On anti-imperialism [very long post]
Julio Huato
members will recognize the author. If you don't and are interested in
locating the source, please e-mail me off-list. (Between * designates
Italics from the author. Between _ designates my emphasis.
Unbracketed ellipsis ... indicating quote discontinuity are the
author's while bracketed ones [...] are mine.)
IMHO, this is one of the most thought-provoking works in the classical
Marxist tradition ever written. In the best intellectual tradition of
Marx and Engels, the author grappled deeply and seriously with the
existing conditions and ideologies, acknowledging their rationales,
following their logic to the point where they forced him to a deeper
and broader understanding of the issues. Like Marx's best works, it
shows readers how a an engaged mind, committed to the struggle, sorts
things out.
I read it fresh in 1979, almost as soon as its Spanish version became
available in Mexico. The first few chapters were divulged first in a
short-lived Marxist journal named Teoría y Política published by a
group of South American exiles. The entire work followed under
Alfaguara. I re-read it a few times as an undergrad student in Cuba
and discussed it at length with friends from -- I believe -- at least
four continents, although I can now see how one-sided my concerns
were. While some friends got really agitated about some of the -- IMO
rather subsidiary -- propositions advanced in the work, some rendered
irrelevant by subsequent developments (the bulk of the work is devoted
to a critique of the Soviet socialist formation), the passages below
taken on their own have maintained a large measure of relevance (not
necessarily validity) all along.
The tension at the center of the quoted section below has been
splitting Marxists since Marx & Engels's times (e.g. the Irish and
Slavic question). On a formal level, the issue reappeared in the late
19th century/early 20th century chasm between the early
social-democrats (Lenin, Plekhanov, etc.) and the narodniki. (As
shown below, on this matter, Lenin himself experienced a 180 degree
turn over his political life. Just keep in mind the early concerns
Lenin had about proving the political relevance of the social
democracy in Russia in the light of Russia's backwardness. The young
Lenin wasn't emphasizing the lack of capitalist development in Russia,
but precisely the opposite. Naturally, with his responsibilities as
head of the Soviet state, in the middle of a civil war, after a
devastating world war, things looked quite differently.) At a deeper
level, though, the controversy had intrinsic intellectual roots in
Russian history (and other "backward" places), dating back to the
conflict between the liberal modernizers and the ancestors of the
populists. In their historical essays, E.H. Carr and Isaac Deutscher
discussed the matter in some detail. Rosa Luxemburg clashed with the
Polish, Galician, and Baltic nationalists on this very issue. Etc.
My decision to post these passages in extenso is, of course, prompted
by the current debate re. the Mousavi-Ahmedinajad conflict.
IMO, the ideological cloak of the anti-imperialist struggle is
secondary. The key thing is the social character of the movement and
its *objective logic* (if I'm allowed to use that old Hegelian
formula). It is of course twisted, ironic and shameful, historically
speaking, that the global discredit of Marxism and -- more tragically
and decisively -- the mechanical suppression of Marxists and
socialists in central Asia and the Middle East (including here
repression conducted by the very forces that now appear to lead the
anti-imperialist resistance, blemishes and all) have limited its role
in the local anti-imperialist struggles, which have turned instead to
the ideological straight-jacketed form of political Islam.
However, secondary doesn't mean unimportant. If the strictures of the
religious integument have dulled beyond a point the anti-imperialism
it portends, all bets are off. In that case, the triumph of the
popular movement excited by Mir Hossein Mousavi or the aftermath may
turn out to be the necessary precondition for a better political
framework for the anti-imperialist struggle in Iran. I'd think that
the risk has diminished with time, but history shows (including the
history of Iran!) that even a large nation has difficulty escaping
subordination to imperialism. It's not clear to me from my distance
and ignorance whether this is already the case in Iran. It does
disturb me to see the excited support that the Mousavi movement has
elicited among the always suspect Western establishment. But that's
not decisive.
I have no answer to the vexing question. The matter is complex. No
kidding. The left in, say, the West doesn't need to settle it as a
precondition to unite in the local struggles ahead. Nothing human
should be alien to us, but too much rancor in disputes that do not
strictly pertain to our present and immediate circumstance strike me
as a cop out. I'm hoping the quotes below highlight the inherent
difficulty of the questions involved and humble us all a little. My
mind on this has shifted and will continue to shift. Back and forth.
And shifts on this tend to be wide pendulum swings, since many
important conclusions follow from each alternative stance. But, "Only
dead minds don't oscillate," wrote Isaac Deutscher.
For example, during the 1990s, I took some distance from the reasoning
below. Stuff related to my own personal trajectory, in Mexico in the
early 1990s (after the Soviet Union failed), and then in the U.S.
under Clinton. At the time, I remember discounting heavily Chomsky's
categorical views on the militaristic slant of U.S. capital with
regards to foreign and domestic policy. (In fairness, I'm referring
to things Chomsky wrote prompted by the late 1980s Persian Gulf war,
which I read with the benefit of the mid 1990s hindsight.)
Assuming the inherently antagonistic form in which capitalism
dissolves old conditions and introduces new ones, I thought (and still
think) that the "neoliberal" globalization offered Mexico and other
nations in Latin America a mixed bag that included opportunities for
reducing international inequality. It wasn't automatic, but it was
possible. In my mind, it was something like a recurrence of the
1850s-1910s expansion of Western capitalism. In Mexico, in the early
1990s, the whole thing appeared as a *political* swing so strong that
-- in my thinking -- it had exhaust or weaken itself considerably, as
a result of its own inherent contradictions, before the left could
have a *political* clear shot. That, of course, didn't imply
abandoning all struggles, particular the economic, day-to-day
fork-and-knife fights for marginal improvements in the workers'
working and living conditions, but the *political* scope of the
struggle had to be downgraded or risk a worse backlash. (Clearly,
Chavez took the exact opposite approach. He went for the political
jugular in 1992. At the time and for a good while, his Quixotic
gesture looked foolish to me. But, as history twists and turns, it
turned out to be a learning experience for him and Venezuela, without
which he and his country wouldn't be were they are now.)
Looking at things from the perspective of the mid 1990s, it seemed to
me that the vitality shown by the U.S. non-military economy and the
whole thrust of the "neoliberal" globalization agenda (as opposed to
the "neoconservatism" of the early 2000s) weren't entirely consistent
with the view of a predominantly militaristic, parasytic U.S. (and, if
I remember well Chomsky's remarks, British) economy. I remember
thinking (and I believe I may have posted something about it on one of
the usual lists) that we faced a sort of historical bifurcation, where
the world train was being switched from the Lenin Track (1914-1989)
back to the Marx Track (1850s-1914s).
It was either my feverish imagination or the track switch prove not to
be very robust since, with the selection of W and the U.S. reaction to
9/11, the train tripped back to the old Lenin Track. Anyway, with
time, my views have become more mixed, which doesn't make them very
amenable to a small set of categorical statements.
Still, I can try to schematize my mental framework in a couple of
sweeping statements: At the present time, the biggest danger ahead for
humans doesn't arise from environmental decay or turbulent financial
markets or even nuclear proliferation per se. These are, no doubt,
serious dangers. But, ultimately, the biggest source of trouble lies
in the abismal, persistent levels of *inequality*, especially (though
not exclusively) international inequality. Imperialism, which
continues to provide the current historical form of global capitalism,
is an epi-phenomenon of international inequality. If the available
data are to be trusted, judged according to this rough criteria, the
main forces of progress in the last four or five decades have been
Southeast Asia, China, India, and more recently Russia and some parts
of Latin America. And the main forces of the historical reaction have
remained virtually the same since colonial times: Western Europe and
its offshots in other continents.
Environmental decay and nuclear weapons are a problem mainly because
they are embedded in a context of deeply rooted international
inequality, which makes them explosive. Of course things are not so
simple, but if I were to put my thought in a simple formula, I'd say
that anything that contributes to reducing international inequality is
very good and anything that helps increase international inequality is
very bad. To which I add the Lincoln Question for reasons that will
become obvious below: Whatever historical development is out there, Is
it *of, by, and for* the working people? If the answer is no, then it
winds up contributing to increasing inequality. And vice versa. (For
limitations to the use of the Lincoln Criterion, see my speech at the
NY Left Labor Project Collective on 6/11/09.)
This is, in short, the rationale of my anti-imperialism.
* * *
The shifting of the main line of battle from the internal to the
external contradictions of imperialism, which is reflected in the
slogan "world countryside against the world town," perhaps dubious,
but still highly significant, is of the greatest importance for a
definition of all other positions in revolutionary programmes today.
We must realize that _this was not expected by the classical Marxist
tradition_. It has theoretical as well as practical implications for
the Marxist conception of history. [...]
It was only realistic of Marx to conclude in 1853 that the British
rule in India would objectively tackle the task of creating the
material foundations for a Western, i.e. capitalist, social order.
The question was not "whether the English had a right to conquer
India, but whether we are to prefer India conquered by the Turk, by
the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by the Briton." For
while "there cannot ... remain any doubt that the misery inflicted by
the British on Hindustan is of an essentially different and
_infinitely more intensive kind_ than all Hindustan had to suffer
before," England had still brought about "the greatest, and, _to speak
the truth_, the only *social* revolution ever heard of in Asia." "The
question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental
revolution in the social state of Asia?" But because the history of
British rule in India scarcely displayed anything beyond the
destruction of the traditional social structure, "The Indians will not
reap the fruits of the new elements of society scattered among them by
the British bourgeoisie till in Great Britain itself the now ruling
classes shall have been supplanted by the industrial proletariat, or
till the Hindus themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off
the English yoke altogether."
This last mentioned alternative, however, is evidently
uncharacteristic of Marx's future perspective, and the outcome of the
Indian uprising a few years later proved him right in this. It was
also without any further consequences that Engels made a more
favourable assessment of the chances of the Taiping movement in China,
fighting as this did with more suitable methods. The two friends
ultimately held firmly to the general rule with which Marx ended his
concluding essay on India: "When a great social revolution shall have
mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch, the market of the world
and the modern powers of production, and subjected them to the common
control of the most advanced peoples (*sic*), only then will human
progress cease to resemble that hideous pagan idol, who would not
drink the nectar from the skulls of the slain." For Russia, for
example, Marx held that such a revolution in the West would actually
provide the possibility of a comprehensive social reorganization along
the lines of the Chinese people's communes of today. The traditional
village communities were to join together on a regional basis, and to
take over and apply the industrial achievements of a now socialist
West on this broader scale.
The same basic position is repeated in Engels' final statement of 1894
on the prospects of the Russian revolution: "However, it is not only
possible but inescapable that once the proletariat wins out and the
means of production pass into common ownership among the West-European
nations, the countries which have just managed to make a start on
capitalist production, and where tribal institutions or relics of them
are still intact, will be able to use these relics of communal
ownership and the corresponding popular customs as a _powerful_ means
of considerably shortening their advance to socialist society.... But
an inevitable condition of this is the example and active support of
the hitherto capitalist West.... And this applies not only to Russia
but to all countries at the pre-capitalist stage of development.
However, this will be relatively easiest done in Russia, where a part
of the native population has already assimilated the intellectual
fruits of capitalist development..." The overthrow of Tsarist
despotism would "also give a fresh impulse to the labour movement in
the West, creating for it new and better conditions for struggle and
thereby advancing the victory of the modern industrial proletariat, a
victory without which present-day Russia, whether on the basis of the
community or of capitalism, cannot achieve a socialist transformation
of society."
History has furnished a decisive corrective to this original Marxist
prognosis. While the capitalist order is already in a third phase of
its internal contradictions, _and *moving* in them instead of
succumbing to them_, as Marx predicted for its first phase, and Lenin
conclusively for its second, many peoples in the precapitalist
countries have set out on their own road towards socialism. The
proletarian revolution in the West did not take place; and its
appearance in the form previously anticipated has become ever more
improbable. The nature and character of a revolution are only
determined up to a certain point by the programme and heroism of its
vanguard, who can only achieve the first steps. The Soviets of 1905
and 1917 continued the Paris Commune, but after them this continuity
was broken. Today, adherence to the hope of a classical socialist
overthrow in the West must lead to _a pessimism that is actually
groundless_. _The revolutions in Russia and China, in the Balkans and
in Cuba, have probably contributed not less but rather more to the
overall progress than the proletarian revolutions hoped for in the
West could have done_.
Marxism, in other words, set out on a different journey, via Russia to
Asia, Africa and Latin America, a route associated with the names of
Lenin, Mao Tse-Tung, Nkrumah and Castro. _It represents today
something incomparably greater and more diverse than in the era of
Marx_, and also in regard to its significance for Europe. It is not a
question of its "purity," but rather that it can simply no longer be
monopolized as a tool for study and for changing social realities.
(The variety of these must be stressed, so as to understand _the
differentiation_ of Marxist thought as something *positive*.)
Historical materialism itself prohibits us from judging whether
conditions in the Soviet Union, People's China, etc. realize
"authentic Marxism," though it can explain why the official
representatives of the various tendencies struggle for sole possession
of the truth. What is authentic is not the letter of theory, but the
historical process. If Leninism already represents in its theory, and
especially in its practice, a considerable "revision" of the orthodox
doctrine, that is the great merit of the founder of the Soviet Union.
Lenin's view of the revolutionary possibilities of the Asian peoples
was rendered more acute right from the beginning by his understanding
of the semi-Asiatic character of social relations in Russia. As early
as 1900, when the Russian reactionary and liberal press were
accompanying Tsarist participation in the imperialist police action
against the so-called Boxer rebellion in China with a campaign of
hatred against the barbarian Chinese, those enemies of culture and
civilization, Lenin stressed, as he was repeatedly to do later, the
similarity of the social problems facing the peoples of Russia and
China: "The Chinese people suffer from the same evils as those from
which the Russian people suffer -- they suffer from an Asiatic
government that squeezes taxes from the starving peasantry and that
suppresses every aspiration towards liberty by military force; they
suffer from the oppression of capital, which has penetrated into the
Middle Kingdom." The term "Asiatic" here describes a specific form of
relations of domination. In the same sense, Lenin was later to write:
"In very many and very essential respects, Russia is undoubtedly an
Asian country and, what is more, one of the most benighted, medieval
and shamefully backward of Asian countries."
Against the background of this historical affinity, he observed how
the Russian revolution of 1905 was followed by very similar events in
Turkey, Persia and above all in 1911 in China, while India and
Indonesia also began to stir. There could be no doubt, Lenin
concluded in 1908, that the European policies of robbery and
oppression would steel the Asian peoples for a victorious struggle
against their oppressors. The Russian revolution had *two* great
international allies, one in Europe (the modern proletariat) and one
in Asia. In 1913 he gave an article the significant title "Backward
Europe and Advanced Asia," and wrote earlier the same year: "The
awakening of Asia and the beginning of the struggle for power by the
advanced proletariat of Europe are a symbol of the new phase in world
history that began early this century." If the mention of Asia was
initially contingent, it indicated none the less the beginning of a
shift of emphasis. In considering the historical destiny of Marxism
in the same year 1913, Lenin emphasized with respect to the new
"source of great world storms opened up in Asia": "It is in this era
of storms and their 'repercussions' in Europe that we are now
living.... Certain people who were inatentive to the conditions
preparing and developing the mass struggle were driven to despair and
to anarchism by the lengthy delays in the decisive struggle against
capitalism in Europe.... The fact that Asia, with its population of
eight hundred million, has been drawn into the struggle for these same
European ideals should inspire us with optimism and not despair....
After Asia, Europe has also begun to stir...."
Characteristic of Lenin's position is his reference to the way that
the philosophical and political slogans of the anti-imperialist
liberation struggle derive from the ideals of the bourgeois and the
proletarian revolution in Europe. The new role of Asia in no way
meant that "light shines only from the mystic, religious East." "No,
quite the opposite. It means that the East has definitely taken the
Western path," which Russia had itself embarked upon. At least at the
theoretical level, Lenin continued to the last to hold the conviction
that "the social revolution in Western Europe is maturing before our
eyes." But after 1917, while the Bolsheviks _waited passionately_ for
the outbreak of the revolution in the West, and in Germany in
particular, which was to come to the relief of the Russian October and
secure its future, a different orientation came more and more to the
fore.
In November 1919 Lenin developed the following idea in addressing
representatives of the Communist organizations of the East: since the
imperialists would not allow the European revolutions to take their
course easily and swiftly, and since the "old socialist compromisers
are enlisted on the side of the bourgeoisie," "the socialist
revolution will not be solely or chiefly a struggle of the
revolutionary proletarians in each country against their bourgeoisie
-- no -- it will be a struggle of all the imperialist-oppressed
colonies and countries, of all dependent countries, against
international imperialism." The programme of the Russian Communist
Party was based on the union of the civil war in the advanced
countries with wars of national liberation. "It is self-evident that
_final_ victory can be won _only_ by the proletariat of _all the
advanced countries_ of the world, and we, the Russians, are beginning
the work which the British, French or German proletariat will
consolidate. But we see" -- and _this is a completely new
formulation_ -- "that they will not be victorious without the aid of
the working people of all the oppressed colonial nations, first and
foremost, of Eastern nations. We must realize that the transition to
communism cannot be accomplished by the vanguard alone." The task
Lenin proposes, therefore, is to "translate the true communist
doctrine, which was intended for the Communists of the more advanced
countries, into the language of every people," and "our Soviet
Republic must now muster all the awakening peoples of the East and,
together with them, wage a struggle against international
imperialism."
In March 1923, when he wrote his final testamentary essay, "Better
Fewer, but Better," Lenin took a decisive step further. "Shall we be
able," he asked, "to hold on with our small and very small peasant
production, and in our present state of ruin, until the West-European
capitalist countries consummate their development towards socialism?"
After surveying the contradictions between the rich imperialist
states, he reached the conclusion that "the outcome of the struggle
will be determined by the fact that Russia, India, China, etc.,
account for the overwhelming majority of the population of the globe,"
a majority schooled and trained for the struggle by capitalism itself.
He then indicated what he saw as the basic contradiction and central
task of the epoch introduced by October: "*To ensure our existence
until the next military conflict between the counter-revolutionary
imperialist West and the revolutionary and nationalist East, between
the most civilized countries of the world and the Oriental backward
countries which, however, comprise the majority, this majority must
become civilized.* We, too, lack enough civilization to enable us to
pass straight on to socialism, although we do have the political
requisites for it." Two months earlier he had written: "If a definite
level of culture is required for the building of socialism... why
cannot we begin by first achieving the prerequisites for that definite
level of culture _in a revolutionary way_, and *then*, with the aid of
the workers' and peasants' government and the Soviet system, proceed
to overtake the other nations?" In this way, therefore, Lenin derived
from the enforced circumstances which the Russian revolution had
arrived at by its isolation the programmatic basis of subsequent
development.
For the heroes of the Second International, who charged the Bolsheviks
with violating "Marxist orthodoxy," and their imitators of today,
Lenin offered the following consideration: "Our European philistines
never even dream that the subsequent revolutions in Oriental
countries, which possess much vaster populations and a much vaster
diversity of social conditions, will undoubtedly display _even greater
distinctions_ than the Russian revolution." What singular Leninists,
then, are those who would today play schoolmaster to the Chinese
revolution, the revolution of a good quarter of humanity!
Marx only touched in passing on the question as to how the
non-European peoples were to appropriate the achievements of the epoch
of private property, i.e. the wealth of Europe with its industrial
preconditions. It seems that he did not realize the full implications
of either the tremendous material gap or the gap at the level of the
subjective factors, the historical human types, between Europe and the
colonized sector of the globe. The characteristic drama of the
present, which we denote with the abstract term "development," would
have been no less a problem if the hopes of the European socialists
had been fulfilled -- on the contrary! Both Hegel and Marx liked to
refer to the unexpected, unforeseen breakthrough of a historical
necessity as the "cunning of reason." Should we not see such a
cunning of reason at work in the fact that the masses of the "Third
World" have anticipated the revolt of Europe?
The peoples of the backward countries today are involved in a race
with catastrophe, a catastrophe which could claim far more victims
than the molten iron of the Russian revolution -- and needless victims
at that. Revolutions such as the Russian and the Chinese are the
precondition for victory over hunger. One of the earliest ideas of
Marxism, that the "overthrowing" class, or the formerly oppressed
classes, needs the revolution _as its own action_, in order _to "rid
itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society
anew_," is _nowhere more valid_ than for those doubly oppressed
peoples whom capitalism found at a lower stage of social development.
What they need is not bread from Canada, but rather bread from Asia,
from Africa, and for this they need a new form of life, similarly
non-capitalist to that in the Soviet Union and in China. How else are
the colonized peoples to overcome their inferiority complex, to find
on a massive scale the new consciousness and self-consciousness
required for their ascent, except through a revolutionary liberation
of their own? The external conditions for this may be favoured by the
existence of other socialist powers, but the popular masses of the
Southern hemisphere can _in no case_ be freed from outside.
What they initially require most of all, for their material
reconstruction is _a strong state_, often one that is in many respects
despotic, in order really to overcome the inherited inertia. And such
a state power can only draw its legitimation and authority from a
revolution, and thus put a stop to the decay and corruption
characteristic of the old "Asiatic mode of production." This state
power *must* be in charge of any "development aid" that comes from
outside with technical knowledge, and is therefore always inclined to
fall into the old colonial manner. There are very few people like
Norman Bethune. That is why state power resulting from liberation
must be established _before_ any European advisers proclaim a
"*Communauté*." It must take the same attitude towards advisers of
this kind as the young Soviet power did to bourgeois specialists. And
if such advisers are now coming from the Soviet Union itself, as well
as from other countries tied to it, the same arrangements must apply
to them too, until they have given proof of their internationalist
solidarity and fraternity. For the history of the liberation movement
since the Second World War has proved irrefutably that the pace and
the effect of emancipation for the masses depend on the achievement of
precisely this state of affairs.
Let us try and imagine what the peoples still under pre-capitalist
conditions and colonial exploitation would have obtained if the West
European proletariat at the turn of the century had anticipated the
liberating revolutions outside of Europe. Can we assume that a spirit
of human solidarity, the practice of equality towards all who bear the
human countenance, would have immediately and unreservedly been
achieved? The working classes of Europe are objective participants in
colonialism, and this was never without its ideological effects. At
the Stuttgart Congress of the Socialist International in 1907, a
clause in the draft resolution that the Congress did not condemn all
colonial policy on principle, since under socialism this could have a
civilizing effect, was rejected by only a narrow majority. Lenin also
reported how the attempt was made in the Congress's commission on the
colonial question "to ban the immigration of workers from backward
countries (coolies -- from China, etc.)." "This is the same spirit of
aristocratism," Lenin observed, "that one finds among workers in some
of the 'civilized' countries, who derive certain advantages from their
privileged position, and are, therefore, inclined to forget the need
for international class solidarity."
The immediate, trade-union interests of the Western working classes,
who would have developed a considerable need to catch up, both
materially and culturally, and would not have been as driven to
solidarity from the foreign policy standpoint as was the poor Soviet
republic, could have been kept on reins only by the most extreme
revolutionary consciousness and selflessness. The bureaucracies of
the social-democratic parties and trade unions, however, tended rather
to cultivate colonialist prejudices. For the sharpened awareness of
the present-day reader, even Frederick Engels' position is not
completely free from a certain "expert" European arrogance, as can be
seen for example in many of his articles on the Indian insurrection of
1857-9. More than a few authorities of the Western labour movement
would have had a good try at teaching the "savage" and
"half-civilized" peoples how to behave, and after the first
unsuccessful attempts to spread a Protestant work ethic in Asia and
Africa, withdrawn angrily like the righteous guardian from his
ungrateful ward. The labour bureaucracies were all inclined, at the
very least, to an _educational colonialism_. And nothing is more
likely than that the peoples affected would have been forced to turn
against such hypothetical socialist governments -- even if under
somewhat more favourable conditions than before, and with a European
left-socialist minority on their side.
Above all, we must repeat once more that _these peoples have an
unconditional *need to rebel for themselves*, if they are to reshape
their society_. They must begin by taking a cultural distance from
Europe, even while assimilating its technical achievements. For the
export of European civilization is _colonialist to the roots, even if
pursued by a workers' government_. Neither Russia nor China would
have managed to attack their own problems of development at such pace,
with such an unleashing of the human productive forces, if they had
not been forced to solve them in revolutionary self-preservation
against a hostile environment.
If a socialist or communist order, as we have since had to realize,
cannot be based on material preconditions that are merely provincial
in character, then _the task of overcoming the lack of civilization
which Lenin referred to must be fulfilled by the revolutionary peoples
themselves, by creating the labour discipline they need in the course
of their struggle, this being the major world-historical task in
preparing for socialism_. _*With the revolutions in Russia and China,
with the revolutionary process in Latin America, in Africa and in
India, humanity is taking the shortest route to socialism*_. There,
in the "East," the real wretched of this earth have awakened. The
role of the working class, who gave the decisive impulse to the
Russian revolution and who obviously have a task in Europe, must be
seen afresh in this context. Moreover, even their revolution in
Europe would not have led directly to the socialism for which Marx
hoped, but far more probably to the phenomenal form so familiar to us,
which Bakunin already feared from the look of the Prusso-German
Social-Democrats and the style of leadership in the International.
Time and again, our bureaucratic centralism is explained in terms of
Russian backwardness, though _in fact_ this is only responsible for
certain excesses. In so far as the hierarchichal apparatus of
functionaries of the workers' organizations is the potential state
machine, what this is preparing is not a new Paris Commune, but rather
a state monopoly freed from capitalism.
We can envisage the state monopoly tendency better, a tendency which
is coming to form the object of the liberation struggle the world
over, if we compare this modern transition period towards classless
society with the ancient economic despotism which was the predominant
form of entry into class society. This is a further reason why the
history and present developmental tendencies in the East are of
particular interest to us. We shall see that the character of this
epoch, as it develops into the "conflict between the
counter-revolutionary imperialist West and the revolutionary and
nationalist East," is the present consequence of all former world
history. On the essential points, it needs only the further
development of the premises already provided by Marx and Engels in
their materialist overview of historical evolution.
cb3...@gmail.com
below seem less valid.
CB
^^^
_The revolutions in Russia and China, in the Balkans and
in Cuba, have probably contributed not less but rather more to the
overall progress than the proletarian revolutions hoped for in the
West could have done_.
Marxism, in other words, set out on a different journey, via Russia to
Asia, Africa and Latin America, a route associated with the names of
Lenin, Mao Tse-Tung, Nkrumah and Castro. _It represents today
something incomparably greater and more diverse than in the era of
Marx_, and also in regard to its significance for Europe.
CEJ
On Jun 26, 12:37 am, "cb31...@gmail.com" <cb31...@gmail.com> wrote:
> With the fall of the SU and Yugoslavian socialism, the statements
> below seem less valid.
>
>
considerable economic success--enough to make proto-EU-types worry
about the future of Spain or Greece or even Italy. And yet most of us
here on the 'left' seem to know very little about the actual nuts and
bolts of the political economy of Yugoslavia. Or Czechoslovakia for
that matter.
Julio Huato
I agree. Perhaps an exception is Michael Lebowitz, who unfortunately participates seldom on this list. Michael has some works that make a good attempt to appropriate at least part of that rich experience and transfer it to Venezuela's and the world's working people.
On Jun 26, 2009 3:17 AM, "CEJ" <jan...@gmail.com> wrote:On Jun 26, 12:37 am, "cb31...@gmail.com" <cb31...@gmail.com> wrote: > With the fall of the SU and...
One thing that has long interested me is that Yugoslavia actually had
considerable economic success--enough to make proto-EU-types worry
about the future of Spain or Greece or even Italy. And yet most of us
here on the 'left' seem to know very little about the actual nuts and
bolts of the political economy of Yugoslavia. Or Czechoslovakia for
that matter.
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