robbo203
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
A conversation about the MFP with Nick Tapping https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnEpUdNG7RI
gnome wrote:ALB wrote:are parish councils part of the machinery of government or more residents' committees?The position of Steve Colborn is not quite as clear cut as some members would have us believe. OK, he joined and was elected as a member of another organisation, but is the Seaham Community Party "political" in the sense we in the Socialist Party understand that description? More to the point; have his actions been "detrimental" to the interests of the Party? At this stage I'm much more concerned about those members, and there have been a few, particularly on Facebook, who have openly expressed their preference, even support in one or two cases, for one of the main, and avowedly, capitalist parties.
Yes I would agree with this. The situation is not black or white. It is possible that the SCP is not a poltical party in the full blooded sense of the term and that this entity was only forced to use the term "party" becaue of certain legal requirements. However, the SCP has expressed certain sentiments of a clear political nature in relation to Rembrance Day etc which i consider thoroughly objectionable as a sociaist. Has Steve clearly disassociated himself from these sentiments? Regarding some members expressing a preference for Corbyn – again I think we have to be clear about what this actually signifies. It is possible to argue that a Corbyn goverment represents a slightly more positive development than a May government without this in any way suggesting an endorsement of the former or a recommendation that one should vote for Corbyn, I would never do that and as socialists we are all surely well aware that a vote for Corbyn simply translates into ensuring in the long run a retun of some future Tory government a few years down the line after a Corbyn gvovernment has failed as it will inevitably do, in the see-saw world of capitalist politics. However, i would be slightly concerned if Britsh workers did vote for still more of the same – i.e. the Tories – without even the pretence of a slight shift in thinking. Such conservatism in both senses of the word, would be truly depressing. There is a further point ( though I am not too sure that the evidence entirely backs it up) that the SPGB as an organisation tends to fare somewhat better under labour governments than under tory governments. Its highest ever membership figure occured under the Attlee govenrment did it not? If the correlation holds I wonder why this would be the case.
Ozy, you could also do with contacting the "Center for Global NonKiling". There is a greak link here to a range of interesting articles http://www.nonkilling.org/pdf/nksocieties.pdf I find your chronic sense of pessimism about the human condition depressing and, frankly, quite misplaced
Ozymandias wrote:What a fuckin horrible species we are. Even in "Primitive Communism" they were laying the foundations of private property society through murder, human sacrifice and fetishing their leaders. "Where did you get this idea from Ozy? Here's a few links that might persuade you to think otherwise https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/14/early-men-women-equal-sc…https://libcom.org/history/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalita… You should read anything by Brian R Ferguson who is the world's leading authority on early warfare, apparently. He would be highly skeptical of the picture you paint. Here's a link to his profile, Scroll down to publications and then articles which you can read for yourself https://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/r-brian-ferguson
Vin wrote:I have to respectfully disagree. He ignored attacks, trolling and off topic posts by LBird, 'Bob Andrews' and many others. I could have respected him if he had acted earlier. He only jumped into action when I responded, which will result in a party member being suspended for the next year while trolls and adverts run free. There is no democratic control of these online meetings.A chairperson is for ONE meeting, a moderator is for life and cannot be questioned or removed. He has the power and he has used it – to silence any opposition to his 'moderation'. It is an embarrasment to our movement and cannot continue. We need a party wide discussion on this.Bob andrews is allowed to attack me behind his pseudonym. Why? I am not allowed a psuedonym. Why? Who is protecting 'Bob' and why? Can you explain why he has been abusive to me, gone offtopic and broken many other rules yet received NO moderation??Are we not a party of equals? Or are some more equal than others?But then 'Bob Andrews' is not a party member. He was expelled along with others for gross undemocratic behaviourHmm Im not too sure that this is entirely true Vin, Lbird has been suspended in the past – has he not? – and has frequently received warnings. I think Bob Andrews has also received warnings though I might be wrong about this. I cant explain his behaviour to you as I dont know him or where he is coming from but am inclined to agree that perhaps he needs to be taken more firmly in hand by the Mod. Not that it matters that he is not a Party member. The rules of the forum should apply equally to everyone on this forum, Party member or not Im not quite sure what you mean about not being able to use a pseudonym on this list. The vast majoirty of users use pseudonyms of some sort. Are you not possibly confusing this with sockpuppets?
Vin wrote:Couldb I suggest that when a thread is 'locked' it should be accompanied with a reason.It does not look good if a topic is locked simply to prevent someone from answering an accustation , for example. as this would stifle balanced debate, which is indispensible to the socialist movement.Agreed but to be fair, Vin, the thread on Fresco which I set up was seriously derailed and some of the posts there should not have come under " general discussion" at all but rather the "website/technical" category. I think that was fairly obviously the reason for the Moderator locking the thread but yes perhaps a formal explanation might be appropriate when a thread is locked as you suggest. I am not a big fan of the off topic rule as you might know but I think while the rule exists, the Mod was carrying out his functions as per the rules….
rodmanlewis wrote:robbo203 wrote:It is amazing how an idiot like Johnson can so distort the meaning of what Corbyn was saying as to interpet it as an attempt to justify or to legitimate the actions of terrorists . Perhaps, Johnson needs to learn the difference between a word like "justification" – and "explanation". Corbyn was trying to explain the background to an event like the Manchester – not "justify" it – and on this occasion he was absolutely correct.Corbyn, with his endorsement of capitalism–the cause of all these conflicts–is just as guilty as Johnson.
That might be true in a general sense – in fact, it is true that in the end he does indeed endorse a system that is the root cause of these conflicts – but that does not mean his particular explanation for the rise of terrorism and the emergence of organsiations like ISIS is not correct. I believe it is correct and just because Corbyn is a capitalist politician does not precluding the posibility of him being occasionally correct.Without that stupid war in Iraq there would be no ISIS today and to give him his due, Corbyn did at least oppose that war on principle unlike many other capitalist politicans
It is interesting that MSN should carry a report citing Boris Johnson's condemnation of Corbyn's comment that the war on terror is simply not working, as being “absolutely monstrous”: "Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, intensified the attack, saying Corbyn’s comments were “absolutely monstrous”. Speaking alongside the US secretary of state Rex Tillerson, he said it was “absolutely extraordinary and inexplicable in this week of all weeks that there should be any attempt to justify or to legitimate the actions of terrorists in this way”. http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/jeremy-corbyn-the-war-on-terror-is-simply-not-working/ar-BBByd9m?li=AA59G2&ocid=spartandhp It is amazing how an idiot like Johnson can so distort the meaning of what Corbyn was saying as to interpet it as an attempt to justify or to legitimate the actions of terrorists . Perhaps, Johnson needs to learn the difference between a word like "justification" – and "explanation". Corbyn was trying to explain the background to an event like the Manchester – not "justify" it – and on this occasion he was absolutely correct. The invasion of Iraq has had blowback consequences in terms of rising levels of terrorism across the world – just as he predicted. You cannot carpet bomb a country, kill tens of thousands of innocents in the process and expect their relatives, friends and acquaintances to stoically accept this outcome as an understandable case of collateral damage. Meanwhile, Johnson himself , while seeing fit to lecture others on making "absolutely monstrous" comments, sees nothing incongruous about defending arms sales to the monstrous Saudi regime that has killed many times more innocents than that sick and psychologically disturbed young man whose appaling act in Manchester resulted in the deaths of 22 othershttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/05/mps-to-urge-ban-on-uk-arms-sales-to-saudi-arabia Now that is what I call being really "absolutely monstrous"!
LBird wrote:Tim Kilgallon wrote:So what you are saying is. is that there is a small group of people (possibly only 1) who understnad Marx, and the rest of the population of the earth do not understand Marx. Sounds like you've identified an elite group with specialist knowledge, there, matey.I've clearly answered this point many times, and I can't believe that you and the others are so forgetful, so I have to assume that this is a political tactic to discredit those who are critical of the SPGB's elitist support of unelected 'Specialists'.So, to add to robbo's version of 'What LBird says', we now have Tim's version of 'What LBird says'.If anyone is genuinely interested in critically assessing my views, and want to ask further questions about them, I can only ask that they first read what I write, and not what SPGB members and supporters make up, to hide their own inability to understand and debate.As I've said, this is a political tactic to discredit criticism, not simply personal disagreement or dislike.
LOL LBird. You have nerve to call your critics forgetful. Have you forgotten the number of times I and others have asked you straightforward questions which you have totally bottled out of answering – questions about the mechanics or logistics of global decision making, for example, Or questions about what is precisely the point of a global vote on the "truth" of some acane scientific theoryOf course you havent answered these questions and you never will and the reason why you never will is that you you dont like the idea of being caught with trousers down.Lets face it, matey- you're a Leninist through and through, pretending to be a democratic socialist/communist. You might not see it like this but that is where the logic of argument takes you
LBird wrote:FWIW, I'm beginning to see why so many of the SPGB and its supporters (including robbo and YMS) sing from the same hymn-sheet as mod1. They all share a common ideology, which is totally unrelated to Marx's views, and totally unsuitable for a democratic socialism.But that's what we advocate – a democratic socialist society! Unlike the Leninist LBird with his hairbrained scheme of de facto society-wide central planning overseen inevitably by a technocratic elite
jondwhite wrote:Is focusing on inequality a diversion?https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/may/24/are-we-about-to-witness-the-most-unequal-societies-in-history-yuval-noah-harariQuote:Inequality goes back to the Stone Age. Thirty thousand years ago, bands of hunter-gatherers in Russia buried some members in sumptuous graves replete with thousands of ivory beads, bracelets, jewels and art objects, while other members had to settle for a bare hole in the ground.https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/14/early-men-women-equal-scientistshttps://libcom.org/history/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways-peter-gray And to Bob Andrews – no, focussing on inequality is NOT a distraction unless you are thinking of this narrowly in terms of wealth redistribution. Socialists prefer to focus on the inequality of power or of the kind of social relationships that exist in society and underlie its pattern of wealth distribution
Sympo wrote:robbo203 wrote:"Have you read Benedict Anderson's book on Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism?"I've never heard of him (though I'm not that knowledgeable about the subject)"While the seed of extreme nationalism may exist in capitalism only because nationalism is part of the logic of capitalism in my view, I dont think it necessarily follows that nationalism in its extreme form must always occur."Does this, combined with the idea that states could include all sellers in economic transactions, mean that Capitalism could potentially be a system where no military conflicts between states occur?
Sympo . Here's a taster for you – from chapter 4 of Anderson's books in pdf formathttps://www2.bc.edu/marian-simion/th406/readings/0420anderson.pdf Regarding your other point, well clearly there are parts of the world where war has not occured for quite a while – like the European Union referred to earlier (discounting internal armed so called national liberation struggle carried out by organsations like the IRA, ETA etc Moreover, there are today some twenty or so countries in the world that do not possess any armed forces at all – though usually this is becuase they fall under the protection of another state or are too small, impoverished or remote to pose a threat to , or be threatend by , other countries. Costa Rica, for instance, abolished its army in 1949 although, as a client state within the US sphere of influence, it has recently welcomed a huge US military presence within the country, supposedly as a deterrrent to drug trafficking in the region. In addition, there are about a dozen or so countries that are resolutely and constitutionally neutral. Switzerland is a good example of the latter. It has never engaged in a foreign war since 1515, and has remained neutral since 1815. The Swiss constitution forbids the state from ever initiating a war or even taking sides in a war – although Switzerland itself is heavily armed (ostensibly for purely defensive purposes) and practices military conscription (http://www.swissworld.org/). Neverthless, none of this prevents even the most neutral state from vigorously promoting a nationalist ideology and its own sense of national identity. The desire to subordinate the citizenry to the central state is as apparent in such cases as it is in more militarily aggressive regimes. The homogenising thrust of the modern state in promoting its own national culture has, however, sometimes brought it up against stubbornly entrenched cultural differences on the ground . Historically speaking, this has not infrequently made it difficult to extend effective political control over the entire population falling within the territorial unit over which it has nominal jurisdiction. Hence the oppressive role that aspiring nationalisms have sometimes played vis-a-vis local cultures – although, even here, we need to be wary of making unwarranted generalisations. As the above website of the Swiss Federal Department of Foregin Affairs puts it; "The status of neutrality has not only protected Switzerland from war, but has helped prevent the country from being torn apart when its different language communities might have been tempted to side with different belligerents in cases of conflict." Perhaps there is, as this would suggest , a kind of subtle background interplay between the foreign policy of a country and its internal domestic situation However countries lie Switzerland are the exceptions that prove the rule, I dont think they are generalisable for the world as a whole where you have a different kind of dynamic coming into play such as superpower rivalry often fought out through proxy wars and the like. .Ultimately wars, though rationalised on nationalist and even religious grounds, are fundamentally fuelled by economic conflicts over resources trades routes, markets and these conflicts are built into a system of market competition, even if they do not always express themsleves in war. The very fact the the world spends nearly 1.7 trillion US dollars on weapons (2016) and that this figure has continued to rise fairly relentlessly, demonstrates to me not just the potentiality for war, but its actuality in global capitalism
Sympo wrote:robbo203 wrote:"In answer to you first point yes I suppose the scenario you suggest is possible but that still does not negate the basic argument that there is a zero sum situation – a conflict of interest – involved"I assume you think the scenario looks pretty unlikely?"they are predicated on a myth called the "national interest" which assumes a commonality of interests between workers and capitalists within a given nation state." So the seed of extreme nationalism will always exist in capitalist society.
Yes I think the scenario you depict is unlikely for the reasons given but I dont rule it out completely Also yes I think the seed of extreme nationalism is embedded in capitalism. In fact the nation state (and nationalism itself) emerged with the rise of capitalism as the unit of spatial and political organisation under capitalism par excellance. Have you read Benedict Anderson's book on Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism? It is an interesting work which I would highly recommend though Anderson did not consider himself to be a Marxist and took issue with some aspects of the Marxian view of nationalism While the seed of extreme nationalism may exist in capitalism only because nationalism is part of the logic of capitalism in my view, I dont think it necessarily follows that nationalism in its extreme form must always occur. Capitalist development as ever is a contractory process and the relationship between nationalism and globalisation is a complex one as current events are showing. Extreme nationalism I would say is the expression of certain historically contingent factors, acting in conjunction with capitalism' inherent tendency to generate nationalist ideology
Sympo wrote:robbo203 wrote:I think your reply was good but I would like to play devil's advocate here and question a few things."For instance, a seller and a buyer might strike a deal but this might very well have the effect of damaging the interests of another potential seller, for example who had been deliberately excluded from the proceedings and might feel aggrieved as a result."Can't the second seller get in on the action (i.e. why can't the buyer buy half of X from seller 1 and half from seller 2)?"On the contrary the drive to war normally engages irrational factors such as nationalistic sentiments to an extraordinary degree"Are capitalist states inherently irrational? Is there no way for them to permanently stay away from extreme nationalism?
Hi Sympo In answer to you first point yes I suppose the scenario you suggest is possible but that still does not negate the basic argument that there is a zero sum situation – a conflict of interest – involved inasmuch as seller 2 now provides half of what the buyer wants to the chagrin of seller 1 who had expected to provide eveything. Seller 1 would much prefer seller 2 was out of the picture altogther along with seller 3, 4….n. Also, of course, according to pure market theory, the buyer wants the lowest price possible. It is unlikely that seller 1 and seller 2 sell their wares at exactly the same price. Furthermore, bulk buying possibly attracts discounts so splitting the purchase between two sellers might not be particularly advantageous to the buyer. Regarding your second point – that's a very interesting question you raise. I believe capitalist states necesarily engage nationalism as a kind of secular religion and to that extent are intrinsically irrational. That is to say, they are predicated on a myth called the "national interest" which assumes a commonality of interests between workers and capitalists within a given nation state. Since there cannot be such a thing, a fictional account of the way the world functions has to be presented. The citizens of another nation are depicted as being uniformly hostile to your interests just as your interests are depicted as being uniformly congruent with those of your employer in some sort of quasi transcendental sense. You are in the same boat as him/her confronting other national "boats" in a contnual war of maritime attrition. Its all a load of tosh really but huge amounts of resources are plowed into maintaining this dangerous fiction Whether "extreme nationalism" can be averted is an interesting question. We have the contemporary case before us of the Europoean Unin being subject to a wave of nationalist sentiment. The irony is that EU was/is esentially a statist construction. Yet the advocates of free trade who argue that more trade and less state intervention will mitigate the prospect of war cannot seem to see that insofar as the EU was formed in part to avert the prospect of war in Europe in the future, this has involved a greater role for the state, not a diminished one, in the guise of inter-state treaities and so forth. That in itself is quite a paradox!
LBird wrote:alanjjohnstone wrote:We haven't advanced far in this debate, have we, after what now has been years of exchanges and screeds of words….I think i mentioned that quantum physics is all gobbly-gook to me because their truth does not correspond to my own reality. I recuse myself from such conversations. You ask who controls truth…i do as an individual. I choose what i consider true. My neighbour possesses his personal world-view of his reality. That is our battlefield in politics.[my bold]The reason that we haven't advanced far, alan, is that you don't realise that 'knowledge production' is part of the class war. You subscribe to the bourgeois ideology that 'knowledge' is an 'individual' product (or, at best, a product of 'elite individuals').That is, you're ignorant of the politics of the social production of knowledge, and that ignorance is reinforced by the social ideology that you've had given to you ('ruling class ideas'), one that stresses 'individuals' in both the production of commodities and of social ideas..
[/quote]Perhaps :LBird can explain what happens after 7 billion people have cast their votes on the pressing matter of whether quarks consist of 3 or 5 preons – there are apparently rival theories in this subject area which are hotly contested among physicists?If the proponents of the 3 preon theory of quarks fail to convince the majority of the soundness of their theory who vote in favour of the 5 preon theory, does that mean the former will no longer be permiited to advance their theory? If not, what was the point of the vote exactly? Please explain See, we can all agree that "knowledge is social" which is a fairly bland and uncontroversial statement to make but just becuase something is a social product does not automatically mean it needs be voted upon, does it? LBird's toothbrush is a social product. Is he seriously telling us that he will insist on voting on the of production technique employed at every stage in the production of toothbrushes? There are literally billions upon billions of things around us that are "socially produced", How does LBird propose that all 7 billion people have a say in the prduction of each of these billions upon billions of things? Over to you LBird
