More people choosing a blindfold.
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Everyone i’ve given the Standard to has rejected our message.
That could have something to do with your overall approach. If you say to someone “switch off your smartphone, o dumbed down one, brush up your Latin, read this if you can understand it, it will raise your cultural level”, it is not surprising you get a negative reaction.
Lizzie45 – “Provide one example where the mode of production/way of life was changed by the conscious actions of the world’s population.”
Yes, the move from stone age production to bronze age manufacturing and then to Iron Age production were large scale changes in the mode of production/way of life. You could also use the agricultural revolution as an example.
Yes, the move from stone age production to bronze age manufacturing and then to Iron Age production were large scale changes in the mode of production/way of life. You could also use the agricultural revolution as an example.
Nope, invalid. Those changes were not the result of the conscious actions of the world’s population. How could they be? There were no means in place (videre licet, universal suffrage), to record the collective will, even in the extremely improbable likelihood one even existed.
Lizzie45: when people act, they act consciously: when feudalism was enacted, it was the conscious creation and recreation of systems, procedures and ways of organising that suited the actors involved. When capitalism replaced it, ideologues created descriptions of the entire world and the agents who created capitalism did so in line with a conscious set of ideas (as did those who opposed them): socialism will be the first time that the majority of the population will be capable of being the agents.
Those changes were not the result of the conscious actions of the world’s population. How could they be? There were no means in place (videre licet, universal suffrage), to record the collective will, even in the extremely improbable likelihood one even existed.
You’ve made a silly slip up here. Something existing is not dependent on the possibility of it being recorded or measured. Obviously you know that.
But anyhow, a shift in the use of technology (BTW I can’t see how that can occur ‘unconsciously’, without people being aware of it), is different from a political shift in how a society organises itself. Technological determinism isn’t a useful way to understand politics.
“And that, sadly, is why socialism will never be established.”
Could I borrow your crystal ball, Nostradamus?
Lizzie45 “Those changes were not the result of the conscious actions of the world’s population. How could they be? There were no means in place (videre licet, universal suffrage), to record the collective will, even in the extremely improbable likelihood one even existed.”
DJP – “You’ve made a silly slip up here. Something existing is not dependent on the possibility of it being recorded or measured. Obviously you know that.
But anyhow, a shift in the use of technology (BTW I can’t see how that can occur ‘unconsciously’, without people being aware of it), is different from a political shift in how a society organises itself. Technological determinism isn’t a useful way to understand politics.”
DJP, I don’t disagree with you, but actually Lizzy45 didn’t actually ask for an example of a “shift on how society organises itself” as DJP has referred to, she actually asked for an example “where the mode of production/way of life was changed by the conscious actions of the world’s population”. That was the question posed, it didn’t directly ask for an understanding of politics and it didn’t imply technological determinism, I merely answered the question she posed
Changes in the “mode of production/way of life” did undoubtedly take place during the development of the Bronze Age, the Iron Age and especially during the development of the agricultural revolution (aka the Neolithic revolution) i.e. the move from hunter gather to agricultural revolution, so I am correct in giving the answer I gave in this area. If Lizzy45 thinks that they were not conscious moves, this would mean that she thinks that these moves occurred in an unconscious way and I don’t think even Freud would make that kind of claim!
Is she claiming that groups of hunter gathers just went off to sleep one night and then woke up in a ploughed field saying “fuck me, we’re farmers, how the hell did that happen?”
So really, if Lizzie45 asks a stupid question, you can’t blame me for giving a stupid answer. Perhaps she should ask questions about astro physics, I believe she may have mentioned that she is an astro physicist (irony alert)
This year a large percentage of the world’s population will have voted in elections — the EU, the USA, India and Russia, not just here. Why is it inconceivable that they could have all returned a majority in favour of socialism? They didn’t of course but the mechanism to do this in a comparatively short period of time already exists.
That wasn’t the point. The point was that they all did vote for the same — capitalism — so why on principle couldn’t they vote for a different same — socialism. But you are such a Party pooper that you can only see the negative side of things.
But that’s my point. Why couldn’t they vote for socialism? Because they didn’t, and that’s what needs looking at.
Because, if reason is all it takes, and most people are rational, then our 100,000 leaflets should rationally produce 100,000 socialists.
But they persist in voting irrationally, even when they know of our existence.Even if they took the time to read the Leaflet the SPGB would be written off as cranks by 99% of workers. The minute they read the word “Socialism” it’s the kiss of death. Most don’t even know they are living in a social system never mind being able to define Capitalism (or Socialism for that matter). It’s fuckin hopeless.
You have still missed the point. It’s not about how a majority of the world’s population might come to want socialism but about, if they did, whether or not mechanisms to express and implement this exist. Someone had suggested that they couldn’t.
Well of course the mechanisms are there.
The RATIONAL is all in place to see. But the irrational still holds sway. And if leaflets, which one can peruse at leisure in one’s home, make no difference, then what hope or time given in trying to explain to busy “rat-race” workers the ins and outs of socialist history and the differences between us and the Bolshevik Left etc?
A beer over the head is the likely response.
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