Dddddd0814 at aol.com:
> Aah, but again you seem to be only looking at the capabilities of Russia in
> an of itself, and how it should have become as productive as Germany,
> Britain, etc. But, the fact is that Russia existed in a larger global sphere,
> where the competing, more powerful states of the West were constantly
> squeezing its productive capacity to insure that it remained
> "underdeveloped." The Tsar's economic accumulation did not benefit the
> plebeians of Russia, but the monarchic dynasties and global capital.
>
> Russia, existing in the global economic sphere as it did, would have simply
> stayed a backwards Eastern European or Slavic country (as it is once again
> becoming), had it not been for reformist Stalinism, protectionism and planned
> economies. Otherwise, we might just as well use the argument that
> contemporary India, since it is a "democratic capitalist" country with many
> "rich people," will soon enough advance to close to the level of the United
> States and Great Britain. Bullshit.
"Bullshit" isn't much of an argument. Witte was a Stalinist of some sort _avant_la_lettre_? As for protectionism and planned economies, many working capitalists are quite fond of them, even though "libertarians" froth at the mouth. I think Lenin had plenty to work with; I think his problems were political more than economic, chiefly the reorientation of the Bolsheviks from a revolutionary party to a self-serving elite. (But that's hardly news.) The theory that socialism can be instituted only by advanced capitalist nations, that is, those which are the least likely to do it, has not yet been proved, but the corruption of one-time revolutionaries into a ruling class is so common the observation is banal.
Dddddd0814 at aol.com:
> But anyway, I think it's quite clear that socialism, regardless of the
> relative level of development within, was a failure in Russia. The next step
> is to determine why. If our reasons don't go beyond liberal crocodile-tear
> moralism and the standard bourgeois axioms about how "power corrupts
> absolutely," then we're going to get nowhere fast.
I consider any accurate observation about the corruption, or rather the elaboration, of power to be in my personal self-interest. It has nothing to do with moralizing and everything to do with my ability (as well as everyone else's) to work my will and pursue my interests. A critique of the deterioration of the situation in the post-revolutionary Soviet Union, as to why socialism and democracy failed there after 1917, must include an analysis of the political structures and processes which enabled a sociopathic monster to get control of a huge country and destroy most of its constructive and progressive social life as well as a large number of its citizens. There is no point in explaining this as the result of scarcity when we observe people setting the political stage for precisely this sort of succession.
I suppose the _bourgeois_ quality of Lord Acton's remark lies in the bourgeoisie's understanding that, being in the business of domination, accumulation, and self-aggrandizement, they must be careful to watch one another. If the only alternative to this distributed public watchfulness is the organization of secret police (Cheka in December, 1917) with the power to torture and execute without trial, followed unsurprisingly by the rise of someone like Stalin, then the vigilance seems like a good practice, but one which should be more widely distributed, and go further, from bourgeois vigilance to active criticism, resistance, subversion and sabotage on an anarchistic level.
Gordon:
> "On the other hand, as people get more and more
> stuff, they become more and more glued to capitalism (usually).
> They seem _more_, rather than less insecure. So the route to
> socialism or communism by means of capitalism appears obscure;
> something is missing from the map. Or it may be that high
> capitalism isn't the best way to get rid of or move beyond
> capitalism. I'm proposing a question, not issuing a
> prescription. I'm observing that certain received ideas
> don't entirely match up to what we observe."
David:
> What you are observing is one of the primary forces in the dialectic: i.e.,
> that when people get a little, they want more. This is one of the fundamental
> contradictions of capitalism: never have so many people *had* a little bit of
> *something*, and this is what allows them to struggle for more. The large
> bulk of people who want more are the workers and poor, not the capitalists.
> Thus capitalism, in the developed countries especially, provides a genuine
> mass movement for socialism.
Where is this mass movement at the moment? What about the millions who say they don't want more, they want some time off, or, if they must work, less crappy jobs? (_More_ isn't going to get them time off by itself; the per capita gross product has increased many times over since the 8-hour workday became customary, but the 8-hour workday remains, probably because it maximizes production-consumption.)
David:
> And besides, if anything at all here is "matching up to what we observe", it
> is those same observation by Marx which run throughout his work: that
> unevenness of development is a primary feature of capitalist society
> globally. This is not a matter of "obscurity" or "received ideas," but the
> objective fact that a large complex material basis is required for
> international socialism. But this is only possible when the means of
> production are put into the hands of the workers themselves.
I don't see this; it's just being asserted. _Why_ is a large complex material base necessary? billbartlett says it's because a certain level of production gives people the possibility of security, but we never see this security appearing. Instead, the more stuff people have, the more insecure they seem to feel -- and probably are -- and the less likely they are to be attracted to socialistic or communistic modes of social organization.
The more capitalism, the more wealth, inequality, _and_ insecurity, therefore, the less likely a move toward socialism. Marx theorized at one point that capitalist systems would collapse because of the immiseration of the proletariat who would be driven to revolt, but the bourgeoisie don't have to immiserate the proletariat after all, because they've learned how to manufacture as much scarcity as the need to keep the system going.
But if you could sabotage scarcity production, maybe a lot of people would take a walk. And then you'd have the beginning of a revolution.
-- Gordon