Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997 03:57:13 -0500 From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki) COCKROACH! #98 (Soviet fascism & capm "abolishing" itself..) A EZINE FOR POOR AND WORKING CLASS PEOPLE. WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR CHAINS. It is time that the poor and working class people have a voice on the Internet. Contributions can be sent to <malecki-AT-algonet.se> Subscribtions are free at <malecki-AT-algonet.se> Now on line! Check out the Home of COCKROACH! http://www.algonet.se/~malecki How often this zine will appear depends on you! Back issues of Cockroach and my book at http://www.kmf.org/malecki/ ------------------------------------------------ 1. Soviet fascism & capm "abolishing" itself.. -------------------------------------------------- Soviet fascism & capm "abolishing" itself... Andrew does exactly what might be expected from someone who shrinks back from acknowledging the fascist aspects of the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union -- he provides an apology for this regime by claiming partly that it was responsible for the conquests of October and partly that it's crimes weren't as bad as they have been painted ("Trotsky exaggerates") nor as bad as those of the Nazis. Dave should perhaps make *his* position clearer in relation to this apology. Let's start with "1000 times worse than the Nazis". I wrote: >> Andrew's got this all arsy-versy. Trotsky's point is the fact that the >> petty bourgeois and lumpen Nazis represent the "possessing and educated" >> big bourgeoisie, whereas the Soviet bureaucracy "takes on bourgeois >> customs" without having direct roots in or bonds with "a national >> bourgeoisie". The alienation of the Soviet bureaucracy from the people, its >> perversion of the real class needs and aspirations of Soviet society, of >> the workers' state, is in fact a thousand times more revolting than the >> relationship of Nazism to the German bourgeois state. "This isn't like >> fascism at all" -- it's *worse*. Andrew reacts as follows: >Yes, Hugh, there are those who argue that the Soviet bureaucracy was worse >that the fascist state. But this is complete bullshit. A thousand times >more revolting?! Again this confusion between regime and state! I refuse to compare the Soviet bureaucracy, as a regime, a superstructure, with the fascist state as a totality of regime and socio-economic foundations, superstructure and base. Comparing like with like, however, regime with regime, superstructure with superstructure, the Stalinist regime was worse than the fascist regime because of its class *betrayal*. As petty bourgeois agents of alien imperialist interests, the bureaucracy was no natural outgrowth of an imperialist country in crisis. The Nazis were rabid petty-bourgeois thugs running a bourgeois state, they were no class traitors, merely executors of short-term crisis interests of the bourgeoisie. Their violence, irrationality and viciousness were consonant with the class basis of the society they sprang from. This was not the case with the Stalinist bureaucracy, except in so far as the world as a whole was dominated by imperialism. It is the treacherous perversity of Stalinist violence, irrationality and viciousness in relation to the workers' state and the interests of the proletariat that makes it worse than the fascists. The fascists never subverted the world labour movement or socialism. Stalinism did. The fascists held power in a few countries for a little over a decade (a few decades in the case of Spain and Portugal). Stalinism held power in many countries for many decades. The fascists may have acted as the executioners of the German labour movement when Hitler came to power, but Stalinist policies brought the fascists to power and placed the axe in their hands. Stalinist policies, not fascist ones, led to the Second World War. The Stalinists are responsible for more murders and deportations than the fascists were. Worst of all, the Stalinists have strangled more revolutions and revolutionary movements than the fascists ever did or could have done. You see, it's not just what they did, but what they prevented from happening. The fascists prevented the normal exploitation of bourgeois democracy running smoothly. The Stalinist bureaucracy prevented the development of workers' democracy in the Soviet Union, they prevented the development of a revolutionary workers' movement internationally, they held up the construction of socialism for almost a century and brought the world much closer to barbarism rather than socialism as the solution of the terminal crisis of imperialism. These are crimes of an enormity that almost beggars description. In a later reply, with all flags flying, Andrew gives us a lecture on fascism. I wrote: > Let's recall that fascism is the counter-revolutionary destruction of the > independent organizations of the working class run by petty-bourgeois, > lumpen Bonapartist bureaucrats and Andrew, with amazing light-mindedness, replied: >Is this all fascism is? No. This is a caricature of fascism. Is this *all*??? A *caricature*??? * counter-revolutionary * destruction of independent organizations of the working class * carried out by petty-bourgeois, lumpen, Bonapartist bureaucrats what more does he want? I'd already made it clear that the Stalinist bureaucracy was acting, if indirectly, in the interests of imperialism. The difference (an important one, of course) between the Stalinists and the Nazis (say) is that the Nazis were a petty-bourgeois political stratum (no class!) running a bourgeois state apparatus, while the Stalinists were a petty-bourgeois political stratum (no class!) running a workers' state apparatus. Otherwise they're as alike as peas in a pod. Andrew's lecture runs: >Fascism is a >reactionary destruction of liberal polyarchy, and the placing in its stead >a authoritarian state run by big industrial and finance capital. This is liberal textbook stuff. It's a caricature and a half. And it's wrong. The state is not run *by* big industrial and finance capital but *for its benefit* by its lackeys in the state apparatus, in the same way as in a bourgeois democracy or any other kind of regime in a bourgeois state. What characterizes fascism isn't the "destruction of liberal polyarchy" but the historical emergence of fascism as a Bonapartist petty-bourgeois solution to insoluble crises of bourgeois democracy in the epoch of imperialism. It is also characterized by the objective weakness of proletarian leadership and the consequent weakness of the proletariat, opening up the way for the petty-bourgeoisie to tail the big bourgeoisie as the stronger class in the class struggle. >Fascism >means the destruction of any pretense to democratic government where the >capitalist class rules directly through the bludgeon of a reactionary >state. *All* bourgeois states in the imperialist epoch are reactionary, they are based on exploitation and the maintenance for ever of exploitation and the oppression of the working class and have no progressive historical tasks such as the overthrow of feudalism. What characterizes a fascist regime are the features I've listed above and previously, most particularly the destruction of all independent organizations of the working class. The statement that what is overthrown by fascism is a "pretence to democratic government" I can accept. The capitalist class rules *indirectly* through lackeys, whether the regime is fascist or some other variety. The indirectness is revealed by the chunks of meat the lackeys carve out of national surplus for themselves. Mind you, contradictions between the lackeys and the real rulers are seldom allowed to develop very far, as the tight rein kept on the Social-Democratic regime in Sweden for 50 odd years testifies. >The bourgeoisie pulls about the state reactionary ideologies, >national chauvinism, atavism, regeneration, even racism--ideologies whose >idioms lay dormant already in the culture, cultivated by the fascist and >other social conservative movements, activated by crisis. Andrew seems to be claiming that the Stalinist bureaucracy was *not* national chauvinist (even Lenin was fighting Stalinist Great Russian chauvinism over the Georgian question in alliance with Trotsky before his death) atavistic (I wonder if he's seen Eisenstein's historical epics?) racist (maybe Andrew doesn't count anti-Semitism as racist?) regenerative (how about motherhood medals and the bulging muscles of Socialist Realist works of "art", if this is what Andrew's on about? As recently as the late 80s some bloody-minded Young Communists in Slovenia pulled a fast one on the party by exhibiting a Nazi statue as a fine example of "Socialist" aesthetics. Guess how popular they were with the mandarins when the scandal became public knowledge.) Andrew conveniently fails to mention the judiciary or censorship where the parallels are just too blatant to deny. >The fascist >movement, having secured the middle strata of society, opportunistically >enters into an alliance with its masters, the capitalist class. To think >that fascism retains its petty bourgeois traits is to buy into a cartoon >image of fascism. They were a cartoon caricature of themselves. It took a Georg Grosz to do them justice. How about the concentration camp commandants and doctors in their carpet slippers and pretty lace curtains? What about the anal retentive petty-bourgeois bookkeeping that went on just the other side of the gas chamber walls -- so many sets of dentures, so many gold teeth, so many pairs of glasses. The uniforms and rituals... >And to suppose the Soviet Union was ever fascist, in any >of its structures, is ridiculous. The socioeconomic foundation of fascism >is capitalism. This is a complete non-sequitur, totally ignoring the whole argument so far. Pure assertion. For reasons he gives, and that I have repeated, Trotsky states that (as Dave quoted): Meanwhile some ultralefts have already reached the ultimate absurdity by affirming that it is necessary to sacrifice the social structure of the USSR in order to overthrow the Bonapartist oligarchy! THEY HAVE NO SUSPICION THAT THE USSR MINUS THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE FOUNDED BY THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION WOULD BE A FASCIST REGIME. [In defence of Marxism, p.69 in New Park Edition] For anyone capable of distinguishing between base and superstructure, this is the equivalent of saying that if you take away the October base you are left with a fascist superstructure. In other words that the USSR was an extremely contradictory formation -- a workers' state and a fascist regime. Now Trotsky is typically cautious in phrasing his conclusion negatively. He doesn't say straight out that the regime in the Soviet Union is fascist in so many words as an affirmative statement. However, to argue as Andrew does that such an affirmative statement is ridiculous or stretching Trotsky's argument to breaking point is nonsense. Each time I characterize the regime (in the sense I have indicated a thousand times by now), Andrew comes back as if I was describing the socio-economic foundations of the state. This is persistent and wilful distortion of what I am saying. I wrote: >> The Stalinist bureaucracy was serving two masters, in class terms. One >> was the dictatorship of the proletariat, and one was world imperialism. >> History has shown us which master was served most faithfully. And Andrew reacted: >Huh? What in the hell does this mean? It means just what it says. It preserved the working class foundations of the dictatorship of the proletariat as long as it thought this was the best way of preserving its privileges, and at the same time it served imperialism by strangling revolutions and the international labour movement. As its degeneration neared a condition of liquid rottenness it contracted closer and closer ties of business and indebtedness. It would rather die than renege on a debt to Western capitalists (Castro's refusal to support a policy of No payment of the foreign debt, for instance), whereas every minute of every day it reneged on its socialist duty and constitutional pledges to the working people. When the Soviet bureaucracy handed over the heart of the Soviet Union to imperialism and launched restoration, this was historically conclusive proof of the Trotskyist analysis of the contradictory character of the USSR and the role of the bureaucracy in it as more faithful servants of the bourgeoisie than of the working class. >> Nazism (classical fascism) > >Hugh, Nazism is derivative fascism. Hitler used the Italian model, but >built onto it. National socialism came much later in time than fascism in >Italy. If any form of fascism is "classical," it is Italian fascism. Big deal. People today thinking of fascism have the Nazi system in mind, and it's the variety of classical fascism that developed furthest. >> capitalist foundations -- needs social revolution to overturn >> fascist regime -- is overthrown as part of social revolution -- OR >> replaced by another bourgeois regime > >Fascism was also overthrown in World War II. It was replaced by >parliamentary bourgeois regimes in West Germany, Italy, Japan, etc. It >struggled on in Spain. It was replaced by state socialist regimes in East >Germany, Croatia, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, becoming integrated >into a socialist world system. For someone picking nits all the time this is very sloppily written. "It [fascism] was replaced by state socialist regimes in East Germany, Croatia, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, becoming integrated into a socialist world system." Fascism becoming integrated into a socialist world system!!! A truly Freudian slip ... >This is concrete historical reality--not >silly speculative formulae involving mix-and-match political and economic >forms. Hm. Andrew is presenting pivotal historical changes as if they occurred without conscious human intervention. "Replaced by" in the passive voice without even a gesture towards indicating what forces made the replacement possible or carried it through, or under what concrete historical conditions or relationship of class forces. Objectivism. A cough and a spit from Stalinist fatalism. >> Stalinism (not classical fascism, but fascist regime running a workers' >>state) > >Listen to this! "Stalinism [is a] fascist regime running a workers state." Exactly what Trotsky said in the quote from In Defence of Marxism, only he put it negatively. >> I don't want to get hung up on words, however. I think it's useful to use >> the label fascist to characterize the Stalinist regime and its >> anti-working-class positions -- it brings out the complete unacceptability >> of the setup. >Ah, I get it now. It doesn't matter if calling the Soviet bureaucracy >"fascist" is historically inaccurate or incorrect from a political >economic framework. We call it "fascist" because it is "useful to use the >label fascist to characterize the Stalinist regime and its anti-working >class positions." And why is it "useful"? Because "it brings out the >complete unacceptability of the setup." This, I suppose, is in keeping >with the bourgeois practice of calling fascism a "socialist movement," >because it usefully distracts the public from the reality that fascism is >authoritarian capitalism. OK, so Andrew *does* want to get hung up on words. But behind the words it is emerging more and more clearly that Andrew is on his way to becoming another Stalinist apologist. Unable to distinguish between different political currents, their active creation and organization etc, he flees to some fatalist objectivism that worships the established fact. Whatever is, is right. October defeated capitalism, but if fell from the sky. Socialism is better than capitalism (that at least is an independent stand to take), so anything at the head of it must be right. Divinely imposed, as the actual mechanisms of parties and conflict of policy etc are "exaggerations" or clashes of personality or whatever. The Moscow trials and the political assassinations are discounted -- after all, nobody's perfect .... To me this looks like the road Andrew is heading down. His final rhetorical flourish just provides more confirmation: >Somebody clue me is. First, are these guys Trotskyists? And, second, is >this what Trotskyists believe? What is so un-Trotskyist about what I wrote? Why doesn't Andrew know for himself what he would consider Trotskyist? A strange gap for a would-be Marxist polymath and speed-reader of Trotskyism to boot ... As for what Trotskyists believe, there's no problem at all with the content. Some fuzziness at the edges exists with people and groups incapable of handling the contradictions involved in the character of the Soviet Union -- some veer off towards neo-Stalinism because they cling one-sidedly to the conquests of October and refuse to acknowledge the depths of counter-revolutionary degeneration to which the Stalinist bureaucracy sank, while others just as one-sidedly grasp the horrors of the Stalinist regime but refuse to acknowledge the conquests of October and veer off towards state capitalism (or worse). To me it looks as if Andrew is rapidly heading for the neo-Stalinist corral, which would be a crying shame. We already have one Louis Proyect and that's more than enough (he was once an active Trot). If Andrew doesn't get active soon, or light off to Turkey (or Brazil, for instance) the way Rahul did, my prognosis for his further political development is not uplifting. On the other hand, if he can wrap his mind round the dialectic, get organized and start participating in the class struggle with the working class, there's no telling how far he might go. I for one would be delighted to have him by my side. Cheers, Hugh ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check Out My HomePage where you can, Read or download the book! Ha Ha Ha McNamara, Vietnam-My Bellybutton is my Crystalball! And Now the International Communist League Page! Or Get The Latest Issue of, COCKROACH, a zine for poor and working-class people http://www.algonet.se/~malecki Back issues of Cockroach and my book at http://www.kmf.org/malecki/ -------------------------------------------------------- --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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