alanjjohnstone
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A longer version of this article is now available at the Countercurrents websitehttp://www.countercurrents.org/johnstone020615.htm
Hud, We have always disinguished between private property and personal possessions.What if i covetted that signed first edition of Capital that you had on your book shelf and took it. There has to be a mechanism of resolution and arbitration on the disputed possession of it (perhaps after some detective work by some agency to determine that i was indeed the culprit and not another person)I am, of course , discussing the earlier days of socialism where personality traits are to some degree still influenced by the conditions of our upbringing. We have recognised laws that says the evidence is put to our peers who determine guilt or not. Do we begin all over again, or permit that type of justice to evolve in its own time to something else that reflects what people want and expect from accepted rules.Take the age of consent which will determine if someone is a paedophile of not. Culturally reached in many cases rather than biological. The importance in power realtionships is shown in the amendments that raises the age when the role of one is a position of responsibility..such as a teacher, yet in work where possible the same power-relationship can still exist, it is dealt with by sexual harassment laws and not automatically a crime. So we have blurred lines of justice that communities must accommodate in their appliction and apportion guilt and sanctions.I used to talk about being ostracised and exile as tools of punishment, but in our global community where travel and re-inventing oneself is very easy, is it now appropriately effective.I agree with your earlier statement…socialism and a socialist society will be dynamic…changing and evolving and adapting…but isn't that the argument being used by Vin, YMS in defence of the State withering and not being abolished, that it too does not remain the same…
Will there not be some sort of universal norms of behaviour that all communities and localities must abide by, Brian?…Or will the customs, traditions, norms and values of, say, Auchtermurchy, take precedence when i enter that village even though i have been brought up to follow the customs, traditions, norms and values of, say, Llanelli. Don't we say democracy will be local, district, regional and wider afield until global. Aren't we going to defend the liberties of those that are descriminated against in those loclities that lag behind…the fundamentalist Bible Belt of America, say. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/gives an idea to the extent of the challengeWhat about the lawyer profession..socially necessary? Or do we follow Shakespeare's advice "The first thing we must do, kill all the lawyers." Henry VI
On further reading, The Coronation Oath Act 1688 provided a new coronation oath, whereby the monarchs were to "solemnly promise and swear to govern the people of this kingdom of England, and the dominions thereunto belonging, according to the statutes in parliament agreed on, and the laws and customs of the same".As an aside, i note that we have a very similar right to bear arms under the 1688 Act as Americans have under their 2nd Amendment – but only if you are a proddy. The present thread has neglected the issue of the courts and law. In abolishing the State, do we burn the courthouses and the law-books? Surely not. In the beginning of socialism, won't we maintain much of the same legal principles as the late capitalist society and only those legal principles that are contrary to socialist principles will be abolished. Do we retain the police to enforce socially acceptable laws albeit in a different form?
YMS, just what will be the socialist position regards the Privy Council, that you previously raised. Upon reading a bit more about it, the powers it can assume are considerable. The most blatant use of it was the eviction of the Chagos Islanders from Diego Garcia. In the 1960s, the Privy Council made an order to evict the 2,000 inhabitants. In 2000 the High Court ruled the 1971 Immigration Ordinance preventing resettlement unlawful. In 2004, the Privy Council, under Jack Straw's tenure, overturned the ruling. In 2006 the High Court of Justice found the Privy Council's decision to be unlawful. Sir Sydney Kentridge, QC described the treatment of the Chagossians as "outrageous, unlawful and a breach of accepted moral standards". He said there was no known precedent "for the lawful use of prerogative powers to remove or exclude an entire population of British subjects from their homes and place of birth".[88][90][91] The Court of Appeal agreed, but the Law Lords (then Britain's highest court), reversed the ruling in a 3–2 decision and upheld the ordinance.The Civil Service is formally governed by Privy Council orders, as an exercise of the royal prerogative. One such order implemented the government's ban of GCHQ staff from joining a trade union. Another, the Civil Service (Amendment) Order in Council 1997, permitted the Prime Minister to grant up to three political advisers management authority over some civil servants. We have debated in the Party of the taking of the oath to take the seat in Parliamnet and concluded we would indeed swear allegience to the monarchy. There are 600 Privy Councillors…not elected but appointed…and they have no automatic right to attend Privy Council meetings and are invited to attendI certainly see a situation that if the king or queen has not sided with the people and supported socialism, constitutionally, the State machinery cannot be legally captured because of the Privy Council's over-riding privileges and power which would take us to legal litigation that would then leave the military with the reasonable excuse that its the authority of command is in limbo and will not act on behalf of a socialist parliament. From past exchanges and contributions from you , YMS, you relish answering those type of comundrums that we may eventually face, so i'm happy to hear your various scenarions centred on the role and function of the privy council
Well, well, well…from a conference that featured both Hedges and Wolffhttp://www.leftforum.org/I'm sure the moderator will ignore that we now are discussing not Chris Hedges on Blanqui, but Chris Hedges on Karl Marx and declaring Marx was right. http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/06/01/marx-was-right
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-32965554Each year during summer solstice, it's thought that 10,000 dogs are cooked and eaten in Yulin, in Guangxi province in southern China, as part of the city's yearly dog meat festival. Dogs are regularly eaten in Asia (during the World Cup, Korea stopped restaurants from serving it.)Not sure why they single out this festival and not, for instance, turkeys at Christmas and Thanksgiving festivals. I know of neighbours, who dog-owners and dog-lovers themselves, who eat dog because it is a budget meat protein. Problem is much of the meat are from rounded up strays, so many are diseased and infected with parasites. I'm not sure cooking completely eradicates and cross-contamination with kitchen utensils is probably high. Occasionally the TV will carry footage of the illegal transportation of dogs caged like battery-hens.
I think the author disparages the impact of the Charter of the Forest a little unfairly. The Carta de Foresta has arguably been the most significant of the two. For a differing view see an article i wrote for the Dissident Voice websitehttp://dissidentvoice.org/2015/02/the-greater-and-better-charter/
I've drawn attention to the thin edge of the wedge regards the use of anti-hatred laws to stifle debate about Israel in Canada. I now read about the Northern Territories in Australia new police powers.The Northern Territory's "paperless arrest" laws are perhaps the antithesis of what the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody had in mind.Introduced late last year, the laws give police the power to lock someone up for four hours for minor offences like making undue noise; swearing in public; or keeping a front yard untidy. A person locked up under these powers has no effective opportunity to challenge their detention or to ask a court to release them. The police essentially act as both judge and jury.Those paperless arrest laws have already been used an extraordinary amount of times – more than 700 times in their first three months of operation. It also showed that they are having a disproportionate impact: more than 75 per cent of people arrested have been Aboriginal.This inequality is perhaps unsurprising. In the Northern Territory, Aboriginal people comprise about 30 per cent of the general population, yet more than 85 per cent of the prison population. The Northern Territory's imprisonment rate is around three times the national average, and closer to America's than any other Australian jurisdiction.Whatever the government says about the supposed limitations of restrictive laws….it's a lie.
I sometimes resort to quoting James Cannon in debates with Trotskyists to show that socialism is a moneyless society although he too advocates the "withering away" of money via intermediate stages.
Quote:the accounting arrangements automatically registered by money wages based on gold will at a certain stage be replaced by labour certificates or coupons, like tickets to the theatre. But even that, eventually, will pass away. Even that kind of accounting, which would take up useless labour and be absolutely purposeless, will be eliminated. There will be no money, and there will not even be any bookkeeping transactions or coupons to regulate how much one works and how much he gets.https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1953/socialistamer.htmAnd when they counter Cannon is talking about communism, i refer them to this statement by him.
Quote:Q: Is there socialism in the Soviet Union?A: No—well, I would like to clarify that now. Socialism and communism are more or less interchangeable terms in the Marxist movement. Some make a distinction between them in this respect; for example, Lenin used the expression socialism as the first stage of communism, but I haven’t found any other authority for that use. I think that is Lenin’s own particular idea. I, for example, consider the terms socialism and communism interchangeable, and they relate to the classless society based on planned production for use as distinct from a system of capitalism based on private property and production for profit.https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1941/socialism/ch02.htm Cannon was moreorless repeating Trotsky on money
Quote:Only when socialism succeeds in substituting administrative control for money will it be possible to abandon a stable gold currency. Then money will become ordinary paper slips, like trolley or theater tickets. As socialism advances, these slips will also disappear, and control over individual consumption – whether by money or administration – will no longer be necessary when there is more than enough of everything for everybody! Such a time has not yet come, though America will certainly reach it before any other country.Cheers, i got the Daily Mail, but didn't help get me BBC iPlayer…so it isn't quite anonymous when they can detect i'm outside the UK
"I think you'd be better 'citing' me, alan."Maybe i would be better with Dietzgen quote" If a worker wants to take part in the self-emancipation of his class , the basic requirement is that he should cease allowing others to teach him and should set about teaching himself." – Joseph Dietzgen
Luxemburg is a gold-mine of quotable commentaries on the class struggle.
Quote:In its capacity as a political party, the Social Democracy becomes the haven of all discontented elements in our society and thus of the entire people, as contrasted to the tiny minority of capitalist masters. But socialists must always know how to subordinate the anguish, rancor, and hope of this motley aggregation to the supreme goal of the working class. The Social Democracy must enclose the tumult of the nonproletarian protestants against existing society within bounds of the revolutionary action of the proletariat. It must assimilate the elements that come to it.But perhaps that quotation is more apt to the reform and reformism thread.
"… 'Assuming responsibility' before we have our democratic ideas in place will lead, as usual, to workers' tears…"Lbird, i have to cite Luxemburg
Quote:A manual of regulations may master the life of a small sect or a private circle. An historic current, however, will pass through the mesh of the most subtly worded paragraph….The working class demands the right to make its mistakes and learn the dialectic of history. Let us speak plainly. Historically, the errors committed by a truly revolutionary movement are infinitely more fruitful than the infallibility of the cleverest Central Committee.Some of Wolff may be acceptable and as usual it is mostly his historical analysis but when it comes to contemporary political action, overall, i find his reformism i.e. his advocacy of WSDEs unpalatable and, worse, anti-socialist. He is a shameless advocate of the Mondragon model of co-operatives and for banking structures on the lines of the North Dakota State Bank. You are very right to add the caveat that you offer no carte blanche endorsement of him. His differences with the WSM and other Marxist scholars such as Kliman run deep. He and Gar Alperovitz are real dangers to the socialist movement, IMHO, and whatever their academic merits are outweighed by their "practical" politics.
