She’ll be comin’ ’round the mountain when she comes…
Industrialization, when it Comes, Is Merciless
Marx made many astute observations about the brutal social transitions of industrialization, and about its impact upon the inevitable victims. The sudden imbalance of power between the emerging capitalists and both the old nobility and the new working class, left the nobility in a state of cascading decline and the working class in a misery of grim exploitation with few ways out.
Those observations were so astute, they still applied in my lifetime to the belated industrialization of China’s peasant economy to become the rising industrial power of our time.
(But note, industrialization is merciless no matter who’s in charge or what they call themselves. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Google research the hukou system, which in effect now ensures a permanent underclass in China.)
But Marx made as well some scorching blunders, the biggest being his blithe assumption that, in the power struggle between classes, class is determined purely and simply by one’s direct relation to the means of production.
This means, in Marxist terms, that since modern capitalism depends upon the pooling of private capital in vast sums, the capitalists become the new ruling class, at the expense of both the old landed nobility and the new industrial proletariat.
Similarly, in feudal times, production was determined, not by the organization of industry but by the conquest and control of land. For this purpose, feudal lords and their private armies were the key economic class.
So far, so good.
The Dictatorship of the Proletariat
Lenin & Stalin, a la Soviet realism
The Potato Eaters, a la Van Gogh’s realism
Perhaps we’re being dense (being the potato eaters that we are) but how exactly does this dictatorship of the proletariat work?
But in his time, Marx wanted to say, the proletariat were now the key productive class, and power would ineluctably flow to them.
Except for one problem: the proletariat was the first ruling class not, from the get-go, capable of self-rule.
But, never fear, a splinter of the old ruling class, a vanguard party, would arise to lead the proletariat to power, through a “dictatorship of the proletariat”. This meant not that the proletariat would exercise dictatorial control (remember, they couldn’t rule themselves), but that the vanguard party, a Communist Party, would rule dictatorially on their behalf.
But this party would develop no independent class interest, according to Marx, because only direct relations to the means of production determined classes.
But this is to place too much weight on the productive process, and too little on the control of the productive process.
The vanguard party, exercising dictatorial control over the rest of the population (including the proletariat), thereby exercised indirect control over the means of production.
If Stalin wanted a dacha, Stalin got a dacha.
If Stalin wanted a woman, Stalin got a woman.
If Stalin wanted anything that money could buy or power coerce, he got whatever he wanted.
If that form of control did not suffice, the party could not rule in the name of the proletariat. It could not direct the means of production, and direct production as it thought best. And it could not maintain itself in power.
Indirect control of the means of production is all that is needed to form an interest as a class.
The party’s indirect control was founded on direct control over all other classes, and especially over the producing classes, however defined.
If the peasants objected, they were starved or slaughtered.
If the students objected, they were re-educated or slaughtered.
The Party’s interest as a class, its sole justification for existing, and its raison d’etre, is to maintain itself as a class capable of wielding power.
This entitlement may be firmly believed to be the party’s historical mission (as it surely is for some), but it may also be a pretext for keeping power by those who crave it (as it surely is for some), and it may also be a security against political reprisal from those they have coerced (as it surely is for some).
A ruling class of this kind, exercising such indirect control over production and direct control over people, does not, while it has the strength to resist, voluntarily yield its control.
History shows few or no ruling classes that leave power gracefully. What else are nativist backlashes? Why would a communist party be any different?
When All Is Said and Dunn 