[p2p-research] Post-Capitalism

Wed Jul 14 07:41:46 CEST 2010

Plato and Aristotle were just some con-guys sitting in the grass in athens,
jesus was a madman, the postmoderns just fashionistas fooling eager students
.., I could go on sprouting personal prejudices ... this would say more
about myself than about the thinkers ..

I actually used to think like that for a brief moment as a teenager, but
then I took a bet, that, if the best minds of humanity had treated such
thinkers seriously and allowed them to develop such a major influence, that
perhaps they had done something that I did not understood, and that I should
make an effort ...

for example, to take just the first one you mention, many people of the
right did consider him a first-rate thinker (I'm thinking Raymond Aron in
France, Leszek Kolawisky in Poland, etc... ), and engaged with him deeply
... it's actually strange that there is a new wave now, for example in
France with Jacques Attali ..

I would venture that the inability to see anything interesting says more
about your own limitations, and a failure to engage with challenging
thought  ... this does not mean I do not value your contributions here, on
many other matters, but I do consider it a blind spot ... on a par with your
belief in transhuman rapture ...

I could probably make remarks about the other people you mention ... Lenin
was certainly not a genius, his books are so-so, and he developed abusive
streaks once in power, but he was certainly not a fool, and not a tool of
the Germans (though they of course mutually used each other) ... all the
Stalinist leaders you mention must have had some talents, it's hard to
imagine rising to power without any, but none of them were indeed great
thinkers ...

For me Marx is like Freud, you can disagree with them and find a lot of
flaws, even reject their whole philosophical system, but their thinking and
visions changed the world forever, making us all post-Freudians,
post-Christians, post-Marxists, in some sense or other, and so understanding
them helps understanding the world .. it's not a matter of being right or
wrong, but rather of changing the very premises of human thought about
ourselves, so that, once you realize the basic aspect of life they
uncovered, you can no longer be the same ... and this is why they are
"first-rate" ..

On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 3:49 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Marx was just some guy in the British Museum with a pen and library card.
> I really wouldn't rank him as a first-order thinker.  He punched way above
> his weight.  Lenin was a fool and a tool of the Germans.  Stalin was a beast
> by any measure.  Mao was a general and a warlord of some talent.  China has
> disintegrated since his death into something approaching a combination of
> the US and Germany at various stages in the 20th century.  People like
> Chavez are laughable buffoons.  Castro is perhaps the best mind of the
> communists.  He really understood what was necessary to have a shot.  I
> think he is very sad that it has all failed so badly.  I really think he was
> a true believer.  Trotsky was the best mind of the communists...that's what
> made him so dangerous.  He understood that you couldn't run things and be a
> true communist.  That doomed him.  Stalin was just a run of the mill
> fascist.
>
> On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:51 PM, Kevin Carson <
> free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 7/12/10, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Arguing with Marxists is very similar to arguing with anyone who
>> believes
>> > strongly in their point of view.  Personally, I see little evidence to
>> > support Marxism any time I've made admittedly minimal efforts to
>> understand
>> > it.  As I am inclined to work with and use things that are evidential, I
>> > have never seen any reason to seriously engage Marxism any more than I
>> do
>> > have reason to engage others systems or beliefs that are minimally
>> > evidential.  That said, some very smart people have used Marxism as a
>> basis
>> > of analysis particularly in sociology and history.  I don't diss it as a
>> > sort of theory of how the world works much from those academic
>> traditions.
>> > It isn't useful as economics or social policy so far as I can tell.
>>
>> I don't really even think any form of Marxist state practice can be
>> straightforwardly drawn from Marx himself, because Marx was so vague
>> about his ideas of a post-capitalist society.
>>
>> I do find Marxist ideas useful as a tool of analysis.  I think Marx
>> and the Marxists got it wrong on the root cause of economic
>> exploitation.  But given that it does in fact occur, and that things
>> like maldistribution of purchasing power, overaccumulation and
>> underconsumption are all real, Marx's theory of late capitalism in
>> Capital vol. III  and the analysis of assorted neo-Marxists in the
>> Monthly Review group is pretty much spot-on.  Particularly useful has
>> been that group's analysis of financialization, jobless recoveries,
>> etc., from the 1980s on.
>>
>> It's also interesting how Marxist theories of overaccumulation
>> dovetail to a considerable extent with Austrian theories of
>> malinvestment.
>>
>> --
>> Kevin Carson
>> Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
>> Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
>> http://mutualist.blogspot.com
>> The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
>> http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
>> Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
>> http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Ryan Lanham
> rlanham1963 at gmail.com
>  Facebook: Ryan_Lanham
> P.O. Box 633
> Grand Cayman, KY1-1303
> Cayman Islands
> (345) 916-1712
>
>
>
>
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