Socialist at Conference in China.

[ALB]

Last weekend a Conference took place at the University of Wuhan in China. One of the speakers was Paresh Chattopadhyay (a socialist who is not a member). Also present was Harpal Brar of the CPGB(ML) and the Stalin Society and Paul Le Blanc (who thinks that Lenin was just a leftwing Social Democrat  and a favourite of the CPGB who we met at the talk on Martov at their Communist University).

Paresh's talk was based on this article. Like us he argued that Lenin's conception of "socialism" was not at the same as Marx's but was in fact a programme for state capitalism

Quote:

Coming back to Lenin’s reading of Marx on socialism, the most innovative part of this reading concerned Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme 1875. Regarding this work’s two phase temporal division of the communist society into a lower and a higher phase, Lenin, called the first one ‘socialism’ and the second one ‘communism’. Lenin did not seem to have invented this ‘nomenclature’. But he is the one whose use of these terms was accepted and widely used first by the international communist movement and then even by the anti-Marxists all over the world. For Lenin there are two transitions, one from capitalism to socialism, another from socialism to communism. Now, it so happens that Marx considered socialism meaning exactly the same thing as communism, simply as an alternative, equivalent term, like ‘Republic of Labour’, a ‘society of free and equal individuals’, ’cooperative society’ ‘(Re)union of free individuals’, ‘Association of free individuals’or simply ‘Association’(most frequently used) – based on the ‘Associated mode of production’(AMP) as opposed to the capitalist mode of production(CMP).Particularly there are at least three texts spread over four places in Marx’s work where he only mentions ‘socialism’ as the society after capital and does not speak even once of ‘communism’. And it is known that he speaks of only one society after capital bearing any of those names given above (mostly ‘Association’).

Thus in an 1844 polemic Marx writes: "Generally a revolution – overthrow of the existing power and the dissolution of the old relations – is a political act. Without revolution socialism cannot be viable. It needs this political act to the extent that it needs destruction and dissolution. However, where its organizing activity begins, where its aim and soul stand out, socialism throws away its political cover” . The second and the third texts are almost identical, appearing – in Marx’s own English – respectively in his 1861-63 notebooks (second notebook among thirythree) and in the so-called ‘main manuscript’ for Capital III. Here is the 1861-63 text (without any alteration):

"Capitalist production…is a greater spendthrift than any other mode of production of man, of living labor, spendthrift not only of flesh and blood and muscles, but of brains and nerves. It is, in fact, at the greatest waste of individual development that the development of general men  is secured in those epochs of history which prelude to  a socialist constitution of mankind."

This text is repeated almost word for word in the ‘main manuscript’ for the third volume of Capital. In his edition of the manuscript published as Capital III Engels translates this passage into German, but not quite literally.  Finally, in the course of correcting and improving the text of a book by a worker (Johann Most), meant for popularizing Capital, Marx inserted: "The capitalist mode of production is really a transitional form which by its own organism must lead to a higher, to a co-operative mode of production, to socialism”(1876).This was just one year after his Gothacritique. As regards socialism being the transition to communism, Marx nowhere says this. For Marx this distinction is nonexistent. For him socialism is neither the transition to communism, nor the lower phase of communism. As we just saw, it is communism tout court.

It will be interesting to see what Brar and Le Blanc thought on hearing an SPGB-type argument presented. And the Chinese Professors of Leninism for that matter.

[jondwhite]

It is not the case with us and may not be the case with Paresh, but some critics of Leninism even those calling themselves Marxist socialists just want state-capitalism.Russia’s Rising Red Dawn. “There was no genuine socialism in the Soviet Union,” she said. “And it is inaccurate to portray us all as seeking a return to the past. That simply isn’t true. We are for a new modernized form of socialism.”

[ALB]

jondwhite wrote:

some critics of Leninism even those calling themselves Marxist socialists just want state-capitalism.

Of course, Karl Kautsky would be a prime example.  Social Democrats tended to see that what was wrong with Russia was a lack of political democracy not the state ownership and control of industry. For them, if political democracy had existed there it would have been socialism. In other words, they stood for the impossible dream of a democratic state capitalism. So did many on the left of the Labour Party. In the olden days.

[Anonymous]

jondwhite wrote:

It is not the case with us and may not be the case with Paresh, but some critics of Leninism even those calling themselves Marxist socialists just want state-capitalism.Russia’s Rising Red Dawn. “There was no genuine socialism in the Soviet Union,” she said. “And it is inaccurate to portray us all as seeking a return to the past. That simply isn’t true. We are for a new modernized form of socialism.”

Indeed and it seems that little or nothing has been learnt from the previous bout of state-capitalism.

Quote:

We want a modernized form of socialism in which the state controls national industry, but not small businesses; it would be lunacy to attempt to control the activities of every small café, for example.

[Author]

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