I wrote:
> >yes, it's true that the actual revolution in Russia turned into the kind
> of sh*t that he and Engels predicted would occur if a revolution
> occurred in a poor country (in the GERMAN IDEOLOGY). <
Mine wrote:
>by the way, do you have any evidence to your claims from German Ideology?
"... this development of productive forces ... is an absolutely necessary
practical premise because without it _want_ is merely made general, and
with the _destitution_ the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy
business would necessarily be reproduced... " (in Tucker, ed., THE
MARX-ENGELS READER, 2nd ed., p. 161).
I don't read German, but I am told by those who do that "the old filthy
business" is a bowdlerized translation of "the old shit."
Mine asserts:
>You have no slightest notion about what Engels is talking about here!
>
>German ideology is neither about a revolution in a "poor" country nor is
>it about the kind of "shit" you are talking about. It is a comprehensive
>statement of the materialist conception of history written in 1845-46.
I can't see how it couldn't be both. In fact, any "comprehensive statement
of the materialist conception of history" would have to have empirical
references of all sorts if it were to be materialist.
>Marx and Engels did NOT make predictions about revolution in Russia here--
>NOT IN THIS TEXT! Even assuming that they did, their
>explanation would definetely be much more qualified than your "shit"
>charecterization!
They didn't make any predictions about _Russia_ per se, but (as I said)
about countries _like_ Russia in 1917, with insufficient development of the
forces of production. (It _is_ a prediction, BTW, as indicated by the
assertion that the development of the forces of production is an
"absolutely necessary practical premise.")
And in a relatively abstract book like THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY, which was
pretty early in their career, statements are _more_ sweeping (_less_
qualified) than in later works. (BTW, I've never read it, but Engels has a
book about the peasant war in Germany which talks about the fate of a
revolution under conditions of poverty.)
BTW, unlike the hard-core social-democratic critics of the Russian
Revolution of 1917, I am not completely endorsing M&E's statement here.
Their assertion indicates that a revolution in a poor country would have a
lot of problems, including simply the socialization of poverty. _We_ need
to bring in the qualifications (and we can't rely on a scholastic style,
quoting scripture to prove points). For example, the poor country could get
aid from the rich countries. That's why people like Lenin & Trotsky hoped
for revolution in Western Europe, so that they could get away from the fate
of a revolution under conditions of poverty.
Also, the Nicaraguan Sandinistas argued that the active participation and
enthusiasm of the people could substitute for the narrowly-defined forces
of production.
One of the problems with M&E's assertion is that the concept of degrees of
development of the forces of production is ambiguous. People like G.A.
Cohen want to quantify that development by referring to the productivity of
labor, but that number can't be measured over time if the mixture of
products being produced changes (just as comparing apple production per
worker and orange production per worker doesn't make sense). But the
mixture of products being produced (along with their quality) changes a lot
over time.
I think that the best way to measure the degree of the development of the
forces of production is similar to that for defining poverty. It can't be
measured absolutely, and must instead be measured relatively. A poor
country is "poor" because it is out-competed or dominated in one way or
another by "rich" countries. That suggests that a lot of the insights of
dependency theory or world systems theory are relevant.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
