[DJP]

Does anyone know if all the occupy groups practise(d) consensus and an open membership policy? That would explain their difficulty in coming to a decision. Also as far as I know there is no mechanism for co-coordinating the various groups, so ‘Occupy’ is really just a collection of disparate and independent groups.

[DJP]

gnome wrote:

17. Refinance all underwater mortgages at 1% interest rate.

What’s an underwater mortgage? Like what you need to buy a submarine?

[DJP]

TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:

The Occupy movements are not political parties and nor were the Miners in 1984. We were working people at war with the capitalist class

I wonder how much you’ve actually participated in this Occupy stuff? The most popular currents within it (at least in the UK) seem to be for a land tax ala Henry George and monetary reform ala Postitive Money / NEF as well as some Green Party type ideas.. These are things that Socialists should be criticising and ridiculing!The trouble with the Occupy thing is that it’s so amophous for it really to represent a cohesive organisation, but where it to become one, I feel alas it would be necessary to oppose it.SOME of the actions associated with the wider occupy movement, and mostly in the US, are inspiring particularly how it worked together with various trade union / workplace activities – I’m not sure if this happened so much in the UK?Reform or revolution does not mean that we should oppose all reforms (as the other SPGB seem to think) but that we should oppose reformism, the illusion that you can get to socialism by gradually stacking reforms one on top of the other.

[DJP]

…In short I think the rule should be: PARTICIPATE, but do so without illusions.

[DJP]

Stuart, I don’t need to patronise the poorest people in ‘our’ country (I thought workers had no country though) with my compassion, I am one of them and I have an ABSOLUTE awareness of where my interest as a member of the working lies, in the abolition of capitalism and its replacement with socialism RIGHT NOW.Of course workers should resist attacks on their conditions, we have no choice but unless we want to get caught up in an endless struggle we have to move beyond this. If the last century is to show us anything is that not the futility of following reformist illusions? Reformism is a barrier that the revolutionary movement will have to overcome.

[DJP]

stuartw2112 wrote:

Seems to me that they are part of an effort (a global effort, more successful in some places than others, depending on the level and militancy of such efforts) to impose the losses (inevitable devaluation) of the crisis more on the ruling class than on the working class. Good luck to them.

The point is if this is the ONLY thing they end up doing then they are wasting their time. Another crisis will come along and they’ll have to do it all over again. Further more, despite their aparant militancy, all they are doing is pandering to the state to make a petty change in its taxation laws. If they where to succeed, they will not have changed the underlying situation one jot. But when considering WHY this is the case it could be likely that some of them will end up at socialist type conclusion.So, all that can be done is to carry on a dialogue explaining that the only way to ultimately resolve the situation is to change the fundamental conditions that underlie it.In short, it’s the classic reform versus revolution argument again…

[DJP]

Just to re-iterate gnome’s point. We need people that realise that the way society is structured is the result of peoples actions as they come together to produce the material things they need to exist, nothing more and nothing less. Belief in some super-natural force that steers it all would be counterproductive to say the least.

Ed wrote:

…religion is a product of and sustained by class society 

Actually that’s probably not quite right, I would have thought primtive hunter-gatherering people (i.e before the advent of private property and class society) would have had some type of religion, though perhaps someone can correct me.

Ed wrote:

someone could recognize their belief in a deity as just that a belief with no supporting evidence

I’m not sure if this is quite the case either. Most religious people will point to something to support their belief, even if it is just some vauge mystic ‘feeling’, religious experience or ‘miracle’.I’m not sure that a person that believes in anything without evidence would make a good party member anyhow. We need people who can critically understand the world and not get led along by conmen with their own agendas.

[DJP]

The party will have to continue ‘ridiculing and attacking’ counterproductive and mis-informed IDEAS so long as they obscure the case for socialism. Mere ‘disgruntlement with capitalism’ is not enough. It is pointless coseying up to any group that stands for anything less than the abolition of capitalism and its replacement with socialism.Myself and other party members have and continue to discuss with people from Occupy and other groups, this is all we should be doing. If people are unable to listen to their ideas being criticised then there’s no hope for us, but I think they can. What I think is more harmful is declaring the eminent downfall of capitalism at the outbreak of every strike or birth of a popular grouping. Surely this distracts from the long slog that is needed and leads to disillusionment and withdrawal.

[DJP]

Meanwhile it seems Occupy Norwich has evolved into the militant wing of the inland revenue

Occupy Norwich wrote:

Dear Friends and Activists alike,At 1 o’clock on Saturday 24th March there will be a rally outside Topshop/man to raise awareness of tax havens and the damage they do to our economy. We will be highlighting Philip Greens Tax negligence as an example of what thousands of other companies are getting away with every year. Tax dodging is standard practice for many multinationals and it’s perfectly legal. In fact 98 of the FTSE 100 companies use tax havens to minimise their taxes. But when companies exploit international loopholes in these ways, we end up paying the price. Figures produced for PCS by the Tax Justice Network show that £25 billion is lost annually in tax avoidance and a further £70 billion in tax evasion by large companies and wealthy individuals. This money could be used to help relieve some of the strain that the relentless government spending cuts are putting on the whole country, but instead it is pocketed by a handful of ultra-rich individuals. Philip Green is one of these individuals. Green is CEO of ‘The Arcadia Group’ which includes Topshop and Topman, BHS, Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Evans, Miss Selfridge, Outfit, and Wallis. Although through this he has a personal income of around £1.2bn a year, the entire group is in his wife’s name. As she is a resident of Monaco (a tax haven) they enjoy a 0% income tax rate on this enormous sum. As a result of this, Green legally avoids paying a UK tax of approximately £285m. This is equivalent to 9000 NHS nurses annual salaries or 32,000 annual student fees that he is hoarding for himself rather than giving back to the people who buy his products and the country he lives in.This is just one example of what hundreds of companies are getting away with, but there is a solution. Taxation must be changed to a system that demands more transparency from these large multinationals so that it is clear how much money they are making, and in which countries this money is being made. These figures could then be taxed according to the laws of the individual countries where the profits were made. This would lead to a fairer business world and less abuse of developing nations. I’m sure you agree that Tax havens are a blinding statement of todays culture of corrupt capitalism. A clear disregard is shown for the welfare and quality of life of many in exchange for extreme wealth for a few individuals. I will see you on Hay HillFrom Occupy Norwich Direct Action

[DJP]

Brian wrote:

And if not why not?   Are not ‘the contradictionary conditions’ and ‘decreasing conditions’ one and the same thing?  An explanation would be appreciated.

Decreasing means a lessening in size, strength or quantity.I was using the word ‘contradictory’ in the dialectical sense, in the sense that capitalism is composed of various opposing tendencies, the central relation being that between wage labour and capital .For example: Competition between capitalists leads them to invest more and more in machinery and less and less in workers (labour-power) but as labour power is the source of profit this leads to a fall in the rate of profit. But there are also other factors at play which counter this tendancy, not least the devaluation of capital which occurs in a crises.So whether the economic cycle is on the up or the down the basic contradiction, and the need for socialism, is the same.So decreasing means down, the interplay of factors that make a ‘contradiction’ can go either way.Fairly basic stuff?

[DJP]

Gog_ wrote:

I didn’t say that it was.

Glad to know it.Though of course the movement for socialism does arise out of the contradictory conditions of capitalism. It’s just the ‘automatically arising out of decreasing conditions’ bit I don’t agree with.

[DJP]

Gog_ wrote:

There’s going to be little joy in relying on living conditions to reduce and people’s frustration to build up to such terrible levels that people are somehow going to spontaneously wake up one day and say “socialism is the way to go for me”. 

Indeed, and I’ll think you’ll find this is not the party’s case either.

[DJP]

…And so the negation is negated and we reach a new understanding. (Sorry, I’ve got a very niche sense of humour!)One last thing though:

Gog_ wrote:

Land may also not be “free” however, it can be freely made available. All is needed is for the right people to say “yes”. 

You can not only say this about land, but anything that takes the form of private property, think about it…

[DJP]

 My final thoughts on this.Firstly I have no objection to a group of socialists getting together to engage in some kind agricultural project. And if it was nearby I would possibly contribute (or maybe not, a local vaguely “anarchist” group have actually been doing this for a number of years and despite numerous invites to tree plantings and the like I have yet to make it there!)I actually live on a farm. The whole operation only requires 2 people to run it. Most of the labour that goes into food production actually occurs in the manufacture of machinery and extraction of fuels. I don’t see why a socialist society would wish to return to the lifestyle of the serf, I certainly have better things to be doing with my time than watering the lettuces. So if anyone is still convinced that this is a course of action they want to take then get to it, it is not me that is stopping you.My reservations:Firstly this is not a new or fresh idea by any stretch of the imagination, people will have been saying similar things for the last 100+ years.Thinking about it, isn’t this how the Amish live? What does that tell us about socialism? I don’t know.. 

Gog_ wrote:

I originally stated that one of the guiding principles would be to challenge the local monopoly of businesses selling people to buy food: eventually, if succesfull enough severely impacting the profitability of such a business. The people doing so would be challenging the fundamental assumption within capitalism that so many people still labour under that, “you have to work, to earn money to pay for food”.

You’re letting your enthusiasm cloud your judgment. You are forgetting  the major thing that such a project would require, CAPITAL. If people are fortunate to have the free time they can give it for free,  but in a capitalist society land, machinery, seed stock etc are far from freely available. Without sufficient stocks of these your level of production is going to be petty to say the least. I don’t think you’d be able to produce enough crops to support many people either.But for most people on low wage jobs, who have to work longer hours, in terms of hours put in and produce at the end, they are going to be better of going to the super market.Sorry to not be overflowing with enthuisiasm but the cold economic facts speak the truth.

Quote:

I originally stated that one of the idea’s principles would be to produce a practical demonstration of socialism

This is probably my major reservation and as a social-scientist in training I should know it:If you where conducting this to try and demonstrate how a socialist society would operate you are going to be constructing an invalid experiment. What you would be measuring is not how affective socialized production is, but how a small group of people living within a capitalist society choose to use their free time. Though you could probably extrapolate some relevant data I guess…To conclude..If people get exposed to socialist ideas by getting involved in a socialist agriculture club then that can only be a good thing. But the same could be said of a socialist cycling club, a socialist rambling association or here’s a thought, a socialist discussion group that discusses socialism.

[DJP]

 This quote from Ken Knabb’s ‘Joy of Revolution’ sums up the situation quite nicely. Though, of course the rest of Knabb’s book is not beyond criticism.http://bopsecrets.org/PS/joyrev2.htm#Reforms

Quote:

[..] Block clubs, co-ops, switchboards, study groups, alternative schools, free health clinics, community theaters, neighborhood newspapers, public-access radio and television stations and many other kinds of alternative institutions are worthwhile for their own sake, and if they are sufficiently participatory they may lead to broader movements. Even if they don’t last very long, they provide a temporary terrain for radical experimentation.But always within limits. Capitalism was able to develop gradually within feudal society, so that by the time the capitalist revolution cast off the last vestiges of feudalism, most of the mechanisms of the new bourgeois order were already firmly in place. An anticapitalist revolution, in contrast, cannot really build its new society “within the shell of the old.” Capitalism is far more flexible and all-pervading than was feudalism, and tends to coopt any oppositional organization.Nineteenth-century radical theorists could still see enough surviving remnants of traditional communal forms to suppose that, once the overarching exploitive structure was eliminated, they might be revived and expanded to form the foundation of a new society. But the global penetration of spectacular capitalism in the present century has destroyed virtually all forms of popular control and direct human interaction. Even the more modern efforts of the sixties counterculture have long been integrated into the system. Co-ops, crafts, organic farming and other marginal enterprises may produce better quality goods under better working conditions, but those goods still have to function as commodities on the market. The few successful ventures tend to evolve into ordinary businesses, with the founding members gradually assuming an ownership or managerial role over the newer workers and dealing with all sorts of routine commercial and bureaucratic matters that have nothing to do with “preparing the ground for a new society.”[…]Meanwhile, until a revolutionary situation enables us to be truly constructive, the best we can do is be creatively negative — concentrating on critical clarification, leaving people to pursue whatever positive projects may appeal to them but without the illusion that a new society is being “built” by the gradual accumulation of such projects.[…]The best projects are those that are worthwhile for their own sake while simultaneously containing an implicit challenge to some fundamental aspect of the system; projects that enable people to participate in significant issues according to their own degree of interest, while tending to open the way to more radical possibilities.

[Author]

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