Re: [Marxism] Bureaucracy and Revolutions (part c) end

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

III. 
 
I believe that the working class of the Soviet Union was "dispossessed" (in 
 quotes) of some (I would say many), of the political mechanisms and 
political  liberities necessary to drive the Soviet system through its 
quantitative  boundaries on the basis of self organization of the workers 
themselves. 
This  happened because the Stalin regime, and Stalin the individual 
understood that  the boundary in front of society could be completed on the 
basis of 
the  organization of the state power and simultaneously defeat his inner 
party  political opponents. 
 
I believe public property as the state was unavoidable. Public property  
organized as state ownership of land, natural resources, everything 
fundamental  to the industrial infrastructure, is the thing that is fundamental 
to how 
and  why Soviet history evolved along the line it did. This line - path, of 
 development had its features stamp with the Stalin Regime, but he no more  
created the line of history than the man in the moon can create our line of 
 history in America. 
 
I also believe a number of political decisions affecting the life and  
direction of all kinds of political mechanisms of the working class, cutting  
across all of Soviet life, were wrong and harmful decisions. I most certainly  
believe that hundreds if not thousands of mistakes were committed, but none 
of  these mistakes individually or collectively destroyed public property 
as the  form of the industrial advance. 
 
Political expediency is expediency because the social consequence is never  
measured against a probable long term consequence. In fact "long term  
consequence" has no real meaning in politics until one is faced with the need 
to 
 cross another juncture or boundary and then "consequence" appears as the 
social  forces at ones disposal to complete the leap. The reason Soviet 
society went  along with this was not because of the power of the state but 
what 
you call  "legacy." In fact this "legacy" - a great word, accounts for the 
power of the  state. 
 
III a. 
 
Socialism in the USSR did not fail. 
 
Really. 
 
By all measures of industrial development, (other than measures constructed 
 in the private heads of the individual) Soviet socialism succeeded  
spectacularly, despite the bureaucracy. The possibility today, not  
retrospectively, of development without such a massive bureaucracy and the  
individual 
prostrating before the state is mind boggling. 
 
Socialism in the USSR was driven through all the quantitative boundaries  
that define the meaning of public property in the hands of the state, during 
the  rise, peaking and decay of the industrial system. Then the Soviets went 
out of  business as their business model ground to a halt. The business 
model did not  ground to a halt because of bad political decisions. The 
business model ground  to a halt for the very same reasons that any once 
successful 
business model  grounds to a halt. Something changes in the economy. 
Production did not stop and  the economy did not contract. Rather the rate of 
expanded reproduction shrank,  as there were no more boundaries left in the 
development of the industrial  system and a further revolutionary advance 
became 
impossible on the same  technological basis. 
 
When such a transition period opens requiring a leap to a new qualitative  
production relation, the subjective factor - agency and agents of 
transition,  becomes all important. 
 
Comrade, I have for 30 years listened to and read countless explanations  
for the stability of the Stalin regime and its excessive reliance on state  
organs and the bureaucracy as being the reason for both. The stability of the 
 Stalin regime rested on the bureaucracy, which in turn accounts for the  
stability the bureaucracy. What accounts for the stability of the bureaucracy 
is  its inherent ability to drive and complete a quantitative boundary in 
the  evolution of a system of production. When a system - mode of production, 
has  exhausted all its boundaries of development the bureaucracy and state 
becomes  polarized as a budding new forms of production relations emerge in 
external  collision with the actual organization of the bureaucracy. In this 
sense I speak  of the bureaucracy in its industrial aspects or as the 
bureaucracy exists in  correspondence to and as an expression of the industrial 
infrastructure. 
 
The issue is twofold. On the one hand the bureaucracy arises outside of the 
 sphere of production by definition of it expressing the power of the state 
or  the organization and stability of property. On the other hand in its 
material  manifestation, as a material organization of power, bureaucracy 
comes to life on  the basis of a historically specific configuration of 
production. Capitalist  bureaucracy means simultaneously bourgeois property and 
the 
configuration on  which this power is made manifest, in the same way of 
feudal bureaucracy. 
 
One cannot overthrow the bureaucracy qualitatively. That is to say, one  
cannot overthrow the bureaucracy by fighting the bureaucracy because the  
bureaucracy is not an abstract configuration of power. Until a new boundary  
appears as transition one can only fight the people in which the bureaucracy is 
 made manifest and within the Soviet system this was a losing proposition. 
It was  also a losing proposition within American capitalism, but this did 
not stop  several generations of communists, at least a section of them, 
fighting the  trade union  bureaucracy. 
 
The Soviet was faced with being left in the technological dark ages, in  
their productivity infrastructure and hitting the boundary of limitation of  
expanding reproduction on the basis of industrial configuration. One comrade 
-  the late Mark Jones, often spoke of how Soviet society hit the wall of 
the  thermo dynamic boundary. Mark cannot defend himself, but when he was  
amongst us I disagreed adamantly. The most that can be "hit" is a barrier on 
the  basis of an industrial configuration or ones specific quantitative 
boundary of  development. The point is that each boundary of development of the 
Soviet system  called for a new reformulation of workers organization, as the 
organized agency  hit the wall of its own limitations. 
 
The Soviet model (model !!!) became unsustainable in this sense and context 
 but was held in place by the bureaucracy. It was at this point that the  
bureaucracy passed from being a hindrance and weight on the revolution to an  
open enemy of the revolution. 
 
If the workers in the Soviet Union had not been "dispossessed" of organs of 
 workers control and political mechanisms in the form of democratic 
institutions  of party and state, would its history have unfolded different? 
Probably, but I  do not see how on earth another path was available, except as 
a 
"what If?" 
 
What if Reuther had not won the political contest in the UAW? What if John  
L. Lewis had not done such and such? What if this or that decision had not 
been  made? What if the CPUSA did not do such and such? 
 
Once a new boundary opens and transition begins and a political form  
emerges as the leading form of political will you are freaking hit and stuck in 
 
a period of history. You are stuck in that political configuration until the 
 process grinds to a halt and begins its sublation to a new boundary. This  
most certainly has happened at every single juncture in American history. 
 
Here is the basic reason I did not put much political stock in fighting the 
 trade union bureaucracy, which more often than not, appeared to some 
comrades as  political passivity. 
 
The strength of the bureaucracy was in fact the legacy (great word) cost of 
 Soviet socialism, but more specific events shaped the character of the  
subjective human agency and organization. The velocity of industrialization  
strengthened the bureaucracy, which in turn increased the velocity of 
industrial  expansion on the basis of the state as property holder. The 
mentality 
and  attitude of the bureaucracy and the Stalin regime was that self 
organization of  the workers could not keep pace with the velocity of 
industrialization due to  endless meeting and unimportant political discussions 
and 
disputes. Was this the  correct approach from the standpoint of any concept of 
socialist democracy? 
 
No. 
 
Did this incorrect approach halt, stop or block the expansion of socialist  
property relations? 
 
No. 
 
For instance in 1932 the bureaucracy was not the enemy of the revolution  
and did not stop the revolutionary advance. As long as "the revolution" is  
defined as only he subjective political aspects of "the revolution" Soviet  
history appears as one damn thing after another; a mysterious 
counterrevolution  with no coherent logic. "The revolution" is never defined 
solely as its  
subjective expressions and democratic assertions. Further, the completing 
of a  boundary verify the relative correctness of ones policy in the eyes of 
the  political grouping making the policy. 
 
Here my dispute is not with Comrade SA.  My dispute is the idea that a  
form of democracy defines socialist property relation. Does form of democracy  
determine capitalist property relations? Just because one may conceive of  
socialist property as milk and honey democracy does not make it so. 
 
I most certainly possess no hidden desire to be jailed or placed in a  
gulag, be it Soviet or American. The American gulag does not alter the property 
 
relations one iota. Letâs be clear. America can and will go communists and  
people are going to still be put in jail for all kinds of real and 
perceived  infractions against the rules of civic society. Anyone that does not 
understand  this needs to reconsider being revolutionary. 
 
In the late 1970/1980âs the Soviets were faced with making the leap . . . . 
 transition, to a new boundary in the material configuration of their 
productive  forces, a new mode of production which requires reconfiguring the 
material power  of the productive forces on the basis of the electronics 
revolution. The  bureaucracy stood in the way and was overthrown (momentarily) 
from the  pro-capitalist left and right. The bureaucracy understood clearly 
that a  communist advance meant the beginning of its demise from history rather 
than a  reorganization attempted by a generation of Soviet leaders. 
 
Why could capitalism be restored? Because the workers had been historically 
 dispossessed (without quotes)? 
 
No. 
 
To answer this question consistent with Marx materialism one has to answer  
the question "why cannot economic and political feudalism, as the landed  
property relations be restored?" 
 
Once a new mode of production - not simply a change in property, takes  
root, the old economic order cannot be restored. Over and over comrades take a  
position that socialism is a new mode of production with qualitatively new  
social relations of production and this is wrong. Soviet socialism 
contained the  exact same productive forces as the bourgeois mode of 
production. Two 
different  form of property existing simultaneously on the same productive 
forces. Only  when society leaps to a new configuration of the material 
power of productive  forces is restoration of bourgeois property blocked. 
Dispossession of the Soviet  workers was the means by which the old property 
relations were restored not the  basis or reason why such could happen. 
 
But then again, no one could know this before society began the leap -  
transition, to a qualitatively new configuration of production. In America this 
 transition, late 1970/80âs gave rise to the means to create the 
infrastructure  of a new form of finance capital, detached from the production 
of 
surplus value.  Capital as a notional (imaginary) value. In the Soviet Union 
this transition  indicated the possibility to leaping to the first stage of 
communism, as defined  by our state of development of the productive forces, 
and would have marked a  period in which the state no longer needed to be the 
property holder. 
 
This leap could have taken place, with the Soviets remaining relatively  
backwards in many of its political institutions and material power of  
production, but the initial transition was possible. The initial transition  - 
leap, would have meant reconfiguring the productive forces on the basis of the  
revolution in electronic. The inevitable distortion would have remained with 
the  military and a streamed down bureaucracy being first to apply all the 
new  technology. Inevitability means the consequence, resulting from legacy. 
 
 
The bureaucratic distortions would have remained in the shape of a vast  
military infrastructure necessary to protect itself from imperialism. 
 
Policy determines outcome during a period of "the leap."  
 
The Soviet bureaucracy passed from hindrance to enemy of the revolution. 
 
IV. 
 
The reason the proletariat cannot be liberated - emancipated, on the basis  
of the industrial system is because it is industrial. The words "modern  
proletariat" is a political description of a category of property, as this  
category of property manifest the wage form of labor. Proletariat as modern  
proletariat does not mean any form of working class but "the industrial  
workers," as wage laborers. Shattering the bourgeois property relations  
liberates the modern proletariat from being proletariat. 
 
The modern proletariat is also industrial and enslaved from two  
intersecting directions: property and the division of labor. 
 
The word industrial embody the meaning of the value relation at a state of  
development of the material power of productive forces called "the 
industrial  configuration." When the industrial proletariat is emancipated from 
capital in  the hands of private owners, he/she is still victimized by their 
subordination  to the division of labor. 
 
This truth is summed up as "no class can be truly liberated until its  
energy that ties it to and mark it as a slave to the division of labor, is  
replaced by a more efficient form of energy." A free association of laborers  
combines two intersecting concepts; property and division of labor. The  
proletariat can abolish itself as modern proletariat and still not be free -  
emancipated. Emancipation from capital is only the first juncture in our  
journey. 
 
I do not imply that you have stated any different. Generally you refer to  
this process under the rubric of developing "social relations," as these  
relations flow from division of labor. 
 
In my view, the Soviets made no fundamental - fatal, political errors until 
 the era of Gorbachev, not withstanding a slew of mistakes and wrong 
decisions of  Khrushchev and company, compounded by a million and one bad 
decisions flowing  back to October 1917.  Fundamental as in "fundamental 
errors" 
means an  error that halts and prevents the crossing of a given quantitative 
boundary  and/or the restoration of bourgeois property. This is not to say 
that men such  as Brezhnev were not political buffoons and degenerates who 
understood nothing  of elementary political economy. Actually, he did 
understand 
some political  economy, but only as it held meaning for the stability of 
the bureaucracy. 
 
But this is a story for another day. 
 
Maybe a difference in self organization of the workers would have made a  
difference. 
 
 
WL. 
 
 
 
Additional: 
 
In a message dated 5/20/2009 12:09:41 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, 
_sartesian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:sartesian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)  writes: 
 
Waistline's discussion really does hinge on a particular interpretation of  
the adage that the proletariat cannot do away with capitalism, with its own 
 exploitation, without doing away with itself at the same time as a 
proletariat. 
 
Well, we know that.  But how do we DO that?  We require  mechanisms, 
agencies of transition, and the proletariat requires itself to the  agent in 
those 
organizations.   Dispossession of the proletariat from  those "political" 
mechanisms and agencies is first and foremost a response to  the legacy, the 
enduring physical legacy, of  international CLASS social  relations, which 
takes its physical form in the prior backward conditions of  agriculture, in 
the devastation of the industrial base, and of the living  standards, by the 
counterrevolution. 
 
It is not industrial mode of production that "limits" the proletariat's  
ability to emancipate itself-- to shrink, overcome, dispense with  
bureaucracy.  Continued success of the revolutionary process does not  require 
a "leap" 
to "economic" communism on the day after, or the day after plus  X days, 
the seizure of power. 
 
Continued success requires utilization of the means of production,  
industrial, agricultural for USE, for need, for social use and social need. A  
bureaucracy is not a neutral formation, it is the compression and composition 
of 
 the pre-revolutionary legacy directly inside the revolutionary 
expropriation of  prior property forms.  History has pretty much made it clear 
how 
incapable,  structurally incapable, the Soviet, and Chinese, bureaucracies 
were/are at  maintaining production for use, need. 
 
Certainly we can say this failure is the result of the pressure of the  
world markets.  But that's not enough.  The failure is not just that  the 
bureaucracies are not "democratic enough,"  but that the bureaucracies  are NOT 
revolutionary enough; that the bureaucracies are indeed NOT a class; do  not 
possess the cohesion, and the specific relation to a specific form for the  
organization of labor, a specific property, that can overcome the legacies 
of  the pre-revolution. 
 
I don't usually go around quoting Lenin, disagreeing as I do with his  
analysis of imperialism.  He got that wrong, IMO. But when push came to  shove, 
 
Lenin got the most important thing right.  And IMO again he  continued to 
get it right when he offered two concentrated expressions of what  the 
proletarian revolution requires to make that critical transition: 
 
1.  soviets plus electrification 
 
2.  every cook can govern 
 

We will know the transition is successful when every governor can, and  
does, cook. 
 
 
 
I like to leave Lenin in his historical period, where in fact he was an  
extremely insightful individual and a great communist. 
 
If you were lucky enough to have a system of public property, even in the  
hands of the state, this meant one could literally pass through a boundary 
at a  greater velocity and with more social, economic and political benefits 
to the  laboring classes as compared with societies under the jackboot of 
private  property.
 
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