I wrote: >>The problem with this is that the ideology isn't enough, just as progressive Christianity isn't enough. Liberation theologists with no contact, no direct attachment, with an active popular movement end up like a lot of progressive or even Marxist types without such involvement. It ends up being entirely academic (perhaps even without being in academia). <<
Yoshie wrote: >In the United States, it is Marxists, more often than the religious, who risk ending up becoming liberation theologians without any base communities, so to speak. Almost all religious activists on the Left I know -- Christian, Muslim, Sikh, whatever* -- are active through their own congregations of faith and often ecumenically networked with religious activists of other faiths as well as irreligious activists. In contrast, many Marxists I know tend to be loose cannons, with no institution that they can call their home base. < me again: of course all the activists you know are active! But, working at a Jesuit university, I know of people (priests) who adhere to liberation theology who aren't activists and whose leftism is pretty academic. In any event, I wasn't making a empirical point in favor of Marxists and against religious folks. Instead of making a idealistic point about the practical superiority of one world-view over another, I was making a _materialist_ point about the importance of the world-view's social context: what's important is the connection to movements. And, as suggested by what followed in my missive, what kind of movement they're attached to is important, very important. I had written:>> Social democracy (like Marxist-Leninist groups) unfortunately often shares some characteristics of fascism, such as top-down organization and nationalism. Of course, social democracy (like M-Lism) is NOT fascism. That's partly because social democracy (when it's at its high point) are linked to independent labor unions and similar organizations (independent women's groups, etc.) rather than dealing with organizations that are mere conveyor belts for the party line (the careers of the parliamentary politicians, etc.) SD parties also typically don't have to deal with the kinds of social disintegration that spawn fascism.
What this suggests to me is that even the most progressive-sounding
Islamic political organization could, like the most progressive-sounding Christian or secular political organization, end up being very top-down and nationalist, leaning heavily in the fascist direction, if the grass roots (the rank and file) do not have the autonomy to keep the party organization honest. << Yoshie: >Looking back on the history of state socialism, I'd have to say that the way socialist states have organized civil society institutions can be called "corporatist," ** much like the way the Islamic state of Iran has. Under formerly and actually existing socialist societies, trade unions, women's organizations, ethnic organizations, etc. have never been autonomous. *** I believe that neither Marxism nor any variety of religion should become the official philosophy of a state. < me: this is not new. The style of organization that "state socialism" creates depends not only on the intentions of the ruling party or parties but also the social conditions under which they operate. For example, in the Russian revolution, the grass-roots soviets had a very hard time surviving as independent institutions because of the civil war, imperialist invasions, and a economic melt-down. As a second example, it's hard for Cuba to be anything but "corporatist" – since U.S.-led imperialism won't allow democracy. Look what it did to Nicaragua! Nonetheless, if I remember correctly, the Bay of Pigs invasion spawned the creation of grass roots organizations to defend the country – the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution – which then gave much more of a grass-roots flavor to the revolution (new leaders, new ideas, etc.) for awhile. The Yugolavs under Tito had to cede a lot of power to workers' cooperatives, because the economy wasn't working. Anyway, this misses my point: I was saying that the socialist or progressive character of a _religions_ government depends on the degree to which women's, workers', ethnic minorities', etc. organizations are independent of the state. I wasn't saying that a Marxist-led government was automatically good or that a religious-led government was automatically bad. (However, I do think that Marxism is a better guide to practice than is religion. A lot of the good stuff in liberation theology came from Marxism or from encountering similar social conditions.)
Instead, I'd suggest Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy, among other
things, as a guiding spirit:
"To me those who condemn the tumults between the Nobles and the Plebs
seem to be caviling at the very thing that was the primary cause of Rome's retention of liberty. . . . And they do not realize that in every republic there are two different dispositions, that of the people and that of the great men, and that all legislation favoring liberty is brought about by their dissension" (Chapter IV).
Replace the "Nobles" by leaders and the "Plebs" by masses, and what
he says suggests what we must aim for: to create as much space as possible for conflicts between leaders and masses in socialist society, for such conflicts are essential to retention and expansion of liberty. The difficulty is to figure out how to do so without allowing a foreign power to take advantage of such conflicts to overthrow the socialist state and restore capitalism.< right.
As for social democracy today, perhaps with the exception of
Scandinavia, nowadays the task of establishing new social democracy or defending existing social democracy mainly falls upon those who are to the left of social democrats (Marxists, syndicalists, religious leftists, etc), as social democrats have become neoliberals. < right.
* Jewish leftists appear to me to be an exception here: they tend to
be atheists or at least agnostics, and they tend not to participate in even secular Jewish community activities. Perhaps, that is because most Jewish leftists are either anti-Zionist or non-Zionist whereas most major Jewish institutions, religious or secular, are dominated by Zionists. < most of the Jewish activists I know are involved in a secular Jewish organization (Sholem) that's pretty anti-Zionist, though not officially.
** IMHO, fascism is a variant of corporatism, though not all
corporatist states are fascist states. < I agree.
*** Venezuela has been a partial exception, but that may be because
the government there has not socialized all means of production there yet -- only a minority of them have come under state control. < Venezuela is hardly socialist in practice, except perhaps in terms of the _direction_ that it's going. Jim Devine
