Re: [Pen-l] democracy

[Ted Winslow <egwinslow@xxxxxxxxxx>]

 Charles Brown wrote:

> Marx,
> Engels and Lenin do not foresee communism,
> after the whithering away of the state , as
> a democracy. I defer to Ted Winslow to explain
> how the fully developed personalities and mutually
> respecting individuals capable of communism
> will always reach consensus on all important
> and necessary group actions.

Marx, though, mkes a significant "integral development of every  
individual producer" a prerequisite for the penultimate social  
arrangement that faciliatates the further "integral development"  
required for the actualization "reason" as the union of "freedom" and  
"necessity', i.e. as "communism", "the true realm of freedomn.

Where particular relations of production so "fetter" "integral  
development" as to prevent the required degree from developing,  
inititation of a succesful "revoutionary praxis" - i.e. one that would  
create "socialism" in this sense - is impossible.

Moreover, fettering relations productive of an "individuality"  
characterized by significiant "supersition"and "prejudice" (i.e.  
relations such as those, according to Marx, of the Indian peasant  
commune and of "masses" of 19th century French peasants) produce  
"despotism" (as in "Oriental despotism" and the "Bonaparte dynasty").

This "despotism" is inconsistent with the relations required to bring  
about the degree of "integral development" rquired for the creation of  
the penulatimate social form let alone for "communism".

In contrast to what Marx suggested in 1881, the relations constitutive  
of the Russian peasant commune produced an "individuality"  
characterized by significdant "superstition" and "prejudice".

On Marx's own understanding of the consequences of such an  
"ndividuality", therefore, a "revolution" for which it was  
"responsible" - in the sense that the "individuality" of "masses" of  
19th century French peasants was "responsbile" for Napoleon III -  
would not only not produce a penultimate social form - "socialism" -  
from which all barriers to the full "integral development of every  
producer" had been reomved, it would produce instead a "despotism"  
inconsistent with generating even that degree of "integral  
development" required to iniitiate the kind of "revolutionary praxis"  
necessary to create "socialism".

Ted




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