On Nov 15, 2013, at 6:53 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> Shane: " A Polish "education?"
>
> [WS:] Typical American male arrogance cum provincial ethnocentrism
OK. Are you saying that the Polish Stalinists gave you an education
in Marxist theory? If so, that's my point. If not, then the question
remains: what qualifies you to pronounce on what is or is not the
Marxist theory of class--with specific reference to the historic
debates over the class nature of the USSR?
> -
> insults instead of arguments.
Is the following what you offer as an argument in defense of your view that the nomenklatura, being nearly totally dissociated from society, was not a ruling class in the Marxist sense?
> Is that what they teach in Yank "education"?
> I thought for a while you were a smart guy, but you are a Nicodemus
> Dyzma
I would have thought you knew the difference between an insult and an
argument. Guess not.
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 12:59 PM, Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Nov 14, 2013, at 12:29 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
>>
>> Shane: "Possible, yes. But wrong. The "Soviet system" was the
>> clearest
>>> example of direct class rule through the state apparatus. That
>>> class, the
>>> decisive elements of the apparatus, known to itself and all others
>>> as the
>>> "nomenklatura," ruled on its own behalf and, after the curtains
>>> came down
>>> on its "socialist" farce, continued to rule over all important
>>> parts of
>>> the empire: from the KGB colonel in the Kremlin to the Aliev
>>> dynasty in Baku
>>> to the various despots of the various Korruptistans. The
>>> Stalinist class
>>> system moved so smoothly from state-capitalism to state-monopoly-
>>> capitalism that some people, a
>>> quarter-century later and three-quarter-century after the definitive
>>> overthrow of the proletarian regime established by the November
>>> revolution, still call the FSU a "workers' state!"
>>>
>>> [WS:] How is it wrong fro chrissake? What you described is the
>>> nearly
>>> total dissociation of the state apparatus from society and its class
>>> structure
>>>
>>
>> To say that the people who make up the state apparatus--those
>> people with
>> the institutional authority to order the killing or jailing or
>> destitution
>> of other people--are not part of society and its class structure is
>> violative of all social science as well as common sense. It is
>> nothing more
>> than Hobbes's Stuart-apologetic "Leviathan."
>>
>> the Soviet nomenklatura is...not a class from a marxist
>> perspective...
>>>
>>
>> What entitles Wojtek to pronounce what is or isn't "a Marxist
>> perspective?"...Ever since its consolidation of power
>> in the Great Purge, Marxists have always regarded the nomenklatura
>> as an
>> incipient (Trotsky) or actual (CLR James) capitalist class. The class
>> character of the FSU has long since been "determined by history" (as
>> Trotsky said in 1940 would very soon be the case) and the historical
>> outcome fully visible today has determined, beyond a shadow of
>> doubt, that
>> its class character was capitalist.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Shane Mage
>>
>>
>> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
>> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
>> kindling in measures and going out in measures.
>>
>> Herakleitos of Ephesos
>>