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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... 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
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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...
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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...
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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: Withering away of the state
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
Re: Withering away of the state
Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/22/00 04:21PM 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. __ CB: State whithers away in communism, not socialism. The socialist state cannot whither away until there are no more capitalist states in the world. Marx knew this. Socialism still has a state for repression of the bourgeoisie. ___
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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: : Withering away of the state (fwd)
Isn't this thread becoming repetitive? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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
Re: Re: Withering away of the state
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. Social-Democratically yours, Rob. 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
Re: Withering away of the state (fwd)
Rod Hay wrote: 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). One of the factors why people construct their language in such a dichotomic fashion is because they seriously conflate the "state capitalist" with the "state socialist" model, and mistakenly attribute the charecteristics of the former to the letter. If one wants to see capitalism in socialism, then one wants to beleive there is in fact no difference between the two. 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. Marx meant withering away of the "bourgeois state", the state which he was witnessing historically. In that respect, his views of the state can not be read out of context. My impression is that you reading the state in the abstract here, in a Hegelian fashion. We are living in the real world, Rod, not in the ideal world. Socialism took place in the periphery of the world system, under the pressure of European and US imperialistic hegemonies, so it was natural that it had some shortcomings, but the system tried its BEST to raise the living standarts of its people, more so rigidly than capitalist states. Shortcomings of the capitalist state requires capitalist solutions (as in Keynesianism). Shortcomings of the socialist state requires socialist solutions (as in Marxism). . 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. From Andy Wayne Austin: (1) "State socialist countries brought comparatively tremendous benefits to their people. Under communist parties these countries were substantially better off than they were before socialism and they are now much worse off after the fall of state socialism. Between 1960 and 1980 all state socialist countries compared favorably with middle and upper-range capitalist countries, and all state socialist society easily surpassed the bottom third capitalist countries. In fact, there were after 1960 no state socialist societies in the bottom third of poorest countries. There was substantially less inequality in these countries, and the ruling parties, while having some bit more of the social surplus than the average person, were much less well off than their counterparts in capitalist societies (a Soviet leader, if so inclined, could only dream of the wealth and privilege of the US politician). All this came with a high level of social services. State socialist societies were not perfect. There is no requirement that any society be a utopia or live up to any ideal to be a desirable alternative. There is probably not a single wage-laborer who desires to be a slave. We live in the real world, Paul, and we always will. People living under state socialist regimes were much better off than most people living under capitalism. They really were" (2) "His statements are also deeply problematic because capitalist countries do in fact round up laborers in their own states or for export to their colonies. English labor history is full of periods of rounding up vagabonds, vagrants, orphans, etc., and selling them into bondage to capitalists in their North American and Australian colonies. In the United States, Indians were rounded up and forced to migrate across the country. After slavery, blacks were rounded up by capitalists and forced to work under the most degrading and dangerous of conditions. In the West, Latino labor forces were subject to such treatment. And perhaps no groups suffered more explicitly harsh treatment of this kind than the Chinese immigrant. Now we have a vast prison system to contain the fallout from structural unemployment, and increasingly this system is being transformed into a slave-labor force. There is also a problem with the notion of Soviet "colonialism" or "imperialism" if by that term we mean the economic exploitation of a "periphery" by a "core." In the relations between the core and periphery in the capitalist context there is often a flow of surplus out of the periphery into the core. Thus the periphery was underdeveloped by their relawith the core. By contrast, relations between core and periphery in the Soviet system system led to development in the satellites. They were, as the capitalist ideologue would have it, proheir satellites. Capitalist have exploited this fact by noting how much former Soviet satellites - "propped up by the Soviet Union" - have suffered after the "fall of communism." One can hardly claim that the extension of the Soviet Union was of an exploitative nature analogous to the relation between core and periphery in world capitalism,
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: : withering away of the state
And hello again, Charles. CB: This is a problem for you because of your utopianism. Marx predicted that the Paris Commune would be a folly of dispair, but also knew that it was the beginning of actual socialism, with all its faults, and advanced his theory of socialism based on it. Similarly , the USSR to the 20th power. The whole idea of praxis is to do with shared learning in shared action, no? Whilst I agree with you that it wouldn't be fair to test a post-bellum society for its adherence to all 'the' communist criteria (this ignores the reality of the 'getting from here to wherever there is' problem), this doesn't mean that the SU was necessarily the beginning of actual socialism. It only was if we've learned from its needless flaws (and separating the needless from the historically enforced can be hard), and the likes of Luxemburg and Trotsky make for valuable reading on this, I reckon. Many Trots reckon the SU was on the path, but that it had become distorted. I think they go this route to keep Lenin and the Bolsheviks beyond criticism, and the consequence is the view that all the SU needed was a political revolution to get back to its socialist essence. A more structural criticism (one that doesn't put the blame for what went wrong on a couple of big personalities during the '20s, esp. Unca Joe) might have it that the party, constituted and legitimised as it was, could be expected to 'substitute itself for the class' to the point it became a ruling class insofar as it enjoyed decisive political economic power, became ever more distanced (materially) from its purported constituency, and developed material interests that were specific to it and inimical to workers. That would indicate that a social revolution, rather than a political one, would be needed even to get the SU on the right road. Whatever, the SU is gone, and it is probably one of the harshest capitalist systems on the face of a benighted planet. The aparat is now uncontentiously the bourgeoisie, and the workers are exploited so intensely as to reduce life expectancies to what used to be called third world levels. We've already seen that Trotsky (himself often, but not always, of the Bolshevik persuasion) saw a lot of this in the SU he saw in the thirties. All in all, I take the view that Leninism has to be investigated with the possibility in mind that some of its flaws were profound, regardless of the invidious position in which the early revolutionaries were confronted. So I reckon you *can* be a non-Utopian non-Leninist, and that there is nothing at all dogmatic about such a position. So there. Rob.
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: withering away of the state
"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 06:14PM Jim, I did not mean that the vision was pathetic. I meant that the actual outcome in light of the vision/ (forecast) was pathetic. _ CB: It was not Marx's vision that the state would whither away until there were no more capitalist states to defeat ( by the working classes from within). USSR, PRC therefore not pathetic within Marx's "vision". He was much less utopian than you are about. Didn't promise a rose garden in socialism. CB
Re: : withering away of the state
And now the latest hits from the Holier than Thou Marxist Chorus: 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. I did not mean that the vision was pathetic. I meant that the actual outcome in light of the vision/ (forecast) was pathetic. -- 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?
Re: : withering away of the state
Rob Schaap [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 12:09AM And hello again, Charles. CB: This is a problem for you because of your utopianism. Marx predicted that the Paris Commune would be a folly of dispair, but also knew that it was the beginning of actual socialism, with all its faults, and advanced his theory of socialism based on it. Similarly , the USSR to the 20th power. The whole idea of praxis is to do with shared learning in shared action, no? _ CB: Yes, nicely put. __ Whilst I agree with you that it wouldn't be fair to test a post-bellum society for its adherence to all 'the' communist criteria (this ignores the reality of the 'getting from here to wherever there is' problem), this doesn't mean that the SU was necessarily the beginning of actual socialism. It only was if we've learned from its needless flaws (and separating the needless from the historically enforced can be hard), and the likes of Luxemburg and Trotsky make for valuable reading on this, I reckon. Many Trots reckon the SU was on the path, but that it had become distorted. I think they go this route to keep Lenin and the Bolsheviks beyond criticism, and the consequence is the view that all the SU needed was a political revolution to get back to its socialist essence. __ CB: "the path" is not there already. "The path"is made in praxis. "All " the SU needed was a revolution in one or two big capitalist countries, like Germany and France. ___ A more structural criticism (one that doesn't put the blame for what went wrong on a couple of big personalities during the '20s, esp. Unca Joe) might have it that the party, constituted and legitimised as it was, could be expected to 'substitute itself for the class' to the point it became a ruling class insofar as it enjoyed decisive political economic power, became ever more distanced (materially) from its purported constituency, and developed material interests that were specific to it and inimical to workers. That would indicate that a social revolution, rather than a political one, would be needed even to get the SU on the right road. _ CB: Imperialism was able to force the party and state to be overly centralized, by keeping the SU under permanent war or threat of war through its whole existence. Even hindsight does not show that the SU could risk much decentralization until the socialist democracy destroying, and socialism destroying institutions were to set, as you sketch. Whatever, the SU is gone, and it is probably one of the harshest capitalist systems on the face of a benighted planet. The aparat is now uncontentiously the bourgeoisie, and the workers are exploited so intensely as to reduce life expectancies to what used to be called third world levels. We've already seen that Trotsky (himself often, but not always, of the Bolshevik persuasion) saw a lot of this in the SU he saw in the thirties. All in all, I take the view that Leninism has to be investigated with the possibility in mind that some of its flaws were profound, regardless of the invidious position in which the early revolutionaries were confronted. CB: Leninism as theory is not profoundly flawed. Leninism as practiced had enormously profound virtues and big flaws both. No current anti-Leninists have demonstrated that they have theory or practice superior to that of historical Leninism. They are armchair, holier-than-thou'ers. _ So I reckon you *can* be a non-Utopian non-Leninist, and that there is nothing at all dogmatic about such a position. CB: But to be non-utopian , one would have to show more results in the real world than any non-Leninists have. The test of your claim is practice ( See Marx's Second ? Third Thesis on Feuerbach) Claims such as Justin's that my approach to Lenin and Marx is like that of an approach to the Father , Son and Holy Ghost, are, ironically, themselves, liberal dogma, unfounded selfcongratulation that Justin or someone thinks more critically and undogmatically than I. This is false. Justin's thinking is not more critical, non-dogmatic than mine, as demonstrated constantly on these lists. Liberals and anti-Leninists are most often dogmatists themselves, and can't claim the mantel of anti-dogmatism by declaration and insult. CB
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: : withering away of the state
At 07:46 PM 5/18/00 -0400, you 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. I think that quibbling about whether or not the USSR was "socialist" is useless. Names are not that important, while "socialism" typically refers more to a movement than an end-result. I used to think that the USSR should be called "collectivist" rather than "socialist" (for reasons similar to Rod's) but I noticed that in the Manifesto and elsewhere, Marx and Engels never made the assumption that "socialism" was a good thing. They are quite critical of socialists (and call themselves communists). The key question is not whether or not the USSR was "socialist," but rather _what kind_ of socialism it was. I think of as an example of bureaucratic socialism (BS). With the receding of the grass-roots working-class movement, with the imperialist invasions and the civil war, with the conflict between the peasants and the workers, the party-state ended up as the only force holding things together, providing order, organizing and developing the economy, defending the country against its foreign enemies, etc. Under these conditions, a small minority of the population could grab and keep state power for themselves "in the name of the proletariat." Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: : withering away of the state
Charles Brown wrote: 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 CB: This is a problem for you because of your utopianism. Marx predicted that the Paris Commune would be a folly of dispair, but also knew that it was the beginning of actual socialism, with all its faults, and advanced his theory of socialism based on it. Similarly , the USSR to the 20th power. Wait a minute. A model that failed and which is now held in almost universally low regard - you may not like that, but it's a fact - is the basis of a future socialism? Justin may be a utopian, but you're a dystopian then. Doug
Re: Re: : withering away of the state
Doug Henwood wrote: Wait a minute. A model that failed and which is now held in almost universally low regard I've never praised or dispraised any position on the grounds that it was or was not "marxist." I'll break that habit now. The use of the concept of "model" in reference to social systems is aggressively anti-marxist -- that is, it is incompatible with almost anything Marx ever wrote. In marxist terms the USSR cannot be either a good nor a bad model simply because in marxist terms it was not a model of any sort. (In most usages of the word -- and in almost all instances of the serious use of the concept -- "model" is a version of Platonic Realism.) Carrol
Re: Re: : withering away of the state
Charles says: Claims such as Justin's that my approach to Lenin and Marx is like that of an approach to the Father , Son and Holy Ghost, are, ironically, themselves, liberal dogma, unfounded selfcongratulation that Justin or someone thinks more critically and undogmatically than I. This is false. Justin's thinking is not more critical, non-dogmatic than mine, as demonstrated constantly on these lists. * * People can and will draw their own conclusions about that. --jks
Re: : withering away of the state
Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 12:41PM Charles Brown wrote: 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 CB: This is a problem for you because of your utopianism. Marx predicted that the Paris Commune would be a folly of dispair, but also knew that it was the beginning of actual socialism, with all its faults, and advanced his theory of socialism based on it. Similarly , the USSR to the 20th power. Wait a minute. A model that failed... ___ CB: Wouldn't call it a model that failed, but efforts to build socialism that had enormous successes and failures. Here's an example of an enormous success. It played a key role in the liberation of most of the paleocolonial world ! A gigantic blow to white supremacism. That was a profound success of the Soviet Union. Another success was proving that a society could exist with no unemployment and free health care and higher education. Unfortunately , they had to put a lot of their success into building defenses against imperialist war. But they were up to the task. and which is now held in almost universally low regard... _ CB: You give too much regard to the opinion of the current generation. History has not ended , nor is its judgment of the SU final with those to whom you refer. - you may not like that, but it's a fact - CB: It's a fact, among the minority of the world population who think about such, but the significance of the fact - the opinion of the current generation of ideologists - is not what you imply. is the basis of a future socialism? Justin may be a utopian, but you're a dystopian then. ___ CB: All turns on your topian approach. You only see utopias and dystopias. You refuse to acknowledge scientific vision ( as defined by the Father , the Son and the Holy Ghost, and the Devil herself ) which contemplates vulgar trial and error as as important to the process as neat and clean"models", armchair holier than thou"theories". You don't have practice as part of your epistemology, only models, theory, topias. Soviet Union is only a "failure" for a utopian approach, (and bourgeois approach, as the latter allows you to ignore its enormous successes in your measurement of its history). A scientific approach finds trials , errors and truths. The SU passed some of the tests and failed others. Normal array result in a scientific practice ( practice is short for experimentation and industry) . It would be very unwise to throw out the positive results from the history of the SU under the humbug that it was an absolute failure. You would have been one calling Marx a distopian for focussing on positive lessons from the Paris Commune, which failed much worse and quicker than the Soviet Union. CB
Re: Re: : withering away of the state
Doug, It is possible to say that the USSR was a "model of socialism" (Carrol Cox's complaint, nothwithstanding) while nevertheless maintaining that it was/is not THE "model for socialism." Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, May 19, 2000 12:41 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19300] Re: : withering away of the state Charles Brown wrote: 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 CB: This is a problem for you because of your utopianism. Marx predicted that the Paris Commune would be a folly of dispair, but also knew that it was the beginning of actual socialism, with all its faults, and advanced his theory of socialism based on it. Similarly , the USSR to the 20th power. Wait a minute. A model that failed and which is now held in almost universally low regard - you may not like that, but it's a fact - is the basis of a future socialism? Justin may be a utopian, but you're a dystopian then. Doug
Re: Re: : withering away of the state
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 12:55PM Charles says: Claims such as Justin's that my approach to Lenin and Marx is like that of an approach to the Father , Son and Holy Ghost, are, ironically, themselves, liberal dogma, unfounded selfcongratulation that Justin or someone thinks more critically and undogmatically than I. This is false. Justin's thinking is not more critical, non-dogmatic than mine, as demonstrated constantly on these lists. * * People can and will draw their own conclusions about that. __ CB: Except for you. You will draw your conclusion based on some liberal dogma.
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: withering away of the state
Barkley writes that Marx was ... also very utopian, especially the bit about the withering away of the state. What a pathetic joke. 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. But the "withering away of the state" in Marx is simply something that he shared with the libertarians, the desire to subordinate the state to society. While the libertarians will always be frustrated in this goal -- since the existence of class society (something they ignore) will always require either a large repressive state or a welfare state, and most likely, both -- Marx saw the end of classes as opening the way to reducing the state's role dramatically, to ending the division between society and the state (with the former in charge). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: withering away of the state
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 -Original Message- From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, May 18, 2000 5:30 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19247] Re: withering away of the state Barkley writes that Marx was ... also very utopian, especially the bit about the withering away of the state. What a pathetic joke. 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. But the "withering away of the state" in Marx is simply something that he shared with the libertarians, the desire to subordinate the state to society. While the libertarians will always be frustrated in this goal -- since the existence of class society (something they ignore) will always require either a large repressive state or a welfare state, and most likely, both -- Marx saw the end of classes as opening the way to reducing the state's role dramatically, to ending the division between society and the state (with the former in charge). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
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: : withering away of the state
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: : withering away of the state
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
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
Re: Re: : withering away of the state
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 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: : withering away of the state (fwd)
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
