Old comments on Hugh's/Zeynep's discussion

[Vladimir Bilenkin <azarov@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Date: Sun, 19 May 1996 20:37:02 -0700 (PDT)
From: Vladimir Bilenkin <azarov@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: spoons@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Old comments on Hugh's/Zeynep's discussion

>If you have access to marxist2 list archive you can find my comments
>(in april) on yours and Hugh's exchange with some of my views on the
>situation in general.


Do you think you could repost them to m1, Vladimir? This is one of the
problems of having two lists, of course. Not everyone has access to m2.


Cheers,

Hugh

_____________________________________________________________________________

I am a new subscriber and the only part of the discussion of transition
to socialism I have is Hugh Rodwell's reply to Zeynap. Anyway I want to
jump in even at the risk of raising issues which have already been
solved or dismissed.  They all relate to the defeat of socialism in SU
where I am from.

Zeynap asks

>But, how does a society, born out of thousands of years of class societies
>(that is the difference between the transition between all the previous
>systems -all were class based- and socialism), give birth to a fresh
>society, that walks a new road. Btw, I think that is how we should try to
>analyse and argue about the Soviet Union, China and Cuba, to identify the
>painful contradictions and pulls of the transition- not to fish out which
>fellow among us is a "Stalinist" or not.

As far as these countries are concerned, our analysis is complicated by
the backward character of their development prior to their revolutions.
Of course, we must squeeze out of their experience everything possible
but it will not be easy to decide what in this experience is contingent
and what is theoretically valueable for undestanding the problems of
socialist transition in the West. Below I will discuss one instance of
this difficulty.  I also think that the only true verdict to this
experience will be pronounced by the workers of these countries.  In
Russia, at least, there are already signs that this trial is under way.

The mind-boggling problem is that of a radical discontinuity even
between the transitional and capitalist societies.  For unlike bourgeois
society, socialist one does not germinate in the society it negates.
Capitalist methods of production, culture, the bourgeois man himself
were able to develop within the feudal order and eventually to overcome
it.  Bourgeoisie conquered political power only after it had proved its
economic and cultural superiority, and the "baby" had been completely
formed. But neither socialist methods of production nor socialist
culture nor socialist man seem to develop in the womb of capitalist
society, at least to such degree that they become autonomous and
continuous. ( The only exception to this is Marxist theoretical
tradition. But since its goal is to become reality it's a dubious
consolation). It is this radical difference between the logic of
transition from one class society to another and the logic of socialist
transition that makes proletarian dictatorship necessary but also so
problematic. Problematic, because so much more depends on the
revolutionary consciousness of the working class, the level and
character of its culture, i.e. what we call "subjective" factors.  This
is why I cannot agree with Hugh's reading of Marx and Lenin which leads
him to conclude that in the epoch of imperialism

>all the necessary technical and human prerequisites are there, provided
by >capitalism in its development from small, individually owned units
capital >to huge, collectively (but capitalistically) owned monopolistic
and >international units of capital.

Let me begin with the case of the Russian revolution, Lenin's works in
the last years of his life is one scream of despair at the lack of
elementary culture in Soviet, state and party organs of all levels.  And
in his famous definition of the fundamental contradiction of the Russian
Revolution as one "between the monumentality of its world-historical
tasks and its material and CULTURAL poverty" (I cite from the original)
the word "cultural" is underlined (Drafts).  In Russian context, by
"elementary culture" Lenin meant elementary bourgeois culture:
discipline, orderliness, sense of responsibility, loyalty, etc. in
short, that what had become the second nature of the Western bourgeois
and the worker alike. The rise of bureaucracy in SU was not in small
degree determined by the general cultural poverty of the population.
Lenin, of course, also said that it would be harder to begin a socialist
revolution in Europe but easier to carry it over.  We have to take this
prediction with a grain of salt.  For Lenin, as for Marxism of his time
in general, seems to have believed that after a revolutionary takeover
it was possible to proceed on the basis of the same type of productive
forces and corresponding cultural forms without a thorouhgoing
transformation of both.  What makes me to suggest this blind spot in
Bolshevism is that I am not aware of any theoretical discussion in the
party on the effects which the mechanical transplantation of the most
advanced American methods of production to SU could have on the cultural
and political development of the Soviet workers.  On the other hand,
certain positive aspects of pre-capitalist culture which were consonant
with the principles of socialist society remained untapped, perhaps, at
least partly because of the traditional disdain of peasantry in
classical Marxism.

But the Soviet case, one can argue, does not apply because of the
backwardness of the country.  In the countries of advanced capitalist
development, Hugh seems to suggest, there exist "the necessary technical
and human prerequisites" for socialist transition.  Indeed, it is a
common Marxist wisdom that the present level of productive powers of
mankind is such that they can provide freedom from want and compulsion
for all.  The question, however, is whether the productivity of these
"technical prerequisites" can be sustained without the attendant regime
of compulsion, and more generally without the sort of culture which
renders this regime "natural" and is structurally rooted in the division
of labor?  Yet, it is this culture that will have to go if we mean
socialism.

In the beginning of the century the German workers were confident that
history moves their way, and every day brings closer "the necessary
technical and human prerequisites" for socialist society. This
deterministic, evolutionary conception of history was influenced by the
bourgeois ideology of progress and helped to bring about barbarism
instead. In very different historical circumstances, the Soviet workers
were also confident that the fundamental conquests of the October R.
were a sort of their inalienable rights, they seemed as natural as air
to them. "Just do your job, increase productivity, live politics to us,
and sooner or later we'll arrive to communism peacefully" - that's what
they were told.  We know the end of the story.

Hugh mentions Marx's Critique of Gotha

>The problems arising from being 'born out of thousands of years of
class >societies' are epitomized by Marx in the Critique of the Gotha
Programme, >when he writes that socialism will be born covered in blood
and with birth >marks due to the capitalist society where it spent its
pregnancy.  These are >more cosmetic than structural flaws and as such
quite manageable - even if >they cause a lot of stress and strain.

The last sentence does not belong to Marx.  And I am afraid the flaws of
the baby will be very serious and structural.  The very alternative
"socialism or barbarism" implies that capitalism generates the enourmous
forces of destruction and human degradation.  They are not disembodied.
Where will they go the day after the revolution?  This question is
raised now by some Russian workers: "What are we going to do with the
millions of people who cannot and do not want to live in the society
that we consider just and good:  the bureaucrats of all shades, the
dealers, the criminals, the comprador intelligentsia, the youth
corrupted by the images of dolce vita, the middle class swamp who wants
to stay in the middle by whatever cost?"  No, in the face of the German
tragedy, the catastrophy in SU and a coming one in China, Hugh's view of
transition is unwarrantly optimistic. We'd better be pessimists, i.e. to
insist on a notion of history from which the working class will not be
able to draw comfort but be constantly aware that nothing good comes out
of capitalism naturally, that technological progress under capitalism is
accompanied by social regress, that we live in a permanent state of
emergency declared by the ruling classes, and that proletarian
revolution, to use Benjamin's metaphor, is better to be seen as
"grabbing the emergency cord" rather than locomotive of world history.
Any optimistic prospect today is superficious if it does not found
itself on this pessimism.

As to the lessons of the Soviet workers' defeat I am in full agreement
with Zeynap:

>This is an important aspect of Soviet Union's failure. One shouldn't compete
>with capitalism say, in terms of tons of steel produced, but maybe in terms
>of free time of the workers, social development of all, participatory
>decision making, equality for everyone...
>
>I know we can't eat equality and participatory decision making. But, if
>socialism is a superior system, the collective planning processes, the
>declining of alienation, the lack of social loss due to market anarchy
>should mean a better, more productive system as a whole (again productive
>not in the capitalist sense of the word).

No one can deny the great achievements of the SU in the development of
its productive base on the basis of nationalized means of production
under the most adverse historical circumstances.  But this victory was
one-sided and therefore pyrrhic, turning into its opposite. It has been
accompanied by the political and physical liquidation of the
revolutionary vanguard, by the suppression of genuine self-activity of
the masses, their social, political, and cultural creativity without
which socialist transition is doomed.  As the result of this "victory"
the Soviet working class has become a political non-entity unable to
defend the powerful means of production that have been created by the
self-sacrificial labor of the generations of Soviet workers; the means
of production which, I must add, properly speaking, belonged to the
world working class and constituted the strategic material foundation
for proletarian struggles around the world.  We can only imagine now how
radically different our prospects would have been today had the Soviet
workers been able to use the favourable objective situation in the early
years of perestroika to wrestle political power from the bureaucracy.
They failed to do this and since then they and the workers of the world
have been paying dearly for this failure. If there is any single lesson
that the counter-revolution in SU can teach us it is that the
revolutionary class consciousness of the working class must be absolute
priority for the Marxists, that it does not grow naturally from the
development of productive forces either on the basis of private or
nationalized property relations but develops only through the workers'
dictatorial control over and direct mass participation in all affairs of
society and the state. In my view, the concept of Soviet democracy still
provides for such vision.

Vladimir Bilenkin


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