My answer to (1). Place all power in the hands of one person. But don’t give this person power for life, and don’t make it hereditary. And don’t make this power last too long — four to six years maximum. And ensure that once out of power this person will be assured a prosperous future, such as a nice pension. It is better to have such a leader under democracy because people will have to acknowledge that they have elected him. But in reality, he will have been elected by money which has paid for the media and advertisement.
My answer to (2). Have a democracy. But by no means give power to one devil in any capacity. If you do, he will kill off all opposition, and enrich himself to the fullest. Minimally, all powers are to be given to at least two devils, with veto power over each other. And perhaps two more devils should monitor all activities of the two in power. Also, the period of their power should be minimal — let’s say six months.
My answer to (2) was not capricious. It was suggested by the ancient Roman Republican practice of having two consuls with veto power over each other, as well as by the ancient Spartan practice of having two kings with veto power over each other. And the idea of having “monitors” was suggested by the existence of lichtors and ephors. We can view the German Gestapo and the Russian Cheka as an extension of this idea of having such “monitors.”
I live in Chicago. I was born in Poland, but I am an ethnic Ukrainian. Like Noam Chomsky, whom I admire, I am concerned with the state of the world: with the almost certain ecological collapse, with the possibility of nuclear warfare, and with U.S. economic and military imperial hegemony.
And because the U.S. dominates the world militarily (with nearly a thousand military bases around the world), it is difficult to envision any economic or political changes anywhere without some kind of U.S. acquiescence.
I also believe that the world is overpopulated. But, because population expansion is in the interest of capitalism, there is no policy of population control, as there was in China. The result is widespread world poverty, widespread conflicts, and ecological collapses.
I also believe that capitalism has taken total control of the U.S. political machinery, simply because the U.S. Constitution is structurally built for oligarchic control.
Theoretically, the solution is to have a different U.S. Constitution — perhaps one closer to that of Switzerland. But I do not see any prospects for any such radical change; for two reasons. The first is that amending the U.S. Constitution is very difficult — nearly impossible. The second is that the U.S. Constitution is regarded with the same reverence as any Holy Book — so, criticism is like blasphemy.
So, as regards the U.S. I am pessimistic, if not a cynic.
I have more hope for other countries. I regard Switzerland as the best democracy in the world. And my utopian hope is that Ukraine will emulate Switzerland.
But the prospects of this happening in Ukraine are dismal.
Situated on the border with Russia, and having a mixed population of bilingual speakers of Ukrainian and Russian, the recent Presidential and Parliamentary elections have given the Russian-speakers total control of the government.
Let me explain. First, Ukraine unlike the U.S. is neither federated nor decentralized. All power is concentrated in the President. He nominates the Prime Minister, the Prosecutor, the Minister of Internal Security (the police), the Minister of Defense (the military), the Minister of foreign affairs, and he appoints all the Governors of the 25 Oblasts and of Kyiv. Second, recent parliamentary elections have given the President’s party, an overwhelming majority. Only a few votes are needed from other parties to make amendments to the Constitution.
The result is that Ukraine has a democratically elected Dictator, who, prior to being elected, was a very successful Russian-speaking comedian on television. (I use the word “dictator” in the sense in which the ancient Roman republic used it, when power was concentrate in the hands of one person, rather than in the hands of two consuls.) How this concentrated power will be used in Ukraine is a total mystery at this stage — with foreboding apprehensions.
In the audio below, Bertrand Russell distinguished between peasant proprietorship and agrarian socialism. In his book on Bolshevism, Russell uses the word “communism” instead. I am puzzled by what point Russell was trying to make. Let me explain. Since the necessary condition for capitalism is depriving people of a free access to subsistence land, then [free] peasant proprietorship — i.e., without taxation, would be antithetical to capitalism, and compatible with anarchism. So, Russell’s use of the term “socialism” is not used as a simple antithesis to capitalism, but seems to require for him a co-operative form of organization.
Now, Karl Marx, in his critique of capitalism, was writing about the class struggle between proletarians and industrialists — and the resolution of this struggle was to be worker-controlled factories. But a peasant proprietor is not a proletarian. A proletarian is someone who does not have access to free modes of production. But free access to land is a type of free access to a mode of production.
Peasant proprietors should have been left alone with the freedom to form co-operatives — agrarian socialism. Instead, under Stalin, Ukrainian peasants were wiped out or forced into collectives.
Transcript:
I met Lenin in 1920 when I was in Russia. I had an hours talk tete a tete with him. And he spoke English much better than you would have expected. The conversation was in English. I expected it to be in German. But I found his English was quite good.
I was less impressed by Lenin than I expected to be. He was of course a great man. He seemed to me a reincarnation of Cromwell, with exactly the same limitations that Cromwell had — absolute orthodoxy. His any proposition could be proved by quoting a
text in Marx. And he was quite incapable of supposing that there could be
anything in Marx that wasn’t right, and that struck me as rather limited.
I decided one other thing about him because his great readiness to stir up hatred. I put certain questions to him to see what his answer would be. And one of them was: you profess to be establishing socialism but as far as the countryside is concerned, you seem to me to be establishing peasant proprietorship, which is a very different thing from agricultural
socialism. And he said, “Oh, dear me, we’re not establishing peasant
proprietorship.” He said, “You see there are poor peasants and rich peasants, and we stirred up the poor peasant against the rich peasants, and they soon will hang them to the nearest tree — ha, ha, ha, ha.”
Dr. Richard Wolff debates libertarian Antony Sammeroff on the Labor Theory of Value on the Lions of Liberty Podcast, hosted by Marc Clair. This is a Marxist economist debating a free market libertarian.
I admire Richard Wolff, and his efforts to bring Marx’s views into the evaluation of capitalism. I also use Marx for this purpose.
But we approach Marx from different perspectives. Wolff focuses on the labor theory of values, and defines exploitation as the surplus value obtained from an employee by the employer. I cannot dispute the meaning of “exploitation” in this technical, stipulated sense. But the word “exploitation” also carries a negative sense of injustice. Libertarians object to this additional sense of injustice, by pointing out that the employer-employee relation is based on an agreement — a contract. And, as long as both abide by the agreement, no injustice has been done.
There is an injustice, but, in my view, it does not come from the employer and his profits; it comes from the political system which bars people from free access to subsistence land — making land into a sellable and taxable commodity. This forces people into a market economy, and there is no choice here — everyone has to enter the market economy. Both employer and employee are victims from this perspective. Compare this with two gladiators thrown into the arena. One is strong; the other weaker. One wins; the other loses. One is an employer; the other an employee. The injustice is in the fact that both gladiators have been forced into the arena.
I see no reason to bring into considerations anything other than the principle of supply and demand to account for a labor market and wages. For example, in my field of philosophy, there was and is an oversupply of eligible teachers — as there is in most fields of learning; consequently, colleges have found that it is more economical to hire “adjunct” teachers than full-time teachers. Let’s take a look at the salaries at City Colleges in Chicago, where I worked as an adjunct. Full-time teacher salaries range from roughly $60,000 to $100,000 per year. So, let’s say, an average full-time teacher gets $40,000 for teaching four 3-credit courses per semester. From one perspective, this is $10,000 per 3-credit course; while the adjunct will get at most $3,000 for teaching the same course. Furthermore, an adjunct cannot teach more than 3 such courses per semester at this school; so, for 2 semesters, he can make at most, at this rate, $18,000, as contrasted with a full-time teacher who will get $80,000. Is this just? Is this a case of exploitation?
Take other cases of popular entertainers and sports stars. Such people can earn millions — and it has nothing to do with the hours of labor; it has to do with the willingness of a large number of fans and audiences to pay large amounts to view and hear them. Let me cite a recent case. Jordan Peterson recently refused to participate in a debate with Richard Wolff at Boise State University in Idaho. His reason for refusal to participate is that he wanted a minimum of $50,000 for a 1-hour debate, which the students could not pay. Apparently, this is the minimum which he gets for his public appearances. Is this just? By the principle of supply and demand, this is what he can get; and so he takes advantage of his popularity to demand whatever he can get. If he is exploiting, he is exploiting his popularity.
I see employers in this same light of trying to get the most compensation within the market system. They will pay their employees the least they can; so that they can garner the maximum profit. I find it incoherent to think here of injustice. The concept of justice makes sense only relative to a free agreement. But when considering agreements, we must also take note of the circumstances. If there is no access to free subsistence land, what alternative does a person have? Starve, beg, steal, or work at whatever is available. Both the employer and the employee have been thrust into the arena of the market, just like gladiators, and they must do the best in the circumstances. The injustice is that both employers and employees have been forced into the market economy against their will. We have all been barred from a free access to subsistence land by governments.
So, unlike Wolff who focuses on the labor theory of values, I focus in Marx on his discussion of “Primitive Accumulation” (chapter 26) in Part VIII of Capital, where he talks about the conquest and forceful eviction of people from land. It is this barring of people from a free access to land which creates a proletariat class which must work for wages — a class of wage-slaves.
Richard Wolff keeps repeating that most economists celebrate capitalism, and that one must also take into account the critics of capitalism, especially Karl Marx. This reminds me of al-Ghazali who wrote The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-Falasifa) which was critized by Averroes in his The Incoherence of the Incoherence (Tahafut al-Tahafut). If Marx is al-Ghazli, then we have a slew of Averroeses who have criticized portions of Marx.
And the portion of Marx which Richard Wolff emphasizes is the labor theory of values, this is also the portion of Marx which has received the most criticism. I will cite three sources for this criticism. The first is Bertrand Russell in his German Social Democracy (p. 15). The second is Karl Popper in the second volume of his Open Society and Its Enemies (chapter 20, p. 170), the third is Alexander Gray, The Socialist Tradition (chapter 12, p. 310.)
Are worker-owned enterprises antithetical to capitalism?
Richard Wolff objects to capitalism because of the employer-employee relationship which has “exploitation” — meaning that the employer gets more money than the employee. His alternative is to have worker-owned businesses.
From my perspective, although such a co-op as Mondragon makes for a democratic workplace and a desirable place to work at, it does not constitute an antithesis to capitalism — even if all businesses are co-ops. Why? If other things are left as they are (ceteris paribus), then presumably these co-ops will compete as do all businesses for markets, with the resulting consolidation of successful enterprises as occurs now.
But the crucial question which is not answered by a system of co-ops is what happens to the unemployed? Where is the safety-valve? In the United States in mid-nineteenth century, the north-eastern coast of the United States was overpopulated with immigrants. The Homestead Act of 1862 was enacted as such a safety-valve. [Whether it worked or not, is a separate issue.] The point was that giving people a free access to subsistence land was the right solution. And not giving the freed slaves access to 40 acres and a mule in 1865 was the wrong solution.
Richard Wolff, apparently does not see that the necessary condition for capitalism — of whatever form — is the deprivation to people of free access to subsistence land.
If people have access to free subsistence land, they can bargain with employers or co-ops for living conditions preferable to a self-sufficient life on a piece of land
David Parkman, in the videos below, tries to introduce some clarity for the concept of socialism. But his analysis does not touch the core issues, and in that sense is not satisfactory. I will try to do better.
First, socialism is a reaction to and a rejection of capitalism. So, the first step needed for a clarification of socialism is an understanding of capitalism. The essence of capitalism consists of two factors. The first is the existence of a type of government. The second is a law by this government to the effect that no one has a right to free subsistence land. All land, thus, has to be purchased, and is subject to government taxation. The result of such a law is that two classes of people are created: employers and employees; or, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. And this leads to a third factor or problem: unemployment or underemployment — in short: poverty.
The existence of a market is a necessary condition for capitalism, but a market is not peculiar to capitalism. Markets and barter have existed at all times in all places. It is the combination of a market with the exclusion of free access to subsistence land by a government which is peculiar to capitalism.
In order to oppose capitalism, you must oppose this type of government, or you must oppose this land law, or both.
One approach, favored by social democrats, is to work within the existing government, and try to alleviate the symptoms of this system, which is poverty. And this is done by various social programs. One such law could be that everyone has free access to subsistence land. But such a law, under existing forms of government, will not be passed. However, something equivalent to getting rid of poverty would be a law giving everyone a basic income; what Milton Friedman called a negative income tax, and what Bertrand Russell called a “vagabond wage.” [According to Russell, everyone’s survival needs should be satisfied, but to get “luxuries,” one has to work. See Bertrand Russell, Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism, 1919.]
Another approach is to take control of the government, and have the government run everything. This is state capitalism; or, authoritarian socialism.
Another approach is to change the type of government, as in anarchism (libertarian socialism). It is true that anarchists are against the State, but it is not true that they are against government. A State is a type of centralized government (i.e., centralized in a one-person rule by a president or a prime minister). It is a type of government which is found everywhere in the world, either as a liberal representative democracy or as a dictatorship. A better form of representative democracy is in Switzerland, which does not have either a president or a prime minister, but a Federal Council of seven individuals.
The alternative government could be a decentralized direct democracy consisting of nested councils, grounded in a community of some 150 families.
P.S.: I recommend Alexander Gray’s The Socialist Tradition: Moses to Lenin, 1946. Although he fails, in my eyes, to do justice to anarchism, his coverage is extensive, with very helpful references to relevant works. Here is his disparaging verdict on anarchism: “The fundamental trouble with the anarchist is that, though he may be highly intelligent, he has no sense.” p. 380.
