Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century

This work aims to present a critical assessment of the trajectory followed by Marxism since its birth more than a century and a half ago. The fundamental contributions of Marx and Engels were enriched by numerous thinkers, leaders and practical experiences throughout this period. However, at the same time as it was being enriched, Marxism was diversifying into numerous tendencies and currents, and facing growing problems arising both from the practical refutation of some of its postulates and from the failure of the historical experiences carried out in its name. The book reviews the most important currents of Marxism, and analyses the problems that have arisen when historical experiments based on it have been carried out. The transformations that took place in capitalism and, above all, the degeneration and failure of the experiences carried out in its name ended up leading to what is known as the crisis of Marxism, which expresses the loss of influence of Marxism both in its critical theoretical aspect and as a guide to social transformation, and which raises questions about the future of what is the theoretical paradigm with the most elaborate emancipatory objectives in history.

Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Marxism A contradictory legacy for the 21st century JESÚS SÁNCHEZ RODRÍGUEZ Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century For the sole purpose of avoiding improbable, but not impossible, plagiarism attempts, this work has been registered in the General Registry of Intellectual Property of the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Spain in January 2018. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez This work did not manage to be published by any publisher, mainly because of its length. However, Editorial Popular agreed to publish a shorter version of the book, so I made a synthesis of it to reduce it to a quarter of the original. This obliged me to delete some chapters or to make a synthesis of the rest. The result managed to retain the essentials of the original work and make it more accessible to the general public. Readers who prefer to read the synthesis or read it in classic printed format have the possibility to do so through the work published by Editorial Popular, the front and back covers of which can be seen in the image. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez INDEX Introduction 8 The origins of Marxism. The creation of the paradigm 18 Triumph and division of Marxism 29 Leninism. A fundamental variation on Marxism 34 The Leninist party 37 The party in Marx and Engels 37 The party in Lenin 42 The party in Rosa Luxemburg 45 Leninist state theory 49 The Soviet revolution and the alliance with the peasantry 60 The Leninist Analysis of Monopoly Capitalism and Imperialism 67 Western Marxism 70 British Marxist historiography 90 Analytical Marxism 94 Scientific Marxism and critical Marxism The status of Marxism as a scientific theory Marxist economics 102 113 126 Marxism as analysis and critique of the capitalist mode of production 128 Marxism and economics in the processes of transition to socialism 137 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century The Soviet Union: confrontation over the economic model for the 137 transition to socialism Cuba: the discussions and trials of a different model Discussions on economic policy in the transition to socialism 157 165 Calculation and economic incentives 167 A critical view of the real socialist economy 174 The controversy over market socialism 182 Structuralist Marxism 199 From structuralism to post-Marxism 209 Marxism in Latin America 218 Latin American Marxism 257 José Carlos Mariátegui 260 Ernesto Che Guevara 263 Álvaro García Linera 269 Maoism: Heretical Asian Marxism 281 Ecological Marxism 302 The problem of strategy: the revolution 309 Gramsci and the strategy for the West 316 Allende's government: the political-institutional path to socialism 321 Eurocommunism 331 Thousands of Marxisms 339 Approaches to the crisis of Marxism 347 Overall assessment of Marxist theory 372 Critical theories at the beginning of the 21st century 378 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Toni Negri: Multitude and Empire 398 Ernesto Laclau: Hegemony and populism 403 Bibliography 411 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Introduction I believe that the itinerary of Marxism and the left (Marxist and non-Marxist) in the 20th century deserves a multidimensional history, conceptual but not rationalist, as attentive to the thinking of the intellectual elites as it is sensitive to social history, to political practices, to ideologies as living and operating collective realities, to social imaginaries, to processes of identity construction, to ritual practices and to symbols. Critique of militant reason Horacio Tarcus Marxism, with its different variants and tendencies, represents a total theory in the sense of presenting a set of postulates encompassing the different levels of social, economic, political, sociological, philosophical reality, etc., some with more depth and development than others, and with a relative level of homogeneity at its heart that has been eroded as time has gone by and it has faced more complex problems and challenges, giving rise to polemics and differentiated developments within it. This totality of Marxism also represents "the coexistence of three projects which, although essentially related, are relatively autonomous: a political project - the achievement of socialism and communism; a scientific project - the understanding of social reality through historical materialism; and a philosophical project - the development of the dialectical materialist conception". 39 It is also possible to argue that the name Marxism today expresses a variety of different aspects that Gouldner40 grouped into four different levels. The first would be a complex and highly sophisticated theory, built on the contributions of the great founders in the 19th century and subsequently complemented by a multitude of varied contributions from different fields and positions. This level is usually dominated by a small group of specialised intellectuals, increasingly from academia. The second level is the less 39 40 Roggerone, Santiago M., El marxismo desafiado. Apuntes para una investigación, pp. 149-50. Gouldner, Alvin, The Two Marxisms, pp.191-2 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez reflexive, partly vulgarised Marxism, which is part of the everyday praxis of a large number of people. The contradictory relationship between these two levels was the subject of reflection, especially by Gramsci, as we shall see below. The third level is the organisational level, i.e. the one that informs a broad set of organisations that use it to achieve political objectives, it is "Marxism as a social movement". Finally, at the fourth level we find societies and states where, after some kind of revolution has triumphed, Marxism acts or has acted as the legitimising theory of those states and their institutions, and is used for the political socialisation of their citizens. To tackle the analysis of the situation of Marxism through its developments, as this study intends to do, is a complex subject, even though we can rely on a large number of existing studies of a partial or general nature. Throughout the chapters of this book we will analyse aspects of Marxism that correspond to one of the four levels differentiated by Gouldner. To go into each of them in depth would be an impossible task for a single work. Therefore, different themes have been chosen with two orientative criteria. For example, discussing the strategy used in the Chinese revolution may be interesting from a historical point of view, but it is of little or no practical use today; However, analysing the economic problems of the transition to socialism discussed by Russian Marxists at the beginning of the Soviet revolution is still relevant as part of an unresolved debate on the nature and problems of the transitional economy, even if it has also lost its immediacy in the absence of any prospect of socialist transition on the horizon. The second is the level of problematicity of a given aspect, the internal controversies it has generated, and the continuity or otherwise of its validity. For example, the scientific or critical status of Marxism, its character as a universal theory or its need for adaptation according to times and places, or the historical confirmation or refutation of some of its most characteristic concepts. The presentation of the chapters has a certain chronological order, but above all thematic, which is why, although it begins with Marx and ends with the critical theories at the beginning of the 21st century, there are thematic intercalated chapters, the economy or scientific status, for example. The different length of each chapter has to do with the relative importance that has been considered, then it has been a subjective choice. Some important aspects have not been developed much in this book because Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century they have already been developed in previous works I have published, such as, for example, the issue of the state and political power in the work Class Society, Political Power and the State, or the Yugoslav self-management experience in the book Historical Experiences of Transition to Socialism. I share the aspiration of the author of the quotation at the head of this introduction. Something similar to what he sets out is G.D.H. Cole's monumental seven-volume History of Socialist Thought, which recovers the history of socialism, broadly understood, from its origins to the outbreak of the Second World War. It is a multidimensional work, but it does not deal with Marxism specifically as such and, given the period in which it ends, it lacks the later period of Marxism which we might call, for lack of a better name, post-classical. It is a monumental work for the efforts of a single author. Some similar works have subsequently appeared, but of a collective nature, such as the General History of Socialism edited by Jacques Droz, which covers the period from 1918 to the 1980s. Like the previous one, it also has a multidimensional character and deals with the socialist thought and movement in a broad sense. Then, of course, there are the countless works by different authors who have dealt with partial aspects of socialist thought and movement, offering descriptions, studies and analyses of more or less depth. Perhaps the more comprehensive synthesis that Tarcus calls for would be desirable, but it is difficult to think that it could be the work of a single author, even if he or she were to spend a lifetime of study on it. A broad collaboration within a shared project is more feasible, but even such an undertaking requires the concurrence of certain conditions that are not easy to achieve. Perhaps it could emerge from the initiative of an academic institution or foundations linked to a political party, capable of mustering the necessary energies and resources and giving such a project the continuity over time to complete the task. Essays on this collective collaborative work can be found in works such as La teoría marxista hoy. Problemas y perspectivas, compiled by Atilio Borón and Javier Amadeo Sabrina González, or Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism compiled by Jacques Bidet and Stathis Kouvelakis, which represent an important contribution in this sense. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez There are also some other synthetic works on Marxism and its currents, such as Perry Anderson's Western Marxism, Iring Fetsche's Marxism. Its history in documents, J.B. Fargues' Introduction to the different interpretations of Marxism, the collective work coordinated by Georges Labica and Gérard Bersussan, Dictionnaire critique du marxisme. Curiously, one of the most extensive works is Leszek Kolakowski's The Main Currents of Marxism, more extensive than the previous three volumes, but with a critical orientation of an author who had become disenchanted with Marxism, following his criticism of the Polish communist government and exile from his country of origin, to end up embracing liberalism. His penetrating knowledge of Marxism (he held a chair in Marxism-Leninism at the University of Warsaw) was used by him to criticise it acidly. The first two volumes of his work focus on the original Marxism (the precursors) and that of the Second International (the Golden Age), and only in the third volume (the crisis) does he analyse some authors in common with those in Anderson's work. The great difference between Anderson's work and Kolakowski's is that the former, while recognising the crisis in Marxism, insisted on the possibility of a recovery, whereas the Polish author simply sought to settle accounts with a theoretical and political tradition he had disowned, using his extensive knowledge of it. It is also necessary to refer to the collective work directed by Eric Hobsbawm The History of Marxism, which contains 101 essays on Marxism in its twelve volumes. Others are more general, going beyond the analysis of Marxist thought, such as the aforementioned seven volumes of G.D.H. Cole's History of Socialist Thought, or others of a regional nature, such as El marxismo en América Latina. Anthology from 1909 to the present day, by Michael Löwy, which is more similar to Anderson's because it focuses on a specific region, Löwy on Latin America and Anderson on Western Europe. In the bibliography at the end of this book, an attempt has been made to provide a broad, but not exhaustive, sample of various Marxist authors and others who have reflected on Marxism. It is a small sample of both the bibliography used in the preparation of this work and of other books, documents and articles related to Marxism. Of course, the existing works and documents by and about Marxists and Marxism is almost incalculable, and surely the sample offered in the bibliography can be objected to by the absence of works or authors that someone might consider indispensable. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century For the purpose of this book, not all approaches enjoy the same attention. Thus, those of authors or currents that have adopted Marxism as an instrument of analysis in their respective disciplines, detaching it from its transformative aspect, that is, from its programme of social revolution, are of secondary interest. In our case, indeed, the interest lies in the degree of validity of Marxism as a scientific discipline to make valid predictions and thus effectively guide, first the struggles to overcome capitalism, then the period of transition to communism and, finally, the construction of the communist society itself. Nor do we intend to make an exhaustive analysis of a particular thinker or current, for which there are an infinite number of studies that have dealt with this, some of which can be found in the final bibliography. But we will refer to some of them when analysing the most important contributions to a given period or subject. This can be, for example, the case of Leninism in the study of early 20th century Marxism or the subject of revolutionary organisation, of Mariátegui in the study of Latin American Marxism, or of Negri in the analysis of the new critical theories. This is the second time I have tackled the subject of Marxism. The first time,41 , I did so with a different approach from the one I will follow in the current essay. On that occasion I focused the perspective on the importance of Marxism as a guiding theory for working class action, and I spent an important part of that work analysing the failures of other oppressed classes in history in their attempts to end their situation of domination due, among other things, to the absence of a theory and, therefore, an elaborated alternative society. It also reviewed some key and polemical concepts of Marxism in its crisis situation. Although this was not the main theme, this concern is also present obliquely in other works I have produced on different topics. But that first essay was clearly insufficient to account for the problematic of Marxism. Especially because it did not take into account the enormous amount of literature that has dealt with the same subject at different times and with different intensity and scope. 41 Sánchez Rodríguez, Jesús, La lucha por el socialismo, el papel del marxismo y su crisis (The Struggle for Socialism, the Role of Marxism and its Crisis). Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez To revisit the question of the status of Marxism on the basis of the various reflections that have been produced on it was a complex and surely frustrating task. The subject was very broad and required a profound knowledge of a great variety of authors and currents in Marxism, which I must admit I do not master in depth, so it was necessary to resort to syntheses and reflections of authors who dealt with them, that is to say, to second-order sources. Another important question is how to approach such a broad and complex subject. I opted for a mixed solution, not very satisfactory either, but which I believe facilitates the exposition, so that the prevailing approach is the temporal one, but interspersed with the thematic one. Finally, there is the question of the common thread that runs through this work. The starting point is an observation that many authors assiduously recall: Marxism is not only a theory for understanding and interpreting reality, but also a theory or tool whose aim is to transform it. And although this work places the emphasis on the theoretical aspect of Marxism, it is inevitable to find its reference or link at each moment with the practical activity of the organisations oriented by Marxism at each historical juncture. This already raises a possibility of periodisation which is the one we are going to follow in this work and which is similar, in time, to the one proposed by Wallerstein in the work Unthinking the Social Sciences42 . In brief synthesis now - as we will deal with it in more detail later - his proposal proposed three stages, the first encompassing that of the founders of Marxism and extending in time from the 1840s to the 1880s. The second would correspond to the predominance of what is known as orthodox Marxism, which, according to this author of world-system theory, would have extended from the 1880s to the 1950s. Finally, the third of the Marxist eras would have begun in the 1950s and in general terms would not yet have ended, and which both Wallerstein and André Tosel call the era of a thousand Marxisms. Although similar, our proposed periodisation differs both in time and in the argument that justifies it. The argument to be used is twofold. On the one hand, as we pointed out, the existence or not of relations, and their intensity, between the intellectuals who create, develop and disseminate Marxist theory, and the practical activity with which 42 Wallerstein, Immanuel, Unthinking Social Science, pp. 194-5. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Marxist organisations try to transform society. On the other hand, the problems, anomalies and challenges that Marxist theory encountered. In this sense, as will be seen throughout this work, the proposal is for four rather than three distinct stages, each with a different model of relations corresponding to the different historical conjunctures through which Marxism and the socialist workers' movement passed. The first stage corresponds to that of the founders, Marx and Engels. Their theoretical output, needless to say, is decisive and enormous, all the more so given that they are only two authors. However, their practical political activity is intermittent and not decisive. Their role as leaders of revolutionary or workers' organisations is basically confined to two of them which are ephemeral, the League of Communists, which they join from the Communist Committee of Correspondence, and the First International, but the latter, which is the more important of the two, cannot be considered a Marxist organisation or one oriented by Marx's theories. During his lifetime, the Trier philosopher had no important political organisations at his disposal in which he could exert a leading or influential role with his theories; only at the end did the German Social-Democratic Party appear, and then the parties that followed this model in other countries, but only Engels in the last part of his life was able to exert any decisive influence. Despite its remoteness in time, given the founding contributions, especially Marx's, his influence remains important and fundamental for Marxism, in some of the key issues, such as the structure of the social and economic analysis of capitalism and the proposed final objectives, although others have been superseded by historical development. The second stage would run roughly from the 1880s to the 1920s, and would be marked initially by the orthodox Marxism of the Second International and then by the revolutionary Marxism of the early years of the Soviet victory and the creation of the Third International. The number of Marxist authors at this stage grew significantly, and the most defining characteristic was the strong relationship between the leading intellectuals and the Marxist political organisations, most of whom were important leaders. This gives special characteristics to this stage, since the strategic question with immediate applications is what prevails. However, their theoretical contributions, although very important at the time, have been largely superseded by subsequent historical developments, and few of them are still a useful tool today. They may be cited Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez in a history of Marxism, but to a much lesser degree they serve as a basis for current political activity or the development of Marxist theory. The third stage lasted from the 1920s to the 1970s, and its characteristics were complex and contradictory. There was a strong expansion of communist organisations throughout the world following the model imposed by the Third International with its 21 conditions, and there was an extension of communist states after the Second World War following the model of the Soviet Union. But there were also significant defeats of the revolution in Europe, the consolidation of Stalinism and the appearance of internal confrontations in the socialist camp. There are still leaders of revolutionary movements who continue to be Marxist theoreticians, such as Gramsci, Trotsky, Mao, or Che Guevara - although the first two come from the previous stage -, but the bulk of intellectuals, while maintaining relations with Marxist organisations, do not play leading roles or influence their strategies; they begin to be linked mainly to the academic world. It could be said that this was a transitional stage that advanced some of the features that would become more solidly consolidated in the last stage. Given the greater proximity of this stage to the present day, some of the theoretical contributions of Marxist intellectuals maintain greater influence, but an important part of them are also ephemeral, such as, for example, those of Mao, or with little relevance for the advance towards socialism, such as, for example, the epistemological or aesthetic debates. The fourth and last stage, which began in the 1970s and continues to the present day, takes place in a new historical context. The contradictory aspect of the previous stage has now been lost. The current period is characterised by a series of defeats and failures, defeats of new revolutionary attempts such as those in Chile, Portugal or Nicaragua, failures such as that of Eurocommunism and, above all, the debacle of real socialism. All this had a profound effect on the Marxist organisations, which were reduced to an irrelevant role and entered a period of great confusion as to strategies and objectives. For the first time since the time of the Second International, socialism has disappeared from the historical horizon as a credible project with influence on the broad masses. There is no better illustration of this situation than the processes that have developed in Latin America in the first three decades of the 21st century. In the first phase, broad mass movements led to the defeat of various neo-liberal governments and brought progressive governments to power, but the role played by Marxist organisations was Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century marginal. Then, at the end of this period, these experiences were blocked and defeated, and only ephemerally, and with a totally ambiguous content, was there talk for a time of a socialism of the 21st century. Marxist theory intensified some of the characteristics present in the previous stage, intellectuals moved further away from their now much diminished organisations, and their academic affiliation was accentuated, with Anglo-Saxon universities taking centre stage. Three features stand out in this last stage. Firstly, in the absence of relevant Marxist organisations with mass influence, Marxist theory clearly lost its most defining feature, that of its strong link to a political and social practice aimed at transforming society. It would seem that the result of this situation is "a Marxism without a proletariat, which retains only its function as a cultural critique of bourgeois civilisation"43 . This feature inevitably leads us to evoke the situation of the first stage, when Marx and Engels knew, then, different failures in practice but continued with a theoretical production which subsequently fertilised and served as a tool for Marxist organisations. But now there is an essential difference, there is the dead weight of more than a century of failures and defeats which prevent the situation from being approached with a simple "let's start again". The second feature is the label used by some authors for the current stage, that of the thousand Marxisms, to express the large number of different contributions made by a plethora of Marxist authors from different disciplines. Indeed, there is an expansion of theoretical contributions coming mainly from the academic sphere. The third feature is the so-called crisis of Marxism, which is related to three different aspects. The first is an acute awareness in certain sectors of the existence of this crisis, not so much because of the absence of theoretical production, which, as we say, is important, but because of the absence of a historical horizon for socialism, which has become an objective outside any real historical possibility at the present juncture. The second, related to the previous one, is the realisation that the theoretical contributions being made have no practical application, insofar as the Marxist organisations have 43 Malia, Martin, The End of the Noble Dream. How "Western Marxism" misrepresented the real Marx, http://www.revistadelibros.com/articulos/la-tergiversacion-de-marx-por-el-marxismo-occidental Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez become politically irrelevant and the new organisations channelling the mobilisations of the popular masses are not oriented by Marxism. The third is the emergence of the socalled new critical theories, which dispute with Marxism the interpretation of social reality and the orientation of protest organisations and movements; this last aspect also represents an important change in the situation of Marxism, since it represents a kind of second revisionist wave, which this time finds Marxism very weakened in terms of its social and political influence. The guiding interest of this work is the reflection on the current situation of Marxism, and the evaluation of its capacity to fulfil the role as a guiding theory of the movements of social transformation that it has attributed to itself since its birth, therefore, its analysis places special emphasis on the last two stages identified since both are united, as noted above, by common features that were established in the third and consolidated in the fourth of these stages. This work, then, aims to contribute to the debate on the situation of Marxism through the exposition and contrast of different visions and reflections on it, making, as far as possible, a modest contribution through personal reflections that will punctuate the different chapters. As can be seen from the subject matter of my published works, I cannot consider myself a specialist in a particular subject - and therefore not in this one either - on which I have focused my efforts and interest and which I delve into in each new publication. Although it is clear that there is a guiding project that runs through these works. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century The origins of Marxism. The creation of the paradigm During his working life, Karl Marx was immersed in the epistemological tension inherent in each and every attempt to analyse the large-scale and long-term processes of social change: to describe at the same time the characteristics and principles of a "system" in its unique process of development. The tension between a theory that is by necessity abstract and a history that is also by necessity concrete cannot, by definition, be eliminated. Like most other thinkers who in their intellectual activity are aware of this tension and confront it, Marx resorts to shifting intensity in his writings, so it is easy to distort his interest, pointing to only one end of this back-and-forth and presenting him as the "real Marx" in ways that he would have rejected, as he did many times. Rethinking social sciences Immanuel Wallerstein Perhaps it might be thought that in order to analyse the situation of Marxism and its problems in the second decade of the 21st century it is not necessary to go back to its origins in the 19th century; however, there are authors who have pointed out that these problems already appeared in the very initial construction of the paradigm by Marx and Engels and, therefore, an adequate interpretation of these problems would not be possible without a prior understanding of the creation of the paradigm and the problems derived from it. Possibly, the most suggestive work in this sense is Alvin W. Gouldner's The Two Marxisms, which we will follow especially in this chapter in those ideas that are most interesting for our purposes, and whose subtitle already illuminates the content of the work, Contradictions and Anomalies in the Development of Theory. This work is also essential for its proposed model for interpreting the different political currents and Marxist authors, which is more explanatory than others proposed for similar purposes. Gouldner analyses essential aspects in the creation of the paradigm and its later repercussions, such as the different stages and weight of intellectual interests in its Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez creation; the relationship of Marx and Engels with philosophy and science; the agreements and differences between the two authors; the works expressly published by the authors and those that were not, and their importance; the role of determinism, alienation, technology, the state, the division of labour; the anomalies and contradictions that appeared early on; the role of Engels in the stabilisation of the paradigm; and the generation of two different types of Marxism. Gouldner distinguishes, like other Marxist authors, two clearly differentiated stages in Marx's theoretical production, the borderline dates of which are between 1848-50, i.e. with the defeats of the European revolutions of that period. The works prior to those years would be "the core of young Marxism" (Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts, The German Ideology, The Communist Manifesto, etc.). "It is this work that is most clearly imbued with catastrophism, with the belief in an imminent and universal revolution."44 The works written from 1850 onwards are those of "the fundamental years of Marx's mature intellectual productivity, centred on political economy" (The 18th Brumaire, Grundrisse, Critique of Political Economy, Capital, etc.). "During this period, Marx curbed his catastrophism and revealed his growing transition towards the structuralist perspectives of economism, with his concept of the massiveness of evolving socioeconomic formations. "45 Althusser had made a similar differentiation of Marx's works, although somewhat more detailed, in which, according to Bolivar Botia46 , up to four different stages can be distinguished. The first, between 1840-5, would correspond to that of his youthful works, distinguishing two periods, the initial one, up to 1842, of a liberal rationalist character, dominated by Kantian-Fichtean approaches, and the final one, between 184245, of a rationalist-communitarian character, dominated by anthropologicalFeuerbachian approaches, with only the 1844 Manuscripts containing a Hegelian character. The second stage, in 1845, would contain the two works of the break, Theses on Feuerbach and The German Ideology. The third, between 1845-57, consisted of the works of maturity, such as The Manifesto, The Misery of Philosophy, Wages, Prices and 44 Gouldner, Alvin W., The Two Marxisms, p. 153. Ibid, p. 154 46 Bolívar Botia,Antonio, Structuralism: from Lévi-Strauss to Derrida, p. 111. 45 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Profit, etc. Finally, the works of maturity, between 1857-83, would contain the Grundrisse and, especially, Capital. If this division into two periods is used to distinguish the young Marx from the mature Marx and, with it, the different themes and visions that prevailed in each of them, Gouldner distinguishes, however, three stages in the evolution of the primary paradigm of Marxism, known as historical materialism, which he defines as consisting of twelve key elements. But before looking at these three stages it is necessary to refer to an important theme which underwent changes in these stages. This is economic determinism which, for Gouldner, has up to three different meanings for Marx and Engels. The first meaning, which he calls "unilinear evolutionism", has been the subject of much later controversy and expresses the view that "all societies pass through the same sequence of stages, each of which is the inevitable result of the preceding one and the necessary prerequisite for the next". The second determinism is called "synchronic particularism", "here it is a question of the ruthless and inescapable laws of capitalism, which apply only to its historical life span". The third is "universal synchronic determinism", "this involves claims concerning the universality of the determination of the ideological and political superstructure by the mode of production, i.e. the infrastructure", i.e. they are applicable to any system characterised by the existence of social classes. According to Gouldner, Marx and Engels departed from the first determinism, and its implications that "capitalism is inevitable everywhere", and in doing so they seem to have "opened up the possibility of socialism without prior capitalism", but at the price of "muddying the whole question of the requirements of socialism", as well as "the very nature of socialism itself [...] which can be as multiform as the conditions that can engender it"47 . The consequences of the introduction of this ambiguity were felt much later when transitions to socialism were tried out in economically backward countries, and even theorised, as was the case with some Latin American Marxist intellectuals and others, as we shall see in a later chapter. In the first stage of its evolution, the Marxist paradigm seeks to differentiate its ideas from those of its surroundings and to draw its limits with respect to "the philosophical 47 Gouldner, Alvin W., The Two Marxisms, p. 262-5 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez idealists", "the vulgar materialists", and "the rival socialists", and chronologically it coincides with the intellectual production of the young Marx. The second stage would be that of the "application of the paradigm" and would develop between 1849-71, with two main expressions, that of historical journalism, and that of "technical work in political economy", the latter exclusively by Marx. At this stage "the paradigm begins to undergo a kind of entropy and several important anomalies appear with respect to it", which Gouldner condenses into seven aspects: "The unilinear model of social evolution begins to be undermined, partly tacitly and partly overtly". "The emphasis on the universal importance of class struggle is undermined by Marx and Engels' increasingly intensive investigation of the primitive commune". "Marx begins to doubt that violent revolution is necessary everywhere." "Marx's ideas on the class state become more complex". "The relative importance of ideological hegemony as the basis of bourgeois domination becomes more prominent". "The assumption of the unambiguous predominance of infrastructure over superstructure, of economics over politics and the state, is undermined and challenged." "The assumption that socialists can take over the old bourgeois state and use it for their ends is further undermined by the conclusions Marx drew from the Paris Commune in the civil war in France." The third stage is that of the "normalisation of the paradigm", and extends between 1872 and 1895 with the death of Engels, and is characterised by two objectives, "First, the maintenance of the limits against the threat of vulgarisation. Second, the consideration of the growing anomalies of the paradigm", in which the first objective prevails over the second, "serious critical reconsideration of the primary paradigm is set aside to make room for a defensive reassertion that conceals its contradictions". 48 Engels, who survives Marx's death by a period of twelve years, will play a fundamental role in the standardisation and final definition of the paradigm created over several decades. What Engels did at that stage was to selectively point out, among the enormous amount of accumulated materials, those he considered decisive in defining the paradigm. And in this task, Engels takes three lines, according to Gouldner, firstly, "he defines himself primarily as the preserver of the primary paradigm, rather than of the political economy of Capital". Secondly, "he is forced to accept and simplify the 48 Gouldner, Alvin W., The Two Marxisms, p. 320-1. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century primary paradigm, to disguise his difficulties in defining concisely, rather than critically assessing, its essential features, in order to facilitate its transmission". Finally, "Engels chose to centre the paradigm of Marxism, not at the level of unilinear determinism and particularist synchronic determinism, capitalism, but at the level of universal synchronic determinism, historical materialism". 49 This orientation of Engels' earned him the later accusation by critical Marxists of being the "first revisionist" of Marx's work, of being the origin of "the positivist heresy of Marxism". The accusation of Engels aims to cover up the internal contradictions of Marxism and, instead of confronting them, simply presents the contradiction between Marx and Engels, accusing the latter of vulgarising and deforming authentic Marxism with his heresy. These accusations, notes Gouldner - who does not deny the existence of differences between Marx and Engels - come, above all, from Marxist philosophers rather than from economists or other representatives of the social sciences. The ambiguity created by Marx in relation to the necessary prerequisites for socialism, originating in his writings on the Russian rural commune, has been pointed out above. Another important ambiguity is related to his attitude to philosophy and science, since he felt attachment to both. "If at times Marx conceived of himself as a scientist among scientists, there were also other times when he conceived of himself somewhat differently, when he regarded himself as a critic and evaluated his work as criticism. Criticism belongs to the realm of philosophy and the art of interpretation." However, Gouldner points out that Marx's preference ultimately leaned towards the side of science "In truth, the three main texts used to paint Marxism as criticism, and not as science, that is, the Grundrisse, the Paris Manuscripts of 1844 and the Theses on Feuerbach were never published by Marx himself. In fact, they were suppressed by him, selfcensored [...] Marx's public life as a scholar became increasingly scientific, although he remained a critical theorist in a different, perhaps deeper, part of his intellectual life"50 . Indeed, the inclination towards science does not imply the abandonment of philosophy and, as a consequence, there remains an unresolved tension which derives from the very nature of Marxism as a tool of knowledge and a guide to society-transforming action. "It cannot abandon science without capitulating to a moralistic conception of socialism, 49 50 Gouldner, Alvin W., The Two Marxisms, pp. 323-4 and 267. Gouldner, Alvin W., The Two Marxisms, pp. 84 and 348. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez and it cannot renounce philosophy and the foundation it provides for critique without surrendering to the present. In Marx's two-pronged project of knowing and changing the world, philosophy was insufficient to know the world, and science insufficient to criticise it. That is why Marx cannot embrace critique without science, nor science without critique".51 If the first ambiguity was the basis for the trends in Marxism, especially in Latin America, which were critical of the Eurocentrism of Marxism, the second ambiguity served as the basis for the two great models of Marxism analysed by Gouldner in his book: the scientific and the critical. Other contradictory concepts in the original Marxist theory are those that develop between its concept of alienation - clearly inherited from Hegel and belonging to the field of philosophy - and the material conditions necessary to build socialism, i.e. the development of productive forces that eliminate scarcity - a scientific and antivoluntarist premise - which in turn raises the difficulties of overcoming the division of labour and thus alienation. But the main anomaly of Marxism that Gouldner points out has to do with its conceptions of the state, and originates especially from its treatment in The 18th Brumaire, where Marx "emphasises the relative autonomy of ideology from the political sphere, an appreciable distance from the more economistic stipulations of the primary paradigm"52 . Marx's thesis on the Asiatic mode of production would also reinforce this anomaly. He ends by pointing out that this anomaly would have lasting consequences, "The tension between historical materialism, which clearly assigns a derivative role to the state, and the relative independence of the state in society, evident to Marx as a political journalist, was never systematically resolved at the level of theory. It remained a disturbing difficulty that led generations of Marxists to try to rescue the theory through countless ingenious but ad hoc commentaries. "53 51 Ibid, p. 95 Ibid, p. 328 53 Ibid, p. 333 52 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century But theories do not collapse at the appearance of anomalies, Gouldner argues, following modern trends in the philosophy of science, "it takes repeated and cumulative anomalies to discredit an established theory". And it is evident that during Marx and Engels' lifetime, they did not reach that level, although they did later, and so the problem of the crisis of Marxism eventually came to the surface. However, Marxist theory resists collapse despite the anomalies for another important reason pointed out by Gouldner, which has to do with the existence of two Marxisms. Marxism matured at two levels, on the one hand, at "the manifest level of Marxism as theory, as technical and extraordinary language, centred on the self-emancipation of the working class", on the other hand, at a deeper level, the "level of the basic underlying assumptions of an analytics in which they maintained an enduring reaffirmation of the importance of the voluntarist element, of philosophy, of theory, of ideology, of the social strata whose special work they are: the intelligentsia. "Thus when anomalies and failures began to appear in his manifest theory, the existence of these two levels helped him to survive, "the Marxist revolution that triumphed was only made by those who broke with Marxist theory, with scientific Marxism, who began to articulately elaborate the dissonant voluntarism of the once repressed Marxist analytics and to generate critical Marxisms". 54 Having seen Gouldner's analysis of the emergence of the paradigm of Marxism and the anomalies contained in it, let us now look at what is the essential core of his work, the differentiation of two types of Marxism, the scientific and the critical. This is not a differentiation discovered and used by Gouldner, but, as he himself points out, it was previously used by other Marxist intellectuals such as Karl Korsch in 1923 in Marxism and Philosophy, Lucio Colletti, Maurice Merleau-Ponty or Mihalo Markovic. On the other hand, Goulder explains that he uses this dichotomy of the two Marxisms for the purpose of "analytical distinctions, ideal types [...] they are hypotheses for an analysis of concrete Marxist theoretical factors", therefore, if a certain Marxist or tendency of 54 Ibid, p. 348 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Marxism is said to be scientific or critical, it is because elements of one or the other Marxism weigh more heavily in it. The differentiation of these two types of Marxism stems from the anomalies contained in the primary paradigm, which we have seen above. The emergence and relationship between the two is synthesised by Gouldner. "Marxism crystallised into a political movement under the tutelage of Engels and Kautsky after Marx's death. It was then dominated by a scientific Marxism polemically opposed to idealism, characterised by an anti-idealist naturalism attentively focused on the limits of voluntarism and asserting the power of economic constraints over human action and reason. But critical Marxism arose as a reaction against this interpretation of Marxism and, on the contrary, asserted the role of a voluntarist consciousness against the naturalism and determinism of the scientific maxim and the latter's emphasis on the restrictive character of economic structures. If scientific Marxism emerges as the negation of academic philosophical idealism and utopianism, critical Marxism is the negation of the negation." 55 Critical Marxism emerged with the conditions created after the First World War, the triumph of the revolution in Russia and the failure in Germany, but especially from the collapse of the Second International in 1914, and condenses two aspects, "it is a tool of ideological struggle within Marxism itself, directed most particularly at the beginning against the determinism and rigid evolutionism of the Second International and, at the same time, it is a distinct critique of capitalist society".56 The predominance of one or the other within Marxism is related to the evolution of political movements based on Marxism. Until the Second International, the scientist was "the dominant layer", after the victory of the Soviet revolution and the spread of Leninism, this dominance was broken, and with the triumph of the revolution in China and Cuba, critical Marxism became definitively "the dominant layer", especially within the less developed countries. 55 56 Ibid, p. 188 Ibid, p. 187 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century The differentiating aspects between the two types of Marxism, which Gouldner analyses, are very varied, as we shall see in a brief summary below: For scientific Marxism, Marxism is a science and considers it to be "selfjustifying and, on the contrary, suspicious of philosophy", which makes its deterministic character weigh heavily. He underlines Marx's epistemological break with Hegel after 1845, distinguishing in the latter his revolutionary method from its conservative content. He considers the importance of Engels' role in the elaboration of Marxism. He considers "ideology as a distorted reflection of the world". He believes that a strong ideological weight still persists in the young Marx, with a leap from ideology to science in the mature Marx. He "looks for firm social structures that reappear and are presumably intelligible out of any context", these structures are the real actors, imposing patterns of action on people. It shows little tolerance for ambiguity, and clearly differentiates between economic infrastructure and superstructure, which includes ideology and the state, and is determined by the former. He stresses the objective conditions for social transformation and rejects any voluntarism that pretends not to take these conditions into account. He relates Marxism to science and technology, and accepts the beneficial power of science and technology, while considering that philosophy must be overcome. He shows strong loyalty to his party and political organisations, and his pathology in this respect is a tendency to "political ritualism". He promotes the preparation of cadres and political patience while waiting for the opportune moment provided by the development of objective conditions. These are the fruit of the inevitable development of the contradictions of society. It does not believe in the possibility of forcing the limits imposed by objective conditions and therefore opposes determinism to voluntarism. He is more inclined to "structuralism in which the social totality is seen as a conjunction of permanent elements that transcends its limits in time and space [...] it is these economic institutions that shape, govern and limit social action". Exploitation, "based on the structures of capitalism", and not alienation, is the fundamental basis of the critique of capitalist society. Socialism is understood as the emancipation of necessity through the development of the productive forces. Its conception of the transition to socialism is more gradualist, even tends towards parliamentarism, and is "more secularised". Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez For critical Marxism, Marxism is a philosophy of praxis, a critique. It is marked by a strong voluntarist tendency. It emphasises Marx's continuity with Hegel, resorting to philosophy to find a point of support external to science. He is inclined to suspect Engels as the origin of the "positivist deformation of Marxism". In relation to ideology, he understands that "while men fashion ideological masks for class domination, they do so under the control of their own and others' critical reason". He recognises the work of the young Marx as authentically Marxist: "He upholds a historicism that emphasises fluidity and social change". It relies on the conception of totality and "rejects formal and blunt categorisation", including the infrastructure/superstructure divide. It sees human will as playing a fundamental role in social transformation. He links Marxism with the more humanistic and philosophical side of culture. In his critique of contemporary society he includes science, although in order not to appear anti-scientific he focuses his critique on positivism. His adherence is more to "a set of values, a conception, a conscience" than to organisations, the pathology in this case being "adventurism or revolutionary messianism". His refusal to wait for objective conditions to materialise leads him to argue that the time is always ripe for revolution, and that the possibility of revolution "depends on changes in and of people, in their consciousness, their ideologies, their theories, their values, their knowledge and their energies". Therefore, the role of the subjects or actors in the revolutionary task is fundamental, becoming a "theory of activist praxis". It was a response to the unexpected fact that revolutions took place in economically backward countries, "it was produced for underdeveloped societies by highly advanced Europeanised intellectuals". Equally, "it is more populist and less bureaucratic than scientific socialism". It is more inclined to "historicism in which each different social phase of society is seen as operating according to unique and different requirements, and emphasises the organic character of society as a special totality". Alienation is a stronger category than exploitation for criticising capitalism. The socialisation of the means of production is only a means to promote "a new man and a new consciousness". His conception of transition to socialism is "more imbued with the catastrophist language of an abrupt and violent revolution", in which "the distant echoes of millenarianism resound". It is more open to other theoretical influences as shown by the weight of these in some of its leading intellectual Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century figures such as Lukács, Sartre, Marcuse, etc. In one sense, critical Marxism, as a reaction to scientific Marxism, is a later version, but, in another sense, it is a "kind of pre-Marxism" because of its connections with utopian socialism. We will see in the following chapters how this dichotomy and its characteristics, so well synthesised by Gouldner, appear in the Marxist tendencies and thinkers we will be dealing with, clearly confirming these theses. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Triumph and division of Marxism The greatest paradox in the history of Marxism is that the passage from theory to effective and victorious revolution has depended on a critical or heretical reinterpretation of Marxian thought, not on a strict orthodox application. As opposed to Lenin, the orthodox were Kautsky and Plekhanov. Introduction to the different interpretations of Marxism J.B.Fargues After the establishment of the Marxist paradigm by its two great creators, and after Engels' death in 1885, there followed a turbulent epoch characterised by three special features. The first is the practical triumphs achieved by Marxist political organisations, initially with the golden age of classical social democracy and its parliamentary achievements, and later with the communist victories in conquering various states. The second feature is the division and open confrontation within Marxism, first within social democracy where three opposing tendencies appeared, represented by Kautsky, Bernstein and Rosa Luxemburg; then between the communists and the socialists, recomposed after the debacle suffered in 1914 and, later, within communism itself between Stalinists and Trotskyists and, finally, the Maoists. The third of the defining features of this stage for Marxism is the type of intellectual-leader that characterises most Marxist theoreticians, who would later become much rarer. The core of this stage concentrates on the first two decades of the 20th century, but extends backwards and especially forwards to the early 1960s with the last revolutionary triumphs (China and Cuba), the last important intellectual-leaders (Mao, Guevara) and the last internal confrontations (Maoism, Stalinism, Castro-Guevarism). Such a turbulent period could not fail to produce a large number of contributions to Marxism through different and conflicting positions. In order to clarify this panorama a little, we will frame the different authors of those first two decades of the twentieth century within the different currents that were in some way linked to Marxism. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Among the centrists, August Bebel and Karl Kautsky; among the revisionists, Eduard Bernstein, Heinrich Cunow, Jean Jaures, Herman Heller, Heine, Antonio Graziadei, Millerand and Vollmar; among the leftists, Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and Franz Mehring; among the Austro-Marxists, Max Adler, Otto Bauer, Rudolf Hilferding and Karl Renner; among the Bolsheviks, Lenin, Nicolai Bukharin, Trotsky, Stalin and Zinoviev; among the Councilists, Karl Korsch and Anton Pannakoek; and other authors who, although from that period, will be discussed in the chapter on Western Marxism, are Antonio Gramsci and Georg Lukács. Following the analysis made by Iring Fetscher in his work Marxism: Its History in Documents, we will make a brief synthesis of the main differences that separated them, as well as a comparison with what Marx and Engels argued about some of the main elements of Marxist theory such as imperialism, classes, the state, the bureaucracy, the nation, law, the party, strategy and the future society. We shall begin by looking at the positions held by Marx and Engels. On the question of imperialism, despite their criticisms of its excesses and the suffering it brought, they nevertheless considered their work progressive in that they did away with backward economies and social structures and brought those countries into the mainstream of historical development. The class struggle was the motor of history, they differentiated the concepts of class per se and class for itself, and predicted the tendency towards polarisation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The state is conceived as an instrument of class domination, and an illusory form of community, conditioned by the mode of production. The bureaucracy appears linked to the petty bourgeoisie, and becomes independent when a state of unstable class equilibrium appears. In general, they undervalue the significance of the nation, considering that the proletariat has no homeland. With regard to law, they consider that legal relations are the expression of the relations of production (determination of the superstructure by the infrastructure), they denounce it as an illusory form of justice. They consider the proletarian party as the representative of the class for itself, thus independent of the bourgeoisie, with an internationalist character, and endowed with internal democracy. Although they do not fix the methods of revolution, they are convinced of the inevitability of violence, although at the end of their days they see possibilities of a peaceful way in Britain; they conceive of it as an action of the majorities, of a world character, national in form but not in content, and determined by objective conditions. They do not leave many Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez indications about the future communist society, the most important being the disappearance of the division of labour and the state, they consider a transitional period, the dictatorship of the proletariat, during which bourgeois residues in law, etc., will subsist, etc., to be indispensable, The authors of the centrist tendency - a position relative to the revisionists and leftists within the Second International have different positions on the above-mentioned issues. They do not consider imperialism as an indispensable capitalist phase (Kautsky), or they see it as a consequence of the entry into politics of high finance, leading to war and the abandonment of democracy (Hilferding). On the issue of classes, it is important to see the role of the intellectuals as introducing consciousness to the workers (Kautsky). They do not see why the state must necessarily be an instrument of the possessing classes, conceiving the democratic state as the organ of the working classes (Kautsky), they also consider bureaucracy necessary, the dangerous thing being bureaucratic cretinism (Kautsky). They defend proletarian patriotism (Kautsky and Bebel) or establish a link between the class struggle and the awakening of nations without history (Otto Bauer). They give an absolute value, going as far as fetishism, to organisation (Kautsky). The strategy they propose is contradictory and confused, they criticise the other two tendencies, revisionism, and the mass strike of the left, and lean more towards exhaustion than overthrow (Kautsky) or parliamentary transformation (Hilferding). They conceive communism as the heir of trutsified capitalism (Hilferding, Kautsky). To the right of centrism was revisionism whose positions are as follows. They consider world unification progressive (Renner). They reject that a polarisation of classes between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is taking place, since new intermediate classes are appearing (Bernstein). They recognise that the state also has a socialadministrative character which deepens with economic development (Bernstein, Cunow, Renner, Heller). They show great sensitivity to the national question, ranging from interest in the situation of the oppressed nations of Austria-Hungary (Renner), to intense nationalism (Heller) or strong patriotic discourse (Jaures). They consider that bourgeois law belongs to the society of small producers and has to be reformed for the developed capitalist society (Renner). Their view of the party is that it is more active than class (Bernstein), or that the foundation of the party is vocation, not class (Cunow). On strategy, they reject revolution in favour of reform (Vollman), viewing parliamentary democracy and government collaboration with the bourgeoisie positively, their Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century conception of transformations is through reform and compromise (Bernstein). On the conception of socialist society in the future, they simply give up the question, the movement and organisation for social progress being everything, and the final goal nothing (Bernstein). The leftist sections of the Second International and the councilists were diametrically opposed to the revisionists, and also far from the centrists. They saw imperialism as the fruit of capitalism's need to conquer non-capitalist countries in order to realise surplus value with the associated danger of inter-imperialist wars (Rosa Luxemburg). They denounce that the bureaucracy becomes a specific class of an exploitative character with its own interests (Pannekoek). In relation to the party, they criticise the Leninist model, advocating spontaneous discipline and the practical experiences of the masses (Rosa Luxemburg), arguing that the organisational form of the proletariat is transformed in the course of the struggle (Pannekoek). Their strategy is based on democratic, non-elitist revolutionism, based on the spontaneous uprising of the masses and conscious leadership (Rosa Luxemburg). They advocate a communist society with planning by society as a whole and workers' control by the rank and file (Korsch). The Bolsheviks obviously belong to the left sector, but their approaches to the issues we are analysing place them in a different position which would become hegemonic for several decades due to the triumph of the Soviet revolution. Imperialism is characterised as the phase of monopoly capitalism, the domination of finance capital, the export of capital and the division of the world among the capitalist countries, one of the effects of which is that it contributes to the corruption of layers of workers in the imperialist countries (Lenin). With regard to the state, it is conceived as an instrument of class domination, and the dictatorship of the proletariat as a transitory type of state that can be managed by any worker; with the subsequent development of bureaucratism in the Soviet Union, the raising of the cultural level of the masses is raised in order to combat it (Lenin); in the case of Trotsky, he considers Stalinism as the expression of the domination of the Soviet bureaucracy. They regard the national state as a requirement of capitalism, and defend the right to self-determination of the oppressed nationalities (Lenin). Their conception of the revolutionary party is one of their main novel contributions, conceived as the vanguard of the proletariat, it is a highly centralised and disciplined party of professional revolutionaries in which there is no room for fractions (Lenin). On strategy, they conceive of struggles related to each concrete historical Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez situation, advocating transforming war into revolutionary civil war (Lenin), in the case of Trotsky they advocate permanent revolution. A long stage will be necessary for the overcoming of classes and the state, but the state is conceived already in the transitional phase as a simple machine capable of being operated by any worker. This quick review of the wealth of contributions made in this period also shows the enormous differences that began to appear within Marxism soon after the demise of its two founders. These differences were based on three circumstances. First, the ambiguity and underdevelopment of many concepts inherited from the founders which, as we saw earlier, supported the development of the two main tendencies of Marxism, the critical and the scientific. Secondly, because of the different experiences faced by the Marxist parties of the time; the experiences of a German Social-Democratic party, the result of the fusion of Marxists and Lasallians, and working in conditions of legality and electoral growth, were not the same as those of a Bolshevik party, which had split from its more reformist wing, the Mensheviks, and acted illegally and was beset by repression. Finally, because most of the intellectuals who interpreted and developed Marxist theory were party leaders and, therefore, faced with practical and immediate problems which led them to approaches derived from those circumstances, the fruits of the immediate political struggle which ended up becoming lasting doctrines. All the approaches we have just reviewed quickly and superficially were put to the test first with the outbreak of the First World War and then with the triumph of the Soviet revolution, its development and its consequences. The novelties introduced by Lenin into the theoretical body of Marxism, and which became hegemonic as a result of the Bolshevik triumph and its irradiation, gave rise to a certain mutation of Marxism which was called Marxism-Leninism, although this term ended up describing the doctrinal version disseminated by Stalinism. Marxism was thus shaken in this period by two consecutive crises. The first within the Second International pitted the three tendencies described as revisionist, centrist and leftist against each other. The first two ceased to be sources for the development of Marxism, in some cases officially maintaining their reference to Marxism, but slowly abandoning it in practice until the moment of some kind of official renunciation (Bad Godesberg). The second crisis hit the new hegemonic version early on when the two major tendencies derived from Bolshevism, Stalinism and Trotskyism, clashed. In the Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century meantime, other minority currents such as councilism or Luxemburgism, without any success to offer, did not manage to consolidate any Marxist current. The revolutionaries were mostly attracted by official communism, and the dissidents by Trotskyism. Gramsci's influence was later and was felt both among the adherents of official communism and among the dissidents, but without creating a distinct current of its own either. Many of the approaches of this generation were marginalised or disproved by the events of the war and revolution, and a somewhat paranoid situation developed in which works and theses were propagated which were being disproved by reality. Lenin's State and Revolution was widely disseminated as the Soviet state was bureaucratised and moved towards Stalinist totalitarianism. The Soviet revolution was praised while the original soviets were quickly reduced to irrelevance and would never again be used as a model either for revolution or for social organisation. Proletarian internationalism was praised while in practice the sections of the Comintern, the communist parties, were used in the interests of the Soviet Union as a state. The thesis of world revolution was maintained, when socialism was being built in one country. In the 1920s, the wave of attempts at socialist revolution in the developed countries was finally defeated, and from then on it was mostly transferred to the backward countries. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Leninism. A fundamental variation on Marxism The systematic construction of a Marxist political theory of the class struggle, organisationally and tactically, was Lenin's work. The scale of this realisation on this plane transformed the whole architecture of historical materialism in a permanent way. Considerations on Western Marxism Perry Anderson Needless to recall that of all the Marxists and of all the contributions made in what was surely the most productive epoch of Marxism, from the point of view of practical achievements, Lenin's stands out by far. His prolific theoretical work and, especially, his leading role in the Russian revolution make his contributions the most important after those of Marx and Engels. His contributions are relevant in several fields, of which we will now describe those that had the greatest impact on the development of Marxism in theoretical terms and in terms of practical consequences. The first field is organisational, where his novel proposal for an ultra-centralised party of professional revolutionaries stands out. Given the success of this party model in carrying out the revolution, it ended up imposing itself as the organisational form to be imitated by the different communist parties that emerged throughout the world. Even other movements and political tendencies also took this model as a reference for their political action. The influence of this model lasted for a long time but, finally, with the expansion of democratic regimes, which allowed for open action, and with the electoral struggle in the foreground, this organisational model would end up declining. The second field of important contributions had to do with the level of the superstructures, and more specifically with the model of the state that Lenin proposed for the transitional phase to communism. However, as we shall see, the development of the state in the Soviet Union quickly departed from the model theorised by Lenin, a theorisation which, despite this, continued to be taken as a model by the communist Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century parties, and a justification for the communist states that emerged after the Second World War. The third important field of Lenin's contributions to Marxism concerns the type of alliances proposed to achieve the victory of the revolution, privileging the peasantry as the main subject for alliances with the proletariat. Given the shift of the main revolutionary activity of the communists from the developed European countries, after their defeats in the 1920s, to the less developed countries of the periphery, this type of alliance was a decisive contribution to the activity and success of the communist parties in those areas. Finally, the fourth field of Lenin's contributions to be highlighted has to do with the analysis of capitalism and the transformations that have taken place within it since Marx's time, contributions that are contained in his analyses of imperialism and monopoly capitalism. The first three fields of contributions mentioned above designed the characteristics of a whole epoch of Marxism characterised by the predominance of some of the variants derived from Leninism, a majority in the political organisations of the transforming left, and exclusive in the victorious communist states. It displaced not only the socialdemocratic version, which gradually abandoned Marxism, or helped the definitive decline of other non-Marxist revolutionary proposals such as anarchism, anarchosyndicalism and revolutionary syndicalism, but also marginalised other competing models within revolutionary Marxism, such as Luxemburgism or councilism. In the first part we will analyse in more detail the Leninist conception of the party as possibly its most essential, influential and enduring contribution. In a second part, we will look more briefly at his other important contributions in the fields of the state, alliances and imperialism. In any case, the study of these four fields will also serve to review the position of Marxism in this respect, at least until the early 20th century. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The Leninist party Lenin's difference with Marx on the question of the party: Marx does not think that the workers' party can possess any trace of exteriority with respect to the class itself; on the contrary, he assumes that it is that same class which is politically organised at the point where it acquires consciousness of its historical ends. It is precisely this correlative identity between social relation and political consciousness that Lenin questions, introducing elements 'outside' the immediacy of the worker's ordinary life or even the spontaneity of the class's trade union struggle. Lenin does not deny that the basis for a workers' politics is given by their social extension and strength, but he rejects the more or less conventional view that it is that social practice in the workplaces, in the daily struggle, the daily 'doing' of the proletariat which will automatically raise its consciousness to socialist goals. Past and present of party socialist theory. Jorge Sanmartino and Pablo Socca We will begin with the aspect which had the most repercussions within Marxism, that of the organisational plane, with its new conception of the revolutionary party of professionals. We will make a comparison of the novel proposals of Leninism in relation to those of Marx and Engels, and we will see the criticisms it received from Rosa Luxemburg. For this part we will mainly use an earlier work done on communist parties in which the conception of the party in Marxist thought was analysed.57 The party in Marx and Engels There are two closely related aspects to analysing the concept of the party in Marx and Engels' theory: The first has to do with the way in which workers rise from their 57 Sánchez Rodríguez, Jesús, Los partidos comunistas. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century concrete experience to the class consciousness that transforms them into a collective historical subject fighting for the transformation of society. The second aspect concerns the very conception of the workers' party, and specifically the party of communists. As we shall see, the relationship between the two aspects is given by the very coherence of the discourse. In relation to the way in which the working class acquires a revolutionary consciousness, two positions are known to have clashed within Marxist thought. One position holds that the working class rises steadily from its concrete experiences of exploitation, oppression and struggle to acquire a clear consciousness of its interests as a class and to consider the radical transformation of society. The other position, on the contrary, affirms that the working class, by its own forces, can only succeed in rising to a syndicalist consciousness, i.e. a consciousness which makes it struggle to improve as much as possible within capitalist society without ever considering overcoming it, a struggle which need not be limited simply to the trade union or demands terrain, but which in fact extends to the political terrain but without at any time considering demands which tend to overcome the framework of capitalism; From this point of view, revolutionary consciousness can only be introduced into the proletariat from outside, be it the philosophers, the bourgeois intellectuals who have taken up the cause of the proletariat, and whose theoretical elaboration is given back to the workers in the form of socialist consciousness, or the party of professionals of which not only the intellectuals but also the workers who have assimilated Marxism are part. Marx's position on this issue will be evolutionary, as Michael Löwy58 , whom we will essentially follow in this section, points out. He traces the evolution of Marx's thinking on the subject through his works and articles. The starting position is contained in the article Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right published in the Franco-German Annals in February 1844. In this article Marx places the birth of socialism at the head of the intellectuals; philosophy, or philosophers, are for Marx the head of the revolution in which the proletariat is the "material weapon", the organ of execution. His thesis at this time, despite being abandoned by the author himself, will be connected first with Kautsky and then, more importantly, with Lenin, and a transformation will take place, and what in Marx were the philosophers, in Lenin will 58 Michael Lowy, La teoría de la revolución en el joven Marx, Siglo XXI Editores, Madrid, 1973. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez be the party. A few months later the change of attitude is evident in the marginal glosses on the article "The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian" published by Marx in August 1844; an event between the two works is responsible for this correction, namely the rebellion of the Silesian weavers. In comparison with the Introduction... three new elements now appear: firstly, the separation between people and philosophy is cancelled; secondly, socialism ceases to appear as a theory resulting from the reflections of philosophers and is conceived as the result of praxis; and finally, the proletariat appears definitively as the active element of emancipation. This evolution is already fully established in the German Ideology, the joint work of Marx and Engels written between September 1845 and May 1846, where the proletariat's coming to consciousness now appears as the fruit of its own revolutionary praxis in a three-stage process: at first, the proletariat becomes a class through its struggle against the bourgeoisie; this struggle pushes it to employ revolutionary procedures, even if its action does not consciously tend to call into question the bourgeois regime; and finally it is through this revolutionary practice that communist consciousness is born and develops within the proletariat. Revolutionary class consciousness is thus not the fruit of abstract theoretical reflection, neither of intellectuals nor of workers, but is born out of the practice of the class struggle. But it is not only through the continuous struggle to transform its conditions of existence that the working class forms its political consciousness and comes to understand the necessity of revolution, but it is through the revolutionary process itself that men are transformed: "revolution is not only necessary because the ruling class cannot be overthrown otherwise, but also because only by means of a revolution will the class it overthrows succeed in pulling itself out of the mire in which it is sinking and become capable of founding society on new foundations. "59 For Löwy this new conception of the relationship between the proletariat and communist theory is a self-criticism of Marx's own earlier positions. As far as Marx's position on the communist party proper is concerned, we must distinguish between the reflections contained in the various documents, in which contradictory elements can be found, and his own practical action, which will serve to clarify these contradictions. The communist party is not the subject in Marx's work of 59 C. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, in Selected Works, Vol. I, Progress, Moscow, 1981. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century any analytical explanation, of any systematic study; one can only find fragments in his work alluding to this subject, the final impression of which is that there is no uniform concept of the party and that it rather refers to two different conceptions of it. In any case, and as Claudin, whom we will follow to develop this part, points out, Marx and Engels share the ambiguous concept that the term party had in the middle of the 19th century: "It designates either a strictly structured organisation, like the League, or a loosely connected grouping of elements with more or less ideological-political affinities, as were the parties mentioned in the Manifesto, or the tendency represented by a publication (the party of La Réforme for example), or the followers of a personality (the party of Marx, it will begin to be said during the revolution), or a class or class fraction, taken in its behaviour vis-à-vis the others, and so on."60 The first conception would be that of party-class, which is what the Manifesto expresses when it says: "This organisation of the proletariat into a class and therefore into a political party...", i.e. the proletariat as such a class acting as a party against the other classes which also conduct themselves as parties, this is the meaning of expressions such as "the party of the bourgeoisie", by which it does not refer to any particular organisation but to the action of the bourgeoisie as such a class. In this sense it is a broad notion which transcends the various concrete organisations which at each historical moment can express the historical tendency towards the emancipation of the workers, it is also about "the whole of the forms of organisation and action, ideological, political, trade union, cultural, in which the historical initiative of the proletariat manifests itself in its struggle against the bourgeoisie and for a new type of society. "61 The second conception is that of party-organisation, which is what he refers to when he alludes to different workers' parties of the time such as the Chartists or the Communists' party itself, organisations which bring together a fraction of the working class around a programme of action; the League of Communists would then be the party of those who organise themselves around the programme of the Manifesto. Here again Marx's position is not free from contradictions; in the Manifesto two controversial passages can be found, on the one hand it is stated that "The Communists do not form a separate party, opposed to the other workers' parties" and on the other it is 60 61 Fernando Claudín, Marx, Engels y la revolución de 1848, Siglo XXI de España, Madrid, 1975, p. 71. Ibid, p. 50 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez added that: "Practically, therefore, the Communists are the most resolute section of the workers' parties of all countries, the section which always pushes the others forward; theoretically, they have over the rest of the proletariat the advantage of their clear vision of the conditions, the march and the general results of the proletarian movement." In order to understand its meaning it is necessary to refer to the concrete conditions of the communists in 1848 in relation to the labour movement and the model of the workers' party that Marx has in view, English Chartism, which together with the National Reform Association in the United States he regards as the only workers' parties of the time. On the other hand, the communists were organised in the League of Communists and maintained close relations with the Fraternal Democrats, which was sympathetic to the ideas of Marx and Engels. But this organisation, after its formal organisation in 1847, had practically become a party within the Chartist party. It is this concrete experience that lies behind the two fragments above and which allows Löwy to draw the conclusion that: "the communist party must not organise itself alongside, or instead of, but in the proletarian party, as the most resolute and most conscious "fraction". In other words, the communists must constitute a party in the workers' party..."62 . The conclusion to be drawn from both their written contributions and their practice is that, on the one hand, Marx and Engels conceived of the proletariat as a class, and not of a particular party, as the protagonist of revolutionary action, and that, on the other hand, they considered the "instruction" of the proletariat for the revolution to be the fundamental task of the communists, for which the existence of a communist organisation was not strictly necessary. The concrete question of organisation is posed as a question to be solved by the proletariat itself in practice, the fruit of the class struggle itself, and it is not the function of the communists to replace the political forms that this process will take historically; the crucial contribution of the communists is to place at the disposal of the proletariat their "theoretical advantage" for the clarification of the process of class struggle, of the interests and aims of the proletariat, and thus to emancipate them from the ideological and political tutelage of the bourgeoisie. The interpretation of the party-class clearly prevails over that of the party-organisation. 62 M. Lowy, op. cit. p. 227. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century The party in Lenin The defining characteristics of the communist parties are to be found not in Marx, but in the organisation of the Bolshevik party, in whose undisputed leader the theoretical arguments, the ultimate justifications that legitimise the concrete model that ended up crystallising in the CPSU, are to be found. The theory of the revolutionary party is basically contained in three documents by Lenin: What is to be done?, One step forward, two steps back63 and Letter to a comrade, supplemented by other later interventions. There are those who have wanted to see an evolutionary line in his thinking on this subject, but what is certain is that despite some circumstantial nuances, the schema developed in What is to be done? is the one that will undoubtedly prevail definitively. Lenin's inclinations in the wake of the 1905 revolution cannot be considered representative. The spontaneous creation of soviets, the mass mobilisations, led him to favour an open, mass party, with a workerist, spontaneist and anti-intellectualist character. But this is a circumstantial intervention which does not invalidate his fundamental conception of the party. The beginning of the century marked the beginning of a period in which, on the basis of the Iskra newspaper in exile in London - which Lenin used to elaborate his theory and to promote the creation of the party - was characterised by the theoretical struggle against the economists. Lenin emphasises the organisation of professional revolutionaries forced by underground work, his vision becomes avant-garde, conceiving the party as an organisation separate from its surroundings, but united with the masses, attentive to their forms of struggle and their innovations, in what is called "dialectical relations with the masses within a revolutionary praxis"64 . The theoretical foundation of this conception of the party is to be found in the aforementioned distinction between two forms of class consciousness in the proletariat. On the one hand, there is a type of spontaneous consciousness which can never rise beyond trade 63 V.I. Lenin, What is to be done? and One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, in Selected Works, Vol. II, Progress Publishing House, Moscow, 1975. 64 J.B. Fages, Introduction to the different interpretations of Marxism, Ed. Oikos-tau, Barcelona, 1976, p. 28. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez unionism, born out of the proletariat's own experiences; it is a reformist consciousness which consequently does not set out the communist transformation of society. On the other hand, there is the social-democratic consciousness elaborated by socialist intellectuals and introduced into the workers' movement through a struggle against the spontaneist and syndicalist tendencies of the proletariat. As we have seen, this schema was present in the first Marx, although it was later abandoned, and passes through Kautsky to Lenin who applies it in a practical way in the construction of the Bolshevik party. Consequently, the party asserts itself as the conscious fraction of the proletariat, its vanguard, which brings political lucidity as opposed to mere class instinct. The struggle on the ideological and political level against "opportunism" is at the same time a struggle on the organisational level against what Lenin denounces as the "cult of spontaneity" which for him means the subjugation of consciousness to spontaneity, i.e. the vanguard lagging behind the movement. For Lenin, the cult of spontaneity in the workers' movement is a way of leaving the latter unarmed against the influence of bourgeois ideology. It is, in short, an ultra-centralist conception of organisation where the highest organ, the Central Committee, concentrates political and ideological leadership, is in charge of organising the lower organs, appointing those in charge and "giving work to all". Like a "General Staff" or a "conductor", the Central Committee is the driving force of revolutionary activity. As the party is built from the top down, democratism and autonomism are prescribed within it, as the heritage of the opportunist currents. The internal life of the party must be governed by an iron discipline for which the workers have been prepared in the factory school. This is certainly one of the possible organisational interpretations of Marx's conception, but certainly not the most faithful to the latter's thinking on organisation, in which the idea of the class-party, the bottom-up organisation and the enlightening role of the communists, not the leading party, predominated. The Leninist party model was an innovation initially situated on the plane of the technique of revolution which, however, would have more profound consequences in that it would condition the very conception and nature of the transition to socialism and the institutions for carrying it out. Thus what, at first sight, would only appear to be an Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century organisational option taken into account in relation to the concrete conditions of the struggle against an autocratic regime, became an element which transformed the conception of the transitional stage and even that of the communist society itself to be achieved. Marx and Engels, and certainly Lenin himself, could hardly have conceived that such a technical choice could have such profound consequences for communist theory and the communist project. This was a major break with the model of the mass party oriented towards parliamentary activity, dominant in the Second International. The reason for this break lay in the concrete conditions of the struggle against the tsarist autocracy. The latter prevented the functioning of a mass party and a democratic internal practice. Nevertheless, the Leninist model of party shares with the social-democratic model of the time two important features, its inclination towards centralism as a form of organisation, and the conception that it represented the external socialist consciousness of the proletariat. With the difference that these two features are sharpened in the Leninist party, on the one hand by the creation of an ultra-centralised party and, on the other hand, by adopting the role of a substitute for the working class after it was decimated following the civil war that followed the revolution. With these conceptions, one of the essential points of classical Marxism, that the emancipation of the workers should be the work of the workers themselves, was denied. Had Marx been too optimistic, even utopian, in aiming at self-emancipation, or was Lenin a practical revolutionary who had devised the best tool and strategy to achieve power, even if this was far from self-emancipation? The counterpoint to the Leninist conception of organisation in the Marxist camp is not only with respect to the dominant conception in social democracy, with which it shares, as we have seen, some key postulates, but with another minority conception whose best representative is Rosa Luxemburg. But there is also a clear break with the original conceptions of Marx and Engels as we have seen. We will end this subject by taking up the opinion of a current author on the subject. Atilo Borón tries out a forced interpretation of the Leninist organisational approach according to which Lenin would in fact have evolved from his positions contained in What is to be done? As is well known, after having written such an important text on the problems of the organisation of the popular forces, Lenin never explicitly took up Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez this question. This silence is as resonant as his words. Our interpretation, put in abbreviated form, is as follows: the QH was the response to a special moment in the development of the class struggle in Russia. After the outbreak of the 1905 revolution and the modest political opening decreed by Tsarism, the very idea of an underground, ultra-centrally organised party fell into obsolescence. The Russian historical dialectic gave rise to the emergence of a new political form, the soviets, which assumed a centrality that no one had even suspected a few years earlier and which ended up displacing the centrality hitherto reserved for the party. It is more than significant that in the days between February and October 1917 Lenin made almost no mention of the party question on the eve of the revolution. With his sure instinct he knew that the soviets and not the party were the protagonists. That the party had a mission to fulfil, but that the pace and direction of the revolutionary process was dictated by the soviets and that the tasks of the party would only acquire meaning and gravitas within the soviets and not from outside or from the front."65 This interpretation is difficult to sustain; one can interpret these silences as Borón does, but there was never any explicit rectification of them. However, even if this interpretation were true, the only thing it would show is that Lenin's initial ideas on organisation would have so permeated the Bolshevik party that they would have persisted despite Lenin and would have become the model that would be imposed on the parties of the Third International. The party in Rosa Luxemburg One of the most important criticisms made of the type of party proposed by Lenin comes from the one who can be considered the representative of a different current but within revolutionary Marxism, Rosa Luxemburg. The Polish revolutionary, leader of the German Social Democratic Party, condenses the Marxist interpretation which, without denying the role of the party, emphasises the spontaneity of the workers' movement. The organisational conceptions held by Rosa Luxemburg were set out both in the articles she published in 1903 and 1904 and in some of the works she edited, and are characterised by their frontal opposition to the conception advocated by Lenin, placing, 65 Borón, Atilio, Actualidad del ¿Qué hacer?, p. 22. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century unlike Lenin, the emphasis on the initiative and revolutionary capacity of the masses, without going so far as to elevate spontaneism into an absolute principle. The difference is already in the starting point, in the way in which class consciousness is conceived by the workers, for Rosa Luxemburg this consciousness is above all the fruit of the direct and autonomous action of the proletariat, of the experience of its revolutionary struggles and not of its introduction from outside through socialist propaganda by the intellectuals or the party. His conception is more faithful to Marx's legacy on the theory of revolution and class consciousness. Revolutionary consciousness cannot be taught, its generalisation among the masses is a consequence of the revolutionary action itself in the course of which the mass change of men takes place. Rosa Luxemburg categorically rejects the separation between the socialist leading core framed in the party and the mass of the workers and considers it a task of social democracy to abolish the division between the leaders and the led as the only way to achieve the emancipation of the working class. On the basis of these conceptions, Rosa Luxemburg's criticisms of the Leninist party model can be condensed into the following points:66 : The type of organisation advocated by Lenin is ultra-centralist, based on two principles: on the one hand, on the radical separation of the "organised troop of manifest and active revolutionaries" from the surrounding, unorganised but revolutionarily active milieu; and on the other hand, on the "rigid discipline and the direct, decisive and determining intervention of the central organ in the whole life of the local party organisations". Rosa Luxemburg does not deny the characteristically centralist features of the socialdemocratic organisation because of the necessity of welding into a unitary party the working class which has to fight within a centralised bourgeois state, but she considers that more important than the formal requirements of any organisation are the specific conditions of the proletarian struggle and that the social-democratic organisation is calculated for the autonomous organisation and direct action of the masses. 66 Rosa Luxemburg, Democracy and Centralism, in Kurt Lenk and Franz Neumann, Critical Theory and Sociology of Political Parties, Anagrama, Barcelona 1980. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez He criticises Lenin for mechanically transposing Jacobin- Blanquist organisational principles to the social-democratic movement. Blanquism was based on the conspiracy of a determined minority which culminated its action in a revolutionary coup d'état, in which a central organisation with broad powers decided all activity. Rosa Luxemburg understands that in social democratic action, organisation, enlightenment and struggle are only different aspects of the same process and not separate moments as in the Blanquist movement. She therefore rejects that there can be any fixed, "previously established and detailed tactics of struggle in which the members of social democracy can be instructed by the Central Committee". The tactics of struggle of the latter are not "invented", but the result of the series of creative acts of the struggle of the experimenting classes. Here too, Rosa Luxemburg concludes, the unconscious proceeds to the conscious, the logic of the objective historical process to the subjective logic of its bearers. If the tactics of social democracy are created not only by the organisation, but by the whole movement, then each of the party organisations needs the freedom of movement which is only possible if the revolutionary initiative is developed. In opposition to the revolutionary creation of the masses, the ultra-centralism advocated by Lenin appears to be governed by a sterile guardian spirit. The course of his thought is cut off by the later of control of party activity and not of fruitful exploitation, of restriction and not of deployment, of a vexatious treatment of the movement and not of its concentration. He also criticises Lenin's dangerous conception of discipline as a transposition of the discipline instilled in the working class in bourgeois society through factories, schools or barracks from the hands of the bourgeoisie and the capitalist state to its Central Committee. It considers this type of discipline completely antagonistic to another based on the "voluntary coordination of the conscious political actions of a social stratum". Rosa Luxemburg rejects Lenin's main argument for his ultra-centralist organisation, that of being a weapon against opportunism, more inclined to autonomism and the rejection of discipline, for opportunism, precisely for this very reason, has as its only principle also in questions of organisation the lack of principles, and consequently chooses its means, in every circumstance, as suits its aims. And in a situation in which the revolutionary sectors are not established and the movement itself is undecided, the organisational tendency suited to academic opportunism is despotic centralism, Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century concluding that nothing more easily delivers a young workers' movement to the lust for domination of the academics than to enclose it in the shell of bureaucratic centralism, which degrades the working class in struggle to a mere tool of a committee. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Leninist state theory What happened in the following months and years up to 1924, when one can already speak bluntly of a dictatorial and bureaucratic power to the detriment of the selforganisation of the masses? Recalling only a few of the most important and allembracing postulates of State and Revolution - for example, the replacement of the state apparatus by a "semi-state" or social organisation of a new type, and the transition from the "government of men" to the "administration of things" - we can see how weak the transformation was in this respect. State and Marxism. A century and a half of debates Hernán Ouviña and Martín Cortés (Mabel Thwaites Rey, ed.) The importance of the Leninist theory of the state lies in the fundamental role that the Russian leader played in the triumph of the first triumphant communist revolution and in the articulation of the proletarian state that arose from that success, but also because, in addition to being a political leader, Lenin was a prolific writer whose doctrine has had a fundamental influence on the subsequent development of the communist movement. In his theoretical treatment of the question of the state, Lenin drew on the earlier contributions of Marx and Engels but, as in other aspects, he introduced farreaching innovations which ended up defining many of the practical aspects of the revolutionary struggle which the two authors mentioned above touched on more superficially, such as the question of the party, class consciousness, the strategy to be followed or the characteristics of the state, all these aspects being intimately related in their treatment. As we shall see below, on the question of the state there was a clear rupture or contradiction between the Leninist theses maintained before the revolution, and which are clearly set out in his work The State and the Revolution, and the concrete embodiments which the Bolsheviks made once they had seized power, without Lenin and his followers ever proceeding to an evaluation of these contradictions and an Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century explanation of the practical contradictions. That would have meant deepening a Marxist state theory, which never happened. On the contrary, despite the evolution of the state in the Soviet Union, Lenin's text cited above continued to retain a great predilection among later generations of communists. In this section we will deal with Lenin's theoretical contributions to the state. For a broader and more complex view of the state from a Marxist perspective, as part of a broader study of the state, see an earlier work, Class Society, Political Power and the State.67 In the fundamental texts on the state written by Lenin, and to which we will refer below, two arguments are mixed, those he uses to criticise the capitalist states, and those he uses to defend the dictatorship of the proletariat. These texts are two68 , "the first is his work The State and the Revolution written in hiding between August and September 1917, in which the positions are continually supported by quotations from Marx and Engels, especially the latter, precisely in order to demonstrate that his positions were correct from the Marxist point of view. The second is The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky written in November 1918 in the midst of the Russian civil war and just as a workers' uprising was beginning in Germany with the creation of workers' councils all over the country. It is a response, in a violent tone, to Kautsky's text The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, which appeared that same year criticising the strategy and tactics of the Bolsheviks. The whole articulation of Leninist thought aims to place itself in the same strictly pragmatic line of Marxism, fleeing from any utopian thinking, of which Marx made an uncompromising critique, aspiring to establish its political line on the basis of historical experiences. However, this pretension was difficult to achieve. A basic pillar of Marxist theory is the conviction that the overcoming of capitalist society presupposes the disappearance not only of social classes, but of all need for coercion. The certainty that the state mechanism, whose nature is the repression of the subordinate classes, has reached such a point that the bureaucratic tasks necessary for society are of such a nature that they can be performed with little difficulty by the great majority of society, and that therefore the disappearance of the state is an inexorable 67 Sánchez Rodríguez, Jesús, Sociedad de clases, poder político y Estado, http://miradacrtica.blogspot.com.es/2016/11/sociedad-de-clases-poder-politico-y_9.html 68 All of the following discussion in quotation marks corresponds to the study on Lenin and the State contained in my doctoral thesis: Teoría y práctica democrática en el PCE 1956-1982, pp.69-77. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez fact after the conquest of power by the proletariat. No historical experience could support this assumption, only the brief experience of the Paris Commune, carried out under very difficult conditions, offered a weak point of support, and it was to this that both Marx and, especially, Lenin clung in order to escape the accusation of utopianism in their proposals for the future society. After Lenin, various revolutionary experiences would accumulate, precisely to refute a large part of his theoretical positions on the subject, but the strand of Marxism he represented remained fossilised under the name of "Marxism-Leninism" with which the Stalinist domination was covered [...]. Lenin marks the difference with social-democratic reformism, represented above all by the German party, in The State and the Revolution69 around the key problem of the state. The starting premise is the repressive characteristic of the state, of every state without exception, including the one needed by the proletariat in the transitional phase; it is undoubtedly an instrument of coercion used by the ruling class to maintain itself in power. Two conclusions can be drawn from this thesis, firstly that it is necessary to destroy the bourgeois state through revolution in order to initiate the socialist transition and that for this transition, in order to exercise power, the proletariat needs its own state, the dictatorship of the proletariat. These conclusions are so important for Lenin that they mark the main difference with the social-democratic current of the Second International, expressing it sharply in the sentence that "Marxist is only he who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat". The character of the state as an instrument for the exercise of dictatorship by the class in power has nothing to do with the political form it adopts, be it that of a despotic monarchy or that of a democratic republic. Lenin is explicit when he states that "democracy is the state which recognises the subordination of the minority to the majority, i.e. an organisation called upon to exercise the systematic violence of one class against another". This assumes that any democracy, whatever level of development it has reached, as such a form of state will disappear in communist society, because "democracy is by no means an insuperable limit, but only one of the stages on the road from feudalism to capitalism and from capitalism to communism". 69 Unless otherwise noted, the quotations used below are from The State and Revolution Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century The second misunderstanding that Lenin rejects on the subject of democracy is its conception as a general form, as a pure form, democracy is always class democracy, and in this way he will always refer to bourgeois democracy and proletarian democracy. From this clarification he begins a devastating critique of existing democracy, bourgeois democracy, which leads him to affirm that "the more developed and pure democracy is, the more frank, acute and implacable the class struggle becomes, the purer the oppression by capital and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie become. In the most democratic republics, terror and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in fact prevail"70 . Relying on Engels, Lenin goes on to assert that democracy is the most suitable and safest type of state for the bourgeoisie to exercise its power: "The omnipotence of 'wealth' is more secure in democratic republics because it does not depend on the bad political envelope of capitalism". In the same way he disqualifies the function of universal suffrage under the domination of the bourgeoisie, which can only serve to measure the maturity of the working class. The exploitation of one class by another on which capitalist society is based means that the democratism of any bourgeois republic is only for a minority, that of the exploiters. Lenin assimilates the freedom that exists in these republics to that which existed in the Greek republics: "freedom for the slaveholders". As in Marx, Lenin accuses the equality represented by democracy of being only a formal equality, because "under capitalism, democracy is curtailed, inhibited, truncated, mutilated by the whole atmosphere of wage slavery, by the hardship and misery of the masses". Lenin's criticism of bourgeois democracy is the fruit of two concurrent circumstances, the absence of any democratic tradition in Russia which forced a hard clandestine struggle against the Tsarist autocracy, and the need to remove the working class from the influence of the parties of the Second International, responsible in the eyes of the revolutionary currents of the time for the betrayal of socialist ideals with the outbreak of the First World War. But this criticism stops at these terms and does not go so far as to show the total indifference of the anarchists to the form of the bourgeois state. On the 70 Lenin, Tesis e informe sobre la democracia burguesa y la dictadura del proletariado, in Gabriel Albiac, El debate sobre la dictadura del proletariado, Ediciones De la Torre, Madrid, 1976, p. 135. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez contrary, Lenin does take into consideration the different forms that bourgeois domination can take and the advantage they represent for the organisation of the working class, recognising that bourgeois democracy is "the best form of state for the proletariat under capitalism". This is evidently an instrumentalist view of democracy as useful in achieving its own destruction as a bourgeois state: "A broader, freer, more open form of class struggle and class oppression facilitates in gigantic proportions the mission of the proletariat in the struggle for the destruction of classes in general". The destruction of the bourgeois state, even in the form of a democratic republic, can only be achieved by violence. Lenin rules out any possibility of peaceful evolution through the use of institutions to achieve communism, he argues that "it would be solemn folly to believe that the most profound revolution in the history of mankind, the passage of power from the hands of the exploiting minority into the hands of the exploited majority can take place within the old framework of the old bourgeois, parliamentary democracy, without the most radical changes, without creating new forms of democracy, new institutions embodying the new conditions of its application". It cannot be imagined that a gradual and peaceful development of an ever greater democracy can lead to communism, the dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary because only in this way can the resistance of the capitalist exploiters be broken. Lenin qualifies the use of two different terms in Marx's works concerning the way to do away with the state, namely destruction and extinction. The former corresponds to the way to do away with the bourgeois state, but this will be replaced by a proletarian state through which it will exercise power during the stage of transition to communism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and it is this state which will be extinguished as its functions become less and less important. Thus, for Lenin the authentic doctrine of Marxism on this point affirms that the bourgeois state is destroyed by violent revolution: "the necessity of systematically educating the masses in this, precisely this idea of violent revolution, is basic to the whole doctrine of Marx and Engels". The dictatorship of the proletariat has the same justification as all other class dictatorships: "the necessity of crushing by force the resistance of the class which loses political domination", but the radical difference which separates it from the dictatorship of other classes is that while these have served to repress the vast majority of the population, the dictatorship of the proletariat will serve to break the resistance of the Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century minority of exploiters. The second justification Lenin adduces in defence of the need for an instrument of power in the hands of the proletariat, rejecting the immediate abolition of the state advocated by the anarchists, is its necessity for "leading the enormous mass of the population, the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, the semi-proletarians, in the work of 'starting up' the socialist economy". The third justification for the dictatorship of the proletariat comes from the fact that in the stage of transition to communism bourgeois law is not completely abolished, abolished in relation to the ownership of the means of production as these become collective property, but bourgeois law will persist as a regulator of the distribution of products and labour among the members of society which will remain unequal as long as communism is not achieved, its persistence thus presupposes that of "a bourgeois state without a bourgeoisie". But this new state from which the proletariat will launch the transition to communism has different characteristics from the states existing up to that time, so that Lenin supports Engels' proposal that what by nature must be different should no longer be called by the same name, and instead of state he prefers to call it Community: "democracy, put into practice in the most complete and consistent way that can be conceived, is converted from bourgeois democracy into proletarian democracy, from a state into something which is no longer a state properly speaking". The state of the proletariat is thus going to be a much broader democracy, not falsified like the bourgeois one, it means both an "enormous extension of democratism, which for the first time becomes a democratism for the poor [...] and a series of restrictions placed on the freedom of the oppressors". But true democracy will not be attainable until the higher stage of communism when, with the extinction of the state, all traces of coercion will have disappeared: "When there is no longer any social class to be kept in oppression (...) there will no longer be anything to repress and there will be no need, therefore, for that special force of repression, the state". There are two fundamental reasons why Lenin believes that there must be an expansion of democracy in the dictatorship of the proletariat, the first is because of the very nature of the repression to be carried out, it must now be of the vast majority of the people against a minority of exploiters, and for this "the people can repress the exploiters with a very simple 'machine', almost without a 'machine', without special apparatus". The second reason is that the bureaucratism, characteristic of the bourgeois state, begins to disappear as the majority of the population participates "not only in voting and Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez elections, but also in the daily work of the administration. Under socialism, everyone will be involved in turn in the management". Lenin was convinced that in its evolution capitalism had developed a highly perfected "mechanism of social management" which, once the "parasites" controlling it had been removed, could be perfectly set in motion by the workers. Apart from expressing these convictions about the development of the future society, not based on any concrete historical experience, there are few other indications in Lenin's work about the functioning of the proletarian state. One of them is the maintenance of representative and elective institutions but abolishing parliamentarism as a division of legislative and executive labour - and transforming it into "labour corporations" in which the representatives "must themselves execute their laws, must themselves check the results, must themselves answer directly to their electors". To this abolition of the division of powers Lenin would later, after the revolution, add "the replacement of the electoral constituencies by production entities such as factories"71 . In this sense, it is difficult to argue that Lenin defended direct democracy as proper to proletarian democracy. Lenin is also open to a plurality of political forms in the transition from capitalism to communism as long as their essence is that of a dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e. that the proletariat controls state power. In this sense the soviet form would be no more than the concrete form taken in Russia, but which would not necessarily be the same everywhere. In The Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky72 the same line as a year earlier in The State and the Revolution is maintained but with a more aggressive and offensive tone. To the polemic to establish who represents the legitimate continuity of Marxism and who is the impostor, to the effort to discredit social democracy before the European workers in order to start the revolution in Europe, is now added the justification of some of the measures taken in the first months of the revolution and which have been criticised by Kautsky in the aforementioned work. 71 Lenin, Theses and Report on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, ibid, p. 140. 72 The quotations used below are from Lenin's The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, Foreign Language Editions, Peking, 1972. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century As opposed to the Bolshevik road, the most important Marxist theoretician of the Second International, who had represented the orthodox revolutionary line against Bernstein's revisionism, set out in The Dictatorship of the Proletariat a road to socialism whose fundamental characteristic is the unrenounceability of democracy. For Kautsky, the transition to socialism can be peaceful or require violence, depending on various factors, but neither socialism nor the transition period can be imagined without democracy. Moreover, he considers that the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat is marginal in the work of Marx and Engels in which it is hardly used and in any case does not mean the suppression of democracy, but its extension. In Kautsky's conception, revolution is understood as a long process extending over time in a peaceful manner and for which not only is civil war not necessary, but civil war, like inter-state war, becomes its worst enemy. His criticism of the Bolshevik revolution is not only for the voluntarist and violent form it took, but for wanting to elevate its concrete experience to the status of a theory of general validity. Lenin's reply goes deeper into some aspects discussed in The State and the Revolution: into the criticism of the bourgeois democratic state, into the superiority of proletarian democracy, into the necessarily violent character of the revolution and into a controversial measure taken by the Bolsheviks, the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. In his critique of bourgeois democracy Lenin is scornful of the proceduralism that accompanies the electoral process and insists on its instrumentalist and limited vision: it is the framework where it is possible to carry out "the preparatory work of the proletarian revolution, the instruction and training of the proletarian army", but when the decisive battle arises this framework becomes useless and to cling to it, to enclose the proletariat in its bosom is then to betray the proletarian cause, "to be a renegade". Once again, he insists, there is no room for peaceful revolution, it is necessarily violent, it is a historical law of revolutions which, like all laws, has its exceptions and one of them was the situation in England and the United States in the seventies of the 19th century, an exception which cannot be repeated because if that era corresponded to that of pre-monopoly capitalism, today, however, it is that of imperialism whose deepest essence is the development of militarism. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Lenin insists that every state, as the dictatorship of a ruling class, does not necessarily mean the suppression of democracy for that class (e.g. slave democracy in Greece) but necessarily for the dominated classes or - and this is an important nuance - a "most essential restriction" which in practice means its suppression. Lenin justifies the restriction of the rights of the former exploiters on the basis of the strength they still retain after their defeat following an insurrection, a strength whose basis is to be found in their higher education, in their relations with the technical and administrative intelligentsia, in their international relations, etc., which means that for a long period of time the efforts and possibilities of reversing the situation, of restoring the old society, will persist. His first interpretation assumes that the restriction of the vote to the old bourgeoisie is not a problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat in general but of the Russian revolution in particular, and then concludes that a "necessary condition of dictatorship" is the forcible repression of the exploiters, and that where there is violent repression there is no (pure) democracy. If bourgeois democracy is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the dictatorship of the proletariat is proletarian democracy, "one form of which is soviet power", which means the extension of democracy in a way never known before to the vast majority of the population. Compared to bourgeois democracy it is "a million times more democratic". On what does this proclamation of superiority rest? Lenin makes assertions and alludes to various measures which, however, do not clarify anything: "The soviet organisation automatically facilitates the organisation of all the workers and exploited around their vanguard, the proletariat". Elections to the non-local Soviets are conducted indirectly, which Lenin claims makes the Soviets' Congresses easier and costs cheaper, but these measures go in the opposite direction of facilitating greater participation of the masses. It is claimed that the bureaucratic apparatus has been dismantled and the bourgeois parliament abolished, and the workers and peasants have been given "much more accessible representation". But the bureaucracy has not been extinguished, quite the contrary, and the more accessible representation in place of parliament remains just that, an assertion. What then does Lenin mean when he speaks of proletarian democracy? Finally, the confusion increases when Lenin defines the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat as "a power conquered and maintained by means of violence exercised by the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, a power not subject to any law". Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century In short, when the Bolsheviks' consolidation of power in revolutionary Russia begins, the Leninist theory of the state to be built rests on three fundamental pillars. First, a dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary to repress the attempts of the bourgeoisie to reverse the gains of the revolution, this proletarian state is a simple machine which can be used without difficulty by the majority of the working class since it requires a low level of specialisation, and the repression of the counter-revolutionaries will not require specialised coercive bodies, but would be a task for the people in arms. Secondly, there is an intense rejection of any of the mechanisms that have been developed under the bourgeois state to manage and deal with the problems of power, parliamentarism, the division of powers, the representative mandate, the rule of law, etc., against which a more authentic democracy is put forward, looking above all to the experience of the Paris Commune and the measures it put into practice, which we have seen above. This absolute refusal to take into account some of the techniques of administration of power developed by the bourgeois state contrasts sharply with the enthusiastic acceptance of the techniques of economic administration established under capitalism such as business hierarchy, productivism or Taylorism. Finally, the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia proposes to rely on the new organisations which appeared already in the first Russian revolution of 1905, the soviets, workers' and peasants' councils which appeared in the centres of production, which are based on methods of direct democracy, and which have spontaneously coordinated themselves to compete for power against the provisional government during the revolution of 1917. In the revolutionary effervescence of 1917, the soviets re-emerged in the factories and neighbourhoods of the most important cities, an expression of popular power that coexisted with parties, trade unions and cooperatives. They are structured around a general assembly, an executive committee, sections and commissions. They spread rapidly horizontally through the factories and neighbourhoods, and proceed to coordinate themselves. They are mass organisations, where the various interests of the working class are discussed and articulated; they are also class organisations insofar as they claim to represent an alternative to capitalism; and they are democratic organisations of participation by the rank and file. But they are influenced by the various political tendencies present in the Russian revolution. This is not an experience unique to the Russian revolution; such councils tend to appear at the height of all popular revolutions. If in the Russian revolution they were finally controlled by the Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Bolshevik party and leaned towards the socialist character of the revolution, in the German revolution of 1918 the councils were mainly controlled by the Social Democracy and the revolution failed in Germany. But there is a fundamental element which does not appear in Lenin's reflections on the state and which will nevertheless play a fundamental role in the articulation of the new soviet state, the Bolshevik party. Neither in these reflections at the beginning of the revolutionary phase, nor before, is the party seen as a fundamental instrument in the construction of the new proletarian state, the party, with its characteristic of a vanguard organisation, is seen as the key instrument for carrying out the revolution, It has acquired for Lenin and the Bolsheviks a fundamental role in overthrowing the tsarist autocracy, but it has never been seen as the backbone of the new state, and this is the role it will play and which will define the characteristics of the new state, and not the previous theorisations which will remain a dead letter. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century The Soviet revolution and the alliance with the peasantry How to rethink the relations between proletariat and peasantry, urban people and rural people, in the long term? Lenin continues to reflect on this intensively. It is remarkable that it was one of the questions on which, when he was already ill, he wrote his last articles, dictated his last notes, known as his "testament" - together with the national question and the question of the bureaucracy in particular. The peasantry and Marxism Pierre Rousset This is the third characteristic contribution of Leninism to the Marxist paradigm. Its importance lies in three closely related aspects: the first is the realisation of the first Marxist revolution in an economically backward and largely peasant country; the second is the necessity, in order for the revolution to succeed, of establishing an alliance between the tiny proletariat and the immense Russian peasantry; the third is the support of the revolution, advocated by Leninism, in specific organs which appeared for the first time in history, the Soviets. Of these three aspects, the first was to become the common feature of the following triumphant revolutions led by Marxist parties, bearing in mind that the establishment of communist states in Eastern Europe was not so much the result of revolutions per se, with the exception of Yugoslavia, as of the presence of the victorious Soviet army at the end of the Second World War. In the course of the Soviet revolution and its settlement, a mutation of great significance both for Marxism itself and for subsequent revolutions took place. The decision to complete the revolution in its second stage in October was taken by the Bolsheviks within the coordinates of the classical Marxist schema at that time: a socialist revolution was not possible under the conditions existing in the Russian empire, but Russia was seen as the weak link at which to break the chain; broken, it was hoped that revolutions would subsequently triumph in some of the developed European countries, especially in Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Germany, whereupon backward Russia would be helped to advance towards socialism with the help of those countries. But after the defeats of the revolutionary attempts in Europe at the end of the First World War, the Soviet regime was isolated and plunged into civil war with interventions by foreign powers. The Bolsheviks then decided to continue with the revolution and, after dramatic discussions among themselves - which will be dealt with in a later chapter on the economic model - the situation ended up with the Stalinist decision to build socialism in a single country which was economically backward and devastated by the revolution and the wars. This situation had never been contemplated by Marxism until then. The absence of the necessary objective preconditions pointed out by Marxism to initiate the transition to socialism - especially the high development of the productive forces and the existence of an organised and conscientious majority proletariat - are replaced by the voluntarism of professional revolutionaries who are fiercely organised to carry out the revolution. If the Bolsheviks were able to consolidate the revolution under such conditions, why, then, could not a majority peasant-based party like the Chinese or the Vietnamese, or a guerrilla foco, as was tried in Latin America, carry the effects of the mutation initiated by the Bolsheviks to their ultimate conclusions? The mutation in Marxism, which we are pointing out, produced even longer-term and more profound consequences. After the revolutions of the 1920s in Europe were defeated and were never to be repeated in the developed countries - in fact in Europe they could have been attempted immediately after the Second World War, at least in Italy and France, but this possibility was rejected, and in the Anglo-Saxon countries neither a proletariat nor revolutionary organisations ever existed - capitalism continued with the incessant development of its productive forces and with its cycles of crisis and growth, while revolutionary attempts to end it moved from its hinterland to the undeveloped and largely peasant periphery. In no way had this situation been contemplated by classical Marxism because it went against the grain of all the assumptions on which its theory was based, but neither were all the consequences drawn from it and how they affected Marxism. The second aspect mentioned was the alliance advocated by the Bolsheviks between the proletariat and the peasantry. This became an indispensable condition if the revolution was to be carried to its conclusion in a country where the majority of the population was Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century peasants. This alliance and the new conception of the peasantry has two aspects. The first is theoretical, and is another mutation of the classical Marxist approach to the peasants. The second is practical, and has to do with the ups and downs to which the Bolsheviks subjected this alliance. There are three aspects to take into account in order to understand the position of Marxism with regard to the peasantry. The first is that the peasantry is the class that has carried out the most rebellions in history and for the longest time. Being the majority class until the 20th century in the different social formations that have existed in history, their long periods of social resignation have been punctuated by continuous rebellions, ineffective, because never in history have they managed to establish a society governed by their representatives and with their projects. From the Marxist camp this weakness and inability of the peasantry to achieve its own interests is explained by relying on a reflection of Marx on the peasantry in the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: "Marx defines here the fundamental characteristic of the peasantry, determined by the social conditions of its existence: its inability to self-emancipate. The peasantry can often fight fiercely but it cannot become a ruling class. The countryside can defeat the city in many battles, but it cannot win the war, because the countryside cannot lead the city, and it is in the city that the main productive forces are located. That is why Wat Tyler's peasant revolt in England in 1381, Emiliano Zapata in Mexico, and countless other peasant revolts throughout Chinese history failed. To acquire cohesion as a national political force, the peasantry needs to be led by a class, or part of a class, of urban origin. For Lenin, Marx and Trotsky, this leadership would be provided by the proletariat, not by "going to the countryside" but by fighting to overthrow the state in the cities. For Mao, Castro, Guevara, etc. this leadership would not be provided not by the proletariat but by the cadres of the guerrilla army, who came (and could only come) almost exclusively from the urban intelligentsia."73 The second aspect is that despite the existence of communitarian tendencies within the peasantry, the aim of the peasants has always been to free themselves from the agrarian ruling classes that have oppressed them (feudal lords, landowners, etc.) in order to gain 73 Molyneux, John, What is the Marxist Tradition, Published by International Socialism (now In Struggle): July 1994 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez access to individual or family ownership of land. On the other hand, the peasantry, as a rural class, has always had a conflictive relationship with the cities and their own social classes. Finally, and on the basis of the above characteristics, classical Marxism has established its vision of the peasantry. Marx and Engels conceived communism as a mode of production overcoming a capitalism which had previously exhausted the capacity for development of the productive forces and had sunk into internal contradictions. Understood in this way, capitalism would then have to have completed the historical task of extending capitalist relations in the countryside, which meant, as the developed countries show today, a drastic reduction of the peasant population and a production model in agriculture similar to the dominant one in the rest of the economic sectors. If communism is conceived as the mode of production overcoming developed capitalism in which the peasantry has a marginal social and economic role, and the proletariat - the class that freely sells its labour power and does not own the means of production - is called upon to carry out that task, what interest would it be to concern itself with analysing the peasantry and its role in a socialist revolution? Marx's initial views on the matter should therefore come as no surprise. If he was concerned to comment on the backward peasant societies of his time, we may find, as when he wrote about India and similar societies, his views on the role of capitalism as a progressive factor that would sweep away, with its inevitable associated sufferings, these backward social formations74 . If he was concerned with analysing the peasantry in the more developed countries of his time, as he did with the French peasantry in The 18th Brumaire, then he uses most derogatory expressions to single out a section of small and medium-sized landowners who acted as a factor of social stability under capitalism. This main view of Marx regarding the peasants was the dominant one later on in the Second International. Only in his maturity, and in the face of the problems posed to him by the Russian populists, did Marx change his position somewhat, which subsequently generated a polemic within Marxism, which will be dealt with at greater length in later chapters. But 74 "Karl Marx, Foreword to the first German edition of the first volume of Capital, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Volume I (Moscow, Foreign Language Editions, n.d.) p. 468. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century in any case, even if he was in favour of the possibility that the Russian commune (mir) could serve as a basis for a transition to socialism without the previous stage of capitalism, such a possibility was conditional on a prior socialist revolution in the more developed countries of Europe. Thus the Leninist position on the question would also introduce a new modification into Marxism. The question began to take on real importance when with the 1905 revolution Lenin began to seriously consider the possibilities of revolution in Russia, the nature it might have, and the role to be played by the peasantry in it. At that time he thought that the revolution would be of the bourgeois-democratic type because of the type of tasks it would have to solve, but if, foreseeably, the bourgeoisie were not able to lead that revolution, then, it would give way to a "revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry". Trotsky, at that time, did not share Lenin's position; he considered such a proposal unfeasible because it would presuppose either that the peasantry was under the hegemony of bourgeois parties or that it had created its own independent one, which was not the case, so he was in favour of the bourgeois revolution being overtaken in its development, becoming a proletarian revolution under the hegemony of the workers. After the February 1917 revolution and the failure of the Provisional Government to meet domestic demands, the peasants mobilised, and the Bolsheviks gave up their agrarian programme of nationalisation or socialisation of the land to adopt the programme of the Social Revolutionaries, which responded better to the peasants' demands for land distribution. The Bolsheviks thus wanted to seal an alliance with the peasantry in order to maintain the revolution. The first revolution under the leadership of a Marxist party was carried out in a mainly agrarian country and on the basis of a social alliance with the peasantry, which would be unstable from the start and would end up sacrificing the demands and aims of the peasants, not for the sake of collaboration with the proletariat, but through the harsh repression of the party-state bureaucracy of Stalinism. But regardless of the stormy alliance with the peasants in Russia which we will see below, the important thing to note is that this alliance introduced an important mutation in Marxist theory and strategy. The option of carrying out the revolution in an economically backward and largely peasant country, to which to offer an alliance in Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez order to achieve victory, was consolidated. As we shall see in a later chapter, Maoism would go a step further than Leninism and rely entirely on the peasantry to carry out the socialist revolution in China. In reality, the alliance with the peasants - although it was represented on the communist banner by the hammer and sickle, and as such is widespread practically to this day - was conjunctural, brief and opportunist, in the sense that its aim was to realise the October revolution and then to break it and sacrifice the peasantry as a social class. Just as the Bolsheviks had to complete the economic task of the bourgeois revolution by industrialising Russia, this task implied another task inextricably linked to it, that of extracting from the peasantry the surplus necessary for industrialisation, making the bulk of the sacrifice of the necessary primitive accumulation fall on this class. The difference with similar processes carried out by the bourgeoisie was not so much the political disenfranchisement of the peasantry - which also occurred in some of the processes of capitalist industrialisation - as the class or social stratum which was to benefit, the bourgeoisie in one case, the state bureaucracy in another, and the final fate of the peasantry. The first break in the alliance came immediately after the triumph of the revolution, when the Bolsheviks dissolved the Constituent Assembly. The elections to the Constituent Assembly took place on 13 November 2017 with an unfavourable result for the Bolsheviks who won 9 million votes and 168 deputies against 16.5 million votes and 380 deputies for the revolutionary socialists (SRs) who represented the majority peasant vote, and another 9.5 million for other minorities. Lenin's conclusion was very clear, the Constituent Assembly left the Bolsheviks in a minority, the Congress of Soviets gave them a majority (51% of Bolshevik delegates at the 2nd, in October 1917, 61% at the 3rd, January 1918), then the Assembly expressed a retarded state of opinion, that of the whole nation as a whole, and the Congress of Soviets expressed the interests of the revolution. "The external history of the Soviets alone, therefore, already shows the inevitability of the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and the reactionary character of the latter."75 But the true reading of that 75 Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, p. 56. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century result is otherwise, the Constituent Assembly represented the real weight of the peasantry and its social project, which were not reflected in the Soviets. Let us recall that this decision to dissolve a Constituent Assembly which was unfavourable to the Bolsheviks was criticised not only by Kautsky, to which Lenin responded in a harsh and disqualifying manner, but also by Rosa Luxemburg. This political rupture of the alliance was deepened by the immediate implementation during the civil war of "war communism" which entailed "strict discipline in the factory, forced labour of the peasants, requisitioning of agricultural production beyond the minimum subsistence level for the latter, not to mention mass and forced conscription into the Red Army. The peasants rebelled against this policy of requisitioning and control."76 With the introduction of the NEP in March 1921, the Bolsheviks reactivated the alliance with the peasants at the price of allowing the emergence of a stratum of rich peasants, and without finally resolving the existing differences between town and country. As we will analyse at greater length in a later chapter, there are authors who point out how during the NEP period two positions clashed among the Bolshevik leaders: on the one hand, that of those, like Bukharin, who is considered to be within the on the one hand, the "agrarist" sector, which attached greater importance to private accumulation in the countryside and to the agrarian economy, and, on the other hand, those who, like the left-wing Opposition, advocated a programme of accelerated industrialisation at the expense of the peasantry. Finally, after 1928, with the Stalinist turn towards forced collectivisation, the alliance was definitively broken and the peasants were definitively subjected to the industrialisation project imposed by the state bureaucracy at an enormous cost in human suffering and regression of the agrarian economy. 76 Barot, Emmanuel, La révolution de 1917 face à la " question https://www.revolutionpermanente.fr/La-revolution-de-1917-face-a-la-question-paysanne paysanne ", Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The Leninist Analysis of Monopoly Capitalism and Imperialism Lenin's diagnosis had become anachronistic because it referred to an already completed stage of capitalist development. The trends of 1880-1914 were no longer relevant in 1945-75 and, for this reason, the main post-war reflections revolved around other problems. The difficulty of many Marxists in accepting this change was due to a misunderstanding of Lenin's approach. They were unaware that the focus was more on the political critique of social-patriotic pacifism than on the economic evaluation of capitalism. Under the rule of capital. Claudio Katz Since neither Marx nor Engels had elaborated any theory dealing with imperialism, this gap was to be closed by later generations of Marxists. Lenin's theory on the subject was the most influential and widespread, but it was not the only one, nor was it the first. Within the Second International, other authors such as Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg and Hilferding had already been engaged in reflecting on imperialism. In fact, Lenin's theory of imperialism, which can be found especially in his 1916 work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, drew heavily on that of Hilferding - from whom he was essentially separated by the practical conclusions derived from his theories, for while the German theorist ended up supporting social patriotism and German participation in the war, Lenin promoted the strategy of turning war into revolution - and on a nonMarxist author, Hobson; It served to criticise that of Kautsky; and it found a rival in that of Rosa, who relied on different economic foundations, seeking greater continuity with Marx's model. But in the end it was Lenin's theory of imperialism that would enjoy the greatest prestige and influence among later generations of Marxists who would later add further developments. The Leninist theory of imperialism takes as its starting point the developments that capitalism had undergone since the last decades of the 19th century. It thus represents Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century an update of the Marxist theory of capitalism. Two important phenomena explain the imperialist phase of capitalism. The first would be that of finance capital, as an expression of the change of stage from capitalism based on competition to monopoly as a result of the growing concentration of capital, and which would be based on the merger achieved between banking and industrial capital, with a clear dominance of the former. Likewise, this monopoly phase would have led to a change from the previous free trade policy to one dominated by protectionism. Financial capitalism would be characterised by the export of capital rather than commodities, typical of mercantile capitalism, which acted as a mechanism for the extraction of profits originating in the periphery, and also by the development of a rentier character of the imperialist states over the subjugated debtor countries. The second phenomenon would be one already pointed out by Marx, the tendency for the rate of profit of capital in the internal market to fall. Both phenomena put pressure on capital to seek the expansion of the external market through conquest in order to secure the domination of sources of raw materials and new markets. But this dynamic, carried out by finance and monopoly capital through the policies of various imperial powers, and which leads to the territorial division of the world through a new colonial expansion, inevitably leads to the clash of these powers which ends up generating imperialist wars, the highest expression of which would be the First World War. As a corollary, imperialism is conceived as the expression of a capitalism entering a terminal phase with a tendency towards stagnation and crisis. A spectator in the first three decades of the 20th century, observing the First World War and the Great Depression that followed, might have concluded that the Leninist theory of imperialism was correct and was accurately describing reality, but the great capitalist growth after the Second World War and the expansion of the new American imperialism would bring the consequences of the Leninist theory into question. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Western Marxism Broadly speaking, Jay subscribes to most of the characteristics delineated by Anderson in his mapping of the territory of Western Marxism: shift towards the western regions of Europe, conviction that a genuine socialist revolution could only succeed in advanced capitalist society, repudiation of the legacy of the Second International, difficulty in unifying theory and practice, marked pessimism, importance of cultural critique, openness to psychoanalytic explanations, great creative fecundity, ambivalent relations with the recipients of his works, elitist nature of his writings, little interest in disseminating theory and isolation from the masses. Western Marxism: Vicissitudes of a Topography Marcelo Starcenbaum In 1976 Perry Anderson published a work that was influential for a long time, Considerations on Western Marxism. The aim of this work was to make a synthesis and critique of the various Marxist authors that he classified under the name of Western Marxism, a designation with which he wanted to point out the characteristics of this trend, which in many respects represented a break with the more classical tradition of Marxism. The latter is analysed in a very quick and light manner with the exclusive aim of serving as a contrast to the analysis of the main current which the British Marxist's book deals with. The value of his work proved to be ambiguous over time. Firstly, his contribution was very positive because he made a magnificent synthesis of the various authors who made up Western Marxism, thus offering a broad vision that made up for the need for a difficult and lengthy reading of all the works of that current, something only available to scholars very interested in the subject, that is, he helped to disseminate the contributions of all these authors among a wider public. Secondly, however, although Anderson's work also has a value that lies in his critique of Western Marxism, highlighting its Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez meaning and weaknesses, later criticisms, which we will see later, have cast doubt on whether we can speak of a current encompassed by the term Western Marxism. Anderson's is an excellent synthesis of the development of Marxist thought up to the 1970s. Initially he dealt with the authors and contributions of the classical period of Marxism up to the Soviet revolution, albeit in a rapid manner, as this is not the main subject of his work. From Marx and Engels, he highlights three issues which, in general, coincide with what was set out in the first chapter. First, on an aspect that he will use as an important comparative and evaluative criterion, that of the connection between the intellectual production of the different authors and their political practice. In this respect, he stresses that the theoretical production of the two initiators of Marxism was most of the time detached from their direct participation in the national political struggle and points out that "the relationship between Marx's theory and proletarian practice was always unequal and mediated: there was rarely a direct coincidence between the two". Secondly, he points to Marx's relatively limited theoretical influence during his lifetime due to the "limits of the workers' movement of the time", which was evidenced by the absence of publication during his lifetime of most of his intellectual output. Finally, he indicates as a synthesis of Marx's contributions that "he left a coherent and elaborate economic theory of the capitalist mode of production, set out in Capital, but he did not leave a similar political theory of the structures of the bourgeois state or of the strategy and tactics of the revolutionary socialist struggle", nor did he "elaborate an extensive general exposition of historical materialism. This was the task taken up by Engels in the late 1870s-1880s and during the 1880s-1890s".77 He places the generation of Marxist intellectuals who immediately followed Marx and Engels (Labriola, Kautsky, Plekhanov and Mehring) as operating in a relatively calm historical period, being militants in their respective parties but with only two of them playing a leading role in them, all of which he relates to the fact that they wrote a series of works whose general sense was "to complete, rather than develop, Marx's inheritance", i.e. he does not consider that they made any essential contribution to the development of historical materialism. 77 Anderson, Perry, Considerations on Western Marxism, pp. 10-11. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century We would have to wait for the generation immediately after to find the model of the Marxist intellectual that is most productive in Anderson's opinion, the intellectual-leader of a revolutionary party (Bolshevik) or one that declared itself in favour of achieving socialism (European social democracy before 1914). Here he includes Lenin, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Bukharin, Hilferding or Bauer. These features are due to the convulsive epoch in which they lived, which opened up revolutionary possibilities that ended up being condensed in the socialist victory in Russia. All of them were leaders in their respective parties, and their works developed Marxism in two essential aspects, according to Anderson. On the one hand, in the flowering of Marxist economic thought with the analyses of the evolution of the capitalist mode of production as a consequence of the weight of monopolies and imperialism. On the other hand, with the first elaboration of a Marxist political theory, in which Lenin was particularly prominent. Despite taking the authors of classical Marxism as models of theoretical production and contributions to the development of Marxism, disregarding the immediate successor generation of Marx and Engels, this does not prevent him from taking stock of the shortcomings and inconsistencies also found in those authors, focusing above all on the main theoreticians, Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, for which he uses the adjective "unsatisfactory" inheritance78 . His review of these inadequacies ranged from the treatment of the capitalist state, the erroneous concept of nationalism, the errors regarding the falling rate of profit, pauperisation and social polarisation, proletarian democracy, and the nature and conception of the workers' party. All of which only confirms the anomalies of the theory referred to in the first chapter. But the war and the triumph of the revolution in the second decade of the 20th century would bring rapid consequences for Marxist theory, firstly because the war divided the Marxist intellectual camp as well as its organisations, with some leaning towards national chauvinism (Kautsky, Plekhanov, Hilferding or Bauer) and others towards the denunciation of the war and the preparation of the revolution (Rosa, Lenin, Trotsky, etc.). Secondly, because the triumph of Stalinism in the Soviet Union "ineluctably destroyed the revolutionary unity between theory and practice which had made classical Bolshevism possible" and turned that country into an "intellectual wasteland", as well as sterilising Leninist thought. 78 Ibid, p. 137 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Anderson points to the defeats of the revolution in Europe first, and in the subsequent wave of dictatorships and fascisms that swept the continent, plus the consolidation of Stalinism, as the causes of a situation that would lead to the 'mutation' of the theory of historical materialism to give way to 'Western Marxism', the fundamental object of study in his work. The English historian's labelling of Marxism as Western comes from the fact that, unlike the preceding generations of Marxist intellectuals located in Eastern or East-Central Europe, the leading figures of the new tradition, with the exception of Lukács and Goldmann, belonged to the westernmost regions of Europe, more specifically, and above all, to three countries, Germany, France and Italy. But although Anderson does not state it openly, the current of Western Marxism was not only characterised by its differentiation from previous generations of Marxist authors, but also by its opposition to the Soviet Marxism of the same period, that which was encompassed and petrified by Stalinism under the label of Marxism-Leninism. Göran Therborn qualifies Anderson's characterisation of Western Marxism, the Swedish sociologist considers it to be a hoc post construction that could be defined as "a politically autonomous current of Marxist thought in the developed capitalist countries after the October revolution. As such it differs both from Marxisms in other parts of the world and from the practically institutionalised Marxism of political parties or groups. However, Western Marxism is a post hoc construction, having a special significance, even in the less partisan and more scholarly versions. "79 The idea that Anderson seems to want to convey is that all the important theoretical production at the time of Stalinism's rule was centred on the tradition he called Western Marxism and which he is going to criticise in its main features. It is clear that he focused on those authors who were not only the most widely known and disseminated (Lukács, Gramsci, Korsch, Lefébvre, Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Sartre, Goldmann, Althusser, Della Volpe, Colletti), but who shared a series of features that allowed him to consider them as a whole as a current beyond their differences. Anderson himself later regretted not having included such an important author as Habermas. 79 Therborn,Göran, On Critical Theory and the Legacy of 20th Century Marxism, pp. 8-9. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century But this selection forced him to ignore other important contributions. The first was Trotsky, to whom he did refer in the final part of his book, pointing, with reservations, to the political current following the Russian revolutionary as the hope for a revival of Marxist thought. The second is that of other Marxist thinkers of the time, such as Mariátegui (who died in 1930, and whose main intellectual work was developed between 1928-30), Che Guevara, or the authors who wrote about the Chilean road to socialism, in all cases leaders of revolutionary parties or processes. The third, and most important, is that of Mao Zedong, leader of the second most important communist revolution in history and a prolific theoretician. It is entirely legitimate that Anderson wanted to focus on Western Marxism for his study, but he should clarify why he ignored these other contributions and, if he thought so, why he considered that they did not make important contributions to Marxist theory, or whether some of these authors were considered by Anderson to be included in Soviet Marxism. At least with Trotskyism he did take the trouble to devote a few pages of attention to it at the end of his work. The changes that were to define Western Marxism began to show themselves at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, created in 1923 and the origin of what is known as the Frankfurt School, among whose members Anderson analyses in particular two of them, Adorno and Marcuse. Western Marxism, as a distinct tradition with a series of common features that allow it to be identified as such, is the result, in Anderson's opinion, of the failure of the socialist revolutions that were tried in Central and Western Europe as a result of the First World War and, as a consequence, the first distinctive feature of this current is the rupture of the "organic unity between theory and practice" characteristic of previous generations, a slow and progressive separation that was consolidated from the 1930s onwards, the first distinctive feature of this current is the break with "the organic unity between theory and practice" characteristic of previous generations, a slow and progressive separation that was consolidated from the 1930s onwards, although the older ones, such as Lukács, Gramsci and Korsch, initially played an important role in their respective parties. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Here too Therborn disagrees with Anderson, and finds it "not very illuminating to characterise Western Marxism as a theory marked by defeat"80 , on the contrary, it was the triumph of the Soviet revolution that inclined all these intellectuals towards Marxism and they showed at different times their sympathies with the Soviet Union. But this is a clearly forced argument for most of them. This dissociation of the link between theory and political practice led to the concentration of Western Marxist intellectuals in university work, 'by the end of the Second World War, Marxist theory had virtually totally migrated to the universities'.81 But Anderson points to a complementary reason to explain this situation, the fact that the political reference for these intellectuals was the Western communist parties, which were closely aligned with the policies of the Soviet Union, led for most of that time by Stalin. Maintaining loyalty to these parties came at the price of keeping intellectual work away from the main issues concerning the political strategy of the communist movement. Nevertheless, Anderson acknowledges that there were disparate cases in the relationship between Marxist intellectuals and communist parties, some who never had any relationship with these parties (Adorno, Marcuse), some who, although close, never belonged to the party (Sartre) and, finally, those who abandoned it (Lefébvre, Colletti) and continued their theoretical production. In turn, this academic specialisation and the orientation of their intellectual output towards their own milieu, rather than towards the masses or militants, led firstly to the use of exoteric language that was highly difficult to read. Secondly, the shift in the focus of their studies from economics and politics to philosophy, more specifically, Anderson points out, what prevailed among these Marxist intellectuals was "epistemological work, essentially focused on method", where the preferred field was "cultural superstructures", noting that Western Marxism followed a reverse trajectory to that of Marx, and instead of following the path from philosophy to economics, it went in the opposite direction. Thirdly, they focused on speculative constructions, i.e. "a priori conceptual schemes for understanding history, not necessarily incompatible with empirical elements of judgement, but always unproven in their mode of presentation".82 Finally, it led them to be influenced by non-Marxist systems of thought of an idealist 80 Therborn,Göran, On Critical Theory and the Legacy of 20th Century Marxism, p. 12. Anderson, Perry, Considerations on Western Marxism, p. 65. 82 Ibid, p. 100 81 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century character, with the exception of the Della Volpe school, (Weber, Simmel and Dilthey in Lukács; Croce and De Sanctis in Gramsci; Freudian psychoanalysis in the components of the Frankfurt School; Husserl and Heidegger in Sartre; Bachelard, Canguilhem, Spinoza and Lacan in Althusser; Bachelard and Schelling in Lefébvre). It would seem that the result of this current is "a Marxism without a proletariat, which retains only its function as a cultural critique of bourgeois civilisation".83 Was this concentration of the majority focus on epistemological questions and cultural superstructures the result of professional deformation, of the fact that most of them belonged to the field of philosophy? One might wonder about the conspicuous absence of other social specialities, such as sociologists, political scientists or economists among Marxist intellectuals, and also about the fact that none of them followed Marx's example and extended their field of study beyond philosophy to politics, economics or international relations. Therborn offers a perhaps complementary explanation as to why philosophy had a monopoly on Western Marxism, but not why it was inclined towards epistemological questions and cultural superstructures, "It seems that in the heart of Europe, philosophy was the academic discipline most open to people who had welcomed the dawn of October 1917. Philosophy was relatively remote from the power and interests of the day, and was distinctly non-paradigmatic, housing a number of schools. It was the medium in which the most general and important issues of humanity were discussed life, history, knowledge, morality."84 Anderson does not mention it in his work, because it is another school and he himself belongs to it, but British Marxist historians later reproduced, in another perspective, the same professional deformation, they dealt especially with issues of history, and not precisely with issues of the present. We shall see this in more detail later. Let us digress at this point to delve a little deeper into this aspect that has been pointed out and which is included in the opening quotation of this chapter on Western Marxism: "...ambivalent relations with the recipients of its works, the elitist nature of its writings, 83 Malia, Martin, The End of the Noble Dream. How "Western Marxism" misrepresented the real Marx, http://www.revistadelibros.com/articulos/la-tergiversacion-de-marx-por-el-marxismo-occidental 84 Therborn,Göran, On Critical Theory and the Legacy of 20th Century Marxism, p. 13. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez little interest in disseminating the theory and isolation from the masses". Horacio Tarcus deals with this aspect with a little more attention, basing himself on Gramsci, for whom what differentiates Marxism from other philosophies is the "peculiar potential for articulation between "high" philosophical culture and "popular culture". "85 However, this unity is not guaranteed by any quality of Marxism and "the risk of a horizontal cut between an educated Marxism and a popular Marxism" always hangs like a threat. A threat, we can now say, that not only materialised in the case of Western Marxism, as Anderson denounced, but tended to deepen subsequently, as we shall see in the following chapters. Gramsci did indeed address the issue and proposed some solutions which, in view of the results, did not prove effective, "The need for contact between intellectuals and simple people is affirmed, not in order to limit scientific activity and maintain unity at the low level of the masses, but to build an intellectual-moral bloc which will make possible mass intellectual progress and not just for a few intellectual groups".86 This problem was not peculiar to Marxism; Gramsci looked at the solution historically found in the Catholic religion, to propose which would be the right one for Marxism. In the first case, it was the church which was responsible for controlling the intellectuals so that they would not become detached from popular religiosity and continue to maintain their influence, in the second case it should be the party which should be responsible for ensuring "the unity of the bloc between the high Marxist intellectual culture and the socialist culture of the masses, in short, between theory and doctrine".87 Tarcus' aim, in this article, is not so much to explore the practical difficulties of Gramsci's proposal as to offer an explanation of why a "deterministic, fatalistic and mechanistic" conception of Marxism ended up being imposed in the formative period of Marxist doctrine that represented the rise of the Second International. A weak explanation, to be sure, because the Second International did not know any major defeat - until its debacle with the outbreak of the First World War - that could in itself explain the mechanistic and deterministic drift of Marxism that prevailed in its midst. 85 Tarcus, Horacio, El marxismo en América Latina y la problemática de la recepción transnacional de las ideas, p. 44. 86 Gramsci, Antonio, Historical Materialism and the Philosophy of Benedetto Croce, p. 16. 87 Tarcus, Horacio, El marxismo en América Latina y la problemática de la recepción transnacional de las ideas, p. 45. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century But the Gramscian explanation can serve as a starting point for analysing the rupture of unity between Marxist intellectuals and the masses. "When there is no initiative in the struggle, and when the struggle itself ends up being identified with a series of defeats, mechanical determinism becomes a formidable force of moral resistance, of cohesion, of patient and obstinate perseverance. "I have been defeated momentarily, but the force of things works for me in the long run..." etc. The real will is disguised as an act of faith in a certain rationality of history, in an empirical and primitive form of passionate finalism, which appears as a substitute for the predestination, providence, etc., of confessional religions".88 The first explanation, then, is centred on pointing to the effect of periods of the ebb and flow of struggles. This is Anderson's explanation for Western Marxism, and Keucheyan's for the new critical thinking, but not to explain a mechanistic and deterministic drift, but the estrangement of Marxist intellectuals from the masses. A second observation, but not explanation, of the difficulties is provided by Tarcus, "In any case, neither party mediation nor a diversified press system have succeeded in resolving these tensions, as revealed in the history of modern socialism by the clashes between theory and practice, between the intellectuals and the masses, tensions which have tended to express themselves often as unrest in the party ranks, if not in frequent polemical outbursts, over the question of the intellectuals. Gramsci himself was aware of the difficulty encountered by immanentist philosophies, including Marxism understood by him as a philosophy of praxis, in "creating an ideological unity between the low and the high, between the "simple" and the intellectuals"".89 This difficulty to which Tarcus refers is historically confirmed by numerous examples, especially for the historical period of hegemony of the parties formed according to the Leninist model, and even more so with the Stalinist deformation. Western Marxism clearly fits into this explanation, and we have already seen that three types of behaviour abounded in this respect, that of the intellectuals who remained in the party with conflicting relations, that of those who ended up leaving it, and that of those who never became part of the party. 88 Gramsci, Antonio, Historical Materialism and the Philosophy of Benedetto Croce, p. 19. Tarcus, Horacio, El marxismo en América Latina y la problemática de la recepción transnacional de las ideas, p. 45. 89 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez But this situation of estrangement of the intellectuals from the Marxist parties and, as a direct consequence or not, from the masses, became more acute when the Marxist parties subsequently went into general decline, in most cases becoming socially and politically irrelevant. This process was reinforced by the academisation of the Marxist intelligentsia. With Marxist parties close to insignificance, with intellectuals even further removed from them, with the proliferation of a thousand Marxisms, as we will have the opportunity to analyse later, and with the historical defeats suffered, "popular Marxism" establishes an almost unbridgeable distance from "educated Marxism", or educated Marxisms, and so what remains of that quality of Marxism that differentiated it from other philosophies? Closing the parenthesis opened to analyse the difficulties of the relationship between intellectuals and the masses, and returning to the main thread of this chapter, we can see that the last aspects mentioned in Anderson's analysis of Western Marxism were also influenced by the discovery at that time of Marx's early writings, The latter, of a more philosophical nature, accentuated the philosophical inclination of this current, and at the same time it sought antecedents in philosophers prior to Marx as a way of trying to find a distant philosophical root, while at the same time it also served to try out with them a reinterpretation of historical materialism. This aspect is also seen by Anderson as a regression from Marx's trajectory. Anderson also underlines other aspects of this tradition, such as the limited relationship that these intellectuals had with each other, which prevented a creative debate on their ideas, and the pessimism that characterised their thinking, an aspect that has subsequently been pointed out about Anderson himself, who has come to be regarded as another example of a Western Marxist. Nevertheless, of all the intellectuals Anderson includes within Western Marxism, Gramsci's membership of this current appears clearly forced, as the English historian acknowledges in several places. Although Gramsci did not concern himself with analyses related to the capitalist economy, there is no doubt about the importance of his contributions in relation to the bourgeois state and revolutionary strategy. He did not focus his energies on philosophical questions and shunned the speculative constructions of the other authors; he was no university professor but a revolutionary leader; and Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century when he undertook to analyse culture it was, in opposition to the other authors of Western Marxism, to study its structure and function for the systems of European political power, "he approached the question of the autonomy and effectiveness of the cultural superstructures as a political problem" (Gramsci, p. 4).90 The English historian sees a new upsurge of the mass revolutionary movement as a prerequisite for closing the gap between theory and practice of Western Marxists, and for Marxism's creative re-engagement with questions of strategy, politics and economics. At the time he wrote Considerations on Western Marxism he only looked at the recent experience of the French May and its offshoots in other countries, such as Italy. But by the time the work was published, other experiences had already taken place inside and outside Europe of greater significance than the French May itself, for as he himself acknowledges, "In reality, of course, the May revolt was not a revolution, and the majority of the French proletariat has neither organisationally nor ideologically abandoned the PCF".91 We are referring to the triumph of the Cuban revolution (1959), the UP government in Chile (1971-3), the Carnation Revolution in Portugal (1974) or the long struggle of the Vietnamese people (1955-75). However, Anderson seems to be anchored in the model of the early 20th century as the only possible way to unite theory and practice in a synthesis capable of revitalising Marxism. That model was based on a mass revolutionary movement with the proletariat as its protagonist, and Marxistoriented political parties channelling and guiding activity towards the goal of socialism. Of course, this scenario has only been repeated occasionally and at disconnected times and places. For example, in Chile before and during the Allende government, which would be the closest example to that model; in the Italian Hot Autumn; in the immediate years and during the beginning of the Spanish transition; or at times of the Carnation Revolution. During or after these experiences, there was an intellectual production of Marxists linked to the organisations involved in them, although they did not achieve the notoriety of the authors of Western Marxism, nor of the classics, perhaps with the exception of Toni Negri, who ended up drifting towards post-Marxist or "para-Marxist" positions, as Kouvelakis put it. 90 91 Anderson, Perry, Considerations on Western Marxism, p. 97. Ibid, p. 118 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez One could also take the experiences of the PCF and the PCI, at their height after the Second World War, as examples similar to that of social democracy before 1914, but instead of intellectuals of the type linked to it such as Rosa Luxemburg, Kautsky, Hilferding or Bauer, there were now the authors framed in Western Marxism such as Althusser, Lefébvre, Della Volpe or Colletti. These latter examples can be explained by the asphyxiating control that the communist parties exercised over theoretical production, but how can we explain the fact that in the other experiences mentioned, Marxist intellectuals of the classical type did not appear either? In 1980, four years after publishing his Considerations on Western Marxism, Anderson gave a lecture that was later circulated under the title Is there a crisis of Marxism? 92to which he himself responded by denying such a crisis. In the intervening four years, there had been no event or change of trend that could lead one to believe that there was or would be a rise of a revolutionary mass movement. However, Anderson had changed his perception of Marxism's creative theoretical output; the 1970s had, in his view, seen a "remarkable upswing" in its creativity. He considered the era of sterile production of Western Marxism to be over and pointed optimistically to a recovery of the intellectual productivity of classical Marxism. He now based his change of opinion on the publications of other authors. In the field of the analysis of the capitalist mode of production he cited the works of Mandel (late professor), Anglietta (professor) and Braverman (militant, not professor); in the field of analysis of the state, Poulantzas (professor), Miliband (professor) or Therborn (professor); in the study of class structures, Olin Wright (professor); on imperialism, Emmanuel, Arrighi (professor) and Magdoff (not professor); and on the analysis of real socialism, Beyer and Bahro. Of these authors cited only Mandel was a leader of a revolutionary organisation. But Anderson's change was not only in his optimism for the new creativity of Marxist theory but also on two fundamental issues. The first was about the conception of the transition to socialism, conceived "as a process of centuries rather than decades as occurred during the transition from feudalism to capitalism". The second on the nature 92 Anderson, Perry, Is There a Crisis of Marxism? Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century and role of the Soviet Union, "Globally it is a factor of progress in today's world history which guarantees the possibility of socialist revolutions and workers' states (hopefully more advanced than itself). Conservative and reactionary in Eastern Europe, its predominant role in Asia, Africa and Latin America is distinctly dynamic and progressive". 93 Anderson now firmly rejected that there was a crisis of Marxism, what there was, however, was a crisis of the communist movement derived from the Third International. If there were intellectuals who spoke of a crisis of Marxism, it was because they had been disappointed in recent years by two important experiences, Maoism and Eurocommunism. Experiences that Anderson takes the opportunity to criticise, the former for its deformations and reactionary drift on the external plane, and the latter for its failure. But the crisis of Marxism will be analysed at length in a later chapter devoted exclusively to it. In this analysis of Anderson's works on Western Marxism, we have interspersed some critical comments by another author who has dealt with this subject, Göran Therborn, but we wanted to leave for the end other types of criticism and views on this phenomenon and Perry Anderson's approach to it. We shall begin by contrasting Anderson's view of the phenomenon of Western Marxism with those of two other authors who have also dealt with it. The first is Marxism and totality. The adventures of a concept form Lukács to Habermas by Martin Jay; the second, Dialectic of defeat: Contours of western Marxism by Russell Jacoby. This contrast has been brilliantly analysed by Marcelo Starcenbaum in an article entitled Western Marxism: vicissitudes of a topography, which we will follow below. In Jay's analysis, there is a great deal of overlap with regard to the characteristics that Anderson defined to characterise Western Marxism. However, the originality of Jay's contribution lies "in the postulation of the concept of "totality" as a priority element for the exploration of Western Marxism"94 . The aim of Jay's work focuses, on the one hand, "on delineating the ways in which the reception of Western Marxism in the 93 94 Ibid, pp. 157-8 Starcenbaum, Marcelo, Western Marxism: Vicissitudes of a Topography, p. 10. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez United States involved a reinforcement of the academicism of American Marxism"95 , through theorists such as Andrew Arato, Paul Piccone, Paul Breines, Fredric Jameson, Susan Buck-Morss and others. And on the other hand, Jay focuses on pointing out that "the closure of the Western Marxist experience is articulated in American Marxism with the reception of the post-structuralist constellation [...] which are quickly accommodated under the umbrella of post-structuralist anti-holism"96 . Thus, this author ends his journey by calling for the recovery of a discourse of totality "as the desirable horizon for a true Marxism"97 , and vindicating the authors who are part of Western Marxism as a group opposed "to the consolidation of the Foucauldian "specific intellectual" and the deconstruction of the Marxist corpus in the name of the totalitarianism of 20th century communism".98 Russell Jacoby also agrees with Anderson in relation to the causes that gave rise to Western Marxism, but differs from the British historian in his assessment of the shift of this current from economics and politics to philosophy, which he does not consider a negative aspect, but rather an advance in the sense of rethinking Marxism, "an effort to rescue a non-conformist Marxism and to challenge contemplative histories of the defeat of Western Marxism".99 In emphasising the difference between conformist Marxism, best expressed by Althusser, and non-conformist Marxism, he rescues for the latter tendencies that are not contemplated by Anderson, such as "Anton Pannekoek and the Dutch school or Paul Levi and German communism". But, finally, there is one point of agreement between Anderson, Jay and Jacoby, and that is the process of "academicisation" of both Western Marxism, in the terms understood by the English historian, and American Marxism: "The American left embarked on a "long march through the institutions" (Jacoby 2000 [1987], 140), at the end of which they encountered academic professionalisation". Jacoby finds in the theoretical and political interventions of American Marxists the projection of the drifts of Western Marxism, especially the language of academia and the move away from the public sphere" (Jacoby 2000 [1987], 140).100 95 Ibid, p. 18 Ibid, p. 11 97 Ibid, p. 12 98 Ibid, p. 17 99 Starcenbaum, Marcelo, Western Marxism: Vicissitudes of a Topography, p. 14. 100 Ibid, p.16 96 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Another more comprehensive and incisive critique of the Andersonian concept of Western Marxism is that of Stathis Kouvelakis101 , to which we will refer below. The final aim of Kouvelakis' long article is to show the intellectual vitality that Marxism still has, for which, firstly, he questions the existence of the current of Western Marxism described by Anderson, to which he devotes the bulk of his exposition and, secondly, he also evaluates the new critical theories whose compendium is compiled in Keucheyan's book, and which we will deal with in the final chapters of this work. This document by the Greek philosopher is important because, thirdly, it makes a broad, but also incomplete, review of the different Marxist authors and currents of the late 20th and early 21st centuries in order to illustrate the intellectual vitality of which Marxism, or the "thousand Marxisms" of which Wallerstein or André Tosel speak, is still the bearer. And it is precisely here where it is necessary to evaluate whether, beyond the emergence of Marxist intellectuals in this latest period, they continue to fulfil the characteristics with which Anderson defines Western Marxism, that is, whether it is a prolongation of the characteristics of this type of Marxism. Kouvelakis points out that Anderson's link between Western Marxism and the defeats of the socialist revolutions in the 1920s is ambivalent to say the least, arguing, as a counterexample, that the work of Marx and Engels could be interpreted as a result of the defeats of the revolutions of 1848 - and of the Paris Commune, we might add. But here there is another substantial difference if one compares the two periods and authors, those situated within Western Marxism show a general pessimistic tendency, whereas the founders of Marxism always wrote with an optimistic tone and confidence in the expectations of their theory. The only hypothesis to explain this difference is that, despite the known defeats, Marx and Engels were the initiators of a theory that had not yet been clearly tested, while Western Marxists knew not only the defeats of the European revolutions, but also the Stalinist drift of the Soviet revolution. But we can also look at the optimistic attitude, maintained against all odds, by the Trotskyist currents despite the fact that they have never won a victory, and despite their impotence and divisions. 101 Kouvelakis, Stathis, Planète Marx : sur la situation actuelle du marxisme (Marx's current situation) Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Kouvelakis also recalls that in the historical period covered by Western Marxism (192070), and despite the revolutionary defeats in the West, there was an expansion of communist states following the Soviet model across an important part of the world, that in Europe there were moments of irruption of working masses (popular fronts, liberation, '68), and that in comparison with the post-Berlin Wall period in those decades there were still expectations of advancing socialism on a world scale. However, the balance is not as clear-cut as Kouvelakis seems to suggest. In the vision of those decades, and from today's perspective, the signs of the defeat of the 1990s become more evident. The expansion of the communist states could not hide the nature of Stalinism and the drift of the Soviet Union; the clashes within the socialist camp, first with Yugoslavia and then with China; and the repression exercised in the countries of that camp against workers' protests or attempts to modify the model imported from the USSR, in East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia or Poland. The upsurges of the working class masses in Europe all ended in defeat, including the Spanish civil war, which, by the way, he forgets to mention. The two different characteristics that Kouvelakis alludes to about the epochal change that 1989 represents - the disappearance of socialism from the historical horizon and the much lesser relationship of today's Marxist intellectuals with Marxist organisations only raise the question of the type of Marxism that is currently being produced, is it a Western type of Marxism squared, as he himself asks about the Marxism produced in the English-speaking world? Where Kouvelakis is indeed right, and we have already alluded to this above, is in his criticism of the discretionary nature of the selection used by Anderson to compose Western Marxism. To the absent currents and authors already mentioned, Kouvelakis adds another important number of intellectuals present at the time, such as Maurice Dobb, Oskar Lange, Claudio Napoleoni, Charles Bettelheim; the Monthly Review school with Paul Sweezy, Paul Baran and Harry Magdoff; the world-system theorists such as Gunder-Frank, Samir Amin or Inmanuel Wallerstein; economists linked to the Frankfurt School such as Henryk Grossman or Friedrich Pollok; as well as a series of other authors, some of whom are less clear about their affiliation to Marxism. Anderson is legitimately entitled to make a selection of authors and to group them together, on the basis of certain characteristics, as a current, that of Western Marxism, Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century just as there are other currents such as analytical Marxism, structuralism, Monthly Review, etc. What is no longer so legitimate is to pretend to present this current as the only, or almost exclusive, source of the development of Marxism at that time. However, it is necessary to recognise the usefulness of his analysis in isolating and condensing a series of features that would not only be present in the aforementioned current although some of these features and some of the authors included may be disputed - but that would be prolonged in the following stage, giving rise to a permanent characterisation of a majority of the theoretical production of Marxism from the 1920s to the present day, and not an exceptionality confined to a particular juncture. Likewise, by forcing the arguments to avoid the negative character that Anderson assigns to Western Marxism, Kouvelakis tries to present the philosophical bias of this current as a positive aspect. The "passion philosophique" of Western Marxism is presented as a reaction to the perceived philosophical poverty of the dominant Marxism of the Second International, converted by Stalinist vulgarisation into dialectical materialism. The philosophical bent of Western Marxism is then presented as a resistance to these tendencies where, despite its abstract character, its challenge is fundamentally political, even if Anderson underestimates it. Anderson concludes his analysis of Marxism, which runs up to the 1970s, by expressing his hope in Considerations... in two respects, in the possibility of the rise of a new revolutionary mass movement in the advanced countries that would break with the characteristics expressed in Western Marxism and renew theory along the lines of classical Marxism, and in the potential that he saw in the Trotskyist current for this task. However, in later years he would not only see these hopes frustrated by the failure of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, but would also see the debacle of real socialism from 1989 onwards as an aggravation of the crisis he had already pointed out. After the publication of his work, new Marxist authors, some of whom were already writing at the time, made new contributions without overcoming the crisis of Marxism. What did take place was the rise of revolutionary mass movements, in some cases with reactionary final consequences, such as the Iranian revolution which consecrated the victory of Khomeini and Shiism in Iran and served for the expansion of fundamentalism throughout the Islamic world, or the Polish trade union Solidarity which served for the restoration of savage capitalism in Poland. In other cases there were mass movements Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez with progressive consequences but not led by Marxist organisations and programmes, such as the anti-neoliberal mobilisations that swept Latin America from the end of the 20th century and led to some progressive governments. Finally, there were defeats of mass movements as in the case of the Arab revolutions of the second decade of the 21st century. In short, the organisations and the programme of Marxism did not lead any mass revolutionary movement in the world and, therefore, forty years after the publication of Considerations on Western Marxism, the conditions that Anderson considered necessary for a fruitful revival of Marxist thought have not been fulfilled. But were these Anderson's conditions indispensable for a fruitful revival of the fruitful contributions of Marxist thought, or were they just characteristics of a certain classical Marxism which need not be generalised? Did Marx and Engels not make the fundamental contributions in periods of ebb and flow of revolutionary movements? Anderson seems to point out that they were not indispensable when, at the end of his analysis of Western Marxism, he deals with a different tradition, Trotskyism. In this regard, in addition to Trotsky himself, he briefly analyses three intellectuals who continued the work of the Russian revolutionary: Isaac Deutscher, Roman Rosdolsky and Ernest Mandel. Overall, he considers the contributions of this tradition to be distinctly different from Western Marxism: their focus was not on philosophy but on economics and politics, they were more clearly internationalist in character, and they used clearer language. Because of this, he came to regard this current as a key element in the revival of revolutionary Marxism, although he also pointed out its weaknesses such as its voluntarist, rather than rational, triumphalist stance on the working class, and its catastrophist analysis of capitalism, as well as its defence of classical doctrines rather than their improvement. Right at the end of his work, however, Anderson not only reaffirms what he considers indispensable conditions for the advance of Marxism as a revolutionary theory - the link with revolutionary masses - but, driven by the critique of Western Marxism, the fruit of "traditional intellectuals", he goes so far as to reject their role, "in the long run the future of Marxist theory will depend on the intellectuals produced organically by the industrial working classes of the imperialist world, as they acquire cultural capacity and self- Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century confidence".102 It is one thing to contrast the organic intellectual as a collective intellectual with the elitist intellectuals, of whom he himself could be a prototype, and another to ignore the difficulties of the training necessary to face the challenge of making analyses and constructing proposals on increasingly complex societies and situations. Despite all the discourse on the organic intellectual, Marxism, but not only Marxism, continues to be dazzled by the model of the intellectual represented by Marx, that of a highly trained and dedicated person who is capable of producing a monumental work that represents a great advance for the theory. Anderson himself supports this view when he focuses on the great figures of Marxism as producers of thought, and not on the collective contributions that the documents and papers of congresses or conferences of organisations can represent in order to assess the contributions that can be made in them. Having analysed the current of Western Marxism and its authors, for whose understanding Anderson's works are fundamental, we can continue with another series of Marxist authors who, due to the existence of common features in their objects of analysis or methods, can be grouped into other tendencies. However, this criterion of grouping later Marxist thinkers into different currents is not shared by everyone. Thus, for example, Göran Therborn does not differentiate between the currents of Marxist thought immediately after Western Marxism as we have done above; on the contrary, the Swedish sociologist indifferently encompasses under the title of neo-Marxism the contributions produced in the 1960s and 1970s. The conjunction at a historical juncture of the student rebellion, the Vietnam War and the influence of the Chinese cultural revolution produced, in his opinion, a remarkable expansion of the influence of Marxism, which, although it reached a greater extent than Western Marxism, nevertheless did not produce anything as spectacular. "One reason for this is that politics and theory had become much more differentiated. Even the most brilliant and thoughtful political writings of this period are largely empirical. The theoretical and scholarly works, even those by politically active people, are very academic."103 To this end, he cites as notable, in Europe, the works of Perry Anderson, Nicos Poulantzas (a structuralist Marxist) and G.A. Cohen (an analytical Marxist) on 102 103 Anderson, Perry, Considerations on Western Marxism, p. 130. Therborn,Göran, On Critical Theory and the Legacy of 20th Century Marxism, p. 16. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez the theoretical level, and Régis Debray on the empirical level. However, according to Therborn, the expansion of Marxism in those years was more productive in the United States, where the works of two great authors, Robert Brenner and Immanuel Wallerstein, stand out, together with other authors such as Braverman, Burawoy, Przeworski and Wright. The use of the prefix neo to describe this Marxism and the mixture of such different currents does not, in our opinion, help to clarify the contributions of those years. Consequently, for our analysis we will use this differentiation of currents and we will deal below with two of them, the British Marxist historians and analytical Marxism. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century British Marxist historiography The contribution of British Marxist historians and their social history "from below", enriched by the break of the ghpc group of historians from Stalinist rigidity towards a critical and creative Marxism, proposed as a focus of interest the historical reconstruction of the working classes: their forms and conditions of life, their social and political activities, their struggles, the process of the formation of their class consciousness and culture. Social history from below and its search for a radical English tradition Fabián Gaspar Bustamante Holguín In Britain, after the Second World War, a long-standing Marxist current appeared in the form of an important group of historians that would give rise to what became known as British Marxist historians. Their best known names were Eric Hobsbawm, Chirstopher Hill, E.P. Thompson, George Rudé, Maurice Dobb, Rodney Hilton, Victor Kiernan, John Saville and Stuart Hall. All of them were members or sympathisers of the British Communist Party. Gaspar Bustamante104 points out the common characteristics that identify them as a group: firstly, with two attempts to overcome the classical economic conception of social class, and the one that alludes to the problems associated with the also classical vision centred on the division between base and superstructure; secondly, in their interest in the problem of the origins and expansion of capitalism. But there is no doubt that the issue that most identified them as a Marxist current was their orientation towards developing a history from below, that is, a social history of 104 Bustamante Olguín, Fabián Gaspar, Social history from below and its search for a radical English tradition. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez capitalism from the viewpoint of the subaltern groups, seeking, in this way, to rescue the popular classes and their role in history from oblivion. They sought to demonstrate that these classes were the bearers of an autonomous culture and processes of confrontation and resistance to the dominant classes. To this end, they analysed the historical past of England in order to demonstrate the existence of democratic and popular struggles. A starting point for this tradition can be found in the famous debate on the transition from the feudal to the capitalist mode of production based on Maurice Dobb's interpretation, which gave rise to a historiographical debate in which many historians took part. The initial and main response to Dobb's thesis came from the American Marxist economist Paul Sweezy. This, in turn, generated a response from Dobb to these criticisms, giving rise to two different visions in the field of Marxism: one of an economic nature, which emphasised the relations of exchange, based on Sweezy's theses; and another more oriented towards political and economic aspects, which emphasised the social relations of production and the class struggle, as a development of the theses defended by Dobb. Hilton, Hill, Hobsbawm and Thompson documented the struggles, experiences and resistance of the peasants, the working class and the people in a broad sense to the domination of the ruling classes, who had been the subject and protagonists of written history until then. The common interest in studying the origins and development of capitalism was focused on the role played by the subaltern classes, and as a broad social and not only economic change. Gaspar Bustamante examines the reasons why this group of British historians turned to history from below. In principle, he points to the political commitment, derived from a period of political effervescence such as the inter-war period, which motivated their affiliation to the Communist Party of Great Britain and their support for the Soviet Union. But in their country there was an anomaly, the British proletariat had not shown, and did not show, any revolutionary inclination as in other parts of Europe. Is this the reason why these historians turned to studying "revolutionary" subjects in pre-industrial contexts in Britain? In this way one could find another important common ground of British historians with the stream of Western Marxists. If the latter had been the fruit of the defeats of revolutionary movements in Europe, the British Marxist historians were Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century the fruit of the non-existence in Britain of a revolutionary proletariat. The former turned to philosophy and epistemology, the latter to the history of the English popular classes before the proletariat. This similarity is reinforced by another similarity with Western Marxists, namely their attachment to their respective communist parties, and the fact that these parties denied their intellectual members the possibility of speaking out on issues related to the current affairs of the workers' movement and revolutionary movements, a field that belonged exclusively to the leadership bodies of the communist parties. This group of historians was confronted in 1956 with the events in Hungary and the position adopted by the communist parties on the subject, a position of unconditional alignment with the Soviet intervention to quell the Hungarian uprising. This position of the Communist parties caused practically most of the British historians who constituted this tendency to sever their links with the CPB. The exceptions were Hobsbawm and Dobb, although they ended up being marginalised in the party. From that moment on, some have interpreted this tendency of British Marxist historians as leaning in their historical studies towards the aspect of cultural practices and relations, giving rise to a cultural Marxism, thus breaking with the older and more economistic perspective of Maurice Dobb. In the same sense, it is interpreted that they were oriented towards overcoming the classical model in Marxism formed by the basesuperstructure dichotomy. However, in the opinion of Harvey J. Kaye105 , one of the authors who has studied this current in most depth, it was not a break with the work of Dobb and "economic Marxism", but a shift in the focus of interest. Gutmaro Gómez106 , for his part, distinguishes in his study of this current four branches within it. The first of these originated around the aforementioned debate on the transition from feudalism to capitalism initiated by Dobb; from this discussion they defended the role of the struggles of ordinary people in the birth and expansion of capitalism, reconstructing the past "in the key of popular struggle, not exactly faithful to the model of class struggle". The second branch derived from the popular history 105 J. Kaye,Harvey, The British Marxist Historians 106 Gómez Bravo, Gutmaro, British social history: memory of a collective contribution. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez tradition and evolved into history from below. The third branch was characterised by the influence of culturalism in social history through the weight "of English literary sources and the emphasis on the cultural question", and would derive from the aim of revising Marxism, criticising it as a scientific system. The last of the branches can be identified with works oriented towards the study of the state and power, in which Perry Anderson, John Saville and Victor Kiernan have been particularly prominent. The work of this current, in addition to the works published by the intellectuals who made it up, resulted in two important theoretical journals, one created before 1956, Past and Present, and the other later, New Left Review. In Alejandro Estella's view, the "culturalist" historians, also known as cultural historical materialism, and in which Thompson is clearly situated, relied on "the idea that the theoretical approaches of orthodox and structuralist Marxism did not provide adequate answers to the question of collective action and class behaviour", and what they did, consequently, was to "problematise" the Marxist formula that the mode of production directly determines class formation and class behaviour. " From 1978 onwards, this more culturalist tendency was criticised first by Richard Johnson and then by Perry Anderson. The former reproaches them for their reduction of class relations to mere collective relations between groups. With a perspective close to Althusserianism, Johnson points out that "On the one hand, by marginalising the structural character of the economic relations of production, culturalists would be trapped in the study of the representation that individuals have of their exploited condition. On the other hand, by abandoning the precise and definite character of this category in Marx's analyses, they move away from historical materialism as a science towards a humanist conception of history" (Johnson). 107 107 Estrella González, Alejandro, El debate en la historiografía marxista anglosajona en torno al concepto y análisis de clase (The debate in Anglo-Saxon Marxist historiography on the concept and analysis of class) Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Analytical Marxism The purpose of analytical Marxism is to distance itself from "traditional" Marxism by focusing more on questions of a methodological nature, and less on questions that concern the diagnosis made from a Marxist horizon about a particular historical juncture or the political application that could be derived from this diagnosis. This commitment to Marxist methodology has as its background the commitment to the scientific character of Marxism, as well as the need to validate it theoretically, according to some of the scientific criteria currently in force. Analytical Marxism: an alternative to the theoretical crisis of Marxism? Luis Armando González Analytical Marxism once again reproduced some of the most defining characteristics with which Perry Anderson had described Western Marxism. It is, in fact, a current of thought that appeared at the end of the 1970s in the Anglo-Saxon world and whose origins lie in the meetings of a group of academic intellectuals with the aim of exchanging opinions on issues of common interest. In particular, they considered whether the hypotheses and categories that formed the fundamental core of Marxism were still relevant in the second half of the 20th century. Important Marxist thinkers such as Jon Elster (political scientist), Erik Olin Wright (sociologist), Gerald Cohen (philosopher), Adam Przeworski (political scientist), Robert Brenner (historian) and John Roemer (economist), all belonging to the founding group, and later adherents such as Philippe van Parijs (philosopher), Robert van der Veen, Pranab Bardhan (economist), Hillel Steiner and Samuel Bowles (economist) belonged to this current. Its emergence was made possible by the fact that in the 1970s Marxism had spread as an important trend within the European and American university world, and by the Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez influence exerted at that time by analytical philosophy108 . Therefore, we can say that, as happened with many authors of Western Marxism, we are in the presence of another attempt to combine Marxism with other currents of thought in philosophy, sociology or economics, in this particular case with rational choice theory and methodological individualism. As noted above, analytical Marxism started from the questioning of key aspects of Marxism, in particular it rejected that Marxism had a method of its own or that what could be understood as such was tenable and defensible from the point of view of scientific criteria. Therefore, most, but not all, authors of this current sought to integrate Marxism with methodological individualism109 , which seeks to establish the microfoundations of action, models of rational action or game theory. This meant replacing some of the most identifying features of classical Marxism with other different foundations such as the instrumental rationality of the actors or the individual basis of social action, in a clear influence of the dominant theories at that time in the AngloSaxon academic world. In Elster's case, his rejection extends to core concepts of Marxism such as scientific socialism, dialectical materialism and a large part of historical materialism, as well as its economic theory, in which he agrees with Roemer. The ultimate aim would be to preserve the most important theoretical categories of Marxism within a method of empirical analysis, purified of any metaphysical evocation, so that Marxism could enjoy the status of science that had always been called into question by its opponents. Thus, "the distinctive characteristics of analytical Marxism would be: the concern for empirical research and verification of its postulates, for them it is necessary for Marxist theory to generate propositions about the real world that can be empirically verified and/or studied; the interest in defining the concepts used in a systematic and clear way, and for the logical coherence of its analyses, criticising the obscurantism and 108 The most defining characteristics of analytic philosophy are its inclination towards the logical analysis of concepts and the study of language; an affinity with the empiricist tradition and the methods of scientific research, especially those of the physical sciences; which means a rejection of metaphysical currents and philosophies close to them. 109 Methodological individualism assumes that human beings act guided by instrumental rationality and that social structures are the unintended result of individual actions and, therefore, that collective behaviours are based on the convictions and motivations of individuals. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century metaphysical pretensions of many Marxists".110 This should imply the rejection of certain aspects of Marxism considered metaphysical, i.e. empirically unprovable, such as alienation or the dialectical method. Evidently, this position clashed head-on with those that distanced Marxism from the standard criteria used to define the sciences in general, and the social sciences in particular. In Cohen's case there is an exhaustive analysis of Marx's works with the aim of giving greater logical coherence to his theory of history, trying to show that historical materialism does not need to rely on a metaphysically based philosophy of history, which meant his rejection of the dialectical method, an element common to the authors framed in analytical Marxism. However, Jon Elster goes further and rejects any theory of history and even Marx's economic theory. The arguments between Cohen and Elster originated in the latter's rejection of Cohen's functional explanation of the Marxist theory of history, according to which the characteristics of the social relations of production allow the development of the productive forces. Indeed, within analytical Marxism, the two most distant and opposing positions were those held by Jon Elster and Gerald Cohen. The former clearly defended Marxism's use of rational decision and game theories, as well as methodological individualism, arguing that intentional-causal rather than functional explanation should predominate in the social sciences. Cohen, on the other hand, defends functional explanation as proper to historical materialism. This type of explanation would be the basis of his defence of Marxism based on three elements: "the productive forces (the means of production and the labour force), the relations of production (which are relations of economic power over the productive forces) and the legal and political superstructure. The relation established between these three elements would respond to the following maxim, the axis of the Marxist theory of history: the development of the productive forces explains the nature of the relations of production and these, in turn, explain the character of the superstructure that accompanies it".111 110 111 García, Marcos Jesús, Teoría marxista de las clases sociales, p. 93. Estrella González, Alejandro, op.cit. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Although analytical Marxists dealt with the various aspects of Marxism, however, for Roberto Gargarella112 the most defining aspect of this current would be its treatment of certain issues, such as justice or equality, a problem that had been marginalised or underestimated by most Marxist authors. The reason for this concern would not only be its starting point, based on methodological individualism, but the awareness that some premises established as necessary for the realisation of communism, such as those of a final egalitarian state or the absence of scarcity, were not being fulfilled in the practical experiences of real socialism and were difficult to fulfil. These premises, especially the last one, will be dealt with in more detail in two other chapters of this book, the first one devoted to the economic analysis of the experiences of real socialism and the discussions on the real possibilities of the material conditions of a communist society (unimpeded development of the productive forces and a situation of abundance satisfying the needs of mankind) being fulfilled; the second chapter is devoted to ecosocialism, where this current opposes the unimpeded development of the productive forces because of the existing serious ecological problems, without clarifying how such a situation would affect the project of establishing a communist society. In the same way, analytical Marxism also questioned other premises on which Marxism's revolutionary transformative action was based: that the working class was the majority in society, being both the class that generated the wealth and the class that was exploited with a tendency towards pauperisation, and therefore had nothing to lose and could embark on a revolution that would transform society. The questioning of these premises by analytical Marxists led them to return to the issue of justice and to propose a different set of alternatives to communist revolution. These authors understood that classical Marxism neglected the problem of justice in a communist society because they conceived that in a communist society the problems of scarcity would disappear - because of the development of productive forces 112 Gargarella, Roberto, Marxismo analítico, el marxismo claro (Analytical Marxism, Clear Marxism). Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century - and conflicts221 . Other Marxist authors argued that Marxism did have a theory of justice, although not developed, based on some enunciated principles such as distribution according to the contribution of the members of society, or according to their need or, also, based on the principle of self-realisation. On the subject of revolution, Gargarella continues, analytical Marxists criticise its feasibility in developed societies on the basis of their analysis of collective action according to the methodological presuppositions mentioned above: the difficulty of carrying out the revolution at the moment when capitalist forces reach their greatest expansion, coupled with subjective feelings of alignment and exploitation; the problems associated with free-rider behaviour, i.e. passive majorities hoping to benefit from the gains without taking the risks; or the contradiction of expecting the proletarians to be able to overcome the aforementioned problems of collective action and the bourgeois not. With these premises and criticisms, analytical Marxists developed some proposals for alternatives to capitalism which avoided the problem of revolution at the price of 221 In relation to this issue, and its practical difficulties, Josep Fontana's description of Khrushchev's experience of putting into practice this communist ideal of the disappearance of conflicts is interesting, and we reproduce a long paragraph from it: "This [communist society] was to be a harmonious and stable society, whose citizens, suitably re-educated, would have no incentive to commit crime. In March 1959, at the Third Congress of Writers, he [Khrushchev] made a speech which was reproduced on the front page of Pravda in which he argued that there was no human being who was incorrigible, not even political opponents and criminals. The only real enemies were the capitalists. Within Soviet society, correction was better than imprisonment. In the social peace of communism, crimes would be so rare that those who committed them would be regarded as mentally ill. Not only did he think that a future without prisons was possible, but he believed that it was within reach. To facilitate the re-education that was to replace prison, a decree of 2 March 1959 set up voluntary brigades in every factory and on every farm in the country to patrol the streets, identify troublemakers and report their behaviour to their place of work, and eventually to the police. At the same time, the "comrades' courts" were reformed, as part of an option which aimed not to arrest or imprison, but to re-educate through public reprobation. But in 1960 there had been an increase in crime, especially in the city of Moscow, which was attributed to the releases from prison brought about by the decree of 14 August 1959 and the new system of placing offenders under the tutelage of social organisations, instead of subjecting them to the usual repressive mechanisms. It was for this reason that at the 22nd Congress in 1961, the battle was organised against the lazy, parasites, troublemakers and drunks, who thought that in communism it was not necessary to work, but that it was enough just to consume and enjoy oneself. These anti-social elements had to be driven out so that they would not hinder the advance towards communism. Despite all the drawbacks, Khrushchev had not yet renounced his social utopia. It was, says Miriam Dobson, "the last breath of revolution, the last attempt to build a perfect world, this time without the need for excessive use of violence". Fontana, Josep, For the Good of the Empire, pp. 169-70. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez returning to the old utopianism of the 19th century - not only by not discussing its feasibility in depth, but also by not setting out the strategy to achieve such alternatives or by settling for reformism. Gargarella refers to two of these alternatives. The first would be that of universal basic income, i.e. the assurance for all individuals of a sufficient minimum income regardless of their productive activity222 . This alternative presupposes a situation of sufficient social surplus based on a highly productive society sheltered from economic crises. That is to say, as a proposal to be made within capitalism, it could surely work in the same conditions in which the welfare state has functioned, as long as there is a situation of economic growth, and in developed countries or some that have an important income situation (oil, etc.), but it is difficult to suppose that, being an extension of it, it could be conceived as a universal solution given the efforts of the dominant classes to reduce the extension of it where it has reached an important development. And if the proposal is made for a socialist society, then the alternative in that situation is superfluous. Even other authors of critical Marxism were sceptical or critical of this option. The second advanced alternative was that of market socialism, more widely accepted among analytical Marxists, with some variants depending on whether or not the market encompasses the production of goods, or is based on workers' cooperatives. Here too, Gargarella highlights the advantages and disadvantages. But in any case, and as with the previous alternative, this is an intellectual exercise without any practical implications, insofar as there is no proposal for a strategy on how to achieve them. Market socialism has been the subject of important controversies in the socialist camp, some of which will be analysed in greater detail in a later chapter. Analytical Marxism had a certain trajectory and practically disappeared in the second half of the 1990s, some of its authors renounced Marxism and others remained on its margins, seeking to overcome capitalism as part of an ethical project, hence some of the proposals they made and which we have mentioned. 222 This type of measure has already been implemented in various forms in different parts of the world, the oldest being Alaska, which has been in place for four decades, and among the most recent is Finland, although it is aimed only at the unemployed. The experiences underway are monitored and studied, and have among their enthusiastic supporters major transnational entrepreneurs such as the bosses of Facebook, Microsoft or Amazon, or are promoted by conservatives. In Finland, for example, it has been a centre-right government that has promoted this experimental measure. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century For Michael Lebowitz, analytical Marxism is not only impossible to consider as part of Marxism, but he considers its essence to be anti-Marxist. The answer seems to be that they consider themselves socialists and that "the label of Marxist reveals at least that certain fundamental ideas are perceived as coming from Marx" (Roemer, 1986), but if selected beliefs and ideas taken in isolation from a Marxist framework were sufficient for the designation of Marxism, this term would lose all comprehensive meaning. What makes analytical Marxism anti-Marxist is that the beliefs and ideas absorbed from Marx have been incorporated into an anti-Marxist framework, and that the parts have acquired properties of that whole" (Roemer, 1986).223 We see, then, that like the Western Marxism analysed by Anderson, this current is also composed of authors situated in the academic world and especially concerned with epistemological problems, although their professions are more diverse, philosophy is not the dominant one, and they are even further removed than those from leadership or militancy in Marxist organisations. Likewise, they ended up showing a pessimistic attitude towards the capacity of Marxism as an explanatory theory and an instrument of transformation. Also like post-Marxist authors, as we shall see later, they began by proposing the need to provide Marxism with a scientific foundation, only to end up distancing themselves theoretically and practically from it. The criticisms of this current from the Marxist camp were varied. Burawoy reproaches them for their dialogue with bourgeois theories in philosophy, sociology or economics, and for being more concerned with academic respectability than with answers to the challenges of history. Diego Guerrero openly describes analytical Marxism as "the most disastrous and degenerative trend in contemporary Marxist economic thought" and quotes the selfdefinition of one of the components of this current, Roemer, "many members of the school found, as the 1980s progressed, that it was increasingly inaccurate to characterise their work as Marxist", since "although Marxism continued to inspire the questions", the conclusions "were often completely different from Marx's".224 223 Lebowitz, Michael A., Is "Analytical Marxism" Marxism? 224 Guerrero Jiménez, Diego, Un Marx imposible: el marxismo sin teoría laboral del valor, pp. 12 and 14. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez As we have had occasion to see in the study of both British Marxist historians and analytical Marxism, both currents, despite their differences from each other and from Western Marxism, share some of the main features of the latter which, in the end, will persist to the present day. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Scientific Marxism and critical Marxism However, the affirmation of the scientific character of historical materialism gave rise to a typically philosophical problem: where does one find the scientificity of Marxism? To provide an answer to this question seemed to require two things. First, a general theory of the sciences and their relation to reality, to provide an objective foundation for the argument that Marxism is a science. That is, it seemed to require a theory that could determine the validity of Marxism as a purveyor of objective knowledge of the world - an epistemology. Second, an identification of those specific features of Marxist theory from which its scientific character was derived. Althusser's Marxism Alex Callinicos Analytical Marxism represented a strong expression of the attempt to give Marxism a status of scientificity in the conditions in which it was understood in the 1980s, but the authors who formed part of this current were not the only ones to raise this conflictive and never resolved issue about the nature of Marxism as a body of theories. Nor can it be claimed that all Marxist authors or organisations agree on the need to accredit the scientific status of Marxism. Given the different positions that can be found not only in the Marxist tradition as a whole, but also in Marx's own texts, various attempts have been made to classify Marxism. One of the best known is that of Alvin Gouldner225 , who, as we analysed earlier, divided Marxism into two major models or ideal types by isolating some of the most characteristic oppositions within it, on the understanding that, like any other ideal classification, this is an analytical tool that does not imply that these two models can be found as they are in the works of the different Marxist thinkers or in the practices of the organisations that claim to be Marxist. These 225 Gouldner, Alvin, The Two Marxisms Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez two ideal types are known as scientific and critical and are very relevant to the object of study intended in this chapter. Recapitulating what we have seen above, scientific Marxism would be characterised, according to this author, by its deterministic character and the pre-eminence given to structural analysis, where the role of economic structures stands out, separated from the superstructures (law, politics, culture) which are ultimately determined by them. These are analysed in the context of the maturation of the objective conditions that will allow the transition between different modes of production. In this perspective, the replacement of one mode of production by another is only possible when the first has reached the limit of its development and the relations of production are an obstacle to the development of the productive forces, which implies that the transition to socialism must take place in the most mature capitalist countries, not in the most backward, and that the transforming subject is inevitably the working class, for it is at the heart of production, in exploitation, that the essential contradiction of capitalism is situated and the class struggle originates. This is part of his progressive view of the productive forces, whose maximum development would be an indispensable condition for the possibility of a communist society. His analysis of capitalism aims at scientifically proving this development, which is regarded as necessary, hence his deterministic bias and rejection of the need for an ethical foundation of socialism. Scientific Marxism fully participates in the view of the capacity of science as an objective method of knowledge of reality and a necessary instrument for the development of the productive forces, thus disdaining the role of philosophy and replacing it with that of science. The defining characteristics of critical Marxism are practically the opposite of those of scientific Marxism. Now the emphasis is not on structures but on the conscious action of human beings who are presented as the real agents of historical transformations and, therefore, the subjective situations involved in this task, such as class consciousness, ideology and organisation, take on special importance. It rejects the separation between structure and superstructure in favour of a vision of society as a totality, for which it relies more on philosophical than scientific knowledge and, as a consequence, emphasises the critique of alienation and fetishism rather than the critique of exploitation. It relativises the need for socialist transformation to take place in developed capitalist countries, seeing it as more feasible in economically backward countries where the living conditions of the masses provide a more favourable Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century environment for revolution, which implies not recognising the proletariat as the indispensable revolutionary subject, but, in turn, is not informed by the deterministic and optimistic tendency towards the final triumph of socialism, which is only possible through a process in which human will plays a key role. The authors or currents closest to the vision of scientific Marxism are those who have raised most insistently and anxiously the problem of the scientific validity of the Marxist theoretical body, of the denials that reality has offered to some of the key propositions of Marxism. In this way, this disproval by the real development of events has led to a relaxation or abandonment of its initial determinist optimism. It is this approach to Marxism that is finding it most difficult to respond to the challenges posed to it, and it is the one that has tried the most complex responses, such as Althusserian structuralism or analytical Marxism, which have not been successful. We have already dealt with the latter, and we will deal with the former later. Critical Marxism seems, in principle, to have more advantages in the face of the adversities encountered by Marxism in actual historical development. If social ends and values are a collective construction not subject to any kind of historical laws, and human will is the key factor for social transformation, then these adversities are simply historical setbacks to be learned from and overcome, but not a disproval of the body of predictions of a theory. The problem is that this path is one of a more or less intense return to the positions of utopian socialism that Marx criticised so much. Indeed, the tendency of this current to produce discourses, critiques and projects oriented by a strong ethical component is clear, both in its vision of capitalism and in its proposals for society. However, despite its popularisation, Gouldner's dichotomous classification is not the only one. Another interesting one is proposed by Sánchez Vázquez, who differentiates three tendencies instead of two. "These are: the objectivist (economicist) tendency, which goes back to the Marxism of the Second and Third Internationals and Soviet Marxism (it focuses its interest on the ontological problem); the humanist tendency of Marxian thought in the 1950s and 1960s (which flourishes at the expense of its scientific character, privileging the anthropological problem); and the epistemological Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez tendency, which defines Marxism above all by its "scientificity" and "theoretical practice". All of them forget or relegate the essential of Marxist thought: praxis. "226 Some tend to identify critical Marxism with the philosophy of praxis. A third approach may be that expressed by Edgardo Lander227 , who states that in Marxism there have been three theoretical-epistemological conceptions in relation to truth and science, derived, in turn, from the three theoretical influences that concurred in the original formation of Marx's work: French utopian socialism, classical German philosophy and classical English economics. In the first field, that of utopian thought, values, aims and ethics are established, freedom and equality are raised, it is the terrain of the human will, where the legitimisation of aims and values is found in itself. Philosophical explanation will serve to find the meaning of history and to know its future; this type of knowledge is based on philosophical reflection, on the power of reason, and it is largely the basis of historical materialism and, above all, of the definition of communism as a goal to be achieved. The last field, that of scientific knowledge, has as its basis for approaching truth the model in force above all in the natural sciences, centred on empirical research and the testing of hypotheses, far removed from speculative reasoning. For Lander, these three theoretical-epistemological conceptions must necessarily produce contradictions when they are used together to support a model of knowledge and action. But the effectiveness of Marxism originally consisted in presenting its aims as coherent with the three conceptions: communism would be at once the goal of the society to be achieved, the end and meaning of history, and the inevitable consequence of the contradictions existing in capitalist society. However, he continues, the core of Marx's theoretical propositions are based on the philosophy of history. These propositions are put forward from his earliest works, and if Marx later devoted his intellectual effort to endow them with a scientific character it 226 Valqui Cachi, Camilo, La filosofía de la praxis en México ante el derrumbe del socialismo soviético, p. 232. 227 Lander, Edgardo, Contribución a la crítica del marxismo realmente existente (Contribution to the critique of really existing Marxism) Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century was because of "the predominance of scientism in the Western European intellectual climate" of his time, which prompted him to remove them from the realm of philosophical speculation in order to give them a scientific aspect. We might add that, equally, the claim of scientism for his theses was also the best way to distance himself from and disqualify the rest of the critical theories of his time, which he lumped under the term utopian socialism, i.e. the opposite of the scientific socialism that Marxism meant. But the epistemological diversity in Marxism could not fail to produce tensions and give rise to a dichotomy that would be expressed, as Alvin Gouldner pointed out, in the two Marxisms, the scientific and the critical, but also in the continuous efforts to recreate a true part of Marx as opposed to another that would be disposable. Among these efforts, Althusser's - which will be dealt with in more detail in a later chapter - was particularly noteworthy in his attempt to set aside the "Hegelian ideological leftovers" such as alienation, humanism, historicism and others, and thus save the scientific Marxism of the mature Marx. Lander, of course, rejects scientific Marxism as a theory that derives social aims and values from inexorable laws derived from the knowledge of history or scientific research, because in this way all discussion and decisions of society about its destiny are excluded and the sphere of freedom disappears, taking its place in the opinions of scientists and philosophers who would hold the monopoly of truth. But the relationship between Marxist theory and the natural sciences has been a complex and changing one depending on different political conjunctures, Lander sustaining the thesis that Marxism has shared the myths and fundamental illusions of scientific thought, and has thus limited its capacity "to criticise scientific activity as the predominant form of production and reproduction of knowledge in contemporary society". This author's position is the defence of an epistemological relativism that excludes one form of knowledge superior to the others on the basis of some absolute criterion and, therefore, rejects the paradigm of the natural sciences as the only possible form of knowledge, being a particular form guided by "the foresight, transformation, control and manipulation of the world", being, moreover, the fruit of a set of cultural choices shaping Western society. It is not only that he rejects the pre-eminence of scientism in Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Marxism because it is the basis of the deformation it suffered in his practical experiences, but, going further, he rejects the very value of science as a means of superior knowledge, being a knowledge fruit of a Western civilisational option that prioritises "the values of production, work, foresight and control" on which it will rely, at the same time as promoting the development of bourgeois society. However, his radical critique ends up leading him to utopianism. Fourthly, it is also important to note Elias José Palti's statement, "The tradition of Marxist thought, like any other, is not something homogeneous and stable. This is so not only in the obvious sense that it has undergone crucial reformulations throughout its century and a half of life, but also, and fundamentally, that its historicity never responds exclusively to its inherent impulses and problematics. It is criss-crossed from end to end by the wider recompositions in the regimes of knowledge that have taken place in the course of its development in Western thought. Marxist thought is thus successively reinstalled in various epistemological niches, reconfigured according to the various epistemi that define, at any given moment, the conditions of intelligibility of phenomena. Ultimately, these provide the basic theoretical network on the basis of which Marx's thought is also reread retrospectively and his legacy reformulated".228 If we take this view, then it is important to take into account the "regimes of knowledge" that are dominant in Western thought. Another rather unusual approach is that of Immanuel Wallerstein229 in which he establishes a relationship between the three stages of Marxism, a type of utopian model and a type of predominant science corresponding to each of these stages. His proposition is suggestive but remains superficial, failing to demonstrate the relationship between the three worldviews. The three models of utopia proposed by Wallerstein are Thomas More's, Engels' and Karl Mannheim's, as three different models that would also express "three different moments in the history of the modern world-system". Choosing Engels as a model of utopia seems a little surprising insofar as he himself incisively criticised utopianism, yet 228 Palti, Elías José, Verdades y saberes del marxismo. Reacciones de una tradición política ante su "crisis", p.92. 229 Wallerstein, Inmanuel, Unthinking Social Science. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Wallerstein considers his predictions of the inevitable extinction of the state after the socialist revolution to be a futuristic vision that falls into the realm of utopianism. Wallerstein, as mentioned above, establishes three Marxist eras, the first corresponding to Marx's most politically and intellectually active period, between 1840 and 1889. His death gave way to the second era, that of "orthodox Marxism", which this author identifies as "party Marxism" and which, in this sense, he defines in time between the Gotha Congress and the Bad Godesberg Congress in 1959, its imprint being given by the experiences of the second and third internationals. The third era began in the 1950s and is still in force today, calling it the era of a thousand Marxisms, its distinguishing feature being the absence of orthodoxy, in which Marxism is used "to carpet so many different worldviews that its content seems very diluted". After establishing the three models of utopia and the three eras of Marxism, Wallerstein proposes a relationship between the two. "The Marxist utopia that prevailed in Marx's era was in fact the utopia of More, which above all was a critique of capitalist reality in the name of a possible human alternative - which only had to be proclaimed to be realised in a relatively short historical period [...] That kind of revolution came close to being realised in the Paris Commune, after which it became the symbol of the utopian possibilities of this first Marxist era. " But why link the era of orthodox or party Marxism with the utopia assigned to Engels? In principle, Wallerstein argues that the Marxism of this second era rejected the utopia of Marx's era, even while denying this and disqualifying utopian positions, claiming that in the face of utopian desires, the party embodied "science, which was rational, methodical and efficient", but "the rejected utopia, found expression in the barely described, but by all accounts perfect, classless society that lay at the end of history, just beyond the horizon. We got there by walking (even running) in the here and now along the rational, methodical and efficient path that the party laid out". Wallerstein points out that since the age of a thousand Marxisms, the Marxist utopia of the first era has been rejected because "it was inefficient and therefore not a true utopia", without providing data on who it was that rejected it in this way. On the disqualification of the utopia of the second era, the world-system theorist is confused, referring to the fact that this is the meaning of the criticisms of actually existing socialism. Thus, the utopia of the third era of Marxism would be, in line with Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Mannheim's, a utopia with a claim to efficiency, without this having been proven to date. As has been pointed out, Wallerstein's approach is suggestive insofar as it attempts to analyse the utopian component present in Marxism, but it remains on the surface of an intellectual construction with a certain brilliance but little explanation. The last relational essay is the one that establishes between the three eras of Marxism and the three eras of social science that developed in parallel. The first would be a philosophical era of the social sciences, in which historical efforts to shake off the yoke of theology had encountered certain limits, "those in which such knowledge remained a philosophy, that is, in which it was based on a constant pressure to formulate the analysis of this world in terms of human potential, of the goodness of truth. In this way, history was instructive history, and the social question centred on what was to be done." Marx and the classical economists are situated as the culmination of this philosophical era of the social sciences and as the beginning of the next era. The second era of social science would be the scientific one, therefore, scientific social analysis had to be logical, empirical and quantified, with "a body of specialised and professionally trained researchers in a multiplicity of so-called disciplines", and Wallerstein then asks, "what is the difference between the party of orthodox Marxism as the sole interpreter of scientific socialism (along with inexorable and continuous party activity as the only meaningful path to revolution) and the body of professional social scientists as the sole concern of the scientific method (along with inexorable and continuous research as the only meaningful path to scientific truth)? " In the third era, social science is defined by Wallerstein as "process interpretation" and rejects "philosophy" as ideological utopia, and accuses social scientific science of also being ideology. "The third era is sceptical of Baconian-Newtonian science as the only defensible version of science. " Wallerstein's essay is an interesting intellectual essay, but too theoretical and ambiguous to draw practical lessons from it and to be used to clarify the scientific status of Marxism. We have already dealt in the previous chapter with the positions that the analytical Marxist tendency held on this issue, now, to conclude, it is necessary to dwell on Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century another of the most important efforts made to deal with the scientific nature of Marxism from a philosophical approach, that of Louis Althusser. A synthetic and critical overview of his contributions is provided by Alex Callinicos in Althusser's Marxism, which we will follow below. Callinicos' book also has another merit, that of summarising the main milestones of the discussion on this issue in the Marxist camp up to the 1970s. First, and very succinctly, he sets out what Marx's position would have been. First, he rejected "the version of empiricism which maintains the scientific nature of a theory on the immediate correspondence of theory and facts, since facts themselves are theoretical constructs"230 , then Marx considered that the objectivity of science can only be achieved "through the work of the scientist", finally, "Marx asserts the clear separation between thought and reality. Indeed, the existence of the sciences presupposes their separation from reality [...] Marx's materialism is based on the assertion of the primacy of being over thought and, at the same time, on their separation, thought as a reflection of reality. "231 Dialectics would be for Marxists the form of theory for the study of social reality and the basis of its scientific character. Engels dealt with a problem that Marx did not address in depth, "that of providing Marxism with a general epistemological foundation", but Engels performed, in Callinicos' view, a "metaphysical tour de forcé" by "interpreting dialectics not simply as providing the specific structures for Marx's analyses of social formations such as capitalism, but as actually representing the laws of all reality, both natural and social, and their reflection in thought. "232 For this purpose Engels relied on Hegel's idealist dialectics, arguing that he rejected his idealist system, but adopted his method, and Marxist philosophy became "a general philosophy of nature". It was this position that prevailed as orthodox in the parties of the Second International until the crisis that broke out in 1914. But already in this approach nested "the great problem of Marxist philosophy: how can we claim that Marxism is dialectical when dialectics, in the hands of Hegel at least (and none of the main 230 Callinicos, Alex, Althusser's Marxism, p.5 Ibid, pp. 15-16 232 Ibid, p. 6 231 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez traditions of Marxist philosophy has rejected Hegel's basic categories) is entirely idealist? "233 This crisis led to a philosophical crisis of Marxism which was based on a return to Hegel, the main exponents of which were Gramsci, Korsch and Lukács. For Callinicos, in this crisis, and in relation to the subject we are dealing with, these authors posed two essential problems, that of the relationship between theory and practice, and that of the relationship between science and the reality to be explained. This return to Hegel gave a special slant to Marxism's conception of science and to the scientific character of Marxism itself, for these authors argued that "A theory has validity as knowledge to the extent that it is appropriate to the historical needs of a particular class, in a particular epoch [...] [and that] . Marxism is therefore scientific because it serves the needs of the working class in its struggle for power. "234 The result was that the task of establishing the objectivity of the sciences became impossible. "The validity of the sciences became dependent, in Lukács' case, on their character as the consciousness of a given class-subject. In Gramsci's it depended, immediately, on their role in articulating the aspirations of a particular class to hegemony and, finally, on an envisaged unity of the human race in which objectivity would be the unanimity of free men at the end of class conflicts."235 Both Gramsci and Lukács rely on a fundamental error, which separates them from Marx, the denial of any separation between thought and the reality it seeks to know. "The themes of their works - the problem of the unity of theory and practice, and the problem of the relation between science and its object - are an invalid and illicit amalgam of questions of a very different order. "236 The two problems we pointed out above, which were invalidly amalgamated by Korsch, Gramsci and Lukács, are taken up again by Althusser who, in opposition to them, bases himself on the postulate that theory is autonomous, and that when it comes to establishing the scientific character of a theory, a foundation external to itself cannot be accepted. In this first approach, the French philosopher rejects that Marxist philosophy 233 Ibid, p. 14 Callinicos, Alex, Althusser's Marxism, p.10 235 Ibid, p. 40 236 Ibid, p. 14 234 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century can play the role of being the guarantee of the sciences and assigns it the role of "theory of theoretical praxis", i.e. it must deal "with the question of the mechanisms that result in the appearance of theoretical formations that are scientific. " 237 An extremely ambitious claim which, however, it does not justify, and which leads Callinicos to denounce as "a profound contradiction within Althusser's epistemology. It is the contradiction between the assertion that the autonomy of theoretical praxis involves a "radical interiority" such that there is no general criterion for the scientific character of the theory of praxis but that each science, properly constituted, possesses its own specific criterion of scientific validity, and the definition of Marxist philosophy as the theory of theoretical praxis, whose specific role consists precisely in applying this general criterion through its analysis of knowledge-effect. Such a contradiction is itself part of a larger general problem inherent in Althusser's system. "238 For while Althusser rejects that the sciences are part of the superstructure, "it is impossible to differentiate the position of theoretical praxis from that of any other element of the superstructure". Thus Althusser ends up being accused of returning to bourgeois empiricist epistemology after having criticised it incisively. Althusser would later recognise these errors and contradictions, rejecting his definition of philosophy as a theory of theoretical praxis and thus its role "as a science of the sciences which is the guarantor of the epistemological validity of the sciences", which is a rejection of all epistemology, proposing a new definition in which "philosophy is the reflection in theory of the class struggle itself. "239 Callinicos' conclusion on this aspect of Althusser's work that we are analysing is positive, "he has provided us with elements for a theory of the sciences which is radically non-positivist and non-empiricist, which avoids the speculative ambitions of epistemology and which allows us to conceive of the sciences both in their specificity and in their relation to the class struggle. "240 However, it has not at all cleared up the problem that we will deal with in the next section, that of whether Marxism is a scientific theory and, if so, why. 237 Ibid, p. 43 Callinicos, Alex, Althusser's Marxism, p. 57. 239 Ibid, p. 66 240 Ibid, p. 82 238 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The status of Marxism as a scientific theory Marxists themselves have engaged in a fierce battle over the scientificity or nonscientificity of their doctrine, to such an extent that they conventionally divide into two opposing camps - the scientific Marxists who attempt to establish laws of economic development analogous to the laws of the natural sciences, and the critics who deny the existence of any strict determinism and deal with the irrationality of capitalism, with the gap between what is and what could be. Determinism vs. voluntarism, science vs. revolution, materialism vs. idealism, the old Marx vs. the young, have been enduring antinomies within Marxism. Marxism as a Science: Historical Challenges and Theoretical Development Michael Burawoy An important perspective from which to approach the crisis of Marxism has to do with its scientific status. And it is important because Marxism has claimed insistently, and by the bulk of its authors, not all of them, its scientific character. No other previous or contemporary political doctrine has claimed this status with such insistence. Liberalism or nationalism have profoundly shaped contemporary society at most on the basis of certain philosophical principles. The sciences, in turn, have been criticised in that the orientation of their practical development has been marked by the needs of capitalist development, but the methodological principles with which they have unravelled the world in its various aspects have not been the fruit of political needs. Marxism, however, has gone much further in postulating itself as a political doctrine, a Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century philosophical conception and a scientific discipline. And the result has been conceptions of science outside the consensus that dominates the scientific community, and sometimes in opposition to each other, which has given rise to polemics not only with what they call the bourgeois view of science, but also between different Marxist authors. It must therefore be pointed out that, as in many other respects, the wide variety of interpretations of Marxism contain profound discrepancies about what Marxism means by science, and thus about its own self-positioning as a scientific doctrine. Every scientific discipline is defined by two fundamental features: it is a complex paradigm capable of explaining the area of reality it deals with, and it is capable of making predictions with a significant degree of probability on the basis of established knowledge. In his History of science, Francisco Fernández Buey mentions several aspects in relation to science that it is interesting to take into account in order to discuss the scientific pretensions of Marxism. The first aspect refers to the characteristics that knowledge must fulfil in order to be considered scientific, "[3] what differentiates scientific knowledge from ordinary knowledge and other forms of knowledge is not so much its object as the way of proceeding to analyse or explain it; [4] we call this way of proceeding through the formulation of hypotheses and the construction of theories and models the scientific method. (...) 7] as procedures for approaching what reality is, models and theories are an open work, always subject to revision; 8] therefore, the truths of science are not absolute and its method is characterised by: 8.1 adhering to logic. 8.2 submitting to verification or contrastation. 8.3 doing experiments for this purpose. 8.4 assuming that there can always be a better approximation to reality than the one available 8.5 not accepting as better other approximations to reality (in the same field in question) that have not been sufficiently tested. 8.6 to encourage a critical spirit with regard to one's own theories and models. 8.7 to consider as alien to scientific procedure any argumentation that does not meet the above requirements (8.1., 8.2. and 8.3. mainly). " 241 241 Fernández Buey, Francisco, Historia de la ciencia, http://www.upf.es/iuc/buey/ciencia Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The second aspect concerns the difficult relationship between the natural and social sciences. From the moment the social disciplines aspired to the status of science, they were attracted by the model of the natural sciences, an attraction accentuated "during the 18th and 19th centuries by the stimulus of the explanatory and predictive success of the science of nature in general and of Newtonian mechanics in particular. For the social disciplines, this attention soon turned into a real attraction to the characteristic way of proceeding of the natural sciences since the time of the scientific revolutions. Ronald L Meek has drawn attention to the common interest of the socio-historical disciplines in the period from the English Revolution to the French Revolution: to apply to the study of man and society those "scientific" methods of investigation which had recently proved their value and importance in the field of natural science. "242 And Fernández Buey adds what can be considered a personal touch in this relationship between sciences, "the attraction felt by the approach of natural scientists has marked the origin and development of the social sciences. An indication of the complication of the history of scientism in the human/social/historical realm is the number of candidates to be the Newton (or Galileo) of the social sciences. Perhaps the first of the official candidates was John Locke. But Locke's candidacy was soon taken up by David Hume (...) the list of candidates is extended if we consider the works of Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, etc.".243 The third aspect is related to the different scope of scientific theories, which has come to be known as theories of great scope or of medium scope, "in the history of science there are theories that, regardless of their explanatory and predictive power, have a fairly limited scope, that is, they explain a set of phenomena or events whose scope, although important, is relatively small, reduced. However, we also call scientific theories very wide-ranging symbolic constructions that contain several laws or principles that explain a set of phenomena or events that are difficult to encompass by a single science. They are grand theories or, as they are also called, synthetic theories, theories that aspire to or end up giving rise to a great 242 243 Ibid Ibid Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century synthesis, which ends up influencing all the disciplines close to the one in whose framework it was initially formulated. Such is the case of the Darwinian theory of evolution. "244 The fourth, and final aspect, concerns the shift in the centre of gravity of interest in the sciences in the 19th and 20th centuries, "just as the two central ideas of the 19th century scientific paradigm can be said today to be "evolution" and "entropy", so the two central ideas of the 20th century scientific paradigm can be said to have been "relativity" and "uncertainty". "245 Just as Marxism revealed how the different modes of production and the social formations associated with them are not eternal and succeed one another, driven by their internal contradictions, so scientific paradigms have succeeded one another as their capacity to respond to the problems posed to them has been exhausted. This is essentially the argument of scientific revolutions that Thomas Kuhn brought into vogue, according to which the sciences have not progressed uniformly on the basis of a hypothetical scientific method, but rather, on the contrary, progress is made through revolutions that take place when the current scientific paradigm is no longer effective in dealing with new problems, then a search for new theories takes place, and when one of them proves its superiority, it ends up being accepted as the new scientific paradigm. Focusing on the social sciences, we could refer to various paradigms that have been superseded, even within a few years. So, given the enormous problems that have arisen around the main assumptions of Marxism, and unless we try to claim the absurdity that it is a special science, to which the defining criteria of the other sciences are not applicable246 , the self-defined status of Marxism as a scientific discipline - understood as such under the premises we have just seen - is exposed to serious problems, among which an important aspect to be elucidated is whether it has its fundamental core and, if so, whether it is still valid. 244 Ibid Ibid 246 This position has been held by many Marxists, its most grotesque and noxious position being that which prevailed in the Soviet Union during Stalinism, which forced the sciences to conform to the canons of diamat and produced theories such as those of Lysenko in biology, later rejected after the worst moments of Stalinism had passed. 245 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Francisco Erice247 approached this problem by asking himself what would be the common trunk that would define Marxism, because so many contributions and interpretations have been made that Marxism itself has been extended until its defining contours have been diluted. But even the definition of that common trunk is problematic as he himself acknowledges, "For the socialists of the late 19th century, it boiled down to the trinity of Marxist thought: the materialist conception of history, the theory of value and the class struggle. For the young Lukács (the well-known Hungarian Marxist philosopher), it was limited to method, to dialectics. In more recent times, the Catalan Marxist Manuel Sacristán summed up in its materialist and dialectical component the essentials of the Marxist worldview, which is "the attempt to consciously formulate the implications, assumptions and consequences of the effort to create a communist society and culture"; but these particular assumptions and implications - he added - are modified according to "the intellectual horizon of each epoch. "" Even if we stick to Marx himself, so as not to take into account later contributions which introduce elements of eclecticism, it is not possible to define either the core or the truly scientific propositions, this author seems to recognise, "Marx's work, like that of many other authors, is a collection of writings and texts of different rank and level of elaboration, with approaches which sometimes change as events change - many of Marx's texts were considered by him to be merely preparatory - or as the evolution of scientific knowledge (anthropological, historical, etc.) itself allows. Think for example of his ideas on historical stages and the succession of modes of production or his theory of the state. The problem is that, as has been pointed out, Marx "was neither a systematic philosopher, nor an economist who devoted himself only to analysis, nor a sociologist who sought to differentiate sociological facts from other neighbouring fields (...), nor a politician in the usual sense of the word"; he is rather an "interdisciplinary classic", susceptible of different interpretations". In a 1978 article by Lucio Colletti248 , whose main focus is the crisis of Marxism, the Italian philosopher takes advantage of this intervention to introduce another of his well- 247 Erice, Francisco, What is Marxism. Materiales para el debate. Curso "Marxismo: pasado y presente", http://www.wenceslaoroces.org/formacionpca/ 248 Colletti, Lucio, El problema de la dialéctica, El Viejo Topo, nº 20, May 1978. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century known criticisms, the conflictive relationship between Marxism and science, which leads him to deny the scientific character of Marxism. The conflict stems from Marxism's view of reality as internally contradictory and, consequently, only dialectics, as the science of contradiction, is capable of explaining it. But science rejects dialectics as a form of knowledge. This is not only a critique of "dialectical materialism", which many Marxists could accept, but its extension to "historical materialism", Colletti confessing that he belatedly discovered the dialectical intrusions in the latter. For the Italian philosopher, "Marxism lacks a rigorous concept of science", and in Marx there are two alternative and incompatible conceptions of science, the empiricistnaturalist one of English origin, and the Platonic-Hegelian one of science as true knowledge as opposed to apparent knowledge. Thus, in Marx there would be an important contradiction between the scientific pretension of his theory and the maintenance of dialectics in the theories of fetishism and alienation, "which implies finalism and dialectics, [and] is incompatible with the demand for causal and scientific explanation". For Colletti, the two tendencies that express this tension in Marxism would be represented, at the height of the 1970s, on the one hand, by the Frankfurt School as the best exponent of the theory of alienation and "romantic critique of science and industrial society" and, on the other hand, the one who is most committed to the "reconstruction of Marxism as a science" is Althusser, trying to "expunge Marxism of all traces of the theory of alienation". However, he considers the work of the French philosopher to be contradictory because, in parallel to his repudiation of humanism and historical finalism, "he continues to consider dialectics as the science of contradictions as essential to Marx's work". In his analysis of the status of the scientific status of Marxism, Michael Burawoy249 first reviews the various models of science offered by the philosophy of science, favouring Lakatos's methodology of scientific research programmes as the most coherent and 249 Burawoy, Michael, Marxism as a Science: Historical Challenges and Theoretical Development, American Sociological Review, Vol. 55, No. 6, (Dec. 1990), pp. 775-793. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez requiring "the evaluation of a historical sequence of theories, not of a single theory", which allows him to study the history of Marxism. After a brief discussion of why Lakatos' model is more coherent and explanatory than other models of science such as inductism, Popper's falsificationism or Kuhn's theories of scientific revolutions, he describes Lakatos' model that will serve to account for the history of Marxism. For this author, "science does not grow through the refutation of conjectures but through the refutation of the refutations of nuclear theories. "And, "instead of considering anomalies as reasons to reject their theories, scientists refute anomalies to defend their theories". Each research programme would be composed of a nuclear theory that is protected from refutations or anomalies by scientists through the construction of auxiliary hypotheses. Thus, the research programme develops through the construction of a belt of theories that account for anomalies. However, research programmes can be progressive or degenerative. In the former, belts of new theories absorb anomalies, expand the programme and offer new predictions. In degenerative programmes, on the contrary, belts of new theories only correct anomalies in an ad hoc manner, reducing the scope of the theory, which by not predicting new facts remains stagnant. For Lakatos, Marxism is a degenerative programme. But Michael Burawoy rejects this conclusion and proposes to develop some elements of Lakatos' methodology that would show that Marxism is a progressive research programme. Thus, instead of speaking of a hard core, he speaks of a family of cores that generates different branches within the same research programme, and successive theories develop like belts within each branch. Some of these branches might be progressive and others degenerative. In this way he approaches the theoretical history of Marxism. This author considers that the core of the theory was defined by Marx in his preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy around seven postulates of historical materialism which he describes as follows: "P1 For there to be history, men and women must transform nature into a means for their survival, i.e. they must produce their means of existence (...) P2 The "economic base" or mode of production defines the limits of variation of the superstructure (...) P3 A mode of production develops through the interaction of the productive forces (how we produce the means of existence) and the relations of production (how the product of labour is appropriated and distributed) Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century (...) P4 Class struggle is the struggle between the productive forces (how we produce the means of existence) and the relations of production (how the product of labour is appropriated and distributed) (...).) P4 Class struggle is the motor of the transition from one mode of production to another (...) P5 A successful transition can only take place when the material conditions are fulfilled (...) P6 History is progressive to the extent that it accompanies the expansion of the productive forces (...) P7 Communism marks the end of social antagonisms and the beginning of the emancipation of individuals. We no longer make history pushed from behind but consciously and collectively". The main texts where Marx elaborated this nuclear theory would be Capital, The Eighteenth Brumaire and The Class Struggle in France. In the last decades of the 19th century the first anomalies in the project had already appeared - as we have seen, for Gouldner these anomalies had already appeared during Marx and Engels' construction of the paradigm - and the first belt of theories appeared in Germany in relation to the implications of the extension of bourgeois democracy and the expansion of the productive forces for socialist strategy. Bernstein essayed the revision of the hard core to absorb the anomalies, giving rise to a new and different research programme; while Rosa Luxemburg, confronting Bernstein, added a belt of theories to transform the anomaly into a confirmation of the core. Kautsky's position was to disregard the anomalies and thereby neither strengthen the kernel nor create a new project. In Russia the anomaly centred on the possibility of the revolution taking place in a backward country, and not in the developed ones, and it was Trotsky who created a new belt of theories to counter this anomaly with his theories of uneven and combined development and permanent revolution. Lenin, for his part, also added another belt of theory in two respects. The first concerns the transition to socialism with The State and Revolution, where, on the basis of his confrontation with Kautsky's orthodox Marxism and anarchism, he makes the new workers' state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, play a central role in the transition process. The second aspect concerns the role of war and imperialism in the phase of monopoly capitalism, with which he sought to explain both the capitalist dynamics at this stage and the behaviour of the socialists in the First World War, as well as the existence of the labour aristocracy. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The next anomaly would be produced by the establishment of socialism in one country, where Soviet Marxism would be a degenerative branch of this anomaly, while Western Marxism would be the progressive branch. The first author of Western Marxism was Georg Lukács, in whom orthodox Marxism still persists, and his main contribution is his theory of reification. The critical theory (Frankfurt School) continued and developed this analysis of Lukács with the theories of organised and state capitalism. It put in cause the emancipatory character of the rule of nature and lost all confidence in the revolutionary activity of the working class contaminated by capitalism. Analytical Marxism is discarded as a progressive branch of development because, in attempting to marry Marxism to the techniques of modern social science, it makes the historical challenges that made it develop vanish. Like post-Marxism, it has a reduced capacity to recognise the anomalies that arise and then generate theories that integrate them. The progressive branch to deal with the failure of revolution in the West and the rise of fascism were the theories developed by Gramsci, bringing to the surface the indeterminism in the seven postulates of historical materialism, emphasising the degree of independence that exists in the sphere of the superstructures, and prioritising the periodisation of the history of capitalism from the rise of civil society. This belt of theories on politics and ideology led to the advocation of a new revolutionary strategy. The last great anomaly, the most important one that Marxism has encountered, is that of the collapse of real socialism, for which, Michael Burawoy acknowledges, a new branch of Marxism is required, pointing to the existence of thought that criticised real socialism such as Trotskyism or Rudolf Bahro. He acknowledges that the challenge this time is more serious because not only is the road to communism blocked, but the very viability of such a society is questioned, but ends on a note of optimistic voluntarism. The problem with the way in which the scientific status of Marxism is posed, as this author puts it, can be summed up in the fact that, in a century and a half, the paradigm that Marxism represents, while it has been able to account for some of the anomalies it has encountered, has not been able to establish the society whose purpose is its reason for existence. But perhaps the most striking aspect of this approach is that the creation of progressive theories to account for the anomalies that Marxist thought was facing, according to Burawoy's account, stops more than 60 years ago with Lukács and Gramsci. It is not clear why the author considers that none of the important later Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century contributions, such as those of Ernest Mandel, Nicos Poulantzas, Perry Anderson, Louis Althusser and a host of other authors, are theories that contribute anything to the growing anomalies facing Marxism. Consequently, we encounter two major difficulties with Burawoy's approach, the first, and most important, is the challenge he himself points out about the debacle of real socialism, in this case a very serious anomaly for which no new belt of explanatory theories has appeared, thus affecting the hard core of Marxist theory; the second is that the creation of explanatory theories stopped several decades ago even though the problems related to the explanatory capacity of Marxism kept increasing. In the summary of Gabriel Vargas Lozano's thoughts on the effects of the collapse of real socialism on Marxism, Valqui Chaqui250 sets out the different components of Marxism in different sets of themes according to their current validity, as listed by the Mexican sociologist. In this list of blocks ranging from the most to the least solid, the first would be the fundamental core of Marxism which would be formed by, "the critique of the capitalist system as a form that produces alienation, fetishism and dehumanisation; the theory of value, the theory of exploitation, its philosophical conception of history, the theory of classes and class struggle, its conception of man, an ontology of social being, the proposal of a practical rationalism, the concept of the relation between theory and practice, the conditioning of theory, the thesis of science as a productive force, the formation of a new method for the social sciences, and the concept of revolution. " He then points out what would be the problematic contributions, not sufficiently dealt with, "the theory of ideologies, the sociology of knowledge, aesthetic ideas, the theory of the modes of appropriation of the world, his conception of the party, the dialectics of the social whole, pre-capitalist modes of production, the theory of social change (or revolution), the theory of the state, on democracy, religion, and his final theses on peripheral capitalism". Thirdly, there would be the properly utopian ideas, "the idea of communism, that is, a series of ideas of what the future society could be (Critique of the Gotha Programme), 250 Valqui Chaqui, Camilo, La filosofía de la praxis en México ante el derrumbe del socialismo real, Internet edition by Rebelión, pp. 142-3. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez the extinction of the state, the elimination of all kinds of alienation, and the end of politics". And, finally, the theses that were never valid, such as those "concerning Latin America (manifested in Marx and Engels' ideas on the US and French invasions of Mexico); the young Marx's teleological conception of history, which does not hold up in the mature Marx; on the Asian mode of production and the dictatorship of the proletariat (which only alludes to the coercive character of power)", or those he considers simply errors, "the underestimation of the chances of survival of capitalism, the extinction of the middle classes, the underestimation of the consequences of a historical leap from the Russian commune to socialism, and the appraisals of Simon Bolivar." In addition to these blocks, there are statements that can be checked against what has happened historically, and their non-fulfilment has been demonstrated for various reasons: "(1) Socialism will emerge from the maturation of the contradictions of capitalist society (here Marx could not foresee that capitalism would circumvent its crises by creating a super-exploited periphery, which would give its developed societies certain benefits, and the transformation of democracy into a complex legal, political and ideological system that would put real power in safety); (2) Socialism will develop in mature societies; (3) Between capitalist society and communist society there is a period of revolutionary transformation, to which corresponds a political period of transition, the state of which is the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat (after the dictatorships of Nazism and Stalinism the concept of revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat can be replaced by the Gramscian concept of hegemony); 4) The bourgeois relations of production constitute the last antagonistic form of the social process of production (this gave grounds for "real socialism" to consider the fundamental contradictions of the social process closed); 5) The new society will be built by the industrial proletariat (today this proletariat has been transformed by new technologies and we are also witnessing the emergence of new historical subjects) and; 6) The future society will cancel alienation (it could not foresee the deepening of the forms of alienation)." The proposal to differentiate the themes is important, especially because not many authors have made the effort to confront this problem. However, if we compare the content of these blocks with each other, the themes that would finally form the most Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century solid nucleus of Marxism, and especially those that have to do with the object of achieving socialism, are quite reduced. In fact, for these purposes, in the first block there are only two themes, class struggle and revolution, but the latter is also considered as not being sufficiently dealt with. The other issues directly related to the praxis of transforming society are not included in the solid core, but are included in the other blocks: the idea of communism, the extinction of the state, the dictatorship of the proletariat or the underestimation of the chances of survival of capitalism. But more important is the block of issues which have been left unfulfilled by practical experience and which further weaken the essence of the solid core of Marxism, which is finally reduced to the critical analysis of the capitalist system of production in all its aspects and to the class struggle, which is in fact a cornerstone of that analysis. The rest - and we do not assume this to be Vargas Lozano's conclusion, but our own - is called into question by the experience of seven decades of real socialism. A scientific and correctly founded critique of the capitalist mode of production is fundamental, but clearly insufficient to be able to raise a praxis that leads to its overcoming. All related aspects, the subjects, the strategy, the vehicle, the transition and the foundations of the future society have proved to have a weak basis. Sometimes because it has been thought that previous experiences, such as that of the bourgeois revolutions, have been extrapolated. At other times because optimistic voluntarism has prevailed, as in the thesis of the extinction of the state and the self-organisation of producers in the future society, or the more or less immediate collapse of capitalism. Also because it has succumbed to the illusion of an ephemeral experience such as the Paris commune, proposing it as a model of future society. But it must not be forgotten that there are clear errors due to the mixture of scientific analysis with political propaganda, and that the heat of a hard and uncompromising struggle makes the former dogmatic and prevents the correction of the errors - proper to the scientific method - in order to update the analysis with the feedback of experience. So, if we add to the anomalies which appeared in the early phase of paradigm construction and which were pointed out by Gouldner, those which appeared later with the development of history, and for which Burawoy points to the production of alternative theories which were capable of confronting these later anomalies, but which ceased to appear more than six decades ago, and we end up adding the weakness of a consistent core in Marxism, as Vargas Lozano points out, then the picture that emerges Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez is that of a great weakness of Marxism as a scientific theory at the beginning of the 21st century. This situation provides the explanation for why the critical side of Marxism prevails over the scientific side, not as a result of a greater explanatory or transformative capacity - for its historical achievements ended in failures - but as a result of the growing weakness of the scientific side. This leads to a twofold process: on the one hand, the retreat of Marxism in the face of the challenges of new critical thinking, which we will analyse in the last chapters, and, on the other hand, the retreat of critical Marxism towards the positions of 19th century utopian socialism, which Marx and Engels criticised so much. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Marxist economics There is no doubt that Marxism must appropriate all modern developments. But appropriating them means much more than adapting to them: it means stripping them of the bourgeois system in which they appear, examining their hidden premises and resituating them (if and when appropriate) on a Marxist terrain - a terrain that does not consist of a simple algebraic variation or sociological transformation of the premises of orthodox economics. We must and do have our own terrain on which to build. Neo-ricardian economics. A wealth of algebra, a poverty of theory Anwar Shaikh I have taken the liberty of appropriating the Shaikh quote at the head of this chapter, taken from an article by Diego Guerrero to which we will refer later on, because it sums up quite well the problem we are now going to analyse. The reason for devoting three chapters exclusively to Marxists who have dealt with economics is that, as we have seen, most Marxist theorists have been located in the field of historiography and, above all, philosophy. The majority of these authors have mainly dealt with issues related to their field of specialisation, although they have also dabbled less intensively in other aspects such as political strategy or organisation. But what is unusual is their interest in economics. Symmetrically, Marxist economists have, with some exceptions - such as Ernest Mandel or Claudio Katz - mainly focused on the field they dominate, that of economics, which justifies the dedication of two separate chapters to them. The reason for dividing these contributions and discussions into three separate chapters is both for the sake of clarity, and because they deal with two quite different areas. This first chapter will be devoted to Marxist contributions and discussions on the analysis and critique of the capitalist mode of production, which, in the opinion of most Marxist economists, is the original and main object of this theory. The following chapters will analyse authors and discussions that have focused on a different object, societies in transition to socialism, for which the continued relevance of the classical Marxist Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez categories used for the analysis of the capitalist mode of production and the validity of some of these categories in such transition processes has been questioned. In practice, this situation only confirms that the growing complexity of the different fields of knowledge obliges intellectuals to specialise in order to be able to make a significant contribution in their respective fields. If the specificity of the economic problematic has led us to an extensive analysis developed in three chapters, and if we are also going to dedicate another extensive chapter to the problem of strategy, the revolution, it would seem normal to do the same with the problematic of power and the state for Marxism, if we have desisted from doing so it is because this extensive analysis is already included in a previous work, Class Society, Political Power and the State251 . 251 Sánchez Rodríguez, Jesús, Sociedad de clases, poder político y Estado. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Marxism as analysis and critique of the capitalist mode of production It is absolutely essential to understand that there may be non-conjunctural reasons for Marx's theory to be restricted to capitalism. Capitalist society itself has certain peculiarities that make it susceptible to theorisation. Against the grain. Epistemology, historiography and Marxism. César Rendueles With more or less success in classifying the variety of contributions made by the Marxists discussed in the other chapters, we have differentiated between classical Marxism, Western Marxism, analytical Marxism and British Marxist historiography, to which we will add some more later. In this chapter on Marxist economics, different currents or trends can also be differentiated, as we will have the opportunity to analyse them, but first of all it would be convenient to refer to a fact that poses a totally unbalanced division between Marxism, which refers almost exclusively to Marx, and neo-Marxism, where the great majority of his followers would be situated, divided into different trends. This is the suggestive proposition put forward by Diego Guerrero, which we shall see below. This Spanish economist understands neo-Marxism in two ways, one narrow and the other broader. In the first sense, neo-Marxism would refer to the contributions that revolve around "the theses of monopoly capitalism, underdevelopment and unequal exchange", and whose central authors are Baran and Sweezy; in a broader sense, it refers to trends or currents that have opted for a crossbreeding of Marxist ideas with others coming from different theoretical backgrounds, such as "Keynesian (and Kaleckian) Marxism", or "regulationist, radical, Straffian and analytical Marxism". 252 252 Guerrero Jiménez, Diego, El pensamiento económico neomarxista, p. 31. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The moment of differentiation of the neo-Marxist current is situated by Guerrero on the basis of the debate on imperialism initiated by Lenin and the two main theses of the Russian revolutionary, the first to define imperialism as the monopolist phase of capitalism, and the second, the need for the undeveloped countries to emancipate themselves from the capitalist world system in order to achieve a path of growth. In Guerrero's opinion, this Leninist approach would represent an essential point of differentiation with respect to the positions of Marx, who, contrary to Lenin's theses, conceived of a situation of monopoly and limited competition at the beginning of industrial capitalism which would later be transformed into one of free competition. This reversal of Marx's approach was not initiated by Lenin, it is already to be found in Engels and Hilferding, especially the latter would be responsible for the dominance in Marxism of an approach that conceives of an initial capitalism of free competition which was definitively replaced in the 20th century by a capitalism of monopolies. This reversal of Marx is viewed critically by Guerrero, "Hilferding is aware of how far he has taken his bet against Marx's theory of value [...] Lenin also writes without being obliged to prove anything, since for him concentration and monopoly seem to be one and the same thing by definition", and considers that, from Marx's point of view, it would be a regression to positions that were criticised by the philosopher from Trier. For Guerrero, most Marxists have departed from Marx on this point, "they have no theory of competition, but have allowed themselves to be dragged along by simple antimonopoly ideology and the caricature of monopoly as a representation of evil".253 The Leninist double thesis, taken up by later Marxists, was promoted especially by Sweezy and Baran, who are therefore considered to be the founders of neo-Marxism. The former developed, in order to explain cyclical crises and the tendency to stagnation, a combination of over-accumulation and under-consumption, the latter's main contribution was the concept of "economic surplus". If until the 1920s, mainstream Marxist thought believed that the advance of the more developed economies drove world economic development, after the Second World War, and under the impetus of Baran, new economic theories appeared that changed the perspective and pointed to the distortions in their economies produced by the advanced 253 Ibid, p. 35 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century economies as responsible for the backwardness of the undeveloped countries. These were the new theories of underdevelopment and unequal exchange of André Gunder Frank and Theotonio dos Santos, followed by the world-system theory of Immanuel Wallerstein. But Guerrero also points out as neo-Marxist, in a broader sense, other theories that are characterised by being a mixture of Marxism and other different theoretical ingredients. This is the case of so-called Keynesian Marxism, where an attempt is made to complement the theories of both thinkers. The adaptation can be in two senses, Keynesians who adopt parts of Marxism, as is the case of Joan Robinson and her followers, or Marxists who accept some of Keynes' postulates, such as Paul Sweezy or Maurice Dobb. The main critic of this neo-Marxist current is Paul Mattick.254 But there are also other neo-Marxist theories whose connections with Marxism are more diffuse, among which he cites "the regulationists, the radicals, the Straffians and the analytical Marxists"255 . If the Straffians depart from Marx's theory of value, the analytical Marxists, whom we have already studied globally in a previous chapter, come to consider Marxist economics as surpassed. Guerrero does not reject a priori the possibility of ideas alien to Marxism that could serve to fertilise it, but he rejects the eclecticism of heterogeneous elements that give rise to contradictory theories. Regarding this last aspect, Guerrero has analysed it in a little more detail in another article256 to which we will now refer. His starting point is to separate two camps in the group of economists who claim to be Marxist: those who accept many theses of Marxism but reject the labour-value theory, and those who consider the latter to be the central element of Marxist economics. It is the latter who, in Guerrero's opinion, can really be considered Marxists. Guerrero's reasoning on the economic plane is reminiscent of the argument used by Lenin in the political field to differentiate the genuine Marxists from the non-Marxists. In the context of the ideological struggle against the revisionists and centrists of his time, the Leninist criterion expressed in his famous work The State and the Revolution is that "Marxist is only he who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the 254 Mattick, Paul, Marx and Keynes. The limits of mixed economics. and Crisis and crisis theory. Guerrero Jiménez, Diego, El pensamiento económico neomarxista, p. 33. 256 Guerrero Jiménez, Diego, Un Marx imposible: el marxismo sin teoría laboral del valor. 255 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat"257 , however, today very few organisations or intellectuals defend this concept so defining for Lenin. Have those who do not defend it ceased to be Marxists? The same question applies, then, to Guerrero's criteria. His arguments, of course, are defended on the basis of the coherence of the concept of labour-value for Marxist theory, but the same could be said of the dictatorship of the proletariat, both of which can be considered key categories of Marxist theory. For Guerrero, there are economists who assume a large number of Marx's theses such as the theory of exploitation, class struggle or historical materialism, but without the acceptance of the labour theory of value, what results is an impossible Marxism. However, it is not part of the aim of this book to enter into a discussion of this subject; it has only been raised as a question about the relevance of delimiting camps and considering certain authors as Marxist or not. What is certain is that if Lenin's and Guerrero's criteria were applied together, the authors and currents we are studying here within a broad conception of Marxism would be significantly reduced. Guerrero's central argument is that in the relations between the economic theory of Marxism and other different currents, two different effects have been produced: first, Marxism has "absorbed" various aspects of these currents; second, Marxism has been, on the contrary, "absorbed" by these currents, and in the latter case it is possible to differentiate whether it has been absorbed by heterodox or orthodox theories. Within Marxism "absorbed" from heterodox currents, he distinguishes firstly "the neoRicardians" and "Straffian Marxism". Secondly, "institutionalist/Keynesian/Polanyan Marxism", in which he includes the French school of regulation, some of whose authors come from a Marxism that at a certain point they abandoned, and one of whose components defines it as "an institutionalism that would have used a lot of Marx, Kalecki, Keynes, structuralism and the Annales school"258 . Thirdly, "American radicalpolitical Marxism", which is characterised by the fact that "its theoretical bases in the economic field are so broad as to include the whole of "political economy""259 . Finally, "Leninist-Kaleckian Marxism" whose relationship, so strange at the outset, Guerrero 257 Lenin, V.I., The State and Revolution, p. 56. Guerrero Jiménez, Diego, Un Marx imposible: el marxismo sin teoría laboral del valor, p. 10. 259 Ibid, p. 11 258 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century justifies in that "from the economic point of view, both have in common their inclination to consider monopoly, oligopoly or imperfect competition as a decisive element".260 In the section on Marxism "absorbed" from orthodoxy, Guerrero also distinguishes between two currents. First, what he calls "pre-analytical neo-classical Marxologists", whom he only considers in his classification because they are often mentioned in compilations of works on Marxism. Secondly, he refers to analytical Marxism, to which we have already devoted a chapter in this book. Finally, Guerrero refers to "absorbing" Marxism whose approach consists of "developing Marx's economics, his own conceptual system, and extending it to the analysis of economic reality beyond where Marx himself left off. Quite the opposite of what has been done in practice for the most part".261 And he echoes Shaikh's critique, according to which "Marxist economics has developed erratically and unevenly", giving rise to theoretical and empirical developments that need to be carefully analysed in order to ascertain the real contributions. He ends his article with a brief list of authors who have contributed to the development of Marxist economics in various fields, including Shaikh, Carchedi, Giussani, Moseley, Freeman, Lavigne, Daum and Gouverneur. On the theory of value and its centrality for Marxism there is also a good summary in an article by Claudio Katz262 of which we will make a brief synthesis. For this author, "the Marxist theory of value has three aspects: an interpretation of exploitation, a law of price formation and a conception of the functioning and crisis of capitalism". In the article he describes the process by which Marx constructed this important theory through a critique of the most important economic theories of his time (Smith, Ricardo). From the very moment of its publication, the Marxist theory of value was criticised from different angles. The neo-classical current "contrasts the subjective conception of utility with the objective theory of value", with the Walrasian critique standing out within this current. Likewise, the theory of value is questioned from the different schools that make up the heterodox current, that is, those that are also critical of the 260 Ibid, p. 11 Ibid, p. 14 262 Katz Claudio, La actualidad de la teoría objetiva del valor (The topicality of the objective theory of value). 261 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez neoclassical one; their criticism is directed at the fact that the former "does not take into account the high extra-economic determination that prices have in contemporary capitalism", to reject its explanation of exploitation, and that it states that "the functioning of economic systems depends on their institutional configuration". Finally, the last challenge to Marxist value theory comes from the surplus or neo-Ricardian school. Independently of these criticisms coming from the field of bourgeois economic theories, Claudio Katz recognises that the theory of value is currently the subject of at least three important debates within the Marxist camp, "the logical resolution of the problem of transformation, the empirical verification of the correlation between values and prices, and the political meaning of value. "Another important debate in the past, but of little interest today in the absence of processes of transition to socialism, concerns the validity and evolution of the law of value during the stage of transition to socialism, which will be dealt with at greater length in the following sub-chapter. In short, the importance of the theory of value for Marxism consists in the fact that it serves as a basis for constructing an explanation "of the functioning and crisis of capitalism on the basis of an interpretation of exploitation and a law of price formation. " Sergio Martín Fernández proposes a significantly different view of the tendencies within Marxism from the point of view of economics, taking the Marxist analysis of economic crises as an element of discussion. The subject of his work focuses on the discussion of the validity or otherwise of the law of the downward trend of the rate of profit as a key element in the explanation of capitalist crises, and the objections that have also been made to Marx's labour-value theory. With this as a starting point, he reviews the challenges made by bourgeois economic thought and the Marxist responses to them and, this is what interests us for the purposes of the objectives of this book, the discussions within the Marxist authors. Among the authors who consider economic crises to be inseparable from the very development of the capitalist mode of production are the radical economists, who, in turn, have an orthodox Marxist tendency insofar as they accept the labour-value theory, and those who combine part of Marx's theory with elements from other theories outside Marxism, and who, as in the case of Diego Guerrero, are also known as neo-Marxists. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Sweezy and Baran would play a prominent role in the birth of the latter current by influencing a significant number of later Marxist economists. "This new generation of scholars would begin to use a Bortkiewicz-Sraffa schema to rethink the whole of Marxist theory, accepting the inconsistency in Marx at the outset. [...] Gradually the new Marxist theory taught in the faculties and schools of economics had more of Keynes and Sraffa than of the original Marx, and in which the inconsistencies in both his theory of value and his interpretation of the origin of the economic crises of capitalism were taken for granted".263 For Sergio Martín, the different criticisms of Marx were scarcely replied to by Marxists until the 1980s, which led to a certain "ostracism" to which the original Marxist theory was condemned. In that decade, a series of authors appeared whose works defend the "validity and consistency" of Marx's original theory, under a new interpretation of Marxist theory called "temporal single system interpretation" (TSSI), which adds a new variable, time, to the original Marxist theory. This "temporalist" school would include Marxist economists such as Andrew Kliman, Alan Freeman, Guglielmo Carchedi and Michael Roberts, and would be characterised by their defence of orthodox Marxism and the consistency of the law of the downward trend of the rate of profit as an explanation of crises. Alongside these authors, there is another group that does not share all the "temporalist" arguments, such as Rolando Astarita, Diego Guerrero, Michael Husson and Anwar Shaikh. The TSSI, in turn, has received different criticisms, some of which come from Marxist authors such as Gérard Dumenil and Dominique Lévy. As we have been able to see from the two works we have used to analyse the situation of Marxism at the level of economic theory, that of Diego Guerrero centres the differences and discussions around the monopolistic character or not of capitalism in its current phase of existence, in fact since the end of the 19th century; while that of Sergio Martín situates these differences around the validity, and consistency or not, of two nodal aspects of Marxist theory, the law of labour-value and the law of the downward tendency of the rate of profit. Both aspects are centred around the ability to explain the 263 Martín Fernández, Sergio, El análisis marxista de las crisis económicas, un estado de la cuestión, pp. 9-10. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez workings of the capitalist system, although the second of these is more crucial in that it confronts the historically insistent challenges from classical or heterodox economics to the fundamental core of Marx's economic theory. Let us say that the temporalist school, above all, slightly updates the original Marxist theory in an attempt to demonstrate its explanatory validity in the face of its opponents' objections, which is a defensive position. Also related to the positions adopted to explain the last great crisis of capitalism unleashed in 2008, Juan Pablo Mateo Tomé takes stock of the different, and sometimes opposing, explanations that have been offered about the great recession that began in 2008 by Marxist authors, leaving aside, as the author points out at the beginning, the neo-Marxist current of the Monthly Review. Synthetically, these explanations are grouped as follows: 1) The fall of profitability, within which there are important polemics, with authors such as Andrew Kliman, Rolando Astarita, José Antonio Tapia, Michael Roberts, Juan Pablo Mateo or Diego Guerrero. "The common aspect of the conceptions of crisis that do not consider technical change is that they implicitly refuse to link the crisis with certain general laws of capitalist reproduction, anchored therefore in the generation of value. Consequently, crises would be possible moments arising from the confluence of certain conjunctural phenomena related to distributive phenomena: capital-wages, net profitsinterest/dividends, or sectoral "...".264 2) The financial sphere, where there are also different approaches, and where authors such as Fred Moseley, Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin, Gérard Duménil, Dominique Levy, Paul Cockshott and Dave Zachariah stand out. "The most relevant aspect of these conceptions is that they situate the crisis not as a necessary moment of capitalist reproduction, but as a contingent result that is reached to the extent that a series of unbalancing elements converge, such as certain economic policy decisions (neoliberalism) or an excessive protagonism of the financial sector, in which the 264 Mateo Tomé, Juan Pablo, La crisis económica mundial y la acumulación de capital, las finanzas y la distribución del ingreso. Debates in Marxist economics, p. 41. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century deregulation carried out must be considered [...] The existence of general laws of accumulation is thus denied, replaced by others, proper to financial hegemony".265 3) The importance of the neo-liberal framework, with important controversies at its heart, and where authors such as Spyros Lapatsioras, Dimitris Sotiropoulos, John Milios, Luciano Vasapollo, Rita Martufi and Joaquín Arriola, but especially Gérard Dumènil and Dominique Levy, are situated. "This group of explanations is difficult to synthesise because of the mixture of conjunctural and structural aspects surrounding the current crisis, which ultimately refers to the difficulty of adapting the general laws of the capitalist economy to a specific phase of the system. "266 4) Distributive theories of crisis and overproduction, or underconsumption. This section includes authors such as Duncan Foley, David Harvey and Michel Husson. "This approach is radically opposed to the labour theory of value [...] In this type of analysis, which emphasises the distributive dimension between labour and capital, the crisis has a conjunctural character, the product of certain specific phenomena. "267 The bottom line he draws is that the important discrepancies in explanations are based on the use of different theoretical foundations, and he comes to a disturbing conclusion about what he calls "a rupture between what we understand to constitute Marxist crisis theory and the way in which the Great Recession is approached by a majority of its adherents. This leads us, on the one hand, to agree with Freeman (2010) when he highlights "Marxism without Marx", in which there is a divorce between the conclusions and Marxian theory. " 268 265 Ibid, p. 47 Ibid. p. 49 267 Ibid, p. 52 268 Ibid, p. 54 266 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Marxism and economics in the processes of transition to socialism Except for a few general remarks scattered in The German Ideology, Capital, The Critique of the Gotha Programme and their correspondence, Marx and Engels did not develop any systematic views on the organisation of the economy that would immediately follow the overthrow of capitalism. This was not an accidental omission but a deliberate abstention. The founders of historical materialism believed that it was not their task to formulate a ready-made scheme of the future society because such a society could only be the concrete result of the conditions in which it appeared. The economy in the transition period Ernest Mandel This second chapter devoted to the economic contributions of Marxism has two distinct parts. The first will focus on the economic debates and practices arising from the processes of transition to socialism, in which two major positions clashed: on the one hand, those who rejected the categories elaborated by Marx as adequate to analyse and guide these processes, advocating the development of new categories and theories suitable for this purpose, and, on the other hand, those who considered Marxist theory adequate for the processes of transition, leading to Stalinism's attempt to use this theory to legitimise its economic practices. The second part will analyse some of the debates arising from the practice and problems generated by the processes of socialist transition, such as the role of the market or self-management practices. The Soviet Union: confrontation over the economic model for the transition to socialism Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century The transgression of the stages of development led to a multiple quagmire: to the "intransigent dogmatism of the Stalin era", then to "inconsistent pragmatism" in economic praxis, and finally to "apologetics" as a generic feature of the political economy of socialism which claimed to interpret it. This political economy buried the theory of the transition to socialism, being subsumed in it as a mere historical preamble lacking a systematic, integral and coherent theoretical body of its own. The political economy of building socialism Figueroa Albelo, V.M. et al. There was a time, in the years immediately after the triumph of the Soviet revolution, when, as we shall see below, a heated debate arose about the economic model to be adopted for the transition to communism. The main participants in this debate were the leaders of the revolution itself in Russia, who were faced with an unusual situation, neither foreseen nor theorised beforehand. The final imposition of the Stalinist model closed this debate and posed a different problematic that evolved until the final debacle of real socialism. There were only two variations on the latter situation, the trial of the self-managed model in Yugoslavia, and the brief discussion of a different model in Cuba. The starting point, as we pointed out earlier, was the unusual situation posed by the Bolshevik victory in Russia. The First World War, and the disasters and suffering it brought, opened up a great opportunity for the revolutionary forces in Europe to seize power and put an end to bourgeois domination and its imperialist policies which had led to the Great War. The initial breaking point, the weak link in the chain, was in Russia, and the Bolsheviks did not hesitate to seize the opportunity offered by history to seize power. Like all political decisions, and even more so in historical periods of great turbulence, their calculations were uncertain and rested on the assumption that after the victory of the revolution in Russia, it would spread to the rest of Europe, and first of all to Germany. Russia was not exactly in the right conditions theorised by Marxism to initiate the transition to socialism, but once the revolution triumphed in advanced industrialised countries in Europe, Russia could benefit from its help to burn through the stages more favourably. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez But the Bolsheviks' calculations proved wrong, not only was the revolution defeated in Europe in the various attempts made, but the internal situation in Russia deteriorated even further when the disasters caused by the First World War were added to the disasters caused by the civil war and foreign military intervention which followed the triumph of the revolution. This is the overall historical context in which the discussion and the political and economic developments that follow will take place. Following the methodological line of this work, we are going to rely for this analysis on specialised studies on the subject which, in this way, are included in the more general vision of Marxism that this work intends to give. The first study that we are going to use for the analysis of the discussion, confrontation and, finally, victory of the Stalinist model, which will end up being imposed later on in the following countries that begin their transition to socialism, is the doctoral thesis of Jesús de Blas Ortega, La formación del "mecanismo económico estalinista" (m.e.e.) En la antigua URSS y su imposición en la Europa del Este. The case of Hungary, which we will follow in substance below. The thesis argues that the in-depth debate which arose among the Bolshevik leaders after they came to power focused on two fundamental practical issues which, in the final analysis, discussed the way forward. The first revolved around the problems of industrialisation for a backward agricultural country like Russia, with Bukharin on the one hand as representative of the official "agrarian-monetarist" bloc and Preobrazhensky on the other hand as representative of the "industrialist" Opposition. The second issue in dispute was the question of the feasibility or otherwise of building socialism in one country, in which Stalin, as an advocate of this thesis, was supported by Bukharin in confronting the opposing theses of Trotsky and the leaders of the Opposition. In the debate, a first part can be distinguished which revolved around what were almost purely theoretical discussions, but with obvious practical consequences. In this part, the discussion centred on whether the theories and categories developed by Marx were adequate and sufficient to analyse and direct the new Soviet economy, or whether new theories and categories were needed. Initially, Bukharin and Preobrazhensky, in considering the methodological problems facing the theoretical analysis of the economy that emerged with the revolution, had agreed on a key element, rejecting that Marx's work contained a "political economy of socialism". Especially for the second of these Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century leaders, Marx's political economy was the science that dealt specifically with the mercantile and capitalist mercantile system, and not the science of the relations of production of men in general. Consequently, it was not a theory suitable to be applied without further ado to the analysis of an economy of transition to socialism, which meant the need for a new theory of analysis suitable for this purpose, which he would call "social technology". But if this was true for a properly socialist economy, where the law of value had disappeared, i.e. a fully organised and planned economy, the problem became more complex in the Russian case, where its economy was no longer capitalist, but not socialist either; where a certain planning was applied while the law of value continued to operate as a consequence of both the internal persistence of mercantile relations and the presence of an inevitable world market. Thus, this Opposition economist posited the need to create a theory - which would be neither Marx's political economy, suitable for the analysis of capitalism, nor "social technology", suitable for the analysis of a full socialist economy - which would be capable of discovering the laws operating in the new situation. Preobrazhensky was the one who went most deeply into the analysis of the new Soviet economy in search of an explanatory theory. To this end, he proposed the validity of two regulators that govern it, the law of value, already mentioned above, and "the law of original socialist accumulation". In the latter he will differentiate two concepts, that of "socialist accumulation", which he will also call "accumulation on a productive basis in the state economy itself", from the concept of "primitive socialist accumulation", which he will also call "accumulation on an economic basis"269 , the aim of the latter being "to transform the existing proportions, absolutely tilted in favour of agriculture (mostly private), to try to strengthen industry (mostly in the hands of the state) and achieve a technical-productive basis which would allow socialist accumulation ("on its own basis") to take precedence. "270 This law could be extended to all revolutionary situations similar to the Russian one, i.e. those carried out in backward countries. Thus, the more backward and agricultural a country is, "the more socialist accumulation must be based on the exploitation of pre-socialist forms of production". Jesús de Blas rejects 269 de Blas Ortega, Jesús , The formation of the "Stalinist economic mechanism" (m.e.e.) in the former USSR and its imposition in Eastern Europe. The case of Hungary, p. 75 270 Ibid, p. 76 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez as inconsistent the two accusations made against Preobrazhensky, namely that his "law of primitive socialist accumulation" implied an extortion of the countryside and the breaking of the worker-peasant alliance, and that it contained a strong dose of spontaneism. The thesis of Jesús de Blas argues that initially Bukharin and Preobrazhensky agreed on this approach, bearing in mind that the works of these authors where these problems are addressed are separated by two very different contexts, Bukharin's The Economy of the Transitional Period, written under the conditions of "war communism", and Preobrazhensky's The New Economy, written six years later under the NEP. However, this basic agreement between these two Soviet authors did not prevent them from taking diametrically opposed positions in the practical field of economics, Bukharin as the most qualified spokesman for the agrarian positions, Preobrazhensky for the industrialist positions. In contrast to this theoretical stance of the two most qualified economists of the early Soviet leaders, there were the approaches of the Stalinist sector, which would end up imposing themselves in practice. The latter would have two distinct stages in their development. In the 1930s-40s, theory was disregarded in favour of the Soviet government's decisions, which were imposed without a theoretical basis. In the 1950s, this sector recovered Marx's political economy as a theory valid for any mode of production, now in the form of the "political economy of socialism", thus applicable to the Soviet economy, which was now considered fully socialist. For Jesús de Blas, Lenin did not go so far as to elaborate a systematic theoretical work on the Soviet economy, but from his contributions he deduced two positions. On the one hand, the recognition in it of elements of both capitalism and socialism, on the basis of which he will focus on the model of "state capitalism" developed in Germany at that time. On the other hand, that these positions are close to those of Bukharin and Preobrazhensky and thus opposed to those which would ultimately prevail with the Stalinist victory. The second part of the debate will have a more directly practical character and will focus on the assessment of the two initial stages of the revolution, that of war communism and that of the new economic policy (NEP). Jesús de Blas summarises the three interpretations that have been put forward on the attitude of the Bolshevik core Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century leadership towards war communism, their common point being the consideration of it as "an exceptional period", from which there are important divergences. In the first there is a consideration that it was simply "forced by circumstances"; the second is that "there was a certain "a posteriori" theorising about the possibility of making the "immediate leap to communism""; finally, there is that which maintains that "it was partly the product of the "a priori" "utopian" conceptions of the Bolshevik leadership about the possibility of the "direct leap to communism", abolishing mercantile-monetary relations".271 However, this author rejects the accusations that both Bukharin and Preobrazhensky in their joint work The ABC of Communism, and Lenin, in the documents for the 8th Bolshevik Party Congress, were in favour of the "direct leap to communism". Although he points out that "The theoretical approaches made in this direction had a marginal character and were pointed out by certain economists (members and non-members of the Bolshevik party) who years later would find themselves situated in Stalin's political environment, giving "theoretical" cover to the requisitions and the policy of forced collectivisation".272 While there were disagreements within the core leadership over war communism, there was broader agreement on the NEP. The shift to NEP in 1921 was an important stage in the revolution because it meant the re-establishment of market-monetary relations in the Soviet economy. "The NEP was not only the re-establishment, after the so-called "war communism", of a certain freedom of trade, in short of a market economy, it was something more. It was a policy to be applied for an unlimited period of time (dependent, above all, on international conditions) which the Soviet leadership gave itself in order to develop, within a framework of mercantile-monetary relations, the state economic apparatus (above all industry, but also trade, transport...) in order to lead the economy in a socialist direction and to drag agriculture progressively towards collectivisation".273 However, this did not prevent the confrontation of two big blocs in the Bolshevik leadership over Soviet politics and economy, the first being the "official" bloc and the second, the "opposition", where shifting alliances would take place throughout the three 271 Ibid, p. 60 Ibid, p. 633 273 Ibid, p. 170 272 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez phases of the confrontation, and which would end at the end of 1927 with the defeat of the Opposition and its expulsion from the party. "At the centre of all the debates will be the discussion on the direction to be taken by the economic development of Soviet Russia. The struggle will have three phases (1923, 1925 and 1926-27), which will coincide with three moments of sharpening of the "delivery crises", in which the different "oppositions" ("platform of the 46", "new opposition" and "unified opposition") will confront the "officialist" theses. The dividing line will be the proposals clearly leaning towards industrial development that the "opposition" will defend, as opposed to the "agrarian and monetarist" theses of the "officialist" sector.274 The "opposition" theses advocated transferring resources from the private agrarian economy through taxation to industrialisation, the "officialist" theses, on the other hand, advocated increasing agrarian income by reducing industrial prices and liberalising economic relations in the village, "agrarianist" theses complemented by other "monetarist" theses which, by applying a "monetary orthodoxy", contributed to stifling the financing of basic industries. Initially, in this confrontation, neither side had put forward the need for Russia to relate to the world market in order to develop the country and overcome its economic backwardness, with agricultural exports, based on the agricultural surplus, being the basis for the import of industrial equipment needed to overcome economic backwardness, although the type of products to be imported also separates the "opposition" and the "officialists". In Preobrazhensky's theorisations, the dangers of such a relationship of the underdeveloped Soviet economy to a technically superior world market were controlled, though not avoided, by the state monopoly of foreign trade. However, from 1924 onwards, Stalin's theory of socialism in one country began to appear, which would receive important theoretical support from Bukharin. This theory advocated autarkic development outside the world market. Initially this alliance thus brought together the "agrarianist" and the "autarkic" conceptions. 274 Ibid, p. 133 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Likewise, Jesús de Blas points out, there is a parallel change in the characterisation of what is understood by socialism. "We are referring to the conception that tends to identify the progress of "socialism" in Russia with the progress of the stateisation of the economy. This conception appears in numerous references by Bukharin, thus introducing the premise of a "quantitative" idea of "socialism" (socialism is that the majority of the economy should be in the hands of the state sector, and that, obviously, can be done even if it is forced in an isolated and backward country like Russia), as opposed to a "qualitative" conception, traditional in the workers' movement (socialism can only be based on the most advanced productive techniques ever known to capitalism, therefore, it is not possible to achieve that goal in the framework of an isolated and moreover backward country)."275 In 1927, the "pro-government" sector found itself in a difficult situation. Internally, it had to defeat the "opposition" once and for all by wresting from it the banner of further industrialisation. Externally, the defeat of the Chinese revolution, a second major setback after the defeat of the German revolution in 1923, increased Russia's sense of international isolation and the fear of external aggression. Pressure from both fronts tended to intensify industrialisation and this would lead to the "Stalinists" within the "officialists" eventually breaking with and eliminating the "agrarists", prior to the "great turning point" which would lead to forced collectivisation and accelerated industrialisation, the final trigger of which would be "the crises of grain deliveries in the winters of 1927-28 and 1928-29". Summing up the situation of what the Stalinist economic conception was beginning to mean, Jesús de Blas points out that it was "a quantitative vision of socialism which will assimilate the triumph of socialism to the abolition of private property and the disappearance of mercantile relations. This narrow and dogmatic approach of Stalin's can only take place within the framework of the "theory of socialism in one country", although paradoxically it is framed in a series of statements on industrialisation quite close to those that had been raised by the "left opposition", but underestimating the framework of the world capitalist economy".276 275 276 Ibid, p. 148 Ibid, p. 173 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Another aspect of Stalinist doctrine, which would eventually prevail, would be his "theory of two world economic systems: the capitalist world economic system and the socialist world economic system". This was a novel approach which broke with those that had been central to Marxist analysis and the theoretical tradition of the Bolsheviks, "which conceived of the world economy ("the world market") as an "organic unity", dominated by imperialism, "to which we are subordinate, with which we are bound and from which we cannot detach ourselves" (Lenin in Trotsky; 1973, p. 77)".277 In reality, these confrontational approaches have only come about since the isolated triumph of the Russian revolution, approaches which could never have been imagined by earlier Marxists, in that they always envisaged a socialist revolution in the developed countries and of a broad character, not in a single country. There is an approach in Jesús de Blas' thesis that clearly locates the Gordian knot facing the revolution in Russia and which underlies the three politico-economic tendencies that were confronting each other. On the one hand, the policies advocated by the "agrarianist" sector probably "could have brought about the collapse of the Soviet regime and the open restoration of capitalism". On the other hand, the emergency measures taken by the Stalinist sector, although they prevented the definitive collapse at the time, came at the price of a dramatic political and human cost that would end up imposing an economy dominated by "bureaucratic-administrative mechanisms", and which would lead many years later to a major failure with the restoration of capitalism from the 1990s onwards. Thus, for this author, only the politics of the "opposition" could have prevented the same outcome, separated by several decades, but this is only a counterfactual hypothesis that is not subject to historical verification. In the internal political struggle within Bolshevism, first the "left opposition" was defeated and then the "agrarianist" sector, giving way to the stabilisation of the domination of the Stalinist faction and its economic programme, which Jesús de Blas calls the "Stalinist economic mechanism" and which was to guide economic development both in the Soviet Union and, with different variants, in the various countries where the communists came to power after the Second World War. This author defines the fundamental features of this economic mechanism as follows: "1. forced collectivisation and agricultural and food crises as mutually interdependent 277 Ibid, p. 176 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century phenomena. 2.- increasing difficulties in exporting cereals and, consequently, in importing Western machinery and technology, favouring autarkic tendencies, which will attribute to foreign trade a "residual role" in planning. 3. - a notable backwardness of the consumer goods industries, affected by the collapse of the agricultural economy, but also sacrificed by the efforts made in the production goods industries in the face of the forced industrialisation that was undertaken. 4. - abolition of the instruments of market regulation between "town" and "country" which had inspired the NEP, replaced by the system of compulsory deliveries and confiscations, and the imposition of an arbitrary price system, totally out of step with the prevailing world market standards. 5. hyper-centralised control of the economy, both for the processes of production and distribution of goods (giving rise to the habitual presence of rationing and queuing), and for the allocation of productive factors (raw materials, fixed investment and labour), with a strong tendency towards over-accumulation, which in turn generated a systematic situation of shortage of resources. 6. substitution of credit instruments by non-repayable budgetary allocations based on uncontrolled monetary issuance, which dynamited the functionality of credit-monetary relations. 7. abandonment of efficiency and quality criteria in favour of exclusively quantitative objectives, implemented through bureaucratised planning that detailed objectives in physical quantities down to the most elementary levels. 8.- increasing differentiation of wage income and preponderance of indirect tax collection (tournover tax) to the detriment of other tax mechanisms based on progressivity. 9.- suppression of labour-union rights and generalised imposition of coercive systems on the labour force in both agriculture and industry. 10.- all this crowned by the elimination of every democratic loophole and the structuring of an immense repressive military-police apparatus, omnipresent in all social life, this same "economic mechanism" was imposed, almost mimetically, on the whole of Eastern Europe after the Second World War".278 Contrary to how this "economic mechanism" was subsequently presented, its establishment was not the result of a prior theoretical approach in which the premises on which it was based and the strategy to be followed were established, but was the result of an economic situation which had been rotting (scissors crisis, crisis of grain deliveries in 1927-9 and strangulation of foreign trade, delay in industrialisation and 278 Ibid, pp. 9-10 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez planning, concessions to the well-to-do peasant sectors) and to which the Stalinist sector reacted urgently, brutally and dictatorially, provoking in these conditions "a dictatorial reaction", The Stalinist sector reacted to this situation in an urgent, brutal and dictatorial manner, provoking, under these conditions, a "massive destruction of productive forces in agriculture and the worsening of international economic isolation".279 However, denounces Jesús de Blas, "All this would be embellished by official propaganda, appealing to a supposed "Marxist political economy of socialism" which would serve to justify such an accumulation of arbitrariness, and which would finally be condensed in the famous manual of political economy which would serve as a body of official doctrine and guide the action of the Stalinist parties in power in Eastern Europe after the Second World War".280 The "great turn" undertaken by Stalinism not only had dramatic and far-reaching economic, social and political consequences, but also had an impact on the theoretical level, causing a rupture and crisis in the ranks of the "left opposition", when some of its best known and most important representatives, such as Preobrazhensky, Radek, Smilgá and others, publicly broke with the "opposition" after 1929, when they understood that the Stalinist turn reconciled the leading group of the Soviet state with the economic theses of the opposition. The interpretation made by what remained of the "opposition", and supported by Jesús de Blas, is that, in reality, the opposition sector that reconciled itself with Stalinism, especially Preobrazhensky, renounced its previous economic positions and theses, without making any new contributions to the Soviet economy. Thus, in extremely difficult conditions, because of their conditions as deportees, and after the crisis caused in their ranks by the break-up of a very significant part of its components, the rest of the "opposition" continued to make theoretical and analytical contributions opposed to the official practice of Stalinism in power. Three contributions stand out in this respect: those of Rakovsky; those of the "thesis of the three", of Solnzev, Yakovin and Stopalov; and those of Trotsky. The main immediate challenge in the economic field was to come up with alternatives to what the different sectors of the "opposition" described as the disaster produced by 279 280 Ibid, p.272 Ibid, p. 638 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century the "Stalinist turn". In this sense, all sectors of the "opposition" started from a shared common position, which took the form of the slogan of "retreat", but from there they differed on what this slogan meant, i.e. where to retreat to. It is well understood that we are analysing theoretical positions which no longer had any chance of being taken into account by the Stalinist sector which at that point firmly controlled power. If in any sense it can be said that the previous theses of the "opposition" (policy of accelerated industrialisation, planning) had been adopted by the Stalinist sector - for some in such a deformed form that they had nothing to do with their positions, as was the case with those who remained in the "opposition", for others in a form close enough to end up breaking with the "opposition" and reconciling themselves with Stalinism - from the "great turn" onwards, the approaches of the "opposition" no longer exerted any practical influence whatsoever. For Rakovsky the concrete form of the "retreat" he advocates is a return to the NEP, a position not shared by "the theses of the three" for whom, in the new circumstances, this return to the NEP could only mean a return to the old policy of the alliance of the rightwing "agrarist" bloc and the centrists. Trotsky's position, though not explicit, seems to lean towards that of Rakovsky, with whom he agrees in many respects. Summing up the economic theories that clashed within the Bolshevik party in the period between 1923 and 1929 and the socio-political projects they represented, Jesús de Blas recognises only two positions, which coincided in their starting bases - the defence of monetary-market relations under the NEP, achieving balanced economic growth of the various economic sectors, and "the necessity of linking the Soviet economy with the world capitalist market" - but clashed on everything else. On the one side was the "agrarist" ("right-wing") camp, with Bukharin as its main theoretical reference, which advocated "a kind of monetarist orthodoxy", gave greater importance to private accumulation in the countryside and regarded economic planning as secondary. Their aim was to give priority to the agrarian economy and thus to accept Russia's role as an agro-export economy in the international division of labour. This project responded to the interests of the wealthy rural strata and wealthy merchants, and leaned towards some kind of agrarian capitalism which would endanger the survival of the revolution. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez On the other side was the "opposition" ("left"), with Preobrazhensky and Trotsky as its two main exponents, which promoted socialist accumulation on the basis of a "planned economic direction". Its aim was to gradually modify the inherited agrarian economic structure in favour of the industrial sector, for which it considered relations with the world market indispensable, and it advocated a monopoly of foreign trade and control of economic management to counteract the world action of the law of value and provide sufficient protection for Soviet industry. In the conditions of the NEP, he advocated progressive taxation to limit private enrichment and to channel surpluses into industrialisation. The first project was initially supported by the Stalinist sector, from a centrist position and without an economic project of its own, until it defeated and expelled the "opposition" from the party. "But later, overwhelmed by the course of events (the delivery crises), it was forced to get rid of the "right wing" to ensure its own survival at the head of the state by instituting a regime of terror. 281 Jesús de Blas thus argues three theses. Firstly, although it could be interpreted that with the "great turn" the Stalinist sector appropriated the economic programme of the "opposition" in order to defeat the "agrarianist" sector, this interpretation is flatly rejected in this author's work. Secondly, the Stalinist economic model that ended up being implemented in the Soviet Union was not the result of a previous theory but "something that was elaborated "a posteriori", based on a set of different measures that were adopted forced by events, without any foresight or coherence from the most elementary economic point of view". After the liquidation of the NEP, the planning that replaced it was set up as "a monstrous bureaucratic and administrative web aimed at fulfilling thousands of indices of all kinds", which prevented the availability of effective instruments, distorted all economic relations and made it impossible to carry out rational calculations on investment projects. "All this accumulation of arbitrariness was elevated to a "universal category" and was "consecrated" as the path that every country should take in its march towards socialism, as the "paradigm" of all socialist construction. 282 281 282 Ibid, p. 279 Ibid, p. 280 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Third, despite the economic disaster that the "great turn" of the Stalinist sector initially provoked, the Soviet Union nevertheless achieved a great industrial take-off and important economic advances because Stalinist policy worked on the basis of the foundations created by the 1917 revolution, "the establishment of the state monopoly on foreign trade, the nationalisation of the main industrial enclaves, the transport network and banking, the expropriation of the large estates and the distribution of land to the poor peasantry on a usufruct basis, the nationalisation of the main industrial enclaves, the transport network and banking, the expropriation of the large estates and the distribution of land to the poor peasantry on a usufruct basis and, although with still very deficient technical means, the establishment of the bases for the planned development of the economy".283 The economic mechanism consolidated in the Soviet Union after the victory of the Stalinist sector sought a theoretical justification by appealing to Marx's own theories, for which theoretical support was sought in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, and this effort was embodied in two main works, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, written by Stalin, and the Manual of Political Economy. In the first work he equates socialism with "the non-existence of private ownership of the means of production" and justifies the persistence of market relations and the law of value in the Soviet Union by the coexistence within it of two forms of socialist production, the state, owned by the whole people, and the kolkhozy, in which its products belong to the respective kolkhozy. This approach makes him go even further, denying that the law of value is the fundamental regulating law of capitalism, given its persistence also under socialism, and formulating, on the one hand, a new law for capitalism, which would consist in ensuring maximum capitalist profit through the exploitation of the proletariat and the backward countries, and another for socialism, which would consist in ensuring maximum capitalist profit through the exploitation of the proletariat and the backward countries; and another for socialism, which would consist in "securing the maximum satisfaction of the constantly increasing material and cultural needs of the whole of society through the uninterrupted development and improvement of socialist production on the basis of the highest technology".284 In 283 284 Ibid, p. 281 Ibid, p. 289 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez practice, however, the latter contradicted another of the "laws of socialism" derived from the practical decisions on the economy, "the law of the priority growth of sector I under socialism". The commitment to the construction of socialism in a single country, and the autarchic conception it implied, led Stalin, after the Second World War and the seizure of power by the communists in several Eastern European countries, to formulate the thesis of "the disintegration of the single world market" and the emergence of two parallel and opposing world markets, the capitalist world market and that of the countries of the socialist camp, whose theoretical precedent can be found in Bukharin in his report to the Sixth Congress of the Communist International. However, under the hegemony exercised by the Soviet Union and the imposition of its economic model, the socialist world market did not function in the sense that this concept might imply, "accelerated industrialisation will take place, which will lead to the establishment of a series of "parallel" economic structures in the industrial field, not complementary to each other, All of them marked by a bilateral relationship with the USSR, which would later be institutionalised as the basis for the functioning of the CAME. The exchange mechanism that would be imposed on the "bloc" as a whole, which would be based on a system close to barter ("clearing"), would be a clear exponent, from the monetary point of view, of the absence of a regional economic integration that was not desired by Moscow. "285 The conception and functioning of foreign trade by the countries of the socialist camp would end up becoming for them the weak point in their growing articulation with the world capitalist economy, for which, moreover, they needed to use the hard currencies of the world capitalist market. "The exhaustion of the economic pattern of growth followed in the 1950s, characterised by the "extensive" incorporation of productive factors (labour, raw materials, machinery) into the industrialisation process, together with the contradiction between the basic autarkic conception and the growing dependence on the capitalist world market, would lead the economies of the socialist camp to the economic reforms of the 1960s, whose main objectives were clearly linked to both "a change in the "model of accumulation", which would have to be based on 285 Ibid, p. 394 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century "intensive" growth, as opposed to the "extensive" growth that had predominated until then", and "a greater and more effective articulation with the world economy".286 These reforms, although they respected the fundamental bases of the Stalinist economic mechanism, such as nationalisations, planning or the monopoly of foreign trade in its bureaucratic-administrative applications, could not avoid the contradiction between the laws governing the world capitalist economy and the fundamentals of the economies of the socialist countries. The main feature of these reforms was the "increasing monetarisation of the economy" to facilitate the decentralisation of economic decisions and to use the price mechanism to obtain information. In Jesús de Blas' opinion, monetarisation was an imperative derived from the growing exchanges with the world capitalist market, while at the same time it was an acknowledgement of the irrational nature of the measures imposed in the Soviet Union after the change from the NEP to the measures of forced collectivisation and accelerated industrialisation that would eventually form the Stalinist economic mechanism. "In the new economic scenario that would take shape, enterprises would have to be guided by the objective of "profit maximisation", prices would have to reflect "relative scarcities" and the economy as a whole would have to "adapt to the requirements of the world market". "287 The next wave of reforms, in the 1980s, already affected the fundamental core of the socialist countries' economies, such as the monopoly of foreign trade, planning and social achievements; they applied structural adjustment policies with the collaboration of the international economic institutions of capitalism (IMF, WB), and prepared the subsequent phase in which the privatisation of the state sector would proceed directly. We have thus seen the economic debate on the transition to socialism which began with the victory of the Russian revolution, a debate which took place under dramatic conditions, in the context of a real experience, and whose protagonists were the leaders of that revolution themselves. Once the victory of Stalin and his economic model over his rivals was consolidated, the polemic became less intense. The Left Opposition had fragmented and lost its capacity for real influence and economic theoretical elaboration. While one part, led by Preobrazhensky, accepted the Stalinist "great turn" of forced collectivisation and accelerated industrialisation, the other part of the Opposition which 286 287 Ibid, p. 451-2 Ibid, p. 457 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez remained critical of Stalinism entered a period of bewilderment in that, while agreeing in proposing a "retreat" from the Stalinist "great turn", it was divided as to what this "retreat" should consist of. The most active part of this Opposition eventually organised itself, following Trotsky, in the Fourth International, and both its initial leader and others who followed him continued to produce analyses on the nature and evolution of the Soviet Union, reflecting on the period of transition to socialism, on the role of planning, the market or self-management, but, as they never managed to achieve power anywhere, all this debate remained at the level of abstract theory. The Marxist analyses and theories generated around the capitalist mode of production at least take place around a concrete and continuously evolving economic and social reality, as did the debates in the Soviet Union on the economic practice being tried out there. Ernest Mandel288 also criticises the economic doctrines that were deployed in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist and post-Stalinist period. In doing so, he encompasses them in a broad view of the development of economic thought in Marxism. Marxist economic theory would have had its most fertile period of development between 1894-1914 with the contributions made by authors such as Kautsky, Lenin, Parvus, Hilferding, Rosa Luxemburg, etc., who were responsible for bringing Marxism up to date with the structural transformations undergone by capitalism. This period was followed by another, less fertile one between 1917 and 1929-33, which focused on the problems of the transitional society between capitalism and socialism, and on imperialism, with contributions by authors such as Bukharin, Preobrazhensky, Varga, etc. But, continues the Belgian Marxist economist, at the moment when bourgeois economics makes its pragmatic turn, Marxist economic theory also undergoes a pragmatic transformation (as an a posteriori justification of the decisions taken by the government of the Soviet Union) which gives rise to two apologetic deformations. The first is related to the question of defining socialist society in relation to market production. The second is related to the question of the remuneration of the labour force in the transition period. 288 Mandel, Ernest, A Treatise on Marxist Economics, III, pp. 268-77. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century With regard to the first, the labour-value theory implies that commodity production disappears with the market, and this depends on two factors, the extinction of all private ownership of circulating commodities, as distinct from collective ownership alone; and the disappearance of semi-penury. Both of these are necessary conditions for the completion of the construction of a socialist society. However, for the official Soviet theses, socialism was completed in the Soviet Union in 1936, and yet the categories "commodities, money, etc." continued to apply, which is a revision of Marxist theory. In the second deformation denounced by Mandel, its apologetic character is even clearer, stating that the remuneration of labour is regulated according to "the quantity and quality of the labour supplied to society". This is only a crude justification of the differences in remuneration that in fact existed in the Soviet Union and other transitional societies. This theory breaks with the labour-value thesis and enters the field of a subjectivist theory of value, where the social utility of labour is neither an objective nor a commensurable criterion. Thus, if between 1920-40 economic thought in the Soviet Union experienced an apologetic and scholastic degeneration, after Stalin's death, and especially after the suppression of the reforms of the Khrushchev period, Soviet economic thought experienced a real renaissance with a clearly pragmatic tendency. The Malishev school, Mandel continued, tended to rehabilitate the intervention of supply and demand in the formation of consumer prices, signifying an increasingly advanced revision of the Marxist premises of economic planning in the transition. Soviet economists sought a system of self-regulators that would allow for optimal outcomes without human intervention. For the Belgian Marxist, the economic debate between the supporters of the "conservative" theses (practices of the Stalinist era) and the supporters of the "renovationist" theses (in an increasingly revisionist sense) meant that these two schools reflected, one, the interests of the central bureaucracy, and the other, the interests of the bureaucracy and technocracy at the level of the enterprises. The characteristics we have just analysed of the economic debate in the Soviet Union, and the tendencies to which they pointed, clearly explain why a genuine Marxist economic debate on the transition to socialism only regained interest and intensity for a short time on the occasion of the triumph of the revolution in Cuba and the proposals Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez made by Ernesto Che Guevara, far removed from the practices of real socialism that Jesús de Blas calls the "Stalinist economic mechanism", a debate we will deal with below. However, the other debates which were continued by authors linked to Trotskyist currents, but not only by them, ceased to refer to concrete social and economic phenomena and moved to the level of pure abstraction. This situation ran counter to the approaches of classical Marxism, starting with Marx, who had refused to make any proposal or theorisation about the functioning of the future socialist society, arguing that this would be to fall into the vice of the old utopianism. However, after the failed experiences of real socialism there were three reasons which had contributed to a change of heart in this respect. The first was the need to analyse and criticise these experiences and to draw lessons and conclusions that would be useful if in the future processes of transition to socialism were to be revived. The second reason was the evidence that the absolute lack of foresight in the classics for the transition period had been a big mistake, leading to improvisation at a very high cost and ultimately resulting in the failure of the transition experiences. There are several aspects to be discussed here. First of all, it is necessary to recall something already repeated, the classics of Marxism had always proposed a revolutionary socialist overcoming starting from a very mature capitalism and with an extension, if not worldwide, at least wide enough to serve as a basis for a rapid expansion of the revolution throughout the world. It is true - as we have already had occasion to analyse and will return to - that Marx made some reflections, on the occasion of the study of the Russian rural commune, on the possibility that in situations such as those of Russia in the 19th century there could be a direct transition to socialism, sparing the capitalist stage, but always considering this process within a socialist revolution in the most advanced countries of Europe. At no point in the classics is the possibility of the beginning of the transition to socialism in an isolated and backward country, or the possibility of the coexistence of two world markets, one capitalist and the other socialist, contemplated. The Gramscian phrase that the Russian revolution was a revolution against Capital has a profound content in that the Bolsheviks, by continuing with their attempt to build socialism in Russia after the defeat of the revolutions in Europe, were entering an unknown terrain and outside all the basic theses on which Marxism had been built. This Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century situation gave rise to a debate in socialist circles in the years immediately after the revolutionary triumph as to whether or not the Bolsheviks had made a mistake in their decision, in which socialists such as Julius Martow, Karl Kautsky, Max Adler and Otto Bauer, as well as leftist figures such as Rosa Luxemburg and Parvus, took part. This debate became less topical in the 1940s and, above all, after the Second World War due to the economic development of the Soviet Union and the extension of the socialist camp, and subsequently disappeared along with the actually existing socialism. The third reason was the need to rethink some of the classical economic positions in Marxism in the light of the failed experiences of real socialism. Thus the debates revolved around the role of the market, the state, planning, self-management and so on. However, as we have already noted, these issues, despite their importance, ceased to be of immediate interest in the absence of new processes of transition to socialism - with the exception, perhaps, of the Cuban case because of its resistance, which we will see below - and within Marxist economic thought the analysis and critique of the capitalist mode of production once again prevailed, as in its classic period. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Cuba: discussions and essays on a different economic model The irony of history, however, is that the harshest critics of the Guevara orientation emerge from the opposite side, among the more "orthodox" ranks of the Cuban administration itself and among those of some of the "brother" countries of the Soviet bloc. And all this, not because of Che's industrialising haste (none of which was ever openly criticised by any of them, we consider it necessary to point out, at least at the stage of the debate that interests us), but because of his "idealistic illusions" (see the following article). Che Guevara. Thought and politics of utopia Roberto Massari From the point of view of this chapter, Cuba is of twofold interest, firstly because for a brief period there was an attempt, on the part of Ernesto Che Guevara, for the Cuban revolution to follow an economic model substantially different from the "Stalinist economic mechanism" dominant in the socialist camp for the most part. Secondly, because Cuba is practically the last surviving country in the field of real socialism in which there is neither a more or less advanced transition to capitalism (China or Vietnam), nor a degeneration that has turned it into an unrecognisable caricature (North Korea). We will therefore analyse the Cuban case, firstly by referring to the trial of a different model and the controversy it provoked, and then to the debates on its current situation, which, in short, raise the question of the possibilities of survival of a socialist economy in a small, backward country in the midst of a capitalism that is more developed and globalised than ever. After the triumph of the revolution in Cuba in 1959, a series of decisions on the nationalisation of land and enterprises, and a set of parallel laws in the following four years, shaped a new economic system based on the collective ownership of the means of production, in coherence with the socialist character officially assigned to the revolution in 1961. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century In this context, the fundamental economic lines were oriented in two directions, firstly to reduce economic dependence on sugar production through a process of agricultural diversification, and secondly to promote a process of industrialisation in which Cuba was lagging far behind. These objectives, like the rest of the economic ones, were pursued through a socialist plan similar to those used in the Soviet Union. However, these two objectives were not achieved, and the Cuban economy encountered major imbalances. Emmanuel Ratto289 describes the causes that hindered their achievement, from the lack of technicians to the obsolescence of industrial equipment imported from the socialist bloc, as well as the US blockade. This forced a change in the lines of development, with agriculture, especially sugar monoculture, being given priority over industry. This is the economic context that served as the background to the great debate that took place between 1963-43. It can be said that, contrary to what happened in Eastern European countries, where the communists came to power thanks to the situation created by the victorious Red Army in the Second World War, for a certain period Cuba did not mimic the economic model in force in the Soviet Union. There was a brief period in the early 1960s when a different economic model, promoted by Ernesto Che Guevara, was proposed and partially implemented. This approach, and practical experience, gave rise to the important debate we will analyse below, possibly the most important since the one we have analysed in the Soviet Union before the definitive triumph of Stalinism, in which not only protagonists of the Cuban revolution such as Ernesto Che Guevara took part, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, Alberto Mora and Marcelo Fernández Font, but also other international Marxist economists such as Charles Bettelheim and Ernest Mandel, both linked to the Cuban process at the time, the former as economic adviser to the Cuban government, the latter as adviser to the Ministry of Industry. The Cuban protagonists who confronted different positions were not only theoreticians, but also exercised important responsibilities in the Cuban economy at the time. On the one hand, Ernesto Che Guevara defending and applying the Financial Budget System in industry from the Cuban Ministry of Industry. On the other hand, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez defended and applied the Economic Calculation System - in force in the 289 Ratto, Emmanuel, Revaluing the Economic Debate around a Transition Society, p. 8. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Soviet Union and the communist countries of Eastern Europe, especially since the application of the reforms proposed by Liberman - in agriculture from the presidency of the INRA (Institute of Agrarian Reform), as did Alberto Mora, Minister of Foreign Trade, and Marcelo Fernández Font, Director of the National Bank. Charles Bettelheim defended the Soviet economic system, while Ernest Mandel took a Trotskyist position close to that of Ernesto Che Guevara. The discussion revolved around two different models of the economy and three intertwined fundamental axes. The two models confronted were, on the one hand, that of centralised planning, budgetary financing and moral incentives and, on the other, that of market socialism, decentralisation of productive units and material incentives. The three main lines of discussion related to both models were: how to manage the nationalised means of production, the type of incentives to be used with regard to the workers in order to involve them in the centres of production, and the role of the law of value during the transition to socialism. With regard to the first point, the form of management of the means of production, i.e. of the enterprises, the two opposing positions were related to the level of autonomy that the enterprises should enjoy as productive units. The Economic Calculation System is based on the criterion of financial and accounting autonomy of the companies, which are responsible for their economic decisions and results obtained, oriented towards the objective of increasing productivity and being profitable. Acting within the framework of a centralised plan, however, business autonomy meant that managers had the decision-making capacity to fulfil the objectives indicated by the plan, the purchase and sale between companies of the products and services they generated as mercantile transactions, the use of money as a means of payment and an indirect instrument of control, and material incentives for workers to achieve the productive objectives. The Financial Budget System, on the other hand, was based on the centralisation of economic decisions, as well as the overall management of the nationalised companies as a whole; the companies were not considered as isolated productive units, but as a conglomerate of production centres according to common technological criteria or final destination. As they were not endowed with autonomy, they had no resources of their own and their financial resources were provided by or drawn directly from the state budget, making the use of bank loans dispensable, and their management was controlled Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century directly by the central state bodies. Money only fulfilled the function of an accounting record of the company's management, and the incentives used were predominantly moral rather than material. This conception of the state as a large enterprise rejected the commodity character of exchanges between state enterprises and, as a consequence, questioned whether the law of value would work in the stage of transition to socialism. On the subject of the law of value, the advocates of Economic Calculus, including Bettelheim, considered that its validity in the transitional stage was a consequence of the objective conditions existing in this stage, and that it would only cease to operate when a sufficiently high level of development of the productive forces had been reached to satisfy all social needs. In the meantime, it would continue to function as a regulator of production, and the accounting and financial autonomy of each of the productive units would be necessary, as well as the use of some market mechanisms. Underlying this position would be the Marxist interpretation that subjective conditions can never advance faster than objective conditions, that the relations of production must correspond to the development of the productive forces. Ernesto Che Guevara and Ernest Mandel argued, on the contrary, that the validity of the law of value was not imposed by objective conditions, but was a residue of the capitalist mode of production which had to be progressively suppressed by means of socioeconomic measures carried out by the state, such as the free provision of many services, the fixing and control of prices, the control of foreign trade, etc. Therefore, the tendency should be to centralise and plan the direction of the economy in greater depth, rejecting the category of commodity for transactions carried out between state enterprises. As Julián Santiago Puyó summarises it, the law of value "refers to the efficiency of a price system, based on the labour value of commodities, in the framework of a mercantile exchange", but with the centralised ownership of the means of production in socialism, the law of value is questioned and its role is no longer "the conduction of the production process, as in the capitalist system. On the contrary, production is determined - regulated - by "the law of harmonious, planned, proportional development"." 290 290 Puyó, Julián Santiago, Revisiting the Cuban economic debate of the 1960s. La contribución del Che Guevara a la teoría de la transición, p. 13. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez In particular, "Mandel accuses Bettelheim of being an "objectivist", of establishing a mechanical link between the productive forces and the relations of production. Although he agrees with Bettelheim on the importance of the objective factor and its determining role, which justifies the existence of the market economy and its categories, in his work he criticises Bettelheim because he absolutises the role of the objective factor, playing down the importance of the conscious factor in his analysis. In his analysis, the market categories have an objective character because of their content, since they express necessary economic relations, but this does not deny the conscious role of man in their study and limitation and subsequent elimination".291 But Mandel does not fall into idealism and recognises the complexity and problems in transitional periods: "Those who reject that the law of value continues to regulate production, directly or indirectly, in the epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism, in no way deny that market categories inevitably survive this epoch. Nor do they deny that, in many fields, planners can quietly leave certain adjustments between supply and demand to market mechanisms. But they understand the fundamentally contradictory nature of the market and the plan, and thus allow ample room for administered pricing in many areas, whether to ensure as a priority the development of certain social services, or to ensure certain imperatives of national economic development. This is why they stress that the influence of the law of value is more limited than in the capitalist mode of production, and that certain sectors - in particular the circulation of the means of production within the state sector - can escape it.292 Although Mandel was at odds with Bettelheim, his thinking was not in the same position as Guevara's. His rejection of the voluntarism of the priority use of moral stimuli during the transition period leaves no room for doubt. His rejection of the voluntarism of the priority use of moral stimuli during the transition period leaves no room for doubt: "The authorities and influential authors who constantly assert, in the USSR and elsewhere, that it is first necessary to "create a new mentality", that work must first become "an individual need felt as such", before material stimuli can be abolished and distribution according to needs can be switched to, display a real "voluntarist deviation" and reverse a causal relationship which is, however, manifest. In 291 Machado Hernández, McsTeresa, La polémica en torno a la ley del valor y su manifestación en el pensamiento marxista cubano, p. 9. 292 Mandel, Ernest, The Economic Debate in Cuba during the Period 1963-1964, p. 6. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century reality, the first thing that is necessary is to see the extinction of the monetary economy through the production of an abundance of goods and services before it can fully manifest itself psychological revolution, before a new socialist consciousness can develop in place of the egoistic mentality of the old man. In the epoch of the transitional society, and a fortiori in the USSR, "capitalist survivals" are not what determines a desire for individual enrichment, but rather the everyday reality of a distribution rationed by money. To want to create in these conditions a "communist consciousness" by the "struggle against the survivals of the capitalist past" is to undertake a real Sisyphean task".293 The Belgian Marxist adopts a position similar to Preobrazhensky's initial position on the theoretical instruments for defining the economic laws that would govern during socialism or communism: "A long series of effective socialist experiences - from the point of view of practice - will be indispensable before theory can definitively codify the "economic laws" of the construction of socialism, which we cannot discover, at the present stage of experience, except through multiple trial and error, according to the method of successive approximation".294 293 294 Mandel, Ernest, A Treatise on Marxist Economics III, p. 169. Mandel, Ernest, The Economic Debate in Cuba during the Period 1963-1964, p. 2. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The discussion on the type of incentives to be used was related not only to the performance of productive units but, especially in Ernesto Che Guevara's view, to the development of the consciousness necessary to achieve communism, a development that would be hindered by the use of material incentives that would perpetuate selfish and individualistic values within the working class, so that material incentives should be progressively replaced by those of a moral nature. This conception meant rejecting economic development as an end in itself, but as a means to transform human beings by making them more creative and more caring. The debate came to a close in 1965 when Ernesto Che Guevara left the Ministry of Industry and embarked on the project of extending the revolution throughout Latin America and, at the same time, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez was removed from the INRA. The Cuban government then embarked on a new economic policy, the Registro or material control, which, although it initially seemed to support the Guevarist theses, nevertheless went in the opposite direction, with an excessive weight of political voluntarism in the direction of the economy. Rather, given the enormous difficulties encountered and the lack of successful reference models, the path followed was one of trial and error, which did not provide a definitive solution to the economic problems of transition to socialism in a small country with a largely agricultural economy, or a service economy in its last stage, and in conditions of isolation following the collapse of real socialism. With Guevara still on the island, a rectification of what many authors have described as a voluntarist policy began. However, between 1965-70, a return to a voluntarist policy led to many errors, and the influence of Guevara's economic approaches was definitively abandoned. From 1971 onwards, a period of rectification of past errors began, leading to greater integration with the economies and models of the countries of real socialism. In practice, we have already seen that the economic model followed in the Soviet Union ended up being imposed in Cuba, but despite this defeat, a few final questions can be asked: was Guevara's economic model more coherent with an authentically Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century emancipatory socialist project, was it practically viable, and did Guevara really make any important contributions? Roberto Massari, one of Guevara's scholars, takes a rather negative view of this issue. On the first point, he points out that "his thinking is oriented in a frankly economistic direction, a precursor, should it ever be applied (which, however, never happened) of deeper and more substantial bureaucratic degenerations than those denounced by himself".295 With regard to the third of the questions, this author answers his own questions, "What is new in his reflection on the problems of the construction of socialism? Is there any specific and creative contribution of his that would also allow us to credit him with having made a step forward in the knowledge and solution of the problems of the transition period? Quite frankly, the answer is almost entirely negative."296 295 296 Massari, Roberto, Che Guevara. Pensamiento y política de la utopía, p. 25. Ibid, p. 61 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Discussions on economic policy in the transition to socialism In conclusion, after going through the international data, we want to put in parallel the double impasse of "state socialism" and "market socialism". And from the point of view of self-management, we will discuss the negative conclusion drawn by Henri Lepage. He considers self-management ineffective in the face of the market. And we will reverse the proposition - the market does not allow adequate social control of social property. The market versus self-management. The Yugoslav experience Catherine Samary There has been a more generic discussion on the economic problems in the transition to socialism, which does not refer to any particular concrete experience but takes all of them into account as a point of reflection. It is a debate which, although of essential importance, has nevertheless lost its relevance since the collapse of real socialism and no new experiences of transition to socialism have taken place. The importance of the subject, after a whole historical period in which it has been possible to contemplate the practice of various experiences of transition to socialism, is reflected in the multitude of essays and articles that have been generated to analyse it. We have chosen, from among all those that have been made available to us, some of what we consider to be the most representative, without implying in advance that they exhaust the discussion of a fairly extensive question. To address this issue, we have chosen some of the most representative polemics and authors and the chapter has been divided into three distinct blocks. The first part will analyse the very early discussions between Marxist authors and neoclassical economists on the viability or not of the socialist model of economy based on planning, on whether the market or planned economy is really more efficient, with a second discussion on the types of possible or necessary incentives linked to these economic models. For this part Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century we will rely on the excellent summary article by Claudio Katz, Problemas teóricos del socialismo. The second part will focus on one of the Marxist authors who has most reflected on Marxist economics in general, and on the economic experiences in the countries of real socialism in particular, with his critique of these and his proposal, in his opinion, of a model more faithful to the postulates of the classics of Marxism: the Belgian economist and Trotskyist leader Ernest Mandel, whose arguments on socialist economic experiences such as the Soviet and Cuban ones we have already seen in the previous chapter. This author leads us to the third part, in which he discusses and confronts his economic model, no longer with economic theories linked to the experiences of real socialism, but with other variants of alternatives to these that try to recover the value that the market should play in future trials of transition to socialism. These latter discussions revolved around some of the mechanisms used in the experiences of transition to socialism, such as planning, the market, money, the mercantile nature of transactions or selfmanagement. Following the pattern of the two previous subchapters, we will also focus here on the polemics that these problems originated among several theorists who dealt with them from different positions, and more specifically on the debate that took place among three scholars of the economies of real socialism and the mechanisms used in them, namely Alec Nove, Diane Elson and Ernest Mandel, to which we will add other authors who expressed their opinion later on, such as Catherine Samary. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Calculation and economic incentives However, since the 1990s, Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell have responded to the Austrian critique by demonstrating that under current technological conditions there is no longer any impediment to achieving detailed planning (processing all inputs used) of a complex economy. Reopening the debate on socialist economic planning Maxi Nieto and Lluís Catalá As indicated above, Claudio Katz takes as a starting point for his article what he considers to be two key issues in a planned economy, calculation and incentive, and analyses the controversies that arose around these two issues between neoclassical and Marxist economists. The neoclassical Austrian economist Von Mises launched a widespread critique against planning and in defence of market efficiency after the Bolshevik triumph and the initial implementation of the system of war communism. This started a long controversy on these issues. The Polish Marxist economist Oskar Lange297 was responsible for the first reply to Von Mises to demonstrate that planning is capable of achieving the same efficiency in price determination as the market through the use of mathematical simulations. The controversy over the feasibility of Lange's proposal continued between Lange and Von Mises' main disciple, Friedrich Hayek. Lange's proposal successfully responded to neoclassical criticisms, even their main objection, the lack of instruments capable of processing the enormous amount of data necessary for his mathematical model, would today be overcome thanks to modern computer techniques. However, Lange's model suffered, as Katz points out, from a 297 Oskar Lange was a renowned Polish economist born in the early 20th century, who taught at several American universities, returned to Poland after World War II and participated in the economic management of the communist government. He was theoretically noted for his defence of planning and the model of market socialism. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century socialist point of view, from an essential defect: "It placed the planner in a substitute role for the market and imagined his action as a mere reproduction of market dynamics"298 and, thus, he comes to ask what sense the planning model defended by Lange makes if its efficiency is based on operating with the same parameters as the market. A model that the Polish economist would use to defend his proposal of "market socialism". However, Katz's critique is very weak, and is based on a classical assumption about the conditions of a communist society that has not yet been proven. For Katz, the market model of capitalism, or the mathematical simulation of it in Lange's planning model, "becomes meaningless when abundance dilutes the role of prices as indicators of demand or of the satisfaction of social needs. "299 This is a subject that we will deal with in more detail in a later chapter on ecological Marxism, but we can already anticipate that the assumption of an abundance achieved under communism collides with increasing difficulties such as population growth, the limitations of the exploitation of nature, and the growing expansion of social needs. Thus, if the society of abundance that would serve as the material basis for the construction of a communist society based on the superior development of the productive forces that Marxism conceives with the beginning of the socialist transition - is not feasible to achieve or, at least, is displaced to a period so distant and uncertain that it would come to mean the same thing, then the problems of economic calculation would become present not as a transitory situation, but as one that is far-reaching or even impossible to eradicate. Katz's critique of Lange's model continues first with the Polish economist's identification of the ultra-centralised, bureaucratised and compulsive planning developed in the Soviet Union with a form of socialism, and then with his critique of Lange's conception of the law of value, Katz considers that this law would only partially rule in the transition period, without becoming dominant in the economy, disappearing under the aforementioned assumption of the abundance of goods and services achieved under communism. Katz then refers to the response of the English Marxist economist Dobb questioning the assumptions underlying Lange's model in the same sense as we have seen Katz do, i.e. 298 299 Katz, Claudio, Theoretical Problems of Socialism, p. 74. Ibid, p. 75 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez criticising the Polish economist because it was a planning model based on market simulation. Dobb was a staunch advocate of planning and a convinced believer in the possibility of the abolition of scarcity under communism, which would make economic calculation unnecessary. While Katz acknowledged the British economist for his arguments against the objections of the neoclassicals, he nevertheless reproached him for his blindness to the obvious problems that had arisen from bureaucratic planning in the Soviet Union, and for his identification of that experience with socialism. These problems stemming from bureaucratic planning, and discussed non-publicly in the ruling circles of the Soviet Union after de-Stalinisation, led to a revival of economic thinking and proposals to modify the Stalinist economic model, such as those of Liberman300 , aimed at making prices more flexible and enterprises more autonomous in order to make them more economically efficient. However, "the debate avoided the political root of the arbitrary economic management that prevailed in the USSR". When the regimes of real socialism finally collapsed, Katz continues, "many of Lange's heirs either fully (Kornai) or partially (Brus) accepted Hayek's theses on calculation".301 After the brief historical summary, Katz draws his own conclusion on the feasibility and possibilities of the application of planning during the period of transition to socialism. "The fact is that a non-market system of price-setting could not be developed effectively in an abrupt manner, even with the most advanced computer aids. Only after a period of joint experimentation with the plan and the market would the first mechanism be able to operate fully [...] a system of collective administration requires not only the support of the majority of the population, but also the maintenance of certain welfare standards. And this administration is unthinkable as long as there are still exhausting working hours or shortages of essential goods. What could be implemented in developed socialism could not be realised in the immediate future, especially in the peripheral countries".302 300 A Soviet economist born at the end of the 19th century, he was noted for his proposals to grant greater autonomy to enterprises within the framework of a planned economy, with the application of performance bonuses. His theories became the basis for the economic reforms carried out in the Soviet Union from 1965 onwards, which ended in failure, although it is true that they were applied to a limited extent in the form of an experiment in a few hundred enterprises and some territories. 301 Katz, Claudio, Theoretical Problems of Socialism, p. 78. 302 Ibid, p. 79 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century It is thus a clear criticism of all the experiences of real socialism, which carried out, following the Soviet model after the NEP, comprehensive collectivisation and nationalisation and ultra-centralised bureaucratic planning. But, as we have analysed above, these conclusions had already been reached by other socialist leaders and theoreticians in the midst of the experiences of transition to socialism, and they had developed alternatives or proposals based on the criticisms that were put into practice with an identical final result: failure. These were the cases of the NEP after the period of war communism, the "retreat" to a new NEP adopted by the left opposition in the USSR after the forced collectivisation and accelerated industrialisation adopted by the Stalinist sector, the model of self-managed socialism promoted in Yugoslavia, and the various reforms carried out in the USSR and the people's democracies after de-Stalinisation. What, then, would be the different characteristics of the economic alternatives proposed by Katz, but also by Mandel and other Marxist theorists, that would make their model successful in the face of the known practical failures? The Argentinean economist is not too profound in this respect, but he points out some elements. First of all, what should not be done, and which was the cause of the failure of the market socialism tried out in the USSR and the popular democracies from the 1960s onwards, is to try to guide the dynamics of the state-owned sector with mercantile criteria. Secondly, the existence of certain indispensable conditions is necessary for the model proposed by Katz, of which he cites four. Full democracy "so that the price formation mechanisms in the planned sector can genuinely operate".303 A majority adherence of the population to the socialist project. A sufficient and continuous development of the productive forces to be able to satisfy social demands. And a continued advance in socialist consciousness. But this takes us beyond the purely economic to focus on the political: what would be the characteristics and institutions of this full democracy that would make it possible to achieve and measure the majority of the population's support for the socialist project? We would now be talking about the type of state of the transition period. However, the advocates of the model proposed by Katz have never finished defining this aspect. His 303 Ibid, p. 81 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez proposals for full, broad democracy have not delved into the details, but this is not the chapter to discuss this issue either304 . We had pointed out that in Katz's article the second important issue related to the planned economy concerned incentives. Here he again points to the criticisms of neoclassical economists of the socialist planning model. Hayek assumed that with planning, incentives disappeared and with them the motives for business investment, to which the "market socialists" responded that incentives should be sought to motivate business managers to increase their efficiency. The theoretical background to the discussion are two different principles that inspire the neoclassicals and the communist project. For the former, the principle of scarcity is the guiding criterion of any economic model, which would express that social needs are always greater than the existing resources to satisfy them, and that the monetary incentive is the only one capable of motivating growth and the efficient use of productive resources. The communist project would be formulated in terms of the existence of abundance, thus obviating the dilemmas of scarcity. Katz resorts to Mandel's arguments to refute these neoclassical positions, but without much success. Indeed, Mandel rejects the neoclassical concept of unlimited needs, differentiating types of consumption of basic, secondary and luxury goods. He argues that with a certain development of the productive forces, scarcity can disappear in the first type. Moreover, needs would depend both on the type of society in place and on the level of development of the economy. The paradox occurs at this level. Both Katz and Mandel recognise that a transition to socialism would be easier in developed economies, where scarcity is more eradicated, than in backward economies, where productive forces are less developed and scarcity is more acute and can last much longer. But it is precisely in many developed economies that a very extensive system of satisfaction of basic needs (food, education, health, social protection, etc.) has been deployed, which strongly discourages the extension of the need for a socialist society to the broad masses. 304 A comprehensive discussion of the problems of Marxist theory in relation to the state can be found in a previously published book, Sánchez Rodríguez, Jesús, Sociedad de clases, poder político y Estado. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century On the contrary, transitions to socialism have been experienced in backward societies, where injustice and acute shortages have led the broad masses to support revolution, but, given these conditions of scarcity, enormous efforts have been needed to develop the productive forces, and they have then been confronted with the problem of stimuli. Moral stimuli alone have not worked, and the material stimuli introduced subsequently have resulted in a blockage or retreat of socialist consciousness - without, moreover, achieving the level of productivity and economic development of the advanced capitalist countries - until, finally, most of these societies have reverted to the capitalist model. The awareness of the problems and difficulties encountered in the societies that have tried the transition to socialism, and the final results of most of them, have introduced a point of caution and uncertainty when facing these problems, suppressing in the case of the most lucid intellectuals, as in the case of Katz, any triumphalist prognosis. If communism advocates communal-moral incentives as opposed to the individualisticmaterial ones of capitalism, however, the acceptance that any transition to socialism will necessarily be extensive in time and with different stages presupposes then, "the combined validity of material and moral incentives. The transition would thus constitute a period of equilibrium between two forms of incentive whose proportion cannot be predetermined in advance. "305 This approach leads him to disqualify the incentive models used in the real experiences of transition to socialism, "the application of voluntarist policies of "permanent collective mobilisation" (such as the "great leap forward" of Maoism) is as harmful as the perverse encouragement of exclusive benefits for company directors, which preceded the collapse of "real socialism" [...] Neither the centralised political mobilisation to achieve a production record, nor the particular encouragement with bonuses translated into the desired results. Bureaucratic management corroded both alternatives equally. "306 Disqualification that he tries to soften when he refers to the proposals on incentives made by Ernesto Che Guevara, but which undoubtedly falls into the category of voluntarist policies, those of centralised political mobilisation. 305 306 Katz, Claudio, Theoretical Problems of Socialism, p. 85. Ibid, p. 85 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century A critical view of the real socialist economy The establishment of this economic system did not come from a natural process of maturation of the productive forces, but from a deliberate political decision to break with the capitalist system and create a new one, based on state ownership of the means of production, regulated by a centralism in charge of the detailed allocation of all economic parameters through planning bodies, supervised by a huge army of highly hierarchical bureaucracy and whose main resource consists of ideological and coercive incentives in the sphere of people's motivation. For an analysis of economic reforms in Eastern Europe. Historical perspective. Jan Patula Previously, we analysed the economic experiences of real socialism and the discussions that took place within it, focusing on the Soviet experience, as it was the main model, and on the Cuban experience, as it tried to be a different variant within this model, at least in the theoretical discussion for a certain period of time. This subchapter might seem redundant, but we have considered it convenient to present it separately because it provides a broader and more critical view of these economic experiences. As we pointed out earlier, one of the authors who was most concerned with analysing and polemicising the economy in the countries of real socialism was the Belgian economist and leader of the Fourth International Ernest Mandel. He not only dealt with these issues in books and pamphlets, but also took part in two important polemics on the subject. We have already analysed the first, which took place in Cuba in the mid-1960s, the second we will see later. Now we believe it is necessary to refer first to some of his most important reflections on the subject, using two of his works where he deals with the subject of the economy in societies in transition to socialism. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez In his important work A Treatise on Marxist Economics, there are several chapters devoted to an analysis of the economy in the Soviet Union, and the socialist countries in general. In particular, Chapter XV is devoted to the "Soviet Economy", and examines the stages of the evolution of the Soviet economy, the experience of the five-year plans, the social nature of the Soviet economy and the "economic categories" in the USSR. We shall dwell on this heading, which is the most interesting for the analysis we are making. Mandel's starting point for explaining the survival of "economic categories" such as commodity, value, money, price, wage and others is the nature of the Soviet economy, "the Soviet economy carries within itself contradictory characteristics: it is a contradictory combination of a non-capitalist mode of production with a still fundamentally bourgeois mode of production. This situation designates a period of transition between capitalism and socialism, during which the economy combines features of the past with those of the future".307 For Mandel, commodity production "only disappears with the production of an abundance of use-values in the fully developed socialist economy. Commodity production cannot be artificially 'suppressed' [...] As long as what is distributed is a shortage of consumer goods, it must be directed according to objective criteria. The scarcity of use values prolongs the life of exchange value"308 However, this survival of commodities only survives in the sector of consumer goods, because in the sector of productive goods, with the enterprises in the hands of the state, the exchanges of their products do not have the nature of commodities. The category of money also survives under these conditions, although it loses part of the fundamental functions it performs in the capitalist mode of production. The same is true of the category of prices, which "continue to oscillate around value, but their formation is no longer an automatic process as it is under capitalism". Mandel thus sees market functioning as inevitable because of the persistence of the relative scarcity of consumer goods in the first stage of transition, recognising that the persistence of a consumer market as a lesser evil nevertheless raises problems such as: 307 308 Mandel, Ernest, A Treatise on Marxist Economics, III, p. 40. Ibid, p. 41 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century "how are prices to be determined? how is economic planning to be reconciled with market production, with the market economy'".309 These problems have had two answers, a theoretical one, that of Oskar Lange and others, and a practical one, that of real socialism, "which sinned in a crude pragmatism that overshadowed the whole price structure, to lead to the worst absurdities".310 Chapter XVI deals more generically with "The Economics of the Transition Period". In it, Mandel differentiates between two types of transitions. The one he calls the "transition period of friction" is concerned with "repairing the extra costs of the transition from capitalism to socialism" and faces problems originating from outside in the "economic mechanism" of that period, with the aim of returning "from limited reproduction to simple reproduction". However, "the transition period proper" is already facing "endogenous" problems, and the aim is to move from "expanded reproduction with a moderate growth rate to expanded reproduction with a higher growth rate".311 With an optimism not based on any real data, Mandel assumes that the economic transition from capitalism to socialism would be easy, once the political problems had been overcome, on the sole condition that either the needs of humanity be limited to elementary necessities, a solution which he himself considers unfeasible, or that the productive forces, which the Belgian economist considers still insufficient, be rapidly expanded to "ensure an abundance of industrial goods for all the inhabitants of the globe", which "implies the need for a period of transition between capitalism and socialism. A period of socialist accumulation".312 He goes on to offer a list of sources of socialist accumulation that would be available in both industrialised and underdeveloped countries. As we have already had occasion to comment above, and as we shall see again in the chapter on ecosocialism, this necessary expansion of the productive forces in order to achieve the abundance of goods is confronted with ecological problems which call into question its possible realisation. This is a basic assumption which is rejected by ecosocialism, without there being a synthesis capable of explaining how Marxism and 309 Ibid, p. 139 Ibid, p. 143 311 Ibid, p. 99 312 Ibid, p. 103 310 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez all its economic categories would turn out if the expansion of the productive forces and the consequent abundance of goods could not be achieved, and the transition to socialism had to be situated in an environment of scarce goods in the face of a growing unsatisfied demand. Could we still speak of socialism then? Would it be feasible to reach it under these conditions? Finally, in chapter XVII, "The Socialist Economy", Mandel summarises his overall view of the economy in the period of transition to socialism, "During the period of transition from capitalism to socialism, the socialisation of the means of production is still linked to the private appropriation of the necessary product in the form of wages [...] Private interest thus continues to be the fundamental stimulant of the economic effort of individuals. The economy remains monetary. "313 This contradiction is a constant source of friction in the planned economy. As long as the economy remains fundamentally monetary, because of relative scarcity, it is inevitable that the struggle of all against all for a greater appropriation of money will persist. The corrupting influence of money is accentuated by the existence of bureaucracy and the absence of real democracy. In this chapter Mandel analyses the role of the individual and social wage in the transition period, reflects on fundamental and accessory needs, on free consumption and rational consumption, on the process of extinction of the mercantile and monetary economy, on the psychological revolution associated with the economic revolution, or on economic growth, which, if presented as a necessity in the transition phase, would become a social option when the full socialist society based on the abundance of goods and services is achieved. In a later pamphlet, Mandel completes some of the aspects already dealt with earlier in The Economy in the Transition Period. His starting point is the observation that the transitions began in relatively backward countries and not in advanced capitalist countries. This situation, not foreseen by classical Marxists, has led to a well-known phenomenon: "Instead of concentrating on a process of creating new relations of production and new rules of distribution, the leaders of transitional societies have had to focus their efforts on expanding the productive forces themselves. "But in addition, and 313 Ibid, p. 167 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century in view of the study of this new type of economy, "According to the method Marx applied to the study of the capitalist mode of reproduction, a systematic analysis of the general characteristics of the transition period would only be possible with the emergence of this economy in its advanced and stable form". Lessons can therefore be drawn from these historical experiences, but "to systematise these experiences in the form of a general economic theory of the transition period seems premature, if not impossible"314 Mandel thus places himself in the tradition of Marxist theorists who, starting with the first analyses after the Bolshevik victory, reject that the political economy developed by Marx could also serve for the transition period, adding that it is still premature to construct an explanatory theory in this respect. What Mandel does, then, is to analyse and reflect on a set of problems and dilemmas that have been appearing in the experiences of transition to socialism, which are as follows: The one concerning the construction of socialism in a single country or permanent revolution. The problem of the survival or disappearance of the categories associated with the market, of which we have already seen its position above, and which we could now summarise in a phrase contained in this text. "The Marxist dialectic requires a continuous combination of a tendency to preserve market categories as long as they are necessary and a tendency to stimulate their disappearance as much as possible".315 The problem of the contradiction between socialist planning and the law of value which cannot be eliminated all at once in the transitional period, but through a progressive process. The dilemma of using rigid or flexible planning, to which Mandel proposes to flee from both the Soviet and Yugoslavian experiences, "the answer to this false dilemma consists neither in the ultra-centralised and ultra-detailed planning of Stalin's model, nor in the too flexible, too decentralised planning along the lines of the new Yugoslavian system, but in democratic central planning under a national congress of workers' councils largely made up of real workers." 316 The dilemma between investment and consumption, whose origin lies in the fact that the societies where the transitions to socialism began, and due to the low level of 314 Mandel, Ernest, The Economy in the Transition Period, p. 2. Ibid, p. 5 316 Ibid, p. 8 315 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez development from which they started, found themselves with the need to "simultaneously carry out "primitive socialist accumulation" and the construction of a new society. " 317 The dilemma between the use of material or moral incentives, which we have discussed above. The dilemma between the leadership of a single individual in the productive process or the self-management of the workers, recognising Mandel's inevitable centralised authority in the productive processes of a developed economy, but subject to choice and revocation by the workers. The dilemma between private and collective agriculture, in the face of which the Belgian economist rejects the forced collectivisation solutions implemented in transitional societies, advocating the progressive integration of the small farmer into collective agriculture through the practical demonstration of its advantages. The dilemma between autarky and trade with the capitalist world, to which Mandel points out that "The correct orientation is that which deliberately calculates the advantages and disadvantages of given trade relations with the international capitalist market", warning against harmful and dangerous confusions "Still less should the need for protection against foreign competition be confused with the socialist ideal of autarky. " 318 The problem of economic relations between states where workers are in power, in which he recognises the difficulties of what would be, in the abstract, the optimal solution, the pooling of all the resources of the countries in transition with the formulation of a common development plan for all of them. A solution which is opposed in practice by the persistent national sentiments in these countries, and which would also have to take into account that such pooling between countries which differ widely in their level of development could retard overall development, but warns, nevertheless, that "although it is not advisable to pool the resources of the non-capitalist field completely, the completely independent development of the economy of each workers' state as a unit gives rise to equally irrational effects".319 317 Ibid, p. 9 Ibid, p. 14 319 Ibid, p. 16 318 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century In short, what the above analyses, debates and discussions highlight are the enormous economic difficulties encountered in practice by the historical experiences of transition to socialism. The end result was that, with the Cuban exception, these experiences ended in a return to capitalism, either in its most complete form and through an abrupt collapse of communist political power and a savage transition to capitalism, as in the case of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; or in the form of a transition piloted from power by the communist party itself, which while keeping the reins of state gradually swung towards capitalism, as in the cases of China and Vietnam. All this raised a whole series of decisive questions for the most lucid and less dogmatic authors, which they have not been able to condense into a body of doctrine capable of serving as a guide for hypothetical socialist transitions that might take place in the future. At most, these authors have sought the root causes of these failures in two orders of phenomena, the first referring to the fact that these transitions always took place in undeveloped countries; the second referring to the political nature of these transitions, with the absence of democracy, the dominance of state and business bureaucracy, the single party merged with the state, etc. On the other hand, having noted the difficulties encountered and the difficulties of making forecasts and advocating solutions in the abstract, some of these authors, as in the case of Mandel, have recognised that an adequate economic theory for the period of socialist transition can only take place on the basis of the practical experiences that took place in this respect. If these explanations are correct, and there are no better ones from Marxism, what is being proposed is that any socialist transition that might be attempted in the future - and in the first decades of the 21st century this possibility has disappeared from the foreseeable historical horizon - in order to avoid repeating the mistakes that led to the failure of previous ones, should be carried out in countries with developed economies as classical Marxism had advocated until the failure of the European revolutions at the end of the First World War inclined the Bolsheviks to carry out the transition in a backward and devastated country - and with a political nature just the opposite of that which was proper to real socialism. However, it was not in this area that most progress was made - with Eurocommunism making the most serious attempt, although it did not confront these problems in any Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez depth either, since it did not achieve power in any country - but rather the debates centred on the inevitability or otherwise of the market, i.e. whether any transition should be through market socialism. This meant that, given the economic failure of the experiences of real socialism, there were only two competing alternatives, those, like Mandel, who continued to advocate a classical Marxist version based on the socialisation of the means of production and planning, but in a context of broad and deep democracy, and those who concluded that it was impossible to escape the necessity of the market and therefore proposed some model of market socialism. This will be the subject of the next sub-chapter. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century The controversy over market socialism Based on the old projects of Oskar Lange and Fred Taylor, the "market socialism" [of analytical Marxism] extends the scope of the ideas of those authors. The essential feature of both models is that they try to make a certain role of the market compatible with the absence of private ownership of the means of production. Analytical Marxism, clear Marxism. Roberto Gargarella In this sub-chapter we will refer to the polemic that developed between Mandel himself and other theoreticians in favour of some form of market socialism. Alec Nove is one of these advocates of what is generically known as market socialism. The key ideas that animate his conception are summarised by Samary, "starting from his idea that none of Marx's observations on socialism are useful (worse, they would be utopian and misleading) in the construction of a "possible socialism". Nove takes as a starting point for his proposals the analysis of "actually existing socialist societies" and capitalism. His model is pragmatic, with a minimum "criterion" that he defines as socialist of strong obstacles to private property and a limited plan. Its regulator is the market".320 Nove's proposal for socialism is as follows: "the only possible socialist economy is a dual economy: a dominant sector organised through "a system of binding instructions emanating from planning boards" and a large, but subordinate, sector organised through the market. The main difference between such an economy and a capitalist "mixed economy" is the absence of private ownership of the means of production on a large scale. The economy is made up of three types of enterprises: state-owned, cooperative and individually owned. Choice and democracy depend to a large extent on market operations and a political system in which planners are accountable to an elected assembly. There is some concern with transforming the social and material relations of 320 Samary, Catherine, Repenser et reformuler les débats sur le socialisme, p. 1. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez production, but not the relations of exchange, distribution and consumption. There is no discussion of the reorganisation of the labour process beyond the defence of small firms, and nothing is said about the reorganisation of the relations between production and the reproduction of labour power (...) Nove attaches little value to self-organisation by the rank and file and is particularly averse to the role of trade unions, which are seen as an obstacle to the economic reforms needed in capitalist and socialist countries. The public action of the members of Nove's socialist society seems to be limited to buying, selling and voting. Nove's conception of socialism emphasises formal ownership and is defined primarily in terms of the absence of large capitalist enterprises. The advantages he attributes to his model of socialist economy are flexibility, efficiency, choice and the ability to avoid the excesses of capitalism or unconstrained centralised planning. "321 Diane Elson's contribution reviews all the drawbacks of the market, and Nove does not refuse to acknowledge many of these objections, but sees the market as a lesser evil because it is the only realistic alternative to bureaucracy. Against Nove's proposal, Mandel, for his part, will defend a totally different model of socialism based on workers' self-organisation and without the need for money, i.e. a socialism where there is no commodity production, "How then should production and costs - "socially necessary" labour - be measured? Mandel's implicit answer is that this can be done "directly". That would mean the direct organisation of production and distribution in terms of use values or concrete labour - i.e. without currency or price."322 . Although, as we have seen above, Samary's interpretation is not entirely correct, Catherine Samary warns us that the positions once defended by Mandel in his polemic with Nove in 1986-88 will be modified later in 1990 to rectify some of his approaches to the role of the market, money or price in a society in transition. This first proposal by Mandel, in which direct democracy would function as a substitute for the market, is criticised by both Samary and Elson. The former makes a clear objection to Mandel's arguments, "Worst of all, it undermines Mandel's fundamental and compelling defence of the need for direct democracy. Too many numerous 321 322 Elson, Diane, Market Socialism or Market Socialisation? (1), pp. 2-3 Samary, Catherine, Repenser et reformuler les débats sur le socialisme, op. cit., p. 4. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century meetings and votes on details would kill participation in the really necessary collective decisions on key choices. The use of money and buying/selling relationships can be put at the service of the effectiveness of the plan. It can be a tool used for its elaboration, its realisation, a means of checking whether it meets the needs of consumers or socialised enterprises that need semi-finished goods for their own production".323 For Samary this first approach of Mandel's was correct but naïve, "Mandel's argument was not very convincing when he tends to present workers' democracy as simple and capable of solving all problems without tools and institutions, including a "socialised market". But essentially, what Mandel wished to argue is that the decision, "in the last analysis" must revert back to the direct judgement of the workers (we will say human beings as workers and consumers) - and in that he was convincing".324 Before continuing with Mandel and the evolution of these early approaches, let us look at Diane Elson's proposal. Her starting point is to accept what she considers to be the valid arguments of Mandel and Nove, "I share Mandel's view that, despite Nove's arguments against it, there is an alternative to both the market and bureaucratic planning. But I start my search for this alternative in a different direction. I agree with Nove that the price mechanism is an indispensable instrument for the coordination of a socialist economy, but I argue that it must be socialised so that it works for and not against socialism."325 He then goes on to make explicit his definition of market and commodity so that they are not rejected a priori as elements of a socialist project. "The market cannot be rejected a priori. [...] Nor can the discussion be limited in advance by defining socialism in terms of an absence of commodity production and by simply equating commodity production with buying and selling. [...] The problematic status of commodities derives not from the simple fact of buying and selling, but from the fact that buying and selling take place under conditions which allow them to take on an independent life of their own. This independence of commodities leads to social relations between men assuming the phantasmagorical form of relations between things [...] Such an 323 Ibid, p. 5 Ibid, p. 8 325 Elson, Diane, op. cit., p. 1. 324 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez interpretation leaves open the possibility of creating a society in which goods are exchanged for money but do not have an independent life of their own; in which people do not exist for one another merely as representatives of commodities."326 Elson reviews and refutes the arguments of various economic schools in favour of the market as it functions in a capitalist economy, but argues that "a decentralised socialist economy requires a decentralised price mechanism, but that this does not imply price formation through private markets (i.e. it does not imply that prices are set by firms acting as market promoters)".327 They do not see feasible, even with a massive use of today's computer techniques, the necessary premise of a centrally planned system to reach an equilibrium before allocating resources and starting production. For this reason they argue that "An advantage of the market system, compared to central planning, is not so much that of generating information at low cost as that of allowing relative autonomy of decisions, so that only a fraction of the information about production possibilities and demand at a given time and place has to be processed".328 Finally, and to reaffirm his confidence in the functioning of market socialism, he concludes that "prices and socialism are not incompatible, but the existing social relations between buyers and sellers must be changed so that they are not antagonistic. The price formation process must be a public process that is not controlled by business. And information must be shared, with relationships of trust, reciprocity and good faith that delimit the functioning of the market, rather than being subordinated to it".329 What does Elson reproach Mandel for in his arguments used in the polemic with Novec? Mandel argued for a system of articulated workers' self-management acting as a decentralised, non-market system of coordination as an alternative to the plan and the market, which was a rejection of both the market and prices. The objective that planning should achieve is that of balancing consumer preferences and the allocation of resources before production starts, thus avoiding imbalances between supply and demand. To reduce bureaucracy to a minimum Mandel designed a system of democratically elected decision-making bodies based on workers' and consumers' councils which would make planning decisions on a top-down scale. In order to dispense with money, buying and 326 Ibid, p. 1 Ibid, p. 8 328 Ibid, p. 19. 329 Ibid, p.23 327 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century selling, the direct and free distribution of goods necessary for the basic needs expressed would be used. Elson considers these proposals by the Belgian economist to be highly unsatisfactory: if prices are eliminated, it becomes impossible to determine the structure of the plan because GDP can only be calculated using prices, even if they are reference prices. It would force households to plan needs in advance, without solving the problem of the large number of unexpected needs that can arise and the correction mechanisms to be employed. His unshakeable faith in self-management prevents him from stopping to reflect on the problems that might arise between the different self-managed groups. In short, the following two judgements are possibly the summary of Elson's critique of Mandel. Firstly, "In Mandel's economic scheme there is little room for the unexpected, and he therefore tends to simplify the tasks that would correspond to "articulated selfmanagement". The existence of quasi-automatic and routine processes is emphasised [...] The assumption of an economy that does not require adjustment processes is reinforced by a very simplified conception of its needs. Mandel starts from the generally accepted existence of a hierarchy of needs to assume that planners can know in advance the combination of goods needed to satisfy human needs and that this is independent of prices."330 Second, "money and prices allow us to consider different alternatives, from what percentage of national output should be devoted to health services to what goods we should buy to satisfy our individual needs. Prices are not the only information needed to make a choice between two alternatives, but they are essential information. Mandel's aversion to money and prices perhaps arises from the belief that these are capitalist forms without possible remission. This is the view of the Austrian school and the basis of its belief in the impossibility of a well-functioning socialist economy".331 Samary believes that in a new article by Mandel published in 1990, Plan or market, the third way, he comes closer to Elson's thesis in relation to the use of the market, money or price. Let us see what Mandel's new approach is in this article. 330 331 Ibid, p. 21 Ibid, p. 23 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The most important theorists of Marxism always admitted, with some differences, the use of certain market mechanisms during the transition to socialism, so Mandel does not intend to discuss the question in these terms, but the importance that such mechanisms must have in the allocation of society's resources. Both the command economy of real socialism and the market economy of capitalism are despotic because the fundamental decisions are taken by a small number of bureaucrats in the first case and by the owners of large economic means in the second, who, moreover, in the case of the latter, have only the accumulation of their profits as their objective. Mandel then proposes what he calls the third model or third way, "In democratic socialist planning, based on coordinated self-management, the priorities for the allocation of scarce resources are decided democratically by the producers/consumers as a whole, themselves citizens, who choose consciously among several coherent alternatives, i.e. on the basis of a truly pluralist and multiparty political system, with full and complete use of all democratic freedoms". 332 Mandel endeavours to dismantle the arguments of those who reject his proposal as unrealisable both at the macro-economic level and at the level of elementary units of production and services, discussing the arguments of Alec Nove or Ota Sik, and one of his most significant arguments used is the following, "A system of coordinated selfmanagement is capable of involving millions of people in the responsibility for the conduct of the economy, precisely because everyone has the responsibility for certain decisions, but not everyone has to decide on everything. This implies that in the "third model" direct self-management is combined with some forms of indirect representative economic democracy, through elected bodies. Decisions on priorities for the allocation of rare resources would not be taken only by the elite levels. They would also be taken at local, regional, industry branch, national and, as soon as possible, international levels. At all these levels, they could only be taken by elected bodies. If elections are truly free, if the debates in these bodies are truly public, if voters have the right to vote on them, and if the population has the right to decide 332 Mandel, Ernest, Plan ou marché: la http://www.ernestmandel.org/fr/ecrits/txt/1991/plan_ou_marche.htm, p. 3. troisième voie, Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century certain fundamental questions by referendum, then there is nothing fundamentally impracticable or bureaucratic in the decision-making process.333 Nor does Mandel reject that material incentives can be used as stimuli for producers, "In a system of democratic socialist planning based on coordinated self-management, the producers would have two material stimulants at their disposal which could be most effective. The first would be their expectation of a "social dividend" (supplementary income), which they would fix themselves - even in the form of: monetary supplements, or in consumer goods, or in social services (holiday accommodation, schools, public transport, accommodation) provided by themselves - even in cooperation with other workers at local, regional or national level. Another stimulant could be a reduction in the workload, i.e. the possibility of returning home after four or five hours of work, if the work in question is carried out under conditions of strict quality control by representatives of the consumers.334 Indeed, as Samary recalled, Mandel has now evolved in his approach towards Elson's, "De même, il n'y a pas de raison de supposer que, dans la période de transition du capitalisme au socialisme, l'utilisation de l'argent (qui demande une monnaie stable) et des mécanismes de marché, Essentiellement comme instruments pour assurer une plus grande satisfaction du consommateur, devraient être écartés ou même limités, à la condition que cela ne conduise pas à une détermination par le marché des priorités de choix en matière sociale et économique. [...] The use of the currency as a unit of account is very different from its use as an exchange instrument and even more different from its use as a means of accumulating wealth and determining investment choices and decisions. The first use will remain generalised in socialist planning. The second has already begun to decline under capitalism and will continue to decline during the transition period, except in the area of certain consumer goods and services. The rise in the production of free goods and services will certainly take place. The third use should be severely restricted and progressively eliminated".335 333 Ibid, p. 7 Ibid, p. 10 335 Ibid, p. 12 334 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Mandel was a brilliant economist, a Trotskyist leader, and a revolutionary far removed from dogmatism as is proved by the recognition that his propositions can only be validated by real practice, "the most effective and humane way to build a classless society is a matter of experimentation and must progress by successive approximations. There are no good recipe books for this, neither total planning nor market socialism. We will learn little by little, from experience, what are the most important mistakes to avoid and the best combinations of measures to promote. We cannot expect perfection, nor can we promise it. The only assurance we can have is that democratic socialist planning will entail fewer economic shocks and lead to fewer inhuman consequences than capitalism/imperialism on the one hand and bureaucratic despotism on the other.336 Going back to Diane Elson's proposals on the functioning of a market socialism, it rests on several basic ideas337 . The first of these is that "the process of production and reproduction of the labour force is the independent variable to which the process of accumulation must be adapted", which would be achieved by guaranteeing households a basic income that would guarantee them a decent survival on the basis of which they would decide whether or not to sell their labour power to companies. The first option could be motivated by access to supplementary goods, public spirit or buying their own means of production, although Elson sets as a prerequisite of his market socialism the abolition of capital. It envisages three possible forms of ownership of the means of production, public enterprises, cooperatives and family enterprises. The second basic idea is that the objective of "achieving an ex ante equilibrium, where supply and demand are equal before production takes place, is unfeasible. This is an impossible goal to achieve". The third basic idea is that of socialised markets, "A socialised market is a market created by public bodies that are financed by taxes on firms and households, not by sales. [The rationale for public market makers (let me call them Price and Wage Commissions) is to overcome the barriers to information exchange that exist when markets are private", as well as to guide price and wage formation. This institution 336 337 Ibid, p. 13 Elson, Diane, Market Socialism or Market Socialisation (2), www.red-vertice.com/fep Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century would be complemented by "public networks of buyers and sellers interested in exchanging information on issues such as the specification of goods and production processes, as well as investment plans". These networks of buyers and sellers would be the basis for a decentralised social planning process, although some form of central planning for the whole economy would also be necessary, which "would take the form of a guiding strategy, a vision of the future, not a procedure for allocating material inputs in detail". The other complement would be the Wages Commission and the Consumers' Union. She summarises the functioning of the production and service mechanism as follows: "Enterprises would not be subject to binding administrative decisions of ministries, although they would be publicly owned and supervised by the Regulator of Public Enterprises. Employees of SOEs would use property rights but not own them, and these enterprises should be self-financing. Workforce relocation would be handled by the Regulator. Enterprises would be free to choose their suppliers and their customers, but their interrelations with each other, and with households, would be mediated by Price and Wage Commissions and network coordinators, including the Consumers' Union." Given the existence of trade between public enterprises (in socialised markets), their self-financing, and the possibility of creating new ones by the workers themselves with loans from public funds, the system can be reminiscent of the model that existed of selfmanagement in Yugoslavia. However, Samary, for his part, recognises that there can be different variants within the model of market socialism, "different conceptions of a "market socialism" can have very different logics ... : il y a les "modèles" qui proposent une compétition entre des unités indépendantes (avec des dégrés plus ou moins grands d'autogestion ouvrière) et des banques sur la base de critères de rentabilité ; mais d'autres, comme Diane Elson, conçoivent un "marché socialisé" et la planification sans marché du capital : la logique est d'encourager une association systématique et non une "compétition prédatrice"."338 Let us also recall that Georges Gauzennec, in his book on the Yugoslav trial, claimed the need for a socialist market as indispensable for the functioning of a self-managing society, despite the failure of the Yugoslav experience. His position was based on 338 Samary, Catherine, Repenser et reformuler les débats sur le socialisme, op. cit., p. 10 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez rejecting the incompatibility, which socialist orthodoxy had been maintaining, between socialism and the market, because the characteristic of capitalism is the domination of capital over labour, and not the market, which is a secondary datum. "Eliminating the market leads to statism [...] Such a system is incompatible with self-management".339 For this author, the socialist market was necessary to ensure the freedom of selfmanaged enterprises and to better satisfy people's needs, but it had to be planned to avoid monopoly situations and unbridled competition, keeping the latter within the "limits of creative emulation", which presupposes a coordination of the role of the state and the market. In a self-managing market socialism, the state must set the rules of the market and exercise control, but, to do so, it must have a democratic character. Before finishing this chapter we will refer to an article by Fidel Vascós González340 who recognises that "Among the questions still not fully solved is the system of management of the socialist economy, both in its conceptual elements and in its application. One of the most controversial issues is linked to the existence of mercantile production in socialism, the content of mercantile categories, the place, role and functions of monetary-mercantile affairs in the construction of the new society and the relations between central planning and the market as regulators of the economy". From Engels' writings it could be concluded that it is theoretically possible for market relations to exist in socialism, with a different content from those of capitalism, although Marx and Engels' final conclusion was that in communist society market relations would have disappeared. In the early stages of the Soviet revolution, Lenin justified the application of the NEP on the grounds that in certain periods, with political power in the hands of the proletariat, mercantile exchange could be used to advance the construction of socialism without the danger of a regression to capitalism, after the period of war communism had reduced mercantile relations to the margins. Now with the NEP, on the other hand, "it is beginning to be understood that in the socialist economy itself there are causes which determine the existence of market production which does not depend exclusively on capitalist relations of production". If the historical merit of this new conception is 339 Gauzennec, Georges, La Yougoslavie autogestionnaire. Bilan critique d'une époque prestigieuse, p. 155. 340 Vascós González, Fidel, Socialismo y mercado, www.rebelión.org Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century usually attributed to Lenin, we have already had occasion to analyse the debate that took place between the two main theoreticians in the polemic on the subject, Bukharin and Preobrazhensky. After Lenin's death, the assassination of Trotsky, and the execution of those other leaders, the debate on the use of market categories during the construction of socialism continued in the Soviet Union with a definition of Stalin's official position in 1952, as this author points out, "Stalin's ideas on market production in socialism, published in March 1952, sum up the progress made and the limitations present in the conceptions of that time. In essence, Stalin rightly criticised those who denied the objective character of economic laws in socialism and stressed that market relations had a basis in the socialist regime itself. However, he linked this basis only to the differences in the two forms of collective ownership of the means of production in socialism: the state, of the whole people, and the cooperative-Kolkhozian. Thus Stalin did not accept the mercantile character of production within state ownership of the means of production. Stalin's conceptions of the market and planning in socialism dominated official economic thinking in socialist countries until the 1960s. New definitions on these issues were proclaimed by the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1961. In turn, significant contributions to the theory of the utilisation of the market in socialism were made by the First Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (CPC) in 1975 and by the XIV National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1992". The first, recognising the objective existence of the law of value and its economic categories in socialism, while insisting on the fundamental importance of the moral factor, socialist consciousness and ideological education. The second, opening up the theoretical possibility that socialism could use both the market and planning to regulate the economy. After his review of the polemic on the use of market elements in the historical experiences of socialist transitions, Vascós González attempts to "theoretically support the existence of market production both in socialism and in the stage of transition towards this new social regime", stressing, first of all, the causes which originate its necessity, "The deepest cause of the existence of market production in socialism consists in the lack of maturation of communist relations of production, the relatively low level of development of the productive forces and the insufficient generalisation of Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez revolutionary consciousness, culture, the spirit of solidarity and ethical, political and ideological education among the masses, which is manifested in the incomplete degree of socialisation of social property, of the means of production and of labour. All this determines that, under socialism, the measure of labour and the measure of consumption continues to be quantified by an indirect means: value. In today's world, at the beginning of the 21st century, there are also international factors that contribute to the existence of trade relations in the countries that adopt the path of socialism". He points out what, in his opinion, are the differences which distinguish the functioning of market relations under capitalism and under socialism, "These differences include that those of capitalism take place spontaneously amidst the anarchy of production, distribution, exchange and consumption, while those of socialism are consciously used by the state in the system of centralised planning of the economy, in which the objectives to be achieved in social development are fixed in advance by man in accordance with his interests and with the real possibilities offered by society and nature." Vascós González alludes to an aspect that few authors dare to deal with because of the difficulties it entails, that of overcoming the social division of labour under socialism. Considered as one of the conditions for the existence of mercantile relations, he does not see its overcoming as possible until a very advanced stage of communism, since it reflects, on the one hand, the insufficiencies of the degree of socialisation of the means of production and, on the other hand, the technical aspects resulting from the level reached by the development of the productive forces. This multiplicity of types of labour requires "for the comparison between them, a homogenisation by indirect means, constituted by the value of commodities". However, his approach to the possibility of overcoming this technical division of labour is simply utopian. Following Leninist reasoning, this author conceives that in the transition period two types of mercantile relations would disappear: those of the capitalist type - based on the private ownership of the means of production - would have an abrupt reduction in this period; and the mercantile relations of small mercantile production - private ownership of the means of production with the absence of exploitation of man by man - would be progressively reduced. However, the third type Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century of mercantile relations of socialism would be fully developed in the first stage of the transition to be extinguished in the higher stage of communist society. Then, and going back to a level of reality closer to that of the higher phase of communism, we would have four causes which provoke the persistence of monetarymercantile relations: First, the existence of different types of property within it, state, co-operative and the collective property of different associations. Second, the persistence of the social division of labour which prevents its direct measurement in units of time and demands a common denominator, value, which leads to the use of monetary-mercantile relations. Third, as there will be an insufficient development of the productive forces to guarantee the satisfaction of all needs equally to all citizens, distribution according to labour and material stimuli is necessary, which leads to the use of money and monetary-mercantile relations. Fourthly, the trade relations between the socialist and capitalist countries also have an influence on the existence of monetarymercantile relations within the former. In conclusion, "As long as the higher stage of communist society has not yet been established, we can come to the conclusion that the use of monetary-mercantile relations in the struggle against capitalism, first, and for the construction of socialism and communism, later, is an objective law for the peoples who set out on the road of eliminating the exploitation of man by man and building a new society". Now, it is centralised planning that plays the fundamental role in economic management, and monetary-mercantile relations are expressed above all in the relations between enterprises and unions of enterprises acting on the principle of financial selfmanagement. Finally, we will mention two opinions whose views on the question of the role of the market in the socialist transition relate, on the one hand, to the fact that these transitions have always been tried in economically backward countries and, on the other hand, to the new directions taken by countries with fully functioning market economies but under the political domination of a communist party, as in the case of China. The first point of view is that of those authors who discuss the use of the market not as a valid element in the economic mechanism of socialism, but as a necessary conjunctural element for countries which, from a situation of underdevelopment, make an extraordinary transition to socialism. In reality, the term "extraordinary transition" is Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez used in connection with the theoretical model of the classics of Marxism, which envisaged the socialist transition from developed capitalist countries, because in historical reality all the transitions that have been tried have been in underdeveloped countries, that is to say, they have been extraordinary transitions. An example of this position is that of Antonio M. Ruiz Cruz341 who distinguishes "two different models or patterns of development" for underdeveloped economies, the capitalist or market model and the socialist or planned model, and states that "Contrary to the predominant conception today that the capitalist model of development is the only way for underdeveloped countries to achieve development, Marxism presents the alternative of socialism as the one that can really give underdeveloped economies that possibility, and contrary to what many suppose, this alternative is the one that can give underdeveloped economies that possibility, Marxism presents the alternative of socialism as the one that can really give underdeveloped economies that possibility, and contrary to what many suppose, this alternative does not exclude the use of the market and capitalism within certain limits." Of course all this is endorsed by the Marxist classics, especially Lenin, "The use of market forces, of capitalism, as a means to achieve socialism is undoubtedly part of the theoretical legacy left by Lenin to those who decide to embark on such a path" 341 Ruiz Cruz, Antonio M., Modelos de desarrollo y alternativa socialista en China , pp. 176-180. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The second point of view alluded to is that represented by Díaz Vázquez, "today it is possible to find conformity, after having witnessed the wreckage of the "Soviet model" and the variants applied in Central-Eastern Europe, including the Yugoslav selfmanagement experience, and in Asia, until the late 1970s and mid-1980s, that the known socialist centrally managed economies lacked "self-correcting genetic properties" in their economic management and management tools. Sino-Vietnamese practices seem to suggest that this role belongs to the "market". The conclusion is obvious: at the current level of productive forces, society is far from being able to send the "market", along with the spinning wheel and the handloom, to the museum of history. Also, something new seems to emerge from the lessons of exhausted and existing socialism; it points to the clarification that the concept of "market" is not identifiable with capitalism. Rather, it constitutes a set of duly "institutionalised" means and methods for the distribution and use of certain resources. Its emergence, mutations and current complexities are the shared fruit of the civilisation and economic development of the modern world. The "market", by nature, is neither a conquest of the bourgeoisie nor the special legacy of its society. At the same time, "planning" is not inherent to socialism alone; its roots go back to industrial capitalism. It is worth adding that the "market" is not only the place where buyers and sellers meet, or the emitter of signals to be followed by producers and consumers. The "market" and the inescapable attributes that give content to its functions, in fact, became an "institution". Moreover, the "market" constitutes a social relationship of an objective character which, the accumulated experience, in particular in "known socialism", suggests cannot be suppressed or atrophied by "decree". Everything indicates that it will accompany humanity in a long period of its historical journey, and that, it transcends the capitalist stage. "390 The latter is a controversial view insofar as it presupposes that the Chinese model undertaken in recent decades is a socialist path characterised by extensive use of the market, and not a return to capitalism piloted by a state tightly controlled by a communist party, which is the most widespread characterisation on the political and intellectual left. 390 A. Díaz Vázquez, Julio, Actualizar el modelo económico en Cuba ¿Patrón chino o vietnamita? Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Structuralist Marxism Among the theories circulating within the new left, a distinction should be made between those that are linked to political groups and those that are not. Structuralism falls into the second category, in the sense that there was no party or movement that fitted into this paradigm. The same was true of existentialism or the Frankfurt school, which are not organised political currents. Left Hemisphere. A map of new critical thinking. Razmig Keucheyan The division of Marxisms has sometimes been presented in dichotomous form, a first division, as we have seen above, is that between scientific Marxism and critical Marxism. The one we are going to deal with now, the main responsible for its division and popularisation is Louis Althusser, and the two camps are known as structuralist and humanist Marxism. Structuralism is the bearer of a methodology whose basis is the negation of the subject as the generator of the meaning of reality and, in this sense, it has been identified as articulated around a methodological anti-humanism. Opposing previous dominant philosophies such as existentialism and phenomenology, it rejects the primacy of history and the subject in favour of structure and system. Therefore, from a methodological point of view, it starts from "the primacy of the code, structure or system, the subject is excluded as an explanatory factor, to become a simple knot in the network of the structure, an element to be eclipsed, to be decentred".391 For this reason, there are authors who prefer to use the qualifier "epistemological anti-subjectivism" 391 Bolívar Botia,Antonio, Structuralism: from Lévi-Strauss to Derrida, p. 42. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century rather than "anti-humanism", because the latter usually has a negative charge associated with it. Similarly, it is not so much a question of "denying historical explanation" as of placing it "outside the structure. "Historical explanation would be a projection of the subject which would invent a continuous history with a (teleological) end".392 "Beyond their respective objects of study (ethnology, psychoanalysis, history or Marxism), it is about a method of understanding socially constituted human realities, trying to do science not in the classical sense - hypothesis, discovery of facts, confirmation and prediction, To do science here is, to a large extent, to re-read, from different assumptions, the myths (Lévi-Strauss), Marx (Althusser), Freud (Lacan), history of knowledge (Foucault), Nietzsche (Deleuze) or Western philosophy (Derrida). "393 Structuralism was originally established as a method based on the advances made by Ferdinand Saussure's structural linguistics at the beginning of the 20th century, which thus presented itself as the only social discipline with the possibility of generating laws in the manner of the natural sciences. The possibility of applying the method developed in linguistics to other social disciplines was immediately raised, so that they could also acquire a status of scientificity which they felt themselves to be lacking. The first of these disciplines to adopt the structural method was anthropology, led by one of its most important researchers, Claude Lévi-Strauss, who discarded the importance of the individual in primitive societies in favour of the study of the system of signs operating in myths; this system formed a structure, unconscious to individuals and peoples, which had to be detected by the researcher of these societies. For Lévi-Strauss, the kinship systems of these societies functioned as a kind of language. From anthropology, structuralism expanded its influence to psychoanalysis through Lacan, for whom it was the unconscious that functioned as a kind of language394 . Subsequently, the structuralist method was adopted by Althusser, proposing a new reading of Marx; by Foucault for his studies on the archaeology of knowledge and power relations; by Barthes, applying it to literary criticism, and so on. 392 Ibid, p. 44 Ibid, p. 35 394 For a detailed analysis of this process and its critique, see Perry Anderson, In the Footsteps of Historical Materialism, especially pages 45-60. 393 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez This extension of the structural method to the rest of the social disciplines was based on the assertion that all social phenomena can be understood in a similar way to linguistic phenomena, that is, that they can be interpreted as systems of signs, so that the meaning of any element is assigned by the set of relationships of the element with others within a structure. This implied a strong charge of relativism that reached all methods of knowledge, including science. As Jorge Arnoletto points out, "this vision has profound consequences for the way of investigating the social and particularly the political, since it emphasises the signifying and meaning-producing character of relational links and their emerging positional values, orienting research towards the "defining and distributing" factors of such relations, thus overcoming the classic approach centred on the formal designations and roles of institutional entities, or on personal performances. In the social sciences, the concept of structure can be understood in two different but complementary ways. In a broad sense, a structure is the encompassing system that contains particular cases; it is the "rule of variability" of that plurality of sets that emerge as variants of their combinatorics. In a strict sense, structures do not belong to the order of empirical reality: they are patterns "invented" from it in order to fulfil, like models, the function of making it intelligible".395 Structuralism, which began by emphasising a certain determinism, ended, however, by emphasising contingency and the importance of the event, which would become common in the post-structuralist current. Let us look at two ways of understanding the importance of Althusser's intervention in the 1970s. According to this interpretation, Marxism had been seriously lacking since its origins, "the absence of a clear scientific theory of the superstructure [...] since Marx's scientific work had concentrated on the economic phase of the capitalist mode of production"396 . This deficit was responsible for the determinist drift that took hold in the Second International. Through the influence of Engels, Kautsky and the main leaders of the International extended the laws developed by Marx for the economy to the superstructure, understood as a "political and ideological reflection" of it. 395 396 Arnoletto, Eduardo Jorge, Curso de Teoría Política, p. 74. Callinicos, Alex, Althusser's Marxism, p. 9. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century The political and military crisis of 1914 forced a "theoretical reinterpretation of Marxism", which was carried out by a return to Hegel. This led, according to Callinicos, to the epistemological discussion of great importance in the approach, especially in the cases of Gramsci and Lukács, an aspect we have already dealt with above. But these Hegelian Marxists of the 1920s, especially Lukács and Korsch, were subjected to harsh criticism by the Bolshevik leadership, which was to recover the "orthodoxy" derived from Engels, and which was to enshrine and petrify Stalin's final victory. It is in this context that Althusser's Marxism becomes important. According to Callinicos, "During the 1960s and early 1970s it became clear that the stabilisation of capitalism achieved since post-war times was coming to an end. As a result of the persistent absence of a theory of the superstructure, philosophy once again had to carry the burden. We now turn to Althusser's attempt to meet the demands that today's revolutionary practices make on Marxist philosophy. " 397 The second way of understanding Althusser's importance is based on a different view. It would be another attempt to update Marxism, to confront the shortcomings and problems that had been pointed out, by means of a certain crossbreeding with a theory external to its universe, structuralism. As we have seen above, structuralism was in the 1960s, in France, ready for a theorist who found it suitable to extend its influence to Marxism as it was doing to other disciplines (anthropology, psychoanalysis, knowledge and power, etc.). This theorist was Louis Althusser, who proceeded to a structuralist reading of Marx - although he went so far as to deny this - emphasising the structures of the capitalist mode of production to explain social phenomena. To this end, Althusser was obliged to point out that it is possible to differentiate between two Marxes and not one: the first would correspond to the young Marx in which the "humanist and ideological" character predominates, and in which the critique of the central categories of Hegelian political philosophy stands out; the second Marx would correspond to the mature Marx, the truly "Marxist" one, characterised by the scientific analysis of capitalism, where his analysis especially emphasises the preeminence of objective relations and understands subjects as mere bearers of structures. 397 Ibid, p. 19 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Althusser wanted to combat what in his opinion were two deformations of Marxism, economism, present in the communist parties as a consequence of the weight of Stalinism, and humanist Marxism developed as a reaction to the former. Althusser's aim was to find a third reading of Marx, the correct one according to him, which would be in line with the rigour and scientific precision of his mature work; this last stage of Marx meant, in the French philosopher's opinion, an epistemological break that gave rise to historical materialism as a science of history. This is the Marxism that is defined in Capital, where the notion that historical development can be explained through the actions of human beings is rejected. Let us see how J.B. Fages presents these arguments398 , "Althusser starts from the search for what Marx did not say, through the symptoms and indications that allow us to detect it [...] It is a question of revealing the absent theoretical concepts [...] A new reading of Marx allows us, then, to produce the absent concept that nevertheless works throughout the work". Althusser elaborates a way of how thought is conceived. "The starting point of knowledge of a theoretical practice is a "Generality I": raw material that is not very scientifically elaborated, comprising prejudices, myths, ideologies, i.e. insufficiently criticised scientific theories. The theory functions as a "Generality II"; which produces "Generality III", i.e. a specified, more scientific generality. Dialectical materialism is the theory of theoretical productions, the study of the laws governing the history of these productions, a history with its developments, its mutations and its discontinuities (epistemological cuts). Theory is radically different from ideology. The former takes the real object of knowledge, appropriates it on the basis of the mode of knowledge [...] ideology passes off its own constructions as if they were the very nature of things [...] Philosophies function as ideology insofar as they follow justifying reflections of a social practice, of a class practice. Dialectical materialism can consider anew the big questions that philosophers asked themselves in an ideological way [...] For such a study, the important thing is to articulate historical materialism (science of social reality articulated in practices) and 398 Fages,J.B., Introduction to the different interpretations of Marxism, pp. 178-188. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century dialectical materialism (global systematic theory that studies especially the laws that take care of the evolution of theoretical practices)". If Marx developed historical materialism in Capital, he did not, however, propose a systematic theory, dialectical materialism, which is absent. Marx did not directly realise the epistemology (dialectical materialism) of his social science (historical materialism), but a good reading of Marx takes up this epistemology which is implicitly at work in Capital. For Althusser, Fages continues, the plurality of levels that constitute the totality of society is formed by the structures of production, the juridical, political, ideological, aesthetic, cultural, etc. superstructures. According to Althusser, the secondary contradictions (juridical, political superstructures, etc.) form the milieu, the conditions where the principal contradiction exists and develops, and where variations, displacements and mutations can occur. To avoid relativism he distinguishes dominant and determining structure and, ultimately, the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production is determining. On the other hand, each level of the structured totality carries with it a relative autonomy and a temporality of its own. In this way, he rejects the notion of reference time and the notion of the cause of history. "History no longer exists, there are only "processes of development" in the different structures and "a complex combination" of these structures, each possessing its own temporality. Althusser insists on the need for a non-anthropological reading of Marx that will bring into play productive forces and relations of production and, at the same time, functions and structures, not human "needs". This reading of Marx is clearly structuralist. Against the possible "Marxist humanism", Althusser is radical: humanism, even if it were Marxist, is an ideology. Even a "philosophy of praxis" still belongs to the ideological order. For Althusser, Marx would have broken with the humanisms of his youth - a first rationalist-liberal humanism and a second communitarian one - from 1845 onwards, and proposes to speak of a "theoretical anti-humanism of Marx". This aspect of Althusserian theory is also characteristic of structuralism, where his critique of the "subject" in favour of an "anti-humanism", or better expressed as a "methodological antisubjectivism", is central. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Thus, for Althusser, the statute of any science would be "to renounce the immediate grasp on the object (here man), to construct a model and operative concepts and to experiment them within the object in order to discover the structures". On the one hand, Althusserian structuralism was part of the intellectual current in vogue at the time, reacting critically to the prestige enjoyed by existentialism and the philosophy of praxis and, therefore, attacking the individual and his autonomy, subjectivism, as Levi-Stauss and Lacan did in anthropology and psychoanalysis. In the specific case of Althusser, his work was directed within the Marxist camp against those of Gramsci, Lukács and, especially, against Sartre's existentialism. Although Althusser himself mentions other authors or currents which had placed themselves wholly or partially in the camp of "humanism" and "revolutionary historicism", "some of Rosa Luxemburg's theses on imperialism and the disappearance of the laws of "political economy" in the socialist regime; the "Proletkult"; the conceptions of the "workers' opposition" etc.; and, in a general way, the "Proletkult"; the conceptions of the "workers' opposition" etc.and, in a general way, the "voluntarism" which has deeply marked the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR, even in the paradoxical forms of Stalinist dogmatism. Even today, this "humanism" and this "historicism" are still awakening truly revolutionary echoes in the political struggles waged by the peoples of the Third World to win and defend their political independence and to commit themselves to the socialist road".399 But, more specifically, the offensive of Althusserian structuralism - while coinciding with the same anti-Hegelian offensive as the Della Volpe school in Italy at the same time - is nevertheless more focused on France, the more precise target of the offensive being the humanism prevalent in the PCF, with which this party underpinned its agreements with socialists and Catholics to achieve advanced democracy, and Roger Garaudy's contributions within the PCF aimed at giving intellectual support to the policy of peaceful coexistence upheld by the Soviet Union. Thus, a first reason for Althusser's intervention has a political objective. The French philosopher interpreted that, after the changes brought about by the 20th Congress of the CPSU, a right-wing tendency arose among Marxist intellectuals who sought to 399 Althusser, Louis, and Balibar,Étienne, To Read Capital, pp. 153-4. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century "exploit" Marx's youthful works as a basis for constructing a "humanist" ideology. He himself clearly explains the aims of his reaction, "against the idealist-right-wing interpretations of Marxist theory as "philosophy of man", of Marxism as theoretical humanism; against the tendentious confusion, whether positivist or subjectivist, of science and Marxist "philosophy"; against the relativist historicism of Marxism and Marxist "philosophy"; against the relativist historicism of Marxist theory as "philosophy of man", of Marxism as theoretical humanism; against relativist historicism, right-wing or left-wing opportunism; against the evolutionist reduction of materialist dialectics to "Hegelian" dialectics; and in general against bourgeois and petty-bourgeois positions, I tried to defend, we tried to defend, badly as well as well, at the price of imprudence and errors, some vital ideas which can be summed up in a single one: Marx's radical specificity, his revolutionary novelty, both theoretical and political".400 The second reason for Althusser's intervention concerns the situation of Marxist philosophers attached to communist parties, "For the philosopher there was no way out. If he spoke or wrote philosophy for the Party, he was limited to commentaries or small variations for internal use on the Famous Quotations. We had no audience among our peers", and he continues further, "the paradoxically precarious existence of Marxist philosophy as such. We, who thought we possessed the principles of all possible philosophy, and of the impossibility of all philosophical ideology, were unable to prove objectively and publicly the apodicacy of our convictions".401 But Althusser not only adopts structuralism from Saussure's linguistic theory, as Arnoletto points out, many of the terms he uses come from "three disparate idealist thinkers: the notions of "epistemological rupture" and "problematic" are taken from Bachelard and Canguilhem; the ideas of "symptomatic reading" and "decentred structure" come from Lacan, and the notion of "overdetermination" comes directly from Freud. On the other hand, Althusser assimilated to Marxism a whole pre-Marxist philosophical system: that of Baruch de Spinoza [...] [ and also] Althusser sought to link Marx with another illustrious predecessor: Montesquieu".402 400 Althusser, Louis, For a Critique of Theoretical Practice, pp. 91-92. Althusser, Louis, Marx's Theoretical Revolution, p.21 402 Arnoletto, Eduardo Jorge, Curso de teoría política, p. 167. 401 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Althusser's influence was intense and gave rise to what can be considered an Althusserian school whose main members were based in France, such as Etienne Balibar, Nicos Poulantzas, Pierre Macherey, Jacques Rancière, Alain Badiou, etc., some of whom drifted towards Maoism. But this influence also spread to other latitudes, such as Latin America, through authors like Marta Harnecker or Raúl Olmedo, or journals like Cuadernos de Pasado y Presente in Argentina or Dialéctica and Historia y Sociedad in Mexico. One of the main criticisms of Althusserian structuralism was formulated by Carlos Nelson Coutinho, who described the French philosopher's work as "a right-wing, bureaucratic and conservative position, an expression of abstract rationalism and neopositivist epistemology". Coutinho's critique is clearly summarised by Juan Del Maso in an article: "he highlights the elements that constitute Althusser's "Marxism" in a variant of structuralism and the "misery of reason": -Absolute separation of "historical materialism" and "dialectical materialism", which implies a negation of the ontological dimension of Marxist philosophy. Reduction of Marxist philosophy to a neo-positivist epistemology, in which the central issue is the construction of formally valid concepts. -A reading of Capital and the Grundrisse in the key of a formalist theory of science, in which, besides rejecting Marx's "juvenile" texts, he postulates the distinction between the "concrete thought" and the "concrete real" as an absolute distinction, in which the object of Capital becomes the construction of a conceptual structure and not the elucidation of the social relations that dominate in capitalist society and its contradictions. -A conception of history similar to that of Michel Foucault, justified by the claim that in Marx there would be no theory of history. -A reduction of labour and praxis to alienated labour and manipulative praxis. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century -A reduction of ideology to "false consciousness" and thus a liquidation of the liberating capacity of praxis (which, as we have already said, is reduced to manipulative praxis). "403 Keucheyan404 , for his part, takes up the opposing points of view on the relationship between structuralism and the new left around May '68. On the one hand, the view that structuralism is "the thought of '68" and its link is "anti-humanism"; on the other hand, the view, which he subscribes to, of the radical opposition between May '68 and structuralism, given the emphasis on alienation in the movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and the opposition between the initial determinism of structuralism and the disruptive event in history that was May '68. In this way, May '68 would have destabilised structuralism and opened the door to post-structuralism. 403 404 Dal Maso, Juan, Louis Althusser... did he win the war? Structuralism and the Misery of Reason Keucheyan, Razmig, Left Hemisphere. A map of new critical thinking, pp. 105-110. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez From structuralism to post-Marxism In this book I have set out to analyse the pathology of this latter "experience of defeat" and, in particular, of the attempt to explain it in terms of the emergence of a postmodern epoch for which the Enlightenment project, even if radicalised by Marxism, is of no interest. Against postmodernism. Alex Callinicos In the last chapters we will deal with the dominant critical theories since the end of the twentieth century, but first it is necessary to clarify the itinerary that serves to link Western Marxism, or at least a part of it, with the new critical theories. This itinerary starts with the Marxist structuralism of Althusser and his school, analysed in the previous chapter, continues through post-structuralism and finally leads to postmodernism and post-Marxism. This common thread is clearly identified by Elías José Palti, for whom the core of the current of poststructuralist Marxism "is formed by a group of former collaborators of Althusser, among whom Alain Badiou, Étienne Balibar and Jacques Rancière stand out in France; but prominent authors from other countries also participate in it, such as Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Judith Butler and Slavoj Zizek. "405 This current is the fruit of the decomposition of Marxist structuralism as a result of the events of the French May, which caused the critique of Marxist humanism sustained by Althusserianism to lose its interest. However, at that point in history, it was no longer 405 Palti, Elías José, Verdades y saberes del marxismo. Reacciones de una tradición política ante su crisis, p. 85. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century possible for the followers of structuralism to return to Marxism after the criticisms they had made of its essentialist characteristics. Palti alludes to the importance of the works of two of Althusser's disciples in the transition from structuralist to poststructuralist Marxism. The first is Étienne Balibar, who set himself the goal of "completing the task begun by Althusser of making historical materialism a fully scientific discipline through the elaboration of a dialectical materialist theory". The second is Alain Badiou, who came to posit "how the field of science emerges, not in opposition, but from within the field of ideology and, at the same time, transcends it, thus enabling the latter to identify it retrospectively as such. "406 Both Fredric Jameson and Néstor Kohan consider poststructuralism to be part of postmodernism. The Argentinean philosopher also clarifies the key differences that separate poststructuralism from Marxism: "within poststructuralism itself, it would be possible to distinguish two currents: those who reduce all social reality to a purely textual plane (for example Derrida) and those who do admit an extra-discursive reality, where the said and the unsaid coexist (for example Foucault). However, both have the same common ground structured on the abandonment of the category of the subject, the difficulty of founding a radical opposition to the whole of the capitalist system as a totality and the absence of a theory that allows us to think the transformative collective praxis from its own history. "407 According to Callinicos, the term post-structuralism was initially used in the United States to refer to two related but distinct currents of thought. The first is what Rorty called "textualism" and whose aim was to "place literature at the centre and treat science and philosophy, at best, as literary genres"408 , denying the possibility of escape from the discursive. The second is represented especially by Foucault and his key category of "power-knowledge", articulating the discursive and the non-discursive, a method also employed by Deleuze and Guattari. 406 Palti, Elías José, Verdades y saberes del marxismo. Reacciones de una tradición política ante su crisis, p. 170-1. 407 Kohan, Nestor, Desafíos actuales de la teoría crítica frente al postmodernismo, p. 6. 408 Callinicos, Alex, Against Postmodernism, p. 65. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The origin of post-structuralism is to be found, according to Callinicos409 , in the defeat of the revolutionary movement of 1968, which led many French intellectuals who participated in that event to abandon any approach to global social transformation, exchanging it, in some cases, for the partial struggles of the new social movements, and ending their evolution in social democracy or neo-liberalism. In this sense, it was the French nouveaux philosophes who did most to transform the Marxist character of the majority of the Parisian intelligentsia into a liberal one. This post-68 environment explains the success of Lyotard and Baudrillard with their message that "it is no longer possible to do anything to change the world". Callinicos rejects as extravagant Regis Debray's explanation of this conversion of French intellectuals, according to which the real function of May '68 was to serve as "an instrument of modernisation by removing the institutional obstacles to the integration of French capitalism into multinational and Americanised consumer capitalism". In his analysis of the debate between Derrida and the Marxists, Eduardo Sartelli states, "Among disillusioned ex-Marxists, the post-structuralist theme of the "end of the grand narratives" became as fashionable as the critique of Marxism as a "modern religion". Confidence that the world was moving towards the solution of its great problems had been shattered: neither under capitalism (with its developmentalist "religion" and its cup theory) nor under socialism (with its Marxist "religion" and its revolutionary theory) was the world moving anywhere. It was the "end of the grand narratives": any statement about the future of humanity, even if only as a potentiality, was liable to be accused of "religion", i.e. "teleology" and thus "theology"".410 However, as Kohan notes411 , while postmodernism and poststructuralism sought with their emphasis on the fragmentary and the dispersed and isolated struggles to attract the disoriented left and avoid the global questioning of capitalism, neoliberalism, in parallel, pushed to extend globalisation and the dominance of capital on a world scale. 409 Callinicos, Alex, Against Postmodernism, pp. 79, 153 and 154. Sartelli, Eduardo, Marx, Derrida y el fin de la era de la fantasía, in Suárez, Aurora and Quezada, Freddy, Debates contemporáneos, p. 61. 411 Kohan, Nestor, Desafíos actuales de la teoría crítica frente al postmodernismo, p. 16. 410 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Some post-Marxist authors such as Henán Fair412 , whom we will follow below, defend post-Marxist or post-structuralist theories as a point of balance or a third way between two erroneous extremes, Marxism on the one hand, and postmodernism on the other. The initiator of post-Marxism would be Ernesto Laclau from 1985 onwards, whom he takes as his main reference to defend the postulates of this current. We will see, then, on the one hand, what criticisms he makes of Marxism and postmodernism, in which the former is criticised more intensely than the latter, thus denoting that what he really wants to present himself as an alternative to is Marxism, the criticism of postmodernism being as much a simple way of differentiating himself as the recognition that the philosophical or political importance of this tendency is much inferior to that of Marxism. On the other hand, we will see what type and characteristics of the project it defends. The first criticism he makes of Marxism, shared with the postmodernists, is of its postulate that there is "an ontological centre or truth, and that this centre was to be found in the economy" interpreted in various ways. This postulate is rejected by both currents, for whom no social centre has "a predetermined privilege in the political struggle". Both currents also agree in rejecting a characteristic of modernity, "the presence of an omnipresent and transcendental subject", which in the Marxist version is represented by the industrial proletariat, to affirm that "the subject with a capital S was dead for ever". This characteristic of Marxism, labelled "essentialism", is flatly rejected by post-Marxism, which abandons any interest in analysing society in terms of social classes. A third fundamental aspect that separates post-Marxism from Marxism is its conception of objectivity. While the latter defends the existence of objectivity, post-Marxism criticises "pure objectivism" and rejects clearly Marxist concepts such as "objective class interests", "objective conditions", or "objective laws of history". Finally, he criticises two other characteristics shared by Marxism and postmodernism: the impossibility of refuting their "scientific" premises, and their method of thinking in "sharp and binary logics", totally inadequate to carry out the concrete political struggle 412 Fair,Hernán, The political debate between Marxist, post-Marxist and postmodern approaches. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez in today's complex reality, dismissing as utopian the Marxist pretension of achieving a "root transformation of the capitalist system". The final judgement on Marxism is therefore blunt: "we are witnessing an inadequacy of knowledge and the death of Marxist truth in its various variants". Postmodernism is a philosophical current characterised in particular by its rejection of the totalising theories that had predominated in recent centuries, an aspect in which it coincided with post-Marxism. In contrast, postmodernism promoted the defence of particular cultural diversity. Post-Marxism criticises it for refusing to propose "an ethical-political project of collective social transformation" and for viewing social reality as a question of "pure perspective and cultural relativity", with which postmodernism ends up legitimising "the conservative stillness of the existing social order". The objectivity defended by post-Marxism is partial and relative because social reality "only acquires a significant entity within a particular discourse that gives it a legitimate social meaning. In order to exist, facts require, on the other hand, the presence of a subject who "makes them speak", of a subject who interprets them and gives them a specific meaning". In the most elaborate vision of post-Marxism, that of Ernesto Laclau (to whom we will devote a sub-chapter in the chapter on new critical theories), once the existence of a "privileged agent of history" has been rejected, an appeal is made to a subject, with a lower case, plural, "who manages to generate universalising links through the construction of "empty signifiers" that transcend their original particularity, without losing their specificity beyond their imaginary constitution of the communal order". Likewise, if there is no determining centre in society, as Marxism claims with economics, what they call "economic and classist apriorism", then the way is open to contingency, to "a recovery of the "centrality of political practice"" which can take advantage of the possibilities opened up by the performativity of language, "the power of ideas expressed in the form of articulated discourse lies in their potential capacity to transcend the political rationality imposed by the hegemonic system, to generate new alternative political projects of social emancipation". Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century At this point the enormous distance between Marxism and post-Marxism becomes particularly clear. Historical materialism starts from the fundamental postulate that the conditions of social existence determine the forms of social consciousness; for postMarxism, however, articulated discourse has the capacity to modulate social consciousness over and above the conditions of social existence. Laclau will refer, more specifically, to a "popular subject" capable of articulating the "unsatisfied social demands" of the people. And what would be the nature of these new projects if the radicality of social transformation sought by Marxism is rejected? Instead, they will take a reformist view which, deconstructing and readapting the Gramscian approach to the new times of greater social fragmentation and segmentation, will seek to modify the socio-economic situation of the popular masses from within the system". The aim, then, is to achieve a "radical and plural democracy". Social equality and emancipation, the great finalist objectives that Marxism and other revolutionary currents linked to the workers' movement have conceived as possible only after overcoming the capitalist mode of production, for Laclau "although impossible to be finally found in the full sense, can be achieved within the [capitalist] system itself", which brings him closer, by other routes, to the social democratic postulates once they had abandoned in practice and in theory any reference to Marxism as a theory of social transformation. Henry Veltmeyer, in his critique of Laclau, makes a good synthesis of the arguments that post-Marxists use to reject the existence of social classes and their relevance as a category for analysing social relations, but he does not offer counter-arguments to refute the former, only a global and ambiguous critique of post-Marxism which, as we will see below, is a common position of the Marxists who have confronted it. We are now going to refer to this synthesis of the lines of attack against the concept of social classes used by the post-Marxists, but we will not use the same order of presentation as Veltmeyer does, we will change it a little in order to order the criticisms from more to less depth. The first type of criticism concerns the epistemological conditions of the elaboration of social class theory, "class" is perceived as a meta-theoretical construct, a concept without an "empirical referent", i.e. there is no objectivity given the conditions that Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez determine the form and structural limits of "class interests". On the contrary, it is argued that these "interests" are no more than a theoretical construct and that their conditions of existence are subjective in the sense that they are not objectively determined (assigned to positions), but are defined and become meaningful on the basis and terms of the social identity of the individuals involved; in turn, this identity is determined, i.e. defined within a specific (non-structural) cultural context. " 413 In fact, this critique of the concept of social class is part of the epistemological presuppositions on which the post-Marxists, especially their main representatives, Laclau and Mouffe, are based. Keucheyan clearly defines these positions, "Laclau and Mouffe criticise the "class essentialism" present in Marxism, by insisting on pointing out the contingent character of social groups they show that they adhere to a form of sociological "indeterminism", according to which the (relative) coherence of actors is always constructed in the course of action and not a priori. It is clear that the view advocated by Laclau and Mouffe is anti-essentialist. [...] if there is no "essence" at the basis of the social, the entities that evolve in this sphere are necessarily relational, that is, they are constructed in relation to each other or against each other". Finally Keucheyan points out the similarities and differences of Laclau and Mouffe with the class positions of Marxist authors such as E.P. Thompson, 'their work can also be conceived as a radicalisation of the view of E. P. Thompson, who has always insisted on pointing out that class consciousness (the "experience") matters as much, if not more, than the socio-economic condition of workers in determining their class membership. Like Laclau, Thompson conceives of social groups in terms of the relations, or more precisely, the relations that oppose them. The difference is that Thompson does not deny that social classes have an objective existence, whereas Laclau renounces this idea. In his view, there is no a priori element that makes it possible to determine where antagonism will appear. Antagonism can be built anywhere".414 The discussion on social classes has been intense among Marxist authors, as evidenced by the works of Lukács, Poulantzas, E.P. Thompson or Wright among others, and whose summary, analysis and critiques can be found in Marxist Theories of Social 413 Veltmeyer, Henry, The Post-Marxist Project: Contribution to and Critique of Ernesto Laclau, p. 10. 414 Keucheyan, Razmig, Left Hemisphere. A map of new critical thinking, pp. 547-548. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Classes415 . Laclau, however, ends up dispensing with all this theoretical baggage in order to situate himself in a position outside Marxism. Secondly, there is the critique against the central place assigned by Marxism to class struggle, "the concept overgeneralises and essentialises conditions that are grounded in particular contexts and, as a result, obscures equally important cleavages such as gender, ethnicity and other social factors, so that it cannot account for the presence and operation of these other factors within society. It is suggested then that the heterogeneity of these differences defines contemporary politics at the level of identities". 416 It is true that Marxism has prioritised class conflict over other types of social conflict, not only because the situation of the working class initially appeared to be the most socially unjust, but because the conflict arises at the heart of capitalism, at the site of production, and thus points to the critique of exploitation and the overcoming of that system. Identity or cultural conflicts, which can become very intense at certain junctures, can be resolved without the need for a transformation of the mode of production. The struggle for women's suffrage was able to achieve success within the capitalist socio-economic structure, demands against racist policies or those of sexual minorities have achieved a high degree of recognition in many places without altering the functioning of capitalism. The bulk of the environmental movement has accepted to raise its demands without demanding a fundamental change in the current mode of production. Nationalist movements have only at very few junctures been linked to social or emancipatory objectives. To abandon or reduce the class struggle to another cleavage is, in a different language, to adopt social democratic positions in the modern sense that this political tendency has acquired. Finally, the third post-Marxists' critique of social classes does not deny that it has been an appropriate concept in the past but, nevertheless, it has lost its relevance with the profound socio-economic transformations of the last decades, and as a result "it is no longer possible to detect any stable structure or intelligible process in the postmodern 415 416 García, Marcos Jesús, Teoría marxista de las clases sociales (Marxist Theory of Social Classes) Veltmeyer, Henry, The Post-Marxist Project: Contribution to and Critique of Ernesto Laclau, p. 10. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez condition; as a result, the Marxist concept of class became irrelevant as well as inadequate to apprehend in thought that which exists in reality. "417 This is a critique that, even before the post-Marxists, was voiced by functionalist liberals such as Dahrendorf, for whom class theory may have been relevant in the 19th century but not for modern capitalism where class conflict has been significantly attenuated and classes have fragmented and become very heterogeneous. Indeed, since the 1960s, there has been a conceptual shift in the dominant social sciences that has involved "the abandonment of the concept of social classes and the analysis of the social in terms of class struggle, and the consequent shift of theoretical interest towards other notions that are gaining primacy in studies: citizenship, social movements, civil society, public space, poverty, exclusion, human condition, postmodernity, media society". The "crisis of Marxism" and the revitalisation of "theoretical humanism" - it is said - have been decisive in this shift. "418 417 418 Veltmeyer, Henry, The Post-Marxist Project: Contribution to and Critique of Ernesto Laclau, p. 11. Inda, Graciela and Duek, Celia, El día que los intelectuales decretaron la muerte de las clases. Un diagnóstico del momento actual, p. 2 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Marxism in Latin America By Marxism in Latin America we mean, therefore, the theory and practice that has been elaborated in Latin America in an attempt to revise, apply, develop or enrich classical Marxism. Marxism in Latin America Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez In the review we have carried out so far, the concentration of attention on Marxist authors located almost exclusively in Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world can be clearly seen. This is due to a kind of compartmentalisation implicit in the works and authors we have used as references for our study. This segmentation by geographical areas means that the authors who have studied the situation of Marxism refer mainly to the works of their geographical environment, not because there are no relevant contributions in other areas but, perhaps, because it is difficult to have a more global mastery of these contributions. Whatever the reason, the fact is that there are two other geographical areas, Asia and Latin America, where states controlled by communist parties still persist, regardless of how they have evolved, in contrast to Europe, from where they disappeared, and the Anglo-Saxon world, where it is not that they never came to power in that part of the planet, but rather that they did not even have revolutionary trials. Therefore, the absence of references to these areas cannot help but seem a little strange. Moreover, while the revolutionary attempts in Europe were being defeated in the 1920s, and the phenomenon of Western Marxism was emerging as a consequence, these two regions took over later in the spread of revolutions and communist states in the world. Europe also experienced such expansion after World War II in its eastern and central zone, but, with the exception of Yugoslavia, the new European communist states were in fact the fruit of the Soviet Union's military hegemony in that zone at the end of the war. Nothing to do with the mostly triumphant revolutions that took place in China, Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Vietnam, Cuba, Chile or Nicaragua, and the waves of influence they generated all over the world. If Marxism remained alive as a political praxis and transformative capacity for almost half a century after the Second World War, it was above all in these areas. In this chapter we are going to analyse Marxism in Latin America, a region which not only witnessed several revolutionary attempts with different characteristics, but was also the world area where the activity of very varied Marxist organisations persisted for the longest time, prolonging the struggles of mass movements beyond the debacle of real socialism, albeit with a much weakened influence of Marxism. The study of Marxism in Latin America condenses several problems that we will be analysing. First, an essential one, which affects the conception of Marxism itself, is the accusation that the original Marxism and its main subsequent developments are Eurocentric, that is, that it is a theory formed and deployed under the cultural, political and socio-economic conditions prevailing in Europe, which makes its translation or direct application in other different geographical areas difficult. What this position points out is that Marxism as it was conceived and subsequently developed by the Second and Third Internationals does not have a universal character and needs to be adapted to the different conditions existing in other areas, in this case Latin America. Secondly, this accusation of Marxism as Eurocentric had two derivations. The first tried to find in Marx the Eurocentric deformations and, more specifically, the prejudices against Latin America that made relations with this subcontinent difficult. The second also sought to find in Marx, paradoxically, the glimpses of a paradigm shift, never fully developed, which would emphasise the revolutionary possibilities of the backward countries of his time, with special mention of the Russian rural commune. This situation led to two different developments of Marxism in Latin America. The first followed in the wake of its development in Europe, at first with the Second International and then with the Third and even the Fourth. The second development was supported by some intellectuals whose acute awareness of the above-mentioned situation led them to consider the possibility of a Latin American Marxism more suited to the conditions of the subcontinent. Thirdly, the difference noted for Latin America received strong support when the first socialist revolution triumphed, in Cuba, not led by a communist party, as Cuban Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century communists at the time opposed the strategy of Fidel Castro and his comrades. An initial consequence of this triumph was the emergence of organisations that competed with the communist parties through very different forms of organisation and strategies. However, this initial situation in Cuba was transitory and, under pressure from US imperialism, the revolution gradually adapted to the model of real socialism, while retaining certain characteristics of its own. However, in this "normalisation" of the Cuban model, the thought of Ernesto Che Guevara represented the continuation of the tendencies towards a Latin American Marxism with its own characteristics. The unsuccessful experiences of Chile and Nicaragua also represented their own models for achieving socialism that differed from the model exported from the Soviet Union, and thus also contributed to giving Marxism in Latin America a physiognomy of its own. However, while it is possible to find differences with European Marxism, or even with Asian Marxism, it is more difficult to specify what this Latin American Marxism would consist of. Some differentiating characteristics have been pointed out, such as antiimperialism; the search for a transforming subject broader than the proletariat; the situation of dependence of Latin American social formations within world capitalism; or its synthesis with national or regional political traditions such as those derived from Bolívar, Zapata, Martí or the communal traditions of the original peoples. But, even taking them into consideration as part of their difference, it has not been possible to create with them a homogeneous and solid body of theory capable of serving as a tool of analysis and guide for action as is, or was, "classical" Marxism. In a quick review of the Marxist influence on fundamental events in Latin America, we can note a triumphant and still persistent revolution, the Cuban, another triumphant and later defeated, the Nicaraguan; a revolutionary process cut short by a military coup, the Chilean; two failed communist insurrections, the one in El Salvador in 1932 and the one in Brazil in 1935; a multitude of guerrilla movements of different importance, nature and ideological orientation; the influence and development of various Marxist currents, the Soviet (Chile or Argentina), Trotskyist (Bolivia or Argentina), Maoist (Peru or Brazil), Castroist-Guevarist (Cuba, Argentina or Chile) or that of socialist parties as special as the Chilean one before and during the UP government; or attempts at different paths to socialism such as the Cuban, Chilean or Nicaraguan ones. With this variety and Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez wealth of experiences, it would be logical to produce a rich thought within the Marxist universe, since it would no longer be a matter of philosophical speculations without clear references to a concrete praxis or philosophical returns to Marx. As a result of the compartmentalisation to which we referred at the beginning, we can point to some works that have dealt with Marxist thought in Latin America, where aspects related to the region itself predominate, and where we can appreciate a totally unbalanced influence between Latin America and Europe, for while Latin American Marxism was clearly influenced from outside, not only by the most classical Marx, Engels, Lenin or Trotsky, but also by more recent ones such as Gramsci or Althusser, the influence of Latin American Marxism outside the region was much less. We will now use the works of authors who have dealt more or less generally with Marxism in Latin America, but whose emphasis on one or other aspect has varied and therefore complement each other. Some works emphasise the historical aspect, others the political-organisational and ideological aspect, and still others the philosophical, although all of them also refer to the other aspects. All in all, we hope to achieve a complex view of Marxism in Latin America that justifies why a separate chapter is devoted to it in this study. We will begin our journey with a work which, despite compiling a multitude of texts by Latin American Marxist thinkers, focuses especially on the development of Marxist organisations and political praxis in Latin America. This is Michael Löwy's important compilation, Marxism in Latin America. At the beginning of the book, Löwy points out the emphasis he places on his study because it was one of the main problems facing Marxism in the region: the question of the nature of revolution in Latin America, which in turn presupposed a prior position on the nature of the social formations that made it up and conditioned the political lines and strategies to be followed. The choice of this point of view in his study led him to distinguish three historical periods in Latin American Marxism. The first period was during the 1920s and first half of the 1930s, when the revolution was seen as both democratic and socialist. A second period was from the mid-1930s to 1959, with the predominance of the Soviet vision of revolution in stages and the advocation at that time of the national-democratic stage. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century The third period was opened by the Cuban revolution, with a return to the socialist conception of revolution. Other authors who have dealt with the study of Marxism in Latin America, such as Sánchez-Vázquez419 or Aricó, look back a little further. The former, for example, points out that the first version of Marxism to reach Latin America was the dominant version of the second international, which in relation to colonial or dependent countries had adopted the more Eurocentric texts of Marx and Engels, with no reference to an essential question for Latin America, the anti-imperialist struggle for its true independence. Löwy underlines the two deformations that threatened Latin American Marxism. The first he calls "Indo-American exceptionalism", describing the tendency to "absolutise the specificity of Latin America and its culture, history or social structure", which would lead to the rejection of Marxism itself - as was the case with APRA - as a European theory. For Löwy, however, it would be the second deformation, "Eurocentrism", that would do the most damage. In this case, it would be a mechanical transposition of the analyses made by the classics of Marxism from the European to the Latin American reality, denying the specificity of the American subcontinent, the author underlining three key errors derived from this, the feudal conception of the agrarian structure, the revolutionary or progressive character of the national bourgeoisies and the anti-socialist vision of the peasantry. Both deformations would coincide in a fundamental conclusion, namely that socialism was not the order of the day in Latin America. Against this Eurocentric deformation, a number of authors (Caio Prado Junior, Sergio Bagú, Luis Vitale and André Gunder Frank) rejected the feudal conception of the domination imposed after the conquest in favour of a capitalist vision of the Latin American productive structure combined with pre-capitalist forms. The political and strategic consequences derived from this theoretical discussion were clear: first, it was wrong to raise the struggle for an anti-feudal and bourgeois-democratic stage, because the solution to the agrarian problem of the continent could only come from a socialist revolution; second, the Latin American peasantry was different from the European and 419 Sánchez-Vázquez, Adolfo, El marxismo en América Latina. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez could play an important role in the struggle for socialism; third, an autonomous capitalist development was not possible in Latin America, the only way to free itself from imperialist domination was the implementation of socialism. As Löwy puts it, this type of debate is rooted in the concrete problems of political lines and strategies, and linked in some cases to intellectuals who are at the same time leaders of political organisations, as in the case of Mariátegui or Rodney Aridsmendi. For this very reason, Latin American Marxism differed from Anglo-European Marxism in the 1920s-1930s. Löwy establishes a tension between two poles of Marxism which he calls "Eurocentrism", which he identifies with the Stalinist hegemony, and "concretedialectical" or "open"; discarding the "eclectic", which moved away from Marxism and which, paradoxically, would predominate in a new, renewed version after the debacle of real socialism and the rise of new critical thought. In this sense, and relating it to the periodisation he established and which we mentioned above, he points out that "open" Marxism predominated in the 1920s and, contradictorily, after the Cuban revolution, while Stalinist hegemony was clear between 1930-1960. Néstor Cohan takes a slightly different approach to the differences between these two poles of Marxism. The second of these, which Löwy calls "open" or "concretedialectical", Cohan will call "Arielist", reproduced in two separate periods, the 1920s and the post-1960s, in between which Stalinism predominated. Ariel is a Shakespearean character taken up by José Enrique Rodó to represent the Latin American humanist values opposed to the materialist values of US imperialism, and would later express, under the name of Arielism, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist romanticism, "in the Latin American brotherhood of Ariel, the classic opposition between culture and civilisation operated to the letter, which served to oppose Latin American Culture to Yankee Civilisation from the youthful and modernist antiimperialism of the Reformation"420 . Romanticism that would end up influencing Latin American Marxism as opposed to Eurocentric Marxism. As Cohan points out when analysing the work of Ingenieros, one of the main intellectuals of this current, "In that explosive preaching of culturalist anti-imperialism and anti-capitalist romanticism, 420 Cohan, Néstor, Ni calco ni copia. Ensayos sobre el marxismo argentino y latinoamericano, p. 66. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century entire generations of Latin American revolutionaries and combatants would be educated. "421 For Cohan, the differences that separated the Marxist orthodoxy, which he identifies as being based on DIAMAT, from the "brotherhood of Ariel", is that while the former identified economic exploitation as the main motive for criticising and rejecting capitalism, the latter did so on the basis of humanism and "romantic anti-capitalist protest". Mella and Mariátegui would, however, represent the synthesis of both tendencies. The "brotherhood of Ariel" is, then, useful to explain Latin American Marxism "where ethics, conscience, ideals and culture are at the very heart and are a fundamental part of the anti-capitalist struggle. "422 . We can add, then, that this Latin American Marxism would be a clear expression of what Gouldner pointed to as critical Marxism. Among the first Latin American Marxists with a certain influence were Juan B. Justo, with a moderate orientation that was difficult to classify as Marxist. Justo, with a moderate orientation that is difficult to classify as Marxist, Luis Emilio Recabarren, Julio Antonio Mella and, especially, José Carlos Mariátegui, who made the most important and most original early contributions to Latin American Marxism, "his thought is characterised precisely by a fusion between the most advanced aspects of European culture and the age-old traditions of the indigenous community, and by an attempt to assimilate the social experience of the peasant masses into a theoreticalMarxist reflection", although, as Löwy points out, "he was often described as heterodox, idealist or romantic", who justifies his "social-ethical voluntarism" or "anti-capitalist romanticism" as "a reaction against a vulgar materialist and economicist version of Marxism"423 . But we will deal with Mariátegui at greater length later on. This was the character of the first period in which "open" Marxism predominated both because of the influence of these intellectuals, who were not very numerous either, and because of the political line of the Third International, in which Stalinism did not yet predominate and which advocated a revolutionary struggle with a simultaneous content of "agrarian, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist tasks", the unity of the peasantry and the 421 Ibid, p. 64 Ibid, p. 18 423 Löwy, Michael, Marxism in Latin America, pp. 19-21. 422 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez proletariat, and an "uninterrupted" revolution leading to socialism. However, although Löwy does not take stock of this, in this first stage Marxist thinking, and the predominant political line, did not give rise to any attempt at insurrection or socialist transformation, evidently due to the weakness of the Marxist organisations. The second period of Latin American Marxism, between 1930-60, was characterised by the hegemony of Stalinism through the Latin American communist parties, and translated politically into the adoption of a new doctrine, that "of the revolution by stages and of the bloc of four classes (the proletariat, the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie), as the foundation of its political practice, whose objective was the concretisation of the national-democratic (or anti-imperialist or anti-feudal) stage. "424 Löwy is contradictory in his assessment of Marxist contributions in this second period, for if on the one hand he speaks of "a process of degradation of Marxist thought in Latin America that would last several decades"425 after the disappearance of Mella and Mariátegui, where the intellectual figures were few and of little relevance, as was the case with Aníbal Ponce, with a rather "pre-Marxist" character, on the other hand he points out further on that "The hegemony of Stalinism in Latin American left-wing thought, from the 1930s to the Cuban revolution, does not mean that there were no important scientific contributions to Marxist thought; On the other hand, he further points out that "The hegemony of Stalinism in Latin American left-wing thought, from the 1930s until the Cuban revolution, does not mean that there were no important scientific contributions to Marxist thought in that period. In several countries, inside and outside the communist parties, communist researchers questioned the prevailing schematic interpretations of the nature of the continent's socio-economic formations, particularly the tendency to impose the European feudal model on the analysis of Latin American agrarian structures. "426 Citing in this regard the economic history works already mentioned by Caio Prado Jr., Sergio Bagú, or those of Marcelo Segall, Milcíades Peña or Nahuel Moreno, and in Marxist sociology the work of Silvio Frondizi. 424 Ibid, p. 28 Ibid, p. 27 426 Löwy, Michael, Marxism in Latin America, p. 42 425 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century In this period of hegemony of the communist parties among the Marxist organisations, on the one hand, the first unsuccessful insurrectionary attempts took place under their leadership: the first was the mass insurrection in El Salvador in 1932, which Löwy points out was the first and only one led by a communist party in Latin America, and the second was the "red rebellion of 1935 in Brazil", conceived more as a military-type uprising than as a mass insurrection. On the other hand, after these insurrectional attempts, the communist parties went on to defend the policy of popular fronts, the most complete expression of which was the Chilean case. Finally, during the Cold War, the communist parties took a new leftist turn without abandoning the theory of revolution by stages and the bloc of the four classes. Their behaviour was uneven, from participating in guerrilla warfare as in Colombia, leading large strike movements in Brazil, or acquiring great strength in Guatemala during the presidency of Jacobo Arbenz, which did not serve to prevent his overthrow by a combination of military invasion and betrayal by the armed forces; to their absence in the armed struggle against Batista in Cuba. In the 1930s, at the same time as the communist parties aligned themselves behind Stalinist policies, there was also the birth of Trotskyist organisations whose most important influence was deployed in Bolivia, inspiring the Pulacayo theses of the miners' unions, in the rest of the cases being irrelevant organisations. The period in which Marxist influence in Latin America underwent a change of version from the initial weight of the official Marxism of the Second International to the hegemony of the predominant version of the Third International is also divided into two periods by Sánchez-Vázquez. Initially, the theses of the Third International revalued the anti-imperialist struggle as a fundamental issue, although the Communist International quickly appealed to the subordination of the struggles in a country to the world revolution and insisted on the vanguard role to be played by a proletariat "almost nonexistent in colonial societies or weak in dependent ones".427 This meant that, in Sánchez-Vázquez's view, although the Third International's version of Marxism was an important advance on the previous version, a certain Eurocentrism persisted with the reaffirmation of "the pre-eminent role of the Western proletariat within the world 427 Sánchez-Vázquez, Adolfo, El marxismo en América Latina, p. 7. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez revolutionary process. The key to the liberation of the peoples oppressed by imperialism still lay in the West. "428 Finally, with the dissolution of the Third International in 1943, as a consequence of the interests of the Soviet Union in the midst of the Second World War, "the Eurocentrism of the 1920s and 1930s will be converted with Stalin into the Russocentrism of the 1940s and 1950s in the world communist movement. "429 The Cuban revolution opened the third period of those analysed by Löwy for Latin American Marxism. Its importance is stressed by the author despite the fact that this revolution was carried out by "a political team of petty-bourgeois origin, inspired by a Jacobin ideology" which ended up moving into "the camp of the proletariat and became Marxist", and that the Cuban revolution subsequently ended up adopting the party-state model of "real socialism". That is to say, neither of the two expressions of Marxism that until that moment disputed the activity of the struggle for socialism in Latin America, communism aligned with the Soviet Union and Trotskyism, played a relevant role in the only revolution that triumphed and consolidated itself on the continent. This implied a certain questioning of Marxism as an orienting theory and guide for revolutionary activity to achieve socialism, or at least to carry out the revolution. It is undeniable that the Cuban revolution disproved the theory of stages for Latin America held by official pro-Soviet communism, but it also refuted the "classical" Trotskyist conceptions of the role of the proletariat or the party, which, moreover, played no role either during the revolution or in its subsequent consolidation. On the other hand, the enormous influence that this triumph exerted on Latin American revolutionaries made a new praxis of Marxism appear for a few decades, which also tried to be theorised as a model, CastroismGuevarism or its version of foquism. As a result of the compartmentalisation of which we have spoken, the consequences of this unprecedented situation in Latin America were little analysed by Anglo-European Marxism. In Europe, Marxist analyses remained more attentive to the upheavals in EastEuropean communism (Hungary, Czechoslovakia) and were briefly affected by the 428 429 Ibid, p. 7 Ibid, p. 9 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century supposedly new Chinese model with its cultural revolution. Paradoxically, however, it was a European author, a Marxist at the time, who contributed most to the theorisation and dissemination of the theory of foquismo, Regis Debray and his book Revolution in the Revolution430 . More influential for the most important communist parties in Western Europe was the development and outcome of the experience of the Chilean Popular Unity with the government of Salvador Allende, which reinforced the already existing tendencies towards the Eurocommunist model. Undoubtedly, the Cuban revolution reproduced in Ernesto Che Guevara the type of revolutionary and intellectual leader of the classical Marxist era that had been rare in Europe since the 1920s. The influence of his figure and militant example was more intense and enduring than that of his theory, but the latter represented a new variation of Marxism. It too will be dealt with at greater length later. The new organisations that were born under the influence of the Cuban revolution were oriented towards armed guerrilla struggle, first of a rural and then of an urban nature. All of them were militarily defeated by the strong repressive regimes that responded to these revolutionary attempts in the 1960s-70s. However, the momentum generated by the Cuban revolution did not end with these defeats, and it achieved a major success with the victory of the Sandinista revolution in 1979, which in turn spurred the guerrilla movements that emerged in El Salvador and Guatemala. The subsequent loss of power by the Sandinistas in 1990, coinciding in time with the fall of the Berlin Wall, put an end to this last wave of revolutionary experiences, leaving the Cuban revolution isolated for almost two decades until the Bolivarian revolution began in Venezuela, followed by the Bolivarian process in Bolivia. One of the most novel aspects of the latest revolutionary wave in Central America, which Löwy describes, is the influence and alliance between Marxism and broad sectors of Christians and the clergy more sensitive to the conditions of the people. 430 Debray's book and its theses were criticised on several fronts, by orthodox communists such as the Argentinians Codovilla and Rodolfo Ghioldi, by his teacher Althusser, and even by Che Guevara himself and other participants in the Cuban revolution. See Néstor Cohan, Ni calco ni copia. Ensayos sobre el marxismo argentino y latinoamericano, pp. 338-340 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez If the impulse of the Cuban revolution still lingered in Sandinismo, it did not follow its political and economic model once it had come to power, and represented the third model, alongside Cuba and Chile, of achieving power and making the transition to socialism. In barely more than two decades, Latin American Marxism offered a variety of revolutionary experiences that cannot be found in Europe or Asia, where several communist states were achieved and maintained. Therefore, it can be affirmed that if European-Anglo-Saxon Marxism maintained a greater influence in the field of theory, Latin American Marxism, without in any way disdaining the importance of its theoretical contributions, provided a greater number of revolutionary experiences. But there was also a revitalisation of Marxism from the 1960s onwards, penetrating academic circles in a multitude of disciplines and beginning to generate a type of intellectual more similar to the European-Anglo-Saxon one. These included names such as José Aricó, Pablo González Casanova, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Bolivar Echevarría, Marta Harnecker, Adolfo Gilly, Ernesto Laclau, Theotonio dos Santos, Juan Carlos Pontantiero, Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez, Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez, Aníbal Quijano, André Gunder Frank, Rui Mauro Marini, Luis Vitale, Emir Sader or Fernando Martínez Heredia, some of whom ended their intellectual careers by abandoning Marxism (Laclau, Cardoso), while others maintained a close relationship with Marxist organisations or Latin American revolutionary processes (Harnecker, Vitale, Marini). In the 1990s, despite the defeats suffered by Marxist organisations and the Sandinista revolution and the debacle of real socialism, the contributions of Marxist intellectuals continued to grow, with a new generation joining those who had survived from previous decades, such as Claudio Katz, Ricardo Antunes, Nestor Kohan, Paul Singer, Carlos Nelson Coutinho, Horacio Tarcus, etc. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century José Aricó is an author who apparently approached the study of the relationship between Marxism and Latin America in a similar way to Löwy, even in the periodisation, but who, nevertheless, clearly differentiated himself by his emphasis on highlighting the disagreement that existed from the beginning between Marxism and Latin America, and which went back to Marx and Engels themselves. The basis of this misunderstanding is to be found in the fact that Marxism is seen as a doctrine formulated in Europe in the second half of the 19th century and that it is received in Latin America as a Eurocentric doctrine. The importance of his contribution consists, then, in analysing the reasons for the differences and ignorance that would serve as a basis for the attempts to construct a Latin American Marxism, as a reinterpretation of European Marxism, according to the conditions of the subcontinent. José Aricó473 examines the disagreement between Marxism and Latin America in the original positions held by Marx and Engels in this respect. To do so, he analyses Marx's thought in depth in two complementary ways. In the first, he tries to understand the reasons that led to Marx's negative view of Latin America; in the second, he makes a more profound revision of Marx's thought, attributing to him a fundamental shift that would have led him to overcome his Eurocentric positions, contained in The Manifesto or Capital, in favour of others where the emphasis would be placed on the revolutionary possibilities of the most backward countries (colonial countries or not, with a predominance of the agrarian sector, and little or no industrial development). First of all, let us look at Aricó's heterodox reading of Marx's work, which will be the main characteristic, with different variants, that defines Latin American Marxism. Aricó does not see Marx's work as a homogeneous, complete and closed system - a position held not only by Latin American Marxists, but also by other authors from Shanin to Althusser - but rather as being made up of a series of theoretical nuclei that vary throughout his intellectual production but, unlike Althusser, for example, it is not a matter of differentiating between Marx's work and that of other Marxists, The aim is not to differentiate the mature or scientific work from the younger, more philosophical work, but rather to recover and revalue some of Marx's writings that were undervalued, 473 Aricó, José, Marx and Latin America Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez or simply ignored, by the main currents of the Marxist tradition of both the Second and Third Internationals. In these texts by Marx, from the late 1850s onwards, we find a new core of Marx's thought that goes beyond the Eurocentric positions contained in his main works: writings related to international questions about backward countries (China, Turkey, Russia, Ireland, etc.) in which we find a profound shift in Marx's political thought. The two main texts in this sense are those related to the Irish question and the Russian rural commune. In them Aricó finds two ruptures in Marx's fundamental categories. The first is the role of the industrial proletariat, that of the developed European countries, which would be relativised as part of a broader emancipatory subject in which the great mass of peasants and subjugated peoples of the backward countries would have great weight. "The "Eurocentrist" residues are in fact overcome in Marx when he avoids identifying with capitalist development and the presence of an internationally homogeneous working class the conditions of "liberation" of the dominated peoples and, furthermore, when he does not subordinate this to the behaviour of the Western European proletariat. On the contrary, Marx glimpses the possibility that the struggles of these peoples will shatter the stability of the capitalist order in the world and in Europe itself. " 474 The second break is the possibility envisaged by Marx, especially from his views on the Russian rural commune, of a transition to socialism in backward countries without the need to go through a previous stage of capitalist development. That is to say, to break with a kind of evolutionary determinism which has been derived from Marx's major works and according to which backward countries would have to pass through the capitalist stage, developing industry and a large proletariat, as a necessary condition for being able to consider the transition to socialism. In the prologue written for the work by Aricó that we are analysing, Horacio Crespo summarises the implications that, according to Aricó, are contained in these texts by Marx: 1) Rejection of the transformation of his theory of capitalism developed in Europe into a philosophy of universal history. 2) "Recognition of the unequal and contradictory character of the economic development of the Western and non-Western world and their conflicting interdependence". 3) Fundamental to the political objective 474 Aricó, José, Marx and Latin America, pp. 134-5. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century pursued by Aricó and Latin American Marxism and even of the globally backward countries, "foreseeing the displacement of the centre of the revolutionary process from the Western to the non-Western world and the constitution of the national revolution of the dependent countries as a condition for the social revolution of the European countries". 4) Consideration of the possibility of transition to socialism without the necessary passage through the stage of capitalist development which, in the specific case of Russia, would be based on the rural commune. 5) Expansion of the revolutionary subjects active in the backward countries. 6) "Affirmation of the different nature of the tasks required for the transformation of Asian and/or colonial societies (political independence, agrarian revolution, industrial and commercial protection) in comparison with those to be faced in European and capitalist societies".475 However, as we pointed out above, this interpretation did not prevail in any of the main currents of Marxism that continued Marx's work. The reason for this path of development is not to be found in the lesser theoretical elaboration of these texts he cites with respect to Marx's main work, nor in a non-existent and explicit rectification of Marx and an evaluation of its consequences, but in the differences he maintained in this respect with Engels. Thus, while, according to Aricó's reading, Marx made a sharp turn from his main positions in the direction indicated, Engels remained firm in them, refusing to modify the role of the proletariat and the real possibilities of the Russian rural commune. And Engels, having outlived Marx, would end up systematising in the dissemination of Marx's work a clearly Eurocentric version to be transmitted to the Second International, which would adopt it as the orthodox one. Returning now to the first aspect we mentioned at the beginning, that of Marx's negative view of Latin America, Aricó points out that it is not that Latin America was absent from Marx's work, for he did deal with it on several occasions, but that it was treated in his analyses with bitter prejudices, the most complete expression of which were his opinions on Bolívar, based on his misunderstanding of the independence processes that took place in the subcontinent. This view of Marx was to have a decisive influence on the approaches of the Second International. 475 Crespo, Horacio, Aricó's Latin American Marxism. La búsqueda de la autonomía de lo político en la falla de Marx, prologue to José Aricó's Marx y América Latina, pp. 63-4. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez For Aricó, the origin of this Latin American vision of Marx is not to be found in a profound ignorance of the subject due to the limitations of the time, which led him to a superficial and distorted treatment of his opinions, but in a previous political position derived from two aspects related to Hegel, the first being the influence of Hegel's idea of peoples without history and, secondly, his rejection of the Hegelian postulate that conceived of the state as an element capable of giving rise to civil society. In this light, firstly, Latin America was seen in Marx and Engels' texts as an "extension of Europe" and, secondly, "The national formations [of Latin America] thus appeared to him as mere state constructions imposed on an institutional vacuum and on the absence of a popular will, incapable of constituting themselves because of the gelatinous nature of the social fabric. "476 , which was reinforced by Marx's identification between the Bonapartist project, which he so incisively criticised in Napoleon III's France, and the Latin American republics. Aricó bitterly points out that this distortion of Marx's vision is such that not even the rectifications made for the backward areas of Europe (Ireland or Russia) and Asia are taken into account in the case of Latin America. This view, prevalent in the Second International, was, paradoxically, consolidated with the triumph of the Russian revolution. "The possibility of a "non-Western" form of social transformation, defended by Marx and the populists in the 1980s, and theoretically questioned by Lenin in the 1990s, was practically buried in October 1917: the Bolshevik path turned out to be the only possible and therefore the only desirable one. For the social democrats, on the other hand, the Bolshevik experience, with its pronounced features of Asian barbarism, confirmed their constant theoretical and political rejection of the possibility of democratic and socialist transformation of a "backward" society. "477 This explanation by Aricó would shed light on the disagreement between the political line advocated by the Third International for Latin America, through the communist 476 477 Aricó, José, Marx and Latin America, p. 146. Aricó, José, Marx and Latin America, p. 87. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century parties of the subcontinent, and the Latin American Marxism defended by Mariátegui, which we will deal with later on. This perspective entails conceiving Marxism not as a universal theory whose aim is to analyse the capitalist mode of production and propose a programme to overcome it with a superior project, but as a European theory that could only be valid in other parts of the world, such as Latin America, through a process of reformulation adapted to its special characteristics and needs. Marxism would not be the contributions of Marx and his subsequent consequent developments, but "a political-doctrinaire construction" carried out at first by the theoreticians of the Second International and then of the Third International. And that, as such a construction, it is received in Latin America. But this approach inevitably leads to the question of what is the general, universal core of Marxism, and what are the special characteristics corresponding to a given geopolitical space or historical moment and which are not relevant to other spaces or different moments. Now it is no longer a question, as we did when dealing with the scientific status of Marxism and the historical refutations of some of its postulates, of the core of Marxism that remained valid after these refutations, but of the questioning of Marxism as a valid theory for a given geopolitical area. Marxism outside Europe found itself confronted with very different situations from those analysed by Marx, especially the fact that these were agrarian societies, with little industrialisation, with a tiny proletariat amidst a majority peasant class, and suffering some level of colonisation by an imperialist state, whether it belonged to Europe, the US or Japan. But this situation was not specific to Latin America; it was the same in Asia and Africa. In the first case, Marxism, with the help of the Chinese Communist Party, adapted itself, through the theoretical and strategic contributions of Mao Tsetung - which are analysed in more detail in another chapter - to rely on a huge peasantry and through an anticolonial war against the Japanese to seize power and initiate the socialist revolution. This gave rise, within the "orthodox" strand of Marxism of the Third International, to a new variant which radiated a major influence for some time throughout the world, including Latin America. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez But even Marx already dealt with this problem, which we could define as the adaptation of Marxism to non-European conditions, especially with his views on the Russian rural commune and its possibilities as a basis for a transition to socialism without going through the stage of capitalist development. We will dwell briefly on this subject because of its relation to the response of certain intellectuals seeking a Marxist adaptation to Latin American conditions. One of the authors who has best studied this subject is Theodor Shanin in his work Late Marx and the Russian Way, of which we shall now give a brief summary of his main theses. In Marx's writings one can find a variety of views on the role of the Russian commune as a suitable vehicle for the transition to socialism. If already in the Grundrisse (1857-8) one can find a certain acceptance by Marx of the existence of "a multiplicity of paths of social development in capitalist societies", this position became more firmly established in the period from 1873-4, and especially from 1877, departing from a progressive unilinear model. For when Marx published volume I of Capital in 1869, he had a negative view of the Russian commune. Marx's change of attitude towards the Russian commune was a consequence, in Shanin's opinion, of his reading of Chernyshvski. Thus, in 1875 the opinion of both Marx and Engels was that the Russian commune could serve as a vehicle for the transition to socialism provided it was preceded by a victorious revolution in Europe (a thesis forced by the polemic with Tkachev), a precondition that disappears in Marx's letter to Vera Zasulich, but reappears in the preface to The Manifesto published in Russian in 1882, which expresses Engels' opinion above all. Shanin points out that if Engels ceased to consider the Russian commune, and even the European peasantry, as important, it was due to the influence of Plekhanov, who had adopted a strong anti-peasant position because of his growing confrontation with the Russian populists. Thus, he continues, Engels was first Plekhanovised and Kautskyised and then Marx Engelsised into an evolutionist mould which proved to be a failure, because in the early 20th century the various revolutions that took place throughout the world took place in backward societies and were largely peasant revolutions (Russia, Turkey, Iran, Mexico, China), while in the industrialised West no revolution triumphed. Thus, the socialist movements of the 20th century were forced to revise their strategies or collapse, in the first case Lenin, Mao and Ho, while Plekhanov and Kautsky failed. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Shanin's approach would support heterodox attempts to adapt Marxism to Latin American conditions, such as those of Mariátegui, the Cuban revolution, Ernesto Che Guevara or the later Castro-Guevarist experiences. Sánchez-Vázquez also dealt with this change in Marx's perspective on the "backward" peoples, the origin of which was to be found in the national and social struggles in Ireland, and which was expressed above all in his famous reply to Vera Zásulich's letter. But Sánchez-Vázquez goes further than Shanin and, in an approach similar to Aricó's, states that this theoretical turn in Marx's thinking gives rise to a different conception of history and revolution, the parameters of which are as follows: "(1) universal history is constituted not only with the "historical peoples", Western ones, but also with the oppressed peoples, "without history"; (2) the historical capitalist development of Western Europe does not inevitably occur in all countries; (3) its negative effects on the subjugated peoples call into question its progressive character; 4) the centre of the revolution is not exclusively in the West but, under certain historical conditions, outside; 5) the emancipation of the colonised or dependent countries would be carried out not by the proletariat of the metropolises but by the oppressed masses of those countries; and 6) in conditions of "backwardness", or subjugation by the metropolises, social liberation is indissolubly linked with national liberation."478 Given the controversy in this respect, Sánchez-Vázquez's conclusions are the fruit of a personal interpretation by the Spanish-Mexican philosopher rather than a clear and definitive position of Marx. The problem not solved by Shanin or Sánchez-Vázquez, nor by the cases pointed out in Latin America, is that the successful revolutions he cites ended in blockades or failures, and that in Latin America the same thing happened, and the Cuban case can be considered a resistant but blocked revolution. Thus, Shanin's approach should be completed with the data known in the second decade of the 21st century. If his judgement on the failure of the orthodox Marxists of the Second International is unappealable, the revision of the strategies he considers successful led, in the end, to ephemeral triumphs in the undeveloped countries, and to the continued impossibility of revolution in the developed ones also with the new parties derived from the Russian 478 Sánchez-Vázquez, Adolfo, El marxismo en América Latina, p. 4. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez revolution. But, what is more, not even the initially successful revolutions in the undeveloped countries were successful following Marx's alleged strategic turn in his writings on Ireland or the Russian commune. This path was never tried by Marxists, and the closest thing was the Cuban revolution, quickly standardised according to the Soviet model, or, closer in time, the neo-Zapatista EZLN or the Bolivian process led by Evo Morales and García Linera. On the Chinese revolution, we analyse it in a chapter of its own. What did it mean, then, for Löwy to circumvent the Eurocentric temptation of Latin American Marxism? What is Aricó getting at when he states that "certain ideologies, although in their letter they affirm exactly the same as their congeners in other areas, by functioning in differentiated realities they also constitute different realities"? These questions had three types of answers in Latin America, the first was that of the communist parties aligned with the Soviet Union and also, with their differences, that of the Trotskyists. They adopted the theoretical corpus derived from the Third International, the former with its subsequent developments in the Soviet Union to which they remained linked, the latter with reference to the first stage of the Russian revolution (Lenin, Left Opposition) and its continuation with Trotsky's defeated line. This is the background to Löwy's work, which sets out the differences in Latin America between the two versions condensed into the different strategies proposed, that of the communist parties based on the need for stages and alliances with the national bourgeoisies, and that of the Trotskyists oriented towards the non-staged socialist revolution, the former being seen as reformists and the latter as revolutionaries. Although for this Löwy has to force explanations for some of the main revolutionary events in the region linked to the communist parties, that of El Salvador in 1932 (the insurrection would have taken place outside the Third International), that of Brazil in 1935 (it was a military rather than a popular uprising), or the Cuban revolution (its link to the Soviet Union was only realised at a later stage). The second response was initially represented by Haya de la Torre and the APRA, who proposed overcoming Marxism as an exotic theory imported from Europe and unsuitable for guiding the programme of transformations that Latin America required. But it would also have later developments crystallised in some of the intellectuals who Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century moved away from Marxism, one of whose main exponents was Ernesto Laclau and his post-Marxist theory of populism. The third response is more varied and is represented by the various attempts to adapt Marxism to the specific characteristics of Latin America, among which two stand out on the theoretical level, those of Mariátegui and Ernesto Che Guevara - and at a greater distance those of Sánchez Vázquez or Dussell - and on the level of praxis, the Cuban revolution and its later derivations in foquismo. Horacio Tarcus has made a suggestive contribution in relation to the problematic of the reception of Marxism, as one more case of a broader problematic of the "transnational reception of ideas". In opposition to the tendency that sees Marxism "as a universal theory available for its proper use and which it is only a matter of applying correctly to local reality, [the new perspective] is interested in that structural misunderstanding inherent in every process of adoption of ideas in a context heteronomous to the context of their production. "479 What he proposes is that, as ideas move between different social spaces where the contexts are different from the space and time of their production, the recipients of these ideas will necessarily reinterpret them according to the needs for which they are reappropriated. We must understand, although this author does not make it explicit, that a different space can refer to a different geographical space at the same time, or a different temporal space in the same place. This is what would have happened in the case of the reception of Marxism in Latin America. In reality, this thesis of Tarcus' not only serves to explain the attempts at Latin American Marxism, but all the known varieties of Marxism. That of the Second International corresponds to the adaptation made, especially by German social democracy and its leading theoreticians, to the needs of its concrete political struggle. Lenin's was a new re-adaptation to the needs of the conditions arising from the struggle against the Tsarist state and those arising from the disasters of the First World War. And so one could continue with more examples. 479 Tarcus, Horacio, El marxismo en América Latina y la problemática de la recepción transnacional de las ideas, p. 37. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez But Tarcus, like Shanin, Aricó and others, applies his thesis to Marx himself in a peculiar case of rethinking his ideas as a consequence of this transnational reception of ideas. The revolutionary wing of the Russian populists read Capital and then questioned Marx on his interpretation of it. Marx rejects that a philosophy of history can be derived from his work and accepts that the Russian rural commune can serve as a basis for the transition to socialism without going through the capitalist stage as in Europe and, in the interpretation of the above-mentioned authors, comes to rethink the conditions of revolution in his mature writings. Thus, the currents of Latin American Marxism, as we shall see at the end of this chapter, receive Marxism but in different ways according to the different moments and circumstances in which it takes place, and give rise to different versions, although there is an effort to find continuity between them. If Löwy's book is an analysis of Latin American Marxism centred above all on the political and social praxis carried out, and in which references to theoretical contributions, without losing importance, are secondary to this main point of view, Raúl Fornet Betancourt's analysis480 inverts this perspective to focus his study on the philosophical reception of Marxism in Latin America, with political praxis as the backdrop to this reception. This author therefore places himself within the Latin American current that approaches the relationship between Marxism and Latin America as a reception surrounded by multiple problems that takes place in seven different stages. The first or preparatory stage, between 1861-83, is characterised by the reception of Marxism in a context dominated by the ideas of utopian socialism, which was a situation similar to the European one, in the sense that Marx and Engels employed part of their energies in combating this type of utopian theories, against which they presented their own as scientific socialism. In the second stage, between 1884 and 1917, the expansion of Marxism had to face two serious competitors, the first being anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism, dominant currents at that time in the workers' and peasants' movements of Latin America, the second being liberal reformist socialism, whose main exponent was the Argentine Juan 480 Fornet-Betancourt, Raúl, Transformación del marxismo : historia del marxismo en América Latina. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century B. Justo, and which represented, in Fornet-Betancout's opinion, a "constructive encounter between Marxism and positivism". Here again, therefore, there is no differentiation with Europe, where Marx and Engels clashed on the one hand with Bakuninists and Proudhonians, and on the other with Lesallans. Perhaps for this very reason, Fornet-Betancout does not dwell particularly on these stages. The third stage would extend from 1919-29, and would be defined by the expansion of the Third International's version of orthodox Marxism disseminated through the Communist parties. In this sense, this author points out the importance of the Sixth Congress of the International insofar as the importance of Latin America is taken into consideration. With the spread of the Leninist version of Marxism, the ideological and organisational polemics, the competition, in short, to extend the field of influence among workers, peasants and intellectuals, were going to take place with the anarchosyndicalists, the socialists and, above all, the populists. The latter will give rise to the most important debate at this stage around the contributions of Haya de la Torre, José Carlos Mariátegui and Julio Antonio Mella. All three are intellectuals and political leaders, in a sense similar to those Anderson identifies in classical European Marxism (including Russia). The former is the leader and ideologue of the APRA, and his initial reference to Marxism is made in terms of overcoming it, as he ends up seeing it as a European theory unsuited to responding to the needs of the popular struggles in Latin America. As Fornet-Betancout points out, "the early work of Haya de la Torre, despite all the limitations or inconsistencies one might wish to discover in it, represents perhaps the first attempt to inculturate Marxism in Latin America"481 . The APRA would be a populist party which, although born in Peru, would spread its influence throughout Latin America. Mella will be in charge of refuting Haya de la Torre's positions from an orthodox perspective according to the canons of the Third International. Mella was a Cuban student leader and promoter of various organisations. With him began a polemic that would persist to the present day in Latin America, and other parts of the world, between Marxism and populism. Mella's criticisms are directed especially at the anti-imperialist strategy of the APRA, which prioritises the national struggle in Latin America, and at 481 Fornet-Betancourt, Raúl, Raúl, Transformación del marxismo : historia del marxismo en América Latina, p. 76. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez its refusal to recognise the leading role of the proletariat in any anti-imperialist alliance, denying the Cuban leader the revolutionary potential that Haya de la Torre assigns to the native Indo-American peoples. Mariátegui belongs, chronologically speaking, to the stage of Mella and Haya de la Torre but, because of his importance, Fornet-Betancourt prefers to place him in a separate, very short stage, between 1928-30, a stage he defines by Mariátegui's attempt to "naturalise Marxism". This interpretation of the Cuban philosopher is part of the tendency that sees in Mariátegui the beginning of a Latin American Marxism and not a simple copy of Eurocentric Marxism. Mariátegui differs from both Haya de la Torre and Mella. "If Haya de la Torre denies the universality of the Marxist method in the name of the Indo-American difference and thus understands the inculturation of Marxism as an overcoming of its methodological principles of interpretation, Mariátegui understands Marxism as a method whose universality lies precisely in its dialectical flexibility, that is, in its adaptability to the most diverse circumstances or historical realities" (Mella, p. 4).482 But neither is Mariátegui's Marxism the same orthodox, Leninist Marxism that Mella defends; for the Peruvian it is a Marxism not only adapted to the traditions of Latin American reality, but he also introduces into it elements from other philosophical schools, such as vitalism, which greatly deform the core of Marxism and turn Mariátegui into a very heretical author. But we will deal with him in more detail later on. For Fornet-Betancourt, however, the fact that Mariátegui's thought was not continued is an expression of the limitations of Latin American Marxists. Indeed, from the point of view of political praxis, none of the main or secondary experiences carried out in Latin America by organisations linked to Marxism were based on Mariátegui's theoretical developments. The fifth stage, between 1930-40, would be characterised by the "incorporation of Marxism into the Latin American philosophical movement", a stage "of withdrawal that takes the form of an unproductive defence of the official orthodoxy and represents a clear step backwards with respect to the theoretical level reached by the amauta's work. 482 Fornet-Betancourt, Raúl, Raúl, Transformación del marxismo : historia del marxismo en América Latina, p. 109. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century "483 In other words, the retreat, or "impoverishment of Marxism", is understood as the hegemony achieved in Latin America at that stage by European Marxism. But here there is a lack of rigour on the part of the Cuban philosopher, since he should be referring, in any case, to the preponderance of Soviet, Stalinist Marxism, and not European Marxism, since, as Anderson has pointed out, the existence of a Western Marxism, analysed in a previous chapter, is already evident at this time, and of which there seems to be no trace of its influence in Latin America, since we will have to wait until a few years later to detect that influence through the works of Gramsci and Althusser. For Anderson, European Marxism, despite its intellectual productivity, especially on the philosophical level, had been impoverished by losing contact with political and mass movements and by not dealing with problems of political strategy and praxis. For Fornet-Betancourt, on the contrary, the impoverishment of Latin American Marxism in this fifth stage would be due to the fact that the programme of "inculturation of Marxism" initiated by Mariátegui would have been replaced by "a pseudo-Marxist project of mimetic transplantation of the analyses and postulates of the MarxismLeninism of the Third International, which by this time was already beginning to come under the dictates of "Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism. "484 The situation of "theoretical impoverishment" at this stage would only have one exception in the figure of the Argentine psychologist and essayist Aníbal Ponce, but not because he was an innovator of Marxism in order to inculturate it to Latin American conditions, since he was an "anti-Mariátegui", but because he applied orthodox, i.e. Eurocentric, Marxism "with coherence and rigour". Thus, Fornet-Betancourt's criteria for saving Latin American Marxist thinkers from mediocrity would be either heterodoxy tending towards inculturation or the application with methodological rigour of orthodox Marxism because it would facilitate their incorporation into the "philosophical, and cultural environments in general, of the subcontinent". We have already pointed out that Mariátegui's programme did not guide any major political praxis. Let us recall that at this stage, the theoretical impoverishment of Latin American Marxism was accompanied by an important activity of the communist parties, 483 Ibid, p. 147 Fornet-Betancourt, Raúl, Raúl, Transformación del marxismo : historia del marxismo en América Latina, p. 148. 484 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez firstly by carrying out insurrectionary trials such as those in El Salvador in 1932 and Brazil in 1935, and secondly by promoting the tactics of the popular fronts which brought them out of marginality in many countries to achieve influence in broader social strata. The sixth stage, between 1941-58, is in fact an extension of the previous one, in that it is a stage of Stalinist hegemony and therefore characterised by the "dogmatic stagnation of Marxism" which became more acute in these almost two decades. The severe description by Fornet-Betancourt leaves no room for doubt," Marxism degenerates, generally speaking, into an exercise in "administration" and the application of a dead body of doctrine. "485 This situation is part of a contradictory behaviour on the part of the communist parties, which experienced significant success and influence, especially in the first part of this stage, followed by the decline of the second part. The first was the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, which boosted anti-fascist alliances in the region, and the second was the influence of Browderism486 , which gave a strong reformist tone to some communist parties. However, the onset of the Cold War in 1947, and the leftist turn the communists were forced to take, led to a decline in their social and political influence. Fornet-Betancourt also seems to identify the theoretical stagnation of Marxism with its philosophical stagnation, because in this stage described with such pessimism he does not fail to recognise that there were debates concerning political praxis, "It is also understandable, in the context outlined above, that in the Latin American reception of Marxism at this stage, political aspects or the philosophy of the state are preferred to purely methodological or epistemological questions. In contrast to the previous stage, then, the discussion of the scientific status of Marxism takes a back seat, leaving its central place now to the debate on questions pertaining to the field of political or social 485 Fornet-Betancourt, Raúl, Raúl, Transformación del marxismo : historia del marxismo en América Latina, p. 197. 486 Earl Browde, a leader of the Communist Party of the United States, had tried to reconcile the American democratic and communist traditions. In 1944, based on the agreements of the Teheran Conference, he concluded that capitalism and communism were destined to collaborate, which resulted in the conversion of the CP into a Communist Political Association. In 1945 the CP was rebuilt and Browde was expelled from the CP. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century philosophy. "487 He acknowledges that there are Marxist philosophical interventions such as those of Adolfo Sánchez-Vázquez, Eli de Gortari or Astrada, but he considers the first two to be irrelevant as they are framed in the scheme of orthodox dogmatism, and the third one to be too influenced by Heidegger, even if he ends up adhering to Marxism. The seventh stage, between 1959-91, is characterised by new attempts to naturalise Marxism in Latin America, which, in Fornet-Betancourt's opinion, would be a "recovery of Mariátegui's programme". Of course, the beginning of this stage was marked by the triumph of the Cuban revolution, which, together with the crisis of developmentalist ideology, would be an essential element for the emergence of new theoretical and practical approaches derived from Marxism. Other elements that would push in the same direction would be the dissemination of Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, the works of Gramsci and, a little later, those of Althusser. What is not very well understood is why Fornet-Betancourt considers these last three contributions as important elements for the development of a Latin American Marxism when they are clearly theoretical imports from Europe. This raises once again that the reference to a so-called Latin American Marxism is rather ambiguous, and that, while it may be a label to classify some authors through some common features, as Anderson used that of Western Marxism to classify others, nevertheless, as in the latter case, the use of labels is not very clarifying. The first specific result of the new stage is the theories of dependency which, in FornetBetancourt's opinion, "is not formulated as an alternative to the Marxist-Leninist theory of imperialism. It is rather conceived in terms of a complementary and enriching vision to the Marxist one whose specific foundation is due to the peculiar historical situation of the subcontinent. "488 The second result is the theoretical contributions of Ernesto Che Guevara, to whom our author does not give as much attention and, therefore, as much importance, as he does to Mariátegui, and on whom we will dwell at greater length later on. 487 Fornet-Betancourt, Raúl, Raúl, Transformación del marxismo : historia del marxismo en América Latina, p. 208. 488 Fornet-Betancourt, Raúl, Raúl, Transformación del marxismo : historia del marxismo en América Latina, p. 243. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The third result would be the importance of the spread of liberation theology, promoted by the second conference of the Latin American episcopate held in Medellín in 1968, which would contribute to the convergence between Christians and Marxists, with its high point in the Nicaraguan revolution. On the relationship between liberation theology and Marxism, one of the main defenders of liberation theology points out that "it is in praxis that liberation theology meets in Latin America with Marxists and Marxism, and that based on and in function of the integral liberation of the poor, it makes a purely instrumental use of Marxism, critically rejecting its philosophical aspects that are incompatible with a Christian vision of man and history and incorporating some of its "methodological indications" that have proved fruitful for the understanding of the world of the oppressed. These include the importance of economic factors, attention to the class struggle and the mystifying power of ideologies, including religious ideologies." 489 Miguel Concha Malo rejects, on the one hand, that liberation theory can be understood as a continuation of the philosophical and theoretical dialogue of the 1960s established in Europe between Marxists and Christians and, on the other hand, considers that the dialogue has been possible thanks to the evolution of Marxism, which in Latin America has ceased to be a simple imitator of that "elaborated in other latitudes". In this context, Fornet-Betancourt notes that Marxism is clearly incorporated "into the university and scientific culture of the subcontinent", and points to four authors as the main exponents of the new attempt at the creative development of Marxism in Latin America, representing "four different theoretical models for the innovative interpretation of Marxism": Ernesto Che Guevara, Juan David García Bacca, Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez and Enrique Dussel. We will devote a subsection of this chapter to Ernesto Che Guevara and José Carlos Mariátegui because they are two cases that most authors who have dealt with Marxism in Latin America consider relevant as theoretical-practical innovators of Latin American Marxism. The cases of Sánchez-Vázquez and Dussel, who take on special importance in Fornet-Betancourt's work because of the latter's special emphasis on the study of the 489 Concha Malo, Miguel, La teología de la liberación, in La teoría social latinoamericana. Tomo III. La centralidad del marxismo, pp. 181-2. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century philosophical side of Marxism, are different. In any case, taking into account the classificatory characteristics used by Anderson, if Mariátegui and Ernesto Che Guevara would be among the classical Marxists because of their intellectual and leading role at the same time, Sánchez-Vázquez and Dussel are two intellectuals closer to the model of the Western Marxist. Aware of this similarity, Néstor Cohan nevertheless tries to highlight the differences between Sánchez-Vázquez, and by extension we could say Dussel, in the sense that if Western Marxism was the consequence of the failure of the European revolutions of the 1920s, the turn to critical Marxism of the Spanish-Mexican thinker is the fruit of the victory of the Cuban revolution. But there is no doubt that, beyond the circumstances of the origin of each, it is evident that both cases coincide on a fundamental point, the weight that epistemological and aesthetic issues play in the thought of all these authors. There are two distinct stages in Sánchez Vázquez's thinking, the first of a clearly orthodox nature, and the second, from 1960 onwards, in which he placed himself within critical Marxism. This shift was influenced by the Cuban revolution on the one hand, and the reception of European critical Marxism on the other, especially Gramscian Marxism, and gave rise to the attempt to recompose Marxist philosophy under the label of philosophy of praxis, "the aim is to promote the updating of Marxist theory in its characteristic of theory of the transformation of the world; but without forgetting that the character of Marxism as a philosophy of the transformation of the world must be able to be traced back to its scientific constitution. "490 In Dussel, as in Sánchez Vázquez, two stages can also be distinguished, but instead of moving, as in the case of the former, from an orthodox Marxism to a critical one, the Argentine philosopher moves from an initial anti-Marxist position to a critical assimilation of Marxist philosophy, a "methodological convergence with Marx". Starting from the category of "exteriority" as the essential basis of his philosophy of liberation, he approaches Marxism by accepting its dialectic, but initially pointing out that it is incomplete because it lacks "the category of otherness", and then rereading Marx to conclude that "Marx's category par excellence is not "totality" but 490 Fornet-Betancourt, Raúl, El marxismo en América Latina, p. 285. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez "exteriority""491 , and that Marx's dialectic is not so much based on Hegel as on late Schelling. This represents a new attempt to reinterpret Marx in a Latin American perspective. Dussel's fundamental point is that he is not so much interested in Marx's theory as in his method. "Marx represents, then, a model of critical thought from which one should not so much take the theory already elaborated in the execution of historical-practical critique (for example, the critique of capitalism, made by Marx himself), as the methodological perspective of critical dialectics [...] Understanding that Marx's living heritage is not a "doctrine", but an "open method", Dussel therefore proposes that Latin American Marxism has to be understood as an express attempt at a creative continuation of Marx's method."492 This operation entails a prior critique not only of the previous "canonised" and dogmatic Marxism, but also of "the limits of Marx's own theoretical work", rejecting that it can contain "all possible theory". We find ourselves, then, before a philosophical system that re-emphasises epistemology and methodology. The importance of this reformulation of the theory of praxis initiated by SánchezVázquez can be seen from two points of view. The first, of lesser importance, is that, between the 1970s and 1980s, a significant number of intellectuals, such as Valqui Cachi recalls, "Gabriel Vargas Lozano, Roberto Escudero, Jaime Labastida, Bolívar Echeverría, Juliana González, José Luis Balcárcel, Jorge Juanes, Teresa Conde, Silvia Silvia Conde, José Luis Balcárcel, Jorge Juanes, Teresa Conde, Silvia Conde and José Luis Balcárcel", Juliana González, José Luis Balcárcel, Jorge Juanes, Teresa Conde, Silvia Durán Payán, Samuel Arriarán, Juan Mora Rubio, José Ignacio Palencia, Jorge Martínez Contreras, Griselda Gutiérrez Castañeda, Carlos Pereyra and Andrea Sánchez."493 The second, more profound, has to do with the situation of Marxism in Latin America. We have seen in the previous pages that its development was marked by tension between two opposing poles. The first was represented by orthodox Soviet Marxism of 491 Ibid, p. 303 Fornet-Betancourt, Raúl, El marxismo en América Latina, pp. 308-9. 493 Valqui Cachi, Camilo, La filosofía de la praxis en México ante el derrumbe del socialismo soviético, p. 92. 492 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century a Stalinist character, hegemonic during the three decades from 1930 to 1960. The second was represented by a Latin Americanist Marxism with a very different profile from the first, with important influence in two separate periods, the first in the 1920s under the influence of Mariátegui, and the second in the 1960s under the initial impact of the Cuban revolution and the thought of Ernesto Che Guevara. Between these two poles there were other minor tendencies such as Trotskyism and Maoism. But that tension disappeared. Soviet Marxism was displaced in influence by the consequences of the Cuban revolution and then, with the debacle of real socialism, eventually disappeared. Latin American Marxism was more unstable, its disappearance in the first stage occurred with the death of Mariátegui, while in the second stage, whose influence was more profound and extensive, its disappearance occurred when three events came together, the death of Ernesto Che Guevara, the "normalisation" of the Cuban revolution according to the Soviet model, and the military and political defeat of the movements oriented by Castro-Guevaraism. In any case, since the 1990s the two models of Marxism had been exhausted in the subcontinent and no clear replacement model was on the horizon. In this scenario, Sánchez Vázquez's philosophy of praxis, and to a lesser extent Dussel's model, could be seen as an alternative, but do they not then play the same role as Western Marxism after the defeats of the revolutions in Europe in the 1920s and thus increase the similarity we evoked earlier? In a similar vein to Fornet-Betancourt, but with a more country-focused view, is the work of Pablo Guadarrama González494 , which emphasises the theoretical production of Latin American Marxism with a minimum of reference to social-political praxis. The document is a broad overview of Latin American Marxist intellectuals and their main works, in which, as in the case of European-Anglo-Saxon Marxism, there is an explosion of contributions of very different types, especially from the 1960s onwards, that is, when university education became widespread and intellectuals linked mainly to the university and influenced by Marxism began to make their contributions in different fields, although here too with the hegemony of philosophy. As happened in the 494 Guadarrama González, Pablo, Bosquejo histórico del marxismo en América Latina (Historical outline of Marxism in Latin America). Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez European-Anglo-Saxon area, it is also possible to speak of a thousand Marxisms in Latin America. Pablo Guadarrama's document covers the period from utopian socialism in the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century and, given its breadth, the author is inclined to follow a criterion based on the national origin of the different authors, so that a broad view of Marxist contributions in Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, etc. can be obtained. Secondarily, attention is paid to the relationship of this intellectual production with the events of the time, or to the relationship with broader discussions within Marxism, referring above all in this case to the reception and influence of Gramsci and Althusser, or the impact of existentialism, or to a specifically Latin American problem such as the relationship of Marxism with Christian sectors committed to the struggle for social justice, the best expression of which was liberation theology. A review of the different contributions reveals several main focuses of interest. The first, and essential, is the analysis and discussion on the characterisation of the situation in Latin America in general or in their respective countries in particular, its colonial or feudal nature, the specific situation and the role to be played by the indigenous and peasant sectors, the region's situation of dependence in the world capitalist system, the nature of the revolution that would be necessary and the ways to be employed, the different practical experiences that were developed, etc. The second focus of interest is related to various philosophical aspects of Marxism, such as epistemology, the humanist component, questions of Marxist ethics and aesthetics, the dialectical method, etc. In these discussions, the authors who defended the official theses of the communist parties, aligned, in turn, with the strategic lines coming from the Soviet Union, clashed with the heterodox versions of Marxism, represented initially by Trotskyism and, later, by Castroism-Guevarism. A third focus would be made up of issues relating to the state, democracy, Marxist political organisations, studies on important Latin American revolutionaries such as Mariátegui, Ernesto Che Guevara, Mella, etc. Finally, with the collapse of real socialism, this was a subject that was dealt with by several authors. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century As a sample of the broad theoretical production generated by Latin American Marxism, we will point out below some of the main Marxist intellectuals according to the division by country made by Pablo Guadarrama, in his document this list is more extensive, and nevertheless does not include some authors we have mentioned elsewhere, the most striking absence being that of Ernesto Che Guevara. Nevertheless, this list of authors serves as proof of the existence of a broad intellectual production of Marxism in Latin America. However, while recognising the importance of carrying out such a review with the number of authors taken into account, the original contribution of Latin American Marxism from the theoretical point of view remains unclear. As we have already pointed out, this does not occur on the level of political praxis, where these contributions are clearly identifiable in the Cuban, Chilean or Nicaraguan experiences, or in those derived from the activity of the Guevarist-Castro organisations. Later on, we will engage in a discussion of the difficulty of referring to Latin American Marxism as a homogeneous and differentiated body. In Argentina, Juan Bautista Justo (more as a precursor than as a genuine Marxist), Aníbal Ponce, Vittorio Codovilla (secretary general of the Communist Party), Emilio Troise, Rodolfo Mondolfo (philosopher, professor), Silvio Frondizi (law professor), J. Posadas (Trotskyist), Nahuel Moreno (Trotskyist), Sergio Bagú, Juan Carlos Portantiero, Oscar Terán and Adolfo Gilly (Trotskyist) stand out. In Mexico, Vicente Lombardo Toledano, Raúl Olmedo, Cesáreao Morales, Alberto Hijar, Carlos Pereyra Bodrini, José P. Miranda, Adolfo Sánchez-Vázquez, Gabriel Vargas Lozano, Roberto Hernández Oramas, Pablo González Casanova, Eli de Gortari (philosopher), Alonso Aguilar (economist), Héctor Guillen (economist), Enrique de la Garza (economist), Carlos Pereyra Bodrini, Francisco Piñón, Luis Salazar, Jaime Labastida, Alberto Saladino, Armando Bartra, Ana María Rivadeo, José Valenzuela, David Álvarez Saldaña, Adrián Sotelo Valencia, Víctor Rico Galán, Pablo Gómez, Lucio Oliver and Enrique Semo In Peru, José Carlos Mariátegui, Hildebrando Castro Pozo, Ricardo Martínez de la Torre, Camilo Valqui Cachi, Hugo Blanco (Trotskyist), Anibal Quijano. In Boliva, José Antonio Arze y Arze, Guillermo Lora (Trotskyist), Arturo Urdiqui, Abelardo Villapando and Miguel Bonifaz. In El Salvador, Farabundo Martí and Schafik Handal. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez In Brazil, Caio Prado Junior, Nelson Werneck Sodré, Ruy Mauro Marini, Theotonio dos Santos, Enzo Faleto, Emir Sader, Jacobo Gorender, J. Luiz Marqués and Vânia Bambirra. In Cuba, Julio Antonio Mella, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, Thalia Fung, Pablo Guadarrama González, Fernando Martínez Heredia, Carlos Tablada and Olga Fernández Ríos. In Colombia, Antonio García, Luis Eduardo Nieto Arteta, Mario Arrubia, Alvaro Tirado Mejías, Francisco Posada, Darío Mesa, Gilberto Vieira (general secretary of the communist party), Álvaro Delgado (historian), Julio Silva Colmenares (economist), Salomón Kalmanovitz (economist), Nelson Fajardo, Fermín González (Trotskyist), Rubén Jaramillo Vélez, Estanislao Zuleta (philosopher), Jorge Gantiva, Fabián Acosta and Sergio de Zubiría. In Chile, Luis Vitale, Volodia Teitelboim, Luis Corvalán, Clodomiro Almeida, Oscar Waiss and Marta Harnecker. In Uruguay, Emilio Frugoni and Rodney Arismendy (secretary of the Communist Party). In Ecuador, Agustín Cueva and Bolívar Echevarría. In Nicaragua, Carlos Fonseca Amador, Ricardo Morales Avilés and Tomás Borge. In Honduras, Longino Becerra. In Costa Rica, Frank Hinkelammert and Helio Gallardo. In Venezuela, Ludovico Silva, José Rafael Nuñez Tenorio, Domingo Alberto Rangel, Germán Carrera Damas, Carlos Kohn, Omar Astorga, Hugo Calello, Héctor Malavé Mata and José Silva Michelena. Omar Acha and Débora D'Antonio, for their part, propose a different approach to Latin American Marxism, where the central hypothesis is that one cannot speak of it in an undifferentiated way, but that "the variations in the forms of Latin American Marxism correspond to the socio-economic and cultural zones that nuance its territorial extension".495 Latin American Marxism would represent a variety with respect to Marxism "in general" - a concept of which the authors doubt its existence, but which would refer to the more universalist aspects of the latter and which would be linked to its Eurocentric version - based on the subcontinent's own singularities, although these traits of originality are not "easily discernible". In fact, they point out that, although it is a 495 Acha Omar, D'Antonio Débora, Cartografía y perspectivas del "marxismo latinoamericano", p. 2. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century widespread concept among Latin American intellectuals, it is hardly taken into account by intellectuals outside the region who have studied the trajectory of Marxism or in the great compilations of Marxism. However, they do include the opinion of Néstor Kohan who, agreeing with Löwy and other authors on the characteristics of the dominant Marxism of the period 1929-59 as "orthodox, economicist, universalist, deductive and reformist", opposes the differentiable characteristics of Latin American Marxism, which would be those of "heterodoxy, culturalism, voluntarism, romanticism and anti-imperialism, all of them linked to socialism. "496 These qualities would be linked to the period before and after, and represented by the thought of Mariátegui and Ernesto Che Guevara. The point is that these qualities are not only opposed to the hegemonic Marxism of the 1930s to the 1960s, which would be the Stalinist version of the Third International, nor to that previously linked to the Second International, but some of them are alien to the original version of Marxism itself. Although it could also be argued that with them Latin American Marxism would form part of the broader model of critical Marxism that Alvin Gouldner opposed to scientific Marxism. What seems clearer for these authors is that Latin American Marxism is the fruit, in any case, of a history full of "exchanges and contaminations" with different ideologies, "revolutionary nationalism (in its multiple figures according to countries and regions), anti-imperialism, juvenilism, feminism, critical pedagogy, ecologism, liberation theology, indigenism, post-colonial theory, among others. "497 Another point on which Omar Acha and Débora D'Antonio's study differs from the previous ones is that it extends its analysis beyond 1980, taking into account the effects of the debacle of real socialism. Thus, in the period from 1980-2000 there was "a massive disenchantment of the intelligentsia with Marxism, the shift to post-Marxist or frankly liberal positions (Castañeda, 1995), the end of the seduction of foquismo and the concept of radical social revolution", and with national variations "the paradigmatic displacement of Marxism constitutes a situation extensible to the entire subcontinent, 496 497 Acha Omar, D'Antonio Débora, Cartografía y perspectivas del "marxismo latinoamericano", p. 14. Ibid, p. 34 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez with the exception of Cuba". 498 Only with the turn of the century do they note the possibility of a different phase, but they recognise that this is an open phase in which none of the experiences underway aspires to set itself up as a continental model, although they fail to point out that Marxism plays at best a totally marginal role in these experiences (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Brazil). These authors question both the existence of a Latin American Marxism and its diversity according to national situations, and are inclined to differentiate Marxism in the region according to "cultural environments" in which Marxism would have acclimatised, "1, Brazil; 2, the Rio de la Plata and Chilean axis; 3, the Andean space; 4, the former Greater Colombia; 5, Central America and Mexico; 6, the Caribbean. "499 There will therefore be a series of characteristics that keep them related, but it proves very complicated to extend a single version of Latin American Marxism to the whole subcontinent, which needs, on the contrary, "the necessary operations of translation". Finally, it is necessary to refer to a current of Latin American Marxist thought centred especially on economic aspects, which provided an original analysis to explain the conditions of underdevelopment in the subcontinent. This is the theory of dependency in its Marxist aspect, since this theory had two other different aspects represented, on the one hand, by the thinking around ECLAC and its main theoretician, Raúl Prebisch, and, on the other hand, that represented by Fernando Henrique Cardoso. In one of the various classifications made of dependency theories, that of Gabriel Palma, which Camilla Dos Santos has taken up, three approaches are differentiated, "the first group was initiated by Frank and followed by Dos Santos, Marini, Caputo and Pizarro [...] this group attempts to elaborate a "theory of underdevelopment", denying the possibility of capitalist development in the periphery, considering that this system can only lead to the "development of underdevelopment". The second group highlighted by Palma is made up of researchers associated with ECLAC, such as Sunkel and Furtado, who devoted themselves to analysing the obstacles facing capitalist development in the periphery [...] The third group, for Palma, is the approach that avoids "developing a mechanical-formal theory of dependence, looking at concrete 498 499 Ibid, p. 15 Acha Omar, D'Antonio Débora, Cartografía y perspectivas del "marxismo latinoamericano", p. 24. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century situations" (Palma, 1987, p. 49). This group is essentially formed by Cardoso and Faletto" (Palma, 1987, p. 49).500 The Marxist strand confronted the other two and, at the same time, had connections with other American thinkers who developed different but common theories, on the one hand with the centre-periphery theory of the early André Gunder Frank, and on the other with the world-system theory of Immanuel Wallerstein. Dependency theory originated in the 1960s in Brazil with a number of professors - Dos Santos, Marini, Bambirra, Abramos, etc. -But with the military coup in that country in 1964, they were forced to go into exile in Chile, where they continued to develop the ideas of dependency until the military coup of 1973, which forced them to go into exile again, this time to Mexico, where the theory of dependency reached the zenith of its development. The Marxist current of dependency theory developed in the 1960s-70s is mainly the fruit of three Brazilian thinkers, Ruy Mauro Marini, Theotonio Dos Santos and Vania Bambirra. Its aim was to establish a new explanatory theory of economic backwardness in Latin America as opposed to the liberal ("neoclassical theories of international trade") dominant in the social sciences, criticising and dismantling their arguments and their promises of future convergence with the developed capitalist economies. "Dependency theorists offering Marxist interpretations are linked to Marx's conception of development on four points: the first concerns the conception that underdevelopment is conditioned by the expansion of the industrialised countries; the second, by the idea that development and underdevelopment are different components of the same process; the third is the defence that underdevelopment cannot be accepted as the first stage of the developmentalist process; finally, fourthly, by the fact that dependence is also the result of an internal structure and not only of an external condition. "501 "Dependency theory affirmed two crucial points in its critique of developmentalism: that the internal structure of the dependent countries had been forged on the basis of a relationship of subordination to international capital, and that the action of external 500 Dos Santos Nogueira, Camilla, La situación actual de la teoría marxista de la dependencia: un estudio de los debates contemporáneos en torno a las nuevas formas de dependencia, p. 37. 501 Ibid, p.26 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez conditions on the development process of the peripheral countries, at a time of predominance of imperialist and monopolistic forces in the international economy, greatly limited the possibilities of independence of this development. In the development of dependency theory, Theotonio points to the formation of two main lines of thought, which will progressively separate from their initial identities. One was Marxist or Marxist-inspired, which included himself, Ruy Mauro Marini, Vania Bambirra and, in part, André Gunder Frank. Another, of Weberian origin, centred mainly on Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto. "502 The Marxist current shared some points with the other two, those of ECLAC and Cardoso-Faletto, especially in pointing out the backwardness of the periphery in general, and of Latin America in particular, as a consequence of the effects of terms of trade that clearly benefited the central countries of capitalism. But from that point on, they diverged in the rest of their analysis and policy proposals. Both ECLAC, with its import substitution proposals, and Cardoso, who ended up accepting neoliberal policies as a path to development, sought to close the gap of underdevelopment within capitalist structures with modernisation policies that in both cases ended in failure. For ECLAC, the historical deterioration of the terms of trade could be overcome by means of internal industrialisation based on a protectionist policy and with the help of external capital financing, a process in which the state plays an essential role in promoting development. The Marxist side of dependency denounced the fallacy that underdevelopment could be overcome through corrective measures by maintaining capitalist structures. Their interpretation coincided with that of André Gunder Frank. "Marxist authors conceptualised underdevelopment from a proximate socialist expectation. They questioned liberal myths, analysed the imbalances of developmentalist industrialisation and explained backwardness by the effects of dependent capitalism. Marini explored obstructed Fordism, super-exploitation, the dependent cycle and the double dimension of sub-imperialism. Dos Santos theorised the 502 Martins, Carlos Eduardo, Theotonio Dos Santos: an introduction to the life and work of a planetary intellectual, p. 20. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century difference between economic polarisation and political dependence, and Bambirra distinguished the unequal variants of underdevelopment. They assigned a scientific status to their conception and assessed the specificity of Latin America in the peripheral universe. Frank's metropolis-satellite approach had affinities with the Marxist vision, but only postulated a chain of surpluses transferred to the centre. It failed to register internal bifurcations, omitted social subjects and wrongly presented the dominant classes as lumpenised segments. "503 Camilla Dos Santos points out the connections of dependency theory with analogous thinking developed in other parts of the world, citing for the African case the theories of Samir Amin and Tamas Sentzes, and for Asia, those of Ngo Man Lan, but also with the works of other thinkers located in developed countries such as Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, or A. Emmanuel. Likewise, in his thesis he deals with the analyses of dependency theory applied to the new situation created by neoliberal globalisation at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, citing a series of new authors who are heirs to previous dependency theories, "Jaime Osorio, Cristóbal Kay, Emir Sader, Eder Sader, Orlando Caputo, Thomas Vasconi, Nelson Gutiérrez, Ana Esther Ceceña, Márgara Millán, Francisco López Segrera, Esthela Gutiérrez Garza, Adrián Sotelo Valencia, Nildo Ouriques, Carlos Eduardo Martins, Roberta Traspadini, Marcelo Carcanholo and Irma Balderas, as well as prominent representatives of global critical thought such as Otto Kreye, Emmanuel Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi, Ronald Chilcote, Samir Amin, Pierre Salama and Valdimir Dadydov. "504 Authors who move within "three major frameworks of analysis: world system and hegemony, globalisation and financialisation, and capital and labour".505 503 Katz, Claudio, El surgimiento de las teorías de dependencia. Dos Santos Nogueira, Camilla, La situación actual de la teoría marxista de la dependencia: un estudio de los debates contemporáneos en torno a las nuevas formas de dependencia, p.70. 505 Ibid, p. 71 504 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Latin American Marxism By this we mean that the set of categories, laws and hypotheses that constitute Marx's theory are inevitably historical and, therefore, while they are effective in naming and explaining the historical reality that Marx is involved in, they lose consistency when they are used in other historical realities to which other forms of existence of the real and other "regularities" are inherent. That Marx himself perceives the relationship between theory and reality in this way is evident in the change of his theoretical orientation system when the subject of his reflection shifts from the Western and European capitalism of England to the Asian and colonial or simply colonial reality. Understanding this relationship then allows us to understand the re-centring of Marx's thought and the changes in the "rational cores" that define the passage from one stage of his development to another. Marx and Latin America. José Aricó Among the various studies that have analysed the evolution of Marxism in Latin America, there is a coincidence, albeit with different emphases, in pointing to two authors, Mariátegui and Ernesto Che Guevara, as the two main contributions, for their originality and influence, to the attempt to construct a Latin American Marxism. It is for this reason that we will devote a little more attention to them at the end of this chapter. Alongside them, we will also dwell on another expression of a heterodox reading of Marxism, already in the 21st century, with a certain impact on the subcontinent and beyond, namely the contributions of Álvaro García Linera. Mariátegui's heterodoxy can be divided into two camps, one at the practical level and the other at the theoretical level. The first is a proposal to adapt Marxism to the sociocultural and economic conditions of Latin America in order to bring about the socialist transformation in conditions totally different from those existing in 19th century Europe or the first two decades of the 20th century. This refers to a problem that Marxism has had to face for most of its existence, and to which we have alluded several times before. This theory was elaborated within what it itself conceived as the last historical link in Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century the development of the modes of production, and its object was the analysis of capitalism in order to explain and justify why this last known mode of production would have to be the last society divided between oppressors and oppressed, between exploiters and exploited, in order to give way, through a revolution, to communism. In Western Europe, the cradle and best expression of capitalism at the time, Marxism gradually gained hegemony within the movements and organisations fighting against capitalism and its effects. But Europe was a small part of the world, and in the rest of the world there were more acute situations of domination than within European industrial capitalism. Initially, when Marx and Engels sporadically confronted this problem, their position was that capitalism was an oppressive and exploitative regime, but a necessary stage for peoples and nations at a more backward level of development. Socialism could only emerge when capitalism had completed its potential for development and had exhausted all its contradictions, and the subject for carrying out this task would be the proletariat. But situations of injustice, misery and oppression in backward countries gave rise to protest movements or revolutions, such as that of the Russian populists against the Tsarist autocracy, the Mexican revolution, Irish nationalism, or the great Chinese peasant revolutions of the 19th century, to name but a few of the best known, which were not based on the capitalist exploitation of wage labour. So, on the one hand, some of the movements and leaders of these movements and revolutions questioned Marxism in search of the support of a theory that was beginning to enjoy great prestige for its level of elaboration, as was the case, for example, with the Russian populists or the first stage of Haya de la Torre and the APRA. On the other hand, Marx and his followers also began to take this situation into consideration. The responses were varied, for example, in China the peasant rebellions took a turn after 1929 when the emergence of the CP Ch finally channelled them towards a revolution whose model was Leninism, but with a different strategy, its main social support base to achieve success in the revolution was the peasantry, but it did not rely on the latter's organisational institutions to move towards communism, but applied the Soviet partystate model. Marx, as we have already seen, had, in the opinion of some Marxist intellectuals, an important change in his vision of the revolution and the transition to socialism from his Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez taking into consideration the potentialities of the Russian rural commune which, however, was not taken into account at all when the triumph of the Bolshevik revolution came. The main current of Marxism in Latin America was initially linked to the Second International and then to the Third International and the Soviet Union. Despite the major differences between the two periods of influence, both coincided in the vision of the first Marx, i.e. the need for a stagist strategy that rejected the possibility of a direct leap from Latin American socio-economic conditions to socialism. However, as has also been discussed, that mainstream was challenged by a different vision to which the following two authors we are going to analyse belong. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century José Carlos Mariátegui Mariátegui was the first of the theoreticians to answer the mainstream in favour of bringing about a socialist revolution on the basis of the elements and conditions available in Latin America. In his essays on Peru, Mariátegui put forward two novel assumptions in the Marxist orthodoxy in force at the time, the first being the indispensable role to be played by the peasantry and the indigenous peoples of Latin America in a situation where the working class was in a minority, the second being the revalorisation of the communal institutions inherited from the Inca period among the indigenous peoples of Peru. This was a clear break with the Marxist reading contained in The Manifesto or in Capital, a rejection of the Eurocentric edge of Marxism, but without renouncing it, as Haya de la Torre would do. He was not the first to make such an attempt - the Bolsheviks had done so too, and Gramsci pointed out for this very reason that the Soviet revolution was against Capital, and Maoism successfully carried out a peasant-based socialist revolution - but his heterodoxy was more profound, for the Bolsheviks refused to rely on the Russian rural commune to build communism, although they did adopt a policy of alliances with the peasantry, always in a subordinate position to the proletariat, for it was the latter's programme that they were trying to implement. Mariátegui thus proposed the direct step towards the construction of socialism from the concrete conditions of Peru, and by extension in other Latin American countries, rejecting the need for a previous capitalist stage, both because of the weight of imperialism in the subcontinent, and because of the impossible progressive role of the national bourgeoisie. In this direct step, the peasantry and the indigenous peoples, and the Inca communal institutions, would play an essential and indispensable role. It is not surprising, then, that the similarity between Mariátegui's project and that of the Russian populists who questioned Marx on the possibilities of the Russian commune has been pointed out. And that, consequently, those sympathetic to Mariátegui, as the initiator of a Latin American Marxism, have insisted on the eventual profound turn made by Marx on the basis of his response to the Russian rural commune. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez If, despite these positions, Mariátegui considers his proposal to be socialist, it is because he seeks to connect it with the process of international socialist revolution and to integrate indigenous demands into the heart of the socialist project. "It would be an antiimperialist socialism identified with the poor masses of peasants, workers and indigenous people, and giving priority with them to the struggle for the liberation of the nation. With this socialism Mariátegui synthesises the national question with the question of socialist revolution. "506 But Mariátegui's heterodoxy was not based exclusively on the necessities of carrying out a socialist revolution in Peru under the conditions of his time, which could simply have been considered the fruit of impatient voluntarism. His own philosophical conception also introduced elements far removed from Marxism, the aim of which cannot be interpreted solely as a way of correcting Marxist Eurocentrism - as some of Mariátegui's defenders have claimed - for he would rely on some European authors and doctrines, especially Sorel and the vitalism of Bergson, although there is no lack of other authors as far removed from Marxism as Unamuno, whose figure Mariátegui highlights. Sorel was influenced by his reading of Croce, and Bergson by his influence on the Lima intelligentsia of his time. The significance of Mariátegui's Marxism, based on the intermingling of these authors, is described quite well by Löwy: "Mariátegui's romantic-revolutionary worldview, as formulated in his 1925 essay, "Two conceptions of life", is opposed to what he calls "evolutionist, historicist, rationalist philosophy" with its "superstitious cult of progress", a return to the spirit of adventure, to historical myths, romanticism and "Quixotism" (a term he took from Miguel de Unamuno)." 507 Mariátegui conceived of an open Marxism capable of assimilating new currents of thought that could enrich it. In Fornet-Betancourt's opinion, this vision of Marxism by Mariátegui meant defending in particular "the methodological dimension of Marxism" as well as "a Marxism ideologically defined [...] by the idea of socialist revolution".508 For this reason, for the Cuban philosopher, Mariátegui's Marxism is marked by a "certain ambiguity [or] ambivalence" which, nevertheless, ultimately forms part of a reaction to the advance of scepticism and nihilism provoked by the First World War. 506 Fornet Betancourt, Raúl, El marxismo en América Latina, p. 127. Löwy, Michael, The Romantic Marxism of José Carlos Mariátegui, p. 3. 508 Fornet Betancourt, Raúl, Raúl, Transformación del marxismo : historia del marxismo en América Latina, pp. 136-7. 507 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century This reaction drives the Peruvian Marxist to the "definitive underpinning of the ideological by rooting it in the mythical"509 , moving away from the orthodox core of Marxism, in Fornet-Betancourt's view, as a rejection of what it contains of "rationalism and scientistic positivism", which is a way of underlining its romantic and voluntarist tendency. In short, by incorporating Bergson's vitalism into Marxism, Mariátegui seeks to "ensure its revolutionary function in history", and the recourse to Sorel aims at transforming the idea into myth, "factor or "voluntarist character" is the term with which Mariátegui perhaps not very happily - wants to emphasize the religious and metaphysical role that Marxism has to assume in a world disoriented by the crisis of rationalism. "510 Mariátegui is, therefore, one of the best representatives of the type of critical Marxism analysed by Alvin Gouldner - or romanticism in Löwy's expression - and in whom many of the characteristics with which he defined that model are best condensed. 509 510 Ibid, pp. 143 Ibid, pp. 147 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Ernesto Che Guevara The second major influence on Latin American Marxism is that of Ernesto Che Guevara. While Mariátegui's role as a Marxist theoretician stands out fundamentally, and his facet as a political organiser is hardly mentioned by anyone who has studied him in depth because it is a less transcendental contribution, in Ernesto Che Guevara, however, three important facets can be clearly distinguished: that of guerrilla leader, first in the Cuban revolution and then in the Bolivian guerrilla movement, and to a lesser extent in his African intervention; that of political and economic manager during a period in the triumphant Cuban revolution; and finally, that of Marxist theoretician with his works and writings. Of course, an immense number of books and articles have been written about Che's life and work, and depending on the author, one aspect has been emphasised more than the others. The more Guevarist ones, seeking propaganda rather than objective analysis, have emphasised above all the activist's facet and also that of the theoretician. And, in this way, they have ended up creating a hero and a model of dedicated revolutionary behaviour that has worn out over time, and has even been "commercialised" by bourgeois society. There is no doubt that Ernesto Che Guevara represents a unique case of a socialist revolutionary in the sense that once the revolutionary triumph has been achieved, and after a brief experience as a leader-manager in the new state, he returns to guerrilla activity under almost impossible conditions. This unusual behaviour has provoked discussions about his ultimate motivations: the weight of his romanticvoluntarist revolutionary tendency to spread the revolution throughout Latin America, the abandonment of Cuba and his political-economic responsibilities because the Caribbean country was moving towards a model, the Soviet model, which he had criticised? But, from the point of view of the interest guiding this book, we are more interested in his facets as a theoretician and political-economic manager, in order to know to what Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century extent his influence had an important weight, and whether he could form part of some kind of theoretical body of Latin American Marxism. Because it is impossible, as with any other theoretician who has had the opportunity to put his theoretical approaches into practice from positions of conquered power, to separate the two levels. The praxis of the construction of socialism, once the state has been conquered, becomes a real evaluation of the feasibility of the theoretical proposals. In the case of Ernesto Che Guevara, we can already advance, his theoretical proposals not only did not work when he exercised state responsibilities in the Cuban revolution, but he abandoned them definitively afterwards. We should begin by taking into account Néstor Cohan's warning that Ernesto Che Guevara never pretended to make original contributions to Marxist theory, in principle, according to Cohan, because Che did not have the appropriate academic training to do so, and he points in this sense to philosophers, sociologists or economists - which we do not believe is an indispensable requirement for this - but, above all, because more than another intellectual who would add his contribution to the theoretical field, "he considered himself part of a historical experience". In the same vein, Roberto Massari expresses himself: "It would not be fair to seek in Guevara's work what does not exist and what could hardly have existed in it. There is indeed a lack of a systematic deepening of some fundamental themes of Marxism. "548 Other authors, however, do highlight this theoretical facet of Che, in the sense that he also "challenged and formulated alternatives to the doctrine and ideology of domination developed by the bureaucratic castes of the USSR and Eastern European regimes and the incipient Cuban bureaucracy of the 1960s. "549 Highlighting, therefore, his importance, but on a more modest level about his theoretical contribution, Massari notes that "Inserted in a leading group undoubtedly courageous, but lacking in preparation on the level of social theory, radical but pragmatic in terms of his choices, he represented for many years the only really creative personality, a real and true "thinking brain" of the revolution: his writings attest to this. "550 548 Massari, Roberto, Che Guevara. Pensamiento y política de la utopía, p. 15. Tablada Pérez, Carlos, El marxismo del Che, p. 2. 550 Massari, Roberto, Che Guevara. Pensamiento y política de la utopía, p. 61. 549 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez In any case, there is a certain agreement in pointing out some characteristic features of Che's Marxism, such as the importance given to the development of consciousness for the construction of socialist society, which can be stimulated through a "systematic education, the example of its leaders and moral stimuli"551 , which is still a tributary conception of the original ones of Kautsky and Lenin on the external introduction of consciousness in the proletariat. Related to the previous characteristic is the essential role attributed to men in history, which is diametrically opposed not only to the structuralism defended by Althusser and his disciples, but also to other currents of Marxism. As Cohan puts it, "For Che, the productive forces do not necessarily have to pull the wagons of the relations of production like a locomotive. In the period of transition to socialism, revolutionaries can, from politics and power, direct the economy in a planned way, accelerating or decelerating and actively intervening in the evolution, without occupying the role of passive spectators in the face of a natural process. "552 The anti-dogmatic character of Guevara's thought has also been pointed out, especially in his criticisms of the petrification of official Soviet Marxism, but also in his political and economic positions. In short, Guevara's thought has usually been defined as a humanist Marxism, influenced especially by the discovery of the Philosophical-Economic Manuscripts of 1844, i.e. the positions of the young Marx. In this sense Löwy notes, "The theme of the new man as the ultimate goal, as the pole star of the socialist revolution, is the touchstone, the central idea-force of Che's revolutionary humanism, in the light of which all his political thought must be understood. "553 As noted above, in addition to Guevara's theoretical incursions, his main facets were developed on the plane of revolutionary practice, first and finally as a guerrilla fighter and, in between, as a leader in the Cuban revolutionary state, especially as the man responsible for Cuba's industrial development. In this last facet Guevara tried to apply his vision of socialism, not only as theory, but as praxis, subject, therefore, to the 551 Borrego, Orlando, Che, el camino del fuego, p. 307. Kohan, Néstor, Ni calco ni copia. Ensayos sobre el marxismo argentino y latinoamericano, p. 268. 553 Löwy, Michael, El pensamiento del Che Guevara, in Cuadernillo Nº4 - Colectivo Amauta - Cátedra Che Guevara, p. 58. 552 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century immediate test of success or failure, something that is not possible to analyse in Mariátegui, nor in the majority of Marxist theoreticians, because they did not have the possibility of practically applying their proposals. Guevara's proposals focus above all on the economic sphere, on the appropriate economic model for the transition to socialism in a country like Cuba, and in this sense he is confronted with other competing models, only to end up failing and being abandoned. Of the various suggested periodisations of the models tried out in Cuba, we will follow Rafael Berástegui's554 , which distinguishes seven stages. That of the beginning of the revolution in 1959-60 "towards an undefined non-capitalist path". From 1961-3, characterised by the Marxist-Leninist definition and the failure to reproduce the Soviet economic model of before 1965, the aim was to diversify the economy and accelerate industrialisation. Between 1964-66 there was a debate on what kind of socialist economy to adopt, which ended with the victory of the theses of Ernesto Che Guevara, who criticised the USSR's economic reforms of 1965 and favoured economic concentration and the mobilisation of the workers under moral imperatives. The fourth stage from 1966-70 is called by this author the "rise and fall of Guevarism", and is characterised by "political-economic hyper-centralisation and semi-militarisation of the economy and society", which ended in failure and the deterioration of the economy. The 1971-84 period was the stage of the institutionalisation of the revolution, condemning the idealism of the previous stages and returning to the Soviet model of the 1965 reform, with greater entrepreneurial autonomy and material incentives. Between 198590, a policy of rectifying mistakes was applied, strengthening collectivisation and centralised decisions, and returning to moral appeals. The last stage, which began in 1990, was the special period, with priority given to the survival of the revolution, national defence, food production and the collection of foreign currency. On the basis of his criticisms of the economic model in force in the countries of real socialism, Guevara proposed a different one, which became known as the budgetary system of financing. The foundations of his position are to be found in "the premise that in socialism men can consciously direct economic processes through planning and modern management techniques inherited from the monopolies, intervening actively 554 Berásteguí, Rafael, La Cuba de Fidel: algunas claves de interpretación. Estudios Públicos, 52 (Spring 1993). Pp. 310-12 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez and in an organised manner in historical development [...] A country like Cuba, given its historical, geographical, economic and political characteristics, could force the march and advance socialist relations of production to encourage the development of the productive forces, Che affirmed. "555 Thus, his proposed economic model was based on several elements which were not very coherent with each other: economic planning and centralisation without paying attention to the objective of overcoming the division of labour, the primacy of moral stimuli over material ones and the raising of the consciousness of individuals, and the use of management and accounting techniques developed in capitalist economies. In short, he sought two parallel developments, that of the productive forces in a backward country, and that of the consciousness of the workers. If planning, centralisation and modern management techniques were instruments for the first objective, moral encouragement and exemplary conduct on the part of the leaders were for the second. But the result seemed to be a voluntarist and paternalistic version of socialism, in which the objectives of raising productivity, of "the rationalisation of production to the utmost" had a clear primacy, and the development of consciousness was a way of bringing Cuba out of underdevelopment; but it was also incoherent as it turned out in practice: "These were illusions about the possibility of a stable and peaceful coexistence between workers and leaders at the factory level. These illusions were, however, destined to crumble little by little as the imperatives of the plan and of the first phase of industrialisation imposed increasing sacrifices on the workers, and as entrepreneurial "guerrillaism" was replaced by "bureaucratism". "556 But these economic approaches and practices were limited in time, between 1961-1965. With his departure from Cuba that year, "the economy suddenly disappears from Che's life, just as he disappears from Cuban economic life".557 Che clashed with other economic development trends in Cuba, and was criticised, as minister of industry, for the economic difficulties since 1962. "It is no mystery, however, that it was Che who lost in that clash. His "revolutionary humanism" had to face up to the materiality of the Soviet presence in the country's economy and it is also 555 Borrego, Orlando, Che, el camino del fuego, p. 7. Massari, Roberto, Che Guevara. Pensamiento y política de la utopía, p. 75. 557 Ibid, p. 42 556 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century plausible that he gave in to the reality of a national "rearguard", so that he could devote himself fully to his project of building an international "vanguard". And it is in any case undeniable that in his decision to step out of any responsibility for the direction of the national economy - even if it was to take on other, quite different responsibilities of a political order - disillusionment with the orientations that had emerged in the Castro ruling group with regard to the strategic options for the economy weighed heavily. "558 While we have already seen some of the criticisms of Guevara's theoretical and practical projects, we will now synthesise these diverse criticisms. These came from the camp of Soviet orthodoxy, at the time launched especially against his idealism and voluntarism, but also from Trotskyism and other sources. Criticisms were directed at his two failed practical projects, that of his economic model, tried and abandoned in Cuba; and that of his model of revolutionary struggle, militarily defeated in several Latin American experiences; but also against his vision of socialism and Marxism. So all these criticisms, while recognising Guevara's heroism, self-sacrifice and personal honesty, globally reject his models which, on the other hand, and after a brief period, ceased to be valid, although, of course, there is still a current that vindicates his ideas. These criticisms cover essential aspects, and thus it is pointed out in general terms that "he was not a political calculator, but a passionate one", which led him to make serious mistakes. In the field of his economic conceptions, the criticism is that "his thinking is oriented in a frankly economistic direction, a precursor, should it ever be applied (which, however, never happened) of bureaucratic degenerations more profound and substantial than those denounced by himself. "559 Regarding his model of socialism, Trotskyists criticised his lack of confidence in the self-organisation of the working class. "Both Guevara and his contradictors more sympathetic to the Moscow system agreed on something fundamental: that it was not the working class that decided, organised in a workers' and socialist democracy. Both sides held the same verticalist conception, where, in this case, at the top, was the "Commander in Chief" or "Maximum Leader", who was asked to "order" [...] In the search for the still unknown "mechanism" of "a more structured connection with the masses", it does not even occur to Che to consider the option of workers' democracy. It 558 559 Massari, Roberto, Che Guevara. Pensamiento y política de la utopía, p. 59. Ibid, p. 25 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez was outside his horizon of ideas [...] Guevara's conception was not that of classical Marxism, which was expressed in the socialist democracy of the Commune of 1871 or the soviets of 1917; that is to say the self-determination of the working class. Or, in Lenin's words, "the democratic state of the armed workers". Also far removed from classical Marxism was his counterposition between "material" and "moral" stimuli, which is indeed much closer to Maoist voluntarism. "560 Or, to put it another way, "Guevara never spoke out against the principle of the single party - in open contradiction to his ideas on social democracy to which we shall return and who, in the same interview with Zeitlin, explicitly speaks out against the formation of currents within the party, i.e. against the inalienable principles of political democracy, and of revolutionary democracy in particular, even in the transitional society. "561 Between Mariátegui and Ernesto Che Guevara there were three decades during which hegemony was held by Marxism linked to the Soviet Union. Both authors are heretical with respect to that universe, they belong to the critical Marxism analysed by Goulder, but they have little else in common. It is difficult for them to serve as a basis for constructing another type of Marxism that could be called Latin American. After Guevara's departure from Cuba to promote the guerrilla struggle starting in Bolivia, the subsequent military defeat of this model, the "normalisation" of the Cuban model of transition to socialism, and the subsequent debacle of real socialism, we will have to wait until the end of the 20th century to find even more heretical contributions, now even outside Marxism, from practices and theorisations in Latin America. We refer above all to the Bolivian process and the thinking of its main theoretical driving force, Álvaro Linera. Álvaro García Linera 560 561 Ramírez, Roberto, Cuba frente a una encrucijada, p. 113. Massari, Roberto, Che Guevara. Pensamiento y política de la utopía, p. 25. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century In the case of Álvaro García Linera we find a dual perspective. On the one hand, he represents the case of a typical intellectual-political leader, abundant in the first decades of the twentieth century, and later turned into an unusual case. A revolutionary militant, innovative intellectual with an important theoretical production, he ended up becoming, for the time being, the vice-president of Bolivia in the governments of Evo Morales, using this position to promote his political projects. Now, although García Linera was at one stage of his life a revolutionary militant and later a government leader, he was not a member of Marxist or traditional left parties, whether Trotskyist, orthodox communist or Guevarist, for which he shows a certain contempt derived from what he considers orthodox visions of the left, from which the problems of marginalisation and domination of the native Bolivian peoples and their potential as transforming subjects were not contemplated. His revolutionary militancy was first linked to a radical indigenous movement, the EGTK, which led him to prison, and then to another indigenous movement, the MAS, with a more moderate strategy, with which he became vice-president of the Bolivian government. Consequently, it can be seen that, both through this political activity and through his theoretical production, García Linera places his attention and hopes in the transformative potential of the indigenous movement, "indianismo" in its own expression, mobilised with the aim of reversing its historical situation of marginalisation and political and social domination. However, García Linera makes an effort, especially in his first stage, to understand this indianismo and its potential from the perspective of Marxism, although he does not succeed in this endeavour and, in a second stage, he leans towards the use of theories and categories far removed from Marxism to analyse and theoretically reinforce indianismo, giving rise to an eclecticism that could be described as post-Marxist, to which Toni Negri and autonomism make their contributions; The sociologies of Pierre Bourdieu, in particular, and Charles Tilly; and the thought of his compatriot, the heterodox Marxist René Zavaleta, with his concept of the national-popular, although the Gramscian concept of hegemony gains increasing weight, especially in the second part of his work. Among García Linera's numerous theoretical productions is an article dedicated to analysing the role of Marxism in Bolivia and its relationship with Indianism, and its Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez very title, Indianism and Marxism. El desencuentro de dos razones revolucionarias562 , clearly expresses García Linera's two strong ideas in this respect, the first being that both universes represent different revolutionary projects, and the second that they have not been able to maintain relations of collaboration, but rather of opposition. It is well understood that his analysis in this case is only referenced to the Bolivian experience, not drawing general conclusions about the revolutionary nature of Indianism in other latitudes, nor about the fact that disagreement with Marxism is the norm. Likewise, it can be seen in this text, and in others on Indianism, that the revolutionary character of both projects is of a different nature. Moreover, he considers that different positions can be found within both projects. In the case of Marxism, he differentiates between "primitive" and "critical" Marxism. The first is identified with the more classical and mainstream Marxism, whether in its orthodox communist, Trotskyist or Guevarist strands; the second is identified with some recent Bolivian authors and, it can be deduced, with Mariátegui. Primitive" Marxism dominated the left-wing scene in Bolivia for several decades from the 1940s onwards, with important influences in the working-class world, when the COB represented a political and social factor of the first order in Bolivia, and the mining and industrial proletariat exercised its hegemony over the peasant world, while the influence of "Indianism" was very weak. García Linera's acid criticism of this Marxism, already contained in the very adjective used to identify it, "primitive", is related to, and therefore directed at, its link with the central and essential body of the Marxist project itself (that of Marx and his main continuators), which we could summarise as a social revolution based on a historical subject, the proletariat; instruments suitable for this task, the proletarian party and the workers' trade unions; an economic base suitable for the project, an industrialised economy which generates the proletariat and serves as the basis for the creation of the wealth necessary to sustain a communist society; a suitable economic basis for the project, an industrialised economy that would generate the proletariat and serve as the basis for the creation of the wealth necessary to sustain a communist society - Marxism, 562 García Linera,Álvaro, Indianismo y marxismo. El desencuentro de dos razones revolucionarias, in Stefanoni, Pablo (Anthology and presentation), La potencia plebeya. Acción colectiva e identidades indígenas, obreras y populares en Bolivia, Álvaro García Linera. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century starting with Marx himself, always saw a communism based on the distribution of poverty as unviable, and even less so in a more developed capitalist environment -; and an instrument to exercise political power and promote economic development during the socialist transition stage, the state. These guidelines of the Marxist project - which García Linera describes as a "kind of radicalised revolutionary nationalism" because of its concrete application in Bolivia563 were clearly not compatible with those of the "indianist" project, of which García Linera was to be an advocate, in which the subject is the native peoples; the instrument, fundamentally the peasant unions; the economic base, the agrarian and artisanal economy of the indigenous communities, supported by the state through the nationalisation of the existing hydrocarbon wealth. The use of the state is the only point of some closeness between the two projects, although for different purposes: to achieve communism in the case of Marxism, to recognise the rights of the native peoples and support their own forms of communal economy in the case of Indianism. It is possible that under the conditions in Bolivia, especially after the transformations brought about by neo-liberal policies and their disintegrating effect on the proletariat, the conditions do not exist to promote a transformational socialist project, and if part of the "indianist" project, especially the one corresponding to a profound transformation of the state, making it multicultural and giving due recognition to the political and social weight that corresponds to the original peoples, do exist. It is possible that Marxist organisations and thinkers have made the mistake of not understanding the historical limits and not supporting the projects that are possible at the present juncture. But to pretend, as García Linera seems to want, that Marxism should renounce its historical project in order to embrace another that simply assumes its dissolution is absurd. On the other hand, he does not explain exactly what the current "critical" Marxism consists of, which, according to him, is trying to support an Indianist project - "thus inaugurating the possibility of a space of communication and mutual enrichment 563 García Linera,Álvaro, Indianismo y marxismo. El desencuentro de dos razones revolucionarias, p 481, in Stefanoni, Pablo (Anthology and presentation), La potencia plebeya. Acción colectiva e identidades indígenas, obreras y populares en Bolivia, Álvaro García Linera. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez between Indianism and Marxism"564 - which he also recognises is lacking both strategic intellectuals and a broad historical vision, "it is significant that this cultural and political Indianist movement is not accompanied by a vigorous indigenous and Indianist literate intelligentsia. While present-day Indianism has a growing practical intelligentsia in the leadership of trade unions, communities, and agrarian and neighbourhood federations, the movement lacks its own literate intelligentsia and more strategic horizons. "565 As noted above, he is an eclectic thinker who, starting from his initial Marxist training, incorporates autonomist and indigenist elements that bring him closer, as we shall see below, in one sense to autonomist thought, especially that of Toni Negri, and, in another sense, to the legacy of Mariátegui in his revaluation of the role of the original Latin American peoples as subjects of an emancipatory social transformation. If he is close to Mariátegui in this respect, he is also close to Che Guevara in the sense of having positions in the state from which to implement his projects. Given his important intellectual production, and García Linera's own ideological evolution, his trajectory has already been the subject of various studies that are of great importance to complete the vision of this Latin American intellectual-political leader. Massimo Modonesi566 points to a set of influences, to which we referred earlier, in García Linera's thinking that make him a very eclectic intellectual. Thus, on a classical Marxist basis, but distancing himself from the orthodox version, he would accumulate the influences of Italian autonomism, especially Toni Negri, of French sociology represented by Bourdieu, of North American sociology, of the debate on multiculturalism, ending up in his last stage at the station of Gramscianism. And it is precisely the title chosen by the author for his article on García Linera that attempts to express the theoretical trajectory of the latter, from autonomism to the use of Gramsci. The two recurring themes that run through García Linera's theoretical production are the state and social movements, "state and social movements, their antagonistic relationship or their possible articulation, constitute the heart of his political concerns and 564 García Linera,Álvaro, Indianismo y marxismo. El desencuentro de dos razones revolucionarias, p. 500, in Stefanoni, Pablo (Anthology and presentation), La potencia plebeya. Acción colectiva e identidades indígenas, obreras y populares en Bolivia, Álvaro García Linera. 565 Ibid, p. 500 566 Modonesi Massimo, From Autonomy to Hegemony. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century intellectual quests", all against the backdrop of the history of social and political struggles in Bolivia. Although García Linera makes some general theoretical contributions, the bulk of his intellectual work revolves around the socio-economic and political history of Bolivia, and the majority of these contributions are strategic, that is to say, they are aimed at making proposals, based on previous analyses, for political interventions, first from outside and then from within the government. Their interest does not seem to be to construct a general theory of universal application, not even for a specific historical period, but rather to contribute with their contributions to resolving a long-lasting revolutionary period that runs through Bolivian history, and which aims to put an end to the situation of marginalisation that the country's original peoples have suffered for several centuries. Thus, the initial autonomist vision would be present both in his analyses of the workers' movement and of the indigenous universe and its movements, where the community and the multitude appear as the successors to the trade union, and where he seeks to overcome the classist vision, considering it insufficient to explain the social and political history of Bolivia in recent decades. However, "the multitud form emerges when the state and neoliberal politicians destroy the previous political and economic regime in which the union form is included. "567 Likewise, Keucheyan continues, the concept of multitude used by García Linera differs from that of Negri or other theorists who have also used it, first in that it is more concrete and, second, and more importantly, in the perspective in which it is framed, Negri "asserts that the multitude is "postmodern", that is, that it emerges once capitalism has destroyed everything else, namely the organised working class, nation states and pre-modern communities. García Linera, on the other hand, says that by annihilating the working class, neoliberalism forces its members to retreat into pre-modern social forms, hence the multitude must be understood as a phenomenon that combines features of pre-modernity and postmodernity. "568 The political context in which García Linera reflects on the concept of the multitude influences his definition. It is a situation in which the powerful Bolivian trade union movement, the COB, after losing its enormous past influence, is replaced in the 567 568 Keucheyan, Razmir, Left Hemisphere. A map of new critical thinking, p. 509. Ibid, p. 510 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez struggles against neoliberalism by territorially-based social movements, centred on the original Bolivian peoples. This is why García Linera is in line with the new phenomena developing in Latin America at the end of the 20th century: "the multitude differs from the working class and the trade union form in that it is not brought together by a hegemony. In the absence of such a hegemony, what prevails is an "association of associations", that is, a mobile set of organisations unified by a given struggle, but whose perseverance over time is never guaranteed. The idea of "association of associations" or "movement of movements" is typical of the 1990s and was particularly present in the alterglobalisation movement [...] The multitude is, in this sense, a more evanescent social form than the working class".569 On the other hand, this inclination towards indigenism as a transformative subject, after the decline of the COB's powerful influence, brings García Linera closer to Mariátegui's thinking on the transformative potential of the original peoples of Latin America. This is clearly expressed in his 1989 text, in which he rejects the historical-evolutionary readings of Marx made by the Second International and Stalinism, as well as the feudalist interpretation of colonialism in Latin America made by the Latin American communist parties, and vindicates the revolutionary role of the surviving communitarianism of the native peoples as the basis for a possible socialist transition based on it. In this text, Linera also expresses his admiration and continuity with Mariátegui, "The Marxist understanding of the anti-capitalist role of the struggles of the working masses of the countryside in Latin America has in José Carlos Mariátegui an exceptional and isolated defender. Recognising the existence of a "practical socialism in agriculture and indigenous life" and that therefore "the communities represent a natural factor in the socialisation of the land", he pointed to the need for a full Socialist Revolution in Peru, led by the proletariat and based on the "oldest and most solid traditions" existing in the community [...].The revolutionary lucidity of Mariateguist thought takes on a greater dimension not only because he did not know several of Marx's manuscripts which most firmly underpin this position (Letter to Vera Zasulich, Ethnological Notebooks, etc.), but also because they were formulated by Marx in his own writings.), but also because they were formulated against the reactionary and pro- 569 Ibid, pp. 511-2. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century bourgeois current which fully took hold in the Third International after Lenin's death."570 However, beyond this meeting point between García Linera and Mariátegui on the potential of the original peoples as revolutionary subjects and the recognition of their communal institutions as the basis of a new society, the differences between the two are profound. Mariátegui had the socialist revolution as his horizon and, in this sense, he conceived the revolution, supported by the native peoples and their institutions, as part of a trend towards a world proletarian revolution. García Linera, on the other hand, envisages a project of "Andean-Amazonian capitalism" for Bolivia and, at the most, linked to other experiences of progressive governments in Latin America which, at the time of writing, are in full retreat, without it being possible to guess how this fact will influence the development of the Indianist project that the MAS is piloting from the Bolivian government. So we can see the important differences that separate the projects of Mariátegui and García Linera. The former's was a project that sought to link the struggles and potentialities of the Peruvian indigenous subject to a world revolution being carried out by the proletariat; the aim was communism, based on the institutions of the Peruvian indigenous communities, and for such a project, and in keeping with the line of the time, he founded a Marxist party, the Peruvian Socialist Party, as an instrument to carry it out. On the other hand, Linera, after abandoning his initial Marxist discourse, which was otherwise very heterodox and critical of both orthodox communists and Trotskyists, was inclined to study and propose a solution to the discrimination suffered by the original Bolivian peoples, in the sense of achieving a multicultural and multicivilisational state that would take into account the social and political culture of these peoples, without this being part of any broader project of socialist transformation. His political project to recognise the just historical rights of the original Bolivian peoples was oriented towards a new type of state in Bolivia, not towards a socialist society. It has also been seen that, in his theoretical evolution, García Linera moves from an autonomist vision to a hegemonist one "i.e. the national-popular dispute for state power 570 García Linera,Álvaro, Introducción al Cuaderno Kovalevsky, p 49, in Stefanoni, Pablo (Antología y presentación), La potencia plebeya. Acción colectiva e identidades indígenas, obreras y populares en Bolivia, Álvaro García Linera. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez rather than the antagonistic construction of socio-political counter-power that characterised the first stage of his thinking". The battle for hegemony in Bolivia is carried out by "Indianism [...] trying to dispute the capacity for cultural and political direction of society with the neoliberal ideology that had prevailed during the last eighteen years".571 García Linera's political theory and practice is mostly linked to the problem of the existence of a group of indigenous peoples marginalised and oppressed by the Bolivian state and the dominant classes that have controlled it, both in its colonial and republican stages. This problem is similar to that of other Latin American countries with similar socio-political structures, such as Ecuador, Peru, Guatemala, etc. Most of his theoretical production revolves around this problem, its historical and sociological analysis, and the proposals for a solution, which began to be tested from the moment MAS came to power with him as vice-president. The inclination towards this problematic is made after noting the dissolution of the hegemony of the working class and the trade union form in Bolivia in recent decades as a consequence of the changes in the socio-economic structure of the country. The replacement of the workers' movement by the multitud form with the hegemony of the indigenous movement also leads to a reinforcement of the replacement of Marxist theory and its categories of analysis by a mixture of sociological theories of different origins that do not end up forming a solid and, above all, general way of thinking. Thus, García Linera's theoretical thinking is above all Bolivian, the reality on which he focuses his attention, partially Latin Americanist, insofar as he does not deal with realities of the subcontinent other than the problem of indigenous peoples, and cannot be considered a generalist or global theoretical contribution, insofar as he is not concerned with this level. Likewise, because of his theoretical eclecticism, he can be considered a post-Marxist, in a different variety from that represented by Laclau, for example. As we pointed out earlier, García Linera's theoretical production is closely linked to his political praxis and, in this sense, it is necessary to refer to the experience of the MAS 571 Modonesi Massimo, From Autonomy to Hegemony Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century governments in Bolivia - as well as their political projects - in which he has been serving as vice-president. For this would be the most defining characteristic in the case of García Linera, who finds himself at the helm of the Bolivian state, piloting one of the most creative experiences of the cycle of progressive and left-wing governments that swept through Latin America in the first three decades of the 21st century, an experience in full swing at the time of writing. Consequently, it is impossible to refer to García Linera's thought and its evolution without taking into account the development of the Bolivian political experience in which he plays a fundamental role. Already in the midst of the "revolutionary period" in Bolivia, from 2000 onwards, García Linera himself described the project of one of the two "political poles" competing for a way out of the crisis, that of the "indigenous movement", as follows: "this pole has a proposal for an economy centred on the internal market, taking as its axis the peasant community, artisan, family and urban micro-business activity, a revitalised role for the state as producer and industrialiser, and a leading role for the indigenous people in the management of the new state. "572 The strategic project defended by García Linera from the MAS governments is known as "Andean-Amazonian capitalism", a model of capitalist development in which, according to the MAS candidate, it is possible to build a type of economic modernity linked to global markets, to contemporary technological development, to business sectors, which is the capitalist part itself, but necessarily recognising the other two platforms of modernity linked to our vernacular capacities: community, artisanal, small producers and simple mercantile economy forces possessing another rationality of work organisation, use of surplus, technological systems, knowledge, organisational forms and distribution of wealth."573 García Linera himself specifies what this project would consist of: "In the next 50 years, Bolivia will be dominated by the structural family economy, the basis of the last social 572 García Linera,Álvaro, Crisis de Estado y sublevaciones indígena-plebeyas en Bolivia, p 443, in Stefanoni, Pablo (Antología y presentación), La potencia plebeya. Acción colectiva e identidades indígenas, obreras y populares en Bolivia, Álvaro García Linera. 573 Lora Fuentes,Miguel, Álvaro García Linera: "Andean capitalism is an intermediate step to imagine socialism". Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez rebellions [...] Today we think that, at least, we can devise a model so that the community will no longer be brutally subsumed to the industrial economy, preventing the modern economy from squeezing and taking all its energies from the community, strengthening its autonomous development. For this we can count on the state and on the surplus of nationalised hydrocarbons. The triumph of MAS opens up the possibility of a radical transformation of society and the state, but not in a socialist perspective (at least in the short term), as some on the left propose. At present there are two reasons that do not allow us to visualise the possibility of a socialist regime in our country. On the one hand, there is a proletariat that is demographically a minority and politically non-existent; and socialism cannot be built without a proletariat. Secondly, the agrarian and urban communitarian potential is very weak. The last 60 years have seen a decline in productive community activity and an erosion of community ties. There is still community, but it has imploded internally into family structures. The communitarian potential that would envisage the possibility of a socialist communitarian regime is, in any case, to strengthen the small communitarian networks that still survive and enrich them. This would allow us, in 20 or 30 years, to be able to think of a socialist utopia.574 This project, which MAS is promoting from within the government, is also described by García Linera as a "democratic and decolonising revolution". "575 García Linera's project is criticised from left-wing positions, "at present, it is evident that the impediments to developing a competitive capitalist scheme in countries like Bolivia are at least as great as the obstacles to initiating socialist transformations. The difficulty is even greater if "Andean-Amazonian capitalism" is conceived as a model compatible with the reconstruction of indigenous communities. "576 This means that, assuming a similar level of difficulties, one should choose to initiate socialist transformations. However, if the Andean-Amazonian capitalism project is surrounded by enormous difficulties and unknowns, only suspected from other experiences that are 574 García Linera, Álvaro, El "capitalismo andino-amazónico" ("Andean-Amazonian capitalism"). Svampa, Maristella and Stefanoni, Pablo, Interview with Álvaro García Linera, "Evo simboliza el quiebre de un imaginario restringido a la subalternidad de los indígenas". Pág.7 576 Katz, Claudio, Estrategias socialistas en América Latina, p. 3. 575 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century not exactly the same, the difficulties of a transition to socialism for an undeveloped country have been verified in practice with cases such as Vietnam or Cuba, the former with a current evolution towards a market economy, and the latter with an impasse over its future tendencies in the face of the serious difficulties and contradictions that beset it577 . Both cases - plus the rest of the experiences of real socialism - are sustained by an iron control of power by a party-state, which is not the case in the Bolivian MAS government. 577 A magnificent analysis of these difficulties and contradictions can be found in Ramos Carrasco, Daniel, Crisis of the Special Period and the Current Debate on the Direction of Socialism in Cuba. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Maoism: Heretical Asian Marxism An important difference [of Maoism] from Leninism is that Leninism always identified the threat of capitalist restoration with the capitalist tendencies of the small producers, whereas Mao saw the threat in the emergence of a new bourgeois class within the state and party bureaucracy, which risks perpetuating itself and becoming hereditary. In his later years, Mao came to accept the logical conclusion of his premises: that the new bourgeois class exploits the proletariat through the mechanisms of the socialist system. Mao's responsibility for the cultural revolution. Miguel Muntaner Marqués There are two reasons for devoting a chapter to Maoism. The first is the importance of its achievement, the success of the revolution in China, although initially less important than the Soviet one, has nevertheless managed to survive it and, while the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, China began a path towards capitalism piloted by the same party that achieved victory in 1949, so that the 21st century will be marked by the weight of China in the international concert, where it disputes the hegemony of the USA. The second reason is the heretical character of Maoism - which has now disappeared in China and practically everywhere else in the world - which can be framed in the field of critical Marxism as one of its most complete expressions. It could also be considered as the embodiment in practice of the line advocated by Mariátegui for Latin America, given their coincidence in an essential element, the role assigned to the peasants as the main force in the revolution, and the framing of this in the world communist revolution. However, while what has come to be known as Latin American Marxism was not able to put its projects into practice, Maoism was able to culminate a revolution based on the peasantry. If Latin American Marxism expressed itself in conflict with the representatives of Eurocentric Marxism, whether of the Second or Third International, Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century or Trotskyism, Chinese communism did not feel the influence of "Eurocentric" Marxism, at most Leninism, briefly at first, and then Stalinism. However, Maoism as such ended in failure, as did Leninism, if we consider that Stalinism was the negation and defeat of Leninism, and not its prolongation. Thus, if Stalin defeated Leninism, Deng Xiao Ping defeated Maoism. In both cases after the death of the two leaders who led the revolution to victory and founded, for a time, a model of Marxism. In the case of China, it was only after the defeat of Maoism that the country was able to enter a period of political and social stability, embark on unprecedented economic development, lift huge masses of the population out of poverty, consolidate itself as a great power, and expand its presence and influence throughout the world, in short, regain its position as the empire of the centre. Maoism was historically necessary to break the prostration and dependence of a decadent China, but later became an obstacle to its recovery as a great power. The price to pay for that change was the sacrifice of egalitarianism and communist ideals in the Maoist version, which never quite worked in revolutionary China, for a society with similar levels of social inequality to those of the capitalist world, and with far less freedom and political rights for its population. In both the Soviet Union and China, communists clashed internally over the model to be followed. In the Chinese Cultural Revolution there were significant acts of violence, and while they may not have reached the level of the Soviet Union with the Stalinist purges that physically wiped out the old Bolshevik guard, they are by no means negligible. In both cases, a type of national communism ended up being imposed, explicitly recognised in the Soviet Union with "socialism in one country", and implicitly in China to regain its position as the empire of the centre, although, in reality, national communism has been the general rule, as the examples of Yugoslavia, Vietnam and others attest. Although it is impossible to separate in the case of Maoism its theoretical characteristics from the practical consequences it gave rise to, what we are going to deal with in this chapter, however, is not the evolution of China, but the characteristics of Maoism as a heretical body of thought and practice within Marxism, as the most successful practical culmination of critical Marxism as defined by Gouldner. This does not mean that we do not refer to its practical consequences. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez If Maoism is a heretical Marxism, it is due to the special characteristics in which it was constituted. Characteristics both of the situation in China and its evolution, and of the implantation of Marxism in China. Without taking these into account it is impossible to understand the nature of Maoism and what it represented. Marxism is a theory born in the heart of Europe from the concrete conditions of 19th century capitalism, hence some accusations of Eurocentrism. But its spread to Latin America and Russia was early, in the 19th century itself, and it was later influenced by developments taking place in Europe with varying intensity. In a way, all these world regions were participating in the same evolution of Marxism at the same time. In China, on the other hand, as in other parts of the world, the reception of Marxism was late, not taking place until after the Russian revolution. This leads Deutscher to point out some special features of Marxism in China. First, in the absence of a native ancestor, "it descends directly from Bolshevism", and even then only briefly, "the impact of pure Leninism in China was very brief. It lasted only until the early 1920s, until the beginning of the "national" revolution in 1925"578 . This lack of a proper Marxist tradition and social-democratic experience, together with the absence of any minimal democratic stage in the country, helped to create the special features of the Chinese revolution and the communist party. But it is also important to take into account China's own characteristics. First, it was essentially a peasant country, more so than Russia was in 1917. Secondly, China's deeprooted traditions and customs, with the weight of Confucianism and Taoism, gave rise to a radical rejection of these traditions before Chinese communism, but transmitted to it, giving rise in Maoism to the idea of a totally new beginning of its own. Thirdly, China has one of the most persistent histories of peasant rebellions throughout its two millennia of empire, one of the most common features of which was an egalitarian ideology. Two peasant wars still took place in the 19th century, which have been described as the largest set of peasant wars in world history, involving guerrilla warfare. Fourthly, China was in the early 20th century in a situation of semi-colonial rule, and its power divided among warlords, which added a clear nationalist bias to the social struggles, so that the Communist Party was faced with the task of fighting for social 578 Deutscher, Isaac, Maoism: Origins and Perspectives. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century goals, alongside national goals in which it was competing with a nationalist party as young as itself, the Kuomintang. The first phase of the Chinese communist revolution took place in 1925-7, with characteristics that fell within the classical moulds of Marxism. It was based on a militant urban working class organised in trade unions. This revolution was badly defeated by the Kuomintang, and it was from this time onwards that Maoism really began to crystallise. Maurice Meisner - whom we will essentially follow in this chapter for his in-depth study of Maoism - suggests the existence of three stages in the development of Maoism. The first, beginning with the defeat of the proletarian revolution of 1925-7, would have four distinctive features: the adoption of the peasantry as the revolutionary class par excellence in China; "a populist-like faith in 'the advantages of backwardness'"; the "substitutionism" adopted by the Chinese Communist Party; protracted people's war through guerrilla warfare; and, as a consequence of the latter, a preponderant role for the army, though always in a subordinate position to the party. The second stage covers the period from the victory in 1949 to 1958, and is initially characterised by the application of the doctrine of "new democracy", a kind of NEP applied by the Chinese communists. Finally, the third stage, between 1958-76, would be that of "late Maoism", in which the previous heretical characteristics of Maoism with respect to Marxism and new ones, such as the persistence of contradictions and class struggle in the stage of socialist transition, its doctrine of permanent revolution, or the "enormous emphasis on the role of ideas and ideologies in making history", would again be clearly expressed. Lacking any Marxist faith in the objective forces that determine history, Mao emphasised that the historical outcome is mainly stimulated by subjective factors: conscience, moral values, and the will of the people. From this derived the Maoist obsession with correct thinking and ideological remodelling, and the belief that "the subjective creates the objective", which was imposed as a Maoist orthodoxy in the post-revolutionary years. " 579 579 Meisner, Maurice, Marxism, Maoism, and the Chinese Revolution: A Commentary on the Role of Ideas in History, Marxism, Maoism, and the Chinese Revolution: A Commentary on the Role of Ideas in History. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez These three stages indicated the existence of warring factions in the CCP, Maoism being one of them, which predominated between the defeat of the first revolution in 1925-7 and the victory in 1949, and then between the beginning of the great leap forward in 1958 and its final defeat after Mao's death. As Rousset points out, "This "internal tension" between the "party of the revolution" and the "party of the bureaucracy in the making" is not the only one that the new regime is going through. But it sheds light on the successive crises that erupted from the mid-1950s to the end of the 1960s".580 Maoism had to find its way between two tendencies after the defeat of 1925-7, the first looking to the Bolshevik example of the defeated 1905 revolution and advocating a retreat to rebuild organisation among the urban industrial workers; the second tendency, driven by the Comintern, insisted on retrying new revolutionary attempts in the cities which led to further defeats. Against both, Maoism turned to the peasantry. This was totally new in Marxism. As Deutscher points out, the Bolsheviks did not think of such a way out after 1905, nor even the Russian Social Revolutionaries. Mao, however, pinned all hope of revolutionary triumph on the peasant masses and on a kind of agrarian revolution from which to conquer the cities, so that Deutscher recalls that Mao came to be seen as "the head of a gigantic jacquerie", or a "kind of Chinese Pugachev"581 . If such heresy ended up being accepted by the Chinese communist party, it was due to two important phenomena, the Japanese invasion and the decision of the invaders to deindustrialise maritime China, which made the leading role of the proletariat in the revolution definitively impossible. "The urban proletariat, so bloodily repressed in 1927, remained politically inactive for most of the next two decades, and the Communists would not regain power in the urban areas until their victorious peasant armies marched on the cities in 1949."582 No Marxist before Mao could have come up with an approach to socialist revolution based on peasant forces conquering the cities from the countryside, where the urban working class passively awaited their liberation. For this novelty alone, Maoism is an absolutely heretical tendency in Marxism, but this change of vision gave rise to heretical approaches in other essential aspects as we will analyse in the course of this chapter. 580 Rousset, Pierre, Revolution and Counter-Revolutions in the People's Republic of China Deutscher, Isaac, Maoism: Origins and Perspectives, Maoism: Origins and Perspectives. 582 Meisner Maurice, Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic, p. 24. 581 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Herein lies one of the most important points of Maoism, the contribution of a new model of revolution. The Bolshevik model based on the soviets was never repeated in history, but the model of protracted people's war based on guerrilla warfare with the peasantry as the privileged revolutionary subject in order to conquer the cities from the countryside was imitated many times afterwards, with or without success. This revolutionary strategy, which was initially presented as a special feature of the Chinese way, was later transformed into a model with pretensions of universality to be imitated elsewhere, especially in the undeveloped world. For Deutscher, the main question, in this sense, lies in the ability of the Chinese communists to reactivate the socialist phase of the revolution - transcending the agrarian bourgeois phase - once the cities were conquered, despite the absence of the working class and the deep rapport the party established with the peasants during the long years of guerrilla wars and liberated zones. And the main reason Deutscher finds to explain this situation is the "substitutionism" practised by the Chinese Communist Party, understood as "the action of a party or group of leaders representing - or taking the place of - an absent or inactive social class"583 , a substitutionism which had previously been taken to its highest expression by the Narodniks in Russia. While Maoism was not the first Marxist party to use it - it was already present in Russia when, after the civil war, the working class was decimated and dispersed, and the Bolshevik party functioned as a substitute for it - nevertheless in China this "substitutionism" was carried out as a prerequisite of revolution, and the support among the peasants was even greater than that of the Narodniks. This, then, was a second unique heretical feature of Maoism which would also be widely adopted by a multitude of parties and guerrilla groups thereafter. Despite the harshness of a long struggle on two fronts, against the Japanese invader and against the Kuomintang, the programme which the Chinese communists drew up can be considered moderate, giving a bourgeois-democratic character to the revolution. This was due to two circumstances, the first stemming from the orientation of the Comintern since 1935, advocating the policy of popular fronts; the second, and more important, was the peasant social base of the revolution which did not allow for an immediate socialist programme. This programme was that of the "new democracy". 583 Deutscher, Isaac, Maoism: Origins and Perspectives, Maoism: Origins and Perspectives. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Initially, after its victory in 1949, the new regime adopted this programme, a policy similar to the Soviet NEP, which sought economic growth through a policy of alliances with the national bourgeoisie, in fact the Chinese Constitution of 1949 did not refer to the regime as a dictatorship of the proletariat, as in the Soviet Union, but as a people's democratic dictatorship. This new model of transition was also theorised, and responded to the special characteristics of the Chinese way: "According to Maoist theory, there were three possible types of state: the capitalist state, characterised as a dictatorship of the reactionary bourgeoisie; the socialist state, which was a dictatorship of the working class; and the people's democratic state, a joint dictatorship of various revolutionary classes led by the working class. That is to say, the people's democratic dictatorship rested on an alliance between peasants and workers with the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie, for the purpose of eliminating imperialist domination and the old political order, the establishment of socialism being postponed to a later stage. "584 "The "new democracy" was the Maoist version of the Marxist-Leninist concept of a bourgeois-democratic revolution, or more precisely, the bourgeois phase of a revolutionary process presided over by the Chinese Communist Party [...].After the 1949 victory, the theory of "new democracy" expressed a post-revolutionary vision of a prolonged bourgeois revolutionary stage in which the politically dominant communist party, in alliance with various bourgeois classes and parties, would preside over a "mixed economy" in which the state and privately owned enterprises would coexist. And it was suggested that this partly capitalist economy would continue until the productive forces were sufficiently developed to permit a gradual transition to socialism [...] the theory of the new democracy strongly suggested that the "transition to socialism" would be a very gradual and protracted process." 585 In practice this was not the case, and the "new democracy" stage was short-lived, with Maoism pushing for a rapid and premature transition to socialism and communism, contrary to the view of another part of the CP Ch. Indeed, the period of "new democracy" was short-lived, between 1949-53, because in 1956 the CCP began the 584 Fanjul, Enrique, Revolution in Revolution. China, from Maoism to the Age of Reforms, p. 26. Meisner, Maurice, Marxism, Maoism, and the Chinese Revolution: A Commentary on the Role of Ideas in History, p.24. 585 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century stage of building socialism, i.e. the Chinese communists felt sufficiently strong in the cities to overcome the phase of agrarian democratic revolution and begin the phase of transition to socialism. Meisner also posits this brief period as the first of two conceived stages in the revolution, a first aimed at completing a bourgeois revolution barely sketched out by the nationalist Kuomintang regime, and a second already socialist one. The bourgeois objectives completed in the first stage were the conversion of China into a modern centralised nation-state through its unification from the fragmented and decadent Chinese empire, independence from foreign imperialism, the dissolution of precapitalist forms of production and social relations in the countryside with agrarian reform, and a plan for modern industrial development. Other factors also contributed to the short-lived nature of the "new democracy". In the early 1950s, the bourgeoisie felt strong and sought, through sabotage and the blocking of government policies, to derail the revolution, coinciding with the height of the Korean War. Mao pointed out that the bourgeoisie must be subjected to political combat, and various campaigns were launched with this aim in mind, leading to the bourgeoisie's disappearance as an autonomous force by 1956 with the completion of the nationalisation of industry and commerce. The campaign against the bourgeoisie in the economic sphere was accompanied by a campaign against the intellectuals after the failure of the Hundred Flowers Campaign in 1957. This situation paved the way for the voluntarist and ultra-left policies of Maoism in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which would represent the attempt to put the Maoist project of society into practice. Thus, the first two stages of Maoism would have been completed and the third, the most defining stage of Maoism, would be entered. Before describing the events of this third phase, essentially the great leap forward and the cultural revolution, it is necessary to finish by pointing out the characteristics of Maoism as described by one of the leading analysts of the Chinese revolution, Maurice Meisner. These characteristics, in this author's opinion, were defined at the time of Mao's initial political formation and, above all, at the time of Yenan or Yan'an, the inland city of China where the long march ended and where it became the nerve centre of Chinese communism between 1935-48. At this time Maoism developed traits such as Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez "self-reliance, self-reliance and local initiative" which would later be widely used to launch the great leap forward and the cultural revolution. A second feature of Maoism would be "a deeply voluntarist belief that the decisive factor in history (and in the making of revolution) was human consciousness - the ideas, desires and actions of men [...] [This] also implied a special concern for developing and maintaining a 'correct ideological consciousness'".586 A third feature would be Mao's populist tendencies, "Populist impulses grew to reinforce Mao's nationalist-inspired faith in the basic unity of the Chinese people in the face of external enemies and also led him to attribute to "the people" an almost innate revolutionary socialist consciousness. Mao's populist impulse, with its essentially rural orientation and its romantic celebration of the rural ideal of "the unity of life and work" defined "the people" as the peasant masses (since the peasantry, after all, constituted the overwhelming majority of the Chinese population) and led him to appreciate the spontaneous revolutionary energies he believed they possessed. [...] other features of the Maoist mentality were typically populist: hostility to labour specialisation, a keen distrust of intellectuals and specialists, a deep antipathy to the bureaucracy, an antiurban prejudice and a romantic mood of heroic revolutionary self-sacrifice. "587 A fourth feature would be the value placed on struggle "partly as an end in itself and partly as an essential therapeutic instrument for the development of the correct ideas necessary for socialist transformation. [...] Mao believed that it was precisely through struggle that "the people" attained the proper consciousness to remain unified, achieved even higher levels of unity through greater levels of ideological transformation and kept themselves on the proper course of social development"588 It was these conceptions that would animate the Hundred Flowers Campaign, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and Mao's own view that, despite the failure of the latter, more cultural revolutions would be necessary in the future. Industrial development, so necessary for a deeply agricultural and backward China, was modelled on, and with the help of, the Soviet five-year plans, although in reality only a first five-year plan was implemented in 1953. This policy would give rise to two 586 Ibid, pp. 32-33. Ibid, p. 34 588 Ibid, p. 142 587 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century inevitable phenomena, the widening of the gap between town and country, and the development of an extensive political bureaucracy in the party, administrative bureaucracy in the state, and technical bureaucracy in the enterprises, which worried the Maoists and made them react with egalitarian, voluntarist and utopian projects, trying to put into practice policies based on the features described above. Mao did not reject industrialisation, he was fully aware that communism was impossible in an agricultural and impoverished society, and initially the Maoists took the Soviet model as an example to follow, the rejection came when they began to realise the social and political consequences that followed. Similarly, Maoism took note that the first land reform carried out in 1952-3, which had rejected the Stalinist model of forced collectivisation, had resulted in the creation of "a country of individual peasant landowners". In this situation, Maoism's first reaction was the campaign, accelerated in 1955, for the agricultural cooperativisation of the countryside, thus inaugurating the Maoist phase proper of the communists in power. The substance of his approach, which was to be repeated from now on, was a view of the party as insufficiently revolutionary, which he would later accuse of containing the elements of a retreat to capitalism, to which he would oppose the revolutionary energies of the masses, at this time the peasants, and in the cultural revolution, the student youth. But implicit in this change in Mao's line was another heretical feature of the Marxist orthodoxy which he himself had hitherto accepted. The thesis that the socialisation of agriculture required the prior development of a broad industrialisation process was abandoned in favour of the thesis that technical transformation would require a longer period than social transformation and, therefore, the latter became a priority. The success achieved by accelerated cooperativisation would reinforce Mao's conviction "in the revolutionary creativity of the peasantry and in the power of human will and consciousness to shape reality"589 And it would also encourage him to launch the second great project guided by these premises, that of the great leap forward, which implied abandoning the Soviet model of industrialisation for the one proposed by Maoism. "Instead of proceeding according to the dictates of bureaucratic rationality, urban 589 Ibid, p. 110 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez industrialisation and centralised state control, the new Maoist conception emerged from a generalisation of Yan'an's model of the "mass line" and, more immediately, was inspired by the rising rural populist-type movement that Mao had launched with his July 1955 speech on agricultural collectivisation. "590 But between the successful accelerated collectivisation and the great leap forward, Mao launched another campaign in May 1956, initially directed against the growing bureaucratisation of the party and the state, the Hundred Flowers Campaign, which sought to get the intelligentsia outside the party to criticise this bureaucratising drift in order to rectify it. However, the outpouring of criticism in this campaign led to its early cancellation and the repression of the most critical elements. And Mao again put forward, on this occasion, another heretical thesis for Marxism, contained in his 1957 speech "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People", the thesis that the main contradiction in China at that time was between the leaders and the led, between the leaders and the people, and that the class struggle under socialism continued in a particularly ideological form. And from this thesis two consequences follow. The first, that "if the people were free to speak, then Mao was their permanent spokesman. What Mao's argument about "contradictions among the people" did was to free Mao himself from the Leninist discipline of the party and allow him to criticise the party from outside, in his special role as the people's representative. "591 The second consequence was that the class struggle continues under the ideological form in socialism, and so ideological conflicts within the party could be interpreted as class conflicts between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The great leap forward, developed between 1958 and 1960, represented a new rehearsal of the voluntarism nesting in Maoism, its ambitious growth objectives intended to be achieved on the basis of an appeal to voluntarist effort, without a minimum of planning and an adequate material basis. The fundamental role of the peasantry and "the virtues of rural life" were also revived. It was the peasants organised in rural communes, and not the cities, who were entrusted with the goal of the great leap. "If the ideological themes then propagated are to be believed, China should become a vast federation of localities, largely decentralised and self-sufficient, but structured by the powerful 590 591 Ibid, p. 122 Ibid, p. 131 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century apparatus of the CPC and its mass organisations. Major problem: the CPC leadership assigns to this new orientation inordinate goals: "to overtake Britain in 15 years", according to Mao's formula. "592 In the great leap forward, Meisner points out, further heretical features of Maoism appear. To the voluntarist faith in the role of conscience as a fundamental factor in social transformation, there is now added, on the one hand, the belief in the revolutionary advantages of backwardness, which came to hold that the people of a backward country are more revolutionary than those of a developed country and thus, "backwardness is turned into a revolutionary virtue that produces the human energies and moral purity for the process of permanent revolution, and so China can advance towards a communist utopia on the basis of its own meagre material resources. "593 On the other hand, the concept of "self-reliance in one's own strength" to carry out these tasks, dispensing with Soviet aid, with which it had just broken away. These traits were also inherited from the formative stage of Maoism in Yenan. The great leap forward was aimed at achieving several objectives for Maoism. It was to promote industrialisation in depth, but to break with the Soviet model and carry out this task from the countryside in order to eliminate the differences between town and country, thus avoiding the exploitation of the latter by the former; it was also to cut off the growth of a "privileged technological intelligentsia", thus eliminating the differences between manual and intellectual labour. In the Maoist vision, it was conceived that professional technocrats were not necessary for the development and use of modern technology, but that the peasant and working masses were capable of using it, thus obviating the need for a separate technical elite. But going even further, it was a matter of the new units of political and socio-economic organisation that appeared during the great leap, the rural people's communes, taking over state functions and carrying out the transition to communism and the extinction of the state. The historical model the Maoists took as an example was not the Russian soviets but the Paris Commune as described by Marx. 592 Rousset, Pierre, Revolution and Counter-Revolutions in the People's Republic of China Meisner, Maurice, Marxism, Maoism, and the Chinese Revolution: A Commentary on the Role of Ideas in History, p. 153. 593 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The result "was a total disaster: the millenarian dream ended in the great famine of the 'three bitter years' of 1959-1962, the largest and most extensive in China's history".594 This failure, which led to strong tensions between the party and the peasantry, advised a return to the "more modest conception of cooperatives", while Mao's authority suffered severe erosion. The failure was due to the economic chaos introduced with the dismantling of national economic planning and management, the absence of trained personnel for the technical-economic management of the communes, and the decline of peasant morale in the face of militarisation and the extension of the working day. Although by the end of the Great Leap campaign the party structure had suffered disarticulation, it recovered easily, continuing the process of bureaucratisation that the Great Leap had temporarily interrupted, and was able to quickly restore the functioning of a dislocated economy and recover the country from a critical economic situation, using an economic policy similar to the Soviet NEP but with fewer concessions to private initiative, in Meisner's view. Despite this setback, however, Maoism did not give up its battle against the bureaucratising tendencies in the party and the state, relying on Mao's remaining prestige, even if his power was momentarily overshadowed by this failure. But before the final confrontation with the Cultural Revolution, Mao launched a new campaign to re-educate the party's thinking, the "socialist education movement", which aimed to revive the collectivist spirit in the face of advancing bureaucratisation and growing inequality. This movement was largely neutralised by the bureaucracy and would lead the Maoists to reinforce their hopes in the revolutionary initiatives of the peasant masses against the party apparatus, although this did not exclude, contradictorily, their support for the People's Liberation Army, over which they had increasing control. The cultural revolution, initiated in 1965, was Maoism's most ambitious attempt to put into practice another of its characteristic theoretical assumptions, namely that the revolution can only be stabilised at the price of reproducing social privileges and differences, that contradictions are eternal even in a communist system, that in the transition stage to socialism class struggle persists and that therefore a process of permanent revolution is necessary in which the mobilised masses avoid these dangers. 594 Fontana, Josep, For the Good of the Empire, p. 413 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Such mobilisation should raise the political consciousness of the masses and revitalise socialist ideals in order to counteract the danger of regression to capitalism that was maintained in the processes of bureaucratisation of the party and state, and of the elitism of the technical intelligentsia. This could be interpreted in two ways. The first, which seemed dominant in the first stage of the cultural revolution and persisted in the more radical nuclei, meant doing away with the communist party in favour of the spontaneous modes of organisation that were taking place among the urban masses - this is the moment when the example of the Paris Commune as described by Marx is most strongly appealed to - but even these would then have to know new cultural revolutions in order to avoid their bureaucratisation. The second interpretation is the one that finally prevailed, when in the face of the growing chaos generated by the cultural revolution, the aim of the latter was to regenerate the party so that it could continue a new stage of undisputed political domination. Other characteristics of Maoism were also expressed in the cultural revolution, such as its anti-intellectualism in favour of the values of physical labour and rural life. Or its belief that the construction of socialism should begin with the superstructure, with an essential role for politics and ideology. Thus, for Maoism, communism is capable of being achieved under backward economic conditions, and would not so much be a regime capable of satisfying all human needs in the conditions of an advanced society without scarcity, as a collectivist regime based on the greatest possible egalitarianism, even under conditions of scarcity. In the Cultural Revolution, too, Maoism's heretical position vis-à-vis Marxism is once again expressed on the question of the social class responsible for leading or driving the revolution. The peasantry was the support class used in the phase of the people's war that led to the revolutionary victory of 1949, and to carry out the great leap forward. Now, in the cultural revolution, Maoism will rely especially on the student youth, the Red Guards, as the leading section of the mass organisations which it will mobilise against the party and state apparatus it is fighting. The slogan for addressing the youth will be to train "revolutionary successors" who will continue the task undertaken, for which Maoism has already ceased to rely on the party, and therefore seeks the momentum and the revolution to emerge from the masses led by the youth. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez In these three phases the proletariat is absent or plays a minority role, but with an intensification of Maoist "heresy" in this sense. If during the revolutionary phase prior to the seizure of the revolutionary subject of power was the peasantry, the party represented the proletariat's project of moving towards communism. The great leap forward represented an intermediate stage, the main subject was again the peasantry, but now the party was criticised and attacked for its bureaucratic drift and because it harboured ideological tendencies to return to capitalism, and could no longer be trusted to represent the proletarian project of communism. So when the cultural revolution was unleashed, the Maoist turn was completed, now the subject was not the peasantry, which it sought to keep on the sidelines, as well as the proletariat, to avoid dislocating production, but the student youth who should drag the urban masses directly against a party definitively condemned as a bureaucratised and inadequate instrument to complete the communist revolution; so who represented the proletarian project of communism now? Obviously, only Mao could represent it, for which he made use of three instruments: the enormous cult created around his figure and thought, the masses of youth who followed his slogans, and the People's Liberation Army, which he controlled through Lin Biao. That the communist project of the proletariat ended up being represented by an almost deified leader and the army was already an expression of the ideological bankruptcy into which Maoism had fallen. Economic bankruptcy had already been achieved in the great leap forward. And the political bankruptcy was its turn, in the cultural revolution itself, against the most radical sections of Maoism - the red guaduas and the most radical and autonomous organisations of the workers - using the army against them, and finally restoring the organisation and power of the party. That later the repressed sections of the party during the cultural revolution wiped out the remnants of Maoism was only the inevitable conclusion of this triple bankruptcy. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Indeed, the cultural revolution did not achieve its objectives. The mass movement soon found itself riven by intense sectarianism expressed in violent internal clashes which led the Maoists to consider the Red Guards a danger, demanding their disbandment and, later, repressing them with the army. The new actors that appeared in a second phase, workers and soldiers, added to the chaos of the cultural revolution, divisions, sectarianism and clashes also ran through the workers' organisations and, after the Shanghai commune, where the closest approach to the Paris Commune model was reached, the Maoists turned to a different model, that of the "revolutionary committee" based on the triple alliance of the mass organisations, the party cadres and the army, with the latter dominating. "The restoration of order under the leadership of the PLA was accompanied by efforts to rebuild the party and re-establish the authority of the state bureaucracy under the leadership of Zhou Enlai. The process was slow and difficult, but it unfolded with an inexorable logic, which dictated that political power that had fallen into the hands of the military would eventually pass to a revived and restored communist party."643 In a sense the Cultural Revolution represented the Chinese model of factional fighting within the party, similar to what happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin, and which expresses a common feature of all communist regimes, the lack of democratic mechanisms through which to channel and settle differences not only in society, but also within the party itself. The absence of such mechanisms means that these differences are settled by violent means. In the case of Maoism this phenomenon is all the more striking because it recognises that in the transition to socialism the class struggle and contradictions within the people continue and, instead of seeking democratic mechanisms, it resorts to campaigns of coercion and purges, and to the struggle of factions in the party, with the use of mass mobilisations and even the army. The cultural revolution was plunged into the chaos of factional struggles, the disarticulation of the party and the state. Finally, the army had to be called in to restore an order which, first Maoist and then reformist, was bureaucratic. Maoism failed in its projects. First, in its three great trials while it controlled power and influence, the Hundred Flowers Campaign, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural 643 Meisner, Maurice, Marxism, Maoism, and the Chinese Revolution: A Commentary on the Role of Ideas in History, p. 364. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Revolution. As Pierre Rousset notes, "The gagging of the hundred flowers cut the party off from an important wing of the intelligentsia. In many regions, the failure of the great leap forward loosened or modified its links with the peasantry, while at the same time lastingly fracturing the apparatus. The massive repression that followed Mao's turn during the cultural revolution broke the identification of radical sections of the students and (what is new) the working class with the Maoist faction. By the early 1970s, it can be said that nothing remains but the "party of the bureaucracy", now well crystallised. "644 Third, and finally, when after Mao's death, the sectors of the Communist Party opposed to Maoism, and even repressed by him, ended up defeating him and channelling China back to capitalism under the control of the Communist Party. Paradoxically, this latter defeat could perhaps be claimed by Maoism as proof of its thesis that without permanent revolution a return to capitalism is eventually imposed. However, many thinkers have been more inclined to the explanation that the conditions for a transition to socialism did not exist in China. Thus, the two great tendencies within Chinese communism, Maoist and anti-Maoist, characterised the different stages of modern Chinese history according to the predominance of one or the other tendency. Maoism can be credited with the strategy that led to the final victory in 1949, but then it was responsible for two major events that ended up being catastrophic for China, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, i.e. if Maoism played a decisive role in achieving power, then its voluntarist and ultra-leftist policy ended up being a failure, both on the economic level with the great leap forward, and on the political level with the cultural revolution that disarticulated the state and the party, and had to be rebuilt from the army. The tendency opposed to Maoism within the CCP, which cannot be considered homogeneous in the different periods, would not have achieved revolutionary victory, but once it did, its predominance - first in the period of the implementation of the new democracy immediately after the victory, and then in the period from the final defeat of Maoism to 644 Rousset, Pierre, Revolution and Counter-Revolutions in the People's Republic of China Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century the present - was responsible for the greatest socio-economic advances in China, although at the ultimate price of a return to capitalist economic and social practices. Meisner's work has the advantage, for the purpose we are pursuing in this work, of making a profound comparison of the defining characteristics of Maoism in relation to the theoretical-strategic body of earlier Marxism, to Marx, but above all to Lenin, in order to highlight, in this way, the heretical character of Maoism. If, as we have had occasion to analyse in previous chapters, Marx attributed socialist consciousness to the industrial proletariat, and Lenin pointed to the need for revolutionary intellectuals organised in the communist party to inculcate that consciousness in the workers, Mao departed from both in that, on the one hand, "the bearers of socialism are those who possess "proletarian consciousness" and that the latter exists independently of a specific social class, neither dependent on the actual presence of the proletariat nor attributed to the peasantry. A revolutionary elite (the party and its leaders) keeps the socialist goal firmly in mind and leads the mass movement towards its realisation" and, on the other hand, "their faith in the party as the bearer of a revolutionary consciousness was never complete, for it was accompanied by a populist faith in the peasant masses, a belief that true revolutionary knowledge and creativity emanated ultimately from the people themselves".645 On the question of revolution, with the peasantry as the main revolutionary subject and the strategy of conquering the cities from the countryside, we have already dwelt earlier. Now we will look at two other differences between Maoism and orthodox Marxism which Meisner analyses. The first refers to the conception of permanent revolution which Maoism also adopted. In classical Marxism this concept was basically used on two occasions, the first by Marx and the second by Trotsky in a similar sense. In the first case, Marx used it in 1850 in relation to the European situation after the defeat of the 1848 revolution to point out that in another possible revolutionary wave, with a minority proletariat and a bourgeoisie incapable of fulfilling its historical objectives, the proletariat would have to take the leadership of the process into its own hands in order to convert the initial 645 Meisner, Maurice, Marxism, Maoism, and the Chinese Revolution: A Commentary on the Role of Ideas in History, pp.35-6. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist one. This meant a correction of the earlier thesis of the existence of well-defined stages of political development corresponding to stages of socio-economic development. In the second case, Trotsky would take up this idea and apply it to the Russian situation. The difference with Marx was that the Russian proletariat's task of transforming the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist one was part of an international revolutionary situation, and the Russian revolution, by stimulating the revolution in other developed countries, could then obtain their help and guarantee its survival. That is to say, the revolution was permanent in two respects, in the sense of going beyond the bourgeois-democratic character in a backward country to become socialist, and in the sense of stimulating revolution in the developed countries and avoiding the existence of an isolated revolution which would be defeated. With Stalin, the concept of permanent revolution would be condemned, returning to the concept of well-defined stages of political development corresponding to stages of socio-economic development. The conception of permanent revolution in Maoism, on the contrary, is more oriented towards the development of the revolutionary process once power has been achieved, "the whole revolutionary process, up to the realisation of communism, is characterised by an infinite series of contradictions and social struggles which can only be resolved by radical revolutionary breaks with the existing reality. Progress from one phase to the next "must necessarily be a relation between qualitative and quantitative changes. All mutations, all leaps forward, are revolutions that must happen through struggles. The theory of the end of struggles [in a socialist society] is pure metaphysics". Moreover, the resolution of contradictions can only be transitory, since "disequilibrium is normal and absolute while equilibrium is temporary and relative". 646 But the conception of permanent revolution held by Maoism also had a second edge, which Meisner points out. "The notion of permanent revolution was above all a formula for constantly revolutionising consciousness and activating human energies as the key to achieving the social and economic goals promised by the Chinese revolution. Another important aspect of the Maoist version of "permanent revolution", even if it 646 Ibid, p. 148 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century was not explicitly formulated in the theory itself, was a populist belief that the real sources of revolutionary creativity lay in the countryside. "647 This conception of permanent revolution would justify that the brief stage of bourgeoisdemocratic revolution would be followed by rapid collectivisation in the countryside, then the great leap forward, and finally the cultural revolution. It is not that the industrialising advances in the early years of the People's Republic were not important, which they were, but given the very low level of development at the outset, they were clearly insufficient to move on to the socialist phase, let alone the communist phase, as the great leap forward intended. The political development promoted by Maoism was much faster than the socio-economic development, thus rejecting, in practice, the correspondence of stages between one sphere and the other. However, this dislocation was justified in the Maoist view in that, contrary to orthodox Marxism, socialist transformations in the superstructure were to act as necessary conditions for the further development of the superstructure. In this way, access to the communist stage was no longer conditional upon the existence of a situation of abundance which would prevent the economic categories from acting. The great economic discussion which, as we have had occasion to see, went through and confronted the Bolshevik leadership, and continued to be discussed afterwards, was not a question that kept the Maoists awake at night. The second difference Meisner analyses between Maoism and orthodox Marxism concerns the interpretation of the concept of cultural revolution. In particular, he contrasts Lenin's conception with that of Mao. "Lenin, like Marx, assumed that a socialist society would inherit (and build on) all the cultural as well as the material achievements of its predecessors. Hence he deplored the cultural backwardness of Russia, which, shortly before his death, he partly blamed for the degeneration of the Russian revolution." In contrast to this view, Maoism pinned its hopes "on the supposed socialist advantages of backwardness, a faith which found its most extreme cultural expression in the remarkable "poor and empty" thesis elaborated at the beginning of the Great Leap campaign in 1958 [...]. Mao seemed to believe that a new culture can be 647 Ibid, p. 150 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez created ex nihilo, on a new canvas, on a "clean sheet of paper", unspoiled by historical defects. "648 648 Ibid, pp. 331-2. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Ecological Marxism We have established beyond doubt that the natural world is one of the starting points in Marx's theory. However, in the subsequent development it acquires a fragmentary and secondary character in relation to the fundamental contradiction of the capitalist mode of production between capital and labour. Nor can we disregard a certain optimism in relation to the development of the productive forces and the non-existence of natural limits. Therefore, an automatic translation of Marx into contemporary ecology does not encourage knowledge and research on the new ecological problems. Ecological Marxism: Fundamental elements for the critique of ecological-political-economy. Ignacio Sabbatella and Damiano Tagliavini In this chapter there are two related aspects that we will analyse. The first is the awareness of a serious ecological problem over the last few decades, which has generated a powerful environmental movement - including political parties of this orientation - that has contributed to spreading this awareness and to launching various institutional initiatives aimed at correcting the most serious ecological problems, such as the Kyoto and Paris agreements. This has given rise to a type of environmentalism that the more radical currents of ecosocialism refer to as "uncritical" environmentalism, insofar as they propose the implementation of solutions that do not call into question the permanence of capitalism. This type of environmentalism ranges from tendencies that appeal to individual responsibility in order to establish patterns of consumption compatible with a sustainable environment, to those that place their hopes in the development of technological capacity to halt or reverse the negative effects produced by industrial development on the environment. While recognising to varying degrees the seriousness of the ecological problem, they do not, however, link its solution to the need for a change in the mode of production. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The second aspect is the influence of this theme on Marxism, which has also had to adapt to other themes whose demands are relatively recent or have intensified in recent decades, such as the push for feminism, gender equality, discrimination of minorities, etc. In the case of environmentalism, this has served to revitalise critical, romantic or "warm" Marxism, which in many cases has given a catastrophist reading of the problem and which, in some cases, is reminiscent of other catastrophist readings, such as when at the beginning of the 20th century, above all, it was based on the inevitable collapse of capitalism. Ecosocialism, as a generic name for this trend, is based on three types of criticism. The first, which is shared by all environmentalist currents, concerns the harmful effects of industrialisation on the environment. However, its distinguishing feature is that it links the ecological problem closely to the capitalist mode of production and, in this sense, any definitive solution must involve overcoming this mode in socialism. The second criticism derives from the solution it proposes, which is thus directed at the currents of "uncritical" environmentalism, in the sense that it is a mistake to try to find solutions to the problem within capitalist industrial society. The third critique is linked to the more radical currents of environmentalism in that it is directed not only at capitalism but also at industrial progress, and thus extends its critique to the developmentalist aspects of the productive forces contained in Marxism, proposing a new paradigm that goes from degrowth to the profound reconversion of the productive system inherited from capitalism. In this sense, efforts have been made by various authors to "update" Marxism according to the requirements derived from the analysis of ecological problems. Ecosocialism distances itself from environmentalism in its three variants. It distances itself from deep ecologism because its radicalism leads it to absurd anti-humanist and relativist positions. It also rejects other environmentalist proposals which, faced with the urgency of the environmental problem, propose policies of intense degrowth which would mean a major setback in the standard of living of the populations of the developed countries, which would make them unacceptable. Finally, and most importantly, they criticise moderate environmentalists because they do not see the link between capitalism and environmental problems and therefore conceive of the possibility of correcting these problems within capitalism. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century The latter is the majority trend within environmentalism that has given rise to its most influential actors, the environmental parties. Among the authors who subscribe to ecosocialism are Michael Löwy, James O'Connor, Joel Kovel, Wolfgang Harich, Ted Benton, Barry Commoner, Elmar Altvater, Manuel Sacristán, Raymons Williams, Jorge Riechman, John Bellamy Foster, Jean-Paul Déléague, Francisco Fernández Buey, etc. Many of the authors who subscribe to ecosocialism have attempted the thankless and unproductive task of trying to support their theses with a supposedly ecological position that already existed in Marx and Engels, or even at the beginning of the Soviet revolution. In part this position is also a defensive reaction against the ecological currents which have criticised Marxism for its lack of attention to this problem or have accused it of being a theory of a productivist character which would be in contradiction with ecologism. What is undeniable is that the ecological problem was not perceived in the 19th century and, therefore, it is normal that it was not the object of Marx and Engels' concerns, in the same way that they could not focus their attention on other problems that did not exist in their time, such as, for example, the presence of nuclear weapons. Consequently, the heart of the matter lies not in the absence of interest of the founding fathers of Marxism in ecological problems that had not shown their seriousness in their time, but in the fundamental conception of Marxism itself as a productivist theory whose aim is the overcoming of the capitalist mode of production so that the productive forces, freed from the corset of the relations of production under capitalism, could develop indefinitely and satisfy all the needs of humanity. In Marxism, human liberation is linked to a development of the productive forces that would produce enough abundance to satisfy social needs, make unnecessary the economic categories of a situation of scarce resources in relation to demands, and liberate labour from its alienating condition. This is a question we have already had occasion to discuss in previous chapters. Therefore, when we are faced with authors who claim to be Marxists and radically reject the above assumptions, it is logical that the question can be raised as to whether they are still Marxists, in the same sense that this question has been raised in relation to other aspects: can those who reject the fundamental role of the proletariat in the project Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez of transition to socialism, those who reject the dictatorship of the proletariat, those who advocate market socialism, those who dispense with the theory of value, etc., be considered Marxists? But it is not the purpose of this work to discern who can or cannot be considered Marxists, but to note the problems of Marxism and to raise the challenges it has met with the development of history and the emergence of new problems, as we have also seen in previous chapters. Some of the authors of ecosocialism propose substantial modifications to Marxist theory in order to take up the problems and challenges posed by environmentalism. Thus, for example, James O'Connor refers to the need for Marxism to add to the first contradiction of the capitalist mode of production - that between the productive forces and the relations of production - a second contradiction between the productive forces and the conditions of production. The question thus posed seems somewhat incoherent in that by not replacing the second contradiction to the first, but by completing it, it leaves in place the corollary which depends on it, i.e. that once capitalism is overcome, the productive forces would develop vigorously because they are not constrained by capitalist relations of production, a development which would be in contradiction with the conditions of production, i.e. with the limits which industrial development would be encountering in the serious ecological problems generated. For these reasons, Michael Löwy seems to go further in resolving this incoherence and, although he alludes to a certain ambivalence in Marx, he nevertheless recognises the importance of the concept of the development of productive forces in his work. And, consequently, he proposes a profound modification of the Marxist paradigm, "The ecological question demands from Marxists a profound critical revision of their traditional conception of the "productive forces", as well as a radical break with the ideology of linear progress and with the technological and economic paradigm of modern industrial civilisation. "649 He therefore defines ecosocialism as an environmentalist current "which adopts the fundamental principles of Marxism - duly freed of productivist residues".650 By this he is alluding to the fact that the overcoming of capitalist relations of production does not necessarily lead to an indefinite and expanded development of the productive forces, and thus, as many Marxist economists 649 650 Löwy, Michael, What is Ecosocialism? p. 2 Ibid, p. 4 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century have analysed, to the fact that the economic categories of capitalism, such as the law of value, commodities, the market, the wage relation, etc., will remain in force indefinitely, i.e. socialism would probably never be reached, at least in the classical sense this term that has had for most Marxist authors. In this sense, ecosocialism's attempt to recover Marx as a basis for its positions is quite reminiscent of other attempts to recover Marx in a non-"orthodox" way, which we have seen in previous chapters. It was the attempt, for example, by Latin American Marxism to eliminate from Marx the Eurocentric conceptions - as now the productivist ones - by relying on his writings on the Russian commune, and now it is the ecosocialists who dig into his writings to look for some phrases or indications that can serve to counteract the main current of Marx, which leads to considering the development of the productive forces as an inexcusable condition once the capitalist relations of production have been overcome. In this sense, ecosocialism slightly criticises Marx and focuses its strongest criticisms on the experiences of "bureaucratic socialism", thus pointing to Stalinism and avoiding referring to Lenin or Trotsky, absolutely in favour of the unlimited development of productive forces, the latter being a clear supporter of accelerated industrialisation in the Soviet Union, as we have already had occasion to see. The point is that, in fact, neither in Marx nor in the experience of the Soviet revolution were ecological problems perceived, the most pressing priorities of the moment being others. It is another matter that from the perspective of the second decade of the 21st century things are seen in a different light. As a consequence, ecosocialism finds it very difficult to rely on the mainstream of earlier Marxist authors in order to build a tradition on them. In this sense, the author most often mentioned is Walter Benjamin with his profound critique of all technical progress and his view of revolution not as the means to liberate the expansion of the productive forces, but, on the contrary, as the means to slow down and reverse that expansion. But this is a weak author to base ecosocialism in a Marxist tradition. Not only because he is an author where critique takes precedence over strategy, but also because, in his search for sources that counter Marx's productivism and support the return to nature, he turns to the utopian socialist Fourier. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The enormous development of the productive forces carried out within capitalism has generated a model of consumption and waste in the industrialised countries, mainly in their more affluent strata, which is physically impossible to be extended to the rest of the planet because of the resources that would have to be used and its very serious impact on the environment. With this argument, ecosocialism is close to the thesis of the dependency theorists who point out that the development of the industrialised countries is based on the exploitation and underdevelopment of the rest of the world. The difference is that the dependency theorists reasoned in terms of accelerating the development of the backward countries by disassociating themselves from imperialist exploitation, and ecosocialism, without denying this right to development, nuances its content, but without clear proposals on how to bridge this development gap and respect the environment. If a simultaneous planetary revolution were to occur in time, perhaps ecosocialists could propose a slowing down of world development and a transfer of the benefits from the developed to the less developed countries - although we have already alluded to the difficulties in doing this when the socialist camp existed, and Mandel's analysis of it but if the trials of transitions to socialism continue to take place in isolated and backward, or relatively backward, countries, it is very difficult for ecosocialist proposals to find an echo there. An indication that this would be the trend is the experience of progressive governments in Latin America at the beginning of the 21st century with their economic policies aimed at relying on the intensive exploitation of their natural resources to drive growth and development. Therefore, in order not to settle into utopianism, ecosocialism is obliged to go beyond a radical critique of capitalism and its ecological problems, and to propose a vision of a world that is fairer and more in harmony with nature. It must consider how to bring about the change they propose, which in many respects is much more radical than that proposed by classical Marxism, which, mistakenly or not, postulated a project of progress and development that continued the achievements of economic progress deployed by capitalism in a radically different type of society. The difficulty of this task is what makes a part of ecosocialism remain linked to the more critical, but also more utopian Marxism, and to look for references in an author Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century such as Walter Benjamin and his concept that productive forces are actually destructive forces. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The problem of strategy: revolution There has never been the beginning of a revolution with clearly socialist objectives and it is unlikely to happen in the future. The democratic, social, political, agrarian and national mould is a dominant brand that tends to persist. Controversies about the revolution Claudio Katz At the beginning of this work we referred to four levels that can be differentiated in Marxism and said that the third level is the organisational level, that is, the one that informs a broad set of organisations that use it to achieve political objectives, it is "Marxism as a social movement". In this sense, we can say that the discussion on the problem of strategy is situated at this third level, insofar as it is the political organisations which are primarily concerned with this issue, or to which the reflections of intellectuals on it are directed. Marxism presented itself from the beginning as a revolutionary theory whose aim was not only to function as a correct tool of analysis and critique of the capitalist mode of production. Its ultimate aim, and raison d'être, was to serve as a guide for transformative action in society. In fact, for the most important transformation in the history of humanity. That of moving from the last of class societies, capitalism, to the first developed classless society, communism. And such a transition, given its essential and profound character, could only be achieved by a revolution. Marx and Engels were influenced by the French revolution, still vivid in their time, and participated in or witnessed other great revolutions such as those of 1848 or the Paris Commune. Advocating revolution to achieve communism was a logical consequence of historical teachings and was coherent with the intensity of the changes to be achieved and the resistance that these changes generated among the social classes defending capitalist society, understood in a generic way. Revolution was what historical examples showed in all its variety of shades, moments or processes of violent confrontation between the defenders of the old and the new Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century social order. Only at the end of Engels' life, with the cooling of the last revolutionary embers in Europe and the seemingly unstoppable electoral advance of social democracy, did Marx's companion reflect on the possibility of a transition to socialism through a path of accumulation of power in society and state institutions that would render unnecessary, or reduce to a minimum, the violent episodes associated with classical revolutions. Revolution, for a time, seemed to be conceived as a long process of transformations, perhaps with some moments of rupture, which would lead to socialism. This was also helped by a certain confidence, never confirmed, in the inexorable collapse of capitalism. It is well known that this situation in the years around the turn of the century, from the 19th to the 20th century, led to the emergence of a revisionist current, headed by Bernstein, which not only renounced revolution, but conceived of socialism as a long, never-ending process based on continuous reforms. But, with the disasters associated with the First World War and the existence of capable and daring revolutionary parties and leaders, the revolution reactivated its functionality as the inevitable road to socialism. It failed in the countries of Europe where it was tried at the end of the Great War, but it triumphed in Russia, and this was enough for the revolutionary road to acquire a new and enormous vigour with replicas that followed one after the other for several decades in the midst of situations in which they reaped transcendental successes. The Second World War and its consequences, the processes of decolonisation, the struggle against dictatorships and imperialist interventions led to the success of revolutions like the Yugoslav, Chinese, Cuban, Vietnamese, etc. But this cycle and this conception of proletarian revolutions - in reality peasant revolutions because of their social base, but led by a party with a Marxist programme came to an abrupt end with the collapse of real socialism. From then on, mass insurrectional violence continued to take place, destabilising states as in Syria and Libya after the Arab Springs, but they were not proletarian revolutions; peasant guerrillas with a Marxist orientation persisted until their final retreat, as in Colombia; others appeared with a novel model that wore out over time, like the Zapatistas; there were phenomena Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez of "subversivism"651 according to the Gramscian category, as in Argentina in 2001. But, above all, what began to become commonplace were popular rebellions that ended up bringing progressive governments to power by electoral means, as in Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Greece. In this situation, almost 40 years after the debacle of real socialism, the discussion on strategies for achieving socialism as a long-term process and through the use of democratic methods was once again an unavoidable necessity, and this calls for two operations, that of recovering the historical reflections and practices surrounding this path, And that of confronting this heritage with the current situation in order to try to clear up the question of whether this path is really viable, because if the classical revolutions ended up leading the societies in which the transition to socialism was experienced to failure, the democratic paths did not manage, for their part, to offer a successful model of transition to socialism. In this sense, there is one aspect which we will not dwell on now, but which cannot be overlooked because of its importance. The type of revolution carried out, the type of party built for that purpose, the characteristics of the societies where the revolutions triumphed, were ultimately associated with the type of society that these revolutions ended up building. If this book had been written in the 1920s-70s it might not have been necessary to write this chapter. It would have been difficult to escape the dominant idea at that time that revolution, in the classical sense mentioned above, was the necessary and inevitable road to socialism. Even if it could be argued why it had not been unleashed in the developed countries, or why it had led to the known results, especially Stalinism. But in the second decade of the 21st century the vision is necessarily very different from that of the aforementioned period. Today, with a broader perspective, three types of phenomena related to revolutionary strategy can be observed, which chronologically could be ordered as follows: First, that, when they took place, revolutions were defeated in the countries of developed capitalism. Second, that the revolutionary momentum derived from the Russian revolution clearly petered out from the 1970s onwards without 651 This term refers to some types of popular revolts without concrete political direction and thus without articulated political objectives. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century any further socialist revolutions triumphing and consolidating since then. And thirdly, that the states which emerged from the triumphant revolutions in backward countries mostly collapsed or were channelled towards a capitalist type of development. These phenomena invite serious reflection on the real capacities of Marxism to achieve its goal of a communist society. As we pointed out earlier, the cycle of triumphant socialist revolutions was concentrated in a particularly turbulent period of modern history, that of the earthquake of the two world wars and their subsequent replicas in the form of the processes of decolonisation and the cold war. Now that the situation has stabilised, especially after the collapse of real socialism, the persistent conflict has not had the capacity to question the stability of bourgeois rule, which, on the contrary, has been reinforced by the almost worldwide extension of the capitalist mode of production and, to a lesser extent, of the most stable and reliable model of political power for the bourgeoisie, the demoliberal state in some of its variants. This economic, social and political scenario is not likely to undergo major violent upheavals, nor are there any political actors interested in their occurrence, with the exception of radical political Islamism. Therefore, with the exception of radical political Islamism, it can be said that the situation for Marxism and its strategy is similar to the period of the Second International in the years before the First World War. But the similarity is very superficial, the experiences of the last hundred years and the transformations that have taken place in capitalism itself have a fundamental weight that separates the two situations far beyond these points in common. Therefore, and beyond small Marxist groups or intellectuals who persist in ambiguous references to "classical" revolutionary strategies without any real relevance today, it is necessary to reflect on the strategies of Marxism for the current historical conjuncture. This problematic is another of the various weaknesses of Marxism, together with the previous ones analysed, such as the economic model, the model of political power, capacity as an instrument of analysis, etc. Without such a broad vision as that provided by an analysis situated in the second decade of the 21st century, however, reflections on this problem of strategy, which, in short, has to do with the real possibilities of overthrowing the power of the bourgeoisie and initiating the transition to socialism, appeared very early on. In this sense we can refer to three different contributions with some points in common. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The first would be the one with the greatest theoretical influence and persistence over time; we are referring to Gramsci's theoretical contributions, which originated precisely in the face of the failure of the revolutions in Europe at the end of the First World War. The second block of contributions would derive from some historical experiences that conceived and tested the beginning of the transition to socialism not as the fruit of a revolutionary event that solved the problem of power definitively at a given moment, a revolution in the classical sense, but as a long process, revolutionary, but a process; we refer to the experiences of the popular fronts and, especially, to the Allende government in Chile. The third block of contributions are those formed by the trial of what came to be known as Eurocommunism, which took place historically when the momentum derived from the Russian revolution was clearly running out and shortly before the collapse of real socialism in Europe. The main point that unites these three blocks of contributions is the search for adequate strategies to initiate the transition to socialism in developed and complex social formations, increasingly so as time goes by, so that the complexity of the societies that Gramsci reflected on in the second decade of the 20th century was much less than that which exists a century later. Another point in common has to do with the historical conjunctures in which they occurred, in which the organisations fighting for socialist transformation enjoyed significant political weight, and the international scene was characterised by a tendency towards the expansion of socialism to varying degrees. Gramsci reflected in the midst of the defeats of the revolutions in Europe, but with the consolidation of the Soviet victory, and the expectations on that basis of future advances, Gramsci reflected on the difficulties of that advance in the developed West, not on its impossibility. Allende's government took place after the victory of the Cuban revolution and after the worldwide expansion of communist states that followed the end of the Second World War and the processes of decolonisation, i.e. in the midst of the expansion of the socialist camp. Eurocommunism took place when the exhaustion of the effects of the October revolution was already clear, but without anyone being able to foresee the collapse of real socialism, and the main communist parties belonging to this tendency enjoyed significant political weight in their respective countries, which gave them hope of achieving government there. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Finally, the third common point is that none of these lines of reflections and experiences gave rise to any process of transition to triumphant socialism. The Gramscian proposal has acted as a backdrop in varying degrees of application, or has been recovered as a theoretical justification either explicitly or implicitly by the aforementioned experiences or some others, but it has not given rise to political currents within Marxism of the Leninist, Trotskyist or Maoist type. There have been no Gramscian organisations, although there have been many intellectuals guided by this thinking who have produced countless theoretical contributions in this direction. These three blocks of experiences and reflections can also be seen as part of a gradual evolution born out of the realisation of the difficulty of revolution in complex developed societies. Thus, even though Gramsci began his reflections in the 1920s, most of the socialist revolutions that followed the Soviet one took place later, all in backward or relatively backward countries. In that period of continuous revolutions and the expansion of the socialist camp, Gramsci's thought was hardly taken into account, with the exception of the PCI and its Toglattian interpretation. Together with Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Korsch and Lukács, Gramsci formed a group of theoreticians who were interesting from some points of view - especially philosophical, where they generated a lot of literature - but of no practical use. The first would be recovered later when the problem of transition for developed countries began to be widely raised and the exhaustion of the momentum of the Soviet revolution was evident. Luxemburg, Korsch and others were not because they had nothing to contribute to the new conjuncture, their strategic thinking might have had some validity at the time but no organisation or current of thought takes it into account today. Gramsci was a first link that put the triumphant Leninist strategy forward as a model to be imitated in the developed West, and contributed an important number of concepts and reflections that would be of particular use in later stages. The experience of the UP government in Chile, the first to attempt a transition to socialism using the parliamentary route, was not influenced by Gramscian thought. In contrast to the Leninist or Guevarist conceptions predominant in the UP's rupturist pole, the gradualist pole made no allusions to Gramsci's theories, but rather created a weak theory of its own. Eurocommunism, however, did try to recover Gramsci as a theoretical foundation for its projects and practices. An opportunistic recovery for some and insufficient for others. But, above all, Gramsci was recovered by a multitude of Marxist thinkers after Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez the exhaustion of the effects of the October revolution and its subsequent disappearance. The curious thing about this latest Gramscian recovery is that it tends to take place outside the Chilean and Eurocommunist experiences, in a sort of leap without a net between the 1920s and the end of the 20th century. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Gramsci and the strategy for the West Trotsky's analyses were shipwrecked time and again against the stumbling block of the Western proletariat. It was to be another Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, who would come up with a broader interpretation that would try to settle accounts with the failure of the revolution in the West. Two methods in pursuit of science: Skocpol versus Trotsky Michael Burawoy First, his rejection of economism, which would no longer play such a decisive role in the analysis and definition of historical conjunctures and, consequently, in the strategies defined by the revolutionary organisations. Secondly, his inclination towards the analysis of the superstructures, thus attempting to fill the void that the classics of Marxism had maintained on this subject. Thirdly, his emphasis on revolutionary subjectivity as opposed to the weight of objective conditions. These characteristics of his thought led to the creation of new conceptual categories within Marxist theory, such as hegemony, historical bloc, organic crisis and passive revolution. His reflections on the revolutionary failures in Europe and the study of the specific Italian conditions led him to revalue the national question, on the one hand, and to recognise the importance of civil society in developed capitalist countries where liberal-democratic political regimes predominate, on the other. His inclination towards the study of superstructures led him to a new characterisation of the state and its relations with civil society, which has profound strategic implications. His concept of the state becomes more complex and all-encompassing, and now includes institutions that in classical thought would correspond to civil society, such as the educational system, the media, religious institutions and even political parties. Thus, the state ceases to have the nature of a mere instrumental tool of the ruling class to be seized and destroyed as such. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez This transforms the socialist strategy, which can no longer be oriented towards the seizure of the state apparatus and the prior confrontation with its coercive apparatus. In developed countries with liberal-democratic regimes, it is necessary to take into account the phenomenon of consensus on which they are based, and which is generated in the institutions of civil society, which in reality are part of the state structure as we have pointed out above. The basis of consensus is the existence of a situation of hegemony of the dominant class over the dominated classes. His reflections on a new strategy, derived from the revolutionary failures in Europe after the First World War, have as a precondition the critique of the revolutionary strategies advocated at the time by other revolutionary tendencies. It is not only that Gramsci considers the strategy that was able to succeed in Russia in 1917 to be the wrong one to be carried out in Europe, but he criticises Trotsky's later approaches to permanent revolution, which he describes as "anachronistic and unnatural Napoleanism".652 The historical bloc expresses the set of structures and superstructures of a social formation. It is a concrete historical product in whose cohesion intellectuals play a decisive role. On the one hand, then, "Gramsci defines hegemony as the exercise of political, intellectual and moral leadership within and over a given political space, in such a way as to bring social forces and institutions into conformity with the requirements of capitalist reproduction in a given period. When hegemony is successfully exercised, it is reflected in what Gramsci calls a historical bloc. For these purposes, a historical bloc can be defined as a contingent and historically specific correspondence between the economic, legal-political and ethical dimensions of a given social formation".653 And on the other hand, "The historical bloc crystallises in the state, which is the organism that condenses the political relations of society. Such an organism must allow the maximum development and expansion of the hegemonic group, presenting it as the development and expansion of the whole of society. "654 652 Gramsci, Antonio, Cuadernos de la cárcel, Volume 5, Critical edition of the Gramsci Institute. Edited by Valentino Gerratana. Ediciones Era, p. 157 653 Jessop, Robert, The Future of the Capitalist State, p. 7. 654 Ordoñez, Sergio, Contemporary World Historical Change and Social Thought. Transformación del capitalismo: la revancha de Gramsci, p. 210. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Its national-popular strategy is oriented, then, towards the creation of hegemony by the working class over the rest of the popular classes interested in a socialist transformation that would turn it into a ruling class. This process of conquering hegemony is conceived as a long war of positions aimed at making the ruling class lose its hegemonic role over civil society, reducing its base of support and alliances. It is then a question of building under the hegemony of the proletariat a policy of alliances that generates an alternative and antagonistic historical bloc to carry out the national-popular strategy. "For Gramsci, in modern societies, the formation of a new historical bloc that surpasses the traditional one is linked to the intellectual and moral reform of the masses who identify themselves collectively as a nation-people: it is a national-popular historical bloc, which we can consider as the locus of national identities. In this process, the role of intellectuals is central, since it is they who shape and disseminate the elements of such intellectual and moral reform, constituting the key element of "formationmediation-identification of each national-popular historical bloc. "655 Although this strategic vision does not exclude the possibility of a decisive moment of rupture provoked by an organic crisis or a catastrophic stalemate that has to be resolved by a moment of force, it nevertheless implies replacing the classic insurrectional strategy with a more complex and gradual one carried out both through and outside the democratic institutions of liberal regimes, even if Gramsci's instrumental vision of them still predominates. Before achieving power, the alternative bloc must have achieved hegemony in society, but in order to break the hegemonic system of the ruling class, it is necessary for an organic crisis to occur, "which is nothing more than a rupture of the organic link between economic infrastructure and political-ideological superstructure, that is, a "crisis of authority" of the ruling class, a loss of its capacity for moral and intellectual control-direction or, what amounts to the same thing, of consensus. If the ruling class has lost consensus, is no longer ruling but only dominant, the holder of coercive force, 655 Lvovich, Daniel, From determination to imagination: Marxist theories of nationalism. An interpretation, p. 36 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez this means that the great masses have broken away from traditional ideology, no longer believe in what they once believed in. "656 "The revolution is for Gramsci, therefore, a long world process, in stages, in which the conquest of state power, although necessary, intervenes to a certain extent according to historical conditions, and in the West presupposes, in any case, a long work of conquest of strongholds, the construction of a historical bloc between different classes, each one bearing not only different interests but with its own cultural and political roots. In the meantime, such a social process is not the gradual and univocal result of a trend already inscribed in capitalist development and democracy, but the product of an organised and conscious will that intervenes, of a new political and cultural hegemony, of a new human type in progressive formation. "657 An extensive summary of what would be the development and stages of the strategy advocated by Gramsci is offered by Rafael Díaz Salazar: a) the peculiarity of the West prevents a mimetic repetition of the Bolshevik model of revolution; b) the most correct and effective political action is to multiply "wars of position" until the accumulation of these makes it possible to unleash a "war of movement"; c) the most correct and effective political action is to multiply "wars of position" until the accumulation of these makes it possible to unleash a "war of movement"; e) priority must be given to the political struggle in civil society, which forms the basis of the modern capitalist state as an "elongated state"; d) the conquest of the apparatuses of hegemony, in which the molecular power of the system is condensed, is indispensable to provoke the organic crisis of hegemony of the capitalist system, that is why one must be a leader before being dominant; e) the realisation of the revolution in the West requires the development of an intellectual and moral reform and the creation of a collective will based on an active consensus; f) the political struggle in the West leads to a long march with various economic, political and military power relations accompanied by economic-corporate, ethical-political, political-military and technical-military phases, for it is the accumulation of hegemony that will lead to the revolutionary rupture; g) the 656 Noguera Fernández, Albert, La teoría del Estado y del poder en Antonio Gramsci: Claves para descifrar la dicotomía dominación-liberación, p. 16. 657 Magri, Lucio, The Tailor of Ulm: Communism in the 20th Century: Facts and Reflections, p. 57. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century aim of the revolution in the West is not the construction of a working class state or the collectivisation of the economy, but the creation of the regulated society. "658 This author acknowledges that if Gramsci was aware of the difficulties of revolution in the developed capitalist countries, and hence his concern about it, these difficulties had increased significantly by the end of the 20th century. What he wants, therefore, is to reflect on the crisis of the European left, which, initially, could be understood as the failure of the Euro-communist parties, but which, in reality, can be broadly extended to the left in countries with mature capitalism, and even to countries with less developed capitalism. "From a Gramscian point of view, the crisis of the European left can be understood from the stagnation experienced by the strategy of expansive hegemony. This seems to have reached a maximum ceiling from which it retreats, while the influence of bourgeois culture and Americanism lengthens and Bahro's hypothesis of the growth of emancipatory interests and the reflux of compensatory interests (linked to material consumption needs) in the developed industrial countries (Bahro, 1980 and 1981) is not fulfilled (Bahro, 1980 and 1981). On the contrary, capitalist hegemony - which is able to coexist and even assimilate various "turf wars" generated during the last decades grows, linked to a system of parliamentary democracy that persists with mere passive consensus and is reinforced by the extension of a mass cultural taste and popular ways of thinking far removed from revolutionary aspirations. All this leads to the entrenchment of a complex, fragmented and autonomous civil society, in which it is very difficult to create a unifying collective will. Add to this picture, strong tendencies of worker corporatism and a progressive reduction of trade union practices to wage politics".659 With this fairly accurate diagnosis of the difficulties of applying the strategic policy derived from Gramscian theory, we can briefly analyse two experiences that have been related to it, firstly the experience of the Allende government in Chile, and secondly that of the Eurocommunist parties. 658 Díaz Salazar, Rafael, Gramsci, el internacionalismo y la izquierda europea, in Trías Vejarano, Juan (coord.), Gramsci y la izquierda europea, pp. 28-9. 659 Ibid, p. 31 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Allende's government: the political-institutional path to socialism In practice it remains to be proved that the political-institutional path can lead to the political hegemony of the working class and thus make the transition to socialism possible. The state and tactical problems in Allende's government Joan E. Garcés The experience of the UP government in 1970-73 in Chile, where a democratic path of transition to socialism was tried out using the institutions of liberal democracy, could give the impression of being a trial developed along Gramscian strategic lines. However, it should be pointed out that at that time Gramsci was a little-known author in Chile, and it can therefore be said that this experience was not at all guided by the Italian communist's reflections. Firstly, because Gramsci was at that time a very little-known author in Chile, although some writings were published before and during the Popular Unity government; however, "the circumstances of his publication do not seem to have found the appropriate climate to obtain a massive appropriation of his contents and to achieve a political impact through them"660 , and this was due, as Massardo points out, to two circumstances. One of a theoretical nature, referring to the fact that the successful dissemination of Louis Althusser's thought in those years among the Latin American left was going to block the possibility of Gramsci's influence. The other, more important, is of a pragmatic nature, because Chile during the period of the UP government is situated in an international situation under the influence of the success of the Cuban revolution; And internally, with Allende's presidential victory, the Chilean left found itself in a diametrically different situation from the one in which the Italian revolutionary found himself when he wrote his works from prison; it was trying 660 6. Massardo, Jaime, Gramsci en Chile. Apuntes para el estudio de una experiencia de difusión cultural, p. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century out the real possibility of a transition to socialism by a new route, whereas Gramsci was writing about the difficulties of such a transition in developed societies after the defeats of the revolutions in Europe. The Chilean Marxists were concerned about the immediate problems of an ongoing experience whose strategy was based on the control of the state apparatus after the presidential victory. It can be said, in this sense, that it was a variant of the classic strategy, especially since the Soviet triumph, of transition to socialism through the conquest of the state, only that instead of a frontal assault through insurrection (Russia), people's war (China), or guerrilla warfare (Cuba), it was done using the possibilities and institutions of a liberal democracy. It was difficult, in those circumstances, for Chilean Marxists to reflect and orient themselves with the political categories developed by Gramsci. Nevertheless, Massardo recalls, the UP parties were faced with the problem of power "without the working class having succeeded in transforming itself into the leading class of most of the social forces involved in the process and without these having become a national majority, also an irrefutable sign of an insufficient struggle for hegemony within civil society or, as was the case, of the absence of a comprehensive approach in this direction. " 661 But this is a reflection that can be valid for the rest of the socialist revolutions that have taken place. Once control of the state was achieved by insurrection, guerrilla warfare or military occupation (Eastern Europe), the working class in those countries lacked hegemony in civil society to varying degrees, forcing the respective communist parties to merge with the state and control it tightly in an inevitable drift towards bureaucratic dictatorship. The revolution that was to serve as a model for the later state, the Soviet revolution, demonstrated the Bolsheviks' lack of hegemony over civil society with the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, in view of their clear minority position in it. Hegemony for Lenin was that of the working class over its allies in the revolution, the peasants, and, as such, that conception was still current among the Marxist parties of the UP in Chile. 661 8. Massardo, Jaime, Gramsci en Chile. Apuntes para el estudio de una experiencia de difusión cultural, p. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The Chilean experience thus provides a second source of strategic reflection for the transformative left when both capitalism and liberal democracy stabilise solidly after the debacle of real socialism, and forces the left to rethink the strategies of transition to socialism under these conditions. The strategic contributions that can be drawn from the Chilean experience have already been analysed in a previous study662 , which we will therefore use here. "The first camp we are going to investigate is made up of those who believed in the viability of the political project of the UP and who seek, in the mistakes made in the face of the various obstacles encountered, the explanation for the failure of this experience. Their common affiliation to this camp does not prevent them from having profound differences on other important issues such as the nature of the stage of the popular government or the type of socialist society they were thinking of. Some of these authors, such as Cancino or Joan E. Garcés, make an effort to draw farreaching theoretical conclusions about the strategies of the socialist movement, about the type of socialism that it is trying to achieve. Cancino's analysis is framed by two key ideas about the actors of the Chilean left. The first is that, despite the profound divergences in the strategies of these actors, they all share a common theoretical matrix, the Marxism of the Third International and the models of revolution, state, party and democracy that this organisation instituted, codifying the experience of the October 1917 revolution in Russia. The second is Cancino's consideration of President Salvador Allende as the genuine representative of a project of democratic socialism, clearly differentiated from the project supported by the CP, to which he is sometimes assimilated, and which would become, precisely, the real alternative on the left to the hegemonic domination of "dogmatic Marxism and the models of the Third International". Against the Chilean road to socialism - a strategy accepted by the UP, at least in theory, and clearly defended by President Allende and, in general, by the so-called gradualist pole - would be the insurrectionary strategy, which for Cancino had no "possibility of effective application in the historical-structural conditions of the Chilean social formation". He defined the latter strategy by the elements that were characteristic of the 662 Sánchez Rodríguez, Jesús, Reflections on the Chilean revolution. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Bolshevik model of revolution: a vanguard party leading a rapid insurrection with the appearance of workers' militias and breaks with the army; the appearance of popular grassroots organisations, the soviets; and, finally, an assault on the state, understood as a fortress, and the constitution of a workers' and peasants' government663 . The hegemony on the left of the model derived from the Third International had two variants regarding the tactics for the seizure of power, the first advocated a process of revolution by stages, the second favoured a frontal and rapid attack of an insurrectional character. Stalinists, Trotskyists and Castroists, with all their variants, participated in this scheme. Only Allende and a handful of followers within the Socialist Party remained aloof, defending a different, democratic model. This is the core of Cancino's critique of left-wing thinking and behaviour during the Popular Unity period. 664 If it is clear that the CP is part of this camp hegemonised by the thinking derived from the Third International - its defence of the validity of the dictatorship of the proletariat, or of the existing regimes of real socialism, proves it - it is no less certain that its subsequent analysis of the causes responsible for the failure of the Chilean experience departs from the most orthodox authors within Marxism-Leninism, who point out that this outcome was inevitable, It is no less true that his subsequent analysis of the causes responsible for the failure of the Chilean experience departs from the most orthodox authors within Marxism-Leninism, who point out that this outcome was inevitable from the moment that the UP did not follow the historical teachings of the proletarian revolutions of the 20th century. After all, the CP was following its "unarmed path" in perfect accordance with what had been advocated by the USSR leadership since 1956. Cancino's analysis contains a threefold conclusion: The first of these concerns strategy, arguing that the only really viable one for the popular forces, in the historical context of 1970 in Chile, was the project of the political-institutional path to socialism665 . The UP's programme and this path were the only ones that responded to the conditions of a complex and pluralist civil society. The UP programme and this path were the only ones that responded to the conditions of a complex and pluralist civil society. 663 Cancino Troncoso, Hugo, La problemática del poder popular en el proceso de la vía chilena al socialismo. 1970-1973, pp. 25-6. 664 Ibid., p. 385 665 Ibid., p. 431 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The second conclusion revolves around the necessary alliances, insisting that the profound structural transformation that the popular government intended to carry out "required for its success a broad base of social support, and therefore, the establishment of a consensus between the Popular Unity and a political party such as Christian Democracy, which significantly assumed the representation of the middle strata and the urban peasant and popular sectors. This consensus would have made it possible to isolate and disarticulate the reactionary bourgeois bloc".666 The third conclusion is addressed to the political parties of the left, asking about their suitability to lead the Chilean road to socialism: "Was the implementation of the institutional political road to socialism possible, by parties or tendencies that formally accepted its premises and at the same time recognised the validity of the paradigm of the armed/insurrectional road, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and, in short, the example of the 'real socialisms'?667 His answer to this question is negative. Joan E. Garcés, for his part, is one of the most important advocates of the politicalinstitutional path. An advisor to President Allende and, as such, a direct protagonist of the Chilean experience, he makes one of the most serious attempts to analyse it rigorously and draw solid lessons for the future. His conclusions on the final fate suffered by the government and the Chilean popular movement can be divided, for the purposes of clarity, into three consecutive sections, which would revolve around the different projects confronting each other in the left camp, disputing the direction of the process and its historical trajectory; the concrete problems that led to the tragic end we know; and the lessons to be drawn from the Chilean process for a political-institutional strategy. Garcés considers that in the experience of the socialist movement, three main models for the workers' conquest of the state have been theorised or practised: the people's war (and its guerrilla variant), the insurrectional model, and the political-institutional668 . But, given the historical development in Chile, the first was left out of any possibility of application, and only the last two were clearly confronted, and are therefore the subject of this author's attention. 666 Ibid., p. 433 Ibid., p. 440 668 Garcés, Joan E., El Estado y los problemas tácticos en el gobierno de Allende, p. 248. 667 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Both ways are also defined as a direct and indirect strategy of transition to socialism; and they are clearly exposed through their most defining elements: "in the politicalinstitutional way social relations are channelled through a dynamic of incitementstimulus between contradictorily differentiated sectors that pursues the socio-economic and political restructuring of society through an indirect strategy that avoids violent conflict and the rupture of the social mechanisms of coexistence and collective identification [...]....] For its part, the insurrectional path contemplates the aggravation of tensions as a path towards the polarisation of social forces and, produced the conflict, the process of social relations is regulated through the coercion-duasion dynamic, which finds its natural resolution in the violent confrontation between the antagonistic organisations - direct strategy." 669"670 On the political-institutional path, Garcés points out that "The supporters of the political-institutional path, on the other hand, if they analyse those peculiarities, which according to them allow the revolutionary process to advance through the legal transformation of the current state, opening a way for the workers to take over and use the structures of the state for their own interests, thus creating the possibility of creating a new socialist institutionality out of the bourgeois one; in their analysis they do not rule out the possibility of a sharp and violent conflict at some point, but their aim is precisely to avoid it. This path offers opportunities, according to its supporters, but they are also aware of the limitations it imposes, as Sergio Bitar acknowledges671 . The first is that since this path is based on access to power through electoral processes in which the UP does not have absolute majorities, it makes it necessary to seek compromises with the DC; Secondly, the Chilean way was based on the assumption that the institutional framework was flexible and respected by all actors, including the UP, and the maintenance of this institutional legitimacy prevented radical changes that would erode it, allowing only gradual progress; the last limit was the control of the Armed Forces, whose neutrality 669 Garcés, Joan E., Allende and the Chilean Experience, pp. 42-3. Sánchez Rodríguez, Jesús, Reflexiones sobre la revolución chilena, pp. 192-4. 671 Bitar, Sergio, Transición, socialismo y democracia. La experiencia chilena, p. 304 670 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez could only be assured as long as government action did not go beyond the institutional framework."672 The political-institutional path, whose best representative was President Allende, was clearly set out by the latter in his message to the National Congress in May 1971 around five points: "The first of these is the principle of legality which, while promising to respect, he expresses his confidence that it will be capable of allowing the necessary changes that will bring about the implementation of the project he defends: "Our legal system must be modified. Hence the great responsibility of the Houses at the present time: to contribute to ensuring that the transformation of our legal system is not blocked. "673 Salvador Allende states that Chile has a flexible institutional system that can be adapted to the new objective of transferring political and economic power to the workers and the people, making it clear that: "the principle of legality and institutional order are essential to a socialist regime. "674 The third is the recognition of the value of political freedoms: "political freedoms are a conquest of the people on the arduous road to their emancipation. They are part of what is positive in the historical period we are leaving behind. "675 And the promise that the UP government would recognise these political freedoms and adjust its actions within institutional limits. The fourth point expresses the aspiration of the Chilean people to advance to socialism without resorting to violence or authoritarian forms of government, but warns, at the same time, that if violence were to be used against normal political development, then "the struggle for social emancipation" would be obliged to adopt different manifestations from those expressed by the Chilean road to socialism. Finally, he refers to the core of this path, the socialisation of the means of production, which he recognises will be a long process without shortcuts, because: "It is not possible 672 Sánchez Rodríguez, Jesús, Reflexiones sobre la revolución chilena, pp. 74-5. Allende, Salvador, La "vía chilena al socialismo". Speech before the Congress of the Republic 21 May 1971, pp. 9 674 Ibid., pp. 10 675 Ibid., pp. 11 673 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century to destroy a social and economic structure, a pre-existing social institution, without first having minimally developed its replacement. "676 "677 As has been pointed out, the Chilean experience of the UP can be seen as a link in an evolution of socialist strategic thinking. The insurrectional path, in its different variants, with its success in Russia appeared as a model that was followed for a long time and in very different places in undeveloped countries with successes and failures. Gramsci's adherence to this path, however, represented an initial reflection on the revolutionary failures in Europe and the difficulties of applying this path in developed countries. The theoretical consequences were the development of a new set of categories appropriate for analysing these societies and a proposal for a new strategy. The Chilean experience was halfway between the classic insurrectional path, present in the proposals of its main parties, and the political-institutional path, supported especially by Allende and in part by the PS and PC. This very special situation gave rise to some interesting reflections among some of its protagonists concerning both paths, which serve as a brief synthesis of their differences. "This [the insurrectional road] requires for its implementation, and eventual success, certain prerequisites which Garcés goes on to describe678 : on the side of the economic factors he mentions, following Lenin, a serious crisis of production and distribution, an acute aggravation of the privations and sufferings of the oppressed classes and, as a consequence of the above, an increase in the activity of the masses. On the side of the political factors there would be found a the political system is undergoing a serious crisis, with a particular impact on the state's repressive apparatus, and also on its ideological apparatus, which has thus been shaken, and the coercive, evaluative and institutional elements that maintain the legitimacy of order and authority are losing their efficacy. Finally, the insurrectional route implicitly implies the need for armed confrontation as the 676 final phase of the conquest of the government. Ibid., pp. 13 Sánchez Rodríguez, Jesús, Reflexiones sobre la revolución chilena, p. 79. 678 Garcés, Joan E., El Estado y los problemas tácticos en el gobierno de Allende, op. cit., pp. 248-53. 677 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez If these are the prerequisites, the instrumental means par excellence in this path is the phenomenon of dual power, which implies the fracturing of the institutional regime, seeking the legitimisation of political power in the decisions of popular organisations, outside the institutionalised mechanisms that the current political system has for this purpose. Finally, Garcés recalls, all this led to "the dictatorship of the proletariat, through civil war, as a mechanism for defining and resolving the confrontation". To justify his position in favour of the political-institutional path for Chile, Garcés examines the historical trajectory of the labour and socialist movement and draws lessons from it, especially for transformative movements operating in economically and politically developed societies, i.e. industrialised and with liberal-democratic political regimes. We summarise briefly some of these conclusions drawn by Joan E. Garcés762 : On the one hand, the characteristics of a period of transition to socialism are conditioned by the nature of the preceding crisis that puts an end to the capitalist system's capacity for continuity. On the other hand, without the existence of a social crisis, a change of regime, and a fortiori of political system, is not possible. A third lesson of the social history of the last half century is that where national or international capitalist forces were dominant, workers' insurrections have been drowned in blood, while where they have had sufficient economic and military backing, they have conquered or retained power. The existence of these two paths does not mean that their choice or historical development depends on an act of voluntarism, but on the historical conditions in which a given workers' movement has developed, especially on whether or not it has a history of democratic struggle. Thus, Garcés notes a historical constant according to which: "in no country where the workers' movement has conquered and practised the forms of political struggle proper to a system based on universal suffrage has a socialist government been installed by insurrection. And the reverse is equally true: in no 762 Garcés, Joan E., Allende and the Chilean Experience, op. cit., pp. 11, 20, 24-6, 28, 38. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century country where a proletarian insurrection has triumphed has the workers' movement incorporated into its praxis the forms of democratic struggle based on universal suffrage, i.e. political democracy". The reason for this constant is that "the socio-economic and political foundations that make the social struggle viable through the political-electoral route are not only different but even opposed to those of the insurrectional route".763 Moreover, he continues, since 1917 every revolutionary attempt at civil war in an industrialised country has ended in failure or bloodshed. Likewise, the closer a revolutionary process comes to civil war, the more its fate is conditioned by military relations between the powers. Finally, a revolutionary process taking place in an international environment militarily dominated by capitalist forces must avoid drifting into a situation of civil war because, in the absence of international war, insurrectionary tactics are unviable in the industrialised countries. This confusion of tactics on the part of the revolutionary leaders of the industrialised countries "for three generations" has led to tragic defeats such as that of Chile in 1973. From these lessons Garcés drew the relevant conclusions which he applied to the Chilean experience, and which led him to a point of agreement with Hugo Cancino: Chile was a country in which, because of its political and historical trajectory, and that of its workers' movement, only the application of the political-institutional path was possible and viable. "764 763 764 Ibid., p. 22 Sánchez Rodríguez, Jesús, Reflexiones sobre la revolución chilena, pp. 194-5. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Eurocommunism Eurocommunism was the recognition of a "convergent assessment of the problems of democracy and socialism". In its main features, Eurocommunism was the attempt to create a model of socialism corresponding to the characteristics of the West and thus a new type of revolutionary strategy. The three parties that gave life to the phenomenon recognised that they did not have a reference "model" from which to build their own path to socialism, announcing the creation of autonomous paths. The failure of Eurocommunism Andrea Donofrio Eurocommunism represented a new step in the search for a strategy of transition to socialism in the conditions of a stabilised capitalism and liberal democracy that enjoyed a growing prestige, highlighted by the traumatic experiences of Nazi-fascism in Europe, and the growing rejection of the bureaucratic dictatorships of real socialism by both the populations of those countries and the working class in the capitalist countries. What is characteristic of Eurocommunism, then, is the following. First, it is an evolution of communist parties located in countries of developed capitalism that have more or less viable expectations of being able to achieve government and urgently need to elaborate a theory that fulfils two objectives: to make them credible in the eyes of broad social sectors that distrust their access to power, and to serve as a basis for a strategy of transition to socialism in the conditions of a democracy of developed capitalism. It is important to point out this characteristic because once Eurocommunism failed, real socialism collapsed, and the communist parties became politically irrelevant, the strategic debate ceased to be a priority. The Marxist parties were reduced to a marginal political situation and were mainly oriented towards critical work without the capacity to provoke transformations. Secondly, the major problem facing these communist parties at the time was to define their position and relations with the Soviet Union. This issue generated intense internal Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century tensions within the parties because their criticism and distancing were essential for their discourse of democratic socialism to gain credibility in the face of a Soviet Union that at that time was posing challenges to them, such as the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan or the military coup in Poland. However, the historical ties of these parties with the Soviet Union, their identity and the emotional attachment of a large part of their militancy led them to contradictory positions and confrontations between the leadership and the rank and file. With the disappearance of the Soviet Union, so did this problem, but despite their distancing from it, with the exception of the PCF, which reconciled with it again, this collapse ended up affecting them deeply. Third, the challenge they faced was complicated and not certain to have a satisfactory solution, as history eventually confirmed. Initially, because the adoption of a strategy of democratic or peaceful or institutional transition, as it was sometimes defined, could assimilate them to classical social democracy before the First World War, reproducing, in another historical context, some of the debates and dilemmas that took place at that time. What specific and novel contribution could Eurocommunism make to convince that its strategy was clearly different from classical social democracy? On the other hand, adopting this path was no guarantee either that the powers that be in the liberal democracies would allow these parties electoral access to power - as demonstrated by the blockade suffered by the PCI and the strategies of tension deployed to prevent this from happening - or that if they did reach power they would be able to develop their programme, as happened with the military coup in Chile against the Allende government. Eurocommunism experienced its most influential period in the second half of the 1970s when three major communist parties in Western Europe identified themselves with this trend, the PCE, the PCF and the PCI. Its theoretical origins have been the subject of different interpretations that emphasise different events and authors, ranging from the popular-frontism of the 1930s to the contributions of Gramsci and Toggliatti, via Austro-Marxism. The possibility of this current was based on the existence of a series of premises to which its supporters constantly refer, among others: "the weight of the socialist system on the world level, the high level of socialisation of production and human needs, peaceful coexistence, the monopolistic character of the state which would make possible Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez the alliance between the forces in favour of socialism and the non-monopolistic bourgeoisie. "765 . The genesis of this current is dotted with disagreements and ruptures with the historical links that the communist parties had maintained with the USSR, which ultimately led each of these parties to end up in different situations, once Eurocommunism itself entered into crisis as an alternative to the impasse that the communists were going through in their actions in the developed countries of the West. The two clearest examples of this rupture had to do with two international actions of the Soviet Union: the interventions in Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan in 1968 and 1979. There are a number of characteristics which identify this current within what was previously called the communist movement; firstly, as opposed to the monolithism and unanimity always demanded, but never achieved, by the USSR, the Euro-communists accepted diversity and divergence; secondly, they recognised the need for a strong relationship between democracy and socialism as well as the maintenance of the freedoms achieved in the advanced liberal democracies; thirdly, they demanded the autonomy of each party to elaborate its own line and strategy in an attitude open to exploring new ways of achieving socialism; finally, they demanded their right to criticise openly and frankly socialism in a spirit of openness and openness; thirdly, they claimed the autonomy of each party to elaborate its own line and strategy in an open attitude to explore new ways to achieve socialism; finally, they claimed their right to criticise openly and frankly the actually existing socialism without this being considered as anti-Sovietism. For Eurocommunism, the transition to socialism is no longer conceived in classical Leninist terms, starting from an initial moment of conquest and destruction of the capitalist state, but is conceived as a long process of democratic transformation of the state and society, in which freedoms and rights are expanded, reformulated and enriched in a more popular and democratic sense. This new orientation also has direct implications for the conception of the party itself, which ceases to see itself as the only genuine representative of the working class and no longer intends to become the dominant force in the state. It also changes the policy of alliances, which is now 765 Sánchez Rodríguez, Jesús, Teoría y práctica democrática en el PCE (1956-82), Fundación de Investigaciones Marxistas, Madrid, 2004, p. 231. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century conceived as being based on the possibility of stable agreements with the non-monopoly bourgeoisie and the middle classes in a long transition phase with democratic stability and mass mobilisations. The political and social struggle, which will persist under these conditions, would be marked by different characteristics from the classic insurrectional path: from within the institutions, extending grassroots democracy, with a gradual programme of reforms to extend rights and freedoms while changing the socio-economic and legal-institutional structure, and based on a broad consensus that allows for electoral control of the most important institutions of the state. Some of the authors who have reflected on the subject have seriously considered the real possibilities of this path and the possible obstacles it might encounter, especially that of the foreseeable violent resistance by the ruling classes to this process. Their answers tend to be optimistic; rely on some of the more superficial features of the liberal political systems established in the industrialised West, on the usual mechanisms of negotiation, on the tendencies towards consensus and the repudiation of violent solutions, or on the ability to prevent the reactionary right from building a mass movement to use as a battering ram against the process of democratic change underway. We can now indicate some fundamental signs of identity in Eurocommunism which differentiated it from the classical strategic conceptions in what was called the communist movement. The first of these signs would be the renunciation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the name by which orthodox Marxism defines the necessary transitional stage in which the proletariat exercises power with a state adequate to the task. In Eurocommunism the conception of democracy is significantly transformed and, from being conceived as an instrument with which to achieve socialism, it ends up being valued as an end in itself, indispensable for the very existence of socialism. Democracy is a conquest of the masses of the people who must continually defend it against the attempts of the ruling classes to empty it of its real content. A similar revaluation is given to the treatment of liberties, which are no longer called formal, and the preservation of all the gains won over a whole historical period, sometimes by the bourgeoisie during its revolutionary stage and sometimes by the proletariat when the bourgeoisie becomes the ruling class, is advocated. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The communist movement never rejected the possibility, even if only theoretically, of a peaceful transition to socialism. The CPSU itself will itself lean in this direction in 1956. What is characteristic of Eurocommunism is that this novelty is accompanied by a series of other changes that give it a different character: renunciation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, renunciation of the leading role of the party, revalorisation of democracy, and so on. Eurocommunism does not renounce direct democracy as an essential instrument for the development of socialism in democracy, but it does not set it in opposition to representative democracy, but rather makes them complementary. Its commitment to a parliamentary path for the transition to socialism forces it to confront two other related problems, that of pluralism and that of alternation in power. With regard to the former, its evolution leads it to accept the need to collaborate with other parties in favour of socialism and to recognise "full rights to all constitutional parties, even those who do not wish the transformation of society in a socialist sense and who oppose it, naturally always with respect for democratic and constitutional norms. "766 . In relation to the possible alternation of power during the transition process, there are also expressions in favour; but there are notorious ambiguities in this respect, given the incoherence and difficulty that such a situation would entail in practice. Two hypothetical arguments are therefore put forward: that at the beginning of the process, with a broad majority, changes of such a profound social, political, economic and institutional nature would be generated that they would make the transformation irreversible; and that once the transition had been promoted by a social majority, this majority would remain loyal throughout the process, given that the changes would benefit the majority of the population. All this theoretical development set in motion by Eurocommunism is dotted with gaps, ambiguities and some inconsistencies, as we have seen, but, in addition, there are three other major problems which this current faced without ever finding an answer to them, especially in the absence of a practical development, which was the only possible area 766 Thesis project for the 15th National Congress of the ICP, Our Flag, issue 97, 1979, p. 20. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century for a solution in any sense of the word. These problems refer to the democratic guarantees offered by Eurocommunism in the face of the mistrust of other political forces, given the historical trajectory followed in the countries of real socialism; the absence of a Marxist theory of the state as an alternative to the liberal-democratic theory; and the dangers that the development of this path could end up leading to the same path followed by social democracy. The bankruptcy of Eurocommunism at the end of the 1970s found its first expression in the PCF, where this political line remained a parenthesis within its orthodox position, serving rather as a supplementary legitimacy for its policy of Left Union with the socialists. With the latter broken, and after the failure of the 1978 elections, the PCF moved away from Eurocommunism while at the same time reconciling itself with the USSR, as was evident in a whole series of gestures at the time, including its approval of the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. In the PCE, the third of the great European Euro-communist parties, the ruin of this line is linked to the failure to fulfil all the forecasts it had made to put an end to Franco's dictatorship, which, together with a series of electoral failures, led to disorientation and a serious internal confrontation. But, apart from the specific circumstances peculiar to each case, there are others of a general nature that can help to explain the failure of this project. Perry Anderson alludes to a crisis of Western Marxism, manifested in the loss of vitality or the abandonment of Marxism by intellectuals, or in the loss of weight of the communist parties in the societies of southern Europe, where, since the Second World War, they had maintained great weight and influence. A general factor in this crisis of Eurocommunism was the reduction of the traditional social and electoral base on which the communist parties had been relying. On the one hand, the traditional working class was losing weight in the social structure of the advanced Western countries, and on the other hand, the crisis hit, above all, those sectors where the communists had had their main strongholds: mining, iron and steel, etc. Another factor would be the continued discrediting of real socialism, which would extend its effects to these parties, despite their distancing from and criticism of the Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Eastern European regimes, helping to undermine their social support. Moreover, the attitude towards real socialism produced growing internal tensions, since it was an issue that affected the deep identity of these parties, their historical raison d'être, and there was an emotional link with the October revolution and all its meaning, a link that remained stronger with the passage of time the further one went down to the base of these parties. Thirdly, it is necessary to refer to the set of cultural changes that affected Western societies and whose impact on the communist parties would have two consequences767 . On the one hand, the rise of individualistic, consumerist and hedonist attitudes undermined the collectivist values, such as class solidarity and self-sacrificing militancy, on which communists had built their organisational practices. On the other hand, there was the emergence of new social demands, such as environmentalism, feminism, pacifism, etc., which the communist parties were unable to take up at the beginning because they were far removed from the traditional themes of mobilisation and propaganda, and which deprived them of the support of a potential electorate that was transferred to the new social movements: "in this unfavourable change in the social and political environment, the communist parties gave clear signs of a lack of adaptation and contributed, moreover, to increasing their internal tensions". In short, after the bloody defeat of the Chilean experience and the failure of Eurocommunism, the majority of communist organisations were reduced almost to irrelevance and, as a consequence, there was an ideological retreat within them, amidst a feeling of confusion. With any possibility of initiating some kind of transition to socialism having disappeared from the historical horizon, with the political system based on liberal democracy having stabilised - the crises in the latter, which never ceased to be expressed, never led to a return to socialism, never led to a return to dictatorships or attempts at socialist transition - strategic thinking disappeared with this possibility and was replaced in Marxist organisations by tactical lines of struggle within capitalist societies, which criticised and rejected these experiences (in the case of Eurocommunism), or ignored them (in the case of the Chilean UP), without proposing any strategic project for the new situation. 767 A summary of these analyses can be found in the report by Luis Ramiro Fernández, Cambio, estrategias políticas y estrategias organizativas: el caso de Izquierda Unida, in typescript. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Thus, when three major upheavals took place at the beginning of the 21st century, represented by the anti-neoliberal struggles in Latin America, the Arab Spring, and the anti-austerity struggles in Europe with the economic crisis that began in 2008, the Marxist parties had practically nothing to say. With the exception of Syriza in Greece which ended in a rapid surrender, precisely because of the absence of strategic thinking - the rest were dominated by various populist, indigenist or Islamist directions. Thus, despite all the contributions we have analysed, and the thousands of Marxisms we will analyse below, Marxism proved practically inoperative when there were historical conjunctures of crisis and important mass mobilisations such as the three we have not referred to. This is an undeniable symptom of the crisis of Marxism, which we will deal with in a later chapter. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Thousands of Marxisms The multiplicity of interpretations and historical developments, the variety of "Marxisms" is rooted not only in this diversity of epistemological foundations, in this particular synthesis of theories and cultural traditions, but also in the way this epistemological diversity is expressed in the tensions existing in Marx's theoretical formulations in relation to central theoretical and political problems raised in his work. Contribution to the critique of actually existing Marxism Edgardo Lander Wallerstein calls this the stage that would begin in the 1950s and extend to the present day. It is true that from that moment on, Marxist theoretical production in different fields began to proliferate, and although the most important part of that production in the first two decades of the stage was by authors belonging to Western Marxism, we have also seen that there is another important number of authors who are not included in this current. Similarly, other more or less lasting currents began to overlap, such as structuralism, British historians, analytical Marxism, Italian workerism, or the neoMarxism that originated with Sweezy and Baran, as well as a multitude of other authors who are not always easy to classify in any one current. This situation is what has led several scholars of Marxism to designate this stage, although there is no exact coincidence as to its original moment, as that of the thousand Marxisms. Also with approximate dates of origin, the expansion of theoretical production coincides with its diffusion in the intellectual cultures of Great Britain and the United States, in this case especially from the 1960s onwards. Kouvelakis768 points to four domains where this expansion took place in particular: cultural studies and literary criticism, where Fredric Jameson, Terry Eagleton and Stuart Hall stand out; political economy, where he cites the work of Anwar Shaikh, Fred Moseley and economists connected with 768 Kouvelakis, Stathis, Planète Marx : sur la situation actuelle du marxisme, pp. 13-4. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century the University of London-SOAS such as Ben Fine, Alfredo Saad-Filho and Costas Lpavitsas; the discipline of international relations in which the work of the neoGramscian school founded by Robert Cox, the theory of the transnational capitalist class by Kees van der Pijl and that of the uneven and combined development of Justin Rosenberg, or the contributions on imperialism and international political economy carried out by authors such as Ellen Meiksins-Wood, Giovanni Arrighi, Peter Gowan, Leo Panitch or Alex Callinicos stand out; and, finally, the domain of geography with the works of David Harvey, Mike Davis, Edward Soja, etc. But Kouvelakis does not exhaust there the inventory of Marxist theoretical production, whose maximum expansion he locates in the 1980s, and mentions other complementary contributions such as the current of the "new dialectic" centred on the reading of Marx's work in a Hegelian sense; important historians such as Peter Linebaugh, Chris Wickham, Benno Teschke and John Haldon; and the contributions in the field of the environment and ecology such as those made by James O'Connor, John Bellamy-Foster and Paul Burkett. Do these authors continue the line taken by Western Marxism or do they have different characteristics? Kouvelakis highlights the points of difference and similarity. In the first place, the fact that the bulk of this new intellectual production is in the domain of the social sciences, i.e., far removed from the abstract philosophy characteristic of Western Marxism, although he recognises that this divergence could be only superficial in view of the work of some of the authors. However, the points of similarity are stronger, two of which stand out: an even more radical separation from political practice than that of Western Marxist intellectuals, and an accentuation of the university character of these new authors. However, despite this, Kouvelakis is reluctant to accept that Anderson's theses of Western Marxism are confirmed. In principle, because the absence of a relation of productive Anglo-Saxon Marxism to political practice is historically explained by the fact that the absence of Marxist mass organisations in those countries has caused Marxist intellectuals to orient themselves towards the sphere of culture and research. Secondly, because there has continued to be an important theoretical production in Western Europe, with a predominance of philosophy, to which Tosel has applied the adjective of a thousand Marxisms. Kouvelakis focuses this continental European Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez production on two countries above all. In France, he distinguishes several currents, the Althusserian-influenced one with André Tosel, Jean Robelin, Tony Andréani and Georges Labica; the Trotskyist one with Daniel Bensaïd and Michael Löwy; the communist one with Lucien Sève and Michel Vadée; and the one influenced by the Frankfurt School with Jean Marie Vincent and Gérard. Raulet. But also other authors interested in the study of Marxist texts such as Miguel Abensour, Jacques Texier, Antoine Artous and Solange Mercier-Josa. In Italy, among other Marxist authors, he points to Domenico Losurdo, Guido Oldrini, Alberto Burgio and Roberto Finelli; along with authors from currents such as postoperaism, with Antonio Negri, Paolo Virno and Christian Marazzi; Gramscian authors such as Guido Liguori and Fabio Frosini; and post-Althusserian authors such as Vittorio Morfino and Maria Turchetto. More scattered, he also points to another series of current Marxist authors in Germany, or the Budapest school, under the influence of the thought of the mature Lukács, with G.Markus and István Mészáros. Finally, Kouvelakis argues against the confirmation of Anderson's Western Marxism thesis that Marxism is no longer a Western phenomenon, having "nationalised" and "regionalised", taking root in most cultural and linguistic areas of the world, but maintaining an important relationship with Western Marxist thought through the influence of authors such as Lukács, Althusser or Gramsci. The conclusion is not difficult to understand: the expansion of Marxism in the social sciences, abandoning the previous quasi-monopoly of philosophy, is the result of the new university environment in which it develops, the Anglo-Saxon one, where these sciences are strongly implanted, but the characteristics that most defined Western Marxism are now even more accentuated, As could not be otherwise given that, on the one hand, Marxist organisations and their influence have suffered a sharp decline, especially since the debacle of real socialism and, on the other, the Anglo-Saxon world has never had a tradition of Marxist organisations. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century André Tosel769 is the author who has most popularised the term of the thousand Marxisms in a long article aimed at visualising this exuberance of Marxist thinkers. But his study has two drawbacks: the first is that, despite the title of the article, it does not really make a global assessment of all the Marxist production of the last decades, as it focuses especially on France, somewhat less on Italy and, marginally, on Germany or Great Britain, so his study can be taken as a complement to those who have prioritised above all the Anglo-Saxon world. The second drawback is that not all the authors he mentions or analyses can be considered strictly Marxist, some of them would better fall into the category of new critical thought. His study is divided into several periods. The first is between 1968 and 1975 and he considers that it corresponds to the end of Marxism-Leninism and the last reconstructions of the communist dissidences or heresies. With this last qualifier he is actually referring to some key authors that Anderson placed within Western Marxism, such as Lukács or Ernest Bloch. But unlike Anderson, who constructed the category of Western Marxism on the basis of the characteristics we have already seen, and whose essential core lies in the relationship between these thinkers and political practice, Tosel identifies them as heretics, logically with respect to Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. In fact, he highlights in both their difficult relationship with the actually existing socialism, Lukács escaping Soviet repression after the 1956 Hungarian uprising, and Bloch fleeing from the German Democratic Republic to the West, although both maintain a critical solidarity with respect to the experience of 20th century communism. He also considers the influence of Gramsci's philosophy of praxis in those years to be within the heretical camp. Althusser, another of the greats of Western Marxism, is considered by Tosel as a heretic among heretics, who will take on the task of deconstructing dissident Marxisms, putting them in crisis by subjecting "to deconstruction all the elements of Hegelianism maintained by Lukács, Bloch, Gramsci". But it was also in this period, as Tosel puts it, that "the end of theoricist Althusserism, of the search for a general theory of theoretical practices and a global reconstruction of Marxism" took place. 769 Tosel, André, De la fin du marxisme-léninisme aux mille marxismes Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The second period runs from 1975 to 1989, and Tosel considers it to be the period of the crisis of (and in) Marxism, with its problematic reconstructions and abandonments. The crisis that erupted in this period stems above all from "the inability of Marxist theorists to clarify the course of the century itself, to explain the development of "socialist" societies, their nature and their structures, on the basis of historical materialism". This explanation of the causes of the crisis is somewhat forced for two reasons, firstly because this "inability" already existed in the previous period, and even earlier, and secondly because efforts had been made to explain real socialism, for example by Trotskyist or Eurocommunist authors. The rapid decline of Marxism, in comparison with its important intellectual weight in countries such as France and Italy, would be related to the new situation suffered by the communist parties, marginalisation in France and Spain, social-liberal conversion in Italy, and implosion in Eastern Europe, although this last case would actually occur at the end of this period. In this environment, many intellectuals moved away from Marxism in three different ways: abandoning Marxism, returning to a minimal Marx in order to attempt a reconstruction based on the grafting of other currents of thought, and maintaining Marxism as a reserve of a critical utopia awaiting better days. In France, Tosel points out, the efforts to refound Marxism can be found in different currents such as Lucien Séve; in the recovery of the Gramscian philosophy of praxis as a critique of Althusserianism, as in the examples of Jacques Texier, Christine BuciGlucksmann or Tosel himself; in other efforts, such as those carried out by Henri Lefébvre, Yves Schwartz, Toni Andréani, or Georges Labica and G. Bensussan; or in the maintenance of a post-Althusserian current with two strands, the first continuing the discovery of the complexity of Althusser's unfinished work, as in the case of Jacques Texier, Christine Buci-Glucksmann or Tosel himself. Bensussan; or in the maintenance of a post-Althusserian current with two strands, the first continuing the discovery of the complexity of Althusser's unfinished work, as in the case of Jacques Bidet or Jean Robelin, and the second with the prolongation of a certain theoretical productivity in opposition to those who considered this vein sterile, as in the case of Etienne Balibar, who "thus creatively refutes all those who had concluded too quickly that the Althusserian stimulus had been exhausted". He also mentions works oriented towards the study of Marx, such as the works of Daniel Bensaïd, Henri Maler, Michel Vadée and Jacques Derrida. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century However, Tosel himself recognises two weaknesses in the research of these intellectuals. The first is that, being a kind of critical re-reading of Marx, it was necessary to specify what would be the doctrinal minimum to qualify them as Marxist, i.e. he recognises that once situated in the field of the critique of Marxism and using grafts of other thoughts, the borderline between what a work can be considered Marxist or not becomes blurred; The second weakness is the strong characteristic of Western Marxism, the separation of these works from any political process, which makes it practically impossible to translate their critical vein. Tosel's analysis of the situation of Marxism in Italy and Germany, which forms part of his study, gives an even less optimistic assessment of the recovery of Marxism than in France. Italy, with the decomposition of the PCI, also saw a rapid dissolution of the influence of the hegemony of Gramscian praxis (which Tosel calls Marxo-Gramscian-Togliattism), together with the disappearance of its ideological counterweight represented by the school of Galvano Della Volpe, with part of its components shifting to social-liberalism, the most spectacular case of which was Lucio Colleti. Tosel's judgement in this respect is conclusive: "Italian Marxism committed suicide largely by social-liberal metamorphosis, accepting the liberalism of the theories of justice resulting from J. Rawls". But there also remained intellectuals who sought a recomposition of Marxism, as in the case of Domenico Losurdo, or Costanzo Preve. If in Italy the dismal situation of Marxist thought originated in the decomposition of the PCI, in Germany its causes are to be found first in the Nazi victory and then in the German division with an orthodox Marxist-Leninist state in the East. The recomposition of Marxism would take place on the basis of the most complete model of Western Marxism, that of the members of the Frankfurt School. The trajectory of its most prominent representative in its second stage, Jurgen Habermas, is clearly defined by Tosel with a sentence that does not admit of interpretation, "from the reconstruction of historical materialism to the theory of communicative action or the euthanasia of Marxism". Because of his links to the German cultural area, Tosel includes in his study of the thousand Marxisms the so-called Budapest School, made up of former disciples or colleagues of Lukács such as Ferenc Fehér, Agnès Heller and György Márkus, who Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez ended up moving towards liberal positions or those close to Habermas, as was the case with Heller. Finally, the third stage studied by Tosel is properly that of the thousand Marxisms, extending from 1989 to 2005. Its origin and characteristics are given by the debacle of real socialism, the confrontation with capitalist globalisation and the broad enterprise of "de-emancipation" that accompanies it, and the end of the previous orthodoxy-heretical dialectic based on the marginalisation or transformation of the communist parties. Tosel's reading of this period is also clear, "The period of a thousand Marxisms [...] represents the greatest fracture in the history of Marxism, and imposes both the work of mourning770 of a certain continuity and the task of thinking a unity". This plurality, which defines the thousand Marxisms, he considers irreversible, which raises the question of a minimum theoretical agreement so that, beyond the legitimate differences, it is possible to speak of a Marxist thought. Tosel's proposal for this minimum theoretical agreement hinges on two requirements: "(a) agreement on the theoretical possibility (turned urgent at the practical level by the persistence of a useless and unjustifiable inhumanity) of an analysis of globalised capitalism, and of its forms, inscribed in, but not directly derivable from the real submission of labour under capital; (b) agreement on the historical hope in a real possibility of eliminating this inhumanity (which is named alienation, exploitation, sovereignty, domination, manipulation of the powers of the multitude) and of constructing determined social forms expressive of this power or freedom of the multitude." Omar Acha and Débora D'Antonio is their work on Latin American Marxism, and after recognising, like Tosel and other authors, the existence of multiple Marxisms, they propose as nuclear criteria for recognising a current, tendency or thought as Marxist some somewhat different nuclear criteria, "that of a critique of modernity based on the analysis of the "logic of value", as an alienated dynamic, and that of an emancipatory socialist programme based on the "class struggle". "771 770 Expression taken by Tosel from Freud, with which the latter referred to the intrapsychic process following the loss of an object or loved one. 771 Acha Omar, D'Antonio Débora, Cartografía y perspectivas del "marxismo latinoamericano", p. 33. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century In this third stage, the authors Tosel mentions for their contributions to Marxism were largely already working in the previous stage. In the case of Italy, he refers to the works of Domenico Losurdo, Costanzo Preve, Giuseppe Prestipino, Alberto Burgio, Roberto Finelli and Gianfranco La Grassa. In France, to the authors already mentioned in the previous stage, he now adds the names of Gérard Duménil, Dominique Levy. Eustache Kouvelakis, Antoine Artous, Miguel Abensour, Solange Mercier-Josa, Michel Vadée, Isabelle Garo and Henri Maler. Tosel warns that in most cases it is a return to Marx beyond Marxisms, with little attention to the figures of 20th century Marxism. But this is not really what is striking; more symptomatic is the lack of interest or inclination to confront the causes and consequences of the debacle of real socialism or the failure of Eurocommunism, or the lessons to be learned from other experiences such as the failed revolutions for different reasons in Chile, Nicaragua or Portugal. As a persistence of the symptoms of Western Marxism, there is too much insistence on abstract, philosophical, epistemological reflection. This is the price and the cause of the majority's lack of involvement in the concrete politics of transformation. And this, for a thought whose main slogan is to stop interpreting the world in order to transform it, is a sign that something is wrong. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Approaches to the crisis of Marxism The third way of reacting to the crisis [of Marxism] is to take a sufficient historical, theoretical and political perspective to try to discover, although it is not easy, the character, meaning and scope of this crisis. Two or three (brutal) words on Marx and Lenin Louis Althusser The decision as to where the study of the crisis of Marxism should begin chronologically is complicated by the fact that there is no single defining event that can serve as a reference point for the way in which the moment of the fall of the Berlin Wall is taken as the starting point for the collapse of real socialism. By taking as the beginning of the crisis of Marxism the current that Anderson described as Western Marxism, we run the risk of giving a false perception of Marxism and its achievements. All the symptoms that the British historian points out about this current, which we analysed in a previous chapter, are true, but by situating its origin in the defeats of the socialist revolutions of the 1920s, he provokes a striking contradiction. Indeed, the defeats were incontestable - and essential in that they prevented the triumph of socialist revolutions in developed capitalist countries led by the working class, and thus definitively closed off the possibility of socialist revolution as conceived by classical Marxism, in the developed capitalist countries and led by the working class - but in retrospect they could also come to be seen as only a temporary setback. After the end of the Second World War, communist states spread across Eastern Europe, parts of Asia, especially with the Chinese revolution, and even America, with the triumph of the revolution in Cuba. So an observer in the 1960s would rightly speak of the immense expansive force of the socialist world revolution and thus of the strength of Marxism, or at least the idea of speaking of a crisis of Marxism would not cross his mind. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century However, in that same decade, clear symptoms of a crisis began to appear, not so much in Marxism initially as in the so-called socialist camp, when the clashes between the Soviet Union and China began to spread from the clashes between the two countries to the heart of the communist movement, giving rise to the emergence of the Maoist current and the irreversible division of the communist movement. The confrontation was serious because of the weight represented by the two giants, but it was not the first, for there was the precedent of the confrontation between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia following the Yugoslav communists' demand for autonomy in their socialist policy and model; and within the communist movement, broadly understood, the split was even earlier with the rupture and confrontation between Stalinists and Trotskyists. A decade after the Sino-Soviet confrontation, it would be the Euro-communist current, mainly established in Western Europe, which would add a further split within the communist movement. We could even go even further back in time and situate the crisis of Marxism at the beginning of the 20th century when revisionist tendencies first appeared in the parties of the Second International and, a few years later, most of these parties went into holy union with their respective bourgeoisies at the outbreak of World War I. These two events were the turning point from which the socialist parties abandoned Marxism, in practice from those years onwards, officially and solemnly on the occasion of some congress such as Bad Godesberg in Bad Godesberg. These two events were the turning point from which the socialist parties abandoned Marxism, in practice from those years onwards, officially and solemnly on the occasion of a congress such as that of Bad Godesberg in the case of the SPD. If the crisis was quickly closed at the time, it was thanks to the Bolshevik victory in Russia, although, after the debacle of real socialism seven decades later, it is legitimate to ask whether the crisis of the early 20th century was not falsely closed. Indeed, in retrospect, we know today that all the elements that would trigger the collapse of real socialism and the restoration of capitalism in the immense part of the world it came to dominate were being incubated. For this very reason, and with the advantage of analysing socio-political phenomena several decades later, it is not at all unreasonable to accept, as Anderson proposes, the beginning of the crisis of Marxism in Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez the current he popularised as Western Marxism, or rather, the fact that this current was an expression of this crisis. However, the first broad discussion in the intellectual field on the basis of an acute awareness of the existence of a crisis of Marxism did not take place until the 1970s. This is already a symptom; the earlier split of Trotskyism and the dispute over Lenin's inheritance, or the confrontation of Stalinism with Yugoslavia and so-called Titoism, despite the seriousness of these events, had not yet given rise to this awareness of crisis. And, on the other hand, Anderson locates the reasons for Western Marxism in the defeats of the European revolutions of the 1920s. Therefore, if there is an awareness of the crisis of Marxism in the 1970s, and not so much before, it is because it is linked to the crisis unleashed within the socialist camp. This leads to the need to make a number of important distinctions at the level of the crisis. First there would be the intellectuals, who elaborate, discuss and criticise Marxist theory, and who influence, and are influenced in turn by, the development and historical vicissitudes of the labour and socialist movement. Then there was a period (1917-45) during which the Soviet Union, as the only communist country, created an international, the Third International, in which it grouped together all the follower parties in the world, which confronted the social democracy of the recomposed Second International. This was a period in which an original crisis already appeared within the Bolsheviks - who appeared as the continuers of Marxism in the face of the parties of the socialist international which were gradually abandoning it - with the split of the leading core around Stalin and Trotsky, a still weak denunciation of Stalinist crimes and the appearance of a new international, the fourth, of Trotsky's followers. Finally, from 1945 onwards, what is known as the socialist camp appeared, made up of the different countries where in one way or another the communist parties conquered state power. References to the communist movement therefore refer to the communist countries plus the communist organisations active in the capitalist countries. The communist movement, in this broad sense, entered into crisis shortly after acquiring such a profile. The confrontation with Titoism, the uprisings in the GDR and Hungary, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Sino-Soviet confrontation and the splits in the communist parties are some of its main expressions. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century This crisis in the communist camp, brilliantly analysed in Fernando Claudín's book, The Crisis of the Communist Movement, cannot but weigh heavily on the theoretical elaborations of intellectuals, and be a fundamental factor in the crisis of Marxism that came to the fore in the 1970s. The political crisis of Marxism, which had been triggered by Bernstein's revisionism in the SPD and aggravated by the betrayal by the socialist parties of the agreements of the Second International at the outbreak of the First World War, only seemed to be closed for a short time by the Bolshevik victory. But almost immediately, the confrontation within the triumphant Bolshevism once again revived a crisis which would grow over time, without any event capable of reversing it, until the collapse of real socialism produced a definitive vacuum. From that moment on, any theoretical contribution from Marxism will be made in an unprecedented and absolutely adverse context. In the first place, because it will have to take into account the burden of the immense historical defeat it has suffered, which it has not yet been able to explain convincingly, or when it has been explained, its conclusions have been rather pessimistic for the future of Marxism. On the other hand, a large number of the political, economic or strategic contributions of the Marxist classics have become obsolete. This is evidenced by the priority recourse since then to Gramsci over other classical contributions, and the return to Marx in a desperate attempt to salvage an original nucleus from which to start again. Part of the critical economic analysis of capitalism could be saved as valid, updating it, but this alone, without a credible project of transformation to accompany it, is not a theory for social revolution, and remains only one of critical interpretation of capitalism. Secondly, this historical context is also adverse because Marxist theory has no mass movements to address and draw on in its elaboration. The three major social upheavals since 1989 have not been led by Marxist-leaning organisations and have even been against Marxism, as in the case of the mobilisations to overthrow the communist regimes in Eastern Europe, or the mass mobilisations in the Islamic world, led by the religious clerics or recuperated by them. In the two anti-neoliberal mass upheavals, the one that took place in Latin America at the turn of the century, the role of Marxist organisations was absolutely marginal; and the one that developed in Europe as a Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez consequence of the economic crisis that began in 2008, only Syriza could be considered a party oriented by Marxist currents, and it ended in a quick defeat. We have already dealt in previous chapters with Western Marxism, which can be seen as a precedent or symptom of the crisis of Marxism in the intellectual or theoretical field. Now we must turn to the discussion in the 1970s, already openly, about the crisis of Marxism. At that time the discussion took place almost exclusively among mainstream Marxist intellectuals, i.e. those more or less intensely linked to the so-called communist camp, already in clear decomposition in that period. There is hardly any participation of Trotskyist authors who, on the contrary, see the degeneration of their main rival since the break-up of the left opposition with Stalinism and, as a consequence, harboured expectations of being able to channel the revolutionary movements along the original path of Leninism of which they consider themselves the heirs. And the only major non-Marxist intellectual to take part in the debate is the Italian political scientist Norberto Bobbio. Likewise, European authors continue to be the majority in this debate, although this time there will also be some Latin American authors. An illustrative way of presenting the crisis of Marxism is to do so by contrasting the positions of different authors in different periods, but, above all, it is necessary to recall the initial debates of the 1970s and part of the 1980s as something essential to be able to understand the crisis itself and the new critical post-Marxist thinking of the early 21st century. It is almost inevitable to begin to analyse the discussions around the crisis of Marxism in the 1970s with a brief text by a very important author in the Marxist camp at that time, namely Louis Althusser and his booklet Two or three (brutal) words on Marx and Lenin772 . It is a very direct work, where the author openly acknowledges the crisis afflicting Marxism, but which, due to its brevity, remains on the surface. Without seriously considering why it is possible to speak of a crisis of Marxism - which he seems to reduce to the crisis of the communist movement and the inability of Marxism to explain it - he points out the three reactions that have arisen in his camp. The first is that of the parties which deny its existence or are content to abandon the most 772 Althusser, Louis, Two or three (brutal) words on Marx and Lenin. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century contentious presuppositions. The second is to accept the existence of such a crisis and to suffer its erosion in the hope of a solution coming from a revival of the workers' movement. The third would be the most productive position, "to take a sufficient historical, theoretical and political perspective to try to discover, even if it is not easy, the character, meaning and scope of this crisis". The crisis, for Althusser, is not recent, it has only been blocked due to the weight of Stalinist orthodoxy, and the fact that it has finally come brutally to the surface may offer an opportunity for the renewal of Marxism. If Stalinism only blocked the crisis, this means that its roots are earlier, with this author pointing to the "difficulties, contradictions and lacunae" already present in Marx, Lenin and Gramsci as the "Gordian knots" of that crisis. One would expect a philosopher of Althusser's stature, faced with such a serious subject, to devote his extensive knowledge of Marxism to delve into what he calls "difficulties, contradictions and lacunae" but, disappointingly, he does not. He merely points "schematically" to four examples: the first is the unsatisfactory theory of exploitation in Marx arising from "the "accounting" presentation of surplus value"; the second is the "problem of Marxist philosophy"; the third is the absence of a theory on the state, on which he briefly but incisively criticises Lenin and Gramsci, for which he uses the term "pathetic"; and the last example is the absence also of a theory on "the organisations of the class struggle and first of all of the party and the trade union. " The French philosopher points out that crises have been consubstantial to the history of Marxism, but only cites the one triggered by the First World War and the capitulation of the parties of the Second International, but the current one (in the 1970s) is on an unprecedented scale, without explaining why. The pamphlet ends by confirming its disappointing character by relying again on a new revival of Marxism already in gestation as a consequence of the mass struggles. He writes this in 1977, when we have just gone through the bloody defeat of the UP government in Chile, the defeat of the expectations of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, the end of the hopes derived from May 68 in Europe, or the repression of the Prague Spring. But what is important for the purpose of this work is that a philosopher of Althusser's prestige should brutally bring to the surface a phenomenon which, although known, was little debated. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Althusser was not the only important Marxist philosopher to clearly expose the crisis of Marxism in those years; he was joined in the enterprise by Lucio Colletti. An article by each of them on the crisis was published jointly in the Spanish journal El Viejo Topo773 and would draw all the attention to it. Both interventions took place against the backdrop of the critical discussion on the societies of real socialism. In Althusser's article, which specifically responds to a series of questions posed by Rossana Rossanda, the French philosopher in fact merely returns to the themes contained in Two or Three Words..., rejecting the conception of Marxism as a philosophy of history, and stressing that "Marxist theory says almost nothing about the state, nor about ideology or ideologies, nor about politics, nor about the organisations of the class struggle", pointing out that this is a "blind spot". Colletti's article is more incisive and critical. His starting point, as he points out several times, is the crisis derived from the failure of Marxism in the evolution of the societies of actually existing socialism, denying in practice all the emancipatory promises with which they were born. It is therefore a political crisis of Marxism. His critique of the absence of a Marxist theory of the state and politics is more penetrating than that of Althusser. If Marxism lacks such a framework, it is because its theory "of politics and the state is, in reality, the theory of the "extinction" of both", which, in turn, is indebted to an organic conception of society that "hides in its entrails the (romantic) dream of the subordination of politics to ethics". If it is argued that with the abolition of private property, conflict over alternative ends disappears, then the "need for mediation of interests", i.e. politics, disappears, and only the technical problems of choosing means remain to be solved. This, for Colletti, is a conception indebted to Hegel's philosophy of history. In this article, Colletti gives two clues as to the level of critique, and rupture, he is reaching with Marxism. On the one hand, as we have seen, he considers Althusser's critique to be insufficient, he goes further and, moreover, does not allude at all to the possibility of a renewal of Marxism; on the other hand, he ends the article by pointing out the ambiguities and contradictions of the PCI, with which he had broken with in 1964, which are, in the end, those that would also be made by extension to all 773 Althusser, Louis, El problema del Estado, Colletti, Lucio, El problema de la dialéctica, El Viejo Topo, nº 20, May 1978. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Eurocommunism. Politically, his ideological drift led this Italian Marxist first to become close to Bettino Craxi and finally to become a senator for Silvio Berlusconi's party. Another author who reflected on the crisis was Ludolfo Paramio, who added a singular approach in two aspects, the first by focusing the crisis of Marxism on a geographical area and a specific phenomenon, Latin Europe and Eurocommunism, and the second by prematurely proposing a way out of the crisis that would later be followed by other authors, a move towards post-Marxism. This Spanish politician and physicist, politically attached to social democracy, experienced at close quarters the brilliance and rapid decline of Eurocommunism, read the criticisms of Althusser and Colleti, and quickly made the connection between the two phenomena. But he was not the only one; Anderson also argued for a time that the crisis of Marxism was a phenomenon restricted to Latin Europe and the failure of Eurocommunism there. The difference is that Paramio was already quick to support post-Marxism in 1988, when he was already a member of a PSOE that had just renounced its Marxist identity. Latin Marxism", as they put it, was in decline after the death or psychiatric unbalance of Della Volpe, Poulantzas and Althusser, and the positions of Colletti and Althusser had aggravated it. But the limitations they had pointed out and the criticisms they made were not new either, at the same time as important theoretical contributions were being made in Marxism in the 1970s. Thus, Paramio's explanation for the seriousness of the crisis posed by Marxism in Latin Europe is that what collapses definitively with Eurocommunism is the reason for Marxism's success, its functioning as a "secular creed". This aspect of Marxism is what would prevent it from renewing itself, as a scientific theory would be able to do. His religious interpretation of Marxism is based on what he considers a "split vision between an emancipated future, assumed in teleological terms, and an alienated present reality, passively assumed as such", the failure of Eurocommunism being, then, that of the late attempt to secularise the left in Latin Europe, that of the attempt to find a reformist strategy while maintaining its revolutionary hallmarks. This criticism of Marxism based on the accusation that it fulfils in certain respects the functions of a secular religion has also been voiced by other Marxist authors such as Alvin Gouldner, Lucio Colletti, or Edgardo Lander, who points out that "this Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez identification with Christian millenarianism, with the suffering of the oppressed, this offer, that in spite of everything, a better world is guaranteed, is thus a latent link with religion that establishes affective identifications of such a nature that, as in the case of religion, they make the refutation of Marxism difficult. If we do not take into account this dimension of Marxism (which includes myths, symbols, hymns, flags, colours, martyrs, dates and sacred texts...) we can hardly adequately explain what has been its development over the last century, and its persistent vigour. " 774 In any case, only one Marxist theoretician of any notoriety openly appealed to the use of religious emotionality to reinforce the effectiveness of Marxist ideas among the masses, and that was a rather heretical Marxist, José Carlos Mariátegui, whom we have already had occasion to analyse above. These latter criticisms are somewhat cynical because, in reality, any political tradition that has appealed to the masses to achieve profound social change has had to employ in varying doses a mixture of rational arguments with many others of an emotional nature. This is the case of nationalism, populism, fascism, anarchism, conservatism, liberalism and so on. It is therefore necessary to separate the rational or scientific core that may be present in these political traditions, some of which are almost non-existent, from the discourses and techniques used to address the broad masses and win their support. Recently, catch-all parties, of which the social democrats are a good example, use the most sophisticated techniques of electoral marketing in the modern media to achieve mass electoral adhesions, among which the emotional promotions of leaders stand out as opposed to programmatic arguments. Secularisation would then consist in the renunciation of radical social transformations in favour of a technical management of the existing capitalist reality, which is the ultimate proposal of social democracy. But the important thing about Paramio is not this social-democratic position, which was already found in Bernstein in a more novel and elegant way, but rather that he promotes a varied current born with the crisis of Marxism known as post-Marxism and which will later have continuers with more elaborate proposals, which would represent a more serious challenge to a flagging and disoriented Marxism. The Spanish politician's 774 Lander, Edgardo, Contribución a la crítica del marxismo realmente existente, p. 22. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century position, in this work to which we are referring, is that there are positive aspects in the Marxist tradition that would justify its reworking and updating, but he immediately points to the objective of this updating, which is clearly outside the sense of the intellectual and political project that Marxism represents, by pointing out that one of the most dangerous legacies of classical Marxism, which survived its crisis, is the "identification of socialism with anti-capitalism". In this way, Paramio seemed to point in the same direction as Laclau, a kind of ambiguous "radical democracy", but in the end, the Spanish author simply ended up taking refuge in the actually existing social democracy. Stathis Kouvelakis' view of the crisis of Marxism is novel only on one point which, throughout his article, he contradicts. Indeed, this Greek Marxist begins by interpreting this crisis in a subjective sense, "what this suggests is that a category of agents who identify themselves as "Marxists" declare that they live their relationship with this theoretical object in the form of a "crisis"".775 For him, we could speak of two crises separated by nearly a century, which would mark a cycle of Marxism, whose two best exponents in the theoretical field would be Bernstein and Althusser. Kouvelakis is broadly correct in his periodisation, but the meaning is different from the one he proposes. Thus, an interpretation that may be more accurate would be the following: the crisis of Marxism became apparent at the end of the 19th century, as he puts it, and entered an acute phase in 1914 when most sections of the Second International betrayed all their congress resolutions to oppose an inter-imperialist war and, if it broke out, to use it to make revolution. In 1914 the ruin of Marxism and the organisations which had taken it as a reference and guide was total, but the triumph of the revolution in Russia in 1917 closed the crisis with a practical and theoretical development different from the one followed up to that time. In this sense it is true that the Russian revolution closed the previous cycle of Marxism, characterised on the organisational level by the model of the electoral and mass social democratic party, and on the strategic level by the combination of electoral politics and the conviction in the 775 Kouvelakis, Stathis, The Crises of Marxism and the Transformation of Capitalism, p. 41. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez inevitable collapse of capitalism. And it opened a new cycle characterised by the spread of the Bolshevik model of party and revolution, by the spread of communist revolutions throughout the world, and by the degradation of these revolutions by the virus of Stalinism and its consequences. The historical failure of real socialism reopened the crisis, but not by taking it back to the parameters of the early 20th century, but to a much more serious, almost terminal situation. If in 1914 the social democratic model and the conviction in the inevitable capitalist collapse collapsed - and the socialist parties rebuilt after the war ended up abandoning any relationship with Marxism - in 1989 a world-wide attempt to build a socialist society once the respective bourgeoisies had been defeated and capitalism abolished collapsed. Two models of accession to power and of building socialist societies failed in their ultimate goals. The situation was becoming truly critical for Marxism, with the aggravating factor that no historical event with functions similar to those of the Russian revolution has now taken place, nor is there any prospect of it taking place. In this sense it is understandable that Marxist literature after 1989 has mostly revolved around critical analyses of capitalism or innocuous philosophical discussions. Therefore, there are abysmal differences between the two crises, which Kouvelakis tries to mask with false similarities: "the schizophrenia of German social democracy" is not the same as the collapse of real socialism; nor can one compare the "uneasiness at perceiving the unfinished and internally contradictory character of Marx's oeuvre" with the "historical refutation of most of the political, economic, strategic and organisational proposals of Marxist intellectuals and organisations for more than a century".776 with the historical refutation of most of the political, economic, strategic and organisational proposals of Marxist intellectuals and organisations for more than a century. Similarly, Kouvelakis confuses what are theoretically symptoms of a latent crisis about to break out - the theories of Bernstein and Althusser - with the crises themselves, which were internally undermining the Second International in one case and real socialism in the other, and which were triggered by historical events such as the 776 Kouvelakis, Stathis, The Crises of Marxism and the Transformation of Capitalism, p. 42. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century outbreak of the First World War or Gorbachev's perestroika. Perhaps for this very reason, the Greek Marxist speaks of the "subjective" character of crises, when they are absolutely objective. But although Kouvelakis speaks of "subjective" crises, he nevertheless links the crisis that began at the end of the 19th century with certain changes in the political and economic planes of capitalism, such as the extension of suffrage, the growing complexity of the social structure, the heterogeneity of the proletariat and the support of the labour movement for the policies of colonial expansion. Bernstein evidently offered a reading and a new political project from these data that would be the basis of the new post-Great War social democracy, and Kouvelakis acknowledges that the response of the orthodox centre, represented by Kautsky, and the left, represented by Luxemburg, "may have seemed weak". In fact it is the same weak response, skipping a century, that Roggerone points out to the challenges posed to Marxism by Laclau. In fact, Kouvelakis, like many other Marxists, links the two authors and considers postMarxism to be a "lowered Bernsteinism". The second crisis, which is initially expressed in Althusser's texts, Kouvelakis considers to have been overcome; it began in 1989 in Berlin and ended in 1991 in Moscow. Then, in this case too, it would have had objective causes, the crisis having ended with the collapse of real socialism, this being a classic Trotskyist explanation which placed the blockage of the international revolutionary movement in the nefarious influence of Stalinism and its continuation. One consequence of the end of this second crisis, according to the Greek Marxist, would be the disappearance of controversies within Marxism, with the sole exception of Laclau's post-Marxism, which he simply considers a reformism of no further importance. In the same way, he disqualifies those who are simply content to reaffirm the core of Marxist theory as inadequate to deal with the new realities. Thus, Kouvelakis completes the similarities between the first and second crises of Marxism: if Laclau is a downgraded Bernstein, those who now turn to classical Marxism would be playing the role of Kautsky and the orthodox centre. However, there is now on the horizon neither a Luxemburg, nor a Lenin and his Bolsheviks, nor a Trotsky. Perhaps Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez this is why Kouvelakis states that "The latest episode in the cycle of the crises of Marxism has ended with a rather disappointing result".777 How to interpret two apparently contradictory statements, such as that the second crisis of Marxism is closed, but the result is disappointing, because, according to Kouvelakis, Marxism remains productive for thinking about the present - for which he cites some current authors - "even if it cannot provide any guarantee for the future". In Palti's terms, Marxism would maintain knowledge but would not be able to sustain truth. Norberto Bobbio focuses his analysis of the crisis of Marxism in the latter sense, and looks for the basis of the crises in the non-fulfilment of some of the key predictions made by Marxism. He points out first three and then four major crises of Marxism: "The first time at the beginning of the [20th] century, when it seemed that the collapse of capitalism would not be realised any time soon; after the first World War, when the first socialist revolution took place in a backward country in capitalist terms; during the long Stalinist dictatorship, when the state, instead of being extinguished, was increasingly strengthened until it gave birth to a new figure in the history of state forms, the totalitarian state; finally in these last years, when not only has capitalism not collapsed because of its internal contradictions but it has overcome and far surpassed the challenge of the first socialist state in history. Of the four crises, this last one seems by far the most serious".778 And further on779 refers to the strategies that were employed in each crisis to save the fundamentals of Marxism, and which are now useless in the face of the current crisis, the first being, "revisionism, which considered it possible to save Marxism by grafting it onto another philosophy, be it positivism or neo-Kantianism, or phenomenology, or by returning to the genuine Marx, the "real" Marx, misunderstood by the bad disciples, even though both strategies have been tried again; the first in the USA with the grafting of Marx's philosophy with analytic philosophy, the second with the recurrent operation of liberating Marx from the various Marxisms." Consequently, Bobbio stresses, stronger salvage strategies are needed today, pointing out two. The first would be to deny the immediate relationship between theory-practice in order to free Marx from 777 Kouvelakis, Stathis, The Crises of Marxism and the Transformation of Capitalism, p. 48. 778 Bobbio, Norberto, Ni con Marx, ni contra Marx, FCE, Mexico, 1999, p. 252. 779 Ibid, p. 272-3 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century responsibility for the experiences of real socialism. The second would consist in dissociating the different Marx (philosopher, economist, etc.) in order to discard some and save others. These strategies evoked by Bobbio are reminiscent of the belts of theories added to counteract the anomalies that appeared in the core of Marxist theory which, as we have seen, were exposed by Burawoy, and which ceased to be produced six decades ago. Palti's work, to which we have already referred, represents an interesting study of the "different ways of experiencing the "crisis of Marxism"", for which he initially takes two contrasting models. The first he looks to Nahuel Moreno, the Argentine Trotskyist leader, the second to Alain Badiou, the French critical philosopher. Both are traversed by different types of "tragic dialectic", Moreno's likening it to "a tragic vision of the world", Badiou's to an "experience of disaster". He also opposes these two models to other ways of experiencing the crisis of Marxism, that of the orthodox, which would be transformed into a sort of "lived experience", and that of the revisionists, where it would "tend to be diluted" within a general crisis of politics. Thus, Perry Anderson and Fredric Jameson would represent "attempts to adapt to the crisis of the matrixes of thought forged in the second post-war period" and would pair up with Moreno's work, while Ernesto Laclau would be the model of revisionism and counterpoint to Badiou. It is, then, an interesting and surprising exercise in approaching the crisis of Marxism from very different intellectual and life trajectories and from the double perspective of the crisis, the first referring to Marxism as a theory or explanatory philosophical-social paradigm, as knowledge; the second approaching it from its political practice and its historical results, as truth. In fact, Palti begins by contrasting Anderson's final vision with that of Badiou. To do so, he takes a quick tour of the evolution of Anderson's thought in relation to Marxism and its possibilities. We have already analysed Anderson's vision contained in Considerations on Western Marxism and In the Footsteps of Historical Materialism, the latter of which rejected, at the time of 1983, the existence of an all-encompassing crisis of Marxism, and which only concerned, in reality, the countries of southern Europe where Eurocommunism, of which he was an incisive critic, had failed, and where a new idealism had spread in the form of structuralism and post-structuralism. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez However, the debacle of real socialism was to be a fundamental historical turning point; it was not just another defeat among the many that the workers' and socialist movement had suffered over more than a century of history, but the end of an entire epoch and an unprecedented historical failure. Anderson, however, reacted contradictorily to this event, reaffirming the theoretical superiority of Marxism and certifying that it was at its most creative moment. At this point, Anderson relies on Fredric Jameson who reveals to him the "need to destroy Marxism as truth (as a practical political horizon) in order to preserve it as knowledge (which allows him to finally arrive at the formulation of the dilemma with which he opens the new series of the New Left Review)". Palti summarises the British Marxist's evolution, "Anderson completes the cycle begun with Considerations. While in the mid-1970s he envisaged the early reconciliation between revolutionary theory and practice, thus reviving the classical Marxist legacy, in the 1980s he would instead accept the advantages of keeping their respective domains separate, only to end up, in the 1990s, discovering the need to admit its destruction as revolutionary practice as the only way to save it as theory".780 The contrast to this point of arrival represented by Anderson would be, in Palti's opinion, Alain Badiou's position, which, inversely to Anderson's, assumes that "the possibility of saving Marxism as a political practice passes precisely by admitting that it would no longer be able to account for reality or its own situation, that is, that the categories with which it attempted to make history and the world intelligible would have proved ineffective. In short, Badiou inverts Anderson's project: in order to save Marxism as truth, it would have to be destroyed precisely as knowledge". For Badiou, Marxism is "historically undone", "its conceptual maintenance belongs only to the order of discourse", and to remain in it means "occupying a place that is destroyed, and therefore uninhabitable". In order to approach the truth that Marxism can represent as revolutionary practice, Palti uses the thought of Nahuel Moreno. He is an important Argentine Trotskyist leader of the last quarter of the twentieth century who confronted the leadership of the Fourth 780 Palti, Elías José, Verdades y saberes del marxismo. Reacciones de una tradición política ante su crisis, p. 52. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century International headed by Mandel. The crisis of Marxism is interpreted by Trotskyism as the combination of two contradictory phenomena, the first being the revolutionary triumphs after the Second World War which reversed the defeats of the 1920s and 1930s and achieved the extension of the socialist states throughout the world; the second is the consolidation of Stalinist domination and its control of the revolutionary processes which, besides preventing an alternative revolutionary leadership, would end up leading the revolutionary processes underway either to defeat or to revolutionary degradation and, in the end, also to their final defeat. This new situation determines an essential turn in the trajectory of the socialist revolution which Moreno synthesizes in two principles. The first one is that the subjective question of the existence or not of a revolutionary leadership becomes the decisive question for that trajectory, following in this point Trotsky's legacy. The factor of objective conditions, of their maturity or not to allow for The determinism of classical Marxism thus gave way to the political dimension and the weight of contingency. The determinism of classical Marxism thus gave way to the political dimension and the weight of contingency. The second principle is that the old alternative expressed in the slogan of socialism or barbarism is viewed in a more sombre perspective than that of the classical Marxists, for whom barbarism could be a stage, but never a definitive end, for it would inexorably have to be that of socialism. This confidence was the hallmark of the Marxism of the Second International and, later, of the communist movement, after the Bolshevik victory first, and then the expansion of the communist states throughout the world. If Trotsky had already given signs of pessimism in this respect in the fascist advance of the 30's, Moreno, putting in the foreground the subjective factor as a fundamental element of the development of the world socialist revolution, opens the possibility, in Palti's opinion, of the triumph of barbarism, that is, the possibility of the socialist alternative disappearing from the historical horizon. Contingency thus definitively displaces determinism. Palti stresses the importance of this position and its consequences, "The irruption of contingency is not, then, in this context, at the level of articulation (the definition of subjective identities), as occurs in the revisionist tradition, as Laclau and Mouffe pointed out, but at the level of the historical goal. The introduction of the hypothesis of Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez the historical non-possibility of socialism breaks down the concept of history as a system, that is, as a closed and self-contained totality, introducing into it an element of uncertainty, a factor that would only be defined in political action itself. The latter, for its part, only takes its justification from it: only the presence of an element of uncertainty gives it a substantive meaning". Moreno is an optimist and consequently misinterprets the development of the process of world socialist revolution. For him it continues not only its extension in the capitalist countries, but, and it is the most important thing, it would be extending inside the workers states, finishing with the Stalinist leadership and allowing the emergence of an authentic revolutionary leadership, Trotskyist evidently. But Moreno was deeply mistaken in his prognoses -one more historical example of revolutionary voluntarism that builds speculations without empirical contrastable data and only serves to end up discrediting a little more that kind of speeches and promises- after having insisted in discrediting those who with a more lucid and realistic vision did not share his revolutionary optimism. And it is at this point that Palti pauses to ponder the significance of the last (and final?) great defeat of the revolutionary socialist movement, the debacle of real socialism, which introduces a historical turning point in that trajectory and in Marxism. In order to do so, he first establishes what would have been the argument that would have kept Marxism safe from the empirical denials that history offered about the upward trend of the world revolution: "What Marxist theory does posit (and this constitutes its very basis) is that every advance of the working class is also an advance of the socialist revolution (and vice versa). What defines the meaning of political processes, for a Marxist, is not their ideology (as it would be for a liberal), but their class character. From the point of view of its ideological or programmatic content, a revolutionary process may eventually follow an erratic course, but its meaning as such would, even then, be unequivocal [...] What is certain is that, if the Marxist hypothesis is correct, sooner or later its revolutionary (working-class) content would have to become manifest also on the ideological-programmatic plane [...] The actual course of the post-war revolutions seemed to confirm this hypothesis. In fact, in all the revolutions that took place in those years (first in Eastern Europe, then in Asia and Africa, and finally in Latin America), despite the "degenerated" forms they adopted due Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century to the presence of "bureaucratic" or "reformist" leaderships, their socialist-revolutionary sense and orientation appeared indisputable. In any case, this "historical law" constitutes an a priori for Marxism". This line of argument, however, would have been definitively invalidated with the debacle of real socialism, "The idea of a revolutionary triumph (in fact, the greatest since October 1917: the defeat of Stalinism in the USSR) which nevertheless leads to a large-scale capitalist restoration is simply inconceivable, it defies the laws which are supposed to govern the course of history [...].The capitalist restoration in the former Soviet Union (and in Eastern Europe), understood not as the product of a defeat (and the "final triumph" of capitalism) but, on the contrary, as the result, paradoxically, of a (great) revolutionary triumph (the historical defeat of Stalinism by the Russian masses), questions less the truth of Marxism (indeed, in a sense, such a triumph would come to reaffirm it) than its knowledge, that is, it represents the dissolution of the assumed laws on which its entire historical materialist theory is based. " Palti's argument is irrefutable from the perspective adopted by Morenoism, a trend that disintegrated at the same time as the USSR and as a consequence of the failure of its forecasts, but is it also relevant from other perspectives? There are at least three others. The first would be that of Eurocommunism which, having begun to distance itself from real socialism before its collapse in order to seek a strategy of socialist transformation in the conditions of developed capitalism with liberal-democratic political systems, was not able to survive the collapse of real socialism either. The second would be the Trotskyist tendencies that Moreno had criticised, which had shown themselves sceptical and critical both with the changes promoted by perestroika and with Eurocommunism, but which the disappearance of the revisionist and Stalinist leaderships did not end up benefiting at all, because they remained existing as organisations unable to get out of their marginal situation. The last would be represented by the only country that survived with a classic communist system and without its leadership turning to controlled capitalist restoration, Cuba, which is simply holding on, with no hope of a new cycle that would establish some kind of new socialist states in the world, a much more pessimistic prospect after the change of political cycle in Latin America from 2015 onwards. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Palti's book, and his positions on the crisis of Marxism, was answered by another Argentine Marxist intellectual, Horacio Tarcus781 , who offered in his answers another view on the crisis of Marxism that is worth taking into account as well. In fact, Tarcus' response is mainly concerned with offering a different view of the political positions held by both Ernest Mandel and Perry Anderson, accusing Palti of having misrepresented them by approaching them from Moreno's perspective. His main aim is to present Mandel and Anderson as two more objective analysts than Moreno, and continuers of a knowledge of Marxism that has not collapsed, but he does not seriously contest Palti's final arguments about the crisis of Marxism, especially after the transition to capitalism in the former communist countries. It can even be said that the support Tarcus seeks from Mandel and Anderson can be used to reinforce Palti's thesis. If Mandel recognised in 1986 that if a socialist solution to the crisis did not succeed, what would be imposed would be "a gigantic historical setback", then what about what happened in 1989 or the capitalist turn in China? "In 1989, Mandel posed an openended situation for the USSR, considering various possible solutions. While he was reluctant to admit that one of the most likely outcomes was capitalist regression (the workers, he argued, could not fight against their own hard-won historical interests), his picture of the situation was so rich and complex that he did in fact admit it as a variable. "Well, but what were the consequences to be drawn from all this? That is the fundamental question. Anderson seems to answer this question, and Tarcus adheres to it, neither accommodation, nor consolation, nor resignation, but "uncompromising realism", which is a reformulation of Gramsci's expression of the pessimism of reason and the optimism of the will, i.e. a resistant attitude. But the discussion is not about the moral values of individuals, but about the present validity of a theory, Marxism. And that answer is insufficient. The quotations Tarcus takes from Anderson could almost have been better used by Palti. In Renewals he notes "The only point of departure for a realist left today is a lucid realisation of historical defeat. Capital has repelled point by point all threats to its rule, the bases of whose power, the pressures of competition above all else, were persistently 781 Tarcus, Horacio, Elogio de la razón militante. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century underestimated by the socialist movement. [...] No collective agency capable of measuring itself against the power of capital has yet appeared on the horizon". 782 And, later, from Apuntes sobre la coyuntura Tarcus summarises, "Anderson paints a picture of globalised capitalism, reviews the rise and fall of the World Social Forum, the activism of Attac, the social struggles in France and the revival of Latin American populisms, but concludes that these resistances, in all their diversity, still fail to break the hegemony of global capital. [...] but the general flow of the period has been a shift to the right...". All that Tarcus offers in defence of the vitality of Marxism are, in order of importance, the following arguments: First, some ephemeral relative successes of individual Trotskyist parties in Brazil and France. Second, the consolation that in previous historical defeats there were counter-current Marxist thinkers such as Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Gramsci, the Frankfurtians or Negri. And, third, that "although Marxism is no longer hegemonic in contemporary thought as it was in the 1960s and 1970s, it continues to show signs of vitality", and for this he cites some of the best-known recent Marxist intellectuals, and authors included in the radical theories who received some Marxist influence in the past, which only proves that the characteristics of Western Marxism continue to be reproduced, but in even more adverse conditions. From Latin America, and also using Moreno's thought, we are presented with another perspective on the crisis of Marxism, this time confronting the vision represented by the Trotskyist leader of the MAS with an author representative of the current of Latin American subaltern studies, John Beverley. We have already had the opportunity to analyse Moreno's positions in Palti's book. Subaltern studies already introduce us to one of the variants of the post-Marxist currents that appeared in the 1980s. Subaltern studies bring into discussion one of the fundamental points of the Marxist core, the question of the emancipatory subject. Marxism has an inseparable link with the working class, historical materialism has pointed out through the modes of production that have followed one another in history, and the class struggle that has driven the great 782 Anderson Perry, Renewals, p.14 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez transformations from one mode to another, that the overcoming of capitalism in a superior mode of production where social classes have finally disappeared is a work that can only be carried out by the working class, although in this task it might need the alliance of other social strata and sectors. Any other perspective in this respect would place us outside Marxism, in one of the variants of post-Marxist theories. Until the successful Soviet revolution and the immediately unsuccessful European revolutions that tried to break through the gap in Russia, nothing and no one had questioned the role of the proletariat as the subject called upon to overcome capitalism. The fact that Russia was a largely peasant empire-country and that the European proletariat was defeated in its first major attempt to carry out the revolution was a first wake-up call on the problem of the subject. The second warning came when again, in parallel, after the end of the Second World War, new revolutionary advances were taking place again in backward and peasant-majority countries (China, Cuba, Korea, Vietnam, etc.) and the European proletariat renounced any revolutionary politics in exchange for important political and social concessions, not to mention the AngloSaxon proletariat which was never attracted by revolutionary fickleness. But this was not the only problem in relation to the question of the emancipatory subject. The emphasis placed by Marxism on the problem of exploitation, centred on the sphere of production, left in a subordinate place the questions referring to the wider field of domination, where the dominated subjects were broader and more heterogeneous: women, ethnic minorities, subjugated or colonised peoples, etc. The working class has condensed the mobilisations against capitalism since the 19th century for three fundamental reasons. The first is that their unbearable living conditions and their political and social marginalisation in the heart of the most industrialised countries led to numerous acts of protest and attempts at revolution that made them a major player. The second was their ability to organise themselves both in mutual support societies and trade unions and, above all, in political parties. This capacity gave them a growing power of pressure and influence with which they were able to change laws and increasingly extend their rights. A parallel movement, the women's suffrage movement, had more limited objectives and hardly gave rise to stable organisations, let alone Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century political ones, so it had much less influence, and its demands were taken over by the socialist movement. The third reason was the intense interweaving between the working class and its organisations and a theory, such as Marxism, capable of offering a model for explaining history, and capitalism, and of offering a goal for overcoming it. This intertwining was never total - other tendencies always maintained a certain amount of influence among the working class - nor was it natural, Marxism had to wage a long struggle to become hegemonic for a certain period of time. Thus, the hegemony of the working class among other subaltern subjects, for a time, was both a political hegemony, thanks to its organisations and successes, and an ideological-cultural hegemony, thanks to the influence and weight of Marxism. This hegemony began to decline when the proletariat of the central capitalist countries, accepting bourgeois hegemony in exchange for political, social and economic rights, gave up its own goals. The decline was reinforced, already on a world level, when it became clear that the revolutions made in its name had entered into a process of degeneration with respect to their original objectives. And, as a consequence of this, Marxism also went into crisis, losing its hegemonic role among the working class, and seeing its hegemonic position among other theories begin to be disputed. Other subaltern subjects, eclipsed until then, came to the surface with force, with their own set of partial claims. Two new types of theories emerged in this situation, some articulating each of these subjects and their movements, others seeking a synthesis of all of them through ambiguous new concepts such as the multitude, or old ones such as the people. In either of these two types of theories, Marxism's key concept for explaining the subjects of history, that of social class, disappeared. Julia Expósito's article focuses on discussing the vision of subaltern studies, through one of its authors, John Beverley, in relation to the crisis of Marxism. Subaltern studies criticised that revolutionary processes had marginalised subaltern sectors, "recreating dominant/subaltern relations in a new form" and that Marxism "veiled the possibility of conceiving the emancipatory subject in its constitutive heterogeneity". Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez In Keucheyan's view783 , subaltern studies derive from Marxism through two important influences, the first being Gramsci, from whom they have rightly taken their defining term. But they also acknowledge the influence of the British Marxist historians, Hobsbawm, Thompson and Hill, and their social history of those at the bottom. The Latin American Subaltern Studies group emerged, according to this author, after the defeat of the Sandinistas. Noting the crisis of Marxism, they proposed a new programme that would take into account the new conditions arising from the Soviet debacle and the crisis of Marxism. To this end, they depart from Marxism in three key respects. Firstly, at the level of the political and sociological categories used, "for the subaltern studies group, the crisis of Marxism leaves open the possibility of thinking about the emancipatory premise, together with the theoretical challenge of creating new categories of analysis. Thus, the key words presented by the group to re-theorise the problematic of struggle are: "culture", "democratisation", "globalisation" and some "post" (post-Marxism, post-modernism, post-structuralism). Along with these concepts, the debate was opened about abandoning categories such as "modernisation", "dictatorship of the proletariat", "party", "revolution", "centre-periphery", "development", "nationalism" and "national liberation", and replacing them with notions that take account of the new specificities of the social, while keeping intact the rupturist wager of struggle. In this way, "pluralism", "democracy", "consensus", "subalternity", "power shifts", among others, seemed more pertinent conceptualisations for the group's objectives".784 Secondly, they depart from Marxism, in positing a different subject, "First, the subject (of the struggle) can no longer be thought of as one. That is to say, this subject cannot be thought of in reductionist terms, it must on the contrary be understood as something multiple, non-determined, hence the choice of the term subaltern: the subaltern is not a single thing. It is, we insist, a mutant and migrant subject. Even if we basically agree with the general concept of the subaltern as the mass of the working population and the intermediate strata, we cannot exclude the "unproductive" subjects, at the risk of 783 Keucheyan, Razmig, Left Hemisphere. A map of new critical thinking, p. 461. 784 Expósito, Julia, The Crisis of Marxism in a Latin American Perspective, p. 13. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century repeating the error of classical Marxism regarding the way in which social subjectivity is constituted. Secondly, subalternity does not emerge from the structure, like the classical Marxist subject, but on the contrary dislocates structural crystallisations. Thus the political emergence of the subaltern is to be found in "the fissures left by hegemonic and hierarchical forms", thus the locus where subalternity speaks as a political and social subject requires an exploration of the margins of the state".785 Thirdly, it departed from Marxism because if those were the positions in relation to the theoretical premises and the subject of change of the new theoretical paradigm, its strategic proposal also fundamentally distanced itself from Marxism in particular and the labour movement in general, placing itself among the post-Marxist theories of changing the world without taking power. "In this sense, it was no longer necessary to think of the struggle as a problem of "taking over the state" but as a struggle around the hegemony of the subalterns that would re-conquer "the space of de-hierarchisation ceded to the market and neoliberalism".786 In conclusion, the position of subaltern studies was not only very different from that of classical Marxism, it was also the opposite of Anderson's position. "Beverley's assessment of the crisis of Marxism was based on the possibility of sustaining Marxist truth as a premise of emancipatory struggle (by other means: the struggle for the hegemony of the subalterns on the plane of de-hierarchisation opened up by neoliberal logic), at the cost of disrupting its methods and its knowledge".787 A final approach to the crisis of Marxism points to an even broader reason, to be found in the external political, social and cultural conditions that served as an environment for the development of Marx's thought. This is the thesis defended by Edgardo Lander when he states that "Many of the main ideas on which Marx's theoretical edifice is built, the most significant and exciting ideas of the 19th century (progress, science, progressive development of the productive forces, industrialism, truth and happiness through abundance), have taken on water. Those ideas which, synthesised and articulated, constituted the pillars of an astonishing theoretical edifice, those 785 Expósito, Julia, The Crisis of Marxism in a Latin American Perspective, p. 16. Ibid, p. 13 787 Ibid, p. 13 786 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez formulations which constituted the fundamental strength of that extraordinary work of synthesis, have today become its opposite. What yesterday was a source of strength is today a source of weakness".788 This third approach to the crisis also includes the onslaught of postmodernist ideas and their effect on the meta-narratives of which Marxism is a part. Against a set of globalising and apparently stable theories, the fragmentation of knowledge emerges; against the great legitimising meta-narratives, the succession of partial legitimisations; against the continent categories, the archipelago categories; against utopia, the void; against confrontational discourse, the discourses of confrontation, the discourses of the "new", the "new", the "new" and the "new"; in the face of discourses of confrontation, discourses of dissuasion; in the face of hard, or strong, thinking, weak thinking; in the face of the finished project, the unfinished, the open; in the face of historical certainty, uncertainty; in the face of dogmas, doubt; in the face of a defined worldview, a new chaos. All of which represents a very strong attack on epistemologically conservative thinking, which still operated in the spirit of scientism and the paradigms of the 19th century unity of all sciences, a single scientific method, the crowning and end of all speculative philosophy, the unicity of the laws of motion in society, in nature and in the human mind...".789 788 Lander, Edgardo, Marxismo, eurocentrismo y colonialismo, in La teoría marxista hoy, op. cit., p. 220. 789 Roca, José M., op. cit. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Overall assessment of Marxist theory After the works of the early and mid-1840s, culminating in The German Ideology, where Marx and Engels settled "accounts with... [their] earlier philosophical consciousness", Marx only deals explicitly with philosophical questions marginally or exclusively in polemics. [their] earlier philosophical consciousness", Marx only deals explicitly with philosophical questions marginally or exclusively in polemics. Althusser's Marxism Alex Callinicos After what has been analysed in the preceding chapters, we can advance some hypotheses. Initially, we can contemplate from a broad historical perspective the role and interpretations of Marxism in relation to an essential aspect, the transition to socialism, the subjects to carry it out, and the different existing concrete situations. There would be, firstly, a classical and original Marxism which analysed the trajectory and nature of capitalism from within and addressed the industrial working class as the central subject for the project of socialist revolution. This version of Marxism was adopted and developed by the parties of the Second International for use in their political struggle in the developed countries of Europe until the First World War. Its result was a failure in the sense that no socialist revolution ever triumphed in the developed countries. A second version of Marxism, diametrically opposed to the first, and very much in the minority, is the reading from the backward countries with the aim of trying out a transition to socialism without necessarily having to go through the stage of capitalist development and relying on a class other than the proletariat, given its weakness, the peasantry. The three main proposals in this sense come from the Russian populists, from Mariátegui, and from Maoism. On the practical level this version is also a failure because it was not able to achieve any success either. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The third version of Marxism could be defined as a middle way between the two previous ones, and would be the most creative in practical terms. From the first it retains the central role to be played by the proletariat, albeit a very minority one, in the countries where it was applied. From the second, it retains its project of passing to socialism without having to go through a prior development of capitalism. The instruments to achieve this difficult synthesis would be, on the one hand, a certain type of party, the communists, who would represent and be in charge of carrying out the Marxist project of the proletariat in the midst of an enormous peasant majority and, on the other hand, the state (the party-state) which would promote the previously nonexistent industrial development by means of a sui generis state capitalism. This third version achieved important triumphs but at the price of huge deformations of the original Marxist project which would lead both to its being criticised in the name of the latter, and to its revolutionary successes eventually collapsing amidst contradictions to return to capitalism. Let us now consider a hypothesis based on what we have been analysing. Marxism was born with a Eurocentric conception, the result of capitalist development centred in Europe, and with a fundamentally philosophical base, derived from Marx's initial training, which later shifted its attention and interest to political economy, the result of the imperious need to understand capitalism in depth and be able to make a profound critique of it and, at the same time, it sought to provide itself with a scientific foundation in order to be able to participate in the legitimacy that science grants to knowledge. These first features will mark its development. We have seen that the bulk of Marxist thought originates in the developed countries and that, with the exception of specific stages, the majority of Marxist thinkers are linked primarily to philosophy and then to economics, and that the double appeal to science and philosophy creates internal tensions that are difficult to reconcile within Marxism. The bulk of the most important theoretical creation is centred on two periods. The first is that of Marx and Engels, and is characterised by the novelty of their contributions in the intellectual environment of their time and the great extent of their work. Their political activity, however, did not lead to any revolutionary success; on the contrary, they lived through the defeat of two great revolutionary trials, the revolutions of 1848 and the Paris Commune. Nevertheless, their theoretical contributions were of sufficient Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century calibre, especially those of Marx, to lay the foundations of a thought of great future influence. The second period is the consequence of a historical juncture of great sociopolitical and geopolitical upheaval at the beginning of the 20th century and the triumph of a revolution, the Soviet revolution. It was dominated by strategic and political thinking, oriented by the practical needs of the situation: the type of organisation necessary for the revolution - the party of professional revolutionaries, the mass movements -, the type of strategy to be followed - alliance with the peasants, relations with the social democrats and other organisations of the left, the need for a new international -, the type of power of the triumphant revolution - the power of the soviets, the role of the party -, the development of the revolution - the NEP, collectivisation, socialism in one country, permanent revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat - , etc. This is the period in which the most important classical figures of Marxism, Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky, Bukharin, Gramsci, etc., intervene. The Russian revolution was both a discontinuity with the original Marxist theory and its culmination. Discontinuity which in practice expressed the failure of the Bolshevik strategy, which originally conceived this revolution as the break through the weakest link, but which should continue with the extension of the revolution to the more developed countries of Europe, so as to connect with the analyses of classical Marxist theory. Failure which would lead to the anomaly, for the original theory, of socialism in one country. Discontinuity that Gramsci would also clearly express when he referred to the Russian revolution as a revolution against Capital. But it was also, as we pointed out, its continuation and culmination. A continuation, because after the Second International parties gave up with the outbreak of the First World War, the failure of the Russian revolution would have left Marxism in a pitiful situation, probably similar, though by no means the same, as it is today, with marginal Marxist organisations in an atmosphere of predominance of a social democracy which renounced Marxism. It is true that the conversion of Marxism into a state doctrine in the Soviet Union petrified it first and brought it into disrepute after 1989, but its triumph also expanded the influence of Marxism throughout the world for a whole period. It was the culmination of Marxist theory, at least in its practical consequences, because the Russian revolution and the subsequent ones that followed as the fruit of its impulse were the ultimate practical expression of the original doctrine. However, after its Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez debacle, it is not possible at the present time to conceive of the possibility of new experiences based on it. The Russian revolution was the first but not the only communist revolutionary epic. At least three later ones can be singled out, the Chinese, Cuban and Vietnamese, although the Yugoslav and Sandinista revolutions could also be added. In all of them there was some important novel aspect to highlight, the central role played by the peasants in the Chinese victory after the CCP realised that the Chinese proletariat was too weak to carry out the revolution on its own; the defeat of a great imperialist power like the USA by Vietnam; the ability to weave alliances with the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie to achieve victory as happened in Cuba and Nicaragua; and, in all of them, the strategic fact of combining the goal of socialism with nationalist impulses, because the Russian revolution was the only one that initially developed under the impulse of internationalism, in the rest, without renouncing it, the weight of nationalism was much greater. However, there were no new generations of thinkers and strategists of universal projection, only a few personalities such as Mao Tsetung or Ernesto Che Guevara, although on the theoretical level only the former really stood out. But even the Chinese revolution, despite its temporary influence and far-reaching consequences, did not produce a generation of theoreticians who would advance Marxist thought in the way that the generation of the Russian Revolution period had done. Thus, three worrying situations converged for the development of Marxism as a theory of proletarian revolution and the building of communism. First, many of the contributions made by the creative generation around the First World War and the Russian Revolution were short-lived and were more or less quickly discredited or abandoned. The party of professional revolutionaries and its proposal for a single party of the revolutionary state is today practically defended by no one. The dictatorship of the proletariat or power based on soviets is today only part of the programme of a few sects. The conditions of the struggle for socialism have changed so profoundly, both because of the economic, social and political development of the capitalist social formations themselves and because of the failures of the experiences of real socialism, that an accumulation of theories and experiences of the past as a basis for future advances has not been possible. Today, at most, the most widely used references to these contributions are those of Gramsci, with his concepts of hegemony, power bloc, war of positions, etc., but they have not served to sustain any successful advances Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century either. Eurocommunism already faced this problem and tried, without much success, to elaborate a theory and strategy adequate to the conditions of struggle in the countries of mature capitalism. Trotskyism sought to remain faithful to the origins of Bolshevism, split into innumerable confrontational tendencies, remained in totally marginal positions, and never led any successful revolution or experience with which to validate its proposals in practice. Secondly, the triumphant revolutions which followed the Russian revolution, and which we have quoted above, also failed to provide a development of theory to support future developments. Maoism had a brief period of influence, but after the various failures of the Chinese revolution - the great leap forward or the cultural revolution - and the final turn to capitalist restoration under the control of the communist party, Mao's teachings do not serve as a model for any Marxist current or party. There has not been a generation of Marxist thinkers linked to these revolutions who made a valuable set of contributions. Anderson's hypothesis of a revival of the development of Marxism when a new mass revolutionary upsurge occurred is disproved by these and later experiences. Thirdly, the main contributions continued to be produced in Western countries - in those of mature capitalism - and were generated by professionals from the academic world with little or no links to Marxist parties, dealing mostly with philosophical or epistemological issues, although also with analyses and critiques of capitalism. Some of these contributions created trends that were important at the time, and had little impact on the praxis of Marxist organisations, as was the case with Althusser's structuralism or the Frankfurt School. Thus, the overall balance of Marxist theory at the end of the 20th century was that of the existence of a significant number of works by different authors produced over more than a century which, although they have contributed to diversifying the currents and tendencies within it, nevertheless, their contribution to the central issues related to the task of transforming society in the conditions of the 21st century are rather scarce. Nor is there much comprehensive and rigorous analysis of the failure of real socialism, whether in the form of the debacle in the Euro-Soviet space, the reintroduction of capitalist social relations as in China, or the degeneration of the regime as in North Korea. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez The magnitude of the defeat of the experiences of real socialism, and the difficulty after them to continue using the core of a theory that has been invalidated in practice, is what can explain the birth and development of the so-called post-Marxist theories. These are more or less complex elaborations, also mainly from the field of philosophy, and we will analyse them in the final chapters, although we have already dealt with some of them, such as subaltern studies. Within the set of critical theories that have developed since the end of the 20th century, Marxism is just one more, and no longer holds the hegemonic role it enjoyed for more than a century. This situation clearly describes the decline suffered by a thought with emancipatory aims after the serious defeats suffered and the unfulfilled promises. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Critical theories at the beginning of the 21st century An important feature of the new critical theories is the loss of hegemony of Marxism within them. Many contemporary critical theorists, among the most stimulating, claim to belong to this tradition which continues to be active not only in the sphere of critical theories, but also in the social sciences. [...] At the same time, it is clear that Marxism can no longer claim to retain the centrality it had from the second half of the 19th century until the early 1970s, i.e. for more than a century, Marxism has been the most powerful of critical theories. The success of Marxism can be explained by the fact that it is a complete paradigm, to which no aspect of social and, in a sense, physical life escapes. Left Hemisphere. A map of new critical thinking Razmig Keucheyan The decades around the turn of the century have seen the publication of new works and authors who, for the most part, moved even further away from the themes of classical Marxism than Western Marxism. These works and authors fall into what has been called neo-Marxism and post-Marxism, and in some cases are difficult to classify in one camp or the other. Anderson's work was both a wake-up call about the problems of Marxism and the need to overcome them, Kolakowski's work was an attempt to show that Marxism was a flawed theory and to accept liberalism-capitalism as a definitive order, pre-empting Fukuyama's end of history slogan. The new post-Marxist theories are perhaps somewhere in between, rejecting Marxism globally or at least its fundamental core and proposing other kinds of theories and practices. The label neo-Marxist, as Therborn proposes, "will be used only to designate critical projects that mark a relevant novelty with respect to classical Marxism but retain an explicit commitment to it. "790 790 Therborn,Göran, After dialectics. Radical social theory in a post-communist world, p. 39. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Callinicos uses the same explanation for post-Marxism as that used by Anderson for Western Marxism, and which will now also be used by Göran Therborn and Keucheyan to explain the new critical theories. In short, this explanation holds that all intellectuals who move away from the fundamental core of Marxism, or from Marxism itself, do so after Marxist political forces have suffered a major defeat, mainly in Europe. The first was the revolutions in the old continent in the 1920s, then came the revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s, and finally the debacle of real socialism in the 1990s. This meant, first of all, the retreat of Marxist intellectuals into areas far removed from strategy and political struggle, such as epistemology and aesthetics, and, in the most extreme cases, as we have seen with the post-68 French, but not only them, into liberal and antiMarxist positions. This explanation may be coherent; the political defeats and empirical denials of some of the core issues of Marxism may have led intellectual sectors to abandon a theory they no longer believed capable of overcoming its contradictions, either by distancing themselves from intellectual commitment, or by moving towards winning positions such as liberalism or, finally, by seeking to try another type of paradigm to explain social reality, as in the case of some critical theories. In order to deal with this also complex period, we will rely on two important studies on the subject. The first is a long article by Göran Therborn entitled After dialectics. Radical social theory in a post-communist world, published in issue 43 of the New Left Review and later forming part of a work by this author, From Marxism to PostMarxism. The second, and most important, is a work similar to Anderson's in the sense that it also synthesises and summarises these new trends thirty-four years after the publication of the English historian's work, in Left Hemisphere. A Map of New Critical Thinking by Razmig Keucheyan. The two authors agree on some aspects of this period, but diverge on others. Therborn's approach is based on a particular consideration of Marxism as a characteristic part of modernity, understood as a broader cultural framework. In such a way he conceives this relationship that historically the rise of postmodernism, as a rejection of modernity, has coincided with the decline of Marxism. For the Swedish sociologist, "Marxism, as a social historical phenomenon, has been the opposition to its modern majesty modernity. Always critical of and fighting against its predominant Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century regimes, but never questioning the legitimate majesty of modernity and, when necessary, explicitly defending it. [...] Marxism is nevertheless the greatest manifestation of the dialectic of modernity, in a sociological as well as a theoretical sense [...] Marxism defended modernity with an eye to another, more fully developed, modernity. " 791 Thus, in Marx there was both an emancipatory and an exploitative conception of modernity, and if on the one hand he celebrated the progressive modernity of capitalism and the bourgeoisie, on the other he criticised it for its exploitative and alienating character. It was a dialectical, contradictory understanding of modernity that differentiated Marxism from other currents of modernity. Modernity, says Samir Amin792 , is characterised by its emphasis on the capacity of human beings to construct their own history through reason, and thus initially contains an emancipatory impulse. But in the hands of the bourgeoisie this impulse is transformed into instrumental reason. Modernity has a first moment, at its birth, which also coincides with that of capitalism, characterised by the Enlightenment but also by the bourgeois character of modernity. The second moment begins with "Marx's critique of the bourgeois emancipatory reason of the Enlightenment", and Samir calls this new chapter of modernity "critical modernity of modernity. " From another angle, Alex Callinicos793 points out that the three most influential ways of thinking about modernity are represented by the models initiated by Marx, Nietzsche and Saint-Simon, whose common starting point is the Enlightenment. Saint-Simon conceived history as progress, condensed in the development of industrial society, supported by scientific knowledge, and whose tendency would be the disappearance of class conflicts, his way of thinking modernity would be continued by the theoreticians of industrial and post-industrial society. While Nietzsche acknowledged the existence of different forms of domination in history, he rejected that a society that would do away with domination and exploitation could be achieved. In Callinicos' view, Nietzsche's influence was transmitted to Weber and, later, to post-structuralists such as Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze. For Marx, bourgeois society did not represent the realisation of 791 Therborn,Göran, On Critical Theory and the Legacy of 20th Century Marxism, pp. 1-2. Amin, Samir, The Drifts of Modernity. The Case of Africa and the Arab World, pp. 85-8 793 Callinicos, Alex, Against Postmodernism, p.61 792 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez reason, but the last version of a class society based on exploitation that would eventually give way to a classless society. For Therborn, this promise of critical modernity represented by Marxism was called into question by the debacle of real socialism. "The contradictions of modernity, according to Marx, were precursors of radical change. The labour movement in the capitalist countries, the socialist women's movement, the anti-colonial liberation movements, and the countries of "really existing" socialism, whatever their shortcomings, saw themselves as the bearers of a different future, of a modern project of emancipation. This faith in the future was shattered in a fundamental sense with the 1990s".794 In this turn taken by modernity at the end of the 20th century there are two directions, "towards the right; transforming itself into postmodernity; and towards theoretical and political quests for new modernities. "795 Therborn then focuses on the decline of Marxism in the 1980s-90s that coincided with the rise of postmodernism. But this decline was contradictory, and to understand it, the Swedish sociologist proposes a differentiation of Marxism on three different levels. Firstly, Marxism is, from an intellectual angle, "a historical sociology" that focuses on historical developments; secondly, Marxism can be understood as "a philosophy of contradictions or dialectics" from which epistemological and ethical questions are posed; finally, Marxism has been "a mode of politics of a working-class and socialist kind" whose aim was to put an end to class society. This last plane is the one that "overdetermined the triangle" and prevented Marxism from being a mere intellectual current. If the classical Marxists dominated the three planes in different ways, however, in the course of the twentieth century there was a distancing between the three planes. This was already clearly perceptible in Western Marxism, but it became more acute in the 1980s with the serious defeats suffered around the world by the different variants claiming to be socialism or Marxism. Marxism as a social science was directly affected although as a philosophy it held up better because it is "immune to empirical 794 795 Therborn,Göran, After dialectics. Radical social theory in a post-communist world, p. 13. Ibid, p.15 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century refutation". Therborn's final conclusion is pessimistic, "The Marxist triangle of sociology, politics and philosophy has, in all probability, broken down irretrievably. "796 In that argument he had justly pointed out one of the explanatory causes for the predominance of philosophers among the main Marxist authors from the 1920s onwards, and that cause was the immunity to empirical refutation which, although it allowed them to be safe from the practical attacks suffered by Marxism, also neutralised them as strategic thought destined to serve for social transformation. Therborn's reflection on the relationship between modernity and Marxism actually serves as an introduction to the fundamental core of this chapter, which is the analysis of critical thought at the end of the twentieth century, attempting to demonstrate the validity of his thesis about the broken triangle of classical Marxism, that of philosophy, sociology and politics. This analysis is centred - as was Anderson's analysis of Western Marxism - on critical social theory developed in Europe and the United States, two areas marked by important differences. In principle, what the Swedish sociologist does is to highlight two aspects that are quite common among critical social authors and that can be described as surprising, to say the least. The first is more common in Europe, and he calls it the "theological turn", referring to the "scholarly interest in religion and the use of religious examples in philosophical and political argumentation. "797 He cites the examples of Regis Debray, Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, Michael Hardt, Toni Negri and Jürgen Habermas. Therborn does not cite this in his work because it is written in an earlier period and does not deal with Latin America, but this "theological turn" was also expressed in the political practice of left-wing leaders and organisations which, during the progressive cycle of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, came to power in Latin America, a region where there is no doubt about the influence of liberation theology. This aspect has also attracted the attention of Keucheyan, who tries to give an explanation for this unusual fact. At first he points out that the religious references of some critical thinkers relate to the concrete problem of belief, alluding to the question of "how it is possible to continue to believe or hope when everything seems against belief, 796 797 Therborn,Göran, After dialectics. Radical social theory in a post-communist world, p.6 Therborn,Göran, After dialectics. Radical social theory in a post-communist world, p.17 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez when circumstances are so radically hostile to it". If this interpretation of Keucheyan is correct - and would thus be in accordance with the second aspect to which Therborn alludes and which we will see below - it would be a symptom of the weakness of the theories of authors who use religious references. Marxism is an attempt to objectively analyse the capitalist mode of production in a global historical context and to unravel the existence of the conditions that can make its overcoming in communism possible. Reformism, initiated by Bernstein, represented the first questioning of this possibility, which eventually led to the rejection of the overcoming of capitalism in exchange for a policy of achieving the greatest possible social and political advantages for the working class. The critical authors who use religious references are in the same position as the reformists, and instead of giving in to a politics of possibilism or deepening the new conditions of capitalism and the struggle for socialism, they take a third position, that of maintaining the belief in the possibility of social transformation, but as an act of faith. Keucheyan's second reason for understanding the religious drift of these critical thinkers is as unusual as the drift itself. Given that there is a religious resurgence in the world, the idea would be to "contest the religious fact from the fundamentalists, showing that there are progressive and even revolutionary forms of religiosity is a clever strategy. "798 The second common aspect among critical thinkers, and more frequent in the North American sphere, is what Therborn calls the "new futurism", with two distinct currents. The first would be the "new utopianism", which would include critical social thinkers such as Fredric Jameson, Erik Olin Wright and John Roemer - the latter two of whom, it should be remembered, are also authors belonging to analytical Marxism - and David Harvey. To find a Marxist author in this utopian line in Europe, one would have to go back to Ernst Bloch and his Hope Principle. The second current is called "systemic apocalypticism" and includes the two main authors of the world-system, Immanuel Wallerstein and Giovanni Arrighi, who postulated the thesis that we are living in a time of transition from capitalism to another type of society with different and uncertain characteristics, although both authors later moderated this thesis about the end of capitalism. 798 Keucheyan, Razmig, Left Hemisphere. A map of new critical thinking, pp. 63-4. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century As we discussed above, one of Anderson's criticisms of the authors under the label of Western Marxism was their drift in the field of thought towards issues related to epistemology and aesthetics. What we find now, with these two aspects pointed out by Therborn, is a drift further away not only from the fundamental themes of Marxism, but from Marxism itself, since the criticisms made by the classics of Marxism were directed, among other things, at religion and its influence, and at the utopian thought of some 19th century socialist currents. These circumstances in themselves make it difficult to consider these critical authors as Marxists. This is why Therborn's classification of these authors is somewhat ambiguous: in some cases he classifies them as post-Marxists, in others as neo-Marxists, and in a third group he maintains that they are simply critical thinkers. He acknowledges that he uses the term post-Marxism in a broad sense, "referring to writers with an explicitly Marxist background, whose recent work has moved beyond Marxist problematics, and who do not publicly claim a permanent commitment to Marxism"799 , and that even the boundaries for dividing post-Marxism and neo-Marxism have become blurred in recent times. Therborn places the origin of post-Marxism in the Frankfurt School and considers Jürgen Habermas as one of its main members, together with Axel Honneth. Other members of this current include Claus Offe, Manuel Castell, Régis Debray and Zygmunt Bauman. Agreeing with Anderson, Kaucheyan argues that the new critical thinking, like Western Marxism, has its origins in defeat. If for Anderson this moment is situated in the defeat of the revolution in Europe after the First World War, Keucheyan situates it in the second half of the 1970s, when the protest movements of the previous decades and the so-called "new left" entered a process of ebb. This "new left" would have been the result of the break with Soviet orthodoxy after Khrushchev's report to the 20th Congress of the CPSU, the invasion of Hungary, the Sino-Soviet split and the Chinese cultural revolution. It is therefore a question of the ebb and defeat of movements and currents that were short-lived and of no practical achievements, but of some key frustrations such as the Carnation Revolution in 799 Therborn,Göran, After dialectics. Radical social theory in a post-communist world, p.39. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Portugal, the French May '68, the Italian autonomous movement, or the Chinese cultural revolution itself, so much mythologised initially by the Western left. However, there had been three important revolutionary advances in that period, such as the victories in Cuba, Vietnam and Nicaragua, which, however, did not seem to have had a significant importance either in the new left or in subsequent new theories, perhaps because the first two ended up aligning themselves with the Soviet camp, or because the Latin American advances were counteracted by the defeats of other experiences in the region, as was the case of the Allende government and other revolutionary movements massacred by the military dictatorships in the Southern Cone. Kenucheyan qualifies, however, the meaning of the new critical thinkers, although they were intellectuals trained during the previous cycle of reflux and defeats, but their theories were oriented towards interpreting the new cycle that began in 1994 with the Zapatista insurrection. By the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the ebb of social movements and the "new left" had already begun a decade earlier. The debacle of Euro-Soviet socialism, and China's swing to capitalism in a different process, represents a more profound phenomenon with different consequences than the previous defeats of the 1920s or the 1970s, so that two interpretations of its consequences have been superimposed on each other. The first assumes that in 1989 the cycle of proletarian revolutions opened in 1917 ended with its practical failure, and with it not only closed any possibility of revolutionary socialist transformation - whose most radical interpretation, from the capitalist camp, was Fukuyama's end of history, and the most complex and interesting, from the Marxist camp, was Anderson's, comparing the debacle with four other different historical examples - but that Marxism entered into a deeper and irreversible crisis, giving rise to post-Marxist theories. The second interpretation of the debacle of real socialism points to it as the closing of the cycle opened with the French revolution, and the questioning of modernity, giving rise to postmodern theories. The point is that because of their capacity and expertise to interpret the social and cultural transformations of an era, intellectuals are in a privileged position to detect when a momentous change is taking place and to make interpretations about the meaning of these changes. In this sense, they are ahead of the perception of common Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century sense and that of other social bodies such as political leaders, parties, social movements, etc. Thus, if Western Marxists, English historians or analytical Marxists represented a wakeup call on the difficulties of Marxist theory to continue generating a strategic thought capable of correctly interpreting the development of the capitalist mode of production, the societies of real socialism, and to make appropriate proposals at each historical moment to orientate the emancipatory project of socialism, the new critical theories that have appeared since the 1990s seem to represent an increasingly important abandonment by critical intellectuals of the Marxist theoretical paradigm, which loses its hegemonic position, in favour of an increasingly important abandonment by critical intellectuals of the Marxist theoretical paradigm, which loses its hegemonic position, the new critical theories that have appeared since the 1990s seem to represent an increasingly important abandonment by critical intellectuals of the Marxist theoretical paradigm, which is losing its hegemonic position, in favour of new theories that represent, in their analytical capacity and social proposals, a step backwards with respect to Marxism. This aspect becomes clear when one finds in them the use of more ambiguous concepts of social analysis such as the people or multitude instead of social classes, when the emphasis shifts to identity politics of a cultural nature abandoning class politics and its project of overcoming capitalism, when there is a return to utopian and futuristic positions that flee from the difficulty of finding answers to the increasingly complex problems faced by a project of social transformation, the recovery of spontaneism, references to religious themes, etc. But the new theories also express the fragmentation of the study of the social totality, an aspect typical of Marxism, in favour of the analysis of partial aspects of society normally situated in the cultural sphere, such as feminism, homosexual movements, environmentalism, immigrants, etc. There is no doubt that these are problems where there is domination to combat and rights to conquer and consolidate, but given their isolated treatment and not included in a proposal for a different society, they become reformist demands and struggles, albeit now of a post-materialist type, similar in their final effect to other reformist struggles in the past, such as those for the extension of suffrage or the conquest of economic and social rights. In the end, many of these Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez demands were achieved to a greater or lesser extent within the capitalist social formations, which were able to assimilate them without serious contradictions. Thus, while Marxism was constituted as a theoretical paradigm that was both broad, due to its capacity to deal with all social, political and economic aspects, and profound, the new critical theories do not possess this all-encompassing capacity. Despite the differences and discussions within it, and its contradictions, Marxism represents a cumulative paradigm that has been enriched by the contributions of numerous intellectuals and organisations that share a common core, even if this core has tended to fade away. By contrast, the new theories have little in common other than their critical stance on the current capitalist society, but they do not accumulate around a common paradigm. If Marxism, and this is possibly its most characteristic feature, is a theoretical paradigm that supports and guides the socio-political action of organisations aimed at overcoming capitalism, the new critical theories are not endowed with such a pretension, since this is not the central objective that guides their theoretical production, in this sense the origin of such theories can be traced back to the Frankfurt School, whose theoreticians dissociated themselves from any project of practical intervention. One of the fundamental aspects that differentiate this variety of critical theories that appeared at the end of the 20th century from Marxism is the question of the subject in charge of carrying out the tasks of social transformation, a question that we have already approached for the first time when dealing with subaltern studies. The distancing of the new critical intellectuals from the classical position of Marxism in this respect has empirical bases that are impossible to avoid. Historical materialism is a theory based on social classes, their existence and, above all, conceives their struggle in each mode of production as the motor of history. In capitalism, the proletariat is the class destined to overcome this mode of production and reach communism, as the final society of history, without social classes. But these nuclear theses of Marxism began to enter into crisis with two strong historical evidences. The first is that the victorious revolutions in the world did not take place in countries with powerful working classes at the head of those revolutions, all the countries where the socialist revolution triumphed were mainly peasants, the programme of the proletariat was represented by the respective Marxist organisations that led the revolutions, and only after the triumph of the revolution was a programme of intense Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century industrialisation and growth of the working class undertaken, a successful programme in some cases such as the Soviet Union, and unsuccessful in others such as Vietnam, Cuba or China, the latter country which undertook massive industrialisation only because of its inclination towards capitalism. Secondly, in economically developed countries with strong working classes, the latter ended up adopting a line of acceptance of capitalism in exchange for the recognition of political and socio-economic rights, mostly through social democratic parties, but also with other variants such as Argentine Peronism, European Christian democratic parties or North American trade unionism. But in all these cases they ended up renouncing their role as emancipatory subjects with respect to capitalism. Of course, Marxism confronted this empirical fact, especially through its theories on ideology, perhaps most notably the Leninist reflection on consciousness outside the working class, its natural tendency towards economism and the role of the communist party as the introducer of socialist consciousness among the workers. The first questioning of the working class as the subject of the socialist revolutionary process was the work of social democracy, beginning with Bernstein. Social democracy did not renounce the working class, it set itself up as its main representative in the developed European countries in order to conquer for it socio-economic benefits within the framework of capitalism, until, by its own evolution, it ended up diluting the representation of the working class together with other layers of society, especially the middle classes, by becoming catch-all parties. The second questioning, and more directly related to the new social theories, was carried out by Althusserian structuralism. This time it was not a discussion of the role of the working class, but a different conception of the historical and social process in which structures replaced the subject in importance. In the 1960s and 1970s, the new critical theories that appeared, such as feminism, environmentalism, pacifism or anti-militarism, stopped appealing to the classic historical transforming subject of Marxism, the working class, to focus on other subjects (feminism) or to address interclass sectors. This third questioning of the historical subject of Marxism has continued in the new critical theories since the end of the 20th century, with the particularity that the transformative historical subject, with the exception of feminism, has become on the one hand more plural and, on the other, even Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez more ambiguous and ethereal. Laclau's people, Negri's multitude, the subjects of subaltern studies, sexual minorities, Latin American indigenous peoples, etc. populated the new theories around objectives that were evidently incapable of carrying a global and alternative project to capitalism. But if these new critical theories, and the subjects they proposed, proliferated, it was because Marxism was unable to resolve the serious contradictions that burdened it, including in particular that of the transformative subject. One cannot critically confront the new theories with much success if one does not have a more solid one at one's disposal. Criticisms of some of these theories have been elaborated from within Marxism, as we shall see, but ultimately the contradictions and unresolved problems of Marxism will always appear as a counter-critique. Another fairly common feature of the new critical theories is their debt to the conception of power elaborated and extended by Michel Foucault. This issue has already been discussed in an earlier work from which the following synthesis is taken. "Foucault's most original contribution is his conception of power as a diffuse phenomenon throughout society, present in all social relations through micro-powers, which implies that "the power of the ruling class rests not only, nor essentially, on the control of institutionalised public structures (state), but on its capacity to regulate the processes of cultural production. "800 Foucault differentiates between state or juridical power and disciplinary power801 . The former is characterised by the following features: it is a power exercised from a centralised organisation, the state, based on "the juridical-political notion of sovereignty", from which it is applied to the entire political environment. It is a zerosum power, based on "a discourse based on rights, obedience and norms", which is exercised over pre-existing subjects, passive in the face of the state's power. It is possible to distinguish legitimate power based on rules from illegitimate power of a discretionary and arbitrary nature. And it has a negative character in that its exercise is carried out through "repressive mechanisms that persecute, censure, prohibit, exclude, monitor and punish, among other effects". 800 801 Noguera Fernández, Albert, La teoría del Estado y del poder en Gramsci, p. 5. Aguiló Bonet, Antoni Jesús, op. cit. p. 10. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century In contrast to political power, disciplinary power802 is characterised by other, different features. In principle, it is "a transversal, decentred and fragmentary power that is exercised in the midst of innumerable flexible and unequal relations", and therefore extends beyond the state apparatus to cover all social relations, which implies recognising that oppression and domination extend through all these relations, which are therefore also political in character. It is also conceived as a historical a priori, i.e. as a set of rules that regulate discourses of truth. In contrast to political power, disciplinary power "is an ascending power, which comes from below, i.e. from everyday micropolitics" and rises to the level of general modes of domination. Moreover, these are "intentional power relations, since they involve a process of calculation that tends towards the achievement of goals and objectives". Finally, for Foucault, the existence of power generates the emergence of resistance, which also has a diffuse and multifaceted character. As Aguiló Bonet points out, this relational concept of power803 , which encompasses the whole of social relations, means overcoming the division present in the liberal theory of power between the political and the private spheres, giving a political character to the multiple conflicts that run through the social structure, from the family home to the centres of production. This conception of power on the part of Foucault has been the object of different criticisms, as Noguera Fernández points out, "The great criticism that authors such as Perry Anderson, Anthony Giddens, Alain Tourain and Jürgen Habermas made of Foucault's work was his excessive 'ontologisation' of power. He had so absolutised the all-encompassing capacity and homogenising effect of power that it became something from which it was impossible to escape (social structures predetermine the activity and thinking of subjects, outside their will and without their being able to do anything about it. The subject as 'cultural idiot') and, therefore, in his theory there was no room for resistance and subversion. "804 802 Op. cit. pp. 11 Nestor Cohán points out that forty years before Foucault, Gramsci had already defined power in relational terms, but not in a generic way as Foucault does, but as relations of forces. Nestor Cohán, Gramsci y Marx: Hegemony and Power in Marxist Theory, p. 49, http://www.rebelion.org/izquierda/kohan170301.htm. 804 Noguera Fernández, Albert, op. cit., p. 5. 803 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Atilio Borón is also critical of Foucault in two respects, the first because of the contradiction of his diffuse vision of power with the processes of "stateisation" that have taken place in capitalist accumulation, and the second because "despite its contesting vocation, Foucault's panpoliticism ends in a theoretical conception that consecrates the immanence and absolute omnipotence of power thus conceived, independently of the relations of production and class exploitation". 805 Agreeing with Sánchez Vázquez that Foucault dissolves any relation of his network of micro-powers to the relations of production". 806 The influence of Foucault's conceptions of power on the new critical theories is evident in the subgroup of so-called "anti-power theories" as Keucheyan rightly points out: "There is now a tendency among many current critical theorists (Holloway, Virno, Negri) to argue that the struggle which previously took various forms - social, trade union, institutional, armed - should be replaced by exile, defection, nomadisation, in short, a set of "indirect" strategies aimed more at keeping the state apparatus at a distance than at confronting it directly. This body of doctrine has been commonly referred to as "anti-power theories" thinkers developing anti-power theory explicitly present them in opposition to Leninism, considered a failure because of the catastrophic experience of the Soviet Union. " In general, none of these theories have served as a guide to action for concrete social or political movements. The socio-political movements closest to these conceptions have perhaps been the Social Forums and, above all, the popular uprising of 2001 in Argentina and the movements that derived from it, and the Zapatista movement. With regard to these last two cases we can find important similarities beyond their clear differences. They represent two cases of the failure of intense protest movements due to the visceral refusal to consider a strategy of struggle for state power through the most appropriate vehicle for this purpose, the political party. In the Argentine case, this refusal was the content of the popular demand during the December 2001 insurrection, ¡qué se vayan todos! In the Mexican case, the rejection was contained in the slogan adopted by Subcomandante Marcos of changing the world without taking power. 805 Boron, Atilio A., Filosofía política y crítica de la sociedad burguesa: el legado teórico de Karl Marx, in Boron, Atilio A., La filosofía política moderna. (comp), La filosofía política moderna. De Hobbes a Marx, p. 284. 806 Sánchez Rodríguez, Jesús, Sociedad de clases, poder político y Estado, pp. 30-2 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Paradoxically, however, in both cases both the piqueteros - the most representative movement derived from the Argentine insurrection - and the Zapatistas entered into negotiations with the state, the former to achieve aid schemes for the unemployed, the latter to change the constitution in favour of indigenous peoples. Also, in both cases we can find attempts to build islands of autonomy outside the functioning of the system, in the Argentine case with the movement of recuperated enterprises, in the Mexican case with the indigenous municipalities of Chiapas under Zapatista control. Many of the new social movements that opposed neoliberalism at the end of the 20th century adopted an autonomist stance, which meant in practice the rejection of parties and political activity understood as action aimed at achieving state power. The movements that persisted in this attitude ended up in an impotent action that ended up favouring conservative parties to regain control of the state and defend the stability of capitalist accumulation from there. Raúl Zibechi, as a theorist belonging to the autonomist current807 , which advocates social transformation without the need to take power, points out that one of the main achievements of social movements is to create non-capitalist islands, spaces where noncapitalist social relations are built. This position is reminiscent of that of the promoters of worker cooperativism in the first half of the 19th century. If this current's criticism of the experiences of the left in favour of the conquest of state power to transform society is based on the historical failure of real socialism or the conversion of social democracy to social liberalism, then, with the same historical reason, they should be reminded that the cooperativist experiences of Fourier or Owen in the 19th century of also founding non-capitalist islands to transform society by their example led nowhere. If we have referred to these empirical cases, it is to document how, on the few occasions in which these "anti-power theories" have had any practical application, they have ended up as failed experiences, and their capacity as an alternative to Marxism has been significantly devalued. Kenucheyan uses in his work a suggestive and imaginative classification of six categories to locate and define the different intellectuals who belong or belonged at some point in time to the field of critical theories. These categories are not related to 807 Zibechi, Raúl, Autonomías y emancipaciones. América latina en movimiento Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez different ideological fields but to the personal attitudes adopted by the intellectuals in their evolution. Thus he points out that the classification is made up of converts, pessimists, resisters, innovators, leaders and experts, whose names already clearly express what each of them consists of. Among the converts there are many who made the journey from the left to the right, such as Claude Lefort, the new French philosophers or some of the members of the regulation school, but there are also some who made the reverse journey, moving from moderate positions to more critical ones, such as Derrida or Pierre Bourdieu. Pessimists are theorists who remain critical with a sceptical attitude towards the possibility of profound social change, "they subject the social world to critique, but do not formulate positions or act as strategists with a view to transforming it" Among them he cites Adorno, or Guy Debord, Jean Baudrillard or Perry Anderson. Perry Anderson's analysis is central to the subject of this book. First, because he is still one of the most lucid Marxist intellectuals at the beginning of the 21st century and, second, because he is probably the one who has been most intensely involved in reflecting on the situation of Marxism, with an exhaustive knowledge of it and a realism that has led him, as we have just seen, to be classified as one of the pessimists. It is possible that the reorientation he gave to the New Left Review in 2000, with the acceptance of the historical defeat of Marxism and the question of what position should be adopted in the face of this situation, has contributed decisively to his inclusion in this category. The position adopted by Anderson at that time represented the drama of many Marxist intellectuals, recognising the historical defeat suffered by the socialist project and the main theory underpinning it, while at the same time rejecting accommodation to the triumphant capitalist order. This drama was expressed very graphically by Elías José Palti, "how can one admit a tradition as destroyed, historically non-existent, and still claim to remain in it?"808 But this interpretation by Palti is part of an interesting essay in his book on the different approaches to the crisis of Marxism, which we have already analysed above. 808 Palti, Elías José, Verdades y saberes del marxismo. Reacciones de una tradición política ante su crisis, p. 27. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century The difference that separates these two categories of critical intellectuals is evident, but their point of departure is a common one, a loss of confidence in the possibility of radical social transformation. Presumably, alongside the converts and pessimists there will be a third, more numerous category, those who simply withdraw into private life or focus their attention and intellectual energies on issues far removed from political and social thought. The latter attitude we have already seen was quite common among Western Marxists in the latter part of their intellectual and physical lives. In any case, they all represent an evident symptom of the crisis of Marxism as a transformative thought, and its renunciation of efforts to enliven it, the converts being the extreme case in which they go on to denounce Marxism as a failed thought that must be abandoned, as is the case of the Polish philosopher Kieslowski. The next two categories used by Kaucheyan are close to each other, the resisters and the innovators, the latter being resisters who have also made a novel contribution to radical theory. Already the choice of the word resistant expresses the position of these intellectuals, it is a matter of resisting in an era of defeats or setbacks, that is, of maintaining the principles and critical positions in the face of capitalist society without capitulating to discouragement, which would differentiate them from the pessimists. Keucheyan cites Chomsky, an old libertarian resister, but above all he includes in this category Trotskyist authors, among whom he cites Alex Callinicos. Innovators are resistant, but they add new contributions to critical theory. These new contributions are the result of the combination of different currents or previous trends and, in some way, include Marxism in this fusion. In some cases it is a matter of integrating it with non-Marxist authors such as Negri or Zizek, in others of completing it with the new problems originated by capitalist evolution such as the ecosocialists or, finally and simply, of abandoning Marxism for other theories, as in the case of Laclau. As was the case with converts and pessimists, now also the resisters and above all the innovators are an expression of a previous defeat, "Yesterday, as today, the defenders of a defeated theory often look outside their own tradition for resources that can make it evolve. " What does seem clear, however, is that none of these innovations are contributions in the sense of progress towards overcoming capitalism. They may be criticisms of new or aggravated problems in capitalism. This is the case of ecosocialism which, moreover, as Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez we analysed in the chapter dedicated to this current, points out the impossibility of maintaining the old Marxist proposal of the development of the productive forces as an element fundamental in the development of a communist society. Criticism of other aspects such as the oppression of ethnic or other minorities, or the power of the modern media and its role in maintaining consensus in bourgeois democracies can also be emphasised. But they still fail to address the key questions for the advancement of the socialist movement. A novel category of critical intellectuals proposed by Kaucheyan is the one he calls "experts" or, more precisely, "counter-experts". It is made up especially of economists or sociologists, whose critique refers to very specific aspects of reality, and is presented in the form of a highly formalised and documented scientific discussion. In fact, when he cites authors in this category, he mentions two biologists and a sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, as well as the organisation Attac. Finally, he refers to the category of intellectuals who have more affinity with classical Marxists, i.e. those who, in addition to their intellectual work, are leaders of parties or movements. The cases he can cite in this category are very few and clearly different from the classical Marxist leaders. Two of them, Daniel Bensaïd and Alex Callinicos, are from marginal organisations and, moreover, are also considered part of the category of resisters; the third, Álvaro García Linera, is the only one at the head of an important but non-Marxist organisation, the MAS, and vice-president of the Bolivian government, whom we have previously devoted ample space to analysing. The other two cases cited, Subcomandante Marcos and Edward Said, are clearly forced into this category. Kaucheyan recognises that these intellectuals are, in any case, the exception that proves the rule of the distance between critical thinkers and everyday political activity. This detachment from political activity and, above all, the absence of strategic considerations are characteristic features of most current critical thinking, denoting both a lack of confidence in the possibility of any advance towards socialism and a perplexity as to what the proposed socialist alternative should look like after the debacle of real socialism. Kaucheyan's work does not have the homogeneity of Anderson's work on Western Marxism; there are no common characteristics among the authors treated over and above their diversity. It reviews authors included by Anderson within Western Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Marxism, such as Althusser, Gramsci or the Frankfurt School; some forgotten by Anderson, such as Habermas; others later, such as Brenner, Altvater, Arrighi, Jameson or Zizek; and then those who are clearly situated outside Marxism, such as Laclau or Judith Butler. It is also noticeable the coincidence in the study of authors located mainly in the European and Anglo-Saxon geographical spheres. Keucheyan's work is important for the object of the study we are dealing with because it complements previous works of synthesis for the most recent period, since it deals with theories that appeared after 1989, i.e. after the debacle of real socialism. It is no longer the case, as was the case with the authors of Western Marxism who were writing at a time of stabilisation of capitalism after the revolutionary storm of the second decade of the 20th century, now the new theories are produced when, on the one hand, capitalism completely dominates the entire planet and any viable alternative to it has disappeared from the horizon and, on the other hand, there are no powerful Marxist organisations to refer to or influence either. But the latter was a situation that other currents, such as analytical Marxists or British historians, had already begun to move into. However, the absence of references to an important number of Marxist authors, more or less known and more or less important in their contributions, but who cannot be ignored in order to understand the evolution and the most recent contributions to Marxism, such as Ernest Mandel, Samir Amin, David Harvey, István Mészáros, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Goran Therborn, Daniel Bensaïd, Perry Anderson or the authors around analytical Marxism, is missing, István Mészáros, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Goran Therborn, Daniel Bensaïd, Perry Anderson or the authors around analytical Marxism, and without pretending to be exhaustive with other authors who would lengthen the list and to whom we have already referred when we have referred to the thousand Marxisms or Latin American Marxism. Keucheyan's book, then, is broader, dealing not only with Marxist intellectuals, but also with the wide range of critical thought. There is a first phenomenon we have already referred to, and it is easily explained: the enormous expansion of intellectuals and theories. One can simply appreciate this inflation of authors by comparing it with what it was in the 19th century. The reason, logically, is the enormous growth of university education in the world, since all thinkers today not only have a university degree, but their main profession is university teaching. This is a defining characteristic since Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Western Marxism that has now multiplied. Just as Weber pointed to the tendency towards bureaucratisation as inevitable given the increasing complexity of modern society and organisations, so the increasing complexity of knowledge drives social thought and theory to be a field almost entirely monopolised by university experts. But there is more, Keucheyan also draws attention to another aspect of this trend that was already observed with British Marxist historians or analytical Marxists, the growing weight of critical intellectuals linked to Anglo-Saxon universities, due to the fact that these universities have co-opted many of these intellectuals, coming from different parts of the world, who pursue their professional careers there. Thus, if on the one hand, he draws attention to the significant number of critical theorists from peripheral areas in relation to the central countries of capitalism, on the other hand, he points out how many of these intellectuals have ended up making their professional careers in AngloSaxon universities, such as Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Achille Mbembe, etc. The academic training and profession of these intellectuals brought them into contact with a multitude of philosophical and social thoughts and theories far removed from the most characteristic critical theory, Marxism. This circumstance, together with the fact of the defeats of the protest movements of the 1960s and 70s, provokes one of the most typical features of the new critical thinking, the tendency to crossbreed Marxism and other new theories or thinkers, something which, as we have also analysed above, is not a new phenomenon. Taking all this into account, the essential question to answer would be the one already formulated by Anderson: has the new theoretical production contributed to overcoming the crisis of Marxism? Among all these new critical thoughts, it is perhaps worth devoting a little more space to the contributions of two authors, Toni Negri and Ernesto Laclau, who have stood out for the global impact of their work, and who can be classified as para-Marxists and post-Marxists. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Toni Negri: Multitude and Empire It is possible to observe the ambiguity and indefiniteness that permeates Negri's work. The imperial global order, with an undefined virtual centre that manifests its power everywhere and simultaneously nowhere, and which is simultaneously traversed by crisis and instability, is thus a highly ambiguous and inoperative conception. Globalisation and Politics Approaches to the State and the New Global (Dis)Order Andrés Felipe Mora Cortés This subchapter is taken from an earlier book809 where the debate on the proletariat as a revolutionary subject was analysed. Negri originated at the beginning of the 21st century one of the best known polemics around the transformative subject. The polemic was triggered by the publication of Empire by Toni Negri and Michael Hard, written in the second half of the 1990s. The polemic was based on three facts; the first was the palpable decline of the revolutionary activity of the proletariat in parallel to the rise of the struggles of new subjects ambiguously encompassed under the name of new social movements; the second was that one of the authors was Toni Negri810 ; and the third was the very provocative content of his proposals. Negri's theses left the strategy for achieving socialism even more nebulous. In fact, with the failure of real socialism there has been an inflation of works, articles and documents criticising capitalism from the most varied angles, with analyses ranging from very simple to sophisticated, and which on the vast majority of occasions end with a three-line declaration of faith in which the transition to socialism is posited as necessary and imminent. Negri's proposal is the most controversial, but possibly also the most sterile. This polemic, as we shall see, served to bring to the surface the 809 Sánchez Rodríguez, Jesús, La lucha por el socialismo, el papel del marxismo y sus crisis, pp. 131-35. For an insight into the political and intellectual trajectory of Toni Negri, see Claudio Albertani, Las trampas de Imperio. Antonio Negri and the Strange Trajectory of Italian Workerism 810 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez difficulty of defining the revolutionary subject at the beginning of the 21st century, a problem we have already analysed in previous chapters. Anderson offers us a brief summary of Negri's and Hard's thinking that can serve as an introduction to the polemic: 'Hardt and Negri agree that globalisation is essentially a process of emancipation, but they reach a diametrically opposed verdict about the role of nations within it. Its history begins earlier, in the sixteenth century, when the liberating spirit of the Renaissance was crushed by a baroque counter-revolution that erected absolutism as the original form of modern sovereignty. Inherited essentially unchanged by the nation-states of the industrial age, the dissolution of this legacy, with the dissolution of the nation-states themselves into a single, uniform "Empire", marks the dawn of a new era of freedom and equality. In this respect, the turning point was not the overthrow of communism in 1989 - hardly mentioned - but the decade 1968-1978, when the anti-imperialist victory in Vietnam and the revolts of workers, unemployed and students in the West forced a reconfiguration of capitalism in its contemporary universal guise. With the advent of universal Empire, classes too - like nations - slowly die out, as capital generates the increasingly "immaterial" labour of a single, no less universal multitude. The days of national liberation, of the working class, of the revolutionary vanguards are over. But just as the Empire was created by resistance from below, so too will it fall by that resistance, as spontaneous networks of opposition to it proliferate across the earth. From the spiralling actions of this multitude - demonstrations, migrations and insurrections - driven by a common biopolitical desire for peace and democracy, a postliberal and post-socialist world will blossom. Without the mystifications of sovereignty or representation, all will rule for the first time in freedom and equality. It could happen at any moment. 811 Later, Negri will write another collective work, in which they recognise that they come "from the great tradition of Italian revolutionary workerism, and our work is part of that 811 Anderson, Perry, Notes on the Juncture, p. 31. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century which in the international debate is referred to by the admittedly unsatisfactory but not ineffective formula of post-workerism". 812 Their starting point is that just as there has been a pre-industrial capitalism prior to the industrial revolution, there can be a post-industrial capitalism which they will call "cognitive capitalism" or "bio-capitalism", which they characterise as follows, "that form which is characterised by its increasing intertwining with the lives of human beings. Previously, capitalism relied primarily on the transformation functions of raw materials developed by machinery and workers' bodies. Biocapitalism, on the other hand, produces value by extracting it, not only from the body operating as a material instrument of labour, but also from the body as a whole [...] The increase in profits that has fuelled financialisation has been possible because in biocapitalism the very concept of capital accumulation has been transformed. It no longer consists, as during the Fordist era, in investments in constant and variable capital (wages), but rather in investments in devices of production and capture of the value produced outside the directly productive process". Therefore, according to these authors, the crisis unleashed in 2008 would be the first crisis of bio-capitalism. For the subject we are dealing with in this section, what is important is the definition of the subject, which they call the multitude, and of the forms of struggle it carries out against this cognitive capitalism. "Uniting the precarious and the excluded, recomposing material and immaterial labour: the former within the complexity of its industrial and metropolitan articulations, the latter in the same space and in the complexity of its articulations (from call centres to universities, from industrial services to communication, from research centres to social, health and educational services). This is the multitude that can build a political subject that actively enters the terrain of income dominated by finance and introduces, with the same power that the struggle around wages had for the workers in the Fordist factories, a struggle around income. This is the dimension on which an "income wage" takes shape. [There is no class struggle without a place where it can develop. Today, that place is the metropolitan territory. There was a time when it was the factory; today it is still the factory, but to say factory, now, means something different from a while ago. The metropolis is today's factory - with its 812 Negri, A., Mazzadra, S., Fumagalli, A., Lucarelli, S., Marazzi, C., Vercellone, C., The Great Crisis of the Global Economy, p. 13. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez productive relations, research departments, areas of direct production and circulation/communication flows, means of transport, its separations and boundaries, crises of production and circulation, various forms of employment, etc. The metropolis: the most modern factory as only the predominance of cognitive labour in the processes of valorisation can determine; and yet, also the most ancient factory in which, like slaves, immigrants and women, precarious and excluded, all are equally put to work and where exploitation reaches all places and moments of life".813 In Claudio Albertani's critique of Negri's "multitude",814 , he points out that this term already appears in Negri's work on Spinoza, a term used by Hobbes and other philosophers of sovereignty, and which Negri would turn around to become the foundation of a radical democracy, "in the face of the crisis of the state, it would be the plural subject of a new open, inclusive and postmodern constituent power". In his critique, Albertani reveals that, "at the end of the journey, Negri returns to the original sin of Italian workerism: the ever-renewed search for some "centrality", the fetish of productive work, and the inability to leave the horizon of the factory. The result is a subject without history, and a form without content, the latest adaptation of the old twist by which the working class never ceases to harass capitalism". Criticisms of Negri from orthodox Marxist positions are made both to reject his disembodied multitude and to vindicate the ever central role of the proletariat, "By constructing a logic of an unreal subject ("the multitude"), which has no correspondence with an empirically determinable subject, they dissolve the objective position occupied in the capitalist mode of production by the various subaltern social classes, in particular the centrality of the proletariat as the social subject of socialist revolution. This phantom subject that they construct, omnipresent and pure power, has no need of programmes, of strategy and tactics and even less of a revolutionary party to undertake its historical mission".815 813 Ibid, p. 180-1 Albertani, Claudio, The Traps of Empire. Antonio Negri and the strange trajectory of Italian workerism. 815 Chingo, Juan and Dunga, Gustavo, A polemic with Giovanni Arrighi's "The Long Twentieth Century" and Toni Negri and Michael Hardt's "Empire", p. 12. 814 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Negri's digression represents an extreme case, the result both of the political, social and economic changes that have taken place in the world - which have forced him to rethink many theses that have been considered immovable for many decades - and of his own personal trajectory. But other authors have also set out to analyse a different reality that cannot be explained by the old concepts alone. The rising prominence of the new social movements, parallel to the decline of the old labour movement, is an indisputable fact that has many facets. Ecologist, pacifist and feminist parties and organisations were one of their first expressions, as were the emergence of NGOs, then the indigenous movements in Latin America, and finally, rounding it all off, the expressions of global articulation such as the World Social Forums. Their activism in the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century, with spectacular mobilisations such as those in Seattle, massive mobilisations such as those carried out around the world against the war in Iraq, or insurrectional mobilisations such as those that took place in Latin America, have led many authors to think of this heterogeneous mixture of actors and demands that are the new social movements as the new subject that took up the baton from the old workers' movement in its struggle against capitalism. The idea is suggestive and hopeful after the astonishing debacle of real socialism and the worldwide deployment of globalisation and neoliberalism. But the picture is complex and changing and, in the face of the certainty of the decline of the classical revolutionary subject of Marxism, there are no clear signs that these movements have the capacity to overcome capitalism, even if they can sustain a long struggle within it. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Ernesto Laclau: Hegemony and populism The heart of Laclau's post-Marxist argument lies in the thesis that the political, as a contingent hegemonic articulation, institutes the social in an original way. Against what he sees as the deterministic economism of traditional Marxism, before any 'social logic', there would be a radical and contingent political institution. A Marxism for Social Movements or Towards a Critical Theory of Modernity Facundo Nahuel Martín As has been pointed out above, one of the authors who best represents post-Marxism, the one who has made one of the most precise elaborations of an alternative theory to Marxism, is Ernesto Laclau. For this reason, it is necessary to refer to his intellectual production in some detail, but without going into an in-depth analysis of it, for which some of the works contained in the final bibliography can be consulted. The reason for having devoted some space to Negri's work in the previous subchapter lies in the publicity that his works acquired for a certain period of time and the debate that arose around them, although later this lustre faded without his theses serving either to achieve a more comprehensive explanation of the new social phenomena and the historical time in which they were occurring, or to fertilise the action of any kind of political or social movement or actor. The case of Ernesto Laclau is somewhat different, firstly because he is one of the most influential of the post-Marxist thinkers, whose work has also raised a wide-ranging controversy with many Marxist intellectuals. Secondly, because his work has the clear purpose of criticising and overcoming Marxism, proposing a new paradigm for conceiving and exercising politics, whose objective is not the overcoming of capitalism. Thirdly, because his recent work on populism offers an interesting explanatory theory of many phenomena, both historical and of the situation in the first years of the 21st century, in which populism has once again acquired a significant force in many parts of the world. Finally, because its theses Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century have served as a guide for some political movements, among which the case of Podemos in Spain stands out, at least in its initial phase. Laclau, sometimes in collaboration with Chantal Mouffe, has elaborated a work which, starting from Marxism, first questioned some of its core elements, and finally placed himself outside that theory. His initial point of differentiation and the vehicle he used to distance himself from Marxism were social classes and hegemony. Laclau begins his critique of classical Marxism on the basis of the ambiguity he points out in Marx's work between a conception of history as a conflict between productive forces and relations of production, and another as a history of class struggles. These two conceptions would be informed by two different logics, the first that of necessity and the second that of contingency. This leads him to separate himself from the economic determinism rooted in the conception of the mode of production by critically relying on Althusser's structuralism. The social totality begins to be conceived on the basis of different independent but contingently related levels in which, unlike Althusser, none of them plays an ultimately determining role. Laclau criticises and distances himself from structuralism by criticising the works of Althusser and Poulantzas for their maintenance of the determinant role of the economic in the explanation of the social totality. As Javier Waiman argues, already in the 1970s Laclau "came to the conclusion that there is a space for the formation of popular identities that is separated from the class determination of the subjects. The construction of the subjects that explain fascism and populism does not respond to class identities but to interpellations of the "people", a non-class category, politically and ideologically constructed".816 In this way, Laclau will lead to the affirmation of "the absolute autonomy of the political, as articulation and struggle for hegemony, the effects of which cross the totality of the social".817 The rejection of any deterministic role of the economic instance is accompanied by a parallel challenge to the central role of the working class as the subject of social 816 Waiman, Javier, Which Marx(ism) of post-Marxism? On the presence of Marx in the work of Ernesto Laclau, p.13. 817 Ibid,p.16 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez transformation, of overcoming capitalism. Laclau rejects the essentialisation of the subject of change, which he conceives of as contingent. "By insisting on pointing out the contingent character of social groups they [Laclau and Mouffe] show that they adhere to a form of sociological "indeterminism", according to which the (relative) coherence of the actors is always constructed in the course of action and not a priori [...] If there is no "essence" that is at the basis of the social, the entities that evolve in that sphere are necessarily relational, that is, they are constructed one in relation to the other or one against the other."818 In contrast to the "essentialism" of classes, Laclau conceives of the entities that form the social base as relational. His conception is perfectly described by Keucheyan, "at the beginning is the radical heterogeneity of the social world, which for Laclau is characterised by the plurality and fragmentation of its components whose identities are permanently fluctuating. The heterogeneity of the social is increasing as societies become more complex. Laclau describes this phenomenon using the expression "logic of difference". Different social sectors, arising from the economic (trade unions), communal (ethnic) or other spheres, interact with established power and institutions by addressing to them the demands that concern them respectively. [...] in that case [when demands are not met], the logic of difference is susceptible to being transformed into the "logic of equivalence". The demands lose their particular character from the moment they suffer the same rejection by power. Because from then on they have at least one characteristic in common, that of having been rejected by power, and this creates the conditions for an alliance between them. Populism is soon to enter the scene. One of the conditions of populism is precisely that sectoral particularisms are transformed into claims of a more general scope which are inscribed in the "chain of equivalence" which links them. "819 After discarding the viability of the project proposed by Marxism, since the historical cycle opened with the October revolution had closed and the core of its main theses had been disproved, the new project proposed by Laclau will be based on a reworking of the concept of hegemony, as he proposes in his work with Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, a concept taken from Gramsci's work but with the suppression of the 818 Keucheyan, Razmig, Left Hemisphere. A map of new critical thinking, pp. 547-48. 819 Keucheyan, Razmig, Left Hemisphere. A Map of New Critical Thinking, p.550 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century essentialist character of the working class that is still present in the Italian Marxist's thought, "Hegemony comes to define for Laclau and Mouffe a type of relationship between groups, through which a greater unity is constituted, principally through ideology, a unity in which the characteristics of each of these groups is transformed by modifying their own identity. The social logic of hegemony thus accounts for the constitution of every society. It is through hegemonic articulatory practices that every identity and every social order can be constituted".820 Thus, the concept of hegemony is taken over from Gramsci, but given a different content. Indeed, Gramsci, in spite of the set of new analytical concepts he put into circulation to understand the defeat of revolutions in the West after the First World War, remains at all times within the structure of Marxist thought. However, by rejecting the 'essentialism' of social classes and renouncing the centrality of the latter - whose main arguments in this respect we have already had occasion to analyse - Laclau gives the concept of hegemony a different content. Laclau and Mouffe's conception of hegemony is that of an unmistakably modern phenomenon derived from the democratic revolution - because, appropriating Lefort's thesis, only in the latter does the notion of power as an empty place appear - but also as the universal form of politics. The hegemonic struggle would have as its stage a variety of political identities that are articulated with the aim of achieving radical democracy. But, "the success of any hegemonic project depends on how effective it is in constructing a chain of equivalences between different demands, subject positions and forces that already exist or are to be created - or, to put it more precisely, whose being is to be modified as they are articulated in a chain of equivalences - Laclau transfers the ontological status of hegemony to populism".821 This development of the concept of hegemony and his rejection of the essentialism of social classes would lead Laclau to end up defending populism, where the irruption of the people as a political subject appears from the equivalential aggregation of a diverse set of unsatisfied demands brought together by means of some kind of nodal point, 820 821 Waiman, Javier, Beyond Limits. Rethinking the relationship between hegemony and democracy, p. 3. Arditi, Benjamin, Post-hegemony: Politics outside the usual post-Marxist paradigm, p. 4. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez which can come to form a bloc that confronts that of power, dividing the social field into two antagonistic poles. Finally, in Laclau's populist logic, "hegemony consists in speaking for the community on the basis of "camps" that antagonism separates".822 For Laclau, populism is 'a way of constructing the political', a 'political logic', and also 'one of the ways of constituting the very unity of the group', which can contain opposing elements, right-wing or left-wing, which means that the no-man's land that exists between right-wing and left-wing has been crossed many times, and that 'depending on social and cultural conditions' one or the other will prevail. But this ambiguity of populism and its language stems from the very nature of the social, according to Laclau, "The language of a populist discourse - whether left or right - will always be imprecise and fluctuating: not because of any cognitive failure, but because it tries to operate performatively within a social reality that is largely heterogeneous and fluctuating".823 Populism needs three preconditions to emerge: "(1) the formation of an antagonistic internal border separating the "people" from power; (2) an equivalential articulation of demands that makes the emergence of the "people" possible. There is a third precondition that does not really emerge until political mobilisation has reached a higher level: the unification of these diverse demands [...] the consolidation of the equivalential chain through the construction of a popular identity that is qualitatively something more than the simple sum of the equivalential ties".824 The political border is an essential element, "if the latter disappears, the "people" as a historical actor disintegrates". Laclau links his concept of hegemony with that of populism. Once the equivalential links that have given rise to popular demands have been constructed, it is necessary to find a common denominator that embodies the totality, that is, the individual demand that becomes central, this is the hegemonic operation, "There is no hegemony without the construction of a popular identity from a plurality of democratic demands". Both from Laclau's own conception of populism, 'a political logic', and from the numerous and contradictory historical examples he uses in his book to try to 822 Keucheyan, Razmig, Left Hemisphere. A map of new critical thinking, p.554. Laclau, Ernesto, La razón populista, p. 113. 824 Ibid, p. 74 823 Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century demonstrate how his populist theory is valid as a tool of analysis to explain reality, the feeling is that we are in the presence of a tool of political engineering useful to be used by very different actors and with even opposing objectives, as he himself acknowledges when he points out that it can be used by both the left and the right, and even transform from one into the other at any given moment. Laclau himself puts it perfectly, populism "is less a political family than a dimension of the discursive and normative register adopted by political actors. It is, therefore, a reserve at the fingertips available to a plurality of actors, in a more or less systematic way. "825 Laclau has criticised and abandoned the Marxist project and, with it, evidently, its finalist objective. His proposal of political objectives based on his two key concepts of hegemony and populism will no longer have to do with any proposal to overcome capitalism, "he poses the problem of two conceptions of emancipation: a political emancipation that would be the product of political construction through the logic of hegemony, through the extension of the discourse of equality and democratic freedom to form an equivalential chain that contests a new hegemony; against a universal emancipation that supposes the reconciliation of a plenitude in society that overcomes all particularity and domination. Laclau clearly posits the impossibility of this second option and supports the construction of an emancipatory exit characterised as political, which he also attributes to Gramsci".826 The fact that Laclau has indicated radical democracy as a goal to be achieved, which is not mentioned at any point in The Populist Reason, is only a personal political choice that does not necessarily derive from his theory. Therefore, he can legitimately try to assert that his political theory is an instrument with greater explanatory power than Marxism, but he cannot base on any element that his political objective is better or more feasible than the one proposed by Marxism, it is only a subjective choice. Laclau's approach, and all the examples on which he relies, show a characteristic of his analysis and the usefulness of his political tool: it is always about national processes where international factors are not taken into account at all. 825 Ibid, p. 165 Waiman, Javier, Más allá de los límites. Rethinking the relationship between hegemony and democracy, p. 17. 826 Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez Laclau and Mouffe's proposals have been the object of various criticisms in an attempt to show that they represent a step backwards with respect to the emancipatory project represented by Marxism: "both the proposal of an agonistic and pluralistic democracy, and that of a democratic populism (proposals whose development is further developed by Mouffe and Laclau respectively in works subsequent to Hegemony and Socialist Strategy); suppose as a strategy the extension of political principles, those of democratic revolution, which necessarily imply the maintenance of class relations. However much they insist in some passages on the need for this radical democratic politics to reformulate and change the existing power relations, and within them the capitalist ones, when these proposals take concrete form, they are only limited to a mere regulation of the capital-labour relation, of distributive measures that ensure more equality while maintaining the domination of the working class by capital".827 However, there are also those who recognise that there has not been an adequate response from Marxism to the challenge posed by post-Marxism, and more specifically Laclau's work. This is the position of Roggerone, who begins by pointing out that while the challenge posed by postmodernism or poststructuralism did receive an adequate response from Marxism through works such as those of Perry Anderson or Fredric Jameson, this response has nevertheless been insufficient in the face of the challenge posed by post-Marxism. Many disqualifications have been levelled at Laclau and Mouffe, but "the truth is that, to date, the field of Marxism has not managed to satisfactorily repel the attacks launched by Laclau et al. It can be said that, in general terms, no major responses have been offered, and that when attempts have been made to provide them, they have been inconsistent". This author considers that the responses attempted by Norman Geras or Ellen Meikins Wood, although lucid, do not manage to structure a true defence of Marxism. And what Roggerone finds most symptomatic is that "an intellectual of Anderson's stature, an ineffable polemicist who in In the Footsteps of Historical Materialism did not hesitate to lambast structuralism and poststructuralism, never developed a critique of post-Marxism - it is also striking that 827 Waiman, Javier, Más allá de los límites. Rethinking the relationship between hegemony and democracy, p. 17. Marxism. A contradictory legacy for the 21st century Anderson never picked up the gauntlet and replied to the imputation of his reading of Gramsci made in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy". 828 Actually, the point about Anderson is not entirely true. In January 2017 he took advantage of an article published in NLR on Gramsci's heirs829 , to critique Laclau's post-Marxism, although it is true that it was a brief and superficial critique, as if Anderson considered Laclau's populism not to be a theoretical rival worthy of spending more time refuting him. We have seen in the chapter on the crisis of Marxism that Kouvelakis reached similar conclusions about Lacau on the basis of a quite different approach. Laclau passed away in April 2014, and it is still too early to conclude whether his physical disappearance also marks the end of the influence of his work, and thus whether both Anderson and Kouvelakis would be right to give him scant attention because of the limited influence of his theories, or whether they will fertilise some kind of school or intellectual trend that will develop his lines of thought in the future. 828 829 Roggerone, Santiago M., El marxismo desafiado. Apuntes para una investigación, p. 27. Anderson, Perry, Gramsci's Heirs, NLR, No. 100, July-August 2016, pp. 89-93. Jesús Sánchez Rodríguez BIBLIOGRAPHY A. 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