Book Notes

Book notes

MF/World Bank/WTO: The Free-Market Fiasco IIRE Notebook for Study and Research no. 24/25, 1995 "FIFTY YEARS IS NOT ENOUGH!", the International Monetary Fund's public relations director said last year in a debate in Madrid. "There is still a lot of work to be done." A more ominous threat to the well-being, in fact survival, of billions of human beings may never have been made before. IMF/World Bank/WTO: The Free-Market Fiasco makes short work of the protestations of innocence and good intentions made by the men who preside over today's globalized economy. It does more than describe the suffering caused in Africa, Latin America, South Asia and Eastern Europe by IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization policies. It explains why the suffering results inevitably from the neo-liberalism unanimously embraced over the last two decades by the world's ruling elites, North and South. Published in cooperation with the Brussels-based Committee for the Cancellation of the Third-World Debt and introduced by Committee eader Eric Toussaint, NSR 24/25's articles complement each other in describing the trap in which the peoples of the South have been caught Jacques Bournay, Susan George and Michel Chossudovsky each help explain how IMF/World Bank Structural Adjustment Programmes force countries to sacrifice their inhabitants' health, education and basic nutrition in order to devote "everything to export" and funnel money to Western banks. Applying this prescription to dozens of countries simultaneously has made export prices tumble while the volume of how the latest GATT accords re-affirm the Third World's exclusion from many Western markets, while giving the new World Trade Organization unprecedented powers to enforce the inequitable treaty. The IMF and World Bank's public relations offensive has tried to hide their responsibility for global impoverishment by talking about "social safety nets". They have been particularly glib on such fashionable topics as "the centrality of women to development" and "ecologically sustainable development". The Notebook exposes this rhetoric. Christian Ferri and Vandana Shiva show the emptiness of IMF/World Bank environmentalist pretensions, for example. Ferri shows how the World Bank continues to have displaced 2.5 million people. Shiva describes the effects on ThirdWorld farmers, consumers and ecosystems of multinationals increasingly bold claims to "intellectual property rights" to millennia-old agricultural and The Bretton Woods institutions' claims to have slowed or even turned around global impoverishment are wrong. Kevin Watkins describes the IMF/World Bank-created disaster area that is Africa. Chossudovsky exposes IMF/World Bank co-responsibility for the collapse of Somalia and genocide in Rwanda. James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer explain why Latin America's "lost decade" of the 1980s has not given way to prosperity in the 1990s; Michel Husson illuminates the well-known case of Mexico. Aleksandr Buzgalin, Andrei Kolganov and Jean-Marie Chauvier explain how the IMF and World Bank have managed to halfdismantle the Russian economy. The political implications of the IMF, World Bank's and WTO's growing power are no less far-reaching than the economic and social consequences of their policies. Pierre Rousset raises some disturbing questions about how these institutions are steadily restricting the range of democratic decision-making on a national level, and the kinds of democratic alternatives that Emerging from the international movement that is looking for democratic alternatives, NSR 24/25 can be useful for several different audiences. For those beginning to explore these issues, it offers a wealth of information. for those already active, it provides an arsenal of arguments and advances some important strategic discussions. For all those who question today's neo-liberal consensus, it provides important elements for understanding the new tasks we face. Le discordance des temps; Essais sur les crises, les classes, I'nistoire by Daniel Bensaid, Editions de la passion, Paris, 1995, 180 FFR This [French language] book by our comrade Daniel Bensaid has three main sections, consecrated to economic rhythms and crisis, the relationship between the class struggle and other forms of social conflict, and thirdly a number of essays on historical reason (Péguy, Derrida, Benjamin, Blanqui and Bloch). Ten of the book's 13 chapters are unpublished material. The first section deals with the specific logic of Marx's Capital. Bensaid underlines the coherence of Marx's logic, and makes a number of reflections concerning crises, long waves, and the relationship between the market and modernity. In the second section he discusses the theory of bureaucracy, the articulation between the class relationship and sexual domination, and the place of national and ethnic questions in this epoch of globalisation. This work represents a complement to what promises to be Bensaid's major work to date, Marx l'impestif, published by Éditions Fayard in October 1995. The final lines of La discordance des temps resume Bensaid's project, in his own, very literary style: "''Marxism''... is accused of having preached a religion of terrestrial salvation, of having let loose the blind forces of productionism, of having blessed the weapons of science and technology, of having organised the idolatrous cult of the proletariat, and of having brought to its full realisation the totalitarian tyranny of historical reason. The prosecutors have evidence texts and citations which they put forward. In a scholastic quarrel, the defence could produce its own, symmetrical pieces of evidence, which would contradict or refute those of their opponents. But this is not some pious attempt to go "back to Marx". This is a necessary 'detour". Reviewed by Jean-Michel Krivine International Viewpoint n° 271 -November 1995 33

Lean Production: The capitalist utopia? by Tony Smith, IRE Notebook for Study and Research no. 23, 1995 PROGRESSIVE ACTIVISTS AND THINKERS IN THE 1990s may face more difficult challenges at the same time than ever before in this century: ecological challenges to old visions of abundance; the collapse of "really existing socialism"; the now unrivalled military supremacy of the USA; economic globalization. Lean Production responds to one such challenge: the claim that major economic changes now underway are making the left's old analysis and critique of capitalism obsolete. The world economy has not only become more closely linked together in the last few years: its technology, its distribution networks, and its basic organizing units on the shop floor are also changing. The business press claims that the new "lean production" unites companies, workers and consumers in the harmonious pursuit of common interests. Innovative ways of organizing production and marketing, within an economic system that is still capitalist, are widely argued to eliminate earlier antagonisms between capital and labour, between producers and consumers, and between different companies. Though progressives may be sceptical of these arguments, we can neither deny that changes are going on nor ignore the interpretations being put forward. This is why the IIRE asked Tony Smith, professor of philosophy and author (among other works) of The Logic of Marx's 'Capital', to examine the new trends. Lean Production: A Capitalist Utopia?, is the result of his work. Is DAS KAPITAL OBSOLETE? Smith agrees that lean production is transforming many of the

"Fordist" ways of organizing production. If the assertions of lean production ideologues are true, he says, then much of what Marx said about capitalist economies is essentially obsolete. He then lays out key points of Marx's analysis, explaining why Marx defined the capital-labour relationship as exploitative, saw consumers' interests as conflicting with capital's, and considered antagonism between units of capital inevitable. Picking apart the business press's arguments one by one, Smith argues that the real changes brought about by lean production do not alter the exploitative, alienating and anarchic character of capitalism. Finally, he explains why lean production is in some ways more efficient and dynamic than the bureaucratically-planned economies that existed until recently in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. He proposes a model for a socialist economy, based on grassroots • participation and democratic coordination, that could match the dynamism of lean production while genuinely keeping its broken promises of cooperation and harmony. Smith's aim is not just to respond to a theoretical challenge, but also to help people respond to the practical challenge of lean production. He considers that the most important forums for the critical analysis of new production techniques are the shop floors, offices, union halls, and political settings where workers discuss their own experiences and plan their own actions. This work is meant to contribute to their discussions and strategizing. * To announce your publication in this free listing, send a sample copy to "Book reviers" c/o International Viewpoint, PECI, BP 85, 75522 Paris cedex 11, France. To order, try your nearest progressive bookstore, contact the publishers directly, or write to : La Breche, 9 rue de Tunis, 75011 Paris, France tel. (+33 1) 43 67 63 57 fax 43 79 29 61 (English, French and Spanish spoken.. Where no price is given, we suggest you enclose a donation of us$ 10 in any convertible currency to cover the postage costs of the publisher. 34 International Viewpoint n° 271 - November 1995

Philosophy and Science in the writings of L. Trotsky, (ФІЛОГОФІА КАІ ЕПІДТНМН ZTA KEIMENA TOY TPOTZKI) by Constantine Skordoulis, 1995, IAMOS (Athens, Greece) This Greek-language work approaches the philosphical thought of L Trotsky as it emerges in Philosophical Writings 1933-35 and his writings on science while President of the Soviet Commission for Industry and Technology (1925). In the first chapter the author presents Trotsky's writings on philospohy and science and evaluates his contribution in these fields. Skordoulis criticises the Stalinist "theory of two sciences", and Althusser's views. The second chapter examines the philosophical foundations of the Theory of Permanent Revolution. The law of combined and uneven development appears as a specific expression of the law of transformation of quantity to quality, whose presence is dominant in Trotsky's writings on the theory of evolution and Darwin. Skordoulis then discusses the crisis and subsequent collapse of the USSR and other "post-capitalist" societies, and tries to re-establish the relevance of theories on the class nature of these states and their potential evolution which are based on Trotsky's theoretical approach. The final chapter presents the first translation into Greek of a number of Trotsky's writings on science, including Philosophical Writings 1933-35 (published in English in 1986), "Dialectical Materialism and Science" (published in English in The Age of Permanent Revolution, I. Deutscher and G. Novack (eds.) and "Dialectics and the Immutability of Syllogism" (published in English in Writings of Leon Trotsky 1939-40, Pathfinder, New York). Constantine Skordoulis lectures on the philosophy of physics at the University of loannia, Greece. This book is dedicated to the memory of Christos Anastasiadis (1910-1987), lifelong member of the Greek section of the Fourth International. * JUST PUBLISHED Ending the Nightmare: Socialists against racism and fascism. John Lister (Ed.), October 1995, Russell Press, ISBN 1-872242-07-3 Includes a number of contribtions to the Socialist Outlook 1994 Summer School on Fighting Racism and Fascism, and an abridged transcript of Ernest Mandel's speech to a 1987 Fourth International course in Amsterdam. £4.95, $10 (p+p 15%) from Socialist Outlook, PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU. Make British cheques payable to Socialist Outlook Fund. Other countries write for details. * Political Islam: Fundamentalism or National Struggle? by Adel Samara, October 1995, Al Mashria Centre for Development and Cultural Studies, Jerusalem (103 p,) £4/$6 * The Ideas of Leon Trotsky, Hillel Ticktin & Michael Cox (eds.), November 1995, Porcupine Press Contributors include Lynne Poole, Antonio Carlo, Stephen Dabydeen, Michel Löwy, David Gorman, Richard Day, Alan Wald, Susan Weissman, David Law, the two editors and Trotsky himself. Pre-publication price £12 (until 1 Dec. 1995) from Porcupine Bookcellar, 5 Caledonia Rd, London N1 (p+p £1.75 UK, £3 elsewhere). *