Re: Praxis

Warren's first point covers a reality which cannot be wished away.
Richard's plan for society would be more convincing if it took this into
account.

Relationships of power, hierarchy and exploitation have always
accompanied the history of mankind. The impulse to control exists from
the micro level (e.g. families) to the macro level (Empire). Unavoidably
It generates the impulse to resist and avoid control. People can
conceive of alternative relationships; but communities which implement
them, from Proudhon's phalansteries in France to idealist communes in
North America, require a heavy workload from each member in generating
and sustaining consensus. In the Athenian democracy, all citizens voted
together to legislate, instead of delegating this authority to full-time
professionals. Athenians took pains to avoid the creation of
"politicians" (a) through selection by lottery and (b) through voting to
banish those who produced too much anxiety. Such processes require a
huge overhead. By comparison, hierarchies centralize this overhead and
are easier to organize. But once delegation is implemented the managers
create structures (mental and institutional ones) which perpetuate their
existence.

This brings me to Warren's second point.

The genie is out of the bottle and you cannot wish it --or force it--
back inside. In Lenin's world it mutated into the soviet analog of
cigar-chomping capitalists: people's servants with dachas, limousines
and enriched relatives. Warren's "carnivore" analogy is correct in the
plural: capitalism is an ecology of complex feedback loops, driven by
millions of carnivores. Theoretically, there are two ways to abolish it.
One is Richard's non-hierarchical and democratic route. The other is
Lenin's hierarchical and dictatorial route. Each one opposes the other
as much as capitalism, by the way. The "soft" route is a true
alternative to capitalism but utopian. The "hard" route has worked
before, and revolutionary marxists expect it to work again. If it
does --a big "if"-- a plausible result would be (a) a new set of power
maniacs at the helm and (b) market capitalists replaced by socialist
allocators. Yet the (potentially positive) replacement of capitalism by
socialism would be overshadowed by a (definitely negative) correlate:
how do you hold "people's power" accountable? If people's rulers are the
sole judges of themselves, then legitimacy works against accountability.

It would be more realistic to see carnivores as an inevitable part of
the social ecology, and to ensure that they are not the dominant species
as they are today. Social reproduction will keep creating carnivores for
generations to come, powerful muscles with flawed minds. A wise society
should know how to put their strength to work for the benefit of all.

Petros Haritatos

-----Original Message-----
From: wwagar@binghamton.edu <wwagar@binghamton.edu>
To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Date: Πέμπτη, 11 Ιανουαρίου 2001 1:29 πμ
Subject: Praxis


>
>
> I have been alternately praised and condemned for introducing
>history into our WSN discussions, but the latest battle, between
>communitarian anarchism (Richard) and Scandinavian reformism (Paul)
leads
>me to try once more.  A whole lot of reinventing of wheels seems to be
>going on, which I respectfully decline to believe is needed at this
pretty
>horrible juncture in global affairs.
>
> First off, the hope that we can dispense with hierarchy, power,
>politics, leadership, ideology, is itself an ideology with long and
>venerable roots in political (or anti-political?) thought.  In the
Western
>tradition, I refer you to William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,
Prince
>Kropotkin, and George Orwell.  It is an evergreenly seductive
philosophy,
>one in which we might all wish to invest our hopes, but which, in my
>fallible judgment, has no foundation in human history or human
behavior.
>Its basic premise, that people are good and society is good and that
>everybody can or will work together for the common welfare, is
>contradicted by every page of human history.  This is not to posit a
>theory of human nature as ineluctably evil, but rather to say that we
are
>all acculturated by our sociocultural milieux to pursue certain private
or
>collective goals that may and usually do clash with what an outside
>arbiter might term the long-term best interests of humanity as a whole.
>
> Second, as Richard has patiently over and over again explained
>to Paul, capitalism is capitalism.  The essence of world-system theory,
>whether Wallersteinian, Frankian, or otherwise, predicates much the
same
>point.  Capitalism is the relentless accumulation of capital for the
>acquisition of profit.  Capitalism is a carnivore.  It cannot be made
over
>into a herbivore without gutting it, i.e., abolishing it.  I think, for
>example, of the "prosperity" of today's Ireland, which was achieved by
>allowing the pulverization of most locally initiated enterprise and
>welcoming its replacement by multinational corporations eager to
exploit
>Irish labor.  In the short run, Ireland wins.  In the longer run, God
help
>her.
>
> Let's not kid ourselves.  There is no real "movement" out there.
>The vast (99%) majority of the human race today has no commitment to
>revolutionary transformation, either out of ignorance and abject
poverty,
>or misguided hopes of joining the microscopic elite that runs
everything.
>You or I are not going to play messiah.  It is our solitary task to
>witness to the promise of better times, keep flickering flames burning,
>and never let the dream die.
>
> Warren
>