[ALB]

In a book on Women and Socialism by a US Trotskyist (member of the ISO) which we've been sent for review, the author Sharon Smith reveals that others in Germany and elsewhere took the same attitude as us towards the Women's Movements that demanded votes for women on the same terms as men:

Quote:

For example, the early-twentieth-century German women's suffrage movement did not challenge the property requirements that denied working-class men the right to vote — knowing that such requirements would also deny voting rights to working-class women. Maintaining such property requirements could only strengthen the political weight ol the middle and upper classes, while the working class would remain politically voiceless.

And describing discussions within the Second International:

Quote:

The issue of whether to fight for "universal" or "partial" women's suffrage was a strong point of controversy. Some women's suffrage organizations demanded (and in some European countries, won) partial suffrage for women—with voting rights based upon property holding and the payment of taxes (that is, restricting voting rights to those women of financial means). But in many of these same societies, male suffrage was also partial, denying working-class men the right to vote. Thus, partial suffrage merely increased the voting power of the upper classes.

[ALB]

Actually, YMS, if I remember correctly he is on record in one of the previous multiple threads on this as saying that if society democratically votes in favour of one particular scientific theory that will become the orthodox view that will be expressed in all textbooks, etc. as such. Any rival view will have difficulty in being expressed. A vote will also be able to ban the expression of certain views.

[ALB]

SocialistPunk wrote:

ALB, you haven't wasted your time. People like TheSpanishInquisition will likely never be swayed whatever you or any other member of the SPGB/WSM say, but they are not important. The important people are those who may be reading what you say and have the seed of a new idea planted in their thoughts, that someday may germinate.

I know. It was just that I thought he was genuine and had spent some time looking on the internet for suitable basic articles which I wouldn't have done if he'd been honest and stated from the start that he was opposed to socialism as he misunderstood it (government ownership and control). Of course we should still discuss with people like him, for the reason you give.

[ALB]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

But, lets try another tack: imagine if, tomorrow, it was made illegal to be an employer (to use terminology from British law, to be the Master in a contract of service).  That would render almost all capital worthless at a stroke, and the only way in which labour could be secured would be through voluntary co-operation, using the worthless tools to hand.

Or that all companies and corporations (which are only legal entities created and maintained by the state) were dissolved or that all stocks and shares, bills and bonds, etc were declared null and void. They'd then just be pieces of paper that could be used to make lampshades.Then no one and no legal entity will be able to exert enforceable property rights over means of production. They would belong to nobody or everybody (the same thing).

[ALB]

Ah, the penny's dropped. You weren't the sincere seeker after truth about socialism that you appeared to be but a defender of capitalism. No doubt some sort of mad marketeer. I'm sorry I wasted my time.

[ALB]

Socialism/communism is not about taking away people's personal possessions. That's just a scare story put around by those whose property socialism will take away: those who own and control the means for producing goods and services (farms, mines, factories, etc).And they won't be bought out, but simply expropriated without compensation when a majority decide democratically to make the means of production the common property of all, so they can be used to provide for the needs of all instead of to make profits for a few.Nor has socialism anything to do with government ownership. It's about common ownership, which is the same as non-ownership. The means of production won't belong to anyone or any institution, not corporations, not rich individuals, not governments. They will simply be there to be used under democratic control to provide for people's needs in accordance with the principle "from each their ability, to each their needs".

[ALB]

Tim Kilgallon wrote:

to be fair, Walford did come up with one reasonably funny joke, which was – A Martian lands in Clapham High Street, knocks on the door of number 52 and says "take me to your leader"

Actually, wasn't the punchine rather "Take me to your non-leader" ?

[ALB]

Yes, but you fed him whiskey and prozac. I just slap him down once and then ignore him

[ALB]

Labriola wrote:

Or did Engels, when he wrote his Anti-Dühring, which is to this day, the most accomplished work of critical socialism and contains in a nutshell the whole philosophy required for the thinkers of socialism, dream of exhausting the possibilities of the knowable universe in his short and exquisite work, or of laying down forever the outlines of metaphysics, psychology, ethics, logic, and whatever may be the names of the other sections of the encyclopedia, which were chosen either for intrinsic reasons of objective division, or for reasons of expediency, comfort, vanity, by those who profess to be teachers?

Labriola wrote:

Engels' Anti-Dühring is that work which ought to get an international circulation before any other. I know of few books which are equal to it in compactness of thought, multiplicity of view-points, and effectiveness in bringing home its points. It may become mental medicine for young thinkers, who generally turn with vague and uncertain touch to books which are said to deal with socialism of some kind. This was what happened when this book appeared, as Bernstein wrote about three years ago in the Neue Zeit, in an article commemorating the event. This work of Engels remains the unexcelled book in the literature of socialism.

Labriola wrote:

When Engels, in his Anti-Dühring, used the term metaphysics in a deprecating manner, he intended precisely to refer to that way of thinking, conceiving, inferring, expounding which is the opposite of a genetic, and therefore dialectical, consideration of things. The metaphysical way of thinking has the following characteristics: In the first place, it regards as self-dependent things, as things independent of one another, those modes of thought, which are in reality modes only to the extent that they represent points of correlation and transition in a process; in the second place, it regards these modes of thought as existing before the fact, as pre-existing, as types, or prototypes, of the weak and shadowy reality of sense perceptions. From the first point of view, for instance, such thoughts as cause and effect, means and end, origin and reality, and so forth, appear merely as distinct terminals of different, and sometimes opposite, kinds. Some of them seem to be only causes, others only effects, and so forth. In the second case the world of experience seems to be disintegrating and falling to pieces before our eyes, separating into substance and attribute, thing in itself and phenomenon, possibility and obvious reality. The critique of Engels demands substantially and realistically that terminal thought should not be considered as a fixed entity, but as a function. For such terminal concepts are valuable only in so far as they help us to think now, while we are actively engaged in proceeding with new thought.

From here:https://www.marxists.org/archive/labriola/works/al03.htmand herehttps://www.marxists.org/archive/labriola/works/al04.htm

[ALB]

Labriola's criticism was aimed at the likes of Enrico Ferri who gave an openly Positivist interpretation of Marx and Engels, as in his Socialism and Modern Science:https://www.marxists.org/archive/ferri/1900/socialism-science/index.htmIronically, the Charles H. Kerr publishing house in Chicago, which specialised in publishing works by "Marxists", published translations of both Ferri (a member of the "Italian Socialist Party" at the time) and Labriola.Actually, Labriola and Engels seem to have been great mates. At any rate, there is no criticism of Engels in anything he wrote.

[ALB]

Most CND members were in favour of Voting Labour. INDEC were CNDers who didn't believe Labour would Ban the Bomb. How right they were (and probably still are, despite Corbyn).

[ALB]

Marx himself defines what he means by "means of production" in section 1 on "The Labour Process or the Production of Use Values" of  Chapter 7 of Capital but he had already used the term in the second paragraph of Capital. Also in the first chapter, there's his well known reference to socialism/communism as "a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common,"Here's the key passage from that section (the whole section is worth reading for its clarity):

Quote:

The elementary factors of the labour-process are 1, the personal activity of man, i.e., work itself, 2, the subject of that work, and 3, its instruments.The soil (and this, economically speaking, includes water) in the virgin state in which it supplies man with necessaries or the means of subsistence ready to hand, exists independently of him, and is the universal subject of human labour. All those things which labour merely separates from immediate connexion with their environment, are subjects of labour spontaneously provided by Nature. Such are fish which we catch and take from their element, water, timber which we fell in the virgin forest, and ores which we extract from their veins. If, on the other hand, the subject of labour has, so to say, been filtered through previous labour, we call it raw material; such is ore already extracted and ready for washing. All raw material is the subject of labour, but not every subject of labour is raw material: it can only become so, after it has undergone some alteration by means of labour.An instrument of labour is a thing, or a complex of things, which the labourer interposes between himself and the subject of his labour, and which serves as the conductor of his activity. He makes use of the mechanical, physical, and chemical properties of some substances in order to make other substances subservient to his aims. [2] Leaving out of consideration such ready-made means of subsistence as fruits, in gathering which a man’s own limbs serve as the instruments of his labour, the first thing of which the labourer possesses himself is not the subject of labour but its instrument. Thus Nature becomes one of the organs of his activity, one that he annexes to his own bodily organs, adding stature to himself in spite of the Bible. As the earth is his original larder, so too it is his original tool house. It supplies him, for instance, with stones for throwing, grinding, pressing, cutting, &c. The earth itself is an instrument of labour, but when used as such in agriculture implies a whole series of other instruments and a comparatively high development of labour.  No sooner does labour undergo the least development, than it requires specially prepared instruments. Thus in the oldest caves we find stone implements and weapons. In the earliest period of human history domesticated animals, i.e., animals which have been bred for the purpose, and have undergone modifications by means of labour, play the chief part as instruments of labour along with specially prepared stones, wood, bones, and shells. The use and fabrication of instruments of labour, although existing in the germ among certain species of animals, is specifically characteristic of the human labour-process, and Franklin therefore defines man as a tool-making animal. Relics of bygone instruments of labour possess the same importance for the investigation of extinct economic forms of society, as do fossil bones for the determination of extinct species of animals. It is not the articles made, but how they are made, and by what instruments, that enables us to distinguish different economic epochs. Instruments of labour not only supply a standard of the degree of development to which human labour has attained, but they are also indicators of the social conditions under which that labour is carried on. Among the instruments of labour, those of a mechanical nature, which, taken as a whole, we may call the bone and muscles of production, offer much more decided characteristics of a given epoch of production, than those which, like pipes, tubs, baskets, jars, &c., serve only to hold the materials for labour, which latter class, we may in a general way, call the vascular system of production. The latter first begins to play an important part in the chemical industries.In a wider sense we may include among the instruments of labour, in addition to those things that are used for directly transferring labour to its subject, and which therefore, in one way or another, serve as conductors of activity, all such objects as are necessary for carrying on the labour-process. These do not enter directly into the process, but without them it is either impossible for it to take place at all, or possible only to a partial extent. Once more we find the earth to be a universal instrument of this sort, for it furnishes a locus standi to the labourer and a field of employment for his activity. Among instruments that are the result of previous labour and also belong to this class, we find workshops, canals, roads, and so forth.In the labour-process, therefore, man’s activity, with the help of the instruments of labour, effects an alteration, designed from the commencement, in the material worked upon. The process disappears in the product, the latter is a use-value, Nature’s material adapted by a change of form to the wants of man. Labour has incorporated itself with its subject: the former is materialised, the latter transformed. That which in the labourer appeared as movement, now appears in the product as a fixed quality without motion. The blacksmith forges and the product is a forging. If we examine the whole process from the point of view of its result, the product, it is plain that both the instruments and the subject of labour, are means of production, and that the labour itself is productive labour.

[ALB]

Labriola will have meant by "means of production" what nearly everybody else did and still does, i.e. the materials that originally came from nature, the machines and tools used to fashion these into useful things, and the buildings where this takes place. Actually, our Object, drawn up in 1904, is even more precise by distinguishing between "means of production" and "instruments of production", i.e between materials from nature ("means") and the human-made machines and constructions ("instruments"):

Quote:

The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.

Labriola,writing in 1896, also argued that this sort of definition distinguished socialism from state ownership or state capitalism ("State Socialism" as it was sometimes then called):

Quote:

It is better to use the expression "democratic socialization of the means of production" than that of "collective property" because the latter implies a certain theoretical error in that, to begin with, it substitutes for the real economic fact a juridical expression and moreover in the mind of more than one it is confused with the increase of monopolies, with the increasing statization of public utilities and with all the other fantasmagoria of the ever recurring State socialism, the whole effect of which is to increase the economic means of oppression in the hands of the oppressing class.

[ALB]

By coincidence there's an article in the latest Socialist Standard (February) on Labriola written by one of our comrades from Italy and so with access to his writings in the original Italian including on "materialismo storico":http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2016/no-1338-february-2016/antonio-labriola-strict-marxist

[ALB]

LBird running wild on yet another thread as people feed him.

[Author]

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