6/28
My dear Rae,
Today is Tuesday - June 28.
We must not by the way forget that we must attack Hegelianism.
For ex.,
Hegel says that only a few philosophising men can overcome alienation. Wrong. The worker, even under cap'm. is twice blessed, in comparison with the philosophizers. I know that, both objectively and subjectively. This thing is a pain. You just have no peace, none. Mid-day and midnight. No peace.
Hegel says too a lot of stuff about contradiction, opposites, etc. Baloney. You want to ruin your life? Become an opposition in a party that is in opposition to bourgeois society. Then you are finished, you cannot do one thing without being tied up in another thing, and the contradiction within the contradiction - it just contradicts you every time you wish to contradict. The most important work has to be done in off periods.
Anyway, out of my multitudinous miseries, the following word holds foremost place. MONOPOLY.
Yes, that's all. Do not despise it. I note that L after reading Logic, singled out value, price, supply and demand, etc. apparently simple denominations. Now for him the new category is monopoly. How profound! I wish that it thought so & would go trouble somebody else.
Instead I say: Monopoly. It is two things. It is:
1. A new category for capital (common c).
2. It is an absolute.
The moment you get that, an absolute in Thought, a self-contained identity, you must be aware of a concrete opposition. If you stick at monopoly you are at Understanding. (You remember that guy? He came out of the West).
Now the opposite of free competition was the socialisation of labor. (You have heard all this so many times in recent days. Sad, but true. If only I could tell myself that).
What is this socialisation of labor? What was it in 1914?
Lenin (Vol. XI,1 pp. 33-34) describes it as he saw it then. Spend a week on that passage. Dig at it. See what it has and what it has not. Note how abstract it is. Note phrases like "The socialization of production IS BOUND TO LEAD TO..." This will "DIRECTLY RESULT IN". Science, redistribution of labor, "improved" labor etc. Note how abstract and idealistic is the new form of the family, the new forms of education - the things sounds like a real petty-bourgeois forecast of the rose future - if taken by itself. Grace must pin this thing down. We know L, the article is dialectical materialist, revolutionary. Already (Nov. 1914) he is thinking about cartels etc. But observe that page in abstracto and it sounds pretty bad - for Lenin. I am going to try it out on my good wife2 who has a wonderful nose for these things.
You see: there you have free competition and socialization of labor. But the movement, soc. of labor becomes MONOPOLY - ah! S of l has imposed itself upon capital, the whole organism. Now Lenin begins to dig out the transitions, the unity of the opposites, the self-movement, socialism from this new category. Nothing "leads to" or "is bound to become"; or "will be well educated". All that is gone. Monopoly creates concrete conditions in which the opposition is concretely posed. Thought, dialectical materialist thought, gives you Monopoly, transcending free competition. Monopoly then as a category clarifies war, imperialism, democracy, etc. etc. Remembers Lenin's constant listing. Monopoly means a) b) c) d) e). The struggle is against this concrete a) b) c) d) e) - if of course you are a socialist. This then becomes the revolutionary struggle for socialism, with concrete enemies and concrete tactics. The concrete is the opposite of the abstraction, the abstract thought, monopoly. The thing is to get hold of the concrete in the light of the abstract generalisation. Monopoly is a new category, i.e., a new method of gaining knowledge of the object. It arises out of the previous capitalist category: free competition. It gives us a closer approximation to capitalist reality, and to the revolutionary struggle. (I assume a re-reading of the Nevada document).
Note please in the His. Tendency of Cap. Acc.3 Marx began by saying "One capitalist kills many". Finance capital is the unification of what had hitherto been separate. In Vol. III4 when Marx speaks of monopoly (p. 516) he refers there almost exclusively to credit. It is Engels who interpolates on production. (And by the way, why haven't we a complete copy of Engels on the Erfurt Program?) From there finance, industrial capital, on to the state, is a certain line to Monopoly. Marx in the Historical Tendency... had left the thing at "grows the revolt". Lenin in 1914 was still there. It is later that this abstraction becomes concrete, through the concentration of thought in the new category Monopoly.
I am still keeping away from State & Rev.5 But it cannot be ignored. Now - free competition brought democracy - political democracy, bastard, limited, hypocritical, but still democracy. But monopoly must have democracy or it will go to ruin. (This is the kind of premise implicit in Lenin which we have to bring out). But monopoly of its origin and nature means political reaction. Hence the moment the category Monopoly is clarified, there begins for Lenin, given his sociological premises, the search for a new type of democracy. Nobody, even in the revolutionary movement was thinking in those terms. As for the liberal bourgeoisie, God help them. They are just helpless before monopoly and democracy. All they can think of is more voting and when everybody votes, then, they say, democracy means the gov't. must regulate. I don't say to say it that way, but the difference is so immense that today,6 when they know that their democracy is in a mess, many will be able to see who simply could not have seen in Lenin's time. However! however! Broad and simple as that definition and its opposite may appear, just think how it separates Lenin (and us) from everybody - and when I say everybody, I mean everybody. That approach draws a ditch between us & everybody.
Now let us look at democracy a bit. It is political democracy. It helps production, as all democracy does. The production it was tied to was free competition. That was the main freedom. The bourgeoisie was made free, to act freely in production. You have to bear in mind the battles that had to be fought to win this. They were great revolutions, genuine revolutions. You see there is a duality to democracy itself - there is the bourgeois-democratic republic, purely political and there is the freedom of free competition. If socialization of labor grows up inside free competition, the bureaucratic republic, strictly political freedom, grows up inside the capitalist regime. This political freedom L sees in a purely proletarian manner in Russia - and elsewhere.
Parliament is for him a stop-gap. Since 1848 the main aim is to organize the masses democratically, i.e., for revolutionary action. With the growth of monopoly, party democracy cannot cope with the crisis. The only democ. possible is rev. democ. But this rev. democ. which began as freedom of competition, now explodes, as he says, quantity changes into quality, and the new democ. = freedom in the industrial organization - release of powers. Here, you see the full force of Marx's final conclusions on the effect of the worker of cap. accumulation. Note too: "one capitalist kills many". Note too "the diminishing number of magnates. Free competition meant freedom for a whole class. But monopoly means freedom for nobody, except the diminishing magnates. Sure we have written about this at various times and in various ways. But have we done the analysis in strict terms of: free competition AND monopoly (a paragraph or two in Invading, that's all, tho' they are good). The struggle for us is to place ourselves where L was and recreate his mental environment and his dilemma. The "public" today is looking at what he saw then.
Let me before I forget: be sure and look up the notes at the back of the Gotha programme (the Int. ed.).7 There you will see Lenin's schema. He is most excited, a vast number of NB's, very good's! Wonderful, etc.; there you have the abstract idea; the universal, the generalisations, linked to Monopoly. But those are for him abstract thought. Always in his polemics, in his articles, etc. he goes back to the concrete. In the notes he keeps on saying that - he calls it: practice. Everything should revolve around abstract generalisations around monopoly, democracy, free competition, etc. and then the concrete... The problem as I see it is this. We are so familiar with the stuff that we think we know all about that. We don't. At least I feel like an infant before it all - now, for this task that we have. I'll try to explain, with the above that I have written in mind.
Take self-determination. We know. We understand. Yet Lenin always it seemed to me to throw a passion into those writings which seemed to me necessary. Now just let me list some of the points, at random.
1) To say today that L thought of self-determination is to denounce Stalinism off the theoretical map. I could write an essay on this alone: e.g. The SWP8 and Shachtman9 usually say: Lenin believed in freedom of nations, etc., maybe a few quotes; and then: the Stalinists have betrayed. It convinces nobody. It is a completely abstract statement. But if you make it part of Lenin's whole system, then you show up Stalinism for what it is, in the whole context of Eastern Europe.
Again: why did L so passionately deal with it. Because he saw this as one of the developing manifestations of monopoly - in Europe itself. It was not any more a Russian phenomenon. This, we, today, can make a lot of people see.
In view of all this some of L's statements: If Finland wants to go let it go; scratch a Bolshevik and you find a Great-Russian chauvinist, etc., these acquire terrific impact.
Isn't it clear that an important part of Lenin in 1914-1917 must take up fully the self-determination?
But monopoly and democracy. Yes, monopoly and democracy. Now a peculiar something is emerging here - this is the sort of thing that gives no peace to the mind.
The economic movement was to monopoly, state-monopoly. But where L separated himself from Bukharin is his political struggle which appears to run DIRECTLY OPPOSITE to the economic movement. There is the Economist point that L refers to and you and Grace have talked about it in regard to Capital.
The economist is the one who takes the generalisation as absolute, but does not see the concrete! (Take it easy; we have a hard road to travel). Why is the concrete in such constant opposition to the abstract generalization? Because of the very nature of categories, opposition, transcendence, etc.:
Watch it: Imperialism, Monopoly is a capitalist category. The generalization is a capitalist generalization, it must be. Now Hegel had his opposition between World-Spirit and Nature. We have ours - class struggle. So that the new opposition to the new phenomenon, monopoly, the concrete class in opposition, must appear at the beginning, before the transcendence, to be in absolute opposition to the generalisation. Hence Lenin: capitalism is progressive in Russia, but we must fight the capitalists. Unification of nations is good, but we must fight it, etc. We have said this before, but we have not put it, in logical, i.e., dialectical terms. What was it that Lenin was whooping about: This is it. This is it. That's the thing. We have to make that as clear as day, in such a commonplace thing as democracy, monopoly, self-determination, state, etc. Yes, workers. They should be able to understand the Introduction. (I can't stop to say why I am so positive about this. Another time).
To go on. The generalization is Monopoly. The concrete (in self-determination) is opposed. The new unity is a higher unity which encloses both opposites. But this new unity is what - it is not an economic unity in the sense of capitalist "economy" at all. It is an organisation of peoples, democratically organized and democratically united.
Now be ready for some leaps. The real opposite to capitalism is democracy. The socialisation of labor is a capitalistic form whose complete expression is democracy - democracy is its truth. Now even where Lenin in Russia has to accept capitalism, and even where he says: maybe the independent state will be a bourgeois state, he has a tight, and absolutely unbreakable grip on democracy as he interprets it (I am ashamed to put that in, but you'll forgive me).
Now Imperialism; State and Rev; Self-Determination10 - not only the means against them but the end is the substitution of democracy for bourgeois determinations - the energies of millions; the form in which all this emerges are to be expressed is vague. You can now see, and must make the reader feel what the Soviets mean to him.
Socialization of labor, or more precisely planning cartels; unity of nations; state above classes; nationalization, monopoly, state-monopoly all these are bourgeois categories, carried to their ultimate. The emerging category or categories, to use, to include, to sublate, these must appear to break them up.
NOW.
NOW.
Previously all struggles for freedom (most) seem to me to have been the same. (French Rev., American Rev.) But they finally broke up only to substitute another class domination. (Old stuff). But the method was always democratic, in revolutionary struggle. But now, and this is socialism, the method, becomes method and aim and end.
The whole things goes deep into the Logic. I have not worked it out for the French Rev. yet, and I am sure Grace is going to jump joyfully on to the British Rev. when she has the time; but logically, the new category arising from the concrete, is always in opposition to the fixed generalization. It dissolves the absolute. It does not go into the seats of the old, taking over. It smashes. It can do this because the old Absolute is a possession for good and all. The concrete while fighting to smash the absolute has in it what is important in the Absolute - the Monopoly, the centralization now exists in the workers. They cannot go back (except for a brief period & that is retrogression and ruin). And now you can see what Hegel means by saying the new must not be looked for as getting larger and larger. It is in violent opposition to the old but has identity with it - it is its Other.
Now the bourgeois is lost completely before monopoly, democracy, US of Europe, plan, etc. Today all serious bourgeois deal with these things. But they are stuck in the Absolute. They do not know how to break out. Some of them want to. Hitler accepted the Absolute and went straight to the end with it - the results we know. But imagine how if this thing is properly done, what a conception of Leninism and of democracy will arise in the reader's mind. And, funny, every died-in-the-wool Trotskyite, will read this, and will know in his soul that despite all he has read by Trotsky, he has never seen anything like this before. But it must all revolve around democracy, monopoly, etc. Bear in mind also "plan" and see how "plan" is no more that the Absolute of Imperialism, of Monopoly. The real plan is the result of democracy. Why? Because where you have socialized democracy, plan is inherent - there can be no other system.
The working out of all this is full of possibilities, full.
Now to a connected point. I am haunted by the little essay on Dialectics,11 Vol XI, p. 81. Lenin here summed up the Notes.
Opposition, L says, is "a law of knowledge (and a law of the objective world):
He then gives a test - and -; positive and negative etc.
Then he hammers away at mutually exclusive opposites, etc. and again (including mind and society).
Unity of Opposites - Self-MovementStruggle of opposites - Absolute
All this must be worked in.
Then he says: "the distinction between sophistry and dialectics is that in (objective) dialectics the difference between the relative and the absolute is itself relative. For objective dialectics there is an absolute within the relative. For - sophistry the relative is only relative and excludes the absolute". Now listen to Stirling - Secret of Hegel.
Now this is a fine job. Work it out concretely with monopoly, democracy, etc. Work them out sentence by sentence if need be. And when that is done you have a broad opposition between Leninism and bourgeois thought.
Then and only then, we can refer to Bukharin, Kautsky, Rosa L, as people who to one extent or another failed to see the full dialectical movement and slipped off here, there and elsewhere. But I simply do not see this thing as mainly concerned with the struggle of tendencies.
Now back to p. 82.
L takes the commodity and he works out how the singlular is contained in the general etc. Then he says "in any given proposition we can (and must) reveal as in a 'cell' ... the germs of all the elements of dialectics...
Agreed? Agreed. Now here is a proposition.
Imperialism is that stage of capitalism in which free competition is transformed into its opposite. And from there you are off.
L says "Dialectics is the theory of knowledge etc.etc." And he says Plekhanov paid no attention to it.
It is from there that L built up everything.
Third point.
Life consists of an immense variety of shades, transitions, etc. If you take one of these and develop it irrespective of its transitions, etc. you get a system, genuine, real, but false. It is not "a lot of nonsense". It is a sterile flower but it grows on the living tree. It is a single side made into an absolute. Now this too must be worked out concretely with Bukharin, Rosa etc. AND the bourgeoisie.
Will go on tomorrow or soon
J.
P.S. Just my letters, R. I don't want them sent except as I ask. You can send yours if you want to. Tomorrow or soon I shall get at this thing.
1 This appears to be a reference to: V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Volume XI: The Theoretical Principles Of Marxism, (International Publishers, 1939). The essay being referred to appears to be 'Karl Marx', (1915) and the specific section titled 'Socialism'. The essay was written for, and published in, the Granat Encyclopaedia, Seventh Edition, Vol. 28
2 CLR James married Constance Webb, an actress, writer and model in 1946. They had a son together, CLR James Jr, (known as Nobbie by his familiars), born in 1949. They divorced in 1953. Webb wrote about her romance with CLR James and her years in the JFT in Not Without Love: Memoirs, (University Press of New England, 2003). Anna Grimshaw edited a collection of letters from CLR James to Constance Webb, which was published as Special Delivery: The Letters of C.L.R. James to Constance Webb, 1939-1948, (Wiley-Blackwell, 1995).
3 'Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation' is the title of Chapter 32 of: Karl Marx Capital: Volume 1.
4 Karl Marx, Capital: Volume 3.
5 Lenin State and Revolution, (1917).
6 The word has been over-written in the original.
7 This appears to be a reference to: Critique of the Gotha Programme, with appendices by Marx, Engels and Lenin (Lawrence & Wishart, 1943).
8 The Socialist Workers' Party (USA) was the largest Trotskyist party in the USA on its formation in 1938. The party split in 1940 over the question of the nature of the USSR. The factions that left the SWP in 1940 formed the Workers' Party. The Johnson-Forest Tendency formed as a minority tendency within the WP. In 1947 they left the WP and later that year rejoined the SWP. Some documents on the re-entry of the JFT into the SWP were published in the SWP's Internal Bulletin, Vol. 9, No. 4 and No. 5.
9 Max Schactman (1904-1971) was a major figure in the American Trotskyist movement. He was a leading figure in the 1940 split from the Socialist Workers' Party, that formed the Workers' Party. The Johnson-Forest Tendency were a faction within the Workers' Party until 1947, when they left and rejoined the Socialist Workers' Party.
10 Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, (1916); State and Revolution, (1917); The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, (1914).
11 Lenin, 'On the Question of Dialectics' (written 1915, published 1925).