heiss93
4th December 2009, 08:45
Joshua Muravchik (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Muravchik) claims that "Karl Marx disdained the utopians as so many "organizers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind." In contrast, he offered "scientific socialism." This was a spectacular inversion. What is science but the practice of experimentation, of hypothesis and test? Owen and Fourier and their followers were the real ‘scientific socialists.’ They hit upon the idea of socialism, and they tested it by attempting to form socialist communities. In all, there were scores of these tests in America and England—and all of them failed, utterly and disastrously."
The anarchic Utopian appeals to the free market, picturing it as the ideal mechanism for social regulation. He holds that market relations are capable of discharging the 135 function the state is trying to usurp-ensuring equality of opportunity for each and giving everyone his due. Like the technocrat (here one utopia is again drawing close to another), he would like to stabilize the social structure because stability is a substantive feature of his social ideal. Unlike the technocrat, however, the anarchic Utopian connects social stability with the preservation of individual freedom (he proclaims it as a major value)-inasmuch as the self-regulating market can ensure it. His ideal is the individual who is not subject to tutelage and, consequently, to uniformity (for any mass tutelage calls for uniformity and standardization as its preconditions) and who is naturally exercising his self-determination within the "minimal state". Let each man live as he wants, the anarchic Utopian says; the state must not force anyone to accept any uniform pattern. "Wittgenstein, Elizabeth Taylor, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Merton, Yogi Berra, Allen Ginsburg, Harry Wolfson, Thoreau, Casey Stengel, The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Picasso, Moses, Einstein, Hugh Heffner, Socrates, Henry Ford, Lenny Bruce, Baba Ram Dass, Gandhi, Sir Edmund Hillary, Raymond Lubitz, Buddha, Frank Sinatra, Columbus, Freud, Norman Mailer, Ayn Rand, Baron Rothschild, Ted Williams, Thomas Edison, H. L. Mencken, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Ellison, Bobby Fischer, Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin, you, and your parents. Is there really one kind of life which is best for each of these people? Imagine all of them living in any utopia you’ve ever seen described in detail. Try to describe the society which would be best for all of these persons to live in. Would it be agricultural or urban? Of great material luxury or of austerity with basic needs satisfied? What would relations between the sexes be like? Would there be any institution similar to marriage?... Would there be private property?... Would there be one, many, any religion?” [135•1 (http://leninist.biz/en/1985/AU236/3.3-The.Utopia.of.a.Traditional.America#forw5page135) p (http://leninist.biz/en/1985/AU236/3.3-The.Utopia.of.a.Traditional.America#One.must) After asking a dozen more similar questions, Nozick concludes that there can be no single answer, just as there can be no single best society in which not only the people listed in the quotation but also any other combination of individuals could be happy. Therefore, the anarchic capitalist believes, it is not only pointless but even harmful to strive for the establishment of any uniform community, 136 the age-old dream of Utopians.
p (http://leninist.biz/en/1985/AU236/3.3-The.Utopia.of.a.Traditional.America#In.Nozicks) One must admit that Nozick deals a heavy blow to the traditional Utopian opinion that there can be an absolute and “best” type of Utopian society equally acceptable to all, that a uniform and “best” way of life in a Utopia can be discovered. These are truly illusory notions repeatedly rejected by the founders of scientific socialism who resolutely opposed any attempts to “bless” humanity with all sorts of universal projects. Nozick himself claims that there is a way out, but that it lies outside the traditional mainstream of the Utopian quest. "Utopia will consist of Utopias, of many different and divergent communities in which people lead different kinds of lives under different institutions.... Utopia is a framework for Utopias, a place where people are at liberty to join together voluntarily to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own Utopian vision upon others.... Utopia is a meta– utopia: the environment in which Utopian experiments may be tried out; the environment in which people are free to do their own thing; the environment which must, to a great extent, be realized first if more particular Utopian visions are to be realized stably.” [136•1 (http://leninist.biz/en/1985/AU236/3.3-The.Utopia.of.a.Traditional.America#forw6page136)
p (http://leninist.biz/en/1985/AU236/3.3-The.Utopia.of.a.Traditional.America#Though.the.fra mework) In Nozick’s view, let people live in communities, let these communities be many, let them be based on diverse material and spiritual principles, including socialist ones; let people choose a community after their own heart, let them switch from community to community if they want; let those who cannot find anything they like create communities of their own, geared to their own conceptions of the best possible world; but let no one be in anyone’s way. And let life itself—or rather, not life but “meta-utopia”, the “ environment”, the “framework” equivalent, Nozick emphasizes, to the "minimal state"—determine which community is to survive and develop and which is to perish. In the final analysis, the "minimal state" itself, a market of Utopias, an auction of Utopias, is the true Utopia.
p (http://leninist.biz/en/1985/AU236/3.3-The.Utopia.of.a.Traditional.America#As.many) “Though the framework is libertarian and laissez-faire, individual communities within it need not be, and perhaps no community within it will choose to be so. Thus, the characteristics of the framework need not pervade the 137 individual communities. In this laissez-faire system it could turn out that though they are permitted, there are no actually functioning ‘capitalist’ institutions.” [137•1 (http://leninist.biz/en/1985/AU236/3.3-The.Utopia.of.a.Traditional.America#forw7page137) Nozick ignores the fact that the laws operating in subsystems cannot be contrary to those operating within the system (“framework”) of which they are a part. Otherwise the system itself would disintegrate, together with its constituent elements.
p (http://leninist.biz/en/1985/AU236/3.3-The.Utopia.of.a.Traditional.America#Still.while) As many of Nozick’s critics point out, and with good reason, his assertion that stable coexistence of different types of Utopia (including socialist Utopias) is possible within the bourgeois society is no more than a logical proposition incapable of standing the test of practice: contrary to all claims by Professor Nozick, communities which do not follow the imperatives of the market and the bourgeois state will cease to exist sooner or later. Here, even hypotheses are redundant: suffice it to simply recall the fate of 19th-century Utopian communities in America.
Still, while dismissing Nozick’s project as illusory, one must admit that there is reason behind his vision of an alternate world: it reflects the interests, illusions and social psychology of certain groups in American society. Pushed around by the state and the monopolies, these groups— which exist now and will, in all probability, continue to exist—feel more secure and free within an imagined laissezfaire society than in the United States as it exists in actual fact. It would be logical to assume that anarchic capitalist Utopias will retain their role of a conservative social alternative in the near future. However, even taking into account the growing trend toward a stronger state, the consequent criticism of the state and the nostalgia after free market relations, anarchic capitalist Utopias will hardly attract as many followers as technocratic Utopias; most probably, their long life will be confined to the Utopian periphery.
Nozick argues thats libertarianism provides a utopian state, in the sense that voluntary members are free to abide by any community they chose to live in. In the same way Ayn Rand says if you don't want the poor to starve, no one will stop you from feeding them. Nozick says if you want to live under communism, no one stops you from setting up a communistic voluntary community.
As Marx and Engels point out none of the utopian communities could succeed because they did not change social relations. But why can't voluntary communism exist under capitalism? The fundamental flaw of capitalism is the waste of surplus value in socially useless profit. In workers and consumers cooperatives, profit and thus surplus value is eliminated. Thus shouldn't cooperative enterprises be able to outcompete for-profit businesses even under capitalism? Even if wages were not much higher, the coop would still have the advantage of immediately reinvesting all capital, as opposed to taking it out of production in the form of private profit.
Critics of Communism argue that because it can not work voluntarily and is dependent on coercion that proves that it is against eternal human nature. The best counterargument IMHO is based on social contract theory. Both the socialist state and capitalist state are dependent on coercion. But that follows from the social contact between the rulers and ruled. Socialist enterprises under capitalism provide the benefits of socialism without being able to enforce the social relations necessary to a socialist society.
But I think it is an interesting topic of debate, and am interested from feedback from both revlefters and OIers.
The anarchic Utopian appeals to the free market, picturing it as the ideal mechanism for social regulation. He holds that market relations are capable of discharging the 135 function the state is trying to usurp-ensuring equality of opportunity for each and giving everyone his due. Like the technocrat (here one utopia is again drawing close to another), he would like to stabilize the social structure because stability is a substantive feature of his social ideal. Unlike the technocrat, however, the anarchic Utopian connects social stability with the preservation of individual freedom (he proclaims it as a major value)-inasmuch as the self-regulating market can ensure it. His ideal is the individual who is not subject to tutelage and, consequently, to uniformity (for any mass tutelage calls for uniformity and standardization as its preconditions) and who is naturally exercising his self-determination within the "minimal state". Let each man live as he wants, the anarchic Utopian says; the state must not force anyone to accept any uniform pattern. "Wittgenstein, Elizabeth Taylor, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Merton, Yogi Berra, Allen Ginsburg, Harry Wolfson, Thoreau, Casey Stengel, The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Picasso, Moses, Einstein, Hugh Heffner, Socrates, Henry Ford, Lenny Bruce, Baba Ram Dass, Gandhi, Sir Edmund Hillary, Raymond Lubitz, Buddha, Frank Sinatra, Columbus, Freud, Norman Mailer, Ayn Rand, Baron Rothschild, Ted Williams, Thomas Edison, H. L. Mencken, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Ellison, Bobby Fischer, Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin, you, and your parents. Is there really one kind of life which is best for each of these people? Imagine all of them living in any utopia you’ve ever seen described in detail. Try to describe the society which would be best for all of these persons to live in. Would it be agricultural or urban? Of great material luxury or of austerity with basic needs satisfied? What would relations between the sexes be like? Would there be any institution similar to marriage?... Would there be private property?... Would there be one, many, any religion?” [135•1 (http://leninist.biz/en/1985/AU236/3.3-The.Utopia.of.a.Traditional.America#forw5page135) p (http://leninist.biz/en/1985/AU236/3.3-The.Utopia.of.a.Traditional.America#One.must) After asking a dozen more similar questions, Nozick concludes that there can be no single answer, just as there can be no single best society in which not only the people listed in the quotation but also any other combination of individuals could be happy. Therefore, the anarchic capitalist believes, it is not only pointless but even harmful to strive for the establishment of any uniform community, 136 the age-old dream of Utopians.
p (http://leninist.biz/en/1985/AU236/3.3-The.Utopia.of.a.Traditional.America#In.Nozicks) One must admit that Nozick deals a heavy blow to the traditional Utopian opinion that there can be an absolute and “best” type of Utopian society equally acceptable to all, that a uniform and “best” way of life in a Utopia can be discovered. These are truly illusory notions repeatedly rejected by the founders of scientific socialism who resolutely opposed any attempts to “bless” humanity with all sorts of universal projects. Nozick himself claims that there is a way out, but that it lies outside the traditional mainstream of the Utopian quest. "Utopia will consist of Utopias, of many different and divergent communities in which people lead different kinds of lives under different institutions.... Utopia is a framework for Utopias, a place where people are at liberty to join together voluntarily to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own Utopian vision upon others.... Utopia is a meta– utopia: the environment in which Utopian experiments may be tried out; the environment in which people are free to do their own thing; the environment which must, to a great extent, be realized first if more particular Utopian visions are to be realized stably.” [136•1 (http://leninist.biz/en/1985/AU236/3.3-The.Utopia.of.a.Traditional.America#forw6page136)
p (http://leninist.biz/en/1985/AU236/3.3-The.Utopia.of.a.Traditional.America#Though.the.fra mework) In Nozick’s view, let people live in communities, let these communities be many, let them be based on diverse material and spiritual principles, including socialist ones; let people choose a community after their own heart, let them switch from community to community if they want; let those who cannot find anything they like create communities of their own, geared to their own conceptions of the best possible world; but let no one be in anyone’s way. And let life itself—or rather, not life but “meta-utopia”, the “ environment”, the “framework” equivalent, Nozick emphasizes, to the "minimal state"—determine which community is to survive and develop and which is to perish. In the final analysis, the "minimal state" itself, a market of Utopias, an auction of Utopias, is the true Utopia.
p (http://leninist.biz/en/1985/AU236/3.3-The.Utopia.of.a.Traditional.America#As.many) “Though the framework is libertarian and laissez-faire, individual communities within it need not be, and perhaps no community within it will choose to be so. Thus, the characteristics of the framework need not pervade the 137 individual communities. In this laissez-faire system it could turn out that though they are permitted, there are no actually functioning ‘capitalist’ institutions.” [137•1 (http://leninist.biz/en/1985/AU236/3.3-The.Utopia.of.a.Traditional.America#forw7page137) Nozick ignores the fact that the laws operating in subsystems cannot be contrary to those operating within the system (“framework”) of which they are a part. Otherwise the system itself would disintegrate, together with its constituent elements.
p (http://leninist.biz/en/1985/AU236/3.3-The.Utopia.of.a.Traditional.America#Still.while) As many of Nozick’s critics point out, and with good reason, his assertion that stable coexistence of different types of Utopia (including socialist Utopias) is possible within the bourgeois society is no more than a logical proposition incapable of standing the test of practice: contrary to all claims by Professor Nozick, communities which do not follow the imperatives of the market and the bourgeois state will cease to exist sooner or later. Here, even hypotheses are redundant: suffice it to simply recall the fate of 19th-century Utopian communities in America.
Still, while dismissing Nozick’s project as illusory, one must admit that there is reason behind his vision of an alternate world: it reflects the interests, illusions and social psychology of certain groups in American society. Pushed around by the state and the monopolies, these groups— which exist now and will, in all probability, continue to exist—feel more secure and free within an imagined laissezfaire society than in the United States as it exists in actual fact. It would be logical to assume that anarchic capitalist Utopias will retain their role of a conservative social alternative in the near future. However, even taking into account the growing trend toward a stronger state, the consequent criticism of the state and the nostalgia after free market relations, anarchic capitalist Utopias will hardly attract as many followers as technocratic Utopias; most probably, their long life will be confined to the Utopian periphery.
Nozick argues thats libertarianism provides a utopian state, in the sense that voluntary members are free to abide by any community they chose to live in. In the same way Ayn Rand says if you don't want the poor to starve, no one will stop you from feeding them. Nozick says if you want to live under communism, no one stops you from setting up a communistic voluntary community.
As Marx and Engels point out none of the utopian communities could succeed because they did not change social relations. But why can't voluntary communism exist under capitalism? The fundamental flaw of capitalism is the waste of surplus value in socially useless profit. In workers and consumers cooperatives, profit and thus surplus value is eliminated. Thus shouldn't cooperative enterprises be able to outcompete for-profit businesses even under capitalism? Even if wages were not much higher, the coop would still have the advantage of immediately reinvesting all capital, as opposed to taking it out of production in the form of private profit.
Critics of Communism argue that because it can not work voluntarily and is dependent on coercion that proves that it is against eternal human nature. The best counterargument IMHO is based on social contract theory. Both the socialist state and capitalist state are dependent on coercion. But that follows from the social contact between the rulers and ruled. Socialist enterprises under capitalism provide the benefits of socialism without being able to enforce the social relations necessary to a socialist society.
But I think it is an interesting topic of debate, and am interested from feedback from both revlefters and OIers.