From: dr.bedggood-AT-auckland.ac.nz Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 16:36:54 +0000 Subject: M-I: Mark Jones - fatalist >Mark Jones on the Stalin list forwarded this defence of Stalin as upholder of the Bolshevik revolution: [snip] > 5. The failure to liquidate the family was the most > fundamental and in the end the most lethal failure of the > Bolshevik revolution. Hardly, as by your own argument, the bourgeois family is subordinated to class relations. This was a big failure, but a much bigger one was the failure of the working class to retain power in the SU. Why? because if the workers had kept power, the family would have been a demolished. Of course one of the reasons why the working class did not retain power was the resurgence of petty bourgeois commodity production, and the bourgeois family under NEP, then rehabilitated by Stalin. > > But this was an enforced defeat: it was a step backwards > taken to defend the revolution, just as NEP was, just as the > liquidation of left-oppositions was. The failure of the > Bolshevik cultural revolution to take real root > foredoomed the Soviet Union to become an empty shell > encrusted with military hardware. But this failure was pre- > ordained in the absence of World Revolution (Mirovoya > Revolyutsiya). > You conflate three conscious decisions here. First, how was the rehabilitationl of the bourgeois family justified in the defence of the revolution? It was women workers who sparked off the February revolution. Women played a key role in the October Revolution. Why does locking women up in the family defend this revolution? Of course it doesnt. It has the opposite effect, that of suppressing the role of women in the working class, undermining the working class as a revolutionary force by dividing it along gender lines, and saving the skin of the bureaucracy as a usurping parasitic caste rooted in the petty bourgeois patriarchy. This is a blatant rationalisation to justify what you see as Stalin's progressive policies of "defending socialism in one country". Which brings us to: Second, NEP. Probably no one is going to challenge you on this, as the NEP was necessary to feed the country. But it was the Left Opposition that was clearest about the restoration of the law of value through NEP and conscioiusly challenged the bureaucracy to tax the accumulation of profits. Stalin's knee-jerk suppression of the kulacs was a desperate political act to retain power which set-back the development of the countryside for years. So even in the case of the NEP we have to say that Stalin did not fully understand what it represented, since he was influenced by the non-dialectical Bukharin to think that the law of value was an optional extra in history and not a deadly poison in the workers state. So Stalin had nothing to do with the introduction of the NEP and everything to do with it getting out of control. Hows that for defending the revolution? Third, so the left oppositionists were also eliminated to save the revolution? Virtually all the old bolsheviks too? Most of Stalin's trusted henchmen at some time got their chips. What was it that the LO were doing that was so threatening to the revolution? Of course, they were fighting to proletarianise it and internationalise it! Funny that, the very things that Mark says were lacking and instrumental in the collapse of October. Perhaps if the LO had won over Stalin the revolution could have been saved. But of course, Trotsky would not have subordinated the world revolution to the defence of the socialist fatherland by entering into political alliances with Hitler or with bourgeois parties in the popular fronts. Nor would he have stooped to the suppression of the revolutionary upsurges at the end of the war to keep his part of the bargain in restoring imperialist order in the world. No it was not the oppositionists that should have been eliminated but the bureaucracy. Mark goes on about the "tragedy" of the collapse of October. As I understand it "tragedies" occur when we make the wrong choice based on our perception of our interests. Otherwise it is fate. The Tragedy of October for the working class was the rise of the petty bourgeois based bureaucracy that in the name of "socialism" [i.e. the perceived interests of the working class] collaborated with the international bourgeoisie to stay in power at the expense of the international working class, including women. > Thus, the west's policies of 'encirclement' and 'containment' > struck at the heart of Bolshevism from the first. Every > attempt by the Party to overcome or transcend the baleful > consequences of this defeat failed. The material and social > bases of the October Revolution simply were not strong > enough to make the thing viable in the long term. Here Mark is trying to excuse the conscious retreat of the bureaucracy from revolutionary politics by pointing towards an insuperable external objective situation. Bullshit! "Every attempt by the party".!!! What defeatism! What abject bowing under the to sob story of the Stalinists." It was too much for us". It wasnt too much to send out agents to murder Trotskyists. It wasnt too much to hold mock trials and mass executions. It wasnt too much to behead the revolutionary movements in China, Spain, Italy, Greece and Indochina. This is the tragedy of the legacy of October. That the revolutionary opportunties that abounded following that lead, were deliberately sabotaged in the name of "socialism".. Not only were these avoidable defeats done in the name of socialism, as they got more rotten and more destructive of the international revolution, they also turned the legacy of October into its opposite- the rationalisations and pretentions of the Stalinist Dictatorship which are now parrotted and forwarded to these lists from Mark Jones and Olaechea. > > All of these adverse subjective and objective (material, > psychological, external and internal) factors conspired to > slowly drain the revolution of its real content. > This is a melange of indeterminacy. > The enormous loss of life from 1918 to 1945 effectively > decapitated the Russian working class and stole from it any > residual chance of a reflux of revolutionary vitality after > 1945. The Hitler War bled the Soviet working class white. True. But so did Stalin, who was more "responsible" for the loss of Russian lives than was Hitler. Why do I say this? Because Stalin subverted the European revolution as early as 1923. He was primarily responsible for the victory of Hitler in 1933. Olaecheas' rubbish about Trotsky subverting the united front, rather than Stalin, is based on projecting his own fear of revolution [and hence fatalism] onto the German working class. German workers were ready and willing to fight. The communists made no attempt to bloc with the social democrats. They even preferred Hitler until it was too late. How pathetic to blame Trotsky for not being willing to enter a popular front, when the CP would not enter even a military bloc with a bourgeois-democratic party because it was supposed to be "social fascist"! Olaechea's third period stalinism is set in formaldehyde. Then of course Stalin killed off most of the general staff just before the war. Trotsky at the time condemned these actions as those of a criminal incompetent prepared to risk the defence of state property to maintain his dictatorship. ] > I am sure that, just as Kollontai supported Stalin until her > death, any honest revolutionary would have done the same, > would have accepted the tragic consequences of the initial > weakness of the revolution. Kollontai's predicament was > tragic, but tragedy is a proletarian and not a bourgeois fate > in this epoch and we have no choice to accept that > Revolutions which fail or only partially successful, are > essentialy tragic outcomes of the hsitrocial process and are > bound to be endures as such by their creators. More crap which conflates tragedy with fate. It reinforces my view that you really see tragedy as fate. Hence your fatalism. > Blame Ebert and the failures of the Sparticists. Yes and why? They were mensheviks at heart and did not see the need to build a bolshevik party. Stalin was quite happy to keep up the tradition of the mensheviks even in October 1917. He got the chance to revert openly after 1924. > Blame the 'miracle on the Vistula'. > Blame Woodrow Wilson and the Fourteen Points. > Blame the indescribably awful interwar foreign policy of > the British. None of these are worth commenting on. > In the end however, we should blame no-one. We should > rather, continue to try to emulate the unprecedented > achievements of the Bolsheviks, who took > the burden of emancipation on their shoulders and were > ready to pay any price, even the most tragic, which not > only did they pay, they knew from the beginning, they > would have to pay. Comeon Mark. This is your trademark. Throw out a whole lot of historical stuff to fit your preconceived defence of Stalin - he did what he had to - then turn on the soppy music and get misty eyed about bullshit notions of human dignity in general. There were lots of generals quoting human dignity as they marched to war. I don't trust human dignity as an end for which many means can be justified. The Bolsheviks were not motivated by nostalgia or a romantic sense of self-sacrifice. They were motivated by the drive to remake the world. It is right to be revolutionary, right to > struggle with all we have and are, that our dignity and > human dignity in general can only be sought and found in > this struggle, wherein lies all the true comradeship and > sororality we shall ever find. That to be a communist is the > best and noblest thing there is, even if we suspect our > hopes will remain dreams inherited by a future generation, > as the Bolsheviks themselves well knew. Im sure that the Bolsheviks i.e. those who died at Stalins hands, would reject substituting a materialist marxist analysis of the cause of their deaths for platitudes about "true comradeship" and "communist nobility". > > Revolution would still be the inescapable destiny of > humankind if for no other reason than that humanity can > only discover itself through its endeavour to slough off the > hypocrisy and sham freedoms of this world, through > revolutionary comradeship and shared sacrifice and > struggle. > You would do well to start with yourself. Slough off the hypocrisy of Stalins apologetics. Slough off the "sham freedoms" which millions had to die unnecessarily for under stalin's dictatorship. Recognise that the true comradeship and shared sacrifice in struggle has been made historically by those who opposed Stalin's counter-revolution and paid with their lives. > But this is not the only reason why proletarian revolution is i inevitable.The world is a much more incendiary place today than it > was in 1917. The falsity and hollowness of late capitalism, > the glittering surface, is just a thin crust over a boiling, > volcanic magma. > Its nice to think this, but there is no inevitable socialist revolution. There are no impossible situations for the bosses. They can always try to wipe us all out if they dont need our labour. Revolution wont happen like a force of nature. First we have to build a revolutionary international that can lead the working class to its magmanimous victory. > Take this very question: the question of feminism, of sexual > freedom, of gender difference, of the double-burden, the > differential exploitation of women in the reproduction of > the only commodity which capital still cannot produce, the > commodity labour-power, which is also the only value- > producing commodity (this concept, the central Marxist > concept, defines in itself the entire parasitism of capitalism, > and also shows how the fate of women and the nature of > the domestic burden are not merely relevant to Marxism, > they are at the very heart of value theory) -- and see how > this question has evolved and becoming completely > symptomatic, florid with symptoms, of the general crisis of > late capitalism. This is quite good in an abstract sort of way. But how do you create a revolutionary movement that can incorporate women in the leadership when you have just given a whole lot of reasons why taking them out of the leadership was necessary to save the revolution in the SU? What woman, or man for that matter, is going to take you seriously? And it won't be a question of writing off women as mere "feminists". That is to say that workers can't be citizens. Or that it is not progressive to fight to gain and retain equal rights of citizenship under capitalism when they are under much attack not only in the case of oppressed groups such as women, or blacks, but for the whole working class. > For the whole period since 1917 international > reaction waged and still wages a bitter counter-offensive and > in no sphere is this more vigorous than the sphere of the > family, gender and sexuality. Today capital is launching a > vast new many-pronged offensive in this sphere whose goal is > nothing less than the Faustian dream of eliminating live labour > from production, of overcoming its instrinsic parasitism by learning > how to produce the commodity labour-power. This would be a good thing. It would eliminate domestic labour for a start. But as Marx argued the working class will not sit around while it is displaced from pre-history by machines. We will take over the machines, including ones which displace us, and use them in socialist production. Your historic fatalism which consigns workers to the margins to justify stalin, also consigns them to the streets in the industrial city. What about the class struggle Mark? > > We have to analyse our tasks as revolutionaries in the light > of ex-vitro embryology, of the deconstruction of the human > Genome, of human sexuality, of mind/brain difference, > of the already-envisaged Huxleyian artificial > wombs, of the commodification of human characteristics > and human subjectivity: of the onrush of cloning, memory- > download and other technologies whose impact on > humankind are, in the hands of capital, insupportable, > intolerable, a total, in-your-face, outright onslaught on the > essence of what it is to be human. > Again, here is the passive working class as laboratory subjects, having their genes duplicated while they watch TV. This is crediting capital with the ability to replace workers without a fight. After rationalising the collapse of the first October, you are now predicting no need for a Second October because the working class has no interest in revolution since its labour power will no longer be expropriated. Wake up! Dave For Permanent Revolution (including this list). --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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