Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 16:34:43 +0000 From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com> Subject: Re: liberal democracy
Substanbtive equalkity means the resources, conditions, and effective power to exercise those rights in a manner that is righly equal in efficacy to anybody else.
Tahir: Well this doesn't say very much about the kind of human community in which this is possible. Even acepting your rather vague definition, I can't see how the liberal conception of freedom could bring this about. "Those rights" above refers to equality before the law. Now you say that you should somehow have the resources, etc. to exercise your legal rights. But it is the law that prevents anyone from gaining the resources etc. that are equal to everyone else's. I'm not any sort of legal expert, but I do think I know that the institutions of law were created in the first place largely to safeguard private property, i.e. existing private property. Very funny, you start with the law and then say that we must all get the resources etc. to become efficaciously equal before the law. Weird and confused.
>Tahir: Well whether I have anything better is not the point.
It certainly is. No one, starting with me, will think you area nything but a total crank if you say that liberal dsemocracy should be transcended, presumably by something better, but you have no clue what. That is equivalent to saying that it shoulkd bot be transcenhded. I am perfectly willing to say that if sometrhing better comes along, I'll jump on it. But before I give up what we've fought and died for, I want to have a rational basis to think that it' for somrething better.
Tahir: You know what I am arguing for and that is communism. I have also mentioned that I regard this as commensurate with Hegel's notion of absolute ethical life. This cannot be achieved on the basis of of a (legal or moral) system that recognises only the freedom of the autonomous subject. This is liberal democracy. There has to be a recognition (I use this word advisedly) of a single human substance, which for me is an ethical one, which can not be re-cognised by taking as a starting point (i.e. as an unconditioned) the individual subject of morality and law. I think on even a moderate and open leftist list such as this one, the onus is on you to show that your substantive notion of equality (which apparently would involve massive redistribution of resources and prevention of capital accummulation such that the power of one would not overwhelm the "rights" of another) is compatible with liberalism. You've done nothing in any of your posts to make that argument.
Yeah, well I say thesame thing about alternatives to capitalism. I am a market socialist and not a communist because I think that there are good arguments that MS would be better and communism would not. Of course this goes hand in hand with a critique of capitalism.
Tahir: Again the only way that this could become interesting on a leftist list is if you are prepared to explain: e.g. You have a critique of capitalism, you say. But you are in favour of the market. So you are in favour of money, the wage relation, the dominance of commodity exchange, the accumulation of capital. No? Please tell me where this is critical of capitalism; I'm not seeing it yet. What is this socialism and how would it come about through your beloved liberal democracy?
>My critique of liberal democracy was in that same spirit, not because I
>was comparing it point for point with some blueprint that I have up my
>sleeve.
We don't need a "blueprint," a detailed account of how to engage in institutional reconstruction, a constitution and law code for an alternative society. We need a description of the main features of the alternative that isarticulatedenough to answer obvious questions people will have about what it is better.
Tahir: OK in a nutshell: A human community in which people give freely of their creative and productive powers and share the product equally freely. This would be an ethical society (one based on what I've called recognition) rather than one based on morality or law. This is obviously tied up with consciousness, and that is why I cannot go with imposition of "socialism" by state repression or by propaganda. That leads to either brute force or moralistic preaching: "Thou shalt" or "Thou ought..." Marx rightly saw foreshadowings of this non-governed and non-legal community in primitive societies, but without the consciousness that history has made possible and without the possiblity of escaping the thrall of brute natural force.
>Your points above are all about an obviously deep satisfaction with the
>institutions of liberal democracy,
Yes and no. I think that in principles, these thinhgs are all great. Univerasl suffrage? What's the alternative? Who would you exclude from voting? Representative govt? Well, the alternativesa re direct democracy,w hich won't work in a large society and would take too much time, or dictatorship or oligarchy. Competitive elections for represemnattive psoitions are a sine qa non--or are you a fan of one party states? Maybe no party states? But is that realistic? Exntensiuve civil and poolitiocal liberties--well, you're obviosuly notw ith Charles in his advocacy of repression, so aren't you for this?
Tahir: Justin, you're defining the alternatives without any reference here to marxism or communism, despite everything that's gone before. You know I'm not advocating a state of any kind, nor am I supporting either democracy as we know it or a regression to some sort of pre-democratic polity or whatever. You won't give me tha range of alternatives to choose from and I will use my own words, because I'm enough of a poetic linguist to know that without the creative use of language the future is impossible to imagine.
At the same time, I don't think I could have been more clear that the realization of these values in capitalist society is deepky disappointing because of the class structure, the power of money, the corruption and cynicism. I am a Chicago lawyer, what I haven't encountered in the way of the corruption of democracy is is being developed here. So am am I rosy-eyed? I think not.
Tahir: Perhaps not, but I have seen nothing in any of your arguments to show that you want anything really except just more of the same. You want to be the forever good guy fighting the forces of evil in the courtroom, defending the ungrateful marxists, etc. etc., deeply cynical, but still romantic enough to believe that these values on which the system is based still have some meaning, etc. etc. Did you consume a lot of Raymond Chandler novels at an impressionable age?
> which is one of the two main political expressions of capitalism (see below). I fail to see how they can be compatible with substantive equality.
I don't see why we can't have public ownership of productive assets, workers' control of production, and also the institutional structures I described. Besides, I cannot imagine acceptable alternatives. Now it's your turn. Tell me what you mean by substantive equality and why it is inconsistent with liberal democracy.
Tahir: Because the contradiction is in your formulation right here. Remember that I said that liberal democracy is one of the two main political expressions of capitalism, the other being rightwing dictatorship. Now you propose public ownership, worker's control etc. and you want to bring this about through the institutions of liberal democracy, presumably by voting in a radical social democratic party. But long before that party gets into the hot seat and starts expropriating property and giving control to workers etc. (what's liberal about that I don't know) it will be swept aside by the real economic powers that be, who will have absolutely no intention of having their property made "public" or giving "control" to workers. Liberal democracy is only there when the masses can be persuaded to consent to the rule of the ruling class; when they don't consent liberal democracy goes out of the window.
I didn't say MINIMAL govt, nightwatchman state, I'm not a Locke-Nozick libertarian. I said LIMITED government, basically that the govt must be given specific powers by the people, and the people have a lot of rights against the govt, free speech and the like. How does that promote capitalism?
Tahir: Oh Justin where does one even begin!
>This is quite different to the communist idea of NO government within a
>communal society.
A total fantasy, completely impossiible in a complex modsern society.
Tahir: Your dogmatic statement confuses government with organisation. There's also lots more that could be said here about the sustainability of what you call "complex modern society", but let's leave that for now. If by "complex modern society" you mean industrial capitalist society, as I suspect, then of course it needs government, lots of it. In fact it's a world with heavily policed borders and couldn't be otherwise.
>I think that there can still be some progressive content in democracy, in
>areas that you mention such as free press, freedom of association, etc.
>where these are still absent.
That's big of you.
Tahir: Don't get it.
>
>the core elements of liberal democracy:
>competitive elections, universal suffrage, representative government, and
>extensive civil and political liberties, it is difficult for me to imagine
>a
>change that is also an improvement. Maybe that is a failure of my
>imagination. Please enlighten me. I am not being sarcastic.
>
>Tahir: look the critique comes down to this: they are about freedom to
>exploit.
Huh? I thought they were about the roughly equal ability of every person to participate in self government, to have a say in decisions about policies that affect everyone, ands to be prorecteda gainst the government if it gets oppressive.
Tahir: No, that is the external ideological veneer. As I've said, it's about capitalism and the people's consent to being ruled. As soon as the surface of that consent begins to ripple out comes the jackboot.
That is unlike, for example,a right to private property in productive assets. You have NOT explained how lib dem is connected, except externally, contingently, and historically, to capitalism.
Tahir: Well first of all "contingently" and "historically" are not even roughly synonymous as you appear to be suggesting. If you stick to folkloric formulations like "accidents of history" as your main sources of philosophical understanding you will regard it as some sort of coincidence that modern forms of governance and politics arose simulstaneously with capitalism. But I think I've done enough in the above to show that liberalism is only one political expression of capitalism and if the ruling class is threatened by insubordination it gives way to something else pretty quickly. Let's not forget where the real power lies and that liberalism is only ONE expression of capitalism. As such it can hardly be the vehicle to something beyond capitalism.
Now Justin, without wanting to be arrogant, I really will only continue with this if you can take the discussion to a slightly higher level than what you've done so far.