A Tale of Lenin and the Tsar, II
Richard Carnes
having sacrificed my friendships, career, love life, health, and
finally sanity for the sake of reading and writing articles for the
net, I find it advisable to economize severely on the time I spend on
it. Since like most people I can type faster than I can think, I am
posting another excerpt from John Roemer's article. (The article is
not copyrighted, BTW; not that I care about bourgeois property
rights.)
____________________
I choose to sidestep the question of collective action because there
are many other aspects of revolutions I think it important to study,
aspects which can be discussed while holding in abeyance the
microfoundations of collective action. In particular, I am
interested in what one might call revolutionary ideology. Ideology
is one of those dirty words in modern economics; it is usually
conceived of as an irrational or unfounded commitment which a person
has to a set of ideas. One might think of an ideology as affecting
the utility function of the agent; but I propose here to conceive of
an ideology as a self-imposed limitation placed on one's feasible
set [of options]. An agent has a set of possible strategies in a
situation; ideology causes him to rule out a certain portion of that
set as beyond the pale, perhaps for ethical reasons. An important
question, I think, is: can we explain why people have the ideologies
they do?
We frequently attribute certain actions of actors in revolutionary
situations to their ideologies. Let me give two examples. Think of
a revolution as a competition between the present ruler (whom I shall
call the Tsar), and a revolutionary entrepreneur, whose name is
Lenin. Lenin and the Tsar are competing for support of coalitions of
the population, in a way which will become precise soon. Frequently,
in such situations, we observe that the Tsar imposes very harsh
penalties on the poor for participating in revolutionary activity,
and somewhat lighter penalties on the more well-to-do who have
abandoned their comfortable stations in life and joined Lenin. (An
example is provided by the elections in El Salvador two years ago [in
1982]: nonparticipation was viewed, by the regime in power, as a
kind of revolutionary protest. The penalties imposed for not voting
were inversely proportional in severity to one's wealth. The poorest
people who did not vote were beaten up and lost their jobs, while
middle class people were censured in some fairly trivial way.) This
behavior of the ruler might be viewed as ideologically (in the sense
of irrationally) motivated: he hates the poor and feels more
friendly to the rich. A second example: Lenin, in trying to
overthrow the Tsar, usually proposes a progressive redistribution of
income, he promises to take from the rich and give to the poor. Par
excellence, this behavior is viewed as the consequence of an ideology.
I would like to provide rational foundations for these ideologies.
For instance, I will show that if Lenin wants to overthrow the Tsar
-- by *any* means necessary -- it will be in his interest to adopt a
progressive redistribution of income. And if the Tsar wants to
preserve the present regime against Lenin's onslaught, his best
strategy will entail assigning penalties for revolutionary
participation which are inversely proportional in severity to the
income of the participants. My purpose is threefold: (1) to
encourage social scientists to think of revolutions as events which
are amenable to rational analysis, they should not remain black
boxes; (2) to make the same point, more generally, about ideology:
that we should not rule out of court certain kinds of behavior as
ideological, but seek to explain the evolution of ideology using
rational choice models; (3) to re-enforce by example my point of view
that in part what should characterize Marxian social science is the
questions it concerns itself with, rather than the adherence to some
supposedly privileged logic, some dialectical or holistic approach,
which I think is more akin to the yoga of a mystical practice or
religion. This is not my complete characterization of Marxian social
science, which I think also differs from non-Marxist social science
in its ethical posture.
Although the work described is quite technical, I will try to avoid
most mathematical detail, and will concentrate on the general
lessons from this tale of Lenin and the Tsar. The interested reader
can get the full story elsewhere [in *Econometrica* 53 (1985)].
--John E. Roemer
--
Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
ja...@inmet.uucp
[Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes]
>I expect to be around to terrorize the net for a while yet.
Delighted to hear that !
>[Another installment of the tale of "Lenin and the tsar"
>by John Roemer].
I realize these are two fictitious characters. However, the
fact that they behave completely out of character for their
historical namesakes *does* reflect, to me, on the value
of the analysis. The author says: here is how two forces
behave, let us understand why. The answer: because you
invented them this way - leaves his conclusions without
foundation.
The fictitious "Lenin" has, as his main priority, the
overthrow of the tsarist regime - which, however,
treats him with relative leniency, and we are invited
to understand that. Having this priority, he calls
for "progressive income redistribution" to obtain
the support of the people. All this, for historical
Lenin and the tsarist government, is complete hogwash.
If you read the complete works of Lenin - the pre-revolutionary
part (not that I advice it) - you will discover that the bulk of
them is polemical (and rather scurrilous in tone). And the bulk
of this polemics is against fellow socialists of various shades.
Out of the remaining portion, most is against liberals. Lenin
was, of course, in favor of an anti-tsar revolution. He just con-
centrated on a different task - organizing a small disciplined
group for future action. (Some Bolsheviks did some fighting,
along with other urban groups, in 1905. Lenin had no role in this).
As for "income redistribution" - the error is even worse here.
This was not *anywhere* on Lenin's, or the Bolsheviks', list of
priorities. (Redistributionism and "petty-bourgeois egalitarian-
ism" are among the swear words of Bolshevik theoretical jargon).
Their agrarian program was very characteristic: the land of the
landlords (about half of the land in use) was to be expropriat-
ed, but *not* parcelled to the peasants. Rather, it was to be
developed by the state ("bourgeois-democratic" state) with hired
labor, because large-scale production units were more progres-
sive. The Mensheviks' program differed in that the land was to be
municipal, not central government, property. There was a party
that wanted all the land to go to the peasants - the Socialist-
Revolutionaries (SR) and some other parties with more moderate
redistribution agenda. In 1917, after their coup, Bolsheviks sud-
denly scuttled their own program and adopted the SR program - for
the good reason that it had the overwhelming support of the
peasants. Such lightning changes of policy were quite charac-
teristic of Lenin. But of course that had nothing to do with de-
feating the Tsar who had been deposed long since.
What about SR - do *they* fit the role of "Lenin" in the fable ?
They *did* fight the tsarist government a lot; and they *did*
want redistribution.
However, for them it was the land for the peasants that
was the main priority; and the tsar was mainly the enemy
because he stood in the way: quite the opposite motivation
from the one ascribed to "Lenin" by Roemer.
The "Tsar"'s behaviour is described as incorrectly - but I am
tired of this now. So far, the only facts Roemer has marshalled
are: (1) revolutionaries often promise to improve the lot of the
poor and (2) police in many countries treat poor and obscure peo-
ple more roughly than rich and well-connected people.
Hardly a base for profound conclusions.
Jan Wasilewsky
Richard Carnes
serve as a further reply to Fencsik's question about the nature of
contemporary academic Marxism. Jan writes, concerning "A Tale of
Lenin and the Tsar":
>I realize these are two fictitious characters. However, the fact that
>they behave completely out of character for their historical
>namesakes *does* reflect, to me, on the value of the analysis. The
>author says: here is how two forces behave, let us understand why.
>The answer: because you invented them this way - leaves his
>conclusions without foundation.
>
>The fictitious "Lenin" has, as his main priority, the overthrow of
>the tsarist regime - which, however, treats him with relative
>leniency, and we are invited to understand that. Having this
>priority, he calls for "progressive income redistribution" to obtain
>the support of the people. All this, for historical Lenin and the
>tsarist government, is complete hogwash.
Jan here misses the point of Roemer's article, which may not have
been very clear although I thought it was. The name "Lenin" was
chosen for one of the agents in the tale simply because Lenin is the
most famous revolutionary of our time. "The Tsar" is the obvious
name for "Lenin's" opponent in a two-person game. Roemer did not
state or imply that the model (or rather models) he proposed had any
particularly close correspondence to the historical reality of the
Russian Revolution, nor do his conclusions depend on a close
correspondence.
The principal question Roemer is addressing is this: Is it possible
to understand revolutionary ideology in terms of individual
rationality? Revolutions need not be black boxes; we can (Roemer
suggests) understand how they work. As a step towards this
understanding, Roemer constructs a model in the form of a two-person
game. The purpose of constructing models is to enable us to
substitute precision for handwaving; by starting with a set of
precisely defined assumptions, we may be able to derive interesting
results that shed some light on the real world. It goes without
saying that the real world is more complex than the model; it also
goes without saying that if the model's assumptions are too wildly
unrealistic (e.g., "people seek to minimize their income"), then the
model is of little use. Jan appears to believe that the model's
assumptions are unrealistic:
>As for "income redistribution" - the error is even worse here.
>This was not *anywhere* on Lenin's, or the Bolsheviks', list of
>priorities. (Redistributionism and "petty-bourgeois egalitarian-
>ism" are among the swear words of Bolshevik theoretical jargon).
>Their agrarian program was very characteristic: the land of the
>landlords (about half of the land in use) was to be expropriated, but
>*not* parcelled to the peasants. Rather, it was to be developed
>by the state ("bourgeois-democratic" state) with hired labor, because
>large-scale production units were more progressive. The Mensheviks'
>program differed in that the land was to be municipal, not central
>government, property. There was a party that wanted all the land to
>go to the peasants - the Socialist-Revolutionaries (SR) and some
>other parties with more moderate redistribution agenda. In 1917,
>after their coup, Bolsheviks suddenly scuttled their own program and
>adopted the SR program - for the good reason that it had the
>overwhelming support of the peasants. Such lightning changes of
>policy were quite characteristic of Lenin. But of course that had
>nothing to do with defeating the Tsar who had been deposed long
>since.
Jan's historical account is interesting but beside the point. It
shows that the Russian Revolution did not follow exactly the course
of Roemer's model. Of course -- no one has claimed that it did. But
Jan's account also shows that progressive redistribution (from rich
to poor) was very much on the minds of the revolutionaries, even if
they wished to redistribute wealth in the form of collective rather
than private property. And indeed there is a large class of
historical situations (including e.g., Central America and South
Africa today) in which we may presume that the desire to improve
one's material situation is one of the principal motives for engaging
in revolutionary activity. So I think it is not grossly unrealistic
for the Lenin of the fable to propose a progressive redistribution of
income. In fact, one of Roemer's main results is that, given the
other assumptions of the model(s) (which of course I have not yet
specified), Lenin MUST propose a progressive redistribution if he
wishes the revolution to succeed. This is what Roemer means by
"rationalizing revolutionary ideology"; under the terms of the
model(s), proposing a progressive redistribution can be viewed as a
rational strategy for winning the two-person game with the Tsar.
If I have time, I will post some more excerpts from the article to
clarify these points. For now let me post these general
methodological remarks from another article by John Roemer.
Reprinted in defiance of bourgeois copyright laws.
__________________
Marxism's method, it is often claimed, is the dialectical analysis of
social forces; Marx's key insight was to see the individual was
determined by his social milieu, indeed his relation to the means of
production; methodological individualism ignores this insight by
placing the individual in the center of the story. Classes must be
the atoms of the Marxian system, not strategic individuals [or so it
is claimed]. The power of the Marxian argument must come, however,
not by postulating that classes are the atoms of the system, but by
proving that as a *theorem*. One has no choice but to take
individuals as given and separate. We observe that individuals
frequently act in class units, the problem being to explain this in a
deductive way, based on postulates of individual behavior. A huge
deficiency of bourgeois history and social science is its inability
to understand class behavior and solidarity: as well as observing
the importance of such behavior, Marxists are obliged to explain it.
Marxism consists of at least these claims:
(1) that classes act as units in certain historical situations;
(2) that class position is best defined with reference to a person's
relation to the means of production;
(3) that class struggle is the mechanism of historical change;
(4) that historical change has a certain pattern (feudalism,
capitalism, socialism);
(5) that capitalism is ethically bad (exploitation).
To argue these points, Marxism requires at least three types of work
-- history, social science and philosophy. I think the role of
history is to formulate inductive laws, with reference to (1)-(4)
above. The role of social science is partly inductive, to formulate
laws on a somewhat more micro level than history does, but also
deductive, to formulate axiomatic theory that can explain the
inductive laws. For example, I have referred to proving a theorem
that individuals will act as classes in some situations as an example
of how (1) [classes sometimes act as units] can be given such han
axiomatic basis. An example of (2) [class position being defined by
relation to means of production] is the work of [E.O.] Wright, who
shows by analysis of data that defining class by reference to the
relations to the means of production gives more cogent explanations
of certain phenomena than defining class with reference to income or
status as non-Marxist sociology does. Game theory can be an
important tool ... for claim (1) at least. I have argued above it is
also useful in (3) [class struggle as the mechanism of historical
change]. It is the role of Marxist philosophy to argue for (5)
[capitalism is ethically bad], although that argument must depend on
historical work. It is also interesting to note that game theory can
be useful for (5), in clarifying ethical positions....
On this account, what distinguished Marxist from non-Marxist social
science is not the postulate of methodological individualism, but the
level of aggregation deduced as applicable in social analysis. In
the non-Marxist view history is determined originally by man's
struggle against nature, and no further level of aggregation is
fruitful. In the Marxist view history may be determined originally
by man's struggle against nature, but the struggle against nature
leads to the formation of classes that struggle against each other.
Indeed, class interests can then affect the struggle against nature.
It is in this sense that Marxism performs an aggregation that
bourgeois thought does not. The most efficacious lens for analysis
may not be the one with the highest magnifying power, and by
resolving always to the level of the individual one may lose the
pattern.
....If we had a good axiomatic theory of class formation and
development of class capacity under capitalism, perhaps a
generalization would suggest itself applicable to socialism. I think
the inadequacy of the Marxist understanding of developments in
twentieth century socialism in large part results from the lack of
formulation of a general deductive theory of class, inspired by the
inductive observations that constitute historical materialism.
There is a secondary purpose for using deductive models in Marxism:
to win over non-Marxists by showing them that Marxism can be
formulated as a consistent system, requiring that the choice for or
against it must be made on the basis of which world-view better
conforms to historical evidence, not on the basis of internal
consistency. I do not mean to imply these ideological decisions are
taken in the pristine vacuum of the library; but if we believe
academic Marxism has any role, we must acknowledge the power and
importance of rigorous argument in ideological debate. Both
world-views, it appears, can be made internally consistent by modern
standards of rigor. But I think this pedagogic purpose is secondary.
The axiomatic method, and methodological individualism in particular,
is useful not mainly as a language to convince skeptics, but as a
tool to teach ourselves. [John Roemer]
--
Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes