alanjjohnstone
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Not pretending that the analysis is as insightful as your own on these exchanges but Socialism Or Your Money Back blog has just published a few slightly related posts from various sources on the topic of science, giving perhaps nuts and bolts practical examples of run-away science when there is no democracy or full social control. http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/
Aslan's CNN interview http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2013/07/30/pmt-intv-reza-aslan.cnn.html
I got lost after 1+1=2 but does it xchanges. But to return to an earler part of the thread, this By Luxemburg caught my eye:-""Socialism cannot be realized with lazy, careless, egotistic, thoughtless and shiftless men and women. A Socialist state of society needs people everyone of whom is full of enthusiasm and fervor for the general welfare, full of a spirit of self-sacrifice and sympathy for his fellow men, full of courage and tenacity and the willingness to dare even against the greatest odds.But we need not wait centuries or decades until such a race of human beings shall grow up. The struggle, the Revolution will teach the proletarian masses idealism, has given them mental ripeness, courage and perseverance, clearness of purpose and a self-sacrificing spirit, if it is to lead to victory. While we are enlisting fighters for the revolution, we are creating Socialist workers for the future, workers who can become the basis of a new social state."http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/12/20-alt.htm
I don't think he was appealing to authority to support his interpretation of Jesus's life and views but emphasising that he was an academic not a religious teacher. Even if he was Christian, would it matter if he was a baptist, catholic or whatever unless he was purposefully setting out to support that particular religion's theology. I don't think it matters much that Vermes was jewish when he wrote Jesus the Jew trilogy argueing he was little more than a eschatological preacher. Without reading the book and simply having read a review which i blogged it doesn't seem as if he is repeating the accepted Islamic interpretation of Jesus so why tar him with that brush as she seemed intent on doing. Does Chomsky and Fickelstein have to always declare their religion as disclaimer when discussing Israel and Palestine and Zionism. There actual religion is used politically like Fox uses it to dismiss them …"self-hating jews" Adam, the gospels are evidence but just hearsay thats been doctored to fit beliefs but still nevertheless evidence of such things as historical background, language/translation, customs etc which he may well have used it to bolster his premise that Jesus was more political than is customary presented. see bloghttp://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2013/07/jesus.html He should have insisted that Fox interviewer declare her own religious bias and what qualified her to form an opinion. Did you catch the woman's aside that she had indeed read many biblical scholars who have written of the "true resurrected" Jesus?
Yet a "new" conspiracy theory on the JFK assassination. The bodyguard did it. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-tragic-accident-in-the-heat-of-the-moment-new-docudrama-claims-jfk-was-shot-accidentally-by-a-hungover-secret-service-agent-8736705.html I remember reading a book about 10 years ago describing the same theory so it isn't a new one and has been satisfactory discredited. Bonar Menninger's 1992 book "MORTAL ERROR: THE SHOT THAT KILLED JFK"Hickey the bodyguard now conveniently dead got a substantial out of court settlement after Menninger's book was published No doubt it has taken on a fresh life from the recent revelations of the whoring and drinking done by Obama's secret service men on a foreign jaunt to South America. Me? I'll stick to my Aristotle Onassis did it to marry Jackie
Australia is well down the road of racist immigration policies. See Pilgers article http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/29/australia-gulag-votes-aboriginal-concentration-camps And our own earlier blog entry http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/07/australias-warm-welcome.html
I too have a few reservations with Ollman such as his apparent acceptance of socialism and communism being different stages but i think you are raising just a problem of terminology here. "New human beings who know how to co-operate and want to do so will make socialism possible" .Obviously it is not the evolution of a new species he means but i took it to read people who have acquired class consciousness, which is a change in thought and ideas and outlook and something people will need for us to achieve socialism. The old case of of the class moving on from from a "class in itself" to "class for itself". As Ollman wrote earlier in the article. "It may be the oldest idea in socialism: each of us our brothers keeper. For people to act upon this, however, they must really think of others as their brothers (and sisters), or, in this case, as members of the same class whose common interests makes them brothers (and sisters). "
While reading up on co-ops i happened upon this by Bertell Ollman which some on this thread might find of interest http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/ms_ch04.php “…There is no overriding need to build an industry from scratch. Advice from a cooperative public, computers and other modern communication technology, and, of course, repeated trial and error and correction of error will permit quick adjustments whenever necessary. Hence, there is little likelihood of making major miscalculations or of suffering much material deprivation when errors are made. I would also expect socialist planning to occur at various levels—nation, region, city, and enterprise as well as world-wide—so that many of the decisions that were taken by central planners in the Soviet Union would be relegated to planners on levels more in keeping with the actions required for the plan to succeed. Equally important is the nature of socialist democracy as it effects the economy of this time. For the workers to function as the new ruling class, it is not enough that the government act in their interests. They must also participate in making crucial political decisions, and none are more crucial than choosing the economic planners and establishing the main priorities of the plan. I would expect debates on these matters to be an essential part of politics under socialism, as workers overcome their political alienation by realizing their powers as social and communal beings. At this point, many readers are probably thinking—”But workers are not like that. They wouldn’t want to get so involved, or, if they did, the result would be chaos”. Enter the revolution, a successful revolution, since we are discussing what comes after capitalism. Market socialists don’t seem to realize what an extraordinary educational and transformative experience participation in a successful revolution would be, and consequently what workers in socialism will want to do and will be capable of doing that most workers today do not and cannot. Like most people, market socialists are simply projecting the same personalities with which they are familiar from their daily lives into the future. New conditions and experiences, however, bring out new qualities in people. Perhaps no lesson from Marx’s materialism is more obvious; yet, there can be few things that are more frequently overlooked. Marx believes that taking part in a revolution is the most powerful educational experience one can have, with its greatest impact in just those areas that are crucial for the success of what comes afterwards.20 Given the enormous power of the capitalist class, for a socialist revolution to succeed, the majority of workers will have to become class conscious, which involves, among other things, understanding their common interests, developing greater mutual concern, becoming more cooperative, and acquiring a keener interest in political affairs as well as a stronger sense of personal responsibility for how they turn out. But these are the same qualities that make building socialism after the revolution, including democratic central planning, possible. Naturally, the more transparent society is at this time, a feature on which Marx insists, the easier it will be for people to carry out their socialist functions…. …..Marx stands out from virtually all other socialist thinkers, however, in insisting that capitalism not only makes socialism necessary, it also makes socialism possible. Starting out to investigate socialism from the side of capitalism, therefore, has the additional advantage in that it enables us to give due weight to the enormous achievements of capitalism as well as to its failures in influencing the shape of the future. In the area of the market, the most important of these achievements include advanced distribution and communication networks and the technology needed to make them work, established patterns of resource allocation, extensive planning mechanisms within private corporations and public agencies, the organizational skills of all the participants, and, of course, the vast amounts of wealth already in the pipeline as well as all the material factors required to produce much more. The possibility of economic planning in socialism cannot be fully understood, let alone evaluated, apart from its necessary preconditions, which—like the main problems to which such planning is addressed—are an inheritance from the capitalist society that preceeded it. All this, and more, leaps out at anyone who begins an analysis of socialism from the vantage point of its origins in capitalism…. ….In revolutions, however, people undergo dramatic changes, and, if a revolution in an advanced capitalist country is to succeed, people will have to develop, as I’ve argued, many of the same qualities that are called upon in building a socialist society. Thus, the kind of reforms that may appear sensible today, based on people remaining pretty much as they are, will appear much less so. The market socialist suit tailored on today’s measurements will no longer fit. New human beings who know how to cooperate and want to do so will make full socialism possible. The same developments will also make it infinitely preferable to any market socialist alternative, which could only strike the people of this time as an unwieldy compromise with the past. So, if today, market socialism is merely impossible, tomorrow (or the day after) it will also be unnecessary….” http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/ms_ch04.php
You said "Yeah me too although I've always known it as demarchy, first time I've heard it called sortition." Me too but when i went to wiki for a link i came up with that definition and term you say "I think it could work very well in a socialist society for making small decisions about things that people are not particularly interested in." Lottery is valid enough method of decision making for things as important as whether a man or woman should live or die, whether a man or woman should spend their lives locked up behind bars or go free . I think justice and punishment is something most people are intersted in and we entrust the decision to (in Scotland) 15 randomly picked members of the public, not quite picked off the street but close enough. As you say it helps to ensure no rise of a bureaucracy in committees. Capitalism seems to have adopted the idea in the sense that they now all use focus groups to determine marketing and such like. There is also consumer research, mostly by telephone but also by visits has grown into an industry and if it didn't have some accuracy i doubt it would exist as much. I certain can conceive of these being used in socialism as mechanisms for feedback on what we actually make and how much of it we should produce. The idea of opinion polls has turned into quite an accurate science in determining attitudes and predicting outcomes and those are based on not quite random selection by lottery but by adding parameters to create a representative sample. I am sure those involved in this profession will devise a whole variety of even more new practical applications for a socialist society that they have not yet begun studying because still having the capitalist society blinkers on. Epidemiologal statistical research and returns is not a head count but a survey (hence the dispute over the UN sanctuion child death rate and the Lancet Iraq war death numbers figures) are used by health workers and host of others. I am not qualified to fully demonstrate how these will be adapted in socialism but when workers in these fields have become socialists and they have built workers councils and neighbourhood communes and whatever, there will be a surge in innovation and implementation. So what i am saying is that democracy and decisions in socialism need not be constant meetings and continual voting on every issue. Certainly we will be involved more in our polis but i am sure it will be combined with festivals and celebrations like the medieval fairs which usually had some economic purpose such as alloting access in the commons or choosing work placements for farm labourers. There has been some use of the word assumption on this thread and it is usually in a negative sense. An assumption can be very reliable (as also can an educated guess). A doctor assumes a certain treatment will have a particular effect. He cannot guarantee it every time but from his knowledge (sometimes second-hand) he assumes it.Socialists do make assumptions but a phrase out of favour and unpopular these days is that our political ideas is based upon "scientific socialism", we are scientific socialists. We use certain thinking processes …inductive reasoning, matrialistic conception of history…we simply do not come up with our ideas independent or outside society . We assume things but it is from precedence.
LBird wrote:I think further discussion on ‘safety net’ social mechanisms, asked for by Sotionov, is worth doingI have always had a partiality to democracy by lottery as a means of administration and decision making http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
Strange bedfellows…ourselves…LibDem and Ukip… http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk-news/2013/jul/25/coalition-row-adverts-illegal-immigrants
I should add if people cannot change then all this discussion is rather pointless because there simply will not be a socialist revolution without people changing and no socialist society to dissect how it will function. Having struggled for a new socialist society which we argue must pre-suppose a mass socialist movement and big changes in social outlook and it may well indeed be an assumption but surely that the desire for socialism and all which it entails and the actual revolutionary process will indeed influence how people will behave in socialism and towards one another. If too many people once having achieved socuialism then decide to not work, then socialism will fall apart The socialist revolution entails workers acquiring a class consciousness , or participating in political and industrial organisations to expropriate the rich and re-structure production, not just who will do the work but how things are produced and distributed. This will require decision making, and interactions with one another. I am quite reluctant to lay down expectations of what sort of procedures will evolve. We can only generalise with broad brush-strokes.the picture of what may happen. We should also rememebr that we are not starting a new society from a blank sheet of paper. Suppose the revolution was tomorrow and we had socialism people will still carry on their duties , business as usual, for the immediate time being, while at the same time adapting and changing their work-places. All those in wasteful socially useless jobs will have to be re-deployed , slotted into other work. No doubt insurance actuaries with their flair for statistics and projections and demographics will orientate themselves to planning and administation. Ex-army will find that they can remain in uniform and be used in natural disaster relief work, sent to build bridges or whatnot. Use your own imagination on how particular jobs in capitalism will disappear entirely, or become transformed into more socially productive jobs in socialism. We are talking millions upon millions of new labour-force now released from retail and commerce to be made available to lessen the hours of work for others.
At the present those who are employed in hazardous and unhealthy jobs do so because they have to, and are often in the job from16 to 60, 8 hours a day , 5 days a week, with a couple of weeks off a year. Socialists are not suggesting that this will be the normal acceptable practice in socialism. These jobs will not be done by the same people all the time. All able-bodied workers – of both sexes- will take turns at this work on a rotational basis that will be decided by those involved and not by you and i right now. Some might not go along with your slightly disparaging dismissive use of "new man (and woman)" but we should not forget that this work will be carried out by socially conscious men and women who appreciate that society now belongs to them and therefore the less pleasant tasks must be performed by them. Don't you ever clean your own toilet in your own house? Or get sweaty and dirty gardening? In the knowledge that we own and control the Earth, and all that is in it and on it , i think it unlikely that people will refuse to tackle the dirty jobs. If the health and safety is an issue and people decide that it is toodangerous to expect people to engage in such work – so be it – we will have to do without, or what is more probable , find an alternative second best choice which doesn't carry as much risk in obtaining. We shouldn't force…or bribe …or morally blackmail such workers.
“I think that communities should institute labor quotas. theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ursula-k-le-guin-the-dispossessed You probably know the book but i recommend Ursula Le Guin’s novel, The Dispossessed, was set on a planet that was unable to provide an abundance and therefore did have what you propose have various quotas and job- organising. In the book the network of administration and management is called PDC, Production and Distribution Coordination. They are a coordinating system for all syndicates, federatives, and individuals who do productive work. “They do not govern persons; they administer production. They have no authority either to support me or to prevent me. They can only tell us the public opinion of us — where we stand in the social conscience. Volunteers and selection by lot…. A bit like conscription and a labour militia. =============================================================================================== “The human/computer network of files in Divlab was set up with admirable efficiency. It did not take the clerk five minutes to get the desired information sorted out from the enormous, continual input and outgo of information concerning every job being done, every position wanted, every workman needed, and the priorities of each in the general economy of the world-wide society.” “All right, but how do you get people to do the dirty work?” “What dirty work?” asked Oiie’s wife, not following. “Garbage collecting, grave digging,” Oiie said; Shevek added, “Mercury mining,” and nearly said, “Shit processing,” but recollected the loti taboo on scatological words. He had reflected, quite early in his stay on Urras, that the Urrasti lived among mountains of excrement, but never mentioned shit. “Well, we all do them. But nobody has to do them for very long, unless he likes the work. One day in each decad the community management committee or the block committee or whoever needs you can ask you to join in such work; they make rotating lists. Then the disagreeable work postings, or dangerous ones like the mercury mines and mills, normally they’re for one half year only.” “But then the whole personnel must consist of people just learning the job.” “Yes. It’s not efficient, but what else is to be done? You can’t tell a man to work on a job that win cripple him or kill him in a few years. Why should be do that?” “He can refuse the order?” “It’s not an order, Oiie. He goes to EMvlab — the Division of Labor office — and says, I want to do such and such, what have you got? And they tell him where there are jobs.” “But then why do people do the dirty work at all? Why do they even accept the one-day-in-ten jobs?” “Because they are done together…And other reasons. You know, life on Anarres isn’t rich, as it is here. In the little communities there isn’t very much entertainment, and there is a lot of work to be done. So, if you work at a mechanical loom mostly, every tenthday it’s pleasant to go outside and lay a pipe or plow a field, with a different group of people…And then there is challenge. Here you think that the incentive to work is finances, need for money or desire for profit, but where there’s no money the real motives are clearer, maybe. People like to do things. They like to do them well. People take the dangerous, hard jobs because they take pride in doing them, they can — egoize, we call it — show off? — to the weaker ones. Hey, look, little boys, see how strong I am! You know? A person likes to do what he is good at doing…But really, it is the question of ends and means. After all, work is done for the work’s sake. It is the lasting pleasure of life. The private conscience knows that. And also the social conscience, the opinion of one’s neighbors. There is no other reward, on Anarres, no other law. One’s own pleasure, and the respect of one’s fellows. That is all. When that is so, then you see the opinion of the neighbors becomes a very mighty force.” “No one ever defies it?” “Perhaps not often enough,” Shevek said. “Does everybody work so hard, then?” Oiie’s wife asked. “What happens to a man who just won’t cooperate?” “Well, he moves on. The others get tired of him, you know. They make fun of him, or they get rough with him, beat him up; in a small community they might agree to take his name off the meals listing, so he has to cook and eat all by himself; that is humiliating. So he moves on, and stays in another place for a while, and then maybe moves on again. Some do it all their lives……" ====================================================================================== What i think is at the bottom of this discussion is that you do not agree that we are capable of producing a world of abundance, which Le Guin's world was not able to do. Really, this is not an ideological issue of disagreement. It can be answered by producing current facts and figures, and adding projections to them if necessary. The conclusion is that we do not have a natural scarcity but an artificial one imposed upon us. Technology and resources are available right now to eliminate want and raise living standards for the majority of the world's population. This is not speculation , not guess-work but the actual real situation. It is not science-fiction but science fact. We have the resources and the knowledge to do this now and imagine the potential of 3-D printing will bring. It is not utopian dream of a never-never land to have free access and to take according to needs. We can debate continuously about the mechanisms of "from each according to ability" and i am sure there will never be just one way of adopting it. Nobody is saying it will be done overnight. There will be trial and error. We will not immediately fall upon a perfect system. Experience and experimentation will determine what society has need of at a given moment. Your differences with the WSM are not that great that you should not join us.
