Why we are different

[jondwhite]

mcolome1 wrote:

Have we ever supported this type of movement ? https://redguardsaustin.wordpress.com, …http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/whats-wrong-using-parliament.   What is wrong with using parliament ? 

depends how you use it but quite a lot potentially given how undemocratic the institution is.

[Anonymous]

jondwhite wrote:

mcolome1 wrote:

Have we ever supported this type of movement ? https://redguardsaustin.wordpress.com, …http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/whats-wrong-using-parliament.   What is wrong with using parliament ? 

depends how you use it but quite a lot potentially given how undemocratic the institution is.

Have you read the pamphlet ?  If you read the pamphlet you will understand the question, and why the workers can use it

[ALB]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

I'd argue freedom of information, expression and association come well above voting, and the right for minorities to try and become majorities (and for majorities to not enforce their will unless necessary): voting is just a means to assist the discursive process.  Sometimes we need to weight the strngth as well as quantity on a question: a minority that strongly holds it's opinion compared to a lightly held majority needs to be taken into account.  The conversation never ends.

Here's former Prime Minister Sir John Major's contribution to this debate (from yesterday's Times):

Quote:

I hear the argument that the 48 per cent of people who voted to stay should have no say in what happens. I find that very difficult to accept. The tyranny of the majority has never applied in a democracy and it should not apply in this particular democracy.

As concerns the principle of democratic decision-making he's got a point.

[Anonymous]

mcolome1 wrote:

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/how-spgb-different

thank you Mcolome1 for posting this link.  Perhaps I'll shift my conversations to someplace more receptive from your link.  I actually, think from reading the link, that what I'm proposing can meet all those criteria, but you're so used to capitalist meanings to the words I use that you can't how it fits those criteria.  I think it might take you 500 years to figure out what I've created in my exchange protocol. I'm acting as an intellectual vanguard, not the political power vanguard you're thinking of with your capitalist preconceptions. But whatever, I'm sure you'll figure it out after the revolution is over and you're left behind. 

[Dave B]

 I think when one talks about exchange which is; ‘what is mine is mine and if you want to use it you will have to ‘give’ me something of yours that I want to use in ‘exchange’, is the norm. However it not necessarily the case, thus; “When I started working at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971, I became part of a software-sharing community that had existed for many years. Sharing of software was not limited to our particular community; it is as old as computers, just as sharing of recipes is as old as cooking……..We did not call our software “free software”, because that term did not yet exist; but that is what it was. Whenever people from another university or a company wanted to port and use a program, we gladly let them. If you saw someone using an unfamiliar and interesting program, you could always ask to see the source code, so that you could read it, change it, or cannibalize parts of it to make a new program.”  https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.en.html Communist labour in the narrower and stricter sense of the term is labour performed gratis for the benefit of society, labour performed not as a definite duty, not for the purpose of obtaining a right to certain products, not according to previously established and legally fixed quotas, but voluntary labour, irrespective of quotas;  it is labour performed without expectation of reward, without reward as a condition, labour performed because it has become a habit to work for the common good, and because of a conscious realisation (that has become a habit) of the necessity of working for the common good—labour as the requirement of a healthy organism. It must be clear to everybody that we, i.e., our society, our social system, are still a very long way from the application of this form of labour on a broad, really mass scale.  But the very fact that this question has been raised, and raised both by the whole of the advanced proletariat (the Communist Party and the trade unions) and by the state authorities, is a step in this direction.  http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/apr/11.htm  THE DESCENT OF MANCHARLES DARWIN, 1871.  This great question has been discussed by many writers4 of consummate ability; and my sole excuse for touching on it is the impossibility of here passing it over, and because, as far as I know, no one has approached it exclusively from the side of natural history. The investigation possesses, also, some independent interest, as an attempt to see how far the study of the lower animals can throw light on one of the highest psychical faculties of man. The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts,5 would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as….  4 Mr. Bain gives a list ('Mental and Moral Science,' 1868, p. 543-725) of twenty-six British authors who have written on this subject, and whose names are familiar to every reader; to these, Mr. Bain's own name, and those of Mr. Lecky, Mr. Shadworth Hodgson, and Sir J. Lubbock, as well as of others, may be added. 5 Sir B. Brodie, after observing that man is a social animal ('Psychological Enquiries,' 1854, p. 192), asks the pregnant question, "ought not this to settle the disputed question as to the existence of a moral sense?" Similar ideas have probably occurred to many persons, as they did long ago to Marcus Aurelius. Mr. J. S. Mill speaks, in his celebrated work, 'Utilitarianism,' (1864, p. 46), of the social feelings as a "powerful natural sentiment," and as "the natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality;" but on the previous page he says, "if, as is my own belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are not for that reason less natural." It is with hesitation that I venture to differ from so profound a thinker, but it can hardly be disputed that the social feelings are instinctive or innate in the lower animals; and why should they not be so in man? Mr. Bain (see, for instance, 'The Emotions and the Will,' 1865, p. 481) and others believe that the moral sense is acquired by each individual during his lifetime. On the general theory of evolution this is at least extremely improbable. [page] 72 ……its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man. For, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them. The services may be of a definite and evidently instinctive nature; or there may be only a wish and readiness, as with most of the higher social animals, to aid their fellows in certain general ways. But these feelings and services are by no means extended to all the individuals of the same species, only to those of the same association. Secondly, as soon as the mental faculties had become highly developed, images of all past actions and motives would be incessantly passing through the brain of each individual; and that feeling of dissatisfaction which invariably results, as we shall hereafter see, from any unsatisfied instinct, would arise, as often as it was perceived that the enduring and always present social instinct had yielded to some other instinct, at the time stronger, but neither enduring in its nature, nor leaving behind it a very vivid impression. It is clear that many instinctive desires, such as that of hunger, are in their nature of short duration; and after being satisfied are not readily or vividly recalled. Thirdly, after the power of language had been acquired and the wishes of the members of the same community could be distinctly expressed, the common opinion how each member ought to act for the public good, would naturally become to a large extent the guide to action. But the social instincts would still give the impulse to act for the good of the community, this impulse being strengthened, directed, and sometimes even deflected by public opinion, the power of which rests, as we shall presently see, on instinctive sympathy. Lastly, habit in the individual would ultimately play a very [page] 73 important part in guiding the conduct of each member; for the social instincts and impulses, like all other instincts, would be greatly strengthened by habit, as would obedience to the wishes and judgment of the community. These several subordinate propositions must now be discussed; and some of them at considerable length.  http://darwin-online.org.uk/converted/published/1871_Descent_F937/1871_Descent_F937.1.html 

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