robbo203
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MBellemare wrote:Most of you on this thread are FASCISTS, and truly ignorant, bitter morons, bemoaning the fact that you have amounted to absolutely nothing, or published anything of any value! I am please that like the chicken shits that you all are, I do not know your real names, arm-chair marxists. And I have answered all your queries…but you refuse to accept the answers. So from now on, every time you hear someone laughing, note that it is me laughing, laughing at a bunch of anonymous losers and spineless cowards, lost in the confines of 19th century failures.SPGB is the honorable term for fascism, a collection pool for idiots.Fuck YOu ALL!!!Anarchism, Now! Anarchism Forever!
I think, MBellemare, youve just blown it now and completely lost any credbility and respect you might have had with this little tantrum of yours. To be honest, I'm more saddened than disgusted Im not quite sure what has gotten into you to respond in this manner – clearly there seems to be some sort of personal issues lurking in the background – but I dont propose to respond in any detail. There is little point.I will however take you up on just one point – your earlier accusation that I am "coward" for "hiding behind a moniker" rather than reveal my real name. Look, this is so silly I cant believe any intelligent person can come out with such daft comment. I am quite happy to reveal to you by real name – I am Robin Cox and I live in Spain – and the moniker I use was simply chosen because it matches the one I use on Facebook. Thats it. Its not like I have given the matter a second thought but you seem to want to read into people's actions all sorts of things which are really just a figment of your own imagination Im not quite sure why you think it so important to know the real identity of other people on ths forum – this is a site for exchanging political ideas , not a dating agency – but you should know that some people (it doesnt bother me, one way or the other) might have legitimate reasons for remaining anoymous, which I surely dont need to spell out to you. Try to be a bit more tactful in future, OK?
MBellemare wrote:It all depends on whose standards and criteria one is judging by, Robbo203. You and SPGB certainly do not have a monopoly on what actually constitutes twaddle and what actually constitutes verity. No matter what you think ROBBO203, the post-modernists were right on at least one count. There is no longer a universal criteria by which to judge once and for all.Does this mean we (or you for that matter as regards your views about the SPGB) are not entitled to express an opinion on what constitutes twaddle and what constitutes truth If anything goes is it perfectly acceptable for a racist to call for the genocidal liquidation of people with a differnet skin colour or for a misogynist to insist that women should be confined to the kitchen or bedroom but on no account should be allowed in to the workplace?If there is no universal human standard one can appeal to then on what grounds could you possibly object to this racist or mysogynist if you think all views are equally valid?
MBellemare wrote:Robbo203, You have no idea what you are talking about. To quote, Max Stirner, " You have wheels in your head…you are haunted by spooks"…a zealot from a bye-gone era. (like there is an authentic reading of Marx, or authentic universal truth. Could you be more obsolete and a 20th century block-head!I think when you've calmed down you will see this is quite uncalled for. I simply said that you seem to be confusing us with authoritarian Leninism to which I am opposed every bit as much as you are. Neither do we take Marx as bible. There is much that he wrote that is sound and it is silly to suggest otherwise but there is also stuff that he wrote with which we sharply disagree. With respect I think I know a lot more about the SPGB than you despite your suggestion that I have no idea what I am talking. As for my views on postmodernism yes I have read some of the literature – Jean Baudrillard and his bizarre notion of simulacra, Lacan and a few others – but I can't say I am overly impressed. For the most part I think its just a load of pretentious twaddle. Since you havent offered any reason why I should think otherwise I cant really comment on why you think I am a 20th century blockhead for not going along with all that pretentious twaddle Besides, all this is straying a long way off from the subject of this thread – Marx and Automation – dont you think?
MBellemare wrote:Steve San fran…don't let these marxists ideologues get you down. There are may be 2 or 3 genuine people on this thread, ready to discuss new possibilities. You being one. The rest are not interested in original thoughts…but like neo-stalinists they are more interested to stuff marxism down people's throats like the out of touch, out of date *tankies*, they are. Be grateful these *tankies* do not have any influence any longer, bud. That is why these *tankies* shit on everything new and post-marxist on this thread. That is all *tankies* have left. Spewing verbal diarrhea on everything that is different, heterogeneous and post-modern on this thread. Steve they are authoritarian totalitarianists…bitter that much of the totalitarian marxist narrative ended in a horror show. Anarchism, Now! ANARCHISM, Forever!It seems M Bellamere does not know what the word "Tankies" means or that socialists have been amongst the fiercest critics of the whole authoritarian Leninist project right from the start. That makes his comment that we are "bitter" that it all ended in a "horror show" all the more incomprehensible. MBellamere – please, please please – do some basic homework on this before commenting. You are clearly confusing socialists and socialism as we see it with something else. And no we dont "shit on everything new and post-marxist on this thread". Marx and Marxism is fallible like any other point of view and there are things that Marx said with which we strongly disagree. At the same time, dont just accept new ideas just because they are (supposedly) new. You are doing exactly what you accuse your critics of doing by doing this – being dogmatic. There are very serious criticisms to be made of post modernism which you have simply ignored
Curious. Ultra orthodox Jews who want to see the state of Israel dismantled…https://www.facebook.com/VICEVideo/videos/1874151472641483/
robbo203 wrote:Bijou Drains wrote:https://dissidentvoice.org/2017/11/the-post-modern-project-is-not-complete/ When you're in a hole, son, stop digging!I see our "structural anarchist" is a post modernist of sorts. Well that figures. A recipe for narcissism and working class disempowerment if there ever was one
There is a clutch of reviews of books on the theme of postmodernism here – from the Socialist Standard :http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1990s/1999/no-1136-april-1999/book-reviews If MBellamare really does subscribe to this regressive and narcisssitic nonsense that is postmodernism he needs to undestand what an insidious impact it has on the whole project of working class emancipation. Far from assisting the realisation of a truly anarchist society which he and, in a sense, we too want it will do the very opposite
Bijou Drains wrote:https://dissidentvoice.org/2017/11/the-post-modern-project-is-not-complete/ When you're in a hole, son, stop digging!I see our "structural anarchist" is a post modernist of sorts. Well that figures. A recipe for narcissism and working class disempowerment if there ever was one
MBellemare wrote:Huh…I place Marxism and Bourgeois-Capitalism in the same boat. They are meta-narratives, which lack any validity and/or any overarching logic, by which we can *all* live by. Both are out for power and to enslave the world under one rubric. With the death of God, Marxism and Bourgeois-capitalism have sought to fill the void left by the death of God and Christianity, with their own religion. Both have sought to become the new religion, the new saving grace of humanity.Both are to be done away with. And, anarchism, the only socio-economic system, which has made plurality, diversity and socio-economic multiplicity, the center of its program and theory, is the only road out of Marxism and Bourgeois-Capitalism alike. Only thru differences, can totalitarian bourgeois-capitalism and totalitarian Marxism, avoided and overcome.You see, structural-anarchism is bent on doing away with both Marxism and Bourgeois-Capitalism, that is, reducing them to the level from which they sprang as just two micro-narratives, who have gotten too big for their own good and the good of the general-population.Here are some of the outdated, nonsensical terms within Marx's texts that are utterly useless today (I won't bother with capitalism, because it is totally useless):Here are the outdated obsolete Marxist terms:Socially Necesary Labor-Time. (Obsolete)The tedential law of the falling rate of profit. (Obsolete and a Lie)The Proletariat. (Obsolete)The Dictatorship of The Proletariat. (Obsolete)Total Value = Total Price. (Obsolete)Unproductive labor and Productive Labor. (Obsolete)Abstract Labor. (Obsolete)Historical Materialism. (A Lie)Dialectical Materialism. (A Fallacy)Value ( A figment of the imagination)(Now there are a lot of other terms within Marx, which have not lost their importance today, principally, EXPLOITATION)Nevertheless, anyone, who defends any of these outdated obsolete terms, or thinks these terms are even applicable today, is deluded, dishonest and an impediment to intellectual and revolutionary progress.This is absurd and ludicrously dogmatic to boot. One does not have to agree with everything Marx wrote – the SPGB certainly does not – to see this is nonsense. And incidentally, I dont know of any self respecting anarchist who would go along with what you say either – at least not in its totality – unless you are maybe unwittngly alluding to the anarcho-capitalist crowd perhaps. So exploitation, according to you, has lost it importance,eh? Does that mean capitalism is no longer an exploitative society and, if so, why bother to overthrow it? How is Historical Materialism a "Lie?" In what sense is the distinction between unproductive (non-surplus value producing) labour and productive labour (labour that produces surplus value ) "obsolete" (it seems you share the same worldview as the bourgeois neoclassical economists in that case). How is the proletariat obsolete when it is growing rapidly across the world with the relative decline in peasant production? How is the tendential law of the falling rate of profit. "Obsolete and a Lie"? Are you aware that Marx also specified certain factors that counteract the tendency for the rate of profit to fall? Here are some statistical data that completely refute your unsubstantiated assertion https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/10/04/the-us-rate-of-profit-1948-2015/ One could go on. You talk about Marxism having become a religion but actually looking at your own comments I would suggest that that jibe would far more accurately apply to your own worldview which strikes me as having little to do with anarchism and would certainly be rejected by most anarchists as some kind of post-modernist mish mash
MBellemare wrote:You can disagree all you want Robbo203 but economic crisis are cause by shiftING power-relations. Think chaos theory…a shift in a power-relation in China can resonate into an explosive economic crash in Britain, which can then move on to Cuba or Argentina etc., all we can know with any accuracy is that economic crisis begin with a shift in a power-relation.Once again, I have asked you HOW a shift in power relations can cause an economic crisis and once again you have failed to come up with an answer. Part of the problem is that you fail to explain what you mean by terms like a "shift in power relations". Power relations between whom or what? Economic classes? Nation states? or what? Of course modern socialised production is all interconnected and it is this quality of interconnectedness that allows us to see phenomena in terms of chaos theory – small changes occurng somewhere that accumulate in intensity and and strength and express themselves in a wider spatial context. But what you dont appear to understand is that that the Marxian disproportionality theory of economic crises is in a sense precisely a description of this very process in an economic form. I suggest you read the link I prpvded in an earlier post
MBellemare wrote:Robbo203, 1. Power-relations consists the sum of society, not just workers and capitalists. Due to this, economic crisis can have a variety of causes.OK I can go along with the first sentence to a degree. Power manifests itself in multiple forms in contemporary society not just in the assymetrical relationship between workers and capitalists. For example, there is the parent-child relationship. But my question to you is how do these assymetries in power relationships result in or express themselves in specifically "economic crises". You havent answered the question at all only asserted that a one way causal connection obtains between them. In any case as I pointed out , the relationship between power and the economy is NOT one way. In a depression , the bargaining power of workers vis-a-vis the capitalists is undermined; in an economic boom, it is conversely enhanced
MBellemare wrote:2. There are no independent economic laws, or tendential laws, if that was the case, all societies since the dawn of the time would have been subject to these independent economic laws. For instance, caveman society would have been subject to the independent economic laws like the tendential law of the falling rate of profit as it is independent.No, this doesnt follow at all. Nobody is saying that economic laws, so called , are independent of society. In a strict sense all it means is that they operate independently of the wills of particular agents constituting society. For example nobody had intentionally engineeered an economic crisis yet economic crises happen. They happen despite, and not becuase of, the will of economic agents Your reference to caveman society also demonstrates that you totally misunderstand what Marxian theory is about. Marx was very explicit on this matter – that different socio-economic formations have different modes of operation and hence "economic laws" or tendencies corresponding to each. It was simply not possible for paleolithic society to expereince "economic crises" in this uniquely capitalist sense of economic gluts giving rising to the economic misery of mass unemployment etc. Apart from anything else there was no such thing as separate realm of reality called the "economy".in hunter gatherer society. Nor anything like "employment", "wage labour" and "profit" – let alone a "falling rate of profit"!
MBellemare wrote:3. Countries go to war not because of the falling rate of profit, they go to war because of shifts in relations of power. A falling rate of profit will be an illusory effect of war, due to dead workers and the destruction of vast amounts of constant capital.As explained, the SPGB does not subscribe to the falling rate of profit theory as an explanation for ecnomic crises. Its view of crises is based on disproportionality theory – a view which Marx also held. There is something about crises here which you might find of interest http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/study-guides/study-guide-economic-crises This does not mean there does not exist a tendency for the rate of profit to fall but as an explanation for economic crises it seem questionable for the reasons cited. The changing organic composition of capital would be too slow to account for such crises.Neither I nor the SPGB suggest that countries go to war because of the falling rate of profit as such. They go to war fundamentally because of economic conflicts over such things as markets, resoruces, trade routes and the like even though such conflicts are dressed up in ,or mediated by, ideological rationalisations
MBellemare wrote:The destruction of thousands of commodities and huge unemployment, in my estimation, according to anarchism-economic-theory, if I would be so inclined to venture, is due the adjusting power-relations.Could you explain how this happens in concrete terms? How does the shift in power between workers and capitalists cause economic crises. I would have thought it was the other way round. Mass unemployment brought on by crises undermines the bargaining power of workers in the labour market. Incidentally, the traditional explanation for crises put forward by the SPGB is based on disproportionality theory – a few held also by Marx – rather than those other main explanations for crises – underconsumptionism and the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. It is because of the "anarchy of the market" that businesses strive to produce without regard to the output of their competitiors resulting in instances of overproduction or overshoot in one or two sectors, to begin with, which then has ripple effects which spread out to engulf the whole economy I fail to see how "adjusting power relations " fits into this picture at all. In general , capitalists want working class consumers to buy thier products. The problem is some of those workers are in their employ and the wages of these workers represent a cost of production which they need to reduce. That, however, depends upon the state of the market. In boom conditions it is a lot more difficult for capitalists to do this Capitalists are not the demigods strutting the economic stage that you make out. They too, as much as workers, are at the mercy of economic forces over which they have no control. Unless you take the view that crises are deliberately engineered with some ulterior purpose in mind which, to me, makes no sense
Prakash RP wrote:If my comments in response to yours don't really contain ' a single sensible coherent argument ' against the principle at issue, it's certainly a limitation they oughtn't to have. But don't they really contain incontestable arguments to awaken you to the irreconcilable contradiction existing between the communist idea of classless order and the view of communism based on the principle of ' From each according to his abilty, to each according to his needs ' ?The short answer is NO THEY DONT. All we have ever had from you is a dreary repetition of the same old endlessly repeated and continually unsupported, dogma of yours about some supposed "irreconcilable contradiction" between communism and the communist principle of ' From each according to his abilty, to each according to his needs '. That, along with your own puffed-up sense of your importance and your all too obvious contempt for anyone who dares criticise you as "silly" and "immature" is probably why most folk here doubtless think there is little point in trying engage in rational discussion with you. Just saying, mind.
Wez wrote:There's no reason to believe that Leninists are any closer to socialist consciousness than your average liberal or conservative.Indeed, Wez, On the aforementioned FB forum – Socialist Economics – in response to a point I made that Marx's conception of the "lower phase of communist society" did not possess " those fundamental structural features that pertain to capitalism and class society in general – such as wage labour, class property and the existence of a state", one of their leading lights, a Leninist, blurted out "Literally utopianism. Will not happen". This same individual was enthusiastically endorsing the price mechanism as the best way of registering human wants You have to wonder why do these individuals even bother to pay lip service to the idea of a communist society at all
jondwhite wrote:Tankies (CPGB) peaked at 50,000 in the 1950s.Trots (SWP) peaked at 10,000 in the mid 1990s.The tankies suffered the most dramatic fall off in 1988 but both are irreversibly downhill.CPB claimed 1,000 a decade or so ago, but its likely they are closer to us now (<500), likewise the SWP since the Delta scandal in 2011.What about other tankies outside of what was the CPGB? Any ideas? What groups comprise the tankie movement in the UK? Also what about the US?
ALB wrote:Not sure about that at least as far as the tankies are concerned.Those are the battles of yesterday and we won. More than ever before, it's now accepted that Marx's views and Lenin's were not the same. What's the point in flogging a dead horse except perhaps for training or amusement.I am not too sure to what extent the tankies are a spent force though, Adam, even if the view is gaining ground that Marx's views and Lenin's were not the same. What in your opinionwould be a rough figure for the size of the movement in the UK for example, juat out of interest? That aside, there are certain commonalities between trots and tankies that need addressing not necessarily with anything Marx might have said in mind but in their own right as questionable ideas (we dont ourselves agree with everything Marx wrote anyway) Yes Dave "Trots and Tankies" is a catchy title for a pamphlet. This is just an idea that popped into my head but I will have to put it to the Publications Committee first. Potentially it could be quite a popular little publication particularly with a bit of humour thrown in for good measure
