Bernie Roddy writes:

"A History of Thought on the Death Penalty"

Bernie Roddy

Debates about the death penalty can address the fairness of its administration or the moral consequences of the likelihood that innocent people are executed, but the central issue from a theoretical point of view seems to be the sense in which death is an appropriate punishment for the guilty.

We know that what constitutes an appropriate response to the most serious crimes has changed dramatically over time, and that it has not always seemed wrong to make even the family of the guilty suffer the punishment he endures. But while a long torturous death at one time seemed to be the only manner in which certain debts could be paid, a simple termination of life as in active euthanasia now strike many as the minimum penalty for some offences.

We can also reasonably say that the penalty may not be one that is imposed by the victims or the family of the victims, but is imposed by society at large, there being a threat to the social order as much as a loss suffered by the individual. Thus, it would not necessarily be correct to consider the execution a form of restitution. Because the debt is not paid to those who suffered the loss, or not to them alone, the power to grant mercy for the accused, it may be argued, is justly denied the family of the victim.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"The Creature Walks Among Us"

John Chuckman

"I beheld the wretch — the miserable monster whom I had created." — Mary Shelley

Doctor Frankenstein's frightful creature was assembled from the limbs of corpses collected in the dead of night.

The Pentagon, with a steady supply of perfectly good severed limbs and heads from all its bombing runs, has decided the good Doctor's approach to the ideal soldier has certain public-relations liabilities. Jerky, stitched-together bodies in uniform with putrid blue-green skin would not make good photo-ops. So the Pentagon has taken the high-tech approach, informing us recently that they are not many years away from putting the finishing touches to a robot soldier.

The U.S. and Europe: Quasi-Allies
Immanuel Wallerstein

George W. Bush, having failed to intimidate Europe in his first term of
office, has decided to try another tactic. First, Condoleeza Rice, then
Donald Rumsfeld, then Bush himself traveled to Europe on a charm offensive.
They all said essentially the same three things. Let's forget our quarrels
over Iraq; the U.S. considers Europe its allies; and let's discuss what the
U.S. wants now and what we can do together. But they all added a fourth
thing: The U.S. will still do what it wants, if the Europeans won't go
along. In a press conference in Europe, Bush said about the debate with
Europeans concerning Iran: "The notion that the United States is getting
ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. Having said that, all options
are on the table."

stevphen writes:

"Moving Against-and-Beyond or Interstitial Revolution

This paper was presented at the World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, 2005.

John Holloway

1. Why are we here in Porto Alegre? To say NO. NO to war, NO to the destruction of the environment, NO to injustice and exploitation, NO to neo-liberalism, NO to capitalism. We come from a whole world of rebellions, of insubordinations, of refusals, of people saying NO to capitalism: ³NO, we shall not live our lives according to the dictates of capitalism, we shall do what we consider necessary or desirable and not what capital tells us to do.² These refusals can be seen as fissures, as cracks in the system of capitalist domination. At times they are so small that even those involved do not perceive them as refusals, but often they are collective projects searching for an alternative way forward and sometimes they are as big as the lacandon jungle or the argentinazo of three years ago or the revolt in Bolivia just over a year ago.

Stevphen Shukaitis writes:

"Walking We Ask Questions”

An Interview with John Holloway

From the Fall issue of "Perspectives on Anarchist Theory"

John Holloway and Marina Sitrin exchanged questions, answers, and more questions during the month of August 2004. John Holloway is the author of Change the World Without Taking Power (Pluto Press, 2002) and co-author of Zapatista! Rethinking Revolution in Mexico (Pluto Press, 1998). Marina Sitrin is the editor of Horizontalidad: Voces de Poder Popular en Argentina (Chilavert, 2005).

Marina Sitrin: Could you explain what events or activities in your life brought you to the point where you are now doing considerable theoretical, as well as practical work on the question of power and, specifically, to challenge the concept of taking power?

John Holloway: I think the most obvious starting point is a theoretical one. Trying to think about the state from the perspective of Marxist theory, I got into the so-called ‘state derivation debate’, a mainly German theoretical debate that took place in the early 1970’s. The main emphasis in the debate was on trying to understand the state as a specifically capitalist form of social relations. Although the actual participants in the debate developed this notion in different directions politically, to me it always seemed clear that the implication of the debate was that we could not think of revolution as taking place through the state, or in other words, that we had to try and develop an anti-state Marxism. Of course, this idea was very much bound up with the experience of 1968, of the struggles in the 1970’s and of the anti-Poll Tax movement in Britain in the later 1980’s.

"Money and Crisis" (Part Five)

Sergio Bologna

[Part Five of five parts. Continued from here.]

Does this highlighting of the Crédit's non-productive and speculative characteristics, contrasting with the revolutionary and innovative view given in the first group of articles in 1858, perhaps show the influence of Proudhon's Manual? In the pages that he dedicates to the Péreire bank, Proudhon, who was more concerned with problems of value than with the political function of the institution, had shown how the Crédit, with a capital of sixty million francs, had issued bonds to the tune of six hundred million francs, guaranteed by an equal sum employed in subscriptions of public bills (treasury bonds, etc) or of company shares. But since shares are subjected to depreciation, they would not provide effective guarantees. Unlike the circulating banks which discount commercial effects of a given value and are guarantees of a transaction - Proudhon concluded - the Crédit Mobilier is not in a position to supply guarantees of value, and thus it "cheats" its clients. Proudhon did not draw the conclusions which Marx had indicated - that the Crédit, by virtue precisely of that structure, was an institution which could prosper only in times of boom, and which would collapse in times of monetary panic. He had not drawn them because he lacked an overall perception of the cycle. His vision of the speculative nature of the Crédit Mobilier was therefore static and moralistic, and to the extent that it influenced Marx, it was in the sense of making possible a further deepening of his analysis.

"Money and Crisis" (Part Four)

Sergio Bologna

[Part Four of five parts. Continued from here.]

Marx's success in eliciting the class content from an election in which the principal issues being discussed were foreign policy and constitutional guarantees, eases the transition to two subsequent articles which were to appear as appendices to Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England.

"Money and Crisis" (Part Three)

Sergio Bologna

[Part Three of five parts. Continued from here.]

Between the end of October and the start of December 1856, Marx wrote four articles in the New Yrok Daily Tribune devoted to the world crisis. In the first, on 27 October, we find ourselves in the midst of a financial panic; once again the crisis was due to a "disproportion between the disposable capital and the vastness of the industrial, commercial and speculative enterprises"; it was not due to a scarcity of the circulating medium, to a crisis of money as a means of payment, but to a crisis in the relation between money and capital, between rates of accumulation and the system of exchange. The raising of interest rates did nothing to stop the outflow of gold; the fact that the capital markets of the various countries were closely connected stood in the way of measures aimed at isolating the crisis; the crisis was general. "The present crisis in Europe is complicated by the fact that a drain of bullion - the common harbinger of commercial disasters - is interwoven with a depreciation of gold." Marx analyses the international monetary system with extreme precision, examining the standards of value present in the various countries (for example, those in which gold was the standard, those where silver was the standard, and those where bimetallism existed) and the ways in which the workings of these standards, far from making crises less communicable, actually multiplied their effects. Between 1848 and 1855, £105 million in gold flowed onto the market, as a result of the development of goldfields in California, Australia, and Russia. Having taken into account that a large part of this was used for international payments, for the replenishment of bank reserves, and for articles of luxury, it was reckoned that this left £53 million, of which only part was used to replace silver in America and in France. In reality the outflows of silver from France and England were much higher, and this was explained by the strong preference of Italian and Levantine traders for silver, as well as by an accumulation of silver reserves by the Arabs. But even this is only a partial explanation. The basic reason was to be sought in trade relations with China and India. "Since the beginning of the seventeenth century, Asia, and especially China and India, have never ceased to exercise an important influence on the bullion markets of Europe and America," as Marx notes in his next article, on 1 November. Prior to the discoveries of gold in California, the flow of metal coming from America was balanced by payments to Asia, but the crisis in the opium trade with India, due to the Chinese rebellion, had produced an impressive drive towards hoarding, which, following on the discovery of gold in California, was principally in silver. At that point India too wanted to be paid in silver, which provoked an outflow of silver from Europe, and at the same time its price rose in relation to gold. This was the framework within which the European commercial crisis developed. It was precisely for this reason that "this Chinese revolution is destined to exercise a far greater influence upon Europe than all the Russian wars, Italian manifestos and secret societies of that Continent."

"Money and Crisis" (Part Two)

Sergio Bologna

[Part Two of five parts. Continued from here.]

What is seen to be failing is the banking system as a prop for the regime's political stability: "The approaching crash in Bonapartist finance continues to announce itself in a variety of ways." The fever of speculation has by now spread even to the proletariat, encouraged by the ideology of the Saint-Simonians. Stock-exchange speculation has become the basis of industrial development — or rather, industrial activity becomes a pretext for speculation. The operations of the Crédit are now subjected to a more stringent analysis; references in the earlier articles left obscure, such as the mutual relations between the Bonapartist state, the Paris Bourse and the Crédit Mobilier are now explained in detail. The directors of the Crédit maintain that they have found the formula to extend to the maximum the bank's investments and reduce its risks to a minimum. Marx seeks to verify this assertion while divesting it of the "flowery language of Saint-Simonianism". The method is simply to underwrite shares in large quantities, speculate on them, pocket the appreciation, and then sell them as quickly as possible. How is this possible? Since the Crédit is backed by government privileges and hence has an assurance of sufficient capital and credit, each new industrial initiative launched finds immediately — ie. at its first issue — a premium in the Stock Exchange; then it distributes to its shareholders, at a nominal value, a number of shares proportionate to those that they owned in the company. The profit which is thus guaranteed to the shareholders is reflected in the first instance on the shares of the Crédit, while their high rating guarantees a greater value to the next batch to be issued. In this way the Crédit obtains command over a large amount of loanable capital. Apart from the bonus which it receives from being able to sell shares at above their face value, the effects on capital are the exact opposite of the characteristic function of commercial banks. These latter temporarily free up fixed capital via their discounts, loans and emission of notes, whereas the Crédit fixes actually floating capital. "A mill-owner who would sink in buildings and machinery part of his capital out of proportion with the part reserved for the payment of wages and the purchase of raw material, would very soon find his mill stopped. The same holds good with a nation. Almost every commercial crisis in modern times has been connected with a derangement in the due proportion between floating and fixed capital. What, then, must be the result of the working of an institution like the Crédit Mobilier, the direct purpose of which is to fix as much as possible of the loanable capital of the country in railways, canals, mines, docks, steamships, forges, and other industrial undertakings, without any regard to the productive capacities of the country?"

"Money and Crisis:

Marx as Correspondent of the New York Daily Tribune, 1856–57"

Sergio Bologna

[Editorial Note: This article was written in 1973. It was a key article in developing the theoretical base of the newly emerging politics of working-class autonomy. This translation, presented here in five parts, was made by Ed Emery and John Merrington for an anticipated volume to be published by Red Notes: Selected Writings of Sergio Bologna. For further details, write to Red Notes, BP15, 2a St Paul's Road, London N1 UK]

At the beginning of 1855, in a series of articles in the Neuer Oder Zeitung (11, 12, 20 and 25 January and in successive articles in the following months) Marx confronted the problem of cyclical crises and questions related to the British banking reforms of 1844. Already there were signs of the coming world recession of 1856–58 and it was urgent to set about analysing its causes.

Marx's unpublished notes on Geldwesen, Kreditwesen, Krisen ("Essence of Money, Credit and Crisis") also date from the same period — November 1854 to January 1855. The relation between the money form and general crisis must thus have been clear to him before the direct experience of the crisis of 1857. Even so, it seems historically legitimate to locate in this experience a decisive turning point in Marx, relating the early stages of his project for Capital to the need for building the base for an international revolutionary working-class party. It seems likely that this convergence of his theoretical and practical work would not have been so solidly achieved had it not been for the close scrutiny and stage-by-stage observation that he devoted to the monetary crisis of 1857. I have taken this as my starting point for a reading of the articles which Marx was writing about the crisis, articles which appeared in the New York Daily Tribune between June 1856 and December 1858.