Date: Fri, 02 Aug 1996 00:42:45 -0700 (MST)
Subject: Re: Some basic questions of Marxism





Dear Mike Dean:

Just wanted to let you know I really enjoyed reading your comments.
I thought you made a number of valid and insightful points, even though
I don't agree with all of your conclusions and proposed methods for
increasing economic democracy, a goal I think we share.  It's a shame
you didn't post earlier.

The important thing is to insure that people have a fair share of the 
wealth they help create, and that they have more democratic control
over the ways in which this wealth is used.  I'm all for making
this economic democracy as direct as possible, as decentralized
as possible, and as complete as possible.  

I do feel, however, that the key word here is democracy, not
dictatorship.  The latter word makes me very nervous and can have
nothing to do with socialism, which by its very nature must mean
rule by the people.  That's the people, not the proletariat, the
party vanguard, the workers, the bourgeoisie, the Overclass, 
or the capitalists.  The people means everybody, regardless of
current status.  

Not only are socialists morally obliged to fight for and defend
full and true democracy -- social, economic, and political -- they are
obliged to design their system of government as intelligently as 
possible so as to reduce, not increase tyranny.  They are obliged
to obtain the consent of the people.  This may be tough when the
media is corporately controlled, but people have won tough fights
before for radical social change despite the forces of reaction.
Whether revolutionary or transformational, socialists are going to
have to develop their own organizations and media outlets, just as
they once did, because as you say, socialism can't work without
the people.  Since this is true, the entire justification for
socialist revolution unsupported by formal popular consensus falls
apart.  The only exceptions to this are countries which are already
so authoritarian that this kind of political organizing isn't 
permitted.

Furthermore, gradualism makes sense.  The economies of modern states
are tremendously complex, and increasing internationalism only 
increases this complexity.  Even intelligent men can't always predict
how their planned changes will work in practice.  We need to make
fundamental changes, not just tinker, but we need to do it gradually,
both to see how these changes affect the system and to gain and retain
the popular concensus needed at each step.  The idea that we can 
replace the whole system in one fell swoop is foolish.  The idea that
slogans and vague and/or impractical notions can build an economic 
system is even more foolish.  People *should* be scared when groups
with the Philip Locker mentality talk about scrapping the entire
system and have nothing but pipe dreams and "the laws of history"
to replace it with -- that and a new dictatorship.  Yes, it's
hard to come up with workable solutions, and even harder sometimes
to convince others to go along with them, but this IS what must be
done.

I think too many leftists have a tendency to throw up their hands
and say the system won't change.  This ignores the vast systemic
change which has occurred since 1789.  It's a mistake to drop
out of the system, because when leftists do this it inevitably
results in a vacuum of power exploited by the right.  The left
then ends up fighting within the system anyway, just to gain
back or keep what it had before.  And make no mistake about it,
they do fight within the system.  They may use tactical methods
which are outside the system (marches, strikes, civil disobedience,
occupations, etc.) to get the attention of the authorities and
the media and to impress upon them the seriousness of the problems
requiring solutions, but those solutions have ultimately been
implemented through the system by means of constitutional amendments,
statutory law, and case law, and by the regulations created within
this framework.  That such solutions are usually imperfect, and
sometimes end up being co-opted or partially or wholly reversed,
is something which can only be improved upon by better organizing,
communications, strategy, and by the implementation of fundamental
changes to the system which reduce the influence of oligarchic power
(getting private money out of election campaigns would be a good
start).  Replacing the somewhat unresponsive system with an even
less responsive, more rigid dictatorship, will not solve these
problems.  This "final solution" is an illusion.

Revolutionary socialism only scares ordinary people away, and
provides the authorities -- who have enormous human, monetary,
technological, legal, and military resources -- with an excuse to
deny legitimate social grievances and repress legitimate social 
movements.

Dividing the people up into classes of friends and enemies --
workers and bourgeoisie -- will not advance the cause of social 
justice, democracy, or socialism.  This isn't to say that we don't 
need good political economy to help the people understand what is 
going on and how the system works.  This inevitably means a discussion
of classes, the current power relations between these classes, the
relative privileges and burdens of these classes, how the
resources and spoils of society are divided up among these classes,
and how this division results in an inequitable distribution of
social, economic, and political power.

But any argument that ends with the demand to replace the so-called
bourgeois democracy with a class dictatorship instead of with a fuller,
more meaningful, more egalitarian democracy, is anti-socialist and
probably doomed to failure.  

The demise of the Soviet system provides a potential for socialism,
genuine, democratic socialism, to develop.  People will, over time, 
no longer automatically associate the word socialism with 
economically inept authoritarian police states.  But only if
socialists provide an intelligent, compelling vision of a better, more
democratic tomorrow, and not a vision of class dictatorship similar to
the phony socialism of Lenin and his bastard offspring, who set the 
cause of socialism back a thousand years -- far worse than any 
capitalist conspiracy could have.

--
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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