A ruling-class has the advantage of inertia that the way things are is the way they always seem to have been, and so appear natural and eternal, until the divergence of that with reality becomes inescapable. The feudal aristocracy clung to power, as ruling-class, long after its social function had ended, and it had become a fetter on further development, but its hold on power did come to an end, as the revolutionary bourgeoisie supplanted it. Every ruling-class forms a minority of society, and, once the mass of society moves against it, its time is up. The bourgeoisie, and petty-bourgeoisie, as a revolutionary class, was also a minority, but it was supported by the masses of the proletariat and peasantry. The bourgeoisie, as ruling-class, has also lost its social function, which has been taken over by professional managers, technicians, administrators etc., drawn from the working-class. The working-class is not only, now, objectively, the collective owner of socialised capital, but, it acts as the collective, “functioning-capitalist”, but, still continues to do so, not in its own interests, but the interests of the ruling-class!
The feudal aristocracy used their position to continue to drain large amounts of rent, which acted as a fetter on economic development, leading to bourgeois ideologists recommending the nationalisation of land. The bourgeoisie has used its position to continue to drain large amounts in interest/dividends, which acts as a fetter on economic development.
Generally speaking, the new, revolutionary forms of property and production must prevail, in the end, and that applies not only within societies, but between societies too. The defeat of Tsarist Russia, in the Crimean War, at the hands of capitalist Britain and France, led Russia to embark on the same transformation of its mode of production. However, what is true, in general, and, as an end result, is not, necessarily true, in any specific case. As Trotsky noted, every new mode of production comes into existence in a weak condition, and risks being strangled at birth by other established states.
Engels notes examples from earlier history.
“... in which the more barbarian conquerors exterminated or drove out the population of a country and laid waste or allowed to go to ruin productive forces which they did not know how to use. This was what the Christians in Moorish Spain did with the major part of the irrigation works on which the Moors highly developed agriculture and horticulture depended. Of course, every conquest by a more barbarian people disturbs economic development and extensively destroys productive forces. But in the immense majority of cases where the conquest is permanent, the more barbarian conqueror has to adapt himself to the higher “economic order” as it emerges from the conquest; he is assimilated by the vanquished and in most cases he has even to adopt their language. But where — apart from cases of conquest—the internal state power of a country becomes antagonistic to its economic development as occurred at a certain stage with almost every political power in the past, the contest always ended with the downfall of the political power. Inexorably and without exception the economic development has forced its way through—we have already mentioned the latest and most striking example of this: the great French Revolution.” (p 234-5)
The point, however, made by Trotsky, that a new revolutionary mode of production, no matter how dynamic, comes into existence in an immature and weakened condition, is precisely why socialism can only arise on an international basis, as opposed to the utopian and reactionary theory of Socialism In One Country. That is all the more true, in the era of imperialism, when even capitalism has grown to the point where the nation state has become an absolute fetter that it has had to burst asunder, with the creation of larger, multinational states, either on the basis of voluntary agreement, or via wars and annexation.
Every new mode of production faces the prospect of the weight of the old society sitting on its chest. The more the new society conflicts with the old society, the more the existing ruling-class must try to suppress it by force. It is not the revolutionary class that desires, itself, to use force, to establish its own rule, but that reality dictates that it must do so.
“... in the words of Marx, it is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one, that it is the instrument by means of which social movement forces its way through and shatters the dead, fossilized political forms—of this there is not a word in Herr Dühring. It is only with sighs and groans that he admits the possibility that force will perhaps be necessary for the overthrow of the economy based on exploitation—alas!, because all use of force, forsooth, demoralises the person who uses it. And this in spite of the immense moral and spiritual advance which has been the result of every victorious revolution!” (p 235-6)
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