Dear Andrew,
I'm sorry our dialog deteriorated as it did; our natural mutual stance
seems to be with swords in hand. I've got a fresh approach which I hope
will be more productive.
I have some fundamental problems with Marx's theories, as I understand
them, and those problems came up so early in my exposure to his ideas that
I haven't been motivated to read him in greater depth. This has made
dialog with marxists difficult: they always say I need to read a stack of
books before I can talk to them. Perhaps you can help with this problem.
I'll tell you my critique of Marx, and you can tell me where I'm
misunderstanding him. Fair enough?
First of all, I find the "labor theory of value" to be totally unsound,
entirely too simplistic. Creativity, initiative, vision, risk-taking, and
good judgement - in setting up and managing an operation - all create
value, as does labor, but in a multiplicative way. All the labor will be
for nought if the enterprise is mis-conceived. Under capitalism, labor is
treated as a commodity and equity rests with investors; this is wrong, but
swinging the pendulum 180 degrees the other way is no better. A _balance_
between worker voice/equity and entrepreneur voice/equity (weather private
or public) would seem to provide both justice and economic vitality. I
_believe_ the experience of China and the USSR tends to support the
desirability of such a balance.
Equally unsound, I believe, is Marx's belief that socialist revolution is
the only likely consequence of the contradictions of capitalism. The
evidence I like to cite for this is the global oil industry, which is in
many ways the most structurally mature capitalist industry. This industry
has long-since reached its "point of contradiction": the industry has long
been concentrated in a handful of major global operators, potential
productive capacity has long exceeded demand, and demand-growth has
stabilized to the point where inter-major cannibalism should have been
expected, on pure capitalist grounds.
But while in the auto industry similar over-production conditions are
currently leading to shakeouts and bankrupticies, this is not happening in
the oil industry. The auto industry is just reaching its "point of
contradiction"; the oil industry has already adapted to it. The way they
adapted was by jointly regulating production and distribution: they gave up
cut-throat competition and decided to share the market more or less
amicably.
In the capitalist microcosm of petroleum, Marx's "contradictions" have been
met and overcome, without dethroning either the elite owners or their
corporations. The contradictions have been overcome, I suggest, by a
replacement of capitalist competition with aristocratic comradarie. This
neo-aristocratic system is made up of corporations instead of
family-scions, but its dynamics are the same: the collaborative domination
of the many by the few. And behind the corporation-aristocracy is a human
aristocracy of the super-rich, which collectively owns most corporte stock.
I believe then, differing from Marx, that there are _two_ evolutionary
outcomes that might follow the end of capitalism: neo-aristocracy _or_ a
resurgance of democracy, and either, I claim, is likely to come about
peacably; chaos and violent change are not inevitable in either outcome.
Globalization, the elite's answer to the contradictions, is leading rather
peacably (if disastrously) to the aristocratic outcome; and a democratic
resurgance is much more likely to succeed if approached peacably.
I emphasize "democratic revolution/rejuvination" rather than "workers
revolution" because I find the "labor" vs "bourgeois" class dichotomy too
simplistic for today's world; and I don't say "socialist revolution"
because I believe a mixed economy is advisable, as mentioned earlier.
It seems to me that Marx believed too rigidly in the omnipotence of
dialectic forces: he was correct that economic currents flow in certain
cycles, but that doesn't dictate that the societal ship is destined to
follow. The elite have found an eddy current that favors them, and I
believe we can too. We can make a pre-emptive strike on history, not
waiting for collapse, and we can stop the dialectic pendulum at an
intermediate point: we aren't compelled to adopt doctrinaire socialism.
Your comments are invited; I'd like to know specifically where my
understanding is wrong.
rkm