From: achekhov-AT-unity.ncsu.edu
Subject: Re: Morality, methods and the transition to socialism
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 13:07:09 -0400 (EDT)


I am a new subscriber and the only part of the discussion of transition 
to socialism I have is Hugh Rodwell's reply to Zeynap. Anyway I want to 
jump in even at the risk of raising issues which have already been solved 
or dismissed.  They all relate to the defeat of socialism in SU where I 
am from. 

Zeynap asks

>But, how does a society, born out of thousands of years of class societies
>(that is the difference between the transition between all the previous
>systems -all were class based- and socialism), give birth to a fresh
>society, that walks a new road. Btw, I think that is how we should try to
>analyse and argue about the Soviet Union, China and Cuba, to identify the
>painful contradictions and pulls of the transition- not to fish out which
>fellow among us is a "Stalinist" or not.

As far as these countries are concerned, our analysis is complicated by 
the backward character of their development prior to their revolutions. 
Of course, we must squeeze out of their experience everything possible 
but it will not be easy to decide what in this experience is contingent 
and what is theoretically valueable for undestanding the problems of 
socialist transition in the West. Below I will discuss one instance of 
this difficulty.  I also think that the only true verdict to this 
experience will be pronounced by the workers of these countries.  In 
Russia, at least, there are already signs that this trial is under way.

The mind-boggling problem is that of a radical discontinuity even between 
the transitional and capitalist societies.  For unlike bourgeois society, 
socialist one does not germinate in the society it negates. Capitalist 
methods of production, culture, the bourgeois man himself were able to 
develop within the feudal order and eventually to overcome it.  
Bourgeoisie conquered political power only after it had proved its 
economic and cultural superiority, and the "baby" had been completely 
formed. But neither socialist methods of production nor socialist culture 
nor socialist man seem to develop in the womb of capitalist society, at 
least to such degree that they become autonomous and continuous. ( The 
only exception to this is Marxist theoretical tradition. But since its 
goal is to become reality it's a dubious consolation). It is this radical 
difference between the logic of transition from one class society to 
another and the logic of socialist transition that makes proletarian 
dictatorship necessary but also so problematic. Problematic, because so 
much more depends on the revolutionary consciousness of the working 
class, the level and character of its culture, i.e. what we call 
"subjective" factors.  This is why I cannot agree with Hugh's reading of 
Marx and Lenin which leads him to conclude that in the epoch of imperialism

>all the necessary technical and human prerequisites are there, provided 
by >capitalism in its development from small, individually owned units of 
capital >to huge, collectively (but capitalistically) owned monopolistic 
and >international units of capital.

Let me begin with the case of the Russian revolution, Lenin's works in 
the last years of his life is one scream of despair at the lack of 
elementary culture in Soviet, state and party organs of all levels.  And 
in his famous definition of the fundamental contradiction of the Russian 
Revolution as one "between the monumentality of its world-historical 
tasks and its material and CULTURAL poverty" (I cite from the original) 
the word "cultural" is underlined (Drafts).  In Russian context, by 
"elementary culture" Lenin meant elementary bourgeois culture: 
discipline, orderliness, sense of responsibility, loyalty, etc. in short, 
that what had become the second nature of the Western bourgeois and the 
worker alike. The rise of bureaucracy in SU was not in small degree 
determined by the general cultural poverty of the population.  Lenin, of 
course, also said that it would be harder to begin a socialist revolution 
in Europe but easier to carry it over.  We have to take this prediction 
with a grain of salt.  For Lenin, as for Marxism of his time in general,  
seems to have believed that after  a revolutionary takeover it was 
possible to proceed on the basis of the same type of productive forces 
and corresponding cultural forms without a thorouhgoing transformation  
of both.  What makes me to suggest this blind spot in Bolshevism is that 
I am not aware of any theoretical discussion in the party on the effects 
which the mechanical transplantation  of the most advanced American 
methods of production to SU could have on the cultural and political 
development of the Soviet workers.  On the other hand, certain positive 
aspects of pre-capitalist culture which were consonant with the 
principles of socialist society remained untapped, perhaps, at least 
partly because of the traditional disdain of peasantry in classical 
Marxism. 

But the Soviet case, one can argue, does not apply because of the 
backwardness of the country.  In the countries of advanced capitalist 
development, Hugh seems to suggest, there exist "the necessary technical 
and human prerequisites" for socialist transition.  Indeed, it is a 
common Marxist wisdom that the present level of productive powers of 
mankind is such that they can provide freedom from want and compulsion 
for all.  The question, however, is whether the productivity of these 
"technical prerequisites" can be sustained without the attendant regime 
of compulsion, and more generally without the sort of culture which 
renders this regime "natural" and is structurally rooted in the division 
of labor?  Yet, it is this culture that will have to go if we mean 
socialism. 

In the beginning of the century the German workers were confident that 
history moves their way, and every day brings closer "the necessary 
technical and human prerequisites" for socialist society. This 
deterministic, evolutionary conception of history was influenced by the 
bourgeois ideology of progress and helped to bring about barbarism 
instead. In very different historical circumstances, the Soviet workers 
were also confident that the fundamental conquests of the October R. were 
a sort of their inalienable rights, they seemed as natural as air to 
them. "Just do your job, increase productivity, live politics to us, and 
sooner or later we'll arrive to communism peacefully" - that's what they 
were told.  We know the end of the story. 

Hugh mentions Marx's Critique of Gotha

>The problems arising from being 'born out of thousands of years of class
>societies' are epitomized by Marx in the Critique of the Gotha Programme,
>when he writes that socialism will be born covered in blood and with birth
>marks due to the capitalist society where it spent its pregnancy. These are
>more cosmetic than structural flaws and as such quite manageable - even if
>they cause a lot of stress and strain.

The last sentence does not belong to Marx.  And I am afraid the flaws of 
the baby will be very serious and structural.  The very alternative 
"socialism or barbarism" implies that capitalism generates the enourmous 
forces of destruction and human degradation.  They are not disembodied. 
Where will they go the day after the revolution?  This question is raised 
now by some Russian workers: "What are we going to do with the millions 
of people who cannot and do not want to live in the society that we 
consider just and good:  the bureaucrats of all shades, the dealers, the 
criminals, the comprador intelligentsia, the youth corrupted by the 
images of dolce vita, the middle class swamp who wants to stay in the 
middle by whatever cost?"  No, in the face of the German tragedy, the 
catastrophy in SU and a coming one in China, Hugh's view of transition is 
unwarrantly optimistic. We'd better be pessimists, i.e. to insist on a 
notion of history from which the working class will not be able to draw 
comfort but be constantly aware that nothing good comes out of capitalism 
naturally, that technological progress under capitalism is accompanied by 
social regress, that we live in a permanent state of emergency declared 
by the ruling classes, and that proletarian revolution, to use Benjamin's 
metaphor, is better to be seen as "grabbing the emergency cord" rather 
than locomotive of world history. Any optimistic prospect today is 
superficious if it does not found itself on this pessimism. 

As to the lessons of the Soviet workers' defeat I am in full agreement 
with Zeynap:

>This is an important aspect of Soviet Union's failure. One shouldn't compete
>with capitalism say, in terms of tons of steel produced, but maybe in terms
>of free time of the workers, social development of all, participatory
>decision making, equality for everyone...
>
>I know we can't eat equality and participatory decision making. But, if
>socialism is a superior system, the collective planning processes, the
>declining of alienation, the lack of social loss due to market anarchy
>should mean a better, more productive system as a whole (again productive
>not in the capitalist sense of the word).

No one can deny the great achievements of the SU in the development of 
its productive base on the basis of nationalized means of production 
under the most adverse historical circumstances.  But this victory was 
one-sided and therefore pyrrhic, turning into its opposite. It has been 
accompanied by the political and physical liquidation of the 
revolutionary vanguard, by the suppression of genuine self-activity of 
the masses, their social, political, and cultural creativity without 
which socialist transition is doomed.  As the result of this "victory" 
the Soviet working class has become a political non-entity unable to 
defend the powerful means of production that have been created by the 
self-sacrificial labor of the generations of Soviet workers; the means of 
production which, I must add,  properly speaking, belonged to the world 
working class and constituted the strategic material foundation for 
proletarian struggles around the world.  We can only imagine now how 
radically different our prospects would have been today had the Soviet 
workers been able to use the favourable objective situation in the early 
years of perestroika to wrestle political power from the bureaucracy.  
They failed to do this and since then they and the workers of the world 
have been paying dearly for this failure. If there is any single lesson 
that the counter-revolution in SU can teach us it is that the 
revolutionary class consciousness of the working class must be absolute 
priority for the Marxists, that it does not grow  naturally from the 
development of productive forces either on the basis of private or 
nationalized property relations but develops only through the workers' 
dictatorial control over and direct mass participation in all affairs of 
society and the state. In my view, the concept of Soviet democracy still 
provides for such vision.

Comradely, 

Vladimir Bilenkin 



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