How does it work
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If I remember right Pieter Lawrence thought that socialism would be like today but without money. Maybe he was right. Obviously it will be to start with. Will that do?
ALB wrote:If I remember right Pieter Lawrence thought that socialism would be like today but without money. Maybe he was right. Obviously it will be to start with. Will that do?"Like today but without money" would be a helluva lot different from the world we live in today, though, Adam! As is often pointed , its not so much money that we seek to get rid as the socio-economic relationships that necessitate money. The disappearance of these relationships could not but make for a radically different kind of experience in so many diverse ways. Which is why I would question the logic of the argument that socialism equals capitalism minus the money I agree with Tim: Pieter Lawrence's work on Production for use Committee was, indeed," a missed opportunity for the Party". It has always struck me as odd that the SPGB does not have some kind of research department – maybe something like Labour Research Department – http://www.lrd.org.uk/index.php – producing regular bulletins and/or the odd special issue booklet (e.g.. how can we overcome global hunger?) The information such an entity could collate together and systematise could go a long towards putting flesh on the bares bones of socialism as a concept, making it more credible and relevant to the practical problems we are subject to today.and inspiring workers to become socialists…..
"Socialism is about extending that co-operation outwards from within firms across the whole community, as a conscious association. That is detailed enough."Well I for one do not think that is detailed enough, it assumes the premise that it would just work because everyone would function in the same way as if nothing had really changed. It must be clear to anyone who's thought about how things might actually look that there are thousands of potential pitfalls along the way. I'm not saying what we have isn't broken, but the interactions are established and understood, for better or for worse, it works on a clearly defined reward system and thus establishes a large amount of control over the general population. There a whole host of practicalities to consider if it's to be replaced and still function, let alone function better. Some random thoughts.How exactly could we transition, what might that look like.What things do we need to keep doing, what things do we not.How are required commodities and services to be fairly distributed or apportioned.How does the change effect an individual's standard of life, if they're on the breadline, if they're well off..What happens to ownership of existing wealth (tangible assets such as property)What happens if a significant minority are refusing to participate. How long do I have to keep doing this job I hate so much.When can I move my family out of my one bedroom flat or my tin shed.Can I stay in my five bedroom house.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. The ability for the "plan" to deliver would be everything, if it didn't then anarchy would follow and there would be no going back.OK I can hear the groans already, we can't try to answer these kind of questions.. and yet they need answering, everyone would need to understand their role, have realistic expectations and contribute accordingly.Catch 22 then, if you can't persuade people to join without having a blueprint then you'll never have the people to make or agree a blueprint. A committee of billions would never achieve it in the time the planet has left, too many cooks spoil the broth, but we nearly all agree when something tastes good.
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. The ability for the "plan" to deliver would be everything, if it didn't then anarchy would follow and there would be no going back.OK I can hear the groans already, we can't try to answer these kind of questions.. and yet they need answering, everyone would need to understand their role, have realistic expectations and contribute accordingly.Catch 22 then, if you can't persuade people to join without having a blueprint then you'll never have the people to make or agree a blueprint. A committee of billions would never achieve it in the time the planet has left, too many cooks spoil the broth, but we nearly all agree when something tastes good.RalphI think you have to differentiate between what socialism might be like and the process of arriving there. Unfortunately we have tended not to be very forthcoming in respect of either of these things, opting for vague generalities that seem safe enough to be techncially correct but which remain unconvincing for most people Socialism can only be ahieved when a significant majority want and understand it. Consequently, the larger the movement towards socialism, the closer we are to socialism, the more detailed the ideas we are likely to have about what a socialist soiety might actually look like in practice. At the moment, we tend to focus on just the broad stuctural or generic feautures of socialism – common ownership and democratic control of the industrial resources, production solely for use , free access to goods and services, volunteer labour and so on and so forth. We make little effort to go beyond this kind of generalised schema which is a pity, I think. It makes socialism appear to be some kind of theoretically abstract proposition remote from our everyday lives. People confronted with this proposition tend to politiely say "its a nice idea" but walk away unconvinced that it is likely ever to be implemented. The temptation for socialists faced with this credibility gap is to fall back on somewhat mechanistic theories of social change. "Socialism is in our material interests" which interests are bound to assert themselves given sufficient time. The problem here is the disconnect between theory and practice, between the individual and the collective (class). It is not necessarily in my immediate interests as a worker to collaborate with my fellow workers against my capitalist employer. It could actually be in my immediate interest to stab my fellow workers in the back as I climb up the greasey pole of career advancement So we need to focus more on what we are trying to achieve as socialists , to put more flesh on the bones of the basic concept of socialism. To take just one of your examples – housing. There are masses of data relating to this subject. For instance, there are huge numbers of properties standing empty at any one time – 1 million in the UK, 3-4 million in Spain, 18 million in the USA, 60 miillion in China. There are in addition millions of square metres of empty offices, retial establishments, warehouses, factories etc etc some of which could be readily converted to accommodation. In Granada in Spain, my nearest city. there is the main hospital near the city centre which has served the community for decades. It is currently being run down as a spanking new hospital has just opened – the largest in Spain. But the old building still has a useful life of many decades ahead of it. It could easily be converted into say student accommodation for the university. At the moment no one has any idea what to do with it. It is data like this that socialists could use to present a more detailed picture of what a socialist could be like and one that would ring true for workers who are quite capable of grasping the absurdity of people living in substandard accommodation or even on the street while millions of housing units remain empty and building workers remain on the dole
robbo203 wrote:ALB wrote:If I remember right Pieter Lawrence thought that socialism would be like today but without money. Maybe he was right. Obviously it will be to start with. Will that do?"Like today but without money" would be a helluva lot different from the world we live in today, though, Adam!As is often pointed , its not so much money that we seek to get rid as the socio-economic relationships that necessitate money. The disappearance of these relationships could not but make for a radically different kind of experience in so many diverse ways. Which is why I would question the logic of the argument that socialism equals capitalism minus the money
Saying that Pieter Lawrence thought that "socialism is capitalism without money" was of course a caricature but it's what we used to say, in part because he also argued that the police, the courts, criminal and contract law would continue into socialism. The ironic thing is that he also wrote some very good stuff on alienation under capitalism and how relationships in socialism would be different. See his articles on the Marxist Internet Archive here:https://www.marxists.org/archive/lawrence/index.htmActually, the Production for Use committee's work did have an outcome: the publication of our pamphlet Socialism As A Practical Alternative( http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/socialism-practical-alternative ) which Pieter drafted. It's good stuff. Very good stuff. It was published in 1987 and is now outdated in one respect: it didn't take into account the spread to the general population of the internet and mobile phones and the possibilities this opens up. A warning that any "blueprint" is going to have to be constantly updated.I am all in favour of us showing how socialism is technologically feasible, e.g that there are enough resources to eliminate poverty, malnutrition, etc but I don't think that will satisfy Ralph. He won't be satisfied till we can tell him where he can park his car or what he will have for breakfast in socialism.
ALB wrote:I am all in favour of us showing how socialism is technologically feasible, e.g that there are enough resources to eliminate poverty, malnutrition, etc but I don't think that will satisfy Ralph. He won't be satisfied till we can tell him where he can park his car or what he will have for breakfast in socialism.Hmm, I dont get the sense that this is what Ralph is asking for which is quite a caricature! He wants, reasonably enough, a more detailed idea of what socialism would entail but not at that level of detail LOL! But you put your finger on it, really. Its not a question of some telling others what to expect in socialism. Rather, its question of drawing in others into the business of shaping those expectations themselves. That is to say, removing this " them" and "us" (the so called experts) dichotomy by encouraging people to see this is a coooperative enterprise in which they themselves are likewise creative agents. That in itself will help to weaken the kind of understandable resistance people put up when presented with an essentially formulaic argument for socialism couched in the most generalised abstract terms. Point is you can only really begin to engage workers' creative identifiction with socialism, in my view, by stimulating or encouraging them to think along these lines, by preseinting – to use Marx's expression – more in the way of "recipes for the cookshops of the future". In other words, putting the ball in their own court, so to speak, and getting them to work through the logic of the argument themselves by inviting their commentary and contribution. Of course, such recipes as we present cannot, and should not, be presented as the final word on the matter and your mention of one aspect of Pieters work being outdated is a timely reminded of that. It must be presented as an open ended process in which the findings reached are always provisional. Neverthless, it is a process that needs still to be undertaken whatever the caveats we attach to it
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?
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.
"I think you have to differentiate between what socialism might be like and the process of arriving there"Oh absolutely, two very different questions and both as important as the other, I think you have to start with defining what Socialism might be like though otherwise you can't possibly know how to get there…
There needs to be a level of detail, enough to prove workability, enough for confidence, it's not about having the technology or the means to produce, that's kind of a given. It's about structure, processes, expectations, deliverables, timescales, social interactions, keeping the wheels turning through transition. I could have the best resources in the world if I don't have the ability to coherently use them then they're useless.I'm not fussy about breakfast by the way
Ralph wrote:There needs to be a level of detail, enough to prove workability, enough for confidence, it's not about having the technology or the means to produce, that's kind of a given. It's about structure, processes, expectations, deliverables, timescales, social interactions, keeping the wheels turning through transition. I could have the best resources in the world if I don't have the ability to coherently use them then they're useless.I agree, so it is necessary to get together a sufficient number of workers (including yourself) who want to see a better world to discuss as much detail of how a new society would work. If they decide that after much discussion there is not enough flesh on the bone, then they can either decide to go into socialism "blind" or give up, go home and let capitalism take its course.What ideas do you have to contribute? After all, we all have a responsibility to society to make our worthy ideas known.
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.
I think you're rather twisting what I said there…"not whether it should happen but most certainly how it should happen."
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.
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