[Ike Pettigrew]

gnome wrote:

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Actually, Ike, we do possess someone with this insider's first-hand knowledge, not of Antarctica,  but the Arctic.  He was an invited non-member speaker in a debate who then joined the Party, afterward.

And in fact Glenn Morris will be one of the speakers at the Doncaster Day School on the environment scheduled for Saturday, 24 February.http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/doncaster-day-school

That will probably be a good talk.  Under other circumstances, I would go.

[Ike Pettigrew]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Ike, i don't think J Surman challenging you on what appears to be climate change denial is a personal attack.

Where did I state it was a personal attack?  I don't think I did.  

alanjjohnstone wrote:

She made a valid point that you were unable to defend your opinion with any references.

Wait a minute…..My point was about the socialist case, on which I was using the global warming thesis as an analogy of how 'democratic' decision-making can be flawed.  I wasn't specifically making a point about global warming.  That's not what the thread is about.  Do you want me to keep to the rules of the Forum or not?  I did also say that as I'm not an expert, I'm not offering any data because I haven't conducted experiments and I don't really want to discuss it.  I think I also allowed that I could be wrong, which I know I could be. 

alanjjohnstone wrote:

I'm not a climate scientist either, nor an astronomer or physicist or medical doctor or any other kind of specialist. It means i am required to make a value judgement on the expertise and accuracy of those who are. (Bakunin explains the authority of the expert here – https://www.panarchy.org/bakunin/authority.1871.html )

As it happens, I am an astronomer.  But you refer to me as a possible "climate change denier" (which I am not, by the way), as if I might be a thought criminal.  Your view is political, not primarily scientific and the term "climate change denier" is a total non sequitur and embarrassingly shows up your scientific ignorance.  Maybe this just proves that science at this level actually is political, so it's a take or leave situation, and your empiricist pleas for data are self-contraductory and just amount to pretension.  Or it could be that I am right to express skepticism, which incidentally the Socialist Standard has also expressed on this very same issue.  Were the editors of the Socialist Standard wrong to highlight (in a general sense) the exaggerations of global warming thesis advocates?  Were you wrong to highlight their alarmism, as you have done on this very same Forum?

alanjjohnstone wrote:

When we have 97% of those experts agree on the reality of climate change

Not that I am doubting the statistic – anybody can pull out a statistic to prove practically anything – but you will let us have a source for this?  I'd like to see the context and what it is there is a consensus on.

alanjjohnstone wrote:

and who have produced research that has been studied by others in the field to verify the accuracy, then i feel i can accept that prevailing view as a true reflection of reality rather than subscribe to the views of a few that has also been appraised but then rejected. And members of the SPGB are well aware of the skewed nature of scientific enquiry and take into account the influence of vested interests when we reach our conclusions…..we do possess someone with this insider's first-hand knowledge, not of Antarctica,  but the Arctic.  He was an invited non-member speaker in a debate who then joined the Party, afterward.You can view the original debate on video https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/video/poles-apart-capitalism-or-socialism-planet-heatsA later talk on capitalism and the environment can be seen herehttps://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/video/business-growth-conflict-environment

I've seen that previously actually – it is a good talk.  I enjoyed watching it.

[Ike Pettigrew]

Marcos wrote:

Vin wrote:

Ike Pettigrew wrote:

 I will not engage in dialogue with bullies who repeatedly insult, belittle and abuse others.  

To a forum contributor

Ike Pettigrew wrote:

 You are dishonestly characterising my tentative conclusions and the process by which I arrived at those conclusions; and, you are characterising my objections in childish terms, a classic dishonest debate tactic, in which you substitute your  You have simply not read my posts!  You are arrogantly pretending to know what my objections are without actually taking the trouble to understand my objections.  Instead, you just want to spout your programmed dogma, like a robot.

I think sometimes he forgets to take his Zoloft, Paxil,  Depakote, or Prozac.  He should read two books named: The Prozac Nation and Xanax nation before dealing with socialist ideasIn this forum, we get so many weird peoples which instead of attracting party sympathizers force them to leave and fall into the hands of the left wingers

I do not need to say any more.  The defence could rest here: I could spend the rest of my time on here just quoting and re-quoting the above ill-advised response.  "Here's what somebody in the SPGB thinks of people with mental illness".The truth is that many (I accept not all) members of the SPGB hate workers, and hold us in utter contempt.  The above is a prime example of the mentality and will be re-quoted at each and every opportunity.  For the record, I have never taken psychotropic medications and will not do so, but the insult does touch a nerve with me because my late father suffered from severe psychiatric problems and was regularly hospitalised.  This made my childhood very traumatic and the humiliation alienated and isolated me from others. It's always interesting to note the prejudices of certain people who claim not to be prejudiced, or affect not to be through their political stances.Perhaps you need reminding that getting angry on a forum is not indicative of mental illness or psychological distirubances, and I think it is thoroughly shameful and disgraceful to imply otherwise.  It is simply a reaction to one's treatment by others on the Forum.  Which is not to say my behaviour is perfect – it certainly isn't – but I do make a point of apologising, which you might wish to take note is what decent people do.  I also have the disadvantage of being in a minority, and I have made reasonable points and asked reasonable questions.  If you don't want me here, please just say so and I will delete my account (assuming that's possible) and never return here again.

[Ike Pettigrew]

Bijou Drains wrote:

 You state that I am dehumanising you and attacking your dignity as a person, I think this is a classic over reaction of someone who has been asked a few awkward questions and is using a histrionic response to hide the inadequacies of their arguments.

It's not that.  My anger was partly because of the behaviour of somebody here, which I'll address separately, and while it was partly because I do think you are distorting what I have said (more on which see below), I will still apologise for my reaction, as that's only polite.

Bijou Drains wrote:

How can debate take place, if any challenge is responded to with the exclamation that "you are dehumanising me", for fuck's sake, what does de-humanising even mean. How can I be attacking your dignity, what dignity have you got,, how am I attacking it by questioning your ideas. You have stated in your previous posts that you consider yourself to be an objective and reasonable thinker, I would question that, but how can it be that the objective reasoner exclaims dehumanisation and attacks on dignity as a person, every time their "objective viewpoint" is questioned. Howver, I do agree you have a right to assert your intellect, I only wish you would.

You've just contradicted yourself in that paragraph!  You are dehumanising me.  You think I am stupid, simply because I disagree with you.  You and many other people here hold workers in contempt.

Bijou Drains wrote:

[I don't think that the Party has ever asserted that average IQs are the same for all geographical groups,

This is plain dishonest. Again, it's the usual lefty debate trick of focusing on one word and addressing that literally while ignoring the point being made.  You have either asserted it explicitly or you have implied it.  You deny that there are discrete human races or (depending on who is doing the talking), you say that race doesn't matter.  Logically, the first assertion follows from the latter, unless you deny the validity of IQ altogether.  And of course you do.  The result is the same.  Ergo, all we need to do is swop the term 'IQ' for the term 'intelligence', and we're left with the same questions that remain unanswered.

Bijou Drains wrote:

as someone who has more than a little professional experience in the "IQ industry" I would argue that all that IQ test measure is the ability of people to complete IQ tests. Evidence of the usefulness of IQ tests is provided by high IQ clubs, who are so intelligent and useful that they gather themselves together, not for the purpose of curing illness, or dealing with hunger, but with the pressing world problem of completing logic puzzles and other such useless tasks, a lot of use those fuckers are.

I notice that while you're asserting your superiority to me, you add in some swear words.  You're sooo superior.I would be inclined to agree that IQ is a questionable concept, but your own assertion here doesn't speak of much insight: surely you realise that high IQ people who attend such meetings don't just attend those meetings or engage in those activities.  Thus, how can you support the generalisation on which your rather shallow and vapid point rests?

[Ike Pettigrew]

Would it not help to separate your ideas from the man?  Marx himself disliked the idea of a 'Marx-ism', not wanting his analysis to be concreted into a secular theology.

[Ike Pettigrew]

People should just opt-out of the system.

[Ike Pettigrew]

rodshaw wrote:

Par for the course for Liddle. As a self-confessed ex-leftie, he is now a firm apologist for the capitalist system.If capitalism is lifting us out of poverty, why is he giving money to charities that try to alleviate poverty?

What's wrong with poverty?

[Ike Pettigrew]

It seems to me in that quote that Marx is neatly side-stepping the point, but at the same time he is not denying the importance of identity.  Identity cannot be bought and sold, even under capitalism – despite the best efforts of both capitalists and socialists.

[Ike Pettigrew]

Would you support workers defending themselves by forming into independent moneyless communities?  I believe this is technically feasible under the current system.

[Ike Pettigrew]

Not that this is scientific, but one thing I have noticed – which I am sure others here will have – is that economic crises under capitalism seem to occur roughly once every 8 to 10 years.  1973/74, 1981, 1992, 2000, 2008, etc.  The next one is about due.

[Ike Pettigrew]

I agree with the basic premise that tax is a labour cost that falls on employers and that increases in taxation rates lead to increased wages.  I know this is likely to be generally true because I have employed people and I know that if tax goes up, the effect is to motivate the employees to press for pay rises.  A point to consider is that not all employers are capitalists.  I think small and micro business owners have very different interests to larger employers.  The former might bitterly oppose measures such as a statutory minimum wage and higher taxes that have the effect of increasing labour costs, whereas larger employers might welcome and even lobby for such measures because of the burdens they impose on smaller competitors.It also occurs to me that a statutory minimum wage, when imposed generally, is a way for governments to 'privatise' social security costs by transferring these to employers.  What I mean by this is that when wages are generally below their labour value for large sectors of the working class, employers will happily subsidise these employees via the state (as Marx explained in one of the quotes above), but when workers are able to organise at the trade union and political level for wages that equal or exceed their labour value, then the mode of subsidy shifts back to the employer through wages.  The burden is always with the employer, but it is paid in different ways. However, it's not completely that straight-forward due to the distorting effect that observance of a statutory minimum wage has and the way that tax works practically.  Probably a small/micro business owner will prefer to pay low wages because that also means a lower deductible tax burden in the pay roll, and possibly the avoidance of tax altogether.  I reject what I see as the canard that a statutory minimum wage is a pro-working class measure.  The minimum wage is actually a 'class war' of sorts between the bourgeoisie and the self-employed petit bourgeois professional and tradesman.

[Ike Pettigrew]

I hope we do see reduced use of fossil fuels.  A case can be made against fossil fuels and for renewable energy and broader sustainability that is completely independent of the global warming thesis.  Can capitalism achieve sustainability?  I doubt it, but I don't see any difference in the underlying mentality of socialists.  You believe in overcoming Nature, when in my view the mindset should be to live within and according to Nature.  In short, I reject overcoming externalities in favour of self-overcoming.  I suspect your implicit belief in anthropomorphising Nature arises because you know deep down that a Natural Order, even of an anarchistic kind (I believe a true Natural Order would be anarchistic), is inherently a 'fascist' and 'racist' view, as you would have it.  Regarding the subject of political action on the environment, the reason unified and (as it seemed at the time) effective action could be taken against CFCs was because the underlying science was widely accepted as sound – the tiny number of skeptics, whether they were right or not, were effectively marginalised – and there must have been economic incentives that allowed profitable action to be taken.  The same is not the case for global warming: the underlying science looks unsound, has been shown to be fraudulent in some crucial respects, is not agreed on in all quarters, and is questioned, challenged or even opposed by many able scientists who offer cogent science against it or undermining it; furthermore, in 'developing' countries like China, there are powerful economic interests against taking action.

[Ike Pettigrew]

Blair is talking within a very mundane context: i.e. how politicians gets things done within capitalism, like say financial deregulation, a new airport or free bus passes for the elderly, and how permanent bureaucrats can put obstacles in the way of whatever political initiative people like Blair think up on a particular day.  An American politician would not necessarily say the same thing.  It seems to be a British thing to believe that politicians should run everything, and by extension, 'run the country'.  In countries that are constitutional republics, there are formal checks and balances that limit political power and the reach of parliaments.  For example, Donald Trump, though chief executive in the U.S., is being blocked on many measures, both by the legislature and by the federal judiciary.  Some of these 'republican' features have crept into the British system, but I think it is basically still about raw power.  Technically, under fusion of powers, Parliament (by which is meant the Queen, as a conceit: the Queen in Parliament) is supposed to be supreme and is meant to control all arms of the state, subject to certain long-standing conventions, informal rules and customs, as well as general law: for instance, the judiciary is said to be formally 'independent', and the civil servants that Blair refers to are meant to be neutral and politically-impartial.  Maybe Blair just doesn't like being limited?I don't believe this raises any issues with the socialist case.  Surely if socialist consciousness is being widely adopted, to the point that socialist delegates are being returned to parliaments and assemblies around the world, then this would reflect in general changing attitudes within the different branches of the state in each country, which cannot survive without popular acquiescence or consent.  There is something in the anarchist case – some of the mechanisms for revolution will have to be extra-parliamentary – but I think socialists are right that any revolution, if it is to be legitimate, has to capture whatever are the elective mechanisms for the expression of popular consent.  Indeed, I am struggling to think of a revolution within capitalism or premodern times that has not involved an assertion of parliamentary legitimacy.  Even Cromwell, England's nearest version of a dictator, was a parliamentarian and careful to assert his legitimacy through Parliament. 

[Ike Pettigrew]

A social revolution is happening before our eyes, it's just difficult to see.  People are slowly rejecting various received wisdoms, including central controls, hierarchy and statist authority.  In the process, they may adopt new (and old) nonsenses and superstitions, but I believe the general movement is away from controlled societies.  This, in my opinion, does not bode well for socialism as it is conceived here, though I also think that the end result could bear strong similarities to socialism.It seems obvious that any effort to overthrow capitalism is going to require active worker intervention.  Without it, capitalism will just evolve into another property-based system, the social-relational roots of which may have been alluded to accurately in a response above about the way information is being controlled in post-capitalist Information Societies.  However, accelerating capitalism's obnoxious features – such as mass immigration and imposed diversity – cannot work in my view, or at least is dangerous, as it could lead away from socialism.  Imposed diversity intensifies the grip of ruling classes on workers and – I am sorry to say – dumbs down society and regresses things biologically.  Breeding and human quality are factors in the type of social system that can be adopted.  That you pointedly choose to ignore this means that your entire worldview has an important blind-spot.  What I would be interested to know is whether anybody here has a road-map or meta-plan for how you get from A to B, A being the present situation under capitalism or post-capitalism, and B being socialism.  I know that you believe in taking the political/parliamentary route, but that is an aim (i.e. socialist delegates elected to enact socialist legislation and dismantle capitalism, etc. and so on), not a real plan.  You also believe in education and propaganda in order to spread socialist consciousness, but what is the plan for how your aims are achieved?The present situation is that the planet is owned or controlled by capitalism in totality (though not strictly in entirety), and even those tribal communities that don't practice it still live formally under this control.  Therefore how do you consciously organise? Neo-Marxists support co-operation in the hopeful belief that organising socialist macrocosms within capitalism will lead workers to class consciousness.  I think this practice does hold part of the answer.  I don't accept co-operativism is completely flawed or that communes and co-operatives inexorably degenerate into private enterprises, but in order for workers to organise independently of capitalists, there would have to be some geographic distance put between socialist pioneers and the vital power centres of capitalism.A resolution of this could be an organising concept based on meta-utopias, which in the case of socialists could take the form of self-sustaining communities that practice socialism or a system as near as possible to it and offer a realistic way for disgruntled people to leave capitalism.  But hasn't that been tried before?  It has and it always fails, but maybe it fails because the pioneers retain capitalism in some proxy form as the essential basis of their social relations.

[Ike Pettigrew]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Or, as another thought, are such boundaries and limits a useful guide to how socialist planning could be done, much better than abstract labour time: such targets would make a useful start for global planning…

I expect that people in the rural areas of countries like Vietnam live 'better' than the average person in the West, especially if they are distant from the mechanisms of the state.  The simpler life is always better.  Of course, this is a matter of opinion and taste.  But my expectations lead me to question why migration happens.  It is surely important to ask how the mass human migrations that happen under capitalism – not just immigration, but even popular tourism – are affecting the environment and what are the driving forces behind this.  If you accept that these phenomena are a result of capitalism, does this then demand a teological view that imposed diversity will bring about true class cohesion and the ultimate end of capitalism, or should these impositions be opposed on the basis that they harm workers and other defenceless peoples, just as you would oppose profit, wages and employment?  I had always thought that the SPGB position is that socialism can happen now, and so anything that harms the working class is not bringing us closer to capitalism's apocalypse, since there is no teleology, only the empiricism of cause and effect, and capitalism could continue forever.  Rather what is required is the education of workers as to how they are manipulated by capitalism in all its aspects, since only workers themselves can overthrow capitalism.Returning to the point in hand, while I'm sceptical about the existence and (if it does exist) causes of global warming, I broadly agree with people here that capitalism is causing us to damage our environment and is environmentally-unsustainable.  If socialism happens, I would hope that it is a system more aligned with Nature, and preferably it should position Man as part of Nature, not above it.  Personally I think socialism, if it works, would impose its own natural limitations, due to the realities of socialist production.  An analogy would be with the way that people live now in small rural villages that practice an eco-sustainable philosophy.  I believe socialism as a practical way of living would have to be inherently sustainable, as it couldn't work politically as a 'mass democracy' with large-scale central planning – but you may disagree.  This is where we come to the borderline, and synthesis, of politics, economics, sociology and ecology.

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