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. --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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