ALB
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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”.
It sounds as if Nick Tapping has come a long way since he was virtually a troll on our old WSM yahoo forum. Somebody should send him an application form! A case of us influencing them rather than vice versa, which of course is as it should be.
KAZ has put his finger on another difference. They are “Utopian” moneyfreers who appeal to all people of good will while we are class-struggle moneyfreers. They are Robert Owen. We are Karl Marx. Still we do have the same objective and Owen wasn’t that bad.
I am afraid that what you suggest is precisely what Royal Mail does not permit. We tried inserts in a local free paper in Kent but got no response. Apparently “intellectuals” don’t read them. Can’t say I blame them.
The other odd thing is that our experience shows a better response from the South than from the North or Scotland. Make of that what you will.
There has always been a tension about who we target. Our theory (which says that socialism is an immediate possibility but can only come into being when a majority wants and understands it) means that we are targeting everybody, ie scattergun approach. In practice, however, our immediate aim to build up a larger and more effective socialist party, to campaign for socialism (I hasten to add, since this sounds a bit Trotskyoid, not to leader the workers) and, though I don’t think we’ve ever explicitly said so, to be around when outside events beyond our control spark off a mass movement seeking a way out of capitalism.
This latter means that we are targeting those who are politically interested and who have the time to be politically active. That is a very small percentage of the population which can’t be more than 5% if that. I wouldn’t call such people “intellectuals” just because they are prepared to read an 800-word article or leaflet. You don’t have to have a college degree to do that.
My view, for what it’s worth, is that we should be aiming at getting replies, so we can acquaint them more with our case via, in the first instance, a free 3-month trial sub to the Standard,
As to costs, you’re lucky as I happen to have them to hand as I’m in the middle of preparing a report from the election committee for the January EC Meeting.
Inserts in the i paper costs £18 per 1,000 + VAT (=£21.60). We had 160,000 inserted, at cost of £3,456. The printing cost £2,045, making a total cost of £5,501. These leaflets weren’t distributed specifically in the constituencies but over the whole of the south of England and Wales and parts of the Midlands. (They didn’t mention that we were contesting and could in fact have been distributed even if we hadn’t been.)
Printing the 55,000 leaflets for Folkestone cost £722 and the 45,000 for Cardiff cost £1,087 (their leaflet was more elaborate). Cardiff also spent £450 on a display ad in the local evening paper. On top was the election deposit of £500 for each constituency. So, the total cost of the campaigns in the constituencies was £3,259. (This suggests that running a campaign to get free postal distribution could cost as little as £1,200, but don’t expect many responses).
We also spent £210 on printing 15,000 leaflets for distribution by members and sympathisers outside the two constituencies.
The total cost of everything (excluding some travel and other minor costs) was £8,970.
Yes I remember now. Those were the two main points. Money free in one country and transitional measures. I think that in the meantime the MFP has deregistered as a political party which means they can’t contest elections under that name any more. Nick Tapping is still around as he puts in an occasional appearance in our Facebook page. He knows us of old.
“How are the reply rate going? Is the newspaper ad still the better response than the election leaflet?”
There is no comparison. Replies to the insert in the i paper (which was also about the election) are now approaching 100 while replies to the election communications remain stuck at 2 (1 from each constituency), useful replies, that is, as we had three hostile replies from Folkestone intended only to make us pay the return postage.
What this shows is that contesting elections to get replies to the free postal distribution is not a reason for contesting. This is not a reason for not contesting, nor even for not using the free postal distribution (since many more will read them than reply and it’s relatively cheap to have even 50,000 printed) as there are other reasons for this, e.g. local activity, national publicity, showing we are apolitically ctive.
The relative success of the newspaper insert confirms that you get a better response, in terms of replies, if you target a specific group (in this case, for us, the readers of a non-Tory serious newspaper) than if you have a scattergun approach aimed at everybody.
