Regulation theory

[nom de guerre]

Michael Kenny rightly points out that one of the main concerns of regulation theory is to more concretely work out the base-superstructure relationship. This need for a more explicit and nuanced theory than that provided by Marx comes as a response to many issues: the proliferation of diffent capitalist states from fascism to liberal democracies; the apparent changes in international and national accumulation strategies throughout the last century; and the increasing criticism of postmodernists and others that traditional Marxist scholarship is too deterministic.

Regulationists like David Harvey seek to show that Marxist theory is not only adaptable to modern history, but indeed the only body of work capable to presenting the changes and nuances of capitalism in a meaningful way. Critics are right to say that regulation theory is often deterministic - we cannot deny, as Marxists, that the social construct is determined by the material conditions of the era.

Is anyone here familiar with the most recent developments of Marxist theory, that is, theory from the last 25 years? I mean, I notice most arguments on this board wind up being a shouting match between Trotskyists and Maoists, with an occasional libertarian or anarchist chiming in.

Despite your hang-ups on shit that happened 50 years ago and is over: the USSR is done, and no one can deny China has become the cutting edge of global capital. So can we please push that shit to the side for a minute and discuss relevant theory to properly address what is correct praxis for today?

[nom de guerre]

I'm gonna go ahead and *bump* this in the hopes that it will inspire a thoughtful response.

[DrFreeman09]

Yes.

Though I still believe we must discuss what happened in the USSR to some extent so that we may not repeat it again, we also have to move on.

The Left is currently paralyzed by two main things:

1. They are stuck in a phase of "cargo-cult" ideology. They think that Marx and Lenin should be taken as the ten commandments, and they repeat words and phrases like "dictatorship of the proletariat" and "democratic centralism" without understanding a) the context under which these terms were used, and b) what these terms really mean in today's world.

2. They are completely incapable of painting a general picture of what future society looks like in a way that makes sense and appeals to activists world-wide.

We must realize that what the world looks like when the workers run the show will be determined not by the failures of past regimes, but by the material conditions under which we currently live. Both Marx and Lenin realized this, and dwelling on the Soviet model is, at the heart, contradictory to both Marxism and Leninism.

We must realize that the vanguardism that existed in the Soviet Union was only a necessary measure in the Soviet Union and that in today's world, it is a theoretically bankrupt concept that should not be advocated in any current nation. We all know what became of the USSR. I don't believe Lenin would have advocated such an "iron fist" path anywhere else, because it contradicted his beliefs.

We must also realize that libertarian Marxism and anarchism (i.e. that which rejects the state entirely) is also theoretically bankrupt because these ideologies fail to recognize the nature of the state and the fact that the laws of commodity production and the flow of capital will not simply cease overnight after the bourgeoisie are removed from power.

Marx left the picture of future society quite vague for good reasons: he knew that based on material conditions, the workers would have to create this future society for themselves. But the left is currently SO disillusioned that the Left needs to start painting a general picture of what the future looks like, because why overthrow the current system if we can't think of anything better?

I'm pretty fond of Ben Seattle's work: http://struggle.net/ben (you can find links there to a bunch of stuff)

Here's some topics to (hopefully) get this started. I realize it starts with stuff we all know (or think we know) but we really have to start with the basics if we are to clear up all of the problems that we've run into.

...

The Nature of the State (Why Will Workers Have to Use It?)

One of the most important things to clear up is this: what is the dictatorship of the proletariat? But before we can do that, we have to make something else a little more clear: what is a state?

The Marxist and anarchist definitions of the state are quite different, but first, let me present the anarchist argument:

The state is necessarily a means for a minority to rule over a majority. Therefore, the root of the problem in capitalist society is not only the economy but the state itself, and both must be eliminated simoultaneously if true classless society is to take place.

But this is quite wrong from a Marxist perspective. A Marxist (like me) will tell you that generally (and when dealing with these kinds of subjects, we have to make generalizations) history has been defined by class struggle. A class has ruled, another class has eventually revolted, has smashed the old state framework, created their own state, and the new class has taken power and shaped society the way they saw fit.

Feudalism, which was the product of reactionary classes ruling society, was overthrown by the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie smashed the old state, and produced new ones that benefitted their class. Eventually, it produced liberal "democracy" that we see in several nations today.

So, by looking at history in this general way, one can conclude that the nature of the state is a means by which one class rules over others. The argument that anarchists use only takes into account the bourgeois state. The bourgeoisie happen to be the minority, and they have shaped the current states to benefit them. But looking deeper into history shows that the real nature of the state has to do with class, i.e. the state benefits whoever has created it.

Therefore, by looking at history in a general way, one can also say with some safety that the workers will rise up, smash the old state, and replace it with a state that benefits them. Anarchists regard a workers' state as a contradiction of terms, but once again, the state is a means by which one class rules over others; not necessarily by which a minority rules over a majority.

So we can say at this point that the workers will be capable of removing bourgeois rule and creating a workers' state. Though history has also proven time and again that the workers simply rising up and laying claim to the existing state framework will not work; the workers will, just as other classes have in the past, smash the old state and shape a new one to benefit them.

But now we are treading upon some more interesting territory: why do the workers' need a state in the first place? What will be the goal of this workers' state? How will classless society emerge from this workers' state?

Why Do Workers Need a State?

Assuming that the workers do overthrow bourgeois rule, why will workers need a state if their goal is to emancipate everyone and create classless society.

The answer is relatively simple, but it requires some explanation.

As long as there are classes, there will be a state.

As long as there is class struggle, society will collapse into chaos if there is not a systematic tool of suppression in place to control the class struggle. The scientific name for this tool is a state.

What causes class struggle? Private property, money, wages, exchange, etc. Until these things are eliminated, there will be class struggle, and therefore, a state. On the other hand, when these things are elminated, there will be no class struggle, and no state.

But in a society transitioning to classless society, we cannot expect

a) the roots of oppression and class struggle (i.e. property, money, exchange, etc.) to disappear overnight by some magic force

or

b) millions of workers to spontaneously figure out how to run an entire economy without property, money, wages, or exchange of any kind.

Experimentation will take time, and every day the sources of classes and class struggle still exist, the bourgeoisie (who, unless you believe that magic will cause the flow of capital to cease instantly, will still maintain a lot of power) will be attempting to regain control. It is the job of the workers' state to make sure this doesn't happen. This is not the only purpose of the workers' state, but it is one of the largest reasons why it is necessary.

The real trick has been to figure out how to suppress the bourgeoisie without suppressing the workers. This will be discussed later, but so far, we have learned that the state must exist until workers figure out how to run an economy where the rule of capital no longer applies. At that point, there will be no classes, and therfore, the state will no longer be necessary (remember that it is a means by which on class rules over another), and it will wither away.

What is the Dictatorship of the Proletariat?

The phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" simply means workers' rule.

What many so-called "Leninists" and others don't seem to want to talk about is the need for concrete democratic rights of free speech under workers' rule. What many Leftists also seem to like avoiding is the question of whether or not there will be multiple political organizations under workers' rule. We need to stop pussy-footing around this question and deal with it now.

A good article regarding the subject can be found here (article is under Ben's email message to me; it's "Appendix A: What Does Victory Look Like?"): http://struggle.net/struggle/ben/2007/909-ben.htm

I'm tired and that's all I'm going to write at this point. But that's some of what's been going on in the last year with Marxism. I hope this topic gets some views and responses.

[nom de guerre]

We must realize that what the world looks like when the workers run the show will be determined not by the failures of past regimes, but by the material conditions under which we currently live. Both Marx and Lenin realized this, and dwelling on the Soviet model is, at the heart, contradictory to both Marxism and Leninism.

You are entirely correct. Thus, I propose we correct Marxism by ditching Leninism. Our model that is congruent with the material conditions today is the network. So why are we still hung up on this old shit?


We must realize that the vanguardism that existed in the Soviet Union was only a necessary measure in the Soviet Union and that in today's world, it is a theoretically bankrupt concept that should not be advocated in any current nation.

I disagree with this. I think vanguardism has shown itself to be profoundly effective as a means to advance a direly underdeveloped proto-capitalist economy into a modern industrialized state. Historically, Leninism has served as an effective tool at modernizing an economy when the bourgeoisie is incapacitated by the preexistent imperialist hegemony. It does so in less time than most traditional bourgeois revolutions, and it does so with a relatively shorter casualty list. I just feel like its paradigm serves no function to revolutionaries working in developed capitalist societies - and in fact, has repeatedly demonstrated how easily its adherents will fall back to reformism.

As a Marxist, I think different paradigms exist in concordance to the different material possibilities in the objective conditions of the era. I just don't see how it is materialist or logical to to try apply an organizational paradigm that is a century old and was developed for a feudal country, in America today.

Buth otherwise, I agree and think the re-clarification of the Marxist term of the state is a necessary discussion that must take place in the over all theoretic re-evaluation of Marxist theory and what it is we define as a Marxist today. And I look forward to checking out those links.

[DrFreeman09]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 01, 2007 10:17 am
As a Marxist, I think different paradigms exist in concordance to the different material possibilities in the objective conditions of the era. I just don't see how it is materialist or logical to to try apply an organizational paradigm that is a century old and was developed for a feudal country, in America today.
Certainly.

Unfortunately, topics like these don't get many responses because they require people to read, write, and think. But I'm optimistic that serious debate will draw people eventually.

I came across this today and although it seems obvious, a lot of Marxists have been unable to articulate this point and some have misinterpreted Marx themselves.

From Francis Wheen's book, "Marx's Das Kapital: A Biography":

"The American economist Paul Samuelson has said that Marx's entire oevre can be safely discredited because the impoverishment of the workers 'simply never took place' - and, since Samuelson's textbooks have been the staple fare for generations of undergraduates in both Britain and America, this has become the received wisdom.

"But it is a myth, based on a misreading of 'The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation' in chapter 25 of the first volume [of Das Kapital]. 'Pauperism,' Marx writes, 'forms a condition of capitalist production, and of the capitalist development of wealth: but capital usually knows how to transfer those from its shoulders to those of the working class and the petty bourgeoisie.' In this context, he is clearly referring not to the whole proletariat but to the 'lowest sediment' of society [...]

"What Marx did say was that under capitalism there would be a relative - not absolute - decline in wages. This is demonstratably true: no firm enjoying a 20 per cent increase in surplus-value will hand over all the loot to its workforce in the form of a 20 percent pay rise. 'It follows therefore,' Marx writes, 'that in proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse.' The crucial phrase here is 'be his payment high or low': labour lags further behind capital, no matter how many cars and microwave ovens the workers can afford.

"Besides, Marx makes it abundantly clear in the very same paragraph that his definition of poverty (like Christ's) goes far beyond pounds and pence: it is about the crushing of the human spirit" (Wheen, p. 56-58).

The problem is that I don't believe that many people make it to chapter 25 of Das Kapital.

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 01, 2007 10:17 am
You are entirely correct. Thus, I propose we correct Marxism by ditching Leninism. Our model that is congruent with the material conditions today is the network. So why are we still hung up on this old shit?

although critical thinking regarding the past is called for, I'm afraid you'll end up throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I mean, I notice most arguments on this board wind up being a shouting match between Trotskyists and Maoists, with an occasional libertarian or anarchist chiming in.

And you yourself started another shouting match in "Let's dump Leninism," "Leninism sucks," etc. :P ;)

Now, to restore the subject at hand:


Michael Kenny rightly points out that one of the main concerns of regulation theory is to more concretely work out the base-superstructure relationship. This need for a more explicit and nuanced theory than that provided by Marx comes as a response to many issues: the proliferation of diffent capitalist states from fascism to liberal democracies; the apparent changes in international and national accumulation strategies throughout the last century; and the increasing criticism of postmodernists and others that traditional Marxist scholarship is too deterministic.

I'm not sure with my terminology, but does this have to do with the idea that organization should be treated as "a separate question" (which only non-spinoff Leninists and certain left-communists, as well as miscellaneous others, seem to grasp)?

If so, I said this in an earlier Theory thread (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=72584):


[Or is the organizational question inherently part of the strictly/directly materialist analysis? :huh: ]

To start off, Lenin treated the concept of organization as its own "question," and I was inspired by such separation in some of my recent analysis.

I started off on this board by stating somewhere that Russia was already materially ripe for a traditional bourgeois revolution since the Crimean war, long before Stolypin became the prime minister (after "Bloody Sunday"), and before Lenin himself was born! Also, Russia was ripe for "revolutionary democracy" in the 1890s, thanks to the accelerated economic programs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_history,_1892-1917#Accelerated_industrialization) of one Sergey White (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Witte) (the developments being commented on in Lenin's The Development of Capitalism in Russia).

However, such revolutions (bourgeois-democratic or revolutionary-democratic) didn't happen spontaneously. As usual, "the devil is in the details."

Now, before someone here cries out "Great Men of History" or even "Ideologist" (sorry if my humour is poor this morning), I'm not one such analyst (coincidentally, those folks who subscribe to the "Great Men" crap are basically saying that some guys came out of the blue spontaneously and fulfilled their historical roles).

Last night, as I peeked into this Learning thread on Stalin's rise to power (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=72409), I noted one sweeping generalization being made (as sweeping and as generalized as the "analysis" of the "Great Men" folks, but this time by the "strictly/directly" materialist side): civil war conditions.

Before I comment on the Learning thread material, I'll go back to the material above on capitalist development in Russia and introduce a fourth perspective (after "Great Men," "Ideology," and "strict/direct" materialism): organization. Simply put, Russia's masses were not sufficiently organized at that time to enact either a proper bourgeois-democratic revolution or a revolution for "revolutionary democracy" in their respective periods (post-Crimean War and under both Stolypin and White). The high levels of illiteracy certainly doesn't help the Ideologists' case or the "Great Men" folks (communication). By the time of March 1917, there were still high levels of illiteracy, but the high levels of regimentation and organization resulting from a third imperialist war in just sixty years (after the Crimean war and the Russian-Japanese war) and from the creation of soviets helped the revolutionary cause immensely. Also, although the Bolsheviks themselves were hardly the organized folks lionized by Soviet propaganda, the proliferation of soviets and factory committees helped the revolutionary cause immensely.

Now, on to Stalin, his bureaucratic bunch, and my two (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=72409&view=findpost&p=1292405670) posts (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=72409&view=findpost&p=1292407266) in the Learning thread (but briefly): no matter how bad the civil war conditions were, no matter how many posts Stalin himself held simultaneously (as noted by Preobrazhensky) (http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/Back/Wnext19/Stalin.html) before that critical moment in 1922, no matter how much "will to power" he had (and ideology was irrelevant at this point, anyway), Stalin and his ignored bureaucratic bunch would not have prevailed over the more prominent trade-union bureaucracy (represented by Tomsky, Shlyapnikov, and Kollontai) and other emerging but equally prominent bureaucratic factions (including the "Bonapartist" military-bureaucratic pressures that Trotsky himself faced) without a key organization. It was neither the Secretariat nor the Orgburo itself (both of which Stalin presided over as General Secretary, a post that mattered little politically even without what I'm about to say); it was a little known Central Committee section known as "Uchraspred."

[Later on, the resurrection and permanence of the "Partyocracy" after Stalin's death was due to corresponding unknowns utilized by Khrushchev and his "Partyocrats," and not so much due to the Secretariat itself. (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=69965)]

Last, but not least, is the question of Hitler and the Nazis. Trotsky may have wrote some fine stuff regarding the petit-bourgeoisie's role in the rise of fascist states, but he, just like the "Great Men" folks and the "Ideologists," ignored the role of organization. Prospective fascist states have their material conditions (usually a political and/or economic defeat or mere eclipse of some sort, plus industrialist $$$), "masses" of petit-bourgeoisie and "Great Men" rabble-rousers, but left unorganized or organized improperly, fascism won't succeed. [If I recall correctly, shortly before Hitler's rise to power, France was the most anti-Semitic country in Europe, and it was long since eclipsed by Britain as the leading imperialist power.]

In short, I am expanding the analysis from its binary origins. There is the base, but within the superstructure there are two elements: the skeletal framework and the "skin." Without a strong skeletal framework, the whole building, even with a strong base, will collapse upon itself! [The "skeletal framework" just happens to revolve around questions dealing with organization.]

[La Comédie Noire]

As a Marxist, I think different paradigms exist in concordance to the different material possibilities in the objective conditions of the era. I just don't see how it is materialist or logical to to try apply an organizational paradigm that is a century old and was developed for a feudal country, in America today.

Yeah, not only is the literacy rate higher here, the internet allows us to cut through ruling class hegemony with sites such as this one.

This is really a case of "the capitalist selling us the rope in which we will hang him with".

I also agree we need to start updating our language. I find it annoying when 99% of the articles I've read are dripping with archaic language and marxist coinage. It causes our body of work to be extremley esoteric. Which is a problem when we claim to represent the "masses".

[DrFreeman09]

The entire assertion that socialist revolution was the correct course of action in Russia was a dubious one. Here is Marx responding to those who believed that Russia could skip the capitalist stage and go directly from feudalism to socialism:

"[Russia] will not succeed without having first transformed a good part of her peasants into proletarians; and after that, once taken to the bosom of the capitalist regime, she will experience its pitiless laws like other profane peoples."

Other Marxists like Gregory Plekhanov also felt that the conditions for socialism in Russia would not ripen until it had industrialized and a revolution at that time would be folly.

So not only was the iron-fist vanguardism only applicable to Russia (i.e. a feudalist nation as opposed to the capitalist nations in the West), it is questionable whether it had any validity in the first place.

Anyway, the argument that without strong guidance, the whole revolution will go to shit has some small kernel of truth and I am not opposed to all forms of political organization (like many "left" communists are). But this same argument is used as an excuse by apologists for the USSR and other regimes as justification for the execution of the single-point-of-control theory, i.e. the workers are too stupid to rule, so a "Marxist" vanguard must rule for them.

This is the idea we have to discuss and correct.

It is clear that this "Marxist" vanguard can (and will) be plagued by hypocrisy and corruption, and that if the workers do not have a concrete level of control in the government, then it will not be the class that rules, but a single organization. I have sometimes been accused of being wrong because I separate the Bolsheviks from the working class and that the reason why the USSR failed is because the Bolsheviks didn't handle their party-state "good enough."

But the way I see it, it is THEY who are mistaken because they fail to separate the party from the class. The party is not the class. The party can represent the class if the workers have concrete democratic rights of free speech, but this implies that the party will not exorcise a monopoly over political power.

So it is clear that the workers will not be led by a single organization. Workers must have the right to organize independently of the "Marxist" party in order to ensure that class rule, and not party rule, exists.

Another argument I have heard a lot is that to rule as a class, the class must deny free speech to the bourgeoisie and therefore limit independent organization. This is simply not true.

Workers in capitalist nations have the right to free speech and free organization, but they do not rule. It follows that under workers' rule, the bourgeoisie and their supporters will have democratic rights to free speech because it is impractical and unecessary to deny them such rights. What the workers CAN do is eliminate the bourgeoisie's ability to buy free speech. In other words, the workers' state can make sure that speech is separate from property. In this way, the bourgeoisie will have democratic rights of free speech, but they will be largely drowned out by the workers, who are the majority, and, because they can no longer use their economic power to buy influence, they will not rule. It is simply the opposite of how the bourgeois state works.