Gnostic Marxist
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I think that it’s very interesting how this thread has developed, since BD’s humorous crack about the Beatles (and as it happens, his list of favourite artists reads exactly like one of mine!).
It’s brought out the issue of who and how music is produced. Great Men with genius inspiration (a few, very unusual, musical lads, ‘elite art school’ attenders), or socio-historical circumstances (Liverpool being port city with intensely close contact for thousands with American 50s music development, together with the general prosperity post-war, better education beyond 14, more free time to think for many workers, and widespread music scene).
I’d just compare and contrast ‘music’ with ‘matter’, as part of the general discussion.
I think that it’s very interesting how this thread has developed, since BD’s humorous crack about the Beatles (and as it happens, his list of favourite artists reads exactly like one of mine!).
Yes, and just because music is a social product does not automatically mean it has to be subjected to a democratic vote. Democracy is only (rightly) applicable to certain kinds of decisions and not others. Or do you think musicians should not be allowed to play music other than that officially approved by the global population in a mega plebiscite?
I am still waiting to here your view on Marx, LBird. Do you think he was a bourgeois individualist for saying “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”?
robbo203 wrote: “I am still waiting to here your view on Marx, LBird. Do you think he was a bourgeois individualist for saying “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”?”
Christ, robbo, I’ve answered this time and time again – change the record, mate!
We all agree with Marx, I should think. If anyone doesn’t, it makes one wonder why they’re here.
Right, robbo! Who determines ‘free’ and how do they determine ‘free’?
Now, we all want a socio-historical account of ‘free’, preferably accompanied by a musical theme (Baker’s drumming will suit me), to this simple, basic, political and philosophical question.
(and as it happens, his list of favourite artists reads exactly like one of mine!).
Hang on, should the proletariate not have had a vote on that???
Christ, robbo, I’ve answered this time and time again – change the record, mate
Can you cite the particular post(s) where you claim to have answered the question of whether or not Marx was an individualist for saying “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”?”. I don’t recall you ever addressing this question
Right, robbo! Who determines ‘free’ and how do they determine ‘free’?
What constitutes freedom is a social product but, once again, something that is a social product does not have to automatically be determined or defined by a democratic vote or plebiscite of the global population, does it? It can emerge organically out of the interactions of multiple players and this is true of most “social products”
I am waiting expectantly for the day when you finally concede democracy has its limits and cannot possibly be extended to every decision human beings make without – paradoxically enough – undermining the very democratic aspect of communism itself and transforming it into a form of insidious totalitarianism
robbo203 wrote: “…democracy has its limits…”
I don’t suppose that you’ll tell what these limits are, and who determines these limits, and how they do so.
Or are ‘limits’ like ‘matter’?
Perhaps, just like ‘material conditions’, you want ‘limited conditions’ to determine ‘free’?
And seemingly the vast majority of humanity is entirely unaware of these ‘limits’, because only ‘clever individuals’, like you, can determine ‘limits’, and you fear that the ignorant majority will overstep your ‘limits’, and so fear ‘democracy’.
Perhaps you really want ‘limited socialism’, robbo?
robbo203 wrote: “…democracy has its limits…”
I don’t suppose that you’ll tell what these limits are, and who determines these limits, and how they do so.
The limits to democracy will be set democratically and will likely vary according to the particular circumstances. For instance democracy very likely wouldn’t entail a world wide plebiscite on what I was going to have for my breakfast, however democratic decisions about what different types of foodstuffs would be grown might limit my choices to the extent that a breakfast of lark’s tongues in aspic might not be on the menu. However if for some reason there was a pestilant plague of larks, it might be decided (through whatever democratic structure had democratically been decided upon) to get those delicious little song birds back on the menu.
Similarly with music, the amount of resources used to produce musical instruments might be decided by democratic methods, what people use the instruments to play would not. I would argue that the stradivarious violins and the 1950s Les Paul Guitars would be commonly owned and accessed by the most proficient musicians (which again might be decided by some democratic method)
How much of the community resources are used to record and distribute recordings (although the amount of resources used to do this now are far less than they have every been and in a resource rich society should not be an issue) might be decided democratically, what people choose to listen to from what is produced would not.
That’s a good point BD. There are “limits” to socialism as common ownership too. Socialism is the common ownership of the means of producing wealth and not of people’s personnel possessions. When we held outdoor meetings as we used to, we had to repeatedly re-assurance our hecklers that socialism would not mean the common ownership of their tooth brush.
Actually, “common ownership” and “democratic control” are two ways of saying the same thing, from different angles — as if everybody didn’t have an equal opportunity to have a say in deciding how something was used then it wouldn’t be “common” ownership by them (but only by those who did).
So democratic control in socialism does not extend to the what might be called people’s “personnel possessions” (though things which they personally used might be a better term).
In the mid-19th century utopian communist Etienne Cabet’s novel Icaria people were required to wear the same sort of clothes so as to ensure equality. What people chose to wear would be no subject to a vote in socialism anymore than what they chose to eat or what music they chose to listen to, etc — or what to think.
In any event, democracy is not just “the majority having its way and the minority having its say”. It’s more than that. It’s a way of life and a culture which means that there are certain things that should not be decided by a majority decision. Not just what people should eat or wear but much more than that.
A majority might well decide to discriminate against a minority group, but that would infringe the spirit of democracy. In fact, even under the “bourgeois” democracy we know today what a majority can decide is limited by a so-called “bill of rights”. I can’t see the equivalent of that not existing in socialism. Otherwise critics of socialism who criticised it as being “totalitarian democracy” would have a point.
I’m fairly sure I read Marx’s description of the difference between private property and personal property a little while back. (Might have been the Civil War in France, I recently moved house and my books are still all over the place). He used the term abolition of private property in terms of the creation of private private property from the (then historically much more recent) enclosures of what had been common property from which capital had accumulated leding to factories, etc. and personal property, that being homes, furniture and personal posessions, etc.
You are right (of course). Here’s the exact passage from The Civil War in France, written immediately after the bloody suppression of the Commune of Paris in 1871:
“The Commune, they exclaim, intends to abolish property, the basis of all civilization! Yes, gentlemen, the Commune intended to abolish that class property which makes the labor of the many the wealth of the few. It aimed at the expropriation of the expropriators. It wanted to make individual property a truth by transforming the means of production, land, and capital, now chiefly the means of enslaving and exploiting labor, into mere instruments of free and associated labor. But this is communism, “impossible” communism!”
Marx had also said the same thing is the last but one chapter of Capital first published in 1867:
“The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labour of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on cooperation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production.”
I don’t suppose that you’ll tell what these limits are, and who determines these limits, and how they do so.
These have been mentioned often enough on this thread, LBird. You should really be more attentive
There are logistical limits to democracy for example. Recall the UK referendum on staying or leaving the UK. About 35 million voted if I am not mistaken It was massive undertaking in itself. Yet you are proposing that not just one referendum should be held but tens of thousands of referenda every year right across the world involving a global population of nearly 8 billion. If you can’t see the absurdity of that then there is little hope for you LBird
Another limitation is knowledge. You have agreed that there will be specialists in a socialist society. Well, specialists by definition have specialist knowledge in the particular field in which they specialise which lay people lack. Yet you expect lay people – which includes those specialists in other scientific disciplines – to vote on some obscure scientific theory about which they may very have little or no understanding or interest. Again, completely absurd.
Unlike a local community voting to determine where it wants to build a new hospital , there is no point whatsoever in voting for some scientific theory. What purpose does it serve? To date you have never explained. And if you have never explained what happens if hypothetically a global referendum on, say, whether anti matter exists was held and only 0.000057% of the global population bothered to vote. Would the outcome of the referendum be a democratic expression of the “will of the people” to which we must now all conform? Why?
I don’t believe it is up to anyone to determine where the “limits to democracy” lie. These limits will emerge organically. If some people feel something is a worth holding a vote on then let them make a case for this through the various local , regional and global decision-making bodies that will operate in a socialist society
ALB wrote: “Socialism is the common ownership of the means of producing wealth and not of people’s personnel possessions.”
I think that ALB has made a key point, which I think has caused enormous difficulties for those employ ‘materialism’.
When we discuss ‘value’, we are not discussing ‘personal opinions’ about ‘value’, but the production of socio-historic relationships, how they emerged, and how we can change them. If someone tries to understand ‘value’, but insists from the start that they as an individual can determine ‘value’, then they’ll never get to grips with Marx’s views about ‘value’. The same applies to ‘matter’.
The idea, put forward by some here, that ‘democracy’ has ‘limits’, when discussing social production, is clearly mistaken, because only democratically organised humans can determine their own ‘limits’. Once again, those proposing ‘limits’ outside of democratic creation of limits (a manifestation of the bourgeois ruling class idea of ‘fear of the mob’) are really talking about themselves as individuals, rather than their future society’s social production.
In this sense, ‘materialism’ is a discussion about ‘personal possessions’ rather than ‘the means of producing wealth’, which is why when ‘materialists’ are asked about ‘matter’, they revert to individualistic explanations about ‘kicking rocks’, rather than explain by who, why and when ‘matter’ socially emerged.
So, ‘materialism’ leads to a ‘fear of the mob’ mentality. Because ‘materialists’ deny the source of their ‘materialism’ (ie. its source is in their society, not their personal ‘senses’), they are wary of ‘social power’, and pretend that ‘bourgeois individual rights’ are the aim of ‘democratic socialism’, rather than ‘the common ownership of the means of producing wealth’.
The idea, put forward by some here, that ‘democracy’ has ‘limits’, when discussing social production, is clearly mistaken, because only democratically organised humans can determine their own ‘limits’.
So where does the following statement
The limits to democracy will be set democratically and will likely vary according to the particular circumstances. </em
Not state this????
For me to preempt the decisions about democratic limits would by definition be undemocratic, in the same way that L Bird stating that there will be votes on scientific theories is by definition undemocratic.
By insisting that socialism will necessarily entail voting on scientific theory L Bird is taking an elitist view (that he knows best) and denies the fact that a future society may take the view that it wishes to democratically place limits to democracy around the “scientific theory”.
L Bird is really very guilty of “making recipes for the cookshops of the future”
The idea, put forward by some here, that ‘democracy’ has ‘limits’, when discussing social production, is clearly mistaken, because only democratically organised humans can determine their own ‘limits’. Once again, those proposing ‘limits’ outside of democratic creation of limits (a manifestation of the bourgeois ruling class idea of ‘fear of the mob’) are really talking about themselves as individuals, rather than their future society’s social production.
LOL LBird you are tying yourself up in knots even more and making yourself look silly in the process.
How is the idea that democracy has limits is “clearly mistaken” because “only democratically organised humans can determine their own ‘limits'”??? In order to test this proposition you have to assume that 8 billion people are capable of organising tens of thousands – nay, millions – of global plebiscites every year on all sorts of things (from the validity of some scientific theory to what is they consider to be a socially acceptable as a form of musical expression), but choose instead to whittle down democratic decision-making to but a few aspects of life.
That assumption is clearly ridiculous. It is clearly OBJECTIVELY IMPOSSIBLE on logistical grounds alone for such a scenario as the above ever to happen. Organising multiple referenda on such a scale would absorb all of the available resources and human labour available to a socialist society, several times over. We would all die of hunger before we ever got round to deciding how we are going to “democratically” organise agriculture
If people chose to democratically limit the scope of democratic decision-making it is because they are sensible enough to see that it makes no sense at all trying, for example, to hold a democratic global vote on whether some obscure scientific is valid or not. It is not worth the effort in terms of the utilisation of human resources, quite apart from being totally pointless.
Using up all, or a even great deal, of your human resources to organise multiple global plebiscites clearly constitutes an objective limit to such an activity which human beings would recognise and to which they would sensibly respond by limiting the extent of such activity.
Denying this is akin to saying we can democratically decide to defy the law of gravity but prefer to submit to the gravitational pull of the earth as a matter of democratic choice! That’s why we fall down when we trip over stone. Cos society has deemed this should be the way of things
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