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Overview
What these writers shared was a commitment to the values of socialism-from-below, the idea that change must be driven by the mass movements of the oppressed. In a world dominated by slump, fascism and war, they retained a commitment to total democracy.
Dissident Marxism describes the left in history. Some readers will enjoy it as a history of revolutionary socialism in the years between Stalin's rise and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Others will find here a challenging thesis — that the most enduring of left-wing traditions, and highly relevant to the times we live in today, were located in a space between the New Left and Trotskyism. Dissident Marxism explores the lives and thinking of some of the most creative and striking members of the twentieth century left, and asks if the new anti-capitalist movement might provide an opportunity for just such another left-wing generation to emerge?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781842772935 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Publication date: | 04/08/2004 |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.64(d) |
About the Author
David Renton is currently a Senior Research Fellow at Sunderland University. Before that, he worked as an Education Officer for the Trades Union Congress in London. He gained his MA in Modern History at Oxford University in 1995, and his PhD at Sheffield University in 1998. He has lectured at Edge Hill College of Higher Education in Ormskirk, at Rhodes University in South Africa and at Nottingham Trent University.
Read an Excerpt
Dissident Marxism
Past Voices for Present Times
By David Renton
Zed Books Ltd
Copyright © 2004 David RentonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84813-092-0
CHAPTER 1
Dissident Marxism 1917–1989
In order to explain the distinctive character of the left in this period, it is appropriate to introduce the main historical forces. This chapter describes the most important processes that shaped the lives of the dissident left, including the trajectory of capitalism in this period, and the main traditions of the dissident and non-dissident left. There is not the space to offer a full history of the short twentieth century, nor even to provide a complete history of dissident Marxism. The history of this tradition was too diverse for it to be summarised in the limited space here. The purpose of this chapter is simply to introduce some key issues, which will be developed more fully in the subsequent chapters.
This chapter begins with a history not of the left, but of the world around it. It would be possible to write a history of socialism which was purely internal in character, but such a history would be misleading. At its best, the dissident left was an activist, combatant tradition. Any history of the left that observes only its own favourites can make no sense of their distinctive position. It would be like a Hollywood film of the Second World War, but a distinct one in which every single actor played a British or American role. If there were no opponents, then why was there a conflict? Before examining any movements of the left — either the dominant traditions of Stalinism and social democracy or the challengers which sprang away from them — it is right to say something about the way in which the world's economic and political system developed in these years. The changing nature of capitalism was the most important factor in making the left what it became.
The other side
At the start of our period, the majority of people lived on the land. Large numbers had already migrated from small towns and the countryside into the major cities. There, they exchanged forms of near-subsistence farming for a new life as paid industrial labourers. Huge proletarian bastions were formed in such cities as Glasgow, Turin, Paris, London, St Petersburg, Chicago and Berlin. The voters from these districts had already chosen socialism. In Germany, for example, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) received by 1914 roughly twice as many votes as each of the conservative parties combined. In global politics, the world was divided into several blocs. The great military powers, including the French, British, Ottoman, Russia, Japanese, Austro-Hungarian and German empires, controlled vast territories, and many diverse peoples. The greatest economic power was Britain, but her influence was slipping. As recently as 1850, around one-half of the world's industrial production had been controlled by the United Kingdom. Sixty-five years later, there was a rough parity between the volume of industrial goods (minerals, metals and chemicals) produced by each of America, Britain and Germany. The economic competition between these mighty states was a major factor pushing the world towards war. In the meantime, other processes were working to change the world. Among them can be counted the development of science and technology, the spread of democracy, the growth of liberation movements among the colonial people and next among women and other 'minorities', the capture of the world's population by the unit of the state, the relative decline of some powers (Austria, Britain), and the rise of others (Russia and the USA).
These seventy-five years witnessed extraordinary progress in human understanding of the world, and in the mastering of technique to apply this knowledge. In the field of biology, breakthroughs included the discovery of penicillin and vaccination. In physics, Einstein's theory of general relativity was confirmed in 1918. It was followed by the validation of quantum mechanics, and the splitting of the atom. Yet the application of science was manifested not only in the spread of new products, cars, cinema and radio (in the 1930s), television and washing machines (in the 1950s and 1960s). The spread of technology also enabled other people to perfect the technique of killing. Millions died in the two world wars. We should also remember those civilians who were murdered in Armenia in 1915–23, in the Ukraine during collectivisation, in the Holocaust, and those killed by US bombers in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia during the 1960s and 1970s.
Over the period as a whole, two important ideas seem to have gained currency. One was that every person in the world belonged to a certain state. Another was that the political leadership of these societies should not be fixed by inheritance, but instead should be decided with some reference to the choices of the people living in them. The proliferation of a consensus in favour of political democracy helps to explain why it was that at the start of our period only two states in Africa enjoyed independence (Liberia and Ethiopia), while at the end the majority of states possessed limited political sovereignty. The most important single story of these years was the gaining of democracy by the nations of the Third World: a process which continued through until the defeat of American forces in Vietnam. By the end of our period, some degree of internal equality had also been won, for example by the women's liberation and Black Power movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
Although such secular trends as the proliferation of science, war, feminism and democracy are important, it is also useful to talk about the different periods that people lived through. From one period to another, the strategies of the people in power varied. Successive decades 'felt' different — even if sometimes the exact contrasts were hard to pin down. The most obvious breaks occurred at the levels of the states and state policy. Ruling-class tactics changed from one period to the next. Between 1914 and 1929, for example, the shape of the world was determined by the events of the First World War. The conflict was a total mobilisation of people and capital, in which ten million died. The conduct of the war was economic. The two main rivals, Britain and Germany, attempted to starve each other to death. States were given unprecedented powers to organise their people for war. Strong states with huge economic powers having been established, there was a profound unwillingness after 1918 to return to the pre-war liberal order. Into the 1920s, the end of the war seemed to create a brief economic boom. The new machinery that had been produced was given over to peacetime tasks. In America, the 1920s were seen as prosperous and carefree — the jazz age — an era of conspicuous wealth. Yet in Europe the short boom of 1919–21 was followed by decline. The victorious powers blamed Germany for war and demanded compensation. Reparations were set at an extraordinary level, $33 billion. In the aftermath of war, Germany owed money to France, France to Britain, Britain to America. The fact that reparations were set so high encouraged non-payment, and the easiest way to do this was through reducing the value of the German mark. A cycle of debt, inflation and crisis was established, whose consequences would only become apparent after 1929.
While most of the world seemed to be set on re-creating the conditions that had caused the great war, one society appeared to have broken out of this harsh cycle. Following the victory of the Bolsheviks in October 1917, Russia declared itself a revolutionary, socialist society. Given what we know of the long demise of the revolution, it is hard now to understood the sheer enthusiasm with which people initially set about creating a new world. For its first six months, the sovereign body in Russia was the soviet, in each city an assembly of working-class representatives. The new society granted women the rights to divorce, contraception and abortion. New forms of art prospered, new relationships in life. Indeed the revolution was supposed to spread. A Communist International was established to speed up this process. Russia itself was renamed the 'Union of Soviet Socialist Republics', its very name implying that the idea of socialism should expand beyond mere borders. Banknotes were printed with 'Workers of the World Unite' in all the main languages of the world. Even those societies that were most opposed to the change they saw responded by imitating some of its features. Within a year of women gaining the vote in Russia, they won it also in the USA. American President Woodrow Wilson came out as a convert to the rights of small nations. The USSR was a revolutionary threat to the old order. While it lasted, there could be no simple return to the pre-1914 ways.
A second period began with the Great Depression that followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The recession led to the most terrible waste of human life. By the mid-1930s, world trade had fallen by two-thirds. The Depression legitimised a particular form of economics, capitalism with a stronger state. One economy that survived the crash unharmed was the Soviet Union, secure behind a wall of protective tariffs. There the early 1930s was an epoch of growth, as millions of peasants were forced to leave the countryside for the towns. They contributed to the construction of huge iron and steel plants, like Magnitogorsk behind the Urals, one of the largest steel plants in the world. By the mid-1930s, the economies of each of the major powers had become intertwined with the industrial bureaux of each state, as public-sector-driven growth seemed to be the best means to escape global slump. The most extreme form of militarised state capitalism was Nazi Germany. Hitler's party was the main beneficiary of the slump, moving in just three years from the margins of politics to the centre of power. Yet fascism was not merely a new economic form of capitalism; it was also a different form of politics, content to use the utmost brutality against its own people. The challenge of opposing fascism was one of the most urgent tasks that the left faced in this whole period. The dynamic of fascism pointed always towards military competition leading to war. Once one of the world's major powers had developed in that direction, then it was likely that several of the others would follow.
The era of state capitalism culminated in the war of 1939–45. Even the democratic powers copied the economic habits of the dictatorships. Major companies were nationalised. In Britain, a Tory minister of agriculture drafted plans to nationalise every single acre of land! Yet at the same time, the idea also emerged that such extraordinary power should be used not for war, but to defend the conditions of the people. There were two faces to the state capitalism of the 1930s and 1940s. The desire to prevent another depression led both to the militarised state and to welfare-state capitalism. The same processes of state management caused both the most terrible later slaughter and egalitarian change.
After the war, most states began the process of constructing a welfare society, often funded by the workers through insurance schemes, sometimes paid for through general taxation. In the two decades after 1945, life itself seemed to demonstrate that the alliance between private capital and the state was the most successful way to run a country. In this period social democracy also reasserted itself, as the movement most committed to the public sector. Through the 1950s and 1960s, capitalism enjoyed the longest boom it has known in its entire history. The economic security of the times was matched by the political stability of the Cold War. There were now two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, the two victors of the war. Military competition was pushed to the margins of the system. Both powers sought to assert their strength, not through the direct colonial rule of the nineteenth century, but through creating indirect 'spheres of influence' in Europe, Asia and Africa.
This system was based on conditions that did not, perhaps could not, last. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the cost of remaining a superpower was too great for either of the major powers to bear. Ironically, it was the USA that buckled first — suffering setbacks and eventual defeat in the Vietnam War. Students and young workers took to the streets. New forms of protest politics emerged, in every country, based on race, gender and sexuality. Yet when the system stabilised itself again, life had changed. The public-sector model had lost its élan. Now, the whole world moved in the direction of privatisation. The most successful economic forms appeared to be the giant multinationals, many of which were now richer than whole states. Welfare-state capitalism was now presented as the cause of poverty. The election of Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the USA highlighted the transition to a new era marked by the ascendancy of globalised, private capitalism.
Nowhere was the new era more destructive than in the old Eastern bloc. Incapable of sustaining economic competition, the rulers of the USSR turned towards a project of reform. Yet the person charged with managing the transition, Mikhail Gorbachev, was unable to control his own project. Members of Russia's oppressed nationalities demanded full independence. Workers were unwilling to bear the cost of transition. Gorbachev attempted to navigate between reform and revolution, but the pressure of the outside world was too great. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. Two years later, the Soviet Union was dissolved. The process of transition only secured the position of the elites. The old leaders of the Communist Party and the Communist Youth succeeding in reinventing themselves as nationalist politicians or businessmen, the owners of local concerns. One witness, Olga Kryshtanovskaya, has described the transformation from the system of state management to the new private capitalist form. 'A ministry would be abolished, and in its ruins a business concern would be created in the form of a joint-stock company (same building, same furniture, same personnel) ... as a rule, the second or third figure in the abolished ministry would become head of the concern.' The transition of Eastern Europe was less violent or dramatic than the equivalent processes of 1917 or 1928–32. Yet the system that emerged was new: an entire historical epoch had reached its end.
Challenges
So far, the events of the twentieth century have been described in an almost 'neutral' fashion. The point of remembering these years, though, is in order to explain the motives of the dissident left. From the perspective of socialist activists, what were the challenges facing the workers' movement between 1917 and 1989? When could we say that a movement had lived up to its duties, and when could we say that it had failed? One task was clearly the need to retain a commitment to the long-standing belief in workers' international fraternity. The urgency of this task was demonstrated (negatively) by the great betrayal of 4 August 1914, when the world's socialist parties failed to unite against the threat of slaughter. More positively, people could look on the example of 1936, when workers from all over the developed world travelled to Spain, to join the international fight against fascism.
As far as the dissident Marxists were concerned, a second test was the need to make sense of developments in Russia, including both the rise and the decline of the revolution there. This task faced socialists in the East, and indeed activists all over the world. If in the 1950s or the 1980s it was correct that the Soviet Union was still socialist, as its defenders claimed, then surely this meant that socialism should be defined as a police state run by a privileged gerontocracy? Such a 'utopia' was not an attractive prospect. Meanwhile, those writers and activists who insisted that Russia had nothing to do with the form of socialism that they sought had themselves to explain how an oppressive society could have emerged from what had been the first successful workers' revolution in the world.
A third challenge required socialists to explain what exactly was taking place in the world economy. In the 1920s, the most important financial processes included the re-establishment of a world economy in the ruins of the war. Initially, it was unclear whether this system would be dominated by private or state capital. Through the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, the nature of capitalism changed. Roosevelt's New Deal was of course different from Hitler's Nazi Germany, yet the relative success of both societies seemed to prove the virtue of a managed society. The left had to explain whether a mixed economy was 'better' than a private economy. If nationalisation was the answer, then why did the list of societies with the most state ownership include both Stalin's Russia and Mussolini's Italy? Were they really a model for socialists? This question was not merely a theoretical challenge but a practical one as well. Those people who supported nationalisation — or any alternative system — then went forward, and attempted to make it happen.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Dissident Marxism by David Renton. Copyright © 2004 David Renton. Excerpted by permission of Zed Books Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1. Introduction 2. Dissident Marxism 1917-1989 3. Mayakovsky, Kollontai, Lunacharsky, Serge: Questioning the Soviet Path 4. Karl Korsch: Marxism and Philosophy 5. Georges Henein: Surrealism and Socialism 6. Dona Torr, E. P. Thompson: Socialist History 7. Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy and Monopoly Capital 8. Walter Rodney, African Socialist 9. Harry Braverman: Work and Resistance 10. Samir Amin: Theorising Underdevelopment 11. David Widgery: The Poetics of Propaganda 12. The Dissident Tradition Further Reading