Socialism in One Country - Kasama

(from the debate on witbd)

You quote Trotsky saying: "The basis for the theory of socialism in one country, as we have seen, sums up to sophistic interpretations of several lines from Lenin on the one hand, and to a scholastic interpretation of the “law of uneven development” on the other. By giving a correct interpretation of the historic law as well as of the quotations in question we arrive at a directly opposite conclusion, that is, the conclusion that was reached by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and all of us, including Stalin and Bukharin, up to 1925."

This is wrong on every level.

First, our theory is not based on previous theory -- in some dogmatic, textual, semi-religious way. Our theory of Marxism (past and present) is based on an analysis of reality. (Real contradictions, real events, real choices)

In other words, the fact that Marx, Engels or Lenin thought the socialist revolution would develop one way (based in western europe) and it IN FACT developed some other way -- should not be surprising.

As Lenin quoted Goethe: "Theory is gray and the tree of real life is evergreen."

Theory by its nature lags behind practice. And the speculations of marxists about events that havent happened yet, are often both prophetic in big ways and mistaken in big ways. (Welcome to the dilemmas of real scientific thought!)

It is a reality of real world events, that the socialist revolution proved to be a process that has happened in separate countries at different times. (Which is an example of the "law of uneven development.) It is a fact of history that the two main socialist revolutions (Russia 1917 and China 1949) happened thirty years apart, in a world still dominated by imperialism.

Unlike what Marx or Engels or even perhaps Lenin expected, these revolutions did not happen where capitalism was most developed, but where it was weakest -- which is where the impact of capitalist war and the agony of continuing feudalism broke holes in the imperialist system.

When those revolutions happened, the victorious revolutionary forces HAD to develop new productive relations, a new mode of production. And those relations could only be either capitalism or socialism. There is no third choice.

So the need and possibility to make a socialist revolution in one country does not come from this or that quote, or this or that expectation by nineteenth century socialists -- it comes from real life. And that is where our theory (correct theory, real Marxism) comes from.

You quote Trotsky saying: "From the uneven sporadic development of capitalism flows the non-simultaneous, uneven, and sporadic character of the socialist revolution; from the extreme tensity of the interdependence of the various countries upon each other flows not only the political but also the economic impossibility of building socialism in one country.

Actually, it has proven possible to develop new societies in large liberated countries. It is difficult. The new society is marked heavily with the remnants weight of the old society AND with the pressure of continuing imperialism. The Soviet Union was invaded -- including by the modern Nazi Army. China was encircled -- and the U.S. landed massive land armies first in Korea and then in Vietnam to "contain" and threaten the Maoist revolution.

But reality has proven Trotsky's scholastic and pessimist prediction to be false.

Trotsky writes: "The productive forces are incompatible with national boundaries. Hence flow not only foreign trade, the export of men and capital, the seizure of territories, the colonial policy, and the last imperialist war, but also the economic impossibility of a self-sufficient socialist society. The productive forces of capitalist countries have long since broken through the national boundaries. Socialist society, however, can be built only on the most advanced productive forces, on the application of electricity and chemistry to the processes of production including agriculture; on combining, generalizing, and bringing to maximum development the highest elements of modern technology."

This is actually a series of disconnected statements disguised as a logical proof.

It is true that capitalism has outgrown national boundaries. Imperialism organizes the world economy so that the imperialist countries have articulated and exploitative economies -- while the third world has disarticulated and exploited economies.

This disarticulation means that in these countries the national economies are organized to serve a "istant heartbeat" -- in Honduras the railroads only run to the sea, in Mexico or Puerto Rico, factories insert zippers, but the cloth is brought from somewhere else. The infrastructures serve imperialist investments, while the people often have no electiricy -- and so on.

So, in practice, socialist economies have, so far, been formed in relative isolation from the surrounding world capitalist market. These socialist ecnomies have used "advanced productive forces" and many productive forces that are socialized but considered (by world capitalist standards) to have not been "advanced." And these economies have been objectively cut of from the imperialist circuits of trade and production. In some ways, this has been a drawback, and has placed a burden on the socialist process. (Socialist china for example had to find coal and oil resources internally, that were not particularly easy to develop).

On the other hand, this situation (which is objective, and not a "choice" has also meant that socialist countries have been able to break with the dependency they inherited from the workings of imperialism -- China was able to build a balance non-disarticulated socialist economy.

Let me say this: The Trotskyist vision where a socialist world keeps the division of labor inherited from imperialism (and where this is assumed to be rational, positive and necessary) is Euro-centric and imperialist thinking -- and will reproduce the inequalities of capitalism in new ways.

You quote Trotsky saying: "Socialism, however, must not only take over from capitalism the most highly developed productive forces but must immediately carry them onward, raise them to a higher level and give them a state of development such as has been unknown under capitalism."

Well, in fact, socialist revolution has (so far) happened in the countries that did not have the "most highly developed productive forces."

This is not what Marx expected. It is just how real life happened. Deal with it.

Overall, as the world revolution advanced, the proletariat will (sooner or later, and hopefully sooner!) gain control over the greatest concentrations of industrial life.

But certainly the rest of the world can't wait with their revolution, or wait with the building of socialism UNTIL the handful of imperialist countries are "ready" for revolution.

You quote Trotsky writing: "The question arises: how then can socialism drive the productive forces back into the boundaries of a national state which they have violently sought to break through under capitalism? Or, perhaps, we ought to abandon the idea of “unbridled” productive forces for which the national boundaries, and consequently also the boundaries of the theory of socialism in one country, are too narrow, and limit ourselves, let us say, to the curbed and domesticated productive forces, that is, to the technology of economic backwardness? If this is the case, then in many branches of industry we should stop making progress right now and decline to a level even lower than our present pitiful technical level which managed to link up bourgeois Russia with world economy in an inseparable bond and to bring it into the vortex of the imperialist mar for an expansion of its territory for the productive forces that had outgrown the state boundaries."

Let me just point out that in all of this, there is much talk of productive forces -- but nothing about the people, nothing about humans remaking the world.

It is as if revolution is about getting the THINGS accumulated under capitalism working more efficiently. This is called "the theory of the productive forces" by Maoists. And because real-world revolution led PEOPLE to make revolution in countries where the PRODUCTIVE FORCES aren't (weren't ) concentrated -- the Trotskyists think socialism is impossible. But people MAKE productive forces.

These productive forces are a creation of the people. And the modern proletariat can lead the creation of new productive forces (using socialist relations, and its creativity) -- even if the revolution leads to the destruction of the production, or even if the revolution happens in poor countries.

Ultimately the revolution will only succeed on a world scale. This will happen in a wavelike way -- not just "country by country" -- but clearly there will also be waves of revolution, and waves of restoration.

But eventually, as more and more of the world has socialist economies of various degrees of development, that will mean that whole new levels of economic efficiency and interaction will be possible (ON A WORLD WIDE SOCIALIST BASIS) -- even as socialist relations give way to higher levels of communist relations.

But the idea that we have to put revolution and socialism on hold in most of the world -- while we wait for revolution in a handful of imperialist countries is just reactionary.