And on the “conquest of nature” metaphor so important here, Engels says:
“Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature …” In other words, Engels has the complete opposite of the “conquest of nature” conception

Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first. The people who, in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor and elsewhere, destroyed the forests to obtain cultivable land, never dreamed that by removing along with the forests the collecting centers and reservoirs of moisture they were laying the basis for the present forlorn state of those countries. When the Italians of the Alps used up the pine forests on the southern slopes, so carefully cherished on the northern slopes, they had no inkling that by doing so they were cutting at the roots of the dairy industry in their region; they had still less inkling that they were thereby depriving their mountain springs of water for the greater part of the year, and making it possible for them to pour still more furious torrents on the plains during the rainy seasons. Those who spread the potato in Europe were not aware that with these farinaceous tubers they were at the same time spreading scrofula. Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature — but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.

http://www.geocities.com/youth4sa/ape2man.html

“Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human
victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us.
Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we
expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unfore–seen
effects which only too often cancel the first. …”

Randy

^^^^^
Thanks Randy. Hope we can bounce it back and forth some more.

I understand your perspective. There is quite a lot there, and I won’t address all you say, unless the direction the thread has taken gets the ok to go on.

On imperialism and the SU, a very big topic, no doubt the Great October Revolution and what followed was not able to overturn the Russian empire ( “the prison house of nations”)”overnight”. But the policies of the SU were directed toward doing that. The Bolsheviks instituted what was basically an affirmative action program with respect to what had been the colonial nations of Russia. Of course, like anything , it wasn’t perfect, but it was historically successful compared to all other European colonialisms.

The main point I would make is that there was not economic exploitation of its formerly colonial nations, and even net flow of goods etc. to the former colonies from what had been the center of the Russian empire.

Surely, you are correct that the CP fell into the problems you describe. That was a great tragedy. But there were socialist achievements as well.

Myself, I _am_ a Marxist because of its practice in the world on behalf of the poor,like you _and_ because it is leading edge of social scientific truth we have. Of course, all truth is relative . There is no absolute truth. (See Lenin and Engels on that). It is the best we have got at this point in human history.

Anyway, if this line of discussion continues…

And of course he is correct that there have been major problems with Marxism , the Soviet Union and CP’s. I have had direct experience and conflicts with the CPUSA , too.

Even with all that, I think that even the most rote learned , basic and vulgar Marxism has something to teach about 99.9 % of the people, given the current mass consciousness marred by so much bourgeois propaganda. If people learn the sort of elementary school level of Marxism, even as its form as a bit of “rigid dogma”, we can move to a next stage of more subtle and intellectually vigorous and flexible, and really profound truths of “advanced” Marxism.

Randy

Randy

And Charles, sorry, but no-one can deny that the USSR had some very imperialist tendencies, many of which stem from the 19th century Russian empire. There was a layer at which multiculturalism was encouraged, but it was often idealized, reproduced as lovely folklore and not further explored (and I like folklore, btw). Russian identity was set up as the normative one. This had some good sides, such as the fantastic education in letters and science — listening to a 40 year old Ukrainian recite sublime poetry in Russian can bring be to tears; nevertheless, it was hegemonic and often oppressive and covertly racist.

As a Yugoslav, I find the contrast which developed after the breakdown of real existing socialisms quite interesting. In Yugoslavia, most reactionaries, even if they had belonged to CPY, switched to brutal nationalism in all of its variants, from pragmatic free-marketism to monarchism. Saying that Yugoslavia was not completely bad or artificial carries an immediate connotation of leftism, and precisely for that reason it is hated among nationalists, who want to preserve the tabula rasa created post 1991.

But my impression is that in the case of the USSR, a lot of people which defend it are merely dreaming of it as one of many incarnations of Russian glory (see those who admire Stalin — it is mostly for his “discipline”, his talent in “uniting the country”). A way to be honest and a better human being is to admit that many people who genuinely believed in communism were also disappointed and oppressed in the USSR. It was not only the suffering of liberals and aristocrats who played the piano and spoke French at home, even though that one has been romanticized, as in the poor, poor Russian princes who lost their palaces and became taxi drivers, blah blah.

After all, from my experience, people in real existing socialism did not oppose it only because they wanted commodities or the right to listen to Madonna. Most people I know who came to dislike the idea of communism did so because the party created a new ruling class which spoke of communism, but practiced something else. It was the hypocrisy and the greed of those at the top which collapsed those regimes, much more so than the lure of any imaginary “western” freedom.

Finally, I am not a Marxist because it is objective, scientific, progressive, or inevitable. Indeed, think the scientific claim is a big problem for Marxist theory and practice, as is the idealization of the young, muscled, androgynous industrial worker.

I am a Marxist because I admire the sharpness of many of old Karl’s analyses, but more importantly, because it is one tradition which is on the side of the poor qua poor, and I sorely miss that in identity politics. Without the Marxist practice, I would never had been able to afford the education I have had, or to fix my teeth. Given my family background, I would probably be a semi-literate, TV-consuming peasant who would feel something is terribly wrong with the world, but would not know how to articulate it, or defend herself against it.

Randy

^^^^^^^
CB: This is a long discussion, but for starters, there was net flow of use-values from the SU to places like Cuba, or Vietnam etc. So, they weren’t colonies and the SU was not an imperialist power. The SU was the main bulwark of anti-imperialism through its existence.