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alanjjohnstone wrote:

So are you saying there will be a Red Army-style peoples militia –  " institutional apparatus of repression…in a   non statist form"

 Well, Alan, Im not a particular fan of the idea of  "Red Army-style peoples militia". .  I would hope that the need to use violence  would diminish with the growth of socialist consciousness and the spread of democratic values it will occasion. However the point I am making is a theoretical one – that it is not neccessary that means of violence or displays of violence, should always take a statist form.  Anthropologically speaking this is borne out by the simple fact that in some forms of stateless societies – notably tribal societies (but not hunter gatherer band societies) – there is systemic violence on a signficant scale. A great example of this in the literature is the Nuer people of Southern Sudan  as studied by the anthropologist, Evans Pritchard http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/245896.The_Nuer The point is that if means of violence can be deployed in a pre-state society there is no intrinsic reason why it might not also be deployed in a post state society.  Hence my  reference to apparatus of repression…in a   non statist form"  (which I hope will "wither away")

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

 What is not in dispute is abolishing the State as an organ of class-rule once the political power of the capitalist class has been neutralised and stripping it of its coercive powers.

 This is precisely what calls into question the whole idea of the withering away of the state after its democratic capture by the socialist movement. For if by defintion the state is an organ of class rule, then its withering away would seem to imply the continuation of classes for some indeterminate time afterwards – the concept of the so called dictatorship of the proletariat .  That is a concept that I have always found to be fundamentally incoherent and is one aspect of Marxist theory that I flatly reject.  It is manifestly impossible for a slave society to be operated in the interests of the slaves. However, there is another way of looking at this question – namely that what Engels is really focussing on is the institutional apparatus of repression by which class rule maintains itself.  It is possible to imagine this apparatus per se persisting into and gradually being demobilised within, a socialist society – but continuing in a non statist form insofar as socialism itself is a classless and hence stateless society. That being the case, the term Engels should have used is not the "withering away of the state" but rather the withering away of the apparatus of repression in socialism. The act of capturing the state by the socialist majority is coterminous with the abolition of class society and hence of the state itself.  But that does not mean the infrastructure of repression will just magically disappear on the spot,  It has to be gradually dismantled over time.  It is, if you like, the hardware of the state and unlike the software of the state which can be deleted wih a push of a symbolic button – socialist electoral victory – it needs to be systematically  gutted of its toxic contents, making sure that these are carefully disposed of without just wantonly dumping them somewhere to poison the surrounding landscape

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twc wrote:

 Kitching is wrong.ExampleAssume that we are productive capitalists, and that the going social labour rate, i.e. the socially necessary labour rate (or money equivalent of labour time) is   1 hour of labour time = £1As productive capitalists, we are “productive” because our production process produces surplus value, ostensibly for ourselves but, under competitive capitalist conditions, we are producing it socially for competitive carve up by the entire capitalist class.Purchase of Socially Necessary MachineryTo be competitive—i.e. to be socially necessary—we, as productive capitalists, need to buy machinery, which we look for on the open, competitive, machinery capitalist market.We find a machine that appears perfect for our needs.The maker is selling it for £1000 money, for him potentially valued at 1000 hours of physical labour time.But an unsold commodity is an unloved thing, and asks “Do I really embody 1000 hours of socially necessary labour time? Am I really worth £1000?”Meanwhile, its equally anxious seller, poor fellow, has no inkling of what unforeseen surprises, game changers, and market disruptions may await him, between the manufacture and eventual sale of his product.Fortunately for him, we as part of a competitive community of purchasers, consider his machine is well priced at £1000 for our needs, and we buy it from him for £1000.Our mutual transaction has now collapsed the machine’s physical value into its money price. We, and our fellow purchasers, on the machinery market, have just validated that his machine really does embody 1000 hours of socially necessary labour time.[Note. This market transaction is not a mechanical operation. It is the working out of a socially necessary competitive process, that continually reproduces and refines itself. It is systemic development. It is, in form, though not in content, a continuous Hegelian development operating before our eyes.]End of transaction.Physical v Socially Necessary Labour Time Our machine has now dropped out of the circuit of production. It is no longer a commodity. Its destiny is no longer the market. It has been sold.Its physically embodied labour time is ancient history. Its socially necessary labour time has been settled, socially, by the market at £1000 or 1000 hours of socially necessary labour.But social evaluation is a dynamic process. Tomorrow, a competing capitalist unveils a cheaper machine that drops the socially necessary purchase price of all machines similar to ours down to £500.Lo and behold, 1000 hours of socially agreed embodied labour has been devalued, in a flash, from 1000 to only 500 hours of embodied socially necessary labour time.The actual time to produce remains the same, but capital pays scant respect to dead labour, even less so than it does to the living variety, which begs gentler handling because it alone is productive. And we, purchasers of the higher priced machine, reluctantly have to wear its social devaluation in order to remain competitive, i.e. to remain alive as a competitive productive capitalist enterprise.Relative to our new competitors, we have to surcharge our products over twice as many products as they, in order to cover the cost of our over-valued purchase.  Paying off the cost of a machine, by the way, is a purely bookkeeping transaction.[Note. To dramatise the difference between impotent dead labour embodied in a machine and virile living labour-power embodied a worker—which is the crucial distinction here under discussion—Ruthless one-off devaluation of constant capital, such as plant and machinery, is periodically enforced by economic collapse to the delight of circling vultures who pick them up “for a song”. Such fire-sale stocks are cleared at a fraction of their original value, something that daren’t be done to precious living labour.]False Accounting in Physical ValueA machine is a socially necessary purchase but not a productive one, in and of itself. Only living labour—labour engaged in the production process—is productive, i.e. preservative of embodied dead labour time and productive of new surplus labour time.Now, most critics of marxian economics think of labour time in terms of fixed physical valuation in one form or another.The supreme example is Sraffa, who chased his tail in recursing through past labour time, reducing embodied labour time to dated labour time, ad infinitum, to utter frustration.It never occurred to Sraffa that market transaction, like our socially necessary purchase of machinery (or raw materials, etc.) is the socially necessary mechanism that short circuits all such labour reduction, once and for all, by collapsing embodied dead labour into socially necessary labour time.Physical labour time, like the category of ‘use-value’, is subservient to socially necessary labour time. And money, as in everything else in the capitalist market, is the ultimate arbiter of labour time.That’s precisely why the capitalist market cannot be understood in pure utility or physical terms.

 I would agree with all of this TWC but again from the standpoint of Kitching or Keen it doesnt quite addresss their claim that machines can create  new value and not just transfer their embodied value to the product.  From their point of view you are merely making an assertion – that  machines cannot generate new values – rather than showing why this is the case.  Im trying to understand how what you are saying here could be further developed to the point that could satisfactorily answer their specific objection. At the end of the day I feel the argument boils down to axiomatic point that,  by definition, machines dont perform abstract human labour and therefore cannot be said to generate value in these terms.  .  If you are going to criticise a theory you have to stick with its basic definitions and follow through the logic of the argument to its conclusion. You cannot surreptitiously import another definition of value into your own argument which is what Keen and co are effectively doing, However,  it would be useful to identify some other argument, apart from the axiomatic one, to refute them which is what I am interested in developing.  There is an awful lot at stake  here in this single problematic issue of whether machines can produce surplus value.  Nothing less than the whole Marxian worldvew – or at any rate a substantial chink of that worldview.  Because, as I said,  this question holds out the theoretical possibility that production could become totally automated under capitalism without jeopardising the capitalists' profits so that, in effect, the capitalists themselves, by bringing about the disappearance of wage labour through automation, would have accomplished something that has thus far eluded the socialist movement – the abolition of capitalism itself

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DJP wrote:

 Machines, like coal, are something that are used up in the productive process. There's nothing arbitrary about saying that their value is transfered to the product as they are used up.

  I guess, putting my Devil's Advocate's hat on, that someone defending the kind of position that Kitching holds would argue that this is not relevant since, as well as transferring the value embodied in them, machines are also capable of generating new or additional values.  That is the argument advanced by Steve Keen in Debunking Economics – namely  that “Marx reached the result that the means of production cannot generate surplus value by confusing depreciation, or the loss of value by a machine, with value creation" ( p. 294). As far as I can tell what this argument is saying is that if machinery enables the amplification of the productive power of workers thereby boosting aggregate value, how can it not be said that machinery adds value… To me though this objection is  axiomatically overcome by the simple observation that machines fo not perform socially necessary abstract labour and therefore by definition cannot add value.  The problem is how to integrate this simple observation with that other simple observation that the productive power of human labour is greatly enhanced by the use of machinery

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Has anyone come across Gavin Kitching’s book “Karl Marx and the Philosophy of Praxis” (1988)? Kitching, who I have just been reading, seems to be sympathetic to some aspects of Marx’s thought but is highly critical of his economics and in particular the labour theory of value. Much of his criticism seems to focus on the question of whether machines produce surplus value Briefly, Kitching argues that Marx employs a completely arbitrary “accounting procedure” to sustain his argument.  If a machine has 1000 hours of Socially Necessary Abstract Labour (SNAL) embodied in it then the maximum amount of SNAL hours that the machine can possibly transfer to each product, according to Marx, is dependent on the number of products produced over the life time of the machine itself.  So if the machine lasts for 1 year and is used to produce 50 products, the maximum value transferred from the machine to each product is 20 SNAL hours. But, contends Kitching, Marx is just inventing an example to fit the theory.  There is no reason why a machine, by amplifying the productive power of the worker should not transfer, say, 2000 SNAL hours in total over the lifetime of the machine, meaning double the number of SNAL hours embodied in the machine itself.  After all a machine can work for a longer amount of time than went into the making of that machine.  So why arbitrarily set the limit of SNAL hours it can transfer to just 1000? By the same token there is no necessary reason why the worker should be producing more value than that required to reproduce and maintain herself.  That is to say, the entire surplus value could in theory be produced by machines.  Marx is in effect rigging the whole discussion with those hypothetical examples of his in Das Kapital, using arbitrary figures plucked out of thin air Of course, if Kitching is right this has enormous implications for the whole edifice of Marxian economics. For starters, the whole concept of the “tendency for the rate of profit to fall” goes out of the window since one cannot sensibly talk any longer of the rising organic composition of capital as machines replace labour power.    In theory this means “capitalism” could happily continue even if we had a totally robotised and automated system of production.  The machines would be happily churning out surplus value while the proles are left to languish on the dole paid for out this surplus value. I say capitalism but since capitalism is predicated on generalised wage labour this would hardly be capitalism any more insofar as generalised wage labour would disappear. A revolution would no longer be necessary to make it disappear. The capitalists themselves would, as it were, be the agents of the system’s destruction by going down the road to technological innovation. And this all seems to centre on this vexed question of whether machines can add value or produce surplus value. Personally, I think Kitching is making an elementary blunder in his treatment of the labour theory of value but I would like to hear what others think…… 

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twc wrote:

  Robbo, my reply to you is more or less the same as that to Alan.Then you are restricting socialist delegates to voting for a capitalist framed bill, with all the baggage that entails.  Not a very bright strategy for a “socialist” reformer to cripple his “socialist” drafting hands, and meekly vote on capitalist designed legislation.  He’s already crossed the boundary to reformism, why not go the whole hog? 

 No this is not the case TWC, Endorsing refromism is very clearly not at all the same as endorsing a particular reform,  Reformism is the pro–active advocacy of a package of reforms as part of an electoral strategy. That is to say you are putting forward this package in the hope of attracting electoral  support on the promise of implementing these reforms if elected.  This is obviously not somethimg a socialist party can do and as a socialist I would oppose such reformism. A socialist party can only stand for socialism and nothing else.  But there is absolutely no contradiction between that and socialist delegates voting on refroms put forward by others on the basis of their merits or otherwise from the standpoint of working class interests.  For example, if a bill came before parliament re-introducing national conscription or makiing it a criminal offcnse to criticise the monarchy,  would you still urge  that socialist delegates abstain from voting?  That would be madness frankly

twc wrote:

 Socialist delegates are in parliament to propagate the socialist case and to expose capitalist legislation for exactly what it is; not to endorse it.  Endorsing (shonky) capitalist legislation just as surely “sends a message” of abject admission of socialist defeat.  You seem eager to be “doing something” that “sends a message”, however capitalist at the core, instead of crafting a message that exposes the rotten core of capitalism to the light of day.Why on earth waste precious socialist time and effort in supporting the damn social system we seek to eradicate?

I am not suggesting socialist delegates should not take every opportunity in parliament to propagate the socialist case.  Of course they should and all  the more so when they are voting for or against particular peices of legislation. As always they need to point out the limitations of such legislation.   But also they must take up a position as decided by the movement in gneral as to what is in the best interests of the workers = however fleeting or ephemeral – under the circumstances prevailing. I made the point earlier about Marx's attitude to promoting the 8 hours working day.  You wouldnt dispute – would you? – that a reduction in the working day would benefit workers and mitigate the rate of exploitation.  Juliet Schor in her book, The Overworked Americanm notes that American workers worked an average of nearly one month more per year in 1990 than in 1970.  One reason for this – apart from the rising costs of fringe benefits vis-a vis-overtime rates which made it profitable for employers to get their workers to work longer hours – was the decline in trade union power in America.  And here's my point.  Can you not see the sheer cognitive dissonance between saying socialist delegates should not vote in favour of (but simply abstain on)  measures that reduce the rate of exploitation such as restricting the length of the working day and yet urging workers in their trade unions to militantly resist the attempts of employers to increase the rate of exploitation by extending the working day. That would send out a very mixed message indeed to the detriment of the socialist movement itself.

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twc wrote:

 

robbo wrote:

By reducing the rate at which it is robbed, pehaps?  Isnt that of some benefit? 

But that flies in the face of “return on investment”, which is the driving force of capitalism, and manifests itself as the driving motive of the capitalist.A capitalist parliament, with or without socialists, has to guarantee social reproduction.  But social reproduction is capitalist reproduction, and remains so, whatever the rate people are robbed at, for they are still robbed.Parliament is there to guarantee this driving force of social reproduction, i.e. to act on behalf of dear old capital expanding itself.The robbing I refer to is the essential mechanism of capital expansion, i.e. Marxian exploitation. Watch the capitalists panic when their precious market rate falls!  It is life or death to those whose motive drives the system—those bearers of the will of capital to expand itself.Reducing the mere rate of robbing is a fantasy solution of liberal humanism in an illiberal inhuman world. It forgets, or fails to comprehend, that we are dealing with a dynamical process that is necessarily insatiable.We dealing with something enormous—an entire social system, or mode of production.  Not fixing its minor unfixable problems.The socialist case is diametrically opposed to liberal humanism—a position that wallows in glorious defeatism.The socialist case abolishes the illiberal inhuman conditions that generate liberal humanism.  Ours is a consciously victorious case. 

 TWC nobody is disputing that while capitalism lasts workers will be exploited.  This is a red herring.  What we are talking about is the hypothetical situation in which there exists a minority of socialists delegates in parliament and how they should respond to leglslation put forward by those in power.  It is NOT being suggested that such delegates should themselves actually propose any such legislation which would indeed be reformist. For instance, one of the ways in whch the rate of exploitation is increased or reduced is by increasing or reducing the length of the working day i.e. absolute surplus value.  Marx himself saw the question of the length of the working day as being one of vital importance to workers.  In 1866 he wrote on behalf of the International Workingmens Association "The legal limitation of the working day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvements and emancipation of the working class must prove abortive….The Congress proposes 8 hours as the legal limit of the working day.". Marx himself was a bit of refromist in this respect Now suppose a situation arose in which legislation was proposed which would shorten the working  week.  Are you telling me, TWC that the socialist delegates in parliament would abstain on the vote even if it had a direct bearing on the rate at which the working class was exploited?  I find that hard to believe I repeat again.  Its not a question of trying to fix an unfixable problem.  No one is disagreeing with the contention that problem of exploitation is unfixable in capitalism.  Its a question of what sort of message you are sending out by abstaining on  a peice of leglislation that could mitigate but never eliminate the exploitation  of workers.  Unless of course you think that reducing the working week has had absolutely no benefits whatseover to workers,  Do you?

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Capitalist Pig wrote:

 I don't support majority rule no. I explained my views in my earier posts so i really don't want to go into another detailed post. What i think basically is that if we let things to be decided on a majority vote, those who aren't in the majority will be marginalized. I think its sort of a herd mentality

 CP, what you are effectively saying is that you think it is better that a minority should marginalise the majority than that a majority should marginalise a minority.  Individuals in the minority carry more weight in your book than individuals in the majority and should therefore be able to overrule the latter.  This is exactly the circumstances under which that phenomenon you fear most – mob rule or the knerk yerk, irrational, over reaction of the disenfeanchised – will occur.  It is the blind lashing out against the systemic contempt of the minority establishment shown towards the majority Treating everyone as equal, as carrying equal weight means treating everyone with respect.  This is why in a true democracy, while the will of the majority will and should prevail, there exists the optimal conditions in which every attempt will be made to accomodate  the wishes of the minority – that is to say, to compromise with the minority rather than marginalise them. Conversely it provides the optimal conditions for the minority to treat with respect the wishes of the majority, As long as you have class ownership of the means of production iyou have a fundamentally adversarial  social mechanism in place by which the majority will be permanently marginalised with all that that entails

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twc wrote:

ALB, note carefully that I did not claim that reforms “were inevitably detrimental to working class interests”.Instead I issued the challenge: “how on earth can anyone tell what reforms are beneficial to the working class in a system based on robbing it?”

By reducing the rate at which it is robbed, pehaps?  Isnt that of some benefit?  

twc wrote:

Again, on the point about “stopping a war”.  Wars are stopped every second week in the Middle East.  People have won Nobel Peace prizes for stopping wars that continue to rage.I repeat, with variation, “how on earth do you stop wars when the system continually breeds warfare in the first place?”There are no permanent solutions for these conundrums.

Well, if war is prosecuted under capitalism because the population in general, being nationalistically minded, acquiesce and even enthusiastically support such a thing, then I put it to you that to the extent that a socialist movement grows, to that extent will it become more and more difficult for capitalist states to wage such wars in the so called national interests. They will increasingly lack the mandate to do such a thing..  There may even come a time in the twilight years of capitalism when wars will cease to exist. The machinery of capitalist propaganda will by then have become so effectively spiked that it can barely function at all This is an important point to emphasis – the qualitative and indeed cumulative impact of the growth of a robust socialist movement on the very dynamics of capitalism itself. We dont emphasise this point enough. The growth of the socialist  movement will in itself signiificantly alter and radicalise  the entire social environment in which it occurs.  That in turn will have a powerful selective influence on the nature of the oppositional forces  that  the movement will then face. For instamce, I cannot imagine the continuation of any kind of significant ultra authoritarian or fascist movement surviving under these circumstances.  Two such totally opposed worldviews cannot both flourish in the same soil We sort of recognise this argument when we say, come the time a socialist movement can be counted in the millions, the parties of capitalism will most likely be more generous in the refrorms they offer.  Indeed we shall probably see a signficant shift in the patten of state speinding away from such things as defence (or for that matter, splashing out 200 million quid plus on refurbishing the royal housejold such as has just been sanctioned) to spending on things like healthcare.  The social priorites will change as the social envirornment changes.  Thats Historical Materialism 101 and it has important implications for the role of socialist delegates in parliament at this stage But we dont emphasis this argument enough, frankly.   It is one of the most powerful arguments that you can possibly make against taking up a reformist position – that ironically the quickest route to achieving what the reformists want inside capitalism is to repudiate reformism itself!

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twc wrote:

 

robbo wrote:

The share of spending devoted to education has risen over time; it almost doubled between 1953–54 and 1973–74, from 6.9% to 12.5% of total spending. It then remained fairly stable, dipping in the early to mid 1980s, before rising to around 13% throughout the 2000s. 

 Precisely.  Like health, it’s threateningly expensive to support.  It threatens return on investment.

 Yes but the point is that it is not the provision of education per se that is threateningly expensive but the extent of that provision and only temporarily so .  Hence the slight drop in real terms  since approx 2010 .   But this will surely change as economic conditions pick up. Capitalism needs a relatively educated workforce , more so now than ever before in this "Information Age". "Education education education" has become the mantra of capitalist states the world over. They understand its critical importance to the self expansion and accummulation of capital

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twc wrote:

robbo wrote:

I think (twc) has an overly mechanistic ring about it.

No. A scientific determinist ring, like all science—the science of necessary process, or else no science at all.In place of deterministic science you skirt perilously close to the fantasy fiction:Socialist representatives get magically elected to parliament, under a South-American old-style dictatorship,where they defiantly denounce the tyranny that elected them and advocate the universal right to parliamentary democracy?The Party case has always been that capitalism requires democracy to legitimate itself.So far, democracy has not lived up to its originally perceived threat to the capitalist system, and has so far failed to put a dent in capitalism itself, which continues to rule triumphant over whichever democratic team has the dubious privilege of “running” it.On the contrary, capitalism has knocked “capitalist sense” into its left opponents, democratic or anti-democratic as the case may be.Once Socialism is on the move, a parliamentary electoral system—no matter how gerrymandered or jury rigged—is powerless to stop it.You seem hung up on the meerest details of hypotheticals.

 I dont recall having said anything of the sort, TWC… When did I suggest: Socialist representatives get magically elected to parliament, under a South-American old-style dictatorship,where they defiantly denounce the tyranny that elected them and advocate the universal right to parliamentary democracy? My point was totally different. I was making a distinction between political reforms and economic reforms. I was saying that it was quite right that the party should say workers should struggle for political reforms that would enable a socialist party to operate in a relatively democratic environment . You cannot effectively operate a socialist party in a dictatorship. I further argued that this struggle for basic democratic rights   is in no sense reformist .  In fact ironically I am rather supportive of your line of argument which suggests that reformism is essentially focussed on the economic dimension/realm of capitalism. I certainly do not envisage socialists representaives being somehow "magically elected" to parliament under dictatorial conditions.  How on earth did you manage to draw this conclusion? 

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twc wrote:

I repeat, how on earth can anyone tell what will “benefit the working class” in a society based on robbing it? 

 TWC would you not say that reducing the rate of exploitation is of some benefit to the workers even if its predicated on the fact that workers  are exploited in a society that , in the final analysis, cannot be run in the interests? Also, I wouldnt say its strictly true that "It is precisely education and health provisions that currently threaten capital’s ability to expand itself".  According to this site:Education spending now represents around an eighth of overall spending. The share of spending devoted to education has risen over time; it almost doubled between 1953–54 and 1973–74, from 6.9% to 12.5% of total spending. It then remained fairly stable, dipping in the early to mid 1980s, before rising to around 13% throughout the 2000s. Figures 1a and 1b show the alternating periods of flat and rising real education spending over the second half of the twentieth century, as well as education spending rising as a share of national income over time. https://www.ifs.org.uk/tools_and_resources/fiscal_facts/public_spending_survey/education Yes there has been a slight dip in spendng in real terms from roughly 2010 onwards as you can see from the accompanying graph but, to be pedantic, it is not the provision of education that currently threatens capital’s ability to expand itself but rather the extent of that provision,  Capitalism would barely function if at all if it made little or no provision – particularly now in the "information age" The same sort of conclusions generally apply also to healthcare provision.  See here http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/healthcare_spending  Of course , there is no such thing as a free lunch in capitalism and the financing of these elements of the social wage out of general taxation  (the burden of which falls squarely on the capitalists alone),  will express itself as a compensatory downward pressure on real wage levels  (disguised as tax deductions on the workers pay slips).  But again, this is affected by the ability of workers to organise and resist such pressure ,  It is not automatic in the way water finds its own level

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twc wrote:

Capitalism can’t be reformed to benefit workers without threatening its very own conditions of existence—capital acting as capital, i.e. private capitalist-class return on investment dominating all social practice,  i.e. dominating the working class.By what criterion can anyone judge that a “reform” will bring “benefit”, to the working class, when the entire social system reproduces itself by exploiting the working-class?Capital necessarily reproduces itself to the detriment, not to the benefit of the working class!The process of capitalist reproduction ensures that its conditions of continued repetitive existence are necessarily self-correcting, self adjusting, self adapting.In short, if you temporarily weaken capital, it systemically reacts and survives, because society must function and, under capital’s domination, society must function on its terms of existence, or not at all.And because capital adapts to its very own nature, any temporary “benefit” to its class enemy necessarily succumbs to capital’s own necessity.The class struggle, fought out under capitalist conditions, of capital simply acting out its very own inflating self—expanding itself through employing the working class—cannot permanently be won against it on a field it already controls.If working-class benefits, that threaten capital’s ability to expand itself, could be won under capitalist dominant conditions, why Socialism?

I understand what you are saying here and have a lot of sympathy for the argument but, even so, I think it has an overly mechanistic ring about it. Its implications can be interpreted as endorsing a somewhat fatalistic view of the world. That, in turn, could react upon or sap, the intensity of class struggle to resist the downward pressure exerted by capital on working conditions and wage levels. After all, it is historically the case, surely, that workers have been able to secure improved conditions and wages and that there was nothing automatic about this.  The capitalists did not grant these improvements out of the generosity of their hearts.  They had to be struggled for There's that great quote from Marx in Value Price and Profit: "Profits [or wages] is only settled by the continuous struggle between capital and labor, the capitalist constantly tending to reduce wages to their physical minimum, and to extend the working day to its physical maximum, while the working man constantly presses in the opposite direction. The matter resolves itself into a question of the respective powers of the combatants."  So the question of struggle cannot be excised as a factor in determining the social outcome – even if the system is rigged in favour of capital as you rightly point out.  This is true even at a time of recession when relative wages and conditions are being pushed downwards by the inexorable force of capital readjusting to adverse circumstances.  If workers did not offer some resistance their plight would be even worse. There's one more observation I would make. We are talking about reforms that would vaguely bring benefits to workers.  But specifically in the context of the socialist case against reformism (which I fully support) what does this actually mean? I put it to you that there are some "reforms" that dont actually fall under the general rubric of "reformist" in that sense, at all.  For instance, how would a reform in the field of civil liberties, such as the extension of franchise, be subject to the inevitable readjustments capital makes in the face of workers’ demands that you speak of?  I think when we are talking about reformism we are referring to a specific class of reforms that are economic in character.  That is to say, their FOCUS is the economic sphere and their FIELD of operation is political – the state via state legislation.  Trade Union struggle is NOT reformist because even if its focus is also the economic sphere, its field is not political (but economic) In short, what makes a reform “reformist” in these terms is the specific configuration of its focus and its field being the economic sphere and the political sphere, respectively.  Any reform offering a different kind of configuration does not strictly come under the rubric of reformism. I think this is implied in the argument you present which focuses on the essentially economic character of the process by which capital readjusts to ensures its own reproduction to the detriment of workers interests.  But you dont tend to find something similar going when the focus is the political sphere.  For instance, what sort of compensatory adjustment has capitalism made in response to the demand that the franchise be extended that is analogous to what goes on in the economic sphere?  All the evidence suggests that there is a long term secular trend towards the bourgeois democratisation of political life.  Places like China and North Korea are holding out but in time they too will succumb to this political process.  Several decades ago almost all of South America and Africa was subject to political cum military dictatorships but the situation is quite different today This is important because the SPGB has always rightly said workers need to struggle for basic democratic rights in the first instance.  I fully endorse this position and would argue that in no way is it reformist.  It lacks the specific configuration of FIELD and FOCUS that would make it reformist and therefore subject to a kind of capitalist clawback or readjustment process you speak of So to conclude – when the first socialist political delegates are elected to political office, it is important that it be clearly understood by everyone that they are elected for one purpose only: the establishment of a socialist society.  That will happen once the requisite electoral majority is achieved and indeed saying this is in itself the guarantee against reformism since it flatly rules out the possibility of these delegates forming a “socialist government” to administer capitalism (since automatically once such a majority is achieved, socialism follows).  In other words, it intrinsically rules out a reformist ticket. However it doesn’t rule the possibility of socialist delegates in parliament considering the reforms advocated by others on the basis of their merits as far as promoting the interests of the working class is concerned.  In no way can this be construed as encouraging the idea that capitalism can be operated in the interests of the working class.  All it will be doing is tipping the balance of forces a little more in favour of the workers in a larger struggle that the workers cannot win while they remain committed, by default or design, to the continuation of capitalism itself

[robbo203]

rodmanlewis wrote:

 But why should we help workers who resolutely choose to continue to vote for the continuation of the conditions they later fight against? Of course, most workers haven't come across the socialist case, but those who do and reject it should have to learn to stew in their own juice.

 Taking that attitude though is not going to encourage them to see the error of their ways.  I fully agree with ALB on this.  Socialists should contest elections solely on a socialist ticket but, in office and whilst still a minority, should consider voting in favour of certain  reforms on the basis of their merits in benefitting the workers, however temprarily.  Needless to say this does not mean advocating such reforms as per the old Second International's  minimum programme. History has decisively demonstrated that you cannot ultimately put forward both a mimum (reformist)  and maximum (revolutionary) programme and by the very nature of things the former will prevail at the expense of the latter

[robbo203]

John Pozzi wrote:

And of course, where there are no commodities like natural light, energy, air, water, land, food, shelter, climate, law, biodiversity, exchange, and consciousness, there is no life. You are living in the world of Smith and Marx where the commodities (products) of labor were thought to be the base of the economy. The were wrong. The Physiocrats knew that it's the products of nature are the base of our economy. – Play with it.  Consciousness is in your biology.

John you are jumbling up a number of different things under the general rubric, "commodity".   Natural light is not a commodity – it is not bought and sold.  Food for the most part today is a commodity although there is a still a vibrant peasant subsistence sector in  many parts of the world where food is produced directly for consumption not for sale. Contrary to what you say Marx was fully aware of the significance of the "products of nature" as appropriated and transformed by human labour.  He regarded human beings as part of nature different from other parts simply by virtue of being "self aware" and capable of reflection and abstract thought (though I think that is too cut and dried given the advances in our understanding of animal behaviour)

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