Re: Market socialism in yugoslavia

[James Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

PJM writes: > On principle, I don't think socialists should label any
system (social system, I adhere the classic critique that economics
arbitrarily severs the economic from the political) as socialist unless is
takes democratic input at many levels including at a national level, in the
traditional sense.<

I used to make this argument. But it struck me that the left's usage of the
word "socialism" has _never_ been purely normative. Even Marx & Engels used
the word "socialism" to refer to visions they didn't like, e.g., "True
Socialism." Of course, then they used the word "communism," which in 1998
is even more problematic. Arguing that the word should have normative
meaning when most people use it in a positive way seems a pointless and
endless enterprise.

We could use the word "collectivism" to refer to socialisms we don't like
(ones we don't like for very good reasons, I must add). But that is to use
a language that's unfamiliar to most people, thought the Right has embraced
it in recent years. (It's an evil to them, including social democracy,
state-guided capitalism as in S. Korea, Iranian theocracy, and stalinism,
but somehow not Falwellian theocracy or corporate bureaucracy.)

I think the best response is to qualify the word. "Bad socialism" and "good
socialism" don't reveal much (and sound pretty damn moralistic), but
they're a step in the right direction. "Undemocratic socialism" and
"democratic socialism" have long pedigree. But the word "democracy," alas,
is another political football, as Clinton travels through Africa endorsing
"democracy" when he means "free-market capitalism."

I prefer the phrases "socialism from above" and "socialism from below"
(following the late Hal Draper). The former refers  either to stalinism or
to techno-bureaucratic "democratic socialism" under capitalism, i.e.,
social democracy. For both, it's the wisdom of leaders and organizations
that leads to human liberation. For socialism from below, humans can only
liberate themselves, while leaders and organizations (Parties) can easily
become obstacles to further human liberation as they become entrenched,
embattled, and/or privileged. Leaders and organizations are only means to
an end and should be treated that way. The end itself -- human liberation
-- cannot be forgotten.

As for socialism from above when it becomes the established mode of
production, as in the old SU, I would call that "bureaucratic socialism,"
which has a very appropriate abbreviation.

Anyway, the point is not to argue about the usage of the word "socialism"
but about the meaning of the socialism we want.

On another topic, Wojtek writes: >That is true only if you assume that
ethnic hostilities ultimately reside in human psyche, as bourgeois ideology
wants us to believe.  If you assume that ethnic conflicts are the sole
product of social relations (or which relations of production are a major
part) - then the only logical conclusion is that the social relations under
the Soviet system did NOT generate serious ethnic conflicts, but the
re-introduction of market-schmarket style bourgeois relations immediately
re-ignited those conflicts.<

I don't think that that's the _only_ logical conclusion. One alternative is
that Soviet-type domination both (1) encouraged ethnic antagonism to
persist while changing a lot of the content and (2) repressed its effects
so that even though antagonism persisted it was not apparent. In addition,
it is quite possible that the Soviet system (3) repressed information about
the actual ethnic strife so that we never became conscious of it.

Part (1) fits with the idea that "ethnic conflicts are the sole product of
social relations." Since Soviet-type domination lasted for quite a long
time, it's hard to rule out the hypothesis that it helped reproduce the
antagonism over time. It is true, however, that marketization/transition to
capitalism has uncorked the bottle, letting the evil genie out, by
temporarily ending (2) and even more temporarily ending (3). That is,
interethnic conflicts are moves toward a new solution to the conflicts
themselves (hopefully not in the direction of a Final Solution) while most
of the new states in Eastern Europe strive to repress information flow as
much as the old SU did.

I am far from being an expert on the actual ethnic policies of the old SU,
so I would like to know if this ignored alternative fit the facts or not.

for socialism from below,


Jim Devine  jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let
people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.