On Fri, 19 Sep 1997, Daniel Frederick Vukovich wrote:
>
>
> 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 think there is more in Marxism that nudges it in the direction of a
puritanical "carthartic" approach to the world than you do. I see Marxism
and the socialist movements that came out of it as a fairly
straightforward secular expression of the human will-to-transcendence.
(One is reminded again of Foucault's introductory essay on Bataille that
discussed the theme of transgression.) Religious believers want to
transcend this world to an afterlife of justice and bliss. This desire is
stoked to such proportions that believers turn into fanatics and attempt
to purge the world of those who do not fit their image of Humanity, the
New Man, and so on. After the Golden Calf episode, Moses had a huge number
of people killed; the idea being that the community simply had to be
cleansed of these people who kept dragging the Jewish people back
ideologically. God Himself conducts a few purges of His own. Revolutionary
movements share this hostility to the world as-it-is but exercise it with
much more intensity than religionists, who at least have the afterworld to
contemplate.
But we look at Stalin and we say, "well, he's just a brute! He never truly
shared this kind of religious intensity; never believed in the
revolutionary vision -- he was just a thug." This is (in part) Trotsky's
view. But perhaps the evidence to focus on is not Stalin himself but
rather on those who were much more genuinely religious than he was. Both
within and without the USSR Stalin was very much thought to be
"synonymous" with Marxism (and Leninism) by a lot of people and for a very
long time. If Stalin was a thug, how do we explain the adoration of this
thug and his system by (for instance) much less thug-like Western
intellectuals? Remember Foucault (paraphrasing Kant) says that the
important thing about the French Revolution was not the event itself but
rather the affect it had on those who observed it; on their sense of
optimism and attitude toward change. We could say the same: the important
thing in determining Marxism's relation to cathartic politics is not who
Stalin was and what he did so much as the attitudes and rationales of
those who enthusiastically (in the religious sense) supported him for so
long.
And the answer of course is: they thought that Stalin was a tool of the
Absolute Spirit (not that they put it that way to themselves). After all,
as Hegel pointed out, the pages of history are blood-splattered! All sorts
of "innocent flowers" have to be crushed if Spirit is going to attain the
next level of Self-Consciousness. Marxism takes over this transcendent
logic from Hegel. Of course, many did not even make it to this level of
analysis and were so taken in that they thought Stalin was the embodied
Self-Consciousness of Spirit.
Hoping everyone is well,
--John
>
>
> >
> > 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
>
>
>
> 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 think there is more in Marxism that nudges it in the direction of a
puritanical "carthartic" approach to the world than you do. I see Marxism
and the socialist movements that came out of it as a fairly
straightforward secular expression of the human will-to-transcendence.
(One is reminded again of Foucault's introductory essay on Bataille that
discussed the theme of transgression.) Religious believers want to
transcend this world to an afterlife of justice and bliss. This desire is
stoked to such proportions that believers turn into fanatics and attempt
to purge the world of those who do not fit their image of Humanity, the
New Man, and so on. After the Golden Calf episode, Moses had a huge number
of people killed; the idea being that the community simply had to be
cleansed of these people who kept dragging the Jewish people back
ideologically. God Himself conducts a few purges of His own. Revolutionary
movements share this hostility to the world as-it-is but exercise it with
much more intensity than religionists, who at least have the afterworld to
contemplate.
But we look at Stalin and we say, "well, he's just a brute! He never truly
shared this kind of religious intensity; never believed in the
revolutionary vision -- he was just a thug." This is (in part) Trotsky's
view. But perhaps the evidence to focus on is not Stalin himself but
rather on those who were much more genuinely religious than he was. Both
within and without the USSR Stalin was very much thought to be
"synonymous" with Marxism (and Leninism) by a lot of people and for a very
long time. If Stalin was a thug, how do we explain the adoration of this
thug and his system by (for instance) much less thug-like Western
intellectuals? Remember Foucault (paraphrasing Kant) says that the
important thing about the French Revolution was not the event itself but
rather the affect it had on those who observed it; on their sense of
optimism and attitude toward change. We could say the same: the important
thing in determining Marxism's relation to cathartic politics is not who
Stalin was and what he did so much as the attitudes and rationales of
those who enthusiastically (in the religious sense) supported him for so
long.
And the answer of course is: they thought that Stalin was a tool of the
Absolute Spirit (not that they put it that way to themselves). After all,
as Hegel pointed out, the pages of history are blood-splattered! All sorts
of "innocent flowers" have to be crushed if Spirit is going to attain the
next level of Self-Consciousness. Marxism takes over this transcendent
logic from Hegel. Of course, many did not even make it to this level of
analysis and were so taken in that they thought Stalin was the embodied
Self-Consciousness of Spirit.
Hoping everyone is well,
--John
>
>
> >
> > 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
>