Freedom

When I was a very young man, back in the early 70s (some time before decided, around the early 80s, that I was actually a socialist) I I read a book called “How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World” by self-styled libertarian Harry Browne, and decided that I, too, was a libertarian.  I later realized that what I liked about the book (and still do, at least in my fading recollection) has little to do with libertarianism as usually conceived.  It  is a theme that does run as a thread through libertarianism, submerged beneath a fetishization of property* and a mytho-heroic cult of the individual**, but it is far broader.  It is a theme in philosophies as old as classical stoicism and as new as the existentialism of Sartre and de Beauvoir.  This is the theme that, in the truest sense, freedom is not something that we strive for, but something that all humans inalienably have. 

In this idea of freedom, freedom is defined as the ability to choose between real alternatives.  This freedom is always constrained, by what the existentialists called “facticity” – by circumstances outside of ourselves that limit the alternatives actually available at any given time.  But the choice is real – and this is the only kind of choice we ever really have.  What we usually think of as “freedom” is to have a choice between more attractive alternatives.  This improvement of the conditions of choice is something that humans can often accomplish, but only if we start by exercising our freedom; by making good choices between the actual alternatives available to us, right here and now.

Hoofnotes:

*A case in point would be the political philosophy of Robert Nozick.

**Courtesy of Ayn Rand, I take it.  (Her, I haven’t read.)

Advantages

Conservative parties have a certain natural advantage over the Left that I don’t think I’ve ever heard discussed.  If your goal is the preservation of the status quo, then much of the way forward may seem relatively clear – just do more of the same.  Among other things, this may make it easier to build consensus in your own party.  If your goal is change, on the other hand, particularly if it is revolutionary change, then the same degree of clarity may be missing.  You may have a theory, but practical experience of the world you are seeking is, by definition, absent.  Is this one reason the Left tends to dissolve in schism?

Of course, objective conditions may make a mockery of expectations based on the conservatives’ experience.  Then, they will fail, and times will change.  Then, the Left may be swift and flexible enough to grasp the whirlwind.  If not us, then the fascists.  They are arguably even better at this than we are.

[Side note:  Don’t try to read too much analysis of current events into the above.  This was mostly generated by some historical musings.]

Navel gazing

With all the talk about "democratic socialism", these days, including attempts to define the term that make it essentially indistinguishable from "New Deal Democrat", I've spent some time thinking about how I would describe my own political/philosophical leanings to an interested stranger. Every day is different, but today I am thinking "radical democratic socialist" because I do NOT think that capitalism with a human face is sufficient. Private ownership of capital is essentially incompatible with democracy (which is why I've sometimes argued that "democratic socialism" is a tautology). Further, paying people, let alone paying them generously, just for owning stuff, let alone just because they already own a lot more stuff than anybody else, is morally indefensible.

On the other hand, I need to add something like "pragmatic radical", because I know that wishing don't make it so, and I do not believe in letting the best be the enemy of the good (or even of the "better than now"). Morally, it is better to do something to make things better, for at least some people, than to do nothing. Pretending to a high moral stance from "keeping your hands clean" is not actually better, morally, than being "compromised" by accepting, and working for, limited reforms. Life is short and (to quote a prominent liberal), in the long run we are all dead.

This leaves out a lot. Feminism, anti-racism... or, better, pro-POC... "embracing" LGBTQ (a phrase I learned recently from a friend, and like so much better than "ally"). I like to think of socialism as not limited to the economic realm. Socialism is democracy, taken to its ultimate conclusion. Socialism is the end of all exploitation, all preferential advantage or privilege of one group over another, for whatever reason, from whatever source.

Government control

One “common sense” argument put forth against socialism, in the (limited) sense of direct government control over the economy, is that the government cannot be trusted to invest wisely.  They may keep non-viable enterprises going, for example, pouring in money drawn from better-performing portions of the economy, in order to win votes.

As a prima facie argument, this strikes me as silly.  After all, private capitalists cannot be trusted to invest wisely, either, and to the extent that they do, they invest for their own benefit, not ours, and the public weal follows as a side effect, if at all.  It’s not that I don’t believe in the existence of the “invisible hand”.  I just think its reach only extends so far.  Maintaining jobs in a money-losing business that produces a useful commodity may actually be a perfectly reasonable public investment in some circumstances, but not one that would ever appeal to the private capitalist.

On a more detailed, implementation-focused level, of course the anti-socialist objection is not entirely ridiculous.  If we have publicly managed investments, we do want them to be managed well, and managing investments well is not a trivially easy job.  We also need to protect ourselves from outright corruption.  Addressing these issues is partly a matter of management, of checks and balances, of trying to design a system as free as possible from irrelevant, systematic distortions.  But to get a well-balanced, robust plan of public investment that takes all direct and indirect costs and benefits into account, I think we would need a much more participatory planning process.   (Note that taking ALL direct and indirect costs and benefits into account is something that capitalist enterprise management NEVER does.)

Can we get a suitable democratic planning process within our current models of government?  I do not believe in the blanket statement, asserted by some on the left, that “you cannot tear down the master’s house using the master’s tools.”  But some of the master’s tools are in fact rather specifically engineered to serve the master’s purposes, and are not so readily adapted to the needs and purposes of the folk.  In my mind, our really-existing systems of representative government are examples of such tools.

Representative governments originated, in Europe, as a way for kings to appease the aristocracy, and eventually the richer bourgeoisie, without ceding too much central control.  Some constitutions, of course, were constructed as a conscious break with the rule of kings; however, the one such “revolutionary” constitution I know something about – our own in the U.S. – was consciously created to keep hoi polloi at arm’s length, and guarantee effective control by the richer classes.  Obviously, there have been modifications in these constitutions over the centuries, most of which (I think)  have been in the direction of greater democratization, but there still is a long way to go.  Most ordinary folks participate in democracy only by spending ten minutes every 2-4 years in voting  (if they even do that).  “Debate” takes place between politicians and pundits in the commercial news media (primarily), and is, to most people, at best a spectator sport.  People’s own discussions tend to take place amongst small groups of their own friends, and can influence the broader process of policy formulation only to the extent they happen to be queried through the passive (and eminently manipulable) process of polling. 

A truly democratic process would have people involved in interactive debate, with both themselves and opponents as participants; a debate taking place in a public forum that fed directly into the decision making process.  Listening to arguments pro and con, and being forced to make a meaningful decision afterwards, focuses the intelligence, I believe, like almost nothing else.

The punditry would assure us that people just don’t want to be that involved in their own government.  Maybe that’s only because they’ve never had the chance.

Subject for Debate

It is not surprising that the debates fail to satisfy.  (I admit I didn't watch them.  A few minutes of Romney's wild eyes and wilder lies, and I was ready to puke, and changed the channel.  But I'm responding to the post-debate coverage I've read, both in the news media and on Facebook.)

You can't squarely and honestly address the issues facing this country unless you address the issue of class; to wit, that the rich and powerful are and have been systematically looting the working class both of this country and the world.  (This is the actual class that includes the working poor plus the bulk of that which we disingenuously refer to as  "the middle class" in our political debates.)  They have been doing this since time immemorial, generally with the full help and support of government.  This was mitigated for a brief time, due to working people's revolutionary struggles and the rise of unionism in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. The post-WWII prosperity then eased the pressure (there was so much wealth to be generated, that the rich could be convinced to share).  But since the mid-70s the rapine has resumed, and steadily intensified in force.  Extreme inequality was a driving force behind the economic collapse of 2008, and our government (a milquetoast Presidency and a recalcitrant Congress) ensured that, while working people got some palliative measures (a stimulus package, payroll tax cuts, unemployment extensions), which actually lessened our pain compared to, e.g., Europe, the rich essentially got made whole, and certainly were not asked to pay for their crimes.

But neither of the major U.S. parties can address this issue, since they are both entirely beholden to the capitalist class.  Our Constitution, and our private cash-driven electoral system ensure this.  I'm not a believer in the strategy of "Down with the Elephant, Down with the Ass."  While I would love to see an effective (i.e., election-winning) "Party of the Working Class,"  I have yet to see one with a credible plan of building mass American support.  Working within the Democratic Party has been somewhat more effective in my lifetime, but frustrating also:  for all the so-called "progressives" we sometimes manage to elect, we can't seem to shake the identification of the Democrats as the kinder and gentler of the parties of the elites.  Money is too influential, leadership too powerful, and even our "progressives", once in office, are often too willing to go along to get along.

I don't have a solution.  We need an effective, yet revolutionary politics if we are ever to break the stranglehold of wealth over our lives, and I frankly can't see where that politics is coming from.  But an honest recognition of the problem has got to be the first step.

P.S. The quote above is from an old Socialist chant, "Down with the Elephant.  Down with the Ass.  Let's build a party of the Working Class."

The Root of All Evil

The root of capitalism is the principle that the possession of property entitles you to a claim on the fruits of someone else's labor.  There is no moral justification for this.  It is on a par with "might makes right" or "the Devil take the hindmost."  Capitalism is thus corrupt at its very core, whatever social benefits it might be deemed to have in any specific time and place.

The logic of capitalism only makes sense if there is an unequal distribution of wealth.  If everybody had equal wealth, there would be no sense in property employing labor; rather, we would tend to evolve a system where men and women collectively used their property and their labor in order to socially produce things (since social production is more efficient than individual production).  Equal distribution of wealth would tend toward a cooperative society, rather than a capitalistic one.

So capitalism arises only in an unequal society; its essential logic guarantees that.  The logic of the working-out of capitalism increases the initial inequality.  If you have only a small amount of property, it is very difficult to make it grow.  Generally, only your constant labor can keep it from shrinking.  If you have a large amount of property, however, it is very difficult to PREVENT it from growing.  The process of being paid for the use of your property returns the borrowed property plus a dividend, over and over again.  The more property you possess, the larger the dividend.  If the amount of property you possess is very large, it becomes virtually impossible to spend the dividend.  Even if your wealth is a bit smaller, only a modest amount of self-restraint is necessary for savings.  So the wealth of rich people grows and grows.  Yes, it is possible for a wealthy person to "go bust" because of bad investments.  But it doesn't happen very often.  And even a wealthy person who, with great fanfare, has  "gone bust",  generally has more residual wealth than a person who wasn't rich to begin with.  Squalor turns out to be relative.

Capitalism is inherently incompatible with democracy, because capitalism concentrates concentrations wealth, and wealth is inevitably power. There is no way to decouple the relationship of wealth and power.  Regulatory tinkering, such as campaign finance rules, can only act as an impediment, an inconvenience to the wealthy when they act to assert their money-power.  Capitalist countries, then, even with republican governmental forms, tend to devolve into de facto oligarchies.  This process can be resisted only by constant vigilance, to limit accumulation of wealth, to restrain the free political exercise of wealth, to balance people power against money power (unions and voter empowerment campaigns).  This vigilance is a lot of work.  When we have won some improvements, "we the people" tend to slack off.  The capitalists never do.  The differential rewards for them - the incentives - are just too immediate and great.  Thus, when times got somewhat better in the postwar period - at least in Europe, the U.S. and Canada - the people became complacent, and in the mid-1970s the capitalists, with their neoliberal/Reaganite/Thatcherite agenda, counter attacked.  And so, here we are today, with economic inequality and poverty at record levels, with a stagnant economy, but with many capitalists declaring "recovery" despite the fact that so many remain unemployed, many, many more underemployed, and almost all of us economically insecure.

So it turns out that not money, but private capital is the root of all evil, arising only in conditions of inequality, sustaining and promoting inequality, and undermining democracy.  Ultimately, if we want secure and just economies, we need to decouple property and income, by recognizing that all capital is socially constructed, and must be socially owned. 

Truth in politics

I recently had an extended Facebook dialog with a comrade which ranged over the possibilities (or lack thereof) for a genuinely democratic politics, the usefulness (or otherwise) of lessons from history, and many related points. If I had an overall theme for my part of the discussion, it was that a genuinely democratic politics is, at least theoretically possible; that it involves a socialized decision making process based on dialog and debate, which, in contrast to capitalist economic theory, privileges reasoned, considered conclusions, arrived at after due deliberation, over the snap judgments which seem to arise from our instincts or first impulses; that to truly achieve such a decision making process would require a vastly more participatory form of democracy than our modern version, in which participation is largely limited to passively watching the news, then pulling a lever, every 2-4 years, for some candidate; and that classical Athenian democracy, for all its evident faults, had things to teach us about how to structure such a participative democracy.  (Some of these themes will be familiar to anyone who has followed this blog; others I do intend to develop, someday...)

Throughout the FB dialog, my comrade several times in passing raised the question as to exactly what is meant by “truth”.  At the time, I ignored it, because it seemed irrelevant to the current discussion, and because I rather thought, without reflecting, that the “conventional” view of truth sufficed for a political (rather than a philosophical) discussion.  If I say I fell down the stairs when I really got beat up by my spouse, the statement is untrue.  If I really fell down the stairs (and wasn’t pushed, or tripped, etc.), then the statement is true.  This definition seemed to suffice for most practical political purposes.

But I realized on reflection that that is not true, and that thinking about why it is not  makes for an excellent demonstration of my ideas about democracy.

Take a concept like the “value” of a person’s labor.  Marx’s labor theory of value, although useful on an abstract level, cannot, in my opinion, be made concrete enough to objectively yield a precise “dollar” value in specific cases.  The capitalist (aka classical or neo-classical) economic model, which defines value in terms of market price, nothing more or less, always yields a precise, objective value.  (At least it does in cases where it “matters” – where there is an immediate need to come up with a wage rate, here-and-now.  It has more of a problem with hypotheticals.)  But there are so many broad social and political factors that go into determining real-world supply and demand that to take the market price as in any way representing a just price is problematic, at best.

And yet, each of us does have his own opinion, in every specific case we encounter, as to whether a given wage is just, or not.  More importantly, these opinions are not just inexplicable “gut reactions”.  We can adduce reasons for our opinions.  “Capital is giving up present consumption, and deserves a reward.”  “The worker’s children need food, a house, books for their education.  The capitalist’s children already have all these things, and more.”  Some such opinions will be hardened beyond possibility of change, but others will be amenable to counter-argument. This makes the determination of value perfectly suited to democratic decision making – to “government by discussion” – providing unencumbered fora exist where broad and open debate can actually occur (which is not generally true in our own malformed democracies).  In this view, what is “true” (i.e., the true value of a person’s work) is not a simple matter of observation, nor is it arbitrarily determined by objective, impersonal forces, but neither is it just a relativistic matter of individual judgment.  It is a social truth, determined, for a particular time and place, by a participatory, deliberative process.

Devotees of capitalist economics will cry that to set values (i.e., prices) by fiat, even that of a democratic public, will lead to horrible economic “inefficiencies”.  “Efficiency” is an interesting word.  It is usually presented in economics discussion as if it were in-and-of-itself a positive good.  Yet efficiency draws its value from the thing that is being done.  To efficiently murder a large number of people is very different from a moral standpoint than to efficiently save a large number of lives.  And, self-serving capitalist theory to the contrary, efficiency in generating private profits is not necessarily (in fact, not often) the same as efficiently building a more just and prosperous society.

But, although this will be apostasy to many of my socialist comrades, it may not be necessary to do away with market mechanisms in determining the actual price in order to benefit from a democratic social discussion as to what is a just value.  If we can successfully debunk the capitalist theory that says the market price is by necessity a just price, and if we can get most people to see that the actual, market-determined prices at some given time are not just, this paves the way for a social examination of the question, “Why not?”  It is an opening to a discussion of exactly what political and social factors influence supply and demand such that market prices are not just.  “Goods” which could come out of this discussion could include:  increases in the progressivity of the tax code, support for cooperative enterprises and small business vis-à-vis corporate big business, introducing some level of direct social control over big business (e.g., public or union representation on boards of directors), support for universal unionization of the work force, decisions to remove more social goods (e.g., healthcare) from private markets and to better support public goods ranging from roads and education to parks and the arts, radical curtailment of commercial advertising...  Please! Extend the list, yourself.

About all of such goods, I would say to my comrades on the left:  It may not be socialism, but it ain’t hay.

While we can certainly strive to educate people within our present social structures, in order for something like the results described above to really happen, we would need a much more robust democracy than our own; one with real, broad based and open social debates, and mechanisms for such debates to feed into actual political decision making.  How we get from here to there, it is hard, at this time, to envision, although I have some thoughts on what sort of structures the end might entail.  But all I’ll say, right now, is that there are strong reasons why capitalism, oligarchy and plutocracy prefer their formal democracies to be crippled.

Capitalism has got to go

The other night, Susan and I saw a television commercial for a new and infinitesimally improved type of contact lens, and we thought, "All the money (millions and millions of dollars) that goes into developing and marketing such an unnecessary product as this." (And this is hardly the most egregious example!)  Meanwhile, a 3 year old toddler is being gunned down on the streets of Boston. This is crazy!  It's just crazy!  Capitalism is MANIFESTLY unable to deliver resources according to need, except in the sick, twisted, circular definition of "need" put forward by capitalism's apologists.  We can pay millions for trinkets, but we can’t afford the policing, educational resources and jobs programs that would make inner city youth feel they had real life alternatives other than joining a gang and dealing drugs.  How much longer can we tolerate this monstrous system?

The rationalizers of markets claim that capitalism will reflect peoples “real” needs, as determined by their marginal utility.  That people’s “free market” decisions reflect their marginal utility isn’t really something that can be proven – it’s taken as self-evident.  And since we can’t know what is in people’s minds except by their actions (as expressed in their market behavior), the only way we have to measure people’s needs is by what the market produces.  This leads to the circularity in the argument that says market outcomes are good because the only way we can know what is good is to look at what the market produces, which, since markets satisfy peoples real needs, which can only be measured their market behavior, must be good.

The problem is that market theory fetishizes isolated, individual, decision making models, but this is not the way we make our BEST decisions.  Our best decisions are made collaboratively, after discussion and deliberation with our friends and other interested parties.  That is to say that GOOD decisions are made collectively, deliberatively, democratically.  Classical economics has built a whole theory of “optimal” resource distribution around the WORST kind of human decision making – isolated, individual, selfish, snap-judgments.

Now there’s a word for making economic decisions collaboratively, deliberatively, and democratically.  That word is SOCIALISM.  Socialism gives us a theory of resource distribution based on the BEST kind of human decision making.  Capitalism gives us a theory based on the worst kind.  And so capitalism always gives us bad results.  Capitalism gives us the things we think we need when we’re unconsciously reacting to hormonal stimuli (don’t even get me started on advertising...)  It does NOT give us the things we would REALIZE that we needed if we stopped and thought, listened to other people, and considered what our priorities really were.  And THAT leads to horrible maldistributions of resources in ways that don’t satisfy ANY of the needs that most of us REALLY feel.  As the sorrowing parents of far, far too many murdered children, in Boston and elsewhere about this nation and the world, could tell you.

Reading Gramsci

I have been reading portions of Selections of the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, as part of a book group sponsored by the Boston local of Democratic Socialists of America.  So far I have read the section on “the Intellectuals” and the section known as “The Modern Prince”.  This is my first foray into Gramsci, and I have found it somewhat slow going.

There are a number of reasons why reading Gramsci’s prison notebooks is difficult.  For one thing, they do not comprise a manuscript prepared for publication by its author, but were precisely notes by Gramsci to himself, some consciously preparatory for some future “for publication” writing, and some not.  Secondly, the thematic groupings (at least in the Selections) seem to be largely determined by the editors.  Apparently Gramsci kept several notebooks going simultaneously, and went back and forth over time between a wide array of topics.  The themes we see in published form were apparently culled from various notes, in various books, written at different dates, and given order by the editors.  Finally, Gramsci was very well-read, and intensely engaged in civic (not just political) life, and his notebooks make frequent references to European (and global) contemporary events, contemporary politics, contemporary (or recent) political thinkers and philosophers, who possess varying levels of present-day fame, as well as to specifically Italian history, especially of the Risorgimento.  Many of these thinkers and topics are not well-known to a modern, non-specialist, American reader, and, since Gramsci was making notes to himself, he was not moved to give background explanations.  (The editors’ notes in the “Selections” help some, but not enough.)

Still, with some persistence, I have found these readings rewarding.

The sections of the Notebooks that comprise The Modern Prince were, loosely, notes for a planned work on politics modeled on Niccolò Machiavelli’s classic, The Prince.  Some of the passages included in the published work clearly were directly related to this project; other’s were perhaps selected (by Gramsci? or the editors?) as at least loosely related.  (Gramsci’s planned work was to have been called The Modern Prince, which leads to some complication of terminology.  The words “The Modern Prince” may refer to the work Gramsci intended to publish, but did not complete; to the actual published assemblage of notebook sections; or to the protagonist of Gramsci’s work, which, as we shall see, was the Communist Party.)  

It may seem strange that the radical, Communist firebrand should take as a model someone so often viewed as virtually the devil incarnate.  But Machiavelli is a much-misunderstood figure.  The Prince horrifies many readers because Machiavelli seems to advocate naked violence and cruelty on the part of rulers.  Interestingly, Machiavelli never says that brutality in a ruler is morally acceptable, nor does pretend morals don’t matter.  He refers to such behavior as “bad”.  But he distinguishes between what is morally “good”, in the sense of describing the world we might choose to live in if we could, and what is “necessary” if certain ends are to be accomplished in reality.  In the ideal world, the “good” might be preferable; in the real world, “necessity” must often prevail.  Machiavelli believes, probably more than most of us would be willing to accept, that the ends justify the means.  What is almost charming about him is how perfectly matter of fact he is about this; so much so that he never even feels the need to specifically state this as a principle.

What were the political ends that Machiavelli sought?  This is a little harder to prize out of his writing than his ideas about means.  There are clues in The Prince, but the Discourses on Livy are give a better glimpse.  Machiavelli was a republican, at heart. With some oversimplification, the adjective “republican”, from ancient world through the Renaissance, can probably best be described as having a preference for the rule of law over the rule of men.  Machiavelli’s own political career had been in the service of his native city of Florence during a republican period;  he lost his job upon the return of the Medici princes (and went to prison, briefly, where he was tortured, then released).  The Prince, in fact, was at least partially written as a sort of job resume; an attempt to get back into politics in the service of the Medici. 

Machiavelli was a republican, but not particularly a democrat.  Gramsci, I think, overstates Machiavelli’s role as a precursor of Gramsci’s own mass-based politics.  Machiavelli had no particular concern, other than pragmatic ones, with how broadly the franchise of citizenship should be distributed.   His primary model was the (pre-Augustan) Roman Republic, but he didn’t think it important to copy the forms of the Romans directly; it was how effectively they achieved their ends that he admired.  He was concerned with the stability of a social system, and with a city’s greatness.  Liberty, for him, as for those in classical times, was for a people to live under their own laws without foreign rule, and preferably without a native tyrant, as well.  The closest he came to democratic thinking was strictly from instrumental concerns; he believed that a republic would be greater, and ultimately more stable, if it was based on the willing and engaged participation of the mass of the citizenry.  In the Discourses, he points out how the disruptions of the plebs in the early days of the Roman Republic forced the senatorial class to make concessions – establishing the tribunate of the people, gradually opening the other constitutional offices to plebeians – but Machiavelli believes if they had not done this, and had somehow been successful in suppressing the plebs, then Rome would never have possessed the loyal, disciplined citizen army that conquered the world.  Thus, civil disorders, producing the need to compromise with the masses, rather than being evils to be avoided, are to Machiavelli the necessary costs of greatness.

From passages in The Prince, it seems evident that Machiavelli was also a sort of Italian patriot.  He wanted to see Italy united, as were the great kingdoms of Europe such as Spain and France, in his time, and he wanted foreign rulers (French, Spaniards, Germans) out of Italy.  If, as it perhaps seemed to him late in his life, the best way to accomplish that was for Italy to be united through force of arms by a powerful but autocratic leader, so be it, and anything Machiavelli could do through his studies and writing to help the process along was for the good.

It is a mark of how progressive Machiavelli’s thinking was (if I am correct in this) that his dream of a united Italy was not actually accomplished until nearly 350 years after his death.

Gramsci clearly felt many points of  kinship with Machiavelli.  In the section of The Modern Prince on the “Elements of Politics” (p. 144 ff), Gramsci stresses the need to start from things as they really are, rather than pretend to some more ideal conditions.  We live in a world in which there are leaders and led.  We should study whether and how it may be possible to move to a world without rulers and ruled, but in the mean time it behooves us to study how to lead effectively.  Gramsci also stresses (p. 170 ff) how Machiavelli was an “active politician”, and not either a political scientist nor a diplomat.  For Gramsci, this means his concerns with politics were primarily pragmatic, unlike the political scientist, but unlike the diplomat, he also had visionary goals.  An “active politician” uses pragmatic means to move towards a vision of a different future, unlike a diplomat, who works in service to the status quo.  It is not hard to see how Gramsci identified himself, as well as Machiavelli, in this.

Gramsci was also fascinated with Machiavelli’s reference to the Centaur who taught Achilles in classic myth, which Machiavelli interprets as meaning that a ruler must combine elements of man with elements of the beast.  Gramsci identifies this with his own ideas of force and consent, which are intimately tied up with his ideas of authority (associated with force) and hegemony (associated with consent).  Gramsci seems to feel that Machiavelli anticipated his own thinking on these things; in fact, I think he was right.  The lesson of the Roman plebs, cited above, could easily be used as an example of the Gramscian idea of hegemony in practice.

Gramsci argues that Machiavelli must be understood and interpreted in the context of his own time, and not necessarily as laying down timeless principles.  In particular, says Gramsci, Machiavelli is concerned with “the moment of force” and not primarily with “the moment of consent”.  This observation is clearly tied to Gramsci’s plan for The Modern Prince, a work to be designed similarly address the needs of Gramsci’s time, in a way similar to that in which Machiavelli’s had addressed his own.

The prince of Machiavelli’s title, is, to Gramsci, a mythic figure, an ideal type constructed to serve as a model for real live rulers to emulate.  While Machiavelli’s prince may have been a suitable model for the 16th Century, Gramsci feels no single individual can bear such weight of history in modern times; the “modern prince” of Gramsci’s opus must be, therefore, a collective person, a political party – specifically the Communist Party.  The Modern Prince was to be a study of the political reality in which the Communist Party finds itself, and the character and attributes it must have or acquire if it is to play its historic role therein. 

Gramsci’s idea of the party, at least at the mythic level appropriate to The Modern Prince, differs from the conventional.  To him, the essence of the party is what he calls the “organic” or fundamental party.  There can be many such organic parties, each of which gives expression to the needs of one specific “group” (which is prison-notebook code for “class”).  These “organic” parties may be broken into numerous apparent “parties”, which would be those entities the world would generally recognize as political parties.  Even “non-party” functions such as groups of intellectuals and publishing enterprises are in fact integral parts of the “organic” party. 

The party, as the expression of a class, also expresses the “common will” of that class (and, as that class becomes hegemonic, as the bourgeoisie is now, and as the proletariat will become, the “common will” of society as a whole).  You might think that for Gramsci, if a class possesses something like a “common will”, that the party, as an “organic” party would come to express this spontaneously or automatically.  But Gramsci does not see a “common will” as something automatically existing in a class; it must be developed, and it is the party that develops it.

What is the “common will” exactly?  It is difficult to extract exactly what Gramsci meant.  In some passages, it seems it could be something as simple as a broad consensus on nationhood (or class consciousness – i.e., who does and does not make up the nation or class), along with a consensus on, or at least a hegemonic conception of, the broad structures of society, state, economy, etc.  Absent a rigid demand for absolute consensus, such a concept of the “common will” could probably be uncontroversially accepted as applying, e.g., in a modern nation such as the United States. In other places, though, he seems to have a much more extreme view, as when he says (p.133) “the modern Prince [Communist Party], as it develops, revolutionizes the whole system of intellectual and moral relations in that its development means precisely that any given act is seen as useful or harmful, as virtuous or as wicked, only in so far as it has as its point of reference the modern Prince itself, and helps to strengthen or oppose it.”  This seems to represent a system of totalitarianism hard to accept as desirable, even in theory, or as attainable, in actual fact.

In addition to the “organic” parties, Gramsci makes reference to what he calls “marginal”, “purely reformist movements (p. 157-158).  My first thought on reading this was that examples would be the environmental, feminist, civil rights, gay rights, etc. movements, which (excepting their most radical exponents) do not envision a complete restructuring of society, nor do they depend on any particular economic structure (unlike, arguably, bourgeois liberals), but rather support reforms which could, and must, apply to any overall social form.

But then Gramsci argues that “at the decisive turning points” all these “movements” must merge into their “natural” (class-based) overall party.  The movements I was thinking of seem irreducibly cross-class (or, if you prefer, are not class-based).  So then I thought Gramsci meant only such phenomena as “business unionism”, which has a reformist and immediate agenda under capitalism, but which could be subsumed into the greater working class (socialist) movement in a crisis of the state (revolution).

But then where does that leave the movements I first considered?  They seem to have no role whatsoever in Gramsci’s big picture of politics.  This apparent reductionism is perhaps not surprising in an early 20th Century Communist thinker, but noteworthy, nonetheless, and unsatisfactory from a 21st Century viewpoint.

An important part of Gramsci’s thinking is wrapped up in what he calls the elements of a party (p. 152 ff). Gramsci sees three “elements” of a party:

1. The mass element (which doesn’t really comprise a party until conscious).
2. Intellectuals, which form a ginger group (not a term G. uses), inspiring and catalyzing the formation of a mass base, of which they then become the “generals”.
3. An intermediate stratum, rising from the mass base (Gramscian “organic intellectuals”?), forming in effect the non-commissioned and lower commissioned  officer corps of the party.

When (2) has organically linked to a (1) possessing rising consciousness, such that (3) begins to percolated out as needed, then Gramsci believes that the historical point has been reached at which a party can no longer be destroyed (until it has played out its historically prescribed mission?)  Up until that point, it is imperative that (2) look to its own reproduction, since if (2) is destroyed (i.e., by the state authorities), and leaves no “ferment” from which it can be regenerated, then the organic mass party... what?  May never form?  Or just may be much delayed (unnecessarily delayed) in its formation?

It is hard to tell, from my so-far limited reading of Gramsci, whether he holds that the play of historic/economic forces must inevitably bring certain things about (e.g. socialism).  He certainly believes that men and women’s political actions are important in determining the pace and course of these revolutions, if not their ultimate success or failure.  A related question would be, how much does he think our actions – as opposed to inevitable historic forces – have in defining the nature of the ultimate goal, once realized?  Antonio Santucci, who wrote an intellectual biography of Gramsci, seems to feel that Gramsci had rejected historical materialism entirely, but I am not convinced that his rejection of this central Marxist tenet was in fact that strong.

Gramsci is at pains, though, to point out his differences with “vulgar” Marxists and anarcho-syndicalists, who pin their faith in inevitability, and believe that nothing need be done in the here and know to prepare for or influence events.  He frequently points to the role of the party, including the intellectuals, in preparing the road.  Thus, for example, his frequent exhortations on the need for educating the masses, for training them in party discipline as well as to lead, for reproducing (as mentioned above) the leading intellectual stratum of the party.  This emphasis on the leading/guiding role of the party stands, I would think, in particular counter-distinction to the anarcho-syndicalists, who presumably would hold that the mass base (1 above) is all that is important; that (3) will arise spontaneously from the base as needed (and fall back into it when needed no longer); and that (2) is completely superfluous.  (Despite the irony implicit in various anarchist intellectuals espousing this view.)

Recall, though, that for all his emphasis on leadership, Gramsci holds that socialist leadership must look to creating the future conditions under which under which the distinction between leader and led will no longer be necessary, or even meaningful (p. 144).  Also, he argues that the success of a socialist (communist) party can only be judged after it no longer exists.  Since parties exist only as the expression of a particular class, the party which proposes to end all class divisions will succeed only when there are no more classes to express, and hence when no parties can logically exist.

It is interesting to compare Gramsci’s idea of organic parties to the situation in the modern United States, where the hegemonic capitalist class has, in effect, two parties.  What Gramsci would see as the “organic party” of the working class seems to have minimal direct expression (marginalized groups such as DSA, a few intellectuals, the worklife-focused labor movement).  Some of what might arguably be called “organic” expressions of working class politics can be pretty perverse (the Tea Party).  How would Gramsci view the situation in which, for practical purposes, much of the political expression of the working class gets directed into the two parties of the capitalist parties?  Sometimes this expression takes forms that Gramsci would be able to recognize as direct functions of the “organic” party – labor COPES, the Mass Alliance – but, primarily due to the Constitutional structure of the U.S. Republic, the energy is focused within one of the two capitalist parties.

What kinds of lessons can I actually draw from Gramsci?  Where was he right, and where wrong?  The concept of hegemony, as he developed it, seems to be a very powerful analytic tool, but I cannot follow it quite as far as he seems to do in his more extreme definition of “the common will”.  I cannot agree (to the annoyance of some of my more traditionally Marxist friends) with his apparent reduction of all social struggle to class conflict.  Issues such as race, gender, sexuality have their own independent (socially constructed) existence, and their own importance.  Gramsci’s idea of the three elements of a party seems worth thinking about, and his ideas on the importance of education, and of creating the “ferment” that will reproduce activist intellectuals for a new generation are things to which anyone who cares about long term social change must certainly pay heed.

I’m certain that I will have more, and more detailed thoughts as my plunge into Gramsci’s thought continues.  And no doubt I will have reason to regret more than one of the hasty, early judgments presented here.

Onward!

References: Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, eds.; Niccolò Machiavelli, The Discourses, Penguin Classics edition, Leslie J. Walker, S.J. and Brian Richardson trans., and The Prince (Bilingual Edition), Mark Musa, editor and trans.; Antonio A. Santucci, Antonio Gramsci, Graziella Di Mauro, trans.

Rights and the Common Good

I was recently interviewed, in my capacity as a member of the National Political Committee of Democratic Socialists of America, for a monthly radio program called “The Socrates Exchange”, which airs on New Hampshire Public Radio (www.nhpr.org for schedule). The question I was asked to discuss was “Are individual rights more important than the common good?” The show’s producers told me they intended to interview a socialist and a libertarian on this, then edit the interviews into a kind of radio dialogue or debate. Since I had to order my thoughts for this interview, anyway, I thought the topic would make a good blog post for this week.

My first thought was that I was being asked, in a sense, to argue in the “language” of my libertarian opponent. Not that socialists aren’t profoundly interested in human rights. Over the past 200 years, socialists have probably fought more to expand human rights than any other single group of people –struggling to expand the franchise in the 19th Century, fighting for Civil Rights in the U.S. in the mid 20th Century, fighting for labor rights such as fair pay for a day’s work, and decent working conditions, in both Centuries, and more. But the concept of rights is not really central to a socialist analysis, in the way it is to libertarians. A socialist analysis is a dynamic analysis – we are interested in processes and forces. We are, thus, concerned with the political and economic forces which might prevent people from enjoying their rights; we are concerned with the way people organize themselves to win their rights; and we are concerned with the social and democratic process by which those rights are defined or constructed in the first place.

This matter of social construction particularly distinguishes a socialist from a libertarian view on “rights”, I think. A libertarian takes rights as prior to social construction – if not to society itself (cf. Robert Nozick “Anarchy, State and Utopia”). In fact, they take one particular right – the presumptive right of property – as prior to everything else, deriving all the rest of their political and social philosophy, and their ideal conception of the state, from this.

This priority of rights makes no historical or ethnographical sense. Our ancestors were social animals before they were humans; the idea that such a complicated conception as a right to property could arise, in a form any human society would recognize as such, in an animal perhaps less mentally developed than a macaque, strains the credulity. And the complex and varied systems of individual and collective property and use that anthropologists have found in different human groups, and even the sharing behavior ethologists have found in other primates, are simply incompatible with the kind of theoretical primacy libertarians like Nozick place on a simple “mine” and “yours” concept of property.

To a socialist, at least to this socialist, all imaginable rights, even the very concept of “property”, itself, are socially constructed. One thing that this suggests is a special importance for those rights which enable people to participate fully in the political processes by which all rights (including these) will be constituted, in other words, for democratic rights: the right of free association, right of free speech, right to vote, etc. Another thing that is suggested is that, unlike some imagined a priori right, socially constituted rights will be inherently contextual, and limited in scope – I may have the right to bear arms, but if I bear them so carelessly as to cause another’s death, I am guilty of manslaughter. I may have the right to free speech, but I may not maliciously cry “fire” in a crowded theater.

In fact, if rights are socially constructed, and in a democratic society, the very idea that individual rights could be set up against the common good appears as a false dichotomy. When people define a right socially, democratically, acting in solidarity, they are defining it precisely with a view to furthering “the common good”, according to their best lights. There may be a debate about how far to extend the right so as to best effect the common good, but the idea that the right should be extended beyond that point, to imperil the common good, is nonsense.

Of course, in a non-democratic, unsolidaristic society, an elite group may try to define “rights” for itself over against the rights of some other group – i.e., they are defining some special privilege which they should have, and the others not (hence the “divine rights” of the nobility, and kings.) But from a socialist point of view, when the attempt is made to define some elite privilege as a right, to the detriment of “the common good”, then it is incumbent on the non-elites to challenge legitimacy of that right.

In other words, from a socialist point of view, “individual rights” which are contrary to the “common good” are not “rights” but “wrongs”.

With regard to property, in particular, socialists not only disagree with libertarians on how the concepts of “property” and “property rights” are constituted, we disagree on how wealth is produced. Libertarians tend to focus on an individual’s role in production as legitimizing their subsequent monopolization of part of the product. Socialists understand that all property is socially produced. The idea that is possible to uniquely and precisely determine the contribution of one person to the total output is ludicrous. None of us makes it “on our own” in this life. If nothing else, we are raised, nurtured, educated by others. Our role in the production of goods and services is deeply embedded in a social matrix: we work on committees and task groups, process materials produced by somebody else, etc. (Perhaps we should exclude the fanatical few who go out of their way to live as “survivalists”. But even the most committed, hardy mountain man probably uses steel traps made by workers in a factory somewhere.)

Since wealth is socially produced, socialists believe that society should make collective decisions about how to use and distribute it. This doesn't mean society "owns" the shirt on your back. Socialists make a distinction between personal property and productive property, or capital. The ability to live a decent life requires a certain amount of non-interference by others in the basic day-to-day decisions affecting your life, and this implies a de facto “right” to “enjoy your personal property”. But accumulations of property – capital – are a productive resource that affects the lives of tens, hundreds, thousands, even millions of people. Decisions as to the use of that kind of property should be made collectively, with the fullest democratic participation possible of all people who will be affected.

In a sense, socialism, the kind of socialism that Democratic Socialists of America espouses, is simply deep democracy. We believe that all important decisions affecting our lives should be made with the full participation of all who are affected by them. The selfish will of the few should never be allowed to trump the human need of the many.

References: Robert Nozick’s “Anarchy, State, and Utopia” is a worthy polemic on libertarian theory by a serious (even if, in this case, completely wrong) philosopher. Frans De Waal “Good Natured”, which I’ve also referenced in a couple of other posts, has a good discussion on primate sharing behavior. “Understanding Capitalism” by Samuel Bowles, Richard Edwards and Frank Roosevelt has (mostly in side bars) some interesting ethnographical information of differing property relations. It also discusses some of the other themes above, and is an excellent basic text book on classical economics written from a democratic socialist point of view.