Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 09:44:42 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: the state redux & socialism



No doubt Adam will view the following remarks as further
self-condemnation, but others may wonder who is condemning himself with
words from his own wordprocessor.

I have not been talking about an immediately postrevolutionary society:
the universal suffrage and extensive civil rights I have said we will need
are those ones under a classless society.

As to a postrevolutionary society, I am a lot more tentative about its
outlines, partly because that will depend a lot on the particular way a
transition to socialism might take place. I wouldn't a priori condemn a
socialist regime that had to take steps to preserve itself in at
atmosphere of military emergency. But I wouldn't a priori say that
emergency measures had to take any particular shape. No doiubt I would be
rounded up and shot as a bourgeois defender under Adam's dictatorship of
the proletariat, headed by the wise leadership of the Socialist Workers
Party, which is able to discern the class enemy. Accordingly, I would
oppose such a regime. Fortunately, I think that in an advanced Western
society with democratic traditions, Adam's 19th century Russian notions of
how to implement socialism have no chance in hell of playing to a modern
working class. 

I think that it's dangerous to try to try o establish "bourgeois" as a
legal category that is deprived of rights. Who goes into this category?
Anyone who owns stock in a corporation (I'm safe there, for now.) Anyone
whose parents owned stock? What are the criteria for getting the vote--ten
years of factory work? You see theproblem.

 In addition to denying the "bourgeois" (defined how, Adam?) of their
voting rights, would the dictatorship of the proletariat also deprive them
of their civil rights to free speech (no doubt), freedom from arbitarry
arrest, unreasonable search and seizure, their rights to fair trial, right
to counsel, etc.? Or perhaps we will just rely on ppopular justice and let
the masses pick out whom they wish to hang on the nearest lamppost,
perhaps with some encouragement from the local party officials. Since the
working class has only one party, of course, thoise officials will be
completely justifying in siccing the Red Guards on members of other
so-called working class parties are objectively bourgeois and therefore
also without rights. 

Thinking this through one begins to see why Pablo sees the seeds of
Stalinism in this conception. 

--Justin


On Mon, 23 Sep 1996, Adam Rose wrote:

> 
> 
> Justin condemns himself thus:
> >
> > As to the liberal character of the ideas
> > abouit the state, I don't care what you label them. I am perfectly happy,
> > even proud, to defend liberal democracy against all comers. I think that
> > representtaive government, universal suffrage, extensive civil and
> > political liberties, and the rulke of law are great things and I wouild
> > not fightr for their abolition. I would fight against their abolition as
> > strenuously as I fight for the overthrow of capitalist power and worker's
> > self-rule. --Justin
> > 
> 
> Justin, perhaps you should consider stopping digging.
> 
> The discussion has moved from the far off nature of a truly communist
> state to what a socialist state would be like, ie the immediate
> question : "what are we fighting for ?"
> 
> Justin writes:
> > I am perfectly happy, even proud, to defend liberal democracy against all comers
> 
> Well, what can you say ? Justin defends what Lenin quite accurately described as
> the most advanced form of bourgeois rule, the one in which capitalist dictatorship
> is the most fully formed, most concentrated.
> 
> Justin is in favour of "representative government" ie he throws in the bin
> all the lessons from the Paris Commune onwards about how a workers state
> ends the cretinism of parliamentarianism and replaces the bourgeois state
> with a working, executive body.
> 
> Justin, most self condemningly, defends "universal suffrage" ie giving votes to
> the bourgoisie. No Justin, a workers state will not give political rights of
> any sort to the bourgeoisie. This is what a workers state is, a mechanism for
> deprving the bourgeoisie of its rights, just as a democratic republic is 
> a mechanism for depriving the working class of its political rights. [ WHEN
> the bourgeoisie has been deprived of its rights for long enough, when it has
> been completely destroyed, when it has no social power, at this point the
> workers state has also withered away completely. ].
> 
> Really, the question we have been debating with Justin up till now is 
> "what does socialism look like ?". But this is a bit of a waste of time.
> What Justin should be asked is : when a workers state deprives the bourgoisie
> of its rights, will you, Justin, support the bourgoisie against the 
> working class ?
> 
> Adam.
> 
> 
> 
> Adam Rose
> SWP
> Manchester
> UK
> 
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
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