RES: The heart of a leftist/Last time

Alexandre Fenelon afenelon at zaz.com.br
Thu Jul 13 19:34:26 PDT 2000


-----Mensagem original----- De: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]Em nome de Brad De Long Enviada em: quinta-feira, 13 de julho de 2000 03:23 Para: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Assunto: Re: The heart of a leftist/Last time

Any split that leaves Pol Pot on the other side sounds like a very good idea...

And recall that the people who "worked out the future in the future" created a politics reminiscent of Nero and thought that the key to economics was to combine some of the least attractive features of serfdom with some of the least attractive features of the German World War I economy. They were *desperately* in need of guidance, and did not get it.

Just one little Utopian speech laying out a future Communist society with--I don't know--a bicameral legislature with chambers elected on the basis of industry and of domicile? Immediate potential recall and replacement of representatives? Freedom of the press? Rotating capital funds offering everyone a chance to plan a new enterprise? Selection of high political officials by lot? Anything more specific and less mushy than the "Critique of the Gotha Program" might well have saved a lot of people.

Brad DeLong

-Do you really believe that this little Utopian speech would have saved -a lot of people? Lenin, in his "State and Revolution" delineated a -semi-anarchist program that was never put into practice. This was a -little utopian book at all...The problem with USSR style socialism was -the fact that in Russia there weren´t the necessary condictions to build -a socialist society. As Lenin and Trotsky knew, the success of Russian -revolution was dependent upon an international revolution. There are -some proofs of this (see, for instance, the speech of Trotsky replying -to Avílov, a left wing Mensheviks in "Ten days that shock the world" or -Lenin, replying to Plekhanov that the international revolution was the -only way to avoid the risks of regression to Asian style despotism, that -the Plekhanov feared). I believe that the Bolshevisks expected the victory -of a international revolution or their own defeat. Alternative 3, the -victory in Russia and defeat in Europe was simply not considered. And -was this result that eventually doomed the Russian revolution, since the -task of building a socialist society in a pre capitalist country was simply -not possible. As the result of this contradiction, we have and hybrid -capitalist-socialist regimen, combining the collective property of production -means with the worst aspects of early capitalist exploitation (famine, -repression, expropriation of peasants, etc...there is a remarkable -resemblance between USSR Stalinism and the processes describe by Rosa -Luxembourg in "The Accumulation of Capital". Two authors have written -interesting works on this: Trótsky (Revolution betrayed) and Robert Kurz -(The collapse of modernization). This latter is a very interesting one, -since he qualifies the USSR Socialism as a kind of burgueoise modernization, -tracking its origins to Ficthe more than Marx. However, I agree with you -that the marxists should work better the democracy question. But I doubt -if it could have saved the Russian revolution, given the specific conditions -of Russia in 1917. -Btw: There is some recent works that cast in doubt the potrait we have from -Nero. He wasn´t responsible for Roma´s fire, made a lot of laws to protect -slaves and did a great job in rebuilding the city after the fire. The -killing of Christhians did happen, but there was 900 people executed. Not -a horrible score if you compare it with Texas, or with Brazil, for instance...

Alexandre Fenelon



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list