[PEN-L:9572] Re: the Max Questions

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Max wrote that "the big system question" was "is BDC [bourgeois democratic
capitalism] amenable to reform?" whereas the "the big political question"
is "are reformist movements feasible and effective at a relevant level?"
where I've added the question marks.

It's pretty obvious (at least to me) that reformist movements are feasible
and sometimes even effective, since BDC is amenable to reform (to different
degrees in different eras). I don't know if anyone on pen-l argues against
the possibility of reform, BTW: for example, back in the olden days when he
was still on pen-l, Henry Liu argued in favor of such crucial reforms as
re-creating a professional football team franchise in Los Angeles, pointing
to the alleged benefits to the area.

However, just asking for reforms -- as with lobbying politicians -- is far
from sufficient, since they are supported by the big-money interests, the
Pentagon, and the like.

What's needed is a mass, grass-roots, and democratic movement pressuring
the government for reforms, while keeping their own leaders and politicians
as honest as possible. It's only the pressure of such movements -- like the
mass labor movement of the 1930s in the US -- that can win reforms against
the money interests, who buy and sell politicians and populist leaders and
fight any reforms that are not immediately profitable to them. (Movement
leaders can also flip out in other ways besides being bought off, BTW, as
anyone who's been a member of a political organization should know. Louis,
weren't you in an organization whose leadership decided to order all its
membership (except them, of course) into the factories?) The larger, the
more based in real-world communities (rather than in corporate boardrooms
or inside the beltway), the more responsive and responsible to its members,
the more the powers that be (the politicians, corporations, financiers, and
labor bureaucrats) will be scared and will make concessions.  These days,
such movements have to be as globalized as possible.

I would add that such a movement would be nonviolent in both tactics and
strategy as long as is humanly possible, despite armed repression by the
state. Violence not only encourages state repression further (likely
killing a lot of innocent by-standers) but also encourages a military
mentality that encourages military-type people to rise to the top and apply
military-type discipline (justly, given the strategy, since no-one wants
violence to be applied unless it serves the revolution; leaders don't want
followers engaging in individually-motivated violence). But military-type
discipline produces simply a different kind of bureaucratic leadership than
that of party politicians and their apparatchiks. A truly mass movement can
be repressed, losing its leadership, without being totally demobilized and
destroyed. Or at least the repressive powers will have to strive harder. If
the grass-roots movement is forced to be violent in return, at least it
will be a matter of a popular decision rather than some elite speaking "in
the name of the people." And it helps to have the "moral high ground" of
being against violence except as a last resort. (When police agents
encourage antiestablishmentarian movements to engage in violence, they are
trying to undermine this moral high ground.)

Winning reforms, while educating and empowering its own members, makes a
movement more powerful. Given the right international environment and the
like, such movements (social-democratic and mass communist parties, with
their trade-union allies) were able to win important reforms in Western
Europe after World War II, for example. However, as such movements became
more and more tools for their leaders' ambitions, as they lost their roots,
they lost power as movements and paved the way for the rise of Tony Blair's
"New Labor" and the like. Of course, such leaders as Harold MacMillan set
the stage by striving to further their own individual careers instead of
building the mass democratic base.

This morning's LAT has a pair of articles (by Mark Cooper and Alexander
Cockburn) on the Pacifica mess that can be seen in the "socialism from
below" light: the Pacifica administration wants to "modernize" that
independent noncommercial radio network, expanding its listener base. I
generally sympathize with the KPFA folks, but I can see Cooper's point that
the left does need national presence and that some of the local on-air
personalities (as they're called in commercial radio) had in effect set up
little empires for themselves and were unresponsive to any need for change.
Though their opponents might be criticized, the Pacifica leadership's
approach is _all wrong_, reflecting the typical top-down approach of
bureaucrats and capitalists.  In addition to erecting themselves a fancy
edifice, they decided to "reform" Pacifica by fiat, including gag-orders
and police action. Instead what should have been done is to unify the
existing Pacifica stalwarts all over the country, developing a general
principles that would unite the varied elements that make up the network,
creating a new Pacifica from below, democratically. The national Pacifica
leadership should resign _en masse_, so that this kind of change can occur
(though it seems a bit late for that at this point). (Of course, I'd like
to hear if my facts are wrong on this issue.)

If the strategy of fighting for reforms from below (rather than from above)
is pursued relentlessly, it not only allows for reforms to be won, but
helps create an alternative, non-capitalist, civil society, a
counter-hegemonic movement. This in turn maximizes the chance of winning in
any revolution that happens, not just getting rid of capitalism but also
replacing it with a democratic socialism, with more profound democracy than
the anemic and tame sort we're used to (if we're lucky) under capitalism.

BTW, in l'affaire d'Henry I did not get into criticisms of Pol Pot and the
like. Frankly (and Maxly), I don't care much about the actual number of
people who were killed during the Pol Pot era in Cambodia and see no reason
to personalize the problem by damning ol' Pol to hell. (I doubt that I need
to.) Instead, I see this kind of disaster as the kind of thing that happens
when a collectivist revolution occurs not as the result of a mass movement
for change but due to such things as bloody strategic bombing by the US,
the collapse of Cambodian society as the US drove the Vietnamese army
further into that country, etc. Similarly, I see the Stalin era as arising
due to the weakening of the working class and peasant movements (and their
conflicts with each other) in Russia after 1917, well-documented by Isaac
Deutscher, along with continued imperialist attacks on the USSR. (Stalin's
well-known paranoia, which played an important role in the political
history of this era, seems largely explained by the precarious political
situation he was in. There are few if any politicians who would deal with
this problem by resigning from office, especially after they had committed
a lot of crimes and feared retribution.)

Stalin and the like might be damned for pursuing a top-down approach _from
the start_, which in some way implied (given the conjunction of historical
forces) despotism. However, the top-down approach is shared by the vast
majority (99 and 44/100 percent?) of professional politicos, including
Democratic Party operatives, Labor Union officials, and of course all of
those on the right (including corporate leaders). The _general_ attitude is
one of "support me and I'll set you free" (or win you the reforms you want,
deeply compromised of course) rather than "I can only help you if you are
involved in the process as a group." Stalin can thus be criticized for
sharing an attitude that is shared by all of the usually-defined political
tendencies. (Was he also a bank-robber? well, we should look at the
background of a lot of those Israeli prime ministers.)

Under capitalism, a similar analysis should be applied. While it is true
that industrialists, right-wingers, and the "white collar" and
petty-bourgeois middle classes supported Hitler, we also need to look at
the severe weakness of German capitalism. I'm sure the industrialists in
their hearts of hearts would have preferred not to make deals with Hitler.
But they thought that the "deal with the devil" was _necessary_ because of
the threat of communism and the Depression (which hit Germany harder than
most countries except for the US, and Germany was already in a weak
situation).

In final summary, the issue is not "reform vs. revolution," but socialism
from below vs. politics from above.

That's enough for the day. I have to work.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html