Is Suppression a Rule of Marxism?

[Ardsgaine]

The question has been raised as to whether the use of force is part of the theory of communism, or whether its use by every communist country is simply a perversion of the theory. I pulled out my copy of The Marx-Engels Reader to examine the question more indepth.

Marx certainly reserved the right to use force where necessary in order to bring the proletariat into power, but what about after the revolution? What would be the role of force in a communist state? According to the editor of MER, Rober C. Tucker, Marx and Engels said very little about what a communist society would look like after the proletariat took power. There is some evidence for Marx's view on this in his response to a tract by Mikhail Bakunin. Bakunin was an anarcho-socialist who was critical of Marx's theories. The tract he wrote was entitled Statehood and Anarchy. I was able to find an online copy of the unpublished notes that Marx made in response to Bakunin's criticisms. Here are some extracts (I've emphasized certain points in bold type. Italics are from the original):

We have already stated our deep opposition to the theory of Lassalle and Marx, which recommends to the workers, if not as final ideal then at least as the next major aim -- the foundation of a people's state, which, as they have expressed it, will be none other than the proletariat organized as ruling class. The question arises, if the proletariat becomes the ruling class, over whom will it rule? It means that there will still remain another proletariat, which will be subject to this new domination, this new state.

It means that so long as the other classes, especially the capitalist class, still exists, so long as the proletariat struggles with it (for when it attains government power its enemies and the old organization of society have not yet vanished), it must employ forcible means, hence governmental means. It is itself still a class and the economic conditions from which the class struggle and the existence of classes derive have still not disappeared and must forcibly be either removed out of the way or transformed, this transformation process being forcibly hastened.

e.g. the krestyanskaya chern, the common peasant folk, the peasant mob, which as is well known does not enjoy the goodwill of the Marxists, and which, being as it is at the lowest level of culture, will apparently be governed by the urban factory proletariat.

i.e. where the peasant exists in the mass as private proprietor, where he even forms a more or less considerable majority, as in all states of the west European continent, where he has not disappeared and been replaced by the agricultural wage-labourer, as in England, the following cases apply: either he hinders each workers' revolution, makes a wreck of it, as he has formerly done in France, or the proletariat (for the peasant proprietor does not belong to the proletariat, and even where his condition is proletarian, he believes himself not to) must as government take measures through which the peasant finds his condition immediately improved, so as to win him for the revolution; measures which will at least provide the possibility of easing the transition from private ownership of land to collective ownership, so that the peasant arrives at this of his own accord, from economic reasons. It must not hit the peasant over the head, as it would e.g. by proclaiming the abolition of the right of inheritance or the abolition of his property. The latter is only possible where the capitalist tenant farmer has forced out the peasants, and where the true cultivator is just as good a proletarian, a wage-labourer, as is the town worker, and so has immediately, not just indirectly, the very same interests as him. Still less should small-holding property be strengthened, by the enlargement of the peasant allotment simply through peasant annexation of the larger estates, as in Bakunin's revolutionary campaign.

Looking at the highlighted portions and comparing them to what happened to the peasants in Russia, one sees that Marx layed the foundation for the deliberate starvation of about 10 million people in the Ukraine. The proletariat has the right to "forcibly remove" or "transform" those classes that resist the proletarian revolution. He specifically identifies the peasants as one class that has resisted the domination of the proletariat in the past. Although he says that their condition must be improved in order to bring them on the side of the revolution, what happens if improving their condition does not bring them over? Well, then they must be forcibly removed. That is precisely what happened in the Ukraine.

When the Bolsheviks took power in Russia, they attempted to collectivize agriculture in keeping with their desire to turn the peasant into a wage earner, a member of the proletariat. They ran into resistance and the effort generated food shortages, so Lenin backed off and insituted the New Economic Plan. Conditions in the Ukraine improved, but instead of winning over the peasants, the improvement inspired a nationalist revival and a desire for independence. When Stalin came to power he "forcibly removed" this obstacle to the proletarian revolution by engineering a famine in the Ukraine that killed about 10 million people. An aberration, or part and parcel of the Marxist theory?

More on the Famine in the Ukraine

 

[Gonz]

Didja ever notice, these people use $20. words to confuse the masses educated on $1.? I understood what's being said but damn, there has to be an easier way to say it.

the peasant proprietor does not belong to the proletariat, and even where his condition is proletarian, he believes himself not to

 

[Ardsgaine]

Didja ever notice, these people use $20. words to confuse the masses educated on $1.? I understood what's being said but damn, there has to be an easier way to say it.

The greater the evil they have to hide, the more obscure they are. Marx is a paragon of clarity compared to Kant:

In whatsoever mode, or by whatsoever means, our knowledge may relate to objects, it is at least quite clear that the only manner in which it immediately relates to them is by means of an intuition. To this as the indispensable groundwork, all thought points. But an intuition can take place only in so far as the object is given to us. This, again, is only possible, to man at least, on condition that the object affect the mind in a certain manner. The capacity for receiving representations (receptivity) through the mode in which we are affected by objects, objects, is called sensibility. By means of sensibility, therefore, objects are given to us, and it alone furnishes us with intuitions; by the understanding they are thought, and from it arise conceptions. But an thought must directly, or indirectly, by means of certain signs, relate ultimately to intuitions; consequently, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

I'll hate him until the day I die....

 

[chcr]

That bastard, Kant wrote:

 

[Gonz]

what's he say

 

[Jeslek]

Kant said:

"Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means but always at the same time as an end."

Basically, Kant's Categorical Imperative said something in the order of one should act on a maxim thst can be willed to be a universal law, and one ought to always treat other people as having intrinsic value, not merely as a means to an end.

There is a good article concerning Kant and business called "A Kantian Approach to Business Ethics" by Norman E. Bowie.

Kant argued that:
- the highest good was the good will
- the intention is better than the consequences
- good people do their duty because it is their duty and not for any other reason
- three main formulations:
-- act only on maxims which you can will to be universal laws of nature
-- always treat the humanity in a person as an end, and never as a means to an end
-- so act as if you were a member of an ideal kingdom of end in which you were both subject and sovereign at the same time

So, what I'm trying to say (this is from my philosophy class notes hehe) is, for you to say whether an action is good or bad, you have to ask yourself the question Can this be a universal truth? If it was, would it be good or bad?

Example. Suppose you do some money for a good goal, but the only way you can get it is to lie. Kant would say you would have to ask yourself whether lying can be a universal truth and if it would be good or bad if everyone was lying. Obviously it would be bad, so in this case, don't lie!

He was an idiot ihmo.

 

[Ardsgaine]

Kant said:

Not that the stuff about Kant isn't interesting *cough*rubbish*cough*, but let's get back to communism...

Here's a quote from Engels where he argues against the anarcho-socialists who he describes as anti-authoritarians:

Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the authoritarian political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon-- authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough.

Is suppression part and parcel of communist theory?

 

[freako104]

i think to an extent it is. as i said elsewhere i learned you give up free will in marx's idea of communism.

 

[Ardsgaine]

as i said elsewhere i learned you give up free will in marx's idea of communism.

It's not so much that you give up free will, Marx simply doesn't believe in free will. He believes that our choices are determined by the economic and social forces acting on us. Since he doesn't believe in free will, he doesn't believe in freedom either. A bayonet or the muzzle of a gun, those are just social forces affecting our choices, not a violation of rights. In a communist state, people still have free will, they're just not allowed to exercise it.

 

[Jeslek]

The Communists' chief purpose is to destroy every form of independence--independent work, independent action, independent property, independent thought, an independent mind, or and independent man. Conformity, alikeness, servility, submission and obedience are necessary to establish a Communist slave-state.

From: Screen Guide for Americans, quoting Ayn Rand in Plain Talk