RE: [OPE] Venezuela is the most democraticcountryinLatinAmerica[MESSAGE NOT SCANNED]

Give me som credit Paul, I know all that. It is all orthodoxy, and is expressed even more clearly by the Korean communists. But we know that such centralisation has not in the long run been a historical success.
I recognise all these points you make in a chapter I have recently written for a book to come out in Spanish translation.
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/leadershipconcepts.pdf
 
Paul Cockshott
Dept of Computing Science
University of Glasgow
+44 141 330 1629
www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/

________________________________

From: ope-bounces@lists.csuchico.edu on behalf of paul bullock
Sent: Sun 3/1/2009 12:51 PM
To: Outline on Political Economy mailing list
Subject: Re: [OPE] Venezuela is the most democraticcountryinLatinAmerica[MESSAGE NOT SCANNED]

The centralisation of authority, especially in times of crisis is well
known..... the purpose and circumstances need to be examined. History cannot
be ignored. Otherwise we are left with some very abstract and pointless
generalisations entirely separated from the concrete struggles that take
place at specific times and places and in particular societies. Indeed this
'horror' of centralised power seems a suitable subject for psycho analysis
rather than a substantive marxist analysis. One cannot run an imperialist
state without centralised processes, and no one fighting such an order can
do so on the basis of rejecting such a form of organisation. It is not
centralisation that is the problem it is the mechanics, purpose and
processes that have to be discussed, the class interests that they present
and support.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Cockshott" <wpc@dcs.gla.ac.uk>
To: "Outline on Political Economy mailing list" <ope@lists.csuchico.edu>
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 11:16 PM
Subject: RE: [OPE] Venezuela is the most democratic
countryinLatinAmerica[MESSAGE NOT SCANNED]

That last message was from me not from Dave Z.

Why do the range of historical examples I raise invalidate the point?
One needs to be willfully blind not to notice the tendancy towards
monarchy in 20th century revolutionary constitutions, and this is
something that has existed in past revolutionary processes as well.
There is a long historical trail associating popular movements with
monarchic outcomes. When faced with an observable fact like that the
appropriate
thing to do is not to ignore it, but to seek to understand its underlying
causes.

Paul Cockshott
Dept of Computing Science
University of Glasgow
+44 141 330 1629
www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/

-----Original Message-----
From: ope-bounces@lists.csuchico.edu on behalf of paul bullock
Sent: Thu 2/26/2009 10:58 PM
To: Outline on Political Economy mailing list
Subject: Re: [OPE] Venezuela is the most democratic country
inLatinAmerica[MESSAGE NOT SCANNED]

DZ,

I suppose you accept the point I made about German elections and Hitler.

With respect to your list of leaders. This is simply abstracting from
entirely different epochs and makes little sense.

Paul B.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Cockshott" <wpc@dcs.gla.ac.uk>
To: "Outline on Political Economy mailing list" <ope@lists.csuchico.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2009 12:17 PM
Subject: Re: [OPE] Venezuela is the most democratic country in
LatinAmerica[MESSAGE NOT SCANNED]

> paul bullock wrote:
>> Dave Z says 'allowing officials'... etc
>> Gerry has already shown that curtailing the rights of voters to reelect
>> a President, is rare, and relatively recent in the USA. ie used to
>> prevent another FDR by the Republicans/establishment in 1952 once
>> re-established. Secondly no one is 'allowing' anyone to do anything,
>> rather, the voters are requiring actions from the elected. The abolition
>> of the two term limit is presented by the enemies of democracy as the
>> removal of some sensible constraint upon individual megalomania, rather
>> than the extension of rights to the electorate. Indeed it treats the
>> electorate as an unreliable passive amorphous manipulated mass without
>> any hope or political capacity.
>
> There is a more general issue here Paul.
> Popular movements have historically often relied upon strong leaders :
> Ceasar, Cromwell, Napoleon, Stalin, Mao, Castro etc.
> The death of the strong leader has often posed major problems for the
> survival of the revolutionary project, and even where the state survived
> that, as in the USSR and China, the concentration of great power in one
> leader means that subsequent leaders were in a position to
> radically change direction.
> Leaders like Solon or Washington who were willing to step back, left more
> lasting revolutionary legacies.
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