Re: [Marxism] Marxist family tree?

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Phil wrote:
> Stalin banished Trotsky, took the wheel, and claimed to be a continuation of
> Lenin but pretty much nobody sees it that way, now or then (or do/did
> they?). I get the impression Lenin was a thinker; was Stalin? My gut says
> not so much, more an opportunist (apologies to his fans! I'm probably
> wrong!).

Phil, in general we avoid the Stalin-Trotsky debate here and try to 
stick to contemporary issues but I would say that Stalin was not much of 
a thinker. Marxist thinkers tend to invite debate since political 
clarification can only take place through a frank and uncompromising 
exchange of views. When Stalin assumed power, he eliminated all debate 
in the Russian party and enforced ideological conformity.

> Mao... any real logical progression there? Is Marx > Lenin > (Stalin?) > Mao
> more or less accurate, ideologically? What were Mao's contributions? Was it
> mostly just ways of adapting Marxism to China, or did he add universal value
> to the thought?

I think that Mao is worth studying, more as a strategist than as a deep 
Marxist thinker.

> P.S. I don't know much about Cuba; is therealcuba.com just right-wing
> propaganda? I pretty much take it for granted that whatever the US
> government says about anything left-of-center will be hideously twisted
> beyond any recognition as truth, but that's apparently a private site.

I wrote something on Cuba a while back that might be useful:

http://www.columbia.edu/%7Elnp3/mydocs/state_and_revolution/cuba.htm

> P.P.S. What's the deal with North Korea? Is Juche a complete abandonment of
> Marxism? Is that place half as bad as it's portrayed in the West?

I would strongly recommend Marty Hart-Landsberg's articles and books on 
North (and South) Korea. Here is an idea of what you will find there:

Martin Hart-Landsberg, "Korea: Divison, Unification and US Foreign 
Policy," Monthly Review Press, 1998:

The End of the Economic Miracle

North Korea's economic advance began to slow in the second half of the 
1960s. The government announced in 1966 that its seven-year plan would 
not be completed on time, and the planning period was extended for three 
years, until 1970. A new six-year plan was launched in 1971. Although 
the North announced its successful completion in late 1975, four months 
ahead of schedule, no new plan was presented in either 1976 or 1977. In 
spite of these difficulties, even CIA estimates, as summarized by Lone 
and McCormack, showed that, "as of early 1976, the North Korean economy 
was out-producing the South in per capita terms in almost every sector, 
from agriculture through electric power generation, steel and cement, to 
machine tools and trucks (but not in televisions and automobiles)." 
Nevertheless, the North was losing the economic race. Between 1960 to 
1976, Northern per capita GNP grew by an average annual rate of 5.2 
percent; Southern per capita GNP grew by 7.3 percent. The South caught 
the North on a per capita basis sometime in the mid to late 1970s, and 
then continued to pull further ahead.

North Korea's economic difficulties had several causes. Among the most 
important were the decline in aid from the Soviet Union and the division 
impelled diversion of scarce resources into the military sector. While 
North Korea has always prided itself on following an economic strategy 
based on the traditional principle of juche (self-reliance), the country 
also benefited significantly from foreign aid. For example, North Korea 
received substantial aid from the Soviet Union and other Eastern 
European countries in 1953 and 1956 that helped finance its three-year 
plan. According to one scholar: During the Three Year Plan, 75.1 percent 
of all capital investments of the DPRK was financed from the grants from 
the communist bloc. In these years 24.6 percent of the Pyongyang state 
budget was financed from aid from the bloc countries (including 
credits). Finally, aid and credits from socialist countries financed 
77.6 percent and 3.9 percent respectively of all DPRK imports during the 
Three Year Plan.

The Soviet Union also gave substantial scientific and technical aid, 
almost all without charge. By 1962, the Soviets had given North Korea 
over 2,581 technical documents; some 935 were drawings of complete 
plants or machinery. This technical support enabled North Korea to 
produce many industrial products, including trucks, cranes, compressors, 
agricultural machinery, electric motors, transformers, and tractors, 
which greatly contributed to the country's rapid industrialization.

Beginning in the late 1950s, relations between the DPRK and the Soviet 
Union grew tense. In 1956, the Soviets started pressuring the North to 
give up its attempt to construct a heavy industrial base and instead 
concentrate on producing light manufactures and primary commodity 
exports as part of a COMECON-structured division of labor. The DPRK did 
join COMECON in 1957, but only as an observer; it refused to accept any 
limitations on its national planning.

Complicating the dispute over economic strategy was a growing split 
between China and the Soviet Union. Kim had worked hard to remain 
friendly with both countries and was therefore placed in an awkward 
position by this development, especially the increasingly frequent 
Soviet criticisms of China. Kim actually supported the Chinese in their 
confrontation with the Soviet Union. He was critical of what he saw as 
Soviet revisionism, especially the policy of "peaceful coexistence" with 
the United States, the very country that had prosecuted the Korean War. 
Kim believed that "peaceful coexistence" reflected a racist attitude on 
the part of the Soviet Union toward Asia. As he saw it, détente was a 
policy that was developed strictly within, and had meaning only in, a 
European context. It could have no meaning for Vietnamese, Chinese, or 
Koreans, people whose countries were divided, with the socialist halves 
under threat of attack from the United States.

In the early 1960s, when the Soviets started openly criticizing the DPRK 
for its economic plans and unwillingness to condemn China, Kim stood his 
ground. The result was the sudden withdrawal of Soviet aid and technical 
support and, from 1962 to 1965, a reduction in trade between the two 
countries. Not surprisingly, this had a serious impact on the North 
Korean economy.


> P.P.P.S. Every time I see the Labor Theory of Value mentioned anywhere
> non-Marxist, it's described as "discredited," as though that were the final
> verdict. I know as much about economics as Marxism (less), but I'm firmly
> left and feel drawn to Marxism, so I bristle at this treatment of the LTV
> because I know it's pretty central to Marxism (precisely how is Greek to
> me). I have this gut feeling that it isn't really discredited (I've watched
> YouTube videos on it that make it sound pretty solid, from what I
> understood)... isn't this just more propaganda to replace the LTV with some
> right-wing theory that will allow them to deny that profits are extracted
> from workers?

For a good defense of the LTV, I recommend Ernest Mandel's "Introduction 
to Marxist Economics", particularly this chapter:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1967/intromet/ch01.htm#s4



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