(the title was: Re: [PEN-L:7894] Re: Re: Galbraith: schizophrenic apologist?) Michael Keaney wrote: >More generally, this demarcation of intellectuals and the masses is not very helpful.< I was pointing to the demarcation as being in Galbraith, not one that I was applying. However, let's apply it. >As if intellectuals should be apologetic for being so, wear sackcloth and ashes, or should somehow defer as a matter of course to the masses.< No, intellectuals shouldn't be apologetic for being such or always deferential to the "masses" (though it's good to be polite and to avoid talking down to people or dwelling on mandarin jargon). But democracy -- which, if I remember correctly, is a socialist ideal -- involves popular sovereignty, which means that the "masses" are the ultimate decision-makers, even if they hire intellectuals to make everyday decisions for them. In this view, intellectuals should argue with the "masses" to try to get their view across (since there's no automatic guarantee that the "masses" know what's best for themselves), but shouldn't impose their perspective (by force or guile) unless absolutely necessary. Advocates of technocracy or the rule by experts see the replacement of capitalist rule as almost automatically leading to benefits to the "masses." They seem to forget that power corrupts. >... What was Mao if not an intellectual? And so what if his image is somehow improved by his plowing the fields. < The problem with Mao was not that he was an intellectual, but that he was a dictator. Maybe having a dictatorship of experts (the CP and the state bureaucracy) was the only available way that China could develop its national economy given the objective conditions it faced, but that doesn't mean we should see dictatorship as the only way to run human society or an ideal to strive for. >... In a technologically developed society such as the one we have now, and would have were socialism suddenly to take the place of capitalism, a division of labour is inherent. Therefore there are going to be rulers and the ruled. The question is really about democracy and accountability.< The idea that capitalism is somehow going to be suddenly replaced by socialism is totally unrealistic. Even a severe economic and social crisis does not automatically cause that kind of replacement. After all, as Luxemburg pointed out, there's always the possibility of barbarism (Bonapartism, Mussolini, Hitler, etc., etc.) And we can add the possibility of "socialist barbarism" (Pol Pot). A socio-economic crisis represents only an _opportunity_ for socialism to replace capitalism. To realize that possibility, we need a democratic grass-roots mass movement of workers and other oppressed populations, the sort of counter-hegemony that Gramsci wrote about. In that type of movement, as with the European social-democratic parties before World War I, there's a continuous process of collective self-education, which helps undermine the division of labor between the thinkers and the doers even before socialism arises. This in turn helps undermine the division between the rulers and the ruled, allowing the flowering of democracy. It also represents a movement of people away from being mere "masses" toward being a class for itself, collectively self-liberating. >Galbraith's technocracy, and Veblen's, is inadequate because there is the assumption that the technocrats will be guided by rational and altruistic ends, a forlorn hope. As for the Party leadership, and those in any position of power, they require the greatest transparency and accountability of all. Would I trust myself if I were President of the United States? < You're absolutely right (especially since you here agree with what I said above ;-) ). In order to keep the technocrats or Party accountable and honest, the mass movement I referred to above is absolutely necessary. It's only the "power of the people" that can insure that the technocrats and Party leaders aren't corrupted by power. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
