some thoughts on barbarism - alternative "end of history"

[black magick hustla]

there is this extremely flawed idea within both the "left wing" of capital and some communists that immiseration is somehow proportional to the "revolutionary" consciousness of the class.

however, immiseration is also the kernel from which barbarism can develop. what do i mean by barbarism? its certainly not a new concept. marx spoke that the capitalism can lead to the "ruin of the contending classes" and we all know the famous dictum "socialism or barbarism".

i am trying to start a discussion because there is a strange and unhealthy mentality in some people. there is this idea that the more fucked up things become the more willing are people to fight. we think about starving peasant insurrections. we think about maoist guerrillas in the countryside. we think about the "unwillingness" of americans to "wake up". so some of us are stoked for an end of the world scenario. after all, a man who has nothing has nothing to lose. that is what they say.

this cannot be anything but wrong. fucked up things make people angry but also fucked up things clamp down on the consciousness of men. the result of socio-economic armageddon will not be communism, but barbarism. a state where consciousness cannot overcome instincts of survival and therefore the perspective of communism would be lost forever. there are numerous examples in history and in the present that point towards this rather than "communism" as the result of generalized misery. left communists remember well world war ii, when the stalinist traitors rallied workers to fight for anti-fascism. world war ii was the worst effect of counterrevolution and the defeat of the revolutionary wave of the early 20th century. World War II was essentially the midnight of the century, it was essentially the "trial by fire" which the class failed to succeed in. In this period, it was essentially impossible to push a class perspective. Apart of a few nuclei scattered around Europe and the Americas, nobody was able to push the class perspective of turning the imperialist war into a civil war. This is because the type of barbarism brought by war make men lash out through their worst instincts, vengeance, retribution, anything to survive. it does not make them enlightened, it does not make them willing to fight (makes them violent but that does not mean they are fighting).

We can generalize the defeat of wwii to other examples. The reason why class perspectives are almost inexistent in places like subsaharan africa and palestine is because all this places are torn by wars and misery. it is within this places that barbarism, as a product of capitalist decomposition, breaks through the cracks. i think there is a possibility that the world, rather than achieving a real human world community, could end up like a giant violent ghetto. if the world ends up like a giant, violent ghetto the end ofall of this will not be communism, but barbarism as a sort of generalized mode of production.

[gorillafuck]

Elaborate on your connection of barbarism to world war II. That relation went a bit over my head.

[black magick hustla]

Elaborate on your connection of barbarism to world war II. That relation went a bit over my head.

that war torn europe was not conductive for the class struggle or communist ideas? this was the worst period in 20th century european history, it was essentially barbarism, and it didnt make the class rebel.

[gorillafuck]

Oh I get it. I thought you meant the aftermath of WWII was barbarism.

[Broletariat]

I asked Zanthorus about this a while ago and he gave me a very good response I will post here.

"When Luxemburg put forward the slogan in the Junius pamphlet, it was as an extension of her 'saturated markets' theses. That is, that capitalism could only grow by trading with non-capitalist areas of the world, and that with the creation of the world market capitalist society would henceforth be in a state of incurable stagnation, war and chaos (And that WWI marked the start of all this). The problems with Luxemburg's theory have been gone over plenty of times in debates over Marxist economics. Luxemburg ignores Marx's idea that consumption is a 'moment' of the totality of economic relations which constitutes production (Along with distribution and exchange) expressed in the original introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Now chapter 1 of the Grundrisse). Put quite simply, production is also consumption, the consumption of raw materials and means of production in order to create new goods, and it requires that the capitalist who wants to produce has to realise the surplus-value of another capitalist whose enterprise created those goods. Within capitalist society there will be a sector of production which produces goods which will be bought by capitalists to produce further goods, and the ability of this sector of production to realise surplus-value is not dependent on the ability of the workers to buy their goods, but of capitalists to buy them. The stats show that 90% of transactions in OECD economies are transactions from enterprise to enterprise rather than enterprise to consumer. Capitalism is increasingly a system of production for the sake of production which is only limited by the desire for capitalists to invest (Which in turn is limited by our old friend the rate of profit).

Of course, for empirical proof that Luxemburg was wrong, we can always look at the economic boom between the 40's and 60's. Many groups which had taken some kind of 'Luxemburgist' analyses tried to weasel around in various ways but in the end it all came down to the idea that crises could be averted by state spending, an explanation which showed the disturbing parallels between the Luxemburgist and Keynesians paradigms. It was also an explanation that in turn had no way of explaining the fact that the economy nose-dived again in the 70's.

Luxemburg did quote Engels for justification in The Junius Pamphlet, and Engels did (Along with August Bebel) predict that capitalism would collapse by 1898. However, the period from the 1870's to the 1890's saw what was known as the 'long depression' which led even stalwart defenders of capitalism to believe that the system was in crisis (The emergence of the economy from the crisis was also the context for the emergence of revisionism within the Second International). So Engels has something of an excuse that all the facts at the time would have led him to believe that the system was in decline (This is also the context in which some of Marx's more optimistic statements about proletarian revolution should be viewed).

To see the folly of predicting the immanent collapse of capitalism we can take a moment to bash those folks in the ICC (In a friendly manner of course). Their theory, based on Luxemburg's, is that capitalism has been in crisis since the end of the First World War, and that it has been leading us to barbarism since then, even though it's taken a fair bit longer than Luxemburg would've expected. Eventually in the late 80's, after about fifteen years of this doom-mongering, they came up with the idea that capitalism was in the phase of 'decomposition', the phase which would lead to the final destruction of either capitalism or humanity. So far we've been in the phase of 'decomposition' for a good twenty years and nothing much of interest has happened in that direction besides the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. This idea that capitalism is constantly on the edge of collapse has led the ICC to take a lot of strange positions, for example, they are absolutely against revolutionaries even becoming members of trade-unions. They also think that the era of counter-revolution induced by the triumph of Stalinism in Russia ended in the 60's, and have been saying since the 70's that the working-class' moment of triumph was just around the corner (I should probably note here for clarity that these criticisms are also the criticisms of the ICC made by the Internationalist Communist Tendency, and should probably initially be taken with a pinch of salt by anyone standing outside this particular sectarian debacle)."

[Os Cangaceiros]

a giant violent ghetto. if the world ends up like a giant, violent ghetto the end ofall of this will not be communism, but barbarism as a sort of generalized mode of production.

That seems kind of silly...the barbaric Id in contrast to the communist super-ego.

Humanity is actually pretty resilient. The world is never going to become like Mad Max, because humans will always get together and form institutions. Institutions combined with natural human empathy is always going to result in a system that's not totally comprised of people cutting each other's throats.

So unless a giant asteroid strikes the Earth and blocks the Sun in a cloud of dust for 500 years, I don't see your dystopian vision coming to life. The so-called "end of history" is stoopid.

[black magick hustla]

That seems kind of silly...the barbaric Id in contrast to the communist super-ego.

Humanity is actually pretty resillent. The world is never going to become like Mad Max, because humans will always get together and form institutions.

So unless a giant asteroid strikes the Earth and blocks the Sun in a cloud of dust for 500 years, I don't see your dystopian vision coming to life.

of course its not a "mad max" world. however get the fuck out of the US and visit some areas in the "third world" that have been in constant wars for basically the last century. to me thats barbarism. barbarism does not seem to be there if you live in some areas of the US but for a lot of people i know certainly barbarism is around the corner.

[Broletariat]

of course its not a "mad max" world. however get the fuck out of the US and visit some areas in the "third world" that have been in constant wars for basically the last century. to me thats barbarism. barbarism does not seem to be there if you live in some areas of the US but for a lot of people i know certainly barbarism is around the corner.

You said barbarism was a mode of production, what makes it different from Capitalism?

[Os Cangaceiros]

Well, I don't know...three wars have been fought in the past two hundred years where I live currently. America has had it's fair share of "barbarism", it's calmed down after the labor struggles tapered off, though.

Man, I know shit's terrible in a large part of the rest of the world. Don't condescend me, motherfucker. But my point is that even in the darkest, most horrendous hellhole warzone, there's still examples of human empathy and resilience. I'm skeptical that BARBARISM is going to engulf the planet in the scenario you predict.

[black magick hustla]

You said barbarism was a mode of production, what makes it different from Capitalism?

i don't think barbarism is a mode of production now. idk i am not a theorist hahahaha. but i did say that there is the possibility that there is a sort of generalized chaos in the world and it will take a different form than what we are used as capitalism

[Broletariat]

i don't think barbarism is a mode of production now. idk i am not a theorist hahahaha. but i did say that there is the possibility that there is a sort of generalized chaos in the world and it will take a different form than what we are used as capitalism

I'll just point out that if "barbarism" is meant to be a different mode of production then we would have to ask what class within capitalism would implement it? What would make it different from Capitalism?

To me it seems like you're just using the word "barbarism" to mean "shitty capitalism" which is just redundant.

[black magick hustla]

Man, I know shit's terrible in a large part of the rest of the world. Don't condescend me, motherfucker. But my point is that even in the darkest, most horrendous hellhole warzone, there's still examples of human empathy and resilience. I'm skeptical that BARBARISM is going to engulf the planet in the scenario you predict.

hahahaah i am not trying to condescend you ES you are cool and one of my fav posters

i think the point of my thread was not so much to talk about a "theory of barbarism" as in mode of production but the idea that the more fucked up we are the more revolutioonary or whatever. i dont think barbarism means there isnt human empathy. certainly, however there is not room for ideas that requries something beyond minimal human empathy (communism)

[Zanthorus]

marx spoke that the capitalism can lead to the "ruin of the contending classes"

No, he said that every previous class struggle had resulted in either the victory of one class or the common ruin of the contending classes. In this context, common ruin of the contending classes probably refers to the decline from the Roman empire to the dark ages.

[Niccolò Rossi]

No, he said that every previous class struggle had resulted in either the victory of one class or the common ruin of the contending classes. In this context, common ruin of the contending classes probably refers to the decline from the Roman empire to the dark ages.

Well yes, I think thats maldorors point. Faced with the inability of the working class to impose communism, humanity is faced with such a ruin - barbarism.

To clarify the matter, the concept of barbarism as representing capitalism 'common ruin' in no way implies a new mode of production. The concept of barbarism has no unique relations of production.

In response to Zanthorous as quoted by Broletariat, I actually agree with almost everything you say, including and with a particular emphasis on the criticism of the ICCs analysis of the international situation and the balance of class forces in the past, vacillating between triumphantilism on the one hand and catastrophism on the other.

As a matter of clarification though, the policy of the ICCs militants to not join trade unions really doesn't have anything to do with this though. It is a strategic decisions corresponding to their analysis of unions in the modern era of decadent capitalism. Also, I hardly think it's a strange position at all, whether or not you agree with it.

Nic.