I fear this thread is getting a bit away from xmca interests. So rather
than pursuing the fascinating intricacies of historical analysis, there is
a general process point which may be of interest to those not caught up in
the social history of Russia. etc.
This is the idea that world history is something that does not exist as
such but had to be brought into being. Look at Hegel's description of
"world History": you have great powers roaming around grabbing colonies,
fighting wars with each other, rising and declining by turns. It is not a
real unified process, it is atomised. Hobbes was banished from national
history, only to remain in charge of world history. In a certain sense, it
was during those last 2 or 3 decades of the nineteenth century that "world
history" was brought into being. The Great Powers could not simply expand
and suck raw materials and cheap labour out of their colonies; they had to
fight each other for access to colonies. And instead of exporting people
and importing primary produce, retaining the most advanced forces of
production at home, capital was exported, and their own social relations
and forces of production implanted off-shore. Within these countries then
we find the combined and uneven development, which is a reflection of the
exhaustion of the possibility for simple expansion. The result is the
continuous ramification of social developments in the developing countries
back into the imperial homelands.
A
At 04:54 AM 23/10/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>Very good point about the advent of imperialism, and Trotsky's role in
>giving the concept of uneven and combined development definitive form,
>Andy, thank you. And thanks for the leads to the Marx archives. I only
>skimmed the articles on the page your url goes to enough to search for the
>word "uneven" and get a sense of their contents. (Incidentally, I found
>no instances of the key word uneven, in an effort to find instances of
>that terminology - I have found one instance so far in Grundrisse).
>
>However, an article by Engels caught my eye. The last lines in this
>article seem to dovetail so well with the quote I posted the other day
>with Trotsky critiquing Stalin's "socialism in one country" that I thought
>I would post Engels, too. The parallel between Engels and Trotsky's
>remarks - they both state that the future of socialism in Russia depends
>on the international working class revolution - is an interesting
>continuation of some of Victor's points about Marx and the prospects for
>revolution in Russia.
>
>Trotsky's quote is from his 1937 assessment of the growth of a "parasitic
>beauracracy" in the Soviet Union - his seminal work, The Revolution
>Betrayed, page 294. Engels' quote, from volume 27 of MECW, p 432-433, is
>from an afterword he wrote in 1894 to an 1875 article entitled "On Social
>Relations In Russia." In the quote below, the "commune" Engels refers to
>was the tendency of serfs in Russia and other countries to share property
>communally, a remnant of pre-feudal property relations. The 1875 article
>that this article was an afterword to was the last of five articles on
>Russia, anarchism, and other topics under a series Engels wrote called
>Refugee Literature, published in Der Volksstaat in 1874 and 1875. Both
>quotes are copied from marxists.org.
>
>
>Trotsky, 1937, speaking of the Soviet Union:
>>>"The isolated socialist state" has long ceased to be a hypothesis, and
>>>became a fact in Russia to be sure, not in Germany. But this very fact
>>>of isolation is also a precise expression of the relative strength of
>>>world capitalism, the relative weakness of socialism. From an isolated
>>>"socialist" state to a socialist society once for all done with the
>>>state remains a long historic road, and this road
>>>exactly coincides with the road of international revolution."
>
>
>Engels, 1894, speaking of Russia:
>"So if the government wishes to meet the payment of interest to foreign
>countries by some other method than new foreign loans, it must ensure that
>Russian industry rapidly expands to the point where it is able to meet
>domestic demand in full. Hence the requirement that Russia must become an
>industrial nation that is self-sufficient and independent of other
>countries; hence the frantic efforts of the government to bring the
>capitalist development of Russia to a peak in the space of a few years.
>For if this does not take place, there will be no options but to draw on
>the metallic war funds accumulated in the State Bank and the State
>Exchequer, or else state bankruptcy. In either case Russian foreign policy
>would be finished.
>
>"One thing is clear: in these circumstances the fledgling Russian
>bourgeoisie has the state completely in its power. In all economic matters
>of importance the state must do its bidding. If for the time being the
>bourgeoisie continues to put up with the despotic autocracy of the Tsar
>and his officials, it is only because this autocracy, mitigated as it is
>by the venality of the bureaucracy offers it more guarantees than would
>changes even of a bourgeois-liberal nature, whose consequences no one
>could foresee, given the present internal situation in Russia. And so the
>transformation of the country into a capitalist industrial nation, the
>proletarianisation of a large proportion of the peasantry and the decay of
>the old communistic commune proceeds at an ever quickening pace.
>
>"Whether enough of this commune has been saved so that, if the occasion
>arises, as Marx and I still hoped in 1882, it could become the point of
>departure for communist development in harmony with a sudden change of
>direction in Western Europe, I do not presume to say. But this much is
>certain: if a remnant of this commune is to be preserved, the first
>condition is the fall of tsarist despotism revolution in Russia. This
>will not only tear the great mass of the nation, the peasants, away from
>the isolation of their villages, which comprise their “mir”, their
>“world”, and lead them out onto the great stage, where they will get to
>know the outside world and thus themselves, their own situation and the
>means of salvation from their present distress; it will also give the
>labour movement of the West fresh impetus and create new, better
>conditions in which to carry on the struggle, thus hastening the victory
>of the modern industrial proletariat, without which present-day Russia can
>never achieve a socialist transformation, whether proceeding from the
>commune or from capitalism."
>
><end>
>
>
>Andy wrote:
>>It is possible to follow Marx's thinking on this subject through the
>>subject archive of Marx on Russia:
>>http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/russia/index.htm
>>The concept as known to both Marx and Hegel had to undergo fundamental
>>change with the advent of imperialism, as described by Lenin. I think
>>that though the genesis of the concept is traceable through Marx and
>>Lenin, it was really only Trotsky who was in a position to give the
>>concept of "combined and uneven development" a definitive form.
>>Andy
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