Well, Paul, you sent me back to look at my undergrad copies of the _Communist Manifesto_ and Lenin's _State and Revolution_, which is a good thing.
While you are correct that _Das Kapital_ was mainly about economics (and history), the _Communist Manifesto_ was a political document through and through. It was a call to revolution addressed to a proletarian audience, not to academics or politicians. In the _Manifesto_, Marx & Engels said: "The theory of the Communists can be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property," but then they went on to qualify that by conceding that "there is no need to abolish" "the property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant" (p. 96 of the 1967 Pelican edition, trans by AJP Talyor). Bourgeois "instruments of production" (factories and large land holdings) were the clear aim. They specify: "Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation" (p. 99). In _State and Revolution_, Lenin has a detailed section near the beginning on the relation between "abolition" and "withering away" of the state. He attributed the latter phrase to Engels (so I had misremembered that part), but noted that elsewhere Engels said that the revolution would "end the state." What would "wither away" (according to Lenin's interpretation) was the remaining bureaucratic apparatus after the state's head had been lopped off, so to speak. That nothing even remotely like abolition or withering away of the state actually happened in the Soviet Union is another matter, having much to do with your correct observation that Czarist Russia was not at all the kind of country Marx had in mind because it was largely pre-industrial. As a result, a whole new theory to deal with what a "proletarian" revolution might mean for a largely agrarian country had to be made up by Lenin and others out of whole cloth -- and this is why the Soviet symbol became the (workman's) hammer and the (farmer's) sickle unified in a cross... And then there was Stalin's takeover when Lenin suddenly died. I have no illusions that the Soviet Union would have become a workers utopia had Lenin lived longer or had Trotsky succeeded him -- revolution nearly always results in multiple warring factions, only the most brutal of which usually manages to get the upper hand on the others (see the so-called "Arab Spring" for just the latest example of this terrible but predictable phenomenon) but Stalin was something else again: the leader of a Georgian organized crime syndicate who saw an opportunity to loot the riches of Imperial Russia if he could just insinuate himself with the right people at a rare moment of complete governmental breakdown. China too: an agrarian monarchy (having nothing in common with the conditions Marx had outlined for communist revolution) overthrown by a brutal, homicidal tyrant who would have taken up any label at all so long as it enabled him to consolidate personal wealth and power. As for kibbutzim and the like, they are tiny models that have no application to the question of entire communist or socialist societies. You will note, whatever your opinion of Israel today might be, that the one thing it did not become was a giant scaled-up kibbutz. Chris ....... Christopher D Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M6C 1G4 [email protected] http://www.yorku.ca/christo > On Apr 12, 2014, at 10:53 AM, Paul Brandon <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > Calling Russian or Chinese Communism 'socialism' is a joke. > What examples do you have in mind? > The closest thing that I know of were the original Israeli kibbutzim; like > Walden II, they were small communities. > One might also talk about the Oneida communities, but they were short lived > experiments. > > It's been many years since I took economics courses in social reform > (including socialism), but I believe that the term 'withering away of the > state' goes back to Marx and Engels, who would have been shocked at the idea > that communism as they foresaw it would have been instituted in a feudal > society like Russia, which lacked the capitalism they saw as a necessary > prerequisite. > > One difference is that Marx and Engels were talking primarily about > economics; Lenin and Stalin about politics and power. > >> On Apr 12, 2014, at 12:35 AM, Christopher Green wrote: >> >>> On Apr 11, 2014, at 10:54 PM, Paul Brandon <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> The problem is that there haven't been any real world examples of societies >>> that met the classic definitions of socialism, in which all property is >>> owned by the State. >>> > > This was my point -- that all real world societies are hybrids. > 'Socialism' may have become a Conservative (U.S. subspecies) dirty word, but > it doesn't refer to anything real. > >> There have been many socialist societies. (And they are as authentically >> socialist as the US is authentically capitalist, despite roads and bridges >> being built by government.) I'm not sure which "classic" definitions of >> socialism your are referring to. In the Marixst model, the state is supposed >> to be abolished because the only reason for its existence is to oppress >> workers. (This was later weakened by Lenin to the state "withering away" >> over time.) The means of production are supposed to be owned by the >> proletariat collectively, but no one (that I know of) ever said that, say, >> personal clothing would be owned by the state >> >> Chris >> ....... >> Christopher D Green >> Department of Psychology >> York University >> Toronto, ON M6C 1G4 >> >> [email protected] >> http://www.yorku.ca/christo >> ------------------------------------ >>> >>> >>>> On Apr 11, 2014, at 9:41 PM, Christopher Green wrote: >>>>> On Apr 11, 2014, at 7:54 PM, Paul Brandon <[email protected]> >>>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Also, while you could refer to the social structure as 'collective' in >>>>> that it was a small community with a common goal, it lacked one defining >>>>> feature of socialism: lack of individual ownership. >>>>> >>>> >>>> No socialist society that I know of has ever lacked individual ownership. >>>> It is restricted, so that wealth does not accumulate in individuals, but >>>> it has never been lacking. >>>> >>>> Chris > > Paul Brandon > Emeritus Professor of Psychology > Minnesota State University, Mankato > [email protected] > > > > > --- > > You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. > > To unsubscribe click here: > http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=430248.781165b5ef80a3cd2b14721caf62bd92&n=T&l=tips&o=36113 > > (It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken) > > or send a blank email to > leave-36113-430248.781165b5ef80a3cd2b14721caf62b...@fsulist.frostburg.edu > > > > > > --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=36118 or send a blank email to leave-36118-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
