[Dave B]

There was no division between Marx and Engels. Any Apparent differences were a result of them dealing with separate aspects of their combined case, thus;  As a consequence of the division of labour that existed between Marx and myself, it fell to me to present our opinions in the periodical press, that is to say, particularly in the fight against opposing views, in order that Marx should have time for the elaboration of his great basic work. Thus it became my task to present our views, for the most part in a polemical form, in opposition to other kinds of views. So also here.  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/housing-question/preface.htm Engels also did not have any finality position either. As it is not our task to create utopian systems for the arrangement of the future society,… https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/housing-question/ch01.htm  %5BA much under read and ignored important booklet incidentally if you like teasing out interesting stuff from a boring subject matter.] If the statement “socialism or Barbarism” doesn’t make that clear? On Lenin’s “State and Revolution” it is obviously lauded by modern anti Bukharinist Leninists. The irony of it is that Lenin actually disowned it. Lenin was never shy about quoting his own past material but he never referred back to that. In fact when Lenin started his stagiest state capitalist April 1918 (as opposed to april 1917) Bukharin wrote a glowing review of it as part of his criticism of Lenin’s state capitalist thesis. Rubbing Lenin’s face in his own recent material; intended and understood by Lenin as that. The vanguardist what is to be done stuff ‘where the word became flesh’ so to speak reappeared again later. V. I. LeninThe Trade Unions, The Present SituationAnd Trotsky’s Mistakes Speech Delivered At A Joint Meeting Of Communist Delegates To The Eighth Congress Of Soviets, Communist Members Of The All-Russia Central Council Of Trade Unions And Communist Members Of The Moscow City Council Of Trade Unions December 30, 1920  But the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class. The whole is like an arrangement of cogwheels. Such is the basic mechanism of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and of the essentials of transition from capitalism to communism. http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm  On this ‘finality’ thing well it isn’t that simple. It’s about extrapolation or projection or where is what is going on going to end up if it continues like this. It is the essence of Hegelianism and in fact science and cosmology etc. The idea of Karl was that we would end up with a load off, or in fact not many, rich bastards owning everything and a real load of wage slaves. And even the rich bastards not being able to control their systems but mere being hand-maidens to a system. The basic idea has since 2003 reappeared in a most peculiar form; many of these serious scientists are starting to take it seriously including Brian Cox’s co-worker and mate- went to his lecture in Manchester last week.

[Dave B]

I have not been following this thread much but what Steve seem to be proposing is some kind of fusion of the relatively modern Parecon system and Deleonism. I think I did ask whether you were is some way a Pareconist but can’t remember an answer. I do appreciate people wanting to avoid being categorised into certain schools of thought but they are more fully worked out so at least your differences between them would be interesting to hear. The Deleonist are especially interesting I think because they are almost as old as us, were American and used to be quite big, probably bigger than us. They now seem to be relatively recently extinct. We did in fact share a lot of ground with them and anti-Lenninist and anti reformist critique of capitalism. Now that they are gone; I can say they had an extremely well worked out system for what you seem to be proposing and were hard work. We had several long running debates with them on the old forum around 2005. You could argue that Kautsky dabbled with this in 1924? https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1924/labour/ch03_j.htm  I actually don’t think the capitalists are the problem and they are becoming less and less of a problem. its the system. Complaining about the consumption fund of the 0.1% is a distraction even if it is your face a lot. Actually theoretically the consumption fund of the capitalist class is probably falling as there are fewer and fewer of them and even they reach human limits on what they consume and how many shoes they can have to wear. For instance I am almost certain that they collectively personally consume far less than is expended on financial sector and for ‘circulation of capital’, advertising and the military and police budget etc.

[Dave B]

The problem with the title of the thread is that the only successful ‘communist community’ ;that lasted a hundred years or so. [successful communist community being one that practiced a free access moneyless system within it of voluntary labour etc.] was one that prohibited sex , and was ‘christian’ ie the Shakers. http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1844/10/15.htm the communist part of it however is pretty much left out of the otherwise glowing Wikipedia entry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers Engels said it was communism in 1844 anyway in a preamble to his pamphlet in a letter to Karl. It is quite clear also that many of the early Christians were communists in the sense that they believed in having things in common As in Didache circa 100AD , epistle of Barnabas 130, anti Christian tract passing of Peregrinus 170 , Celsus again anti Christian and ad 170, Justyn the Martyr circa 130. etc. Ignoring the well trawled acts stuff. And there is also the other stuff, like below again from 2nd century. For man God made all things to be common property. He brought the female to be with the male in common and in the same way united all the animals. He thus showed rightousness to be a universal sharing along with equality. But those who have been born in this way have denied the sharing which is the corollary of their origin and say Let him who has taken one woman keep her, whereas all can share her, just as the other animals show us. With view to the permanence of the race, he has implanted in males a strong and ardent desire which neither law nor custom nor any other restraint is able to destroy. For it is God´s decree……Consequently one must understand the saying You shall not desire as if the lawgiver was making a jest, to which he added the even more comic words Your neighbors goods. For he himself gave the desire to sustain the race orders that it is to be supposed, though he removes it from no other animals. And by the words Your neighbors wife he says something even more ludicrous, since he forces what should be common property to be treated as private posession.  http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/epiphanes.html Sexist orientated admittedly but plenty to sink your teeth over that kind of thing????? This stuff however seems to be preserved by early Christians critiquing some kind free love notion of Christian communism; looks like flower power kind of stuff? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpocrates

[Dave B]

That kind of thing has been on the agenda for a while as in the link below. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/aug/28/vast-social-cleansing-pushes-tens-of-thousands-of-families-out-of-london It will move up a gear again very soon as they have lowered the Cap on benefits again and will hit the London poor the hardest as you can’t get much in the way of housing or you don’t get much change to live on out of £20-25K per year. It was also covered in I Daniel Blake with the ‘Essex girl’ single mother being socially cleansed to Newcastle. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/davehillblog/2016/nov/10/london-boroughs-prepare-for-impacts-of-tightened-benefit-cap  Which is pretty shit really because the beer up there is crap never mind the football teams.

[Dave B]

I thought Trump might win based in a small part on reliable reports on the very large attendances at his rallies etc. And its inverse; attendances at Hilary’s. But I think that only addresses the lesser proportions of the voters. Most voters were undoubtedly either voting against “Hilary” or against “Trump”. That was fully recognised beforehand with highest disapproval ratings of both presidential candidates ever.  The anti “Hilary” vote, as a combination and fusion of things is probably more interesting. Once aspect of it was encapsulated by a Michael Moore talk given several days before with his ‘prediction’ that a load of pissed off workers, shafted by lost jobs, poverty and foreclosed homes etc would send a ‘F**k You’ message to whom they considered as the preferred representative of the boss class. And as he said, some of the dafter would to some extent follow the maxim of; ‘an enemy of my enemy is my friend There was little confusion as to who ‘preferred representative of the boss class’ as the  so called mainstream media made that plain. If the Wikileaks stuff on the Wall Street speeches didn’t.  (On political punditry; the guy with his ear to the ground, Julian Assange, said in an interview with John Pilger a few days ago, that Trump wouldn’t be allowed to win. He might still be correct I suppose.)  The ‘F**k You’ message, which is ‘apparently’ naked revenge, can be analysed in two fundamentally different albeit always mixed up ways; the ‘working class’ and human and the ‘economic’ bourgeois way. The ‘economic’ bourgeois way is to raise the level of threatened or exacted, and costs to themselves, of punishment until it reaches risk -benefit equilibrium for the threatened potential perpetrators. It doesn’t matter whether it is pick pockets, sheep rustlers, Mafia horses heads or bomb B52 them into the stone age.    The other ‘F**k You’, is I will take you down and go down with you if that is what it takes.  On the ‘positive’ political incorrectness of the pro Trump supporters re Mexicans and illegal immigrants etc. This I think is invariably interpreted as naked racism ‘ethnicism’ etc and I don’t doubt that that plays its part. But as far as the much ‘justifiably’ maligned redneck working class , over there and here, are concerned ‘they’ could just as easily be Norwegian albino’s. ‘They’ are the ‘global reserve of the unemployed’, irrespective of their skin colour etc, producing the usual affect of over supply of any commodity, in this case labour power, an driving down its ‘price’. I don’t like racism at all; but I think ‘genuine’ working class economic concerns re cheap labour, which is the ‘content’ of ‘their’ problem should be properly redirected back to that? Rather than colluding with the liberal capitalist class as re- representing it, as for them, the safe space of a now, non economic class issue.     

[Dave B]

I think it is interesting to compare what it used to be like to now. Unemployment in the UK started to rise in the mid 1970’s reaching about 5% which is roughly the level it is supposed to be now. But I think the general political attitude towards it was more sympathetic then and it was less a matter of scroungers than a failure of the system. To give it a context there was a BBC TV play at the time. It must have reasonably good as I can still remember it ; not watched since or again although it has been made available on DVD 30 years later.  https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elephants%27_Graveyard_(1976)  There are several other things that are different now from the 1970’s for those at the bottom of the heap. It not so much the minimum wage as the ‘intensity’ of work that is expected for it and the associated zero hour contract ‘flexible’ working. There is also the general precarious or non permanent basis of employment; the idea of starting working in a place and still being there 20 years later is quite strange now whereas it used to be almost the norm. And then there is the deterioration of housing (benefit) security system, loss of ‘affordable’ state provided  housing; and there is the cost of accommodation in general experienced as rent and mortgage interest payments etc. It isn’t unusual now for double income earners to paying up and over 50% of it to keep a roof over their heads. I would be interested to know the historical data or personal experience of that from the 1970’s say. I think the average ‘house price’ in the UK is about 200K and the monthly interest only payments on that is about £800 which gobbles up more than half of the take home pay of an average salary of 27K. Theoretically its interesting as according to Karl there were three classes in ‘capitalist’ society as the volume III joke says. The ‘manufacturing’ capitalist class that directly squeeze out of the working class surplus labour; that is unpaid labour that they pay to themselves. And the ‘landowning’, house-owning  or rentier class will cream off some of that out of the system for themselves.  And that the interest bearing, finance and rentier  ‘capitalists’ were effectively parasites living off the back of the parasitic profiteers of enterprises. Whereby the “profiteers of enterprises” have to hand over a lot of their surplus value (£800 a month is a lot of surplus value)  to the wage slaves  so they could pass it on to the ‘non productive’ rentier class. There are some interesting historical examples eg the living out system in the slave system of the USA. Where ‘proper’ capitalists would employ slaves under a direct wage labour system and the slaves would then either themselves pass on a proportion of their wages to the slave owners or the capitalist employer pass on a premium to the slave owners. In Russia, with seasonal agricultural production, the serf owners would send their serfs off to work for capitalists (typically mining, and lumber and stuff like that) for a fee.  I think there was a certain degree of hostility between landowning class and ‘productive’ capitalist class which had as much to do with their historical base. Now they seemed to have fused together somewhat. However there now are some very much non Marxists who are comparing the increasing part played by interest bearing and rentier ‘capitalism’ to a return to ‘feudalism’ as they would put it. There is food for thought wiki entry on it.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rentier_capitalism

[Dave B]

I think it is a lot worse than it used to be in the 1980’s when I did the life of and love on the dole thing. When there was 3 million us plus, as the figures where fiddled downwards then. Then you would sign on and leave you alone although I had no experience of the disability system direct or otherwise. pretty much mainly chasing after people who were working in the gray economy and co-habitors. People who were shacked up together which deserved a deduction. Now they are using the workhouse kind of system of picking oakem and breaking stones, or in other words proving that you are applying for loads of jobs that you have no hope of getting to avoid ‘sanctions’. And the problems of the bedroom tax that makes the security of the hovel over your head that much less secure. Then there is also apparently the problem of being driven into temporary work and not having the financial reserve to carry you over between when it ends and the payments come through on your next application. There has been a novel explosion of people living on the streets, in tents etc, and begging in Manchester which I have not seen before. They are not all old wino’s by any stretch of the imagination either. They was a ‘jungle’ like camp site set up on a major thorough fare in Manchester on Oxford Road under the Mancunian Way, a motorway fly over, and the centre of the Manchester universities complex with its lucrative foreign students business, making the place look like the third world. I cycled past it going to work when they started clearing them out with a few police and regiment of private security guards. It was probably an accident that I was there again a bit later going home; it could have been a Saturday. Clattering along oxford road going north was a black limousine with a dozen or so police motorcycles as escort with blue flashing lights and all that paraphernalia; which is exceptional in Manchester. They had actually already cleared the road totally but I sneaked on my bike only to be driven off the road by the cavalcade.  I swore and V signed at what I assumed was one of the 0.001% , when the pigs were out of site.Not realising, before a google search that it was a fellow traveller and brother Mr Xi, the communist president of China   http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/live-chinese-president-manchester-visit–10317062  He sort of also demonstrated a rather un-diplomatic partisanship in only visiting the Manchester city ground. I live next door to the Manchester United ground and my work place is next to Manchester cities ground which; is pretty crap for a cultural heritage scouser, no peace. Football is crap now and is just a brand. I think it used to be a bit of ‘cultural’ space where the working class could congregate and bond together in some shared space, the terraces, to the exclusion of the ruling class etc. With a possibility bit of brain dead regionalist xenophobia thrown in perhaps.   There were ‘toffs’, or sometimes a well off ageing relative sat down in the stands but we were all from the same soil. Engels in the housing question seemed to think that oxford road ran east-west but he did remember the ‘elevated railway’ that crossed it and is still there.

[Dave B]

You sort of wonder how things panned out for Saint Lawrence of Rome , the patron saint of chefs and comedians when he was barbecued. There doesn’t appear to any details as to what happened to the ashes, or charcoal.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_of_Rome As we all know of course the standard theological basis of ‘the bodily resurrection’ or to quote the mantra “giving them back the bodies they lost at death”, is justified from Saint Pauls 1 Cor. 15. I am not going to provide the quotations for in the hope of encouraging the otherwise lazy bible readers. But it a considerable over-read to infer from that that you are going to end up looking like you did when you popped your clogs. Maybe Saint Lawrence is up there looking like a piece of burnt Asda chicken breast?  Saint Paul is interesting in the sense that there is practically nothing in his stuff that suggested any awareness of the ideological content of gospels. And I think certainly given the time it was supposed to have been written there was plenty to sink your teeth into or prattle on about. Ironically perhaps one of the few interesting details he did provide is an anathema to the catholics ie that he had met and talked with Saint James who he said was JC’s brother. They have done computer pattern analysis on the ‘Greek’ writings of Paul and decided that some of it was not written by him or all of it was not written by the same person etc. Can’t remember which is contested but can pull it out if required. It has even been accepted by some of the more intelligent bible bashes who counter it with the ‘secretarial thesis’ ie he just drafted or dictated stuff to be written up by someone else. Although most of it hangs together as probably authored by the same person. He was allegedly decapitated as a luxury capital punishment reserved for the ruling class and a citizen of Rome. You had to have, as a Turkish ‘Jew’, loads of lolly to buy your way into that club.

[Dave B]

There is another report from the bbc webb site as below. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-37697474  Not heard or seen anything on the radio or tv apart from one quick item on an on the hour radio four news similar to the above. They took Iranian press tv off cable and satellite in the UK a few years ago. The webb site is another useful resource or other ‘opinions’ or interpretation. RT news in several serial programmes invites and welcomes the neocons and advocates of the standard western position etc to discuss and debate and challenge the Russian perspective etc eg crosstalk , the Okrana woman and Sophie one. As well as offering platforms to the ‘left’ eg going underground and even gorgeous Galloway. As well as bog standard finance and capitalist economic programmes like boom and bust and even people like Max Kaiser.  The situation does look like world war one replay with an emerging economic power blocs challenging another. The US is facing down Russia as a more manageable problem than China and for that matter the rest of them. It looks like the Philippines, like maybe Turkey? is switching allegiances to another family and Don. There was an brief article elsewhere pointing out the double standards as in the Guardian. Which ran an article celebrating the attack on Mosul to liberate it from ISIS and on the next page running the standard critique of Russia/Syria doing the same thing in East Allepo;  even on what is almost certainly going to be on a smaller and less catastrophic scale. And the idea that it is OK to provide no fly zone safe havens for east Allepo terrorists; but having to bomb and invade Afghanistan to prevent it becoming a safe haven for terrorists. And Saudi dictatorial head-choppers bombing Yemen. The US press secretary had to admit that there were problems with the "precision and planning" of some of the Saudi’s more obviously murderous bombing operations. As there was when the Israelis bombed Gaza as a right to defend itself against ‘terrorists’ letting of sending puny rockets into their patch.    As to human nature etc if you brutalise human beings enough they will tend to become monsters themselves. And as general greed is good etc the capitalist media will make all us after their own image as any other image is a critique of themselves.

[Dave B]

You could mention to them the French Icarian version Progress of Social Reform On the Continent October 23 1843; https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/10/23.htm And the shakers in particular at; http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1844/10/15.htm with 'introduction'; ….The Teutons are all still very muddled about the practicability of communism; to dispose of this absurdity I intend to write a short pamphlet showing that communism has already been put into practice and describing in popular terms how this is at present being done in England and America. [12] The thing will take me three days or so, and should prove very enlightening for these fellows. I’ve already observed this when talking to people here…… https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/letters/44_10_01.htm

[Dave B]

1) Do you believe money must be eliminated for socialism to exist? (YES/NO + optional comment) yes2) What about coupons. . . are they a form of money that must also be eliminated? (YES/NO + optional comment)Yes3) What about checks that are just papers notes with a number of dollars written on them and sent by a local store to a distributor in a capitalist economy for purchasing more products to restock their shelves. . .are checks money? (YES/NO + optional comment) yes4) What about tally counts of items removed from a peoples store written on a piece of paper that is sent to the central communist distribution center in a communist economy to re-order more toasters to restock the shelves. . . are tally counts money? (YES/NO + optional comment) Tally counts aren’t necessarily money – in fact this is already done with computerised stock control systems. What is removed from stores is logged and re ordered from suppliers. The suppliers then automatically reorder materials to make them and so on down the supply chain. They use this system in all modern manufacturers supplying the supermarkets ie where I work. We use SAP, there are several. I know someone well who wrote the first electronic point of sale computer programmes for the retailers in the UK in the 1980’s.She said hers would still have run if the value of all items was set a zero. 5) What about the count of the number of hours a person has worked at a factory in a socialist economy. . .  is that a form of money and the hours contributed by each person must not be counted and must not be writen down on a piece of paper and sent to others? (YES/NO + optional comment) I would say people could count themselves the number of hours they worked and if they were allowed to count the number of hours embodied in the production of stuff they consumed- by making that information available-  they could voluntarily regulate how much they worked and balance it against what the consumed.6) What about a count of the number of votes an idea has in a socialist or capitalist economy. .  . Are vote counts written on a piece of paper and sent to a central agency for making a decision that affects distribution of goods or resources a form of money?(YES/NO + optional comment) I would do that by sortition, along with everything else, with the possibility over overturning the decision by a larger vote- all abstentions being taken as a vote in agreement with the sortion decision.7) Is there a functional definition of money that is specefic to theories of communism. I'm looking for a logic rule that addresses grey areas in the definition of money as used by communist critques. Can you link to any well developed arguments and theories that already have been debated and answer all my survey questions at once?(YES/NO + optional comment) are you arguing for a Parecon type system?Grundrisse: Notebook I – The Chapter on MoneyNow, it might be thought that the issue of time-chits overcomes all these difficulties. (The existence of the time-chit naturally already presupposes conditions which are not directly given in the examination of the relations of exchange value and money, and which can and do exist without the time-chit: public credit, bank etc.; but all this not to be touched on further here, since the time-chit men of course regard it as the ultimate product of the ‘series’, which, even if it corresponds most to the ‘pure’ concept of money, ‘appears’ last in reality.) To begin with: If the preconditions under which the price of commodities = their exchange value are fulfilled and given; balance of demand and supply; balance of production and consumption; and what this amounts to in the last analysis, proportionate production (the so-called relations of distribution are themselves relations of production), then the money question becomes entirely secondary, in particular the question whether the tickets should be blue or green, paper or tin, or whatever other form social accounting should take. In that case it is totally meaningless to keep up the pretence that an investigation is being made of the real relations of money.The bank (any bank) issues the time-chits. [18] A commodity, A = the exchange value x, i.e. = x hours of labour time, is exchanged for a quantity of money representing x labour time. The bank would at the same time have to purchase the commodity, i.e. exchange it for its representative in monetary form, just as e.g. the Bank of England today has to give notes for gold. The commodity, the substantial and therefore accidental existence of exchange value, is exchanged for the symbolic existence of exchange value as exchange value. There is then no difficulty in transposing it from the form of the commodity into the form of money. The labour time contained in it only needs to be authentically verified (which, by the way, is not as easy as assaying the purity and weight of gold and silver) and thereby immediately creates its counter-value, its monetary existence. No matter how we may turn and twist the matter, in the last instance it amounts to this: the bank which issues the time-chits buys commodities at their costs of production, buys all commodities, and moreover this purchase costs the bank nothing more than the production of snippets of paper, and the bank gives the seller, in place of the exchange value which he possesses in a definite and substantial form, the symbolic exchange value of the commodity, in other words a draft on all other commodities to the amount of the same exchange value. Exchange value as such can of course exist only symbolically, although in order for it to be employed as a thing and not merely as a formal notion, this symbol must possess an objective existence; it is not merely an ideal notion, but is actually presented to the mind in an objective mode. (A measure can be held in the hand; exchange value measures, but it exchanges only when the measure passes from one hand to the other.) So the bank gives money for the commodity; money which is an exact draft on the exchange value of the commodity, i.e. of all commodities of the same value; the bank buys. The bank is the general buyer, the buyer of not only this or that commodity, but all commodities. For its purpose is to bring about the transposition of every commodity into its symbolic existence as exchange value. But if it is the general buyer, then it also has to be the general seller; not only the dock where all wares are deposited, not only the general warehouse, but also the owner of the commodities, in the same sense as every merchant. I have exchanged my commodity A for the time-chit B, which represents the commodity’s exchange value; but I have done this only so that I can then further metamorphose this B into any real commodity C, D, E etc., as it suits me. Now, can this money circulate outside the bank? Can it take any other route than that between the owner of the chit and the bank? How is the convertibility of this chit secured? Only two cases are possible. Either all owners of commodities (be these products or labour) desire to sell their commodities at their exchange value, or some want to and some do not. If they all want to sell at their exchange value, then they will not await the chance arrival or non-arrival of a buyer, but go immediately to the bank, unload their commodities on to it, and obtain their exchange value symbol, money, for them: they redeem them for its money. In this case the bank is simultaneously the general buyer and the general seller in one person. Or the opposite takes place. In this case, the bank chit is mere paper which claims to be the generally recognized symbol of exchange value, but has in fact no value. For this symbol has to have the property of not merely representing, but being, exchange value in actual exchange. In the latter case the bank chit would not be money, or it would be money only by convention between the bank and its clients, but not on the open market. It would be the same as a meal ticket good for a dozen meals which I obtain from a restaurant, or a theatre pass good for a dozen evenings, both of which represent money, but only in this particular restaurant or this particular theatre. The bank chit would have ceased to meet the qualifications of money, since it would not circulate among the general public, but only between the bank and its clients. We thus have to drop the latter supposition.The bank would thus be the general buyer and seller. Instead of notes it could also issue cheques, and instead of that it could also keep simple bank accounts. Depending on the sum of commodity values which X had deposited with the bank, X would have that sum in the form of other commodities to his credit. A second attribute of the bank would be necessary: it would need the power to establish the exchange value of all commodities, i.e. the labour time materialized in them, in an authentic manner. But its functions could not end there. It would have to determine the labour time in which commodities could be produced, with the average means of production available in a given industry, i.e. the time in which they would have to be produced. But that also would not be sufficient. It would not only have to determine the time in which a certain quantity of products had to be produced, and place the producers in conditions which made their labour equally productive (i.e. it would have to balance and to arrange the distribution of the means of labour), but it would also have to determine the amounts of labour time to be employed in the different branches of production. The latter would be necessary because, in order to realize exchange value and make the bank’s currency really convertible, social production in general would have to be stabilized and arranged so that the needs of the partners in exchange were always satisfied. Nor is this all. The biggest exchange process is not that between commodities, but that between commodities and labour. (More on this presently.) The workers would not be selling their labour to the bank, but they would receive the exchange value for the entire product of their labour, etc. Precisely seen, then, the bank would be not only the general buyer and seller, but also the general producer. In fact either it would be a despotic ruler of production and trustee of distribution, or it would indeed be nothing more than a board which keeps the books and accounts for a society producing in common. The common ownership of the means of production is presupposed, etc., etc. The Saint-Simonians made their bank into the papacy of production. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch03.htm

[Dave B]

The proposition is in fact quite simple. It is proposed that the only way we, or the 99%, can solve the problems that we have now as a result of our development is to move towards free access moneyless communism. That is contested obviously, particularly by the 1% who suffer that much less from the problems of capitalism; and needs debate. A debate that is restricted and controlled by the ownership of the media by the 1%. And probably we will, as Winston Churchill put it in another somewhat ironic context; Do the Right Thing — After Exhausting All the Alternatives

[Dave B]

The system I am referring to is know called sortition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition I raised it on revleft about 10 years ago when it was still referred to as demarchy. An in that link it gives history of it that includes the Athenian democracy, for the ruling class, anyway. Even the formally democratic systems can lead to a political class; as most and in my opinion the better kind of people have got better things to do and aspirations than be political organisers. The worst kind do, and become a ‘bureaucratic caste’ and I think people like Bakunin had a point on that. Reformism and false conciouness etc aside. You can just imagine what a headache it might be for the ruling class if the UK parliament, the US Congress and Senate or for that matter the Bolshevik Central Executive Committee was selected randomly, mostly and inevitably, from the population of the 99% and for that matter rotated every four years or one.  Then again I suppose in the US it would be like winning the lottery as you set up the Dave B Foundation and cleared your dairy for the $250,000 a short lecture and tours took in the Wall Street bribes as fast as they arrived. I would recommend it the capitalist class as it might turn out cheaper than the system they have now. But that aside again. When I have attended packed Noam Chomsky talks I was impressed by the system ‘he’ had when it came questions from the floor. People who were too nervous to speak confidently in front of 2000 people etc, like me, were given the opportunity and in fact encouraged to present them to an individual who would speak or ask it on their behalf. I think democracy is as much about a spirit rather than technical procedures and in fact dislike and distrust most people who are able to push themselves forward in that manner. There are I believe a whole load obnoxious personality traits that appear to go hand in hand with eloquent and confident people; or in other word “politicians”.

[Dave B]

I would prefer to change the debate a little bit by looking at democracy in general and how it could work or not work in communism as I think a perceived weakness of the communist democratic model is that it would be incredible complicated and unwieldy. One basic problem is the number of decisions that would need to be taken and thus the number of votes that would have to taken. You could trivialise it, a bit, by taking the example of decision over street lighting in a small town in Peru etc and multiplying that problem up. Second  problem is just the technical way democratic decision making is made with all its amendments to resolutions, addendums and all that crap that most organisations go in for; as does the SPGB. When I first joined the SPGB I attended a conference and was horrified by the complexity and confusion involved in the process and lack of transparency about what was actually happening; and I was fairly well educated. Not that I wasn’t already familiar with that kind of thing as I had previously briefly attended student union political meetings and associated with the kind of middle class gobshites who liked to spend their time doing that kind of thing. For them it was a game for the elitist nomenklatura, understanding or the technical procedures. It gives a decision making advantage to the intelligentsia, who know how to play the system, of so called democratic procedures and latent bureaucrats. The old Bolsheviks knew how to take advantage of it during the very brief period before they could dispense with even that. Third problem is that so called mandated delegates can just be a euphemism for representative democracy. Where the delegates get selected on the same basis as representative democracy; clever sounding and convincing bull-shitters irrespective of what kind of system they are intended to administer and or corrupt.     I think delegates should be selected by lottery, or randomly selected by picking a name out of a hat; with the caveat that people can vote to exclude them just in case a self serving latent bureaucrat whose ambition is to organise those that do real work chances to get picked. The fourth, L bird problem, is decisions being made by people who aren’t ‘qualified’ to make them; like me. So recently I was in a what turned into a lively debate between me and several other informed scientists about the relative merits of (photo electric) solar versus wind power. We were all ‘informed’, there was no doubt about that, however there was some argument about ‘capital’ outlay (set up cost’s), maintenance ( the solar power people think their no moving parts solar PV panels will last for 10,000 years whilst these windmills will grind to a halt after 30) and transmission costs ( getting solar power from hot sunny places like the Sahara to Manchester etc etc, etc).        The solution to that kind of problem is that you randomly select say 1000 people from all walks of life including Peruvian peasants, Warrington bin men, and even the least qualified people, with double firsts in Oxbridge in the humanities, who are likely to be a drag on it, and force them to gem up and make a decision.  It is called Demarchy. It rests on well established mathematical statistical principals that a rigorously exercised ‘poll’ will represent the views of a majority. And decisions made by it can go through on the ‘nod’. It is of course an anathema to bureaucratic social climbers of all descriptions.

[Dave B]

 Works of Frederick Engels 1874The Program of the Blanquist Fugitives from the Paris Commune …In this line, so far as big words are concerned, we know that the Bakounists have reached the limit; but the Blanquists feel that it is their duty to excel them in this. And how do they do this? It is well known that the entire socialist proletariat, from Lisbon to New York and Budapest to Belgrade has assumed the responsibility for the actions of the Paris Commune without hesitation. But that is not enough for the Blanquists. "As for us, we claim our part of the responsibility for the executions of the enemies of the people" (by the Commune), whose names are then enumerated; "we claim our part of the responsibility for those fires, which destroyed the instruments of royal or bourgeois oppression or protected our fighters."In every revolution some follies are inevitably committed, just as they are at any other time, and when quiet is finally restored, and calm reasoning comes, people necessarily conclude: We have done many things which had better been left undone, and we have neglected many things which we should have done, and for this reason things went wrong.But what a lack of judgment it requires to declare the Commune sacred, to proclaim it infallible, to claim that every burnt house, every executed hostage, received their just dues to the dot over the i! Is not that equivalent to saying that during that week in May the people shot just as many opponents as was necessary, and no more, and burnt just those buildings which had to be burnt, and no more? Does not that repeat the saying about the first French Revolution: Every beheaded victim received justice, first those beheaded by order of Robespierre and then Robespierre himself! To such follies are people driven, when they give free rein to the desire to appear formidable, although they are at bottom quite goodnatured. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/06/26.htm

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