File spoon-archives/marxism2.archive/marxism2_1996/96-10-02.060, message 12


Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 23:47:25 +0100
From: m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Hugh Rodwell)
Subject: Re: The state redux


Justin called:

>In addition, I do not deny that a fair distribution is possible. (Although
>Marx did, for all you fundamentalists out there: look at the Critique of
>the Gotha Program,) What I say is that in order to get a fair distribution
>and keep it you need accepted procedures of making decisions and
>resolving disputes that produce enforceable results. That's law and the
>state.


This is specious.

What Marx said was that some people would get more because their needs were
greater (under "communism"), and some would get more because their labour
was greater (under "socialism"). Would you deny he's right in this?

As to the question of a socially just distribution: "accepted procedures of
making decisions and resolving disputes that produce enforceable results"
may be "law" in a general, supra-historical sense, but to make them the
state is to load the definition in your own favour, and give it a bourgeois
twist. The Vikings in Iceland (and elsewhere for that matter) had this kind
of law, in their Thing courts. The enforcement was another kettle of cod
altogether. There they had to make shift themselves, so the rich and
powerful could enforce their "right", and the poor couldn't, unless they
could drum up volunteers -- some hope! Not to mention the thralls, or
Viking slaves, who had no "right" or voice or anything.

In our late socialist or communist societies (in the classical Gotha
programme sense), the enforcement will be by ad hoc groups with powers of
constraint and seizure. Maybe something like a combination of a people's
militia and jury service in an early stage of socialism, then more and more
by self-mobilizing mechanisms as the kind of events requiring intervention
are better known and classified and the best way of dealing with them is
scientifically evaluated.

Cheers,

Hugh




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