There seems little doubt that as a transitional phase Marx accepted that violent revolution and a Dictatorship of the Proletariat would be necessary. But do we suppose that he expected a Stalin to be the result, and in no sense a transitional result, of such a doctrine? Do we suppose that he would be happy to have known that a new governing institution, this time appropriating to itself power in the name of ‘the people’ instead of God, would secure itself in the permanent citadel of a new unbreachable regime that would deprive the masses of freedom, meanwhile subordinating to itself the significatory scope of that very terminology of emancipation that had defeated the old order and ushered it into power in the first place, in this way foreclosing from within the possibility that this language might any further resonate in ways other than to strenghten its own dominance. I can’t help thinking: if anyone had ever wanted a poster child for Capitalism, none more convincing or persuasive, perhaps, could have been imagined than Stalin. Not only did he strengthen the West in its complacent smugness about the superiority of Capitalism, despite its depradations. He also tore up from within the roots of sincere support for Communism. The best way, perhaps, to subvert a possibility is not to directly oppose it but rather to corrupt it from with, by taking it over and distorting it and then pretending to be its champion. It is difficult not to see this practice occuring in another institution, one also enamoured of promoting the tyranny of the fictitiously Big Other. The Post-Constantinian church, in its various historical guises, has been doing something similar with the Gospel for centuries, very succesfully, one can only suppose, in so far as it has managed to keep at bay the possibilities of that very concrete, this-worldy and inter-relational love which its founder and leader was so unambiguously insistent upon. One might very well want to explain this inadequacy in terms of some weakness in human nature, an inability to bear the light or such like. But even so, whatever the explanation, one might as well admit that this is what has happened.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Oct 2013 16:25:05 +0000
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