ALB
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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.
The reference was just to what happened in Brixton. Maybe elsewhere the action was more successful in terms of numbers who turned up. I imagine they expected more to turn up in Brixton. We did and even printed a few more leaflets.The other criticism — for blaming the banks and in particular HSBC for the crisis — remains valid as it is diverting popular discontent away from capitalism as a system on to banks and their top executives. Here is another extract from their leaflet (presumably also distributed in Regent Street, Glasgow, Sheffield, etc):
Quote:Today people all over the country are targeting HSBC – shutting down the UK's biggest bonus-munching, crisis-causing, tax-dodging bank. We are bringing food banks into the big banks. It's time that the tax-dodging fat-cats and the banks that caused the financial crisis were made to pay up, not the public.Popular resentment against banks and bankers may be understandable, but it is still wrong to blame them for causing the crisis. In fact we need to argue against this misdirected resentment and its populist exploitation by UK Uncut and TUSC, one of whose election leaflets and frequently in their paper raises the slogan "We won't pay for the bankers' crisis!" Maybe UK Uncut can be excused to a certain extent because they don't claim to be Marxists.I'm not against us organising propaganda stunts (as discussed in the workshops we held) but they need to be correct politically.
I don't think that the "to each according to their needs" part, i.e free access according to individually determined need, poses a problem as long as it is understood that it can only be free access to what society has decided should be produced (or to what you yourself grow or make). Where this exists, in however distorted a form, under capitalism people eventually adjust to taking or using only what they need, a behaviour pattern that will be re-inforced in socialism when people can be certain that free access will continue. There is a "social" element here, yes, but it's the decision about what should be produced to be made freely available, not the individual decision to assess "need".The first part "from each according to their ability" is the one that doesn't fit it with anarchist-type "individual sovereignity" as it presupposes a degree of organisation that cannot be left to individual choice. Individuals will have to fit in with the work process and commit themselves to being at work at agreed times, i.e. when (or even whether) to work cannot be completely "self-determined". But I would think that the solution will lie along the lines of ensuring that everyone has a job (or jobs) that suits them and being part of a co-operating working community. I don't see anything wrong in principle with a rota system for tasks considered uninteresting to which people would also be committed, but I don't see that coercive measures (such as reduced access to what you need to live) would be any part of the solution.In the end, this sort of discussion is really about what people think "human nature" is: if you think people are "naturally" lazy and unco-operative then you will tend to envisage coercive measures. If you don't then you won't.
Interesting and relevant news item on the BBC yesterday:
Quote:Researchers from Abo Academy University in Finland say that violence in early human communities was driven by personal conflicts rather than large-scale battles.They say their findings suggest that war is not an innate part of human nature, but rather a behaviour that we have adopted more recently.Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23340252
Russia could have jumped straight into socialism in 1918 but only if North America and the rest of Europe had jumped at the same time, i.e socialism was immediately possible in 1918 but not just in one country.
Here's Bob Crow of RMT's take on this. The trouble is he only wants to create a Labour Party Mark 2, but why try to recreate a political form that's failed?
Nobody is saying that local communities are not capable of running their own affairs. Of course they are and in socialism will be able to, freed from financial considerations. All we are saying is that they are not capable of producing all they need locally. This is not an insult, eg saying that they are not competant to do this, but a purely factual statement. It's no answer saying that if there isn't a copper mine locally, they could use aluminium because the chances are that there won't be an aluminium mine (or smelter) locally either.What is wrong with local communities adminstering their affairs locally, but getting goods and materials that are not available locally from their region or, in the case of some things, from some world body? To refuse this would be to shoot themselves in the foot, not that I can imagine those in any local community wanting (voting) to do this. I think you'd find yourself outvoted by the other citizens of Wokingham
According to the two comrades who went, this was a very quiet event. They set up stall opposite ULU in Malet Street (having worked out that it was not in Gower St, as I mistakenly said above) at about mid-day and stayed for a couple of hours. The only other non-SWP stall was that of the AWL. They estimated only about 200 people went to the meetings in ULU (there may have been others who went to parallel events at the other venue at the Institute of Education). They gave away leaflets, sold a few pamphlets and returned to their car to find they'd acquired a parking ticket (so rather an expensive propaganda exercise).Not like in the olden days. Not sure if it will be worth bothering next year.
