Die Neue Zeit
26th September 2010, 23:50
Peoples Histories, Blocs, and "Managed Democracy" Reconsidered
Without too much overreaching, we might say [Julius Caesars] reign can be called a dictatorship of the proletarii [the poor propertyless citizens of Rome], an instance of ruling autocratically against plutocracy on behalf of the citizenrys substantive interests. (Michael Parenti)
In 2003, Michael Parenti illuminated much of the truth behind the traditional depiction of Julius Caesar as a tyrant and a demagogue. In The Assassination Of Julius Caesar: A Peoples History of Ancient Rome, Parenti breaks through the traditional depiction set by the rich nobility of the Roman Republic and beyond, which like todays bourgeoisie deemed the commoners contemptuous and worthy of little more than breads and circuses. Only a few were social reformers, starting with Tiberius Grachhus. The line of social reformers was a tragic one, a line in which almost all were assassinated.
Enter a young Julius Caesar, an army officer with a program of social reform, if not social revolution: land reform, outright grants to the poor, public works and other employment programs for putting plebeians toward productive work, luxury taxes, partial debt relief, recognition of minority religions like Judaism as legitimate, and even a Maximum on Allowable Personal Wealth of 15,000 drachmas (but not one that was subject to populist adjustment by mass democratic means). Even in spite of his military successes, he too fell victim to a Senate conspiracy and was assassinated.
Despite the limited participants in the class struggle of ancient Rome the free rich and the free poor (and neither slaves nor provincial farmers) it is unfortunate that the traditional depiction set by the rich nobility seeped into the revolutionary accounts of the likes of Wilhelm Liebknecht and Karl Marx himself, and from there into more contemporary revolutionary accounts like those of Jack Conrad:
Julius Caesar in particular, because of his youthful identification with the popular cause, programme of land reform and stunning military successes in, and plunder of, Gaul and Egypt, was able to offer substantial gifts to a supportive, but not uncritical, citizen mass. Through their votes and semi-autonomous street manifestation Julius Caesar was able to skilfully outmanoeuvre and eventually bludgeon his aristocratic rivals into submission. The lowering presence of his legions helped too.
He got himself appointed dictator perpetuus, or life-long holder of emergency powers. A Bonapartist domination which by no stretch of the imagination equates to what Michael Parenti an apologist for "official communism" calls "a dictatorship of the proletarii, an instance of ruling autocratically against plutocracy on behalf of the citizenry's substantive interests." Such a description is akin to projecting back in time contemporary Stalin, Mao, Castro, and Chavez myths.
On the subject of army officers, peoples history found another army officer in Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. At least part of his program is in fact a combination of the programs of three 19th-century political figures with very different politics: anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon for his emphasis on workers cooperatives and communal power, democratic-socialist-yet-centralist Ferdinand Lassalle for his emphasis on state aid in social transformation as a means of agitating towards political action, and the statist Iron Chancellor Otto von Bismarck for his social justice welfare missions and a touch or two of social conservatism (like on enacting measures against those video games and toys which promote violence).
At least rhetorically, Chavez has on questions of class struggle elevated himself above the likes of Mao and even Ho Chi Minh, discarding the so-called Great Helmsmans class-conciliationist and illusory Bloc of Four Classes (workers, peasants, small-business petit-bourgeoisie, and so-called national bourgeoisie or patriotic bourgeoisie):
The bourgeoisie keeps plotting to kill me. If they kill me, listen to me, do not lose your head! We have leaders, the party, my generals, my militias, my people. You know what to do. Just take over power throughout Venezuela, absolutely all, sweep away the bourgeoisie from all political and economic spaces and deepen the revolution!
In so doing, he unwittingly stumbled upon the position of the Second International on political and social change (not the kind of social revolution described in this work) in less developed countries, a position that avoided collaboration with bourgeois liberals while avoiding misplaced permanent revolution contempt towards the likes of small tenant farmers and sharecroppers (i.e., Engels and Trotsky), who can indeed be politically revolutionary if not socially revolutionary. For the purposes of this work, this revolutionary position on political and social change in less developed countries will be called the Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie.
What are the key ideas behind the Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie, a strategy that, unlike the worker-centric Permanent Revolution, carries profound relevancy in less developed countries even today? Consider the following class coalition, which is bigger than the proletariat-led class coalition in an imperialist power:
1) Proletarians, whose class organizations must achieve and maintain politico-ideological independence regardless of whether they lead this coalition or not;
2) Dispossessed elements which nevertheless perform unproductive labour and can perhaps be called the modern proletarii (like butlers, housemaids, paralegals, all who work exclusively in luxury goods production and sale, and perhaps all who work exclusively in non-civilian arms production and trade);
3) Proper lumpenproletariat, preferring legal work to illegal work (like prostitutes where illegal and rank-and-file gangsters);
4) Coordinators, a dispossessed class apart from the so-called prole classes (like mid-level managers, tenured professors with subordinate research staff, doctors without general practice businesses, and bureaucratic specialists); and
5) Nationalistic or pan-nationalistic petit-bourgeoisie of urban areas (like small-business shop owners) and rural ones (like the more numerous small tenant farmers and sharecroppers), apart from those accommodating to the whims of foreign capitalists, but also part of a propertied class which, in an imperialist power, would belong to one reactionary mass (to quote Lassalle) of bourgeois and petit-bourgeois class coalitions.
Since the national or even pan-national loyalty is held by part of the petit-bourgeoisie and not the bourgeoisie as per Maos illusion, all bourgeois elements are excluded before, during, and after the Bloc wages its oppositionist class struggle, which in turn could include Peoples War and the kind of political strikes or mass strikes in the cities that helped Fidel Castro and Che Guevara topple US-backed tinpot tyrant Fuluencia Batista. How, then, could the Bloc achieve the exclusion of the bourgeoisie during and after such class struggle come about while taking into account the leadership role of one following the footsteps of the Julius Caesar of peoples history? The answer, ironically, comes from the modern Kremlin, an example of bourgeois authoritarianism that was programmatically opposed earlier.
According to Ivan Krastev of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Bulgaria:
It cannot explain what distinguish Putin's concept of sovereign democracy and Hugo Chvez's concept of sovereign democracy.
What is missing in western attempts to make sense of Putin's Russia is an insight in the political imagination of the current political elite in Moscow. What is missing is an interest in the arguments with which the regime claims legitimacy. Carl Schmitt could be right when some fifty years ago he noted that "the victor feels no curiosity".
Sovereignty, a recently published volume of ideological writings edited by Nikita Garadya presents a promising opportunity to glimpse into the political imagination of Putin's elite.
The volume is a compendium of excerpts from the president's state of the union speeches, newspaper interviews with one of his possible "successors" (deputy prime minister Dmitry Medvedev), the legendary February theses of Kremlin's ideologue-in-chief Vladislav Surkov delivered in front of the activists of United Russia, and a dozen essays and interviews in the tradition of enlightened loyalism.
The book's ambition is to define and develop the master-concept of Kremlin's newfound ideology: the concept of sovereign democracy. The contributors philosophers, journalists and military strategists - are regarded as key members of Putin's ideological special forces.
[]
The nationalisation of the elite took the form of de facto nationalisation of the energy sector, total control of the media, de facto criminalisation of the western-funded NGOs, Kremlin-sponsored party-building, criminal persecution of Kremlin's opponents (the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky) and the creation of structures that can secure active support for the regime in the time of crisis (such as the Nashi [Ours] movement).
As implied above, it must be stated more explicitly that a de-liberalized, radicalized, substantively populist, and very left-oriented implementation of managed democracy that appeals to sovereignty is far from being the full minimum program for the Demarchic Commonwealth, the form of the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat (as opposed to the Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie), and that, by extension, Parentis dictatorship of the proletarii conclusion was indeed overreaching. For example, where is the management component in eliminating judges in favour of sovereign commoner juries? In random selections for public office instead of elections, thus blunting the charismatic appeal of any would-be National/Pan-National/Paramount/Supreme Leader? In sovereign socioeconomic governments directly representative of ordinary people, thus putting such would-be Leader in a position of having to choose between socioeconomic matters and matters like high politics? In ensuing that such would-be Leaders standard of living is at or slightly lower than the median equivalent for professional and other skilled workers, thus greatly humbling personal prestige? In recallability from popular recall, sovereign commoner juries sanctioning representatives who violate popular legislation, lower representative bodies, political parties themselves, and other avenues thus putting such would-be Leader in a very precarious position? In full freedom of class-strugglist assembly and association for the working class, such as in the formation of working-class militias, thus again putting such would-be Leader in a very precarious position?
However, the aforementioned managed democracy may be compatible with the political section of a more orthodox minimum program, ranging from dynamic opposition to the threshold before the point whereby the working class must expropriate ruling-class political power. Consider these points, for example:
1) The reduction of the normal workweek (even for working multiple jobs) including time for workplace democracy, workers self-management, broader industrial democracy, etc. through workplace committees and assemblies to a participatory-democratic maximum of 32 hours or less without loss of pay or benefits has an ecological component, which implies some form of management. Further reductions corresponding to increased labour productivity, plus normalized planning and policy pertaining to reductions in the normal workweek below the participatory-democratic threshold and to related increases in labour productivity, also imply some form of management.
2) The expansion of local autonomy for equally local development through participatory budgeting and oversight by local assemblies, as well as through unconditional economic assistance (both technical and financial) for localities seeking to establish local currency alternatives to government money, may enhance the prestige of the aforementioned managed democracy, and full communal power replacing the full scope of municipal power from the neighbourhood level to the metropolitan level to even the megapolitan level, and thus actually replacing whole provinces, prefectures, and federated states altogether alters the federal structure towards resembling a hourglass, increasing both the role of the lowest levels of power and the central government power, all at the expense of levels of power in between.
3) Workplace democracy over mandated balance of content in news and media production, heavy appropriation of economic rent in the broadcast spectrum, and unconditional economic assistance (both technical and financial) for independent mass media cooperative startups would go a long way towards eliminating the inequality in access to and distribution of free speech that results from the mass media like RCTV and Globovisin not being fully independent from concentrated private ownership and control (not just from private ownership and control by those colloquially called media moguls or media tycoons, such as Rupert Murdoch).
4) Most importantly, a closed-list proportional representation that both achieves full or near-full proportionality and allows even smaller parties to arbitrarily appoint to and remove from the halls of power those with party affiliations (even by means of random selection that is institutionalized internally) does not take into consideration which parties are allowed representation in the first place, unless one were to consider working-class freedom from formal political disenfranchisement due to class-strugglist assembly and association. Before being sidelined from politics, Lenin once told a foreign journalist, However, eventually we will have a two-party system such as the British have a left party and a right party but two Bolshevik parties, of course. Stalin insisted on official Popular Front governments in all Eastern European governments, comprised of official Communist parties in predetermined leading roles and agrarian, Catholic, left-nationalist, and minor parties in predetermined supporting roles. In short, a managed multi-party system committed in substance to a de-liberalized, radicalized, substantively populist, and very left-wing orientation can be compatible with an orthodox minimum program (and even more).
Under the leadership of one following the footsteps of the Julius Caesar of peoples history, a Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie coming to power in a less developed country and excluding all segments of the bourgeoisie from the political process by means of a de-liberalized, radicalized, substantively populist, and very left-oriented implementation of managed democracy that appeals to sovereignty would be a reenactment of Alea iacta est (the die has been cast), of committing treason against the Roman Senate by not disbanding ones army on the way to Rome, of crossing the Rubicon, and of the original and genuine March on Rome (not Mussolinis farcical Fascist coup detat).
Within this managed democracy the most obvious element is the National Leader or pan-national equivalent, even if there is no organizational emphasis here. Such role could move in and out of the presidency like Putin. The presidency itself could have semi-strong veto power, weaker than the strong veto power held by US and Ukrainian presidencies (overridden only upon a two-thirds legislative majority in all legislative chambers), but stronger than merely the one-time ability to ask legislatures to reconsider certain legislation like in Hungary, Italy, and Portugal. For example, questions on war and peace that are addressed by legislatures could be put to a referendum after a presidential veto. Meanwhile, judiciary reorganization or the less euphemistic presidential court packing of specifically constitutional courts apart from the nominally independent but regular court system would facilitate more radical social reforms. Moreover, the transition to full communal power could see the National Leaders obvious influence on the developing communal power as a bulwark against opposition governments in the municipalities, provinces, prefectures, and federated states. Despite all this power, the president should be subject to legislative confidence, and a National Leader outside the presidency should also be the leading member of a party (all the more so as president).
Again, the most important element of this managed democracy is not the National Leader or pan-national equivalent, but the managed multi-party system. Tillman Clark noted the importance of mass politics even within this managed democracy:
A tradition of dictatorial political leadership in Latin America that is best characterized by the image of the caudillo an authoritarian but popular military leader may seem appropriate to populism. But what separates the populist leader from the caudillo is that populism operates in a context of mass politics instead of dictatorial, singular power. In this sense, populist leaders must have a democratic form of popular support for their rule either through street demonstrations and rallies or through constant calls to the voting booth. Populist mobilization, therefore, is an inherently top-down process that often feeds off a direct relationship between a leader and an originally unorganized mass of followers. But this is not nearly enough, as almost any original movement can be seen this way.
[]
Chvez applied the elementary populist discourse of alien elements corrupt politicians, oligarchic elites, agents of imperialism, etc. to justify the circumvention of traditional democratic procedures and institutions through the guise of manifesting the popular will as determined through the mandates of the voting booth.
This tendency is best exemplified by the method through which the 1999 Constitution came into being; Chvez campaign pledge to elect a constituent assembly and overhaul the nations democratic institutions. Controlled by a 92% Chavista majority, thanks largely to a boycott of the elections by oppositional members, the constituent assembly moved quickly to claim extra-legal authority to re-found Venezuelan democracy. It proceeded to increase the size the judiciary to include more judges (sympathetic to Chvez) and shut down the congress in order to convoke new elections to re-legitimize public officials at every level of the political system. As such, having more than a two-thirds majority in Congress, the Chvistas had the ability to undertake a vast restructuring of the political system. With a two-thirds majority congress, a sympathetic and reformed judiciary, and the lack of voiced opposition in any democratic institution, there was little blocking the radical change many Chvistas hoped to bring to Venezuela and with this more or less domination of all aspects of governance, a wide variety of important changes were made to Venezuelan society during the first stage of the Chvez presidency, all of which cannot be noted here, that have continued and expanded in the second.
[]
Populisms positive aspect lies in how it often ushers in a new mass democracy that transcends the old, traditional, and oligarchical politics, providing a new sense of dignity and self-respect for lower class sectors of society, who are encouraged to recognize that they possess both social and political rights. The negative aspect of traditional populism was its effect on democratic citizenship. Populism requires the privileged link between the masses through electoral functions and acclimations, but once in power, this leadership provided few institutional means by which citizens can participate in the functioning of government or hold it accountable. Elections were thus merely delegative formalities where the masses choose who to give authority and then retreat to a paternalistic position. It is in this regard that the unique nature of Chvismo populism holds hope.
Accordingly, one such managed multi-party system committed in substance to a de-liberalized, radicalized, substantively populist, and very left-wing orientation and thus worthy of at least critical support could look like this:
1) There is a big populist party of power on the "right" that appeals economically to the fringes of left-wing social democracy but, in accordance with the March 2010 draft party program of Die Linke (The Left party in Germany), is committed to things like: public and democratically controlled ownership of general public service, social infrastructure, the energy industry and the finance sector as well as [] transfer large, structure-setting industrial companies to democratic social ownership and to overcome capitalist ownership; the prohibition of mass dismissals in companies not threatened by insolvency [and] the socially secured transfer of employees from shrinking branches into sustainable ones; a public future fund for helping out endangered yet economically viable enterprises, and promoting socio-ecological transformation [where] governmental aid should be allotted only in exchange for [permanently] according property shares to the public sector or to employees [] to be employed for changing management criteria; effective control and regulation of international capital flows and a ban on highly speculative investment vehicles, which jeopardize the stability of the finance system and hence of the entire world economy; wealth tax in the form of a millionaires tax of an annual five per cent on property exceeding one million euros in value; and the abolishment of humiliating means tests, and an end to the coercion into accepting jobs paid below the pay-scale or ones qualification level. However, this big party is the relatively conservative Party of Order on social issues like tackling violent video games (like banning them in Venezuela). Rightward orientation would be limited by executive influence, by the political orientation of parties further left, and by the overall need for coalition politics.
2) There is also another big populist party of power, but one that is on the "left" and that appeals more economically to the Yugoslav model of market socialism, and might adopt the positions of Hyman Minsky and Swedish economist Rudolf Meidner to tackle structural unemployment and working-class savings, respectively (more on Meidner in the next chapter). Socially, this big party is the relatively liberal "Party of Liberty which, in relation to the Die Linke, should definitely be supportive of demonstrations and petitions for referendum and civil disobedience, but also with instruments such as political strikes and general strikes [as] the most effective forms of struggle.
3) There is also a third party or limited group of third parties standing in between the two big parties. One such party is in fact a "Labour" party obviously one not trapped in dead ends like British Labourism, given the standards set above by the March 2010 draft party program of Die Linke. This "Labour" party's purpose is to serve mainly as a significant coalition partner to either of the two big populist "parties of power," like Lassalle's long-term orientation when faced with the choice of Bismarck and the bourgeois liberals, and like the more mainstream Green parties in Europe today as coalition partners to either of the two bigger parties. The "third party" position need not necessarily be a monopoly held by some "Labour" party. Green parties, Pirate parties for intellectual property reform, and other special-interest parties approved under executive influence could occupy this position, as well.
4) The fourth party or limited numbers of fourth parties are class-strugglist left parties of various backgrounds. There can be parties that are traditional in allowing non-worker intellectuals, self-employed service providers, sharecroppers, and so on to be members. Most importantly, there can be a national or pan-national section of Class-Strugglist Social Labour that, through a workers-only voting membership requirement, helps achieve and maintain politico-ideological independence for the proletariat and for the broader strata of so-called prole classes. This fourth party position should refuse coalitions with either party of power or with those in the third party position unless the full minimum program of the Demarchic Commonwealth, the form of the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat, is met.
5) Attempts to form political organizations to the right of the Party of Order would receive executive treatment not unlike the full spectrum of the Kremlins treatment of liberal opposition groups: immediate criminalization for actions like receiving funds from foreign capitalists and their governments, more mundane haranguing, collective monopoly on electoral registration to be held by the four parties or groups of parties (so that, like with the difficulties of third-party registration in the US, this further-right opposition would be forced to file endless stacks of papers, go through long waiting times, and so on), coordinated media taboos, and Potemkin diversions (pseudo-parties staffed entirely by public agents with the goal of dividing the further-right opposition, all the while making organizational and political mishaps at that oppositions expense).
REFERENCES
Dictator of the Proletarii? by Paul DAmato [http://www.isreview.org/issues/36/rev-caesar.shtml]
The Assassination Of Julius Caesar: A Peoples History of Ancient Rome (abstract) by Michael Parenti [http://www.michaelparenti.org/Caesar.html]
Caesarism: was Marx wrong? [http://www.revleft.com/vb/caesarism-marx-wrongi-t112185/index.html]
Fantastic Reality: Marxism and the Politics of Religion by Jack Conrad [http://books.google.com/books?id=Ehfd4BZollsC&printsec=frontcover]
Venezuela to Outlaw Violent Video Games, Toys by Christopher Toothaker, The Associated Press [http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=8748510]
Chvez: "If I am killed, sweep away the bourgeoisie" by Mara Lilibeth Da Corte, El Universal [http://english.eluniversal.com/2010/04/14/en_pol_esp_chavez:-if-i-am-kil_14A3737731.shtml]
A question on Third World struggles [http://wcrforum.com/showthread.php?tid=326]
Permanent Revolution: Myths and Reconsiderations (video) by Mike Macnair [http://vimeo.com/14808875]
Sovereign democracy, Russian-style by Ivan Krastev [http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-institutions_government/sovereign_democracy_4104.jsp]
Does Venezuela need "Managed" or "Sovereign" Democracy? [http://www.revleft.com/vb/does-venezuela-need-t141876/index.html]
Human Rights and Radical Social Change: Liberalism, Marxism and Progressive Populism in Venezuela by Tillman Clark [http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/218/5/human-rights-and-radical-social-change-liberalism-marxism-and-progressive-populism-in-venezuela]
Program of the Left Party (First Draft) by Oskar Lafontaine and Lothar Bisky [http://die-linke.de/fileadmin/download/programmdebatte/100426_draft_programme_en.pdf]
Without too much overreaching, we might say [Julius Caesars] reign can be called a dictatorship of the proletarii [the poor propertyless citizens of Rome], an instance of ruling autocratically against plutocracy on behalf of the citizenrys substantive interests. (Michael Parenti)
In 2003, Michael Parenti illuminated much of the truth behind the traditional depiction of Julius Caesar as a tyrant and a demagogue. In The Assassination Of Julius Caesar: A Peoples History of Ancient Rome, Parenti breaks through the traditional depiction set by the rich nobility of the Roman Republic and beyond, which like todays bourgeoisie deemed the commoners contemptuous and worthy of little more than breads and circuses. Only a few were social reformers, starting with Tiberius Grachhus. The line of social reformers was a tragic one, a line in which almost all were assassinated.
Enter a young Julius Caesar, an army officer with a program of social reform, if not social revolution: land reform, outright grants to the poor, public works and other employment programs for putting plebeians toward productive work, luxury taxes, partial debt relief, recognition of minority religions like Judaism as legitimate, and even a Maximum on Allowable Personal Wealth of 15,000 drachmas (but not one that was subject to populist adjustment by mass democratic means). Even in spite of his military successes, he too fell victim to a Senate conspiracy and was assassinated.
Despite the limited participants in the class struggle of ancient Rome the free rich and the free poor (and neither slaves nor provincial farmers) it is unfortunate that the traditional depiction set by the rich nobility seeped into the revolutionary accounts of the likes of Wilhelm Liebknecht and Karl Marx himself, and from there into more contemporary revolutionary accounts like those of Jack Conrad:
Julius Caesar in particular, because of his youthful identification with the popular cause, programme of land reform and stunning military successes in, and plunder of, Gaul and Egypt, was able to offer substantial gifts to a supportive, but not uncritical, citizen mass. Through their votes and semi-autonomous street manifestation Julius Caesar was able to skilfully outmanoeuvre and eventually bludgeon his aristocratic rivals into submission. The lowering presence of his legions helped too.
He got himself appointed dictator perpetuus, or life-long holder of emergency powers. A Bonapartist domination which by no stretch of the imagination equates to what Michael Parenti an apologist for "official communism" calls "a dictatorship of the proletarii, an instance of ruling autocratically against plutocracy on behalf of the citizenry's substantive interests." Such a description is akin to projecting back in time contemporary Stalin, Mao, Castro, and Chavez myths.
On the subject of army officers, peoples history found another army officer in Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. At least part of his program is in fact a combination of the programs of three 19th-century political figures with very different politics: anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon for his emphasis on workers cooperatives and communal power, democratic-socialist-yet-centralist Ferdinand Lassalle for his emphasis on state aid in social transformation as a means of agitating towards political action, and the statist Iron Chancellor Otto von Bismarck for his social justice welfare missions and a touch or two of social conservatism (like on enacting measures against those video games and toys which promote violence).
At least rhetorically, Chavez has on questions of class struggle elevated himself above the likes of Mao and even Ho Chi Minh, discarding the so-called Great Helmsmans class-conciliationist and illusory Bloc of Four Classes (workers, peasants, small-business petit-bourgeoisie, and so-called national bourgeoisie or patriotic bourgeoisie):
The bourgeoisie keeps plotting to kill me. If they kill me, listen to me, do not lose your head! We have leaders, the party, my generals, my militias, my people. You know what to do. Just take over power throughout Venezuela, absolutely all, sweep away the bourgeoisie from all political and economic spaces and deepen the revolution!
In so doing, he unwittingly stumbled upon the position of the Second International on political and social change (not the kind of social revolution described in this work) in less developed countries, a position that avoided collaboration with bourgeois liberals while avoiding misplaced permanent revolution contempt towards the likes of small tenant farmers and sharecroppers (i.e., Engels and Trotsky), who can indeed be politically revolutionary if not socially revolutionary. For the purposes of this work, this revolutionary position on political and social change in less developed countries will be called the Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie.
What are the key ideas behind the Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie, a strategy that, unlike the worker-centric Permanent Revolution, carries profound relevancy in less developed countries even today? Consider the following class coalition, which is bigger than the proletariat-led class coalition in an imperialist power:
1) Proletarians, whose class organizations must achieve and maintain politico-ideological independence regardless of whether they lead this coalition or not;
2) Dispossessed elements which nevertheless perform unproductive labour and can perhaps be called the modern proletarii (like butlers, housemaids, paralegals, all who work exclusively in luxury goods production and sale, and perhaps all who work exclusively in non-civilian arms production and trade);
3) Proper lumpenproletariat, preferring legal work to illegal work (like prostitutes where illegal and rank-and-file gangsters);
4) Coordinators, a dispossessed class apart from the so-called prole classes (like mid-level managers, tenured professors with subordinate research staff, doctors without general practice businesses, and bureaucratic specialists); and
5) Nationalistic or pan-nationalistic petit-bourgeoisie of urban areas (like small-business shop owners) and rural ones (like the more numerous small tenant farmers and sharecroppers), apart from those accommodating to the whims of foreign capitalists, but also part of a propertied class which, in an imperialist power, would belong to one reactionary mass (to quote Lassalle) of bourgeois and petit-bourgeois class coalitions.
Since the national or even pan-national loyalty is held by part of the petit-bourgeoisie and not the bourgeoisie as per Maos illusion, all bourgeois elements are excluded before, during, and after the Bloc wages its oppositionist class struggle, which in turn could include Peoples War and the kind of political strikes or mass strikes in the cities that helped Fidel Castro and Che Guevara topple US-backed tinpot tyrant Fuluencia Batista. How, then, could the Bloc achieve the exclusion of the bourgeoisie during and after such class struggle come about while taking into account the leadership role of one following the footsteps of the Julius Caesar of peoples history? The answer, ironically, comes from the modern Kremlin, an example of bourgeois authoritarianism that was programmatically opposed earlier.
According to Ivan Krastev of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Bulgaria:
It cannot explain what distinguish Putin's concept of sovereign democracy and Hugo Chvez's concept of sovereign democracy.
What is missing in western attempts to make sense of Putin's Russia is an insight in the political imagination of the current political elite in Moscow. What is missing is an interest in the arguments with which the regime claims legitimacy. Carl Schmitt could be right when some fifty years ago he noted that "the victor feels no curiosity".
Sovereignty, a recently published volume of ideological writings edited by Nikita Garadya presents a promising opportunity to glimpse into the political imagination of Putin's elite.
The volume is a compendium of excerpts from the president's state of the union speeches, newspaper interviews with one of his possible "successors" (deputy prime minister Dmitry Medvedev), the legendary February theses of Kremlin's ideologue-in-chief Vladislav Surkov delivered in front of the activists of United Russia, and a dozen essays and interviews in the tradition of enlightened loyalism.
The book's ambition is to define and develop the master-concept of Kremlin's newfound ideology: the concept of sovereign democracy. The contributors philosophers, journalists and military strategists - are regarded as key members of Putin's ideological special forces.
[]
The nationalisation of the elite took the form of de facto nationalisation of the energy sector, total control of the media, de facto criminalisation of the western-funded NGOs, Kremlin-sponsored party-building, criminal persecution of Kremlin's opponents (the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky) and the creation of structures that can secure active support for the regime in the time of crisis (such as the Nashi [Ours] movement).
As implied above, it must be stated more explicitly that a de-liberalized, radicalized, substantively populist, and very left-oriented implementation of managed democracy that appeals to sovereignty is far from being the full minimum program for the Demarchic Commonwealth, the form of the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat (as opposed to the Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie), and that, by extension, Parentis dictatorship of the proletarii conclusion was indeed overreaching. For example, where is the management component in eliminating judges in favour of sovereign commoner juries? In random selections for public office instead of elections, thus blunting the charismatic appeal of any would-be National/Pan-National/Paramount/Supreme Leader? In sovereign socioeconomic governments directly representative of ordinary people, thus putting such would-be Leader in a position of having to choose between socioeconomic matters and matters like high politics? In ensuing that such would-be Leaders standard of living is at or slightly lower than the median equivalent for professional and other skilled workers, thus greatly humbling personal prestige? In recallability from popular recall, sovereign commoner juries sanctioning representatives who violate popular legislation, lower representative bodies, political parties themselves, and other avenues thus putting such would-be Leader in a very precarious position? In full freedom of class-strugglist assembly and association for the working class, such as in the formation of working-class militias, thus again putting such would-be Leader in a very precarious position?
However, the aforementioned managed democracy may be compatible with the political section of a more orthodox minimum program, ranging from dynamic opposition to the threshold before the point whereby the working class must expropriate ruling-class political power. Consider these points, for example:
1) The reduction of the normal workweek (even for working multiple jobs) including time for workplace democracy, workers self-management, broader industrial democracy, etc. through workplace committees and assemblies to a participatory-democratic maximum of 32 hours or less without loss of pay or benefits has an ecological component, which implies some form of management. Further reductions corresponding to increased labour productivity, plus normalized planning and policy pertaining to reductions in the normal workweek below the participatory-democratic threshold and to related increases in labour productivity, also imply some form of management.
2) The expansion of local autonomy for equally local development through participatory budgeting and oversight by local assemblies, as well as through unconditional economic assistance (both technical and financial) for localities seeking to establish local currency alternatives to government money, may enhance the prestige of the aforementioned managed democracy, and full communal power replacing the full scope of municipal power from the neighbourhood level to the metropolitan level to even the megapolitan level, and thus actually replacing whole provinces, prefectures, and federated states altogether alters the federal structure towards resembling a hourglass, increasing both the role of the lowest levels of power and the central government power, all at the expense of levels of power in between.
3) Workplace democracy over mandated balance of content in news and media production, heavy appropriation of economic rent in the broadcast spectrum, and unconditional economic assistance (both technical and financial) for independent mass media cooperative startups would go a long way towards eliminating the inequality in access to and distribution of free speech that results from the mass media like RCTV and Globovisin not being fully independent from concentrated private ownership and control (not just from private ownership and control by those colloquially called media moguls or media tycoons, such as Rupert Murdoch).
4) Most importantly, a closed-list proportional representation that both achieves full or near-full proportionality and allows even smaller parties to arbitrarily appoint to and remove from the halls of power those with party affiliations (even by means of random selection that is institutionalized internally) does not take into consideration which parties are allowed representation in the first place, unless one were to consider working-class freedom from formal political disenfranchisement due to class-strugglist assembly and association. Before being sidelined from politics, Lenin once told a foreign journalist, However, eventually we will have a two-party system such as the British have a left party and a right party but two Bolshevik parties, of course. Stalin insisted on official Popular Front governments in all Eastern European governments, comprised of official Communist parties in predetermined leading roles and agrarian, Catholic, left-nationalist, and minor parties in predetermined supporting roles. In short, a managed multi-party system committed in substance to a de-liberalized, radicalized, substantively populist, and very left-wing orientation can be compatible with an orthodox minimum program (and even more).
Under the leadership of one following the footsteps of the Julius Caesar of peoples history, a Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie coming to power in a less developed country and excluding all segments of the bourgeoisie from the political process by means of a de-liberalized, radicalized, substantively populist, and very left-oriented implementation of managed democracy that appeals to sovereignty would be a reenactment of Alea iacta est (the die has been cast), of committing treason against the Roman Senate by not disbanding ones army on the way to Rome, of crossing the Rubicon, and of the original and genuine March on Rome (not Mussolinis farcical Fascist coup detat).
Within this managed democracy the most obvious element is the National Leader or pan-national equivalent, even if there is no organizational emphasis here. Such role could move in and out of the presidency like Putin. The presidency itself could have semi-strong veto power, weaker than the strong veto power held by US and Ukrainian presidencies (overridden only upon a two-thirds legislative majority in all legislative chambers), but stronger than merely the one-time ability to ask legislatures to reconsider certain legislation like in Hungary, Italy, and Portugal. For example, questions on war and peace that are addressed by legislatures could be put to a referendum after a presidential veto. Meanwhile, judiciary reorganization or the less euphemistic presidential court packing of specifically constitutional courts apart from the nominally independent but regular court system would facilitate more radical social reforms. Moreover, the transition to full communal power could see the National Leaders obvious influence on the developing communal power as a bulwark against opposition governments in the municipalities, provinces, prefectures, and federated states. Despite all this power, the president should be subject to legislative confidence, and a National Leader outside the presidency should also be the leading member of a party (all the more so as president).
Again, the most important element of this managed democracy is not the National Leader or pan-national equivalent, but the managed multi-party system. Tillman Clark noted the importance of mass politics even within this managed democracy:
A tradition of dictatorial political leadership in Latin America that is best characterized by the image of the caudillo an authoritarian but popular military leader may seem appropriate to populism. But what separates the populist leader from the caudillo is that populism operates in a context of mass politics instead of dictatorial, singular power. In this sense, populist leaders must have a democratic form of popular support for their rule either through street demonstrations and rallies or through constant calls to the voting booth. Populist mobilization, therefore, is an inherently top-down process that often feeds off a direct relationship between a leader and an originally unorganized mass of followers. But this is not nearly enough, as almost any original movement can be seen this way.
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Chvez applied the elementary populist discourse of alien elements corrupt politicians, oligarchic elites, agents of imperialism, etc. to justify the circumvention of traditional democratic procedures and institutions through the guise of manifesting the popular will as determined through the mandates of the voting booth.
This tendency is best exemplified by the method through which the 1999 Constitution came into being; Chvez campaign pledge to elect a constituent assembly and overhaul the nations democratic institutions. Controlled by a 92% Chavista majority, thanks largely to a boycott of the elections by oppositional members, the constituent assembly moved quickly to claim extra-legal authority to re-found Venezuelan democracy. It proceeded to increase the size the judiciary to include more judges (sympathetic to Chvez) and shut down the congress in order to convoke new elections to re-legitimize public officials at every level of the political system. As such, having more than a two-thirds majority in Congress, the Chvistas had the ability to undertake a vast restructuring of the political system. With a two-thirds majority congress, a sympathetic and reformed judiciary, and the lack of voiced opposition in any democratic institution, there was little blocking the radical change many Chvistas hoped to bring to Venezuela and with this more or less domination of all aspects of governance, a wide variety of important changes were made to Venezuelan society during the first stage of the Chvez presidency, all of which cannot be noted here, that have continued and expanded in the second.
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Populisms positive aspect lies in how it often ushers in a new mass democracy that transcends the old, traditional, and oligarchical politics, providing a new sense of dignity and self-respect for lower class sectors of society, who are encouraged to recognize that they possess both social and political rights. The negative aspect of traditional populism was its effect on democratic citizenship. Populism requires the privileged link between the masses through electoral functions and acclimations, but once in power, this leadership provided few institutional means by which citizens can participate in the functioning of government or hold it accountable. Elections were thus merely delegative formalities where the masses choose who to give authority and then retreat to a paternalistic position. It is in this regard that the unique nature of Chvismo populism holds hope.
Accordingly, one such managed multi-party system committed in substance to a de-liberalized, radicalized, substantively populist, and very left-wing orientation and thus worthy of at least critical support could look like this:
1) There is a big populist party of power on the "right" that appeals economically to the fringes of left-wing social democracy but, in accordance with the March 2010 draft party program of Die Linke (The Left party in Germany), is committed to things like: public and democratically controlled ownership of general public service, social infrastructure, the energy industry and the finance sector as well as [] transfer large, structure-setting industrial companies to democratic social ownership and to overcome capitalist ownership; the prohibition of mass dismissals in companies not threatened by insolvency [and] the socially secured transfer of employees from shrinking branches into sustainable ones; a public future fund for helping out endangered yet economically viable enterprises, and promoting socio-ecological transformation [where] governmental aid should be allotted only in exchange for [permanently] according property shares to the public sector or to employees [] to be employed for changing management criteria; effective control and regulation of international capital flows and a ban on highly speculative investment vehicles, which jeopardize the stability of the finance system and hence of the entire world economy; wealth tax in the form of a millionaires tax of an annual five per cent on property exceeding one million euros in value; and the abolishment of humiliating means tests, and an end to the coercion into accepting jobs paid below the pay-scale or ones qualification level. However, this big party is the relatively conservative Party of Order on social issues like tackling violent video games (like banning them in Venezuela). Rightward orientation would be limited by executive influence, by the political orientation of parties further left, and by the overall need for coalition politics.
2) There is also another big populist party of power, but one that is on the "left" and that appeals more economically to the Yugoslav model of market socialism, and might adopt the positions of Hyman Minsky and Swedish economist Rudolf Meidner to tackle structural unemployment and working-class savings, respectively (more on Meidner in the next chapter). Socially, this big party is the relatively liberal "Party of Liberty which, in relation to the Die Linke, should definitely be supportive of demonstrations and petitions for referendum and civil disobedience, but also with instruments such as political strikes and general strikes [as] the most effective forms of struggle.
3) There is also a third party or limited group of third parties standing in between the two big parties. One such party is in fact a "Labour" party obviously one not trapped in dead ends like British Labourism, given the standards set above by the March 2010 draft party program of Die Linke. This "Labour" party's purpose is to serve mainly as a significant coalition partner to either of the two big populist "parties of power," like Lassalle's long-term orientation when faced with the choice of Bismarck and the bourgeois liberals, and like the more mainstream Green parties in Europe today as coalition partners to either of the two bigger parties. The "third party" position need not necessarily be a monopoly held by some "Labour" party. Green parties, Pirate parties for intellectual property reform, and other special-interest parties approved under executive influence could occupy this position, as well.
4) The fourth party or limited numbers of fourth parties are class-strugglist left parties of various backgrounds. There can be parties that are traditional in allowing non-worker intellectuals, self-employed service providers, sharecroppers, and so on to be members. Most importantly, there can be a national or pan-national section of Class-Strugglist Social Labour that, through a workers-only voting membership requirement, helps achieve and maintain politico-ideological independence for the proletariat and for the broader strata of so-called prole classes. This fourth party position should refuse coalitions with either party of power or with those in the third party position unless the full minimum program of the Demarchic Commonwealth, the form of the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat, is met.
5) Attempts to form political organizations to the right of the Party of Order would receive executive treatment not unlike the full spectrum of the Kremlins treatment of liberal opposition groups: immediate criminalization for actions like receiving funds from foreign capitalists and their governments, more mundane haranguing, collective monopoly on electoral registration to be held by the four parties or groups of parties (so that, like with the difficulties of third-party registration in the US, this further-right opposition would be forced to file endless stacks of papers, go through long waiting times, and so on), coordinated media taboos, and Potemkin diversions (pseudo-parties staffed entirely by public agents with the goal of dividing the further-right opposition, all the while making organizational and political mishaps at that oppositions expense).
REFERENCES
Dictator of the Proletarii? by Paul DAmato [http://www.isreview.org/issues/36/rev-caesar.shtml]
The Assassination Of Julius Caesar: A Peoples History of Ancient Rome (abstract) by Michael Parenti [http://www.michaelparenti.org/Caesar.html]
Caesarism: was Marx wrong? [http://www.revleft.com/vb/caesarism-marx-wrongi-t112185/index.html]
Fantastic Reality: Marxism and the Politics of Religion by Jack Conrad [http://books.google.com/books?id=Ehfd4BZollsC&printsec=frontcover]
Venezuela to Outlaw Violent Video Games, Toys by Christopher Toothaker, The Associated Press [http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=8748510]
Chvez: "If I am killed, sweep away the bourgeoisie" by Mara Lilibeth Da Corte, El Universal [http://english.eluniversal.com/2010/04/14/en_pol_esp_chavez:-if-i-am-kil_14A3737731.shtml]
A question on Third World struggles [http://wcrforum.com/showthread.php?tid=326]
Permanent Revolution: Myths and Reconsiderations (video) by Mike Macnair [http://vimeo.com/14808875]
Sovereign democracy, Russian-style by Ivan Krastev [http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-institutions_government/sovereign_democracy_4104.jsp]
Does Venezuela need "Managed" or "Sovereign" Democracy? [http://www.revleft.com/vb/does-venezuela-need-t141876/index.html]
Human Rights and Radical Social Change: Liberalism, Marxism and Progressive Populism in Venezuela by Tillman Clark [http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/218/5/human-rights-and-radical-social-change-liberalism-marxism-and-progressive-populism-in-venezuela]
Program of the Left Party (First Draft) by Oskar Lafontaine and Lothar Bisky [http://die-linke.de/fileadmin/download/programmdebatte/100426_draft_programme_en.pdf]