(posted originally on Mark Jones's Leninist-International list. Nestor is in Argentina, where he has been politically active for several decades) El 26 Aug 98 a las 9:03, Chris Burford nos dice(n): > > eg Suppose there is a "government of national unity" in > Russia (maybe this can fit in with the moderators' focus > this week). How should it be criticised? What do you > understand is the principal contradiction, the principal > aspect of the contradiction, the fundamental > contradiction, and the relationship with the principal > contradictions on a world scale? I am so short of time, and I do not have too much reliable information on the events in Russia (in fact, this list is one of my prime sources). But I will however venture some opinions (brazen, mad or bold? it will be left to comrades to decide). Though parallelism is not good historical method, not to speak of good Marxism, I have been struck by the parallels between some events in Russia and those taking place in Argentina. The main parallel is that both countries were defeated in their attempts to build autonomous industrial economies with the support of a working class subject to a dialectics of mobilization and control from the State. This is a formal parallel, of course. While Russia attempted to follow a socialist path (whether betrayed or not by Stalin, Khruschev, Gorbachov or Yeltsin does not matter for the point I am trying to stress: that both mobilization and control were effected on the masses, and accepted by the masses, _in the name of socialism_), Argentina with Peronism attempted to follow an autonomous capitalist trail. The State bureaucracies, in both cases, mobilized and controlled the masses, and in both cases, as it seems, reduced political education and debate of the masses to the most elementary levels. In both cases, the defeat of the project ended up in Dantesque levels of misery, in a push of millions of humans to the brink of starvation, etc. And in both cases the main target of imperialism was the State. I believe that the first task of a revolution in Argentina is to rebuild a State, something that acts as a State even in the rash Weberian sense (an institution or a set of institutions that enjoys the monopoly to enforce laws by the use of physical coertion). And if this is true for Argentina, what to say of Russia. I do not remember of another situation in history where a State has been so destroyed as the Russian state has. Now, building a State out of its inexistence requires the resort to force, and it is quite difficult to imagine this task being developed without some authoritarian regime. The class contents of the regime needs not be -immediately- the class contents a Marxist expects of a socialist regime. It may, nonetheless, do part of the revolutionary work, even if it might appear under reactionary forms. What I am trying to propose to debate (and let me be clear on this, it is not a "position", a "standing" I have taken, it is just some spark I try to send to the list) is that even a Lebed government, however reactionary, may be useful for the Russian workers, if it sets the stage for a struggle for State power. Without State there is no State power. There are Latin American similes, I now recall two, that of General Roca in Argentina of the late 19th. Century, and that of President Zelaya in Nicaragua by the same time. Neither was a socialist (though Roca favored the election of the first socialist representative in America, in 1904). But they constituted states where there was nothing, they founded the States that were (and are) the prize for those who win class struggle. If I do not recall wrongly, fascism can be "technically" defined as the terrorist dictatorship of great capital. If the Lebed government, in the name of the Mother Russia, or of the Greatness of Ivan Kalita, or of the Boyards, or Whatever you Want, returns the large enterprises to state ownership, puts the debt to default, ends with the mafias and the "Brothers", redeploys the military might of Russia, etc., will he be doing the policies of great capital? Or he will just be doing the policies of the Russian State, with a class content that will have to be debated but _will not_ be the "great capital" in the sense "great capital" was behind criminals such as Pinochet or Videla, namely great capitalists of the imperialist countries, the only ones that count on the global scene (re. Samir Amin). I think that this deserves careful observation. Of course, if one believes, as Mark Jones does, that a Fourth Russian Revolution is knocking at the door, then this perspective may look revolting. I hope he is right. But if he is not, then we should have to decide whether a right-wing Russian government, with the support of an Army that wants to be a fearsome force in the global scene, and with the backing of the "lesser bureaucrats" of yesteryear who want to restore the Russian (if not Soviet, at least Russian) state _against_ the will of the whole band of highwaymen that meet in Davos each year, if such as regime, however revolting it may be, can be seriously termed "fascist". I doubt that there can be a regime more "fascist" in this sense than that of Yeltsin, I have a feeling that his is a Platonic Republic of the true Fascists, the great imperialist bourgeoisies: so perfect that any change will have to be for worse. And this because there is a question we must answer to ourselves: Is Russian bourgeoisie "au pair" with the French, German or American bourgeoisie? If not, then even a hypothetical Russian bourgeois regime may be doing some of the work the Russian proletariat desperately needs to be done: reassemble the limbs of the country, now torn by the hounds. All of this is, of course, highly speculative and basically uninformed, but perhaps debate may clarify things. Hope so. Nestor. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
