Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 16:13:00 +0200
From: Jorn Andersen <jorn.andersen-AT-vip.cybercity.dk>
Subject: Re: the state (fwd)


At 02:12 21-09-96 -0300, Pablo Gilabert wrote:

>4. Why am I arguing with you, Adam?
>Because I think that there are some POLITICAL/ETHICAL dangers in sustaining
>the theses of Communist Archadya you soustain:
>(a) It's the type of argument that was used for justificate the totalitarian
>"socialisms" of USSR, etc: Don't worry about current sacrificies, sooner or
>later you will be absoluty happy when I (the burocratic State) removed the
>obstacles for communism.
<cut>
>Of course I know you are not one who will love russian "socialism". But your
>ARGUMENTS perhaps are in that direction...

This argument I find rather strange.

In fact stalinism had to rewrite exactly this part of Marxist theory to
make it fit in with reality in stalinist Russia. In stead of arguing that
the state would "wither away" it argued that with socialism came an
intensification of class struggle. So what was needed was a *stronger*
state - not the state withering away.

(At the same time it was argued - in 1936 I think - that stalinist Russia
was now a communist, i.e. classless, society. The in-consistencies of
stalinist theory are innumerable...)

But the heart of the matter is that it was *not* this kind of arguments
that was used to justify stalinist terror. And I don't think they could be
used. The argument about the withering away of the state (and about
classless, communist society) is not - and can not be - an argument for
sacrifice. On the contrary it is an argument for human control and human
rationality.


I think it *can* be argued with some substance that we can't *know* if
socialism will mean the withering away of the state. The basic argument
will have to be that the "withering away" is a prediction, an extrapolation
of history as we know it. But the immediate consequence of such an argument
will also be that communism (in any marxist sense of the word) is impossible.

Faced with this kind of arguments I usually say that really we can't know.
But from all we know about history up to now - class and pre-class - I
think the basic argument of Marxism still stands. And FWIW, I am willing to
fight for it.


Yours

Jorn



--
Jorn Andersen

Internationale Socialister
Copenhagen, Denmark
IS-WWW: http://www2.dk-online.dk/users/is-dk/






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