Chris Cutrone: Is Capitalism Pregnant with Socialism?
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 8 фев 2025
- Chris Cutrone's "Cutronezone" featuring a conversation about his 2018 essay "The future of socialism: What kind of illness is capitalism?"
School of Materialist Research Link
schoolofmateri...
Buy Chris Cutrone's Book: The Death of the MIllennial Left
www.sublationm...
Sublation Media Summer Conference in NYC
/ 3575849189296205
Support Sublation on Patreon
/ dietsoap
Karl Kautsky on childbirth as an analogy for social revolution:
The act of birth is a leap. At one stroke a fetus, which had hitherto constituted a portion of the organism of the mother, sharing in her circulation, receiving nourishment from her, without breathing, becomes an independent human being, with its own circulatory system, that breathes and cries, takes its own nourishment and utilizes its digestive tract.
The analogy between birth and revolution, however, does not rest alone upon the suddenness of the act. If we look closer we shall find that this sudden transformation at birth is confined wholly to functions. The organs develop slowly, and must reach a certain stage of development before that leap is possible, which suddenly gives them their new functions. If the leap takes place before this stage of development is attained, the result is not the beginning of new functions for the organs, but the cessation of all functions - the death of the new creature. On the other hand, the slow development of organs in the body of the mother can only proceed to a certain point, they cannot begin their new functions without the revolutionary act of birth. This becomes inevitable when the development of the organs has attained a certain height.
We find the same thing in society. Here also the revolutions are the result of slow, gradual development (evolution). Here also it is the social organs that develop slowly. That which may be changed suddenly, at a leap, revolutionarily, is their functions. The railroad has been slowly developed. On the other hand, the railroad can suddenly be transformed from its function as the instrument to the enrichment of a number of capitalists, into a socialist enterprise having as its function the serving of the common good. And as at the birth of the child, all the functions are simultaneously revolutionized - circulation, breathing, digestion - so all the functions of the railroad must be simultaneously revolutionized at one stroke, for they are all most closely bound together. They cannot be gradually and successively socialized, one after the other, as if, for example, we would transform to-day the functions of the engineer and fireman, a few years later the ticket agents, and still later the accountants and book-keepers, and so on. This fact is perfectly clear with a railroad, but the successive socialization of the different functions of a railroad is no less absurd than that of the ministry of a centralized state. Such a ministry constitutes a single organism whose organs must cooperate. The functions of one of these organs cannot be modified without equally modifying all the others. The idea of the gradual conquest of the various departments of a ministry by the Socialists is not less absurd than would be an attempt to divide the act of birth into a number of consecutive monthly acts, in each of which one organ only would be transformed from the condition of a fetus to an independent child, and meanwhile leaving the child itself attached to the navel cord until it had learned to walk and talk.
Since neither a railroad nor a ministry can be changed gradually, but only at a single stroke, embracing all the organs simultaneously, from capitalist to socialist functions, from an organ of the capitalist to an organ of the laboring class, and this transformation is possible only to such social organs as retain a certain degree of development, it may be remarked here that with the maternal organism it is possible to scientifically determine the moment when the degree of maturity is attained, which is not true of society.
On the other hand, birth does not mark the conclusion of the development of the human organism, but rather the beginning of a new epoch in development. The child comes now into new relations in which new organs are created, and those that previously existed are developed further in other directions; teeth grow in the mouth, the eyes learn to see; the hands to grasp, the feet to walk, the mouth to speak, etc. In the same way a social revolution is not the conclusion of social development, but the beginning of a new form of development. A socialist revolution can at a single stroke transfer a factory from capitalist to social property. But it is only gradually, through a course of slow evolution, that one may transform a factory from a place of monotonous, repulsive, forced labor into an attractive spot for the joyful activity of happy human beings. A socialist revolution can at a single stroke transform the great bonanza farms into social property. In that portion of agriculture where the little industry still rules, the organs of social and socialist production must be first created, and that can come only as a result of slow development.
It is thus apparent that the analogy between birth and revolution is rather far reaching. But this naturally proves nothing more than that one has no right to appeal to nature for proof that a social revolution is something unnecessary, unreasonable, and unnatural. We have also, as we have already said, no right to apply conclusions drawn from nature directly to social processes. We can go no further upon the ground of such analogies than to conclude: that as each animal creature must at one time go through a catastrophe in order to reach a higher stage of development (the act of birth or of the breaking of a shell), so society can only be raised to a higher stage of development through a catastrophe.
www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1902/socrev/pt1-1.htm
Compare:
"The notion of the class war can be misleading. It does not refer to a trial of strength to decide the question "Who shall win, who be defeated?" or to a struggle whose outcome is good for the victor and bad for the vanquished. To think in this way is to romanticize and obscure the facts. For whether the bourgeoisie wins or loses the fight, it remains doomed by the inner contradictions that in the course of development will become deadly. The only question is whether its downfall will come through itself or through the proletariat. The continuance or the end of three thousand years of cultural development will be decided by the answer. History knows nothing of the evil infinity contained in the image of the two wrestlers locked in eternal combat. The true politician reckons only in dates. And if the abolition of the bourgeoisie is not completed by an almost calculable moment in economic and technical development (a moment signaled by inflation and poison-gas warfare), all is lost. Before the spark reaches the dynamite, the lighted fuse must be cut. The interventions, dangers, and tempi of politicians are technical - not chivalrous."
- Benjamin, 'Fire Alarm', 1928.
Great conversation
Would you ever consider hosting a conversation with Gabriel Rockhill?
Sure. I talk to Stalinists all the time.
11:20 'Wert' does not mean value or wealth in German, it really never means wealth. But the distinction between 'labor' and 'work' missing in German is right. E.g. when we translate an English text that is using 'labor' we check if it is meant as the designation of a political body (labor) or otherwise we use 'work'.
Thanks! I though “Wert” meant “worth” and in English we distinguish between “value” as merely conventional and formal versus actual worth - like the distinction between money-price on the market vs actual social value. Or between exchange-value and use-value: Wert or worth would mean the latter, which was my point about “wealth” since the latter is usually associated with use-value. This is why I raised Smith and his speculative - dialectical - identity of labor as value AND wealth; whereas for Marx with industrial production it is precisely the non-identity and contradiction of value versus wealth in capitalism, in which labor as source of value is in conflict with labor as source of wealth.
@@ccutrone so you meant 'worth' not 'wealth', I must have misheard.
Incidentally, cause we ran into this problem translating 'Money without Value' (Kurz, 2012). According to him, the word for money in German 'Geld' has its roots in the medieval 'Gelt' (gelten, abgelten, Vergeltung, das gilt nicht etc.).
A common phrase, for instance in games and sports here is: 'Das gilt nicht !' (that isn't valid !, that isn't according to the rules !).
Yes I meant wealth but as another meaning of Wert - wealth in Smith and Marx’s sense of real social value of wealth that is contradicted by the miserly value of labor-time in capitalism. As I said in the interview one needs a dialectical approach to the critique of value - which I find severely lacking in Wertkritik, which I find undialectical i.e. anti-“value.”
Perhaps I am just speaking my own language!
25:00 is the question ive been struggling with all week. I dont really understand what the fuck Value is
14:55 Doug, this must be the lingering Klimanism you’ve previously mentioned because no calculation is possible. Kliman’s MELT has a glaring flaw in that the processes that govern the transformation of concrete labour into abstract value systematically obscure labour-time values. So those business and labour statistics he relies on has little to no relevance to Marx’s value concept. Rather, the sum of all prices is the monetary representation of total abstract labour, in other words, the total of prices represents nothing other than the value relations dominating society!
Capitalists' pull-out game: weak
Capitaljizm
@@NF-ru8on”capitaljizm” oh y’all in here talking freaky deaky 😂
I'd argue it hasn't stopped fucking after it came.
The Cutrone zone
What work &or labour &or value is involved when i find that magical Mantra, which when uttered, results in a nice comfy cotton TShirt?
14:05 Professor Cutrone is right. The aggregate of prices at the level of the totality is NOT the aggregate of value, that is a key jump not to make Doug. The price point of exchange is the individual smart capital getting a chunk of that total mass of surplus value (hence the entire thing about 'added value' or 'surplus value', where the first is used in economics and the second by the Marxists, Marxians. Point being that the first is muddling the waters since it makes it seem as if value can be produced directly).
Incidentally, that's also a topic leading to the key distinction between Michael Heinrich and Robert Kurz (positivism).
It looks like Doug has abandoned the comment section so i’m going to tag myself in here.
I don’t even think Chris disputes that total price represents total value. All he is saying is that value cannot be measured and he’s right. Let’s say it was possible to capture the capitalist development process in a given moment in order to distinguish all the various elements in the price structure and reveal the value relations. It would still tell us very little because capital is not a given but is constantly moving and changing. For this reason (and what i think Chris’ entire point is), it is necessary for Marxists to stay focused on the unchangeable relations of capitalist production which prevail no matter what the particular relationship between price relations and the movements of capital are in a given moment.
In fact the only thing your argument shows is the formation of a general rate of profit i.e. surplus-value may vary from the average organic composition of capital but the rate of profit remains the same. This is only conceivable if total price represented total value. This is why Marx compares “stockholders in a stock company” with the individual capitalist in capitalism in chapter 9 of volume 3.
If you feel the need to explain a metaphor several times, pick a different approach. They are supposed to help understand, or explain, something.
I couldnt get the "egalitarianism and scarcity" part. Is that a book or an article or something like that?
Peter Frase's "Four Possible Futures" as I mention in the video; and my own "The future of socialism: What kind of illness is capitalism?"
@@ccutrone Many thanks. Reading the essay now.
Love ya Chris but this wasn't your best. It started out good, but everytime you started to explain what value is you either got interupted or trailed off into some other thought. Left my pleb' ass wanting more and never getting it!
What does he mean by a "dialectical concept"?
I think he means a concept who’s effective definition is changing, for which each particular definition can describe a moment of the concept and not the whole of it. A concept which only makes sense in a kind of process, with varied meanings across that process.
If it wasn’t for capitalism I’d be poor.
@@ludviglidstrom6924 my point is capitalism gives you the freedom of choice to become wealthy and if you apply yourself and sacrifice you will become wealthy. Nobody said it was easy. Capitalism doesn’t generate poverty my friend, laziness and bad choices do. Many suffer from poverty as children because of the choices their parents made, but there comes a point where you as an individual can make it out. If one is sick of their job and complaining about not being able to afford rent or food then quit complaining and better yourself. Nobody holds you down but yourself.
Do you ever consider that some people might value a particular freedom from the necessity of making sacrifices you're writing about? What if making these sacrifices contradicts some of the other values they hold to be dear in life? I guess it's easier to call them stupid and lazy than try to understand and grapple with a different set of values than those that you have to adopt to achieve success under these circumstances (which nobody can choose).
Don't get me wrong, I think that there is value in striving to overcome one's limitations and better oneself. It's just that, I think, there might be many different ways these ideas make sense to different people. If you can honestly make a claim that poverty is solely a result of a personal failing, then, presumably, you already are a winner in this game. I tend to subscribe to a view (backed by some research into an economic reality of the system) that chances of such success are distributed unequally, or sometimes very unequally.
What follows from this is, among other things, the belief that people should be free not to adopt the kind of mindset you present or, at least not such an absolute form of it, that is: hard work often pays (but not always) but it might not be the only thing people are after in life.
There’s a contradiction here - if capitalism is a social system that allows for prosperity, then this means it is the organization of society that is generating the conditions that allow for individual advancement; but if wealth is accumulated purely through the decisions of individuals, then the organization of the social accumulation of wealth is irrelevant.
If there is no society, and only individuals, then any political conception of society - capitalism, socialism, feudalism, whatever - is actually irrelevant. If it is through my decisions alone, that I could force my way into personal betterment, then it is ultimately irrelevant if I will become a feudal noble, an entrepreneurial capitalist, or a state bureaucrat, as what matters is actually the efficacy of my personal judgement given the situation, the circumstances being ultimately contingent.
In advanced bourgeois society, all social relations are relations of exchange between freely associating proprietors - the mediation of the commodity-form underpinning all social relations, means that the contents of society are expressed through formal relations of independent individuals. This can make it appear as if there is no society, and that what accounts for society is just the aggregation of individual wills - but what of the general will, the social contract, greater than the sum of its parts, and the way we negotiate, writ large, civil government with the consent of the governed? Addressing the continued existence of the state, violating the rights of individuals in order to preserve civil society, must be understood through the contradictions embedded within social relations, which includes registering the apparent divide between individual and society.
Only Marxism attempted to continue clarify this problem first illustrated by Rousseau - the problem of dialectics.
I think the real dispute here has to do with neoliberalism. In my opinion, the attempt to privatize government to decrease expenditure and subordinate the civil bureaucracy to democratic authority has only lead to greater administrative bloat, as state funds are now tied to competing special interests between non-government organizations. Under neoliberalism, government has become bigger, more expensive, and utterly incompetent, making the administration of state a total political mess, “political” in both pejorative senses of rarified ideological divisions and competing private interests. On some level, I’m sympathetic to the way that conservative neoliberalism had a disdain for the inherently bullshit character of politics, but the anti-politics of the personal-is-political has actually reduced civil society to a series of potemkin villages. Just look at the USA's "nation-building" in Afghanistan; a money-hole for slipshod NGOs that are barely functional.
@@irishuwould5185
You got to check a new book titled: Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream by Alissa Quart
Funny fact is that Marx in the Grundrisse pointed to the idea of Bootstrapping which helps you as an individual Labour but GUESS WHAT? If every other labor applied herself & sacrificed, wages will plummet so everyone will lose the value of their work according to Marx 😂
The point is simply that whatever you think Right for yourself HAS NOTHING TO DO with what is Right for everyone
Chris: Right?
Doug: Right, right?
Chris: Right.
It's nice for Chris Cutrone to mention the critiques I made last time, but it would be even nicer if he countered them by something more than just "but no". Here he claims that "it's right there in Hegel" that "A does not equal A", but one will notice that he, unlike me last time, does not cite any source for that claim except "right there". If he did, one might evaluate the claim based on the textual evidence, but as he doesn't, this is somewhat difficult, particularly since I'm trying not to talk without, preferably complete, expertise (which is also why I didn't reply to his first comment). Luckily however, there exists scholarship on the issue. In the article "Hegel and the Law of Identity" Reynold L. Siemens goes into it. The article is very readable and useful, though the author seems to be trapped in a pre-homotopy type theory analytical understanding of equality, and I won't summarize it here, but only present some important points important to the discussion: the author notes Hegel's ambivalence towards the law and that "In one place, Hegel says that the law of identity and its instances are self-evident truths." while also making several criticisms of it. The important point to me seems to be that "statements of identity identify different things", meaning that equality is an additional structure relating *a priori different* things (this *a priori* part seems to confuse the author in a later part of the article), that are only *a priori* identical in this one special instance, and thus
"In the form of the proposition in which identity is expressed … there lies more than simple abstract identity; in it, there lies this pure movement of reflection in which the other appears only as an illusion, as an immediate vanishing. 'A is', is a beginning that hints at something different to which an advance is to be made. But this different something does not materialize: A is A. The difference is only a vanishing; the movement returns to itself." [Hegel]
In other words, 'A is' is only a useful beginning of a statement because it allows for the identification of two *a priori* different things, say, gravity and spacetime, that nevertheless turn out to be equal, whereas 'A is A' is exactly that not happening. This makes perfect sense when understood in this way and does not at all require introducing an inconsistency between Hegel's acceptance of the law of identity in some statements and his treatment here. There are also other critiques Hegel makes, that I won't repeat, but they are very much about issues of logic, in a strict sense, and what it is not is some kind of generic "you can't step into the same river twice"-statement, which was a much more adept phrasing of the same point anyway and would not have required Hegel, and treating it as such does a disservice to Hegel, yet I feel like this is exactly what Cutrone is doing.
From the standpoint of the Hegel scholar, all Marxists eventually vulgarize Hegel. Lenin does it and Engels does it. Even Marx himself does it and even someone like Adorno does it. One could say vulgarizing Hegel is almost necessary - it's almost as if social reality itself has vulgarized Hegel. I think a Marxist Hegel scholar will need to learn to wear two hats and speak two languages and keep things at a distance.
@@Hist_da_Musica I could literally quote Cutrone from that very same interview against that (might have been the parrot room), but I'm sympathetic. However, if someone tells me that "A is not equal to A" I'd give them a strange look and at the very least would want them to elaborate on that, and if their reply is basically something about the changing nature of things I'd just say "oh, you just mean things are always changing" or if they were talking about how the same thing can manifest in different ways or how things can be equivalent in some respects but not in others I'd say that, but in any case I'd go "but that's not really what that means" and also "why are you phrasing that so weirdly?". And why indeed? Why not use such much more understandable, simple even, explanations? It seems to me that what Cutrone is doing is actually making a point about logic, namely an attack: "see how this doesn't work?". But why, when there are perfectly logical interpretations of Hegel that are not just in line with but extend other logical frameworks, much more in the spirit of Hegel (who saw himself in a long line with all kinds of logical frameworks)? Perhaps this is just how Cutrone reads Hegel but I'm feeling like what he is defending is a specific mode of thinking he got from Hegel. And who am I to argue with the last Marxist? Though I do think people are only ever catching one meaning of that phrase and not the (doubtlessly conscious) allusion to Nietzsche's last man, something to be superseded, not celebrated. And I'll say that I personally have a much simpler time wrapping my head around Hegel from my perspective (and I'm not a Hegel scholar, by the way, though I'm honored) than from this one which is deliberately antagonistic towards things that make up some fairly important foundations of modern logic and mathematics. I find it both more in line with what Hegel wrote and what I find realistic (which I treat as different questions) and even easier to explain.
@@alexanderprahauser1261 one would have to pick up Hegel's Logic and try to work through the difference between synthetic judgments and speculative propositions!
Kudos to you Douglas for all the efforts you put to enlighten Marxists through such sessions 🙏
So who is going to own my house?
Cutrone really showing his ass trying to intelligently discuss price and value. lol
I wouldn't say so. The transformation problem has both plagued Marxists and has been hotly debated for decades. I disagree with him, but respect his opinion and it has driven me to reread sectuibs if Capital and even to crack volume 3.
Fair enough, but it didn't sound to me like he even understood the concept of value and price being equal in the totality. Maybe I don't either! But I think of both price and value as ratios, so of course the sum of each is equal (1==1).
Empirically establishing value is not difficult. You can use input-output tables to measure prices against any commodity c on your x axis, and the only commodity that provides a linear relationship is when c=labor. Likewise, you can take all random prices and place them in a bell curve, and the standard deviation will be any price less than what it costs to pay their workers wages AND to cover all the wages of all their suppliers. Prices that deviate from labor values lead to bankruptcy. This dictatorship of the proletariat needs a scientific analysis of social forces, and the labor theory of value is robust, provided we discard the myth of equalization of profit rates.
couldn't believe Cutrone said Marx has limited applicability to current conditions. "Financialization' is not a new phenomenon. In fact, it is what drove the developement of capitalism in the first place. Has he not comprehended Marx or Braudel? heard of the south sea bubble? the tulip mania?
but financialization means finance displacing large amounts of industrial production, essentially permanently, and becoming its own "industry" even while production whithers. It doesn't mean financial capitalism as such.
@@emilianosintarias7337 this is the crisis of overproduction. The result of capitalism reaching its physical limits to which financialization is a byproduct. Of course, this is just a change in sectoral investment. Can't fetishize the production of physical widgets over svcs. Wage labor is at it's highest share of world population ever
seems like you are ignoring that marx saw industrial capitalism as progressive because finance mainly was tied to making physical stuff, and this is how it kept growth and improving people's lives going. Everywhere in the world where industrial production is growing and people are living longer and eating better is a place where the finance is either curtailed back to its old role or the state acts in its place. Everywhere that is in deindustrialization and finance is getting a much expanded role people face hard times @@straderi
I couldn't follow much of this, but my primitive question is, if capitalism is pregnant with socialism, then why not feed the mother to get the baby?
Vote right wing, that will hasten the path to socialism?
Huh? I've missed a few things...
Why do you say voting right-wing will hasten the rise of socialism?
My question: if socialism is an inevitable evolution of capitalism-a baby in the womb, might obstructing capitalism before it has created the necessary wealth for transformation, by voting for a party on the left, just slow the inevitable evolution of socialism, and voting for the right hasten it?
2 of many issues with that idea, is most places don't have a left to vote for, and it is very hard to know what is left and right anymore, after the disappearance of the organized left in the 70s-90s and the rise of the current techno state. I would go much further myself, and say even if there was still a left, it isn't clear if that wasn't as right wing in substance than the right wing. For example was feminism and anti-colonialism which were part of the new left until its final death at the end of the 20th century not reactionary, given what we know (ought to know if we look at the stats) today? Of course, you do touch something important, which is that the right wing has no solutions, not only to capitalism, but to the social issues they talk about or the issues most care about. But just exposing that in real time, which has been done before, does not mean that anything will be hastened by it.@@leanmchungry4735