Re: The Stalinization Process

Thanks John,

(I just got back from showing general sociology students *FBI's War on
Black America*.)

>(a) Eliminating markets will encounter large resistance.

Those who struggle to eliminate slavery encounter "large resistance."  
Those who struggle against monarchies encounter "large resistance." Those
who hold power do not very often peacefully yield to those who challenge
their power (do you expect them to?). Often, to borrow your phrasing,
"Violence on a massive scale [is] required to overcome it." Considering
what is frequently at stake, outcomes can be bloody. But the violent
overthrow of tyranny, when this is the appropriate action to take, is
morally justifiable (however regrettable). The question is not whether
violence per se is bad or good but rather *who* is using it and *why*.
This question can be adapted to apply to a great many things, don't you
think?

>One will also need an ideology that justifies massive bloodshed.

This is an interesting way to put it. Suppose for a moment that the US
Civil War was really fought over slavery. Suppose that a powerful minority
in the US demanded an end to slavery (the abolitionists) and the South
refused to comply. A war results in which the enslaved population is
liberated. What was the ideology that justified massive bloodshed?
Abolitionism? Was this an evil ideology? Is violence right or wrong in
this admittedly idealized example?

>It also requires people willing to engage in bloody acts.

People who are prepared to struggle against oppression must also be often
willing to engage in "bloody acts." Those who resist the struggle for
justice often force their opponents to take extreme measures. Had the US
South cooperated with the abolitionists (again, assuming for the sake of
the point that the war was over slavery) then there would have been little
or no bloodshed. But they didn't. Will capitalists resist the overthrow of
the market? Of course they will. And their resistance will and does take
the form of violence.

>That gets me part of the way.

It doesn't get you any of the way. If we accept the assumption for this
part of your argument--that violent struggle and the ideology that
justifies it are inherently wrong--we are left with the principle that
there can be no justification for any oppressed group to struggle for
justice. No war is justifiable, especially class war, since any war
requires people willing to engage in "bloody acts" and the development of
an ideology that "justifies massive bloodshed," and these are a priori
wrong. This is oppressive pacificism.

But I wonder if you really are an extreme pacifist. Do you really believe
that oppressed people should roll over and capitulate to tyranny? I don't
think you believe capitalism is tyranny--note your post to Alan today
where, by confusing individual behavior and structural coercion, you
distinguish good and bad capitalists (reminiscent to those who attempt to
morally justify slavery by noting how well many slaveowners treated their
slaves). You do not observe the same ideological operation in your
condemnation of socialism? This is quite instructive, since your argument
really seeks to make the struggle for socialism fundamentally wrong. I
don't believe you are opposed to violence. What you are opposed to is
socialism. Why not just make this your argument?

>The next step is (b) dictatorship of the proletariat, which is, of course,
>necessary to keep the capitalists from returning to power.

Why would people engage in revolution if they were not prepared to secure
their gains against counter-revolution? That would be stupid.

>Such a dictatorship generally gets rid of dissent (those advocating
>maybe a market here, a market there) and so engages in censorship.

Are the advocates of slavery dissenting voices? Are the advocates of
genocide dissenting voices? Is there a difference in letting these
dissenters voice their immoral views and letting them institute slavery or
carry out genocide? Should force be used to stop the latter? Are the
exploiters dissenters who should play a formative role in the new or
potentially new social order created by the revolution. If markets disrupt
the building of a new social order, if markets are inherently unjust, then
it would be stupid to permit their development, just as it would be stupid
to allow the development of slavery or the perpetration of genocide.

Consider again the example of US slavery. Through compromise,
Reconstruction was ended and southern elites quickly set about
reconstructing a racialized political economic system. The result was that
post-Civil War blacks suffered conditions not unlike black slaves. The
planters were the dissenters. They were not suppressed by the federal
government (unfortunately), but rather, consistent with the liberal
political order that marks bourgeois republics, were permitted to
reinstitute a system of racial oppression (aided by the 13th Amendment,
which legally permitted the reconstruction of slavery). I wonder if the
black sharecroppers during that period who were re-enslaved stood up and
cheered the absence of a regime that suppressed dissent? A socialist
revolution should work to prevent what happened in the US South from
happening in post-revolutionary society. Unfortunately, the Soviet Union,
China, and most of the state socialist societies were betrayed by their
leaders who permitted reintegration with the capitalist market. What has
resulted is a downward spiral into impoverishment. The problem with state
socialism was not the suppression of markets.

>Keeping markets from forming will require force.

Keeping capitalist markets from dissolving requires force, John.
Capitalist markets did not peacefully emerge by the will of the people;
they were created violently and imposed on the world. You are aware that
for most of world history people did not encounter one another in
capitalist markets? Were people unfree until capitalism emerged some 500
years ago to liberate the heathen mind from its non-market existence?

>Keeping the idea of markets down will also require force in the form of
>censorship. 

Keeping the idea of dissolving capitalist markets at bay also requires
force in the form of censorship (corporate control of the mass media) and
violence (murdering dissidents, labor organizers, and, on a larger scale,
destabilization and war).

>It will require much interference and control in daily affairs, and a
>police state is a likely result.

The maintenance of capitalism requires an extensive police state. Consider
the US, for example, where 2 million people are incarcerated and over 5
million are tied up in the CJ system in one way or another. Consider the
US military, which enforces the preservation and expansion of capitalism
globally. Consider the government agencies (FBI, CIA, etc.) that
destabilize countries and murder dissidents). Think about the interference
and control capitalism imposes on people in their daily affairs. My life
in the US has been controlled by capitalism from birth. I didn't choose
this system. There are no mechanisms in the system that permit me to
substantively control the system. People are forced to compete with each
other in markets over which they have little or no control. People are
forced to participate in coercion to obtain money to buy things they have
been brainwashed to believe they need. The people struggle under the
illusion of choice, John. Capitalist tyranny is the most insidious form of
tyranny.

>Those people who were willing to do the "necessary" bloody actions will
>still be around to utilize their special methods.

To prevent the re-imposition of tyranny, the post-revolutionary society
will be required to maintain a defense. It would indicate incompetence of
leadership to leave the new social order vulnerable to tyranny.

>Replacing markets will require the input/output system mentioned in an
>earlier post. 

Why?

>Such a system won't be able to compete with capitalist systems of
>production and distribution, or, if a world-wide revolution occurs,
>production and distribution will be found to be more difficult when one
>is actually faced with it.

Why?

>This fact will have to be kept from the people, as will, in fact, much
>other information. The argument will be that the gov't must protect its
>citizens from capitalist propaganda. And capitlist agents will be seen
>everywhere. But some will find out. Or they will just criticize for
>whatever reason. Either way, its out to the gulag for some, death for
>others, and an inefficient system for all.

The claim about inefficiency is nonsense. Under capitalism we have a
system with layers of redundancy, tremendous amounts of waste,
unprecedented resource depletion, all based on manufactured needs and
wants, while the majority of the populations lives in relative
deprivation, and over 1 billion exist in conditions of absolute poverty.
That is inefficiency.

Your vision of a free market world free of coercion and full of choice
exists only in your head, John. 

Andy Austin