DJP
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Wez – You honestly think that everyone that calls themselves a socialist behaves like a placid angel all of the time?
“Once upon a time a valiant fellow had the idea that men were drowned in water only because they were possessed with the idea of gravity. If they were to knock this notion out of their heads, say by stating it to be a superstition, a religious concept, they would be sublimely proof against any danger from water. His whole life long he fought against the illusion of gravity, of whose harmful results all statistic brought him new and manifold evidence. This valiant fellow was the type of the new revolutionary philosophers in
Germany.”It seems Marx must have met LBird
To revive this old chestnut, what is at stake is how we make concepts and how they are related to the real world. In plain language (who calls consciousness or the mind “the ideal”?) it’s something like this:
As our experience of the world has to be mediated through the concepts we make of it (this is the top left box in TWCs diagram) the question arises that when we are theorising are we just self-referentially referring to these concepts or is there a way that these concepts are influenced by the real world.
Note: The idealism of Hegel and Kant does not deny that the external world exists but that all we can know is concepts, not that world itself. Likewise “materialism” does not necessarily involve denying that minds exist or can play a causal role in the world.
These were just some notes to introduce this video, which I thought was good at clarifying:
Just stumbled across this YouTube channel which has a lot of video essays. This one might be the most relevant here:
“All of your problems have something in common”
“In other words. a police force by any other name. So much for your society without laws, police or prisons.”
But has the SPGB actually claimed that socialism could operate without rules, and by extension those necessary enforcement of them? I’m sure individual members may have said things like this, but what has been the party position?
What is generally understood as a “police force” is something that is not under the control of the community it polices but in a position of power above it. That is the difference. So yes there would have to be people that enforced rules, but these people would have to be strictly mandated and answerable to the wider democratic society. Not a coercive “force” above society.
These kinds of ideas aren’t limited to the SPGB, or even socialists. For example, read Pettit’s “Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government”
“And who will enforce these ‘matters’”
Those that have been mandated and delegated to do it. There’s no great mystery to it.
“I’d like to think that socialist humanity could find a solution to disputes different to the manner in which dogs resolve their disputes over the ownership of a bone.”
The dogs fighting over a bone is a case of domination.
A democratic and cooperative republic deciding upon rules and enforcing sanctions isn’t. Since those who face the sanctions are also a part of the rule-making body.
Socialism won’t be a Smurfland where everyone agrees and nobody goes against decisions already made. It doesn’t need to be. All that is required is that the means of making the rules, and the means of enforcing them, are carried out by the whole of the society – not some special elite that rules from above.
But before we even get to the stage of rules and enforcing them, people’s behaviour is shaped by the norms of their society. As socialism has eliminated market competition between people, and as it requires a co-operative and non-dominating ethos to operate, we can expect this form of social pressure to shape how people act. Trying to be the big man or the boss would be frowned upon and ridiculed – the opposite of what occurs today.
I don’t know how useful Graeber is all of this. Probably anthropologists like Christoper Boehm (who was mentioned in this review of the latest Graeber book https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2020s/2022/no-1413-may-2022/david-graebers-false-dawn/ ) and neo-republicans like Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner have more useful things to say.
“I wouldn’t have thought socialist society would need “men (or women) with clubs” to deal with traffic offences.”
You might think that, but then you’ve never seen my driving!
Seriously though, removing a licence would be on the spectrum of what could be considered “coercion”.
“Obviously, we’d not reach for the authoritarian tool of men with clubs and fines: but, given a need to have rules that enjoy support, what to do when a recalcitrant minority refuse to abide?”
I’m guessing that some might not like to hear it, but socialism – like every human society – would have to feature some form of coercion. The reason being that not everyone will choose to go along with the rules all the time, and as the example of irresponsible (and potentially fatal) driving shows, the community would sometimes need to take coercive action to protect itself from such people.
The difference being that in socialism the coercive forces wouldn’t take the form of a special body above society in general and would instead be democratically accountable to it. This could, in extreme cases, involve (delegated, accountable and recallable) “men with clubs”, but given that such bodies would not be in a permanent position above society (like a standing army or a police force), I don’t think such actions would be “authoritarian”.
OK, this is an audio podcast and not a video but I have been listening a lot to these people after I discovered the Kautsky episode.
The latest edition is about Gerrard Winstanley and the English Revolution
https://pod.link/1544487624This academic paper by one of the contributors is worth reading too:
https://www.pdcnet.org/soctheorpract/content/soctheorpract_2021_0047_0004_0603_0627Unfortunately, you may need to have access to a subscribed institutions library to read it though..
“I do not know why the Socialist Party selected and spent money on Word Press”
FWIW the version of Drupal the former site was running on needed to be updated for security, updating between versions of Drupal is a task more suited for professional level web developers, as there was no-longer no-longer anyone on the committee with those abilities I guess that is one of the reasons the choice to move to WordPress was made – I was not party to the decision. It’s true, some functionality has been lost, but too late now…
“What on earth are you going on about?”
I was trying to work out how you were linking the statement “people don’t like change” to the response you gave.
“Reference was being made to the transition from Feudalism to Capitalism where the overwhelming majority, the peasantry, had no say in the matter.”
Yes good. Capitalism didn’t come about through choice but force.
“Capitalism didn’t require a politically conscious and overwhelming majority to bring it about. Only a relatively small and sufficiently motivated minority prepared to take risks.”
So you’re saying that people don’t like change but a minority was able to enact change against the wishes of that majority?
To dump a few more into the bucket these are two channels that I am also enjoying watching and keeping up to date with.
https://www.youtube.com/@WHATISPOLITICS69
https://www.youtube.com/@carefreewandering
And this is my own channel, make of it what you will
