Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1996 18:09:28 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Marxism: meat and potatoes questions


emerald-AT-aztec.asu.edu (MARK ADKINS) writes:

>Comrade Locker writes that marxists can't organize a revolution,
>that "history will organize the revolution, not Marxists...Marx argues
>it has nothing to do with how good our planes are; it is the objective
>laws of history" which are "on our side."  He writes that "a revolution
>will only happen when a majority are ready for it," but goes on to
>declare that "there is no such thing as popular consensus."  He asserts
>that dictatorship "is what every ruling class does," and that it
>"ruthlessly keeps down" enemies of the state.  Yet he goes on to

You can't seem to grasp the difference btwn. a rulling class of exploiters
and a rulling class (workers, 90% of society).  Anyhow, the whole point of
the Dictatorship of the proletrait (DOP) is to destroy ALL classes
(including the owrking class), destroy the state (the instrument of class
'dictatorship').  It is a trasnistory stage on the road to communism.

You don't seem to understand te relationship between means & ends.  The
workers & capitalists in this case might use the same means (class
dictatorship when they seize state power); [allthough i reject "morality"
for the sake of argument I will go with it] the same means can not be used
to judge the moral value of an act.  When a SLAVE OWNER uses trickery,
deciet & violence to put a man into chains and enslave him that is one
thing.  When a SLAVE uses trickery, deciet or violence to break his chains
and free himself that is another thing.  Both actions described above use
the EXACT same means; they use those means for exact opposite ENDS -- fool.

>claim that under the worker's dictatorship "there will be no 
>authoritarian military & police bodies."

Thats right;  they will not be authortarian in that they will not be
autonmous bodies seperate from the working class.  They will be under the
direct controll of the DOP, i.e. 90% of society -- fool.

>Savor the irony: Locker accuses me of "idealism" yet believes in 
>mystical claptrap like "the objective laws of history" -- and that

You obviously did not understand my explanation of idealism.  As i said
before idealism in the philosophical sense means believing reality is made
up of idesa.  This has nothing to do with the common  expresion "idealism"
which reffers to "unpracticle" or utopioan or stupid ideas -- do you get it now?

Why werrre your arguments idealistic?  Because idealists when applying there
philosophy to history, see history as a function of reality (in there case,
ideas).  The constitution or the bill of rights or "freedom of expresion"
are IDEAS.  A materialist views these ideas as REFLECTIONS of material reality.

>these laws are "on our side" no less!  Yes, Virginia, this worker's

You have no undersdtanding of dialectics -- fool.
Lets examine the terms 'progresive' and 'reactionary'.  Progresive means
anything that will move the whole of socierty forward objectivly...in
marxist terms this means increasing societys wealth, potential to create
more wealth, etc, etc.
The bourgeoisie was at one point in history a very, very, progresive class.
The were in fact revolutionary.  They as they allways do, stood for private
profit (along with many progresive political ideas & institutions -- but
these were only ways to make it easier to produce and realize profit).  We
could say that before 1848 the fight for prfit was progresive.  It created
the world market;  it connected the world; it created nation-states; it
smashed feudal political & cultural relations and replaced them with
bourgeois democracy & culture, morality, etc; the arts & siciences exploded
in new discovers, etc, etc.  The wealth of society moved ahead by light years.

The bourg. desire for profit remains constant.  But the world, the context
in which this desire takes place is infact defined by its DYNAMIC nature.
What is progresive yesterday id reactionary today.  After around 1848, the
borg., still figfhting fo their intrests, became reactionary.  The prusuit
of profit has become a fetter to progress.

The point of all the above is to illustrae how history can act in ones
favor.  The  laws don't act in workers favor because workers are kind or
moral or good.  Due to the contraddictions of capitalism, the desires &
intrests of workers COINCIDE with the movement of history (moving in a
progesive direction).  Thw workers at this time, are the subjects of history
sense they are the ones pushing all society fwd.  Marxists, the concious
working class fighters, have history on there side because of that -- fool.

>paradise will not result from thoughtful planning and political
>organizing, but is the inevitable result of the "molten hot objective
>laws of history" which are ON OUR SIDE.  At the same time that he
>talks about dictatorship and concedes the necessity for the ruthless
>suppression of the enemies of the new state, he denies that this will
>be accomplished by authoritarian military and police bodies.  How
>will it be accomplished?  By "the general armed working class, organized
>in workers councils and militias" which will spontaneously organize as
>a result of the workers "acting in their own interests" -- these
>being the common interests they don't have, because we have already
>learned that "popular consensus is an illusion."  

Oh dearie me.  If you don't believe in laws of history, please explain to us
why bourgeois democracy (nation state, "bill of rights" type laws,
parliament, etc) all appeared at a certain point in history.  Why?  what
forces did they satisfy?  If they have a precise begining when will be there
end?  Or is it just because John Locke was a smart guy and figured out how
to run a 'democracy'?  Wow, if only he had been born 1000 years earlier.
Mankind would have been saved from so many stupid detours...

FOOL.

>When I attempt to discuss constitutional rights intended to protect
>individuals from the state, he dismisses these as "mere ideas" which
>are "not important to a marxist analysis" because "the objective forces
>determine how I will act."  Dear me, it seems we're back to the
>molten hot laws of history.

Yes, i was being somewhat simplistic. In a concrete analisis of
course,ideas, laws, everything from the 'superstructure' come into play.
But you asked very abstract questions; I can't give a very detailed analsis.
In the last analsis, i.e. the primary factor is the underlying movement of
the plate techtonics of class struggle, i.e the 'laws of history'. A more
subtle explanation for a more englightned audience would dicuss the
dialectical relationship between the base & superstructure...

>As long as we're discussing history, perhaps history has something
>to say about the practical consequences of this kind of UTOPIAN
>drivel?  Listen very carefully, Philip.  "Kronstadt...the post-
>revolutionary Constituent Assembly...the Cheka..."  Can you hear
>history whispering to you?  All of this idealistic talk has been

I have a very good understanding & explanation of what happened in the USSR
-- obviously you don't.  You belive that 1 man, Lenin, could due to his own
evil or good intentions cause all of the above to happen.  If only you had
been there to teach him -- then everything would have been different! BS!
What happened happened not because of the ideas of Bolshevism but because of
the contradictions of capitalism, the contradictions of a woprkers state in
a backward & isolated country.  Fool -- if you want an explanation of
STALINISM ask for one -- don't blame me for not explaining something yiu
didn't ask about.

>new phrase to describe Locker's tired utopian cliches: old crap in
>old form.

History will judge, right?

>And Mr. Locker, when you're considering the American revolution as
>a parallel, consider the fact that this spontaneous revolution

I was giving it as a perfectly good example of revolution.  Or was it not a
revolution?  I made no claims to why certain things did or did not happen,
etc.  IT WAS ONLY AN EXAMPLE OF 1 REVOLUTION -- FOOL.

>wasn't at all spontaneous, was formally planned in fact, was
>accompanied by much debate and policy formulation, and resulted in

All of the above show the importance of the subjective factor, something
marxists don't ignore.  In fact I belive in it quite strongly:  That is why
I am a member of a political organization -- FOOL.

>the continued slavery and oppression of blacks, indians, women, and
>poor whites -- in other words, most of the population.  All of the
>hard won civil rights (with the exception of physical freedom for
>the slaves) which have since transformed this country came not
>from revolution, but from popular democratic struggle (however
>tumultuous, unconventional, or illegal its *tactical* means).

I.e., not because the constitution promiseed them something, but through
struggle.  Yes you finally got it.  What you say above is true.  Sad, you
don't realize that you are giving a (bad) materialist analsis.

>Moving on to trivia, Locker doesn't believe that Lenin defined the 
>dictatorship of the proletariat in terms of factory workers and excluded
>all others, including farmers, peasants, and non-capitalist clerical,
>professional, and other workers.  "Where  & when did he say this?  I 
>don't believe it is true" he writes.  

Did you understand what I said when I explanied what a worker was?  DID YOU?
You still don't seem to have grasped it.  It does not matter what Lenin said
(althoough he didn't say it).  Marxists don't study every word of marx and
reciet it as scripture.  It doesn't really matter what they said.  We try to
learn the METHOD, i.e. how they arived at their conclusions so that we can
do the same thing today.  The marxist method explains what a worker is, as I
said in my last post.  Please reread before you talk about what a worker is
or is not.

>Here is a quote from one of Lenin's speeches on trade unions in the 
>Soviet system at the end of 1920 (quoted in Michael Harrington's
>Socialism: Past and Future (Penguin/Mentor, 1992)):
>
>  "The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through
>an organization embracing the whole of that class, because in all
>capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most
>backward) the proletariat is so divided, so degraded, and so
>corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an
>organization taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly
>exercise proletariat dictatorship.  It can only be exercised by
>a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class...
>it cannot work without a number of 'transmission belts' running from
>the vanguard to the advanced class, and from the latter to the
>mass of the working people."  

I don't see where he says that factory workers are the only workers -- FOOL.
In fact I don't see the word factory once!  What he is describing is the
role of a vanguard party, i.e. a marxist subjective factor.  It has nothing
to do with a marxist definition of working class and therby individual
workers.  FOOL.


>A party vanguard acting through the advanced class of bureaucratic
>hacks, transmitted by the belts of terror and statist fiat.

NO.  You are doing something marxist call 'teleoscvoping'.  Taking what you
have experienced in your own life and superimposing it on another reality.


>We'll miss ya, Mike.

Yes.  Learn english.  You meant to say "I'll miss ya".  Anyway WE WILL NOT
miss ya.

--
Comrade Philip



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