Developing Contemporary Marxian Theory and Practice – a Role for Trotsky?: Saccarelli’s Gramsci and Trotsky in the Shadow of Stalinism

Abstract

Developing Contemporary Marxian Theory and Practice – a Role for Trotsky?: Saccarelli’s Gramsci and Trotsky in the Shadow of Stalinism Jacinda Swanson (bio) Emanuele Saccarelli. Gramsci and Trotsky in the Shadow of Stalinism: The Political Theory and Practice of Opposition. Routledge: 2007. $39.95 (paper) $105.00 (cloth). 312 pages. ISBN-10: 041587338X In light of the severe economic crises and injustices associated with capitalism, Emanuele Saccarelli is to be applauded for his efforts to contribute to Marxian theory and struggle in his book Gramsci and Trotsky in the Shadow of Stalinism.1 As Saccarelli complains, Trotsky has been ignored within political theory and political science—although Gramsci and Marxian theory have barely any more of a presence than Trotsky within political science in the United States. Given the lack of serious, widespread concern about economic issues and the paucity of interest in radical economic change within political theory and political science, it is heartening to come across such a book. I also welcome and share Saccarelli’s criticisms of the pressures to conduct research that is (supposedly) neutral and objective and the tendency of so many scholars to ignore contemporary political crises. Despite my appreciation for these aspects of his book, in this essay I would like to raise a variety of concerns about its focus on criticizing Stalinism, its approach to evaluating theorists and to political theory as a practice, and its brevity concerning several of Trotsky’s political and economic ideas. Positivism and Politics Like Saccarelli, I wish more political theorists would explicitly acknowledge their political commitments and “biases” and pursue research that forthrightly stems from them,2 even if they are conservative or classically liberal—at least the bases and goals of their research would then be obvious. More generally, I wish more political scientists, economists, and other academics would candidly acknowledge and examine their own ethical, epistemological, and ontological assumptions and their political and economic consequences. Of course the pressures to be neutral and the tendency not to acknowledge such assumptions stem from many scholars’ positivist epistemology and/or belief in the obviousness of their conventional ethical and ontological assumptions. I have increasingly come to believe that the widespread acceptance of positivist epistemologies among both academics and regular citizens constitutes a major barrier to emancipatory social change. By treating theory (e.g., economic theory) and facts as singular and neutral, those adopting positivist epistemologies are blinded to the partiality, contingency, and thus political nature of their assumptions and arguments. Injustices may be rendered invisible or treated as inevitable and the possibilities for social change obscured, depending on the social explanations and facts a citizen or researcher employs. As long as scholars and citizens deny the historically and socially constructed and multiple nature of knowledges/discourses, they will continue to deny the controversial nature of some of their assumptions and the non-neutral, sometimes oppressive, effects of their arguments. Epistemology is consequently not an arcane academic issue, but has real political consequences, as scholars from a variety of traditions have argued.3 For instance, because positivist discourses that naturalize and/or justify the economic status quo (e.g., neoclassical economics) deny the possibility of alternative economic practices and view alternative economic knowledges (e.g., Marxian theory) as false, the struggle against economic injustice is also epistemological. Leftists therefore need to vigorously criticize positivism inside and outside academia, including within Leftist circles. Saccarelli’s Aims It seems to me that Saccarelli is overly ambitious in what he claims his book does. Namely, I do not believe the book contributes to the “revitalization”—what I would instead call the continued development—of Marxism nearly as much as Saccarelli suggests. This does not in any way undermine or lessen the scholarly contribution the book does make, but it is important to be clear about what the book does and does not do. As I understand it, the book has two primary aims: (1) to demonstrate, in light of his exclusion from the political theory canon, Trotsky’s political insights and consequently how his ideas can contribute to the revitalization of Marxism; (2) to show how Trotsky properly criticized Stalin, whereas Gramsci fell short in this respect, and why Trotsky...