Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 13:28:11 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Stalin explained (fwd)


Greg sent me the following message which I believe was intended for the
list. I waited a bit before forwarding hoping that it would show up as a
list post. Unfortunately, I will not be able to reply to his comments for
some time. -- Jerry
========================================================================---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 07 Aug 1996 00:25:06 -0700
From: Greg Schofield <schofield-AT-taunet.net.au>
To: glevy-AT-pratt.edu
Cc: Greg Schofield <schofield-AT-taunet.net.au>
Subject: Re: Stalin explained

Thankyou Jerry for you prompt reply. I take your point, naturally, that
"workers' control which can play an important role in transitional
economies and is not necessarily 'anarchic'". what I object to is the use
of worker's control as the catch all solution, the cure for every
possible ill of future socialism. Worker's control, by itself is simply
another form of utopiansim. Not that I think you are putting such
a simplistic position. However the question must arise as to the political and
economic relationship worker's control of individual industries and
plants has to greater society.

All too often the concept is treated as an isolated element and it is for
this reason I prefer to neglect it as a diversion to fathoming out a
workable modern communist platform. Yes by all means worker's control,
the more of it the better, but by its nature this must come from the
worker's themselves, reinvented through struggle as a spontaneous
creation. It is this aspect of historical spontanity which I believe
precludes worker's control from a political platform that must be shaped
under the objective conditions of capitalism, it may be referred as an
aspiration but no programatic emphasis can conjure it up.

On the other-hand worker's self-management is quite a different thing,
for this only suggests that the industrial management layer has been
removed. It is not worker's control by any stretch of the imagination,
but niether does it assume that capital as a whole has been expropriated.
Worker's self-management is thus objectively obtainable without
preconditions and can thus fall naturally within a program of
assaulting bourgeois power.

Jerry wrote:
> The Bolshevik leadership did *not* consider the Soviet Union to be
> socialist. The question that they addressed in developing both the
> policies of "War Communism" and the NEP was how to "take steps towards
> socialism" (Lenin). Thus, the NEP was viewed as a temporary, necessary
> retreat *away from socialism*. If the NEP was extended indefinitely, how
> would the USSR ever become socialist (let alone the transition to
> communism)? The *only* hope, according to the Bolsheviks who advocated
> the NEP like Lenin and Trotsky, for socialism was the spread of the
> international revolution. The idea that one could become socialist with
> NEP policies was an extension of Stalin's infamous doctrine of "socialism
> in a single country."

I consider that there is only one real definition of proletarian
socialism - the dictatorship of the proletariat. At what times the
history of USSR expressed this dictatorship, or indeed whether it simply
expressed the possiblity of this dictatorship is open to analysis.
Naturally what questions are being posed will result in different answers
to the question to the historical existence of socialism.
No unambigious line runs through history separating one thing from another.

While it is the case that (the hope for) proletarian socialism subsided
in the USSR, so many historically complex issues are involved I would not
like to take isolated expressions and hang a great deal on them, even if
they issue from the mouth of  Lenin. What did he have in mind exactly when
he issued these warnings, what did he mean by world revolution (European
Revolution?). I take a pedestrian view that what  was being said was very
striaghtforward and not all that theoretical. For the dictatorship of the
proletariat to fully emerge Lenin quite correctly knew that a wider and
more sound economic base was required, revolution in some of the advanced
capitalist countries would have been an immediate and material relief.
The reflief never arrived - no eloborate theory required, the working
class in the USSR were simply not strong enough to either fully grasp
power or maintain it. Elsewhere at different times and places with more
mature economies this scenerior might not be true (I discount Trotsky
entirely on this point).

The Boleshevik party dictatorship promised, at least for a short while, a
proletarian dictatorship, how you wish to define this is not very
important when asking general questions. It is in this pregnanent period
of possiblities that the policy directions of the revolutionary leaders
is going to reflect the great forces unleashed - NEP is one such policy
and is thus worthy of serious consideration. It is also the most
neglected area in communist history which should be a hint that more is
involved than a simple retreat.

The Stalin's famous socialism in one country is for me an empty slogan,
but so is Trotsky's attack on it. There may have been some symbolic
value, but on the whole I consider the whole thing a complete diversion.
Are we to introduce some new stage in history to contain the worker's
revolution established before a world revolution and then begin socialism
only when the last state joins? The idea is silly. The first stage of
socialism will do me for any place that actually creates a working class
dictatorship, like all past historical stages, the evolution of socialism
will be uneven (as if we did not have sufficient proof of this already).

Greg Schofield
Darwin Australia




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