Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1996 03:54:04 -0700 (MST)
Subject: Re: Marxism: meat and potatoes questions




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

Savor the irony: Locker accuses me of "idealism" yet believes in 
mystical claptrap like "the objective laws of history" -- and that
these laws are "on our side" no less!  Yes, Virginia, this worker's
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."  

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.

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
heard before.  It didn't work out that way.  What's changed?  Why 
should things be different?  Take a lesson from history.  I
believe it was Marx who used the phrase "old crap in new form"
to describe phony socialisms -- which certainly describes authoritarian
police states like the early U.S.S.R.  In this spirit I now coin a
new phrase to describe Locker's tired utopian cliches: old crap in
old form.

And Mr. Locker, when you're considering the American revolution as
a parallel, consider the fact that this spontaneous revolution
wasn't at all spontaneous, was formally planned in fact, was
accompanied by much debate and policy formulation, and resulted in
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).

To the extent that the American revolution itself brought rights
to the nation, it brought them in the form of a well considered
legal object called the Bill of Rights, which provided the framework
upon which more egalitarian expansions could built and maintained.  
But of course, Locker has already informed us ignorant pawns of 
capitalism that the Bill of Rights is a mere "abstraction," which is
"not relevant to Marxist analysis" because it influences neither the
people's nor the government's actions, as opposed to the "molten hot
objective laws of history" which are on our side and which control our
destiny.  

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.  

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."  


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

As Harrington comments sarcastically: 

  "The workers' and peasants' revolution, then, is not to be made
by the actual workers and peasants, who are too backward to know
their true objective interest, but by the party vanguard."

Harrington (who was, I believe, active in the leadership of the 
Democratic Socialists of America until his death in 1989) has further
insightful comments:

  "The idea of a 'temporary' dictatorship over the people in the name
of the people was a radical, and tragic, redefinition of the meaning
of socialism.  It is, alas, alive and well today, not simply in those
societies where it has been institutionalized as the basis of an
anti-socialist 'socialism,' but in revolutionary movements that are
genuinely struggling for emancipation, but in ways that lead to new
tyrannies."

We'll miss ya, Mike.

--
What a curse these social distinctions are.  They ought to be abolished.
I remember saying that to Karl Marx once, and he thought there might be
an idea for a book in it.



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