File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9803, message 1173


Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 09:55:25 -0500
From: "Charles Brown" <charlesb-AT-CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Women's liberation, male supremacy ,power and praxis


Nancy,
   A while back you wrote in response to what I wrote.

>>> <brumback-AT-ncgate.newcollege.edu> 03/29 1:25 AM >>>
>  NANCY,
>
>             For your program and praxis (practical -critical activity)
proposals: How about in the temporary first phase of the revolution
dictatorship of the feminine gender within the temporary dictatorship of the
proletariat. Well not dictatorship. How about hegemony of the femine gender
within the hegemony of the proletariat for socialism ?
>
>                     Comradely,
>
>                           Charles
>
Good idea! I am definitely in favor of feminine rule of any kind!

Just kidding -- not really. Somewhere I wrote about a "Dictatorship of
Ideas," which would have been collectively defined by both men and women in
democratic discussion, such as what Leo wrote about in today's posts:

I also think -- this is an anti-essentialist position -- that the only
ultimate ground and foundation of morality and ethics is community discourse,
the democratic give and take of conversation amongst ourselves on how we
should act and treat each other. A given moral or ethical code is thus an
expression of some community consensus, regardless of the form in which it may
express itself (ie, religious, philosophical.)

This is good, I think, because men are not going to have anti-woman
positions just because they are men, and women are not going to have
pro-woman positions just because they are women. Like Paulo Freire said,
none of us can see "reality" by ourselves. We have to try to look at it
together and discuss what we see, because what one cannot see, another may
be able to.
Nancy

---------

       I don't know if you noticed my comment on the tyranny of the majority/minority thread about the dictatorship of the proletariat. When Marx started using the term, he made it clear that the main existing and tyrannical dictatorship was that of the bourgeoisie, which is still the main actually existing dictatorship of a class. Marx, Engels and Lenin did not intend that the DOP would undo the historic democratic advances of the bourgeoisie over feudalism, including logically the community consensus type processes you sketch. In the Manifesto, they project the working class ascending to being the ruling class as  the institution of democracy. The idea is not that the average working class citizen in a government with the working class as the ruling class would have less freedom of speech,due process or all around individual rights, but  rather all these the bourgeoisie have promised , however fulfilled under working class government ; plus the right to a living job, housing, minimums for physical survival - materialist rights to give content to the idealist rights. Socialist democracy sublates bourgeois democracy, preserves and overcomes it.
     At the time Marx formulated the DOP, there was prejudice against the masses (as a gooey, gooey mob) which prejudice justified perpetuating tyrannies of the minority bourgeoisie.  The tyranny of the bourgeoisie  was a bigger problem than the masses actually having power and misusing it ("dictatorship") against their own real interests, or against fractions of itself. 
     Since then the word "dictatorship" has been through Hitler, Mussolini, etc.. And more importantly, the DOP has, by bourgeois control of mass media , been decoupled from its opposite, the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie (its semantic difference has been erased) in most consciousness and has a completely different meaning thereby.
      However, Marx, Engels and Lenin's analysis of and projection regarding the transitional form of the state under the transitional phase between capitalism and communism ,socialism, is in full effect, in my opinion. The key texts are The Origin of the Family, Private Prop. and the State by Engels and The State and Revolution by Lenin. The common sense is that the working class cannot abolish the state while there are still bourgeois states.  The history of the Soviet Union and all socialist countries proves this in spades. Talk about scientific, empirical confirmation of Marxist theory of the state. We got that.
The bourgeoisie states tried to strangle every socialist country from the cradle through old age. From surrounding the infant Soviet Union, to Hitler murdering 20 million to the Korean and Viet Nam wars, to the Cold War and more.
       The state is a repressive apparatus for the repression of one class by another. This is the Marxist concept of the state. In socialism (from each according to ability, from each according to work), there is still a need for an apparatus to repress the bourgeoisie. The state does not whither away until communism is a world system and there are no bourgeois states, the true dictatorships.
         This the classic analysis. I am willing to substitute "hegemony" for "dictatorship", but as Engels said, a revolution is a very authoritative act . One has to be very sure one is correct and be willing to be very firm about. Very firm. For me the key is to make the state an authentic representative of the working class, the great majority, the People, including the type of process you describe to determine what the great majority opinion is. This is the most legitimate authority and democracy  to me.

     C.B.
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