From: kreisel@spark.pfc.mit.edu (Felix)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.soviet
Subject: Re: Capitalist restoration in the USSR
Keywords: marxism
Date: 6 Apr 92 16:59:38 GMT
Reply-To: kreisel@spark.pfc.mit.edu (Felix)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation


          Socialism in one country

In response to my arguments that socialism is impossible in a single 
country the following statements were made:
>    "lenin" ( not Bukharin and Stalin ) built the theory  about the
possibility
>    of the socialist revolution in one country. His theory tought us
that
>    it is possible, but the country should be an "isolated and
backwards".

Another person tried to narrow down the source for the theory of 
socialism in one country:
>I think that the Lenin's "discovery" that the socialism
>could be built in one single country was described in his
>"State and Revolution". (Hey, I had an A for "History of the CPSU"
>about seven years ago).

Lenin did not claim that a socialist society could be built in a singe
country, 
let alone backward Russia.  Were Lenin to say that socialism is possible
in 
one isolated, especially a backward country, he would be contradicting
the 
basic materialist tenets of Marxism.  Actually, a similar theory was 
advanced by the Narodniks.  Narodnik socialists, Chernyshevsky and 
Herzen for example, suggested that an ideal communist society could be 
built on the basis of the peasant "mir", the village communities which 
owned pastures, forests and water resources in common.

Plekhanov and all the social-democrats fought this idea.  Marxists said that 
socialism required a higher stage of technological, economic, cultural 
development that the most advanced capitalism.  The actual development 
of capitalism in Russia in the late 19th and early 20th century totally 
demolished the basis for the idealist Narodnik conception of development.

As to the reference to "The State And Revolution", it is quite misplaced.  
The gist of that famous book is based on Marx' and Engels' idea that every 
state is an expression of a dictatorship of one class over the others.  Lenin 
rescued their almost forgotten idea that the working class cannot take over 
the old bourgeois state, army and judiciary but must smash the bourgeois 
state and establish its own dictatorship on the way to the eventual 
complete withering away of classes and of state compulsion.  The state 
machinery embodying the dictatorship of the proletariat will be as simple 
and transparent in its functioning as possible so that "every housewife 
would be able to run the state".  In the preface to his book, Lenin starts out 
from a view of the world capitalist system as a whole:

"The question of the state is now acquiring particular importance both in
theory and in practical politics.  The imperialist war has immensely
accelerated and intensified the process of transformation of monopoly
capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism.  The monstrous oppression of 
the working masses by the state, which is merging more and more with 
the all-powerful capitalist associations, is becoming ever more monstrous.  
The advanced countries -- we speak here of their 'rear' -- are being 
converted into military convict prisons for the workers."

It is clear that Lenin surveys the whole world, not just Russia.  He sees 
himself as battling world capitalism, not just the Russian absolutist version 
of it.  Only a year before "The State and Revolution" he wrote his 
"Imperialism" in which he had analyzed the predominance of banks and 
the supra-national expansion of capitalism.

It is instructive to note that the Stalinists did not refer to this book in
their attempts to find a justification for their theory.  The anti-
bureaucratic tenor of the book made it quite unsuitable for their purposes.  
Bukharin used the quotations from Lenin's 1921 article "On Cooperation" 
and the 1922 article "The Tax in Kind" out of context.  There,
Lenin used phrases like "socialist construction" or "building of socialism" in 
the context of the strategic retreat of the NEP.  Lenin characterized NEP as 
a strategic retreat, forced on Soviet Russia by the delay of world 
revolution.  Obviously, Lenin did not mean to construct a socialist society 
within the overall strategy of the NEP.  He wanted to use consumers' and 
producers' cooperatives as levers against the bourgeois influences of the 
re-emerging market relations.

For the best theoretical statements of Stalinism, see Bukharin's polemic 
against Preobrazhensky and Trotsky, conveniently reprinted in Russian in 
"Izbranniye proizvedeniya", Politizdat, 1988.  In these articles from 1925-
27, Bukharin argues that Russia can develop independently of the world 
economy.  The records of the polemics within the Russian CP have been 
generally available in the West since the 1920s, but the Stalinist regime 
has long denied the Soviet readers access to this material.

Hostile bourgeois critics of Lenin found the "State and Revolution" 
"inexplicable" or "out of character" (see for example Adam B. Ulam's "The 
Bolsheviks").  What "confused" them was their own national interpretation 
of Bolshevism.  Lenin's programmatic goal, like the goal of all Marxists (and 
anarchists), was a world-wide, classless, self-governing society.  But the 
Civil war and foreign aggression imposed the necessity of an iron 
dictatorship and forced a retreat from this program.  In any case, Lenin 
was thinking in international terms, i.e., that such an "ideal" society is 
possible in the technologically advanced and highly cultured countries like 
the US or Germany.  A revolution in Russia was seen as a spark of the 
world revolution.

           Tsarist Russia
In response to my data concerning the pre-revolutionary state of 
development of Russia, the following statement was made:
>      I would insist on my numbers obtained from Russian magazine
>      "Nash Sovremennik", which I subscribed for 5 years, unfortunately
>      I don't have it with me now. The same numbers were reported by 
soviet
>      TV about 2 years ago. Saying anything positive about Russia was
>      not common for the Soviet TV, and this contradiction makes me 
believe
>      that it's true.

It would be more educational for all of us if my learned opponents were to
provide somewhat more reliable sources.  The basic facts of Russia's 
poverty and backwardness were never disputed by either Marxist or 
bourgeois authorities.  Only the Stalinists attempted to underestimate both 
the level and the tempo of growth during the pre-revolutionary period.  
That was done for political reasons in order to enhance their claims to the 
achievement of socialism in the USSR during the Stalin or the Brezhnev era.  
It should be noted that today these same historians reverse themselves 
and exaggerate both the level and the tempo of development of tsarist 
Russia.  People like Volkogonov and Tsypko harken back to Alexander III 
or Nikolai II and proclaim that the tsarist prison of nations would have 
developed into a flowering democracy. As to the implication that the 
sources I cited are "marxist", that is ludicrous.  Please check with any 
lecturer in Russian history.

The present day CIS TV and radio stations likewise acclaim the glories of 
capitalist Russia and of capitalism in general.  The former Stalinists, like 
Yeltsin, Gorbachev and Kravchuk, have no dificulty finding new masters at 
the IMF or the Bundesbank.  Their former "marxism" was sham anyway.

A question was posed to me:
>    ... May I ask you? What do you
>   think would happen if marxism didn't exist? Russia would be among the
>    first world leading countries, wouldn't it? We would not have such 
problems
>    with East Europe telecomunications, wouldn't we ?

If Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks did not lead the October revolution, 
then in all probability the Kerensky government would have been 
eventually overthrown by a reactionary tsarist general, either Kornilov or 
someone else, and a reign of terror would have been unleashed on both the 
workers and the peasants.  Russia would have still been defeated in the 
war (please read General Krasnov's memoirs for a sober evaluation of the 
possibility of continuing the war) and dismembered among the victorious 
imperialists just like they did it to the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian 
empires.
Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, etc. today would have ranked with India or 
Bangladesh in their economic, social and cultural levels.

I should add that the implications for the West would have been as 
horrible.  Without dwelling on all the possibilities, just ask yourselves what 
would have happened if the Red Army did not defeat Hitler?

                    The pitfalls of "Common Knowledge"

It is only to be regretted that my opponents resort to their all too fallible 
memory or to obscure and questionable sources.  We would all profit from 
learning the truth about history.  For my part, I shall try to refer to 
commonly available sources.  It is up to every thinking reader to apply his 
critical faculties when reading anything.  The ex-Soviet audience knows, of 
course, of the mountain of Stalinist falsifications of history.  These 
falsifications extended from falsifying facts to killing whole generations of 
eyewitnesses.  It should be all the more suspicious of the former Stalinist 
ideologues (like Tsypko, Volkogonov, Yakovlev, etc.) who today 
"rediscover" the beauties of tsarism, "democracy", the Orthodox Church, etc.

For the native Russian readers, I found the following books very 
interesting:
"Oktiabrskaya revolutsiia; memuary  by Kerensky, Miliukov, Denikin, 
Krasnov, etc.; Orbita, 1991;
Sukhanov's (Left menshevik) "Istoriia Russkoi Revolutsii";
Trotsky, "Istoriia russkoi revolutsii", "Moia zhizn".
M. Paleologue (French ambassador to Russia 1916-17) "Tsarskaia Rossia 
nakanune revolutsii"

This is by no means an exhaustive list.  Fortunately there is now a 
comparative wealth of new and old materials being printed in Russian.  For 
a Marxist exposition of Soviet Russia nothing touches the 1936 book by 
Trotsky "The Revolution Betrayed".  Unfortunately, it is still unavailable in 
Russian in the US.  Please write to me directly, if interested in obtaining a 
copy.
--
This article expresses strictly my views, not my employer's.