>>> Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 05/11/00 12:15PM >>>
I wrote:
>BTW, a friend (an expert on Soviet agriculture and politics) who spent a
>year in the USSR in 1977 or so reported that Soviet academics were
>expected to quote from Lenin in all articles (including articles on soil
>chemistry). But they weren't supposed to quote from THE STATE AND
>REVOLUTION, seemingly because it was seen as anarchistic.
quoth Charles Brown:
>CB: Do you think the "freedom" of U.S. academics from this disciplined
>Leninism results in better or worse intellectual products as compared with
>the SU ?
I don't think this kind of comparison (the quality of intellectual
products) can be made.
)))))))))))))))
CB: What type of issue were you getting at with your "BTW" ? Sounds like you are
raising an issue of intellectual freedom in the SU.
)))))))))))
Just as in the US, the quality of orthodox academics
rose as the topic that they were dealing with became more distant from
questioning the official ideology.
___________
CB: I don't know. The official ideology in the SU ( historical materialism) was of
high intellectual quality , compared with that in the US.
___________
>Is "freedom" from the principles that Lenin championed in the best
>interest of the proletariat, the overwhelming masses of the population ?
no. The point was that the quotations from Lenin were simply
window-dressing. The academics would throw in a quote from Vlad, then
ignore it and discuss whatever they were studying. The initial quote didn't
hurt the quality of their work.
__________
CB: I have a lot of books from the Soviet Union for which this is not true. The quotes
of Lenin are very relevant to what is being discussed. For example , I had one by
Comrade Zivs , an attorney whom I met, for which your generalization is inaccurate.
Perhaps, not everybody was in the same situation as your aquaintence said.
__________
>More directly to your point, which has to do with the republican principle
>vs. direct democracy, Marx and Engels clearly advocated a republican form
>of government for socialism, not direct democracy ( New England town
>meeting) of the tens of millions. So, the form of the dictatorship of the
>proletariat in the Marxist conception IS some minority ruling as the
>representatives of the overwhelming majority as in all republics. Engels
>and Marx also advocated a centralized instead of a federal ( as in the
>U.S.) form for the national government.
I wasn't talking about direct democracy, which seems like nothing but a red
herring.
________
CB: May seem like one , but is not. You didn't use the term "direct democracy", but
the concept is important for analyzing the subject you and Lou were discussing. All
of the following questions you mention
"Rather, it was about who was running the state: was it the proletariat or
some small minority of CP members? so was it a dictatorship _by_ the
proletariat or a dictatorship _in the name of_ the proletariat? or a
dictatorship _over_ the proletariat? or the Stalinist dictatorship
_exploiting_ the proletariat?"
cannot be addressed without the concept of direct democracy. A "dictatorship by (of)
the proletariat " has no sensible meaning without reference to "direct democracy." To
ask was it the proletariat "running" the state, must mean some reference to direct
democracy, if just to clarify the meaning of republic or representative government.
"The" proletariat is a mass. A mass "running" the state is some type of direct
democracy.
____________
Strictly speaking, the Commune model that Marx endorsed wasn't
"representative democracy." Rather, it was delegatory democracy, since the
delegates could easily be recalled.
__________
CB: All elected officials of the City of Detroit can be recalled too. All republican
forms are "delegatory" forms.
I wouldn't quite say Marx endorsed the Commune in the sense of a comprehensive
theoretical model for a socialist state. It was more a specific experiment , which was
valuable because it was an "actually existing" effort, and a source of one or two
specific modifications of Engels and Marx's outline in _The Manifesto of the Communist
Party_. Specifically, they said the proletariat could not just pick up the bourgeois
state apparatus whole, but that it would have to be broken up. Also, this was a
negative lesson from the Commune, a lesson from an error of the Commune.
___________
__
Representatives can't be recalled with
ease (it's like impeaching the president in most cases). ______
CB: "with ease" has to be spelled out. Legally, all you have to do is gather the
signatures and win the vote in Detroit. Practically, you are fighting city hall.
There was just a recall petition circulated against the Mayor last year. The City
Clerk suspiciously invalidated a huge number of signatures.
__________
Also, the
delegate's pay were restricted from rising much above that of the average
worker. Because of recall and the pay restriction, it's not the same as
rule by a minority. (Also, Marx endorsed the end of the separation between
the executive and the legislative branches.)
________
CB: Yes, I am writing now a brief on a related topic (separation of powers ; city
manager form of municipal govt, i.e. the mayor sits at the plearsure of the Council,
essentially executive branch is not independent of the legislative branch).
All republican forms are not, in theory ,rule by a minority. They are modified or
pragmatic forms of popular sovereignty. All power resides in the People as a whole,
but it is delegated to their elected representatives. All levels of government in the
U.S. have recall except the federal, i.e. are like the Commune model.
Nobody is for rule by a minority in theory ( Well, Solzenhityzen)
____________
Of course, recall and pay restrictions work differently (i.e., poorly)
under capitalism. Here in California, recall is relatively easy, so that
the organized right wing and the moneyed interests use it (just as they use
the initiative system). If we had pay restrictions, that would mean that
most of the time, only the independently wealthy could afford to stand for
office. (Every once and awhile, some Republican advocates lowering
representatives' pay, in order to produce this result.) Similarly, ending
the separation between the executive and legislative branches is no big
improvement under capitalism, as seen in the many cases of parliamentary
democracy in Europe and elsewhere. Again, Commune-type democracy would work
better with socialism in place.
______________
CB: Agree. The rule of $$$$$$ corrupts the democratic, republican and delegatory
forms, no matter how good they are on paper.
I am not saying, by the way, that there were not corruptions of the forms in the
history of the SU. However, I would say that it was not an absolute or complete
corruption of the forms. It was like a giant Paris Commune, with negative and
positive lessons for those who try to build socialism the next time.
Don't forget , as with the Commune, there were many who argued that it was wrong to
even try socialism in Russia , and with hindsight we might say that the truths of
their arguments are borne out by the failures and Failure of the SU. But Marx had
anticipated that the Commune would be a folly of despair, yet supported the effort.
Then he drew the lessons from the effort.
__________
>Then to be historically concrete and realistic, the imperialist imposition
>of a permanent state of war or threat of war against the SU necessitated a
>militarization of the form of rule. All democracies in real history have
>disgarded many democratic forms in conditions of war siege. For example,
>Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the U.S. Civil War.
Right. The problem is that the longer the external attacks (and threats)
persist, the more entrenched the bureaucratic rulers become. It starts out
as necessity, but eventually the officials start arguing the virtue of that
necessity. The means become ends in themselves. (I've read old Soviet
propaganda about the benefits of a one-party system (and it wasn't simply a
matter of defending the country) and the fun little fairy tale about how
the other political parties voluntarily disbanded during the 1920s.)
__________
CB: I agree with you completely that the external attacks resulted in and combined
with internal failures, crimes, fuckups. On the other hand, I am not sure that if the
SU had had perfect delegative democracy that it would not still have been destroyed by
an attack. I am a vigorous advocate of "delegatory" democracy, if that's the term you
prefer. But it contemplates a situation in which there is the freedom to take the
long time it takes to make decisions by millions of people, a mass deliberative
process.
The SU did not have this luxury of time during the Civil War or after. A main issue
was industrialize rapidly (as an underpinning for building defense) or succumb to the
inevitable next attack from the imperialist powers. That was as true as the fact that
the sun rises everyday, whether it was voted for by "the proletariat" en masse or not.
I kind of think the vast majority of the proletariat and peasants in Russia could
understand that and agree with it at the time, regardless of the lack of delegatory
forms.
With hindsight, we could probably figure a way that the Paris Commune could have
lasted much longer too, maybe even led to socialism in France in the 1870's.
___________
If the US Civil War had lasted for a long time, the Lincoln-era
restrictions on civil liberties would have become totally entrenched, just
as the Cold War-era restrictions (HUAC, the FBI, COINTELPRO, etc.) became
entrenched until people (including lawyers) fought hard and long against them.
___________
CB: Agree. Of course I have to agree. The word "entrenched" here is a metaphor. It
means not trenches in dirt , but a way of thinking about things gripping the masses
and becoming a material force, social and political ideas of the type you mention
being held by a critical mass or group of people. And , as you say, the only way to
prevent such "entrenchment" is by other people persuading others to hold ideas
opposing the undemocratic ideas.
By the way, I think there was an abatement of the worst anti-democratic ,Stalinist
practices in the SU after WWII.
The Khrushchev denunciation of Stalin's crimes was not a nothing from the standpoint
of democracy. I am hard pressed to think of a Western example of similar
criticism/self-criticism (openness) in the ruling political sectors.
_________________
>As I said, you and Lou are correct in noting that the SU in the period of
>Stalin also violated Marxist principles of democracy. Khrushchev details
>these in the 20th Congress report. But the Soviet state in the period of
>Stalin also did many things that were not only in the name of the
>proletariat, but in the best interests of the proletariat. This fact is
>significantly absent from your measure of the success of proletarian
>democracy in the SU at that time. Stalinist illegal violence was more
>against party members than the proletarian masses.
not against the kulaks?
___________
CB: What was the class/strata status of these kulaks ? Not all peasants are kulaks ,
are they ? The is an enormous tendency among peasants to become small producers, i.e.
proto-bourgeoisie, no ? Isn't this exactly a point at which the need for the
proletariat to lead the peasants is paramount ? In some sense, the proletarian state
must repress the tendencies of peasants to become petit bourgeois , small producers.
Of course, without violence is preferable, but in a pinch, the socialist state remains
a repressive apparatus, will use force. Marx did not contemplate a dictatorship of the
proletariat and peasants, did he ? Overall, the Russian Revolution gave a bigger role
to the poorest peasants than had been anticipated in Marx's model of democracy.
Again, to the extent that we are discussing Marx's conception of proletarian
democracy, I don't think old Karl considered that the proletarian state was not a real
state that would have to use terror and violence to rule in some circumstances,and
this would mean acts that we all abhor at some level.
Marx did not except socialism from that statement he made about violence being the
midwife of the birth of a new society , or whatever he said.
This is one sense in which the process of establishing socialism is "objective".
Necessary things happen that we subjective humans abhor.
____________
>So, the SU form was as close to the dictatorship in the interests of the
>proletariat as most actualizations of an idea for social forms have been
>in human history, with successes and failures in matching the idea.
really. Then I'm against the dictatorship of the proletariat as you define
it. I don't think that working people want to be ruled by a bunch of crusty
old bureaucrats like Andropov (also a KGB man, like Putin), running a
poorly-working planning system, with a secret police always checking out
and sometimes repressing deviants.
____________
CB: Well, you may be against what I said, but your comment is nothing like what I
said. I said nothing like
"working people want to be ruled by a bunch of crusty
old bureaucrats like Andropov (also a KGB man, like Putin), running a
poorly-working planning system, with a secret police always checking out
and sometimes repressing deviants "
I said that despite failures like what you mention , the SU had SUCCESSES in meeting
the interests of the proletariat and masses. Your only referring to the failures is
telling a half-truth.
____________
It's the same old sh*t. Out with the old
bosses, in with the new.
____________
CB: Nope. The SU was not just the same old shit. False. It had some new sugar and some
old shit both.
____________
However, I do not think that a discussion of this topic is worth pen-l's
time, so I'll stop there.
______________
CB: This "not worth discussing" line pops up now and again as a sort of parting shot.
Would make more sense to say it at the beginning of a post than at the end.
The issues on this thread are as important to "progressive economics" 2000 as much as
many other threads that appear here.
CB
I'm out of time anyway. I'm not going to be on pen-l for the rest of the
day (unless someone _misrepresents_ my views).
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
