robbo203
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Thanks for the reply but I don’t think that that really grapples with what I was trying to ask. I think painting the theoretical demands as minimal is grossly underestimating the challenge that we face. Marx is not simple, neither are the intellectuals that followed him
Hi Persnickety
I have some sympathy for the point you make but I dont think it is necessary to have read Marx or to have understood him to come to a socialist perspective on life. Marx is useful – particular some of his more readable stuff like Wage Labour and Capital which probably most workers could easily understand – but Marx is not the be-all and end-all and, certainly, we in the SPGB dont go along with everything he wrote. Some of what he wrote is plain wrong or downright misleading but the we are all fallible, including Marx.
Still, there does need to be a minimal understanding by workers of what capitalism is and what socialism is if the former is to be replaced by the latter. There also needs to be a minimal understanding of how that can happen. The problem is not that workers lack the ability to understand so much as the will to understand. People feel powerless, isolated and overawed by the scale of the task. They dont see themselves as part of a larger movement that alone can accomplish that task. This is one of the more pernicious by-products of the dominant ideology of capitalism: individualism. Divide and rule is the name of the game.
Only through unity can strength come – the sense of empowerment that comes from joining with others of a like mind. This is what we need to work to achieve. Making the case for socialism more accessible will certainly help but ultimately it is through connecting with, and supporting, each other to achieve a better world that real progress will come
We would need to be clear as to who the pamphlet is directed: would it be at xenophobes like the average Brexit voter or at those who voted Remain because they opposed the xenophobia of the Brexiteers or at ourselves to provide a historical and theoretical analysis of the origins, role and dangers of nationalism?
Personally I would go for an all-purpose pamphlet but certainly featuring Brexit and the resurgence of nationalism and xenophobia in Europe and elsewhere in the context of globalisation. It could also touch on the historical background with reference to the writings of people like Benedict Anderson and the cultivation of nationalist mythologies. Then there is the matter of leftist support for so called national liberation struggles and the theory of imperialism….
There is a lot to cover but I do feel this is a yawning gap in the Party’s literature which needs to be closed sooner rather than later. Contemporary developments are crying out for such a publication
So perhaps the next referendum, if there is one, is the appropriate time for an issue of an anti-nationalist pamphlet rather than one on protectionism and free trade which would, of course, feature a chapter in an analysis of nationalism.
Absolutely agree with this suggestion. The Party seriously needs a pamphlet on nationalism particularly now given the rise of nationalist and populist movements in Europe and elsewhere. This is a major obstacle to the socialist cause.
A call was made for anyone interested in submitting a draft to come forward and contact the Publications Committee. So far there have been no takers. I would ask people here to give this some serious thought….
This would be relevant too
In Spain, right-wing populism is gaining popularity within the Vox Political Party, as all of those typical movements, they are blaming the crisis of capitalism on the immigrants, the politicians and the political party, but never in the logic of capitalism
The Sundays elections in Andalucía (where I live) has produced a shock result. The Far Right Vox Party gained 12 out of 109 seats in the Andalusian Parliament. Vox was only formed in 2013
https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/12/03/inenglish/1543819452_668081.html
Two points
Firstly , Vox seems to have done particularly well in Almeria province where, from nowhere, it is become the third strongest party. In some towns like El Ejido it emerged as the strongest party. People might not know the significance of this but El Ejido is right in the middle of Almeria’s greenhouse belt where an estimated 100,000 migrants live and work. This place is stronghold of racism and there have been violent racist outbreaks here dating from the 2000s
Secondly, the rise of Vox has been attributed in part to the reaction to the Catalan Independence movement. I touched in this in an article I wrote for the SS a while back (Feb 2018):
As the philosopher Anna Hennessey put it in an article in Counterpunch (29 September): ‘Franco was victorious and did not lose his war, as Hitler and Mussolini lost theirs, but this must not mean that we should let the dictator’s toxic ideological infrastructure persist any further into the twenty-first century. Supporting Catalonia is a necessary step in putting an end to fascism in Europe’.
Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything was calculated to encourage the growth of fascism it is Hennessey’s recklessly naive endorsement of Catalan nationalismIt appears that this has indeed turned out to be the case. Thanks to Catalan nationalism and those naïve leftists who thought supporting it was a “progressive” thing to do, we now see an upsurge of Far right populism in Spain
The Media Committee, though staffed, is currently moribund and has been for several years. And you’re right, Robin, this is an exceedingly weak link in the Party and one of reasons why some of us think there could be a slimming down of sub-committees, with the Media Committee, for example, being merged with the Campaigns Committee.
Maybe this is something that ought to be brought to the attention of the EC, Dave. Is it too late for it to be put on the agenda for the December meeting? I think the question of promoting literature is vital and, as I said, if there are any members who want to act on their own initiative , quite apart from any committee, I would encourage them to do so. I make a habit of often linking to party pamphlets or SS articles on various debate forums I frequent
I wonder if it i a good idea for the publications committee to contact media committee an acquire the appropriate lists of contact emails so to promote our literature. I believe Media have created an extensive list for press-releases
Can the Media Committee not just go ahead and promote our literature as it comes on stream? Isn’t that part of their brief? Personally I would encourage them and indeed, any individual member, to go ahead and take the initiative of promoting this literature. I think this is a weak link with the Party. We are starting at long last to step up the output but we are not doing nearly enough to promote it. It is disheartening to learn that a lot of literature is just sitting there languishing in HO…
It only becomes a tragedy under capitalism, where you have, for instance, profit-seeking fishing companies competing to make a profit out of fishing.
Very true and in Hardin’s original paper published in the 60s the assumption is made that because the land is common property, that this is what gives rise to it being overgrazed. No mention is made of the fact that, because the herds are the private property of the herders themselves, who are in competition with each other, that this is what incentivises them to increase the size of their own herd while externalising or sharing the environmental costs this entails with the other herders. Hardin evidently did not consider the possibility of making all the cattle common property along with the land that the cattle grazed
But this is not robbo’s (or any materialist’s) argument. They argue that ‘material conditions’ (and by ‘material’, they mean something outside of ‘consciousness’) will ‘mature’, and then ‘consciousness’ will follow, hence their ‘waiting for consciousness to arise’.
This is simply not the case L Bird. What you are describing is what might be called a mechanical or mechanistic form of materialism. This is not and never has been my position. Ive made it clear many times before that “consciousness” is inseparable from the “material” world it investigates. I am not a dualist in that sense. I have explicitly stated that there is no such thing as a value free-science. You have simply not been listening.
The application of science is thoroughly conditioned by the kind of society we live in. It is here – in the way in which science is applied that there is ample scope for democratic decision-making – but not in the development of scientific theories per se which is the ridiculous nonsensical idea that you seem intent upon dogmatically pushing. You need to understand the difference.
You arguments are a complete caricature of the SPGB’s position. For a start, the SPGB is not ‘waiting’ for socialist consciousness to arise which implies a position of passivity. There would be no point in the SPGB even existing as a political party if that were the case.
Secondly, I referred to what has been called by convention the objective and subjective preconditions of socialism which in a way are analogous to the hardware and software of a computer system respectively. The Party’s position is and always has been that the objective preconditions for socialism (a sufficiently developed technological infrastructure to satisfy the reasonable needs of humanity) have long been met – at least since the beginning of the 20th century – but that we are long way off yet from fulfilling the subjective precondition of socialism -mass socialist consciousness.
You naively misinterpret this to imply a one-way deterministic relationship between the ‘objective’ preconditions and the ‘subjective’ preconditions where the realisation of the former automatically works to bring about the latter. Hence your absurd fatalistic gloss on what the Party is supposed to stand for – that it does not have to do anything – except “wait” – since the material conditions will inevitably produce socialism.
But that’s ridiculous. Even our very perception of what constitutes the “reasonable needs of humanity” is coloured by the system of values we subscribe to. So for example according to bourgeois economics human beings are inherently insatiable in their demands and so by definition there can never be enough in the way of physical output to satisfy the reasonable needs of humanity. So if you look at the highly developed technological infrastructure we have today through the eyes of a bourgeois economist, rather than a socialist, you will be bound to conclude that the objective preconditions of socialism have not and never will be met – no matter how much the living standards of workers might rise
The point I am making is that a socialist awareness of technological potential to underpin a socialist society is bound up with her consciousness and own deeply held socialist values. In short, they cannot be separated
“alan, the ‘bloody obvious’ has just dawned on me, just as I posted the above and logged out!
‘Materialists’, like you and the SPGB, are passively waiting for the ‘material conditions’ to mature.
In the hope that, one fine day, ‘matter’ will say its piece to robbo’s ‘technical elite’, but the mass of the proletariat will never hear its whispers, and the ‘elite’ will merely assure us all that it was the case, that ‘Material conditions have arrived!“.L Bird
Since when has the SPGB been passively waiting for the ‘material conditions to arrive‘? ‘Material conditions’ in this context, I suggest, relate to the technological potential to produce enough to satisfy the reasonable needs of the population. The SPGB is not ‘waiting’ for this to arrive but, on the contrary, assert that it has long been around. All that is lacking is the desire and understanding on the part of the mass workers to make this happen and in that respect it is certainly not “passively waiting” for this to happen. If that were the case why would the SPGB undertake any kind of activity at all?
You can assert that this consciousness too forms part of the material conditions which in one sense is true but by convention this is called the subjective preconditions of socialism distinguishable from its objective preconditions in much the same way as we might distinguish between the software and hardware components of a computer system.
A further point of clarification. I dont actually say there would be some kind of a single homogenous or unified “technical elite” in a socialist society vis a vis the rest of the population; in my view that would be a sociologically meaningless concept. There would only be “technical elites” (in the plural) corresponding to the multiple branches of scientific endeavour. So trained and competent molecular biologists, to use my example, would belong to the technical elite of molecular biologists but not say , a technical elite of mechanical engineers.
If you deny that such multiple technical elites would exist, what you would be denying is that would not be any degree of occupational specialisation or training in socialism whatsoever. In effect, this would be tantamount to saying that anyone should be permitted to do the work of say, a neurosurgeon without having undertaken the years of dedicated training and study that this requires.
Which needless to say is completely bonkers!
A member of a technical elite in socialist society would have no more power than anyone else for reasons that I have already given and, in any case, I suspect most individuals would belong to one or other technical elite by virtue of pursuing a primary (though not necessarily exclusive) occupation. Its would be a matter of degree
“I don’t think offering false hope of a rosy red superabundant future, as some in the WSM, seem too, is either wholly honest, accurate, or advisable either.”
Malcolm, I would agree although, offhand, I can’t think of many proponents in the WSM of a “Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism.” in which our needs would be fulfilled with the mere push of a button on a console. Most I think would take a more sober and realistic view of the situation – that the establishment of socialism would be accompanied by a considerable structural transformation of the whole apparatus of production in which the quality and, even sustainability, of life will loom larger as an objective than mere quantitative increases in output – at least for many workers in what is today called the West.
I vaguely remember Hardy in an article in the SS suggesting something along the lines that some of these workers may very well have to put up with a reduction in consumption levels, come socialism, precisely in order to free up resources to alleviate capitalism’s legacy of grim derivation that many more other workers will be left to grapple with.
Its a small price to pay for a better world if you can call it a price at all. In some ways it would a release from the oppressive burden and accumulated clutter of consumerism . Speaking personally, I have little doubt that, in income terms, I would fall within the bottom 20 percent but, moving house recently, even I have been struck by the sheer amount of crap I have accumulated over the years and for which I have no practical or foreseeable use at all. It was bliss to give the stuff away to charity.
As socialists we should be not seen to be pandering to the ethos of consumerism or giving credence to the economists myths about human beings being insatiably greedy in their demands. “Abundance” should be redefined to mean simply what is sufficient to satisfy our reasonable needs with the emphasis on “reasonable” in this era of climate change
Marshall Sahlins’ great work the Stone Age Economics: The Original Affluent Society has much to teach us in this age of growing environmental constraint and in particular this passage from that book:
There are two possible courses to affluence. Wants may be “easily satisfied” either by producing much or desiring little. The familiar conception, the Galbraithean way- based on the concept of market economies- states that man’s wants are great, not to say infinite, whereas his means are limited, although they can be improved. Thus, the gap between means and ends can be narrowed by industrial productivity, at least to the point that “urgent goods” become plentiful. But there is also a Zen road to affluence, which states that human material wants are finite and few, and technical means unchanging but on the whole adequate. Adopting the Zen strategy, a people can enjoy an unparalleled material plenty – with a low standard of living. That, I think, describes the hunters. And it helps explain some of their more curious economic behaviour: their “prodigality” for example- the inclination to consume at once all stocks on hand, as if they had it made. Free from market obsessions of scarcity, hunters’ economic propensities may be more consistently predicated on abundance than our own.
L Bird
You ask who determines what is the necessary amount of training to be undertaken to become a competent molecular biologist in a socialist society. I dont mind at all in saying that probably is is those who are competent molecular biologists themselves who are in the best position to say what is required. I know sod all about molecular biology myself so am quite happy to defer to such folk in these matters. It’s no skin of my nose.
One thing is for sure – and you cannot deny this – to become a competent molecular biologist requires training and we can’t all become competent molecular biologists. Some of us need to be trained in other occupations. There are thousands of such other kinds of occupations needed to operate an advanced system of production which also require training, which training we would not be able to undertake if we were all busily training to becoming molecular biologists. In other words, there are opportunity costs involved in training people which for some reason you dont seem to understand. Choices have to be made in the real world. It you want to become particularly competent in one branch of science that most likely means abandoning any thought of becoming particularly competent in another. True, you do get the occasional polymath relatively competent in a number of sciences but these are far and few between
Your whole position is premised on the idea that everybody should be able to vote on the “truth” of scientific theories of which there are multiple thousands. Setting aside the logistics of such voting (which in itself completely rules out the idea anyway) it should be obvious to you that in order to vote on the “truth” of a theory, you need to know what the theory is about. Since most of us know little or nothing about most scientific theories in circulation – even the most accomplished scientist amongst us will have huge gaps in his or her understanding – how is this remotely possible?
It seems that either you want everyone to have a specialist or competent knowledge of everything or no one to have a specialist knowledge of anything. Neither of these positions are tenable. The only practical option is for some people to be knowledgeable in some things and others to be knowledgeable in other things – over and above any body of knowledge that is common to most of not all people
Yet you reject this option. Without specialist knowledge of the workings of the brain (which you can only acquire by not specialising in, say, mechanical engeneering) how can you become a competent brainsurgeon? Presumably according to you, anyone should be allowed to perform the job of a neurosurgeon in a socialist society regardless of what training she or he had undertaken. But that is ludicrous. Would you, LBird, place your life in the hands of a stranger randomly pulled off the street to perform a complex operation on your neocortex. Of course not. You would want to be reassured that person doing the operation is reasonably qualified – that is someone who is part of technical elite trained in this procedure
Your basic problem is that you dont understand what the issue is and that there are clear limits to democratic decision making. It is not the SPGB that is ‘confused’ on the question of technical elite vis a vis a political elite but, rather, your good self
You claim:
“It is a political assumption (based upon a non-democratic ideology) that ‘these two things signify quite different things‘, and it’s a political assumption that democrats don’t share, never mind democratic socialists and revolutionaries.”
But actually you are the one making a political assumption here which democratic socialists don’t share. What give you the right to assume that in a socialist society there won’t be a group of people called molecular biologists who can be differentiated from the general population by the fact that they have undergone a significant amount of training to become competent molecular biologists? It is in that sense and only that sense that we can talk about them comprising a “technical elite”.
There is nothing wrong with having such a technical elite in a socialist society – a group of people who have undergone significant training in the science of molecular biology. On the contrary, we need such people. In fact in that sense there will be multiple technical elites corresponding the different branches of science. Contrary to what you claim, these elites would have no power over the population in general any more than they would have each other and, to an extent, probably most people would belong to one such elite or another.
Because you don’t seem to understand what the basic structure of a socialist society would look like and how it would operate, you conflate the concept of “technical elite” as described above with the concept of a “political elite”. But there can be no political elite in a socialist society because the very class basis of political power itself disappears in such a society. In a society in which there is a free access to goods and services and labour is performed on a completely voluntary basis, there is no leverage any one person or group can exercise to force others to act against their will.
The example you cite of Mengele shows precisely where you error lies. You are confusing the development of scientific theory with the practical application of scientific knowledge to the world around us. No one is saying that the latter will not be subject to democratic control but there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that the process by which scientific knowledge itself comes to be built up should be subject to such control. To do so is ludicrous and in fact totally against the spirit of scientific endeavour. A few hundred years the great majority of people believed the sun revolved around the earth and not the other way round. If you had your way this would still be the case and Copernicus’ ideas would never have seen the light of day. A democratic vote would have ensured his perpetual silence.
Of course, there was an “asymmetrical distribution of power” in the way Mengele used science to experiment on Jews but here again we are talking about application of scientific knowledge to certain social ends. Science is never value free in this sense. It is conditioned by the kind of society we live in. In a socialist society the application of science to the kinds of ends Mengele had in mind would of course be inconceivable for the reasons stated.
But all this has nothing to do with the truth of otherwise of scientific theories themselves. The abomination of Mengelian experimentation did not arise because German workers did not have the opportunity to vote on the validity of the scientific theories Mengel made use of. It arose because the nature of German society at the time and the influence of Nazi ideology.
It is one thing to subject the practical application of scientific knowledge to democratic control; it is quite another to suggest that the very process by which society acquires that knowledge itself should be subject to democratic control.
You need to understand the difference….
L Bird
As per usual you get it completely wrong. I have already stated that democratic decision-making will obviously be a key feature of social production in socialism. Your problem is that you dont understand that there are limits to democratic decision-making even under socialism or where these lie. Hence your absurdly impractical suggestion that scientific theories – tens of thousands of them – should be subjected to a democratic vote by the global populace. You dont explain how this can be accomplished in practical terms or even why it is necessary. Why cant people just agree to disagree assuming they are even interested in a particular theory
Since I inadvertently incorrectly responded to your comments on the ‘world socialist movement’ forum (which you also incorrectly made on that forum), as ALB noted, allow me to copy and paste on this thread which is the more appropriate place for them:
“Whilst I agree with what ALB and the SPGB say here, I’m never quite sure why they don’t apply the same political analysis to ‘science’, but instead, in effect, in relation to the political power of ‘science’, adopt Lenin’s method.This political method assumes, of course, that an elite minority of specialists have an ability, prior to the proletariat, to know something that the proletariat can know only after a political revolution, then being taught by the ‘revolutionary elite’.That is, ‘science’ is not a socio-political activity that the proletariat must school itself to be able to take power over, but is an activity that must be left to specialists. This is clearly an anti-democratic political method. Why can’t the SPGB answer this political criticism of their ‘science ideology’ (even if it’s not yet an openly declared party ‘science policy’)?”
To become a competent molecular biologist takes years of study. Of necessity that involves specialisation. Is LBird seriously suggesting here we should all become trained molecular biologists before we can have socialism? And what of those who are trained in molecular biology? How many of them are, say, competent mechanical engineers as well? Though they may be specialists in their own field, in relation to mechanical engineering their position as no different from that of any other worker – they are non specialists. How does their specialist knowledge of molecular biology give them any more power over their fellow workers than a mechanical engineer skilled in that branch of science but lacking in knowledge of molecular biology?
LBird’s position is completely indefensible. Either he is saying that all workers should become competent scientist in every conceivable branch of science, which is obviously absurd, or he is saying no one should become specialists in anything which equally absurd. The development of science requires specialisation in the sense of some people having to spend years of the lives devoted to mastering a particular branch of science.
You can call those who have undergone the necessary training in this particular branch of science a technical “elite” if you so wish. But you cannot transpose this understanding of the term “elite” to the idea of a political elite or vanguard to which the SPGB is opposed. These two things signify quite different things. The latter implies an asymmetrical power relationship; the former does not
