Chapter Seven
Intellectuals and Social
Change
1. On the dismantling of the incipient
socialist institutions in Russia, and for Lenin's and Trotsky's writings
setting forth their thinking, see footnote 3 of
this chapter.
2. On Lenin's and Trotsky's
assumptions about revolution in Germany being required before socialism could
develop in Russia, see for example, Moshe Lewin, Lenin's Last Struggle, New York: Pantheon, 1968, p. 4 (quoting
Lenin to indicate that, until his last days, he believed socialism could be
achieved only after revolutions had occurred in the advanced capitalist
countries, Germany in particular; note, however, that Lewin's interpretation of
Lenin's goals and efforts is far from Chomsky's in the text). An excerpt (pp. 3-4):
In the eyes of its originators the October
Revolution had neither meaning nor future independent of its international
function as a catalyst and detonator: it was to be the first spark that would
lead to the establishment of socialist regimes in countries which, unlike
Russia, possessed an adequate economic infrastructure and cultural basis. Unless it fulfilled this function, the Soviet
regime should not even have survived.
Lenin often affirmed this belief, and he persisted in this
interpretation even after several years had elapsed without bringing any
confirmation of his hopes. In June 1921
he declared that the Socialist Republic might survive amid capitalist
encirclement, "but not for very long, of course." In February 1922, he was just as categorical
as ever: "We have always proclaimed and repeated this elementary truth of
Marxism, that the victory of socialism requires the joint efforts of workers in
a number of advanced countries. . . ."
According to the most widespread interpretation of
Marxist theory, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the method of government
of the first successful revolution, should be established in a country where
the working class formed the majority of the population: the dictatorship of
the working class would then be exercised over a negligible minority. Nothing of the kind was possible in Russia.
See
also, Leon Trotsky, "War Communism, The New Economic Policy (N.E.P.) and
The Course Toward the Kulak," in Irving Howe, ed., The Basic Writings of Trotsky, New York: Random House, 1963, pp.
160-167. After noting the disastrous
effects of the Bolsheviks' initial programs, Trotsky wrote (p. 162):
The
theoretical mistake of the ruling party remains inexplicable, however, only if
you leave out of account the fact that all calculations at that time were based
on the hope of an early victory of the revolution in the West. It was considered self-evident that the
victorious German proletariat would supply Soviet Russia, on credit against
future food and raw materials, not only with machines and articles of
manufacture, but also with tens of thousands of highly skilled workers,
engineers and organizers. And there is
no doubt that if the proletarian revolution had triumphed in Germany . . . the
economic development of the Soviet Union as well as of Germany would have
advanced with such gigantic strides that the fate of Europe and the world today
would have been incomparably more auspicious.
3. For Lenin's and Trotsky's thoughts on how Russia should be
developed, see for example, Vladimir Lenin, "The Immediate Tasks of the
Proletariat Government" (originally published April 28, 1918), in Vladimir
Lenin, Selected Works, Moscow:
Cooperative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., 1935, Vol.
VII, pp. 313-350. An excerpt (pp.
342-344; emphasis in original):
But
be that as it may, unquestioning
submission to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of
labour processes that are based on large-scale machine industry. . . . The revolution has only just broken the
oldest, most durable and heaviest fetters to which the masses were compelled to
submit. That was yesterday. But today the same revolution demands, in
the interests of socialism, that the masses unquestioningly
obey the single will of the leaders of the labour process. . . . And our task, the task of the Communist
Party, which is the class conscious expression of the strivings of the exploited
for emancipation, is to appreciate this change, to understand that it is
necessary, to take the lead of the exhausted masses who are wearily seeking a
way out and lead them along the true path, along the path of labour discipline,
along the path of co-ordinating the task of holding meetings and discussing the
conditions of labour with the task of unquestioningly obeying the will of the
Soviet leader, of the dictator, during
work time.
For
a discussion by Trotsky of the need for "militarization of labor" and
"labor armies," see Leon Trotsky, Terrorism
and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky, London: New Park, 1975 (original
1920), ch. VII.
For Lenin's pronouncements
on the need for "state capitalism," see for example, Vladimir Lenin,
"'Left Wing' Childishness and Petty-Bourgeois Mentality" (originally
published May 5, 1918), in Vladimir Lenin, Selected
Works, Moscow: Cooperative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the
U.S.S.R., 1935, Vol. VII, pp. 351-378.
An excerpt (pp. 365-366; emphasis in original):
While
the revolution in Germany is slow in "coming forth," our task is to
study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the
copying of it. Our task is to do this
even more thoroughly than Peter [the Great] hastened the copying of Western
culture by barbarian Russia, and he did not hesitate to use barbarous methods
in fighting against barbarism.
Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth,
and Dissolution, Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon, 1978, p. 484 (Lenin remarked in
October 1921: "aided by the enthusiasm engendered by the great revolution,
and on the basis of personal interest, personal incentive and business
principles, we must first set to work in this small-peasant country to build
solid gangways to socialism by way of state capitalism").
On the incipient socialist structures in
Russia and the Bolsheviks' dismantling of them as they consolidated control,
see for example, Maurice Brinton, The
Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, 1917 to 1921: the State and Counter-Revolution,
London: Solidarity, 1970, especially pp. 1-49.
This study gives a detailed chronology of the development of popular
structures in Russia after the initial February 1917 revolution, then describes
the Bolsheviks' rapid steps to undermine and destroy them after they gained
political power in October 1917 (citing extensively to contemporaneous
Bolshevik Party sources). The detail
and quantity of evidence in this short book defy quotation here; however, the
author summarizes some of his findings as follows (pp. ix-x):
Between March and October the Bolsheviks supported
the growth of the Factory Committees, only to turn viciously against them in
the last few weeks of 1917, seeking to incorporate them into the new union
structure, the better to emasculate them.
This process . . . was to play an important role in preventing the
rapidly growing challenge to capitalist relations of production from coming to
a head. Instead the Bolsheviks canalised
the energies released between March and October into a successful onslaught
against the political power of the bourgeoisie (and against the property
relations on which that power was based).
At this level the revolution was
"successful." But the Bolsheviks
were also "successful" in restoring "law and order" in
industry -- a law and order that reconsolidated the authoritarian relations in
production, which for a brief period had been seriously shaken.
Importantly,
the author notes that (p. 35):
It
is above all essential to stress that the Bolshevik policy in relation to the
[Factory] Committees and to the unions which we have documented in some detail
was being put forward twelve months before
the murder of Karl Liebknecht and of Rosa Luxemburg [in January 1919] -- i.e.
before the irrevocable failure of the German revolution, an event usually taken
as "justifying" many of the measures taken by the Russian rulers.
Similarly,
many of the Bolsheviks' measures to disempower the incipient socialist structures
and avert genuine workers' control; to suppress and liquidate left-libertarian
political parties and publications; and to reintroduce wages and otherwise
begin the "restoration of capitalist management of industry" were
implemented well before the beginning of large-scale civil war and the Western
powers' intervention in Russia on May 15, 1918 (pp. 15-46). In this context, note the timing of Lenin's
pronouncements, quoted above in this footnote, concerning the necessity for
"unquestioning submission" to the Bolshevik Party and its
"dictatorial methods."
Brinton adds that the Civil War, which peaked in August 1918, then
"immensely accelerated the process of economic centralisation" (p.
46).
Furthermore, it bears emphasis that the theoretical foundations which
motivated the Bolsheviks' actions once they gained power also long predated
these dire conditions. See for example,
Vladimir Lenin, "What Is To Be Done?," in V.I. Lenin: Collected Works, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing
House, 1961 (original 1901-1902), Vol. 5.
An excerpt (pp. 384-385):
Since
there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working
masses themselves in the process of their movement, the only choice is -- either bourgeois or socialist ideology. . .
. There is much talk of
spontaneity. But the spontaneous development of the
working-class movement leads to its subordination to bourgeois ideology . . .;
for the spontaneous working-class movement is trade-unionism . . . and
trade-unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the
bourgeoisie. Hence, our task, the task
of Social-Democracy, is to combat
spontaneity, to divert the
working-class movement from this spontaneous, trade-unionist striving to come
under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of
revolutionary Social-Democracy.
Brinton
adds (p. 12): "Nowhere in Lenin's writings is workers' control ever
equated with fundamental decision-taking (i.e. with the initiation of decisions) relating to production." He also quotes Lenin's view in his most
libertarian work, State and Revolution,
that (p. 24): "We want the socialist revolution with human nature as it is
now, with human nature that cannot
dispense with subordination, control and managers" (emphasis added).
For a description of the origins and development of workers'
organizations in Russia before the Bolshevik takeover, discussing the period
between 1905 and October 1917, see Peter Rachleff, "Soviets and Factory
Committees in the Russian Revolution," Radical
America, Vol. 8, No. 6, November-December 1974, pp. 78-114. An excerpt (pp. 84-87, 89-90):
Beginning October 10 [1905], factories in St.
Petersburg began sending delegates to meetings of what was to become the Soviet
[i.e. workers' assembly]. . . . Within
three days there were 226 delegates representing 96 factories and workshops. .
. . The Soviet, at first performing no
other task than organizing and leading the strike, changed itself over the
course of several days into a general organ of the working class in the capital.
. . . Similar organizations appeared
amidst strikes in all the urban areas of European Russia (and in some larger
villages as well). Between forty and
fifty came into existence in October.
Although most functioned only for a short time, their importance should
not be underestimated. This was the
first experience of direct representation for most of those involved. No political party dominated the soviets. .
. . The soviets were created from below
by workers, peasants, and soldiers, and reflected their desires. . . . [T]he Tsar turned to full-scale repression
to quell all disturbances. . . . They
were militarily crushed by the end of 1905, and the Russian working class
suffered a defeat that would demoralize and disorganize it for almost a decade.
. . .
[In 1914 there was] a real rebirth of the Russian
working-class movement. . . . May Day
saw half a million people demonstrating in the streets. . . . In early July of 1914 a meeting of workers
from the Putilov metal works, called to support a strike in the Baku oil
fields, was brutally suppressed by the police.
A general strike was the immediate response made by the St. Petersburg
working class, and within four days 110,000 were out on strike. Two days later, the Bolsheviks, who had
experienced a rebirth in popularity since their lowest point in late 1913,
called for an end to the strike.
However the striking workers, exhibiting the independence that had been
their tradition, paid no attention to them.
Instead, they built barricades and engaged in pitched battles with the
Cossacks. . . .
The beginning of 1917 saw the armed forces seething
with revolt. . . . Demonstrations,
which were virtually bread riots, spread throughout [Petrograd, then the
capital of Russia]. The troops who had
crushed similar demonstrations in 1905 refused to put down the uprising, and
many joined in. By the end of the
month, after three days of spontaneous demonstrations and a general strike,
Petrograd was in the hands of the working class. . . . The revolution spread throughout
Russia. Peasants seized the land;
discipline in the army collapsed; sailors seized their ships in the Kronstadt
harbor on the Baltic Coast and took over that city; the soviet form of
organization reappeared, first in industrial areas, then among soldiers,
sailors, and peasants. A Provisional
Government came to power when the Tsar abdicated. Made up of members of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy . . .
they failed to come up with solutions to the problems experienced by the bulk
of the population, both workers and peasants.
The
article then describes the workers' organizations -- the soviets and factory
councils (pp. 90, 92-96):
The soviets, which had sprung up across the country,
were viewed as the legitimate government by the workers, peasants, and
soldiers, who came to them with their problems. . . . [Power within the soviets] still remained in the hands of the
Executive Committee[s]. This had been
the case from the start, and it continued to be the case throughout the spring
and summer of 1917. . . . [S]oon the
[Petrograd] Soviet itself became nothing but an open forum where workers and
soldiers could come together, air their views, meet others like themselves, and
keep their constituencies informed about what was going on. It did offer people who had been politically
voiceless a chance to speak out. But it
did not represent the power of the working class. . . . No more than the Provisional Government can
the soviets of 1917 be considered instruments of working-class power. Moreover, the existing trade unions also
confronted the workers as a power separate from them and over them, a power
which hindered them rather than helped them in their attempts to solve their
pressing problems. . . .
The real activity was represented by an incredible
proliferation of factory committees, organs consisting of and controlled by the
workers within each factory. It was
through these committees that most of the workers sought to solve their
problems. Whereas the soviets were
primarily concerned with political issues, e.g., the structure of the
government and the question of the continuation of the war [i.e. World War I],
the factory committees initially dealt solely with the problems of continuing
production within their factories. . . .
Such committees appeared in every industrial center
throughout European Russia. The
membership of a committee always consisted solely of workers who still worked
in the factory. Most important
decisions would be made by a general assembly of all the workers in the factory. The committees were utilized by the workers
in the early months of the revolution to present series of demands, and in some
instances to begin to act to realize those demands. Paul Avrich describes the functioning of some factory committees
in the first months of the uprising: "From the outset, the workers'
committees did not limit their demands to higher wages and shorter hours,
though these were at the top of every list; what they wanted in addition to
material benefits, was a voice in management.
On March 4, for example, the workers of the Skorokhod Shoe Factory in
Petrograd did, to be sure, call upon their superiors to grant them an
eight-hour day and a wage increase, including double pay for overtime work; but
they also demanded official recognition of their factory committee and its
right to control the hiring and firing of labor. In the Petrograd Radiotelegraph Factory, a workers' committee was
organized expressly to 'work out rules and norms for the internal life of the
factory,' while other factory committees were elected chiefly to control the
activities of the directors, engineers, and foremen. Overnight, incipient forms of 'workers' control' over production
and distribution appeared in the large enterprises of Petrograd."
Even
before the Bolsheviks took over, they began to limit the power of these
popularly-based organizations (pp. 104-108):
By October . . . councils of factory committees
existed in many parts of Russia. . . .
Conferences of local factory committees in Petrograd and Moscow in late
September and early October reaffirmed the necessity of proceeding with their
role in production -- managing the entire production process -- and in
developing better methods of coordination.
A short time later, the first "All-Russian Conference of Factory
Committees" was convened. . . .
Members of the Bolshevik Party made up 62% of the delegates and were the
dominant force. By now, the Party was
in firm control of the recently created Central Council of Factory Committees,
and used it for its own purposes. . . .
The Bolsheviks at this conference succeeded in passing a resolution
creating a national organizational structure for the committees. However, this structure explicitly limited
the factory committees to activity within the sphere of production, and
suggested a method of struggle which embodied a rigid division of activities. .
. . The non-Bolshevik delegates -- and
the workers they represented -- did not reject this new plan. Few realized the necessity of directly
uniting the "economic" and "political" aspects of the class
struggle. The Bolsheviks, now on the
verge of seizing state power, began laying the foundations for the
consolidation of their control over the working class. No longer did they encourage increased
activity by the factory committees.
Most workers and their committees accepted this about-face, believing
that the new strategy was only temporary and that once the Bolshevik Party had
captured "political power" they would be given free reign in the
economic sphere.
Shortly thereafter, the Bolsheviks successfully
seized state power, replacing the Provisional Government with their
tightly-controlled soviets. The initial
effect on the workers was tremendous.
They believed that this new revolution gave them the green light to
expand their activities, to expropriate the remaining capitalists, and to
establish strong structures of coordination. . . . Out of this burst of activity came the first attempt of the
factory committees to create a national organization of their own, independent
of all parties and institutions. Such
an organization posed an implicit threat to the new Bolshevik State. . . . The Bolsheviks, seeking to strengthen their
position, realized that they had to destroy the factory committees. They now had available to them the means to
do so -- something which the Provisional Government had lacked. By controlling the soviets, the Bolsheviks
controlled the troops. Their domination
of the regional and national councils of the factory committees gave them the
power to isolate and destroy any factory committee, e.g., by denying it raw
materials. Lenin wasted little time in
trying to take control of the situation.
On November 3, he published his "Draft Decree on Workers'
Control" in Pravda, stating that "the decisions of the elected
delegates of the workers and employees are legally binding upon the owners of
enterprises," but that they could be "annulled by trade unions and
congresses." Moreover, "in
all enterprises of state importance" all delegates elected to exercise
workers' control were to be "answerable to the State for the maintenance
of the strictest order and discipline and for the protection of property. . .
."
[T]he power now resting in the hands of the
Bolshevik State gave it the ability to go ahead with the dismantling of the
power of the factory committees. Isaac
Deutscher describes how the trade unions were used to emasculate the committees
before the end of the year: "The Bolsheviks now called upon the trade
unions to render a special service to the nascent Soviet State and to
discipline the factory committees. The
unions came out against the attempt of the factory committees to form a
national organization of their own.
They prevented the convocation of a planned all-Russian Congress of factory
committees and demanded total subordination on the part of the committees. . .
. The unions now became the main
channels through which the government was assuming control over industry." There were to be future rebellions against
the new state, for example Kronstadt in 1921 [where anti-Bolshevik sailors were
massacred by Trotsky's Red Army] and Makhno's peasant movement in the Ukraine
[which governed the area along anarchist principles beginning in November 1918
and defeated an invasion by the Western powers, then was crushed by the
Bolsheviks' Red Army in late 1920].
However, they were labeled "counterrevolutionary" by the
Government press and viciously suppressed.
The total power of the Bolshevik State over all aspects of social and
economic life was now consolidated and the working class were relegated to
living under the same powerless situation they had experienced prior to 1917.
See also, Voline [i.e. Vsevolod Mikhailovich
Eichenbaum], The Unknown Revolution,
1917-1921, Detroit: Black & Red, 1974 (original 1947)(classic history
of the popular revolution in Russia and the subsequent Bolshevik coup,
detailing the Bolsheviks' systematic destruction of the popular institutions
and their repression of the genuine revolutionary developments; written by a
libertarian socialist participant in the events from October 1917); Robert V.
Daniels, "The State and Revolution: A Case Study in the Genesis and
Transformation of Communist Ideology," The
American Slavic and East European Review, Vol. 12, No. 1, 1953, pp. 22-43
(on Lenin's "intellectual deviation" to the left during 1917;
documenting in particular how Lenin's famous polemic State and Revolution "is a work conforming neither to Lenin's
previous thought nor to his subsequent practice").
For criticism of the Bolsheviks' actions by
left-wing critics at the time, see chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnote 21.
4. For Bakunin's predictions, see Michael Bakunin, "Critique of
the Marxist Theory of the State" (1873), "Letter to La Libertι"
(1872), "Critique of Economic Determinism and Historical Materialism"
(1872), and "Some Preconditions for a Social Revolution" (1873), all
in Sam Dolgoff, ed., Bakunin on Anarchy:
Selected Works by the Activist-Founder of World Anarchism, New York: Knopf,
1972, pp. 326f. Excerpts (pp. 329, 332,
284, 319, 337-338, 318-319, 275):
The differences between revolutionary dictatorship
and statism are superficial. Fundamentally
they both represent the same principle of minority rule over the majority in
the name of the alleged "stupidity" of the latter and the alleged
"intelligence" of the former.
Therefore they are both equally reactionary since both directly and inevitably
must preserve and perpetuate the political and economic privileges of the
ruling minority and the political and economic subjugation of the masses of the
people.
Now it is clear why the dictatorial revolutionists,
who aim to overthrow the existing powers and social structures in order to
erect upon their ruins their own dictatorships, never were or will be the
enemies of government, but, to the contrary, always will be the most ardent
promoters of the government idea. They
are the enemies only of contemporary governments, because they wish to replace
them. They are the enemies of the
present governmental structure, because it excludes the possibility of their
dictatorship. At the same time they are
the most devoted friends of governmental power. For if the revolution destroyed this power by actually freeing
the masses, it would deprive this pseudorevolutionary minority of any hope to
harness the masses in order to make them the beneficiaries of their own
government policy. . . .
[The Marxists] insist that only dictatorship (of
course their own) can create freedom for the people. . . . [A]ccording to Mr. Marx, the people not only
should not abolish the State, but, on the contrary, they must strengthen and
enlarge it, and turn it over to the full disposition of their benefactors,
guardians, and teachers -- the leaders of the Communist party, meaning Mr. Marx
and his friends -- who will then liberate them in their own way. They will concentrate all administrative
power in their own strong hands, because the ignorant people are in need of a
strong guardianship. . . . There will
be slavery within this state . . . which will be even more despotic than the
former State, although it calls itself a People's State. . . . It will be the reign of scientific intelligence, the most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant
and elitist of all regimes. There will
be a new class, a new hierarchy of real and counterfeit scientists and
scholars, and the world will be divided into a minority ruling in the name of
knowledge, and an immense ignorant majority.
And then, woe unto the mass of ignorant ones . . .!
A strong State can have only one solid foundation:
military and bureaucratic centralization.
The fundamental difference between a monarchy and even the most democratic
republic is that in the monarchy, the bureaucrats oppress and rob the people
for the benefit of the privileged in the name of the King, and to fill their
own coffers; while in the republic the people are robbed and oppressed in the
same way for the benefit of the same classes, in the name of "the will of
the people" (and to fill the coffers of the democratic bureaucrats). In the republic, the State, which is
supposed to be the people, legally organized, stifles and will continue to
stifle the real people. But the people
will feel no better if the stick with which they are being beaten is labeled
"the people's stick. . . ."
No state, however democratic -- not even the reddest
republic -- can ever give the people what they really want, i.e., the free self-organization
and administration of their own affairs from the bottom upward, without any
interference or violence from above, because every state, even the
pseudo-People's State concocted by Mr. Marx, is in essence only a machine
ruling the masses from above, through a privileged minority of conceited
intellectuals, who imagine that they know what the people need and want better
than do the people themselves. . . .
The State has always been the patrimony of some
privileged class: a priestly class, an aristocratic class, a bourgeois
class. And finally, when all the other
classes have exhausted themselves, the State then becomes the patrimony of the
bureaucratic class and then falls -- or, if you will, rises -- to the position
of a machine. But in any case it is
absolutely necessary for the salvation of the State that there should be some
privileged class devoted to its preservation.
But in the People's State of Marx there will
be, we are told, no privileged class at all.
All will be equal, not only from the juridical and political point of
view but also from the economic point of view.
At least this is what is promised, though I very much doubt whether that
promise could ever be kept. There will
therefore no longer be any privileged class, but there will be a government and, note this well, an extremely complex
government. This government will not
content itself with administering and governing the masses politically, as all
governments do today. It will also
administer the masses economically, concentrating in the hands of the State the
production and division of wealth, the cultivation of land, the establishment
and development of factories, the organization and direction of commerce, and
finally, the application of capital to production by the only banker -- the
State. All that will demand an immense
knowledge and many heads "overflowing with brains" in this
government. . . .
Can one imagine anything more burlesque and at
the same time more revolting? To claim
that a group of individuals, even the most intelligent and best-intentioned,
would be capable of becoming the mind, the soul, the directing and unifying
will of the revolutionary movement and the economic organization of the
proletariat of all lands -- this is such heresy against common sense and
historical experience that one wonders how a man as intelligent as Mr. Marx
could have conceived it!
5. For Marx's works that are mentioned in the text, see Karl Marx,
"The Civil War in France" (1871)(on the Paris Commune); "On
Imperialism in India" (1853)(on the British in India); Capital, Vol. I (1867)(on industrial
London).
6. On
the lack of discussion of socialism in Marx's work, see for example, Daniel
Bell, The End of Ideology: On the
Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties, New York: Free Press, 1960,
pp. 355-392 ("Two Roads from Marx").
An excerpt (pp. 368-369):
The paucity is extraordinary. In an address to the General Council of the
International Workingman's Association, published as The Civil War in France, Marx said, at one point in passing, that
communism would be a system under which "united cooperative societies are
to regulate the national production under a common plan," but nothing
more. . . . In only one other place did
Marx elaborate any remarks about the future society -- the testy letter which
came to be known as The Critique of the
Gotha Programme. In 1875 the rival
Lasallean and Eisenacher (Liebknecht, Bebel, Bernstein) factions met in Gotha
to form the German Socialist Workers Party (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei
Deutschlands). As a political party,
the socialists were confronted, for the first time, with the task of stating a
political program on transition to socialism.
Taking its cue from the [1871 Paris] Commune, the Gotha program
emphasized two demands: the organization of producers' co-operatives with state
aid and equality.
Marx's criticism was savage. The demand for producers' co-operatives, he
said, smacked of the Catholic socialism of Buchez (the president of the
Constitutional Assembly of 1848), while the demand for the "equitable
distribution of the proceeds of labour" was simply a bourgeois right,
since in any other society than pure
communism the granting of equal shares to individuals with unequal needs would
simply lead to renewed inequality. A
transitional society, Marx said, could not be completely communal. In the co-operative society, based on
collective ownership, "the producers do not interchange their
products." There would still be
need for a state machinery, since certain social needs would have to be
met. The central directing agency would
make deductions from the social product: for administrative costs, schools,
health services, and the like. Only
under communism would the State, as a government over persons, be replaced by
an "administration of things. . . ."
[D]espite his theoretical criticisms of the transitional program, there
is little in the Critique of a concrete nature regarding the mechanics
of socialist economics either in the transitional or the pure communist
society.
7. On Engels's use of the term "dialectics," see for
example, Shlomo Avineri, The Social and
Political Thought of Karl Marx, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University
Press, 1968, p. 65 ("Much of what is known as 'Marxist materialism' was
not written by Marx but by Engels, in most cases after Marx's own death. Students sometimes forget that Marx himself
never used the terms 'historical materialism' or 'dialectical materialism' for
his systematic approach").
8. Chomsky personally observed this at the I.B.M. Research Center in
the 1960s.
On overt pressures on the
schools more generally, see for example, William E. Simon [former U.S. Treasury
Secretary], A Time for Truth, New
York: Reader's Digest, 1978. An excerpt
(pp. 231-233):
Business must cease the mindless subsidizing of
colleges and universities whose departments of economics, government, politics
and history are hostile to capitalism and whose faculties will not hire
scholars whose views are otherwise. . . .
This has nothing to do with trying to govern what any individual
professor teaches, nor is it an attempt to "buy" docile professors
who will teach what businessmen tell them to.
That notion is as ridiculous as the idea that anti-capitalist professors
are entitled to support by capitalism.
No non-professional has any right to attempt to dictate what and how a
teacher teaches. He can, however (and,
I argue, he must), decide whether or not that teacher -- either by virtue of
his competence or lack of it, or the nature of the doctrine he espouses -- is
entitled to his support. There is a
world of difference between attempting to govern what is taught and simply
refusing to support those whose teachings are inimical to one's own philosophy.
. . .
[In addition], business money must flow away from
the media which serve as megaphones for anticapitalist opinion and to media
which are either pro-freedom or, if not necessarily "pro-business,"
at least professionally capable of a fair and accurate treatment of
procapitalist ideas, values and arguments.
The judgment of this fairness is to be made by businessmen alone -- it
is their money that they are investing.
See
also, Ann Crittenden, "Simon: Preaching the Word for Olin," New York Times, July 16, 1978, section
3, p. 1. An excerpt:
William E.
Simon, Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald
R. Ford [and President of the conservative Olin Foundation] . . . spends at
least one-fourth of his time urging corporations to promote the free-market
economy. . . .
"Why
should businessmen be financing left-wing intellectuals and institutions which
espouse the exact opposite of what they believe in?" he asks, referring to
the fact that many corporations give grants to universities or institutions
whose scholars may be critical of business. . . . "I even go so far as to discourage advertising in
publications that are unfriendly to business," Mr. Simon says.
On universities' dependence
on corporate money in general, see for example, Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business
Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-1960, Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1992, ch. 7. An excerpt (pp.
193-194):
[B]y 1951 half of the country's nine-hundred
privately endowed schools were in the red.
In the late forties, private colleges and universities began soliciting
corporate America to bail them out of their chronic financial predicament. A powerful segment of the business community
proposed a "marriage of business and education" based on the
financial rescue of independent education.
In 1952, a group of leading industrialists that included Alfred P. Sloan
of General Motors, Frank W. Abrams of Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, Henry
Ford II of Ford Motor Company, John L. McCaffrey of International Harvester
Company, Irving S. Olds of United States Steel Corporation, Henning W. Prentis
of Armstrong Cork Company, and Laird Bell of Weyerhauser Timber formed the
Council for Financial Aid to Education.
With the assistance of the Council, corporate contributions grew
dramatically in the fifties. . . .
Business gifts, independent of grants for industrial research, rose from
$24 million in 1948 to $136 million in 1958.
By 1965 corporate donations had reached $280 million a year.
Joel
H. Spring, Education and the Rise of the
Corporate State, Boston: Beacon, 1972; David F. Noble, America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate
Capitalism, New York: Knopf, 1977, especially chs. 7, 8 and 9; Calvin Sims,
"Business-Campus Ventures Grow," New
York Times, December 14, 1987, p. D1.
And see footnote 31
of this chapter; and footnote 75
of chapter 10 of U.P.
9. Allan Bloom's book is: The
Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and
Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students, New York: Simon and Schuster,
1987.
10.
Bloom continually invokes Plato, stating: "Men may live more truly
and fully in reading Plato and Shakespeare than at any other time" (p.
380).
11.
On human rights in Mexico, see for example, Larry Rohter, "Former
Mexican Soldier Describes Executions of Political Prisoners," New York Times, February 19, 1989, p. A1
("In the first public acknowledgment of death squad activity in Mexico, a
former Mexican Army soldier is maintaining that he was part of a secret
military unit that executed at least 60 political prisoners here"); Amnesty
International, Mexico: Torture With
Impunity, New York: Amnesty International, 1991; Ellen L. Lutz, Unceasing Abuses: Human Rights in Mexico One
Year After the Introduction of Reform, New York: Americas Watch, 1991; Dan
La Botz, Mask of Democracy: Labor
Suppression in Mexico Today, Boston: South End, 1992, pp. 30-33. See also footnote 88
of chapter 10 of U.P.
12.
On Japan's global lead in advanced manufacturing and the myth of
"Japanese economic decline" in the 1990s, see for example, Eamonn
Fingleton, "The forgotten merits of manufacturing," Challenge, Volume 43, Issue 2, March 1,
2000, pp. 67-85.
13. On the similar allocation of research funding
by M.I.T.I. and for "Star Wars," see footnote 4
of chapter 3 of U.P.
14. Another example of a central question
systematically evaded in academic scholarship is the influence of corporations
in setting foreign policy. For a rare
discussion of this phenomenon, see Dennis M. Ray, "Corporations and
American Foreign Relations," in Annals
of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Philadelphia:
American Academy of Political and Social Science, September 1972, pp.
80-92. This article begins (pp. 80-81):
[W]e know virtually nothing about the role of corporations in American
foreign relations. . . . [Scholarship
has] clarified the influence of Congress, the press, scientists, and non-profit
organizations, such as RAND, on the foreign policy process. The influence of corporations on the foreign
policy process, however, remains clouded in mystery.
My search through the respectable literature on international relations
and U.S. foreign policy shows that less than 5 percent of some two hundred
books granted even passing attention to the role of corporations in American
foreign relations. From this
literature, one might gather that American foreign policy is formulated in a
social vacuum, where national interests are protected from external threats by
the elaborate machinery of governmental policymaking. There is virtually no acknowledgment in standard works within the
field of international relations and foreign policy of the existence and
influence of corporations.
15. On purges of dissent at U.S. universities,
see for example, Ellen Schrecker, No
Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1986 (on the 1950s purge); Howard Zinn, "The Politics of History in
the Era of the Cold War: Repression and Resistance," in Noam Chomsky et
al., The Cold War and the University:
Toward an Intellectual History of the Postwar Years, New York: New Press,
1997, pp. 35-72.
16. Chomsky notes that for Cambodia scholars,
the situation has changed somewhat in recent years.
17. On Thomas Ferguson's work, see footnote 94
of chapter 10 of U.P.
For an historical analog to
the Ferguson story in the text, see Merle Curti, The Social Ideas of American Educators, Paterson, NJ: Pageant
Books, 1959, p. 222 (noting that in 1895, in the midst of labor agitation, the
National Education Association "recommended that the teacher of American
history confine herself to the colonial and early national period"). See also, Ronald Radosh,
"Annual-Set-to: The Bare-Knuckled Historians," Nation, February 2, 1970, p. 108 (reporting that professor Jesse
Lemish was "dismissed from the University of Chicago because his
'political concerns interfered with his scholarship'"); Jesse Lemisch, On Active Service in War and Peace: Politics
and Ideology in the American Historical Profession, Chicago: New Hogtown,
1975.
18. For Peters's book, see Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the
Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine, New York: Harper and Row, 1984. Scarcely eight months after its publication,
the book went into its seventh printing, and Joan Peters reportedly had 250
speaking engagements scheduled for the upcoming year.
19. Some of the reviewers' blurbs reprinted in
the paperback edition of the Peters book include:
"This book is a historical event in itself." (Barbara Tuchman)
"A superlative book. . . . To
understand what is happening in the Middle East, one must begin with its past,
which Miss Peters traces to the present with unmatched skill." (Theodore
H. White)
"Every political issue claiming the attention of a world public has its 'experts'
-- news managers, anchor men, ax grinders, and anglers. The great merit of this book is to
demonstrate that, on the Palestinian issue, these experts speak from utter
ignorance. Millions of people the world
over, smothered by false history and propaganda, will be grateful for this
clear account of the origins of the Palestinians." (Saul Bellow)
"Joan
Peters' book provides necessary demographic and historic perspectives which
have been inexplicably and substantially ignored until now, but without which
misconceptions and policy distortions are inevitable. The reader will be most impressed with the thoroughness and
prodigious input this work entails, as I was." (Philip M. Hauser, Director
Emeritus, Population Research Center, The University of Chicago; former Acting
Director of U.S. Census)
"Joan Peters strikes a heavy blow against the broad consensus about 'the
Palestinians' and the assumption that Palestinian rights are at the heart of
the Arab-Israeli conflict. . . . From Time Immemorial supplies abundant
justification for reversing the moral and legal presumptions that have cast
Israel in the role of defendant before the court of world opinion."
(William V. O'Brien, Georgetown University)
"The massive research Ms. Peters did . . . would have daunted
Hercules. In the course of it she
turned up a great deal of interesting material from Ottoman records, the
reports of Western consular officers and observant travelers and other
sources." (New York Times Book
Review)
"A remarkable document in itself. . . .
The refugees are not the problem but the excuse." (Washington Post Book World)
"Everything in this book reads like hard news. . . . One woman walks in and scoops them all. . .
. The great service provided here by
Mrs. Peters -- if only attention is paid -- is to lay a groundwork for peace by
clearing away the farrago of lies." (National
Review)
"This book, if read, will change the mind of our generation. If understood, it could also affect the
history of the future." (New
Republic)
"The
reader comes away not only rethinking the Middle East refugee problem, but also
the extent to which propaganda can be swallowed whole for lack of
information." (Los Angeles
Times)
"From Time Immemorial is
impressive, informative, absorbing. All
those who are interested in the Arab-Israeli questions will benefit from Joan
Peters's insight and analysis." (Elie Wiesel)
"From Time Immemorial will
surely change the way we think about that still fiercely contested land once
called Palestine. For Joan Peters has
dug beneath a half-century's accumulation of propaganda and brought into the
light the historical truth about the Middle East. With a wealth of authoritative evidence, she exposes the tangle
of lies and false claims by which the Arabs have tried to justify their
unending violence. Everyone who hopes
for peace in the Middle East between Jews and Arabs will want to read this book
-- will have to read this book."
(Lucy Dawidowicz)
20. On professor Hauser, see footnotes 19
and 25
of this chapter.
21. For Tuchman's and others' jubilation about
the Peters book, see footnotes 19
and 25
of this chapter.
22. The original article by Finkelstein appeared
in In These Times, September 11,
1984. An updated version is published
as chapter 2 of Norman G. Finkelstein, Image
And Reality Of The Israel-Palestine Conflict, London: Verso, 1995. See also, Norman G. Finkelstein,
"Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of
Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial,"
and Edward Said, "Conspiracy of Praise," both in Edward Said and
Christopher Hitchens, eds., Blaming the
Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, London: Verso,
1988, chs. 1 and 2.
23. After several years, Finkelstein was able to
obtain work teaching classes in political theory and international relations at
New York University and then at City University of New York. He published four books between 1995 and
2000 -- see Norman G. Finkelstein, Image
And Reality Of The Israel-Palestine Conflict, London: Verso, 1995; Norman
G. Finkelstein, The Rise and Fall of
Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1996; Norman G. Finkelstein and Ruth Bettina
Birn, A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen
Thesis and Historical Truth, New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998; Norman G.
Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry:
Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, London: Verso, 2000.
24. For British reviews of the Peters book, see
for example, Albert Hourani [Oxford University historian], "An ancient
war," Observer (London), March
3, 1985, p. 27. An excerpt:
The whole book is written like this: facts are
selected or misunderstood, tortuous and flimsy arguments are expressed in
violent and repetitive language. This
is a ludicrous and worthless book, and the only mildly interesting question it
raises is why it comes with praise from two well-known American writers.
Ian
Gilmour and David Gilmour, "Pseudo-Travellers," London Review of Books, February 7, 1985, pp. 8f. An indication of this review's sustained
decimation:
Peters's censorship of Zionist sources that do not
suit her case is as effective as her censorship of Arab sources. In this, at least, she is impartial. . .
. Peters cites the historian Makrizi to
back one of her statements about mid-19th century population movement, but,
since Makrizi died in 1442, he is less than authoritative on what happened in
1860. . . . Instead of bolstering Peters's
case, the Hope Simpson report destroys it.
Ms. Peters's treatment of the report shows that her handling of such
evidence cannot be trusted even when she seems to be quoting it. . . . Part of the author's technique is at times
to give a misleading "quotation" in the text and then bury the
correct quotation in one of the 1,792 footnotes at the end of the book. . .
. Peters thus uses the Ottoman census
when it suits her and disregards it when it does not. . . . The author prefers the words that were not
used to those that were. . . . Even
when the author uses a more modern piece of evidence, it is distorted out of
all recognition. . . . [W]hat can one
say of a historian who takes a group of 37 refugees in 1967 and translates them
into "the majority of the Arab refugees in 1948"? It is disappointing that after "seven
years" of research, the author has not discovered facts about the Middle
East conflict which have been widely known for a long time. . . .
[T]his book is not history. As a guide to what has happened in Palestine
in the last hundred years Ms. Peters is about as trustworthy as her Medieval
"source" Makrizi. The
prominent Zionist academics thanked in the preface for their encouragement,
their "data and statistics," their "checking and re-checking,"
seem to have some explaining to do. In
accepting the claims of this strident, pretentious and preposterous book, Miss
Tuchman and Mr. Bellow among others have shown a deplorable lack of judgment.
25. For the article that refers to the unpublished
Porath review, see Colin Campbell, "Dispute Flares Over Book On Claims To
Palestine," New York Times, November 28, 1985, p. C16. An excerpt:
The whole "Palestinian" issue, Miss
Peters claims, is a "big lie" that has caused "bewildering, squeamish
reactions" of "doubt and guilt" among Israel's supporters. Yehoshua Porath, an Israeli historian of the
Palestinian Arabs who teaches at Hebrew University, was asked in a telephone
interview from Jerusalem about the book.
"I think it's a sheer forgery," he replied. "In Israel, at least, the book was
almost universally dismissed as sheer rubbish except maybe as a propaganda
weapon," the historian said. Mr.
Porath described his politics as centrist.
He has written an essay on the book for The New York Review of Books
that will be published soon.
[Barbara Tuchman], in an angry letter to Sir
Ian [Gilmour, who dismissed the book as fraudulent in the British press,] that
was printed last month in The Nation, traced part of the hostility against the book
to Britain's "growing anti-Semitism." Ms. Tuchman said later that she regarded some of the book's
American critics as "committed P.L.O. supporters" who were guilty of
"the worst kind" of anti-Semitism. . . . Mrs. Tuchman said she had not kept up with recent scholarship but
she retained a vivid sense from research she did 30 years ago that Jewish labor
had reclaimed a desolate Palestine, just as Miss Peters argued. The notion of "the Palestinians"
was "a fairy tale," Mrs. Tuchman said.
Mr. Hauser, the Chicago demographer [who
recommended the book's methods], recalled that Miss Peters, a family friend,
had asked him to check some calculations and he had done so. He said he had "no competence" in
Middle Eastern history. Saul Bellow
declined to comment. Mr. Wiesel, Mr.
Duke, Mr. White and several others [who all had praised the book] said they had
not followed the controversy.
Norman
Finkelstein notes that this article appeared in response to escalating
accusations of censorship, leveled mainly by the British press. It was run by the New York Times in its Thanksgiving Day (non-) issue, on the Theater
page, without even a listing in the index.
Several weeks later, New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis then devoted a column to
publicizing the hoax. See Anthony
Lewis, "There Were No Indians," New
York Times, January 13, 1986, p. A15.
26. For Porath's article, see Yehoshua Porath,
"Mrs. Peters's Palestine," New
York Review of Books, January 16, 1986, p. 36. See also, Norman G. Finkelstein, Image And Reality Of The Israel-Palestine Conflict, London: Verso,
1995, ch. 2.
27. On the Israeli reviews of the Peters book,
see for example, Norman Finkelstein, "Challenging the Thesis of a
Palestine 'Uninhabited' in 1880," Op-Ed, New York Times, January 17, 1986, p. A30. The Times published
this letter from Finkelstein after the New
York Review finally ran its review of the Peters book: