25 June 2011
Grenoble, France
 
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,

I was recently telling my children about my old Uncle Omer, a wheat farmer from Kansas, and how he used to tell me: "If we don't hang together, we'll hang separately." These were his words of wisdom after spending a lifetime scratching out a living on the Kansas plains and fighting speculators who sought to "buy grain cheap and to sell it dear." Today, the United States is a country where 400 individuals possess more wealth than is owned by one-half of the country's entire population, i.e. more than 150 million Americans. How does this system hang together? Where might we look to see similar patterns, where similar concentrations of wealth and power occurred in history, and discover what dynamics are unleashed to unravel this system when it hits "critical mass."

Before the counter-revolution of the 1980s in Great Britain and the United States, much was written on theories and strategies that aimed at assuring a better future for all humankind. The redistribution of wealth was on the public agenda, so to speak, as the Vietnam War had taught most of us a lesson about the untenable growth of capitalism. Books like Paulo Freire's (1921-1997) Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Ivan Illich's (1926-2002) Tools for Conviviality were read in high schools and on university campuses across North America and in Europe. Such books served as practical guides, until social class war was declared against most of us by Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan & Co., and the newly organized capitalist state plowed ideologies like liberation theology deep beneath the surface of the earth, where the sun does not shine, greatly impoverishing civil society everywhere.

The private manufacture of public apathy has been analyzed and much publicized by humanist scholars like Gregory Bateson (1904-1980), R.D. Laing (1927-1989), David Cooper (1931-1986), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), Fritjof Capra (b.1939), to name only a few.... Essentially, apathy is produced by an intense interpersonal relationship that looks something like this: "I love you more than I love myself. I cannot live without you. You must do what you want to do, and this is why I love you. And if you do what you really want to do, it will kill me. You must do what you really want to do!" We can see the production of a paradox by the simultaneous use of such contradictory injunctions. In the dynamics of such human relationships a bond frequently becomes a bind and, under certain conditions, the bind becomes a double-bind, when finally the victim finds him/herself in a situation of constant oscillation, back and forth to where he is "damned if he does, damned if he doesn't, and damned anyway." This is the manufacture of schizophrenia, the apathetic zombies, neutralized by capitalist no-win relationships, who are increasingly considered "the surplus population," excluded from consumerism and seeking to survive in no other way than by remaining docile and obedient to the ambivalent forces around them. [For more on this technique of oppression and its antidote, please see Howard Zinn (1922-2010), "the wrong people are in jail, and the wrong people are out of jail...."

Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) --in addition to the many film documentaries on Stalin, an interesting propadanda piece on Stalinism, can be seen at the Internet link to the recent BBC production, Who Killed Stalin?-- was the efficient pathological protector of civilization in the Soviet Union and as such can perhaps teach us about a paradigm that is recognizable today in the science of modern  management, i.e. neutralizing the opposition.

In the introduction to his anthology, Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation (1977), Princeton University professor Robert Tucker (1918-2010) explains the importance of coming to terms with the Stalinist phenomenon in history. "In scholarship, as in war, it is often useful to follow what has been called the strategy of the 'indirect approach'." (see B.H. Liddel Hart (1895-1970), Strategy,1954.)

      The cultural-and-historical approach is an indirect strategy in comparative Communist studies. Instead of moving straight to the comparing of Communisms, the distinguishing of observable similarities and differences between them, it delves into the developmental history of Communism, starting with Russian Communism. It does this in search of understanding not simply of the ways in which different Communisms are alike or differ, but of the understanding sources and dynamics of differentiation or non-differentiation within the Communist sociocultural universe.
     Adopting the strategy of the indirect approach in comparative Communism, the central importance of addressing ourselves to the problem of the Stalinist phenomenon is beyond question. Even though, as in this volume, we examine the nature and causes of Stalinism primarily in its original Russian setting and only to a small degree in its extension to other countries, whatever progress we make may possibly redound to the benefit of Communist studies in their comparative dimension. For what we try here to illuminate is the developmental dynamics of Russian Communism, which impinged in countless ways upon every other Communist movement in the world and which most heavily impinged upon the others precisely in Stalin's time. No matter whether Stalinism's imprint upon a given Communist movement or party-state was indelibly deep, or whether it was an incubus which one or another movement in a particular non-Russian national cultural setting had the power and inclination to throw off, comparative Communist studies must take account of this influence; and to take account, it must comprehend Stalinism itself much more adequately than we have done so far. (Tucker, pp. xix-xx)

Through the production of feelings of fear (and of vague anxieties) populations have been managed by self-appointed elites, often in the name of a top-down revolution, to support (or at least tolerate) an economic restructuring to their collective disadvantage. In the case of Stalinism in Russia --the paradigm for future, more ambitious projects, perhaps-- these changes took on three distinct characteristics: a) an industrialization program at the fastest pace possible, driven by the "absolute priority for heavy industry and relentless mobilization of material and human resources for this purpose, regardless of the level of sacrifice; b) the collectivization of agriculture in a relatively short time, both for doctrinaire reasons as well as for the support of rapid industrialization; and c) strict centralization of the command economy. (p.245)

Tucker proposes the following analogy to grasp the dynamics of this social system under Stalin : Communism : Fascism = Leninism : Stalinism. This type of ahistorical formula thinking, however, is of  limited value, beyond being a possible instrument for building ideological consensus. The material chronology of Stalinism, the evolution of its historical context from 1924-25 (at Lenin's death and the purge of Trotskyites), to 1928-29 (the beginning of the accelerated industrialization campaign, and the forced collectivization of agriculture, accompanied by the liquidation of the kulaks), to 1935 (the beginning of the great purges and the jurisprudence of terror), to 1941 (the start of the Great Patriotic War), to 1953 (the death of Stalin, reportedly murdered by his secret police chief, Beria (1899-1953), at a time when the Soviet leader was about to launch another great purge), to 1956 (when Khruschchev attacked Stalinist terror tactics and the cult of personality that was so carefully engineered during his dictatorship).

In October 1928, we can see "Uncle Joe" explain patiently in a speech delivered at the Plenum of the Moscow Committee and the Moscow Control Commission of the Soviet Union Communist Party Bureau, how essential it is for revolutionaries to recognize their class enemies and act every hour, every day against them.

Bukharin's third mistake, Stalin tells his listeners, for example, concerns the question of the peasantry :

     As you know, this question is one of the most important questions of our policy. In the conditions prevailing in our country, the peasantry consists of various social groups, namely, the poor peasants, the middle peasants and the kulaks. It is obvious that our attitude to these various groups cannot be the same. The poor peasants as the support of the working class, the middle peasants as the ally, the kulak as the class enemy --such is our attitude to these social groups. All this is clear and generally known.

     Bukharin, however, regards the matter somewhat differently. In his description of the peasantry this differentiation is omitted, the existence of social groups disappears, and there remains but a single drab patch, called the countryside. According to him, the kulak is not a kulak, and the middle peasant is not a middle peasant, but there is a sort of uniform poverty in the countryside. That is what he said in his speech here: Can our kulak really be called a kulak? he said. Why he is a pauper! And our middle peasant, is he really like a middle peasant? Why, he is a pauper, living on the verge of starvation. Obviously, such a view of the peasantry is a radically wrong view, incompatible with Leninism.

     Lenin said that the individual peasantry is the last capitalist class. Is that thesis correct? Yes, it is absolutely correct. Why is the individual peasantry defined as the last capi9talist class? Because, of the two main classes of which our society is composed, the peasantry is the class whose economy is based on private property and small commodity production. Because the peasantry, as long as it remains an individual peasantry carrying on small commodity production, produces capitalists from its midst, and cannot help producing them, constantly and continuously.

     This fact is of decisive important for us in the question of our Marxist attitude to the problem of the alliance between the working class and the peasantry. This means that we need, not just any kind of alliance with the peasantry, but only such an alliance as is based on the struggle against the capitalist elements of the peasantry.

     As you see, Lenin's thesis about the peasantry being the last capitalist class not only does not contradict the idea of an alliance between the working class and the peasantry, but on the contrary, supplies the basis for this alliance as an alliance between the working class and the majority of the peasantry directed against the capitalist elements in general and against the capitalist elements of the peasantry in the countryside in particular.

     Lenin advance this thesis in order to show that the alliance between the working class and the peasantry can be stable only if it is based on the struggle against those capitalist elements which the peasantry produces from its midst.

     Bukharin's mistake is that he does not understand and does not accept this simple thing, he forgets about the social groups in the countryside, he loses sight of the kulaks and the poor peasants, and all that remains is one uniform mass of middle peasants.

     This is undoubtedly a deviation to the Right on the part of Bukharin, in contradistinction to the "Left," Trotskyite, deviation, which sees no other social groups in the countryside than the poor peasants and the kulaks, and which loses sight of the middle peasants.

     Wherein lies the difference between Trotskyism and Bukharin's group on the question of the alliance with the peasantry? It lies in the fact that Trotskyism is opposed to the policy of a stable alliance with the middle-peasant masses, while Bukharin's group is in favor of any kind of alliance with the peasantry in general. There is no need to prove that both these positions are wrong and that they are equally worthless.

     Leninism unquestionably stands for a stable alliance with the main mass of the peasantry, for an alliance with the middle peasants; but not just any kind of alliance, however, but such an alliance with the middle peasants as ensures the leading role of the working class, consolidates the dictatorship of the proletariat and facilitates the abolition of classes. (J. V. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, Peking: 1976, p.363-365)

The debate in Tucker's anthology revolves around the question: Was Stalinism the genetic inheritance of Leninism and Marxism, or were these ideas mostly environmental products of a specific historic conjuncture in time and space? The last two sections of Tucker's book deal with these issues head on: in Part III, "Stalinism in Eastern Europe," H. Gordon Skilling (1913-2001) (a political science professor at the University of Toronto) poses the question of why countries like Czechoslovakia adopted Stalinist methods and retained this Russian-style despotism for several decades, against its older traditions?

In Part IV, "Stalinism Versus Marxism," Leszek Kolakowski (1927-2009) (a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford) argues that Stalinism was no more and no less than "applied Marxism", while Mihailo Markovic (1923-12010) (the director of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade) disagrees and instead argues that Leninism was above all else a theory for establishing the necessary historical pre-conditions for Marxist socialism to unfold, and Stalinism was a conservative assault on these pre-conditions, abandoning dialectical materialism and making the development of "Marxist humanism" impossible by centralizing power, promoting fear and inter-group conflicts, with the result of isolating individuals and making them collectively dependent on the authoritarian state apparatus.

Kolakowski writes, for example, of "mature Stalinism" :

     The upshot of this process --of which all phases were deliberately decided and organized, though not all were planned in advance-- was a fully state-owned society which came very close to the ideal of perfect unity, cemented by party and police. Its integration was identical with its disintegration; it was perfectly integrated in that all forms of collective life were entirely subordinated to, and imposed by, one ruling center; and it was perfectly disintegrated for the same reason: civil society was virtually destroyed, and the citizens, in all their relations with the state, faced the omnipotent apparatus as isolated and powerless individuals. The society was reduced to the position of a 'sack of potatoes' (to use Marx's phrase applied to French peasants in the Eighteenth Brumaire).
     This situation --unified state organism facing atom-like individuals-- defined all the important features of the Stalinist system. They are all well-known and described in my books. We should briefly mention a few of them, the most relevant to our topic. 1) the abolition of law, "in the sense of rules which could in any point infringe upon the state's omnipotence when dealing with individuals"; 2) one-person autocracy, as the "logical outcome of the perfect-unity principle which was the driving force in the development of the totalitarian state"; 3) the system of universal spying, "as the principle of government, where people were both encouraged and compelled to spy upon each other..." As citizens, they were supposed to live in the perfect unity of goals, desires, and thought --all expressed through the mouth of the leader. As individuals, they were expected to hate each other and to live in never-ending mutual hostility. Only thus could isolation of individuals from one another achieve perfection, ... where all people were at the same time inmates of concentration camps and secret police agents."(pp.287-289)

Markovic, on the other hand, compares the core ideas of Stalinism with those of Marx :

    Both [Marx and Stalin] say that in the process of socialist revolution the proletariat becomes the ruling class, the means of production are socialized, and produced goods are distributed according to work.
     But Marx considers the seizure of political power only 'the first step in the revolution,' and he calls it . . . 'winning the battle of democracy.' The dictatorship of the proletariat is at the same time a 'democracy.' The state is 'the proletariat organized as the ruling class.' He speaks about 'despotic inroads on the rights of property' in the beginning. But the purpose is to 'entirely revolutionize the mode of production.' In the new society just as it emerges from capitalist society, individuals are regarded only as workers and are remunerated only according to their work --which is still the narrow horizon of bourgeois right. '[Later] in place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.' Then society will inscribe on its banners, 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!'
     In Stalin everything is quite simple. There are no contradictions because there is no longer any interest in historical development. ...
     Stalinism and Marxism differ essentially both in their critique of capitalist society and in their approach to socialism. However, Stalinism has some roots in Marxism, not only genetically but also in sofar as it offers a simple and invariably conservative, ahistorical interpretation of a number of puzzles present in Marx's theory.
     Stalin's critique is very simple and superficial in comparison. It entirely lacks . . . the critique of domination of living labor by accumulated labor, and the critique of alienation (alienated labor, alienated politics). Consequently, it lacks precisely those most basic humanist elements of Marx's critique which are still relevant not only for capitalism but also for the Stalinist society of the transition period.
     Stalin's critique deals only with those features of capitalism which are associated with private ownership of the means of production, over-emphasizing in such a way the discontinuity between capitalism and the system existing at the time in the Soviet Union. . . .
     The less profound and radical the critique of capitalism is, obviously the less profound and radical the idea of socialist revolution. If capitalism is seen only as a particular social system and not also as an instance of a deeper structure of class domination due to the state's disposal of the total accumulated past labor and, furthermore, as merely an instance of universal human alienation and reification, then the whole idea of revolution will be very narrow and restrictive.
     There are three important aspects in which Marxist and Stalinist conceptions of the socialist revolution are essentially different. These are (1) the objectives of revolution, (2) the conditions under which revolution is possible, (3) the nature of the negation of capitalism. (pp.302-306)

 

The 6 items below should provide CEIMSA readers with insights into various techniques used to subvert revolution from below in the wake of economic devastation, by bribing, blackmailing, coercing and bludgeoning social critics to achieve submission --all for the most temporary of advantages. This collective suicide in the guise of "class war" is led by investment bankers and followed the various echelons of ideologues and their army of zombies.

Item A. is a Real News Network release of Julian Assange reporting on the conditions of his own house arrest in England.

Item B. is an update on ecologist Tim DeChristopher, awaiting prison sentencing for civil disobedience in Utah, from The Real News Network.

Item C. is a broadcast from Democracy Now! on Code Pink and its "Audacity of Hope" heading toward Gaza.

Item D. is a report by The Real News Network on cultivating militarism in God's garden, a.k.a. the colony called Israel.

Item E. is a Democracy Now! special on The Historic 21st Century African Land Grab & the Role of US Universities.

Item F. is the new Internet site, A.N.S.W.E.R., featuring The Honorable US Representative Cynthia McKinney in Libya, sent to us Eileen Savdié.


And finally we offer CEIMSA readers an instructive and entertaining lesson on :

" The Crises of Capitalism,"
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0

 

Sincerely,
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies
Director of Research
Université Stendhal Grenoble 3
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/

P.S. We highly recommend two additional sources for those interested in a critical understanding of the political economy of the United States and where it might lead in the next few years: Professor Bertell Ollman's work on methods of dialectical materialism, and Professor David Harvey's 13 lectures on Capital.

______________
A.
from The Real News Network :
Date: 16 June 2011
Subject: Julian Assange under house arrest in England.
http://therealnews.com/t2/

______________
B.
from The Real News Network :
Date: 21 June 2011
Subject: Tim DeChristopher awaiting prison sentencing for civil disobedience in Utah.
http://therealnews.com/t2/

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/20/the_audacity_of_hope_us_peace

______________
D.
from The Real News Network :
Date: 23 June 2011
Subject: God's garden of militarism.
http://therealnews.com/t2/

______________
E.
from Democracy Now! :
Date: 20 June 2011
Subject: The Historic 21st Century African Land Grab & the Role of US Universities.
http://www.democracynow.org/

A new report raises questions about the connection of Harvard, Vanderbilt and other U.S. universities to European financial interests buying or leasing vast areas of African farmland. Called “Understanding Land Investment Deals in Africa,” the report by the Oakland Institute claims farmers in Africa are being driven off their lands to make way for new industrial farming projects backed by hedge funds seeking profits and foreign countries looking for cheap food. We speak with Anuradha Mittal, the executive director of the Oakland Institute. “We have heard about the role of these private hedge funds in food speculation and speculation of food prices, because they control commodities” says Mittal. “But when they start buying even the means of production ­ they control labor, they control large tracts of land, they control water, they dictate what is grown and how it is grown ­ it is the kind of vertical integration of a food system that we have never seen before.”

______________
F.
from Eileen Savdié :
Date: 14 June 2011
Subject: From Cynthia McKinney: Frank Wisner's Mighty  Wurlitzer is Playing Now, But Nobody's Dancing!
http://www.AnswerCoalition.org/

Francis,
As you probably know, ANSWER is the organization Ramsey Clark is associated with, and as you see, below, Cynthia's factfinding commission in Libya will be reporting in five cities, LA San Francisco, Chicago, DC and New York City starting Saturday. I thought you'd be interested in receiving her 'updates.' 
eileen
PS. Did I send you the Libyan article criticizing Cynthia that she was gutsy enough to pass on? I think that would interest you too.



Major tour stops include:

1. Los Angeles
Saturday, June 18, 6pm
Immanuel Presbyterian Church
Westminster Chapel
3300 Wilshire Boulevard
Info:             213-251-1025     
SPEAKERS: Cynthia McKinney, Akbar Muhammad, Muna Coobtee
 
 
2. Chicago
Wednesday, June 22, 7pm
University of Illinois at Chicago
BSB Building, Room 140
Corner of Harrison and Morgan
Info:             773-463-0311     
SPEAKERS: Cynthia McKinney, Akbar Muhammad, Brian Becker

3. New York City
Saturday, June 25, 2pm
Location to be announced
Info:             212-694-8720     
SPEAKERS: Cynthia McKinney, Akbar Muhammad, Ramsey Clark, Brian Becker
 
4. San Francisco
Tuesday, June 21, 6:30pm
Unitarian Universalist Church
Thomas Starr King Room
Franklin & Geary Sts.
Info:             415-821-6545     
Co-sponsored by the Unitarian Universalists for Peace
SPEAKERS: Cynthia McKinney, Akbar Muhammad, Omar Ali

5. Washington, D.C.
Friday, June 24, 7pm
Festival Center
1640 Columbia Rd. NW
Info:             202-265-1948     
SPEAKERS: Cynthia McKinney, Akbar Muhammad, Brian Becker