Gnostic Marxist
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If everyone is so opposed to democracy, and this seems to be the official stance of the SPGB, why not just say so?
Complete and utter nonsense. A troll like travesty of everything any member has said on here.
You’re going to have to explain yourselves eventually, or the party will collapse. Why is the SPGB opposed to democracy?
Don’t talk such utter rubbish, LBird.
It has been explained to you COUNTLESS TIMES, that the SPGB fully endorses the idea of democratic control and common ownership of the means of wealth production. We just don’t believe that the principle of democratic decision making should be extended to such things as validating scientific theories by mean of a vote by the global population – a ridiculously impractical and pointless idea which you seem to hold.
If the SPGB is opposed to democracy, as you claim, you would not have been afforded the privilege of debating your ideas on this forum when you have been booted out of many other forums as I understand it
Stop being so downright dishonest, LBird. That is an appalling comment you made. You should it retract it immediately
“…if everyone is so opposed to democracy, and this seems to be the official stance of the SPGB, why not just say so?…”
I concur with Matt, you have revealed deliberate and malicious misinformation.
After all those years of being on the fringe of the Party and having been privy to some of our internal disputes, i’m surprised you have not recognised that one of our organisational problems is an over-commitment to democratic practices which sometime have hindered our activities.
All our Annual Conferences and ADM are usually full of well-intentioned resolutions to improve upon our democratic procedures and make the Party fully accountable to the membership’s will.
alanjjohnstone wrote: “I concur with Matt, you have revealed deliberate and malicious misinformation.
After all those years of being on the fringe of the Party and having been privy to some of our internal disputes, i’m surprised you have not recognised that one of our organisational problems is an over-commitment to democratic practices which sometime have hindered our activities.”
There’s nothing ‘malicious’ about speaking the truth, alan. You only have to read this thread, to find constant questioning about the theory and practice of democratic social production. It’s not me writing those arguments, but your party members.
As for ‘over-commitment’ to democracy, read this thread. No commitment whatsoever.
On a personal level, you seem to be completely baffled by the discussion, and refuse to take the side of ‘democracy’, and prefer ‘matter’. It’s your choice, alan, not mine.
Once you tell me that ‘matter’ can be voted out of ‘existence-for-us’, I’ll know that you’ve got to grips with ‘democratic socialism’. Else, you have to tell me who or what created ‘matter’. Easy answer, alan, as Marx argued, is humanity, using conscious production. That’s why we can change it.
You have hit on one accuracy…I am completely baffled by your promotion of your position.
In all these years of this debate which if my memory serves me right, you originally claimed that there is no objective truths, and gave an example that if people believed the sun went around the sun, then it led to how truth in the physical sciences is demonstrated – by voting on scientific hypotheses, and only a technocratic elite will oppose such a process. And no doubt, even that rough summary will be proof that i am indeed baffled.
I’m passed the stage where i require any philosophical explanations for the need for working people to take control of their lives and determine their conditions. As Marx said, his German Ideology should have been left to the gnawing away of the mice.
You refer to your mistaken choices made as reason why you now abstain from actual party politics, something that Marx declined himself to do, participating in various organisations throughout his life, from the Communist League to the First International. His individual understanding of society, he recognised meant very little if it was not reflected by an active social movement. He was not an individualist but i find that you prefer to hold that individualist role.
robbo203 wrote: “We just don’t believe that the principle of democratic decision making should be extended to such things as …
Stop being so downright dishonest, LBird. That is an appalling comment you made. You should it retract it immediately” [my bold]
I can’t retract the truth, robbo.
In return, I wouldn’t call you ‘dishonest’, just apparently incapable of reading what you yourself write. You have a ‘belief’ that ‘democratic decision making’ shouldn’t ‘be extended’ to a list of powerful things that you have chosen.
I’m not writing this stuff, robbo, you are.
You never tell us why you get to choose this list, but humanity can’t democratically accept/amend/reject it.
alanjjohnstone wrote: “You have hit on one accuracy…I am completely baffled by your promotion of your position.”
Well, since my ‘position’ is the same as Marx’s, ‘the self-emancipation of the proletariat’, perhaps you need to question your ‘bafflement’.
alanjjohnstone wrote: “I’m passed the stage where i require any philosophical explanations…”
The problem, alan, is that you haven’t even reached any ‘stage’, never mind ‘passed’ it.
You have a ‘philosophy’, but it’s not, as you seem to accept, a ‘democratic’ philosophy. Otherwise, you’d agree with me and Marx.
I can’t retract the truth, robbo.
In return, I wouldn’t call you ‘dishonest’, just apparently incapable of reading what you yourself write. You have a ‘belief’ that ‘democratic decision making’ shouldn’t ‘be extended’ to a list of powerful things that you have chosen.Perhaps it is you, LBird, who is apparently incapable of reading what you yourself write
You earlier wrote “If everyone is so opposed to democracy, and this seems to be the official stance of the SPGB, why not just say so?” Yet here you have just said that I and others in the SPGB have a belief that ‘democratic decision making’ shouldn’t ‘be extended’ to such things as voting on scientific theories since this is pointless and impractical exercise
But for democracy to be considered not “extendible” to such things very clearly implies that one sees democracy as being applicable to certain other things. Yet you are here making this disgracefully dishonest claim that we reject democracy altogether when all we are saying is that its application would of necessity be limited to certain kinds of decisions and not others
Talk about being confused!
robbo203 wrote: “But for democracy to be considered not “extendible” to such things very clearly implies that one sees democracy as being applicable to certain other things. Yet you are here making this disgracefully dishonest claim that we reject democracy altogether when all we are saying is that its application would of necessity be limited to certain kinds of decisions and not others”
I’ve never made any claim whatsoever, robbo, never mind any ‘disgracefully dishonest’ ones, that you ‘reject democracy altogether’. I’ve openly said that the SPGB is far more democratic than, for example, the SWP.
I keep quoting you, and asking you questions about what you yourself are writing. You have to read what I’m writing, and not make up a figment of your own imagination.
Look: “democracy … all we are saying is that its application would of necessity be limited” You wrote this, not me.
In response, I ask you (I don’t make a ‘disgracefully dishonest claim’, it’s your words, chosen by you – I simply quote you) – ‘who would determine these ‘limits’, if not humanity by democratic means?’.
It’s open to you to answer this, I’m not putting words in your mouth.
I simply argue that the only acceptable answer for a democratic socialist would be ‘humanity (not ‘necessity’) would determine these limits, by democratic methods’.
If you disagree, fine, tell us who (or what), in your political opinion, determines ‘limits’, and how do they (it) do so?
“I’ve openly said that the SPGB is far more democratic than, for example, the SWP.”
That is a very mealy-mouthed clarification and an extremely low bar you have put forward in your defence having declared that the official stance of the SPGB was to oppose democracy.
If everyone is so opposed to democracy, and this seems to be the official stance of the SPGB, why not just say so?
I’ve never made any claim whatsoever, robbo, never mind any ‘disgracefully dishonest’ ones, that you ‘reject democracy altogether’.
Obsfucutory. Complete and utter nonsense. A troll like travesty of everything any member has said on here.
alanjjohnstone wrote: “That is a very mealy-mouthed clarification and an extremely low bar you have put forward in your defence having declared that the official stance of the SPGB was to oppose democracy.”
But it’s true, alan, even you agree – the official stance of the SPGB is to oppose democracy in: nature, reality, truth, physics, matter, maths, logic, necessity… I’m sure there are others that have been mentioned, and I have forgotten.
You seem to have a problem with electing the ‘material’.
Matthew Culbert wrote: “Obsfucutory Complete and utter nonsense. A troll like travesty of everything any member has said on here.”
Well, let’s see then, eh, Matthew.
Matthew, is it a ‘travesty’ to say that Matthew Culbert won’t have ‘democracy’ in the creation of our reality?
Here you go, Matthew, your own chance to refute the accusations of a ‘troll’, that ‘you won’t have democratic science’.
Here you go, Matthew, your own chance to refute the accusations of a ‘troll’, that ‘you won’t have democratic science’.
I have already done so.
Socialism/communism, it means the same in the classical Marxian, pre-Leninist sense, will be an advanced , post-capitalist society, run by us all, locally, regionally, globally, in administration over resources and not a government over people.
It will be a market -free, money -free, production for use (not for sale), free access (not rationed access) commonly owned,(not private, corporate or state owned) revolutionary permanent break with the present capitalist one.
It has never existed anywhere.
It is not a ‘reformist’ nor a ‘statist’ version of capitalism which retains wage slavery in any form.
It will be the mature, politically conscious task of the immense majority to make it happen and not the minority vanguardist led actions of pseudo-revolutionaries.
“The organising tenet will be from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.”
” The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois.”(1879 Marx and Engels )
The workers themselves,(no longer workers as a class as classes will not exist) will decide which functions will be recallable delegatory, local, regional,global.
Permanently in the hands of the immense majority, always with recourse to overall decisions about resources and theoretical informational decision making apparatus, being allocated to permanently prevent the formation of bureaucratic, technocratic or scientific potential usurpation of control over resources.
How those will be organised will be decided by the people who make the revolution then and not armchair keyboard warriors from the 20th and 21st century..
You’d get more sense arguing with a flat-earther. A vote of all humanity to decide the nature of reality or the laws of physics or even if the Earth is flat. What a nutter.
Here’s the new birdie song
All cracking stuff. This argument has gone way past the full half hour. It’s just been gainsaying for some time now though.
The working class will, of course, collectively decide for itself when it is ready to establish democratic common ownership and will itself determine just how democratic democracy needs to be. But if that means waiting for everyone to gain the same profound knowledge of things scientific (not to mention artistic, musical, sporting etc.) we’ll be waiting a very long time indeed, probably until everyone is telepathic or (more likely) we are extinct.
This attitude suggests that a future socialist world would be based on fear and a total lack of trust of anyone for anyone else, leading to a need for everyone to know everything for fear of being hoodwinked.
If the SPGB are impossibilists, how to describe this view?
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