[robbo203]

Here's an article I came across  that is of interest. It illustrates a growing trend among the commentariat. Finance is no longer serving the interests of industry and has got way to big for its boots. As if finance even when it supported manufacturing – shades of Hilferdings Finance Capital – was ever productive or socially useful http://evonomics.com/financialization-hidden-illness-rana-foorohar/

[robbo203]

A sign of the changing times, perhaps,  I came across this peice of infornation recently. "Meet the Chinese Billionaire Who’s Moving Manufacturing to the U.S. to Cut Costs" http://fortune.com/2016/12/22/us-china-manufacturing-costs-investment/QUOTE:"Wage and transportation costs are getting higher in China, Cao says. "Compared with four years ago, labor wages [in China] today have tripled," he told China Business Network. Meanwhile, "transportation in the U.S. costs the equivalent of less than one yuan ($) per kilometer, while road tolls [in China] are higher," he added, pointing out that some mid- and small-sized Chinese enterprises have already started moving to Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam and Cambodia for cheaper wages and materials."

[robbo203]

DJP wrote:

ALB wrote:

Actually, when they get to Cabinet level it could be said that they are members of the capitalist class in that they do share in the surplus value extracted from the working class

But then wouldn't we have to say that about all those working in the state sector?

 Its a tricky question insofar as unproductive workers – workers who don't produce or generate surplus value under capitalism – are also paid out of surplus value generated by other workers.  Even so, unproductive workers are indispensable to the administration of capitalism. The question then becomes how do you differentiate between unproductive workers and the capitalist class.  Adam refers to the nomenklatura in the Soviet Union which in effect constituted the Soviet capitalist class. I think the way in which one might go about making such a differentiation is by considering what is meant by "ownership"which the capitalist class is meant to exercise in respect of the means of production In the soviet union the capitalists class, the nomenklatura, did not have de jure ownership of these means – there was no legal document which said it was their property.  But then that is also true of capitalists in the west.  There is no legal document which specifically enshrines the rights of western capitalists as a class to enjoy exclusive ownership of the means of production.  This is a sociological matter that has to be explained in sociological terms not legal terms and the Trotskyite tendency to deny the existence of a soviet capitalist class on the grounds that individuals could not legitimately exercise individual ownership of capital – as is the case in the West – shows its penchant for bourgeois legalism rather than Marxian sociological analysis So its de facto ownership we are fundamentally interested in , not de jure ownership.  De facto ownership is inseparable from ultimate control.  If you own something you have ultimate control over the disposal of that irrespective of the legalities of the situation.  Conversely if you exert ultimate control over something you in effect own it Control therefore constitutes the axis along which you can differentiate owners and non owners. As workers we all exercise a modicum of technical control in respect of the duties we are assigned but we do not exercise ultimate control.  Ultimate control is what our employers exercise.  In the Soviet Union, the red capitalists exercised their ultimate control , collectively as a class not as individuals, via their stranglehold on the state machine So there is a spectrum of control – from very little to very considerable, or ultimate, control – and it is along this spectrum that you can assign people to one or other class.  Certainly there is a grey area where one class shades into the other but that does not invalidate the point that most people in the working class are clearly in the working class and most people in the capitalist class are clearly capitalists.  Sociological analysis is concerned with generalisations but it does allow for exceptions to the rule

[robbo203]

jondwhite wrote:

Far from 'a few simplistic formulaic generalities about socialism.' Engels observes;

Socialism, Utopian and Scientific wrote:

And as each one’s special kind of absolute truth, reason, and justice is again conditioned by his subjective understanding, his conditions of existence, the measure of his knowledge and his intellectual training, there is no other ending possible in this conflict of absolute truths than that they shall be mutually exclusive of one another. Hence, from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds of most of the socialist workers in France and England. Hence, a mish-mash allowing of the most manifold shades of opinion: a mish-mash of such critical statements, economic theories, pictures of future society by the founders of different sects, as excite a minimum of opposition; a mish-mash which is the more easily brewed the more definite sharp edges of the individual constituents are rubbed down in the stream of debate, like rounded pebbles in a brook.To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis.

Actually the party did come across as credible with the pamphlets I mentioned, Socialism and Religion sold out and went through multiple reprints. These were also far from 'a few simplistic formulaic generalities about socialism.'

 I don't think Engels' comment is relevant  here.  There is a lot more that we can definitely say about socialism that goes well beyond the abbreviated description of a society based on such generalities as  the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production etc. These additional and necessary  attributes of a socialist society which give give a fuller and rounder picture of such a society derive from 2 sources: 1)  Inference/deductive thinking2)  Observation and analysis of broad trends in production possibilities An example of the former would be the decisive repudiation of the concept of apriori society wide planning and consequently the acknowledgement of what follows from that – that  a socialist production  system MUST to some degree be  decentralised and a self regulating..  This has huge implications for the organisation of a socialist society itself which need to be spelt out in clear an unmistakble terms. An example of the latter would be the constraints operating on global agriculture which I recall Pieter Lawrence has a great interest in.  We have a rough idea of how much food we need to produce to feed the global population taking into account its projected growth –  more or less 10 billion by 2050 – to provide a more or less adequate diet for everyone  If you cant produce enough food to support a socialist society how is such a society possible?  So  we are necessarily bound to look into this question if we want to put forward socialism a solution to the world's problems.  We have to factor in such things as soil erosion rates, increasing water scarcity in some parts of the world,  fuel transportation costs, biotech advances, food wastage and so on to get better idea of the kind of agricultural system we would need to develop in a socialist society. Or to take yet another example – socially useless labour which is my particular hobby horse.  If we have an idea of the extent of capitalism's structural waste then this allows us to see how much more a socialist could produce in the way of socially useful wealth even by scaling down on the overall extraction of resources and developing a more sustainable system of production The point I am making is that if you don't say more about a socialist society,  if you simply leave your description of such a society at a level that is so abstract and generalised –  you are just not going to convince a sufficient number of workers to embrace socialism.  Overwhelmingly it is going to be dismissed as utopian,  a nice idea.,  academic but wholly impracticable. People ARE interested in the practicality of ideas and this is where, up until relatively recently, the SPGB has been very weak.  Ironically it needs to embrace the practice  utopian speculative thinking much more enthusiastically if it is to avoid the accusation frequently leveled at it that it is – utopian   

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jondwhite wrote:

There are many party pamphlets that are much better than SaaPA including; The Manifesto of the Socialist Party, Is Labour Government the Way to Socialism, Nationalisation or Socialism, War and the Working Class, Socialism, Why Capitalism will not collapse, Socialism and Religion, Russia 1917-1967.Non party pamphlets would likely generate even more interest including The Communist Manifesto, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific or particularly any by William Morris..

 The above pamphlets are not "better" than SaaPA – just different. SaaPA goes some way to filling a void that depararely needed filling – namely, providing a more detailed and nuanced description of what socialism is about – though a lot more still needs to be done in this area.  If you think that Party would come across as credible to the newcomer by offering just a few simplistic formulaic generalities about socialism then think again. Thank heavens the SPGB has moved on from that and Pieter Lawrence's original paper was a turning point in that respect Personally I think the the SPGB  should be churning out pamphlets and "positon papers"  every few weeks (when was the last time the Party published a pamphlet?) Even if necessary relaxing the procedures involved by, for example, commisioning sympathetic outsiders over whom of course it would still have full editorial control. The SPGB could take a leaf out of the tiny free market  outfit – the Libertarian Alliiance – that produces an astounding array of publications for its small size..Check here http://www.libertarian.co.uk/?q=publications The more diverse and detailed your literature stock the better – at least in my opinion

[robbo203]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Can I pitch in, if there is any party work worthy of a video/whiteboard it should be Socialism as a Practical Alternative?  (I don't mean, necessarily verbatim, but as the underlying basis for something).  What grabs the Zeitgeist crowd is the notion of a plan, and since we're in the business of putting the positive case for socialism, I thinkt hat is where a video is based placed.  I'll see about asking my branch to put something to conference to this end, but I'll float it here too.http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/socialism-practical-alternative

I think thats an excellent idea. You could work in the argument about socially useless labour as that as surely the most significant pracitcal advantage that socialiism has over capitalismhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/socially-useless-labour Photoshoots of City workers commuting into the City  to do their stint of socially useless labour wouldn't go amiss

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

robbo, it seems pointless for me to say the same things, once again.You can read what I'm saying, and what I'm saying is backed up by Jordan.What seems to be the problem is that you don't accept what I'm saying. Which is fair enough. 

 Or it could be that you are just hopeless at explaining what you are trying to say.   Which leads me to think that you would be better advised to completely drop such arcane academic phrases as "We do actually "produce" our physical world" which seems to suggest that before there were rocks, trees, oceans and the Milky Way itself there were human beings who then proceeded to …er…"produce" these things And the biggest irony of all is that you were the one going on recently about wanting to make Marx more comprehensible to ordinary workers having yourself swallowed some kind of philosophy dictionary.  LOL LBird

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

 And you keep using 'this obscure elitist academic and bourgeois language you have such a fondness for': 'materialism'. That's what I am trying to get you to see but you don't see it.And what 'you' (ahem) 'suggest' is a well-attested ideology, an ideology that pretends not to be a social ideology, but common-or-garden, simple, basic, individual common sense!You're the one separating 'idea' from 'physical' – which is an ancient philosophy, which separates the 'subject' from the 'object' (or, the 'idea' from the 'physical'; or, 'consciousness' from 'being'; or, 'ideal' from 'material', etc.).

 I am not doing anything of the sort LBird.  I don't have any problem with the argument that we cannot apprehend the physical world around us apart from the ideas or assumptions we hold about that world .  Or as you once put it,  "the rocks don't speak to us".  I agree and, as you well know, I am not a positivist and do not believe that science is value-free or non-ideological.  As I recall, I have been arguing this  very point long before you even joined this forum But this is not the issue.  The issue concerns your inept use of the word "produce" in relation to the phase you come up with  – "We do actually "produce" our physical world".  No we don't.  What we produce is a MENTAL PICTURE or concept of our physical world but we don't actually literally produce  this world around us that we experience through our senses, do we ? Did you "produce" the rock that you found and picked up on the beach the other day?  Of course not It might seem trite even to have to point this out to you but there are larger philosophocal issues at at sake here. While you criticise dualistic theories that separate the "subject" from the "object"  you yourself seem  to be verging on an entirely subjectivist point of view which denies the interpenetration – or interaction – of subject and object by virture of denying the existence of  the latter as possesssing properties independent of our will or thoughts.  Of course I am aware that we cannot know what these properties are without thinking about them but the logic of what you are saying with your use of the word "produce" is that "the", or "our",  physical world – it really makes no difference as far as the substantive argument is concerned  –  does not exist outside of our thought processes.  That is obviously absurd since it suggests that if nothing can exist outside of our thinking about then then nothing could have existed existed prior to thinking human beings appearing on the scene   All those billions of states and galaxies we see in the night sky never existed before homo sapiens first appeared on the earth and then "produced" them. Is this what you are saying LBird?

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

 robbo, I can't express myself more clearly. I'll put it in bold/italic for you, if it will help:We do actually "produce" our physical world.  .

Sigh. What I am trying to do, LBird,  is to encourage you to modify your language in a way that makes clear in what sense we "produce" our physical world,.  You are not seriously suggesting here  that the we actually literally produce the physical world  are you?  At least, I hope not!  As far as is known the physical universe preceded the appearance of human beings by, well,  millions upon millions of years, right?  To a peasant like me that sounds as if its highly unlikely that we "produced" this universeWhat I suggest we "produce" is not the physical world as such  but an IDEA of the physical world.  Thats what I am trying to get you to see but you don't see it.  You continue to use this obscure elitist academic language you have such such a fondness for

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

If you read what I've written, robbo, then we do actually produce our 'physical world'.Jordan supports this view of Marx's epistemology.If you're not interested in this, why keep posting?

 Like I said, LBird, your way of expressing yourself is misleading.  We don't actually "produce" the physical world because, taken literally, that would mean human beings predate the physical world in which they find themselves. Unless you've gone bonkers that is obviously not what you mean but you need to say what you mean more clearly without resorting to this poseur style of cod philosphy

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

.We produce what we call 'physical'.The 'physical world' is a social product.

 This is why this whole argument is becoming bogged down in boring semantics.  We don't actually "produce" the physical world in the sense that rocks did not exist before human beings came along and then they somehow  brought rocks into existence or "produced" them with a wave of some magic wand. I don't think even LBird is daft enough to suggest that What I think  LBird is trying to say in his cumbersome obtuse academic language is that our knowledge or apperception of "rocks" is socially produced which I don't think anyone here is actually disagreeing with.  As YMS states this idea is "unobjectionable".  I agree. Isn't it high time this conversation moved on instead of forever going around in circles?

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

.You'll argue for 'elite production' (that 'truth' will not be a social product) and I'll argue for 'democratic production' (that 'truth' will be a social product)..

 For the umpteenth time that fact that something is a social product does not mean you have necessarily to vote on it.  Why can you not understand this simple point?

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

.How you identify "workers' democracy" with "Lenin's central planning" says more about your ideological biases, than about mine.

No I don't .  Where did you get that idea?  Any unbiased observer of what I wrote would see the point that I was making  which is that democracy has limits and has to be counterbalanced by other considerations which I outlined. If your idea of a " workers democracy is that the entire global workforce has to be involved in deciding upon the entire structure of production then what you are effectively advocating is what Lenin advocated – namely turning society into a "single office and a single factory".  This is the point I was making and I challenge you to refute it in the other thread if you think I am wrong 

LBird wrote:

I think, since you keep saying these things, that you're a follower of 'bourgeois individualism', and regard 'socialism' as the realisation of those ideas, rather than the Marxian concepts of "workers' democracy" and "social production".

If I am a follower of "bourgeois individualism" then so is Marx,  We BOTH argue that the “free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”.  We BOTH believe,  unlike totalitarians like yourself, that individuals should be able to express their individuality and that this is a precondition of a free society.  We BOTH believe that there is no such thing as a society without individuals and that there is no such thing as individuals without society.  – that is  to say, they dialectically  interpenetrate as constructs.   You seem to think otherwise and this shows up  your anti-Marxist outlook.  You are the mirror image of Margaret Thatcher who argued that there is no such thing as a society only individuals. Only with you it is the exact opposite – there is no such thing as individuals only society.This is not what Marx and I believe. You are a totalitarian but you are coy about wanting to reveal your totalitarian ideology,  Is that not the case LBird?

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

 I have constantly challenged your personal 'imaginings', robbo, and asked, many times, that you read what I actually write, rather than consult your own 'imaginings', but to no avail. But, it's good that you are starting to question your own 'imaginings', at least. 

 OK so lets be clear then – if I was just "imagiining" that you were saying the global population would democratically vote on the scientific "truth" of ten of thousands of thousands of scientific theories then it would seem to  follows that you do NOT support such an idea – meaning you do NOT advocate the global population democratically voting on these truthsCan you please confirm this in black and white for all to see so we can all move on and not accuse you of holding ideas you do not hold

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

 You're wrong again here, Fool, because you're following robbo's 'cockamammie idea' about 'social production', not mine (or Marx's). You'll have to take up your question with robbo, because it's not up to me to answer for robbo's 'ideas', 'cockamammie' or not.Now, if you want to discuss Jordan's opinions about Marx, I'll continue the dialogue. But if you want to discuss robbo's opinions, then please go to robbo's new thread. I won't reply here to any more 'foolish' queries.

Is LBird now finally admitting that the global population will not be voting on every scientific truth as I had previously imagined he had been saying? If so,  this is a bit of breakthrough. It would amount to agreeing that just because something is socially produced does not mean we have to have a democratic vote on it.  Teacups, industrial lasers,  and computer monitors are the products of socialised production but no one surely would be so daft as to suggest that the design of these things or their pattern of distribution should be decided upon by 7 billion people voting on such matters.  Or would they? Perhaps with that in mind LBird might follow through with this new sense of realism that he has apparently succumbed to and comment on my scathing criticism of society-wide central  planning in the other thread on "socialism and democracy".  Because unless I am mistaken society wide central planning  a la Lenin's idea of converting society into a single office and factory is another idea that LBird previously endorsed iwtth his conception of "workers democracy"

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