to summarise Carob's long and readable piece: "In short, we have to take the
issue of equality as one about which something can indeed be done."
This phrase apears 2/3 of the way thru. It is a warning-sign: when people
start trying to figure out ways to make us more equal, expect arguments to
become unhinged from reality. And they do. The rest is a well-intentioned
mish-mash of sub-rawlsian discourse which could come straight from a
Christian seminar in applied transactional analysis: how to satisfice us all
by finding ways to collectivise individual greed and fear under the sign of
loving-kindness, forgiveness and collective wisdom. Sorry if this sounds
like internal backbiting (whatever that is). Wallerstein's own brand of
kilometric waffle is bad enough even for alleged apocalypticists like moi,
but this is way too much. Carob's historico-logical 'if...then' requires
leaps of imagination and faith way beyond my capabilities, as in "If
capitalism collapses, do we still have an alternative that fulfils the
traditional socialist objective'?!?
I think it was Lenin who said that the doorway with 'Equality' written
over the lintel is the exit from socialism.... At least Rawls had
the common decency not to kowtow to the Market in quite such
a grovelling way as this: "I suggest there may be another route,
one that has in fact been tried partially and which is rather promising.
I think one might be able to get
most of the advantages of private ownership yet eliminate most of the
negatives by ensconcing productive activities within medium-size,
decentralized, competitive non-profit structures." At least Rawls continued
to speak and think in terms of non-market social institutions and
non-competitive human interactions. And what on earth does this mean:
"Decommodification, it should be underlined, does not mean demonetization,
but the elimination of the category of profit." ??? But I did like the
discussion about specialists: reminds of early Bolshevik rank and filers
deciding how to use the military skills of tsarist officers, and
how to incentivise same, ie by much comradely talk backed up by
bullets ...
Mark Jones
http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, April 22, 2000 2:22 AM
Subject: Re: M-TH: Wallerstein on 21C Leftism #2
> In a message dated 4/20/00 4:59:44 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
> << 3. A Strategy for the World Left
>
> What is wrong with the strategy the world left evolved in the course of
> the nineteenth century? There must be many things, since
> the strategy has not been successful. The centerpiece of the overall
> strategy was the concept of "two steps": first obtain state
> power, then transform the world. This sequence made sense insofar as
> control of the state machinery seemed the only way to
> overcome the accumulated economic and cultural power of the privileged
> strata and the only way to ensure that new kinds of
> institutions could be constructed - and maintained against
> counterattack. Any other route to social transformation seemed
> utopian (in the pejorative sense of being a pipedream), and this view
> seemed to be confirmed by the fact that various other
> routes to transformation, whenever tried, met with aggressive
> counterattack and ultimately suppression.
>
> So the two-step strategy seemed to be the only one that would work. And
> yet it failed. We know in retrospect what happened.
> The two-step strategy failed because, once the first step was achieved -
> and it was indeed achieved in a very large number of
> countries - the new regimes did not seem to be able to achieve the
> second step. This is precisely the source of disillusionment
> with the Old Left. But why did the movements falter at the second step?
> For a long time it was argued that, if a given regime did
> not transform the world as it had promised, it was because the
> leadership had in some sense "betrayed" the cause and had "sold
> out." The idea that leaders sell out, just like the idea that the masses
> are falsely conscious, seems to me analytically sterile and
> politically disabling. To be sure, some leaders do place personal
> ambition above their proclaimed principles, just as some
> ordinary people do seem not to believe in the same principles that many
> (even most) of their fellows do. The question however
> is why do such people prevail.
>
> The basic problem is not ethical or psychological but structural. The
> states within a capitalist world-system have a lot of power,
> but they simply are not all-powerful. Those in power cannot do just
> anything they wish to do and still remain in power. Those in
> power are in fact rather severely constrained by all kinds of
> institutions, and in particular by the interstate system. This is a
> structural reality which one after the other of these movements that
> have come to power have confronted. Like trees in a storm,
> such regimes have either bent or been broken. None has ever stayed
> straight, or could have stayed straight. And in many ways,
> it was dangerously naive to have expected them to do so.
>
> It is not that no one on the left had ever warned about the dangers of
> the two-step strategy. It is that those who argued its
> dangers could never convince the majority that there was any efficacious
> alternative route. The fact that the powerful of the
> world controlled the weapons (via state armies and state police forces)
> seemed to make it impossible that any truly fundamental
> changes could be made before the movements obtained state power. And the
> majority on the left was probably right about this.
> There was indeed no alternative way, as long as they were operating
> within the ambit of the capitalist world-system that was still
> basically stable.
>
> But there is more to it than this. The left analysis involved multiple
> biases which pushed it towards this state-orientation. The first
> bias was that homogeneity was somehow better than heterogeneity, and
> that therefore centralization was somehow better than
> decentralization. This derived from the false assumption that equality
> means identity. To be sure, many thinkers had pointed out
> the fallacy of this equation, including Marx, who distinguished equity
> from equality. But for revolutionaries in a hurry, the
> centralizing, homogenizing path seemed easiest and fastest. It required
> no difficult calculation of how to balance complex sets of
> choices. They were arguing in effect that one cannot add apples and
> oranges. The only problem is that the real world is
> precisely made up of apples and oranges. If you can't do such fuzzy
> arithmetic, you can't make real political choices.
>
> The second bias was virtually the opposite. Whereas the preference for
> unification of effort and result should have pushed
> logically towards the creation of a single world movement and the
> advocacy of a world state, the de facto reality of a multi-state
> system, in which some states were visibly more powerful and privileged
> than other states, pushed the movements towards
> seeing the state as a mechanism of defense of collective interests
> within the world-system, an instrument more relevant for the
> large majority within each state than for the privileged few. Once
> again, many thinkers had pointed to the fallacy of believing that
> any state within the modern world-system would or could serve collective
> interests rather than those of the privileged few, but
> weak majorities in weak states could see no other weapon at hand in
> their struggles against marginalization and oppression than
> a state structure they thought (or rather they hoped) they might be able
> to control themselves.
>
> The third bias was the most curious of all. The French Revolution had
> proclaimed as its slogan the trinity: "Liberty, Equality,
> Fraternity." What has in practice happened ever since is that most
> people have tacitly dropped the "fraternity" part of the slogan,
> on the grounds that it was mere sentimentality. And the liberal center
> has insisted that "liberty" had to take priority over
> "equality." In fact, what the liberals really meant is that "liberty"
> (defined in purely political terms) was the only thing that mattered
> and that "equality" represented a danger for "liberty" and had to be
> downplayed or dropped altogether.
>
> There was flimflam in this analysis, and the world left fell for it. The
> world left, and in particular its Leninist variant, responded to
> this centrist liberal discourse by inverting it, and insisting that
> (economic) equality had to take precedence over (political) liberty.
> This was entirely the wrong answer. The correct answer is that there is
> no way whatsoever to separate liberty from equality. No
> one can be "free" to choose, if his/her choices are constrained by an
> unequal position. And no one can be "equal" if he/she does
> not have the degree of freedom that others have, that is, does not enjoy
> the same political rights and the same degree of
> participation in real decisions.
>
> Still this is all water under the bridge. The left made its case, and it
> has had to live with it. Today, as a result and as we are very
> well aware, the world left is in great difficulty. I am arguing however
> that this should not be seen in isolation. The errors of the
> left, the failed strategy, were an almost inevitable outcome of the
> operations of the capitalist system against which the left was
> struggling. And the widespread recognition of this historic failure of
> the left is part and parcel of the disarray caused by the
> general crisis of the capitalist world-system.
>
> The failure of the left yesterday and its recognition today is precisely
> what will make it possible for the world left tomorrow to
> achieve its objectives. Possible, but not at all certain! A new kind of
> historical system will be constructed in the next half
> century. The worldwide battle has already begun over what it will look
> like. So what is it that we can do?
>
> I think the first thing we can do is analyze. I say this not because I
> am addressing a group of social scientists, that is, persons
> who presumably engage in social analysis as their life work, but because
> one of the problems of the world, and in particular of
> the world left, is that our previous analyses have not been all that
> good and seem to have been part of the cause of why we are
> in the dilemmas we are in today. Here I can only repeat a number of
> themes I have been plugging for a while now. The first is
> the importance of the choice of the unit of analysis. I think the
> relevant unit of analysis is the modern world-system, which is a
> capitalist world-economy. The second is to analyze this system in the
> longue durée, which is however distinctly not eternal.
> What this does mean is that for any given historical system, such as for
> example the capitalist world-economy, we need to
> distinguish cyclical rhythms and secular trends, and use that to
> distinguish the periods of genesis, of quasi-normal operation, and
> of structural crisis of the system as a whole.
>
> The third is to understand systemic processes in terms of their
> complexity, that is, their long-run tendency to move far from
> equilibrium, arriving at moments of bifurcation with indeterminate
> outcome. The fourth is to place particular emphasis on the
> institutional role within the capitalist world-economy of (a) the
> antisystemic movements and (b) the structures of knowledge.
> And the fifth is to place all this analysis within the context of
> unthinking (which is different from rethinking) the categories
> bequeathed to us largely in the nineteenth century to meet the needs and
> reflect the geoculture of the present world-system.
>
> Analysis is of course always a necessary component of praxis. But it is
> particularly urgent and central when we are confronting a
> structural crisis because it is just then that accepted categories of
> thought provide the greatest hindrance to useful action.
> However analysis by itself is never action. Action requires
> organization. The world left has believed for the last 200 years that
> this meant highly coordinated action, preferably within a single
> hierarchical structure, believing it to be the most, perhaps the
> only, efficacious form of action.
>
> I think that this assumption has been proven wrong. The social
> components that potentially make up the world left are too
> diverse, face too many different immediate problems, originate in too
> many diverse cultural loci for a system of democratic
> centralism, even one that were genuinely democratic, to work. This has
> been recognized in recent years by the emergence of
> two slogans that point in another direction. One is the U.S. slogan of
> the "rainbow coalition," a phrase that has been copied in
> other parts of the world. It was generated by the sense that, for very
> many people, their politics are rooted in, or deeply
> affected by, their social position and their identities. The other
> phrase is the one launched in the last few years in France, that of
> the "plural left." This phrase too is being copied. It refers less to
> the reality of different identities than to that of the multiplicity of
> political traditions and priorities.
>
> However we appreciate the actual attempts heretofore to create a new
> style of left coalition, the core of the idea seems to me to
> be absolutely correct, and indeed essential if we are to make any
> significant political progress. We are strengthened collectively,
> not weakened, insofar as people organize in forms and structures
> meaningful to them, provided only the groups they form are
> ready to talk to each other, and to operate meaningful coalitions. This
> is far more than a matter of parliamentary politics. It can
> and should operate at all levels from the global to the local. But most
> of all, it cannot be merely a matter of political logrolling but
> one rather of constant debate and collegial analysis by these movements
> in concert one with the other. It is a question of creating
> and reinforcing a particular culture of collegial as opposed to
> hierarchical political action. It will not be easy.
>
> What is it however that such coalitions should push? I think there are
> three major lines of theory and praxis to emphasize. The
> first is what I call "forcing liberals to be liberals." The Achilles
> heel of centrist liberals is that they don't want to implement their
> own rhetoric. One centerpiece of their rhetoric is individual choice.
> Yet at many elementary levels, liberals oppose individual
> choice. One of the most obvious and the most important is the right to
> choose where to live. Immigration controls are
> anti-liberal. Making choice - say choice of doctor or school - dependent
> on wealth is anti-liberal. Patents are anti-liberal. One
> could go on. The fact is that the capitalist world-economy survives on
> the basis of the non-fulfillment of liberal rhetoric. The
> world left should be systematically, regularly, and continuously calling
> the bluff.
>
> But of course, calling the rhetorical bluff is only the beginning of
> reconstruction. We need to have a positive program of our
> own. There has been a veritable sea-change in the programs of left
> parties and movements around the world between 1960 and
> 1999. In 1960, their programs emphasized economic structures. They
> advocated one form or another, one degree or another,
> of the socialization, usually the nationalization, of the means of
> production. They said little, if anything, about inequalities that
> were not defined as class-based. Today, almost all of these same parties
> and movements, or their successors, put forward
> proposals to deal with inequalities of gender, race, and ethnicity. Many
> of the programs are terribly inadequate, but at least they
> feel it necessary to say something. On the other hand, there is
> virtually no party or movement today that considers itself on the
> left which advocates further socialization or nationalization of the
> means of production, and a number which are actually
> proposing moving in the other direction. It is a breathtaking turnabout.
> Some hail it, some denounce it. Most just accept it.
>
> There is one enormous plus in this cataclysmic shift of emphasis. The
> world left had never addressed with sufficient seriousness
> the biggest problem of all for almost everyone, which is the day-by-day
> reality of worldwide multiple inequalities. Equality
> means very little if it is equality only amongst the wealthy. The
> capitalist world-system has resulted in the greatest geographic
> polarization of wealth and privilege the planet has ever known. And the
> top priority of the world left must be to decrease the
> gap radically and as rapidly as possible. But this is not the only gap
> that needs to be addressed. There are all the ones we have
> talked about for a long, long time: class, race, ethnicity, gender,
> generation. In short, we have to take the issue of equality as one
> about which something can indeed be done.
>
> But what? Decreeing equality as an objective is not achieving it. For,
> even with good will all around - and this of course cannot
> be assumed; indeed quite the contrary - it is not easy to find equitable
> solutions. Here is where I think we need to reintroduce,
> indeed revive, Weber's concept of substantive rationality. We should
> note here incidentally a problem of translation. The term
> Weber used in German was "Rationalität materiel" - "material" as opposed
> to "formal." The accepted English translation,
> "substantive," only conveys "materiel" if we associate it with
> "substance" and not with "substantial" in our minds. What Weber
> was talking about was that which is rational in terms of collective
> widely-applicable value systems as opposed to that which is
> rational in terms of particular, narrowly described sets of objectives
> an individual or an organization might set itself. Weber
> himself was ambivalent about the attitude to take vis-a-vis "substantive
> rationality." He sometimes described it in ways that made
> it seem his priority and sometimes in ways that underlined his fears
> that ideological organizations (read, the German
> Social-Democratic Party) might impose their views on everyone else.4
> Most of Weber's post-1945 acolytes have only noticed
> the latter sentiments and ignored the former. But we can make our own
> use of this important concept and the insights it gives us.
>
> What it seems to me that Weber was pointing to is that, in a world of
> multiple actors and multiple sets of values, there can be
> resolutions of the debates that are more than the result of simple
> arithmetic (counting the votes) and more than a free-for-all in
> which everyone pursues his own fancy. There can exist substantively
> rational ways of making social decisions. To know what
> they are requires a long period of clear, active, and open debate and a
> collective effort to balance priorities over the short run
> and the long run.
>
> Take a very obvious issue, the problem of generational priorities. There
> is at any given time a given social surplus, which can be
> divided among four generational groups: children, working-age adults,
> the elderly, and the as yet unborn. What is the right
> proportion to allocate in terms of collective expenditures? There surely
> is no easy or self-evident answer. But it is a question that
> needs some measured decisions, arrived at democratically (that is,
> involving the real participation of everyone, at least everyone
> living, in some meaningful way). At the present time, in the present
> system, we have no real process by which this can be done,
> not even within a single state, not to be speak of doing it globally.
> Can we construct such a process? We must. If we cannot, we
> renounce forever the traditional objective of the world left, a
> relatively democratic, relatively egalitarian world. I am not ready to
> renounce this objective. Thus, I am in principle optimistic that
> humanity can construct such procedures. But remember, not only
> is it difficult, but there are many, many powerful persons who do not
> wish to see such procedures established.
>
> What we can say about these issues of multiple inequalities and the ways
> in which they might be overcome is that at least, and at
> last, they are the subject of serious debate today. They are on the
> agenda of the world left. And if we have not come up with
> very good answers up to now, we do seem to be working at it, and with
> far less internal backbiting than one might have feared
> and seemed to be happening 20-30 years ago.
>
> But the great plus on the issue of the multiple inequalities has gone
> along with a great minus on the side of reconstructing our
> basic economic institutions. If capitalism collapses, do we still have
> an alternative that fulfils the traditional socialist objective - a
> socially-rational system that maximizes collective utility and fair
> distribution? If the world left is putting forth today such
> proposals, I haven't heard of them. Between those at one end of the left
> spectrum who are proclaiming "new" ideas that are
> simply watered-down versions of centrist administration of the
> capitalist system and those at the other end who are nostalgic for
> the nostrums of yesterday, there seems a real poverty of serious ideas.
>
> The world left needs to face up to the most systematic and effective
> critique of historical socialist rhetoric, the suggestion that
> non-private ownership of the means of production leads to waste,
> disinterest in technological efficiency, and corruption. This
> critique has not been untrue of what we today call "real-existing
> socialism." This has been recognized by such of these regimes
> as still survive (or at least most of them), but their response has been
> to create a large place for private ownership within their
> regimes and label this "market socialism." While this may seem to solve
> some short-run economic difficulties, it fails utterly to
> address the underlying issues which the world socialist movement sought
> to address in the first place - gross inequality and gross
> social waste.
>
> I suggest there may be another route, one that has in fact been tried
> partially and which is rather promising. I think one might be
> able to get most of the advantages of private ownership yet eliminate
> most of the negatives by ensconcing productive activities
> within medium-size, decentralized, competitive non-profit structures.
> The key is that they would be non-profit, that is, that no
> one would receive "dividends" or "profit distributions" and that any
> surplus either went back to the organization or was taxed by
> the collectivity for reinvestment elsewhere.
>
> How might such structures work? Well, actually we know how, in the sense
> that there are parallels. Most major universities and
> hospitals in the United States have worked on such principles for two
> centuries now. Whatever we can say of their functioning,
> it is not the case that they have been "inefficient" or "technologically
> backward" by comparison with the few for-profit institutions
> that have existed. Quite the contrary. I'm aware that there is currently
> a move to try to transform such structures into for-profit
> institutions, but insofar as this has occurred in hospital structures
> the results have not been very good and the move to
> profit-oriented institutions has not yet been seriously tried in
> universities. Of course, in most countries, hospital and university
> structures are state-financed but traditionally they have usually been
> allowed enough autonomy for us to consider them examples
> of decentralization. These state-financed non-profit structures have not
> in any case been notably less efficient than the private
> non-profit ones. <Charlie, note this paragraph, what do you think?>
>
> So why wouldn't this work for steel firms, for computer technology
> giants, for manufacturers of aircraft and biotechnology? No
> doubt there would be a lot of details to argue about, especially the
> degree to which such non-profit corporations should be
> taxed, but per se it seems to me viable, and promising, and an
> alternative road that would not be out of sync with the
> commitment to a worldwide higher standard of living for everyone. At the
> very least, it would seem to me to something we
> should be seriously discussing and an idea we should be elaborating.
>
> What I think we should keep in the forefront of our minds is that the
> basic issue is not ownership or even control of economic
> resources. The basic issue is the decommodification of the world's
> economic processes. Decommodification, it should be
> underlined, does not mean demonetization, but the elimination of the
> category of profit. Capitalism has been a program for the
> commodification of everything. The capitalists have not yet fulfilled it
> entirely, but they have gone a long way in that direction,
> with all the negative consequences we know. Socialism ought to be a
> program for the decommodification of everything. Five
> hundred years from now, if we start down that path, we may not have
> fulfilled it entirely, but we can have gone a long way in
> that direction.
>
> In any case, we need to be debating the possible structures of the
> historical social system we want to construct as the present
> system collapses. And we ought to be trying to construct the alternative
> structures now, and in the next half-century, during the
> period of transition. We need to pursue this issue forcefully, if not
> dogmatically. We need to try out alternatives, as mental
> experiments and as real experiments. What we cannot do is ignore this
> issue. For if we do, the world right will come up itself
> with new non-capitalist alternatives that will involve us in a new,
> hierarchical, inegalitarian world order. And then it will be too
> late, for a long while thereafter, to change things.
>
> Allow me to say one last word that is obvious, but needs to be said.
> Social scientists are specialists. Of course, we are not the
> only brand of specialists. In a sense, the world is constituted by an
> endless series of specialists, some of whom have had longer
> periods of training than others. How do specialists relate to
> non-specialists? How should they? The world left has tended to
> define this as the issue of how middle-class left-oriented intellectuals
> should relate to the working classes. And we have tended
> to favor the theory that they must be "organic intellectuals," by which
> we have meant that they must be involved in social
> movements, working with them, for them, and ultimately under them. The
> collapse of the movements has left a bad taste in the
> minds of erstwhile and putative organic intellectuals about the whole
> idea.
>
> There is however another way to look at the issue. Consider how a client
> relates to a lawyer or a physician. As we know, it is
> basically a matter of class. The working-class client may feel ignorant
> and helpless vis-a-vis the professional, and accept the
> judgment of the professional, sometimes gratefully, sometimes with great
> resentment, but usually accepting it nonetheless. A
> wealthy or otherwise powerful person may treat the lawyer or the
> physician as a subordinate, whose primary function it is to
> give technical advice to a superior.
>
> Is there some way in which the specialist can relate to the
> non-specialist as an equal? Obviously, the specialist has some
> specialized knowledge. That is the whole point of multiple, differential
> training programs. And obviously again, the specialist
> knows many things that are relevant to solving particular kinds of
> problems of which the non-specialist is unaware. That is why
> the non-specialist consults the specialist, to get the benefit of the
> expertise the specialist has. But it is also obvious that the
> non-specialist knows many other things - about his needs and
> preferences, about other problems he/she is facing - of which the
> specialist is unaware, or if aware, on which the specialist has no
> specialized knowledge.
>
> Somewhere along the line, a total judgment has to be made, as to whether
> or not a particular line of action the specialist
> recommends is substantively rational. I am of course assuming that it is
> formally rational, that is, that it will achieve the
> narrowly-defined objective the specialist has taken into consideration.
> But who will make this decision? And how? If one
> transposes this issue from the realm of an individual encountering a
> specialist to resolve a personal problem to that of a
> collectivity encountering a group of specialists to resolve a collective
> problem, we see immediately that once again there is no
> simple answer. But I think once again this is a conundrum not impossible
> to overcome, merely difficult. Neither of two extremes
> is acceptable: that the specialists impose their solution on the
> collectivity; that the political decision-making bodies ignore the
> knowledge and the recommendations of the specialists. We need somehow
> systematically to intrude public debate on the issues,
> and the balancing of multiple needs and interests. We are thus back to
> the issue of substantive rationality.
>
> This whole program for the left would be hard enough were we to face it
> amongst only ourselves and in all tranquillity. But we
> face these issues while under constant attack by those who wish to
> prevent our basic objectives from being achieved, and who
> have powerful resources at their command. Furthermore, we shall not be
> doing it in times of tranquillity but in times of chaos. It
> is the transitional chaos that offers us our opportunity, but at the
> same time this chaotic ambiance confuses us and presses us to
> turn away from the long-run reconstruction of a historical social system
> to the short-turn solution of urgent problems.
>
> Finally, those of us in the United States find ourselves before one
> further obstacle, which C. Wright Mills saw clearly in 1959,
> and which has not fundamentally changed since then:
>
> "[I]ntellectuals of [our] sort, living in America and in Britain,
> face some disheartening problems. As socialists of one sort or
> another, we are a very small minority in an intellectual
> community that is itself a minority. The most immediate
> problem we face is the nationalist smugness and political
> complacency among the dominant intellectual circles of our
> own countries. We confront a truly deep apathy about
> politics in general and about the larger problems of the world
> today."5
>
> In short, and I say this for the last time, it will not be easy. But the
> game is surely worth the candle.
>
>
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>
>
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>
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