From: "Greg Schofield" <g_schofield-AT-dingoblue.net.au>
Subject: Re: AUT: What could "proletarian socialism" possibly mean?
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 10:54:16 +0800


Thank you Harald for your clear, concise, and well written response which puts my efforst to shame.

As I suspected at the core of things is a good deal of agreement, although historically there is a noticable gulf. But what does the latter really stand for, in this context, but a different view of the past and a different mode of expression.

I will say this, that I find nothing whatever to disagree with the essence of what you say below. Also your reference to the Spainish anarchists has recast what I believed to be the case (their three generations analogy feels more or less right).

You mentioned historical determinism. Luckly I feel no need to defend it because it has always been wrong. Communism is not inevitable though capitalism cannot go on forever. Social evolution (my particular interest) is not like biological evolution except for a few superficial things, both can lead a species (society) to extinction, both make major changes in terms of generations, but in effect leap ahead to something new - what was long for individual lives is but a flash in history.

The other point you make in your last paragraph is something I am much in accord with:
"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."

Again I think we suffer from our histories in trying to communicate. No-doubt I may have given the impression that I was talking about a "relative permanent condition", in effect because the transition is so heavily overlooked by both anachist and communist traditions (traditions as popularily held notions within these movements) I do stress its longevity and immediate importance, it is not a system but a period of struggle I am talking about - precisely a period struggle "against exploitation through alien social forces" and if you like one of constantly expressing and reasserting in new forms "soldaric relations" and "freedom".

I must mention here the material reality of irony in history. Part of the reason I stress the negative aspects of the transition period (ie the persistence of the capital labour relation and with this forms of property) is that changes made at one point can and do change into their opposites despite the original intent - but more importantly despite the fact that they worked in the first place.

I stress the persistence factor in order to understand why changes which are beneficial become subverted, that the very means of change already hold the seed to their undoing, that struggle in this transition must change form but never cease until all relations of production are dissolved into conscious communism.

I do not think that you would differ in this, for in this transition creative, political, social, cultural and economic innovations will rise to great hieghts unleashed from the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, in so far as, society is not fully conscious of its itself, in so far as, blind historical forces work on human lives, these creative leaps will not be without contradictions (hopefully on a higher plain but also generating their own ironic twists and self-oppositions).

Now there is a point not of disagreement but one of mutual clarification when you say:

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."

I call it clarification for I see the point you are making, understand it as reasonable but I also see an implied contradiction. First I agree that in the USSR for example they succeeded in turning "gold into stone", I used a similar phrase many years ago as "they assidiously hoarded the dross and discarded the gold". It was very much from the study of the history of the USSR that I derived my concenetration on the historical nature of the transition period. The reason was obvious in the contradictions of 1917 to the end of the NEP, which despite the many things that went wrong, the stupidities, the brutalities the unbelievable hardships imposed by being under siege, the uneveness of changes, in short, despite everything there was a resilitant , inventive and socially dynamic re-emergance of oridinary people making a better life for themselves. And then out of these very contradictions emerged so quickly the opposite to all these struggles against tremendous odds the whole thing was wiped away in such a way that the working class was re-subjected in every way to thing which they had struggled so hard against.

In hindsight we can easily identify the threads and tendencies that would emerge, the bureacratic mindset expressed itself fully but in contest throughout the entire early period, but at one symbolic point it won and the rest of Soviet history can only be read as one of class oppression of the most extreme kind.Ironically the clearest expression of bureacratic social engineering was Trotsky the most prominant main mover to become a scapegoat. The double irony is that he became the symbol of external resistence to bureacratic dominance of the worker's movement. It was trotsky who promoted most loudly the command economy, the unavoidable main spring of the petrit bourgeoisie to lever themselves into power over the working class, it was of course Stalin who re-instituted it (re-insituted "War Communism", which was no more than the necessary logic of siege-economy but without the siege - ie without the practical reason for it).

Harald, our traditions are so different and no-doubt my expression is one which provokes images of past polemics (especially between communists and anarchist, but also trotskite as well), but I ask only they you try and discard this impression, as I am trying to underscore not ideological differences but signficant class forces at work (ie a rising and, in its fasciod way, of a "radical" petit bourgeois as the significant aspect). You don't have to agree with my take on this aspect of history, I would be suprised if you did, as I think the lessons we have both drawn from this period would express the difference of an "outsider" to "insider's" viewpoint and would not be compatable even when we were essentially expressing the same observations. Here it is not the illustrations or references that are important, but whether something can be said for the logic of proposition.

Now this logic feeds into the other aspect of your statement above. As I stress in the history of the USSR (also the history or Spain with which I am only superficially acquainted and the history of the Greek Struggle which I am more familiar, but also Australia which I know intimately and by historical analogy everywhere else to one degree or another) the role of the petit bourgeoisie in the 20th century cannot be over-estimated.

This class which gets overlookes as just petty property owners of no great consquence in the titanic struggles between the great classes is far more important in retrospect then anyone could have expected at the time. True the left is rather fond of denergrating this or that as petit bourgeois and when the charge is not baseless, what they inevitably refer to is the point of view of the small property owner.

However, there is that otherside and one which the great 19th century thinkers tended to overlook because this "middle" class reflected then current dominance of classical private property and thus everywhere appeared as either sycofants or malcontents because of this position and little else. In the 20th century, especially in conjuncture with the new productive forces (the concentration of the technical innovations of the previous century into gaint enterprises opened up managerial possiblities like never before).

When I mentioned an alliance between a radical petit bourgeois and the working class this was no conscious alliance, rather the reverse, the radical petit bourgeois attached itself in opposition to an old style private bourgeoisie and in doing so inserted its class agenda into the entire movement (even those parts nominally in opposition to the direction).

When struggles reached points of success over the mutual enemy (the old bourgeoisie, or even the bourgeois in gneral) the "new" middle class was in an excellent position to exert itself. In old social democracy it became the leadership and was personally brought-off, latter in the communist movement it exerted itself both within state power when this became available, and through a movement when it did not. When capitalism socialisied itself to a degree that made room for technocrats and managers on a large social scale, the need for a radical petit bourgeoisie declined (those these elements, ideologies and cultures persisted especially aorund leaderships), we effectively have been left with the rump.

Now I would reflect this back on the first part of quote from you above, where you infer the promotion of a transition period goes hand in hand with imposing social change from above - which I would classify as typically petit bourgeois agenda rather then as a result of ideological error (imposed from by above automatically creates the positions for its own transformation - the type of change is irrelevant to this which is why I would include this radical element in properly fascist movements).

Harald this is only inferred from your words (the emphasis on ideological pre-occupations) my problem is that I come from a movement which gave lip-service to transition but would never seriously explore it, just as the social democrats pratted on about slow change but where never that specific about how it would all add up. When pressed to express excatly what went on during this transition inevitably it would be expressed as some type of system (I include everyone in this social-democrats, communists and anarchists). The very notion of a system, as static arrangemenht where things would be "better" and current problems "solved" inevitably is part and parcel of the dominance of radical petit bourgeois agendas.

The minute transition ios thought of as being any particular system (even a non-system) we immediately create the need for the social engineers and hence the role for managers of one desfription or another. My response to the question of what is the trasnition is not a system but an antagonism. Yes things will get better, possiblities will blossum, but the struggle goes on, subverts the achievements, rises up new problems and development will not be straight forward - I can imagine a situation where yesterday's firebrands are displaced by my democratic forces and these too replaced and so on untiul the whole need for indirect repsentation disappears form all aspects of soicial life. 3 generations perhaps, cetianly not short then this, lety aloine the connected problem of doing it on a world scale which imposes  its own uneveness and contradictions.

In Conclusion.

Harald I simply don't see a lot to disagree with in what you have said. As I suspected despite differeing traditions and schools of thought thinking critical minds have to cover the same territory, have to reach broadly similiar conclusions and have a duty to cement this accord which is based on a living reality in a more conscious way.

The radical petit bourgeoisie have moved off the historical stage as a force (not as a remenant, they still hang round), the inner contradiction which racked the proletarian movement (in fact it was never purely such in the first place) has dissapated. The sectarianism which was an expression of this historical duplicity and became more pronounced in its dotage, is now something which is capable of being put aside (if we are willing). If all we content to dfo initially is to remove ideological questions from their false pedistal, be prepared to accept differences and debate if we must about them but always keeping them in perspective, and concentrate on the challenges of struggle in the real world -  I think we can begin making a new movement which will not resemble what either of us currently understand.

As I said my intellectual interest has always been history, what we take as established fact is not always so (the facts remain but the relationships between them are seen in new ways), something of our collective past history has to be reclaimed, most of the old debates are dead and have been for sometime (kept alight to warm sectarian humours).

What I admire about your contribution is both its thoughtfulness and clarity and on these two things much can be built.

Yours
Greg

Ps thought of an illustration just as I was about to send.

Ask an Anarchist, Social democrat or Communist what the end product of struggle is and you will get the same answer in general. Ask them to describe how things will function and something strange happens all three will come up with related but different systems much of which will be in direct contradiction with the more general claims, but patched over with slogans and statements of faith and thus forced to fit. 

Ask them how we achieve this new society and again three different answers but all sharing a common point, a point of social realisation, when the mass of people realise where their interests are in the ideological sense (ie the point of conscious mutation).

There is a gross utopianism here. Consider the opposite, starting at the general understanding of full communism. Suggest that things function pretty much in the way they do now in the initial phase, that the shift is essentially in who demands their interests fulfilled, the toilers or the non-toilers (of course lost of practical change would stem from this). It requires no great ideological shift, rather if any shift occurs in ideology in a mass sense, it results from them actually exerting their power to fulfil their interests (not the other way round). 


PPS - just some conceptual musings - do not take them seriously - they are no argument of any kind.

ON REFORM
When did the revolutionary event happen? Perhaps this is only a question which can be posed in retrospect. What were its precursors? Perhaps the very things which appeared not so-very revolutionary when they were happening. What is the difference between a "reform" and a revolutionary change? The former turns into its opposite by staying in place, the latter reforms the reform in order to rescue its essence - struggle itself, struggle to push the toilers interests forward and then forward again - the contradiction is that each step of the way is always just a reform (a specific change imposed on a specific thing) - revolutionary reforms appear no different and in fact are no different from any other type of reform - it is the context in struggle that counts.

If we cut out the verbage, unwrap the slogans and concentrate on the specifics we would do well - a mass political platform would then consist of nothing other then a lot of demands to do the sensible thing in a lot of diverse areas, which of course would be followed by another and another platform as things progressed. The point of any specific reform is not change the world but simply to impove aspects of it, to render the immediate interests of ordinary folks into something which can be obtained by their efforts and was already in their mind if not on their tongue at that point. The revolutionary steps are those that heat up the boiler by practical struggles which gain real victories (even if fleeting ones) through which the strength of the weak grows exploiting the weakness of the strong until the tables are turned.

Forgive this and the next using but they touch on the problems we are currently discussing. 

STAGES AND STAGISM
In history straight lines are abhorant, stages of development are only usefully imposed in order to sought-out its spagetti like threads, they are a mere abstraction and only an abstraction, they dictate nothing. Only an idiot mistakes the abstraction for the reality, unfortunately there is a lot of idiocy around. I will stick to my stages, phases and periods, but not because they are true in any metaphyiscal sense whatsoever, but because they clarify what will always in detail contradict them and defy their artifical order. Abstractions are good, essential, but also have to be dissolved into their subject matter where such straight lines do not exist and every twist of the thread is inhabited by real people doing ordinary things even when the threads collectively fall off the plate and onto another.

I thought I should say something in my intellectual defense, though, Harald, you have not mentioned this it has been brought up on the list. It touches on how I am using the transition period, phase, stage within  historical understanding, rather then from a set of religious beliefs.

Again thanks for your reply, I hope this provokes more comradely discussion and especially more clarification (which is so rare on the left these days).


--- Message Received ---
From: Harald Beyer-Arnesen <haraldba-AT-online.no>
To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 22:42:47 +0100
Subject: Re: AUT: What could "proletarian socialism" possibly mean?


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


______________________


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