Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology
John Steinbeck wrote about two thefts of the land in The Grapes of Wrath. As readers, we know Steinbeck as the classic author who wrote eloquently about the second theft, the banks’ theft of the dying Oklahoma countryside from its tenant farmers. But many of us know less than we should about the first theft.
Let’s take a look.
The political left doesn’t know what to make of Venezuela, just as it doesn’t know what to make of a lot of foreign policy issues. Ken Livingstone asserted Hugo Chávez should’ve killed the oligarchs. That’s one view. George Ciccariello-Maher, a more careful analyst, also lapses into overheated rhetoric. But if there’s anything like a left consensus, it looks like this: vague critique of the current administration standing next to critique of any US-backed war. As Michael Walzer would surely say, it’s the vague consensus at work.
I’d like to get less vague. I’ll give an overview of the situation in Venezuela, and I’ll honor a bit of the spirit of Livingstone’s flippant remark without reproducing its content. What’s the insight here? It’s this: the Bolivarian Revolution, ’21st Century Socialism’ in name, recreated many of the problems of 20th century socialism in practice. And I’m talking here about the social democratic varieties, not the Leninist or Stalinist ones.
But all things in good time. First there’s our point of departure. Everyone agrees things are fucked up in Venezuela, but they don’t agree how or why. What’s fucked up? Why did it happen? Will Venezuela fix it?
I’ll tackle some of these questions on the way to our destination.
Most conversations about race and capitalism quickly degenerate into a chicken-or-egg discussion. You know the one. Which came first, racism or our beloved ‘free enterprise system’? I say we’ve had enough of that. The debate is played out. It’s monotonous and tired. But there’s a Marxist term from the debate still relevant to us. I’m referring to ‘primitive accumulation‘.
Does ‘primitive accumulation’ solve these issues? If so, how far does it take us? More broadly, does primitive accumulation account for the role of race in the capitalist system? Or if you approach these issues like, say, Ta-Nehisi Coates approaches them, does it account for the role of capitalism in the racial hierarchy?
Lots of people talk about class reductionism. Most people seem to agree it’s a bad thing, and that some other group of people does it. But few people talk about what ‘class reductionism’ means. It’s simply assumed or unstated. I, on the other hand, find the term extremely unclear. And unclear in both its parts. That is to say I think it’s unclear what ‘class’ means and what it means to reduce something to it.
What we have, then, is a useful project for an analytic philosopher. What does ‘class reductionism’ mean? Is it a political or explanatory project of some kind? What’s it all about? Some thoughts on that…
There’s been a lot of interest lately in the question of whether we need a socialist party in the US. Perhaps to put this in a way people might ask it: Do we need a socialist party in our time, and, if so, what would it look like? In one sense, it’s a surprising question. We have a socialist party in the US! In fact, we have lots of them.
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