ALB
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Ray seems to be using the same argument as the Remainers that the 2016 referendum wasn’t democratic because (a) a majority of the electorate didn’t vote for it and (b) that those that did were misinformed. In fact he seems to be going further and saying that these apply to all elections under capitalism.
But neither stand up. If (a) was true then our party will probably never have taken a democratically valid decision and that this will be rare even in socialism. Having said this, I can agree that, in important changes to devcision-making provcedures, a “super-majority” could be required. I also think it shows that referendums are not the best way to make decisions.
As to (b), no doubt the majority of those who vote for capitalism have been brainwashed in one sense or another and maybe enough voters were misled by lying propaganda during the referendum campaign to get Leave over the line. But that’s not the issue. It is not why people vote for what they do, but whether elections, here in Britain under capitalism, accurately record how they voted and so are democratic in that sense.
I would say they do. I have been an election agent for the party in many elections and have attended many counts. At these I have never seen any evidence thst the elections were not properly conducted or that the votes were not accurately counted. The sad fact is that the vast majority in Britain currently want capitalism in one form or another and any election, however perfectly organised and conducted, will give this result. A majority want capitalism and get it.
The other thing of course is that we as socialists do not require or expect the political institutions of capitalism to be perfect from a democratic point of view (they can’t be in a class-divided society), only that they are sufficiently democratic to allow a socialist majority to win control of political power. It has always been our case that in Britain they are.
No I didn’t see that list (it doesn’t appear automatically) but have now and it is interesting who is on it and who isn’t. It might be as you suggest because we are a registered political party and contest elections. That might explain the absence too of the Communist Party of Britain but not that of the New Communist Party nor, as far as I could see, any of the Maoist parties.
Maybe it is just a list of commonly seen logos. I would agree with your point that it is probably a good thing we’re not on the same list as them.
There was a strange one for the Anarchist Communists — a combination of the anarchist A sign and the hammer and sickle — but does a group with that logo actually exist?
How do you know we are not on this list? Have you seen it?
“Among the groups listed with no known link to terrorist violence or known threat to national security are Stop the War, the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, vegan activists, anti-fascist groups, anti-racist groups, an anti-police surveillance group and campaigners against airport expansion. Communist and socialist political parties are also on the list.”
Or the government will continue some of it and proclaim it as some new initiative to “regenerate” the North or wherever. In any event, ordinary people are not going to notice much difference either way. Certainly not on 1 February (except for the sound of church bells chiming in some places), if only because the UK will still be in the EU economically. They won’t notice much difference either on 1 January 2021, when new trading arrangements with the EU are supposed to come in. But much of these are likely to be window-dressing with the UK taking the “independent sovereign decision” to do what it would have done had it still been in the EU.
Meanwhile Greta is accused of wanting to get rid of capitalism. If only, but who knows, after all it is the logic of her position.
So it’s the Grauniad journalist or sub-editor highlighting their own prejudices then, even if Attenborough is on record as having expressed such views in the past?
Makes you wonder what would happen if one of the nuclear armed states made a similar mistake at a time of high tension. Eg India v Pakistan or Israel or North Korea.
Oh dear. Does that mean we have to pull Rod’s Open Letter to him due for publication in next month’s Socialist Standard? Can we look kindly on a follower of Parson Malthus who blames overpopulation for environmental problems generally and who therefore, by implication, thinks that if the world’s population were to be reduced then these would be solved despite capitalism continuing?
But they are “extremists” — environmentalist ones like Earth First! was (are they still going or are these their descendants?) — and can’t, and no doubt don’t, expect the state to give them a free run.
Of course the state’s department dealing with illegal challenges to its authority is going to classify all “extremists” together. That’s par for the course but they won’t be that stupid as to regard this lot as the same sort of threat as Islamic terrorists (even if some of their less intelligent operatives might).
Indignation at being classified along with terrorists of one sort of another doesn’t alter the fact that their tactics are misplaced. And when these don’t work the temptation will be for some of them to escalate to violence.
That’s a perfectly logical position for anarchists who believe in agitation for immediate day-to-day issues to take up.
After all, if you sincerely believe in scrapping universal credit, saving the nhs, banning fracking, land justice, etc, etc (and are not campaigning for something as a Machiavellian “transitional demand”), then you have more chance of achieving your goal if, as well as pressuring policy deciders and implementers from outside by direct action, you also try to get people favourable to your aim into positions where they can make decisions.
Through elections. For that you’ve got a choice between the Labour Party and the Green Party but, if a national decision is required, then the Greens are no good.
It’s not them that are being incoherent but their fellow “agitationalist” anarchists.
I’ve taken your advice and read it once before reading it again. It does seem something we should reply to in detail in a future issue if the Socialist Standard.
I already noted a few points.
1. He is basically criticising that oxymoron that he sometimes calls “Marxism-Leninism” and its practice in what he calls and presumably regards as having been “socialist” countries. Since Leninism is an ideology of capitalist development in countries with a weak private capitalist class then, yes, it is “productivist” as accumulating more and more capital is what capitalism is all about.
2. Like many critics of Marxian economics (and some supporters) he completely misunderstands Marx’s conception of “value”, taking it to be something physical that exists in all societies and not just capitalism and so which will have to continue to exist in socialism too. Or, insofar as he does understand that this is not Marx’s view, he dismisses it as “metaphysical”, as does conventional academic economics. But this is to confuse wealth production with value production. All wealth is produced by the application of human labour to materials that originally came from nature, but wealth only has “value” when it is produced for sale in a market economy. This is why it won’t exist in socialism where wealth will be produced and distributed directly to meet people’s needs.
3. He accuses Marx of being in favour of “perpetual” growth whereas the most that can be said is that he was in favour of further growth even under capitalism, up to the point where a full socialist society became possible; which he recognised wasn’t yet the case in his day. But it is now. Marx’s 1875 idea of a relatively lengthy “first” stage of communist society set out in his notes on the German Social Democrats’ Gotha Programme has been overtaken by developments and is no longer relevant.
4. There is a gross distortion when he interprets a passage in the Communist Manifesto which talks of the “subjugation” of “natural forces” to mean that Marx and Engels were in favour of subjugating “nature”. But what are renewable energies but the result of subjugating, harnessing, directing, whatever, the natural forces that are the Sun’s rays, winds, waterfalls, tides, etc? Doesn’t he want to do this too?
And they thought it was easy to bring down the state as if the state wouldn’t defend itself against a direct and proclaimed challenge to its authority. Minority direct action is not going to work and looks as if, as with minority violence, it’s going to give the state a pretext to strengthen its powers. As the protest song puts it, when will they ever learn?
As both Colin Millen and the reply bring out, it depends on what you mean by “self”. He means (I think) the whole biosphere. William Morris seems to mean the individual person (through taking responsibility for their actions.) I suppose it could mean the whole community.
The word also appears in “self-management” which the old Solidarity group introduced from the French autogestion (which I see has also become an English word itself.) Both refer to a way of managing a workplace (and so are attractive to the syndicalist-minded) generally within the context of a market economy (and so are not attractive to socialists — we have called it “self exploitation”).
I don’t see what’s wrong with “democracy”, or if you want to refine it more, “participatory democracy”, which can apply to all aspects of society and not just the workplace. That avoids having to define what is meant by “self”.
Actually our Object puts it well when it refers to “democratic control … by and in the interest of the whole community.”
The other thing to bear in mind of course is that we have no control over the future evolution of language and it may be that in the future the words “state” and “government” will come to mean the unarmed central administration(s) that will exist in a socialist world. Who knows? But it will be the content not the name that will be important. Come to think of, that’s the case today too.
