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Democracy and Individuality*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

Alan Gilbert
Alan Gilbert
Affiliation:
Political Science, University of Denver
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Extract

For many contemporary liberals, Anglo-American democracy seems unimpeachably the best political form. In contrast, adherence to democratic values seems an area in which most Marxian regimes, and perhaps Marx himself, are strikingly deficient. Further, Marxian theory insists on the existence of oppressive ruling classes in all capitalist societies and on the need for class struggle and violent revolution to achieve a more cooperative regime – theses which liberal social theories tend to dismiss peremptorily. From the perspective of modern liberal democratic theory, Marxian arguments seem prima facie outlandish and even morally objectionable.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , Spring 1986 , pp. 19 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1986

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References

1 Gilbert, Alan, “Moral Realism, Individuality and Justice in War,” Political Theory vol. 15 (Feb. 1986)Google Scholar; Lipset, Seymour M., Political Man (New York: Doubleday, 1963), p. 64Google Scholar; Schumpeter, Joseph, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1950).Google Scholar

2 I contrast theories of democracy and argue for the plausibility of a Marxian view in an accompanying paper to this one, “Democracy and the Recognition of Persons,” unpublished. See also my “The Storming of Heaven: Capital and Marx's Politics,” Pennock, J. Roland, ed., Marxism Today, Nomos vol. xxvi (New York: New York University Press, 1984)Google Scholar, section 5.

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18 Levine's theory; even more than Cohen's initial presentation of Marxian communism as the abolition of social roles in Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 129–133, overemphasizes the abolition of (harmful) “social” divisions. It fails to stress sufficiently the care and energy involved in healthy social connectedness.

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20 Levine, op. cit., conclusion; Elster, in Pennock, op. cit., 298–299. I leave aside the forging and repair of basic means of production for social wealth which, in a planned economy, are also not governed mainly by a market.

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22 On conflicts of goods, see Alan Gilbert, op. cit., Ball and Farr, eds. (1984).

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24 In “Marx on Morality and Justice,” Parkinson, ed., op. cit., Lukes rightly sees communist “Justice” as beyond rules concerning distribution, but misses the dialectical retention of fundamental rules preserving life and the mutual recognition of persons. These extensions of previous social and political achievements partly explain what Lenin referred to as the long familiar “elementary social rules” which would be more easily observed in communism; Lenin, Selected Works, 2:373. Contrary to Lukes, the ends of communism and the standards justifying revolutionary action in “prehistory” are not rigidly separated. On a dialectical view, how could definite aims concerning the human good license their utter violation in “prehistory?” Lukes's explanation of the putatively “beyond morality” character of Marxian theory of the good – its beneficent transcendance of the conflicts of scarcity coupled with an alleged moral agnosticism toward such conflicts – thus mirrors the self-refuting aspects of relativist Marxian metaethics which he otherwise astutely criticizes.

25 Cohen, in Pennock, ed., op. cit., p. 246.

26 Tsetung, Mao, A Critique of Soviet Economics (New York: Monthly Review, 1977), p. 83.Google Scholar

27 Gilbert, Alan, “Democracy and the Recognition of Persons,”Google Scholar unpublished.

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29 These concessions lead to the perpetuation of what Roemer has called status exploitation in socialism. He attempts to justify some of this inequality with a game–theoretic argument as “necessary socialist exploitation.” Since, on his account, there are no direct beneficiaries of “exploitation,” the latter characterization is puzzling. More importantly, Roemer ignores the impact of such differentials on the fundamental issue of who controls the state and the possibility of broader systemic harms to workers arising out of socialist inequalities. He thus criticizes the law of value to clear away misconceptions which hinder the development of current socialist regimes. See the useful discussion in , Roemer, A General Theory of Exploitation and Class (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 248–249Google Scholar; and “Should Marxists Be Interested in Exploitation?,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 14 (Winter 1985), p. 64. This argument questions the putative necessity of socialist “exploitation” and challenges the law of value, based on an explicit conception of communism as social individuality.

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45 Gilbert, “Historical Theory,” 1981.