EDITORIAL PERSPECTIVES (continued)
We are told over and over that historical materialism is fatalistic and
inevitabilistic; that it reduces history to a sequence of necessary transformations,
leaving no room for variety, accident, agency, or the role of the individual. "Red
Butterflies" makes it clear that there is unity and directionality in the present-day
historical process; that nothing changes the general line of development from capitalism to socialism.1 But that leaves open the questions: at what speed, with what
choreography (i.e., the ordering of development in different parts of the world), and
indeed whether the path to the future is not permanently blocked by a thermonuclear or ecological catastrophe. Does my critic really want to suggest that changing
Lenin's impact in the way proposed would have had no effect? (Lenin, arguably,
was one of those nodal butterflies.) Of course, it should also be clear from "Red
Butterflies" that even if Lenin had lived longer, and lent his influence to a qualitatively different turn in the political culture of the USSR, the impact of that development on other parts of the world will still have depended entirely on the concerted
efforts of mass movements and many other people. Certain individuals do indeed
have disproportionate influence, but not alone, and not to the extent that the entire
course of social evolution is altered.
What is fascinating is the way in which thinking that urges us to "look to the
future, not the past" and invent entirely new paths converges with unacknowledged
acceptance of a rigid version of historical materialism in which variation is in fact
not contemplated. It is a case of the past being completely closed, and the future
completely open.2
Now regarding the "Brothers Grimm." I don't mind hearing "Red Butterflies"
called a fairy tale; fairy tales can, as we know, be important allegories. What I seek
to understand, however, is how "this kind of thinking" has, in the mind of this
writer, led to "some of the worst totalitarian regimes," or how it amounts to
"gloss(ing) over the crimes of the past." Since the entire point of "Red Butterflies"
is that the authoritarian deformation of early socialism, although rooted in material
and social conditions, was not inevitable, and that the world might have been
farther advanced along the road to enlightened and needs-fulfilling societies, this
writer's intense hostility (not to speak of "curses") suggests psychological
displacement. The injunction to "burn those old garments and weave new dreams"
relegates the dreams to the utopian sphere of an entirely contingent future, where
they are conveniently unrealizable. The emotion in this response is actually a cry of
pain against the possibility of achieving a socialist future, a possibility that emerges
through examination of its uneven and imperfect presence in that much-despised
past. The outraged, decontextualized moralism of third-camp socialists in their
attacks against everything the left has ever actually done is in fact directed against
the very core of the left vision.
This applies, also, to the last comment, which again counterposes the future
to the past, sees alternative paths as an instance of "dewy nostalgia for happy outcomes" (how can one be nostalgic for something that did not happen?), and condemns "our own hubris" for making those outcomes impossible. The "hubris," apparently, is the mere fact of projecting a humane, democratic and egalitarian future.
Yes, we had the temerity to try to change the world. Yes, our efforts often had unintended, and tragic, consequences. And yes, we will try again! Perhaps we will draw
important lessons from the past and avoid some of those consequences. If so, it will
only be by studying our history, not by ignoring it or condemning it tout court. And
the dialectics of immanence suggests that studying history not just the outer
shell, but also the inner core involves learning from not only what happened but
from what might have happened; from the contradictory unity of the actual and the
potential.
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IN THIS ISSUE
José Carlos Mariátegui (18941930) was a remarkable Peruvian Marxist, who combined theoretical depth with vast knowledge of the historical and cultural specificity
of Latin American countries. In his study "Mariátegui, the Comintern, and the
Indigenous Question in Latin America," historian Marc Becker brings a new and
valuable portrait of this thinker-activist to English-language readers; reveals his
early and profound thinking on the problems of indigenous peoples in Latin America, as the left there sought to interpret the work of Lenin and others on the "national question" in terms of the complex realities of that continent; and, finally,
shows that the relations of Communists "on the ground" to the Comintern in the
period studied do not fit the usual academic stereotypes. In particular, the positions
adopted by Mariátegui and the official representatives of the Comintern in Latin
America are not positioned along a simple spectrum running from "heterodox" to
"orthodox," in terms of class analysis. Moreover, the debates recounted by Becker
reveal an active and passionate process in which local activists fought for their views
and had some influence over the policies eventually adopted, undermining the
dogma of anti-Communist scholarship that paints the Comintern as uniformly rigid,
unresponsive to local input, and dictatorial in implementation of policy.
From Mariátegui's Peru to Gramsci's Italy, a line may be traced linking those
two thinkers and their realities. (Indeed, they are often compared.) Antonio
Sonnessa's "Factory Cells and the Red Aid Movement: Factory and Neighborhood
Forms of Organization and Resistance to Fascism in Turin, 19221926" recounts the
struggles of the working-class industrial and political movement there in the context
of the rising tide of fascism. Central to this struggle was the question of the role of
defensive work, and the balance between factory and neighborhood organization.
Both involved issues surrounding the role of women in the overall struggle.
Sonnessa's account, like Becker's, reveals an impressive sophistication, both in
relating theory to experience, and in tactical flexibility. The Italian Communist
Party resisted the temptation to go entirely with one form of organization or the
other, recognizing not only an intrinsic role for each, but also that the roles, and the
balance between them, shifted as the struggle moved from one phase to another.
Once again, we learn that we have much to learn from the past.
The issue of the definition of productive labor, and the uses to which the
productive/unproductive distinction may be put, has been debated widely in Marxist
political economy, including in Science & Society. While some (including this
writer!) may be tempted to declare that the debate has been "solved," it is important
to acknowledge that this is never in fact true; political economy progresses through
continuing reconsideration of what some may see as old issues. Now, Paul
Cockshott and David Zachariah put forward a view that defends a version of the
famous distinction, based on direct or indirect relative surplus value production.
Their account has the merit of a) careful attention to classical texts, without succumbing to "textualism" (treating Marx's writing as somehow sacred and inherently
definitive); b) a delightfully modern contextualization of the debate, with command
of rigorous techniques in economic theory; and c) an empirical application, to Swedish data.
In our "Communications" section, we begin with political economist Jørgen
Sandemose's new approach to gold money and the reproduction schemes from Capital II. The serious implications of the riddles addressed by Sandemose for the general theory of capitalist accumulation have been clear since Rosa Luxemburg's Accumulation of Capital, and we expect this discussion to continue. We are also pleased
to present, in a very different vein, Richard Magat's historical note relating the epic
Scopes "Monkey Trial" to the roles of two teachers, both from De Witt Clinton High
School in the Bronx, New York City. We won't rehearse the details here, except to
note the remarkable coincidence that our author also happens to be an alumnus of
that school!
Finally, Sylvia Federici's review article on Londa Schiebinger's Nature's Body:
Gender in the Making of Modern Science raises anew questions concerning gender
oppression: not just that it exists, or even that it is related to the rise of capitalism,
but rather how it is part of the reproduction of oppressive social relations generally,
and how science itself has been shaped, and limited, by the social relations within
and around it not just the pool of talent from which it has been able to draw but
also the very conceptual foundations from which scientific progress is projected.
D. L.
________________
1. The usual story, of a butterfly in Brazil flapping its wings and causing a
hurricane in North America, is in fact widely misunderstood. If any butterfly
flaps its wings at any time, the effect will most likely be unnoticeable. Chaos
and catastrophe theory require a particular wing flap, in both space and time.
If you want to be a historically noteworthy butterfly, find a nodal point, a
point on the cusp or boundary of the control space that governs qualitative
shifting of a system from one state to another.
2. "To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are to be
considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of
investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely
irreconcilable antitheses. 'His communication is "yea, yea, nay, nay," and
whatsoever cometh not of these cometh of evil'" (Engels, Socialism, Utopian
and Scientific, International Publishsers, 1935, p. 46; quoting Matthew 5:7).