Date: Mon, 31 Oct 1994 19:15:04 EST
From: tgs-AT-cunyvms1.gc.cuny.edu
Subject: Re: paris commune


My sense is this communication space is elastic--a lot more than many
of the needs you say only the market can provide for.

OK, this is your argument.  But I would never want to join an organization
like this (again).  i find it to be a recipe for elitism and unaccountability,
and have found it to be so.  The comrades in charge of labor work are
responsible to the group as a whole to carry out the group's political positions
and to be active vs. lazy.

HOw can you say you agree with Dewey's Public and its Problems, and yet
argue that the fractions inside a revolutionary party ought to act like
interest groups, with whatever favoritisim, cronyism, lack
of
criticisim and clicquism the members
of the interest group allow? See Michael Rogin's essay in his RONALD REAGAN
THE MOVIE on interest groups.  Democracy is there to prevent this, by 
providing universality to combat the corruptions of insular particularity.
What's good for the society is good for the group attempting to change it:
it was this kind of double standard which led to the terrible errors the
Bolsheviks made once in power.  The view that the party is merely an instrument
of change, not thereby properly a microcosm of what the new society ought
to be like, is responsible for the overcentralism of democratic centralism,
where there's a rigid line to which everyone must adhere, etc..  You're just
taking that old double standard of "democratic centralism" and applying it to
apologize for an equally undemocratic "pluralist" organization.

NO offense.  But I do think that a forum on Marxism ought to talk about
questions of revolutionary organization.


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