>>> "rc-am" <rcollins at netlink.com.au> 10/06/99 02:07AM >>>
hey Chaz,
an excerpt from a wildcat article in another post, but a general response to your comments here.
1. why do you keep posing the connections between Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Lenin as a succession akin to that of the popes? is all we do "augment" and "develop", or is this also a process of critique and discontinuity, wrought by the force of changing circumstances, as much evident in the writings of (say) Marx and Lenin as between them?
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Charles: Why do you keep thinkng of the notion of scientific discipline in Marxism and connections between successive scientists as analogous to religious dogma , such as your reference to the pope above ? I am so tired of your self-serving , insulting claims that my arguments are more like religion than yours.
As a matter of fact since idealism reduces to the equivalent to religion, it is your arguments that are more like those of a pope.
Your arguments are not more creative, less religioius, more open minded or whatever it is you think they are than mine.
Yes, until capitalism is overthrown, much of valid social science ( or whatever you call what you are doing) retains the fundamental concepts developed by Marx and Engels, and then developed by Lenin, et al. This is no more religious than continuing to believe the earth is round or that within a certain range f = ma , but in a larger picture e = m (c squared).
I repeat. Your arguments are more religious than mine are. I am the atheist, materialist, creative, non-dogmatist, scientist. You are not.
And another point, there isn't a succession between Kautsky and Lenin. They were opponents in argument. My connecting Kautsky with the "papal line" is non-Leninist,non-dogmatic Leninism.
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2. i said i had not seen any analysis of class struggle in the accounts of the war in Yugoslavia and indonesia by those who wanted to pose most emphatically as marxists.
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Charles: Well , maybe you don't read my posts. I am emphatically a Marxist. And I made arguments on the imperialist economic basis of the war on Yugoslavia. Other marxists did too.
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i did not say i thought these were in fact marxists or indeed that they were the only marxists on the list, did i?
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Charles: What ?
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positioning oneself on the terrain of a particular legitimation tends to arise out of rhetorical requirements rather than fact. call me perverse, but it's not a game i would myself take seriously.
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Charles: I don't know what you mean. Sounds like something from a papal encyclical ((((((((((((((
> Charles: Lenin's analysis in _Imperialism_ , augmented by the historical
developments of the last 80 years makes the links between analysis of
imperialist nation-states, colonial and neo-colonial nation states,
labor/capital, class struggle and surplus-value. There have been plenty of
non-ultra left applications of this to recent and historical events in E.
Timor and Yugoslavia. This was why Marxists on these lists were arguing
against those who denied an economic motive for the U.S./NATO actions, for
example.<
not quite, chaz. you tried to locate economic motives in the reductive sense of booty (ie., territorial grabs for resources), as did others who haven't to my knowledge called themselves marxists. within that framework, things like the creation of a pool of cheapened labour (ie., surplus value and class struggle) seemed to disappear as an 'economic motive',
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Charles: Yes, quite. Why on earth would creation of a pool of cheapened labour seem to disappear as an economic motive ? Only in your mind does it seem to disappear.
Of course, the imperialists are trying to create the cheapest pool of labour in everything they do. Why would the war on Yugoslavia be an exception ?
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and indeed what i would think is amongst any marxist the priveliged 'economic motive'. other self-declared marxists were more content to line up according to which nationalism they saw as progressive, or more accurately, whether they had already decided that capitalist internationalism or anti-western imperialism was the strict principle. a very kautskyian manoevre, and one which like the disintegration of the Second International, gives no real indication of which 'national side' to support. it only says that one nationalism should be supported as the proxy of the class struggle.
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Charles: So what if some self-declared Marxists said that. That does not mean that no self-declared Marxists said otherwise. You said you hadn't seen any. "Some", not "all" , constitutes "any" in basic logic
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all this was in stark contrast to the analyses in
"Class Decomposition In The New World Order: Yugoslavia Unravelled" by Aufheben. http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/aut_html/Aufheben/yugo.html
or "Yugoslavia: from wage cuts to war" by Radical Chains. http://www.webcom.com/wildcat/Yugoslavia.html
both of these offered a non-kautskyian, but i would say eminently marxist, account of the conditions of that war. as i said before, less lenin more marx, specifically the marx of "Class struggles in France".
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Charles: What is an "eminently marxist" account in contrast with Kautsky if not Leninist ? You contradict your first statement above. "Eminently marxist" sounds like something analogous to the pope.
The Kautsky part is that imperialism has become ultra-imperialism, not supporting your own bourgeoisie. My slogan was "get the goddamn U.S. out of everywhere"
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> Charles; See also, _The State and Revolution_ on the connection between
surplus value and capital as a political-economic figuration. The state is
an apparatus for the repression of one class by another. <
Pope Angela: well, you know i have a penchant for "S&R"... but i don't think i ever saw this analysis emerge in discussions of, for instance, the Yugoslavian state by those who could not raise it because they had already decided to bury any critique of Yugoslavia under the ostensibly propagandistic obligations of opposing NATO.
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Charles: S&R does not focus on the colonialism. Not only that, it is before the colonies had liberations and established semi-independent states. It is also before the socialist Yugoslavian state existed. It is also before the imperialist states formed the military alliance of imperialist states called NATO. The basic point is NATO is one of the biggest, capitalist repressive apparatuses there is. The Yugoslavian repressive apparatus may not be with the working class, but it is small time anti-working class compared to NATO.
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Charles
> Actually, the current world situation is a form of Kautsky's theory of
ultra-imperialism. Imperialism has radically reduced its inter-imperialist
rivalry from that period, a possibility that Kautsky foresaw.<
Angela: what i never understood about Lenin's pamphlet, "The Bankruptcy of the Second International and the Renegade Kautsky", was just how superficial it was. Lenin more or less accused Kautsky of a betrayal, but it seems to me that the collapse of the Second International into nationalism was exactly premised on a certain fidelity to Kaustky's analysis of imperialism. that fidelity is also apparent amongst those who in recent times have argued from the perspective of nationalism contra globalisation; or who (whilst taking apparently opposing positions on whether imperialism or petty nationalism is progressive, now coded as 'for or against intervention') continue to use kautsky's analysis without bearing in mind the consequences of such an analysis for the Second International: ie., it's collapse into celebrants in the slaughter of 'other nations' ' proletarians...
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Charles: I am not saying Kautsky was correct in 1914. Lenin's critique was correct. But Lenin's critique was not that there could not be ultra-imperialism, but that it wouldn't automatically turn into socialism. The Russian Revolution and establishment of the Soviet Union actually prevented ultra-imperialism from coming about in that era. But now with the collapse of the SU, imperialism has gone onto ultra-imperialism. Thus, Kautsky's objective observation about the tendency of imperialism was correct, except he was wrong about the relationship of that to becoming socialism.
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Charles
> We have to supplement Lenin and Kautsky with facts and theory of the
history since their period. Central to this is the history of the Soviet
Union and other socialist countries, and their struggle with imperialist
nations, and the liberation of the whole paleo-colonial system, and its
replacement by neo-colonialist relations. The export of capital ,
transnational finance capital ( expressed in neo-colonial control by debt)
and counter-revolutionary wars (use of the bourgeois state apparatus to
repress the exploited classes in the neo-colonies) against national
liberation movements to protect transnational capital are major factors in
the connection between nation-states , capital and surplus-value.<
Angela: umm... i take it you've noticed that the USSR is no more? looks to me like the counter-revolution has pretty well been accomplished, and no small thanks goes to the strategies of 'socialism in one country'.
Charles: Umm, I think you don't get what I mean. See above , the collapse of the USSR is exactly why now the path that Kautsky mentioned has occurred.
Why would the Soviet Union want to have socialism in only one country ? That is ridiculous. Lenin premised his whole approach on a revolution occurring in an "advanced capitalist" country (besides Russia), and a world socialist revolution. The idea that Leninists were trying to prevent revolutions in other countries is too non-sensical to treat seriously. They knew full well that their revolution was doomed if they had to take on the whole advanced capitalist world. It is amazing that the Soviet Union was able to hold on as long as it did.
The failure of revolution outside of Russia in Europe or America is NOT the fault of the Soviet communists or workers. That world threatening failure lies with the communist and workers of the advanced capitalist countries.
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and what 'national liberation movements' today would you cite as containing a socialist promise or premise?
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Charles: China, Viet Nam, Korea, Cuba.
CB