Gar Lipow wrote:
> There are a few people who have come up with answers -- including Robin
> Hahnels and Michael Albert's Parecon scheme. However whenever it is
> brought up we get into an endless loop of argument.
This maillist constitutes a self-appointed Board of Experts. Now political
activity always emerges from such self-appointed committees, but those committees
always arise from prior political activity and are held to a de facto
responsibility to a broader constituency by that constituencies acting or not
acting. That is, if the self-appointed committee's proposals don't make sense, no
one comes to the picket line or the forum or the rally. Such an artificial
Self-Appointed Board of Experts as this list (or any other maillist) can have
reasonably intelligent arguments over description and analysis of capitalism as it
now exists, over various forms of resistance to capitalist power at various
levels, and about political strategy and tactics. That is mostly because most of
us have come to the list from a history of trying to make sense of struggles we at
some point found ourselves involved in, and there is also a goodly scattering of
self-appointed representatives of the kinds of constituencies that the left must
at the present stage appeal to.
But to talk about a socialist society in the abstract turns us into the kind of
Committee that allegedly created the camel. Hahnels and Albert strike me as such
a committee. And from a post I just read quoting David McReynold's views, as
quoted in a post from Michael Hoover, show what I mean:
> The day before, on Wisconsin Public Radio's Conversations with Tom
> Clark, McReynolds critiqued the corporate system. "The problem is,
> corporations do not have a conscience," he explained. The push to
> make a profit leads to the mistreatment of workers, the befouling
> of the environment, and a dangerous foreign policy, he said. He
> also denounced intolerable social problems that our society
> tolerates--like poverty and a racially imbalanced prison system
> that now houses a quarter of the world's inmates.
>
> McReynolds and the socialists have a solution. "Vast corporate
> structures" should be placed "under social ownership," he said
> when he announced that he would seek the Socialist Party
> nomination for President.
> But McReynolds does not hold that the state should take over large
> corporations. Rather, he supports worker control and advocates
> putting large corporations, particularly the Fortune 500, into
> local, community hands.
>
> As for small businesses, says McReynolds, "That's the spice of
> American life. We are not interested in abolishing small business.
> The enemy of small business is not the Socialist Party. The real
> enemy of small business is, in fact, the corporate structure."
>
The post had earlier described a TV studio audience cheering at McReynold's
descriptions of the world as it now exists. And McReynolds obviously has (from a
lifetime's experience) important things to say about political organizing. But as
soon as he begins to speak of the world as he would *eventually* want it to be,
all he can produce is a camel. Anyone who believes this horseshit about small
business really should read Upton Sinclair's *The Brass Check*.
And anyone who tries to map out how *either* workers *or* the state would
socialize IBM or General Motors (should the latter even exist?) is off in cloud
cuckoo land. How many workers? Fifty percent plus 1? 75%? How do we persuade
workers that they should run GM? What kind of organization among workers exists
at the moment when it becomes possible for them to socialize GM? How are relations
among GM plants and GM suppliers scattered here and there over the nation to be
arranged? If we are doing this in a democratic context (having, which is
impossible but we are playing games here so we can pretend, chosen socialism
electorally), how are the workers going to handle the many death squads which
would clearly be operative? How much property has been destroyed during the many
rallies/police riots which, under the most peaceful imaginable socialist
tranasformation, would certainly take place? How are the workers in one of those
local businesses going to think about continuing to work for someone who has
contributed thousands to the organizations of squads who have been murdering
socialist and union organizers?
By the time this magical transformation comes about, what will be the housing
conditions in the U.S.? Will we somehow have arrived at integrated housing by that
time so there won't be the terrible problem of finding good housing AT ONCE for
the residents of the slums and housing projects?
It is insane hubris to think that anyone can even begin to think out answers to
these questions (or even draw up a partially adequate list of such questions)
except within the context of a mass movement with experience in struggle behind it
which is *nearing* the actual seizure of power.
The most important book in English for leftists to read is *Fanshen*. Reading it
you will discover how incredibly complex, in a context almost infinitely less
complex than in a developed capitalist nation, is the process of even *beginning*
to transform social relations -- even when the revolution has *already* achieved
military control.
Carrol
