Re: Chronology of Russian-Chechen relations -- part two

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 6/26/2004 10:57:22 PM Central Standard Time, comvoice@xxxxxxxxx writes:

Under Stalinist state-capitalism, however, monstrous crimes were committed against the nationalities, including the mass deportation of the entire Chechen population. This is ethnic cleansing on a vast scale, complete with many deaths during the deportation process itself, and police supervision of the deportees in their new place of residence. No socialist regime could ever do such a thing. And yet Stalin did it not just to the Chechens, but to a number of other small nationalities.  All this shows that the revolution had died out in the Soviet Union, and that there is nothing in common between Stalinism and communism.

 

 

Comment

 

Actually, changes in the economic units of society and/or the property relations does not spontaneously lead to enlightenment, benevolence, equality or the suspension of historically evolved prejudices or necessarily endow leaders with the capacity to rule.  The professing and or confusing of a brand of ideology is not an indicator of individual or group ethics and morality. Cambodia and the "killing fields" proves this in my opinion. Men are capable of incredible stupidities and monstrous crimes against humanity no matter how noble their individual ideas.

 

Nevertheless, societal activity occurs in a context and environment. What the Chechen may refer to as a Soviet version of the Trail of Tears - during the Stalin years, occurred in the context of the history between 1850 and 2004.

 

It is precisely the time frame 1850 - 2004 that witnessed profound economic changes in the life of not just the Soviet Union but the mode of production on earth. The economic content of this time frame embraces the transition from agricultural relations to industrial relations or what is called from feudalism to capitalism. This economic logic needs to be understood to make head or tails of what is called the national question.

 

Infinitely more than a change in the form of wealth - from land to gold, and the slow transition from handicraft to manufacture to industry is involved in transforming the mode of production as the human drama. The change in the primary form of wealth to good - movable property, is what allows for the acceleration of the money economy or exchange between commodities with money serving as the medium and depositor of value.  

 

Imperial conquest in its economic aspects means many things. We are talking about the uprooting of thousands of years of tradition and social relations and civil institutions. The injection of a money economy into a natural economy is devastating and unravels the fabric of the old society. Even the imperial army itself serves an economy content not reducible to merely force.

 

For example British rule in India meant recruiting locals into the imperial force of storm troopers and these real people must eat, have shoes and clothes and be housed and are on this basis drawn into the money economy and exchange. The point is the economic logic of bourgeois imperialism in history, the destruction of natural economy and the way of life form countless million and the export of a higher mode of production and its imposition on the economically less developed people. This is one side of the social process that was looked at that the early Marxists attempt to craft a policy that spoke directly to the regrouping of peoples as new economic units.

 

This was called the national question.

 

From time to time Marxists are called insensitive in our assertion that the importance of the industrial revolution lies in its stripping away of all the idyllic relations between people and bring to the fore the naked economic truth of the exploitation of the working class.  There is some truth to this when we fail to acknowledge not simply genocide against the weaker peoples but the world altering and destructive path of economic development that uproots and tears one their social and spiritual relations what imbue one with specificity.

 

New class are formed under the impact of this economic transformation and the approach of the Marxists in the imperial country was to craft a policy called the national question. One aspect of this policy became the call of the Right of Nations to Self Determination and this was during the period between 1850 and 1917. Marx approach to this question differed from that of Lenin's.

 

The question remains whether or not the slogan and political approach called right of nations to self determination is applicable to Chechnya.

 

Covering a period between 1850 and 2004  - 150 years, that has witnessed the greatest changes in the material power of production in human history is more than a notion if one is addressing the economic logic that created the national question in the first place.

 

Apparently the real question has noting to do with the evolution of the Marxists approach to the national factor and its economic logic but rather "what should Putin do?"

 

Well, I do not know what Putin should do and never approach the world of politics as such. In my thinking and experience this is the approach of the novice. Putin is going to be driven to do certain things as a representative of the Russia State.

 

Should Chechnya be allowed to form an independent multi national state, is a question I simply cannot and would not answer because it cross - violates, certain political lines I adhere to.

 

It is valid to ask "what is the economic content of the national question or rather national factor today in 2004?"

 

Would it not at least make sense to frame the question, "what is the future of a former autonomous region in the old Soviet Union." Screaming self determination is simply ideology devoid of an attempt to make an economic analysis of the world in which we live.

 

Is this not a more interesting question rather than lingering in old dogma?

 

"One hundred years ago Lenin said . . . and this must be true for today because Lenin said it," is a refusal to try and unravel the economic content of our time.

 

Lenin unraveled the economic content of his time which changed during the 1920s and again during the 1940 and again during the 1970/80 and today we are seeing the very real changes in the economic basis of the mode of production.

 

 

Melvin P.