On Fri, 19 Sep 1997, John Ransom wrote:
>
> When did he stop being synonymous with Marxism? Do you seriously mean to
> assert that you detect no serious tendencies toward exclusionary
> tactics and logic in the history of Marxist thought and practice?
*Synonymous* is much too strong a word here, either way. Stalin was a
gangster from Georgia *and* someone who fancied himself, perhaps, a
marxist. Certainly he wrote about it, and took it in his own way.
Stupidly, indeed tragically so. Tendencies within? Sure, but not much is
there, regardless, as to what the transition would be like, let alone
policy-level specifics. Many other, potentially positive -- as opposed
to the potenialities actualized by a Stalin -- tendencies? You bet. Why
shouldn't those few pages in Marx in re. "the transition" be read via the
template of "poststructuralist" textuality? NOt to mention the volumes
of his "other" writings?
>
> I mean, really, at a certain point it just doesn't work to say, "Hey man,
> Stalin was just one guy working in unfavorable conditions! He distorted
> the original truth of Marxism! Oh, sure they had a Gulag, a tightly
> controlled press, purge trials that made Kafka's castle look like a
> friendly and accessible theme park, suppression of all opposition views,
> campaigns to eliminate whole classes, a population that spied on each
> other at the behest of the secret police, fabrication of an anti-Jewish
> 'doctors' plot,' and on and on but that doesn't say anything about
> Marxism!" Against all that, what are we going to do? Mention Rosa
> Luxembourg? Karl Korsch? And then we can just carry on as before?
Again, we need to distinguish b/w the Stalin era and before. Not b/c
Staliin distorted the Truth of Marxism, or the Transition, but because
these Truths never did exist. See note above.
> What, after all, is Marxism's primary contribution to social theory? Lenin
> thought it was the following:
>
> Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the
> revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There
> corresponds to this also a political transition period in which
> the state can be nothing but *the revolutionary dictatorship of
> the proletariat*. (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme)
>
> In his letter to Weydemeyer of March 5, 1852 Marx underlines this point:
>
> What I did that was new was to prove: 1) that the *existence of
> classes* is only bound up with *particular historical phases
> in the development of production*, 2) that the class struggle
> necessarily leads to the *dictatorship of the proletariat*,
> 3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the
> transition to the *abolition of all classes* and to *a classless
> society*.
In all my years of studying things Marxist, or social or critical theory,
I've never seen this stuff pointed to as M's main contribution. Briefly,
and off the top of my head, I'd say his main contributions are signified
by: 1.) all truth claims must be grounded in particular social relations,
not least relations b/w classes 2.) historical materialism, and its
various methods, from M's historicism to hegelian marxists, to Gramsci,
to Althusser and beyond. None of this work, or Foucault's for that
matter, would be possible without Marx's first, and various steps. 3.)
the absolute general law of accumulation. 4.) the marxist take on
capital, or the Value-process. For better or worse, there is still no
better critique of capitalism, and to say this is not to pose as a
Base/Superstructure scientist.
>
> The task of this dictatorship is to eliminate the bourgeoisie--not
> necessarily through violence, of course, but through suspension of rights,
> education, and, most important, development of an economic system that
> killed their social roots. But it is not at all some incredibly unrelated
> leap for Lenin (and then Stalin and Mao and every other big Marxist I can
> think of right now) to say that the bourgeoisie installs itself in our
> habits, can even infect party members and leaders, gives rebirth to itself
> constantly in the massive, lower regions of the economy, and thus requires
> the kind of puritanical "Law of Suspects" approach that characterized
> every self-respecting socialist state this century!
>
> Best wishes,
>
> --John
I would disagree with the extent, the causes, and "puritanical" nature of
this Law. Moreover, I still see no reason not to take on this task, and
I actually like how you've characterized "the bourgeoisie"'s spectre or
process of infection. But only if "the bourgeoisie" in this sentence is
more of a force, a complex of forces and social relations and
rationalities. So, to give due credit to Lenin, that is quite a leap;
but so too, to read him as the originator of that Law is I think inaccurate.
As for the "dictatorship" -stuff, the word choice was always a strategic
and polemical one, and one which apparently retains much of its force.
None of this is to imply that the form of Lenin's (or Marx's) politics in
re. The Transition is some model we North Americans ought to follow. But
in its own context, and for its own reasons, I have to ultimately affirm
them and their histories. I'm not sure how productive it is to push
these debates without contextualizing things. Not that I'm the man for that.
In solidarity (?!),
Daniel Vukovich