Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 22:36:48 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Stalin explained (fwd)



Jorn, you're usually better than this. It's high time revolutionary
socialists stopped using Lenin's The State and Revolution as an excuse to
stop thinking.

First of all, even in an imaginary, impossible, and quite undesirably
wholy homogeneous society without social conflict, a modern industrial
society requires immense specialiaztion and technical knowledge to run,
along with a stable, compenent and reasonably honest cadre of specialists
competent in such exciting aresa as solid waste management, pension fund
administration, cewrtified public accountancy, information systems
control, and lots of other really boring stuff. 

Inevitably these officials
must exercise power or they cannot run their jobs. Inevitably the
oversight that "the working class" can exercise ovcer them will be fairly
limited because "the working class" cannot have the specialized knowledge
nor, for the most part, the interest, to assess whether the jobs are done
right. 

Workers can only know the long term effects of the decisions,
whether they like them. Immediate power of recall will not help much if
the correct source of the decisions people don';t like cannot be easily
identified, as indeed it odteb can't. Moreover, immediate recall threatens
to compromise the quality of decisionmaking by making the choices
susceptible to crude political pressure for short term, partial
interests. There are a lot of other problems. These are only a few.

A further problem is that insofar as managing conflict is a source of
bureaucracy, there is a lot of conflict ina ny pluralistic society that
has nothing to do with class. The only way to get rid of it, or to
suppress it, temporarily and superficially, is by totalitarian measures
of a sort I am sure you would disapprove of. I do not refer here to
conflict over race, sex, and other oppressions. Let us wave a magic wand
and assume all that evaporates on the morn of the Revolution. What I mean
is that members of the woreking class will have differences about both the
ends to be attained and the means to attain them, as well as about the
allocation and use of resources (many necessarily scarece) in their
attainment. They will moreover have different interests not based on class
oppositions. Southern California will still need water. Northern
California will resent having its water diverted. Run down cityies will
want rebuilding. Richer areas will say, why should we sacrifice for that?
This problem will be maginified on a large scale with rich and poor
nations. Therew ill conflict aplenty to generate "bureacracy."

Although I do observe that you do not explain how conflict does generate
bureaucracy.   

It does no good at all to define "bureacucracy" as a kind of exploitative
rule tahtr existed in the USSR, etc., and say we won't have bureacucracy
bewcause we will have worker's democracy. The problems that Chris has
identified are indeed problems with large complex technically advanced
pluralistic societies, whether or not they have exploitative rule. If such
societies generate politically more-or-lessunaccountable groups with
private interests opposed to taht of society at large, whatever the
interest of society at large might be (and how do we tell)? you cannot
make this problem go away by magic. 

The fact is, democracy is a lot harder than Lenin ever imagined. In the
circumstances in which he was operating, it was so hard he decided not to
even try to solve the problems in practice he had tried to start to think
throough in theory. We had better take this opportunity of our current
period of quiesence to think then through betterthan he did so we have a
hope in hell of solving them in practice the next time we get a chance.

Irritatedly yours, 

Justin Schwartz

On Sun, 18 Aug 1996, Spoon Collective wrote:

> 
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 03:38:08 +0200
> From: Jorn Andersen <jorn.andersen-AT-vip.cybercity.dk>
> To: marxism2-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
> Subject: Re: Stalin explained
> 
> At 22:26 18-08-96 +0100, Chris Burford wrote:
> >Isn't the situation this? How can any modern governmental structure
> >(under any social system in a techically advanced country - I wish to
> >exclude the "democracy" of ancient Athens) run without
> >full time paid officials?
> 
> Jorn:
> The problem in my opinion is not *technical complexity* but rather *social
> antagonism*. If you take a look at present day governmental structure, how
> much of it is directly related to two basic features of modern day capitalism:
> 
> 1. Managing class conflict, i.e. trying to keep it in a safe and regulated
> framework, and if this is not possible making sure they have the necessary
> means to impose their will by force.
> 
> 2. Managing conflict and regulations *within* the ruling class itself.
> 
> My guess would be well above 80% - at the lowest. The point is that it is
> *class society* which demands the need for massive regulation - not that
> "society" taken in the abstract is "complex" etc.
> 
> But of course something has to be "managed", especially in the period
> immediately after a socialist revolution. And there *will* be a need for
> full time paid officials.
> 
> >And won't they form a bureaucracy?
> 
> No - bureau*cracy* means that they rule, or at least are in a position where
> they can hope for or aim at this. This *can* be the outcome if the workers
> are not socially strong enough to keep them checked - which was clearly the
> case in Russia after 1917.
> 
> >So what do you do with that bureaucracy?"
> 
> +
> 
> >How in the Trotskyist tradition is this question about the official strata 
> >answered?
> 
> Basically I think the experinces of the Paris Commune - as summarized by
> Marx and in Lenin's small book "State and Revolution" - gives the best
> answers. Trotsky's (and Lenin's before him) writings in the debates in the
> early-mid 20's are really more about what to do to put workers in a position
> where they are able to rule, not so much about what to do when they are in
> that position.
> 
> Accountability and subjection to immediate recall are basic necessary
> feautures of working class democracy. The rise of the bureaucracy as a
> ruling class in Russia in the late 20's had to do away with the last
> remnants of this. To make their class safe they had to develop a huge layer
> of state bureaucrats. This, however, was not a problem of socialist
> democracy, but of capitalist oppression.
> 
> 
> Yours
> 
> Jorn
> 
> 
> -------
> 
> Jorn Andersen
> 
> Internationale Socialister
> Copenhagen, Denmark
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>      --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---





     --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---