>However, I do know something about Marxism; I used to teach it when
>I was a professor,
>[...]
>Moreover, Marxists also want a social revolution that well eliminate
>classes; the Marxist commitment to political revolution (not a
>Marxist term, btw, Marxists say: to making the working class the
>ruling class) is undergirded by a belief that conquest of state
>power is necessary to make and defend a social revolution.
Not all Marxists, as a teacher of Marxism in America you ought to know that the only strain of Marxism native to America, the De Leonists, were anti-state. They called for a symbolic capture of state power, but once captured they said the sole function of the state was to immediately dissolve itself.
Another interesting feature of De Leonism was its insistence on socialism being achieved democratically, in fact the purpose served by capturing state power, through democratic elections, was merely to demonstrate that abolition of capitalism and the political state was the express will of the majority. Only once this democratic mandate had been achieved, De Leon argued, did the working class have the right to seize the means of production through their industrial unions. (Though the insistence on democratic means was not merely based on morality, it was primarily strategic.) De Leon did not see any need for state power to defend this revolution. (Stripped of its economic power and lacking any democratic legitimacy, the small minority of former capitalists would have constituted little threat.) Or indeed to make a revolution, the working class already occupied the means of production and simply needed to formally take control through the democratic processes of their union, rather than take orders from capitalist owners.
Oddly enough, or so it seems to me, De Leon's bitterest foes were the anarchists, who were outraged by the notion of seeking a democratic mandate for social revolution.
>Economic determinism has nothing to do with this, either in the
>sense that revolutions are supposed to occur when the social
>relations fetter the forces of production, or that the economic
>relations of production somehow expalin the ideological and
>political superstructure. Rather it's supposed to be a sociological
>fact about what's required to overcome bourgeois resistance and get
>the new instititions off the ground. Indeed, it's an
>anti-determinsit point in the sdecond sense: here the political
>institutions determined the social relations of production.
>
>Hope this clarifies things a bit.
Not really. So far as I can see, NA's charge of "determinism" is merely a misunderstanding. He/she confuses the concept that certain conditions are required in order for socialism to be possible, for a the notion that once those certain conditions are met, socialism will inevitably follow. As you say, it is merely stating the obvious to say that material conditions determine possibilities, it is not a proposition that anyone could sensibly oppose. But some people do get it into their head that it means something more profound, that it means socialism is somehow inevitable once the material conditions are in place. As if there were some kind of cosmic plan.
But it doesn't mean that, so NA's charge of "determinism" is based on a misconception.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20030107/e6f6e733/attachment.htm>