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en:riff-raff-10-introduction [2022/06/20 19:33]
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en:riff-raff-10-introduction [2022/06/20 20:02] (current)
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| ====== Introduction ====== | ====== Introduction ====== |
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| This tenth and final issue of the Swedish journal //riff-raff// is being published eleven years after the last one.((The present translation is from //riff-raff// no. 10, Spring 2022, pp. 7–15.)) A fact that may provoke laughter among all the cynics, greedy for cold comfort, who populate the tiny, parliamentary-orientated extra-parliamentary Swedish left. A fact that we neither can nor want to do anything about. We—the editors of //riff-raff// since 2002—have not had reading and writing as our main occupation. | This tenth and final issue of the Swedish journal //riff-raff// is being published eleven years after the last one.((The present translation is from //riff-raff// no. 10, Spring 2022, pp. 7–15.)) A fact that may provoke laughter among all the cynics, greedy for cold comfort, who populate the tiny, parliamentary-orientated extra-parliamentary Swedish left. A fact that we neither can nor want to do anything about. We—the editors of //riff-raff// since its inception—have not had reading and writing as our main occupation. |
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| A lot of major and minor things have occurred since we published the last issue in 2011, more than we can analyse and comment on here and now. For example, in 2011 the war in Syria started after what is known as the Arab Spring. At that time Donald Trump, the notorious former president of the US and inverted teddy bear of liberals and leftists around the world—and who has been replaced by sleepy Joe Biden—had not even started to warm up. Since 2015 and the wave of migration in the wake of, not least, the war in Syria, we have seen the ugly face of nationalism find its way into the centre of social debates, for example in the form of protectionism and isolationism, trade wars, and Brexit. Nationalism has been piling up its victims—including on the battlefields of ideology—and we are currently witnessing the bartering of political positions, one after the other, in order to adapt to its refuse. We have now endured two years of a global pandemic with all its attendant misery in the form of excess mortality, social distancing, and unemployment, etc. While finishing the current issue of the journal another bloody war has begun after Russia and Putin attacked their neighbour Ukraine. Clearly, this attack must be condemned! And, as always, it is of utmost importance to remain sober and reflective, to be able to hold fast to the perspective of proletarian internationalism against all factions of the ruling class and its states. Neither the Ukrainian nation’s ‘right to self-determination’ nor the ‘legitimate interests’ of Russian imperialism are principles worth dying for. It is a cul-de-sac to desperately try to provide answers to all the problems of the world within a bourgeois horizon and logic. As communists, we refuse to pick sides between bad alternatives, even though one side may seem slightly less bad than the other. | A lot of major and minor things have occurred since we published the last issue in 2011, more than we can analyse and comment on here and now. For example, in 2011 the war in Syria started after what is known as the Arab Spring. At that time Donald Trump, the notorious former president of the US and inverted teddy bear of liberals and leftists around the world—and who has been replaced by sleepy Joe Biden—had not even started to warm up. Since 2015 and the wave of migration in the wake of, not least, the war in Syria, we have seen the ugly face of nationalism find its way into the centre of social debates, for example in the form of protectionism and isolationism, trade wars, and Brexit. Nationalism has been piling up its victims—including on the battlefields of ideology—and we are currently witnessing the bartering of political positions, one after the other, in order to adapt to its refuse. We have now endured two years of a global pandemic with all its attendant misery in the form of excess mortality, social distancing, and unemployment, etc. While finishing the current issue of the journal another bloody war has begun after Russia and Putin attacked their neighbour Ukraine. Clearly, this attack must be condemned! And, as always, it is of utmost importance to remain sober and reflective, to be able to hold fast to the perspective of proletarian internationalism against all factions of the ruling class and its states. Neither the Ukrainian nation’s ‘right to self-determination’ nor the ‘legitimate interests’ of Russian imperialism are principles worth dying for. It is a cul-de-sac to desperately try to provide answers to all the problems of the world within a bourgeois horizon and logic. As communists, we refuse to pick sides between bad alternatives, even though one side may seem slightly less bad than the other. |
| In his text, Henriksson reflects on the critique made by Åström in 2013 against both the communisation perspective and value-form theory, as they are represented by TC and Chris Arthur, respectively. Considering the theme of the present issue and the critique by Åström, Henriksson presents a sketch for a preliminary theoretical perspective where he aims to show what is potentially productive in some form of communisation perspective and some variant of value-form theory. | In his text, Henriksson reflects on the critique made by Åström in 2013 against both the communisation perspective and value-form theory, as they are represented by TC and Chris Arthur, respectively. Considering the theme of the present issue and the critique by Åström, Henriksson presents a sketch for a preliminary theoretical perspective where he aims to show what is potentially productive in some form of communisation perspective and some variant of value-form theory. |
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| According to Henriksson, Åström’s notion of value neglects and misses completely what is eminently critical in Marx’s theory and, instead, understands value as some kind of technical solution to the problem of and the need to distribute social total-labour time in capitalism through the market, or in communism through the plan. In this way, Åström’s understanding tends to become purely nominalist or formally logical, with ‘value’ as nothing but a name for a nature-imposed and, thus, transhistorical phenomenon, namely human labour in general. Value, Henriksson claims, should rather be understood as a purely social ‘object’, which expresses and summarizes historically specific relations of production, appearing in the form of exchange value and money, or capital, depending on our level of abstraction. Value, thus, has to do with a capitalist commodity economy, and value producing abstract labour is intimately and internally related to this economy. The establishment of communist relations abolishes both the value character of the products of labour and the character of human labour as abstract labour. Communist relations, Henriksson claims, are characterised by the abolition of ‘labour’ in its restricted form, as it becomes part of human practice as a totality. Communism is, thus, (another form of) praxis, not some rational allocation of the total labour-time of society in order to be able to expand ‘leisure time’. Given this, he argues that the opposition between the ‘realm of freedom’ and the ‘realm of necessity’ is obsolete in communist relations. | According to Henriksson, Åström’s notion of value neglects and misses completely what is eminently critical in Marx’s theory and, instead, understands value as some kind of technical solution to the problem of and the need to distribute total social labour time in capitalism through the market, or in communism through the plan. In this way, Åström’s understanding tends to become purely nominalist or formally logical, with ‘value’ as nothing but a name for a nature-imposed and, thus, transhistorical phenomenon, namely human labour in general. Value, Henriksson claims, should rather be understood as a purely social ‘object’, which expresses and summarizes historically specific relations of production, appearing in the form of exchange value and money, or capital, depending on our level of abstraction. Value, thus, has to do with a capitalist commodity economy, and value producing abstract labour is intimately and internally related to this economy. The establishment of communist relations abolishes both the value character of the products of labour and the character of human labour as abstract labour. Communist relations, Henriksson claims, are characterised by the abolition of ‘labour’ in its restricted form, as it becomes part of human practice as a totality. Communism is, thus, (another form of) praxis, not some rational allocation of the total labour-time of society in order to be able to expand ‘leisure time’. Given this, he argues that the opposition between the ‘realm of freedom’ and the ‘realm of necessity’ is obsolete in communist relations. |
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| In short, Henriksson argues that Åström misses the opportunity to articulate a meaningful critique of both the communisation perspective and the value-form paradigm. Instead Åström advocates for a positive social theory which, when taken ad absurdum, provides a vision of a planned state where ‘society’ subsumes individuals instead of, as in capitalism, the market doing so. This vulgar image is hard to differentiate from the command economies of the 20th Century. | In short, Henriksson argues that Åström misses the opportunity to articulate a meaningful critique of both the communisation perspective and the value-form paradigm. Instead Åström advocates for a positive social theory which, when taken ad absurdum, provides a vision of a planned state where ‘society’ subsumes individuals instead of, as in capitalism, the market doing so. This vulgar image is hard to differentiate from the command economies of the 20th Century. |
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| March 2022 | March 2022 |
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| Gothenburg, Sweden | Gothenburg, Sweden |