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       #Post#: 3968--------------------------------------------------
       Ελάτε
       ιστορικοί
       "υλιστές",
       ελάτε
       μπολσεβίκοι!
   DIR By: FringeElements
       Date: December 4, 2012, 4:49 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Γιατί οι
       αναθεωρητιστές
       και
       εξουσιαλάγνοι
       παραχαράκτες
       του
       εξουσιολάγνου
       Μαρξ
       έσβησαν,
       όπως έκανε ο
       Γουίνστον
       Σμίθ, από τα
       κατάστιχα
       της
       ιστορίας
       τον
       ασιατικό
       τρόπο
       παραγωγής; Ο
       Μαρξ ήταν
       σαφής πως
       υπάρχει ο
       ΑΤΠ και όλοι
       οι μη
       ΚΚολλημένοι
       ληστοσυμμορίτες
       το
       παραδέχονται.
       Γιατί ο
       Στάλιν τον
       εξαφάνισε;
       Γιατί έτσι
       όπως
       περιγράφεται
       ο ΑΤΠ έφερε
       σατανική
       ομοιότητα
       με κάθε
       σύγχρονο
       αλλά και
       αρχαίο
       σοσιαλιστικό
       καθεστώς,
       από την ΕΣΣΔ,
       την ΒΚορέα
       και την
       μαοϊκή Κίνα,
       μέχρι την
       αρχαία Κίνα,
       τους αρχ.
       Αιγύππτιους,
       τους
       σοσιαλιστές
       Ίνκας, και
       άλλα
       ...προοδευτικά
       καθεστώτα
       τα οποία
       ήταν κάτι
       ανάμεσα σε
       σκλαβιά
       προς την
       "κοινωνία"
       (ευφημισμός
       για το
       κράτος) και
       δεν είχαν
       ιδιοκτησία
       στην Γη.
       Ο
       συγκεκριμένος
       τύπος της
       σκλαβιάς δε
       ήταν ο
       ορισμός του
       καλού
       σοσιαλιστή
       (μαλάκα) και
       περιγράφετο
       από τον Μαρξ
       ως
       παγκόσμια
       σκλαβιά,
       ρητά
       ξεχωριστή
       από την
       ατομική
       σκλαβιά.
       Αυτό
       ονειρεύονται
       για άλλη μια
       φορά όσοι
       πάνε να
       εφαρμόσουν
       αυτές τις
       θεοπάλαβες
       ιδέες περί
       διαλεκτικού
       ιστορικού
       πρότσες και
       άλλα
       παραμύθια
       της χαλιμάς.
       Με απλά
       λόγια: Αυτό
       που έκαναν
       όλοι
       σοσιαλιστές
       των δυο
       προηγούμενων
       αιώνων ήταν
       να γυρίσουν
       τον κόσμο
       ΠΡΙΝ τον
       μεσαίωνα
       και την
       φεουδαρχία
       και μετά
       μαζεύτηκαν
       στα
       σοβιετικά
       καταγώγια
       τους και
       άρχισαν να
       σβήνουν την
       ιστορία για
       να
       παρουσιάσουν
       αυτόν τον
       πρωτογονισμό
       ως κάτι
       πρωτόγνωρο,
       που μας
       έρχεται από
       το μέλλον...
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Διαβάστε το
       εδώ
       καλύτερα:
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       Appendix
       Was There Such a Thing as an "Asiatic Social Formation"?
       Everyone who has ever passed an examination on "historical
       materialism" is familiar with the basic outline of human
       history. History is seen as a sequence of social formations:
       primitive-communal, slave-owning, feudal, bourgeois and
       communist. This fundamental historical law, however, did not
       crystalize with perfect clarity at once and certain comrades
       still have confused ideas on the question.
       The problem is that the Founders of the Scientific Method of
       History occasionally referred to one other type of
       information--the "Asiatic,"
       [185]
       elsewhere referred to as the "Asiatic Mode of Production." (See
       the correspondence between Marx and Engels, Marx's essay
       "British Rule in India" and his preface to "Toward a Critique of
       Political Economy.") The distinguishing feature of this
       formation, the trait that constitutes the basis of the political
       and religious history of the East and the "key to the Eastern
       sky," was identified as the absence of private ownership of
       land.
       There was lively discussion of this question in Soviet
       historical scholarship in the twenties and thirties, especially
       in connection with the history of the ancient Near East. The
       argument was won by academician V. V. Struve and his followers,
       who maintained the correct Marxist point of view, according to
       which the ancient kingdoms of the Near East were slave-owning
       societies. The question might have been considered completely
       closed with the publication of Stalin's famous Chapter 4 of the
       Short Course on the History of the CPSU (1938), wherein the now
       universally familiar "fivefold" scheme of historical development
       was enunciated: it did not include any" Asiatic formation."
       This atmosphere of perfect clarity was clouded by the appearance
       in print, in 1939, of a manuscript by Marx that the author had
       not originally intended for publication: "The Forms Preceding
       Capitalist Production." (86) Marx here places "Asiatic, ancient,
       feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production" in a single
       line of development as the "progressive epochs of economic
       social formation." Soon after this publication, an article
       designed to prevent any misinterpretation appeared in Vestnik
       drevnei istorii. (87) It was by academician Struve, who wrote:
       "By this, once and for all, an end is put to the attempts of
       certain historians to ascribe to Marx the idea of a special'
       Asiatic' socioeconomic formation." He warns sternly: "Asiatic
       society is a slave-owning society." What Marx says about
       .slavery in the East in the work in question is of course very
       good, but he unfortunately uses the rather vague concept of
       "universal slavery," which is difficult to fit into a historical
       framework that is based on the idea of class.
       Representatives of various other schools of thought were quick
       to respond. The Communist renegade and reactionary K. Wittfogel
       stooped to filthy insinuations about an alleged analogy between
       the "Asiatic" and "socialist" formations. He even attempted to
       use this analogy to explain why Marx and Engels, by the end of
       their lives, had stopped mentioning the" Asiatic mode of
       production."* Needless to say, the slanderous character
       * Reference to Wittfogel's argument (in 89) that Marx borrowed
       the notion of a specific "Asiatic" type of state from the works
       of Adam Smith, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Richard Jones (the
       concept itself goes back to Montesquieu and Bernier), and used
       it in his scheme of the development of society on the basis of
       production. From the 1860s on, however, Marx and Engels engaged
       in sharp polemics with Bakunin and his adherents. Bakunin
       asserted that Marx and Engels' ideal of state socialism would
       "engender despotism at one extreme and slavery at the other." In
       this context, the analogy to Asiatic despotism became too
       obvious for comfort. Here is the reason, Wittfogel believes, why
       Marx and Engels refrained from mentioning the "Asiatic mode of
       production" in their later works.
       [186]
       of Wittfogel's statements was thoroughly exposed by Marxist
       historians, although a number of them also started to show an
       interest in this question, which, one would have thought, had
       been fully settled. In foreign Marxist journals, dozens of
       authors took part in the discussion. The response came in the
       form of a collection of articles. (88) (In this collection see
       the survey entitled "Discussion of the Asiatic Mode of
       Production in the Foreign Marxist Press," which is the source of
       the information given below.)
       One of the first contributions to this discussion was an article
       published in 1957 by B. WeIskopf, a historian from the German
       Democratic Republic. She expresses the opinion that the ancient
       Orient cannot be adequately categorized by either the concept of
       "classical" slavery or the concept of "patriarchal" slavery.
       Those societies, the author believes, fit the rubric of "Asiatic
       mode of production" in the same way as ancient China, India and
       America. In 1958, F. Tökei, reviewing property relationships in
       the Chou epoch, came to the conclusion that there was no private
       ownership of land at the time. And in studies published in 1963,
       he characterizes this epoch as a period of "Asiatic mode of
       production." R. Pokora comes to the same conclusion regarding
       ancient China.
       Studies in which the "Asiatic mode of production " is discovered
       in ever new countries and new historical periods have been
       multiplying rapidly. J. Suret-Canale, a "Marxist-Africanist"
       (and the author of the survey under review here) sees this
       formation in precolonial, tropical Africa. P. Boiteau discerns
       it on Madagascar; R. Gallissot, in precolonial Maghreb and
       Algiers (in the latter, however, in an imperfect form); M.
       Tchechkov, in precolonial Vietnam; K. Manivanna, in Laos of the
       fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries; M. Olmeda, in
       pre-Columbian Mexico; S. San tis, in Inca, Aztec and Mayan
       states; S. Divitcioglu, in the Ottoman empire of the fourteenth
       and fifteenth centuries. It turns out that traces of the
       "Asiatic mode of production" can be found in present states (but
       of course not in the sense proposed by the renegade Wittfogel).
       J. Chesneaux writes of the "Asiatic mode of production ":
       "It does not belong only to the past, however. No doubt it has
       left deep traces on subsequent history. The tradition of
       'supreme unity' is an example. Has it not, in numerous
       Afro-Asian countries, prompted the establishment of a system
       controlled by an all-powerful head of state who also enjoys the
       confidence of the masses?" (88: p. 55)
       These historians acribe the following new features to the
       "Asiatic mode of production":
       1. A special concept of property. First of all, this is
       expressed in the absence of private ownership of land, as noted
       in WeIskopf's first study. Tökei even asserts that no private
       land ownership ever existed in Asia. Gallissot speaks about
       "public property." And L. Sedov writes: "That which
       distinguishes all stages in the development of the Asiatic mode
       of production ...is an almost complete absence of private
       property as a system of relations."
       2. A minor role for trade. Chesneaux believes that commercial
       turnover
       [187]
       and commercial exchange played only secondary roles and were
       limited to "additional foodstuffs" in the consumption of the
       communities.
       3. A special means of exploitation that was, as Chesneaux puts
       it, "fundamentally different from classical slavery or from
       serfdom--universal slavery." C. Perrin singles out the basic
       features of this means of exploitation:
       a. Use of a large mass of essentially unpaid peasants
       temporarily cut off from their farms and families.
       b. Extravagant use of the labor force not only on the building
       of canals, dikes, and so on, but on construction of the despot's
       palaces, pyramids, etc.
       c. The masses forced into hard, unskilled physical labor.
       d. Peasant communities compelled by the despot to provide labor
       for public works on a grand scale.
       e. Such exploitation is implemented by means of collectives
       formed from the rural communities; this requires a despotic,
       centralized rule.
       4. A special role for the state when it acts as "supreme unity"
       to exploit rural communities (WeIskopf, Perrin) and "controls
       directly the basic means of production" (Gallissot).
       The "Asiatic formation" presents extraordinary difficulties for
       scientific Marxist study. In particular, it has proved almost
       impossible to subject it to class analysis. Chesneaux, for
       instance, is compelled to come to the conclusion that class
       contradictions are present here "in an original way," viz., they
       exist without any clear appropriation by the ruling class of the
       ownership of the means of production. The ruling class turns out
       to be not a group of people (!) but "the state itself, in its
       essence."
       Tökei writes: "Of all the related problems, the most frequently
       discussed is the question of how societies of the Asiatic mode
       of production were divided into classes." (88: p. 62) Tökei and
       Chesneaux come to a "functional class theory," according to
       which the division into antagonistic classes is based not on the
       exploiters' ownership of the means of production but rather on
       "socially useful functions" defined by the ruling class. Sedov
       shares this view and advocates a theory of a "state as a class."
       Finally, Tchechkov asserts that the term "class" is not
       applicable at all to the ruling social group in precolonial
       Vietnam. There was instead a hierarchy of "functionaries," with
       the emperor as "first among functionaries." This elite was
       constantly replenished through a system of examinations and
       tests. For this group of elite "scholar functionaries,"
       ownership of the means of production did not determine their
       place in the hierarchy, but on the contrary, their rank in the
       hierarchy determined their economic position. The ruling "state
       as a class" exploited the peasant members of the community not
       by owning the means of production but by virtue of its
       functional role in governing society and the economy.
       The tried and tested tool of scientific research--quotation from
       the Marxist classics--proved to be of no help in solving this
       extremely difficult problem:
       [188]
       "What was Marx's opinion on social stratification and the class
       structure under the 'Asiatic mode of production'? We search the
       works of Marx in vain for a formula or a simple and clear
       analysis bearing on this question. Due to the press of time,
       Marx did not even give a complete analysis of the class
       structure under capitalism. In Chapter 52, Volume III, of his
       Capital, Marx began to expound his ideas on the subject* but was
       able to write only the first lines of a preface." (88: p. 63)
       One cannot help sharing Tökei's sad thoughts on this score.
       Why is the matter so complicated that it does not yield even to
       the refined tool of the Marxist scientific method?
       Apparently this is to be explained by the fact that we are
       speaking about phenomena that are so remote in time and so alien
       to our way of thinking that the modern Marxist historian finds
       it exceptionally difficult to visualize all these unknown and
       strange social relations.
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