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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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Vin wrote:

Just came across this published by a Left Wing grouphttp://climateandcapitalism.com/2017/01/08/creating-a-socialism-that-meets-human-needs/

 Its a good article – quite thought provoking – although I think possibly a little over prescriptive in places.  One of the points that perhaps needs developing is the balance between community needs and individual needs which has implications for a socialist democratic "praxis" – something I alluded to on the thread on "socialism and democracy".   I would be slightly concered about the idea of a “society based on socially-validated need" if this covers every conceivable need that individuals might entertainI think it is important to stress that in a future socialist society there needs to be quite a substantial component of automaticity about needs fulfilment and the need for demcratic decision making really arises in the contect of collective needs – that is to say where needs take a collective form and have a collective impact.  There is a balance to be struck between individual  "freedom" (implied in free access/volunteer labour) and "democracy".  Too much of one at the expense of the other can be harmful to socialist society in the long run. Has this guy been contacted by the SPGB? Its great to a come across articles like this…..

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robbo203 wrote:

Socialism is defined as a system of society in which the means of production are commonly owned and democratically controlled by everyone.  But what exactly is meant by “democratic control” here?  Since socialism is a global society, how is democratic control to be exercised by the 7 billion or so people that currently constitute the world’s population? I think we need to seriously unpack this whole question and present a much more nuanced and – dare I say it – realistic account of how a socialist democracy would work in practice One of the many criticisms that are constantly thrown at socialists alludes to what is called the "complexity problem" which is associated with people like F A Hayek.  In a nutshell what Hayek was saying is that modern industrial society is far too complex for decisions to be concentrated in the hands of a single planning centre.  It is quite impossible for the literally millions upon millions of decisions that are being made every day about every aspect of modern production to be made by this single authority.  Of necessity, such decisions need to be decentralised and then coordinated through an impersonal market mechanism.  Hayek was right about the need for some degree of decentralisation but very wrong about the need for such decisions to be coordinated through a market.  There is an alternative mechanism of coordination that in fact operates side by side with the market mechanism even today – namely, a self-regulating system of stock control involving calculation-in-kind.  Socialism will simply get rid of the former but retain the later Central or society wide planning is also an attempt to coordinate decisions but in a non-decentralised fashion – obviously.  In theory, this can be done either democratically or not.  In practice, neither democratic society-wide planning nor undemocratic society-wide planning is remotely feasible and indeed of the two the former is even more unfeasible because the idea of having to consult the global population on a daily basis about the millions upon millions of decisions to be made every day is self-evidently ridiculous. Society-wide central planning, democratic or not, is a completely unworkable idea. It requires calculating in advance the ratios of millions of inputs and to millions of outputs via a calibrated system of "material balances",  Any given output requires certain inputs so to produce a certain production target for that output requires that the production targets for these inputs should be met.  A shortfall in the production of even one of these inputs will impact upon the output in question such that the target production of that output will not be met.  Since everything is interconnected in a modern production system even small departures from the central Plan will magnify in a cumulative fashion that will undermine the integrity of the whole plan – even assuming it could be put together in the first place I dont need to labour the point.  Society wide central planning is impossible not least because it is simply incapable of adjusting to the problem of real world changes.  But what is the alternative then?Here I think the principle of subsidiarity will come into play and should be a cornerstone of the socialist view of democracy – notwithstanding the origins of this concept in such a reactionary organisation as the Roman Catholic Church .  Subsidiarity has been defined as “ an organizing principle that matters ought t0o be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. Political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity A healthy democracy requires informed decision-making.  A local community in one part of the world is unlikely to be even aware of another local community on the other side of the world let alone the kind of issues that affect the latter.  Should it have a say in such issues or would this not be seen as a form of arrogant external interference in matters that don’t really concern it? This surely brings out a central point of a socialist democracy – that there are different scales of decision-making to which correspond different levels of spatial organisation in a socialist society – local regional and global.   It entirely depend on the nature of the decision to be made and its spatial significance for individuals This is one very important constraint on the extent of democratic decision-making in a socialist a society. There are others – such as how to balance the decisions made by individuals against decisions made by groups.  It is only in the sphere of group decisions that democracy has any relevance and there is a shifting boundary between group decisions and individual decisions which we need to take cognisance of.   For instance we would not want to argue that in a socialist society the group should determine what clothes we wear, what food we eat, what music we listen to and so on.  That would make socialism unbearably totalitarian and intolerant.  These things should quite properly should be left basically up to the individual to decide.  Not only that, it is quite impractical for such things to be decided on any other basis. Morevoer, I would argue that the very nature of a socialist society absolutely requires and insists upon this sphere of individual freedom.  As Marx put it in socialism the “free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”.  Note the words. "condition of".  Marx is saying a free society depends on its individuals being substantially free to express their own individuality.  From each according to ability to each according to need is the very embodiment of this principle of free development. For instance, if we are not able to voluntarily choose what kind of work we would like to do then it follows that our labour is coerced not free.  Coerced labour is a characteristic of a class based society not a socialist society So, in summary, what I am arguing for is that we need to more proactively present a more nuanced picture of a socialist democracy as something that is  balanced or constrained by other considerations .  The more realistic or practical our model of socialist democracy the more likely is it to attract interest

  I refer to LBird's silly comment on the other thread:"But, having tried to discuss 'socialism' with the SPGB, I find no mention of workers, proletariat, bourgeoisie, Marx, democracy, power – all the issues that I would presupppose that any 'socialist' would be keen on discussing, so as to build a 'theory' which can then be put into 'practice' " Even the most cursory glance of the SPGBs literature would reveal copious reference to these things.  But since LBird has mentioned democracy here and since he claims to be a democrat I imagine he would be keen to discuss the kind of issues raised by this thread. So LBird – lets kick off with a discussion about society wide central planning. Are you in favour of this or do you favour a degree of decentralisation – meaning some workers would be taking decisions pertaining to their local community which other workers would not be involved with.  Do you think this is a good idea or not? 

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mcolome1 wrote:

This is really funny. We have about 2,697  views and 208 reply on this topics, and we have   179 view and  7 reply on socialism and democracy,  and  a few respond to others topics that really are related  to the interest of the working class, which means that , we are more interested on intellectual discussions than on the real issues of the working class

 Hear! Hear!.  And I note that LBird did not respond at all to the thread on Socialism and Democracy despite forever going on about being a "democratic communist".   I wonder why? Im a bit miffed really having started the thread with him in mind.  Perhaps, an academic elitist obsession with "epistemology" – how many of my fellow workers in the pub (or tapas bar in my case) are earnestly discussing whether Marx was an idealist-materialist? –  counts a lot more in his eyes than the practicalities of how to organise a democratic communist society

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One thing I would say in addition to the above is that we should not overlook the extent of self-provisioning or subsistence production which, by definition, falls outside the monetised sector of the economy.  This is quite extensive particularly in the so called Third World where you still find a relatively large number of peasant small holders. What that means is that a family on a very low monetary income may not necessarily be starving if they are able to feed themselves to a large extent without the need to purchase food. Of course this situation is rapidly changing.  As an article in the Guardian put it "Today 54% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, but by 2050 the urban population is expected to rise to 62% in Africa, to 65% in Asia, and to 90% in Latin America" (https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/mar/26/2015-challenges-urbanisation).  There are multiple reasons for this of both a “push” and “pull” kind.  In Africa for example, “primitive accumulation” is still going on at quite a pace in the form of huge land grabs by agribusiness supported by corrupt governments.  As a consequence, rural people are forced to move into more ecologically fragile areas that cannot really support them or they compelled to move into the cities.  Once in the cities they become more dependent on a monetary income to buy food and other goods.  They no longer have that non market buffer to protect them against outright starvation.  On the other hand, they do have more collective influence in the urban areas to bring pressure to bear on governments – for example to subsidise certain basic foods stuffs.  So it’s a case of swings and roundabouts I recall reading a while back that in Africa during the so called lost development decade of the 1970s, the proportion of food produced outside of the market economy actually increased relative to the output of to commercial agriculture.  The decline in food commodity prices was one reason for this – it was just not worth producing food to be sold on a market.  Better to eat it yourself! It’s not just in places like Africa where you find a significant amount of self-provisioning food production. In Russia, for example, I was astounded to learn that around 40 per cent of the food produced comes from the self-provisioning non market sector.https://healthimpactnews.com/2014/russian-family-gardens-produce-40-of-russian-food/That's an extraordinary high figure .  I suspect it is in part a legacy of the Soviet era

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Meel wrote:

.·         Numbers in extreme poverty have more than halved since 1993, despite a growth in the world population of almost 1.9 billion.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/30/eight-charts-that-show-2016-wasnt-as-bad-as-you-think

Hmmm. This is a claim that is often made.  It is based on figures supplied by the World Bank but the World Banks methodology has been fiercely contested.  There certainly has been improvement – above all in China – but progress has not been quite so significant as the World Bank would have us believe The most widely accepted quantitative measure of absolute poverty today is what was first introduced in the 1990 World Development Report – namely, an income at that time of less than $1 per day.  Using this measure, the World Bank calculated that the proportion of the population of the developing countries living in absolute poverty had fallen from 28 per cent in 1990 to 21 percent in 2001 – that is, to 1.1 billion people. By 2004 this figure declined  to 985 million .  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty#Absolute_poverty)   This seems like making good progress but if you raise the threshold to $2  per day, on the other hand, the picture is somewhat less promising, suggesting what statisticians call a "bunching effect".  The World Bank itself has conceded there has been only a relatively small drop in the number of those who make less than $2 a day, from 2.59 billion in 1981 to 2.44 billion in 2008  ("A fall to cheer: For the first time ever, the number of poor people is declining everywhere The Economist 3.3.2012.)  In other words the numbers of people just above the official poverty line have not declined that much and moreover are highly vulnerable to falling back into official "absolute poverty".    I see the graph displayed in the Guardian is based on a figure of $1.90 per day.  This is significantly above the original $1 per day but it should be remembered that for a long time the World Bank in the face of mounting criticism held out against raising the minimum threshold which was seen as increasingly unrealistic in the context of rising cost of living – in particular food prices – in recent years. It was only in August 2008 that the World Bank decided to overhaul its estimates of absolute poverty and introduced a new base line of $1.25 which retrospectively raised the number of people living in absolute poverty to 1.4 billion in 2005.  If the new figure is now $1.90 this would obviously inflate the number of people living in absolute poverty back in 1990 by comparison with a figure of 1 dollar day and so present a somewhat misleading view of progress made since then However, the threshold of absolute poverty stills seems to be  a fairly conservative one in the view of some of the Bank's critics (http//www.stwr.org/globalisation/world-bank-poverty-figures-what-do-they-mean.html). The point is that the lower the poverty threshold you use the lower the number of people that appear to be subject to absolute poverty and if  therefore you want to provide the most positive possible spin on your efforts at combating absolute poverty it becomes important to keep your poverty threshold as low as possible and for as long as possible. Adam Parsons in an article in Counterpunch ("Should We Celebrate a Decline in Global Poverty?", Counterpunch 16-18 Mar 2012) notes   The World Bank is the monopoly provider of global poverty figures, and it is no secret that they are often used to support the view that liberalisation and globalisation have helped to reduce poverty worldwide. In other words, a reduction in global poverty can usefully defend the Bank’s neoliberal policies that favour economic growth and free markets as the overruling means to combating poverty    A further criticism, as Parsons points out  "centres on the Bank’s use of the ‘purchasing power parity’ (PPP) adjustment, which many economists argue is a flawed method for comparing households across countries or currencies. As Reddy and Pogge have consistently shown, these adjustments typically overstate the ability of the poor to purchase basic necessities." In short, they do not adequately reflect relative prices of basic commodities between different countries.   For instance, the base line figure of  $1.25 per day used by the World Bank in 2008  to facilitate international comparisons in the extent of absolute poverty would in practice not be enough to meet even minimal food intake requirements in a country like,say, the United States – let alone cover cover other costs of living.  Why then entertain such an unrealistically low threshold for absolute poverty in this instance?  Indeed, it is for this reason that the official poverty threshold has been pitched significantly higher within developed countries themselves thereby ignoring the figures used by the World Bank for the purpose of international comparison.   For instance, in 1997, a figure of $14.40  per day was proposed by Tim Smeeding in a study for the United Nations Development Program which corresponded to the "single person poverty line in the United States in 1985 dollars" This figure was deemed to be more realistic for a country like the United States and was subsequently used by UNDP and  the International Labour Office in its "Key Indicators of the Labour Market" to arrive at estimates of poverty rates there (http://www.csls.ca/events/cea01/sharpeilo.pdf) .   This controversy over the benchmarking of absolute poverty demonstrates the difficulty of trying to define it without resorting to value judgements. One of the earliest attempts was  Seebohm Rowntree's classic study of  poverty in York in 1899, which prompted the UK government to apply a "budget standards" approach to poverty alleviation.  To render such an approach more realistic required rethinking and updating what was meant by a minimally acceptable level in the light of changing circumstances.  Absolute poverty, one might say, is only relatively absolute. 

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Sympo wrote:

I think that the principle of subsidarity is a reasonable one in a lot of cases. However, in some cases I think that it would be good for different areas to decide if the approval of something would affect them in an important way. A somewhat bad example would be if a town wants to build a nuclear power plant that is not just near the area of their town, but also near the area of another town. If a disaster happened, both towns could be negatively affected.On the issue of democratically deciding what clothers to wear, what music to listen to etc, I agree that this would be bad.However, if most people would want to decide stuff like that by voting, there wouldn't really be any way of stopping them other than convincing them, right? Not that I think there would be a big risk of that happening.

 Yes, there is a balance to be struck between what might be called "freedom", on the one hand, and "democracy", on the other, and this is a theme that is unfortunately woefully underexplored in socialist discussion.  There is a sense in which they obviously converge but there is also a sense in which they diverge.  For instance, the right to freely express your opinion or to access other opinions may very well be considered a cornerstone feature of a democratic society.  But so is the process of voting.   We have heard on this forum an argument being put forward (by the contributor LBird) for the "truth" of scientific theories to be democratically voted upon which to me is an utter absurdity (never mind the total impracticality of the the idea).  The  implication is of course that if you continue to hold  to some some heretical scientific idea that  has been voted down then you put yourself in the morally abhorrent position of promoting a scientific "lie" So the totalitarian and frankly anti scientific policy of voting on the the truth of scientific theories – it would turn science into a religious cult rather than an open-minded process of discovery and constant questioning –  is one that we need to take heed of. LBirds argument is reminsicent of the so called democratic centralism put forward by Leninist style parties though LBird himself , strangely enough, claims not to be a leninist  Deciding on what consititues scientific truth – why do we need to decide on this anyway? –  is a good example of where society would benefit from the absence of this ritual of head counting.  The same would apply to a range of other kinds of decisions of a personal nature such as where you wish to live, what work you would like to do , what clothes music or culinary habits you prefer.  Collective decision making which is an aspect of democracy  should not play any role in respect of these things and it would be thoroughly unhealthy were it to do so and if you start laying down the law in this area you will only breed resentment.  I am strongly with Marx when he says "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all"? However, just as there is a danger of too much democracy in some areas of life so too is there a danger of too little democracy in other areas.  Those areas relate to matters of joint concern for numbers of people and which have collective impacts.  Quite rightly, they should be subjected to democratic voting  but even here there is a need to refine our argument about who gets to decide what.  Hence my reference to the principle of subsidiarity.  Its something we need to discuss to reach greater clarity

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mcolome1 wrote:

There are many importance issues that are not discussed in this forum. With Marx Epistemology workers are not going to stop paying their rent or mortgage, and they are not going to put food on their tables for their family, or to eliminate the causes of wars in this society. The thing about epistemology is like a rosary for the church of Marx, it is a repetition of the same ideas all the time, it is an endless cycle. We have discussed those ideas hundred of times, it is like hacking the forum toward a mono-thematic concept

 Yes I'm inclined to agree.  Epistemology is not unimportant but it is of secondary importance, in my opinion.   The nitty gritty of how a socialist society might actually be run democratically is a more important issue and tellingly, LBird has completely avoided any serious discussion of this.  I think he is more interested in academic concepts then real struggles and real solutions to those struggles. If that were not the case why does he not explicitly pot forward a model of how a socialist democracy could actually function? He really hasnt thought through a lot of what he is saying….

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robbo203 wrote:

Socialism is defined as a system of society in which the means of production are commonly owned and democratically controlled by everyone.  But what exactly is meant by “democratic control” here?  Since socialism is a global society, how is democratic control to be exercised by the 7 billion or so people that currently constitute the world’s population? I think we need to seriously unpack this whole question and present a much more nuanced and – dare I say it – realistic account of how a socialist democracy would work in practice One of the many criticisms that are constantly thrown at socialists alludes to what is called the "complexity problem" which is associated with people like F A Hayek.  In a nutshell what Hayek was saying is that modern industrial society is far too complex for decisions to be concentrated in the hands of a single planning centre.  It is quite impossible for the literally millions upon millions of decisions that are being made every day about every aspect of modern production to be made by this single authority.  Of necessity, such decisions need to be decentralised and then coordinated through an impersonal market mechanism.  Hayek was right about the need for some degree of decentralisation but very wrong about the need for such decisions to be coordinated through a market.  There is an alternative mechanism of coordination that in fact operates side by side with the market mechanism even today – namely, a self-regulating system of stock control involving calculation-in-kind.  Socialism will simply get rid of the former but retain the later Central or society wide planning is also an attempt to coordinate decisions but in a non-decentralised fashion – obviously.  In theory, this can be done either democratically or not.  In practice, neither democratic society-wide planning nor undemocratic society-wide planning is remotely feasible and indeed of the two the former is even more unfeasible because the idea of having to consult the global population on a daily basis about the millions upon millions of decisions to be made every day is self-evidently ridiculous. Society-wide central planning, democratic or not, is a completely unworkable idea. It requires calculating in advance the ratios of millions of inputs and to millions of outputs via a calibrated system of "material balances",  Any given output requires certain inputs so to produce a certain production target for that output requires that the production targets for these inputs should be met.  A shortfall in the production of even one of these inputs will impact upon the output in question such that the target production of that output will not be met.  Since everything is interconnected in a modern production system even small departures from the central Plan will magnify in a cumulative fashion that will undermine the integrity of the whole plan – even assuming it could be put together in the first place I dont need to labour the point.  Society wide central planning is impossible not least because it is simply incapable of adjusting to the problem of real world changes.  But what is the alternative then?Here I think the principle of subsidiarity will come into play and should be a cornerstone of the socialist view of democracy – notwithstanding the origins of this concept in such a reactionary organisation as the Roman Catholic Church .  Subsidiarity has been defined as “ an organizing principle that matters ought t0o be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. Political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity A healthy democracy requires informed decision-making.  A local community in one part of the world is unlikely to be even aware of another local community on the other side of the world let alone the kind of issues that affect the latter.  Should it have a say in such issues or would this not be seen as a form of arrogant external interference in matters that don’t really concern it? This surely brings out a central point of a socialist democracy – that there are different scales of decision-making to which correspond different levels of spatial organisation in a socialist society – local regional and global.   It entirely depend on the nature of the decision to be made and its spatial significance for individuals This is one very important constraint on the extent of democratic decision-making in a socialist a society. There are others – such as how to balance the decisions made by individuals against decisions made by groups.  It is only in the sphere of group decisions that democracy has any relevance and there is a shifting boundary between group decisions and individual decisions which we need to take cognisance of.   For instance we would not want to argue that in a socialist society the group should determine what clothes we wear, what food we eat, what music we listen to and so on.  That would make socialism unbearably totalitarian and intolerant.  These things should quite properly should be left basically up to the individual to decide.  Not only that, it is quite impractical for such things to be decided on any other basis. Morevoer, I would argue that the very nature of a socialist society absolutely requires and insists upon this sphere of individual freedom.  As Marx put it in socialism the “free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”.  Note the words. "condition of".  Marx is saying a free society depends on its individuals being substantially free to express their own individuality.  From each according to ability to each according to need is the very embodiment of this principle of free development. For instance, if we are not able to voluntarily choose what kind of work we would like to do then it follows that our labour is coerced not free.  Coerced labour is a characteristic of a class based society not a socialist society So, in summary, what I am arguing for is that we need to more proactively present a more nuanced picture of a socialist democracy as something that is  balanced or constrained by other considerations .  The more realistic or practical our model of socialist democracy the more likely is it to attract interest

 

LBird wrote:

I'm a Democratic Communist, whose concern is to use Marx to further the building of the democratic control of social production by the producers (ie., socialism).

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And so, you hide your ideology

  I note that while LBird goes on and on  and on and on ad nauseum about Marxist epistemology he has made no attempt  whatsoever to respond to the above. Does LBird support Lenin's  idea that the whole of society should be turned into "one office and one factory" in the guise of society wide central planning?  After all this is surely the realisation of LBird's fantasy of the TOTALITY of production – billions upon billions of decisions – being determined "democratically" by the TOTAL global workforce  (all 7 billion of us). Why is LBird hiding his totalitarian ideology from us? Why does he not come out of the closet and admit he is a totalitarian at heart?

[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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