From: "Greg Schofield" <g_schofield-AT-dingoblue.net.au>
Subject: Re: AUT: is leninism dead? was: Flooding
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 17:53:40 +0800


Thank  you Commie00 for your response.

Yes we do have a difference here, quite a big one but not insummountable I would think.

Could I say this, if for the sake of arguement the state was a product of bourgeois society in the way you state below, then your reasoning holds firmly. That is as a bourgeois creation the state as such is a manifestation of bourgeois class existenece and thus with its overthrow as a class the state can no more exist then a turtle without its shell.

I hope you agree that a lot of this reaonsing depends on historical understandings and perhaps we might resolve some of this by staying within this level for a while.

First lets clear some things up right away.

The present "modern" state has certianly absorbed much of its character from the bourgeoisie. In structure, in function and in so many other ways it is easy to see relatively minor changes effecting the state as we know it (I say this not presume that the essential state can be so "reformed" but that so much of its character is a result of its close and intimate relationship to the bourgeoisie).

Commie00 is this a statement which you could find acceptable?

The reason is obvious why I ask this, because I have purposefully posed this to leave over the question whether aside from its bourgeois characterisatics there is still some esential "state-ness" which would remain - you don't have to agree to this of course.

That is the door I would like to leave open, hopefully one that maximises are agreements and narrows our disagreements. I would like to return to this.

As for Marx's phases and stages of communism, I have nothing particularily against the way you have framed it below, perhaps my rendition suffers from being too formal. 

However, given the nature of history I suggest that relatively time spans can be very long in terms of human lifetimes yet be the quickest flash within history itself - after all what is 100 years of transition to history, or 300 - just a blink of the eye. 

I would point out it has been 10,000 years since primitive communist society began to break up, between 5-2000 years since mature class societies emerged and the origin of capitalist can easily slip from anywhere from a mere 250 years ago back to the 12-14 centuries, at a pinch, depending on the features being looked at (I have seen arguments, which I find a good deal to agree with, that incipient capitalistic relations can be found way back in Roman times at least and as far back in China).

If none of this is a particular bother then we have to simply acknowledge that there can be a fair amount of flexibility in terms of the relative importance of the transition to the final outcome - it will be short, but short measured in historical terms, not in lifetimes.

Now I suggest for the time being that we skip over the dictatorship of the Proletariat for a while as this presumes an answer to the state question anyhow. I just suggest, however the transition period turns out, this is the proper place of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat which can have no meaning under communism fully developed.

Now the definition you use for the state is where I would begin disagreement, but again this does not make real sense unless we go back to the history of the state itself and decide whether the state has prior existence to the bourgeois era. However you might not agree that this is a proper way to proceed and I must admit that social evolutionary theory is a personal passion and I can be very boring on it - so I will leave that for the time being. So in this post lets skip over it altogether and just suggest some defintions of the state.

I disagree that the state is necessarily hierachical (at least in the sense of the now all too familiar bureacratic state), but dips back into history again. My essential point is that hierachy fits the beast but is not a sufficient definition, rather it is the function of state in class society wherein lies its definition.

AT this point I would prefer to stop, see how much mutual agreement can be fostered up to this point, rather then launch into a arguments of comparison. However these are a few points that outline my take on the state.

1)Aside from all else the state is an armed body.
2)The state resting on (1) is a civil-judicial body which resolves disruptive internal social contradictions.
3) The state resting on (2) acts as a regulating body of society as a whole, as a board of directors for the ruling class.
4) The state in order to maintain itself in these roles partially stands above class interests in order to realise the interests of the ruling class - it has a contradictory nature and one that can impart interests to the state itself as body within civil society. The state is not pure servant nor pure master, it stands above classes and is mired to them, it acts in the general interests of class society but is also capable of raising its own interest beyond either society as a whole or particular classes.

Please note I have deliberately objectified these points making the state sound far more benign then it is, in order to concentrate on its historical functions.

Commie00 I look forward to your reply on this.

Greg


--- Message Received ---
From: commie00 <commie00-AT-yahoo.com>
To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 02:51:37 -0500
Subject: Re: AUT: is leninism dead? was: Flooding

hey greg (and sean)

thanks for the calmness and clarity of this discussion... i hope i can
maintain this with my contribution...

i guess first of all, my basic disagreement with you (greg) seems to be
rooted in our understandings of of marx's critique of the gotha program...

to me it doesn't seem like marx is actually setting up a rigid notion of two
stages, but is instead just eluding to the fact that communism (in a
particular sense) will not appear overnight. and to the best of my memory,
marx does not at any point specifically say that in the "lowest stage" the
state still exists. in fact, if memory serves, in some other writings
(perhaps letters?) he makes explicit that the "lowest stage" can not come
into existance until the state is destroyed, or at least weakened to the
point where there is room for communism to begin taking root.

when you add into this that marx takes as a presupposition from (at least)
the german ideology on that communism is the movement (verb) that does away
with class society (and that this movement is against alienation and for
community), and that marx understood communism to be a stateless society
(and that from at least the 1850s onward he began criticizing hierarchy,
etc.), you can get quite a different reading of the critique than the one
offered by lenin and generally accepted by many.

to wit: the short description of stages in the critique should not be taken
as solid since marx viewed communism not only as the goal (for lack of a
better word), but the method. that is, the bulding of community and
supression of alienation (communization) are the means to the end. thus the
"lower stage" becomes something much more difuse, and his description merely
a tool for explaining that we can't be puritanical. however, this does not
mean we have to accept the "state" as a revolutionary tool. in fact, in my
understanding, it means unending hostility toward the state (and all forms
of institutionalized hierarchies) as part-and-parcel of class society /
organizational body & weapon of the bourgeoisie / a form of alienation. that
is: the struggle against hierarchical, market, etc. social relations will
continue within a any future society for a while (since we are stamped with
them, and will stamp younger generations with them), but that this does not
mean said society has a "state", etc.

from here i think we have decide on how we define the state: to me some of
the key aspects of the state are:

1) it is inherently internally hierarchical. while not every dictionary
would agree to this, it is still our collective experience. and thus use of
the term "state" conjures up, even subconsciously, a hierarchical organ
controled by a few people. and, since language is the structure of our
thought, we can see a reason why calling something a "state" can doom
whatever it is to hierarchicalness, and thus the supression of any kind of
"working class rule" in a positive sense.

2) it is historically wedded to the bourgeoisie. that is: while prior to the
advent of capitalism we see many proto- and near-states, the state is never
fully realized until the rise of the bourgeoisie. if memory serves, this is
one of the reasons marx stopped using the term "state" to describe anything
revolutionary in the 1850s, even going so far as to get on folks for using
the term "semi-state".

so, now we get to the heart, i suppose: what do we understand to be a
"state". i assume that you would understand the workers' councils in hungary
'56 to be a "state", while i understand it to be an anti-state expression of
proletarian power. that is: if it is not hierarchical, and not attached to
the bourgeoisie, then (to me) it is not a state but something else,
something new.

i do agree that "the state" will persist... however, i think it will persist
as the organizational force of the class enemy, not as something "in the
hands of the working class". from here i much agree with dauve / barrots
assessment, which i quote in its entirety:

"States and How to Get Rid of Them

The State was born out of human beings' inability to manage their lives. It
is the unity - symbolic and material - of the disunited. As soon as
proletarians appropriate their means of existence, this mediation begins to
lose its function, but destroying it is not an automatic process. It will
not disappear little by little as the non-mercantile sphere gets bigger and
bigger. Actually, such a sphere would be fragile if it let the central
governmental machinery go on, as in Spain 1936-37. No State structure will
wither away on its own.

Communizing is therefore more than an addition of direct piecemeal actions.
Capital will be sapped by general subversion through which people take their
relationships with the world into their own hands. But nothing decisive will
be achieved as long as the State retains some power. Society is not just a
capillary network: relationships are centralized in a force which
concentrates the power to preserve this society. Capitalism would be too
happy to see us change our lives locally while it carries on on a global
scale. As a central force, the State has to be destroyed by central action,
as well as its power dissolved everywhere. The communist movement is
anti-political, not a-political."

(http://www.geocities.com/antagonism1/etoc.html)

on leninism: i think its important to also recognize that marx also rejected
the term "marxism", but the term retains validity in describing the
theoretical behavior that derives from marx. similarly, "leninism" maintains
validity in describing the theoretical behavor that derives from lenin,
methinks.

quick note to sean: i'm not entirely sure where you got the idea that i
think i've found the science of revolution, or whatnot. if i've given that
idea to you, please accept my apology since i agree with you (and ilan,
etc.) that no such science exists, nor can it exist.

but, of course, i don't have access to a research library, so i prolly don't
know what i'm talking about...





Greg Schofield
Perth Australia
g_schofield-AT-dingoblue.net.au
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