David wrote:
> A constant feature of this discussion seems to be the relegation of all
> "socialism" to that of its exponents in underdeveloped, isolated countries.
Joe: Rubbish. In the e-mail you are replying to I never referred to a single underdeveloped or isolated country. It would be nice if you would refer
to what I actually said instead of putting words in my mouth.
David: Calm down, Joe. I wasn't referring to what you said in particular. Maybe I misunderstood what you meant when you referred to "authoritarian socialism" above. Did you mean actual attempts at socialism or did you just mean the notion of socialism in the abstract? And what did you mean by "Marxist-Leninism"? This was a terminology specifically invented by the Stalinists in opposition to the "Trotskyists" who they expelled.
David wrote:
> . Socialism fails and becomes degraded in the less advanced countries
because
> the material conditions for socialism, along with a larger international
> revolutionary movement, do not exist. Socialist revolution can only become
> successful when it reaches the economically most advanced countries, where
> capital is concentrated.
Joe: Considering that the vast majority of real-life socialist societies have been pre-industrial I think it's pretty absurd to claim that you must have industrialization before you can have socialism.
David: But, what I am saying is that there have never been any "real-life socialist societies." The Soviet Union was basically a state-capitalist society. I do not agree with Stalin that the Soviet Union was truly "socialist" in any sense of the term. Lenin said, and wrote over and over again that socialism was impossible in one country. If the Soviet Union was socialist, it would have been able to create the situations necessary for an end to the monetary system, and end of markets, and an abolishment of private property.<A HREF="mailto:Dddddd0814 at aol.com%3FSubject=Re:%20war%20and%20the%20state%20(was%20milton,%20etc.)">
</A>Joe: No one is putting oneself beyond the notion of power itself, except perhaps some Marxists. I'm seeking to understand power; Engel's essay obscures that understanding by pretending two very different things are the same. Engel's essay is wrong because it misunderstands (probably deliberately) what anti-authoritarians mean by authority.
David: As someone else on here wrote recently, the question is not over whether or not the term "authority" has this or that definition, but on how authority is really going to go away. This is silly, because I think we are both agreeing that progressive movements and reactionary states are fundamentally different things.
David wrote:
> But, even in the example of a woman using pepper spray, the issue of
power is
> still there. When a woman defends herself by pepper spraying her
attacker,
> she is taking power away from the attacker, weakening him, and
putting power
> into her own hands. Taking control of the situation, exercising
authority
> over her attacker. We can use whatever words we want to describe
them, but
> the same thing's going on. It's a situation where "authority" and
"control"
> are actually worthwhile, progressive things.
Joe: Once again you, like Engels, are attempting to obscure the difference between two very different things. There's a huge difference between having power over another (authority) and other power relations. The refusal of those on the bottom of the hierarchy to obey authority is not authority, it is a rebellion against authority.
David: But how does this rebellion occur? It doesn't occur by simply refusal, disagreement, or abstract negation of terms. It occurs by people physically taking power into their own hands. Maybe you'd prefer to call this "autonomy"?
David wrote:
> If we really wanted an end to *all* authority and control immediately, just
> for the sake of eliminating them, we'd have to advocate women stop
defending
> themselves from attackers, African Americans stop defending themselves from
> the cops, workers stop organizing against the bourgeoisie!
Joe: This of course is standard Marxist word magic, with little relation to what anti-authoritarians mean by the term authority. To illustrate the fallacy behind this, let's take an example. Say someone responded to your call for the abolition of capitalism by defining capitalism as "production of stuff." This person then proceeds to defend capitalism by pointing out that we have to produce stuff to survive - otherwise we'll starve. This is then taken as a vindication of capitalism. The fallacy in such an arguement should be obvious to any socialist - the manipulation of the term 'capitalism' allows him to obscure social relations and avoid the socialist critique of capitalism. You (and Engels) do the same thing with the term authority.
David: I'm having trouble understand this paragraph. Is the interlocutor someone who or agrees or disagrees with socialism, or....? Anyway, I think what I was trying to say, from a socialist perspective, was that "authority" necessarily has a class nature to it-- i.e., it is not a classless term. There is bourgeois authority and there is proletarian authority. There is nothing inherently "authoritarian" or "anti-authoritarian" about the proletariat, or any oppressed group of people for that matter. But, whether or not we agree to refer to both things as "authority," I think we DO agree that the class in power represents fundamentally different things, and acts in different way, from the class NOT in power. What do you think?
-- David
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