Re: Dms and bureaucracy

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

>Do you mean the bureaucracy?  Is that what you are defending?  ..; The
bureaucracy represents and compresses in its organization the inadequate
development of the material base of the revolution-- the poor level of 
relations between
city and countryside, manufacturing and agriculture, at the same time as it
achieves a historical longevity by being both product and producer of the
defeat of the international revolution.  If that's too obtuse, I'm sorry, but 
this
is the modern be defenera, so a little abstraction is required otherwise all
you get is:

The Same Old Song.  Just Ask the Lonely.<

Comment

I have learned much of your form of expression and how to read its meaning.
Society gives rise to certain common functions, which it cannot dispense with.
The persons selected for these functions form a new branch of the division of
labour within society. This gives them particular interests, distinct too from
the interests of those who gave them their office and the class they serve.

Lets deal with this question as materialist and not ideologist. You are in my
opinion fundamentally correct.

What was worth defending in Soviet Society was its property relations in the
industrial infrastructure as opposed to the bureaucracy, which is what I
understand you to state. The basis for capitalist restoration is the value
producing system - commodity production, on a planetary scale and this can be
witnessed in Cuba today. In the most basic logic one (the Soviets) must enter 
into
relations with the more developed industrial countries because self-sufficiency
is impossible and technology is required to expand the industrial
infrastructure to sustain and further the standard of living of the people. 
Technology is
also required for military defense against imperialism.

The value producing system existed under Soviet socialism and its
agricultural relations spontaneously generated the bourgeois property 
relations. The
agricultural workers - peasants, would only alienate their produce on the basis 
of
exchange. Here is the problem that a political law cannot abolish. That is to
say the agricultural product was the peasants product - he owned products,
and retains the right to sell them even if one can only sell the product below
its value. The products created by the industrial workforce do not belong to
them under bourgeois property relations or the public property relations.

In the absence of world revolution the value form is the basis for bourgeois
restoration. This basis finds its material expression within the public
property relations within the Soviet Union by way of the bureaucracy. The 
reason is
that the bureaucracy is a layer of society that administers "something" and by
definition have access to the wealth of society. "The bureaucracy's tendency
to administer the impulse to capitalist restoration" is rooted it the nature
of the value producing system internal to Soviet society and external to soviet
society and also due to the intrinic nature of the bureaucracy as bureaucracy

Until the advent of a communist world, bourgeois restoration as a material
possibility, is always present.

I agree. The bureaucracy administers the impulse that arises from value. More
is involved concerning this matter of bureaucracy than "the chatter of value
at the border," although these two distinct things - the value form and
administration, are intertwined. I believe it is incorrect to speak of a 
"Stalinist
bureaucracy" rather than a Stalinist party and government. Is there a Bush
bureaucracy in America? The issue becomes complex because the Stalin government
and party were bureaucratic. No one can smash or abolish bureaucracy. All one
can do is smash and abolish the people in bureaucracy, because it is a
historical phenomenon. In the last instance technology abolishes the basis of
bureaucracy.

Engels has actually written about the process logic governing bureaucracy and
no one uses what he has written as a basis to understand this phenomenon.

In its functional character bureaucracy arises as the material act of
administering "something." There was a feudal bureaucracy, and there is 
industrial
bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is the organization of layers of society necessary for
the administration of the material power of the productive forces and
stabilizes production relations. Bureaucracy is a feature of every industrial 
society
and as a historical phenomenon supercedes preexisting bureaucratic structures
stabilizing agricultural relations. Bureaucracy arises from material relations
not 'partial' consciousness or bad politics.

The Soviet bureaucracy has its own unique history as if arose intertwined
with its party, but now is not the time for this aspect of the question.

Bureaucratism as an ideological expression denies that the administrator and
administrative apparatus is a servant of society acting on behalf of a class
and elevates the administrator to "power broker" who controls as opposed to
administer. Bureaucrats are universally hated by all of society because they are
bureaucrats. That is, individuals who administrative task allows them to
exercise some authority over the life of the individual.

Allow me to exhaust this point concerning bureaucracy, which is not a
property relation. Here is how Frederick Engel's put the matter. Pardon the 
length of
the quote, but it explains how and why the bureaucracy

"Where there is division of labour on a social scale there is also mutual
independence among the different sections of work. In the last instance
production is the decisive factor. But when the trade in products becomes 
independent
of production itself, it follows a movement of its own, which, while it is
governed as a whole by production, still in particular cases and within this
general dependence follows particular laws contained in the nature of this new
factor; this movement has phases of its own and in its turn reacts on the 
movement
of production." (Page 490)

(Page 491) "The thing is easiest to grasp from the point of view of the
division of labour. Society gives rise to certain common functions, which it 
cannot
dispense with. The persons selected for these functions form a new branch of
the division of labour within society. This gives them particular interests,
distinct too from the interests of those who gave them their office; they make
themselves independent of the latter and--the state is in being. And now the
development is the same as it was with commodity trade and later with money
trade; the new independent power, while having in the main to follow the 
movement
of production, also, owing to its inward independence (the relative
independence originally transferred to it and gradually further developed) 
reacts in
its turn upon the conditions and course of production. It is the interaction of
two unequal forces: on one hand the economic movement, on the other the new
political power, which strives for as much independence as possible, and which,
having once been established, is also endowed with a movement of its own. On
the whole, the economic movement gets its way, but it has also to suffer
reactions from the political movement, which it established and endowed with
relative independence itself, from the movement of the state power on the one 
hand
and of the opposition simultaneously engendered on the other. Just as the
movement of the industrial market is, in the main and with the reservations 
already
indicated, reflected in the money market and, of course, in inverted form, so
the struggle between the classes already existing and already in conflict with
one another is reflected in the struggle between government and opposition,
but also in inverted form, no longer directly but indirectly, not as a class
struggle but as a fight for political principles, and so distorted that it has
taken us thousands of years to get behind it again.

The reaction of the state power upon economic development can be one of three
kinds: it can run in the same direction, and then development is more rapid;
it can oppose the line of development, (page 492) in which case nowadays state
power in every great nation will go to pieces in the long run; or it can cut
off the economic development from certain paths, and impose on it certain
others. This case ultimately reduces itself to one of the two previous ones. But
it is obvious that in cases two and three the political power can do great
damage to the economic development and result in the squandering of great masses
of energy and material.

Then there is also the case of the conquest and brutal destruction of
economic resources, by which, in certain circumstances, a whole local or 
national
economic development could formerly be ruined. Nowadays such a case usually has
the opposite effect, at least among great nations: in the long run the defeated
power often gains more economically, politically and morally than the victor.
(End of quote)

(Engels to C. Schmidt, October 27, 1890. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
Selected Works, Volume Three, Progress Publishers Second Printing 1973.)

"Her (the bureaucracy) letter ended truly yours,
When you know that she was never truly mine.
I'm left Behind"

Spinners "Truly Yours"


Melvin P.


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