Jose Gracchus
16th June 2010, 08:48
On a generally left-liberal, technocratic, professional/petty bourgeois aggressively atheist board that I frequent, I'm engaged in debate vis-a-vis the issue of capitalism and imperialism with a dyed-in-the-wool generic left-liberal international relations wonk. I do not know how appropriate it is to either a.) link to the other board, or b.) quote my opponent in the debates in seeking assistance. So this post is somewhat confused, as I do not know how to proceed. I do not want to spark a board invasion, and certainly do not wish to be banned, and I think I've made some progress in coalescing a vague radical left grouping on the board (whether I've just clarified this group's allegiance or influenced anyone, I'm unsure).
The basic issue is one of international politics and recent history. As I am at least sure it is appropriate to quote myself, bear with me:
I'll respond to the other points later, but in brief: I am a socialist. I think that the vast controlling interest in the global human economy should not in principle be controlled by a very tiny minority of people for reasons which cannot be extrinsically morally justified. All human institutions should be subject to direct democratic control by the people who participate in, as well as are effected by the workings of said institutions. This is a simple acknowledgment of the fact that as a libertarian socialist, formal democracy in capitalist societies (especially ones in the global periphery) in principle do not prevent most of public life from not being subject to unchecked private tyranny. When there is such an attempt to bridge this inadequacy, it is usually denounced as autocracy, communism, autarky, economic stupidity, fanatical nationalism, etc. -- anything which will cause hysteria among articulate sectors among the privileged imperial societies -- followed by a probable attempt by the U.S, to collaborate with apoplectic local business elites in order to subvert the incorrectly functioning elections (their function is to create elites who will service us) by a coup.My opponent applied along three basic lines, which I will show one-by-one:
On the issue of mass democratic control of social institutions, i.e., true socialism:
What do you mean by "direct democratic control"? We already have a form of this in the more democratic states (such as the US, Canada, Europe, Japan, and so forth) where the populace, at least in theory, has the ability to authorize others to regulate, establish, and ban institutions within a certain territory.
If you are referring to "direct democratic control" in the sense of actual direct democracy, then it is wholly impractical at any sort of large-scale organization for the same reason that direct democracy generally is impractical for any population beyond that of a small town. The operations and procedures alone involved in many of the processes underpinning our society are far too complex for most to understand without advanced training, which most don't have the aptitude for.
As for the "effected", that is a vague and large group. Hypothetically speaking, if some inventor in China discovers some radical new material that displaces, say, steel as a building material, wiping out the remaining steel industry in the US as a result of steel's usual purchasers flocking to the new material, do I count as one of the "effected" who has a right to control the inventor's company as well as the spread of the new material, beyond the role I defined in the first paragraph of my response?
On asymmetric power relations between the Third World and the First:
The Third World is, of course, an area where this is the case, but that largely has to do with weak institutions unable to enforce restrictions on behavior. That's a call for stronger state-building.
The Rich Countries are obviously not perfect in this regard, but they have gotten vastly better over the years. We have a whole network of agencies and laws that greatly limit what would otherwise be an even worse situation (look at the history of the Thames in London, before government efforts to clean it up).
Finally, on the alleged termination of anti-self-determination and imperialism and Red/Official Enemy-baiting toward all sympathizers of national liberation and popular control:
Your ideology perhaps would have been more appropriate in the 1980s than today. Do you have any relevant examples of this happening in the Third World today?
I apologize if this is inappropriate, but I do not have the encyclopedic knowledge of on-going recent U.S. and general Western imperialism, complete with rigorous citation, evidence, and scholarship, even in the broad outline. My knowledge of the 1990s is limited to rather controversial assessments by Chomsky et al with regard to U.S. motives in the Persian Gulf, the Balkans, Israel-Palestine and Eastern Europe. Are there any concrete examples of the variety of U.S. oppression and imperialism and exploitation -- with good sources -- on the same level as U.S. intervention and terror in Central America, against the vast majority of the public of El Salvador and Nicaragua? I need examples which cannot be explained away with likely-case post facto of the "it was the wrong brand of intellectual academic elites in Harvard foreign policy chairs", "it was bad dogmatic bellicose Republicans", "it was due to cultural misunderstanding" and the various "personality" and "politics" type explanations trotted out by your resident left-liberal apologist who will not admit capitalist agency.
The basic issue is one of international politics and recent history. As I am at least sure it is appropriate to quote myself, bear with me:
I'll respond to the other points later, but in brief: I am a socialist. I think that the vast controlling interest in the global human economy should not in principle be controlled by a very tiny minority of people for reasons which cannot be extrinsically morally justified. All human institutions should be subject to direct democratic control by the people who participate in, as well as are effected by the workings of said institutions. This is a simple acknowledgment of the fact that as a libertarian socialist, formal democracy in capitalist societies (especially ones in the global periphery) in principle do not prevent most of public life from not being subject to unchecked private tyranny. When there is such an attempt to bridge this inadequacy, it is usually denounced as autocracy, communism, autarky, economic stupidity, fanatical nationalism, etc. -- anything which will cause hysteria among articulate sectors among the privileged imperial societies -- followed by a probable attempt by the U.S, to collaborate with apoplectic local business elites in order to subvert the incorrectly functioning elections (their function is to create elites who will service us) by a coup.My opponent applied along three basic lines, which I will show one-by-one:
On the issue of mass democratic control of social institutions, i.e., true socialism:
What do you mean by "direct democratic control"? We already have a form of this in the more democratic states (such as the US, Canada, Europe, Japan, and so forth) where the populace, at least in theory, has the ability to authorize others to regulate, establish, and ban institutions within a certain territory.
If you are referring to "direct democratic control" in the sense of actual direct democracy, then it is wholly impractical at any sort of large-scale organization for the same reason that direct democracy generally is impractical for any population beyond that of a small town. The operations and procedures alone involved in many of the processes underpinning our society are far too complex for most to understand without advanced training, which most don't have the aptitude for.
As for the "effected", that is a vague and large group. Hypothetically speaking, if some inventor in China discovers some radical new material that displaces, say, steel as a building material, wiping out the remaining steel industry in the US as a result of steel's usual purchasers flocking to the new material, do I count as one of the "effected" who has a right to control the inventor's company as well as the spread of the new material, beyond the role I defined in the first paragraph of my response?
On asymmetric power relations between the Third World and the First:
The Third World is, of course, an area where this is the case, but that largely has to do with weak institutions unable to enforce restrictions on behavior. That's a call for stronger state-building.
The Rich Countries are obviously not perfect in this regard, but they have gotten vastly better over the years. We have a whole network of agencies and laws that greatly limit what would otherwise be an even worse situation (look at the history of the Thames in London, before government efforts to clean it up).
Finally, on the alleged termination of anti-self-determination and imperialism and Red/Official Enemy-baiting toward all sympathizers of national liberation and popular control:
Your ideology perhaps would have been more appropriate in the 1980s than today. Do you have any relevant examples of this happening in the Third World today?
I apologize if this is inappropriate, but I do not have the encyclopedic knowledge of on-going recent U.S. and general Western imperialism, complete with rigorous citation, evidence, and scholarship, even in the broad outline. My knowledge of the 1990s is limited to rather controversial assessments by Chomsky et al with regard to U.S. motives in the Persian Gulf, the Balkans, Israel-Palestine and Eastern Europe. Are there any concrete examples of the variety of U.S. oppression and imperialism and exploitation -- with good sources -- on the same level as U.S. intervention and terror in Central America, against the vast majority of the public of El Salvador and Nicaragua? I need examples which cannot be explained away with likely-case post facto of the "it was the wrong brand of intellectual academic elites in Harvard foreign policy chairs", "it was bad dogmatic bellicose Republicans", "it was due to cultural misunderstanding" and the various "personality" and "politics" type explanations trotted out by your resident left-liberal apologist who will not admit capitalist agency.