Where Are Your Interests?
Because the conversation has been pretty quiet, and because I fear losing what momentum we have unless we get to the crux of things, I'm going to skip a section here and go straight to a sequence of ideas that ought to get us talking.
Paragraphs 8, 9, and 10 in Lebowitz deal with the fact that the Venezuelan Constitution of 1999 was an attempt to support capitalist institutions while aiming for higher goals of human development. He suggests that was appropriate for the time the document was written, but then raises questions about whether human development and capitalism are ultimately compatible.
The next three paragraphs deal with a basic breakdown between what Friedrich Engels called "two new classes" of the industrial era that were busy "swallowing up all of the others." These two classes are essentially those who own industry and those who sell themselves to industry. Though much has changed in the last century and a half, if anything, this polarity has become more vivid, with yet another class coming into view (a class both Marx and Engels actually did anticipate), a class that is losing its place within the system. Today, it is more clear than ever that the employed and unemployed have common interests that are different than those who own the dwindling number of companies running the world.
But I don't mean to get ahead of where we are. Let's look at this basic analysis. Can we agree that these two classes Lebowitz describes are "swallowing up all of the others"?
The logic of capital
11. Think about capitalism. In capitalism, the logic of capital dominates; and that logic goes counter to the needs of human beings for their own development. In capitalism, the goals of production are the goals of capital for profits. For capital, human beings and nature are just means to that goal.
Capitalists and workers
12. Consider the nature of capitalist relations of production. There are two central aspects—the side of capitalists and the side of workers. On the one hand, there are capitalists—the owners of wealth, the owners of material means of production. And their orientation is toward the growth of their wealth. Capitalists purchase commodities with the goal of gaining more money, additional value, surplus value. And that’s the point, profits. As capitalists, all that matters for them is the growth of their capital.
13. On the other hand, we have workers—people who do not own the material means of producing the things they need for themselves. Without those means of production, they can’t produce commodities to sell in the market to exchange. So, how do they get the things they need? By selling the only thing they do have available to sell, their ability to work. They can sell it to whomever they choose, but they cannot choose whether or not to sell their power to perform labor if they are to survive. Capitalism requires people who must sell their power to produce in order to get the money to buy the things they need.
First, the logic of capital is so familiar to us we have several cliched expressions that sum up what's being said here. "Money makes the world go round" being just one of them. Is it true that the goal of profits is in direct conflict with human development? How and why?
Second, where do you exist in relation to these two classes? Would you say you own the means of production for our society or would you say you sell your ability to work to get what you need? What other classes are there, and are they in fact being swallowed by these classes?
I'll leave the first point to you all, but I'll answer the second based on my perspective. I'm in the teaching profession, part of academia, which has often seen itself as separated from the old dichotomy of owners versus workers. But is it? We have a union, even if we like to call it a "faculty association." And we are increasingly seeing situations where teachers' jobs are being cut, even tenured faculty positions are on the line.
For many reasons, I think it's pretty obvious that I'm a white collar worker. My job is to process students through two levels of our academic credentialing system. I have classroom management skills, and I know how to grade papers, and my own academic credentialing says that I can approve or disapprove of student work based on the laws of the system. But that separates me very little from a quality check person in a factory or a line supervisor. As we face issues of increased workload (class size) and budget cutbacks at all levels of the state education system (we barely have a Federal education system), it becomes more and more apparent that college teachers need some political consciousness to face the challenges ahead.
It is also terribly obvious that our interests lie with the partially employed who are our colleagues (97 English teachers in my department are part-time temporary while 27 are full time), and that we ultimately have more in common politically with our students and the unemployed in our community than the politicians and CEO's who are trying to cut their losses (including people who work for them) in order to maintain what control they currently have.
Unfortunately, I think most teachers are a long way from that kind of class consciousness. This is one reason I think a discussion like this is so important.
Your thoughts?
Monday, March 30, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
The Individual and the Collective
The Individual and the Collective
Lebowitz's next section takes these same themes and shows how they are endorsed by the Venezuelan Constitution. I don't want to get too hung up on studying Venezuela here, although I do think looking at the Constitution (a link for which I've posted at the end) may be helpful in seeing at least what this government is about on paper.
What tends to confound Americans about socialized governments is that the government calls upon the individual to be responsible to the collective. Americans tend to think that means those people in socialized countires are not truly free. But there are at least two things to consider here. One, is that there is no such thing as an individual life that is not interdependent on social relationships--that's delusional or dysfunctional at best (and it could be argued the American character suffers greatly from such delusions and dysfunctions).
Second, which is the point Lebowitz is making, the flowering of the individual personality depends on social relationships and some form of social responsibility. Of course, Americans, in the main, believe this about our own society. But those of us in particular who find ourselves alienated by the system may grow very uncomfortable with any concept of the individual having her or his individuality dependent on a relationship with any governmental system.
The key to any kind of social revolution, I tend to think, has to do with people genuinely, subjectively, coming to understand that their freedom, their individual personalities and their desires are in fact dependent on a new relationship with one another and a new system. That's why articles like this are written, and even why we write Constitutions--to win people's minds as much as their hearts over to a new way of thinking.
I don't have any preset prompts for this one. I'll just paste this section below, and we might want to comment on how well Lebowitz and/or the writers of the Venezuelan Constitution make their case.
The common sense of the Bolivarian Revolution
5. Every Venezuelan should recognize these ideas—they are at the center of the Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela. In its explicit recognition (in Article 299) that the goal of a human society must be that of “ensuring overall human development,” in the declaration of Article 20 that “everyone has the right to the free development of his or her own personality,” and in the focus of Article 102 upon “developing the creative potential of every human being and the full exercise of his or her personality in a democratic society”—the theme of human development pervades the Constitution.
6. Further, the Constitution also focuses upon the question of how people develop their capacities and capabilities—i.e., how overall human development occurs. Article 62 of the Constitution declares that participation by people in “forming, carrying out and controlling the management of public affairs is the necessary way of achieving the involvement to ensure their complete development, both individual and collective.” The necessary way—practice, protagonism.
7. And, the same emphasis upon a democratic, participatory, and protagonistic society is present in the economic sphere, which is why Article 70 stresses “self-management, co-management, cooperatives in all forms” and why the goal of Article 102, “developing the creative potential of every human being,” emphasizes “active, conscious and joint participation.”
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/constitution
Any thoughts?
Lebowitz's next section takes these same themes and shows how they are endorsed by the Venezuelan Constitution. I don't want to get too hung up on studying Venezuela here, although I do think looking at the Constitution (a link for which I've posted at the end) may be helpful in seeing at least what this government is about on paper.
What tends to confound Americans about socialized governments is that the government calls upon the individual to be responsible to the collective. Americans tend to think that means those people in socialized countires are not truly free. But there are at least two things to consider here. One, is that there is no such thing as an individual life that is not interdependent on social relationships--that's delusional or dysfunctional at best (and it could be argued the American character suffers greatly from such delusions and dysfunctions).
Second, which is the point Lebowitz is making, the flowering of the individual personality depends on social relationships and some form of social responsibility. Of course, Americans, in the main, believe this about our own society. But those of us in particular who find ourselves alienated by the system may grow very uncomfortable with any concept of the individual having her or his individuality dependent on a relationship with any governmental system.
The key to any kind of social revolution, I tend to think, has to do with people genuinely, subjectively, coming to understand that their freedom, their individual personalities and their desires are in fact dependent on a new relationship with one another and a new system. That's why articles like this are written, and even why we write Constitutions--to win people's minds as much as their hearts over to a new way of thinking.
I don't have any preset prompts for this one. I'll just paste this section below, and we might want to comment on how well Lebowitz and/or the writers of the Venezuelan Constitution make their case.
The common sense of the Bolivarian Revolution
5. Every Venezuelan should recognize these ideas—they are at the center of the Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela. In its explicit recognition (in Article 299) that the goal of a human society must be that of “ensuring overall human development,” in the declaration of Article 20 that “everyone has the right to the free development of his or her own personality,” and in the focus of Article 102 upon “developing the creative potential of every human being and the full exercise of his or her personality in a democratic society”—the theme of human development pervades the Constitution.
6. Further, the Constitution also focuses upon the question of how people develop their capacities and capabilities—i.e., how overall human development occurs. Article 62 of the Constitution declares that participation by people in “forming, carrying out and controlling the management of public affairs is the necessary way of achieving the involvement to ensure their complete development, both individual and collective.” The necessary way—practice, protagonism.
7. And, the same emphasis upon a democratic, participatory, and protagonistic society is present in the economic sphere, which is why Article 70 stresses “self-management, co-management, cooperatives in all forms” and why the goal of Article 102, “developing the creative potential of every human being,” emphasizes “active, conscious and joint participation.”
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/constitution
Any thoughts?
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
The third paragraph really sums up the first two, though there may be claims here worth discussion, so I wanted to include the fourth paragraph today as well. Feel free to comment on any of the questions raised by either one.
Lebowitz writes:
A society that stresses the opportunity to develop our potential
3. The idea of a society that would allow for the full development of human potential has always been the goal of socialists. In his early draft of the Communist Manifesto, Friedrich Engels asked, “What is the aim of the Communists?” He answered, “To organize society in such a way that every member of it can develop and use all his capabilities and powers in complete freedom and without thereby infringing the basic conditions of this society.” Marx summed it all up in the final version of the Manifesto by saying that the goal is “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” Our goal, in short, cannot be a society in which some people are able to develop their capabilities and others are not; we are interdependent, we are all members of a human family. The full development of all human potential is our goal.
Where does human development come from?
4. Human development, though, doesn’t drop from the sky. It doesn’t come as the result of a gift from above. It occurs through the activity of people themselves—through what Marx called revolutionary practice—“the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change.” We change ourselves through our activity—through our struggles and through everything we do. The way we produce (in the workplace, in the community, and in the home), the way we relate to others in our activity, the way we govern ourselves (or are governed by others)—all these make us the people that we are. We are, in short, the product of all our activities.
In the first paragraph (3), does the logic of our interdependence and the need for everyone to win if any of us are to win make sense? Other questions and/or comments about the role of socialism and communism in all of this? Any thoughts about why the general American public almost always refer to socialist ideas as the opposite of individual development?
What about the idea in 4 that we develop based on the sum total of all of our activities? To what extent can we see the truth in this, based upon our own experience? What are the implications of this? What does it mean for us to be engaged in "revolutionary practice"? By the way, if I notified you about this blog, I think of you as engaged in "revolutionary practice." Does that impression make sense to you?
[This idea, the relationship between theory and practice, is core to Marx, and I hope we go into it some here and keep that thread going later in the discussion.]
I may leave this post a little longer before moving forward to encourage discussion. There's a lot of room here to testify to our own versions of "revolutionary practice" and to consider and talk about how we learn what we learn. How much of what we know comes from our activity?
Maybe I can start things off by saying I know I am only as good a teacher as I am (however good that is) because of the writing I have been doing--about music, about social issues, about politics--throughout my experience as a teacher. At the same time, my writing is enormously informed by my conversations with 200 students a year over a 20 year period.
When I write, my sense of voice and audience comes out of those experiences. And though I don't overtly talk politics in the classroom (often), I do find I learn a lot about political issues by encouraging my students to discuss these topics, by reading their papers and by thinking about the questions that need to be asked to get them to look deeper into the questions they tackle. At the same time, they teach me a great deal about the questions I need to be tackling.
One of my great writing teachers is a pop music writer who told me long ago two things that might seem contradictory. First, I should never underestimate my audience's ability to follow any argument I want to make. Second, I should think about casting a very wide net when I write. What I learned is that, most of the time, the contradiction there is only in our minds. A wide audience is capable of grasping sophisticated ideas, if we give that audience a chance.
That's a political sensibility that is far too rare; I certainly don't hear it from our elected officials. However, I've always heard it in the fiction, music and movies I most love. And what this writer did was teach me to think about the contradiction and apply it in the work I do. It's served me well in my "revolutionary practice." There's more to what I do in terms of activism, but I don't know that there's anything more important.
What about you?
Lebowitz writes:
A society that stresses the opportunity to develop our potential
3. The idea of a society that would allow for the full development of human potential has always been the goal of socialists. In his early draft of the Communist Manifesto, Friedrich Engels asked, “What is the aim of the Communists?” He answered, “To organize society in such a way that every member of it can develop and use all his capabilities and powers in complete freedom and without thereby infringing the basic conditions of this society.” Marx summed it all up in the final version of the Manifesto by saying that the goal is “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” Our goal, in short, cannot be a society in which some people are able to develop their capabilities and others are not; we are interdependent, we are all members of a human family. The full development of all human potential is our goal.
Where does human development come from?
4. Human development, though, doesn’t drop from the sky. It doesn’t come as the result of a gift from above. It occurs through the activity of people themselves—through what Marx called revolutionary practice—“the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change.” We change ourselves through our activity—through our struggles and through everything we do. The way we produce (in the workplace, in the community, and in the home), the way we relate to others in our activity, the way we govern ourselves (or are governed by others)—all these make us the people that we are. We are, in short, the product of all our activities.
In the first paragraph (3), does the logic of our interdependence and the need for everyone to win if any of us are to win make sense? Other questions and/or comments about the role of socialism and communism in all of this? Any thoughts about why the general American public almost always refer to socialist ideas as the opposite of individual development?
What about the idea in 4 that we develop based on the sum total of all of our activities? To what extent can we see the truth in this, based upon our own experience? What are the implications of this? What does it mean for us to be engaged in "revolutionary practice"? By the way, if I notified you about this blog, I think of you as engaged in "revolutionary practice." Does that impression make sense to you?
[This idea, the relationship between theory and practice, is core to Marx, and I hope we go into it some here and keep that thread going later in the discussion.]
I may leave this post a little longer before moving forward to encourage discussion. There's a lot of room here to testify to our own versions of "revolutionary practice" and to consider and talk about how we learn what we learn. How much of what we know comes from our activity?
Maybe I can start things off by saying I know I am only as good a teacher as I am (however good that is) because of the writing I have been doing--about music, about social issues, about politics--throughout my experience as a teacher. At the same time, my writing is enormously informed by my conversations with 200 students a year over a 20 year period.
When I write, my sense of voice and audience comes out of those experiences. And though I don't overtly talk politics in the classroom (often), I do find I learn a lot about political issues by encouraging my students to discuss these topics, by reading their papers and by thinking about the questions that need to be asked to get them to look deeper into the questions they tackle. At the same time, they teach me a great deal about the questions I need to be tackling.
One of my great writing teachers is a pop music writer who told me long ago two things that might seem contradictory. First, I should never underestimate my audience's ability to follow any argument I want to make. Second, I should think about casting a very wide net when I write. What I learned is that, most of the time, the contradiction there is only in our minds. A wide audience is capable of grasping sophisticated ideas, if we give that audience a chance.
That's a political sensibility that is far too rare; I certainly don't hear it from our elected officials. However, I've always heard it in the fiction, music and movies I most love. And what this writer did was teach me to think about the contradiction and apply it in the work I do. It's served me well in my "revolutionary practice." There's more to what I do in terms of activism, but I don't know that there's anything more important.
What about you?
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
What Do We Need for Our Development?
From Lebowitz:
What do we need for our development?
2. There are two points, though, that we need to stress. First, if we are going to talk about the possibility of human development, we have to recognize that a precondition for that development is sufficient food, good health, education, and the opportunity to make decisions for ourselves. How can we possibly develop all our potential if we are hungry, in bad health, poorly educated, or dominated by others? Secondly, since we are not identical, what we need for our own self-development obviously differs for everyone.
I'm not going to write too much today, because I'm most interested in the responses, and the dialogue we have there. Two comments before we go on. First, I apologize if folks had a hard time making comments on the first day. I didn't have it set up for as open of access as I should have (my own ignorance), but I think I've fixed that. Second, if you are just taking your first look at the blog today, take a look at yesterday's blog and the comments that followed it. This is meant to be a conversation, and though I see it going in all kinds of directions at once, it is following a coherent path.
Finally, Lebowitz calls this "two points," but there are, of course, several points contained in each one. The first is obviously that the path to human development depends upon some basic human rights--pretty much the ones the U.N. agreed to in its 1948 declaration. The second is that we have to nurture individuality.
On this second point, it's funny because it reminds me of a conversation I was having with a friend of mine from Russia the other day. We were talking about how much the stereotypes of the Soviet Union sprung from many different elements in Russian history and culture as well as the pecularities of Stalinism. What it reminded me of was the way the 1950s horror movie, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers is so often talked about as a critique of communism when, in fact, director Don Siegel has said he saw it as a spoof of American mass culture, suggesting that one of the ironies of the Cold War was that the two empires mirrored each other's flaws, irrespective of ideology or economic system.
The point is, from my perspective, can't we imagine a world where we can do these two things at the same time--take care of everyone's needs and nurture our individuality? Honestly, don't they go hand in hand?
What do we need for our development?
2. There are two points, though, that we need to stress. First, if we are going to talk about the possibility of human development, we have to recognize that a precondition for that development is sufficient food, good health, education, and the opportunity to make decisions for ourselves. How can we possibly develop all our potential if we are hungry, in bad health, poorly educated, or dominated by others? Secondly, since we are not identical, what we need for our own self-development obviously differs for everyone.
I'm not going to write too much today, because I'm most interested in the responses, and the dialogue we have there. Two comments before we go on. First, I apologize if folks had a hard time making comments on the first day. I didn't have it set up for as open of access as I should have (my own ignorance), but I think I've fixed that. Second, if you are just taking your first look at the blog today, take a look at yesterday's blog and the comments that followed it. This is meant to be a conversation, and though I see it going in all kinds of directions at once, it is following a coherent path.
Finally, Lebowitz calls this "two points," but there are, of course, several points contained in each one. The first is obviously that the path to human development depends upon some basic human rights--pretty much the ones the U.N. agreed to in its 1948 declaration. The second is that we have to nurture individuality.
On this second point, it's funny because it reminds me of a conversation I was having with a friend of mine from Russia the other day. We were talking about how much the stereotypes of the Soviet Union sprung from many different elements in Russian history and culture as well as the pecularities of Stalinism. What it reminded me of was the way the 1950s horror movie, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers is so often talked about as a critique of communism when, in fact, director Don Siegel has said he saw it as a spoof of American mass culture, suggesting that one of the ironies of the Cold War was that the two empires mirrored each other's flaws, irrespective of ideology or economic system.
The point is, from my perspective, can't we imagine a world where we can do these two things at the same time--take care of everyone's needs and nurture our individuality? Honestly, don't they go hand in hand?
Monday, March 23, 2009
Why This? Why Now?
Why This? Why Now?
When I was getting out of my car an hour ago, a story was playing about the escalating popularity of Fox News, and some right wing nut was saying, "So if you really want socialism, all we're asking is that you be honest about it."
But despite the Right's inflammatory rhetoric about the Obama administration, it's fairly obvious that Barack Obama couldn't even bring about socialist change if he wanted it. His job is to save the capitalist economy, and no one has happy answers to that problem.
I think we can all tell we are facing a major fork in the road. Like the efforts to solve the environmental crises without fundamentally changing the way the world exploits the environment and like the efforts to stop terrorism without getting at the root causes of unrest, we all must at least sense with ever increasing certainty that we are going to have to come to a point of reckoning in our near future. The world is changing dramatically, and the chance for that change to turn positive is getting slimmer every day.
In the U.S., we've had over 600,ooo first time job losses for three months in a row. At this rate, that will be over 7 million newly-unemployed people by the end of the year. Modest projections suggest over 20 million job losses worldwide this year. This is like nothing we've ever seen before.
Alongside the many manufacturing jobs that are being lost, the recently expanding service sector has begun contracting. And of course people in real estate and banking are in trouble. My friends in journalism have less and less options as they face unemployment, and even those in the ivory tower, tenured professors, are beginning to lose their jobs.
One of my neighbors, an old vet who waves the flag proudly every day, joked to me recently, "Give me a bail out!" We've all heard that one. But within that joke, within the anger at the rich CEO's who are getting bonuses while the rest of us wonder how long we'll keep paying rent, there's an opening to a new kind of thinking. If we have a government by the people and for the people, what's its responsibility to the people when the economy goes in the crapper? Do we really live in a society where you can be too big to fail, meaning you can also be small enough that failure is acceptable? Is that really the society we want to live in?
This is genuinely a blog. I'm just throwing these ideas down to get some discussion going, and my only interest in doing this is if we actually do have a discussion. I promise not to always be so long winded. I want to get a talk going that I feel is long overdue by people coming from all kinds of perspectives in our society.
I know nothing about Michael A. Lebowitz, except that he is a Canadian economics professor. But what I do know is that he wrote an article for Monthly Review that is meant to kickstart just such a discussion. As he explains in his preface, he wrote the article for "educational and political discussions in Venezuela," but he was thinking of how an American audience might use it as well. He points out that it was written, not for the "individual passive reader" but to "encourage collective struggle....to fight for a society which permits the full development of [everyone]."
We still live in the shadow of the Cold War, in which Marxist thought was effectively propagandized as anti-American. And that has left us with a great hole in our public debate. I believe deeply that we need to understand what Marx was saying about our system, the course of its development and its ultimate self destructiveness, if we are going to be prepared to deal with the choices that lie ahead.
None of this is easy stuff. But Lebowitz has tried to develop an explanation of Marxist methodology applied to our 21st Century situation. I think he may be missing some crucial stuff, that will no doubt come up over the course of our conversation, but I think he's done a tremendous job of laying the bricks for the construction of many more arguments that need to happen.
For almost two decades now, I've been convinced that the choice between "socialism and barbarism," the choice Lebowitz says we have to make, lies ahead of us. In fact, I think it's practically upon us, and the forces for barbarism are growing stronger all the time. That's why I want to have this piece-by-piece discussion of his article with as diverse a group as people I count as friends and allies as I can.
I would encourage you read ahead through the whole article at any point. It is available at http://www.monthlyreview.org/090223lebowitz.php. If, at some point, it is not available, please let me know, and I will get you a copy. As Lebowitz says, "Monthly Review's policy of placing articles online will make it possible for organizations to make whatever use of "The Path" they think may help the struggle." I'm taking him at his word.
So, without further stalling, I'm going to skip past the introduction, though I encourage you to read it, and start simple, with the opening paragraph.
Lebowitz writes:
1. What do we all want? We want to be all that we can be. And we want this not only for ourselves. We want our families and our loved ones to be able to develop all of their potential—that we all get what we need for our development. To each according to her need for development.
When I was getting out of my car an hour ago, a story was playing about the escalating popularity of Fox News, and some right wing nut was saying, "So if you really want socialism, all we're asking is that you be honest about it."
But despite the Right's inflammatory rhetoric about the Obama administration, it's fairly obvious that Barack Obama couldn't even bring about socialist change if he wanted it. His job is to save the capitalist economy, and no one has happy answers to that problem.
I think we can all tell we are facing a major fork in the road. Like the efforts to solve the environmental crises without fundamentally changing the way the world exploits the environment and like the efforts to stop terrorism without getting at the root causes of unrest, we all must at least sense with ever increasing certainty that we are going to have to come to a point of reckoning in our near future. The world is changing dramatically, and the chance for that change to turn positive is getting slimmer every day.
In the U.S., we've had over 600,ooo first time job losses for three months in a row. At this rate, that will be over 7 million newly-unemployed people by the end of the year. Modest projections suggest over 20 million job losses worldwide this year. This is like nothing we've ever seen before.
Alongside the many manufacturing jobs that are being lost, the recently expanding service sector has begun contracting. And of course people in real estate and banking are in trouble. My friends in journalism have less and less options as they face unemployment, and even those in the ivory tower, tenured professors, are beginning to lose their jobs.
One of my neighbors, an old vet who waves the flag proudly every day, joked to me recently, "Give me a bail out!" We've all heard that one. But within that joke, within the anger at the rich CEO's who are getting bonuses while the rest of us wonder how long we'll keep paying rent, there's an opening to a new kind of thinking. If we have a government by the people and for the people, what's its responsibility to the people when the economy goes in the crapper? Do we really live in a society where you can be too big to fail, meaning you can also be small enough that failure is acceptable? Is that really the society we want to live in?
This is genuinely a blog. I'm just throwing these ideas down to get some discussion going, and my only interest in doing this is if we actually do have a discussion. I promise not to always be so long winded. I want to get a talk going that I feel is long overdue by people coming from all kinds of perspectives in our society.
I know nothing about Michael A. Lebowitz, except that he is a Canadian economics professor. But what I do know is that he wrote an article for Monthly Review that is meant to kickstart just such a discussion. As he explains in his preface, he wrote the article for "educational and political discussions in Venezuela," but he was thinking of how an American audience might use it as well. He points out that it was written, not for the "individual passive reader" but to "encourage collective struggle....to fight for a society which permits the full development of [everyone]."
We still live in the shadow of the Cold War, in which Marxist thought was effectively propagandized as anti-American. And that has left us with a great hole in our public debate. I believe deeply that we need to understand what Marx was saying about our system, the course of its development and its ultimate self destructiveness, if we are going to be prepared to deal with the choices that lie ahead.
None of this is easy stuff. But Lebowitz has tried to develop an explanation of Marxist methodology applied to our 21st Century situation. I think he may be missing some crucial stuff, that will no doubt come up over the course of our conversation, but I think he's done a tremendous job of laying the bricks for the construction of many more arguments that need to happen.
For almost two decades now, I've been convinced that the choice between "socialism and barbarism," the choice Lebowitz says we have to make, lies ahead of us. In fact, I think it's practically upon us, and the forces for barbarism are growing stronger all the time. That's why I want to have this piece-by-piece discussion of his article with as diverse a group as people I count as friends and allies as I can.
I would encourage you read ahead through the whole article at any point. It is available at http://www.monthlyreview.org/090223lebowitz.php. If, at some point, it is not available, please let me know, and I will get you a copy. As Lebowitz says, "Monthly Review's policy of placing articles online will make it possible for organizations to make whatever use of "The Path" they think may help the struggle." I'm taking him at his word.
So, without further stalling, I'm going to skip past the introduction, though I encourage you to read it, and start simple, with the opening paragraph.
Lebowitz writes:
1. What do we all want? We want to be all that we can be. And we want this not only for ourselves. We want our families and our loved ones to be able to develop all of their potential—that we all get what we need for our development. To each according to her need for development.
It seems self evident, but I feel like we should take a few minutes just to look at this and make some of our initial responses.
Is this true for you? Do you want this for your families and loved ones? Do we live in a society where "we all get what we need"? Why or why not?
I'll move forward tomorrow, with the longer paragraph #2. And we may tackle larger sections at a time later, although the material grows more complex. If I print a paragraph a day, this will take us 115 days, but in my opinion, it will be four months well spent.
Do not feel you have to only talk about what's in the paragraph. For instance, today, I've written a number of other thoughts, and I've left many more out about how and why I've reached the conclusions I have. We can each testify at whatever length based on our own perspectives, or we can have as many side arguments as we might want to have at a time. For now, as long as we don't get people simply running interference, I am going to leave this a completely open blog, in the interest of as much open communication as possible. I know this might better serve a list serve or some other format, but it makes sense to me to stick to the overall coherence of Lebowitz's article, and I'm happy to leave a written record of what we've done out here on the web for blog hoppers to discover. I would also encourage you to share this link with friends who you think might be interested.
But enough of that. I promise not to ramble this long very often, if ever again.
Back to the question:
Do we want a society where we all get what we need?
Do we have one?
Can we imagine one?
Other thoughts?
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