ZJW
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In your untiring and commendable daily perusal of alternative news sites, do not neglect (if you do) the following:(- where you yesterday would have seen this great little history —2) The US (market-)libertarian site https://www.antiwar.com .3) https://www.wsws.org (where, despite all, there is now and then something worth reading.)(Not necessarily just in connection with the zionism-topic of course.)
Excellent. But a trigger-warning to the reviewer: this book contains long sex scenes as well as neo-genderal phenomena. This can be distressing to certain older readers.
Ok. Thanks for the further clarification.
If there is no such thing as a down-vote I have nothing against it.
I didn’t ask *what*, I asked *why*.
Since you and I both are familiar with it from libcom, this is precisely the reason why I wonder what you find positive about it.
I think it’s meaningless, and, in fact a terrible, distraction.
Say, the IdPolist and the anti-IdPolists are at polemics (to give just *one* example). Those on the one side will vote down posters from the other side, and vice-versa. And I’m sorry to to say that juvenile as that is, I find myself drawn into doing it as well. Can’t let the side down after all.
That’s my case ‘against’. What’s your case ‘for’?
By the way, off the topic, what book-gift did you finally settle on for the 12-year old niece-or-nephew? (Not the graphic novel about Luxemburg that KAZ had ‘heard good things about’ I hope! It’s a disgrace.)
ALB, your #184020 and #184022:
Has this been — so far — the end of it? The theme has not been taken up certain sections of the media, or repeated by other politicians, that sort of thing?
How fitting that the article in the link appears to be by none other than Cory Doctorow, author of the communistico-futurist novel ‘Walkaway’.I don’t think I have ever read a piece of fiction whose readability is of such low uniformity. Around the middle, I nearly deleted it, but at the other extreme, there may be as much as a fifth or more of it of it that I can say I liked well enough that I don’t regret having read it.What’s the content? Society is divided into two parts: a) The ‘Default’ (ie mainstream, normal propertarian society); b) the Walkaway zone (or zones).What kind of things are in the story?1) Personalistics; 2) Technology sufficiently advanced (it’s c. 2070) that a group of people can fairly easily DIY anything. (Not too clear why this is not done much in ‘Default’. I suppose because of property / patent enforcement. ) The Walkaway zone is then a society of free-access material abundance, or potentially so. 3) A lot of talk about cybernetics and the web, plus discussion of, and practice of, life-extension; 4) military assault by ‘Default’ against the Walkaway zone(s); ( and sometimes fraternisation of the assaulting military). There much much much too much of (1), a lot of it quite idiotic.(If I remember correctly there is some conflict between free-accessors and a small minority who who believe in ‘remuneration’ (in kind?) based on labor-perfomed/recorded.)@alanjjohnstone, your #184082:
*Why* should it have a vote up or vote down application??
Richard B Lee:
‘Hunter-Gatherers and Human Evolution: New Light on Old Debates’ (2018):
Robbo-I mean for example —etc, and so forth.I am not a Facebook user, but I can access these. So, that’s what I mean by ‘made public access’.(There’s no doubt a more correct term that’s specific to FB use.)Re ALB’s #182772.quote:
‘and use it to disposses the capitalist class and coordinate the introduction of socialism. ‘
Am I right in thinking that there have been two tendencies of thought in this area, one relatively ‘negativist’ and the other relatively ‘positivist’?
Three quotes from ‘What’s Wrong with using Parliament?:
a) ‘The state is an instrument of coercion, but it has assumed social functions that have to exist in any society and which have nothing to do with its coercive nature: it has taken over the role of being society’s central organ of administration and co-ordination. Gaining control of the state will at the same time give control of this social organ which can be used to coordinate the changeover from capitalism to socialism. Of course, it couldn’t be used in the form inherited from capitalism; it would have to be reorganised on a thoroughly democratic basis, with mandated and recallable delegates and popular participation replacing the unaccountable professional politicians and unelected top civil servants of today.’
b) ‘Better to use the fact of being the majority to take control of the state via elections and parliament, if only to neutralise it.’
c) ‘This is not to say that the socialist majority only needs to organise itself politically. It does need to organise politically so as to be able to win control of political power. But it also needs to organise economically to take over and keep production going immediately after the winning of political control. We can’t anticipate how such socialist workplace organisations will emerge, whether from the reform of the existing trade unions, from breakaways from them or from the formation of completely new organisations. All we can say now is that such workplace organisations will arise and that they too, like the socialist political party, will have to organise themselves on a democratic basis, with mandated delegates instead of leaders.’
From Cooking the Books ‘Transition Period’ in the Jan 2019 SS:
‘This second point is important in that some have imagined this ‘transition’ as lasting decades. However, once the material conditions for ending class ownership have evolved – once production has become ‘socialised’ in the sense of being the collective, co-operative effort of the whole workforce – then the change can be made rapidly. The contradiction between socialised production and minority ownership can be achieved by ending the monopoly control, whether in law or in fact, of the minority over the means of production. What is required to do this is a political decision to withdraw state protection (via the law, police, armed forces, and courts) for this monopoly. There is no reason why this should take any length of time. It just requires a political decision and its implementation; which of course assumes that the working class has won control of political power and is organised to implement its decision.’
Quote (b) and the quote from Cooking the Books refer to a ‘negative’ (or ‘neutralising’) use; quote (a) refers to a ‘positive’ use. Perhaps it is my De Leonist and council communist side but I would think that the greater the role of workplace organisation (quote (c) ) comes into play, the less need for the ‘positive’ use of the (now democratised remainder of the old) state.
ALB-
His reply along with a reply back will be printed in the March SS, correct?(In the back of my mind is a back-and-forth with Mr Parecon in the April 2006 SS (I think), which was highly instructive. )I don’t know whose FB https://www.facebook.com/groups/2126150080743426/ is, but since it is has not been made public-access, those of use who are not Facebook users are not able to see any of it whatsoever. Perhaps someone would send them a message suggesting they do so?
Here is Reynolds’ book’s table of contents:
Unrelated to that, the table of contents to (finally published) Gilles Dauvé: ‘From Crisis to Communisation’:Oh right. Thanks.
New question:
A lot — not all — of the links at https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/article/study-guides/study-guides/
result in ‘Oops that page can’t found’.
(I wanted to read the one titled
‘Overdetermination and Marxian Theory: A Socialist View of the Work of Richard Wolff and Stephen Resnick’)
