[Dave B]

i   This is all a load of bollocks of course. The comedy of it all is that these people babble on about Karl’s use if the scientific method whilst it is painfully obvious that they do not have any idea whatsoever about what the scientific method is. Or even it would appear any kind of basic history of the subject. So I am going to do a direct anecdote of Karl’s approach and the scientific approach using Aristotle and his objects falling to the ground and Newtonian gravity on the history of science side. Just because it was in the Penny physics lesson youtube.  And on the  Marx side the stuff about price or exchange value not being equal to value or things not exchanging at their value in capitalism etc.    So lets lay out the vulgar Marxist position.   [ I have the problem here of putting many different words into many different types of vulgar mouths; but it would take too long to cover all their positions ‘precisely’]  As a general synopsis of this vulgar position of  the price of a commodity in the non abstract and real empirical world of capitalism that we live in. A capitalist produced commodity is sold at a price that will make an adequate or average, or whatever you like for the moment, rate of profit. So the price is determined or dependent upon a necessary rate of profit. With the result that the Law of value or that stuff exchanged according to their labour time value did or does not operate, or never did depending on which school of vulgar Marxism one comes from. Because exchange value was dependent on the required rate of profit and thus not the labour time value or whatever.     And for them; In some ‘hypothetical’, ‘idealised’ or ‘abstract’ or non real world or in a world or situation(s) that were never really dominant if they existed at all. Eg in simple commodity production were self employed or ‘private’ labourers exchanged their products amongst themselves. Then and only then did commodities exchange at their value; or the law of value operated.    And thus the problem was that Karl supposedly took some Law that he developed from some kind of unreal fantasy world, or the moon perhaps, that didn’t really exist [much] on earth.  

---

 So we are going to go back first to ancient Greece and Aristotle;  Sheldon: You’re welcome. Now, Introduction to Physics. What is physics? Physics comes from the ancient Greek word physika. It’s at this point that you’ll want to start taking notes. Physika means the science of natural things. And it is there, in ancient Greece, that our story begins.Penny: Ancient Greece?Sheldon: Hush. If you have questions, raise your hand. It’s a warm summer evening, circa 600 BC, you’ve finished your shopping at the local market, or agora, and you look up at the night sky. There you notice some of the stars seem to move, so you name them planetes, or wanderer. Yes, Penny?Penny: Um, does this have anything to do with Karl’s work?Sheldon: This is the beginning of a twenty six hundred year journey we’re going to take together from the ancient Greeks through Isaac Newton           ……….Aristotle proposed that the speed at which two identically shaped objects sink or fall is directly proportionalto their weights.…….   This quite simple really for simple people. If you take ping pong ball and a lead ball of the same size and drop them the lead ball hits the floor first. Could one imagine for instance any other situation? Like the ping pong ball and the lead ball, or for that matter a falcon feather and a hammer falling to the ground at the same ‘speed’? And if one could what would it matter? And if there were exceptional circumstances or were objects of different weights appeared to fall the ground at the same speed. What would that matter? What on earth would be the point of investigating these circumstances that were not general or ‘dominated’? And. How would you deal with;   ….Galileohad already demonstrated that objects of different weights reach the ground in similar times…….. Which contradicted Aristotle’s more obvious dominant law? The most obvious approach would be to attempt to explain the ‘Galileoeffect’ using Aristotle’s ‘dominant’  law. Even if the theory; ‘…that all bodies move toward their natural place’ was a little bit flaky. Or go off planet earth or into a world of hyothetical abstract absolute vacuums  [ or out of capitalism? And into simple commodity production?] Refine the ‘abstract’ ‘Galileoeffect’ Which is what Newton did really. And take the Newton / ‘Galileoeffect’ to explain the Aristotle phenomena? (The way things actually historically panned out admittedly isn’t so straightforward looking back.) Or in other words; you could either say that the Aristotle phenomena/law was ‘dominant? And was modified by something else improperly understood. Or something more outrageous, so outrageous that David Harvey couldn’t contemplate it. That the Newton / ‘Galileoeffect’ or gravity was in fact the important thing and still persistently operated on planet earth, as regards falcon feathers and hammers. And that you could explain Aristotelian falling falcon feathers and hammers on planet earth in terms of a gravitational affect that was being modified by another affect. In this case air resistance/ viscosity etc . So you use Newton / ‘Galileoeffect’ or gravity to explain air resistance and viscosity and thus take your Newtonian and ‘Galileoeffects’ into the world that ‘appears’  to contradict them in order the explain that contradictory world?????? Well we know what happened. It worked. It is a project or general approach that could of course fall flat on its face. And that kind of thing has done in the past. What Karl has done is take the simple commodity effect and it operating law of value and employed it or taken it into the contradictory world of capitalism in order to explain capitalism. And used the more fundamental law of value to explain or understand the counteracting force of the average rate of profit that interferes with it. Just as an atmosphere or lack of a vacuum interferes with the law of falling objects. Aeronautical do not abandon Newtonian forces of gravity, as an irrelevant abstraction like Harvey and Professor Hienrich would. In fact they understand things like Reynolds numbers and all that shit from and by taking with them the Newtonian laws. Whether or not the heavenly vacuous ‘abstract’ Newtonian laws are robust enough to withstand or explain the slings and arrows of an atmospheric world. [there is nothing much more abstract than going off planet except perhaps from going to a non capitalist mode of production?] Or  the simple commodity laws are robust enough to withstand or explain the  slings and arrows of an a capitalist for profit world. Is the question.

[Dave B]

iThe reason, according to Karl in volume III, that commodities did not exchange according to the value was the influence of the sought after rate of profit and different proportions of capital on what the commodities produced by them ended up being exchanged for etc. Karl sought of anticipated or recognised this problem in volume I and raised it as soon as he could really. Thus;  This law clearly contradicts all experience based on appearance. Everyone knows that a cotton spinner, who, reckoning the percentage on the whole of his applied capital, employs much constant and little variable capital, does not, on account of this, pocket less profit or surplus-value than a baker, who relatively sets in motion much variable and little constant capital. For the solution of this apparent contradiction, many intermediate terms are as yet wanted, as from the standpoint of elementary algebra many intermediate terms are wanted to understand that 0/0 may represent an actual magnitude. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch11.htm All scientific investigations begin with ideal laws. Eg one of the most if not the most famous. Aptly named the ideal gas law! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideal_gas_law     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEIn3T6nDAo

[Dave B]

iWell I suppose I need to start with the ‘maxim’. Transformation of Quantitative Into Qualitative Changes This is hegelian and marx stuff as well although I think Hegel plagiarised the notion from the progess of science. Rather than Hegel’s philosophy being proved by science. This is just a quicky found article below for an example only and to get the drift even though there are things I don’t like about it. https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Transformation+of+Quantitative+Into+Qualitative+Changes Fred discussed it in various parts of ante duhring but  I wasn’t that keen on some parts of that either. But basically I think it can be useful. Thus I suppose if you analyse anything that exists now as part of some developing process eg higher human conciousness or abstract thought. Or modern computers.  Then you might want to consider analysing it as merely just more of something more elemental.  I am not, at this stage anyway, not really that interested  in trying to link up computers to consciousness but just as two possible examples but you could pick your own?) Looking at something now that is quantitatively developing and extrapolating it into the future is more difficult. But it is being done rationally. Thus serious bods are thinking about quantitative developments in artificial reality technology and where it might end up. Uploading our entire consciousness into computers and maybe staying there and escaping the limitations of a material bodily form or whatever. Another interesting and very big subject; but back to dog’s and humans. You might want to argue that human conciousness and abstract thought is the ability to covert real things into symbols in our heads. Manipulate the interactions and relationships of these symbols according to ‘idealised’ to rules and laws that ‘reflect’ or mimic the real world. And then if required convert the results back to sense perception reality. And maybe check to see if it makes sense of reality. This will be much harder for non scientist to get a grasp of because scientists are more directly used to doing it even if they don’t think much about what they are doing? Thus Hook paraphrasing Fuerbach; "………That systematic knowledge cannot be developed on the basis of sense-perception alone, Feuerbach of course does not deny. He admits that even science, which he holds up as an illustration of the fact that sense-perception can be important element in systematic knowledge, must recognise an inescapable opposition between objects of sense perception and scientific objects.""But in science as distinct from philosophy this opposition between sense-perception and thought (in modern terminology sense data and hypothesis) is not unmediated. That is to say, scientific thought even though it must transcend sense-perception takes its point of departure from it and returns to it somewhere in the process of scientific proof.""Science is not opposed to ordinary experience. It does not deal with another order of being but is an effective human method of controlling experience………." Thus perhaps you could argue that the quantitative element of abstract thought or the first step or whatever is the ability to convert a sense perception ‘image’ into a ‘symbol’ and then later match the symbol to a real sense perception object or whatever. My thesis on the human condition and language and co-operation is as follows, it is shared by others but not all eg Chomsky. So we need to co-operate which may have started with something simple like warning calls; eg small monkeys have a vocabulary of snakes eagles and jaguars or whatever is a hazard infant apes in particular. The sound call is a generalised symbol for something else. Thinking in idealised symbols expands or makes easier to think. Then co-operative language facilitates or becomes a tool or a basic mechanism for thought. And then there synsergistic co-evolutionary development of language and intelligence in tandem.Thus what a dog or more some dogs can do is an elemental quantitative form of human conciousness?  It helps of course to have had one of these dogs and shared ownership with it with another scientist. I will add this as just another link from a quick google search. Find your own! http://www.eva.mpg.de/psycho/dog-cognition.html

[Dave B]

i## https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melibiose

[Dave B]

iI did actually start responding to this last night but realised it starts complicated very quickly and knew exactly where it would go to and how long it would take as I have done it before. It has to do with the ability cope with symbolic representations of real things. It is in its higher form in humans connected to intelligence as when we think just in our heads we do with language symbols. It has nothing to do with sound obviously. As deaf people and chemists do it. So if a chemist was thinking about melibiose actually the word itself wouldn’t be really important; they would be conjuring up an image of the stick diagram on the rhs  Anyway on dogs?  https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201301/can-we-communicate-dogs-using-photos-and-replicas If you ferment something with raffinose in it the invertase will partially breakdown the raffinose into melibiose. Raffinose is in beet sugar at about 0.2% ; it used be thought that it was bit lower than that but not for much longer.   Beet sugar is used to adulterate fruit juices and the grape juice used to make wine. Find the melibiose and you find the adulteration. Nobody has published a method to do that, yet. 

[Dave B]

i Well if you couldn’t find that in; “………..Karl Marx, Das Kapital, vol.I. Footnote to Chapter XXII….”  It is because it is chapter XXIV. Thus;  Chapter Twenty-Four: Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital 50.Bentham is a purely English phenomenon. Not even excepting our philosopher, Christian Wolff, in no time and in no country has the most homespun commonplace ever strutted about in so self-satisfied a way. The principle of utility was no discovery of Bentham. He simply reproduced in his dull way what Helvétius and other Frenchmen had said with esprit in the 18th century. To know what is useful for a dog, one must study dog-nature. This nature itself is not to be deduced from the principle of utility. Applying this to man, he that would criticise all human acts, movements, relations, etc., by the principle of utility, must first deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch. Bentham makes short work of it. With the driest naiveté he takes the modern shopkeeper, especially the English shopkeeper, as the normal man. Whatever is useful to this queer normal man, and to his world, is absolutely useful. This yard-measure, then, he applies to past, present, and future. The Christian religion, e.g., is “useful,” “because it forbids in the name of religion the same faults that the penal code condemns in the name of the law.” Artistic criticism is “harmful,” because it disturbs worthy people in their enjoyment of Martin Tupper, etc. With such rubbish has the brave fellow, with his motto, “nuila dies sine line!,” piled up mountains of books. Had I the courage of my friend, Heinrich Heine, I should call Mr. Jeremy a genius in the way of bourgeois stupidity. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm It is one of my favourites actually and used it before. This all falls into the more general philosophy of ‘consequentialism’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism You have to be a bit careful in discarding people and ideas that Karl attacked as he attacked everyone and often took onboard some of the core ideas of the people he attacked. Eg Max Stirner. I suppose these consequentialism’ people were saying that one should do stuff or rationally  organise things or adopt a position to maximise the welfare of humanity in total kind of thing. You could say it was possibly philosophically corrupted by ‘social aggregate’ of conditioned human culture and ideology etc. Thus the capitalist culture might condition us to have an insatiable desire for more and more, and bling etc. Or the desire to rise up above others ‘meritocraticaly’ renumerated with material incentives blah blah. Whatever. It also has an apparent ‘moral’ collective perspective. So it is talking about the greatest good of society as a whole rather than the greatest good for the individuals in it. However‘if’ we take the argument that ultimately and absolutely [or materially, scientifically or objectively or whatever ] moneyless communism is the greatest good for society. Then we are materialistic consquentialists. The other argument that I want communism just because it is good for me as an individual rather than for society, in this philosophical respect, formally excludes consequentialism. Because in this ‘other argument’ that ‘moneyless communism is the greatest good for society’ is the incidental consequence [excuse the joke] and not the predicate, which is what ‘is good for me’. Back to Max Stirner. In 1844 Karl and Fred were human nature or human essence communist Fuerbachians. The argument then was quite simple as it popped later with people like Kropotkin in his Mutual Aid. We where, as in 1844, for some reason naturally co-operative and had communistic instincts and that was our human nature or essence. We were not in our natural social environment in 1844 with capitalism and all that. And a return to a communist society would be harmonious with our instincts as well as other stuff and consequentially good.  Stirner in his aptly named ‘Ego And His Own’ adopting a consequentialism of his own said no, no! The consequence to be sort for, or predicated, is the welfare of the individual or the masses thereof. And let that ‘consequentially’ drop out as it will. Karl’s dog nature quote is an interesting flashback I think. So dog’s nature, or the nature of dogs, in 1867 was obviously conditioned or bred to produce its special and particular behavioural effects etc etc. But they are all original wolves at the end of the day. It is a bit anecdotal etc as regards social conditioning versus forced behavioural genetic conditioning of dogs etc. But the philosophical question is what is good for a corrupted wolf, or cocker spaniel? Send it to Montana and introduce it to elks or something? It has implications for Karl as well. So in the Gotha programme what is initially good for the corrupted working class with its ‘bourgeois limitations’. Is a labour voucher transitional period as the cocker spaniel makes the transition back to its wolf nature?? He actually hated the idea but what could he say to the working class, with their ‘cocker spaniel’ culture, who felt they needed time to transition? Importantly admittedly Bentham didn’t take a class position.  As an aside, Dogs are becoming really important now over the last few years in serious scientific research. It was sort of stimulated by proper scientists with impeccable reputations responding to trivial surveys on their ‘relationships’ with their pet pooches. So they did a seminal survey as part of one of these sociological and psychological exercises initially. Like do you think they never landed on the moon and it was a hoax. And you sort collect ancillary data like do you have a science degree, what papers do you read and how much do you earn etc. They did it for the dog thing which obviously pulled in a large dataset.  With stuff like does your dog know what you are thinking and respond to your emotional state and can you tell what mood your dog is in by the sound of its bark etc. The results were horrifying as there was even a positive squew to the yes amongst scientific intellectuals. They weeded out the professors of quantum mechanics at MIT etc and interviewed them. To check it out to see what was going on. They were a bit embarrassed but stuck to their story. They did an even more challenging selective survey of the ‘scientist’. They took them and just them and played them tapes of unknown dogs barking and asked them to select a range of options or multiple choice of what they thought the situation was. They statistically significantly, by a large margin, selected the correct choices. I know it sounds crazy but the selective breeding of dogs that can sort of tap into and interact with human beings is a possibility? As a scientist and having owned a dog for a long time I have to admit I one of them as well. And I am fully aware of anthropomorphism and trick cyclist ‘projection’ and all that.  Dogs have also beaten the chimps when it comes to vocabulary. They can also do the abstract thinking stuff.  So they can be shown a picture of a red carrot and told to go and get it from the next room from a larger jumble of rubber toys etc. In a controlled experiment it is quite amazing to see it. Out of the other room is important as all this new technology has revealed that the dogs are watching the humans eyes and paying attention to what the human is looking at. And there is this kind of stuff? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/3354028/Dogs-can-read-emotion-in-human-faces.html  

[Dave B]

i RT’s was accused of falsely claiming that the BBC participated in a staged ‘chemical’ weapon attack. And was criticised by Ofcom for it being unbalanced? Which attracted a lot of publicity eg in the Guardian. The video details of RT’s claim are at the link below. https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-bbc-saving-syrias-children-documentary-staged-events-fake-video-footage/5470158 I suppose it is up to the individual to make up their minds if there was any justification in suspecting that the event was staged and that the BBC participated in it. RT gives a platform to the critics of ‘western’ capitalism. And no doubt they ‘foam with sullen rage over it’. I think, for the same reasons as Karl, we should pay attention to it. Karl Marx. Capital Volume One Chapter Twenty-Five: The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation   ……..On the other hand, the industrial bourgeoisie foamed with sullen rage at the denunciations of the factory system by the landed aristocracy, at the pretended sympathy with the woes of the factory operatives, of those utterly corrupt, heartless, and genteel loafers, and at their “diplomatic zeal” for factory legislation. It is an old English proverb that “when thieves fall out, honest men come by their own,” and, in fact, the noisy, passionate quarrel between the two fractions of the ruling class about the question, which of the two exploited the labourers the more shamefully, was on each hand the midwife of the truth. Earl Shaftesbury, then Lord Ashley, was commander-in-chief in the aristocratic, philanthropic, anti-factory campaign. He was, therefore, in 1845, a favourite subject in the revelations of the Morning Chronicle on the condition of the agricultural labourers. This journal, then the most important Liberal organ, sent special commissioners into the agricultural districts, who did not content themselves with mere general descriptions and statistics, but published the names both of the labouring families examined and of their landlords……. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm

[Dave B]

i  That is connected in a way but you need to follow it back to electricity. As you can reconvert metal oxides back to the metal and oxygen by electrolysis or electricity. photovoltaicsolar panels that produce electricity are getting better and cheaper all the time so that in some sunny places;  ……..The price of solar power has continued to fall so that in many countries it is cheaper than ordinary fossil fuelelectricity from the grid (there is "grid parity")…….. They will become as cheap as wall paper and you be able to cover the Sahara desert with it generating enough power supply europe. Providing you had a super conducting material to transmit the electricity over that kind of distance.  Renewable and Sustainable Energy ReviewsVolume 55, March 2016, Pages 59-72  Superconducting transmission lines – Sustainable electric energy transfer with higher public acceptance? Despite the extensive research and development investments into superconducting science and technology, both at the fundamental and at the applied levels, many benefits of superconducting transmission lines (SCTL) remain unknown to the public and decision makers at large. This paper aims at informing about the progress in this important research field. Superconducting transmission lines have a tremendous size advantage and lower total electrical losses for high capacity transmission plus a number of technological advantages compared to solutions based on standard conductors. This leads to a minimized environmental impact and enables an overall more sustainable transmission of electric energy. One of the direct benefits may be an increased public acceptance due to the low visual impact with a subsequent reduction of approval time. The access of remote renewable energy (RE) sources with high-capacity transmission is rendered possible with superior efficiency. That not only translates into further reducing CO2emissions in a global energy mix that is still primarily based on fossils, but can also facilitate the development of RE sources given for instance the strong local opposition against the construction of new transmission lines. The socio-economic aspects of superconducting transmission lines based on the novel magnesium diboride (MgB2) superconductor and on high-temperature superconductors (HTS) are compared to state-of-the-art HVDC overhead lines and underground cables based on resistive conductors. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136403211501120X Given priorities it is amazing what can be done. Although the concept of a nuclear powered submarine originated around 1940 it was still science fiction. Around 1950 and a below. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_I Po faced admirals asked the scientist to build a nuclear reactor small enough to fit on a submarine. They burst out laughing apparently. …….she was commissioned USS Nautilus (SSN-571), on 30 September 1954.On 17 January 1955, she departed Groton, Connecticutto begin sea trials. The submarine was 320 feet (98 m) long, and cost about $55 million……… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_submarine

[Dave B]

iNone. To keep it going is like trying keep a pencil balanced on its tip. Breath on it and it falls over and stops dead. Fukushima type meltdown is a total impossibility In fact that is the problem. Actually computer power played a significant part in getting it to run for 10 seconds at the one in England near Oxford. Because to keep the plasma stable etc they had to monitor it and do really fast alterations to the magnetic field or something. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus I think they have been looking at a slight variation of it involving lithium or something which is easier but produces a potential radioactive waste product, something like tritium? But it has short half life of a decade or so unlike the half lives of thousands of years of some of the stuff they do with atomic energy now. I have sort have been following over the years, went to lectures in Manchester by the scientific director of the JET one and a bod from one in France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER That is like a $20 billion project and running. It is quite insane really. It costs $20 billion, for the prototype and pilot plant, because they have only got crap super conducting material. And the research money they have spent on superconductors probably doesn’t add up to $200 million? As well as being black magic with eye of toad and tail of newt stuff; it has also been plagued over the by fraudulent and exaggerated irreproducible claims to pull in more grant money. The idea or philosophy of ITER would be future bigger ones or say 10 times bigger would be 1000 times easier to run etc and that they would be on an engineering learning curve. The americans have spent a small fortune on one that produces the plasma and heat etc etc using lazers.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility

[Dave B]

Actually that kind of nuclear fusion reactor has, as such, never been a theoretical problem. The problem always was it would need super electromagnets and that would need high temperature super conducting material. They have known that super conducting material exists and could be made etc etc for at least about 30 years but it wasn’t bendy like wires and could only operate at minus 160 degrees centigrade sort of thing. They have been working on it and got to material that works at higher and higher temps. But making stuff like that is more like alchemy than anything else without any reason to believe that it would eventually even be possible.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARC_fusion_reactor The amount of resources and funding allocated to superconductor research has been quite absurd by even capitalist standards.  http://news.softpedia.com/news/Superconductor-Research-Receives-1-2-Million-in-Funds-124235.shtml “…….In 2016, the U.S. Department of Defense purchased 149 Tomahawk Block IV missiles for $202.3 million………..”  Will it be too little too late?  https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-arctic-climate-tipping-points-methane-and-the-future-of-the-biosphere/5631112 I think it is and it is a matter of brace for impact.  I think the scientific community themselves are culpable as well. I go to these lectures on the large hadron collider and very large telescope research stuff with all the money spent on it etc. Stand up and tell them that we should be focusing on other stuff rather than trying to discover what happen 15 billion years ago and the reaction is as if you have just let off a really loud eggy one.

[Dave B]

i There is also this material?  The International Workingmen's Association, 1871Political action and the working classSpeech by Marx the London Conference of the International, September, 1871  These are notes taken (in French) from two speeches Marx made at the London Conference; Protocols of the Sessions of September 20, 21, 1871. In virtually all countries, certain members of the International, invoking the mutilated conception of the Statutes adopted at the Geneva Congress, have made propaganda in favor of abstention from politics; and the governments have been quite careful not to impede this restraint. In Germany, Schweitzer and others in the pay of Bismarck even attempted to harness the cart to government policy. In France, this criminal abstention allowed Favre, Picard, and others, to seize power on September 4; this abstention made it possible, on March 18, to set up a dictatorial committee composed largely of Bonapartists and intrigants, who, in the first days, lost the Revolution by inactivity, days which they should have devoted to strengthening the Revolution. In America, a recently held workers' congress [National Labor Union, August 7-10, 1871, Baltimore] resolved to occupy itself with political questions and to replace professional politicians with workers like themselves, who were authorized to defend the interests of their class. In England, it is not so easy for a worker to get to Parliament. Since members of Parliament do not receive any compensation, and the worker has to work to support himself, Parliament becomes unattainable for him, and the bourgeoisie knows very well that its stubborn refusal to allow salaries for members of Parliament is a means of preventing the working class from being represented in it. One should never believe that it is of small significance to have workers in Parliament. If one stifles their voices, as in the case of De Potter and Castian, or if one ejects them, as in the case of Manuel — the reprisals and oppressions exercise a deep effect on the people. If, on the other hand, they can speak from the parliamentary tribune, as do Bebel and Liebknecht, the whole world listens to them. In the one case or the other, great publicity is provided for our principles. To give but one examples: when during the [Franco-Prussian] war, which was fought in France, Bebel and Liebknecht undertook to point out the responsibility of the working class in the face of those events, all of Germany was shaken; and even in Munich, the city where revolutions take place only over the price of beet, great demonstrations took place demanding an end to the war. The governments are hostile to us, one must respond to them with all the means at out disposal. To get workers into Parliament is synonymous with a victory over the governments, but one must choose the right men, not Tolains. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/09/politics-speech.htm  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1878/03/03.htm    Karl MarxThe Class Struggles In FranceIntroduction by Frederick Engels  And if universal suffrage had offered no other advantage than that it allowed us to count our numbers every three years; that by the regularly established, unexpectedly rapid rise in the number of votes it increased in equal measure the workers' certainty of victory and the dismay of their opponents, and so became our best means of propaganda; that it accurately informed us concerning our own strength and that of all hostile parties, and thereby provided us with a measure of proportion for our actions second to none, safeguarding us from untimely timidity as much as from untimely foolhardiness—if this had been the only advantage we gained from the suffrage, then it would still have been more than enough. But it has done much more than this. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/intro.htm there is other material

[Dave B]

i Even the wiki entry is flawed ? As the SDF was formed out of the “Democratic Federation” And it was the “Democratic Federation” that was actually formed in 1881 and became the SDF in 1884? Anyway Fred wasn’t impressed with the forerunner of 1881 either. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/letters/83_08_30.htm the footnote might be incorrect as well?

[Dave B]

you would have thought they would have the wiki entry  However, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx's long-term collaborator, refused to support Hyndman's venture. Many of its early leading members had previously been active in the Manhood Suffrage League.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Federation  

[Dave B]

i“…………If socialism can work – i.e. the democratic communalisation of resources resolves economic scarcity – then why would a socialist society need to engage in economic calculation at all?…………”   I think the position is more of a ‘general’ one concerning socially responsible consumption and its impact rather than I will take what I want because it is free, abundant, not scarce etc etc. Even in capitalism people can be concerned about the ‘social’ impact of what they are consuming even if they can easily afford it. Thus as I said before we have free range chickens and eggs, sustainable fishing for tuna and farming for palm oil. Or more current perhaps disposable and free plastic shopping bags. This has its inherent capitalistic problems as anecdote and that is ecological being concerned with whales, dolphins and albatross’s etc. But human beings who work in factories and down mines are animals too like chickens. And consuming stuff that has been made by factory workers and miners has an impact on them too. We talk about democratic control over what is produced and how much etc which will presumably involve and endless round of voting. Or Bolshevik like technocrats deciding for us how much of what will be available to us etc. So why not let people vote at the free access community stores at the checkout. Operating on some kind of socially responsible principal of consuming a similar amount of labour time as one puts back into society? Robinson Crusoe would decide whether the utility of consuming something was worth the effort in producing it.

[Dave B]

i I appreciate the use of hyperbole etc but you have to sensible about this kind of thing and going too far spoils the analysis a bit. But to get one part out of the way as regards ten Ferraris. People do that kind of thing as it provides some kind of social status perverted as it maybe in capitalism. Having ten Ferraris in communism would work then, and would carry all the social status, of being caught with child porn on your PC. Perhaps we wouldn’t have Ferraris and gold toilet seats in communism because;  Either we would democratically decide not to make them. Or what amounts to the same thing no-one would volunteer to work in factories making Ferraris and gold toilet seats. Gold miners, having some decentralised control about what happened to their work? might refuse to supply it to people who wanted to turn it into toilet seats. [If these things are still around I would suggest allocating them according to trial by combat to death.] However greed when it comes to consumption can be a bit subjective. I would define it as consuming a lot more than you produce, as measured by labour time. If people want to have, or actually more importantly use, a 25 foot yacht, a Ferraris or something like £15,000 superbike or something. And are prepared to ‘work’ for it in communism by doing 40 hours a week when the rest of us are doing 10 hours then that would be fair enough with me. Flipping over to the decadent consumption type people, should they exist in communism. We presume that the amount of stuff anyone can actually consume or use up is limitless in confounding it with possession. Even the infamous Imelda Marcos with her seven thousand per of shoes fortunately only had two feet and could if she tried use them up. If they insist on that kind of thing I would suggest letting them do it and ‘have’ seven thousand shoes. Without police and property rights etc of course there would be nothing to stop people turning up and taking them to use for themselves. Under such circumstances we would understand their distress and suggest that they take a careful note of what was taken and let us know and we would promise to replace them as soon as possible. They might like that idea and so should we as they would be happy then running community stores and performing a useful social function. When stuff is glorious and relatively unobtainable or has limited attainability it is easily imagined than given abundance and free access enough will never be enough etc. I loved Cadbury’s chocolate fingers and chocolate chip cookies when I was young. Then miraculously I went to work in the factory that made them in 1979. This place as it was in 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-12173304 Started off in the biscuit section and the fingers line; you could eat as much as you want as it came off the line. As well as the line that made the chocolate chips for the cookies, which was the best bit. It took about 1 week before I was sick of it and three before the smell of chocolate made me want to puke I asked for a transfer to the ‘tea house’, they made Typhoo tea bags as well. Never got sick of the tea though, even though you would think it was worse as there was so much tea dust your snot was brown. It used to settle on the floor like snow and the swept it up to sell to people who made vending machine instant tea stuff. So Neelix with water and replicators in star trek voyager had a kind of resonance.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDPHW21R13E

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