alanjjohnstone
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All people are involved in participatory democracy within socialism – and they will decide the means, the methods, the procedures and the processes in how it will be exercised. I have made myself even clearer now. I am sure future society will engage in trials and experiments and involve themselves trying out various models of administration to discover what is best suited for the task in hand. Problems will be dealt with as they arise without binding a future generation to pre-ordained "solutions". Democracy i do not believe will be fixed but in flux, at least, in the early decades of socialist society until as Marx said we have got rid of all the shit left-over from capitalism. People may well chose to recuse themselves from certain aspects of democratic practice. Participation will not be compulsory. They might decide to delegate. They might have elections for certain aspects of running society. They might as i suggested, simply have people draw long and short straws. But power over oversight will ultimately still reside with the people, specifically, those impacted by directly or indirectly administrative decision-making. People in England will not impose their authority upon who should be a member of a panchayat in India. Likewise, a civil engineer will not govern the selection of an aeronautical engineer. People will reserve their democratic powers for their actual involvement and the relevance to their lives, as well as areas of expertise. You may have missed this passing post.
Quote:He even deals with your debate with LBird. He says that he is not interested in car mechanics so in a RBE he would have noting to do with it. He would participate and vote on issues of importance to him.https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/money-free-party#comment-40707 They also may well impose restrictions and parameters to participation, geographic, for instance, or professional, possibly. But that decision is a matter of society deploying either a long leash or short, the length of which is judged by all people as reasonable and accepted by them.
My, LBird, aren't you confirming exactly what i accused you of…interpreting what i say as you wish to read it. I dislike the terms proletarian and bourgeoisie was what i said. I never said i reject the concept of class or that class conflict is the motor of social change. That is the big diference with ourselves and Zeitgeist, Moneyfree Party and the ilk who also feel the need to change language. Our ideas go beyond moralist appeal for better worldWorker and working class are terms i also use, i see no problem with producers, either, or even wealth-creators and for our master class, I often use the terms owning, possessing employer class rather than bourgeoisie, and nothing wrong with capitalist or ruling class. I indeed said i equated the "masses" with the working class…workers are the vast majority in the world today, as i clearly pointed out to you As the say in Scotland.."we arra people"I never suggested that the Zapatistas was movement was a model for socialism. What i said was that their success could be because they made use of an existing democratic structure that was not the State but an indigenous village democracy, legally unrecognised by the State but older and more rooted within the community. . When it comes to socialist administration being democratic, there is a case that we do not need to re-invent the wheel but as always we build upon what we have.Again, i said that the random election of jurists that takes place within capitalism is a principle that could well be widened and applied to other sectors but required adaptation and adjustment. You could have criticised it as not doing away with the division of labour in law, as it still permits legal specialists…(in Scotland we are more accurate in our words…we call barristers advocates)…but you failed to make that point. Instead, you bring forth the point that we cannot accept practices that are agreed consensually within capitalism – existing society- as it somehow is approving of todays's methods. It is if raising your hand to signal assent and dissent within today's society, is a suspect method of expressing ones view because it an acceptable method of democratic procedure. It is the conservatives who made it illegal…(with secret strike ballots and whatnot), I explained that worker as a word can have both a literal meaning…those who work …or a political economic meaning. I explained that language should be inclusive. A student, a pensioner, the sick and the disabled, those who literally do not work, may well misunderstand us when we talk of workers being in control of society as saying that they have no role whatsoever in decision-making. It is like insisting that production will only be determined be the democracy of the producers and not the consumers i.e. sectional ownership and not common ownership or social ownership.All people are involved in participatory democracy within socialism, to answer your last question.And defining them narrowly as "workers" no longer applies as i pointed out. Classes cease to exist and proletarian is a specific term for a class-relationship and can only be used in the context of capitalism will be a redundant term, an archaic word like villein.
ALB, it is so often said by ourselves that it is Tweedledum and Tweedledee relationship between the Tories and Labour…I thought it was ideal contemporary ammunition to support that argument for our two candidates to cite as evidence in any hustings that it is a reality. But no need to start another thread, if it is of no potential use…simply ignore it.Gnome, i think it is possible to have remote candidates but simple fact demonstrated more than on one occasion in the past, the two Scottish branches do not consider themselves capable of participating in any election, although involvement is not a necessity, but it is highly desirable.
Scottish Labour leader, Kezia Dugdale, has suspended every Labour councillor in Aberdeen after they ignored orders to abandon a power-sharing deal with the Conservatives. Dugdale said the nine councillors, including the newly elected lord provost of Aberdeen, Barney Crockett, would now be disciplined for refusing to tear up a coalition deal with the Tories in a bid to prevent the Scottish National party from taking power. The Tories had helped to get Jenny Laing, the Labour group leader, elected as council leader on Wednesday, and allowed Crockett, a former council leader, to become lord provost.https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/17/labour-suspends-aberdeen-councillors-over-coalition-with-toriesIf we wanted Tory policies – we'd have voted Tory
No….the sensible suggestion as i pointed out was one that is already in practice, so if you like society made that democratic decision already. My only suggestion is that such a tool can be expanded and used in all manner of situations requiring oversight if we so wished. So when i propose an obstacle to elitism and specialisation, you say i am for it…I have already in an earlier post declared that no one size fits all and historic and social conditions will determine the nature of local organisation. I recall reading about a parallel system of civic administration existing in indigenous regions of Mexico where once the state apparatus is dismantled it will present an organic alternative. I think one of the Zapatista successes was to build upon what already existed. We do have a difference in how we feel socialist ideas should be expressed. We agree that DOTP is not a phrase either of is bandies about and your ill-founded suspicions of why i used it is an example why – the tone of our words and language can be so easily misconstrued. I'm accused by you of throwing out the baby with the bath-water when i signal that Marxian arguments can be alternatively expressed. Only a hair-splitter would consider Occupy's 1% V 99% to be misleading in reflecting the class nature of society but even some of my comrades seek to amend it to be more accurate by saying 5% V 95%.(i was reared on the the 7:84 divide from the 70s theatre group). I happen to prefer "class war" to "class struggle".I have no desire to restrict myself to a limited lexicon of acceptable revolutionary expressions. Where is the poet in you, LBird?I am not averse to stretching the definition of workers, producers, toilers, to the people and mankind, humanity, no matter how amorphous such a wide-ranging definition is to yourself. I do try to avoid the qualification the common people, though.When Marx wrote in the 19th century, the working class was a minority of people but one that has grown into the vast majority until it is now just "us" and "them", no middle class, no peasantry (and who cares if they are a class or not)…workers democracy is the democracy of the majority. In numbers, the workers are The People (name of the SLP journal, btw), they are humanity, they are mankind. "The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority." Substitute socialist for proletarian and i see no great dilemma in the choice of words.
LBird, you are demonstrating a knack of interpreting what i write as you wish to read it.I made a very sensible suggestion of how democratic control is enacted that does not involve voting or electing and one that is not a utopian proposition but a practical projection of the present reality which will be adapted and adjusted as seen fit and which makes any specialist unnecessary for control and those chosen to administer important parts of socialist society will be random and temporary positions. No elite can form but you accuse me of promoting such. I'm lost at such a reading.You can continue using Marxian language but some i find very counter-productive such as "dictatorship of the proletariat". We have already expressed a preference to the term socialist rather than communist even though neither is fully comprehended and invariably require elaboration.I am happy in these modern times to use people…humanity…whatever…as substitutes for workers…working class…producers…whatever. Hopefully, when i use words, they are understood by my fellow-workers (another hangover from my IWW days) since, of course, i am not addressing any specialists in Marxology, academic or autodidact who require their special technical language and terminology.
In political discourse, there are two words i do dislike…one is proletariat and the other is bourgeoisie.There has been previous debates on which term we should use for the working class…i think i am prone to saying working people these days…and as you have noticed, dropping the working and going for the people. It is to be inclusive. I have encountered many who claim that they are actually not producers, being unemployed or unemployable. The IWW had to revise their industrial unions to cater for this substantial part of the population by introducing Household Service Workers Industrial Union 680.Since i was suggesting that decisions about how we organise a socialist society after it is achieved is best left to those with the task of implementing it under conditions and circumstances we are not aware of and therefore should not pre-empt, i think we have made class redundant as it no longer has any meaning in a class-free society. As Marx the humanist keeps telling us inside a socialist society, its members now become associated individuals ( https://libcom.org/library/socialism-individual-marxs-work ) and the term proletarian which has a distinction only under capitalism is no longer an appropriate word to use.Perhaps you confused by my meaning of the building socialism once we have acquired political power and displaced the capitalists and assumed i was discussing building towards socialism.As for this specialist issue….my relationship with my doctor, for instance, will basically be the same as it is today…i will have the final say and consent but he or she will no longer have any influence from NHS budgets and pharmaceutical industry inducements when recommending courses of treatment. But will there exist overseeing bodies such as NICE, or as the American Republicans like to name them "death committees", yes, i suppose there will be. Cost-benefit analysis may be different in socialism but there will be various filters for efficiency. NICE might exist. Who picks that specialist body? Maybe the Athenian lottery system as in our jury service. After all, it is not professional lawyers and solicitors who decide guilty and not guilty but people picked from the electoral register. So do i worry that my life may be placed in the hands of my peers?As Robbo has tried to do on a different thread by highlighting the literal meaning of a phrase, i think you make an ado over nothing. As Citizen (another useful word for us to use more) Wolfie Smith says: Power to the People!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMKsR_wUSfA
http://www.ipsnews.net/2017/05/genetically-engineered-disappointments/https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/business/gmo-promise-falls-short.html?_r=1Some of us have argued that GM is no magic bullet and that the great hopes that GM foods would counter the prospect of food shortages in the coming growth in population were spin by the corporations who aim to control the food production industry for greater profits. Others have argued that the science shows the potential for GM to be a tool for better harvests of better crops and that the anti-GM case is driven by protectionist vested interest. Despite strawmen argumentsi don't think the health risks of actual GM foods (other than the pesticides) have featured in the anti-GM arguments on this forum, even if elsewhere people make outlandish claims of Frankenstein technologies.A report from the States National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found that US GE crop yield gains have slowed over the years, leaving no significant advantage in yield gains compared to non-GE plant varieties. Over two decades ago, Western Europe largely rejected GE crops while North America – the United States and then Canada – embraced them. More than twenty years later, US crop yield gains are not significantly higher than in Western Europe. Since the adoption of GE crops, US use of herbicides has increased. This is in contrast to France, which bans GE crop cultivation, where overall use of herbicides has been reduced.
Quote:"although there already is enough food being produced to feed everyone in the world, the real problem is one of access, as most of the hungry do not have the means to buy or produce the food they need. Therefore, while US agribusiness has long claimed that GMOs will “save the world”, there has been little compelling evidence to this effect after two decades."(not from the research paper but the IPS article.I can't cut and paste any of the NYT article unfortunately)
Coincidence, i was just doing an anti-nationalist blog post on how few French used to speak French (as we know it)And then i clicked the wrong key and lost the damn thing…this new Apache word processor i had to get with the new laptop is a damn nuisance
Quote:Did Nazi Germany really trade a lot with France/Britain prior to WW2?I did a quick google on this Before the war, 70% of Germany's export trade was with European countries, mostly the Netherlands, France, and England
Just think perhaps we missed this bus this year in Scotland (i fully understand why and am not being accusatory…only expressing regret). I believe when we are the only party on the ballot with the name socialist we do relatively well. The SSP are not standing anywhere in Scotland. In fact, this report shows that there is a drop in minor parties contesting seats. The Greens are fighting only three in Scotland.
Quote:266 candidates have put themselves forward for Scotland's 59 constituencies. Each of the four major parties – the SNP, Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems – have put forward a candidate in every seat.That leaves just 30 independent candidates and people representing "other" parties, such as the Greens, UKIP and others. This is a huge drop on the figure from previous years – in 2015 there were 346 candidates, with 110 not representing one of the four major parties. In 2010, 335 party candidates stood, including 99 from "other" parties. And in 2005, the first year of the current boundaries (with 59 constituencies rather than 72), there were 370 party candidates, 136 of whom were in the "other" column. The upshot of all of this is that Scottish voters are going into this general election with less choice than ever before. In 36 of the 59 constituencies, there are only the four major parties on the ballot paper.http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-39934756A missed opportunity to take advantage of the situation
Are Cardiff and Swansea branches now wound up …or only Cardiff being re-named? My Welsh geography is bad so Southeast is what exactlyWhat will the frequency of branch meetings be?
And if you think i am wrong about the manipulative ways of the BBC, contrast this picture of May and Corbyn and tell me the photo editor was being neutral in the image he or she sought to portray them…https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/A505/production/_96054224_15940bc1-1faf-4c88-8843-ed09bf6af65b.jpg
