Jurriaan Bendien wrote: > No, contrary to a bunch of motley Marxist and Trotskyite opportunist > bureaucrats, I haven't argued for ...
Gosh, Jurriaan, the above sounds _exactly_ like what "Marxist bureaucrats" used to say when people disagreed with the Party Line, to wit "contrary to a bunch of motley petty-bourgeois Marxists and Trotskyites, ..." Oh, I forgot to put a phrase like "so-called" or "would-be" before "Marxists" to complete the sneer. It's bad practice -- and bad for any reasonable discussion -- to simply dismiss someone's opinion because they're "bureaucrats" or "petty bourgeois" (or "Trotskyites"). (It's akin to Assad's dismissal of popular dissent in Syria as merely due to outside agitators.) Given the poor situation that the various left-wing elements find themselves in these days all around the world, we need to present principled and substantive arguments instead. If we throw around terms like "bureaucratic" or "petty-bourgeois" in a sectarian or emotive way, all it does is close off discussion and alienate potential sympathizers. And just because someone can be labeled a "bureaucrat" (e.g., Alex Calinicos, because he's a leader of the SWP of the UK, which seemed pretty bureaucratic the last time I looked at it) doesn't mean that they're automatically wrong. Even Margaret Thatcher was right sometimes, but only when there was a blue moon. BTW, I thought of a working definition of "bureaucracy" that fits both Max Weber's idealized vision and the real world: a bureaucracy follows the practice of "democratic" centralism, in which the "Line" or "Program" is decided upon and then all the members have to follow it in public, whether they agree with it or not. That's the way such bureaucracies as corporate hierarchies or the US State Department work: if someone in the State Department were to publicly disagree (in a significant way) with the Obama/Clinton position on Libya, for example, there would be a scandal and that person would either be forced to resign or simply fired. (Cf. the recent sacking of P.J. Crowley for his criticism of the Pentagon over the treatment of Bradley Manning.) This kind of "democratic" centralism is also applied by some leftist groups, large or small. -- 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 [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
