UST301 Critical Reaction

In reading James C. Scott’s book “Seeing Like a State” the author seems to have created some very effective imagery to understand the point of view of the state. However, I find it difficult to completely accept his personification of the state. From a postmodern perspective, the actions of the state seem to arise from interpersonal conflicts for political power. The sedentarization process described in the introduction is a valuable concept, but I remain uncomfortable accepting that any state can truly define its own goals beyond transitory political maneuverings.
Mr. Scott needs to create abstract representations of very complex systems in order to demonstrate the importance of his ideas. The relevance of local knowledge is perhaps the best example. He talks to possible critics who might say he has come to believe that tradition and custom are naturally superior to a rational governmental policy. The point he makes is that there needs to be more interaction to take the best from both sides. In this process, the local knowledge becomes a gray area. Some traditions are vital as others constrict and the final arbitrator advocated seems to be trail and error.
While I agree with his assessment of local knowledge being vital to the success of a state’s policy, he seems too often to give the state the benefit of the doubt. This can be seen in a statement from the introduction, “it is harder to grasp why so many well-intended schemes to improve the human condition have gone so tragically awry.” (4) It would be harder to find an example of a policy that has succeeded as intended. The majority of state policies seem to have more unintended consequences, for good and bad, then any originally imaged by government officials.
Welfare reform is a strong case for this idea. In Wisconsin, studies have shown that before welfare reform a majority of recipients worked illegally to supplement their incomes. The ironic fact is that the new system has discouraged the participation of these individuals who can now legally work and receive welfare. The poor in essence have assumed this new program was more hassle than it was worth. The welfare roles are far below any projections due in most part to apathy inherent in the system’s employees. The people the poor seem to have decided to avoid. In fairness, the civil society is stable; there was not revolution, but welfare reform was structured to address the concerns of the citizen tax-payers not necessarily the poor.
I can accept a majority of the ideas presented, but the process of abstraction seems sloppy in a few places. The introduction has a throwaway statement about Eastern Europe, which peaked my interest and led me to the chapter on collectivization. Mr. Scott states he is not a Russian expert and proceeds to demonstrate the fact, “collective farms failed to deliver on any of the social goals envisioned by Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and most Bolsheviks.” What he fails to mention is that Trotsky and Stalin developed into mortal enemies. The accepted view is that Stalin paid for the contract murder of Trotsky in Central America. They shared few common ideas.
Stalin came to power simply because no one understood the importance of the party post of general secretary. He took a job no one else wanted. Stalin controlled who got what job in the lower structure of the party. How can he be seen as a person interested in the improvement of the human condition? His pact with Hitler to divide Poland if nothing else seems to demonstrate his desire for personal power; the cult of Stalin, not communism is what ruled Russia after Lenin’s death. Stalin was not seen as the heir apparent; his position of secretary gave him his power in the party.
Aside from this support, Stalin also had Lenin’s party rule against factions. This rule was designed to give the early party the unity to stabilize a government. This was a temporary rule that Stalin made eternal to his advantage. No one would be allowed to dissent in the party. Mr. Scott describes only in passing “the struggle with the ‘right’ opposition led by Burkharin.” This process is certainly more important to the Russian experience than any sense of improving the human condition. First Stalin sided with Lenin and Burkharin in favoring New Economic Plan (small scale privatization). At this point Lenin has already became incapacitated and soon died, not before writing a secret letter questioning Stalin’s motives (this was disclosed under Krushev’s policy of de-Stalinization). Stalin used the rule against factionalism to purge the old guard supporters of collectivization. Then he switched to the side of collectivization and used the same rule to purge the NEP supporters like Bukharin. What was left was a completely hand pick upper level party administration indebted to Stalin.
The social experimentation under Lenin was gone. Trotsky was in exile to be executed in later years. Communism was replaced with the cult of Stalin. Marx never imagined Russia as the place for revolution. Lenin hoped in jump starting a revolution in Russia, a revolution in Germany would follow (Marx wasn’t talking about Germany). Stalin deported entire nations of people from their historical land; he killed millions in work camps. The Russia experiment was not an attempt to improve the condition of man kind, from 1924 to 1953 it was an attempt to increase the power of the cult of Stalin. There was no state vision in this context.
The ideas presented in this book are too strong to be muddled with spurious assumptions about Russian communism. The personification of the state hopefully will become a more useful model in the future, but the further we go in the past the more illogical these personifications become. In the majority of concepts presented, Mr. Scott has presented precise images of the state and local level interacting, but over well-trodden ground (i.e. Russian collectivization), he seems to be lost in simplification.