DJP
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…And so the negation is negated and we reach a new understanding.
(Sorry, I’ve got a very niche sense of humour!)One last thing though:Gog_ wrote:Land may also not be “free” however, it can be freely made available. All is needed is for the right people to say “yes”.You can not only say this about land, but anything that takes the form of private property, think about it…
My final thoughts on this.Firstly I have no objection to a group of socialists getting together to engage in some kind agricultural project. And if it was nearby I would possibly contribute (or maybe not, a local vaguely “anarchist” group have actually been doing this for a number of years and despite numerous invites to tree plantings and the like I have yet to make it there!)I actually live on a farm. The whole operation only requires 2 people to run it. Most of the labour that goes into food production actually occurs in the manufacture of machinery and extraction of fuels. I don’t see why a socialist society would wish to return to the lifestyle of the serf, I certainly have better things to be doing with my time than watering the lettuces. So if anyone is still convinced that this is a course of action they want to take then get to it, it is not me that is stopping you.My reservations:Firstly this is not a new or fresh idea by any stretch of the imagination, people will have been saying similar things for the last 100+ years.Thinking about it, isn’t this how the Amish live? What does that tell us about socialism? I don’t know..
Gog_ wrote:I originally stated that one of the guiding principles would be to challenge the local monopoly of businesses selling people to buy food: eventually, if succesfull enough severely impacting the profitability of such a business. The people doing so would be challenging the fundamental assumption within capitalism that so many people still labour under that, “you have to work, to earn money to pay for food”.You’re letting your enthusiasm cloud your judgment. You are forgetting the major thing that such a project would require, CAPITAL. If people are fortunate to have the free time they can give it for free, but in a capitalist society land, machinery, seed stock etc are far from freely available. Without sufficient stocks of these your level of production is going to be petty to say the least. I don’t think you’d be able to produce enough crops to support many people either.But for most people on low wage jobs, who have to work longer hours, in terms of hours put in and produce at the end, they are going to be better of going to the super market.Sorry to not be overflowing with enthuisiasm but the cold economic facts speak the truth.
Quote:I originally stated that one of the idea’s principles would be to produce a practical demonstration of socialismThis is probably my major reservation and as a social-scientist in training I should know it:If you where conducting this to try and demonstrate how a socialist society would operate you are going to be constructing an invalid experiment. What you would be measuring is not how affective socialized production is, but how a small group of people living within a capitalist society choose to use their free time. Though you could probably extrapolate some relevant data I guess…To conclude..If people get exposed to socialist ideas by getting involved in a socialist agriculture club then that can only be a good thing. But the same could be said of a socialist cycling club, a socialist rambling association or here’s a thought, a socialist discussion group that discusses socialism.
This quote from Ken Knabb’s ‘Joy of Revolution’ sums up the situation quite nicely. Though, of course the rest of Knabb’s book is not beyond criticism.http://bopsecrets.org/PS/joyrev2.htm#Reforms
Quote:[..] Block clubs, co-ops, switchboards, study groups, alternative schools, free health clinics, community theaters, neighborhood newspapers, public-access radio and television stations and many other kinds of alternative institutions are worthwhile for their own sake, and if they are sufficiently participatory they may lead to broader movements. Even if they don’t last very long, they provide a temporary terrain for radical experimentation.But always within limits. Capitalism was able to develop gradually within feudal society, so that by the time the capitalist revolution cast off the last vestiges of feudalism, most of the mechanisms of the new bourgeois order were already firmly in place. An anticapitalist revolution, in contrast, cannot really build its new society “within the shell of the old.” Capitalism is far more flexible and all-pervading than was feudalism, and tends to coopt any oppositional organization.Nineteenth-century radical theorists could still see enough surviving remnants of traditional communal forms to suppose that, once the overarching exploitive structure was eliminated, they might be revived and expanded to form the foundation of a new society. But the global penetration of spectacular capitalism in the present century has destroyed virtually all forms of popular control and direct human interaction. Even the more modern efforts of the sixties counterculture have long been integrated into the system. Co-ops, crafts, organic farming and other marginal enterprises may produce better quality goods under better working conditions, but those goods still have to function as commodities on the market. The few successful ventures tend to evolve into ordinary businesses, with the founding members gradually assuming an ownership or managerial role over the newer workers and dealing with all sorts of routine commercial and bureaucratic matters that have nothing to do with “preparing the ground for a new society.”[…]Meanwhile, until a revolutionary situation enables us to be truly constructive, the best we can do is be creatively negative — concentrating on critical clarification, leaving people to pursue whatever positive projects may appeal to them but without the illusion that a new society is being “built” by the gradual accumulation of such projects.[…]The best projects are those that are worthwhile for their own sake while simultaneously containing an implicit challenge to some fundamental aspect of the system; projects that enable people to participate in significant issues according to their own degree of interest, while tending to open the way to more radical possibilities.Gog, If you and some friends want to get together and grow some fruit and veg and share the produce then fine, go ahead be my guest.But if you think this is a magic path to socialism you are wrong.The fact is at some point the question of state power will have to be met and that is why it is necessary to organise politically.
The socialist party has held that socialism cannot exist in one country let alone one small holding.Copied from our FAQ
Quote:One country cannot establish socialism. No country is completely self-sufficient in the resources people need to satisfy their needs. No country can really isolate itself from the rest of the world in a peaceful manner, so a peaceful “socialist nation” would be easy prey for the outside capitalist world. Just as capitalism is a world system, socialism will have to be a world system.What you are talking about would not be a demonstration of socialism as a system of production but a demonstration of a group of people within capitalism co-operating to run an allotment, something which I’m sure happens very often today and is not very controversial or significant to the question in hand.
Brian, you’re half right and half wrong. It is made by two people from TZM who we debated with in Norwich but they’re making the films under their own initiative. Here’s their youtube channel to see more of what they’ve done:http://www.youtube.com/newfuturemedia
You can read this journal online here:http://sic.communisation.net/They definitely share the same definition of communism with us, as a moneyless, stateless world community. Though I haven’t read them in enough depth to have a real opinion of their concept of ‘communisation’.The related journal ‘Endnotes’, is worth reading.. www.endnotes.org.uk
Just read Deitzgen’s “The Positive Outcome of Philosophy”. I’d highly recommend it to anyone interested in “dialectical monism”. I like his clear and down to earth style. There’s a talk by Steve Coleman which should be re-uploaded soon that would make a good introduction, as would the one in the book, written by Pannekoek – who all leftist trainspotters should have heard of.It’s online here:http://www.archive.org/details/positiveoutcome00dietgoogHere are some passages I liked
Quote:
The first principle, then, declares that A is A, or to
speak mathematically, every quantity is equal to itself.
In plain English : a thing is what it is ; no thing is what
it is not. “Characters which are excluded by any con-
ception must not be attributed to it.” The square is ex-
cluded from the conception of a circle, therefore the pre-
dicate “square” must not be given to a circle. For the
same’ reason a straight line must not be crooked, and a
lie must not be true.Now this so-called law of thought may be well enough
for household use, where nothing but known quantities
are under consideration. A thing is what it is. Right is
not left and one hundred is not one thousand. Whoever
is named Peter or Paul remains Peter or Paul all his life.
This, I say, is all right for household use.But when we consider matters from the wider point of
view of cosmic universal life, then this famous law of
thought proves to be nothing but an expedient in logic
which is not adequate to the nature of things, but merely
a means of mutual understanding for us human beings.Hence the left bank of the Rhine is not the right, because
we have agreed that in naming the banks of a river we
will turn our backs to the source and our faces to the
mouth of the river and then designate the banks as right
and left Such a way of distinguishing, thinking, and
judging is good and practical, so long as this narrow
standpoint is accompanied by the consciousness of its
narrowness. Hitherto this has not been the case. This
determined logic has overlooked that the perception
which is produced by its rules is not truth, not the real
world, but only gives an ideal, more or less accurate, re-
flection of it. Peter and Paul, who according to the law
of identity are the same all their lives, are in fact dif-
ferent fellows every minute and every day of their lives,
and all things of this world are, like those two, not con-
stant, but very variable quantities. The mathematical
points, the straight lines, the round circles, are ideals.
In reality every point has a certain dimension, every
straight line, when seen through a magnifying glass, is
full of many crooked turns, and even the roundest circle,
according to the mathematicians, consists of an infinite
number of straight lines.gnome wrote:For my part, I’m taking a very positive attitude to this strike. I’m positive that it’s a waste of time even discussing this half-baked stunt any more than I already have which is virtually zilch. Best thing to do with those who subscribe to this nonsense is to provide them with a platform and then sit back and wait until they fall off it! I predict that the wait won’t be very long………Well, 150 days according to the Olympic Games website.But saying that if anyone is serious about the idea of a moneyless society they are free to join the Socialist Party, providing they take the time to study our aims and principles and understand and agree with them.
yabanji wrote:The billions already convinced are enough.I’m sorry to say it but you’re deluding yourself. The 27th July will come and go and NOTHING will happen.If you really want to work for a world of free access you’ll have to accept this and be prepared to put in the long and tedious work that is required to bring it about.It took hundreds of years for the transition from fuedalism to capitalism to be fully completed, we have to accept that we may not live to see the realisation of a moneyless society; but, like the builders of cathedrals, we have contributed to something that will long outlive our children and childrens children.There are no shortcuts to the new society, we must face this or otherwise suffer bitter disappointment and withdrawal.
yabanji wrote:Fuck the reality that They created! Imagine the new world We can create, with real justice for all!Indeed! But if you’re going to convince anyone other than those already convinced you’re going to have to learn to convey yourself better than that.
Ozymandias wrote:Watched this video and it doesn’t fill me me with hope at all…just depression. I went over to Blythswood Sq in Glasgow in November to talk with the “occupiers” there. Ok they were enthusiastic but didn’t have a single iota about how capitalism operates or what the solution is. It really depressed me.But why would you expect it to be any other way? I think there is a tendency for people to project their own wishes on to large and visible movements and then to feel disappointed when they do not act in the way they hoped. It is clear that real communism is an ultra minority view point at the present time, this is to be expected.All that these developments present us with is a platform with which we can explain and discuss our perspective with people who are BEGINNING to question the status-quo. You visited the occupy camp in Glasgow, how many times? Our argument has so many layers / premises that it takes more than one meeting to get the point across. All we can do is partake in the process, I attended many discussions at the Norwich camp and even presented a brief text on the Marxian analysis of how capitalism works. (Though most of the campers, especially near the end, did not seem to be interested in discussing, I think these things had a tendency to turn into homeless shelters / hang-outs for teenage kids)
Quote:Looks as if Occupy is in disarray now anyway whilst TZM is dwindling fast. Let’s face it folks we are all doomed. This species is on it’s way out…fast!I think you place too much emphasis and hope in big flavour of the day ‘organisations’. The ‘real movement that changes the existing order of things’ is not Occupy, TZM or even the Socialist Party; it is the proletariat as a whole. All we can do is participate in the process – we have no ther choice.
How on earth can a strike achieve a moneyless society? Such a thing cannot be achieved by people withdrawing their labour but by people consciously cordinating how their labour is conducted and distributed.This is bound to be a dismal flop.I guess the best thing it will provide is platform for speaking to people who may be interested in ‘full communsim’ as it were…
Here’s the 1934 illustrated version of ‘Capital’http://graphicwitness.org/contemp/marxtitle.htm
