Hud955
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Hi SP
Yes, you’re right. There is always a problem with clash of ‘authorities’ and that’s a difficulty. In this area, where you have researchers in archaeology, anthropology, ethology, paleology, genetics, sociology, microbioloogy and god knows how many more disciplines all contributing to the debate, it’s bound to be messy, particularly as there are so many vested interests (creationists, racists, socialists, humanists) clamouring for a particualr result. I’m not convinced science is value free either, or that broader social belief structures and commercial interests don’t influence the direction of its research.
Frankly, as a non-specialist, I just get confused reading all the new research. And when there is such confusion (and even when there isn’t) people tend to choose the arguments that best suit their presumptions. We all do it, socialists included. But that is the nature of the human search for truth. As socialists we can only do what everyone else does and make the best case we can, leaving it to others to decide what they think is true or valuable or not.
In any case, I’m far from convinced that human beings are essentially rational, and I’m not sure from a socialist perspective that it matters very much. Some socialists put great store by the claim their arguments are scientific. And I think the assumption behind this, that we should engage as far as possible in discussing the case at a serious level, is a true and important one. But science is an ongoing project, not an established set of laws, and socialists, like anyone else are just participants in the game, not bearers of something called ‘truth’ – we can leave those claims to religious folk.
For me anyway, the socialist case is primarily a vehicle for getting people to see beyond the ideologies that are fed into their brains through the education system and the media and to experience what is actually going on in the world all round them and what their place is in all of it. It’s not primarily part of the ongoing scientific/rational/empirical debate, though it is that too – or should be. Once people can see beyond the ideological categories that fog their thinking, then they can start to reconstruct the way they understand things and assess what is in their interest and what isn’t.. As a socialist I’m not here to provide them with a fundamental truth. The exploitative, alienating and destructive nature of Capitalism itself must do the work of making socialists. All we can do is to speak about it openly.
So I tend to keep stuff very simple these days when I’m discussing the socialist case with non-socialists. And I try to just to put my own point of view (not easy for me as I have a definite didactic streak). I don’t try to convert anyone. If I can just get them thinking about the world in a different way, that’s as far as I can go. Then it’s up to them. I try not to get bogged down in detailed arguments of any kind, because that way you lose track of the fundamental point of socialism. A few simple ideas clearly understood will do a lot more to get people thinking about the world they live in than getting deeply into ego-fuelled arguments about the latest reasearch on genetics or ethology.
Sorry, these are just a few rambling thoughts before breakfast. But thanks for the opportunity to share them.Hi Socialist Punk, the problem I find when I talk to people is that for every piece of research you can quote that seems to demonstrate a predisposition to co-operative behaviour in human beings, there is another, usually by an evolutionary psychologist of undoubted academic standing, that ‘demonstrates’ we are all violent, territorial, selfish, hierarchical or what have you. Though I don’t have a lot of time for evolutionary psychology (its conclusions in my view are largely conjectural) it is accepted as academically respectable these days and because the EPists have been busy writing lots of popular books, their arguments are also well known. If you offer your piece of reserch and someone cites a piece of research back to you that claims to show that we are all greedy (and there is plenty of stuff like that – I have shelfuls of it), you are back at your standoff position since you are merely quoting authorities at one another like a couple of Christian fundamentalists with their bible aphorisms. I find this a real problem, and I tend to keep references to research down to a minimum and go for more common sense approaches these days. The situation is not as bad as it was ten years ago because after half a century of denying group selection could exist it is coming back into academic respectability again recently and human co-operation is once again on the academic menu. These things go in cycles though.
Hi both
Thanks Adam. I don’t think it would be necessary for banks to break even every night after BACS exchanges had been made for this to work. They would only have to achieve that in the medium term. That’s why they would need to monitor their BACS payments and adjust their lending/marketing accordingly. But they would do that anyway.
Your point that an individual bank is expecting to get a deposit at the end of the day to cover its previous loan is obviously true. It means that though there is a risk to an individual bank, it’s only a small one because it would get very rapid signals -and it could balance its books by adjusting its lending policy in the short term and its marketing in the long term. But collectively, it would still be the case that the banking system as a whole was issuing loans that were unbacked by previous deposits. The deposits they do receive would be covering previous loans and not any future ones, and like their loans, deposits of this kind are newly minted digits that have no backing in cash either from depositors, bank reserves or from a central bank.
Theoretically, the banking sector could go on doing this for as long as they liked, so long as individual banks reacted rapidly to the BACS payments and kept things in balance. Of course banks will not be trying to keep things in balance, they will be trying to outdo their competitors – making the greatest number of loans to guarantee them future interest payments and competing for the greatest market share of deposits, which would result in BACS in-payments from other banks. I guess, if anywhere, it is at this point of competition between banks that the system would break down. If a particular bank that was getting an average share of deposits stopped making loans, then it would not be getting much in the way of interest, but it would be getting a lot of BACS payments every night. That would force other banks to cut back on their own loans to prevent a drain on their cash, and so on.
One of the interesting aspects of a scenario like this is that If you follow through the logic of what would be happening, the digits ‘created’ only have a very temporary life, because, summoned up out of nothing, once paid back, the loan account they came from would also return to nothing. All that is happening here is that a debt has been created that will be paid back out of future earnings, and ultimately out of future production.
I think this is nevertheless a troublesome argument because we frequently make the case that the reason banks constantly tout for new depositors is that they need deposits before they can lend. But as this scenario shows, that’s not necessarily the case. Banks may need deposits because they can’t lend without them, but euqually, they would need them to prevent a drain on their cash through BACS payments to other banks? It also offers an alternative interpretation of empirical evidence showing that banks do not, on the whole, have more money in their loan accounts than they do in their deposit accounts and cash reserves.
Ho Hum! Am I missing something? I’m acutely aware that I’m making a logical argument here and don’t have much practical understanding of the banking system. But this is bugging me.
Hi Darren, that’s a useful reminder from Walter Leaf. Thanks for that. I’ve been so carried away trying to puzzle this one out that I had forgotten that loans don’t always result in a deposit (obviously true) and haven’t yet considered what its implications might be. I would imagine, though, that it is less true today in the age of credit and debit cards and digital money than it was in Walter Leaf’s time.
I’m not so sure about the language of assets and liabilities and credit, though. I’ve tried to think the same scenario through using that terminology, and though it’s useful, I also find it becomes easier to make category errors.The problem with this whole area of discussion is that it is a hotly contested field (or range of fields), invoving a huge array of empirical research and complex argument. Most people you engage don’t want to go there. And the fact is we are not experts either. So it is dead easy for anyone to cite a piece of evidence selectively, and equally easy for someone else just to deny it. And before you know it you have a frustrated stalemate. I think the only way forward with most of us is to keep it simple and make a few telling points, then allow those who want to follow it up to do it in their own time. Frankly, people will take whatever side suits the world-view they have come to acquire and deny the rest. We may be social and co-operative but we are not really abstractly rational creatures. I tend to skirt round the issue and go for class interest. An interest is what most people can understand.
Hi Adam
I’m rushing to get to work so have only skimmed your response, but the thing I’ve picked up is that in the scenario I have presented it is not necessary, in the normal course of business, for a bank to call on central bank reserves for this system to work. All that is required is that over time if bank A can ensure it owes bank B the same that bank B owes bank A etc (ie each bank manages to ensure a roughly equal number of deposits that arise from previous ‘loans’). In other words, over time the banks break even on the deal amongst themselves. And there is a mechanism to do this. By monitoring its BACS payments and adjusting its lending accordingly, or marketing itself better to increase deposits, the whole system can totter on. I can see various problems in managing this but I’m not sure they are necessarily insurmountable and therefore why this process cannot take place. If it can’t then there needs to be an immediate mechanism to prevent it – otherwise the banks would have exploited it. Alternatively, there needs to be a more fundamental explanation of why it can’t happen. Given my current state of knowledge/understanding I can’t work out what that is.LOL SP most of us have been driven close to the type of behaviour we are accused of having programmed into us by this type of person. I agree absolutely with you. The way most people play the human nature card is not to present it as an argument at all, but as a defence against accepting that they need to take responsibility, not just for their actions now in buying consumer junk made of sweated labour, but for overturning capitalism and creating a world more in line with their class and human interests. That scares the shit out of a lot of people. And there usually isn’t any way to challenge that directly, because it is not an argument, it’s just wallpaper – and you can’t argue with wallpaper. If you want to keep trying you’ve just got to find a way through their defence so you can continue to discuss rationally. And in my experience, finding a way through is different for everyone you talk to. Some people can be encouraged to think about it rationally, and are eventually susceptible to rational argument, but others just aren’t and you just have to give them an alternative image of who and what we are.
OK, I see where you are coming from and don’t disagree.
I can’t say, though, that trying to convince leftists to turn impossibilist is easy; personally, I’ve always found it particularly difficult as, apart from anything else, it requires a very comprehensive knowledge of their political history. And Trots in particular seem to have a deeply ingrained inability to think about capitalism in any real way at all. I think some SPGB members target leftists for similar reasons that you want to approach minimalists – they share, at least, a common language of radical dissent. And quite a number of our members come from a leftist background, so they are familiar with the territory. But yes, anyone who is dissatisfied with capitalism offers a way into discussing a more radical solution.
Personally, I’m not very selective. I’ll talk to anyone about socialism (except perhaps a couple of members of the BNP who inhabit a pub up the road – common sense and self-preservation prevail there.) Maybe that’s because of where I live. The most exciting or radical folk you are likely to meet around here are Greens or Buddhists. This is Tory heartland, so most of my neighbours would be surprised if they knew they lived next door to a Labour voter, let alone a socialist. I meet a lot of lifetyle Tories and quite frankly I’ve had really good discussions with some of them. You never know what susceptibilities people might have (unless of course they are committed to an ideology like that of the BNP!)I understand what you are referring to by minimalism, SS. My problem with it is that far from encouraging a radically socialist understanding of working class interests such life-style choices, attitudes, philosophies, call them what you will, merely perpetuate the belief that if we just adjust our attitudes within capitalism, all will be well.
I think I can see where you are coming from on this. But though there may seem to be a (purely intellectual) ‘chiming’ between producing for need and rejecting consumerism, in practical terms these things are opposite ends of the political spectrum. Many attitudes within our present society are hostile to some aspect of capitalism, but do not reject capitalism itself. So, a socialist or anyone else might choose to behave like a minimalist while capitalism persists for personal life-style reasons, but a minimalist world view (rejecting consumerism) will not make socialists. The reason for this is that being anti-consumerist is only something that can be pursued within capitalism (consumerism just won’t exist within socialism so there will be no possibility of rejecting it). These sorts of life-style attitudes, though they appear to reject some aspect of capitalism carry within them an acceptance of fundamental capitalist relations and capitalist values. The obvious political trajectory of a movement like minimalism is yet another reformist one.SussexSocialist wrote:Interesting though the above is, it seems a long way from the discussion I was hopng to have. Ah well, never mind…….As I said, I’m not convinced that lifestyle choice within capitalism, however interesting they may be, have much to do with socialism. The ball’s in your court, SS, if you want to get the thread back on track…
Hi SS
I think there are really two questions here. One is about media – how do we make best use of the media that are available to us – what skills do we have to acquire to use them effectively, etc?. The other is more about personal presentation and that’s something we all have to develop ourselves. Everyone has their own style that works best for them and that can’t be forced. The important point though is that it doesn’t come naturally: it is something that has to be worked at. and the question of the best and most appropriate way of getting a point across is part of that.
So, even before all the detailed questions, there is the question of presentation itself. It is very rarely addressed within the party. So long as we put the case, so the belief goes, we can rely on it to do the work for us. There is this assumption (implied, at any rate) that we don’t have to work too hard, or at all, on how we present it. So we forget about such matters.I could be wrong, but I get the impression that some members believe the whole question of presentation is a little anti-socialist. The idea that there are maybe better ways of getting the message across suggests deviousness and manipulation and they don’t like it. It’s a bit like engaging in PR and all that implies. The problem is that there is no escaping this issue. There are better ways of getting the message across and that means that there are also worse ways as well. And you have to choose. Because I think we so often choose not to choose we end up with something less effective than we might.There is a prior question to that. Why is it that we repeatedly ask this question and others like it, but usually come up with so few positive answers? Is it a failure of imagination or perception on our part or is it the intractability of the situation we find ourselves in? Or a little of both? I think the last. But I don’t think our situation is so intractable that we can’t find a way forward with this.
At the Stock Exchange Occupy site at St Pauls last year I had a lot of conversations with people who accused the party of peddling old and tired solutions to new problems. These were mostly people in their teens, twenties and thirties. The ironic thing is that the ‘brand new’ reformist-type solutions that so many of them were proposing had been around even before the party was formed right back in 1904. The ‘solutions’ they were mostly discovering were new, but only to them. Had they been willing even to listen to what a tired old socialist case had to offer, they might have realised they were hearing something genuinely different – something that they hadn’t cobbled together out of the standard ideology.There is a communictions issue here separate from any debates about the substance of the socialist case itself. We do need to update our presentation. The question is how do we reframe it without losing its specifically socialist character.
Like many of us, I’ve got as far as asking the question and bothering my head with it a bit, but I haven’t seriously researched it or tried to come to any real conclusions. What I have experienced is that whenever we raise this question we start trying to explain the problem away rather than putting effort into answering it. And that is an even more effective way of achieving nothing than avoiding the question altogether. I know from personal experience that the temptation is remarkably strong. The socialist case remains a powerful one whenever it responds directly to the way working people experience and think about the world. It is not that well adapted nowadays to meeting that challenge. Frankly, you’re right, SS. It needs a makeover.
OK, so how do we find new ways of presenting a socialist world view more in tune with the socially fragmented and overloaded capitalist environment we live in?
We are having a workshop coming up on the confernce weekend to discuss how we should be engaging with the current disquiet over capitalism so that we put the socialist case more effectively. Are you going to be there?Can’t wait to put my post-capitalist money in a public bank and get my state insurance for free. If you make post-capitalism look so much like capitalism that you can’t tell the difference, except that you project a few current institutional trends within it forward (‘It’s already here’) then all that is happening is that you are singing the praises of the future of capitalism. Good propaganda. Keeps the system ticking over nicely. I hate feeling cynical, but that’s the fallout from being a socialist in a world of deceptive ideology. If you can read anything into this, I think it will go something like this. People are engaging in post-capitalist speculation right now. We need to co-opt that in the interests of promoting the way we see the world (the capitalist way). Where have we seen this kind of thing before? If, as I suspect, this is a response to the recent questioning of capitalism, then I guess It’s a good sign that they feel the need to fight back.
Can’t let you get away with a list like that, O King of Kings: You need to add:
John Adams: ‘Shaker Loops’, and ‘short ride in a fast machine’
Steve Reich: ‘Drumming’; and
Philip Glass: ‘Violin Concerto’ – not one of his best, but kinda catchy.
Can’t fault your selection, though.Hi SS
I’m a straight-down-the-line materialist when it comes to socialism, so, all my ideals evapourated a long time ago. That means learning how to live without the flotsam that capitalism foists upon us isn’t a socialist ideal for me. In fact, I’m not sure I would know what a socialist ideal was. I don’t know what attitudes people will take to personal possessions once capitalist property relations are overthrown. I can imagine, though, that they would be unlikely to want to produce all the crap that capitalism produces. That’s not an ideal though I would aim for: if it happens, it will be a consequence of altering the material basis of society. And that wouldn’t be something people would have to learn as consumers, it would be the result of a democratic decision they had taken as producers.
(Looking around my front room, sadly, I’d say that right now, I’m rather captivated with all the flotsam that capitalism has foisted on me. LOL)LOL. I think there are several pairs of braces caught in the revolving door, here. Purely from an observer’s point of view, this discussion lost its substance a long, long time ago. Please don’t tell me you guys are actually enjoying this? Are you?!!!! Maybe, if you are looking for a way out it might just be useful to agree that there are much more interesting and fruitful things to discuss, than John Lennon and Imagine – even if Adam is going to have it played at his funeral (a decent sized wake, I hope, Adam). Of course, I’m biassed. I never did like the Beatles. As far as I’m concerned, music died with Gene Criss and the Hep Cats. (The guys were pissed as newts when they recorded their one and only single, but the result was a moment of pure musical genius. Maybe there is a lesson there for all of us. Sigh!)
