Re: [A-List] Russia: Putin's promises

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 5/28/2004 6:15:34 AM Central Standard Time,
michael.keaney@xxxxxx writes:

>There are strong differences of opinion on this list concerning how we
should view Putin. Melvin's highlighting of the material basis of Russia's
present social and political transformation is a welcome step forward in the
analysis of Russia.

Michael Keaney<

My personal opinion and politics is that Putin's Russia is bourgeois
democratic and the bottom line historical difference between it and bourgeois America
has to do with our non-history of feudal economic or social relations and
institutions. There are other differences that can be attributed to how the
industrial bureaucracy evolved in Soviet Russia outside of the bourgeois property
relation and the special role of the state as an organization of violence. Then
there are of course the personal and subjective attributes of individual
leaders as they operate within a historically specific culture and environment.

Putin's Russia is bourgeois democratic and he has a more popular mandate from
the electoral arena than Bush W., or Clinton for that matter. It is my
understanding that more people as a percentage of the population are incarcerated in
America than Russia. Putin's Russia is undergoing transition but it is
already bourgeois democratic.

This question of the yearning for the "strong man" at "the top" is also very
much a part of industrial ideology and expresses the material reality of
industrial organization as a system of cooperation. Not simply alienation but the
reality of being a "cog" in a vast system of machinery that is industrial
society. My use of the word "strong man" takes this into account and has very
little to do with forms of political struggle. The "strong man" is an administrator
in industrial society and not necessarily authoritarian - however one defines
this term. There is nothing more authoritative than the factory system that
pins the worker to the machine.

"Strong man" does not mean violence. "Strong man" means he who can manifest
the popular will and get things done - administrate.  How one administers and
get things done is subjected to a multiplicity of factors. My use of the term
"strong man" is imbued with the ideology of a class of industrial workers and
not political ideology.

Putin is a leader of and representative of capital - the bourgeois property
relations and I have no love for the bourgeoisie of any country or nationality.
I simply do not care if Putin put a gun to Yelsin's head and he could have
blown his head off. I have zero love for the bourgeoisie . . . period.

The facts that seem to come out of Russia is that individual members of the
oligarchy - the bourgeoisie, are going to be jailed and their wealth
expropriated. I personally do not care if they are jailed or shot. I am told that after
Forbes released the names of billionaires in China some of them were jailed.

I am no cheerleader of Putin and merely stated the obvious. I have never been
a cheerleader for Putin or for that matter the past leaders of the Soviet
Union during the past 40 years. Nevertheless, all political leaders face real
economic and social problems that cannot be explained simply on the basis of
political ideology or ones assessment of forms of political rights.

Putin's administration is going to jail members of the oligarchy and Average
Ivan - the Russian man on the street, is not going to shed one tear over these
criminals. The complexity of the political struggle in the old Soviet Union
meant that all classes and strata of society collided upon itself as
reactionaries, progressives and communists sought to overthrow the industrial
bureaucracy. The state agencies - organization of violence, split and collided with
itself.

Reaction carried out the insurrection and bourgeois property was restored and
given legal status. Putin is the representative of capital and he is trapped
by history - as are all of us.

The alleged discrediting of the Soviet model - which I dispute, is alive and
well amongst the intellectual sector of earth's imperial centers. By Soviet
model is meant the specific form of industrial development unique to a society
with the absence of the bourgeois property relations. This means a society
where means of production cannot pass into the hands of the individual . . . only
items of consumption. This is the meaning of the Soviet model in its economic
logic. No analysis was put forward concerning the subjective political
struggles and their forms during the 1920s, 1930 and 1940s.

Putin is responding to intense economic factors and a section of the
oligrachy stands in his way - in my opinion. His "way" is that of a class - the
bourgeoisie.

If the world masses were given the opportunity to vote on the issue of the
Soviet model of industrial development, (the real poverty stricken masses of
earth Asia, Africa and Latin America)  - who to this day have not really attained
the level of development of the industrial system of the Soviet Union,  I am
convinced beyond doubt they would immediately surrender their wretched
conditions for Sovietism.

Of this I have no doubt. In the imperial centers the workers were more
advance in their economic and social development. These workers cannot vote to go
backwards.

On the other hand there is no need for a Soviet type industrial development
in this era. The progressive accumulation of productive forces has outrun that
stage of history. This is the meaning of indicating the essence of Soviet
policy in the 1920s and why agriculture was the only possible basis of
accumulation and exchange in the world market.

The "strong man" is an industrial character. In America if the working class
had a chance to vote over jailing the criminals in high and low places they
would be in jail today.


Melvin P.