Sigh, s'pose I have to make the required menshie noises ...
Chas quotes some stalwart Bolshie mates:
>Noam Chomsky says: "One can debate the meaning of the term 'socialism,'
but
>if it means anything, it means control of production by the workers
>themselves, not owners and managers who rule them and control all
decisions,
>whether in capitalist enterprise or an absolutist state. ***** To refer
to
>the Soviet Union as socialist is an interesting case of doctrinal double
>speak."
>
>Chomsky is considered an expert in the science of language - i.e., a
>professor of linguistics, and a partisan, linguistic theoretician. The
>notion of "doublespeak" is, of course, taken from George Orwell's
>anti-utopian science fiction, futuristic novel 1984. If there is a
>totalitarian or "absolutist" state-society within which operates a
"Ministry
>of Truth," it is the United States -- with its educational institutions --
>and Chomsky is its "Obrian."
Bagging a fat target like the USofA is, by itself, no way to attack Chomsky,
who's made the same point a thousand times - and with more respect for solid
evidence than this lot. That Chomsky attacks the Soviet model, too, is
quite consistent. To be sans democratic control of the means of production
is to be sans a decisively socialist society, is it not.
>Terms, such as "socialism" and "capitalism," have meaning not only in
>linguistic sophistry, but also as description of economic phenomena. For
>Chomsky, the idea -- the concept denoted by the term -- has prior reality.
>Chomsky is an idealist (not a materialist like Lenin, Trotsky, and
Luxemberg
>- all contemporaries of the Russian Revolution) and, therefore, if the
>material phenomenon he examines does not correspond to the concept, he
>dislodges the reality from the concept. For example, Chomsky's idea of
>socialism and the economic reality of the Soviet Union do not comport so,
in
>order to keep his concept in tack, Chomsky dislodges the reality from the
>idea and refers to the Soviet Union as "socialist. . . doublespeak." To
>Chomsky we say that we are not dealing with an Orwellian novel, but
economic
>reality.
'Socialism' was the Soviet version of 'freedom' in the west. Both are
double-speak. Both are the names in which their definitive opposites
were/are performed in practice.
>Economic reality in Russia in 1917 had nothing to do with Orwellian symbols
and systems,
>and the reason why the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was not maintained
in Russia
>cannot be explained by attributing ill will to what Chomsky considers a few
power hungry
>"usurpers" -- viz. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin.
I'm not saying there was no ill-will, mind, but what are these people really
saying. That socialism in one state is not a goer, and that the productive
forces (and the decisively substantial proletariat that attends a developed
capitalist society) in the Russia of 1917 wasn't up to scratch yet. If that
was decisively true, Chomsky is right. The SU was not socialist - because
it could not be. If not decisively true, these mates of yours should tell
us what was.
>Positioned
>by industrial developments in Russia in 1917, the Russian working class was
>able to operate as a concentrated, independent political party, a class,
and
>it was able to challenge the bourgeois Constituent Assembly.
Ah, yes. If it wasn't Bolshie, it was bourgeois. The party is the class,
and everybody else is against the class. Tendentious substitutionalism on
its way to the Gulag via Kronstadt ...
>In contradistinction to the historical precedent of the bourgeois-dominated
French
>Revolution, the Russian proletariat was able to exploit the nascent
bourgeois democracy,
>and form an alliance with the vast masses of a revolutionary peasantry.
Here's a nice line on revolutionary peasantries and 'alliances': "They
cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Their representative
must at the same time appear as their master, as an authority over them, as
an unlimited power that protects them against the other classes and sends
them rain and sunshine from above. The political influence of the
small-holding peasants, therefore, find its final expression in the
executive power subordinating society to itself."
Ring a bell, does it?
>The Russian Revolution was based on Soviet power - soviets of workers,
>peasants, and soldiers.
"All power to the Soviets" was a good idea and even better double speak.
'The party' substituted for them, too.
>Socialism has nothing in common with either "capitalist enterprise or an
absolutist state."
Er, that's what Chomsky is saying, no?
>The overthrow of that state was the first phase of the bourgeois-democratic
revolution
>in April-May 1917. Yet, there was also Soviet power along side of the
bourgeois
>government of the Constituent Assembly. Following the example of the Paris
>Commune, the Bolsheviks called for "all power to the Soviets" in opposition
>to the power held by the National Constituent Assembly. This was class
>struggle personified. The Soviet was the political representative of
>workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors, while the National Constituent
>Assembly was the political representative of the bourgeoisie. When the
>Soviets got the upper hand, the Bolsheviks (as the majority in the Soviets)
>seized the initiative and disbanded the National Constituent Assembly.
>Perhaps the disbanding of the National Constituent Assembly (the bourgeois
>political power) in favor of the Soviets (the power of the masses of
workers,
>peasants, soldiers and sailors) is what Chomsky bemoans. On the contrary,
we
>do not bemoan this victory by the Bolsheviks but celebrate it!
A dialectician has cause to celebrate it, but not in the terms chucked at us
here. Here's a good dialectician at work: " ... the revolution made
progress, forged ahead, not by its immediate tragicomic achievements, but on
the contrary by the creation of a powerful, united counter-revolution, by
the creation of an opponent in combat with whom, only, the party of
overthrow ripened into a really revolutionary party."
>Chomsky's idea of "socialism" is workers' control of industry, "whether in
a
>capitalist enterprise or an absolutist state."
Chomsky says nothing of the kind, and your mates know it, Chas! What
bollocks! Have another look at that opening paragraph!
>Well, what if the capitalists
>who own the enterprise do not want to subject it to the "control" of the
>workers? They don't, and they won't. Workers' control of the economy in
an
>absolutist state is impossible.
Now THAT'S what Chomsky is saying!
>The Bolsheviks had to send armed detachments
>to break up the bourgeoisie's' constituent assemblies, and the Soviet power
>became the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics - and we are not here
talking
>about an "absolutist state." The bourgeois industries were nationalized
and
>the peasantry seized the lands. The Bolsheviks were only a part of this
>revolution.
Here, fantasy is the larger part. The peasantry began dying in their
millions in 1922. One tends not to die if one has really "seized the
lands". Someone else must have seized them by 1922, no?.
>Chomsky charges that "The Bolshevik coup of October 1917 placed state power
>in the hands of Lenin and Trotsky, who moved quickly to dismantle the
>incipient socialist institutions that had grown up during the popular
>revolution of the preceding months - the factory councils, the Soviets, in
>fact any organ of popular control - and to convert the work force into what
>they called a 'labor-army' under the command of a leader." Chomsky
continues
>by saying: "In any meaningful sense of the term 'socialism,' the Bolsheviks
>moved at once to destroy its existing elements. No socialist deviation has
>been permitted sense." Chomsky's perception was very much different from
the
>reality.
But in agreement with an awful lot of doomed Russian workers, it seems.
>"To be successful, insurrection must rely not upon
>conspiracy and not upon a party, but upon the advanced class. That is the
>first point. Insurrection must rely upon the revolutionary spirit of the
>people. That is the second point. Insurrection must rely upon the crucial
>moment in the history of the growing revolution, when the activity of the
>advanced ranks of the people is at its height, and when the vacillations in
>the ranks of the enemies and in the ranks of the weak, half-hearted and
>irresolute friends of the revolution are strongest. That is the third
point.
> And these three factors in the attitude towards insurrection distinguish
>Marxism from Blanquism." (Emphasis in original) (Marxism and Insurrection:
A
>Letter to the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour
>Party, V. I. Lenin Selected Works, Volume VI, p.213).
It all rather depends on how one defines 'advanced', how substantial the
'advanced ranks' are, how one defines 'enemies' and 'half-hearted', and how
substantial they are. I reckon a 100-year-old Marx would have agreed these
things were decisively important - he would, however, have disagreed with
the implicit Leninist position that the nature of the insurrection he had in
mind suited the conditions per these very criteria. Or, if he were to
agree, he'd have done so along the lines of the dialectical insight quoted
above.
>Chomsky claims that, once the Bolsheviks realized democracy and Soviet
power,
>they then destroyed it! This is unsubstantiated nonsense!
Lenin may have had no option, or thought he had none - I'm quite prepared to
go along with that, and Chomsky doesn't think it important to go into that
element of the argument - but I've read the April Theses and the NEP, and I
see plenty of substantiation for Chomsky's claim there.
>Chomsky seems to believe in
>the private ownership of the means of social production with workers'
>"control" (or management) of that production.
He seems to believe in no such thing.
>Chomsky further criticizes the Russian Revolution: "These developments came
>as no surprise to leading Marxist intellectuals, who had criticized Lenin's
>doctrines for years (as had Trotsky), because they would centralize
authority
>in the hands of the vanguard party and its leaders. In fact, decades
>earlier, the anarchist thinker Bakunin had predicted that the emerging
>intellectual class would follow one of two paths: either they would try to
>exploit popular struggles to take state power themselves, beginning a
brutal
>and oppressive Red bureaucracy; or they would become the managers and
>ideologists of the state-capitalist societies, if the popular revolution
>failed. It was a perceptive insight, on both accounts."
Wasn't it just! Bakunin had his moments after all.
>We take issue with Chomsky's portrayal of Lenin (and the Bolsheviks) as
>dictating to the armed proletariat, peasantry, soldiers and sailors.
Like the West's capitalist class, the Bolshies won this round - and they got
to write the history. The contortions in which they engage to explain the
Kronstadts, the Moscow ironworkers, the tens of millions of dead peasants
etc are not convincing. And those weren't instants of dictating so much as
killing.
>More importantly, the Russian
>Revolution found support - and gave support to - workers' and oppressed
>people around the world.
This they sometimes did (Cuba) and sometimes didn't (Spain).
>Chomsky probably would have stood with Karl Kautsky
>in opposing the dictatorship of the proletariat in an alliance with the
>peasantry. We stand with Lenin, Luxemberg and Liebnick.
I didn't know there were two Luxemburgs! And anyway, how lame is that
'proabaly'?
>Neither we nor Chomsky were a part of the Russian Revolution, but if we
were
>-- and based on the information at hand today about the Russian Revolution
>and the material conditions that gave rise to the dictatorship of the
>proletariat - we would have stood against Chomsky, and with Lenin and the
>Bolsheviks in calling for "all power to the Soviets."
I'm all for "all power to the Soviets"! So I'd have been with all the Noams
du juour.
Don't give yourself whiplash reaching for that reply button, eh?
Cheers,
Rob.
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