Posted by William Mandel on April 05, 19101 at 11:25:24:
In Reply to: A critique of "Saying No To Power" posted by Thomas W. Warner on February 21, 19101 at 14:15:34:
RESPONSE BY MANDEL: Where did you find evidence in my book that I spent
time with burocrats on the 1998 visit you refer to? I not only spoke to
the coal miners encamped behind the Kremlin, but traveled to Siberia
specifically to speak to them in their own territory. I spoke to a disabled
advocate for the disabled, to ordinary people on railroad trains (those
who can't afford to travel by plane today), to bottom-level officers of
two unions, one for collaboration with management and one against, and to
the editor of one of the only two Soviet-era magazines that retains large
circulation today.
Workers' control was abandoned by Lenin within six months of taking
power when he found it leading to anarchy and further decline in production.
He wrote, April 1918: "Large-scale machine industry -- which is precisely
the material productive source and foundation of socialism -- calls for
absolute and strict unity of will, which directs the joint labor of hund-
reds, thousands and tens of thousands of people. The technical, economic,
and historical necessity of this is obvious, and all those who have thought
about socialism have always regarded it as one of the conditions of social-
ism. But how can strict unity of will be ensured? By thousands submitting
their will to the will of one." Selected Works, VII, 342
I did not write and do not believe in the free market. I think that a
modern version of Roosevelt's New Deal or its European equivalent, social
democracy, is the best we can do today. I don't believe that, or anything,
ever, will be the end of history. I have learned that Utopias don't work,
so we're going to have to muddle through, one step at a time, by trial and
error.