Re: Response to Chris Chase-Dunn

Wed, 31 Jul 1996 00:11:39 -0600 (CST)
Kerry (macdonak@Meena.CC.URegina.CA)

On Tue, 30 Jul 1996 wwagar@binghamton.edu wrote:

> Just a few postscripts to Chris's comment of 30 July. I am not a
> firm believer in the thesis that world wars occur during Kondratieff
> downswings. In fact I am not enough of a sociologist to believe that
> world wars must occur during any part of any cycle. The greatest world
> war ever was brewed in the murky vat of the Great Depression, but its
> baleful predecessor came during a time of general prosperity.

I would agree, Kondratieff's economic theory is deterministic,
mechanistic, instrumental and other bad things :). He attempted to
create a grand theory of capital accumulation to explain why capitalism
had failed to fall apart. I dislike because it's not only
non-dialectical but it negates humanity (given that the two are dependent
I guess I'm being redundant ... oh well).

> Of course I agree with Chris that the World Party must not wait
> for the capitalist world-system to destroy itself. It would have to do
> its best to prevent such a thing, because there is no way that the death
> of one or two or five billion people can be justified. There is no way to
> justify the death of anybody. But as Chris goes on to say, the World
> Party might not be able to keep the system from suicide. Maybe a renewed
> US hegemony will turn out to be the least of the various evils in store
> for humankind. Better red, white, and blue than dead?

And that way only those who resist the support of dictatorships go
missing or tortured. As for the rest they are simply exploited, forced
to work in unsafe conditions, are underemployed, dieing many years before
their time (using our lifespans in the North as a comparison). That is
better. Wars are simply dramatic death, out of the ordinary. More
people die in Canada in industrial accidents than those who are
murdered. People have been so commodified and objectified that they are
no longer even personell they are human resources. No different than a
wrench or plow.

The system perpetuates a "state of violence" in the way that people are
organized. Granted, here in the North and for those in affluent
positions war is a justifiably poorer alternative, however, to argue that
Pan America is the answer (or to be fair, the lesser of our evils) is not
something that is so apparent. It depends more upon where one is sitting
as to whether or not that is an appropriate choice.

By the way, what is this "World Party"? Is it B.Y.O.B.? :)

> In any event, the one thing this discussion has not elicited, to
> any great extent, is attention to praxis. The session at the ASA last
> summer that started all this was supposed to be devoted to praxis. How do
> we get from here to there? Even if we can't agree on what's happening
> here and what's needed there--and that's par for the course in left
> circles--couldn't we at least focus for once on appropriate means? If the

Means? Hmmmmm? Given that praxis is the combination of theory and
action in a dialectical relationship I'm not so sure how an "appropriate
means" can be accomplished. This is not to say that we are emascualated
or incapable of action (a la Marcuse's great refusal), its only that
there is always a kind of "fast food", instant gratification, that seems
to embrace certain elements within the left - let's' do something,
anything approach. I would submit that much of the angst within the left
arises from that need to do it now.

It has been said that Rome wasn't built in a day and neither was
capitalism and I don't think that it's eradication is going to be
accomplished in a few years or even decades. It seems to me that much of
what has happened with the left is that it sees that the system is bad
and we only need to do this or that and the whole thing will change.
This was the hope with the Russian Revolution and we all saw how that
worked itself out. The current fad is variations on Schumacher's "small
is beautiful". Regardless, the left constantly sets itself up for
disappointment; which has lead to a kind of retreat (a la the Frankfurt
School boys) or resignation and embracing the "enemy", IMO.

> World Party is a pipedream, what would be better? If it's not a
> pipedream, how should it be organized, how should it operate, what kind of
> politics should it pursue? To echo Chris, how do we prepare strawberry
> jello?

It isn't simply politics it is social interaction, society needs to be
changed. The seisure of the state, whether by force as in the case of
the various communist movements, or by the ballot box, as with the
numerous democratic socialist governments, just dosen't work. The state
is embedded within a system of pre-existing social practices which
happers what it can do (Marx is much more elegant upon this point in the
German Ideology).

IMO, the only way that society will change is when the way that people
interrelate changes. Thus stealing an old feminist cleche "the personal
is political", we need to change the way that people think and act
towards one another; new institutions, networks of interaction, need to
constructed. This all takes time and it needs to powerful enough to
withstain the hegemonic social norms in order to sustain itself as an
alternative. This will take decades or possible centuries or it could
simply be a footnote of history (as many of the counter-hegemonic
attempts during the Middle Ages were.)

The strategy needs to contain certain elements: 1) the critique of the
existing systems needs to be continued and disseminated; 2)
counter-hegemonic institutions or personal practices need to tried out;
3) that those institutions must also be open to critique; 4) that
"support systems" need to be created to provide sustenance (in a
subjective sense) to those groups; 5) that people appreciate that what
they are doing may only bear fruit for their children's children (if
lucky); and, finally (in the sense that I can't think of anymore at the
moment :)) that dialectical reasoning becomes more prevalent. This may
work or it may not, but the nice thing is that we have time or at least
take the time. If the world blows up well that would be unfortunate and
we should attempt to insure that the probability is minimized but that
shouldn't make us attempt to force something that can't be forced.

Or then again I could be off in left field :)

kerry