Good News, Comrades!

Good news, Comrades! As some of you may know, I'm doing my honors thesis this semester on Karl Marx. I want to share with you some of the interesting tidbits I've discovered. I know that many consider Marxism recondite and dead, it should be noted that at least China, North Korea and Cuba still hold to a form of communism that, at least, followed the lead of many of Marx's assertions.

The first thing that I want to clear up is the notion that the fall of the USSR showed conclusively that Marxism cannot work. This position could not be more mistaken. According to Cohen's technological interpretation of historical materialism, Marx believe that society started as a primitive classless, communistic society. When the productive forces (read: technology and labor power) reached a certain level of development, the production relations (read: who controls the means of production [read: technology] and the people who work said means of production) change to form pre-capitalist society. This includes feudalism and slavery. Eventually the forces of production developed enough so that the then current relations of production fettered the further development of the forces of production so that the production relations changed to form a captialist society.

Now, this step through capitalism is essential for Marx. While Marx considered capitalism bad in that it exploited and alienated the proletariat (read: those who own their own labor power but do not own the means of production), it was nevertheless an essential route through which society must go in order to reach socialism and, eventually, communism. Only capitalism could sustain the high level of development of the productive forces that needed to obtain in order for post-capitalist society to form. Post-capitalist society could not form when the productive forces were underdeveloped; it is akin to switching from first gear to fifth gear in a car. It would eventually stall.

So capitalism was a necessary evil (though there is much debate in the arena of Marxian ethics as to whether Marx was consistent in calling capitalism evil if ethical beliefs were relative to a particular class or society's ideology). Why is this important? Russia emancipated its serfs only in 1861; the Russian Revolution was in 1917. Less than 60 years separate Russia's departure from feudalism and its departure from capitalism. Russia was actually one of the most underdeveloped countries in the European sphere. Marx did think that it was possible for a country to skip capitalism (and for all intents and purposes Russia did in fact skip the stage of capitalism) and go straight to the proletarian revolution if and only if it were part of a wider proletarian revolution being undertaken in more advanced countries like Germany or England.

Lenin thought that measures could be taken in order to correct this and other problems, including the problem with labor unions. Labor unions seem like a good idea because it will allow the proletariat to achieve class consciousness by becoming a unified class. The tension would build and then the revolution would occur. This, however, is not what happened. Those involved in the labor unions became concerned only about getting more money for themselves. This actually relieved the tension from the proletariat and made the idea of revolution seem more distant. Lenin's response to the labor union problem and the underdevelopment of Russia was to create a vanguard party that would initiate the revolution with violence. You could either join or else die. It now seems pretty apparent that this was no solution to the underdevelopment of Russia.

The point is this: the fall of the USSR is no evidence that Marxism must fail; the USSR abandoned Marxism. Good news, comrades! We still have hope!