BHA: Re: Bhaskar's politics

["Sean Creaven" <seancreaven@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sunday 11 Feb, Andrew Hagen wrote:

I was not merely blaming Stalinism on Leninism. I was blaming many things on
Lenin. My major point remains: Lenin's theory/practice inconsistency is
indicative of a flawed praxis.

But nowhere in his reply to my post (or his original post) does Andrew
justify this argument. It is simply an assertion. My reply to his claim was
that Leninist political practice in the post-revolutionary context diverged
from Leninist political principles (a multi-party soviet democracy in tandem
with socialised production) because of the pressure of catastrophic events,
not because of a basic inconsistency in Lenin's grasp of the theory/practice
connection. I sought to illustrate this claim with reference to certain
historical events. Instead of confronting this (admittedly sketchy)
argument, Andrew simply rules it out as foul play, because 'getting beyond
the province of the list'. This being the case, Andrew's claim that I have
not engaged with the substance of his remarks is decidely odd. In fact, the
boot is exactly on the other foot.

Nonetheless, having taken this step ('the mailing list is not a historical
investigation'), Andrew is not shy about appealing to 'the plain
[historical] facts' of the matter to support his contrary view that Lenin's
politics are justifiably maligned. As he puts it: 'Some people will deny the
plain facts I rely on. The fact of Lenin's tyranny remains nonetheless'. But
the 'facts' of which he speaks are precisely the point at issue, and no
assessment of the relationship between Lenin's theory and practice can
sensibly be made without reference to them, as Andrew recognises in practice
if not in rhetoric.

I pointed out that a wide range of historical scholarship has shown that
much of the Bolsheviks' post-revolutionary policy (War Communism, penal
policy, hypercentralisation of command, the suppression of Krondstadt, the
dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, etc.) was unavoidable given the
catastrophic situation of the wars of foreign intervention, the White
Terror, and the economic collapse. Put simply, the siege economy was a
response to a siege. The fact that these measures were lamented and seen as
departures from political principle by leading Bolsheviks is well
documented. Despite this, Soviet penal policy prior to the rise of Stalin
was remarkably restrained, and not arbitrary as is often said. But don't
take my word for it. Listers should read Rees (1997) for a detailed rebuttal
of the 'the malignant straight line theory'(Cohen 1988) of the Bolshevik
revolution, drawing on an impressive range of historical scholarship,liberal
and socialist, which should also be consulted. Certainly, at the very least,
these sources would reject the simplistic view that Lenin's government was a
'tyranny' or simply 'murderous', as Andrew claims.

But perhaps Andrew's thought is that a socialist revolution can be defended
against those prepared to go to any lengths necessary to drown it in blood
without any recourse to violence or terror. My own view is that a measure of
terror and violence was unavoidable and therefore justifiable in the context
of the civil war, because without it the forces of White reaction would have
destroyed the soviet democracy and workers' state, and erected in its place
a fascistic military dictatorship. Imagine the consequences of that! The
White generals executed more people in one year (1919) in the Ukraine than
the Bolsheviks did during the entirety of the civil war. The White armies
practised torture as a matter of course, the Bolsheviks forbade torture and
strove to punish those in their ranks who did practice torture. The Whites
imprisoned arbitrarily, the Bolsheviks did not, instead striving to do so
only if there was clear evidence of a security risk. If the Whites had won,
the terror would have surpassed even that of Stalin. And what of the
consequences of that in global terms? Would Hitler, for instance, have been
so keen to destroy a fascist Russia? If not, how might the course of World
War II been affected?

So, in answer to Andrew's question ('Lenin had to make tough compromises?),
the answer is obviously yes, of course he did. And perhaps he made mistakes
as well. But, again, drawing up a balance sheet of the rights and wrongs of
Leninism cannot be done if you take 'the fact' of Lenin's arbitrary
practice, his tyranny, and so on, for granted.

I will conclude by making a few more critical remarks in response to
Andrew's reply. Andrew says:

Bhaskar is a critical realist. He rejects idealism. In DPF he argues that a
theory/practice inconsistency is the result of a badly flawed Hegelian
dialectic. Bhaskar criticises Lenin and blames diamat on him. Would you say
that this makes Bhaskar an idealist?

Of course not. Perhaps Bhaskar is an idealist, perhaps not, but this is
irrelevant to my argument. In fact, one can be an idealist and accept CR,
for example by accepting the stratification of nature, the reality of the
world beyond human thought, yet holding that the most basic stratum is God.
In any case, I am criticising you not Bhaskar. But I would say that Bhaskar
is wrong to blame vulgar Stalinist diamat on Lenin. I would also say,
incidentally, that a reconstructed diamat is defensible, anti-reductionist
and compatible with CR, as I argue in my Marxism and Realism (ch.1). Since
the point at issue is precisely whether or not there is a theory/practice
inconsistency inherent in Leninism, it does not get us anyplace making the
obvious point that 'Bhaskar is a critical realist', or asking the rhetorical
question: 'Is Bhaskar an idealist?' Bhaskar is undoubtedly a realist, he
does believe there exists a theory/practice inconsistency in Lenin, but that
does not mean that Lenin is guilty as charged, or offer any support for your
own belief that Lenin is guilty as charged.

Andrew asks:

Just what were Lenin's contributions to politics?

Have you read the 'The State and Revolution', Andrew? if not, you might find
it an illuminating read. What about Lenin's theory of the party? Democratic
centralism? Perhaps you think these can be simply discarded. Perhaps they
ought to be, but few would deny that these are Lenin's contributions to
politics. What about the manner of his application of Trotsky's theory of
combined and uneven development to Russian conditions? This allowed Lenin to
argue for the viability of socialist revolution in backward Russia, without
his politics collapsing into voluntarism, whilst at the same time preserving
the decisive role of agency in epochal transformation. Again, perhaps
Lenin's political strategy here was misguided, but it was undoubtedly a real
contribution to socialist politics.

Andrew asks:

Where does Bhaskar make this error [of reading off the errors of Stalinism]
from alleged errors in philosophy and theory? It would be interesting to
hear exactly where. For the life of me, I don't think you can back up this
claim, however.

Andrew, I would not wish you to forfeit your life simply for being mistaken
on this matter. But Bhaskar does say:

This is not the least of my differences with Hegel, who, although a more
sophisticated exponent of cognitive triumphalism, Prometheanism, or
absolutism, nevertheless is a conduit directly connecting his older
contemporary Pierre de Laplace to Lenin and thence diamat and the erstwhile
command economies of the omniscient party states (Bhaskar, in Archer et al.
1998, p. 576).

If this (amazingly reductive and sweeping) sketch does not qualify as a
statement of how misguided philosophical ideas or positions (in this case
'cognitive triumphalism')translate directly into repressive political
practices, it is hard to see what would! But I would like to make the
obvious qualifying point that I am not saying that philosophical errors do
not have pernicious political effects. All I am saying is that a
consideration of the relationship between philosophy and politics is not
generally adequate to the task of understanding the trajectory of politics
or society, because more often than not the actual development of social and
political structures is shaped rather more by contingent and conjunctural
real world events and circumstances than by errors in theory. My contention
is that real-world circumstances and events, not theoretical errors internal
to Leninism, or Lenin's failure to think out adequately the relationship
between theory and practice, explain the degeneration of the Bolshevik
revolution.

But it is interesting to see how historical understandings of the 1917
revolution are refracted through the dominant political paradigms of the
day. In the 1960s and 1970s, the 'malignant straight line' view was rightly
subjected to detailed critique by Marxist, socialist and libertarian
historians and analysts, who recognised the Cold War agenda of 'orthodox'
Russian historiography and sought to challenge it. Today, however, following
the collapse of the Eastern bloc, and with the spectre of 'communism
repentant', many on the left who once crudely identified authoritarian state
control with socialism have lost their political bearings and critical
faculties. The result has been the dominance of liberal social thought in
the academy, the effects of which include the expansion of Cold War type
accounts of the Russian Revolution beyond their traditional right-of-centre
constituency.

This is the context informing my observation that a socialist political
practice has to base itself on a sober balance sheet of the lessons of
October, and not a mere regurgitation of right wing myths. In other words,
the critic has to assess the lessons of October through a broad range of
competing perspectives, if a judgement of the competing claims of each is to
be made. This does not necessarily mean that Leninist organisation is still
appropriate today, that is another debate. But it does mean that we cannot
have a sensible debate about the merits or demerits of Leninism if we allow
Cold War myths to go unchallenged.

The fact that Andrew is not open-minded on this question, and has not
properly researched his argument, is revealed by the way he has conducted
our debate. For you, Andrew, to question a particular right wing
interpretation of the Bolshevik revolution is to reveal a 'Leninist
mentality', to defend 'Lenin's political murders', to be 'dogmatic', to come
'out of the woodwork' in order to defend a 'creed'. You have even had this
to say to another Lister:

By the way, I happen to think you are a very thoughtful intellectual who
would be worth reading even if you did happen to be a Leninist.

Steady on! This tone suggests to me a lack of confidence in the arguments
you are proposing. Note I have not accused you of having a particular 'mind
set', of defending a 'creed' or crawling 'out of the woodwork'. All I have
suggested is that you have fallen under the sway of a particular and
extremely powerful ideology of anti-Bolshevism, which works basically by
abstracting Bolshevik practice from its socio-economic context. There is no
shame in that.

Regards

Sean
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