>Jim Baird writes: >... wouldn't Marx say that the "conflicting
interests",
>just like Madison's "factions", are really another word for classes?<
>
>No. The idea of factions fits with the general notion of there being
>special interests that conflict with the "general good" or "public
>interest." Madison proposed his view of the public interest, and saw
>factions as going against it. (His public interest, if I remember
>correctly, was that of the property- and slave-owning elite.)
>
>From Federalist #10:
But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.
True, Madison recognizes other sources of conflict (chiefly religious differences), but his primary interest was in controlling and mediating inter- and intraclass conflicts:
A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.
The real question, as I see it, is how many "conflicting interests" in society are truly unrelated to class? Given a true society of equals, with common ownership of the means of production, are there disputes that are truly unamenable to "self-contained" democratic solutions, that require a separate state authority for mediation?
>Usually, as in the anarchist movement in Spain in the 1930s, that means
>that authority goes underground (with the FAI secretly guiding the
CNT).
>That means we have a hidden authority which is held responsible to
no-one.
I must confess I am not as familiar with the history of the Spanish Civil War as I should be. Could you elaborate on this, or (better yet) point me to a good history?
Jim Baird
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