Last weekend I attended Marxism 2010. It was really an excellent conference, getting just about the right balance between academic and activist focussed speakers and sessions, with as always an impressive line-up. In due course I’ll probably right up a fair bit about it, but for now I just wanted to flag up the personal website of Andrew Kliman, an excellent Marxist Economist. Kliman’s work on defending Marx’s claims about the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall is of particular importance, but his website also contains all sorts of fascinating pieces of work…

BREAKING NEWS – PLEASE REPUBLISH!

Earlier this afternoon all staff in the Arts and Education section of Middlesex University received the following email:

 Dear colleagues,

Late on Monday 26 April, the Dean of the School of Arts & Humanities, Ed Esche,
informed staff in Philosophy that the University executive had ‘accepted his
recommendation’ to close all Philosophy programmes: undergraduate, postgraduate and
MPhil/PhD.

Philosophy is the highest research-rated subject in the University. Building on its
grade 5 rating in RAE2001, it was awarded a score of 2.8 on the new RAE scale in
2008, with 65% of its research activity judged ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally
excellent’. It is now widely recognised as one of the most important centres for the
study of modern European philosophy anywhere in the English-speaking world.

The MA programmes in Philosophy at Middlesex have grown in recent years to become
the largest in the UK, with 42 new students admitted in September 2009.

The Dean explained that the decision to terminate recruitment and close the
programmes was ‘simply financial’, and based on the fact that the University
believes that it may be able to generate more revenue if it shifts its resources to
other subjects – from ‘Band D’ to ‘Band C’ students.

As you may know, the University currently expects each academic unit to contribute
55% of its gross income to the central administration. As it stands (by the credit
count method of calculation), Philosophy and Religious Studies contributes 53%,
after the deduction of School admin costs. According to the figures for projected
recruitment from admissions (with Philosophy undergraduate applications up 118% for
2010-11), if programmes had remained open, the contribution from Philosophy and
Religious Studies would have risen to 59% (with Philosophy’s contribution,
considered on its own, at 53%).

In a meeting with Philosophy staff, the Dean acknowledged the excellent research
reputation of Philosophy at Middlesex, but said that it made no ‘measurable’
contribution to the University.

Needless to say, we very much regret this decision to terminate Philosophy, and its
likely consequences for the School and our University and for the teaching of our
subject in the UK.

· Professor Peter Hallward, Programme Leader for the MA programmes in
Philosophy,

· Professor Peter Osborne, Director, Centre for Research in Modern European
Philosophy,

· Dr. Stella Sandford, Director of Programmes, Philosophy

As many readers will know, the philosophy department at Middlesex is one of the most important departments working on continental philosophy in the UK. It has, for a long time, been a centre for people working on critical theory, aesthetics, marxism, psycho-analysis, and radical philosophy. To say that such a department made no measurable contribution to the university is an absolute travesty. The figures speak for themselves, but do not show the great contribution that this department has made to academic life both in London and around the country.

In capitalism’s early life Marx compared capital to a vampire, that ‘only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks’. Chris Harman thinks a different horror staple is appropriate for the system’s later years. Far from being the sophisticated, sentient vampire count, it is better compared to the mindless, destructive zombie, ’seemingly dead when it comes to achieving human goals and responding to human feelings, but capable of sudden spurts of activity that cause chaos all round’. Harman’s book is a detailed account of the history and nature of this zombie system, framing a thorough defence of the relevance of Marx to understanding the current economic crisis.

Zombie Capitalism benefits, ironically, from having been intended as a rather different book. Harman’s intention was an update of his book Explaining the Crisis, intended to defend similar conclusions and incorporate work done in articles in International Socialism over recent years. The Credit Crunch, Lehman Brothers and the onset of recession created a need to rework much of the book. This actually helps give greater background to the account of what is going on today. Rather than being a rushed out ‘Marxist guide to the credit crunch’ it is an important document in a particular tradition of Marxism, which gives a persuasive account of the events of the past two years by rooting them in wider processes in the system. In fact, only three of the fourteen chapters are taken up with a direct discussion of recent events.

Harman assumes little prior knowledge, and a good thing too as much of the debate amongst Marxists on these issues can be anything but accessible. Marx’s account of capitalist crisis, his Labour Theory of Value and the various debates around these issues are explained with clarity. Following Marx we get a picture of a system characterised by competitive accumulation, with periodic, ever deepening crises. A system which is international, but at the same time gives rise to powerful and competing nation states. A system which transforms use values into exchange values, and in so doing mystifies and distorts them, and which transforms even basic human capacities into a commodity. 

Harman identifies two key trends in the history of capitalism: Endless, rapid, competitive accumulation and, more controversially, the tendency of profit rates to fall. Marx argued that as the proportion of investment in fixed capital compared to that in Labour increased, the rate of return on investment will decrease. This is because Labour is the only source of value. Whilst this claim has been the source of much controversy Harman is not naïve about it, and he defends it with all the vigour of someone who has been an active socialist across five decades. This tendency, argues Harman, is crucial to understanding the various ups and downs of the global system over the past century and a half, and can help us understand what economists still see as the holy grail, the depressions of the 1870s and 1930s.

Whilst these tendencies help us understand the depressions, a developed analysis can also help us see how, temporarily, they were overcome. Drawing on arguments from Michael Kidron, he suggests out that investment in unproductive labour (defined as labour that does not aid capitalist accumulation) is leakage, or waste from the system. He argues that this insight can explain the so called ‘Golden Age of Capitalism’, from 1945 until the 1970s through the levels or arms investment at the time. The global system was stable because massive amounts of surplus value were invested in armaments during the Cold War, slowing the growth of fixed capital relative to Labour. This allowed the tendency to be offset for the longest period in capitalism’s history, but still crisis returned in the 70s.

And so to today. Since the recessions of the 1970s global capitalism has been hit by regular crisis, from the long drawn out collapse of the Japanese economy to the bursting of the telecoms bubble in 2001. Profit rates never returned to those before the golden age, and throughout the 1980s and 90s the solution was to try to prop up profits through shifting the burdens onto the labour force, holding down real wages and various ‘productivity improving’ techniques. During this period a system of finance developed which, as well as being essential to the management of ever greater international transactions, seemed to offer massive profits. The US’ biggest manufacturing firm, General Electric, received 40% of its revenue from its finance wing ‘GE Capital’, and would often use its assets to ensure it reported regular and steady growth. As Harman observes ‘the vast expansion of finance had created the illusion of a new “long upturn” in productive accumulation; the crisis of finance made that illusion disappear with traumatic effects.’

 Try as it might capitalism can’t escape Marx, and:

“In some important ways the system is even more chaotic than Marx’s account. The very size of the units that make it up means that it has lost some of its old flexibility. The destruction of some capitals through periodic crises which once gave new life to those that remained now threatens to pull these down as well. Life support systems provided by the state may be able to keep the system from complete collapse but cannot restore it to long-term vigour.”

Harman ends with an important call to arms. In re-affirming Marx’s belief that those capable of transforming society and ending capitalism are those who create its wealth, he adds that ‘those who study capitalism have to become an integral part of a movement of those who suffer from it’. And, as we all know, the only way to deal with a zombie is to remove the head, or destroy the brain.

Chris Harman is Editor of International Socialism and a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party. Zombie Capitalism is published by Bookmarks and is available from their website.

Chris will be speaking at the Book Launch at Bookmarks shop, 1 Bloomsbury St, Central London, on Tuesday 29th September, 6:30pm. Call 020 76371848 or email to reserve a place.

It’s now fairly commonplace to note how the recession has caused economists to turn to Marx for some answers. On this site Matthew noted the various ways in which Marx himself has shifted into vogue during capitalism’s latest crisis. The problem is, most of what we get in the mainstream doesn’t really get beyond puff pieces written by people who have little time for Marx beyond noting that he might have been right about capitalism’s instability. It’s worth, then spending a bit of time highlighting the more detailed work of actually existing Marxists over the past couple of years, because there’s actually quite a bit of it about, and the wonders of the net make it a fair bit more accessible.

As Joseph Choonara observes in this valuable overview, a key dividing line amongst Marxist accounts of the crisis is over whether to situate it in the financial sector, which then ‘infects’ or ‘impacts’ on the real economy, or to see the crisis as part of a longer term trend within the economy. Focussing on the financialisation side of things are Robin Blackburn and the late Peter Gowan, both associated with New Left Review.  Blackburn in particular has written prolifically about the development of finance, and this warning about subprime defaults from spring 2007 puts a lie to the notion that the credit crunch caught everyone with their pants down. For Blackburn the crisis is firmly situated in financialisation – “a crisis of that venturesome ‘new world’ of leverage, deregulation and ‘financial innovation’”. Whilst Blackburn firmly situates himself within the Marxist tradition, his work has little engagement with traditional Marxist themes and concepts, and his explanations can exaggerate the changes involved in contemporary capitalism. As Choonara says, his writing often “gives the impression that the rise of finance comes out of finance itself”.

However, the reasons for the rise of finance ought to be of major significance. Alongside the question of how finance got into this mess there needs to be the question of why and how finance developed the importance it has. Many, notably those around the Monthly Review Journal and also International Socialism (though with important differences), situate it within a general trend of stagnation since the 1970s, in which capitalism has at different times sought to overcome underlying problems of production and accumulation (Costas Lapavitsas remains a notable exception, preferring to focus on the shifting role of banking and technological developments). These accounts tend to be, to their credit, reluctant to accept the idea that this represents a radically new phase of capitalism (See Chris Harman for a particularly forthright rejection). Where these two schools differ is in the value they assign to Marx’s famous, but maligned, ‘tendency of the rate of profit to fall’, Monthly Review preferring an analysis based on the formation of monopolies. This is the subject of much debate (see Harman, Kliman) but is often far too quickly rejected.

Naturally, analysis of the nature of the crisis give rise to differing prescriptions for solutions, both in terms of its administration and its content. Chris Harman and Neil Faulkner’s debate about the depth of the crisis is thin code for a debate about how activists should be responding. From a rather different perspective Blackburn offers a number of proposals for regulation of finance. The radicalism of the solution, of course, depends on how deep you think the crisis goes, but it is hard not to agree with Geoff Mann that:

Turning over our upside-down world requires not just the taming or grounding or redistribution of value, but its destruction. The overthrow of capitalism is the only way out. In short, it is the acceptance of the necessity, not just the inevitability, of revolution that makes a Marxist adequate to Marx’s analysis.

Reports are emerging that the philosopher G.A. Cohen died in the early hours of this morning aged 68. Cohen was most famous as arguably the most significant of the ‘Analytical Marxists’, who attempted to systematise Marx’s ideas into the schemas of analytic philosophy. Implicit, and often explicit, in this task was the purging of the Hegelian core of Marxism. I believe this to be both a doomed and rather pointless project, and there is no doubt that the trajectory of these thinkers was away from radical politics, to greater or lesser degrees. However, the whole point of Post-Marxists is that they are (or were) some kind of Marxists, and we shouldn’t allow the liberal philosophical establishment to claim Cohen as one of their own too quickly.

Cohen’s 1978 work ‘Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defense’ is exactly that: a rigorous defense of Historical Materialism. At times it is in breathtaking detail, and the considerations about exactly what constitute modes, means and relations of production, for example, are of importance to any Marxist today (incidentally it is far from clear what makes this peculiarly ‘analytic’ that allows it to be distinguished from earlier Marxist thought). It is a sincere attempt by someone committed to socialism to defend the ideas of its most significant advocate. Cohen’s great failing, however, was to emphasise too heavily the primacy of the forces of production as a driver of history, ignoring the subjective element of human action. Without understanding the crucial role that Marx affords human beings in making history (but not in circumstances of their own choosing), Marx remains a caricature, and hard to defend.

Cohen was a student of Isaiah Berlin, the Cold War philosopher who’s article ‘Two concepts of Liberty’, shaped the terrain of subsequent debates about freedom. Whilst Cohen was not the only one, he was a prominent and powerful critics of this false dualism. In a typical passage he writes:

My principal contention, one that contradicts very influential things that Isaiah wrote, is that lack of money, poverty, carries with it lack of freedom. I regard that as an overwhelmingly obvious truth, one that is worth defending only because it has been so influentially denied.

Whilst to many readers of this blog this also seems an overwhelmingly obvious truth, it is difficult to exaggerate how controversial a claim it was, and still is, in the context of late 20th Century liberal philosophy. For this alone he should be applauded.

No doubt Cohen’s life will be celebrated by many people who’s ideas he would have loathed. The analytical marxists became Post-Marxists, and even Cohen, as the best of them, grew pessimistic. This of course, is music to the ears of anti-marxists. But Cohen should be celebrated, and claimed in the Marxist tradition. An odd branch, sure, but a venerable one.

I spent last weekend where I spend the first weekend of every July, at the annual Marxism Festival, hosted by the SWP. Unfortunately, as ever, due to my various commitments (most notably organising the free creche), I didn’t get to see many of what I’m told were highlights. Nevertheless here are a few of my thoughts on the event overall.

Firstly, it was very visibly the biggest for some time. You always have to be wary of this claim, since it tends to be made every year, but as someone who has been to every Marxism except one for the past 7 years (and also who’s seen some of the figures), it really did feel like the biggest I’d been to. It was also very, very young, with large numbers of college and university students who had travelled from around the country. For example, I met two young women who had travelled down from Gloucester solely on the basis of picking up a flyer on a day trip to Bristol, and on the last day found myself discussing the class nature of the Soviet Union with a college student from the depths of rural Cheshire, who had made his own way. That large numbers of young people are being drawn to radical politics, whether they get organised or not can only be a good thing.

For me there were a few major highlights: Getting to see Norman Strike, whose fantastic diary of the Miner’s Strike has now been published by Bookmarks, was an entertaining privilege. Adam Tooze and Chris Bambery engaged in a fascinating debate on whether Hitler could have won. David Harvey was thought-provoking, if a bit all over the place, and Gary Younge constantly surprises me with how radical he is. I missed the Zizek/Callinicos debate, but am told it was a highlight.

Much of this, and more, is on Youtube just search Marxism 2009, and CDs of every session are available from Bookmarks, and will appear at some point on resistance mp3.

One of the things that always amazes me about Marxism, from the organisational side, is how, despite it involving the efforts and stress of large numbers of people, ususally with no compensation whatsoever, how good-natured everyone is. In many cases the organisig team are helping out from 8:30am-9pm, staying up till 2, sleeping on a community centre floor, and doing it all again. Compared to many of the environments I’ve worked in where far smaller tasks have involved bullying, stress and recrimination as a matter of course there is minimal fuss and general calm. This is a credit to those who help, so for all who read this who helped with Marxism in any way, well done comrades!