I substantially agree with what Wojtek said in response to my missive in this thread (locality ==> loyalty?). All I was saying is that one can't simply look at social geography. Class is also important, along with race and gender. I wrote > ... democracy is an end in itself, rather than being a means to an end. Democratic sovereignty seems the only legitimate political principle.< Max S. writes: >> Democratic sovereignty is an ideal, maybe a principle, but far too vague to mean very much in a practical context. I don't want to have a national assembly on whether my garbage is contracted out or provided by public employees. On the other hand, I don't want dictatorial control of, say, civil liberties.<< Of course, it's abstract, since principles always are. How democratic sovereignty (DS) works in practice has to be decided on a case-by-case basis using more information. But it's not especially vague. What DS means can best be seen in terms of the alternatives: it is a rejection the principle of "might makes right," even though in practice might does indeed make right (just as history is written by the victors). There is no moral basis to the rule of the mighty. DS is also not a Hobbesian principle where some individual or minority of individuals -- the sovereign Leviathan -- is seen as the decision-maker of last resort for society. The only justification of the power of the few is the conscious and active consent of the people; the decision-maker of last resort is the societal majority. It is also not a Locke-style principle where certain rights are asserted to be "natural" or god-given. Saying that something is "natural" does not necessarily mean it's good, while it's hard to know what is and is not a gift from the gods (assuming they exist). Usually, an argument that something should be a "right" ends up saying that it's good for people, for society. This seems nothing but an appeal to DS. In practice, rights in society are created by people; the issue is which people make the decisions about what rights exist and how such decisions are made. One thing is clear: DS is not the same thing as democratic decision-making about all absolutely all issues. Among other things, the societal majority will, in most cases, grant everyone certain rights (civil liberties, etc.) Democracy involves not only majority rule but minority rights. After all, individuals know that they can easily be in the minority. Put another way, the majority can benefit from civil liberties, directly and indirectly. Similarly, the societal majority (a national assembly) could easily decide that municipalities could make their own decisions about garbage collection. The full application of DS would, in my admittedly old-fashioned opinion, would involve the abolition of capitalism, so that the contracting out of garbage collection services to capitalist enterprises would be ruled out. I want to stress that the societal majority can easily make the wrong decisions (though it's hard to tell, since that majority's ability to make mistakes is so restricted and distorted by our current political-economic system). But in the end, they are the only ones who can decide whether or not these decisions are wrong. DS also says that a society should be able to learn from its errors rather than having some minority make mistakes for them. (As Luxemburg said, the mistakes of the mass movement of workers are worth more than the correct decisions of the elite.) Sure, I have my own moral standards and political views. But I cannot claim the right to stuff my own morality or politics down the throats of the majority. Rather, the aim is to educate and convince people, while pushing for a much less distorted method of the expression of popular sovereignty than capitalism allows. >> The issue was whether some kind of plant-level industrial democracy would necessarily make for more enlightened decisions in national planning, and my comment was that it is less rather than more likely.<< As I said, pure workers' control has to be compromised to fit in with a central plan, which itself must decided upon democratically. >>Even so, the fact that a democratic process could lead to a decision I don't like would not delegitimize the process for me. I wouldn't oppose workplace democracy in general. I simply have grave doubts that it would accomplish much, and even more that such an arrangement would facilitate economic planning. Decentralized, democratic deliberation seem to be the very opposite of the idea of a plan.... << That's because you're probably thinking of a "plan" as being the USSR-type. > Also, Max, it sure seems that your vison predicts that the Economic Policy Institute would be a collectively self-aggrandizing organization that would always be opportunistically taking advantage of others...< Rather than respond to the details of Max's comments, I want to clarify my point: the EPI contradicts the theory that all decentralized organizations are anti-social. >>I would be happy to write for the WT. I've done worse.<< If the WASHINGTON TIMES were to ask your organization to do research for them, I for one would worry about the soul of the EPI. MISCELLANEOUS COMMENTS: 1. Elaine: NAFTA may have been advertised as being only about trade, but in practice it's also about investment. 2. Colin mentions that capital goods aren't scarce in many cases. For fans of Roemer's theory of exploitation, R's theory would predict that capitalist exploitation wouldn't exist. His Walrasian theory can't deal with unused capacity or unemployment, two perfectly normal phenomena under capitalism. 3. Wojtek mentions the possibility of people using Communist Party organizations in Eastern Europe for their own purposes. He's right. A similar case: in Francoist Spain, the underground CP used the state-controlled corporatist unions as political organizing arenas. If I remember correctly, old Vlad the Impaler advocated the use of Tsarist company unions in a similar way. ("Vlad the Impaler" refers to Lenin, BTW.) 4. Gina Neff mentions the domination of pen-l by the "regs" (regulars). At my next meeting of Pen-l Anonymous, I will publically admit to being a reg -- maybe even the main one. Since I will be in Palm Springs anyway this weekend, I'll stop at the Betty Ford center. More seriously, I'll try not to dominate pen-l. The problem for me is that when I read pen-l missives, it stimulates a wealth of ideas in my head and I feel frustrated until I can put them down on paper or on the e-waves. (It's almost like I'm Pavlov's dog.) They can't wait for scholarly papers and the like ... Maybe if I _read_ pen-l less, I'll send fewer messages... in reg pen-l solidarity, Jim