ALB
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I’m surprised that an anarchist should object to being described as “voluntarist”. I thought this was what anarchism was all about. Traditionally, they have accused Marxists of being “determinist”.
Incidentally I never argued that Russia had to develop capitalism just because workers there didn’t want socialism. It was because socialism isn’t possible in one country, and especially not in an industrially backward one. Capitalism would have had to develop there even if a majority had wanted socialism. There’s determinism if you !
I am not sure that the development of capitalism in parts of the world where elements of pre-capitalist class societies survive is necessarily bad for socialism. At least capitalism will spread education and lessen the oppression of women in those parts of the world. But that’s a matter for another thread.
There is an interview in today’s Times with Richard Dawkins on his 80th birthday in which the interviewer writes:
“My all-time favourite Dawkins tweet is from 2019: ‘Accosted in restaurant by Flat Earth zealot who intrusively talked at us while friend & I were trying to enjoy our meal. Finally I lost it and said, ‘You are an ignorant lunatic’”.
We know the feeling.
That’s what I’d call a real UBI scheme, not just tweaking the welfare system by paying that sort of money instead of existing paments. The trouble is that it is only intended to last for a year or so (but if it was permanent, an annual state hand-out of $12,000 would begin to exert a downward pressure on wages) and the capitalist state is not going to pay for it (and if recourse was had to the printing press this would depreciate its value through roaring inflation).
If these leftwing Democrats want to propose something realistic why don’t they propose socialism, the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources and production and distribution on the principle of “from each their ability, to each their needs” ?
Yes, Marxism is rather less voluntaristic than anarchism. There are economic laws out there and they cannot be overcome by acts of will. The sad fact is that as long as capitalism is the dominant world system there is no way out on a national scale for people anywhere, not even in the capitalistically developed parts of the world and certainly not elsewhere. This means that people in parts of the world in the same position as Russia was in 1917 are going to have to suffer capitalist development. There is nothing they can do to avoid it; the most they can do is to try to ensure that this takes place in conditions of political democracy. “Think global, act local” sounds ok at first sight but, when you analyse it, it doesn’t turn out to be that sensible. Not that some local acts can’t bring some relief within the system for some.
I never said that industrial development in Russia was needed under capitalist conditions and certainly not in the form it took under Stalin. If socialism had been established in the rest of the world in 1917 or 1921 or before, any industrialisation of a part of the world in the same condition as Russia then was could have taken place under the quite different conditions of socialism.
My argument was, given that world socialism wasn’t established (because the great majority of the workers of the world didn’t want it), then industrialisation under capitalist conditions was inevitable in Russia. It was going to happen, though it could have taken a different form, with more private capitalism, than it did. So there was some historical leeway.
But could some sort of non-capitalist society have been established in Russia on its own if a majority there had wanted it? It’s a bit of an academic question now since it didn’t happen so there’s little point in asking you what it might have been like. But I doubt it.
What isn’t academic is the situation today. Is further capitalist industrialisation needed in the the largely non-industrialised parts of the world? I say No. But how to avoid it? By world socialism or by some attempt to establish some sort of non-capitalist society in one country or region? What should revolutionaries like us be aiming for the workers to do?
More on the struggle for profits amongst Big Pharma companies supported by their governments.
From another article in today’s Times headed “why did Americans take jab at Astra?”
“It’s too trite to suggest it’s to protect US alternatives developed for profit by Pfizer and Moderna, shooting for $15 billion and €18.4 billion in sales this year.”
Because AstraZeneca is not aiming at a maximum profit for the time being, selling its vaccine at cost price (actually a bit above this but still below what they could charge) the author assumes that they are doing it “for no profit to help the world”.
How naive can you get! He doesn’t mention that this is only for the duration of the current pandemic. They are playing a longer game, using their vaccine as a loss leader and shooting for billions of dollars in the longer term when they have calculated that vaccines will still be needed.
Another case of vaccine capitalism.
A Guardian-reader noted this in their paper a few days ago about which political parties claimed furlough:
“The British National party may no longer have any councillors but it claimed up to £10,000. A spokesperson for the party, led by Adam Walker, said its employees “should not be discriminated against because some people may hold different political views than their employer”.
Very few other political parties made claims but they include Brexit Party Ltd, which is owned by Nigel Farage, and the Socialist party. Each claimed up to £10,000.”So Trotskyist professional revolutionaries are now paid by the capitalist state.
“I like annoying people in this way“.
I think we’ve gathered that, TM! But what is the point of this thread? To show that the rest of the working class are dumb and that we are therefore never going to get socialism?
ps Are you sure they don’t take you for a Belgian when you say “septante” and “nonante”? And Four score and ten sounds more archaic than ninety.
Socialism in one fortress. It’s a novel idea. It might work … for a few months.
A classic argument between Marxists and anarchists (those who want common ownership, that is) has been about when a viable communist society could be established. Anarchists (and “Utopian Socialists”) argued that it could have been and could be established anywhere and at any time in history. Marx argued that one of its conditions was productive forces capable of providing plenty for all.
This is no longer an argument today since that condition has been met, meaning that a communist society could be established tomorrow if that’s what a majority of workers wanted. That was the situation in 1921 too.
But should socialists try to establish oases or islets of communism now alongside capitalism or should they work to help get a majority of workers to want and act to achieve worldwide communism?
Before I cast my vote I need to hear the case for voting No.
I believe Marx had a go at this sort of thing:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/mathematical-manuscripts/
It’s beyond me but, twc, is there a footnote somewhere saying he thought he was elaborating a democratic proletarian calculus or that he proposed that it should be put to the vote?
According to the media, Johnson told the Tories’ 1922 committee yesterday that “the reason Britain had secured such large vaccine supplies before other countries was because of ‘greed’. He is understood to have told his MPs: ‘The reason for our vaccine success is capitalism — greed, my friends’” (today’s Times.
His PR people have since tried to row back on this but it confirms that the UK government got Astra Zeneca to give it priority over the EU by offering them a higher price.
So what is it: vaccine capitalism or vaccine nationalism?
I don’t think I said that state capitalism was the way forward for Russia (that was Lenin) but that in the circumstances capitalism in one firm or another was the only way forward. The circumstances being of course that workers neither in Russia nor, crucially, in the industrialised parts of the world wanted socialism. For economically backward and isolated Russia capitalism was the only way. Obviously socialism on a world scale was the only real way out but unfortunately that wasn’t on the cards — only if the rest of Europe and North America had gone socialist could Russia have avoided capitalism.
We can only speculate now on what alternatives to what actually happened there might have been, ideally I suppose one which allowed the working class trade Union and socialist movement some margin to develop. But it wasn’t to be. I don’t know what you think could/should have happened “in the circumstances”?
Talking of democracy, I am not sure what you mean by “anarchist type base democracy” where you don’t have to put bits of paper in a ballot box. I thought the first Kronstadt demand was for new elections to the Soviet’s with a secret ballot.
In any event, under the ideal soviet (council) system the “base” only gets one chance to vote — when electing the local soviet. Elections above that level (wider geographical area) are made up delegates from lower (smaller) soviets. Which could mean that those on the supreme (nationwide) soviet might be 5 or 6 times separate from the base one.
I am not sure that this is more democratic than directly electing the members of the region-wide decision-making body. But not up to us today to lay down or decide.
I think you are right, Wez. The absurdity of our feathered friend’s conclusion (that, in Hegelian terms, Nature has no independent existence but is a manifestation of Man’s essence) means that he has got something seriously wrong somewhere.
He is clearly out of his philosophical depth though I must confess that I am not too confident myself in interpreting (or even a fan of) Hegelian philosophy and its terminology. So put me right if I go wrong.
In that passage Marx is arguing against the view that Man and Nature are the creation of God and so are expressions of its essence; which would make them “unreal” in the sense of “inessential” (not being their own “essence”).
To refute this view, he argues that sense-experience shows that Man and Nature have no need of an alien (outside, external) “essence” to explain them. The sense-perceived existence of Man shows the existence of Nature and the sense-perceived existence of Nature shows the existence of Man. Both are therefore “essential”, ie “real”. Equally real.
Hence Marx’s conclusion that socialism (as a theory, a doctrine)
“starts from the practical and theoretical sense-perception of man and nature as the true reality” (McLelland translation).
Or, in the Marx Engels Collected Works translation, which sticks more closely to the Hegelian terminology, socialism
“proceeds from the practically and theoretically sensuous consciousness of man and nature as the essence.”
Both Man and Nature, together, are “real”. They are the “ultimate reality”. Not God. Thus Marx refutes Creationism (philosophically).
Our feathered friend is making Marx say that only Man is real in this sense, with Nature as a manifestation of Man’s essence.
This is a possible philosophical position but an odd one (a sort of collective human solipsism – collective Man thinking that everything they experience is what they have created just as an individual might think that only he or she exists). But it wasn’t Marx’s. He was a materialist in the sense that he thought that (the rest of) Nature was just as real as Man.
Here is David McLellan’s translation of that passage in the 1844 Paris Manuscripts where Marx is arguing against Creationism:
“But since for socialist man what is called world history is nothing but the creation of man by human labour and the development of nature for man, he has the observable and irrefutable proof of his self-creation and the process of his origin. Once the essential reality of man in nature, man as the existence of nature for man, and nature for man as the existence of man, has become evident in practical life and sense experience, then the question of an alien being, of a being above nature and man — a question that implies an admission of the unreality of nature and man — has become possible in practice. Atheism as a denial of this unreality, has no longer any meaning, for atheism is the denial of God and tries to assert through this negation the existence of man; but socialism as such no longer needs this mediation; it starts from the theoretical and practical sense-perception of man and nature as the true reality.” (Early Texts, pp. 156-7)
In his “Karl Marx. His Life and Thought” McLellan comments on this passage:
“Thus for socialist man the question of an alien being beyond man and nature whose existence would imply their unreality had become impossible. For him the mutual interdependence of man and nature was what was essential and anything else seemed unreal.” (pp. 122-3)
