ALB
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alanjjohnstone wrote:While reading up on co-ops i happened upon this by Bertell Ollman which some on this thread might find of interest….In revolutions, however, people undergo dramatic changes, and, if a revolution in an advanced capitalist country is to succeed, people will have to develop, as I've argued, many of the same qualities that are called upon in building a socialist society. Thus, the kind of reforms that may appear sensible today, based on people remaining pretty much as they are, will appear much less so. The market socialist suit tailored on today's measurements will no longer fit. New human beings who know how to cooperate and want to do so will make full socialism possible. http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/ms_ch04.php
Now it's Ollman who is talking crap. This idea that socialism requires "new human beings" lends support to Sotionov's criticism that socialists/communists are just utopians who want to change "human nature" and needs knocking on the head straighaway. Socialism is not incompatible with "people remaining pretty much as they are". As we put it in our pamphlet Are We Prisoners of Our Genes?:
Quote:The coming of socialism will not require great changes in the way we behave, essentially only the accentuation of some of the behaviours which people exhibit today (friendliness, helpfulness, cooperation) at the expense of others which capitalism encourages. Capitalism has an all-pervading culture of violence, competitiveness and acquisitiveness, and people are under pressure to adapt their behaviour to this. In socialism this culture will disappear and people’s behaviour will no longer be shaped by it.Let's not weaken our case by talking of a supposed need for "new human beings" for socialism to work.
LBird wrote:…science may confirm that ‘there is nothing in the biological make-up of human beings that would prevent them living [with]… 'free access communism'’, but that isn’t the same as science arguing that ‘humans are innately disposed to f.a.c.’, either.That was the point of my earlier post,Entirely agree. That was my point too.
LBird wrote:…that humans must want to choose to live in a society based on ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’.Yes, agree again.
Quote:There is no ‘biological imperative’ for that type of social arrangement, either, just as there isn’t for Sotionov’s position.Entirely agree yet again (this is turning into an exercise of mutual admiration). Having said that, I think somebody could make out a strong case for capitalism being "against human nature" by trying to reduce us all to isolated competing social atoms whereas we are a social species. It would be nice if this were true, but I'm not arguing this myself.
LBird wrote:But your reply seemed to, at the least, soft-pedal on the need for the basics of f.a.c. to be argued for, as part of a Communist ideological framework. [….] I think it is an ideological argument, which we must actively propagandise for.Of course I agree that, to get to socialism/free-access communism (the same thing) people must want and understand this. And that the main tasks of socialists today is to argue the case for socialism. After all, this is the long-standing SPGB position!My objection was to the word "ideological" because of the association, in some interpretations of Marx, of ideology as "false consciousness". Obviously, socialist consciousness won't be ideological in this sense as it will be an accurate understanding of the situation and of what needs to be done.I assume by "ideological" you simply mean "in the field of ideas". Yes, socialists are engaged in a battle of ideas, but I think we need to find another word than "ideological" to express this.
Nice touch, the break for Thanksgiving. I would have thought that with their immense knowledge on display they would have known that this means nothing in England. The Fall neither.
As promised, LBird, here's the "scientific findings of social anthropology" you were asking about, taken from our pamphlet Are We Prisoners of Our Genes?:
Quote:When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933 biological determinism became a state ideology. This was to be its undoing, at least temporarily, as with the defeat of Germany more accurate views on human biology and behaviour came to the fore. Racism and eugenics were repudiated and it came to be recognised that human behaviour was socially and culturally, not biologically, determined. This was based on solid scientific research and was well expressed (apart from the then prevailing confusion of “human” and “man”) by Kenneth Boulding in 1966:“It is the great peculiarity of man, however, differentiating him from all the other animals, that what his genes endow him with is an enormous nervous system of some 10 billion components, the informational content of which is derived almost wholly from the environment, that is, from inputs into the organism from outside. The genetic contribution to man’s nervous system is virtually complete at birth. Almost everything that happens thereafter is learned. It is this consideration which inspires the modern anthropologist to declare that man has virtually no instincts and that virtually everything he knows has to be learned from his environment, which consists both of the physical world in which he lives and moves and the social world into which he is born” (in Man and Aggression, edited by MF Ashley Montagu, OUP, 1968, pp 86-87).And by the anthropologist Alexander Allard in 1972:"Anthropologists realized long ago that purely biological explanations of human behavior are inadequate. Our behavior is based on customs which develop in the context of specific social and environmental conditions. While they do reflect the fact that man like all other animals must adjust to the environment to survive, attempts to link human behavioral systems to simple geographic or genetic factors have always failed. This is because man's major behavioral adaptation is culture."Culture is learned and shared. It is rooted in biology. But although this is true (the capacity for culture is part of a normal human's brain structure), culture frees man to an unprecedented degree from strictly biological controls over the development and maintenance of behavioral systems. Culture is biologically adaptive. That is, human populations imbedded, like all animal populations, in specific environments adjust to these environments largely through culture."Man is born with a capacity to learn culture, not with culture. This does not mean that all human behavior is freed of biological programming. Individuals are born different. The outcome of heredity and experience will lead to differences in temperament and ability which make it possible for the human group to function as a social entity."The human being has been shaped by evolution. His size, the fact that he walks on two feet, his relative lack of body hair, and the fact that he can and does talk are all products of the evolutionary process. What man does and also what he believes are also products of evolution. But those elements which depend upon culture are not inherited biologically. In part, man adapts biologically to his environment in a non-biological way—through culture."Since man is one of the most widely distributed of species occupying a vast array of environments ranging from deserts to swampland, from plains to mountains, from inland to the sea, and because his social and technological environment varies as widely, we should not be surprised to find a range of behavioral variation adjusted to specific environments" (The Human Imperative, Columbia University Press, 1972, pp. 21-22).This finding was never popular with those who supported class rule and capitalist privilege. It had implications which were too democratic, let alone too socialist, for them. In fact, it confirmed that the so-called “human nature objection” to socialism was completely unfounded: people could adapt to living in socialism, just as they had adapted to living in primitive tribal communism, ancient slave society, feudalism and capitalism.and
Quote:Socialists defend the finding that human behaviour is acquired and not innate, because this is what the accumulated evidence shows. Human behaviour throughout the ages has been so diverse that it is not possible to conclude that, to continue with our examples, aggression, acquisitiveness and male domination, are universal; and not just throughout the ages, such behaviour is not even exhibited by all people today. What this suggests is that humans as a species possess the capacity to engage in a great variety of behaviours and that it is this behavoural flexibility and versatility that is “human nature”.This is confirmed by the study of the genetic make-up of humans. Our brains are adapted for acquiring new behaviours and for thinking abstractly and communicating by means of a structured language based on abstract symbols, and we have a biologically-governed prolonged period of growing up during which we learn the most intensively, in particular language and social skills. Neuroscience is making advances in our understanding of how the brain works but it is not uncovering anything to suggest that complex behaviour patterns such as aggression or possessiveness are, or even could be, innate. Quite the contrary, what neuroscientists are trying to discover is what it is in the make-up and functioning of our brains that allows humans to have a repertoire of many more behaviours than any other animal.In short, the findings of social anthropology show there is nothing in the biological make-up of human beings that would prevent them living in a socialist society (what you call 'free access communism').
Ok, later but the findings don't demonstrate the 'naturalness' of socialism but merely that it is not 'unnatural' (not against an imagined 'human nature') as critics claim.
LBird wrote:Yeah, ‘free access’ Communism can really only be even begun to be grasped from the ideological perspective of the Communist proletarian.I wouldn't go that far. It can be understood by anyone with an elementary knowledge of the scientifc findings of social anthropology. It's not "ideological" in the strict sense of the term. It's a pretty simple concept really. You don't need to be a great intellectual or a grand theoretician to grasp it !
LBird wrote:I think further discussion on ‘safety net’ social mechanisms, asked for by Sotionov, is worth doing, if only to illustrate their probable superfluousness.Agreed. That's what this forum is for.
Sotionov wrote:As I said, if one doesn't hold utopian views, the mechanisms I talk about are neccessary for preneting the democratic and cooperative society from failing. On the other hand, if one is confident in his utopian views, there is no reason to opposse the mechanisms I propose, because if you are right, they will be made superfluous by practice, just like a safety-net is made superfluous when one crosses the walking rope.I don't know what you expect us to do. Adopt your scheme as our official policy? But what would be the point? Besides trying to dictate to the future, this would be to commit ourselves to something that might exclude people who were socialists but disagreed with this particular blueprint. There's nothing stopping a particular socialist holding this view as their own personal view, but it's not the sort of thing to make a party policy.Much more worrying, though, about your proposition is the thinking behind him it, identified by LBird as a reflection of the bourgeois ideology as to what "human nature" is. It's that that's really unacceptable..
Par for the course for groups organised on a Leninist basis. I'd expect a similar controversy to break out sooner or later in the SPI's sister party in Britain (SPEW), as some of those attracted by its programme of immediate reforms realise that they are not really Trotskyists but simple democratic reformists:The article (though written by an obvious CPGB infiltrator) does make the same criticism as us of the typical Trotskyist reform programme that "aims to tailor its demands to the present consciousness of workers":
Quote:And, to reassure the floor of the SP’s ‘credibility’, the table presented ‘solutions’ to the Irish state’s €16.2 billion fiscal deficit. There followed the expected reformist drivel about the need for higher corporate and capital gains taxation, a wealth tax, a financial transactions tax and so on. (….)The terrible irony here is that such ‘credible’ demands are utterly impossible to achieve under capitalism and do not even articulate the need for socialism. They are truly transitional to nothing; save sowing illusions. The inevitable effect of this ‘transitional’ routine – in which the (supposed) socialist consciousness of the SP plays no part – is that the SP’s ‘programme’ is nothing more than an eclectic, incoherent mess of demands that could never advance the cause of socialism. Socialism is an utter non-sequitur as far as the actual practice of the SP is concerned.Quite. It's the same with SPEW here with their incredible 'credible' demands to "tax the rich" to finance "massive public spending" on houses, schools and hospitals.
But we were first. Not sure that Farage is that critical as he's reported in today Times as raising another bogey that
Quote:"28 million poor people" from Bulgaria and Romania will have automatic rights to work in Britain from 1 January,The figure seems to have gone up from the 6 million who are said to be actually coming that's circulating in pubs at the moment.I think he'd prefer the vans to tour the highways and byways of Bulgaria and Rumania saying "Don't Come".
In the course of the discussion you have changed your position from
Sotionov wrote:People don't like to do (hard, dirty and dangerous) work, and will avoid it if they can.to
Sotionov wrote:people in general don't like doing (hard, dirty, dangerous) work and will avoid when they can, and will choose the easier, cleaner and safer work when they can.I don't if this know if this change is significant but all you are saying is: People don't like doing work that they don't like to do. Which is true by definition rather than a fact of life! Can't disagree with that.Your question boils down to how, in a socialist society with free access, can people be got to do work they might not like doing? In other words, a variety of "Who Will Do the Dirty Work?" which opponents have long put to socialists and which socialists have long come up with various answers. Here, for what it's worth, is the one given by William Morris in 1883 (in Useful Work versus Useless Toil):
Quote:Socialists are often asked how work of the rougher and more repulsive kind could be carried out in the new condition of things. To attempt to answer such questions fully or authoritatively would be attempting the impossibility of constructing a scheme of a new society out of the materials of the old, before we knew which of those materials would disappear and which endure through the evolution which is leading us to the great change. Yet it is not difficult to conceive of some arrangement whereby those who did the roughest work should work for the shortest spells, And again, what is said above of the variety of work applies specially here. Once more I say, that for a man to be the whole of his life hopelessly engaged in performing one repulsive and never-ending task, is an arrangement fit enough for the hell imagined by theologians, but scarcely fit for any other form of society. Lastly, if this rougher work were of any special kind, we may suppose that special volunteers would be called on to perform it, who would surely be forthcoming, unless men in a state of freedom should lose the sparks of manliness which they possessed as slaves. And yet if there be any work which cannot be made other than repulsive, either by the shortness of its duration or the intermittency of its recurrence, or by the sense of special and peculiar usefulness (and therefore honour) in the mind of the man who performs it freely – if there be any work which cannot be but a torment to the worker, what then? Well, then, let us see if the heavens will fall on us if we leave it undone, for it were better that they should. The produce of such work cannot be worth the price of it.So, basically, there are various possible practical ways (that don't assume a "new Man") of dealing with the matter but there's no point in drawing up a detalied blueprint (or "mecanism") today.This is a discussion forum so there's no harm in discussing your "mechanism", but knowing full well that it is only an abstract intellectual exercise that will probably have no bearing on what future socialist society decides.Your proposal is that it should be democratically-decided that every able-bodied person should do some many hours a month of what might be called "community service". That sounds reasonable. I would imagine that most people would go along with that and do it. But, you object, what about the one, or maybe ones, who refuse or fail to do this. You want to "punish" them by depriving them of free access, but how? Everyone else will be able to take freely from the common stock of wealth set aside for individual consumption; the recalcitrant individual turns up at the store but who's going to tell them what they can and cannot have? Or, for that matter, stop them taking what they think they need?When we've been drawn into discussing this hypothetical case we've generally answered that it is likely to so rare as to not to need to bother about, and certainly not worth erecting a complicated structure to deal with. But the basic answer is given above by Morris: there is no point in us today working out a "mecanism" for a problem which might not arise or, if it did, not in a form that we can know. Even if we were to, it would just be an intellectual exercise since what would actually be done would depend on what people at the time decided in the light of the exact circumstances of the time, not on what we today might think they should do.In other words, future socialist society will deal with the problem if it arises and there's no point in us today drawing up a blueprint, not even a "contingency plan", of what they should do.
Sotionov wrote:Today we have two facts of life: 1. In order to provide for people's needs, people need to work. 2. People don't like to do (hard, dirty and dangerous) work, and will avoid it if they can.You beat me to it, Ed. (1) is a "fact of life", but (2) is dubious and is not universally true. People are prepared to work "hard" if they consider what they are doing is enjoyable or necessary. What work is "dirty" is in the eye of the beholder. And some people consider it an honour to do "dangerous" work (eg lifeboat crews or mountain rescue teams, even soldiers).
Sotionov wrote:If you don't think that these two facts will be overcame with the abolition of capitalism, then we are going to need mechanisms to ensure that if someone consumes, he should also contribute according to his abilities.This does not follow even on its own terms. There are plenty of people even today who consume without contributing to production (eg the young, the old, the sick) — another "fact of life" that will no doubt continue (and probably be extended) in a socialist society. So this claim would need to be revised to: if people are to consume, "mechanisms" will be needed to ensure that enough people work.But what does "mechanisms" mean? It sounds ominous and seems to suggest some form of economic coercion tying what some persons are allowed to consume to the amount of work they do. But why?Obviously, because "in order to provide for people's needs, people need to work", arrangements will have to be made to ensure that the needed work is done, but it does not follow that these have to involve economic coercion. It could just be a purely organisational matter, matching the work people like or are prepared to do with the work that needs to be done. It need not involve any restrictions on what those who work consume, i.e there does not have to be any link between an individual's contribution to production and their consumption.
Have you got one for a comrade in the CWU who's desperate to contract out since he's learned that some of his union dues are going to finance the Labour Party? Looks, though, as if he might have to continue contributing for the rest of the year.
Socialists in the RMT too need to contract out of the political levy, otherwise they will be paying to subside not the Labour Party but the Trotskyists in TUSC (not sure which is worse):http://www.tusc.org.uk/16803/06-07-2013/rmt-conference-re-affirms-union-support-for-tuscInteresting to see that there is still some residual support for Labour in the RMT.
Sotionov wrote:I have free access to everything. If my place turns into a waste pit, what do I care, I'll just go into another place, it's free.That's just the usual anti-socialist crap we get from open supporters of capitalism. You'll have to do better than that.to justify not making housing and utilities free. And who said that in socialism people would have free access to "everything"? Next you'll be telling us that people will be demanding free access to Porsches, as if we'd not heard it all before from open supporters of capitalism.
