PEN-L message, Re: (USSR collapse) Socialism Betrayed

>"This struggle is reduced to rivalries among the Soviet elite. The working class is barely mentioned in the recounting of events. Why this emphasis on individuals rather than historic forces always take a back seat to great personalities? Why hasnât the Soviet working class more voice or participation in this book?

Economic problems, political and ideological stagnation and imperialist pressure did not cause the collapse, the authors say. That was the result of "the specific reform policies of Gorbachev and his allies" (as if the problems and stagnation were not the cause of the reform policies). They hold this view because they believe "the subjective factor is vastly more important in socialism than in capitalism." Elsewhere in discussing the economic problems of the Brezhnev era they write: "Even more important than the objective problems were the subjective ones: the problems of policy...." But policy is a reflection of objective reality. Policies are the result of objective circumstances and can never be "more important." In fact, "wrong" policies themselves have an objective basis." <

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/234/1/35/

Book Review - Socialism Betrayed, by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenney (in print) By Thomas Riggins.

Comment

I had found Socialism Betrayed to be a very good book in summarizing important events in the history of Soviet Power . . . although my personal point of viewcialism than in capitalism." Elsewhere in discussing the economic problems of the Brezhnev era they write: "Even more important than the objective problems were the subjective ones: the problems of policy...." But policy is a reflection of objective reality. Policies are the result of objective circumstances and can never be "more important." In fact, "wrong" policies themselves have an objective basis." <

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/234/1/35/

Book Review - Socialism Betrayed, by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenney (in print) By Thomas Riggins.

Comment

I had found Socialism Betrayed to be a very good book in summarizing important events in the history of Soviet Power . . . although my personal point of view is radically different. The issue of the subjective and objective aspects of the social process is always hotly contested within Marxism.

In my own presentation there is a deliberate tendency to highlight the objective process as manifest in a definable quantitative and qualitative stage of development of the material power of production . . . because my presentation always assume the subjective aspect as given. By subjective aspect is meant man/women as the most important aspect of the productive forces . . . gray matter is the most decisive element in history . . . although thinking and active man/women carry out their activity as species under specific conditions.

Once the political struggle amongst communist is won to locate our place in history then the battle "shifts" to the subjective determinate of outcome. "If not us . . . then whom?"

The above reviewer express a conception of the working class . . . that I believe . . . to be a bourgeois democratic prejudice without foundation in at least American history and that of the Soviet Union. I can of course be properly accused of having a "big man theory" because of how I articulate the role of the individual in history . . . as bounded within a definable development of the material power of production.

When you cannot win your goal you still fight and resists the encroachments of imperial capital.

Lenin long ago solved this problem in his "Left Wing Communism" concerning the relationship of masses, class, political parties and leaders of such political groupings. Political leaders are extremely important as individuals because they embody material strivings, economic and social currents in society and it is impossible for a class to express itself in any decisive manner without some organizational - political, form.

The assault on the so-called "Big Man theory" in and preaching the abstract attributes of the democratic working class . . . in contradistinction to its political party under socialism ... and even in bourgeois America ... reduces itself to disorienting the real individual that can play a very big role in today's events.

It that section of the working class in motion and on a collusion course with the state could achieve class and political consciousness on its own we would not need political and propaganda organizations of the Marxists and even socialist type. Yes?

Take the question of the trade unions and their history in our country. The workers in say the industrial unions do not take a back seat to the leaders of the Union as such. Rather various leaders in the trade union are elected through consensus or parliamentary voting or based on seniority . . . and more than less express a cross section of how union members understand and act on their social and economic interest. I am familiar with the autoworkers union and also other unions, through different party units I once belonged to and being an Executive Board member of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionist (Detroit), as well as taking part in election within the AFL and ASECME.

The working class in the Soviet Union did not and could not behave as an abstract class . . . or rather how people think a working class should behave and think.

"If the Bolsheviks had not done such and such and if Stalin was not with a dark side . . . or if Lenin had lived . . . or if it was real democracy . . . then the workers would have known what to do."

Really?

Try teaching one person . . . your kids for example . . . the Marxist approach to society as insurgent tactics and strategy and then consider trying to reorient an entire society.

OK. We need to be honest with ourselves and the keyboard.

The working class of the SU class consciousness was best expressed through its ownership of the means of production. It achieved this class consciousness through and expressed as its leaders or political forms of organization that enabled a group of insurrectionaries to seize political authority on behalf of the working class and peasants.

Then they began building an industrial society without the power of private capital governing reproduction.

What of our real industrial history and forms of industrial organization?

In America . . . Walter Reuther purged the communists from the leadership of the union during the period of the 1940s and 1950s and his ability do such was based not on the abstract subjective disposition of the union members but on his ability to deliver the goods. In my opinion this was the "secret" behind Reuther's ability to consolidate his authority . . . he delivered the goods during a rising curve of development and expansion of the industrial system. The point is that leaders express a material current in society or they do not remain leaders for long.

I am personally one of the last members of a generation that had an opportunity to take advantage of "30 and Out" . . . with reasonable benefits and live to tell about it. I was born at the end curve of the "baby boom" and a distinct historical period in the evolution of capital. The guys and girls hired during 1993 and the 1998 period are going to face and are facing a different set of circumstances than me and my dad.

The bulk of the union members or . . . the working class for that matter . . . does not and cannot behave as a class for itself except through its actual leaders. And this is true under socialism. Complex reasons dealing with culture, intellectual development, the history peculiar to a country or region or industry as well as material stratification in society means that the working class cannot behave as a class except through leaders.

Even here the stratification in society means that various strata manifest different strivings and a different one sided-ness on the social process and how they understand their place within it. A group of workers that are software programmers with understand their relative importance different from a group of assemblers in a plant making microwave ovens or seats for automobiles.

Intellectual workers view themselves very different and in contradistinction from production workers as assemblers of goods. This distinction is not going to goo away because someone might not like it. Everyone in America "knows" how lawyers think and the idea that studying jurisprudence somehow endows the individual with a greater aptitude . . . or that going to college actually means something outside the market place. This is real stratification as a subjective factor that becomes a material _expression_.

Then their is the political form of struggle peculiar to the bourgeoisie . . . and . . . pardon . . . industrial society . . . as an epoch of historical development. One party . . . two parities or three political parties . . . is not in itself an indication of the real freedoms in a society. Or you have to vote for the increasingly vocal fascistic like Kerry.

"Bury Kerry" and prepare for the wave of reaction which is itself the transition period.

Sorry.

The working class of the Soviet Union was stratified and consisted of corresponding stratum as that in industrial America. When doctors and professors and skilled industrial workers perceived their worth . . . value . . . under the bourgeois order . . . this material relationship throws a wrench in the ideological glue of Soviet society.

We forget that the imperialists won the ideological campaign . . . first . . . and internal Soviet policy had a lot to do with this victory. Doctors in the Soviet Union have to be compared with doctors in Ethiopia or China as the ideological assertion of the socialist state. There are of course the selfless Cuban doctors saving and fighting to cure and heal the world. The subjective and proletarian ideology is very important.

The was a powerful strike wave in the Soviet Union during the period of Gorbachev as well as turmoil in the various dependent Republics. The voice of the working class can only find _expression_ through various organizations and the leaders of the various organization possess a complex of different views on the same issue.

I believe on the basis of my experience that the reviewer is absolutely wrong to state that "policy is a reflection of objective reality. Policies are the result of objective circumstances and can never be "more important."

This is no more than an inverted bourgeois democratic prejudice hiding behind the slogan of democracy.

Policies at best express how the individual or collective understand a given set of factors and things become really screwy under circumstances where say . . . all of us are historically inaccurate. What if all of us have been historically inaccurate at describing the moment?

The subjective factor is and was most important under Soviet industrial socialism because the communists were fighting on a hostile economic terrain and the impact of ones policy often was not made manifest for years later. The bourgeoisie only fought on truly hostile economic terrain . . . as a rising class . . . within the environment of feudal social and economic relations. One's subjective understanding of ones place in history is paramount for the communist assertion.

If the working class is the rising classes in terms of political assertion as ruling class . . . does this not automatically mean the communist workers are on hostile economic terrain slugging it out with the world bourgeoisie . . . in pockets of the earth where we have won power?

This is not a fat Marxist conclusion but an elementary . . . "I kicked your ass" in this one theater conclusion . . . and know you are going to try and fuck me back.

One can observe this ideological and theory process at work in the Soviet Union by the attempts of various party grouping and leaders to describe where and how they saw the direction of their society in slogans like "mature socialism" or "advanced socialism." What is "mature of advanced socialism" if socialism refers to a period of transition between capitalism and communism?

What is meant is that society has reached a point where it is passing into economic communism or mature socialism means nothing at all. Policies . . . subjective constructs . . . were created and implemented based on the ideology and theory of "advanced or mature socialism" or the passing to economic communism . . . which also served as the basis for the theory of the "peoples state" or "the state of all the people."

A small but vocal section of the world communist movement . . . siding with the polarity that was momentarily lead by the Peoples Republic of China . . . or rather the CPC . . . rejected such policies as reactionary and dangerous. A section of the CPSU . . . historically aligned with Molotov rejected this "policy" as dangerous and published it appraisal of it and called the Khrushchev protectors of "a caricature of the bourgeoisie" . . . their exact words.

In describing the power of ideas or policy Marx had wrote that theory becomes a material force once it grips the masses . . . but the masses he was talking about are broken into classes and cannot assert themselves as a serious political forces in the political arena without an organization(s) or consolidated political form. That is why Marx and Engels founded the First International.

The reviewer states:

The struggle amongst the Soviet elite . . . according to what the Russian Communist wrote themselves . . . was an exceptionally acute and violent form of class struggle.

I did not write this but rather the Russian communists wrote the above concerning the specific character of their inner party struggle . . . after the fall of Khrushchev. Historic forces never take a back set to historical events . . . but ebb and flow and are expressed through leaders and political forms of assertion.

Gorbachev's leadership . . . expressing a complex of class and stratum in Soviet society . . . ushered in a historical event. The end result of Gorby's leadership ushered in the most catastrophic defeat the Soviet working class and the world working class has faced since the time of Lenin.

In assessing the political struggle in the former Soviet Union, one cannot talk of the Soviet working class as an abstraction or mystical democratic force . . . on the basis of bourgeois American political concepts.

It is hard to believe that the reviewer actually read Socialism Betrayed.

Melvin P.