From: phs265y@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au
Newsgroups: aus.politics
Subject: Re: Socialism. (was: Compulsory Voting.)
Date: 28 Jul 92 11:25:52 +1000
Organization: Computer Centre, Monash University, Australia

In article <1992Jul26.042551.17889@metapro.DIALix.oz.au>, bernie@metapro.DIALix.oz.au (Bernd Felsche) writes:
> In <1992Jul24.095331.89501@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au>
>    phs265y@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au writes:
> 
>>         But the idea that socialism can be "installed" is one of the
>>conerstones of Stalinism. Marx's conception of socialism was that it could only
>>be achieved by the self activity of the working class, which under advanced
>>capitalism is the overwhelming majority of the world's population. 
> 
>>         There are objective material conditions why the working class in
>>Russia failed to create socialism, the most pressing being that Russia had a
>>small working class in 1917 and it was almost destroyed by WWI and the civil
>>war that followed it. In China, Cuba, Vietnam it wasn't the working class that
>>created "socialism", it was imposed from above by the leaders of peasant
>>armies.
> 
> Your are historically incorrect in asserting that there was
> a small working class in Russia prior to the revolution. It
> was not the industrialised working class (proletariat)
> envisaged by Marx et al, but is was a rural working class,
> with a mostly monarchy-based bourgeoise. There were also
> serfdoms, if I recall history correctly.

         Yes, well the urban proletariat (which was small in 1917) was what I 
was referring to, as it is the only class that can transform society from 
capitalism to socialism. In fact the peasantry don't even form a class. 
As Marx put it:

     "The small holding peasants form a vast mass, the members of which live in
similar conditions but without entering into manifold relations with one
another...Each individual peasant family is almost self-sufficient; it itself
directly produces the major part of its consumption and thus acquires its means
of life more through exchange with nature than in intercourse with society... 
In so far as there is merely a local interconnection among these small holding
peasants and the identity of their interests begets no community, no national
bond and no political organisation among them, they do not for a class"

                               (Marx and Engels, "Collected Works" XI 187)

> 
> Lenin, Trotsky, and others did not see that as a significant
> distinction and impediment to socialism. Neither did Mao and
> his fellow warlords. 

          Lenin and Trotsky shared the view of Marx, that the urban proletariat
would be the ally and leader of the peasantry in overthrowing the bourgeoisie
and forming a workers' state. Lenin and Trotsky also shared the view of Marx
that it is impossible to achieve socialism in one country; that for the
revolution in Russia to survive it would have to spread to the more advanced
industrial countries:

     "Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant
peoples 'all at once' and simultanously, which presupposes the universal
development of the productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with
them"              
                      (Marx and Engels, "Collected Works" V 49

       Mao and 'his fellow warlords', shared Stalins view that Socialism could
be engineered on behalf of the urban proletariat in one country alone.

>
>                           The elements which Marx defined for
> socialism to exist did not presume industrialisation, though
> population density as a result of it, was implied.
> 

       Really ?    
                "Large-scale industry, already by creating the world market,
has so linked up all the peoples of the earth, that each people is dependent on
what happens to one another. Further in all advanced countries, large scale
industry has so levelled social development that in all these countries the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat has become the two decisive classes of society
and the struggle between them the main struggle of the day. The communist
revolution will therefore be no merely national one; it will be a revolution
taking place simultaneously in all advanced countries"

                               (Marx and Engels, "Collected Works" VI 351-2)

> Much of the world crisis, as seen from the perspective of
> the less-developed countries, has been caused by those
> pushing for socialism/communism trying to forcibly impose
> their ideals on a majority. Take a look at Ethiopia for
> example. Such Stalinist practices are causing the deaths of
> millions every year through famine and war casualties.

         famine and war in Africa are caused by the economic policies of the
World Bank, that of reducing the productive forces of a third world country to
one or two cash crops or mineral exports which are heavily dependent on the 
fluctuations in the world market (which usually work to the advantage of one or
more of the big players, EEC, US or Japan) and prove insufficient to feed the 
population of that country; and by imperialist interventions both Stalinist and
Western.

> 
> Clearly, only those who take the Stalinist approach, have
> any chance of implementing what they call socialism, though
> it's just as much a power-trip for them as it is for
> capitalist regimes.
> 
> I should mention though, that no "capitalist revolution"
> which I know of, has caused decades of unrest or sustained
> famine. A *capitalist* revolution is the one which comes
> from below. That is human nature, and to suppress it, means
> to impose a Stalinist regime of egalitarian, "socialist"
> totalitarianism.
> 

      Your human nature argument was invented by bourgeois political economists
at the beginning of the industrial revolution to justify the destruction of
rural life and the exploitation of the new urban proletariat. They argued that
capitalism provided the perfect expression of human nature and as such human
society had arrived at the end of history. Of course they failed to explain why
capitalism hadn't always existed since the beginning of human history, nor did
they provide any mechanism (unlike Marx) of how human history and society had
evolved up to the industrial revolution (and beyond).

> True socialism implies egalitarianism. People are equal, but
> they are not the same. An egalitarian society fails to
> exploit the differences between individuals for the benefit
> of society. Capitalism provides a catalyst for the
> exploitation of differences to the benefit of society.

       The maxim for a truly egalitarian society is: "from all according to
their capacity, the each according to their needs".

Capitalism fails to do this. Recessions and unemployment is a perfect example 
of the failure of capitalism to make use of the capacity of people. Poverty,
homelessness, war are the example of the failure to meet the needs of people.

Capitalism is a mode of production which exploits the working class to the
benefit of the bourgeoisie.

                       Tony Hartin
                       International Socialist Organisation
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