[Xmca-l] YV, Marxism and revolution

[Tom Richardson]

Xmca'ers all, esp. Annalisa
Forgive me for a start - I cannot face reading through ALL the thread, but
my reaction to the original UKGuardian 3-page article was very strong: I
can summarise it this way:

   - YV has not understood Marx.
   - YV psychologises the capital-labour-power relation
   - the value of labour-power *can indeed* be determined - by the wage
   paid for it.that statement is *not* an emotionally or social
   reproduction-costs-*true* one, but that it not what Chapter One of
   Capital is telling us
   - Chapter One of Capital tells us that the 'truth' of our capitalist
   society is a social relation - the capitalist-labour-power relation, which
   appears *and IS*, a relation betweeen things when it *is* "the definite
   social relation between men themselves which assumes here, for them, the
   fantastic relation if a relation between things
   - YV turns this *solely *into a psycho-drama of the destruction of human
   dignity - which it is, but
   - that view avoids the economic, workplace and market- based realities
   - YV then  suggests that a way can be found not too complete or
   exacerbate the chaos that capital/ism is in at present, an to give a global
   working class some time to regroup by 'saving capitalism from itself'
   - *IF* politics and resistance could work that way, YV would be correct,
   but what is the likelihood of the gravediggers being in a stronger position
   when they have resuscitated the dying body -
   - the extraction of surplus value from labour-power does not allow that
   sort of concession to the exploited as far as history tells us

So, whatever moral or emotional exhortations may be derived from YV's
article, appreciate them, but IMO, do not accept his analysis as Marxist,,
nor characterise Marxist thinking as *ideological, *i.e. partisan; if
Marxism is an ideology then we Marxists are all up a very tall and sticky
gum tree, adn as Marx says in his 'Theses on Feuerbach', our fallacies will
be proved such by the (powerful test of) sensuous human activity!
Tom Richardson
Middlesbrough
UK