<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Orsan</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:orsan1234@gmail.com">orsan1234@gmail.com</a>></span><br>Date: Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 3:36 AM<br>Subject: [NetworkedLabour] A major contribution to the dialectical-systemic analysis of transnational revolutions<br>To: "<<a href="mailto:networkedlabour@lists.contrast.org">networkedlabour@lists.contrast.org</a>>" <<a href="mailto:networkedlabour@lists.contrast.org">networkedlabour@lists.contrast.org</a>><br><br><br><div dir="auto">Another must read from <span style="font-size:medium;background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">Kees van der Pijl:</span><h1 style="text-align:start;margin:20px 0px 10px;font-weight:300"><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)"><font size="3">A theory of transnational revolution: universal history according to Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and its implications </font></span></h1><div><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)"><font size="3">...</font></span></div><div><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)"><font size="3"><br></font></span></div><div><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">
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<p><span style="font-size:11.000000pt;font-family:'Times'">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).
</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.000000pt;font-family:'Times'">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.
</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.000000pt;font-family:'Times'">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.
</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.000000pt;font-family:'Times'">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 </span><span style="font-size:11.000000pt;font-family:'Times';font-style:italic">idealist</span><span style="font-size:11.000000pt;font-family:'Times'">stripe (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 </span><span style="font-family:Times;font-size:11pt;background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">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.</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-size:11.000000pt;font-family:'Times'"> ...</span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></span></div><div><a href="https://www.academia.edu/12976734/A_theory_of_transnational_revolution_universal_history_according_to_Eugen_Rosenstock-Huessy_and_its_implications" target="_blank">https://www.academia.edu/12976734/A_theory_of_transnational_revolution_universal_history_according_to_Eugen_Rosenstock-Huessy_and_its_implications</a></div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>
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