ALB
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That's what he, the new Minister for Brexit thinks (dreams). Shrewd move by Maggie May to put Brexiteers in charge of the Brexit negotiatons. They'll have a better chance of selling what they come up with to keep access to the single market to the xenophobes who are more concerned with keeping foreigners out.
robbo203 wrote:ALB wrote:If I remember right Pieter Lawrence thought that socialism would be like today but without money. Maybe he was right. Obviously it will be to start with. Will that do?"Like today but without money" would be a helluva lot different from the world we live in today, though, Adam!As is often pointed , its not so much money that we seek to get rid as the socio-economic relationships that necessitate money. The disappearance of these relationships could not but make for a radically different kind of experience in so many diverse ways. Which is why I would question the logic of the argument that socialism equals capitalism minus the money
Saying that Pieter Lawrence thought that "socialism is capitalism without money" was of course a caricature but it's what we used to say, in part because he also argued that the police, the courts, criminal and contract law would continue into socialism. The ironic thing is that he also wrote some very good stuff on alienation under capitalism and how relationships in socialism would be different. See his articles on the Marxist Internet Archive here:https://www.marxists.org/archive/lawrence/index.htmActually, the Production for Use committee's work did have an outcome: the publication of our pamphlet Socialism As A Practical Alternative( http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/socialism-practical-alternative ) which Pieter drafted. It's good stuff. Very good stuff. It was published in 1987 and is now outdated in one respect: it didn't take into account the spread to the general population of the internet and mobile phones and the possibilities this opens up. A warning that any "blueprint" is going to have to be constantly updated.I am all in favour of us showing how socialism is technologically feasible, e.g that there are enough resources to eliminate poverty, malnutrition, etc but I don't think that will satisfy Ralph. He won't be satisfied till we can tell him where he can park his car or what he will have for breakfast in socialism.
If I remember right Pieter Lawrence thought that socialism would be like today but without money. Maybe he was right. Obviously it will be to start with. Will that do?
robbo203 wrote:I find this whole train of thought stemming from Marx expressing an ingrained reluctance to “write recipes for the cook-shops of the future" deeply regrettable. As a matter of fact had Marx been more forthcoming in that regard it would have been far more difficult for the Leninists of all hues to assimilate Marxian thinking to their own anti-socialist and statist project.Actually, Marx did say quite a bit about your (1) and (2) and certainly enough to counter Leninist distortions:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1973/no-832-december-1973/marxs-conception-socialismIt was (3) he wasn't so keen on (and of course the "cook-shops" of Marx's day, where you could buy ready-cooked meals, were quite different to those of today). Others like Edward Bellamy and William Morris were prepared to have a go But these are descriptions of what the writer would personally like socialism to be like not what it actually will be. I don't think that would satisfy Ralph. He does seem to be insisting on knowing what the cook-shops of the future will be like rather than could be or might be.
I agree that the workers had no alternative but to resist the fascist action to overthrow political democracy. In fact the only practicable outcome of some benefit to the working class there would have been the consolidation of political democracy, which would have allowed them to organise to fight the class struggle on the economic front and for socialist and other ideas to be propagated and discussed. But this was not to be either, due to the intervention of outside dictatorial powers. Germany and Italy on the fascist side, and Russia on the Republican side though this presented a problem since Russia wasn't really in favour of political democracy.A statement that appeared in the May 1937 Socialist Standard (Baltrop in The Monument mistakenly says it appear in March) gave general support to defending political democracy but left it up to workers on the ground in Spain to decide how best to try to defend it:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1930s/1937/no-393-may-1937/spgb-and-spainBarltrop said it caused a controversy, from two different directions: those who said it did not go far enough in its support for those (literally) fighting for democracy and those who said it went too far. The same sort of issue came up 60 or so years later over the movements for political democracy in Eastern Europe though not complicated by the question of armed resistance.
I see Chomsky figures among the signatories to this statement:
Quote:At a time when austerity, insecurity and racism remain real threats to the lives of many people in the UK, we believe that Jeremy Corbyn can help to provide a way out of the mess we are in.Sympathy with Corbyn for the way the media have treated him as a person is one thing, but support for his reformist Old Labourite policies which failed in the 60s and 70s is another.
This contemporary article (from 1937), by someone who had an intimate knowledge of Spain and what was happening there, explains why the Spanish revolution was not going to succeed and what would have happened had the CNT succeeded in implementing its plan for trade union control of the Spanish economy:http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.co.uk/2006/09/spain-turns.html
Quote:The Spanish Revolution – and a revolution is taking place – is limited by the following conditions:1. The unsocialist outlook of the population of Spain. 2. The unsocialist outlook of the population of the rest of Europe. 3. The low level of the economic development of Spain, working for the eventual defeat of revolutionary action that is limited to Spain.Quote:Functioning for any length of time in the midst of the world market, the industrial enterprise taken over by the Catalonian trade union and coordinated into a national system through the "Federation of Industry," must undergo the same influences that act on any producers' cooperative. They must "pay." They must be profitable in the capitalist sense, the only sense possible or go under. Effected on a national scale, complemented by the State or Federation monopoly of the country's foreign trade and by this single control of the economic-financial activity of the nation, such "socialization" might work again, in the capitalist sense. For as a result of this monopoly, the national "cooperative" would assure itself of a constant market at home and thus subtract itself, on the domestic field, from the laws of competition. But the national "cooperative" will not be able to escape the laws of competition in the international arena. There it will have to stand up against all comers all other sellers and buyers in order to dispose of its goods at a profit and to pay for credit. …. In order to be able to do that, the National Federation of Industry its central control will have to adopt toward its workers the erstwhile free cooperators the same attitude that any capitalist entrepreneur takes to his employees. The national cooperative soon the national capitalist will have to squeeze out of the producers working in the total national enterprise enough surplus-value to realize at least an average rate of profit on the world market. It will have to do that or drop out of the world market and collapse into backward sel-sufficiency.Sad but true. That was the tragedy of the Spanish Revolution. It was never going to succeed.
DJP wrote:Bookchin's criticism is that the anarchists allowed political power to flow away from them and unwittingly gave it to their opponents.In which case, to return to KAZ's original question, it was the non-participation, not the participation, of the CNT in the regional government of Catalonia that would have been "detrimental".
DJP wrote:I'm in agreement with Bookchin on this. The anarcho-syndicalists controlled the economy of Catalonia but they allowed the "socialists" to remain in control of a significant portion of the state machinery. This would come back to haunt them later, and would seem to confirm what we say about the necessity of gaining state power.http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2015/no-1336-december-2015/book-reviews-next-revolution-killing-fields-ineqIn that book Bookchin makes a valid point but seems to be suggesting that the CNT did not enter the regional government of Catalonia but surely they did, even if only as the junior partner (as, for a while, did the POUM). Did they or didn't they?
Saw Andrew Neil grilling some non-entity called Eagle who wants to topple Corbyn. Pathetic, inarticulate and whining. If they think they'll do better under her they're deluding themselves.
KAZ wrote:And, since the involvement of the anarchists in the Generalitat was, if anything, detrimental, what can be the place of the political revolution (the 'Parliamentary Road')?Is what way was it detrimental? I would have thought it made sense to have some control over the official machinery of government if only in order to prevent it being used against events on the ground — as in fact happened after they were excluded and the so-called "Communists" took over control of it.The lesson must be that it is vital to gain control of political power at some stage of the socialist revolution. Incidentally, I don't like the term "the parliamentary road". I know we have used it, but we shouldn't really as it gives the mistaken impression that we think socialism can be legislated into being by an Act of Parliament (or even a series of Acts, as most in fact of those who use the term envisage). Whereas in fact we only want to use parliament as a stepping stone to gaining control of political power to use it to uproot capitalism.
There was already a thread on this here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/world-socialist-movement/living-utopia-anarchists-and-spanish-revolution-film-norwich
Just to clarify, the American SWP has nothing to do with the British SWP. It is the premier Orthodox Trotskyist sect there, i.e holds that the USSR was a "defenerate workers state" (while the SWP holds that for most of the time it was a form of state capitalism). Nowadays they have transferred their allegiance to Cuba. Their Brirish affiliate, the Communist League, stood against us in the recent London elections and got even less votes than us.
I agree, but it must have been a vote against something on the part of the 37% of the electorate who voted Leave. It certainly wasn't a vote for anything (as we are now seeing). What would they have been voting against? Not the corporations or capitalism, maybe against what capitalism had put them through but mistakenly blaming this on the EU and/or foreigners. But it's not all doom and gloom. After all, 35% didn't vote against foreigners (and 28% didn't express an opinion either way)..
