Re: lumps in the gravy -- uneveness and interimperialist war

spectors wrote:
> 
> ...As I said before, processes can have a "logical
> conclusion." Marx and Engels (and I) believe that the logical conclusion of
> class society and class struggle will EVENTUALLY be a classless society. But
> EVENTUALLY can be a long, long time; there are a lot of zigs and zags along
> the way, and just as capital within a nation needs a state to enforce its
> power, capital, even transnational capital, still needs political-military
> structures (nation states) to protect its interests. I'm not saying that a
> "NATION-STATE" with extreme "autonomy" from class forces will determine
> politics and wars, but rather that with all their supposed "relative
> autonomy", nation-states will continue to be a key way that capitalists and
> banks will fight it out. And economic struggle becomes political struggle
> becomes military struggle.

Alan, the problem, it seems to me, is at the very beginning of your
analysis: the concept of class. Classes were the product of empires and
kings, in which laws are deliberately designed to block social mobility.
The capitalism of the industrial revolution developed within the empire
class system. In the ideal or imaginary pure capitalism of producers and
traders, success (usually measured in wealth and income) is determined
by one's contribution to consumers' wants. Since consumers' wants are
varied and the means of satisfying them are also varied, there is a
multitude of different specializations available for freely choosing
people to enter. However, since real capitalism developed within the
class system of empires, masses of people were barred from occupations
and positions that would have enabled them to achieve success. The class
system of empire continued in spite of capitalism's pressure to undo it.

When Marx wrote about the subject of class, the field of economics was
in an early stage of development. The classical economists did not fully
appreciate the logic of marginal productivity. Observing the great
increases in society's wealth during just their lifetimes, the
contemporaries of Marx typically did not dream that the ideas of someone
like Marx would become popular. So they had no immediate rebuttal.
Partly neglecting the class society in which they themselves lived, they
failed to see the prospect for political discontent among the masses.
(Adam Smith had recognized this prospect, however, in his discussion of
British restrictions on economic and political expression in the
American colonies.) Also, failing to realize the extent to which
capitalism weakens the power base of the emperor, they did not
appreciate the potential destructive force of an embittered working
class during a recession. The time was ripe for the emergence of a Marx.

The critics of Marx, most notably the Austrian Eugen Bohm Bawerk, and
the later critics of socialism, including F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von
Mises, showed two things. First they showed that people under pure
capitalism voluntarily divide themselves into economic specializations
according to entrepreneurs' perceptions of their contribution to
consumers' satisfaction. Second, they showed the unworkability of
socialism due (1) to the incentive problem and (2) the incomprehensible
knowledge need by a central planner to even get close to the standard of
living that was achievable in a capitalist economy.

The capitalism that developed since Marx wrote, while having its roots
in empire, is now firmly entrenched in the liberal constitutional
democracies of the U.S. and its allies. The class system that inspired
Marx simply does not exist to any significant degree in these countries
today. And the global trading system is tending to destroy its vestiges
elsewhere. So Marx's revolution will not occur. One may wish to look
elsewhere to find a reason for predicting a revolution. But Marx's
prediction of a revolution was based on a false understanding of the
source of class divisions. That revolution never could occur.

This is not to say that nationalism, bolstered by a strong government's
restriction on access to information, would not lead to war. The
hotspots in the world today are mainly those where such conditions are
present. But so long as the capitalist democracies do not reduce their
vigilance, continue to pump massive amounts of moneys into military
research and operation, and protect their secrets; a new world war is
improbable.


> I  truly wish it was coming down to the end game as Andy suggests, with a
> united global revolutionary egalitarian (I still like Marx' use of the word
> communist) movement preparing to battle a global capitalist class.  I just
> think that such a scenario vastly oversimplifies the contradictions within
> contradictions that still riddle the capitalist world.

One hopes that this is not a wish for war.


References

Bohm Bawerk, Eugen, Karl Marx and the Close of His System, 1949. 
(Originally published in part in 1896).

Hayek, F. A., The Road to Serfdom, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1956. (originally published in 1944)

von Mises, Ludwig. (1981) Socialism, An Economic and Sociological
Analysis. 3rd revised edition. Indianapolis: Liberty Classics.
(Originally published in 1922 under the title of Die Gemeinwirtschaft:
Untersuchungen uber den Socialismus)

-- 
Pat Gunning, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman
Web pages on Subjectivism, Democracy, Taiwan, Ludwig von Mises,
Austrian Economics, and my University Classes
http://www2.cybercities.com/g/gunning/welcome.htm
http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/barclay/212/welcome.htm