Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 21:08:02 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: the state



No doubt people will change. But they will not all change in a way that
makes for an engaged citizenry. This for two reasons: first, much public
decisionmaking is intrinsically fairly dull, even on important matters:
how to choose the best sort of power grid for a reason, whether to
prioritize whaet or barley in your planting, etc. People are most
likely to be involved in these decisoions sporadically, when they affect
them in a negative way. Good, you say: increased viligance will prevent
abuse. Will, it will act against abuse. But long term, regular
participation in boring affairs will be hard to manage. Just try to get
people to work on the finance committee of your popular organization! And
leaving these matters, which do offer opportunities for personal
enrichment, power-grabbing, nepotism, favoring your own group, and so
forth, in hands of the people who are interested is, while hard to avoid,
also intrinsically risky. You do not have to think that people are lways
and everywhere as they are under capitalism today to think that given
opportunities to advantage them,selves, they will tend to take them.

The second issue concerns the way people will change. If communism allows
for fuller self-development, many people will prefer ways of life which do
not mesh in any obvious way with participation in public decisionmaking.
They will hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, do critical
criticism after dinner, and have little time or interest for meetings.
Given the range of interesting things to do, things which in many cases
require years of concerted work, practice, study, and discipline, many
people will be content to leave public affairs to others until, perhaps, it
is too late. If you say, it's their look-out, you admit the problem. 

Perhaps you think that the potentials for abuse will all be nipped in the
bud as soon as its manifestations damage the interests of some citizens. I
think that this will be a lot easier to manage if there are regular
institutions governed by known rules and predictable standards with
enforceable penalties for violation and stable mechanisms for ensuring
representataive leadership, in short, a democratic state ruled by law. 

--Justin

On 17 Sep 1996, jc mullen wrote:

> Going to sleep and trusting leaders of society not to abuse their power is not
> something that people do naturally. Capitalist society has to work tremendously
> hard to put down layers of discouragement, cynicism, hopelessness, passivity,
> submission, obedience, laziness  and other such dirt on our minds. Capitalist
> society fits the mountain of what we know a human being can be into a teaspoon.
> when a generation has gone through a socialist revolution, built a new society,
> the very idea of passively trusting the leaders of society will be ludicrous.
> Even under capitalist society we often see how once people can see that things
> are changing and that their part in a project is meaningful and human, they find
> incredible amounts of energy and enthusiasm and find ways of participating. Of
> course, sooner or later capitalism crushes them. But when there is no
> capitalism, not only will the economy be organized differently, human
> personalities will develop differently. You are not gonna be able to fuck people
> around the same.
> John Mullen
> SI France
> 
> 
> 
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