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Hi Michel and all!
Last week (13 days ago) Michel Bauwens wrote:
but I have trouble with the
anti-semitic argument.
Well, first I want to emphasize that I accused nobody being an
antisemite. All I related to were some or Matteo's arguments. To me
arguments people make are not to be confused with the people who make
them. Arguments and opinions can change in a second. With people this
is usually somewhat harder ;-) . I did not even label these arguments
as plain antisemitic but having a antisemitic structure. To me this
also makes a difference. For reference I kept the passages where I
talked of the antisemitic structure below.
Second I even have no problem with someone saying things like this
here. I mean I'd probably need to stop writing here immediately if
nobody is allowed to say something stupid ;-) . This is a learning /
research project and stupid or wrong things are there for being
improved here in a common process. But for this learning / research it
is necessary that everyone can say: "Hey, this is stupid". That's what
I did and that's what I'll try to explain here further.
Third I'd like to make clear that with a strong background in German
leftism you can probably not evade that topic. Because of this I might
be a bit more sensitive to antisemitic structures like those visible
in Matteo's arguments.
Nazism, was a mixture, it had anti-semitism, and many
other opinions in a mixed bag.
Yes - and as you refer to Nazism I conclude you talk of the German
version of fascism.
They even had strong anti-capitalist tendencies. That was partly
tactical to catch the workers but also for ideological reasons. One
famous leftist even called fascism the anti-capitalism of the stupid
guys ("Antikapitalismus der dummen Kerls" - hoping I remember the
quote correctly).
The point is: What distinguishes this brown anti-capitalism from an
emancipatory one? More on that below.
For example,
protection of the environment, an interest (however, distorted in
their
case) in spiritual matters.
Sure. And Hitler was a vegetarian.
That's not the point. I'm *not* confusing logics in the sense of
"Hitler was an vegetarian so every vegetarian is a Nazi." In the
contrary there are indentifiable aspects in the argumentation which
make me talk of a antisemitic structure. Again: More below.
I see a lot of straw men arguments in Matteo's
text, but I fail to see any anti-semitism, and none of your
examples seem to
point out any arguments related to Judaism?
It has nothing much to do with Judaism also. I checked what Wikipedia
had to say on antisemitism_. What I'm referring to is matched best by
"Political and economic anitsemitism". Unfortunately this is not
explained more in whole Wikipedia.
.. _antisemitism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-semitism
However, there are some interesting references in the Wikipedia
article on the `anti-globalization movement`_ and its relation to
antisemitism. In fact the subject of the anti-globalization movement
is very prone to fall into this antisemitism trap - mostly because the
lack of a valid theory explaining capitalism.
.. _anti-globalization movement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
globalization_and_antisemitism
Which finally brings me to my point. So what is the difference between
brown and emancipatory anti-capitalism? In a way that's easy.
Brown anti-capitalism simply does not understand the inner workings of
a money based system like capitalism. Therefore it has no notion of
surplus value and there is no understanding that finance capital and
interest are just derivations of the surplus value generated in the
application of abstract labor.
However, there *is* of course finance capital and interest and
globalization and all this stuff in capitalism. If you feel threatened
by this phenomena but can not explain them by a thorough analysis you
need a scapegoat for it - a structure which is indeed well-known from
brown but also other movements. The Jews come in handy here - partly
because the Christian church over centuries accused them of taking
interest. I'll not expand on this here. Anyway it "qualifies" them as
a proper scapegoat.
So to make it clear: The antisemitic structure I talked of is there
exactly when those capitalist phenomena named above are ascribed to
those who fill that role in capitalist societies. This is what Matteo
tended to when complaining about large companies, finance world and
rent (i.e. interest).
However, the problem with capitalism is not that there are several
roles which need to be filled but the logic which makes these roles
necessary. Understanding this is key to understand what is necessary
to overcome capitalism. And the lack of this understanding is probably
why brown anti-capitalism has been named the anti-capitalism of the
stupid guys (though the results in Nazi Germany were all but
anti-capitalist...).
Emancipatory anti-capitalism on the other hand understands that
interest, globalization and finance capital are only agents necessary
in capitalism (and any other money based and therefore abstract
exchange system - but I'll not expand on this here now). Let me
explain this more thoroughly by the example of interest.
Let's take the M->C->M' movement of capitalism again. M is money, C is
commodity and M' > M. M' > M applies precisely because of the surplus
value extracted from the application of labor power (and a bit from
nature but this is not the point here). Now interest looks like M->M'
happens. Of course this is a fiction because the M'-M is still exactly
the surplus value extracted from some successful application of labor
power. It is only the layered system of capitalism which makes it look
like M->M' is possible.
That this is true can currently be studied by the crashing finance
markets. Those bubbles in the finance markets which crash once in a
while for say 20 years now - and with ever increasing and indeed
worrying results - are exactly what happens when M->M' is *not* backed
by some successful application of labor power - i.e. M->C->M'. It is
what logically needs to happen when M is completely decoupled from C
and thus labor. In capitalism this happened in the early 1970s when
the USA - as the last nation - decoupled there money from gold.
Similarly finance capital and globalization can be explained as
logical derivations of capitalism. It makes no sense to hit those
things because they are necessary functions in (developed) capitalism.
Capitalism doesn't work with the successful application of labor
power. This is the lifeblood of capitalism and the more this fails the
more capitalism is doomed to fail. In fact we are exactly in this
historical phase. And let's be grateful that with peer production a
new mode of production appears which seems to be capable of replacing
capitalism in a positive sense. And - most important - does not care
much about all these things because they are very immanent to
capitalism but not to the new mode of production which can do very
well without money and the alienations implied by it.
Grüße
Stefan
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2) question the role and complicity of the commons
within the global economy and put the common stock out of the
exploitation of large companies;
I'm really sorry to say this but once more your anti-Semitic
attitude
shows through: Single workers may but large companies may not? That
argument has an anti-Semitic structure. In Germany the Nazis
distinguished "Raffendes Kapital" and "Schaffendes Kapital". And
they
killed those who were supposed to be the "Raffendes Kapital" in the
concentration camps...
More generally the whole finance world is
based on rent. Financialisation is precisely the name of rent that
parasites domestic savings.
If I had looked for a proof of the anti-Semitic structure of your
arguments I had finally found it here...
Sorry, Matteo, but this piece is really bad - at least for an
emancipatory project. The main problem I see is that the whole
argument is based on a deeply anti-Semitic structure from which I
can
not see how something useful can come from.
It's really a pity that nowadays anti-Semitic structured arguments
seem to be so common even among people I'd otherwise classify as
leftists. To me this is another sign of the decline of the left.
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