Saturday, August 22, 2015

Article Review: Panitch and Gindin's "Marxist Theory and Strategy"



The Future of Historical Materialism in Theory and Practice


                I was genuinely moved by the most recent highlight article in Historical Materialism’s 23.2 edition by Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin.  For those unable to obtain a copy of HM 23.2, or for those who don’t have a University Proxy, I hope that this summary will provide at least the key points; because this is an argument and assessment of historical materialism that cannot be overlooked.  While I will do my best to explain my own thoughts, reactions, and perceptions of the article, nothing can substitute reading the author’s own words.  I highly recommend a subscription to Historical Materialism Journal, which can be purchased for about $50-80 depending on your student status.  Otherwise, you can always purchase individual copies of their journals on their website from Brill Publishing (link will be posted at the bottom).
                So let’s dive right in.  The title of the article is aptly put:  Marxist Theory and Strategy:  Getting Somewhere Better.  Some might read that and be confused by the title, but for the vast majority of Marxists out there it need not be said that presently the work of historical materialists, Marxist scholars, and social activists need a more grounded understanding of how theory transforms into practice; and vice versa.
                On a basic, general level, the article calls for “better historical-materialist theorisations of capitalist competition, capitalist classes and capitalist states, and in particular the institutional dimensions of these—which is fundamental for understanding why and how capitalism has survived into the twenty-first century.”[i]  This is in part a rallying call for Marxist intellectuals and social activists to reassess their understandings of the capitalist world-system by integrating more advanced theories of socioeconomic development.  A critical example of this would be Giovanni Arrighi’s The LongTwentieth Century—a text that I have reviewed and given much praise.  Secondly, it is also a criticism of the existing theorisations by implying that there could be something “better.”  This is something we must take to heart and consider seriously:  What about existing theorisations are limiting?  The rest of the article spends most of its time explaining these limitations.
                The first major limitation suggested by the authors is the attempt by social theorists to explain capitalist competition through “market predominance,” or the relative size and growth of multinational corporations throughout the twentieth century.  Coca Cola, for example, holds a relative dominance over a specific market of commodities and goods, thereby limiting the expansion of more commodities in that market (it’s quite difficult to start up a new soda product).  But what exactly does the predominance of a multinational corporation tell us about capitalist competition other than that it generally creates conditions to destroy competition?  It’s one thing to point out a tendency for market predominance to come into fruition over time and another—even more revolutionary—thing to point out that this is a law of capitalist development, not a feature of it.  The “structural relationship between industry and finance” should be understood as a monopolistic fact of economic development under capitalism.  Laws exist suggesting that monopolies are not beneficial for the economy and should be broken up, but the fact remains that monopolization of a market is a canon feature of all industrial and financial production.  Few scholars and activists, the authors suggest, have addressed this fact and instead focus on the anti-monopoly laws as a feature for a greater society—wholly ignoring that political laws do little to disrupt entrenched economic laws.[ii]
                The second limitation put forth by the authors is the jargon-laced assessment of “class” done by Marxists from 1900 to the present.  Too often do we hear people break down “class” into abstract and ideal categories:  99% and 1%; rich and poor; proletarian and bourgeoisie.  Indeed, Marx himself used this sort of abstract dichotomy to explain the complex nature of class struggle.  But none of Marx’s writings ever suggested that these class groups were solidified and unchanging; in fact the very notion of a lack of quantitative and qualitative change over time would flip everything Marxism is based on upside down.  Instead, the authors suggest that “classes must be conceived as real collectivities whose changing formation based on common experiences and activities can be traced historically.”  It is thus the role of historical materialists to “investigate the changing capacities of classes to express their identity and interests over time, and the effects this has on the relative balance of class power.”  Now here’s a radical proposition that few Marxists have expressed:  Classes identity and class position do not necessarily coincide.  Someone might be an industrial proletarian but identify with their rich and affluent high school friend who now owns a major business.  Class, therefore, has two central components to it:  1) the economically-determined actuality of social position; and 2) the culturally and socially-determined perception of social position.  Classes change, and so do their understandings of themselves and their relationships to others.  Historical materialists must accept this and continue to investigate the mechanisms that cause the shift from one generation to another.[iii]
                Probably one of the best criticisms put forth by the authors is the limited assessment made by 21st century Marxists to explain the full nature of capitalist states.  The authors charge that “Marxism’s traditional weakness as a theory of the state was that it never went far beyond the assertion that ‘the state is merely a device for administering the common affairs.’”  I hear this argument repeated ad-nausium on Facebook groups:  ‘The state is a tool to be used by whatever class is in power.’  Such a notion is built off a façade; it’s an attempt to justify and defend the Marxist-Leninist practices of the Soviet Union and China from 1930-1980.  The authors, however, point to Ralph Miliband, who insisted on “the need for distinguishing between state power and class power, and the importance of clearly delimitating state institutions within capitalist societies.”  Consider America for example, which was a critical nation-state in the formation of the contemporary capitalist world-system after WWII.  The state did not merely wield control over its own territory, it also manifested conditions of capitalist development on all corners of the globe.  However, the conditions it created did not expand the power of the state and those employing it—rather, it expanded the power and reach of multinational corporations.  This built a symbiotic relationship that had previously only existed in infancy:  “capitalist states are dependent on capital accumulation for securing their own tax revenues and legitimacy, and their actions must always be located within the social field of class forces, but state power is not the same as class power.”  In short, we cannot fool ourselves into believing that the state is merely a pawn of one class or another; it is independent in many ways.  Attempts to negate this independence is an idealistic endeavor to ignore complexity for the sake of simplicity.[iv]
                The two final criticisms are broken into sections, but they essentially encapsulate the same question:  Why has capitalism survived?  Why has the proletarian industrial class not assumed their roles as the system’s ‘gravediggers’?  Building off previous arguments by World-Systems scholars and Autonomous social activists, the authors pose us to question our own understanding of the role played by the proletarian class.  Marxism has been charged in the past for being deterministic, in that it suggests an inherent downfall in capitalism because of visual and accountable contradictions.  P, the so-called ‘tendency for the rate of profit to fall’, is a prime example of this.  But as I’ve addressed in previous articles and the authors do in their own, the contradictions of capitalism should not be understood as the faults upon which a breakdown is inevitable.  Instead, they should be understood as the mechanisms which force capitalist economic systems to continuously revolutionize and expand their own production.  Some scholars, like Arrighi, argue that a bounce-back between financial and industrial investment accounts for at least part of the sustainability of capitalism through periods of sustained crises—such as the 1880s, the 1930s, the 1970s, and the current situation around us today.  The authors of the article suggest another powerful argument:  that the crises necessitate shifts to “alter the balance of class forces and change institutional infrastructures in ways which renew capital accumulation.”  In other words, the social institutions that we associate with capitalism (banks, reserves, productive centers) undergo massive quantitative and qualitative shifts to cope with the conditions of crises generated by capital’s contradictions.[v]
                All these limitations lead the authors to posit 9 “strategic guidelines,” which they say expresses the “nine lives we would like to think Marxism has before it really deserves to be pronounced dead.”  The first is that “capitalist crises cannot be counted on to produce conditions for socialist transformation.”  A powerful argument, one that many will not swallow easily. 
The second is that “there is no possibility of a return to the Keynesian welfare state.”  Too often do we hear individuals, liberal and conservative, express a desire to return to the old days, when the conditions were more pure for social change and the welfare state stood as an example for future development.  In light of globalization, the welfare state is increasingly seeing its own power dwindle in comparison to multinational corporations. 
The third guideline is that “the working class as the agency of socialist transformation needs to be problematized.”  This attacks the idea that once a class, or representatives of a class, obtain power that they immediately have begun transformation of social conditions.  As Deutscher wrote on the success of the Bolshevik’s seizing of power, their power “at best represented the idea of the class, not the class itself.”
The fourth strategy is one many are familiar with but hesitant to take to its full completion:  historical materialists, Marxists, and social activists must “build institutions which are directly engaged once again in organizing the proletariat into a class.”  The emphasis here is on organizing and representing the proletariat “broadly rather than narrowly” (such as only organizing industrial workers, or only organizing service workers, and not finding ways to link together the relationships of both groups).  This would ultimately prove that the “proletariat”, the “precariat” (affluent working class, or middle class), and “cybertariat” (laborers who’s input is solely on the internet) “are not in fact different classes.”
The fifth strategy is also familiar, but again riddled with complexity:  “making the public goods and services required to meet workers’ collective needs the central objective of class struggle.”  The authors do not mean within the confines of the nation state; but rather to the services and public institutions which extend beyond the state—unions, revolutionary political parties, social activist groups, internet cooperatives…etc.
The sixth strategy is something American workers in particular, along with European workers from Germany and France, have had a particular difficult time accepting; which is the rejection of “the goal of economic competitiveness.”  Too often is the competition between working groups utilized by the state and multinational corporations to curb interests into their favor.  By pitting the steel workers of America, for example, against the steel workers of China, the state and corporations void themselves of blame for poor economic conditions and instead open up a side-tracked competition that typically results in social and cultural racism and exclusion.
The seventh strategy, which is the idea that “international solidarity” should be advanced into the twenty-first century, is a pretty easy idea to understand.  In my opinion it could have been integrated with other points from other strategies, but I nevertheless understand the author’s desire to highlight it as well as build up the 9-lives metaphor.
The eighth strategy builds off the idea that “the most salient conflicts amidst capitalist globalization are within states rather than between states.”  As such, the authors suggest to us a strategy of transforming “the state in the context of a fundamental shift in the balance of class forces [that] must centrally involve transforming public institutional forms, purposes, and capacities.”  The previously mentioned notion that state power and class power must, then, be understood as an obstacle to overcome.  State power must, ultimately, become the expression of class power by “transforming” the institutional systems that makeup the nation-state.
Finally, the last strategy also builds off a powerful thesis that should be explored in more depth:  that “the types of parties that can transform working classes into leading agents of social transformation have yet to be invented.”  Again, this is an argument many Marxists and social activists will have trouble accepting—but at the very least they should consider its plausibility.  The final strategy, then, is “to start anew at creating the kinds of working-class political institutions which can rekindle the socialist imagination, make the goal of socialism relevant, and develop the socialist capacities to get there.”[vi]
I hope that this summary at least sparked some thoughts and ideas from readers, and ideally it urged a few to go and find the actual article.  All Marxists, intellectuals and social activists, could benefit from this healthy and ruthless criticism of the existing theorisations of historical materialism.  It forces us to question ourselves and consider what we may have missed amidst the massive social transformations made by capitalist development over the past 25 years.  Too often do I feel that we find ourselves relegating arguments with conditions to the 1930s, or arguing in the abstract about the potentiality of a proletarian revolution without the need to assess capitalist development in 2015.  The authors, Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, offer a fresh and stark assessment to push us forward and leave behind the failed theorisations of the twentieth century.

Links:
http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/1569206x/23/2 (online copy of journal)


[i] Leon Panitch and Sam Gindin.  “Marxist Theory and Strategy: Getting Somewhere Better” in Historical Materialism, Vol. 23, No. 2: p. 3
[ii] Ibid, 5-7
[iii] Ibid, 7-8
[iv] Ibid, 8-10
[v] Ibid, 11-16
[vi] Ibid, The sections on “strategic guidelines” can be found on pages 16-20

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