Marxist Humanist Initiative rips Monthly Review...this time it's serious...

[RadioRaheem84]

Usually Andrew Kliman writes a piece attacking the underconsumptionalist theories of MR and MR never responds. I think this time it merits a response.

http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/economic-crisis/more-misused-wage-data-from-monthly-review-the-overaccumulation-of-a-surplus-of-errors.html

This is a really hard hitting article and is basically saying that Fred Magoff and Bellamy Foster are being intellectually dishonest with their stats to pump up the picture of falling wages.

I was shocked to see the level in which Kliman really hit them with this piece and according to Brendan M Cooney, he says that the MR editors are flipping a wig denouncing Kliman on their FB pages.

Can someone decipher in plain english all the intellectual drama between these two camps? It used to be academic disagreements but now it's turned into accusations of blatant fraud!

[RadioRaheem84]

I know there aren't a lot of MR fans in here but the journal has a lot of clout in left wing circles. This is not only dismantling their arguments but accusing them of intellectual dishonest to peddle their underconsumptionalist theory. This theory is what constitutes a lot of the progressive, left-liberal, post-Kenyes, movement's theories and arguments. If shaken there is a fear down the road that right wingers might see this data and Kliman's arguments to discredit the left intellectuals in the US.

I am just wondering what you guys think.

[subcp]

If I remember correctly, some of the debates over underconsumptionism in the Trotskyist milieu also took place decades ago- Baran and Sweezy's "Monopoly Capitalism" (which I believe Kliman references in The Failure of Capitalist Production) was attacked by Ernest Mandel (quite well- Mandel eviscerated underconsumptionism in the '60s the way Kliman does today).

"There is no doubt in our mind that starting with the late fifties (i.e. with the upward shift in the unemployment rate) there has been a significant increase in the rate of surplus value, which crystallized in the “profit explosion” of more than 50 percent between 1960 and 1965. But that this increase can continue to displace more and more productive workers, who alone create surplus value, at an equivalent rate with the rise in the organic composition of capital is doubtful. Automation will continue to displace more and more productive workers; the wages of the productive workers may well represent a gradually declining part of the new income generated in industry; but they will certainly not fall rapidly enough to offset the rising organic composition of capital. So there is no reason to assume that the tendency of the rate of profit to decline will be historically reversed."

-Mandel, The Labor Theory of Value and Monopoly Capitalism

The implications of underconsumptionism that Kliman references and attacks are undoubtedly opposed to a Marxist perspective. Right-wingers aren't anywhere near as much a problem as the left-liberals and labor-left that have roots in the working-class, and have historically been one of the biggest obstacles to proletarian revolution or autonomous class struggle. That the 'official' Communist parties, the Socialist International, etc. have a Marxist veneer means they must be struggled against perpetually.

In the late 1920's, there was a phrase used by Kolarov- "the fascization of facts". That appears to be a phenomenon linked to the clever-selective use of 'official' statistics to push counter-revolutionary politics on the working-class and its advanced minority.

[The Idler]

Socialist Standard dealt with underconsumption in April 1959
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1950s/1959/no-656-april-1959/affluent-society-pt2-marx-and-underconsumption


A Reply to Professor Galbraith
It often happens that when people look for a criticism of Marx, not being sure where to look, they look in the wrong places. Professor Galbraith, for instance, looked to Moscow, to Mr. Strachey and even to Mrs. Joan Robinson.
Poverty, Crises and Catastrophe
He gathered from some of these sources that Marx had formulated an absolute law of poverty and that the system's chief defect was acute and chronic under-consumption. Along with the ever greater ability to turn out wealth the workers' living standards would decline, capitalism would choke under the weight of its unsold commodities and collapse. As if "all this—and purgatory, too," was not enough. Professor Galbraith adds another alleged Marxian theory of crises, of a continuous fall in the rate of profit and hence capital investment, with slumps of ever greater magnitude and final breakdown. Which one Marx was really supposed to hold we are not informed. Our view is that he held neither. However, let our motto be one crisis one article, and it is the under-consumptionist variety which will be its subject.
Marx not an under-consumptionist
In view of all that has been said of Marx as an "under-consumptionist" theorist, the only statement which has any bearing on the matter is in Vol. 3 of Capital, where he says,
"The last cause of all real crises, always remains the poverty and unrestricted consumption of the masses as compared with the impulse of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as if only the absolute powers of consumption of society were their limit."
This statement is merely an interpolation by Marx when he is discussing at length the view that shortage of capital is a cause of crises. This statement seems out of context with the passage, but even so, it is obvious that Marx was drawing attention to the contradiction between the tendency of capital to expand in an absolute way the powers of production, and the limits imposed upon it by the antagonistic income distribution inherent in capitalist society. This has nothing to do with under-consumption theories as understood, but implies the conflict between productive powers and productive relations.

[Lord Hargreaves]

It is a bit strange that someone can be so remorselessly dedicated to showing that workers don't have it that bad after all simply in order to prove oneself more-orthodox-than-thou on Marxist political economy. Capitalism only fails because of the tendency for a falling rate of profit and this alone - not worker (relative) impoverishment, not the changing dynamics of class struggle, not excessive consumer and household debt, not ecological collapse (Bellamy Foster), not any of these things - and anyone who says anything slightly different must be denounced as a deviant revisionist!

To the extent that this sums up Andrew Kliman's position, I have to confess I find it rather dull and boorish. Let MR do their thing I say, let each to their own.

[Comrade-Z]

Hmmm, I tried to leave a comment under the article on the Marxist Humanist Initiative website, and at first it showed up just fine when I would revisit the page, but now it doesn't show up at all. Did they delete it?

The gist of the comment was that Andrew Kliman's conclusions might be unfashionable because they pose too much of an either/or situation for many people's tastes. Many people (especially liberals) want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to think it is possible for workers to get higher compensation AND have capitalism recover. Kliman suggests it is either/or: either workers sacrifice some of their compensation, or capitalism won't recover (and by implication, if you want to maintain or enhance your standard of living, capitalism has to go).

In a way, Kliman agrees with the right wing in a descriptive sense while being at polar opposites with the right wing in the prescriptive sense. Kliman and the right wing both agree that, descriptively, an underlying problem with capitalism currently is profitability, and that workers getting more compensation will not help profitability, but will actually hurt it and make the crisis worse.

However, prescriptively, right wingers (as well as liberals, really) want to protect capitalism at all costs. Liberals think this can be done alongside rising workers' compensation, whereas the right wing doesn't think so. But when push comes to shove, if it is definitively shown, descriptively, that workers' compensation is an impediment to profitability and must be crushed to restore profitability and rescue capitalism from stagnation and crisis, the right wing and liberals will both end up agreeing to do that because they don't think a system beyond capitalism is possible or desirable.

Kliman's analysis makes a radical left/liberal alliance no longer make sense. It draws the line in the sand between those people who think that a system beyond capitalism is possible and/or desirable, and those who don't. Considering that the numbers of the former are still minuscule, many radicals are probably going to be hesitant to buy into Kliman's analysis and thus be forced to jettison the idea of a practical left/liberal alliance, but in the long run it is the only route that makes sense no matter how hard and unfashionable the going is bound to be at first, given Kliman's analysis.

In the end, Kliman's analysis needs to be combined with persuasive arguments for why socialism is possible, workable, and desirable, so that people don't just end up saying, "Oh, well if I need to slash my pay to protect capitalism, then I'll do so at all costs to make sure I stay out of Uncle Joe's gulags" or whatever.

[subcp]

It is a bit strange that someone can be so remorselessly dedicated to showing that workers don't have it that bad after all simply in order to prove oneself more-orthodox-than-thou on Marxist political economy. Capitalism only fails because of the tendency for a falling rate of profit and this alone - not worker (relative) impoverishment, not the changing dynamics of class struggle, not excessive consumer and household debt, not ecological collapse (Bellamy Foster), not any of these things - and anyone who says anything slightly different must be denounced as a deviant revisionist!

The argument is that the falling rate of profit is identifiable, an existing factor- he argues that it explains the context of increasingly risky financialization, which end in pump-primed asset bubbles (Savings & Loan, dot.com, mortgage backed securities), the latter acting as flashpoints for new expressions of crisis. Not that the FROP is the root cause of all crises or the only factor. He's hardly an ortho given the shit Marxist-Humanist politics.

[Lord Hargreaves]

The argument is that the falling rate of profit is identifiable, an existing factor- he argues that it explains the context of increasingly risky financialization, which end in pump-primed asset bubbles (Savings & Loan, dot.com, mortgage backed securities), the latter acting as flashpoints for new expressions of crisis. Not that the FROP is the root cause of all crises or the only factor. He's hardly an ortho given the shit Marxist-Humanist politics.

That's fine, if one wants to talk about the FROP. It can be useful for our understanding.

However the debate over this is taking the form of "the MR lot are not Marxist because they talk about weak demand in the economy rather than FROP". It does inevitably become about enforcing orthodoxy within Marxist political economy.

You yourself say that "underconsumptionism" (sic) is "undoubtedly opposed to a Marxist perspective" and is being used to "push counter-revolutionary politics upon the working class". How can this be just an academic disagreement among comrades when people like you say stuff like this?

[subcp]

I think the implications are what separate an academic vs political disagreement. Whenever there are instances of open class struggle or larger strikes, movements, etc. (Occupy, anti-cuts, etc.) there are boots on the ground promoting positions derived from conclusions like those in MR. Underlying theory driving practice. The other thread in Economics related to this topic is what I mean (on stagnating wages): if one sees the current expression of economic crisis as a result of declining 'fight' from the working-class, from declining unionization and union density, which lead to stagnating real wages, then the policy position is that stronger unions will mean a rise in real wages because unions are how the working-class fights cuts and 'gets the goods'. The process of discussing/debating/polemic is what's important, which clarify whats at stake. I don't think communists can afford to treat all views as inherently equal and deserving of a place. Either the correct analysis, theory and practice develop from disagreements and the process of debate or there is a gentle plural umbrella group incapable of making a decisive decision from being pulled in every direction. Do you think it's possible to have contradictory positions on the economy/crisis inhabit the same organization or co-exist as equally legitimate positions to take?

[Die Neue Zeit]

RadioRaheem, please don't lump the Post-Keynesian crowd with the underconsumptionist crowd. Whether they admit it or not, the Post-Keynesians are supply-siders when it comes to wage-earning and bargaining power.


It is a bit strange that someone can be so remorselessly dedicated to showing that workers don't have it that bad after all simply in order to prove oneself more-orthodox-than-thou on Marxist political economy. Capitalism only fails because of the tendency for a falling rate of profit and this alone - not worker (relative) impoverishment, not the changing dynamics of class struggle, not excessive consumer and household debt, not ecological collapse (Bellamy Foster), not any of these things - and anyone who says anything slightly different must be denounced as a deviant revisionist!

To the extent that this sums up Andrew Kliman's position, I have to confess I find it rather dull and boorish. Let MR do their thing I say, let each to their own.

So is Kliman in a way just parroting the "Marx for the bourgeoisie" crowd, who emphasize Crisis, Crisis, and only Crisis?


The gist of the comment was that Andrew Kliman's conclusions might be unfashionable because they pose too much of an either/or situation for many people's tastes. Many people (especially liberals) want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to think it is possible for workers to get higher compensation AND have capitalism recover.

Comrade, underconsumption is a different animal than wage-earning and bargaining power. Historical development and even Marx have proven time and again that higher real wage-earning and bargaining power are possible under bourgeois commodity production, so long as this rate doesn't exceed productivity growth. Consumption and profits are the main indicators for the mainstream, while wage-earning and bargaining power and productivity levels are downplayed.

Kliman ignores that, without this dynamic, we all should have settled for feudal relations!


The other thread in Economics related to this topic is what I mean (on stagnating wages): if one sees the current expression of economic crisis as a result of declining 'fight' from the working-class, from declining unionization and union density, which lead to stagnating real wages, then the policy position is that stronger unions will mean a rise in real wages because unions are how the working-class fights cuts and 'gets the goods'. The process of discussing/debating/polemic is what's important, which clarify whats at stake. I don't think communists can afford to treat all views as inherently equal and deserving of a place. Either the correct analysis, theory and practice develop from disagreements and the process of debate or there is a gentle plural umbrella group incapable of making a decisive decision from being pulled in every direction. Do you think it's possible to have contradictory positions on the economy/crisis inhabit the same organization or co-exist as equally legitimate positions to take?

What matters in immediate actions is the policy position, not how one arrives at it from a theoretical standpoint. It's also the difference between revolutionary program and revolutionary "theory" (the latter used to justify sectarianism).

A political organization can have a hodgepodge of "analysis" and "theory" to arrive at a reasonable policy position, without resorting to consensus fetishes that make the organization incapable of taking a stand.

[The Idler]

Some more discussion here
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/andrew-kliman-marxist-humanist-slams-underconsumption-theorists-monthly-rev