From owner-marxism Wed Sep 20 00:39:45 1995
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 1995 20:39:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: Maoist Internationalist Movement
Subject: Re: Chris M. Sciabarra's Tepid Defense of Capitalism
On Tue, 19 Sep 1995, Jamal Hannah wrote:
> > And as far as capitalists TRYING to gain
> > monopolistic control -- this too, cannot be achieved without some form of
> > political intervention. By the way, the Austrians are as critical of
> > monopoly as they are of "socialism" in that to the extent to which each
MIM replies: Is their being "critical of monopoly" able to prevent monopoly or is this criticism more like unrequited love--ineffective?
There is a strong streak of idealism in both anarchism and libertarianism.
Here we see a case of someone (Sciabarra) substituting the invisible hand for God finding it sufficient for those who want results to wait till the next life.
We agree with Jamal Hannah's criticism of Sciabarra, but would say much of the criticism applies to anarchism as well. For example, how can one criticize comrade Gonzalo in Peru as "opportunistic" until one has "a bird in the hand"? What makes one assume the focoist group is better? Or the IU? Or is it just wishful thinking?
Could Jamal Hannah tell us which of the great anarchist theorists were really theorists and not social artists? Which ones told us of realistic strategies and which ones succeeded somewhere? (By the way there is definitely a place for liberation poetry, music etc., just not in place of the political-military reasoning necessary to defeat Hitler for instance.)
We at MIM are willing to jump with the oppressed from horse to horse midstream. We aren't willing to jump into the stream hoping a horse will come along and catch us, but this is what anarchists and Trotskyists typically ask us to do.
Capitalists are strong enough to win one-on-one fights. The oppressed must unite to win. For this reason, it is important to TAKE SIDES and criticize Marxism-Leninism-Maoism from within. When we split from the victorious tradition of the proletariat, we weaken the movement and make Stalin-like repression more likely as a necessity of history.
The anarchist position has always been to call for the white knight to rescue it from coercive Marxism-Leninism, as a "third" or "alternative" course, but the knight never comes. Communist anarchism takes up firm proletarian goals, but it attaches petty-bourgeois methods that cannot succeed.
MIM's theory journal MT#8 is dedicated to anarchism and its failures.
As always we invite responses.
Pat for MIM
From owner-marxism Fri Sep 22 01:41:13 1995
Date: Thu, 21 Sep 1995 21:41:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: Maoist Internationalist Movement
Subject: Re: Did I ruffle a few feathers? :)
On Thu, 21 Sep 1995, Chris M. Sciabarra wrote:
>
> I still believe however, that many ecological problems could be
> addressed in the context of the rule of law, rather than the rule of a
> planning board. If corporations have to PAY for their pollution, and pay
> dearly, they will be compelled to try other means for either cleaning up
> their pollution, or, for non-polluting methods of production. It is
> after all, a technological problem, and markets are pretty good at
> responding to technological problems IF market participants are forced to
> take into account costs -- that is, market "failure" can become market
> success if externalities are internalized in the property rights
> structure of law.
MIM replies:
1. Figuring out what should cost what is not much different than planning. Of course you will argue that if you privatize everything including the air, then people won't destroy the air and it won't involve as much "bureaucracy." However, you still have to figure out what it is you have to sell in the air? Is it the right to put up sulfur dioxides bothering you? Maybe carbon monoxide? Etc.
To some extent this has been done already--but by the government and very incompletely, because of an Anglo-Saxon superstructure matching a settler-imperialist political economy.
You make it sound like we could just privatize the air in a few thousand cardboard boxes and we'd all be fine. That brings me to my second point.
2. Life is not so simple as in settler times: grow things on a farm; commit genocide against natives. It's not just public parks or even global warming. Unless we take up the Unabomber's route, we are going to have to take scientific endeavor via the environment as a given.
The only question is what will motivate all the scientists, experts and consultants and the people themselves when it comes to environmental science. You can posture all you like, but I doubt you'd be willing to eat meat that was not inspected; drink water untested or take it upon yourself to know what kind of drugs you should use to combat various micro-organisms.
Personally I don't want to take on the burden of being an all-knowing consumer in these areas. Most people want to rely on an authority with a public interest to do these things. You could argue that we should all pay consultants to do our own private bidding, to inform us of what we need to buy.
Most people probably would rather form a consumer's union and purchase that service from their government, thinking that they would gain leverage and knowledge from collective struggle. Mao thought the masses should form their own organizations and overthrow folks in their government from time to time, thus honing the skills of the masses to wield power.
Ironically, unless you take up a straight, 100% pure Marxist instrumentalist approach to the state, there is no way that you can argue the state would be completely corrupted by the individual polluter. (Postcript, August, 1998: That's to oppose those who say the state is prone to more corruption than people in the free market bought off by whoever has the most money in a free-wheeling fight.)
On the other hand, in a world where we are all asked to be God-like consumers, we have to hire consultants to tell us what to do, and we have to have the God-like knowledge that these consultants aren't in bed with the industries they give advice on.
Under a dictatorship of the proletariat, the possible avenues of corruption in general are reduced. If you can't make millions screwing over other people, you won't have people so motivated--especially if you have stiff penal penalties for white-collar corruption, profiteering and speculation. Currently, such criminals have little to hold them back, because the bourgeoisie recognizes that there is little difference between white-collar crime and legitimate cut-throat competition. The U.S. imperialists complain all the time that state-capitalist China is stifling Anglo-Saxon capitalism with its vague and overweening sense of punishing enterprise directors for crime.
You can say people will substitute pursuit of state power for pursuit of huge wealth. I don't think it's the same thing, especially when polluters cannot profit from polluting directly and have no incentive to bribe the government.
However, even if you were correct, such pursuit of power is more visible and accountable to the people than the power exercised by powerful individuals in boardrooms in the name of the invisible hand. We'll take visible oppression over invisible oppression any day. Isn't it a great thing Perot ran for President, and is in the light of day now?
It is Maoism that seeks to unleash the scientific initiative of the people as a force like the "atomic bomb." Ironically it is again Maoism that points toward the utopia of competent and well-organized individuals in an economy of free trade. The critics almost always fall back on the streak of aristocracy in capitalist "democracy." They simultaneously criticize Maoism for lacking their form of democratic institutions but they recoiled at the institutions of the people that arose in the Cultural Revolution, and declaimed mob violence just as the aristocracy opposed the French Revolution of 1789.
Pat for MIM
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