Sean Tunney's article on postmodernism (SO6) was superficial and muddled. Tunney's need 'for simplicity' (why should cultural analysis need this anyway?) allows him to analyse the contents of David Harvey's The Condition of ostmodernity and pass this off as the orthodoxy or postmodernism, despite his admission that there is 'no agreed orthodoxy on postmodernism'.
But he quickly goes on to say there is a certain unity to thinkers he dubs Post minerhat historyely that - namely that hey think that 'history has no meaning or subject. Butitis not luibbling about labels to sa hat Tunney here is simply confused substituting postmodernism for post-structuralism.
The intellectual reaction to structuralism - evidenced by the thought of Baudrillard. Foucault and Lyotard - should not be confused with what is truly germane to postmodernism; namely that there was a fundamental mutation in capitalism after World War 2. The Marxism Today version of this mutation which Tunney criticises is not the strongest or most relevant version.
This belongs to Frederic Jameson in his book Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. This seeks to elaborate at the level of culture the central tenets of Ernest Mandel's Late Capitalism. It is strange. that a review in Socialist Outlook should overlook this.
There are further problems with Tunney's assertion that postmodernism is 'modernism gone rotten. The assumption vere is that the 'modernist' theories and artistic styles which predominated through much of this century represented 'confidence on the part of the bourgeoisie and the working class. Really? Durkheim and the concept of anomie? Weber and bureaucratisation? Cananyone really describe TS Eliot's The Waste Land as confident in tone? There are many other similar examples. the quite separate issue of indeed phase ism has distinct phases, which is the essence of the debate about postmodernism) is being justified by the said irrationalism.
Tunney concludes stirringly: 'The claims of postmodernism will collapse when a new period of advance for the working class develops in the major capitalist countries'. Asa mode of argument in cultural analysis this is suspect per se. Substitute relativity theory, or Trotskyism or Catholicism or anything you like for postmodernism, and see if you don't begin to have doubts yourself.
Then suppose Tunney is correct. This line of argument becomes the dominant tone of the Socialist Outlook approach to cultural analysis. In that case, why not simply extend the industrial struggles section for another couple of pages?
Terrý Murphy Oxford Editor's note: Owing to a typesetting error the article criticised by Terry Murphy was incorrectly attributed to Sean unney. In fact it was written bi aul Člarke. Clarke will reply to this letter, and to the article by Steve Taylor on the opposite page, in our next issue. Terry Murphy is being invited to make a longer contribution on this debate in a forthcoming issue.
"The manager is considering Your article in issue 5 on the collapse of BCCI miseducates. Under the headline 'Banks means fraud' you argue that 'finance capital, by definition, is based on usury and fraud, and 'fraud is at the heart of the capitalist system. Not so.
Banking is another means of circulating profit made in one sphere to investment in another; it enables the mobility which is a fundamental feature of capital. The profit made by banking capital is normal capitalist profit: capital is necessary to run a bank, and banks are entitled to an average rate of return on this capital. Competition in banking moderates this return. There is nothing fraudulent about all this.
Nor is capitalist banking 'usurious', if that means arbitrary or monopolistic profit. The interest rates of the 1980s, which you cite, were indeed high by historical standards; but this was due to strong demand from firms, consumers, and states -the market in money capital. Moreover, interest is always limited by productive profit, from which it is a cut. In the 1980s this was perhaps 3-6% per annum out of 15-25% productive profit.
High interest rates are anyway not No.7 the same thing as high bank profit, which is a marginal difference in interest rates. It is therefore wrong to describe either interest rates or bank profits as 'usurious'.
BCCI was involved in fraud, both in conniving in the illegal activities of its customers and in ripping off its depositors. But this fraud is against capitalist rules of capitalist states. States regulate banking in order to stop capitalists ripping off each other, and in order to head-off disruptive collapses, that is, in the interests of capital as a whole.
Certainly the nature of capital valuation as fictitious capital' gives opportunities for fraud. And certainly, competition for deposits has loosened state regulation, which is why the Bank of England ignored BCCI for so long. But the rip offs and instability this allows are a problem for capital. You ignore all these contradictions.
Populists have always portrayed profit, especially bank profit, as deriving from trickery. One of Marx's main arguments in Capital is to show that this is not so. Our paper should present popular marxism, not populist rhetoric.
Jamie Gough London WC1 Sept. 14, 1991 Page 13
Marxism