>>> hooverm at scc-fl.edu 05/10/06 3:16 PM >>>
>>> cbrown at michiganlegal.org 05/08/06 12:22 PM >>>
That democracy is a contradiction of democracy and dictatorship jumps
out at
one in the classical Marxist writings on same. Marx and Engels
anticipate
real democracy as the working classes as the ruling class,and that
ruling is
not anticipated to be all nice. For Marx, the _dictatorship_ of the
proletariat is the highest form of democracy. Engels and Lenin, in
analyzing
the state, emphasize that democracy is still a state, that is, has
still a
repressive apparatus, standing bodies of armed personnel, prisons.
People
may have heard of the notion of the state whithering away in Marxist
theory.
However, when the state whithers away that is no longer democracy in
this
theory. For Marx, the advanced phase of communism does not have
democracy,
because in it the state has whithered away.
<<<<<>>>>>
Marx asks, in *Critique of the Gotha Programme*, 'what transformation will the state undergo in commumnist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions?'...
there are four basic/general functions of the modern state: minimum of security and order, mediation among conflicting interests, regulation and coordination of basic activitites, repression...it is the last of these which makes the state an instrument of class rule, while the others are socially necessary common activities...as coercive power disappears, the separation of state and civil society, and the necessity of bureaucratic control would be eliminated...social decisions and administrative functions would come under the domain of democratic organization...Marx states, in *The Conspectus of Bakunin's State and Anarchy*, 'when class rule has disappeared a state in the now accepted political sense of the word no longer exists'...
is a stateless society as utopian as many have been led to believe?...no, because it would mean transformation from a bureaucratic society to a participatory one...active participation and dialogue - not simply voting for political representativves - would mark the determination of basic goals, short and long range planning, and responsibility for their achievement...
in above sense, the immediate post-capitalist period would allow society to begin to take over functions previously performed by the political state...characterized by radical changes in structure, personnel, and methods of operation, transfer of power (seizure of power by?) to workers would begin to 'restore to the social body all forces hitherto absorbed by the state parasite feeding upon, and clogging the free movement of society' (*Civil War in France*)
I do not profess to any specific knowledge about how we get from now to then, nor do I have any special insight as to how we might specifically apply the above general framework...but then Marx cautioned against - and refrained from - writing 'cookbooks of the future' (something about which Carrol periodically reminds us)...perhaps Gramsci's notion of 'prefigurative' institutions/organizations can be of help, as Marx himself noted, 'workers must establish their own revolutionary government, whether in the form of municipal committes and municipal councils or workers' clubs and workers' councils' (*Address to the Communist League*)... Michael Hoover
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