Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 23:15:29 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: the state



This is a parody, right? Pretending it's not, I'll try to restate neil's
points in straight form:

	1. The end of exploitation does not mean the end of the need for
administration, and Engel's slogan about the aministration of things and
not of people is nonsense. Power over resources and their allocation,
power to determine priorities, is power over people.

	2. While a state might not be necessary if there were absolute
abundance, so that anyone could have anything she wanted without real
effort, this is a situation that cannot be seriously envisaged for two
reasons at least:

	a. increased consciousness about the end of the era of unlimited
use of nonrenewable resources and the impossibility as well as the
undesirability of unlimited expoloitation of nature means that we must
work for a socialist or communist future in which resources are scarce,
because that is the only future we have.

	b. Even assuming, per impossible, that resources are not scarce,
the determination of priorities in their use and the need for their
efficient (nonwasteful, rational) use means that these decisions must be
arrived at by authoritative bodies and enforced effectively, by coercion
if necessary.

	3. The end of class conflicts is not the end of serious conflicts
about social priorities. In the medium term, even a communist world would
have to decide, for example, about how much of its resources to devote to
the reconstruction of the formerly exploited South or ex-Third World at
the expense (necessarily) of the advanced former capitalist countries--a
politically difficult problem especially if there is democratic self-rule
in the latter. In the long term, a communist world would have to decide
about what proportion of its effort and resources should go into, e.g.,
health versus education, and once that was decided, how to implement its
decisions. Allk this would involve political conflict.

	4. Political decisions and free association means political
parties; effective administration and enforcement of these decisions means
a coercive apparatus of some sort (cops, anyway); specialization
(necessary for the development of expertise) requires hierarchy. Call
these what you like, they are the functional equivalent of the state.

	a. If the communist society is a centrally planned one, the
planning appratus must have a means for formulating priorities among
competing proposals, which requires both experts on one hand and political
discussion about divergent proposed ends on the other.
	b. It must have a means for choosing and implementing effective
means to attain any pland agreed upon, which requires more politics, since
any means chosen will benefit some and hurt others. Implementation
requires hierarchy, with someone being responsible for carrying out decisions.
	c. The planning apparatus must have a means of enforcing its
decisions and coercing compliance from the uncooperative, the laggard, the
free riders, and the outright dishonest and exploitative. This requires a
variety of sanctions and bodies of person authorized to use coercion and
otherwise apply sanctions.
	d. All these things apply mutatis mutandis if the communist
society isd not planned but is, say, a market socialist society.

	As Neil's joke is meant to show, quoting Marx and Engels on these
matters resolves nothing. They didn't think these things through very
carefully and their ideas are really not worth maintaining except for a
generalized commitment to a democratic politics that won't tolerate
systematic exploitation. But the communist future will have politics and a
state.

--Justin Schwartz

On 10 Sep 1996, neil wrote:

> dear friends,
> 
> In reply to Justin S's view that we must still keep what must be   the POLITICAL
> state under communism.
> This is NOT so in the main as Marx and Engels point out .
> Antagonistic classes and class struggle will not exist under communism. neither
> will
> exploitation of persons by persons. There will be no ruling class. Scarcity and
> privativation and parasitism will be no more. Abundance prevails ! no waged
> labor -- FREE ACCESS!
> 
>  Marx/engels  thought that through the transition period the material basis for
> the state would "wither away' and/or 'die out". They thought is was possible
> that the "government over people will be replaced by the administration of
> things" ( So we will  still have administration, but shorn of its coercive and
> repressive 
> integuments). See Engels: Socialsim-from utopia to science
> 
> We will have gotten rid of cops, courts, prisons, (and maybe lawyers too! Ah ,
> how sweet is this liberation!)
> armies, secret police, insurance salesmen, etc. All these, the mainstay of the
> political state because the material basisis for this will have been overcome in
> the advent of communism.
> 
> The real workers communist administration of things is benign and
> non-repressive. There are no political parties or rulers over people. We want a
> classless and stateless society--with planned production for human need- no more
> profits either.
> 
> And yes, it will take monumental struggle in this contest , and the working
> class has tremendous struggles and self-sacrifice ahead of it. The potential
> for success is a long-shot, but there  the proletariat  still rates a fighting
> chance!
> 
> Neil
> 
> 
> 
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