From: "Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba-AT-online.no>
Subject: Re: AUT: What could "proletarian socialism" possibly mean?
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 22:42:47 +0100



Now we can let old Karl rest  a while (though I might have had
a few things to add on the issue of child wage-labour in the 19th century).
Anyway, I think I've  found a way to say parts of what was on my mind,
without it getting too long. Let me begin by stating, that since I am not
a historical determinist, I neither see communism as inevitable, even if
I also believe the human potential to always be there, and that
communism always survives in some form within every society as
a precondition for its survival.

The particular with a revolutionary moment is the greatly
enhanced potential to act as a collective on the basis of
the future. and not the past, it opens up. But simultaneously
the consquences of our acts becomes magnified, and
everything moves so much faster. Thus I also believe in
the need for a _prededing  period of transition_ (Spanish
anarchists have often spoken in terms of three generations) ;
building the seed of the future within the shell of the old
society. When the revolutionary moment comes it tends
to very late. Not going the whole way sets in motion a
logic of a transition back to what was, or something not
much better, even worse. So as I see it, the long drawn out
transition period is realistic only within the logic of
'capitalism and the past. A half-meausured revolution is
much like being almost pregnant, it brings no new life
into the world.
        As such the "workers' control" of the Mensheviks and
Lenin was bound to, the longer it existed without being sur-
passed, to lead back to class rule and passivity. A power
vacum has to be filled. Likewise the centralized rule of the
All-Russian Soviet:-Parliament, of the Sovnarkom and
decrees, had to be surpassed, or lead back to more of
the same. The government collaboration of members of the
CNT gave new life to an institution, a state, that had ceased
to exist, at least in Catalonia. Which is again reveals the
obvious, to succeed, the revolution, beyond the disarming of
the old guard, has to become almost wholly a constructive
affair. When it ceases believing in its own creative powers it
prepares the ground for reaction, of which "red terror"
always tend to be its vanguard
       Likewise, a generalised money economy imposes its own
logic that may be partially resisted during the first phases
of revolutionary enthusiasm. Still it reveals a high degree of
belief in voluntarism, and yes in the force of ideology alone,  to
think this could last forever.
            The long transition period ideology appear to be the de
facto ideology of a voluntaristic strata (a would-be or existing
ruling class) advocating that communism can in part be imposed
from above, through social engineering and a dedidication "to
serve the people". As such it has been the most radical idealistic
movement of the 20th century.  It is also easy to forget that it was
the ideology of the social democrats, at the time such a thing
still had a real meaning and a real social basis in a broad working
class movement. Even if their failure was less than that of
Leninist, they managed the feat of turning gold into stone, the
seeds of revolutionary self-organisation into the rule of an
alienated passivity . That they thus also undermined their own
social basis would be funny if its consequences were not so
desasterous.

So what I am trying to say,  is that while a fundamental transformation
of the framework within which human social relations comes to expression
in a material world (which is not a reference to a world without
conflicts),  might not be easy to achieve, --  yet, to believe in
relative permanent conditions where "the working class" rules, yet
rules not, are the masters but yet the slaves, is purely idealistic.
What you call "self-exploitation" is either communism pure and
simple, a material basis of solidaric relations, and freedom (in the
classical Bakunist sense) where we in certain sense, and to a
certain point, become the mutual instruments for our own creative
powers, – or it is just another word for exploitation through alien
social forces, beyond which always hides the manifestation of a
very real exploitative and oppressive ruling class.

Harald







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