[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

robbo, I've answered your question, and you really do have to try and read what I wrote in my last post. 

Sorry but you haven't answered my point at all, I've gone through your posts with a toothcomb and there is absolutely nothing in the way of an answer to my question (several questions actually). I wanted to know from you whether or not you accept that there will inevitably be to some extent a social division of labour in socialism/communism.  Meaning that were will inevitably be a degree of specialisation (we can't all be neurosurgeons).  This ties in directly with your claims about the democratisation of "scientific truth".  I've made my position clear.  I can't see the point in voting for a scientific theory assuming one even knew what it is about.  If you want to believe the sun revolves around the earth then I support your right to hold and proclaim that "truth" as you see it  even if I don't agree with it. The point is, though, if you accept that there will be a social division of labour with its accompanying specialisms then this has direct implications for your proposal about voting on scientific theories.  If most of us have never heard of some obscure theory in biochemistry how can we possibly vote on it if we don't know what it is about.  That just doesn't make sense does it now. That is not to say we are incapable of knowing of what it is about.and your big mistake is to assume that that is what I am suggesting. I m not.  What I am saying is that we simply do not have the time – any of us no matter how gifted – to acquaint ourselves with any more than a tiny sliver of the sum total of human knowledge..  Inevitably we will focus on things that interest us and disregard the rest. At the end of the day that means that only a small minority are going to be bothered with voting on the merits of String Theory. Do you agree with this  or don't you and if not why not?

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

This determination to reduce political and philosophical questions to questions about 'individuals' seems to have spread from robbo – or has it always been there, in the party?blah blah blah

 So when are you gonna answer the question LBird?Do you think that in a communist society everyone will become a skilled neurosurgeon, an accomplished biochemist and a knowledgeable mechanical engineer all together and at the same timeA simple yes or no would suffice. Anyone looking at your posts thus far might be forgiven for thinking that you dont wish to supply an answer out of fear that it might expose you as an empty windbag using convoluted language as a flak to hide your own utter naivete and your elitist posturingWhy are you so petrified of answering a simple question, LBird?

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

I've given my political answer, robbo, in some detail.You don't like my answer, because it doesn't suit your political ideology.

 No you haven't answered the question at all.  I repeat the question for your benefit.  Do you think that in a communist society everyone will become a skilled neurosurgeon, an accomplished biochemist and a knowledgeable mechanical engineer all together and at the same time? Do you not believe that there will be to some degree a social division of labour in such a society such that some people will tend to specialise in some lines of work and others in others? Do you think it is OK that anyone can come off the street and operate on that brain tumour you have , irrespective of the fact that they might not even know which end of a scalpel to hold? Its a very simple question, L Bird.  A "yes" or "no" will suffice and then we can take it from there…"

LBird wrote:

Talking of giving answers, though, can you explain why you intend to deny the producers the right to decide for themselves what they produce? And to make it clear that I'm not talking about just 'widgets', but the right to decide 'truth'.This is the nub of the political debate on a political site, about 'power' and who will wield it, in your proposed version of 'socialism'.My answer is very clear: only the democratic producers can determine their truths.

 Where do you get the impression that I want to deny anyone the right to decide the truth".  If you want to believe that the sun revolves around the earth in a communist society then be my guest.  In no way would I want to stop you holding this belief though I might want to challenge that belief and present evidence that the opposite is the case. You are of course at liberty to reject the evidence I present  If anything it is you who seem to want to deny people the right to hold alternative views.  According to you scientific theories – tens of thousands of them! – ought to be subject to a democratic vote by the global population of 7 billion, Never mind how you organise such a vote which is mind boggling in itself , what happens if such a vote were to take place and the "truth" of a given theory has been established by democratic mandate. Are you going to forbid the expression of rival theories henceforth? If not , what then was the point of the vote?  Was it just an intellectual popularity contest carried out at enormous expense to determine whether some theory was correct or not , a decision which might very look foolish the day after the vote should some scientist accidentally stumble upon a discovery that completely overturns the newly endorsed orthodox theory. Are we then going to have to have yet another global vote on the matter? Of course the whole idea is silly.  Democracy is about practical decisions of a collective nature that impact upon our lives.  I don't really see the point of voting to determine whether String theory is a correct and truthful representation of reality.  Do you and if so could you explain in simple terms what is the purpose of such a vote?

[robbo203]

  LBird, your answer  to my simple question is evasive and full of red herrings There is no equivalence between my original statement:Does he not recognise at all that in any kind of large scale complex society, there is inevitably going to be, to some extent, a social division of labour? We cannot all become accomplished neurosurgeons or geophysicists let alone both at the same time.and your gloss on it:Do they not recognise at all that in any kind of large scale complex society, there is inevitably going to be, to some extent, a social division of labour? We cannot all become accomplished managers or directors let alone both at the same time. These are referring to two quite different things – knowledge/skills,  on the one hand,. and  the economic power to manage, supervise and dictate to others within an authoritarian structure called the capitalist corporation on the other hand.   I don't see how the latter could arise in a voluntaristic society of freely associated producers – communism –  but I can very definitely envisage in such a society some people specialising in becoming neurosurgeons or biochemists and others opting for other kinds of specialisms.  My point is that there is actually no way in which this could NOT happen.  Would you be happy to have just anyone walk off the street to operate on your brain to remove a tumour?  Of course you wouldnt.   You would expect such a person to be trained up and that takes years of practice and study, years that would prevent such a person becoming at the same time a skilled mechanical e gineer for example.  These are the inevitable opportunity costs of speicalisation and the social division of labour.  Get used to it What LBird does not seem to understand with his utterly naive view and simpliustic of communism is that specialisation and the social division of labour does not in anyway impact on or alter the patten of social power in communist society.  This is because he is still thinking through the prism of bourgeois ideology.  Being a neurosurgeon does not give you greater  leverage over others in a communist society though it certainly can in a capitalist society where your skill command a higher price It is amusing that L Bird should sayIf the question is asked from a socialist perspective, that is, 'Do you feel collectively everyone can become…'And to that question, I can answer 'Yes'. How telling that L Bird does not tell us what it is in his question that "collectively everyone can become…"!!!  Become "what" L Bird? If I rephrased or  interpolated into your comment the specific details that you evidently preferred to leave out , thusIf the question is asked from a socialist perspective, that is, 'Do you feel collectively everyone can become an accomplished neurosurgeon, a biochemist and mechanical engineer?…'And to that question, I can answer 'Yes'. would you still answer "yes" in this instance? Lets hear it from you LBird but this time without evasion.  Do you think everyone become an "accomplished neurosurgeon, a biochemist and mechanical engineer, all at the same time" Do you seriously there is absolutely no room for specialisation or a social division of labour in communism Yes or no, LBird?

[robbo203]

Answer the question LBird Does he not recognise at all that in any kind of large scale complex society, there is inevitably going to be, to some extent, a social division of labour? We cannot all become accomplished neurosurgeons or geophysicists let alone both at the same time. Do  you feel everyone can become an accomplished neurosurgeon , a geophysicist and a biochemist all at the same time?Yes or no?

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

 Is this elitism the policy of the SPGB? Is the whole of the party membership bound to 'elitist materialism'? Will the SPGB, if they participate in a workers' revolution, really seek to deny the democratic participation of workers in the social production of 'scientific knowledge', as I know already, because you've said so, that you will?

 Groan.  Not this same old rehashed nonsense from LBird yet again. Does he not recognise at all that in any kind of large scale complex society, there is inevitably going to be, to some extent, a social division of labour? We cannot all become accomplished neurosurgeons or geophysicists let alone both at the same time. This is not elitism; it simply stating the obvious – that the opportunity costs of acquiring expertise in one specialism means forsaking expertise in another. It takes time and years of study/practice to become a trained neurosurgeon. We only have three score years and ten within which to allocate our time to what become what we would like to become.  No individual, however talented, can ever acquire more than a tiny fraction of the sum total of human knowledge. I would have thought that was obvious but not according to LBird.  He seems to think human beings are potentially demigods endowed with the capacity for infinite wisdom and understanding. As for his silly rhetorical question "Will the SPGB, if they participate in a workers' revolution, really seek to deny the democratic participation of workers in the social production of 'scientific knowledge', as I know already, because you've said so, that you will?" – no, LBird no one here is proposing to place any barriers whatsoever on anyone contributing to the production of scientific knowledge.  On the contrary, any individual in a socialist society. I imagine,  will be encouraged to contribute whatever they can to the production of scientific knowledge.  The more the better as far as I am concerned However, it is one thing to say that, its quite another to expect every worker without exception to  contribute significantly to every conceivable branch of scientific  understanding.  Thats just plain daft in my opinion.  There are obviously going to be groups of workers more skilled in some areas of expertise than the population in general.  Or is LBird seriously trying to tell us that this will not be the case.  In which case, lets hear his argument for this if he has one!

[robbo203]

Dave B wrote:

 In my communism I want the amount of human effort required to make everything, it’s value, in the free access store recorded and displayed on the label. [Just like you get nutritional information you get on food products.  

 Dave But "value" is not the amount of human effort required to make everything, strictly speaking.  It is not actual labour time.  It is "socially necessary labour time" which is an abstraction baxsed on average levels of productivity etc . Marx argued that the only way  in which you could ascertain value is through the market and in the absence of a market economy it is a meaningless term.I really dont see the point of labour time accounting in a socialist society (not to be confused with labour vouchers which I also dont agree with).  How would you go about calculating the amount of labour time embodied in a tube of toothpaste as opposed to a bottle of hair gel? Woud you include in your calculations the labour time embodied in the machine that produced the machine that produced the machine  that produced the hair gel  by a process of infinite regress? It would seem to me to be adding another layer of unneccesary and resource-consuming bureaucracy to achieve a result of questionable validity and of dubious practical value.

[robbo203]

SocialistPunk wrote:

Hi Robbo,I think the article is a little easy on Bliar, suggesting cognitive dissonance. To those of us who were against the war, and saw through the half truths, the "sexed up" data, the apparent lack of understanding of the complexities of the history of the region, (despite having access to the best intelligence agencies in the world who had "experience" with Saddam), it wasn't cognitive dissonance at work, but simple manipulation. It's what politicians do, what they are trained to do.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36744911

 Hi SP.  Yes you are no doubt current in your comments on Blair. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the man lied through his teeth. However, I was more interested in the underlying argument presented in this article and the point that merely presenting factual evidence that seems to contradict a person's viewpoint might not necessarily undermine that view point and could even lead to it being reinforced. This has huge implications for the way in which we go about promoting the case for socialism and it is these implications which I wish to explore

[robbo203]

DJP wrote:

Collecting facts that only support one side of the argument is just an exercise in confirmation bias. Wouldn't we be better off collecting arguments against socialism and then seeing if what we say stacks up against it? 

 That's precisely the point – what have we got to stack up against the the arguments against socialism? For that you need to do some basic research  which means collecting data to present an evidence-based against capitalism.  By all means "collect arguments against socialism" but the point is to be able to effectively respond to these arguments if you want to come across as credible

[robbo203]

Tim Kilgallon wrote:

 I think there is a need to continue this practical work within the party, anyone else up to do some of this work?

 Tim  What about this practical work taking the form of a research department that draws on the research skills of individual members and collates the results in the form of regular bulletins along the lines of the Labour Research Department?My brother, Andy, who was a member of the SW regional branch before he died in 2014, started up something under his own initiative which provides a kind examplar of what I am talking about http://andycox1953.webs.com/database.htmhttp://andycox1953.webs.com/database2.htmhttp://andycox1953.webs.com/database3.htm 

[robbo203]

mcolome1 wrote:

He has already capitulated to the same things that he was opposing on his campaign, he is going to be part of the killing machine of the US government.His career as an honest politician has been thrown in the trash can, and probably his whole career is over because more than 40% of the peoples what were following him are not going to vote for Hillary Clinton

 Couldn't agree more.  I know its perhaps naive to expect anything different but – boy! – what a disappointment Sanders has proven to be!  What a sellout!  Unbelievable that he should have actually endorsed Clinton. Better that he had said nothing at all than this. I think he has lost all respect as a politician and has become just another grey suit,  I vaguely hoped he might be a little different from the run of mill politicians.  But not so,  The problem is that Sanders campaign has prompted unpredecented levels of interest in the word "socialism".  Whats gonna become of that I wonder?

[robbo203]

Ralph wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Hi Ralph,  Socialists do sometimes turn their attention to the practical organisation of a hypothetical future socialist society.  In fact the SPGB published a pamphlet on this very subject here http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/socialism-practical-alternative 

 Finally read this, it's really good… It starts to look persuasive, if this was done back in 1994 was there a different attitude or was this  just a rebellion! If you can go this far you can go further surely… 

 I wouldnt disagree with that.  What happened to the whole "Productiion for Use "  initiative back in 1980s/90s? It seemed to have just fizzled out, Such a pity.  It was one of the most positive projects ever embarked upon  by the SPGB

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

 I am all in favour of us showing how socialism is technologically feasible, e.g that there are enough resources to eliminate poverty, malnutrition, etc but I don't think that will satisfy Ralph. He won't be satisfied till we can tell him where he can park his car or what he will have for breakfast in socialism.

 Hmm,  I dont get the sense that this is what Ralph is asking for which is quite a caricature!  He wants, reasonably enough, a more detailed idea of what socialism would entail but not at that level of detail LOL! But you put your finger on it, really.  Its not a question of some telling others what to expect in socialism.  Rather, its question of drawing in others into the business of shaping those expectations themselves.  That is to say, removing this " them" and "us" (the so called experts) dichotomy by encouraging people to see this is a coooperative enterprise in which they themselves are likewise creative agents. That in itself will help to weaken the kind of understandable  resistance people put up when presented with an essentially formulaic argument for socialism couched in the most generalised abstract terms.  Point is you can only really begin to engage workers' creative identifiction with socialism, in my view,  by stimulating or encouraging them to think along these lines, by preseinting –  to use Marx's expression – more in the way of "recipes for the cookshops of the future". In other words, putting the ball in their own court, so to speak, and getting them to work through the logic of the argument themselves by inviting their commentary and contribution.   Of course, such recipes as we present cannot, and should not, be presented as the final word on the matter and your mention of one aspect of Pieters work being outdated is a timely reminded of that.  It must be presented as an open ended process in which the findings reached are always provisional.  Neverthless, it is a process that needs still to be undertaken whatever the caveats we attach to it 

[robbo203]

Ralph wrote:

I'm not wanting answers of course but  there are thousands of questions just like these that need consideration, let's not assume that it would just work, because it wouldn't, everyone who would buy into the concept would inevitably have some expectation of the outcome, they would be asking these kind of questions, so why not sit down and try and work it out. Consider every way something can fail,  preempt solutions or do something a different way and perhaps you end up with a working model something believable for wider consideration. The ability for the "plan" to deliver would be everything, if it didn't then anarchy would follow and there would be no going back.OK I can hear the groans already, we can't try to answer these kind of questions.. and yet they need answering, everyone would need to understand their role, have realistic expectations and contribute accordingly.Catch 22 then, if you can't persuade people to join without having a blueprint then you'll never have the people to make or agree a blueprint. A committee of billions would never achieve it in the time the planet has left, too many cooks spoil the broth, but we nearly all agree when something tastes good.

 RalphI think you have to differentiate between what socialism might be like and the process of arriving there.  Unfortunately we have tended not to be very forthcoming in respect of either of these things, opting for vague generalities that seem safe enough to be techncially  correct but which remain unconvincing for most people Socialism can only be ahieved when a significant majority want and understand it.  Consequently, the larger the movement towards socialism, the closer we are to socialism,  the more detailed the ideas we are likely to have about what a socialist soiety might actually look like in practice. At the moment, we tend to focus on just  the broad stuctural or generic feautures of socialism – common ownership and democratic control of the industrial resources, production solely for use , free access to goods and services, volunteer labour and so on and so forth.  We make little effort to go beyond this kind of generalised schema which is a pity, I think.  It makes socialism appear to be some kind of theoretically abstract proposition remote from our everyday lives. People confronted with this proposition tend to politiely say "its a nice idea" but walk away unconvinced that it is likely ever to be implemented.  The temptation for socialists faced with this credibility gap is to fall back on somewhat mechanistic theories of social change.  "Socialism is in our material interests" which interests are bound to assert themselves given sufficient time.  The problem here is the disconnect between theory and practice, between the individual and the collective (class).  It is not necessarily in my immediate  interests as a worker to collaborate with my fellow workers against my capitalist employer. It could actually be in my immediate interest to stab my fellow workers in the back as I climb up the greasey pole of career advancement So we need to focus more on what we are trying to achieve as socialists , to put more flesh on the bones of the basic concept of socialism.  To take just one of your examples – housing.  There are masses of data relating to this subject.  For instance, there are huge numbers of properties standing empty at any one time – 1 million in the UK, 3-4 million in Spain, 18 million in the USA, 60 miillion in China. There are in addition millions of square metres of empty offices, retial establishments, warehouses, factories etc etc some of which could be readily converted to accommodation. In Granada in Spain,  my nearest city. there is the main hospital near the city centre which has served the community for decades.  It is currently being run down as a spanking new hospital has just opened – the largest in Spain.  But the old building still has a useful life of many decades ahead of it.  It could easily be converted into say student accommodation for the university.  At the moment no one has any  idea what to do with it. It is data like this that socialists could use to present a more detailed picture of what a socialist could be like and one that would ring true for workers who are quite capable of grasping the absurdity of people living in substandard accommodation or even on the street while millions of housing units remain empty and building workers remain on the dole

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

If I remember right Pieter Lawrence thought that socialism would be like today but without money.  Maybe he was right. Obviously it will be to start with. Will that do?

 "Like today but without money" would be a helluva lot different from the world we live in today, though, Adam! As is often pointed ,  its not so much money that we seek to get rid as the socio-economic relationships that necessitate money. The disappearance of these relationships could not but make for a radically different kind of experience in so many diverse  ways. Which is why I would question the logic of the argument that socialism equals capitalism minus the money I agree with Tim: Pieter Lawrence's work on Production for use Committee was, indeed," a missed opportunity for the Party".  It has always struck me as odd that the SPGB does not have some kind of research department – maybe something like Labour Research Department – http://www.lrd.org.uk/index.php – producing regular bulletins and/or the odd special issue booklet (e.g.. how can we overcome global hunger?) The information such an entity could collate together and systematise could go a long towards putting flesh on the bares bones of socialism as a concept, making it more credible and relevant to the practical problems we are subject to today.and inspiring workers to become socialists…..

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