Young Master Smeet
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PGB,
Quote:Your "material bases" are not causes of the war involving ISIS et al, they are not what the war is about, they are not what drives the militants to fight and kill. From what I can see it is religious faith.Their subjective intentions are irrelevent, the conditions (and especially the material surplus/oil) are what give rise to the fighting. Those conditions include the existence of human coalitions, which will be built by whatever means necessary. Furtehr, the commanders at the top are required to make rational choices regarding acquiring wealth that apply, irresopective of whetehr they are sincere in their religious beliefs. BTW, as we've seen from the presence of copies of Qu'ran for Dummies with jihadists, there is little theological understanding among them, what is more important is the self image of taking part in a cause, and a feeling of belonging to one coalition/group or another. Robbo203,We might have a war just because we fancy it, for no reason. taht's freedom, see?First warning: 1. The general topic of each forum is given by the posted forum description. Do not start a thread in a forum unless it matches the given topic, and do not derail existing threads with off-topic posts.
Well, it's not about what we want, it's about what we need. Ultimately, without pencils and papers religious obscurantists can't produce their tracts, still less without food. In terms of military competition, the warlord who forsakes material gains will be outcompeted by the one who has bought the bigger and better guns.
There's no reason it can't start with the religious impulses, but if these murder gangs don't get some money, they disintegrate, in the final analysis the econonomics wins (that was kind of the point I was making in the last paragraph). None of this contradicts basic matyerialism, since to have the idea takes time and human behaviour; but all ideas come back to the real world and human action within it.
I've not listened in, but it is clear that thisis getting Labour types out in force to pulverise the Greens, so it's instructive to see how social media is being used by the big guns.
In terms of ISIS (and Boko Haram) and some of the similar armies that have blighted the world, we can point to distinct material bases.1) Acces to a raw material/resource which can be sold for ready cash (oil, diamonds, minerals, etc.)2) Access to a local population to kidnap/recruit killers from.3) A unifying idea which can be used for coalition building (language, culture, religion)4) Sex (and rape, sadly) are often used to bond these armies.5) Geopolitical interference (in the case of ISIS Gulf leaders and a few wealthy Saudis are clearly lending support).The horrific point of these roving militias is they don't need labour, they only need fighters: they appropriate surplus directly (so they cannot really be called capitalist).The role of ideology is that it provides a line of communication, and helps bind together a force made possible by the appropriation of surplus/material product.I was only half joking about sports colours, as the Nika riots demonstrate:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots(but, even there, there were lines of patronage and political power at stake as well).Religion can play and important, and desive role in events, but must *ultimately* come back to the material conditions (for example one of these roving murder gangs could be taken over by a leader with a different set of ideas, who would exploit the same economic resources).
Robbo203,Wars within capitalism are fought within the constraints of capital and commodity relations, but once we are freed from economic constraints, and enter the realm of freedom, then we may choose to fight wars for other than economic reasons, who knows? That has no bearing on the decision to become free, though.
A quick dig around for Mark W Allen this linkSome pages are redacted (google books action) but the basic point on a skim does seem to be as made here, mobile bands were least violent, and going up the scale of complexity and population density does seem to suggest more violence. haven't time for more than a skim, but hope that helps.
Alan,you mean you don't hav the Latin for the Judging exams?http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Beyond_the_Fringe#Peter_Cook
The interesting question is whether they'll be able to drive forward with free electricity, healthcare, susbidised food and an end to evictions. These are 'cheap' measures, tha leave the basic system intact, but do seem to rely on non-commodity relations.
Robbo203
Quote:And if people are naturally warlike – that is to say, if wars will occur again and again regardless of the kind of society we live in – then socialism must be considered dead in the water. I do not imagine for one moment, YMS, you seriously think we could or would divide the world up in socialism and engage in wars with each other. How do you imagine a socialist society could survive for one second if this was true.Socialism provides according to need, if we need war, we'll organise one, its perfectly conceivable that ritualised lethal warfare could be compatible with common democratic ownership of the means of production. Unlikely, but who knows?
HUD955, I found the title of the book I was thinking of (post #19):
Quote:Violence and warfare among hunter-gatherers / Mark W. Allen, Terry L. Jones, editors. Walnut Creek, California : Left Coast Press, [2014] Allen, Mark W., editor. 9781611329391 hardbackrobbo203 wrote:There is absolutely no way round this for revolutionary Socialists. If human nature is warlike because hunter gatherers were warlike then that rules out socialism. QEDI don't think this does follow. If in certain (knowable) circumstances prehistoric humans engaged in warfare, we can know to build around and avoid those warfare conditions. The case for socialism certainly doesn't rest on humans being naturally angels, or need a 'New Man', and it rests on the impulse for freedom and the non-necessity of class. If it turns out, when we are free, that humans are by nature Evil, so be it.We might even decide to divide the world up, like, like the Byzantine chariot fans, Blues and Greens, and have wars between ourselves for n o good reason, because that is our natyure. I doubt that would happen, but whether it would or not has no bearing on the case for socialism.
This si the sort of nonense they are peddling:http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news/ukraine-and-the-new-hitler-fairy-tale-what-lies-behind-the-putin-did-it-conspiracy-theory
Quote:However, when a right-wing regime seized power in a violent coup in Ukraine on Russia’s border and then took provocative actions against Ukraine’s ethnic Russians, Putin responded to calls from Crimea – both from its parliament and a referendum – to take the peninsula back into Russia.Putin also feared that the new powers in Kiev might give the historic Russian naval base at Sevastopol to NATO with its nuclear-armed submarines. In other words, as much as the New York Times has bandied about claims of a Russian “invasion” of Crimea, the Crimeans requested Russia’s intervention and up to 25,000 Russian troops were already there in the agreement with Ukraine over the naval base.The article is right that Russia has reacted to encroachments upon its traditional sphere of influence (or Imperialist Sphere, if you want to speak Trot). That Russia's attempt to intefere in Ukraine is just as despicable as the NATO/EU's doesn't seem to arise.In the tiny minds of these people, taking sides is what counts, people are dying and they areassisting in the deaths by giving intellectual covering fire. Worse, under the banner of 'Stop the war' they are calling for, and supporting war, which is going to make the job of future anti-war activists a lot ruddy harder.The need for the workers of Ukraine is peace, now. A democratic settlement and a touch of freedom.
Stuart, you're onto a good point,moving the decision over that is truth to any sort of vote just brings back the same questions as it arouses for an individual (and adds the further question of deciding what is the voting polity: whites in the the early 20th century US outnumbered blacks, and literally voted to make them inferior, so I guess black people must have been inferior, by that logic).Of course, if an observable event happens, and people accept it happened, then some logical deductions fall ineluctably. If, say, a group of people managed to send a coke can into space, and it travelled 12 million kilometres in four seconds, then we would know that it is possible for information to travel faster than the speed of light (and we would know that Einstein passim was wrong).I suppose it would be possible to vote on whether people believed that happened or not, but I don't see much point in that. What is more useful, would be if they were voting that it was valid sscience: validation is different from verification, and defintiely, to my mind, belongs to the social sphere.Of course, the problem with anthropology is that its objects aren't amenable to repeat experiments, and everything is subject to interpretation.There are masses of evidence that inter human viuolence occurs within hunter gatherer tribes,and that violence has occurred in history. The real argument is how do you define war? Now, the first archaeological evidence for war, IIRC is about 7,000 BCE, where there is evidence that a group of humans stood their ground and died in a ditch, we've found that mass grave. The problem is such actions might have occurred before.Anyone who has been out on a saturday night and seen two gangs of lads kicking at each other is witnessing something on the size and scale of what would have been a war between HG groups. But we don't call Cardiff a warzone, do we? These fights do lead to deaths, especially in London, but the numbers of deaths are small.Stuart is right that it's obvious that in the right circumstance we all have the capacity and prepensity for lethal violence, the point is do we have to organise it on a permenant and official basis?
So far as I'm concerned "socialist party" and "workers councils" are exact synonyms. A freely formed association of socialistically minded workers will be formed to assume control of political power. Now, that might mean simply taking control of local decision making and existing power structures if possible, so local councils and national parliaments will have socialist majorities through which our association(s) can implement our programme of socialisation.The reality of a mass conscious movement will be sufficient to overcome procedural chicanery and to deter military opposition. After that, it is down to extending democratic operation and control into the necessary parts of the state we want to retain (after all, who wants to die of dissentry the day after the revolution?).
