[A-List] Re: [A-List]

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

>Does anyone think that program is divorced from analysis of the driving
forces of revolution?  Does anyone think the analysis of permanent revolution
somehow ends with the seizure of power and then needs to be retired in favor of
what?  Socialism in one country?

The point about the theory and practice of permanent revolution is that it is
of a whole, requiring an international completion in program and power. You
don't get to select parts and discard the rest, just like you don't get to
select parts of Marx, say the analysis of the commodity, and then get to discard
the exploration of overproduction.

I'd like to know how the analysis of permanent revolution, where the seizure
of power by the workers in any one locale of capital, requires concurrent,
consecutive seizures of power throughout the universe of capital to be
successful, no longer applies.

We might look at the results of "socialism" in one or two or many countries
to see the result of the lack of permanent revolution. <

Reply

Actually, you misunderstand the issue and apparently have not actually read
the entirety - two parts, of the debate or why it is historically obsolete.
What is required is not the "consecutive seizures of power throughout the
universe of capital to be successful," - which is an abstraction, until we define the
content of successful? What is meant by the words "social revolution" is a
qualitative change in the productive forces that compel society to leap forward
to communism.

Everyone even a little familiar with Marx or the process of transition from
one mode of production understand that it is a "wave process" where everything
does not happen "all at once." I recently read again, several "important
works" by L. Trotsky on line including "Permanent Revolution" and also understand
the debate, as it arose historically and as it revolved around personalities
going back to the movement of the 1890s.

I have of course read both sides and understand the discussion, its context
and why it took place in the first instance and why intense political fights
evolved later, on this basis. Throughout the world political tendencies were
formed on the basis of how various people understood the policy struggle in the
Soviet Union, which in itself is an internal weakness in the political groups
and factions that had combined under the banner of the Third Communist
International. The various political tendencies and factions had an existence prior to
taking sides on this matter of "socialism in one country," so what we are
actually talking about is the evolution of various political groups as class
fragments, - on the basis of their own internal development and the attempt by the
Russian communist to raise these groups to the level achieved by the Soviet
revolution. Here is the question presented in its totality framework.

No doubt you are familiar with Mr. L. Trotsky theory. Below will give an
example of the opposing side and the complexity of the actual policy struggle.

"International capital can be finally curbed only by the efforts of the
working class of all countries, or at least of the major European countries.
For
that the victory of the revolution in several European countries is
indispensable -- without it the final victory of socialism is impossible.

"What follows then in conclusion?

   "It follows that we are capable of completely building a socialist society
by our own efforts and without the victory of the revolution in the West, but
that, by itself alone, our country cannot guarantee itself against
encroachments by international capital -- for that the victory of the
revolution in
several Western countries is needed. The possibility of completely building
socialism in our country is one thing, the possibility of guaranteeing our
country
against encroachments by international capital is another."

(J. V. Stalin "THE POSSIBILITY OF BUILDING SOCIALISM IN OUR COUNTRY" Reply to
 Comrade Pokoyev)

Further, in J. V. Stalin CONCERNING QUESTIONS OF LENINISM (January 25, 1926)

   "But the overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie and establishment of
the power of the proletariat in one country does not yet mean that the
complete
victory of socialism has been ensured. The principal task of socialism -- the
organization of socialist production -- has still to be fulfilled. Can this
task be fulfilled; can the final victory of socialism be achieved in one
country, without the joint efforts of the proletarians in several advanced
countries? No, it cannot. To overthrow the bourgeoisie the efforts of one
country are
sufficient; this is proved by the history of our revolution. For the final
victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist production, the
efforts of
one country, particularly of a peasant country like Russia, are insufficient;
for that, the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries are
required." (See The Foundations of Leninism, first edition.)

   This second formulation was directed against the assertions of the
critics of Leninism, against the Trotskyites, who declared hat the
dictatorship of
the proletariat in one country, in the absence of victory in other countries,
could not "hold out in the face of a conservative Europe."

   "To that extent -- but only to that extent -- this formulation was then
(May 1924) adequate, and undoubtedly it was of some service.

   "Subsequently, however, when the criticism of Leninism in this sphere had
already been overcome in the Party, when a new question had come to the fore
-- the question of the possibility of building a complete socialist society
by
the efforts of our country, without help from abroad -- the second
formulation
became obviously inadequate, and therefore incorrect.

   "What is the defect in this formulation?

   "Its defect is that it joins two different questions into one: it joins
the question of the possibility of building socialism by the efforts of one
country -- which must be answered in the affirmative -- with the question
whether
a country in which the dictatorship of the proletariat exists can consider
itself fully guaranteed against intervention, and consequently against the
restoration of the old order, without a victorious revolution in a number of
other
countries -- which must be answered in the negative. This is apart from the
fact that this formulation may give occasion for thinking that the
organization
of a socialist society by the efforts of one country is impossible -- which,
of
course, is incorrect."

Thus is presented the "other side of the argument." Neither side in this
policy fight took a position that the foundation for socialism and socialism
itself could not be built in Russia.  A more complex political struggle was
unfolding that is not relevant today - seventy years after the fact. What is relevant
is American history is the fact that the political struggle amongst American
Marxists has never been focused on or riveted to the issue of "permanent
revolution" or "socialism in one country" but the class character of American
society and the social position of the African American people.  Stated another way
the trajectory that outlines the path to communism based on the social forces
in our own country, has always been the overriding issue. This remains true
to this very day.

Various factional and sectarian groups formed themselves on the basis of
their individual understanding of the policy fight in the Soviet Union. Those who
supported the Soviet State were generally called "Stalinist" and those who did
not support the Stalinist State but claimed Marxism as their theoretical
basis were generally called Trotskyites and identified themselves not as Marxist
but Trotskyites. Some of these "anti-Stalin government" people advocated the
overthrow of the Stalin government.

There is more to this old and obsolete theory battle than meets the eye.  If
one has no knowledge of the evolution of the Bolshevik Party and how Lenin
combined the various advanced thinkers and revolutionaries together before and
after October - a process completed by the time of the founding of the Third
International, it is virtually impossible to understand what took place and why.
What is reasonably clear today is that this same combining of forces by Lenin
was extended world wide through the administrative apparatus of the Third
International.

On the surface L. Trotsky stood apart from the Lenin section of the movement
for virtually his entire political career leading to the events ushering in
the October Revolution (around 1916) and Comrade Stalin appears as the "loyal
son" from basically day one. Lenin calls taking sides an expression of a class
policy or class fragment.  Even personality factors and tensions become indexes
of conflict and strife during a history-altering period of time.  The
proletarian-peasant logic of Comrade Stalin tended to attract large section of
industrial proletarians, while the daring and militant bravery of Trotsky during the
military campaigns of the young Soviet Republic, combined with his fiery
oratory and skill as a prolific writer tended to capture the imagination of the
intellectual.

These tensions and personality factors - material qualities, of men in class
combat at the highest level of the game, combined with their political
projections and in America shaped the class composition of the political groups that
would take shape on the basis of the political ruptures in the CPSU (B).
Beneath this surface a deeper logic played itself out within American Marxism on
the basis of ones approach to the industrial proletariat and an intense battle
to adopt a revolutionary position on the African American Question. The
underlying question has always been the attitude of the revolutionaries in the most
imperial of all countries toward the fighting colonial masses and on what
basis to mobilize their own workers. To this very day the policy struggle in the
Soviet Union obscures this fact.

I believe you either don't understand the specifics of the policy form of the
struggle that would unfold internationally and how it took place in America
or are hopelessly bogged down in the class fragment whose political face and
expression is Trotskyism. I am generation's industrial proletariat and our
families third generation has been in industry half a decade. Guess what side I
fell on? Ponder the impact of a historical configuration shaped by pronouncements
and personality. One must learn to unravel the political logic that makes us
who we are as individuals - sand pebbles on the beaches of history, and strive
to understand our context of being.  In other words, "to each his own" and
"to each his reach."

To begin with the workers could not and did not seize power throughout the
universe of "capital" because it was not possible owing to two factors: the
stage of development in the productive forces, especially as it expressed
itself
in the weakest links in the chain of imperial capital - the colonies. For the
workers to seize power there must exist a critical mass of workers and
communist revolutionaries at a stage of theory development to understand the social
process.

We are basically talking about the petty bourgeois colonial world and masses
and the attitude of the communist towards this class of primarily agricultural
workers and peasants and a thin layer - strata, of artisans. In America the
attitude and general policy of these various historical grouping have been that
of imperial scoundrels, as witnessed by their work amongst the black masses
and policy statements. This has not changed to this various day and expresses
itself in the assessment of Cuba. Lets examine what we are talking about in its
general features.

A break within the weakest link of the chain of imperialist exploitation is
by definition a weakness in the world proletarian movement itself. The colonies
in the time frame of 1914 - 1970, had very little chance or means to effect
industrialization and no possibility of escaping the value producing system.
Today we are in another time frame and can formulate the question different from
past generations of communist. If not for this I would not write on Marxline.

What is painfully clear is this: without the development and evolution of the
industrial infrastructure in the colonies it is not possible for the workers
to be a material body politically separate and able to maintain its political
independence from the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. Passing a resolution
is not enough.

Reread the last two paragraphs of Marx and Engels Address to the Central
Authority of the Communist League, that ends on the note: "Their battle cry must
be: the revolution in permanence" or "permanent revolution." The question that
has been answered is why the workers in the colonies and the non-sovereign
peoples could not and did not form themselves into "an independent party as soon
as possible and not . . . be seduced for a single moment by the hypocritical
phrases of the democratic petty bourgeoisie into reframing from the independent
organization of the party of the proletariat."  Instead of "independent
organization of the party of the proletariat," what was formed was peasant armies
led by Marxist to engage imperial storm trooper in a fight for liberation.

The Vietnamese revolution is instructive. The Communists referred to
themselves as a "Workers Party." There were no real workers parties in the colonies
because one must have a critical mass of workers passing from manufacture to
industrial production to have a basis for a workers party. The communist fighters
in the colonies were ideologically "proletarians," and formed peasant armies
equipped by the Soviet proletariat and the socialist community in the main.
Here one can observe not simply compromise or "contact, conflict, callback" with
bourgeois property, but the systematic betrayal of the colonial masses the
opportunist who came to power in the Soviet Union.

What this has meant in America were the white petty bourgeoisie intellectuals
- amongst both factional sides of the Marxist movement, attempting to lead
the black masses, given the passivity of the Anglo-American proletariat, and its
limited stirring amongst the industrial sector seeking industrial union
formation. This class configuration remained in force until the social explosions
in Watts 1965 and Detroit 1967, where the spontaneous movement allowed for the
most exploited section of the African American masses to fall under the
political leadership of its industrial proletariat. This configuration has altered
American history forever and established a historical juncture that manifest
how and on what basis the proletariat social revolution will unfold in America.


The question of "permanent revolution" or "socialism in one country" in any
form has had no relevancy in American history as such, but in the ideological
sphere evolved into opposition to the Soviet regime and support for the Soviet
proletariat, as it existed in the form of the Stalin government. However, from
the standpoint of the most exploited and oppressed sector of the workers in
the North and peasant like masses of the South, what they saw and experienced
was the white petty bourgeois radical lecturing the colonial masses on the
twist and turn in the unfolding class battles.  Stated another way the pro-Soviet
section of the Marxist were more proletarian.  This historical alignment
remains to this very day and it being rendered obsolete with the unraveling of the
value system.

The second factor is the composition of the working class in the imperial
countries. Communism is not possible without a communist class and this
understanding requires serious thinking. Soviet Russia was an aberration that
sprung forth as a result of the wartime collapse and not a revolution that ushered
forth from an industrial society crisis. The revolution in Russia ushered
forth as the transition in the form of wealth from land to gold to transition from
manufacture to industrial society. Russia was feudal and the communist could
go no further than build an industrial society without capital in the hands of
private individuals or defeat what Marx called the bourgeois property
relations. This was called socialism or the first stage of communism.

The last century makes no sense unless we place in the historical transition
from agriculture to industry not the transition from capitalism to socialism
or what is the same, the transition from agricultural relations as dominant to
industrial relations. This is to say, to the revolutionaries of the first
several decades of the twentieth century the quantitative boundary of the
industrial system and/as the value producing system could not be defined. It was
impossible to define the boundary of the value system.

Not because they were not smart but because it is outside human power to
define
the location of a social boundary and its components before it appears.
History has conclusively proven that the revolutionaries in Russia were the most
theoretically advanced and resolute revolutionaries on earth.

"Permanent revolution" as articulated by Mr. L. Trotsky does not mean a
specific
development in the means of production that unravel the value system.
"Permanent revolution" meant the triumph of the political revolution in
numerous
countries to Mr. Trotsky. No one could define the development that unravels
the
value system in the first parts of the twentieth century including Lenin
and Marx. The question of "socialism in one or several countries" is framed
historically incorrect and this is obvious
to anyone that has examined the new qualitative development in the means of
production for the last two decades or actually read and understood Marx
address
to the Central Committee.

Nor could the final victory of socialism be defined simply on the basis of
the economic logic of the industrial system, even if the proletarian revolution
was victorious in several major countries in Europe and no military threat to
Soviet power existed. That is to say the advance to communism can only take
place on the basis of the transition in the mode of production in the
postindustrial area, not during the period of the transition from agriculture to
industry. Stated another way, socialism is not a new mode of production because
socialism if a property relations and not a mode of production, just as capitalism
is a bourgeois property relations and not a mode of production.  The errors of
the past generation of Marxists are historical limitations or historical
errors, which are
impossible to see by the participants, or they would not be historical
errors.

>The point about the theory and practice of permanent revolution is that it
is of a whole, requiring an international completion in program and power. <

This is abstract logic rooted in the last period and means nothing. Stating
that a "program is (not) divorced from analysis of the driving forces of
revolution," means nothing until the specific properties are defined for comrades to
see and debate.  Today we can define the specific properties and features of
the value system the proletarian revolution faces.

One cannot ascertain the question of proletarian revolution from the abstract
question of "permanent revolution." Where did you define the specific
properties and mechanism that unravel the value system? This is where the driving
force of the revolution is located, not political policy or theory. Political
policy reveals if one has in fact located the driving force of the social
revolution, which is not an abstract development in the means of production, but the
injection of a qualitatively new production process and instruments that
demands that the entire infrastructure be reconfigured to conform to the new
qualitative ingredient. It is not a question of an international completion in
"program or power" but a question of the social revolution that is generated on the
basis of the revolution in the means of production exclusively.

 It is a question of the unraveling of the value system or the system of
commodity exchange that arises on the basis of the socially necessary labor
(content) of social products, or rather commodities and what specifically destroys
this law system of production. What this means is that no policy on earth can
bring to an end the laws of commodity production because they are based in the
development of the material factors of production that give rise to exchange,
a universal medium of exchange, the separation of people and producers from
their means of production and the universal transition to industrial society. A
development must take place in the means of production that unravels - begin
to destroy, the material properties of industrial society and produced the
material ingredients for the next leap in human development. A political program
of revolution cannot do this.

This process has been described very clearly as the infrastructure passes
into its second stage of post industrial evolution at the hands of computers,
digitalized production process and advance robotics. Here is the material basis
for communism. Here is the transition in the mode of production in material
life. Here is the material description of the "forces of production," which
compels society to leap forward in a similar motion as the transition in the form
of wealth and machines cause society to leap forward from agricultural
relations. This could not be defined in the past and "permanent revolution" is an
abstraction with no meaning other than "keep fighting" everywhere.

Here is the rub. The colonial masses do not need to be told to keep fighting
against the oppressing peoples. You lecture the man whose neck is under your
foot and feel you have a God given right to instruct the "heathens" on correct
policy. When I protest about the imperial examination of Cuba by the
intellectuals of the imperial country with their foot on the neck of the Cuban and call
them the imperial scoundrels that they are, I am told I am going to far and
being dogmatic or "Stalinist." Well, I am not a Stalinist but a Marxist and you
chose to call yourself a Trotskyite and use his theory to unravel the value
system. Fine. The plate you bring to the table is empty or as it is fashionable
to say nowadays, "you are all hat and no cattle." Like . . . where's the beef
. . . where is the substance?

The formulation of socialism as the first stage of communism was a question
of a practical approach to the proletarian revolution during the period of
transition from agriculture to industry. This program became political doctrine
for a specific historical period. It is high time to discard this doctrine and
theory of socialism and the theories connected to it.

Society leaps to communism based on a political revolution that grows out of
the social revolution that unravels and destroy commodity production. This
means that no policy on earth can cause society to leave the "universe of
capital." It is not possible. Capital is a social power and not the meaning of
capitalism or rather, bourgeois property relations. Today Marx can finally be
understood in his totality.

The Trotskyites were fundamentally wrong and were always wrong in their
theory of revolution before October and after October, in the face of Lenin, but
not in the face of the Second International. This is why Lenin called Trotskyism
a petty bourgeois trend in the workers movement.  The Leninist was correct to
seize power and Lenin understood the impossibility of making the leap to
communism. The Stalinist government was primarily a military form of the
dictatorship of the proletariat and peasant, under conditions of a country of peasants
and if the whole world went socialist, society would still have to pass
through the social revolution and intense political and military fights to leave the
value producing system and reach communism.

This is conjecture because it did not happen, but society under this
conjecture would have faced what has been called a caricature of the bourgeoisie. This
formation would owe its existence not to bourgeois property relations, which
had been abolished, but bourgeois right or the lingering force of the social
power called capital. Nor is this caricature of the bourgeoisie, which arose
under Soviet conditions a new class because classes are formed exclusively on
the basis of the instruments and changes in the instruments of production.

Socialism is understood as the first stage of communism during the transition
from agriculture to industry. How can these old theory concepts possibly
apply after the transition has taken place? Once society, or at any rate the
imperial centers have completed the fundamental mechanization of agriculture the
class alignment in society is radically altered. Add to this the revolution in
technology which begins to not only undermine, but destroys the value of labor
power by pushing a huge sector of humanity outside the mechanics of commodity
production in an absolute sense, and we have arrived a new juncture of
history. A salient feature of this new period - grasped by Marx in its logic and
outlined in his discussion of the credit system of capital, is the radical
destruction of the bourgeoisie as a class of real individuals and the universal
emergence of those "regarded as capitalist" by virtue of the existence of bourgeois
property, and we no longer can talk about socialism as the first stage of
communism in the theory categories of the 1920s - 1990s.

The Soviet Revolution did all it could do and conjecture about what this guy
should have done is childishness. To frame the question of why and how the
Soviet power was overthrown as the proof of "no permanent revolution" is devoid
of logic and a refusal to think and unravel the mechanics of the social
process.

The Soviet Revolution did not fail, but rather hit the wall of history. Since
it is impossible to DE-evolve a mode of production on the basis of a
political counterrevolution - industrial society cannot be DE-evolved back to feudal
social and economic relations, the political and economic issues facing the
communist in the Soviet Union was the transition to communism. The communist were
solidly defeated.

No one want to admit that everyone can be historically wrong but compelled to
do their best under impossible conditions. The fact of life is that all of us
are always historically wrong as part of the human drama. Were the workers of
Lyons historically wrong in their uprising, which set the basis for the Paris
commune? Was the Paris commune historically wrong which lasted 70 days and
set the basis for the October Revolution, which lasted 70 years?

The historical trajectory has opened to be witness by all. Will the next
insurgent fight by the forces of the proletariat last 700 years? The thousand year
war is unfolding on the basis of the reconfiguration of the value system.
What if the impending upsurge brought to power a world proletarian regime that
last 700 years and fall back - backslide in major imperial centers, 100 years?
Backslide does not mean going back to a previously existing mode of
production.

We have just entered a point in time to talk about communism as a concrete
economic configuration. This new era is less than twenty years old. Building the
material foundations of socialism or "socialism in one or several countries"
or "permanent revolution" are obsolete concepts and a refusal to make the
theoretical leap that requires unraveling the value system at our specific state
of development. The landscape is still unclear but the infrastructure relation
is starting to show its distinct features.

We have forever left the era of counting widgets and primitive concepts of
workers democracy from below because these are concepts of industrial democracy,
industrial logic and the industrial phase of society. Is Lenin to be
condemned because he states, "Soviet power and the electrification of Russia is
Communism," and could not see the juncture that would be crossed roughly 80 years
after his death?

At least 99% of everything I have written on Marxline in - the past almost 2
years, is on this singular point of transition in the mode of production from
various sides of the social question.

The one percent is against the ideologist who points an accusing finger at
the proletariat at various stages of its development. The overthrow of public
property relations in the Soviet Union is not the result of "no permanent
revolution." In fact you have not articulated the question on the level of Mr.
Trotsky.

The law of commodity production governs the workers as a class.  All the
theory, programs and slogans mean nothing. Until you can explain the properties of
what, why and how - stating a "lack of permanent revolution" is childishness
and silly.

What happened? I will tell you again what happened.

A break in the weakest link in the chain of imperial exploitation and
oppression meant the fight throughout the colonial world and the workers could not
assert themselves as an independent political force. The concept of a "weak
link" means the other links in the chain possess something the weakest link does
not have. What the weakest link lacks is a class configuration or critical
masses of proletarians connected to the mechanics of industry and the value
producing system. The social configuration of colonial society as it faced imperial
authority in the real world meant not simply compromise with various class
bits and fragments, but the formation of an army from the countryside and
engaging the imperial storm trooper in combat. This was the configuration of history
as the last period and not the meaning of proletarian revolution.

The answer lay in disclosing the properties of the value producing system and
its economic logic that compels society to leap forward because society is in
perpetual "permanent revolution." That is why this discussion emerged on the
basis of socialist Cuba. Cuba without question is a socialist country and a
society as shaped on the basis of the transition from agriculture to industry.

Brother, the question is not socialism in one country but rather, why
communism cannot evolve in one country or one part of the world or leap forward from
an industrial basis.

The last generation of Marxist - Lenin himself, formulated the doctrine that
the break in the imperial chain of oppression and exploitation by bourgeois
property is in itself a weakness in the proletarian social revolution and today
we can witness the economic meaning of this brilliant observation.

Melvin P.