robbo203
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Alan Kerr wrote:Thank you Robbo, yes I said "There is no question of attaching a value to the product. Total social product already contains social labour." Crusoe does count his labour better than the market. For Crusoe one hour of skilled = 1 hour of simple labour. We need to do as Crusoe does but counting with computers.It's true that Crusoe can miscount and mishap is possible. In practice, builders expect 10 per cent waste on materials. Crusoe must likewise work out probabilities and keep a reserve to cover for this.The answer is please compare what Crusoe does with a market and with what you want.
Yet again youve lost me. You dont want to attach values to the product but you do want to count the social labour that goes into the product like Crusoe does but with what computers e.g 300 social hours to make product A compared to 350 for product B. But how is that not attaching a value to a product?
Alan Kerr wrote:Thank you Robbo, Then let's be clear. There is no question of attaching a value to the product. Total social product already contains social labour. It was inevitable that we lost count of how many social labour hours our products cost. This is why we must now make things for exchange as commodities. Only in a commodity producing society does it seem as if value in exchange is attaching to the product. That is illusion. Really, value is social labour-time that it takes to produce, or to reproduce the product. In a society, that knows what its products cost in labour-time (and such knowledge is now un-stoppable) that illusion is impossible. In a society, that knows what its products cost in labour-time the production of commodities and the market are impossible. See above and Crusoe solves all of your unsolvable labour counting problems..Alan, Im still no clearer on what you are saying. You say on the one hand "There is no question of attaching a value to the product" presumably referring to a socialist society. On the other hand, you say also "In a society, that knows what its products cost in labour-time the production of commodities and the market are impossible." But knowing what a product cost in labour time IS attaching a value to it measured in labour time units! Incidentally I still want to know HOW you think a society can "know" what it products cost in labour time, without guess work. There is no way of reliably knowing this in a system of socialised productiom in my view – whether in capitalism , socialism or any other system. And even if you could know what use would such informaton be to you, anyway? You dont explain You seem to be saying – though I may be wrong in interepreting you – that unless socialism engages in fullscale labout time accounting it will not work and we will be stuck with a market economy. If so, I emphatically reject such a claim I also reject your suggestion that the Crusoe approach "solves all of your unsolvable labour counting problems" Crusoe by defintion did not have to deal with the problem of heterogeneity of labour
Alan Kerr wrote:If you repeat this crude guess-ology over enough, I hope you will see why you fail to convince. Please try to convince Dave b to use your guess-ology in his work, as analytical chemist, in the food industry. You will fail as you are also failing right now to convince Aeiough. Or please try to convince the schools that guess-ology is the more exact way to prove truth in maths and science. Or please try to convince all industry that guess-ology is the more exact way to prove key facts. First, convince everyone to trust in guess-ology, in all problems of life. And if guess-ology is workable in practice then, yes, I'll push my copy of Marx' Capital aside and trust in guess-ology too.But until then, why should we bother with your guess-ology? What has your guess-ology to do with changing from one whole economic system to another? Why should we trust in your way to prove as we switch to Crusoe's way to labour,–full scale?You would have no right to risk your unworkable way in practice without checking, as Crusoe does, by counting our labour-time too.Please see the Socialist Standard for Sep. 2017.Alan, I am having difficulty trying to figure out what exactly your criticism is. Nobody is suggesting not to "count labour". The question is – in what way? Are we talking about fullscale labour time accounting, using labour time as a universal unit of account, to attach a value to all the products of labour? Or we talking about monitoring supplies of particular kinds of labour required for particular purposes in precisely the same way as we might treat any other factor input? I would favour the latter approach and reject the former. If your are talking about "guess-ology" then fullscale labour time accounting is a very good example of precisely that. How can you possibly calculate how much labour went into manufacturing a fridge or ballpoint pen or a laptop computer? And what use would such information be to you anyway? Are you going to abandon the production of fridges becuase it absorbs more labour than the production of laptops? Of course not. Past labour is also not necessarily a useful guide to the future allocation of labour given the fact that technologies are constantly changing. There is also the formidable problem of weighting different kinds of labour. I have yet to hear a convincing explnanation of how this problem of the heterogeneity of labour can be overcome in socialism. I keep on making this point that the fundamental thing we need to know about all factor inputs, including different kinds of labour units, in a socialist system of production is their relative scarcity, not their labour content. Relative scarcity is something we can determine with reasonable accuracy via a self regulating system of stock control. Look up the literature on Justus von Liebig's "Law of the Minimum" This is the way ahead for efficient and effective resource allocation in a socialist system, not fullscale labour time accounting
I have just come across this which is quite a treasure trove of references to the socialist calculation debate. Very handy to have https://theredand.black/forums/topic/561-the-socialist-calculation-debate-and-the-economic-calculation-problem/ The SPGB's material is mentioned under other biblography
DJP wrote:Dragon festival it was, 2002 I think. Cigarrones was the place.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_FestivalIncidentally I was in Barcelona earlier this year, there was an exhibition in Montjuic Castle about German fascism in Barcelona. The Nazis had a strong prescence with long Nazi banners being hung across the city from 39-45 http://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/castelldemontjuic/en/activitats/exposicions/nazis-and-fascists-symbolic-occupation-barcelona-1939-1945Of course Catalonia is the region where the authorities now take the exhumation and identification of war remains most seriously.Yep Cigarrones is the place. We lived for 5 years in Tijola directly opposite and on the side of the river until literally last month . This will bring back a few memories for you, DJP – the Green Dragon Festival in 2006. I went then and in 2007 when it was at its height (my ex wife was one of the peformers on stage in 2007). Very Woodstock and all thathttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elRM-ZRK_vw Also this which gives you a look-in on the hippies and Sufis of Orgiva (in Spanish though)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe1rTI4xfxI
DJP wrote:I visited Orgiva about 15 years ago. A lot of British and other European hippies live near there on a dried up river bed, but I think that is not at El Carrizal. I had no idea about the mass grave there. Spain is second only to Cambodia in terms of victims whose remains have never been found.http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2008/10/20/%E2%80%9Cthe-dead-are-so-many-here%E2%80%9D/Hi DJP. I think you are referring to a place called Estrella just outside Orgiva where a few hippies are encamped. Most reside in Beneficio which is up in the mountain above Orgiva and there is a third group along the banks of the Guadalefeo which is never dry and goes all the way down to the Rules dam. This last spot was the site of (for a while) Europe's largest free festival – the Green Dragon festival – until it was closed down by the authortieshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX37tRoUqVE The expat community in Orgiva – about half the total population of 5500 – are mainly non-hippies and there are some very wealthy individuals among them some with some pretty sumptuous prperties nestled amongst the olive groves. You just have check out some of these properties on the "owners direct" site to get a flavour of the place https://www.homeaway.com/results/spain/orgiva/region:2105 I have a soft spot for the hippies of Orgiva. They have a tough life and I doubt if I have what it takes to live the kind of lives they lead. Im a bit too partial to my creature comforts to take to living in a clapped out old van or flimsy tent though I quite like sleeping in a yurt which I have done. Many of them scrape a living making arty crafty stuff which they sell on street market every Thursday
alanjjohnstone wrote:Robbo was lucky to be born in the pristine wilderness of the South African veldt. But the threat to such areas it isn't coming from nature being crowded out by people but the arrival of corporate pirates and cattle barons.Well , truth be told, Alan, it was not in the pristine wilderness of South Africa that I was born but in a rather large and unappealing South African city called Germiston (near Joburg) whose only notable feature apart from being surrounded by goldmine dumps is to be the largest railway junction in Southern Africa. That said we did frequently as a family venture into the bush and my love for wilderness sprang from these experiences I wouldnt say it is entirely down to corporate pirates and cattle barons that wilderness is being encroached upon. Population growth is also a factor although there are complex linkages between these factors. Land grabs for example have displaced many subsistence farmers in various parts of the world pushing them onto ecologically marginal land that then becomes subject to environmental deterioration
alanjjohnstone wrote:And don't forget, Robbo, on your trip through the intensive agriculture of the Netherlands, at one time it was under the sea and/or salt marshes.The achievement was indeed remarkable that it was turned into farm-land, in the first place.Yes thats a fair point. But as I say my reaction to the rural landscape of Holland was a purely aesthetic one . I thought it was dreary even ugly at times with its criss crossing network of power lines, and heavily built up. Other people might think quite differently about it. that is their prerogative. I prefer a less cluttered and as I say, less overcrowded landcape. That does not make Holland or the UK for that matter "overcrowded" from the standpoint of being able to feed their respective populations and that is essentially the point Im making. – that there are different senses in which you can talk of a country being overcrowded
I agree with ALB on this subject. I cannot see the point in either labour time vouchers or labour time accounting (too quite different concepts) in socialism whatever Marx might have said on the matter. Marx's views on the matter ought not in any case to be treated as holy writ. I see no reaosn why labour cannot be counted in precisely the same way as any other factor input in socialism – that is to say on the basis of calculation in kind. What we would be interested in is the available supplies of specific types of labour relevant to the specific tasks at hand as determined by consumer demand. In the same way we would be interested to know the available suplies of physical components etc. It is the availability of all these different inputs that is key here becuase this is what constrains or limits the amount of output of a given good that can be produced.. In fact, this is where Justus von Liebig's famous "law of the minimum" comes into play and its importance for socialist planning cannot be understated. Essentially what Liebig was saying was that the output of any good is limited by the particular input that is scarcest. Liebig was an agricultural chemist and so his theory essentially related to the various components necessary for plant growth (although it can be extended to cover the entire prpduction system). Supplies of organic based fertiliser tended to be the limiting factor in his day until the invention of artificial fertilifer. As a result some other factor then tended to take the place of fertiliser as the limiting factor e.g. pesticides , irrigation water supplies etc etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebig%27s_law_of_the_minimum For any given output there is always going to be one input that serves as the limiting factor. Increasing the output of the good in question means either increasing the availability of this input or, alternatively, changing the technque of production itself and technical ratios of the inputs to each other to prpduce a given output. In other words economising most on inputs that are most scarce (which is the rational thing to do). To enable these kinds of decisions to be made what is needed is some idea of the available stock in the case of each input. That information is something that would be made available through a self regulating system of stock control using calcualtion in kind. The point is that this system is already in place in capitalisim today – we dont need to invent or introduce it – and operates alongside a system of monetary accounting. In fact wthout the former capitalism would grind to a halt. In socialism we would continue to use this system but dispense with monetary accounting altogether. All this talk about the need to calculate how much labour goes into all the various products produced in a socialist society is a complete distraction and an irrelevance. Even if it were technically feasible to accomplish – which it is not given the socialised nature of modern production – what use would it serve? Past labour is not a particularly useful guide to the future allocation of labour and as has been pointed there is the problem of the heterogeneity of labour (e.g. skilled labour versus unskilled labour) which makes it near impossible to apply labour time as a universal unit of account. You dont need to do that anyway – quite apart from the enormous bureaucratic costs involved in trying to attach a value expressed in abstract labour time to literally millions of different products. "Socially necessary labour time" is only relevant to a capitalist exchange economy for the purpose of establishing equivalence. Meaning it only reveals indirectly ad retrospectively through market prices at the point at which supply and demand in theory equilibriate. So it presupposes a system of capitalist commodity exchange . Or as Marx put it: "Social labour-time exists in these commodities in a latent state, so to speak, and becomes evident only in the course of their exchange…. Universal social labour is consequently not a ready-made prerequisite but an emerging result’ (Critique of Political Economy)
Im not going to bother with the personal stuff which is getting a real bore now and just stick to the thread. It strikes me that people are taking a too polarised view on this subject. The world is capable of producing enough to satisfy the reasonable needs of every person on this planet and from that point of view is not "overcrowded" – though I think the term "overpopulated" would be more applicable. It is nevertheless possible to agree with this statement and still think the world is overcrowded but for quite other reasons e.g. the loss of natural habitat , species diversity etc. Last year my partner and I visited Holland which is one of the most densely populated countries in the world and also of course one of the richest per capita. The vista unfolding from the train window of a heavily built up and almost industrialised rural landscape did not appeal to me in the least – though I loved the ambience of some of the old historic towns like Leiden and Utrecht. My reaction to the Dutch countryside was essentially an aesthetic one. Wilderness has always had an appeal for me but I guess that comes from having been born in, and spent my early years in South Africa. So I think it is legitimate to talk of some parts of the world being "overcrowded" providing one does not put some kind of Malthusian spin on this with the implication that socialism is out of the question becuase there are too many people on the planet to meet the needs of everyone.. If anything I would say if you want a less crowded world, socialism is the way to go. It is economic circumstances that ultimately derive from the fact that we live in capitalist world that tned to make for high birth rates. In the Global South where a significant chunk of the population still live in the countryside and earn a living from farming , large families are indispensable not only as a household labour force but to provide for the old in the absence of a social welfare system. Of course with urbanisation and declining infant mortality this is changing and we are begining to see quite sigifnicant falls in fertility rates in most of the Global South Another reason that tends to make for higher birth rates is the pro-natalist policies of many capitalist nation states which attach importantce to population size for obvious reasons – it gives them more clout on the world stage. Economists also fret about the "dependency ratio" and the prospect of an aging population being supported by a decling fraction of the population of working age. Yet absurdly the capitalist nation state imposes barriers on the free movement of workers which would otherwise address this problem, seeking instead to reform the tax system to encourage large families
Its somewhat dated but I would recommend the film series called "The Future Eaters" by Tim Flannery – particularly the episode on the Maoris of New Zealand
Ike Pettigrew wrote:I think the main difference between my views and that of National Anarchists would be that I reject the need for a market system, any system of exchange, and any organised system of property ownership. Therefore, in political economy, my 'socialism' is closer to that of the SPGB, though not quite the same as I would not object to the existence of natural markets or essential individual and collective possessory rights to land, space and buildings.The major point on which I part company with the SPGB is that I would want to see the continuation of organic cultures that have already arisen under capitalism. This will require borders, therefore some rudimentary concept of territorial exclusivity – both at the macro and micro level – would have to be developed and recognised.Ike I am curious about this conception of a possible future society you hold. On some points there is, as you say, some agreement. You reject the need for a market system and any system of exchange. But you also reject the need for “any organised system of property ownership”. I’m not quite sure what you mean by this. Common ownership of the means of production (which seems to me to denote an “organised system of property ownership”) is what makes possible the elimination of market exchange that you call for. If you mean simply by this that if everyone owns the means of production this effectively boils down to the same thing as saying no one owns the means of production, then I have no quarrel with this Having just said you reject the need for a system of market exchange you then go on to say: “I would not object to the existence of natural markets or essential individual and collective possessory rights to land, space and buildings.” I find this all very confusing. What, in your mind, constitutes a “natural market”? It seems to me you are confusing a market with a gift economy. These are two fundamentally different concepts. The purpose of gift exchange is to cement social relationships whereas market exchange involves the dichotomisation or division of the parties to the exchange into a buyer and seller each pursuing their own self-interest in opposition to the other. The buyer wants to obtain the lowest possible price; the seller the highest possible price. In the context of a non-market society of free access and volunteer labour, I fail to see how “natural markets” could arise. Generalised free access to goods and services based on material abundance kills off the very possibility. Why buy something when you can get it for free? I can however easily imagine gift exchange arising in such a society as an expression of our intrinsic sociality as human beings. In fact socialism has sometime been characterised as a system of "generalised reciprocity" – a sort of “moral economy” in which a pervasive sense of moral obligation will obtain, based on a clear recognition of our mutual interdependence. With the “right” of unrestricted access to goods and services goes the “duty” to contribute to the social good You talk also of “collective possessory rights to land, space and buildings”. This is another expression that puzzles me. Socialists make an important distinction between “possessions" and “means of production” (though there is admittedly a grey area between these two concepts). Your possessions will be yours in socialism, not your neighbours or the local community’s. This is logically entailed by the concept of free access. “Means of production” on the other hand, are a different matter. Social or common ownership of the means of production is a logical outgrowth of the socialisation of production itself. In fact that is where the very word “socialism” comes from. Even the simplist artefact – a pencil, for example – requires the direct and indrect collaboration of literally millions upon millions of workers right accross the world to produce. What socialists propose is to bring ownership into line with this socialised integrated character of modern production. This brings me finally to your point that socialism will “require borders, therefore some rudimentary concept of territorial exclusivity – both at the macro and micro level”. I simply fail to see the reason for this. This whole idea of fixed borders is a relatively recent thing that arose with capitalism and the nation state. Even a few hundred years ago people could move around comparatively freely. Passports in the modern sense only appeared in the 15th century in a very limited way although prior to that you did have documentation sometimes being issued to foreign travellers permitting them to pass through a certain territory (which is quite different to the concept of a passport being issued to individuals on the basis of their supposed national citizenship, a comparatively modern concept) I cannot see any reason whatsoever for the continuation of this institution in socialism. It suits capitalism insofar as, and to the extent that, the basic territorial unit of capital accumulation has historically been the nation state. But even this has undergone change recently with the emergence of supra-national trading blocs – most obviously the EU – that allow for the free movement of people within these blocs. In a world in which capital is able to move around freely, the proposal to restrict the movement of labour can only be considered deeply reactionary insofar as it selectively promotes and favours the interests of capital over labour. None of this is to deny the likely continuation of what you call "organic cultures" into socialism. On the contrary, I would argue that socialism would provide the context in which these organic cultures could much more firmly take root and flourish rather than wither under the insidious influence of capitalist commercialism as they do today. However I totally reject your suggestion that this requires “borders” and “territorial exclusivity”. In fact what you are proposing seems the very opposite of "organic". It seems to be something that is mechanically imposed and bureaucratically enforced. In short it seems to imply the kind of capitalist mind-set to which you say you are opposed
IkeSo let me try to sum up what I think you are saying here. You seem to be saying that any kind of global economic system would need to be “totalitarian” in the sense of a generating a kind of all embracing “total culture” and a common set of values in order to function effectively (a kind of structural-functionalist viewpoint if I read you correctly). This is the glue that would hold a socialist society together. Cultural heterogeneity would weaken that glue in your view and that is precisely why you say a “common economic system would struggle with cultural heterogeneity”. The latter would be dysfunctional for the system and quite possibly cause it to break up As you explain, within this 'total culture', "some groups will develop their own practices and habits.” According to you “If disparate cultures develop in socialism, you may find that slowly some groups/communities start to evolve in a different socio-economic direction and become socialistic and pseudo-propertarian rather than socialist, or they may come under other influences, perhaps from their own heritage/ethnic past, or whatever”. In an earlier post you claimed that a “process of statisation” could be “inexorable within world socialism”. Presumably what you had in mind here is the attempt by a socialist society to assert its authority over its citizenry and to strengthen the centripetal forces at work in such society in order to overcome the centrifugal forces of cultural differentiation you describe above which plainly in your view threaten such a society and possibly represent the “seeds of the system's eventual destruction and replacement with something else”. Let me begin first of all by saying your use of the term “statisation is wholly inapt in this context. A state is an instrument of class rule and signifies the existence of classes. In effect what you are suggesting here is the possible re-emergence of class or property based relationships within socialism. You do not explain how this is supposed to happen given the voluntary nature of work in socialism and given the free accessibly of goods and services to the populace. Free access trumps free markets every time unless you can come up with a convincing reason why you think people would prefer to buy something when they could got it for free in the first place. In other words, you do not explain what leverage some individuals or groups could exert over others to induce, blackmail or otherwise compel the latter to submit to these newly emerging class relationship that you seem to posit inside a socialist society. You talk about some groups possibly evolving in a different socio-economic direction and become socialistic and pseudo-propertarian rather than socialist. If so then it would not be socialist society in general succumbing to what you call a process of statisation” but rather those groups within it wanting to evolve, according to you, away from socialism and in the process seeking to establish some kind of state like institution to force this through. After all, a socialist society is a classless and therefore stateless society. You cannot posit a process of statisation going on in this society unless you can show some mechanism by which common ownership was being replaced by class ownership involving the dispossession of the majority against their will Not only is your hypothetical scenario unsound in the way it is set up or in the way you explain it but it seems to me quite unrealistic. The whole point about socialism is that represents an attempt to bring the social relations of production into line with socialised and interlinked character of modern production. Production today is a thoroughly globalised affair, Every part of the world depends on every other through which it is connected in an incredibly complex pattern of material flows. You can’t just unilaterally alter the way one part of the world relates to another without seriously rupturing this pattern with all the adverse consequences that flow from that. If there is one aspect of the “total culture” of a socialist society – its set of core values – which we can all agree upon then that would be this idea of mutual interdependence, globally. It is this that would serve as a unifying force in such a society So yes while I agree that some groups, some groups “will develop their own practices and habits” – in short their own distinctive cultures – in a socialist society, I do not see this as fundamentally problematic at all. Of course there will be some mutual adjustment going on, and possibly a degree of tension, between the universal culture of a socialist society – what you call its “total culture” – and particular cultures. However, I think the whole ethos of a socialist society will be quite different in the way it views “the Other”. Instead of seeing cultural differences as threatening (which is a characteristic of bourgeois individualist thought incidentally – read Louis Dumont on this) such differences will be seen as enriching. Finally, I think Adam and I were both right to point out that socialism would not some kind of highly centralised system of decision-making. Though you say you “ completely understand that much of production within socialism will be at the individual and community level, and be essentially self-directed” I think this idea of socialism as some kind of centrally planned economy still lurks in the background and infects you thinking . This is demonstrated by your reference to “process of statisation” which you claim could be “inexorable within world socialism” and which you describe precisely in terms of the political superstructure becoming “more agglomerated” – that is when its decisions start to take on the characteristics of representation rather than delegation, replacing community directives with what it conceives of as a community standard. In others you think socialism is driven by a centralising dynamic I disagree strongly on this point. As has been pointed out many times before on this forum,socialist democracy will be multi-tiered and polycentric with the great bulk of decisions being made at the local level. This necessarily follows, I would argue, from the very nature of a socialist society itself
jondwhite wrote:alanjjohnstone wrote:Next January will be the centenary of Rosa Luxemburg's and Karl Leibnecht's murders.It would be an opportunity to publish a pamphlet offering our analysis of their ideas. We have done quite a number of sympathetic and some critical articles in the Standard.We could address nationalism, war, reformism, Marxian economics and political tactics all in one pamphlet, focussing on those two revolutionaries at a time when interest may have grown in their lives and deaths. Ample preparation time for the pamphlets committee…or they can co-opt a willing member for the task and merely do the proof-reading.Would you propose this and the other pamphlets through party channels?
Perhaps a pamphlet specifically on Rosa Luxemburg and the various aspects of her worldview would do the trick. She certain has a following out there in cyberspace as I have discovered on my forays into various debate forums I think, as I have said before, we need more in the way of intermediate-type pamphlets with a narrower focus and a more detailed treatment of the subject matter. General pamphlets on broad themes such as ecology, war, Marxian economics etc have their place , of course, but they need to be complemented by this more specific and targeted kind of approach in my view. The Party also needs to sigificantly step up the output of pamphlets which has slowed down considerably in recent years. Hopefully we shall shortly begin to see changes in this direction
Ike Pettigrew wrote:Of course, I understand that socialism would not necessarily be culturally homogeneous, but it would still be the same interlocking system the world over and, to my mind, a workable system has to take account fully of different human types and cultural differences.I dont see the reasoning behind this at all. Why cannot socialism be culturally hetereogenous as well as an "interlocking system the world over"? The "system" is basically defined by the economic relations that obtain between people with respect to the means of producing wealth. I really cannot see any problem about the same kinds of economic relationships that typify socialism – common ownership, free access to goods and serices, volunteer labour etc etc – existing right across the world – but at the same tme , there being a considerable degree of cultural diversity across the world. Unless, that is, one takes a reductionist-cum-mechanistic view of culture as a mere "reflection" of the "economic base". Thats surely not your position – is it, Ike?
Ike Once again I think you are making quite unwarranted claims about the nature of socialism – in this instance, concerning the nature and extent of democratic decison-making in a socialist society – based on idealised projections stemming from, in my view – an uncritical application of a few basic dogmas. What I mean by this is that you seem to be thinking that since socialism means common ownership of the productive resources of society by everyone, and since common ownership is inseparable from democratic control, this means that everyone will be involved in all decisions pertaining the production of social wealth. That is clearly nonsensical and impractical Not only is democratic decisionmakiing likely to be far more nuanced, multilayered and polycientric than you seem to imply but there will also be a large area of decionmaking where there is simply no need to go through some democratic process of voting on the decision in question. I refer to individual decisionmaking in the spheres of both consumption and production You talked in the other thread of there being a tendency on the part of SPGBers to "give canned responses or regurgitate rigid dogmas" but this is yet another example where your impressions are based on a complete caricature. There has indeed been , at least since the 1980s, a lot of discussion on precisely the kinds of issues you raise which has resulted in a much more nuanced , thoughtful amd throught-out positions being reached. I dont know when exactly you were a member but did you perchance have the opportunity to read some of the SPGB's internal documents such as the "Production for Use" Committee's report? Pamphlets have been produced such as "Socialism as a Practical Alternative" which reflect current Party thinking (see pamphlets section) I dont wish to rehash old arguments but I did start up a thread over a year ago which more or less deal with the arguments you raise here. Check this out:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/socialism-and-democracy
