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It is also why we no longer call the Socialist Standard the SS

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

Coincidental, the current issue of Libertarian Communism has as its theme co-ops.

Just got round to reading this and, actually, apart from one rather long-winded facing-both-ways article, the section on co-operatives and their limitations within capitalism is not bad.Very revealing is the article reprinted from the Economist in 2009 showing how workers in  the much-touted Mondragon co-op in Spain not only exploited themselves but other workers (twice as many) too who are not members of the co-operative, as the Israeli kibbutzim also ended doing:http://www.economist.com/node/13381546I see that the group's managers used the same pretext for paying themselves more as the emerging nomenklatura did in the early days of the old USSR: that non-party experts were getting paid more than them.

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Not a word that we use these days. That's why we changed the name of the "Propaganda Committee" to the "Campaigns Committee" !

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The petrochemical industry is not all that insignificant nor are its products:http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/1053386/analyzing_the_global_petrochemical_industryLet's not be too sweeping in our statements about oil.

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This is a very clever move by a local council opposed to the cuts. It has already removed the Labour Party's excuse that the councils they control are merely implementing Tory-LibDem decided cuts and exposed them as being in favour of implementing them fully. In fact they're even talking about a Labour-Tory adminstration to push them through. As to the Tories bleating about the cost of the referendum, what hypocrisy when they are committed to a much more expensive and quite irrelevant national referendum on the EU. The Brighton referendum if it takes place will be a revealing test of public opinion on the cuts..I wonder how TUSC will react. They can no longer denounce the Greens as "Tories on bikes". In fact I wonder how a Socialist in Brighton would vote.

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steve colborn wrote:

would leave the need, in my personal opinion, for the use of hydrocarbons, irrelevant.

Ah, but plastics are hydrocarbons and oil is their raw material. So we won't be able to do without oil altogether. Otherwise there'd be nothing to put into the 3-D printers some say are going to come into widespread use, quite apart from all the other things that are made from plastics. Using oil to make plastics is a much more intelligent than burning it to generate energy.

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jondwhite wrote:

There couldn't be safe fracking for use not profit no matter how regulated because the technology does not exist to make fracking safe. No technology exists to stop oil well shearing which contaminates the water table.

This is the claim made on the Grasland site but they are not neutral in this matter, if only because they want to sell their film. Their FAQ answers:

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Nope, no technology currently exists to make fracking safe. Here are some of the numbers released by drilling giants Schlumberger, Archer Oil & Gas, Southwestern Energy, and the Society of Petroleum Engineers:- Around 5% of oil and gas wells leak immediately and up to 60% of them fail over a 30-year time period.- According to multiple studies, about 35% of all oil and gas wells are leaking now.

In other words, not all oil and gas wells leak and contaminate the water table. Why don't those that don't? I concede that this will probably be due to geology rather than technology, but it shows that not all fracking is harmful in this sense.Note also that this applies to oil as well as gas and would be an argument against drilling for oil too. Maybe it is, but why single out fracking for shale gas for attack in emotive terms? Why not call also for a ban on oil wells? Under capitalism the nuclear industry would love that.To tell the truth I'm not convinced that the technology does not exist to stop leaks. It will exist, but is not being applied because it is too expensive. If fracking were to be needed in socialism, then cost would not be a consideration and it could only be done in suitable geological conditions.I'm not defending fracking under capitalism, just making the point that there is nothing wrong with the technique in itself. It could be useable in socialism if need be as long the proper precautions were taken. We shouldn't attack the technologies themselves, only their likely misuse under the profit system, i.e. not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

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After Ian Bone, Russell Brand? According to this, he told students at Cambridge the other day that he hadn't ruled out running for parliament:

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Aside from his joke, Brand focused his speech on his distaste for the British government, and reportedly told students that he may run for Parliament.

Or perhaps that was another of his jokes that evening, as another report has him saying that he wouldn't "run" for parliament but "saunter".

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

The purpose of GM is not to increase production but to make agriculture more profitable (and even then it is a short term fix) for business. GMO is an irrelevancy to food supply just as Spanish tasteless strawberries naturally selectively bred for longer shelf life hopefully does not  reflect food choice in socialism. GMO is a distraction from worthwhile research into new methods of produucing our food because it offers certain large corporations large profits

But you are talking about this under capitalism. Of course the aim is not to increase food production to feed more people. It's to make profits. Of course the agro-corporations (and the frackers) want minimal regulation as stringent regulation would increase their costs and reduce their profirs.But I was talking about the completely different situation that will apply in socialism. Then, the aim really will be to grow better food in places where it can't be grown easily today. It really will be to feed the world. And research into genetically engineering crops to allow them to grow faster or over a wider area will be useful. In fact I would have thought that agronomists would be keen to carry out such research, to improve the lot of humanity instead of, as today, to open up profit prospects for some capitalist corporation.As to fracking, the motive for introducing it today is to make a profit. I agree, though, that given other possible sources of energy, it might not be necessary in socialism, but I don't see why it should be ruled out on principle. I don't see why there couldn't be safe (stringently regulated) fracking for use not profit in socialism if need be.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

GMO and nuclear are unnecessary technologies in socialism and are not required threfore why have unnecessary risk.

This is open to challenge. In one sense they are not required for socialism, but since socialism could have been established anytime in the last hundred or so years in that sense neither are radio, plastics, electronics, antibiotics, TV and all the other technologies developed since 1900. But they make the case for socialism all the more practical and plausible as they re-inforce our argument that society has the capacity to produce plenty for all.Genetically engineered crops (most of the crops we eat have already been "genetically modified", through artificial selection) can surely play an important part in increasing food production (a key objective of socialism in the early days). As to nuclear power, nuclear fission could still be used as a transitional source of energy (that does contribute to global warming) while viable renewable sources of energy are developed while nuclear fusion, when it's properly developed, could become an important source of energy. And we could still use coal and oil, if not to burn for energy, as raw materials for plastics.Socialists always used to be technological optimists not back-to-nature technophobes.

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Actually, it's the classic reformist case that could easily be adapted to criticise us, even though we are not vanguardists. As they've left an email address I've sent them this classic article on water by Harry Young:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1980s/1989/no-1023-november-1989/why-water-commodity

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Obviously capitalist firms are not going to engage in fracking unless it returns a profit for them, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is harmful. Personally, I don't see anything wrong in principle with fracking any more than there is with mining in general. In fact, all the arguments against fracking on environmental grounds could also be levelled against mining, but we're not going to take up an anti-mining stance are we? I think we should be wary of jumping on the anti-fracking bandwagon along with the nimbys and those who opposed any new technological advances.(e.g. GM crops too) and continue to argue that scientific and technological advances strengthen the case for socialism and will be properly applied in a socialist society to produce what people need instead of for profit.

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jondwhite wrote:

Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century

Unfortunate name, I'd have thought, in view of its similarity with Chavez's "21st Century Socialism", unless they are Chavists that is. But I thought the SWP was relatively clear on this.

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That's why, the last time this came up at the end of the 1980s, our 1989 Conference passed the following resolution:

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This Conference reaffirms the Party's position on co-operatives as set out, for instance, in the chapter on "The Co-operative Movement" in the 1942 edition of Questions of the Day, that is:"In the minds of many workers the Co-operative movement is regarded as being in some way linked up with socialism. When the co-operators take up this attitude they claim in justification that Robert Owen, the co-operative pioneer, was actively concerned for some part of his life with possible means of escape from the capitalist system (…)Robert Owen's solution was that small groups of workers should try to establish self-supporting 'villages of industry', in which there would be no employer, no master. They would constitute, as it were, little oases in the desert of capitalism, owning the 'land and means of production common'. He anticipated that the movement would grown until finally the workers would have achieved their emancipation (…)The Co-operative Movement cannot solve the basic economic problems of the workers as a whole, or even of the co- operative societies' own members. Its success is merely the success of an essentially capitalist undertakings (…)Co-operation cannot emancipate the working class. Only Socialism will do that. The workers cannot escape from the effects of capitalism by retiring into Owen's 'villages of industry'. They must obtain for society as a whole the ownership of the means of production and distribution, which are the property of the capitalist class. For this they must organise to control the machinery of government. Once possessed of power they can then reorganise society on a socialist basis of common ownership. Owen's original aims can only be achieved by socialist methods."

 

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Good argument forour policy of normally calling ourselves simply the Socialist Party rather than the Socialist Party of GREAT Britain

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