Hugh Rodwell
Tue, 04 Apr 2000 14:45:23 -0700
Gidday Rob,
>Sez Hugh of the little disagreement of late:
>
>>it's part of the struggle for the leadership of the working class,
>
>It might be an analogue of some such struggle in some place and time, but I
>doubt anyone here really seeks to lead the working class. I don't anyway.
Always the "wanting", never the needing, Rob! I see politics as the
task of matching our wants to historical needs. If you accept Marx's
analysis of the class character of and the centrality of the class
struggle in the capitalist mode of production, and consider his
political practice to grow out of his theoretical conviction, then it
becomes clear that he saw the development of capitalism as bearing
with it the need for the emancipation of the working class and the
institution of a consciously organized socialist mode of production.
And saw with this a *need* for conscious revolutionary working-class
leadership if this was to come about. This is a theme he harps on
about from the Manifesto onwards. His political propaganda, agitation
and participation were all aimed at creating a suitable conscious
leadership of the working-class. Focusing and channelling the
existing wants of radical workers into something more disciplined and
historically suitable for the objective task facing them.
>>Need to qualify this: true, revolutionary Bolsheviks -- there's a lot of
>>fakes around, causing problems until a clear and trustworthy international
>>leadership crystallizes.
>'Clear and trustworthy' to whom, Hugh? Whilst purported socdems may
>purportedly 'lead' the class now, an awful lot clearly don't trust 'em.
>Yet no other international leadership' has arisen of late. Why's that,
>d'you think?
They don't "purportedly" lead it, they do lead it. Badly and
provocatively, it's true, but these people are the actually existing
mass leadership of the working class.
While the Soviet Union still existed there was a competing mass
leadership of the class, the Stalinists, and the main difference
between them and the SocDems was that they developed their
counter-revolutionary policies in a workers state, while the SoDs did
it in a bourgeois state. No one would dream of accusing SoDs of being
revolutionaries, but the Stalinists often donned the mask of
revolutionaries when it suited their purpose -- an indicator of which
of the leaderships was the most treacherous perhaps.
The reasons for the lack of a strong mass Trotskyist leadership are
basically three. The first is the unprincipled persecution and
slaughter of Trotskyist militants and leaders by the Stalinists
(Vietnam being an excellent example) throughout the world, the second
is the unparallelled discipline and loyalty of the working class to
its political leaders (which when the leadership is once more what it
should be will once more be transformed into a hugely positive
factor) which kept them bound to counter-revolutionary leaders for
too long and kept them from listening to alternatives, and the third
reason is political weakness in the Trotskyist movement itself (very
materially worsened by Stalin's assassination of Trotsky in 1940) --
best typified by the Pablo-Mandel cop-out in the early 50s, when
fatalism and objectivism became the lodestar of the International and
it was no longer thought "necessary" to fight to build revolutionary
parties in the workers states.
>Hugh agrees with Dave:
>
>>Bureaucratic, moralizing and intolerant are words that spring to mind to
>>describe the disorganizing activities of the Social-Democrats. And the
>>bureaucrats (of whatever school) can always be told by the vitriol they
>>spray on the working class for being "unable, incapable and unprepared".
>
>Well, Hugh blames poor or treacherous leadership.
That's why I talk about the bureaucracy -- such rank and file SoDs as
there are don't really count for much in how the leadership acts
towards the class -- they're just a necessary political base, a
transmission belt to the class and getters-out of votes at election
time.
> And I reckon the western
>working class is not willing, or feels it would be too risky, to overthrow
>the capitalist system.
Again the subjectivity! Does it need to overthrow the system or
doesn't it? If it does, what's the next step?
>I certainly don't think the vast majority of the
>world's people is 'unable' to do, or 'incapable' of doing, anything.
But that's cos you're not a typical SoD bureaucrat. That's why I see
you as sitting on a fence. You recognize the potential of the class
to change history. All SoD bureaucrats and most rank and file SoDs
don't.
>'Unprepared' I'll go along with. They must be, else they'd recognise the
>enduring Truth of at least one of the schools of Trotskyism - no, Hugh? If
>prepared they are, where is their leader?
In the sense you take "unprepared", I'd agree with you -- the class
is not at the moment ready to take power. I carelessly added in a
meaning of "potentially willing", you know "ready to go the whole way
if necessary, in the right circumstances" -- I should have made
myself clearer.
The leadership needs to be built, obviously. If it existed, we
wouldn't have to discuss it in terms like this. There are potential
leaderships working right now to do something about this, though,
much as the Bolsheviks worked as a relatively obscure minority in
Russia between 1905 and 1917.
>Reckon I might be happy with the tag 'radical democrat market socialist',
>but ...
In Trotsky's sense, or ???
>Well, I'm certainly convinced by Marx's theory of exploitation (so was
>market socialist Justin Schwartz, incidentally).
No, Justin held no truck with the labour theory of value as I recall,
and that's the theoretical axiom, the foundation in which Marx's
theory of exploitation is rooted. Marx's theory of exploitation
builds on the distinction between workers producing value with their
*labour*, but having their labour (hence their value production)
expropriated by the capitalists who only pay them the value of their
*labour-power*, the physical capacity they have to produce labour.
The difference between the value/labour incorporated in the workers'
*labour-power* (paid to an equivalent value) and the value generated
by the workers' *labour* (appropriated without an equivalent by the
capitalist) is the concrete measure of exploitation. If you don't
hold with Marx's theory of value, you don't hold with his theory of
exploitation.
> >I don't think Rob, for instance, is really very aware of the similarities
>>between some of his own principles and the principles of the leaders he
>>understands to be betraying the historical needs of the class.
>
>Fair comment. I haven't a clue as to what I have in common with 'New
>Labour' or the ALP ...
The automatic linking of Bolshevism with Stalinism, and the idea that
Stalinism grew necessarily and organically out of the revolutionary
Bolshevism of Lenin and Trotsky.
New Labour and the ALP represent the aspect of Social Democracy as a
mass leadership of the working class and as a governing repressive
force in bourgeois society.
Perhaps Rob would be more willing to recognize himself in figures
like Allende in Chile and Ortega in Nicaragua though? But can he see
how they betrayed the historical needs of the working class?
Especially Allende, who delivered the class and the country into the
hands of one of the most vicious dictatorships of this century by
refusing to follow revolutionary Bolshevik policies.
> >>Bolsheviks can claim responsibility for the only socialist revolution
>>>in history.
>
>It seems ahistorical to take the credit for October, but not a deal of the
>responsibility for what happened afterwards.
This is important. What deal of responsibility does revolutionary
Bolshevism bear for the Stalinist counter-revolution, Rob? It's this
kind of statement that makes me say your positions are typically SoD
and Kautskyite -- Stalinist tyranny as an automatic consequence of
Bolshevism and not as a diametrically opposed aberration.
>Like that sad list of splits and purges on the new web site of your new
>party, Dave? You see, the degree of agreement you demand of others
>(generally before the event of the shared practice in which theory is
>supposed to be constituted) will ever lengthen lists like that. I can't
>discuss anything to do with market socialism, because it's treacerous to do
>so. So I can't get in for a start, and no interested lay person gets to
>weigh the arguments - nor would s/he feel tempted to chance a speculative
>post on the question. Just as nearly 90 Thaxists don't.
Two points here. One is that disagreements, splits and the like occur
in every living political and social movement, even Esperanto. No big
deal, especially given the pressure exerted on revolutionaries from
every side -- repression, contempt, bribery, you name it. Divide and
rule. Two is a double point: a) dismissing topics for discussion as a
priori treachery is sectarian blockheadedness, b) anyone who lets
themselves be put off by this kind of blockheadedness doesn't really
*need* a revolutionary change in society in every fibre. Just before
WWII in England for instance a doctor's daughter from South Africa
had to practically claw her way into the party -- and there's a lot
to be said for that. Right now it's not the same, but it's still the
case that anyone who feels the need for revolution and has fire in
their belly won't get put off by a few jumped-up bureaucrats standing
in the way. Pissed off but not put off.
> >Serious politics requires contact with the shit -- that's part of the price
>>to be paid.
>
>That much is very true, Hugh.
Enough to create a faction!!
>Then you say of my argument that:
>
>>Cos what he writes here
>>is largely irrelevant. The subjective consciousness of the working class is
>>not what determines a scientific view of how society works or what needs to
>>be changed to make it better. Hiding behind distorted mass consciousness is
>>apologizing for the shit.
>
>To recognise something, and to consider it important, is not quite the same
>thing as hiding behind it.
Let's put it this way -- you'd never tolerate your knowledge of the
way the media and communications work in society being dictated to
you by the mass of your students, particularly not the most passive
and uninterested ones.
>And I don't think a fear of bolshevik takes on
>'scientific socialism' constitutes a 'distorted mass consciousness'. But
>that'd be because I've a distorted subjectivity, I s'pose.
Again the automatic identification of Bolshevism with Stalinism!!! Is
it an academic reflex, Rob, or what? Where does it come from?
Deutscher? Kautsky? Anti-Trotskyist CP historiography?
I think this is the focus of our disagreement on the theoretical
side, Rob, so I'd like a bit of detail here if possible.
> >But obviously to make serious progress in politics, these distorted
>>elements of working-class consciousness have to be taken into account
>
>I'm 'hiding' when I say that, but you're being scientific, eh?
It depends on what it's being taken into account for. I don't see it
as determining the fundamental course of the class struggle -- that
is determined by the relationship between the development of the
forces of production and the relations of production in much more
general and objective terms. I think you do so it as determining the
fundamental course of the class struggle -- we disagree on what
constitutes "fundamental".
> >is made very clear in the outline of the transitional method in the
>>Transitional Programme. The transitional method is the interface between
>>the masses with their distorted consciousness (instilled in them by the
>>miseducation system and their treacherous mass leaders, naturally) and the
>>objective scientific requirements of a real socialist revolution.
>
>An objective scientific bunch of facts upon which no-one seems to agree,
>especially within the Trotskyist churches themselves.
The most productive political-practical interpretation is still being
thrashed out in the Trotskyist movement. Not churches. Churches are
about unreal abstractions like God and Soul and Salvation, and have
very primitive emotional fetishisms as their material basis.
Political movements are about the social material interests of a
class or part of a class. Political sects might resemble churches,
but they aren't.
> >The positions themselves can in fact
>>be mutually exclusive if seen in an abstract fashion,
>
>Thus not necessarily in practice ...
Exactly.
> >but if the people who
>>support them fight together for certain goals, then the possibility of
>>future and more general joint action becomes much more real.
>
>So we should be pulling together?
Yup.
> >Here I agree with Dave's criticism. What Rob writes about is the way it
>>will appear at first in the struggle.
>
>Well, it appears that way to me. Perhaps I'm assuming that the struggle
>has yet to transcend 'at first'?
No, it's the need for those leading the struggle to transcend
appearances. And if you consider the Mensheviks during 1917, for
instance, they were willy-nilly, leading the working class in its
struggle, only they led it badly and reluctantly and kept claiming,
as some do on Thaxis, that they weren't leading it at all and that
the leadership of the class was a figment.
> >taking the situation as is with the minimum defensive and collaborational
>>positions Rob mentions (as if they were the only ones) and developing
>>consciousness in the mobilizations so that more radical and more
>>confrontational steps can be taken that challenge the root problem of
>>bourgeois control of society.
>
>I'm agin oligarchy myself. Which capitalism produces as a matter of
>course, natch. It's a 'root problem', for mine. Of capitalism, of
>feudalism - and of the Soviet Union (right back to the first famines, and
>the structure at the peak of which Uncle Joe seated himself).
So still no difference between the pressure exerted on the Bolshevik
leadership by the working class and the poor peasantry during the
revolution and the civil wars and imperialist invasions, and the
pressure exerted on the post-Lenin leadership by the burgeoning
bureaucracy and the resurgent rich peasants and traders? No
difference in the openness of Lenin's and Trotsky's leadership and
the closed aloofness of the Stalin leadership? No
counter-revolution?? No qualitative difference between October and
the wars and what followed Lenin's death???
>Yours somewhat indignantly,
>Rob.
Like to see there's some life in the old dog yet!!
(Ow! my ankle....)
--- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---