>
> > In general , the liberal and skeptical attacks on Marxism as dogmatic
>
>Not mine!
>
>^^^^^^^^
>
>CB: You have no dogmas ?
I didn't say that. I said I don't atatck Marx as dogmatic, or even Marxism. Some Marxists, yes.
>You seem to subscribe to a lot of liberal dogma. What's your list ?
>Elections, civil liberties, etc. That's liberal dogma,no ? I thought you
>were comfortable with your liberalism. Surely, it is dogma.
Oh, yes. AS I have recently said here, I think think this list is seriously open to challenge. I'm pretty dogmatic about it.
>The notion of the permanence of the state, that we discuss below, is
>liberal dogma.
ABout this I am more open to argument.
>
> >CB: On this you should acknowledge more often than you do that your
> >liberal ideology contemplates the need for permanent repression and use
>of
> >force and Marxism does not.
>CB: No , I was thinking specifically of your claim that I am a " fan of
>repression". I was expounding Marxism when you made that claim, so it
>seemed an effort on your part to distinguish your views as less repressive
>than Marxism.
I was specifically discussing your advocacy of repression of speech you disapprove of, which, as I read Marx, is foreign to his thought. He was an ardent fan of free speech, wrote an article decying censorship, said the police should be divested of political functions.
>
>Then there are your assertions from time to time in the vein that "rights"
>are alien to Marx, combined with your emphasis that you are very much for
>your list of liberal rights.
But Marx does have nothing but contempt for rights talk, calls it "shit" (Dreck). He has a very sophisticated critique of it, which I have posted here, in my brief analysis, pretty recentlt.
> This seems to be your effort to be a socialist but with a large dose of liberal "rights" thrown in to cover Marx's rights/repression deficiency.
Well, you may not be impressed by my effort to be a socialist, but it certainly impressed by former coleagues at the Ohio State philosophy dept! And my insistence on liberal rights is not to make up for a repressive deficiency in Marx, but bevcause I think they are good things that we ought not to try to trabscend.
>
>And you must be kidding when you above try to make Marx out to be a
>liberal. "The dictatorship of the proletariat" is about as anti-liberal of
>a concept as can be formulated.
>
No, I didn't say Marx was a liberal. But he is opposed to repression, and in
that respect closer to liberals than to Bolsheviks.
>
>I think that traditional Marxist ideas about doingw ith the state and law
>are a pipe dream.
>
>^^^^^^^^
>
>CB: Law and the state have not always existed.
TRue, but where they did not you have either Hobbesean chaos, as in modern Somalia, or small homogeneous societies where trust is enough.
>
>Why is it a pipe dream ? Because criminality is in some people's genes, or
>is natural in some sense ?
Criminality is the least of our problems. I think there will alwys be some crooks, but you're a lawyer, Charles, you know most of the law is not about crime. It's about transactions--contracts, wills, and the like--and about solving disputes peaceable and esatblishing regular expectations.
> Why cannot the necessity for standing bodies of armed personnel, the
>state, be overcome by humans ? What is your anthropological theory and
>evidence on that ?
It's reductive to view the state as centrally the army and the cops. I am a state employee, so are you, neither of us have anything to do with guns. The state is about administration. Socialism will require more rather than less administration. In limit cases, the administrative and legislative decisions may require coercion to enforce them, but this would hopefully be less important if we did not have great inequalities. It's rare enough now.
>
>
> Gramsci's theory does not contradict the Engels theory on this issue.
>Gramsci just puts another layer between the repressive apparatus and the
>oppressed class. Gramsci's position is not that hegemony would work without
>the repressive apparatus as the ultimate bulwark against overthrow of the
>ruling class.
That is correct, but I don't see how it helps defend your view. You still confuse "ultimate bulwark" with "central essence." Coercion is small if important part of the business of the state, that's GFamsci's point.
>All of the law involves disputes that, although, it usually doesn't come to
>the police, courts would soon have very little business if there wasn't the
>police backing it up. There is a reason that the sheriff deputy or
>marshalls are in court rooms in civil cases. Another example is that
>Sheriffs carryout evictions. Very few people would agree to the custody or
>property orders of a court in a divorce that went against what they wanted.
> The police are right there beneath the surface in almost all civil
>matters. They are obviously very much there in criminal matters.
So how are these disputes to be resolved peacably if there si not a uniform, final, and definitive way of solving them, backed up in the last resort, which is rarely invoked, by the sheriff?
>
>CB: The problem is you want to also claim that even though you are not a
>Marxist , you have a more "nuanced" and "complex" i.e. accurate
>understanding of Marx than those who are Marxists. This is a recurrent
>sort of sophitry in these discussions on these issues.
Depends on the Marxist! I don't claijm to have a more nuanced view than, say Ralph Miliband, with whom I largely agree on the interpretation of Marx (and most other things).
>
>
>CB: Actually, Hegel was weak on the state, rights and law, as Marx
>critiqued.
Well, Marx idenbtified weaknesses in Hegel's thought, but he missed many of the strengths.
> He is also weak in his anthropology, because in smaller societies there was a lot more reflection than was realized in Hegel's day. The key "diverse interests" that give rise to this change are those between exploiting and exploited classes,
Hegel knew this, that is part of the point of the chapter on Master and Slave.
> which can only be settled by a state, which is literally the force behind the law. The force of law is the state. That's the formulation.
A reductionist and not terribly illuminating one for many purposes, I think.
>
>Socialism has to have socio-economic order, but not law. The Marxist idea
>is that humans can voluntarily conduct their economic business in an
>orderly manner. Human nature is capable of that. Marxism has a higher
>opinion of human nature than liberalism in this regard. This economic
>orderliness is the discipline, the mastery of necessity, in the
>Hegel/Engels sense, that is the premise for freedom.
But there have to be predictable rules that require enforcement, that is, law.
jks
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