From: Paul Bullock (paulbullock@EBMS-LTD.CO.UK)
Date: Thu Dec 18 2003 - 06:22:36 EST
Mike,
certainly the comment by Paresh makes him seem a conservative, with a sort of loose, implicitly deterministic view of Marx's approach, why would marx be in any way pleased with the disasters in Russia/CIS/ Georgia etc after the collapse of the USSR?
Paul
----- Original Message -----
From: michael a. lebowitz
To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU
Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2003 1:41 AM
Subject: Re: OPE-L Paresh Chattopadhyay CAPITAL, THE PROGENITOR OF SOCIALISM: PROGRESS AS THE DIALECTIC OF NEGATIVITY
Hi Paul,
I didn't send this in relation to the Cuba list that we are on; that may be a confusion. Rather, it was a bit of information to add to the material that Rakesh sent from Paresh and is, I think, a good indication of where Paresh's reading of Marx has taken him. In the Preface to the new edition of 'Beyond CAPITAL', I referred to this perspective as follows: 'Of course, in one of those ironies that Marx would have appreciated, it was possible to find conservatives of various hues quoting scriptures and declaring that capitalism's successes and the failures of AES ['Actually Existing Socialism"] confirmed that Marx was right.'
in solidarity,
michael
At 18:12 16/12/2003, you wrote:
Michael,
why have you sent this? what was the point of the paper in relation to Cuba now?
Paul B.
----- Original Message -----
From: michael a. lebowitz
To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU
Sent: Monday, December 15, 2003 2:50 AM
Subject: Re: OPE-L Paresh Chattopadhyay CAPITAL, THE PROGENITOR OF SOCIALISM: PROGRESS AS THE DIALECTIC OF NEGATIVITY
Apropos, here's the abstract for the paper that Paresh wrote for this year's Marx conference in Havana. You'll note his closing line re the Soviet experience--- "Marx, indeed, had the last laugh."
Two Approaches to Socialist Revolution :Marx vs.Lenin-Trotsky
Russia 1917
Abstract
Following Marx,a society of free and associated producers---socialism---is a product of history,not of nature or arbitrary will.Individuals cannot bring their own social relations under their proper control before having created them.Indeed,new,hier relations of production do not appear before its matériel conditions of existence have already been hatched within the womb of the old society itself.And if in the existing society we do not find in a latent form the matériel conditions of production and corresponding relations of circulation for a classless soceity,all attempts at exploding the present society would be don Quixotism.These conditions are basically,first,the existence of the proletariat---« the greatest productive power »----occupying at least a significant position in society,and,secondly,the universal development of productive forces and socialization of labour and production.Given these conditions,socialist revolution begins when capital has reached a situation where the productive powers it has generated---including its « greatest productive power »---can no longer advance on the basis of the existing relations of production.Socialist revolution itself is seen as an immense emancipatory project---based on workers' self-emacipation leading to the emancipation of the whole humanity---whose very first step is the « conquest of democracy »,
the rule of the immense majority in the inter est of the immense majority.
Against this profound materialist perspective Lenin(and Trotsky) avanced the thesis that socialist revolution could(would) break out where the chain of world capitalismsubject to the law of unevenand combined developmenthas its weakestlink,that is,its productive powers are least developed .This 'weakest link' thesis became a canon of the dominant Left as well as of those sympathetic to the Bolshevik regime. However,they were dismissing Marx too rapidly.Lenin soon real ized that a largely pre-capitalist country with a low level of productive forces and a backward working class required the development of capitalismof course under a 'proletarian' statein order to reach socialism later.This is seen in Lenin's own pronouncements of the post-1917 period as well as the corresponding measures undertaken by the new regime.It need not be stressed that the development of capitalism is not the task of a SOCIALIST REVOLUTION.
Similarly,far from inaugurating a socialist revolution as a self-emancipatory act of the toilers themselves,'conquering democracy' as a 'first step',October 1917 saw the seizure and monopolisation of power by a tiny minority in the name of the toilers independently of and,in fact,behind the back of their already established organs of self administrstion,putting a définite brake on the immense pluralist and democratic process started by the spontaneous revolutionary upheaval of the entire mass of the Russian toilers,,rapidly destroying in the process thetoilers own organsof self-rule.In the event,never able to suppresscommodity and wage relations,the regime,particularly after the civil war,took conscious measaures to widen them rapidly and in the process consummateda bourgeois non-democratic revolution.Marx,indeed,had the last laugh.
Paresh Chattopadhyay
University of Quebec at Montreal
---------------------
Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Office Fax: (604) 291-5944
Home: Phone (604) 689-9510
---------------------
Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Office Fax: (604) 291-5944
Home: Phone (604) 689-9510
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