Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 alpha 4/15/85; site ubvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!hao!hplabs!pesnta!amd!amdcad!cae780!ubvax!tonyw From: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: What is "capitalism"? Message-ID: <194@ubvax.UUCP> Date: Thu, 6-Jun-85 13:14:19 EDT Article-I.D.: ubvax.194 Posted: Thu Jun 6 13:14:19 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 15-Jun-85 06:36:51 EDT References: <449@qantel.UUCP> Organization: Ungermann-Bass, Inc., Santa Clara, CA Lines: 117 In article <449@qantel.UUCP>, gabor@qantel.UUCP (Gabor Fencsik@ex2642) writes: > > ... Lacking a > > big wad of bucks or demand credits in a bank, I'd have more "freedom" to > > determine our technology or our mode of production in (almost)ANY socialist > > economy than in this one. I have NO freedom to determine or to meaningfully > > participate in these big kinds of decisions under US-style capitalism. > > > Do I want that kind of freedom? Sure. [TONY WUERSCH] > > Let me see if I got this right. Tony's chain of thought runs as follows: > > 1. I am an intellectual. > 2. Intellectuals have more power under socialism. (As opposed to capitalism > where a competing elite - businessmen - hold the power.) > 3. Therefore, socialism is preferable to capitalism. > > Did anything get lost in the the translation? In any case, Tony should be > commended for putting his cards on the table. > > ----- > Gabor Fencsik {dual,nsc,hplabs,intelca,}!qantel!gabor There's a sociologist at Wisconsin, Ivan Szelenyi, who was forced to leave Hungary because he and, I think, George Konrad co-authored a book called "The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power". Szelenyi asks if the natural course of Eastern European socialism is for the intelligensias to take over in the next or subsequent generations. He also suggests that had intellectuals plotted for their rule, they couldn't have plotted better. (Not that they did -- they didn't live in the Eastern Europe of today, remember, when they started agitating.) I read Szelenyi for the first time about two years ago. Wow. I started joking to my left friends that this was exactly what WE were all about -- and, boy, did they NOT like that joke. Szelenyi defends intellectuals on the basis that their rule would be a lot better than businessmen on lots of criteria, mostly hingeing on their shared sense of social obligation, etc.. Some defense. Szelenyi IS a bit of an ironist. (Paul Hollander makes the same critique as Szelenyi, but whereas Szelenyi would shrug and cope, Hollander would likely advocate keeping intellectuals under perpetual surveillence, perhaps. Hollander's intellectual contempt of intellectuals knows no bounds at all.) Intellectuals do spend less on their own personal consumption than businessmen, and they surely ask for less salary. My own judgment on Szelenyi is that his analysis only goes as far as Gabor's -- that intellectuals do better under socialism than under capitalism. I don't think Szelenyi proves that intellectuals could actually rule under socialism as if they were an independent class with interests opposed to other classes, because he can't prove that intellectuals are an independent class. (Not to say that that isn't a VERY popular view in Slavic countries -- Szelenyi says intellectuals were a separate social category both before and after socialism. But a separate social category still does not quite a class make.) Szelenyi seems compelled to admit that intellectuals in power would have to maintain all the traditional "working class programs" -- guaranteed employment, cheap housing and food, cradle-to-grave health care, etc. This weakens his case considerably. So his focus on intellectuals in socialism is entirely appropriate, especially in Eastern Europe, but his tag to sell the issue -- intellectuals as a new ruling class -- is only that, a tag. Intellectuals in socialist countries cannot become a new bourgeoisie. I think intellectuals under socialism are tied to class-related specialties just as much as intellectuals under capitalism. That is, under both systems intellectuals are part of an ambiguous professional petty-bourgeoisie, who can stand for and reinforce other class forces but find it almost impossible to stand for themselves alone against all other classes. The dream of intellectuals ruling is sort of a diabolic fantasy, though, worth indulging in salons and the like. This kind of fantasy civil servants have all the time. It's the civil servant's wet dream. William F. Buckley, for instance. He calls his talk show "Firing Line". *** A PERSONAL COMMENT *** I agree with all of Gabor's points. What I don't understand is his backhanded compliment that I am "putting my cards on the table". If he means that I'm just slightly out for myself in favoring socialism to capitalism, I might agree except that were I mainly out for myself to rule, I'd become a businessman and, perhaps, join the libertarians or apply for US government subsidies. I haven't done that yet, and it's not in my plans. I'd rather be an intellectual than rule under capitalism, not because I'm forced to, but by my own choice. Maybe now I'm plotting on my behalf where I may once have plotted on the behalf of others. To that, I can only plead that this would be a double bind (damned if i do and damned if I didn't) argument. I don't respond to double bind arguments directly, for the obvious reasons. However, I held just about the same opinions on socialism before and after reading Szelenyi. Was my selflessness contaminated by learning that intellectuals do well under socialist regimes? Should that effect objectively good arguments for socialism (which I prefer)? No. *** END OF PERSONAL COMMENT *** Yes, socialism is a system where intellectuals gain relative to capitalism. So what? Consider this: intellectuals would gain under ANY EXTENSION OF DEMOCRACY. Simply because intellectuals have the communicative skills needed to be more persuasive, and the value of persuasiveness increases as DEMOCRACY increases. Anyone, such as myself, who wants more democracy and more significant public discussion of important economic and political questions, has to face the problem that an increase in the power of intellectuals is a likely result of the success of my program. More democracy is a good idea, and not all good ideas have to be advocated by saints or patrons. Tony Wuersch {amd,amdcad}!cae780!ubvax!tonyw