[ALB]

Apparently, he’s also speaking at the “Anarchist Economics” meeting later that afternoon:

Quote:

4.30pm – 6.30pmAnarchist Economics Even amidst economic crisis, experts and politicians tell us that, ‘there is no alternative’. When the Left proposes an alternative it is invariably the Marxist one of nationalisation and often just seems a mirror-image of capitalism as usual. Anarchists by contrast have explored and experimented with economic alternatives for 172 years. At this meeting a panel of speakers will discuss some of these experiments. We hope this will evolve into an open discussion taking up at least half of the available time.Speakers include: David Graeber, Iain McKay and others

“the Marxist one of nationalisation” ! No wonder they won’t let us have a stall there. We might shatter their illusion that Marxists stand for nationalisation when we’ve been denouncing this as state capitalism for over a hundred years. See for instance:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/nationalisation-or-socialism-1945

[ALB]

Fabian wrote:

Could it be said that socialism is based on an view that everyone has the right to fulfillment of their needs?

You could put it that way and enabling people to fulfil their needs is what socialism will bring about. But there is no need to make out a moral or philosophical case for socialism since socialism will not come about through people accepting such a case. It will come about when material circumstances eventually lead the excluded majority to realise that their material interest (in fulfilling their needs) can only be achieved by making productive resources the common heritage of all, ie as a practical solution to a practical problem, not as the implementation of an abstract principle. This may well be reflected, as others here have pointed out, in a feeling that this change is right/fair/just, etc. In fact I would imagine it will be.

[ALB]

Yes, he does seem to have become obsessed with debt and getting rid of it rather than concentrating on getting rid of wage-labour (which you’d think a card-carrying member of the IWW might prioritise).I see he’s speaking at the Anarchist Bookfair in Queen Mary’s university in Mile End, London, on 27 October, but as he’ll be with Chris Kinght I imagine this will be on his specialist subject of anthropology:http://anarchistbookfair.org.uk/whatson.htmlI see their talk is followed by one by the ineffable Michael Albert and his ridiculous “parecom” scheme. That’s one to give a miss.

[ALB]

Thought this from Zeitgeist about the concept of “property” in a moneyless world of abundance makes a useful point that is relevant to this discussion, ie that the concept of ownership will come to be replaced by that of use and access to use:

Quote:

Concurrently, one of the more in depth changes in values and lifestyles will be the way people think about ‘property’. In most of the world today, property is a powerful concept, with people often associating their social status with what they own. As stated before, the monetary system requires ‘cyclical consumption’ to function. This naturally leads to the need for people to be manipulated into thinking they want or need a particular good or service. With the powerful tactics of modern advertising, most in the world support an artificial, materialistic value system that entails wanting more and more goods and services, often regardless of their necessity or utility.In a Resource-Based Economy, the monetary system will no longer pollute the human mind via its manipulative arm – “advertising”. The endless sea of billboards, media commercials, magazines and the like will no longer poison the landscape or our perceptions. This will cause a dramatic shift in the human value system and hence lifestyle.More powerfully, in a Resource-Based Economy there is no reason for property. Property is an outgrowth of scarcity. People who had to work very hard to create or obtain a product or resource in turn protected it because it had immense value relative to the labor entailed along with the scarcity associated. Property is not an “American” or “Capitalist” idea… it is a primitive mental perspective generated from generations of scarcity. People claim “ownership” because it is a legal form of protection.In a system of abundance, without the need for money, the idea of ownership becomes irrelevant. In this new system no one owns anything. Instead, everyone has unrestricted access to everything. Ownership is a massive burden. No longer will a person need to live in one place. One could travel the world constantly. Anything needed is obtained, without restriction. There is no reason for abuse for there is nothing to gain. You can’t steal things that no one owns and you certainly couldn’t sell them.Household items are obtained through central distribution in the cities, while recreational items are available on call or near the location of their use. For example, if you go to a golf course you would select, on site, your clubs from the most effectively designed models available. You use them, and then you return them. If you decide to keep the clubs, go ahead – that is your burden… for why would a person want to transport, maintain and store golf clubs, when they can always have access to them and then return them onsite? Our homes today are full of junk that we hold onto because of the supposed value they maintain. This waste will no longer be needed.In this model, the city complex or, in fact, the entire world, is really your home. Instead of having extraneous items like recreational equipment and vehicles sitting about your physical house, collecting dust when they are not in use, they are stored centrally for everyone’s free access, with products being utilized actively, minimizing redundant waste.If you require an automobile for whatever reason, the car is made available for you. When you get to your destination, the satellite based driving system will automatically make the car available for others to use, as opposed to sitting in some parking lot wasting space and time.In society today, the need for property results in extreme product overlap and redundant waste. There is no reason for every person to “own” a car. Most only drive them for an hour a day. It is much more intelligent to create a universal shared system, for it dramatically reduces waste, redundancy and increases space and efficiency.-The Zeitgeist Movement – Observations and Responses. Activist Orientation Guide.(pp.67-69)

 

[ALB]

SocialistPunk wrote:

As a point of relevant interest, does any body know which country has the largest socialist party?

The “largest” in terms of numbers is the party here in the British Isles. In terms of members per head of population it will be the World Socialist Party (New Zealand).But of course the spread of socialist ideas and the growth of the socialist movement doesn’t depend on our puny efforts. If we are right then it is capitalism that will, as it were, sponpontaneously keep generating these ideas. The “technological determinist” element in Marxism (yes, I don’t deny it!) suggests that this should happen in the most developed part of the world, i.e the USA and in particular California. And we do find some (slight) confirmation of this in two examples of a “spontaneous” generation of the idea of a moneyless world based on the world’s resources becoming the common heritage of all humanity (spontaneous in the sense that it had nothing to do with us). Here’s an extract from 1983 from a publication called Commie Rag:

Quote:

Socialism is a word whose root is society. It originally referred to a way of living in which all the means of producing our needs would be controlled by society as a whole. This would entail the free association of the world’s people, with every associate a co-owner of the entire world’s vast array of resources, natural and human made. The global community would collectively make decisions on matching their needs with available resources. This would mean the end of wage labor, i.e. the selling of one’s ability to work in order to gain access to social wealth, an end to separate nations and enterprises, an end to money and all forms of exchange. Once such social relations were to mature, becoming an unconscious element of daily activity, earth would become a big commune, and its way of living would be known as communism.

The other would be the Zeitgeist Movement with their aim of a world “resource-based economy” which they define as “a global system in which the planet’s resources are declared the common heritage of all the world’s people” and “in which all goods and services are available to everyone without the use of money, barter, or any other form of debt or servitude”:

Quote:

Earth is abundant with plentiful resources; today our practice of rationing resources through monetary methods is irrelevant and counter productive to our survival. Modern society has access to highly advanced technologies and can make available food, clothing, housing, medical care, a relevant educational system, and develop a limitless supply of renewable, non-contaminating energy such as geothermal, solar, wind, tidal, etc. It is now possible to have everyone enjoy a very high standard of living with all of the amenities that a prosperous civilization can provide. This can be accomplished through the intelligent and humane application of science and technology.To better understand the meaning of a resource-based economy consider this: if all the money in the world were destroyed, as long as topsoil, factories, and other resources were left intact, we could build anything we choose to build and fulfill any human need. It is not money that people need; rather, it is free access to the necessities of life. In a resource-based economy , money would be irrelevant. All that would be required are the resources and the manufacturing and distribution of the products.

We can expect such ideas to keep cropping up as long as capitalism lasts since, objectively (not as a mere matter of opinion), they represent the only framework in which the problems humanity faces can be solved.On the other hand, there is the remark one of our comrades in Belfast is always making: people in the West will “want” socialism, but people in the rest of the world “need” socialism. In which case Socialist Punk’s “large proportion of the worlds workers [who] have not had decent material conditions” might need less convincing and persuasion than workers in the more developed parts of the world. So the movement might start to take off there.Who knows or can know at present? 

[ALB]

Two of us went to the book launch as well as 30 or so others, mainly members of James Heartfield’s family and ex-RCPers (who used to publish Living Marxism, of which he was a member). He seemed a decent bloke. I gave him a copy of the May 1985 Standard (50th anniversary of the outbreak of the slaughter) and in his speech he mentioned that when he set out to write the book he thought that only the CP (between 1939 and 22 June 1941) had denounced the war as a conflict between rival imperialist blocs but had since learned that anarchists, the ILP and the Socialist Standard had also taken up this position (throughout the war). I bought 5 copies at a discount (£16 as opposed to £20) for resale to members. He also said he’d be prepared to do a talk on it. So we’ll have to take that up.

[ALB]

DJP wrote:

Fabian wrote:

Are you kidding me? You’re talking about a world where there is abundance of everything and it’s all free for everyone to take, even if they don’t contribute, and that kind of a system will sustain itself by I don’t know what kind of magic, and I’m ridiculed for accepting moral norms? That’s not even utopianism, that’s basically a fairy tale. 

This seems to be a strange comment, as do some of your others, for someone who introduced themselves to the forum as an anarcho-communist. You don’t even seem to have grasped the basic ABCs of anarchism.

Yes, it was a rather rapid transition from anarcho-communist to free marketeer. But let’s not forget that Proudhon, who anarchists praise as one of their founding fathers, was one too, a free marketeer that is. He envisaged an economy of artisans and cooperatives producing for exchange at labour cost without the interference of a state. Forum members in London and its environs will be able to hear more about this at a talk by our comrade Steve Clayton on “PROUDHON’S PIPE DREAM AND OTHER FAIRY TALES: SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM VERSUS UTOPIAN SOCIALISM” on Sunday 28 October 7pm.at our premises, 52 Clapham High St, SW4 7UN.So perhaps it’s just anarcho-communism, where money would be redundant, that he doesn’t understand. 

[ALB]

robbo203 wrote:

So what is thei SPGB’s official position on this matter or does it have one?  A link would be appreciated

Here’s what we say in the chapter on “Socialism and the Less DevelopedCountries” in the 1978 edition of Questions of the Day, here on this site:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/questions-day

Quote:

Socialists are sometimes asked about another aspect of uneven development. This relates to the possibility that the socialist movement could be larger in one country than in another and at the stage of being able to gain control of the machinery of government before the socialist movements elsewhere were as far advanced.Leaving aside for the moment the question as to whether such a situation is likely to arise, we can say that it presents no problems when viewed against the world-wide character of the socialist movement. Because capitalist governments are organised on a territorial basis each socialist organisation has the task of seeking democratically to gain political control in the country where it operates. This however is merely an organisational convenience; there is only one socialist movement, of which the separate socialist organisations are constituent parts. When the socialist movement grows larger its activities will be fully co-ordinated through its world-wide organisation. Given a situation in which the organised socialists of only a part of the world were in a position to gain control of the machinery of government, the decision about the action to be taken would be one for the whole of the socialist movement in the light of all the circumstances at the time.There remains the question whether in fact there will be material differences in the rate of growth of the sections of the world socialist movement. At present, throughout the advanced capitalist countries, the vast majority, because they are not yet socialist, share certain basic ideas about how society can and should be run. They accept that goods must be produced for sale with a view to profit; some men must work for wages while others must be employers; there must be armed forces and frontiers; and it is impossible to do without money and buying and selling. These ideas are held by people all over the world and it is this which accounts for the basic stability of capitalism at the present time.It was Engels who remarked that a revolutionary period exists when people begin to realise that what they once thought was impossible can in fact be done. When people realise that it is possible to have a world without frontiers, without wages and profits, without employers and armed forces, then the socialist revolution will not be far away. But this advance in political understanding will be achieved by the same people who now think that capitalism is the only possible system. Because workers all over the world live under basically similar conditions and because of modern systems of communication, when they begin to see through capitalism this will apply everywhere. There is no reason at all why workers in one country should see this while those in others do not.The very idea of Socialism, a new world society, is clearly and unequivocally a rejection of all nationalism. Those who become socialists will realise this and also the importance of uniting with workers in all countries. The socialist idea is not one that could spread unevenly.Thus the socialist parties will be in a position to gain political control in the industrially advanced countries within a short period of each other. It is conceivable that in some less developed countries, where the working class is weak in numbers, the privileged rulers may be able to retain their class position for a little longer. But as soon as the workers had won in the advanced countries they would give all the help needed to their brothers elsewhere. To sum up, we can say that the less developed countries might present Socialism with a problem, but they do not constitute a barrier to the immediate establishment of Socialism as a world system.

Actually the whole chapter is interesting and relevant.Agree there could be a separate thread on this subject.

[ALB]

Fabian wrote:

ALB wrote:

Why on earth would somebody, in a socialist society based on common ownership and distribution on the principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”, want to behave in this way? Since everybody would have free access, according to their self-determined needs, to what had been collectively produced this doesn’t make sense. What you are talking about just wouldn’t arise. Perhaps you haven’t grasped that in a socialist society there will be no production for sale and no money?

Firsly, that doesn’t adress the question. Secondly, people are freely acting individuals, they are not machines determined by social circumstances, and some people just would behave that way. Thirdly, I’d want to behave that way, because I think most people are lazy and I don’t like them and wouldn’t want to give them anything for free.

I see you really are a wild frontiersman and misanthrope. Fortunately, most people aren’t lazy. You don’t seem to be for one. Me neither. It’s always the others, isn’t it?

Fabian wrote:

ALB wrote:

If, in a socialist society, someone (like yourself?) wants to work as an artisan producing something nobody is going to stop you, but you’re going to have a problem if you try to sell what you make.

Oh yeah? Society is going to stop me?

No, nobody will, but I’m adding a new contribution to the joke section here: Have you heard the one about the man who wanted to sell something in socialism? He’s called Fabian. I’m afraid you won’t be able to open a bank account either.

Fabian wrote:

ALB wrote:

As buying and selling and money will have disappeared

We’ll use commodity money to buy and sell.

It has been suggested that there could be reservations in socialism for people who can’t get use to not using money, but personally I don’t think this problem will arise.

Fabian wrote:

ALB wrote:

you’ll have to give what you produce away free

Society would make me give my products for free?

No, nobody would make you do anything. Even if you stockpile your products in your back yard (which is what would happen since nobody is going to buy them when they can get the same things for free) you’ll still be able, like everyone else, to have free access to what’s available in the common stores and distribution centres.

Fabian wrote:

You realize that is pretty much the definition of theft?

This looks like another contribution to the joke section: Have you heard the one about the man who thought that giving things away was theft?

[ALB]

Fabian wrote:

Yes, I’m a deonotologist, not a consequentialist.

Is that the same as a “deontologist”? I think we may be pragmatists.

[ALB]

Fabian wrote:

A socialist society stoping people from keeping the product of their labor to themselves to barter or trade it with likeminded people who didn’t want to give what they made to the community for free.

Why on earth would somebody, in a socialist society based on common ownership and distribution on the principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”, want to behave in this way? Since everybody would have free access, according to their self-determined needs, to what had been collectively produced this doesn’t make sense. What you are talking about just wouldn’t arise. Perhaps you haven’t grasped that in a socialist society there will be no production for sale and no money?

Fabian wrote:

The point is, if anyone is for taking from me what I made myself (and I have payed for everything that I used in making it) because “it is not mine”, I consider him a robber/ thief, and an enemy to be fought against. The only communism (/socialism as you here define it) that is justified is the one that is voluntary, where the workers by their free choice decide to give products of their labor to the community they belong to. But if they are deprived by force of the products of their labor, or defrauded by lies that they are not entitled to the full product of their labor, but that a part (or all) of it belongs to someone else, that is oppression and exploatation, a crime and a wrong.

Since socialist society will be a society without a state (a central administration having armed force at its disposal), in this sense it will be based on voluntary co-operation. But, as I (and Kropotkin) keep emphasising, the whole concept of an individual producing anything on their own, or of trying to measure an individual’s contribution to collective production, is silly precisely because production is now collective. It’s a leftover from an ideological justification for capitalist society at an earlier stage of its development (which only ever existed as an ideal anyway).If, in a socialist society, someone (like yourself?) wants to work as an artisan producing something nobody is going to stop you, but you’re going to have a problem if you try to sell what you make. As buying and selling and money will have disappeared, you’ll have to give what you produce away free, as I’m sure most craftsmen would prefer to do anyway rather than seeing the products of their skills being mere commodities turned out just to make money.

[ALB]

Fabian wrote:

The point is what follows from this kind of appeals. From talking about how the wealth of the capitalists is not their because they have not worked for it, but have stolen it from the workers follows a desire for a revolution where the the workers take from the capitalists what is not theirs. But does from the talking about everything being “communal” because of vague interconnectedness of labor done in past and present and in all places follow the desire of the community to take from each individual worker that which he personally made because “it is not his”? Kropotkin doesn’t thinks so:

I hold no brief for Kropotkin (after all, although he was a communist he wasn’t a Marxist!) but I think you have misunderstood him here. In the passages you quote he was talking about the revolution and expropriation and explaining that “expropriation” would not apply to “a peasant who is in possession of just the amount of land he can cultivate” nor to “a Sheffield cutler, or a Leeds clothier working with their own tools or handloom”. I don’t imagine this will happen either. After the revolution, when common ownership of the land, instruments of production and the products (on being produced) has been established, Kropotkin envisaged the application of the principle “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”. As he put it very eloquently (can’t fault him here):

Quote:

The means of production and of satisfaction of all needs of society, having been created by the common efforts of all, must be at the disposal of all. The private appropriation of requisites for production is neither just nor beneficial. All must be placed on the same footing as producers and consumers of wealth

and

Quote:

Common possession of the necessaries for production implies the common enjoyment of the fruits of the common production; and we consider that an equitable organisation of society can only arise when every wage-system is abandoned, and when everybody, contributing for the common well-being to the full extent of his capacities, shall enjoy also from the common stock of society to the fullest possible extent of his needs.(Anarchist Communism: http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/kropotkin/ancom/)

I imagine that he would envisage his peasant and the artisan Sheffield cutler and Leeds clothier continuing to work as before if they wanted to except not producing for sale, and having the same right as everybody else to satisfy their needs without having to pay, not that there are too many artisan cutlers or clothiers left these days.

[ALB]

Fabian wrote:

Kropotkin

Here’s his answer to your argument:

Quote:

There was a time when a family engaged in agriculture supplemented by a few domestic trades could consider the corn they raised and the plain woollen cloth they wove as productions of their own and nobody else’s labor. Even then such a view was not quite correct: there were forests cleared and roads built by common efforts; and even then the family had continually to apply for communal help, as is still the case in so many village communities. But now, in the extremely interwoven state of industry of which each branch supports all others, such an individualistic view can be held no more. If the iron trade and the cotton industry of this country have reached so high a degree of development, they have done so owing to the parallel growth of thousands of other industries, great and small; to the extension of the railway system; to an increase of knowledge among both the skilled engineers and the mass of the workmen; to a certain training in organization slowly developed among producers; and, above all, to the world-trade which has itself grown up, thanks to works executed thousands of miles away. The Italians who died from cholera in digging the Suez Canal or from “tunnel-disease” in the St. Gothard Tunnel have contributed as much towards the enrichment of this country as the British girl who is prematurely growing old in serving a machine at Manchester; and this girl as much as the engineer who made a labor-saving improvement in our machinery. How can we pretend to estimate the exact part of each of them in the riches accumulated around us? (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/revpamphlets/anarchistcommunism.html)

and

Quote:

Let us take a civilised country. The forests have been cleared, the swamps drained. Thousands of road and railways intersect it in all direction; the rivers have been rendered navigable, and the seaports are of easy access. Canals connect the seas. The rocks have been pierced by deep shafts; thousands of manufactures cover the land.  Science has taught men how to use the energy of nature for the satisfaction of his needs. Cities have slowly grown in the long run of ages, and treasures of science and art are accumulated in these centres of civilisation. But—who has made all these marvels?The combined efforts of scores of generations have contributed towards the achievement of these results.Our cities, connected by roads and brought into easy communication with all peopled parts of the globe, are the growth of centuries; and each house in these cities, each factory, each shop, derives its value, its very raison d’etre, from the fact that it is situated on a spot of the globe where thousands or millions have gathered together. Every smallest part of the immense whole which we call the wealth of civilised nations derives its value precisely from being a part of this whole. What would be the value of an immense London shop or storehouse were it not situated precisely in London, which has become the gathering spot for five millions of human beings? And what the value of our coal-pits, our manufactures, our shipbuilding yards, were it not for the immense traffic which goes on across the seas, for the railways which transport mountains of merchandise, for the cities which number their inhabitants by millions? Who is, then, the individual who has the right to step forward and, laying his hands on the smallest part of this immense whole, to say, ‘I have produced this; it belongs to me’? And how can we discriminate, in this immense interwoven whole, the part which the isolated individual may appropriate to himself with the slightest approach to justice? Houses and streets, canals and railways, machines and works of arts, all these have been created by the combined efforts of generations past and present, of men living on these islands and men living thousands of miles away (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/SBA.html).

[ALB]

DJP wrote:

Any idea what happened to the author? Is he still a member?

I’m afraid not. He was a vegetarian and pro-animal rights and resigned about 10 years ago after another member (now an ex-member too, who contributes here from time to time) baited him by saying that he saw nothing wrong with bull-fighting. It seems we never learn how to behave on internet discussion forums …Pity really as he wrote a few good articles for the Socialist Standard, eg:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1990s/1999/no-1134-february-1999/utopian-socialism

[ALB]

Fabian wrote:

Let’s say I’m an artisan, and I make tools from natural resources that I collect myself. Are those tools mine?

Quote:

Under modern conditions, the “labour theory of property” leads to common property.

You have complete misunderstanding of labor theory of property, but answer my above question first, and we’ll talk about it more.

I’m not a defender of the “labour theory of property” but am merely pointing out that logically under today’s productive conditions it leads to common ownership of production.I think that a supporter of the theory would argue that your artisan would be able to claim the tools he himself made from materials he himself collected from nature were his property, on the grounds that he had mixed his labour as the exercise of his body in them. But this is an imaginary situation that could only be taken seriously by an armchair philosopher.Here’s Engels’s take on the argument that the labour theory of value leads to communism (from his 1884 Preface to the first German edition of Marx’s Poverty of Philosophy, which Marx wrote in French):

Quote:

The above application of the Ricardian theory that the entire social product belongs to the workers as their product, because they are the sole real producers, leads directly to communism. But, as Marx indeed indicates in the above-quoted passage, it is incorrect in formal economic terms, for it is simply an application of morality to economics. According to the laws of bourgeois economics, the greatest part of the product does not belong to the workers who have produced it. If we now say: that is unjust, that ought not to be so, then that has nothing immediately to do with economics. We are merely saying that this economic fact is in contradiction to our sense of morality. Marx, therefore, never based his communist demands upon this, but upon the inevitable collapse of the capitalist mode of production which is daily taking place before our eyes to an ever growing degree; he says only that surplus value consists of unpaid labour, which is a simple fact. But what in economic terms may be formally incorrect, may all the same be correct from the point of view of world history. If mass moral consciousness declares an economic fact to be unjust, as it did at one time in the case of slavery and statute labour, that is proof that the fact itself has outlived its day, that other economic facts have made their appearance due to which the former has become unbearable and untenable. Therefore, a very true economic content may be concealed behind the formal economic incorrectness.

[Author]

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