ALB
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LBird wrote:I think this post, containing Hud's and ALB's positions, is the most illustrative of the two stances being taken on this thread.I think that these can be summed up as "Workers' Councils" versus "Democratic Parliament".
No, that's not the division of opinion here. It's between (a) those like yourself who seem to want to abolish all the institutions of the machinery of government, including essentially administrative ones, and create a completely new administrative structure from scratch, and (b) those who don't see the point of this and favour adapting, fully democratising the useful administrative parts of the existing machinery of government. Between, if you like, the utopian system-builders and the pragmatists.Being pragmatic myself, I can accept that some of the democratic organisations thrown up in the course of the struggle for socialism will no doubt be merged with the democratically-reformed existing structures to create the democratic administrative structure of socialist society.Nobody has yet made out a case as to why the health service, the postal service, local government, etc should be completely destroyed as part of the socialist revolution and replaced by newly-created institutions to perform the same functions.
Vin wrote:ALB wrote:I, too, am not against workers organising "councils" (even "industrial unions"!) to take over and run workplaces.Tell me more! What about the non-workers? Will they have a say?
It's the Party Case, comrade, and always has been! We've always said that, to establish socialism workers should organise economically as well as politically, i.e to keep production going as well as to capture the State. We've always stressed that, of the two, political organisation is the more important and rejected the basically syndicalist idea that future society should be run by industrial unions (or by work-based "workers councils") even though of course workplaces too will be democratically organised. As you say/imply, to involve everyone whether they work or not the democratic running of society will have to be community-based not industry-based,More here.From November 1937 Socialist Standard:
Quote:The Socialist Party, therefore, whilst holding that the working class must be organised, both politically and economically, for the establishment of Socialism, urges that the existing unions provide the medium through which the workers should continue their efforts to obtain the best conditions they can get from the master class in the sale of their labour-power. That the trade unions must inevitably accept the Socialist theory as the logical outcome of their own existence, and as such will provide the basis of the economic organisation of the working class to manipulate the means and instruments of wealth production and distribution when the capitalist ruling class have first been dislodged from political power. The essential conditions for obtaining Socialism must never be underestimated. At the very moment that the workers have gained control of the State machine provision must be made simultaneously for the economic requirements of the community. The Socialist working class of the future will, no doubt, see to this as one of its supreme functions.I, too, am not against workers organising "councils" (even "industrial unions"!) to take over and run workplaces. Something like this will obviously have to happen. My point was what was the point of trying to build from scratch organisations to run "national" services and local democracy and administration when structures exist that can be adapted. It doesn't make sense. Anyway, it's not how social (as opposed to merely political) change takes place — it's evolutionary and adaptive.
Hud955 wrote:Government machinery could be restructured to provide the administrative needs of a new society, though I suspect that would not be easy. It might be just as easy to set up a new administrative system altogether.It might be theoretically possible but hardly "just as easy". Just as easy, for example, to set up a system of local government from scratch than to take over and democratise and reform the existing structure? Just as easy to set up a new health service from scratch? "Pretty pointless" is the alternative description that comes to mind.
Dave B wrote:I thought were going to have a discussion on Blanqui?I thought the following was well ahead of the game for 1834 predating Karl and Proudhon somewhat anyway.https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/blanqui/1834/soupe.htmI see that this is the source of the passage Hedges quote to try to make Blanqui a miserablist Protestant like himself but that he has truncated and distorted it (even if he is using a better translation). The full passage reads (he only quoted the parts in italics):
Quote:Yes! The right of property is in decline. Generous spirits prophesy and call for its fall. The Essenian principle of reality has slowly sapped it over the course of eighteen centuries through the successive abolition of the various servitudes which served as the basis for its power. It will disappear one day, along with the last privileges that serve as its refuge and nook. The past and the present guarantee us this resolution. For humanity is never stationary. It either advances or goes back. Its progressive march led it to equality. Its backward march climbs, by all of privilege’s steps, to personal slavery, the final word in the right of property. To be sure, before returning there, European civilization would have perished. But through what catastrophe? A Russian invasion? To the contrary, it is the north that will itself be invaded by the principle of equality that the French bring in the conquest of nations. The future is not in doubt.Blanqui has gone up in my estimation again, even if he was a proto-Leninist or, rather, even if Lenin was a latter-day Blanquist. Blanqui took the view that the people had been kept in such ignorance, mainly thanks to the Catholic church, that they had to be liberated from above by a revolutionary minority which once in power would educate them into communism. Understable perhaps in 1834, less so in 1870, but not in 1902 and certainly not today.
Sounds as if Bookchin's article (which can be found here) has some relevance to the other thread on the need to win control of political power. The case for this is unanswerable and it's good to see a former anarchist renouncing anarchism and coming round to realising this.
There's not really a contradiction. The word I used was "switch off". This suggests something sudden. Certainly, as long as people support capitalism, they can be persuaded to support measures that the capitalist class of their country favour, e.g war and measures aimed at "extremists" and "scroungers" (as groups they don't identify with).It is true that over time as the older generation dies off a particular lesson learned by the working class can recede, e.g perhaps trade union consciousness. But this would be a very gradual change. It would have to be the same with a regression in democratic consciousness. This is today very well entrenched in the working class in this country and it doesn't just apply to right to vote, etc. It also applies in non-political contexts as over how to run clubs and voluntary associations. I still say this democratic consciousness cannot just be switched off. I don't think the working class could be manipulated out of it either, even if the ruling class tried or wanted to.
I think Hedges must have read the May/June 2014 edition of Radical Philosophy where the passages from Blanqui will have been quoted::https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/auguste-blanqui-heretical-communisthttps://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/blanquis-bifurcationshttps://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/the-radical-gapThe passages he quotes from Blanqui' aren't up to much either.
What a load of crap (Hedges's article) and pretentious with it. But it does say he's a graduate of Harvard Divinity School. If he's not a miserable Protestant he sounds like one!. Pity because some of his other stuff has been ok. Don't think he can be trusted on Blanqui either since he says that Blanqui was involved in the Paris Commune (he would have liked to have been but was in prison elsewhere) and he doesn't give any source for the quotes.PS. Just looked him up on wikipedia and he's a Presbyterian minister. So I guessed right.
The other one is just as bad:http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/18/labour-relationship-business-yvette-cooper-party-leadership-corporation-taxThey have to be pro-business of course. Labour supports capitalism as it is and, given a large private sector, it is private businesses pursuing profits that drives the economy. Being pro-capitalist and anti-business doesn't make sense. So, they've got to let business have its way, as in fact when it power they've always done., putting profits before meeting people's needs.
Just got back from an Indian restaurant where I ordered "non vegetarian thali". What's the world coming to when normal food is described as "non-vegetarian"?
Yes. And it's maintained by their continuing support for it. The ruling class can't just switch it off. Political democracy is not just a matter of laws. It's a reflection of a level of political consciousness already attained.By the way, what's that Nazi site you refer us to? I agree they should be concerned about these new laws being used against them. We'd oppose that too.
Before the scaremongering and speculation here gets out of hand, here's a more balanced view of what is likely to be proposed:http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/blogs/prospector-blog/what-does-theresa-mays-extremism-crackdown-involve Extremism as "the ideology which drives terrorists". Hardly a definition that could include us by any strength of the imagination. Still an infringement of free speech, though.
Vin wrote:Do we seek to end 'parliamentary democracy ' ?No.
Vin wrote:The 'freedom of the market' ?Yes, but where does the proposed legislation say it will be a crime to advocate the end of the "freedom of the market"?
Vin wrote:Do we not seek the revolutionary overthrow of Britain and 'British values'?Yes.
Vin wrote:The legistlation would give the state the power and the legal means to shut the party down.They've already got that legal power.
Vin wrote:Whether they use that power we will have to wait and see. See if 'our enemies' defend us.Oh dear, all is lost !
