Jim Devine
Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:57:37 -0700
CB: > What do you make of Marx and Engels' definitions and statements on > socialism ? In the _Manifesto of the Communist Party_, et al. That's > where I get my definition. They don't seem to put as much emphasis on > democracy as you do.
Note that I wasn't talking about socialism _per se_. There are at least two kinds of socialism. First, there's bureaucratic socialism, of the sort that describes the Chinese system under Mao (for example). Then, there's democratic socialism (which is what Marx, Engels, etc. favored). Both types of socialism involve state ownership of the means of production (i.e., collectivism). The most important question is _who controls the state?_ Under BS, it's an elite political party merged with the state bureaucracy, holding a monopoly of political power (and thus controlling the coercive power of the state). Under DS, in contrast, it's the working class as a whole that controls the state, by controlling its political representatives in one way or another. Generally, Marx was vague about what that meant, though his writings on the Paris Commune are more specific. He didn't write much about democracy, as I understand it, since a lot had already been written and much of it was mere slogans or hypocrisy. A lot of bourgeois parties of his era actively championed "democracy," but he was clearly looking for something better. A crucial idea that sums up Marx's political philosophy was summarized by Engels "the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself” and said by Marx himself in various ways. They didn't want some elite handing socialism down from above (as with the "utopian socialists" like Owen). At the basic philosophical level, in Marx's Theses on Feuerbach, he wrote that: >>The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and >>upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is >>essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, >>divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. << He rejected the Owenite perspective, knowing that Owen and other "educators" were themselves a product of the system and would change society and people in ways that would reflect their own upbringing, attitudes, values, goals, etc. He was familiar with the old adage that power corrupts. Hal Draper's KARL MARX'S THEORY OF REVOLUTION (Monthly Review Press) presents large numbers of quotes from Marx and Engels about this. > On the one hand, I respect your militant attention to democracy in > the sense of "all power to the People", popular sovereignty. On the > other hand, given the history of capitalism/imperialism's willingness > to take matters to the most horrific warring and violence in the > history of the world in order to destroy socialism , of any form, it > seems impractical not to have significant centralization in socialist > states in a world with imperialism still. Obviously, a country that's attacked by imperialism has a very hard time having DS. Similarly, a country like Vietnam that was attacked by China (or a country like Czechoslovakia that was attacked by the USSR) has a hard time having DS. BS may have some worthy economic goals, e.g., promoting relatively egalitarian national economic development in an economically backward country. But we should not fool ourselves into thinking that it represents democratic socialism. The relatively egalitarian national economic development seen in China might have set the stage for the development of DS, but then again that's the alleged "progressive" aspect of capitalism, too. In any event, China's potential for promoting DS here was not realized, so that instead we see (state) capitalism there. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l