ALB
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Our christian friend is moving too fast when he goes from positing the possible existence of some mysterious “underlying non-material entity” to concluding that, if it did exist, this would mean that christianity is true.
Assuming for a moment that the existence of such an entity could be shown then there would be two further stages to go through. First, showing that this entity has intervened and still intervenes in the course of human history. Second, and even more implausibly, that it intervened and intervenes in the way that christianity teaches (had a son with a human, etc).
How the solar system evolved and how life did on one of its planets, the course of human social evolution and history and what happens today, can be adequately explained without recourse to the intervention of some non-material entity. So if it did exist it wouldn’t exist in any meaningful sense since it would have no effects. It would be the same position as the ancient Roman philosopher Lucretius put the gods of his day — existing somewhere but having no effect on the world and humans.
The claims christianity makes for it are patent nonsense and don’t need to be taken seriously and aren’t by most people, not even our friend it seems.
The best human approach is to realise that this is the only life we are going to have and so work to make it the best we can. This does not rule out accepting that there is more than just you as an individual. We are part of a larger whole — other humans and life-forms — but there is no need to give this the form of a non-material entity and regard it as our “Lord” before whom we must bow down and subjugate ourselves.
Ah, I see now. They are saying that “imminent” is the same as “immanent”. Perhaps it is in their warped minds.
We know that the various UN climate conferences always fail and for the same reason — the inability of the various capitalist states to agree on what needs to be done as some would suffer economically more than others, especially countries with fossil fuel resources which they use either for export or for domestic use as the cheapest energy source available.
Australia is one of these as a coal exporting country. Here is their prime minister Scott Morrison explaining the other day why Australia is not going to agree to coal burning being reduced:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-50888786
Here’s the killer quote:
”What we won’t do is engage in reckless and job-destroying and economy-crunching targets which are being sought.”
Actually, he needn’t worry as the International Energy Agency is estimating that coal burning in Asia is going to go up over the next five years, precisely the markets Australia exports its coal to:
The argument advanced by the US regime for the assassination, of an immediate danger to American lives is quite specious. If there was an immediate danger that would mean that it was about to happen, so how would killing the top person in the plan stop it? Presumably the plan was so advanced that it did not depend just on one person being alive. If he died or was killed his deputy could just step in and press the button as it were. The fact he didn’t shows that there was no immediate plan.
No doubt there was a plan and still is as the US (and Israel) and Iran are already at undeclared war with each other over who should control the oil resources of the Middle East and the trade routes and pipelines to move it out to other parts of the world.
It is just that to respect the letter of the piece of paper that is the part of the UN charter making war illegal the state engaging in acts of war has to justify its action by invoking one of its let-out clauses such as immediate danger to life or vital interest at stake.
But then we know that truth is the first casualty of war.
“they have not done their homework yet, and continue hitting the Piñata in the wrong area.“
I take it this is a reference to the MHI not us !
Here’s the US Marxist-Humanist Initiative on the result.
The first part where they discuss the Labour leadership’s apparent misjudgement that Brexit not Social Reform was going to be the issue is not bad. There is also an interesting discussion of Labour as no longer the party of “the working man” but as a coalition of different identity groups.
It goes off towards the end when they give their view of what “progressives” should have done. Not their general position that workers should not follow parties or leaders but should act for themselves (nothing wrong with that of course), but their view that the way forward is to directly confront xenophobia and racism rather than try to unite workers around an “economic populist” programme. Sadly perhaps, if Labour had done that they would have lost even more heavily.
Incidentally, their man in London, Ravi Bali, discloses that he was once a member of an unnamed vanguardist party that used to stand against the Labour Party in elections, Which can only be SPEW, can’t it? Good on him for abandoning all that. Actually, on this podcast he’s better than Kliman but, then, he is here on the ground. His 2016 article on their site on the EU referendum, in which he takes an abstentionist position, is quite good.
If this was 1914 the assassination on foreign territory of Iran’s equivalent of the head of the CIA would be a Sarajevo moment. It may turn out to be as no self respecting capitalist state can take this lying down, certainly not a medium strong one like Iran. Rocks ahead, then.
When I heard that item on the news I thought, yes, they are trying to do what the Chinese government is trying to do with the Uighurs or at least any of them they suspect of being actual or potential Islamist fanatics ie brainwash their ideas out of them. Doesn’t seem to work though. For that you’d have to change the miserable social conditions that gave rise to such a “radicalisation” and they can’t do that.
From what you said I thought it was going to be terrible, but on reading it I didn’t feel embarrassed at all. It was a quite clear and coherent exposition of the view Engels held at the time and which he expressed elsewhere. The electoral success of the German Social Democratic Party was the basis of his conclusion that the time of seizing political power by armed insurrection, barricades and street battles was over and that the way to political power now lay through the ballot box — a position we inherited.
Of course he was labouring under an illusion — that the votes cast for the SPD were votes cast for socialism whereas in fact they were mostly votes cast for political democracy and social reforms (the party’s minimum programme). This illusion was shared by other names in European Social Democracy for whom we have traditionally also had some regard such as Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg. Only later did the feet of clay reveal themselves.
I thought this passage summed up quite well his approach to elections:
“Our first plank is the socialisation of all the means and instruments of production. Still, we accept anything which any government may give us, but only as a payment on account, and for which we offer no thanks. We always vote against the Budget, and against any vote for money or men for the Army. In constituencies where we have not had a candidate to vote for on the second ballot, our supporters have been instructed to vote only for those candidates who pledged to vote against the Army Bill, any increased taxation, and any restriction on popular rights.”
Not ours, but still fairly principled if you do have a minimum programme of social and political reforms. It was maintained and within ten years some sections of the SPD were doing deals with other parties.
I didn’t find the reference to a “socialist government” particularly embarrassing either. It wasn’t Engels’s term but was introduced by the interviewer and one that has often been put to us. We of course would immediately reply “We don’t seek to form a government” but then go on to say that we still wanted a socialist majority to take over political power and use it for a while however short to dispossess the capitalist class (so there would be a sort of socialist “administration”). After all, we are not anarchists and do stand for the workers gaining control of political power.
Incidentally, I think that Marx would also have failed the entrance test as he too wasn’t against having a minimum programme of immediate demands. In fact in 1880 he helped the French Workers Party draw up such a programme for coming elections there. See here. The Preamble is good, in fact excellent and finds an echo in our declaration of principles, but look at the rest.
Meet the other side:
The Luddites of course weren’t anti-technology philosophers but independent producers defending themselves against competition from capitalist factory owners in the only way open to them.
The others are not our “fellow travellers” but people we pass on the road to socialism who are going back in the opposite direction. Who wants to toady up to them?
I agree that discussing technology does not imply an attitude, one way or another, to it. But I would hope that some sophisticated “technological determinism” will be part of any discussion since this was an element of Marx’s materialist conception of history.
As the basis of any human society is how its members are organised to produce what they need to survive and as the technology at their disposal will influence this, the particular technologies used will be part of what determines the other aspects of their social living. Of course social change occurs through class struggle, with a new class championing some new technological way of producing what is needed to survive against an entrenched class defending an outmoded method from which they benefit.
I have nothing against the views of any anti-technology “caveman tendency” , that seeks to attribute current problems to technology rather to than capitalism, being discussed either.
“Partially Automated Reasonably Sufficient Socialism is quite adequate, thank you very much.“
It’s reassuring that you haven’t gone completely off your rocker, even if you did need prompting.
I suspected that you were trying to argue that technology does not prepare the way for socialism as that’s typical of those anarchists who do actually want socialism (a minority) and who think that it could have been established at any time in human history eg in 1720 or 1820 or 1020 for that matter as much as in 2020. Talk about voluntarism.
I would have thought that it was obvious that socialism only became possible when the capacity to produce enough for everyone had developed, which can be said to have happened towards the end of the 19th century in the form of a world productive system reflected under capitalism as a world market that had come to dominated the whole world including the non-capitalist parts.
Every technological development since then has strengthened the case for socialism by making it easier and more feasible, and so is to be welcomed even if in the meantime it is misused under capitalism.
“Technological determinism. Meh. Surely we should be able to assess from our own experience and knowledge that technological advance is totally unrelated to social advance. We are more alienated from each other, less cooperative, than we were forty years ago. I think it no coincidence that the less developed areas of Spain were more communist during the revolution.”
Another manifestation of the an anti-technological-progress ideology that crops up here from time to time.
While it is true that we have become more alienated from each other I don’t think this can be attributed to technological progress. It’s due rather to the workings of the capitalist economy that has a tendency to reduce us to isolated atoms that collide on the market place as buyers and sellers of one sort or another. It is the workings of the capitalist economy that have a tendency to break down existing pre-capitalist communities like the ones you mention that used to exist in Spain.
To blame technological advance for increasing social alienation is to commit the classic logical error of concluding that when two things happen together one must be the cause of the other, whereas in fact both could be caused by a third factor.
Anyway, what are the specific technological advances that are supposed to have caused increased social alienation? The main recent advances that have affected people’s everyday life are, I would have thought, the internet and mobile phones; before that it would have been television and landline phones. Not to mention electricity in those parts of Spain. Besides making life better, these have the potential to bring people together but this is being frustrated by economic and social conditions of capitalism.
To blame technology and presumably want to turn the clock back really would be a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
KAZ has put another finger on another difference: that Jacque Fresco was an unapologetic technocrat. A point we have made in discussions with those influenced by his views. But neither the MFP nor Peter Joseph are orthodox Frescoists. Both have moved some way from his technocratic position towards bringing in elements of democracy, the MFP merely by contesting elections and Peter Joseph by the indefensibility of Fresco’s position. It would be nice to think that we have had some influence on this change of position.
I think you’re being a bit hard on Robert Owen. OK he was an elitist, a philanthropist who wanted to do something for the working class, but he is credited with introducing the word “socialist” into the English language and the Owenites (many of whom were better than him) were publishing pamphlets in the 1840s with titles like “What is Socialism?” In fact, I wonder if they are not responsible for the word “socialism” replacing “communism” in England as the word for a society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of life with production directly for use not sale and profit, which we inherited (but which anarchists have been reluctant to, even though I think Kropotkin did call himself a socialist a few times).
As Zeitgeist and its offshoots like the MFP (there are many more) appeal to all persons of good will to change society rather seeing this as the outcome of a class struggle against those who own and control productive resources, a rehash of Engels’s distinction between “utopian” and “scientific” socialists, seemed a good idea. Like the distinction between the nebulous anarchists around Freedom and the self-styled “class struggle anarchists”.
