Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Withering away of the state
The democratic rhetoric of Rousseau and Tocqueville becomes meaningless and obfuscatory emissions of hot gasses by Clinton or Blair. Such hyperbole is not good for communication... So you believe Clinton when he talks about being in favor of democracy? Of course Clinton and Blair believe deeply in democracy: it has been very good to them, and must therefore be the best of all possible forms of government. I, on the other hand, face every day the results of the California voter initiative process... Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Re: Re: Withering away of the state
Then we are at an impasse. I think it is worth while to rescue the language of socialism and Marxism from the Leninist distortions, but perhaps it is not. Perhaps we have to invent a new political language. Rod Yep. Back to Tocqueville and Rousseau...
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Withering away of the state
Tocquville and Rousseau offer a "new" language? I don't deny we have lots to learn from them, but if "new" is what we need, they don't qualify. --jks I think it is worth while to rescue the language of socialism and Marxism from the Leninist distortions, but perhaps it is not. Perhaps we have to invent a new political language. Rod Yep. Back to Tocqueville and Rousseau...
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Withering away of the state
Brad wrote: Then we are at an impasse. I think it is worth while to rescue the language of socialism and Marxism from the Leninist distortions, but perhaps it is not. Perhaps we have to invent a new political language. Brad writes: Yep. Back to Tocqueville and Rousseau... If Brad is not being facetious here, he is contradicting himself: I thought that he rejected Rousseau's rhetoric about the "general will" and the like, not to mention R's conception of human malleability. (If he _is_ being facetious, it should be pointed out that that method is not good for communication unless it is in a face-to-face conversation or as part of an extended essay which allows the reader to understand the tone. It also suggests that Brad participates in pen-l not to communicate with others or to learn from them but to cause trouble and/or to prevent serious discussion.) As for Tocqueville, I think that Brad has to deal with the contradiction between Tocquevillean local democracy (community) and capitalism's dynamics. As seen in the history of the world during the last 25 years (and especially the last decade), capitalism weakens and undermines _any_ kind of democracy, converting all sorts of democracy into the heartless and aggressive seeking of profit at all cost and/or the heartless and anonymous dictatorship by bureaucratic organizations such as the multinational corporations, the WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF. (In this experience, the marketization of the world goes along with its bureaucratization, rather than these two phenomena being substitutes.) The democratic rhetoric of Rousseau and Tocqueville becomes meaningless and obfuscatory emissions of hot gasses by Clinton or Blair. If we accept the common image of "Leninism" as a method of stuffing Revolution down the throats of the people (rather than seeing a more complex and nuanced view of Lenin and his ideas), then we must recognize that in the current day, it is the US Treasury, the IMF, and the World Bank that are the main "Leninist" forces, imposing a neoliberal Revolution on the world. Instead of socialist revolution from above (as in interpretations of "Leninism" shared by both Stalinists and Cold Warriors), it's capitalist revolution from above. The worst, of course, can be seen in the ruins of the former Soviet Union, where the "Washington Consensus" was imposed on the conquered territory by the Harvard Boys, in effect leading to a modern version of the Carthaginian Peace (sowing the soil with salt), from which it will take a generation or more for the Russians to recover. BTW, I think that any criticism of "Leninism" should be combined with criticism of other top-down methods. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine
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The democratic rhetoric of Rousseau and Tocqueville becomes meaningless and obfuscatory emissions of hot gasses by Clinton or Blair. Such hyperbole is not good for communication even in face-to-face conversation or as part of an extended essay which allows the reader to understand the tone. It appears that Jim participates in pen-l not to communicate with others or to learn from them but to cause trouble and/or to prevent serious discussion. So you believe Clinton when he talks about being in favor of democracy? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Withering away of the state
Brad wrote: Then we are at an impasse. I think it is worth while to rescue the language of socialism and Marxism from the Leninist distortions, but perhaps it is not. Perhaps we have to invent a new political language. Brad writes: Yep. Back to Tocqueville and Rousseau... If Brad is not being facetious here, he is contradicting himself: I thought that he rejected Rousseau's rhetoric about the "general will" and the like, not to mention R's conception of human malleability. (If he _is_ being facetious, it should be pointed out that that method is not good for communication unless it is in a face-to-face conversation or as part of an extended essay which allows the reader to understand the tone. It also suggests that Brad participates in pen-l not to communicate with others or to learn from them but to cause trouble and/or to prevent serious discussion.) Just because I think that Rousseau's concept of the general will is naive doesn't mean that _Inequality_ and _The Social Contract_ aren't works of genius from which we can learn a lot. I like Rousseau's formulation of the problems--I just don't think he has the answer. As for Tocqueville, I think that Brad has to deal with the contradiction between Tocquevillean local democracy (community) and capitalism's dynamics. Not something Tocqueville ignored, by the way... The democratic rhetoric of Rousseau and Tocqueville becomes meaningless and obfuscatory emissions of hot gasses by Clinton or Blair. Such hyperbole is not good for communication even in face-to-face conversation or as part of an extended essay which allows the reader to understand the tone. It appears that Jim participates in pen-l not to communicate with others or to learn from them but to cause trouble and/or to prevent serious discussion.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Withering away of the state
Jim: I agree that circumstances both internal and external had a great deal to do with what happened in Russia. I don't blame it all on Lenin. Socialism in a poor country is an extremely difficult proposition. But my point is that whatever the reason, Russia did not socialise the means of production, and should not be called socialist. Rod Jim Devine wrote: At 06:54 AM 05/23/2000 +1000, you wrote: Nice post, Rod! And I tend to side with Barkley on the SR Constituent Assembly, too - which seems to me to have been a more promising midwife for the sort of transformations you discuss (especially in light of the resolutions they were passing in their last days) than the dictatorship of a vanguard - substitutionalist elite. I'm not sure that the Constituent Assembly would have dealt well with the issue of ending WW I the way Lenin did for Russia -- or with continuing to fight the war, the way Karensky wanted to do. Would it have dealt well with violent opposition or civil war or imperialist invasion? or the extreme poverty of Russia at the time? the division between the peasants and the workers -- and the difficulty of keeping peasants united once they've grabbed land for themselves? This is not to apologize for Lenin (since I'm no Leninist). But I think that the objective conditions of 1917-18 in Russia were such that nice social democrats were unlikely to take power (or stay there, if you consider Karensky to be a social democrat). I think that these conditions bred substitutionism more than it leapt full-grown from Lenin's head. (Many of the SR's were more substitutionist in that many believed in the "propaganda of the deed." Lenin was a moderate compared to the bomb-throwers among the anarchists, who were strong substitutionists.) Substitutionism takes hold when the working class is poorly organized and less than class conscious. (It can be seen in the form of various lobbyists and lawyers who are substituting for the US working class in most struggles these days.) It's important to notice how Lenin's ideas change with circumstances in Russia. After he initially flirted with Kautsky's top-down "workers can never be socialist" perspective in WHAT IS TO BE DONE?,[*] he became less "vanguardist" and less "substitutionist" as the Russian workers movement grew in number and depth. Then, after October 1917, once the popular revolution begins to fade, the grass roots being torn apart by civil war, urban/rural conflict, etc., his ideas veer toward top-downism. I guess my conclusion is the opposite of Leninism, in that I see Lenin as more of a dependent variable than an independent one. He, like Woodrow Wilson, may have seen history as being on his side (as Brad asserts), but he was wrong. Wilson maybe was right, since his flavor of hypocrisy seems to rule these days (bombing Serbia to "make the world safe for democracy"). [*] Hal Draper's article reprinted in the recent HISTORICAL MATERIALISM makes a convincing case that it was Kautsky who developed the top-down (vanguardist) conception of the party, while Lenin never went all the way (contrary to the strange consensus among Stalinists and Cold Warriors, who all agreed that Lenin = Stalin). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
RE: Re: Re: Re: Withering away of the state
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Jim Devine Sent: 23 May 2000 05:34 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:[PEN-L:19438] Re: Re: Re: Withering away of the state At 06:54 AM 05/23/2000 +1000, you wrote: Nice post, Rod! And I tend to side with Barkley on the SR Constituent Assembly, too - which seems to me to have been a more promising midwife for the sort of transformations you discuss (especially in light of the resolutions they were passing in their last days) than the dictatorship of a vanguard - substitutionalist elite. I'm not sure that the Constituent Assembly would have dealt well with the issue of ending WW I the way Lenin did for Russia Any illusions about the survivability or relevance of the Constituent Assembly do not survive a reading of the memoirs of its own leaders or of the S-r's generally. It's collapse may have been occasioned by Lenin but he was not the cause of the CA's barrenness. See for instance Ziva Galil, The Menshevik Leaders in the Russian Revolution or Diane Koenker's Strikes and Revolution in Russia in 1917, or David Mandel's Petrograd Workers and the Soviet seizure of power; or, best of all, Leopold Haimson's classic: The Making of 3 Revolutionaries: Voices from the Menshevik Past Mark Jones
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... But my point is that whatever the reason, Russia did not socialise the means of production, and should not be called socialist. Rod I don't know if it does any good to say that the USSR wasn't socialist, since the vast majority of humanity uses that tag. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Withering away of the state
Then we are at an impasse. I think it is worth while to rescue the language of socialism and Marxism from the Leninist distortions, but perhaps it is not. Perhaps we have to invent a new political language. Rod "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Rod, I would prefer the kind of socialism that you describe. But, like it or not, I would still maintain that what we saw in the USSR was a form of socialism. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, May 22, 2000 4:20 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19425] Re: Withering away of the state First, let's start with the word socialism and what it means. To me the minimum would be some socialisation of the means of production (I distinquish this from nationalisation). This entails the establishment of democratic institutions capable of managing that control. I take this to be what Marx meant by the withering away of the state. The state as a institution of a divided society would be replaced, as those divisions were resolved, by alternative democratic institutions (the division between the public and private sphere being one of the most important divisions, would thus be overcome). The Soviet Union did not attempt to construct these institution, (in fact, after the initial period of the soviets, they did everything in their power to destroy alternative centres of power.) Yugoslavia and Cuba did more in this and have a greater claim to being socialist. The Soviet Union was a society in which the division between capital and labour was still strong. Capital, was for the main part, controlled by the bureaucracy, but it still existed as an opposition to labour. Little was being done to overcome this division. The Soviet Union was one of the world's most developed welfare states but it was not socialist, it was most definitely a society in which capital still ruled. Rod "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Rod, In what way was it not? The USSR followed most of the "planks" in the platform at the end of the Communist Manifesto. It even, under Khrushchev, attempted to maintain greenbelts and carried out other policies motivated by the essentially utopian goal of eliminating the distinction between the city and the country. What it was not was communist. And neither it nor any other socialist state (that I am aware of, maybe Pol Pot made such claims) ever claimed so to be. The official line in the old USSR was that they were a socialist state "in transition" to a communist future that never arrived. BTW, to those who are getting upset that I have made some critical remarks about Marx, I say that I am a great admirer of Marx and fully agree that he was very perspicuitous about many matters, arguably the most brilliant economist of the nineteenth century, certainly one of the most. But, he was not a god or a messiah or a prophet. He was a human being subject to errors, no matter how brilliant or wise he was. Even if one wishes to designate him as "error-free," clearly his writings are open to many interpretations in many places, as we all well know. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, May 18, 2000 7:49 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19253] : withering away of the state Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a socialists society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but it wasn't. "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Jim, I did not mean that the vision was pathetic. I meant that the actual outcome in light of the vision/ (forecast) was pathetic. Barkley Rosser -- -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Re: Re: Withering away of the state (fwd)
One needs to first understand Marx before even talking about Leninism.. Mine Then we are at an impasse. I think it is worth while to rescue the language of socialism and Marxism from the Leninist distortions, but perhaps it is not. Perhaps we have to invent a new political language. Rod "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Rod, I would prefer the kind of socialism that you describe. But, like it or not, I would still maintain that what we saw in the USSR was a form of socialism. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, May 22, 2000 4:20 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19425] Re: Withering away of the state First, let's start with the word socialism and what it means. To me the minimum would be some socialisation of the means of production (I distinquish this from nationalisation). This entails the establishment of democratic institutions capable of managing that control. I take this to be what Marx meant by the withering away of the state. The state as a institution of a divided society would be replaced, as those divisions were resolved, by alternative democratic institutions (the division between the public and private sphere being one of the most important divisions, would thus be overcome). The Soviet Union did not attempt to construct these institution, (in fact, after the initial period of the soviets, they did everything in their power to destroy alternative centres of power.) Yugoslavia and Cuba did more in this and have a greater claim to being socialist. The Soviet Union was a society in which the division between capital and labour was still strong. Capital, was for the main part, controlled by the bureaucracy, but it still existed as an opposition to labour. Little was being done to overcome this division. The Soviet Union was one of the world's most developed welfare states but it was not socialist, it was most definitely a society in which capital still ruled. Rod "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Rod, In what way was it not? The USSR followed most of the "planks" in the platform at the end of the Communist Manifesto. It even, under Khrushchev, attempted to maintain greenbelts and carried out other policies motivated by the essentially utopian goal of eliminating the distinction between the city and the country. What it was not was communist. And neither it nor any other socialist state (that I am aware of, maybe Pol Pot made such claims) ever claimed so to be. The official line in the old USSR was that they were a socialist state "in transition" to a communist future that never arrived. BTW, to those who are getting upset that I have made some critical remarks about Marx, I say that I am a great admirer of Marx and fully agree that he was very perspicuitous about many matters, arguably the most brilliant economist of the nineteenth century, certainly one of the most. But, he was not a god or a messiah or a prophet. He was a human being subject to errors, no matter how brilliant or wise he was. Even if one wishes to designate him as "error-free," clearly his writings are open to many interpretations in many places, as we all well know. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, May 18, 2000 7:49 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19253] : withering away of the state Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a socialists society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but it wasn't. "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Jim, I did not mean that the vision was pathetic. I meant that the actual outcome in light of the vision/ (forecast) was pathetic. Barkley Rosser -- -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Re: Re: Withering away of the state
At 06:54 AM 05/23/2000 +1000, you wrote: Nice post, Rod! And I tend to side with Barkley on the SR Constituent Assembly, too - which seems to me to have been a more promising midwife for the sort of transformations you discuss (especially in light of the resolutions they were passing in their last days) than the dictatorship of a vanguard - substitutionalist elite. I'm not sure that the Constituent Assembly would have dealt well with the issue of ending WW I the way Lenin did for Russia -- or with continuing to fight the war, the way Karensky wanted to do. Would it have dealt well with violent opposition or civil war or imperialist invasion? or the extreme poverty of Russia at the time? the division between the peasants and the workers -- and the difficulty of keeping peasants united once they've grabbed land for themselves? This is not to apologize for Lenin (since I'm no Leninist). But I think that the objective conditions of 1917-18 in Russia were such that nice social democrats were unlikely to take power (or stay there, if you consider Karensky to be a social democrat). I think that these conditions bred substitutionism more than it leapt full-grown from Lenin's head. (Many of the SR's were more substitutionist in that many believed in the "propaganda of the deed." Lenin was a moderate compared to the bomb-throwers among the anarchists, who were strong substitutionists.) Substitutionism takes hold when the working class is poorly organized and less than class conscious. (It can be seen in the form of various lobbyists and lawyers who are substituting for the US working class in most struggles these days.) It's important to notice how Lenin's ideas change with circumstances in Russia. After he initially flirted with Kautsky's top-down "workers can never be socialist" perspective in WHAT IS TO BE DONE?,[*] he became less "vanguardist" and less "substitutionist" as the Russian workers movement grew in number and depth. Then, after October 1917, once the popular revolution begins to fade, the grass roots being torn apart by civil war, urban/rural conflict, etc., his ideas veer toward top-downism. I guess my conclusion is the opposite of Leninism, in that I see Lenin as more of a dependent variable than an independent one. He, like Woodrow Wilson, may have seen history as being on his side (as Brad asserts), but he was wrong. Wilson maybe was right, since his flavor of hypocrisy seems to rule these days (bombing Serbia to "make the world safe for democracy"). [*] Hal Draper's article reprinted in the recent HISTORICAL MATERIALISM makes a convincing case that it was Kautsky who developed the top-down (vanguardist) conception of the party, while Lenin never went all the way (contrary to the strange consensus among Stalinists and Cold Warriors, who all agreed that Lenin = Stalin). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: Re: : withering away of the state (fwd)
I have read everything. Rod [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What did you read about Soviet socialism? Mine Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what most people mean by the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call it what you want, but I don't call it socialism. Rod Carrol Cox wrote: Rod Hay wrote: Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a socialists society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but it wasn't. This I think is utopian. Socialism is a movement, not a platonic form against which you can measure any state and say it is or isn't "socialist." It would seem to me wrong to assume that there will not be many more episodes in the socialist movement which will go greatly astray in one way or another, many more defeats. THe struggles of 6 billion people and their descendants to find their way out of capitalism will almost certainly contain episodes at least as unpleasant as the USSR at its worst. The struggle for socialism has to be essentially g self-justifying at each step, regardless of the (temporary) final outcomes of each struggle. If the only or even the chief reason to fight for socialism is the achievement of the socialism for our great-grandchildren, then socialism is a bust. This is *not* to disagree with Rosa Luxemburg that the final goal is everything, the struggle is nothing. The role of that final goal is the understanding we achieve through it of the present. Hence the struggle depends on the final goal *independently* of whether or not we ever achieve that final goal. Marx, as I understand him, did not propose the classless society and the withering away of the state as a prize to reward us at the end. He saw that just as feudalism could be understood from the perspective of capitalism, so capitalism could only be understood from the perspective of communism. We can only understand the capitalist state (and therefore organize our struggle against it) by seeing it from the perspective of the society in which the state has withered away. [I really think it would help if a larger proportion of marxists suffered from depression. That would help dampen the galloping optimism that blithely says the USSR was not socialist -- for the implication of that evaluation is that socialism of just the sort we want will be easily attainable if we just have the right ideas. Horse Feathers!] The evil at the heart of capitalism (or of any social order of which the market is the central institution) is that Reality becomes the Future, while the past and present become mere appearance. I began to see this by reading and re-reading Plato's *Republic* and attempting to explain it to undergraduates. In Plato's timarchy (in effect a landed aristocracy of some sort) the Past is the Real. The present is merely a recapitulation of the past and is emptied of reality. In what he called an oligarchy (a state ruled by those whose motive was the accumulation of wealth [=money?], the past was non-existent, and the present only the shadow of the future. Action becomes meaningless in itself, since it cannot exhibit ambition (which is the struggle to maintain what the past has given us) nor can it be its own end. Since anything resembling capitalism was still nearly 2000 years away, it was remarkable that even in the piddling financial manipulations of his day Plato could see this. The core capitalist metaphor, that of *investment* catches up this trivialization of the present by the future. The *demos* Plato discarded with contempt: they *chose* (he implies) to live only in the present, their lives dominated by a lowly lust for immediate satisfaction. (One of the many modern equivalents of this is the accusation that unwed mothers have babies in order to make money off of public aid.) There would have been no way to theorize this in Plato's world, for that depended on the development of wage labor under capitalism and its theorization in Marx's conceptions of surplus value and alienation. The working class, by definition, is that class which *must* live in the present (that being the main thrust of the assumption that labor power is purchased at is value). And it is this (unavoidable) attachment of the working to the present (which implicitly is also a valuation of the past such as the investor dare not allow him/herself) which makes the working class a *potentially* revolutionary class. Its revolutionary task is to free humanity from the tyranny of the future. Carrol -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive
Re: Re: Re: : withering away of the state (fwd)
for example? Mine I have read everything. Rod [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What did you read about Soviet socialism? Mine Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what most people mean by the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call it what you want, but I don't call it socialism. Rod Carrol Cox wrote: Rod Hay wrote: Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a socialists society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but it wasn't. This I think is utopian. Socialism is a movement, not a platonic form against which you can measure any state and say it is or isn't "socialist." It would seem to me wrong to assume that there will not be many more episodes in the socialist movement which will go greatly astray in one way or another, many more defeats. THe struggles of 6 billion people and their descendants to find their way out of capitalism will almost certainly contain episodes at least as unpleasant as the USSR at its worst. The struggle for socialism has to be essentially g self-justifying at each step, regardless of the (temporary) final outcomes of each struggle. If the only or even the chief reason to fight for socialism is the achievement of the socialism for our great-grandchildren, then socialism is a bust. This is *not* to disagree with Rosa Luxemburg that the final goal is everything, the struggle is nothing. The role of that final goal is the understanding we achieve through it of the present. Hence the struggle depends on the final goal *independently* of whether or not we ever achieve that final goal. Marx, as I understand him, did not propose the classless society and the withering away of the state as a prize to reward us at the end. He saw that just as feudalism could be understood from the perspective of capitalism, so capitalism could only be understood from the perspective of communism. We can only understand the capitalist state (and therefore organize our struggle against it) by seeing it from the perspective of the society in which the state has withered away. [I really think it would help if a larger proportion of marxists suffered from depression. That would help dampen the galloping optimism that blithely says the USSR was not socialist -- for the implication of that evaluation is that socialism of just the sort we want will be easily attainable if we just have the right ideas. Horse Feathers!] The evil at the heart of capitalism (or of any social order of which the market is the central institution) is that Reality becomes the Future, while the past and present become mere appearance. I began to see this by reading and re-reading Plato's *Republic* and attempting to explain it to undergraduates. In Plato's timarchy (in effect a landed aristocracy of some sort) the Past is the Real. The present is merely a recapitulation of the past and is emptied of reality. In what he called an oligarchy (a state ruled by those whose motive was the accumulation of wealth [=money?], the past was non-existent, and the present only the shadow of the future. Action becomes meaningless in itself, since it cannot exhibit ambition (which is the struggle to maintain what the past has given us) nor can it be its own end. Since anything resembling capitalism was still nearly 2000 years away, it was remarkable that even in the piddling financial manipulations of his day Plato could see this. The core capitalist metaphor, that of *investment* catches up this trivialization of the present by the future. The *demos* Plato discarded with contempt: they *chose* (he implies) to live only in the present, their lives dominated by a lowly lust for immediate satisfaction. (One of the many modern equivalents of this is the accusation that unwed mothers have babies in order to make money off of public aid.) There would have been no way to theorize this in Plato's world, for that depended on the development of wage labor under capitalism and its theorization in Marx's conceptions of surplus value and alienation. The working class, by definition, is that class which *must* live in the present (that being the main thrust of the assumption that labor power is purchased at is value). And it is this (unavoidable) attachment of the working to the present (which implicitly is also a valuation of the past such as the investor dare not allow him/herself) which makes the working class a *potentially* revolutionary class. Its revolutionary task is to free humanity from the tyranny of the future. Carrol -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic
Re: Re: Re: Re: : withering away of the state (fwd)
Rod, "Everything"? Really? Ponomaesh Russki yazik? Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, May 19, 2000 7:11 AM Subject: [PEN-L:19273] Re: Re: Re: : withering away of the state (fwd) I have read everything. Rod [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What did you read about Soviet socialism? Mine Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what most people mean by the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call it what you want, but I don't call it socialism. Rod Carrol Cox wrote: Rod Hay wrote: Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a socialists society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but it wasn't. This I think is utopian. Socialism is a movement, not a platonic form against which you can measure any state and say it is or isn't "socialist." It would seem to me wrong to assume that there will not be many more episodes in the socialist movement which will go greatly astray in one way or another, many more defeats. THe struggles of 6 billion people and their descendants to find their way out of capitalism will almost certainly contain episodes at least as unpleasant as the USSR at its worst. The struggle for socialism has to be essentially g self-justifying at each step, regardless of the (temporary) final outcomes of each struggle. If the only or even the chief reason to fight for socialism is the achievement of the socialism for our great-grandchildren, then socialism is a bust. This is *not* to disagree with Rosa Luxemburg that the final goal is everything, the struggle is nothing. The role of that final goal is the understanding we achieve through it of the present. Hence the struggle depends on the final goal *independently* of whether or not we ever achieve that final goal. Marx, as I understand him, did not propose the classless society and the withering away of the state as a prize to reward us at the end. He saw that just as feudalism could be understood from the perspective of capitalism, so capitalism could only be understood from the perspective of communism. We can only understand the capitalist state (and therefore organize our struggle against it) by seeing it from the perspective of the society in which the state has withered away. [I really think it would help if a larger proportion of marxists suffered from depression. That would help dampen the galloping optimism that blithely says the USSR was not socialist -- for the implication of that evaluation is that socialism of just the sort we want will be easily attainable if we just have the right ideas. Horse Feathers!] The evil at the heart of capitalism (or of any social order of which the market is the central institution) is that Reality becomes the Future, while the past and present become mere appearance. I began to see this by reading and re-reading Plato's *Republic* and attempting to explain it to undergraduates. In Plato's timarchy (in effect a landed aristocracy of some sort) the Past is the Real. The present is merely a recapitulation of the past and is emptied of reality. In what he called an oligarchy (a state ruled by those whose motive was the accumulation of wealth [=money?], the past was non-existent, and the present only the shadow of the future. Action becomes meaningless in itself, since it cannot exhibit ambition (which is the struggle to maintain what the past has given us) nor can it be its own end. Since anything resembling capitalism was still nearly 2000 years away, it was remarkable that even in the piddling financial manipulations of his day Plato could see this. The core capitalist metaphor, that of *investment* catches up this trivialization of the present by the future. The *demos* Plato discarded with contempt: they *chose* (he implies) to live only in the present, their lives dominated by a lowly lust for immediate satisfaction. (One of the many modern equivalents of this is the accusation that unwed mothers have babies in order to make money off of public aid.) There would have been no way to theorize this in Plato's world, for that depended on the development of wage labor under capitalism and its theorization in Marx's conceptions of surplus value and alienation. The working class, by definition, is that class which *must* live in the present (that being the main thrust of the assumption that labor power is purchased at is value). And it is this (unavoidable) attachment of the working to the present (which implicitly is also a valuation of the past such as the investor dare not allow him/herself) which makes the working class a *potentially* revolutionary class. Its revolutionary task is to free humanity from the tyranny of the future. Carrol
RE: Re: Re: : withering away of the state
Perhaps but that could cut two ways, as in socialism yes, good no. No reason to assume every form of socialism would be desirable. mbs I bet if we took a count more people would consider the USSR socialism (communism even) than not. CB Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 09:15PM Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what most people mean by the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call it what you want, but I don't call it socialism. Rod Carrol Cox wrote: Rod Hay wrote: Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a socialists society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but it wasn't. This I think is utopian. Socialism is a movement, not a platonic form against which you can measure any state and say it is or isn't "socialist." It would seem to me wrong to assume that there will not be many more episodes in the socialist movement which will go greatly astray in one way or another, many more defeats. THe struggles of 6 billion people and their descendants to find their way out of capitalism will almost certainly contain episodes at least as unpleasant as the USSR at its worst. The struggle for socialism has to be essentially g self-justifying at each step, regardless of the (temporary) final outcomes of each struggle. If the only or even the chief reason to fight for socialism is the achievement of the socialism for our great-grandchildren, then socialism is a bust. This is *not* to disagree with Rosa Luxemburg that the final goal is everything, the struggle is nothing. The role of that final goal is the understanding we achieve through it of the present. Hence the struggle depends on the final goal *independently* of whether or not we ever achieve that final goal. Marx, as I understand him, did not propose the classless society and the withering away of the state as a prize to reward us at the end. He saw that just as feudalism could be understood from the perspective of capitalism, so capitalism could only be understood from the perspective of communism. We can only understand the capitalist state (and therefore organize our struggle against it) by seeing it from the perspective of the society in which the state has withered away. [I really think it would help if a larger proportion of marxists suffered from depression. That would help dampen the galloping optimism that blithely says the USSR was not socialist -- for the implication of that evaluation is that socialism of just the sort we want will be easily attainable if we just have the right ideas. Horse Feathers!] The evil at the heart of capitalism (or of any social order of which the market is the central institution) is that Reality becomes the Future, while the past and present become mere appearance. I began to see this by reading and re-reading Plato's *Republic* and attempting to explain it to undergraduates. In Plato's timarchy (in effect a landed aristocracy of some sort) the Past is the Real. The present is merely a recapitulation of the past and is emptied of reality. In what he called an oligarchy (a state ruled by those whose motive was the accumulation of wealth [=money?], the past was non-existent, and the present only the shadow of the future. Action becomes meaningless in itself, since it cannot exhibit ambition (which is the struggle to maintain what the past has given us) nor can it be its own end. Since anything resembling capitalism was still nearly 2000 years away, it was remarkable that even in the piddling financial manipulations of his day Plato could see this. The core capitalist metaphor, that of *investment* catches up this trivialization of the present by the future. The *demos* Plato discarded with contempt: they *chose* (he implies) to live only in the present, their lives dominated by a lowly lust for immediate satisfaction. (One of the many modern equivalents of this is the accusation that unwed mothers have babies in order to make money off of public aid.) There would have been no way to theorize this in Plato's world, for that depended on the development of wage labor under capitalism and its theorization in Marx's conceptions of surplus value and alienation. The working class, by definition, is that class which *must* live in the present (that being the main thrust of the assumption that labor power is purchased at is value). And it is this (unavoidable) attachment of the working to the present (which implicitly is also a valuation of the past such as the investor dare not allow him/herself) which makes the working class a *potentially* revolutionary class. Its revolutionary task is to free humanity from the tyranny of the future. Carrol -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive
RE: Re: Re: : withering away of the state
This may seem a cliche, but I'd say it is more complex than "yea, yea, or nay, nay", ( I really hate to say this one) "good and bad", "success and failure". It had some good and some bad ( and ugly), some success and some failure ( and freedom even). For us, the importance of the SU is to learn the positive and negative lessons, for when we do it. No, it is not only a source of negative lessons. Wrong. The "all bad" version throws out the baby with the bath water. Ok , Max , two points for you for getting me to use all these cliches. But the point here is also, the harm to the reputation of socialism. On that, it is important first, to debunk the exaggeration of its failures, raise its coveredup successes, and broadcast the positive as well as negative critique, as in any scientific, objective process. CB "Max B. Sawicky" [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 02:15PM Perhaps but that could cut two ways, as in socialism yes, good no. No reason to assume every form of socialism would be desirable. mbs I bet if we took a count more people would consider the USSR socialism (communism even) than not. CB Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 09:15PM Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what most people mean by the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call it what you want, but I don't call it socialism.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: : withering away of the state (fwd)
No Barkeley just a silly answer to a silly question. But I have read enough, that anything radically new would surprise me. Rod "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Rod, "Everything"? Really? Ponomaesh Russki yazik? Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, May 19, 2000 7:11 AM Subject: [PEN-L:19273] Re: Re: Re: : withering away of the state (fwd) I have read everything. Rod [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What did you read about Soviet socialism? Mine Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what most people mean by the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call it what you want, but I don't call it socialism. Rod Carrol Cox wrote: Rod Hay wrote: Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a socialists society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but it wasn't. This I think is utopian. Socialism is a movement, not a platonic form against which you can measure any state and say it is or isn't "socialist." It would seem to me wrong to assume that there will not be many more episodes in the socialist movement which will go greatly astray in one way or another, many more defeats. THe struggles of 6 billion people and their descendants to find their way out of capitalism will almost certainly contain episodes at least as unpleasant as the USSR at its worst. The struggle for socialism has to be essentially g self-justifying at each step, regardless of the (temporary) final outcomes of each struggle. If the only or even the chief reason to fight for socialism is the achievement of the socialism for our great-grandchildren, then socialism is a bust. This is *not* to disagree with Rosa Luxemburg that the final goal is everything, the struggle is nothing. The role of that final goal is the understanding we achieve through it of the present. Hence the struggle depends on the final goal *independently* of whether or not we ever achieve that final goal. Marx, as I understand him, did not propose the classless society and the withering away of the state as a prize to reward us at the end. He saw that just as feudalism could be understood from the perspective of capitalism, so capitalism could only be understood from the perspective of communism. We can only understand the capitalist state (and therefore organize our struggle against it) by seeing it from the perspective of the society in which the state has withered away. [I really think it would help if a larger proportion of marxists suffered from depression. That would help dampen the galloping optimism that blithely says the USSR was not socialist -- for the implication of that evaluation is that socialism of just the sort we want will be easily attainable if we just have the right ideas. Horse Feathers!] The evil at the heart of capitalism (or of any social order of which the market is the central institution) is that Reality becomes the Future, while the past and present become mere appearance. I began to see this by reading and re-reading Plato's *Republic* and attempting to explain it to undergraduates. In Plato's timarchy (in effect a landed aristocracy of some sort) the Past is the Real. The present is merely a recapitulation of the past and is emptied of reality. In what he called an oligarchy (a state ruled by those whose motive was the accumulation of wealth [=money?], the past was non-existent, and the present only the shadow of the future. Action becomes meaningless in itself, since it cannot exhibit ambition (which is the struggle to maintain what the past has given us) nor can it be its own end. Since anything resembling capitalism was still nearly 2000 years away, it was remarkable that even in the piddling financial manipulations of his day Plato could see this. The core capitalist metaphor, that of *investment* catches up this trivialization of the present by the future. The *demos* Plato discarded with contempt: they *chose* (he implies) to live only in the present, their lives dominated by a lowly lust for immediate satisfaction. (One of the many modern equivalents of this is the accusation that unwed mothers have babies in order to make money off of public aid.) There would have been no way to theorize this in Plato's world, for that depended on the development of wage labor under capitalism and its theorization in Marx's conceptions of surplus value and alienation. The working class, by definition, is that class which *must* live in the present (that being the main thrust of the assumption that labor power is purchased at is value). And it is this (unavoidable) attachment of the wo
Re: Re: Re: withering away of the state
Barkley writes: I did not mean that the vision was pathetic. I meant that the actual outcome in light of the vision/ (forecast) was pathetic. but as I said: Of course, there are lots of things that famous people said that we can dismiss as "pathetic jokes," with the benefit of hindsight. Even we non-famous people on pen-l aren't correct in our predictions. For someone writing in the 19th century, Marx is amazingly correct in his predictions, with the last 25 years or so fitting his vision more and more. Even so, I can't find any place where he saw this withering away as somehow inevitable and therefore a prediction that could be proven to be "pathetic" in hindsight. Rather, it's a potentiality, something that _can_ occur given the development of working class organization and consciousness. In the MANIFESTO, one of ME's most rhetorical of works, they don't see proletarian revolution -- or the move to a stateless society -- as inevitable. In fact, the class struggle might lead to the mutual destruction of the contending classes. This seemingly Hobbesian situation, in turn, sets the stage for Bonapartism (cf. Draper) and worse. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: : withering away of the state
In a message dated 5/18/00 9:19:18 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what most people mean by the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call it what you want, but I don't call it socialism. Actually, isn't it a big part of our problem that what _most people_ DO mean by "socialism" what they had in the USSR? --jks
