Re: [marxmail] Russia: “Anticapitalism” a la Putin

I’ll preface my comment by stating my appreciation for Michael Probsting’s always careful and informative analysis of current events, including his latest concerning the increasing shakiness of the Putin regime.

However, he loses me when he writes: "In order to recognize the peculiar nature of the Putin regime, it is important to understand the meaning of the Marxist character of Bonapartism... the bonapartist Bismarck regime in Germany...the bonapartist character of the Putin regime...The Putin regime is not a unique example. Hitler expropriated, expelled or even killed a number of Jewish capitalists in Germany...the Saudi regime of Mohammed bin Salman has also brutally persecuted other figures of the ruling class...Another, even more important, example is China..Like other bonapartist dictatorships, it persecutes disloyal elements in order to consolidate a regime which has served the bourgeoisie enormously." (Trump is usually added to the above pantheon).

As I’ve noted previously, apart from it being a 19th century category which Marx would have updated had he lived to see its more modern, brutal and more broadly-based reaction to a threat to property from below called fascism, it’s  another example, like subimperialism and imperialism, of indiscriminately collapsing disagreeable regimes together in a manner which blurs rather than sharpens the concept which is being deployed. In this case, the most egregious example is the equivalency drawn between Xi Jin Ping and the CCP, whatever its anti-democratic deformations, and the genocidal Nazi regime under Hitler.

Less egregious is the lumping together of 19th century Germany and 21st century Saudi Arabia and post-Soviet Russia. But they and many other states have displayed common features of autocratic rule, including persecuting elements of the ruling class deemed to be disloyal. Sometimes these regimes are masked by parliaments and other norms and institutions associated with bourgeois democracy, sometime not. To call them all “Bonapartist” does not tell us very much about the unique challenges they face(d) and their responses to them.


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