22.07.1999

Modest differences

USSR and the power of ideology

I am sure comrades will forgive the lateness of this reply to Jack Conrad’s critique of my article on the USSR and negative ideology (Weekly Worker October 15 1998).

The reason that I am publishing a counter-argument now is that I feel somewhat perturbed at the response to my recent review of Michael Cox’s Rethinking the Soviet collapse (Weekly Worker June 24 1999). Whereas before I was accused of being a ‘Stalinist’, I am now apparently in full agreement with Jack Conrad on the question of the Soviet Union. It is quite obvious that agreement between myself and comrade Conrad exists. However, I thought the aforementioned book review would make quite clear where the differences remain. Unfortunately, certain comrades remain stuck in the lazy practice of casting around for this or that label, rather than in engaging with what people actually write.

In his reply to my ‘Problematic of negative ideology’ (Weekly Worker October 7 1998) Conrad questions whether in fact I am debating with him at all: “The gist of comrade Watson’s non-argument with me is that ideology can under certain circumstances become ... a primary material force that must be situated within the complex of other forces ... Yes, in the Soviet Union official ideology ‘actively moulded’ certain specific realities of development.” In other words, Conrad decries the charge of being a mechanical materialist. If this were to be the substantial foundation of Conrad’s theory then we would indeed be indulging ourselves in a “non-argument”. Unfortunately for those who like a happy resolution this is not the case at all.

Conrad frames his analysis of ideology with a set of generalised ontological statements. After acknowledging ideology as a material force and pointing to the fact that throughout history people have changed reality on the basis of ignorance and superstitious belief, Conrad asks the question: what is primary?: “Materialists say that nature, objective reality and its contradictory laws are in the last analysis primary.” Just in case you thought Conrad was warming up with a little pre-critique banter, he rounds off the demolition with another ontological flourish: “The world constitutes a whole. But in the last analysis ideas are not and cannot be primary ... The real point of departure is not the idea, not the ideology of what should be: rather the actual state of things as they are.” This is obviously where Conrad squares his own methodological circles, giving ideological determination specific weight in the cause of its ultimate refutation. What we have here is an excellent polemical method. Its theoretical viability is something we can test in more detail.

Conrad’s usage of the reality/idea distinction is of course an ontological variation of the base/superstructure metaphor. That ideas and reality are indeed distinct is not disputed here. What is questioned is the rendering of these factors into primary and secondary spheres.

In his famous analysis in chapter one of Capital, Marx gives us an understanding of the contradictory nature of the commodity. A commodity is first of all considered as having a definite use-value. In Marx’s own words it is “an external object, a thing which through its qualities satisfies human needs of whatever kind” (K Marx Capital Vol 1, London 1986, p125). Exchange-value on the other hand “appears first of all as the quantitative relation, the proportion, in which use-values of one kind exchange for use-values of another kind” (ibid p126). The precise magnitude of a commodity’s exchange-value is decided by the amount of labour-time “socially necessary for its production” (ibid p129).

This particular unity of opposites is no mere logical progression. Written into this relationship is a relational abstraction, or, to be more precise, an alienated effect. Marx illustrates clearly how this process becomes interwoven into the production and consumption of such objects through their conversion into exchange-value:

“If ... we disregard the use-value of commodities, only one property remains - that of being products of labour. But even the product of labour has already been transformed in our hands. If we make an abstraction from its use-value [eg, in the form of exchange-value], we abstract also from the material constituents and forms which make it a use-value. It is no longer a table, a house, a piece of yarn or any other useful thing. All its sensuous characteristics are extinguished. Nor is it any longer the product of the labour of the joiner, the mason or the spinner, or of any other kind of productive labour. With the disappearance of the useful character of the products of labour, the useful character of the kinds of labour embodied in them also disappears; this in turn entails the disappearance of the different concrete forms of labour. They can no longer be distinguished, but are all together reduced to the same kind of labour - human labour in the abstract” (ibid p128).

This has profound consequences for the communist project, concerned, as it should be, that the working class should be able to understand and appropriate the world in all it sensuous formation. Under capitalism and the rule of exchange-value such a process is circumvented by the consistent elaboration of the quantitative.

Marx moves on to explore the means by which differing exchange-values are mediated into the social totality. He works through a variety of value formations (the simple, isolated or accidental form; the total or expanded form) until he reaches the general form of value, which lays the necessary foundation for the money form. Marx shows how such a dynamic “expresses the values of the world of commodities through one single kind of commodity set apart from the rest ... linen for example, and thus represents the values of all commodities by means of their equality with linen” (ibid p158). Thus under capitalism it is the money form which becomes the universal equivalent, the one commodity which quantifies all others against itself. We have observed how through the machinations of exchange-value commodities become abstracted and alienated from their use-value. It is the money form which sets itself the task of arbiter.

Having reconstructed Marx’s outline of the commodity we can now return to the question of whether Conrad’s gradation of “ideas” and “objective reality” is useful in apprehending the nature of a particular historical determination.

We can observe that the dialectic is concerned with difference and its distinct mediation into the whole. Within the structure of the commodity Marx shows the need to reach beyond its abstracted character in order to grasp the object - and the labour required to produce it - in all its profundity and sensuousness. Grasping the nature of historical events requires the expression of a similar methodology, in that difference is a basic epistemological means by which we comprehend the workings of history.

By seemingly admitting that ideology can, under certain circumstances, become a primary material force Conrad appears to be on the verge of grasping similar conclusions. However, in rounding off our “non-argument” he smothers this recognition in favour of a more ‘orthodox’ formulation: “Materialists say that nature, objective reality and its contradictory laws are in the last analysis primary.” This forms the basis of Conrad’s universal - methodological - equivalent. The functioning of Marxist ideology in the USSR can only be a ‘secondary’ phenomenon: as a social mediator it becomes effectively null and void. The whole gamut of historical events, determinations and outcomes must be expressed through the preconception “objective reality” first, “ideas” second. Comrade Conrad is a fine theoretician, but this really does reek of formalism. By polemicising in this fashion Conrad certainly reproduces Capital, but only in the form of the object of its critique. Just as exchange-value blunts our perception of social labour, Conrad’s ontological rendering of the base/superstructure metaphor blunts our perception of the particular in favour of a universal abstract.

Marx writes: “Labour ... as the creator of use-values, as useful labour, is a condition of human existence which is independent of all forms of society; it is an eternal natural necessity which mediates the metabolism between man and nature, and therefore human life itself” (ibid p133). Labour and the creation of use-value is thus the starting point for any understanding of human societies throughout history. However, to construct an ontology around one dialectical pole - the necessity of labour - is a gross error. Marxism must also comprehend how freedom mediates necessity. To allow for this freedom, and then to negate it in the cause of ruling necessary labour as a universal “primary” phenomenon, is merely to mangle our concept of the particular beyond all recognition.

Georg Lukács pressed home a similar line of attack shortly before his death: “The challenge, as I see it, is to reject the language, values and categories of the exact sciences and to coin an intellectual vocabulary which would reflect the unique nature of man’s manifold interactions with his history, his culture, his religion, his class, etc” (cited in G Urban, ‘A conversation with Lukács’ Encounter October 1971, p31). In order to meet this challenge we need to dispense with the irrational logic of the universal equivalent, methodological or otherwise.

Conrad makes use of the three concluding paragraphs from the first supplement of his ‘Genesis of bureaucratic socialism’ series in order to refute the charge that he dismisses the cause and effect of ideological structures. Conrad does this by advancing an understanding of Soviet centrism:

“To justify itself [the Soviet bureaucracy] a mystifying ideology was needed. By definition that could not be genuine Marxism nor could it be pro-capitalist reformism. Soviet centrism was invented. It justified adaptation to Russia’s backwardness and legitimised the bureaucracy’s monopoly of power. Soviet centrism stood between reform and revolution in its own particular way; that made it centrism sui generis.”

It is in drawing a distinction between Soviet centrism and ‘classical’ centrism that Conrad appears to draw theoretically close to Phil Watson. As an ideology Soviet centrism

“served a social stratum which gained its privileges to the detriment of socialism, yet at the same time owed those privileges to a socialist revolution - hence the contradictory ideology that denied the existence of an antagonistic bureaucracy and its privileges, and portrayed an imminent realisation of utopia ... despite its ‘extreme poverty and even dishonesty’, it reflected and actively moulded, as Herbert Marcuse pointed out, ‘in various forms the realities of Soviet development’. This was because it was an ideology which both justified and served a caste, if not a class, that was running a world power ...”

In reality Conrad’s outline of this ideological relationship stands some way apart from that of Phil Watson. Conrad predominantly considers Soviet ideology as adapted by a distinct bureaucratic need. Even his statement that Soviet ideology reflected and actively moulded Soviet development is immediately qualified by its functional relationship to the CPSU bureaucracy. Thus Conrad is infinitely stronger at identifying ideology as the reflection of material backwardness and bureaucratic control than in establishing its real contradictions. He certainly locates the legitimating function of ideology and the contradiction involved in bureaucratic denial, yet we have to go further and draw the line not just within the structure of a pragmatic ‘Marxism-Leninism’, but between this formation and that of Marxism itself. It is this latter ideological pole that became divorced from its material base and manifested itself in a relatively independent manner.

Comrade Conrad is of course completely correct in establishing that ‘Marxism-Leninism’, as represented by the CPSU, was a significant deformation of the praxis of Marx, Engels and Lenin. However, as I have argued previously, such a dynamic was bolstered by the use and reproduction of Marxism (in its critical and liberatory sense) to bolster the Soviet ideological structure. The bureaucracy may not have been comfortable with this, but the legitimising function of Lenin’s collected works could not be entirely dispensed with. Nevertheless, it should be understood that Marxism (as opposed to ‘Marxism-Leninism’) became negative and dysfunctional in that its practical role was heavily prescribed. The voluntaristic implications that such a practice involved were quite in accord with the manner in which various leaderships ‘planned’ and ruled society.

This ideological effect manifested itself with the USSR’s collapse and the concurrent formation of a reactionary period in world politics. If this is accepted then it becomes clear that advanced sections of the working class thought of the Soviet Union as something other than a gigantic prison camp: the Soviet experience was residually linked to the workers’ revolution of 1917, a development which the ruling bureaucracy were forced to dance half-heartedly around.

Jack Conrad, with his universal methodological equivalent (“ideas are not and cannot be primary”), is theoretically incapable of grasping hold of this conundrum. Modest these differences may be, but differences they remain.

Phil Watson