Re: [Marxism] Re: "The Two Souls of Socialism"

["Ian Pace" <ian@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: "Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Your statement that "socialism can only be achieved starting in the
> developed world" suggests that socialism must first take hold in the
> developed countries. The underdeveloped countries, in their struggles,
> move simply in a vicious circle in which one revolution from above MUST
> succeed another until the workers in the developed countries open the
> actual socialist revolution.  The workers in these countries, though
> they are driven to struggle, are simply spinning their wheels like the
> Chinese peasant wars under the Asiatic Mode of Production (and down to
> today in fact).

What I'm suggesting, in line with Callinicos, is not so much prescriptive as
fatalistic. I would LOVE to think that it were possible for the
underdeveloped countries to achieve their own brand of socialism
irrespective of the first world, but I simply find it hard to believe this
will be able to happen, with all the forces of global capital stacked in
opposition.

> Their struggles do little or nothing to advance the class struggle in
> imperialist countries although, I assume, as internationalists, the
> socialism-capable workers in the advanced countries must oppose the
> imperialist depredations against the workers and  peasants of these
> countries in their futile cycles of struggle.

That's a ridiculous conclusion to draw.
> But then is not the socialism made possible by the workers in the
> imperialist countries for the masses of Asia, Africa, and Latin America
> a form of socialism from above.  In effect, the workers of the
> imperialist countries generously BRING socialism to the workers and
> peasants of the poor countries whose struggles themselves can have no
> fruitful outcome. Isn't this SOCIALISM FROM ABOVE?

NO! The idea of the workers of the imperialist countries generously
'bringing' socialism to the poor countries is a nonsensical conception.
Rather, with some form of socialism existing in the developed world, there
is hopefully less chance of global capital stamping down whichever choices
the masses of Asia, Africa and Latin America make. It's not at all
'socialism from above', rather it's the one way of avoiding 'capitalism from
above'.

>  Isn't the
> aristocratic noblesse oblige relationship suggested here betweeen the
> Advanced workers and the Backward workers  a stratified relationship
> carrying all the "logic" of bureaucratism, privilege, corruption, and
> recreation of the old "crap" that was suggested by all the concepts of
> "socialism from above" that Hal Draper condemned.

See above.
> It seems to me that the more integrated conceptions of class struggle
> developed by Lenin, Trotsky, Castro and others in the twentieth century
> are a good antidote to Pace;s conception which really reflects the
> attitudes, structures, and strata -- the real life conditions that
> produce them -- that have largely blocked the workers in the imperialist
> countries from acting in fact with any kind of consistency as a
> revolutionary transformative force.

And how successful have these conceptions of class struggle been ultimately?
Without the Soviet Union or China inducing their own forms of 'socialism
from above', just look how marginalised the possibilities of socialism in
the third world have become.

I'd say the more integrated conceptions of the relationship between
consciousness and its role in maintaining hegemony as provided by the
Frankfurt School are a better antidote to over-idealistic 19th century
Marxism.

> Getting past those conditions
> requires economic changes, which I think are in the process of taking
> place.  But it also requires smashing through the ideological barriers
> that have grown up, of which Pace's version of "socialism from below" is
> one.
Could it be possible for the undeveloped world working in blocs to actually
succeed in resisting the power of global capital? Without being crushed in
the process? I would love to be able to think so, but am very sceptical.
Challenges to US power on the part of oil rich nations, including those in
the Middle East and Venezuela, are a different thing, more like struggles
between different capitalist interests.

That said, I do have a few sympathies with aspects of Maoism/third worldism
(to the chagrin of Trotskyite comrades). When the Western working classes do
benefit from the proceeds of imperial exploitation (through cheap oil prices
and the like), it does seem crazily idealistic to equate their interests
(are you listening, Michael Moore?). Paradoxically, it can also be through
more social democratic models of society in the West that the Western
working classes stand to benefit in this sense. To translate this into a
notion of the third world as the 'world's proletariat', and the developed
world as a global bourgeoisie, transcending class divisions in either, is
fatally simplistic in such a didactic form. But there remains some truth
here, I believe.

> So Pace's conception turns out to have the wrong "soul."
>
> The way Pace's "socialism from below" becomes in fact "world socialism
> from above" highlights the problems of turning "socialism from below"
> into an ideological panacea that stands above the actual class struggle
> which, after all, must generate leadership, organization, and all the
> rest.
Of course leadership and organization are necessary, but the question
remains of whose interests revolutionary struggle is ultimately to serve -
the democratic interests of the workers or those of the leadership acting by
self-styled proxy, with no greater accountability?
> Frankly, I like Draper's pamphlet as a politically and theoretically
> challenging work, and I like even more his volumes on Marx that are in
> part a sweeping development of his thesis.  But yes, I disagree with
> "socialism from below " as a panacea.
> I really think that in this usage (which is Draper's) "socialism from
> below", as Joaquin notes in his comments and points out about
> Callinicos' bow to Holloway, pushes workers away from really fighting
> for state power, which tends to imperceptibly dissolve into concepts
> like workers control, dual power, pure democracy, and so on.  Workers
> should struggle only from their place, which is, of course, "below"

This sort of rhetoric is dangerous. Do you not think that workers are
perfectly capable of becoming as ruthless capitalists as anyone else?
Advocates of 'socialism from below' absolutely want workers to fight for
state power, but in such a way that power will remain in the hands of the
workers, not just a few of their self-styled advocates. That's what concepts
like 'workers control, dual power, pure democracy, and so on', that you so
scoff at, are about.

> Be
> afraid, very afraid,  of rising above -- of  holding power, of the
> dictatorship of the proletariat and its mass allies on the march to
> socialism.

You might as well say that it doesn't matter what the nature of the state
is, as long as those running it were at one point 'workers'. I trust you've
come across right-wing workers?

What does the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' mean if power continues to
be held by a few?

Solidarity, without wanting to get into sectarian flaming,
Ian



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