socialism is necessary

["Jurriaan Bendien" <j.bendien@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis,

We agree that socialism is needed,  that as socialists we need to
oppose war and militarism, and about the rapacious nature of modern
imperialism. I am not trying to be a sunday talkshow host, I am merely
querying your conception of who the goodies and the baddies are in the
wild world out there, it seemed to me you were generalising in an
unfruitful way, that is all. I think in the current epoch the "camps"
are not as straightforwardly defined as you make it out to be. You are
still very much wedded to Lenin's vision of the epoch, whereas I think
our conception of the epoch must be modified, and I am, as I have
indicated before, more critical of Lenin as a socialist than you are.
I don't pretend to have anything like a worked out perspective myself,
I'm just suspending some certainties I thought I had in the past, in
order to make room for some new thought. Where that leads I will have
to see.

Just to clarify the kind of thing I have in mind by the "conception of
the epoch", I will quote an excerpt from a paper I wrote with a friend
in 1986, when I still considered myself a Marxist rather than a
socialist (I just found the paper back in the domestic fracas):

"The development of Marxist theory took place through a complex
interaction of theory and practice. Marx's theory was and is
interpreted by Marxists in the light of actual political practice.
Simultaneously however, most Marxist political practice is itself
guided by particular interpretations of Marxist theory. The mediating
links between the two are "conceptions of the epoch". These are
perspectives or working hypotheses on the nature and character of the
current period of history, its major developmental trends (economic
and otherwise), the socio-political relationship of forces, and so on.

A conception of the epoch is a composite picture. It is
theory-directed, yet also oriented by empirical events and trends.
Theory plays an important role in the conception of the epoch by
supplying focal points: it specifies which trends are important, and
in what respect they are important. But historical  events and trends,
too, play an important role. They suggest which aspects of the theory
warrant special attention at any given time. It is in this way that
conceptions of the epoch mediate between Marxist theory and political
action.

Unlike religious doctrine, which prescribes activities in absolute,
universalistic terms ("always/never do X"), doctrinal (axiomatic)
statements in the Marxian theoretical system prescribe action in
relativistic terms ("always/never do X in situation Y"). Marxist
theory is intrinsically "open" to history because its prescriptions
are conditional (i.e. always include ceteris paribus clauses). As a
"guiding thread" (Marx), "guide to action" (Lenin) or "wisdom of
practice" (Gramsci), Marxist theory always performs its function via
an assessment of the concrete situation that obtains, i.e. in the
light of some conception of the epoch.

It follows from the mediating role of the conception of the epoch that
it lends support both to theory and practice, and enriches either only
if practice is guided by theory. As Marxist theory is open to
modification by empirical conditions, the conception of the epoch
plays a semi-independent role in directing ongoing scientific and
political practice. But theory also provides a rationale for this
practice. Thus political and scientific practice is oriented both by
theory and a conception of the epoch.

Given the conditional status of theoretical imperatives, current
practice can be either legitimated or challenged by conceptions of the
epoch. Thus whenever activists defend different Marxisms, diferent
conceptions of the epoch are always crucial premises in the
controversy. In any scientific or political debate, Marxists defend
particular practices using particular interpretations of both the
general theory and of the existing empirical reality.

The process of rationalising or defending specific courses of action
importantly determines how theory is interpreted and the direction of
its further development. Here again, conceptions of the epoch exert a
certain semi-autonomous influence. Militants often attempt to
legitimate practices ruled out by theoretical injunction, with claims
to the effect that novel phenomena an trends have been encountered
which were not anticipated by the theory. Because the apparently novel
circumstances are considered to fall outside the domain of existing
theory, a corrective is claimed to be in order: theory must be adapted
or extended to take account of the new facts.

But if theory or political practice do not produce the expected result
even after the corrective has been incorporated, it is logically
always possible to blame (a) inadequate practical implementation, (b)
the conceptions of the epoch, (c) the general theory, or (d) any
combination of these. There are only two objective strictures which
prevent all this "negotiation" from slipping into subjectivism,
eclecticism, and relativism. These are the real movement of historical
events and the formal coherence of theory. But if either of these is
to act as a genuine corrective, a continual openness to new historic
facts and logical criticism is absolutely crucial.

The performance of different marxisms in this respect is by no means
equal. Aacademicians of "official communism" for example deflect
criticism - both logical and factual - with the "armour of dialectical
materialism". No other brand of Marxism has been quite so impervious
to counter-factual evidence and the elementary rule of consistent
thinking as that of the official communists. Their appreciation of
Marxism as an "ideology" is quite apt: Marxism-Leninism ceases to be a
scientific arbiter and becomes instead a more or less crude gloss for
a bureaucratised political and scientific practice.

Stalin - the spiritual father of official communism - first argued
that socialism in one country was impossible, a little later that it
was possible and later still that it had been achieved. Caught in
similar circumstances, most ordinary people would concede they had
been wrong - at least once. But not Stalin. His typical retort was
that such concessions were "non-proletarian". To think that formally
opposed statements contradicted one another simply indicated a
"bourgeois inability to think dialectically". Stalin's capacity to
think "dialectically"  in this sense is legendary. But sometimes even
he could not think dialectically enough. History accordingly had to be
straightforwardly falsified to preserve the coherence of the
theoretical system. Stalin's approach became the norm and has been
followed by the ideologists of official communism ever since.

The more "liberal" marxisms - sometimes in reaction to the "closed"
nature of the Stalinist system - err in exactly the opposite
direction. They are "open" to almost anything, revising and adapting
theory on the skimpiest of evidence. Whereas official communists and
communist officials appear rigid and dogmatic, the liberals change
their minds at the drop of a hat. The attitude of the dillentante is
facile and arbitrary. He appears to act on whims, intuitions and
journalistic impressions; at any moment he is willing to change
direction.

The fact that there are so many different Marxisms supports the above
interpretation of the relationship between Marxist theory and
practice. But the dogmatism of the official communists and the
arbitrariness of the dilletantes cannot be explained purely with
reference to subjective factors. This is indicated by the fact that
the very same forces (social position and background, practical
commitments, conception of theory and/or of the epoch) which propel
the defenders of "actually existing socialism" into dogmatic positions
have also produced the theoretical dilletantes. Whereas official
communists seldom volunteer admissions that they were mistaken, it is
characteristic of the dilletantes to concede happily that, up till
now, they seldom "got it right".

Both are equally driven to revise Marxist theory and categories to fit
in with their practical commitments and schemas of the world - without
reference to any systematic empirical enquiry. From the standpoint of
rational theoretical continuity and the development of theory, each is
just as dogmatic as the other. The existence of excessively "closed"
and "open" Marxisms stems from the fact that - to borrow Goethe's
formula - both think they "push" when they are "pulled" along by
historical events. It is this circumstance which lends a certain
credibility to Gouldners voluntarism-determinism polarity. But it
simultaneously undermines the assumed polarity, because the most
"deterministic" Marxists - the dialectical materialists of official
communism - more often than not turn out to be the most "voluntarist".
For example, Stalinists argue that history is the passage of necessary
and unavoidable stages, yet also that it is possible to build
socialism in isolated and economically backward countries. To resolve
Gouldner's contradiction, it is obviously necessary to identify and
distinguish in history between the forces which act upon historical
agents and the force of their actions."

(The paper goes on to trace briefly the changes in the "conception of
the epoch" with reference to Marx, Kautsky, Bernstein, Lenin, Stalin,
and the neo-Marxists, but I won't bore you with that stuff again).