Marxism, Mao and politics

Over at Splintered Sunrise an interesting conversation was developing on Badiou, one to which I tried to make a contribution. Anyway some of the points that were made got me thinking a bit, so here I just want to say a few things. Central to this discussion was the question of why the Cultural Revolution might form an important event for some people on the left; my explanation as to why it might follows below, and segues into some more general considerations on Marxism.

My general contention here is that the Cultural Revolution and Maoism more generally, appealed to the late 1960s and 1970s left for a series of interconnected reasons. My key argument is the inadequacy of a Marxist theory of politics, and of the ‘superstructure’ more broadly conceived. In the period after the World War One and the 50s and 60s the state of Marxism – and certainly of ‘official’ Marxism – was pretty moribund. Despite a supposed adherence to Lenin, what we tended to see was a certain mechanical Marxism. In this schematic conception of history, what drove social change was contradictions between the forces of production and the relations of production. This conflict is ‘resolved’ by class struggle, which eventually replaces one mode of production with another.

So in this conception politics and political action is conceived of as being determined or as actualising economics. This type of Marxism doesn’t really have a theory of politics strictly conceived. But this approach brings numerous problems with it. The first problem for this conception is how to explain the relationship between economic and political action. How is it that class struggle can move (as Gramsci put it) from an economic-corporate phase, to a hegemonic phase? And this itself brings the problem from the other direction why is that the contradiction has not yet been actualised. This is of course the classic starting point for a lot of contemporary Marxist theorising – why in the advanced capitalist countries has the working class not taken power?

The answer to this question can’t be found purely in economistic considerations (e.g. the dull compulsion of economic relations) because to look at it this way basically forestalls social change forever (or until the next crisis). In response to this you get the (thankfully long dead) Trot line about a ‘crisis in leadership’. But even the crisis in leadership line is making a grasping attempt to go beyond certain economist lines and move to a more political explanation of the crisis. Basically, then, it seemed that the situations on the ground demanded an examination of the role of ‘superstructure’. But not just as a ‘reflection’ of the base, but in its capacity as decisive. Because the entire issue necessarily must move outside of the economy and onto political and cultural grounds.

And it is here that the Mao becomes central. Mao’s heterodox Marxism represented a fairly innovative intervention into this impasse. This can particularly be seen in Mao’s On Contradiction. Basically, Mao argues that any social totality is a complex of interacting contradictions, all of which contribute towards development and change. However, in every social totality there is a principal contradiction, which serves to give a specific character to all of the other contradictions:

There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of the other contradictions. For instance, in capitalist society the two forces in contradiction, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, form the principal contradiction. The other contradictions, such as those between the remnant feudal class and the bourgeoisie, between the peasant petty bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie, between the proletariat and the peasant petty bourgeoisie, between the non-monopoly capitalists and the monopoly capitalists, between bourgeois democracy and bourgeois fascism, among the capitalist countries and between imperialism and the colonies, are all determined or influenced by this principal contradiction.
p.331

Such a position is a very interesting one, and we can find echoes of the argument in Althusser’s notion of a totality structured in dominance (and of course we would - because Mao's Marxism is one of the big influences on Althusser) and even in Lukács earlier discussion of the role of totality in Marxist thought. The point here is that one can immediately recognise Mao had constructed a theoretical edifice which might be able to bridge the impasse described above. Here we can see a way to articulate the primacy of the contradiction between the forces and relation of production; without having to rely on that for change. The point here is that as a principal contradiction it could shape political ‘contradictions’, even these contradictions became vital.

However, Mao goes further than this. He also argues that every contradiction has a principal and subordinate aspect. It is the principal aspect which will (eventually) supersede that subordinate aspect and so bring change. But further to this Mao argued that in a given struggle around a contradiction, things would develop to the point where what was the principal aspect could become the subordinate aspect and vice versa:

We often speak of "the new superseding the old". The supersession of the old by the new is a general, eternal and inviolable law of the universe. The transformation of one thing into another, through leaps of different forms in accordance with its essence and external conditions -- this is the process of the new superseding the old. In each thing there is contradiction between its new and its old aspects, and this gives rise to a series of struggles with many twists and turns. As a result of these struggles, the new aspect changes from being minor to being major and rises to predominance, while the old aspect changes from being major to being minor and gradually dies out. And the moment the new aspect gains dominance over the old, the old thing changes qualitatively into a new thing. It can thus be seen that the nature of a thing is mainly determined by the principal aspect of the contradiction, the aspect which has gained predominance. When the principal aspect which has gained predominance changes, the nature of a thing changes accordingly.
p.333

So the vision Mao here articulates is one which – in contrast to ‘official Marxism’ is a dynamic one; emphasising struggle. But the coup de grace, and what I would argue made Maoism so attractive to (particularly) the French left is the following passage:

Some people think that this is not true of certain contradictions. For instance, in the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, the productive forces are the principal aspect ... in the contradiction between the economic base and the superstructure, the economic base is the principal aspect; and there is no change in their respective positions. This is the mechanical materialist conception, not the dialectical materialist conception. True, the productive forces, practice and the economic base generally play the principal and decisive role; whoever denies this is not a materialist. But it must also be admitted that in certain conditions, such aspects as the relations of production, theory and the superstructure in turn manifest themselves in the principal and decisive role. When it is impossible for the productive forces to develop without a change in the relations of production, then the change in the relations of production plays the principal and decisive role. The creation and advocacy of revolutionary theory plays the principal and decisive role in those times of which Lenin said, "Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.'' When a task, no matter which, has to be performed, but there is as yet no guiding line, method, plan or policy, the principal and decisive thing is to decide on a guiding line, method, plan or policy. When the superstructure (politics, culture, etc.) obstructs the development of the economic base, political and cultural changes become principal and decisive. Are we going against materialism when we say this? No. The reason is that while we recognize that in the general development of history the material determines the mental and social being determines social consciousness, we also -- and indeed must -- recognize the reaction of mental on material things, of social consciousness on social being and of the superstructure on the economic base. This does not go against materialism; on the contrary, it avoids mechanical materialism and firmly upholds dialectical materialism.
p.335/6

Obviously, this is long, but I think it basically helps to illustrate the attraction Maoism held for certain people. The whole point is Mao has seriously broken with ‘official’ Marxism, and has attempted to theorise the political. Although Mao presents this as somewhat limited, the implications of this passage (particularly from where we sit) are fairly wide-ranging. Key to my argument is the notion that:

When the superstructure (politics, culture, etc.) obstructs the development of the economic base, political and cultural changes become principal and decisive.

But the whole point – at least so far as Marxists were concerned with in the West – is that it is always the ‘superstructure’ which obstructs the development of the base. Because if we are talking about the standard economic conditions which make things ripe for revolution (in the schematic sense) – well they’ve been here for God only knows how long. So the allure of Mao is that for him politics and culture become central. It thus seems that – quite accidentally – Mao addressed the central concerns of the left in Western Europe, since he attempts to theorise the primacy of the political/cultural whilst remaining a materialist. No matter what people think of Mao (and obviously opinions are not high), this particular theoretical position seems interesting.

Now, with this in mind, we can make a few other considerations. Firstly, it might be argued that this position – which stresses the importance of conscious, political action is a ‘Leninist’ one. Well, yes, I’d agree with that entirely, and it’s certainly something that Lenin articulated rather well. But the point is that Leninism – especially in the time period in question – was associated with the ‘Marxism’ of the USSR, which – to all intents and purposes – had reverted back to the Marxism of the second international. Secondly, insofar as Leninism was taken up by the Trotskyist movement it was (1) not always that great and (2) not likely to be taken up by people inside of the official communist movement. That is why Maoism managed to sink its roots into France, I feel. The milieu from which these people came from was one in which official communism (in the form of the PCF) was all powerful – both politically and philosophically – for a time, Maoism seemed to represent an critique of official communism from within the official communist movement.

Another point to bear in mind is that very similar philosophical positions are put forward (in whatever way) by the early Lukács and Gramsci. It’s no coincidence that interest in these two only began to grow around this period – they address precisely the same issues which I’ve outlined above. But Lukács had the great misfortune of being alive at the time; reconciled with the official communist movement and he had of course basically renounced much of History and Class Consciousness. Gramsci, had not yet been translated (I don’t think), and again, he had the misfortune to be placed at the service of the PCI, which even before its explicit Eurocommunism had started moving in such a direction.

So, my first point about Mao is that he seemed to address some of the central problems of the time, in an innovative way. This was only reinforced by the fact that the events of the time seemed to suggest political action needed to be theorised. Because not only did the inaction of the working class need to be theorised – but also the action that had sprung up in the late 60s. So in particular, it proved quite difficult for ‘official’ Marxism to theorise les evenements of May ’68, and its response to what was a pretty huge moment was risible to say the least. This is also where the importance of the Cultural Revolution comes in. The Cultural Revolution appeared to be an actualisation of the theoretical positions outlined above. Here politics and culture were assuming the decisive role in transforming China. The emphasis on mass mobilisation obviously chimed with what was happening in ‘the West’ in a way that the experience of the Soviet Union could not.

It also strikes me that there are some other interesting threads that could be picked up (although I will decline to do so for now). Firstly, this concentration on the political (whilst maintaining that these struggles were ‘coloured’ by the principal contradiction) helped provide a way to explain struggle amongst groups not traditionally mobilised by the left (e.g. people who weren’t the manual working class). Secondly, Mao of necessity assumed a crucial role in the attempt to articulate a Marxist understanding of anti-colonialism and development. The inter-twining of the language of Marxism and decolonisation led to some very odd attempts to theorise these issues. Furthermore, most Marxists seemed (and pretty much still do) to accidentally condone mass death in the Third World – which is never a good way to make friends and influence people. Finally, of course, there are those who have turned to Schmitt in an attempt to theorise the political. The continued reference to Schmitt (something of which I myself am guilty of) perhaps shows us there is still a bit of a lack in the Marxist attempt to grapple with the political.

But I rather look forward to seeing Splintered post on diamat.

Base, Superstructure and the Property Problem

One common criticism that Marxism has constantly faced is its notion of the base-superstructure model and the relation of ‘material’ (base) and ‘legal’ (superstructure) relationships. This is well emphasised by a quote Acton, one with which GA Cohen attempted to tangle:

[T]he “material or economic basis of society” is not ... something that can be clearly conceived, still less observed, apart from the legal, moral and political relationships of men.
HB Acton, The Illusion of the Epoch

In accordance with the general thrust of this blog (notwithstanding a few aberrations) I am not going to focus on ‘morality’ and its relation to the ‘economic structure’ of society. Instead my primary focus will be on the response of Marxian legal theory to such a criticism, and I will then propose my own interpretation of the problem. It is possible to find several categories of people who attempt to refute this thesis, in essence we have two ‘camps’; the ‘separationists’ and the ‘imbricationists’.

Separationists

The ‘separationists’ are a fairly broad camp, and contain several theoretical currents. The main theoretical accounts are by the analytical Marxists and the French Maoists (who were decidedly influenced by Althusser). I have to admit that at one point I was essentially aligned with the French Maoists, in fact I wrote a very sympathetic account of their conception of ‘possession’ and I intend to keep several elements of their analyses.

What is common of both ‘camps’ of the separationists is their notion that legal ownership and effective ownership are conceptually separable. GA Cohen develops the notion of ‘powers over’ rather than legal rights, whereby one can ‘effectively own’ property, without having a legal protection of it. Legal ownership therefore grows from effective ownership, and recognises that which materially exists. The Maoists followed a similar line, positing that the legal superstructure of capitalist society was clearly conceptually separable from the economic base.

However, this approach was open to some very materialist criticism, in that their account served merely as a way to ‘[t]o vindicat[e] a wholly abstract commitment to ‘materialist’ world view’, as Karl Klare put it:

There is simply no “prelegal” realm of social life to which legal outcomes can be referred, at least not in this modern age. A particularly embarrassing case of circularity is the ease with which we are told that legal outcomes and processes derive from the underlying relations of production or property ownership, as though production relations or property could meaningfully be defined without reference to legal rules.
Karl Klare, Critical Theory and Labor Relations Law, in THE POLITICS OF LAW: A PROGRESSIVE CRITIQUE 61 (David Kairys ed., 1990), p. 67.

Even if it is entirely possible separate legal and economic relations, such an approach seems to have little or no ‘reflection’ in real life, where social relations are expressed in legal terms. This criticism, is not fatal to the idea of a separateness of legal and economic relations, provided one abandons the precise insights of the ‘separationists’.

Imbricationists

In many ways these people can be seen as a direct reaction to what they saw as the vulgar, abstract theorising of the separationists. Perhaps the most famous of these is EP Thompson, with his wonderful tirade against Althusser vis-à-vis the law:

[L]aw did not keep politely to a ‘level’ but was at every bloody level; it was imbricated within the mode of production and productive relations themselves (as property-rights, definitions of agrarian practice).
Thompson, Edward 1995 [1978], The Poverty of Theory, London: Merlin Press, p. 130

I don’t think I can add much more to what Thompson said, but I would also point out the sophisticated account of Derek Sayer in his The Violence of Abstraction:

In the real world, then, ‘power’ over objects turns out to be neither the abstraction, nor the simple relationship, of Cohen’s impeccably rechtsfret’ definition. It exists only in a multiplicity of often rechtsvoll empirical forms, to whose analysis, if Thompson is correct, a categorical framework built on prior and exclusive definitions of supposed social ‘levels’ is remarkably ill-suited. In certain cases, like England in the eighteenth century, law will emerge as inextricably ‘imbricated within’ — indeed constitutive of — any property relations we might want to consider relations of production, ‘part of the same nexus of relationship’. So too might other supposedly superstructural ‘instances’, like moral codes, political institutions, or ‘forms of social consciousness’ (all of which are fairly evidently entailed in Smith’s ‘orderly oppression’). In which case, to seek to expunge these from the concept of property or production relations a priori, for the sake of theoretical coherence or elegance, would seem to be a gross artificiality which does considerable violence to the very facts Marx’s concepts are meant to help us understand: a species of what he himself castigated as ‘violent abstraction’.
Derek Sayer, The Violence of Abstraction

Although this is a long quote I think it shows very well the approach that the imbricationists take, and the fact that their conception of social life is grounded in material right. Of course the problem here is that there is a danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as such an approach can end up essentially abandoning Marxism’s distinctive approach, and surrendering to an idealist ‘Marxism’.

Defence of the separationists

As I said before the proposition that there is a conceptual separability between effective ownership and legal ownership is not as indefensible as it might at first seem. Rather than an abstract vindication of a materialist world-view I would argue that the notion of ‘effective ownership’ is the theoretical manifestation of a particular historical conjuncture. I am talking here of the USSR, and its degeneration.

The separationist account (from here the Bettleheim thesis) is a corollary to the experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat that every Marxist must arrive at, this is for two different reasons. Firstly, if one were to hold that the possession and ownership were not separable then one must conclude that the USSR was a socialist society (deformed or not), until some time around the Gorbachev years. Of course this is the position of orthodox Trotskyism, yet in terms of a coherent account it is impossible to maintain it. The central notion here is that of the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. Marxists of many hues, Hoxhaites, Maoists, Trotskyists of the Cliffite variety and the council communist school have all held that the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union was, even before the rise of Gorbachev, able to constitute itself as a new bourgeoisie.

There was no obvious, official, legal relation between the new bourgeoisie and the means of production, nevertheless they were able to appropriate surplus value, and so there was clearly a capital-labour relation and therefore some kind of effective ‘ownership’.

The bureaucracy, by its social position, was able to appropriate the surplus value realised by the state enterprises, furthermore, labour essentially became a commodity and managers had effective ownership over the means of production. Some of these changes were of course enabled by small changes in the law, yet the fact remains that the bureaucracy’s social position was not legally sanctioned until the Gorbachev years. This inevitably leads to the conclusion that capitalist social relations can exist without capitalist legal relations. In fact they can exist within socialist legal relations.

If one holds to the contrary incoherent consequences result. Firstly, one can only explain the degeneration of the Soviet Union as a “big bang”, and one will not be able to make concrete references to the changes in “property forms” and social relations that occurred, since these cannot be explained by changes in the law. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly from the perspective of praxis, if one does not acknowledge that the bureaucracy can establish itself independently of the law, that legal relations do not always reflect property relationships, how can one struggle against capitalist restoration? In fact, how can one even know it is going on? A commitment to the separability of legal and material relations leads not to abstract theory but a guide to the concrete class struggle and an identification of what needs to be struggled against.

Secondly, the Bettleheim thesis allows Marxism to fulfil its role as a “guide to action” in another way. When the dictatorship of the proletariat is first established it has a certain series of tasks it must fulfil. Chief amongst these is the nationalisation of the means of production. Yet nationalisation is not socialism. Those who hold to the inseparability of material and legal relations tend to mechanically identify socialism with nationalisation, viz. they identify legal content with social content. However, in terms of Marxian socialism, this is simply not true; nationalisation is merely the first step on the road to socialism and eventually communism:

[Trotsky] defined the dictatorship of the proletariat by the state ownership of the means of production. In that case, the Asiatic mode of production of the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Peru etc., would have been socialist prototypes; modern Egypt would be a dictatorship of the proletariat
Kostas Mavrakis, On Trotskyism, p. 77

More than that, socialism must be defined as the transition to communism and the abolition of the exploitation of man by man. In this sense one cannot define socialism legally, as in nationalisation, but politically and economically, through the increasing socialisation and interdependence of the economy, the growth of the productive forces and the extension of power to the masses. Nationalisation is not socialisation, nationalisation as a legal form is perfectly compatible with capitalism, and has been in the past. Thus, again we see this is not an abstract theoretical conception, but in fact represents the concrete content of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

But surely what I have said goes too far in defending the separability thesis? Perhaps it does, especially as what we are describing in an exceptional situation. This is why I seek a transcendence of this ‘dichotomy’ through Pashukanis, Stone and Miéville.

Going beyond the divide

As I have previously state China Miéville, rather than taking either approach, insists that the law must be viewed as a broad social phenomenon. China puts forward the position that Pashukanis’ approach leads to law as being part of both the base and the superstructure:

It is thus misleading to claim that Pashukanis sees ‘law’ as part of the base, or part of the superstructure. ‘Law’ is a complex of social relations, norms, rules and formal proceeds which, under capitalism, straddles both levels of society.
C. Miéville, Between Equal Rights, p.96

Miéville holds therefore that the legal form, which is embedded in the very structure of the commodity, is part of the base. Alan Stone, in his wonderful article ‘The Place of Law in the Marxian Structure-Superstructure Archetype’, argues that Marx had a similar position on particular legal relations. Stone posits that some legal relations are the ‘essential legal relations’ that are the direct actualisation of material relations in the 'legal realm':

At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto.
Karl Marx, Critique of Political Economy

A sophisticated approach therefore sees that certain legal relations are organic to the commodity form, and are therefore immediately expressed in the legal form. For example punishment for theft, is part of the violence embedded in the commodity form, and is violence directly expressed in the legal form, without necessary mediation in the legal superstructure. The same is true of basic property relations and contract law, those forms of law that are mere ‘economic reflexes’.

Miéville shows that we need not have a state authority for there to be a law-ness to social relations, rather the law-ness is embodied in the legal form and the violence that constitutes this law-ness can come from either the state or the legal subject. Of course the law-creating character of the violence of the legal subject is only law in its primitive form, a law not yet illuminated by the legal superstructure.

What this approach tells us is that effective ownership is already a type of law-ness. Thus effective ownership, as part of the economic base of society, takes occupies the legal form in its most immediate actualisation, even though it is not yet present in the legal superstructure. This in turn solves shows the real interaction between form, content, base and superstructure. These contents are the contents which truly embody the legal form, and in fact serve as the first articulation of the legal form. Since there is such an unmediated identity between form and content here, these ‘contents’ serve as the base of capitalist society. As Stone notes these legal relations, have a series of superstructural relations that derive from their basis, these superstructural relations can be questioned and changed, but when the essential legal relations are widely challenged we know capitalist social relations are in trouble.

However, there is one problem that remains here. Since we have two levels of the law, i.e. the legal form and the legal superstructure, how is it some times the latter is in contradiction with the former? As with the example of the USSR, but more generally in the development of capitalism, why is it that the ‘legal base’ was not identical with the ‘legal superstructure’.

Firstly I think we need to note the Marxian conception of social development, whereby new social relations grow up within the old, the ‘old’ social system provides the material prerequisites for the development of the new, and the new is able to ‘mature’ within the new. This means that there will be periods in which new legal relations are developing, due to the proliferation of commodity production. Therefore, there will be a period where different legal contents exist within the legal form, as classes, and the productive relations they represent struggle amongst themselves.

This can lead to a situation where the ‘legal base’ of one type of social system has triumphed but it has not yet been recognised in the superstructure. Only when the legal superstructure recognises this, has the transition been truly completed:

[B]ourgeois capitalist property ceases to be a weak, unstable and purely factual possession, which at any moment may be disputed and must be defended vi et armis. It turns into an absolute, immovable right which follows the object everywhere that chance carried it and which from the time that bourgeois civilization affirmed its authority over the whole globe, is protected in its every corner by laws, police, courts.
E.B. Pashukanis, General Theory of Law and Marxism, p. 78

Thus we need to recognise that any notion of ‘effective ownership’ has to grapple with the fact that by far the best guarantee of effective ownership is the legal superstructure, and that even the basic notion of the individual securing his property is violence with a legal character.

What should also be noted is the materialist approach to norms holds that the norm is norm insofar as it effects, or reflects material relationships or trends:

A norm as such, i.e. in its logical content, either is directly derived from existing relationships already or, if it is published as statutory law, then it presents itself only as a symptom by which one may assess, with some degree of probability, the likely emergence of the corresponding relationships in the near future. It is not sufficient to know the normative content of law in order to confirm its objective existence. It is necessary to know if this normative content is realized in practice, that is in social relationships.
E.B. Pashukanis, General Theory of Law and Marxism, p. 63

This again shows us how to transcend the narrow boundaries of the two approaches outlined above. We can see that the apparent socialist norms of the USSR were not realised in practice, in actual fact they were in opposition to the concrete practice of the bureaucracy, whose appropriation of surplus value constituted the embryonic embodiment of the new legal superstructure, but had already been actualised through the legal form. This also provides an explanation for the growth of capitalism within other social formations.

Of course, there needs to be further explanation as to why the legal superstructure remained as it did for so long. There are two possibilities here. One is that of superstructural inertia, i.e. it takes time for the legal superstructure to develop norms that are already expressed at a more primitive level. Of course, since the USSR was always a transitional social formation, several of the essential legal relations of capitalism were already present, their role was simply expanded. One might also argue that law, as site and instrument of class struggle, was used here to mystify actually existing social relations, what better way to exploit the proletariat than under the veil of socialism?

I will also later make a post on whether socialist ‘property’ relations can be posited legally, as I think this is something that needs to be brought forward.