Subject: Re: M-I: The socialism of Z Magazine
From: jschulman-AT-juno.com (Jason A Schulman)
Date: Wed, 25 Dec 1996 18:08:50 EST


On Wed, 25 Dec 1996 10:50:45 -0500 (EST) Louis N Proyect writes:

>Somebody cross-posted my comments to Mike Albert and the next 
>thing I know I find his answer to me on PEN-L, which he is not even 
>subscribed to. It is a *lengthy* and humorless lecture on the 
>importance of anti-authoritarianism for the left. 

The *Z* crowd is a somewhat earnest bunch.

>The main problem with [*Looking Forward*] is that it shares Chomsky's
anarchist 
>hostility toward "Leninist" states and central planning, which they 
>call "coordinated" economies. While Chomsky is an open anarchist, Albert

>and Hahnel seem reluctant to use the "a" word. They prefer to call 
>themselves socialists and even pay respects to the "good" Marxism of 
>Rosa Luxemburg.

Chomsky's "anarchism" is a silly pretense.  Anarchists don't do political
parties; Chomsky does.  He has never cared to explore the differences
between Marxist and Anarchist theories of the state.  On ideological
matters the *Z* crowd doesn't know its history.

>Their objection to "coordinatorism" is expressed in the following 
>words:
>
>"Coordinatorism distributes productive responsibilities so that some 
>people (the coordinators) do primarily conceptual, administrative, and 
>creative tasks, while others (the workers) do primarily rote tasks 
>defined by others; that is, the former rule the latter. But the 
>promise of  economic liberation has always been to distribute productive

>responsibilities so that *everyone* has a fair share of opportunities 
>for performing conceptual and executionary labor with all workers
thereby 
>entitled and prepared to play a proportionate role in determining 
>events. This is a 'third way'".
>
>What is wrong with this analysis is that it doesn't take into account 
>the concrete state of class relations in those societies that broke with

>capitalism in the 20th century and what caused them to have 
>bureaucratic flaws. The Soviet state's problems had nothing to do with
somebody 
>imposing a "top-down" ideological vision of socialism on a working-class
that 
>was ready, if not bursting at the seams, to "play a proportionate role
in
>determining events."
>
>What happened is that the working-class that made the revolution of 
>1917 had virtually disappeared as a class in five short years. Either 
>they had been killed in the Civil War or had lost jobs in the economic 
>collapse following the Civil War. This history is detailed in 
>Deutscher, Carr and Levin. One of the things that troubles me about the
Z 
>people's understanding of what took place in the USSR is that it is 
>ahistorical.
>
>Rather than discuss the relationship of forces between the peasantry, 
>the former Czarist bureaucracy and the class-conscious socialist 
>working-class, they prefer quote-mongering. They fixate on some 
>particularly offensive remark by Lenin, often wrenching it out of 
>context. We discover that Lenin said, "Unquestionably submission to 
>the single will is absolutely necessary for the success of labor 
>processes based on large scale industry...Revolution demands, in the
interests 
>of socialism, that the masses unquestioningly obey the single will of
the 
>leaders of the labor process." (If Albert was on this list and had the 
>guts to debate me, I would track down the full quote. I have a feeling 
>that something important was elided.)
>
>Now if quotes mean anything, why don't throw this into the hopper? 
>This is from "Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?"
>
>"The conscientious, bold, universal move to hand over administrative 
>work to proletarians and semi-proletarians, will, however, rouse such 
>unprecedented revolutionary enthusiasm among the people, will so 
>multiply the people's forces in combating distress, that much that 
>seemed impossible to our narrow, old, bureaucratic forces will become 
>possible for the millions, who will begin to work for themselves and 
>not for the capitalists, the gentry, the bureaucrats, and not out of 
>fear of punishment."
>
>Now obviously this did not come to pass. The explanation why it did 
>not must be found in Marxism, and not in the sort of superficial 
>quote-mongering that people like Albert, Hahnel and Chomsky engage in. 

Louis's methodology certainly has more "meat" to it than does
Albert/Hahnel/Chomsky's.  However, there are certain areas where we can't
let Lenin off the hook so easily.

Let's look at *State and Revolution*.  Lenin quotes Engels, approvingly:

"The first act in which the state really comes forward as the
representative of society as a whole -- the seizure of the means of
production in the name of society -- is at the same time its last
independent act as a state.  The interference of a state power IN SOCIAL
RELATIONS becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then
becomes dormant of itself.  Government over persons is replaced by THE
ADMINISTRATION OF THINGS and the direction of THE PROCESSES OF
PRODUCTION" (emphais added).

This is way insufficient, particularly if it's meant to apply to
socialist politics in advanced countries.  As J. David Edelstein points
out in "Politics Under Socialism" (*Against the Current*, Sep/Oct 1991),
there are plenty of policy questions which can't be reduced to
administration.  How massive and rapid an effort to remove the material
and social effects of bigotry?  How much to develop depressed areas
within the US? How much to developing nations?  Should the ecological
crisis be considered severe enough to require a declining standard of
living?  What portion of the national income should be assigned to
current consumption? How should these things be accompished? Through what
kinds of technology, educational systems, changed residential
arrangements and other (perhaps major) changes in life-styles?

Concerning differentials in pay and social status, and the division of
labor in which these are rooted: how far and how fast should changes be
made in a egalitarian direction?

More generally, differences in values and interests, as well as over the
formulation of major problems and the means to resolve them, will
continue to be sources of controversy under socialism, and require a
political structure suitable for resolving such questions.

*State and Revolution* doesn't deal with such questions. Lenin
continually insists throughout the work that politics after the
revolution will be as simple and as non-controversial as bookkeeping. He
argues that the same, allegedly technocratic laws which govern efficient,
monopolistic capitalist production will now govern socialist society, but
without the distortion of the private profit motive.

But he seems to think that there exists one correct technical solution to
all and any dilemmas. Even democratic planning, of course, involves
political conflict, as we won't all agree on social and economic
priorities after the revolution (as Edelstein points out). But Lenin
apparently thought we would. In chapter three of *State and Revolution*
Lenin sneaks in his one and only reference to the party; he says that the
"one" workers party discerns the true interest of the working class and
will tutor all classes (peasants, etc.) and workers in the direction
socialism should take after the revolution. The party is "the guide" to
socialism. Never once in the work does Lenin outline an actual political
conflict -- and thus need for political pluralism -- that would arise
>from the soviets. If we all agree on all questions of work, allocation,
organization, etc., because there are technical laws of socialist
society, then who needs pluralism, democracy, etc. The book talks about
democratic participation, but there's no vision of it actually happening.
In fact, the work evisions the transcendence/abolition of any need for
politics, as we'll all agree on how to balance the books. 

That aside, this isn't solely Lenin's problem; from what I gather, Engels
and Kautsky (and to an extent, Marx himself) had the same sort of
anti-political bias.  (Hal Draper wrote a whole book on this subject in
the 1980s which I have yet to read.)  And, as Michael Harrington put it:

"Lenin did indeed create the precedents which led to Stalinism, but he
was no Stalinist himself...he won political power by persuading masses of
people to his cause...in the period leading up to and right after the
October Revolution, was dead serious about his utopian plan to begin the
'withering away of the state' immediately...Even though the Bolsheviks
before Stalin, including Lenin, approved measures that laid the basis for
the later tyranny, they were in the 1920s sincere and committed Marxists,
however wrong" (from *Socialism: Past & Future*).

>The attitude that a new socialist movement takes toward these very 
>flawed experiments like USSR, China, etc. must be worked out very 
>carefully. I believe that it must reject the sort of knee-jerk 
>anticommunist rhetoric of state-capitalists and the Z Magazine 
>anarchists who argue that these experiments were no improvement 
>over capitalism. 

I agree that it's really dumb for Chomsky to jump for joy at the end of
the USSR.  Though on one hand I'm glad that the bureaucratic monstrosity
no longer exists to mock the name of Marxism, surely Chomsky must realize
that the USSR's collapse has done enormous damage to socialism's
credibility around the world.  (Of course, so did its existence...)

-- Jason
______
"To engage in class struggle it is not necessary to 'believe in' the
class struggle any more than it is necessary to believe in Newton in
order to fall from an airplane. (In the latter eventuality, however, it
is advisable to believe in parachutes.)"  - Hal Draper


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