Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 00:21:05 +0200
Subject: Re: the state redux & socialism


Adam writes:

>
>So it IS curious that so few others joined in the debate.
>
>I deduce from the silence that most people on the list don't feel
>happy with what I consider to be the classical Marxist position
>on this ( ie the one stated by Marx and then restated by Lenin ),
>but nor do they feel happy with Justin's open attack on that
>classical Marxist tradition. Am I right ?
>

I don't know for the others subscribers to the list, but as regard me you
are wrong.
I did not join the debate because I think my english is not very good, and
because you said what seems for me essential about the position of Marx: in
a communist society, there is no longer state.
I could add that, according to the philosophical works of the young Marx,
before being an instrument of oppression, the state is a mean to deal with
the conflicts in a divided society. The society is divided, and humen are
alienated, because of the division of labour, private property being a
consequence of this division of labour. In a communist society there is
abundance, there is no longer division of labour, so there is no longer
need for a state.
As for socialism, I disagree with Adam: I think there is no need in the
dictatorship of the proletariat to deprive bourgeois of their political
rights. Marx wrote (in The civil war in france, I think) that dictatorship
of the proletariat will be one hundred times more democratic than the most
democratic of bourgeois democracies: it is not a question of number,
workers do not have the historical task to build communism because they are
the most numerous, but because of their position in the society. In
bourgeois democracy, workers may have political rights, but bourgeois
democracy is nonetheless a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie: the oppression
is economic. In socialism, the oppression on the bourgeois will in the same
way be economic. By the way, I hope that now capitalism has so much
developped the wealths and the productive strenghts (the poverty is no
longer a natural poverty, but is socially producted) that the transition
can be short.

------------------------------------------------------------
Jean-Luc Gautero - Centre de Recherches d'Histoire des Idées
=46aculté des Lettres - Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis
98 Boulevard Edouard Herriot - BP 209 - 06204 Nice Cedex 3
Email: jgautero-AT-hermes.unice.fr
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