02-13-2009

Dear Comrades:

I read your article on the November 2008 CWO meeting, and particularly was interested in the various comments of comrades who attended the meeting, and also on the differences between the CWO-IBRP comrades, and the ICC comrades.

I've previously written public comments over on the ICC website and you can find some of my comments over there. I'm the "Allan Greene" a/k/a email: [tompaine1917@yahoo.com] over there. If you read my comments over there, you will have some idea of my political background in left social-democracy, and Trotskyism, and then in organizationally non-affiliated political activism over many years since leaving organized left politics in 1976. I identified myself over on the site as sympathetic to a kind of left Trotskyist perspective, but also identified myself as not being organizationally affiliated with any party or nucleus.

I also sought to provide some pretty detailed views of mine on political issues over there.

On the issues discussed in your article on the November 2008 CWO meeting, I would have to say I am generally sympathetic with your view on the world economic and financial crisis, and I consider myself probably closer to your kind of economic analysis than to that of the ICC comrades. I'm familiar with the analysis of the late Paul Mattick, as well as with the analysis of Nikolai Bukharin who, despite his identification with Leninist Bolshevism, and not council communism of the type espoused and expounded by Mattick in his life, had an economic analysis closer to that later expounded by Mattick and, earlier, Grossman. You seem to have an analysis closer to Mattick, Grossman, Bukharin, than to Rosa Luxemburg, and you seem to view the issue of realization and extra-capitalist markets insightfully. With some hesitation, I'm inclined to probably share your view.

I would also have to state the crisis does seem to me to at this moment in time be terminal for capitalism. There is, of course, the fact that the international bourgeoisie can always "muddle through" crises to one degree or another. But in the broad sense, it surely seems the crisis is terminal, at least to me.

On the $62 trillion dollar number. Actually, internationally, the number's probably closer to $595 trillion to $600 trillion, if one accounts for the build-up internationally in the fancy-schmancy financial instruments embodying accumulated debt called, derivatives, which have been partaken of by all major capitalist ruling classes. However, they started in the U.S., my country, and that is where the $62 trillion dollar figure is more relevant and pertinent.

The sheer bigness of the $595-$600 trillion figure makes it hopeless, in my view, for the Obama regime to think its paltry little Keynesian $789 billion "stimulus" is going to do more than maybe give a tiny little bit of a nudge to the economy, after which everything will continue spiraling downward. Obama's no more capable of getting U.S. or world capitalism out of this severe crisis than FDR was in the 1930s, and he did not get American or world capitalism out of the 1930s Depression; World War Two did. That, at least, is what absorbed -- finally -- millions of unemployed workers into the American war production plant.

That is what is portended for the future, and the not-very-distant future at that, if, that is, the proletariat does not seize power in at least one major capitalist country.

I'm inclined to think it has to happen in the U.S., the most powerful capitalist country, if there is to be hope for the salvation of humankind from the prospect of a nuclear Third World War, which would be followed by a nuclear winter and the probability of the international eclipse and doom of humankind. Rosa Luxemburg's statement that socialism or barbarism remained the only real alternatives is even more relevant and to the point today than in her own day.

I very much enjoy IBRP articles on the world economic and financial crisis, and think you comrades do a very good job in analyzing it. I switch back and forth between reading your articles, the ICC comrades' articles, and articles by various Trotskyist presses, like the presses of the ICL-FI ( icl-fi.org ), LRP ( lrp-cofi.org ), Internationalist Group ( internationalist.org ), and also Loren Goldner's site, Break Their Haughty Power. I've more recently gone to the site of the Internationalist Perspective comrades as well. But I think you comrades, and the ICC comrades, were analyzing this crisis quite early in the game, and I have been impressed by your articles, as well as theirs.

On the credit crunch. I'm inclined to see the thing as based in the accumulated fictitious capital of all those derivatives. I think the most pertinent chapter is Marx's chapter 25 in volume 3 of Capital, entitled, Fictitious Capital. I thought that for quite awhile. The enormous financial overhang of this bubble of a 40-years-built-up fictitious capital (essentially speculative capital) is what is acting as the overwhelming pressure downward on any possibility of real production due to no credit materializing. I found the article in the Trotskyist press of the ICL-FI of their economist, Joseph Seymour, pretty good on that as well. I also was very impressed by the article in the IBRP press with the funny cartoon showing the enormous upside-down pyramid with the top of the upside-down pyramid sitting on a house and a voice coming from the house saying "I thought we were just selling a house." That was very appropriate.

On the issue of Russia and China, as well as Brazil and India. First, I disagree with both you and the ICC on your view of Russia and China prior to the 1991-1992 overturn of the old Soviet state-planned and state-owned economy in Russia, and view such growth as was enabled as being largely a function in China to this day as being a function of 75 percent of China's economy being state-owned, and in Russia at least up to 1991-1992 as being similarly a function of their state-ownership and state planning. I am here more or less of the view that state ownership and state planning represents on some level social and economic progress and an abrogation, at least in part, of the private profit principle and, therefore, of the law of value. I also hold to the Trotskyist perspective that, embodying progress as over and against private-for-profit-based capitalism, it deserves being defended against private-for-profit-based capitalism; that is, the precept of state ownership and state planning deserves being defended against private capital-based imperialism, while, at the same time, the program of proletarian revolution to overthrow Stalinist bureaucracies must be advocated at the same time, and a government of elected workers' councils (soviets) advocated.

I am also more or less of the view that insofar as China's growth is today slowing, that's primarily a function of their having over-adapted to the 25 percent of their economy that is privatized, which has hamstrung their growth and development. That's the sector that has acted as a subverter and underminer of their growth and development, which is why at this moment in time, unlike, for instance, in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, China today will be negatively impacted on by the current international financial and economic crisis of world capitalism. To get out of that, the Beijing Stalinist bureaucracy, who have adapted to an extraordinary extent to privatization, have to be overthrown and replaced by elected soviets or workers' councils that would not do away with the state-planned and state-owned economy, but, to the contrary, strengthen them, placing them under the control and supervision of the elected councils of the working class, a centralized government of workers' councils.

I see no other way out other than that for China.

That also implies building revolutionary workers' parties in every country in anticipation of the coming proletarian explosions. I don't think a nucleus equals a party, but, on the other hand, it would be foolish to close one's eyes to the effects the crisis is going to have. I agree that proletarian explosions don't mechanically materialize from unemployment, but on the other hand, proletarians on the way down in their living conditions, and proletarians on the way up in their living conditions, are those proletarians most likely to engage in mass labor class struggle. The Chicago workers' sit-down about which you wrote happened when proletarians in that plant were on the way down in their working and living conditions.

I am somewhat unclear about something. The ICC comrades in their article on that Chicago plant occupation of December wrote that the workers, or some of them, had advocated the tactic of the plant occupation as a tactic to fight the layoffs. I wasn't sure if that was the case from your article. I read an article in the ICL-FI Trotskyist press on line, and they also did not say whether the workers engaged in the occupation aimed to fight the layoffs themselves at that plant. But if that was the original demand of the workers, the securing of severance pay was not necessarily the victory it was made out to be, because a fight against the entire layoff that was successful would have been a much more substantive and important victory. Plant occupations to fight layoffs are a very historically significant and solid proletarian tactic. The ICC said some of the workers at that plant did actually see the occupation as a tactic to fight the layoff itself. Did your own comrades have the same impression?

Anyway, again, I enjoyed the article on the November CWO meeting.

Comradely greetings,

Allan Greene

Email: [tompaine1917@yahoo.com]