Young Master Smeet
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TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:A good point YMS and as I always say I wouldn’t want someone taking out my appendix who was not ‘authorised’ to do so. However, what if the ‘authorised’ person started to remove healthy lungs instead of an unhealthy appendix and an ‘authorised’ captain started to deliberately sink the ship. What then? Take it up with your branch? Failing that then take it to conference? Or would another mechanism be required? If so. which one?
Well, if someone started taking out my lungs without authorisation, I suspect there'd be damn all I could do about it, since I'd be unconconscious with my lungs hanging out. You are right, though, that taking the matter to a proper democratic channels would be the correct way to deal with and remove/sack an aberrant official, however, like your evil surgeon, if the captain were trying to sink the ship during a storm, or similar emergency, there'd be no way to remove him through nice channels (and I doubt you'd necessarily notice, again, until it were too late).The point is, yes, officials would be subject to democratic appointment and dismissal, and there would have no interest separate from the group they were serving, and by and large we would have to show self discipline by sticking by the democratically and agreed rules of the activity/workplace/organisation.Of course, now isn't the time to come up with details Laws of the Sea Under Socialism, or guidebooks for medical practitioners, at best we can come up with general principles.
And here's Kautsky:http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1892/erfurt/ch04a.htm
Kautsky wrote:It is true that socialist production is irreconcilable with the full freedom of labor, that is, with the freedom of the laborer to work when, where and how he wills. But this freedom of the laborer is irreconcilable with any systematic, co-operative form of labor, whether the form be capitalist or socialist. Freedom of labor is possible only in small production, and even there only up to a certain point. […] Freedom of labor has come to an end, not only in the factory, but wherever the individual worker is only a link in a long chain of workers. It does not exist either for the manual worker or for the brain worker employed in any industry. The hospital physician, the school teacher, the railroad employee, the newspaper writer – none of these enjoy the freedom of labor; they are all bound to certain rules, they must all be at their post at a certain hour.Or, put anyother way, once you've chosen to commit to a project, obligations apply. We could take the option of not having advanced industry, but once we do, we'll need to have ways of transmitting one way signals (which is another way of saying hierarchical)…
Blithering nonsense. In socialism, there will have to be safety officers who, if not obeyed, will mean a worker will have to leave the site. There'll still be captains of the ship, who will have to be obeyed at sea. The difference is, they will be chosen from among the crews and will have no material benefit to their position, no more than the captain of a Sunday football team. The difference being, chiefly, that there will be limits to their authority, but authority they will have and authorities there will be.
Robot waiters, in China. They have over 20 in one restaurant, and they can work non-stop for five hours at a time..'Nuff said:http://www.thestar.com/ajax/photoplayer/1315323
Speaking of 3D printers…http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20972018
Quote:imagine if this cut of meat, just perfect for your Sunday dinner, had been made from scratch – without slaughtering any animal. US start-up Modern Meadow believes it can do just that – by making artificial raw meat using a 3D bioprintesee, we don't need the real world any more, we'll make our meat in nice clean factories, and no horses involved (obviously, the recent horse scandal is just food adulteration by profit seeking once again). There might be fun ethical debates about VAT grown flesh, but the idea that we can produce meat by cutting the land use, and possibly turning the land over to either re-wilding (build some vertical farms while we're at it) or redesignate for vegetables or biofuel crops, is quite exciting. Remember, meat farming is a massive source of greenhouse gasses. The possibility of making all communities food secure is quite exciting.
Quote:Are they votes that we would want if they have a straight choice between voting socialism or reforms and choose the latter?Not really, but it clarifies the vote we got back last year. And if those people might come to us at a later stage, so we know there's a "fringe" if you will, who we can speak to.
Ian Bone has ben doing his 'memory of the class' routine again, and reminds us of the Limerick Soviethttp://ianbone.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/limerick-workers-occupy-hmv-shop-shades-of-the-limerick-soviet/http://www.limericksoviet.com/
Quote:The Limerick Soviet (Irish: Sóivéid Luimnigh) was a self-declared soviet that existed from 15 to 27 April 1919. At the beginning of the Irish War of Independence, a general strike was organised by the Limerick Trades and Labour Council, as a protest against the British army's declaration of a "Special Military Area" under the Defence of the Realm Act, which covered most of Limerick city and a part of the county. The soviet ran the city for the period, printed its own money and organised the supply of food. [1]Congrats on a good fight, and a not too bad result, 1.3% is our trend result. I suspect if TUSC hadn't have been there we'd have attracted some of their voters, so it's interesting to see the effect of a head-to-head like this (at the GLA election they didn't contest the seats, that may be why we did slightly better last year). Albeit in Labour heartlands, that is a thumping swing to them, a a body blow for Lib-Dems.According to die-hard Labour loyalist Luke Akehursthttp://labourlist.org/2013/01/a-gesture-of-great-political-and-organisational-self-confidence/Labour are looking to retake Bermondsey, and the sort of people who've abandoned the Liberals in Brixton are the same sort as will abandon them there.
Quote:A NEW scheme to put long-term unemployed to work as council workers is being planned by the Government.Up to 3,000 people on the dole for more than two years will be put to work at street cleaning, cutting grass and carrying out road worksWhile such a scheme might not be too bad, in and of itself, it will have to be managed in a way so as not to remove the stick of unemployment. The work won't be meaningful, nor will it be useful work, if that threatens the profits of a commercial firm that would want to do the work.
Hollyhead,well, no, it's not a waste of time, we're contesting the meaning of the word. Admittedly, we can call ourselves the Fishcakes Party and claim that Fishcakes is a moneyless, classless and stateless society of common and democratic ownership, but I think that is harder work.The word "Socialism" contains historical usages/meanings that we can recover and shift back to our needs: but that will only start to take off when people need a word to describe a project like the one I outlined above.
Although his notion of double think is well known, the underlying thesis is broken. His idea was that if you control language and what people say, you will control their minds; however, the apparent truth is that people shape their language through their behaviour, and if a word doesn't exist, they will make one. Whetehr this is down to some innate faculty for language (as per Chomsky) is debatable (and slightly beside the point).The facts are that language is not a mirror of the world, nor is ity necessarily direct. The linguistic philosopher Grice came up with his maxims of implicature, to demonstrate how we communicate by flouting or breaking linguistic rules. That is, that context and discourse determine meaning more than the mere words in themselves. This leads to the revolutionary import of the idea of Marx & Engels in the German Ideology, that social being determines social consciousness.By the same token, the logical positivist J.L. Austin noted that language is performative: we "do things with words". Swearing allegiance to a flag or democracy, even with fingers crossed or with a snigger still remains a declarative perlocution (as the terminology goes), partly because, as noted, language is social, and meaning does not reside internally to the anunciator but in the relations between speaker and hearer: peopel react to our words, and we in turn react to their (or are affected by their choices based on our statements).Language, thus, takes the form of a struggle for meaning and inetrpretation, to define our words and to struggle for understanding of others'.What matters most is what people do with their words, not the words they utter in themselves: for example, a poet praising another's work may be in reality promoting and praising themself by assuming they have the right/capacity to critique (or by inference of similarity). Commitment to high ideals become a means of self promotion, that neglect or forget the practice that underlies those ideas or their actual meaning.
http://www.leninology.com/ (passim)http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/soviets-without-bolsheviks-the-outside-left-organises/http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/towards-a-new-movement-on-what-basis-do-discussions-begin/People are beginning to discuss what outcome could come of the disappearance of the SWP (I think it is likely to crumble, Labour rightists will not let a single opportunity pass to beat the SWP up over the Comrade Delta affair). While Richard 'Lenin' Seymour is playing the role of internal oppositionist (how long this will be tolerated is questionable), and sending out the call "Stay and fight" its unclear how they can, with the incumbant Central Committee holding all the constitutional cards (even a recall conference is subject to the manipulations of the CC, so its doubtful that could topple them). As some people have noted, as good materialists, the SWP has money, and the actual outcome of the factional spat will be who ends up with the assets, if not the toxic brand.So far as I can see, we can only wish well any attempt to form a genuine, broad (however you define it) socialist movement. Our advice is the same as we gave to the occupy movement: you need to have a democratic mechanism to co-ordinate such a movement (we can call such a mechanisms a "Party"), and you need to aim for political action: you can't abandon the field of elections.After that, we can have the discussion about reformism.Nothing would give me greater pleasure than a call to dissolve ourselves into a bigger, democratic and socialist organisation. Until such a movement adequately addresses the question of Party, Political action and Anti-Reformism, we'll need to stand our ground.
Not a lot of time to post, but Ian Bone makes an interesting pont here:http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/why-no-women-leaders-of-trot-groups/and herehttp://ianbone.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/swp-rape-allegation-would-aid-the-edl/
Just a wee point, I've never defended 'arbitrary' deletion, I've given good reasons why, under conditions of democratic accountability, posts may need to be removed from a forum: abusive posts, legally problematic and disruptive (what you call 'off topic') posts. Now, you accept that there needs to be a moderator who can remove legally problematic and abusive posts, and I've made the case that disruptive ("off topic") posts are a breed of censorship in themselves, and also deserving of deletion.
SocialistPunk wrote:I have highlighted the problematic part of your assertion. You and JC both referred to the deletion of posts as if abusive posts were/are being deleted for our benefit. Especially the benefit of the abused and abuser. Trying to make out that censorship was not arbitrary, but directed and necessary.No, in the context of a general discussion on the principle of moderation, I have outlined the reasoning behind the necessity for such an institution. I have not discussed any concrete case, just general principles.
SocialistPunk wrote:We seem to be in a position were YMS and JC justify censorship on weak grounds. The abuse is still here for all to see and so could not be said to have been censored to protect anybody. It has also been highlighted with a link to it from another party site, by the abused party. So much for your assumption it's removal is beneficial for the abused and the abuser?You don't need to be telepathic to explain your own reasoning on the subject, just consistent.I don't know why the moderators have acted the way they have. I'm only talking about the basic reasons why we need moderation, and the grounds for which I believe it is reasonable to remove posts from the forum.
