[lbo-talk] Liberal Intellectuals and the Coordinator Class

Mike Ballard swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au
Wed Jul 11 18:52:03 PDT 2007


On 7/11/07, Mike Ballard <swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> A worldwide system of production needs coordinaton. This does not
> mean that coordinators cannot be delegated to do what the associated
> producers want them to do and to be subject to removal. The concept
> of "coordinator class" automatically assumes bureaucratic control of
> production/consumption a la the old USSR. A grassroots, democratic
> co:operative commonwealth is perfectly consistent with what Marx
> wrote about in terms of socialism.

Tayssir wrote in response:

Yes, Parecon explicitly adds ideas which are apparently lacking from Marxism. Parecon advocates claim that you can have nicely democratic systems, consistent with what famous 19th century philosophers like Marx claim, but still have strong institutional tendencies towards repressive authoritarianism and hierarchy. We can wish that the system will stay democratic, but will it? **************************

Marx and other members of the First International explicitly advocated a social revolution which would be the act of the class conscious workers themselves, not some bureaucratic institution, party or vanguard which stood above the workers themselves. This notion of the workers themselves being the revolutionaries and not some "class" of professional revos who would lead the "masses" to the new Jerusalem in upteen years of transitional "guidance", this concept was part and parcel of socialist thinking in the 19th Century as was the absolute necessity of abolishing the wage system. Such a tactical/strategic stance *assumes* a class conscious subject at its core. A society wide association of producers controlling an administration of things is what was the strategic goal. Thus, a grassroots democracy is what is being called for by Marx and others in the First International and this, IMO, precludes the necessity for bureaucracies i.e. groups of people who have *power over* their constituencies. Bureaucracies are made necessary by a division of labour which is grounded in the servitude of the "masses" (voluntary or involuntary) to the direction of the "bosses". The will to freedom of the individuals who make up "the masses" is/was something taken for granted in formulations like, "the revolution has to be the act of the workers themselves." Obviously, the memory of this stance was dropped down the "memory hole" within the socialist-communist movement since the early years of the 20th Century.

You also quoted Einstein's lucid observation of the problem of bureaucracy as it had developed in the socialist-communist movement in the 20th Century: *********** This is not new. In the first issue of Monthly Review back in 1949, a commentator (Einstein) asked:

"Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy

is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied

by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of

socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult

socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the

far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to

prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening?

How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a

democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?"

http://www.monthlyreview.org/598einst.htm

**************

Mike B)

An injury to one is an injury to all http://www.iww.org/

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