File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1996/96-12-18.142, message 3


Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 15:16:00 -0500
From: Vladimir Bilenkin <"achekhov-AT-unity.ncsu.edu"-AT-ncsu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-G: On the irrelevance of the Soviet Union


Hugh Rodwell wrote:
> 
> Zeynep writes on M-I:
> 
> >The period in which Soviet Union
> >was a major dividing line in the left is over, for better or worse. Most of
> >the divisions, and "taking side"s from that era, are anulled.
> 
> This is not very clearly put. The dividing line on the left was hardly the
> question of the Soviet Union as such, but partly whether or not it was a
> workers' state (the question of the state), and partly whether or not it
> represented a positive force for socialism given its Stalinist regime (the
> question of the regime).
> 
> Since the question of the character of the Soviet Union is the central
> question of our epoch, with its roots in the October revolution, the
> political preparations for it and its consequences, and since it affects
> our position on
> *all* the major political events of the century (such as the Nazi seizure
> of power in Germany, the Spanish civil war, the Second World War, the
> Yugoslav Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the Vietnamese Revolution, the
> Cuban Revolution, the bourgeois-democratic revolutions of national
> independence, the postwar boom in the major imperialist countries, Hungary
> 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Iran and Nicaragua in 1979, Poland, Eastern
> Europe and the Soviet Union itself in the 1980s and 1990s -- to mention
> just a few) -- in view of all this, issues inseparably linked with the
> character of the Soviet Union will not disappear from the agenda any time
> soon, regardless of our subjective wishes in this respect.
> 
> Zeynep finishes off:
> 
> >Those that want to keep them alive can do so. Insisting on being
> >irrelevant is no crime.
> 
> In the first place, historical pressures will "keep them alive", not
> voluntarist special pleading.
> 
> In the second place, unsolved problems of the transition to socialism are
> not irrelevant.
> 
> Or does Zeynep think the fall of the Soviet Union actually solved any of
> these problems? If so, which, and why?
> 

I agree with Hugh on all his points and would like to add a couple of my own.

Since I am not a member of m-international and not familiar with Zeynep's entire
argument and its concrete polemical context, I will consder her thesis just 
as anonymous and actually quite typical one among the broad western left.
 
We need to ask ourselves first: What are the immediate ideological and political
implications of "annuling" the question of the SU?

In the first place, it would mean de facto surrendering this question to 
the good graces of its bourgeois interpreters. They would appreciate it very
much indeed. For they have used this question very effectively in the service
of their class against the masses, most notably - speaking of recent developments -
in their ideological justification of the "neoliberal" offensive against which
the broad left purpotedly wants us to unite. The essential objective condition
for this offensive - which is nothing else but capitalism coming into its
own normal regime of operation - was the destruction of the SU, the event that
has been hailed by the broad left as a progressive development and actually a
"revolution" of the masses.  One meaning of the "annuling" the question of
the SU is then to supress this scandalous fact that betrays so much about
the class nature of the western "broad left," i.e. the radical part of the 
new professional class under the conditions of late capitalism and counter-
revolutionary period. 

And who can forget those moans of relief and great expectations from the 
the left philistines of all stripes and colors when the first workers'
state was finally destroyed by the forces of international and internal
counterrevolution, of which they were a very special detachment!  The monster
that only compromised the ideals of socialism is no longer! The dead weight on
the feet of the true left has finally gone and the renewal of socialism is 
just around the corner! 

Now they want us to unite in struggle against "neoliberalism," which is to
say, they want us to unite for a return to the pre-existed conditions of the 
welfare state based on the post-war class compromise.  Yet this compromise was 
but a function of the "pre-existed" Soviet Union which no longer exists! 

Now, the call to "forget the SU" is respectably justified by a need for unity. A
unity of whom and against what? That of the "left" against "neoliberalism." 
The plain historical fact that no "left unity" has ever existed (imagine Marx
embracing Pruhdon or Lenin uniting with Kautsky) does not seem to be worthy of 
reflection to our unifyers. So what is the concrete class content of this 
projected unity consecrated by the ritual of collective forgetting and mutual
forgiving on the ruins of the SU? For after all, if we consider the disagreements
among the left to be truly ideological, i.e. the expressions of some real 
class contradictions rather than accidental and superficial party or even
personal rivalries, this question is unavoidable.  It seems that the 
impossible unity for the impossible struggle against the impossible 
"neoliberalism" has all the ingredients of the rotten compromise that the 
former "revolutionary" left would like to make with the liberal flank of
western bourgeoisie, and the professional class who, I want to 
emphasize this again, has dominated the western left throughout the entire
post-war period. 


Vladimir


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