[Marxism] An introduction to Henryk Grossman

[Louis Proyect]

One of the motivations in scheduling a discussion of "crisis theory" 
in this online introduction to Marxism class is that it gave me an 
excuse to read Rick Kuhn's new biography "Henryk Grossman and the 
Recovery of Marxism". I have heard Grossman's name bandied about on 
various leftwing mailing lists for the past 10 years and was curious 
to see what the buzz was about. Kuhn's book has been a rewarding 
experience both in terms of its scholarly treatment of a somewhat 
neglected figure and as an important piece of the jigsaw puzzle of 
capitalist crisis.

This puzzle is of course all the more compelling given the events of 
the past few months. A Lexis-Nexis search on "1929? for articles 
within the last 3 months yields 992 hits! Here's something from one 
right off the top:

         How will new Fed chairman Ben Bernanke's handling of the 
current crisis compare to Greenspan's record? The big worry is that 
the collapse in share prices has been accompanied by a banking 
crisis. With hundreds of billions of sub-prime mortgage losses yet to 
surface, most banks have given up lending to one another. This has 
inevitably invited comparisons with what happened between 1929 and 1933.

         As against that, Bernanke has cut US interest rates four 
times since last September. They now stand at just 3.5 per cent as 
against 5.25 per cent when the crisis first began. And the Fed isn't 
done cutting yet, with a further rate cut, possibly to three per 
cent, likely before the end of the month. While there is a chance 
that things could go terribly, horribly wrong, the likelihood is that 
cheaper money will limit the effects of any economic downturn.

         –Irish Independent, January 26, 2008

Rick Kuhn has been devoted to re-establishing Grossman's reputation 
since 1993. His preface gives reasons why. Part of it was personal. 
Like Grossman, Kuhn's Jewish parents had to flee Nazi-controlled 
territory in 1938 and 1939. (Grossman made it out of Europe safely, 
but his wife, son and many other relatives were killed by the Nazis.)

But the main reason was what Grossman had to contribute on Marxist 
economics, which was of great importance to Kuhn's peers, including 
Anwar Shaikh, whose "excellent survey of Marxist crisis theory 
provided a sympathetic account of Grossman's position." This survey 
of course was the text around which I focused my first post on this topic.

One of Kuhn's first forays into the area of Grossman studies appeared 
in the Summer 1995 edition of Science and Society. It was titled 
"Capitalism's collapse: Henryk Grossman's Marxism". The second 
paragraph is about as key to the discussion that we have been having 
on this topic as anything I have read anywhere:

         Capitalism does many horrible things to people. It generates 
radical differences in income and wealth, with starvation on one side 
and immense luxury on the other. It alienates us from each other, and 
from our natural capacities — for work and even for sexual pleasure. 
The system reproduces itself by dividing humanity along arbitrary 
lines of nation, gender, race, religion and sexual orientation. Its 
wars periodically massacre huge numbers of people. All of these 
provide bases for socialist critiques of the capitalist mode of 
production. But if capitalism can go on forever, increasing the 
production of wealth all the time, then in principal economic 
problems, at least, could either be overcome through working-class 
action to reallocate wealth or ameliorated into unpleasant but 
bearable irritants. In these circumstances, Grossmann argues, the 
working class could just as easily reconcile itself with capitalism 
as voluntaristically attempt to realize socialism.

full: 
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/03/21/an-introduction-to-henryk-grossman/