FAQ Needed

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mikelepore
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Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 372

Posted: 29 Apr 2008 10:51 pm Post subject: FAQ needed

I'm thinking about how to put together a FAQ about De Leonism, how it differs from any other interpretation of socialism. Probably the best way is to identify the particular nuggets, and to document the places in the literature where we can find them. If it isn't done that way then I will have a tendency to turn it into a collection of my own essays, my own words. If that were to happen, although I am one of the world's most skilled writers, there would be a significant loss of objectivity. Therefore, I am seeking to identify the nuggets and to cite the places where they are found. For example, I previously found several places where we see references to the "industrial form of government": http://www.deleonism.org/industrial-government.htm And several places where we can see what De Leon implied when he discussed historical materialism in terms of "the tool": http://www.deleonism.org/tool.htm Today I gathered several quotations documenting how the SLP has cited Roosevelt's comment, "Reform if you would preserve." I have tentatively placed these on the glossary page: http://www.deleonism.org/glossary.htm#reformif So, what are some more of the nuggets of De Leonism? Help me to list them. The industrial union strategy The uses of political organization His critiques of reformism His battles with the anarchists Insistence on the Law of Value The personal nature of religion What else makes De Leonism what it is?

davesearles

Joined: 01 Feb 2005
Posts: 292
Location: Vermont

Posted: 30 Apr 2008 09:36 pm Post subject:

To me a central idea of Deleonism is the duality of the struggle. The necessity of the political side but the fact that it is ultimately subservient to the mission of the workers in the industrial union. Another aspect of Deleon's contribution that we need to keep in mind for the current generation is that his contribution was incomplete - incomplete as to his untimely death at the age of 62 - and incomplete caused by inability, for many reasons to better focus on laying out a more coherent and concrete long term plan for the party and the workers in general. That incompleteness it seems was made more significant by the inability of the party for whatever reasons to move along after his death. (For example keeping the same national secretary from the time of Deleon's death for over 50 years.)

mikelepore
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Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 372

Posted: 01 May 2008 07:46 am Post subject:

What we think is the essence, the nutshell. Good phrase there -- duality --subservience of the political to the industrial. How everything compares to what other people it the world mean when they say 'socialism' or marxism.' For purposes of classification. For example, the tendency to envision socialism as a world that a has everyone voting on everything, which is completely lacking in Stalinism and Maoism, the obey-the-leader-or-get-shot concept of socialism. Tendency to see socialism as Jeffersonian democracy in a higher phase of evolution. Premise that the goal dictates the program. Goal and program have some similarity in shape. -- "Industrial unionism is the socialist republic in the making; and the goal once reached, the industrial union is the socialist republic in operation." (I don't think any of the Lenin offshoots has anything similar to this.) Attention to the difference between industrial unionism and craft unionism. Frequent criticism of the leader of the craft union as a faker, images of handshakes under the table between the union leader and the capitalist. Some explanation of how the SLP turned out. Inherited De Leon's idea of what "revolutionary discipline" means but changed it somewhat. (How?) We could editorialize here: unusual combination of pure democracy at the same time that everyone thinks alike -- "groupthink" -- Assumption that the reason everyone thinks alike is that they've been "scientific" and ""upholding principles" rather than due to a habit of cultural uniformity. De Leon had a greater tendency to meet with other organizations in search of common ground. Examples: De Leon a delegate to the Second International; De Leon participated in an (unsuccessful) unity conference with the SP (1907?). The modern SLP more isolationist, regards all other organizations and publications as not worth talking to. But is there any way to keep our editorial opinions out of it, and just cite the literature? Should this whole mess be entirely omitted from a FAQ?

davesearles

Joined: 01 Feb 2005
Posts: 292
Location: Vermont

Posted: 01 May 2008 02:09 pm Post subject:

.unusual combination of pure democracy at the same time that everyone thinks alike -- "groupthink" -- Assumption that the reason everyone thinks alike is that they've been "scientific" and ""upholding principles" rather than due to a habit of cultural uniformity. I don't know what you are talking about here? Groupthink everyone thinks alike is that they've been scientific rather than doe to a habit of cultural integrity???

davesearles

Joined: 01 Feb 2005
Posts: 292
Location: Vermont

Posted: 01 May 2008 02:11 pm Post subject:

The problem with writing a FAQ is that you have to have FAQ to answer instead of making them up.

davesearles

Joined: 01 Feb 2005
Posts: 292
Location: Vermont

Posted: 01 May 2008 02:50 pm Post subject:

ML: the tendency to envision socialism as a world that a has everyone voting on everything DS: For many things you're better simply having an adminstrator dealing with things. Do I need to waste my time with every little detail of every little aspect of every little decsion that somejow affects my life? I think that you talked about this in describing the environment in one of your IBM departments. So in decsion making there needs to be a specialization of labor. Where to draw the line is alway the perogotive of the ultimate decsion maker. Such as in adminisrative law - adminstration established by statute is totally dependant on the staute as to it's authority and the parameters of the decsions that it makes or may make. If people are unhappy they'll bitch to who ever put the administartor in power or they'll bitch to the ultimate decsion make to expressly deal with the perceived problem via statute.

mikelepore
Site Admin

Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 372

Posted: 01 May 2008 07:59 pm Post subject:

davesearles wrote:

For many things you're better simply having an adminstrator dealing with things

One could say that the SLP idea of a new society involves mostly representative democracy, with not much discussion about direct democracy. When critics pose the challenge, "How are the workers supose to have either the time or the knowledge to vote on every little detail?", the SLP answer seems to be that the party never suggested such a thing.

mikelepore
Site Admin

Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 372

Posted: 01 May 2008 08:06 pm Post subject:

davesearles wrote:

The problem with writing a FAQ is that you have to have FAQ to answer instead of making them up.

I've been mentioning stuff that I think falls under one of these common questions:

"What is your goal, and how do you propose to attain it?"

"Isn't socialism just a bunch of government takeovers, like the town schools and the city-owned trains?"

"Don't we already have socialism, since the New Deal in the 1930s?"

"Would religion and free speech be outlawed?"

"When you say 'socialism' or 'marxism', how is this different from Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Mao, Ho, and Castro?"

* * *

But it doesn't have to be in the form of a FAQ. I would just like something to explain things to beginners. I'll say "FAQ" for now.

Similar forms that we often see online:

Tutorials
Fact Sheets
New Here? Read This
Who We Are

The most inhuman aproach of all, when a web site just has a link that says "ABOUT".

Last edited by mikelepore on 01 May 2008 09:04 pm; edited 4 times in total

mikelepore
Site Admin

Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 372

Posted: 01 May 2008 08:13 pm Post subject:

davesearles wrote:

I don't know what you are talking about here? Groupthink

I think a document for beginners should omit this, but just in the interest of conversation right now ....

First sign of groupthink, everyone in the party tends to talk exactly alike. The minute someone says "the state", it's automatic to quote Marx on "the existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery." The minute someone asks what a socialist society would be like, it's automatic to tell the story about the time George Washington said "First lick the British."

Second sign of groupthink, you can have some forms of intolerance even if you have complete democracy. There are some things that are considered in bad taste. For example, admitting to others that a publication of another organization said something thought-provoking, or reading non-SLP socialists, or even calling those others by the word "socialists". Everyone except "us" is misled, deluded, a disruptor.

Even the silly habits -- I can even remember how shocked I was in the 1970s when the party, for the very first time, spelled the word "socialism" without a capital-S.

But if you ask them why everyone talks alike, the answer will be: Because the truth is consistent. We have experience, wisdom, and scientific understanding of the truth.

____________________________________________________

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

"A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action"

"Isolation of the group from outside sources of information and analysis"

"Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions"

davesearles

Joined: 01 Feb 2005
Posts: 292
Location: Vermont

Posted: 01 May 2008 10:31 pm Post subject:

ML wrote accurately: One could say that the SLP idea of a new society involves mostly representative democracy, with not much discussion about direct democracy. When critics pose the challenge, "How are the workers suppose to have either the time or the knowledge to vote on every little detail?", the SLP answer seems to be that the party never suggested such a thing. DS technically true HOWEVER nowhere in the SLP version of the future is there ANY recognition that there can be any administrative body apart from the productive structure. Are brewery workers as opposed to the general population through its representatives to determine the drinking age? The guy who runs the paving machine have some special say on what the speed limit should be? Their idea isn't wrong - just incomplete. Deleon gives us just an inkling of this when he talk about the necessary function of courts of law. Just where in the productive structure is this function supposed to fit? Answer (to me anyway) it doesn't) Had DeLeon been a better manager of his talents we might have had an opportunity to have fleshed some of this idea out, I guess it just wasn't the age for such things - that we needed to strew over it for 90 years before anyone that I am aware of has come up with a fuller and infinitely more practical advance plan than one that just says - "Abolish political govt and substitute an industrial FORM of govt? Oh it will work out!" That idea for one thing depended upon the continuing growth of unions up to the point of and indeed influencing the beginning of the revolution. That just ain't happening even if we hold our breaths for a really long time in anticipation.

mikelepore
Site Admin

Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 372

Posted: 02 May 2008 12:45 am Post subject:

That's right. The party claims that industrial decisions are all there is, which is incomplete. I seem to remember a leaflet that said this, but I can't remember which one it was -- take everything useful that the political state does today, and an industry will do it, for example, the transportation industry will direct traffic instead of the police doing it. After reassigning those things, no other necessary tasks remain to be done, so there's no need for the state. Can you recall one of the old leaflets saying that? De Leon said it too in Burning Question: "The parliament of civilization in America will consist, not of Congressmen from geographic districts, but of representatives of trades throughout the land, and their legislative work will not be the complicated one which a society of conflicting interests, such as capitalism, requires but the easy one which can be summed up in the statistics of the wealth needed, the wealth producible...." I'm not talking about the geographical versus non-geographical contrast. I'm talking about the claim that there's nothing that needs doing except industrial planning. There's no indication anywhere in over a century of SLP literature that society would need laws against murder and assault. There's nothing to consider except "the statistics of the wealth needed, the wealth producible." The pamphlet "Questions Most Frequently Asked...." (intentionally allowed to of out of print because there was something in it that was later judged to be misleading) came right out and said that a socialist society cannot have police. They're carrying on with the the old 19th century "perfectibility of man" doctrine that inspired the anarchists and even Marx and Engels, that without class divided society no one would even think of commiting a violent act -- not one person -- ever. (The World Socialists also believe that.) Do you think my interpretation is right? An unbiased history of the SLP should explain this about them. I don't believe in that doctrine myself, but it's something I would include if called upon to describe their outlook. Incomplete, definitely. Last edited by mikelepore on 02 May 2008 07:09 pm; edited 1 time in total

davesearles

Joined: 01 Feb 2005
Posts: 292
Location: Vermont

Posted: 02 May 2008 11:37 am Post subject:

ML: An unbiased history of the SLP should explain this about them. DS: I don't know about all of this. To me - it doesn't seem necessary. Of course I have pretty much of a one track mind on things. But to me the amamendment idea is the next logical step. Problem in seeing it then - too much like REFORMISM. anti-reformism (god damned poodle) combined with an incomplete idea of "government" under "socialsism" woudn't allow anyone to ANALOGY ALERT intellectually walk out onto the ice to ANALOGY ALERT to fathom just what the "administration of things" was going to look. Depite our protestations I am afraid that our "Socialism" did look like that it would be just one more scheme for totalitarianism to be implemented - all of our pamplets about the revolutionary forefathers and constititonal freedoms not withstanding. I never read this before: +++++++++ And the whole socialist principle in its turn is only one aspect that concerns the reality of the true human being. But we have to pay just as much attention to the other aspect, to the theoretical existence of man, and therefore to make religion, science, etc., the object of our criticism. In addition, we want to influence our contemporaries, particularly our German contemporaries. The question arises: how are we to set about it? There are two kinds of facts which are undeniable. In the first place religion, and next to it, politics, are the subjects which form the main interest of Germany today. We must take these, in whatever form they exist, as our point of departure, and not confront them with some ready-made system such as, for example, the Voyage en Icarie. [Etienne Cabet, Voyage en Icarie. Roman philosophique et social.] Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form. The critic can therefore start out from any form of theoretical and practical consciousness and from the forms peculiar to existing reality develop the true reality as its obligation and its final goal. As far as real life is concerned, it is precisely the political state – in all its modern forms – which, even where it is not yet consciously imbued with socialist demands, contains the demands of reason. And the political state does not stop there. Everywhere it assumes that reason has been realised. But precisely because of that it everywhere becomes involved in the contradiction between its ideal function and its real prerequisites. From this conflict of the political state with itself, therefore, it is possible everywhere to develop the social truth. just as religion is a register of the theoretical struggles of mankind, so the political state is a register of the practical struggles of mankind. Thus, the political state expresses, within the limits of its form sub specie rei publicae,[as a particular kind of state] all social struggles, needs and truths. Therefore, to take as the object of criticism a most specialised political question – such as the difference between a system based on social estate and one based on representation – is in no way below the hauteur des principes. [Level of principles] For this question only expresses in a political way the difference between rule by man and rule by private property. Therefore the critic not only can, but must deal with these political questions (which according to the extreme Socialists are altogether unworthy of attention). In analysing the superiority of the representative system over the social-estate system, the critic in a practical way wins the interest of a large party. By raising the representative system from its political form to the universal form and by bringing out the true significance underlying this system, the critic at the same time compels this party to go beyond its own confines, for its victory is at the same time its defeat. http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm +++++++++++++ So this seems to suggest that the "group think reaction - "the existence of the state ..." overly overly simplistic as a represntation of what is supposedly THE definitive Marxist position regarding the state. ALSO If my ideas identify me as a socialst then I am a socialst - but it is not socialism that I am pushing, it's the next step in social evolutioin that I am pushing - democratic industrail unions owning the means of production. If that's socialsm - that's fine by me. If not, I won't loose a wink of sleep. There are too many socialst experts floating around and not enough people pushing for worker control of the means of production.

mikelepore
Site Admin

Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 372

Posted: 02 May 2008 07:35 pm Post subject:

That's cool if you want to concentrate fully on the amendment, but I suggest that we try again to keep the posts in this forum located in the topics with related names -- this is the I-wanna-new-FAQ topic .. so, continuing on that SLP overly simplistic notion of the political state.... Marx and Engels had a view of the state that was more complex that what the SLP says. A device of class repression, but not ONLY that. It IS more that that, but is gets USED for being a device of class repression. Quote Engels from his book "Ludwig Feuerbach and ...": "Society creates for itself an organ for the safeguarding of its common interests against internal and external attacks. This organ is the state power. Hardly come into being, this organ makes itself independent vis-a-vis society; and, indeed, the more so, the more it becomes the organ of a particular class, the more it directly enforces the supremacy of that class." There's a picture of something useful in there -- safeguarding common interests against attacks -- but it has been twisted into being a device for the supremacy of a class. But to the SLP, there is no dual nature -- the political state is nothing but another name for slavery. The SLP considers it an open-and-shut case that a classless society can't have elements that we recognize as elements of the state, because, simply, why would we want to keep having slavery? Too simplistic. In this sense, the SLP is an anarchist organization. It's only by using the SLP's own ideosyncratic definition of the word "anarchism" [change via bullets instead of ballots] that one could say that the SLP isn't anarchist. By everyone else's definition of the word, the SLP is anarchist. (Besides, all Marxian groups, and the SLP is no exception in this, have a tendency to take a few favorite sentences that Marx made in a forty year writing career and exaggerate them as being the very essence of Marxism. Can doing that provide a fair representation of any writer? In truth, Marx and Engels didn't denounce "the political state" as uniformly as the SLP claims. To find the supporting quotations is like sifting the sand for gold.) ML: "An unbiased history of the SLP should explain this about them." DS: "I don't know about all of this. To me - it doesn't seem necessary." --- well, I'll have to rein in my tendency to overdo it, but, to be encyclopedic and to put De Leonism (or is it the mainly the post-De Leon SLP?) into a classification system of all social theories, there's got to be some mention of the political state getting dumped in favor of the industrial form of government. I don't know how best to say it. But it seems to me like the 800-pound gorilla in the living room if we fail to add this comment: The SLP doesn't seem to have explored the possibility that some aspects of the state can be continued, and they make it sound as though there will exist no legislators, laws, police or courts, by the very definition of "socialism."