ALB
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I think I agree more with KAZ than YMS on this but January last year the Oxford Communist Corresponding Society ran a meeting entitled "Red Scissors: the socialist case for reducing the regulatory burden on business" in which the speaker argued that when the working class won control of political power they should end all regulations and subsidies for private capitalist businesses and let them sink or swim without any state aid on the assumption that most of them would sink. Probably true, actually.
The RCG has replied:
Quote:Dear comrade, Your article is wrong, we are for a boycott. So perhaps not so different from yourselves. Maybe if you asked us you wouldn't get it wrong. Solidarity, Anthony.We did include them as "against the flow" of most of the Leninist group of urging "Vote Leave", saying that they are "yet to declare". Which seems to have been true at the time of writing. But since then they have declared: See:http://www.revolutionarycommunist.org/capitalist-crisis/4349-eu-referendumdated 1 June.Not so different from us, though for rather difference reasons:
Quote:We reject totally taking sides in what is essentially a dispute between sections of the ruling class over what would be for Britain necessarily totally reactionary outcomes – part of a European imperialist bloc or becoming an offshore centre for usury capital under the umbrella of US imperialism. The only principled communist position is to call for a boycott of the referendum while exposing the reactionary intentions of those on either side.Actually, Von Mises himself in his Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth conceded that socialist society could survive "for a time" using the calculations (of what resources to use to produce things) inherited from capitalism. This from section 2:
Quote:For a time the remembrance of the experiences gained in a competitive economy, which has obtained for some thousands of years, may provide a check to the complete collapse of the art of economy. The older methods of procedure might be retained not because of their rationality but because they appear to be hallowed by tradition.He thought that if this continued for any longer period it would lead to economic chaos and the collapse of socialism. Maybe but we're only talking about a relatively short period at the very beginning of socialism. "For a time" would suffice until socialist society applies better ways (which we can assume will already have been worked out) of organising the production and distribution of goods and services that don't reflect what happened in the days when monetary calculation prevailed.
Depends what you mean by "money". We always said that in the early days of socialism there might not be able to be full free access to everything. In which case there would have to be some sort of "rationing" of the goods and services in short supply. Personally, I'd have thought coupons for those goods and services only would be best way to deal with this. Certainly not "labour-time vouchers". But if these are not regarded as "money" then nor would any other all-purpose circulating vouchers be that could be used to acquire anything. An option, I suppose, but only slightly not as bad as labour-time vouchers and not really "money" (though we wouldn't be able to stop people calling it that. After all some, eg the pre-war Dutch Council Communists, call "labour-time vouchers" "labour-money".)
Zeitgeist is back in the news, at least in the New York Times of 26 May (as a sympathiser has drawn to our attention). Here's a description of a discussion in a vaping bar in a small town in North Carolina:
Quote:One Friday afternoon someone brought a pair of virtual reality goggles hooked up to a laptop to the shop. Mr. Foster exhaled a cloud that smelled like a Popsicle. He said he had been reading up on the idea, explored in the “Zeitgeist” movie, of a “resource-based economy” — a system in which, he said, “There’s no money and everything is controlled by computers and resources are equally distributed and there’s no ownership or anything like that.”“The system we have now is going to collapse,” he said. “And technology, the automation process, is going to keep taking over and over.”That, he said, would free up people to do what they wanted.Chris Lentz, 36, a worker for a utility company in a pair of mud-caked boots, frowned and asked, “If people were just given everything they ever needed, then what’s the point of going to work?”Good to know that these sort of ideas are being discussed in the obscurest of places.
They won't do it, though something similar was tried on a mini-scale in Taiwan in the early years of the Great Recession after the Crash of 2008:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2009/no-1254-february-2009/cooking-books-1-free-money-everyoneThe result would obviously be massive inflation. Interesting, though, that 8 years later they still thinking of ways of trying to get capital accumulation going again at its previous rate. From the article:
Quote:Central bank-issued money could be used to fund tax cuts or infrastructure spending in an attempt to boost growth.The British Labour government under James Callaghan tried this to get out of the slump of the 1970s. Here's his verdict on it, at the 1976 Labour Party conference:
Quote:We used to think that you could just spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you, in all candour, that that option no longer exists and that in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting bigger doses of inflation into the economy, followed by higher levels of unemployment.Letter published in Friday's Richmond and Twickenham Times:
Quote:Big Business or Little England? That's the choice in the referendum the Tory Party has organised to try to settle its internal differences. So, to that extent, it is not the concern of the rest of us. The trouble is that, if things go wrong and there's an unexpected vote to Leave, we risk being collateral damage in the temporary economic and financial crisis that would follow. The nostalgic dreams and rosy future promised by the Leave campaign won't happen. On the other hand, leaving wouldn't be as dramatic a change as the Remain side is suggesting — it can't be as the British capitalist economy is so intertwined with that of the rest of the EU that it can't withdraw from it. So there'd be a deal with Britain ending up something like Norway. The rest of us won't notice the difference.I see that both sides are being criticised for exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims, but what do they expect? The protagonists on both sides are professional politicians used to telling lies and making false promises. They are not going to change their spots just because it's a referendum and not an ordinary election. All this is grist to our mill and publicity for our meeting the Sunday afternoon before the vote entitled THE EU REDERENDUM CAMPAIGN: LIES AND COUNTERLIES. Details here
Also available, in a more readable form, on the WSP (India) website here:http://www.worldsocialistpartyindia.org/paresh.pdf
Comrade Binay Sarkar of the WSP(India) has written a criticism of Chattopadhyay's article here:https://www.academia.edu/25627820/Critique_of_Paresh_Chattopadhyays_Twentieth_Century_Socialism_
Actually I wouldn't deny that there is a sense in which we are "selfish", only that this is determined by our genes rather than the social environment in which we grew up or live. As we say in our pamphlet Are We Prisoners of Our Genes?:
Quote:Nor does socialism require us all to suddenly become altruists, putting the interests of others above our own. In fact socialism doesn’t require people to be any more altruistic than they are today (a behaviour which is greater than biological determinists like to admit and which presents them with the insoluble theoretical problem of how a gene for such behaviour, which they have obliged themselves to believe in, could have evolved). We will still be concerned primarily with ourselves, with satisfying our needs, our need to be well considered by others as well as our material and sexual needs. No doubt too, we will want to “possess” our toothbrush, our clothes and other things of personal use, and to feel secure in our physical occupation of the house or flat we live in, but this will be just that—our home and not a financial asset.Such “selfish” behaviour will still exist in socialism but the acquisitiveness encouraged by capitalism will no longer exist. Under capitalism we have to seek to accumulate money since the more money you have the better you can satisfy your material needs, and as an insurance against something going wrong (like losing your job) or as something to hand on to your children or grandchildren. People are therefore obliged by their material circumstances to seek to acquire money, by fair means or foul and if need be, when push comes to shove, at the expense of others. This is why capitalism has earned the name of “the acquisitive society”.Socialism won’t be an "acquisitive society" and won’t need to be, as everybody will be able to satisfy their material requirements as of right and without needing to pay money.Meel wrote:Quote:“Those who believe that communism or socialism is the most rational form of social organisation are aghast at the suggestion that they run against our selfish natures” (The Blank State, Allen Lane, 2002, p. 161)This quote is taken out of context. This is not Pinker's opinion; he is putting this argument in the mouths of those in favour of socialism or communism.
I don't think this is either taken out of context or is Pinker describing some others' argument. Why, for instance, would those in favour of communism or socialism argue that the sort of society they wanted was against human nature? I think it is Pinker's opinion that our biological nature is "selfish", even if he thinks we can do something about it.As to Dawkins, here's what he wrote in the opening chapter of The Selfish Gene:
Quote:Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have a chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.Ironically, he has ended up with the same basic position as Christian theologians: that we are born sinful but can overcome this ! OK, he is not saying that socialism is impossible because of humans' "biological nature", only that because of it there's only an outside chance of it succeeding. I think he's a supporter of the pre-Corbyn Labour Party or the LibDems or the old SDP, that sort of thing.In the original 1976 edition there was a note in which he condemned as "selfish" workers for going on strike against the then Labour government's "incomes policy". I've tried to find the exact quote on the internet but can't but will see if i can find a copy of this edition. In the meantime, maybe somebody else here can help. It is true that he later dropped this, another example of him backtracking. As is the inclusion in the 1989 edition of a new chapter entitled "Nice Guys Finish First", an attempt to argue himself out of this implication of his theory which he himself expressed as:
Quote:The selfish gene view follows logically from the accepted assumptions of neo-Darwinism. It is easy to misunderstand but, once understood, it is hard to doubt its fundamental truth. Most of the organisms that have ever lived failed to become ancestors We that exist are, without exception, descended from that minority within every earlier generation that were successful in becoming ancestors. Since all we animals inherit our genes from ancestors rather than from non-ancestors, we tend to possess the qualities that make for success in becoming an ancestor rather than the qualities that make for failure. Successful qualities are such things as fleetness of foot, sharpness of eye, perfection of camouflage, and – there seems no getting away from it – ruthless selfishness. Nice guys don't become ancestors. Therefore living organisms don't inherit the qualities of nice guys (The Listener, 17 April 1986).For instance, Konrad Lorenz, Desmond Morris, Robert Ardrey, E.O. Wilson, Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, sundry "sociobiologists" and "evolutionary psychologists" and all the others who encourage (and reflect) the prejudice of the person in the street that socialism is against human nature. Wilson and Pinker state explicitly that this is the conclusion to which the theory they have put forward leadsHere's EO Wilson in 1978:
Quote:"The perception of history as an inevitable class struggle proceeding to the emergence of a lightly governed egalitarian society with production in control of the workers is ( . . . ) based on an inaccurate interpretation of human nature" (On Human Nature, Penguin, 1995, p. 190).And here's Steven Pinker:
Quote:"One of the fondest beliefs of many intellectuals is that there are cultures out there where everyone shares freely. Marx and Engels thought that preliterate peoples represented a first stage in the evolution of civilization called primitive communism, whose maxim was 'From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs'" (How the Mind Works, Penguin, 1998, p. 504).“Those who believe that communism or socialism is the most rational form of social organisation are aghast at the suggestion that they run against our selfish natures” (The Blank State, Allen Lane, 2002, p. 161).
This year is the bicentenary of the first working telegraph by Francis Ronalds in his house in Hammersmith Mall. According to an article in the Chiswick Herald (12 May, scroll down to page 33) this was the house where William Morris lived later and part of which is now the headquarters of the William Morris Society :
Quote:A plaque on the house commemorates Ronalds’ achievement. It is seen near the top of the former stable, where the equipment at one end of the telegraph was once positioned. A famous later owner, William Morris, had agreed “reluctantly” that it could be put up – after explaining that he “doubted which has been the greatest curse to mankind – railways or telegraphs”.So it would be fair to assume that Morris wouldn't have approved of mobile phone either but there is an electric barge in News from Nowhere. He sounds like an Old Grumbler.
I would have thought that epigenetics, in showing that how some genes have their effect on the body is influenced by the environment, undermines the genetic determinists' case that we are the prisoners of our genes. This was obvious anyway but the scientists working in the field of epigenetics seem to be coming up with the way this works.
Came across an old pamphlet from the time of the last Common Market referendum in 1975. At that time the TUC and half the Labour Party were for coming out though the Wilson Labour government was in favour of staying in (as was the Tory party).Here's Roy Hattersley, a junior minister, for the REMAIN side dealing with the "loss of sovereignty" issue:
Quote:Mr. Hattersley accepted that sovereignty would become a major issue once the new terms were known. He questioned, however, whether the British Parliament really did have the power any longer to influence world events that vitally affected the British economy. 'No matter how many resolutions we pass or laws we enact, Britain's domestic interest rate (which affects every aspect of our life from the control of inflation to the cost of school building) will be more affected by decisions taken in Zurich, Bonn and New York – and now in Teheran, Jeddah and Caracas as well – than by anything done by the House of Commons'….'In or out of the EEC, our economy will be influenced , judgments made beyond these shores'. The best protection was the economic power to withstand foreign pressures. Close alignments, like membership of the EEC, clearly involved some pooling of sovereignty, Mr. Hattersley went on. But if the Community gave each member State increased economic strength in return 'we become more free not less so'". (Financial Times, 7-1-1975)And Peter Shore, a Cabinet Minister allowed to put the case for LEAVE, dreaming of having his cake and eating it:
Quote:Peter Shore recognises the need for Britain to continue trading on a large scale with the EEC, but argues that this could be done by concluding a trade agreement with the EEC such as Sweden is trying for. The trade agreement would offer access to the EEC and nothing more.I don't whether the current debate is plus ça change or history repeating itself a second time as farce.
