Eva:
I thought that recognition that the absence of democracy conditioned the
horrors and ineptitude of the Soviet system was implicit in all that I
wrote, but perhaps it had to be spelled out in big letters. If so,
thanks for doing the job.
The overall thrust is that -- in whatever order of significance, for in
fact this is an inter-related complex of causation -- the absence of
democracy (including the ability to freely express and satisfy
social-political and market needs), the absence of legal standards that
govern the governors as well as the citizens (in both political and
economic areas), and the absence of (organic) behavioral norms that are
slowly evolved in a culture and society -- often lead (as they did in
the Soviet system) to an enhanced "war of all against all."
The distinction between capitalism °as it can be* (i.e., markets in the
context of democracy, law, and behavioral norms) and capitalism °as it
often is° (and as some of its more gullible expponents -- who emulate
the late and unlamented Ayn Rand -- and are so bedazzled by their
concepts that they are not even elementary discreet in drawing the veil
over the brutalities of actual process) is that they trumpet this "war
of all against all" as a positive good, as the way that things should
be. They may justify this as realism -- "we see things as they are and
are not afraid to call it the way it is, in contrast to you deluded
idealists." The difference is that Hobbes, who wrote much of the most
tough-minded psychological as well as political analysis of these basic
tendencies over 300 years ago, was sufficiently clear-headed to
acknowledge the fact of the "war of all against all" while arguing that
it needed to be restrained and that government was brought into
existence, as a human contrivance, to restrain these human tendencies.
The ancient (Talmudic) rabbis put it in pithy form: "Pray for the
government, for without goveernment people would devour each other."
Nearer our time, in his relatively early work AMERICAN CAPITALISM
(1950's), John Kenneth Galbraith spoke of the "countervailing power" of
government to balance against the excesses of market economics, whether
in the comopetitive or ologopolistic mode. Presumably, the
countervailing concept would extend further than this: market-oriented
capitalism can be a tool to balance against excesses of government, and
government a tool to use against the excesses of capitalism.
Personally, I lean to the sociological interpretation of Schumpeter
(see, e.g., the small volume called IMPERIALISM AND SOCIAL CLASSES) in
which he puts forward the hypothesis (advanced contra the Marxist theory
of imperialism, but perhaps of more general application) that the
corruption of systems and injustices that are perpetrated are the
outgrowth of persistent atavistic tendencies to seek and wield abusive
power, rather than a direct outgrowth of economic activity and
development. But that brings me back to the point where you and I
disagree (re. the need for democratic systems) and to the brink of where
I believe we disagree (your arguments that capitalism intrinsically and
inevitably must be anti-democratic), and so it is a good point at which
to end.
Saul Silverman
