[lit-ideas] Re: Interpretation and Elision

Andy Amago wrote:

Given the surreal enormity of the chaos that [Stalin]
perpetrated on that country, I wonder if the commonly held view that
Communism was tried and failed really holds. Under circumstances such as
those, democracy/capitalism would have failed too. I am NOT a supporter of
Communism. I'm just wondering if absent Stalin it would have turned out
differently. Rhetorical. Of course it would have turned out differently. It may have actually been a viable system. We'll never know.

Yes. Marx wouldn't have seen Stalin's rule as a dictatorship of the proletariat, so-called. Clearly a one-man dictatorship is a long way from a state in which the workers control the means of production, and thereby 'state' power. But Marx was notoriously reluctant to say just what the final stage would look like in detail, because he and Engels
(I don't know who said what) wanted to avoid the fallacy of 'utopian socialism' in favor of 'scientific socialism.' Reaganites who see the failure of the Soviet Union as the failure of Communism itself shouldn't be trusted to interpret anything.

It may be that Marx didn't really think that there were logical relations (Feudalism entails Capitalism) among objects and states of affairs, but there's a teleological strain in his writings which suggests that he must have; if he didn't think something like this, his claims about the transition from one state to another would have been put forward as empirical ones, confirmable or falsifiable through experience.

It was this view of Marx (not necessarily this view of Marx's) that I was interested in.

Phil Enns or Mike Chase, or both, will point out how I get Marx wrong; Richard Henninge will point out how in criticizing Marx I misrepresent German Idealism; Donal will take care of the falsifiability stuff.

Robert Paul
Winesburg, Ohio



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