A Republic, Democracy, Government and representation

[Lyev]

I got into a discussion with my brother at supper earlier this evening. He's a bloody Obama supporter who has decided he will probably vote Liberal Democrat in the upcoming UK elections :crying:. Anyway, he said Marxism was idealistic, and I told him no, Marx' and Engels' socialism was a direct antithesis to idealism, opposed to the utopian socialism expounded by Robert Owen et al., anyway, after that, we eventually got onto the definitions of socialism. He thought socialism could be defined as government ownership and distribution by need, but I told him socialism was common ownership, and no one can represent the masses. He agreed with this and said government ownership is in fact common ownership (??). Surely a huge revolutionary incentive is overthrow of an undemocratic government that only represents it's own interests.

But here's where I get stuck: how does (or perhaps how does a government not (especially in a place like the USA*)) represent the best interests of the people? We have democracy, obviously, and what's to stop normal people trying to run for elections? I'm confused. What's the difference between common ownership, ie. socialism (which is also obviously abolition of the state, of money, class etc) and government ownership? Why don't any current governments best represent the interests of majority of the population of said country? It seems like this is the question for politcal philosophy; I've yet to read The Social Contract or any Machiavelli or anything.

By the way, I wasn't sure whether to put this in OI, learning or here so please could a mod move it if it's wrong. Thanks again folks.

*The USA is supposedly a republic, right?

[ROBOTROT]

But here's where I get stuck: how does (or perhaps how does a government not (especially in a place like the USA*)) represent the best interests of the people? We have democracy, obviously, and what's to stop normal people trying to run for elections? I'm confused. What's the difference between common ownership, ie. socialism (which is also obviously abolition of the state, of money, class etc) and government ownership? Why don't any current governments best represent the interests of majority of the population of said country?

Governments such as Brown's are presiding over a capitalist state which is inherently structured toward the interest of the bourgeoisie. Modern Parliament, the legal system, the bureaucracy, etc were all created on the basis of liberal individualism and capitalism. If the government just started expropriating everything and running it all on socialistic principles then there would be a massive backlash from the capitalist class, the police and the bureaucracy and there would most likely need to be a revolutionary situation for the government to survive it anyway. There would also need to be an almost total structural change to the way the state is run. We all know this isn't going to happen of course because the modern Labour party (and the Lib-Dems) are neo-liberal and essentially part of the ruling class. Why would they undermine their own power by decentralising decision making to producers? They are most definitely on the opposite side of the class struggle. But it's unlikely that even a genuinely working class socialist government in the capitalist state would be able to do it. Once in power they would be in control of a vast apparatus (the state) specifically designed to resist the working class challenge to power and not at all suited to the task of decentralising decision making to the population. I think this last thing really needs to come from below in order to be successful.

Anyway, nationalisation doesn't mean the same thing as socialism. The NHS is nationalised and it isn't run democratically by the producers, rather it is run by a massive and cumbersome bureaucracy and is in some ways even less transparent than private enterprise. These top level bureaucrats would be just as pissed off about losing their authority, prestige, perks and high salaries to the lowly proles as the capitalists would be.

At the end of the day, creating a workers' state where production is controlled democratically isn't going to come as a gift from above. I think this is the real idealism, in more ways than one. It is going to need to be fought for, tooth and nail, against those for whom it is contrary to their interests. I'm not necessarily totally against using the state, but we should be careful because once someone enters a government their class interests shift dramatically and they are in control of the very thing which has held the class struggle back all these years.

This all really comes back to the reform vs. revolution debate and you should perhaps read Lenin's State and Revolution or Rosa Luxemburg's Reform or Revolution.

[Kléber]

i know some people are sick of this one but

Since Bismarck went in for state-ownership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkeyism, that without more ado declares all state ownership, even of the Bismarckian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the state of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and [conservative Austrian chancellor] Metternich must be numbered among the founders of socialism.