What do the Popes and the Castros have in common?

georgestapleton writes:

Angelus writes:

Ok, but rights and democracy presuppose the state – or, to use a definition that we can all probably agree on, “a monopoly on the means of violence.” And democracy is not just a neutral procedure, but has an economic content.

Angelus gives us the example of the need to post signs requiring workers in restaurants to wash their hands. But if the purpose of the society would be to provide for people’s needs in the best way possible, then the interests of food producers and food consumers would not be in conflict. Does anybody here post such a sign on their friends’ kitchen wall when invited for dinner? Probably not.

With the example of the dog owner who doesn’t clean up his dog’s shit … well, you can make a long list of all the things that annoy you in this society, but that doesn’t make a case for rights and democracy. In a rational society, it would just be a matter of working it out so the sidewalks are clean, and not a matter of majority rule and a right to shit-free walking. In any case, its hardly an irresolvable conflict; it’s unlikely that dog walkers have the intention of laying turds in anybody’s path.

In capitalism, people want an authority that stands above them because they feel a need for such an authority: everybody is in conflict because of the state-established competition over private property. Needless to say, in a society that does not require its citizens to compete for their means of survival, many (if not all) conflicts in this society would not exist.

We would probably all agree that these conflicts do not exist because of “human nature” (although we might disagree that it is the unbeatable arrogance of capitalist democracy that with “human rights” it equates its rule as being in line with human nature).

The rule of law and democracy are exactly what their names say they are: forms of rule. Its clear what the posters on this thread mean when they talk about democracy: they think of it as the rule of the people. But in the real world, it’s the opposite: it’s rule that the people give their consent to. So it’s just idealism to say: we want “true” democracy and not the really existing democracy – or we want the “fulfillment of democracy” so that it extends to the economy and everywhere else. If you just draw a comparison between the democracy you see and an ideal democracy you could imagine, then you can't complain when the really existing democracy is what you end up with.

Red Hughs writes:

No, in post #69 Angelus refers not to "structures" but to “the possibility that ‘rights’ can exist in a post-revolutionary society, as something codified in a written document safeguarding certain democratic freedoms from the arbitrary exercise of power” (which I spoke to in #88).

To say it again in different words: if in a post-revolutionary society “rights” are needed to protect people from “the arbitrary exercise of power,” then that just means you need a new revolution.

Why would this be a problem? It’s not even a problem now in capitalism.

Angelus Novus writes:

You are wrong that rights don’t presuppose a state. Even in the most colloquial of contexts, e.g. when a wife tells her husband that she has a “right” to a day off from childcare or one neighbor tells another that he has a “right” to smoke in his backyard, this invokes a relation that two individuals have to an authority that stands above them and mediates between them. They say they have a right because they are saying that their interest is permitted. That means a permitter. That means that it’s not up them, but someone else who has the power to allow or deny their interest. You are wrong to think this is simply an “institutional arrangement” that doesn’t imply the presence of force.

And “democratic organizational forms” are not the same as democracy, a political form of rule. These forms are also not the same as actually discussing where problems come from so as to arrive at a solution, and actually feed off the refusal to discuss the various specific reasons for this or that grievance. If a decision is made that doesn’t suit you, it’s no compensation that it was what the majority wanted.

Wrong. We said that conflicts of interest will occur in a post-revolutionary society. We can only abolish objective antagonisms – those between workers and capitalists, buyers and sellers, etc. Doing this will more than likely get rid of a lot of subjective conflicts of interest, but certainly not all of them – that's impossible. Your mistake is in thinking that rights can solve them.

Restaurants are stressful places to work. Often there isn’t sufficient time to take a piss and wash one’s hands afterwards. This is because restaurants are about making money. Hand washing signs are part of the general regulations pertaining to the restaurant business because if the state didn’t establish and enforce such general sanitation laws, the business need to cut costs and maximize labor would endanger public health. Of course, you can have hand washing signs in restaurants or wherever if you want the people working there to be reminded to wash up after using the bathroom. Most people would agree, including the people working there, that people handling food should probably have clean hands. But does this require a “right” to have your food handled by clean hands? And if a worker doesn't want to wash his hands, rights aren't going to save your food either.

Rights also don't help in these situations. Does one guy having a “right” to not be shot somehow stop the person from shooting him, etc.? We never said that “institutional mechanisms” are identical with the state. Also where do you get the idea that an “institutional mechanism” in somehow the same thing as someone having rights? In none of the “arbitrary exercises of power” you bring up would a right be helpful. If someone doesn't like his neighbor, he can move or his neighbor can move or it can be dealt with some other way. If someone is sexually harassed, this can also be dealt with (in whatever way). Why would a right solve these conflicts of interest?