Young Master Smeet
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Vin wrote:Forum discussions do not resemble public/party meetings. A moderator is not a chairperson. He/she is appointed annually..You can't move a motion 'That the chairperson be removed' for example, as you can with branch meetings. Nor could the mover of such a motion be warned for being drunk, abusive or disruptive as is the case with forums and moderators. The comparison in nonsensical to say the least.
You couldn't move such a motion at a public meeting, the chair person being appointed by the branch at a previous business meeting; howeverm, as it stands, a branch could send a motion to the EC, or, in extremis, a complaint to the moderator's own branch. The IC can remove moderators. There is accountability.That online fora are different to face to face meetings is obvious. That doesn't make the necessary moderation any less democratic.
SocialistPunk wrote:Looks like I'm having to go through it again.Ok, so the Socialist Standard has limited space for letters, meaning editorial decisions need to be taken. Articles or letters? Tough one there.So you accept that different media, and different communication channels demand different conditions on the manner of expression?
SocialistPunk wrote:At a physical meeting you could find yourself removed for disruption, likewise on the forum via the system of reminders, warnings and suspensions. So there is no difference there. I don't see the problem with removing people who are disruptive. And it's a pretty poor argument to say they are being censored, as by that defintion there would be many a censored individual cooling off in police cells come the weekend.Not all disrupters are drunks, some are sincere opponents of the meeting's aims
SocialistPunk wrote:Imagine the scenario at a physical meeting whereby all contributions had to be heard by the chairperson before the audience could hear them, with any "unsuitable" bits disallowed".That would be difficult to organise in a live environment. But, lets say it was a very busy meeting, and contributors were asked to pass a note to the chair asking to speak, and saying what they would generally say. The chair could decide in such circumstances to not choose to call off-topic speakers, those whose contribution may be abusive, disruptive, etc. That, again, would not be censorship, but maintaining channel clarity. So long as democratic methods for redress existed (again, which did not clog up nor disrupt the meeting) that would be fine.The point is, on the internet, people can go and spot their opinions elsewhere if they want, freedom of speech doesn't mean they have to do it here, or that we have to give bandwidth over to them.There is no embarrasment here.
Of course, there is method behind the crisis:http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31438699Factories in Apple's supply chain have been exploiting bonded labour.
Quote:Bonded servitude or labour sees new workers charged a fee – sometimes equivalent to a month's salary or more – for being introduced to a factory, typically by third-party recruiters.It means many employees will begin work in debt. Some have their passports confiscated.A BBC Panorama programme investigation last year highlighted the poor treatment of workers in Chinese factories.Of ocurse, the story is that Apple have 'banned' the practice. But hark, what are their new enlightened terms:
Quote:It said that it had tracked more than 1.1 million workers on average per week in 2014 and that suppliers had achieved 92% compliance with its 60-hour maximum working week.Anyone fancy a 60-hour week? Also
Quote:Last year suppliers repaid $3.96m (£2.57m) in excess fees to more than 4,500 foreign contractors, according to the audit.Did Apple bear the cost of that repayment? And how many millions from previous years has Apple held onto? It appears that Apple is now basking in teh halo of new reports that they genuinely have stopped beating their wife. Well done for stopping beating your wife, Apple.
ALB wrote:Maybe because there will be no "workers" in socialism as all classes, including the working class, will have been abolished.Better yet: work might be abolished, and we can leave it all to the robots.
LBird,the immediate need, within capitalism, is for us to have freedom of expression so that we may put the socialist case (and, obviously, that means freedom of expression in non-democratic contexts). Once we have abolished the working class, we can have thorough going democracy among humans.
SP,different channels of communication opperate under different principles. We have a standing principle to publish all letters to the Standard, but they go through the editorial committee, who have to exercise a degree of judgement (the ones in green ink and going on about Satan tend not to make it through to print for some reason, hideous insidious censorship).At a physical meeting, someone who shouts "whoop-de-whooop-mcpoop" continuously would eventually be "censored" by being man handled outside, where you would no longer be able to judge if somewhere in the noise there was a meaningful message that deserved to be heard.There is no difference when this happens online, save that, because of the delayed nature of the communication, someone could look at it and see if there is something that could be forwarded to the meeting. This is actually an advance.So, we have three clear distinctions to make:Content of communicationManner of communicationAction of communicationThe case being made here is that there should be no restriction on content, but manner and action are matters for consideration, since they are the point at which speech acts impinge on other people.The principle is that the least interference necessary to enable people to communicate their ideas to one another is ideal; and preferably in a democratic context. Obviously, in the case of this forum, the democratic context is not the participants of the forum, but the members of the party through their demcoracy – non-party members have no say in how this forum is run. Fat fact..
SP,If someone sends a message to this website in the wrong code format, it simply won't appear, that isn't censorship, merely a technical fact of the forum's set up. If someone is persistently disruptive, then it is no different to stop accepting their posts, they're sending English in the wrong format. Pre-moderating posts is no different from a chair at a meeting allowing someone to speak, but then cutting them off when they go off-topic. In fact, it is less censorious than simply banning them from the forum.No topic has been censored on this forum.
Quote:who, if not the 'producers' (or, 'workers', as defined above), shall have political power….'elite group' (of 'experts'; often from Young Master Smeet)I have never argued this. Indeed, I've argued the exact opposite, but never mind. The whole community (including those not directly involved for one reason or another in production) should be involved in democratic decision making, in socialism.
To return to the thread: part of the problem of no platform (other than the implicit call it gives to state power, and legitimacy it gives to suppression of ideas) is the power it gives to the fascist bogey: if we don't support mainstream parties, the fash will get us. Whilst I in no way want to diminish the harm the fash would do if they got to power, the only real defence we have against them is support for political democracy, and, ultimately, pro-socialist activity, rather than anti-fascism.
The BBC this morning have been going big in the driverless car trials:http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31364441They already in propaganda mode: asking why people are prepared to trust planes to computers (which they already have) but not cars.To be clear, this is a threat to every Taxi, delivery, lorry, bus and all sorts of other drivers. Yes, new work will come along, and for many of us it will be a liberating boon.
Ah, it seems the Greens *haven't* ditched the policy, just weaselled it:[quoteCaroline Lucas]“The citizen’s income is not going to be in the 2015 general election manifesto as something to be introduced on May 8.“It is a longer-term aspiration; we are still working on it. The aim is absolutely, to be able to give everybody a guaranteed, non-means tested income, because that means that you can get around the poverty trap.“When we come to publish our manifesto in March, you will see the workings out that we’ve got. This is not a policy for the next general election, it is lifting the living wage to £10 an hour by the end of this parliament … challenging the austerity of the other parties . . . what we need to be doing is investing in jobs rather than cutting jobs.”[/quote](My bold)http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/02/green-deputy-leaders-contradict-caroline-lucas-citizens-income-will-be-manifesto
http://www.tuc.org.uk/economic-issues/britain-needs-pay-rise/average-wage-worth-%C2%A32500-less-year-cameron-became-pm-says-tucThe hard facts of class war:
TUC wrote:Since David Cameron became Prime Minister the average wage is worth £2,500 less a year, the worst fall in living standards since Queen Victoria was on the throne.[…]From April 2010 to April 2014, the value of average gross annual earnings of full-time employees in the UK decreased by £2,509, or 8.4 per cent. Source: ASHE, adjusted by RPI.This is the real issue of the day, that the prolonged crisis since 2008 has depressed wages and decreased the share of the national wealth going to workers(and the above doesn't include the cuts to the social wage in the form of cuts and restrictions to benefits). Cameron thinks he can buy votes cheap by asking employers to put up wages (which they may, as a political move to keep their party in power).And the TUC? It is doing all it can, it would be futile to be a blow hard and demand a general strike now, they are putting up guerilla resistance where they can (see here for a minor union success) but that just points up the necessity of a political response.
There's a copy of: Pre-capitalist economic formations / Translated by Jack Cohen. Edited and with an introd. by E. J. Hobsbawm. Edition [1st U.S. ed.] Published • New York : International Publishers [1965, c1964](Or another edition of the same) in the party library.
I have my doubts about the efficiacy of the study: one, it's not necessarily an empirical question. I was once doing the party's monthly accounts, and found I was out by 40p. I was about to just write this small discrepencey off, but decided to give it another check. It turned out two lines were out by substantial sums that got me to within 40p of the correct sum. Even if at the accounting level the banks don't directly credit and debit from different bits of their ledger (immediately) ultimately, they must produce balanced accounts. So you can't point to one deposit and say 'it became that loan'.Indeed, the paper says what we have always expressely said:
Quote:Instead we find that the bank treats customer deposits as a loan to the bank, recorded under rubric ‘claims by customers’, who in turn receive as record of their loans to the bank (called ‘deposits’) what is known as their ‘account statement’SP,in this thread I also mentioned the principle of association, which means people may wish to control the manner of expression. No topic has been censored on this forum, the manner of behaviour of forum members has been censured. All such controls are due to channel limitations, and the need to share the resource. The fact that people can go elsewhere to discuss topics in the manner they choose fit is relevent.LBird: so this sub-committee that reviews the material won't become corrupted itself? And you are right, there are things we don't know we don't know about the moon, and that can only be resolved through "going there" (either physically or through advances in remote viewing). If censorship exists, there will be information I don't know I don't know, that I might need to know (or have a chance of finding). I will also be being asked to vote on matters I don't know by your beninign su-committee. Democratic censorship is impossible.
