robbo203
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I declined “the suggestion” because I already know all I wish to know about De Sade including his penchant for inflicting pain, suffering and humiliation non-consensually on others…
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Which confirms my point concerning your narrow and bigoted approach to the whole subject ….
You imagined the article is about ‘getting off’ in response to extreme pain, suffering or humiliation inflicted non-consensually on others” and for which reason you declined to read the article. Saying that this reason now “includes” the above is a classic case of you trying to wriggle out of the situation you have made for yourself
You pay attention! I wasn’t referring to the content of the article per se but to the individual that it was about.
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Really? Is that why you declined to read the article ZJW referred you to with this these words:
“No thanks ZJW. I have no interest whatever in anyone who ‘gets off’ in response to extreme pain, suffering or humiliation inflicted non-consensually on others.”
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No one on this forum is interested in inflicting pain and humiliation on others….
How do you know? Are you clairvoyant? 🙂
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Actually, that question would be better directed at your good self. You are making the assumption that there is someone here “who ‘gets off’ in response to extreme pain, suffering or humiliation inflicted non-consensually on others.” Otherwise, why decline the suggestion that you read the article in question?
By the way, is Alan alright?
__________Nobody seems to have heard from him for a while. I asked on the WSPUS forum – nothing. He just suddenly disappeared off the radar. Its quite worrying
It’s not an assumption but an historical fact where De Sade is concerned. Do some research.
…………………….Pay attention. I am talking about the article ZJW referred you to, not the random “sadist” in the street you seem to have in mind. No one on this forum is interested in inflicting pain and humiliation on others….
So the only thing protecting society from Mr More going berserk is a dodgy sciatic nerve. You ought to let Lizzie take a look at that, she is a qualified physio.
::::::::::::::::::::::::What’s this irrelevant nonsense about? Perhaps we should stick to the topic which is about the relative importance of the submersible vis-a-vis refugee boats in media reporting.
No thanks ZJW. I have no interest whatever in anyone who ‘gets off’ in response to extreme pain, suffering or humiliation inflicted non-consensually on others.
_____________________________Why do you make this assumption that anyone is “getting off” on the extreme pain and humiliation of others??? That’s pretty narrow-minded and bigoted, don’t you think? The article ZJW referred you to does no such thing. It is perfectly possible to look at historical figures and recognize both the good or useful things they said and did as well as the bad things. The SPGB for example broadly describes itself as a Marxist political organization but that does not mean that there are not things that Marx wrote with which we strongly disagree.
Your response is a bit like how the tabloid press might respond to the very mention of Marx (only in this case De Sade) – super-charged moralism and completely lacking in nuance
When my father, during his brief association with the Bund Demokratischer Sozialisten (League of Democratic Socialists), told me, among other things, that socialism would be a society without laws, police or prisons, I knew then that it would never become a reality.
________________It depends on what you mean by “law”. There is a tendency to associate “law” with the state and since the state is, in Marxist terms, an instrument of class rule and since socialism is a classless society there can obviously be no law in that sense in a socialist society.
However, there is a long tradition in anthropology going back to people like Malinsowki in the early 20th century referring to “primitive law” in relation to acephalous or stateless societies such as hunter-gatherer bands and some pastoralist societies (like the Nuer in Sudan). The law in this sense was often radically decentralized with often only the immediate parties in a dispute being involved in settling a dispute with the aid of some functionary (in the case of the Nuer, someone called the “leopard skin” man, if I remember correctly)
We could arguably talk about socialism having “law” – or explicitly defined normative rules of behavior. Whether there would be a need for a specialized body called the police, or institutions called “prisons” is another matter. It depends on how strictly you want to define these things.
I recall the late comrade Pieter Lawrence was a strong advocate of the idea that there would indeed be “law” in a socialist society
It looked like the Ukrainian conflict would drag out to some kind of indecisive end with Russia having the edge militarily and the country being more or less partitioned along the lines that it is now. The Ukrainian counter-offensive was not really making that much progress, and sooner or later, the Zelensky regime would have to come to its senses and negotiate. The sooner the war ends the better it would be for everyone. Ukraine is a complete mess and has experienced rapid depopulation. It’s gonna take years to recover.
This Wagner business has kind of complicated things. A destabilized Putin regime might ironically prolong this stupid war and increase the risk of it escalating if the temptation grows to resort to tactical nuclear weapons. Gawd help us all then…
Just shows you how utterly hopeless things are. Socialism is a beautiful dream. That’s all it’ll ever be.
……………………………..Maybe. Maybe not, Ozy. None of us has a crystal ball. You cannot ever rule out small developments occurring that can metamorphize into something much bigger and could serve to put socialism onto the agenda in a way that was simply not predicted or was unpredictable.
But apart from that I keep coming back to this point in the face of all this depressing talk from our depressing Jeremiahs: Look, even if turns out that socialism is an “impossible dream” that is never going to be realized, it does not follow at all that we should give up on the struggle for a sane alternative to capitalism.
We are few in numbers but arguably punch way above our weight. By doing what we are doing we ARE having an impact on the world as it is right now. Not much of an impact, I grant, but an impact nevertheless. We are adding our little bit to the general flux of ideas and altering in a small way the social climate of opinion. For instance, we make the job of the warmongers a little more difficult to accomplish when we oppose the nationalist ideology that lends support to capitalism’s wars. There is a balance of forces out there in the real world and our job is to tilt it in the direction we would want it to go.
I cannot really see any alternative. There is either this or we resign ourselves to some coming apocalypse which, frankly. is not a healthy way to live. Hopelessness translates into a state of perpetual misery. You might just as well slit your wrists and be done with it…
Doubtful – you can’t even get Johnstone’s name right!
Pathetic.
————–Bit below the belt, that. And uncalled for.
Just looking at the quote from the last June´s SS and this in particular:
“If production were fully automated, no surplus value would be produced, so there would be no profits and capitalism would no longer exist.”
It strikes me that a more potent pressure on surplus value than automation and the changing organic composition of capital might be the growth of unproductive labour versus productive labour. I recall that Marxist economist, Fred Moseley, has written something about this but has anyone come across any comparative studies on the relative effect of these two factors?
I agree though that there are always counteracting tendencies to the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. The more it does so the stronger these counter tendencies. As so often happens it’s a case of water finding its own level under capitalism….
The sensible Ukrainian workers, like their Russian counterparts, refusing to fight for their so-called motherland:
“What would you answer if someone called you a coward?” I ask, as gently as I can.
“I have no country,” he says awkwardly. “I just have a family.”
Useful article on the economic background to the capitalist war in UKraine
“The article on inflation by Michael Roberts in the latest Weekly Worker makes no mention of an excess issue of notes and coins as the explanation for inflation. Paul Mattick was of the same opinion. The SPGB account looks like that put forward by Ricardo and JS Mill, both dismissed by Marx.”
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HmmmmmmI quote:
“But in any event none of these could explain a general rise in the prices of all commodities. What could cause such a rise? Only, it will be argued here, some change in the standard of price, some monetary change. A general rise in prices, or inflation in its strict sense, is a purely monetary phenomenon. Marx was amongst those who recognised this.”
