Primitive Society, Progress, and Marxism
Justin Flude
Louis Proyect has made a big fuss about Marxism's attitude to
primitive societies, and even given the impression that Marx was in
favour of preserving them in the face of capitalist development. I'd
like to correct that misapprehension, so I've put together some points
from Aidan Campbell's excellent new book that explain Marx's basic
position:-
=============================
From "Western Primitivism: African Ethnicity - A Study in Cultural
Relations" by Aidan Campbell, Cassell, 1997, Chapter 6 entitled
'Primitivizing Marx?':-
It is vital to consider Marx's views on primitive society because his
extensive notes on the subject permit us to challenge today's dominant
paradigm that the conditions that governed primitive communist
societies in the past can still be applied to backward capitalist
societies today. 'Just as each century has its own Nature, so it
produces its own primitives' to which we may perhaps add, 'and its own
Marx' ...
... [I]t is useful to make explicit at this point the main assumption
[Marx & Engels] operated under since it stands in such stark contrast
to those of mainstream cultural relativism. Once we have done this it
will be obvious why what Marx and Engels wrote also applied to
primitive communities everywhere. This assumption is that different
levels of production determine different forms of society, but within
these forms people are the same irrespective of any other difference,
cultural or temporal. Thus this assumption implies that Greek society
of the fourth century BC can be compared to that of the Iroquois based
around the New York area in fifteenth century AD ...
Marx's views on primitive communism are comprehensively summed up in
his famous remark on the impact of British colonialism on the
'idyllic' village communities in India:
"Sickening as it must be to human feeling to witness those myriads of
industrious patriarchal and inoffensive social organisations
disorganised and dissolved into their units, thrown into a sea of
woes, and their individual members losing at the same time their
ancient form of civilisation and their hereditary means of
subsistence, we must not forget that those 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."
Marx and Engels were fully aware of the negative side of civilization,
that is capitalism's, achievements. Civilization was a thousand times
more progressive than those Indian villages, but it was a thousand
times more brutal as well:
"Civilisation achieved things of which gentile [that is, primitive]
society was not even remotely capable. But it acheived them by
setting in motion the lowest instincts and passions in man and
developing them at the expense of all his other abilities. From its
first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilisation
... If at the same time the progressive development of science and a
repeated flowering of supreme art dropped into its lap, it was because
without them modern wealth could not have completely realised its
achievement."
Marx ... indicated that the source of primitivism's morality was based
on the assumption of dimished humanity, where production is geared to
existing human need; as compared to modernity, where humanity has
apparently been chained to the unlimited expansion of production.
'Thus from the old view, in which the human being appears as the aim
of production ... seems to be very lofty when contrasted to the modern
world, where production appears to be the aim of mankind and wealth as
the aim of production.' The development of society's productive
forces required the sacrifice of all presuppositions, all
preconditions, where man strives not to remain something that he has
already become, but where all limited, one-sided aims are sacrificed
to secure the full development of human mastery of the forces of
nature. 'This is why the childish world of antiquity appears on one
side as loftier. On the other side it really is loftier in all
matters where closed shapes, forms and given limits are sought for.
It is satisfaction from a limited standpoint; while the modern gives
no satisfaction; or, where it appears satisfied with itself, it is
vulgar' ...
Primitive communism meant a 'levelling down' to basics, but for Marx
this 'crude communism' was unnatural, an
"abstract expression of the entire world of culture and civilisation,
and the return to the unnatural simplicity of the poor, unrefined man
who has no needs and who has not even reached the stage of private
property, let alone gone beyond it."
The primitive was not much of a personality. Marx consistently argued
maintained that the primitive individual was a diminished individual,
an embryonic human ... The typical communal personality was the
complete non-entity. Once this point has been grasped we can begin to
appreciate the peculiar meaning of democracy in a primitive communist
society. A definite chief was selected in advance - maybe many years
in advance - and then elected into power by the community as a whole
at the appropriate moment. The selection was more a matter of
following the norms of traditional society than as a result of any
democratic process...
The moral code of the primitive communist community was for their own
members only. Generally, they treated everyone else like beasts.
Engels dramatically makes the point that, in respect to the primitive
communist community, the development of slavery was 'a great step
forward'. First he makes the point that, as Man sprang from beasts,
he had no alternative but to use bestial means in order to extricate
himself from barbarism. But these 'bestial means' were directed
outside of the community, at least initially...
It is automatically assumed that Marxism takes the side of the victims
and especially ethnic victims. From an ideology formerly devoted to
forging a vanguard which would take society towards a brave new world,
Marxism is being turned into a caring, sharing support system for the
victims and the oppressed of the world. Marxism and Marxists are
lined up with everyone else moaning about the sufferings inflicted
upon either persecuted ethnic victims, or the sad casualties of ethnic
violence. The strength of the victimizing agenda, the diminished
individual, is so powerful that every political system - even Marxism
- is seen through its spectacles...
Marx was interested in all forms of humanity, including the primitive.
We have demonstrated [in previous chapters] that primitivism feeds on
the suspicion that humanity is a problem. For Marx, however, humanity
was the solution. Modern 'ethical' ethnicity is a profoundly
conservative and reactionary force in Africa. It is perfectly
possible to comprehend its meaning. Not only does it celebrate
long-defunct cultures, it also implies that future social
experimentation is risky and should be avoided...
Africa's own techno-shaman, the modern NGO volunteer, sits in his
four-wheel drive vehicle with his satellite phone and his
Internet-compatible laptop computer, busy all day downloading ethnic
identities to try in implant in Africans - who would otherwise forget
the whole business - as if they were alien abductees. The eradication
of African ethnicity principally requires confronting Western
primitivism.
Louis N Proyect
On Thu, 18 Dec 1997, Justin Flude wrote:
> Louis Proyect has made a big fuss about Marxism's attitude to
> primitive societies, and even given the impression that Marx was in
> favour of preserving them in the face of capitalist development. I'd
> like to correct that misapprehension, so I've put together some points
> from Aidan Campbell's excellent new book that explain Marx's basic
> position:-
>
What are Campbell's affiliations? Hudson Institute? Cato Institute?
Unification Church? Heritage Foundation? The Moral Majority? The
Promise-Keepers? The 700 Club?
Louis Proyect
scott collins
I've been very interested in this question for along time. Marx's
views seem generally correct to me. But where in his works were
these quotes taken from?
--
Justin Flude
I didn't include the references for the sake of abbreviation - after
the holiday I'll repost it with proper refs.
In the meantime, I believe the quotes are from (i) "British Rule in
Inida" by Marx (?); (ii) the ethnographic notebooks Marx compiled from
attending lectures at the Royal Society (Lost Project should note the
dodgy company Marx kept); (iii) Origin of the Family etc, by Engels.
Justin
Justin Flude
>On Thu, 18 Dec 1997, Justin Flude wrote:
>
>> Louis Proyect has made a big fuss about Marxism's attitude to
>> primitive societies, and even given the impression that Marx was in
>> favour of preserving them in the face of capitalist development. I'd
>> like to correct that misapprehension, so I've put together some points
>> from Aidan Campbell's excellent new book that explain Marx's basic
>> position:-
>>
>
>What are Campbell's affiliations? Hudson Institute? Cato Institute?
>Unification Church? Heritage Foundation? The Moral Majority? The
>Promise-Keepers? The 700 Club?
This Marx quote ...
"Sickening as it must be to human feeling to witness those myriads of
industrious patriarchal and inoffensive social organisations
disorganised and dissolved into their units, thrown into a sea of
woes, and their individual members losing at the same time their
ancient form of civilisation and their hereditary means of
subsistence, we must not forget that those 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."
... directly refutes your earlier positions, Louis. I seem to
remember you reposting the trash of some green with the nerve to
revise Marx on this question, a month ago or so. IIRC he, with you,
claimed that Marx held a different position. Care to repost, so we
can all see where the differences lie?
Justin
Louis N Proyect
What does Marx's writings have to do with LM? LM is in a coalition with
representatives of the Cato and Hudson Institutes. Furthermore, Marx's
attitudes on this question evolved as he got older and wiser. He took a
stand against the introduction of capitalist property relations into the
Russian countryside in the late 1870s. He said that it would be a tragedy.
His letters to Zasulich have nothing in common with your defense of
capitalism. Of course, this is becoming a bit pointless as your cult
continues to mutate in a rightward direction. Before too long, it will be
Jeffery Sachs you are quoting rather than Marx.
Louis Proyect
On Mon, 22 Dec 1997, Justin Flude wrote:
> This Marx quote ...
>
> "Sickening as it must be to human feeling to witness those myriads of
> industrious patriarchal and inoffensive social organisations
> disorganised and dissolved into their units, thrown into a sea of
> woes, and their individual members losing at the same time their
> ancient form of civilisation and their hereditary means of
> subsistence, we must not forget that those 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."
>
Justin Flude
>What does Marx's writings have to do with LM? LM is in a coalition with
>representatives of the Cato and Hudson Institutes. Furthermore, Marx's
>attitudes on this question evolved as he got older and wiser. He took a
>stand against the introduction of capitalist property relations into the
>Russian countryside in the late 1870s. He said that it would be a tragedy.
What bollocks. You're dodging the issue, Louis.
All I asked is that you repost the articles on the penetration of
capital into India that you made some while ago. How can your refuse
this golden opportunity to flap that mouth of yours again?
Or are you engaged in a little bit of historical revisionism? There's
always DejeNews, you know.
Justin
Louis N Proyect
On Mon, 22 Dec 1997, Justin Flude wrote:
>
> All I asked is that you repost the articles on the penetration of
> capital into India that you made some while ago. How can your refuse
> this golden opportunity to flap that mouth of yours again?
>
I only have discussions about Marxism with other Marxists. Your boss Frank
Furedi says he's no Marxist and has dissolved his "Marxist" group. So what
does that leave us with? Certainly not anything that can be loosely
described as Marxist. I regard you as the same thing as the right-wing
scum you've set up a speakers bureau for. Fuck the Cato Institute. Fuck
the Hudson Institute. Fuck Reverend Moon. And fuck you.
Louis Proyect
David Stevens
Louis Proyect displaying intelligent openmindedness:
>
> I only have discussions about Marxism with other Marxists.
If Louis had only adopted such a rule back in his wheatpasting
days, who knows what wonders it might have worked for Barnes'
SWP in recruitment?
> And fuck you.
Louis claims, correctly, that he isn't always like this.
But if he were less erratic, he _would_ be.
- David Stevens
creb...@antares.com.br
In article <349e6d46...@news.xara.com>,
jfl...@hotmail.com (Justin Flude) wrote:
>
> On Thu, 18 Dec 1997 11:21:24 -0500, Louis N Proyect
> <ln...@columbia.edu> wrote:
>
> >On Thu, 18 Dec 1997, Justin Flude wrote:
> >
> This Marx quote ...
>
> "Sickening as it must be to human feeling to witness those myriads of
> industrious patriarchal and inoffensive social organisations
> disorganised and dissolved into their units, thrown into a sea of
> woes, and their individual members losing at the same time their
> ancient form of civilisation and their hereditary means of
> subsistence, we must not forget that those 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."
>
> ... directly refutes your earlier positions, Louis. I seem to
> remember you reposting the trash of some green with the nerve to
> revise Marx on this question, a month ago or so. IIRC he, with you,
> claimed that Marx held a different position. Care to repost, so we
> can all see where the differences lie?
>
> Justin
We (and the LM group) are stepping on very thin ice here. Marx had no
theory of imperialism, and so could envisage capitalist development as a
process of convergent evolution of *national* societies, in which
economic development bred social modernization and political
democratization. That, however, rans counter the idea of "uneven and
combined development", in which economic development props backward forms
of political power and strenghtens them, such as in the Paris Stock
Exchange having a stake on preserving tsarist autocracy because of its
debt, or of Tony Blair pampering Fernando Henrique Cardoso because his
social regressive "reforms" are in the interests of Brit investors
overseas (BTW, the LM has a flair for interesting vignettes, but they
didn't comment on the Cambridge don that compared FH Cardoso to Julius
Caesar while granting him a honoris causa Ph.D- another example of the
1st, World pampering 3rd. World backwardness)
Carlos Rebello
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet
Louis N Proyect
On 31 Dec 1997, Hunter Watson wrote:
> That's interesting but what do you think of the particular quote from Marx?
> I think it to be truly revealing. Surely you acknowledge that on the eve of
> the 21st Century we have some legitimate reason to fear that regimes based
> on such cavalier attitudes toward our cultural and moral inheritance will
> proceed to abuse power in the future, just as have Marxist totalitarian
> regimes of this century? What will be the institutional restraint to
Hunter, this quote from Marx that Flude posted is abysmal but it reflects
his immature thought on the subject of precapitalist societies and their
culture. A new edition of his Ethnological Notebooks, which includes many
thoughts from late in his life, is coming out in 1998 and it reveals a
profound respect for the democratic forms and ecological wisdom of
"land-based" societies. Also, in his correspondence with the Russian
populists of the late 1870s, he said that it would be tragic if capitalism
destroyed the zemstvos in Russia where farmland was owned collectively and
the crops shared equally. The thing that is confusing is that the LM gang
and their supporters like Diamond and Stevens embrace the crudest
"productivist" version of the earlier Marx.
My guess is that you are not interested in any form of socialism, but it
is important to see Marx in his totality. He was all too human and
reflected many of the prejudices of the 19th century. Among them was the
belief in the "white man's burden". He got over this, even though you
wouldn't know it from the shit that Justin Flude posted here. It's a
problem with many "Enlightenment" thinkers. There's a new book out by an
African professor at the New School in New York that contains the most
howlingly ignorant and racist comments about people of color from Diderot,
Kant, Hegel, Voltaire, Hume, et al. Marx was a product of this culture and
by no means the worst offender.
Louis Proyect
Anthony Phillips
Louis N Proyect wrote in message ...
The thing that is confusing is that the LM gang
>and their supporters like Diamond and Stevens embrace the crudest
>"productivist" version of the earlier Marx.
>
>My guess is that you are not interested in any form of socialism, but it
>is important to see Marx in his totality. He was all too human and
>reflected many of the prejudices of the 19th century. Among them was the
>belief in the "white man's burden". He got over this, even though you
>wouldn't know it from the shit that Justin Flude posted here. It's a
>problem with many "Enlightenment" thinkers. There's a new book out by an
>African professor at the New School in New York that contains the most
>howlingly ignorant and racist comments about people of color from Diderot,
>Kant, Hegel, Voltaire, Hume, et al. Marx was a product of this culture and
>by no means the worst offender.
>
>Louis Proyect
>
Indeed, Louis. In fact, I am in possession of that most infamous of Marx's
corpus, "A World Without Jews." To tag on to your point, I wonder how much
sooner we could get down to the business of tomorrow if we would deal with
today half as much as we deal with yesterday. Was Marx a racist? an
anti-semite? a cultural elitist? Well, I suppose it depends on how one
uses the terms. He was every bit a product of his time, and yet he left a
body of work and a political/sociological tradition behind him that has
spawned the thoughts, beliefs, opinions and world-views MOST of us on apst
take for granted.
I know that you for one, brother, are much more interested in whether or not
contemporary Greens, or Furedians, or others are racist, than in whether or
not Marx was. I hope we can avoid letting the tail wag the dog here. It is
tempting to the feeble-minded to say that Marx was a racist, therefore
Marxism is racist. But shit, Marxism is a century and a half old tradition
in political dialogue, theory and struggle. As a dynamic force in the
global struggle it can't be expected not to evolve and in so doing to
resolve the flaws in its own heritage.
Yours in common struggle,
Tony
Hunter Watson
> In article <349e6d46...@news.xara.com>,
> jfl...@hotmail.com (Justin Flude) wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 18 Dec 1997 11:21:24 -0500, Louis N Proyect
> > <ln...@columbia.edu> wrote:
> >
> > >On Thu, 18 Dec 1997, Justin Flude wrote:
> > >
>
> > This Marx quote ...
> >
> > "Sickening as it must be to human feeling to witness those myriads of
> > industrious patriarchal and inoffensive social organisations
> > disorganised and dissolved into their units, thrown into a sea of
> > woes, and their individual members losing at the same time their
> > ancient form of civilisation and their hereditary means of
> > subsistence, we must not forget that those 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."
SNIP
> We (and the LM group) are stepping on very thin ice here. Marx had no
> theory of imperialism, and so could envisage capitalist development as a
> process of convergent evolution of *national* societies, in which
> economic development bred social modernization and political
> democratization. That, however, rans counter the idea of "uneven and
> combined development", in which economic development props backward forms
> of political power and strenghtens them, such as in the Paris Stock
> Exchange having a stake on preserving tsarist autocracy because of its
> debt, or of Tony Blair pampering Fernando Henrique Cardoso because his
> social regressive "reforms" are in the interests of Brit investors
> overseas (BTW, the LM has a flair for interesting vignettes, but they
> didn't comment on the Cambridge don that compared FH Cardoso to Julius
> Caesar while granting him a honoris causa Ph.D- another example of the
> 1st, World pampering 3rd. World backwardness)
>
> Carlos Rebello
That's interesting but what do you think of the particular quote from Marx?
I think it to be truly revealing. Surely you acknowledge that on the eve of
the 21st Century we have some legitimate reason to fear that regimes based
on such cavalier attitudes toward our cultural and moral inheritance will
proceed to abuse power in the future, just as have Marxist totalitarian
regimes of this century? What will be the institutional restraint to
prevent it? If a Marxist regime is not to be a nation of laws (and as a
rule they haven't been), AND it proceeds on the premise that our hard won
cultural and moral heritage will be jettisoned on the alter of utopian
"flexability" in building a new society, how can we have *any* trust and
confidence....? 20th Century history is profoundly disheartening on this
subject is it not?
Hunter Watson
Peter West
In article <68calt$5...@examiner.concentric.net>, Anthony Phillips
<HiT...@concentric.net> writes
>
>Indeed, Louis. In fact, I am in possession of that most infamous of Marx's
>corpus, "A World Without Jews."
_A world without Jews_ was the incorrect title thought up by Dagobert
Runes, who edited an alleged translation of Marx's 1843 essay _On the
Jewish question_. Hal Draper, in his _Karl Marx's Theory of revolution_,
suggests about this translation that "there are other distortions in the
text" (p702, vol1 State and bureaucracy). Draper does not consider
Marx's essay against the temporarily leftist Bauer at all "infamous" and
neither should any communist who puts it in its context.
An online edition of Marx's _On the Jewish question_ is available from:
http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive
--
Peter [remove .nosp in address before emailing]
Hunter Watson
In article <7Cc4LAAC...@duntone.demon.co.uk>, Peter West
<Peter...@duntone.demon.nosp.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <68calt$5...@examiner.concentric.net>, Anthony Phillips
> <HiT...@concentric.net> writes
> >
> >Indeed, Louis. In fact, I am in possession of that most infamous of Marx's
> >corpus, "A World Without Jews."
>
> _A world without Jews_ was the incorrect title thought up by Dagobert
> Runes, who edited an alleged translation of Marx's 1843 essay _On the
> Jewish question_. Hal Draper, in his _Karl Marx's Theory of revolution_,
> suggests about this translation that "there are other distortions in the
> text" (p702, vol1 State and bureaucracy). Draper does not consider
> Marx's essay against the temporarily leftist Bauer at all "infamous" and
> neither should any communist who puts it in its context.
Once it's put in context the conclusion should not depend on one's ideology.
"Infamous"? How long is that essay? Can you put it up for us, Tony?
Hunter Watson
creb...@antares.com.br
In article <hwatson-ya0231800...@news.up.net>,
hwa...@up.net (Hunter Watson) wrote:
>
> In article <882888486...@dejanews.com>, creb...@antares.com.br wrote:
>
> > In article <349e6d46...@news.xara.com>,
> > jfl...@hotmail.com (Justin Flude) wrote:
> > >
> > > On Thu, 18 Dec 1997 11:21:24 -0500, Louis N Proyect
> > > <ln...@columbia.edu> wrote:
> > >
> > > >On Thu, 18 Dec 1997, Justin Flude wrote:
> > > >
> >
> > > This Marx quote ...
> > >
> >
>
> I think it to be truly revealing. Surely you acknowledge that on the eve of
> the 21st Century we have some legitimate reason to fear that regimes based
> on such cavalier attitudes toward our cultural and moral inheritance will
> proceed to abuse power in the future, just as have Marxist totalitarian
> regimes of this century? What will be the institutional restraint to
> prevent it? If a Marxist regime is not to be a nation of laws (and as a
> rule they haven't been), AND it proceeds on the premise that our hard won
> cultural and moral heritage will be jettisoned on the alter of utopian
> "flexability" in building a new society, how can we have *any* trust and
> confidence....? 20th Century history is profoundly disheartening on this
> subject is it not?
>
> Hunter Watson
I do think that the historical record shows that, in the long run,
respect for distinct national cultures as a collective right has proven
to be a field were the Leninist achievment is, all things considered
best. The break-up of the USSR proceeded without a gigantic bloodbath
only because the existing internal borders - created mostly in Lenin's
time - were coherent, and because each nationality had administrative
personnnel and skills readily avaliable.The great problem of Marxism as
politics for the future will be mostly to found a way of upholding the
cause of *individual* authonomy and freedons without sapping its basic
tenets.As Trotsky rightly said, "Come what may with the USSR, Lenin's
nationality policy will remain as one of mankind's undying treasures"; it
has, at least, avoided us a great deal of atrocities (and of course the
handling of Lenin's nationalities policy by Stalin was to pervert it out
of all recognition)
Hunter Watson
Marxism is a century and a half old tradition
> in political dialogue, theory and struggle. As a dynamic force in the
> global struggle it can't be expected not to evolve and in so doing to
> resolve the flaws in its own heritage.
Marxism appears to have partaken of more than political dialogue, theory
and struggle over that century and a half. Faith in the equivalent of a
revealed religion is the most common analogy. Because of this rigid,
unreflective characteristic it is extremely resistent to learning from its
own history and to the resolution of the flaws in its own heritage. A bush
league example is the reluctance of the faithful to even seriously
*discuss* reconsideration of the doctrine here on apst. Factory workers,
for example, continue resolutely to be seen as a central engine of history
even though Lenin actually held them in something akin to contempt. If
Marxism is to have continuing relevance this needs to be looked at
thoroughly in this post industrial civilization. We know also what class
warfare and dictatorship of the proletariat meant to Bolsheviks. Is that
still what they mean to Marxists today? And, if not, what specific passages
in Marx, Engels and Lenin are to be openly repudiated? Who among the
faithful will have the intellectual and moral courage to do it? I just
don't see it happening.
The 20th Century was the crucible for *application* of the 19th Century
theories of Marx, Engels and Lenin. We have vast data as to how it worked
in all its variations. Why isn't that data being systematically evaluated
*by Marxists* in an effort to protect and advance that within the doctrine
which may still have vitality and usefulness? Perhaps it would be just as
useful to ask the Pope when he intends to disavow the virgin birth?
In the meantime the political energies of thousands of bright young men and
women of the Left are being frittered away on a heritage which for the most
part is totalitarian.
Hunter Watson
Hunter Watson
The very idea that beyond public philanthropy the state should have *any*
jurisdiction over "culture", should propose and dispose, even within
limits, is characteristic of the totalitarian persuasion. The idea that it
will *grant* more or less in an act of noblesse oblige certain cultural
freedoms to the people suggests that underlying power over the subject
originated and remains with the state. Unless such rights ore organically
individual rights, eforceable *as such* against the state, the rights of
"distinct national cultures" are meaningless. Just as important is the fact
that those individual rights include access, untrammeled, uncensored and
unmonitored, to *world culture without limit. If any aspect of these rights
are the property of the "collective" they are in reality the property of
the bosses. The result in the Soviet Union was socialist realism and the
foreshortening of the life spans of poets, writers and artists by an
average of roughly a third.
Snip
The great problem of Marxism as
> politics for the future will be mostly to found a way of upholding the
> cause of *individual* authonomy and freedons without sapping its basic
> tenets.
I agree with this with the proviso that any "basic tenets" which conflict
with those rights should be jettisoned, forthrightly, after public debate
by post 20th Century Marxists in the interest of the people.
>As Trotsky rightly said, "Come what may with the USSR, Lenin's
> nationality policy will remain as one of mankind's undying treasures";
Trotsky said it but not "rightly":
"Within days of assuming power, the Bolshevik government issued, over the
signatures of Lenin and Stalin, a 'Declaration of Rights' of the national
minorities. It affirmed, without conditions or qualifications, that every
nation had the right to self-determination up to and including separation."
The historian goes on to state the obvious, that this Declaration ran
contrary to the Bolsheviks' "centralist political philosophy" and explains
the reservation. The right of national self-determination had to be
subordinated to that of 'proletarian self-determination', a doctrine not
discussed in the Declaration. "By this he (Lenin) meant that even if,
contrary to his expectations, in disregard of economic realities, some or
even all of the borderland areas chose to leave Russia, a Bolshevik
government would have the right to bring them back into the fold." As we
all know, Lenin failed to reap the costless benefit of support of ethnic
minorities which this cynical policy was designed to permit. "On every
occasion when able, he dispatched pro-Bolshevik armies to topple the newly
formed nationalist regimes: in the Ukraine, Belorussia, Finland, and the
Baltics. He did not always succeed in reconquering them, but when he failed
it was not for want of trying."
"What was he to do? Lenin, who had no difficulty changing tactics when
necessary, decided now to abandon--in effect, though not in name--the
principle of national self-determinatin in favor of federalism. It was to
be not genuine federalism, under which the member states are equal and
endowed with powers over their territory, but a peculiar species of
pseudo-federalism that provided neither equality nor power. Under the
regime he had established in Russia, state (governmental) authority
nominally derived from a hierarchy of democratically elected soviets. In
reality, the soviets were only a facade to conceal the true sovereign, the
Communist Party. This arrangement proved adaptable to dealing with the
nationalities. Once they were reconqueered and reincorporated into the new,
Soviet empuire, they could be granted the semblance of statehood, given
that their governmental institutions, too, would be controlled ('paralyzed'
was
the work Lenin used) by the Russian Communist Party. And as for the Party,
Lenin did not intend to divide it along ethnic lines. The result would be
formal federalism, with all the trimmings of statehood, presumably able to
satisfy the aspirations of the non-Russian peoples, concealing a rigidly
centralized dictatorship centered in Moscow. It is this model that Lenin
Adopted and in 1922-24 incorporated into the constitution of the new state,
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He assumed that as other countries
went Communist, they would join the U.S.S.R. on the same principles."
Pipes, Richard, "Russia under the Bolshevik Regime", pp. 151-152.
So, Carlos, in the brave new world will those rights be individual or owned
by the state? Will we apply to Glavlit to sanction our literary work?
Hunter Watson
Victor Khomenko
>
>> I think it to be truly revealing. Surely you acknowledge that on the eve of
>> the 21st Century we have some legitimate reason to fear that regimes based
>> on such cavalier attitudes toward our cultural and moral inheritance will
>> proceed to abuse power in the future, just as have Marxist totalitarian
>> regimes of this century? What will be the institutional restraint to
>
>his immature thought on the subject of precapitalist societies and their
>culture. A new edition of his Ethnological Notebooks, which includes many
>thoughts from late in his life, is coming out in 1998 and it reveals a
>profound respect for the democratic forms and ecological wisdom of
>"land-based" societies. Also, in his correspondence with the Russian
>populists of the late 1870s, he said that it would be tragic if capitalism
>destroyed the zemstvos in Russia where farmland was owned collectively and
>the crops shared equally.
How cute and how naive! That was the worst danger that he was able to
envision for those orgaizations? That titan of the human thinking that he
was? He wasn't able to predict any possibility that those "zemstvos" would
not not even see any light of a day under the revolutionary soldier' boot?
Capitalism would destroy them? How that? Maybe by taking away ALL their
harvest, leaving them to die like dogs? Maybe by murdering the most
productive ones and resettling the rest into Siberia? Maybe by instituting
the death penalty for children picking up some left-over seeds from the
frozen fields?
No, not the capitalism killed those prosperous groups. The young idiots
with Marx's name on their lips did it, and very effectively, thank you.
They didn't know capitalism from gonorrhea but they knew they had to kill.
And they killed and they killed many, but never enough, and the food supply
disappeared and it was all blamed on the "wreckers" amd more blood got
spilled and the kulaks tried to fight back and they all got slaughtered....
and then... and then... and now you sit here and pontificate about the
murderous nature of the capitalism and how it was supposed to destroy the
zemstvos. How pathetic.
When it comes to murder, especially the mass murder kind, and destruction,
the communists lead the pack. They equip the bands of young idiots with
weapons and works of Marx and they turn them loose. The rest happens
naturally and before you know the whole culture is wiped out.
Victor.
Victor Khomenko
creb...@antares.com.br wrote:
>In article <hwatson-ya0231800...@news.up.net>,
> hwa...@up.net (Hunter Watson) wrote:
>>
>> In article <882888486...@dejanews.com>, creb...@antares.com.br wrote:
>>
>> > In article <349e6d46...@news.xara.com>,
>> > jfl...@hotmail.com (Justin Flude) wrote:
>> > >
>> > > <ln...@columbia.edu> wrote:
>> > >
>> > > >On Thu, 18 Dec 1997, Justin Flude wrote:
>> > > >
>> >
>> > > This Marx quote ...
>> > >
>> >
>>
>> I think it to be truly revealing. Surely you acknowledge that on the eve of
>> the 21st Century we have some legitimate reason to fear that regimes based
>> on such cavalier attitudes toward our cultural and moral inheritance will
>> proceed to abuse power in the future, just as have Marxist totalitarian
>> regimes of this century? What will be the institutional restraint to
>> rule they haven't been), AND it proceeds on the premise that our hard won
>> cultural and moral heritage will be jettisoned on the alter of utopian
>> "flexability" in building a new society, how can we have *any* trust and
>> confidence....? 20th Century history is profoundly disheartening on this
>> subject is it not?
>>
>> Hunter Watson
>
>I do think that the historical record shows that, in the long run,
>respect for distinct national cultures as a collective right has proven
>to be a field were the Leninist achievment is, all things considered
>only because the existing internal borders - created mostly in Lenin's
>time - were coherent, and because each nationality had administrative
>personnnel and skills readily avaliable.
You read this trash and your hair is slowly rising. Just how many millions were
killed during this "coherent" annexetion? What do you think kept the Red Army
busy after the civil war? "Each nationality had administrative personnel and
skills available?" Where do you get your information? In most cases the
Russian personnel was in charge and Russian language was spoken. Why do you
think the Estonians were crying seeing the Russian troops leave? From sadness
of future separation, maybe? The only "Leninist achievemt" present there was
that they had too many people to kill and they got tired after a while. To
think that someone would praise those horrible deads today....
The great problem of Marxism as
>politics for the future will be mostly to found a way of upholding the
>cause of *individual* authonomy and freedons without sapping its basic
>tenets.As Trotsky
Another bloody scumsucker and murderer
rightly said, "Come what may with the USSR, Lenin's
>nationality policy will remain as one of mankind's undying treasures"; it
>has, at least, avoided us a great deal of atrocities (and of course the
>handling of Lenin's nationalities policy by Stalin was to pervert it out
>of all recognition)
If Stalin did pervert the Great Lenin's policy, then how come the end result was
so peaceful, according to you?
Yes, looking back at the thirties it seems improbable that the executioner's
hand would ever get tired.
Victor.
creb...@antares.com.br
Well, Watson, in order to get my ms. published, 12 years after the end of
the military dictatordhip here, I had to apply to lots of "Glavlits",not
least of all the deep seated common sense agreement that any work
critical of the present liberal-conservative political consensus is, by
itself, something disturbing because by simply appearing in public it may
hurt "morale" and scare the confidence of foreign investors and native
entrepreneur about our potentially endless economic stability. But the
greatest problem is sheer lack of money at the university presses;
academic expenses do not rank highly among the priorities of the
government.You see, there are some collective facts in social life
without which formal individual democratic rights are simply
empty.Fortunately, I have this simple exemple at hand; but then the idea
that the collective, in a society, has logical precedence over the
individual is common sense in sociological thinking since Durkheim- who
was, of course, no marxist.
As to Pipes's comments over the Bolsheviks policy of nationalities, he
seems to be disturbed by the fact that Lenin agreed about the right for
local self-government in the USSR, given that the various local
governments followed the bolshevik ideology . Well, what is the
contradiction here? Do you know about any government that does not want
to propagate its peculiar ideology. Pipes, perhaps, should read
Thucidides, who simply states as a fact of life that, during the
Peloponesian War (431-404b.c), the democratic parties in the various city
states leaned on Athens, and the olygarchical elements on Sparta. Has
there been any news since then? And then Lenin offered the national
governments that did not want to follow bolshevik ideology a right of
secession that he was not loath to give, for instance, to the Baltic
countries- But of that later in my reply to Victor Khomenko.
Carlos Rebello
creb...@antares.com.br
In article <34ad7...@news.dca.net>,
Victor Khomenko <in...@balanced.com> wrote:
>
> creb...@antares.com.br wrote:
onality had administrative
>
> You read this trash and your hair is slowly rising. Just how many millions
were
> killed during this "coherent" annexetion? What do you think kept the Red Army
> busy after the civil war? "Each nationality had administrative personnel and
> skills available?" Where do you get your information? In most cases the
> Russian personnel was in charge and Russian language was spoken. Why do you
> think the Estonians were crying seeing the Russian troops leave? From sadness
> of future separation, maybe? The only "Leninist achievemt" present there was
> that they had too many people to kill and they got tired after a while. To
> think that someone would praise those horrible deads today....
>
> The great problem of Marxism as
> >politics for the future will be mostly to found a way of upholding the
> >cause of *individual* authonomy and freedons without sapping its basic
> >tenets.As Trotsky
>
> Another bloody scumsucker and murderer
>
> rightly said, "Come what may with the USSR, Lenin's
> >nationality policy will remain as one of mankind's undying treasures"; it
> >has, at least, avoided us a great deal of atrocities (and of course the
> >handling of Lenin's nationalities policy by Stalin was to pervert it out
> >of all recognition)
>
> If Stalin did pervert the Great Lenin's policy, then how come the end result
was
> so peaceful, according to you?
>
> Yes, looking back at the thirties it seems improbable that the executioner's
> hand would ever get tired.
>
> Victor.
I have to admit that my measuring yard is low. In our "Yanomami" theread,
we are talking about the possibility of the Yanomami culture facing the
fate that befell to some native group in Brazil from which, in a certain
moment, there remained only *one* old and shrivelled woman who still had
some memory(faint) of the native language (That scene was filmed in a
documentary). There is a famous anecdote about an indian group that was
so quickly destroyed by hunger, epidemics (there are many ways to skin a
cat), etc., that when the ethnologists went to it for research work,
there remained only a trained parrot as the only live being which could
speak the group's language.In fact, the results of Lenin's policy of
nationalities were only those: two recognize the existence of the said
nationalities and to preserve minimally their distinct languages and some
other cultural traits, even when that preservation action was limited to
not pressing russification policies to much, or- in the case of Estonia -
not following the White Army into the country. But,again, given my
particular standards of comparision, those achievements at least seem
gigantic.
Hunter Watson
Sadly true no doubt. But I can assure you that your democracy is capable of
reform over time. Things have been worse in Brazil by your own admission.
But the
> greatest problem is sheer lack of money at the university presses;
> academic expenses do not rank highly among the priorities of the
> government.You see, there are some collective facts in social life
> without which formal individual democratic rights are simply
> empty.Fortunately, I have this simple exemple at hand; but then the idea
> that the collective, in a society, has logical precedence over the
> individual is common sense in sociological thinking since Durkheim- who
> was, of course, no marxist.
We were speaking of the arts. I think you've changed the subject. (Whenever
there's any form of government there is a "collective" by definition.) I
recoil at the thought of "the collective", anybody's collective, proposing
and disposing in the field of the arts. I'd prefer chaos, thank you very
much. Please describe the role you perceive the collective as having in
this field. Will it be a system of rewards and punishments, of perqs and
prohibitions? Is it possible that there will be necessary memberships as
preconditions to publication or mere circulation of one's work? Will
"Babel's dacha" be given to a toady before he's even been tried and
executed?
> As to Pipes's comments over the Bolsheviks policy of nationalities, he
> seems to be disturbed by the fact that Lenin agreed about the right for
> local self-government in the USSR, given that the various local
> governments followed the bolshevik ideology .
My understanding is that no such hedge is found in the Declaration. The
right was absolute and not contingent on politics.
Well, what is the
> contradiction here? Do you know about any government that does not want
> to propagate its peculiar ideology.
"Propagate"? The word is "impose" and when you get to context it's kind to
limit yourself to "bloody" and "horrific".
Pipes, perhaps, should read
> Thucidides, who simply states as a fact of life that, during the
> Peloponesian War (431-404b.c), the democratic parties in the various city
> states leaned on Athens, and the olygarchical elements on Sparta. Has
> there been any news since then?
Sorry, your meaning is not clear.
And then Lenin offered the national
> governments that did not want to follow bolshevik ideology a right of
> secession that he was not loath to give, for instance, to the Baltic
> countries- But of that later in my reply to Victor Khomenko.
Sorry, again. This is not making sense.
Hunter Watson
Hunter Watson
In fact, the results of Lenin's policy of
> nationalities were only those: two recognize the existence of the said
> nationalities and to preserve minimally their distinct languages and some
> other cultural traits, even when that preservation action was limited to
> not pressing russification policies to much, or- in the case of Estonia -
> not following the White Army into the country. But,again, given my
> particular standards of comparision, those achievements at least seem
> gigantic.
>
> Carlos Rebello
The "particular standards of comparison" are neither appropriate nor are
you compelled to use them. One does not justify leaving room for the
commission of crimes by Marxist totalitarians in the future by pointing to
past crimes committed by non-Marxists of indeterminate persuasion. A
statesman will take steps to prevent such crimes from happening in the
future, that is, if the system is amenable to statesmanship. I am
approaching despair as to whether yours is. I am gradually concluding that
should the Marxist Carlos Rebello take power there will be a great deal of
violence attendant to the rending of society into his preconceived ideal
shapes. After all he knows all about the right "collectives". Actually, it
would be a good idea for him to read Madison and Jefferson along with
Durkheim and Thucidides. They solved the problem for him in the 18th
Century.
We are trying here -- I am anyway -- to juxtapose Lenin's express policy
of nationalities as set forth in his famous Declaration of late 1917 with
what was actually done by the Bolsheviks in the "borderlands" of the
Imperial Russian Empire. It is a question of Lenin's political honesty. You
know, saying what you mean and meaning what you say? The *words* of the
Declaration shine with the brightness characteristic of the Stalin
Constitution of the late 30's. As in the later case the reality was brutal,
completely at variance with the words. The words did not matter to him. His
single principle was the aquisition of power and how he attained it was
irrelevant.
Hunter Watson
REMEMBER THE TERROR!
creb...@antares.com.br
In article <hwatson-ya0231800...@news.up.net>,
hwa...@up.net (Hunter Watson) wrote:
>
> In article <883795470...@dejanews.com>, creb...@antares.com.br wrote:
>
> > In article <hwatson-ya0231800...@news.up.net>,
> > hwa...@up.net (Hunter Watson) wrote:
> >
> >
>
> We were speaking of the arts. I think you've changed the subject. (Whenever
> there's any form of government there is a "collective" by definition.) I
> recoil at the thought of "the collective", anybody's collective, proposing
> and disposing in the field of the arts. I'd prefer chaos, thank you very
> much. Please describe the role you perceive the collective as having in
> this field. Will it be a system of rewards and punishments, of perqs and
> prohibitions? Is it possible that there will be necessary memberships as
> preconditions to publication or mere circulation of one's work? Will
> "Babel's dacha" be given to a toady before he's even been tried and
> executed?
In the sphere of the arts, Watson. I'd think that the state has a duty to
offer artists the opportunity to have access to cheap materials, paints,
musical instruments, the like. I'm, of course, opposed to any censorship.
But I do think that one of the functions that any state or para-state
collective shall have in any future minimally progressive society will
be-must be- to foster new standards of *taste*, as socially perceived. In
our capitalist society, things like Proust's *Rememberance of Things
Past*, *The Brandenburg Concerts*, and Picasso's *Les Demoiselles
d'Avigon* are as good as unavaliable to the majority of the population,
thanks to the fact that this majority has no leisure, mans, and above
all, proper upbringing even to begin to understand those things. That
implies some stete interference in culture, in favour of some or other
school of literature, music, visual art, etc. For instance, I have listed
above Proust's master work, that Trotsky considered to be decadent from
the 1st. to the last word (But then some American right-wingers would
consider Proust simply unbearable, I think). To chose between Proust,
Zola and Balzac, between Picasso, Rivera, Pollock and Lichenstein- in a
post-revolutionary society, that would become political questions under
a developed socialist society. to be solved ultimately by the state.
> > As to Pipes's comments over the Bolsheviks policy of nationalities, he
> > seems to be disturbed by the fact that Lenin agreed about the right for
> > local self-government in the USSR, given that the various local
> > governments followed the bolshevik ideology .
>
> My understanding is that no such hedge is found in the Declaration. The
> right was absolute and not contingent on politics.
Yes, and in the Baltic countries(incl. Finland), where no political
forces of any consequence supported the bolsheviks (in Finland, there
were few survivors), Lenin and Trotsky respected the independence and
secession of these countries and didn't even followed Yudenitch's White
Army, after it had attacked Petrogad in october 1919, into Estonia.
>
> Pipes, perhaps, should read
> > Thucidides, who simply states as a fact of life that, during the
> > Peloponesian War (431-404b.c), the democratic parties in the various city
> > states leaned on Athens, and the olygarchical elements on Sparta. Has
> > there been any news since then?
>
> Sorry, your meaning is not clear.
Any country of consequence in the world attracts supporters and oponents
of its political regime and by this sole token is bound to exert
influence in others countries' internal policies- even when this country
itself does not chooses to act in other countries in behalf of national
and/or ideological interest.The history of the relations between the USA
and Brazil is full of instances where the US supported political forces
operating in Brazil because those forces supported concrete American
interest,but also because those forces were seem ideologically akin to
American policiy makers in the spot. That happened in at least two major
changes of political regime in Brazil- the fall of the Vargas regime
(1945) and the setting of the military dictatorship (1964). But of that
later. That pattern of behavior only repets similar patterns present
since at least Thucydides's day, I think.
>
> Hunter Watson
creb...@antares.com.br
Dear Watson:
You seem to forget that Lenin respected the independence of Lithuania,
Latvia, Estonia and Finland, even against the sanctuary given by the last
two of the above said to White armies, and that his final break of
relations with Stalin was due to the utter lack of respect the showed to
the national feelings of the Georgian communists- something even Pipes
admits. I must say that Rosa Luxemburg admitted that when she said she
would like Lenin and Trotsky to show less respect to borderland bourgeois
nationalism and more for democratic liberties in the former Russian
Empire in general. But the fact is that, in countries where there were no
native bolsheviks present, they behaved with great respect to the
general public opinion in those countries, and granted the independence
demanded. In the Ukraine, contrariwise, they supported their native
co-thinkers; but those were, at the time real representatives of a shade
of opinion in the Ukraine.
You can disagree of course, but you will be arguing against Luxemburg -
and even against *facts* that Pipes admits happened.
The real problem Watson, is that you point to real problems with marxist
politics;only the solution you point- to give up and act as the real
problems that marxism has proposed itself to solve didn't exist- will
never do.
Hunter Watson
> In article <hwatson-ya0231800...@news.up.net>,
> hwa...@up.net (Hunter Watson) wrote:
> >
> > In article <883795470...@dejanews.com>, creb...@antares.com.br
wrote:
> >
> > > In article <hwatson-ya0231800...@news.up.net>,
> > > hwa...@up.net (Hunter Watson) wrote:
> > >
> > >
> >
> > We were speaking of the arts. I think you've changed the subject. (Whenever
> > there's any form of government there is a "collective" by definition.) I
> > recoil at the thought of "the collective", anybody's collective, proposing
> > and disposing in the field of the arts. I'd prefer chaos, thank you very
> > much. Please describe the role you perceive the collective as having in
> > this field. Will it be a system of rewards and punishments, of perqs and
> > prohibitions? Is it possible that there will be necessary memberships as
> > preconditions to publication or mere circulation of one's work? Will
> > "Babel's dacha" be given to a toady before he's even been tried and
> > executed?
>
> In the sphere of the arts, Watson. I'd think that the state has a duty to
> offer artists the opportunity to have access to cheap materials, paints,
> musical instruments, the like.
Excellent. That's public philanthropy -- even handed, benign. Free
societies subsidize all sorts of "good" things. The Germans spend more on
opera than we do on public transit. It ought to go much farther than cheap
materials and instruments. It ought also to be designed to encourage
diversity and experimentation in the arts if it is to be done at all.
I'm, of course, opposed to any censorship.
The question really isn't your personal view on that but whether your
Marxist vision contains institutional structures and guarantees which will
deny government the power to censor, effectively deny it, guarantee the
denial of that power?
> But I do think that one of the functions that any state or para-state
> collective shall have in any future minimally progressive society will
> be-must be- to foster new standards of *taste*, as socially perceived.
We remember clearly how that worked in the Soviet Union. New standards were
enforced with a vengeance. "As socially perceived" meant as perceived by
bosses with the power of life and death both professionally and literally.
"Fostering" new standards of taste meant imposing them to the exclusion of
others by the application of fear and other means of oppression and
discrimination.1,500 writers and artists were murdered. Many more were
arrested. So with that history we have a right to ask you Marxists
precisely how it is that you will *prevent* censorship and this other
disgusting violence in the socialist state or para-state collective. If
your attempt to foster new standards of taste don't attract much of an
audience or induce much enthusiasm -- just as mandatory study of ideology
was a failure in the Soviet Union -- how can we be sure that it won't be
imposed on us by force as it was there? Remember we must not trust you.
You've lost all claim to that.
In
> our capitalist society, things like Proust's *Rememberance of Things
> Past*, *The Brandenburg Concerts*, and Picasso's *Les Demoiselles
> d'Avigon* are as good as unavaliable to the majority of the population,
> thanks to the fact that this majority has no leisure, mans, and above
> all, proper upbringing even to begin to understand those things.
The answer, then, is more leisure, greater means and better education. No
revolution required. In fact it's contra-indicated. It might also be a good
idea to display a little less condescension to this "majority". Great art
is not accessable only at the highest level of comprehension. Even within
the life experience of a single individual the response to particular works
of art changes as one becomes more experienced and mature.
That
> implies some stete interference in culture, in favour of some or other
> school of literature, music, visual art, etc. For instance, I have listed
> above Proust's master work, that Trotsky considered to be decadent from
> the 1st. to the last word (But then some American right-wingers would
> consider Proust simply unbearable, I think). To chose between Proust,
> Zola and Balzac, between Picasso, Rivera, Pollock and Lichenstein- in a
> post-revolutionary society, that would become political questions under
> a developed socialist society. to be solved ultimately by the state.
I'm glad you mention Trotsky. His formal education did not exceed High
School. Yet he read from the first to the last word of "Rememberance". His
father was an obscure farmer in the Ukraine. Yet Trotsky educated himself
and thereafter presumed to pass judgment on no less than Marcel Proust! The
condescension you display isn't necessary. Education and leisure are the
keys. The problem is whether views such as Trotsky's will be re-promulgated
by oppressors and imposed upon the rest of us. This theory of "interference
in culture" to the point that a "choice" in favor of some or other
undefined "school" will become a "political" rather than an artistic
question and will be solved "by the state" is a profoundly dangerous. It
will inevitably be abused. No one can be trusted with that kind of power
over the arts. The entire history of Marxist regimes in the 20th Century
proves this without question.
I have to hand it to you though. No one else on apst from within the ranks
of the totalitarian persuasion would have been candid enough to admit these
things! They hide from hard questions like creepy-crawlies under rocks.
Maybe there's some hope. I just wish I could read Portugese and then get a
copy of your new book. Tell you what. Your English is great. How 'bout
giving it to us here on Usenet, chapter by chapter. You will want to
publish it in English sooner or later anyway. I do indeed want to read it.
I want to know what cutting edge thinkers are saying about how Trotskyism
is to be perceived in the 21st Century, how it is to be made relevant to
post industrial civilization. How it is to be made consistent with humane
values and civil liberties. You tantalize me with a little tid bit here and
there. No where near enough.
>
> > > As to Pipes's comments over the Bolsheviks policy of nationalities, he
> > > seems to be disturbed by the fact that Lenin agreed about the right for
> > > local self-government in the USSR, given that the various local
> > > governments followed the bolshevik ideology .
> >
> > My understanding is that no such hedge is found in the Declaration. The
> > right was absolute and not contingent on politics.
>
> Yes...(snip)
Does that "yes" mean that I am right there is no such hedge found in the
Declaration, that the right was not therein conditioned upon following
Bolshevik ideology? That's definitely what the historians say but I have
not read it myself in a quarter century and cannot find it in an appendix
in my library. As to the Yudenich pursuit decision I don't think the Red
Army was strong enough to follow. The Baltic countries were taken later by
the same regime under the most disgusting cricumstances, so what's the
difference? Stalin was Lenin's appointed expert on the national question.
> > Pipes, perhaps, should read
> > > Thucidides, who simply states as a fact of life that, during the
> > > Peloponesian War (431-404b.c), the democratic parties in the various city
> > > states leaned on Athens, and the olygarchical elements on Sparta. Has
> > > there been any news since then?
> >
> > Sorry, your meaning is not clear.
>
> Any country of consequence in the world attracts supporters and oponents
> of its political regime and by this sole token is bound to exert
> influence in others countries' internal policies- even when this country
> itself does not chooses to act in other countries in behalf of national
> and/or ideological interest.The history of the relations between the USA
> and Brazil is full of instances where the US supported political forces
> operating in Brazil because those forces supported concrete American
> interest,but also because those forces were seem ideologically akin to
> American policiy makers in the spot. That happened in at least two major
> changes of political regime in Brazil- the fall of the Vargas regime
> (1945) and the setting of the military dictatorship (1964). But of that
> later. That pattern of behavior only repets similar patterns present
> since at least Thucydides's day, I think.
I follow what you say but it doesn't advance the argument. We're not
speaking of the influence an attractive cultural or political system might
have naturally on foreign peoples completely independent of active physical
intrusion or subversion by its government. We're not even speaking of
efforts from outside to influence the debate. We're speaking of the violent
termination of all debate. The Bolshevik Red Army set the border lands
ablaze alright, but the dull red glow on the horizon was from arson, not
ideas. It strikes me as somewhat desperate to attempt comparison of
American influence in Brazil with Bolshevik subjugation of national
minorities.
Hunter Watson
Hunter Watson
> The real problem Watson, is that you point to real problems with marxist
> politics;only the solution you point- to give up and act as the real
> problems that marxism has proposed itself to solve didn't exist- will
> never do.
>
> Carlos Rebello
The social, economic and political problems which stimulate interest in
Marxist doctrine are real enough. They cry out for solution. 150 year old
economic theories which have already been given excruciating opportunity to
work are not the answer. It's not as if I am rejecting everything ever
labeled Marxist. I think you ideologues need to reconsider the doctrine and
eliminate that which has proved to be pernicious. And, Carlos, there is an
awful lot of that. Along the way Marxism needs to be purged of its
religious trappings.
It's a pleasure as always.
Best regards,
Hunter Watson
Hunter Watson
> In the sphere of the arts, Watson. I'd think that the state has a duty to
> offer artists the opportunity to have access to cheap materials, paints,
> musical instruments, the like. I'm, of course, opposed to any censorship.
> But I do think that one of the functions that any state or para-state
> collective shall have in any future minimally progressive society will
> be-must be- to foster new standards of *taste*, as socially perceived. In
> our capitalist society, things like Proust's *Rememberance of Things
> Past*, *The Brandenburg Concerts*, and Picasso's *Les Demoiselles
> d'Avigon* are as good as unavaliable to the majority of the population,
> thanks to the fact that this majority has no leisure, mans, and above
> all, proper upbringing even to begin to understand those things. That
> implies some stete interference in culture, in favour of some or other
> school of literature, music, visual art, etc. For instance, I have listed
> above Proust's master work, that Trotsky considered to be decadent from
> the 1st. to the last word (But then some American right-wingers would
> consider Proust simply unbearable, I think). To chose between Proust,
> Zola and Balzac, between Picasso, Rivera, Pollock and Lichenstein- in a
> post-revolutionary society, that would become political questions under
> a developed socialist society. to be solved ultimately by the state.
According to Tertz the most exact definition of socialist realism
("socrealism" among initiates) was set forth in the statute of the Union of
Soviet Writers:
"Socialist realism is the basic method of Soviet literature and literary
criticism. It demands of the artist the truthful, historically concrete
representation of reality in its revolutionary development. Moreover, the
truthfulness and historical concreteness of the artistic representation of
reality must be linked with the task of ideological transformation and
education of workers in the spirit of socialism." (1934)
The language is what Tertz calls "this innocent formula". We know, however,
what happened in the Soviet Union and for that matter in China regarding
the arts. What we need to know is the larger meaning of your conviction
that the state will "choose" among various books in our pre-revolutionary
heritage and that such things will become "political questions" soluable
only by the state. We need also to know what methods will be used by the
government to foster "new standards of taste". We need answers to lots of
questions. What better, more systematic way to do it but to analyse the
flag ship regime's statute on the very subject? Let's dismantle it line by
line. The text will be in capitals for ease of reference. I will follow
with some elementary questions. Remember though that we use this simply as
a necessary surrogate for the neo-Trotskyist formulation which you call for
above. I hope you will show us the changes that your formulation will
render to any aspect of it in the context of your answers.
SOCIALIST REALISM IS THE BASIC METHOD OF SOVIET LITERATURE AND LITERARY
CRITICISM.
A. Why doesn't it read "a" basic method? Will the neo-Trotskyist
formula follow the Soviet mode?
B. Why is it necessary that the *government* promulgate "the basic
method"? Won't it spring up naturally? What are communists afraid of here?
Do they really have perpetual "legitimacy anxiety"?
C. Will non-Soviet (read neo-Trotskyite) literature and literary
criticism be permitted? Will it be supported equally by the government?
D. If literary criticism is to be confined within the prescription for
socialist realism too, how can it fulfill its basic function in literature?
Is all of literature to become an adjunct of politics?
IT DEMANDS OF THE ARTIST, THE TRUTHFUL, HISTORICALLY CONCRETE
REPRESENTATION OF REALITY IN ITS REVOLUTIONARY DEVELOPMENT.
E. Is there any limit to peremptory "demands" which will be made of
artists? If so what is it and how will it be enforced?
F. Who will determine the operative definition of "reality"? Will it
be left to artists or will it have ideological content? What such content?
Who will determine it and enforce it? Will it change as time goes on and
different sects succeed to the leadership?
G. Will the term "historically concrete" be defined by the state and
enforced by censors? Will it have ideological content? What such content?
H. May an artist write and publish something on a subject which in his
independent view has had no "revolutionary development"?
I. If there is to be censorship by the state what becomes of the
requirement of "truthfulness". Will the state be the sole reservoir of
truth?
MOREOVER THE TRUTHFULNESS AND HISTORICAL CONCRETENESS OF THE ARTISTIC
REPRESENTATION OF REALITY MUST BE LINKED WITH THE TASK OF IDEOLOGICAL
TRANSFORMATION AND EDUCATION OF WORKERS IN THE SPIRIT OF SOCIALISM.
J. Why is the word "must" used here? Will there be any residual
freedom to angage in non-political art and to have it published?
K. Despite Trotsky's best efforts not everyone is a worker. What of
the transformation of others? What of the freedom of others not to be
transformed? What of the freedom of workers not to be transformed?
L. What sort of ideological transformation and education is proposed
here? Will that be left to political bosses and censors? For example, which
Trotskyist sect will prevail in the arts?
I realize, Mr. Rebello, that this is not precisely your formulation
but I have reason from what you have said to believe that it will in fact
be close to it. I hope to be disabused of this illusion in detail. In
addition to answers give us, please, the proposed neo-Trotskyist statute of
writers. Surely you discuss this important issue in your book?
Best regards,
Hunter Watson
creb...@antares.com.br
>
> I realize, Mr. Rebello, that this is not precisely your formulation
> but I have reason from what you have said to believe that it will in fact
> be close to it. I hope to be disabused of this illusion in detail. In
> addition to answers give us, please, the proposed neo-Trotskyist statute of
> writers. Surely you discuss this important issue in your book?
>
> Best regards,
>
> Hunter Watson
Watson:
Your questions about socialist democracy and socialist statute of the
arts are important and legitimate. However, I think that Pipes's is not a
good guide on the subject. You see, conservatives like Pipes concentrate
on Bolshevik blunders and mistakes in Lenin's lifetime period, and forget
thet Trotsky lived some 15 years after Lenin's death and wrote lengthly
on those subjects.First, Trotsky proposed, in the Revolution Betrayed,
that a political revolution in the USSR should restore the multi-party
system, in order to restore the Bolshevik Party as a *party*, and not an
state authority enforcing the will of the General Chairman. Also, Trotsky
said again and again that any future socialist experiment should set
itself the aim of deepening bourgeois democracy by strenghthening its
element of genuine popular participation in government affairs, as
opposed to the whole concept of *representative* government.
But on the arts, Already in 1923 Trotsky forewarned the Party that it
should, in the fileld of literature, only repress materials that
objectively fostered and proposed counter-revolutionary activities. Later
he wrote his famous manifest with the French surrealist Breton, where he
wrote that ALL IS ALLOWED IN ART.
But, as to the matter of state interference in the building of taste: you
see, Watson, that developed taste in art requires training; in order to
appreciate T.S. Eliot's *The Waste Land*, one could of course
self-educate oneself, but the main problem here is- how is one to know
that there *was* a T.S. Eliot. I should put more fauth in a socialist
school that prints and distributes free copies of T.S. Eliot's work to
students and so accomplishes the main social function of education, which
is formative,not informative, more of a *Bildung* than *Erziehung*.
Best regards
Bill Magdalene
>But on the arts, Already in 1923 Trotsky forewarned the Party that it
>should, in the [field] of literature, only repress materials that
>objectively fostered and proposed counter-revolutionary activities.
Can you say more about this? How is "objectively" determined here?
>Later
>he wrote his famous manifest with the French surrealist Breton, where he
>wrote that ALL IS ALLOWED IN ART.
Isn't this inconsistent with repressing "counter-revolutionary" materials?
Bill Magdalene
Hunter Watson
In article <53181....@maroon.tc.umn.edu>, "Bill Magdalene"
<w-m...@maroon.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
It is inconsistent. The problem is one both of theory and of praxis.
Though no aspect of human freedom is more important to me personally than
freedom in the arts, this is only one facet in a much larger problem of
Marxism. That problem is the failure of the doctrine to deal with the
containment of political power either in theory or in practice. I ask
Messrs. Rebello, Magdalene and Proyect and anyone else interested to look
at my lamentably labeled but serious post, "Loudmouth Dilettantes and
Marxist Lacunae". It deals with the larger problem represented by this
particular issue.
Hunter Watson
sayan bhattacharyya
Hunter Watson <hwa...@up.net> wrote:
>
>Though no aspect of human freedom is more important to me personally than
>freedom in the arts, this is only one facet in a much larger problem of
>Marxism. That problem is the failure of the doctrine to deal with the
>containment of political power either in theory or in practice.
I think that Mr. Watson has laid his finger exactly on an important
problem.
I think that the standard marxist answer to this is that the
over-concentration and accummulation of power in the hands of
a small group or an individual, was a consequence of "socialism
in one country" i.e. that an embattled socialism in one country
made inevitable this overconcentration as a defensive measure.
I'm not sure if I buy this marxist answer, because it seems to
lead to a chicken-and-egg problem.
David Stevens
sayan bhattacharyya wrote:
> ...
> I think that the standard marxist answer to this is that the
> over-concentration and accummulation of power in the hands of
> a small group or an individual, was a consequence of "socialism
> in one country" i.e. that an embattled socialism in one country
> made inevitable this overconcentration as a defensive measure.
>
> I'm not sure if I buy this marxist answer, because it seems to
> lead to a chicken-and-egg problem.
Sayan, you have a knack for identifying interesting questions,
but sometimes I think you skip over important definitions in
casting the problem. If one considers a Stalinist to be a
"standard" Marxist, then speaking non-ironically of embattled
"socialism" and "inevitable" concentration of power is indeed
probably the traditional cant. But if there is such thing as
a "standard Trotskyist" <brr> position, it would take issue
with many of these embedded assumptions.
(*) The Soviet Union was never "socialist"; when we call it
a "bureaucratically deformed workers' state," it is not
because we like to use extra words, but because the
difference can be absolutely crucial.
(*) We do not concede as "inevitable" the concentration of
power in order to defend the revolution in an isolated
workers' state. To the contrary; the best "defense" of
the revolution is to _empower_ the overwhelming majority
of the workers who have something to gain, and to make
it manifest what they are fighting for. (This applies
not only to politics but even to concrete improvements
in everyday standards of living).
(*) There's a _sometimes_ true proverb: The Best Defense is
a Good Offense. In social revolution, it happens that
_defense_ of the revolution requires its _extension_.
Even bourgeois-revolutionary France couldn't establish
"capitalism in a single country," without spreading new
ideas and new armies all over the continent of Europe.
The fascist victory in the Spanish Civil War was due to
the defeat of the Spanish Revolution; the Revolution was
defeated not by Franco, but by the craven Republicans.
The Popular Front government told revolutionary workers
and peasants: First we win the war, then we can conduct
the Revolution later on. In the end, they got neither.
Success in the Revolution was a precondition for the
defeat of Franco. Indeed, the pro-imperialist policies
of the Popular Front regime were a military liability
even from the start of the generals' revolt. The first
Rebel troops were mostly "colonial" troops from Spanish
Morocco. A revolutionary government would have declared
the independence of Morocco, and Franco's initial legions
would have melted away on the spot. But by attempting to
compromise "reasonably" with the "progressive" bourgeoisie,
the workers organizations in the Popular Front betrayed
themselves, refusing to call for Moroccan independence.
(*) Soviet revolutions occured in Hungary and Bavaria, too.
It was by no means "inevitable" that the revolution would
remain isolated. Most would agree (I hope) that a Soviet
Germany would have made a rather substantial difference to
the USSR and to the world.
Of course, this discussion arose in the context of debate with a
rabid anticommunist who professes that Stalin was the inheritor of
Lenin (a claim the Stalinists share with our rulers).
- David Stevens
creb...@antares.com.br
> <w-m...@maroon.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 15 Jan 1998 06:22:09 -0600,
> > creb...@antares.com.br <creb...@antares.com.br> wrote:
> >
> > >But on the arts, Already in 1923 Trotsky forewarned the Party that it
> > >should, in the [field] of literature, only repress materials that
> > >objectively fostered and proposed counter-revolutionary activities.
> >
> > Can you say more about this? How is "objectively" determined here?
> >
> > >Later
> > >he wrote his famous manifest with the French surrealist Breton, where he
> > >wrote that ALL IS ALLOWED IN ART.
> >
> > Isn't this inconsistent with repressing "counter-revolutionary" materials?
> >
> > Bill Magdalene
>
> It is inconsistent.
Absolutely. Perhaps my wording was inadequate to convey what I meant:
That Trotsky, between 1923 and his composing the manifesto with Breton,
revised his views. BTW, I haven't yet seem Watson's post on censorship
and the arts, but Watson talks that marxism has no theory about the
containment of power...
Well, there's really a problem. Marxism has long held *politics*, as a
theoretical discipline, in disdain before the realities of class rule,
and busied itself with different *policies* to attain socialism,
disdaining to think about a prospective socialist - or should it be
better to say soviet- constitucional arrangement that would give
sufficient leeway for reabsorption of member of former owning classes in
the post revolutionary order, freedom of press, multiparty system. Well
and good; anyway, there is already a general commitiment with the idea of
*popular participation* of people in shaping the ambience of their daily
lives. It is still a general principle, but it exists. And, as to
containment of political power, Watson has forgotten to say something
about the disproportionate and almost boundless share in political power
held by owners of capital in our society, whether by means of influencing
relatively small representative bodies, or by helding an oligopoly over
the media. Does Watson thinks that in the USA any sector of public
opinion has equal access to expound its views on the media?If not, what
should he propose as alternative?
Hunter Watson
In article <69o4q9$qgk$1...@news.eecs.umich.edu>,
bhat...@skynet.eecs.umich.edu (sayan bhattacharyya) wrote:
> Hunter Watson <hwa...@up.net> wrote:
> >
> >Though no aspect of human freedom is more important to me personally than
> >freedom in the arts, this is only one facet in a much larger problem of
> >Marxism. That problem is the failure of the doctrine to deal with the
> >containment of political power either in theory or in practice.
>
> I think that Mr. Watson has laid his finger exactly on an important
> problem.
>
> I think that the standard marxist answer to this is that the
> over-concentration and accummulation of power in the hands of
> a small group or an individual, was a consequence of "socialism
> in one country" i.e. that an embattled socialism in one country
> made inevitable this overconcentration as a defensive measure.
>
> I'm not sure if I buy this marxist answer, because it seems to
> lead to a chicken-and-egg problem.
Another formulation of the same excuse is the tendency of Marxists to label
the failures as "state capitalism", not socialism, and to suggest that the
rest of us should just give them another shot at it without insisting on a
fundamental re-work of the doctrine first, i.e., without having paid any
price. It's something like insisting on a free throw in basketball after
having committed the foul yourself. It's counter-intuitive. Heilbroner
calls it "disingenuous".
Hunter Watson
Hunter Watson
In article <69o91p$3...@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net>,
phyls...@worldnet.att.net wrote:
> sayan bhattacharyya wrote:
> > ...
> >
> > I think that the standard marxist answer to this is that the
> > over-concentration and accummulation of power in the hands of
> > a small group or an individual, was a consequence of "socialism
> > in one country" i.e. that an embattled socialism in one country
> > made inevitable this overconcentration as a defensive measure.
> >
> > I'm not sure if I buy this marxist answer, because it seems to
> > lead to a chicken-and-egg problem.
>
> Sayan, you have a knack for identifying interesting questions,
> but sometimes I think you skip over important definitions in
> casting the problem. If one considers a Stalinist to be a
> "standard" Marxist, then speaking non-ironically of embattled
> "socialism" and "inevitable" concentration of power is indeed
> probably the traditional cant. But if there is such thing as
> a "standard Trotskyist" <brr> position, it would take issue
> with many of these embedded assumptions.
Sayan seems not to rely on "definitions" as an alternative to independent
analysis.
Whether socialism might be "embattled" or not after a coup and whether or
not one considers Stalinists to be different from other Marxists is
irrelevant. None of this can constitute a justification for the failure of
the doctrine, the Marxist/Leninist doctrine and regimes, to deal with what
became their Achilles' heel, the failure in theory or practice to deal with
the problems of political power. The economic theory as to the nature of
capitalism was obviously not enough.
>
> (*) The Soviet Union was never "socialist"; when we call it
> a "bureaucratically deformed workers' state," it is not
> because we like to use extra words, but because the
> difference can be absolutely crucial.
>
> (*) We do not concede as "inevitable" the concentration of
> power in order to defend the revolution in an isolated
> workers' state.
Regardless of its justification this *purpose* given for the concentration
of power was not sufficient to check the use of power in fact. The road to
Hell is paved with ostensibly good intentions. I think it intuituvely
obvious that it *could not* have been sufficient. Virtually all of the
crimes committed by government in the Soviet Union were justified as being
in defense of the revolution in one way or another. This was true of
Lenin's era as it was in Stalin's. In order to defend the revolution Lenin
abolished the criminal code. Should anyone, anyone in power be able
routinely to arrest, try and execute citizens in the absence of a criminal
code, for years on end? Anyone? Right or Left? The disappearances in Chile,
Argentina and Uruguay under right wing regimes must resolutely be
condemned, but it is impossible not to apply the same logic to left wing
regimes. This is part of what I mean about the insensitivity to questions
of the concentration of political power.
To the contrary; the best "defense" of
> the revolution is to _empower_ the overwhelming majority
> of the workers who have something to gain, and to make
> it manifest what they are fighting for.>
What institution was created by Marx or Lenin to effectively protect even
workers, much less other elements, from the state?
Lenin abandoned the empowerment of workers very, very early. What is to
*prevent* any Marxist regime from doing the same thing?
> Of course, this discussion arose in the context of debate with a
> rabid anticommunist who professes that Stalin was the inheritor of
> Lenin (a claim the Stalinists share with our rulers).
>
> - David Stevens
Can't resist can you, David? Remember, even you, the exalted Janitor of
APST, are a meaningless cipher. Only the ideas matter. You know they are
important regardless of what you think of me. Whether you deal with them
forthrightly or not is simply a matter of your character.
As to Stalin as the "inheritor of Lenin" I say yes, indeed, and it stems
precisely from the defect in theory and practice at issue which goes back
all the way to Marx and Engels. In the mid 1800s they could have learned a
lot about institutional restraint of political power simply by looking
West.
Hunter Watson
Hunter Watson
> In article <hwatson-ya0231800...@news.up.net>,
> hwa...@up.net (Hunter Watson) wrote:
> >
> > In article <53181....@maroon.tc.umn.edu>, "Bill Magdalene"
> > <w-m...@maroon.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
> >
> > > On Thu, 15 Jan 1998 06:22:09 -0600,
> > > creb...@antares.com.br <creb...@antares.com.br> wrote:
> > >
> > > >But on the arts, Already in 1923 Trotsky forewarned the Party that it
> > > >should, in the [field] of literature, only repress materials that
> > > >objectively fostered and proposed counter-revolutionary activities.
> > >
> > > Can you say more about this? How is "objectively" determined here?
> > >
> > > >Later
> > > >he wrote his famous manifest with the French surrealist Breton, where he
> > > >wrote that ALL IS ALLOWED IN ART.
> > >
> > > Isn't this inconsistent with repressing "counter-revolutionary" materials?
> > >
> > > Bill Magdalene
> >
> > It is inconsistent. (said Watson)
>
> Absolutely. Perhaps my wording was inadequate to convey what I meant:
> That Trotsky, between 1923 and his composing the manifesto with Breton,
> revised his views.
Can the manifesto with Breton be found on the Web in English?
BTW, I haven't yet seem Watson's post on censorship
> and the arts, but Watson talks that marxism has no theory about the
> containment of power...
>
> Well, there's really a problem. Marxism has long held *politics*, as a
> theoretical discipline, in disdain before the realities of class rule,
> and busied itself with different *policies* to attain socialism,
> disdaining to think about a prospective socialist - or should it be
> better to say soviet- constitucional arrangement that would give
> sufficient leeway for reabsorption of member of former owning classes in
> the post revolutionary order, freedom of press, multiparty system. Well
> and good;
What was the impact of this failure on the course of Soviet history? And,
if it is to be said as David does that the Soviets *never* achieved
socialism, is there any point in those 70 plus years where such a
constitutional arrangement with reabsorption and freedoms should have been
required regardless?
anyway, there is already a general commitiment with the idea of
> *popular participation* of people in shaping the ambience of their daily
> lives. It is still a general principle, but it exists.
Can a general commitment protect one from state power?
And, as to
> containment of political power, Watson has forgotten to say something
> about the disproportionate and almost boundless share in political power
> held by owners of capital in our society, whether by means of influencing
> relatively small representative bodies, or by helding an oligopoly over
> the media. Does Watson thinks that in the USA any sector of public
> opinion has equal access to expound its views on the media?If not, what
> should he propose as alternative?
>
> Carlos Rebello
I agree with this as far as it goes, but that is not far enough. Political
power is not shared equitably in the USA or in the West generally.
Certainly the fruits of "capital" are not distributed in an equitable
fashion. I don't think they ever will be under any sort of regime. Humans
are too much the naked ape. The question is the direction in which we are
heading. The owners of capital are unquestionably influential beyond their
numbers. Yet, somehow, it remains comforting that here they are
*politically* powerless to decree in camera that we shall be dragged into
cellars at 2:00 a.m. and shot in our hundreds of thousands, or, Mr.
Rebello, drugged and cast from helicopters into the ocean. We come and go
as we please without internal passports or permission. We assemble in
secret or in public with anyone we choose and speak our minds on virtually
any subject. We read what we please and can gather it with impunity from
anywhere in the world. I've done it all of my adult life. We may voice
virtually any opinion in public including the opinion that the U.S.
government should be overthrown (though it's not a real good idea to act on
it as perhaps Malecki can attest). There are endless examples of the
limitation and regulation of the actual power of both government and
capital in this system despite the fact that it is riddled with faults none
the less. There are institutions which have been built up over 225 years
which aim directly at the limitation and balancing of political power. The
need for it was understood in the 18th Century by provincials on the fringe
of empire. How could Marxists have gotten to 1998 without serious
consideration of the issue and still be resisting it?
Hunter Watson