MHI Invites Anarchists to Debate

MHI issued the following invitation to anarchists to debate on April 17 by distributing it at the Anarchist Book Fair in New York City and sending it to the IWW.  To date, we have received no response; we hope someone will agree.  (We note that, historically, the IWW had many “socialist” as well as “anarchist” members.)

INVITATION

Marxist-Humanist Initiative hereby invites the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and any other anarchist or anarchist group, to a debate on Proudhon’s and modern Proudhonist alternatives to capitalism. We are ready and willing to engage in such a debate at any reasonable time and place. Theoretical development of a viable alternative to capitalism is a crucial need, in order to revitalize and help orient struggles for a new society, and a debate on this topic can help further the process of theoretical development. Read More

Marx, Proudhon, and Alternatives to Capital

By Seth Weiss.

Marx’s critical dialogue with the work of the French anarchist thinker Pierre Joseph Proudhon spanned several decades-from his youth haunting the cafes of Paris, where he had occasion to meet Proudhon and discuss German philosophy, through the writing of the Grundrisse, Capital, and theCritique of the Gotha Program. While largely ignored in the present, Marx’s critique of Proudhon remains of real import for all of us struggling to break the hold of capital over our lives and our world.
Three aspects of Marx’s critique will be explored here: (I) the limits of reforms in the sphere of circulation; (II) economic laws and the possibilities which politics and consciousness offer for their transcendence; and (III) Marx’s still largely uncharted concept of “directly social labor.”

‘Fair Trade’

In his 1846 Philosophy of Poverty, Proudhon locates a contradiction between use-value and exchange-value-a contradiction which he holds as the basis of poverty, inequality, and economic crises. With what he terms “constituted value” or “synthetic value,” Proudhon, drawing on the value theory of classical political economy, endeavors a resolution of the contradiction. “Synthetic value,” Proudhon maintains, is the ground for abolishing unequal exchange. (1) What Proudhon is proposing, in practical terms is that one commodity which requires, for instance, four hours to produce will exchange with any other commodity that requires four hours to produce. For Proudhon this would be a situation of equality: equal contributions to society receiving equal rewards from society. Read More