Forwarded from Jim Farmelant

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Recently, G.A. Cohen has reissued his classic 1978 work *Karl Marx's Theory
of History: A Defence* in an expanded edition which includes a new
introduction in which he reflects upon analytical Marxism, as well as some
additional new chapters which he attempts to develop a revised historical
materialism. He still maintains that his 1978 book presented a faithful
presentation of Marx's materialist conception of history (with the aid of
tools borrowed from 20th century analytic philosophy) but in the additional
chapters he attempts to come to terms with his more recent misgivings
concerning historical materialism by presenting a revised version of the
theory which he calls a "restricted historical materialism." In addition to
this he also has a chapter on the collapse of the Soviet Union considered
from the standpoint of historical materialism, the text of which follows.
_____________

What is the significance for Marxists, of the failure of the socialist
project in what was the Soviet Union? And what is the significance, for
socialists, of the failure of that project? I separate the two questions
not merely for the formal reason that 'Marxists' and 'socialists' designate
(overlapping but nevertheless) distinct categories, but also for the
substantial reason that the significance of the Soviet failure is, in my
view, very different for the two cases. For reasons to be explained below,
the Soviet failure can be regarded as a triumph for Marxism: a Soviet
success might have embarassed key propositions of historical materialism,
which is the Marxist theory of history. But no one could think that the
Soviet failure represents a triumph for socialism. A SOviet success would
have been unambigously good for socialism.

I treat, here, the significance of the Soviet failure for Marxism. Now, as
I said, had the Soviet Union succeeded in building socialism, that might
have embarassed historical materialism. It might, in particular, have posed
a serious challenge to the central claims of historical materialism:

(1) 'No social formation ever perishes before all the productive forces for
which there is room for it have developed . . .'

(2) 'and new higher relations of production never apppear before . . .
[they] have matured in the womb of the old society itself.'

It follows from the passage on exhibit that a capitalist society does not
give way to a socialist one until capitalism is fully developed in that
society, and that socialism does not take over from capitalism until the
higher relations which characterize socialism have matured within the
antecedent capitalist society itself. But what, precisely, is imposed by
the requirement that relations constitutive of the future socialist society
must mature under capitalism? A complete answer to that question might be
difficult to supply, but whatever else is required for such relations to
have matured within capitalism, thre surely must exist, for such relations
to have matured, a large proletariat within the capitalist society in
question: it must be false that the great bulk of 'immediate producers' are
peasants, rather than industrial wage-workers.

Now against the background of the two exhibited historical materialist
theses, I want to discuss a criticism of historical materialism which is
often made by anti-Marxists. I draw attention to this criticism because I
believe it to be instructively incorrect.

The criticism is that, whereas Marx predicted that socialist revolution
would first break out in advanced capitalist countries, it in fact occurred
first in a relatively backward one, one so backward that one might refuse
to call it a capitalist country. And this predictive failure was not just
of the man Karl Marx himself, but of historical materialis, because of its
commitment to theses (1) and (2) above. For here was a socialist revolution
in an incompletely capitalist country in which further development of the
productive forces , under a capitalist aegis, was surely possible (so that
(1) stands falsified), and in a country which had not generated much of a
proletariat (so that (2) also stands falsified).

Before indicating why I think that this criticism is misguided, I should
address a standard reply to it, in defence of (2), which I think unsound.
The standard reply, against the charge that the 1917 revolution occurred
without the existence of a developed proletariat, and, therefore, in
contradiction of (2) above, is that there was a highly developed and
concentrated proletariat in the huge factories of Petrograd itself, where
the leading revolutionary events occurred, and where power was seized. But,
while an ample local proletariat may help to explain, and may have even
been crucial to, Bolshevik political success, theorem (2) is, in my view,
supposed to be true not because of the exigencies of politics but because
of what a socialist form of economy requires for viability. So this way of
protecting (2) against the threat posed to it by the Russian revolution fails.

Despite the failure of the 'Petrograd proletariat' gambit, I do not think
that the 1917 revolution falsified thesis (2). The reason why I think that
it does not is that it would do so only if what occurred in 1917 was indeed
a socialist revolution, one which by definition, ushered in a truly
socialist society, in which class division is abolished under the rule of
the associated producers themselves. I do not believe that Soviet society
had such a socialist character: it was not ruled by the associated
producers, but by the leaders, and sometimes just by the leader, of the
Bolshevik Party. Indeed, those who criticize historical materialism in the
stated fashion would be the last to grant that the 1917 revolution
succeeded in establishing what Marxists would regard as a truly socialist
society: they should therefore be the last to lodge the criticism of
historical materialism that they do lodge. (They may think that the Russian
revolution produced the only sort of 'socialism' that is possible, but they
should not (as they do) expect others, who may not agree with that further
claim, to accept that the Russian revolution falsified (2).)

In a word , the 1917 revolution and its aftermath offer no difficulty for
proposition (2), since appropriately higher relations of production did not
supervene. But, all the same, the Russian revolution might still be thought
to refute proposition (1), the principle that no social order ever perishes
before all the development for which it supplies romm has been completed,
for capitalism, surely showed room for fuller development in Russia in
1917. Thus, someone might say, the problem the 1917 revolution poses for
historical materialism is not that it causes socialism to succeed
prematurely but that it caused capitalism to fail prematurely.

But I believe that that judgement is also ill-considered. For historical
materialism does allow for the possibility of a premature revolution
against capitalism, provided that it is not successful in the medium or
long run. Only because historical materialism does allow for such a thing
could Marx have warned, in the *German Ideology*, that, if there were an
attempt to install socialism on the basis of an incomplete development of
the productive forces, then 'all the old filthy business' 'would begin again.'

Now, I am confident that the Russia of 1917 was indeed charactrized by an
incomplete development of the productive forces, in the sense Marx
intended: he undoubtedly thought, in the early 1880s, that Russia was very
backward, and I am sure that he would still have thought it backward, and I
am sure that he would still have thought it backward (if not very backward)
in 1917. Accordingly, under a reasonable interpretation (which I shall
presently give) of the aforequoted *German Ideology* passage, the
restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union confrims the truth of that
passage in particular and of historical materialism in general: the
restoration shows that no social order perished here before all of its
possibilities of productive development were exhausted. Capitalism receded,
but receding, temporarily, is not the same thing as perishing.

The reasonable interpretation of the *German Ideology* passage that I have
in mind says, first, that Marx did not think that competition and
capitalism would necessarily 'begin again' immdediately: seventy years is
the batting of an eyelid, world-historically speaking. And the reasonable
interpretation adds, for good measure, that the rigours and death and
mismangement of the seventy post-revolutionary years might themselves be
regarded as illustrating the 'filthy business' that Marx predicted (whether
or not we eccentrically interpret Soviet society as itself a peculiar form
of capitalism, as some twentieth-century Marxist sectshave done).

In sum, the standard use of the Soviet case in criticism of (2)requires
affirmation that the 1917 revolution established as socialist society,
which is not true, and which is hardly considered to be true, in the
appropriate sense, by makers of the standard criticism. And the standard
Soviet- experienced-based criticism of (1) works only under a crude
conception of historical materialism's implication which ignore the
reasonable interpretation just ventured of an important, and entirely
representative, *German Ideology* passage. So, as far as anything raised
thus far shows, the Russian revolution does not embarass the relevent
historical materialist theses.

But there is a further point to be made here. As is quite well known, Marx
was consulted in the 1880s by Russian socialists who asked him whether he
did not think that Russia could pass from its semi-feudal and merely
nascent capitalist condition directly to communism, without undergoing the
rigour of a full capitalist development. In order to answer that question,
Marx learned the Russian language, so that he could study Russia's history
and circumstances. And his answer to the question that the Russians put to
him was very interesting: 'If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for
a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other,
the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the
starting-point for a communist development.'

Now, how does that sit with the requirements of historical materialism, and
in particular with theses (1) and (2)? I believe that, as long as (1) and
(2) are taken to be true for each society separately, then Marx's advice
was heresy. But that very advice suggests a global construal of historical
materialism in which claims such as (1) and (2) are asserted not of each
society taken singularly but of world-scale or at least multi-national
social systems. (If Marx had meant that revolution in the West was no more
than just politically or militarily required, then his answer to the
socialists does not require this construal, but I think that he thought
that socialist success in Russia needed Western cooperation for more deeply
systemic reasons).

Now was Marx's advice to the Russians heresy, if we interpret (1) and (2)
in the suggested global fashion? That is a matter of judgement, and all I
can do here is to set out my own. It is that, taken globally, (2) would be
consistent with Marx's advice, but that (1) would not be. (2) would be
consistent because the proletariat was sufficiently developed across Europe
as whole for new, higher relations to count as having matured, in a global
sense, within that region. But (1) would still contradict Marx's advice,
since as history shows, there was enormous scope for further development
under capitalism in Europe when Marx wrote his remarks. Whatever globalism
does for (2), in the face of the challenge to it posed by the Russian
revolution - and you may disagree with my judgement that it helps (2) a lot
- it makes (1), if anything, more difficult to defend, in the face of that
challenge.

Lenin was, of course, an erudite student of Marx, and he did not imagine
that the 1917 Russian Revolution would stand alone and succeed. He thought
that it would succeed, but only because he thought that there would be the
responsive workers' revolution in the West that Marx laid down as a
requirement of a Russian success: the needed support from afar would be
forthcoming. As a Marxist, Lenin was committed to believing that, in the
absence of that desired response, socialism in Russia was doomed, and, in
due course, he expressed despair over Western proletarian failure and
inaction. The true heresy was not Lenin's making of the 1917 revolution,
for he made it with appropriately orthodox hopes, but Stalin's proclamation
of 'socialism in one country,' because that had to mean socialism in one
backward country, and such as prospectus contradicts historical materialism
on any construal of its central theses. (I do not thereby commit myself to
Trotskyism, but perhaps I do commit myself to the view that one must choose
between denial of key historical materialist theses and affirmation of some
Trotskyist ones).

If the Soviet Union had succeeded in building an attractive socialism, then
that would have been wonderful for socialism and for humanity, but bad for
the credibility of historical materialism. Of course, since human beings
are the sorts of creatures that, fortunately or unfortunately, they are,
they might have been more willing to believe historical materialism had the
Soviet Union succeeded. But by 'credibility', here, I mean what it could be
rational to believe, so the stated infirmity of human nature does not
affect what I have said.


Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org