[Pen-l] democracy

[Charles Brown <cdb1003@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

In the Russian and Chinese cases then, an analysis in terms of these ideas would examine the extent to which peasant conditions in each case were productive of an "individuality" characterized by significant "superstition" and "prejudice" and the extent to which the "revolutions" in question led to a "more or less centralised despotism".

In so far as they were so productive and did so lead, they not only did not create "socialist" productive relations in Marx's sense, they instead created relations incapable of producing the degree of "integral development of every individual producer" required to create such  relations. They would eventually lead, therefore, not to "socialism", but to a social form consistent with the actual kind of "individuality" they did produce.


Ted
 
^^^^^^
CB: I don't think it is accurate
to say that the influence of the
Soviet state on the Russian peasants
was to perpetuate or develop
"superstition" and "prejudice"
On the contrary, it developed a
atheism, scientific and internationalist
 worldview
in them, probably more than
in the US even.
Also, its influence
was the opposite of perpetuating
or causing isolation
and the lack of connexion between 
the life of one commune (cooperatives)
 and that of the others. It
 de-localised and centralized.
It was a Union.
 
Thus, on your logic, the Soviet
Union very much developed the
old Russian peasant communes in
a way that produced individuals
capable of creating the 
penultimate state of communism,
i.e. socialism.
 
The problem with the SU
was not inadequate or non-integrated
 individual
development, but the world
historic slaughter and 
material/economic destruction
 and threat of slaughter
and destruction wrought
on the SU by capitalism
including especially Nazism
and the US. The SU had
to militarize its social
structure and spend too much
on defense, it being genuine
defense given the
history of gigantic assaults
, not preparation
for offense as in the US.
This military threat was
a critical factor in China's
detour to capitalist relations
of production,too.
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