The Accretion Disk

Lately I've begun to use the term "Accretion Disk" as a metaphor, based on a theory of the Moon's formation. The theory says that about four/four and a half gigayears ago a wandering planet roughly the size of Mars struck the Earth. Earth recovered relatively quickly, but for some time a huge ring of debris circled the Earth, gradually coalescing, coming together ("accretion") to form the Moon. (See: http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Dec98/OriginEarthMoon.html)

In my metaphorical use of the concept, I see Marxist theory as having been struck a huge blow by the isolation and containment of the Russian Revolution after 1917. Reality, the "continuation" of history, was "shattered, circled" by the debris of incomplete and/or wrong conceptions of strategy and tactics informed (or misinformed) by Historical Materialism. Examples would be: Stalinism, (and most "anti-Stalinisms," e.g. Bordigism, Trotskyism) Maoism, Hoxaism, Identity Theory/Politics, and Right-Social Democratic Welfare Statism. Alternative formulations, e.g. Anarchism, the "New Left," and the "Greens" were able to neither reformulate, or in the case of the Greens and some Anarchists, replace Historical Materialism. This "debris" is somewhat akin to what Gramsci called "Morbid Symptoms."

It is true that we need to be careful about proclaiming "iron laws" of human and social development. On this, see Hobsbawm's introduction to Marx's "Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations," and the late Stephen Jay Gould on the "accidental" nature of much Natural History. Precisely because the limited theories listed in the previous paragraph rushed in to fill the vacuum when history took roads we didn't anticipate, it seems easy now to label these viewpoints, if inaccurately, as "morbid." Often the problem is "only" that a Marxist should strive to analyze profits, not try to be one.

Hopefully there now - exists? will be? - a new "accretion" of the Historical Materialism informing our thought and practice under contemporary conditions. I don't know that I had any idea of where a new revolution would break out, but I sure didn't anticipate it would be in Tunisia and Egypt! Last year, a colleague attended a meeting of Mediterranean CPs sponsored by the Greek party. While there, he was told by a member of the Egyptian CP that there was a "Communist" wing in Al Queda. This seemed so incongruous at the time I didn't really think about it. Now? ¿Quién sabe? As to what we can be positive about, please see Ken MacLeod's blogpost "The battle of Tahrir Square means we can all be human again." (http://kenmacleod.blogspot.com/2011/02/br-battle-of-tahrir-square-means-we-can.html) Maybe we will be able to date the new era as beginning with the current all-Arab 1848.