Wojtek writes:
>At 05:15 PM 4/8/98 -0500, you wrote:
>>Ricardo quotes Wojtek as follows:
>>
>>>WS:
>>>
>>>> That depends on how one views the REAL objective of the October
>Revolution.
>>>> If that REAL objective was the establishment of a socialist society
>worthy
>>>> its name, then I fully concur with Ricardo - the x-USSR was a gigantic
>>>> failure.
>>>>
>>>> If, on the other hand, that REAL objective was catching up with the
>>>> advanced capitalist powers of Western Europe and Japan, ideological
>>>> proclamations notwithstanding -- a view I tend to espouse -- then the
>>>> Stalinist policies should be viewed as a moderate (because of the
>>>> considerable human cost) success.
>>
>>What makes something a "REAL objective"? Only, I submit, the explicit
>>formulation
>>of that objective by the agents of historical action, NOT the "ruse of
>reason."
>
>
>Only if we assume that the motives of the leaders = motives of the
>state/system.
I disagree profoundly with this personification of "the state" and "the
system." Motives and objectives can exist only as the motives and
objectives of *people*, the real agents of social life. When Hegel spoke
of the "ruse of reason," and Marx recast this concept in terms of
historical objectivity (as in the quotation below) they were referring to
the fact that historical outcomes frequently do not correspond at all to
the motives of their agents, but that these motives were historically
necessary factors in the process that led to the *undesired* outcome.
Moreover, the "leaders" are not the only, or indeed the most important,
agents. The masses have their own motives and objectives, which should
always hold pride of place. In no sense was the true objective of the
Soviets' revolution its overthrow by Stalinist counterrevolution.
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
P.S. I apolpogize for my inadvertent misspelling of Guchkov as "Gorchkov."
SM
> Gerschenkron, working to re-formulate the marxist conceptss
>(but staying, IMHO, totally within the Marxist concpetual framework) views
>those objectives as being determined by (i) the organization of production
>(esp. the banking system and industrial labor), and (ii) organizational
>mimicry (emulating successful models developed elsewhere). Fram that
>standpoint, it matters little waht the glorious leaders say about their
>motives (cf. Marx & Engels, _The German Ideology_ , New York: International
>Publishers, 1995 , p. 46-47 "The fact is, therefore, that definite
>individuals who are productively active in a definite way enter into these
>definite social and political relations. Empirical observation must in
>each separate instance bring out empirically, and wihtout any mystification
>and speculation, the connection of the social and political structure with
>production. The social structure and the State are continually evolving
>out of the life-process of definite individuals, but of individuals, not as
>they may appear in their own or other people's imgaination, but as they
>_really_ [emphasis original] are; ie. as they operate, produce materially,
>and hence as they work under definite material limits, presuppositions and
>conditions
>indpendent of their will.)
>
>>From that point of view, the "real" motives can be inferred as (i) a desire
>to catch up with the Germans and the Japanese who defeated Russia in 1905
>and 1917 respectively, and (ii) implementation of a 'succesful' model of
>industrialization i.e. the Bismarckian corporatist welfare state cum
>cartels with a slight modification, the state rather than banks controlling
>the cartels (as the Russians banks were literally a joke - "nye propadnyet,
>no nye powoocheesh" or "[your money] won't get lost, but you won't get it
>back either."
>
>Regards
>
>WS
