The ABC’s of Communism Bolshevism 2011
Jason W. Smith, Ph.D.
Before
We Begin
The
Language of Historical Science: Terminology, Concepts and Facts
Contents
Defining Our Terms
Historical Perspective
A Vision of the Future
Erroneous Visions
The Evil Imprinting of the Servitude Epoch
In Science we build on the Past
The Method: Original Documents
History is Always Unfolding as it Should
Modern Science Born
Theory and Practice in the Science of
Society, Culture and their History
Marxist Philosophy of Science
Cross-cultural Comparative Analysis by Formula:
The mathematics of sociocultural evolution
The evolution of culture: the dialectics of
contradiction
The evolution of culture: Crises dialectics
Do not get confused
The Absolute Decline in the Rate of Profit
Laws
The First Presentation of Stage Sequential Laws
Of sociocultural evolution
The Problem of Trotsky and Trotskyism
The New Class is the General Crisis of
The stage of Stalinist Socialism
Stalin and Stalinism
Taking on the Rothschilds, 1901
The Empire Atremble
The Revolution of 1905
Trotskyist Mythology
The New Class is not a deformation but Part of a New
and Necessary
Transitional Stage – of which there will be several
more before we arrive at Communism
The New Class is Our # 2
Problem
Backwardness in technology is not what Marx and
Engels Proposed
Prehistoric Origins of the New Class
In the Slave and Feudal Stages
Capitalism and the Technocrats
Socialism and its New Class
To Review Two Ugly Facts You Must Face
Back to Our Story in Russia
Construction of Russian Socialism is both fast and slow
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Lessons of the Cultural Revolution
Wanting Communism is not enough to have Communism
Epilogue as Prologue
If this country had a real educational system, which
is to say a system of telling the truth about political science, then what
follows in this preliminary section would more properly be termed “remedial terms, definitions and concepts.”
Since we do not and most North Americans are in a state of total political
ignorance with all of its ramifications (ignorance of history for example other
than the fairy tale history of US
lower grade textbooks) we will not use the term remedial with its pejorative
content. It would be unfair to so penalize those who were the victims rather
than the perpetrators of these educational crimes.
Furthermore, many who consider themselves communists
from virtually all of the Left (self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist parties) have
been writing pamphlets, brochures, leaflets and even books for the last several
years in which their discussion of world capitalism, globalization, the role of
labor, the role of revolutionaries, etc.,
managed to never even mention the imminent global capitalist collapse now in
process. (Chief offender here is FBI agent Sam Webb’s ongoing propaganda in
favor of disarming the working class and substituting the U.S. Government’s
version of what is going on for a scientific Marxist view.) The other offenders
didn’t mention it because they didn’t see it coming. They didn’t see it coming
because they don’t understand Marxist economics. They don’t understand Marxist
economics because they don’t understand Marxism. We, on the other hand, do
understand Marxism and you can see the proof in the last several years of
articles I have written for my old website and now reproduced in our Recent Archives section, as well as in
this text The ABC’s of Communism,
Bolshevism 2011.
What is happening now is just the dress rehearsal for
the total and final collapse, (obvious to any serious Marxist-Leninist
political scientist as I have proven over the last five years in this book and
in the innumerable columns I have written for my old website http://groups.msn.com/JasonSmithcom soon to be found at the Daily Worker. This next collapse is
coming and soon. Thank goodness what we are currently experiencing is just the
dress rehearsal because we US Bolsheviks are far from prepared at the moment to
being able to lead working people in a final revolutionary struggle against the
fascist regime in Washington.
As for the North American Left’s self-declared “communists” enough is enough
from these writers. Now let us move on.
Let me begin by pointing out that the definition of
terms is critical in every scientific and academic endeavor. - And so it is in
revolutionary politics as well. In this book you will learn, many of you for
the first time, the scientific definitions of important terms in the science of
society, culture and their history. You will learn these correct definitions and
how enemy propagandists, and their so-called “educators,” try and trick you by
giving these same words an entirely false and unscientific meaning. This
confusion is spread as a principal tactic of our enemies. For example, when
neo-Nazi fascist thugs, like George Bush and Rush Limbaugh, mouth words like
“freedom” and “democracy”, these words end up meaning exactly the opposite of
their real definition. For “freedom”, Bush et. al., mean the “freedom” to rob, pillage and kill, the working
people of this world. By “democracy” they mean that among themselves (the
billionaires and trillionaires who own this country and its sorry “government”
in Washington)
they
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will be “democratic” in determining how to rob,
pillage and kill the working people of North America. A far cry from
their real meaning and like the Nazi’s before them this “populist” language is
aimed at confusing the ill-prepared, ignorant, and uneducated.
Historical Perspective
For the first time in many years the situation in the USA
with regard to the possibility of working class political power is extremely
good. The Orwellian nightmare of modern revisionism in the USSR
and Eastern Europe has been lifted from our backs and now the US
imperialist flagship has crashed itself onto the Iraqi shoals of an emerging
new continent in world history; in the aftermath there is great confusion on
the part of our enemies. For our side, we have gone through a period of
confusion, but this book among others, is a signal that long-view clarity is
being imposed. It remains only to put our now correct understanding of
contemporary historical process to work in appropriate organizational ways. I,
for one, have never seen us in a better position than the one we Bolsheviks now
occupy, both at home and abroad; more importantly I believe there has never
been a more propitious situation in the history of North
America, for real progress toward real Communism, than
the one we now confront.
A Vision of the
Future
Is there a painting, or an illustration, or say a movie,
which can give us a view of the future which is consistent with what Karl Marx
and V.I. Lenin would have pictured for us as an ideal future? Yes I think so – probably quite a few books,
illustrations and movies or TV shows, show us a future with at least some
aspects we can admire and with which we can identify. My favorite happens to be
the vision of Gene Roddenberry (not that there are not many others.) For in Star Trek we see a near future with technology so advanced that people
can live without money and without pay, and yet everything they desire in the
way of material things is instantly available. In this future the “necessities”
of everyday life are made available to everyone as a matter of birthright. This
is a near future with technology so advanced that when a person wants a cup of
coffee or a meal she simply asks the “replicator” machine for said item and the food and the
cup or plate containing it instantly appears. Private ownership of such things
as food and cutlery is an anachronism; i.e.,
irrelevant; immaterial. This is
Communism. In this version the Starship Enterprise crew are the communists of the future.
For me, this Star Trek future is the vision I think is most
consistent with the scientifically predicted future of Karl Marx and most
subsequent Marxists. Therefore, you will see occasional references in this book
to future human society and future communist society as societies having Star
Trek characteristics. We will be thinking in broad sociocultural evolutionary
themes with a sweeping overview of humanity from its primate origins to its near
and predictable future forms, so such “vision” is important for all of you to
consider.
Whether, such advanced technology as pictured by the
Roddenberry tradition is at hand, or even possible in the coming century, is
really not the point. The point is that some day, in the not too distant
future, meaning in the next few centuries, we will have an adequate industrial
base to support the slogan “from each according to her ability to each according
to her need.” – And, when that day arrives we will have the technological
basis needed to support the Stage of Communism.
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I happen to think that what Roddenberry pictures for
us with regard to faster-than-light travel is possible and will be achieved in
the 21st century (virtually everything else from The Original Series
has been invented and is very much with us, with this exception, and the
exception of teleportation). As far as space travel in general is concerned,
there is just one remaining problem and that is the cost. But from a several
centuries perspective, that problem will go away once science and engineering
create an anti-gravity engine. For these reasons, I have spent considerable
time over the last four decades in the area of subatomic physics – a kind of
hobby, if you will, where the problems of light speed and gravitation are the
very essence of the subject matter. For those of you interested in where I am
going with this I recommend that you read my book New Perspectives in
Physics, 1999, Jason W. Smith, Premier Books, Boise,
160 pp. or, the four papers at
http://www.communistfoundationpartyusa.org
- click on the button to on the home page of that site, also labeled “New
Perspectives in Physics.” (See the website WorldCat for university libraries
closest to you.)
Erroneous Visions
One final comment about
futuristic visions and their importance. I alluded to the fact that
not every Marxist leader saw the future as Marx, Engels and Lenin did. Most
notorious was Cambodia’s
Pol Pot, who as a young man wrote a
doctoral dissertation in France,
and then carried out much of the thinking expressed therein, many decades later
as chief of the Khmer Rouge. In his way of thinking, it was sufficient to have
an ideologically pure and advanced cadre lead people into an egalitarian
communal way of life before any great technological advance occurred. We know
how that turned out in practice. – And, I think it proves that Pol Pot was not
really a Marxist at all.
There is the historically related movement called Anarchism. Their view of the future may
best be seen in the way they organized their areas of Republican Spain in the
1930’s. However, their failure to accept Marx and Engels’ discovery of the
nature of the state, left them irrelevant to us, and enemies
in fact. (e.g., Marx sent the First International away from Europe to the USA,
allowing it to “die” there, in order to avoid allowing the pernicious influence
of anarchism to contaminate labor. See Part III of this book for the details.)
In the same sense I think Pol Pot left the common fold when he failed to accept
what Marx and Engels had proven; namely, that one cannot advance into a truly
communist society, let alone into a society where human power is its own end,
until one has the technological wherewithal to make the foregoing slogan of
communism a reality.
Roddenberry’s vision has our advanced technological
base as a “given” for the altruistic and egalitarian lifestyle he preaches. So,
in that sense, it is fully in accord with the vision of Marx and Lenin. Don’t
get bogged down in whether this or that facet of Star Trek is possible or not
possible, or feasible or not feasible – give a little artistic freedom to the
writers, because, our tasks at the moment, are much more down-to-Earth, as you
are about to see. The point is that we Marxist-Leninists have a vision of
technologically assured plenty, scarcity eliminated, egalitarian social
relations extant, in the absence of class coercion (i. e., the state) as the future of humanity.
The Evil Imprinting
of the Servitude Epoch
Herbert
Aptheker, an outstanding North American Marxist historian, and
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theoretician of the CPUSA, recognized the evil nature of mental
imprinting in the world as currently constructed, and in the last years of his
life he said so to his Communist Party USA colleagues. The autobiography of his
daughter tells us that Aptheker had his own peculiar, culturally imposed, demons which presumably helped him come to this
correct conclusion. His experience teaches us that erroneous visions, such as
his terrible life curse, have their foundation in, the at-bottom evil nature of contemporary mental imprinting that
affects ALL classes not just the oppressing classes. People are not born
with a blank slate for long. Imprinting begins with birth and proceeds rapidly
apace so that by the time a child is a few years old it is well set in.
Communists are just as susceptible to evil basal mental imprinting as anyone
else. It is for this reason that attempts to jump into the social organization
of communism, without adequate mode of production preparation, have failed.
That is, first or simultaneously with socialist reorganization of society, we
need to have the fully accomplished technological gains of the Capitalist Stage
firmly in hand, so the material foundations for modern altruism exist. – And,
then enough time must pass for the new way of doing things to be reflected in
the ideology of said societies. This means that the old and evilly infected
must be allowed to pass away so that the new generation of properly imprinted
persons can take their place. Because the Earth always belongs to the living,
as Thomas Jefferson was fond of saying.
Let’s say it again: the material conditions of great plenty,
the founders required for communism to be successful, must be laid first! Or,
at the very least, must be very well advanced and underway before modern
altruism can replace modern selfishness-sadism, among the masses, as the
primary underlying mental template being imprinted. The founders were right, as
usual. Modern communism requires the fully modernized industrial base of
the capitalist stage. You either inherit it or you build it. There is no short
cut. We know. We have tried. We found out the hard way.
It certainly is not our intention to return to primitive
communism. From our theoretical standpoint we would be far better off sticking
with capitalism which is more advanced in sociocultural evolution, as you will
see in this book, and as Marxists have always maintained.
In Science we build on the Past
In
science we are always building on the past.
For example, in the case of biology we are always building on Darwin’s
discovery of variation and natural selection. We work out the details as we go
along; explaining how these two pillars of our general theory work mechanically
and systematically, and we have gone through several distinct periods with
their unique contributions. Such as the discovery that
inheritance is particulate (Mendelian genetic specific theory) and now the rise
of molecular specific theory (DNA). We don’t throw Darwin’s
discoveries overboard as we progress, but rather deepen our understanding of
the way in which variation occurs and the ways in which selection acts upon it.
In the case of physics we don’t throw out Newtonian mechanics or Faraday’s
electricity discoveries but rather more fully explicate their mechanical
function, always seeking to deepen our understanding of the underlying systems,
as in Maxwell’s field mathematics, Einstein’s relativity theory and
contemporary subatomic research, e. g.,
http://www.communistfoundationpartyusa.org – And, the same should be the
case with social science. Our task is to deepen our understanding of Karl Marx
and Frederick Engels original discoveries and to do so by learning the real
lessons of history
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from our own historical practice.
The Method:
Original Documents;
History is
always Unfolding as it Should
In
fairness we need to point out that social science is neither biology nor
physics. Because it is “social science” everyone recognizes that contemporary “political
programs” are affected by our reconstruction of historical events. This means
there is a very definite bias favored by contending persons inherent in such
reconstructions and this in and of itself leads to partisanship in scholarship.
This accounts for the radically different qualities of journalism to be found
in the newspapers of the far Left. Some articles have valuable data and are
“right on,” others are simply ludicrous and sometimes have not a true
historical statement in them, being simply umpteenth-hand regurgitations of
historical mythology (as for example in continuing misrepresentations of what
happened in the first go-around in China with the capitalist classes. See
Chapter 14 Bolshevism Spreads to China for an accurate summary).
But, there are ways for
everyone to “check” the tendency toward petty partisanship. A scientific
“method” in other words peculiarly well suited to our subject matter.
What are these checks? What
is this method?
The first is to go to
the original documents. The second is to follow the guideline
that history is always unfolding as it should!
Thus, our task is not to
pick a side (as for example Stalin vs.
Trotsky) but rather to determine accurately what in fact did happen and why. In
the end we may appear to be taking a side but there is a very big difference in
the way we go about doing it. Contemporary Marxist schismatics pick their side
first and then try to justify it by a partisan, inaccurate, interpretation of
historical events – scientists on the other hand make an objective historical
assessment first and then if they wish may pick a side, although what possible
service side-picking might afford many decades or more after the fact is beyond
me. Recognizing that history has provided us with this analytical tool cum rule (i.e., history is always unfolding as it should,) I have tried to
follow it in my work, as for example in this book. This means finding out what
really did happen and then finding out why. – And, to do this I always go to the
original documents – not nearly as difficult a task in this day and age, with
so much information instantly available on the internet, as it used to be when
hours, days, weeks, months and even years in various research libraries were
required. This is a method you can use to check the tendency toward petty
partisanship in your understanding of history. Once you do this adequately you
can proceed to the next – organizational – step.
Modern Science Born
As Charles Darwin founded modern biology so Karl Marx
and Frederick Engels founded modern social science. As
Darwinian evolutionary theory is the foundation of all of modern biology, so
Marxist sociocultural evolutionary theory is the foundation of all of social
science.
The word “theory” in science is used to describe our
highest explanatory construct in that science.
Theory does not mean in science what it means in everyday talk, which is
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to say someone’s idea about something. This latter
definition more appropriately fits the scientific term “hypothesis.” Scientific
general theory flows from materialist epistemology (that branch of philosophy
known as “theory of knowledge.”) For us Bolsheviks, this materialist
epistemology is always dialectical. That is, we search for the interconnections
between all phenomena and try to discover the moving causes which create the
evolutionary process. Often these causes appear as “opposites” and feature one
transforming into the other.
Generally speaking there are three areas of
“philosophical matter.” That is, three types of real world existence in the
universe. These are the non-living physical area, the living or biological
area, and the sociocultural realm. Our concern as professional revolutionaries
is primarily with the latter.
When Marx and
Engels met for the first time in Paris
in November 1842, they quickly realized that, independently, they had come
to the same conclusions as to the motive forces involved in sociocultural
phenomena. We often refer to these discoveries as the “laws of history.” To wit,
people articulate with their environment via
a buffer we call “culture.” Culture has three components: the forces of
production (technology), the relations of production (social organization) that
people enter into in order to utilize that technology and a mental
superstructure (ideology) that arises on the foregoing, Mode of Production.
The terms technology, social organization and ideology
were inventions of Leslie A. White who brought Marxism back to the forefront in
the English-speaking World, as the General Theory of Anthropology. White felt
he had no choice but to camouflage anthropological theory’s Marxist origins, if
he were to successfully populate the post-Second World War US (GI Bill) public
universities with graduates of his own "neo-Evolutionary" school
of Anthropology.
Thus, the terms, technology, social organization and
ideology, so widely used in anthropology today. Another
story for another book.
Theory advances with practice.
In biology that practice took nearly a century of
intense work, after Darwin
published Origin of Species, before the underlying mechanism of
variation was laid bare for all to see in the 1953 announcement of Watkins and
Crick that they had uncovered the nature of hereditary chemistry. DNA showed us
the structure of heredity and also told us how natural selection works
mechanically.
At about the same time as Darwin and Marx those who
would found the modern Earth geological sciences were publishing their own
breathtaking vision of the real forces at work shaping the planet. – And,
building on Newton’s
discovery that light is particulate, practical experimenters were building the
foundations of contemporary subatomic physics. This latter work would take much
longer as the subject matter, being invisible, required more sophisticated
means of getting to its at-bottom causality.
Theory and
Practice in the Science of Society, Culture and their History
In social science, we have had 91 years of practice
since workers first seized power in October, 1917, by overthrowing the Magnate-Ducal
Czarist regime in Russia; creating the first working class state and government
in the world. Since then the tide of global class struggle has ebbed and
flowed, and in this book you will see how and why. As importantly you will see
what stages humanity passed through on its way to this contemporary situation.
We are in the second transitional period (between two Epochs,
35
and
this time two Eras) where the last of the Servitude Stages (Capitalism) is
giving way to the first stage of the Era of Freedom (Communism) via at least two intermediary
“socialist” stages.
Sociobiology
There
is a field of ongoing neo-Nazi ideology called sociobiology. The first
principle of this so-called school of scientific thinking is (1) the science of Anthropology never existed.
(2) There is no such thing as culture
as we Marxists and all anthropologists define it. (3) Rather in this new
Hitlerian vision all human behavior is determined by genes and the earlier
Hitler caveat of Aryan racial superiority in a chart of superior to inferior
humans based on skin color, hair form, skull shape, stature, weight and so
forth, was wrong and the real chart should be based on who has what superior
genes which again are said to determine all behavior including such things as
altruism. Then they set about blissfully to find these genes. Of course this is
all nonsense.
The
truth of Marx’s and Engels’ understanding of culture (forces and relations of
production upon which arises an ideological superstructure) is as firmly set in
social scientific stone as natural selection and variation are in biology. Which is not to say there are no critically important genetic
components to human evolution as of course there are and I have mentioned them
throughout this text. Most importantly, recently, has
been the successful ongoing research linking changes in the chimpanzee
brain to cultural activity as I point out herein.
The
only important thing for you to note about this nutball “science” is that it is
in the wings and waiting. Waiting for what? For the inevitable final struggle
between fascism and socialism and the open dictatorship the oligarchy will
establish by military coup or at
least attempt to establish soon here in the USA.
This will be reflected in an imposition of this kind of neo-Nazi ideology on
the university and High School textbooks and teachers. That is, if we allow
that to happen, which we shall certainly try and prevent.
Marxist Philosophy of Science
Frederick Engels spent the better part of his life
studying the then contemporary advance of philosophy as the highest guiding
body of knowledge of any science. His central conclusion was that science and
philosophy had become the same thing; at least as far as we are concerned.
(Bourgeois ideologists of course get paid for penning ongoing bullshit but that
is their problem.) There are no better works on dialectical materialist
epistemology than the originals of this great historical genius. – And, from his
work we have constructed the modern materialist philosophy of science and I
urge all serious Marxist philosophy students to go back and start at the
beginning with the work of Frederick Engels.
The method flows from a Marxist philosophy of science and the theoretical explanations thereby
constructed. Science always has an explanatory and investigative
“structure” beginning with epistemology
(that branch of philosophy known as “theory of knowledge”) which in our case is
the epistemology of dialectical materialism, another topic for another book.
Schematically, we can picture the following from top to bottom: the first level
on top is epistemology. Below epistemology is General Theory which means a series of statements and concepts
expressed in words or numbers or both, explaining “everything” within that
science. At the next level, below general theory, each
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science has many, seemingly innumerable, specific theories which are more
specific statements that explain everything within a rather tightly subsumed
category within that science. So, for example, we have the “General Theory” of Historical Materialism and the “Specific Theory” of Primitive Communism.
In our case our general theory is
historical materialism – what this book is all about – and that also means our
general theory is the general (highest) theory of the sciences of anthropology,
psychology, history and sociology. When we set our immediate task to develop a
specific explanation (theory) that covers all examples of the New Class in all
circumstances where it exists, we turn to the three major ways to construct an
explanatory specific scientific theory and these are: 1) the deductive way where the premises make the conclusion necessary;
(2) the probabilistic form of
theoretical explanation where the premises make the conclusion probable; and
(3) the historical or “genetic” form where any given event is
explained in terms of its evolutionary antecedent forms. Because genetic has so
many other connotations in science we will use the term ”historical” which at
any rate has its own place in the history of our science.
Cross-cultural Comparative Analysis
by Formula
The Mathematics of Social Evolution
Using the third form of scientific
investigation/explanation we extract a formula for production as the
“theoretical” way of expressing the relationship within the Mode of
Production. (The mode of production is called the “base” of culture; ideology
arises on the base and is called the superstructure)
{Technology à Social Organization} mode of production or base
The formula can be
expressed in terms of four elements in an equation, and using the formula for
the capitalist stage as an example (see Chapter 12), these are:
(1) Human working activity (l = concrete individual working activity; lp
= homogenized collective labor, temporally measured, called labor-power.)
(2) Technology
(in the case of capitalism this is always some kind of machinofacture.)
(3) Value – the
cost of labor and in the Servitude Epoch (especially in the capitalist stage) the
cost of labor-power
(4) Surplus value
– the additional amount produced above value in capitalist systems and in
pre-capitalist systems of the Servitude Epoch; and surplus social product in
pre-Servitude Epoch society.
Expressed as
follows:
l (or lp) + technology à V1, V2 + SV
These are the four essential
elements of human productive activity and they can be cross-culturally
compared through time and across the entire space of the
globe. This is the way we build a theory in science and the way we make it
useable. (You may think of them analogously as the four nucleotides of
sociocultural DNA; not that there is such a
37
thing, of course.) The General
theoretical structure is the cultural concept of the Mode of Production; the specific theoretical constructs are as
numerous as the sociocultural evolutionary stages they represent. Which is to
say (i) we define the essential elements at the core of something (in this case
human productive activity) and (ii) arrange them in such a way that they appropriately
describe every instance of the subject in question (which in this case is the
evolution of human productive activity through distinct “stages”) – And (iii) we
do this at two levels: (a) a high general level and (b) a secondary tier of
specific levels. As you can see “theory” has two magnitudes.
This time, in this edition, as we use our third form of
scientific investigation and explanation, we will spend more time on the origin
and development of our contemporary New
Class, tracing the New Class back into its previous forms. We can see that
it has several “occupational” or “professional” components. Accounting
is one. Enforcement is another. Religion (and certain associated
scientific endeavors such as astronomy) is another; professionally specialized
crafts are another. You will see who the predecessors of today’s new class
were, how they functioned and transformed.
Thus, we have what we meant to have, when we used the
phrase “…a “Marxist” “theoretical” explanation” (or as commonly, an “historical
materialist theoretical” explanation.) It has been the failure to produce a Marxist theoretical explanation for what
happened in the USSR,
Eastern Europe, and in a totally different way, the PeoplesRepublic
of China,
in the last several decades, which left the “Left” in the capitalist countries
totally confused and often demoralized – subject to ideological subversion by
the non-stop assault of the capitalist media. Hopefully, that deficiency is
remedied herein.
The Evolution
of Culture: The Dialectics of Contradiction
Mechanical materialists (e.g.,
Leslie A. White; Marvin Harris) approach the evolution of culture as a linear
process whereby one step leads to the next. Dialectical materialists approach
the evolution of culture by deciphering how one type of core causal phenomena
transforms into its opposite step by step, from the earliest to the most
recent, and then we try to project into the future the likely next dialectical
resolution. Rather than continue to speak in the abstract let us turn to the
text to see how this method works in practice.
The general
contradiction can be reduced to a prime
directive for our purposes. There are two general contradictions with which
we are preoccupied in our studies and each of these will have its own prime
directive. The general contradiction describes the two polar opposite keys to
understanding the social organization of an epoch. The prime directive is the
resulting cultural commandment for all citizens of the group in question in the
epoch being studied.
In our case we begin by describing two General Contradictions that occupy two “epochs” in human history. The
first of these is the general contradiction of the first egalitarian epoch
(the epoch of primitive communism) consisting of the bands and tribes of the
hunting-gathering and early agricultural modes of production which simply put
is that “every step taken to prevent surplus social product, and the
social dissolution, inevitably created by it, becomes in addition a step in
making the creation of surplus social product a certainty. – And, as
importantly, this fact makes it certain that even though a given step may gain
a temporary respite in the burgeoning of surplus social product, the process is
even more certain to end in social dissolution.”
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The prime directive of this general contradiction is to avoid
the production of surplus social product at virtually any cost.
The second general contradiction is that of
the servitude epoch (the stages of slavery, feudalism and capitalism) where “every step taken is aimed at maximizing
production but despite this the results are less and less of a share for those
doing the work; a worse living condition for the producers themselves and these
facts make it certain that the dissolution of this epoch will also occur as
slaves, serfs and workers revolt, sharpening the class struggle and
requiring armed force (the “state”) in the hands of the domesticating classes
to pacify the masses who are resisting the process of being domesticated. The prime directive of this
general contradiction is to maximize
production regardless of all other factors.
The task confronting us is to
explain how the first contradiction transformed into the second “opposite”
contradiction.
The Evolution of
Culture: Crises Dialectics
A General Crisis on the other
hand is the engine that drives a
particular “stage” (within the
epochs) through growth, maturation and eventual dissolution. For example, in
the Slave Stage (as part of the
second or Servitude Epoch with its specific general contradiction) the general crisis arises as a result of
the need to have a larger and larger ever growing army and police (i. e., the “state” itself in other words)
to keep the slaves in servitude. The cost
of the state (army/police) is a drawdown, or cost, charged against the
surplus value column as you will see, and the generals (or sergeants) will
eventually realize they can replace their employers, a more intangible cost.
Both (a) the drawdown on surplus value and (b) the rise of “the state” (army
and police) over society, lead to the end of Slavery as a stage, and the
necessity of the half-way house of Feudalism to replace it, and can be
expressed in the form of an equation or formula, which I will teach you herein.
This resolution should also be viewed dialectically in that the origin of the
“state” occurs to insure the status quo
yet its very success dooms the status quo.
In Capitalism
the general crisis is caused by the financial cost to the capitalist of
the constantly increasing investment required of him to stay
competitive. He must buy into more and more, increasingly expensive, next
generations of machinery, which is a drawdown on the surplus value column.
Eventually, as you will see, one capitalist eats the other and capital is
concentrated. This also can be expressed in the form of an equation. In short,
we say that it is the Law of the
Absolute Decline in the Rate of Profit which results from this inherent
need of each capitalist to stay competitive by buying into more and more
new machinery which is the engine both causing and driving the General Crisis
of Capitalism, for reasons which will be explained to you in detail in this
text.
This resolution should be viewed dialectically in that
investment in the next generation of machinery (NGM in the equations you will
learn) occurs to increase production, and to increase its efficiency, yet the
ultimate outcome is great poverty for the mass of producers, so that workers
must revolt to put an end to the steady deterioration of their lives, as they
are getting less and less value for themselves, even though they produce more
and more value overall (expropriated by the capitalist.) You will learn this
equation, among many others.
- And, in so doing, you will see that all of human culture
and societal affairs can
39
be reduced to the few simple elements mentioned above,
and in detail below, in the same way that all of life on Earth can be reduced
to a few simple nucleotides. This is what
science is all about – getting to the core of causality and process and laying
bare the key driving elements, stripping away all the non-essential factors,
adornments, and related manifestations.
Do
Not Get Confused
Violence, Armed force, Government, Class and
State
I want you to notice that we Marxists do not confuse
“the state” with violence. Violence existed before class- And-state
society and will continue after class- And-state society. Neither do we confuse
“the state” with “armed force”, for “armed force” of the people as a
whole existed before the emergence of class- And-state societies and will exist
after the disappearance of class- And-state society. We do not confuse “the
state” with “government” for people governed themselves before class- And-state
society and their governments, and they shall govern themselves after the
disappearance of the class- And-state society of the Servitude Epoch (Slavery,
Capitalism and Feudalism.) The state refers to thuggery (a private
monopoly of armed force) in the hands of an already separated, or in the
process of separating, ruling class. Class
refers to a group of people with a distinct relationship to the means of
production: the most important relationship being that between those who own,
and those who do not own, said means of production. In class divided society
(existing for only some 6000 years) other classes exist as well, particularly
those who find employment serving ruling classes (soldiers, cops, and priests
for example; also, small proprietors and occasional entrepreneurial workers,
and in time a “New Class” of technocrats.)
The Absolute Decline in the Rate of Profit
There is continuing confusion over the Law of the Absolute Decline in
the Rate of Profit. Marx found confusion abundant on this subject during his
lifetime and he had a great deal to say about this misunderstanding in the
post-1867 period (and the publication of Capital Volume One). Yet,
because macro-theoretical economics is such a rarely understood, let alone
taught, science in the USA,
and most readers, therefore, have no previous experience with the subject
matter, it is worth reframing the question here.
The
crux of confusion lies in understanding the difference between the absolute
decline in the rate of surplus value production and the absolute decline in the
rate of profit. These are two separate categories. Two separate things. Yet, intimately related all the same.
You
will become familiar with many equations, which are short-hand ways of
describing relations between key elements of human productive activity. Let us
jump ahead for just a moment, using the formula for the capitalist stage as the
example:
labor power (lp) + technology (t) à Value 1 +
Value 2 + Surplus Value (SV)
Profit
/ NGM
In the case of Capitalism we
are always discussing the application of human labor-power (homogenized
collective output of factory workers, for example, measured by the factory
clock) applied to machinery (“t” technology: which is machinery in the
40
capitalist stage.) What is thereby produced repays the workers for their
labor-power (only in part) (Value 1 – i.e., wages and benefits) and pays for the factory installation and
upkeep of the machinery (Value 2). We call both value 1 and value 2 “value.”
What is left over is what we call “surplus value.“
From the surplus value column there are many possible deductions the capitalist
can make but the ones of greatest concern to us are those that account for (as sub-columns
in our equation) the capitalist’s “profit” and those that account for
his investment in the Next Generation of Machinery (NGM).
When
new machinery is installed (under “t” or technology in our equation) it is done
precisely to lower the amount of labor-power (lp) that
is required to produce a given commodity. This allows the capitalist to hire
fewer workers. Or, another way of putting it is that workers previously hired
will be sent to the street unemployed.
The rate of surplus value
production must decline because to buy the new machinery, install and
maintain it, the capitalist must shift more overall output from surplus value
to value 2 (the cost of installing and maintaining the newly purchased
machinery) and also (and most importantly) take more of this overall output and
shift it to cover the cost of this newly purchased (next generation of)
machinery (NGM).
In order to avoid this, the
capitalist would have had to hire more workers, and/or work the same workers
longer hours, so that labor-power input increases at a one-to-one ratio with
that of the increased productive power of the new machinery, thereby
maintaining the same rate of surplus value creation. In this way he
would stay competitive (it is for this reason that Capitalism as a Stage hates
competition because) this he cannot do; his idea was to reduce the amount
of labor-power going in, not to increase it (and thus his costs.) Therefore,
right off the bat, while the introduction of new machinery means a reduction in
the cost of his labor force (in hours and/or numbers of workers) it also means
an increase in the cost of installing new machinery and maintaining
newly equipped factories and therefore results in less surplus value being
created; and because simultaneously
the capitalist must invest more and more of his remaining overall output in the
purchase of the new machinery. This means, all other things being equal,
that this absolute decline in the rate of surplus value creation
is exacerbated and indeed brought to “crisis” by these new costs of each
successive generation of machinery (NGM). This latter fact results always in an
absolute decline in the rate of profit. This is why as Karl Marx
discovered it is the antagonistic articulation of profit
with the costs of the Next Generation of Machinery under
Surplus value which is the major loci of the General Crisis of
Capitalism (what causes it – the cause of the so-called “business cycle” of
boom and bust.)
Yes, of course, there are short-term
things a capitalist can do to offset the absolute decline, at least
temporarily, by choosing new ways (eliminating previous ways) of using his
surplus value that had hitherto been choices he found desirable. The best long-term
way for him is (i) monopoly and/or fixed corrupt contracting, and (ii) slave
labor, but these generate massive social resistance. No matter what he does
short of these two things, in the end, he is still confronted with the
necessity of investing in new machinery or losing competitive advantage; thus in
the end he will have less surplus value available for profit. This is the Iron
Law of Capitalist Relations.
In
short, the decline in the rate of surplus value creation (as the cost of value
2 must increase even when labor costs (V1) decrease as he sends workers to the
street) sets the stage for a general crisis because what surplus value is
available must be shifted on an increasing scale to cover the cost of the next
generation of machinery (NGM). Thus, in the end there is less surplus value
available for whatever other expenditures he may have in mind – especially profit
- and this means that the rate of profit must also decline. That is why
I said that while these two absolute declines in rate are totally separate
categories they are at the same time intimately related.
I want
you to read the chapter on Capitalism (12) carefully for the detailed
exposition, but this summary may assist you in understanding what is going on.
It may be especially helpful to re-read this short essay after reading Chapter
12.
All
of these technical data on the operation of the capitalist system are not just
for economists. These internal operations of all capitalist systems always
end up in terrible social and thus political crises that close factories,
sending masses of workers to the street, leaving higher priced commodities for
consumers, and undercutting all the social programs that workers have fought
for (and which can no longer be paid for in “the black”) You are witnessing the
truth of all I have written above today in your everyday lives.
Laws
Before proceeding
to the text let me make one final comment on the definition of terms. In the
initial version of this book I discussed certain terms and their definition
around which confusion often exists. Since then I have found some confusion
also over the use of the terms “law of value,” “laws of history,” “laws of
sociocultural evolution,” and so forth. When we use the phrase “laws of history” we should be referring
to Marx’s and Engels’ discovery of the concept that history is determined by
people using “culture” (anthropological definition) as a buffer between the
environment and society. This is the broadest stroke of the use of the term
“law” and refers to the fact that ALL of human social and cultural evolution
must be understood in terms of the evolution of culture’s three components,
technology, social organization and ideology. (The “Mode of Production” being
the forces and relations of production; ideology is the Superstructure.) These
laws apply to all human sociocultural formations. This is, as Engels said in
his funeral eulogy to Karl Marx, one of the two greatest discoveries of Marx.
The other greatest accomplishment was Marx having unlocked the secrets of
operation of the Capitalist Stage.
– And, if I may say so, I think a third great
accomplishment of Marx at this level was his formulation of the Marxist theory
of psychology where the relationships exhibited in production are known to
appear in new and different forms (to paraphrase Marx in Volume One of Capital, “the material relations among
people appear as social relations between things.”)
On the other hand the phrase “law of value” refers specifically to
the law by which capitalism operates, and not pre-capitalist formations,
except, of course, where capitalist germinal elements are present in
pre-capitalist stages of the Servitude Epoch, and then the law of value
operates only within the germinal capitalist sector. The law of value in this
sense always refers to the “socially necessary labor-time” required in the production
of a commodity. The relative value of a commodity produced by different
factories is the socially necessary labor-time involved in the production of a
commodity in factory X as compared to factory Y, and so forth. This is usually
a function of the amount of new advanced machinery installed in a given factory
– the newer that machinery, the less socially necessary labor-time is required
in the production of a given commodity.
Laws
of sociocultural evolution will be explained as we proceed but again these
refer to all stages in some cases and only specific stages in others. Laws of
history refer in general to all of the above.
These
are important considerations and not simply matters of technical definition.
They are important because Marxists believe in history being determined by
cause and processual interaction of these causes in a “lawful” manner as in any
other case of natural phenomena. Marx dealt primarily with the laws of
operation of the capitalist stage and was spending the latter years of his life
deciphering the laws by which pre-capitalist formations operate (a task he left
uncompleted). Marx never made the mistake of projecting into the past,
capitalist formation laws onto pre-capitalist society. Even Soviet textbooks,
originally at least supervised by Stalin, tended to blur these distinctions and
it is important that we do not duplicate that error (Mao pointed this out in
his A Critique of Soviet Economics,
see the 1977, Monthly Review Press edition of this work of Mao Zedong).
The First
Presentation of Stage Sequential Laws of Operation
It is fine to assert that such
universal laws exist because on the one hand we know epistemologically and in
our general theory that such laws must exist. It is quite another to assert
that the laws of operation of pre-capitalist systems are known when in fact
they are not. To the best of my knowledge this book is the first one to project
a series of laws of specific operation of each stage of pre-capitalist society which
conform in every way to the model established by Marx in his analysis of
capitalism.
For some informal discussion of
Marx’s work in the last seven years of his life and his struggle to understand
pre-capitalist society especially primitive communist society, listen to the
audio portions of my website at http://www.communistfoundationpartyusa.org.
One Final Word on
the Future
For Marxists, there has always been one clear vision
of the future. It was laid out for us by the “founders of our science”
themselves: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Their vision was, and is, part and
parcel of the science of society and culture and their history; that is to say,
it is a product of, and mandated by, our scientific understanding of
sociocultural evolution. Virtually every subsequent great thinker in our
tradition has identified with that vision, including V.I. Lenin, Joseph Stalin,
Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi-Minh, and Deng Xiaoping. So what precisely is
this vision.
The
Future Mode of Production
For Marxists and Leninists, the future features highly
advanced industrial technology alongside social relations of absolute
egalitarianism, and the full freedom of each individual to the fullest
expression of their inner-most desires in daily productive activity, sexual
orientation, and family life.
Technology, in
the future we shall build, is so advanced as to assure the production of unlimited
quantities of heavy and light industrial goods, and consumer articles, and the
distribution of all such produce to every industry and every person. The
future, in other words, features society where unlimited access to the
articles of production for every person, is a simple fact of everyday life.
Since we did not inherit the most advanced technological preparation in the
Soviet Union, China,
Eastern Europe, or Cuba,
we have had to build the industrial base from scratch. But, all observers can
see that we have done so.
Bidding
“the State” Good Bye
For Marxists and Leninists our goal is also a future
society in which “the state” (army and police) has ceased to exist and withered
away. How can this instrument of class oppression be made to disappear? The
answer is, only by doing away with social classes
first. Once we have done away with social classes we have also done away with
the role of the state, in all societies. The role of “the state” is a role for
a social institution which is nothing more than an institution of repressive
violence in the hands of an exploiting or ruling class. Once class society
ceases to exist – and class society did not exist for 99.99% of human history
(nor did the state) – then the need for the state will be gone too.
When the state is no longer needed as an instrument of
class rule, then and only then, can we finally do away with it altogether. Until that time, one class or another will rule.
– And, the way one class or the other rules is through the use of police,
intelligence services, military force, judicial systems, torture chambers,
prisons and execution. There are no exceptions now nor have there ever been any
exceptions, anywhere, to this form of class rule – nor shall there ever be. In
contemporary times, when the capitalists have state power in their hands, they
use it against us. When we seize power we establish our own state and we use
that power (in new, loyal, hands) against them. Who will persevere? Science
tells us that we will. But, science cannot tell us how long it will take us to
win; for better or for worse in the meantime, before the final solution, we are
free agents with free will; we are free to win and we are free to lose.
The
Problem of Trotsky and Trotskyism
Beginning in 1965, when
I took my first SWP course on Trotsky and Bolshevism I found myself quietly at
odds with the conclusions and general tenor of the instructor and the majority
of already convinced students. To me Trotsky’s book Permanent Revolution
seemed extraordinarily shallow. There was nothing in this book that was not
already established doctrine among Leninists as far as the idea of continuing
the bourgeois revolution into the proletarian phase was concerned. As the
course proceeded it became obvious to me that the then popular idea that
Trotsky had the right “take” on art and literature was in fact ludicrous. It
should have gone without saying that whatever art and literary forms exist at
any point in time are reflective of the class
interests of the ruling classes of that time, period. – And as the decades
passed, and I learned more about Trotsky as a person, the more disgusting I
found him to be. How could a Marxist of whatever stripe act so haughtily and
arrogantly toward working class cadre of the social democratic movement unless
he was fundamentally flawed as a person – carrying over the worst rather than
the best of what had gone before, in terms of individual cognizance of his own
importance.
Gradually, I came to the
conclusion that Trotsky was the author of a mythology as deadly to our side as
the fantasy world in which the capitalists live is to their side. I mention
this up front, so as to make it clear what side I would have been on in the
Trotsky-Stalin split. My prejudices allowed to precede
me, for your benefit. Take them as you will.
For our purposes, the
most important thing we need to make clear about Trotskyism is, in my opinion,
the at-bottom fundamental difference between world Trotskyism and the world international
Communist movement is the idea that the New Class is a temporary deformation
of a working class-ruled world Sociocultural Evolutionary Stage, when in fact
it is no such thing. What we have in Stalinist Socialism is a distinct
world wide Stage (in its own right) of Sociocultural Evolution characterized by
backwardness that has necessitated a New Class, potentially dominating and
ruling. This is, in fact, the General Crisis of this new Stage in social
and cultural evolution – not a deformation. In other words, what we have seen is a new transitional stage; a
Stage which features a necessary technocrat class with certain privileges,
because there has been no choice, given the technological (almost
pre-capitalist) backwardness in which we first seized power.
Had we
seized power in the most advanced capitalist countries the role of this
technocracy would have been quite different; many workers, sufficiently
educated, would have been in place to quickly ascend into these technocratic roles. That was not the case as history has proven. Rather
we seized power where we could – meaning in countries
where the ruling capitalist classes were relatively weak and thus more easily
defeated. But, the consequences of victory first in these countries, led to the
necessity of the vanguard Party having to create the conditions that Marx and
Engels had assumed we would inherit.
We did not inherit them. We inherited the presumptive wind of a global
hurricane. From nearly empty air we had to build the technological foundations
without which Socialism is not possible.
Two
New Sociocultural Stages
This type of “Soviet”
socialism occurs again and again in many countries in the period after 1917.
Furthermore despite all odds it continues and despite all odds it continues to
evolve. Thus, we are seeing for the first time a distinct sociocultural Stage
emerge and evolve on the Planet Earth. To get from here to the Stage of
Communism as we conceive it implies at least one more
sociocultural Stage will emerge along the way. Probably two or more,
I suspect. China
marching into the Stage of Advanced Socialism shows us what that Stage looks
like and it also is a New
Sociocultural Stage. In about 200 years at this rate the entire
globe may well have entered the Communist Stage although political liberation
will occur long before that period of time passes. – And advanced capitalist
countries like the USA
could literally skip over these two Stages (or at least shorten them to one or
two decades) and go directly to the stage of Communism.
Back
at the Ranch
Preparing
to Understand Trotsky’s role in Chapter 13
The
Stage of Stalinist Socialism
An administrative caste, if you
will, was clearly necessary for the Bolsheviks in power and in uniform. In the
latter part of his life Leon Trotsky made this de facto New Class the principal bugaboo of his theoretical
position. Yet even perfunctory historical analysis shows us that when he was on
top, Trotsky was all in favor of a bureaucratization of everything, including
the working class itself, he would have placed under military discipline in
their factories! (As he proposed at the 9th Party Congress in
the Spring of 1920.) It was Trotsky, not Stalin, that Lenin found guilty
(in his Testament) of too much attention to the bureaucratic aspect of things.
Alternatively, Trotsky later proposed a variety of
solutions, but finally, and most often, he spoke of
"internationalism" - meaning the support of workers from other
successful revolutions in advanced capitalist countries - coming to the
assistance of the Soviet Union.
- And, he blamed the Stalin "gang" for staging what he called a
"coup" against the legitimate representatives of proletarian power in
the Party and the State and of course with filling the Government with their
own. This is another of those historical problems that requires surgically
precise logic and very accurate historical knowledge to get to the bottom of
the contention. I find it useful to separate Trotsky the man from Trotskyism
the strategy, and indeed the Trotskyist "theory".
Beginning with the former, I think
Trotsky in the last analysis had no one to blame but himself for the alienating
of the Bolshevik "Old Guard." With his very wealthy family background
and privileged upbringing, his arrogance and air of superiority, his tendency
to lord it over the less verbal Bolshevik Old Guard, he was everything that the
Bolshevik working class originating old cadre hated. He had opposed Lenin and
Bolshevism virtually his entire life. He came over to Lenin and the Bolshevik
Party very late – in late June and early July of 1917 - only after rigorous
argument with Lenin, where he made demands so infuriating to the rest of the
Bolshevik Party (such as demanding they change their name, if Lenin wanted to
gain his membership and indeed leadership mantle) he made many enemies - for
life. Among the Bolsheviks only Lenin wanted him. Because Lenin wanted him the
rest went along.
Lenin wanted Trotsky in the summer
of 1917 because Trotsky had a big mouth, and he could put the Bolshevik
position forward consistently and clearly in the all-important Petrograd
Soviet. – And, eventually in the national Congress of Soviets. Trotsky’s
Bolshevik candidacy was feasible because he was a Marxist, and he had one
critical point upon which he agreed with Lenin and that was in turning the
bourgeois February Revolution into a Proletarian Revolution as quickly as
possible. Trotsky had a small group of followers he could throw into the mix
and they were people of competence and ability, so Lenin would pick them up
along the way as part of the deal with Trotsky. Lenin knew Trotsky would be a
spoiler in the Petrograd City Council upon his return if he was not brought
under control and the only realistic way he could bring him under control was
to bring him into the Party.
As the years have progressed I have often
found myself thinking that bringing Trotsky into the Party was Lenin’s greatest
single mistake. Yet, on the other hand, the most important thing in May and
June of 1917 was seizing state power. Lenin knew Trotsky could be invaluable in
this respect because he knew Trotsky would have a tremendous influence in the
Petrograd City Council (Soviet) which was the most important political body in
the Empire at that point in time. Without Trotsky the Bolsheviks would probably
win. With Trotsky the Bolsheviks would definitely be successful in the seizure.
Nothing was more important than the seizure. With it everything became
possible. Without seizure, nothing would have been possible. History is
unfortunately, often messy, and this is just one of those unavoidable examples.
So, in the end bringing Trotsky in was the right thing to do. Frankly, I
suspect that everything would have gone much smoother if Stalin had disposed of
him in 1919 rather than 1940 but that is just speculation.
Trotsky would later claim to have
been the originator of the idea of going over quickly to an armed struggle for
proletarian dictatorship once the bourgeois revolution began, and attached the
label "permanent revolution" to it, but this is simply not
true. It had been the policy of Bolshevism since it became Bolshevism in 1903 to argue for going over to working
class seizure of power from the bourgeoisie as quickly as possible once the
bourgeois revolutionary process might begin. In a somewhat different form the
idea goes back to Karl Marx and the revolutionary period 1848-1850. – And, as a matter to note, for still different reasons,
it was Mao Zedong who pressed the idea
of permanent revolution on the Chinese Party throughout the period after 1952.
Now in the summer of 1917, Lenin needed Trotsky's ability
in the Petrograd (earlier St. Petersburg, later Leningrad) Soviet, where
debating and oratory were a daily necessity for Party leaders of every persuasion
- and the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies in Petrograd was a de
facto proletarian parliament, which the capitalist parties dominated at the
beginning of the six month period from February to October 1917. Lenin had seen
from the very first that it would be the Petrograd Soviet and others like it
that would be the organizational form around which the Bolsheviks would move
for power and he had the experience of the 1905 St.
Petersburg Soviet to learn from.
In the 1905 St.
Petersburg Soviet, Trotsky had played the leading role, and thus, was admired
by the relatively sophisticated workers of 1917 Petrograd.
In their mind he was a man who could hold his own with the best of the Cadet,
SR (Socialist Revolutionary Party, Left and Right) and Menshevik orators with
the debating skills of his upper bourgeois class background - and he was on
their side! He made them proud and they would listen to him. At least that is
what Lenin thought and hoped, and was the reason he put up with Trotsky's
stifling arrogance in their negotiations. Lenin certainly had more important
things to do than bullshit, day-in and day-out, in the Petrograd Soviet.
Trotsky’s followers later maintained
that it was he who had led the actual seizure of 24-26 October, 1917, and that
is merely true. He was one member of the committee formed for the purpose of
seizure three weeks prior to 24 October, 1917 (the origin of the first
Politburo). He played an assigned role as did everyone else on the committee
except for Kamenev and Zinoviev who betrayed the revolution on the eve of the
Revolution. But that's it. (Lenin forgave these two their treason and they were
readmitted into the Party. Stalin did not. They were shot in 1936.) In fact,
the seizure took place in many other cities simultaneously and was hard fought
and took several weeks. What is true is that in Petrograd, which was the capital
of the Empire, “…the
practical work of organizing the uprising was done under the immediate
direction of Comrade Trotsky, the President of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be
stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to
Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the
Soviets and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary
Committee was organized.” (Joseph Stalin
writing on Trotsky’s role in a Pravda
article of November 6, 1918, the first anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution
and quoted by Stalin in his 1934 book The
October Revolution.)
Furthermore, the Bolshevik revolution was not confined to Petrograd.
Bolsheviks under other leaders seized power simultaneously in Moscow,
Kiev, Samara, Minsk
and many other cities, beginning 24 October and continuing over the next
several weeks.
In the military struggle it is often
thought that Trotsky was the sole brain behind the eventual success of the Red
Army and that certainly is not true. As I explain in Chapter 13, there was from
the beginning and throughout the Civil War a sub-rosa conflict between
Trotsky and Stalin with regard to military strategy and tactics, and in April
of 1919 the Stalinists finally won control of the Red High Command (Party
Military Committee) and kept it, despite the fact that Trotsky was allowed to
remain as War Commissar (because Lenin wanted it that way.) From that date
forward Trotsky's policies would be closely watched by the worker-general
Mikhail Frunze, the candidate of Stalin and Dzershinsky. Frunze,
the new Chief of Staff, now would have three of the five seats, in addition to
himself (for 4 out of 5) in the Red High Command. So, if their was a “gang” of
Stalinists they emerged immediately, and the “coup” against Trotsky began in
the first months and years of the October Revolution, not years later after
Lenin’s death.
In other words there was no coup by
any gang. Accurate
historical reconstruction shows us that the Stalin-Trotsky Party and Army split
existed from the beginning and deepened through the entire Bolshevik
experience, until one or the other had to prevail. The divisions between these
two and other Party leaders were so bitter by 1921 that Lenin feared
factionalism could destroy the Party. At any rate, so much
for the myth of a Stalin gang and coup. Logically, this tell us, in my
mind, along with other aspects of the way Trotsky conducted himself, that he
had a tendency to exaggerate and distort history, to suit his purposes as he
saw fit, with the passage of time.
- And, when it was all said and done it was Trotsky's
disastrous leadership of the 1920 Polish-German-West European campaign, that
left the Soviet Republic high and dry without the hope of any immediate
international linkage to the essential advanced industrial bases of the West
except for what could be gained by the more normal type of bourgeois statecraft
to which Lenin was now reduced.
In fact, even Trotsky spoke by 1922 of the new situation
internationally where the SovietRepublic
could expect to participate on an equal basis in the international grouping of
capitalist states. Hardly a call for a “revolutionary
internationalist” solution to the problems confronting Bolshevism.
The second bugaboo of the Trotsky
theory has to do with the idea that what was needed was more workers
participatory democracy. But Trotsky was rather slovenly in coming to this
position also. It was Trotsky who in 1919 started the program of labor armies
to replace the soldier armies that were being disbanded, the soldiers
discharged. It was Trotsky who in early 1920 called for the total
militarization of the Russian proletariat and to hell with the trade unions.
This proposal being justified by the idea that since the workers now owned the
state and government and were led by a worker's party that they were well
enough represented and could be reduced to what amounted to automatons. Lenin
had to step in at the 9th Party Congress in the spring of 1920
saying someone would have to defend the workers from their own state if
Trotsky's ideas were to be given serious consideration. That's how precarious
the situation was at that time.
- And Party democracy is the other
side of this second theoretical coin Trotsky tosses out in the 1920's. However,
it was Lenin who kicked off the campaign in 1921 to tighten inner Party
discipline because he saw the need for ending factionalism in the Party (and
with it the endless debates) and demanded it. Lenin saw that the time had come
"to go to work." It was time to face the facts: namely, that the
proletariat had failed to seize power in any other capitalist country. That
situation was not going to change in the foreseeable future. Certainly it
wasn’t going to change right away, after the failure of Trotsky to complete his
mission to seize Warsaw
and Berlin
in 1920 (for details see Chapter 13 below.) In fact, the situation in Russia had
grown so intolerable that the better part of 1921 had to do with crushing the
massive Tambov, and other, peasant rebellions (not to mention the Kronstadt
sailors mutiny) and was only successfully concluded because of the
re-introduction of capitalism by Lenin's fiat in the spring of 1921 (the New
Economic Policy or NEP).There was no possibility of an internationalist
solution, to use a popular Trotskyist phrase, to the problem of Russia's
technological backwardness at that time. It would have to be done by the
Bolsheviks themselves at home where they did have state power. - And, Trotsky
agreed at the time with the demand that debate and discussion end and that a
policy of carrying out orders be adopted. Except during a “campaign period” if
you will of a few weeks before a Conference or a Congress.
Lenin saw the grave danger
confronting the SovietRepublic
because of its technological backwardness and improvised accordingly. To make
up for the fact that Russia's
initial technological backwardness had been exacerbated by the loss, in the
civil war, of up to 90% of the politically conscious proletariat by 1921. The
Government would have to lick its wounds and start to educate and train the
necessary cadre at home - as slow and painful as that might be - and, in the
meantime, gain as much time as possible, before the next inevitable imperialist
onslaught, with a new foreign policy.
Finally, the bureaucracy bugaboo in the
Trotsky theory claims that the power to appoint secretaries and functionaries
from the center – which had replaced the earlier, inefficient (for military
purposes), electoral forms of democratic centralism within the Party during the
Civil War – was carried to an extreme by Stalin and used in essentially
undemocratic ways to win his political fights. In other words, Trotsky claimed
Stalin won his fights in the Party by rigging the elections, since the
delegates were often his hand-picked secretaries and other functionaries. All
of which may well be true. But that is just organizational politics. What is
important is what lies behind or below the surface in such matters.
The role of the Party
was dramatically and in fact drastically different in power than it had been
out of power. Out
of power a great deal of input from below on every issue had been the norm.
Then, after a decision had been reached, it was the responsibility of the Party
leadership to carry out the decisions and the membership to do as they were
told, to implement the decisions. Now, in power, without the necessities
demanded by Marx and Engels (fully modernized capitalist industry) the Party
had to get to work and build virtually everything from scratch. Its role
demanded that it transform itself into an enabling organization – an organization
charged with building the foundations of Socialism however it could. A Party of “builders” as opposed to a Party of “destroyers.”
A Party without such rigid internal control would not have been able to carry
out the gigantic historical tasks it would soon confront. Not the least of
which would be the collectivization of agriculture (which would not begin until
1928 so they had seven years to get their act together.) Not to mention winning
the inevitable imperialist second world war.
We shall mention all of these consequences again in this
book but the point here is that the ideas which form the mainstay of what would
eventually be called Trotskyism are historically ill-founded. I think the
Trotskyist analysis makes no sense when reviewed within the context of the
reality of those times.
Does this mean that the bureaucracy
in the Soviet Union
was not a new class? Does it mean that they would not separate themselves as a
New Class with title deed to property if they got the chance and in the meantime
act as if they did? No, of course, it doesn't. It does mean that the Trotskyist
analysis is flawed fatally in both theory and practice and in the real test of
the facts of history.
Trotsky as a person (and, thus, Trotskyism as a
strategy/theory) became irrelevant except as a straw-man whipping-boy for
Joseph Stalin who found it convenient to use him, and it, that way until he
disposed of him in Mexico
City in 1940. When Trotsky was
reduced to nothing more than whining about the pace of the very programs
he had advocated - i.e., massive
industrialization and agricultural mechanization/collectivization - he became
irrelevant to Communists almost everywhere. – And carping still more about
Stalin’s management methods left him even more outside the fold of “legitimate
critic” in the minds of most communists.
Except for the perceptive few who saw the problem created
by the New Class and were honestly trying to do something about it - the
Trotskyists. It is because of their sincerity that we should welcome them into
the New Bolshevik movement, as I have done for many decades. I remember my
friend Arne Swabeck, one of the leaders of the 1919 Seattle General Strike,
(see the movie Reds for Arne’s last
public appearance) and many other Trotskyists in the 1960’s for their support
of Chairman Mao’s attempts to reign in the New Class, and among the Trotskyist
youth also in Los Angeles for their willingness to pursue common objectives
with us (Progressive Labor Party),
as in the Los Angeles Anti-Vietnam War Committee they created. The fact that
Mao’s attempt was tortured along the way by reality is another matter
altogether, which we shall be discussing at several points below. I like to
think that it has all worked out in the end for China.
But, what about for us?
At the end of this handbook you will see that a New Class of managers
and bureaucrats has been necessary for the construction of Socialism in
backward countries. Inherent in that recognition is also the insistence that we
see to it that they play only this role and are not allowed the role of a new
ruling class.
We shall also see that backward countries may well have to
witness capitalism developing alongside socialist institutions, as in
Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, for example. Given the backwardness
of those economies a Chavez-Morales-Ortega triumvirate in alliance with
Socialist Cuba is not just the “best” we could expect but by far good enough! With our Marxist
theoretical understanding as outlined above, and explained herein, you will see
that it has been Bolshevik policy to
support exactly this, as circumstances require, since 1921.
However it may end up in the future, for the moment, the Chinese
Communist Party is doing exactly this, because as in the case of Lenin’s Russia,
China
has had no choice. The Russians tried jumping straight away from capitalism to
communism; failed; restored capitalism and then tried again, this time with
limited (i.e., “socialist” as opposed
to “communist”) goals, by “building” into the planned economies of the
Stalinist Socialist Stage. In China’s case its first ten years (1949-1959)
under Bolshevism were all about getting to communism as quickly as possible
(ending capitalism and feudalism in agriculture; collectivization; peoples
communes) requiring in the succeeding twenty years, two new revolutionary
struggles; all the while trying to stay on the right road (1966-1975; 1976-78).
Not an easy task, without historical precedent, and when one is uncertain as to
which road is the right one. In both the Russian and Chinese cases these
initial attempts at jumping into communism failed, and new forms of social
organization had to be invented. In both cases Bolshevism has had to step back
and deal with the reality of backwardness.
Can we do our part – meaning fight for and seize state
power, build the socialist transition and move rapidly into communism all the
time struggling to prevent New Class separation? We should be able to do so
now. We have the technological foundations the founders required; we should be
able to invent the democratic proletarian forms to prevent the negative aspects
of the initial experiments in Russia
and China
from happening once again, as we replace oligarchic ownership of our factories
and land with ownership of the working people in those factories and on that
land.
Stalin and Stalinism
One might wonder why the question of Stalin and Stalinism
has been so terribly distorted in the English-speaking world. The answer should
be obvious. The ruling capitalist classes, and their academic toadies,
desperately needed to attack Stalin and they found the most convenient way of
attacking him to utilize the mythology spread by Trotsky about him.
An excellent example is now playing; in May
of this year PBS broadcast the most recent attack of Gringolandia academics
against Stalin. It starts out with a great lie of omission (ignoring the twenty
two year history of Britain and France against the USSR including their every
attempt at sending Hitler against the USSR during the years 1933–1941) and the
PBS lies continue, one compounded on the other, throughout this miserable
series – hopefully no one of you will ever give a penny to the scumbag PBS
(they are worse than FOX because everyone knows what FOX is.) Far worse yet is
the attack ongoing in the USA
by Left traitors and paid FBI agents like Sam Webb. In fact, this PBS pack of
lies was rushed out to counter the truth as now is being published herein and
in other books. Especially since the earlier excellent movie World War II: When There Were Giants with major actors (Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins,
John Lithgow) playing the roles of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt has had such
an impact on contemporary thinking in Gringo academia of a positive (which is
to say truthful) way; meaning a truthful exposition of World War II and its
conduct. PBS is after all, just another capitalist outlet for lies and
misstatements of history, albeit unlike FOX (Fascist Oxymoron) it is aimed at
“educated” North Americans as opposed to the ignorant and unwashed targeted by
the latter.
As the years since 1965 progressed and I read more and more
of the original documents I came to see an entirely different Stalin than the
one Trotsky propagandized. So different that it is truly shocking. Furthermore,
because of my own involvement in the intelligence service I began to see how
Stalin organized and led the most important combat part of the international
communist movement – the Red Secret Service – and, accordingly, have been
writing a book about it (Red Sword, Red
Shield). Let me give you an accurate assessment of Stalin’s originating
role in the Bolshevik Party.
Stalin
was born Joseph Vissarionovich Dzugashvili on December 9, 1879 in
Gori,
Georgia.
Nicknamed Soso by others, he chose the name “Koba” for himself by the time of
his adolescence. In time he would take on a new name. His official new name
would be Stalin, the man of steel.
But that was some time into the future. For now Stalin would be Joseph, Soso,
or Koba.
Koba was the hero of a
Robin Hood novel about a Georgian who stole from the rich and gave to the poor.
Joseph continued to use Koba as his first name in the underground world of the
RSDLP. The main book that Koba read was The
Patricide, its author Alexander Kazbegi – perhaps the wealthiest landowner
in Georgia - had released his serfs from their serf obligations, given away his
own wealth, and gone to living as a simple herder of sheep in the mountains of
Georgia. Writing his Koba stories occupied Kazbegi’s plentiful spare time as a
shepherd during the years 1880 to 1886. The first six years of Joseph’s
childhood.
At the age of 8
Joseph’s mother enrolled him in elementary school. Here he was forced to learn
Russian, as instruction was done only in Russian, and he completed elementary
and middle schooling therefore in the Russian language. He graduated with
honors from this church school in 1894 and at the age of 14 was admitted to the
seminary in Tiflis (Tbilisi),
Georgia,
for high schooling, which was the only way toward a higher education for a poor
boy. The following year at the age of 15 he joined the Russian Social
Democratic circle (called Mesame Dasi) in Tiflis.
There he caught the attention of the man who would become his mentor, Leonid Krassin. Krassin was a well
educated capitalist, working for Russian wildcatters and foreign oil concerns
as a manager, company man and sometimes as an entrepreneur for himself,
wildcatting in the rough- And-tumble oilfield culture of Georgia,
especially around Batum and Baku.
– And, Krassin was a secret Social Democrat of the Lenin variety.
Now, note two things:
(1) at the turn of the century three families dominated the Russian oil
industry: the Nobels, the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds, and (2) in
these days the seminaries were producing revolutionaries like hot house plants.
Not only in Trans-Caucasian Russia, but also in Georgia
and Armenia.
In Tiflis (renamed Tbilisi
in 1936 by Koba, now Georgia’s
favorite son, known as Stalin) as a member of the Social Democratic
organization, Joseph and other seminarians met revolutionary factory and
oilfield workers, studying in secret, and immersed themselves in these workers
activities. They were studying Russian translations of Karl Marx and Frederick
Engels principal works including Marx’s Capital
Volume One. Caught reading these materials at the seminary Joseph was
expelled in 1899. However, in the five years from this initial meeting, which
is to say when Koba grew from 15 to 20 years of age, Krassin taught him how to
organize workers, and as importantly, how to rob banks, stage-coaches and
steamships. Krassin was such an obvious and enthusiastic capitalist, the
Czarist secret police missed him altogether, and thus, for some time they also
missed his most promising student. Krassin would work his way up the Czarist
bureaucracy, in time, to become what Lenin would eventually call (during the
First World War) the “Finance Minister of the Bolshevik Revolution” for reasons
you will come to understand in the text.
In 1900, Joseph met his
first face-to-face intermediary to Lenin. Arriving in Tiflis from internal
exile in that year was Victor Kurnatovsky who had met their future leader while
in exile (Lenin was exiled to the Siberian town of Minusinsk
at the time) and come under his sway. Kurnatovsky told Koba about Lenin whom he
described as a genius who would lead them all to victory. By this time Lenin
had been released, having served his prison sentence and had made his way to London.
Unlike other émigrés Lenin arrived in London
with a plan of action. Sewing circle reading and discussion groups would give
way under the new leader to a secret professional organization of militarily
organized combat revolutionaries. The central instrument Lenin proposed to
implement the policy of the General Staff of the Revolution was a newspaper. The
following year, 1901, The Spark (Iskra) began to arrive in Tiflis via sailors on shore leave at the Black
Sea ports. Joseph became a follower of Lenin among the
Social Democrats; following the split of the RSDLP into its Bolshevik and
Menshevik factions in 1903, Joseph, now known in the Party almost always as
Koba, joined unhesitatingly with the Bolsheviks.
In 1901, following
instructions received via Iskra,
Koba threw himself into organizing the oilfield workers and organizing armed
strikes at Baku
and Batum and then into organizing bank hold-ups stage-coach and steamship robberies, and other armed “expropriations” (known as “exes”
by the Bolsheviks.) Shortly after the 1903 formation of the Bolshevik Party,
Koba and Krassin became the number one in-country “provider Team” of cash to
Lenin’s cause; organizing for example, the Great Tiflis Stage-coach and State
Bank Robbery that netted Lenin some 300,000 gold rubles! In other words, at
just the right time Koba provided Lenin with the two things he needed most: (1)
a real organized labor movement which had won armed strikes and put their union
into the oilfield on a permanent basis and (2) money. This was the first
successful organized labor movement in the Russian Empire and it was Leninist
thanks to Koba and his fellow Bolshevik-to-be organizers. The soon-to-come
Bolshevik Party had also become the first financially independent working class
vanguard Party in the world; again thanks to Koba and associates. Lenin
recognized all of this and began to put Koba on the top of his list of people
to be pushed ahead.
Among these principal
organizers in the Caucuses were not only Koba but his closest friends including
Kliment Voroshilov, future head of the entire Red Army, and Michael Kalinin,
future President of the Soviet Union.
Of course, Leonid Krassin continued as the senior advisor of this Young
Communist cadre.
Taking on the
Rothschild’s: 1901
As we have seen there were three major
international oil concerns operating in Russia
at the turn of the century; those owned by the Nobel’s, the Rothschild’s and
the Rockefeller’s. All three were well represented on the Caspian, especially
in the oil cities of Baku
and Black Sea
Batum where Koba had risen to be the de
facto chief of Russian Social Democratic Labor Party strike organizing
operations by 1901. Having built a union in the oilfields, the following year
Koba took on what he considered to be the weakest of the foreign oil combines. Namely, that of the Rothschild’s. However, as the unfolding
began, the strike once again brought out the Czarist troops and gendarmerie.
Koba and his associates jumped into the fight with guns and every other weapon
they could get their hands on and the fighting was underway. Troops burned the
workers quarters and shot down men, women and children daring to engage in open
protest and refusing to work. Koba’s teams of armed workers fought back and
forced the cops and troops to retreat or face hundreds of burning wells. The
capitalists decided this was a higher price than they were willing to pay and
called off their troops. The workers won the strike and went back to work with
a union! It was the first Social Democratic victory in an armed strike and it electrified the Empire.
Meanwhile in London,
Lenin was thrilled to learn that his brand new newspaper was considered by the
Czar’s secret police, and by his own Party, as responsible for the Caucuses
being in flames. Lenin had believed from the moment of his arrival in the United
Kingdom the
previous year that the Czarist regime was very weak and open to direct attack
by workers. Workers could and would engage in massive work stoppages regardless
of the sacrifice in wages required to do so. Furthermore, he had proven that
workers would take up arms and fight for socialism whether or not Russia
was considered by bourgeois intellectuals to be too primitive for Socialism.
All the workers needed was encouragement and that came
from the underground newspaper Spark (Iskra). The text or “copy” to be printed
was smuggled to the Caspian on ships with friendly sailors and then printed in
one of the underground print shops Koba and associates maintained. All the
intellectuals needed were some balls. Then they could understand that it didn’t
matter whether the revolution started in Russia
or in England.
What mattered was that it started, and then got international, as quickly as
possible. Workers with advanced industry would come to the aid of workers with
backward industry, and would be more than happy to do so, since the latter
would have started the conflagration that had led to their own liberation.
– And, that was Lenin’s program in short. Action now for
proletarian revolution. The Russian Workers Revolution would come to
power in a period of transition with “the state” (Army and secret police) in
its hands, and full scale industrialization would occur as workers in the
advanced capitalist countries got their act together and joined in.
First in Batum, and now in Baku, Koba and his fellow organizers had
implanted the Party printing presses. Code named “Nina” the Russian printing
press operation by 1902, was hidden in a dugout cellar eventually expanding
under several homes and city streets in the mainly Mongol working class quarter
of Baku.
From here, bundles of the paper were printed and smuggled as far as Moscow
and St.
Petersburg in the North and then
to every working class quarter in the country, as opportunity provided. The
distribution network for petroleum products that flowed northward and eastward
from the Black Sea
functioned for many years as the backbone of secret Bolshevik newspaper
distribution, another gift to Lenin from his devoted Baku-Batum followers
led by Koba. Accordingly this network became the vertebral chord of secret Bolshevik Party cell organizing as
well.
The
working class action committees of Baku
and Batum had set the pace and provided the model for what workers could do in
other cities. – And, Lenin knew from his growing network of informers and
couriers that workers in every other city of the Empire, aware of what was
happening in the Caucuses, were seeing in those committees, the model for their
own organizations. Inside the newly created Russian Social Democratic Labor
Party, those who had seen Lenin as just another intellectual in exile now saw
him in a quite different way. Unfortunately, some such as the father of Russian
Marxism, Plekhanov, were simply jealous of this young upstart’s success.
Plekhanov chose to see Lenin thrusting ahead of himself and felt his long
suffering service in presenting Marxism to Russia
to begin with, was being forgotten. Others, like the newcomer Leon Bronstein
(Trotsky), initially sided with Lenin but then went over to the other side
within the exile RSDLP leadership. Perhaps because they too were being sidelined
by Lenin’s ability to get things done. However, their varying motivations may
have been, the fact was that what would be, in the Russian revolutionary
workers movement, was being decided on the ground, and Lenin had all the
troops.
The Empire Atremble
Even Lenin was surprised when his as yet unmet
leaders in the Caucuses, principal among them being Koba, succeeded in 1903, in
organizing the most eventful workers action in the history of Europe
since the Paris Commune of 1876. A general strike that not
only shut down the oilfields of the Caspian Sea and everywhere else
but also shut down every industrial city in the Russian Empire. For a moment the Empire wobbled. Could it
all be over that fast?
In theory yes. Marx had said in the Communist Manifesto it was just a
matter of workers changing ownership of the means of production, putting
themselves and those in need among the people, at the top of the national
priority list, instead of at its bottom, as the capitalists had done, and you
would have socialism. Eventually, with the abolition of private property you
would have a paradise on Earth where all the advantages of industrial
production would be at the service of the working people rather than the other
way around as the capitalists had arranged it. - And with publicly owned means
of scientifically advanced industrial production, making the slogan “from each
according to his ability to each according to his need,” a reality, you would
have communism. But, what about the resistance of the
exploiters? Surely, they would mount powerful counter attacks. The
capitalists were already sending the Czarist secret police (Okhrana) in huge
numbers; the Army and the Cossacks could not be far behind.
The Revolution
of 1905
The
General Strike of 1903 left the Czar’s top advisors unanimous in wanting to
start a war to refocus national thinking off of the internal problems
confronting them. Rather than seeking social reform with the liberal
capitalists and the new class of petty bourgeois intellectual and educated
bureaucrats, the Czarists preferred to start a war. This time they planned for
a successful war.
The problem came when
they failed in their elective war. They had chosen the wrong victim. Japan.
In this case the Japanese nation was prepared, although ruled by a small
tight-knit coterie of formerly feudal aristocratic and noble families. Families
that had kept the discipline of their rule over slaves and serfs while
voluntarily transforming themselves into capitalist ruling families. As they
applied this feudal discipline to their rule over workers they were able to
catapult themselves into the modern industrial world of international
capitalism. The Okhrana, focused as it was on internal dissent, had missed all
of this. Russia
acted as if it had not known of Japan’s
industrialization and its immediate application to the construction of steel
war ships with fully modern big guns.
The
setting chosen by the Russians for their conflict was Korea.
But, in the event, the Czar’s Army and Navy proceeded to disgrace themselves in
a series of embarrassing military debacles. The war climaxed with virtually the
entire Czarist fleet being buried at sea!
In
response the Russian nation rose up. Many in the capitalist class, hitherto
allied seemingly inextricably with the feudal Lords, intermarried and
interbred, wanted west European style parliamentary democracy, as did the
liberal bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie - especially the New Class of
technocrats upon which the Czarist Regime depended increasingly. The farmers
rose up under their Socialist Revolutionary Party leaders demanding
redistribution of land along the lines they imagined it had existed before
Peter the Great. The workers rose up under their political parties: the
Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. As the year progressed the Bolsheviks began to
get the upper hand among them. – And, along the way a variety of individualists
such as Leon Bronstein (Trotsky) arose to espouse their own doctrines and
acquire in the milieu of revolution their own following.
Trotsky
cut out his following from the masses gathering around the St. Petersburg City
Council (Soviet is the Russian word for Council.) The Bolsheviks gained a mass
following in the workers quarters which was also reflected in the City Council.
In the end the Czar outfoxed the revolutionaries and crushed the Petrograd City
Council and along with it the rest of the revolutionary councils that had
arisen throughout the nation.
Koba’s first importance to Lenin and the
Bolsheviks was precisely his clarity on the nature of the enemy and what was to
be done about them.– And, this clarity was achieved first of all in the real
school of life. Furthermore, he was willing and able to get done, what needed
to be done, for his Party and his Chief. Lenin recognized these qualities in
Koba, calling him “that wonderful Georgian.”
During the 1905
Russian Revolution Lenin came to depend on Koba. Koba could get things done. He
had a wide range of working-class political contacts and was developing an even
wider range of bourgeois contacts including those of the underworld as a result
of his prison experiences which had only begun. Lenin would, in the years up to
the October Revolution in 1917, rely on Koba to carry out the most dangerous
and sensitive and the most important secret tasks confronting the Party.
For example, all the bourgeois socialists including
Leon Trotsky, were opposed to Lenin’s program of bank hold-ups, and other armed
robberies to finance Party activities, organs, and the press – strong-arm work
of which he had placed Koba (Stalin) in charge, and which policy Lenin defended
in open debate against the Mensheviks and Trotsky at the 5th (1907)
RSDLP Congress in London. After all, Lenin argued, the aristocrats and
bourgeoisie had stolen all this money from the people to begin with and it was
only right that the people’s champions should expropriate it on their behalf.
Lenin dismissed his opponents politically, considering them bourgeois sissies,
and went on with the business of building his own (Bolshevik) Party. A Party which of course did
not include Trotsky or any of the other bourgeois socialists (Mensheviks.)
For Lenin it was politics not personal.
Stalin, however, as we have seen, pictured himself as
a kind of “Robin Hood” of the Revolution. So much so that even before he became
a Social Democrat, as we have also seen, he had taken the name of the legendary
Georgian Robin Hood, “Koba”; a name
his friends would use for him all of his life. The anger he felt toward the
haughty Trotsky was not so easily assuaged.
Lenin also
handed Stalin much of the responsibility for organizing the secret financial
investments of the Party in a variety of Russian banks; arranging transfers of
cash and securities to Party safe-drops in West European banking centers, and
so forth. – And these are just a few examples of the important secret work that
Lenin entrusted to Stalin.
As a matter of historical note, Stalin’s first
face-to-face conflict with Trotsky occurred as a product of this 1907 RSDLP (5th)
Congress (Joint Congress with both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks attending) debate
in London,
and went far to shape his dislike for the man he considered to be an
“aristocrat-bourgeois” socialist. In a short time a mutual hatred emerged
between these two. Hatred destined to shape so much of the Party’s future
experience. If Trotsky had been less aristocratic in his bearing and less
presumptuous toward those doing all the work, and taking all the risks, perhaps
even showing appreciation for those such as Stalin, the latter might have been
less likely to politicize his personal feelings. I suspect Stalin’s feelings
were hurt and he did politicize them.
I imagine that the more Stalin thought about Trotsky,
the exact kind of privileged person he hated the most, and his absolute failure
to understand the dedication and importance of his (Stalin’s) work, the more he
internalized his hatred of Trotsky, until it was part of the marrow of his
bones. Stalin “went off” on Trotsky within weeks of the beginning of the armed
struggle in 1918 and I don’t think it was just because of their principled
military disagreements. However that may have been, before this was all over
Stalin would bury an axe in Trotsky’s head. Albeit via a surrogate and far from home.
Trotskyist Mythology
We
will return to Stalin and his role in the creation of the world’s first
worker’s Government and State in Chapter 13. For now, let me say again that the
Trotskyist mythology which has cursed a certain portion of our movement for
many decades has necessitated this factual review of early Bolshevik history.
Also, it sets to rest, permanently I believe, the slander Trotsky spread far
and wide about Stalin being some kind of late-coming usurper of the throne that
should have been his. This mythology has two main threads. The first
that spun by Trotsky himself. The second the impression left by history
on foreign communists about the relative importance of the Russian Bolshevik
leaders. The former speaks for itself and is seen in all of Trotsky’s writings.
The latter is something I witnessed myself and, thus, had to come to
understand.
In
1965 when I was helping Phil Taylor organize Los
Angeles for the Progressive Labor
Party I met long time Trotskyist Arne Swabeck and his wife. (See the movie Reds for Arne’s last public
appearance.) I spent a number of hours throughout that year listening to Arne
talk about meeting Lenin and the other Bolshevik leaders in 1919 and many times
thereafter. He told me that at the Comintern Congresses he attended he never
heard of Stalin. I believed him and it is something that has stuck with me and
which I had to confront and answer for myself.
Now,
after decades of research, I think I can see how Trotsky’s shameless
proselytizing on his own behalf utilized certain historical features of 1917
and the subsequent six or seven years, to spread and reinforce the idea that
Stalin was an outsider and a usurper. This as we have just seen is the furthest
possible thing from the truth one could imagine. I think what Lenin is
purported to have said to Michael Borodin upon his return to Russia from
Chicago, about Trotsky having been brought into the Bolshevik Party by Lenin to
handle the Petrograd City Council where otherwise he would have been a spoiler,
is probably exactly what happened. Things worked out and according to Lenin
when Trotsky turned his attention to military affairs that worked out also. I
will leave this military question to the text and return to the second issue at
hand.
Namely,
that foreign communists and indeed foreign capitalist leaders of Germany,
England, Italy, France, the UK and so forth, got the impression that Trotsky
was one of the principal Bolshevik leaders on the same level as Lenin because
Trotsky had a big mouth, had been in charge of peace negotiations that eventually
took Russia out of the world war, and was the public face for a long time of
the Red Army. Combine this with the fact that most of these foreigners had no
command of the Russian language whatsoever and no familiarity with Bolshevik
history or even its most basic publications left the field wide open for
assuming that whoever was standing up front and talking the most must be the
boss. Well that certainly put Trotsky right up there as public face number two
– right next to that of Lenin – and Trotsky was always shooting his mouth off
to the press, foreign as well as domestic, so he got even more Press than
Lenin! This led to people such as Arne
Swabeck getting the wrong impression about the relative importance of
Trotsky (who was the real late-comer) and the relatively quiet Stalin. It also
explains why Stalin found it so easy to isolate Trotsky from the rest of the
Russian Party rather quickly as we shall see in the text.
Finally,
most foreign communists knew the Russian Bolsheviks almost exclusively through
the prism of the Comintern. Here there were many such leading mouths: e. g., Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev not to
mention Trotsky, etc etc. Stalin was
there, but very quietly, as the boss of the Comintern’s secret department. This
decision to make Stalin the real Comintern boss as far as real world operations
were concerned had been made by Lenin in an almost offhand way when Lenin was
single handedly organizing the Call and Structure of the Comintern and its
First Congress during January and February of 1919. It was rather natural that
Lenin would have continued to show complete confidence in Stalin in this matter
in that he had long since placed Stalin as the head of the Russian Communist
Party’s (Bolsheviks) secret department. (Stalin, from the beginning, and always
thereafter, for the rest of his life, had been and would be head of Bolshevik
secret operations at home and abroad no matter what organizational,
bureaucratic, structure and name had been or would be involved.) The other
Bolshevik leaders were intellectuals well suited to the development of the
intellectual side of Bolshevism. Now they were the public face of the Comintern
and contributed all the talk and stuff of the Comintern press. Stalin on the
other hand rarely spoke in Comintern meetings or publications. His secret role
was the most important job in the Comintern but only those members with a “need
to know” would have had any indication of this.
The
Trotskyists are for the most part quite sincere people. At least that is my
experience. But they have been badly misled and in our country they suffer the
gringo curse of failing to read. However, education is the cure for both
deficiencies and perhaps we have laid a good foundation for imposing clarity
here in this foreword. Now let us move on to the central theoretical false
premise of Trotskyism.
The New Class is Not a Deformation
but Part of a New Necessary
Transitional Stage – of which there
will be several
Before we arrive at Communism
The most important theoretical difference between international
Trotskyism and the international Communist movement in 2011 is on the question
of the nature and role of the Soviet New Class. (- And, by extension that of the
New Class in the Socialist Stage in China,
East Europe, Vietnam, Cuba,
etc. as the Trotskyists maintain
today.) Is the New Class, just as Trotsky maintained, an aberration?
Trotsky’s thinking made the New Class into a historically
accidental, peculiar, social structural deformation. According to him this was
due to idiosyncratic developments in Russia
(namely his main bugaboo, Koba or Joseph Stalin.) If, for example, he and
associates had been on top, the bureaucracy would have been controlled in an
otherwise well put together working class sociocultural evolutionary stage. A
single transitional Stage of Socialism. Or, rather conversely, is the New Class
a part of a new and specific transitional Stage of Socialism, which features
working class, farmer, and petty bourgeois technocrats in alliance? (By
extension this implies that there will be one or more additional transitional
Stages of Socialism yet to come.) Trotsky claimed the former. In fact, the
historical evidence – combined with the archaeological evidence – tells us the
latter is the case. Let us see why.
As I said in the Preface to the 2006 edition of this book,
we are indebted to Professor Antonio Gilman for identifying a deficiency in my
writing the first edition of this book (Fundamentals of Historical
Materialism, Bolshevism 2005.) Namely,
that I had failed to be sufficiently explicit about the origin and evolution of
the New Class in Socialist Societies, the central problem in the construction
of Socialism since 1917. I accepted this criticism as correct and so, we shall
now outline this origin and evolution.
The New Class is our #2 Problem
In fact, the number two problem,
after survival (which to date has been our number one problem), so far
encountered in countries undergoing socialist construction, has been how to
live with, meaning how to properly reward, the bureaucratic infrastructure
essential to the construction of the scientific and technically advanced
industry and agriculture in societies which were only pubescent with the high
levels of development initially proposed by the founders (Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels.) Because the consequences of this central fact of having
inherited technological backwardness in the homelands of proletarian
revolution, have been, and are being, used by the propagandists for capitalism,
to discredit the Marxist-Leninist strategy, and indeed our entire historical
analysis, an evolutionary trajectory for the New Class, as it should be
understood (nothing emerges unique and pristine without antecedents in
sociocultural evolution), is now a centerpiece of this handbook.
To begin with then, as you will see in
this Bolshevism 2011 version of Fundamentals
of Historical Materialism now The ABC’s of Communism, the problem of
the New Class has to be understood in theoretical terms – Marxist
theoretical terms.
What does this mean?
In practical terms it means we
continue to use the methodology of historical materialism’s analysis of
pre-capitalist formations as explained in this handbook. – And, in so doing we
lay out the origin and transformation of this New Class over the past 6000
years. As you will see, when we precede in this way it becomes clear that the
administrative bureaucracy of Socialism is actually a very old class, with its
origins in the Simple and Advanced Theocratic Chiefdom Stages.
Why is it true we must proceed in this way,
besides the fact that this method works?
Backwardness in
Technology
Is Not What Marx and
Engels Proposed
So far, with regard to technology, it
has been “national backwardness” we have encountered in the homelands of
socialist construction. This is not what Marx and Engels had proposed – exactly
the opposite, as a matter of fact, is what they required before one could
realistically hope to construct socialist, let alone communist, society. They
had proposed a completed capitalist stage with all its “modernizations” in
place. What we got was the extreme backwardness of Russia
and China,
with only the post-World War II German and Czechoslovak exceptions, too little
and too late to make any real difference.
The
problem of the Soviet Union and China
with the New Class is not the same
problem we should expect to have, at least to the same degree and intensity,
when working class revolution comes to the advanced capitalist countries.
However, having said this let me also assert that a New Class of administrators
will still be needed through the transitional Stages of Socialism in the USA,
and the other advanced capitalist countries, as we enter the transitional
period. – And, while the transition in our advanced countries will be fast (the
productive forces fully developed – i.e.,
as fully as possible anyway under Capitalism) there will still be a transition and it may last a decade or even two.
Although, hopefully, it will be this time a truly "classless
intelligentsia" as Stalin named it in the 1930's, and not a would-be new
class of wolves parading in sheep's clothing. It is up to you to be sure that
this time the Nomenklatura (Soviet
term for the New Class) meaning persons named to the different bureaucratic
positions determined by the leadership, is held directly responsible and
immediately recallable by democratic proletarian organs. Given the proven
dangers, experience has taught us of not doing this; you should make it a
priority when the time comes. – And, this
time, the New Class of Party and Government administrators should be a
class that will be consciously building
itself out of existence, over a
period of time, as it works alongside the other working classes, toward the day
when all working people share the responsibility of managing the affairs of the
economy and government democratically, as the founders planned in 1848 (with
the January appearance of The Communist Manifesto.) It certainly seems
possible to me that a person starting on Day One, after the revolution in the
USA, could be a bureaucrat for a decade and then have phased herself into a
role she may more truly appreciate (perhaps being a scientific researcher, or a
High School coach.)
Today a management of the whole
economic and political life of society by the people as a whole is more than
ever possible and absolutely essential. It
is possible because of the cybernetic revolution that makes every person
into a potential manager and monitor of the economy as a whole with worksites
at home and in their professional capacities. It is essential because we did not overthrow the class system of
the Servitude Epoch simply to create an Orwellian nightmare, nor to “share the
poverty,” but instead to create limitless goods and services of the most
advanced (indeed STAR TREK like) nature. – And, with it the only real world
possibility to create a society world-wide where it can be realistically and
common-sense wise, true, that each person contributes what she can and is
rewarded as she wishes. It is possible and essential, but only can happen if we create an altruistic mental template
in society that can only be made
permanent by the vast increase in productive capability which makes
selfishness anachronistic; an increase the advanced capitalist countries have
achieved. (- And, in the case of China,
the vast increase which we project to be extant there by 2050).
So now as to the New Class (i.e., the bureaucracy in the Party,
State and Government apparatus' of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.) What
was it? What were its sociocultural evolutionary predecessors? What were the
specifics of its development? What about the New Class in China; what forms
does it occupy; where did they come from and where can they be directed, as a
class, while accomplishing the objectives of the proletarian Party in power as
it is in China?
Prehistoric
Origins of the New Class
In the mid 1990's, I noticed an
article in a popular magazine from an archaeologist in one of the USA
Southwest's National Parks about evidence for compartmentalization of the
holdings of a Chiefdom storehouse - a Simple Chiefdom at that. It set me
thinking. Perhaps, as we archaeologists look for evidence of state origins by
finding the material remains of barracks (army garrisons) and cop-shops, we
could also find evidence of the origins of professional specialization as
"administrators" by finding evidence of the things that reflect
administrative tasks (such as differential storing and accounting for different
agricultural contributions). For that matter, as we find evidence for
professional specialization in the production of pottery by searching for
evolving uniformity and standardization, in the early chiefdom levels of
archaeological sites. (As opposed to the idiosyncratic
features of individual household pottery manufacture of the tribal domestic
mode of farming production.) My analysis of such remains has been
discussed elsewhere. The point is, there is in fact clear evidence in the
remnant material culture of such early administrative tasks and eventually they
become truly specialized. A "new class" can emerge from this
"new specialty." - And it often does. Always, as a matter of
fact, in the five known centers of the origin of civilization (by
“civilization” be sure to note that historians are always referring to the
emergence of the Slave Stage) and we can see the beginnings even in the
outlying independent centers (e.g.
the USA Southwest) that never got quite as far as class division and state
emergence for a variety of reasons. This is a "handbook" so I won't
pursue the subject except to say that our contemporary Socialist society “New
Class” has its distant origins along the banks of the Tigris, Euphrates, Nile,
Huang-ho and Yangtze Rivers in the Old World, and in the highlands of the
Central Andes, as well as the lowlands and highlands of Mesoamerica in the New
World. This is the beginning of our specific theory of the contemporary
New Class in socialist societies.
In
the Slave and Feudal Stages
As you will see the ruling families
that constituted the ruling classes of the Ancient World (the term Ancient
World means the Slave and Feudal Stages of the Old World and the Slave Stage of
the New World) had a deadly problem of their own with regard to their
boss-hierarchy (which will become the technocrat bureaucracy of modern times in
Capitalist and Socialist society) and they attempted to resolve it in a variety
of ways. Sometimes they were successful but just as often they were not. Among
the successful techniques they used we shall see two that were continuous and
especially important: (a) the construction of monumental architecture (to keep
labor-power in servitude out of the hands of the boss-hierarchy) as one way
they dealt with the problem (e.g. the pyramids of Egypt
and China's
Great Wall.) Another (b) was to keep the boss-hierarchy deeply in debt by
encouraging all sorts of expenditures on high living and luxury items. Without
labor power and without cash they could not very effectively challenge the
ruling and richest families.
Yet, keeping labor-power in servitude (whether it be slave,
feudal or capitalist; i. e. chattel or wage slavery) requires a
military-police establishment. Increasing the number of slaves requires a large
constantly growing military and police establishment. Under these circumstances
it’s only a matter of time until some of generals realize they can replace their
employers. Thus, slave stage forms always result in military dictatorship and
usually begin that way as well.
(This tendency is ever present, even
in capitalist societies such as the USA with a parliamentary tradition, as we
can see at present, where some the richest families want to do away with much
of the democracy that exists among themselves, and move toward a more efficient
dictatorship of the police-military sort. Fortunately, for some of them, the
moron Bush has failed - but next time there may be someone of a more than
Forest Gump capability - a Clinton, a McCain, or a Kerry – a smarter fascist
leader - who will succeed in replacing the quaint notions of constitutional
safeguards the US
ruling class has enjoyed for so long. Either way it’s their
problem not ours. Our task is to destroy all of them.)
- And don't panic over the Patriot
Act - they have been doing all this for many decades anyway and they will keep
doing it, with or without legal authorization, until the day they are
overthrown and liquidated root and branch. They have been tapping my phones,
following me to school and to work, conducting surveillance of my mail, etc. since I was ten years old and this
is not unique. For the details see the first volume of my autobiography
entitled The Buccaneer. So, this is a ruling class problem – not
ours. That is to say the bourgeoisie must fight out their own battles with the
billionaire-trillionaire oligarchy to protect their own turf. We know the US
ruling class state apparatus will try to do whatever they like with regard to
us as they always have. (We will fight back, overcome them, and liquidate
them. But, on our terms, as we see fit.)
Capitalism
and the Technocrats
Feudalism was the
half-way house stage between the chattel slavery and the wage slavery of the
preceding (Slave) and succeeding (Capitalist) stages, where the role of the
administrative bureaucracy, as part of the overall boss-hierarchy, assumed its
special “Eastern” and “Western” characteristics. Specifically, for example, the
highly sophisticated 250,000 strong corps of eunuch scholar-bureaucrats,
administering China for the Chinese ruling classes, in the east, and the
rather puny castle-bound individuals in the pay of European fiefdom princes
(still, however, with their testicles), responsible for financial affairs in
the west (the vast territories around the Mediterranean Sea). But as I
have pointed out in the text, Feudalism was doomed, not because it was an
historic compromise that gave more freedom to farming families in exchange for
labor-peace, but because its system of productive forces was primitive –
just as primitive as it had been in the Slave Stage.
Capitalism, on
the other hand, introduced machinery (in part at least of iron and steel
made by machine tools) with its own independent power sources (e.g., steam engines) to which unskilled,
untrained labor-power could be put to work in the factory installed machine
manufacture (machinofacture) of commodities and this changed the entire
nature of wealth acquisition. – And with it the jobs spectrum of the
boss-hierarchy; especially for persons involved in things other than
enforcement. – And these technocratic sectors expanded quickly and became during
the 1700’s in Europe and the Americas
by far the biggest part of the boss-hierarchy, with enforcement relegated
strictly to a specialized state (military, intelligence, police) establishment.
For capitalist machinery obviously takes brains to make, maintain, and most
importantly improve – generation of machinery, after generation of machinery.
The myriad of productive
tasks and professional activities involved in machinery produced commodities,
would require a new and far superior method of technical education for the
boss-hierarchy. Thus, arose the technocrats.
In economies as advanced in the capitalist way
as those of the major eight capitalist countries, this New Class is not as
obvious as it is in the newly emerging economies of places like Mexico, Brazil,
and Venezuela (for that matter essentially all of South America, and many
developing countries in Africa and Asia as well) where the technocrats stand
out clearly, and are often a political force as well. However, we don’t want to
forget that the most advanced eight capitalist countries had an emergent class
of technical people that looked in the 1700’s and 1800’s much like these
contemporary “technocratic New Class” elements in the developing capitalist
countries.
Furthermore, where the Marxist
parties did take power beginning in 1917, it was often from this “new”
Technocrat Class the leadership first arose (e. g., V.I. Lenin, Mao Zedong) – petty bourgeois and bourgeois in
class outlook – and continues to arise (e.g.
Fidel and Raul Castro, Che Guevara). Our leaders often come from this special
part of that class “in service” to the ruling families and ruling classes,
where their intellectual preoccupation and commitment to science and scientific
method led, and leads, some of them to accept Marx’s scientific discoveries of
the laws of history, and as importantly the laws of operation of the capitalist
system. Among these individuals were those who decided, and who continue to
decide, to side with the working class – the proletariat – and its farmer
allies.
Socialism
and its New Class
The very first problem confronting
Lenin and the Bolsheviks in Petrograd
on the night of 24 October, 1917, was how to build a new Government. The second
was how to build a new State (military/police). Surprisingly, little thought
had been given to these tasks when everyone's eyes were fixed on the seizure.
It was chaos at the Smolny Institute where Lenin's leadership established their
first ministries (commissariats) by tacking pieces of paper on doorways
announcing that this room was for Education and Enlightenment, this for
Nationalities, this room for this, and that room for that. Within hours they
had to confront the old bureaucracy of the bourgeoisie which either walked away
altogether or refused to obey orders or in a few cases tried to help. The same
was true in the military. The crude use of power was all that the Bolsheviks
could do in those first days to open the financial system (blow the vaults
open) and make the military command submit (by shooting officers refusing to
carry out Lenin's commands by telephone, or in person).
It soon became apparent (for their
Government) the Bolsheviks would have to use those who were willing, among the old
technocratic petty bourgeoisie, and as soon as possible to add to their ranks
or supplant them altogether with persons coming from the ranks of the
proletariat or poor peasantry, who could read or write, or soon would learn
how, and who could be educated quickly to assume minimal responsibilities. The
Bolsheviks had no choice.
Even for their State (the Army, Navy
and special police) it would be necessary to use officers of the Czar, when
they were willing. - And, it was safe to do so, or at least as safe as such a
policy could be, if there was a Red political officer counterpart next to every
command officer with the ability and willingness to shoot said command officer
if the slightest perfidy was suspected.
Russia and the
soon-to-be constituent Republics of the Soviet Union featured nearly universal
female illiteracy among the peasantry and most of the males too, in a country
that was 90% peasant. Needless to say it would be hard to make technical
administrators out of these people quickly. It would take time. It did take
time. In the meantime the Bolsheviks improvised as best they could, always
believing that international assistance from working class revolutions in the
advanced capitalist countries was inevitable, and most importantly, hoping and
believing it would arrive soon!
You will learn how such illusions,
among the Bolshevik leaders, including Lenin, dissipated by 1921. You will also
learn about the consequences of Trotsky's failure to successfully conclude the
Polish-German campaign in 1920. With that campaign however, the Civil War
proper had come to an end (meaning the period of White Russian Armies against
Red Russian Armies, with the former supported by all the imperialist countries
[yes, including the USA, but also the UK, France, Italy, Serbia, and Japan; the
Soviets supported by working classes in those countries and by peoples of the
colonial world].) Yet, 1921 began for the Bolsheviks with the necessity of
having to stifle another Civil War in the bud. – And this time, given the
failure of the 1920 Polish-German offensive, meaning no assistance from the
advanced workers of the West, and confronting the 1921 Tambov peasant uprising,
and the Kronstadt sailors mutiny of 1921, Lenin was forced to restore capitalism
at home, and to embark upon a new kind of international statecraft abroad.
The Party didn’t like the New
Economic Policy (NEP) and went along with it only because Lenin insisted – they
trusted Lenin. After all, without Lenin they never would have gotten this far
and they all knew it. Even so, the Party wanted to move on with the
abolition of private property and everything that went with it, with or without
advanced technical assistance from Europe or North
America. But that was not possible in the foreseeable
(day to day planning) future as far as could be seen at the beginning of 1921.
Nor did Lenin think that it was a matter of critical importance. There was no
Marxist prescription on how long the revolution against private property would take
– nor, more importantly, any prescription left by the founders (other than some
broad social notions – see Chapter 2 paragraph 22 of The Communist Manifesto) as to what form(s) and phases the
transition to public from private property would encompass.
Lenin knew that the key thing was that the Party had state
power. Its key first task was to preserve itself and its hold on state power.
Always, and first and foremost, is and was the question of ‘could the
Bolsheviks retain state power’ – everything else that was and is to be
accomplished depends on this. This was Lenin – always – first – foremost –
preaching and demanding that the
Bolsheviks retain state power no matter what; no matter what the cost!
If that meant the temporary restoration of Capitalism so be it. – And, it did mean this.
To fail to restore capitalism in 1921 as Lenin insisted, would have led to the
overthrow of the Bolshevik Party and the loss of state power. Lenin realized by
now that it was War Communism which
had led to the defeat of Bela Kun
and his Communist Government in Hungary,
and worse, that Rosa Luxembourg’s radicalism in proposing permanency to the
abolition of private farming had led to the defeat of the insurrection in Berlin.
He realized he had tried to go too far too fast. It would take time to
educate the farmers and to prepare a transition to US-style large-scale
mechanized and indeed industrialized agriculture, although this time publicly
owned.
To Review
The whole point behind my decision to go into archaeology
to begin with was to uncover prehistoric sociocultural stage evolutionary
indicators which by comparative analysis might help us determine where we are
today and why. This is what Marx spent the last seven years of his life trying
to find. What I have discovered is that the Stage of Stalinist Socialism is
structurally, comparable to the Sociocultural Stage of Simple Chiefdoms,
especially in the latter’s initial few centuries. This archaeological
comparative evidence tells us that what we have been witnessing since 1917, is
the emergence of a distinct sociocultural stage (comparable to that of Simple
Chiefdoms, structurally) with its own class characteristics. It also, implies,
what must come next. The next Stage in Sociocultural
Evolution being that of Advanced Socialism. – And there may yet be
another Stage after that, before we can make the transition to communism.
In each of these twentieth century examples, what we have
is not a workers Government alone; nor even a workers and farmers Government;
but Government whose support requires a technocratic New Class and a
police-military force of modern type. These classes being
somewhat differentially rewarded. This will continue until we seize
power in an advanced capitalist country and get to the point Marx and Engels
thought we would have reached by the time a working class revolution took
power. Then, and only then, will we be able to march, inevitably, to Communism.
In other words, at least one more transitional Sociocultural Evolutionary Stage
will be required to finish up Advanced Socialism. Unless and until an advanced
capitalist country has a working class revolution there will be no other route
to a truly Communist Sociocultural Evolutionary Stage. All of this will take
one or two centuries more. This means a lot more fighting and dying and perhaps
annihilation. Freedom or death! There is nothing to be gained by a denial of
historical inevitability; knowing where we are and how we got here, should help
us avoid the latter.
Two Ugly Facts You Must Face
Lenin’s Party membership had an emotional
commitment to end private property. They had often interpreted their emotions
as being the same thing as objective realistic assessment. Meaning, the Party
membership wanted the transition to total public property to happen overnight.
As we were about to see, given the peculiar conditions of working class
dictatorship in the 20th century (happening first in the least
advanced capitalist countries of Russia
and China)
it was not going to happen overnight. It was going to take a long time. In 1921
Russia,
no one knew how long. The Russian
Bolsheviks had to face up to the ugly fact that there is a big difference
between wanting Communism and being able to have Communism. Something the
Chinese would have to face up to by 1975-78. – And, that the Communist
International Movement must face up to today!
Nor would people suddenly become altruistic and give
their “all” for their fellow humans in the construction of a new and just
society. In time, we would learn that people carry with them the psychological
template of the “Epoch” (in this case the template of selfishness-sadism that
characterizes the Servitude epoch and is imprinted in nearly everyone to
greater or lesser degrees regardless of class) into which they were born and
that would not change overnight either. In fact, even under the best of
circumstances (fully developed near-Star Trek levels of technology) it will
take generations.
This means that backward countries must
build the capitalist mode of production first (at least the technological
component) before they can even begin to consider building the communist one.
We tried jumping into communism time and time again, only to fall back time and
time again, for lack of mode of production preparation first and
superstructural (ideological) preparation second. It also means that it is high
time revolutionaries in the advanced capitalist countries bring about
revolution in those countries if they want to get to communism more quickly. We
know this is true not only because we have tried to jump and failed, but
because the proof lies in the fact that this is the way history played
out and history is always unfolding as it should.
In short, (1) wanting communism and having
communism are two different things – communism cannot exist in its modern form
without the most advanced, indeed Star Trek-like, technology. (2) People are
not inherently good. Even working people. People are
not inherently bad either. They are just people and the way they think is
conditioned first and foremost by their environment. The principal component of
their environment is culture. The ideology
arising is either altruistic (the primitive communism of
the bands and tribes of hunter-gatherers and early farmers) or it is sadistic (as we see all so clearly in the history of slavery,
feudalism and capitalism.) These are ugly facts but they are nevertheless facts
and Bolsheviks must face them and accept them. It will take generations
of inculcating modern altruism, after we
have state power, before we will see the final disappearance of the
selfish-sadistic ideology of the servitude epoch.
Back to Our Story in Russia
Meanwhile the Soviet New Class began
to emerge as the bureaucracy the Leninists had to have to run the Party, the
Government, the State and the public sectors of the economy (and, after the
Spring of 1921, to regulate the private sectors.) Initially it was composed of
Party people, old Czarist era bureaucrats of the willing variety, and a new
kind of opportunist. No longer did we have just the romantic idealists of the
pre-Revolutionary period or even the self-sacrificing Bolshevik and trade
unionist shock troopers of the Civil War. Now, joining up were all those
looking for advantage. For there was only one way
forward and you had to talk a good show to get a job with these guys. How to
tell the real revolutionaries from the opportunists? Well, there is no sure
way. The secret police can only do so much (i. e. the Cheka.) Or the Party
Control Commission or the Commissariat of Workers and Peasants Inspectors, etc.
Periodic reform campaigns and purging of Party ranks helped but didn't ever
fully succeed.
As we shall see, the bureaucracy was
also an open road for the honest and forthright and just as often manned and
staffed by them. Bureaucracy, as a class, had and has, a legitimate role and it
has lasted 6000 years in its evolution. In this volume you will see that origin
and watch the evolution of the bureaucracy of the Chiefdoms, through the Stages
of the Servitude Epoch, where it functions as one or another kind of
“boss-hierarchy” for the ruling family or families or indeed class. The
question is (1) how is it to be rewarded in the transitional stages of
Socialism and (2) can differential reward be established without threatening
the internal foundations of proletarian power (i.e., without corrupting the Party.) - And, in this historical explanation, we have that specific Marxist
theory which explains (a) both the rise of modern revisionism and its collapse
in the USSR
and East Europe and (b) the totally different way in which the New Class is
being handled in China.
Construction of Russian Socialism is
both fast and slow
The first and most important part of
the bureaucracy the Bolsheviks had to replace was in the state
apparatus, that is to say the military, and by the end of the Civil War they
had pretty much succeeded in weeding out the Czarist officers and replacing
them with officers of proletarian origins. War is an exceptionally fast way of
naturally selecting the best (among the new people of proper origins) and for
elevating them to higher positions of command.
Things were not nearly so smooth in Government as
far as industry is concerned. It took years - the years from 1917 to 1934 - to
fully train the first generation of technocrat managers. - And, although
politics was emphasized in the new schools and technical training institutes as
much as performance in the subject matter, the truth is that the extreme
poverty of Russia
would see that much was left to be desired in terms of being able to create a
communist consciousness in these students. The new system of restored and
controlled capitalism was extant to the degree that it could be explained by
Bukharin one year after Lenin initiated NEP in his Economic Organization in Soviet Russia. An
argument essentially the same as that of Deng in China
in 1975-1978.
Lessons of the Cultural
Revolution
In the end, as you will see in this book, the Cultural
Revolution in China (1966-1975) failed because it failed to deal with the New
Class in any kind of final definitive ”theoretical” way. On the contrary, China’s
ultra-left demonstrated the futility of its ideological campaigns to get
production moving in China,
and in the end they were shown to have no real program to offer the Chinese
people except to “share the poverty.” To the degree that the Cultural
Revolution may be said to have succeeded, it is to the degree that everyone in China
and much of the rest of the world, now knows that New Class separation is our
number two enemy after US
imperialism. The biggest problem we have coming up, after we liquidate the
Gringo trillionaires and their sorry government, will be to establish our own rapidly transforming
socialist stage and to do so without creating a permanent New Bureaucrat Class cum New Ruling Class.
At any rate, in 1975 – 1978 the Chinese Party examined
its heritage and especially the results of its first thirty years and there was
a turn to a course very similar to the one Lenin launched in Russia in 1921
(the NEP, which we have reviewed and will do so in more depth in the text
–especially in Chapters 13 and 15) and about which Politburo spokesman Nicolai
Bukharin wrote in detail in 1922. Of
course now thirty four years later (i. e.,
after 1975) in China, what has emerged is a far more complex mixed economy than
the Russians had ever had an opportunity to achieve in their seven years of
NEP. After seven years of restored capitalism opposed at every turn by the
imperialist encirclement Stalin had no choice but to go to a war footing as the
necessity of getting serious about the coming war with capitalism in
technological preparation. To do that he also had to complete the social
revolution at home. This necessity for the survival of Socialism led to the
Five Year Plans beginning in August 1928. In
other words if the pressure had been off and the Soviet Union could have had
access to capitalist bank credits and financing the Soviet Union could have
industrialized under NEP.
Only the agricultural pace toward collectivization and coops would have had to
have been stepped up and that was already part of the NEP program. However the
global capitalist class of this historic period could emerge with no policy other
than the total destruction of Socialism and especially Bolshevism by aggression
and eventual cataclysmic world war. The die was cast and we know how it played
out in the form of World War II as it eventually came down.
At least this time, as the 21st century
unfolds, everyone is aware of the potential danger of the New Class becoming a
ruling class by transforming the Communist Party itself. It took several years
for the Chinese Party to complete this turn. Over the next three decades (1976 - 2006) the Chinese leadership would
come up with a “theoretical” solution, which is consistent with what I have
presented herein.
Wanting Communism
is not enough to have Communism
However, having a solution and explaining it
internationally are often two different things. Especially since the
rank- And-file Left in the West is not well read, nor well educated, and does
not have the discipline to sit down and study the progress of the NEP-like
program of the CPC over the last 30 years. Furthermore, as the
Left in the West has always had an ultra-left component that wants communism
NOW, Euro-American leftists have been especially resistant to the idea of a
mixed economy in China.
But, as you will also see in this book, and as Lenin was forced to admit in
1921, wanting communism and being able
to have communism are two distinctly different categories. Emotion is not
enough. One has to accept what Marx and Engels discovered, and that is
that the mode of production for modern Communism requires an extremely
modern technological component. There
is no short cut.
We have tried relying principally on the ideological
and social organizational components of culture, in lieu of technological
advance, and in all instances these attempts have ultimately failed. Without an
extremely advanced industry and agriculture, communism is not possible in the
post-Servitude Epoch way, anyway. – And, it is not our intention to return to the primitive living conditions of “primitive
communism” (the Stages of Hunting and Gathering and primitive agriculture) in
order “to share the poverty.” Those who wish to follow that road now, after the
experiments of the 20th century, are free to do so, but they are not
communists nor Marxists nor Leninists, nor Maoists – rather, they are a modern
form of the old utopian socialists that Marx and Engels first confronted,
exposed and defeated. Living in a “commune” in the forests of Oregon or the
slums of Chicago is fine for those who wish to do so, but it is no more
representative of what we communists have in mind for society overall, than the
Kibbutz is representative of capitalist Israel. After reading this book you
will know exactly what it is we have in mind – in a phrase, modern
communism, with Star Trek levels of advanced technology; that is, with the
highest living standards and conditions possible, for everyone, to go along
with it.
Epilogue as Prologue
You revolutionary cadre (from a variety of political
parties and tendencies) need this textbook summary in handbook form, so that
you can better use our scientific grasp of causality and process in history to
successfully defeat the tiny US
ruling oligarchy, for it is the intention of this tiny group of
super-billionaires and trillionaires that rule the USA
to kill you and yours. Their ruling ancestors consciously set about killing
tens of millions of US and European workers when they started the First World
War. As I say, it is the intention of their descendants, now in power, to kill
you! – And, they have new means at their disposal, such as intercontinental
disease, and environmental catastrophe of geologic epoch proportions, in
addition to war, to use against you, and they will use them against you. These
are examples of what they have in store for working people around the globe,
but they do not include all of the evil plans of the billionaire and
trillionaire elite in the USA
and abroad. These are the families Rockefeller, Morgan, Mellon, DuPont, Bush,
and their foreign allies such as the ruling families of Saudi
Arabia and Kuwait
(to name only a few.) You see, this gang of killers no
longer need you. They see you as the enemy within. Ironically you are an enemy
they have created, as a consequence of the laws of capitalist production. I am
going to teach you about these laws of capitalist production, herein. – And,
along the way I will teach you about how capitalism as a “stage” in social and
cultural evolution came about.
You will learn,
for example, in this book, why the capitalist ruling classes undertook the mass
murder of tens of millions of European and North American workers in what they
called The Great War of 1914. By the time you finish this book you will know
why mass murder by war was the conscious policy of the capitalist ruling elite
of North America and Europe;
why it was one of the two main reasons the capitalists started their First
World War. To stop them from doing the same thing again, this time against you
and your families and friends, you must act first, now, before they
succeed.
For the moment, US imperialist policies are primarily
aimed at global domination of raw material inputs (e. g., oil and gas) to the factories they own on all the continents
of the globe. Also, for the moment, US imperialist policies are primarily aimed
at controlling the globes cheapest labor-power resources. In part, this is
because the tiny group of US ruling billionaire and trillionaire families is in
desperate straits; they are far weaker today, than at any time since they
established their hegemony over the Capitalist World in 1945. (Hegemony
means asserting a predominate influence over others – in this case, the
US ruling families exerting dominance over the ruling families and
classes of the other advanced capitalist countries.) In fact, the US
ruling oligarchy of billionaire families and their (U.S.)
Government have lost that hegemony in the past eight short years, as you will
see, and they, and it, are now desperately striving to stave off total
financial collapse. Thus, your first acts must encompass the concept of
stopping their drive for global domination.
We are in the last days of the imperialist phase of
the Capitalist Stage. (Imperialism means shipping constant capital [machinery
and factories] to colonial [now Third
World] countries to take advantage of their cheap
labor.) Imperialism is a phase of the Capitalist Stage which began soon after
Capitalism was fully extant in Great
Britain c. 1850, and reached a zenith in global
terms, in the First World War period (1914-1918). Since then, imperialism has
been the only form of large scale Capitalism, and it has become increasingly
centralized. - And, in the aftermath of the Second World War, was (until very
recently) hegemonized under the leadership of the US
ruling financial families. The fact that US
hegemony has collapsed during the last few years is a new development - very
positive for our side - with special ramifications, not all of which we can yet
foresee. Some of which we shall discuss at the close of this Handbook.
As you read you will see why I say that the strategy
of liquidating billionaire-trillionaire control over the North American People
is a feasible and correct strategy to follow as the 21st Century
unfolds. (This billionaire control exists as an unholy alliance of US comprador
billionaires and foreign trillionaire families - as for example the Bush family
and the Saudi so-called Royal Family, as demonstrated so well by Michael Moore
in Fahrenheit 9/11). Along the way, you will figure out which tactical
approaches may best be honed to your long term goals.
However, fighting the US
ruling billionaire-trillionaire elite (and their foreign allies) over their
policy of global domination of raw resource and cheap labor inputs,
does not mean that you should spend all your time and energy in the
Anti-Iraq-War Movement or for that matter in the anti-Afghanistan War movement.
After all the more troops imperialism sends against the religious crackpots in
these countries the fewer gringo troops we have to confront in this hemisphere!
– And if they don’t destroy the nutballs we would have to do it anyway. At the
same time if anti-Islamic war activity corresponds to “base building” fine.
Otherwise, it is far more important to devote as much time as possible to
organizing working people to (1) fight for popular power, and; (2) organize
workers, union and non-union, organized and unorganized, (especially, the
lowest ranks, the most oppressed) for the seizure of political power at the
opportune moment, somewhere down the road. - And, (3) remember that in the end,
it is the “conscious” working class mass base which will provide the ultimate
block to the ruling oligarchy, by destroying imperialism (the final stage of
capitalism) root and branch, once and for all. The final solution to the
problem of those who would kill us, in their drive for super profits, is to
seize power!
Make no mistake, the final
solution in the US
will involve an armed struggle to defend democracy from the fascist regime in Washington,
and to go over, all the way, to the fight for Socialism! This is not going to end
well for the enemies of the people; or, it will not end well for us. Unless I
miss my bet altogether what is coming will make the French Revolution look like
a Sunday School Picnic! You must either stop the elite or they will liquidate
you. The armed struggle for a final solution is not going to be a pretty
picture.
History
is with Us
Remember this: We Bolsheviks have never admitted the
word “defeat” into our vocabulary. We fight to the bitter end or until there is
no one left to carry the guns. We do know the word Victory! Victory belongs to
those who believe in it the most and who believe it the longest – who sacrifice
everything for it.
Remember what we are fighting for: the future we
Bolsheviks have in mind is Star Trek like; a United Federation of Peoples. Our
objective is to establish a Communist social order with such massive production
that the slogan “from each according to her ability to each according to her
needs” is the obvious way to live. The future our capitalist enemies of the
people have in mind for you would have you made into Borgs!