Socialism

[FutureTaoiseach]

Ideological orthodoxy whereby every tenet of a particular ideology is swallowed unquestioningly, is not the correct basis for solving the world's problems. The world is too complex for all the answers to be in some book by Marx and Engels, or indeed Adam Smith etc. We should pick and choose what suits the situation i.e. pragmatism.

It does not make sense in particular, to argue as Socialists tend to, that everything beneficial to society e.g. female suffrage, gay rights, came about due to "class-struggle", especially as the leaders of the suffragettes were upper class.

[Engels]

Future Taoiseach wrote:

It does not make sense in particular, to argue as Socialists tend to, that everything beneficial to society e.g. female suffrage, gay rights, came about due to "class-struggle", especially as the leaders of the suffragettes were upper class.[/quote]

Socialists/Marxists don't argue this as far as I'm aware. Most gains are won through struggle an have to be defended by struggle that is the
case [/quote]

[Engels]

Conflict over ethnicity, geographical borders, succession rights, resources, religion etc, have all been as important historically as class. More so indeed I would argue.

Classical Marxism does argue that socialism is a science and is inevitable. Indeed that is the very thing that Marx and Engels distinguished as the difference between themselves and the so-called "Utopian socialists". like Robert Owen, Proudhon, Fourier et al.

I don't disagree that there are periodic attempts to roll back the social gains made over the past century or so. However, democracy inevitably means that there has to be compromise between conflicting parties. There is no more chance of the radical right destroying those social gains under democracy, than there is of the radical left instituting socialism.

1. Class struggle has been the motor force of history - even capitalism though most of it's leaders would hate to admit it was born from revolution and class struggle - the means of production under Feudalism were too inhibiting for the real development of produciton and distribution which resulted in revolution and the emeging capitalist class taking power . The other issues you refer to religion, ethnicity etc are certainly factors in historical change but they have taken second place to class and the struggle over economic change.

2. The point about the inevitabiltiy of socialism is that I don't think it will just happen, there is no grand final collapse of capitalism it needs to be overthrown and economic control wrested from those who are a fetter on the development of the economy i.e. private owners.
Socialism is the next step in history's progression, how and when it will progress is unclear it needs conscious development and organisation - it's certainly not inevitable in my life time though obviously possible

3. You seem to imply that democracy is something "independent" not the ownership of any class in particular - democray does not prevent the rolling back of social gains by the right - democracy is always at the whim of the ruling class - the British ruling class gave serious consideration to a coup in Britain in the 70's to overthrow a labour gov, US imperialism has orchestrated the collapse of many democratically elected governments when they were not getting their own way, recent attempts in venezuela are just one example, German capitalism used Hitler to smash the german working class and democracy. The reason why radical right groups have had temporary success in rollong back gains is precisely because of the size and strength of the working class and the power it pocesses to stop these attacks. The only compromise under capitalism is to accept inequality, poverty, unemployment, environmental disasters, war,famine etc - I don't accept that, you obviously do. The idea that with all the wealth on this planet it is not possible to provide a decent standard of living is absurd in my opinion - the resources and wealth exists it is just in the control of those who couldn't give a toss.

[popper]

You say that "socialism is the next step in history's progressions".

That assumes two things. First of all, that socialism is inevitable and secondly that 'progress' is inevitable. Both of these are absurd propositions. It places "scientific socialism" on the same intellectual level as the Seventh Day Adventists or the Branch Davidian sect.

Of course there is conflict between classes and other groups within society. That is where human creativity comes from. Once you supress that conflict, as was attempted under the former socialist states, you kill human initiative, spontaniety, inventiveness and art. Indeed you only have to look at the art produced under socialism to see that the only worthwhile writing, music and painting came from those who were in opposition to totalitarianism: Mayakovsky, Shostokovich, Solzhenitsyn et al.

Economic and social inequality is also inevitable. It has existed under every known form of social organisation, including socialism. That is not to say that attempts should not be made to ameliorate this. Indeed western democracies have come closer than any others to eradicating extreme poverty. Not because the wealthy and powerful wanted to - although many of them did - but mainly because popular forces were able through democracy to win social and economic gains.

[Engels]

You say that "socialism is the next step in history's progressions".

That assumes two things. First of all, that socialism is inevitable and secondly that 'progress' is inevitable. Both of these are absurd propositions. It places "scientific socialism" on the same intellectual level as the Seventh Day Adventists or the Branch Davidian sect.

Of course there is conflict between classes and other groups within society. That is where human creativity comes from. Once you supress that conflict, as was attempted under the former socialist states, you kill human initiative, spontaniety, inventiveness and art. Indeed you only have to look at the art produced under socialism to see that the only worthwhile writing, music and painting came from those who were in opposition to totalitarianism: Mayakovsky, Shostokovich, Solzhenitsyn et al.

Economic and social inequality is also inevitable. It has existed under every known form of social organisation, including socialism. That is not to say that attempts should not be made to ameliorate this. Indeed western democracies have come closer than any others to eradicating extreme poverty. Not because the wealthy and powerful wanted to - although many of them did - but mainly because popular forces were able through democracy to win social and economic gains.

Was capitalism a progression on Feudalism, Feudalism a progression on Slavery, Progress Absurd? History has been a series of progressions? Your thesis would imply that this is it? That is absurd and denies history.

Human creativity surely comes from human talent and the interaction with the world around them - conflict is not a pre requisite to creativity.

Economic and social inequality are not inevitable. They are if we have private ownership of wealth and live in a society where profit comes first - but that is not ineviatable. Socialism in my understanding and Marx, trotsky Lenin and Engels etc hasn't existed so no point using it as an example of inequality. The Soviet Union was not a socialist country it was a bureaucratic dictatorship. The biggest western "democracy" i.e. the US has the biggest gap between rich and power of any society in the world.

[popper]

There has been economic and technical progress over the past 5/600 years, but the post-Enlightenment age is the only one that sees progress in the way you do. Economic, technical, and even social progress is certainly a product of the Enlightenment (some would even argue more specifically that it is a product of captialism) but it is not inevitable nor is it shared by most historical periods or by most of the existing cultures on the planet. Buddhism, Hinduism, fundamentalist Islam have no concept of progress in the way that we (as in western Europeans) do. Marxism is therefore a product of the Enlightenment in as much as it claims to share in those values. However, in so far as it claims that history is following a definite path inevitably leading to socialism it is irrational.

It is entirely possible that for whatever reason: resource shortage, climatic cathastrophe, war, totalitarianism, that we could see a return to similar periods of ignorance, obscurantism and misery that existed in the past. Ironically the nearest thing we have at the present moment is North Korea, one of the few surviving socialist states.

Finally I do not accept that the USSR and its allies were not socialist, or that all of its flaws stemmed from one man - Joseph Vissaronovich Stalin. (A strikingly subjective and unMarxist view of history in fact!). The flaws were systemic and came about from the attempted implementation of Marxism-Leninism. It was, as you appear to admit, an unmitigated disaster. It was, nonetheless, still socialism.

[ibis]

Was capitalism a progression on Feudalism, Feudalism a progression on Slavery, Progress Absurd? History has been a series of progressions? Your thesis would imply that this is it? That is absurd and denies history.

Was feudalism an advance on the Late Roman Empire? Was the Roman Empire an advance on the Roman Republic? Were the Aztecs an advance on the Toltecs?

[Worldbystorm]

If class struggle has not been the "main" catalyst of historical change, what has? I have never said in any post nor do I believe that socialism is inevitable. Revolutionary struggle is inevitable, the organised working class seeking ways to change the unjust, anarchic economic model of capitalism is inevitable but the sucessful construction of of a socialst model is far from inevitable.

Social democracy at different times has meant different things, marxists were described as social democrats in the early part of the last century.

How can you describe the era of neo liberal capitalism i.e. the current economic epoch as one of "compromise" - there is a deconsturction of many of the social gains won by the working class in the last century taking place. Social democratic parties have rested on reformism rather than revolution they have always attempted to win concessions from the ruling class and did so at different stages but as I said in this era of neo liberalism they in many cases are the parties carrying out the attcks of the bourgeois on the very gains that they helped to win, Schroeder in Germany, Blair in Britain etc -this is no compromise this is simply capitulation to the dictatorship of market forces.

While I would ascribe class as a major, perhaps as the major factor of change, like popper and ibis I can think of at least two other motors of change, technological progress and elite conflicts. How else to explain the long fallow period of the Dark Ages where feudal societies remained extremely stable? Or the fact that in other societies outside the west there was remarkable stability. It strikes me technological change is one of 'the' catalytic agent which can impel class struggles forward - hence the industrial revolution in many respects led to 1917 and welfarism.

The problem is that a reasonably objective reading of the current environment does not point to a 'deconstruction of the social gains', if anything there has been a strengthening of these gains (consider labour laws, safety and health rights, increased social welfare and a broader application of welfare, child benefit, employment schemes, education schemes - the broadly positive impact of EU legislation on these areas as well). I find it remarkable, and remember I work in education as well as rather vaguely politics, how much social support there is compared to ten years ago, and in comparison to the dark 1980s - well there is no comparison. Now of course, much of this was driven by increasing prosperity, but much of it was also driven by pragmatic and sensible schemes thought out by people in FF/FG who wouldn't describe themselves as socialists or social democrats in order to increase economic output and improve the quality of life in this country. It hasn't worked universally, there is still deprivation and poverty, but there is no 'deconstruction' going on. And take the UK, yes Thatcher and the Conservatives did attempt to roll back aspects of the post-war welfarist dispensation (so-called Butskellism), but even she was unable to dismantle it, and New Labour has proven to be mighty redistributionist in practice and extremely pro-education, particularly for the young and those seeking work.

It's hard even to believe that this is a truly 'neo-liberal' period. I don't see any sign that we or our European partners are undergoing say the Chilean experience in the late 1970s and early 1980s, or even a US style rightward drift (and even that is overplayed since the US is now back to the sort of state expenditures not seen since the height of the Reagan years - problem being they have no apparent means to fund this expenditure). Quite the opposite in fact. I think the language you use is telling, attack, dictatorship and so on. It's only by framing the situation in these terms that it's possible to spin it in a negative fashion. In real terms working people in Europe are reasonably well off, their standards of living are increasing at a reasonable rate. The welfare nets are not being slashed. Employment remains stable to very good. This could of course change.

Finally I think it is up to marxists and socialists to clearly state the sort of society they envisage. My bookshelves are groaning under various books, stuff by Foot, Harrison, Gramsci, Garaudy, Hobsbawm and so on and so forth and yet I can think of only two instances where a reasonably clear outline of a future 'socialist' society is given, one by Andre Gorz and the other in an essay in the CPGB/Marxism Today 'New Times' book from the late 1980s. And even these aren't greatly detailed. By contrast we know exactly what's on the tin in relation to other political parties - and basically it's more social democracy with a left or right tinge. In a situation where marxists and socialists have done abysmally badly when putting their theories into practice devolving to totalitarian states it's going to take considerable selling to convince people that such a society is a good idea. And I suspect that might be an impossible sell given the previous track record.

[Pax]

Alternatively all property could be held in trust for all of the people by some entity which they would ideally elect and control. This entity would make all decisions about production, prices, wage levels, investments etc. Only a vast bureaucracy could achieve this. And however benign it may be, however brilliant, honest and hardworking its members were, it would be extremely inefficient. This is because, in the absence of free markets, the bureaucracy has to make billions of decisions every year, and they all have to be consistent in delivering a planned outcome. It cannot be done. The Soviets had the most brilliant mathematical economists in the world. In Lenin they had one of the most brilliant politicians of all time. They wrestled long and hard with these problems and they failed.

Eventually people would get fed up. If they had a right to elect anyone they wanted to the bureaucracy, at some stage a PD type party would emerge and would get elected. They would privatise everything and introduce free markets. Socialism would be undone. That is a key problem of socialism – if it is democratic then it is in theory reversible. Lenin understood this, that is why he invented the concept of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Castro understands this also. To make capitalism illegal you have to abolish democracy. I don’t see any way around this.

I'm not so sure that the bureaucracy would go hand in hand with such a system today and I'm thinking of a thread I started recently,titled Allende's 'Socialist Internet'! on what Allende had started in Chile. Changing technology could make viable what was previously not.

Indeed saying 'capitalism will eat itself' is not childish naivety but real world honesty and is, in other words a succinct way of highlighting the mathematical impossibility of capitalism. Never ending growth in a finite world is not possible nor is growth alone a solution. We have to live within what is biologically possible and not what's impossible.
Money is all about trust, if those that control it are to be seen to be living within a fantasy then that money becomes a worthless piece of paper or lump of metal. Money is an agreement within a community to use something as means of exchange. Take money created due to a loan-as money does not exist prior to it-would you loan (create money) based on a fantasy, an impossibility? Every euro or pound or dollar you've seen, physically or in a bank account, originates somewhere as a loan to someone through the banking system. That's the origin of money. What is the destination of a system where fantasy is it's bedrock?....
In response to this, imo, a working transmogrification of capitalism can result in something that cannot be called capitalism as we know it.

So I think blindly denouncing those on the fringes who push for reforms that could very well improve things when in place, can come, as I know myself, from a defending against one's own 'sold out' acceptance of the status quo. You know, sometimes the 'extremes' get it right..If there's a cure to the ills of today then why not allow people seek a remedy? See 1) for the alternatives particularly the recent Participatory Economics ...

After all if there never were the catalysts or the eh entrepreneurs of change, change which might work when implemented or not, then we wouldn't be where we are now. Therein lies sclerotic stasis with what currently 'works' (“There is no alternative” (TINA)ism) for fear of what might come in the future or even non/wrongly-implemented good ideas of the past.

And when I say 'works' I mean in the same way as how many within the command economy and Soviet system could not see the obvious failings or listen to their critics from within. The very same can be seen in a globalised system where the one rule to rule us all is neoliberalism (very democratic..) despite it's own quite obvious and abhorent failings and it's almost communistic flight path 2)) Even proposing, Fiacc, your last paragraph of your full post “create a social-democratic system” in opposition to this is seen as radical at the global level when imo this is almost centrist!

Either way once such good systems are in place to the benefit of a majority of a population and/or electorate then it's extremely hard for conservative forces-within whatever contexts-to either turn back the clock or prevent further necessary change. For them to do so requires a near propagandist co-opting of the media and scientific process in order to distort impartial empirical analysis of what constitutes an improvement to the greatest number whether today, tomorrow or even the past. But even seemingly interminable success in this is never permanent, necessary change is too hard and indeed dangerous- due to unintended consequences-, to stop.

To see how hard it is for conservatives to go Thatcherite or whatever I refer to European and Scandinavian nations where systems are virtually untouchable by both left and right because they work so efficiently and they're just too popular. So I would disagree that this is an either or situation in that socialism and democracy are not mutually exclusive, the degrees of collectivism, co-operation and competition must be in flux in that you really can't have socialism without giving an impartially informed people a say. I would go so far as to say that socialism and democracy are more cohesive bedfellows whereas democracy and the free market are competitors rather than partners i.e. as shown in the need, in the past and recently, for democratic state intervention. In fact perhaps it should be a responsibility of citizenship both to vote and, within reason, to remain informed within such a system...

In democratic societies, people have the right to vote for parties which promise to reverse historical progress. There is nothing to prevent people from voting for parties which guarantee to bring back slavery or feudalism or military dictatorship. (And it has happened – Iranians voted for a theocratic dictatorship).

They did, but it was poisoned by negative outside interventions, as in prior to that they voted for democratic socialism under Mossadeq but the Iranian democracy was subverted by the Americans and the British coup to protect British Petroleum and appoint the dictator the Shah. Compare this to the postive intervention of billions pumped into the, still imperfect, Israeli democracy. A democracy free of self serving, foreign supported coups ...



------------------
1)

Paths Toward an Anti-Capitalist Liberation

http://www.zmag.org/parecon/indexnew.htm
Or read Parecon Life After Capitalism by MICHAEL ALBERT 2003
which can be read for nowt below,

http://www.zmag.org/books/pareconv/parefinal.htm

Introduction
Most everybody I see knows the truth
but they just don’t know that they know it.
— Woody Guthrie

The British Victorian liberal thinker John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) tells us that we ...

are not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other’s heels which form the existing type of social life are the most desirable lot of human beings.

The American social critic Noam Chomsky says he ...
would like to believe that people have an instinct for freedom, that they really want to control their own affairs. They don’t want to be pushed around, ordered, oppressed, etc., and they want a chance to do things that make sense like constructive work in a way that they control, or maybe control together with others.

If “trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading” are not the “most desirable lot” for humanity, what is? If humanity should not aspire to create an elite minority joyfully dancing atop a suffocating mountainous majority, what should we aspire to? If the instinct to not be “pushed around, ordered, oppressed” and to do “constructive work in a way that [we] control” deserves exploring, where should we begin? .....

Also see,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_Economics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participat ... ry_defense
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participat ... of_markets


2)
See the report by the New Economics Foundation

Growth isn’t working: The unbalanced distribution of benefits and costs from economic growth

http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/12345ne ... rking.aspx
http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/z_sys_p ... px?pid=219

world economy giving less to poorest in spite of global poverty campaign says new research 23/01/06

World's poorest see 73 per cent drop in share of benefits from growth in last decade according to new research from nef released as World Economic Forum gathers in Davos. nef's report shows that globalisation is failing the world's poorest.

nef's report "Growth isn't working: the uneven distribution of benefits and costs from economic growth", released on Monday 23 January 2006, shows that globalisation is failing the world's poorest as their share of the benefits of growth plummet, and accelerating climate change hurts the poorest most. ...

Growth isn’t working: the uneven distribution of benefits and costs from economic growth, shows that globalisation is failing the world’s poorest as their share of the benefits of growth plummet, and accelerating climate change hurts the poorest most.

The report, the first in nef's series of 'Re-thinking poverty' reports, reveals that the share of benefits from global economic growth reaching the world’s poorest people is actually shrinking, while they continue to bear an unfair share of the costs. New figures show that growth was less effective at passing on benefits to the poorest in the 1990’s than it was even in the 1980’s- the so-called ‘lost decade for development’ - and an age of rising climate chaos will worsen their prospects.

The report says that the notion that global economic growth is the only way of reducing poverty for the world’s poorest people is the self-serving rhetoric of those who already enjoy the greatest share of world income. It's authors argue that to achieve real progress we need to change in the way we think about and discuss economic issues, and break out of the confines of mainstream economic thinking. We also need a shift in power relations, both globally and nationally, to move power from developed countries, elites and commercial interests to the majority of the world’s population, the poor.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/developm ... 23,00.html
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1692556,00.html
Poor see fewer benefits from economic growth: report

I'm a bit out of touch on the latest cutting-edge socialist thinking.

Have socialists moved beyond the whole "bourgeois democratic revolution", "world-wide proletarian revolution", and "socialism in one country" debates yet?

Which view has prevailed - Leninism, Trotskyism or Stalinism?

Like, what's the deal with Joe Higgins? Does he regard himself as an internationalist proletarian, or an Irishman?