From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: Re: AUT: Stagism
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 21:14:43 -0600


Greg,

Thanks for the points.  I sent you Paresh's piece because it does a much
better job than I could with my currently limited time.  I did not assert it
baldly in the past, I sent copies of Paresh's piece to anyone who wanted it,
but I did not post it because it is 25 pages long.

Cheers,
Chris

----- Original Message -----
From: "Greg Schofield" <g_schofield-AT-dingoblue.net.au>
To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 08, 2002 11:45 PM
Subject: Re: AUT: Stagism


>
> OK on this we might make some progress.
>
> --- Message Received ---
> From: cwright <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
> To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 20:03:59 -0600
> Subject: Re: AUT: Stagism
>
> CWright:
> This is not a new discussion.  Greg, I think that you misunderstand Marx's
> Critique of the Gotha Program and his notion of stages.
>
> The first 'stage' assumes the end of the dictatorship of the proletariat
> already and the end of capitalist forms of property.  That does not mean
> that all of the old garbage has been swept away, hence Marx's discussion
of
> the continuation of bourgeois forms of right.
>
> Greg:
> Obviously I believe that you have misunderstood Marx. Here is the first
reference (note the way capitalist and communist societies are
counterposed):
>
> "Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the
revolutionary trnasformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to
this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing
but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."
>
> OK quote one. Between capitalism and its complete negation there is a
middle bit - a revolutionary transformation. Simple and straight forward.
Note also that corresponding to this at the political level is the
dictatorship.
>
> Now your proposition is after the dictatorship there are still odd bits of
capitalism about and then phase one and two of communism begin. That does
not really fit in the quote above so we will go to the next bit some 40
paragraphs latter.
>
>
> "But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society
as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from the
capitalist society..."
>
> Birth pangs take place before birth, ie when "communism" was still the
struggle of workers within capitalism. I believe this is rather explicit,
and I cannot see how you squeeze another period in of revolutionary
dictatorship, indeed Marx seems to be speaking of the same thing just using
a different title.
>
> "In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination
of the individual to the division of labour.... has vanished."
>
> I will point out the the division of labour predates capitalism, if trhe
higher phase of communism means even this has gone, even the division
between mental and manual labour, then phase one has done a great deal more
then just mop up some remanant capitalist practices.
>
> Now I ask you to go back to the first quote where Marx throws to opposites
(capitalism and communism) which in the context could just as well be
rendered class society as whole as opposed to communism, between which there
is no small transition as Marx is at pains to point out. When he talks of
first and higher phases, he talks of society once broken with the rule of
the bourgeois it is a minor shift in emphasis underscored by a slightly
different use of words, no more.
>
> On the other hand I think it is a terribly forced reading of the text to
come to the conclusions you have on this and I don't know of anything else
of Marx that even gets this close. I have come across your reading of the
Goath program before, but I have never seen anything but the bald assertion
ever made, indeed theoretically the extra "period" seems to create more
problems then it solves. Have you any evidence of this extra period in Marx?
>
>
> CWright:
> This notion of stages, btw,
> is not simply bourgeois but a retrogression from Hegel even.  So it may be
> standard 'dialectics' in the structuralist/Ortho bog, but it isn't
> dialectical at all.
>
> Greg:
> Quite correct there is nothing dialectical about stages used as a rule (ie
as a structuralist form) but I thought I went to some pains to distance
myself from that and point out that stages are no more than convenient
lables for distinct phases of the same movement (ie not lock stepped series
of moves, but descriptive aspects of a single move). If I have not made
myself clear in the previous post I will do so now. Stages are not
dialectical when they are seen as disintict unrealted, discrete, series of
structures, stages and phases however are useful in any dialectical
understanding to classify distinct aspects of a transformation (actually
this is how most people understand it regardless of dialectics). Stages and
phases in themselves are not especially dialectical.
>
>
> CWright:
> There is no necessary progression from one 'stage' to
> another, nor does reality present itself as discrete stages.  For example,
> retrogression, in the sense of the destruction of the conditions that
would
> have lead to, say the possibility of communism, is possible.  Hegel
> recognized this in his Smaller Logic, Luxemburg recognized it in her
> discussion of 'socialism or barbarism'.
>
> Greg:
> Ok same stuff again - external progression is silly, always has been.
Structuralists use it because they do not know what is going on, they see
that one set of distinct characteristics pressupposes another and that these
can be placed in some order, but they don't know why so they import some
indistict idea, like progress, to explain it - and it does no such thing.
>
> Who's talking about descrete stages anyhow - Marx certainly was not which
is clear from the quotes above and I am like hell trying not to (but with
far less success).
>
> I believe a serious issue is raised in your reading of the Gotha Program
and unlike this distraction may be well worth pursueing.
>
> Greg
>
>
> This has also been discussed in the past at length on this list over the
> last year (actually more recent than that.)
>
> Cheers,
> Chris
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Greg Schofield" <g_schofield-AT-dingoblue.net.au>
> To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
> Sent: Friday, March 08, 2002 8:07 AM
> Subject: Re: AUT: Stagism
>
>
> > Micahel I will try and speak as plainly and civilly as possible.
> >
> > The question of stages or phases is lifted directly from Marx's critique
> of the Gotha Program. Stages and phases are of course completely abstract,
> merely ways of distinguishing the begining, middle and end of a single
> process. There is nothing particularily bourgeois in this.
> >
> > Progressivism, especially bourgeois progressivism has one
characteristic.
> Not that things always get better, rather that we live in the best of all
> worlds. Progress is towards us, in other words.
> >
> > On the other hand when looking at any historical phenomenon we must take
> into account, movement and transformation, and must grasp some way of
> distinguishing the different features belonging to each particular form in
> this movement. The negation of capitalism, the very idea of negating
> capitalism itself proposes the stages of which we speak. At one end its
> total negation (Communism) at the other its postive existence (classical
> capitalism) in between a contradiction (socialism).
> >
> > Now Michael, if you can pick something particularily bourgeois in this
> good luck as far as I underdstand this is bog-standard dialectics.
> >
> > In so far as the Soviet Union was Socialist and has reverted to
> capitalism - are you so sure?
> >
> > Are not the means of production in the former SU  still socialisied? Not
> much I believe has actually been turned into private property - rather
state
> property has become corporate property (which probably accords better with
> its prior existence anyhow). Both forms of property are highly socialisied
> the socialisation of capital is not something that is easily turned back
nor
> the bourgeoisie a class easily resurrected.
> >
> > Are not the ruling bureacrats, criminals and all the garbage that
> accumulated in the pores of the old SU now spilled over to become the
> managers and directors of the same means of production which in a sense
they
> had mastery in the previous period?
> >
> > History is never neat, but it can never be run backwards. The state in
the
> old Soviet Union has certainly changed, but is there really any less
> state-capitalism, does capital now move in Russia indepedant of the state?
> or is capital and the state still enmeshed but now in a new form?
> >
> > If we look at capitalism today as a world system and compare this to
> classic capitalism where individual capitalists directly owned capital it
is
> obvious they practically no-longer exist - the bourgeoisie is still there,
> in control, but it is a transformed bourgeoisie, amongst themselves they
> share capital socially as a class - bourgeois socialism perhaps?
>
> Greg Schofield
> Perth Australia
> g_schofield-AT-dingoblue.net.au
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