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<TITLE>Government in the Future</TITLE>
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<h2>Government in the Future <a href="http://chomsky.info/audionvideo/19700216.mp3">(mp3 version)</a></h2>
<h3>Noam Chomsky, 1970</h3>
<h4>(Rush transcript)</h4>
ANNOUNCER: The sound seminar you are about to hear was recorded at the
Poetry Center of the New York YM-YWHA on February 16, 1970. This
program presents Noam Chomsky, speaking on "Government in the Future".
Here is Noam Chomsky.
<p/>
[00:19]
<p/>
CHOMSKY: I think it is useful to setup as a framework for discussion
four somewhat idealized positions with regard to the role of the state
in an advanced industrial society. I want to call these positions 1)
classical liberal, 2) libertarian socialist, 3) state socialist, 4)
state capitalist and I want to consider each in turn.
<p/>
[00:43]
<p/>
Also, I'd like to make clear my own point in advance, so that you can
evaluate and judge what I am saying. I think that the libertarian
socialist concepts, and by that I mean a range of thinking that
extends from left-wing Marxism through anarchism, I think that these
are fundamentally correct and that they are the proper and natural
extension of classical liberalism into the era of advanced industrial
society. In contrast, it seems to me that the ideology of state
socialism, that is, what has become of Bolshevism, and of state
capitalism, the modern welfare state, these of course are dominant in
the industrial countries, in the industrial societies, but I believe
that they are regressive and highly inadequate social theories, and
that a large number of our really fundamental problems stem from a
kind of incompatibility and inappropriateness of these social forms to
a modern industrial society.
<p/>
[01:39]
<p/>
Well then let me consider these four points of reference in sequence,
beginning with the classical liberal point of view.
<p/>
<h3>Classical Liberalism </h3>
<p/>
[01:50]
<p/>
Classical liberalism asserts as its major idea an opposition to all
but the most restricted and minimal forms of state intervention in
personal or social life. Well this conclusion is quite familiar,
however the reasoning that leads to it is less familiar and, I think,
a good deal more important than the conclusion itself.
<p/>
[02:13]
<p/>
One of the earliest and most brilliant expositions of this position is
in Wilhelm Von Humboldt's "Limits of State Action", which was written
in 1792, though not published for 60 or 70 years after that. In his
view: "The state tends to make man an instrument to serve its
arbitrary ends, overlooking his individual purposes. And, since man is
in his essence a free, searching, self-perfecting being, it follows
that the state is a profoundly anti-human institution." That is, its
actions, its existence, are ultimately incompatible with the full
harmonious development of human potential in it's richest diversity.
Hence incompatible with what Humboldt, and in the following century
Marx, Bakunin, Mill, and many others, what they see as the true end of
man. And for the record I think that this is an accurate description.
<p/>
[03:07]
<p/>
The modern conservative tends to regard himself as the lineal
descendant of the classical liberal in this sense, but I think that
can be maintained only from an extremely superficial point of view, as
one can see by studying more carefully the fundamental ideas of
classical libertarian thought as expressed, in my opinion, in its most
profound form by Humboldt.
<p/>
[03:30]
<p/>
I think the issues are of really quite considerable contemporary
significance, and if you don't mind what may appear to be a somewhat
antiquarian excursion, I'd like to expand on them.
<p/>
[03:41]
<p/>
For Humboldt as for Rousseau, and before him the Cartesians, man's
central attribute is his freedom. "To enquire and to create, these are
the centers around which all human pursuits more or less directly
revolve." "But," he goes on to say, "all moral cultures spring solely
and immediately from the inner life of the soul and can never be
produced by external and artificial contrivances. The cultivation of
the understanding, as of any man's other faculties, is generally
achieved by his own activity, his own ingenuity, or his own methods of
using the discoveries of others."
<p/>
[04:16]
<p/>
Well, from these assumptions, quite obviously, an educational theory
follows and he develops it, but I won't pursue it. But also far more
follows. Humboldt goes on to develop at least the rudiments of a
theory of exploitation and of alienated labour that suggests in
significant ways, I think, the early Marx. Humboldt in fact continues
these comments that I quoted, about the cultivation of the
understanding through spontaneous action, in the following way: He
says, "Man never regards what he possesses as so much his own, as what
he does and the laborer who tends the garden is perhaps in a truer
sense its owner, than the listless voluptuary who enjoys its fruits.
And since truly human action is that which flows from inner impulse,
it seems as if all peasants and craftsmen might be elevated into
artists, that is men who love their labor for its own sake, improve it
by their own plastic genius and inventive skill, and thereby cultivate
their intellect, ennoble their character, and exult and refine their
pleasures; and so humanity would be ennobled by the very things which
now, though beautiful in themselves, so often go to degrade it."
"Freedom is undoubtedly the indispensable condition without which even
the pursuits most congenial to individual human nature can never
succeed in producing such salutary influences. Whatever does not
spring from a man's free choice, or is only the result of instruction
and guidance, does not enter into his very being but remains alien to
his true nature. He does not perform it with truly human energies,
but merely with mechanical exactness. And if a man acts in a
mechanical way, reacting to external demands or instruction, rather
than in ways determined by his own interests and energies and power,"
he says, "we may admire what he does, but we despise what he is."
<p/>
[06:04]
<p/>
For Humboldt then, man is born to enquire and create, and when a man
or a child chooses to enquire or create out of its own free choice,
then he becomes, in his own terms, "an artist rather than a tool of
production or a well trained parrot". This is the essence of his
concept of human nature. And I think that it is very revealing and
interesting compared with Marx, with the early Marx manuscripts, and
particularly his account of "the alienation of labour when work is
external to the worker, not part of his nature, so that he does not
fulfill himself in his work but denies himself and is physically
exhausted and mentally debased. This alienated labour that casts some
of the workers back into a barbarous kind of work and turns others
into machines, thus depriving man of his species character, of free
conscious activity and productive life." Recall also Marx's well known
and often quoted reference to a higher form of society, in which
labour has become not only a means of life but also the highest want
in life. And recall also his repeated criticism of the specialized
labour which, "mutilates the worker into a fragment of a human being,
degrades him to become a mere appurtenance of the machine, makes his
work such a torment that its essential meaning is destroyed, estranges
from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process in very
proportion to the extent to which science is incorporated into it as
an independent power."
<p/>
[07:37]
<p/>
Robert Tucker for one has rightly emphasized that Marx sees the
revolutionary more as a frustrated producer, than as a dis-satisfied
consumer. And this, far more radical, critique of capitalist
relations of production, flows directly, often in the same words, from
the libertarian thought of The Enlightenment. For this reason, I
think, one must say that classical liberal ideas, in their essence
though not in the way they developed, are profoundly anti-capitalist.
The essence of these ideas must be destroyed for them to serve as an
ideology of modern industrial capitalism.
<p/>
[08:13]
<p/>
Writing in the 1780's and early 1790's, Humboldt had no conception of
the forms that industrial capitalism would take. Consequently, in
this classic of classical liberalism, he stresses the problem of
limiting state power, and he is not overly concerned with the dangers
of private power. The reason is that he believes in and speaks of the
essential equality of condition of private citizens, and of course he
has no idea, writing in 1790, of the ways in which the notion of
private person would come to be reinterpreted in the era of corporate
capitalism. "He did not foresee", I now quote the anarchist historian
Rudolf Rocker: "he did not foresee that democracy, with its model of
equality of all citizens before the law, and liberalism, with its
right of man over his own person, both would be wrecked on the
realities of capitalistic economy." Humboldt did not foresee that in a
predatory capitalistic economy, state intervention would be an
absolute necessity. To preserve human existence. To prevent the
destruction of the physical environment. I speak optimistically of
course.
<p/>
[09:18]
<p/>
As Karl Polanyi for one has pointed out: "The self-adjusting market
could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human
and natural substance of society. It would have physically destroyed
man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness." I think
that's correct. Humboldt also did not foresee the consequences of the
commodity character of labor. The doctrine, again in Polanyi's words,
"that it is not for the commodity to decide where it should be offered
for sale, to what purpose it should be used, at what price it should
be allowed to change hands, in what manner it should be consumed or
destroyed." But the commodity in this case is of course human life.
And social protection was therefore a minimal necessity to constrain
the irrational and destructive workings of the classical free market.
<p/>
[10:03]
<p/>
Nor did Humboldt understand in 1790 that capitalistic economic
relations perpetuated a form of bondage which, long before that in
fact, as early as 1767, Simon Linguet had declared to be "even worse
than slavery," writing :"it is the impossibility of living by any
other means that compels our farm labourers to till the soil, whose
fruits they will not eat, and our masons to construct buildings in
which they will not live. It is want that drags them to those markets
where they await masters, who will do them the kindness of buying
them. It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the
rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him. What
effective gain has the suppression of slavery brought him? 'He is
free,' you say. That is his misfortune. These men, it is said, have
no master. They have one, and the most terrible, the most imperious
of masters: that is, need. It is this that that reduces them to the
most cruel dependence." And if there is something degrading to human
nature in the idea of bondage, as every spokesman for the
enlightenment would insist, then it would follow that a new
emancipation must be awaited, what Fourier referred to as the third
and last emancipatory phase of history. The first having made serfs
out of slaves, the second wage earners out of serfs and the third
which will transform the proletariat freemen by eliminating the
commodity character of labour, ending wage slavery and bringing the
commercial, industrial and financial institutions, under democratic
control.
<p/>
[11:28]
<p/>
These are all things that Humboldt in his classical liberal doctrine
did not express and didn't see, but I think that he might have
accepted these conclusions. He does, for example, agree that state
intervention in social life is legitimate "if freedom would destroy
the very conditions without which not only freedom but even existence
itself would be inconceivable" which are precisely the circumstances
that arise in an unconstrained capitalist economy and he does, as in
remarks that I quoted, vigorously condemn the alienation of labour.
In any event, his criticism of bureaucracy and the autocratic state
stands as a very eloquent forewarning of some of the most dismal
aspects of modern history, and the important point is that the basis
of his critique is applicable to a far broader range of coercive
institutions than he imagined, in particular to the institutions of
industrial capitalism.
<p/>
[12:21]
<p/>
Though he expresses a classical liberal doctrine, Humboldt is no
primitive individualist, in the style of for example Rousseau. So
Rousseau extols the savage who lives within himself, but Humboldt's
vision is entirely different. He sums up his remarks as follows, he
says "the whole tenor of the ideas and arguments unfolded in this
essay might fairly be reduced to this: that while they would break all
fetters in human society, they would attempt to find as many new
social bonds as possible. The isolated man is no more able to develop
than the one who is fettered." and he in fact looks forwards to a
community of free association, without coercion by the state or other
authoritarian institutions, in which free men can create and inquire,
achieve the highest development of their powers. In fact, far ahead
of his time, he presents an anarchist vision that is appropriate,
perhaps, to the next stage of industrial society. We can perhaps look
forward to a day, when these various strands will be brought together
within the framework of libertarian socialism, a social form that
barely exists today, though its elements can perhaps be perceived, for
example in the guarantee of individual rights, that has achieved so
far its fullest realization (though still tragically flawed in the
western democracies), or in the Israeli kibbutzim, or in the
experiments with workers' councils in Yugoslavia, or in the effort to
awaken popular consciousness and to create a new involvement in the
social process, which is a fundamental element in the third world
revolutions, coexisting uneasily with indefensible authoritarian
practice.
<p/>
[14:07]
<p/>
So let me summarize this first point. The first point of the state
that I want to setup as a reference, classical liberal, its doctrine
is that the state function should be drastically limited, but this
familiar characterization is a very superficial one. More deeply, the
classical liberal view develops from a certain concept of human
nature: one that stresses the importance of diversity and free
creation. And therefore this view is in fundamental opposition to
industrial capitalism, with its wage slavery, its alienated labour and
its hierarchic and authoritarian principles of social and economic
organisation. At least in its Humboldtian form, classical liberal
thought is opposed as well to the concepts of possessive
individualism, which are intrinsic to capitalist ideology. So it seeks
to eliminate social fetters, but to replace them by social bonds, not
by competitive greed, not by predatory individualism, not of course by
corporate empires, state or private. Classical libertarian thought
seems to me therefore to lead directly to libertarian socialism or
anarchism, if you like, when combined with an understanding of
industrial capitalism.
<p/>
[15:17]
<p/>
<h3>Libertarian Socialism</h3>
<p/>
Well the second point of reference that I want to discuss is the
libertarian socialist vision of the state. A French writer rather
sympathetic to anarchism once wrote that "anarchism has a broad back,
like paper it endures anything" and there are many shades of anarchism
and I am concerned here only with one, namely the anarchism of
Bakunin, who wrote in his anarchist manifesto of 1865 that "to be an
anarchist one must first be a socialist". I am concerned with the
anarchism of Adolph Fisher, one of the martyrs of the Haymarket affair
in 1886, who said that every anarchist is a socialist, but not every
socialist is necessarily an anarchist.
<p/>
[15:57]
<p/>
A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of
production. Such property is indeed, as Proudhon in his famous remark
asserted, a form of theft. But a consistent anarchist will also
oppose the organisation of production by government. I'm quoting: "it
means state socialism, the command of the state officials over
production and the command of managers, scientists, shop officials, in
the shop. The goal of the working class is liberation from
exploitation and this goal is not reached and cannot be reached by a
new directing and governing class substituting itself for the
bourgeoisie. It is only realized by the workers themselves being the
master of production by some form of workers' councils." These
remarks, it happens, are quoted from the left wing Marxist Anton
Pannekoek and in fact radical Marxism, what Lenin once called
infantile ultra leftism, merges with anarchist currents.
<p/>
[16:53]
<p/>
This is an important point, I think, and let me give one further
illustration of this convergence between left wing marxism and
socialist anarchism. Considering the following characterization of
revolutionary socialism: "the revolutionary socialist denies that
state ownership can end in anything other than a bureaucratic
despotism. We have seen why the state cannot democratically control
industry. Industry can only be democratically owned and controlled by
workers electing, directly from their own ranks, industrial
administrative committees. Socialism will be fundamentally an
industrial system. Its constituencies will be of an industrial
character. Thus, those carrying on the social activity and industries
of society will be directly represented in the local and central
councils of social administration. In this way the powers of such
delegates will flow upwards from those carrying on the work and
conversant with the needs of the community. When the central
administrative industrial committee meets, it will represent every
phase of social activity. Hence the capitalist political or
geographical state will be replaced by the industrial administrative
committee of socialism. The transition from one social system to the
other will be the social revolution. The political state throughout
history has meant the government of men by ruling classes. The
republic of socialism will be the government of industry, administered
on behalf of the whole community. The former meant the economic and
political subjection of the many, the latter will mean the economic
freedom of all. It will be therefore a true democracy."
<p/>
[18:24]
<p/>
These remarks are taken from a book called "The State: Its Origins and
Function", written by William Paul in early 1917, just prior to
Lenin's "State and Revolution", which is his most libertarian work.
William Paul is one of the founders of the British communist party,
later the editor of British communist party journal. And it is
interesting that his critique of state socialism resembles very
closely, I think, the libertarian doctrine of the anarchists, in
particular in its principle that the state must disappear, to be
replaced by the industrial organisation of society in the course of
the social revolution itself. Proudhon, in 1851, wrote that what we
put in place of the government is industrial organisation and many
many similar comments can be cited. That, in essence, is the
fundamental idea of anarchist revolutionaries.
<p/>
[19:13]
<p/>
What's more important than the fact that many such statements can be
cited, is that these ideas have been realised in spontaneous
revolutionary action several times, for example in Germany and Italy
after the first World War, in Catalonia in 1936. One might argue, at
least I would argue, that council communism in this sense, in the
sense of the long quotation that I read, is the natural form of
revolutionary socialism in an industrial society. It reflects the
intuitive understanding that democracy is largely a sham when the
industrial system is controlled by any form of autocratic elite,
whether of owners, managers, technocrats, vanguard party, a state
bureaucracy or whatever. Under these conditions of authoritarian
domination, the classical liberal ideals, which are expressed also by
Marx and Bakunin and all true revolutionaries cannot be realised. Man
will, in other words, not be free to enquire and create, to develop
his own potentialities to their fullest, the worker will remain a
fragment of a human being, degraded, a tool in the productive process
directed from above.
<p/>
[20:18]
<p/>
And the ideas of revolutionary libertarian socialism in this sense,
they have been submerged in the industrial societies of the past half
century. The dominant ideologies have been those of state socialism
and state capitalism. But there has been an interesting resurgence in
the last couple of years. In fact, the thesis that I quoted from
Anton Pannekoek, these were taken from a recent pamphlet of a radical
French workers group and the quotation that I read from William Paul
on revolutionary socialism was taken from a paper by Walter Kendall at
the national conference on workers' control in Sheffield, England,
last March. Both of these groups, the French and the English one,
represent something significant. The workers' control movement in
England, in particular, has developed into a, I think, remarkably
significant force in the last few years. It includes some of the
largest trade unions for example. The Amalgamated Engineering
Federation [probably "Amalgamated Engineering Union"], which I think
is the second largest trade union in England and which has taken these
principles as its fundamental ideas. It has had a series of
successful conferences putting out an interesting pamphlet literature
and on the continent there are parallel developments. May 1968 in
France of course accelerated the growing interest in council communism
and similar ideas and other forms of libertarian socialism in France
and Germany as it did in England.
<p/>
[21:39]
<p/>
Given the general conservative cast of our highly ideological society,
it is not too surprising that the United States is relatively
untouched by these currents. But that too may change. The erosion of
the Cold War mythology, at least makes it possible to discuss some of
these questions and if the present wave of repression can be beaten
back, if the left can overcome its more suicidal tendencies and build
on the achievements of the past decade, the problem of how to organize
industrial society on truly democratic lines, with democratic control
in the workplace as well as in the community, this should become the
dominant intellectual issue for those who are alive to the problems of
contemporary society. And, as a mass movement for revolutionary
libertarian socialism develops, as I hope it will, speculation should
proceed to action.
<p/>
[22:28]
<p/>
It may seem quixotic to group left marxism and anarchism under the
same rubric as I have done, given the antagonism throughout the past
century between Marxists and anarchists, beginning with the antagonism
between Marx and Engels, on the one hand, and, for example, Proudhon
and Bakunin on the other. In the nineteenth century, at least, their
differences with regard to the question of the state was significant,
but in a sense it was tactical. The anarchists were convinced that
capitalism and the state must be destroyed together. Engels, in a
letter of 1883, expressed his opposition to this idea as follows: "The
anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the
proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political
organisation of the state. But to destroy it at such a moment would
be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious
proletariat can assert its newly conquered power, hold down its
adversaries and carry out that economic revolution of society without
which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and in a mass
slaughter of the workers, similar to those after the Paris commune".
Now the Paris commune, I think it is fair to say, did represent the
ideas of libertarian socialism, of anarchism if you like, and Marx, of
course, wrote about it with great enthusiasm. In fact, the experience
of the commune led him to modify his concept of the role of the state,
as you can see, for examples, by looking at the introduction to the
"Communist Manifesto", the edition of which was published in 1872, and
to take on something like a more anarchist perspective of the nature
of social revolution.
<p/>
[24:03]
<p/>
Well the commune was of course drowned in blood, as the anarchist
communes of Spain were destroyed by fascist and communist armies. And
it might be argued that a more dictatorial structures would have
defended the revolution against such forces. But I doubt this very
much. At least in the case of Spain, it seems to me that a more
consistent libertarian policy might have provided the only possible
defense of the revolution. Of course this can be contested and it is
a long story, which I do not want to go into here, but at the very
least it is clear that one would have to be rather naive after the
events of the past half century to fail to see the truth in Bakunin's
repeated warnings that the Red bureaucracy would prove the most
violent, terrible lie of the century. He once said "take the most
radical revolutionary and place his on the throne of all Russia", he
said in 1870, "or give him a dictatorial power and before a year has
passed he will become worse than the Czar himself." I'm afraid, in
this respect, Bakunin was all too perceptive and this kind of warning
was repeatedly voiced from the left. For example the
anarcho-syndicalist Fernand Pelloutier asked, in the 1890s: "Must even
the transitory state to which we have to submit necessarily and
fatally be the collectivist jail ? Can't it consist in a free
organisation, limited exclusively by the needs of production and
consumption, all political institutions having disappeared ?"
<p/>
[25:28]
<p/>
I don't pretend to know the answer to that question, but I think that
it is tolerably clear, that unless the answer is positive, the chances
for a truly democratic revolution that will achieve the humanistic
ideals of the left are perhaps rather slight. I think Martin Buber
put the problem quite succinctly when he said: "One cannot in the
nature of things expect a little tree, that has been turned into a
club, to put forth leaves." For just this reason, it's essential that
a powerful revolutionary movement exist in the United States, if there
are to be any reasonable possibilities for democratic social change of
a radical sort anywhere in the capitalist world. And comparable
remarks, I think, undoubtedly hold for the Russian empire. Lenin,
till the end of his life, stressed the idea that: "It is an elementary
truth of Marxism that the victory of socialism requires the joint
effort of workers in a number of advanced countries. At the very
least it requires that the great centers of world imperialism be
impeded by domestic pressures from counter revolutionary intervention.
Only such possibilities will permit any revolution to overthrow its
own coercive state institutions as it tries to bring the economy under
direct democratic control."
<p/>
[26:43]
<p/>
Well, let me summarize briefly again. I have mentioned so far two
reference points for discussion of the state: Classical Liberalism and
Libertarian Socialism. They are in agreement that the functions of the
state are repressive and that state action must be limited. The
libertarian socialist goes on to insist that the state power must be
eliminated in favour of the democratic organisation of industrial
society, with direct popular control over all institutions by those
who participate in, as well as those who are directly affected by, the
workings of these institutions. So one might imagine then, a system
of workers' councils, consumers' councils, commune assemblies,
regional federations and so on, with the kind of representation that
is direct and revocable, in the sense that representatives are
directly answerable to and return directly to the well defined and
integrated social group for which they speak in some higher order
organisation, something obviously very different than our system of
representation.
<p/>
[27:40]
<p/>
Now it might very well be asked whether such a social structure is
feasible, in a complex, highly technological society. There are
counter arguments and I think they fall into two main categories.
First category is that such an organisation is contrary to human
nature, and the second category says roughly that it is incompatible
with the demands of efficiency. I'd like to briefly consider each of
these.
<p/>
[28:03]
<p/>
Consider the first, that a free society is contrary to human nature.
It is often asked: do men really want freedom ? Do they want the
responsibility that goes with it ? Or would they prefer to be ruled
by a benevolent master ? Consistently, apologists for the existing
distribution of power have held to one or another version of the idea
of the happy slave. Two hundred years ago, Rousseau denounced the
sophistic politicians and intellectuals "who search for ways to
obscure the fact," so he maintained, "that the essential and the
defining property of man is his freedom. They attribute to man a
natural inclination to servitude, without thinking that it is the same
for freedom as for innocence and virtue. Their value is felt only as
long as one enjoys them oneself, and the taste for them is lost, as
soon as one has lost them." As proof of this doctrine he refers to
the marvels done by all free peoples to guard themselves from
oppression. "True", he says, "those who have abandoned the life of a
free man do nothing but boast incessantly of the peace and repose they
enjoy in their chains. But when I see the other sacrifice pleasures,
repose, wealth, power and life itself for the preservation of this
sole good, which is so disdained by those who have lost it, when I see
multitudes of entirely naked savages scorn European voluptuousness and
endure hunger, fire, the sword and death to preserve only their
independence, I feel it does not behoove slaves to reason about
freedom." A comment to which we can perhaps give a contemporary
interpretation.
<p/>
[29:36]
<p/>
Rather similar thoughts were expressed by Kant 40 years later, "he
cannot", he says, "accept the proposition that certain people are not
right for freedom, for example the serfs of some landlord." "If one
accepts this assumption," he writes, "freedom will never be achieved.
For one cannot arrive at the maturity for freedom without having
already acquired it. One must be free to learn how to make use of
ones powers freely and usefully. The first attempts will surely be
brutal and will lead to a state of affairs more painful and dangerous
than the former condition. Under the dominance but also the
protection of an external authority. However, one can achieve reason
only through one's own experiences and one must be free to be able to
undertake them. To accept the principle that freedom is worthless for
those under one's control and that one has the right to refuse it to
them forever, is an infringement on the right of God himself, who has
created man to be free."
<p/>
[30:29]
<p/>
This particular remark is interesting because of its context as well.
Kant, in this case, was defending the French revolution during the
terror, against those who claimed it showed the masses to be unready
for the privilege of freedom. And his remarks too, I think, have
obvious contemporary relevance. No rational person will approve of
violence and terror, and in particular the terror of the
post-revolutionary state, which has fallen into the hands of a grim
autocracy, has more than once reached indescribable levels of
savagery. At the same time no person of understanding or humanity
will too quickly condemn the violence that often occurs, when long
subdued masses rise against their oppressors or take their first steps
towards liberty and social reconstruction.
<p/>
[31:17]
<p/>
Humboldt, just a few years before Kant, had expressed a view very
similar to that. He also said that freedom and variety are the
preconditions for human self-realization. "Nothing promotes this
ripeness for freedom so much as freedom itself. This truth, perhaps,
may not be acknowledged by those who have so often used this
unripeness as an excuse for continuing repression, but it seems to me
to follow unquestionably from the very nature of man. The incapacity
for freedom can only arise from a want of moral and intellectual
power. To heighten this power is the only way to supply the want, but
to do so presupposes the freedom, which awakens spontaneous activity."
"Those who do not comprehend this", he says, "may justly be suspected
of misunderstanding human nature, and wishing to make men into
machines."
<p/>
[32:01]
<p/>
Rosa Luxemburg's fraternal, sympathetic critique of Bolshevik ideology
and practice was given in very similar terms. Only the active
participation of the masses in self-government and social
reconstruction could bring about what she described as the complete
spiritual transformation in the masses degraded by centuries of
bourgeois class rule, just as only their creative experience and
spontaneous action can solve the myriad problems of creating a
libertarian socialist society. She went on to say that historically
the errors committed by a truly revolutionary movement are infinitely
more fruitful than the infallibility of the cleverest central
committee, and I think that these remarks can be translated
immediately for the somewhat parallel ideology of the soulful
corporation, which is now fairly popular among the American academics.
For example Karl Casen who writes: "no longer the agent of
proprietorship seeking to maximize return on investment, management
sees itself as responsible to stock holders, employees, customers, the
general public and perhaps most important the firm itself as an
institution. There is no display of greed or graspingness, there is no
attempt to push off on the workers and the community at large part of
the social costs of the enterprise. The modern corporation is a
soulful corporation." [laughter] Similarly, the vanguard party is a
soulful party, and in both cases those who urge that men submit to the
rule of these benevolent autocracies may, I think, justly be accused
of wishing to make men into machines.
<p/>
[33:33]
<p/>
Now the correctness of the view which is expressed by Rousseau and
Kant and Humboldt and Luxemburg and innumerable others, I don't think
that the correctness of this is for the moment susceptible to
scientific proof. One can only evaluate it in terms of experience and
intuition. One can also point out the social consequences of adopting
the view that men are born to be free, or that they are born to be
ruled by benevolent autocrats.
<p/>
[33:57]
<p/>
What of the second question, the question of efficiency ? Is
democratic control of the industrial system down to its smallest
functional units incompatible with efficiency ? This is very
frequently argued on several grounds. Some say, for example, that
centralized management is a technological imperative, but I think the
argument is exceedingly weak when one looks into it. The very same
technology that brings relevant information to the board of managers
can bring it at the time that it is needed to everyone in the work
force. The technology that is now capable of eliminating the
stupefying labour that turns men into specialized tools of production,
this technology permits in principle the leisure and the educational
opportunities that make them able to use this information in a
rational way. And, furthermore, even an economic elite which is
dripping with soulfulness, to use Ralph Noloban's phrase, is
constrained by the system in which it functions to organise production
for certain ends; power, growth, profit, but not in the nature of the
case human needs. Needs that to an ever more critical degree can be
expressed only in collective terms. It is surely conceivable and
perhaps it's even likely, that decisions made by the collective
itself, will reflect these needs and interests as well as those made
by various soulful elites.
<p/>
[35:12]
<p/>
In any event it is a bit difficult to take seriously arguments about
efficiency in a society that devotes such enormous resources to waste
and destruction. As everyone knows, the very concept of efficiency is
dripping with ideology. Maximization of commodities is hardly the only
measure of a decent existence. The point is familiar and no
elaboration is necessary.
<p/>
<h3>State Systems </h3>
<p/>
[35:32]
<p/>
Well let me turn finally to the two final points of reference: The
Bolshevik or state socialist and state capitalist. As I have tried to
suggest they have points in common and in an interesting respects they
diverge from the classical liberal ideal or its later elaboration in
libertarian socialism. Since I am concerned with our society let me
make a few rather elementary observations, about the role of the
state, its likely evolution and the ideological assumptions that
accompany and sometimes disguise this phenomena. Its obvious, to
begin with, that we can distinguish two systems of power, the
political system and the economic system. The former consists in
principle of elected representatives of the people who set public
policy, the latter, in principle, is a system of private power, a
system of private empires that are free from public control, except in
remote and indirect ways in which even a fuedal nobility or a
totalitarian dictatorship must be responsive to the public will.
There are several immediate consequences of this organization of
society.
<p/>
[36:34]
<p/>
The first is that in a subtle way an authoritarian cast of mind is
induced in a very large mass of the population, which is subject to
arbitrary decree from above. I think that this has a great effect on
the general character of the culture: the belief that one must obey
arbitrary dictates and accede to authority, and I think that in fact a
remarkable and exciting fact about the youth movement in recent years
is that it is challenging and beginning to break down some of these
authoritarian patterns.
<p/>
[37:10]
<p/>
Second fact that is important is that the range of decisions that are
in principle subject to public democratic control is quite narrow.
For example it excludes in law and in principle the central
institutions in any advanced industrial society that is the entire
commercial, industrial and financial system. And a third fact is
that, even within the narrow range of issues that are submitted in
principle to democratic decision making, the centers of private power
of course exert an inordinately heavy influence in perfectly obvious
ways, through control the media, through control the political
organizations, or in fact by the simple and direct means of supplying
the top personnel for the parliamentary system itself, as they
obviously do. Dick Barnet in a recent study of this reports his study
of the top 400 decision makers in the post war national security
system, that: "most have come from executive suites and law offices
within shouting distance of each other, in 15 city blocks in 5 major
cities." And every other study shows the same thing. In short, the
democratic system at best functions within a very narrow range in a
capitalist democracy and even within this narrow range its functioning
is enormously biased by the concentrations of private power and by the
authoritarian and passive modes of thinking that are induced by
autocratic institutions such as industries, for example. It is a
truism, but one that must be constantly stressed, that capitalism and
democracy are ultimately quite incompatible. And a careful look at
the matter, I think, merely strengthens this conclusion.
<p/>
[38:41]
<p/>
There are perfectly obvious processes of centralization of control
taking place in both the political and the industrial system. As far
as the political system is concerned in every parliamentary democracy,
not only ours, the role of parliament in policy formation has been
declining in the years since WWII as everyone knows and political
commentators repeatedly point out. The executive, in other words,
become increasingly powerful as the planning functions of the state
become more significant. The house Armed Services Commitee a couple of
years ago described the role of Congress as that of a sometimes
querulous but essentially kindly uncle, who complains while furiously
puffing on his pipe, but who finally, as everyone expects, gives in
and hands over the allowance. And careful studies of civil military
decisions since WWII show that this is quite an accurate perception.
Senator Vandenberg 20 years ago expressed his fear that the American
chief executive would become "the number one warlord of the earth".
That has since occurred. The clearest decision is the decision to
escalate in Vietnam in February 1965 in cynical disregard of the
expressed will of the electorate. This incident reveals I think with
perfect clarity the role of the public in decisions about peace and
war. The role of the public in decisions about the main lines about
public policy in general, and it also suggests the irrelevance of
electoral politics to major decisions of national policy.
<p/>
[40:13]
<p/>
Unfortunately you can't vote the rascals out, because you never voted
them in, in the first place. [applause] The corporate executives and
the corporation lawyers and so on who overwhelmingly staff the
executive, assisted increasingly by a university based mandarin class,
these people remain in power no matter whom you elect and furthermore
it is interesting to note that this ruling elite is pretty clear about
its social role.
<p/>
[40:37]
<p/>
As an example take Robert MacNamara, who is the person widely praised
in liberal circles for his humanity, his technical brilliance and his
campaign to control the military. His views of social organisation, I
think, are quite illuminating. He says vital decision making in
policy matters as well as bussiness must remain at the top, that is
partly though not completely, what the top is for, and he goes on to
suggest that this is apparently a divine imperative. [laughter] I
quote: "God is clearly democratic. He distributes brain power
universally, but he quite justifiably expects us to do something
efficient and constructive with that priceless gift. That's what
management is all about. [laughter] Management in the end is the most
creative of all the arts for its medium is human talent itself. The
real threat to democracy comes from undermanagement. The
undermanagement of a society is not the respect of liberty. It is
simply to let some force other than reason shape reality. If it is
not reason that rules man, then man falls short of his potential." So
reason, then, is to be identified as the centralization of
decision-making at the top in the hands of management. Popular
involvement in decision making is a threat to liberty, a violation of
reason. Reason is embodied in autocratic tightly managed
institutions. Strengthening these institutions within which man can
function most efficiently is in his words "the great human adventure
of our times." Now all of this has a faintly familiar ring to it and
it is the authentic voice of the technical intelligensia, the liberal
intelligensia of the technocratic corporate elite in a modern society.
<p/>
[42:16]
<p/>
There is a parallel process of centralization in economic life. There
is a recent FTC report which notes that the 200 largest manufacturing
corporations now control about two thirds of all manufacturing assets.
At the beginning of WWII the same amount of power was spread over a
thousand corporations. I quote the report. It says: "a small
industrial elite of huge conglomerate companies is gobbling up
American bussiness and largely destroying competitive free
enterprise." Furthermore it says "these two hundred corporations are
partially linked with each other and with other corporations in ways
that may prevent or discourage independent behaviour in market
decisions." What is novel about such observations is only their
source: the FTC. They are familiar to the point of cliche among
left-liberal commentators on American society.
<p/>
[43:05]
<p/>
The centralization of power also has an international dimension. It
has been pointed out that, I am quoting from "Foreign Affairs", "on
the basis of the gross value of their output, US enterprises abroad in
the aggregate comprised the third largest country in the world, with a
gross product greater than that of any country except the United
States and the Soviet Union. American firms control over half the
automobile industry in England, almost 40% of petroleum in Germany,
over 40% of the telegraphic, telephone, electronic and business
equipment in France, 75% of the computers. Within a decade, given
present trends, more than half of the British exports will be from
American owned companies". And furthermore, these are highly
concentrated investments: 40% of direct investment in Germany, France
and Britain is by three firms, American firms.
<p/>
[44:01]
<p/>
George Ball has explained that the project of constructing an
integrated world economy dominated by American capital, an empire in
other words, is no idealistic pipe dream, but a hard headed
prediction. It's a role, he says, into which we are being pushed by
the imperatives of our own economy. The major instrument being the
multinational corporation which George Ball describes as follows: "in
its modern form the multinational corporation, or one with worldwide
operations and markets, is a distinctly American development. Through
such corporations it has become possible for the first time to use the
world's resources with maximum efficiency, but there must be greater
unification of the world economy to give full play to the benefits of
multinational corporations." These multinational corporations are the
beneficiary of the mobilization of resources by the federal government
and its worldwide operations and markets are backed ultimately by
American military force, now based in dozens of countries. It is not
difficult to guess who will reap the benefits from the integrated
world economy, which is the domain of operation of these American
based international economic institutions.
<p/>
[45:04]
<p/>
Well, at this stage in the discussion one has to mention the specter
of communism. What is the threat of communism to this system ? For a
clear and cogent answer, one can turn to an extensive study of the
Woodrow Wilson Foundation and National Planning Association called the
"Political Economy of American Foreign Policy", a very important book.
It was compiled by a representative segment of the tiny elite that
largely sets public policy for whoever is technically in office. In
effect, it's as close as you can come to a manifesto of the American
ruling class. Here they define the primary threat of communism as
"the economic transformation of the communist powers in ways which
reduce their willingness or ability to complement the industrial
economies of the West." That is the primary threat of communism.
Communism, in short, reduces the willingness and ability of
underdeveloped countries to function in the world capitalist economy
in the manner of for example the Philippines, which has developed a
colonial economy of a classic type after 75 years of American tutelage
and domination. It's this doctrine which explains why the British
economist Joan Robinson describes the American crusade against
communism as a crusade against development.
<p/>
[46:23]
<p/>
The cold war ideology and the international communist conspiracy
function in an important way, as essentially a propaganda device, to
mobilize support at a particular historical moment for this long time
imperial enterprise. In fact, I believe that this is probably the
main function of cold war. It serves as a useful device for the
managers of the American society and their counterparts in the Soviet
Union to control their own populations and their own respective
imperial systems. I think that the persistence of the cold war can be
in part explained by its utility for the managers of the two great
world systems.
<p/>
[46:52]
<p/>
Well, there is one final element that has to be added to this picture,
namely the ongoing militarization of American society. How does this
enter in ? To see, one has to look back at WWII and to recall that
prior to WWII of course we were deep in the depression. WWII taught
an important economic lesson. It taught the lesson that government
induced production in a carefully controlled economy, centrally
controlled, could overcome the effects of the depression. I think
that is what Charles E. Wilson had in mind at the end of 1944 when he
proposed that we have a permanent war economy in the postwar world.
Of course the trouble is that in a capitalist economy there are only a
number of ways in which government intervention can take place. It
can't be competitive with the private empires for example, which is to
say that there can't be any useful production. In fact it has to be
the production of luxury goods. Goods, not capital, not useful
commodities, which would be competitive. And unfortunately there is
only one category of luxury goods that can be produced endlessly with
rapid obsolescence, quickly wasting and no limit on how many of them
you can use. We all know what that is.
<p/>
[48:01]
<p/>
This whole matter is described pretty well by the business historian
Alfred Chandler. He describes the economic lessons of WWII as
follows: "The government spent far more than the most enthusiastic New
Dealer had ever proposed. Most of the output of the expenditures was
destroyed or left on the battlefields of Europe and Asia, but the
resulting increased demand sent the nation into a period of
prosperity, the like of which had never before been seen. Moreover,
the supplying of huge armies and navies fighting the most massive war
of all time required a tight centralized control of national economy.
This effort brought corporate managers to Washington to carry out one
of the most complex pieces of economic planning in history. That
experience lessened the ideological fears over the government's role
in stabilizing the economy." (This is a conservative commentator, I
might point out.) It may be added that the ensuing cold war carried
further the de-politicization of the American society and created the
kind of psychological environment in which the government is able to
intervene in part through fiscal policies and in part through public
work and public services, but very largely of course through defense
spending.
<p/>
[49:16]
<p/>
In this way, to use Alfred Chandler's words, "the government acts as a
coordinator of last resort when managers are unable to maintain a high
level of aggregate demand." As another conservative business
historian, Joseph Monson, writes, "enlightened corporate managers, far
from fearing government intervention in the economy, view the new
economics as a technique for increasing corporate viability." Of
course, the most cynical use of these ideas is by the managers of the
publicly subsidized war industries. There was a remarkable series in
the Washington Post about this about an year ago, by Bernard Nossiter.
For example he quoted Samuel Downer, financial vice president of LTV
Aerospace, one of the big new conglomerates, who explained why the
postwar world must be bolstered by military orders. He said: "It's
basic." "Its selling appeal is the defense of the home. This is one
of the greatest appeals the politicians have to adjusting the system.
If you're the president and you need a control factor in the economy,
and you need to sell this factor, you can't sell Harlem and Watts, but
you can sell self-preservation, a new environment. We are going to
increase defense budgets as long as those bastards in Russia are ahead
of us. The American people understand this." Of course, those
bastards aren't exactly ahead of us in this deadly and cynical game,
but that is only a minor embarrassment to the thesis. In times of
need we can always follow Dean Rusk, Hubert Humphrey and other
luminaries and appeal to the billion Chinese armed with to the teeth
and setting out on world conquest. [laughter]
<p/>
[50:43]
<p/>
Again I want to emphasize the role in this system of the Cold War as a
technique of domestic control, a technique for developing the
psychological climate of paranoia and psychosis in which the tax payer
will be willing to provide an enormous, endless subsidy to the
technologically advanced sectors of the American industry and the
corporations that dominate this increasingly centralized system.
<p/>
[51:06]
<p/>
Well, of course it's perfectly obvious that Russian imperialism is not
an invention of American ideologists. It's real enough to the
Hungarians and the Chezchs, for example. What is an invention is the
uses to which it is put, for example by Dean Acheson in 1950 or Walt
Rostow a decade later when they pretend that the Vietnam war is an
example of Russian imperialism. Or by the Johnson administration in
1965, when he justifies the Dominican intervention with reference to
the Sino-Soviet military bloc. Or by the Kennedy intellectuals, who,
as Townsend Hoops put it in an article in the "Washington Monthly"
last month, were "deluded by the tensions of the cold war years, and
could not perceive that the triumph of the national revolution in
Vietnam would not be a triumph for Moscow and Peking." It was the
most remarkable degree of delusion on the part of presumably literate
men. Or, for example, by Eugene Rostow, who in a recent book that was
very widely praised by liberal senators and academic intellectuals,
outlined the series of challenges to world order in the modern era as
follows: "Napoleon, Kaiser Willhelm, Hitler," and continuing in the
post war world, "general strikes in France and Italy, the civil war in
Greece, and the attack on South Vietnam" where, he writes in 1968,
"Russia has put us to severe tests in its efforts to spread communism
by the sword."
<p/>
[52:31]
<p/>
Now this is a very interesting series of challenges to World order:
Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler, general strikes in France and Italy,
the civil war in Greece and the the Russian attack on South Vietnam.
If one thinks it through he can reach some pretty interesting
conclusions about modern history.
<p/>
[52:50]
<p/>
Well, one can continue with this indefinitely. I mean to suggest that
the cold war is highly functional, both to the American elite and it's
Soviet counterpart, who in a perfectly similar way exploit Western
imperialism, which they did not invent, as they send their armies into
Czechoslovakia. It's important in both cases in providing an ideology
for empire and for the government subsidized system here of military
capitalism. It's predictable then that challenges to this ideology
will be bitterly resisted, by force if necessary. On many ways
American society is indeed open, and liberal values are preserved.
However, as poor people and black people and other ethnic minorities
know very well, the liberal veneer is pretty thin. Mark Twain once
wrote that "it is by the goodness of God that in our country that we
have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech,
freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of
them." [laughter] Those who lack the prudence may well pay the cost.
<p/>
[53:53]
<p/>
Roughly speaking, I think its accurate to say that a corporate elite
of managers and owners governs the economy and the political system as
well, at least in a very large measure. The people, so-called, do
exercise an occasional choice among those who Marx once called "the
rival factions and adventurers of the ruling class". And those who
find this characterization too harsh may prefer the formulations of a
modern democratic theorist like Joseph Schumpeter, who describes
modern political democracy, favorably, "as a system in which the
deciding of issues by the electorate is secondary to the election of
the men who ought to do the deciding. The political parties", he
says, accurately, "is a group whose members propose to act in concert
in the competitive struggle for political power. If that were not so,
it would be impossible for different parties to adopt exactly or
almost exactly the same program." That's all the advantages of
political democracy as he sees it.
<p/>
[54:49]
<p/>
This program, that both parties adopt more or less exactly, and the
individuals who compete for power, they express a narrow conservative
ideology, basically the interests of one or other element in the
corporate elite, with some modifications. Now this is obviously no
conspiracy, I think it is simply implicit in the system of corporate
capitalism. These people and the institutions they represent are in
effect in power and their interests are the national interests. It is
this interest that is served primarily and overwhelmingly by the
overseas empire and the growing system of military state capitalism at
home.
<p/>
[55:25]
<p/>
If we were to withdraw the consent of the governed, as I think we
should, we are withdrawing our consent to have these men and the
interests they represent; govern and manage American society and
impose their concept of world order and their criteria for legitimate
political and economic development in much of the world. Although an
immense effort of propaganda and mystification is carried on to
conceal these facts, nonetheless facts they remain.
<p/>
[55:52]
<p/>
We have today the technical and material resources to meet man's
animal needs. We have not developed the cultural and moral resources
or the democratic forms of social organization that make possible the
humane and rational use of our material wealth and power.
Conceivably, the classical liberal ideals, as expressed and developed
in their libertarian socialist form, are achievable. But if so, only
by a popular revolutionary movement, rooted in wide strata of the
population, and committed to the elimination of repressive and
authoritarian institutions, state and private. To create such a
movement is a challenge we face and must meet if there is to be an
escape from contemporary barbarism.
<p/>
[Applause.]
<p/>
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