From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Tue Nov 07 2006 - 15:51:30 EST
Jerry, a few replies: Possibly I was a bit harsh on anarchism, and really the debate between Marxian and anarchist radicalism is one of the most interesting ones there are. But I do not find anarchist explanations of power and authority very convincing. In part, the problem seems to be that anarchism rejects the exercise of authority often as something intrinsically bad. But this is not a good basis for understanding where it comes from. As against that, the Marxian analysis of political power is often also rather bad, as you can see e.g. in the byzantine disputes over the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. I'm aware that self-management does not mean simply appointing (or electing) a manager, and so forth. I was merely making the point that in enterprises of any size you do need a clear allocation of responsibilities, and cannot get away from skilled people exercising managerial tasks. Thus, even in self-managed Yugoslav plants, you still had directors and managers by necessity, and these people could not do their job if their authority was not respected. The question of productive labour is really about what kinds of labour create net additions to the total mass of new value produced, in a given interval. Marx rules out some kinds of labour on the ground that they are not production, others because they only transfer ownership title or redistribute products etc. or fall outside capitalist production altogether. You say leadership arises out of respect rather than competence. But in reality, that "respect" is based in good part on perceptions of competence. In fact, you admit as much when you refer to "human relations" skills. You said that "enlightened leaders view themselves as _part of_ the "masses" rather than a group apart. Enlightened leaders don't reproduce hierarchical and authoritarian relations." I think it is more complex than that. Among other things, enlightened leaders might have to work with, or inherit, hierarchical relations. The question is not really whether hierarchies are bad or not, but what kind of hierarchies they are, and what they are based on. Why do hierarchies form anyway? Because e.g. people are unequal in skills, competencies, experience and so forth, or because of inequalities in wealth and access to resources etc. The critique of hierarchy is more that (1) rights, duties and privileges are not distributed according to clear moral and technical criteria, but just reflect and reproduce contingent power relations or arbitrary factors ultimately based on the ownership of assets or the power to command others, rather than personal worth, (2) hierarchy is applied to contexts which do not really warrant or necessitate the application of a hierarchical model. But that does not make ALL hierarchy ipsofacto objectionable. That is precisely why the ideology of meritocracy remains influential - i.e. apart from people arrogating positions in dubious ways, there are also those whose position is reached through personal merit, giving credence to the idea that you can improve your position through what you do yourself. Jurriaan
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