Rules, regulations, laws, socialism
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To what extent does the SPGB still believe that there will be no need for laws in socialism – or a regulatory framework?
A couple of things have set me thinking recently. During the summer, I whiled away some hours watching the Earth channel on TV. There were some interesting programs; one in particular surprised me.
Scientists had been studying the material spider webs are made of. Apparently, apart from being incredibly thin and wispy, the material is very strong and able to withstand great forces. Commercially minded people thought it would be great to mass produce the web material. However, it would be very laborious to extract the stuff on a spider by spider basis. Could they get some other organism to produce it in greater quantities?
What they managed to do was to splice the gene from the spider responsible for producing the protein the web is made of, into goats, more precisely, into the genes that code for milk production in goats. Then all they had to do was to milk the goats, containing the web silk protein, synthesise it out – and hey presto!
It sounded a bit like an April’s fool joke, but it was a serious programme.
It just made me feel very uneasy. I agree with ALB’s comment that socialists should not be opposed to advances in technology per se (e.g., GM foods – humans have genetically modified food stuffs for a long time due to selective breeding, although the way GM foods are produced under capitalism may be detrimental).
But – where is all this genetic meddling going to end? For example, there are organisms that can produce very strong mind/behaviour altering substances that compel other organisms to behave in a way detrimental to their own survival. A certain worm is dependent on getting into birds intestines to complete its life cycle. Its eggs are laid in insects (a type of ant for some, grasshoppers for others). The developing eggs/pupae eat the ants from the inside; gradually disabling all the body parts one by one, leaving the ability to move around. They then “command” the insect to act contrary to its own survival, crawl up to the top of a leaf where they are spotted by birds and then eaten.
Then there is Toxoplasmosis, which you catch from cats, which alters the behaviour of rodents, and possibly of humans too – http://www.viewzone.com/toxo.html:
"The increasing body of evidence connecting Toxoplasma infection with changes in personality and mental state, combined with the extremely high incidence of human infection in both developing and developed countries, warrants increased government funding and research, in particular to find safe and effective treatments or vaccines," Dr Boulter said.
My point being, that if they can get goats to produce milk with spider silk protein in it, what is next?
Then the next thing that got me thinking; this was an article about surrogacy in Thailand. Two gay men had paid a Thai surrogate mother to conceive a child for them. She carried a baby girl for them and gave birth (the gay couple already had a son conceived this way).
Now, the twist in the tale: The surrogate refused to give up the baby once she realised the couple were two men. She was quoted as saying she had doubts about the suitability of the couple to bring up the child. Although the baby was not supposed to have been conceived from the woman’s egg, the article speculated that this may have been the case.
Obviously, I have nothing against gay and lesbian couples bringing up children; there is no reason why they cannot be just as good parents as traditional straight couples.
But I can see a whole lot of difficulties in these situations. Yes, the fertility techniques developed can be a godsend to many people who wished to have children but cannot for whatever reason.
There are several “rights” to be balanced against one another; the “right” of homosexual couples to bring up children as well as the “right” of any child conceived under such circumstances to be informed of his or her genetic parents, should they wish for this to be divulged as an adult. Has the egg or sperm donor the “right” to anonymity? What about the “right” of the “incubator”, whether the egg is hers or not, should she decide after nine months that she does not want to give up the baby?
I am interested in the SPGB’s current position on whether laws will be necessary in socialism. I have mentioned two examples that set me thinking, I am sure other contributors can come up with many more.
Yes there will be some kind of socially decided rules, what they are and how they are enforced will be decided democratically like everything else. And democracy itself, after all, requires certain rules and structures in order to operate and exist.
Ok, DJP, and if the regulatory framework is breached, say with lethal or debilitating consequences, what then? Say, a person has died or been left with some disability because someone has practised medicine or dentistry without the appropriate qualifications and/or experience? Say that a population was polluted because the proper industrial safeguards were not followed?if there are regulations in place, and breaking these have consequences, that sounds like laws to me.
The difference being that democracy would allow things to be more fluid and not dominated by the interests of a minority.I don't think we need to go overboard with details or cases since it is not up to us but the people then and there.And of course it depends how you define 'laws', to me that suggests something too rigid and outside the influence of society at large.
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.Then again, Marxism isn't about creating blueprints for the future.
The problem is credibiliy when speaking to members of the public and trying to convince them of the need for radical change.If we say that the legal system is going to be scrapped just like that, with nothing in its place, they are bound to think of examples like the ones I gave and many, many more. The legal system is not only about protecting the property right of the capitalists. We live in an increasingly complex and technological sociey, with issues surrounding the use of new technologies, adoption, surrogacy, public safety, etc, etc, etc, still being present in a new society.Also, if we expect others to provide more "flesh on the bones" when it comes to ideas about voting on "truths" in a future society, it would reflect well on us if we did not always deflect genuine concerns with "it will be up to democratic decision making at the time" (although I can see that this will often be the case).I take it from your replies, DJP, that the SPGB does not categorically state that there will be no laws or "law-like structures" in socialism……….
This may be of interest to you Meel – a report of a talk given by the late Pieter Lawrence on the topic of law and socialismhttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2012/05/socialism-and-law.html
alanjjohnstone wrote:This may be of interest to you Meel – a report of a talk given by the late Pieter Lawrence on the topic of law and socialismhttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2012/05/socialism-and-law.htmlGood article. Just to re-emphasize democracy is not the absence of rules and structures quite the contrary an absence of rules leads to what Jo Freeman called "the tyranny of structurelessness".
An excellent article.Pieter concludes with som references to language, and the importance of using terms that the general public understands, rather than esoteric terms only understood by the few.He concludes:"The dictionary defines law as the rules of the community. That is adequate for our purposes. And since we agree that socialism will be a society with rules – it follows that there will be law in socialism. "
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