Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 17:47:01 +1000
From: rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au (Rob Schaap)
Subject: M-I: Re: The Political Failure of Western Communism


Lou Godena writes:
'Double standards in practice are the unavoidable price of
universal standards of principle.'

[To my way of thinking, Marxist standards of principle apply only to
capitalist relations of production.  Only where capitalism is the salient
mode of production, the main determinant of social relations, should we
dare apply our standards.  I think this gives us a pretty large object for
both interpretation and change - one that corresponds to the views of many
large parties/movements that seem to have developed within the diverse
cultures of India, Russia, China, Korea, Japan, South America ....  

My ignorance prevents me from accusing Huntington of bourgeois idealism -
but it does sound a bit like the post-structuralist assault on
international relations (pace Jim George) - y'know, the one that undermined
the dependency theorists like the Dorffmans, Stoniers, Freires and
Wallersteins - and effectively left the Lerner/Pye model of modernisation
without an articulated practical alternative while the Ghanas and Sierra
Leones IMFd themselves to cultural dissolution and concomitant
socio-economic destruction.]

[Lou speculates:]
'A resurgence of Marxism in India or Russia could swing those
societies from a Western-dependent role (assumed long before the "collapse"
of Marxist regimes in 1989-91) into an alignment with the challenger
civilizations against the West.   Islamic,  Sinic,  Hindu,  and eastern
European civilizations differ fundamentally in terms of religion,  culture,
social structure,  traditions,  politics,  and basic assumptions at the root
of their way of life.   Inherently each probably has less in common with the
other than it has in common with Western civilization.    Yet in politics a
common enemy creates a common interest.'

[I can't see a usefully long-term future for a pragmatic coalition between
open Marxism and, say, Shi'ite Islam either, if that's what you're saying.

And Lou concludes:]
'The lack of a successful Marxian formula for the advanced Western
countries,  the failure to integrate the Communist ideal with the culture
and traditions of Western modernity,  threatens to reduce revolutionary
Marxism to at best an ancillory role in the West of the new century.'

[We can't deny this threat with a straight face - the evidence for it lies
at every turn.  But, the speed with which western
liberal/democracy/capitalism has changed our way of being and seeing over
the last twenty years shows how volatile are our times - When Mark claims: 
'The socialism that is to come will come through catastrophe which no-one
should relish anticipating. But it will come, Louis.', I am half with him. 
Only half, because I share Lou's concern that the looming catastrophe
should not be seen as necessarily a road to socialism.  Catastrophes have
led elsewhere before, and in days when the left was a much better organised
and culturally entrenched phenomenon than it is now.

Regards,
Rob.




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