stuartw2112
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Occupy Oakland leads the way (written by ex-SPGBer)http://infantile-disorder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/occupy-oakland-still-leading-way.html
I’m not convinced the debate has any value. A word can mean whatever you want it to mean. Meanings can only be fixed on provisionally by groups of people who want to talk to each other and be confident they are understood. Marx and Engels, in the space of a single document, the Communist Manifesto, use the words socialism and communism interchangeably to mean (non exhaustive list):1. A semi mystical force which everyone recognises is a power in Europe, even if people or parties calling themselves communist barely exist.2. A hodge podge of different beliefs held by widely divergent political trends, eg, “conservate socialism”, “critical-utopian socialism”, “petty bourgeois socialism”, etc, etc.3. A political party that fights for demands, such as the abolition of taxes on articles of consumption, the universal arming of the people, and the establishment of a state bank.4. A movement that refuses to set up a separate political party, but merely aims to “point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat”.5. Full communism, ie, “the communistic abolition of buying and selling”.
An interesting task would be to compare the political effectiveness of Ralph Nader (or the SPGB if you like) with that of the Occupy movement, and then conclude who we should be taking most seriously:http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/01/11/rising-share-of-americans-see-conflict-between-rich-and-poor/
ALB wrote:I wonder how Stuart will respond to Nader’s argument !He’s saying the Occupy movement should get more organised and more politically effective? Well, what an insight. Who disagrees?
From David Graeber:Yes in that last comment you have it exactly right. Marx is writing “as if” those he’s critiquing are empirically correct. To say a Marxist must adopt the account of the origins of money in Capital strikes me as totally misunderstanding “critique”.
@ALB: You’re right on all counts. I remember that Marx said that (and Graeber says that barter does indeed take place between communities rather than in them, though not in the way imagined by economists), and of course Graeber does not imply that the emergence of money as a commodity had nothing to do with exchange (of course it did, what else?!). What I’m saying is that I don’t think Graeber and Marx’s accounts compete or need compete. Marx’s account takes its place within Graeber’s broader account.And anyway, as I pointed out before, they’re doing different things. Marx is saying, OK, let’s accept that the political economists are basically right, and that their utopia is to be implemented. What are the consequences of such a view? Graeber is saying, let’s not accept that the political economists are right: let’s look at their assumptions (accepted by Marx, not because he accepted them, but for the sake of his argument) and ask whether those assumptions are based on science or myth (answer: myth, with political consequences).I may be wrong, I’ll email Graeber and ask him. He’s normally generous at replying to emails.Cheers
I’m bowing out of this thread with a few concluding remarks.First, I am not confusing Leninism with Stalinism. This says about all that needs to be said on the matter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz11K1wUbrcSecond, I think Rosa is partly right. He is criticising the dialectics of Lenin and Leninism, inherited from Engels. This is a silly dogma, and Rosa’s criticisms, although tediously lengthy and monomaniacal and equally dogmatic, are about right.Third, Adam is right that this is not at all the same as Dietzgen, who was a very interesting and subtle thinker, whose philosophy is in accord with modern science. (As an interesting aside, also with Buddhism’s worldview, at least in some respects, but that’s not important.)Fourth, yes, I do mean “he”. If Rosa is a woman, I’ll cut my cock off and eat it with my hat. I refer you to rule 16 of the Rules of the Internet.Thanks, anyway, Rosa, for an interesting discussion.All the best
ALB wrote:I know Graeber is against the wages system. We said so in the February Socialist Standard here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2012/no-1290-february-2012/cooking-books-after-revolutionI’m not sure this is enough to say he’s also a sort of Marxist. After all, isn’t he putting forward a quite different theory of the origin and nature on money (as debt) to that of Marx (as a commodity)?I’ve read a bit more and am in a slightly better position to offer an answer. The economists have a theory of the origin of money, and anthropologists have been telling them for years that it’s definitely wrong, says Graeber. For years, the economists have retorted: well, what’s your alternative? Graeber says there isn’t a single, coherent alternative to offer for the good reason that money was not an invention as such and so did not have a single origin. Money, in its broadest sense, is a way of comparing the value of two things, and so has existed as long as the need to compare the value of two things has existed – ever since humans engaged in social activity (were “indebted” to each other in some way), ever since human life arose. In the narrower sense of money, ie, money as a commodity (coinage) that facilitates trade, it is as much a myth that it arises naturally out of exchange (barter) as is the idea that markets arise naturally as a result of our tendency to “truck and barter”. (There is no evidence that money or markets ever arose in this way, plenty of evidence to contradict the idea) The truth is that money in this sense, like markets, has to be imposed by the state. Why impose markets and money? To raise armies and impose social control, basically.At least, I think that’s the gist of the argument, as far as I’ve understood it.Cheers
If Rosa is looking for some truly nutty sounding, fantastical, mystical ideas, all he has to do is try to read some modern physics. But then, I guess that’s all written by alienated bourgeois fantasists.
Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:Having said that, your ideas seem to me to be pure fantasy, and subject to Marx’s comments about religious alienation.Right back atcha: I personally can’t understand how a person living in the modern world could possibly subscribe to the sinister religion of Leninism. I guess it’s cos you’re alienated.
Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:“I am not a member of the SPGB.”Well, I’m sorry for thinking you were, but you are a Marxist, I take it.No need to apologise. I suppose I’m a bit of a Marxist, I’m a bit of lots of things, but basically a libertarian socialist. I’m certainly someone who believes that fantasies are far less harmful than Leninism.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Of course there is an ongoing dialectic between something and nothing. The dialectic that lies at the heart of computing and of genetics: without the absences – such as the white bits around the letters in this comment – there would be no positive meaning. The human mind also structures its apprehensions throught relational methods between object/non object. Leaving aside the bendier aspects of relativity which suggest that light may well be everywhere at once (IIRC), if the Big Bang theory holds, then everything in space/time is related and is just the ongoing expression of the initial explosion of energy constantly transforming itself into higher and lower concentrations of entropy.Indeed, we are all star dust – another piece of hippy-dippy mystical spiritual bullshit that just happens to be true. Sounds nicer when Brian Cox says it.
Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:I see, we have now moved away from science and into pure fantasy.As I said, the ruling ideas are always those of the ruling class…
The ruling ideas are always those of the ruling class… Hmm, sounds more like fantasy than science to me. The ruling idea in molecular biology is that information flows from DNA to RNA to protein. A ruling class idea?
ALB wrote:stuartw2112 wrote:As for occult forces, what could be more occult and mystical than Newton’s force of gravity?For Dietzgen gravity is not a force on its own but a description and explanation for particular events we repeatedly and regularly observe and can predict in the world of phenomena. On the other hand, Buddha’s Seventh Heaven is a figment of the imagination and exists as that, ie it’s a real figment of the imagination.
I’ve just been reading a Buddhist writer talking about the different realms, and he says, in common with every other Buddhist writer I’ve read, that the most important thing to remember is that these realms are “a projection of your own mind”, or, as you have it, a “figment of the imagination and exists as that”. So you’re more Buddhist than you know.But anyway, we weren’t talking about the different realms, but about “the practical world of sense perceptions, [where] there is nothing permanent, nothing homogeneous, nothing beyond nature, nothing like a “thing itself.” Everything is changing, passing, phantomlike, so to say. One phantom is chased by another”. Which couldn’t be more Buddhist (“mystical”) if you tried.
