Is participatory delegate democracy practical without internet access

[Anonymous]

Subhaditya wrote:

mcolome1 wrote:

… the vast majority of the human beings must have control over the means of production.

How will you implement this… spgb is proposing elected delegates who can be recalled and their decisions reversed…. it looks fine to me, much more accountable than what we have today…. 

It is much more flexible than the indication you give.Most decisions will be made locally, at production level by hands on workers and will flow through cooperatively agreed norms of productive practice. They will have informational advantages, of access to details of available resources.

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But you see these delegates will be the acting leaders of the socialist society. Even the media will be run by elected delegates… so we will still have leaders in a socialist place just they will be much more accountable to the majority than we have today as we can 'reverse their decisions' immediately if we dont like them thus giving us much more power than we have today.

No they will not be leaders in any sense. We will only need to delegate in specific regionally and globally, instances. To be decided at the time by the workers. In regional, or global cooperation. we can use the allocative functions of present local administration, when they are adapted to our use from a presently rationed, to a free access perspective, the whole mindset will be transformed into genuine public service facilitating the free flow, rather than the stunted delivery of permitted allocations .

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I only hope information flows freely in such a place

You need not rely on hope as we will have it all at our fingertips, thus,

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or we will have another ruling class coming up.

The revolution by a politcally aware immense majority will render this impossible, as Comrade Marcos indicates.

[Dave B]

The system I am referring to is know called sortition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition I raised it on revleft about 10 years ago when it was still referred to as demarchy. An in that link it gives history of it that includes the Athenian democracy, for the ruling class, anyway. Even the formally democratic systems can lead to a political class; as most and in my opinion the better kind of people have got better things to do and aspirations than be political organisers. The worst kind do, and become a ‘bureaucratic caste’ and I think people like Bakunin had a point on that. Reformism and false conciouness etc aside. You can just imagine what a headache it might be for the ruling class if the UK parliament, the US Congress and Senate or for that matter the Bolshevik Central Executive Committee was selected randomly, mostly and inevitably, from the population of the 99% and for that matter rotated every four years or one.  Then again I suppose in the US it would be like winning the lottery as you set up the Dave B Foundation and cleared your dairy for the $250,000 a short lecture and tours took in the Wall Street bribes as fast as they arrived. I would recommend it the capitalist class as it might turn out cheaper than the system they have now. But that aside again. When I have attended packed Noam Chomsky talks I was impressed by the system ‘he’ had when it came questions from the floor. People who were too nervous to speak confidently in front of 2000 people etc, like me, were given the opportunity and in fact encouraged to present them to an individual who would speak or ask it on their behalf. I think democracy is as much about a spirit rather than technical procedures and in fact dislike and distrust most people who are able to push themselves forward in that manner. There are I believe a whole load obnoxious personality traits that appear to go hand in hand with eloquent and confident people; or in other word “politicians”.

[Anonymous]

No, there are alternatives to participatory democracy that don't require internet access.  Just very tedius ones.  In theory everythign done on the internet can be done on paper, just with a lot more time and effort.  I think you agree with that and the question your asking is what alternatives are their or do we default have a two class system where the population is devided between internet haves and have nots. . . first, let me say that the easy solution is to provide everyone with free internet access. In america we have public libraries where everyone can access the interent.  Also, even poor people are given free internet enabled smart phones under Obama's life line program.  The capabilities and bandwidth of these phones are limited and they aren't very good for watching TV shows, but they're more than capable of accessing the web sites that participatory democracy runs on. There's some good software for back end of public websites who want to run a more socialist business organization internally.  HOLOCRACY is promoted as an OS for business.  Basically the business in america that have switched to HOLOCRACY are running their internal decision making in a way that's defintely not hierarchial and definitely not a comand and control type sytem.  The closest political system to holocracy is probably socialism, but holocracy actually is a very specefic type of government with specefic rules and organizational structure tuned to make it function best in a business scale organization operating in a capitalist society.  think of HOLOCRACY as a socialist busieness model operating in a capitalist market. here's wikipedia info on it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holacracy But lets talk about how to run a socialist society without convenient computer access.  There's some easy ways that disenfranchise people like having some elites track store inventory and act as if that's the only metric that counts for participation.  Just picking up items from a store or leaving them seems a shallow and pale sort of participation.  How is that much better than participating in the capitalist marketplace?  It's not.  It doesn't allow you to make suggestions about what you want on the store shelves it only allows you to vote on whether you want an item already on the shelf or not.  To make somethign feesibly participatory you need a convenient form of participating in a wide range of things.  This could be accomplished by a "participation" card.  A participation card wouild be something like a voting ballot, but would be smaller and more convenient so about like the size of a business card.  you could then write in a suggestion or comment on something.  Now to do that you don't need a computer, but to count millions of these participation cards you would need some computers.  They could be processed using distributed computer processing so not centralized if you dislike centralization. But for sake of convenience lets assume the "comment cards" are processed centrally right now because it's easier to explain what has to happen next.  You need every store and every politician and every decision and every individual to have access to other peoples comments and you need to be able to sort them and pass them on if they're not relevant to the people who recieve them.  So most likey you need a store that can scan the comment/vote cards into a public accessible database at a low cost.  and then the collective will of the people can be understood better.  I've speculated on construction of a digital currency called the "voteCoin"  this is a digital blockchain that basically counts votes and comments and it could work within the limits of a market economy by utilizing the capitalist market practices of coupons and cash registers and all the other material affordances of a marketplace in order to give the ability ot vote on any topic at any time the ubuiquitous convenience you're looking for without everyone needing a computer.  Here's a link to my discussion on the vote coin that I put under the subject "Hacking the current economic system". . .http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/hacking-current-economic-systemperhaps combine these threads?

[Anonymous]

Dave B wrote:

The system I am referring to is know called sortition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition I raised it on revleft about 10 years ago when it was still referred to as demarchy..  . .

I love wikipedia.  Isn't wikipedia a socialist organization in practice? Leaderless (mostly).  everyone can and does contibute according to their ability. Everyone can and does benefit according to their need. . . .I hope it's not Sotition.  Sortition has some problems other sytems have been created to solve. . . Here's a list of stuff tried.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_governance P.s.check the citations and follow the links.  Some of these open source governance programs have been run in real life and have real world feedback for them.  I believe one of them in canada was so successfull at empowering the public that the party leaders scuttled the plan to preserve their own personal power as elites.  That's an emplimentation hicup problem when your socialist leaders decide they like being in charge but one that can be more easily overcome than other problems.  

[Subhaditya]

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

I love wikipedia.  Isn't wikipedia a socialist organization in practice? Leaderless (mostly).  everyone can and does contibute according to their ability. Everyone can and does benefit according to their need. . . .

^^

[Anonymous]

Subhaditya wrote:

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

I love wikipedia.  Isn't wikipedia a socialist organization in practice? Leaderless (mostly).  everyone can and does contibute according to their ability. Everyone can and does benefit according to their need. . . .

^^

This is really funny. The blind guiding the blinds. Some peoples want to turn socialism into a mockery. That expression of Marx taken from the French Anarchists is only applicable when the working class of the world be able to have common possession of the means of productions, and has overthrown capitalism.  it is not applicable to a blackboard known as Wikipedia. it would be  like Paul Lafarge concept of The Right to be Lazy which is only applicable to a socialist society:having common possession of the means of productions.  Under capitalism we only have the right to be wages slaveshttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2004/no-1193-january-2004/right-be-lazy

[robbo203]

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

  But lets talk about how to run a socialist society without convenient computer access.  There's some easy ways that disenfranchise people like having some elites track store inventory and act as if that's the only metric that counts for participation.  Just picking up items from a store or leaving them seems a shallow and pale sort of participation.  How is that much better than participating in the capitalist marketplace?  It's not.  It doesn't allow you to make suggestions about what you want on the store shelves it only allows you to vote on whether you want an item already on the shelf or not.  To make something feasibly participatory you need a convenient form of participating in a wide range of things.  This could be accomplished by a "participation" card.  A participation card would be something like a voting ballot, but would be smaller and more convenient so about like the size of a business card.  you could then write in a suggestion or comment on something.  Now to do that you don't need a computer, but to count millions of these participation cards you would need some computers.  They could be processed using distributed computer processing so not centralized if you dislike centralization. But for sake of convenience lets assume the "comment cards" are processed centrally right now because it's easier to explain what has to happen next.  You need every store and every politician and every decision and every individual to have access to other peoples comments and you need to be able to sort them and pass them on if they're not relevant to the people who receive them.  So most likely you need a store that can scan the comment/vote cards into a public accessible database at a low cost.  and then the collective will of the people can be understood better.  

 I question this, Steve.  You overlook that the  relationship between the consumer in a socialist society to the goods on display in the store would be fundamentally different to what obtains under market capitalism. There is no exchange involved – simply direct free access, This makes a world of a difference, despite what you say.  Your "participation card" seems to imply something other than this and strikes me as being  unnecessarily bureaucratic.  Are you meaning to say that if you dont have a participation card you dont get to have a say? The idea of people having to carry their participation cards around with them, much like a store card today, frankly doesnt appeal and if that is not what you in mind then the term is misleading, I suggest. In the end the consumers in a socialist society are making a choice in selecting what goods they take from the store The particular pattern of preferences arising out of the totality of consumer decisions is something that the folk operating the store will act upon in replenishing stock via a self regulating system of stock.  But that hardly makes then some kind of "elite". The very fact that self regulating system of stock control by its very nature accommodates itself to the choices made by consumers itself an indication of the participation of consumers in decisions about what gets produced.  Of course this same "consumer is king" argument might be invoked in the case of capitalism but there is a big difference here,  Goods are commodities with a price attached to them  and your ability to access them is contingent on whats in your wallet Certainly there are other ways  of participating in the process of deciding what gets to be produced  in a socialist society than merely effecting a consumer choice – that is, by removing a particular item from the store shelf – which will then  impact on what the store gets to do when it comes to reordering stock.  The problem with this is that the consumer only gets to choose between stock actually on the shelf which is limiting.  In itself this does not provide a mechanism by which novel kinds of stock might get to find there way onto the store shelf in response to the subjective preferences of consumers. That requires another kind of mechanism to supplement a self regulating system of stock control – namely consumer surveys.  These can be conducted in-house (that is within the store itself) or initiated by the suppliers cum producers to elicit some kind of feedback on what consumers in general want which would be richer in informational content  than merely relying on stock control data.  Or indeed both kinds of consumer surveys could be put into use. In any event your participation card would be quite unnecessary unless you mean by this simply a glorified form of consumer survey,  In which case why not just call it that and dispense with  the trappings of a kind market apprroach to the question

[Anonymous]

robbo203 wrote:

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

  But lets talk about how to run a socialist society without convenient computer access.  There's some easy ways that disenfranchise people like having some elites track store inventory and act as if that's the only metric that counts for participation.  Just picking up items from a store or leaving them seems a shallow and pale sort of participation.  How is that much better than participating in the capitalist marketplace?  It's not.  It doesn't allow you to make suggestions about what you want on the store shelves it only allows you to vote on whether you want an item already on the shelf or not.  To make something feasibly participatory you need a convenient form of participating in a wide range of things.  This could be accomplished by a "participation" card.  A participation card would be something like a voting ballot, but would be smaller and more convenient so about like the size of a business card.  you could then write in a suggestion or comment on something.  Now to do that you don't need a computer, but to count millions of these participation cards you would need some computers.  They could be processed using distributed computer processing so not centralized if you dislike centralization. But for sake of convenience lets assume the "comment cards" are processed centrally right now because it's easier to explain what has to happen next.  You need every store and every politician and every decision and every individual to have access to other peoples comments and you need to be able to sort them and pass them on if they're not relevant to the people who receive them.  So most likely you need a store that can scan the comment/vote cards into a public accessible database at a low cost.  and then the collective will of the people can be understood better.  

 I question this, Steve.  You overlook that the  relationship between the consumer in a socialist society to the goods on display in the store would be fundamentally different to what obtains under market capitalism. There is no exchange involved – simply direct free access, This makes a world of a difference, despite what you say.  Your "participation card" seems to imply something other than this and strikes me as being  unnecessarily bureaucratic.  Are you meaning to say that if you dont have a participation card you dont get to have a say? The idea of people having to carry their participation cards around with them, much like a store card today, frankly doesnt appeal and if that is not what you in mind then the term is misleading, I suggest. In the end the consumers in a socialist society are making a choice in selecting what goods they take from the store The particular pattern of preferences arising out of the totality of consumer decisions is something that the folk operating the store will act upon in replenishing stock via a self regulating system of stock.  But that hardly makes then some kind of "elite". The very fact that self regulating system of stock control by its very nature accommodates itself to the choices made by consumers itself an indication of the participation of consumers in decisions about what gets produced.  Of course this same "consumer is king" argument might be invoked in the case of capitalism but there is a big difference here,  Goods are commodities with a price attached to them  and your ability to access them is contingent on whats in your wallet Certainly there are other ways  of participating in the process of deciding what gets to be produced  in a socialist society than merely effecting a consumer choice – that is, by removing a particular item from the store shelf – which will then  impact on what the store gets to do when it comes to reordering stock.  The problem with this is that the consumer only gets to choose between stock actually on the shelf which is limiting.  In itself this does not provide a mechanism by which novel kinds of stock might get to find there way onto the store shelf in response to the subjective preferences of consumers. That requires another kind of mechanism to supplement a self regulating system of stock control – namely consumer surveys.  These can be conducted in-house (that is within the store itself) or initiated by the suppliers cum producers to elicit some kind of feedback on what consumers in general want which would be richer in informational content  than merely relying on stock control data.  Or indeed both kinds of consumer surveys could be put into use. In any event your participation card would be quite unnecessary unless you mean by this simply a glorified form of consumer survey,  In which case why not just call it that and dispense with  the trappings of a kind market apprroach to the question

Ok call it a consumer glorified form of consumer survey and keep the comment cards in the store for people.  That works too.  keeping in stores deprives the workers of the means to decide how things are done unless they're in the store.  It means you can't write down notes or comments or surveys at home though unless you bring them with you.  Your feedback will only count if you have it in mind while in a store.  If you're on a farm and your tractor breaks down, hope you have a  survey card with you to write down that the hitch mount needs to be strengthened on the tractor hitch and write down the part number and any details.  Or you could remember all that and write it down when you go pick up a new tractor if we keep the survey cards there.  Or if you want to do an survey with people coming to your door every year or two that works too.  But the ease and convenience of everyone having the same survey cards and knowing how to fill them out and having them available all the time is important if you want the sytem to function.  we have general elections routinely in most nations so a general election is kind of a limited type of survey that's taken ever few years.  People in america complain all the time that leaders don't care what people think because the election isn't for years away.  Under comunism you'll get the same thing with survey cards if you only do the surveys one every few years and you have limited choices on the surveys.  Mostly I'd say you want a digital app for the phone and use that for participatory use in the means of production and the decisions you make.  The comment card or glorified survey is just for people who don't have or don't want to use a computer.  you said the coupons were too bureacratice so I think that means the computer participation is even more burocratice than the cards.  That's find people can choose not to participate on computer and not to participate with survey cards at home and not to participate with survey cards in the store if they want.  At least I think that's the way communism says it should be right? 

[Anonymous]

mcolome1 wrote:

Subhaditya wrote:

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

I love wikipedia.  Isn't wikipedia a socialist organization in practice? Leaderless (mostly).  everyone can and does contibute according to their ability. Everyone can and does benefit according to their need. . . .

^^

This is really funny. The blind guiding the blinds. Some peoples want to turn socialism into a mockery. That expression of Marx taken from the French Anarchists is only applicable when the working class of the world be able to have common possession of the means of productions, and has overthrown capitalism.  it is not applicable to a blackboard known as Wikipedia. it would be  like Paul Lafarge concept of The Right to be Lazy which is only applicable to a socialist society:having common possession of the means of productions.  Under capitalism we only have the right to be wages slaveshttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2004/no-1193-january-2004/right-be-lazy

Well I read your link.  It's not talking about wikipedia.  You do know that nobody makes money off of wikipedia and contributors aren't paid and anyone can use it for free right?  No one who contributes to wikipedia gets paid wages.  No one pays money to subscribe to it.Can you explain your "blackboard comment".  It sounds like you're saying it's not big enough to be considered capitalist or socialist?  Is there some minimum size for communism or socialism so like you might say the isreali kibbutz are not socialist because they're too small. here's info on the communist societies in Kibbutz. . .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz

[robbo203]

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

 Ok call it a consumer glorified form of consumer survey and keep the comment cards in the store for people.  That works too.  keeping in stores deprives the workers of the means to decide how things are done unless they're in the store.  It means you can't write down notes or comments or surveys at home though unless you bring them with you.  Your feedback will only count if you have it in mind while in a store.  

 Well, the problem is a little more tricky than that. The information contained on the "comment card" needs to be transmitted to the producers themselves to modify or innovate their products, accordingly – unless of course, the store can take it upon itself to  source some other supplier that stock the products in question. And even then there are other considerations to take into account. For instance, if one particular customer requests a particular kind of product not in stock would it warrant the effort tracking down an alternative supplier to accommodate just this one individual's consumer preference? And what about transportation and fuel considerations in the case of a supplier further afield.  Is there a critical threshold of consumer demand that needs to be breached before contemplating approaching an alternative supplier of a novel product or persuading an existing supplier to modify its products?  If so what would this threshold be? I don't have any easy answer to this.  I think as with a lot of things in a socialist society it will be a case  of just muddling through within the broad constraints of a generally understood procedure of how to go about doing things.  This is in part why I favour a more multifaceted multilevel approach to cover every angle  – not just limiting consumer surveys to some in-house exercise in public consultation.   There could be agencies especially set up for this purpose and commissioned by production units for that purpose or production units themselves could carry out surveys themselves to ascertain levels of consumer satisfaction with their products.  The possibilities are limitless. How things will pan out will depend on many factors . The density of distribution stores within a locality which generally correlates positively with population size, could impact on the variety of products available and hence on the ability to choose between them.  There is also  the question of the products themselves.  We wont need "57 varieties of baked beans" as the expression goes but we will need quite a considerable  variety of boots or T shirt  for people to chose from. A final point worth making concerns the distinction between bespoke products and mass standardised products.  I think with  the advent of new technologies such as 3 D printers there will be much more scope for the former carried out on a DIY basis.  Indeed,  I believe production in general will become noticeably more decentralised and localized in a socialist society with all the cultural, environmental and transportational implications this entails We really need to be thinking more of a kind of spatial model of socialist prpduction or, if you like, a kind of socialist geography of human choices.  By putting flesh on the bare  bones of our socialist skeleton we invite interest and appeal to concerns  that preoccupy people today such as the deep damage wrought by the capitalist mode of production to our physical environment, not just through a reckless comsumerism it fosters but also through the way in which consumer demand is gratified under capitalism

[Dave T]

While internet access will make it more possible for workers to participate in the decision making process of a socialist society but it would have to be in a collective way rather than at present an individual secretive process. to achieve this new form of collective perception there would have to be a qualatative change in workers consciousness to a socialist consciousness and we are still a long way of that. In facty I would hazard a guess by saying that such an event has never occured where workers as a class have developed a socialist consciousness.

[Anonymous]

robbo203 wrote:

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

 Ok call it a consumer glorified form of consumer survey and keep the comment cards in the store for people.  That works too.  keeping in stores deprives the workers of the means to decide how things are done unless they're in the store.  It means you can't write down notes or comments or surveys at home though unless you bring them with you.  Your feedback will only count if you have it in mind while in a store.  

 Well, the problem is a little more tricky than that. The information contained on the "comment card" needs to be transmitted to the producers themselves to modify or innovate their products, accordingly – unless of course, the store can take it upon itself to  source some other supplier that stock the products in question. And even then there are other considerations to take into account. For instance, if one particular customer requests a particular kind of product not in stock would it warrant the effort tracking down an alternative supplier to accommodate just this one individual's consumer preference? And what about transportation and fuel considerations in the case of a supplier further afield.  Is there a critical threshold of consumer demand that needs to be breached before contemplating approaching an alternative supplier of a novel product or persuading an existing supplier to modify its products?  If so what would this threshold be? I don't have any easy answer to this.  I think as with a lot of things in a socialist society it will be a case  of just muddling through within the broad constraints of a generally understood procedure of how to go about doing things.  This is in part why I favour a more multifaceted multilevel approach to cover every angle  – not just limiting consumer surveys to some in-house exercise in public consultation.   There could be agencies especially set up for this purpose and commissioned by production units for that purpose or production units themselves could carry out surveys themselves to ascertain levels of consumer satisfaction with their products.  The possibilities are limitless. How things will pan out will depend on many factors . The density of distribution stores within a locality which generally correlates positively with population size, could impact on the variety of products available and hence on the ability to choose between them.  There is also  the question of the products themselves.  We wont need "57 varieties of baked beans" as the expression goes but we will need quite a considerable  variety of boots or T shirt  for people to chose from. A final point worth making concerns the distinction between bespoke products and mass standardised products.  I think with  the advent of new technologies such as 3 D printers there will be much more scope for the former carried out on a DIY basis.  Indeed,  I believe production in general will become noticeably more decentralised and localized in a socialist society with all the cultural, environmental and transportational implications this entails We really need to be thinking more of a kind of spatial model of socialist prpduction or, if you like, a kind of socialist geography of human choices.  By putting flesh on the bare  bones of our socialist skeleton we invite interest and appeal to concerns  that preoccupy people today such as the deep damage wrought by the capitalist mode of production to our physical environment, not just through a reckless comsumerism it fosters but also through the way in which consumer demand is gratified under capitalism

I agree completely and think that you provided some valuable insight to me on the subject.  there's a small group of poeople who advocate an ecosystem model for understanding capital flows in an economy and a few economist working under the "new institutionalism" paradigm that seem to be heading in the right direction for creating a kind of spatial model for socialist production you mentioned.My pesonal pet theory is a little out of the box and involves creating what's called a multi-currency society and is based on reading from "BlockChain: blueprint for a new economy".  Towards the end of the book Hyeck, an economics political philosopher, speculates on the possibility of an infininite number of digital currencies and using digital currency as a simply counting mechanism.  So you would have a digital currency for toasters and a digital currency for blenders, and some sort of exchange mechanism.  in a society with a digital currency using the unit of a toaster, then the "money" is simply equal to the amount of toasters taken off of shelves in a peoples store.  5 toasters taken from the shelf means the store gets 5 toaster coins (like bitcoin only based on a toaster).  The store can then exchange trade those toaster coins to the manufacture for 5 toasters and the manufacture can trade the collection of toaster coins for labout hour coins to pay the toaster makers, and processed metal coins to pay for the materials to built the toaster.  in this scenario accounting of difference currencies takes the place of a centralized bureau and adjustments to the economy production and resource usage are accomplished by changing the exchange rate between toaster coins and labor hour coins.  So one of the key benefits of the multi-currency society is distributed managment of inventory levels is built into the system and instead of directing every company who uses precessed steel to be more conservative of procesed steel due to a steel shortage, all that needs to be done is to digitally change the exchange rates for processed steel.  A lot of communist appose this idea because of the word "currency" which frigtens them even though they don't understand it.  One of the best implementations of a multi-currency society would use a currency based on Up-votes, or simply voting approval.  You could use upvotes or voting counts to decide production of goods and answer the question should be make more red t-shirts or blue t-shirts.  Again, this could be arranged to produced the same results to what's done with a buracratic solution currently, so don't let the word "currency" scare you. It's just an accounting process in it's effect and a common generalized solution to all counting problems and management of counting and accounting systems. 

[Anonymous]

Dave T wrote:

While internet access will make it more possible for workers to participate in the decision making process of a socialist society but it would have to be in a collective way rather than at present an individual secretive process. to achieve this new form of collective perception there would have to be a qualatative change in workers consciousness to a socialist consciousness and we are still a long way of that. In facty I would hazard a guess by saying that such an event has never occured where workers as a class have developed a socialist consciousness.

I'm not sure I agree with the observation that we're a long way form a socialist mindset.  Others have pointed out to me on this discussion board that a family household operates on socialistic principles and there's wikipedia and open source code that is socialistic.  None of these socialistic practices are political but it suggests to me the concepts and ideas for a socialist society are in the conciousness of everyone to a degree I would not consider a long way off. As for bridging the gap between socialism mindset and capitalist mindset, I think that digital internet technology has a possible solution.  I'm a User Experience designer, which means I study and apply knowledge of how people use the interent or products and what they experience and think and want and what motivates them. Usually most jobs are tedious capitalist supporting work, which I deplore and so I'm rarely employed.  BUT, in my learning I ran into the theory of "the nudge" or also known "the  power of default choices".  So an example of a nudge is where in some nations people get their drivers license with the organ donation box already checked by default. They can still uncheck it, but it takes a second or two to make their choice known.  in other places the organ donation box is defaulted to "don't donate" and it takes a few seconds to check the box that says "do donate my organs if I die in a car accident".  So you can guess what the results of comparing the two places show in the percent of people who agree to donate their organs.  I think the internet access allows nudging the population towards socialism in a way that's easier and better than a paper process.  Unfortunately the internet also allows nudging a society towards capitalsim ideas.  So whether we can nudge people gradually towards socialism or not is unknown and depends a lot on who's doing the nudging and to what goal.  However, the interenet does democratize the creation of websites and internet services can surface an existing User interface to change the nudges.  So you could more easily havea  society scale dual system that takes the online application to renew your drivers license provided by the government and have something like a "socialist re-surfaciing" web browser plug-in you've downloaded that would look at the liscense renewal form and change the default selection for organ donation to "yes donate my organs" if you live in a place where the government defaults the form to "don't donate organs".  The cost of doing something like this and the access issues would be unfeasible in a paper only system for renewing drivers licesnse, but I could resurface their website drivers license renewal form in a days effort if such a plug in were already avaliable.We curently have in the internet resurfacing and renudging practice done mostly in a minor role.  One that comes to mind is the amazon online website will list products on their web site based on the profit to amazon first.  So if you want to see the least expensive cat food on amazon first you have to scroll down through several pages of luxury cat food with high profit margins for the producer.  there's a website that fixes that for you now and it digitally takes the products and re-order them so the least expensive to the consumer is the first one you see on page one.  The Amazon sales website and it's resurfacing proves the idea is feasible and that nudging works and that non-government actors can creating a people prefered nudging enviornment even thought it doesn't seem to advance socialism.  So the question is can we surface capitalism to use nudges for influencing people to think like socialist about their government and business and laws? I think the question is yes, but estimating the scope and effectiveness of such a project on a society scale is beyond my interest level and effort at the moment.  Maybe some group of people will one day do somethign like that?There's already several political based websites that resurface political media to allow users to select their nudging based on political ideology.  So one that comes to mind is PoleVault and another i worked on with the founders is WeVote.org.  I lost momentum on the weVote.org volunteer project and dropped out due to depression and am no longer actively contributing, so I'll talk about how https://www.pollvault.com/ works to resurface media propaganda. What poll vault claims is that it helps you make smarter voting decisions.  the way it does this is by consolidating opinions to let you choose the source.  So you can easily select the socialist party voting recomendations for your voting area and see how they suggest you should vote and you can then click on a particular ballot issue they recomend you vote "yes" on and find out in their comment why they say you should vote yes.  I can also find the repulican party recommedations and show them side by side with the the socialist party recomendations for voting and In practice, I alwasy vote against the republicans.  Having these recomendations with supporting arguments conveniently avalable and organized according to your ballot is a convenience nudge that allows me to ignore a lot of media on tv and other sources.  So that can bypass the paid media propaganda problems in practice. Of course this poll vault is non-binding and once I've marked down my voting choices I have to print it out as a crib sheet to bring in with me to the voting booth and recopy onto an official ballot.  But one advantage is I can make my voting decisions easier and remember them easier so I like poll vault for that reason.  It lets me vote smarter.  I can also put notes on why I voted so if I normally vote socialist, but not on this particular issue I can explain why to myself. OR I can share my voting preferences with others and seek followers and get my recommendations listed right next to the recomendations of the league of women voters or the socialist party recommendations. So it democratizes the voting inforamation landscape. 

[Subhaditya]

Dave T wrote:

In facty I would hazard a guess by saying that such an event has never occured where workers as a class have developed a socialist consciousness.

I agree, or russian workers would not have allowed their leaders to lord over them break up the soviets, communes etc.

[Anonymous]

Subhaditya wrote:

Dave T wrote:

In facty I would hazard a guess by saying that such an event has never occured where workers as a class have developed a socialist consciousness.

I agree, or russian workers would not have allowed their leaders to lord over them break up the soviets, communes etc.

sounds like your arguing it's impossible.  Or is this just one of those pedantic arguments like saying no one has ever created a perfect circle.  Is it your view that socialism is some sort of platonic state than can only exist in the mind as a concept like a perfect circle, but can never be actually realized?  

[Author]

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