From Marx’s kitchenThe Asian Age India Madhuri Santanam Sondhi
More than a century ago, Karl Marx said he did not want any recipes for a kitchen that did not yet exist. Then a kitchen was built in his name in which fascist recipes were, and still are, used. Eugen LoeblTalking the other day with a young woman who burned with revolutionary ardour when describing the destitution characteristic of Nepal and parts of India, particularly Bihar, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, I found myself caught in a time loop. The impassioned critique of capitalism, globalisation and feudalism came straight from the heart, as the frustration with the slow and corrupt processes of Indian democracy. But hard to understand was the faith in communistic solutions, given that among the communist states that survive the ignominious collapse of the Soviet Empire, not one can be cited as a "successful" recipe from Marx's kitchen for re-structuring society, not North Korea, not Cuba, and certainly not China, which endures through heavy imports of capitalism and mild liberalism.I recalled our meeting in India with Eugen Loebl more than 30 years ago, former minister in the post-war Czech communist government, one of three who miraculously survived the notorious anti-Semitic Slansky trials of 1952. He spent five years in solitary out of eleven in a Marxist jail. A committed communist and revolutionary, he was falsely accused, imprisoned and tortured to confess to imaginary "crimes." During his incarceration, Loebl agonised over what had brutalised and barbarised the system in which he had wholeheartedly believed. He looked beyond human factors and misinterpretations of the canonical truth, to theoretical flaws in the original doctrine which systematically led towards fascism or totalitarianism. When permitted, he meticulously re-read and analysed the complete works of Karl Marx. Forbidden to write, he mentally, paragraph by paragraph, composed and memorised what became a book, published later during the Prague Spring. He participated enthusiastically in the attempt to establish "socialism with a human face" but when the fraternal Warsaw Pact tanks entered Prague, Loebl fled to America, where his book appeared in translation as Humanomics.In America Loebl spent time on campuses with revolutionary anti-Vietnam coffee-house intellectuals, and wrote up his impressions as Conversations with the Bewildered. The arguments and discontents of these affluent adolescents echoed those of my revolutionary friend and other children of the Indian rich and/or privileged castes. Loebl sympathised with their genuine desire to change an unjust system, but pointed to the flaws in their violent methodology and the system that was to replace it. He offered them three broad interrelated themes; a distinction between pseudo and real revolutions, an analysis of the real motor of economic growth, and the crucial failure of modern economics, whether of the left or right variety, to include normative and cultural considerations in their praxiology.In India Loebl met with students on the JNU campus — a decade before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Musing over the 1917 events, Loebl suggested that the Russian revolution had been a "pseudo-revolution"; revolutionary in successfully overthrowing the Tsarist regime but "pseudo" in that with its internally flawed theories, it failed to realise its aims. In place of "leadership" it created a "dictatorship" of the proletariat, a euphemism for the dictatorship of a party or a single person with all the negative consequences that follow. He also interacted with Gandhians: he saw Gandhi methodologically as a non-violent revolutionary in his commitment to social change, appreciated his effort to introduce morality as an integral factor in social, economic and political thought, but disagreed with his rejection of industrialisation.His own examples of true revolutions which have radically transformed society from deep within are the scientific and technological revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries, followed by the communications revolution of the last quarter. "In all previous revolutions, the oppressed classes took over from their oppressors: the dictatorship of the old class gave place to that of the new." But, "(T)he technological revolution … has replaced the oppressed class by the natural forces which have been mastered through the genius of the human intellect." Labourers have been liberated from their toil by the invention of machines or "energy slaves." No doubt radical critique has shifted towards the maleficent exploitation of nature with ill effects on natural and human life, but Marx's analysis of economic growth based on exploitation of the labouring classes has been rendered obsolete and irrelevant.Indeed, Loebl's definition of revolution underscores the argument that it is not surplus labour but brain power as mental innovation, homo sapiens and not homo laborans, which motors economic change, and has been so from the invention of the wheel. Previously, innovations came at a slow pace, and entrepreneurs profited from the exploitation of human labour; but for nearly half a century now, the rapid speed of scientific discovery and its technological applications has made human labour redundant. Ownership of the means of production can be equally retrogressive in private or state hands; today the means of production do not create the superstructure, rather people at the high level of the superstructure create the "material basis of production." Thus social and economic problems can be dealt with through "the growing intellectual capacity of wider classes" which "provide fertile ground for new ideas."Is this true for countries outside the highly developed world? Before visiting India Loebl thought not, sharing the views of other West European economists who dismissed revolutionary communism as bad for Europe but good for the "backward" or feudal societies of Asia, Africa and Latin America. But his three-week Indian visit in 1979 stimulated him to think more innovatively about this society with its interwoven levels of simplicity and sophistication. Instead of a uniform economic policy for the whole country, he toyed with the possibility of several "lucro-active" approaches which could benefit both the mini-producer and the big industrialist.Loebl critiqued both dirigiste and free market economists for failing to take integral cognisance of the human factor in their theories. In their search for "scientific objectivity," economists overlook real networks of actual living persons with unquantifiable beliefs, norms and choices. To "objectively" condemn percentages of people to unemployment or poverty (through rising prices); to contemplate sacrificing present generations to shining statistics for tomorrow, was to him grossly inhuman, whether from a communist or capitalist perspective. He had explored the possibility of linking economic thinking to the religious values permeating western culture with a Catholic businessman, Stephen Roman: their book, The Responsible Society was republished in India as Alternative to Communism & Capitalism. Looking for a similar dialogue with Hinduism he met with a monk of the Ramakrishna Mission who, however, could not immediately connect Upanishadic spiritualism with an economic dimension. However the monk was deeply impressed with Loebl's stoic fortitude throughout his ordeal, and how he had utilised those punishing years for reflection and constructive thought.Despite a few anachronisms arising from the times and circumstances in which he wrote, Loebl remains a stimulating and innovative thinker. He was keen to spend more time in India enlarging his economic thinking to encompass the problems of rural development small enterprises, crafts et al. He died, however, a few years later. His definition of the economy as a system of thinking human beings is both a human and an intellectual challenge.
http://www.asianage.com/?INA=2:175:175:138732© 2005 The Asian Age
More than a century ago, Karl Marx said he did not want any recipes for a kitchen that did not yet exist. Then a kitchen was built in his name in which fascist recipes were, and still are, used. Eugen LoeblTalking the other day with a young woman who burned with revolutionary ardour when describing the destitution characteristic of Nepal and parts of India, particularly Bihar, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, I found myself caught in a time loop. The impassioned critique of capitalism, globalisation and feudalism came straight from the heart, as the frustration with the slow and corrupt processes of Indian democracy. But hard to understand was the faith in communistic solutions, given that among the communist states that survive the ignominious collapse of the Soviet Empire, not one can be cited as a "successful" recipe from Marx's kitchen for re-structuring society, not North Korea, not Cuba, and certainly not China, which endures through heavy imports of capitalism and mild liberalism.I recalled our meeting in India with Eugen Loebl more than 30 years ago, former minister in the post-war Czech communist government, one of three who miraculously survived the notorious anti-Semitic Slansky trials of 1952. He spent five years in solitary out of eleven in a Marxist jail. A committed communist and revolutionary, he was falsely accused, imprisoned and tortured to confess to imaginary "crimes." During his incarceration, Loebl agonised over what had brutalised and barbarised the system in which he had wholeheartedly believed. He looked beyond human factors and misinterpretations of the canonical truth, to theoretical flaws in the original doctrine which systematically led towards fascism or totalitarianism. When permitted, he meticulously re-read and analysed the complete works of Karl Marx. Forbidden to write, he mentally, paragraph by paragraph, composed and memorised what became a book, published later during the Prague Spring. He participated enthusiastically in the attempt to establish "socialism with a human face" but when the fraternal Warsaw Pact tanks entered Prague, Loebl fled to America, where his book appeared in translation as Humanomics.In America Loebl spent time on campuses with revolutionary anti-Vietnam coffee-house intellectuals, and wrote up his impressions as Conversations with the Bewildered. The arguments and discontents of these affluent adolescents echoed those of my revolutionary friend and other children of the Indian rich and/or privileged castes. Loebl sympathised with their genuine desire to change an unjust system, but pointed to the flaws in their violent methodology and the system that was to replace it. He offered them three broad interrelated themes; a distinction between pseudo and real revolutions, an analysis of the real motor of economic growth, and the crucial failure of modern economics, whether of the left or right variety, to include normative and cultural considerations in their praxiology.In India Loebl met with students on the JNU campus — a decade before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Musing over the 1917 events, Loebl suggested that the Russian revolution had been a "pseudo-revolution"; revolutionary in successfully overthrowing the Tsarist regime but "pseudo" in that with its internally flawed theories, it failed to realise its aims. In place of "leadership" it created a "dictatorship" of the proletariat, a euphemism for the dictatorship of a party or a single person with all the negative consequences that follow. He also interacted with Gandhians: he saw Gandhi methodologically as a non-violent revolutionary in his commitment to social change, appreciated his effort to introduce morality as an integral factor in social, economic and political thought, but disagreed with his rejection of industrialisation.His own examples of true revolutions which have radically transformed society from deep within are the scientific and technological revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries, followed by the communications revolution of the last quarter. "In all previous revolutions, the oppressed classes took over from their oppressors: the dictatorship of the old class gave place to that of the new." But, "(T)he technological revolution … has replaced the oppressed class by the natural forces which have been mastered through the genius of the human intellect." Labourers have been liberated from their toil by the invention of machines or "energy slaves." No doubt radical critique has shifted towards the maleficent exploitation of nature with ill effects on natural and human life, but Marx's analysis of economic growth based on exploitation of the labouring classes has been rendered obsolete and irrelevant.Indeed, Loebl's definition of revolution underscores the argument that it is not surplus labour but brain power as mental innovation, homo sapiens and not homo laborans, which motors economic change, and has been so from the invention of the wheel. Previously, innovations came at a slow pace, and entrepreneurs profited from the exploitation of human labour; but for nearly half a century now, the rapid speed of scientific discovery and its technological applications has made human labour redundant. Ownership of the means of production can be equally retrogressive in private or state hands; today the means of production do not create the superstructure, rather people at the high level of the superstructure create the "material basis of production." Thus social and economic problems can be dealt with through "the growing intellectual capacity of wider classes" which "provide fertile ground for new ideas."Is this true for countries outside the highly developed world? Before visiting India Loebl thought not, sharing the views of other West European economists who dismissed revolutionary communism as bad for Europe but good for the "backward" or feudal societies of Asia, Africa and Latin America. But his three-week Indian visit in 1979 stimulated him to think more innovatively about this society with its interwoven levels of simplicity and sophistication. Instead of a uniform economic policy for the whole country, he toyed with the possibility of several "lucro-active" approaches which could benefit both the mini-producer and the big industrialist.Loebl critiqued both dirigiste and free market economists for failing to take integral cognisance of the human factor in their theories. In their search for "scientific objectivity," economists overlook real networks of actual living persons with unquantifiable beliefs, norms and choices. To "objectively" condemn percentages of people to unemployment or poverty (through rising prices); to contemplate sacrificing present generations to shining statistics for tomorrow, was to him grossly inhuman, whether from a communist or capitalist perspective. He had explored the possibility of linking economic thinking to the religious values permeating western culture with a Catholic businessman, Stephen Roman: their book, The Responsible Society was republished in India as Alternative to Communism & Capitalism. Looking for a similar dialogue with Hinduism he met with a monk of the Ramakrishna Mission who, however, could not immediately connect Upanishadic spiritualism with an economic dimension. However the monk was deeply impressed with Loebl's stoic fortitude throughout his ordeal, and how he had utilised those punishing years for reflection and constructive thought.Despite a few anachronisms arising from the times and circumstances in which he wrote, Loebl remains a stimulating and innovative thinker. He was keen to spend more time in India enlarging his economic thinking to encompass the problems of rural development small enterprises, crafts et al. He died, however, a few years later. His definition of the economy as a system of thinking human beings is both a human and an intellectual challenge.
http://www.asianage.com/?INA=2:175:175:138732© 2005 The Asian Age
The greatest valour lies in devouring by means of renouncing - tena tyaktena bhunjitha (Isha Up. 1)- what loftier economic prescription?
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