Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/21/00 03:02PM Charles, Actually, Czechoslovakia was the only Central European state to have a functioning parliamentary democracy throughout the interwar period. Arguably democracy thus began with independence at the end of WW I. It was interrupted by the Nazi takeover, ended by a combination of the Red and US armies (the latter withdrawing westward later), only to be interrupted again when Klement Gottwald seized power in 1948. _ CB: I'm talking about after the war starts, not inter war period. No homegrown fascists in Czechoslovakia ? CB
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Charles, Actually, Czechoslovakia was the only Central European state to have a functioning parliamentary democracy throughout the interwar period. Arguably democracy thus began with independence at the end of WW I. It was interrupted by the Nazi takeover, ended by a combination of the Red and US armies (the latter withdrawing westward later), only to be interrupted again when Klement Gottwald seized power in 1948. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, May 19, 2000 5:21 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19343] Re: Marx and Malleability Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 05:05PM CB: So many here are holier than them Soviets. I've never sent a bunch of troops to suppress the beginnings of democracy in Czechoslovakia. CB: Democracy "began" when there when the Nazis were removed by the Red Army. - In fact, I've never killed _anyone_. So I guess that I'm holier than the Soviets, though not necessarily holier than thou. ___ CB: All the Soviets killed someone ? Even the art commisars all killed someone ? Where's the evidence ? I bet the vast majority of Soviets either did not kill anyone or those who killed someone did so in heroic self-defense of the country in the wars. I think you have an exaggerated notion of Soviets who killed. __ BTW, it's wrong to blame "the Soviets." After all, it was only the top leadership of the state-party bureaucracy that made the decisions to roll the tanks in 1968. ___ CB: Rolling the tanks into Czech in 1968 does not make you holier than them. There are crimes of commission and crimes of commission. Those who have done nothing are not innocent. _ The people were not to blame, since they didn't choose that leadership. ___ CB: None of them chose that leadership ? Rather overstated. _ (As Nathan might argue, we in the US are _more_ responsible for crimes like this (e.g., the recent terror-bombing of Serbia) because we have a bit more say about who are our leaders are than the Soviets did. Of course, Nathan would disagree about the parenthetical example I chose.) __ CB: Speak for yourself. I don't have more of a say about who my leaders are than the Soviets did. They limit my "choices" to all I people I don't want. That means I have ZERO say. That you think you have more of a choice means the U.S. bourgeoisie have fooled you. You buy that the U.S. election system is somewhat still democratic. You've bought the bourgeois propaganda that this is the Free World. False.
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What do you have against cars with big fins? --jks Aside from the fact that they were rather ugly, they were also rather mean if one backed into you. If I remeber correctly, there was a handful of news items on the grisly effects of that. Secondary effect: they provided material for some very dull cartoons by Bill Maudlin. Carrol
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
At 10:43 AM 5/19/00 -0400, you wrote: What do you have against cars with big fins? --jks if a horse falls against a 1959 Cadillac, it can die. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Yeah, I know, those old cars are fragile. I would never let a horse fall on mine. --jks At 10:43 AM 5/19/00 -0400, you wrote: What do you have against cars with big fins? --jks if a horse falls against a 1959 Cadillac, it can die. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
Jim Devine wrote: In the terms I used, this positing of possessiveness reflected Hobbes' experience with the English Civil War and the rise of capitalist competition. Mine writes: Yes and No. Hobbes was not *simply* writing under the influence of his circumstances. He was also *normatively* endorsing capitalism and private property regime. If one's ideas simply reflect one's circumstances, then Marx could never have been "critical" of capitalim. I didn't say "simply reflected circumstances," since I didn't use the word "simply." plus, Hobbes' notion of the "instict of rational self-preservation" is completely "ahistorical". Hobbes abstracts the concept from its historical content, and then projects capitalism onto human nature as if human nature has never changed, or as if it has always remained capitalist. He does not locate rationality in its historical context. He assimilates the very definition of liberty to capitalist rationality (posssesive individualism). I don't disagree. I wouldn't equate his views of human nature with "capitalist rationality," though. I think it also reflected (though it did not "simply reflect") the extremely contentious English Civil War. You say R's model was an abstraction. i don't terribly disagree with this. however, i don't see any problem with abstractions per se nor do I. The problem for me, as for Marx Engels, was with the kind of abstraction it (R's "contrat social") was. I wrote: But following R, there's a distinction between "possession" (control) and "property" (state-endorsed rights). Mine writes: I don't recall this. do you have a citation for this distinction from the text. Under "capitalism", state is by definition a protector of private property regime The distinction is in R's SOCIAL CONTRACT. BTW, I don't think the concept of "private property" is a good one. I would use the term "individual property" instead, since the impact of "private property" is more than private. Under capitalism, owning the right kinds of property allows one to appropriate a share of the societal surplus-value. Even under simple commodity production, the owner of property can impose pollution and the like on others. I think it's confusing to _define_ the capitalist state as "a protector of [the] private property system." That's what it does, but I would define it in more general terms as the organization that monopolizes violence (or attempts to do so) in a given territory. (This follows Weber, who follows Trotsky, but is not the same.) At least for a while the working class could control the state in a way that goes against capitalist property. I like that book [Origins of Inequality] too. It's a very abstract and hypothetical anthropology, akin to a lot of "sociobiology" in style of analysis (trying to figure out what people were like without society) but with more attractive conclusions to most leftists. come on! which socio-biology?. I strongly disencourage you to assimilate R to biologically reductionist socio-biology arguments that reduce man to "genes"... I explained what I meant, in parentheses. this missive is too long to respond to any more... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Consumer Society, was Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Doug Henwood wrote: [snip] Ernest Mandel criticized in this passage from Late Capitalism: [snip] (the actual extension of cultural needs, to the extent to which they are not trivialized or deprived of their human content by capitalist commercialization). This whole passage from Mandel is magnificent, but he does (unavoidably) leave a hole in his argument -- which could be the occasion of endless debate. How does one measure "the extent" to which any one "actual extension of cultural needs" is or is not trivialized? If I recall correctly, the same passage in *Monopoly Capital* that sneers at rock also sneers at the "hi-fi system" endlessly playing (unheard) in the background. Whatever may have been Sweezy's subjective attitude at the time, this does not (as Michael Keaney has pointed out) any more constitute a condemnation of Bach's Brandenberg Concertos than does the sneer at rock music constitute an attack on rock as such. (I suspect Sweezy was really sneering at rock as such, as Caudwell sneered at Jazz in the mid-thirties -- but we are entitled to ignore the error and look for the principle.) One effect of rock music (quite aside from its excellence or lack of excellence as music) has been the diminution of public places where people can hear each other talk. There is not a single bar in Bloomington- Normal where one can carry on a conversation. There is one restaurant and bar that quiets down a bit after about 8:30 p.m. on week nights. That's in a population center of about 150,000. Carrol
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Brad De Long wrote: I think that the line between Sweezy's attitude toward rock-and-roll and the suppression of the Czechoslovakian Jazz Section, or the bulldozing of Moscow modern art exhibits, is pretty clear. The point is not the "discrediting" of Sweezy, but how it came to be that people who claimed to be committed to a tradition that extolled human freedom, potential, and development could be so hostile to... ...jazz ...modern art ...rock and roll That is an interesting historical puzzle; I would like to have a sense of why it happened. Jazz and rock and roll strike some sorts as disorderly, chaotic, and rebellious. Some revolutionaries seem to prefer a new order - their order - to disorder, chaos, and rebellion. Complaints about the "anarchy of capitalist production" fall along those lines. Then there's the class thing - Sweezy comes from a fairly posh background. As did Adorno, who didn't like jazz, and no doubt would have hated rock and roll. Those hippie girls who shook their breasts at him probably helped bring on his death. Modern art is a mixed bag. The cultural elite who ran the Congress for Cultural Freedom liked it because it was elitist (but yahoos in the U.S. Congress thought they were supporting Commie art by funding the likes of Jackson Pollock). There's some resemblance between Jesse Helms and Joe Stalin's artistic taste, no? Doug
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Brad raises an important question about the cultural development of Soviet-style socialism. It has been noted that there are parallels between "socialist realism" and the sort of art promoted under Nazism. This suggests that there is something in the way totalitarian, or would-be totalitarian, stystems regard art. A crude first approximation might be that these enshrine the cultural values of people with middlebrow artistic taste, due to their, typically, non-elite education and background in the old society, and create an apparatus for enforcing that taste by coercion, an well, of course, in the choice of what to spend public mony on. That does not explain thea ttitude of someone like Sweezy, who was not a bureaucrat from a lower class background in a Stalinist state, but a person of highly elite education. However, at the time he wrote the sentence in question, he was even more enamored of Stalinism than he is now, and may have adopted its tastes by analogy; at the very least, he had the reaction of someone of his education and generation to music that was loud, fast, abrasive, and obnoxious, and didn't even have positive political content, and confused that reaction with an insult to the human spirit. For me, if socialism hasn't got a place for low and vulgar rock n roll, I don't want it. --jks * * 8 how it came to be that people who claimed to be committed to a tradition that extolled human freedom, potential, and development could be so hostile to... ..jazz ..modern art ..rock and roll That is an interesting historical puzzle; I would like to have a sense of why it happened. Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Brad, pen-l's resident contrarian, writes: I think that the line between Sweezy's attitude toward rock-and-roll and the suppression of the Czechoslovakian Jazz Section, or the bulldozing of Moscow modern art exhibits, is pretty clear. Actually, the (disgusting) quote from MONOPOLY CAPITAL was by both Baran _and_ Sweezy. Though as co-author of that book, Sweezy can't be totally absolved of the horrible guilt of being against rock'n'roll, it fits better with my understanding of Baran. I think of Paul B. as more Stalinist than Paul S., though perhaps someone more familiar with all of their works than I am can correct me. Also, I think Paul B. was more influenced by the Frankfurt school. That school emphasized the cultural critique of capitalism (much more than Paul S. did). It also emphasized the conflict between what's real under capitalism and what's rational from the Frankfurter perspective. In the relevant passage of MONOPOLY CAPITALISM, there is no explicit call for the suppression of rock'n'roll. So that's another thing that separates Sweezy from the East Bloc Stalinists who suppressed the Czechoslovakian Jazz Section, etc. Similarly, I don't like rap music, but that doesn't mean that I advocate its suppression. I do like the idea of restrictions on the volume of the music being blasted out of peoples' cars. But that would simply be a liberal reform of the sort that is already in place in many areas, not an example of Stalinist repression. For example, New York City had anti-noise ordinances long before the resistible rise of Rudy Giuliani. Since Baran Sweezy explicitly are criticizing "the rock-and-roll that blares at us" rather than rock'n'roll _per se_, someone who hasn't declared an ideological war against Sweezy might allow for the possible interpretation that it's the _blare_ which is important to their argument. Sweezy, I know was very critical of the USSR and its "allies" of the East Bloc when they were around. I guess he might have been disgusted by the suppression of Jazz, but would have said "considering the way in which capitalism keeps up its attacks on the USSR, the poverty that they started with, etc., you can understand why they do such stupid things." Again, I don't know what his exact position on this issue was (though I hope that Brad has documentation here). Also, Sweezy's opinion on these issues has changed over his life-time, just as everyone else's do. Just as we should trash Brad for his youthful indiscretions (I can imagine that he inhaled), we need to give Sweezy the benefit of the doubt rather than arbitrarily dumping him in the dust-bin of history with the Soviet Commissars. It's important to notice that suppression of culture is not a phenomenon that is unique to the distorted socialism that grew up in poor countries attacked by capitalist enemies and forced to become garrison states. Here in California, where Brad also lives, we got an early taste of neo-liberalism with governor Reagan's efforts to defund education and the arts, a trend which has continued to the present day. Education has been transformed more and more into "just the basics, ma'am," so that art and culture are left to the commercial television networks (including PBS) to purvey. This is just as much a crime against culture as was the Soviet suppression of alternative culture. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
RE: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Brad raises an important question about the cultural development of Soviet-style socialism. It has been noted that there are parallels between "socialist realism" and the sort of art promoted under Nazism. This suggests that there is something in the way totalitarian, or would-be totalitarian, stystems regard art. A crude first approximation might be that these enshrine the cultural values of people with middlebrow artistic taste, due to their, typically, non-elite education and background in the old society, . . . But this is not unique to totalitarian/authoritarian societies. If Readers' Digest had an art supplement you would find the same stuff there in a patriotic mode. Look at the arguments over the Viet Vets memorial. The common element is rejection of elite and/or less accessible art. mbs
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 02:45PM Brad, pen-l's resident contrarian, writes: I think that the line between Sweezy's attitude toward rock-and-roll and the suppression of the Czechoslovakian Jazz Section, or the bulldozing of Moscow modern art exhibits, is pretty clear. Actually, the (disgusting) quote from MONOPOLY CAPITAL was by both Baran _and_ Sweezy. Though as co-author of that book, Sweezy can't be totally absolved of the horrible guilt of being against rock'n'roll, CB: Don't you think that as a genre, rock'n'roll is a failure , like the Soviet Union, and hoola hoops ? Isn't rock'n'roll a sort of dystopia ? Didn't it just come out that the CIA WAS promoting modern art with an anti-communist political aim ? CB
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Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 03:18PM Didn't it just come out that the CIA WAS promoting modern art with an anti-communist political aim ? that doesn't mean that it was bad art. __ CB: I thought the Soviets knocked it out because it was being used for anti-communist purposes, "good or bad". What is good art ? Good things can be used by bad people. Besides, modern art seems better than most "socialist realism" outside some Cuban works. ___ CB: I have seen a lot of modern art worse than a lot of socialist realism. Of course, most of both I haven't seen. Whose correct about art ? Me or you ?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
CB wrote: Didn't it just come out that the CIA WAS promoting modern art with an anti-communist political aim ? I replied: that doesn't mean that it was bad art. CB now replies: I thought the Soviets knocked it out because it was being used for anti-communist purposes, "good or bad". So, maybe they were right about one thing. But they -- the unelected Soviet equivalents of Jesse Helms -- deserved to be tweaked by art, if not more. What is good art ? I don't know. All it does is remind me of a cartoon, with two fellows at a modern art museum. Says one "I don't know much about art..." and the other replies "but you know more than the artist did." Whose correct about art ? Me or you ? We're both correct and we're both wrong, even though we may have contradictory tastes. As a died-in-the-wool Philistine, I think that defining "good" art is a matter of taste. The purpose of art criticism, as far as I can tell, is to help the viewer understand what's seen by presenting possible interpretations. I have this "proletarian style" portrait of Chairman Mao on my wall. It's painted on black velvet and he's got big eyes like a Keane painting... (Actually, that's a joke from an old "Anarchy" comic book.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
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Too bad Louie Proyect is off hiding on an Indian reservation. He could add to this I think in the case of abstract art that the condemnation came before the anti-communist use. At the time of the 1917 Russian Revolution, abstract art already existed, with some of its most important practitioners, e.g. Kandinsky and Malevich, being Russian. Most of these folks were sympathetic to the revolution and during the 1920s there was an outpouring of abstract art and "constructivist art" (check out the funky Tatlin architectural models at the Guggenheim that never got built) in the USSR. The imposition of socialist realism (and I agree with Charles that some of it is actually quite good) came with the rise of Stalin and a more general crackdown on "alternative" culture in many areas. I note that the 1930s saw such art in many areas, I see an old WPA "socialist realist" fresco in the local post office here in Harrisonburg. Given the Stalinist suppression of such art, along with "formalist" music and a lot of other stuff, which ran through the 1930s and reached a peak with Zhdanov in the "anti-cosmopolite" campaign of the late 1940s, it is not surprising that many abstract artists began to take a different view of things. Many were Trotskyists, and the campaign that Charles is noting largely involved former Trotskyists in the New York area. But, even so, Picasso remained a member of the CP throughout all this nonsense. I don't have a more general explanation of this sort of stuff, but there is a huge literature out there purporting to provide all kinds of explanations. In any case, the abstract painters were originally pro-Soviet and only got turned off by Stalin's suppression. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, May 19, 2000 3:29 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19327] Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 03:18PM Didn't it just come out that the CIA WAS promoting modern art with an anti-communist political aim ? that doesn't mean that it was bad art. __ CB: I thought the Soviets knocked it out because it was being used for anti-communist purposes, "good or bad". What is good art ? Good things can be used by bad people. Besides, modern art seems better than most "socialist realism" outside some Cuban works. ___ CB: I have seen a lot of modern art worse than a lot of socialist realism. Of course, most of both I haven't seen. Whose correct about art ? Me or you ?
Re: Consumer Society, was Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
I recall the week after J. Kennedy was killed, the bars did not have bands as some sort of patriotic gesture. I still remember fondly how nice the conversations were. Carrol Cox wrote: One effect of rock music (quite aside from its excellence or lack of excellence as music) has been the diminution of public places where people can hear each other talk. There is not a single bar in Bloomington- Normal where one can carry on a conversation. There is one restaurant and bar that quiets down a bit after about 8:30 p.m. on week nights. That's in a population center of about 150,000. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 03:52PM So, maybe they were right about one thing. But they -- the unelected Soviet equivalents of Jesse Helms -- deserved to be tweaked by art, if not more. ___ CB: More than you deserve to be tweaked by art ?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
At 04:26 PM 5/19/00 -0400, you wrote: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 03:52PM So, maybe they were right about one thing. But they -- the unelected Soviet equivalents of Jesse Helms -- deserved to be tweaked by art, if not more. ___ CB: More than you deserve to be tweaked by art ? yeah, even though my students may disagree, I'm not a tyrant. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
CB: So many here are holier than them Soviets.
sez me:
I've never sent a bunch of troops to suppress the beginnings of democracy
in Czechoslovakia.
in response:
CB: Democracy "began" when there when the Nazis were removed by the Red Army.
I guess we disagree about the meaning of the word "democracy." Paging
Comrade Slansky...
sez me:
In fact, I've never killed _anyone_. So I guess that I'm holier than the
Soviets, though not necessarily holier than thou.
CB: All the Soviets killed someone ? Even the art commisars all killed
someone ? Where's the evidence ? I bet the vast majority of Soviets
either did not kill anyone or those who killed someone did so in heroic
self-defense of the country in the wars.
I think you have an exaggerated notion of Soviets who killed.
I didn't say that "all the Soviets killed" anyone. In fact, I made it clear
that I didn't mean that (though I elided that passage in the current
missive -- look at my previous message in this thread).
I don't like the numbers game ("how many were killed in Cambodia vs. how
many in Indonesia"). But I don't think that the invasion of Czechoslovakia
had anything to do with "heroic self-defense of the country." It had to do
with tired old bureaucrats who wanted to preserve their rule and couldn't
stand any kind of democratic reform.
The people were not to blame, since they didn't choose that leadership.
CB: None of them chose that leadership ? Rather overstated.
Okay, a small number of CP bureaucrats chose their own leaders, highly
influenced by the power of the in-group leaders. (Gee, it's kinda similar
to here in the US.) Why this kind of quibble?
(As Nathan might argue, we in the US are _more_ responsible for crimes
like this (e.g., the recent terror-bombing of Serbia) because we have a
bit more say about who are our leaders are than the Soviets did. Of
course, Nathan would disagree about the parenthetical example I chose.)
CB: Speak for yourself. I don't have more of a say about who my leaders
are than the Soviets did. They limit my "choices" to all I people I don't
want. That means I have ZERO say.
Each out-of-power individual acting alone has zero power (or close to it),
no matter what the system.
But you do have the option of attending a big demonstration or the like,
which can have some impact on our leadership. The anti-war movement won
some victories, for example, speeding the exit of Lyndon Johnson from the
White House. It's true that Nixon intensified the terror-bombing of North
Vietnam, but at least the movement saved the lives of some US troops on the
ground. That's hardly an unmixed victory, but it's not ZERO impact. The
civil rights movement also had some victories.
That you think you have more of a choice means the U.S. bourgeoisie have
fooled you. You buy that the U.S. election system is somewhat still
democratic. You've bought the bourgeois propaganda that this is the Free
World. False.
I didn't say that the US election system is democratic. Saying that "we
have a bit more say about who are our leaders are than the Soviets did" is
NOT the same as saying that the US electoral system is democratic, since I
deliberately stated it in relative terms.
BTW, I don't think that the bit of democracy we see in the US was _given to
people_ by the capitalists. There are lots of examples of capitalism that
are totally undemocratic (e.g, Nazi Germany). The little bit of democracy
was won by struggle from below, starting with the Bill of Rights, which was
a response to the anti-Federalists and "Shay's rebellion." The powers that
be keep on struggling to reduce civil liberties, so efforts from below
continue to be necessary.
You say that the U.S. election system is not "still democratic." When was
it democratic?
Finally, there's no point in throwing insults at me (e.g., that I've
"bought the bourgeois propaganda that this is the Free World"). I find that
all that insults do is to reduce my regard for those who use them.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability(fwd)
I would add one more thing.Weber's definition of state is quite
misleading. If state is defined in terms of monopolization of power,I
don't think this is unique to capitalist state. If you carefully read
Weber's _Sociology of Ancient Civilizations_, where he analyzes
pre-capitalist states, you will see that Roman empire was monopolizing
power in a given territory too, but Roman empire was not necesarily
capitalist, as Weber admits. In _Economy and Society_ Weber adds one
more dimension to his theory of the modern state: "legitimate right to
have a monopoly of violence in a given territory".He does not use
legitimacy in the sense of consent formation (contractual). He uses it to
describe how rulers receive legitimacy ("beleif" in legality, p.37)
regardless of whether or not rulers are themselves are legitimate
(following his logic faschism is legitemate too! geez!).
So Weber is interested in how the ruling autority is "legitimized". In
that respect, the capitalist state doees not simply use coercion but also
seek consent to make people beleive that its very existence is legimate
Weber was a bourgeois thinker.I prefer Gramsci's concept of hegemony to
Weber's concept of domination, since he has a more dynamic
vision of the state. Gramsci argues that the very definition of
the capitalist modern state is based two charecteristics: consent and
coercion. Politics is a power struggle of trying to gain hegemony over the
state (war of position),and of converting spontaneous mass movements to
long term organic developments. Once a dominant groups establishes her
hegemony, then they automatically resort to consent formation by
effectively using the ideological appratuses in society: civil society,
business groups, education, family, church..
ohh! gramsci is a different story.i love his reading of M' prince with a
communist twist! italian geniousity..
Mine
I think it's confusing to _define_ the capitalist state as "a protector
of [the] private property system." That's what it does, but I would
define it in more general terms as the organization that monopolizes
violence (or attempts to do so) in a given territory. (This follows
Weber, who follows Trotsky, but is not the same.) At least for a while
the working class could control the state in a way that goes against
capitalist property.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Brad De Long wrote: So why, then, is the first Marx so weak in post-Marxian Marxism? Why was the world afflicted with, say, Paul Sweezy's claim that "One need not have a specific idea of a... beautiful musical composition, to recognize that the... the rock-and-roll that blares at us exemplify a pattern of utilization of human and material resources which is inimical to human welfare"? My god. Where did he say that? Doug
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
CB, Well, there needs to be voting and the opposition needs to be allowed to exist and speak. Otherwise, I'm not sure. Marx's complaint about the parliamentarians seemed to have mostly to do with their pay and privileges. I don't mind reducing the privileges of legislators, but one needs to somehow keep them from falling prey to money interests. Campaign finance reform anyone? I accept Carrol Cox's dating of the suicides, btw. Sorry about being so way off on my return to the list. But Laura and Paul are mentioned on the plaque in Pere Lachaise, and that is a very surreal place in that far corner with all those overblown statues on the graves of the CPF leaders. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, May 18, 2000 9:57 AM Subject: [PEN-L:19190] Re: Marx and Malleability "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/17/00 05:25PM Jim, Hi. I'm back, at least for a few weeks. Guess I'll side with Brad D. on this one, although only slightly. I agree that the first Marx is clearly the dominant one in most of his writings, the one for free development of people. But he did at certain points issue some rather sulphurous diatribes about the wretchedness of bourgeois democracy and also painted a not so nice picture of the dictatorship of the proletariat as well in certain passages, these getting picked up by good old Lenin to justify some of his more unpleasant Bolshevik excesses (See _The State and Revolution_ for example). __ CB: Bien venue back Comrade Barkley. What's your theory of democracy that's better than Marx's, young or old) ? The place to find the most heated of these is in Marx's writings on the Paris Commune in its aftermath. I think that it is worth keeping in mind that his own daughter and son-in- law were gunned down at le mur des Communards in the Pere Lachaise cemetary at the end of that sad episode, just across from where all les grands fromages of the French Communist Party are buried with their exaggerated socialist realist sculptures that are not nearly as cool as what one finds at the graves of Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, the lamentable Jim Morrison, or even Pere Abelard Barkley Rosser Professor of Economics MSC 0204 James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA 22807 USA tel: 540-568-3212 fax: 540-568-3010 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] website: http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb -
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
In The Closing of the American Mind, of course. ;) --jks In a message dated Thu, 18 May 2000 12:16:52 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Brad De Long wrote: So why, then, is the first Marx so weak in post-Marxian Marxism? Why was the world afflicted with, say, Paul Sweezy's claim that "One need not have a specific idea of a... beautiful musical composition, to recognize that the... the rock-and-roll that blares at us exemplify a pattern of utilization of human and material resources which is inimical to human welfare"? My god. Where did he say that? Doug
Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
At 12:25 PM 5/17/00 -0700, you wrote: At 10:48 AM 05/17/2000 -0400, you wrote: Second, the claim that forcing people to be free is OK does not follow from malleability, if if Marx held the malleability thesis. Rousseau used the seemingly sinister saying about forcing people to be free. But one of his points, I believe, is that _any_ society involves forcing people to be free. Well, most societies force people to be *not* free. It is very important to maintain a proper distinction between "forcing people to be free" and "forcing people not to be free"... I don't quite get what you say here. What R was talking about is that the only kind of "natural" freedom that exists is worthless, stuff like the freedom to be nameless, friendless, and bestial. People like Locke assume that the freedom that goes with property ownership -- including the ownership of one's own life -- is somehow "natural" (it exists in the "state of nature"). You also seem to be assuming that a worthwhile freedom exists prior to and independent of society. But such rights, as R argues, are created by society: worthwhile human freedom is a social phenomenon. Here he is agreeing with Hobbes, who also saw property and other rights as societal creations. R was arguing that society's forcing people not to be barbaric -- the suppression of "natural rights" such as the right to rape pillage -- actually created new opportunities, new choices in life, etc. That is, the creation of a society also creates new kinds of freedom. Again, Hobbes agreed: the creation of order out of his "state of nature" civil war creates freedom to live normal lives. To use a more concrete example, if a society designates a certain area of the country as a public park, which creates all sorts of opportunities for people to have picnics and the like (i.e., freedom). As another example, a rich capitalist country that's not being threatened militarily like the US has created "freedom of the press." That freedom has clear limitations (look at the propaganda we get!), but it's a kind of freedom nonetheless. Of course, the societal creation of freedom can easily go awry. All of the freedom (the power) might be concentrated in the hands of a small minority such as Stalin or the IMF and its allies. So the question of "what type of freedom?" arises. R himself preferred a democratic (or "civic republican") Social Contract, so that the violation of natural freedom is in tune with what people want. I think he was right about this. Freedom should be democratic freedom rather than being hogged by a small minority, with its impact imposed on society from above. Businesses shouldn't be allowed to dictate to society -- as when they freely trespass on our lungs with their pollution or when they arbitrarily throw workers out of jobs, for example -- unless society democratically decides that these rights are valid. The problem with Rousseau's Social Contract is that it's an abstraction and not much more. Since he sees society as corrupting the people, the people could never choose that Contract. So R brings in the all-wise Legislator (a latter-day Solon or King Utopus) who sets up the constitution, which then encourages people to have the "right" type of personal character (under R's malleability assumption) so that they democratically decide that the constitution is correct. This is the stuff of the top-down utopians of the 19th century and of later dictatorial or bureaucratic socialists. Marx solved this problem (at least to his own satisfaction) by pointing to historical trends that would allow working people to unite and create their own democratic social contract from below. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
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Justin writes: I would add to this analysis that I think the democratic Marx was a lot more popular until the rise of the USSR; you see this in people like Rosa Luxemburg ... But the Soviet Unuion claimed the mantle of Marx and squelched democracy, So in the shadow of its prestige, the democratic Marx went rather by the wayside, to be salavged in margins by people like Draper. This is the problem. Most working people and many intellectuals go with "what works in practice." They looked at capitalism, which was giving them quite a bad deal during the period after 1917 and compared it to what they saw in the USSR. The USSR was getting a lot of criticism from the bourgeois press, etc., but since those organs lie about so many important issues, these folks thought that they must be lying about the USSR, too. (This impression was reinforced when the bourgeois press accentuated the negative and ignored the positive.) The USSR was the "lesser of two evils" and besides, it was far away and not threatening, or at least much less so than the boss who's breaking the union or speeding up the labor process. The USSR claimed to be "Marxist," while most people don't know much about Marx -- especially since most of the "democratic Marx" writings came to light very late -- so many equated the USSR with Marxism. A similar process encouraged the rise of a different version of Marxism during the 1960s 1970s. I agree with Brad, too, that Marx's refusal to think about recipes for the cookshops of the future didn't hepp. Marx didn't try to develop recipes for the cookshops of the future (utopian schemes) because he predicted/hoped/wanted workers to take control over their own lives in their own way (a democratic way). He only described the future of socialism at the most abstract way (in places like "Critique of the Gotha Programme") until he could learn from the empirical reality of events such as the Paris Commune. I think, however, the fault doesn't lay with Marx as much as with his followers. The problem is that there's no reason to restrict one's source of insights to only Marx and Engels. We can learn from all sorts of other socialist theorists (including the utopians). BTW, Marx himself never said that he was the only source of Truth. Justin is right that utopian descriptions of a possible socialism are useful. As Draper [sorry!] points on in his description of Marx Engels' views of the utopians, they agreed. Workers' discussion of utopian schemes, they thought, were part of the process of workers's self-education and self-liberation. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
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Barkley wrote: BTW, in his personal political dealings Marx was not known for democratic tolerance. When Bakunin and the anarchists threatened to take control of the First International, Marx closed it, shut down the shop, took his marbles and went home and pouted. this a partial picture. Bakunin and his anarchists (sounds like a rock'n'roll band, no?) also used all sorts of nasty tactics to take over the organization. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
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Brad writes: Or, in other words: "Democracy? We don't need no stinkin' democracy! We directly express the general will!" That's the perspective of many utopian socialists, Stalinists, and the IMF, which sees its policies as Good For Humanity in the Long Run, so that it doesn't matter if democracy is scuttled in the "short run." I would think that Cromwell was the first to make this mistake, when he dismissed the Long Parliament. Robespierre certainly made it--and then executed both Hebert and Danton when it became clear that their vision of direct expression of the general will was different from his. Draper is pretty clear that Marx was no fan of either Cromwell or Robespierre. Marx was quite critical of Rousseau's idea of the General Will. snip Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
Barkley wrote: In the Critique of the Gotha Program he clearly goes totally utopian in his programmatic speculations. Just the contrary. _The Critique of the Gotha Program_ is one of the most "realist" criticisms of the program of the Eisenach faction of the German social democratic movement. it is a critique of bourgeois "idealism" as it criticizes the failure of bourgeois democracy to live up to its ideals of equality and justice. (See for this Norman Geras' article in _New Left Review_, Marx and Justice Debate, 1989 or 86?) I always find the first passage the most remarkable: Party program says: "labour is the sources of all wealth and all culture, and since useful labour is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labor belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society" Marx replies: "Labour is not the source of wealth. nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labour, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labour power. The above phrase is to be found in all children's primers and is correct in so far as it is implied that labour is performed with the appurtenant subjects and instruments. but a socialist program can not allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that alone give them meaning.. the bourgeois have very good grounds to for falsely ascribing supernatural creative power to labour; since precisely from the fact that labour depends on nature it follows that the man who posses no other property than his labour power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the SLAVE of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labour. He can work only live with their permission, hence live only with their permission" (Marx-Engels reader, Tucker ed., ) Mine Doyran Political Science Phd student SUNY/Albany
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Michael, Well, I may be wrong about this, and will have to eat more crow (good for egomaniac me, :-)), but it is my memory that what happened was that whether by hook or by crook or by whatever means, Bakunin and his allies had come to control a majority of the national groups that were in the First International. At that point, when they demanded to take control of it, Marx shut it down. Now, this is no particular defense of Bakunin. I fully agree that he behaved "irresponsibly" in a variety of ways, and that the anarchists were constantly provoking the authorities with strategies and tactics that simply brought on repression, the later assassination wave that was symbolized by killing off Alexander II so he could be replaced by the more repressive Alexander III being a clear example. However, the problem was that there was no clear democratic structure or basis to the First International. How did Marx come to be its leader? Who was voting? Were there any rules? The bottom line remains that once things did not go his way, Marx did not respect whatever rules of conduct there were in the organization and ended it. He verbally supported some form of democracy, but his personal conduct does not suggest that he practiced it. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, May 18, 2000 1:12 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19219] Re: Marx and Malleability Marx feared the damage that Bakunin would do. They would make fierce statements, just calling for repression, without organizing any base to resist the state. I believe that they declared a revolution in Lyon without doing anything to back it up. The police broke up workers' organizations that had nothing to do with Bakunin. I may have some of the details wrong, but anyway Marx saw Bakunin as a very destructive influence. Jim Devine wrote: Barkley wrote: BTW, in his personal political dealings Marx was not known for democratic tolerance. When Bakunin and the anarchists threatened to take control of the First International, Marx closed it, shut down the shop, took his marbles and went home and pouted. this a partial picture. Bakunin and his anarchists (sounds like a rock'n'roll band, no?) also used all sorts of nasty tactics to take over the organization. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
Mine, But, Marx's remarks do not address what socialism will be. It is just more critique. The utopianism came in when he actually discussed what socialism would be, or more precisely communism, e.g. the withering away of the state and "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs;" all very nice, but also very utopian, especially the bit about the withering away of the state. What a pathetic joke. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, May 18, 2000 1:16 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19221] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd) Barkley wrote: In the Critique of the Gotha Program he clearly goes totally utopian in his programmatic speculations. Just the contrary. _The Critique of the Gotha Program_ is one of the most "realist" criticisms of the program of the Eisenach faction of the German social democratic movement. it is a critique of bourgeois "idealism" as it criticizes the failure of bourgeois democracy to live up to its ideals of equality and justice. (See for this Norman Geras' article in _New Left Review_, Marx and Justice Debate, 1989 or 86?) I always find the first passage the most remarkable: Party program says: "labour is the sources of all wealth and all culture, and since useful labour is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labor belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society" Marx replies: "Labour is not the source of wealth. nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labour, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labour power. The above phrase is to be found in all children's primers and is correct in so far as it is implied that labour is performed with the appurtenant subjects and instruments. but a socialist program can not allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that alone give them meaning.. the bourgeois have very good grounds to for falsely ascribing supernatural creative power to labour; since precisely from the fact that labour depends on nature it follows that the man who posses no other property than his labour power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the SLAVE of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labour. He can work only live with their permission, hence live only with their permission" (Marx-Engels reader, Tucker ed., ) Mine Doyran Political Science Phd student SUNY/Albany
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 01:30PM The bottom line remains that once things did not go his way, Marx did not respect whatever rules of conduct there were in the organization and ended it. He verbally supported some form of democracy, but his personal conduct does not suggest that he practiced it. _ CB: Or he may have had a different theory of democracy than yours ,such that the majority decision within a group that was a tiny minority of the overall working class did not constitute an important democratic principle to be observed. A theory of democracy has to consider what is the WHOLE group that constitutes the "demos" . CB
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 01:28PM Draper follows a somewhat controversial position, since he treats Marx and Engels totally as a team, with no significant disagreements. For him, "Marx" is sometimes used as short-hand for Marx-and-Engels, though in citations he is always clear about which said what. CB: Bravo ! Me too. That's not controversial with me. it's controversial with Hegelian-Marxists, such as the followers of Raya Dunayevskaya (sp?), who see Marx as being Hegelian and Engels as not. _ CB: Yes, indeedy. Raya D. lived in Detroit for a while, and there is a Marxist-Humanist chapter here. I attended a number of their meetings a few years ago, and read a number of her books. Alas, I soon observed what you said. Anti-Engelism is a key component of her theory. Lenin fairs a little better. She says Lenin stopped one paragraph short in Hegel, but otherwise he did pretty good. Nonetheless, I try to learn about Hegel from the Marxist-Humanists. There are a number of other schools of Marxist thought that claim a big difference between Engels and Marx, so I was trying to get a measure of Draper. CB
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
In fact some Marxists argue that although Marx did not completely agree with R's notion of the general will, he was positively inlfluenced by R's critique of private property (unlike liberals like Hobbes and Locke who naturalized property ownership as a basis for apologizing inequalities and possesive individualism).If you read Marx's early writings in details, you will see that there is not an _explicit_ attack at Rousseau. I think he only mentions once in his essay "On the Jewish Question" (or manuscripts), not in a polemical way though.. for this, see Colleti's book on R, Marx and Lenin. the influence from R to Marx is not an easy generalization... Mine Doyran Political Science Phd student SUNY/Albany Robespierre. Marx was quite critical of Rousseau's idea of the General Will. snip Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
In fact some Marxists argue that although Marx did not completely agree with R's notion of the general will, he was positively inlfluenced by R's critique of private property (unlike liberals like Hobbes and Locke who naturalized property ownership as a basis for apologizing inequalities and possesive individualism).If you read Marx's early writings in details, you will see that there is not an _explicit_ attack at Rousseau. This is basically right, except that Hobbes did not "naturalize" property ownership. What Hobbes did "naturalize" was a posited battle of each against all. In other words, he took the civil war of his own society (the English Civil War) and the rising phenomenon of capitalist competition (which was disrupting traditional ways of life) and then inserted them into what was supposed to be an un-societal setting (the "state of nature"). Hobbes would agree with Rousseau that it makes sense to talk about individual _possession_ in a "state of nature" (I control my books) but that it doesn't make sense to talk about individual _property rights_ (I own my books), since such rights are creations of society. In celebration of getting (some of) my books out of boxes, let's quote THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY (in Tucker's 2nd ed. MARX-ENGELS READER): "Only in community [with others has each] individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in community, therefore, is personal freedom possible. In the previous substitutes for the community, in the State, etc., personal freedom has existed only for the individuals who developed within the relationships of the ruling class, and only insofar as they were individuals of this class." (p. 197) Here, not only do ME see freedom as a social creation (following Rousseau and Hobbes) but they point to the issue that liberals (both "neo" and New Deal) ignore, i.e., the distribution of freedom, the way in which the freedom of some (the capitalists, the State bureaucrats) limits the freedom of others (the workers). On the next page, ME refer to Rousseau's _Contrat social_ (though without naming Jean-Jacques), calling to it as "arbitrary," which I interpret as saying that it was simply a product of R's mind rather than being a product of societal processes in history. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
Barkley Rosser: The utopianism came in when he actually discussed what socialism would be, or more precisely communism, e.g. the withering away of the state and "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs;" all very nice, but also very utopian, especially the bit about the withering away of the state. What a pathetic joke. Where have you been, Barkley? Tell me the truth. Russia? Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
Jim Devine wrote:. This is basically right, except that Hobbes did not "naturalize" property ownership. in fact, he did. this is the sole idea behind R's criticism of Hobbes in _On the Origins of Inequality_. Hobbes falsely projected what is social (property) onto human nature, to say that it was in human nature to acquire property. R disagreed with him since he believed private property was a social invention, "not" a natural condition of human being. R says "averice" "oppresion, desire", all the attributes that liberal contract theorists traced to human nature are the charecteristics we gain in society. he then continues in the same passage, they "portrayed savage men". "it was in fact CIVIL MAN they depicted" i always find _Origins of Inequality_ a very important piece of work on the "anthropology" of human development.that being said, it should not be read from a romantic point of view as if R was talking about an abstract state of nature.. it should be read from a materialist point of view. R was *not* Marx, but if I were to choose among Locke, Hobbes and R, I would definetly put R near Marx, *not* near Hobbes.. Mine
Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Not only that, but she came to Chico to visit Ivan Svitak. A lot happens up here in the big city. Charles Brown wrote: Yes, indeedy. Raya D. lived in Detroit for a while, and there is a Marxist-Humanist chapter here. I attended a number of their meetings a few years ago, and read a number of her books. Alas, I soon observed what you said. Anti-Engelism is a key component of her theory. Lenin fairs a little better. She says Lenin stopped one paragraph short in Hegel, but otherwise he did pretty good. Nonetheless, I try to learn about Hegel from the Marxist-Humanists. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Bakunin and his allies had come to control a majority of the national groups that were in the First International. At that point, when they demanded to take control of it, Marx shut it down. Actually, he moved it to the U.S., where Sorge shut it down, I believe. However, the problem was that there was no clear democratic structure or basis to the First International. Yes, you are correct. It was more of a movement than an institution. How did Marx come to be its leader? Probably by the respect that many people had for him. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
I met her several times in the 1960s. Detroit being not so far from here. (I used to visit Fredy Perlman as well, another Detroit character). She was a wonderful woman, but totally obsessive on Hegel. She liked Lenin, but primarily the Philosophical Notebooks. Rod Michael Perelman wrote: Not only that, but she came to Chico to visit Ivan Svitak. A lot happens up here in the big city. Charles Brown wrote: Yes, indeedy. Raya D. lived in Detroit for a while, and there is a Marxist-Humanist chapter here. I attended a number of their meetings a few years ago, and read a number of her books. Alas, I soon observed what you said. Anti-Engelism is a key component of her theory. Lenin fairs a little better. She says Lenin stopped one paragraph short in Hegel, but otherwise he did pretty good. Nonetheless, I try to learn about Hegel from the Marxist-Humanists. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
I wrote: This is basically right, except that Hobbes did not "naturalize" property ownership. Mine writes: in fact, he did. this is the sole idea behind R's criticism of Hobbes in _On the Origins of Inequality_. Hobbes falsely projected what is social (property) onto human nature, to say that it was in human nature to acquire property. R disagreed with him since he believed private property was a social invention, "not" a natural condition of human being. R says "averice" "oppresion, desire", all the attributes that liberal contract theorists traced to human nature are the charecteristics we gain in society. he then continues in the same passage, they "portrayed savage men". "it was in fact CIVIL MAN they depicted" I think we basically agree on this: Hobbes put "possession" -- and thus possessiveness (the seeking by each individual to accumulate power after power) -- into the "state of nature," which is illegitimate, as Rousseau points out. In the terms I used, this positing of possessiveness reflected Hobbes' experience with the English Civil War and the rise of capitalist competition. But following R, there's a distinction between "possession" (control) and "property" (state-endorsed rights). Hobbes did not put property into the state of nature. He wanted property to exist, though, which is an important reason he wanted the Leviathan to impose order. Similar to the plot of many Westerns, "private property" couldn't exist until the Sheriff rode into Dodge on his white horse to shoot and/or jail the Bad Guys. i always find _Origins of Inequality_ a very important piece of work on the "anthropology" of human development.that being said, it should not be read from a romantic point of view as if R was talking about an abstract state of nature.. it should be read from a materialist point of view. I like that book too. It's a very abstract and hypothetical anthropology, akin to a lot of "sociobiology" in style of analysis (trying to figure out what people were like without society) but with more attractive conclusions to most leftists. Even though as a materialist I get something out of it, I wouldn't call it a materialist book. (Materialism involves studying the empirical world, among other things.) My handy-dandy philosophical dictionary defines "Romanticism" as a movement rejecting the 18th-century Enlightenment, emphasizing imagination and emotion against the Enlightenment's emphasis on Reason. That fits R. While the Encyclopedists (Diderot, etc.) were glorying in the benefits of "civilization" and the early stages of capitalism, along with the importance of transforming people and conquering nature with the application of Reason, R pointed to the down-side of civilization's development (the increase in inequality, etc.) and the fallacy of separating reason completely from emotions. (In the SOCIAL CONTRACT, he wrote that the most profound law is that which is inscribed "in the hearts of the citizens," while hoping that the shared sentiments of the citizens -- patriotism, etc. -- would find expression in the general will.) R was *not* Marx, but if I were to choose among Locke, Hobbes and R, I would definetly put R near Marx, *not* near Hobbes.. Luckily we don't have to make that choice. R might be thought of as the father of modern collectivism, but he wasn't a democrat (until _after_ the all-knowing, all-seeing Legislator imposed a Social Contract that involved censorship, propaganda, a civic religion, etc.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
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Mark, So, was this utopian or not? We certainly did not see any withering away of the state, not in the former USSR, not in the PRC, not anywhere that was or is ruled by a self-labeled Communist Party (or some variation on that). Would that it were not so. I was in Denmark for a conference last week. Those social democracies still look about as good as we have managed anywhere on the face of this globe so far. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Mark Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, May 18, 2000 3:02 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19239] RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd) Barkley Rosser: The utopianism came in when he actually discussed what socialism would be, or more precisely communism, e.g. the withering away of the state and "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs;" all very nice, but also very utopian, especially the bit about the withering away of the state. What a pathetic joke. Where have you been, Barkley? Tell me the truth. Russia? Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
Jim Devine wrote: In the terms I used, this positing of possessiveness
reflected Hobbes' experience with the English Civil War and the rise of
capitalist competition.
Yes and No. Hobbes was not *simply* writing under the influence of his
circumstances. He was also *normatively* endorsing capitalism and private
property regime. If one's ideas simply reflect one's circumstances, then
Marx could never have been "critical" of capitalim.
plus, Hobbes' notion of the "instict of rational self-preservation" is
completely "ahistorical". Hobbes abstracts the concept from its historical
content, and then projects capitalism onto human nature as if human
nature has never changed, or as if it has always remained capitalist.
He does not locate rationality in its historical context. He assimilates
the very definition of liberty to capitalist rationality (posssesive
individualism).
You say R's model was an abstraction. i don't terribly disagree with this.
however, i don't see any problem with abstractions per se. Marx also
abstracted capitalism in such a way to formulate it as a mode of
production based on an endless accumulation of surplus, using classical
political economy as a starting point. He did this albeit in a critical
manner. We always need abstractions to understand the reality.
Abstraction is a useful analytical tool to reason and to see who we are,
what we are and what our human needs are (See for this Geras's book on
_Marx and Human Nature_) The problem is to decide which abstractions are
better approximations of reality. Definetly, Hobbes's human nature is a
false abstraction as well as a "distorted" understanding of his own
circumstances. Moreover, it is an ideological distortion of the
anthropology of human nature: "I put for a general inclination of mankind
a perpetual and rentless desire for power after power, that ceaseth only
in death" (Leviathan chpt 11). My credit to R is that he saw that human
nature was historically conditioned as it took shape through the
development of modern civilization, the same human nature which Hobbes
fixated, essentialized and ahistoricized "as war of man against another
man".He also understood that natural right is an abstraction created by
convention to preserve the right of the strongest. R argued hunting and
gathering societies did not even have a conception of private property.
The desire to posses developed as people started to settle on the land and
claimed right to property. He says " The first person who, having eclosed
a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people
simple enough to beleive him, was the true founder of civil society"
But following R, there's a distinction between "possession" (control) and
"property" (state-endorsed rights).
I don't recall this. do you have a citation for this distinction from the
text. Under "capitalism", state is by definition a protector of private
property regime.
Hobbes did not put property into the state of nature. He wanted property
to exist,
The only way for him to LEGITIMIZE property was to see it as a
"natural right". Hobbes uses the concept "naturalness" in two ways.
Sometimes "natural" implies a concept with which man "spontaneously" gains
"security", "acquisitiveness" and "agression". Sometimes, it is something
that generates "perfect reason", which allows man to make himself as
"secure" as possible.
though, which is an important reason he wanted the Leviathan to impose
order.
true because Hobbes wanted capitalism. Leviathan, he thought, could impose
possesive market regime. Leviathan ("supreme soverign") was an abstraction
par excellence, just as R's Social Contract was, so I don't see the point
in your argument that R's model was an abstraction whereas H's model was
influenced by his own circumstanes. R was as much influenced by his
own context as Hobbes was.
i always find _Origins of Inequality_ a very important piece of work on
the "anthropology" of human development.that being said, it should not be
read from a romantic point of view as if R was talking about an abstract
state of nature.. it should be read from a materialist point of view.
I like that book too. It's a very abstract and hypothetical anthropology,
akin to a lot of "sociobiology" in style of analysis (trying to figure
out
what people were like without society) but with more attractive
conclusions
to most leftists.
come on! which socio-biology?. I strongly disencourage you to assimilate R
to biologically reductionist socio-biology arguments that reduce man to
"genes". Unlike sociobiologists, R REJECTS to see inequality, domination,
war, endless desire for power in human nature. The book itself is a very
analysis of the development of HUMAN SOCIETY, not an analysis of people
"without society"."Men are not naturally enemies, for the simple reason
that men living in the original state of INDEPEDENCE do not have
sufficiently constant relationships among themselves to bring about either
a state of
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
At 10:48 AM 05/17/2000 -0400, you wrote: Second, the claim that forcing people to be free is OK does not follow from malleability, if if Marx held the malleability thesis. Rousseau used the seemingly sinister saying about forcing people to be free. But one of his points, I believe, is that _any_ society involves forcing people to be free. Well, most societies force people to be *not* free. It is very important to maintain a proper distinction between "forcing people to be free" and "forcing people not to be free"...
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
yea, and why do you stop the citation in the comma? I am well aware that there are two Marxes, the one who tends to be democratic and the one who tends to be dictatorial. A kinder, gentler way to put it is that there are two Marxes, the one who believes in the free development of each and the one who believes that when they fight their oppressors the people have one single general will that the dictatorship of the proletariat expresses... Ole Charlie didn't understand much about political organization, or tyranny of the majority, or bureaucratic process, or separation of powers, or rights that people should be able to exercise against every form of state. In many ways Tocqueville thought deeper and saw further as far as political sociology is concerned... Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Not contradictory. As Draper has shown, the Dictatorship of the P. is a temporary waystation to allow the future free development. Brad De Long wrote: yea, and why do you stop the citation in the comma? I am well aware that there are two Marxes, the one who tends to be democratic and the one who tends to be dictatorial. A kinder, gentler way to put it is that there are two Marxes, the one who believes in the free development of each and the one who believes that when they fight their oppressors the people have one single general will that the dictatorship of the proletariat expresses... Ole Charlie didn't understand much about political organization, or tyranny of the majority, or bureaucratic process, or separation of powers, or rights that people should be able to exercise against every form of state. In many ways Tocqueville thought deeper and saw further as far as political sociology is concerned... Brad DeLong -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Brad writes: ... there are two Marxes, the one who believes in the free development of each and the one who believes that when they fight their oppressors the people have one single general will that the dictatorship of the proletariat expresses... There are clearly two traditions in _Marxism_, but Marx himself fits only the first Marx that Brad describes. Hal Draper's book on Marx's political writings shows this very clearly. Draper also has a useful little essay, "the Two Souls of Socialism," which distinguishes between the two traditions in Marxism and in socialism in general. There's socialism from above (Stalinism, social democracy, most utopians) and socialism from below, which is summarized by Marx's slogan that socialism can only be won by the working class itself. (One could extend this distinction to that between capitalism from above (Yeltsin, the World Bank, the IMF, etc.) and capitalism from below (the small business perspective).) Draper also argues that during the period that Marx wrote, the word "dictatorship" had a different meaning than it does today. Meanings change over time, just as the phrase "the dictatorship of the proletariat" has taken on the meaning of "the dictatorship for, or in the name of, the proletariat" or "the dictatorship over the proletariat" (as a result of the Soviet and Chinese experiences). The "dictatorship of the proletariat" for Marx was an alternative to what he saw as the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" ruling capitalism. Since Marx didn't see an opposition between dictatorship and democracy of the sort that we posit today, this can be restated as saying that he favored "proletarian democracy" over "bourgeois democracy." Of course, this is not an argument for using the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" in the present context, since it has taken on new meaning. Ole Charlie [Marx?] didn't understand much about political organization, or tyranny of the majority, or bureaucratic process, or separation of powers, or rights that people should be able to exercise against every form of state. In many ways Tocqueville thought deeper and saw further as far as political sociology is concerned... Just as people should read Marge Piercy before jumping to conclusions about her perspectives, you should read Draper's multi-volume KARL MARX'S THEORY OF REVOLUTION, which is a quite exhaustive (and exhausting). In fact, the first volume has the word "bureaucracy" in its title. Guess what? Marx was against bureaucracy, while his experience with the Prussian monarchy encouraged a general anti-statism on his part. His main distinction vis-a-vis the anarchists on this question was that he didn't want to smash the state immediately. Instead, he saw workers' control of the state as needed first. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
I think Brad is right that Marx didn't think much about political sociology from the perspective of institutional design, or about how group dynamics might work in a postrevolutionary society. I do not think that supportds the "two Marx" thesis, one democratic and one dictatorisl. Marx was entirely democratic, but he was also pretty naive in a sort of willfull way about practical postrevolutionary politics. See his marginal comments on Bakunin's prescient criticisms of Marxism. I do not think that much can be read into the "dictatorship of the proletariat," and certainly not that it is a temporary "dictatorship" in the modern sense of unrestrained lawless repressive rule. I think Marx meant something like temporary class rule, in the sense that a postrevolutionary state would be, he thought, a worker's state. I think it is clear that he did not conceive it as a rule of force unrestrained by law, as Lenin put it--L was advocating this. It is stuff like this that makes me a liberal democrat in politics. I am aware, of course, a transition to a noncapiatlist society is not likely to bea ccomplished through the ordinary process of voting and campaigning, and that if it is ever established over probable violent resistance by procapitalist forces, the rule of law is likely to be a bit dicey for a bit, as it has been with every major social transformation. The loyalists were brutalized after the American Revolution, for example. However, if we are to think about a society worth fighting for having, there are norms it is essential to uphold and maintain,a nd these are, for the most part, embodied in liberal democratic values: equal citizenship, universal suffrage, competitive elections, extensive civil and political liberties, and the rule of law. These were things we might liearn something about from Tocqueville, as Brad says. ANd from Rousseau, who thougtht about them deeply. --jks * * * Michael Perlman writes: Not contradictory. As Draper has shown, the Dictatorship of the P. is a temporary waystation to allow the future free development. Brad De Long wrote: yea, and why do you stop the citation in the comma? I am well aware that there are two Marxes, the one who tends to be democratic and the one who tends to be dictatorial. A kinder, gentler way to put it is that there are two Marxes, the one who believes in the free development of each and the one who believes that when they fight their oppressors the people have one single general will that the dictatorship of the proletariat expresses... Ole Charlie didn't understand much about political organization, or tyranny of the majority, or bureaucratic process, or separation of powers, or rights that people should be able to exercise against every form of state. In many ways Tocqueville thought deeper and saw further as far as political sociology is concerned... Brad DeLong -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Not contradictory. As Draper has shown, the Dictatorship of the P. is a temporary waystation to allow the future free development. Brad De Long wrote: yea, and why do you stop the citation in the comma? I am well aware that there are two Marxes, the one who tends to be democratic and the one who tends to be dictatorial. A kinder, gentler way to put it is that there are two Marxes, the one who believes in the free development of each and the one who believes that when they fight their oppressors the people have one single general will that the dictatorship of the proletariat expresses... Ole Charlie didn't understand much about political organization, or tyranny of the majority, or bureaucratic process, or separation of powers, or rights that people should be able to exercise against every form of state. In many ways Tocqueville thought deeper and saw further as far as political sociology is concerned... Brad DeLong -- Michael Perelman Or, in other words: "Democracy? We don't need no stinkin' democracy! We directly express the general will!" I would think that Cromwell was the first to make this mistake, when he dismissed the Long Parliament. Robespierre certainly made it--and then executed both Hebert and Danton when it became clear that their vision of direct expression of the general will was different from his. Dictatorship is not a temporary waystation but a switchpoint that--as Camille Desmoulins, Nikolai Bukharin, Peng Dehuai, and many, many others learned--led straight to Hell. But the point was made a long time ago by Rosa Luxemburg: "The suppression of political life in the whole of the country must bring in its wake a progressive paralysis of life in the Soviets themselves. In the absence of universal franchise, of unrestricted freedom of press and assembly and of free discussion, life in any public body is bound to wither, to become a mere semblance of life in which only bureaucracy can remain an active element. This is a law from which nobody is exempt. Public life gradually becomes dormant while a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustable energy and boundless idealism do the ruling and directing; from among these a dozen outstanding intellectuals do the real leading while an elite from the working class is summoned from time to time to meetings, there to applaud the speeches of the leaders and to give unanimous approval to the resolutions laid before them - in fact, power in the hands of cliques, a dictatorship certainly, but a dictatorship not of the proletariats but of a handful of politicians"
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Jim, Hi. I'm back, at least for a few weeks. Guess I'll side with Brad D. on this one, although only slightly. I agree that the first Marx is clearly the dominant one in most of his writings, the one for free development of people. But he did at certain points issue some rather sulphurous diatribes about the wretchedness of bourgeois democracy and also painted a not so nice picture of the dictatorship of the proletariat as well in certain passages, these getting picked up by good old Lenin to justify some of his more unpleasant Bolshevik excesses... So why, then, is the first Marx so weak in post-Marxian Marxism? Why was the world afflicted with, say, Paul Sweezy's claim that "One need not have a specific idea of a... beautiful musical composition, to recognize that the... the rock-and-roll that blares at us exemplify a pattern of utilization of human and material resources which is inimical to human welfare"? I suspect that there is more to it than Marx's lack of thought about how systems of self-rule and people-power could actually work. I suspect it was his refusal to imagine his version of socialism that has made the currents of thought that flowed from him in many cases positively hostile to forms of free development that they do not like... Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
In a message dated 5/17/00 5:34:16 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: But he did at certain points issue some rather sulphurous diatribes about the wretchedness of bourgeois democracy and also painted a not so nice picture of the dictatorship of the proletariat as well in certain passages, these getting picked up by good old Lenin to justify some of his more unpleasant Bolshevik excesses (See _The State and Revolution_ for example). Hi, Barklay, glad to have you back. As is well known in the environs hereabouts, I am a great fan of bourgeois democracy, and I am happy to say that every sulpherous thing Marx had to say about it is true in spades. It is rule by the rich that ignores the real differences in power created by wealth; its virtues evaporate quickly under the heat of class warfare; and it helps to stabilize and legitimate an indefensile system. Do you deny these (obviously true) propositions? And in asserting them, am I subscribing to any sort of antidemocratic politics? As for the dictatorship of the proletariat, what is the not-nice stuff you have in mind? But I will agree, without myself adopting the expression, that any sort of large-scale systematic political change is goiung to involve some not-nice stuff. To get rid of slavery, we had a not-nice civil war. Marx was a political realist, and knew that the properties were not going to lie down and roll over even a proletarian majority democratically voted away their property rights in a peaceful manner, as he imagined might happen in the 19th century US. So, does it make him undemocratic to recognize this reality? Now, I agree that Marx is not a liberal democrat. But there is nothing in what little he says about politics to suggest that he would have been anything but horrified at the perversions of Leninism--rule by one party, political police, censorship, repression of independent unions and worker's organizations, etc.--never mind Stalinism. Btw, these perversions are not advocated in The State and Revolution, which seem to envision a weak state based in a worker's militia with functioning soviets operating a relatively direct democracy. This vision is close of Marx's, attracted the anarchists, and didn't last a week in the hurricane of the Russian civil war. --jks
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
In a message dated 5/17/00 10:02:03 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So why, then, is the first Marx so weak in post-Marxian Marxism? I suspect that there is more to it than Marx's lack of thought about how systems of self-rule and people-power could actually work. I suspect it was his refusal to imagine his version of socialism that has made the currents of thought that flowed from him in many cases positively hostile to forms of free development that they do not like... This is an important question. Hal Draper thought about it a lot and addressed it in The two Souls of Socialism, and elsewhere. Draper's theory was that institutional Marxism reflected the undemocratic interests of bureaucracies in the workers' movement, in trade unions and mass parties, ultimately in the postrevolutioanry states: the functionaries in these bureaucracies are opposed in their interests to capital to a greater or lesser degrewe, insofar as their success depends on a strong workers' movement, but also to worker self rule that might limit their prerogatives. The "new class" theory of Djilas is obvious;y related to this sort of view. Draper thought that the democratic Marx who advocated worker self-emanicipation could only catch on when workers became mobilized, activized, and capable of self rule through a process of struggle against their own bureaucratic leadership as well as against the domination of capital. I would add to this analysis that I think the democratic Marx was a lot more popular until the rise of the USSR; you see this in people like Rosa Luxemburg and, in his own way (Draperw ould kill me for saying this) Erduard Bernstein. But the Soviet Unuion claimed the mantle of Marx and squelched democracy, So in the shadow of its prestige, the democratic Marx went rather by the wayside, to be salavged in margins by people like Draper. I agree with Brad, too, that Marx's refusal to think about recipes for the cookshops of the future didn't hepp. --jks
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Yes, Marx was distrustful of the ideas of utopians, who laid out plans for the future. He thought that people should organize such things on their own when the time came. Brad De Long wrote: I suspect that there is more to it than Marx's lack of thought about how systems of self-rule and people-power could actually work. I suspect it was his refusal to imagine his version of socialism that has made the currents of thought that flowed from him in many cases positively hostile to forms of free development that they do not like... -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
I might be wrong, but I always thought that it was because he was a democrat. People would decide for themselves what they wanted. People freed from the constraints of a society of scarcity, and class divisions, might decide things that he could not imagine. Rod Brad De Long wrote: I suspect that there is more to it than Marx's lack of thought about how systems of self-rule and people-power could actually work. I suspect it was his refusal to imagine his version of socialism that has made the currents of thought that flowed from him in many cases positively hostile to forms of free development that they do not like... Brad DeLong -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
In a message dated 5/17/00 11:28:27 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I might be wrong, but I always thought that it was because he was a democrat. People would decide for themselves what they wanted. People freed from the constraints of a society of scarcity, and class divisions, might decide things that he could not imagine. Rod Marx's antiutopianism has a number of sources: 1. Democracy, or anyway the commitment to the self-emancipation of the working class, in contrast to the top-down schemes of utopian socialists like Fourier and Owen, who planned out the lives of the peopled in their ideal societies in excessive detail; 2. Science, the recognition that he didn't then have much concrete knowledge of how people might arrange matters. Note tahtw hen he got some data, he discussed it, as in the Paris Commune, 3. Hegelianism: the Owl of Minerva flies only at twilight; we can theorize adequately only what is in some sense actual; But the anti-utopianism is not wholly consistent. Marx purports to know that the people in a postrevolutionary society will not have a society organized around markets, or anything that amounts, in the end, to a state. Be that as it may. Whatever excuses Marx had for not writing recipes for the cookshops of the future, we have no such excuses. No one will believe us if we don't have a credible alternative that at least starts to answer many questions people actually and reasonably have about why we think a big and dangerous change will be an improvement. We also know a lot more than he did, after a century of experiments, about what doesn't work. The democracy point is valid, but we are not in a position to impose our conceptions on future cooks in any event. Writing recipes just gives them more choices about the menues they might want to make up. --jks
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Brad, Well, it is a truism that he considered thinking about what it would look like to be utopianism, which he dismissed, although I have long claimed that parts of the platform of the Communist Manifesto amounted to utopianism, although some of it looks like garden variety stuff today, e.g. a progressive income tax, and others are garden variety blah socialism, e.g. nationalizing the banks. In the Critique of the Gotha Program he clearly goes totally utopian in his programmatic speculations. BTW, in his personal political dealings Marx was not known for democratic tolerance. When Bakunin and the anarchists threatened to take control of the First International, Marx closed it, shut down the shop, took his marbles and went home and pouted. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Brad De Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wednesday, May 17, 2000 10:01 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19168] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability Jim, Hi. I'm back, at least for a few weeks. Guess I'll side with Brad D. on this one, although only slightly. I agree that the first Marx is clearly the dominant one in most of his writings, the one for free development of people. But he did at certain points issue some rather sulphurous diatribes about the wretchedness of bourgeois democracy and also painted a not so nice picture of the dictatorship of the proletariat as well in certain passages, these getting picked up by good old Lenin to justify some of his more unpleasant Bolshevik excesses... So why, then, is the first Marx so weak in post-Marxian Marxism? Why was the world afflicted with, say, Paul Sweezy's claim that "One need not have a specific idea of a... beautiful musical composition, to recognize that the... the rock-and-roll that blares at us exemplify a pattern of utilization of human and material resources which is inimical to human welfare"? I suspect that there is more to it than Marx's lack of thought about how systems of self-rule and people-power could actually work. I suspect it was his refusal to imagine his version of socialism that has made the currents of thought that flowed from him in many cases positively hostile to forms of free development that they do not like... Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Justin? Well, you are right that State and Revolution is full of democratic verbiage (I misremembered) although it is full of denunciations of "parliamentarism" drawing on Marx. Try "The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government" written after attaining power. Now Marx's concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is explicitly cited in a basically bloodthirsty set of passages that support the use of an "iron hand." Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wednesday, May 17, 2000 10:13 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19169] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability In a message dated 5/17/00 5:34:16 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: But he did at certain points issue some rather sulphurous diatribes about the wretchedness of bourgeois democracy and also painted a not so nice picture of the dictatorship of the proletariat as well in certain passages, these getting picked up by good old Lenin to justify some of his more unpleasant Bolshevik excesses (See _The State and Revolution_ for example). Hi, Barklay, glad to have you back. As is well known in the environs hereabouts, I am a great fan of bourgeois democracy, and I am happy to say that every sulpherous thing Marx had to say about it is true in spades. It is rule by the rich that ignores the real differences in power created by wealth; its virtues evaporate quickly under the heat of class warfare; and it helps to stabilize and legitimate an indefensile system. Do you deny these (obviously true) propositions? And in asserting them, am I subscribing to any sort of antidemocratic politics? As for the dictatorship of the proletariat, what is the not-nice stuff you have in mind? But I will agree, without myself adopting the expression, that any sort of large-scale systematic political change is goiung to involve some not-nice stuff. To get rid of slavery, we had a not-nice civil war. Marx was a political realist, and knew that the properties were not going to lie down and roll over even a proletarian majority democratically voted away their property rights in a peaceful manner, as he imagined might happen in the 19th century US. So, does it make him undemocratic to recognize this reality? Now, I agree that Marx is not a liberal democrat. But there is nothing in what little he says about politics to suggest that he would have been anything but horrified at the perversions of Leninism--rule by one party, political police, censorship, repression of independent unions and worker's organizations, etc.--never mind Stalinism. Btw, these perversions are not advocated in The State and Revolution, which seem to envision a weak state based in a worker's militia with functioning soviets operating a relatively direct democracy. This vision is close of Marx's, attracted the anarchists, and didn't last a week in the hurricane of the Russian civil war. --jks
