Young Master Smeet
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Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:So this website is capitalist? LOL that's funny.
I think you missed my point: within capitalist society, there are vast swathes of areas, of behaviour, interactions and structures that are 'socialistic', i.e. are not performed on the basis of the exchange of commodities with a view to making a profit. However, as we are living within a capitalist society, the interests of capitalists predominate, and these behaviours can only exist where they don't conflict with the interest of profit seeking.Wikipedia is a good example of a starting point for how we could co-operate in socialism, without leaders, without masses of bureaucracy, etc. Ultimately, within capitalism, it depends on the Wikimedia Foundation (and donations).This is a website run by socialists within capitalism.
Gnome,you don't pay per mile, nor does vehicle tax pay for the road, it's a general tax, it just uses vehicles on the road as a means of collection. At most it's like a club membership: you get unlimited usage: but there is no commodity relation. The tax is on the vehicle.
Essentially the same thing: use political power to break a key structure in the system of capitalism, and rely on the expressed will of the vast majority to carry through the changes that result.
Just to play along: Make it a criminal offence to be an employer (In UK terms: to be the master in a contract of service). That, or make strikes legally enforceable: put police on the picket lines!
The communistic bar is quite low: it is when people interract and don't hold property barriers in the way, and share their goods. It's the situation in family life, when you're with your friends: the trick is to turn it into the organising basis of society. So, for all of us, presently, any activity we do ultimately is dependent on commodity production and the need to sell our ability to work: I can only edit wikipedia articles when I'm not selling that ability (I'd never do it at work, honest). In our workplaces, though, we co-operate, and don't put commodity barriers in the way of working together: socialism would extend this to cover the whole of society.
Wikipedia is not a democracy, it works by consensus (which has swings and roundabouts) and Jimmy Wales is the owner/dictator of last resort. In daily practice, anyone can access wikipedia, there is no charge for its articles, and the articles ae produced by volunteers (as are the adminisrators and moderators. It's a great example of free association of producers, and decentralised co-operation.There are downsides: there is a particular demographic who get involved (white under forties males, typically, and American), and consensus leads to some odd results: the case of Chelsea Manning, traditional publishers were able to accomodate the name change, where consensus was difficult on Wikipedia.
gnome wrote:You obviously don't have a motor vehicle. Try accessing your "communist roads" in one without the requisite road tax and insurance and see what happens.Indeed, I don't, my bicycle uses the roads for free: but even road tax is a tax on the vehicle, not on the usage of the roads per se.
LBird wrote:Young Master Smeet wrote:There wasn't much voting in primitive communism.That's why it's called primitive communism, YMS.
But it's still communism.
It is possible to have communism/socialism without democracy: but not, I'd suggest, sustainably nor even desireably. Modern communism needs democracy.
LBird,do you accept that roads are communist? There is no commodity relationship to roads, we all access them freely (exclude toll roads and congestion charge areas, for now). In a democratic polity we would collectively decide what roads to build, but we wouldn't set about saying what the quicket routes between several stops would be, people would travel down the roads freely.
The point is they are working towards a scientific commons, one regulated and sustained communally, in which we will all share the benefit. This is an interesting event, as much klike our communist roads, this is actually existing communism.
ALB wrote:I don't know if anyone else noticed it, but someone has posted in another section here that the BBC are charging £1000 for every minute of material from their archives:http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tv/production/articles/archive-rights-clearancesAnd, more relevently:http://www.bbcmotiongallery.com/
So, taking Engels' article as a starting point, we can look at the in-built advantages the wealthy have in the electoral system: they (at the turn of the 20th Century) occupied all the corridors of power, had all the money and controlled the means of communication.So, the 20th century has seen an expansion of the civil service, meaning people from a non-traditionally bourgeois background have risen to high office, and the gate keepers of the universities have (to some extent) been opened up. Labour has at least helped that, and been a useful conduit for ambitious workign class people to rise in politics both electorally and through the appointed bureaucracy.Money: the wealthy dominate the political spending, Labour gets plenty of money from millionaires, as well as its millions from trade unions (trade unions have traditionally been on the conservative end of the party, because, well, they're in business, and I think this fits in with my theme of the need to udnerstand the working class does have a stake in capitalism and sees avenues other than socialism to its advantage). Unions are a key conduit of labour propaganda, and shape and enforce the pro-market side of the party.The unions also provide the labour backbone of the party, officials and organisers have the time to campaign and build a party, (and also 'middle class' professionals too have the space and freedom topush to the front of the political edge of the party, and become candidates).To borrow from Chomsky & Herman's propaganda model, it's a series of filters that makes it harder for any radical notion to get to the front of the party: as we've seen with Corbyn, he jumped one filter, by getting elected, to run into the filter of sitting MPs and journalists who genunely cannot understand him.So, what I'm suggesting is:1) Filters make it easier to go along with existing structures.2) The capitalist class have in-built home advantage in those structures.3) The lived experience and interest of the working class, or the politically engaged/active sections, is fulfilled by labour.4) Workers whose politics extends merely to voting operate a gift relationship with those who capture the political levers.
Actually, this article:https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/02/22.htmBy Engels, has aged well.
Quote:Nobody holds it against the “labour leaders” that they would have liked to get into Parliament. The shortest way would have been to proceed at once to form anew a strong workers’ party with a definite programme, and the best political programme they could wish for was the People’s Charter. But the Chartists’ name was in bad odour with the bourgeoisie precisely because theirs had been an outspokenly proletarian party, and so, rather than continue the glorious tradition of the Chartists, the “labour leaders” preferred to deal with their aristocratic friends and be .'respectable,” which in England means acting like a bourgeois. Whereas under the old franchise the workers had to a certain extent been compelled to figure as the tail of the radical bourgeoisie, it was inexcusable to make them go on playing that part after the Reform Bill had opened the door of Parliament to at least sixty working-class candidates.
