The folly of Vanguardism:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is another Under L on the USSR post. In this case, I'm going to make a point that people as a rule generally prefer to neglect in terms of just why the USSR failed:

Leninism is the root of the problem, not specifically the form it took when Stalin made it supremely more efficient.


In particular, the flaws of the USSR came from that most fundamental misperception of Lenin: if you take a group of people, inculcate in them the Nechaev-style view of Revolutionary-as-monomaniac, and you teach them a distorted view of an already oversimplified and flawed idea, the only thing that can result from such a huge conglomeration of total fanatics and scum in high places is an epic disaster. The very root of the evil in the Soviet system is the most simple one of all, namely that it rose from the fundamental founding tenets of Lenin, and this flaw applies no matter what kind of system would emulate this.

The reason that things like the Soviet Union can only fail and will always fail is not even necessarily when they attempt to create a command economy (for after all the USA and other societies of WWII had them in a sense as that's what a full-fledged war economy is). Rather, it is the attempt, working from an already flawed idea, to encourage the worst kinds of fanaticism and zealotry in people who already wield tremendous power that creates the seeds of destruction in the midst of such creation. The difference, however, between Leninism and Nazism proved to be this: the USSR had one guy whose concept of fanaticism was rooted around the ultimate bureaucratic nightmare, and so it promoted people who were exceptional bureaucrats of a purely economics-minded fashion (being purely economics minded by no means meant they could run an economy well outside certain specialized sectors). Nazism just promoted manchildren with penis-size compensation issues and let them run amok in Europe for 12 years with all the horrors that entailed.

The flaws, however, here do not simply apply to the 1917-1991 phase of the continental Russian imperial civilization led by a one-party state. Rather the deep flaws of Vanguardism apply to any such movement and its simplest flaw of all is this one: humans on a social scale organize in fashions that are inherently unequal and prone to waste and all kinds of abuses. Simple fanaticism and cruelty and ruthlessness, no matter how firmly applied, cannot in a short span of time accomplish what much longer "natural" spans of time themselves accomplish unevenly. The prospect of change in societies is an inevitable, but change must come naturally, from within social institutions, and working to step by step, degree by degree, alter those institutions for the better. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the failure of Vanguardism in particular and revolutions in general comes not from the stars but from ourselves: the power that comes out of the barrel of a gun is power indeed, but it's a crude, ruthless power that has no ultimate staying power and is in its own fashion a ticking time bomb in the heart of any so foolish as to wield it.

Comments

[vehemencet-t.livejournal.com]

I disagree that societal change has to work through the institutions, especially when those institutions are corrupt and work against the interests of the society. There are times when they cannot and should not be reformed, but destroyed and abandoned.

And history has shown that such attempts will never be won without a fight as the ruling class does everything in its power to hold on--so this "foolish time bomb" must be kept ready, but used with care.

But I agree with your critique of Vanguardism. It is no way to establish a free society. Mass support is required so that after the authority is overthrown people have the alternative social structures in place to efficiently meet their needs in its absence.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Except that revolutions invariably attempt to destroy institutions, with partial success if there is any success at all, while creating a new, insecure elite whose sole resort in times of trouble is kill everything that moves. Revolutions invariably replace an old elite with a new one because the revolutionary cycle all but guarantees the movement without a state will become a state. Revolutions, after all, almost invariably lead to wars, and what do wars require? The organized tools of a state or something very like them.

The Thermidor is not a failure of a revolution, it is an inevitable evolution of a revolution.

[vehemencet-t.livejournal.com]

I disagree. Only when revolutions allow themselves to be co-opted and homogenized by authoritarian forces, when they remain part of a collective (or are forced to be) that no longer conforms to their self-interest, does that occur. Some revolutions have managed to avoid becoming a state until overcome by statist/counter-revolutionary forces (such as in Spain, Ukraine, and Shinmin autonomous region), while some continue to struggle in freedom such as in Chiapas. Other examples like Somalia shows the consequences of what happens when a government collapses and the people have not prepared for it, although even in that cases, many rural areas showed the remarkable capacity of individuals to spontaneously organize to mitigate chaos and detrimental disorder.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Revolution by its very nature is an authoritarian, collectivizing force.

[vehemencet-t.livejournal.com]

False. Revolution is supposed to be, in order to achieve its goal by definition, a popular, diversifying (through creating free space for people to be) force.

Once again refer to history--while there are certainly examples of authoritarian coups falsely referred to as "revolution", as if there were anything revolutionary about that, there are other examples of the popular bottom-up variety of more or less duration and success.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Not really, not at any point in history. Revolutions are Vanguardist by their very nature, defining liberty in senses that deliberately reject the old order and impose a new one by the crash of the bomb. Popular movements are too unwieldy. After all, the first Terror of the First Republic in France was proto-Stalinist and it was from the most "popular" phase of the Revolution......

[vehemencet-t.livejournal.com]

The popular act of taking back what a recalcitrant and oppressive ruling class stole is not "imposing". It is countering the violence of the elite in order to defend what has been reclaimed.

I concede many so-called popular movements have utterly failed in that regard by becoming themselves an oppressive and authoritarian power. However, not all, have gone this way, such as Catalonia, Aragon, the Free Territory of Ukraine, Shinmin autonomous region, modern Chiapas for the Zapatistas, El Alto in Bolivia, although many were eventually conquered/slaughtered by statist/counterrevolutionary forces from without. Nonetheless not by any internal failings.

But regardless which is preferred, the controlled stagnant society where the majority of wealth and power is concentrated into the hands of a ruling class who are trusted with such things as nuclear weapons, biological weapons, central bank apparatus whereby with practically a keystroke they can send economies crashing, and massive surveillance capabilities and who, being the monopoly on force and, almost, through capitalism, survival, can impose their selfish and corrupt will on the rest of us? Or free space where individuals are free to associate voluntarily (or not) to cooperate in creating non-hierarchical social networks to address their needs and retain authority over themselves and their local decisions. At least the latter gives us a chance, whereas the former can promise only future further consolidation and greater divide.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

So in November 1917 the Provisional Government was just as repressive as Alexander III and Nicholas II had been?

The problem with all the examples you mention is that many of the supposed anarchist movements were really warlord bands. It's like using Jennison and Quantrill to typify the US Civil War. And that war itself produced many of the same patterns.

[vehemencet-t.livejournal.com]

Warlord bands? Seriously. Not even a statist historian would make that assertion. I think you have them confused with Somalia (who collapsed unprepared to suddenly be forced to manage their own lives, without which a lot of the chaos could have been avoided).

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

About Makhno, the Zapatistas, and their ilk? Er, yes, actually, statist historians could, would, and do do precisely this.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

(for after all the USA and other societies of WWII had them in a sense as that's what a full-fledged war economy is

This is an untrue assertion.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

So you say.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

No, not me.
http://www.investorwords.com/951/command_economy.html
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_command_economy
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/command-economy.asp

As for whether the U.S. was a command economy during the war:
http://prospect.org/article/way-we-won-americas-economic-breakthrough-during-world-war-ii
Contrary to the stereotype of a wartime "command economy," there was a remarkable entrepreneurial spirit in sharp contrast to the situation in Germany or in socialist, centrally planned economies. Roosevelt brought in dozens of top business executives as "dollar-a-year" men to help run the government commissions so that businesses didn't feel the government was simply telling them what to do. He allowed business to realize profits. He used government to create markets and to help business set up new plants and equipment, which business often leased and later bought cheaply after the war.

I will admit that it does seem like you're not alone in conflating "war economy" with "command economy".

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

So why then do people say his actions were 100% identical to Joe Stalin's?

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

I don't know what people you're talking about.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

A very tempting thesis, but surely the American Revolution punches a hole in this theory? With its fanatic vanguardist revolutionaries (Jefferson! Henry! Paine!) rejecting such well-established political principles as monarchism at the point of a gun and going on to invent and rule a radical new order, surely the United States should have been doomed.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

As I recall the American Revolution wasn't really won by the USA so much as by the British being overstretched fighting a rebellion on the simple geographic scale of North America, and against the states of Spain, the Netherlands, and France. Any time outside a siege where the Continental Army deliberately fought the UK's forces with the one exception of Saratoga, it ended as well for them as any battle of the Viet Cong and the US Army. Too, the US Revolution was less an attempt to build a new order than to consolidate an old one.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

The Declaration of Independence doesn't read to me like the manifesto of people consolidating an old order.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Depends on how you look at it I suppose. King Georgey and others made the mistake of letting the colonies develop their own sense of identity and autonomy. There was, in fact, an extant "order" to the colonies, and by and large the Revolutionaries were acting to preserve that order. The colonies see-sawed through periods of hands-off policies and controlling polices from the Parliament. It was when Parliament began getting too hands-on that the colonists were like, "Eh what? No, this is not how we do it.."

American independence is rooted in the previous de facto independence afforded by distance and negligence on the part of England.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Institutionally, I agree. And that may be the difference that makes the difference. But philosophically, the explicit rejection of the monarchy was a radical change.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

+ 1

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I'm sure Oliver Cromwell and Charles I would have been interested to see the radical nature of that change.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Yes, but they weren't around in the late 18th century.

In the west at that time, Roman republicanism was no more realistic a model for governance than Roman worship of Jupiter was realistic as a model of religion.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

All true. The American republic was not wholly novel.

But I don't think that changes that the founders of the American republic were vanguardist revolutionaries. Being a vanguardist doesn't mean that your new order is wholly novel; it means that your new order is radically different from what it replaces, with the expectation that revolutionary zeal will be enough to overcome any challenges.

And while yes, the colonial legislatures were already in place, the radical grounding of state legitimacy in democratic principle was indeed radical change for the American people of the time. Hence my point above about institutional versus philosophical change; one could argue that vanguardism can effect the latter but not the former.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Shamelessly plagiarizing from Locke? It really was consolidating the old order of "you pretend to rule us and we pretend to be ruled."

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

And it was doomed. The US has yet to truly break away from the London teat. The British bankers' club is still here and going strong.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I agree that real change is evolutionary. There were evolutionary changes in Russia and even in the USSR itself. Revolution is typically a boil-popping process that excises a festering puss from the body politic. In the case of the Marxist-Leninists, they became the next generation of festering puss that needed to be excised. Unfortunately for Russia, there is still a great deal of detritus left behind.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No there weren't. The only evolutionary change was in March, the November clusterfuck was the start of a civil war where neither side represented the actual majority, but the group that did had no army.