It would be easy to mistake Tom Walker as a member of the New Marxist Exploiting Class, because he has a lot of the typical behaviours associated with it, the jeering, lying and sneering and so forth. Nevertheless I would not include him, because he is not a Marxist by any stretch of the imagination, and because I think his ideas are not useful for anything, and therefore it is difficult to see how he could exploit anybody. But I am open to other arguments.
------ In reply to Jim Devine's query: I don't have the time to explain the theory with all kinds of academic subtleties and niceties here, but I can give a brief sketch as follows: The formation of a new class, caste or elite in actually existing socialist societies has been commented on by numerous leftists with some scruple or moral conscience, including: Altvater, Arthur, Bahro, Behrens, Bence, Bettelheim, Boeuve, Bordiga, Brenner, Burnham, Carlo, Carter, Chattopadyay, Cliff, Cox, Cycon, Daum, Deutscher, Dunayevskaya, Dutschke, Feher, Fernandez, Finger, Frolich, Furedi, Grandizo, Haraszti, Hegedus, Heller, Hilferding, Holmberg, James, Kautsky, Kis, Kofler, Konrad, Korsch, Kowalik, Kuron, Laurat, Loone, Machover, Marcuse, Markus, Mattick, Melotti, Miasnikov, Modzelewski, Mohun, Naville, Neussus, Pannekoek, Peret, Pollock, Rakovsky, Resnick, Rizzi, Rosdolsky, Sandemose, Sapir, Schachtman, Schmiederer, Singer, Sohn-Rethel, Sternberg, Stojanovic, Sweezy, Ticktin, Voslensky, Weil, Wolff, Worrall, and Zimin. Characteristic of most of the theories mooted by these authors, is the "disconnect" between (1) Marxism, and (2) the class or elite power obtained by Marxist leaders. This was never mentioned in Marcel van der Linden's book "Western Marxism and the Soviet Union" (which I translated into English). Marcel's narrative was along the lines: "I don't know what the answer is, and they don't either, but I hope they give us some clues." The leftist analysts of the "new class" (or new elite, or ruling caste) typically assumed, that Marxism is "sugar and spice and all things nice", and that if it isn't, then it cannot be Marxism. With this kind of assumption, it is reasoned that if a new class or elite did emerge in actually existing socialist societies, then this cannot have had anything to do with Marxism. In this way, Marxism (in whatever flavor or variant) is always exonerated. Very precise arguments are often made about this, such as that the true revolutionary Marxism existed until 1923, or 1928, or 1956, or 1960, or 1989, and that thereafter it degenerated into some other doctrine which wasn't Marxism. Deutscher talked poetically and liturgically in terms of "the gulf between the idea and reality." In non-revolutionary times, you had to carry the Marxist Talmud on your back, until the revolutionary time would come again when the idea could realize itself. The ideological assumption in all this, is as simple as it is banale: either developments were revolutionary and progressive, in which case Marxism was being applied, or they were reactionary and barbaric, in which case Marxism had nothing to do with it. The idea that there could be anything wrong with Marxism itself, is completely excluded, it is a sort of "blind spot". Nikolai Bukharin in fact very precisely defined this blind spot, because in his critique of Kautsky, he tried to provide a logically conclusive theoretical argument to prove once and for all that the Bolsheviks could not be a new ruling class, true in virtue of the truth of its logical premises, the primary one being that a ruling class by definition owns the means of production. The concept of the New Marxist Exploiting Class aims to overcome this kind of implausible interpretation, by specifically emphasizing that the new exploiting class was a MARXIST exploiting class, and it exploited ruthlessly specifically by applying a MARXIST ideology. The fact that it did so, led to a by now legendary cynical humour among the people in Eastern Europe, sharply contrasting the lofty rhetoric of the Marxist rulers with the oppressive realities of life. The implication in NMEC theory is, that Marxism is itself not a "squeaky clean" ideology, but already contains the germs of new forms of social oppression in the way that it theorizes social reality. Sociologically speaking, the New Marxist Exploiting Class usually has its main roots among the skilled working class and the lower middle class, though it depends on what historical period or country we are talking about. As Deutscher remarks somewhere, Marxism provided middle class people with a convenient instrumentarium to understand the state and society, and their own place in the social order. We are talking about personalities desirous of wealth, fame, adventure and power, who seek to rise out of their class, people with a mixture of motives revolving around social envy, status anxiety, contempt for their competitors, and moral indignation about unfairness and injustice. What they have in common is, that they try to manipulate people's sympathies for the oppressed for the purpose of their own campaign to climb to power, their own political career, their own interests. They need not be especially creative people, they could just be people who feel good following a doctrine or faith, or people who like to spy over the shoulder of their betters, in order to find out how they can advance their own position. Formally it looks they are overflowing with the milk of human kindness, but in substance they are parasitic and extractive. The general conclusion of the NMEC analysis is that although the Marxists were able to highlight, explain and alleviate some forms of human oppression fairly well, the very idea of "Marxism" as an eponymous doctrine was a bad and mistaken idea, and that if we want to improve, we have to start again to forge a new way of thinking, completely freed from the chatter about "Lenin said", "Trotsky said", "Mao said" (or "Marx said"!) etc. There can of course be no dispute that these Marxists in their own time did put a lot of ideas to the test, and that the tests can tell us important things, but we don't want that again. I think the Trotskyoids and neo-Trotskyoids played a very clever trick when they rejected any idea that the USSR, China etc. could be "socialist". Socialism was sugar and spice and all things nice, you see. So if there was real oppression in socialist countries, then they could not be socialist. It is a simple and compelling thought, no doubt. However, not only does such a theory flatly contradict the reality experienced by of hundreds of millions of socialist citizens, it also has nothing in common with Marx. I think Marx realized very well, already in the 1840s, that there were all kinds of possible socialisms, and he liked to heckle a lot of the socialistic ideas in the emigrant community of which he was part. Hal Draper documented that in one of his books. The only consistent position is, to say that the USSR and Soviet-type societies were really socialist, but that it was a specifically RUSSIAN (or CHINESE, CUBAN, VIETNAMESE) socialism, which emerged under highly specific historical conditions, and therefore was not necessarily any exemplar for other countries (or even no exemplar for what socialism really ought to be). I think Hal Draper got an inkling of the truth, with his tale about the "two souls of socialism" - socialism from above, and socialism from below. He realized very well, that socialism could have an oppressive as well as a progressive content, which is true. But his spiritual metaphor prevented him from thinking his own idea through till the end, to its logical conclusion, that is all. Draper could not quite make himself believe, that if there was a socialism from above, that this was really a "socialism" (just as much as a socialism from below), warts and all. His idea seems to have been that in the revolutionary transformations of society, the true socialist idea got lost, and its upholders were wiped off the stage of history, and thus, that although the revolution might have been socialist-inspired, successive waves of leaders created a bureaucratic collectivism, a sort of monster which had nothing to do with socialism. Of course, the NMEC analysis does not agree with Draper, although being sympathetic to his idea. Draper's analysis is delightfully spiritual and poetic, but not a materialist analysis. This is not to deny the importance of spirituality, of course. But anybody can call himself a "humanist" while pursuing a profoundly anti-humanist program. J.
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