Brad wrote:
>>Then we are at an impasse. I think it is worth while to rescue the
>>language of
>>socialism and Marxism from the Leninist distortions, but perhaps it is not.
>>Perhaps we have to invent a new political language.
Brad writes:
>Yep. Back to Tocqueville and Rousseau...
If Brad is not being facetious here, he is contradicting himself: I thought
that he rejected Rousseau's rhetoric about the "general will" and the like,
not to mention R's conception of human malleability. (If he _is_ being
facetious, it should be pointed out that that method is not good for
communication unless it is in a face-to-face conversation or as part of an
extended essay which allows the reader to understand the tone. It also
suggests that Brad participates in pen-l not to communicate with others or
to learn from them but to cause trouble and/or to prevent serious discussion.)
As for Tocqueville, I think that Brad has to deal with the contradiction
between Tocquevillean local democracy (community) and capitalism's
dynamics. As seen in the history of the world during the last 25 years (and
especially the last decade), capitalism weakens and undermines _any_ kind
of democracy, converting all sorts of democracy into the heartless and
aggressive seeking of profit at all cost and/or the heartless and anonymous
dictatorship by bureaucratic organizations such as the multinational
corporations, the WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF. (In this experience,
the marketization of the world goes along with its bureaucratization,
rather than these two phenomena being substitutes.) The democratic rhetoric
of Rousseau and Tocqueville becomes meaningless and obfuscatory emissions
of hot gasses by Clinton or Blair.
If we accept the common image of "Leninism" as a method of stuffing
Revolution down the throats of the people (rather than seeing a more
complex and nuanced view of Lenin and his ideas), then we must recognize
that in the current day, it is the US Treasury, the IMF, and the World Bank
that are the main "Leninist" forces, imposing a neoliberal Revolution on
the world. Instead of socialist revolution from above (as in
interpretations of "Leninism" shared by both Stalinists and Cold Warriors),
it's capitalist revolution from above. The worst, of course, can be seen in
the ruins of the former Soviet Union, where the "Washington Consensus" was
imposed on the conquered territory by the Harvard Boys, in effect leading
to a modern version of the Carthaginian Peace (sowing the soil with salt),
from which it will take a generation or more for the Russians to recover.
BTW, I think that any criticism of "Leninism" should be combined with
criticism of other top-down methods.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine
