ALB
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Good debate in which Bill put the case for socialism excellently. Worth listening to if you’ve a spare 90 minutes.
Good debate. I am not sure that the anarcho-capitalist had come debated anyone before arguing against the existence of the coercive State and for voluntary agreement like him but also against the capitalist economic system of production for the market with a view to profit. But he must surely have come across others calling themselves anarchists who take up this position.
Of course the anarcho-capitalists start from the assumption that the right to property derives from someone having paid for something out of their earnings from work. But, as Bill pointed out, production today is not individual but a collective effort involving all those involved in producing something (ultimately everybody who works); on the argument that the right to property derives from work this would justify socialism as common ownership and from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. Not that this is an argument that we use since, as Bill also pointed out, we don’t argue in terms of “rights”. But it is one anarcho-capitalists have to answer but can’t.
It doesn’t imply that at all. Of course science is a human construct — a phenomenon of the mind as Marcos points out — and so is also culturally influenced. What we are looking for is a description that reliably predicts the course of a series or set of phenomena and so is of more practical use.
But you need to be careful, Wez, in case you catch bird flu — and have to self-isolate 😊
I think, perhaps inadvertently, you have put your finger on it: that the language of dialectics is a cultural way of describing observed phenomena learned in particular by those who attended a German university in the first half of the 19th century (like you know who).
In other words, as Marcos has pointed out, dialectics is one way of describing observed changes in phenomena not something that is in the phenomena themselves. It belongs to the realm of human thought not to that of “Nature”.
I am sure it is possible to describe observed changes in this language even if this might be a bit convoluted. Anyway, have a go at explaining how water changes from liquid to gas or how an animal species evolved in terms of changes in “internal relations”. I am sure you can.
We do love philosophy discussions here. But, to be fair, we do discuss other things too,
Heavy going but this is the passage I retained (from the German Ideology):
“where real life starts, there consequently begins real, positive science, the expounding of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of people. Phrases about consciousness end, and real knowledge has to take their place. When reality is described philosophy as an independent pursuit loses its medium of existence. At the best its place can only be taken by a summing-up of the most general results, abstractions which are derived from the observations of the historical development of people. These abstractions in themselves, divorced from real history, have no value whatever. They can only serve to facilitate the arrangement of historical material.” (Marx and Engels 1976, 37)6
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.
