ALB
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It's actually even sillier than that. The Labour candidate lives in a street which forms the boundary of the ward, with one side in it and the other not. He lives on the wrong side, The Liberal candidate lives a few streets away. They both probably shop at the same corner shop and wait at the same bus stop.It seems the campaign is sorely in need of elevating beyond the level of parish pump politics, as it will be with our leaflet "Revolution the only solution".
Dave wrote:While I agree that when the working class as a class develops a socialist perspective the capitalist class will more than likely be overthrown with a relative small amount of casualties. After all the Russian reolution of 1917 was a relatively bloodless affair. The problem however is that as the process develops the capitalist class will use a wide variety of methods to sustain their power and part of that will be the use of physical force.I take it you mean by "physical force" actual violence rather than the routine exercise of state power which is always a case of "force". Maybe, but maybe not for the reasons I outlined. Having said this, I don't think we can rule out isolated incidents of physical violence before and immediately after the working class capture of political power but I suggest that these would just be that — isolated incidents. Even Marx, in 1872, considered that a peaceful takeover of power by the working class was possible in certain conditions, i.e a stable political democracy, (even though he expected that sections of the capitalist class would stage a "slaveholders' revolt").
Dave wrote:The example of Noske is a good one for it shows that the German capitalist class took steps to abort the development of a socialist consciousness and they were helped in this by bad tactics of the sparticists and the left of the Marxist movement.I don't think this is a good example as conditions in Germany in 1918-19 have very little in common with conditions in the developed capitalist countries a hundred years later. The Social Democrat government that came to power in 1918 was trying to consolidate "bourgeois democracy" which had just been established there, whereas today in most countries this is fairly well established and supported by the population. I do agree that the minority of socialists in Germany at the time did make a mistake in staging an uprising without majority or even widespread support. As would any socialist minority fool-hardy enough to try this today or in the future.
Dave wrote:The same will happen in the UK and the working class needs to know that a revolution can be a dangerous but necessary event if class rule is to be overthrown.If we really think that, then we'd have to revise our whole approach. Frankly, I don't see a civil war (and so preparing for it) as being on the cards and, even if it was, I would think most workers would opt for staying with capitalism rather than going through a modern civil war (as in the former Yugoslavia and now in Syria) to get to socialism.
Dave wrote:The example of the collapse of Stalinist/State Capitalist regimes in Eastern Europe is not a very good one as what we saw was a shift within the ruling class where sections of the ruling class became the dominate class.I know that's the counter-argument and there's some truth in it, but what happened there still showed that no government can hold on to power in the face of mass popular opposition. It is also the case that a modern capitalist economy, which requires trained and self-motivated workers, could not function on the basis of forced labour for any length of time. So, in that sense, political democracy, and the illusion of "freedom" that goes with it, is the best political form for capitalism. If a government were to suspend it in the face of a growing, but still minority socialist movement they would severely disrupt profit-making and if they tried it in the face of a majority socialist movement they would merely be uselessly postponing their demise (as some maybe most of them would surely realise as did Honecker and co in East Germany). In any event, we've always endorsed the old Chartist slogan of "peaceably if we may, forcibly if we must" as long as there's a majority in favour.
Dave wrote:A revolution is qualatatively different with one class being replaced by another class.Agreed, but all the revolutions that have taken place in history up to now have been a case of one minority replacing another minority (even what happened in Russia in 1917). The socialist revolution, on the other hand, will be a case of a minority ruling class being replaced by a majority. This has never happened before, so I don't think we can conclude from the experience of minority or minority-led revolutions what is likely to be the case in a majority revolution.
Dave wrote:One question does the SPGB see socialism as an ethical imperative or a material necessity?Opinions on this are divided, with some members saying "both" and other saying "material necessity" (the current majority position).
Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:However, I'm not sure why you mentioned 'transitional demands' — I have never argued in their favour, whatever other Trotskyists might have maintained.I thought you said somewhere that you were or had been in some Trotskyist organisation (SWP, I think) and jumped to the conclusion that you were an orthodox one. My apologies but what, then, is your case against "abstract propaganda" for socialism?In the meantime, I've discovered that Marx did take some interest in "philosophy" after 1845. He introduced Joseph Dietzgen, who was one of the delegates to the congress of the IWMA in Amsterdam in 1872 as, "our philosopher" (as reported by his son, Eugene, in this article) and also discussed his ideas in correspondence with Engels and Kugelmann. I agree, though, that Dietzgen was into the theory of knowledge (epistemology) rather than general, speculative "philosophy" and that he did write a book called The Positive Outcome of Philosophy, a title implying that philosophy's day was over. But didn't you also claim somewhere that Marx wasn't interested even in "epistemology"?I'm not sure that this makes any difference to anything.
That's actually one of the approaches we used to adopt when speaking at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park on a Sunday. We told the listeners that it was true that every 4 or 5 years they were free to elect MPs and councillors to fill certain political posts but that, come Monday morning, as soon as they passed through the doors of the office or the gates of the factory where they worked they stopped being "free citizens" and became subjected to the dictates of whoever was acting on the authority of those who owned where they worked. In other words, that democracy stopped at work, whereas in socialism it would be different, etc.
I never said that Marx had a positive attitude to philosophy in general (In fact I said the opposite) nor would I deny that when Marx talks about ruling ideas he includes philosophy of all kinds in this. My point was narrower: that by "die Philosophen" in your quotes he was talking about post-Hegel German philosophers of which he'd once been one.It is surely significant that in the passage where he writes of this he speaks of "thinkers", "producers of ideas" rather than "philosophers". Surely to make it clear he was referring to a wider group than he referred elsewhere to as "die Philosphen", a group that includes theologists, theorists of law or history or literature and ideologists of all kind as well as philosophers, German or otherwise.It doesn't make any difference which one of us is right on this narrow point. I just think that the ecidence shows that .you are wrong on it.I would add, though, that in assimilating "producers of ideas" and "philosphers" and then rejecting philosophy you would also seem to be rejecting all theorising, even by socialists. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water. Or, more worryingly, denying the utility of arguing the case for socialism with fellow workers, not even in simple, everyday language (preferring to lead them down the path of "transitional demands" instead as a way of making them learn).
I still say, RL, that you are on to a loser in trying to argue that Wittgenstein meant something different by "philosophy" than the Logical Positivists and the Ordinary Language Philosophers. All of them were concerned with analysing the meaning of everyday language and eliminating most of what traditional philosophy had studied as "metaphysics". Anyway, you have conceded that Wittgengstein did philosophy and was a philospher, even if a sort of anti-philosophy philosopher.You are on to a loser too is trying to argue that by "the philosophers" Marx meant more than the German "critical critics" that he'd once been associated with himself and that the quotes you have given about him saying they were quasi-religious, ought to come down to earth, were only concerned with discussing and changing ideas, etc, etc don't refer to them. Engels actually says so in his preface to his Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. Referring to what was later to be published (after his death) as The German Ideology, he wrote:
Quote:In the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, published in Berlin, 1859, Karl Marx relates how the two of us in Brussels in the year 1845 set about:“to work out in common the opposition of our view” — the materialist conception of history which was elaborated mainly by Marx — to the ideological view of German philosophy, in fact, to settle accounts with our erstwhile philosophical conscience. The resolve was carried out in the form of a criticism of post-Hegelian philosophy.So, for Marx, "die Philosophen" in your quotes were the exponents of this, not philosphers in general.Having said this, I don't like the term "Marxist philosophy" as I agree with you that there is no such thing, "philosophy" (all philosophies of history, not just German) having been replaced by the materialist conception of history and all "philosophies of nature" by science.But this discussion about the meaning of philosophy is a bit of a side-show. More important are the differences over Leninism and its political tactics and practice, as an ideology of state capitalism, arising from the meaning of the ruling ideas being those of the ruling class and how to deal with this.
I know what you mean. Of course "politics" in the sense of arguments over what "policies" should be pursued or decisions taken will continue in a socialist/communist society. The objection to applying the word to such a society is that it is associated with the state and what policies it should pursue whereas there will no longer be any state. Just semantics perhaps, but I can't think of an alternative singe word for this at the moment.I think there's been some discussion here before on applying the word "economy" to socialism/communism. I'd be more opposed to this since the words "economy", "economics", etc are too linked to the concept of exchange and the study of the impersonal forces that arise and determine people's decisions about the production and distribution of wealth when there is production for sale.When production for the market with a view to profit has been replaced by production solely and directly to need people's needs, as will be the case in socialism, there will no longer be such impersonal forces to study and "economics" will cease to exist. So, on this definition, socialism is not an economy, not even a planned or a democratic economy. I'd be more insistent on this one in view of the fact that there are so many groups advocating democratic control of production for sale who imagine that that would be socialism. This, of course, is not what you mean, so there's no need to fall out over this (we know what we mean because we've defined our terms). It's others who might be misled.Better, then, to speak of socialism/communism as "the democratic control of the production and distribution of wealth" or simply "the democratic control of production".
Who's saying that? The argument is that, with the spread of socialist ideas, enough members of the armed forces would be to render these forces an unreliable and perhaps a useless instrument in the hands of the ruling class. We've seen plenty of dictators give up when they realise that the armed forces are no longer on their side.Even today when socialist understanding is very limited there are some former members of the armed forces in the Socialist Party. I was talking to one the other evening.
Just found while looking for something else this example of the Red Flag being sung by Party members (right at the end):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1910s/1916/no-141-may-1916/crabbed-age-and-youth
Dave wrote:History shows that no ruling class ever gives up its power voluntarily or peacefully.This is often said, but is it actually true? It can certainly be said that no ruling class has ever given up power "voluntarily" in that it has spontaneously decided of its own accord to do this without being put under any sort of pressure to do so, but there are a number of historical examples of a ruling class giving up "peacefully" when put under overwhelming popular pressure, under the force, if you like of mass popular opposition. The state-capitalist ruling class in East Germany and Czechoslovakia for instance. Here were hard-line regimes with repressive force at their disposal which, when faced with mass popular opposition, decided not to use this force but literally to give up, knowing that they had no chance of holding on to their power and that if they tried, as some elements of the ruling class in Rumania did, they would be signing their own death warrants.Surely, the situation on the eve of the socialist revolution will be like that in Eastern Europe twenty or so years ago, only more so. A mass popular and democratically-organised socialist movement enjoying majority support. Under these circumstances the capitalist ruling class will have no realistic choice but to surrender, especially if majority socialist support is confirmed by an election victory. They wouldn't be doing so voluntarily but will have been forced out by mass popular pressure. So I think your statement needs to be amended to read:
Quote:History shows that no ruling class ever gives up its power without being forced to do so.That's more historically accurate.
Dave wrote:What is certain is that as the working class develops a revolutionary consciousness then the ruling class will take military means to smash the developing workers movement.I don't think this argument can be sustained either. Certainly, we cannot say that this will be "certain" to happen. One reason for this will be that as a revoluntary consciousness develops among the working class this will, as has already been mentioned in the discusssion here, be bound to affect workers working for the state, including those in the armed forces. Which will make the armed forces, and the whole state apparaus, an unreliable weapon in the hands of the ruling class.Any ruling class that tried to use military force against a growing democratically-organised socialist movement would be taking the enormous risk, for them, of making the instrument by which they rule unstable and unusable. In fact it is hard to see the ruling class being united on this any more than the armed forces would be.One section of the ruling class might prefer to try an alternative strategy to counter the growing socialist movement — offering reforms and improvements to try to defuse it. Actually, I would suggest this is the more likely scenario and describes how ruling classes have behaved when faced with growing popular discontent. "Give them reform or they'll give you revolution", as one Tory politician once put it. So, here again, your statement needs to be amended:
Quote:What is certain is that as the working class develops a revolutionary consciousness then the ruling class will take measures to counter the developing workers movement.Personally I don't like the phrase "the parliamentary road to socialism" (although we have occasionally used it). I prefer "the political road to socialism" which will involve using elections and parliament. We have in fact never been committed to a purely political road but have always held that the working class need to be organised outside parliament too, to control any elected MPs and councillors but also at work to take over production and kee it going. As we say in our latest statement of this case, our pamphlet What's Wrong with Using Parliament?:
Quote:The socialist political party (of which we are just a potential embryo) will not be something separate from the socialist majority. It will be the socialist majority self-organised politically, an instrument they have formed to use to achieve a socialist society. The structure of the future mass socialist party will have to reflect – to prefigure – the democratic nature of the society it is seeking to establish. It must be democratic, without leaders, with major decisions made by conferences of mandated and recallable delegates or by referendum, and other decisions made by accountable individuals and committees. It won’t have a leadership with the power to make decisions and tell the general membership what to do. In other words, it will be quite different both from the parties of professional politicians that stand for election today and from the vanguard parties of the Leninists. This is not to say that the socialist majority only needs to organise itself politically. It does need to organise politically so as to be able to win control of political power. But it also needs to organise economically to take over and keep production going immediately after the winning of political control. We can’t anticipate how such socialist workplace organisations will emerge, whether from the reform of the existing trade unions, from breakaways from them or from the formation of completely new organisations. All we can say now is that such workplace organisations will arise and that they too, like the socialist political party, will have to organise themselves on a democratic basis, with mandated delegates instead of leaders. With the spread of socialist ideas all organisations will change and take on a participatory democratic and socialist character, so that the majority’s organisation for socialism will not be just political and economic, but will also embrace schools and universities, television, film-making, plays and the like as well as inter-personal relationships. We’re talking about a radical social revolution involving all aspects of social life.I suppose you could, at a pinch, call these socialist-minded workers' organisations "workers councils" but we haven't because of the term's association with the "soviets" that emerged during the Russian anti-tsarist revolution and which have idealised, not to say idolised.The armed forces are part of the state and whoever controls the state will control them. This will apply to a socialist=controlled parliament, so why should the question arise of handing over control to some other body. Presumably you are thinking of some central council of "workers' councils", but would be the point of setting up such a parallel organisation? Other means will exist of controlling socialist MPs (as set out in the extract above from our pamphlet) who, I repeat, won't be separate from control by socialists outside parliament than would the delegates to any central workers council. And it wouldn't be an "SPGB dominated parliament" but a socialist-minded working class dominated parliament.In a sense this is speculation, but the important factor before socialism can be established is to have a democratically-organised majority in favour of it using democratic methods. In the political conditions that exist today one of the means that can be (and we say should be) used is elections and parliament.Here's an article from a back issue of the Socialist Standard on "Workers' Councils":http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1971/no-808-december-1971/workers-councilsSee also this article from 1937 and its concluding paragraph:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1930s/1937/no-399-november-1937/socialist-party-and-economic-organisation
alanjjohnstone wrote:There will be some however who would challenge a purely materialist explanation of the civil war in Syria, based on a drought and urban migration. Wasn't the original rising more a "educated, middle class" Arab Spring and rising food prices not a particulr great issue as a yesr or so earlier in Egypt…Smoke and mirrors, perhaps…..Hey , thats the cause…unfixable environmental destruction….not Saudi money and politics.Actually, he only said that it was a factor, not the factor, but them so did we in the article on "The Civil War in Spain" in the September Socialist Standard:
Quote:Hanna Batatu writing in the 1981 Middle East Journal is prophetic about the 2011 uprising: ' rural people, driven by economic distress or lack of security, move into the main cities, settle in the outlying districts, enter before long into relations or forge common links with elements of the urban poor, who are themselves often earlier migrants from the countryside, and together they challenge the old established classes'An Associated Press Report of 16 October 2012 identified that the rebels were poor, religiously conservative from the underdeveloped countryside who felt economically marginalised, were against elite merchants and industrialists who dominated Aleppo and allied to the regime. An ex-car mechanic now in the rebel army said: 'those who have money in Aleppo worry about their wealth and interests when we have long lived in poverty'. The report concluded that the uprising was 'as much a revolt of the underclass as a rebellion against the regime's authoritarian grip'.Of course, all sorts of elements have taken advantage of this to further their interests such as, precisely, Saudi Arabia to further its struggle with Iran for regional hegemony and Western capitalism to overthrow a hostile regime in an oil-rich part of the world.
I see the date of that tweet was 1 November:https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/396302820648837120Interesting because, to back up his claim that Marx thought there could be a peaceful winning of political power under certain circumstances, Owen Jones quoted not from his speech in 1872 in Amsterdam but from something he wrote in the 1850s and which is quoted in the blog of our friends North of the border but which is rarely quoted by anyone else.Speaking of the Chartists, Marx wrote in 1852:
Quote:But universal suffrage is the equivalent of political power for the working class of England, where the proletariat forms the large majority of the population, where, in a long though underground civil war, it has gained a clear consciousness of its position as a class and where even the rural districts know no longer any peasants, but only landlords, industrial capitalists (farmers) and hired labourers. The carrying of universal suffrage in England would, therefore be a far more socialistic measure than anything which has been honoured with that name on the continent. Its inevitable result, here is the political supremacy of the working class. [Marx emphasis]This was in an article he wrote in August 1852 for the New York Tribune which curiously (though perhaps not) is not on the Marxist Internet Archive.Are we allowed to speculate that Jones mugged up on Marx before the programme by consulting what we say? But then where else would a Social Democrat go to built a case that Marx wasn't a Leninist?
You can watch it here for another 7 days (it starts 24m 29s in);http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03gprs0/Daily_Politics_01_11_2013/A comrade rang me this morning to say Owen Jones had been on TV talking about Marx, so I watched it expecting a load of rubbish (Jones being a trendy reformist) but in fact I have to confess that he wasn't all that bad at all. He pointed out that Britain wasn't a political democracy in Marx's day and that Marx envisaged the possibility, with the extension of the franchise to most workers, of a peaceful winning of power for socialism. Strange, though, to see a Labour Party supporter speaking favourably of Marx.What was bad was not him but the woman professor from Oxford who said that Marx foreshadowed a vanguard party such as Lenin formed and Andrew Neil himself who kept on implying that the USSR had been "Marxist". Jones actually used an argument we've often used to refute this: East Germany called itself the "German Democratic Republic" but nobody thought it was democratic, so why consider the USSR socialist just because it called itself that?
