Young Master Smeet
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SocialistPunk wrote:The issue I have in what you say YMS is you seem to identify "the state" with social organisation, as well as coercion. I on the other hand don't recognise the social organisation aspect of "the state" and see it only as a coercive body that can only exist in a class based, minority owned society.
The co-ordinating features/functions are currently carried out by the state: they could be carried out privately, but then we would have private tyranny. What makes them state functions is currently they must obeyed under the threat of villence, remove that threat and they cease to be state bodies. I don't se why we should build parrallel versions when the bodies and their offices and information are in place already to be used.
SocialistPunk wrote:I also accept the complexity of organising and running a socialist society. But I don't see why some kind of central control would be required. As I've said before many services are owned and controlled by private companies, there are also many NGOs. While there will be certain regulations they must comply with to operate within "the state" they have their own logistic teams and managers. Such systems would be used by the socialist society.There will be authorities, even if we cantonised the world, the cantons would be centrally controlled. But we in fact will need a worldwide body, that would look like a parliament of delegates, to set worldwide plans into action. We'll need some sort of sea authority, transport links like railways will need global authorities. You can't have a railway where each branch and each train does its own thing. We'd need resources boards, and worldwide food planning. These will all need democratic control. We'd need a global human rights and democracy commission, to help ensure that local majorities don't try and oppress local minorities. etc. etc. What none of these would have would be guns to back them up. In the first days of the revolution, though, we will need the guns, at the very least safely where we can see them and no-one else has them.
SocialistPunk wrote:This is my essential point. The heart of "the state" is undemocratic, so I don't see how it can be transformed. Why would a democratic, socialist revolutionary movement have any need of undemocratic machinery. I just don't get it. Perhaps something is being lost in translation. Perhaps we haven't succeeded in pinning down what "the state" actually is.Well, one thing the state is is administrative skill and expertise, which we will need to utilise, but, you're right, the undemocratic aspects would have to be lopped off, the cabinet ministers meeting in secret would go, the office of Prime Minister would go, the Monarch and the House of Lords would go, etc. and business would be conducted in public.The bottom line is, whatever administrative units we divide the world up into (and, as I say, there's no reason why for different purposes different units could not overlap) there will need to be a co-ordinating body that would look for all the world like a parliament, after all, delegates would be frequently given free hands on many issues.
SocialistPunk wrote:I'll have to use Britain as an example. Firstly, not all health and hygiene services are state owned anymore. The NHS is more than capable of running independently of the state tomorrow if it had unrestricted financial resources. Plus it won't be too long before there is little left of a state owned NHS. Utilities are no longer state owned, likewise communication, most transport, postage. One of the Tories favourite mantras is "the small state".They are regulated and co-ordinated by the state, and are frequently state contractors, fulfilling a franchise given them by the state: it may be that the left gets het up when a corporation gets to run a state function, but in the end they are carrying out state functions much in the same way an employee would. All they really do is remove the employment layer by one so that their employees are no longer state employees.
SocialistPunk wrote:Secondly, new democratic structures will already be in the process of creation a the revolutionary workers organise and plan the logistics outside existing democratic structures. During the "change over" period it would be more a case of taking control of premises, equipment and the book work.Why create new democratic structures? That seems like a fetishistic waste of time. The democratic mass party is the device that fundamentally transforms those structures into a direct democracy.
SocialistPunk wrote:So what is left, or even useful, of "the state"? The military? Would a reduced "state" be kept in place (not even sure what that means) to enable any violent capitalist resistance to be stamped out? As Robbo points out, "stateless societies are also capable of wielding coercive force".For so long as there were a capitalist class, there would be a state, whatever you want to call it.
The Guardian have form on this, their defence of Derry Irvine spending thousands on luxury Wallpaper for the Lord Chancellor's apartments The Guardian (London) Leading article: Derry's den;William Morris would approve SECTION: The Guardian features Page; Pg. 19, March 5, 1998):
wrote:There is something po-faced and hypocritical about the attacks. For the Right there is something deeply suspicious about socialists enjoying the good things in life, while the Left has always had its puritanical wing. In fact, Lord Irvine is merely following a noble tradition that dates back more than a century to Labour's roots in William Morris's Arts and Crafts movement. Morris saw socialism as the contrast between beauty and ugliness, and between the worker as artisan craftsman and the worker as slave to the machine. In an era of mass output, it is good the Government is helping high-quality small firms to thrive.I will never forgive nor forget that lick-spittle editorial.
http://www.vox.com/2015/5/21/8630771/software-slow-wage-growthInteresting point:
Quote:So when will wages start to rise again for average workers? Bessen's theory suggests that it depends on how long it takes for new technologies — like online publishing and supply-chain management — to mature and standardize. Once that happens, it will become easier for ordinary workers to gain skills, for schools to teach them, and for workers to earn a living from them over long periods.alanjjohnstone wrote:I think certain democratic bodies need to be created within the sphere of production and distribution or do we not intend to have industrial democracy as it was once described. Call them workers council, producers guilds or whatever but they will also transform the trade union movement into a much more hands-on administration of industry.Or, co-operatives? Yes, within and between firms we will need to establish democracy, as that is a sphere where democracy currently doesn't exist, however that doesn't mean where local bodies already exist we should abolish them (re-purpose, maybe), we'll still need geographic bodies, but also overlapping distinct bodies, health boards, transport boards, etc.
SocialistPunk wrote:For me at least, this raises a question as to what parts of the state get converted into "the agent of emancipation"? Or to put it another way. What use is the state to socialism, when workers have already organised outside it to ensure the transition from capitalism to socialism?1) I for one an allergic to dying of typhoid the day after the revolution, the whole gammut of state regulation of sanitation and health will need to be taken over (disrupting it will be harmful).2) Why create new democratic structures when perfectly functional ones exist? Local councils and parliamentary bodies exist and we will need something of their like (even if we change the terms of election and their precise duties: what would definitely be dismantled would be the separate and secret executive functions of the state).3) Even if we didn't need to use the police and army, their weapons would be in our hands and useable against violent recalcitrant minorities. We may need to lock up a few Anders Breiviks.4) Even if we could co-ordinate our revolution worldwide, there is the possibility of at least one remnant reactionary state power trying it on, and they will need to be deterred from exercising the war route.
Vin wrote:I believe the SPGB's position is that the state is converted from an instrument of oppression into THE agent of emancipation.Corrected.
Just a small point, but the Party isn't committed to Parliament, as such, but to political action (as opposed to direct action, a general strike and union action, or military action). Parliament is just a means of political action, and converting the state into the agent of emancipation (including the armed forces and police). I'm quite happy with the idea of putting police on the picket lines to keep the scabs out…
TBH, as some have pointed out, the current rail strike would be legal under the proposed changes (in fact, I think it would be counter productive, because it means when strikes do come, they will be bitter and determined, rather than the current gentlemanly dance we have at the minute). I think the main thing is, like the ever present threat of taking away the license fee of the BBC, it's a stoick to wave and get compliance, more powerful if not effected than it would be if it were…
SocialistPunk wrote:We're not talking about the first world war and the restrictions it placed on SPGB propaganda. The thread is about a British government potentially using its powers to attack revolutionary political organisations today. Revolution would by most Tories be seen as an extremist stance and to advocate revolutionary overthrow of the status quo could be deemed treasonable.And my point was our response would likely be the same as the previous times our propaganda activity was attacked by the state: we'd decline to die futile heroic deaths, and continue to publish articles on the Battle of Thermopylae, or whatever it took to stay on the side of legality.I forgot to mention, this was the overall outcome also of our Special Party Meeting on comrades being beaten up in Africa.https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/spopen/search/messages?query=SPM%20African%20Safety(Don't know if that link will work, it's actually an interestign discussion, and an early example of trying to use an E-forum for party purposes).
Quote:We are aware, of course, that we lost an unique opportunity of indulging in heroics. We shall be told, perhaps, that we ought to have gone on in defiance of the powers that be till we went down in a blaze of fireworks. Our view, however, was the sane one dictated by our avowed principles. We have always held that the supreme power is in the hands of those who control the political machine. The most we could hope for by going on was to prove that contention. But it is not for us to prove our contentions by acting in opposition to them.There was no question of fighting for Socialism or Socialist principles. The Regulations were not, as far as we could judge, in the nature of anti-Socialist legislation. They were merely the precautions ordinarily resorted to by countries embroiled in a serious war. For this very reason we had nothing to gain by running counter to the Regulations, for just as the temper of the working class is, at the moment, such as to prevent them benefiting from our propaganda, so it would prevent them learning anything from our victimisation or martyrdom. Clearly, then, it was our tactics to place ourselves in such a position that only by the Regulations being strained to the point where they would become obviously anti-Socialist could we fall victims to them. These tactics demanded, in view of the risk of having our spoken words twisted and distorted in the Courts, that we suspend propaganda meetings for the time, and confine our activities to such forms of propaganda as would secure us from any attack that did not reveal the deliberate intention of our opponents to crush us under the cloak of the present situation.I'd suggest we'd do the same again…
