Re: two concepts of dictatorship of the proletariat

[boddhisatva <kbevans@xxxxxxxxx>]

                Mr. Schwartz,



        You wrote:



"Socializing the means of production requires the expropriation of the
expropriators."

                

        As a law student (?), you should know that this is incorrect.
Right now, we PROTECT the expropriatory contracts on which the
expropriation relies.  If we decide that absentee ownership without
providing capital to an enterprise is an invalid agreement, and simply
refuse to extend stockholders protection of such contracts - POOF! there
goes the stock market, and without a shot fired or a new regulation
passed.  Now we would also have to have something like a public domain
concept where those property rights revert to the workers, but still this
is not an extension of legal authority, but a change of whom we protect.
Co-ops need not form anew if we decide to protect existing industries as
co-ops.  If the SEC allowed unions to drive companies into bankruptcy so
that they could buy them for a song, the workers could get their
syndicalist reward, again without the government controlling a thing.



        The capitalist of today is not a direct owner and investor with
armies of Pinkertons at his side to defend his personal property.  He is a
passive speculator with a fund manager, a broker, a board of directors, and a
management BETWEEN him and his property rights.  He relies on ornate
mechanisms of civil law to provide him with market regulation, bankruptcy
protection, contract enforcement, etc..


        Look at banks: required reserve ratios, FDIC insurance, and, of
course, federal control of bonds and currency are their skeleton.  The only
industry that worries me is insurance, but even there simply removing the
outrageous anti-trust exemption they enjoy would be devastating.  Besides,
the federal government already provides health, life and even catastrophic
property insurance to citizens.



        I'm afraid that the idea of government-dominated socialism overlooks
the fact that capitalism RELIES on government intervention.  The old
market economy/command economy dichotomy is bunk.  It's what we were all
taught under capitalism, so why should it surprise us?



        The issue of socialism is WHO owns (and thus controls) the means
of production, not who controls the "allocation of scarce resources"
(which is also a bogus concept).  The only legitimate hegemony over
resources comes hierarchically from work, cash, and then, and only then,
democratically determined necessity.


        Liberal democracy has provided capitalists with security and
restrained their freedom little.  Socialism has to be able to do the same
for workers.  Waving away this precept with *representative democracy* is
untenable.  Capitalists litigators, judges, and legislators have spent
countless hours of highly intelligent discourse, over hundreds of years
refining the legal balance between government power and protection for their
constituency.  Ignoring that work and proposing the wave of some governmental
magic wand is insulting to the revolution.  We owe our constituency more.





        peace,


                boddhisatva





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