[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Communism means from EACH (individual) according to the ability, to EACH (individual) acording to their needs.

So, who determines 'ability' and 'needs', YMS?Isolated individuals or social producers?How are these social products made?By ahistoric, asocial personal intuition, or by democratic discussion?

 Who is involved in this ..er.. democratic discussion about one's "abilities" and "needs"LBird has scoffed at the suggestion that there are any "limits" to democracy. For example he seems to have rejected even the idea that there will be such a thing as local democracy in a communist society since he sees this as putting a limit on democracy – in this case limiting discussion of local issues to the local populationWhich means, to be quite literal about it, that what LBird is suggesting is that 7 billion plus individuals in global communism are going to be sitting around discussing  your, my or LBird’s particular "abilities" and "needs"SERIOUSLY???The more I read the endless tripe that seems to gush from LBird the more convinced I am that whatever communist consciousness he might have possessed has long ago gone through the meat grinder of Leninist ideology and has been reduced to mush It is basic to Marxian communism (to which LBird quite clearly is in many respects diametrically opposed) that the individual in a communist society should be free to chose how to express herself through work, her contribution to society.  Of course we are social individuals and dont make our choices in a vacuum and are influenced by others around us but nevertheless ultimately in communism it is we as individuals who must decide what work we want to do.  If we are not able as individuals to freely decide on this matter – that is if we are not able to contribute our labour on a genuinely voluntary basis – then our labour is not the result of free association .  It is coerced or estranged labour.  This is not communism.  It is just another form of slavery and I can see why that should appeal to the Leninist streak in LBird who would have us all become cogs in a vast impersonal machine So the freedom to choose is a cornerstone of Marxian communism.  It is implicit in that quote of Marx from the German Ideology: For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic and must remain so if he does not wish to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.  Finally I cannot  let LBird get away with this crass comment: Howare these social products made?By ahistoric, asocial personal intuition, or by democratic discussion? Actually democratic discussion doesn’t produce anything – at least not in the economic sense of “goods”.  It is human labour aided as the case may be by machinery that does that . Democratic discussion may help to guide us in matters such as what  to produce in some cases but certainly not all or even a majority of cases in a communist society unless LBird rejects the communist principle of free access as well as that other communist principle of volunteer labour. Free access means you decide what you want.  If others decide for you this is no longe free access but some form of rationing. If that is what LBird wants he should come out and defend this position  Democratic discussion certain has a role to play in communist production but it is only a small part of the overall process of social production though you would never think that listening to LBirds nonsensical blather about "democracy without limits".  It conjures up a vision of a society in which there are endless rounds of mass meetings but nothing ever gets done. 

[robbo203]

There is a classic in the anthropological literature called "Political systems in Highland Burma" by Edmund Leach which touches on the subject of polyandry.  Its ages since I read the book but I think Leach offers what are basically environmental reasons as to why polyandry occurs among the Kachin people living in the mountains – something to do with migration of male labour to the valleys below where work is more plentiful  though I might be quite wrong about this. Polyandry seems to be concentrated in places like Burma  (Myanmar), Tibet and Malaysia

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

 Then we have no political disagreement, mod1.Clearly, given your formulation, 'the majority' can decide whether there will be 'limits', and if so, what those 'limits' will be.This is at odds with what you've argued previously, though.Unless you wish to modify what you've just said, and return to your previous stance, that 'limits' exist prior to their social production by the democratic producers?The ball's in your court, mod1.

 No, this is nonsense.  There is absolutely no question about the fact that there will be limits to democracy – unless LBird is seriously proposing here that all 7 billion people can vote on billions upon billions  – nay trillions – of decisions that need  to be taken throughout  the world every day  in which case let him come out and state this is a serious proposition on his part.  This is no more up for discussion than whether one can defy the laws of gravity when jumping off a tall building. What can be democratically decided beforehand by workers is where those limits will lie not whether there ought to be any limits at all, That latter is a peice of Leninist fantasy – totalistic society wide decisionmaking – invented by LBird himself  which is completely incapable of being realised.  And if it cannot be realised there is no point in even discussing it is there now?

[robbo203]

Vin wrote:

Clearly Lbird has  stopped replying to Robbo because he has no reply. Nothing new there.  Restart the baseless insults later, eh?

 Yes Indeed Vin,  He refuses to anwer the simple question of whether he supports the notion of localised forms of democracy and now we know why.  Its becuase he has something to hide.   He is a Leninist at heart who support the Leninist model of decisonmaking for society but is too embarrassed to come out and honestly admit to his Leninist inclinations,  His model of decision-making absolutely guarantees the most extreme form of elitism that is possible Remember this whenever Lbird accuses the SPGB of "Leninism" and "elitism"

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

Ah, but I'm not allowed to respond to your insults, mcolome1, so it's not the same at all.Here we can see the political relationship between workers and the SPGB 'specialists' that will be produced in any future version of 'socialism' that the SPGB apparently intends to build.

But hold on here LBird – you subscribe to an ultra-centralised Leninist model of complete society-wide decision making on everything.  You clearly do not envisage any form of local democracy operating in your system because this would be a limitation on democracy in your view – it "limits" the electorate on certain local issues to local people.  Are you not doing exactly what you charge the SPGB with doing?  That is to say, you are an elitist who unilaterally prescribes a particular model of decisionmaking in which the workers have had no say in the making of.

[robbo203]

Capitalist Pig wrote:

strange that no one in this party has any idea what form of gorvernment they want or how to run it. everyones just saying burn everything down and everything will be fine. On one hand you will say you favor democracy then say you favor anarchism. Seems like you have no comcrete plan or idea of where to go if you were actually elected. You guys are very utopian, you think if you abolish the government people will act pecfectly and all have the same ideas and beliefs which would lead to a perfect society. The problem with that is that we have free will and are not a collective mob like ants or termites. Government is nessesary in society to keep order and stability, without a buffer to prevent people from commiting crimes or maintaining the law of the land there will be civil unrest and chaos. That is the only role of the government, to maintain law and order and prevent civil liberties from being violated in my opinion.now go ahead and say the same thing over and over again

 CP.  Your criticism seems rather confused and contradictory.  You want us to supply you with some idea of what form of government we want and then you complain that we want to abolish government!  Which is it?You seem to be vacillating between different ideas of what a "government" actually means,  That is why I asked you to define what you actually mean by government – do you mean a state or merely an adminsitration?  We socialists certianly want to get rid of the state and so if you equate goverment wth the  state, then socialism will be a society without government.  However,  in anthroplogy, the term government has sometimes been used in the context of stateless or "acephalous" societies – see for example Lucy Mair's book on "primitive government" In any event, the state is an institution of class rule and in a classless society  a state clearly cannot exist,  That does not mean  in a stateless socialist society there will be just chaos or anarchy.  You make a huge assumption here which is simply not justified.  Indeed the anthropological study of stateless societies would refute your claim.  If anything, chaos and anarchy is strongly associated with the power struggles that are endemic to class societies Socialism will provide the material conditions in which a much more transperant and cohesive sense of morality will emerge in my view, based on the clear recognition of our mutual interdependence.  We do not need some external body in the guise of a state to maintain order and social harmony.  We are quite capable of doing it ourselves and far more effectively than any class based statist society

[robbo203]

Vin wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Can you you answer this simple question without your usual equivocation?. 

 He can't,  Robbo. I have been asking for a couple of years. He will probably call you a "anti-democratic, Engelsian, Religious Materialist "I have been called worse but that's all he has: Some stupid phrases he repeats when he has no reply. I am sure we materialists all have better things to do than waste our time on an elitist, leninist idealist. 

Well its a simple enough question – does Lbird support local forms ot democracy that limit decisionmaking to the locals who are affected by these local issues.  Or is LBird a Leninist who advocates ultra centralism? Why is he so reluctant to answer I wonder?

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

 So, YMS, read this post, and stop making up stories about what I'm supposedly writing. As for robbo's "Outraged Individualist!" account of 'my ideas', I've given up trying to correct him. If you and the others want to attack robbo's account, be my guest. 

 LOL LBird you are a laugh-a-minute.  If you think my interpretation of your worldview is incorrect and that you do not after all endorse the  Leninist  position of ultra-centralised society-wide decisionmaking – turning the whole of society into a single office and a single factory in Lenin's words – then you have a simple course of action available to you. – DENY THAT YOU  ADVOCATE SUCH A THING! You say you have "given up" trying to correct me on this .  Really?  When have you ever tried to begin with, huh?  By my reckoning you have not tried even once to "correct " me on this but have shied away from any serious debate on this matter every time .  You never once said "I do not advocate society wide central planning". Not even once. I have given you opportunity after opportunity to say "I do not support such thing".  But not once have you taken such an opportunity So here is a very simple question for you LBird – I dunno why I even bother asking you given your track record of evasion  but what the hell.  My question is simply this: Do you believe that in communism there will be local forms of democracy as well as regional and global forms? In other words, will there be cases where democratic praxis limited to local communities? Can you you answer this simple question without your usual equivocation?.  Its a simple enough question, after all, and it will salvage your position at a stroke and send your critics into disarray if only you can answer it correctly.  We will no longer have grounds for calling you the orthodox Leninist you appear to be

[robbo203]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

LBird wrote:

You, like robbo, YMS and the others, mcolome1, should actually start to read what I write, and not live in a mythical world of outrage, ignorance and misunderstanding.

Elementary science suggests we have read what you wrote, and reacted to it: so maybe the problem is with how you communicate your ideas.  Or maybe the problem is with the ideas themselves.  It is a key feature of elitism to assume that your audience is at fault for not understanding your arguments, don't you think?

 Absolutely  YMS,  The problem is not that we dont read what LBird has written but that he does not grasp, and does not want to grasp,  the utter stupifty of the implications of what he has written.  And he hides this behind the mock protest that others have misunderstood him. Poor misunderstood LBlrd!  Of course it doesnt help when he refuses to answer a straight question with a straight answer which is the typical strategem of somebody who has something to hide. In LBird's case a piss-poor argument in favour of Leninist-style society wide decisionmaking over everything.  That is what he really advocates when he says democracy should have no limits

[robbo203]

Matt wrote:

 it does not folow that individuals ignore the rest in a poycentric model. Rather, iIt is a much more democratic model which allows for the fluid interaction and recognition of there beng several or many inputs necessary to arrive at conclusive results, in a modern technological and informational savvy, post-capitalist era with multiple interactive factors to interplay within decisions as to the better optional gains for the whole. It allows more for "From each according to their ability" to prevail with a multiplicity of interactions feeding into decision making and the best optional outcomes.Your rigid model is much more likely to create crises of over and undersupply with the loss of corrective autonomous self regulative adjustment. It has the smack of the Gulags to me.. We have been there before.

 Matt , our resident Leninist, LBird who like his mentor, Lenin, wants to turn the whole of society into a single office and a single factory, simply does not grasp, and shows no willingness to grasp, the utter stupidity of what he is arguing for  – total society wide decisionmaking over everything . He claims that I am making an argument about something he is not saying at all but that is rubbish.  He himself  has declared that there are no limits to democracy but as I have already explained, a localised form of democracy is in itself a form of limitation – it limits the electorate to  a particular locality in the case of certain kinds of decisions of a local nature.  By rejecting  the argument that demcoracy will necessarily be limited in some respects, Lbird is effectively saying that there will be no localised forms of decisonmaking!  In other words 7 billion people will all be involved in the making of billions upon billions of decisions right across the world.  Which of course is ludicrous. He then has the nerve to say that because we point out that democracy will necessarily be limited in socialism we are therefore rejecting democracy in favour of what he calls "individualism"  (he still doesnt undestand what this word means).   Which of course is rubbish and typical of his simplistic black or white view of the world,  Obviously there will be a lot more democray in socialism than there is today but that does not mean it will be "unlimited"

[robbo203]

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

  This means "there is an exchange".   information is exchanged, and values such as a clean household are exchanged.  for houshold chores one person might do dishes in "exchange" for another person sweeping.  In a family there's few enough people that this is all kept in the head with a sort of "how much do you help me vs how much do I help you" type mental accounting of fairness.  Unfortunately that only works because a family is a small group where you know each persons history and reliability and repuation from long experience with them.  The unfortunate part is that won't scale to the large numbers needed for specialization.  The woman who makes silicon chips doesn't know personally from long experience the people who want to use the silicon chips for making the computer that will be sold to to the family to use in creating a google doc for sharing chores.  She has no knowledge about them or their reputation or if they are working against her or not.  She could have that information if you gave her access to your google docs for sharing chorse an there was a chore in there that said something like "bring food to the people who help us out by making microchips".  So that's a solution, but one that requires sharing a Shareable count and tally of chores and who benefits from the chores.  In the family wthout a sharing chores speadsheet this count is kept internally to each person in their head and not sharable with the rest of the world except by word of mouth and then there's no way for strangers to check your reputation and history to see if you are honest.  So the solution is to share the information and the family can share their chores so others can trust them.  These spreadsheets with different interests being helped by different chores is effectiveliy (due to how it's used and how it works) a form of exchange and a form of "money".  

 Two points. Firslty, on the question of "exchange", when we talk about exchange in an economic context we are referring to quid pro quo exchanges – I will give you something on condition that you give me something else in return. In other words it is an exchange in property titles to the things being exchanged. It is only because there is the expectation that you will get something back from the other party to the transaction that the transaction happens at all.  Otherwise it wouldnt.  A further point about economic exchange is that it is fundamentally self interested.  Each party to an exchange is looking to his or her own interests only. This necessarily implies economic valuation for the purposes of comparison.  Each party to the exchange wants to maximise the difference in utlility between what s/he gets in an exchange and what s/he gives, This is a foundational dogma of bourgeois economics and the basic reason why it asserts that trade is necessarily a positive sum game.  If both parties did not benefit from the transaction it wouldnt happen. Period. That is "economic exchange".  But it is totally misleading to apply the reasoning behind this to "exchanges" in the general sense.  When people "exchange" pleasantries or information they are not engaged in a property based transaction.  The word you are looking for is actually reciprocity not exchange,  In socialism there will be no  economic exchange since economic exchange as a quid pro quo phenomenon is based on private property in the means of production .  There will however be reciprocity.  Reciprocity is about cementimg snd strengethening social bonds,  It is not about advancimg ones own self interests.  In the case of household chores where one person might do dishes in "exchange" for another person sweeping, this is not an example of economic exchange but of reciprocity. It is about what is good for household as a whole. It is essentially a moral concept Seondly the argument that a system of generalised reciprocity – which is essentally what socialism is all about – cannot be "scaled up" is a completely bogus argument. It is the argument of last resort that critics of socialism resort to when all their other argument have been knocked away from under their feet.  "Ah its a nice idea" they say "but you can only really apply but on a small scale – such as within a household or a commune  but not to a large scale society" Thats rubbish.  There are numerous examples of generalised recipocty that operate on a very large scale indeed even under capitalism,  Take the internet for example,  This has been cited as an example of a gift economy which is esentially what socialism would be. See https://wiki.gifteconomy.org/Main_Page What people who make this kind of objection really mean is that you cannot "scale up" the kind of riciprocal relationships to be found inside the household to capitalist society as a whole since that would no longer be capitalism,  That is true enough but that is NOT an argument against socialism though it might be an agument against peice meal reform. Socialism entails a fundamental change in the entire social context in which people relate to one another in a way that make generalised reciprocity not only possible but the norm

[robbo203]

Yet another example fo the total disconnect between the Trump regimes professed isolationist aim of steering well clear of military entanglements abroad and the actual reality of what it is doing on the ground.  This just a continuation of the same old US military aggreesion and intervention in the affairs of other countries.  Nothing has changed with Trump in power Once again  from the admittedly rather biassed and OTT  website http://www.legitgov.org/…. "USociopaths trolling for World War III: The US prepares to 'incapacitate' Kim: USS Carl Vinson carrying huge fleet of fighter jets arrives in South Korea as military sources reveal plan to 'remove' Jong-un's war chiefs –South Korea's Yonhap News Agency claims the heightened military presence is part of a plan to decapitate North Korean leadership. | 15 March 2017 | A growing US presence off the Korean Peninsula is reportedly part of a plan aimed at 'incapacitating' Kim Jong-Un's government in Pyongyang should [a US-engendered] conflict break out. A nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier arrived in South Korea on Wednesday for joint military exercises in the latest show of force against the North. The USS Carl Vinson arrived at the southern port of Busan as US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson began a tour of the region, where tensions have escalated in recent weeks…More than 80 aircraft, including the fighter aircraft F/A-18F Super Hornet, the E-2C Hawkeye and the carrier-based EA-18G Growler are on board the supercarrier."   

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

Matt wrote:

Unicentric = Having a single centre.Polycentric = Having many centres.

Perhaps you're missing the point, Matt. I'm sure we all know the difference between 'uni' and 'poly' as words. It's the political meaning that you seem to have missed.'Uni' = 'democracy', whereas 'Poly' = 'individual'.robbo is a 'poly' individualist, whereas Democratic Communists are 'uni' democrats.This is a question of 'power' – 'power' is either a collective phenomenon ('uni', centralised upon a social decision-making process, in which individuals participate and then obey) or 'power' is an individual phenomenon ('poly', decentralised amongst individuals, who can ignore other individuals).Socialism requires collective decision-making, not 7 billion decisions which ignore each other.I'm a democrat, whereas robbo is an individualist – that's why we disagree. This is a debate about where 'power' will lie within Socialism/Communism – distributed amongst 7 billion biological and sovereign individuals, or with a collective World Socialism where democracy is sovereign.

.   Again, this demonstrates LBird simply does not understand the argument at all.  It’s like banging your head against the wall trying to get it through to him and in my opinion he is just being deliberately obtuse to prevent having to acknowledge the thoroughly anti- democratic implications of his Leninist worldview.  This is why he constantly misrepresents what I am saying.  He has to hide behind a screen of falsehoods to protect himself So for instance he portrays me as an “individualist” who rejects collective decision-making. That’s absolute rubbish.  Of course I accept that socialism requires collective decision-making – when have I have said anything to the contrary?   The question is what is the “collective” that makes these decisions. Is it one single collective embracing the whole of humanity or are there multiple collectives operating at different scales of socio-spatial organisation – local regional and even global too LBird is an advocate of a unicentric model of decision-making since he has made it quite plain that he will not allow local decision-making or regional decision-making under his system. There will only be one organ of decision-making under his system – and only one – his central 'World Hall' as he  calls it.  There will be no such thing as a local council, for example, in LBird Brave New World.  Local councils will be abolished. All decisions relating to people living in a particular locality must be routed through his remote central World Hall and put to the vote of the entire global population – 7 billions of us.  The idea is a just too silly for words I, on the other hand, am very firmly an advocate a polycentric model of collective decision-making – that is democracy operating at different levels of socio-spatial organisations. This is actually the only realistic option.  I also argue that, alongside these collective decisions to be made by countless numbers of collective organs, there is also another class of decisions that will be made by individuals themselves that do not involve and have no need to involve collective decision-making.  Now this is very clearly the Marxist position and I am more than happy to endorse it.   Marx was a fierce advocate for individual choice and individual freedom.  He argued strongly that “the free development of eachis the condition for the free development of all”endorse.  He well understood, unlike LBird who doesn’t really know what communism is about, that in order for the communist principle to apply – from each according to abilities to each according to need – people have to be free to decide how they themselves want to contribute to society.  In the German Ideology, for example, he spoke of the individual in communism being able to “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, do critical criticism in the evening, just as he has in mind.”  We may question Marx’s choice of activities but the underlying principle he was trying to illuminate was clearly enough.  Individuals should be able to choose what work they do.  Work should not be forced. Forced work is estranged work.  Forced work is a characteristic of class-based societies. So there would be two basic types of decisions in communism/socialism – individual decisions and collective decisions and the latter will take many forms relating to a polycentric model of decision-making. LBird rejects all of this.  He rejects on the one hand the Marxist view that there will be a class of decisions that individuals will take without the need for collective decision-making.  And he rejects the polycentric model of decision-making in favour of an utterly preposterous unicentric model of the world in which only one single decision-making organ can exist.  This is fully in line with his Leninist conviction that the"The whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory" (State and Revolution).  Since it is quite impossible that 7 billion could vote on billions upon billions of collective decisions that will need to be made in communist society what that means is that in order to salvage this unicentric model of decision-making, those decisions will have to be undertaken on the spot by a minuscule de facto elite. There is no other option available to LBird and even this is not really an option at all.  This is why I argue the ultimate logic of LBirds Leninist way of looking at the world is thoroughly anti-democratic and elitist to its very core   

[robbo203]

Capitalist Pig wrote:

sounds nice but it means absolutely nothing. I'm just astonished by the unwillingness to even discuss the possiblilities of government or even make the case that no government would be nessesary. really shows how cut off from reality you are. sad.

 Define what you mean by government in that case CP. If you mean by  that simply administration then of course there will be administration in socialist society which much like today will be multitiered – local regional and global – and where collective decisionmaking will be made on a democratic basis and obviously to a much greater extent than is the case today If you mean by government, the state machine then no – there will be no state in a socialist society since if you understand your Marxist theory, you will know that the state is essentially an instrument of class rule,  Since there will be no economic classes in socialism there cannot exist a state in socialism.  Its fairly straightforward really.  What specifiically about all this do you not understand?  You really need to be more clear about what precisely it is you want to know before making sweeping claims that others here are "unwilling" to discuss whatever it is you want to know about it

[robbo203]

John Pozzi wrote:

Hi Vin,Thank you.Now I know my socialism is the direct democratic socio-economy where people own the means of production, distribution, and exchange and is directly regulated by the global community of GRB shareholders, and your socialism is not practical because you have no commonwealth to exchange.Regards, 

 John How can people collectively own the means of production and then engage in exchange with one another?  Exchange means an exchange in property titles and therefore necessarily implies private property not common property. You have been asked this question several  times but have yet to provide an explanation

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