In the Aftermath of the Collapse of Soviet State-Socialism

Edward J. Dodson

[A response to a commentary by Samuel Lehrer ("It Can't Happen Here?") appearing in the Philadelphia weekly newspaper, The Welcomat. This response appeared in The Welcomat, 21 February, 1990]

I am in general agreement with Judge Lehrer warning that we in the West risk a great deal by becoming sanguine over the East's rapid abandonment of state-socialist policies. However, I would add that the changes we see within the Soviet bloc represent a return to the policy agenda we in the West loosely identify as liberalism. By this view of history, the authoritarian Stalinist regimes represent terrible yet self-destructing aberrations. The other side of the return to liberalism is, as Judge Lehrer indicates, that the systems of socio-political arrangements looked to as models for change by the Soviets and Eastern Europeans are themselves beset by problems of poverty, corruption, environmental degradation and a serious "failure of leadership" in and out of government. A serious examination of history combined with reasoned analysis reveal why we seem doomed to repeat the past rather than learn from it.

Clear away the surface differences between societies and the historical development of socio-political arrangements follow very similar patterns, although entering and advancing through stages at different times. Mediterranean-centered societies left behind the hunter-gatherer stage earliest, founded fixed settlements, adopted hierarchical socio-political structures dominated by warrior-protectors and spiritual (knowledge-bearing) subgroups. Those who gained and held power gradually leveraged themselves by force, superstition and tradition to secure for their heirs entrenched positions of privilege with which they claimed a large share of all that others produced by their toil and sweat. Serfdom and slavery existed in virtually all societies once they advanced to the stage of fixed settlement.

Despite a continuous struggle by the many to shed the domination of the few, true revolution - the securing of liberty for the individual - has never been fully realized, not even at the moment of creation of our own nation-state, and in large part because our forefathers chose to form such a state. Unfortunately, much of the history we are taught in school is at best selective, at worst mythical. We would, for example, benefit from a better understanding of the socio-political arrangements that governed both the tribal societies of the Americas and African continent, as well as that feudal Europe. These societies thrived (in isolation) under socio-political structures that balanced competitive and cooperative relationships, privilege with obligations. The French writer Proudhon (someone from whom Marx could have learned a great deal) reflected on this period of history and called for the dismantling of the nation-state and a return to communitarianism (i.e., society built on voluntary cooperation). Unfortunately, the momentum toward the consolidation of centrist power and empire-building under the guise of the nation-state had already been long established by the early nineteenth century.

As the nation-states of Europe emerged during and after the fourteenth century, they immediately transplanted via conquest this 'advanced* stage of centralized power to much of the rest of the globe. Yet, at the same time that the American and African tribal communitarian societies were being decimated by European conquerors and settlers, the seeds of a burgeoning spirit of individualism blossomed were planted in North America. For nearly 150 years -- from 1609 until the late 1750s -- colonists of European heritage experienced a period historians describe as the era of salutary neglect.

British subjects became Americans not by decree but by the experience of unprecedented freedom. Freedom, however, also carries a burden of responsibility. What is not understood by the overwhelming majority of citizens in the United States today is that the founding of this nation and the framing of our Constitution contained crucial structural flaws that would prevent true liberty (i.e., freedom constrained by just socio-political arrangements) from being secured. Despite an historically unique opportunity to create a society built to secure and preserve liberty, the framers compromised principle and formed a government that sanctioned slavery and replicated privileges by which the few in Europe had for so long dominated the many. It would take nearly a century for the full consequences of these compromises to arrive.

Judge Lehrer notes correctly that "[n]o economy has survived eventual collapse where too many resources are persistently allocated for luxury consumption, land speculation and million-dollar homes while infrastructures decay ..." Ours is no exception; there are deep cracks in the veneer of prosperity readily apparent to any objective observer. Long and serious recessions have plagued our society from almost the beginning. If we are to ever solve our problems, we must first acknowledge that the sources are structural, and directly related to the political compromises to privilege maintained by the framers in our Constitution, from which so much corruption has been sanctioned and thrived. Our monetary system is unsound (and, unconstitutional); our tax laws penalize those who produce and reward those who merely gain the legal right to claim the production of others, and the end result is an increasingly destructive maldistribution of control over wealth.

As powerful as the Bill of Rights has been in keeping alive the spirit of democracy, privilege has dominated the economic sphere in our society. Absent from our system of laws is a fundamental protection of human rights that was recognized and fought for by a handful of our forefathers. Franklin, Paine and Jefferson each argued Locke's case that the earth is the equal birthright of us all, and that guaranteeing this birthright against the inroads of privilege is among the crucial responsibilities of just government. Access to nature, from which all that we need to survive comes, is absolutely necessary. It logically follows that the legitimate basis for private property is production -- what we produce by our labor or acquire by trading production belongs to us. Titles to nature fall in the realm Locke defined as licenses and are privileges, under which the titleholder or licenseholder is granted (by all others) uninterrupted access to part of mankind's birthright.

f As the experiment in social-democracy continues in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe, the people of those societies must demand that their fundamental human rights -- of equal access to nature and the happy enjoyment of what they produce -- be incorporated in the constitutions and written laws that give substance to sociopolitical arrangements. Isolation in our era of global interdependence, and, hence, a return to communitarianism, is impossibly idealistic; liberalism is structurally flawed by the countless privileges that have yielded not capitalism but something akin to industrial-landlordism.

LIBERTY is freedom constrained by justice. JUSTICE demands that equality of opportunity be secured and privilege removed in our socio-political arrangements. With justice, we live in an environment of cooperative-individualism; without justice, there is only oppression, chaos, violence and the sure destruction of human civilization.