alanjjohnstone
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If you look for bollocks, you are guaranteed to find it
Quote:On the one hand you are saying that we need to reduce the amount of labour, yet on another you are saying that locally produced food is the way to produce plenty.Show me that statement. What i did say was "the blog has been critical of the carbon-footprint claims of the local food movement" and i also made a point of saying those industrial sized croplands will stay. I did qualify that by saying existing small farmers should not be displaced and collectivised for they are already performing well in providing food for the majority of the world's population. Not my opinion but the findings of research. I think your asssertion that i am for more labour-intensive production, or that "economy of scale" compensates for labour intensity is off the mark. You ignore the external costs and i touched on it by saying vast acres of farmland requires the use of lots of chemical which has a detrimental impact. But before you go and accuse me again of something i don't hold, i am not saying organic farming alone is the solution…but there is a case for more of it added with agroecology and other methods to be increased, and indeed these do involve extra labour…as would William Morris hand-crafted furnishings compared with IKEA's Just to press a point home, the blog stated
Quote:A few times in the past, the SOYMB blog faced criticism that we over-emphasised organic agriculture rather than promote the current methods of farming. Let us be clear, the choice on how we produce our food in the coming new society will not be made by the blog or the Socialist Party but will be a decision for the generation that has the task of implementing sustainable ways of growing food in socialism. Whatever chosen will be fit for purpose and not picked for profit.The blog explains
Quote:In farming there are legitimate fears about soil erosion, manure lagoons, animal welfare and nitrogen runoff at large farms — but it’s not just environmental groups that worry. Farmers are also concerned about fertilizer use and soil runoff. That’s one reason they’re turning to high-tech solutions like precision agriculture. Using location-specific information about soil nutrients, moisture and productivity of the previous year, new tools, known as “variable rate applicators,” can put fertilizer only on those areas of the field that need it (which may reduce nitrogen runoff into waterways). GPS signals drive many of today’s tractors, and new planters are allowing farmers to distribute seed varieties to diverse spots of a field to produce more food from each unit of land. They also modulate the amount and type of seed on each part of a field — in some places, leaving none at all. Before “factory farming” became a pejorative, agricultural scholars of the mid-20th century were calling for farmers to do just that — become more intensive. Farm sizes have risen significantly. It is precisely this large size that is often criticized today in the belief that large farms put profit ahead of soil and animal health. But increased size has advantages, especially better opportunities to invest in new technologies and to benefit from economies of scale. Buying a $400,000 combine that gives farmers detailed information on the variations in crop yield in different parts of the field would never be sustainable on just five acres of land; at 5,000 acres, it is a different story.Farming in socialism will not be a matter of business as usual. The harm of growing food in deserts such as in Californian dry regions will not be implemented due to the dependence on imported water and fertilisers and whatnot. Food will be grown where it best grows and that does not mean locally everytime. The end of mass poultry sheds and piggeries and the slurry it creates will effect availability on the shelves. Your remarks about tea-picking is not my experience. Been there, seen it. Alternative means of livelihood such as tourism is actively discouraged in tea-growing regions so as to ensure a trapped work-force. It isn't just the exploitation to make a profit for Tetley and Typhoo but the actual process. Some types of work are abhorrent because of the occupational health risks and no amount of amelioration is possible. There are hopes of some sort of mechanisation but for the moment picking is done by hand. Having as a lad done some tattie-howking, i can't remember it being of any benefit other than pecuniary so when that inducement is withdrawn from tea-pickers, they will depart for better climes and more socially useful work than toiling bent-double in cold wet hill-sides to satisfy someone's palate. i specifically referred to the Perth tea growing in message #82, once again as i did tobacco suggesting when push comes to shove , there is a limited solution but again i qualified it by saying there is no way that the present high demand for tea can be supplied from home-grown bushes…and rationing will be required for those desperate for a cuppa…perhaps a weekly lottery for a box of tea…it will be a luxury to enjoy fully and delight in.
When all you know is this way of living, there will be a tendency to project it into the future.I have lost count of how many articles i have quoted Sylvia Pankhurst's "Socialism means plenty for all. We do not preach a gospel of want and scarcity, but of abundance." So please don't say i am arguing for a world of frugality, Tim. I am the one that is advocating choice, but some of those will be hard choices, made by the majority against the views of the minority. (I have on another thread proposed a discussion on democracy and decision-making so that might is not always seen as being right, but no-one seems to be concerned with how we run socialism) Matt's post hit it on the nail. The decisions on what you eat and consume will be made by the present producers, as a general rule. No-one willing to go down to the coal-face, then no coal. Our reply that work will be rotated, conditions improved, labour time reduced, processes automated is at best a partial answer. Unlike Gnomes and Vin's optimism that people will accept their present lot in life as it is now, workers in unhealthy, unpleasant or as they say, the 3 Ds, dirty dangerous and degrading work, will vote with their feet. i used an example from history of the black slaves when released from the shackles of chattel slavery, even wage slavery could not drive them back to the fields…it took the KKK and lynchings to do that.Do you expect fellow-workers to continue to suffer and place themselves at risk so that others can continue with non-essential self-indulgent treats? The priority of the new socialist world will be to find the technology to perform many unwelcomed tasks or come up with suitable alternatives but it will begin with the important vital areas of production, not the optional "comforts". Nobody is really denying anybody anything, what is being said is, wait your turnThere are more important parts of the economy for things to be done first and it cannot be based upon the prevalence of "me" over "us". Socialism is not a system where every whim and wish of one person or even one section of the community, is satisfied, sometimes we will have to accept, "second-best".You don't "need" tea, you "want" tea…but present-day tea-pickers do need a better life, and should not be condemned to one day longer in their wretched conditions while waiting for some machine to do the toil because someone wants to continue having a daily cuppa.Those who suffer deprivation, misery and indignity can't be placed at the back of the line when it comes to emancipation and if they are, Gnome, don't expect them to be welcoming the great day of socialism when nothing changes for them because some folk won't sacrifice any of their privileges and they are told to wait …wait …wait…for their deliverance.Vin seems to believe that his rights is overwhelmingly right regardless of what others choose and decide. If the exercise of community choice is Trotskyist democratic centralism then Vin is calling for individualist anarchism. We already demand that peoples' ideas change. We expect and insist that workers reject sexism, racism and nationalism, ageism and religion. We say that such beliefs are incompatible with being a socialist. In our understanding of contemporary capitalist society we do not accept climate change denialism as a valid world-view but place the blame on the capitalist mode of production and distribution. We decline to agree with those who advocate non-science-evidence based CAM . We rightly reject pandering to those who project capitalism's lack of safety and precaution into socialist society as an argument for rejecting new technology. But it seems some are slaves to consumerism and the advertisers and how else can it be right now…Marx did say capitalist ideas prevail. In an ecological-minded libertarian socialist society, methods of production that harm the environment would be done away with and new methods would be substituted. Production under socialism will take into consideration environmental effects, availability and renew-ability of resources and develop the least harmful methods of production. That means changes.The determination of these changes, the process of choosing which comes first will be a focus that requires commencing before socialism is achieved and as we put flesh to the bones as experts and specialists in their fields come aboard. Healthy debate will take place prior to socialism but it will be more-up-to-date than this one.If we can succeed in persuading people to throw off outworn but deeply rooted ideas of bigotry and discrimination, i think we can convince them that their pork pie comes at an unacceptable social cost so they will have to forego an indulgence so that necessities are met.
i said
Quote:, net-worked by like-minded hobbyists.A bit ambiguous , i concede but you insist upon a literal reading by declaring i was opposed to
Quote:What if I and a group of other workers decide we want to keep many many chickens and run a large herd of Jersey cows to mass produce butter, cheese, milk, cream and beef? By implication we cannot, because we are only allowed to have a couple of pigs and a goat or two, as per your blueprint.But let us be clear on some matters and i made the point in my first post
Quote:production (and that includes food) will be a social process.my emphasisI maintain that it will be highly unlikely that many plantation products which face difficulty in being mechanised will have a labour force doing the arduous hard work on them, tea pickers being one job that will, imho, will not remain on the plantation. As many black slaves did when emancipation arrived they fled the cotton plantation and only Jim Crow laws forced them back. But never fear…tea is grown in Perthshire, so perhaps you will have a cuppa…as a well-deserved luxury since the existing demand will be no way satisfied…and tea will be rationed.What you and your buddies want to do will be up to yourselves but the effect and impact on the wider community will not be ignored by your neighbours. By implication of what social democracy is, what you do when using common owned resources will be decided collectively and what purpose and use, land will be put to (not me if i happen to be still around at the time) and you and your mates will simply be out-voted. You will be, of course, free to seek out situation and condition where you are not involved in group-decisions or expected to abide by them – somewhere up in mountains of Montana with the other militia maintain their individualist independence.We are not talking about idiosyncratic habits of individuals but what society will deem as the most efficient and sustainable way to go for the benefit of most of the people and of Nature. I suggest my scenarios are the more plausible on the long-term and the issue of the availability of pork-pies will not appear high on the agenda.
Lat's re-read some of your own quotes of me
Quote:If you want a small allotment with a few chickens and a couple of pigs and goat or two, I am sure you will be able to”A guarantee of choice is what i understand by that statement, not the imposition of my own.
Quote:“Your individual tastes will be just that, mostly individually produced”Another assurance of your own choice, not my dictatorial directiveCorrection added Livestock numbers will dropNot my judgement but that of both environmentalists and climate scientists…if we are to remedy the global warming from methane emissions and mounting pollution of soil and water by effluence.
Quote:“Tobacco plantations will disappear”Later i said tobacco farms existed in Berwickshire and when commercial tobacco plantations and their unwilling workers disappear, you will be growing your own. Another choice offered to those who ignore the self-harm of smoking, not prohibition. i speculated that bland one-taste world beer-production will disappear when people begin to enjoy the flavours of many locally made beers.McDonaldisation of the world will cease. As will those giant brewers. Hyperbolic rhetorical replies as to what sort of society i seek (and i do speak only for myself on this forum although i think my opinion is supported by the evidence) ignored the statements i made qualifying my views in the original and follow up. I always argue different strokes for different folks, based upon my world travel and encounters with the planet's rich diversity of peoples and cultures. With global communication and interaction from increased travel, best practice will eventually prevail. Mistaken life-patterns and styles will be ultimately corrected. But the debate is whether we condemn certain practices before the advent of socialism. I say we do at present exclude people holding and expressing certain views from membership, nor do we justify every practice around the world because it is a local and accepted custom. We hold a universal and for want for better words moral and ethical expectations. We are idealists in our concept of socialism, understanding it will lead to new relationships and new behaviours. Our visitor seeks to define and extend that application of what he considers socialist principles and i find it an interesting exchange.
I understand that inside socialism no one size will fit all. We have the Prairies, the Pampas and the Steppes where agriculture in on a large-scale and industrialised with much chemical inputs to maintain the productivity. I have no reason to think that we are capable of dividing these enormous tracts into small-holdings and handing over to a population who currently do not possess any farming skills. Therefore i do foresee them continuing.Not so, though, in the regions where the land is now in the hands of many small-farmers who have been feeding populations in a fairly sustainable manner for generation after generation. Transforming those farms into "economy of scale" plantations as the current land-grabbing in intent upon accomplishing and encouraging the surplus rural workers to urbanise, i do not consider a worthwhile objective. ALB has previously drew my attention to the fact that much uplands is only suitable for goats and sheep. i am no expert but i can envisage such rough pasture may well be turned into arable fields. The crofts of Scottish Highlands were producing oats and potatoes and kale and turnips before being turned over to sheep during the Clearances. Here may well be where GM will have a useful role…increasing the adaptability of different varieties. No matter how you honey-coat it by saying animal husbandry will improve and become more humane, ham involves the killing of a sentient life-form when there is no life or death reason for doing so.It is the continuation of the religion that man has been given dominion over all life, rather than more enlightened religions that talk of harmony with nature. But please note, though, the blog has been currently posting critically on the p anti-cow-killing hindu fundamentalism happening in India."Pork Pies or Socialism…we want our pork pies…"I recall when a kid, getting chicken only at Xmas, can't remember it ever progressing to revolutionary demands for chicken every day. Same with satsumas and mandarins…seasonal fruits that were a once a year treat…but with global market, they are always on the shelf. But again the blog has been criticial of the carbon-footprint claims of the local food movement
Quote:your recent post about becoming the leader of the party and being carried around in a sedan chair whilst you make all of the decisions was not mere jest. Apparently you decide what future food production will entail, no room for debate what you think is how it will be.And what i said was
Quote:How people in socialism will conduct daily life is not for us to determineAnd i thought i used plenty of caveats to leave ample room for debate and discussion.
If you want a small allotment with a few chickens and a couple of pigs and goat or two, i am sure you will be able to. However on the bigger picture production (and that includes food) will be a social process. Your individual tastes will be just that , mostly individually produced or at most, net-worked by like-minded hobbyists.I am in no doubt that meat-eating smoking and drinking will decline dramatically. Because of the environmental damage and demands, and the need for a more sustainable farming industry, live-stock will drop in numbers, so i do think your pork-pies will become a luxury dish to be savoured on special occasions and festivals.Do you know how to slaughter and butcher a pig? I doubt very much that the existing workers will continue in the abattoirs – read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair – and conditions have scarcely improved over a century as the oft-repeated exposes regularly and frequently revealThat chemicalised piss will be replaced by micro-breweries in local speciality beers. Moon-shine will once more make a re-emergence but this time it won't be made out of anti-freeze and industrial ethanolTobacco plantations will disappear as most likely will tea and coffee (i have talked about it before) as workers migrate to more rewarding farm-work of producing food and not cash-crops. (I believe a tobacco farm existed in Berwickshire during WW2 so not only will it be roll your own it will be grow your own) Local cultures will no doubt carry on traditions. Cubans will smoke their havanas. Mind altering drugs will probably be used on the same scale as today and for the same purpose…relaxation and recreation. But glue-sniffing will go the way of meths-drinking. I think Bolivians will still chew the coca leave and Africans eat Khat as older Asian chew betel nut. But newer generations will maybe less inclined to follow these traditions since i do think as the title of the thread infers, men and women and children will be more desirous of a healthy meaningful life and the advertising and sponsorship industries won't be promoting sugar-addiction and fat-saturated junk-food. I image a completely new mind-set in people. To be honest, i recognise it now in younger folk's behaviour the older i get and the old fogie i am becoming. Those who indulge will perhaps have a garden shed with solar-power lights and hydroponics and again there will be the regionalisation of types. But will pharmaceutical factories produce E and other manufactured synthetic highs? Again, i think society will decide to forgo such and concentrate upon the life-saving and enhancing drugs. But once more, perhaps a few self-taught chemists will make and circulate pills.We can only speculate on marriage and sexual relationships but even these days as the economic chains are loosened for women, no longer is the ring on the finger the same as the ring through the nose. No longer are women slaves to the kitchen and with an increase in communal eating and the end of consumer white household appliances will increase social-living. I still recall the neighbourhood laundry-house, the old steamie, not the launderette but same applies…work will be where people meet and talkLGBQT will liberated people from imposed sexual roles and so-called norms. We will become accustomed to more than one sex or gender.Anyways, i think we should go a bit lighter on Prakash. I think he come from a country that is in transition culturally…a country where dowry and honour killing are common in marriage, where caste determines what you eat and cannot eat, what you work as and where you live. A country where prohibition is still a political issue and with an alcohol problem that makes us all seem like tee-totallers. So give Prakash some slack.Thinking back, our own WSP India expelled a member for attending a religious wedding of a relative (i stand to be corrected on that) because locally they feel a need to be particularly anti-religion. Now, how many members would we have if mere attendance at a religious do was grounds for expulsion. But on the otherhand, I know of one Glasgow member who was brow-beaten by his sectarian family into going on an Orange Walk and when spotted could never again show face at his branch ever again (a VV tale)How peoople in socialism will conduct daily life is not for us to determine but just as sexism, racism and nationalism is something we deal with in our own lives at present, perhaps we can add life-style issues to behaviour that is becoming to or not nbecoming for a socialist. Closer to socialism, Prakash strictures on what we should do and not do will become more prominent and a member who chooses to munch on a pork-pie in public will be frowned upon as much as a member who lights up a cigarette at the EC table. Who knows…
http://www.countercurrents.org/Just in case you have not heard of it, Countercurrents is an Indian (Kerala) based website with a very open and inclusive policy when it comes to publishing articles. They have published a number of my own. Binu Matthews is a very welcoming editor. Perhaps you could submit your article to them. http://www.countercurrents.org/countercurrents-submission-policy/
Marx (and Engels) wrote extensively on their "ideology" and their works would have continued to be gnawed away by mice if they did not begin to discuss the application of their ideas with the real movement of the workers and to participate in the actual movement themselves, something they had done from their beginnings as passive philosophers a la Stirner but becoming active journalists reporting politics, then joining such workers organisations as the Communist League then later the IWMA.The charge you are making LBird that i deny my own ideology i think is misplaced. I prioritise it in my view of it. I did so the day i chose that agreeing 100% with 100% of the membership of the SPGB was not necessary but what i did accept was that i had much in common with the majority of them and that the points of difference were not so vastly apart or irreconcilable that they could not be overcome by debate and discussion – something that is still ongoing as many will acknowledge from the temper of some of my posts.The need to begin to be part of the great process of social change was more vital than some of my own pet theories (ideology) and individual interpretation of the class struggle, past, present and future.It would be indeed utopian to suggest that the SPGB is the ideal vehicle for achieving socialism, but it is the best we got right now. Or can you offer a better alternative, LBird? What is ideology that remains outside practice? Religion and the belief in a non-interventionist "god"? The test of ideology is its application. Educate Agitate Organise. You may well believe the first is the prime imperative but without the pillars of the other two, then any edifice will tumble (as the Wobblies discovered, mezinks).Again some will note that the content of my posts emphasise the second principle as the one lacking most within the SPGB.While some members concentrate on party matters so to provide a home for the organise option…but i think the future of the workers movement does not rest with the SPGB as a political party and thus, i have invited the forum to discuss the various means that "workers democracy" can materialise and be expressedThe choice is yours whether you are willing to put any flesh on to the bones of your own ideology, LBird.
Hmmm…did i try to disguise my "ideology"?
Quote:One key problem, alan, is that the way you lay out the 'issue' is prejudiced from the start."Personally, i believe…I think…or at least i think"…yup, i'm prejudiced alright for declaring my very own thoughts on the matter…As i said before, it is time to move on….your own ideology has been done to death on this forum.I'm sure you, yourself, will have thoughts that feature the words brick wall and head banging.Let us go through the application of our theories…our philosophies… and see just how in conflict they are when we analyse workers democracy being taken from the realm of ideas and implemented as political policy or how we wish them to be exercised. I think we will find we have much more in common and this hurling of Leninist invective back and forth when placed into actual context of reality." Language serves not only the purpose of distinguishing things but also of uniting them – for it is dialectic." =DietzgenWas it Vin or Mod1 who asked …what is workers democracy?…Let us answer this without the esoteric espousing or should i say posturing and permit us all to join in
Personally, i believe there can be a quite constructive debate with LBird when this "workers democracy" is discussed in practical terms, rather than high-faluting philosophical terms….(yes, i know, philosophy has importance but theory is often over-ridden by practice and implementation)LBird being more a traditionalist worker councilist than some of us in the SPGB who having had the history of debating syndicalism and industrial unionism and sovietism feel that democracy of the work-place stops short of community/society control and our concept of socialiisation of production and distribution.I think Robbo in his writings elsewhere and ourselves have a very valid case that we are not for adding additional layers of administration but for promoting a much more automaticity in decision-making and consumption, removing the necessity of constant voting.I also know that YMS and ALB (or at least i think they do) favour various modification to present bodies such as local councils and even Parliament/State organs which is worth expanding upon.Democratic communism will have a structure that can be detailed with broad brush-strokes and while some lessons can be deduced from the past, too often these examples were built upon historic necessity of the times and can be judged as bastardised forms of democratic communism in action…starting with the Paris Commune and all those well-known later events, Russia Germany Itay Spain HungaryPerhaps, some will consider all this idle speculation over blueprints but exchanging opinions over concrete manifestations or embryonic expressions of social democracy/industrial democracy need not be a sterile exercise
In defence of LBird, i think he has a fundamental difference with the SPGB and may suffer a form of "OCD" when it comes to repeatedly discussing his views on this forum at every opportunity regardless of the relevance to the thread, imho.Thus i do think he should be monitored a bit more stringently to ensure that he is following the guidelines and i do believe he has been suspended on occasions by the moderator. A Troll he is not, however, no more than those who regularly engage him in debate and discussion, and who are perhaps equally culpable for the distraction, are guilty of being Trolls. A few of my recent messages has raised the issue whether this engagement in polemics has well and truly run its course and no longer resulting in any benefit for the contributors. Until they acknowledge this, i fear there is little that can be done.
The post now appears to have disappeared but from memory in regards to Lydon thread, Bob Andrews commented "There's never a Mark Chapman around when you need one". (29 Mar at 3:44 PM)..Mark Chapman killed John Lennon…i took that to be an inference that he would approve of John Lydon being murdered for expressing political ideas. I don't think i imagined the post and can only surmise that the Moderator was on the ball and deleted it. And perhaps i should not have raised the topic and let it be.
A lefty reformist answer to the UBI issue by promoting that "full employment", another mirage, is a better tactichttp://www.truth-out.org/news/item/40022-why-socialist-job-guarantees-are-better-than-universal-basic-income
Just to be clear, this forum does not endorse murder and suggesting such an act, in my view, deserves a permanent ban from the forum.
I went on a few protests with my union and got relative overly-generous expenses paid to me. I recall during the UK miners strike, pickets were also paid expenses, a vital income for many.Nor is the idea too far away from the principle of paid officials, political party or union or even MP's pay. Even our own organisation will pay for travel and meals to members. Even anarchists like Emma Goldman was paid speakers fees and the audiences charged to hear her, much like any professional performer.
