[robbo203]

Hi Steve Thanks for your very detailed and informative response, Its given me much food for thought. I guess my concern would focus on the interface within the the Code for America project between government, business and "civic minded technologists".  This what I was getting at in my comment about the project being possibly  subject to serious "internal tensions and competing objectives".  Certainly in a socialist cum communist society , community projects would also be subject to tensions but these would be of a qualititatively different order to what obtains today in the sense that everyone will be singing from the same hymn sheet. There will be no scope for smuggling  in objectives alien to the nature of such a society. The Code for America project though it might institutionalise regulations that entrench its voluntaristic code and ethos strikes me as possibly being vulnerable to motives that have little to do with what it is ostensibly about.  I don't know enough about the project to comment with any authority on this, though… I endorse the principle of voluntarism as a kind of training ground for a future communist praxis and a potential seedbed of communistic values but we have to be careful to separate the wheat from the chaff.  The example of internships which you mention  is a case in point,  This is just voluntary slavery harnessed to the interests of profit. I was interested in your comment that most internships don't actually get to get that lucrative job that is dangled in front of them like a carrot to incentivise them through the period of unpaid drudgery .  Do you have any links  that might shed more light on this whole murky area of internships and provide some sort of statistical breakdown? There is a huge and diverse range of organisations within the volunteer sector.  One of my favourite examples is the the Freecycle Network  which is growing rapidly and  is made up of 5,293 groups  with a current membership  of 9,088,707  .  See here https://www.freecycle.org/.  Its the kind of organisation that individual socialists , if not socialist political parties , could very well get involved with  and I suspect the possibility of finding like minded people in them would be significantly greater than any random sample of the population

[robbo203]

Steve This Code for America project which I have never heard of before sounds interesting but doesn't quite seem to fit the image you project. For instance upon googling I discover that the Code for America Summit is a "roll-up-your-sleeves conference that brings together government innovators, civic-minded technologists, and entrepreneurs" (https://www.codeforamerica.org/summit)  At least two elements of this constellation would give me cause for concern and i suspect would render the project subject to serious internal tensions and competing objectivesDo you have any links that would show otherwise and allay my suspicions?

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Yes the development of scientific theories tends to be a  minority concern …In any event , that has got nothing to do with changing society which very clear must be the concern of the majority not a small minority

[my bold]These are contradictory political positions, robbo.To 'change society' (which must mean our socio-natural being, what Marx calls our 'organic nature') requires social theory and practice, which, for building a democratic society like socialism, can only be the 'theory' of the majority and the 'practice' of the majority.'Scientific theories' have everything to do with 'changing society'.Your continued failure to address this contradiction in your politics will lead you to take an essentially Leninist position – that an 'expert elite' can come up with the scientific social theories required to build our world.

 There is no contradiction at all LBird and, anyway, this is not the thread to discuss your pet theory which has been blown out of the water so many times that I have lost count.   If you wnat  discuss how it is possible that even one individual0, let alone all 7 billion of us, can become experts not only in the field of say molecular biology but every other field of scientific endeavour as well then you are welcome to start up another thread.  Oh wait- you've already done that still you've flatly refused to explain how this was possible or to answer any of the other questions asked of you.

[robbo203]

mcolome1 wrote:

  What Robbo203 is saying has been evidenced in Bolivia, they have hundred of communes, and they are reformist measures labeled as socialist,  run as capitalists enterprises. 

 Yes but I am not talking about capitalist enterprises, whether these take the form of worker co-ops (I think thats what you mean rather than communes which are residientially based entities) or conventional corporations,  I am talking about that whole vast range of activities that essentally fall OUTSIDE of the money economy altogether (even if they often have links with it) and would include such things as  self provisioning peasant production, the household sector, mutual aid / community projects , volunteering and so on.  This has been dubbed the Grey Economy in contradistinction to the official White economy which your Bolivian worker co-ops would presumably fall under and the unofficial or illegal Black economy Estimates I've come across from UN sources and elsewhere suggest that in terms of labour hours expanded the Grey Economy is larger in size than the the White and Black economies combined  for the world as a whole. That has got to be quite significant from a socialist standpoint surely?

[robbo203]

moderator1 wrote:

 Reminder: 6. Do not make repeated postings of the same or similar messages to the same thread, or to multiple threads or forums (‘cross-posting’). Do not make multiple postings within a thread that could be consolidated into a single post (‘serial posting’). Do not post an excessive number of threads, posts, or private messages within a limited period of time (‘flooding’).

 Sorry Mod1 My duplicate posting in response to Matt was a technical cockup.  Im not quite sure how it happened and I dont know how to delete my post once it is written. Thanks for deleting it anyway….

[robbo203]

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

 thanks that was well written.  you mentioned that SPGB does campaign for certain kind of laws to be implemented.  Is it convenient for you to just link to a list of those and that would satisfy my goals for your contribution on this topic? 

 Steve  What i mean is that the SPGB supports the struggles of workers to secure basic democratic rights such as freedom of expression and assembly and the right to vote.  This is another example of what I call a " non reformist" reform  – reformism in my book being measures undertaken  by the state specifically directed at economic functioning of capitalism and not its political superstructure as such

[robbo203]

Matt wrote:

Quote:

The other drawback  in the SPGB-s approach is it curiously agnostic attitude towards institutions and practices that fall outside the money economy.  So for instance the idea of setting up a commune is routinely pooh-poohed on the grounds that this has all been tried before and has singularly failed  which is really not the point at all or is  missing the point altogether.

We don't 'just' diss those Robin. We do acknowledge they may seem to have immediate benefits for some workers at the time.The problem is their inevitable failure, like all reformist failures are laid at our door and labeled as 'socialist' failures.

 Matt What I have been trying to say is that these  kinds of activities such as the setting up of communes or other forms of activities that function outside the money sector are of a qualitatively different order to "reformism",  The problem is that the SPGB has never really developed a concise clear cut  definition of reformism and that possibly shows in your comment above where you seem to categorize the failure of communes under the heading of "reformist failure" unless i have misread you. But its got nothing to do with reformism as I understand it and I'm not quite sure how you judge something like a commune or intentional community to be a "failure" anyway. There are a vey large and growing number of them all over the world if you do some research into the topic.  Sure they haven't delivered socialism but that was never really the intent anyway.  In any case , sadly, the political movement for socialism represented by bodies organisations like the SPGB can hardly be rated a roaring success from that point of view either I come back to the expression coined by David Graeber about the "communism of everyday life".  I think he on to something here –  that so much of what we do in our daily lives is unwittingly an affirmation and acting out  of communistic values and practices. This is what seperates it from refromism.  It doesn't obviously automatically lead to communism – there is still an absolutely indspensable role for abstract propagandaism  in that respect as I said which is excatly what the SPGB does  – but can be looked upon as a kind of seedbed of communist ideas. Like any seedbed it needs fertilising and watering if the seeds are going to germinate and flower in to full blown communst consciosness. You may not "diss" these kinds of activities Matt but you do clearly distance and cut yourself off from the potential assistance they could render the socialist  movement through your determination to remain completely agnostic with regard to them.  That is precisely the problem.  You need to this embrace  this "communism of everyday life" in much more postitve way and I think   you will find it will start to reap benefits  when it comes to propagating the case for socialism itself.  At the very least the political movement for socialism will begin feel itself less cut off isolated and miniscule by adopting a more accomdating and inclusive approach

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

It is crude mechanistic cum deterministic nonsense to suggest that "material conditions" per se  or on their own will somehow deliver a flourishing movement for socialism.  This ignores the key role of creativity in the historical process

And yet this 'nonsense' is precisely what you argue about the production of knowledge, robbo.Or, your notion of 'the key role of creativity' is necessarily a 'role' conducted by an elite.That is, your (I accept unconscious) political basis is Leninist.

 Thats absolute rubbish.  The one thing  does not follow from the other at all.  You are pretty much confused on this as on other things.  By "material conditions" I'm alluding to such pet notions entertained by some that for instance it needs an acute economic crisis to force people into accepting socialism.  Its nonsense because a sharp downturn in the economy could jst as easily fuel the rise of fascists ideas for example.  In other words it ideological outcome is not pre-givenHow can I possibly be unconsciously " Leninist" when I categorically accept that in order to have socialism you have to a conscious socialist majority first; it cannot be imposed from above by a vanguard.  It seems you don't understand what Leninism is about at all.  Yes the development of scientific theories tends to be a  minority concern and this is inevitable given a social division of labour or do you seriously imagine we all have the time or training to engaging in abstruse and complex debates on the cutting edge of molecular biology or astrophysics or whatever.In any event , that has got nothing to do with changing society which very clear must be the concern of the majority not a small minority

[robbo203]

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

.  The idea I'm proposing is that laws can set the stage for communism or set the stage to prevent communism.  I'm not claiming what we have with some few laws we can suggest here is everything and the only thing needed for communism or socialism.  I'm just asking what laws in the currently dominant capitalist economy would help or would speed up the process.  It seems like you're saying laws are irrelevant and that's nonsense since in theory it's possible to make a law that ends this Website and that would certainly be relevant.  Anyway, this is more of a brainstorming device than map for a final solution like you seem to be focused on.  So you see the only way to a socialist society is violent revolution? I think that's been tried and failed too, but please correct me with a link to when it's worked if you have one,  In fact everything that's been tried has failed from what some of the commenters here tell me.  Maybe that means it's impossible or maybe you need to check your assumptions?  I choose to believe you need to check your assumptions.Or, If your really convinced a violent revolution to overthrow the state is required, then maybe you could suggest a law that gives every citizen the right to own a gun, a tank and some C4 explosives. plus a law that says every citizen can enter any public or government building at any time without being searched.  Or maybe a law that makes every persons net worth public information so you'd know who to shoot at when your revolution starts.  I think those would be laws very hard to get passed, but at least it's a start to get your ideas going.  

 Steve I think you are kinda missing the point here  and by the way, just for your information, the SPGB does not advocate "violent revolution to overthrow the state" and thats not what Marcos was suggesting.  Personally, I think that it would be suicidal to take on the armed might of the state – and utterly counterproductive. The means determine the end rather than justify them.  War brutalises and requires an authoritarian chain of command.  Its outcome will be a brutalised authoritarian society far removed from socialism This thread is about the potential for laws to facilitate or hinder the implementation of socialism.  The "anti legalistic" stance that has been expressed does not at all derive from any conviction that we must use violence to bring about socialism but rather is linked to the SPGB.s opposition to "reformism" which is not the same as opposing or indeed supporting individual reforms.  You need to understand this distinction in order to fully appreciate where SPGBers are coming from.  Certainly in theory there are laws we can think of, or dream up, that could facilitate the implementation of socialism and benefit workers but from the SPGB's standpoint the opportunity costs of pursuing or pressing for such legislation would be the watering down and eventual abandonment of the goal of socialism itslef. There are certainly historical precedents to support this position.  The parties of the Second International in the late 19th early 20th centuries – the largest of which was German SDP – pursued both a maximum programme (socialism as we understand it) and a minimum programme of reforms.  Predictably the former disappeared like the Cheshire cats grin as these parties succumbed to the opportunism of attracting workers on the basis of reforms and in due course all of these parties became straightforwardly pro -capitalist organisations and nothing more. There is also the sociological argument that can be traced back to people like Emile Durkheim that laws tend to reflect the social outlook rather shape that outlook and that consequently are only as effiicacious as the social environment itself permits.  Hence the primary emphasis on trying change the social environment through the dissemination of socialist ideas which is the hallmark of the SPGBs approach. I have a lot of sympathy for this approach although I do think it has its weaknesses.  One is that it is based on an insufficiently nuanced formulation of "reformism".  The whole argument against reformism is that capitalism cannot be run in the interest of workers – which is quite true – but here capitalism is conceived of as an economic construction.  In this sense these reforms are directed at (futilely) modifying  the economic base.  However there are other reforms that are directed at modifying  aspects of the superstructure (in terms of Marx's "base superstructure" model).   For instance, reforms than enhance political democracy like the extension of the franchise.  These reformsdo  not strictly come under the category of reformism in my book and to be fair the SPGB does talk about struggling to secure basic democratic rights in those parts of the world where these do not exist. That is to say, it presses or campaigns for certain kinds of laws to be implemented The other drawback  in the SPGB-s approach is it curiously agnostic attitude towards institutions and practices that fall outside the money economy.  So for instance the idea of setting up a commune is routinely pooh-poohed on the grounds that this has all been tried before and has singularly failed  which is really not the point at all or is  missing the point altogether.  True the "unconscious communism" that we all practice in our daily lives is no guarantee that it will deliver a communist society.  But the whole point is that it needs to be joined or coupled with the "conscious communism" of abstract propagandism that the SPGB practises in order to enable the former to assist the latter.  Its is like an engine that has been wilfully switched off waiting idly and in vain for the day it can help power the spread of socialist ideas. Some of us it would seem  are determined to do everything by hand rather than make use of the machinery that could enhance our productivity. if you follow my drift. But as I say the core of the SPGBs approach is, for all that, quite correct.  You cannot have socialism without socialists and you cant get socialists without actively disseminating the idea of socialism itself.  It is crude mechanistic cum deterministic nonsense to suggest that "material conditions" per se  or on their own will somehow deliver a flourishing movement for socialism.  This ignores the key role of creativity in the historical pricess

[robbo203]

mcolome1 wrote:

 I think you need an immediate crash course on socialism and capitalism In the USA anything is socialism, and anything is liberalism, or big government,  and most peoples who said that, they have not  read the first preface of a  reformist document known as the Communist Manifesto, or they have not read the introduction of the book The wealth of the nations, or do not know about the concept of state capitalismPS. Wikipedia on many concepts  is the blind guiding the blinds

 Wikipedia is not socialism or socialist in the sense that socialism constitutes a distinct system of society.  You could however argue that it is "socialistic" as a compromise term.  That is to say it exhibits certain structural properties that could be said to prefigure  a genuine future socialist society. Not just Wikipedia but a lot of other things too.  The internet, for example, has been likened to a "high tech gift economy".  See here http://innovate.ucsb.edu/796-richard-barbrook-the-hi-tech-gift-economy. The point is that its basic principles of engagement resemble or mimic those that would be found in socialist society.  free access, voluntarism, generalised reciprocity and so on David Graeber has written of the "communism of everyday life" and of how capitalism is just a rather bad way of running a basically communistic society.  Its a bit of poetic licence, I know, but Graeber does  have a point.  The non money sector under capitalism is absolutely huge.  According to UN data it  is actually larger in terms of the expenditure of labour hours than all forms of paid or monetised activities put together. Of course people who grow their own veggies or volunteer their labour to manning the lifeboats are not generally doing so out of some generalised commitment to the ideal of socialist society,  But that is not the point.  The point is that they are motivated by concerns that have nothing to do with making  money and have everything to do with directly helping themselves and other around them.  This should be welcomed and  encouraged by all socialists. As socialists we should not sniff at these countless examples of unmediated activity or airily dismiss them as having little or no relevance ce to the socialist cause.  They are a seedbed in which a genuinely revolutionary outlook can germinate.  They are what routinely  aid socialists in their arguments with others who claim that socialism is somehow against "human nature".  As socialists we all, I am sure, invoke examples of actually existing human behavior drawn from the non money sectofr, to refute such a claim. One final point and to clarify –  I don't think "big government"  or statism constitutes in any way an  example of such "socialistic activity" and any comparison would be invalid.  The state sector relies on tax revenue and the relation of state employees to their employers is essentially no different to that of the private sector

[robbo203]

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

 Ok call it a consumer glorified form of consumer survey and keep the comment cards in the store for people.  That works too.  keeping in stores deprives the workers of the means to decide how things are done unless they're in the store.  It means you can't write down notes or comments or surveys at home though unless you bring them with you.  Your feedback will only count if you have it in mind while in a store.  

 Well, the problem is a little more tricky than that. The information contained on the "comment card" needs to be transmitted to the producers themselves to modify or innovate their products, accordingly – unless of course, the store can take it upon itself to  source some other supplier that stock the products in question. And even then there are other considerations to take into account. For instance, if one particular customer requests a particular kind of product not in stock would it warrant the effort tracking down an alternative supplier to accommodate just this one individual's consumer preference? And what about transportation and fuel considerations in the case of a supplier further afield.  Is there a critical threshold of consumer demand that needs to be breached before contemplating approaching an alternative supplier of a novel product or persuading an existing supplier to modify its products?  If so what would this threshold be? I don't have any easy answer to this.  I think as with a lot of things in a socialist society it will be a case  of just muddling through within the broad constraints of a generally understood procedure of how to go about doing things.  This is in part why I favour a more multifaceted multilevel approach to cover every angle  – not just limiting consumer surveys to some in-house exercise in public consultation.   There could be agencies especially set up for this purpose and commissioned by production units for that purpose or production units themselves could carry out surveys themselves to ascertain levels of consumer satisfaction with their products.  The possibilities are limitless. How things will pan out will depend on many factors . The density of distribution stores within a locality which generally correlates positively with population size, could impact on the variety of products available and hence on the ability to choose between them.  There is also  the question of the products themselves.  We wont need "57 varieties of baked beans" as the expression goes but we will need quite a considerable  variety of boots or T shirt  for people to chose from. A final point worth making concerns the distinction between bespoke products and mass standardised products.  I think with  the advent of new technologies such as 3 D printers there will be much more scope for the former carried out on a DIY basis.  Indeed,  I believe production in general will become noticeably more decentralised and localized in a socialist society with all the cultural, environmental and transportational implications this entails We really need to be thinking more of a kind of spatial model of socialist prpduction or, if you like, a kind of socialist geography of human choices.  By putting flesh on the bare  bones of our socialist skeleton we invite interest and appeal to concerns  that preoccupy people today such as the deep damage wrought by the capitalist mode of production to our physical environment, not just through a reckless comsumerism it fosters but also through the way in which consumer demand is gratified under capitalism

[robbo203]

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

  But lets talk about how to run a socialist society without convenient computer access.  There's some easy ways that disenfranchise people like having some elites track store inventory and act as if that's the only metric that counts for participation.  Just picking up items from a store or leaving them seems a shallow and pale sort of participation.  How is that much better than participating in the capitalist marketplace?  It's not.  It doesn't allow you to make suggestions about what you want on the store shelves it only allows you to vote on whether you want an item already on the shelf or not.  To make something feasibly participatory you need a convenient form of participating in a wide range of things.  This could be accomplished by a "participation" card.  A participation card would be something like a voting ballot, but would be smaller and more convenient so about like the size of a business card.  you could then write in a suggestion or comment on something.  Now to do that you don't need a computer, but to count millions of these participation cards you would need some computers.  They could be processed using distributed computer processing so not centralized if you dislike centralization. But for sake of convenience lets assume the "comment cards" are processed centrally right now because it's easier to explain what has to happen next.  You need every store and every politician and every decision and every individual to have access to other peoples comments and you need to be able to sort them and pass them on if they're not relevant to the people who receive them.  So most likely you need a store that can scan the comment/vote cards into a public accessible database at a low cost.  and then the collective will of the people can be understood better.  

 I question this, Steve.  You overlook that the  relationship between the consumer in a socialist society to the goods on display in the store would be fundamentally different to what obtains under market capitalism. There is no exchange involved – simply direct free access, This makes a world of a difference, despite what you say.  Your "participation card" seems to imply something other than this and strikes me as being  unnecessarily bureaucratic.  Are you meaning to say that if you dont have a participation card you dont get to have a say? The idea of people having to carry their participation cards around with them, much like a store card today, frankly doesnt appeal and if that is not what you in mind then the term is misleading, I suggest. In the end the consumers in a socialist society are making a choice in selecting what goods they take from the store The particular pattern of preferences arising out of the totality of consumer decisions is something that the folk operating the store will act upon in replenishing stock via a self regulating system of stock.  But that hardly makes then some kind of "elite". The very fact that self regulating system of stock control by its very nature accommodates itself to the choices made by consumers itself an indication of the participation of consumers in decisions about what gets produced.  Of course this same "consumer is king" argument might be invoked in the case of capitalism but there is a big difference here,  Goods are commodities with a price attached to them  and your ability to access them is contingent on whats in your wallet Certainly there are other ways  of participating in the process of deciding what gets to be produced  in a socialist society than merely effecting a consumer choice – that is, by removing a particular item from the store shelf – which will then  impact on what the store gets to do when it comes to reordering stock.  The problem with this is that the consumer only gets to choose between stock actually on the shelf which is limiting.  In itself this does not provide a mechanism by which novel kinds of stock might get to find there way onto the store shelf in response to the subjective preferences of consumers. That requires another kind of mechanism to supplement a self regulating system of stock control – namely consumer surveys.  These can be conducted in-house (that is within the store itself) or initiated by the suppliers cum producers to elicit some kind of feedback on what consumers in general want which would be richer in informational content  than merely relying on stock control data.  Or indeed both kinds of consumer surveys could be put into use. In any event your participation card would be quite unnecessary unless you mean by this simply a glorified form of consumer survey,  In which case why not just call it that and dispense with  the trappings of a kind market apprroach to the question

[robbo203]

Subhaditya wrote:

p.s. i used the word 'encourage' not 'force'… whats with this blindness there is a difference between encourage and force… person being encouraged can reject it while person being forced will be killed or jailed or fined for refusal.

 The problem is that the basic premiss of your argument is that socialism WILL fail of group sex is not the norm.  That sounds very much like an imperative. Group sex will be a obligatory requirement if we want socialism to continue.  I don't believe that for one moment. The fact is we simply don't know what pattern of sexual relationships will emerge in a socialist society and it would be idle to speculate.  More to the point it would be counterproductive.  Try telling  a worker today that he or she – and it seems to be overwhelmingly if not exclusively  women that you are talking of – is going to be shared around as the object of sexual desire and see what sort of response you get. I'm a strong advocate  of utopian thinking in the sense of trying to put flesh on the bare bones of a socialist model but I think this is an area where caution is advisable.  It is quite conceivable that group sex might become more commonplace but it is equally conceivable that many might prefer to maintain a monogamous relationship.  This has zero implications for the continuance of socialism either way and, in any case, equating more sex with having more sexual partners is questionable. Not to mention that there is more to life than sex I'm not an advocate of monogamy or polygamy or anything else but I am an advocate of letting people freely decide for themselves.  The decisions they make about their sexual lives will not impact on the continuance of the socialist society they have collectively brought into being.  Neither sex nor anything else can be used as a weapon to leverage power and influence over others in a society where the means of living are freely available to all.  Free access to goods and services along with the voluntary cooperative nature of labour in socialism are what will dissolve the possibility of any kind of concentration of power in a socialist society and this point can hardly be emphasised too much

[robbo203]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

http://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=open-science-cloud

Quote:

The term cloud is understood by the High level Expert Group (HLEG) as a metaphor to help convey both seamlessness and the idea of a commons based on scientific data.

and

Quote:

Imagine a federated, globally accessible environment where researchers, innovators, companies and citizens can publish, find and re-use each other's data and tools for research, innovation and educational purposes. Imagine that this all operates under well-defined and trusted conditions, supported by a sustainable and just value for money model. .

 

 Take money out of equation and the reference to "companies" and this does indeed seem to be a fairly plausible description of how science might be conducted under socialism/communism.  It will be a state of affairs in which individuals will be enabled to pursue and develop and  their own particular interests, relying on the mutual support of others, without barriers being placed in their way as is the case today under the dictatorship of money which blocks opportunities and secrets away scientific knowledge behind paywalls and patents, . The only limitation will be that of the human mind itself to assimilate knowledge about the world around us. Since none of us can grasp more than a tiny sliver of the total stock of human knowledge and since this knowledge by definition extends to everything that human society as a whole knows about the world around us, this necessarily presupposes a marked social division of labour which severely limits the ability of individuals, no matter how scientifically gifted, to contribute to and competently comment on the development of scientific theories other than those he or she has had the time and training to become familiar with. In one sense this is an "elite" view of science – in the sense  that only a few in society can ever expect to become a fully qualified molecular biologist.  A large scale technologically advanced  society in  which everyone because a qualified molecular biologist would not be able  to survive for long because it requires individuals to become trained in numerous other occupations besides molecular biology which would be precluded by the time and effort spent in becoming s trained molecular biologist.  So there would be multiple elites in this sense of a complex social division of labour in a socialist.communist society. However, it wont be an elitist construction of science in the special sense in which it is today under capitalism and the rule of money. Moreover, the scientific specialists in a socialist/communist society will have absolutely no power or leverage whatsoever   to compel anyone or any group to do anything against their will or in opposition to their own perceived interest.  Free access to goods and services coupled with the voluntaristic nature of work itself, completely dissolves the very basis of political power itself

[robbo203]

  Hi Subhaditya I don't disagree with some of the things you say but part of what you say seems to be mistaking the shadow for the substance.  I refer to your argument against monogamy. My position is that I am neither for nor against it.  If  people wish to maintain a monogamous relationship thats fine by me, If they wish to enter a polygamous relationship thats equally fine by me.  Its the compulsion to conform to one or the other thats the problem. I'm not convinced by your rather tortuous line of argument.  According to you sex is a critical need (true) and that if we dont get to have enough of it this mechanically translates into increased competition over sex leading to increased levels of violence.  But what does getting enough sex entail? There is no apriori reason why our sexual needs cannot be fulfilled completely within a monogamous relation,  It depends on the individual,  Yet you interpret  sexual scarcity in terms of not having enough partners to satisfy your sexual needs, rather than the actual time we spend having sex, Again this may be true for some individuals but it does not follow that it is true for everyone, You mention porn but I think there is a danger of inadvertently succumbing to a kind of capitalist supply and demand model of sex.  Under capitalism sex is a commodity. Sex sells.  Not only is sex sold in the direct proximate sense but but also facilitates the sale of other commodities through the seductive power of association.Porn is the expression of the commodification of sex, I don't wish to come across as prudish here, If people want to indulge in porn thats entirely understandable given the nature of the society we live in, But we shouldn't overlook what lies behind it . The fetishism of commodities takes on a deeper meaning in the case of sex. There is some evidence to suggest that porn can be addictive in some cases – what does this say about the law of supply and demand – and for men in particular this can lower the quality of their relationship with their female partners though – curiously – not the other way round apparently .  See this for example  http://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/04/pornography.aspx.  I'm not quite sure what the evidence is in case of gay relationships There is a lot more to life than sex.  Don't get me wrong.  Lenin in his debate with Alexandra Kollontai talked of sex "stealing fire from the revolution" if I remember correctly (though I cant recall the actual source of this quote).  Kollontai's socialist feminist perspective is nicely summed up in this article    https://www.solidarity-us.org/node/1724 You state:In the Hindu sacred scriptures a King had the divine right to have sex with as many as he liked while a poor man only had his wife… wouldn't you desire power in such a place, I would. I mean getting to experience as many women as I like… who wouldn't want that. When we watch porn its all we do… experience someone other than our wives. If you found yourself in a position to turn your desires into reality would you not go for it… I did imagine most would. Therein lies the need for power. But what if you could do this that is turn your porn desires into reality as an average Joe…. that will be one less reason now for craving power and being content as the average Joe. I find this a little confusing.  On the face of it it seems to be saying that the king having access to as many women as he likes should have no need to crave power.  Would that that were the case in real life! Pornography and prudishness are but two sides of the same coin that we exchange for sex under capitalism – not necessarily in brutish physical sense of resorting to prostitution but also in the more refined sense of a Jane Austen novel in which a good marriage is equated with a sound business proposition without even the hint of embarrassment at the very thought of it

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