The Bukharin Factor

Brian Morton's Dissent article on bloggers says nice things about me, so I hate to criticize it, but in addition to what Kevin Drum says about age and Kay Steiger says about gender, I have to take issue with one of Morton's assertions about "Old Bolshevik" intellectual Nikolai Bukharin:

By saying they're ambitious, I mean that most of these writers share a politics that is interested in deep-going social reform—you could say it's a social-democratic politics, although few of them would use that term. (As far as I can tell, they have absolutely no interest in socialist thought, which, in my opinion, is a good thing. At any rate, I can't see that any of them has been hobbled intellectually because of a lack of opinions about Bukharin.)

I have opinions about Bukharin!

Back in college, I wrote a term paper on him for a slightly weird seminar that Robert Nozick co-taught with a scholar of the Russian Revolution from the History Department. My take was that Bukharin's right deviationism (and other efforts at "reform Communism") was ultimately a mirage. The hard-liners were correct to think in Bukharin's day, just as they were when they crushed the Prague Spring and when they tried to stage a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, that Communist Party political control couldn't survive substantial liberalization of the economy.

Beyond that, I'll admit to not having much interest in socialist thought. I will say that I'm pretty much a believer in Marx-style base/superstructure theory to an extent that most of my friends and colleagues seem to find somewhat appalling. I don't, for example, believe that William F. Buckley, Jr. exercised any substantial real causal influence on American history not through any fault of his own but simply because I don't think intellectuals really impact the course of events. This is, needless to say, not a popular opinion among writers.

Comments

Your paper seems to have been on historical socialism instead of socialist ideology. It seems that your argument was located in a historical context, ultimately the NEP came along and did liberalize the economy to a certain extent. In other words, you think that market liberalization only undermines communist in particular historical contexts. Doesn't seem like an argument about ideology.

As to base/superstructure, this depends on what communist you are referring to. Gramsci states that the super-structure has an effect on the structure, though far less that structure on super-structure.

Posted by Charlie | April 23, 2008 8:41 PM

Your paper seems to have been on historical socialism instead of socialist ideology. It seems that your argument was located in a historical context, ultimately the NEP came along and did liberalize the economy to a certain extent. In other words, you think that market liberalization only undermines communist in particular historical contexts. Doesn't seem like an argument about ideology.

As to base/superstructure, this depends on what communist you are referring to. Gramsci states that the super-structure has an effect on the structure, though far less that structure on super-structure.

Posted by Charlie | April 23, 2008 8:42 PM

I thought that hood ornament Trotsky acquired was an interesting touch.

Isn't Hillary Clinton's idea of the "Permanent Campaign" similar to Trotsky's concept of the "permanent revolution"??

Posted by Don Williams | April 23, 2008 8:49 PM

Bukharin - cooler looking than Stalin, not as cool as Lenin.

Posted by blah | April 23, 2008 8:50 PM

Yes, of course intellectuals don't impact the course of events. Of course Buckley didn't whip the reigns around and help save the Republican party after Nixon. Of course Lenin's trip in a box car from Switzerland back to Mother Russia was tantamount to visiting an aunt.

Uh... how can you study the Russian Revolution in any way and come to that conclusion?

Posted by Eric | April 23, 2008 8:56 PM

I don't think intellectuals really impact the course of events

I'd be curious to hear more about this. Do you think intellectuals just describe things that were already happening without them? Is it a base/superstructure thing?

I think there's a lot of merit to that school of thought, but I wouldn't go too far. Articulating and explaining historical processes to a wider audience is a good way to accelerate them. Changing the way those processes are framed seems like it could even be a good way to change them.

Even Marx thought that describing the world was a way to change it.

Posted by ML | April 23, 2008 9:01 PM

Eric,
It would be pretty easy, the Russian Revolution didn't happen because of Lennin's box car trip, both of them occurred because the state (depends which revolution) was so weak that any group that wanted power could as Hannah Arendt put it "pick it up in the streets". Thinkers have some impact on society but only an ancillary one. The means of production are far more important in determining who has power and how that evolves. At least according to a Marxist, or even just a plain old materialist.

Posted by Charlie | April 23, 2008 9:02 PM

Tom Paine: no effect.

Benjamin Franklin: no effect.

Adam Smith: no effect.

William Wilburforce: no effect.

Harriet Beecher Stowe: no effect.

Martin Luther King: no effect.

Rachel Carson: no effect.

Posted by Eric | April 23, 2008 9:03 PM

Eric,
The point isn't that these people had no effect, just that that effect was caused by structural changes in society, not by miraculously gifted individuals People had suggested similar theories to Adam Smith's before he did, his caught on because the structural changes in English society made his theories make more compelling. Obviously this can be taken to an extreme, but it is far more persuasive than the idea that MLK singlehandedly changed America.

Posted by Charlie | April 23, 2008 9:09 PM

I don't think intellectuals really impact the course of events. - Matt

Well, maybe not in America. Maybe a little moreso in France and Germany, where intellectuals are esteemed. Tolstoy predicted that state socialism would catch on in Russia rather than Britain because he thought the British could never get excited about a theory.

Posted by Gary Sugar | April 23, 2008 9:11 PM

In regard to the idea that Party control could not survive substantial liberalization of the economy: tell that to the Chinese! They seem to have squared the circle on that one, and there is very little reason to think that the CPSU could not have done the same. Is there really any evidence that the NEP of the 1920s was leading to political challenges to Bolshevik rule from outside, as distinct from discontent and conflict and factionalism within the Party itself?

Bukharin's problem was not that he was wrong on the question of the best political economy for Russia, but that it made him a sitting duck in the same way that someone who says "let's talk to Iran" may get viewed as "unserious" on foreign policy in the US. It marked him off as a softie in a Party which was excessively macho, saw everything in terms of warfare, which responded well to bold plans and calls for sacrifice, and which hated compromise or subtlety.

This is not to say that old B was the "conscience" of the Party. No-one who was a leading Bolshie got through 1917 to the early 30s without a great deal of blood on their hands. He was the best of a very bad lot, but Stalin did not shoot an innocent man.

A more pertinent contemporary question, though, is what MY, with his faith in base and superstructure, is doing supporting Obama (given his putative trust fund), or believing (given the presumed capitalist lock on US politics) that such support will have any impact at all??

Posted by Estrien | April 23, 2008 9:11 PM

I'm absolutely jealous that you not only got to write about Bukharin, but you got to do so for Nozick.

You son of a bitch, why are you so much cooler than me?!

Posted by Skalite | April 23, 2008 9:16 PM

Erstien,
I don't think anyone completely buys into the idea that structure dictates superstructure. There are lots of way to nuance this argument to give individuals agency while retaining the dichotomy. For example, you could borrow the idea from anthropologists that some cultural structures loose their purpose and that these can then be fought over and turned into useful political infrastructure. In that case, because you have to pay attention to social, the advantages afforded to one side due to their position in the means of production is minimized. Anyways, that is my way of saying that you are right, Matt probably doesn't believe in structure/superstructure completely.

Posted by Charlie | April 23, 2008 9:19 PM

Charlie: I love Tolstoy, but his 'great leaders just stand at the crest of a wave' is overintellectualizing it a tad. It defies me someone could go through the Bush years and not see how individuals can have tremendous impact, when one of the key intellectuals of the era was Karl Rove. Honestly, it beggars belief. Especially looking at the Russian Revolution. Obviously Russia was in terrible shape, but it had been in terrible shape before and nada damn thing happened. And if there had been a miraculous, spontaneous rise of the proletariat, how would a new state emerge without the first three internationals and the current crew to debate it?

To discount the role of intellectuals throughout history is to pretend that it doesn't matter the quality of a leader in a battlefield. It's to pretend rhetoric has no impact on people's beliefs or behavior. It's a frankly silly, academic notion. The Civil Rights era would be vastly different if there were no intellectuals. Look at India... look at the American Revolution... look at the Iranian Revolution...

Your comments are baffling. People didn't come up with Adam Smith's writing before he did because none of it had ever happened before. But he was able to codify it and allow people to understand the vast changes that were taking place and perhaps to change them. So what if James Watt didn't explicitly invent the steam engine, only advanced it. Weren't all the others working on it before also intellectuals? Or do things just 'materialize' in the midst of people walking on the street?

Lets get some Gramsci in here, stat!

Posted by Eric | April 23, 2008 9:20 PM

Franklin, Wilberforce, and King were all active political leaders: they were more interested in organizing people than in writing about ideas. Bukharin, by contrast, basically spent 1917 writing about the things that his cooler friends were out doing.

Smith is one of those authors who's really only important as long as he's misunderstood. Or, to put it another way: what matters isn't what Smith actually said, but what everyone thinks he said. (Hegel and the Bible have the same problem.) Leaving aside the fact that Smith wasn't free-market fundamentalist and was full of contempt for rich people, he wasn't even writing about industrial capitalism. His famous pin factory was cottage industry, and it was already obsolete by the time he wrote about it.

If Smith hadn't come along, the robber barons would have invented some other bit of intellectual self-justification--just like they invented the character that everyone calls "Adam Smith."

But I agree with you when it comes to Paine, Stowe, and Carson.

Posted by ML | April 23, 2008 9:21 PM

Whatever with all this theory stuff. What I need to know is, did Bukharin wear a Russian flag pin?

Posted by Random Dude | April 23, 2008 9:24 PM

Eric,
I think we agree more than you think. I am not saying that these events wouldn't have occurred without intellectuals but instead that those intellectuals were in large part the product of social structure and the means of production. Obviously, while I think that these forces have a huge impact, I also think that the play at the edges are really important as well. If I didn't I wouldn't have knocked over 2K doors for candidates in 2006. I think your example of Karl Rove is right on. Rove was put in a situation where the social structure didn't dictate the outcome, and therefore he was able to influence the events a little, but it was a little that went a long way. The Bush administration, having taken control of the state were then able to push social structure in a way that favored them and multiply Karl Rove's impact. Hence I am not saying that individuals don't have an impact, they do, but its just a small impact within the confines of the structure. These small impacts can then have a large influence down the line(aka. Rove). I would say that Gramsci posits something very similar. Either way sometimes we can get lost in theory and I think we'll both agree that we should do as much as we can for the progressive movement (knocking doors, giving money, creating progressive infastructre).

Posted by Charlie | April 23, 2008 9:31 PM

"I don't think intellectuals really impact the course of events."

I think many intellectuals (even Marxist intellectuals!) recognize that the socialist revolutions in Russia and China wouldn't have been possible with a combination of the vanguard movements (Mao, Lenin) and the ideology behind them that was developed by Marx. It seems at least plausible that pre-Marxist rebellions (like the Sepoy Mutiny in India?) would have been successful if they'd had a specific ideology to organize around and promises to make to people.

It's funny that you cite your opinion as "Marx-style" when I think many genuine Marxists, and maybe even the man himself, would have vehemently disagreed with you.

Posted by Sam L | April 23, 2008 9:32 PM

ML: perhaps I muddle it by including political leaders, but I consider those intellectuals as well. Hell, in Civ III they're treated much the same. I'll include scientists and inventors, too. And Smith may be a mistake; he's more a historian, in many ways, but is able to introduce talking about economics to the world. I also happen to admire his acuity and hope (vainly) he can someday be rescued from the free marketers.

Bukharin's scribbling: perhaps Matt's problem is the only intellectual he's studied was a terminal scribbler?

Posted by Eric | April 23, 2008 9:33 PM

I will say that I'm pretty much a believer in Marx-style base/superstructure theory to an extent that most of my friends and colleagues seem to find somewhat appalling.

Therefore, they must not buy into this classic:

'Society is not founded upon the law; this is a legal fiction. On the contrary, the law must be founded upon society, it must express the common interests and needs of society...which arise from the material mode of production prevailing at the given time.'

In which case, they obviously skimmed the Cliff Notes pretty lightly when they covered De Tocqueville. He says pretty much the same thing, minus the Marxist buzz words.

And I though it was the sciences students who snoozed through the humanities.

Posted by cmholm | April 23, 2008 9:34 PM

Sam,
The funny part is that Marx would very clearly have agreed with MY, even though it is clear that they aren't really right. In fact when asked if Russian could ever become a socialists state, Marx said that it never could because it was still an agrarian economy. On the other hand, Lenin and the Soviets that followed him would chastise MY.

Posted by Charlie | April 23, 2008 9:35 PM

Charlie: sorry for venting. The Spartacist movement in Berlin provides a sterling example of an intellectual movement with no structural basis, to sad result. (Berlin, too, was supposedly more ripe for revolution than anywhere else...) I was more venting at Matthew for a fairly blithe comment that seemed perfectly untrue. To this I added righteous pride that I went to a state school and tend to resent Ivy Leaguers their opportunities to study with Nozick and the like so found myself flailing against the ghosts.

Posted by Eric | April 23, 2008 9:39 PM

Charlie,

You lay it out well, and as a sidenote, I was of course pulling MY's leg: for someone who claims to really, really believe - to an extent his friends find appalling - in the old base/superstructure model, I found his choice of candidate amusingly ironic. But I also found it good and heartening.

As Marx said, "philosophers have only described the world. The question is to change it." I guess Karl wasn't an absolutist about the base/superstructure ither.

Posted by Estrien | April 23, 2008 9:41 PM

Eric,
If it is any consolation all my friends who went to Ivy league schools admit that they didn't really learn much from their really famous profs. Not to say that it wouldn't be cool anyhow. Anyways, I should go back to my non-Ivy thesis. Pleasure having a discussion with you.

Posted by Charlie | April 23, 2008 9:45 PM

Bukharin - cooler looking than Stalin,

I'm going to have to disagree. To quote MattY, Stalin had a pretty sweet hipster style back in his younger years, as one can see here and here.

Posted by Tyro | April 23, 2008 9:49 PM

Mr. Yglesias,

It's not a fair comparison between Bukharin and Gorbachev. Gorbachev's attempts to reform the Soviet Union failed in large part because the system had been terminally discredited by Stalin. Also he was stuck trying to reform a command economy with serious structural deficiencies that Stalin had created. Even then, a smarter politician might have been able to hold the system together- we'll never know. But that's an entirely separate question from asking whether Bukharin might have saved the Soviet system if he had taken power _instead of_ Stalin. I think that there's good reason to believe that some kind of Tito-esque market socialism might well have succeeded in Russia in the 1930s. Even better of course would have been if the Socialist-Revolutionaries had taken power instead of the Bolsheviks.

Posted by Hector | April 23, 2008 9:54 PM

Despite Bukharin's so-called "Reform Communism", he was still a Communist, and Barack Hussein Obama showed bad judgment in serving on a board with Bukharin in the early 20th century.

Posted by El Cid | April 23, 2008 9:54 PM

WTF? Socrates, Darwin, Einstein, Nietzsche--were they not intellectuals, or did they have no impact on the course of world events?

Posted by blahblah | April 23, 2008 10:02 PM

WTF? Socrates, Darwin, Einstein, Nietzsche--were they not intellectuals, or did they have no impact on the course of world events?

I presume the explanation was that it was the state of the times that made them amenable to the ideas of those men. If times had been different, we'd be talking of some other group of intellectuals who had a great "impact on the course of world events."

Posted by Tyro | April 23, 2008 10:08 PM

ML: perhaps I muddle it by including political leaders, but I consider those intellectuals as well. Hell, in Civ III they're treated much the same. I'll include scientists and inventors, too. And Smith may be a mistake; he's more a historian, in many ways, but is able to introduce talking about economics to the world. I also happen to admire his acuity and hope (vainly) he can someday be rescued from the free marketers.

Actually, having thought about it for a little bit, I think you're absolutely right. I don't think the distinctions I tried to make are really significant, in the scheme of things.

The distinction between speech (the intellectual) and action (the political) really isn't all that helpful. (Thanks, Arendt.) I'm a little embarrassed that I tried to make it.

But I stand by crotchety angst over the fact that everyone talks about Adam Smith without having actually read him.

Posted by ML | April 23, 2008 10:15 PM

Didn't Bukharin put nails in butter? I think he confessed to that.

That is so not cool. Think of the children, and their love of butter.

Posted by putnam | April 23, 2008 10:16 PM

Prescriptive Marxism (what we should do): wrong.
Descriptive Marxism (the way the world is): almost entirely right.

Posted by Freddie | April 23, 2008 10:22 PM

I think people are confusing the great man theory of history with the base/superstructure theory of society.

Base/superstructure says that the ideological elements of society - religion, politics, art, culture, etc. - are shaped by the material realities of society - economic structure, technology, etc. This is not exactly the same as saying that great people don't shape history, although if you believe in base/superstructure you are probably more likely to think that individuals do not play a big role in the long run of history.

Posted by blah | April 23, 2008 10:24 PM

Thread Summary (33 comments in): "Do great men actually change the course of history through the power of their ideas, or do they merely encapsulate their Zeitgeist for the benefit of future historians? Discuss."

Keep it up, boys! I know we can break 100 comments on this one!

Posted by James Gary | April 23, 2008 11:14 PM

How old are you Marc Ambinder? YOu sound sooooo young in this post. I feel ancient after reading it, and I'm only 43.

Posted by cnnr | April 23, 2008 11:42 PM

Figures like Einstein (a scientist) or Martin Luther King, Jr. (an activist and organizer) aren't really what I have in mind when I talk about intellectuals. Those two were thinkers, to be sure, but their impact on the course of events comes from other things.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | April 23, 2008 11:49 PM

Henry Kissinger said it well when he defined intellectuals as those capable of articulating the elite consensus. So yes, they're reactive, to put it nicely.

Posted by Mark | April 24, 2008 12:53 AM

Matthew, I applaud you on having the courage to articulate a Marxist point of view - even in your limited, imperialist defending way. To not recognize the controlling impact of the means of production is a level of intellectual vapidity even below the modern day Democratic Party.

Posted by Jonesy | April 24, 2008 1:07 AM

How old are you Marc Ambinder? YOu sound sooooo young in this post. I feel ancient after reading it, and I'm only 43.

I'm 26, but I'm also not Marc Ambinder. So, yeah, you're old.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | April 24, 2008 1:07 AM

Mickey Kaus was talking about these base/superstructure baby games on Sunday:

Help! I'm A Snob Like Obama! Greg Mitchell ridicules Bill Kristol for insinuating that Barack Obama was a Marxist for saying that residents of economically depressed small towns "cling to guns or religion ... as a way to explain their [economic] frustrations." But of course it was a Marxist thing to say, wasn't it? If Democrats had delivered on the economy, Obama suggests, all those GOP cultural "wedge" issues would lose traction. This idea--that the economy trumps culture--isn't new. It's "materialism." The economic "base," Marxists would argue, determines the cultural "superstructure." If the economy changes (i.e. if small town Pennsylvanians get well-paying jobs) then the superstructure will change (Pennsylvanians will feel less intensely about their religion).

Actually this isn't simply Marxism--it's what, when I was in college at least, was called Vulgar Marxism. More sophisticated Marxists hypothesized various ways the cultural "superstructure" could interact with the economy or take on a life of its own. Less supple Marxists (Engels, if I remember) hew to the crude base/superstructure idea--with feudalism you get feudal beliefs, which give way to bourgeois beliefs once capitalism takes over.

Posted by Fred | April 24, 2008 1:53 AM

Matt,

A tad off-topic, but have you seen St. Elmo's Fire? If not, it was a brat-pack 80s movie about a circle of twenty-somethings living and working in D.C. Have you thought of collaborating with your father on a screenplay loosely-based on your circle of friends working in D.C.? You might have to take some liberties to add some drama, but think about it. With your father as a co-writer, if the script gets picked up you'll get whatever his going rate is, rather than something close to the guild minimum.

Posted by Fred | April 24, 2008 2:00 AM

At the risk of commiting philosophical Broderism, I'd say that a movement's rise is steered by personality, but that its fall is dictated by its structure.

The Tsars' hold on power was too weak to endure, but without Lenin, what replaced it would have been very different.

Similarly, 1930s Germany was ripe for a totalitarian resurgence, but it was Hitler who brought virulent anti-semitism and eastward expansionism into play. One could just as easily imagine a more Bismarkian junta settling for a reunification of Greater Germania and the military humiliation of France. Or a communist takeover and alignment with the USSR, for that matter. The force of Hitler's personality gave that particular form to German militarism.

Posted by heedless | April 24, 2008 2:02 AM

Oy. This is an interesting thread to read, as a Marxist.

1) Don Williams:
Isn't Hillary Clinton's idea of the "Permanent Campaign" similar to Trotsky's concept of the "permanent revolution"??

In fact, no. This is a good introduction to the concept of the "permanent revolution", though of course I understand you were just making a rhetorical point.

2) As other commenters have noted, comrade Yglesias appears to be applying an undialetical approach to the question of base/superstructure. At certain moments in history, superstructural elements such as political ideas and organizations have immense influence on history. The insight of historical materialism is simply that, like the man said, people make their own history, but not in conditions of their own choosing.

3) Two examples of moments when the superstructural element was decisive were the Russian Revolution - including the famous Finland Station arrival - and, negatively, the abortive German Revolution of 1919-1923. Contra Eric, the Spartacist movement in Berlin had a structural basis, a mass rebellion of the German working class against the system that had led it into a disastrous First World War, but despite Rosa Luxemburg's individual brilliance, did not have an organized political force capable of leading it to victory. The Spartacists had no worse circumstances than the Bolsheviks, but they were no Bolsheviks.

4) Comrade Yglesias ought to re-read Bukharin's Imperialism and World Economy. Though dated, it contains many insights which pose problems for the comrade's sadly bourgeois "liberal internationalist" framework.

Posted by Kalkin | April 24, 2008 3:13 AM

Comrade Kalkin, I applaud you for such a terrific retort to some of the idiocy being thrown around by these uneducated petty-bourgeois swine. Do you think, perhaps, that had Luxemburg and Liebknecht had not been murdered by the Freikorps, the German Revolution would've been successful? This would've taken pressure off of the Soviet Union and spread the Revolution, perhaps preventing the rise of Stalin. Ahh, history's what ifs.

Posted by Jonesy | April 24, 2008 3:47 AM

"I don't think intellectuals really impact the course of events."

Shorter Matt: I blog and write books for egoboo and money.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 24, 2008 4:43 AM

"but simply because I don't think intellectuals really impact the course of events."

How about George Kennan? Buckley had no influence because he was a supercilious fop.

Posted by bob h | April 24, 2008 6:07 AM

Why do you think that the development of the USSR had anything to do with socialism ? Just because they called it "scientific socialism" doesn't mean that it was either.

Posted by Marshall | April 24, 2008 6:36 AM

Well, if the standard of 'intellectuals who change the course of history' is based on William F. Buckley, then Matt's assumptions has some weight. Of course his name wouldn't come first to my mind except in 'intellectuals who helped shape the modern right wing', but that's a different matter.

Posted by El Cid | April 24, 2008 6:37 AM

Do intellectuals affect the course of events more or less if they have a trust fund? Did Tom Paine have one? Remember, all blogging from now on must in some way be reduced to this trust fund controversy. My deep admiration of George S. stops me from letting this go.

Posted by Hugh | April 24, 2008 8:13 AM

At any rate, I can't see that any of them has been hobbled intellectually because of a lack of opinions about Bukharin.)

Yes, but then yours has always been the least hobbled intellect in the blogosphere.

Posted by hoi polloi | April 24, 2008 9:14 AM

Marxism, and especially the vulgar Marxism Matt is referring to when he mentions base/superstructure, is simply too reductionist and ideologically slanted to deal with such a complex problem. While Hegel had some obvious blind spots which were justly pointed out by Marx and others, his descriptions of the actual process by which societal change comes about is still very much worth reading and has to be taken into account in any discussion of such matters.

Posted by novakant | April 24, 2008 9:25 AM

I don't, for example, believe that William F. Buckley, Jr. exercised any substantial real causal influence on American history not through any fault of his own but simply because I don't think intellectuals really impact the course of even

Nope. Everything counts. Down to the last drop.
WFB had a huge impact. As has Kristol et all. The key modern insight to the base/superstructure theory is that power influence causality in it runs in both directions

Posted by Northern Observer | April 24, 2008 9:28 AM

Tyro: "I'm going to have to disagree. To quote MattY, Stalin had a pretty sweet hipster style back in his younger years, as one can see here and here."

Wow, you're right. That's pretty awesome actually.

Posted by Korha | April 24, 2008 9:30 AM

Eric and Kalkin should read up on the Russian Revolution. Lenin had nothing to do with it whatsoever - when the actual Revolution happened in February 1917 he was in Switzerland and largely ignored by everyone in Russia. Lenin is responsible for the Bolshevik coup d'etat in November 1917, not the Revolution. The actual Revolution clearly had a structural cause.

Also Lenin was not just sitting around writing essays and hosting dinner parties a la Buckley, he was an active political leader. Almost no one in Russia paid attention to any of his scribblings until after he started gaining power. So even if you grant his influence on the course of events it doesn't undermine Matt's thesis that writers by and large are not as influential as they like to believe. Harriet Beecher Stowe is a good example of that - Uncle Tom's Cabin is a book that reflected the temper of the time, not a book that dictated it. Tom Paine is another good example of an intellectual whose actual real world influence was probably almost nil. Actually Eric has picked a pretty weak list - Franklin was more important a as a diplomat and power broker than as a writer, Rachel Carson is another one who was merely synthesizing ideas already circulating. MLK again was an active leader - it's not his theories and books that people talk about. And so on.

Posted by vanya | April 24, 2008 9:33 AM

Re cmholm's comment "In which case, they obviously skimmed the Cliff Notes pretty lightly when they covered De Tocqueville. He says pretty much the same thing, minus the Marxist buzz words.

And I though it was the sciences students who snoozed through the humanities."
-------------
Since my degrees are in engineering, I never even bothered to sign up for the courses.

However, I do read on my own, occasionally. Wasn't Mortimer Adler's primary argument that many ideas we have today have a long-forgotten ancestry? The "Great Conversation" that has taken place in over 3000 years of Western civilization?

Certainly , if you look at Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy, it is hilarious to see how much he cut and pasted from Polybius. With little attribution other than to some unnamed Romans, as I recall.

And Polybius himself took his primary idea on politics -- The Rule of the One, the Few, the Many and the need for a Mixed Constitution which balances the three powers against one another -- from Aristotle's Politics without citation. Although Polybius did add some interesting elaborations.

What amuses me is how liberals arts wienies can have a 3000 year "Great Conversation" and not come to any conclusions.

Luckily, I did take a course in Chinese Philosophy as an undergraduate elective -- and found some ideas which I have not seen in the Western classics (so far.). Ideas from circa 400 BC that are superior to many of the strains of Western political philosophy.

Posted by Don Williams | April 24, 2008 9:40 AM

1) I think you guys discussing the Bolshevik Revolution overlook the influence of money. Plus the fact that history is often ..er..incomplete (hence, false) because historical events are the result of covert intelligence operations and historicans don't have security clearances.

Didn't Winston Churchill say that he knew history would be kind to him because he intended to write it? Kinda funny given some of the mysterious fires that broke out in some intelligence archives shortly after WWII ended.

2) Where did the Commies get their money?
For a start, Some very wealthy Jewish financiers in America were pissed at the Russian Czars pogroms and poured money into the Communist revolution -- people like Jacob Schiff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Schiff

3) Plus the governments of both Britain and Germany were engaged in the Great Game against czarist Russia. Britain to grab the oil deposits of Iran -- Germany as part of WWI.

4) You have to have motivations for people to engage in prolonged struggles. Altruism for the proletariat fades pretty damm fast. Respect for an intellectual argument fades even faster.

Hatred can be a good sustaining force, but even haters need to eat. At the end of the day, people work for an adequate paycheck and the dream of a bigger paycheck.

The only ideologues I can think of who influenced history were the two atomic spy rings who gave Stalin the atomic bomb design from the Manhattan Project -- and the personnel of those rings were not really intellectuals. (Probably that explains why they were effective.)

5) As Pareto pointed out, you can look at many different political systems and you still have the case that a few men always have owned most of the wealth --hence most of the power.

6) The Republican Party is not ruled by Rush Limbaugh, Bill O"Reilly, Ann Coulter or Karl Rove.

It is ruled by the men kicking in roughly $500 Million per election. Limbaugh and O"Reilly merely read the scripts they are given.

But 100 years from now, unfortunate undergraduates will be reading Rush Limbaugh's bullshit books in order to trace how this "intellectual" brought about the Bush Revolution.

Posted by Don Williams | April 24, 2008 10:17 AM

I agree with the posters here who say what Matt needs to do is read more Gramsci. Or E.P. Thompson. Or Herbert Marcuse. Or Fredric Jameson. Or any really sophisticated Marxist. The fact is, not realizing that the base and superstructure are inter-related is a sign of the crudest sort of vulger Marxism.

Posted by Jeet Heer | April 24, 2008 10:23 AM

Re "WFB had a huge impact. As has Kristol et all."
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William Kristol would be living on food stamps if not for the huge subsidy Rupert Murdoch gives the Weekly Standard. And has been giving for years.

Are there ANY political magazines which are NOT eternally in the Red -- i.e, which do not require an annual subsidy from one or more wealthy patrons? Including the Atlantic?

Posted by Don Williams | April 24, 2008 10:23 AM

I find it interesting that everyone let Matt get off with the fact that his hypothesis for his paper was both so totally off and such a hackneyed representation of the post Cold War establishment CW:

In regard to the idea that Party control could not survive substantial liberalization of the economy: tell that to the Chinese!

Exactly, tell it to Vietnam. And tell it to every dictatorship in history before 1989. True, there needs to be a bit of an ideological, um, adjustment, but not one that's ultimately that insurmountable.

Posted by AJ | April 24, 2008 10:36 AM

I don't understand why this is so terribly complicated. It seems pretty clear that the material and, for lack of a better term, the intellectual are mutually constitutive of each other. The material only derives it's value from the intellectual valuation of such entities. In other words, aside from the most base functions of life both material goods and reality are dependent on our perceptions of them. Our perceptions are created by our place in society and the narrative that is built around that perspective (not just classwise but all the other aspects of our lives that go in to forming our identities. Clearly intellectuals and leaders of social movements play a real role in helping to clarify and define these structures.

On the other side of the coin, the positions and thoughts of intellectuals are driven by their places in the structure of society. Material reality serves to create ideological reality, while ideological reality functions to give material reality its flavor. Of course, in the end it's all quite random anyway. The point, though, is that I would think intellectuals certainly play as much of a role in the process as structural concerns. In fact, I have always thought that the structural/ideological debate is a silly one and that structural influence on reality does not discount agency and the existence of human freedom and influence does not mean that both social institutions and the particular historical moment don't bind that freedom is some significant ways.

Posted by Jonathan | April 24, 2008 11:14 AM

Re AJ's comment "In regard to the idea that Party control could not survive substantial liberalization of the economy: tell that to the Chinese!
Exactly, tell it to Vietnam."
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Apples and oranges -- because the ultimate factor is the effect that high population density has on a country's political culture.

The Chinese and Vietnamese accept more authoritarian governments because centuries of experience tell them that large numbers of people die in famine when there is social disorder.

Russia, by contrast is a huge country with low population density and a contrary political culture-- one of mounting up on horses and running off across the steppe to rape, pillege, and plunder.

Posted by Don Williams | April 24, 2008 11:14 AM

Re Jonathan's comment "Clearly intellectuals and leaders of social movements play a real role in helping to clarify and define these structures."
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Er..my choice of words would be "obscure and conceal these structures".

Intellectuals earn their porridge by making up bullshit to CON the herd, NOT to enlighten it.

E.g, Suggesting that we have a "Democracy" or a "Representative Republic" whereas in reality we have a deeply corrupt, authoritarian oligarchy with a Gini coefficient for income distribution that would embarrass a South American dictatorship and an incarceration rate that is SIX times greater than China's and far above the rates in the rest of the civilised world.

E.g, that we were attacked on Sept 11 because Islamofascists hate our Freedom -- not because of the buttfucking that the US government has administered to the Middle Eastern populace on behalf of special interests for the past several decades.

Posted by Don Williams | April 24, 2008 11:32 AM

Don,

Can we agree that sometimes intellectuals conceal the "truth" and sometimes the elucidate it? I think, more accurately, the intellectuals construct the truth in so far as there is probably no such thing as actual reality. So if we add knowledge as one more part of the structures of power we can think of all of these attempts as purely manipulative and an opportunity for the individual intellectuals to craft the world in a way that is as close as possible to their particular worldview or, if your cynically inclined, interests (although really the two might be almost the same thing).

Posted by Jonathan | April 24, 2008 1:49 PM

I know that it is not fashionable in Academia currently, but I'm one of those old fools who think there is an Objective Truth which is separate from the self-interested and deceptive narratives constructed by intellectuals.

That doesn't mean that those narratives don't have some of the Truth contained within them. But I regard covering up major, relevant facts in a narrative to be the functional equivalent of a lie.

By that definition, most of our public discourse and news in the USA today is lies.

And when I say "self-interested narratives" I'm including the Federalist with the Communist Manifesto. The NY Times with Fox News.

As Socrates noted, the narratives are shadows on a cave wall made by manipulators waving statues before a fire. They are not reality --although the herd thinks they are.

Posted by Don Williams | April 24, 2008 4:58 PM

I'm envious too, re studying Bukharin with Nozick. It gives me visions of studying Hillary with Wittgenstein and other choice combinations.
But I think what Morton meant to evoke when he mentioned Bukharin was a world where some of us spent all our time debating Bukharin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, the Schactmanites, Jay Lovestone (and on and on). That was our world. We lived in it as much as some kids lived for major league ball statistics. Political correctness really meant something in those days. Were we the better for it? No. But I'm nostalgic for it.

Posted by Dick Mulliken | April 24, 2008 9:38 PM

vanya:

Eric and Kalkin should read up on the Russian Revolution.

This is a statement of position, not an argument. But while we're giving each other reading assignments, I'd suggest Rabinowitz' The Bolsheviks Come to Power. It's pretty good medicine for people who think October was simply a "coup".

Lenin had nothing to do with it whatsoever - when the actual Revolution happened in February 1917 he was in Switzerland and largely ignored by everyone in Russia.

Come on. Not even the Pipes school of historiography limits the term "Russian Revolution" to February.

Posted by Kalkin | April 25, 2008 1:02 AM