Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 23:24:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: the state



Hugh makes the same mistake in reading me that Mullen did. He argues that
since I think there must be authority, specialization, and hierarchy under
any complex and pluralistic form of society, that I must think taht there
will be privilege and exploitation too. I reject this proposition. I do
think that the tendencies in authoritative bodies to put their intrerests
and those of their members first can be restrained so that there need
emerge neither a privileged strata of administrators or officials nor an
exploitative class of bureaucrats. The institutional structure to bring
this about, however, requires quite a lot of thinking through which
neither I nor anyone else has done really adequately.

Hugh says that my problem is that I cannot "imagine" a society free of
conflict. Au contraire. I can imagine it and I find the thought quite
horrifying. As Madison pointed out, you can eliminate factionalism by
eliminating its causes if you like. That means the end of pluralism,
creating the conditions where everyone thinks the same thing. This might
be done without police repression if we lived in small, isolated
communities where shared values were strong enough so that social pressure
to conform kept everyone in line. I doubt whether we could revert to taht
sort of sitaution without a major catastrophe and I am certain taht we
would not want to. 

Madison's other alternative was to handle the effects of factionalism,
accepting its causes as practically ineliminable. This is the line I
accept. It sets the challenge for democratic government under communism.
This is a challenge for the communist future, after the disappearance,
heartily to be endorsed, or any bourgeois threat. The problem is not that
capitalism might come back, but that since we need authoritative
institutions even under communism, and since these will have tendencies to
put their interest first; and moreover since disagreements in the general
population about means and ends will persist and must be resolved in a
democratic and fair way, we need fair procedures to arrive at and enforce
decisions that are in the general run of things acceptable to most people.
This should not be so hard to understand. In plain English, this means we
need laws. Since we need laws, we need the ability to make them stick,
ultimately based on a monopoly of coercive power. Now even in capitalist
society the usual run of decisions, even controversial ones, doesn't
require that power be applied. The legislature passes a law, the courts
issue an order, and most people comply even if they disagree. But when
people don't, you need to be able to make them.

Incidentall a monopoloy on coercive power--police--is necessary for
another reason. We want disputres to be resolved peacefully, by agreement,
arbitrartion, lawsuits, and such, and not to break out into violence. One
advantage of having an enforceable rule taht only specially authorized
officials (cops) are entoitled to use force absent very special
circumstances (self defense, necessity, etc.) is that it encourages this
paeceful resoloution of disputes. 

Hugh says:
> 
> You are merging aspects of *socialism* -- where the socialist organization
> of the world economy will have hegemony under a regime of proletarian class
> dictatorship against a disappearing but not yet vapourized bourgeoisie, and
> where the maxim of 'from each according to his or her ability, to each
> according to his or her work' will hold -- and *communism* -- where the
> bourgeoisie will no longer present the most minimal threat and the
> *material need* for a class-based regime will have vanished.
> 
> The business of rebuilding the devastated semi-colonial world will
> definitely be the task of the *socialist* period. Justin's 'cops' may well
> exist as some form of coercive body of the state during this period, but
> *socialism* will not last for ever, or be perceived as lasting for ever,
> but will more and more rapidly and consciously move away from the splitting
> off and fetishization of administrative functions in alienated,
> self-reproducing and privileged bodies to the absorption of these functions
> into the everyday self-management of the community of freely associated
> producers at its various levels of integration.
> 
> In the same way as parents raised in authoritarian families can't imagine
> raising a child without whipping her, Justin can't imagine running a
> society without coercion, exploitation and privilege. It's the same problem
> Marx ran into time and again in the classical bourgeois economists -- they
> were totally incapable of imagining society organized in a non-capitalist
> fashion.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Hugh
> 
> 
> 
> 
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