ALB
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Here’s someone from another religion — I am not sure whether it is Sikhism or Hinduism — saying why he doesn’t believe in some “supreme being”:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bhagat-singh/1930/10/05.htm
Agreed “consumerism” can be seen as just an ideology but are you sure that the “undevelopers” and the “no-growthers” see it as just that? That they don’t criticise just the profit-seeking corporations that promote it but also people would fall for it? Or that they don’t want people to consume less as individuals (so as, for instance, to reduce their supposed personal “carbon footprint”)?
If we are going to use the word we need to be very careful not to be seen to criticise consumers rather than capitalism (not that capitalism is kept going by what workers spend).
Yes, Russell’s “Why I am not a Christian” is good and its implication that, as we only have one life, the best “philosophy of life” is to try to make the best of it and not hope for a better one in some non-existent afterlife.
What is lacking is that the way to achieve this for everyone is through a society based on the common ownership of the means of life, so that there can be production solely and directly to meet people’s needs and distribution on the principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”. And that this is what an individual should work for.
This article by an early socialist ( sort of) is also good against the idea of the immortality of a supposed “soul”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bax/1888/04/immortality.htm
Having said this, philosophy has largely given way today to the theory of science and to neuroscience as the study of how the brain works.
I agree that that’s the issue: hair-shirtism or a world of abundance?
In the 1970s we confidently proclaimed that socialism would be a world of abundance on the basis of modern technology. Since the recent advent of eco-pessimism with Greens and Christians telling us we have been consuming too much even under capitalism we have been less confident about this.
But, as an article in this month’s Socialist Standard explains, popular consumption is a function of capitalist economic growth. So, therefore, is so-called “consumerism” unless you think that this means that workers are paid too much. So, also, less capitalist economic growth (“degrowth” even more so) would mean less popular consumption. We can’t go along with that under capitalism (as its advocates in effect envisage). Of course, that doesn’t mean that we support capitalist economic growth. Our way-out is socialism as the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life.
We have nothing in common with those who say workers are consuming too much today under capitalism. Let’s leave that to Christians and other moralists.
I wasn’t objecting to those in the so-called underdeveloped world not wanting capitalism as we know it in “the North” to develop in their part of the world (though they won’t be able to avoid it unless socialism is established).
My objection was to those in the North who say they want to “undevelop” here. Maybe they are only objecting to the consumerism and waste of capitalism but in that case the word “undevelop” is unfortunate as, to most people as well as me, it suggests turning the clock back in some way. The word “degrowth” is even more unfortunate as it suggests a cut in people’s personal consumption.
I don’t think that we as socialists should go along with such talk. Obviously we are not for the endless accumulation of capital (“growth”) that is built-in to capitalism, but we are in favour of using modern technology rationally to satisfy people’s needs. We are not against the productive potential or the transport and communications infrastructure that have been built up under capitalism. So we shouldn’t use language that suggests that we are or might be. What we are against is their misuse under capitalism.
We don’t want to “undevelop” the North but to use what has developed here rationally for the benefit of all.
The trouble is he is frequently referred to as “America’s most prominent Marxist economist” as, for instance, here.
The book by him and Resnick mentioned at the end of Wolff’s article on China was reviewed in the Socialist Standard in June 2003.
It was clear even then what Wolff’s mistake was and where it was leading to;
”Because Resnick and Wolff concentrate on what happens at enterprise level their argument leads to the conclusion that communism can exist at enterprise level. This is, in fact, their argument; which makes producer co-operatives the typical communist organisation. Insofar as communism is equated with any kind of “common ownership” then such co-operatives could be called “communist” since the co-operative’s assets and products are commonly owned by its members. In fact, in their detailed economic history of the USSR between 1917 and 1990 that takes up most of the book, the only example of “communism” they identify in Russia are the collective farms set up in the 1930s, on the ground that, legally, the surplus they realised was not directly appropriated by state officials but belonged to the farmers as a collective group.“
So, for him, the only example of “communism” in the USSR were the collective farms. In that article he says the same about the “communes” in China:”China’s economic system is also clearly not a communism in the sense of having overcome the employer/employee structure or mode of production. To the extent that such overcoming once occurred during the era of communes early in the history of the People’s Republic of China, it mostly vanished.”So, Wolff has been wrong for a long time, even before he leapt to fame with his videos on the Crash of 2008. But we were on to him well before then.Incidentally, in the sane Study Guide section of our website there is an article on another, more obscure aspect of the theoretical position of Wolff and Resnick.Yes crackpots who want us to abandon the material basis for socialism that has been built up under capitalism. Anyway it could only happen on the basis of the common ownership of the means of life ( it’ll never happen under capitalism) but I can’t see people in socialist society wanting to go back to using stage coaches and bullock carts.
What did you expect him to say ! Something like?
”I pledge that, if elected as president of the executive committee of the US ruling class, I will at all times pursue their interests at home and abroad, irrespective of what this might involve for workers in America and other countries.”
That’ll be the day.
“From the standpoint of a higher economic form of society, private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite as absurd as private ownership of one man by another. Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries, and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition.” — Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 3, chapter 46.
Not a bad article. It confirms the observation on the thread about the wsws site that from time to time there is some interesting stuff there.
I liked this bit:
“The morning that the event was to take place, the AFROSOCialist Caucus demanded that Reed’s talk be cancelled and instead that there be a debate of his “class reductionist analysis versus our intersectional socialist analysis.”
Yes let’s debate it but with a slight change of title; class reductionist analysis versus anti-socialist intersectional analysis.
That’s the second of Craig Murray’s blogs I’ve read. This one is good. He obviously knows what he’s talking about. I might start to read his blog.
Yes that site is run by members of one of the many Trotskyist groups. This one which calls itself the “Socialist Equality Party” and originated from one of the factions within the WRP and its US section. They are orthodox Trotskyists whose only difference with other such groups is that they have a different leader. Otherwise it’s the same (the Bolshevik coup was a workers revolution, the USSR was some sort of workers state, workers need to be led by a vanguard party dangling impossible returns in front of them, etc).
Here are a couple of articles on Trotsky and Trotskyism in general:
