DJP
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I didn’t have a choice about being a socialist. My brain did that.
“It wasn’t me, it was my brain that did it”. Interesting line of argument, and a good example of Poe’s law too.
If “you” are not your brain are “you” any other parts of your body? If not I guess there’s no need to worry about the nuclear apocalypse.
Incidentally, Heinrich was one of the examiners for Soren Mau’s PhD thesis, from which ‘Mute Compulsion’ is derived. It’s freely available here:
Mau’s book isn’t about socialism, or how to achieve it, but about how market relations are necessarily a form of domination or ‘mute compulsion’. Listening to him talking about his book here, I don’t think it’s fair to describe him as an idiot (even if he has no clue about how socialism might come about)
https://pod.link/1544487624/episode/c66ba1020402cecd75dcc8af75d30f8c
Edit: Another reason I thought a review would be good is that it could draw a bit of internet traffic from interested parties.
I guess as I started I may as well continue… Avidor Dro were a popular and influential band during the post-Franco era ‘La Movida Madrileña’. This is a track from one of their albums from 1983.
“We will distribute the means of production
between producers and
urban worker associations.
With science on our side,
the hierarchies will disappear,
the paternal hand of the old state.”Lyrics here:
https://www.letras.com/aviador-dro/806420/Some Argentinian Anarchist Guajira for you. Lyrics, in Spanish, below:
Well?
It’s a very long text. Have you had a chance to look at it properly? Worth spending the time to look at?
I notice it makes reference to Søren Mau’s book “Mute Compulsion” book. This should be reviewed in the Standard; it’s a very popular work right now.
“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds”
According to Wikipedia these lines were taken from a speech from Marcus Garvey.
Perhaps I’m playing Devil’s advocate here, but if the argument is that production goods cannot be effectively allocated without a pricing mechanism how is saying “planning will be decentralised” an answer to that? Surely Von Mises could just say that even in a decentralised system this problem would still persist, there is still no way to compare dissimilar goods and make efficient allocative decisions in the face of competing demands.
If Von Mises is saying something like “only markets can effectively allocate production goods, and you can’t have markets without prices” then I would have thought it would be better to target the assumptions he’s making about needs and market efficiency. Or is he saying more than that?
FWIW – “For what it’s worth”. I.e I don’t think this is worth making much out of. I’ve not read the Mises essay, and was just responding to the short paragraph you mentioned. The whole of which is below:
Under socialism all the means of production are the property of the community. It is the community alone which can dispose of them and which determines their use in production. It goes without saying that the community will only be in a position to employ its powers of disposal through the setting up of a special body for the purpose. The structure of this body and the question of how it will articulate and represent the communal will is for us of subsidiary importance. One may assume that this last will depend upon the choice of personnel, and in cases where the power is not vested in a dictatorship, upon the majority vote of the members of the corporation.
The “powers of disposal” just means “abilities to decide how to make use of”. Looking at the last two sentences, it seems Von Mises thinks his criticism would apply equally whether this power is concentrated or not.
But as far as know, Von Mises is just saying that without a single unit of account (i.e prices in units of money) you wouldn’t be able to make calculations and allocations based on this single unit of account. The question for us to ask is if such a single unit of account is as necessary as he thinks.
Bijou Drains. FWIW You don’t seem to be disagreeing with Von Mises claim in that sentence, that a socialist society would have to have some kind of organisational structure that coordinates production and distribution, just suggesting different ways in which this body could be organised
‘Genocide’, another word being devalued by over and mis-use. The Israeli army is not looking to murder every last person calling themselves Palestinian.
This is from the UN genocide convention. Nothing about murdering “every last person” https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/Genocide%20Convention-FactSheet-ENG.pdf
“According to the Convention, genocide is a crime that can take place both in time of war as well as in time of peace. The definition contained in Article II of the Convention describes genocide as a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.”
Wasn’t it Harold Wilson who said a week is a long time in politics?
In other words, a lot can happen in a very short space of time.Yes, big events can happen quickly and unexpectedly. But I don’t think the imminent collapse of the Israeli state and its replacement with a Palestinian one is at all on the cards. Whatever you think about it morally, due to the balance of forces internationally and locally Israeli domination of Palestine is the only game in town right now. Anything else is dreamworld wishful thinking.
The depths to which the Israeli state is descending is further illustrated by the report below.
But the fact that the Israeli state can do these things is an indicator of its strength, not of its weakness or imminent collapse, don’t you think?
However, the dissolution of the state of Israel may well be ‘on the cards’; the establishment of your dream world most certainly isn’t.
If you think of revolutions as being like a whodunnit; for a socialist revolution the working class has both the means (they have the numerical numbers to win the battle of democracy and they are the people that already conduct production) and motive (for workers capitalist production is experienced as a form of domination – non-domination is a near-universal good).
Who do you see as the group agent that would have both the means and motive for wanting to dissolve the Israeli state?
