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JamesH81 wrote:

yes i would agree with full freedom of speech and no restrictions on non – socialist parties / organisations – to be a truly free socialist society – open debate across the whole political spectrum 

 I would endorse the idea of full freedom of speech but what do you mean "non – socialist parties / organisations", James? I am not even sure we can usefully talk about parties even existing in a socialist society in the sense that parties exist today to aspire to take control of the state, when there is no longer a state to take control of in socialism. That is what a political party would seem to be about – an organisation intent upon capturing state power.There may of course be non socialist organisations in the sense of being organisations intent upon bringing about the restoration of capitalism. I would say they should be permitted to spout their ideas without any kind of restriction being put on them,  They are not going to make much headway though. Try persuading an ex-slave that she needs the return of a slave society. But difficult, isnt it?

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Bob Andrews wrote:

The' World Socialist'  claimed the proto-fascist D H Lawrence as a socialist. I don't think it needs reviving.

Even if this were true and I have already shoen this to be completely false, how is this an argument against reviving such a journal?  It strikes me that a movement called the World Socialist Movement needs a journal called the World Socialist or some such – no? In any event, my main point stands – there is a pressing need for a journal which has a more theoretical or, if you prefer, academic approach than the Socialist Standard which quite rightly focusses on more topical issues, 

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Bob Andrews wrote:

The' World Socialist'  claimed the proto-fascist D H Lawrence as a socialist. I don't think it needs reviving.

 Here is the article in question – judge for yourself. And you are dead wrong.  The article said quite explicitly "He was not a socialist and did not profess to be one" From the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist D. H. Lawrence and the abolition of money The novelist and poet, D. H. Lawrence, who died in 1930, was born one hundred years ago, on 11 September, 1885. He was not a socialist and did not profess to be one, but there can be no doubt that he possessed some excellent ideas about what was wrong with the money-wages-profit system and what sort of society would be fitter for humans to live in. Certain rather foolish literary gentlemen and superficial Leftists have described Lawrence as a fascist. There is no evidence to support this claim, and we would argue that it is a label mainly put about by Stalinists who resented Lawrence for having been a non-conservative who was totally opposed to the state-capitalist dictatorship of the Russian Empire. In the 1930s to have taken up such a position, even if you were in favour of social transformation, meant that the so-called Communists would call you a fascist in the hope of discrediting you. In the case of D. H. Lawrence, who wrote explicitly about why he opposed fascism, the label struck and the smear has no doubt led many people to dismiss the social and political context of his poetry. To do so is to dismiss some of the most forcefully revolutionary poems ever written in English, a selection of which we publish below. They were written in 1929 and are taken from the second volume of Lawrence's selected poems published by Heinemann (the book is deceptively called Pansies, but we can assure you that it is not about flowers). Why did Lawrence take up some of the ideas expressed in these poems? Reading them, one might think that he was acquainted with the Socialist Party of Great Britain, but there is no evidence to show that he was. More likely, Lawrence picked up the socialist content of his thinking as a result of visiting the home of his girlfriend until 1912, Louise Burrows, whose father was a committed socialist who possessed the socialist writings of William Morris and spent his time talking with Lawrence about the case for socialism whenever the young writer visited his house. The connection between William Morris and D. H. Lawrence is rarely made, and shallow critics would have it that the former was a romantic revolutionary while the latter was a fascistic reactionary (both utterly mistaken observations): in fact, it will be seen from the poems published here that Lawrence too shared a passion to change the insane society of capitalism, and that, if anything, his poetry was more expressive in its simplicity. Moreover, it is known that he had read Morris' News From Nowhere, and was inspired by its depiction of a socialist society.    The poems can be accessed here  http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com.es/2013/12/d-h-lawrence-and-abolition-of-money.html

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jondwhite wrote:

Cheers, but I'm talking more scholarly, e.g. more about this sort of thinghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_journalAnyone familiar with Capital&Class, Rethinking Marxism or Historical Materialism?

 I have a few copies of Capital & Class somewhere.  Not too bad.  Although the problem with many lefty "academic" journals is 1) they come across as somewhat pretentious and snobby in the language they employ and 2) they dont really have much if any commitment to the goal of a genuine socialist society.  Its often just lip service with them, a clothes horse onto which they can hang their academic credentials I wouldnt class the Socialist Standard as an "academic journal" which is not to denigrate the important work that it does.  However, I do think there is an urgent need for a journal of some kind that looks into issues relevant to the movement in much more systematic and detailed way Whatever happened to the "World Socialist"?  Is it it not high time it was revived?

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JamesH81 wrote:

what is the spgb / world socialist movements position on freedom of speech…. and would only one socialist party…. exist in wsm / spgb real socialist world

 I would hope that in a "real socialist world", political parties along with political power itself (the state) will disppear.  In the meantime socialists cannot but be for the fullest possible freedom of speech.  You cannot separate the means and the ends.  The end determines the means,. A free and democratic society requires methods to bring it about that are themselves free and democratic….

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JoanOfArc wrote:

 in russia the capitalst owned corps were taken under government control. i do not agree with taking over one culture with another. it has to be done gradually and purely at the will of the people, many people. not just a few so called socialist dictators.  as Engels pointed out that state capitalism would provide tools for socialism. it would make the state richer that's for sure. and that then can be used to bring about socialism. i see different models of ownership being piloted and time for experimentation. but you need financial resources within this capitalist system to do this.]

 JoanI would argue that state ownership is simply a variant of private property,  It is certainly not common property and therefore by default, has to be some form of private or sectional property – namely, the collectivised property of a ruling class –  who own the means of production in de facto terms by virtue of their ultimate control over those means via their stranglehold on the state apparatus itself. If you ultimately control something you own it and vice versa Common ownership of the means of production is logically incompatible with a system of economic exchange and this is certainly what exists under a system of state capitalism . In the Soviet Union, goods and services were bought and sold, there were employers and employees and thus the commodification of labour power itself ,  other means of production (constant capital) are also subject to market exchange and legally binding contracts.  The Soviet union was a fully functioning capitalist system in every sense that mattered Might I recommend to you this brilliant work by Paresh Chattopadhyay  which you can download and readhttps://libcom.org/library/paresh-chattopadhyay-marxian-concept-capital-soviet-experience I cannot see any advantage whatsover for preferring state capitalism to any other form of capitalism. Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto made a serious blunder, in my view, in advocating the centralisation of the means of production in the hands of state  – though they latter backtracked on thiis.  They reasoned that this would hasten the development of the forces of production and hence the arrival of socialism.  They also reasoned that it would facilitate the changeover to socialism though unlike Lenin never made the mistake of equating socialism with state ownership. Large scale socialised production, they argued, makes it easier for the revolutinary movement to take over the means of  production.  Stalin explained away the continuance  of commodity production in the Soivet Union mainly because of the agricultural sector which was comprised of numerous small to medium sized production units. I think the whole argument is bogus.  State capitalism does not bring us one step closer to socialism at all.  On the contrary I would say state capitalism in its full blooded sense belngs to an era of early capitalism. It is the sign of an immature capitalism based on extensive rather than intensive growth via technological innovation. And it has been rendered obsolete by the globalisation of capitalism itself There is no warrant for advocating any kind of capitalism today as a supposed transitional step towards socialism since the forces of production are already more than adequately developed to underwrite and sustain a genuinely socialist society – and have been for at least a century now

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mcolome1 wrote:

I know that Lenin admired Germany state capitalism, like Roosevelt admired the German Nazis, but the first Bolshevik who exposed the conception was Bukharin

 Do you possibly have a link to Bukharin's work on this? I know he mentioned somewhere that state capitalism was comparable to "white slavery" I think it was  Wilhelm Leibknecht, one of the founders of the German SDP who first coined the expression "state capitalism", In 1896 he remarked:  “Nobody has combatted State Socialism more than we German Socialists, nobody has shown more distinctively than I, that State Socialism is really State capitalism"  https://www.marxists.org/archive/liebknecht-w/1896/08/our-congress.htm

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mcolome1 wrote:

 It was Lenin, and he borrowed the idea or the concept from Nikolai Bukharin,  and he also absurdly indicated  that it  was for the benefits of the working class. Since when capitalism has been beneficial for the working class ? . The first intent and realization of state capitalism was the Soviet Union

 Hmmm,  I would say it was Germany under the anti socialist, Bismarck.00 Lenin admired German state capitalism.  Here's what he said To make things even clearer, let us first of all take the most concrete example of state capitalism. Everybody knows what this example is. It is Germany”.Moreover “While the revolution in Germany is still slow in “coming forth”, our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorialmethods to hasten the copying of it.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/may/09.htm

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Vin wrote:

The link worked for me, by copy and paste. My first impression is that he is a philosopher able to put his point across with  humour and the technical ability to produce videos.So all we need is a socialist with the ability to put the case for socialism across with humour and an ability to produce videos  Did you ever see this, Robbo?brilliant:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipe6CMvW0Dg

Yes Ive seen that one Vin.  Its excellent.  I like the "crash course in  philisophy" format mentioned above though.  It would be great to have a "crash course in socialism" perhaps spread over a dozen units or so

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Came across this youtube based "crash course in philosphy" in 42 units of about 10  minutes duration each  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A_CAkYt3GY        Its snappy and witty though the guy speaks a little too rapidly to fully assimilate what he is saying in my opinion.  But I have to say I quite like it.  How about producing a "crash course in socialism" sort of along the same lines, eh?

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aaargh  the  link doesnt work but if you google "crash course in philosophy youtube" it will come up  straightaway….

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Capitalist Pig wrote:

 I hope that what your saying is true, I just don't want communism to become a complete democracy which is tyranny. Borders might not exist, but they might exist in communism but most likely not due to competing economic interests. I am just saying that the people should be allowed to decide for themselves whether or not to allow open borders. There should be no group of people with the 'best' understanding of communism that decides what laws are implemented, that would be a bureaucracy.my point is that open borders shouldn't be said to be a prerequisite to communism, because its not.

I understand the point you are getting at when you say you don’t “want communism to become a complete democracy which is tyranny”. It is a point I have made myself.  There is a balance to be struck between “democracy” and the “freedom” of individuals to choose.  But, rememeber, this freedom to choose applies also to the question of travel and where you want to live I think the point that is being made is that the very existence of “borders” implies the continuation of that core generic institution of capitalism – the nation state.  This is why I have problems with your statement – “open borders shouldn't be said to be a prerequisite to communism”. Open or closed it still seems to imply the existence of the nation state which is incompatible with the existence of communism.  Also the word “prerequisite” is somewhat misleading.  A prerequisite is a “thing that is required as a prior condition for something else to happen or exist”.  “Open borders” is not in that sense a prerequisite of communism though mass communist consciousness certainly is.  Mass communist consciousness entails amongst other things a repudiation of the ideology of nationalism that sustains the very existence of the nation-state. As I suggested in my earlier post democracy in a communist (aka socialist) society would be a multi-level phenomenon – local regional and global. Obviously, this entails the existence of distinct spatial cum administrative entities and you can’t have such an entity without it being spatially bounded – that is to say, having boundaries that demarcate and differentiate one such entity from another.  I prefer the term boundary than border since the latter seems to have statist connotations I have no problem with the idea of the free flow of people across these boundaries in a communist world and I don’t quite see why you think it is such an important issue.  You say borders “might exist in communism but most likely not due to competing economic interests”.  Well then other than to demarcate a particular administrative entity within which a particular level of democratic decision making is effected what possible reason would there be for such “borders”. I think at the root of your preoccupation with “borders” is the worry that should borders disappear there will be some huge influx of people into a particular part of the world e.g. Europe which will overwhelm its economic support structures and undermine its sense of cultural identity.  I do not believe there is any basis for concern at all.  You have to ask yourself why is it that people migrate today.  In the main it is for political and economic reasons – war and the prospect of seeking employment.  These factors will disappear come a communist society.  If anything there is likely to be far less in the way of wholesale migration in the sense of people uprooting themselves from one part of the world and relocating elsewhere.   Of course people will still travel and visit other parts of the world and this is a good thing.  Cultural diversity is something that needs to be nurtured, fostered and above all experienced and I am all for it.  Variety is the spice of life and one of the many insidious effects of capitalism is its tendency to create a dreary monoculture everywhere.  World cities are more and more starting resemble each other with the same predictable array of corporate chains setting up business in them  – the "McDonaldization" of global society which is an expression coined  by the sociologist George Ritzer in his 1993 book on the subject. 

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Capitalist Pig wrote:

well if a prerequesite for communism is the destruction of all national bounderies then I don't think the majority of the population will even consider it. You have to leave your ideological bubble and come to realize that is just not possible at the present time, espesially with the resergance of nationalistic and libertarian movements. The local people should have a say on who comes into their country and know what kind of people they are, if they hate the freedoms offered in the west and want to deminish them or if they want to embrace them. If they're was a global vote on every issue in the world who do you think would have the deciding vote? countries like China and India would out-weigh all the other countries thanks to their massive population. The local people should be the ones who are in control, it shouldn't be a dictatorship of the mob.

There are a number of serious misconceptions here which others have already touched on but I will focus on just one – the strange notion that there will be a "global vote on every issue in the world" in socialism.  I dont know where you got that idea from – maybe from our regular contributor, LBird? LOL – but I for one strongly dissent.  I imagine that democratic decision-making in a socialist society would be carried at out at several different scales organisation – local regional and global – depending very much on the issue to be resolved.  I strongly suspect that very few decisions would need to be taken at the global level and that the great bulk of them would be taken at the local level in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity.  Of course how you differentiate local from regional issues, say, is something that has to be resolved in practice, its not something that can be decided a apriori.  But as a general rule of thumb local issues are those that tend to have some significant impact on the lives of individuals within a particular locality rather than outsiders so the criterion of who gets to decide what depends on the degree of impact it has for the people concerned.  The citizens of a socialist Seattle, for example, are not going to be affected in any significant way by the decision of the citizens of socialist Singapore to re-site a new general hospital in downtown Singapore.  So it is quite right that only Singaporeans should get to vote on this particular issue which is what would happen in practice anyway, in my view As for your point about China and India with their massive populations outweighing other countries should it come to a global vote on matters of global importance well, as has been mentioned, the nation state would cease to exist in a socialist society.  The assumption behind your point seems to be that particular territorial units in a socialist society which you continue to see in national terns as having some kind of collective interests that separates each unit from every other  in terms of competing interest.  Meaning you are projecting into a future socialist society what happens under capitalism The whole point about socialism is that we living in a globally integrated and interdependent world in which the production of goods is a thoroughly socialised process spanning the entire globe.  That is what lies behind the very concept of socialism itself.  It is about bringing the social relations of production in line with the socialised character of modern prpduction which is global in scope

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Capitalist Pig wrote:

 I don't think that all muslims should be catoragized as radicals but alot of them that come into the country simply do not like the culture and instead of assimilating or wanting to embrace the western way of life, they distance themselves and separate themselves from the rest of the population, not to mention ISIS most certainly has come in as refuges. I am just making the point that open borders might sound great but in reality it is destroying the country. We should have a screening program so we know who we are letting in, if we are letting in radical Muslims or actual refugees. Open borders is not a good idea in my opinion

 CP, here's the thing  – us socialists don't like the culture we are living in either.  Thats why we are socialists,  It doesn't matter where we live – in the West East, South or North.  Its global capitalism.  I don't want to be assimilated into this insidious  commodity culture which to coin a phrase knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Never mind the ideological froth and blather.  ISIS is just another money making machine, a glorified street gang, for extracting tribute, a proxy tool for regional powers to to play their cynical and disgusting game of real politick with.  They are absolutely no threat to capitalism at all.  Indeed, their very existence is a boon to reactionary nationalism which is on the rise everywhere – from Trump to Le Pen to UKIP.   You are giving voice to this self same reactionary nationalism with your absurd comment that open borders are "destroying the country" What in earth does that phrase even mean?  I would love to see countries destroyed everywhere so we can truly establish a free world.  But unfortunately the reality is the  exact opposite of what you claim

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Capitalist Pig wrote:

vin- are you suggesting that a muslim theocracy has more civil liberties than a constitutional republic or a representative democracy? All I am saying is how can you advocate the mass influx of 'refuges' when many of them don't even want to assimilate into the country and oppose what I explained above? The morale signaling is getting old by the way

   CP – I think you are projecting into a possible future socialist society the kinds of institutions and habits of thinking that pertain to capitalism It’s not that socialists "advocate a mass influx of immigrants".  The expression is almost meaningless to a socialist way of looking at things since no one would be an immigrant or emigrant in a socialist world without states and therefore without boundaries. It’s like saying a person born and raised in Hampshire or Surrey who then moves to Berkshire is an immigrant.  Socialists dont prescribe where people, let alone “masses” of people,  should live or move to in a socialist world.  It’s entirely up to them as free individuals in a free society In any event, the whole premiss of your argument is deeply flawed.  Firstly, you make grotesque generalisations.  What do you mean by "many of them dont want to assimilate into the country"?  Assimilate to what degree? Do you favour some kind of insipid capitalist monoculture in which we all think and behave the same?  Cultural clones.  I cannot imagine anything more dreary.  I get a great deal of pleasure from experiencing cultural diversity,  It adds to the richness of life. Of course socialists do not accept or support some of the ideas of some of the " immigrants" such as theocratically-inspired homophobia or the treating of women as second class citizens.  Of course socialists will oppose and criticise these kinds of negative attitudes. But you can’t reduce and stereotype immigrants and the culture of immigrants to this small segment of beliefs held by some. Actually I would argue that a MAJOR factor behind these kinds of negative attitudes and for the perpetuation of this attitudes, is precisely the xenophobia exhibited by many in the host country.  Ghettoization is the natural corollary of domestic racism. Of course people are going to seek out mutual support with those of the same cultural background, are going to cling all the more firmly to their traditional beliefs, including some that are overtly hostile to western democratic liberal values, if they live in a western so called “democratic liberal society” that treats them like shit and subconsciously regards them as aliens opposed to the so called “western way of life”.  Wouldn’t you do the same if you were in their shoes and your family has sought refuge in the West having had your home and your city bombed into oblivion by the West and then to find you are treated with utter contempt upon arriving in the West? This doesn’t excuse the behaviour of some “immigrants” but it does at least allow us to see where they are coming from and why they behave as they do I would go so far as to say that the main reason why some immigrants dont "integrate" into Western societies is precisely because of the xenophobic and outright hostile attitudes of some in the West that ,quite simply, does not allow these immigrants to "integrate". This is so ironic because so called western societies are themselves the end products of successive waves of immigrants from many different ethnic backgrounds over a long period of time.   

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