Internationalist Perspective

Report on Internationalist Perspective’s Public Meeting in New York

October 26, 2009 on 1:24 am | In Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Internationalist Perspective held a public meeting in New York on October 15, 2009 on the current econimc crisis. Here is a report on the meeting.

IP Public Meeting, New York, October 15, 2009

There were 15 at the meeting (besides IP): several “class struggle” anarchists, linked to NEFAC, though critical of it in a number of respects; 2 ICC; three from the Meltdown List (including L.G.); J. from Endnotes, and a few others who seemed politically close to him; and H.

I did the introduction, focusing on how the crisis had “produced” a dramatic increase in the rhetoric of “anti-capitalism,” which entailed a positive critique of capitalism, focused on attacks on speculation, “unproductive” capital, neo-liberalism, and on the need for regulation, Keynesian economic and financial policies, and – at the extremes – nationalization and statification. By contrast, I posed the need for a negative critique of capitalism, focused on the value form as the root of the crisis, and the necessity to attack the value form both theoretically and practically as the only response to the alternative posed by Rosa Luxemburg: socialism or barbarism.

Sander’s presentation focused on the toll the present crisis – the deepest since the 1930’s — has taken, especially in human terms, on a global level. In contrast to the rise of equity and share prices over the past six months, he accentuated the rise in global unemployment (now measured in the billions), the blighted urban landscapes, the ecological crisis, itself exacerbated by capital’s desperate search for new energy sources and quest for profitability through the exploitation of cheap labor in the Third World, which involves dependence on the most toxic and polluting forms of energy. Sander then evaluated the prospects for an economic recovery, accentuating the greater capability that capital possesses today vis a vis the 1930’s to prevent a total collapse, while focusing on how the contradictions of the value form itself constitute an insurmountable obstacle to any sustainable recovery. Indeed, the very steps that capitalist states have taken to avert a collapse already contain the seeds of new financial bubbles and the spectre of an even deeper crisis on the horizon.

The discussion, and it was a real discussion, not just questions posed to IP, with comrades speaking to each other and not just to IP, was very animated. Several issues dominated it. There was general agreement that the response of the class to the crisis, despite some militant struggles, was still weak in the face of such a sharp deterioration in living and working conditions. To which one response of IP was that this was one more indication that the value form was not just material but subjective too; that it had impacted the very way in which workers “see” the world, making the value form appear natural. Beyond that, this led to a focus on the role of pro-revolutionaries: was it primarily theoretical, were they outside the class, trying to animate it and provoke a response, or were they a part of the class, indeed, not different than any other workers? Was there a distinction between theory and practice, was there a distinct role for pro-revolutionaries, and in addition to theory, how did pro-revolutionaries play a role as an “accelerator” of class struggle – indeed, in addition to theory did pro-revolutionaries need a new “idiom” into which to translate their analyses of the value form, for example, into the actual terms of the life of the collective worker? Or was such a putative task already the creation of a division of labor between pro-revolutionaries and the class. The ICC argued that revolutionaries were simply one part of the class, and that at critical points the class can be ahead of the revolutionaries. At least one of the anarchists argued that pro-revolutionaries were not “just” workers; that their theoretical practice was vital, J. and others with him argued that there should be no separation – at times it seemed – no distinction even between pro-revolutionaries and workers, and no tasks that were specific to pro-revolutionaries.

At the end of the meeting, the NEFAC comrade suggested the possibility of a meeting of several of his comrades with IP, which we endorsed. H. has asked to be in close contact with us, and J, who is organizing a conference sponsored by the journal “Historical Materialism” (Trotskyist, but open to the left communist and heterodox Marxist currents) has invited IP to make presentations.

Mac Intosh