Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 21:58:40 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: The state redux




This idea of putting the power to enforce public decisions in the hands of
ad hoc groups responsible to one one and from whom there is no recourse
sound perfectly nightmarish. Evidently the notion of "due processw" is a
bourgeois illusion. If so, it is one for which I'll fight. What Jugh
suggests is a recipe for lynch law. 

Marx' side about some people getting more because they need more sounds
fine to me, but he';s as clear as he can be that he doesb't regard this as
justice ("Recht").


On Fri, 20 Sep 1996, Hugh Rodwell wrote:
> 
> 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.




     --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---