Re: [Marxism] RE: USSR, Democracy, and the Environment

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 5/17/2004 12:40:53 AM Central Standard Time, stolz@xxxxxxx
writes:

>I wonder if the key to our understanding the environmental and human
problems of the Soviet Union is more of a historical than theoretical nature.  
Let
us recall Lenin's formulation of the central contradiction of the October
Revolution: the contradiction between its world-historical goals and its 
material
and cultural poverty.<

Comment

Your comments are very enlightening and the Soviets faced a certain doom not
unlike the Paris Commune. The problem with any serious discussion of the
Soviet Union is the historical anti-Sovietism from the left and right.

The dual nature of Soviet Industry you speak of has been written about as the
difference between the extensive and intensive development of industry on the
basis of bourgeois property and socialist property relations. To my knowledge
no one on this list even has a conception of industrial development and
property - extensive and intensive development other than myself.  Instead what 
is
spoken of is "combined and uneven development" which is an inherent attribute
of all social systems and the meaning of imperialism in human history.
Imperialism in human history is the export of a higher technological regime, 
methods,
instruments and science to a less developed area and hence your basis for the
emergence of the law of "combined and uneven" development.

I am of course the unreformed Stalinists on a list with a Trotskyite
tradition but 99.9% of everything I write about the Soviet Union is directly 
traceable
to the writing of Marx and Engels. Stalin's Five Year Plan was not what made
the Soviet Union socialist. The people of the old Soviet Union are learning
the hard way today the real meaning of the bourgeois property relations and the
unrestricted law of value.

>Those who explain the design of these plans by Stalin's evil will rather
than by the straight-jacket of the internal and external situation of the USSR
have the responsibility
to demonstrate that a more humane and effective solution was possible
and that this solution would have prepared the country within one decade
to defeat the Nazi Germany and right after that to protect the USSR,
China and others from Anglo-American imperialism by developing the
atomic bomb.  Would all this have been possible if the five-year plans
proceeded according to Pulchinsky, not Stalin? <
__________________________

I first read Stalin's articles on the industrialization of the country
perhaps a little over thirty years ago and it altered my perspective.  The first
material read about the Soviet Revolution was the Trotskyite "Prophet Armed,
Prophet Unarmed And Prophet Outcast," and it created within me a glowing image 
of
Leon Trotsky leading the Russian Revolution. As a second generation industrial
autoworker in Detroit, I was raised with an industrial sensibility and the
process called industrialization made sense to me.

For a complex of reasons peculiar to Detroit in the 1960s the generation and
groups I was involved with could not be anti-Soviet. We were anti-Khrushchev
in the sense of his political projections and even here very restrain in our
public criticism.

Soviet history is extremely complex because it was real existing socialism
with a different property relations at the basis of its system of reproduction.
To accommodate the ideologists I generally draw a line of distinction between
the "subjective Stalin period" and the objective material fact of developing
an industrial economy without the bourgeois property relation creating the
character of reproduction.

You inadvertently expand a theory problem amongst American Marxists (who
understand nothing of Marx) - although you are absolutely correct. Isolating
Stalin's "Five Year Plan" evolves a concept within the ideologists that says 
that
"planning" is the essence of socialism and not the property relations on which
reproduction takes place. This is not your fault but the concrete problem
faced by Marxists on the level of theory in America.

American Marxists have been the laughing stock of the communists movement
from day one. The title of this thread "USSR, Democracy, and the Environment" is
conceived on the basis of the most privileged sections and sector of America.
The connection between socialism, democracy and environment is degenerate
ideology. From every point of view America is the greatest industrial polluter 
and
disrupter of the environment on earth - in the history of the world.

Pollution is not a question of property for the ideologists, but a question
of democracy and democratic planning. Marx "Philosophic Manuscript of 1844" on
the question of Human needs and reproduction is totally misunderstood.
Political economy is misunderstood and not read.

Let me retreat.

Lenin said that we would have to pay for our ignorance in different ways. We
are ignorant because for 40 centuries the ruling classes has stamped out every
spark of consciousness of the masses, jailed and murdered us in our millions.
I come from a noble people murdered in American history for reading a book.
Intellectual development occupies 99.9% of my waking hours and 99.9999999% of
all my dreams.

I must know why and the curve of history as it evolved and make no
concessions to the white chauvinists or those who ignorance cause them to 
gravitate into
white chauvinists ideology.

In this regard he projected the necessity of utilizing the old bourgeois
specialists in the interest of the working class. Marx called this the 
transition
from bourgeois property on the basis of the living reality of bourgeois
property and not some fiction invention in the head of the petty bourgeoisie.

I believe myself to be reasonable clear about property, industrial
development and the political economy of Marx. My expressed intent is to take 
the
ideologist to the mat and destroy them on the level of theory and prepare the 
way
for the proletarian onslaught.

In the next six months my expressed intent is to utterly destroy what is
called the "Mark Jones Thesis" on the basis of the political economy of Marx.

You are interested in writing about blacks in America for your audience. This
will be accommodated. You should know that we are jailed on a level that
eclipse anything that can be attributed to Soviet Power.

Your perception of the anti-Soviet and anti-Russian nature and character of
the left in America is correct. The evolving "unity" between China and Russia
is a historical configuration and has everything to do with the industrial
advance of China over that past 30 years - she has caught up with and in some
areas surpass Russia in economic development.

>From here we go to the mat.


Melvin P.

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