Date: Sun, 15 Sep 1996 00:35:56 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: the state



A last word on the state.

Neil seems to think that in endorsing liberal democracy I am
endorsing capitalist democracy as it is today, unaware that it is more
capitalist than democratic, that I don't know that money talks, that
representative institutions are dominated by the rich, that universal
suffrage hides profound asymmetries of power that favor the bourgeoisie,
and that the valie of civil liberties is undercut by the disparty in the
means to execute them. He also seems to think that I, a law student, am
unaware of who makes the laws and in whise favor. Well, I'm not unaware of
all that. 

However, and this is the point, I take it that underlying his
criticism of the views he imagines me to hold is the notion that it would
be a good thing if we has\d a really representtaive government with
universal suffrage that was genuinely equal and civil liberties taht were
highly and more or less equally valuable for all, as well as laws that
reflected the interests of the working majority. If so, Neil's a liberal
democrat too--one whom likes me, thinks that the ideals of the
revolutionary bourgeoisir cannot be realized under capitalism.

In a later post, Neil says we don;t know all the answers, but we do know
that without saying how we will be be able to solve the problems of
administring a complex society using the institutional structure briefly
hinted at in a few writings of some 19th century German philosophers.
Apparently these writers have set in stone the framework for a
postcapitalist society and any obhections to their ideas are to be brushed
off by (a) assertions of boundless faith in the working class' ability to
solve all problems within those constraints and (b) an assumption that
human nature is malleable in a very specific direction, viz., that
eventually there will be no seroous social conflicts about ends and means.
(Evidentally all such conflicts are due to class exploitation and nothing
else.)	

I don't expect to be able to make a dent in the fundamentalists, who think
that the Heilige Schrift embodies all the answers, but I hope that others
will be inspired to think about the problems of realizing democracy in a
postcapitalist society in a serious spirit. I don't even rule out the
notion that the hints in Marx and Engels might provide some inspiration
for development of clear thiunking about these issues. Ernest Mandel, who
is as orthodox as you like, at least took these matters seriously when it
came to economic decisionmaking. Those more orthodox than I might look to
his discussion of planning as an example. In fact, I look to it as an
example, although I think he's got it wrong. At least he goesa bout it in
the right way.

The reason all this is important is that if we Marxists content ourselves
with repeating old formula that are are generally perceived to be
discredited, and indeed are discredited if left as formulae, then we will
be increasingly confined toa n irrelevant backwater, quite without
influence on the broadere currents of working class politics,a nd
deservedly so. Workers may be discontented with their situation under
capitalism, but they are unlikely to be moved to change their situation in
a radical way, at leasta leftward way, unless they are convinced on a
rational basis of two things: (a) that there might be an economic
alternative that offers them an improvement over what they have, and (b)
that choosing to strive for and create that alternative will not
extinguish values of political freedom and democracy they enjoy, to
wahtever extend, and might wish to extend insofar as they do not enjoy
them. In this discussion I have been addressing the second. (My previous
defenses of markets ocialism, which were not implicated here and are not
presupposed bya defense of liberal democracy, addressed the first.)

I have been very disappointed by the way this discussion has gone. In the
past, in discussing market socialism, I at least got sharp criticisms
tahtw ere to the point, although I did not find them persuasive. Here my
interloctors--Neil, and Mullen, and Tom, among others--failed entirely to
come to grips with my concrete and detailed arguments. What I got was
mainly ad hominem abuse. This really will not do. I don't care if you read
me out of your conception of Marxism, and I'd really appreciate an
intelligent defense of the orthodoxy, or some variation it it, that
actually looks to the problems I claim that liberal democracy will solve.
But sneering at your critics is no way to operate, especially if they are
reasonably intelligent and coherent. I think it's sad.

--Justin Schwartz







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