ALB
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LBird wrote:What do you think, ALB? Is it a fair reflection of Bogdanov’s views, in your opinion?
Not really. It's from an ICC pamphlet written by someone who was one of their members at the time and reflects their ambiguous position towards Lenin, seemingly endorsing his criticism of Bogdanov. Although Bourrinet is a socialist/communist in our sense and Kolakowski a declared anti-socialist, I think we can have more confidence in Kolakowski's summary of Bogdanov's views as he would have read Bogdanov in the original Russian while Bourrinet would probably not have done.It is true that Bogdanov wanted to incorporate some of the ideas of Mach and Avenarius into socialist theory (as did Pannekoek) but I don't think he saw this as "going beyond Marx's limitations" (any more than Pannekoek did). More like filling a gap both perceived in socialist theory by adding a theory of the nature of knowledge (epistemology) to it.Anyway, (for what it's worth) here is Kolakowski's summary of some of Bogdanov's views (he devotes 11 pages of his Main Currents of Marxism to discussing them). Referring to a book Bogdanov wrote in 1899 Kolalowski writes:
Quote:In this work he displays the relativist tendency which he regarded as a cornerstone of Marxism: all truths are historical in the sense that they express man's biological and social situation; truth is a matter of practical applicability, not objective validity.And on what Bogdanov got from Mach:
Quote:According to Bogdanov, Mach's philosophy supports Marxism inasmuch as they both treat cognitive processes as instruments of man's fight for existence and reject the possibility of ideas not derived from experience. The 'objectivity' of acts of cognition lies in the fact that they are valid for human societies and not only for the individual. This collective aspect distinguishes physical phenomena from "subjective" ones. "The objective character of the physical world consists in the fact that it exists not for me personally but for all, and has for everyone a definite meaning, the same, I believe, as it has for me" (Empiriomonism, i, 25). Nature is "collectively organised experience". Space, time, and causality are forms in which men co-ordinate their respective perceptions; but this co-ordination is not as yet complete. There are experiences, socially significant and with a social origin, which nevertheless conflict with other experiences. This is due to social antagonism and the class division, which have the effect that human beings only understand one another within certain limits, while their discordant interests inevitably produce conflicting ideologies. In an individualistic society like ours each person's experience centres on himself, whereas in primitive communist societies the "self" was merged in the community. In the society of the future it will be different again, when work is collectively organized and there is no possibility of conflict between my own self and another's.By which I take Bogdanov to mean that in socialist/communist society all humans will share a common "ideology".He does seem to have been a bit of a technological determinist but to accuse him of prefiguring "the stalinist view" is grossly unfair. After all, while he regarded the Russian Revolution as "progressive" he did not regard it as socialist and realised that what the Bolsheviks (Lenin and Trotsky as well as Stalin) were building in Russia was state capitalism not socialism.
The website comrades have just added another article to the Socialist Standard archive here which exposes Militant's confusion over another economic question: banks and credit. This article criticises a pamphlet they brought out in 1977 in which they argue that banks can create credit out of thin air:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1980s/1981/no-917-january-1981/militant-confusion-about-inflationThis might go down well today in some reformist circles but is just as much mistaken today as it was then. They are still fishing in currency crank waters as this article calling for the "banksters" to be jailed shows. It also shows that a nationalised bank is a key part of their reformist plan to relaunch the capitalist economy by a massive programme of public works:
Quote:the banking system should be nationalised under democratic popular control. Only on this basis would it be possible to get rid of the spivs and speculators that are holding working class people to ransom. A genuinely nationalised banking sector would be run for the benefit of the majority, rather than for the super-rich. Those struggling to pay their mortgage would have it converted to an affordable rent; small businesses could get cheap loans, and public works such as a massive house-building programme could be cheaply financed.alanjjohnstone wrote:The Socialist Party does not shy away from mergers with groups where there is a common identity of interests.No doubt this is true in the abstract (though it has never happened of course and it is not immediately clear what "a common identity of interests" might mean, i.e a common aim and set of principles) but a 'merger" is not what the EC;s letter proposes or has in mind. It is merely proposing a meeting to discuss the principle that in any one country there can only be one socialist party. As it concludes:
Quote:As there can be no point in two socialist parties in one country we should like to propose a meeting to discuss the principle of a single socialist party, based on sound socialist principles, as opposed to forming yet another leftwing reformist party.In other words, to draw their attention to the fact such a socialist party already exists. A meeting would also be an opportunity to discuss differences, especially their clause 8 which says that a socialist party should have a reform programme.
It's another interesting but different graph, showing this time how, since the 1960s, the share of national income of the top 10% has gone up at the same time as the percentage of workers unionised has gone down.I'm not sure, though, that we can conclude that the share of the top 10% went up because the percentage of workers in unions went down. We certainly can't argue that if union membership hadn't declined then the share of the top 10% would not have gone up. That would be to attribute to unions a power they don't have.Unions may (and do) have the power, when first set up, to increase the wages of their members (and some others) and then to more or less maintain this in the long run (pushing up wages in boom times and slowing down wage cuts in slump times), but that's as far as they can go.Not even governments can reducee income inequality. Reformist governments have tried but failed and given up. Instead, in recent decades, governments have helped capitalism's tendency to increased inequality, by reducing taxes on profits and high incomes. Government anti-union legislation, making unions less effective in their limited sphere, may have been a factor but only a minor one.Union membership will have declined in line with the decreased share of manufacturing (where they were well organised) in GDP. But even if union membership hadn't declined I think the top 10 percent's share would still have gone up.
"Middle class" here is defined as "the middle 60 percent of households" by income. So what's really been talked about is the middle 60 percent of income-receivers, most of whom will of course be members of the working class properly defined.In the olden days, the ICC would probably have said it was a conspiracy by the unions, at the behest of the capitalist state, to reduce their own membership and so effectiveness so as to allow the income of the workers concerned to fall. These days they would more probably point to this part of the news item as confirmation of their view that workers are better off without unions:
Quote:Studies have discovered that during the economic recovery, non-union workers fared considerably better than union workers in fields like manufacturing and private construction. Also, during the 1982 and 1991 recessions, states with fewer union members were found to recover more quickly than states with a strong union presence.What should we make of it? First, that the middle 60 percent of incomes is not a very meaningful group. Second, that "middle class" is not a useful description of it as class is determined not by income but relationship to the means of production. Third, that a group's declining share of total income does not necessarily mean (as the title, but not the small print, of the graph suggests) a decline in their real income.
Well, well. Everybody's heard of the revolving door between top civil servants and big business. Now it applies to the BBC economics "experts" and big business:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24288088Not surprising really when you consider that the BBC and other TV news always employ people working for City financial firms to comment on the economy. In the (now distant) past they at least tried to be seen to be neutral by interviewing academics.
By co-incidence the other person who was refused admission to the Socialist Platform meeting on 14 September was the German journalist who was the author of the article from issue 941 of the Weekly Worker JohnD gives.From what she told us in the pub where we went instead, these are an unsavoury lot. Nasty people who break up other people's meetings. She specifically singled out "Platypus" as their English-language version.Incidentally, David Rovics has a hilarious song attacking the idea of a Vanguard (often played during the lunch-hour at our Head Office). It can be heard here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSeU9q6zyT4Here's the lyrics:http://lyrics.wikia.com/David_Rovics:Vanguard
Actually, in his book The Marvelous Learning Animal Arthur Staats doesn't contest "the facts" collected by today's dominant biological determinist scientists, that the brains and brain patterns of men, women, gays, people with learning difficulties, schizophrenics, etc are different. What he is challenging is the "ideological" assumption that these differences must be genetic. He says this is just an assumption which the biological determinists have not been able to prove by showing how genes do or even could determine human social behaviour. He proposes that the differences could equally be due to the experiences (learning) of these groups being different and this having an effect on their brains.You seem to be suggesting that just because socialists favour the second possible explanation socialists should interpret "the facts" in this way. That of course would be wholly "ideological". Staats says that the view he supports needs to be backed up by a coherent theory that fits "the facts", i. e. those who take this approach must show how learning affects and changes the brain. Which is where the neuroscience and (yes) neuroscientists come in. They do indeed seem to be doing our work for us. After all, we are not qualified to do it ourselves, are we? Are you?But we are in danger of turning yet another thread into a discussion of your theory of science.
DJP wrote:Behavioral economists and psychologists are doing the hard work for us!Just reading this book The Marvelous Learning Animal by a behavioural psychologist which seems to be backing up our long-argued position on human nature:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14568718-the-marvelous-learning-animal
I hadn't realised that this was a Labour Party proposal. What a shower of shameless opportunists. I suppose some fock-us group has told them that militarism is a vote-winner at the moment and they duly oblige. Who said they are the lesser evil? They are just as bad if not worse than the other lot. At least the other lot probably genuinely believe in militarism while Labour is just pretending to try to garner votes.
LBird wrote:Dietzgen on the unity of natural and social in one science:Be careful you might end up with the spiritual interpretation of Dietzgen by Larry Gambone in his strange book on Cosmic Dialectics !http://vcmtalk.com/jospeh_dietzgen_page
alanjjohnstone wrote:If i understand my masonry, SPGBers cannot join the British masons due to the necessary belief in the Supreme Being, the Grand Architect in the Sky, but could join the atheistic French masons. i recall reading about them parading in full regalia during the Paris Commune.I wouldn't have thought so !Freemasonry was a bourgeois revolutionary movement in France, Spain, Italy, etc (I think Bakunin was one; secret societies were his thing. Marx wasn't of course) and the Social Democratic parties of those countries are still riddled with it. Not the Communist parties as they declared it incompatible, as I imagine we would/should. The fact that it played a part in the Paris Commune shows the extent that to which its ideas were still influenced by the French bourgeois revolution of the 18th century.
I think I may have posted this link before but here's Kliman explaining in 3 minutes why redistributing income to the working class is not a way out of the crisis. Anyway, it bears repeating:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O47sXexnM9A#t=6m40s
Just posted this yesterday on another thread:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/andrew-kliman-marxist-humanist-slams-underconsumption-theorists-monthly-rev?page=1#comment-8374Actually, they don't seem to be defending crude underconsumption views (they say explicitly that Rosa Luxemburg was wrong on this). What they do do is defend policies which others defend on underconsumption grounds, e.g. increasing government spending and workers incomes, but which they defend on other grounds ("transitional demands", i.e bait to gain a following). They also point out that "underconsumption" is an apparent feature of one stage of the boom/slump cycle (as it is).As I posted yesterday, I think they score a point against Kliman (one only) when they argue that not all crises are caused by a falling rate of profit due to a rise in the organic composition of capital (crudely, due to increased mechanization). They even mention the explanation of crises we have tended to favour:
Quote:Crises can be caused by disproportionality between different industries.But the document is mainly political. At one point they accuse Kliman of echoing SPGB views:
Quote:Insofar that this means anything, it is that the working class must be 'theoretically' educated – presumably by Kliman and Bruce Wallace – to prepare them for socialism.This sounds familiar. It echoes the arguments of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) – not our party, the Socialist Party of England and Wales, but the tiny organisation – that seeks the road to socialism, which by definition must be long and protracted, through abstractly 'educating' working people on the realities of money and demanding its immediate abolition, and the same with classes, the law of value, etc.Such an accusation when used amongst Trotskyists is normally a winner. But Kliman is not a Trotskyist. It may even help us get a debate with him.
Another article, just out, by Wolff defending workers cooperatives still producing for a market as the "alternative" to capitalism and redefining socialism to fit this:http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/18323-debating-capitalism-redefining-outdated-termsHe is of course right that it is inadequate to see capitalism v socialism as the market v state planning. But while capitalism is not incompatible with state planning that doesn't make socialism compatible with the market.
