"Russia and the Long Transition from
Capitalism to Socialism,” by Samir Amin, 2016
Amin is a unique theorist,
combining Maoism, social democracy and progressive nationalism into an analysis
of present-day imperialism. This book combines
an anti-imperialist analysis with a ‘geographical’ analyses – building on his
earlier concept of the ‘center’ and ‘periphery,’ which updates the concepts of
the ‘global North/global South,’ or the ‘1st world/3rd
world’ dyads. He rejects the Bolshevik
Party’s ‘underestimation of the peasantry,’ citing Stalin’s forced
collectivization as the ultimate breaking of the worker/peasant alliance. This criticism includes Lenin and Trotsky as
well. Regarding the latter, Amin’s
comments echo prior Stalinist critiques of Trotsky (an ‘academic Marxist’), as
well as making Trotsky’s very early role in calling for political revolution in Russia
invisible. Amin: “At the risk of sounding pretentious, I have
been part of a small current on the left that that had broadly foreseen what
came to a climax between 1989 and 1991.” That actually is pretentious and inaccurate.
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| Core and peripheries of global capitalism |
Mao’s block with the
peasantry and the anti-bureaucratic model of the “Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution’ are touchstones in this group of essays centered around Russia, as well
as the 1955 Bandung Conference. I will list
his main points, as these are ideological writings based on history for the
most part.
1. The comparison of Russia in either Czarist times or
under the Bolsheviks with ‘imperialism’ or empire in the capitalist West is a factually
false comparison. The Czar was actually less
brutal to subject nationalities than the British (or American) colonialists,
while the Bolsheviks forged a USSR
based on the integration of many nationalities, not subject to economic
exploitation. Russia
and China
did not extract ‘imperialist rent.’ The
dissolution of the USSR was
actually carried out by only two counter-revolutionary leaders in Russia and Ukraine over the heads of the
population.
2. Imperialism is always for the dissolution or
‘independence’ of multi-national states it opposes (Yugoslavia,
Russia, China, etc.) while seeing the independence of Scotland or Quebec
or Catalonia
as forbidden. (Amin actually is against
the independence of Scotland,
oddly, as he thinks it is not really separate from Britain any longer.)
3. Amin, being a Maoist, believes that Russia was and China is ‘state capitalist’ and
that ‘state capitalism’ seems to be a progressive step on the road to
socialism. He believes that this entails
a ‘new’ bourgeoisie – a state bourgeoisie, i.e. a new class suddenly developed
out of government. I won’t analyze this
position in depth, but it would logically lead to fighting for ‘state capitalism’
as a progressive step. Unity with the
incipient state-capitalists will make the fight for socialism that much ‘longer!’ He calls Stalinism’s goal a ‘capitalism
without capitalists’ which seems to be strikingly similar.
4. Oddly, in his long, detailed, mostly social-democratic
prescription for what should happen in Russia, he thinks a wing of Putin’s
oligarchy might opt for independent development after the NATO coup in the
Ukraine – a development which might continue the ‘long transition’ towards
socialism. In certain places he does
echo Trotsky’s call for workers control and independent unions, though what he
means by workers democracy is not clear given his adulation of the Cultural
Revolution. At one point he actually
says that the first victims of the Soviet ‘realists’ were ‘communist
militants’ - members of the various Oppositions, including the Left Oppostion.
5. Amin thinks the Bandung
anti-imperialist conference in 1955 can reoccur out of a present alliance
against the ‘triad’ – Europe, US and Japan
- by the “Euro-Asian” block – China,
Russia and anyone else they
can pull in, like Iran and
perhaps now Indonesia and Turkey. He thinks ‘delinking’ from the economic clutches
of the imperial centers is essential, which certainly makes sense. However, given 60 years have passed since Bandung, it seems
unlikely that the revolutionary nationalism of that time will manifest itself
as anti-capitalist in the present period, as it did then. Capital has swallowed nearly all of the globe
in a quite literal way.
6. Amin understands, as nearly all leftist
historians do, that the expropriation of the workers states and socialized
property in central Europe and the USSR
(and for him, China)
came out of the majority wing of the Communist Parties - the enterprise
managers and their political representatives.
7. Amin’s analysis is partly based on geography
playing a role in why Russia
and China first broke with
world imperialism, although he insists that Russia was not in the
‘periphery.’
8. There can never be a ‘one world government’
or state, or a fully-globalized unitary capitalism, as exploitation by the
center of the peripheries is essential to its functioning. He calls leftists who think we are going to
have ‘one world’ naïve.
9. Amin believes that Islamic political
fundamentalism is a form of fascism. As
a former resident of Egypt,
his opinion carries weight, as he has seen its functioning first hand. Amin thinks that imperialists like the U.S. and Britain have been using Islamic
fundamentalism for years against the working class, anti-imperialists and
revolutionary nationalists. This should
come as a shock to those ‘leftists’ who have embraced Islamic politics as ‘anti-imperialist’
or ‘revolutionary.’
10. The USSR only had military parity with
the US./NATO block, but never economic or social parity, given it was not an
imperialist power. The ‘global class
war’ was really a ‘global class defense’ against aggressive imperialism. Amin does not find evidence that the Soviets
or Chinese or Vietnamese ever wanted to export ‘revolution’ except in the form
of national self-defense. The Cuban
effort in Angola
against South African apartheid was to help a pre-existing revolutionary
nationalist government, not something they instigated. Even the isolated offensive effort of Che
Guevara indicates that this was so.
11. Amin calls for a ‘Socialism III” after the
collapse of the 2nd & 3rd Internationals. However, he forgets the 1st International and
makes the 4th invisible.
Perhaps his number should be “V.”
12. Amin believes, unlike some previous
socialists, that small-scale agriculture is viable in a workers state.
13. The destruction of the USSR and central
European workers’ states after 1991 led to an explosion in the triad’s
hegemonic military aggression and financial exploitation across the globe,
while in Europe and in the U.S. liberalism and conservatism united against the
‘social wage,’ public ownership, labor unions, socialist ideas and
working-class parties. All you folks
cheering for the destruction of the USSR? This is what you get.
14. Amin reminds us that the capstone to the push
for ‘democracy’ in Russia
was the disbanding and bombarding of the elected Duma in 1993 by Yeltsin’s
military. It was full of too many
opponents of Yeltsin and the crash-course capitalism he advocated. An assault cheered on by the ‘democratic’ U.S.
press. To top it off, the Communist
Party virtually announced its capitulation by agreeing to the new Russian
constitution.
15. Amin indicates that the ideal of Liberalism
is used by capitalism in the same way that the ideology of Socialism is used by
bureaucratism (or in Amin’s words “state capitalism”) – to hide reality. American Liberals believe an ideology that
has little connection to actual social reality for the vast majority, but it
serves as positivist ideological cover for the whole project.
Altogether an interesting
book by an eclectic Marxist thinker.
Other books by Samir Amin Reviewed below: "The Law of Worldwide Value" and "The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism." Other book or event reviews or commentary on Russia: "Russia & Stoli"'; "Soviet Fates & Lost Alternatives", "Ukrainian Pawns", "Women in Soviet Art" "Life and Fate," "Soviet Women," "Enemy at the Gates," "Ivan's Childhood," "Reinventing Collapse," How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin", "The Red Atlantis" and "Absurdistan."
And I bought it at Mayday
Books!
Red Frog
November 29, 2016
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