Jacques Attali and Eric Hobsbawm in conversation with John Kampfner

Similar documents
EUR1 What did Lenin and Stalin contribute to communism in Russia?

Karl Marx. Karl Marx ( ), German political philosopher and revolutionary, the most important of all

The History and Political Economy of the Peoples Republic of China ( )

[Orwell s] greatest accomplishment was to remind people that they could think for themselves at a time in this century when humanity seemed to prefer

Kent Academic Repository

Trotsky s Notable Publications

2.1.2: Brief Introduction to Marxism

Testament of George Lukacs

Social Salvation. It is quite impossible to have a stagnate society. It is human nature to change, progress

Animal Farm. Background Information & Literary Elements Used

Accelerated English II Summer reading: Due August 5, 2016*

Animal Farm: Historical Allegory = Multiple Levels of Meaning

Historical interpretations of Stalinism. A short introduction.

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION KEY ECONOMIC INFLUENCES

Reason Papers Vol. 37, no. 1. Blackledge, Paul. Marxism and Ethics. Ithaca, NY: State University of New York Press, 2011.

AP European History. Sample Student Responses and Scoring Commentary. Inside: Short Answer Question 4. Scoring Guideline.

Marxism Of The Era Of Imperialism

http / /politics. people. com. cn /n1 /2016 / 0423 /c html

From GREETINGS TO ITALIAN, FRENCH AND GERMAN COMMUNISTS

Page 1 of 6 Transcript by Rev.com

1. STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO IDENTIFY AND EXPLAIN THE CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF THE RISE OF TOTALITARIANISM AND COMMUNISM

The Comparison of Marxism and Leninism

Emergence of Josef Stalin. By Mr. Baker

About the Author. George Orwell s real name is Eric Blair. He was born in India in 1903.

HEGEL (Historical, Dialectical Idealism)

18. THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION TO THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY; THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE OPPORTUNIST FACTIONS OF TROTSKY, BUKHARIN AND OTHERS

Can Socialism Make Sense?

Affirmative Dialectics: from Logic to Anthropology

SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY: A REASSESSMENT

Module-3 KARL MARX ( ) Developed by:

Communism, Socialism, Capitalism and the Russian Revolution

Peter Singer, Famine, Affluence, and Morality

19. RESOLUTE SUPPORT FOR THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION AND THE NATIONAL-LIBERATION MOVEMENTS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD

Transition materials for A Level History. Russia

Worker s Marseillaise La Marseillaise

ANDREW MARR SHOW 28 TH FEBRUARY 2016 IAIN DUNCAN SMITH

Is the Pope a communist?

"El Mercurio" (p. D8-D9), 12 April 1981, Santiago de Chile

AS History. Tsarist and Communist Russia, /1H Autocracy, Reform and Revolution: Russia, Mark scheme.

Record of Conversation between Aleksandr Yakovlev and Zbigniew Brzezinski, October 31, 1989

The dangers of the sovereign being the judge of rationality

by: Rabbi Ahron Cohen

Dear Mrs Guri and Mr Guri, our friends Juliet and Bern, Dear Klaus and Tanja Loetzer, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Liderando en positivo Interview Antonio Garrigues

Timothy Peace (2015), European Social Movements and Muslim Activism. Another World but with Whom?, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillian, pp

Please note I ve made some minor changes to his English to make it a smoother read KATANA]

US Iranian Relations

IIM Bangalore Convocation 2017 March 20, 2017 Chief Guest Shri Uday Kotak, Executive Vice-Chairman & Managing Director, Kotak Mahindra Bank Limited

The Communist Manifesto (1848) Eight Readings

On the National Question September 1994

1 ANDREW MARR SHOW, 25 TH MARCH, 2018 DAVID DAVIS MP

On the National On the National Question Question en.marksist.com

JOHN DEWEY STUDIES IN CENTRAL EUROPE: ELI KRAMER INTERVIEWS EMIL VISNOVSKY

INTRODUCTION. THE FIRST TIME Tocqueville met with the English economist Nassau Senior has been recorded by Senior s daughter:

Animal Farm. Teaching Unit. Advanced Placement in English Literature and Composition. Individual Learning Packet. by George Orwell

[MARXIST-LENINISTS IN BRITAIN]

Sociology 475: Classical Sociological Theory Spring 2012

KIM JONG IL ON HAVING A CORRECT VIEWPOINT AND UNDERSTANDING OF THE JUCHE PHILOSOPHY

SONNY LEONG CHINESE FOR LABOUR NEW YEAR BANQUET

The Third International and Its Place in History. [written April 15, 1919]

Marx By Peter Singer READ ONLINE

Animal farm. by George orwell. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others

J. M. J. SETON HOME STUDY SCHOOL. Thesis for Research Report Exercise to be sent to Seton

return to religion-online

BFU: Communism and the Masses

WESTERN IMPERIALISM AND ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM: what relation? Jamie Gough Department of Town and Regional Planning, Sheffield University

Interview with Paul Martin, Canada s Minister of Finance and Chair of the G20. CTP: Could you tell us a little bit more about what you actually did?

UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION. Address by Mr Federico Mayor

Kate, just a quick question before we begin. Are you okay with me recording the conversation so I can take notes afterwards?

The Classics, Part 4a. Political Economy

The Communist Manifesto

Research of Lenin and Early Western Marxist Class Consciousness Thought

V I LENIN The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism

Preface to Chinese translation of The Origins of English Individualism. Alan Macfarlane

The communist tendency in history

Review Exam 2. Classical Liberalism. Why did classical liberalism develop? What is classical liberalism? What were the problems with it?

Examiners Report June GCSE History 5HB02 2B

Rudolf Böhmler Member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank. 2nd Islamic Financial Services Forum: The European Challenge

Research Foundation for Governance: in India

KARL KAUTSKY: SELECTED POLITICAL WRITINGS

Mart Laar Receives Milton Friedman Prize I

The Communist Manifesto

2. THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CREATION OF A REVOLUTIONARY PROLETARIAN PARTY. OF A NEW TYPE

Part II-Hist 1112 Assessment. 20 Multiple Choice questions. Each question is worth one point (20 points total).

Religious Naturalism. Miguel A. Sanchez-Rey. the guiding force that fights against the ignorance of the shadows that permeate at the other

AMBER RUDD ANDREW MARR SHOW 26 TH MARCH 2017 AMBER RUDD

The Coming One World Religion - pt 2. The next group that we will examine is the United Alliance of Civilizations. The website for the...

erscheint in G. Motzkin u.a. (Hg.): Religion and Democracy in a Globalizing Europe (2009) Civil Religion and Secular Religion

Modern France: Society, Culture, Politics

Revolution and Reaction: Political Thought From Kant to Nietzsche

Leon Trotsky. Leon Trotsky led the revolution that brought the Bolsheviks (later Communists) to power in Russia in October 1917

What was the significance of the WW2 conferences?

Utopian and Scientific Socialism Evolutionary and Revolutionary Socialism Basic Principles of Marxism

China, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan ( ) Internal Troubles, External Threats

History Europe Since 1789 Peter Weisensel Course Overview: Readings:

ANDREW MARR SHOW 22 ND JANUARY 2017 NICK CLEGG

TRANSCRIPT (19-08) FRANCE IS BETRAYING AMERICA AND FULFILLING BIBLE PROPHECY PART 3 NOVEMBER 29, 2018 VOICEOVER: The Key of David with Gerald Flurry.

1 ANDREW MARR SHOW, TONY BLAIR, 25 TH NOVEMBER, 2018

World History. 2. Leader Propaganda Posters Jigsaw (50) 3. Exit ticket (10)

6. The Industrial Revolution

Transcription:

Jacques Attali and Eric Hobsbawm in conversation with John Kampfner Eric Hobsbawm: It happens that the Jewish Book Week takes place within a few yards of the place which is most associated with Marx in London, the round Reading Room of the British Museum and, indeed, within a few days of the anniversary of Marx s death. And here we are, Jacques Attali and I, paying our posthumous respects to him. Both of us have written about Marx. Jacques Attali s biography of Marx, which has sold like hotcakes in France and deservedly so is being translated over here. I have only done the biography of Marx in the Dictionary of National Biography, in a more modest way. And yet when you consider, it is really rather strange that we should be here to talk to you about it, and to talk to an enormous audience about it. One cannot say that he died a failure in 1883, because his writings had begun to have some impact in Russia and a political movement in Germany was already in being under the leadership of his disciples. And yet, how could he have been satisfied with his life s work? He had written a few brilliant pamphlets and the torso of an uncompleted major work: Das Kapital. When he was asked about his works by a visitor he said What works?. His major political efforts since the failure of the 1848 revolution, the so-called First International of 1864-73, had foundered. He had established no place of significance in the politics of the intellectual life of Britain where he had lived for over half his lifetime. And yet what an extraordinary posthumous political success. Within 25 years of his death the European working class political parties founded in his name or which acknowledged his inspiration had between 15 and 47 percent of the various national votes in the countries in which there was the right to vote. Britain was the only exception. After 1918 most of them became parties of government not only of opposition and they remained so and are still in existence. Meanwhile, the disciples of Marx established revolutionary groups in the non-democratic countries and third world countries, and 70 years after Marx s death one-third of the human race was being governed by regimes which actually claimed Marx as their inspirer, their guru and their founder. In fact, there is no other case of a thinker who has left such a tremendous mark on the 20th century. Go into Highgate cemetery. There, by sheer accident, there are the two 19th century Marks and Spencer s: Marx s grave and, not very far from it, the grave of Herbert Spencer who, in those days was, as you might say, the Aristotle of the Western world. You see, where is Marx now and where is the memory of Herbert Spencer? On the other hand, the era of Communist regimes has passed and with it Marx temporarily, once again, disappeared from sight. And when he did he found himself once again in noman's land. His ideas had been largely identified with Communism. For even the dissident Marxist and Marxist-Leninist tendencies established where they were, were largely ex- Marxists or splits from what had once been the basic Soviet tradition. So, for more than 15 years after the end of the Soviet Union, Marx was in no-man's land. Some journalist has even suggested, à propos of tonight s meeting, that we are here to try and rescue him from the dustbin of history.

Any yet Marx today is incredibly influential or at least prominent. I don t think too much has been made of the BBC poll which named him as the most famous of all philosophers. If you actually put Marx into Google you ll find that there are a huge number of entries come out. Much the largest of the great international presences, exceeded only by Darwin and by Adam Smith. More than twice as numerous as Freud, about three times as numerous as John Stuart Mill or Wittgenstein and even, if I may say so, two to three times as numerous as Winston Churchill. How are we to explain this sudden re-emergence? The first, I think, is that the end of the official Marxism of the USSR has liberated Marx from the public identification with Leninism in theory, with the Leninist regimes in practice and, in doing so, people have begun to notice once again that there are a lot of things in Marx that are really quite interesting. And this, in a sense, takes me to the second and major reason: Because the globalised capitalist world that emerged in the 1990s was in some ways uncannily like the world predicted by Marx in 1848 in the Communist manifesto. This became clear in the public reaction to the 150th anniversary of that manifesto which, incidentally, was a year of quite dramatic economic upheaval in large parts of the world. Paradoxically, I think, this time it was the capitalists who rediscovered Marx more than the others. The socialists had by that time had the courage knocked out of them, and they weren t trying to celebrate the anniversary particularly. I recall my own amazement when I was approached at that time by the editor of the in-flight magazine of United Airlines - on which, I may take it, 85 percent are people travelling on business. He thought that the readers would be interested in a debate on Marx, because after all it did seem to be relevant to the present situation. A year or two later, when I found myself having lunch with George Soros, I was equally amazed when Soros said What do you think of Marx?. Well now, knowing that our opinions on various things didn t agree, I thought I gave a sort of ambiguous answer, saying Some people think he s good, some people think he s bad, and then he said Do you know, I ve just been reading that man and there is an awful lot in what he says. So here we are, that is a starting point, I think, for the conversation which Jacques Attali and I are going to have tonight. Attali is an eminent French socialist who has never been a Marxist and is, incidentally, a man of absolutely universal talents who has not merely written books on music, plays and novels but who is also, as I need hardly remind you, highly active in both politics and international finance. Attali is not and has never been a Marxist. And yet, here is this man, a socialist, who too comes to the conclusion that this is the time when Marx has something to say. And so I hope that is what we are going to discuss between us and I hope he ll agree. Jacques Attali: Marx of course is a fascinating man and an amazingly modern person. And, to follow up what has been said by Eric Hobsbawm before me, I would say that there are three reasons to consider Marx as important today. The first is his own remarkable personal fate. The second is that his thinking is amazingly accurate in understanding the next stages of globalisation. And third, but not least, he is a very interesting man in his understanding of what Jewish identity means. First, his remarkable destiny and fate. We must understand that we cannot have a clear view of our own time without understanding the 19th century. That was not only the Victorian era in romanticism and literature but also the time for a group of people who were bold enough to accept that they must go into exile just to defend their ideas and to fight for their utopia. Marx was one of those people and actually the only place in the world where

they could have found refuge or exile was here in London. His life, in this sense, was extremely interesting because he came from a Jewish family in Germany, went to France to find shelter there, was expelled, went to Belgium, came back, tried to fight, tried to go back to his country Germany as a journalist which was the only job he ever had in his life, was expelled again after the '48/'49 revolution, and then came to the UK in order to survive. Actually, as everybody knows, it was not easy for him to survive and, not far from here, he lost three of his six children as a result of misery and hunger. And then, from this amazing life he succeeds in being the most influential intellectual in the history of mankind. No intellectual, no scholar it is very often said that scholar is a dirty word in English has had such a large influence in terms of the numbers of copies of his books or, even more, as you said, in terms of political life. For people who try, as I do, not only to think but also to act in order to change the world according to their ideas, he is a tremendous example of a man having such leverage on history. This is because he tried to do both. He tried to act and, I think, in this sense his life is an important example of what could or should be the life of someone who tried to think. I hate politicians who just implement the ideas of others like puppets, and I hate thinkers who just give lessons of what should be done without trying put it into action. I think Marx exemplifies someone who tried to do both: Thinking, leading his life every day according to his ideas, never compromising these ideas but also trying to act on them. And what he tried to do with the international socialist movement was a remarkable attempt to think about the world as a global world, where the only response to the birth of the new historical factors capitalism and work would be to organise the workers at a global level. This actually led to the second dimension I want to highlight here, that his views are extremely modern. As you said, I have never been Marxist but whenever I wanted to study something, I always thought 'What does Marx think about this? What has he said about it?'. You mentioned my work on music. When I wrote on music, I asked 'Has Marx anything to say about music?' and actually he does have some very interesting things to say which are fundamental to understanding the new world of music which is going to develop via the internet and so on. Marx is an amazingly modern thinker not because his texts are a theory of what an organised socialist country should or will be but because they are about the future of capitalism. Contrary to the caricature of Marxism Marx's worst enemy, he is first of all an admirer of capitalism. For him, capitalism is a much better system than any previous one, because he considers the earlier systems to show obscurantism and stupidity he used those words. He holds the view that capitalism is progress, and he also understands that capitalism is just beginning in the '40s, '50s and '60s. Once or twice he thought that it would also end there, but very rapidly decided that that was not the case and that capitalism had a huge future. What is also very modern is his view that capitalism would end only when it has gone global he mentioned China and India as potential partners of capitalism and when the whole of the working class has become part of it, when nations disappear and when technology would be able to transform the life of a country. He said, for instance, that protectionism is a mistake and that free trade is a condition for progress, which is very strange coming from his position. In an analysis he also said that the revolution of '48 was much less important than the revolution of electricity, which is fascinating when you bear in mind that he died before we really knew the importance of electricity. So, for Marx, capitalism had to expand globally before we could go on to socialism.

Marx was totally against the idea of socialism in only one country, and the way it was used as a recipe for social democracy is something that he was very reluctant to accept. In his last published book, he was not very enthusiastic about the social democratic text of the Germans. Actually, the head of the German Democrats was the former babysitter of his daughter in London, which was one of the reasons why he was annoyed with him! So, he was very much against the idea of having socialism in only one country, or to have it in one country called Russia. At the end of his life he wrote about many of his detailed discussions with Russians potential revolutionaries where in the end he concedes in a very important letter (after making three drafts of it) that perhaps Russia could be the place to start a revolution because it has a specific form of land ownership. But this should be only on one condition: That it immediately becomes a worldwide revolution and does not remain a national development. We could, and we certainly should, discuss the question of how Marx was distorted by Marxism after that and why, in my view, in a certain sense there is a devil in the German culture. This led to the distortion of Marx as an element of a state, which left Marx to be used as a factor of the developing Prussian model, leading first to Lenin and secondly to Nazism. These are two distortions, nightmares emerging from his utopia. But Marx considered that capitalism should grow worldwide before we think about what socialism could be. For him, socialism is not the collective allocation of scarcity. It goes beyond scarcity to a world where people would be able to invent different kinds of jobs, to do whatever jobs they want without the markets, without commodities and without money. This is a world which may be starting to emerge for the new technologies where everything may begin to be free. Socialism, for him, develops after capitalism and not instead of it. Socialism as a pre-requisite to Communism is global and the only thing we can do is not to design the culture, society or institutions which we can have knowing it has to be a global world governance very far away from him this time but it has to be first about organising the working class in order for the working class to be global. This is why he helped the foundations of the socialist movement in order to have a world social organisation in front of a capital organisation. When you read Marx you realise that he has a lot to say on globalisation what is happening to the movement of companies, delocalisation and everything that links to how we live every day today. In a certain sense, the Soviet Union was destroying or interrupting the validity of Marx s thinking, and the fall of the Berlin Wall gave back a new raison d être to Marx s thinking. This is because Marx was thinking of the world globally and the Soviet system was a nightmare which was not forecast by Marx but was an element which can be regarded as a parenthesis in the explanation of future predictions by Marx. And thirdly to finish, this is part of his Jewish identity. The Jewish identity can be seen as universal in thinking about what is good for itself and also good for others. If you look at the basis of the Jewish relationship with the world, a Jew considers that nothing can be good for a Jew unless it is not first good for the other nations. Therefore, if the other nations are not happy a Jew cannot be happy you will find that in many biblical texts. Marx was amazingly Jewish. Of course we can argue a lot about one text he wrote called The Jewish Question which is understood as an anti-semitic text but is not. But also we can see that, as any Jew, Marx cannot be explained without reference to the relationship with his parents. He had a very bad relationship with his mother, but he was fascinated by his father. His father is the real hero in the Marx dynasty an amazing man. He came from a family of rabbis for centuries but boldly decided to enter the world of lawyers. When the

Prussians returned to Trèves he had the terrible choice to make of whether to stay Jewish and to get rid of his freedom of thought as a lawyer or to embrace another religion and keep his thinking as a lawyer, which is what he did. And his son always had in mind this tragedy of his father. Marx was amazingly Jewish all his life in order to give a raison d êtreto his father s fight. He was a nomad, a universal thinker, a man with an interest in the destiny of his own culture, fascinated by the future of his own daughters all this, more than anything else, can be understood as an element of the fact that for a Jewish thinker transmission is always the key. For Marx, transmission was the key of his understanding of the role of his life, and I think we should recognise this as an element of his important destiny. John Kampfner Eric Hobsbawn, would you like to come back on Jacques Attali s observations of Marx as an admirer of capitalism as the best form of economic and societal arrangement hitherto and also Marx as the first or the great global thinker and how that is reflected in modern globalisation. EH: Well, there s no doubt that Marx believed that capitalism was the most powerful element in history so far. And there s no question that he believed that it was transforming the entire world. I would slightly hesitate to agree with Attali in believing that he thought that somehow or other you had to wait until capitalism had developed even further, although it turned out that that was the case. After all, both in 1848 and again later, he was a great believer in doing something now. I think he anticipated what capitalism was going to do and therefore exaggerated what he thought capitalism had already done which, by modern standards, was very, very modest. But the belief that somehow or other you had to wait until it developed further is part of the Marxist tradition. For instance it is one of the things that the revolutionaries criticised in German social democracy they said It s really not trying to make a revolution like Marx did. Indeed, Kautsky himself said We re a revolutionary party, but we don t make a revolution. We re just waiting for capitalism to develop further and working within it. In Russia in the late 19th century there used to be a group called the Lidon Marxists. Because Russia was a very backward country there were very few ideologies there that actually believed in the necessity of capitalist development. Marxism was one of the very few of those which did. To this extent, you see, Attali is completely on the dot. A number of very able people became Marxist with the very objective of developing capitalist industry in Russia. But whether that itself was enough I am by no means clear. It does, however, explain one thing which Attali in his book addresses and dislikes; namely the tendency of Marxists in backward countries to assume that Marxism is a recipe for economic development irrespective of capitalism. I believe it s a natural development, which is one of the reasons why Marxism appealed to intellectuals in very backward countries, countries requiring development, Russia and then in the 20th century in third world countries. There, in fact, once again a lot of the regimes for economic development were not aiming at the spread of globalisation but at short-circuiting the spread of globalisation by initiatives taken by governments, whether these were actually formal Marxist regimes as in the Soviet Union or whether they were developmental regimes such as in Turkey where again the object was to modernise Marxism as a way of modernising

both the economy and society. Or whether it was a case, as in the Latin American programmes of the 1950s, of short-circuiting the development of global capitalism by a policy of import substitution and planned national industrialisation. All of this, as we now know, while it was effective up to a point, was not a replacement for the actual development of globalisation and of a global economy as we have seen it developing in the last half century and even more so in the last 10 years. It is true that Marx did not underestimate the potential for global capitalism. The tendency to do that only occurred in the 20th century when global capitalism appeared to break down. The 1929 crisis was the crucial event in 20th century history because it appeared to show that even American capitalism wasn t working. It was at that stage that an element came into Marxist analysis which is mistaken the belief that, unless socialism replaces capitalism, economic growth would stop or break down. After this great crisis was overcome, at the cost of millions of victims in World War II, even capitalism learnt that it had to change and arrived at a new way forward which at present it is abandoning. And here s a great problem. We now have the realisation of some of what Marx anticipated: A globalised international economy. It has had a number of effects which Marx would not have predicted. For instance, it will have the effect that the working class in the industrialised countries will disappear. We re already at the stage whereby for practical purposes within 20-30 years no cars will be made anywhere in Western Europe and quite possible not in America. To that extent, the Marxist prediction of a growing proletariat which would eventually overthrow capitalism didn t work because the progress of capitalism eventually does without the working class as it does without the peasantry. Up to 1914 the prediction was quite reasonable and it did indeed create mass parties which still exist. But nowadays the future will be different. In short, the basic conditions under which Marxism operates in the 21st century will be quite different from those of the 20th century. One thing will remain: The necessity not only to criticise capitalism but to demonstrate that the very process of globalisation in the capitalist way generates not only growth but also tensions and crisis. And that the process of capitalism is incapable of coming to terms with these. That will remain. JA: Marx's predictions are that capitalism will grow, that inequalities will grow, that the working class will be destroyed and that the workers will be poor. And, as you just said, this is not true in the developed world. But if you look at it globally, it is true. Concentration of wealth worldwide is growing. The share of wealth which is owned by a small number is growing and the number of rich people is diminishing. There are 3 billion people who live on under $2 a day, and out of 9 billion inhabitants 40 years from now 4.5 billion will be below the poverty line. This is Marx's nightmare and you cannot say that they are not workers they are part of the working class. Even if they are unemployed, they are workers. And people working only with their head, or digital workers, are still workers. The contradiction in the market economy, in order to use a word other than capitalism which has 19th century connotations, is more true than ever. The reason why the system worked up to now is that the market economy was voided either by socialist dictatorship the kind of nightmare that we know or by social democracy and here democracy means states which were able to compensate for the contradiction of the market.

The key question of today is the following. Before we reach the moment when Marx predicted that we develop beyond capitalism which means out of the market economy how are we going to organise a world market economy at a time when we don t have a world market democracy? The simplest prediction to make is that it will not work, and we will then return to protectionism and isolationism. In fact, if you look at the history of mankind in the last two centuries, this is the fourth attempt at globalisation. One was at the end of the 18th century: Collapse and the Napoleonic war. The second at he end of the 19th century: Collapse and World War I. And in the 1920s: Collapse and World War II. We are now in the fourth attempt at globalisation in two centuries and most probably this fourth attempt will go the way of the previous three which means collapse and isolationism. We will not accept that we no longer produce cars, etc. We will try to protect the standard of living and then collapse. The world will collapse because of the growth of the world today at 4.5 5.0 percent a year even in the industrial revolution it was only at 1-2 percent a year and now it is at 5 percent a year. Marx wrote about the return to protectionism and other kinds of barbarism in 1949. At the beginning of the 20th century this was impossible to imagine and today equally so. We cannot think or imagine the barbarism that will happen but it is obvious that it will. The only way to imagine a solution to that would be to organise a new kind of compromise between the market and democracy on a continental or on a national level or to be able to think of a worldwide compromise between them. And this is the key way of putting into modern words a Marxist question: Is there a contradiction between market and democracy? The general thinking of today is that the market is creating a democracy we have seen this in Russia, in Latin America and elsewhere. The only place where we have seen democracy creating the market is in Russia. There will be the feeling that the market is creating democracy and democracy is creating the market and that everything is fine. History is ending because the only thing left is to generalise both processes everywhere and leave it at that. But Marx explained that there is not only a self-perpetrating system between both but also three contradictions between them. Firstly, the market exists without borders borders in terms of space and borders in terms of competence. The market will not accept a border and the market will also not accept that an area of competence is not within its field. Second, the market doesn t accept that health, education, transport, foreign affairs, or whatever, is outside of the market. And third, the market is invading the scope of democracy. The market doesn t want borders while democracy needs borders. This contradiction is key. If we are not able to have a democracy beside the market, both will be destroyed simultaneously. Can we create a world where the market and democracy can survive? Possibly, in my view, if the people here who are young enough to think about being here in the middle of this century were to see the birth of a world government. This will try to shape democracy and markets in order to prepare for the next utopia which is without markets beyond markets. The question for now is: Until then do we have to go through a catastrophe as at the end of the 19th century or the middle of the 20th century? The most probable answer is yes, because in mankind we have never seen the birth of something new without the death of something old. JK: On that optimistic note.

JA: In the Jewish tradition there are two kinds of prophets. One is optimistic, explaining that everything will be fine. The second is very pessimistic and in this second category you have prophets who say I think if you behave like that, things are going to be that bad, but at the back of their mind they hope to be wrong. They hope that they will create enough fear in order that what they say will never occur. Questions: Have we ever had any country/ regime which has truly followed Marxist principles? Can speakers comment on the ability of Marx to see behind the veil of capital which is socially constructed and crucial to capitalist society? EH to reflect on third assumption of Attali that Marxism is a sort of orthodox Judaism with the idea of justice and prophetic element etc. How far is Marxism Judaism? EH: The question is: What are the principles of Marxism? Regimes in a sense operate not with principles but with institutions and policies, they have to construct something or other. Marx says very little, as Attali pointed out, about exactly what he thought a future society should be like. Very little indeed. So, for practical purposes, most of the debates about it are debates among people that came across problems that Marx himself had not had to encounter in his lifetime. For instance, take the case of a planned society. It s fairly clear that some kind of planning is implicit in a society based on social ownership and means production. But, in fact, there is nothing whatever in Marx to suggest this, and nothing actually that deals at all with it until the Soviet Union, until the Russian revolution and until various governments at the end of World War II face the actual problem of how to nationalise industries. Paradoxically, the mere theory of a centrally planned economy wasn t even worked out by Marxist socialists. It was an Italian economist Barrone who in 1908 actually worked out the theoretical model demonstrating that at least in theory it could work and had to work. So, most of what happened about planning a socialist economy had to be improvised in the light of experiences which didn t necessarily have very much to do with Marx for instance, very much in the case of the Soviet Union, the experience of the war economy of Germany in World War I and various other things of this kind. To say that any regime represents Marxist ideas we can only say that there are one or two that represent it less than others. In my view, for instance, Maoism has very, very little in common indeed with Marxism except naturally that Marx, being this great guru of revolution and coming in through the Russian revolution which was so important in its genesis, Maoism retained part of an ideology which itself has very little to do with it. You could not actually expect any existing government or institution to have this process. The only way you could do it is just conceivably to finesse the problem in the way in which Bernstein did. One of these days we re going to have it in the future but that doesn t really matter, because what really matters is what we are doing now. The movement is the important thing, rather than the end. On the Judaism question, in a sense Marx was treated as a prophet. And I dare say, had he been more successful in his lifetime, he wouldn t have minded he looked like a prophet! In a way he belonged to the prophetic tradition. If you look at the Bible, these are

people who denounce the existing status quo and announce a better future. Well, you can say that Marx belongs to that, but that isn t only a Jewish tradition. I would have thought that Marx s style was that of the 19th century emancipated Jews, the Jews who no longer felt that they had to operate within a tradition. Nonetheless, I think there is something in Marx that is Jewish, in that you cannot have the emancipation of one lot without having a general emancipation of all humanity. And I think that is in some ways an enormous step forward for humanity, and particularly likely to be made by Jews who recognised that they were not the only people being oppressed. Unless there is an ideology for the general emancipation of everybody, no single group however much we may be personally attached to it can hope to find an adequate solution for itself. JA: I agree of course with everything you just said. Marx has nothing that is a recipe for a government, except that from time to time he said something that could be of interest in judging what could be a government of today. And the most important moment when he did this was in judging the French revolution in 1870 la commune de Paris where he always explained he was very worried because his three daughters were there, living with French journalists. He was not very happy with the situation and he was against la commune de Paris. But every time he had to choose something, he said Be more radical in the revolution, but protect individual freedom. Two elements are vital for Marx. He was a journalist and freedom of press was vital. His father was a lawyer and justice was vital for him. These two pillars were his understanding of what society should be. Even in the dictatorship of the proletariat he said 'Freedom of press and freedom of justice are key, of course, very different from how it was implemented. Secondly, of course Marx didn t see the financial dimensions of capitalism, it was not part of his view. He understood industry only as the production of real goods and not the financial dimension of it. We can explain that this financial dimension is a remarkable way of organising the potential globalisation of capitalism and a tremendous instrument for the success of globalisation, because the financial industry is the first global industry which has been driven by the internet and new technologies. It is creating the conditions for a global financial market and also the conditions for an industry which is absolutely vital for the future of the market. This is the insurance industry, and hedge funds are derivatives of insurance. There is no market without insurance because insurance is the only way to ensure rational behaviour in the face of risk. It is also the only way in which the market organises individual survival in the face of the risks created by the market for each individual. Therefore, if we go further in analysing Marx, the most important industry of the future is insurance because it is the only way of organising the behaviour of economic agents in a world of scarcity.