First there is a depth of time issue, I mean by this that you seem to be expressing a point of view drawn from class societies and apply it similiarily to ancient pre-class communalism and future communism. This underscores a conceptual problem with social evolution which in a sense is what the discussion is really about.
Next there seems to be a problem with reducing historical concepts to truisms. This seems a more methodological constraint, where a specifc historical meaning, rights, judiciary ect, is given an extra-historical existence. There is always a grain of truth in this afterall both courts and the rational resolution of disputes are bound to follow some general shared forms and logic. There is also a grain of truth that so long as human's exist they will behave as human's and follow norms which emerged with their biological form - but at such a level the truism is pretty obvious and nothing very much is being said.
Is there not a case here that general forms, applicable to any and every dispute resolution, are being expressed? If this is the case it is difficult to see any real debate in operation. I do not want to put words in people's mouths but I expect, based on what he has been quoted as saying, James Heartfield would a agree that at generalities and abstract logic the familiar operations of dispute resolution would be present in human affairs.
However, the state backing up law, backing up rights and a formal judicial pronciple in action, would have no reason to exist. To put a final point on it jurisprudence would loose its subject matter. I think this is what James Heartfield is getting at. What he is perhaps saying and what I am definitely saying, is that law (as abstract expression of rights), rights themselves and legal process have no basis under fully fledged communism.
I wonder if at this point it is understood the time frame of this, even given an international proletarian revolution tomorrow morning would be many generations until achieved (a least 100 years but probably much longer than that). Fully fledged Communism, communism as a human mode of production (a term not strictly applicable for such a period) is no overnight achievement and I would fervantly hope that rights, law and proper judicial means exist until then (withering away finally with classes and the state).
Of course what is a 100 or 200 years (3-7 generations) in the span of human history, a mere wink, but for us we will be long past before it is seen. This is what I meant about depth of time being a possible problem of cross-purposes in debate.
Social Revolutions are not short affairs measured in human lifetimes. The recently deceased Queen Mother Elizabeth Saxe-Colburg aka Windsor spanned the entire period of transition from national capital to international capital, the invention of flying transport to supersonic speeds, radio and TV and the fall from greatness of the largest directly ruled Empire the world has ever known. Presuming another hundred year old had died when she was born gets us back to 1800, one more life so measured gets us well before the industrial revolution, just 9 generations ago.
Now in terms of social evolution, go back a mere 10,000 years and the inkling of agriculture has begun, class society, the state, law and judiciary are 5,000 years off in the future before they are fully developed (in the sense of a standing body of armed men, law codes and courts). 10,000 years ago people no doubt had elobarote means of dealing with disputes, but it had common features not duplicated in law codes. Then people could be relied on collectively to remember the lessons of the past (rendered abstractly into custom and mythology) dealing with disputes was a matter of referencing the past and applying remedies as best would suit the purpose. What is missing is any needs to codify rights, obligations and sanctions, for these were common property of the social group and as such had no special existence.
The necessity of giving them a separate existence lay in class society in having a society antagonistic to itself. In this sense law remained a social peace and, when working well, this is how it manifested itself as mutually recognised relations which held society together against the countervieling tendency towards social chaos. Rights were held specifically to exclude others, the right of one overruled the freedom of the other (this is what Marx was on about when rights and laws were elevated into philosophy as gods). As a binding method of mutual reconition of contradictory desires law functions well (despite how badly it may function in practice).
This is what I think James Heartfield was referring to, Marx's critique of the temporary nature of these forms of reified human concepts.
I would like to hear your response on this, to see if there is some accord, rather then try and meet your criticisms one by one.
As for dogs biting people under communism, of course they will it is in their nature. In terms of resolving this, do you suggest compensation (given the non-existence of money this might be hard to calculate), or some other remedy? Might not the resolution be to find a way so it will not re-occur - either by dealing with the dog, or, as is often the case in reality, by dealing with the person who was bitten - that is teach them how to behave around animals (the most common reason people get dog bites). Do either of these things require a law court backed up by an armed body of soldiers? Are rights necessarily involved at all?
Greg
--- Message Received --- From: "dlawbailey" <dlawbailey at netzero.net> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2002 20:59:40 -0800 Subject: RE: no rights under communism - yeah, right
Greg Schofield writes:
"what are disputes between people? It is simple to have a personality clash wirth your nieghbour or work mate - that will go on under communism. Likewise materially some two things might not be compatable but both need doing (a natural winner and a natural loser) that will continue under communism. Finally there will be individuals who intentionally or otherwise hurt others and this will be found under communism. In all these sense disputes contiunue under communism very much for the reasons you give: " Because humans are a social animal, we must cooperate; because we must cooperate, disputes are inevitable"."
Right, disputes are inevitable. In a very real sense, bourgeois liberal-democracy arose out of the need of common people to resolve their disputes while appealing to something less violent and arbitrary than the martial authority of the feudal nobility. The capitalist system requires the peaceful resolution of the business disputes that come about a hundred million times a day and that is the basis for liberal democracy. As a trickle-down benefit, the principles that the bourgeoisie needed to adjudicate their disputes have had a significantly enlightening effect on society, whatever the original intent of the system.
Greg Schofield continues:
"But are these trivial conflicts disputes as we know them? I mean they happen but are they the things that really require today or anytime formal "dispute resolution". And before anyone points out that nieghbours sometimes call in the whole power of the judiciary tro solve some petty problem, our rembrances of such things is based on the fact that it is unnecessary in the first place. In a litigous society anything can be brought to court, but the real question is what soughts of disputes bring courts about?"
The system of logic that applies in courts also keeps people out of court. Lawyers form agreements that deal with as many sources of dispute as they possibly can before actual disputes arise. While it may be said that reasonable people do not need courts to resolve their disputes, people, because of their different experience of the same set of events, cannot always be expected to act reasonably.
Schofield continues:
"You state as there will be disputes there must follow extra-personal means of resolving them.
Makes sense except only a narrow band of disputes go through extra-personal resolution. Indeed the most common aspect of human disputes is that they most often completely resolved by the individuals directed connected to them, and always have been and will be in the future.
Reverse the causuality and ask what type of disputes called into existence extra-personal resolution?
Now the answer seems stright-forward, disputes which are extra-personal to begin with. Disputes arising from contradictions of the social relations they find themselves, social relations which are not open to conscious change but imposed on the person by virtue of the general relations of general production (no particular mode being referred to)."
Nice try. The cause of disputes needing litigation cannot be said to be "external" nor "imposed on the person by...the general relations of...production." Take the recent example of the killer dogs in San Francisco. From the point of view of the dog owners, their Presa Canarios were nice family pets that maybe had a naughty streak and their neighbors were just pain-in-the-ass lesbians, one of whom happened to make their dogs go crazy and got killed in a freak occurrence. From the point of view of the decedent's partner and family, the dog owners were irresponsible freaks who kept killer dogs for their appalling nazi jailbird client/friend. The two positions are utterly irreconcilable.
People will have dogs that bite under communism, too.
"Amongst the tribal relations where people are born into these relations and express them as "person", sometimes eloborate means are used not because the conflict is personal (directly involving only those in direct dispute) but precisely beause others are indirectly part of the dispute - in fact because the dispute is social and not personal at all."
Tribal relations have proved vastly inadequate to deal with disputes. We all know from personal experience that disputes within a family are often intractable and irresolvable. It is doubly problematic to try and extend that dynamic to disputes among strangers.
"Communism means nothing at all (that is full communism) unless social relations also become conscious relations, unless a dispute is seen for what it is and not for what it represents. This of course does not mean that every individual is consciously aware of all that takes place (this would be impossible) but rather that the relations established are fully human and lack the force of unconscious relations. Disputes will arise because the factors involved are not always conscious, but this is different to them being necessarily unconscious as in previous modes of production."
What you're saying is that all possible parties to disputes must look on themselves reasonably and in a social context the way a jury, for example, is meant to look on them. Forget it. People get into disputes because they see the world from their own perspective and this is not going to change.
Schofield writes:
"Lets assume a complex dispute involving lots of people under full communism, a dispute where most of the participants (or all) are completely unconscious of the underlying problems which have caused the conflict."
Exactly and you've identified the problem. The people cannot see themselves from outside themselves and, frankly, even if they did they might not agree what it is they see.
G.S. :"In our society this requires a resolution to be imposed."
Not so fast. The resolution is arrived at after the event has been analyzed according to legal principles. This is a serious and useful system and nothing to be waved away.
G.S. : "The imposition has little to do with the actual causes, but with the relations involved which consciously can only be percieved as "rights" standing somehow above the dispute and through which it must be resolved. "Rights" exist as a necessary expression of what cannot be properly expressed, those relations which unconsciously make a "right" of some aspect of being. This is what Marx had in mind, "rights" as an exclusion of others, "rights" expressed as an abstract action of unconscious relations and hence seen as standing above actual beings, as something of a God."
Wrong, rights are not a God, but the basis of a hierarchical, ethical methodology of analyzing a situation. We first ask whether the most important rights have been violated and proceed from there.
G.S.: "Take away the necessity of unconscious relations (they can still exist and will but they are no longer necessary) and the need for "rights" dissappears"
Again, nice try, but no. Each individual cannot be expected to understand or admit to his larger social role. His fellow citizens will inevitably be called on to adjudicate some dispute and that adjudication must be done on the basis of rights and laws - whether you want to call them that or not.
G.S.: "(until then, and in dispute with some high handed expressions about rights they are of course a necessary and important thing)."
Until then and ever after. What's wrong with rights and laws? Rights and laws as such don't oppress anybody. Lawlessness, on the other hand, is uniformly oppressive.
Greg
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Greg Schofield Perth Australia g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ Modular And Integrated Design - programing power for all
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