> CB: Why don't you think Marxist ideology will ever be the sort of force it
was once ?
andie:I've explained. Kells, is my paper still on your website? Whats' the
link? It's not long, about 20 pp in typescript.
CB: Until I get the website, are there three or four main reasons ?
>
>
> andie: we agree, I think on this, that many if not all of these awful
> things you mention are due to capitalism, not to lib dem. Recall taht I
> define lib dem as" universal suffrage, competitive elections, and extensive
> civil and political liberties. It's hard to see hwo any of those, or all in
> combination, leads to world wars, etc.
> > CB: I think your definition of "liberal democracy" must add an
> exclusionary clause: "absence of capitalism". It is the capitalism in
> liberal democracy that leads to world wars and wars.
andie: Hmm. the world wars (I & II) were started by autocracies or
dictatorships
> (Germany, Austro-Huna=gary in WWI,
CB: Germany had universal (?)suffrage, competitive elections, and civil and political rights before WWI, no ? On the other hand, the US. had non-universal suffrage, competitive elections or extensive political and civil rights for Black people or Native Americans or Mexican or Chinese Americans, no vote for women, so less than half suffrage ; no first amendment rights for opponents of war (i.e. when first amendment rights really count they didn't exist), , no exclusionary clause to enforce the Fourth Amendment,
no appointed lawyers for the poor, etc. Point being was WWI really started by a less liberal democratic nation or a more liberal democratic nation ?
andie: Germany, Japan & fascist Italy WWII). Of course liberal capiatlsit
democracies
> played a role in the competition for empire that lead to those wars.
CB: What is your theory of the causal connection between the lack of liberal democracy in Germany, Japan & Italy and the war ? I would still say it was the capitalism of these nations that "had" motives for war.
See all the wars before and since WWI and WWII. Liberal democracies have no particular aversion to war.
> CB: Further, we see in the actual history of liberal democracy, even in
the 20th
> Century, that capitalism undermines the democracy had through universal
> suffrage, competitive elections , rights.
andie: Agreed, one more reason I'm a socialist. But that doesn't go tow
hether it's lib dem
> or capitalsim that is the main cause of the things we both abhor.
>
> CB: I don't think universal suffrage, competitive elections and extensive
> political and civil rights are the cause of the things we both abhor. I
> think capitalism is, and that really you can't have truly effective
> universal suffrage, truly competitive elections or extensive political and
> civil rights with capitalism. You get sham and increasingly sham, totally
> phony versions of these. Witness the U.S. history of a variety of
> subversion and corruption of all of these, of a perfection of shams of all
> of these. Paper rights that are undermined in fact in many ways. The
> corporations are "state" powers as much as the governments, and they are
> not bound by the Bill of Rights. This is a major way in which
> Constitutional rights are made hollow, phony. Look at the trend of the U.S.
> Supreme Court decisions which is going backward in regard to rights, after
> 200 plus years of liberal democracy. Democacy is degenerating here. Almost
> everyday in court I see some way in which we don't really have the rights
> declared on paper. I don't know as many details for other liberal
> democracies, but I suspect the same.
> Everybody wants "democracy", but if and when the People really have gotten
> and get Power, it is not clear that their initial rule might not be
> infinitely more angry and harsh and vengeful ( "irrational" even) than we
> of the scribbling class ( and I include myself in that) have in our
> paternalism dared imagined. Perhaps Marx knew this when he formulated the
> "revolutionary _dictatorship_ of the proletariat".
>
> >>As Hal Draper has documented at tedious length, that is not what Marx
> meant.
>
> >CB: I''ve read quite a few of Marx's documents, and I don't know if Draper
> wins the argument. Marx seems to anticipate quite a bit of violence in
> revolution.
andie: Read Draper. He doesn't deny that Marx thought revolution would be
violent, but he
> does argue with a great deal of detail that he didn't mean by "dictatorship"
> anything like what we mean by it, namely (as Lenin put it) a rule
> unconstrained by any law and resting on sheer force.
CB: I never read that in Lenin. This seems an inaccurate statement of Lenin's descripton of the dictatorship of the proletariat. He was a drafter of the Soviet Constitution. Why do that if the dictatorship of the proletariat was unconstrained by any law ? It would rest on the force which is the idea of working class rule gripping the working class, i.e. democracy, the working class as the ruling class ( That's Marx and Engels saying that).
I read some Draper when I tried to join Solidarity. I might look again, but I'm not likely to be convinced that Lenin was not an accurate extender of Marx.
>
> >>And if it were, I'd oppose it. I think it is silly to say that it is
> paternalist to oppose a vengeful bloodbath in in oneself and one's children
> may be murdered. If you really think that is what we are in for, explain to
> me why progressive intellectuals should support this?
>
> ^^^^^^^
> CB: For one, we might avoid being murdered by not trying to lead the Party
> of the Revolution, or accepting lesser roles than top leaders. This might
> be good advice for people like us if the revo was coming, but if it's
> likely to be a murderous bloodbath directed especially at the likes of me,
> why shouldn't I do everything in my power to stop it from coming? > In
> general, the idea would be to learn from the first socialist revolutions
> and do better the next time. The challenge would be to truly become
> intellectuals organic with the working classes.
> andie: We all must try to do better the next time around, but one can't
> _become_ an organic (in Gramsci's sense) working class intellectual.
CB: Why not ? We can all improve, learn, do better, change, develop,evolve.
People like us from middle class backgrounds with lots oif higher education
are
> not goping to fit organically into the proletariat.
CB: We have the examples of Gramsci, Lenin. Depends in part on whether we went into our higher education training with a notion of "giving back" to our communities.
My group, Solidarity, has a lot of folks who have "industrialized" or become
auto
> workers, truck drivers and the like -- the idea was that this would promote
> working class radicalism by helping the workers organize their own
> struggles from below. Well, it hasn't beena total flop, people have done
> good work in TDU, New Directions in AUto,a nd the like, but people like
> Mike Parker, autoworkers who went to college and write books, are still
> industruialized intellectuals, not organic memberrs of the proletariat. And
> for me, I fear, that's hopeless. Besides, why do you think that being
> autoworkers will keep us safe from the vengeance of the people?
CB: Teachers in working class schools, legal services lawyers for the poor, party members in clubs with workers, cabaret fans and partyers. I don't know. Most of my friends are working class. I actually don't think colonizing was all bad or as you say, not all a failure. Dave Sole , Jerry Goldberg of WWP. But there is also, having a "middle class" occupation , but with working class "clients". Workers expect one to use one's education.
Anyway, I hope I was too dramatic on the level of venegence "next time" . Afterall, today, autoworkers consider themselves middle class in the U.S. But , we should still be conscious of some level of class resentment. That's the less dramatic lesson that may be hidden if we put too much of "Stalinism" on Stalin as an individual. He was probably a very successful organic intellectual , frankly -A middle classer who was able to hang with the workers and peasants, in a middle class not '"colonizing" role. "Stalinism" was a social not individual phenomenon.
>
> jks
>
>
> For another, the bourgeoisie are going to continually perpetrate bloodbaths
> if they aren't overthrown (see my synopsis of liberal history earlier) So,
> we may be between a historical rock and hard place.
>
>
>
>
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