File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/97-01-24.005, message 116


Date: 21 Jan 97 03:29:46 EST
From: Chris Burford <100423.2040-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-TH: Trust


Chris Sciabarra wrote:

>>Cyberspace is not the place for a trial.  Being a thorough
bourgeois, I can appreciate the principle of due process.<<

In this strange laboratory, these ugly exchanges, seem to me also to 
relate to a fundamental problem of 20th century socialism, the extent
to which there can be a socialist legality and due process, that
protects the socialist revolution from unacceptable excesses, but  
is different from a bourgeois legality.

Certainly, arbitary behaviour is not best made more accountable by
arbitrary accusations. 

But there is a serious problem of how much left wing academics can
use cyberspace with some personal safety to debate subjects about 
which passions can rightly be strong, when in their own workplace they
cannot assume everyone is going to be on their side. Those who
risk straddling both domains are vulnerable to their compromises 
being exposed as unprincipled and a source of mistrust by all.
Jobs and funding applications can be at stake.
Yet if we cannot develop dialogue, we miss an opportunity to 
strengthen an intelligent marxist orientated critique within
an intelligentsia that of course in the main serves to maintain the 
continuation of capital, and the establishment.

I wonder whether Chris S would have any comment on this passage from
Fukuyama, which to my surprise I agreed with. It seems to me 
that an extreme libertarian position can sometimes come full 
circle, and stress, although in a different way, the need for 
social accountability.


"Trust is the expectation that arises within a community of 
regular, honest and co-operative behaviour, based on commonly
shared norms, on the part of other members of that community...

By contrast, people who do not trust one another will end up 
cooperating only under a system of formal rules and regulations,
which have to be negotiated, agreed to, litigated, and enforced, 
sometimes by coercive means."

>from "Trust, the social virtues and the creation of prosperity"
Hamish Hamilton, 1995.

Chris Burford
London.


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