Young Master Smeet
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Exactly, and detailed discussions of how exactly we'll allocated houses, who will work the farm rota, will there be beer and fags in Socialism do not reach out to a broad audience. Two questions:1) Can you run your own life?2) Do you want to?We run the world now, why not run it for ourselves? We know it's possible, the technology, skills and resources are there, it just takes the decision. Continually asking 'but whatabout?' and 'how' just defers the decision. When the revolution is tomorrow, we'll work out the detail, all of us, in a big movement.
See, Medieval defenders of the existing order used to use Aesop's Belling of the Cat as an anti-communist story: the mice know they need to bell the cat, but will never do it, and spend their time arguing over who will bell the cat and how. the point is, at this stage, we need to get everyone to agree:1) That the cat needs to be belled.2) That the cat is bellable.3) That we can live without a cat.We only ned the abstract possibility of living without capitalism, to choose to try and live without it. Me, I want socialism to be full of gleaming glass spires, England to be concreted over and turned into a Site of Special Scientific Unnatural Ugliness. These are the arguments we can have when the cat is gone.
Ralph wrote:Good question, I'm going to assume you mean slavery in the traditional sense of the word rather than wage slavery (since the two are clearly very different). So it comes down then to whether I believe it's easy to abolish slavery and whether the outcome of doing so is clearly not going to be detrimental to those enslaved, if there were many billions of slaves and the abolishment of slavery suggested the possibility that they might starve or become shelterless through a miscalculation of events then yes of course I would question it – not whether it should happen but most certainly how it should happen.Well, in the US, the chattel slaves numbered millions, and unlike workers, weren't running society from top to bottom. Nice to know you'd keep slavery, for the good of the slaves, obviously.The point is: we know how to organise our own lives, our own organisations; we have examples of non-commodity society from throughout history, and we have the technology and the know how to create abundace. We don't need to pronounce how exactly housing would be allocated, since there are so many ways to choose from, and doubtless in different bits of the world, different ways will be used. We are not selling a product, a Thing called socialism, but calling for the abolition of wage slavery, and for us to take control of our lives as free human beings.
Ralph wrote:I'm not wanting answers of course but there are thousands of questions just like these that need consideration, let's not assume that it would just work, because it wouldn't, everyone who would buy into the concept would inevitably have some expectation of the outcome, they would be asking these kind of questions, so why not sit down and try and work it out. Consider every way something can fail, preempt solutions or do something a different way and perhaps you end up with a working model something believable for wider consideration.Would you ask such questions of a campaign to abolish slavery?
Ralph wrote:Some interesting broad concepts, so what is the detail plan to bring about Socialism then ? How do you propose we get there and what does it look like when we do ?The thing is, we know how to run an economy co-operatively: it's what we do in all our workplaces everyday. We don't dicker and bargain with our colleagues or calculate the cost of every task, we have an open ended approach to work with each other and our teams. We go to the stationery cupboard, or the chemicals stores, or the woodshed, and take what we need to do the job, and other colleagues ensure that the stores are well stocked.Socialism is about extending that co-operation outwards from within firms across the whole community, as a conscious association. That is detailed enough.
I'll reiterate my answer: it's not one vote, one time, one answer, but many votes: and the context of the votes is clearly important. 50.000001% is enough, in the right context.
A confirmatory referendum would be perfectly sensible, indeed, I suspect there'd be several. There would be big differences, an election with sufficient support for the change would have happee first, and the predominant party would be in charge, and would have expressly announced a referendum; th party in power would more likely than not have a detailed plan/programme that it would be asking to be confirmed (as well as a detailed description of what each result of the referendum would mean), t wouldn't be a weird #referendum to not ave socialism. It would also have detailed opportunities for a fresh election after the results. I'd also expect some sort of citizens assembly/jury to look at th detail of the question and the process.I doubt it would be a referendum for 'socialism' but a referendum on the key aspects: "Should all residential properties be brought into comon ownership, and a right to housing be assured?' or somesuch.Also, I'd expect the results to be binding.
Quote:There are powerful arguments on both sides. But the crucial point is that, as a matter of law, Article 50 notification commits the UK to withdrawal from the EU, and so is inconsistent with the 1972 act. Withdrawal is the object of the notification, and it is the legal effect. If, at the end of the negotiating period, parliament disagrees with the withdrawal which flows from the notification, there is nothing parliament could then do to prevent our withdrawal from the EU, which would frustrate the 1972 act. Therefore prerogative powers may not now be used.David Pannick in today's times. Basic point, it requires legislation by parliament to withdraw from the EU, MPs may yet frustrate the referendum…
I made a comparison to Yarm, previously, it seems they've just had an exit vote:http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/yarm-in-yorkshire-referendum-reaction-7181126
Quote:Almost 90% of those who voted in yesterday's poll backed the town being moved into North Yorkshire and placed under the control of Hambleton District Council.That'll be ignored…
Quote:The proposal to ignore or undo the vote is unjust. It bears noting that the relatively powerless in our polity – the poor – overwhelmingly supported exit. Ignoring the referendum would be particularly unfair to them. It would not be consistent with treating them as free and equal persons entitled by the law and constitution of their land to a share in self-government, not least since the rationale for ignoring the process in which they participated has so often been framed in terms of outright contempt for them. Any failure to act on the decision made in the referendum that the UK should leave the EU would be a profound betrayal. It would be no mere failure to recognize the perspective of the dispossessed, but would be the betrayal of holding out to them, as to others, a question for decision and then ignoring their decision because one does not like it.There is a real danger to democracy here: a lot of contempt for the electorate from some of the losing side:
Quote:There are very real risks in this flirtation with flouting the decision. The risks are compounded by the rhetoric of much of this discussion, which is often frankly contemptuous of (“stupid, xenophobic”) working class voters and (“senile, selfish”) elderly voters. It is just possible that the interests of working class and middle classes come apart here. And even if, say, working class voters misconceived their material interest, they might reasonably have acted for other ends. In any case, we do not or should not live in a state where disappointed middle class voters get to reverse the decisions they think their ill-informed inferiors have taken.Quite, if the result is overturned, then many people will see an establishment fixing things in their own interest, and learn that only physical force counts, likewise turning to procedural fixes to outmanoevre the ignorant canaille establishes it's own reaction. Likewise, finding out that what they have voted for is just not politically or practically possible leads to disillusion with the politicians that could well lead to new demagogues coming to the head. This is not a pretty place to be in. Cameron deserves opprium for trying to fix a vote and not preparing an exit plan; Johnson deserves brickbats for not having a clear exit plan. In this case, the fault isn't capitalism, it is Tories.
Varoufakis wrote:However, in order to close the model mathematically, the only way to solve the equations is by making assumptions that distance the model from really existing capitalism. So for instance you have to assume that there’s no time and there’s no space, because if you allow time to interfere with your model, or space to enter, you end up with indeterminism. In other words, you end up with a system of equations that cannot be solved or that have an infinity of possible solutions and then you have no predictive power. You can’t say, “well, this is what’s going to happen.”[…]So the gurus, the popes, understood that this theory was examining a postcapitalist world, a world without labor markets, a world without the, you know, labor exploitation, without monopolies, without even the slightest of capacities to alter prices on the behalf of employers, of entrepreneurs, of conglomerates, a world without firms. Because what is a company? A company is a market-free zone, it’s a hierarchy, it’s a small Soviet Union with Gosplan and central planning. If you look at Google, if you look at Microsoft, that’s what it is.
