Thanks for that, but it appears to be in the wrong section.
I'll move this to Politics.
On second thoughts, Theory!
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was curious if anyone had read Kojin Karatani's book, Transcritique: On Kant and Marx, or had heard of/participated in the New Associationist Movement?
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INTRODUCTION TO NAM / Kenta Ohji
NAM (New Associationist Movement) is an association of individuals who take the task of organizing effective and non-violent counter-actions to capitalism and the State. Founded by Kojin Karatani in Japan last year, NAM proposes a simple theoretical schema for the critique of capitalism, nation and the State, as well as a practical form of activism in several spheres. Currently, NAM numbers about 600 members, each of whom belongs to at least three sections, according to social category, region and main-interest. Members of diverse ages come from all over Japan and there are twelve regional sections as including that of overseas. The sections of main interest are agriculture, architecture, art, computer, cooperative, education, environment, gender and sexuality, labor, law, LETS, minority, third-world, theory and welfare, etc.
From the debates and discussions made in each section by way of mailing-lists, some concrete action projects have been launched: a project of the education section is now waiting for the legal registration for establishment of New School; a project of the agriculture section is working on the boycott of genetically-modified products, and the third world section is preparing the immigrant workers’ association. Hihyokukan, [Critical Space], a philosophical quarterly edited by two members of NAM, Kojin Karatani and Akira Asada, has been launched by a new publishing company, founded with the view towards a future transformation into a cooperative of producers. But at this time, the main project of NAM is "Q project", formed to establish an internet-run LETS (Local Exchange Trading System): Ippei Hozumi, a system engineer and member of NAM, has already developed the system’s prototype (WINDS). We consider the creation of multi-LETS networks as the first step toward the development of a non-capitalist market based on exchanges without the creation of surplus or the fetishization of money.
The phrase "market economy" is often used to conceal the reality of capitalist accumulation behind it. Capital consists of the movement from M (money) to C (commodity) to M’(more money). From a skewed perspective, it seems to consist only of separate individual exchanges, C-M or M’-C. Those who worship the market economy see only these isolated moments, and are blind to the way in which exchanges are carried out only as components of the movement of Capital. The self-reproduction and self-expansion of Capital through the movement M–C-M’ is possible only when surplus value can be appropriated. The surplus value appropriated by industrial capital arises from the differences in value that exist when workers buy back the (direct or indirect) products of their own labor. But this requires the creation across time of new value systems through technological innovation (Marx's "relative surplus value"). Because Capital constantly travels the world over in search of cheap labor, surplus value cannot be thought of in terms of an individual corporation or a single nation-state. It must be seen as the total surplus value in global capitalism. Accordingly, surplus value itself remains invisible at the level of a single corporation or state, as if it were locked away in a black box. The only form that people can know empirically is profit. A "profit" that is inseparable from its by products: class divisions, wars, pollution.
The secret of Capital lies in the process M-C-M’ - consequently, the phase of resistance to Capital should shift from production to distribution, from workers-as-producers to workers-as-consumers. In its movement, Capital encounters two critical moments: when commodified labor power is purchased and when the products are sold back to the workers. If a failure occurs in either of these moments, Capital is unable to appropriate surplus value - it is unable to function as capital. Workers can counteract capital at either of these two phases. In the first, they can adopt the strategy proposed by Antonio Negri: "Don’t work" - which can mean nothing other than, "Don’t sell your labor power! Don’t perform waged labor under capitalism!" Or in the second, they can follow Mahatma Gandhi’s suggestion: "Don’t buy the products of capitalism!" Both of these "boycotts" are carried out from positions in which laborers can become active "subjects." But to make it possible for workers-as-consumers to choose not to work and not to buy, an alternative form must be available that can allow them to work and buy in order to live. An exscendent form of activism that aims to go beyond the limits of capitalism by creating non-capitalist forms of production and consumption - such as the non-capitalist market founded on the Local Exchange Trading System and the formation of cooperatives of producers and consumers in that market - is an indispensable complement to the immanent activism that takes place within the capitalist economy. The immanent activism centered on boycotts is also necessary to help push capitalist corporations to reorganize themselves into non-capitalist forms.
Marx sought to unveil the secret of money. But what sort of counter-measures become possible by his analysis of money-form? Engels and Lenin sought to abolish capitalism through state regulation and through a centralized planned economy, which resulted in the abolition of the market economy of free exchanges between individuals and in the withering away of freedom. They overlooked the specific function that characterizes money. Money is not simply an indicator of value; it actively coordinates the value systems of all products and production as they are exchanged through it. Money functions as the unavoidable medium of this system of relations - it plays an indispensable role. The superiority of market economies over planned economies is due to this function of money; planned economies which hope to establish their value systems without money can't but result in an enormous concentration of power in the hands of the State. In the capitalist market economy, of course, a substanceless money becomes substantialized as a principal object of desire, which results in money fetishism and the movement of capital as the self-reproduction of money. But to abolish the market economy on the grounds that its money transforms into capital is to throw out the baby with the bath water. To echo the antinomy of Marx's Capital: we can’t live with money, and we can’t live without it. The question is how to overcome the money-form while simultaneously conserving a market that permits free exchanges between individuals.
LETS (Local Exchange Trading System), a proposal initiated by Michael Linton, creates a multilateral balance-of-payments system, under which each participant maintains an individual account. The goods and services that each participant can provide are listed in a catalog, which members use to carry out voluntary exchanges through negotiation of the price; the results of the exchanges are recorded in the accounts of the participants involved. The currency used in LETS is different from the forms of cash issued by various national central banks, in that with each exchange, the currency is issued anew by the purchaser. The sum total of debits and credits in all the accounts of all the participants remains at zero, based on the principle of mutual cancellation between buyer and seller. Although this system may undergo future technical revisions, its basic concept already holds the key to resolving the antinomy of money.
Comparisons with the reciprocal gifts carried out within a closed community and with the capitalist economy highlight the distinguishing features of LETS. LETS resembles a system of reciprocal gifts within a closed community, but its exchanges could occur across a wide area and involve complete strangers (especially when administered on the internet) and the value of goods and services exchanged is not predetermined by communal system of value, but by the negotiation of individual seller and buyer. In this sense, it differs from a closed system of gifts and more closely resembles the characteristics of a market system. But it also differs from a capitalist market economy because LETS currency cannot function as capital. This is not just because it does not bear interest, but also because of the principle of zero-sum (mutual cancellation between assets and expenditures) for the system as a whole. No matter how actively exchanges are carried out, the final result will always be a canceling out of all currency.
This suggests an answer to the inherent antinomy of the money form: under the LETS system, money simultaneously exists and does not exist. LETS currency functions as a general equivalent, but only as something that enables the relation between services and goods. It has no independent existence beyond that relation, consequently, money fetishism cannot arise. When currency exists only as the condition of possibility for exchange, it becomes meaningless to hoard it, nor is there any need to fear mounting debt. LETS currency enables a relational system of exchange for goods and services, but does reduce it to "commensurability." This means that LETS realizes the possibility of exchange between qualitatively different goods and services without enclosing them in one system of value which is regulated by money in capitalist market. As each member is capable of issuing the currency as s/he wants, and as the price of the goods and services could vary according to each negotiation between individual buyer and seller. In the non capitalist market of LETS, a good or service could have different price according to each exchange that takes place, and the members themselves create the terms of the exchange - the capacity of evaluation (of creating a standard of value) remains in the hands of buyer and seller.
LETS is well-suited to the principles of our association in NAM, which are not merely economic but also ethical. While a reciprocal exchange system within a closed community requires accepting perpetually the jurisdiction of that community that issues the currency, the social contract implemented under LETS is similar to what Proudhon called "associations" based on the contract between individuals. All individual members are free to leave the LETS network, just as they are also free to belong simultaneously to more than one LETS network (multi-LETS), a development that will be facilitated through an internet system of exchanges. Unlike the single currency issued by a nation-state, the currency in LETS is plural and heterogeneous. And, most importantly, unlike other alternative local currencies, in LETS each individual member has the right to issue currency (in the form of entries into her or his account). As one of the sovereign rights of a state is the right to issue currency, this amounts to a popular sovereignty that goes beyond lip service: it genuinely makes each individual into a sovereign of currency. In this sense, LETS is not simply an alternative local currency, nor simply an economic movement, it crosses into a political dimension.
Since LETS is situated in the distribution and circulation phase, workers as consumers can take the initiative with it. Whereas ordinary cooperatives of producers/consumers are immediately forced into competition with capitalist corporations, LETS is structured to enable them to develop freely and under the self-determination of the individual participants. And it’s also well-suited to a gradual creation of a non-capitalist market, as it initially allows a mixed use with national currency (for instance, 50% of the price of a commodity could be paid with LETS, while the other half could be paid with the national currency). Through this form of incremental changes, LETS permits the development of a non capitalist-market to grow out of the midst of the capitalist market.
But no matter how much LETS expands, by itself it cannot halt the self-reproduction of Capital. It remains in the end a complement to the market economy, and its impact is limited. To actualize the potential of LETS requires a movement to be linked with counteractions in various forms against the trinity of Capitalism-Nation-State. An exscendent activism outside the limits of capitalism is insufficient without counteractions immanent to the capitalist economy. The two forms of activism can meet in the distribution phase of the market, where workers take up the position of consumers. We do not want to deny the necessity of traditional forms of counter-acts against capitalism such as labor movements based on workers’ unions, but it is also clear that these movements themselves cannot stop the movement of Capital as long as they are separated from each other and opposed to its patron in the determined relation of production. But, as Marx said, when the worker appears in the position of a consumer, he is emancipated from all his determinations as a worker. In other words, it is in this position that the worker appears as an individual subject, and that s/he could actively counter-act the movement of Capital (M-C-M’), and it is from this position that the worker could seek an escape from the cycle of the self-reproduction of Capital. The counter-acts that we propose to organize against capital must be based on the ethical and subjective choice of individuals.
As a young movement, NAM is developing gradually, sometimes in small steps, but effectively. It is not our aim to expand the organization of NAM itself; the only thing of importance is that "NAM-like" counter-actions take root in reality, in diverse places, in diverse forms, and that together, these find a way of communicating with and linking to each other through mutual exchanges and cooperation, thus extending the sphere of non-capitalist and non-statist society.
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Thanks for that, but it appears to be in the wrong section.
I'll move this to Politics.
On second thoughts, Theory!
This is not a new criticism of Marxism and the idea of a planned economy. IN the long term the answer is that while planning may indeed lead to less efficient coordination of values, such efficiency will no longer be necessary because of the level of wealth that then exists. Thats the whole pont about a planned economy - it is based on wealth.
In any case, as formulated here, the argument is incorrectly linked to the nature of maney, suggesting that money and planned economies are incompatible. Money is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the generalised regime of commodity exchange that is being discussed here. Money doesnt have a single function, its function varies with the structure of the economy it is part of.
If the review you post a link to is accurate, Karatami ascribes to Kant the view that the constructed object is a necessary illusion - this is not Kant's view. He also ascribes to Kant the idea that the thing in itself is a necessary alterity - this is not Kant's view, although close to Adorno......I could go on.
He actually sounds like a post modern version of Proudhon.
"Dixi et salvavi animam meam" - quoted by Marx
"Things rarely work out well if one aims at 'moderation'..." - Engels
"By and by we heare newes of shipwrack in the same place, then we are too blame if we accept it not for a Rock." Sir Philip Sydney
"The most to be hoped for by groups who claim to belong to the Marxist succession (...) is for them to serve as a hyphen between past and future....nothing can be held sacred – everything is called into question. Only after having been put through such a crucible could socialism conceivably re-emerge as a viable doctrine and plan of action." - Van Heijenoort
http://www.cross-x.com/vb/showthread.php?t=986373
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in the preface to 'transcritique', kojin karatani quotes marx as follows:
this seems true of kritik debate as well - it's not reducible to a state of affairs or an ideal; it's a real movement. this also helps explain why requiring kritiks to include policy-like alternatives is misguided, because such alternatives are pie-in-the-sky, unrelated to reality on the ground.
recent events on wall street compel us to return to marx's fundamental lessons. although revolution may not be inevitable, crisis certainly is. and although capitalism may not collapse under the weight of its own internal contradictions, such contradictions function as their own most radical critique of the capitalist status quo.
in addition to a reminder of the endemic nature of crisis for a commodity economy precariously constructed on credit, we're also reminded of how intimate the partnership between capitalism and statism/nationalism is - to quote karatani (pages 14-6),
{the position of the nation-state in regards to capital is precisely what deleuze and guattari refer to in 'anti-oedipus' as 'archaisms with a current function'. agrarian communities are decomposed by the osmosis of money (or, to apply d&g, the threat of decoding that haunts all societies) yet they're recovered imaginarily to maintain national sentiments of obligation and indebtedness. see karatani, page 13-4.}
we must supersede the capitalist nation-state or we'll be coopted by so-called 'social democracy'. this isn't easy. a 'mindset change' isn't enough. kritiks have to move beyond mere denunciation and forge new counter-movements. but first we have to appreciate the intractability of the problem (page 10-1),
i need to go to lunch, but karatani's 'alternative' in a nutshell is association, very akin to the creation of a debate commons, and we all know that solves for human extinction: http://www.cross-x.com/vb/showpost.p...&postcount=189 ...which is also why it's the "work of all and everyone".
more excerpts
http://www.cross-x.com/vb/showpost.p...8&postcount=33
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electoral dictatorship, revolutionary violence, nonviolent resistance, boycott/co-ops...
(1) "Marx was a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in universal suffrage, the backdrop of the coup of the Eighteenth Brumaire, rather than a direct violent means of rule. It is a system wherein people of all classes participate in the electons. But that is not all - at the same time, and inversely, in this system, all individuals are, for the first time, separated in principle from all class relations and relations of productions. The representative assembly has already existed in the feudal system as well as in the absolutist monarchy; but it was at the point when universal suffrage and then secret balloting were introduced that the representative assembly turned into the unequivocal boureois parliament. Hiding who votes who for whom, secret voting liberates people from their relations; at the same time, however, it erases the traces of their relations. Thus the relationship between representative and represented is radically severed once, and becomes arbitrary. So it is that the representative chosen by secret balloting is no longer controlled by the represented. In other words, the representative can behave as if he represented everyone, even though that is not the case. That is the nature of dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. It is not quite the same as the bourgeois class running society by occupying the parliament. Rather it is a mechanism that erases class relations or the relations of domination by temporarily 'reducing' people into 'free and equal individuals' - and this mechanism itself functions as the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. In elections, the freedom of individuals is guaranteed, but this exists only at the moment that the hierarchical relations in the real relations of production are suspended. So it is that there is no democracy sensu stricto in capitalist enterprises, outside elections. That is to say, managers are not elected by employees, and furthermore not by their secret voting. And it is impossible that state bureaucrats are elected by people's direct voting. People's freedom exists only to the extent that they can choose their representatives in political elections. And, in reality, universal suffrage is just an elaborate ritual to give a public consensus to what has already been determined by the state apparati (military and bureaucracy)." p151-2.
(2) "Since the Puritan Revolution, bourgeois revolutions have always involved violent acts. Even some socialist revolutions have been violent, however, that is only because they occurred in countries where the bourgeois revolution (read sweeping of feudal remnants) or the formation of nation-state had not yet been completed. Still there are many regions on earth where violent revolution is necessary. It is unjust and pointless for bourgeois ideologues to criticize this type of revolution. They are oblivious to their own pasts. But the point I want to make is that what abolishes - not just regulates - the bourgeois state (capital/state amalgamation) is no longer the violent revolution. I would call this other movement a counteraction rather than a revolution." p344-5.
(3) "The counteraction to the capitalist nation-state should be nonviolent through and through. But here a redefinition of "nonviolent" is necessary; the parliamentary system - as opposed to a military uprising - is always defined as the "nonviolent" way of changing the political state. But it is not the case that it is veritably nonviolent. I argue that parliamentarianism too, wills to state power. According to Max Weber, the state is equal to a human community that demands an actual monopolization of the means of executing physical violence within a limited domain. Whether by compulsion or by agreement, the execution of might is violent through and through. Therefore, all those who are involved in politics are flirting with the demonic power lurking in violence, it might be said. In this sense of Weber, social democracy is in the least nonviolent, albeit less violent. Social democracy seizes state power by resorting to the majority vote in the parliamentary system and seeks to redistribute the wealth extorted from capital (as tax) to workers. If so (as seen from the stance of the radical libertarian Hayek), the difference between Berstein and Lenin is not as large as it seems. Both resort to state power, that is, violence. One is a soft statism, while the other a hard statism. From our vantage point, neither seeks the abolition of the labor-power commodity, namely, wage labor. And the social democracy is the last resort for the capitalist nation-state to survive. What we call nonviolence is exemplified by the strategy of Mahatmi Gandhi. But it cannot be reduced to so-called civil disobedience. Mahatma Gandhi's principle of nonviolent resistance is well known, but less known are his 'resistances' of boycotting English products and nurturing consumers'/producers' cooperatives. If not for this nurturing, the boycott could not be what Gramsci called the war of position. If not for the will to noncapitalist cooperatives, the boycott would be a nationalist movement that cared only for the well-being of national capitals." p302.
(4) "For individual capitals, nothing is more damaging than boycotts. The most powerful campaign in the Civil Rights movement of the late 1950s was initiated by the boycotting of the segregated bus services in Montgomery, Alabama. It is said that the leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., learned the spirit of nonviolent resistance from Gandhi. But what needs to be stressed here is that nonviolent resistance was done as a boycott. Without referring to Gandhi, Malcolm X, later in his life, sought to do what Gandhi did in his own context: He was trying to organize consumers'/producers' cooperatives by and for the African American community. It was a tacit boycott against capitalist economy. Since his death, the social welfare system has begun to support many more impoverished, including African Americans; but it does not help their independence. What is imperative here is also not the social democracy that organizes the state's redistribution of wealth, but the autonomous movement to create consumers'/producers' cooperatives." p346.
