---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Orsan <[email protected]> Date: Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 3:36 AM Subject: [NetworkedLabour] A major contribution to the dialectical-systemic analysis of transnational revolutions To: "<[email protected]>" < [email protected]> Another must read from Kees van der Pijl:A theory of transnational revolution: universal history according to Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and its implications ... Rosenstock's perspective can perhaps be best classified as neo- Hegelian, and there are elements of teleology and a neglect of social structure and productive forces which readers should be aware of. His aim, as stated at the beginning of the book, is to transcend 'the purely theoretical dialectic of the Marxists by a true dialectic of peoples and parts of the world' (Rosenstock-Huessy, 1961:xii, quoted hereafter as RH). Marxism, according to Rosenstock, tends to reflect the capitalist order in that it ignores the organic side of society, and like capital itself, annihilates social time by imposing an inexorable logic of equations (RH 484-5). Certainly the dialectic of the productive forces and the relations of production which Marxists self-confidently applied to explain the progression from 1789 to 1917 and beyond, in the 1970s as in the 1930s failed to take into account the clash between capitalist 'efficiency' and the rhythms of organic social life (day and night, the seasons, childbirth and parenthood, youth and old age) which Rosenstock considers the fundamental contradiction and limit of a capitalist order (rather than actual exploitation (RH 405, 474; cf. Polanyi, 1957)). The effects, material and ideological, on societies radically exposed to this clash accordingly have been underrated; but so was the degree to which Soviet-type socialism represented an effort to catch up with the capitalist west rather than establish a society beyond it. Since the poten- tial for a resumption of capital's revolutionary dynamic was not recognized either (as testified by terms such as 'state monopoly capi- talism' and 'late capitalism' (cf. Funke, 1978)), the march of history was too easily taken for granted. What Rosenstock in his turn fails to acknowledge is that capital, too, projects a spiritual totality, to which its 'subjects' orient their particular expectations and actions. He therefore cannot account for the power of capital to drive forward global unification through processes of class formation on a world scale; instead, a bipolar state structure is consid- ered the end state of world revolution. But, as we will argue below, the teleology and finality of Rosenstock's theory can be transcended precisely by reintroducing this dimension of capitalist globalization. This article is built up as follows. First, we will present a short summary of Rosenstock's theory of transnationally connected revolu- tions. Next, we will argue that Rosenstock's theory is an elaboration of Hegel's philosophy of history but, unlike other 'universal histories' of an intended or unintentional idealiststripe (i.e. projecting back into history what appears self-evident today), the teleological and rational- izing aspects with Rosenstock are more in the nature of unacknowledged residues, since his professed aim is to analyse the cumulative effects of unique historical combinations; the concrete real in other words includes the rational rather than the other way around. In the final part, we will argue that if we assign capital its proper place as a transnational force, we need to divide Rosenstock's national/universal revolutions into those which paved the way for the rise of commerce and capital and to some extent coincided with it, and those which faced an already existing universalism of capital centring on the English-speaking coun- tries. If amended in this way, Rosenstock's theory remains important as an explanation of national/transnational revolutions in an apparently unified, 'closed' capitalist world. ... https://www.academia.edu/12976734/A_theory_of_transnational_revolution_unive... _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list [email protected] http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/