Re: AUT: State capitalism?

["Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nate Holdren" <nateholdren@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 25. juli 2002 21.59
Subject: Re: AUT: State capitalism?

Nate writes:

> What's interesting to me about this in relation to the USSR is the light
it
> throws on some of the different accounts of the USSR and the friction that
> arose (and still does) between some marxists and some anarchists over this
> question. (This issue recurs and takes on a new importance when some
fairly
> sophisticated folks like Zizek start calling for a return to Lenin and the
> party.) I know a lot marxists for whom Russia 1917 is something like what
> the Spanish revolution is to some anarchists - a time of tremendous
> accomplishments and even greater possibilities, all of which was dashed,
> thus the romance and continuing power to fascinate of these periods. I
know
> more about Spain than I do about Russia (and it seems to me that there
were
> huge possibilities opened up in Spain).

Possibilities were opened. No disagreement there. But when
Zizek start calling for a return to Lenin and the party, it only says
one thing; He is an reactionary apologist for state capitalism.
He has not the excuse of being uneducated. So this just tells
me one thing: He is willing to defend the mass-slaughtering
of workers and peasants on a far larger scale that Mussollini
ever accomplished. These are not questions that are at all
historically in doubt. You do not even have to go to other historical
records than those produced by the Bolsheviks themselves.
Basically all this has been known also outside Russia since
the early 1920ies for those who wanted to know. Slavoj Zizek
may be many things but a communist he certainly is not. Or
maybe again, he just does not want to know? In case it is
psychological question, which should be his department.
        The real and serious question is why so many intellectuals
have been willing to defend slavelike conditions, the mass
slaughtering of workers and peasants, and a exploitation on a
level leading to death in famine of 5 million people (ironically
their numbers almost certainly would have been threefold,
according to Bolshevik sources, without U.S. aid), and left
other millions of homeless children wandering all over the
Russian Empire. And this is a reference to Lenin's time,
not the rule of Stalin. it is a sad story. Mussolini's Italy was
paradise in comparision. And this is not an opinion but a
historical fact.

You write: "A lot of the status of Leninism seems to hang on
how one assesses this time period.(Negri, for example, in
my limited reading seems to think that at the time  the leninist
model was appropriate but is not so any longer. I have my
suspicions though that this was never a very good model.
I don't have the knowledge to back these up or even investi-
gate them very well, though.)"

Again there are reasons to ask, is there any excuse for such
a well-educated man as Tony Negri to claim that "the leninist
model was appropriate but is not so any longer. I am far less
concerned about the abstract word "model" than the reality of
millions of corpses that hides back this label. It is also very
much a question of which side you defend in a class struggle.
Which side are you on, boys and girls? Which side are you on?
It is fine that he believes it is not any longer a appropriate
model, but I cannot help but feel that it still sounds as a pretty
instrumental point of view. Does it for instance imply that
Negri means the Cheka was appropriate once upon time,
that the dissolving of the soviets at gunpoint in the spring
and summer of 1918 were appropriate, that machine guns
were an approriate means to end strikes and extort grain
from poor peasants until they starved to death. That slave
labour, the militarization of labour, and work camps was
oppropriate etc ... I really wonder how this all fits into the
"refusal of work" perspective?  The "leninist model" was
not just some theoretical construct to be studied at universities.
It was a deadly reality. And it scares me when people are
able to abstract so much from people of flesh and blood,
joys, sorrows, pains, dreams, and dreams and hopes
turned into corspes and cannibalism.

These are pretty serious questions, and are directly related
to why so many workers have lost a belief in a world beyond
capitalism.

This is not just simply a question of "different accounts" and
"friction ".  It is that some of us are sincerly opposed to
shooting workers and peasants struggling for a better life
and more self-determination. And have never thought it
"appropriate".

Harald











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