The Question of Stalinism and the Modern Protest

by Gary Tedman

The organized and deliberate horror of the system that produced Auschwitz stands as a kind of philosophical toll-booth at which we cannot seriously pay in the same old currency anymore, and once we have passed through it everything must be in a new currency, a different one. Let me put this even stronger: fascists made Auschwitz and the other death camps, and Communists opposed it, all those who are not with the Communists, are with the Fascists, it is not possible to take any other position: that system forbids this, completely and utterly.

To be sure, the WWII and post WWII situation was and is complex, and the lines to be drawn are not easy, but I maintain these are the real lines.

Notwithstanding, many people, groups, have passed through this toll-booth without changing their currency and are, as it were, living the illusion that things remain the same as before.

The rationalization for this is invariably 'Stalinism' and the associated 'Gulag'. 

The image of an equal and opposite horror to Hitlerism is there and keeps the old currency going in this new territory, it is there to rewrite history, in the end it is there, no matter its reality, its reasons for being, or not, for the moment, to tell us that the Auschwitz system did not really exist, or if it existed, it was just the opposite of an equally horrible horror that it opposed, in effect, to tell us that it is 'just like' an extreme version of the daily politics that we all know so well.

This means most people are in fact, though they don't know it, communists. They are because they obviously oppose this fascism, but they do not know they are communists. There are a few fascists who have the knowledge of what they are doing, and they are largely in positions of power and wealth, although of course there are also fascists among the poor and working class, those who have been brutalized. Nevertheless, low level fascism (for want of a better name) represents a quite different phenomenon to high level fascism. The Brownshirts (the Sturmabteilung) functioned as a paramilitary organization of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (or Nazi Party) are an example of this difference, and they had to be dispatched by the higher level Nazis, as we know, in the infamous 'Night of the Long Knives'. The key to grasping this difference is that the Brownshirts could not be trusted to 'do the right thing', which was to attack and blame minorities, chiefly for economic problems, rather than the ruling class.

Allow me to provide an example that will make this philosophical-political position clearer:

In Greece there was a coalition government (February 2012), which coalesced because they all agreed on some basic principles, and wanted to 'rescue' the Greek economy and nation, one method to do this was to introduce some extreme 'austerity measures' for the population: - sackings, redundancies, public and private sector wage/salary cuts and freezes, increased taxes, privatizations. The coalition was formed by the two main parliamentary parties PASOK ('socialist')/New Democracy (rightist) plus some extreme rightist fascists. These parties were led respectively by Georges Papandreou, Antonis Samaras and Georges Karatzaferis, the latter a party leader who has openly used anti-Semitic phrases and slogans. Essentially, the fascist held the deciding vote, in spite of the fact that he represented a tiny minority of the citizens of Greece in electoral terms.  This coalition was led by an 'installed' (by the Eurozone state apparatus) Prime Minister, Lucas Papademos, described as a 'technocrat' whose political affiliation remained 'officially' undecided but who was a banker with a history not unconnected with the causes of the crisis. 

The question arises: why would anyone, or any party, enter into an alliance with the extreme rightist, fascist party unless they had something in common with them? We were of course made aware officially that this was not the case. The other leaders always disavowed any connection of this type. Yet here we have, de facto, a close political relationship.

My argument is that what we saw in front of our eyes, we saw because it is true and fact, it is the reality. 

The coalition represented at bottom like minds, it represented agreements, similar goals and aspirations, and so on. It means that they are the same, an identity. This means conversely that the opposites that we thought the apparent left Socialists and right New Democracy were, in fact, fake. In reality they are performing a double act, a false dialectical piece of theater that allows us to vote for each party as if we were deciding a sports match, who after the spectacle share in the spoils. 

Why? They do this because they do share in the spoils, because they share class interests, and these interests are their private interests. In the Greek coalition of that time it reached a point in the economic crisis where those interests were best served through an alliance with the fascists. This is because any individual party holding power would be held to blame as responsible for the austerity that they both wanted to impose, so a coalition would neatly spread the blame and unpopularity as well as allow each to blame the other, in other words it allows the false dialectical double act to continue relatively unscathed (in theory, because this was happening against a backdrop of continuous protests). But it only allowed this to continue with the assistance of the fascists: only the fascists had the same interests at heart. Only the fascists had the same ruthlessness and brutality.

The two major left parties did not enter into this coalition and opposed it. This group included the Greek Communist Party (KKE), ostensibly a Stalinist party. We have, therefore, here the fascists versus the communists, although few involved would have accepted this as an accurate description, in fact they would of course have rejected it outright in indignation. And the reason why this description would not be accepted, and so strenuously, is because parliament must (it is an imperative), function as a stage on which political conflicts take place and argue democratically, and this entails of course that they are and must be opposed to each other, except in times of necessary national unity or emergency; i.e. they must really be opposed for this to be a genuine democracy, because democracy means choice. If we were to find that these parties were not really opposed but in fact shared their outlook, we would realize that we were living in a plutocracy, a dictatorship, not a genuine democracy, because changing the one to the other by election would really be no change at all.

Now, it is not that real opposition never ever happens in this structure. The fact of the necessity to perform on this stage means that they must do certain things, intervene, make political decisions, and so on, politics must be seen to be done and so it must often be done in fact on the stage that is parliament. However, the idea that they are opposed in any fundamental way is false as far as this structure is concerned; they are only opposed as factions within the one position of the rule of the ruling class. This is the key to understanding all bourgeois democracy. It is its classical form, as with the English Parliament (there are of course always exceptions).

We are using the metaphor of a stage here, but this is more than a metaphor; it really is a stage with actors performing roles. The political effect is chiefly the response of the audience to this performance, not the laws they put into effect. The laws are always decided beforehand by the class that the politicians are drawn from, or that they now de facto represent as politicians. The role of the parliamentary politician is to sell these political decisions. Apart from a stage performance with the actors, the process also more than resembles the performance of a conjurer, as well as has something of a comedic double act, with the classic straight man (who is funny and who is straight depends on your sidedness) or the classic nice cop v nasty cop routine. It is therefore no accident that the parliament resembles a stage set, it is a stage set. It is a place in this sense where art meets politics in a very pure way, the design must be right, the rituals and aesthetics of it all must add to the effect, in fact you might say it is a site where there are 'special effects' and a special atmosphere created. If politics is show business for ugly people, then this is their special stage.

All modern political arguments seem to lead to a single argument and question: to Stalin versus Hitler. It was for this reason that Godwin created his 'law' of blogs, although it mainly refers to Hitler and Nazi comparisons (although it may also be expanded to imply any of this type of figure); Wikipedia:

"Godwin's law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies[1][2]) is a humorous observation made by Mike Godwin in 1990[2] that has become an Internet adage. It states: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."[2][3]  In other words, Godwin observed that, given enough time, in any online discussion—regardless of topic or scope—someone inevitably criticizes some point made in the discussion by comparing it to beliefs held by Hitler and the Nazis.

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There are many corollaries to Godwin's law, some considered more canonical (by being adopted by Godwin himself)^[3] than others.^[1] For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.^[8] This principle is itself frequently referred to as Godwin's law. It is considered poor form to raise such a comparison arbitrarily with the motive of ending the thread. There is a widely recognized corollary that any such ulterior-motive invocation of Godwin's law will be unsuccessful.^[9]

Godwin's law applies especially to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with Nazis."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_Law

Whilst the 'law' does not and should not prevent genuine discussion of Nazism and Hitler or fascism where this is relevant, it is often used (wrongly) on blogs in precisely this way, to prevent discussion of the history, specifically of Europe and its last world war. At the same time, the 'blog law' tends to function to deny (whilst secretly recognizing it as a phenomenon) that all blog discussions seem to be inexorably drawn towards the political issue that the last world war was fought over: fascism versus communism. 

Blogs are merely an example of a kind of cultural injunction, almost a taboo that exists in this space. In this sense it tends to act as a prohibition against recognizing everything stated above about the two great camps of politics. Stalin/ism is the real focus of the law. The argument regarding Stalin, Stalin's existence, acts as the universal position that says we may pass through the toll booth without changing our political-philosophical currency. It also says that any defense of Stalin is 'beyond the pale', even more so than Hitler. We may not discuss Stalin even in the context of Nazism, because to do so would be to challenge the accepted ideological norm of a 'balance' of forces, of bourgeois politics as the great balancer between two extremes that are essentially the same, two forms of evil, which of course we all know as the Cold War ideology.

This ideology was the post war switch in the Allies entire ideological position from support as an ally of the Soviets to outright antagonism. It was the switch necessary (whatever the actual complex circumstances) so that the ruling class and capitalism could return to its pre-war narrative of the evils of socialism, a switch it had to make, and was successful in making. For this reason the anti-Stalin position is essential to this ideology. The existence of an evil figure on the Left is essential to the modern concept of democratic politics and the entire notion of political 'extremes' of Left and Right balanced by universalist humanism, extremes which, on the contrary, are the only real political positions that exist today, after the Holocaust.

Are we saying that Stalin and Stalinism did not really exist, that the 'phenomenon' is a figment of bourgeois illusion making, that it is not as evil or equal to Hitlerism, are we saying that Stalin's opposition to Hitler was pure and progressive, 'the good', etc? No, such would hardly be a proper Marxian analysis; but it will be worth looking at the trajectory of the main proponent of the 'evil Stalin as equal to Hitler' ideology.

The Great Purge is supposed to be the fault of Stalin/Stalinism and 'his evil'; Wikipedia (I must say I support this mode of information and see no problem with it) again:

"The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938.[1][2] It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of unaffiliated persons, characterized by widespread police surveillance, widespread suspicion of "saboteurs", imprisonment, and arbitrary executions.[1] In Russian historiography the period of the most intense purge, 1937–1938, is called Yezhovshchina (Russian: ежовщина; literally, the Yezhov regime), after Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the Soviet secret police, NKVD.

In the Western World, Robert Conquest's 1968 book The Great Terror popularized that phrase. Conquest was in turn inspired by the period of terror (French: la Terreur) during the French Revolution."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purges

Conquest then joined the Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD), a unit created for the purpose of combating communist influence and actively promoting anti-communist ideas, by fostering relationships with journalists, trade unions and other organizations.^[1] In 1956, Conquest left the IRD and became a freelance writer and historian. Some of his books were partly distributed through Praeger Press, a US company which published a number of books at the request of the CIA.

(…)

Some critics have argued that examination of archives following the USSR's collapse in 1991 challenge many of Conquest's statements.[15]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Conquest

Now, Robert Conquest's personal role in this construction is pivotal in that it is his work that generally feeds into the mainstream media and consciousness as 'the truth' about the Soviet Union (SU) and Stalin as an evil figure representing the SU, and it turn representing all forms of (should we say consistent or authoritative) Left socialism. It is not exactly difficult to detect that he is an agent (whether factually or not) of that thing known as 'the west' (if we treat this term as synonymous with advanced democratic capitalism), and that his ideology fits into the rightist framework of understanding history, and the fact that he started as a Communist only adds to this. 

One of the primary ways that he derives huge figures for death rates in the purges is by adding together the deaths from famines. Apart from this simple subterfuge, these famines were a feature of Russian life (and death) long before the Soviets came to power, and the Soviets were of course trying to eradicate them. The other salient aspect of this, however, is the background ideology or philosophy at work here, and the concept of the 'terror', the idea of an all powerful evil force to which any death or destruction may be attributed in a society. Now, it is noticeable that such an ideology is itself rather 'Stalinist', in the sense that it really believes and asserts repeatedly that such an evil overarching quasi-mystical force is actually possible and exists and operates as a factor in history.

The Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser has already remarked on this in his criticism of the rightist interpretation and critique of Stalinism, and counterpoised to this a very different left critique of same that looks at the problem of the cult of personality (in Essays in Self Criticism).

In November 2005 Conquest was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush, a president infamous of course for cajoling the fabrication of the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) as the excuse for the gung-ho invasion of Iraq to effect 'regime change'. It is noteworthy that President Bush, acting for his class, after the terrorist atrocity of 9/11 used the concept of a widespread 'War on Terror' as the reason to justify the invasion of another nation unrelated to this act of terrorism, and as a rationale for many other reductions in US civil rights at home, also unrelated (unless we mention class). In this way the rightist vision of history of the SU functions to generate just the kind of political conditions that are conducive to the rightists own political aims for a 'strong state', and very peculiarly in other words 'Stalinist' conditions, but minus any socialistic content. To put it more simply: Stalinism here becomes the rationale for Stalinism.

From another direction, may we not assert that Stalinism, or more specifically Hitlerism (which we seem to have forgotten), may justifiably be a real excuse for Stalinism, or a 'strongman', if we are faced with fighting a truly terrible despotic force, one of those earthbound mundane evils that may not have mystical projective powers but certainly cause a great deal of grief and destruction. Every nation, even democracies, do indeed have a way to resort to emergency laws, martial law, and the 'strongman', and we all know that Churchill represents just such an historical figure, a hero for most, but who also had a personal history and reputation that on close inspection cannot be denied of being ruthless and at times cruel (i.e. earlier in Africa, or as regards the firestorm bombing of Dresden and Hamburg).

Attached to all this is the way this same rightist fantasy of evil and good ultimate powers leads also to the repeated insistence on peace as opposed to violence, as if one side (the rightist one) somehow owns the rights to peace as such. The suggestion is that there are, again, two fundamental forces at work: those who want peace and those who are hell bent on 'mindless' destruction and death. 

Lately (in 2011) this argument came to be used against the Arab Revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, and against the uprisings of the Tunisian, the Bahraini, Libyan, Egyptian, Yemeni and Syrian peoples, etc. The suggestion is that these uprising have been generated by a kind of will to violence and that the existing state and the stasis it produces is in contrast necessary for peaceful 'stability'. What we find is that the institutions of the state, because it only presents a bureaucratic violence which is insidious and hidden, is framed as peaceful, while protesters who resist repression with an open vigor are regarded as 'violent'. 

Recently this same argument has been leveled at Greek protesters in the context of the (seemingly never ending) negotiations by the Greek government with the troika (the ECB, IMF and EU) that offered to the Eurozone currency group of nations even further austerity measures that were forcing the nation into penury and its people into ever deepening poverty. Protesters, normally peaceful, are in Greece often accompanied (except for the Communists who resisted this) by groups of other protesters (or rioters) who act in an immediately and rather too ready way with violence against the state riot police, who then have the convenient excuse to heavily tear-gas the protesters.

On one occasion in Greece during such protests (February 2012) it was (on video evidence that is widely documented on the internet) the riot police which first began the violence by firing down into the packed crowd of protesters, only after this did the stone throwers begin attacking the riot police, who began their familiar routine of surrounding the mass of peaceful protesters and herding them by copious amounts of teargas. To cut the story short, on this night many shops and buildings, including historic ones, were the next day reported as burnt out, smashed and looted. Some were ostensibly targets of Left wing rage – such as the HQ of the fascist party (Laos), or some were loosely connected to this apparent agenda (the cinema which had been used as a Gestapo torture chamber, as well as banks). The destruction was quite widespread. Naturally the Greek press and the government mostly, but not totally, avoided the question of parastatal elements involved in agent provocateur acts, and described the violence in terms of wanton thuggery and 'mindless evil'. 

In the UK comparisons were made sometimes to the recent English riots and looting (which nevertheless also gave rise to questions over the sudden reluctance or inability of the nation's police to contain it). The narrative was clear: protest against the state was a form of terror and evil that had to be eradicated, and reflected that there was something fundamentally wrong with the Greek people. This came after months of descriptions on blogs etc of Greek people as lazy and inefficient, too expecting of 'entitlements', and 'not living within their means' and thus needing constant loans in the crisis.

The Greek people, and its kind of state, were essentially becoming the scapegoats for the global capitalist crisis in the western media. The case of Ireland was financially at least as grave, if not worse, than Greece, but all the concentration was on the plight of Greece as a 'special case'. This barely hidden racism, since it had no justification in rationality (in fact in the blogs it was hardly concealed at all, and was allowed as if 'fair comment'), on a broader level was reflected in the insulting name for the badly affected southern states, PIIGS (for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain). 

Tellingly, these are all states which still had unfinished business to deal with after the last world war: for instance the legacy of the Junta in Greece and of Franco in Spain; Greek people were actually still in the process of trying to gain some war reparations from Germany over a well known massacre of civilians. Disregarding the doubts over who is responsible for the violence of the protesters, we have here, I would argue, two kinds of violence presenting itself: the one is state violence and the other is people's force resisting this. Part of the state violence, when it is not tear-gassing people, is 'peaceful', in the sense that it presents itself ostensibly at least through lawful methods and bureaucratic processes to implement austerity. Some of these methods are doubtful in terms of their Greek constitutional legitimacy, but we can leave that aside too. 

What is austerity? It is the systematic reduction in the living standards and welfare benefits of the ordinary people of Greece (and other nations). These are generally not the people who were or should be held responsible in the sense of punishment for the global crisis, but who seem to be being treated as such, and we must place this in the European context of big bankers still receiving colossal financial rewards even for their total failure and need to be bailed out from the public purse, i.e. the very people who were being 'punished'. The people of Greece were and are very angry about this situation and they resist it. They feel (obviously) justified in this resistance.

What happens? A few buildings, property, some historic, get burnt in the struggle, little proof of who did it (the earlier Marfan bank atrocity may be the exception). The bourgeoisie are generally horrified. In actual fact the media horror expressed at the buildings and shops being burnt down as a result (apparently) of the anger over the severe state imposed austerity seems to be far higher than, say, passion against the massacres of civilians taking place concurrently in the city of Homs in Syria, who the UN and Arab League have failed miserably to protect even in words. For this we get mere sadness and some mild hand wringing, even prominent Left figures (such as Seamus Milne of The Guardian newspaper) walks away from the Syrian issue saying it is too 'toxic' and offered no plan of action even for the Left. 

In the UK, persons have been arrested and imprisoned for supporting and encouraging the riots in words only, such as through the new social media. So in this sense free speech is being curtailed over an issue that could be aired in this respect: is violent rioting (even, in contrast to protesting) never legitimate? Is the expression of anger by the people never justified? 

Let us forget for the moment the easy way in which the rightists will confuse and conflate, deliberately and for their own project, riots with protest. Is it never ever justified? Wanton destruction is only wanton and mindless when it has absolutely no point to it. To fulfill this it would have to be to all intents and purposes mad, i.e. psychopathic, and in that sense would lead us to a different problem since psychopaths are not considered responsible subjects. Such destruction as we have seen in Greece is not psychopathic though, it is anger about something and in response to a definite political event. You might say it is an expression (if genuine) of – if you attack me this way, I will attack you this way. The working class and people are unable to defend themselves or express their anger through legal constitutional means from the austerity measures that are (against the legal Greek constitution anyway, and even against the principles, at least, of the European Charter) reducing their lives in fact, so all that is left is (apparently) illegal methods. 

It is clear that by calling these methods 'mindless' (the repeated refrain in the press) as well as naming it 'rioting' is a way to link ordinary peoples protest to the general idea of 'terror'. To fight this 'terror' the (Greek in this instance) state feels justified in its violence or its own 'terror' as a way of combating it, so it resorts to the 'Stalinist' position (or perhaps we should say the Hitlerist in this case). If we add to this the suspicion that the state is encouraging and/or allowing this response and see that parastatal elements are included, then a picture emerges of a state itself going beyond legality, becoming an illegitimate state, a state which is no longer interested in performing its democratic function with regard to its people but only interested in its survival as a form of power become arbitrary and beyond law.

It is this kind of arbitrary power, which is being ascribed to radicals constantly under the name of Stalinism, yet arises from the position of Stalinism (or Hitlerism), which says we must not voice this position as the people, even as a concern about power, and we must accept that we all want 'peace', even though this is a peace which kills us: what is, we must ask, the ultimate austerity measure, do we not already know? Yes we do, it as Auschwitz. The same people who would call this hyperbole would call those who alluded to the early indications of the rise of the Nazi party and its dangers as conspiracy mongers and paranoiacs. 

There is a fundamental and deep hypocrisy at work here and it can be simplified down to this: they, the bourgeoisie, feel it is wrong to make a revolution, to overthrow an oppressive regime if there is nothing for them to gain from it. In Libya there was something to gain for capitalists from intervention: politically Gaddafi had appeared sometimes in the popular press as 'socialist', so intervention could be seen to be both anti-socialist (a strategic political gain), and there was oil present, plus the geography and demography helped, it was 'doable'. In Syria this was not the case, and the much vaunted democratic moral imperatives did not play a strong role, all the capitalist nations failed (at least in the first months, as I began to write this) in their self appointed 'duty' (including China and Russia). If Syria is a bourgeois revolution with working class components as well as an independence struggle against foreign tyranny, and as well as against home grown corruption and despotism, the world's bourgeoisie can only, at the moment, see its working class aspect, its courage and real violent resistance, as a threat.

Note

An additional aspect of the problem of Stalin and Stalinism is a historical difficulty: if this were to be taken as true, how may we approach the bare fact that the Soviet Union and Stalin was an ally during the war and that our (say, British) press was affectionate towards the figure of Stalin (Uncle Joe etc)? Should we 'westerners', to be consistent, say that this 'realpolitik' (at best) was complicity in war crimes? This would of course be very awkward and in fact of course it does not happen, in its place there is a void, the question is not confronted, it is simply never grappled with. Instead a kind of historical anachronism is produced, wherein, if 'we' ever think it, for the duration of the war it was 'normal' to be allies with the Soviet Union, but now, after a certain dividing line in time, it is not, and this 'doublethink', although contradictory, coexists. Common ideology has no inbuilt necessity, after all, to be consistent.

The existence of this line of demarcation, the division of future from past and the inability to rationally configure the one by and with the other, creates an historical anachronism and leads to a kind of violence in the present, based on it. For, if we cannot address this, it is a kind of repression. What is being repressed? If we were projected back to, say, Europe 1943, a British subject could not so easily openly exclaim "Stalin is an evil bastard", but now it is the reverse, if you do not claim he is an evil bastard you are an evil bastard. The violence here is that which prevents us from examining this as a genuine historical and ideological problem. It prevents us from researching the subject matter in a serious way. The only option that appears to be open to us is to strike the rightist attitude and interpretation of history. 

As stated, this rightist attitude does not exactly replace the figure of Stalin with anything much other than its own vision of a 'strong man', i.e. with its own Stalinism (e.g. Putin for instance). The violence of ideology is always based in this rejection of rational discourse, but the rejection does not appear so much in ideology, since it is irrational and therefore in a sense outside of ideas, but in affective practice, or in the affective practice that accompanies the ideology and appears at the moment it becomes aware that the line of demarcation and the prohibition is being challenged somehow, which in this case is a kind of historical line. In other words, it surfaces as an emotional response. This emotional response is, after the fact, usually excused through moral and ethical terms: with indignation, horror, astonishment, bluster, apoplexy, and a shutting down of the lines of rational communication, and then, censorship, the final act of which is to actually kill. And yes, ironically, Stalinism (if it is indeed what they say it is) itself followed this course, even (and this is the sad aspect of it) after it became unnecessary for the ruthlessness of war. We have in the Stalinist insistence on the end of class struggle in socialism the illusions of the post war Soviet state, since a state, of course, cannot be the end of class struggle given its end is the ending of the necessity for a state (this is the simple, basic, Leninist principle).

This is why here, on this ground, socialism grew its own, home grown, false dialectic. On the one side we have the notion of gradualism and total cessation of struggle in Stalinism, and on the other the ideas of the total continuation of continual revolutionary struggle in Trotskyism. What this represents is actually the same repression, in the end the repression of the science of social change that is Marxism, by being happier with the condition of stasis produced by holding apart these two sides and preventing synthesis. Why should this happen within socialism (ignoring the antagonistic pressure from outside)? A provisional answer may be this: socialism has no magic immunity from ideology, and especially from the ideology of its own victories and disappointments. There is an ideology of Marxism as much as any other politics, in fact even more so because of what is at stake.

Bertrand Russell on Bolshevism (4)

by Thomas Riggins

Part One of Bertrand Russell's "The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism" comprises eight chapters under the heading 'The Present Condition of Russia' [1920]. Briefly the main points of each chapter:

3. 'Lenin, Trotsky and Gorky'

This chapter is full of personal impressions of Lenin, Trotsky and Gorky. It is really very subjective, more so than many other opinions in this book, so I will pass it by after giving just a few examples.

Of Lenin, Russell says, "I have never met a personage so destitute of self-importance." Lenin thought it would be difficult to build socialism with a majority population of peasants (little did he know). He told Russell that the world revolution was needed before any real achievement could happen.

Of Trotsky, Russell says the Russians don't regard him at all as equal to Lenin but he impressed Russell more as to "intelligence and personality" but he had only "a very superficial impression" of the man. He had "admirable wavy hair" and appeared vain. He brought to mind a comparison with Napoleon!

Gorky was ill when Russell interviewed him. "He supports the government," Russell wrote, as I should do, if I were a Russian-- not because he thinks it faultless, but because the possible alternatives are worse." If Russell really thinks that, then he, as a Leibniz scholar, should have recognized that the Bolsheviks were the best of all possible Russian governments and thus mitigated some of his criticisms since he could see the Bolsheviks were doing the best they could. He should have at least made constructive criticisms of the faults instead of comparing them to his ideal of Britain since 1688 and suggesting incommensurable historic parallels

Now for a more substantive chapter.

4. 'Communism and the Soviet Constitution'

Russell wanted to study and compare the Soviet system, set up by the Constitution, with the Parliamentary system but could not as he found the Soviets "moribund." The All Russian Soviet , the legal supreme body, hardly ever met and had already become a rubber stamp for the CP.

This was due to the fact that the Western blockade and the Civil War had reduced the country to the verge of collapse and the Bolsheviks could only hold out by extreme measures. The idea was first the government had to survive and after peace was established there could be a return to more democratic measures.

Russell was aware of the fact that the peasants were hostile to the Bolshevik regime. To feed the cities it was necessary to take food from the peasants and this was paid for by essentially worthless paper money which the peasants could not really spend.

Nevertheless, Russell thought the peasants "never better off" and their dislike of the Bolsheviks seemed unwarranted. He saw no "under fed" peasants and the big landlords' property had been confiscated for the benefit of the peasants.

The peasants were very ignorant, knowing little beyond the confines of their villages. Knowing nothing of the Civil War or blockade "they cannot understand why the government is unable to give them the clothes and agricultural implements that they need."

Russell saw the CP in Russia ('the bureaucracy") divided into three parts. First, the old Bolsheviks, "tested by years of persecution", who have the the most important positions. They are upset by the backwardness and hostility of the peasants and by the fact their ideals have to be postponed awaiting better material conditions.

Second, the second rank of "arrivistes" who have the second level positions. They benefit from the fact that the Bolsheviks are in power (the police, informers, secret agents, etc.,) From their ranks come the members of the Extraordinary Commission [i.e., the Cheka or,in 1920, All Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combatting Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Corruption).

This was a violent revolution and the White Guards, the pro Tsarist side in the Civil War had unleashed the "White Terror" in areas it controlled and the Bolsheviks, fighting fire with fire, unleashed the "Red Terror" against their perceived enemies. Needless to say many untoward actions were taken by both sides.

Lenin addressed these issues of democracy and dictatorship in a speech he gave in 1920. "[In] the era of capitalism, when the masses of the workers are subjected to constant exploitation and cannot develop their human capacities, the most characteristic feature of working-class political parties is that they can involve only a minority of their class. A political party can comprise only a minority of a class, in the same way as the really class-conscious workers in any capitalist society constitute only a minority of all workers. We are therefore obliged to recognise that it is only this class-conscious minority that can direct and lead the broad masses of the workers.... What is this organized minority? If this minority is really class-conscious, if it is able to lead the masses, if it is able to reply to every question that appears on the order of the day, then it is a party in reality." And because of the dire situation in Russia it was really a small group of leaders at the top who actually ruled Russia.

Now for the third group in Russell's view. These were people who supported the government NOT because they were fervent communists but because the communists were in power and they could benefit from serving the communists-- either out of motives of patriotism or self interest (or both).

These people were of the same type as American businessmen (being motivated to advance themselves and take advantage of situations) and Russell "supposes" that if peace comes this group will help in the industrialization of Russia making it "a rival of the United States."

The Russian workers in 1920, Russel said, were lacking in the habits of "industry and honesty" and the "harsh discipline" of the Bolsheviks will allow Russia to become "one of the foremost industrial countries." This attempt will be made in the 1930s in earnest.

Coming up, 'The Failure of Russian Industry'

Click here for part one of this series
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Bertrand Russell on Bolshevism (2)

Thomas Riggins

Part One of Bertrand Russell's "The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism" comprises eight chapters under the heading 'The Present Condition of Russia' [1920]. Briefly the main points of each chapter:

1. 'What is Hoped from Bolshevism.'

Russell informs us that Communism inspires people with hopes "as admirable" as those of the Sermon on the Mount. So Christians at least should be willing allies of Communist movements if they only knew their own ideals (if Russell is right that is.) But then he says that Communists hold their ideals just as fanatically as Christians and since "cruelty lurks in our instincts" and "fanaticism is a camouflage for cruelty" Communism is "likely to do as much harm" as Christianity has done.

And it seems as if the tyranny of some Communist states has indeed equaled that of Christians when they have been in control of state power (and not only Christians: it seems almost all states based on religion have been just terrible and still are to this day.) Later we will see how he thinks a Communist state may avoid this pitfall although the Russians probably won't.

Russell says capitalism is doomed because it so bad, so unjust that working people will not put up with it much longer. In deed "only ignorance and tradition" keep it going. Well. "ignorance and tradition" still seem to have a lot of steam left. The exceptional power and efficiency of the US are such that it might hold up the capitalist system another 50 years or so-- but it will be weaker and weaker and will never have the dominance it had in the 1800s.

According to this the game should have been over in the 1970s. Russell may have been off by 30 years. It is possible that the world crisis ignited in 2007 will lead to a general collapse. The US is the mainstay of the capitalist order so if it does go down it may well take the rest of the capitalist world with it.

While Russell thought that the capitalism of his day was more or less ripe for replacement he did not think the Russian form of socialism could replace it. Because he thinks Bolshevism cannot be a viable way to build socialism in the West he opposes it-- but not from the point of view of defending capitalism in any way.

Bolshevism is the socialism of a backward undeveloped country with no democratic tradition. It is the right form for Russia "and does more to prevent chaos than any possible alternative government would do." The lack of personal freedoms Russell found in Russia he blames on its Tsarist past and it is that past rather than communism as such that it is to blame.

A Communist party taking power in England (and by extension in the US or any other country with a democratic tradition might not get such an irresponsible backlash as happened in Russia and would be able to be "far more tolerant." This is, I think, especially so for the US where the Communist Party advocates a form of socialism based on the Bill of Rights.

Looking at the historic conditions of the Bolshevik's coming to power (the wreckage of W.W.I and the almost complete destruction of the Russian economy) Russell thinks communism can only come about through "widespread misery" and economic destruction.

This seems historically to be the case-- Russia, China, Vietnam, Korea, etc. However he leaves open the possibility that communism could be established peacefully without the destruction of a country's economic life. Russell would like to see the least possible violence in the transition to socialism/ communism.

However, he has a really goofy idea, based on half baked psychological notions he has developed, which is that revolutionaries find that "violence is in itself delightful" and so have no inclination to avoid it. This is too ridiculous to require further comment.

As far as a peaceful transition is concerned, there is no a priori reason to reject this notion, but it would probably take place as a democratic upsurge of class conscious workers responding electorally to anti-capitalist parties once they had realized that their disintegrating economic conditions could not be halted by the traditional political system and its representatives.

Next time we will look at Chapter 2: "General Characteristics" of the situation in Russia.

Click here for part one of this series
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Click here for part four of this series

The Partisan in Philosophy: Lenin

by Gary Tedman

Partisanship was a feature of Lenin’s political intervention into philosophy that the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser wrote about (see Althusser ‘Lenin and Philosophy’ 1971, p30-32). As Althusser explained, Lenin asked a very impertinent question of philosophy. He asked: what is philosophy doing as a practice? He questioned what position it had in the class struggle. In this way, he revealed the ideological nature of philosophy in its relationship to the sciences. By openly declaring his own partisanship in philosophy, Lenin was also exposing the fact that all philosophy is sided.

Althusser understood Lenin in this respect. He understood that philosophy as a discipline is a battlefield, and that Lenin was not ashamed to declare his position on this battlefield as the correct position, and to support a particular thesis as ‘scientific’. This has been described as Lenin’s ‘Marxist ontology’ or his theory of being, but ontology approaches the question of being by supposing one can proceed from a non-position to arrive at a position, while Lenin shows us we are always/already in a position, we are always/already sided in the dialectical process.

We do not here, therefore, with Lenin, and not necessarily with Althusser (as some commentators have claimed), arrive at a scientific theory of ‘science as science’, self-justifying and for all time, for this considers science as if devoid of content. Certainly, if you alleged “science is correct because it is science” it would be an empty tautology. But Lenin does assert the possibility of being correct through struggle.

Lenin’s stance was essentially derived from the legacy of the Pre-Socratic philosopher Zeno of Elea transmitted via Marx and Engels. The ‘Zenoan’ dialectic allows us to see how the cosmos is always/already sided, we have preferences and we must discriminate, and there are thresholds, limits, boundaries, colours, and opposites in the play of the dialectic, which is also at play ‘in us’. The dominant ideology of capitalism asserts that ‘discrimination’ (conflating it with bigotry) is a bad thing and it tries to limit its incidences from a notional position apparently higher than any involvement in everyday battle, or from a medium point of a notional ‘balance’. Lenin called this a ‘shamefaced’ position, while Althusser described it as ‘denegation’. It hides, disavows, and disguises the role of ruling class philosophy, and its ‘world view’ in the class struggle, in other words it keeps hidden the fact that it is sided and must be sided. There is in reality no fence to sit on. Despite all the strictures surrounding ‘discrimination’ in capitalist democracy we know that discrimination, or rather to give it a more accurate term 'bigoted privileging', even according to the accepted statistics, is common today in advanced capitalist democracies. The very regulations against discrimination function to hide this fact and to create the illusion that it is a problem that the ruled must be saved from by the rulers.

But let us not be mistaken here. It is not that Marxists or Communists always seek conflict, or should like to, and cannot be friendly or maintain a popular front because of this position, but more the case that for Marxism recognition of partisanship and of our embedded-ness in class struggle is the precondition for a fair and ‘equal’ debate about what is to be done. As in Marx’s “Critique of the Gotha Programme”, this means we must see the dominant class notions of equality and social justice as limited by the actual capitalist economic conditions. Talking of the Lassallean influence in the programme Marx writes:

“…equal right here is still in principle -- bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case.

In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor.

But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only -- for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.

…Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.” (Marx)

Lenin was able to act practically on many of the principles written by Marx in this theoretical Critique; it was this kind of understanding that essentially enabled the Bolsheviks to be successful in their strategies and arguments and gave them their unique tendency within the Communist movement. They essentially took Marx’s advice about how it was a crime to repeat as dogmas:

“…ideas which in a certain period had some meaning but have now become obsolete verbal rubbish, while again perverting, on the other, the realistic outlook, which it cost so much effort to instil into the Party but which has now taken root in it, by means of ideological nonsense about right and other trash so common among the democrats and French socialists.” (Marx)

These lessons remain largely unlearned even by many Communist parties today, a long time later. This is not so surprising. But it means we can still find ourselves not being able to distinguish between a strategy of popular front in practice and a popular front in theory, in the latter where it functions just to reanimate all the ‘ideological rubbish’ Marx referred to. And still today Lenin comes under attack not just from his usual reactionary detractors but from his erstwhile friends who, being tainted by a critical liberal tradition, are perhaps unable to free themselves entirely from the same old notions of right.

In this context we might refer to Slavoj Zizek’s mild (but pointed) criticism of Lenin (2001, ‘What can Lenin tell us about Freedom Today?’ in Rethinking Marxism Vol.13, No.2.), that he identified himself with revolution and ‘correctness’ too readily, which I think is, for the above reasons, rather unjust. Someone had to accept the role of leader during the difficult period in question (circa 1917) without a shamefaced attitude. To avoid identification as a leader of an actual vanguard party while being actually engaged in that leadership would have been an abdication of his responsibility, and a disavowal (or denegation) of his sidedness. Lenin was being true to his philosophical word. Althusser, I believe, despite his championing of Lenin’s position, had some difficulty of his own reconciling his Marxist sidedness with the influence on him of figures like Lacan, a hero of Zizek and someone who strongly represented the attempt to undercut the supposed ‘mastery’ of authority that ‘correctness’ entails by way of a surrealist strategy, intellectually popular since Breton, which Freud (also a good materialist in philosophy) had resisted condoning.

Reading Lenin 12

READING LENIN: Materialism and Empiro-criticism [ 12 ]
Thomas Riggins

Using our editor's blog to further Marxist education seems like a good idea. So here is a famous work of Lenin's that outlines what Marxist philosophy is all about. It's 100 years old this year and we might ask ourselves what is still valid in this classic. Have new philosophic developments in the last 100 years made this work outmoded? I'm going to post some reflections on the book section by section and anyone who wants to read along and comment is welcome to do so. I hope to post weekly updates and Sunday seems the best day to this as it is a free day for me.

CHAPTER THREE: THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE OF DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM AND OF EMPIRIO-CRITICISM. III

SECTION THREE: "Causality and Necessity in Nature"

Lenin thinks the question of causality is important and wants to begin to look at this issue from the standpoint of materialist epistemology. To do this he turns to Feuerbach's criticism of the philosopher Rudolf Haym [1821-1901, member from the center right of the National Assembly at Frankfort in 1848 and best known for his 1857 biography of Hegel] who attacked him on this issue.

Feuerbach quotes what Haym says about Feuerbach's book "The Essence of Religion": "Nature and human reason are for [Feuerbach] completely divorced, and between them a gulf is formed which cannot be spanned from one side or the other."

Haym is responding to Feuerbach's statement in his book that we "apply human expressions and conceptions to [the phenomena of nature], as for example: order, purpose, law; and are obliged to do so because of the character of our language."

Feuerbach goes on to point out that the big split between nature and human reason that Haym sees is not really there. He says his statement "does not assert that there is actually nothing in nature corresponding to the words or ideas of order, purpose, law." He was just trying to deny their identity (Idealism).

Feuerbach in fact claims that it is theism that makes this division, not materialism. "The reason of the theists splits nature into two beings -- one material, and the other formal or spiritual." Lenin discusses this Feuerbach-Haym dispute and concludes, "Feuerbach's views are consistently materialist."

Lenin says, "The recognition of objective law in nature and the recognition that this law is reflected with approximate fidelity in the mind of man is materialism." We should keep in mind the expression APPROXIMATE FIDELITY as Lenin often gets a bit carried away and talks about PHOTOGRAPHIC equivalence which many interpret as ABSOLUTE FIDELITY. This may be too strong a claim.

Since Marx and Engels were influenced by Feuerbach (he was the bridge between them and Hegel his philosophy being a materialist mutation of Hegel's Objective Idealism), Lenin makes the following remark about Engels that "to anyone who has read his philosophical works at all attentively it must be clear that Engels does not admit even a shadow of doubt as to the existence of objective law, causality and necessity in nature."

Lenin now makes some comments about Joseph Dietzgen who had been portrayed by the Machists as a subjectivist with respect to causality. Lenin tells us that while "we can find plenty of confusion, inexactnesses and errors in Dietzgen" so that as a philosopher "he is not entirely consistent", nevertheless the Machist view of him is totally false. He was a materialist and, Lenin quotes him as saying "that 'the causal dependence' IS CONTAINED 'in the things themselves'."

Lenin now demonstrates that Avenarius' line on causality is the same as that of Hume and his agnosticism on this issue. Avenarius, just as Hume, says we do not observe "causes" in nature, ie., "necessity", "All we experience," says Avenarius, "is that the one [event] follows the other.... Necessity therefore expresses a particular degree of probability with which the effect is, or may be, expected." Lenin calls this "subjectivism." With the development of physics in the last one hundred years, especially quantum mechanics, this has become the standard scientific view regarding "causality" and Lenin appears to be wrong in this respect. Materialism can live with a probabilistic universe if it recognizes that probability is an objective feature of reality as it presents itself to us.

But Mach and Avenarius are not justified by these developments. Mach says, "In nature there is neither cause nor effect.... I have repeatedly demonstrated that all forms of the law of causality spring from subjective motives and that there is no necessity for nature to correspond with them."

Modern science and modern materialism detect probability frequencies as objective features of quantum interactions independent of "subjective motives." Since, as Lenin says, the real issue is whether causal connections are the result of "objective natural law or properties of our mind", there is nothing in modern science that does not support the materialist position.

Lenin deals in a similar fashion with Pearson (who says "MAN IS THE MAKER OF NATURAL LAW), Petzoldt (who says "Our thought demands definiteness from nature, and nature always accedes to this demand; we shall even see that in a certain sense it is compelled to accede to it"), Willy (who maintains "We have long known, from the time of Hume, that 'necessity' is a purely logical (not a 'transcendental' characteristic...".

Now, two new subjectivists pop up: Henri Poincare [1854-1912, world famous French scientist] ("The only true objective reality is the internal harmony of the world," and this does not exist except in us); and Philipp Frank [1884-1966, Austrian scientist who later became a logical positivist who taught at Harvard] ("experience merely fills in a framework which man brings with him by his very nature....").

All the above were anti-materialism, or at least agnostics, and the reason Lenin added them to his critique was because they only varied here and there from Hume and Kant. These variations led Yushkevich and other Russian Machists to hail them as producing new ideas in philosophy. Lenin thinks that nonsense. Lenin says the essence of these "new" viewpoints "does not necessarily lie in the repetition of Kant's formulation, but in the recognition of the fundamental idea COMMON to both Hume and Kant, viz., the denial of objective law in nature and the deduction of particular 'conditions of experience', particular principles, postulates and propositions FROM THE SUBJECT, from human consciousness, and not from nature."

Lenin then grants that the Russian Machists "would like to be Marxists" and have read Engels' views on causality but are utterly confused. Yushkevich [P.S. Yushkevich, 1873-1945 was a Russian Menshevick], for example, "preaches" a new fad called "empirio- symbolism" and informs us that energy, in his own words, "is just as little a thing, a substance, as time, space, mass and other fundamental concepts of science: energy is a constancy, an empirio-symbol, like other empirio-symbols that for a time satisfy the fundamental human need of introducing reason, Logos, into the irrational stream of experience."

And let us not forget Bogdanov's "Empirio-monism" where we can read that the laws of nature "are created by thought as a means of organising experience, of harmoniously co-ordinating it into a symmetrical whole." None of this derives from the thought of Marx or Engels but derives from the philosophy of Kant.

Next week we will pick up with Section Four "The 'Principle of Economy of Thought' and the problem of the 'Unity of the World.'"

See Reading Lenin 11 here.

Reading Lenin 11

READING LENIN: Materialism and Empiro-criticism [ 11 ]
Thomas Riggins

Using our editor's blog to further Marxist education seems like a good idea. So here is a famous work of Lenin's that outlines what Marxist philosophy is all about. It's 100 years old this year and we might ask ourselves what is still valid in this classic. Have new philosophic developments in the last 100 years made this work outmoded? I'm going to post some reflections on the book section by section and anyone who wants to read along and comment is welcome to do so. I hope to post weekly updates and Sunday seems the best day to this as it is a free day for me.

CHAPTER THREE: THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE OF DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM AND OF EMPIRIO-CRITICISM. III

SECTION ONE: "What is Matter? What is Experience"

Lenin says the first question is posed to the materialists while the second is put to the idealists (including the Machists) and agnostics. About 'matter' Avenarius says, "Within the purified, 'complete experience' there is nothing 'physical'-- 'matter' in the metaphysical absolute conception -- for 'matter' according to this conception is only an abstraction...." This theory Lenin calls "disguised subjective idealism."

Mach says, "What we call matter is a certain systematic combination of the ELEMENTS (sensations)." This is also subjective idealism. Lenin also has a quote from Pearson's "The Grammar of Science" to the same effect. He also says that the Russian Machists are totally off base when they equate these views to those of modern science. They are simply the old views of the idealists dressed up in new clothing.

Matter, Lenin says, "is that which, acting upon our sense-organs produces sensation." Bogdanov doesn't like this formulation and complains that materialists are not advancing and that their arguments, in his words, "prove to be simple repetitions." This only shows his ignorance as there are in fact basically only two main lines in philosophy with regard to this issue.

"One expression," Lenin points out, "of the genius of Marx and Engels was that they despised pedantic playing with new words, erudite terms, and simple 'isms', and said simply and plainly: there is a materialist line and an idealist line in philosophy, and between them there are various shades of agnosticism. The vain attempts to find a 'new' point of view in philosophy betray the same poverty of mind that is revealed in similar efforts to create a 'new' theory of value, a 'new' theory of rent, and so forth."

So much for "matter." Now, how is "experience" used in empirio-criticism?
I should say right off the bat that Lenin says "experience"-- the major concept of empirio-criticism -- is NOT clearly defined by the empirio-critics! With Avenarius it is vague and circular as when he says "pure experience is experience to which nothing is admixed that is not in its turn experience."

This is a definition which the philosopher A. Riehl in 1907 said "obviously revolves in a circle". And, Norman Kemp Smith, in "Mind" vol. XV, remarked, "The vagueness of the term 'experience' stands him in good stead, and so in the end Avenarius falls back on the time-worn argument of subjective idealism." Mach even goes so far as to say, "The acceptance of a divine original being is not contradictory to experience."

The confusion over this term can be seen in its use by Bogdanov. According to Lenin, when Bogdanov says, "consciousness and immediate mental experience are identical concepts" and that matter is "not experience" but "the unknown which evokes everything known" he is being an IDEALIST. Yet he is being a MATERIALIST when he says that those who go beyond experience only arrive at "empty abstractions and contradictory images, all the elements of which have nevertheless been taken from experience."

Mach in several works makes pronouncements in a materialist vein, so much so in fact that Lenin says he "instinctively accepts the customary standpoint of natural scientists, who regard experience materialistically."

All this goes to show that Engels was correct in saying there are only two fundamental positions with regard to "experience"-- i.e., the materialist and the idealist.

SECTION TWO: "PLEKHANOV'S ERROR CONCERNING THE CONCEPT 'EXPERIENCE'"

This is a short section where Lenin wants to correct a statement Plekhanov made in his book "L. Feuerbach". Plekhanov wrote, "A German writer has remarked that for empirio-criticism EXPERIENCE is only an object of investigation, and not a means of knowledge. If that is so, then the contrasting of empirio-criticism and materialism loses all meaning and discussion of the question whether or not empirio-criticism is destined to replace materialism is absolutely vain and idle." Lenin thinks this is a "complete muddle."

According to Lenin, Plekhanov must have had in mind, and not really understood, the following from Avenarius filtered through his disciple F. Carstanjen. Lenin says, "Fr. Carstanjen is almost literally quoting Avenarius, who in his "Notes" emphatically contrasts his conception of experience as a 'means of knowledge' in 'the sense of the prevailing theories of knowledge, which essentially are fully metaphysical."

Now, Carstanjen maintains that Avenarius did not investigate if experience , i.e., "all 'human predications', as the OBJECT of investigation" was real or not. What he did was simply classify "all possible human predications, BOTH IDEALIST AND MATERIALIST, without going into the essence of the question." As a result, Plekhanov's muddled conclusion above is unwarranted and in error.

Next week we will begin with Section Three of this chapter: "Causality and Necessity in Nature."

See Reading Lenin 10 here.

Reading Lenin 10

READING LENIN: Materialism and Empiro-criticism [ 10 ]
Thomas Riggins

Using our editor's blog to further Marxist education seems like a good idea. So here is a famous work of Lenin's that outlines what Marxist philosophy is all about. It's 100 years old this year and we might ask ourselves what is still valid in this classic. Have new philosophic developments in the last 100 years made this work outmoded? I'm going to post some reflections on the book section by section and anyone who wants to read along and comment is welcome to do so. I hope to post weekly updates and Sunday seems the best day to this as it is a free day for me.

Chapter Two : Section Five: "Absolute and Relative Truth, or the Eclecticism of Engels as Discovered by A. Bogdanov"

This great discovery was made, says Lenin, in the preface to Book III of Bogdanov's Empirio-monism. Bogdanov thinks he is ridiculing Engels when the latter gives as examples of "eternal truths" such statements as "Napoleon died on May 5, 1821" or "Paris is in France." To Bogdanov this is too trivial for words.

"What sort of 'truth' is that?", he asks, "And what is there eternal about it? The recording of a single correlation, which perhaps even has no longer any real significance for our generation, cannot serve as the starting-point for any activity and leads no-where." For some reason Bogdanov calls such "truths" eclectic, as if Engels is just uncritically adopting them from all different forms of materialism.

Of course the examples given by Engels are "trivial", but they are given to make a point, which is that there are many examples of objective and eternal truths all around us and that idealist philosophers are just being foolish when they try to make a big mystery about "truth." Bogdanov's objections are just "turgid nonsense" according to Lenin.

"To be a materialist," Lenin writes, "is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense-organs. To acknowledge objective truth, i.e., truth not dependent upon man and mankind, is, in one way or another, to recognise absolute truth."

What we have to do is get away from these trivial criticisms and examine DIALECTICALLY the distinction that Engels was trying to make between relative and absolute truth in his criticism of Duhring's philosophy. By ignoring the context of Engels' argument Bogdanov only reveals his own incompetence.

By thinking dialectically Engels arrives at a concept of absolute truth that grows out of relative truth. Each one of us as an individual has a part of the truth, relative truth, but absolute truth is the whole which gradually reveals itself, but only partially at any one time.

"For Bogdanov (as for all Machists)," Lenin writes, "recognition of the relativity of our knowledge EXCLUDES even the least admission of absolute truth. For Engels absolute truth is compounded from relative truths. Bogdanov is a relativist; Engels is a dialectician."

Absolute truth (the reality behind the world of our sensations) is built of the relative truths we gain from experience. Towards the end of this section Lenin says, "Dialectics -- as Hegel in his time explained -- CONTAINS an element of relativism, of negation, of skepticism, but IS NOT REDUCIBLE to relativism."

What is at issue, and which Bogdanov and the other Machists fail to see, is "the CORRESPONDENCE between the consciousness which reflects nature and the nature which is reflected by consciousness." This is something that Marx and Engels understood (and Dietzgen and Feuerbach as well). Bogdanov and the Machists, under the guise of modern science are just repeating "ancient trash."

SECTION SIX: "The Criterion of Practice in the Theory of Knowledge"

"'The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from from practice is a purely scholastic question,' says Marx in his second Thesis on Feuerbach,'' Lenin points out, and Engels repeats: "The success of our action proves the conformity of our perceptions with the objective nature of the things perceived."

And what does Mach have to say about the criterion of practice? According to Lenin Mach, in The Analysis of Sensations, makes a distinction between theory and practice. Mach: "Physiologically we remain egoists and materialists with the same constancy as we forever see the sun rising again. But theoretically this view cannot be adhered to."

This is supposed to be the newest scientific viewpoint (1908). I won't go into the newest viewpoints (2008), but will remark that the battle continues! But it is an old battle. A hundred years before Lenin it was raging, Fichte, and two thousand years before that with the Greeks as well as in other philosophical traditions.

"Of course, we must not forget that the criterion of practice can never, in the nature of things, either confirm or refute any human idea COMPLETELY. This criterion too is sufficiently 'indefinite' not to allow human knowledge to become "absolute", but at the same time it is sufficiently definite to wage a ruthless fight on all varieties of idealism and agnosticism."

Next week we shall do the first 2 sections of Chapter Three.

See Reading Lenin 9 here...