Date: Thu, 26 Sep 1996 14:06:50 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: the state redux & socialism



Look who is being abstract and irrelevant here. "Liberal democracy," you
say, is an effective mechanism for depriving workers of their rights. In
all circumstancesm times, and places? Doubtless under capitalism,
capitalist liberal democracy works to deprive workers of their rights as
well as to secure them some gains under the system. (That is why they have
fought so hard for extensions of liberal democracy: the right to vote, the
right to speak and organize, etc.) But if there are no capitalists it is
hard to see how the institutions of liberal democracy can deprive workjers
of their rights. Look at these institutions as I have defibed them, quite
conventionally by the way:

	Universal suffrage. Capitalists are a tiny minority: their votes
will not tip the balance away from collective ownership of prodictive assets.
	Extensive civil rights, inclusing freedom to spreak and oirganize.
Without capitalist ownership and control of the media, it's hard to see
how the ability of capitalist to argue for capitalism and organize
peacable in favor of it (demos, marches, petitions, etc.) will leave them
in much better position to challenge a workers state taht we,similarly
lacking such resources under capitalism, are in under a capitalist state.
	REpresentative government. A genuinely majority government will
represent the workers, who are the vast majority. If pro-capitalists elect
a few advocates to parlaiment or other legislative bodies, they will be
isolated and irrelevant.
	
	I think there was another item, but it slios my mind just now.

If workers cannot maintain popular support for socialism when they control
the government and press, then they do not deserve to. If socialism is
better, they will not have to worry about capitalist propaganda. 

Moreover, it's dangerous and unrealistic to single out certain groups for
deprivation of civil and political rights simply on the basis of their
real or supposed economic position in the old society instead of any
concrete acts they may have performed against the laws of the new society.
Criminal bewhavior, violation of clearly defined laws, might be punishable
by various sanctions, including deprivation of civil and political rights
for certain periods (as they are under capitalism). But your proposal
turns on allowing the state to deprive vaguely defined individualks of
their rights on the basis of a suppised propensity of their to act in
accord with their old interests, regardless of any overt acts they may or
may not have performed. (Note that Engels would have been deprived of his
rights under your rule.) This is simply unjust.

Moreover, what criteria doi we use to single out the groups to be so
deprived? Anyone who has ever employed anyone else? What about my
socialist boss at the Guild Law Center, who employs a handful of attorneys
and law clerks and a couple os clericals? Anyone who has ever employed
more than 10 or 20 or 100 people? Anyo9ne who owns more than a certain
number of sahres or shares of a certain value, or has assets of more than
a certain amaount? Wnat do we say to people who are poir, have never
employed anyone, but who advocate capitalism? Are they to be shut up and
stripped of their rights too? You see taht even if we accept the
propensity inference,w hich we should not, implementing it is
impracticable. These are lawyer's questions, but you are talking about
legal matters. 

The upshot is taht your proposal is wrong in principle and unworkabke in
practice. ATtempting to implement these ideas will in fact lead to a
Terror, as large groups of persons are deprived of their rights or any
means to defend them without any basis ina nything they have actually done
or any criteria for doung so that are not arbitrary. It offers wide scope
for personal vendettas and settling scores (as was observed under various
Red and other Terrors, when people denounced each other for personal
reasons); it will offer a large scope for prejudice at a time
when prejuedice will still be widespread; it will give a Red bureaucarcy
that acnnot be presumed to have the interests of even all the workers
first in mind virtually unlimited powers of coercion and subvert socialist
democracy. It would be an utter disaster.

Now, we must distinsguigh sharply between the institutions of a
post-revolutionary government and the conduct of the revolution itself.
When the outcome is still in doubt and the capitalists have a great deal
of power over productivea ssets and media, the rules are different: here
the rules taht apply are closer to the rules of just war (as Norman Geras
has discussed in his excelklent essay Their Morals and Ours in Discources
of Extremity) than to the rules of liberal demoicractic politics. But
oincew e have one, liberal democractic rules should be restored fully; and
they should be compromiseda s little as possible during the revolutionary
period.

Adam dismisses my commentsa s sarcatic. The tone was sarcastic, but the
conent was not. I think that he would happily have me shot as a
counterrevolutionary were his party, per impossible, to take power. 

--Justin



On Wed, 25 Sep 1996, Adam Rose wrote:

> 
> Justin,
> 
> Sarcasm is all very well. But you defended liberal democracy.
> I pointed out that as far as I was concerned, liberal democracy 
> is a particular mechanism for depriving workers of their rights,
> in fact the most advanced of such mechanisms, the one which deprives
> workers of their rights the most effectively.
> 
> I argued that a state is essentially armed bodies of men, and that
> the purpose of a state is to enforce the rights of one class precisely
> by taking away the rights of another class.
> 
> A capitalist state, liberal democratic or not, defends the right of the
> capitalist to make profits by taking away our right to strike, by busing
> in scabs etc etc.
> 
> A workers state only makes sense as a set of institutions which exist in
> order to take away the rights of the capitalists. As far as it succeeds,
> it undermines its reason for existence. A workers state will take away
> capitalists' "civil rights" so that workers can have "civil rights".
> 
> To talk as if "civil rights" should apply to anyone, whether they are
> cleaner or a newspaper owner, is an abstract mystification. But not
> only this, it is precisely the ideological cover that the capitalists
> will use in a revolutionary situation. They're not going to say "we
> need a counter revolution in order to restore bourgeois dictatoship,
> democratic or not". They're going to say "changes should be made which
> guarantee our civil rights". 
> 
> It seems you are either going to be consistent, and agree with them, or be
> inconsistent, and disagree. Which you do is up to you. But the ideas you
> put forward at the moment are of no use in dealing with the situations
> which have arisen and will arise again.
> 
> Adam.
> 
> 
> 
> Adam Rose
> SWP
> Manchester
> UK
> 
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
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