Knowledge
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twc wrote:wrote:A working class that does not consider it to be morally reprehensible to cross a picket line or inform on "cheating" benefit claimants to the authorities or to proudly support what "our boys" are doing in places like Iraq, etc etc is quite frankly, a working class that is a million miles away from effecting a socialist revolution.
These are not specifically socialist issues, and should be evaluated rationally according to circumstance.Most socialists don’t need an “ethical” crutch to be motivated to perform acts of working-class solidarity, and many anti-socialists act this way without socialist prompting.The worst of what you are saying is that the Party should mandate that all proletarians should:always obey the dictates of each and every Union boss, independent of whether he runs a scab Union, or whether he calls a strike for anti-socialist reasons with anti-socialist outcomes—like corrupt Union officials in cahoots with the bosses.always condone or encourage welfare fraud, independent of its punitive consequences. Why not always the same for criminal theft?always reject working class solidarity with our fighting boy and girl proletarians who put their lives on the line. What about those proletarians whose non-frontline labour safely supports the war effort, or those whose labour actively supports capitalism?
These issues may not in themselves be "specifically socialist issues" – one does not have to be a socialist to observe that it is unethical to cross a picket line – but I am asserting nevertheless that no socialist would want to do such a thing. No socialist worth their salt would find such a thing morally acceptable.You are once again twisting my words or inventing spurious and irrelevant arguments/scenarios to try to get round the simple point I was making. I didn't say anything about proletarians always needing to obey the dictates of some Union boss on each and every conceivable occasion – did I now? – and it is presumptuous of you even to suggest that I would support such an undemocratic arrangement as Union bosses "dictating" what their members should do. Obviously one uses a degree of discretion here. But if a strike was conducted not for anti-socialist reasons, would you, TWC, find it morally acceptable as a socialist to cross a picket line? Yes or no?Ditto, welfare fraud. Of course crime can be sometimes unacceptable – most particularly when the victim is a fellow worker. Once again its a case of using your own nonce to determine what is acceptable and what is not from a socialist point of view. But I thought as a revolutionary socialist you would recognize that the system is one of the legalised robbery by the capitalist class of the fruits of our working class labour. I would have thought as a revolutionary socialist you would support or, at any rate, condone any attempt by workers to slightly redress the balance. So let us hear it from you, TWC. – would you as a revolutionary socialist spill the beans to the authorities if you came across a worker claiming benefits while a working a few hours on the side? Do tell us – why would you not do this unless you thought it was morally unacceptable as a socialist to betray your own class members? Call a spade a spade, TWC – you wouldnt do it because you consider it morally unacceptableFinally, in yet another adept display of TWC twisting other people's argument you questioned whether proletarians should "always reject working class solidarity with our fighting boy and girl proletarians who put their lives on the line". I nearly choked on my coffee when I read that one. Put their lives on the line for what, TWC? Are you saying there are occasions when it is justified that workers fight in a capitalist war? Some revolutionary socialist you have turned out to be! Once again, you should read what I said and not what you imagine I said. Of course,as socialists, we express solidarity with all workers regardless but we don't necessarily condone what they do, do we now? You yourself have made this very point – ironically! However I was not talking about expressing working class solidarity with fellow workers in the armed forces. I said quite clearly that what would be morally unacceptable for a socialist to do is to proudly support what "our boys" are doing in places like Iraq, etc etc. I was talking about their actions, not the fact that they are working class. Your whole position is based on a completely false reading of what ethics is all about. Ethics is not some external "crutch" that we can usefully, or otherwise, employ in voluntaristic fashion to bring about our desired end. Rather, our socialist ethics is fundamental to who we are and it is part of what defines us as socialists in the first place. As a socialist you simply cannot help but take up a socialist moral perspective on life
Robbo, If “discretion is needed”, then discretion over-rides your “ethics”.You’ve now gone too far, and inexpertly whittled down your “ethical” precept to don’t cross the picket line if the strike is for socialist reasons.But few strikes are for socialist reasons. This is not quibbling but goes to the heart of applying abstractions to concrete situations:Strikes are defensive reactions against the dire human consequences of the relentless compulsion of capital to expand itself. People almost never strike for socialist reasons—to replace the root cause of capitalist exploitation—but primarily to ameliorate their living and working conditions under capitalism, i.e. to make the best out of a bad lot.Of course, Leftists believe that all strikes are pro-socialist.If “you’ve got to use your nonce”, then your nonce over-rides your “ethics”.Rather than sticking to abstract precepts, how about practically taking someone to heart and discussing the direful repercussions of detected welfare fraud—to be careful they aren’t setting themselves up for far worse social deprivation, given the omnipresent surveillance systems now in place. This also is not quibbling—it’s what concerned friends [may] do.We all take vicarious pleasure in Pyrrhic victories over the “system”, but only Leftists think they dent capitalism, and promote socialism.If your “particularist” solidarity excludes proletarians of some professions, and only includes those of capitalist professions you approve of, what remains of your “proletarian ethics”? How does your code tell us which capitalist “ethical” professions to be in solidarity with?I am not “twisting” your words, but only teasing out their implication—as I see it, if they are turned into an abstract prescription—in order to point out that all “particularized ethics” boil down to “particularized” anti-ethics for those they “particularly” exclude.I simply seek to show that all such codified “ethics”—and they have to be codified for universal reference if they are deemed to be essential—are easily turned, by concrete circumstance, into the exact opposite of what they abstractly encode, and of what their framers desired.There is not a single abstract proposition dealing with human behaviour that is inviolable in the concrete.So to your questions…I answer “No, No, No”. But my answers are far less relevant than you seek to make them, because they are concretely specific answers—unlike your “ethics” which are abstractly general—to concretely specific questions that plumb the deepest prejudices that capitalism generates.Your “particularist ethics” are pre-ordained to see someone who answers “Yes, Yes, Yes” as being unethical. But that is not necessarily so. They are typically guided by an opposing “particularist ethical” practice, that excludes yours.No, No, No versus Yes, Yes, Yes, is then a case of one “particularist ethics” versus its exclusionary opposite “particularist ethics”. Here might prevails, as it invariably does.Your “particularist ethics” exclude the possibility that, under capitalism, persons act under material conditions that shape their conviction. Their pro-capitalist actions may be highly rational—rational in dominant capitalist terms—and demonstrate their “particularist” conception of integrity.It’s the rationality of their pro-capitalist perception that we must expose by pro-socialist rationality. Your desired proletarian solidarity ensues of its own accord.
I have to say that a posting of Mr Slapper's 'open letter' is more relevent and more important than repeated posts and threads discussing how do we 'know'.How did anyone 'know' it was a repeated post? When I 'know' that it wasn't. 'Knowing' is only half the problem, it's what we do with what we 'know' that is important. Noone can 'know' that it was a repeated post so logically there was no reason to place it in the Rubbish bin.As for me I don't doubt what I 'know', I 'know' it was not a repeated post. So whether or not a post is removed to rubbish bin depends upon epistemolgy and phylisophical perspective. I conclude that epistemology anomy has no place in a revolutionary movement as it renders it sterile and divisive.We know what we know and bugger everyon else
I didn't know that but now I do but don't ask me how.http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/320530/Know-Nothing-party
When asked: 'What is your manifesto?' a spokesperson for the party replied 'That's a silly question, what makes you think I would know that?'
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