve as a path to communism.

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April 27, 2014

How the basic income scheme could become the Left’s worst nightmare

So, let’s do a thought experiment just for the hell of it.

WARNING: This exercise is definitely not recommended for the fainthearted nor for those trapped in the social democratic delusion that the fascist state is a neutral field for competition between classes:

generation-basic-income-1024x682In my last post I asked if basic income can be employed to maintain wage slavery in face of chronic overproduction of capital. I explained, in this regard, the fact the basic income was incompatible with wage slavery has no place in the discussion, because chronic overproduction itself is already incompatible with wage slavery.

This means chronic overproduction itself should have already brought down wage slavery whether a system of basic income existed or not. Given this fact, the task is to explain why chronic overproduction did not bring down wage slavery and how  the capitalists managed to prevent this from happening.

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April 25, 2014

When Charles Murray met David Graeber

charlesmurrayOne of the great difficulties Leftists who support the idea of basic income have is trying to explain why some of the most notorious Rightists in post-war United States have, at one time or another, embraced this idea themselves.

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April 21, 2014

Simpleton economists and the “puzzle of secular stagnation”

748Ryan Avent wants us to think economics is too complicated to be understood by anyone but simpletons — our economic troubles are all just too complicated:

“Economic puzzles have been in no short supply in recent decades. New ones keep appearing without waiting for old ones to be solved. The productivity puzzle that began in the 1970s persists, thanks to the apparent fizzle in productivity growth since the internet boomlet of 1996-2004—and despite what looks to many like an ongoing acceleration in technological discovery. The British economy has developed its own acute version of the productivity puzzle; over the course of the financial crisis and recovery productivity collapsed, shielding the economy from labour-market carnage. There are puzzles of wage stagnation and falling labour-force participation. There are savings glut puzzles and secular stagnation puzzles. The common thread linking the puzzles is that they almost always mean trouble of one sort or another.”

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April 19, 2014

How John Weeks misunderstands neoliberalism

Professor John Weeks has written some papers on neoclassical economics that have been useful to me in understanding its core assumptions. In particular, I have found his paper on neoclassical theory of money to be extremely helpful. In Margaret Thatcher-1507907that paper, Weeks made it clear that since in neoclassical economics anything can be money, the fascist state must ensure its currency alone is money. Which means what serves as money within the world market cannot be open for negotiation. This argument goes a long way toward showing why the United States will not give up the special place of the dollar in world trade. I don’t always agree with Weeks conclusions, but I think his grasp of neoclassical theory is extremely worthwhile.

So, when I came across this three part interview on neoliberalism that Weeks held with The Real News Network it piqued my interest. Unfortunately, it turns out to be another example of how Week’s mastery of the assumptions of of neoclassical theory often has to be separated from his conclusions.

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April 18, 2014

Response to David Graeber: If basic income is so good, why not start with the Koch Brothers?

Par7731873This Graeber article, “Why America’s favorite anarchist thinks most American workers are slaves”, is just chock full of the most egregious bullshit on the basic income issue possible.

There are two possible directions for the Left to take at this point and both are said to achieve the same goals. The first is basic income and the second is reduction of hours of labor. For some reason, David Graeber has suggested the working class should be fighting for the first, not the second.

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April 16, 2014

What does it take to beat capitalism when the deck is stacked against us

cardsOn Monday, I showed both the workers and the capitalists view economic choices through the lens of capitalist relations of production. The fact that both classes view the crisis of capitalism through the same filter means the both accept the same false choices in the crisis. It is not true in the least that the working class is brainwashed by the capitalists to act against their own interests. Rather, because both classes see the crisis from their respective positions within capitalist relations of production, they arrive at the same general conclusions.

Those conclusions are consistent with capitalist relations and, therefore, imply a definite outcome: labor exists only to fatten profits.

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April 15, 2014

“How Capitalism Works” (through the eyes of the working class)

trickledownYesterday, I showed why the inflation\deflation debate is concerned with the consumption of labor power and the debt of capitalist firms. Deflation carries a risk firms will not increase their employment and may go bankrupt because falling prices put pressure on profits.

My post led to the following response on reddit’s Socialism page:

“Too tired to read article but debt becomes worse with deflation because in real terms it is worth more (the corollary is that you can inflate debt away, since the debt which is constant becomes less in real terms after inflation. [Krugman] wrote a good op ed about that on April 4th, called oligarchs and money if memory serves). Aside from that this article seems a little wacky”

So does Krugman’s recent post to his New York Times blog contradict my argument? Well, let’s see:

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April 14, 2014

The False Choices of Bourgeois Economic Policy

It isn’t until I read this whole state debate thingy that I even realized the critical role inflation plays in the process. If Yaffe and Bullock are correct, profit is not possible unless there is inflation. Which is why there is such fear of deflation. I phillipskurvekind of knew this in theory already, but it only now makes sense to me that the inflation/deflation debate is not a side-show, but goes to the heart of capitalist relations of production. Without inflation, commodities cannot sell above their prices of production and without selling above their prices of production surplus value cannot be realized.

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