ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
That old press cutting (found no doubt by using digital technology) shows precisely why the possibility taken up by the Louvre will never be fully used under capitalism and won’t be able to be till we get socialism when, of course, there will no longer be ownership rights over books and other works of art.
Incidentally, nobody here (and as far as I know noboy anywhere) has suggested that physical books should disappear. I don’t think that’s going to happen even under capitalism. They talk of paperless offices but that will be the case in socialism too, even if for a different reason — most of the paperwork today has to do with money in one way or another and that won’t exist.
Looks as if the military has won and that there’s no point in trying to resist further at the moment. As long as the armed forces remained loyal to their leaders this was inevitable. It was worth a try to test the balance of forces but now seems the time for sullen acceptance that the military junta have the upper hand for the time being.
“I must say that I don’t think you ever loved books or saw them as anything other than text.
“Just couldn’t resist a put down, could you?”
“I find myself rushed all the time, constantly apologising for harsh words sent in a hurry.”Apology accepted, comrade.
You have completely missed my point. Which was not that digital books are better than paper ones but that digital devices could allow millions of people access to exact copies in all details of editions of books that they can’t in that form in any other way. The same applies to paintings.
I’d have thought you’d would have welcomed a technological advance that enabled more widespread access to things you consider aesthetic in a form that reproduced not just the text but the way it was presented.
I prefer to read books in paper form but my preferences are as irrelevant and as boring as yours.
In socialism you will be able to have a smartphone or other device with a screen the size of a book on which you can read exact copies of the Book of Kells and Morris’s edition of Thomas More’s Utopia as you sit in a cafe in Paris. Everybody will be, not just scholars in some specialist library and having to wear white gloves.
You should listen to the talk and discussion when it eventually appears on the site here. Pre-digital printing did involve a lot of skills which have now disappeared but it seems that, for mass printing, digital printing is better in that it avoids the use of solvents and heavy manual work. Of course, as you say, it was developed to make more profits and involved smashing the print unions first.
I think we can be sure that in socialism there will be artisanal printing. In fact even under capitalism these has been an expansion of this, to cater for a niche market made up, dare I say it, of aesthetes.
If you were able to take part in these discussions (as I think you can since, despite your digitalophobia, you seem to have a smartphone) you might alter you view that other members have been dumbed down or are in favour of this.
I don’t object to the word “aesthete” as such. Apparently there is even a Marxist theory of aesthetics (not sure what it is, though). But anyone who describes themself as one runs the risk of being considered an intellectual snob. There may also be some confusion with the word “effete”.
Incidentally yesterday evening’s talk on Discord about changes in the printing industry did lead to a discussion on printing books in socialism. There will no need for all books to be printed digitally (though it will make sense to print up textbooks and manuals in this way) and plenty of scope for artisanal printing of books à la William Morris. The question of the dangers involved in pre-digital printing of having to use solvents to clean the ink off the plates did come up. Nobody suggested abolishing printing books in favour of ebooks.
But genocide is not gas chambers and extermination of people. Under international law it is the destruction of cultural identity.
I checked and you’re right. That is how the UN define it but it’s not what most people would understand by it or that those who use it for propaganda purposes intend that people should.
In all other contexts the suffix “cide” implies killing, so genocide should mean mass killing of a whole people. Given the new definition you might conclude that all Hitlerite Germany was doing was trying to destroy Jewish cultural identity.
In any event, I don’t think we should misuse the word in this way.
The Chinese government may be persecuting the Uighur but they are not trying to kill them all off. No wonder they are pissed off by the likes of Sir Ian Douglas Smith, who appears to be the MP for Washington DC, who suggests that they are.
Do you believe all these atrocity stories about what the Chinese government is supposed to be doing to the Uighers? They seem to be giving them a hard time but rape and murder and genocide?
They seem to be exaggerations put around by the US rulers (and their poodles in Britain) as they have come to realise that Chinese capitalism is a real threat to their domination.
And the Uighur nationalists are not all goodies. They are Islamist who want to establish an Islamic state in what they call East Turkestan and provided more than their share of ISIS terrorists. In fact I think they still have a band operating in Syria.
I think we should be wary of jumping on the pro-Uighur bandwagon and believing all of the stories they are putting around.
Glad you clarified that as it seemed to be endorsing the view that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism”. Which would be a strange view to be expressed on a socialist forum.
And of course you are right, the working class are not dumb. Who do those who subscribe to this view think runs the world from top to bottom, keeps society going? Who designed and sent a robot to Mars? Who developed an anti-covid vaccine in record time? Who builds and runs the technology that makes a socialist world of sustainable abundance possible?
Most may not be “aesthetes” but that doesn’t mean that they are dumb. It just means that they are not intellectual snobs.
Now you are exaggerating (not about being a bad anarchist but about “bourgeois democracy” in Britain “becoming indistinguishable” from red or brown fascism). Even you don’t believe that. Where is the supreme Leader? Where are the mass rallies? Where are the internment camps? Where is the Single Party? Where the monolithic state ideology?
Here, the expression of a very wide range of political views is permitted as is criticism and mockery of the government. We still exist, hold meetings and publish literature. So does the ACG.
For more on Big Brother and on the new Bill on demonstrations wait for next month’s Standard (out next week)
It might make for a more interesting and relevant discussion if you developed this hypothesis that you advanced (assuming that it is not a case of “I like annoying people in this way“):
“The traditional view of an educated, historically aware working class must then be abandoned, to be replaced with a different scenario: some kind of spontaneous explosion whereby the historically ignorant become united through necessity, not knowledge.”
All of the articles in the Socialist Standards of 1920-23 and 1927-29 are now online. Also those from February-May and December 1925 and from March-June and August and September 1926.
This was the decade of the industrial unrest after WW1, the General Strike, the first Labour Government and the development of state capitalism in Russia. Also recorded are the reformism of the ILP and the antics of the CPGB. Nationalisation is exposed as a fraud from a working class point of view. For Marxist theory in English, apart from Engels, members had to rely on Plekhanov and Lafargue.
The articles can be found here.
I still don’t know what the purpose of this thread is. It seems to be just to allow TM to self-indulgently moan about how dumb those he meets are (and by how clever he is). You try to broaden the subject but he just returns to grumbling.
Any chance of it going the same way as the “woke” thread?
I would have thought we expect most of the majority needed before socialism can come into being will be materialists in the sense of being non-religious. After all, socialism is a practical project to make things better down here on Earth for the one and only life we all have.
I don’t know about the extent of the historical theory and knowledge they will need to have. Certainly not a degree in history or even O level history (but I don’t think that exists any more now that the good old days have gone?). I can’t see why it would need to be all that extensive, just that capitalism came into existence some centuries ago, couldn’t solve the problems it caused working class in particular and humanity in general and is about to be consigned to the dustbin of history.
