At 10:26 08/01/00 +0100, Hugh wrote:
>Chris writes:
>
>>As far as revolutionary change in the west is concerned Hugh seems to make
>>the mistake of arguing that because Gramsci's approach implies 10,000
>>changes in the superstructure will be part of the process, it will
>>nevertheless be a gradual evolution. Turbulence and sudden change could
>>occur. It might still be right to fight a war of position, until it turns
>>dialectically into a war of movement.
>
>So what do you prepare for -- the thousand automatic adjustments in the
>bourgeois democratic regime or the decisive moment of political transition
>when it will be possible to remove bourgeois political institutions and
>replace them with socialist ones?
Well, I think you have to prepare for both.
One of the ironies of this is that inevitably any organization will be
caught unawares, I suggest. In the winter of 96-97 there was an enormous
wave of protests in France against austerity measures. I may have got the
dates a bit wrong but this preceded Jospin's electoral victory. The French
CP was caught reacting to the situation rather than leading it. No doubt it
was severely criticised by Trotskyist organisations, and deserved some of
these criticisms. However I think it is very likely that Trotskyist
organisations were also reacting to the situation rather than leading it.
Why? I suggest because sudden changes of pace to a revolutionary tempo
occur by definition unexpectedly. No organisation, which has the
flexibility of an oil tanker, can easily change direction. Anarchist groups
can of course, but they lack the ability to do the sustained work in
between during the long non-revolutionary times.
I see some improvement in the situation in that there is more understanding
about the importance of networking and flexibility. London and Seattle last
year showed how groups engaged in longer term planning for reforms could
share information with more spontaneous activists. The result were protests
that had both short term instensity and long term strategic depth.
I do not think this is achieved by certain marxists groups specialising
only in announcing the revolution, and denouncing everyone else - always,
as it were, announcing that the Old Mole has just surfaced - A Mole! A Mole!
So I would ask Hugh what is the evidence that a Trotskyist organisation
behaved like a true vanguard in anticipating the revolutionary change of
pace in France in 1996 - perhaps even his own sister organisation???
And I would ask what is the point of calling other organisations by
definition revisionist?
>
>None of the Soviet-Stalinist CPs *ever* prepared to or even tried despite
>being unprepared to take over power.
This is largely consistent with my argument but it is not subject to moral
condemnation. It may not be completely true either. The fall of the
reactionary militarist Portugese dictatorship in the 70's appeared to be
very well coordinated, with people stuffing red carnations into the
soldiers guns. I have little doubt that underground subversive work by the
communists contributed to this revolutionary change.
>Those CPs that did -- in Yugoslavia,
>Vietnam and China -- had a military and popular base that had forced
>distance between themselves and Moscow, most dramatically in the case of
>China, and soon developed features of their own mimicking the bureaucracy
>and Stalinism of the Soviet Union.
So is this some sort of contagion theory of revisionism? O an original sin
theory - that all human beings are destined to be unable to hear the
revolutionary call of the true revolutionaries? Because this becomes a
religion then, and like all religions has to await a divine intervention -
the Final Crisis of Capitalism, the Last Judgement, when the small number
of the revolutionary Elect will be Justified, and will sit on the right
hand of Marx, and join the marxist Engels, singing His praises for evermore.
>Including the refusal to prepare for the
>take-over of power internationally, again most dramatically in the case of
>China and its relations with the Indonesian CP leading up to 1965.
One of the things that I respect in Hugh, underneath the obligatory dose of
Trotskyist bombast, is that he appears to be linked to a network of
Trotskyist organisations that have some sort of realistic political
analysis in at least several countries. What I think this argument here
however throws up, is his lack of an *international* strategy for defeating
global finance capitalism led by US capitalism.
We are all to some extent in new territory here but we also have new
opportunities. I do not see that in the second half of the 20th century it
was entirely the fault of allegedly revisionist marxists that the balance
of forces could not be altered more than it was.
GRAMSCI
>Gramsci analysed the bourgeois superstructure, or what amounts to the same
>thing, the Political Regime, the State, as an abstraction lacking a
>decisive qualitative watershed between bourgeois and workers state power.
One of the problems is that Gramsci wrote a vast amount but not for
publication, and in political code. Admirers and critics of Gramsci cannot
possibly read the lot, and just pick up a selection, which they then
interpret.
I have already conceded to Hugh that there are almost inevitably right
opportunists who interpret Gramsci in this way. However it is consistent
with the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin, that the transition between
different modes of production is indeed blurred. We can only to a limited
extent say that a revolutionary change in political leadership is the
qualitative change that ensures everything else will follow.
The force of habit of generations is extremely strong. Good conscientious
revolutionaries trying to run the society in the interests of all the
working people could well find themselves getting tired, even a bit
bureacratic in their ways. This does not occur because one man called
Stalin cast a spell over them. However idolisation of a single figure
whether that be Stalin, Lenin, or Trotsky can be an excuse to escape from
thinking rather than an invitation to think.
So I do not think it is fair to say that Gramsci's description of a blurred
transition is abstract. It is very concrete!
But at least he gives us a theoretical tool to see that part of the state
may operate in an openly coercive way, while another part, blending with
civil society, may be non-coercive but extremely powerful.
It is a fact that Marx did not rule out the possibility of a non-violent
revolution in England in a situation where the repressive state was
comparatively speaking very small. If we get to a situation where social
democratic politics are all pervasive it may get very hard to see which
reforms modify the capitalist mode of production, and which promote the
socialist mode of production, especially if violence is not directly on the
table.
For example a brave and sustained campaign against a by-pass going through
ancient woodland is literally speaking reactionary - reactionary to the
onward dictates of capitalist mode of production. But is it objectively
progressive in a strategic sense? These are not easy questions to answer,
and much may depend not just on the composition of the local action
committee but the wider national and international context.
>So his scientific work was passive in the sense that it prepared party
>members for changes in areas of civil society that are not decisive in
>relation to socialism. If he'd analysed bourgeois society as Marx, Lenin or
>Trotsky did, he would have pointed up the contradictions that could explode
>and create conditions for a revolutionary party leading the working class
>and its allies among the exploited peasantry and poor people to take power.
This criticism cannot be sustained. Gramsci was at least explicit in
conceptualising a war of position, and a way of movement. To grasp this
idea of Gramsci's at all, one has to concede that situations may suddenly
arise where a *war of movement* becomes appropriate.
>But this line of discussion won't get any further unless Chris tells us why
>he thinks Gramsci is not revisionist, and in what way he embodies the
>fundamental principles of revolutionary Marxism in his work.
I think Hugh has withdrawn from commenting on the further paragraph of
Gramsci I quoted to show that the paragraph Hugh criticised is not
revisionist, and has thereby conceded a point.
I accept that the further paragraph is written in very opaque terms and its
interpretation depends on how Gramsci used concepts of abstraction and
ideas of what is "real". But I do not see the evidence that Gramsci was
lacking in revolutionary courage just because he argued that for long
periods of time a war of position, extending into the superstructure, is
the most relevant for developed capitalist societies.
What convincing alternative to this strategy does Hugh have anyway? I know
he repeats periodically the phrase from the text of the call for the 4th
International about the crisis of world leadership. I accept that in a
purely polemical framework like cyberspace discussion lists, arguments
about who appears to be leading also appear to be the nearest thing to
concrete reality. But there are other uses of the internet such as those
that contributed to June 18 in London, and Seattle in November last year,
which show that the critical thing about moving forward is how to combine
theory and practice at a global level. I suggest the leadership will come
out of this revolutionary practice rather than the leadership being first
forged in abstract polemic.
I do not think Hugh actually has a convincing strategy for revolutionary
advance in capitalist countries that is different from the Gramscian one,
even though I concede that the Gramscian one is open to right opportunist
distortions.
>I'm surprised no-one else is joining in
Yes, I too think it is surprising. Just because we can count on Hugh for a
good argument does not mean that this strategic issue is of relevance just
to him and me. At least we both agree that it is pretty fundamental.
Chris Burford
London
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