what does chaz want? (was anarchism/marxism)

[rc-am]

ok, Chaz, granted: needs and desires are socially and historically
constituted.  this we already agree on.  the question though i think
still stands, but perhaps in a different form:  how is this 'we'
constituted which then plans our wants?  planning assumes a certain
decision-making protocol, right? so, what is this instrument/vehicle of
planning?  the state?

(btw, dunayevskaya does have a lot of important things to say here, as
peter noted.)

and in any case, the inflection of the first question, 'what does chaz
want', is still there in an important sense, though writ larger.  the
inflection being a psychoanalytic one, implying that desires are not
always (some would go further and say 'not ever') transparently known.
if at the level of the psyche, which is always a social and historical
term and not an individual one, there is a certain opacity, then the
presumptions of planning fall down at this point, since planning assumes
a transparency.    ie., how do you really know what you desire and why?
and, if you can't be always on top of this, why do you expect an
institution to be capable of such knowledge?  (we're back perhaps to the
theory of the party-as-the-state-in-waiting as beyond ideology.)

but, whether you accept the psychoanalytic claim of a certain
non-transparency, the question of _what_ is constituted as the planner
of wants remains.  and, if it is the state, then we are truly in the
realm of (at least as an aspiration toward) a state authoritarianism as
an apparent alternative to the 'invisible hand' authoritarianism of
capital.

Angela
_________