Is Socialism Feasible? Would it be better than the current system? What does the evidence say?
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I wish you all the Best (pun intended) on your journey of discovery and hope you find it enjoyable and interesting. If you do happen to discover something of interest please let us know. We are always eager to learn if only for the heck of it!
Alaric wrote:I am also finding that there is a lot of hostility towards my question from some of your comrades. Some of the responses have felt like the responses of cult members to heretics. I have always held the party in high regard as an organisation of "scientific socialism" and have nearly always pointed other activists towards it as one of the few intellectually honest organisation. Some of the people who I have engaged with on this discussion thread have made me seriously doubt this (not you Brian). I now feel little desire to engage further with the SPGB on this topic. No one is offering up much that satisfies my desire for evidence based decision making and some are offering up offal. I have enjoyed talking with you Brian.Take care and good luck.I am a member of this party and feel the same.Please do not go away with that thought. The attitude on this forum does not necessarily represent the attitude of the party as a whole.
TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:I am a member of this party and feel the same. Please do not go away with that thought. The attitude on this forum does not necessarily represent the attitude of the party as a whole.That gives me some hope.Thank you.
Bugger, just lost my reply. Try again.Short version: socialism isn't a thing. Socialism is us applying the capacity and co-operation we use in our daily lives now. If workers don't think they can run their own lives, they won't create socialism. We run capitalism from top to bottom in a co-operative fashion, and socialism is just about extending that workplace co-operation. There is no chart, no method, no algorithm, just free co-operation. The evidence is in your own life, before your very eyes every day.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Bugger, just lost my reply. Try again.Short version: socialism isn't a thing. Socialism is us applying the capacity and co-operation we use in our daily lives now. If workers don't think they can run their own lives, they won't create socialism. We run capitalism from top to bottom in a co-operative fashion, and socialism is just about extending that workplace co-operation. There is no chart, no method, no algorithm, just free co-operation. The evidence is in your own life, before your very eyes every day.There is however a subtle difference between 'thinking' and 'knowing' and I suspect Alaric would be insistent on confirming that actually knowing is the conclusive clincher in this discussion. Which effectively means that this confirmation can only be revealed in a socialist society.
Brian and Master Smeet, I am not sure that I demand knowing. That is a very high bar. The bar is lowered considerably by the fact that I believe the current system has some inherent instabilities. For example, we came close to nuclear annihilation on several occasions. There are many options on the table and I am comparing them to one another. Given that I can't be certain about any of them I can't demand certainty in any arena.On the other hand Brian is right that I have a higher bar than the evidence that has been provided here. There is much evidence that points to the possibility but it hardly swamps the, I believe reasonable, doubts that I and many others have. These doubts require careful responses but receive very general responses that I don't feel have been well tested, theoretically or empirically. For example, Master Smeets statement that "If workers don't think they can run their own lives, they won't create socialism." sounds like a compelling argument for socialism. It sounds compelling because everyone thinks that they can run their own lives. In fact, by one definition of the statment, we are already running our own lives. However, I think Master Smeet means much more by "running our own lives" than merely the sense in which people currently "run their own lives". I believe he means that "If workers don't think they can run society without the use of markets or heirarchies but through some unspecified form of democratic process, they won't create socialism.". If this is what he means by "running our own lives" then I wholeheartedly agree with his statement. Indeed, it is this sentiment that lead me to start this thread in the first place. I think I will now have to commit myself to leaving this thread for some time as I have a lot of work on. If the party ever does decide that it wants to try and work out what assumptions the party case relies upon and what evidence there is for such assumptions I would be very happy to be a sounding board and provide contributions both positive and negative.
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