File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_2001/aut-op-sy.0108, message 166


From: "Paul Bowman" <paul.bowman-AT-totalise.net>
Subject: Gothakritik was RE: AUT: Re: Maoism? Not Really.
Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 15:20:45 +0100


commie00 wrote (in reponse to Dave Graham):
> i've done just this [compare Gothakritik with Lenin's interpretation],
>  and have found something completely different. so has
> chris (who recently wrote an article on this) and paresh chattopadhyay,
> who's article on the critique of the gotha programme is incredible (i
> believe chris recently posted this to the list, but i can repost
> it, or send
> it to people personally, if people would like to see it).

Like Dave Graham I too seem to have read an entirely different version
"Critique of the Gotha Programme" from commie00 and Chris.

First can I beg for some URLs to Chattopadhyay's piece and Chris's article
on the Gothakritik so I can familiarise myself with this (IMO) surprising
interpretation.

While I'm waiting on that can I just lay out some of my reading of Marx's
piece.
1. That the material conditions will not allow the foundation of communist
relations in the immediate aftermath of the revolution.
2. That this necessitates an intermediate "transitional phase" where
bourgeois relations of exchange (i.e. value exchange) will be retained -
although (via some Hegelian magic) though the form will be unchanged the
content will be transformed.
3. At some undetermined stage by some undetermined means the transitional or
"lower" stage (commonly referred to as socialism) will give way to communism
proper.

Objection to 1: Seems to me insufficiently materialist in the sense it is
never defined exactly how the insufficiency of the forces of production are
to be measured, or how to determine at what level they are sufficiently
developed to make communism proper possible. Presumably, given that
capitalism continues to develop the forces of production, there must come a
point when they are developed to such as stage that the "lower stage" is no
longer necessary - this is the position argued by such as Bookchin and
Barrot/Dauve.

Objection to 3. Pretty much follows from 1, namely how is the attainment of
the necessary level of development to be determined and how is the
transformation from bourgeois relations of exchange to communist relations
to be effected?

In my view the Gothakritik represents a retreat from communism - one
reproduced faithfully by socialists ever since (including many who
identified themselves as anarchists like Maximoff, Guerin, Fontenis, etc.) -
and as such, serves a useful function of distinguishing between socialists
and communists. I will be interested to see the articles referred to. I
suspect I may also find Chattopadhyay's article incredible, but perhaps for
slightly different reasons.



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