DOCSLIB.ORG

Critical Theories of the Class Nature of the Soviet Union: a Marxian Survey

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Critical Theories of the Class Nature of the Soviet Union: a Marxian Survey Critical Theories of the Class Nature of the Soviet Union: A Marxian Survey Kamran Nayeri University of California Survey Research Center 2538 Channing Way, #5100 Berkeley, California 94720-5100 U.S.A. Tel. 510-642-6566 [email protected] March 2006 An earlier draft of this paper was presented in a Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE) session at the Allied Social Science Associations conference, held in San Diego, United Stated, January 3-5, 2004. Section 3 of this paper is extracted from a book review published in the Review of Radical Political Economics Vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 413-416 and is include here with permission from URPE. Critical Theories of the Class Nature of the Soviet Union: A Marxian Survey 1. Introduction The ongoing systemic crisis of world capitalist system and solutions being imposed by the employers and their governments not only generate resistance and struggle but also an active search for a better world, for which a critical study of the Soviet experience is an integral part. This essay is a Marxian survey of three prominent critical theories of the class nature of the Soviet Union. Attention will be focused on the internal logic of these theories, their explanatory power but especially on their potential contribution to the development of a Marxian theory of transition to socialism. In October 1917, the workers and peasants of Russia inaugurated their own government. The proletarian character of this government based on the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies could be easily discerned from the January 10th 1918 resolution of the Third Congress of the All-Russia Soviets where unprecedented political, economic, social and cultural rights of workers and peasants were recognized and the socialist direction of the new society proclaimed. The new socialist civilization, in keeping with Marx’s teachings, was to be built on a scale surpassing the best capitalist world could offer. However, internal and external difficulties soon engulfed the new Soviet regime, workers’ and peasants' organizations were undermined, and deep divisions emerged within the leadership of the Bolshevik Party. The character of the new Soviet society and state became a subject of contention. Marx’s theory of communism1 developed from his radical critique of the class society in general and the capitalist system in particular. Accordingly, in Marx’s communism production, allocation and appropriation are planned by the self-governing “associated producers” as the market and the state, and with them alienation and oppression, have withered away. Such society requires a high degree of development of the productive forces (technique and culture) to unfold each person’s individuality and support its rounded development as the cooperative wealth flow abundantly to allow “from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.” However, Marx who was hopeful to see the socialist revolution start in France, extend to Germany, and be finally settled in England, was a materialist and a realist. He fully expected the post-revolutionary society that would issue from a successful proletarian revolution “in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still [be] stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges (Marx 1875:85).” Thus, the theory of transition from capitalism to communism remained the central issue for which no ready made prescriptions were available. In September of 1917 in preparation for this transitional phase, Lenin wrote the State and Revolution. Contrary to the anarchists, Lenin argued that the working people need their own state to advance the revolutionary transformation of the society. Still, Lenin stressed 1 In Marx, socialism was the lower stage of communism. They were both terms for a new mode of production of “associated producers.” 1 that “The working people need the state only to suppress the resistance of the exploiters, and only the proletariat can direct this suppression (Lenin 1917: 408).” Against Social Democratic theories that advocated state socialism, he emphasized that “the proletariat needs only a state which is withering away, i.e., a state so constituted that it begins to wither away immediately (Lenin 1917:407).” Using Marx and Engels’ guidelines generalized from the experience of the Paris Commune, Lenin proposed political and administrative measures to guard against the growth of a bureaucracy in the workers state. The workers state was to be built on the basis of class struggle mass organizations of the working people formed during the revolution in place of the shattered capitalist state machinery, including its bureaucracy. This brief background is sufficient to exclude the “really existing socialism” claim as a Marxian theory of the Soviet Union. This self-serving characterization of the Soviet Union as socialist or communist was prominent among both the Stalinists and anti- communist bourgeois ideologues. In April 4, 1936 issue of Pravda, for example, Stalinists boasted that: “In the Soviet Union the parasitical classes of capitalists, landlords and kulaks are completely liquidated, and thus is forever ended the exploitation of man by man. The whole national economy has become socialistic, and the growing Stakhanov movement is preparing the conditions for a transition from socialism to communism (cited in Trotsky 1937A:107-08).” From the perspectives of Marx and Lenin, the reality was the opposite of the Stalinist totalitarian regime that was being built through successive waves of purges, imprisonment and murder of tens of thousands of communist cadres, including the bulk of the central leadership of the Bolshevik Party, and, millions of workers and peasants. Thus, I limit this essay to critical theories of the Soviet Union. 2. Trotsky: a degenerated workers state Trotsky’s critical assessment of the class nature of Soviet Union evolved over two decades. Here, I focus attention on his later writings, in particular The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? (1937A). As most Marxist writings, this book is written in a polemical form, principally in response to the Stalinist claim that the Soviet Union has already achieve socialism (the lower stage of communism) and is heading for its final stage of development. It is important to recognize that the book is also partly written as a defense of the Russian revolution and its achievements still present in the Soviet Union, in the face of what Trotsky (correctly) predicated as the next imperialist world war. Of necessity, my account reflects a certain degree of simplification without, I hope, misrepresenting the main logic of his position. Trotsky begins with the presumption that the most essential achievement of the October revolution was the establishment of a workers state in Russia. The new state was founded on the basis of the proletarian revolution that nationalized the social means of production, distribution, finance, and international trade. On these bases, the Soviet Union was able to begin experimentation with central planning. 2 To assess the evolution of the Soviet society Trotsky begins with Marx’s emphasis on the material and cultural prerequisites for communism (Trotsky 1937A:45-46). This, he argues “is not exhausted by a consideration of property regardless of the achieved productivity of labor (ibid. 46-47).” The necessary level of labor productivity can only be determined relative to what has been achieved in the advanced capitalist countries. This is so, not only because the workers state needs to defend itself militarily, but more importantly, because of the prevalence of “bourgeois wants” in post-revolutionary society, which is a function of the conditions of the capitalist world economy (ibid. 57). Basing himself on Marx’s view that bourgeois norms of distribution will continue to prevail after the inauguration of the workers state, Lenin had argued that bourgeois norms of distribution of consumer goods inevitably presupposes a bourgeois state to enforce bourgeois law supporting such distribution. It follows that in the transition period “not only will bourgeois law survives for a certain time, but also even a bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie! (Lenin 1917:476)” From this Trotsky concludes the dual nature of the state in the transition period: It is “socialistic, insofar as it defends social property in the means of production; it is “bourgeois, insofar as it defends distribution of life’s goods…with a capitalistic measure of value and all the consequences ensuing there from (Trotsky 1937A:54).” Combining these theoretical considerations with the empirical phenomenon of the malignant growth of the bureaucracy and state and their rapid alienation from workers and peasants Trotsky draws a general conclusion: The tendencies of bureaucratism, which strangles the workers’ movement in capitalist countries, would everywhere show themselves even after a proletarian revolution…[T]he poorer the society which issues from a revolution, the sterner and more naked would be the forms assumed by bureaucratism, and the more dangerous would it become for socialist development (ibid 55). Thus, Trotsky reviews the Soviet experience: The transfer of the factories to the state changed the situation of the workers only juridically. In reality, he is compelled to live in want and work a definite number of hours for a definite wage. Those hopes which the worker formerly had placed in the party and the trade union, he transferred after the revolution to the state created by him. But the useful functioning of this implement turned to be limited by the level of technique and culture. In order to raise this level the new state resorted to the old methods of pressure upon muscles and nerves of the worker. There grew up a corps of slave divers. The management of the factory became super-bureaucratic. The workers lost all influence whatsoever upon the management of the factory. With piecework payment, hard conditions of material existence, lack of free movement, with terrible police repression penetrating the life of every factory…In the bureaucracy he sees the manager, in the state, the employer.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • On Althusser on Science, Ideology, and the New, Or Why We Should Continue to Read Reading Capital Geoff Pfeifer
    C Abstract: C R R I It is no secret that much of the criticism of Althusser’s work during the- I S period within which Reading Capital was written centers on his alleged S I I On Althusser S ‘theoreticism’, or the view that revolutionary practice needs theory (or S theoretical practice) if it is to be truly revolutionary and thus theory is pri- & & mary and autonomous whereas other forms of practice are secondary and C C R must be tied to theory insofar as it is only theory that can liberate practice R I from its entrapment in ideology (this is of course, in a very general sense, I on Science, T T I the foundation of the science/ideology split in Althusser’s work from this I Q period). As Jacques Rancière has put this criticism in his assessment of Q U U E Reading Capital, “this reading of Marx via Althusser and Lacan does little E more than give a new sheen to the thesis Kautsky had already defended: Ideology, and the / / science belongs to the intellectuals and it is up to them to bring it to Volume 2 / 1 Volume 2 / Issue 2 producers necessarily cut off from knowledge” Criticisms such as Ran- Issue 2 cière’s are what, in part, led Althusser himself to work to clarify his posi- tion during what we know as his ‘critical period’ wherein he argues that New, or Why We theory itself is a form a political intervention. This essay returns to these debates in order to point to the relevance of the central thesis of Reading Capital for our time arguing that ultimately, Althusser’s project is not one in which theory trumps other forms of practice, but rather one in which Should Continue Marxist theory (or science in the parlance of Reading Capital) is what can help us make sense of those moments in other forms of revolutionary practice that are distinct from the ideological field in which we find our- selves, and hence can aid us in marking the border between ideology and to Read Reading the new, the non-ideological, and the revolutionary.
    [Show full text]
  • Reichman on Linden, 'Western Marxism and the Soviet Union: a Survey of Critial Theories and Debates Since 1917'
    H-Russia Reichman on Linden, 'Western Marxism and the Soviet Union: A Survey of Critial Theories and Debates since 1917' Review published on Monday, November 10, 2008 Marcel van der Linden. Western Marxism and the Soviet Union: A Survey of Critial Theories and Debates since 1917. Leiden: Brill, 2007. ix + 380 pp. $139.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-90-04-15875-7. Reviewed by Henry Reichman Published on H-Russia (November, 2008) Commissioned by Nellie H. Ohr A Fading Tradition This is a revised, corrected, updated, and expanded version of a work that began as a PhD dissertation and was originally published in Dutch in 1989 and again in German in 1992. Marcel van der Linden, a labor historian at Amsterdam University and executive editor of theInternational Review of Social History, summarizes an extraordinarily broad range of Western Marxist thinkers in an effort to understand how Marxists who were politically independent of the Soviet Union "theoretically interpreted developments in the Soviet Union" (p. 4). Noting that "in the history of ideas Marxist theories have not received the attention they deserve" (p. 2) and that "the 'Russian Question' was an absolutely central problem for Marxism in the twentieth century" (p. 1), van der Linden seeks simultaneously to shed light on both the Soviet experience and "the historical development of Marxist thought" (p. 1), succeeding perhaps more in the latter goal than the former. The book opens with a brief introduction, which postulates that the development of Western Marxist thinking about the Soviet Union was shaped by three "contextual clusters:" 1) "The general theory of the forms of society (modes of production) and their succession" adopted by differing Marxist thinkers; 2) the changing "perception of stability and dynamism of Western capitalism"; and 3) the various ways "in which the stability and dynamism of Soviet society was perceived" (pp.
    [Show full text]
  • Political Space in the Work of Henri Lefebvre: Ideology and Utopia
    5/2012-13 Political Space in the Work of Henri Lefebvre: Ideology and Utopia Grégory BUSQUET, UMR LAVUE (Mosaïques), Université Paris Ouest Nanterre The ideas of philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991) are currently experiencing a revival in urban studies in France, while his theories on the city and urban society have been discussed and modified for many years in Anglophone social science literature. This new interest, which moreover extends to Europe, demonstrates however various uses of his philosophy: while some attempt to draw practical applications and to identify the influences of his theories on the practices of The Production of Space and on the usual uses of The Right to the City (Stanek, 2011), some philosophical or biographical exegeses ignore the concrete purpose of his reflections, namely, the socio-spatial processes of alienation, and occasionally at the same time turn up their noses at the setting in which they are expressed (social, political, urbanistic, etc.) and the conditions of their development. While some depoliticize his philosophy, giving it the currently popular slant (post-marxist) and emptying it of its subversive content and emancipating aim, as well as all references to conflict and the class struggle, others, conversely, especially abroad in the work of the supporters of Anglo-Saxon “radical geography”, take their inspiration from Lefebvre and do not allow their thoughts on space to be disassociated from an analysis of class or an analysis in terms of politics1. This article would be in alignment with the latter perspective, resituating Lefebvre’s thought on space and all its criticism, theoretical and practical alike, at the heart of that which in our opinion makes it unique, namely, it’s relationship with the political.
    [Show full text]
  • Socialism in One Country” Promoting National Identity Based on Class Identification
    “Socialism in One Country” Promoting National Identity Based on Class Identification IVAN SZPAKOWSKI The Russian Empire of the Romanovs spanned thousands of miles from the Baltic to the Pacific, with a population of millions drawn from dozens of ethnic groups. Following the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks inherited the problem of holding together such a heterogeneous body. At the same time, they were forced to uphold Marxist ideology demanding worldwide revolution of the proletariat while facing the reality that despite the turmoil following the First World War no such revolution was forthcoming. In 1924 the rising Joseph Stalin, along with Nikolai Bukharin, devised the theory of “Socialism in One Country” which would become the solution to many of these problems facing the Bolsheviks. First of all, it proclaimed the ability of socialism to succeed in the Soviet Union alone, without foreign aid. Additionally, it marked a change from Lenin’s policy of self-determination for the Soviet Union’s constituent nations to Stalin’s policy of a compulsory unitary state. These non-Russian ethnics were systematically and firmly incorporated into the Soviet Union by the promotion of a proletariat class mentality. The development of the theory and policy of “Socialism in One Country” thus served to forge the unitary national identity of the Soviet Union around the concept of common Soviet class identity. The examination of this policy’s role in building a new form of national identity is dependant on a variety of sources, grouped into several subject areas. First, the origin of the term “Socialism in One Country,” its original meaning and its interpretation can be found in the speeches and writings of prominent contemporary communist leaders, chief among them: Stalin and Trotsky.
    [Show full text]
  • Vygotsky and Marxism
    10 Vygotsky and Marxism Danling Fu There has been great interest in Vygotsky and in how his mathematical formula or recipe which guided him rigidly in views affect the understanding of learning and teaching since his psychological analysis. Instead, he digested it, in his word, the early 80's in the United States. Today, this interest con- "internalized" it and transformed it into his own principle tinues to grow and Vygotsky's views continue to affect the which dominated his way of thinking and directed his study improvement and reform of contemporary education in the of human psychological development. As he said "I don't United States. New interest in his theories has been sparked want to discover the nature of mind by patching together a too in Russia after his work has been decreed as reactionary lot of quotations. I want to find out how science has to be bourgeois pseudoscience for sixty years. Also after Vygotsky built, to approach the study of the mind having learned the has been labeled as an anti-Marxist bourgeois psychologist whole of Marx's method" (Mind in Society, p. 8). Vygotsky's for decades in his country, he is recognized as a devout Marx- thinking and approach are Marxist, as claimed by Wertsch, ist. Russian Vygotskian expert, Toulmin (1981) wrote: "in more subtle but no less fundamental ways," and his debt to Marx "runs deeper than is commonly recognized" (1985, Vygotsky was happy to call himself a Marxist. The historical- p. 5). materialist approach ensured the success of his scientific To cut off Vygotsky from Marx is to look at him frag- investigations; this was the philosophy that armed him, gave mentally and to separate his work from its theoretical basis.
    [Show full text]
  • The Bolshevil{S and the Chinese Revolution 1919-1927 Chinese Worlds
    The Bolshevil{s and the Chinese Revolution 1919-1927 Chinese Worlds Chinese Worlds publishes high-quality scholarship, research monographs, and source collections on Chinese history and society from 1900 into the next century. "Worlds" signals the ethnic, cultural, and political multiformity and regional diversity of China, the cycles of unity and division through which China's modern history has passed, and recent research trends toward regional studies and local issues. It also signals that Chineseness is not contained within territorial borders ­ overseas Chinese communities in all countries and regions are also "Chinese worlds". The editors see them as part of a political, economic, social, and cultural continuum that spans the Chinese mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, South­ East Asia, and the world. The focus of Chinese Worlds is on modern politics and society and history. It includes both history in its broader sweep and specialist monographs on Chinese politics, anthropology, political economy, sociology, education, and the social­ science aspects of culture and religions. The Literary Field of New Fourth Artny Twentieth-Century China Communist Resistance along the Edited by Michel Hockx Yangtze and the Huai, 1938-1941 Gregor Benton Chinese Business in Malaysia Accumulation, Ascendance, A Road is Made Accommodation Communism in Shanghai 1920-1927 Edmund Terence Gomez Steve Smith Internal and International Migration The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Chinese Perspectives Revolution 1919-1927 Edited by Frank N Pieke and Hein Mallee
    [Show full text]
  • Volume 1 May-June 1917 No. 1
    TtfCIMSTQMQOli: Devoted to International Socialism Published by The Socialist Publication Society, 115 Worth St., N. Y. City Issued Every Two Months—25^ a Copy; $1.50 a Year Editor.: LOUIS B. BOUDIN, LOUIS C. FRAINA, LUDWIG LORE Vol. I MAY-JUNE, 1917 No. 1 THE TASK BEFORE US The world-war found the Socialists in a deplorable state of mental unpreparedness, and they were, therefore, quite un- equal to the task of coping with the tremendous issues which it brought forward for immediate and radical solution. The ques- tions to which an instant and categorical answer was demanded were not, indeed, new or unfamiliar to Socialists. On the con- trary, they were intimately related to the fundamentals of So- cialist philosophy and action, to questions, moreover, upon which- the Socialist movement seemed to be in almost unanimous agree- ment—the questions of the international character of the Social- ist movement and its opposition to war. But the war, like all great crises, served to reveal the latent weaknesses and defects of the Socialist movement as it then was. Its inexorable demands for instant and radical action revealed the fact that during the peace era that preceded it, the Socialist movement slurred over difficulties instead of solving them; that in order to save the for- mal unity of the movement agreement on fundamentals was assumed rather than obtained. Mere formal unanimity thus achieved was not only useless in the face of a serious crisis, but served to aggravate it greatly by creating confusion in many minds that would otherwise have been clear, palsying hands that would otherwise have been vigorous, and producing an at- mosphere of betrayal where only disagreement existed.
    [Show full text]
  • The Nationalist Message in Socialist Code: on the Court Historiography in People's Poland and North Korea
    The Nationalist Message in Socialist Code: On the Court Historiography in People’s Poland and North Korea* Jie-Hyun Lim (Seoul, Republic of Korea) I. Introduction The fall of the really existing socialist system shed fresh light on the ideological topology in the twentieth century. It is generally argued that after the Fall, nationalism, an ideology of the right, took over from the bankrupt socialist utopias of the left. It is assumed that the Fall triggered the eruption of many different kinds of old-fashioned patriotism, revivalist messianism, conservative nationalism, xenophobia and so on. The dichotomy of the right‟s nationalism and left‟s socialism made this argument plausible. In purely theoretical terrain this dichotomy seems to be correct. A further reflection on the historical reality, however, would deny that dichotomy. Communist regimes had leant on the nationalist pillar in their search for legitimacy in various ways. In fact the official nationalism prevailed under the propaganda banner of socialist patriotism and proletarian internationalism. To cite Adam Michnik, “nationalism was the last word of Communism. A final attempt to find a social basis for dictatorship…”1 The official nationalism in the socialist regimes has another name: „apparatchik nationalism,‟ coined by Peter Sugar. Apparatchik nationalism was not the only form of nationalism that existed in the socialist regimes. Nationalism was also an articulation of the political opposition to Communism. In fact the popular nationalism was the offspring of the official nationalism. The socialist regime tried the „nationalization‟ of history and kept the state monopoly on history. It reprogrammed the popular memory on the basis of official nationalism.
    [Show full text]
  • The Problem of Social Class Under Socialism Author(S): Sharon Zukin Source: Theory and Society, Vol
    The Problem of Social Class under Socialism Author(s): Sharon Zukin Source: Theory and Society, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Nov., 1978), pp. 391-427 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/656759 Accessed: 24-06-2015 21:55 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/656759?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Theory and Society. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 132.236.27.111 on Wed, 24 Jun 2015 21:55:45 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 391 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL CLASS UNDER SOCIALISM SHARON ZUKIN Posing the problem of social class under socialismimplies that the concept of class can be removed from the historical context of capitalist society and applied to societies which either do not know or do not claim to know the classicalcapitalist mode of production. Overthe past fifty years, the obstacles to such an analysis have often led to political recriminationsand termino- logical culs-de-sac.
    [Show full text]
  • Nine Lives of Neoliberalism
    A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Plehwe, Dieter (Ed.); Slobodian, Quinn (Ed.); Mirowski, Philip (Ed.) Book — Published Version Nine Lives of Neoliberalism Provided in Cooperation with: WZB Berlin Social Science Center Suggested Citation: Plehwe, Dieter (Ed.); Slobodian, Quinn (Ed.); Mirowski, Philip (Ed.) (2020) : Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, ISBN 978-1-78873-255-0, Verso, London, New York, NY, https://www.versobooks.com/books/3075-nine-lives-of-neoliberalism This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/215796 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative
    [Show full text]
  • Joel Kotkin: the New Class Conflict Study Guide, 2014
    Scholars Crossing Faculty Publications and Presentations Helms School of Government 2014 Joel Kotkin: The New Class Conflict Study Guide, 2014 Steven Alan Samson Liberty University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/gov_fac_pubs Part of the Political Science Commons, and the Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons Recommended Citation Samson, Steven Alan, "Joel Kotkin: The New Class Conflict Study Guide, 2014" (2014). Faculty Publications and Presentations. 437. https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/gov_fac_pubs/437 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Helms School of Government at Scholars Crossing. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications and Presentations by an authorized administrator of Scholars Crossing. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 JOEL KOTKIN: THE NEW CLASS CONFLICT STUDY GUIDE, 2014 Steven Alan Samson Epigraph: “In every republic there are two parties, that of the nobles and that of the people; and all the laws that are favorable to liberty result from the opposition of these parties to each other. Good examples [mimetic desire] are the results of good education, and good education is due to good laws; and good laws in their turn spring from those very agitations which have been so inconsiderately condemned by many. The demands of a free people are rarely pernicious to their liberty; they are generally inspired by oppressions, experienced or apprehended; and if their fears are ill founded, resort is had to public assemblies where the mere eloquence of a single good or respectable man will make them sensible of their error.” – Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy FOREWORD: FIXING THE BROKEN COMPASS Outline A.
    [Show full text]
  • Class Structure and Political Ideology
    CLASS STRUCTURE AND POLITICAL IDEOLOGY Val Burris Marxist theorists have devoted much eVort recently to the clari cation of the concept of class and the elaboration of alternative models of class structure. The main focus of this theorizing has been the class position of salaried intermediaries and their role in the class struggle. With a few exceptions, most Marxists today recognize the existence in advanced capitalist society of a signi cant group of people who cannot be included in the working class, even though they work for a salary or wage. Various names have been applied, to this group—“new middle class,” “new petty bourgeoisie,” or “professional-managerial class”—and com- peting theories have been advanced to explain the nature and signi cance of these positions within the class structure. Disagreements over how to conceptualize intermediate class positions have prompted extensive debates over the basic principles of Marxist class analysis and the application of those principles to modern capitalist society. Three issues have been central to this debate. First is the de nitional question of specifying the boundaries of classes—especially the bound- ary which separates intermediate class positions from the working class. Second is the conceptual issue of clarifying the nature and identity of these intermediate class positions. Do they qualify as a “class” in the full sense of the term? lf so, do they constitute a new class within advanced capitalism or the evolution of some earlier intermediate class? Third is the political question of predicting the alignment of this group in the struggle between capital and labor.
    [Show full text]