The revival of sympathetic interest in Marxism implicit in writings by people like Francis Wheen is also apparent in Europe. Jacques Attali, former adviser to Mitterand and a former president of the European Bank, has also written (in French) a book about Marx. I happened to be surfing my TV channels on the weekend and happened upon a business/economics channel called 'Bloomberg'. Normally, I wouldn't watch it but Attali was being interviewed in English. The transcript is available on the link below but five points impressed me.

Attali supports the notion that socialism will come after capitalism spreads everywhere. While I'm not convinced that it can't happen in one country, the process of globalisation certainly suggests, at the moment, that there will be a world capitalist economy before there is a socialist country again.

This is linked to the second point: Attali refreshingly acknowledges that Marxists recognize capitalism as a 'huge progress compared to the previous feudal system'. A Marxist approach is thus very different to the nostalgic idealised yearnings for a return to village life, expressed by some who would claim a Marxist tradition. I still shock people who have never studied Marx when I tell them he supported free trade. They see trade union leaders, labelled 'leftwing' by the media, calling for protectionism and assume that a leftwing point of view is opposed to free trade. The supposedly leftwing anti-globalisation movement also fosters this illusion.

The third point that really impresses me with Attali relates to his view that 'there will be something beyond capitalism'. He refers to fights against theocracies and dictatorships along the way. He gives capitalism one century to five centuries. Of course, it will depend upon the actions of thinking human beings but it is certainly interesting that a leading economist can say something so challenging. Normally, if praise is given to Marx, it is in a different context; one that says he was brilliant but wrong on the issue of capitalism's collapse.

The fourth thing that really got me thinking was Attali's attempt to describe the world beyond capitalism. What will communism be like? This is something discussed on this site, but never really successfully, in my humble opinion. Attali scintilatingly suggests 'a world of free things and no value'. He gives the Internet as an example of 'the beginning of a world where some things, or everything, will or may become free'.

Of less importance (to me) is the fifth point worth commenting on. Attali heads a group called PlaNet, which gives out 'micro-loans' to poor people in under-developed countries. It's work is well publicized. Prompted to comment on Bob Geldof's support for debt relief, he rejects the idea as ineffective - because the relieved debt will only serve corrupt/dictatorial governments rather than the poor people. From memory, no-one at lastsuperpower posted anything about the big 'Live 8' concert, at which debt relief was certainly an expressed idea. Any thoughts?

Anyhow, here's the link to Bloomberg's transcript: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000088&sid=amki8cR5MF34&refer=culture 

Barry

If we look at the devlopment of nano technology it would seem that capitalism may at best have 50 years before its demise . The debate in this area is about what sort of society will exist when there is no or minimal cost to production? The social nature of labour would also be questionable with nano technology. There is of course a real problem with the underdeveloped regions, not so much economically, but cuturally they are no where near ready for such a breakthrough as nano- technology provides. There are serious repurcussions with such a powerful technology which would be available to everyone.

Usually the Singularity is meant as a future time when societal, scientific and economic change is so fast we cannot even imagine what will happen from our present perspective, and when humanity will become posthumanity.

(According to Kurzweil) humankind  is at the threshold of an epoch ("the singularity," a reference to the theoretical limitlessness of exponential expansion) that will see the merging of our biology with the staggering achievements of "GNR" (genetics, nanotechnology and robotics) to create a species of unrecognizably high intelligence, durability, comprehension, memory and so on. The word "unrecognizable" is not chosen lightly: wherever this is heading, it won't look like us. Kurzweil's argument is necessarily twofold: it's not enough to argue that there are virtually no constraints on our capacity; he must also convince readers that such developments are desirable. In essence, he conflates the wholesale transformation of the species with "immortality," for which read a repeal of human limit. In less capable hands, this phantasmagoria of speculative extrapolation, which incorporates a bewildering variety of charts, quotations, playful Socratic dialogues and sidebars, would be easier to dismiss. But Kurzweil is a true scientist—a large-minded one at that—and gives due space both to "the panoply of existential risks" as he sees them and the many presumed lines of attack others might bring to bear. What's arresting isn't the degree to which Kurzweil's heady and bracing vision fails to convince—given the scope of his projections, that's inevitable—but the degree to which it seems downright plausible.  (Publisher's Weekly)

The future is going to be  fast wild ride into strangeness and most of us will still be there when it happens.

The thing is what can/do we know and unerstand about where history is taking us and can we influence it?  What's marxism and communism  got to do with it? 

The third point that really impresses me with Attali relates to his view that 'there will be something beyond capitalism'. He refers to fights against theocracies and dictatorships along the way. He gives capitalism one century to five centuries.

When people think of a future period, they intuitively assume that the current rate of progress will continue for future periods. However, careful consideration of the pace of technology shows that the rate of progress is not constant, but it is human nature to adapt to the changing pace, so the intuitive view is that the pace will continue at the current rate. Even for those of us who have been around long enough to experience how the pace increases over time, our unexamined intuition nonetheless provides the impression that progress changes at the rate that we have experienced recently. From the mathematician's perspective, a primary reason for this is that an exponential curve approximates a straight line when viewed for a brief duration. So even though the rate of progress in the very recent past (e.g., this past year) is far greater than it was ten years ago (let alone a hundred or a thousand years ago), our memories are nonetheless dominated by our very recent experience. It is typical, therefore, that even sophisticated commentators, when considering the future, extrapolate the current pace of change over the next 10 years or 100 years to determine their expectations. This is why I call this way of looking at the future the "intuitive linear" view.

But a serious assessment of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential. In exponential growth, we find that a key measurement such as computational power is multiplied by a constant factor for each unit of time (e.g., doubling every year) rather than just being added to incrementally. Exponential growth is a feature of any evolutionary process, of which technology is a primary example. One can examine the data

in different ways, on different time scales, and for a wide variety of technologies ranging from electronic to biological, and the acceleration of progress and growth applies. Indeed, we find not just simple exponential growth, but "double" exponential growth, meaning that the rate of exponential growth is itself growing exponentially. These observations do not rely merely on an assumption of the continuation of Moore's law (i.e., the exponential shrinking of transistor sizes on an integrated circuit), but is based on a rich model of diverse technological processes. What it clearly shows is that technology, particularly the pace of technological change, advances (at least) exponentially, not linearly, and has been doing so since the advent of technology, indeed since the advent of evolution on Earth.

I emphasize this point because it is the most important failure that would-be prognosticators make in considering future trends. Most technology forecasts ignore altogether this "historical exponential view" of technological progress. That is why people tend to overestimate what can be achieved in the short term (because we tend to leave out necessary details), but underestimate what can be achieved in the long term (because the exponential growth is ignored).

• We achieve one Human Brain capability (2 * 10^16 cps) for $1,000 around the year 2023.
• We achieve one Human Brain capability (2 * 10^16 cps) for one cent around the year 2037.
• We achieve one Human Race capability (2 * 10^26 cps) for $1,000 around the year 2049.
• We achieve one Human Race capability (2 * 10^26 cps) for one cent around the year 2059.

What follows is probably better thought of as what communism won't be like.

 I recently came across some writing by Andre Gorz written in the 1960’s that I’ve found really interesting. The ideas below are taken from a lecture on “Arduous Socialism” contained in “Socialism and Revolution”. Googling has not (yet) been successful in locating a transcript, hence no links. If anyone has better luck than me (or more time), please supply a link as this would make things more accessible. He is essentially speaking here of the necessary difficulties confronted by the Soviet and Chinese revolutions

Socialism has, until quite recently, been promoted and regarded as a more effective and superior system because of its capacity to manage the economy as a whole.

“This is why the construction of the foundation of socialism has necessarily been accompanied by a weakening of direct democracy”.

During this early phase of socialism the intolerable conditions generated by scarcity, (the backward nature of the economy), and made worse by the effects of war etc can only be overcome by uniting in a common struggle, the need for which is overwhelming. During the period of the revolutionary struggle for power the interests of the individual coincides with the interests of the group – the liberty of one is coincident with the liberty of all. “The sovereignty of the individual exists for the group and through the group for the purposes of achieving a common goal identical to his own aims.”

But this coincidence cannot survive the winning of power because the task of the revolution then becomes one of diversifying the community of producers in order to meet the diversity of the tasks to be accomplished. The very nature of these tasks, themselves born of the state of extreme scarcity, necessitates specialization and centralization, which are unavoidable accompaniments of the need to coordinate production across the national economy.

 The first task of local producers is the production of a surplus for the purposes of re-investment, which itself has to fit in to long term development strategies for the national economy. This means that it isn’t possible for the local groups to overcome the problems encountered in such coordination by “democratic mediations”, because the groups are not free to make the optimisation of local goals their main concern.

 Interestingly, he then goes on to say that the society of scarcity and accumulation cannot therefore put an end to alienation, because both the relations of production cannot be fully transparent to the producers and because the productive process is still governed by scarcity (political economy, the science of the rational allocation of scarce resources).

The ideal socialist man or woman that met the needs of those times was therefore one who subordinated or sacrificed their individual needs to those required by the needs of production. “The satisfaction of needs has been assimilated to the simple reproduction of labor power, which has been required to reproduce itself as cheaply as possible.”

So the socialist man or woman, circa 20^th century revolutionary DIY manual, that we have been taught to admire and model ourselves on, remains, necessarily, alienated; a model for the concrete circumstances that forged him/her, but not a model for us, today or in the future.

Individual development under capitalism, while distorted by the exigencies of capitalist social relations, has nonetheless occurred – the development is real – and people are not likely to subordinate their individual needs to the needs of accumulation for either the bosses or a revolutionary state unless the conditions of scarcity are reproduced. In the underdeveloped world where scarcity still reigns, this model still has a shelf life, although hopefully a brief one. We, in the developed world have moved on from this, (although if one is to listen to many of the green voices one can hear detect a distinct pining for these harsher times).

Gorz goes on to say that the socialism required to meet the needs of such socialist accumulation has perpetuated the divorce between the concrete individual and the social individual, between individual interest and general interest – although encouraging the internalisation of this divorce within the individual by getting him/he to “repress” their individual needs.

In a psychological sense, repression is an unconscious mechanism, one beneath awareness, as distinct from suppression, which is a conscious mechanism (eg, delayed gratification), thereby maintaining free choice and individual agency. My guess is that he had more of suppression in mind although in both the Soviet and Chinese revolutions repression is what it became in practise.

What I like about Gorz’s material is that it gives me a better understanding of some of the unavoidable problems associated with the 20^th century revolutions and their limited applicability to our own situation and tasks. And in saying this I am mindful that people like Lenin and Mao were at pains to point this out. It’s a lame thing to say but it is a great pity that their advice was neither heeded or understood.

I don't have Gorz handy and I'm not sure that I understand what this post is getting at.

It sounds to me like a fairly conventional view that the Soviet and Chinese revolutions required the subordination of individualism in order to focus collective energies on primitive accumulation.

If so, I would disagree. Revolution unleashes the creativity of millions who were merely objects rather than subjects before. This emergence of masses of peasants into modernity in the Soviet and Chinese revolutions is scarcely noticed by the bourgeoisie and its intelligentsia who feel that their entrepreneurial freedom to exploit is being harshly repressed.

Together with revolution there is always counter-revolution which brings a genuine sense of liberation to the class that was being repressed at the same time as it consigns broader masses to a more passive role.

I was struck by an insightful contemporary comment on the Cultural Revolution in China. I cannot remember the source or exact content but it essentially pointed to the displacement of Confucian conformist culture by a more dynamic and modern specifically Western culture. This was striking because the overwhelming perception both at the time and since was of forcible imposition of stifling conformity. That was also happening but it represented the counter-revolution which in those conditions had to be "left in form but right in essence" - eg religious worship of Mao.

The Puritan revolution was also the birth of modernity in England, but is seen as the imposition of "Puritan" conformity by the aristos whose liberties were denied by it at the same time as other classes moved forward.

Developing a positive program requires a negative critique of capitalism.

In contrast with pseudo-left, and in common with the historical traditions of the left, this would focus on capitalism being a restriction or fetter on human potential.

We want "free enterprise" whereas capitalism represses the entrpreneurial spirit of the majority so that they "only work here".

In every institution and on every issue, the domination of labor by capital restricts what we can do and therefore has to be swept aside by sharply raising the "property question".

Bosses or "suits" are simply "in the way". They prevent us getting things done but are seen as the organizers of what can be done.

This includes of course repressing us from organizing ourselves to express our individuality by repressing them.

I'm currently finding thinking about things I "ought" to be thinking about "work not leisure", and that this is connected with feeling really pissed off at people not taking responsibility for their own lives and wanting some god to give them rules.

These all do seem to be deeply connected - and also connected with "a religious approach to things".

"We have not supplied a program to excite people and make them want to overthrow the present system." is leaving me cold and just feeling pissed off.

When I talk about making a negative critique of capitalism I don't mean getting into the whining mode of the "left" and pseudos. It means actually giving the theoretical perspective that is needed about raising the "property question" and abolishing wage labor to people whose natural assumption remains that they "only work here" and that thinking is a job for others who will provide them with the rules to follow.

It is precisely the obsolete capitalist social relations fettering the development of the productive forces that create and reinforce this passivity among people rather than "human nature".

One thing I've never been able to get to grips with is the relation between reformism, "band-aids" and revolution.

My own strengths, weaknesses, background and inclinations naturally incline me in directions that have very little to do with day to day struggles in workplaces and neigbourhoods etc and in particular no interest at all in "band aids".

But leaving the organization of day to day stuff to reformists and the state has been an important part of the capitulation of revolutionary politics.

It's interesting how Hezbollah - which is very reactionary, but nevertheless an organization with a "mass line" - was able to organize social services as well as armed struggle and that this has been central to people's war in third world countries like China, Vietnam etc.

There's a lot of self-organization going on among people often either through government funded NGOs or churches etc - and capitalist social relations (including lack of funds) certainly get in the way.

Likewise there's a lot of self-organization in "civil society" - eg friendship "tribes", music and bands and an overlapping phenonemena with things like free and open source software, wikipedia, the blogosphere etc.

All this stuff is crying out for communist theoretical analysis.

"Not my department" I'll say - but I'd be much more cheerful trying to keep up with international affairs if I could see others analysing this stuff.

About time people started writing about the evolution of sexual, gender, family and kinship relations in modern society too, from a viewpoint that isn't as fucked as those who do write about such things.

One concrete issue i've been thinking about as a result of remarks from an unexpected source is immigration, especially from poor and strife ridden regions, which ties together both international and day to day domestic concerns. Apart from "family reunions" and small refugee quotas, current Australian immigration policy is specifically oriented towards keeping such people out as less assimilable and more likely to be a drain on social welfare rather than a boost to "the economy", while encouraging skilled labor desperately needed in poor countries and educated at great expense to come and fill shortages here instead.

The long term program for the withering away of states and nations and their borders is clear enough, as is immediate opposition to phenomena like Australia's mandatory detention policy. But the connection between encouraging greater immigration flows and ending the disparities between countries that are the driving force behind people wanting to move is a lot fuzzier.

Seriously pressing for opening borders as wide as possible raises all sorts of interesting issues about how to promote concrete winnable reforms in a revolutionary way. Is the main limitation to how wide is possible genuine popular opposition, or pandering to hpothetical opposition?

It seems to be a live issue in the US and Europe, but largely in the form of a "backlash" against a "flood" of cheap labor foreigners with fear that their backward attitudes will undermine hard won conditions.

It ought to be a line of demarcation between people who want to move forward to the future and people who want to hold things back

Does this require a new thread? "Reform and Revolution" or "Immigration"? Whatever, I don't have time now but I would question the assertion that  "borders are more open than they've ever been before" - if this is meant to apply to immigration. I think the reality is that it's becoming much harder for people to gain admission to Australia - this has been the case for about 30 years since the introduction of the points' system, which was meant to come to terms with the decline of manufacturing industries that had previously needed 'unskilled' labour in large numbers. The great majority of the people who were admitted in the two decades after the war would not have a hope of getting in today, nor since the late 1970s. This includes my parents and me, who disembarked in 1954.

The actual numbers admitted are also small, though the anti-immigration lobby - including the greenies - have created a sense in which people think we are taking too many newcomers. The Australian population was about 7.5 million after World War Two and we are still taking in the same numbers when our population exceeds twenty million.

It was interesting when, during the Reply to the Budget, Beazley made his remark about Chinese workers taking Aussie apprenticeships in Ballarat, the so-called leftwing ALP members on the front bench applauded him while the Government members started calling out "Pauline! Pauline!".

The connection between a revolutionary perspective and the day-to-day reforms is one that I find hard to tackle. If you don't bring it back to earth then it just sounds like chest-beating. I remember in the 1970s when I was actively involved in, and a leader of, the Victorian prisoners' action committee, we spent a lot of time supporting prisoners' rebellions, exposing conditions, demanding reforms, while at the same time posing questions about capitalism and the need for its overthrow. We probably went a bit too far but the effort was made and I think we were seen, briefly, as revolutionaries who were part of a real struggle and genuinely committed to the immediate issues/reforms.

In haste,

Barry 

 To me the main tenet of marxism is now , ( after 30 years of believing I was one , but with a head full of psuedo left  perversions ) which class will take the productive forces forward. Duh! you all say . In the time of marx engel lenin stalin it was obvious too . The bourgeoisie was going no where fast and it was going to be the prolateriate 's turn.  But nobody knew at the time the role bourgeoisie democracy was going to play in unleashing the productive forces .

Where did it come from ?

Was it an all new class or was it a creation of the moribund bourgeoisie of the turn of the last century?

It was obviously the former but it actually does not matter. The bourgeoisie was not going to rule in the old way . Imperialism  facsism  are dead and bourgeoisis democratic revolution is in full swing world wide.

the question I am posing is how long for ?

I believe it is for a long time and I believe it is marxist to think so.

If the bourgeoisie eventually falls over the only other class to take over will be the prolateriate ? but in the meantime where is the great crisis going to come from to topple this capitalist system? and why is this capitalist system not resilient enough to overcome these crisis's.

I will guarantee all the big capitalist's  are marxist and now whats at stake if they do not deliver. They know how wealth is generated and they are good at siphoning the cream off the top and they enjoy the wealth and power that comes from their control of the economy.

We on the left had the main preoccupation of opposing the beourgeosie for living off the toil of the working class but it does not concern me or the working class at all anymore. Our share of the pie is quite high in any case. We all get a 9 % super as well. The goverments tax share of companies profit is 30%. An ever increasing share of dividens from company profits is going to super funds. what i am getting is we are in the main doing quite well out of a properly functioning B.D.

These are ideas I am throwing up for discussion if anyones interested.

 But nobody knew at the time the role bourgeoisie democracy was going to play in unleashing the productive forces.

I will guarantee all the big capitalist's  are marxist and know whats at stake if they do not deliver. They know how wealth is generated and they are good at siphoning the cream off the top and they enjoy the wealth and power that comes from their control of the economy.

We on the left had the main preoccupation of opposing the beourgeosie for living off the toil of the working class but it does not concern me or the working class at all anymore. Our share of the pie is quite high in any case. We all get a 9 % super as well. The goverments tax share of companies profit is 30%. An ever increasing share of dividens from company profits is going to super funds. what i am getting is we are in the main doing quite well out of a properly functioning B.D.

Well it seems clear enough that we don't have much of a clue on moving from capitalism to communism.

Looking on the bright side of that (grimly) the moribund state of communist ideas is itself a reflection of the moribund state of capitalism itself.

The general apathy and cynicism is not conducive to vigorous analysis of revolutionary transformation of the economy. But it isn't a sign of long term acceptance of capitalism either.

Boredom, lack of involvement, parasitism (including the huge overhead of the state and financial sectors) are all indications of a moribund social system that is a fetter on the development of the productive forces. The collapse of the simplistic ideas that people used to have on the left is a necessary preliminary to the development of more serious ones.

Unfortunately we're still stuck in the period in between, which has been going on for far too long to avoid getting depressed about it.

Like youngmarxists' friend I do feel much more positive about things like "One Laptop Per Child" than about the negative critiques we can make both of the ruling class and of the pseudo-left and greens etc. I also think analysing how things like that could be unleashed if production was not organized for profit would shed a lot of light on what will need to be done when economic crisis breaks out and also more immediately.

Would like to see much more on that, even though I'm going to continue focus on Iraq etc myself.