Goffman: sociology at its most critical

Scan page 11

The American way of life... seen by a cartoonist I have just heard of the death of Erving Goffman.

•He was one of the few sociologists read by those who participated in anti-Vietnam war, anti-racist, student and counter-culture movements. He himself seemed to take little interest directly in politics. But his writings hit a note that was readily embraced by many radicals.

The image that remains for me is of a figure alone in a corner of a roora, observing, critical, looking for his own way to drop out of society. The story goes that when his wife died, he wrote an article on condolence-offering behaviour based on his friends' superficial responses to the death. This jaundiced view of society was what appealed.

Stigma

The works I remember best are 'The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life', 'Stigma' and 'Asylums'.

In the first of these, he takes to its Imit the ociological idea that human beings are actors playing roles for one another. The 'self' ", he says, is a performance: it requires backstage work to keep up manb in loan un the illusory appearances; teamwork to insure that those closest to you don't reveal your dirty secrets; stage management to maintain the ideal front offered to others; and a certain trust on the part of your audience lest they expose what lies behind the mask.

All this is hard and precarious work; the charade might fall to pieces at any moment. And when it does, •The three books mentioned by Erving Goffman are available In Penguin: 'Asylums' at {1.95, "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life' at £1.75,. and 'Stigma' at £1.95. society is pitiless. If your front collapses, if your dirty backstage secrets come to the fore, society will turn you into an outcast, a bearer of stigma, an alien.

Scratch beneath the surface of good and proper folk and you will find enough to portray literally anyone as deviant: It is almost a matter of chance 'who gets picked out.

'Asylums' examines what happens to those who are stigmatised and end up confined in total institut'ions. Goffman presents mental hospitals as machines for the production of outcasts. • Mental natients suffer from "contingency" rather than mental illness; they are there because a member of their family happens to have complained to some medical authority; the future patient happens to have said the wrong thing which is interpreted as a sign of madness.

Once confined, the patient is watched in his or her every movement, gesture, word; nothing escapes the eye of authority; a psychiatric discourse is able to translate anger at being confined into a symptom of disease; the medical record preserves every case of "abnormal" behaviour and systematically excludes the possibility of situational cause.

The patient has no private space, no possibility of constructing a normal self. Each attempt at building an identity can be undercut by the doctors on the basis of their all-pervasive record.

'A biography is built up of the patient, detailing every act he or she has. committed which can possibly fit the category of developing madness. Normal conduct is selected out and only the faults retained, even if they constitute a minute fraction of the patient's actual life.

Anyone, says Goffman, can slip into this nightmare. And anyone can then be portrayed as a proper and right object of psychiatric attention.

There are enough skeletons in each of our cupboards to enable society — if it puts its mind to it, if it watches us sufficiently, if it translates our reactions into maladies of the psyche, it it builds up a record of each act of madness - to convince itself that we are mad and need to be locked up.

Drugged

If this is not enough, the patient is stripped of his or her clothes, personal possessions, freedom of movement, even of the right to use a knife and fork. In some cases the patient is drugged until he or she trembles and froths and loses coherence. Under such circumstances anyone will look mad.

The asylum is for Goffman the other side of the coin of normal society: the dark side of civilised Goffman's manners. weakness was that he could see no escape from this situation; it was for him the meaning of social life.

All that he could offer in the end was a plea that our presentations of self not be undermined, that our idealised fronts be accepted at face value, that we suspend our distrust on the ground that he who throws the first stone ...

Wary

He became as wary of the mugger who violates the trust i quired between strangers on a street as he did of the state which violates this trust in another way. I am not sure what politics he ended up with but I should not be surprised if he went the way of that other famous anti-psychiatrist of the time, Thomas Szasz, and joined forces with the Republicans, Nixon and Reagan.

After all, they promised to cut down on the state's enormous expenditure on mental health as part of its general attack on federal spending, at the same time as they waged war on muggers.

Rousseau

Goffman could see no material base to the ills of society. Two hundred years before him JeanJacques Rousseau, the great apostle of Enlightenment, declared that with the rise of private property, people began to hide their real feelings and put on a mask, the better to pursue their own private interests at the expense of others. After a while, they forgot what their real feelings were and were left with nothing but their masks.

Inauthenticity was the product of bourgeois society. The solution for Rousseau was the abolition of private property.

For Goffman these alienated relations had become so entrenched that he was no longer able to see them as anything but natural and eternal. They seemed to have no historical foundation and accordingly to have no solution. People are by nature role players.

Negative

Goffman's virtue was to see the negative, critical side of this existence, while orthodox sociology treated role playing as the bland, neutral essence of social life.

Like many who cannot understand the ills of society, Goffman, I believe, moved to the right "and sought imaginary safeguards. But 1 am not sure because at this point I lost touch with him.

Goffman's best works represent sociology at its most critical and for many students have offered a way Marxists thinearn from call him.

This ability has earned Spielberg a fortune og previous films like 'Jaws" ¡Close Encounters' and 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' ET is the best yet. And his fortune is increased not only by the films themselves but also by shrewd marketing.

The fact is that the film lives up to all this buildup. The relationship between E1 and the children tugs on the emotions of the audience. The $1.5 million creature appeals to real children, not just the Hollywood variety.

Indeed the fact that such an ugly creature - which the film hints is related to a frog - appeal to children itself shows that conceptions of beauty are very much created by society.

Spielberg plays on all the emotions, in particular the love of children. The excitement comes from the fact that the authorities are trying to catch ET _ possibly (it is hinted) because the adults want to cut it up for research. While the adults have their reasons for chasing the creature, the children just want to help it go home.

Interestingly Spielberg changes the book in order to increase the mystery and open up a religious interpretation. The book depicts the Extra-Terrestrials as 10 million year old botanists, trying to save the earth's plant life, with which they communicate.

• Spielberg explains none of this in the film. So when ET's finger heals the boy's cut, or when at the end of the film he touches the boy's head and says he will aways be there, the viewer is left free to interpret this in a religious sense.

Don't be put off by the vast profits (takings are fast approaching Star Wars' $244 million, and Spielberg has a personal stake in all the toys and spin-offs).

ET is a really good movie. Take the children -family or no family.

#st fight for a pomphlet •Orgonses Available trom sO, postage.

Scan page 12

Socialist Organiser no.113 December 16 1982 Page 12 Andrew Hornung and conclude their series o Lenin's last struggle.

Many of the Lett Opposition's supporters were from the ranks of the youth like these Red Army cadets ฿ votember 1928, practically all ine multants of the Left apposition had been sent into nemal exile. But they still organised demonstrations on the Ilth anniversary of the revolpon. The banners read. 'Turn the fire against the Right, the kulak, the Nepman, and the "arecucracy, and'Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat'. IN 1922 Lenin suffered a stroke which paralysed him almost totally for a period. After a brief recovery, he suffered another stroke on March 7 1923. He never recovered, though there were periods in which he was able to dictate notes.

In this period he fought his last battle, against growing bureaucratism and in defence of working class democracy.

On his deathbed he became increasingly aware that things were not going well, and alarmed by the growing power of the bureaucracy. He had, he said, the uncanny sensation of turning a steering wheel which no longer had any control over the vehicle.

Initiative from below was being stifled. The Workers' Inspectorate, tar trom being a genuine organ ot working class supervision, had become merely one more source of bureaucratic power for Stalin.

On the national question, too, 'great Russian chauvinism' was restoring itself to power within the new social structures. Stalin and Dzherzhinsky had conducted a savage campaign against the Georgian Bolsheviks, accusing them of LUNKOTAL nationalism. Lenin knew where the malignant nationalism lay - in the Great Russian chauvinism of the central state apparatus.

He resolved to conduct a struggle against the bureaucracy, in favour of the maligned Georgian Bolsheviks and the rights of the Georgian people within the Soviet system. But Lenin the activist was reduced to Lenin the dictator of notes, unable even to write them himself. These notes became his Testament.

Rude On January 4 1923 he wrote: "Stalin is too rude and this defect.. becomes intolerable in a general secretary. That is why I suggest that the comrades think over a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing somebody else differing in all respects from Comrade Stalin by one single advantage - that of being more tolerant, more loyai, more polite and considerate to the comrades, less officious, ete...

I think that from the point of view of assuring against a split and from the point of view of what I wrote above of the mutual 30/03 PONGTAPNATA relations between Stalin and Trotsky, it is not a detail, or it is a detail which can acquire decisive importance" • Stalin was not removed, and in any case he was not himself the new bureaucracy, merely its personification.

NAT andy panac sU AT.. molitionl СтхT clearly epitomises the protoundly revolutionary and democratic spirit of damanpatin cnirit of Tonin and the Bolsheviks as their policy on the national question. True, they had (rightly) not hesitated to subordinate the national rights of the Poles in 1920 and of the Georgians in 1921 to the needs, as they saw them, of the workers' revolution.

But for most of the longoppressed nationalities and peoples of the Tsarist empire, the workers' revolution meant liberation, a tearing-down of that Bastille of the nations. The revolutionary effects of Bolshevik policy on oppressed nationalities and peoples was felt as far away as among the Blacks in the USA.

The fate of the national minorities under the Stalinist bureaucratic counterrevolution graphically summed up what that counterrevolution meant, and will do to illustrate what happened in every area of society.

It was one of the must savage ironies of history. While the Austrian prison house of nations had been shattered into fragments, the Bolshevik policy of self-determination had preserved the unity of most of the former Tsarist empire - unity on the basis of freedom of the component nations and peoples.

Prison

Now the Stalinist bureaucratic degeneration began systematically to convert the free assuciation of Soviet peoples created in the fires of revolution and civil MAILA aT.. war back into a prison house for the non Great Russians. Stalin rebuilt the walls and the institútions of national oppression. The systematic bureaucratisation of the party and the state apparatus, bureaucratically centralised and unified throughout the 'Soviet Union', inevitably meant that the constitutional rights of the nations and peoples became a fiction.

The political and ideological degeneration of the bureaucracy injected the puison of Russian chauvinism into the state structure. By the mid-'20s, the Stalinist faction was already using anti-semitism surr within the party! - against the Trotskyist opposition which continued the anti- which mintinnad the anti bureaucratic offensive of Lenin.

The progressive impure of the revolutionaries' policy on the nationai question could still be felt throughout the 1920s. especially in the least developed eastern regions. But by the early '30s the StalinIsts were able to turn on its head the central teaching on the national question of the revolution and of Lenin - they now pruclaimed that the national problem in the USSR was no longer the poison of Great Russian chauvinism, but 'nationalist deviations' among the peoples long oppressed by that chauvinism.

For over 50 years now a majority of the peuple of the USSR have had national oppression superimipose : on the sucial oppression experienced by all the population.

Whole nations have been deported. The Ukraine, a nation of 50 million, the biggest oppressed nation in the world, has heen subject to systematic national and cultural oppression, sometimes more savage, sumetimes less. The last largescale purge there began in the 1970s.

There are few states on earth more alien to Lenin's programme on the national question than the une where the production of pictures and statues of Lenin - stylised to fit a vulgar Stalinist caricature - is a major industry.

On January 21 1924 benin died. Within a short time all that he stood for had become a dead letter in the Communist movemeni.

Stalin and his friends used the occasion of Lenin's death to organise the su called 'Lenin levy' • a swamping of the revolutionary core of the party by a mass of raw, often careerist, recruits.

Opposition

At the end of 1923 the Left Opposition, led by Trotsky, had taken up the same struggle as Lenin. Within less than a year after Lenin's death the bureaucracy had differentiated itself from his programme vy pruciaung a pugianme that he would have mocked, that there could be socialism in one country. Thus they started on the road to abandoning the struggle for international proletarian revolution.

Over years and decades they were to redefine the very basis of socialism, the self-liberation of the working class, to comply with their own authoritarian police-state rule. The notions of liberty and democracy, and much else that the socialist working class takes over from the great liberation movements of the past, were excised from their state socialism, and an authoritarianism previvusly associated with the Right inserted in their place. Lenin's properly bitter denunciations of the reformists' parliamentary fetishism were construed as absolute renunciation of democracy and endorsement of bureaucratic tyranny.

Transformed

Trotsky and the Left Oppusition were very soon the only forces still standing on Lenin's programme. The bureaucracy gained control of the young parties of the Comintern, many of them still in the process of formation. they formation In timin thou were transformed into parties like the British Communist Party of today.

Within little more than ten years of Lenin's death, almost the entire generation of Bolshevik revolutionaries were murdered by the totalitarian state with VAAN Stalin at its head.

Lenin, safely dead, was mummified and made into an icon by the Stalinist state. As if foreseeing it, Lenin had written, with Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in mind:

"During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the Anninccina uppressug ciasbts cunstantiy hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their deaíh, attempts are made lo convert them into harmless icons, to canonise them, su to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the 'consolation' of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time rotsing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarising it"

The impossibility even for Stalin of destroying Lan. in's published works which for us remain the real Lenin - now lpd te endless scholastic reinterpretations of them, quitr alien to the spirit of Lenin and the spirit of Marxisin.

The Russian Revolution led by way of the Stalinist political counter-revolution to the savagely tyrannical rule of a vast bureaucratic caste which subjects the working class of the USSR and Eastern Europe to unparalleled social and political oppression. In conditions of Russian backwardness and the isolation of the revolution, many of the unret fastures of. race ICaVUICO society were gratted onto the cullectivised property initially established by the workers' revolution. These mutant remnants of the 1917 workers revolution will have their progressive potential realised only when the working class makes a new, anti-bureaucratic revolution.

Does the historical fate of the Russian workers' revolution endorse in retrospect the verdict of thuse scholastic Marxists like Karl Kautsky who condemned Lenin and the Bulsheviks as adventurists •- nennle who tank a lear TY LAM «YUr in the dark?

It is best to let the splendid revolutionary Marxist

Scan page 13

• 'Memories of Lenin' by Nadezhda Krup. skaya (Lenin's widow) is currently our of print. But US editions can sometimes be found in bookshops, and many libraries Krupskaya was Lenin's comrade-in-arms, his best biographer, an‹ ists' attemnts after his death to make an 'icon' of Lenin Mt always aiguts, sume- suppression or Lenin s lestatimes submits, but • never ment and later belonged to The Stalinists could consolidate their power only by physi- finally gives up trying to the Zinoviev-Kamenev wing cally exterminating most of the activists of Lenin's party convince, for it is thus, and of the Left Opposition. She Rosa Luxemburg answer perspective of the internat- thus only ... that he wins broke with the Opposition that question. Luxemburg ional socialist revolution. It The Stalinist picture of largely confined herself to was an ardent supporter was not their fault that the Lenin is not of a militant specialist work in education. of the Russian Revolution, working class was everybut also a sharp critic of where defeated in the ad- convince others, but of period from: 1893 (when the policy of the Bolshe- vanced countries of Eur- someone infallibly "direct- Krupskaya met Lenin) to viks. She differed with ope and that the Russian them on their land policy Revolution was isolated and and on their national policy. subsequently degenerated.

Terror and argued that the viks, led by Stalin, finally Bolshevik Revolution could betrayed the revolution, and should have been won they could only feel secure with less repression and in that work when they more democracy than the had slaughtered almost the Bolsheviks felt they could entire membership of the foster after the outbreak of revolutionary party that aries, and consistent Marx- able part of life, but an ists - were absolutely abomination which people siht to seize power, he ought and are able to sweep base themselves on the away" She criticised the Red civil war in mid 1918.

She wrote against the Kautskys:

•That the Bolsheviks have based their policy entirely upon the world proletarian revolution is the clearest proof of their political farsightedness and firmness of principle and of the bold scope of their policies"

"Surely nothing can be further from [Lenin's and Trotsky's) thoughts than to believe that all the things they have done or left undone under the conditions of bitter compulsion and necessity in the midst of the roaring wolfpour of eveuts, should be regarded by the International as a shining example of socialist policy toward which only uncritical admiration and zealous imitation are in order". . But:

'Whatever a party could offer of courage, revolutionary farsightedness and consistency in a historic hour, Lenin, Trotsky and the other comrades have given in good measure: All the revolutionary honour and capacity which western social democracy lacked were represented by the Bolsheviks. Their October uprising was not only the actual salvation of the Russian Revolution, it was also the salvation of the honour of international The Bolsheviks - socialinto nenlatarian raunlutinn- Isko, prultvaral eerulununIf a group of old BolsheLenin had built.

Bolshevism

If the European labour movement had had more of Bolshevism in it, then the Russian Bolshevik-led revolution would not have led to Stalinism but to the inauguration of the liberation of the working class at least of Europe.

Their method, their programme, and their spirit is today still the only serious working class answer to capitalism, and now also to the Stalinist system which rules over one third of the alnhe These articles have traced the outline of Lenin's political activities. Let the writer Maxim Gorky, a friend of Lenin though not always an uncritical one -he opposed the • October insurrection, and very bitterly criticised the Red Terror - have the last word on Lenin's character and motives:

'I have never met... nor do I know of, any man who hated, loathed and despised so deeply and strongly as Lenin all unhappiness, grief and suffering.. Lenin was exceptionally great, in my opinion, precisely because of this feeling in him of irreconcilable, unquenchable hostility towards the sufferings of humanity, his burning faith that suffering is not an essential and unavoidby Colin Foster FOR anyone encouraged to read further by our recent series, 'Lenin and the Russian workers' revolution" this book is, I think, the best place to start.

Simply written - drafts were read to workers' classes - and vivid, yet precise and luminating on many complex political issues, the book is also a world removed from the quasi-religious cult of Lenin developed by the Stalinists.

Krupskaya's approach is sharply illustrated by one passing comment on a speech by the pre-World War 1 French Socialist leader Jean Jaures. "I did not like his speech - every word seemed to be deliberately chosen."

Krupskaya here speaks for herself: but her dislike of phrases spoken for effect is also the attitude of the Lenin described by the historian Pierre Broue, his victories.

learning, arguing, striving to READERS may be aware of research on particle accel erators at CHRN (Fura- VAMVULO VLIALLY нииpean Centre of Nuclear Research) in Switzerland and elsewhere into the fundamental nature of the matter and energy which makes up our universe.

This is being done by giving particles of matter a lot of energy (accelerating them to high speed) and then smashing them into each other. Some of the energy is then transformed into new mass (as predicted by Einstein with his famous equation E=MC2) and a Einstein: energy into matter ing" the revolution in about the same way as the bureaucrats saw themselves "directing" the society of the USSR.

There is not much inspir ation or education to be gained from the activities of Lenin seen the Stalinist way - you cai only await the arrival of a new infallible "director" of the revolutionary movement.

Account

But Krupskaya's account fits in more with Trotsky's summary: "Lenin ever extended his horizons, he learned from others and daily drew himself to a higher plane than was his own yesterday." From such a struggle for growth we can learn to struggle too, if not to grow so high.

Krupskaya wrote her "Memories of Lenin" between 1924 and 1926. Through most of this time she was in opposition to Stalin: she opposed the annanadian af Ianin'o Trota in late 1926, and afterwards The memoirs span the shower of new particles are made. Researchers then look for particles whose existence has been predicted by current theories.

The whole thing is called "High Energy Physics" and they must have colossal electricity bill!

Before looking at the current theories, I shall briefly describe the history of this quest.

Over 2,000 years ago, some Greek philosophers thought that matter might be made up of particles that could not be divided up SULU .....

October 1917. The anecdotal detail not only makes them highly readable, but also gives a more rounded picture of the real processes of building the Bolshevik party.

Take for example the 1903 split in the Russian Marxist party, the, first division between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. It was not all clear-cut from the start.

The party congress had elected an editorial board of three - Plekhanov, Martov, Lenin - excluding three old members. This exclusion, proposed by Lenin, caused great resentment. Martov refused to serve. Plekhanov wavered and eventually moved to co-opt the other three.

And Lenin? "After the Congress : Vladimir Ilyich raised no objection when anymore. They called these "atoms" (atomos -without cutting).

It was only about 200 years ago, however, that atoms were proved to exist and it was soon shown that they could _be further divided - into a nucleus (or core), and electrons, which seemed to circie round the nucleus, like the planets round the sun.

Nucleus But that was not the whole story. The discovery of radio-activity showed that the nuclęus itself could be divided. An atom could be split into two or more bits; some of which were themselves other atoms, and others of which were particles of matter (alpha- and beta-particles and neutrons) or packets of radiation, called photons (gamma-rays).

So - matter was made up of protons, reutrons and electrons ikile energy was carried by photons. (We know these as radiowaves, heat, light and ultra-violet rays, X-rays and gamma-rays) and that was that. Or was it?

Since the early twentieth century a vast number of so-called fundamental particles have heen discovered. Unfortunately, to discuss these particles, we have to abandon many of our common sense ideas, Organiser no.113 have it.

Glebov proposed co-opting the old members of the editorial - even to drag along in the old way was better than a split. But the Men. sheviks refused ...

"Vladimir Ilyich tried to come to terms with Martov. He wrote to Potresov (a Menshevik and old Editorial Board member) to convince him that there was no real cause for a split...

"Plekhanov decided, in order, as he said, to preserve peace in the party, to co-opt the old Iskra editorial. Vladimir llyich resigned from the Board ... Let Plekhanov make peace, he would not bar the way to peace in the Party ...

"[Then] Plekhanov insisted that a second CC [Central Committee - the Party leadership inside Russia, as distinct from the as most of the properties of these particles have no counterpart in our experience.

Modern theories try to explain matter and energy in terms of the four forces of nature.

1. Force of Gravitation -all particles (including the photon) are subject to this force which we are familiar with, even if we can't explain it. Now, a force has to be transmitted in some way in order for it to have an effect, and with gravity this is thought to happen by particles called Gravitons being passed back and forth (like rugby players passing a ball, except that the "ball" seems to keep them together in the case of gravity).

2. The Electro-magnetic force - this is felt by particles possessing electric charge (e.g. protons and electrons) and it 1s transmitted by passing photons between interacting particles. There are two types of electric charge called (for absolutely no reason) positive and negative.

Each repels its own kind, but attracts its opposite. The electro-magnetic force is 1033 (10 followed by 32 noughts) stronger than the G force.

3. The Strong Force -felt by neutrons and protons. About 100 times stronger than the electroemigre Editorial Board] representative, Rou, should leave the Council _the joint committee of CC and EB] to be replaced by a Menshevik. Vladimir Ilyich for a long time hesitated at this new concession.

"I remember how the three of us ... stood that evening by the edge of the turbulent Geneva Lake. [Roul persuaded Vladimir Ilyich to agree..."

The hardening of the lines, the clarification of the differences, did not come through Lenin seeing everything in advance, but through the successive tests of political struggles. Lenin's contribution was not unique foresight, but unique courage and perseverance in plunging into, analysing and drawing all the conclusions from those struggles. magnetic force, which explains how protons can be squeezed into a tiny nucleus even though they have the same electric charge. It is carried by particles called gluons, which are passed between particles feeling the S 4. The Weak Force -this is felt by protons, neutrons, electrons and neutrinos and is about a million million times weaker than the Strong Force. It is though to be carried by the W-particle (the Intermediate Vector Boson or Centauro) which researchers are now looking for at CERN. Neutrinos are interesting particles - they have no mass or charge and pass through most objects with impunity.

By day, they shine down (and through us) from the sun. By night, they shine up on us, passing through the earth as if it were not there.

So, there are the four forces of nature, the particles thai transmit them, and the particles that feel them.

In future articles I will talk about the thousand or so other particles that have been discovered or made. as well as quarks, the Big Bang. and GUTs (Grand Unified Theories).

Scan page 14

Socialist Organiser no.113 December 16 1982 Page 14

----- pull-quotes -----

KICK OUT THE TORIES! Labour democracy

WORKERS GOVERNMENT

28 Middle Lane, Lon- don N8 for 60p incl.

•Lenin and the Russian workers' Revolution Stalin's political countel revolution

by Les Hearn ES