[PEN-L:28683] Re: Drudgery

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

At 10:40 AM -0700 7/27/02, Gar Lipow wrote:
> Justin Schwartz wrote:
>
> > Why would be a such a great idea to have the demos tell college
> > professors how to run their shop? In most of this country, that
> > would result in the shut-down of biological departments, except for
> > ag depts, the conversion of most philosophy depts into bastions of
> > conservative Christian fundamentalism, etc. All the remaining
> > socialists would be fired at once. For that matter, what does the
> > demos know about surgery? Would you want to be operated on by
> > medical professionals who were accountable, in doing their job, to
> > anything but their expertise? Likewise, if I may say so, with us
> > legal professionals. Would you want my considered legal judgment,
> > given as best as I can give it, or my judgment as informed and
> > limited by what a bunch of people who know no law nor how the legal
> > system works nor anything much except that they don't like lawyers
> > because we are all greeedy rich crooks?
> >
> > In my typical, class-blinkered, petty bourgeois manner, I am a real
> > fan of expertise. Democracy has its place, but not in
> > micro-managing the use of real expertise by real experts. There are
> > skills that require long study and constant application to master,
> > and where the opinion of the populace has no damn role, except
> > indirectly in setting general ethical standards and rules and
> > regulations embodied in law. Don't tell me how to manage my shop.
> >
> > jks (proud advocate of a  nation of shopkeepers)
>
> Two flaws - the use of straw men, and a real misunderstanding of the
> role of expertise.
>
> 1) The straw men: Democray in this context does not mean that
> everybody votes on the details of "how you run your shop". It does
> mean (and Schweickart agrees) that everybody in your shop gets a
> vote. That is the in a hospital, not only doctors, but nurses, Xray
> techs, receptionists, floor sweepers, nutritionists, cooks all get
> an equal say in running the place - whether  via direct democracy,
> the election of a council, or the choice of a manager answerable to
> an elected council. And democracy also demands that priorities in
> terms of how capital is allocated also are set democratically.
>
> 2) Secondly, for the most part expertise does not mean a right of
> decision making, but a right to advise. For example if I go to my
> doctor and she recommends an operation, she has no right to order me
> to have that operation, I can refuse, and if the doctor knows what
> she is doing suffer or die as a result. But the point is that choice
> is mine; the doctor's expertise gives her only a right to advise,
> not to order. As lawyer, you should be all to well aware that the
> same is true for lawyers. I suspect you can think of some cases
> where you have been extremely frustrated by clients who ignored your
> advices. I suspect that most of them had reason to regret doing so;
> but if a client ignored your advice and flourished thereby you might
> find ite even more  frustrating.

History teaches us that revolutionary reconciliation of democracy and
expertise must take place in conditions that are _not_ auspicious to
it:

*****   But, at present [at the beginning of the French revolutionary
wars], the [French] army was hardly equipped to turn them [innovative
military strategies and tactics, new field-artilleries, etc.] to good
account: it had numbers and enthusiasm, but it lacked co-ordination,
discipline, supplies and leaders.  The old aristocratic officers had
been weeded out in their hundreds by the troops themselves, civil war
and mutiny had disrupted whole regiments, and of a former officer
corps of 9,000 only 3,000 retained their commands.  To fill the gaps
in the regular army and in response to new ideals, battalions of
volunteers (some 100,000 in all) had been recruited from the National
Guards enrolled since July 1789.  These citizen-solders were full of
patriotic devotion, were comparatively well paid and elected their
officers; but they had more enthusiasm than discipline and training,
the generals treated them with contempt, and their privileged
conditions of service enraged the "regulars" and caused endless
friction.  Such an army was no match for the 70,000 trained and
seasoned troops that Brunswick assembled at the frontier; and
Brissot's gamble, as we have seen, ended in disaster.  An invading
force, sent across the frontier towards Tournai and Liege, fled in
panic after its first encounter with the enemy and fell back, with
the bulk of the French army, towards Lille.  France was only saved
from further catastrophe by the cautious and traditional generalship
of Brunswick, who failed to follow up his advantage.

It was, in fact, the weakness and divided counsels of her enemies
rather than her own internal strength that gave France an initial
breathing-space and the opportunity to snatch victory from defeat.
By the time of her first successes at Valmy and Jemappes in September
1792, the "Austrian Committee" had been removed, the monarchy had
been overthrown, Brissot and his band of garrulous generals (among
them Lafayette) had been cashiered or had deserted to the enemy, the
artillery had been improved, and greater numbers of volunteers had
been recruited, trained and equipped.  But the major problems still
remained: to merge the new citizen-soldiers with the old regulars in
a single national army; to extract the maximum military advantage
from the mass of citizens whom the Revolution made available for
service; to find and train an efficient and trustworthy corps of
officers; and to equip the army with a steady flow of the latest
weapons by harnessing industry to the needs of war....

(George Rude, _Revolutionary Europe, 1783-1815_, NY: Haper & Row,
1964, pp. 205-6)   *****

That's the sort of real "transformation problem" -- how to
democratize expertise and make democratic use of it, without losing
the war to reactionaries who seek to destroy the revolution -- with
which all revolutionaries must grapple.
--
Yoshie

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