Anyway, there are three possible senses in which Marx's views have a streak of economic determinsim. None has any connection with Marx's anti-anarchsim, his ideal that the first task of the proletariat is winning the battle of democracy (as he puts it) and setting upa workers state.
The first sense (see the 1859 Preface) is the thesis that societies go through a sequence of stages of revolutionary change driven by the development of the productive forces, revolution happening when the forces are fettered by relations of production. This idea does not mention the state at all or say anything about the form of a revolution, just discusses when they revolutions will occur (when the forces are fettered by the relations). This is not Marx's only view of revolution, however. His other views, not obviosuly consistent, is the class struggle picture of the Manifesto, a theory taht does not refer to fettering the forces of production.
The second sense is the base-superstructure thesis, that the state, ideology, philosophy, and culture generally depend upon and are poartly explained by the relations of production. This is hard to characterize as ecopnomic determinism, because Marx emphasizes that unlike the connection between the forces and relations of production, the connection between the superstructurea nd the base is pretty loose. Of course there is language in the German Ideology that suggests otherwise, that philosophy and the rest of ideology "retain no independence" are are mere "reflexes" of men's material life. But he never says that abiyt the state. In any event, even if the state itself were a mere reflex of the relations of production, that would not say anything about whether ir ought to be seized or smashed or both in a revolution.
The third is the claim that the collapse of capitalism, the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist state, and the withering away of the state (Engels' phrase not Marx's, btw), are inevitable, and more geberally that the sequence of stages in the first sense is inevitable. Marx sometimes talks like this, e.g., the end of Capital, the passage in the Manifesto where he talks about inevitabilkity. But sometimes he doesn't, e.g., the passage in the Manifesto noting that a revolutionary situation can end in the common ruin if the contending classes. In my view, nothing is lost in Marx if all the inevitability clkaims are dropped. But even if they are not, nothing in the idea that socialist revolution is inevitable commits Marx to saying that it must take a particuklar form with respect to the state. What makes the revolution socialist is that the workers control the means of production. If they can do so without state action, it's still a socialist revolution.
Therefore, Marx has an ambiguous relation with economic determinism. He sometimes holds three things that might be so characterized. He sometimes rejects those views for noneconomic-determinist alternatives. But nothing in any of his economic determisnit views,s ucha s they are, commits him to a particular view about the existence or nature of a workers state. His views on that dimension seem to be derived in part from observation of the conduct and aims of workeres movements, e.g., the Commune, and in part from general considerations of a tactical nature that are not rooted in historical materialism.
Those views might be wrong. But they should be criticized for what they are, without the red herring, you'll excuse the expression of economic determinism. Your idea that the Marxist revolutions have not panned out, so MArx's theory of state is wrong, is a better way of going at it, but the brush is to broad. It does not explain the connection between that theory and the failures of the revolutions. The failures might be due to something else.
Btw, what doi you attribrute the failure of anarchist revolutions to, or the lack of such revolutions (apart from Spain 1936-37)?
jks
jks
- <P>When I was referring to Marxism being economically determinist, I was referring directly to the writings of Marx himself, and how they were at odds with the clearly anti-determinist philosophy of Bakunin.
. . . <P> The characterization was of Marx's writings in and of themselves... and the only current of Marxism you've named above that has any serious weight is probably of the Gramsci variety, although this has prominance primarily in academic circles and little to no influence amongst the working class of any country.</P> <DIV></DIV> . . . . </EM></P> <P>I never denied Marxists want a social revolution as well. What I said is that they believed the social revolution was seperablew from the economic, and that both could be undertaken *after* a supposed political revolution. This is the idea I fundamentally oppose and anarchism itself clashes with.
Indeed marxists hold that you need a political revolution before a social one to overcome burgeois resistance... so far the failure of every Marxist revolution in history, along developmental lines Bakunin laid out in theory for their failure half a century before any such revolutions took place, is testament to the bankruptcy of this claim.</P> <P>It's not 'anti-determinist' because hte political institutions are determined (according to Marx which Lenin concurs with in The State and Revolution) by the historical material realities that have produced them. The idea that the "withering away" of the state is an inevitability, just as Marxist revolution is an inevitability, is fundamentally economically deterministic.</P></div><br clear=all><hr>The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and <a href="http://g.msn.com/8HMOEN/2019">2 months FREE*. </a> </html>
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