Re: [Marxism] question about 'black book of communism'

[Haines Brown <brownh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> has anyone read this book or 'mao: the unknown story'
> 
> thoughts, rebuttals, agreements, arguements, etc?

Why do you raise the question? I'm not challenging your reasons, but 
need to frame your question. That is, answers to it could go in a
variety of different ways, but I'm sure most would not be of interest
to you. That is, your question as stated is too open-ended.

For example, both books' facts have been challenged, but surely you
don't want to get involved in these specific (factual, empirical)
issues here, for it would probably end as a discussion that gets
nowhere. This is not a forum of experts on the subject, and the kind
of argumentation that an expert would bring to bear is ill-suited to
an online forum such as this. 

Of more interest to you and probably to the other people here are the
books' theses. But let me illustrate how we can get into trouble
discussing them. The Black Book argues that Soviet Communism amounts
to the same thing as Nazi Germany or even worse in that both were
institutions aiming at mass death. Well, one does not have to get hung
up on relative numbers of these dead to conclude that the thesis is
misconceived from the start. The reason is that to understand politics
in isolation from the whole of society is reductionist; an equation of
fascism and communism is blind to the profound difference of the two
systems in systemic, historical and functional terms and so is also
reductionist. 

Let me offer a few rules that most professional historians would
likely agree upon and should be honored in any debate here:

1. History is an emergent process, and for that reason every situation
   is some way unique and new. History never repeats itself; general
   rules have no explanatory power in historiography. For this reason,
   you can't infer a general truth from the observation of a finite
   number of cases; you can only seek to explain each specific
   case. Knowledge of other, perhaps comparable, cases only helps us
   to generate hypotheses; it does not validate them or serve as
   explanation. 

2. While you can argue back from known outcomes to generate hypotheses
   (suppositions) about possible initial causal structures or states
   (abduction), the result of this method is a range of hypotheses
   (possible suppositions), not theories. It only offers a range of
   possible explanations that are worth evaluating, However, these
   hypotheses require validation and/or justification of a different
   kind than theories, for they involved comparing the relative
   probability of possible explanations. That is why virtually all
   historians instinctively use a probabilistic language.
 
3. While rules have no explanatory function (although some still argue
   they do in the natural sciences), structures do persist and do play
   a role in explanation. However, structures contribute to
   explanation only in terms of a specific time, place and
   circumstance. Explanation is always of a specific situation, not
   encompassing different times and places. This is called
   historicism.
 
4. We naturally wouldn't engage in a reductionism that says the truth
   of a thesis reduces to the motives of the person putting it
   forward, or that what is taken to be true is nothing more than a
   consensus among a significant group of experts. Nevertheless,
   scientific arguments are socially constructed and cannot be
   understood without taking into account the social location and
   interests of the person offering a thesis, for it frames or
   indexes the research project and provides the axioms upon which the
   thesis rests. While you have to know what the authors are up to and
   why in order to understand and be persuaded by their arguments, it
   does not imply the truth of their arguments reduces to their
   motives.

5. The issue of moral judgements in history is problematic. We can
   certainly say that an action of the past would be condemned were it
   to happen today, but to project our own moral values on the
   (mis)deeds of the past is untenable, for history is emergent. So
   the task of the historian cannot be to judge the past, but to
   explain it in terms of the causal forces that led to a certain
   outcome. To presume transcendental values that are detached from
   time, place and circumstance is probably counterfactual.

6. Ideal types were popular in the 19th century, but their use has
   become suspect today. An ideal type is not a reference to the
   (unobservable) causal structure of a system, but to a metaphysical
   reality detached from empiria. To reduce a complex whole to certain
   key factors, to identify a logical or functional relation between
   those factors, and then to suggest that the resulting abstraction
   is independently real and/or useful is an adventure we try to avoid
   these days, for we are all "materialists" in the sense of having a
   monist ontology.

What I've tried to do here is to suggest that a debate of the two
books will go nowhere unless everyone involved shares basically the
same social location (class), the same starting axioms (such as the
Marxist approach implied by the name of this list), and has some
understanding of the methods of contemporary historiography such as I
have sketched above.

-- 
 
       Haines Brown, KB1GRM

         
        

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