From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Wed Jan 18 2006 - 15:37:24 EST
Jerry, It occurred to me you might think that what I wrote was a bit tepid. Well like I say it is often difficult to talk about these things in-the-abstract, without seeming to vent a banality. I am well aware most socialist revolutions involve expropriation of property, and where is the morality in that? In passing tonight, I just talked to a bright woman who claimed she was a Venezuelan petrol engineer, and she couldn't see it but she believed in the wide-open globalised economy, and so on. Well I think there's several points to consider. Firstly, of course, expropriation occurs all the time WITHIN capitalism, and where's the morality in that? Secondly, socialist revolutions haven't occurred willy-nilly but typically in response to brutal conditions. The Russian revolution for example was a direct, defensive response to a world war that cost millions of workers their life and limb, a war in which they had no interest whatever. Mr Chattopadhyay may be a very erudite scholar who can teach us about socialism as a theoretical category, but - if I may be permitted to say so - I think his case as offered stinks. All very well to talk about the "sanctity of property", until you realise that people will commit bloody mass murder to keep the loot - never mind prattle about ethics and sound morals and the good of humanity. The bourgeois will of course scream "more police" but part of our job is to try making sure that more police aren't necessary, because people put their brain into gear and remember who they are. Finally, there are also ways and ways to go about that expropriation, come to that - in a disciplined, countenanced way, or e.g. as a sort of generalised vindictive robbery. In Chattopadhyay's defense, there is obviously also plenty irrefutable evidence of the excesses of the Russian communists, inspired by an exaggerated - and analytically baseless - paranoia about the "class enemy". I have no crystall ball that can tell me how things will go in the future, even if I have my hunches, but to my way of thinking there is, come to that, always a distinction to be made between a justifiable expropriation based on a clear moral code, and criminal activity devoid of any moral integrity. For these reasons, too, I do think moral discussion is very relevant, whatever your socialist stance might happen to be, and it is very unhelpful if Marxists dismiss it, by conflating lived morality and moral theory simplistically with "moralism" and ideological delusions. There has to be a clear and reasonable relationship between means and ends; if we measure with double standards, it will rebound on us. That's why I think an experiential ethics, based on verifiable facts, is essential if we are to make good moral evaluations. I'm also well aware of Hegel's quip that "one can find a reason for anything", but as for myself, I prefer the company of rational, thinking people to loonies. I talked to a old Trotskyist here once who said to me "do you know why we established a base here [in Holland]? Because nothing ever happens here." What a wonderful stance... actually, there is a lot happening here, even if people aren't walking around with AK-47s. And I tend to think that the moral debates occurring will have a decisive impact on the future; it so happens that the armed conflicts actually solve less and less problems anyway, and those problems include people being hoodwinked by insipid inanities such as "the war against terrorism" and the "Iran nuclear threat". Benjamin Franklin would roll over in his grave. As an aside, BBC ran an interesting radio clip on the electricity supply somewhere in South Africa, people were tapping electricity illegally and they were spending millions of dollars trying to block illegal connections (SA is often portrayed as a sort of AIDS-infested sexual jungle, i.e. though apartheid was wrong, the blacks can't manage their own society). Call me a "gas-and-water socialist", but I think if you want to talk morality, here is a real problem socialists have to tackle somehow on the basis of what the facts are, never mind odes to Lenin and Marx. I'd be interested to hear what Patrick's ideas are. Jurriaan
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