Tuesday, January 25, 2022

The bureaucratization of the world


Marx believed that the Jacobins and sans-culottes during the French revolution were doomed to defeat, since society wasn´t yet ripe for socialism and workers power. The Jacobins "objectively speaking" acted as a violent battering ram for the bourgeoisie by exterminating the old aristocracy. Then, the Jacobins fell (and so did the sans-culottes), the French revolution being a bourgeois revolution ushering in capitalism. 

In my opinion, the role of the Bolsheviks and the working class during the Russian revolution was similar. The early, internationalist Bolsheviks were like the Jacobins. They used the working class (and themselves) as a battering ram against Czarist absolutism, and also against the bourgeoisie. But on behalf of what class? Answer: on behalf of the future state bureaucracy, which eventually created a new mode of production, based on a centralized planned economy. Thus, the Bolsheviks and the revolutionary workers "objectively speaking" acted as the violent stormtroopers of the "Stalinist" bureaucracy. In other nations, the bureaucracy took control from the beginning, sometimes using peasants as their shock troops, but usually tightly controlled by the bureaucratic center (Mao´s China). The bureaucratic mode of production is an alternative path to modernization (or attempted such) in nations where the national bourgeoisie was too weak to abolish semi-feudal conditions, this task instead falling to a nationalist intelligentsia which created a centralized "socialist" state apparatus. 

In the Western nations, the Social Democrats likewise represented an aspiring bureaucratic layer, using the organized and unionized working class as its lever. In contrast to the Communists, who wanted a bureaucratic revolution, the Social Democrats were seeking to transform the system through peaceful reform. This was eventually succesful, creating the typical alliance between Big Government, Big Labor and Big Business (and, I suppose, Big Banking). Later, the Social Democrats broke their connections to the organized working class, instead fusing completely with the state apparatus, which in its turn hybridized with the PMC version of capitalism (which isn´t hostile to state regulations, as long as it controls the state through "regulatory capture"). This hybrid system is probably going to collapse right before our very eyes during the 2020´s, perhaps replaced by an alliance of populist leaders, angry petit bourgeois, unorganized workers and rogue capitalists. What will come out of it, is anybody´s guess at this point. 

What is clear is that the working class failed to take power in its own name, and that this was (probably) inevitable. Marxism morphed into Social Democratic reformism within capitalism or the creation of a new "Stalinist" bureaucratic mode of production. Marxism "dialectically" transformed itself into the ideology of the new bureaucracy, which claimed to represent "the workers" or "the people", just as the bourgeoisie had claimed to represent the latter. Autistic Trots will tell us that we are "duty-bound to explain whether the new mode of production was historically progressive or not", to which we respond: no, Messr Trotskyites, we are not "duty-bound" to explain anything according to *your* specifications, since we are not Trotskyists nor Marxists! 

There isn´t any "progress" that moves inexorably onwards and upwards, no historical schema where capitalism is replaced by an even more advanced economic system which "develops the productive forces", und so weiter. Empirically (not metaphysically according to the Dialectic), democratic capitalism with a Social Democratic government was often better than Stalinoid really existing socialism, and so was Bukharinite-Titoist Communism (or Dengist Communism minus the economic free zones). This is therefore the "minimum program" worth striving for, not utopian pipe dreams about international Bolshevism or Trotskyism.

Perhaps the working class can´t take power in its own name. Or perhaps it could have done so, but such a system would have resembled anarcho-syndicalism more than Social Democracy or Communism. It´s difficult to see, however, how a modern economy could be "self-managed" in the syndicalist fashion, suggesting that such a system would quickly evolve into a more centralized one, if only to survive. And the moment that happens, the working class "as a whole" or "as a class" is no longer in power. A new managerial elite takes over. Marxists say that ancient slaves or medieval peasants couldn´t take and hold power. Maybe, maybe not, but the working class seems to belong to the same category of "exploited classes" incapable of overthrowing the system once and for all. 

Add to this the massive environmental destruction brought about by capitalism, and it´s no longer obvious if this system really is "historically progressive". Not only didn´t it produce its own grave-diggers, it might actually become humanity´s very own undertaker! 

With that, I close my reflections for today. 


7 comments:

  1. Jag antar att du har läst denna. http://www.arbetarmakt.se/u_radsmakt_09-10c.html

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  2. Inte ännu, men den ser intressant ut. Jag är för ung för att ha träffat FAM när de exiserade, däremot träffade jag några ex-medlemmar senare. FAM verkar ha varit en av de mer sympatiska vänstergrupperna på 70-talet (åtminstone ur vänstersynvinkel). Fast en trotskist eller hade kanske påtalat likheterna mellan den rådskommunistiska analysen och den mensjevikiska, och dragit slutsatsen att den förstnämnda är "ultravänster till formen, men höger till innehållet", eftersom man "objektivt sett" borde stödja antingen någon form av kapitalism mot statsbyråkratin...eller tvärtom! I inlägget här ovan centrerar jag mellan dessa ståndpunkter, men sätter helt fräckt ett plus där trotskisterna hade satt ett minus.

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  3. Jag tycker inte att de liknar mensjevikerna, och jag hörde aldrig någon trotskist säga något sådant när det begav sig. Däremot liknade de kanske en del av vänsterkommunisterna ca 1921 men dessa var nog mer sekteristiska än FAM. Håkan Blomqvist sa nån gång 1973 att han såg dem som en ultravänstergrupp. De var de nog på sätt och vis, men jag var då mest intresserad av deras analys av de "kommunistiska" länderna. Jag såg nog det som att de var den anda analys jag stött på förutom den trotskistiska som var värd att ta på allvar.

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  4. PS. Jag minns en FAM:sre som sa att det statsbyråkratiska produktionssättet hade samma relation till det kapitalistiska, som det asiatiska produktionssättet hade till feodalismen. Statsbyråkrati och kapitalism var två varianter av industriella klassamhällen medan asiatiskt produktionssätt och feodalism var två varianter av agrara klassamhällen.

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  5. Jo, men är det statsbyråkratiska produktionssättet mer progressivt än det halvfeodala? I så fall "borde" man stödja statsbyråkratin som objektivt historiskt progressiv! Det är i vart fall en möjlig ståndpunkt. Och jag tror att mensjevikerna hamnade i den när de började ge ett slags kritiskt stöd till stalinismen. Om jag minns rätt stödde FAM nationella befrielserörelser i tredje världen, eller har jag fel? Då borde ju logiken ha varit att t.ex. Nordvietnams produktionssätt objektivt sett är bättre än det vietnamesiska kejsardömets eller den franska kolonialmaktens.

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  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  7. Jag tror att de vacklade på fråga. I början fick jag intrycket av att de såg det statsbyråkratiska produktionssättet som i alla fall lite mer progressivt men det var inte det intryck jag fick mot slutet. Att de (mycket kritiskt) stödde FNL bottnade nog mest i att det var en nationell befrielsekamp, inte om Nordvietnams planekonomi. Jag tror inte de hade stött Nordkorea om detta land hade angripit Sydkores.

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