Communists and the "Third World"

[redstar2000]

What are the obligations of communist societies to pre-capitalist societies?

Consider a world in which the European Union and North America have both established functioning communist societies. (We might also include Japan, eastern China, Taiwan, united Korea, Australia, New Zealand and possibly Malaysia, Singapore, and South Africa.)

This world would still contain some functioning and even thriving capitalist countries, Russia, Brazil, and Mexico being the most likely. But there would be a large number of countries that were either still pre-capitalist or in the very early stages of capitalism -- call it "robber baron" capitalism.

With the end of the old neo-colonial powers, the new ones would struggle with each other over who could establish new neo-colonial relationships with the "third world".

Meanwhile, what should we do?

We will not have the massive professional military forces to actively intervene in other parts of the world...even if we might think it desirable to do so. We might be able to "tip the balance" in a country "close at hand"...helping Cuba to resist a Mexican invasion, for example. But if Brazil decides to conquer Paraguay or Russia decides to rebuild her old empire...there's not a lot we can do about that.

Communist societies will almost certainly re-establish the manufacturing sectors that the old capitalist regimes exported to the "third world"...so the physical plants, etc. can be turned over to those countries "gratis". We could even give them directly to the workers in those countries...though they would probably not be allowed to keep them.

It is possible that we may have to arrange some kind of barter agreement with the pre-capitalist or early capitalist regimes; a communist EU might trade food for oil or natural gas with Russia or Libya.

We would, of course, try to support communist movements in those countries that had not yet had successful proletarian revolutions...especially in the most advanced capitalist countries of that era. But it would be necessary to recognize our limitations. Having no currency ourselves, we can't send any to anyone else (we could send, for example, the jewelry we had seized from our own ex-capitalists and let domestic communists convert it into the local currency). We could print vast quantities of literature for them and hope to smuggle as much as possible into those countries. We could offer well-meaning advice...and hope at least some of it was useful. And we could provide refuge for prominent communists from those countries who had no choice but exile or execution.

Naturally, we'd have websites in every language about communism and we'd shift them around as they were blocked by repressive regimes (satellite technology might prove useful here).

Is there anything else? Should we provide humanitarian assistance to non-communist regimes that starve their populations or that suffer natural disasters? I can't see much use in that myself -- most of the assistance will inevitably be stolen by the ruling elites in those countries.

Thus, for the most part and in all substantive ways, I think the first communist societies would have little choice but to "mind their own business" and wait for the rest of the planet to "catch up".

I address this question because there is another view -- that seems to be held by the "Revolutionary Communist" Party but probably also by others.

In the RCP's opinion, at least as I understand it, the purpose of their "dictatorship of (over) the proletariat" is to deliberately hold back the transition to communism in the advanced capitalist countries until the entire world is materially capable of making that transition.

An RCP-style regime in the EU or North America would thus continue to exploit the working class, keeping it in wage-slavery. The extracted surplus value would be appropriated by the ruling elite and dispersed as developmental assistance to "friendly" regimes in the "third world". It would probably be called "reparations for imperialism" or something along those lines.

No one knows how long it would take to raise the "third world" to the level where communism would be materially possible...but a couple of centuries would seem a reasonable estimate. During this period, an "iron dictatorship" would be required in the advanced countries over workers who made a revolution to emancipate themselves from wage-slavery...only to learn that wage-slavery would continue "even unto the 7th generation".

And those "friendly regimes" that will receive the assistance might well have required considerable military assistance if not outright invasion and conquest by the RCP regime in North America...thus the continuation of a bloated parasitical military establishment will be required. Military conscription of young workers will be necessary -- the sons of the ruling elite will be excused.

Under such circumstances, revolutionary class consciousness will plummit...people will quickly learn that despite all the red flags, it's just a new version of "dog eat dog". Corruption is inevitable! And long before the two centuries have passed, or even half that, the ruling party will have transformed itself into a new capitalist and imperialist ruling class.

Realistically, I don't think the RCP perspective "has a prayer"...no class conscious worker is ever going to say "ok, I'm willing to remain a wage-slave until Nepal has reached the material level required for communism."

But the purpose of discussions like this one is to keep people from wasting their time and energy on something they really don't want! The reason I argue against "bad ideas" on the "left" is not because I think the bad ideas really have much chance of success...but rather to encourage people who really want communism to hold out for that and "accept no substitutes".

It is better to fight for what you want and maybe lose than to fight for what you don't want...and also lose.

[Maz]

RS2000 - try to write less, your posts seem to be getting longer and longer. Anyways, here's my thoughts. Workers under a socialist government are not exploited just because surplus they produce is appropriated from them as individuals. I can't imagine a society without some form of surplus appropriation; this is neccessary for things to be socially consumed like roads, healthcare, defense, etc. The problem with capitalism is that this surplus is appropriated by a power that is alien to the working class and serves to continually reinforce realtions opposed to the interests of the working class. Under socialism, this appropriation from individual workers would be done by the working class in the service of its historic interests towards communism. The proletariat is an international class, so I think the surplus ultimately has to be put in the service of the working class as a whole, worldwide, and not just in the service of those workers who currently live in a socialist country.

[redstar2000]

Maz wrote: RS2000 - try to write less, your posts seem to be getting longer and longer.

Do what I do...if a post looks long and boring, just skim it and move on.

Maz wrote: Under socialism, this appropriation from individual workers would be done by the working class in the service of its historic interests towards communism.

Yes, that's the claim...but it didn't happen that way, did it?

In the "socialist countries", there was no movement "towards communism", was there?

Maz wrote: The proletariat is an international class, so I think the surplus ultimately has to be put in the service of the working class as a whole, worldwide, and not just in the service of those workers who currently live in a socialist country.

That's true, the proletariat is an international class.

But what about all those pre-capitalist and early capitalist countries?

"Must" the proletariat in North America, Europe, etc. "delay" communism in order to "artificially raise up" the rest of the planet to the material conditions where communism is possible for them as well?

Do communist societies have a "moral obligation" to repay the "debts of imperialism"? Even at the cost of communism itself?

Should we go so far as to "conquer" them "for their own good" and impose some kind of "socialism" on them at gunpoint?

Will that help?

Maz wrote: I can't imagine a society without some form of surplus appropriation; this is necessary for things to be socially consumed like roads, healthcare, defense, etc.

I don't see communist societies producing a surplus in the sense that you are using the word.

For example, take a new road. How would it be constructed in a communist society?

Presumably it would begin with demand for a new road. Many collectives that were using the old road would ask the collectives that built and maintained roads to "add this one" to their list of projects, perhaps persuading the road collectives that their need was "urgent". If the road collective agreed, then it would request the necessary materials from those collectives which produced those materials. In due course, the new road would be built.

All this would be done without money changing hands, of course...people who work in the road-building collectives do so because they like that kind of work -- it's important, socially useful, and gives them prestige in communist society. Since their material needs are guaranteed (like everyone's), there's no "surplus" that's taken from anyone else to "pay" for the new road.

In fact, there's no money at all.

[Maz]

I do think that certain countries were moving in the right direction towards communism, restricting bourgeois right, breaking down the old social inequalities, however contradictory and wrenching the process might have been. This has been discussed elsewhere on the board, maybe we should leave it for the 'History' folder.

Anyways, I don't know where you're getting this 'delay' the advent of communism stuff from. The Maoism I read, from RIM, is pretty clear that they want to accelerate the world revolution, and use whatever breakthroughs they acheive in the form of socialist countries to use them as base areas to further accelerate the world revolution.

The world we live in today isn't neatly separated between capitalist and pre-capitalist countries. With the development of imperialism, the whole world has been brought into a massive productive matrix, including those areas where pre-capitalist productive forms exist. In a funny way, imperialism has made it so that feudalism as it exists today is intimately tied to the needs of the global capital accumulation process. So either peasants or workers, "we're all in this together" in a certain sense.

So this isn't a moral question (although a morality certainly flows from this materialist understandin). The interconnectdness of the world's revolutions are rooted in the material basis of how the world now functions. A victory in Nepal would be, therefore, a great victory for the proletariat in the US, not in a narrow short-term standard-of-living sense, but certainly in a historic-interest sense. It really is the case of either we all get free or none of us do. This is the sense in how I see surplus from socialist countries serving the world revolution, not for charity or reparations, but to further the world revolutionary process as a whole.

As for conquering the world, sounds good to me. I think that we have to rely on the masses to make revolution, but also that bourgeois borders shouldn't be held sacred. I mean, if the US had a rev, I wouldn't have much of a problem if the proletariat there decided to take Canada while they were at it, provided of course, that they unleashed the Canadian masses as part of the process.

[flyby]

redstar has a special method: he does not read what other people actually write or believe, he imagines what their position should be based on his own fanciful view of their logic.

So he spins a complete nonsensical rap about what the RCP and the RIM believe about communism (holding back a hypothetical socialist US in a still-bourgeois world, enforcing wage slavery instead of liberation on people etc.) and then says he thinks that would be wrong.

And then he gets upset when people say "you are putting words in my mouth."

There is something a little manic about it all, and perhaps lazy -- i.e. he doesn't feel the need to actually look up what someone's position is, but thinks he can freely invent and then refute.

go figger.

[redstar2000]

Maz wrote: Anyways, I don't know where you're getting this 'delay' the advent of communism stuff from.

flyby wrote: So he spins a complete nonsensical rap about what the RCP and the RIM believe about communism (holding back a hypothetical socialist US in a still-bourgeois world, enforcing wage slavery instead of liberation on people etc.) and then says he thinks that would be wrong.

But the "Font of All Wisdom" Himself wrote...

Well then, really, the way the society and the economy would have to be structured, to be consistent with this anarchist vision, is that every unit of production in society, or small groups of people that got together to carry out production and exchange, should enjoy the fruits and the benefits of what's produced through their labor. But among the many problems with this is the inescapable fact that, if you were to do this beginning on an economic foundation that resulted from the position of the old imperialist country in the overall international division of labor and accumulation process of the imperialist system, then you would be proceeding on the basis of reaping the fruits and "communizing" the plunder and exploitation that had been carried out by imperialism. And this would be true, even taking into account the unavoidable destruction and dislocation of technology and of the economy overall that would be involved in a revolutionary war to overthrow imperialism--even with all that, you would still be "inheriting" vast and highly developed technology and other productive forces that are, to a significant degree, the fruit of exploitation and plunder carried out over decades and centuries of imperialist domination and colonial conquest throughout the world.

So the question will be: are you going to have an approach of "communizing" those fruits, for the benefit only of the people in that (former) imperialist country, or are you going to utilize those productive forces first and above all to advance the world revolution toward the aim of overcoming all exploitative and unequal relations in the world, including the "great divide" between the imperialist and the colonial countries?

Another way of getting at this is to say that, so long as society is divided into classes--and so long as the economic-material basis exists for such class division--it is only through a socialist state that the highest interests of the proletariat and masses of people can be realized. And what goes along with that is that it is only through such a state that proletarian internationalism can be given its fullest and highest expression. This is the only way that the larger interests of the proletarian class, including its proletarian internationalism, can actually find expression--can actually be implemented and, yes, enforced... Emphasis added.

awip.proboards23.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=theory&thread=1073581656&start=0

There's no "special logic" involved here...it follows naturally from what your "great leader" wrote.

Leninists used to argue that the working class -- even in the advanced capitalist countries -- was too "backward" to advance straight to communism in the wake of a proletarian revolution.

That argument has become less and less plausible as time has passed; consequently other "justifications" for the "socialist state" and Leninist despotism must be found.

This is clearly one of them: if workers in North America made a proletarian revolution and abolished wage-slavery, then that would be "wrong" and even a "violation" of their "higher interests"...instead, they must continue in wage-labor, submit to military conscription, etc. in order that the "whole world" be "brought up" to the level of North America as quickly as possible...through economic gifts, military invasion and conquest, or both.

Maz wrote: The world we live in today isn't neatly separated between capitalist and pre-capitalist countries. With the development of imperialism, the whole world has been brought into a massive productive matrix, including those areas where pre-capitalist productive forms exist. In a funny way, imperialism has made it so that feudalism as it exists today is intimately tied to the needs of the global capital accumulation process. So either peasants or workers, "we're all in this together" in a certain sense.

Yes, you do have a point here. The economies of countries under the imperialist heel do not develop "normally"...in fact, what I would expect to happen is that with proletarian revolution in the imperialist countries, the "force" that distorts those countries' development will be immediately removed, and they will begin to develop in the same ways that capitalism developed in the "west".

But that doesn't alter the fact that the political consciousness of the classes in those countries still reflects their material reality. Whether the semi-feudal and colonialized bourgeoisie are overthrown in the context of an anti-imperialist struggle or whether that takes place after imperialism itself (at least that originating in the advanced capitalist countries) has been overthrown by proletarian revolution, the general consequence is still the same: the rise of a native and vigorous bourgeoisie ready to compete in the world marketplace.

Imposing a "socialist" despotism on those countries only serves to slow down that process. Epochs of production cannot be "skipped"...no matter how much you'd like to do that.

Maz wrote: A victory in Nepal would be, therefore, a great victory for the proletariat in the US, not in a narrow short-term standard-of-living sense, but certainly in a historic-interest sense.

Well, "if you say so". The only Americans I can think of who would take any interest in the matter would be travel agents.

I do rather hope that one of the three Maoist groups there capture Nepal's king and cut off his head. It would make good symbolic evidence that what is taking place there is a bourgeois revolution...or at least the first faltering steps in that direction.

It is a very backward country, you know.

[Maz]

It seems like you feel as if you are pulling a rabbit out of a hat with that Avakian quote, but the passage you quoted in fact seems to be in line with what I have been saying, and not your "interpretation" of it. Avakian clearly emphasizes in that passage that a state must exist to avoid 'communizing' the plunder of imperialism. Once again, this isn't a moral question but is based on the material fact that the proletariat can only liberate itself by liberating all humanity, and that if there weren't efforts to overcome the disparities between imperialist countries and oppressed countries (and the exploitative production relation that creates these disparities) then the revolution will just end up re-creating capitalism all over again.

Rather than dealing with some of the contradictions Maoists feel make things like money neccessary for a time after the revolution, you skirt the issue by saying it's just some "justification" for the (apparently) sinister motives of the "great leaders" (your sarcastic scare-quotes). It strikes me as being a strange way to argue. I think proletarian states are neccessary because without them we will head back into capitalism. There are many reasons for this, including what Avakian argued in that passage you quoted. Why not try and criticize the arguments the Maoists make for why they think this rather than inventing your own idea of what people are thinking. (Unless you really are telepathic).

Your last few lines are really troubling and revealing. First you tend to agree with me that the system we now live in is integrated and connected but then you turn around and say that the revolution is Nepal is only siginificant to travel agents. Hmmm. But then all is revealed, cause hey, Nepal is a backward country after all and political consciousness reflects material reality, so the people there must be pretty backward too. So who gives a shit about what some backward peasants are doing halfway around the world? To use your term, I don't think we need a "special logic" to see where you're going with this.

[eat the world]

here, btw, is a document of the RCP's real world discussion/debate over this issue:

rwor.org/a/1229/dp-soc-econ-dofp.htm

[redstar2000]

Maz wrote: Avakian clearly emphasizes in that passage that a state must exist to avoid 'communizing' the plunder of imperialism.

If it's not "communized", then who gets it?

Obviously your state apparatus will get it; what will be done with it?

And since you admit that wage-labor, commodity circulation, money, etc. will continue to exist...what will your state do with the surplus-value thus generated?

That was really the question that I was raising when I started this thread.

The document that eattheworld linked to seems to me to be more ambiguous than the Avakian quote...it really sounds to me like Avakian thinks that communism would be materially possible in an advanced capitalist country but "morally wrong".

(I note in passing that I do agree with that document's position on "intellectual property rights" -- surely the most outright theological invention that capitalist ideologues have ever come up with. The "blueprints" for advanced technology should obviously be made available to the entire human species--except for nuclear weaponry and really nasty things like that.)

Maz wrote: ...if there weren't efforts to overcome the disparities between imperialist countries and oppressed countries (and the exploitative production relation that creates these disparities) then the revolution will just end up re-creating capitalism all over again.

It's difficult for me to comprehend why, for example, the "organic" or "normal" development of capitalism in Angola or Pakistan or Paraguay should "restore capitalism" in a communist Europe or North America. Do you expect them to invade?

With the most advanced parts of the world being communist (that's communist, not "socialist"), I see the remaining capitalist countries having a rather tough time of things...many of them may choose social democracy "in self-defense" against the appeal of communism. (Just as the ruling class in Scandinavia did...because of the proximity of the USSR.)

Maz wrote: Rather than dealing with some of the contradictions Maoists feel make things like money necessary for a time after the revolution...

A separate thread, don't you think?

As to your "inner motivations", who knows? If I really were "telepathic", I'd comment on them.

But you can't really expect intelligent people to "assume the best" when you argue for a perspective that has turned out to be "among the worst".

You may "mean well" -- everybody always thinks they "mean well".

For Marxists, that's not good enough.

Maz wrote: I think proletarian states are necessary because without them we will head back into capitalism.

And I obviously disagree. Would you like to start a thread with the positive argument or would you like me to start one from the negative perspective?

Maz wrote: But then all is revealed, cause hey, Nepal is a backward country after all and political consciousness reflects material reality, so the people there must be pretty backward too. So who gives a shit about what some backward peasants are doing halfway around the world?

Well, who does "give a shit"? A little revolution in an isolated place that most people couldn't find on a map...it will, at best, be a "proto-bourgeois" take-over, causing the tourists to have to pay more to climb mountains.

I daresay that the people there will benefit (slightly) from the changes...and that will be nice.

Otherwise? Are you really suggesting that Nepal means something significant in today's world?

Good grief, what?

It appears to me that you are still stuck in the Maoist "learn from the peasantry" mode...even though we have no peasants in the modern capitalist countries.

There's a phrase from Marx that you might want to think about: "the muck of rural idiocy."

Marx did not wish to "learn" from that; he wanted to abolish it.

So do I.