[Marxism-Thaxis] e-mail discussion lists
This is off-topic, but since this is a GNU-Mailman mailing list and since so many of the members belong to many discussion lists, this should be a decent place to submit my question. I subscribe to numerous yahoo groups, and even have two of my own. I also subscribe to several Mailman mailing lists, including this one, of course. Unlike yahoo, there is no overall listing of discussion lists for Mailman that I know about. Other services that host discussion lists that I've been on are topica and googlegroups. I can't think of any others I've been involved with, outside of university-based listservs. In sum: Yahoo! Groups http://groups.yahoo.com/ Mailman, the GNU Mailing List Manager http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/index.html Google Groups http://groups.google.com Topica http://lists.topica.com/ I'm asking myself, should I choose to start new groups in addition to groups already established, which service should use? Are there pros and cons of each I have not taken into consideration? ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ?
No. The withering away of the state is predicated upon a couple of things: the withering away of the need for massive organized armed bodies of men domestically and internationally; the destruction of the value relations and the resolution of class antagonism. I was reluctant to reply to the question posed by this thread because it seemed to pose matters outside the concept of the state as the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. For the state to begin its process of withering class antagonism - property as class, must be in the process of withering. Further, in Anti-Duhring, Marx and Engels outline the precondition for the state to wither away as state, founded and predicated on the concept of the state as the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The Soviet state as state was overthrown. In their comments, Marx and Engels wrote that only the residual aftermath of value would remain. Thus, riveting the state to the division of labor in society. Although administered by government the social safety net, welfare, housing, etc., is not the state. All government bureaucracies are not the meaning of the state, although the state as state has its bureaucracy, or it could not be an organized structure. I do not understand the Housing agency - HUD, to fall within the scope and meaning for the state as defined above by Lenin and Engels and Marx. Rather, HUD is an agency of the government as a bureaucracy. The Pentagon, a government agency is on the other hand a part of the state because of its function and role in society. WL. **Need a job? Find an employment agency near you. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=employment_agenciesncid=emlcntusyelp0003) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ?
But Lenin wrote (in State and Revolution) that the withering away of the state begins at the very instance when the proletariat (the armed working class) takes power. The Commune-state is a state of a new type. The soviet state, alas, though not strangled at birth by the Wilsons and Churchills was subjected to grave injuries that led to its violent death at the hands of the Stalinist counterrevolution in the years 1935-1939. Shane Mage Comment Why do we don these absurd things? The reason is clear: firstly, because ours is a backward country; secondly, education in our country is at the lowest level; and thirdly., because we are receiving no assistance. Not a single civilized state is helping us. On the contrary. they are all working against us. Fourthly, owing to our state apparatus. We took over the old state apparatus, and this was unfortunate for us. Very often the state apparatus worker against us. In 1917, after we captured power, the situation was that the apparatus sabotaged us. This frightened us very much and we pleaded with the state officials: Please come back. They all came back, but this was unfortunate for us. (Lenin). Here is the genesis of the historically specific problem Lenin grappled with . . . in his words. Very often the state apparatus worker against us. Why and how is the subject of volumes of writing. WL. **Need a job? Find an employment agency near you. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=employment_agenciesncid=emlcntusyelp0003) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Review of Sokal's Beyond the Hoax
Ralph Dumain I thought Proyect hated Sokal. ^ CB: I don't know about that. I think he doesn't hold much truck with post-modernism ^ The review is hardly brilliant but it is to the point. I am sure Sokal got all his information about India from Meera Nanda, who has written numerous books and articles on the subject. I haven't read Sokal's books, though I have always been in sympathy with his aims. However, judging from the review, there comes a point where one ends up beating a dead horse to death. CB: Yeah you right, comrade, but there are probably some potential converts to Marxism among among post-modernists who get their heads straight. And some young thinkers who witness the debates may go more directly to materialism. Understanding of truth derives from correction of error. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ?
I would agree with Jim F that present day Russia is some form of state capitalism. On the nature of the former Soviet Union I think it was none of the alternatives offered by Jim (and by Trotskyism in the post-war period). It was a bureaucratic bourgeois state in which a surplus was extracted from the peasantry and workers but not surplus value (so it could not have been a form of capitalism). It ceased to be a degenerated workers state when the possibility of a democratic opposition to Stalin within the CPSU based on Trotskyists/Bukharinists expired (1930). I had been thinking of doing work on globalisation since the 1970s because none of the Trotskyist groups seems to understand what has happened or its significance. But then I realized that I have to go even further back to the Cold War, because post-war Trotskyism tried to impose its own schemas onto it and unfortunately no group built a developed understanding of the Cold War. Adam Westoby's COMMUNISM SINCE WORLD WAR TWO is however a good start, despite faults. Phil Walden -Original Message- From: marxism-thaxis-boun...@lists.econ.utah.edu [mailto:marxism-thaxis-boun...@lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Jim Farmelant Sent: 22 February 2009 00:53 To: cdb1...@prodigy.net; marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Cc: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Well in Russia the state renationalized most of the energy industry several years ago. Putin, as president, went a long way towards reestablishing the leading role of the state in the management of Russia's economy. The state is a major stockholder in many of Russia's largest companies. One of Putin's big achievements was to rein in the oligarchs who had taken control of much of Russia's economy under Yeltsin. All this course takes us back to a lot of the old debates over the nature of the former Soviet Union: was it socialist? was it state capitalist? a degenerate workers state? a bureacratic collectivism? And to those old debates we can now can add debates over the nature of contemporary post-Soviet Russia. The post-Soviet regimes of Yeltsin and Putin had the avowed aim of restoring capitalism, but it seems that the reality there is perhaps more complex. They never could entirely obliterate Soviet-era institutions and practices, and now, I suspect, that the current world economic practice may force the current government of Medvedev and Putin to revive many of the old Soviet policies. I suppose that we might characterize the current Russian economy as a kind of state capitalism with some socialist characteristics. Jim F. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ?
Total idiocy, delusional nonsense, senseless gibberish, from first word to last. At 09:53 PM 2/22/2009, Charles Brown wrote: I agree that these are the classical Marxist-Leninist theory, definitions, schema and order of the process, but I'm thinking that actuality, actual history, the concrete truth of this may not go down in as linear a fashion, as the a,b,c,1,2,3 of the theory. This would be applying Marx and Engels other warning against cookbooks and predictions about socialism and communism to their own sketch of how the state whithers away. So, the process of whithering away may in actuality be a zig-zag , one step whither, one step unwhither of the straightline of the abstract classical formulations For example, the Soviet state was a multinational state. The Russian state does not encompass all of the former Soviet territory. This might be seen as an early aspect of the total whithering away of the state there. Also, notice that there was relatively little bloodshed. The Soviet state did not go down fighting, not with a bang but a whimper ( as that Commie T.S. Eliot put it) Also, Soviet society was substantially without class antagonisms. This is one of the most important theoretical and praise of the Soviet Union points. The peaceful end of the multi-national state is an indicator of the lack of class antagonisms existing in the Soviet Union. Also, notice that the implication of my use of whithering away of the state is that some of what is left in Russia is _communism_ not socialism. The whithering away of the state ushers in communism. Obviously, since capitalist imperialist states still exist in the world and the Russian _state_ has nuclear weapons, the state has not totally whithered away. So, it would be a partial and harbinger whithering away that we see. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ?
Quantifying history and historical progression, all ways get me in trouble, yet this stops no one from quantifying history. I believe that the American state, as we know it is going to change at lightening speed, after a change in the property relations. What happens in America is very important to world history. The state can fall relatively peaceful without the outbreak of Civil War as was the case after the Lenin group seized power. However, the Bolshevik seizure of power was relatively peaceful. The fight came afterwards as the result of invasion. Invasion will not be one of our worry's. What happened with the fall of Soviet Power - 1989, outlines our future more or less. Marx wrote that the proletariat would have to fight for 50, 100, 200 years of wars and international wars not just to achieve power, but to make itself fit for the exercise of power. I am not sure if it is understood that it will take perhaps another 100 - 200 years, just to completely leave the old ritualized agrarian/feudal culture of Russia. One hundred years is nothing. Very much of China today is still feudal in its real actual and ritual behavior. Hundreds of millions of peasants, with an unbroken historical and written culture is mind boggling. Hence the stability of the system no matter what direction it lurches in. I am laughing because Mao had to tell everyone Marxism meant it is right to rebel. This of course does no excuse or justify state policy one way or another. There is a tendency to forget that the October Revolution was bound up with the transition from agrarian social and economic relations to industrial social and economic relations. Defining the October Revolution of 1917 as a revolution - transition, from capitalism to socialism is in my estimate extremely inaccurate and run against all the statistical data on the Russian - Soviet population from the early 1900's to 1950. One cannot build socialism in a country of peasants, or rather the socialism one builds, cannot overcome the law of value as commodity exchange. One can restrict the law of value in everything fundamental to the industrial infrastructure. What made the Soviet Union socialist rather than capitalism was its industrial infrastructure. The fact of the matter is that no one owned any aspect of heavy industry or light industry before the spread of the second economy unleashed by Nikita. When the state owns all the capital and establishes institutions that deploys labor based on a plan and not anarchy of production that is socialism. There of course are zero peasants in America. In Russia, so-called socialist accumulation, a hideous term that tells no one anything, was carved out of the backs of the peasants. What actually took place was the thousand year old battle of the towns - city-states, demand for cheap food stuff running into the culture and ritualized social life of the small producers. I have a bias for Polany on this issue. At any rate, is not the average Russian living on about 3 bucks a day today? I do agree that the process of the withering away of certain features of the state began with the class rule of the proletariat in the Soviet Union. And that Russia was no basket case in the 1960's, 1970's or 1980's. Don't quote me on it but I believe the 1980's rate of growth hovered around 3% of GDP with a lack of statistics in the second economy. WL. I agree that these are the classical Marxist-Leninist theory, definitions, schema and order of the process, but I'm thinking that actuality, actual history, the concrete truth of this may not go down in as linear a fashion, as the a,b,c,1,2,3 of the theory. This would be applying Marx and Engels other warning against cookbooks and predictions about socialism and communism to their own sketch of how the state whithers away. So, the process of whithering away may in actuality be a zig-zag , one step whither, one step unwhither of the straightline of the abstract classical formulations For example, the Soviet state was a multinational state. The Russian state does not encompass all of the former Soviet territory. This might be seen as an early aspect of the total whithering away of the state there. Also, notice that there was relatively little bloodshed. The Soviet state did not go down fighting, not with a bang but a whimper ( as that Commie T.S. Eliot put it) Also, Soviet society was substantially without class antagonisms. This is one of the most important theoretical and praise of the Soviet Union points. The peaceful end of the multi-national state is an indicator of the lack of class antagonisms existing in the Soviet Union. Also, notice that the implication of my use of whithering away of the state is that some of what is left in Russia is _communism_ not socialism. The whithering away of the state ushers in communism.
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ?
Wandering thoughts and notes related to the tread. From 1928 with Stalin's Industrialization of the Country speech and plan, to his death in 1953, the polices of forced collectivization, rapid industrialization and centralized planning through a series of five year plans held complete sway. Without question the execution of Bukharin and other leaders, and the imprisonment of tens of thousands of rank and file communists - party members, many of whom were innocent of any wrong doings, had much to do with the silencing of the voices of opposition. However, it would be wrong to assume that Stalin eliminated diversity of thought and policy, which simply adapted to that peculiar form of Soviet speak. Everyone simple wrote in the form of Stalin and those unfamiliar with this form of Soviet speak will find it all but impossible to follow the various intense forms of political struggle and divergence. It would be horribly wrong to think for a moment that Stalin's economic polices were not overwhelmingly supported by the population. The idea that violence alone can account for the popularity of Stalin views is equally wrong and a failure to understand elementary politics. The people loved Stalin beyond comprehension of those not familiar with politics and how people actually think things out. American actually did vote for Bush W. and he was horrible stupid by all accounts. Stalin was by no mans unlearned. Acceptance of Stalin's view and approach to building socialism was supported because it worked. The success was so obvious in the building of entire new towns, roads, factories and cities. Within an incredibly short time, (less than the time I worked and retired from Chrysler), the Soviet Union leaped from a semi-feudal country and backwardness into the front ranks of the industrialized countries. One has to visualize this pace of development; place themselves in this environment of going to work everyday and look out at Soviet society as a citizen rather than a detach analyst trapped by ones own ideological inclination. One needs go to the country side and see how industrialization of the country uproots the old society and why dozens of communists sent to set up schools were murdered and many of the female teachers raped and then murdered. The resistance is complex and mirrors the resistance capital encounters in injecting the money economy into a historically stable natural economy. Somewhere on the A-List I produced the statistics of how fast the population moved from peasant to proletariat, and it is breathtaking. Then what was traced was the impact of these peasants turned proletarian on organization and why the organizations would collapse. The spontaneous life as culture of the new proletarian is to convert all organizations into form of the extended family. To understand this one has to go there and experience it. The new proletariat was less than 10 years old and Lenin himself wanted only to recruit proletarians into the party who had a minimum of 10 years factory seniority! I no longer have the books with all the stats, but remember some and have some from the book Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union. In the first year of the 5 year plan industrial production grew by 11 percent. From 1928 to 1940 the industrial sector grew from 28% of the economy to 45 percent of the economy. Between 1928 and 1937 heavy industry output of total manufacturing output grew from 31 percent to 63%. The illiteracy rate drop from 56 percent to 20 percent and guess who Stalin wrote for and to? You can bet it was not the intelligentsia. Here I am condoning nothing but stating the obvious facts so misunderstood by our own intelligentsia. Further, it is a profound misunderstanding that Stalin was not a first rate theoretician with a gigantic memory, which he used against his opponents. He really understood all the issues. Whatever his demons, paranoia, masochism and narsssacism, he understood quantitative dimensions of the social process; specifically its nodal point and easily outflanked his opponents, who deeply felt political struggle are won and lost on the basis of an abstract theoretical profundity. More often than not his opponents were more wrong than he was and he understood that by reading what they wrote. The reason Lenin recruited Stalin into the upper level of the party is based on his early writings. On his death bed Lenin saw something grievously wrong with Stalin's personality, in the way he treated Lenin's wife. This incident and Stalin's later apology is perhaps the only time he apologized to anyone. To understand the rise of Stalin to power all one has to do is read his foundations of Leninism and compare it to what Bukharin wrote and then what Trotsky wrote. The whole damn party voted for Stalin after reading the material published
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? (lenin on class in 1919
Socialism means the abolition of classes. The dictatorship of the proletariat has done all it could to abolish classes. But classes cannot be abolished at one stroke. And classes still remain and will remain in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship will become unnecessary when classes disappear. Without the dictatorship of the proletariat they will not disappear. Classes have remained, but in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat every class has undergone a change, and the relations between the classes have also changed. The class struggle does not disappear under the dictatorship of the proletariat; it merely assumes different forms. Under capitalism the proletariat was an oppressed class, a class which had been deprived of the means of production, the only class which stood directly and completely opposed to the bourgeoisie, and therefore the only one capable of being revolutionary to the very end. Having overthrown the bourgeoisie and conquered political power, the proletariat has become the ruling class; it wields state power, it exercises control over means of production already socialised; it guides the wavering and intermediary elements and classes; it crushes the increasingly stubborn resistance of the exploiters. All these are specific tasks of the class struggle, tasks which the proletariat formerly did not and could not have set itself. The class of exploiters, the landowners and capitalists, has not disappeared and cannot disappear all at once under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The exploiters have been smashed, but not destroyed. They still have an inter national base in the form of international capital, of which they are a branch. They still retain certain means of production in part, they still have money, they still have vast social connections. Because they have been defeated, the energy of their resistance has increased a hundred and a thousandfold. The “art” of state, military and economic administration gives them a superiority, and a very great superiority, so that their importance is incomparably greater than their numerical proportion of the population. The class struggle waged by the overthrown exploiters against the victorious vanguard of the exploited, i.e., the proletariat, has become incomparably more bitter. And it cannot be otherwise in the case of a revolution, unless this concept is replaced (as it is by all the heroes of the Second International) by reformist illusions. Lastly, the peasants, like the petty bourgeoisie in general, occupy a half-way, intermediate position even under the dictatorship of the proletariat: on the one hand, they are a fairly large (and in backward Russia, a vast) mass of working people, united by the common interest of all working people to emancipate themselves from the landowner and the capitalist; on the other hand, they are disunited small proprietors, property-owners and traders. Such an economic position inevitably causes them to vacillate between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. In view of the acute form which the struggle between these two classes has assumed, in view of the incredibly severe break up of all social relations, and in view of the great attachment of the peasants and the petty bourgeoisie generally to the old, the routine, and the unchanging, it is only natural that we should inevitably find them swinging from one side to the other, that we should find them wavering, changeable, uncertain, and so on. In relation to this class—or to these social elements—the proletariat must strive to establish its influence over it, to guide it. To give leadership to the vacillating and unstable—such is the task of the proletariat. If we compare all the basic forces or classes and their interrelations, as modified by the dictatorship of the proletariat, we shall realise how unutterably nonsensical and theoretically stupid is the common petty-bourgeois idea shared by all representatives of the Second International, that the transition to socialism is possible “by means of democracy” in general. The fundamental source of this error lies in the prejudice inherited from the bourgeoisie that “democracy” is something absolute and above classes. As a matter of fact, democracy itself passes into an entirely new phase under the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the class struggle rises to a higher level, dominating over each and every form. General talk about freedom, equality and democracy is in fact but a blind repetition of concepts shaped by the relations of commodity production. To attempt to solve the concrete problems of the dictatorship of the proletariat by such generalities is tantamount to accepting the theories and principles of the bourgeoisie in their entirety. From the point of view of the proletariat, the question can be put only in the
