File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/marxism.Jul12-Aug17.94, message 273


Date: Fri, 05 Aug 1994 14:12:49 -0500 (EST)
From: eugeneh <eugeneh-AT-HUMANITIES1.COHUMS.OHIO-STATE.EDU>
Subject: reply to Phil on Stalin



Phil Goldstein asks:

"Is th(e) distinction between Marx and Stalinism naive? Doesn't 
Stalinism grow out of Marx's thought, including his belief that 
the workingclass must expropriate the expropriators or take 
control of the means of production? I don't mean that Marx was 
not more sophisticated, liberal, or profound than the Stalinists 
(or Marxist-Leninists); I mean that his views are clearly 
implicated in or complicit with the practices of the Stalinists." 

One can agree that Stalinism "grew out" of Marxism without going 
so far as saying that Marx's own views are "implicated" by the 
disaster of Stalin, much less that they are "complicit with 
Stalinist practices."  "Complicity" really strikes me as linking 
Stalin far too closely with Marx.  "Expropriating the 
expropriators doesn't directly "imply" gulags; nor does 
"dictatorship of the proletariat" imply Stalinist-style 
dictatorship: on the contrary, Marx uses it in parallel/contrast 
with the actually-existing "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" 
which often takes precisely liberal-democratic form. 

The point is: all kinds of things can have grown out of as 
spacious and as "radical" (in the biological sense) an oeuvre as 
Marx's -- which leaves us with the (endless) task of pruning the 
growths (e.g. the less sophisticated, the less profound, the less 
democratic ones! etc.) that didn't bear the kind of fruit we 
like, rather than chopping down the whole tree "by implication". 


On a completely different note:  I'm sorry to learn than Donna 
Jones will fall silent (here); her postings were great.
 Best of luck (if you're listening) on your dissertation project!

          Gene Holland


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