beatrice hibou, the force of obedience

(xiii): real transformation is disappearence of fear--too early to talk about anything else [hmm--a polite way of saying nothing has changed, yet]

(xiv): obedience was result of repression, yes, but also of inclusion -- the 'security pact,' is her term. and the movement, of course, made possible by decline of 'security pact'

(xv-xvi): decline partly consequence of objective grievances--job, bread [not enough--present in negative cases aplenty]

(xvi): elements of 'contingency' [come on...]

(xvii): business and m-class also alienated

(xviii): 'democratization' will depend on what happens with the RCD, since RCD is base of the 'security pact' -- it isn't simply a repressive institution, but also a network of clients/benefits

(xx, 278): corruption that concerned tunisian people was the 'daily' corruption; not the corruption of the ruling family

(xxi, 14-16): construction of 'economic fiction' was a mode of normalization [ah god]

(xxi-xxii): the 'economic is political,' and vice-versa

(xxii): the field is 'entirely open' , as regards the future[hmm]

(1-2): "analysis aims to restore ambiguity" [wtf? this way of writing is profoundly unhelpful]

(3): people are 'free' to manuever/negotiate, even when they seem thoroughly repressed.

(6-7): pervasive punishment of those who refuse to be 'politically normalized'

(9): these practices, though, happen to a small minority--the 'politically active'

(10): linz/stepan and 'economic society' [part of the critique here seems interesting; part seems absurd--b/c they use numbers, percentages!]

(12): distancing herself from the literature [but, in the process, plumping for something that seems pure verbiage]

(13): "domination is ambivalent' [sigh...]

(17): 'statistics is state knowledge" [astonishing]

(267): not simply authoritarian--people negotiate everyday life [of course, if you look at everyday life, people will do this in any authoritarian society]

(269-270): hyper-centralization

(272): 'legacies of colonialism'--the 'strong state', etc., citing Timothy Mitchell

(280): imp--policing state as an 'engineering' state, hostile to liberalism. liberalization didn't change this, insofar as it wasn't a 'real' withdrawal from the market [hmm--what exactly does this mean? it opens up space for the argument to be reactionary, though it probably isn't. it also isn't clear that the intervention of the state disproves liberalization, since that is common to all liberalizers. odd claim against Left--State hasn't ignored redistribution, look at all the other modes of regulation (consumption!?)]

(288): hey Hitchens--between 1989 to 1992, Ben Ali launched an attack on the headscarf

JPS October 1973, Vol 1 Number 1


Eric Hobsbawm, Peasants and Politics

(4): differentiating between the 'peasant' problem and the 'agrarian' problem (landless labourers or commercial farmers, he's arguing, belong to the latter)

(4): peasants on a continuum--the 'sack of potatoes' (i.e. 18th Brumaire) variety to more collective forms (i.e., 19th century Central Russia). most tending towards latter, though this doesn't imply egalitarianism, even if it does imply prohibition of unrestricted accumulation.

(5): peasant question is question of traditional group involved in 'modern' politics

(5): citing Shanin, 'peasantry' is characterized by 'low classness'--not much about its politics can be read off its relation to the MoP

(7): allowing for a vague consciousness of 'peasantness', as a distinct category of subalternity

(8): but stressing underdeveloped sense of the world beyond ('Cuba as another department of Peru,' etc.) [unique to the peasantry?]

(9, 11): imp, no such thing as a 'national peasant movement' -- only becomes wider by external force (and even then more likely to be regional) [hmm] (Mexico as his example--bulk of peasantry not involved, but key regions were: Pancho Villa's North (the equivalent of the Cossacks), and Zapata in Morelos, situated next to the capital)

(11): 1905-1907 in Russia, 80-100% of peasant population in action


(11): at the same time, such 'congolemerate' movements can be very important to the success/failure of revolutions, of course

(11-12): Peru 1962-1964 was impressive, but had limitations--took five years and a coup to win agrarian reform

(12): imp, major reason peasantry is weak is because of a pervasive sense of inferiority [hmm]. this has something (?) to do with the nature of the peasant economy, since unrest must stop for the harvest (hypothesis that the little labour required by the potato economy in Ireland made possible frequent unrest)

(13): peasant 'passivity' as a form of class struggle--since 'no change' suits them best [hmm]

(14-16) [becoming a bit too speculative, all this; Hobsbawm's writing doesn't really lend itself to journal articles]

(17): traditionally, peasants integrated into political apparatus by three ideological devices: King (precisely because he isn't their 'real' ruler, but wields power over their overlords), Church, proto-nationalism. all this lends them to right-wing politics, albeit of a revolutionary tenor

(17) int, so why do peasants come under the political Left? economic changes, urbanization, migration, etc. (Narodniks vs. early 20th C. revolutionaries in Russia). (but S. Italy and Garibaldi? no answers)

(18-20): three propositions about peasants in modern political situations

1. the 'peasantry' as a political concept disappears, because conflicts within rural sector eliminate what peasants have in common against outside (Bolsheviks were over-eager in anticipating this, of course--but this often redounds to the disadvantage of revolutionaries, since it antagonizes some groups [hmm])
2.  democratic electoral politics do not work for the peasantry as a class ('peasant party' is a freak phenomenon, no one-to-one attitude; peasantry as 'electoral fodder')
3. citing Marx, peasantry are incapable of representing their own interests; they need a master over them

(20): rise of Nazis 1928-1933 was last genuine 'mass movement' of peasants

This is simply a mathematical canard. According to the USAID Green Book, in 2009, total economic assistance to Pakistan came to $1.35 billion and military assistance totaled $0.429 (for a grand sum of $1.78 billion). In 2009, Pakistan's gross domestic product was $162 billion. Calling this is a dependency is an obvious stretch. (In fairness, I too have been guilty of lapsing into this idiom until I crunched the numbers.)


By way of contrast, the United States gave Israel $2.43 billion in total economic and military assistance in 2009. Israel's GDP was $204 billion. As a percentage of GDP, U.S. total assistance to both countries are nearly the same (around 1 percent). Between 1962 and 2009, total economic and military assistance to Israel totaled $178 billion in constant 2009 U.S. dollars. In the same period, U.S. military and economic aid to Pakistan comes to $37 billion in constant 2009 U.S. dollars. But would Mr. Hitchens describe Israel as being dependent upon Washington? By his own argumentation, he would have to answer in the affirmative.

origin of capitalism, EM Wood

(14): confusion of bourgeois with capitalist is a legacy of the historiography

(17): Weber as 'Smithian'

(19): for both old commercialization and w-systems models, the extent of trade is the index of capitalist development

(20-21): M. Mann, too

(21): Polanyi as (partial) exception--distinction between society w/ markets, and 'market society' (recognition that most early markets were not 'competitive', and that competitive markets were resisted by merchants,etc.)

(26): key--points is, of course, that advance of PF presupposed transformation of property relations. normal "order of causation suggests a failure to treat the capitalist market itself as a specific social form."

(27-32): nice critique of supposed anti-Eurocentrism--odd to challenge the argument by further naturalizing capitalism, saying it actually had advanced quite far in TW, etc. within this view, the absence of capitalism still constitutes a 'historic failure'

(35): two narratives in Marx: the old one, in GI and CM; suggestions of a different one, in Grundrisse and Capital [she's exaggerating the latter for effect, one thinks. but no mind]

(37-40): brief summary of Dobb-Sweezy--Dobb, drawing on Hilton, calling into question assumption that capitalism was a 'quantitative expansion of commerce', and that it was to be found in towns/trade. debate hinged on 'prime mover'--was it endogenous? or exogenous (trade)? Dobb/Hilton showed that latter was unsustainable. Hilton demolishing Pirenne. Dobb's argument was about differentiation in the petty mode of production, which was freed from feudal strictures after 'class struggle'.

(41-42): imp, Dobb/Hilton--despite the importance of their argument, the commercialization model is not dead, with them. once feudal fetters are removed, capitalist logic soon metastasizes (some of Sweezy's questions, in his c-argument, show this--why does petty commodity production generate capitalists and wage-labourers?)

(44-46): for Perry Anderson, 'Absolutist State' emerges in context of feudal bonds weakening (b/c of emergence of money rents), as lordly response to that challenge. Absolutist State as 're-charged' apparatus of feudal domination. BUT, though Anderson still understands it as feudal, he believes it liberates 'economy' because coercive powers are transferred upward, and de-coupled from point of economic extraction (this is why it's transitional); Wood making point that economic and political are still fused, but now through central State appropriating surplus through rents

(47): empirical problems with Anderson arg--English capitalism didn't need absolutism, and French absolutism didn't produce capitalism. and theoretically, still a 'fetters' model.

(48): PA review of Brenner--a 'value-added', commercialization account

(48): importance of capitalist agriculture in England is that it produces an 'internal market'--this sustains demand in the context of declining overseas markets

(49): English farmers can need Flemish market for wool--but opportunity for commerce does not produce capitalism; can simply entrench old relations of production. question is still begged, by Anderson and commercialization account.

(51): starting point of Brenner critique of both Malthusianism and commercialization--basic demographic patterns and insertion in network of trade produced different results in different places. this is a function, of course, of the character of SP relations

(54): why tenant farmers were, uniquely, capitalist--not b/c of wage labour (non-capitalist farmers in past had hired wage-labour), but because access to the means of reproducing themselves was mediated by the market and its imperatives

(57-58): one critique of Brenner--was 1600s or 1700s England distinct enough to be called agrarian capitalism (either b/c France was not that far behind, or b/c wage labour was not general)? but the first confuses land productivity with labour productivity; and the second leaves the origins of wage-labour mystified, unless it agrees to the Brenner thesis, which explains them (after all, proletarianization will not be the inevitable consequence of differentiation--in other words, differentiation was not the cause but the effect of the change in s-p relations)

(61-62): PA critique of Brenner--alleged contradiction between his transition argument, and his BR argument (i.e,. in Merchants and Revolution): said to have demonstrated the revolutionary role of merchants, in Eng Rev. actually, Brenner's position on BR is clear: he thinks it is a concept inherited from the commercialization model (mechanical materialism, etc.), in which PF increase (b/c of increasing division of labour--capitalist laws of motion are being generalized), merchant class grows, soon throws off feudal fetters.the key point, re: Merchants and Revolution, is that in France the revolutionary bourgeois need not be identified with capitalism; and in England, if they are to be identified, it is because the key transitions (in agriculture) have already taken place [EM Wood acknowledging that there is not enough, here, about links to international trade]

(66-67): EP Thompson offering a Brenner-like account, in Making of the English Working Class, b/c of his attentiveness to new forms of work discipline--new imperatives of productivity and profit mark capitalism as distinct, for him. this is why he focuses on 1700s, rather than later industrialization--b/c this is when specifically capitalist forms were taking shape

(74): identification of capitalism with towns is hegemonic (here discussing city-states). but incorrect.

(75): this becomes explanation of why West? b/c of unique autonomy of cities and the burghers.

(75): key--but, of course, historically this is absurd. lots of urban settlements that, while making use of market opportunities, never were systematically subject to market imperatives (and no tendency to develop from former to latter)

(77): early commercial rivalries had to do with competition over extra-economic privileges (shipping routes, etc.)

(78): dominant principle of trade was 'profit upon alienation'

(81): extensive commerce in food production is associated, of course, w/ rise of cities. but this does not mean that food production was subject to market imperatives (and its consequences--dev of PF, etc.)

(82): the trade in grain, also, was a function of the wealth of prosperous consumers (and, of course, their dependents).

(82): landed aristocracy was 'principal market for a range of products' at this time (Hilton)

(85-86): key-- urban wealth in medieval and early modern Europe was still 'politically constituted' -- it was a consequence of status, privileges ('collective lordships'). in short, this kind of 'economic development' was extra-economic in source, and thus self-limiting.

(88-89): int discussion of Dutch Republic, as paradigmatic failed transition--EM Wood arguing dominated by merchants whose chief vocation was circulation rather than production (even though direct producers start to depend on market for subsistence, etc.). in short, urban population was sustained by dominance in international trade, not by superior labour productivity in agriculture, as in Britain [hmm. more reading needed, here--how can you have such systematic market dependence, of direct producers?]

(91-93): in crisis of 17th century, Dutch came up against limits of pre-capitalist economic system. response to crisis was disinvestment from agriculture, unlike GB, and attempt to undergird commercial privilege (this was behind backing of William the Orange in England, against France)

(95-97): useful pithy description of SP relations, and difference between pre-capitalist rel. and capitalist rel.

(98): imp, England--none of the monarchical States were (1) as effectively unified as England (particularly true after 16th century). also, (2) no economy as characterized by as much land concentration--what landlords lacked in extra-economic autonomy, they made up for in economic power. this was to impel them towards a strategy of farming out to tenants, forcing productivity increases; they couldn't depend on extra-economic coercion, as in France [all this seems a rather roundabout way of explaining what happened in England]

(102): good point re: 'dissolving' effect of monetization of rents--whether or not this actually dissolves pre-capitalist relations of production depends on relations of production

(104): in France, crisis of 17th century was 'met' by a doubling-down of absolutism--vast new powers of extra-economic coercion over a peasantry with access to means of subsistence

(104): contrast between English and French surveyors--former searching for mkt values, latter for seigneurial rights

(105): a national market arose only as a corollary of capitalism/mkt society (Napoleonic State's efforts, in France); it was not a cause.

(107): early improvements were not revolutionary technological innovations--more application of accumulated knowledge, refinement in techniques (here, 16th and 17th century being discussed), and, crucially, elimination of old customs/practices (usufruct rights for non-owners, etc.)

(109): enclosures checked by monarchy, until 1688 rev. 18th C. as century of 'parliamentary enclosures'

(110-113): imp, Locke embodies this era--his theory of property is premised on 'improvement (i.e, this is how you prove your right to land). and, in case we need reminding, labour of servant is understood as counting towards 'productive use' by landlord. this, EM Wood adding, is a feature of capitalist ideology--would never have made sense under pre-capitalist MoP

(116-117): imp, the SRoP set the stage for class struggle--in France, over politically constituted property (aristocracy vs. monarchy, bourgeois vs. nobility and church, etc., peasants vs. all); in England, politically constituted property was not the issue, but more the economic powers of appropriation (right of enclosure, conflicts over use rights)

(118): class struggle set stage for capitalism, in England, by asserting landlords' rights over peasants' customary rights [not a very 'unintended' consequence, but this is weakness of summary]

(118-119): attack on concept of BR, even where it is rehabilitated to simply be 'outcome'-based--more 'effect than cause' where capitalism pre-exists it (can be a factor in its future development, but isn't key). BUT can't use the same concept to describe England AND France.

(120): imp, the popular elements in the English revolution were actually fighting against the forms of property most conducive to capitalism. theirs is an anti-capitalist legacy (this is further developed in 'Democracy Against Capitailsm,' one imagines)

(120): FR tensions were old-regime ones; conflict over State apparatus.

(121): and outcome-wise, difficult to argue that it facilitated rise of capitalism (even if it did unify State, etc.)

(122): again, ER did more to promote capitalism--but it didn't occur in context of feudalism.

(128): the 'idyllic' English countryside (image of) rests on disposession of peasantry, elimination of their villages and hegemony of territorial aristocrats

(130): imp, where does wage-labour fit in SRoP? new economic pressures produced wage-labour, but they don't presuppose wage-labour (even though wage-labour is part of the triad, it was a minority in seventeenth century England--restricted to parts of S and SE). you can be market-dependent w/o employing wage-labour, w/o being a wage-labourer. it requires only loss of non-market access to means of self-reproduction.

(131): by end of 1600s, English capitalism confirmed in productivity dominance

(132): urban population in 1850: 40% in England and Wales, 14% in France, 10% in Germany

(134): 'British capitalism depended on a highly developed domestic market'

(135): new banking system rooted in domestic transformations, in London

(136): similarly, naval and military power rooted in exceptional wealth, which was a property of domestic transformations

(137): competitive rents take off in 16th century

(137): EM Wood position on Dutch vs. English [interesting to compare w/ Brenner, of course]

(140): b/c of nature of mass mkt, extra pressure to produce cheaply [seems wrong]

(141-143): imp, the agrarian transition lay the groundwork for the industrial revolution--(1) created a proletariat; (2) with that, created a mass market. (Wood also adding that w/o agrarian transition, capitalism would not ever have developed! cf. demonstration effect, etc.). it was not technology (contra Polayni)--in fact, innovations in the first IR were quite minimal [hmm, worth interrogating, since this is what invites the ire of the PF school]

(144): nice sum--"industrialization was, then, the result not the cause of mkt society, and capitalist laws of motion were the cause not the result of mass proletarianization"

(148): the int market then transmitted the imperatives of efficient production, elsewhere (i.e., so it's not just via the 'demonstration effect,' and the State) [but hang on--why would other producers be forced to produce efficiently?]

(147): key--development of distinctive social property relations in England was well on its way by the time it became a major imperial power. the others that dominated were, of course, characterized by non-capitalist 'laws of motion'

(147-148): imp--lay 'Left' accounts of importance of imperialism, to capitalist take-off, are built on a 'commercialization model'. moreover, they fail to recognize that other powers were more important imperialists (Spain as best example)

(148-149): and slavery? other non-capitalist powers equally engaged in plantation slavery.

(149): in short, imperialism may have helped England on its way--but no amount of colonial wealth would have done anything to further capitalism in England, without prior transformation of social-property relations

(150): imperial expansion of pre-capitalist societies followed pre-capitalist logic: extra-economic coercion in extraction of surplus, extensive expansion, profits on alienation in trade

(153, see also 175): imp, English in Ireland, as emerging case of capitalist imperialism (late 1500s under Tudor colonization, to 1600s under Cromwell). imposition of a new economic system, via settlers--an 'English-style commercial order' was to be implanted [there is a danger, here, of identifying capitalist imperialism as an imperialism that brings capitalism--rather than as an imperialism impelled by distinctively capitalist imperatives. Wood isn't doing much to clarify this latter question. in fact, she's confounding the two questions].

(155): argument that capitalism has tendency to 'universalize its imperatives' [hmm], counter-balanced by attempt to manage effects [so this, in her argument, is why England retreats from capitalist development in Ireland; but it seems better to locate the tension in policy-makers, and question of what might be functional for English capital. maybe just a subtle distinction, though I think not]

(157): Locke on Indians and 'improvement'

(168): the question of the State, under feudalism--localized/territorialized parcels of sovereignty; modern nation-state was born with centralization

(169): again, contra Perry Anderson, for Wood 'absolutism' reproduces a pre-capitalist unity of political and economic power, but at a higher level (France as paradigmatic case). moreover, territorialized sovereignty never fully dissolved, under absolutism, of course.

(171): in England, story is a bit different. the social transformation that brought about capitalism is the same one that brought about the nation state

(172-173): imp, England's unification was far advanced, viz-a-viz France--this went hand in hand with 'economic unification, though it doesn't require it since the general process of centralization was rooted in tension between monarchies and parcellized sovereignties [she's being evasive re: exact nature of causation (b/c the same thing happens in France), but it clearly has its roots in underlying social transformations. the position seems to be that capitalism brings this to its fruition, but doesn't kickstart it.]

 (177): no evidence that capitalism today is less in need of 'nation states' than it was before, despite rhetoric to the contrary

(177): useful, disjuncture in capitalism between boundaries of economic appropriation and extra-economic coercion--the former can transcend the boundaries of the latter. this makes possible its unique expansiveness, also. BUT it also invites a contradiction, which is that capitalism does still need extra-economic coercion.

(182): nice, 'modernity' has been identified with 'capitalism,' as part of the 'commercialization' model that associates bourgeois and capitalist. rethinking this identity invites a re-thinking of the relationship between modernity and capitalism. and opens us up to an anti-capitalist modernity.

(183-184): much of the Enlightenment belongs to a 'non-capitalist' society--in France, for example, the absolutist State. an overwhelmingly rural society, limited internal market in the 1700s.

(185): imp, the 'revolutionary' program of the bourgeoisie consisted in demanding 'equal access' to the tax-office State. 'universalism,' in the language of the bourgeoisie, had a more limited meaning (anti- aristocratic privilege) than it has been given in theories of history. and their attitude to the absolutist State was equivocal.

(187): Berman/Harvey reading 'capitalism' into early accounts about 'confusion'/'flux' that are really being written about cities, not capitalism

(188): the de-coupling of Enlightenment from capitalism is clearer, still, when you look at England--'rationalism' is replaced by 'invisible hand,' etc [hmm]

(189-190): nice, much of what the Enlightenment is indicted for is actually the ideology of improvement we see in capitalist Britain (not a consequence of commitment to rational analysis, etc., but disconnected from it)

(191-192): pithy definition of postmodernism, and its idiotic rejection of 'totalizing narratives'

(193): in sum:

1. capitalism is not a natural/inevitable consequence of human nature
2. a deeply contradictory force--self-sustaining growth, but not incompatible with regular stagnation (important, re: thinking about development of PF)

 (197): Continental Europe has better public services b/c of 'legacy of absolutism'[!!?]

ahmed shawki and sebastien budgen, HM 2010 (european far Left)

SEBASTIEN BUDGENS

The Historical Context

(1) Crisis of ideological legitimacy (dating to 1995, and the French strikes, but onwards since then)

(2) Crisis of social democracy

• membership
• programmatic crisis
• moral crisis (corruption, political entropy)

(3) The stirrings of social resistance (students in Austria, Greece; strike activity in Germany).

New Elements

(4) Opening of political opportunities

(5) Crisis and austerity

(6) Crisis of confidence re: democratic centralism and vanguard parties

Three Different Models

(1) Coming-together of remnants of mass communist parties with other strands (including far-left, trade unionists, etc.). The obvious example is Die Linke, in Germany (East Communist party, splits from the SDP, sections of the trade union movement, Trotskyists, etc.) The party of Communist Re-Foudnation in Italy had similar origins. In Greece, the coalition aroud the former Eurocommunist Party resembles this.

(2) re-foundation of a Left party around many far-left group. The best example is the Left Bloc in Portugal; a more-or-less balanced coming-together of the far-left, to create a new force.

(3) the new anti-capitalist party, a re-making of the defunct Revolutionary Communist League.

We have to bear in mind, always, the disasters of England and Italy, as controls, so to speak.

Why are these worth considering?

(1) They have had electoral success, for one. In the last European elections, the New Anti-Capitalist Party got 5%; Die Linke 7.3%; Left Bloc 10%. In the federal elections, there was a substantial breakthrough for Die Linke (which won 11.9% of the vote; five million votes). In Portugal, the Left Bloc got 9.8%; doubled its parliamentary representation (becoming the fourth-largest in Portugal)

(2) They have a significant presence on the national scene, aside from this.

(3) A coming-together of different trends on the left (autonomists, trotskyists, etc.).

(4) Mixing of generations.

(5) Marks the end of period of bunkering down and ghettoization for the European left.

(6) Portends something on a European scale, perhaps.

General Obstacles

(1) The question of alliances, electorally or otherwise; the question of alliances to the right (and sometimes to the Left). In Germany the question is the possible alliance with the SPD (in Berlin has led to massive disagreements within the party); in France with the French Communist Party; In Portugal with the Portuguese Socialist Party. The question can't be dodged; there is significant pressure from below. Italy though gives us an example of how cooperation can destroy this kind of party (the party of Re-Foundation). It doesn't always have to be this stark—the question of the Left Front in France (for the first time, the Communist Party has decided not to stand with the Socialists in the first round of the elections). At the same time, the New Anti-Capitalist Party has certain conditions, which the Communist party is likely to refuse (no regional executives in alliance with the Socialist party).

(2) Their own programmatic weaknesses—how to articulate a defensist program, protecting the welfare state and whatnot, as part of a larger, more radical program?

(3) How do you translate electoral support into activist support? How do you turn millions of voters into thousands of activists?

(4) The question of internal organization—how do you balance plurality, with leadership? How do you relate to those within your organization who are more skeptical of party membership?

(5) A missing generation of cadre; many of these organizations involve a whole host of people in their 60s, or people in their 20s.

(6) The relationship to the media, and the question of the personalization of politics. You have effective, eloquent spokespeople; but how do you handle overexposure to the media? It makes parties very dependent on these personalities (if Olivier Betanscout was to give up his job tomorrow, the NPA would be in dire straits)

(7) Underdevelopment of theoretical consensus within the parties—often many strands coexisting, rather than constructive debate.

(8) The articulation of electoral movements, to movement-building; how do you relate to trade union leadership? Big problem in France where there's a tradition of resisting political influence over the decision of striking, etc. Or in Germany, may of the trade union bureaucrats are in Die Linke—makes a critique, complicated.

(9) Relate the national, to the international.

(10) How do relate to national minorities? NPA has very few roots amongst youth of color, etc.

(11) The biggest problem, which overdetermines all of this—the absence of mass struggle in these countries.

What are honest expectations?

It is clear that this will be determined by the outbreak of mass forms of struggle—and by the ability of these formations to relate to that struggle in a flexible, creative way.

But things to do in the interim, is quite clear—the creation of a liberated electoral zone, that Social Democracy has evacuated. The danger is the Americanization of European politics, where Left and Right are more-or-less meaningless.

The re-popularization of Socialist values and principles.

The engagement and unification of social movements; having a voice in the national media defending factory occupations, etc.

AHMED SHAWKI

These represent formations that we must learn more about in the US—their importance is obviously connected to our own ambitions and plans, here.

On a broader scale, the reference to the question of the return to the 19^th Century is worth taking up. We're in a new period. In the First International, you had many different currents coming together; then you had a dominant model, in the time of the Second International (which saw a split, then, at the time of the Second World War)--since that period, the main form of expression in the workers' movement was the Communist Parties, which entered a period of crisis, themselves. And they shared, at that time, an industrial organization. The other wing of the workers' movement, of course, was the parties of social democracy. The late 60's, then, saw an attempt to reclaim the revolutionary tradition.

That period, very schematically, has come to a close. It's in this context that the new parties have emerged.

Shared Characteristics

In the main, these parties have an electoral orientation—emerging from a period in the 1980s/1990s when struggles were not politicized in the same way.

The weakness of these parties and general discontent in society at-large, Shawki's arguing, is what explains the disconnect between their social base and their electoral success (so you see people's aspirations and desires reflected in electoral success, but no real social base and local cadre). Analagous to the Party of Socialist Liberation in Brazil, where the leader is well-known around the country, but the cadre is similarly absent.

In the US—the majority of activists want the creation of a revolutionary party, no doubt. The problem, of course, is what steps would this kind of political development take. At the very least:

1. A serious orientation toward elections and social struggles.
2. Decision by the constituent elements to accept other traditions. The problem here is that we don't have the background, the experience; we don't have a social democratic workers' movement that feels betrayal, etc.

Ways Forward

Need to come together in action and collaboration, much more so than the creation of a new party for the sake of having a party (Greece is a good model; painful years before the coalition was formed).

Comment and Questions

(1) The Communist Parties—niche parties; popularity perhaps partly explained by a history of struggle against dictatorship and fascism; element of familial reproduction; contradictory, tactical flexibility, which appeals to a traditional working-class elite which is tied to hard rhetoric but right-wing practice (Greek Communist Party published a favorable account from the perspective of a policeman!). Haven't managed to take it to a new generation. (Argument also that, with the defeat of these parties, Marxism has been liberated from being the property of these organizations; and thus, these new formations have complicated, interesting relationships to the re-formation/re-composition of Marxism. But this is where, obviously, the indeterminateness is interesting/problematic).

(2) Charlie arguing that much of what explains the formation of these parties and their absence in the US is, also, the differential levels of class struggle. (Paul LeBlanc making same point)

(3) How can we talk of the parties of social democracy as bourgeois workers' parties? Or are they capitalist capitalist parties, so to speak? (Paul Blackledge responding that it is the former, which is both a positive and a negative) (Sebastien saying that this is complicated, even metaphysical—how degenerate is the degenerate workers' party? And how degenerate does it get before...? But crux of response that this can only be debated in the context of different national realities. And we have to discuss what we mean by organic links to the workers' movement.) (Ahmed tracing it to its specific roots; a term deployed by the Third International to refer to movements that they had once belonged to; but crux of response seems to have to do with specifics of each situation. We require a willingness to understand the particularity of the situations that confront us).

(4) How to build a mass social movement? Point about Obama's electorate, hopes being aroused and then dashed—so we have 'new openings'. How to push this forward, as revolutionary Marxists? (Ahmed re-emphasizing that it's entirely false to think that there hasn't been a change in reality/consciousness, owing to crisis and Obama—and it may not all be positive, at all. But it's silly to deny that we're in a different context. Fair enough, but there is an enormous question about how this translates into organization ('infrastructures of resistance,' what have you.))

(5) “Cultural Politics”—not in the Eurocommunist aspiration for cultural hegemony; but rather the question of how to reach out to people who have no institutional links to the workers' movement. Film showings; work in mosques; etc. This is a useful term for something that could be critical to work in Pakistan, of course. (Ahmed mentioning that if you have a 'knee-jerk' stupid position on religion, you won't get anywhere in this country).

(6) Die Linke not as a revolutionary party with reformist tendencies; rather, a reformist party with revolutionary tendencies (has much to do with low-level of political consciousness, as much as it does has to do with bureaucratic structures; “I didn't leave the SPD, the SPD left me”). Similarly, on the question of entryism—you cannot simply be a critic from within, you have to be an organizer from within.

ahmed shawki, comintern

an ambiguity in the comintern's formulation of the national question, beginning with the second congress in 1920, which has led to the confounding of 'marxism' with a kind of 'radical nationalism'.
for marx, socialism meant international working-class revolution--not out of a moral duty, necessarily, but because of the nature of capitalism as a 'global' system. the possibility of victory in one country is premised on success in all countries.

marx also believed that capitalism would be reproduced in less developed countries in the way it appeared in advanced countries (his empirical material was limited). the spread of capitalist relations in these countries would be 'progressive' (this doesn't need to be the caricatured stagism that said and co. think it is--there were no sanguine descriptions of what it did, remember). the problem is, of course, is that he was wrong. he had concluded that national differences would tend to disappear as there is created a world-class; he was wrong about the pace, and the speed at which it would develop. revolutionary socialists face an entirely different problem, really--you had the development of imperialism, which is a fundamental obstacle to the disappearance of 'national antagonisms'.

the organizations of the socialist movement around WWI, of course, collapsed.

lenin's argument, at this time, was very different: in marx's time, capitalism was still contained within a few nation states. now, of course, we are talking about the uneven expansion of the world-system (you don't get many manchesters, but england and india). imperialism, furthermore, appears here; defined as the ferocious rivalry between advanced capitalist countries (not so much about the advanced countries and the less developed). this is why, of course, marxists reject variants of third-worldism; they are unable to accomodate the rivalries that ravage the 'advanced blocks'. this is the key to the collapse of the second international (here shawki is disagreeing--the question of the 'labor aristocracy,' etc.), in lenin's argument.

the most important thing about lenin, here, is that he is insisting that we begin not by ceding to the politics of nationalism, but by supporting the right to self-determination of those who are fighing colonial occupation (not necessarily secession, but if it comes to that, yes). this is the period of world war one.
this is really when Marxism starts to look beyond Europe, shawki is arguing.

comintern in 1919, in baku -- emancipation of workers in less advanced countries requires revolution in the advanced countries. if capitalist europe pillaged them, socialist europe will liberate them.

CRITICAL--what is important about this statement, shawki is noting, is that within a year, almost, or by the mid-1920s, this changes quite dramatically. their attitude changes. instead of seeing the emancipation of the third world as dependent on the workers of the advanced world, with the decline of revolutionary possibilities in europe, they began to see the struggles in the third world as the spark that would light the fire.
the comintern at this time is trying to clarify what their position should be, with respect to these countries, around this time (1920-1922, it seems). three central conclusions.

first and foremost, the precondition for socialism was the development of the economy and the development of a working-class. did that mean that socialism elsewhere was an impossibility? support for nationailst countries?
the comintern says no. capitalism is not inevitable--if the victorious proletariat in these countries conduct aggressive propaganda (and USSR come to their aid, note), capitalist development might be bypassed.

second, soviets are possible amongst the peasantry, etc.

thirdly, the nationalist movements in the third world would be the allies of the Soviet State, in that they fought against the domination of the imperialist countries.

this is where MN Roy steps in, of course. it was already raised, here, that class differentiation in the less developed countries had come to a degree that you already find movements that are 'bourgeois' in character--and more fearful of the proletariat than they will be brave in the face of imperialist oppression. he objected to blanket support to national liberation movements (he was saying, in effect, what Lenin had said in Tsarist Russia--the 'bourgeois-democratic' revolution, and then the 'national revolution')

this ambiguity in the formulation, then--how you assess national liberation movements?--was actually avoided at the congress of the comintern, and was left for the future. basically, Roy's amendments were spliced onto Lenin's original theses. an agreement, of course, to not obscure the nature of bourgeois movements--we will support the nationalist movements only when they are genuinely revolutionary, and when they will not block independent communist organizing.

KEY--of course, even this leaves many of the questions to be resolved, in practice. and leaves a contradiction in place. the stronger the communist party, the weaker and more conciliatory the natonialist movement. the weaker the communist party, the more revolutionary the nationalist movement. so confusion, he's arguing.
this said--there certainly is room, here, for tactical flexibility. moreover, practically, they never here compromised the politics of the international revolution, he's arguing. "a resolute struggle must be waged against coating the non-revolutionary movements in the colonies in the colors of revolution. comintern should collaborate with the revolutionary movement, yes, but it must unconditionally maintain the independence of the proletarian movement."

in practice, what did this mean? 

well, there was a tension--in part to do with the ambiguity of the formulation. but also--KEY--because you have two contradictory aims, of course: the defense of the Soviets, and the advance of the international working class.

one example--in 1921, the principal threat to the Soviet Union was Britain and France (third congress in 1921), acknowledging that revolution was no longer on the cards in the West. they looked, then, for allies who would assist them in their struggle against Britain and France, which leads, shawki's arguing, to a whole series of contradictions--signing of a treaty between Ataturk and the Russian State, for example. Ataturk took the support, of course, and this had disastrous consequences for the Turkish Communist Party, which was promptly slaughtered.

there is an objective difference, Shawki is arguing, between this and the comintern under Stalin. not a question of justifying anything, just understanding the context.
Bukharin, for example, to Turkish communists--"even now, with the persecutions, do not let yourself be blinded. you still have far to go." what is important here, he's arguing, is the beginnings of the development of a 'theory of stages'. in all of what has been given thus far, shawki's noting, there has been no hint of a 'theory of stages' in the backward countries.

KEY--theoretically, shawki is saying, this has to do with the arrival of socialism in one country. the european revolutions had failed; but the russian state survived, as a result of the smychka. bukharin, following some of his earlier analysis, adopted that as the theory of the world--in today's present circumstances, the struggle internationally was not about working-class revolution, but about 'the cities of the world' vs. the 'countryside' (modern-day third worldism). therefore we're not talking so much about international alliances, but instead a kind of 'nationalisms' (this has also to do with bukharin's belief that the working-classes in the advanced countries were vanishing).

it now becomes a question, then, of supporting nationalist movements against imperialism which is with us (where as we do not support those who aren't with us). a question of the defence of the russian state above all else. clearest illustration of this is the chinese revolution of 1925-1927. bukharin/stalin here are entirely different from what came previously; they were never unclear on the question of independent organization, and not dressing up the nationalists in communist colors (in china, the nationalist movement was literally constituted by the comintern (by Borodin)--it physically did not exist as an organization).

borodin is known for one famous quote in 1927--this is not our time, this is the time to do coolie service for the KMT. here's a quote from the central committee in 1926, in the midst of an enormous strike wave: "the greatest danger is that the mass movement is developing toward the left, while the KMT is seized with panic, and beginning to incline toward the right. should these tendencies continue, the cleavage will deepen... the red united front will be demolished..."

CONCLUSION--the practical consequence of this is that the comintern collapsed the struggle for socialism into the struggle for nationalism, and into the defence of the Soviet Union.  it began to blur the very important distinction between the class position in society--it's not a question of ignoring the peasantry, but a question of understanding divergent class interests.

lecture twelve, development

Nixon motivation to go off 'gold standard' driven by domestic policy. the 'discipline' put on it by the condition of convertibility was largely theoretical; others were willing to abide by it. there was a concern about holding dollars in the late 60s, but no one was willing to initiate the run.

SDRs was a counter-proposal, but US didn't let it happen, properly.

'Closing the Gold Window' is a good book about Nixon's decision to abandon the 'gold standard.'

the engineering of the 'Oil Shock' story is a bit problematic; it seems a bit of a stretch, given that (a) US never took opportunities to screw over Europe; (b) US capitalists/finance invested in Europe, they would be greatly damaged

when Europe goes into crisis, US does everything it can do to help (Aaron Major's research)

Atlantic alliance was not grounded on 'threat of USSR' – has to do with interpenetration of economies, and other factors. the thesis of intense interstate competition in the advanced world is not right—or, died with WWII

questions about whether the American ruling-class benefits from the dollar being the international currency. there's a hazard that goes along with Nixon wanting the dollar, which is that the dollar was seen as foundational to US hegemony.

the jacking up of oil prices as an expression of 'competition'--the least efficient producers need the price rise to benefit, because of the high costs of expansion.

major structural shift is the change in balance of forces in US, which seems important to explaining the high temporal concentration. one reason that the IMF of the 50s isn't the IMF of the 70s is b/c of influence of 'planning.'

theory of money: central banks control money supply (monetarists—a regulating institution) vs. central bank have to accommodate decisions of private banks (Marxists, post-Keynesians, etc.--an accomodating institution)

no Volcker shock, no debt crisis. ISI doesn't need to collapse, even if it isn't particularly strong—it's the shock of raising interest rates to 19%, of course.

financialization by '85

period between 1815 – 1870s is a period of 'global peace'; but it doesn't mean that military violence ceases, it's all turned inwards (and this is documented—state-building). and once they have built their States, imperialism commences.