Not a blueprint for revolution in the middle of a war. I mean a blueprint for the system once things have settled. No, not settled perfectly: settled once the revolution and war are over.
I thought Stalin was a lunatic, so why worry about his blueprints? >As they say in club meetings, I would like to be identified with >Comrade Devine's remarks below. Well said ! > >Charles > >^^^^^^^ >From: Jim Devine > >As I understand it, Marx & Engels rejected blueprints for socialism >mostly for tactical and strategic reasons. When they wrote, >"socialism" most often showed up in one or two forms. First, there >were the utopians, many of whom had blueprints for ideal societies >(the way the money libertarians of today and yesterday have blueprints >for the ideal market system). The usual shtick was a leader would >take his followers to the New World, take some land stolen from the >natives, and try to follow the blueprint under the benign dictatorship >of the leader. Some of these "colonies" were religious in nature. Most >of them didn't succeed, often turning into cults or being absorbed >into the broader society. Second, there were those who called for >government subsidies for workers' cooperatives. > >Marx & Engels had a lot of respect for the "utopian socialists" (Owen, >Fourier, Saint-Simon, etc., even Proudhon) and saw this kind of >socialism as something that could be studied and learned from. In >fact, it was part of the collective self-education of the working >class which was part of the social-democratic parties of the day. But >they rejected the idea of imposing idealized frameworks on reality. >Instead, they saw socialism as linked into the predicted process of >historical development and coming from below, i.e., from the working >class movement itself. So, for example, Marx's most concrete >statements about socialism came from his study of an actual struggle, >i.e., the Paris Commune. (If you want a blueprint from Marx, that's >it.) > >Of course, when the rubber hit the road (actual practice), it did not >work out as M&E predicted. In the simplest possible terms, the world >was split between the imperialist powers (where the working class was >strongest) and the dominated countries (where capitalism was weakest) >rather than combining a strong working class with weak capitalism (the >true recipe for Marxian socialism). The Revolution happened in a >"backward" country where capitalism was weakest (Russia). > >Once Lenin and the boys got into power, they clearly didn't have a >blueprint. The workers', peasants', and soldiers' soviets (which had >been the main basis for the Revolution) lost their enthusiasm and >increasingly became a liability in the context of civil war and >imperial invasion. (If the White Guards are attacking, how can a >military commander deal with an independent soldiers' soviet?) Marx's >writings on the Paris Commune became increasing irrelevant as this >revolution from below faded. > >Lenin _et al_ developed most of their system of governance in the >context of civil war, invasion, social backwardness, and economic >underdevelopment. The little bits of blueprint that M&E left weren't >very useful. The CRITIQUE OF THE GOTHA PROGRAM was very abstract >(slogans!) and mostly a critique, not a positive program. > >In fact, it's unclear in this historical context that a blueprint >would have helped. M&E and the social democrats had a lot of doubts >about creating socialism in a poor country, especially one that was >isolated and encircled by enemies. This is why the early Bolsheviks >said that the revolution had to be international to succeed. > >In desperation, a lot of the Bolsheviks made a virtue of necessity. >"War communism" (a totally planned economy aimed at defending the >country) became an ideal, replacing democratic ideas about the >Commune. Eventually, after some twists and turns, something like that >was instituted under Stalin, as a machine for promoting national >economic development. In this context, any respect for utopian >socialism was anathema, since it implied a critique of the Soviet >_status quo_. Engel's "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" became >interpreted as "Socialism: Utopian _versus_ Scientific," where >"Science" became an idealized image of physical science and attached >to Marxian political economy (which is not that kind of science). > >I wouldn't blame Stalin on the allergy to blueprints. Like Carl >Dassbach, I'd blame the material conditions faced by Russian in 1917 >and after. >_______________________________________________ >pen-l mailing list >[email protected] >https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > > _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
