File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9805, message 111


Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 14:01:02 +0100
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-TH: Property relations vs political regime


An exchange from M-International, which is not really the right place for
this kind of discussion. Jim's been sticking it to the Stalinists there,
and was upbraided by Rebecca in Ireland for only talking and not doing
anything.

Cheers,

Hugh

_______________________________

Briefly.

Jim Heartfield writes:

>There's no doubt that Trotsky's critique of 'socialism in one country',
>'peaceful coexistence' and the break up of the communist international
>along chauvinistic lines were entirely correct, and vindicated by
>events.

How not?

>His only real failing in that regard was to see 'nationalised
>property relations' in the Soviet Union as essentially sound, and the
>growing bureaucracy as little more than an excresence on the top of a
>dynamic economy. That was foolish: How could property relations be sound
>in the absence of democratic planning?

No failing. Not foolish.

Unless Jim can explain how we'll get to socialism without expropriating the
bourgeoisie and nationalizing large-scale production, finance and the land,
ie changing the property relations of a whole country, he's confusing
economic fundamentals and superstructural (very important but not
fundamental in the same way at all) political and social factors. In fact
falling for impressionism and fatalism, with its swings between
ultra-leftism (revolutionary syndicalism, anarchism, third period putschism
etc) and reactionary quietism (there's nothing happening, the working class
is dead, so we might as well coexist, suck up to arseholes like the Shah of
Iran or Mobutu or the Derg in Ethiopia, make money writing fake-left books
or develop our sexual self-expression).


>It was also proved to be wrong by
>the grotesquely underdeveloped and autarkic state of the soviet economy.

This is nonsense, despite the weaknesses of the Soviet and Chinese
economies. They were in no sense grotesquely underdeveloped by comparison
with other huge and impoverished nations such as India, Indonesia, Brazil
etc. Their failings were with respect to what they might have been if the
very important factor of democratic planning had been there. Which takes us
to our next point...


>As to Trotskyism - that's a different matter. Trotskyism as a movement
>was a failure. It failed to get off the ground. Its policies were
>reduced to formulae. It failed to win a hearing. Consequently Tortsky's
>critique of Stalinism is redundnant with the collapse of Stalinism,
>since the movement he left never went beyond that original insight.

You see, it's not just planning but the whole political power structure
that underpins any institutions such as planning agencies etc. What Trotsky
and Trotskyism did and are doing is challenging the whole political
degeneration of Stalinism and its imperialist shadow Social-Democracy in
relation to the fundamentals of working class power and policies. This is
an objective need of today's world in the current epoch of class relations.
It won't go away. The collapse of Stalinism has produced neither the
disappearance of the working class or the death of socialism. It has
corroborated Trotskyism's analysis of the poltical weakness of the
Stalinist bureaucracy and its choice between either surrendering to the
workers and seeing the restoration of a regime of healthy workers'
democracy (including democratic planning and the destruction of
bureaucratic privilege) or capitulating to the imperialists and selling out
the conquests of October to capitalist restoration.

Trotskyism has constantly won a big hearing -- Vietnam 1945, Bolivia 1952,
Peru in the 1960s, Argentina after the Malvinas war. There are other less
striking examples -- the whole of the British left is indelibly stamped by
the presence of Trotskyism for instance, as is the French left in a much
more polarized fashion. Today it is better placed than ever to win an
international hearing and show what it's capable of than it's ever been
before.

More on this as it develops.

Cheers,

Hugh





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