> The Marxist view, that the world socialist revolution was upon us
> and that
> history was unfolding as it should, which gained much impetus after
> the
> Russian Revolution, was not vindicated by the twentieth century,
> particularly as it came to a close with the demise of the USSR, the
> turn to
> capitalism in China, the clear evidence that capitalism had not
> "exhausted
> it's historic possibilities", and the decline of the once powerful
> trade
> unions and socialist parties in the advanced capitalist countries in
> the
> West, where the revolution was expected to begin. At best, the early
> Marxist
> belief in an inevitable and imminent world revolution which would do
> away
> with private ownership and capitalist social relations was
> historically
> premature.
>
> As you know, I've made these observations many times before. I plead
> not
> guilty, your honour, to charges of ontology, teleology, metaphysics,
> and
> metanarrative.
Any particular understanding of social phenomena necessarily embodies ontological and anthropological premises.
Unrecognized, these make approaches to understanding grounded in different premises impenetrable.
The Russian and Chinese revolutions, for instance, were not characterized by the kind of "revolutionary praxis" that, on Marx's ontological and anthropological premises, the creation of "socialism" requires.
When these premises are taken into account, the Russian revolution and its consequences falsify Marx's 1881 speculations about relations in the Russian peasant commune.
The speculations concern the consistency of those relations with those required for the development of the individual "powers" - the individual degree of "enlightenment" - "necessary" to enable individuals to initiate the kind of "revolutionary praxis" that then further "educates" them to the degree necessary to enable them to "appropriate" the the degree of "universality" of mind objectified in the "productive forces" developed within capitalism outside Russia and use them as means to build "socialism" without having themselves to pass through "capitalism".
They assume that the creation of "socialism" requires an "individuality" with degree of developed intellectual and other "powers" required first to build "socialism" in the mind and then to build it in reality, building in this way being what distinguishes even the worst "architect" from the best of bees.
They (in one sense) also make evident that essential aspects of the ontological and anthropological premises underpinning Marx's early ideas about "necessity" and "freedom" were never abandoned.
These include the idea of the relation of "freedom" to "necessity" elaborated by Engels in Anti-Duhring and the idea of the "necessity" of fully developed powers for the actualization of "freedom" in this sense, the "powers" whose development as an "end in itself" Marx, in Capital vol. III, makes a defining characteristic of "the true realm of freedom".
The conception of these "powers" as "necessitating" specific relations for their full development then explains the treatment of human history as a set of "necessary" stages in an "educational" process "necessary" to develop them, i.,e. its treatment as a set of "stages in the development of the human mind", in the development of "enlightenment".
This idea of "necessity" allows for the "contingency" pointed to in the speculations about the Russian peasant commune, i.e. the speculations assume non-capitalist conditions can develop the "powers" required to initiate the revolutionary "praxis" that then "fits" individuals for the "appropriation" of the "productive forces" developed within capitalism, "productivee forces" understood as objectifications of the development of mind - the development of "enlightenment" - facilitated by capitalism.
It retains, however, the idea that the building of "socialism" in Marx's sense requires developed intellectual and other "powers" and that "revolutionary praxis" plays an essential role in this development (in this "education") an idea elaborated in the following passage from the German Ideology of 1845/46.
"Thus things have now come to such a pass that the individuals must appropriate the existing totality of productive forces, not only to achieve self-activity, but, also, merely to safeguard their very existence. This appropriation is first determined by the object to be appropriated, the productive forces, which have been developed to a totality and which only exist within a universal intercourse. From this aspect alone, therefore, this appropriation must have a universal character corresponding to the productive forces and the intercourse.
"The appropriation of these forces is itself nothing more than the development of the individual capacities corresponding to the material instruments of production. The appropriation of a totality of instruments of production is, for this very reason, the development of a totality of capacities in the individuals themselves.
"This appropriation [of the forces of production developed in capitalism] is further determined by the persons appropriating. Only the proletarians of the present day, who are completely shut off from all self-activity, are in a position to achieve a complete and no longer restricted self-activity, which consists in the appropriation of a totality of productive forces and in the thus postulated development of a totality of capacities. All earlier revolutionary appropriations were restricted; individuals, whose self-activity was restricted by a crude instrument of production and a limited intercourse, appropriated this crude instrument of production, and hence merely achieved a new state of limitation. Their instrument of production became their property, but they themselves remained subordinate to the division of labour and their own instrument of production. In all expropriations up to now, a mass of individuals remained subservient to a single instrument of production; in the appropriation by the proletarians, a mass of instruments of production must be made subject to each individual, and property to all. Modern universal intercourse can be controlled by individuals, therefore, only when controlled by all.
"This appropriation is further determined by the manner in which it must be effected. It can only be effected through a union, which by the character of the proletariat itself can again only be a universal one, and through a revolution, in which, on the one hand, the power of the earlier mode of production and intercourse and social organisation is overthrown, and, on the other hand, there develops the universal character and the energy of the proletariat, without which the revolution cannot be accomplished; and in which, further, the proletariat rids itself of everything that still clings to it from its previous position in society." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01d.htm
The main inconsistency of commune conditions with those "necessary" for the development of the requisite degree of individual "enlightenment" to which Marx points in 1881 is the condition of "isolation".
"There is one characteristic of the 'agricultural commune' in Russia which afflicts it with weakness, hostile in every sense. That is its isolation, the lack of connexion between the life of one commune and that of the others, this localised microcosm which is not encountered everywhere as an immanent characteristic of this type but which, wherever it is found, has caused a more or less centralised despotism to arise on top of the communes." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/03/zasulich1.htm>
This applies to these conditions the claim in the German Ideology that
"the real intellectual wealth of the individual depends entirely on the wealth of his real connections. Only then [i.e. after "the overthrow of the existing state of society by the communist revolution"] will the separate individuals be liberated from the various national and local barriers, be brought into practical connection with the material and intellectual production of the whole world and be put in a position to acquire the capacity to enjoy this all-sided production of the whole earth (the creations of man). All- round dependence, this natural form of the world-historical co- operation of individuals, will be transformed by this communist revolution into the control and conscious mastery of these powers, which, born of the action of men on one another, have till now overawed and governed men as powers completely alien to them." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ ch01a.htm
>
This sublates Kant on the requirements for the development of "enlarged thinking" and on the relation of "enlarged thinking" to "enlightenment".
As does Kant, Marx, in these 1881 speculations, continues to connect "a more or less centralised despotism" to the absence of individual "enlightenment", to "superstition" and "prejudice". In particular, he repeats the connection between "isolation" and intellectual impoverishment to which he had pointed in his 1853 journalism on British rule in India.
"these idyllic village-communities, inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the solid foundation of Oriental despotism, that they restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/25.htm
The same point is made in his 1852 invoking of the "superstition" and "prejudice" of masses of French peasants as "responsible" for the despotism of the Bonaparte dynasty.
"The small-holding peasants form an enormous mass whose members live in similar conditions but without entering into manifold relations with each other. Their mode of production isolates them from one another instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch07.htm
In his 1843 letters to Ruge, "human being" is implicitly defined in terms of its potential for "enlightenment" so that support for despotism means absence of "human being" in this sense.
"The monarchical principle in general is the despised, the despicable, the dehumanised man; and Montesquieu was quite wrong to allege that it is honour [Montesquieu, De l'esprit des lois]. He gets out of the difficulty by distinguishing between monarchy, despotism and tyranny. But those are names for one and the same concept, and at most they denote differences in customs though the principle remains the same. Where the monarchical principle has a majority behind it, human beings constitute the minority; where the monarchical principle arouses no doubts, there human beings do not exist at all." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_05.htm>
Ted