Date: Sat, 14 Sep 1996 00:49:38 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: the state



I'm happy to be called a liberal small-d democrat, if that means someone who
believes in representative government, universal suffrage, extensive civil
and political rights and liberties, and the rule of law rather than of
men. That's not the full extent of democracy, but as a lrgacy from the
revoluntioanry bourgeoisie, it's nothing to sneeze at. If "bourgeois
democracy" means that I think that capitalism is a  fine thing if
combined with liberal democracy, I am no bourgeois liberal democrat,
since, for all my reluctant toleration of markets (quitre ublike my
enthusiatic support for liberal democracy) I am adamantly opposed to
capitalism. Whether Hugh or anyone else will grant me the honorific
"Marxist" I do not care. I'm Marxist enough for me,a nd was apparantly too
Marxist for the Ohio State Univerity philosophy department (which is why
I'm in law school now.

I can certainly imagine that under different forms of social organization
people will behave differently than they do now. That's one reason I
remain confident that we can do without capitalists and that workers can
rule themselves. Moreover, I have argued in some detail that people can be
different from they way they are now, but I think this argument points in
a different way from the way that Hugh, Mullen, Tom Condiut, and some
other think with respect to our ability to get on without liberal
democracy. I have said that we can do without that, indeed without a
state, if we give up on a large, diverse, pluralistic, modern society. But
I don't think we want to do that. If we don't, there is no alternative
taht I have heard to the liberal democratic state. 

--Justin 

On Sat, 14 Sep 1996, Hugh Rodwell wrote:

> Thanks for a nice post, John.
> 
> >Take away the reason for exploitation, the reason for separate
> >material interests, and you take away this tendency to domination. The
> >factionalism which is left is quite different : it is debate about how best to
> >serve common interests, and that is fun.
> 
> You ought to know that Justin (I liked the "Justine" for all the overtones
> but it's wrong) argues fairly and from principles (non-Marxist) and has the
> courage of his bourgeois-democratic convictions, as far as I've been able
> to observe. So the "tone" you object to is just him saying he disagrees --
> as he's bound to.
> 
> >I ought to say that I find Justin's tone "sorry to rain onthe parade etc."
> >pretty pathetic.
> 
> If Justin could only realize that societies develop very different
> relationships between people (that are reflected in their heads as "human
> nature" more often than not) on the basis of the mode of production, and
> that all this is a historical process, so that what is valid for one
> historical mode of production is not at all necessary for another, then we
> might just have the makings of a fine Bolshevik.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Hugh
> 
> 
> 
> 
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