Date: Thu, 01 Aug 1996 08:28:56 -0700 (MST)
Subject: Re: Marxism: meat and potatoes questions




In a previous post, Philip Locker (jesusc-AT-interport.net) wrote:

>You can't seem to grasp the difference btwn. a rulling class of 
>exploiters and a rulling class (workers, 90% of society).

I grasp it very well.  I also grasp the fact that a ruling class
consisting of 90 percent of the population does not need to rule by
"dictatorship."  I grasp the fact that there is a difference between
rule by the people and rule by a bunch of strictly self-anointed 
arbiters of the people's will, i.e., rule in the name of the people by
some party constituting only a small fraction of the people, as in
Lenin's dictatorship of the revolutionary vanguard (not proletariat).

I grasp the fact that most people lack the aggressiveness, the
the ruthlessness, the self-righteousness, and the organization of 
professional revolutionaries, and that any seizure of power by the latter
is likely to result in a tyranny over the former unless the structures of
the new government are designed with a strong system of checks and 
balances and formal recognition of the equal (and substantive) civil 
rights of all individuals.  

I also grasp the fact that after the institutions of state power
come under the control of these professional revolutionaries, the
people at large are all but powerless to change conditions by 
revolutionary means.  This is particularly true where the 
pre-revolutionary institutions of state power are pervasive and 
developed, and *especially* true when the revolutionary rulers are
completely ruthless, having no respect for morality or individual 
rights, or indeed anything outside the narrow, fanatical values of 
their dogma.  For an example of the Orwellian horrors which await the
population of a modern state under such conditions, consider Nazi 
Germany or the U.S.S.R.  Today, the possibilities for surveillance,
information control, and physical repression are manifold increased.

I grasp the fact that it is difficult enough to organize people to
form a simple block watch anti-crime program in their own immediate 
and tangible self-interest, even when this involves nothing more than
a commitment to peep out of their windows from time to time and to
report suspicious activity to the police, much less to form armed
militias exercising direct police and paramilitary powers.  True, 
there are always those who are willing to do this, but they are
a tiny percentage of the population.  Most people are neither 
temperamentally suited to the task, nor are they willing or even able
to spend their time performing these functions.  Police and military
work are professional specializations because people in modern society
have decided that it is desirable and in fact necessary to delegate these
tasks to professional specialists.  The idea of armed militias consisting
of 90 percent of the population becomes even more implausible when
one considers the function of such militias as a paramilitary army
to repress counter-revolution (or for that matter, the tyrannical
perversion of the revolution by the revolutionary leaders, whether
first or second generation).  

These ideas seem plausible to you only because you have a child's
understanding of human psychology and of the practical logistical
necessities of police and military functions.  These bodies are
hierarchical and authoritarian because they need to be: it is the
only practical means by which they can, on a day to day basis, get
the job done.  Shall the police vote on every investigation or
arrest?  Shall the military vote on every tactical or strategic
action?  Even if the police and military bodies could somehow consist
of 90 percent of the population -- an absurd presumption in itself --
this would only compound the problems of an already unworkable scheme.

All of these problems are further magnified by the geographic and
administrative scope of modern states (e.g., the U.S.).  Very few
people live in villages, much less politically independent villages.
Unless the revolutionary government of each neighborhood is largely
autonomous, you will need the equivalent of local, state, and federal
hierarchies to insure that the nation remains a unified political
body under the Marxist system you intend.  This insures a further
concentration of power in the police and military bodies which
at the top will necessarily be administered by a tiny percentage
of the population.  

Sooner, rather than later -- if not from the very beginning -- a 
situation is reached in which a small group of revolutionary leaders
are able to establish their own definitive and final authority in
determining the terms of revolutionary development.  They control
the language and context of revolutionary truth because they can
enforce their views at the end of a gun barrel and because they
control the organs of mass media to a degree far beyond anything
existing in bourgeois capitalist democracies like the U.S.  Pretty 
soon, even though all animals are equal, some animals are more equal
than others.

This is where poor institutional design comes home.  In the United
States these institutional flaws result in the political and media
distortions we are all familiar with.  But the inordinate powers
these flaws provide to oligarchic forces are weak compared to the
nearly unrestrained institutional powers you seek to grant to the 
supposed people's revolutionary government.  You imagine that because
these powers will be granted for well meaning reasons, perhaps even to
well meaning men (at first), the potential for abuse of these powers 
will be neutralized.  That's naive.

I know very well what happens to idealists like you once the 
difference between revolutionary rhetoric and revolutionary reality
manifests itself.  You become a liability: first, because you are
militant; second, because you are idealistic.  It is discovered
that you are secretly an agent of counter-revolutionary forces.
The evidence is clear: eyewitnesses step forward to denounce you for
conspiracies against the people; counter-revolutionary literature
is found to be secreted in your apartment; prisoners confess your
involvement in their schemes.  Your arrest and the evidence against
you may or may not be publicly announced in the mass media,
depending upon the sensitivity of the case and other contingent
requirements.   You might have been able to defend against the charges,
but unfortunately you have ceded all the nice checks and balances
and constitutional rights ("just ideas") of bourgeois government
in order to more perfectly advance the revolution.

>Anyhow, the whole point of the Dictatorship of the proletrait (DOP) is
>to destroy ALL classes (including the working class), destroy the state
>(the instrument of class 'dictatorship').

More utopian claptrap.  

>You don't seem to understand the relationship between means & ends. 
>The workers & capitalists in this case might use the same means (class
>dictatorship when they seize state power); [allthough i reject 
>"morality" for the sake of argument I will go with it] the same means
>can not be used to judge the moral value of an act.  When a SLAVE OWNER
>uses trickery, deciet & violence to put a man into chains and enslave 
>him that is one thing.  When a SLAVE uses trickery, deciet or violence to
>break his chains and free himself that is another thing.  Both actions 
>described above use the EXACT same means; they use those means for exact
>opposite ENDS 

I quite understand that similar acts performed in different contexts
assume different moral characters.  Shooting someone with a gun is
quite different in self-defense against an attacker than it is when
the target is a little old lady who merele looks at you the wrong way.
None of this addresses the issues I have been raising.

Furthermore, Comrade Locker, I fail to see why, if you "reject morality,"
you then "go along with it" -- in fact, using it as the basis of 
argument.  This smacks of petty-bourgeois sentimentality, which cannot
be tolerated by the Party.  You will now present a confession of your
counter-revolutionary tendencies, which will go into your Party record
until such time as it may be useful as evidence in your show-trial.

>
>>Savor the irony: Locker accuses me of "idealism" yet believes in 
>>mystical claptrap like "the objective laws of history" -- and that
>
>You obviously did not understand my explanation of idealism.  As i said
>before idealism in the philosophical sense means believing reality is 
>made up of idesa.  This has nothing to do with the common  expresion 
>"idealism" which reffers to "unpracticle" or utopioan or stupid ideas
>-- do you get it now?

Reality is obviously made up of both abstracts and concretes.  If
someone has the idea that you are an enemy of the people, and the
idea that enemies of the people must be ruthlessly crushed, that
is an abstract.  When, assuming they are in a position to do so, 
they put you in prison or shoot you as a result, that is a concrete.
Both are real.

The notion of "objective laws of history" is an idea.  The problem
with this idea is that there is no evidence that it is anything other
than an impotent mystical fantasy with no effect on reality whatsoever.

>Why werrre your arguments idealistic?  Because idealists when applying
>there philosophy to history, see history as a function of reality (in 
>there case, ideas).  The constitution or the bill of rights or "freedom
>of expresion" are IDEAS.  A materialist views these ideas as REFLECTIONS
>of material reality.

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are ideas, but they are ideas
which have practical concrete consequences.  Judges make decisions
based upon them and these decisions can have enormous and far reaching
concrete effects.  For example, the freedom of expression embodied
in the First Amendment allows you to criticize the government without
being put into prison or executed.  The situation is different in
many countries which lack such formal rights.  

The fact that theory and practice are not always identical is obvious,
but immaterial to whatever degree to which practice actually
conforms to formal expectations.  The Bill of Rights as put into
practice has provided significant if imperfect concrete results.

The fact that popular democratic struggle was necessary to expand
the coverage of constitutional rights beyond the privileged group
of white male land owners the Constitution was originally intended
to (primarily) serve, does not change the fact that the Constitution
determined a form of government whose checks and balances provided
a sufficient if imperfect framework in which these egalitarian 
modifications could occur.  When all is said and done, the results of
democratic struggle endure only to the extent that they are given 
the force of law, whether as constitutional amendments, statutory law,
case law, or some combination.

>If you don't believe in laws of history, please explain to us why 
>bourgeois democracy (nation state, "bill of rights" type laws, 
>parliament, etc) all appeared at a certain point in history.  Why?  
>what forces did they satisfy?

They didn't appear at a certain point in history.  They appeared
at different points in history in different places, and not at all in
many places, even today.  This had nothing to do with any mystical
"laws of history," much less laws of history on somebody's side, and
everything to do with the preconditions, circumstances, personalities,
individual choices, and chance events of specific places and times,
as well as a great deal of trial and error, false starts, and uncompleted
attempts.  Of course these are not isolated and may influence one another
to the extent that these ideas, strategies, and success stories are 
communicated from one place and/or time to another.  But these are
not "laws" of history.  You have given no examples of such "laws,"
merely a vague set of conditions (e.g., "the workers are oppressed")
and the naive belief that progress is inevitable and/or irreversible.
Nor have you shown how these laws determined the times and places of
these same historical events.  You simply pointed to the fact that
they did occur, and claimed that this was the result of "objective
laws of history."

>
>>As long as we're discussing history, perhaps history has something
>>to say about the practical consequences of this kind of UTOPIAN
>>drivel?  Listen very carefully, Philip.  "Kronstadt...the post-
>>revolutionary Constituent Assembly...the Cheka..."  Can you hear
>>history whispering to you?  All of this idealistic talk has been
>
>You belive that 1 man, Lenin, could due to his own evil or good 
>intentions cause all of the above to happen.

Rubbish.  

>What happened happened not because of the ideas of Bolshevism but 
>because of the contradictions of capitalism, the contradictions of a
>woprkers state in a backward & isolated country.

What happened was the predictable result of a dictatorship.  The
political ideology of the dictators (in this case the Soviet Communist
Party and its secret police organs) was almost irrelevant., except to
the extent that it reflected a ruthless, amoral, and stupid dogma.

>if you want an explanation of STALINISM ask for one

Stalinism?  Stalinism was merely the exaggeration of an already
existing dictatorship, further concentrated into one man's hands.
Dictatorship existed from the very beginning.  It began with the
establishment of the Cheka in December 1917 as a tool of political
control by terror, and culminated in January 1918 when the Bolsheviks
broke up the post-revolutionary Constituent Assembly (after one
day of operation) and began the formal persecution of all party
enemies, including a number of non-Bolshevik revolutionary socialist
parties.  The right-wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) held
an absolute majority in the Constituent Assembly, whereas the Bolsheviks
won less than a quarter of the vote.  The SRs, along with all other 
parties which would not support the Bolsheviks in the Assembly (all 
parties except for the left-wing of the SRs (LSRs) which still only 
gave the Bolsheviks a minority of the vote) were then suppressed 
as enemies of the revolution.  The LSRs, which acted as a moderating
influence on the Bolshevik component of the Cheka, soon lost 
representation therein (Summer 1918), after which the Cheka began 
carrying out executions for political crimes.  The character of the 
Cheka as a tool of terror is not exaggerated.  The Cheka itself had a
periodical unapologetically titled "Red Terror" (Krasny Terror).

>
>>Moving on to trivia, Locker doesn't believe that Lenin defined the 
>>dictatorship of the proletariat in terms of factory workers and 
>>excluded all others, including farmers, peasants, and non-capitalist
>>clerical, professional, and other workers.  "Where  & when did he say
>>this?  I don't believe it is true" he writes.
>
>It does not matter what Lenin said. We try to learn the METHOD, i.e. 
>how they arived at their conclusions so that we can do the same thing
>today.

Surely Lenin's reasoning, as reflected by his speech, had something to do
with how he arrived at his conclusions.  Neither his speech (in this case)
nor his actions are anything which any friend of the people would wish to
repeat.

>
>>Here is a quote from one of Lenin's speeches on trade unions in the 
>>Soviet system at the end of 1920 (quoted in Michael Harrington's
>>Socialism: Past and Future (Penguin/Mentor, 1992)):
>>
>>  "The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through
>>an organization embracing the whole of that class, because in all
>>capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most
>>backward) the proletariat is so divided, so degraded, and so
>>corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an
>>organization taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly
>>exercise proletariat dictatorship.  It can only be exercised by
>>a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class...
>>it cannot work without a number of 'transmission belts' running from
>>the vanguard to the advanced class, and from the latter to the
>>mass of the working people."  
>
>I don't see where he says that factory workers are the only workers...
>In fact I don't see the word factory once!

Factory workers were the only ones concentrated and militant enough to
qualify for inclusion in the context of a so-called proletariat 
dictatorship.  They were only a tiny portion of the workers of Russia,
and even this fraction was further "declassed" as many of these militants
were killed on the front lines of the civil war.  The party vanguard
consisted of revolutionary leaders like Lenin (but hardly confined
to Lenin alone), and the "advanced class" were the militant, class-
conscious factory workers, to the extent that they existed.  I am
disappointed with you, Comrade Locker, for your ignorance of Party
history.  You may even harbor deviationist tendencies.  We shall
see...

--
What a curse these social distinctions are.  They ought to be abolished.
I remember saying that to Karl Marx once, and he thought there might be
an idea for a book in it.



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