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[Nueva entrada] Afghanistan – Past, Present and Future, a Marxist Analysis (Afganistán: pasado, presente y futuro, un análisis marxista)

A Critique of Crisis Theory

Afganistán – Pasado, presente y futuro, un análisis marxista | Una crítica de la teoría de la crisis (wordpress.com)

Afganistán – Pasado, presente y futuro, un análisis marxista

El 30 de agosto, las últimas tropas estadounidenses y otras tropas de la OTAN después de una guerra de disparos de 20 años contra el pueblo afgano se retiraron de Afganistán en derrota. El 15 de agosto, incluso antes de que las últimas tropas de Estados Unidos y la OTAN se hubieran ido, los talibanes entraron en Kabul cuando el "presidente" de Afganistán, el títere estadounidense Ashraf Ghani, huyó del país.

No fue solo Ghani quien huyó. Lo que era en el papel el aparato extremadamente formidable del estado afgano, incluido un ejército permanente fuertemente armado de 300.000 soldados y una fuerza policial masiva se derritió durante 11 días en el aire. Cuando los combatientes talibanes entraron en Kabul, no había policía en las calles. La única seguridad eran los talibanes armados. A medida que se desarrollaban estos asombrosos acontecimientos, el ejército estadounidense tomó y mantuvo el control del aeropuerto de Kabul mientras los partidarios aterrorizados de la ocupación estadounidense, y otros afganos que no tienen ningún deseo de vivir bajo el gobierno de los talibanes huyeron al aeropuerto. En un incidente, los afganos que huían de los talibanes se aferraron desesperadamente a un avión estadounidense. Mostrando la actitud real del imperialismo estadounidense hacia aquellos que cumplen sus órdenes, el avión despegaba de todos modos con los afganos cayendo a la muerte.

Muchos más afganos celebraron tanto el final de decenios de guerra desastrosa como el hecho de que otro imperio —el más poderoso de todos— había sido derrotado por el pueblo del Afganistán. Al menos momentáneamente, Afganistán está más unido que en cualquier otro momento de su historia. El presidente Biden afirmó unas semanas antes, señalando al ejército afgano de 300.000 hombres en comparación con los 75.000 talibanes, que la retirada de Estados Unidos no terminaría como lo había hecho la guerra de Estados Unidos contra Vietnam el 30 de abril de 1975.

De hecho, la velocidad del colapso del gobierno títere de Estados Unidos empequeñeció todo lo que había sucedido en Vietnam. En Vietnam, el gobierno títere se había mantenido durante unos dos años después de que las últimas tropas estadounidenses se retiraran. En Afganistán, el gobierno títere desapareció varias semanas antes de que las últimas tropas estadounidenses pudieran ser trasladadas, para asombro del gobierno de Estados Unidos, del mundo e incluso de los propios talibanes.

El 26 de agosto, ISIS-K (el ala afgana del Estado Islámico), un enemigo acérrimo de los talibanes, atacó el aeropuerto de Kabul con terroristas suicidas, matando a muchos afganos y soldados estadounidenses. Sin embargo, parece que muchos de los que murieron también fueron asesinados por balas de tropas estadounidenses y otras tropas de la OTAN. Tal vez ISIS estaba frustrado de que la guerra estuviera llegando a su fin antes del "fin de los días" que conduce al gobierno directo final de Dios y sus santos, una creencia que juega un papel importante tanto en la religión judía como en sus ramificaciones, las religiones cristiana y musulmana. El presidente Biden parece haber olvidado las enseñanzas de su propia religión cristiana (al menos según el Evangelio de Mateo). (1) En su famoso "Sermón del Monte", Jesús predica el perdón, amando a los enemigos y poniendo la otra mejilla. En cambio, el presidente Biden prometió venganza contra ISIS-K.

"A aquellos que llevaron a cabo este ataque, así como a cualquiera que desee daño a Estados Unidos", declaró el presidente de los Estados Unidos, "sepan esto: No perdonaremos. No lo olvidaremos. Te perseguiremos y te haremos pagar". El presidente Biden fue tan bueno como su palabra. Envió drones guiados por la tecnología informática más moderna que el Pentágono tiene a su mando para matar a presuntos líderes de ISIS. Esta fue esencialmente una ejecución policial que es demasiado familiar en las calles de los Estados Unidos, particularmente para los afroamericanos, donde no hay presunción de inocencia, ni juicio por parte de sus pares ni de nadie más. Entre las víctimas de la venganza de alta tecnología de Biden había diez civiles, incluidos siete niños.

La pregunta de la mujer

Para confundir a los progresistas, los partidarios de la guerra contra Afganistán han puesto gran énfasis en las políticas de los talibanes hacia las mujeres. Un ejemplo típico de esta propaganda a favor de la guerra disfrazada de defensa de los derechos de las mujeres se proporciona en un artículo de AP de Kathy Gannon, fechado el 4 de septiembre, desde Kabul. Gannon informa sobre una manifestación de mujeres afganas contra los talibanes. Gannon informa: "La marcha de las mujeres, la segunda en otros tantos días en Kabul, comenzó pacíficamente. Los manifestantes colocaron una ofrenda floral frente al Ministerio de Defensa de Afganistán para honrar a los soldados afganos que murieron luchando contra los talibanes antes de marchar hacia el palacio presidencial.

Observe que los manifestantes honraron a los soldados que lucharon en un ejército títere creado por Estados Unidos que se desintegró incluso antes de que los últimos soldados estadounidenses y otros soldados de la OTAN se retiraran porque había pocas personas dispuestas a luchar y morir por lo que ese ejército representaba, a saber, el control estadounidense sobre Afganistán.

"Los talibanes", continúa Gannon, "han prometido un gobierno inclusivo y uno más moderado, pero las mujeres son profundamente escépticas y temen un retroceso de los derechos ganados en las últimas dos décadas". Gannon y la AP tienen como objetivo convencer a sus lectores de que las últimas dos décadas, coincidiendo con la ocupación estadounidense y la guerra contra el pueblo afgano, fueron un período de grandes logros para las mujeres afganas. Ahora que Estados Unidos está fuera, Gannon quiere que sus lectores crean que las "ganancias" que las mujeres afganas supuestamente ganaron como resultado de la guerra de Estados Unidos están en peligro mortal.

"Flanqueada por otros manifestantes", escribe Gannon, "Sudaba Kabiri, una estudiante universitaria de 24 años, le dijo a su interlocutor talibán que el Profeta del Islam dio derechos a las mujeres y que querían los suyos. El funcionario talibán prometió que a las mujeres se les darían sus derechos, pero las mujeres, todas en sus primeros 20 años, eran escépticas.

En los Estados Unidos y otros países imperialistas, vivimos en una sociedad donde no la mayoría, sino muchos jóvenes, incluidas muchas mujeres, tienen la oportunidad de asistir a la universidad. Sin embargo, no debemos olvidar que la propuesta del senador Bernie Sander, apoyada por todos los progresistas, incluidos los marxistas, de que la educación universitaria gratuita sea un derecho para todos los estadounidenses, no muestra signos de ser aprobada en el corto plazo. Kabiri, al menos antes de que los talibanes volvieran al poder, disfrutaba de un privilegio que todavía se niega en la práctica a la mayoría de las mujeres estadounidenses, especialmente, pero no solo a las mujeres de color. Las perspectivas de Kabiri para continuar sus estudios universitarios, al menos si permanece en Afganistán, ahora son sombrías.

¿Cuántos hombres jóvenes, por no hablar de las mujeres jóvenes, en Afganistán tuvieron el privilegio de asistir a la universidad durante "los últimos 20 años", o nunca? Al menos el 75% vive en el campo. Para estas mujeres, y hombres, asistir a la universidad está simplemente más allá de la comprensión. Sin embargo, una pequeña capa burguesa en Afganistán, ubicada en gran parte en Kabul, una ciudad que es cualquier cosa menos típica de Afganistán en su conjunto, se benefició de la ocupación estadounidense. Había muchos dólares estadounidenses circulando en Afganistán como resultado de la ocupación de Estados Unidos y la OTAN, y para los residentes de Kabul que podían tener en sus manos suficientes de estos dólares, se abrieron las puertas para la educación superior y la cultura que viene con ella, junto con el acceso a todos los productos producidos por los trabajadores y campesinos del mundo que estos dólares podían comprar. Pero la gran mayoría de los afganos, las mujeres incluso más que los hombres, no tienen acceso a productos básicos o a la cultura moderna que vienen con dólares estadounidenses.

Para entender lo que está sucediendo en Afganistán, es necesario entender lo que es el país y lo que no es. Afganistán no es un Estado-nación capitalista algo atrasado. La gran mayoría de los residentes de Afganistán viven en lo que se llama una sociedad de clanes tribales y hablan muchos idiomas.

Hace diez mil años, todos los residentes humanos de la vasta masa terrestre euroasiática, así como África, Australia y las Américas vivían en tales sociedades. Pero gradualmente, a lo largo de miles de años, estas sociedades se desintegraron y en su lugar surgieron sociedades basadas en la propiedad privada, la familia nuclear y el estado, cuya forma final es la sociedad capitalista en la que vivimos hoy. En su "Orígenes de la familia, la propiedad privada y el Estado", Frederick Engels describe la evolución de la sociedad humana, desde una estructura de clan tribal donde no había propiedad privada y las mujeres tenían un alto estatus social hasta una etapa posterior de la sociedad de clanes tribales llamada patriarcado donde la propiedad privada comenzó a desarrollarse y el patriarcado reemplazó al matriarcado. Engels llamó a este desarrollo la derrota del sexo femenino. En última instancia, el mayor desarrollo de la propiedad privada condujo a la desintegración de la estructura tribal-clan y su reemplazo por la familia nuclear, la propiedad privada y el estado que existe para defender la propiedad privada.

Este proceso evolutivo, a veces marcado por revoluciones, que se ha desarrollado en los últimos 10.000 años ha llevado a nuestra "sociedad burguesa" con su división entre la clase capitalista, que monopoliza la propiedad de los medios de producción, y la clase obrera, que solo tiene su fuerza de trabajo para vender. Todo lo que queda en nuestra sociedad moderna de la vieja sociedad tribal-clan, aparte de la propiedad privada, concentrada en cada vez menos manos es la familia nuclear. E incluso eso se está desintegrando, dejando al "individuo soberano" a su suerte en la jungla social que es la sociedad capitalista.

Con el surgimiento de la sociedad capitalista viene otra institución, el estado-nación capitalista, que también puede llamarse el etnoestado capitalista moderno. Los estados precapitalistas eran reinos geográficamente pequeños, ciudades-estado o imperios multinacionales, con los pequeños reinos y ciudades-estado siendo conquistados por los imperios multinacionales más grandes. Pero el Estado capitalista moderno es etnoológicamente homogéneo. Dentro de nuestros estados-nación capitalistas modernos, la mayoría de los ciudadanos hablan el mismo idioma, comparten una religión más o menos común, tienen tabúes alimentarios y de dieta similares, y una cultura y un código de vestimenta comunes.

The modern capitalist nation-state is necessary for the development of the capitalist mode of production because it is the system of political organization that best facilitates the exchange of commodities. The capitalist nation-state guarantees private property in capital and land while allowing the capitalist-controlled government to wall off the national market through tariffs and other trade barriers from the world market, where this is judged appropriate by the capitalists. The nation-state is a tool in the hands of each national capitalist class in the never-ending struggle with the capitalists of other nation-states for control of the world market.

Within a class-state society, individuals are grouped geographically. In contrast, within tribal-clan society, individuals relate to one another through “blood ties,” whether real or mythological. Members of a tribe are, at least in theory, descendants of a common ancestor, at first defined on the maternal line but later, after the defeat of the female sex, by the paternal line. Tribes, in turn, form nations, which are confederations of tribes that also claim common ancestors.

In the Western world (and in this sense, the West includes Afghanistan thanks to the domination of the Muslim religion), the most well-known example of tribal patriarchy is found in the Hebrew-Christian Old Testament. According to the Hebrew Bible, God destroyed the rest of humanity in a fit of rage allowing only one man Noah and his family to survive. Presumably, Noah had a wife (or wives), but the society that produced this ancient myth – a version of which appears in the Hebrew Bible – was so patriarchal that the biblical authors left out this “unimportant detail.”

In the Biblical version of the myth, Noah had three sons – Japheth, Ham and Shem. All living humanity, according to the Bible, are descendants of one of these three men, with all other lines wiped out by God through the flood. Arabs and Jews are supposedly the descendants of Shem — the Semitic (2) peoples. The people of Africa are supposedly descendants of Ham, while the people of Europe are supposedly descendants of Japheth. The ancestors of peoples from other regions of the world are not considered because the Biblical authors had no knowledge of their existence.

One of Shem’s descendants, according to this mythological genealogy, was Abraham, called God’s friend. According to the Bible, Abraham and his wife Sarah were getting on in years but Sarah failed to provide Abraham with a male heir who alone in the patriarchal tribal society could continue his line. The scheming Sarah owned a slave woman named Hagar. Sarah gave Abraham permission to sleep with her slave so that she could bear him a son. Abraham’s son by Hagar was named Ishmael. But then when she was in her nineties, which is normally considered a bit beyond the child-bearing years, Sarah, conceived Issac, who was to become the ancestor of the Israelite tribal confederation out of which the Jews — the tribe of Judah — descended.

Once Issac was born, Sarah turned against Ishmael and demanded that Abraham banish him. Ishmael as well as his mother, Sarah’s slave woman Hagar, were banished at Sarah’s insistence to the wilderness. But God protected Ishmael and his mother Hager. (God unlike Sarah is after all of the male gender and was, therefore, more reasonable than Sarah.) Ishmael gave rise to his own line which became a “great nation,” which according to later Jewish lore is called the Arab nation. When some Arabs were converted to Judaism and then Christianity, they were proud to discover that like the Jews they were the direct tribal descendants – not mere spiritual descendants – of Abraham. (3)

Why did the tribal patriarchal society such as that described in the Hebrew Bible manage to hold on in Afghanistan while it largely — though not completely — vanished from the rest of the globe? Afghanistan is a landlocked and mountainous country. Its mountains are much higher than the Rockies, the Sierra Nevada, and the Cascades in the western U.S. or the Alps in Europe, or even the Andes of South America. Mountain ranges — particularly high mountain ranges — separate people from one another and prevent them from crystallizing into nations in the modern bourgeois sense.

Afghanistan’s valleys are fertile, but this fertile land has remained isolated from the world market by the high mountain ranges and the landlocked nature of the country. As a result, capitalism has been slow to take hold in Afghanistan. Capitalism develops in coastal regions or in river valleys that connect to the oceans that form the highways of the world market, the basis of the capitalist mode of production.

The Afghan Revolution of 1978

This doesn’t mean that capitalism is uninterested in Afghanistan. The country is rich in mineral wealth, and important oil pipelines run through it. Wikipedia estimates the value of the mineral wealth at a trillion dollars, while the website CaspianReport put out by the bourgeois Uzbekistani journalist Shirvan Neftchi, who now lives in Moscow, estimates the value of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth at $3 trillion. Afghanistan has, according to Wikipedia, barite, chromite, coal, copper, gold, iron ore, lead, natural gas, petroleum, precious and semi-precious stones, salt, sulfur, talc, and zinc.

Wikipedia also states: “According to a September 2011 US Geological Survey estimate, the Khanashin carbonatites in southern Helmand Province have an estimated 1 million metric tonnes of rare-earth elements at a potentially useful concentration in the rock, but of unknown economic value. Regina Dubey, Acting Director for the Department of Defense Task Force for Business and Stability Operations (TFBSO) stated that ‘this is just one more piece of evidence that Afghanistan’s mineral sector has a bright future.’”

Further, states Wikipedia: “Lithium is a vital metal that is mostly used in the manufacture of rechargeable batteries for mobile phones, laptops and electric cars. It is speculated that Afghanistan has plenty of lithium. The country’s lithium deposits occur in dry lake beds in the form of lithium chloride; they are located in the western Province of Herat and Nimroz and in the central east Province of Ghazni.”

Both Lithium and rare earths are therefore vital to the 21st-century world capitalist economy. Much of the world’s rare earths are located in China, and the U.S. has long been interested in finding alternative sources of supply. Far from being marginal to the world economy like it was in the past, Afghanistan is positioned to play a vital role later in the 21st century.

After the Russian Revolution, Soviet governments from Lenin to Chernenko were concerned to make sure that Afghanistan was not transformed into a military base against the Soviet Union. Successive Soviet governments encouraged democratic changes in Afghanistan, but the leaders of the Soviet Union never considered this largely tribal country to be ripe for a socialist transformation.

The 1978 Saur (April) revolution was led by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, founded in 1965. This party has been called by the imperialists as well as many Western socialists and progressives a “communist party.” However, this is not true. To understand why the People’s Democratic Party was not a communist party we have to review some basic Marxist principles.

Genuine communist parties are parties of the proletariat — the class that owns no private property except its labor power, which it is forced to sell to the class that monopolizes the ownership of the means of production — the capitalists. A communist party must therefore be proletarian not only in theory and program but also in composition. Therefore — and the Communist International under Lenin was clear on this point — communist parties can only exist in countries where an industrial proletariat exists. In countries without an industrial proletariat, while there can be communist intellectuals, they cannot form a communist party.

In countries that are truly pre-capitalist like Afghanistan — as opposed to those capitalistically underdeveloped — the Communist International supported the creation of people’s parties that would push for progressive democratic changes — sometimes called national democratic revolutions — as well as close cooperation with the Soviet state. A direct transition to socialism without passing through the stage of capitalist development in these types of countries is possible but only to the extent that they merge economically with already existing socialist countries. In that case, and only in that case, is it possible for a pre-capitalist country to make a transition to socialism without passing through the capitalist stage.

Many Kabul-based Afghani intellectuals admired the achievements of the Soviet Union, which they contrasted with the continued backwardness and stagnation of the still largely tribal Afghan society. Some of these intellectuals may have hoped that eventually Afghanistan, which bordered the Soviet Union, might join the Soviet federation and become a Soviet Socialist Republic. But successive Soviet governments showed no interest in such a transformation.

Unable to form a true communist party, these progressive Afghani intellectuals created the Democratic People’s Party of Afghanistan in 1965. Its program was a series of democratic reforms that included among other things rights for women linked to the abolition of tribal institutions such as the bride price and arranged marriages as well as the right of women to obtain education along with men through the university level. In 1978, facing repression from the Afghan government of President Sardar Mohammed Daoud, and with the support of the Afghan military, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan assumed power in Kabul. However, its authority like all other Afghan governments before it did not extend very far into the tribal countryside.

The tribal leaders saw the democratic reforms supported by the Democratic People’s Party of Afghanistan — such as rights and education for women — as a threat to their age-old authority. The U.S. government, then under U.S. Democratic President Jimmy Carter, saw an opening. It decided to arm and encourage the tribal leaders and feudal warlords to start an insurrection to overthrow the new progressive Kabul government and replace it with one that would do Washington’s bidding. If the tribal leaders-backed insurrection, in turn, backed and armed by the United States, was successful in overthrowing the new progressive government in Kabul, Washington hoped this would enable it to set up a pro-U.S. imperialist government in Kabul right on the Soviet border.

Moscow was alarmed by this development and aided the People’s Democratic Party government in its resistance to the U.S.-sponsored insurgency, though it did not at first send Soviet troops into Afghanistan. On the ground, tribal leaders and village preachers called mullahs, who have great authority in Afghani rural society, organized the so-called Mujahideen, which functioned as a decentralized militia under local tribal and clan leaders. The Mujahideen were well financed by the U.S, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis sent one of their sons, a certain Osama bin Laden, to help organize the rebels, who were painted in the West as heroic “freedom fighters” battling the “communist” government in Kabul. In those days, neither Washington nor the corporate media showed the great concern for the rights of Afghani women that they pretend to show today.

The People’s Democratic Party was not a unified party but a loose confederation of factions that were often in bitter conflict with one another. The top leaders of the PDPA were Nur Muhammad Taraki (1917-1979), Hafizullah Amin (1929-1979), Babrak Karmal (1929-1996), and later Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai (1947-1996). Taraki was a writer and is sometimes referred to as Afghanistan’s Maxim Gorky. He was the first leader of the People’s Democratic Party and headed the first PDPA government established in April 1978.

However, Taraki was ousted by Hafizullah Amin in 1979 and was soon killed. The murder of Taraki reportedly shocked the ailing Soviet president and Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. The Soviet leadership strongly suspected — and for good reason — that Amin was attempting to move the Kabul government away from friendship with the USSR and towards an alignment with the United States and its then ally against the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China. Fearing that Kabul was about to reach an agreement with Washington at Soviet expense, the Soviet leadership decided to move troops into Afghanistan to prevent this from happening while at the same time helping the besieged Kabul government fight against the U.S.-supported rebels. Amin was soon killed and replaced by Karmal, who remained the head of the PDPA until 1986 when he was replaced by Najibullah at the urging of Mikhail Gorbachev.

By the time Najibullah had replaced Karmal, a major shift in power had occurred in Moscow. The long-ailing Leonid Brezhnev had died in November 1982. He was succeeded in quick succession by Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko. Both Andropov and Chernenko were already old men in bad health when they were chosen to lead the CPSU and soon died in office. In March 1985, the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party chose a much younger — and healthier — general secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev.

Gorbachev represented a new generation of CPSU leaders who had matured in the relatively peaceful years after what the Soviets called “The Great Patriotic War” — World War II. The new Kremlin leaders headed by Gorbachev were qualitatively further removed by both time and ideas from the October Revolution 1917, which had brought the Bolsheviks to power, than any of their predecessors. These new leaders were willing to listen to economic advisers who claimed that modern “Western economics” based on the Austrian and neoclassical schools was correct against Marxism. The Soviet Union, these economic advisers claimed, could quickly solve its economic problems if the Soviet Union fully embraced a “market economy.” As Marxist theory would indicate, and events were soon to prove in practice, this meant the restoration of capitalism with all its consequences including among other things the destruction of the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev was also inclined to embrace “Western” ideas — in other areas as well — including in Afghanistan. If the website CaspianReport, based in what was the Soviet Union, is to be believed — and it seems to be well informed — Gorbachev decided to embrace a new strategy in fighting against the U.S.-supported mujahideen rebels. The Gorbachev leadership, according to CaspianReport, decided to launch a massive bombing campaign against the Afghan rural population aimed at driving the rural tribespeople into the cities where Gorbachev and his advisers believed they would be more easily controlled.

This was similar to the U.S. strategy employed in Vietnam — though Vietnamese rural society was quite different than the one in Afghanistan, and the Vietnamese insurgency in Vietnam had a very different kind of leadership than the one in Afghanistan did. The result was that many embittered young tribesmen fled to Pakistan where they were educated in religious schools known as Madrassas, where they learned a strict form of fundamentalist Islam that was in accord with the values of their tribal society. Lenin would, of course, have been outraged by Gorbachev’s policy of brutally destroying with massive firepower from the air a society made up of impoverished tribal people.

Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko, however far removed they were from the revolutionary spirit of Lenin, were unwilling to embrace such a strategy. But the “Western-oriented reformer” Mikhail Gorbachev, at least if the CaspianReport is to be believed, did embrace it, laying the foundations of what was to become the Taliban. In 1987, Gorbachev changed course in Afghanistan and decided to capitulate to U.S. imperialism, just as he was soon to capitulate to U.S. imperialism in Eastern Europe, Germany, and finally the Soviet Union itself. (4)

The U.S. policy of encouraging tribal people to rebel against a progressive government is not unique to Afghanistan. For example, the U.S. encouraged the rebellion of the Miskito people against the Nicaraguan government in the 1980s. Earlier, it had fostered an armed movement aligned with U.S. imperialism among Hmong tribes of Laos during what is called in the West the “Vietnam war.” The U.S. did the same in Vietnam itself. The best fighters for the South Vietnamese puppet government were found among the mountain tribal people of southern Vietnam. Later, the U.S. used people from mountain tribes of Albania against Serbia and what was left of Yugoslavia. More recently, the U.S. imperialists have been manipulating the mountain tribal people of Southwest Asia known as the Kurds.

The U.S. is also encouraging central Asian tribal people known as Uyghurs to rebel against China. The use of tribal people against rising and potentially dangerous capitalist competitors, or any democratic movement opposed by these powers, is an old policy of the established capitalist powers that precedes even the rise of modern imperialism. During the U.S. war of independence, the British used the native American tribes — called “Indians” by the white settlers and “savages” in the U.S. declaration of independence — against the rebelling white colonists, who the British rightly feared represented a danger to their then monopoly of modern industry.

U.S. aims in Afghanistan

With the discovery of vast mineral wealth, Afghanistan has acquired great importance to the U.S. world empire and global economy. In addition, the country is a gateway into central Asia uniting the now huge industrial complex of China with Europe. Afghanistan has potentially great importance to China and what the Chinese government calls the “New Silk Road.” (5)

By 1989, Gorbachev had completed the pullout of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. However, the government of the People’s Democratic Party in Kabul did not fall at that time. It was still in control of Kabul in December 1991 when Gorbachev was frantically trying to negotiate with Washington to save his job as president of what was left of the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev was unsuccessful in this attempt and lost his job when Russian President Boris Yeltsin arranged to have the USSR formally dissolved. At this point, to save his skin Gorbachev agreed to formally resign the post of Soviet president, which was being abolished by the formal liquidation of the Soviet Union. As the Gorbachev regime came to its disgraceful end, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan managed to hold onto power in Kabul into 1992. Finally, however, the PDPA, deprived of any powerful allies with state power that could provide aid, lost control of Kabul and the city fell into the hands of pro-U.S. warlords.

The U.S. had, with Gorbachev’s considerable assistance, succeeded in using the tribes of Afghanistan to destroy the People’s Democratic Party and its attempts at improving the position of women in Afghanistan and realizing other aspects of the national democratic revolution. But after 1992, the tribal Afghanistan society that the U.S. had used to destroy the Saur Revolution now became an obstacle to U.S. plans to dominate Afghanistan and gain control of its vast mineral wealth.

U.S. imperialism aims to transform the tribal people in Afghanistan into proletarians who will work in the extractive industries expected to be developed later this century. And it wants to make sure these extractive industries, as well as the railways and roads that will be necessary to bring the products of these industries to the markets of the world, will enrich U.S. corporations and their mostly U.S. stockholders first of all.

To achieve these aims, U.S. imperialism needs to destroy the tribal society of Afghanistan much as early U.S. capitalism destroyed the tribal societies in what we now call the United States. To achieve U.S. aims, the fertile land in Afghanistan must become private property — not in the feudal sense but the modern capitalist sense — so the tribal people can be separated from their means of production and be forced to sell their labor power to the corporations.

In 1992, Kabul fell under the control of corrupt U.S. paid for and bought warlords willing to do the bidding of American imperialism. In response, the Taliban (6), much demonized in the West, were formed by young tribespeople who had fled to Pakistan to escape Gorbachev’s bombs. There they trained in a form of Islam that is rooted not so much in Islamic religious law as it is in the values of an Afghan patriarchal tribal society much older than Islam. In 1996, the rule of the U.S. puppet warlords was replaced by that of the Taliban. The Taliban now faced a new enemy — their former sponsor, U.S. imperialism and its NATO satellites.

The events of 9/11/2001 gave the George W. Bush administration the excuse it needed to invade Afghanistan under the banner of NATO and crush the Taliban as a first step toward the destruction of Afghanistan’s tribal society and transform the tribespeople into wage slaves for the (mostly) U.S. corporations. The excuse the Bush administration used was that the Taliban had provided refuge to the former U.S. ally Osama bin Laden.

Saudi Arabia itself is a kind of tribal society where the ruling tribe has been converted into landowners who have grown extremely rich off the huge differential oil rents they collect. Bin Laden, a former U.S. ally after the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Union but infuriated by the introduction of U.S. bases and troops in his native Saudi Arabia — the Islamic holy land — decided to launch his own terrorist struggle against American imperialism, which climaxed on 9/11. (7)

The Taliban was willing to negotiate with the U.S. government when it demanded after 9/11 that Bin Laden be handed over to it. The Taliban proposed to hand over Bin Laden to a Muslim country for trial if the U.S. could provide evidence that Bin Laden was really behind 9/11. But the U.S. was not interested in negotiating with the Taliban over Bin Laden; indeed Bin Laden and 9/11 were only a pretext.

The U.S.-NATO war against the people of Afghanistan

Within weeks after the U.S.-NATO invasion began, the U.S. media began speaking about the Afghan war in the past tense. Even the Taliban, if The New York Times is to be believed, were willing to negotiate a surrender with the hope that perhaps they would be able to retain some influence in the rural areas. After all, the Taliban had no regular army, no air force, no navy, and indeed, unlike Vietnam, no ally with state power anywhere in the world except to some extent Pakistan.

George W. Bush and his advisers as well as the corporate media were convinced there was no way the U.S. could lose this war. What was viewed as the inevitable, and the Bush administration and U.S. corporate media assumed quick, U.S. victory against Afghanistan would help overcome the “Vietnam Syndrome” and thus pave the way for wars against stronger opponents. But the U.S. media was wrong. The Afghan war was only just beginning and it was to become the longest war for the U.S. since the centuries-long war against the tribal peoples the white settlers called “Indians”.

Why the U.S. lost

It wasn’t easy for capitalism to defeat the tribal peoples of North America. But the early capitalist system had a powerful weapon against the tribal peoples – a surplus population out of which the white colonial settlers who were to become the “Americans” were recruited. The leaders of a young British and then American capitalism told the white settlers, we will arm you with modern weapons. If you can crush the “Indians” (the settler slogan was “the only good Indian is a dead Indian”), you will be able to keep the land you stole from them as your private property. And if you can farm — or in some cases mine — it, you will have a chance to grow rich off it and become capitalists yourselves.

But times have changed. After using the “farmer economy” to crush the “Indians,” capitalism in its further development crushed the settler-farmer economy. Today, agricultural production has fallen more and more into the hands of an ever-smaller number of ever-larger capitalist farms. These capitalist farms are now being pushed aside by even larger corporate farms. Today, U.S. farmland is being bought up by multi-billionaires like Bill Gates, the software monopolist of Microsoft, now raking in still more billions from agricultural ground rents.

The high mountains of Afghanistan and its landlocked geography saved it from colonial settlers during the age of settler colonialism. The passing of the small farmer — and mining — economy means that there is no chance that Afghanistan’s fertile valleys can be colonized by “white” farmers from North America, Europe or anywhere else. Nor can its mountains be mined by white settlers. The development of the natural resources of Afghanistan will require huge quantities of capital — or socialist production. Instead of colonial settlers, U.S. imperialism was forced in its war against the Afghans to rely on soldiers and mercenaries who were paid a wage but had no prospect of seizing the land of Afghanistan and farming or mining it themselves to make themselves rich.

Therefore, unlike the British settlers who colonized America and waged a centuries-long war against the “Indians” in return for farmland, the U.S. and other NATO soldiers and mercenaries working for private contractors were interested above all in staying alive and collecting their wages to eventually return to the United States — or the other NATO countries from which they came. The Taliban, on the other hand, were defending their country, villages, clans and society. Using guerrilla tactics, they merely had to wait out the U.S. as the imperialists squandered trillions in the Afghan “forever war.”

When the U.S. finally announced the date — 31 — that they were leaving and it became clear that they meant it, the entire structure of the bourgeois Afghanistan state with its 300,000-member standing army and police forces, having no real base in Afghan society, disappeared overnight. With U.S. and other NATO forces gone, the country is now in the hands of the Taliban though how centralized their rule will be and how long it will last remains to be seen.

The Marxist attitude toward the Taliban victory

First, we should oppose the new economic war the U.S. has launched against Afghanistan. The U.S. has frozen the accounts that the central bank of Afghanistan holds in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. We should demand that this money be released immediately and the U.S. — and the other NATO countries — recognize the Taliban government in Kabul since it controls the country. The representatives of the now overthrown puppet government of Afghanistan should also be removed from the United Nations and replaced by representatives of the government that actually rules Afghanistan.

Left-wing anti-imperialists across the globe are delighted to see the U.S. and other NATO forces leave Afghanistan in defeat. But left-wingers are also appalled by the victory of the “reactionary Taliban,” especially in its treatment of women. Therefore, many on the left wonder if the victory of the Taliban is a victory in the struggle against imperialism and the U.S. world empire in general, or is it yet another victory of reaction?

After the Russian Revolution, there was much discussion in the Communist International on what should be the attitude of Marxists when imperialist countries find themselves involved in wars of conquest against pre-capitalist countries. In the Second International, right-wing Social Democrats like Edward Bernstein argued that such imperialist wars should be supported because the imperialist countries were bringing the gains of capitalist civilization to backward and “barbaric” peoples.

But the left-wing Social Democrats and the Communists after the Russian Revolution rejected this argument. The main enemy the workers’ movement faces is world imperialism and not the pre-capitalist formations that survive in various parts of the world.

Communists, the leaders of the Third International explained, should strive to achieve proletarian leadership over the struggles of the peoples of pre-capitalist areas wherever possible. Communists should oppose the leadership of these struggles by religious and clerical forces such as that of the Afghanistan Taliban. But if clerical, tribal, and even monarchist forces find themselves at the head of struggles against imperialism anyway, communists are duty bound to support all struggles against imperialism regardless of their leaderships.

The defeat of imperialist invaders, regardless of the leadership of the forces fighting imperialism, is a blow against imperialism, the main enemy of the working class, while a victory of the imperialist invaders strengthens our main enemy. The debacle in Afghanistan will make it harder — though, of course, not impossible — to start new “easy-to-win” wars against “backward” countries. Far from overcoming the “Vietnam syndrome,” U.S. imperialism will now have to overcome the “Afghanistan syndrome.”

For example, in 1935 fascist Italy invaded the African country Ethiopia, then ruled by the autocratic Emperor Haile Selassie. In pre-capitalist Ethiopia, slavery still existed. There were socialists in the 1930s who argued for neutrality in the war between Italy and Ethiopia. Mussolini and Selassie were both “dictators,” these socialists argued. And even under Mussolini, Italy didn’t have chattel slavery while chattel slavery did exist under Selassie. Despite the fact of the existence of slavery in Ethiopia, all Marxists in the 1930s worthy of the name defended Ethiopia against the Italian imperialist invasion. Even if Italy in the 1930s had been a parliamentary republic, like it is today, communists would still have supported Ethiopia in its struggle with Italian “democratic” imperialism.

Similarly, Marxists in the 1930s supported China under the blood-soaked anti-communist dictator Chiang Kai-Shek in his rather reluctant struggle against the imperialist Japanese invaders. Again there were socialists in the 1930s who argued that there was nothing to choose between imperialist Japan and the dictator Chiang Kai-Shek. But the Marxists of those days knew that if the Japanese imperialists were successful in colonizing China, not only would Japanese imperialism but world imperialism would have been greatly strengthened. But if the Japanese were defeated, not only Japanese but world imperialism in general would be dealt a powerful blow. And this is exactly what happened.

But what about the horrible oppression of women by the Afghan Taliban? Surely Marxists don’t defend that! Of course, we don’t! Marxists oppose the oppression of women anywhere it occurs whether in Texas (8) or Afghanistan, just as we opposed slavery in Ethiopia in the 1930s. But we also have to be aware of how U.S. imperialism is misusing the woman question to hide its crimes against the people of Afghanistan and explain to well-meaning progressives what is really involved in all the U.S. wars against the Afghanistan people. These include the war against the Saur revolution from 1979 to 1992, the 20-year military war between 2001 and 2021, and the current economic war – 2021-?.

From the dawn of capitalist colonialism until well into the 20th century, European colonialism justified its crimes against the peoples of the world by claiming that it was saving the souls of the colonized peoples, even when it was physically exterminating them. Salvation for sinning humanity, the colonizers claimed, could only come through the recognition of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. It was therefore perfectly okay to wipe out the “natives” physically because their souls were being saved for eternal life.

The decline in Christian belief over the last several centuries — despite the continuing efforts of the capitalist ruling class to prop it up — has forced modern imperialism to largely drop this argument. Its successor has been that imperialism — now mostly U.S. imperialism — must intervene to bring “democracy” to the benighted peoples of the world. However, the Vietnam War and the revelations over the years of the crimes against many other peoples of the world by imperialism and its various puppet dictators and monarchs have undermined this argument. (9)

As a result, the democracy argument, refuted by U.S.-arranged and supervised fake elections in Afghanistan and elsewhere, carries less and less weight. But imperialism has found a new argument better suited to present-day conditions — the woman question. The Taliban has been charged by the U.S. media with forbidding women to work outside the home and attend school while forcing them to wear clothes that conceal almost their entire bodies and with supporting the bride price and arranged marriages.

These charges are true, though the Taliban claims that this time it will allow women to work and attend school within the limits of the Taliban’s interpretation of Muslim religious law. Still, even this more liberal attitude — if that is what it is — falls far short of what the modern women’s liberation movement in the West demands — or for that matter what the Saur Revolution was trying to achieve in Afghanistan itself in the 1970s and 1980s against the opposition of U.S. imperialism.

However, the tribesmen that make up the Taliban view themselves in their own patriarchal way very much as defenders of Afghan women. Under the U.S. puppet regime, most Afghan women enjoyed in practice only the right to be bombed and driven from their homes by the U.S. and NATO forces — “rights” also enjoyed by men and children. Women also enjoyed the “right” to be raped by rampaging pro-imperialist soldiers. Gains the U.S. media claims that Afghan women won in the last 20 years at most benefited a small minority of bourgeois women in Kabul and a few other cities but meant nothing for the overwhelming majority of Afghan women. The argument that Afghan women need the U.S. and NATO to defend their rights is a fraud, just as much as they need the Christian religion to save their souls or for the U.S. Army and Air Force to establish democracy and free elections in their country.

The future of Afghanistan

The new Taliban government will need foreign capital if it wants to develop Afghanistan’s vast natural resources, which potentially could transform the country from one of the poorest in the world into one of the richest. This capital could come from the U.S., Europe and Japan but it could also come from China and to a lesser extent India. Perhaps the Taliban will attempt to play the various potential sources of foreign capital off against one another. The chance of U.S. capital dominating the process of developing Afghanistan’s natural resources has been weakened but far from eliminated by the U.S. defeat in its 20-year military war against the Taliban.

If and when foreign capital does penetrate Afghanistan, the huge mineral ground rents might well transform the upper strata of the Taliban into a class of wealthy rent collectors such as occurred in Saudi Arabia and the other oil monarchies while the mass of the tribespeople are separated from their means of production and are transformed into a modern proletariat. Though this would be a long and painful process, such a development would put the struggle for socialism — and not just a national democratic revolution – on the agenda in Afghanistan.

But there are other possibilities for Afghanistan’s future. If over the coming decades the crises of world capitalism lead to a victory of the socialist revolution, Afghanistan may yet be spared the agony that a transition from a tribal to a capitalist society involves. In the event of the victory of the global working class, one way or another Afghanistan will at some point join the world socialist community at a pace decided by the Afghan people themselves. The Taliban, if it survives that long, will of course resist such a process. But in that case, it will be waging a losing fight.

But there is yet another possibility. World capitalism may within a few decades through climate change, war, or some combination of the above bring about the collapse of modern civilization. If this happens, the victims won’t number in the tens or hundreds of millions like they did in the wars and catastrophes of the 20th century, but in the billions. However, Afghan tribal society protected by its mountain vastness might survive such a disaster.

Then the Taliban will be able to say to tribal society that the society of the capitalists was able to produce for awhile far more wealth than our kind of society can ever hope to produce. It dazzled the world, the Taliban will explain, with its technological and scientific achievements beyond anything our society could ever dream of. But it couldn’t last. Only a society like ours that respects nature and is based on the eternal values handed down by God Himself can survive in the long run. And then the Taliban, or forces like it, might rule Afghanistan for centuries to come and the position of women in Afghanistan will remain just as it has been since the matriarchy gave way to the patriarchy.

The outcome won’t be decided by the Afghans or the Taliban. It will be decided by us, the global working class. Will we finally be able in the 21st century to end the rule of capital and transform world imperialism into world socialism, or will we allow modern society to crash as billions perish. The outcome is not up to the Taliban or the Afghans, it is up to us.

Now back to Shaikh

Now let’s return to our examination of modern capitalism and the work of Anwar Shaikh.

In 1978, Anwar Shaikh wrote a paper for the Union of Radical Political Economists as part of a series of papers on U.S. capitalism in crisis entitled “An Introduction to Crisis Theories.” At that time, the U.S. and world capitalist economies were in the midst of a decade-long economic crisis called stagflation. The U.S. economy had pulled out of the mid-1970s recession that had occurred within the broader stagflation crisis. But the recovery was shaky. Both inflation and unemployment remained stubbornly high during what turned out to be an abortive upturn.

According to Keynesian theory, stagflation — the combination of high inflation, high unemployment, and low to no growth – was not supposed to happen. As a result, Keynesianism was coming under increasing attack by Milton Friedman and his “monetarists” — today called neoliberals – from the right. According to Keynes, inflation was supposed to become a problem only when the economy was “in the vicinity of full employment.” The co-existence of both high inflation and high unemployment created a major policy dilemma for the Carter administration and the Federal Reserve System.

The standard policy measures for situations of high inflation were tax increases and reduced spending — or, more realistically, a reduced rate of growth of spending — by the central government, combined with moves by the central bank to raise short-term interest rates. However, high unemployment — both of workers and machines – required the opposite set of policies: some combination of tax cuts and increased spending by the central government backed by moves by the central bank to lower short-term interest rates.

But what was the central government and the central bank — the Federal Reserve System — supposed to do when both unemployment and inflation were high? The Carter administration and the Federal Reserve leadership gave the impression they had no idea of how to respond to the stagflation crisis. Their policy, if you could call it that, was simply to hope the inflation would go away. But the inflation refused to oblige.

Within a year after Shaikh wrote “An Introduction to Crisis Theories,” inflation sharply accelerated and the crisis came to a head. Carter appointed a new Federal Reserve chairperson, Paul Volcker. Volcker announced that the Fed was going to adopt Milton Friedman’s policy recommendations of targeting the rate of growth of the money supply – the dollars created by the Federal Reserve System plus the credit money (checkbook money created by the commercial banking system) rather than target short-term interest rates. In reality, as Volcker later admitted, this meant allowing interest rates — especially short-term rates — to rise radically to whatever level was necessary to break the back of the accelerating inflation.

But when Shaikh wrote “An Introduction,” the “Volcker shock” was still in the future. While it can be said that in a sense Paul Sweezy and the other economists of Sweezy’s generation were children of the Depression, Shaikh was a child of the 1970s stagflation. By 1978, Shaikh had not only rejected the neoclassical economics he had learned from Gary Becker; he also rejected the “Keynesian-Marxism” associated with the Monthly Review school. It can be said that “An Introduction to Crisis Theories” was a preliminary draft of what was to become his monumental 1,000-page book “Capitalism,” published in 2016, in the wake of yet another economic crisis, that of 2008.

Henryk Grossman and his school

Back in 1978, finding the Monthly Review school unsatisfactory to his mathematical-logical mind, Shaikh looked toward the economic school of Henryk Grossman for an alternative to both neoclassical economics and the Keynesian-Marxist Monthly Review school. Grossman, who had died in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) in 1950, had little influence among bourgeois economists. No surprise there, since Grossman was a thoroughgoing Marxist of the generation that had witnessed and supported the Russian Revolution. Grossman was a lifelong supporter of the October Revolution and the Soviet Union.

Grossman also had little influence in the international Communist movement or the broader labor movement. The international Communist movement (the Third, or Communist, International had been dissolved in 1943) was thoroughly embedded in the trade union movement engaged in the daily struggles to raise workers’ wages, reduce working hours, and improve working conditions.

Grossman’s theory of “breakdown crises” implied that the way out of an economic crisis short of a socialist revolution was to reduce wages. Breakdown crises in the final analysis, according to Grossman, arise from insufficient production of surplus value. The way the capitalists solve each successive breakdown crisis is to increase the rate of surplus value.

This implies that the trade unions’ insistence on high wages is responsible for high unemployment. Indeed, neoclassical economists claim that if there is not full employment it is because wages are higher than the value of the marginal product the unemployed workers would produce if they were employed by the capitalists. Therefore, according to neoclassical economists, the only way out of a persistent unemployment crisis is to reduce wages. Though they disagree on virtually everything else, Grossman and the neoclassical and Austrian economists all see wage cuts as key to recovery from economic crises as long as capitalism is retained.

These conclusions were not welcome in trade union circles and in working-class parties leading the day-to-day struggles of workers because it implied that the more successful the struggles of the workers were the more likely crises were to break out and the harder it would be once a crisis broke out to achieve recovery (on a capitalist basis). As a result, Grossman’s theories found little support among the Communist Parties that exercised great influence in the trade union movement. Grossman’s theories also had minimal influence in the much smaller Trotskyist movement (9), probably for similar reasons.

Grossman found himself largely outside of the organized workers’ movement from the time he dropped out of the Polish Communist Party around 1925 to the time that he joined the (east) German Socialist Unity Party at the end of his life. Grossman, however, did have a few followers, among them the German worker and Marxist economist Paul Mattick (1904-1981).

In Germany, Paul Mattick was briefly a member of the German Communist Party. He broke with that party well before the Stalin-Trotsky split and denounced the Russian Bolshevik Party and its policies from the left. Unlike Grossman, Mattick considered the Soviet Union to be “state capitalist.” Mattick was associated at various time with some small Marxist organizations — sometimes called “council communists” — who opposed the Communist Parties of the Third International. These groups should not be confused with the followers of Leon Trotsky. None of the groups Mattick was associated with exercised much influence in the broader trade union movement.

Another follower of Grossman (and Mattick) is the British Marxist David Yaffe, who in the 1970s wrote many articles on economics. Yaffe in his youth was a follower of Tony Cliff, who led a split from the British Trotskyists who refused to support the Koreans who in the Korean War of 1950-53) were facing a U.S. invasion. While the “orthodox Trotskyists” defined the countries of the Socialist Camp as degenerated and deformed workers’ states, Cliff and his supporters claimed the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc were “state capitalist” and just as much the enemies of the working class as U.S. imperialism. In the 1980s, Yaffe moved away from Cliff to Grossman’s positions on the Soviet Union and the socialist camp and renounced the theory of state capitalism. Today, Yaffe is a strong supporter of socialist Cuba.

During the 1970s, Shaikh was impressed by the economic analysis of Grossman and his followers Mattick and Yaffe. However, Shaikh has never joined an organized Marxist tendency or party and has spent most of his adult life as a professor of economics at the New School. Though a sympathizer, Shaikh has always stood outside the organized workers’ movement.

Shaikh has a logical-mathematical mind that rejects inconsistency and muddled thinking. This goes hand in hand with a love of algebra and knowledge of mathematics in general, which he acquired first as an engineering student and then a student of neoclassical economics. However, unlike some other writers, he never used his formidable knowledge of mathematics to mystify the non-mathematical reader and emphasizes that mathematics itself is no substitute for sound economic reasoning.

In his “Introduction to Crisis Theory,” Shaikh deals with three crisis theories. One is known as underconsumption theory, the second is the profit squeeze theory, which blames the falling rate of surplus value during prosperity for capitalist crises, and the third is the fall in the rate of profit caused by a rise in the organic composition of capital. In the history of Marxism, Grossman is the most prominent exponent of crises caused by a fall in the rate of profit tied to the rising organic composition of capital. This is the camp Shaikh has supported from the late 1970s until the present.

Shaikh’s critique of underconsumption crisis theories in 1978

“The basic tenet of underconsumption theory,” Shaikh wrote in his 1978 article, “is that the demand for consumer goods and services determines not only the production level of Department II (consumer goods), but also that of Department I (producer goods).” The working class, which produces surplus value, cannot buy back its entire product, the underconsumptionists point out correctly. The workers can buy only the commodities enabling them to reproduce their labor power.

As a general rule, members of the working class spend their entire wage income on items of personal consumption. The rest of the commodities annually produced replace the existing constant capital used up (simple reproduction), expand the existing constant capital (expanded reproduction), and comprise items of personal consumption (necessary goods and luxuries) purchased only by capitalists.

Según la teoría del subconsumo, la producción en la industria de bienes de producción, escribe Shaikh, "está regulada en última instancia por los requisitos de insumos de la industria de bienes de consumo: la demanda de bienes de producción es, por lo tanto, 'derivada' de la demanda de bienes de consumo". Supongamos que imaginamos que tenemos una economía que se dedica a la reproducción simple que cambia a la reproducción expandida. Shaikh continúa: "... la clase capitalista al principio gasta enteramente en el consumo personal. Ahora supongamos que reducen su consumo a $ 150,000, y los $ 50,000 restantes los invierten usando $ 30,000 para comprar bienes de producción (de los inventarios del Departamento I) y $ 20,000 para contratar trabajadores (del ejército de reserva de los desempleados). La caída neta en la demanda de los consumidores es de solo $ 30,000, ya que la caída en la demanda de consumo capitalista se compensa parcialmente con el consumo adicional de los trabajadores recién contratados. Sin embargo, la demanda de bienes de consumo disminuye, por lo que las ventas en el Departamento II caerán, lo que a su vez significa que su propia demanda de bienes de producción caerá, disminuyendo así las ventas en el Departamento I".

Según los subconsumistas, el objetivo básico de la producción es la satisfacción de las necesidades humanas, la producción de artículos de consumo personal. Si, razonando los subconsumistas, aumentamos la inversión a partir de la inversión neta cero ,simple reproducción—, el consumo personal tiene que caer. Los capitalistas terminan aumentando la capacidad de producir bienes de consumo, pero reducen la demanda de bienes de consumo. El resultado es una sobreproducción de bienes de consumo que luego conduce a recortes en la inversión que conducen como efecto secundario a la sobreproducción de los medios de producción, también al Departamento I. El resultado es que, según la teoría subconsumicionista, en palabras de Shaikh, "la acumulación generada internamente se niega a sí misma".

Pero ahora, si vamos a seguir la lógica del subconsuelo, hemos demostrado demasiado. Hemos demostrado la imposibilidad del modo de producción capitalista como sistema de reproducción expandida. Pero dado que la reproducción capitalista expandida existe en el mundo real, esto significa que la demanda debe provenir de fuera del sistema capitalista.

Diferentes escuelas de pensamiento de subconsuelo

Shaikh divide a los teóricos del subconsumimiento en lo que él llama radical y conservador. También señala que los primeros subconsuncistas escribieron antes de Marx y carecían del concepto de Departamento I y Departamento II, que gradualmente se conoció después de que Engels publicara el Volumen II de "El Capital" en 1885. Según Shaikh, los primeros subconsumidores premarxistas no siempre eran conscientes de que su teoría implicaba que lo que Marx llamaba reproducción capitalista expandida era imposible. Los subconsiguistas premarxistas imaginaban que había una especie de tasa óptima de acumulación. Si la acumulación fuera demasiado baja, habría estancamiento económico. Pero si la acumulación fuera demasiado rápida, los excesos generales (sobreproducción) detendrían la acumulación capitalista. El remedio era desacelerar el crecimiento económico lo suficiente como para evitar el temido "exceso general".

Shaikh cita a Michael Bleaney (1950 – ) de su libro "Teorías del subconsuminado": "La posición general de estos escritores era que hay un límite por encima del cual la tasa de acumulación se vuelve peligrosamente alta, amenazando con precipitar una depresión. Pero la lógica del argumento a medida que lo desarrollan es que este límite es una tasa cero de acumulación, como señala efectivamente Chalmers. Por lo tanto, están atrapados en una trampa, en la que o bien deben retirarse del borde del abismo y descartar parte de sus resultados, o bien deben declarar abiertamente lo absurdo de sus conclusiones".

Shaikh señala: "El primer economista importante en aterrizar en este dilema fue Thomas Malthus (década de 1820). Fiel a la tradición subconsumista, Malthus argumentó que es la demanda de bienes de consumo la que regula la producción, de modo que solo una cierta tasa de crecimiento era "sostenible". Por supuesto, dada la lógica de su argumento y la conclusión implícita en él, Malthus nunca pudo decir cuál era esta tasa de crecimiento 'sostenible'".

Shaikh continúa: "En manos de Malthus, esta tendencia hacia el subconsumo se convirtió en una apología reaccionaria para los terratenientes feudales, cuya alta vida y consumo conspicuo se presentó como un contrapeso bienvenido a la tendencia de los capitalistas a (sobre) ahorrar. (Malthus también es famoso por su ataque a la clase obrera a través de sus llamadas leyes de población. Entonces, como ahora, estas brutales 'leyes naturales' nunca tuvieron la intención de representar el comportamiento de las clases dominantes 'civilizadas')

Además del subconsumo reaccionario de Malthus, había un tipo que está mucho más cerca de los de los progresistas de hoy. El fundador de la escuela subconsuncista "progresista" fue la economista suiza Simonde de Sismondi (1773-1842), considerada por Marx como, junto con Ricardo, la última de los economistas clásicos. "El propio Sismondi", escribe Shaikh, "defendió cambios radicales en la distribución del ingreso a favor de los campesinos y los trabajadores, y miró al estado para llevar a cabo estas y otras reformas económicas".

Además de los "subconsuncistas" burgueses premarxistas, también están las escuelas subconsuncistas burguesas post-Marx. Uno de los representantes más importantes de esta escuela fue el inglés John Hobson (1858-1940), quien ejercería una gran influencia en los marxistas, incluido Lenin, como sabe cualquiera que haya leído el famoso folleto de Lenin "Imperialismo". Hobson también influyó en Baran, Sweezy y John Maynard Keynes. "Hobson", explica Shaikh, "comienza en la forma ahora familiar de los subconsumidores. Identifica explícitamente el objeto último de toda producción, incluso bajo
el capitalismo, como la producción de bienes de consumo.

"Hobson", señala Shaikh, "también introduce el concepto de 'excedente', que juega un papel importante en su análisis posterior. En términos generales, hobson define el 'excedente' como el exceso del valor monetario total de la producción sobre los costos estrictamente necesarios de producir esa producción". Cualquiera que esté familiarizado con Monopoly Capital de Baran y Sweezy (publicado por primera vez en 1966) o libros y artículos escritos por miembros de la escuela Monthly Review reconocerá no solo los conceptos de Hobson, sino incluso la terminología de Hobson.

Según Hobson, los ingresos cada vez más inflados de los capitalistas y terratenientes y su creciente incapacidad para gastar todos sus ingresos en artículos de consumo personal tienden a conducir al subconsumo, la sobreproducción y el estancamiento. Los países capitalistas ricos tratan de escapar del estancamiento económico resultante apoderándose de los países precapitalistas y colonizándolos. Sin embargo, Hobson creía que había una mejor manera de lidiar con el subconsuelo y el estancamiento que supuestamente genera que la toma competitiva de territorios por parte de las "grandes potencias", lo que conduce a la guerra.

"Que cualquier giro en la marea de fuerzas político-económicas desvíe de estos propietarios su exceso de ingresos y lo haga fluir, ya sea a los trabajadores con salarios más altos o a la comunidad en impuestos", escribió Hobson, "para que se gaste en lugar de ser salvado, sirviendo de cualquiera de estas maneras para engarmar la marea de consumo: no habrá necesidad de luchar por mercados extranjeros o áreas extranjeras de inversión". (citado de Shaikh). Los puntos de vista de Hobson, tal como se expresan aquí, todavía ejercen una gran influencia en el pensamiento progresista de hoy, si no directamente, a través de su influencia en la escuela Monthly Review.

Marxist underconsumption theories and Rosa Luxemburg

The semi-Marxist Ukrainian economist Mikhail Tugan-Baranowsky, Shaikh explains, took opposition to underconsumptionist theory to its logical extreme. Tugan-Baranowsky claimed that if only the correct proportions were maintained between Departments I and II, consumption represented no barrier to capitalism whatsoever. To maintain these correct proportions as the organic composition of capital rises, it is necessary for Department I to grow faster than Department II. There is, of course, always the possibility that the correct proportions between the two departments will not be maintained, which will lead to crises that disrupt capitalist expanded reproduction.

This led to the view that became widespread among the theoreticians of the Second International that crises arose out of mere accidental disproportions between Department I and II. Tugan-Baranowsky’s influence encouraged the view that the growing “organization” of monopoly capitalism in the form of syndicates, cartels and trusts and bank control over industrial enterprises could limit or even eliminate crises. “Both “Tugan-Baranowsky and Hilferding,” Shaikh writes, “were later to argue that since it was the anarchy of capitalism which led to crises, planning would eliminate crises.” However, Shaikh continues, “Rosa Luxemburg refused to accept this resolution of the debate.” He quotes Luxemburg as stating that if “capitalist development does not move in the direction of its own ruin, then socialism ceases to be objectively necessary.”

Underconsumptionist breakdown theory

Underconsumptionist theory implies that if there isn’t a source of extra demand that is somehow external to the system, capitalism cannot realize surplus value in money form — profit — if it engages in expanded reproduction. If we combine Marx’s view that capitalism can exist only as a system of expanded reproduction with the underconsumptionist view that capitalism cannot carry out expanded reproduction without a market that is somehow external to the system, you draw the conclusion that a pure capitalist society consisting only of workers, and capitalists (and their hangers on) cannot exist.

“Imagine,” Shaikh writes, “that at the end of a production cycle the whole social product is deposited in a warehouse. At this point capitalists come forward and withdraw a portion of the total product to replace their producer goods used up in the last cycle, and workers come and withdraw their means of consumption. This leaves the surplus product, from which capitalists withdraw a portion for their personal consumption. Now Luxemburg asks, where do the buyers for the rest of the product come from? (This is, of course, the traditional underconsumption problem of filling the ‘demand gap’).”

If we assume that Luxemburg’s logic is sound here, this raises the question of how has capitalism been able to carry out expanded reproduction over several centuries. Luxemburg concluded that the extra demand must be generated outside of capitalist production. But where does this extra demand come from? Shaikh explains, “Luxemburg notes that the Malthusian solution of a third class of unproductive consumers makes no sense, since their revenue could only come from profits or wages.”

“She therefore argues that capitalist accumulation requires a strata of buyers outside of capitalist society who continually buy more from it than they sell to it. Thus trade between capitalist and non-capitalist spheres is a prime necessity for the historical existence of capitalism, and imperialism necessarily arises as capitalist nations struggle over control of these all important sources of effective demand.”

In a footnote, Shaikh explains that “Readers familiar with Volume I of Capital might recall that Marx distinguishes two types of circuits involving purchase and sale: C-M-C and M-C-M’. In the former the object is consumption, but in the latter the object is the expansion of capital. It is the latter which is the dominant (regulating) circuit of capitalist production. Luxemburg forgets this.”

Shaikh’s point is sound. But this is one of the relatively few places in Shaikh’s entire article where he refers to money. For the most part, Shaikh – like most other Marxist writers of either the Second or Third Internationals or who are independent treat the trade that the capitalists of Departments I and II engage in with each other as though it was barter. These Marxists, including Shaikh, forget that the individual capitalists that make up Department I purchase the consumer goods they and their workers buy from Department II not with means of production but with money. Similarly, the capitalists of Department II purchase the means of production produced by the capitalists of Department I not with consumer goods but also with money.

Si el comercio entre el Departamento I y el Departamento II es un comercio de trueque, no hay forma de que cualquier desproporción entre los dos departamentos pueda representar una sobreproducción general de mercancías que Marx y Engels (pero no la mayoría de los marxistas modernos, incluido Shaikh) describen repetidamente como la esencia de las crisis capitalistas cíclicas modernas. A lo sumo, las desproporciones entre los dos departamentos de producción pueden representar una sobreproducción parcial de algunos productos básicos respaldada por una escasez de otros productos básicos.

La Gran Depresión y Paul Sweezy

La Depresión de la década de 1930 revivió una vez más toda la cuestión de los límites históricos de la reproducción expandida capitalista. El capitalismo había sobrevivido a las crisis asociadas directamente con la Primera Guerra Mundial, excepto en el territorio de lo que se había convertido en la Unión Soviética. A mediados de la década de 1920, Luxemburgo (que había sido asesinado por fascistas alemanes en 1919 con el apoyo del gobierno socialdemócrata) fue completamente repudiado por los teóricos de la Segunda y Tercera Internacional. La reproducción expandida capitalista a todas las apariencias estaba progresando normalmente una vez más. Se asumió, especialmente por Nikolai Bukharin, el principal teórico de la Internacional Comunista, que esto continuaría a menos que o hasta que fuera nuevamente interrumpido por una nueva guerra mundial.

Pero luego vino la crisis que comenzó en 1929. Esta no fue simplemente la crisis cíclica habitual, aunque parecía ser al principio, sino que se convirtió en un colapso masivo en el proceso de reproducción expandida capitalista. Este "colapso" continuaría, primero en la forma de la Depresión y luego en la economía de guerra de la Segunda Guerra Mundial durante 15 años. Incluso hoy en día, cuando se les presiona, los economistas burgueses a menudo admiten que realmente no entienden qué causó la Depresión, es decir, la ruptura de la reproducción expandida capitalista, aunque esto no les impide agregar que "nosotros" sabemos cómo evitar un desastre similar en el futuro. Una nueva generación de economistas de izquierda y marxistas de los cuales Paul Sweezy emergió como una figura central intentó responder a la pregunta de por qué ocurrió la Depresión.

'Teoría del Desarrollo Capitalista'

Según Shaikh, Sweezy hizo dos intentos de desarrollar una teoría de las crisis capitalistas y el estancamiento. El primero fue en la "Teoría del Desarrollo Capitalista" de Sweezy, publicada en 1942. "A medida que el capitalismo se desarrolla... Shaikh escribe: "La mecanización avanza a buen ritmo y se necesitan más y más máquinas y materiales para respaldar a un trabajador; esto significa que los gastos de inversión capitalista en bienes de producción aumentan más rápido que los de salarios. ... Parece, por lo tanto, que la capacidad de producir bienes de consumo se expande más rápido que la demanda de consumo de los trabajadores. Se abre así una 'brecha de demanda'".

Sweezy creía que era poco probable que esta brecha de demanda se llenara con un mayor consumo capitalista porque a medida que el capitalismo se desarrolla, los ingresos de los capitalistas se vuelven tan colosales que no pueden gastar una fracción cada vez más baja de sus ingresos en consumo personal. Shaikh cita a Sweezy: "... de ello se deduce que existe una tendencia inherente a que el crecimiento del consumo se quede atrás del crecimiento de la producción de bienes de consumo... esta tendencia puede expresarse en crisis o en estancamiento, o en ambas".

Shaikh refuta la posición subconsumista de Sweezy a partir de 1942 de la siguiente manera: "El error fundamental en el análisis de Sweezy es el subconsumista tradicional de reducir el Departamento I al papel de un 'insumo' en el Departamento II. Una vez que se hace esta suposición, se deduce necesariamente que un aumento en la producción de bienes de producción puede utilizarse para hacer bienes de producción también, y como señalamos en la crítica de Luxemburgo, la reproducción ampliada requiere que se utilicen de esa manera".

Segundo intento de Sweezy

Según Shaikh, Sweezy hizo un segundo intento de explicar las crisis y los períodos de estancamiento del capitalismo en "Monopoly Capital", que escribió con Paul Baran, publicado por primera vez en 1966. "Monopoly Capital", explica Shaikh, "escrito a la luz de Marx, Keynes y Kalecki, ya no se limita solo al Departamento II o a la demanda del consumidor. En cambio, se argumenta aquí que el capitalismo moderno tiene una tendencia a expandir la capacidad productiva total más rápido que la demanda efectiva generada internamente, de modo que en ausencia de factores externos [énfasis de Shaikh], el capitalismo monopolista se hundiría cada vez más en un pantano de depresión crónica".

La tarea entonces, a pesar de que Baran y Sweezy trajeron el monopolio, al final no es diferente del problema tradicional de subconsunción de explicar no el estancamiento o la depresión, sino más bien por qué incluso el capitalismo monopolista puede crecer. Para explicar el continuo crecimiento capitalista, Shaikh escribe: "... Baran y Sweezy señalan las principales innovaciones (máquinas de vapor, ferrocarriles, automóviles), la expansión imperialista y las guerras, y la estimulación de la demanda en general a través de la publicidad, la política gubernamental, etc., como factores cruciales para superar la naturaleza inherentemente estancada del capitalismo monopolista.

La crítica de Shaikh al "capital monopolista"

Supongamos, escribe Shaikh, que la inversión capitalista es "lo suficientemente grande como para expandir la capacidad, pero no lo suficientemente grande como para comprar la oferta del período anterior; entonces, por supuesto, la capacidad productiva superará la demanda efectiva y el sistema se enfrentará a una brecha de demanda o 'problema de realización'. Este es precisamente el argumento implícito en la afirmación de Baran y Sweezy de que el excedente (potencial) se expande más rápido que la capacidad del sistema para absorberlo. Sin embargo, aunque tienden a culpar gran parte de este problema al monopolio, no discuten por qué los monopolistas persistirían en expandir en exceso la capacidad productiva ante una demanda insuficiente".

En otras palabras, gracias al monopolio capitalista, la inversión es lo suficientemente fuerte como para expandir la capacidad productiva, pero no lo suficientemente fuerte como para generar la demanda necesaria para comprar el producto aumentado que se puede producir con la ayuda de la capacidad adicional. Baran y Sweezy en "Monopoly Capital" ven esto como inherente a la naturaleza del monopolio: presumiblemente no fue un problema en la fase anterior del capitalismo que terminó a fines del siglo 19 cuando prevaleció la "competencia perfecta".

Shaikh cita a Erik Olin Wright (1947-2019): "La debilidad más grave en (esta) posición subconsuminista es que carece de cualquier teoría de los determinantes de la tasa real de acumulación. ... Gran parte de la escritura subconsiguiente ha optado, al menos implícitamente, por la solución de Keynes a este problema centrándose en la anticipación subjetiva de la ganancia por parte de los capitalistas como el determinante clave de la tasa de acumulación. Desde un punto de vista marxista, esta es una solución inadecuada. Todavía no he visto una teoría elaborada de la inversión y la tasa de acumulación por un teórico marxista subconsiguiente, y por lo tanto, por el momento, la teoría sigue siendo incompleta".

¿Qué determina realmente la acumulación o, si lo prefiere, la inversión? Es la tasa de ganancia tanto para la economía en su conjunto como para las tasas relativas de ganancia en diferentes ramas de la producción. El capital siempre fluye de las ramas con tasas de ganancias más bajas que el promedio a las ramas de tasas de ganancia más altas que el promedio. Aprendemos de Marx que la ganancia no es más que la forma monetaria de la plusvalía. Paul Sweezy estaba tan preocupado por la realización de la plusvalía que transforma la plusvalía en ganancia monetaria que descuidó la producción de plusvalía.

Keynes, quien también evitó la cuestión de la producción de plusvalía al igual que el vampiro evita la cruz, explicó que las decisiones de inversión capitalistas están determinadas por las expectativas capitalistas de ganancia. Pero seguramente estas "expectativas" no se basan en meros caprichos, sino que reflejan alguna realidad que existe fuera de las mentes de los capitalistas individuales. En contraste, con el problema de la realización de la plusvalía que ha dominado a los subconsumidores desde los días de Sismondi hasta el presente, Shaikh (y Grossman antes que él) están sobre todo interesados en la producción de plusvalía. Esto es especialmente cierto para el joven Shaikh en 1978, aunque esto se modificará un poco como veremos en el Shaikh maduro del "Capitalismo".

Esto nos trae la familia de teorías de crisis que Shaikh suscribe y que culpan a las crisis capitalistas del mundo real, y a los períodos de depresión y estancamiento, de una producción insuficiente de plusvalía. Estos se pueden dividir en dos sub familias. Una es la llamada teoría de la compresión de ganancias. Según esta teoría, durante la prosperidad el equilibrio de fuerzas en el mercado laboral cambia a favor de los vendedores de la fuerza de trabajo, la clase trabajadora. A medida que el desempleo disminuye, la competencia entre los trabajadores por los empleos disminuye, mientras que la competencia entre los capitalistas por los trabajadores aumenta. El resultado es una tasa decreciente de plusvalía y, finalmente, una caída absoluta en la masa de plusvalía, una situación que Marx llamó la "sobreproducción absoluta de capital". El colapso de la inversión desencadena una crisis económica.

La otra subfamilia de la escuela de "no hay suficiente plusvalía" involucra lo que Marx llama la composición orgánica del capital. A medida que el capitalismo se desarrolla, el capital constante (edificios de fábricas, máquinas y materia prima y auxiliar) aumenta en relación con el capital variable, la fuerza de trabajo comprada de la clase trabajadora. Suponiendo que la tasa de plusvalía permanezca sin cambios, como lo hace en el modelo de Bauer-Grossman que examinamos el mes pasado, la tasa de ganancia disminuirá a medida que aumente la composición orgánica del capital. Eventualmente, no se producirá suficiente plusvalía para sostener el nivel existente de empleo en ausencia de un aumento en la tasa de plusvalía, lo que hará que el sistema, o al menos el "pleno empleo", se "rompa".

To be continued.

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1 Compare President Biden’s statement with the words of Jesus Christ in his Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matthew 5:38 and 5:39: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.“ (back)

2 La concepción moderna de los pueblos "semíticos" data del siglo 19 cuando los lingüistas europeos descubrieron que el árabe, el hebreo, el arameo y las lenguas de Etiopía están estrechamente relacionadas entre sí, al igual que las lenguas de Europa y la India llamadas "indio-europeas" también están estrechamente relacionadas. En manos de los racistas europeos del siglo 19, esto se mezcló con el concepto de "raza", que enfrentó a los judíos "semíticos" contra la raza "aria" - indio-europea - que supuestamente están encerrados en un conflicto eterno entre sí. Esta idea se convirtió en la base de la ideología de la Alemania nazi. (volver)

3 San Pablo argumentó que la Ley Judía —la Torá— ya no es necesaria porque los seguidores de Cristo, que pronto serán conocidos como cristianos, eran espiritualmente al menos los descendientes de Issac, quienes según Pablo representan la "libertad" — de la Ley Judía. A los cristianos árabes no les gustó la implicación de que, dado que eran descendientes biológicos de Abraham a través de las esclavas Agar, son inferiores a los judíos y otros cristianos que espiritualmente son descendientes de Abraham a través de su esposa libre Sara.

El Islam puede ser visto como una especie de cristianismo que observa una versión modificada de la Ley Judía y rechaza a Pablo, quien al romper con el judaísmo insultó al supuesto antepasado tribal de los árabes Ismael. Hoy en día, la gran mayoría de los musulmanes, incluidos los residentes de Afganistán, son no árabes que son solo descendientes "espirituales" de Abraham e Ismael, pero este no era el caso cuando el Islam comenzó en el siglo VII. (volver)

4 En pocos años, la mayoría de los líderes soviéticos posteriores a 1985, incluido Gorbachov, rompieron por completo con cualquier pretensión de dommunismo y marxismo y se convirtieron en anticomunistas abiertos. (volver)

5 La Nueva Ruta de la Seda es una iniciativa del gobierno de China para desarrollar rutas terrestres y marítimas que vincularán la economía industrial de China con Europa. El imperialismo estadounidense se opone firmemente a la Nueva Ruta de la Seda, ya que, entre otras cosas, amenaza la sumisión de Europa a los Estados Unidos, que forma la piedra angular del imperio mundial de los Estados Unidos. (volver)

6 Talibán es una palabra tomada del idioma árabe, que significa estudiantes. (volver)

7 Las monarquías petroleras como Arabia Saudita tenían poblaciones muy bajas antes de que el descubrimiento del petróleo enriqueció a las pequeñas poblaciones tribales que son nativas de estas regiones. Por lo tanto, no hay mucho de un proletariado nativo en estas regiones. En cambio, las monarquías petroleras dependen de los trabajadores enviados desde el extranjero, en su mayoría musulmanes de Pakistán e India. Estos trabajadores son cruelmente explotados, y en el caso de las mujeres, a menudo sexualmente. No tienen perspectivas de permanecer en las monarquías petroleras y planean regresar a la India o Pakistán. La falta de una clase obrera con alguna perspectiva de permanecer en las monarquías petroleras ha hecho que estas monarquías sea difícil de derrocar desde dentro. Es por eso que las monarquías petroleras son tan valiosas para el imperialismo estadounidense. La mayor población nativa en Afganistán significa que las posibilidades de desarrollar un proletariado nativo a medida que la sociedad tribal se desintegra es mucho mejor en ese país que en las monarquías petroleras. (volver)

8 El estado estadounidense de Texas acababa de aprobar una ley que no solo prohíbe el aborto después de las seis semanas o cada vez que se puede detectar un latido cardíaco fetal. Otorga a cualquier persona privada en cualquier parte del mundo que descubra que se ha producido un aborto después de las seis semanas para demandar en la corte a las personas involucradas en el aborto y cobrar una recompensa de $ 10,000 de ellos.

La facción republicana de la Corte Suprema, tres de cuyos miembros fueron nombrados por Donald Trump, se negó a declarar inconstitucional esta ley y ha entrado en vigor. Un país que puede permitir que un estado apruebe una ley tan bárbara y tolera a los "jueces" de la Corte Suprema que se niegan a declarar inconstitucional tal ley no tiene derecho a sermonear a Afganistán ni a nadie más sobre los derechos de las mujeres. (volver)

9 El principal economista trotskista fue Ernest Mandel (1923-1995). En su "Teoría Económica Marxista", publicada por primera vez en 1962, Mandel, que había sido miembro de la comisión de estudios económicos de la Federación General Belga del Trabajo hasta principios de la década de 1960, fue bastante desdeñoso con el trabajo de Grossman. Sin embargo, en "Capitalismo tardío", publicado por primera vez en alemán en 1972, la influencia de Grossman en Mandel es muy fuerte. (volver)