Of Socialism, Federalism, and Confederation

[TheMaroon]

*This post is made up of my interpretation of socialism and the respective modes of government as well as a fair amount of assumptions. This is just "theory".*

*Socialism in this thread is assumed to mean an economy where some private industries are present, however industry is mostly publicly-owned and heavily regulated.*

In a Democratic(and/or republic-Federalist system of government, the power of the government is divided between the National, State, and Local levels respectively. Law making is generally decided on a State and National level, and each level is led by a group of elected officials, whom stay in office for a set amount of time. After which they are replaced or re-elected in office. Power in this system, although mostly even is vested more into the National Government. Most Federations do not allow succession.

In a Democratic(and/or republic)-Confederacy, power is generally decentralized, with a weak national government, and strong state or provincial government(s). Government officials are elected just as in Federalism. And Laws very from state to state and the states are often a little bit flaky. With most confederacies allowing succession from the Confederacy.

A Socialist mode of government requires a strong central government, to regulate industry and enforce laws, and such. This type of government is characteristic of a Federal government; however to the contrary Socialism also requires a strong proletariat, with virtually no bourgeoisie present in the system. This would be characteristic of a confederacy where the proletariat states are behind the reigns rather than a political elite ruling a national system such as in the US.

In your opinion, what mode of government would better complement a Socially Liberal, Economically Socialist type of government: Federalism or Confederation?

PS- Please excuse my general idiocy

[Blake's Baby]

I understand the question, I just don't understand the reason for the question.

Q: 'What particular form of government is best for the particular conditions of capitalism I have set out?'

A: 'The one it is easiest for the working class to overthrow during the revolution.'

[John Nada]

*This post is made up of my interpretation of socialism and the respective modes of government as well as a fair amount of assumptions. This is just "theory".*

*Socialism in this thread is assumed to mean an economy where some private industries are present, however industry is mostly publicly-owned and heavily regulated.*

In a Democratic(and/or republic-Federalist system of government, the power of the government is divided between the National, State, and Local levels respectively. Law making is generally decided on a State and National level, and each level is led by a group of elected officials, whom stay in office for a set amount of time. After which they are replaced or re-elected in office. Power in this system, although mostly even is vested more into the National Government. Most Federations do not allow succession.

In a Democratic(and/or republic)-Confederacy, power is generally decentralized, with a weak national government, and strong state or provincial government(s). Government officials are elected just as in Federalism. And Laws very from state to state and the states are often a little bit flaky. With most confederacies allowing succession from the Confederacy.

A Socialist mode of government requires a strong central government, to regulate industry and enforce laws, and such. This type of government is characteristic of a Federal government; however to the contrary Socialism also requires a strong proletariat, with virtually no bourgeoisie present in the system. This would be characteristic of a confederacy where the proletariat states are behind the reigns rather than a political elite ruling a national system such as in the US.

In your opinion, what mode of government would better complement a Socially Liberal, Economically Socialist type of government: Federalism or Confederation?I get an American-centric vibe from the jargon in your post. The way the local, state and national levels of government are framed is peculiar to the USA bourgeois-"democratic" republic. A lot of the definitions in your op are similar to what US school textbooks use, but have different meanings and connotations in the nomenclature of various Marxist and anarchist tendencies. For example socialism can(and often is) a synonym for communism. And many anarchist and Marxist theorists used federation and confederation interchangeably.

Also many words have different connotations and definitions in other nations and languages(there's users from all over the world, many have English as a second language). For example "liberal" in vernacular American English has connotations of progressive or leftist. In leftist circles, outside the US or on this board, liberal has rightist connotation meaning classical liberalism(laissez-faire capitalism), neoliberalism(austerity) or center-left reformism. Not so "liberal" for the workers and poor; a complete opposite meanings.

There is no state and classes under communism at all. Having a state, private enterprises, and classes, let alone a bourgeoisie, is not socialism, even if major industries are nationalized.

Marx and Engels noted much of what you proposed already existed, and still exists, in bourgeois-democratic republics like the US or Switzerland. What you put forth isn't a program for a post-capitalist society. It deals primarily with the state-apparatus part of the superstructure in a form well within the logic of capitalism. There's nothing on the base like productive distribution or productive relations, or on other parts of the superstructure like family structure, culture, customs, ect. In fact, exactly which nation(s) this is about is not mentioned(Zimbabwe? Tajikistan? China? Slovenia? USA? a multinational confederation/federation?).

There was a federation model proposed in the Erfurt Program of the SPD:
2. Direct legislation by the people through the rights of proposal and rejection. Self-determination and self-government of the people in Reich, state, province, and municipality. Election by the people of magistrates, who are answerable and liable to them. Annual voting of taxes. https://www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/1891/erfurt-program.htm However, Engels was critical of this:
Second. The reconstitution of Germany. On the one hand, the system of small states must be abolished — just try to revolutionise society while there are the Bavarian-Württemberg reservation rights — and the map of present-day Thuringia, for example, is such a sorry sight. On the other hand, Prussia must cease to exist and must be broken up into self-governing provinces for the specific Prussianism to stop weighing on Germany. The system of small states and Prussianism are the two sides of the antithesis now gripping Germany in a vice, in which one side must always serve as the excuse and justification for the existence of the other.

What should take its place? In my view, the proletariat can only use the form of the one and indivisible republic. In the gigantic territory of the United States, the federal republic is still, on the whole, a necessity, although in the Eastern states it is already becoming a hindrance. It would be a step forward in Britain where the two islands are peopled by four nations and in spite of a single Parliament three different systems of legislation already exist side by side. In little Switzerland, it has long been a hindrance, tolerable only because Switzerland is content to be a purely passive member of the European state system. For Germany, federalisation on the Swiss model would be an enormous step backward. Two points distinguish a union state from a completely unified state: first, that each member state, each canton, has its own civil and criminal legislative and judicial system, and, second, that alongside a popular chamber there is also a federal chamber in which each canton, whether large or small, votes as such. The first we have luckily overcome and we shall not be so childish as to reintroduce it, the second we have in the Bundesrat and we could do very well without it, since our “federal state” generally constitutes a transition to a unified state. The revolution of 1866 and 1870 must not be reversed from above but supplemented and improved by a movement from below.

So, then, a unified republic. But not in the sense of the present French Republic, which is nothing but the Empire established in 1799’ without the Emperor. From 1792 to 1799 each French department, each commune, enjoyed complete self-government on the American model, and this is what we too must have. How self-government is to be organised and how we can manage without a bureaucracy has been shown to us by America and the First French Republic, and is being shown even today by Australia, Canada and the other English colonies. And a provincial and communal self-government of this type is far freer than, for instance, Swiss federalism, under which, it is true, the canton is very independent in relation to the federation, but is also independent in relation to the district and the commune. The cantonal governments appoint the district governors and prefects, which is unknown in English speaking countries and which we want to abolish here as resolutely in the future as the Prussian Landräte and Regicrungsräte.Bold Mine: https://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1891/06/29.htm Engels was in favor of a federalism of the American type in the context of Germany as a counter to Prussian dominance, and in the British Isles as a multinational federation of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. He opposed the Switz model of federalism. Note that he was discussing the minimum program for the SPD, when Germany still had elements of absolutism as opposed to being a full-fledged bourgeois-democratic republic.
In your opinion, what mode of government would better complement a Socially Liberal, Economically Socialist type of government: Federalism or Confederation?The question shouldn't be which government in this context is "socially liberal, economically socialist", which is an Americanist term. It should be what minimum program will enable the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat and socialist construction.

"Confederation" has different connotations in the US of being "states' rights". Bookchin noted this in writing of a confederation as a form of dual power:
If the two — confederalism and statism — are not seen as being in tension with each other, a tension in which the nation-state has used a variety of intermediaries like provincial governments in Canada and state governments in the United States to create the illusion of “local control,” then the concept of confederation loses all meaning. Provincial autonomy in Canada and states’ rights in the United States are no more confederal than “soviets” or councils were the medium for popular control that existed in tension with Stalin’s totalitarian state. The Russian soviets were taken over by the Bolsheviks, who supplanted them with their party within a year or two of the October Revolution. To weaken the role of confederal municipalities as a countervailing power to the nation-state by opportunistically running “confederalist” candidates for state govemment — or, more nightmarishly, for governorship in seemingly democratic states (as some U.S. Greens have proposed) is to blur the importance of the need for tension between confederations and nation-states — indeed, they obscure the fact that the two cannot co-exist over the long term. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-the-meaning-of-confederalism#toc4

[ckaihatsu]

It's a near-travesty that thoroughly bourgeois conceptions of 'rights' and 'government' are retained when discussing socialism.

The whole *point* of socialism is to *transcend* the need for bourgeois-type forms of geographically-parceled management, which, really, is all about private property claims, anyway, and all material-legal complications resulting from that premise.

As revolutionaries we should firmly negate the *entire* superstructure -- that seems validated on the basis of its intertwining itself into geography, physical space, existing communities, natural resources, etc.

The revolutionary line is that the bourgeois (private-property-based) division of labor has been objectively materially superseded already, and is an execresence concerning all matters of rational (worker-controlled) political economy.

The abolition of private property abolishes any and all need for the *management* / administration of the same in the world's current parcel-faction way -- a paradigm shift to *human* concerns as the basis for social organization would, firstly, negate the entire concept of *geography* as being in any way tied to matters of political economy, because the 'superstructure' of a post-capitalist society would be entirely about the *individual*.





[S]ocialism itself will be of value simply because it will lead to Individualism.

Socialism, Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it, by converting private property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and insure the material well-being of each member of the community. It will, in fact, give Life its proper basis and its proper environment. But for the full development of Life to its highest mode of perfection, something more is needed. What is needed is Individualism. If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first. At present, in consequence of the existence of private property, a great many people are enabled to develop a certain very limited amount of Individualism. They are either under no necessity to work for their living, or are enabled to choose the sphere of activity that is really congenial to them, and gives them pleasure. These are the poets, the philosophers, the men of science, the men of culture – in a word, the real men, the men who have realised themselves, and in whom all Humanity gains a partial realisation. Upon the other hand, there are a great many people who, having no private property of their own, and being always on the brink of sheer starvation, are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work that is quite uncongenial to them, and to which they are forced by the peremptory, unreasonable, degrading Tyranny of want. These are the poor, and amongst them there is no grace of manner, or charm of speech, or civilisation, or culture, or refinement in pleasures, or joy of life. From their collective force Humanity gains much in material prosperity. But it is only the material result that it gains, and the man who is poor is in himself absolutely of no importance. He is merely the infinitesimal atom of a force that, so far from regarding him, crushes him: indeed, prefers him crushed, as in that case he is far more obedient.




https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-oscar/soul-man/


G.U.T.S.U.C., Individualism - Tribalism



http://s6.postimg.org/izeyfeh9t/150403_2_Individualism_Tribalism_aoi_36_tiff_x.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/680s8w7hp/full/)


Centralization-Abstraction Diagram of Political Forms



http://s6.postimg.org/a6jq3ear5/2374201420046342459e_NEwo_V_fs.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/xxj3liay5/full/)