Abstract
The fifth chapter concerns Stalin’s deliberations over Party and people, which may be seen as a Marxist recalibration of the dialectic of transcendence and immanence. The chapter begins by observing that despite the abandonment of the world by God and the concomitant drive to immanence in modern Europe, the dialectical relation between transcendence and immanence remains, albeit in recast or translated forms. In other words, it is not that transcendence has been banished, but that it takes on new roles. Stalin offers, perhaps surprisingly, the most far-reaching reinterpretation, albeit in political terms. The main features of his position concern the opposition of ‘from below’ and ‘from above’, the nature of socialist consciousness, and the relations between Party and people. In terms of the well-known distinction between ‘above’ and ‘below’, Stalin reveals a distinct caution over transcendence and a valorising of immanence. Such caution challenges the common idea that Stalin was a proponent of ‘revolution from above’. The next step is to examine the workings of more complex dialectical understanding, initially embodied in his reflections over socialist consciousness. These reflections function as a microcosm of the more developed argument concerning Party and people, in which transcendence and immanence rely thoroughly on one another. This argument inevitably leads to an initial articulation of what socialist democracy might be. The chapter closes by considering the objection (Adorno) that the transformation of theological transcendence leads to even more pernicious forms of political and cultural transcendence, in which human beings lord it over others. Was Stalin guilty of such a move?
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Notes
- 1.
This is by no means the only occasion of implicit or indeed explicit dialectical thinking on Stalin’s part. Apart from other chapters in this book, these dialectical examples include his arguments for the generation of active revolutionary engagement from the determinism of history, a nascent constitutive resistance, the simultaneity of non-simultaneity, and the necessity of contradictions under socialism. These dialectical modes are apart from the explicit engagements with the Marxist staples of quantity and quality, subject and object, base and superstructure, and the forces and relations of production (Stalin 1906-7a, 1906-7b, 1938a, 105–131, 1938b, 99–127). Kolakowski’s vain effort (1978–1981, vol 3, 94–99) to account for this material should be avoided.
- 2.
A common move is to deploy the myth of classicism (Boer 2014b) and suggest that Plato and Aristotle constitute the origin of the two ways in which transcendence may be understood, as either without or within the world.
- 3.
The accounts of this process are many and varied. These include: the ‘death of God’ first proposed by Hegel (1977, 190, see also Kosky 2004); a narrative of the loss of enchantment in all its dimensions, alongside a splintering of spirituality (Taylor 2004); the supposed radicalisation of God’s transcendence, which began in medieval thought but culminated with the Reformation, which led to secularisation and thereby immanence (Taylor 2007, 130–140, 186–205); theology as the historical and ontological conditions for the immanence of modern politics (Schmitt 2005); occasional protests against the grain (Jonkers 2012). Studies of these figures are legion, so I resist the urge to cite more ere.
- 4.
See also a couple of useful studies of Nancy and Marion that address some of these issues (Kate 2012, Schrijvers 2012).
- 5.
I leave aside here the point that the effort to render transcendence immanent in immanence mirrors inversely the early theological effort to render immanence immanent in transcendence, especially in terms of the divine trinity (Ritter 1995, vol. 4, 221–222).
- 6.
Further, the effort to ‘Ukrainise’ the Russian workers ‘from above’ would be a curious form of national oppression, harmful if not utopian, that would generate anti-Ukrainian sentiment (Stalin 1926a1, 159–160, 1926b1, 151–152). This situation has its own dialectical complexity, since the Russian workers and indeed industry in Ukraine tended to be ‘from above’, inserted into the Ukrainian situation (Stalin 1923g, 337–338, 1923h, 329–330).
- 7.
‘The Bakuninists moreover had for years been preaching that all revolutionary action from above to below [von oben nach unten] was an evil, and everything should be organised and carried through from below to above [von unten nach oben]’ (Engels 1873a, 590, 1873b, 485). Stalin quotes this text via Lenin (Lenin 1905g, 391, 1905h, 136, Stalin 1905k, 148–149, 1905l, 87–88).
- 8.
A comparable argument ensued in relation to participation in the Duma between 1905 and 1917. Such participation functioned to raise worker consciousness (Stalin 1912i, 258, 1912j, 91).
- 9.
For a full analysis, with all relevant references to Lenin, see my Lenin, Religion, and Theology (Boer 2013, 135–174).
- 10.
Examples from texts between those of 1920 and 1937 reveal such a consistency (Stalin 1928m, 31–42, 1928n, 28–38, 1928i, 246, 1928j, 236–237, 1937g, 282–283, 1937h, 178–179).
- 11.
See the detailed elaboration of this point a little later (Stalin 1923e, 384–387, 1923f, 374–377, 1923u, 200, 1923v, 198).
- 12.
Compare the discussion below of the tendency or gravitation of the working class to socialism.
- 13.
‘The task of modern socialists is no longer that of inventing a new social order, but of discovering the requisite material thereto that is furnished by modern society; it is no longer that of bringing salvation to the proletariat from above, but of assisting the proletariat in its class struggle by enlightening it, and by promoting its economic and political organizations to the end that it may move onward all the more quickly and painlessly towards the time when it will be able to emancipate itself. In short, the task of the socialist labor Party is to mold the class struggle of the proletariat into the most adequate shape, and to instil into it the clearest possible understanding of its aims’ (Kautsky 1910, 1905, see further Lih 2011, 56–57). Note Stalin’s observation that ‘Kautsky does not differ one iota from Lenin on that point’ (Stalin 1905c, 113, 1905d, 52).
- 14.
See also Lenin’s approving summary of the main argument of ‘A Reply to Social-Democrat’ (Lenin 1905c, d).
- 15.
The original text appeared in Neue Zeit, 1901–02, 20.1, No. 3, p. 79.
- 16.
‘It is the duty of the vehicle of this consciousness, Social-Democracy, to imbue the working-class movement with socialist consciousness’ (Stalin 1905c, 94, 95, 100, 104, 1905d, 36, 37, 41, 44).
- 17.
The most complete elaboration of this approach may be found in Stalin’s contribution to the Short Course (Stalin 1938a, 115–117, 1938b, 110–112).
- 18.
The problem here is what may be called the struggle of ideologies: it may be that the more deeply-rooted bourgeois ideology permeates the working class and causes it to deviate from its path to socialism (Stalin 1905c, 97–99, 1905d, 39–40).
- 19.
Stalin’s analysis of the two early revolutionary moments of 1905, in January and December, provides an excellent example of this theoretical point in relation to practical action (Stalin 1906o, 201–204, 1906p, 367–370).
- 20.
For a brief recapitulation of the history of this co-dependence—through strikes, insurrections and repressions—see the report on the London congress (Stalin 1907e, 73, 1907f, 98).
- 21.
These sections in the conference reports are often lengthy (Stalin 1924s, 199–230, 1924t, 191–219, 1924k, 1924l, 1925a1, 123–130, 1925b1, 121–128, 1925i, 351–361, 1925j, 343–352, 1927c, 333–361, 1927d, 325–351, 1930e, 348–385, 1930f, 338–373, 1934g, 353–388, 1934h, 347–379, 1939a, 398–429, 1939b, 321–341).
- 22.
Literally, ‘family and friends for them’ (Stalin 1920k, 370, 1920l, 358, 1918a, 95, 1918b, 93–94).
- 23.
See further the stories that illustrate this point in the text preceding and following this quotation (289–292), which draw on both the everyday experience of socialism in power and Greek mythology (Stalin 1937g, 289–292, 1937h, 182–185).
- 24.
Or indeed nebulousness and chaos (Stalin 1912m, 235, 1912n, 57).
- 25.
‘It scarcely needs proof that without these intangible moral threads which connect the Party with the non-Party masses, the Party could not have become the decisive force of its class’ (Stalin 1924e, 180, 1924f, 173).
- 26.
These include trade unions, co-operatives, Young Communist League, Young Pioneers, organisations of working men and women, army, voluntary public associations (diverse cultural and educational circles and societies, sports organisations, auxiliary societies, organisations of worker and peasant correspondents, physical culture organisations, and so on) (Stalin 1924s, 200–206, 1924t, 192–197).
- 27.
For a full discussion of Lenin’s approach to freedom and democracy, see my Lenin, Religion, and Theology (Boer 2013, 163–172).
- 28.
By the time of the socialist offensive, Stalin would link the proposals of Trotsky and others with the opposition from the ‘moribund classes’ to the dual processes of industrialisation and collectivisation (Stalin 1930e, 362–372, 1930f, 352–361).
- 29.
As for the practical matter of elections, see especially Stalin’s comments to the first American Labour Delegation in 1927 (Stalin 1927k, 113–114, 1927l, 107–109).
- 30.
At times Stalin veers close to the equation: democracy = socialism. This was a common assumption in the lead-up to the October Revolution, when the various socialist parties represented democracy as such, and when democracy was equated with socialism (Stalin 1917o, 14, 1917p, 52, 1917y2, 391, 1917z2, 459, 1918c, 106, 1918d, 105; Kolonitskii 2004).
- 31.
Note also his comment: ‘But in the name of which democracy are you speaking?’ (see also 1917m, 337, 1917n, 413).
- 32.
Socialist democracy needs to be distinguished from social democracy, which became part of the bourgeois democratic structure. Stalin describes such social democratic parties as ‘election machines adapted for parliamentary elections and parliamentary struggle’ (Stalin 1924e, 176, 1924f, 169).
- 33.
See also the careful study of Arendt by Roodt (2012).
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Boer, R. (2017). Party and People, or, Transcendence and Immanence. In: Stalin: From Theology to the Philosophy of Socialism in Power. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6367-1_5
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