PartisanZ
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I don’t go to work with the red shirt/flag, but I talk about the social- it is in those personal connections, networks and whisper campaigns that socialism becomes effective- as well as others seeing our values alloy with our behaviors…
That is precisely how I first became acquainted with the notion of socialism entailing the abolition of the wages system, in a hurried conversation at a fellow worker’s lathe.
I had to wait a few years before more before I could investigate it further, once I was told of an outdoor meeting in Glasgow that my brother had stumbled upon while waiting upon his girlfriend finishing her work.
I was not knowing where to look, or how to look, but he knew I was interested because of my trade union activity and so on, but I was dissatisfied with the then Labour government’s delivery of what I had thought was a kind of ‘socialism’.
Nowadays the information is available online.
George Monbiot – Still talking the talk but never walking the walk
Well for what its worth ‘Prolerat’ has commented. Here.
..reading Laclau and Mouffe for too long.
(Laclau corrected name).
Sounds like a fine furnishings company, which leads me into saying I haven’t read any of their stuff and I would be reluctant to do so, having devoured earlier cultural theoretical stuff and not having got much out of it. Sounds like, if I may be crude, Foucalt even.
It all seems like navel gazing and obstructs the primary task which William Morriss defined, as ‘making socialists’.
This needs everyday language. Something we strive for in the Socialist Standard and our literature.
I got one up too.
‘The Breakthrough’
I once asked a Labour man,
“Are you a Socialist? Answer me if you can”.
“I’m a Labour man”, he answered.
“So it’s obvious I am”.
“There’s nowt obvious it”, says I,
And he looked at me strangely before he said,
“Are you quite alright, mate,
Or are you goin’ funny in the head?”
“No”, says I simply, saddened by his manner,
Reflecting that all Labour men
Say they wave the Socialist banner.
But you ask ’em what Socialism is
And they haven’t got a clue.
They think it’s Nationalisation
Or some other pathetic view.
I say, “Do you think it’s a world system
That has no need for money?”
And he looks at me again in that same old way
As though he thinks I really have gone funny.
“Well that’s Socialism”, I say.
“No buying, no selling, no spending, no pay.
There’ll be no need, you see,
Everything’s readily available,
Everything’s free”.
“What about work? he says.
“Who’s goin’ do it for nowt?”
“That’s no problem”, says I.
“That’s not hard to figure out.
You’ll work cos you want work
Not cos of what they pay ya.
If you had a choice of doin’ summat
or nowt all day,
I’m sure you’d choose summat, what say ya?”
“Mm, reckon so,” he says. “You might have summat after all.”
“There’s no reckon about it,” says I, “it’s a fact
Or my name ain’t Paul”.
“Well, when’s this free world going to come about, then?
Tell me how long we’ve got?”
“As soon as folk like you come and join us
Instead of listening to that Labour rot”.
He nodded reflectively, As though he’d just seen the light,
And I knew in my heart
He was going to say what was right.
“Are you a Labour man?” I asked again.
“Or cab you now see clearly through the mist?”
“Nay, lad,” he replied smilingly,
I’m no Labour man.
I’m a Socialist.”
Paul Breeze
The ICC link doesn’t resolve. Is this the article?
The issue is certainly exercising more members of the public who have not been involved before in activist protest.
Our blog has this to say.
And Matt I would expect you to intervene when a member is attacked by another. No, only kidding 😀
Apologies. I accidently deleted the post 185244 when copying it to respond privately to the poster.
There is actually no member acting as forum moderator, VM. Matt is just performing a technical role, not an interventionalist one on forum content.So far, until now, despite a few off topic contributions such as this is developing into, the forum has been without any acrimony.
I am acting as the Forum moderator also. I expect ALL forum members to observe the normal protocols of behaviour on here.
The spgb article about Sweden should have included the theory of surplus value as one of the essential ideas of the Marxian theory
He does open with this,
“Historically, Marxism has meant the materialist conception of history, the Labour Theory of Value and the political class struggle.” (My emphasis)
Although he doesn’t expand it further. I can only think space prevented him and the issue dealt also with Alienation etc as subjects, so perhaps his intention was just to expand on the Historical Materialist perspective more.
they are two wings of the same bird known as capitalism.
Being a smart ass I always say , “we aren’t a bird we are a movement”. I really prefer the metaphor that we, although as yet limited in size and scope by our numbers, with our educational contributions, are ‘gnawing at the foundations of capitalism’, by countering the capitalist narrative in a crucially distinctive way.
This article from 1922 spells out some of the problems we still have to overcome.
I am reminded of that: the ruling elite, the ruling idea- Do I follow or interrogate the ideas fed to me? I will reflect on that, who made the idea, who was its ruler?
Marx’s analysis of capitalism points to Socialism as the next, higher stage in social development, but there is nothing of predeterminism in this. With today’s large stocks of nuclear and biological weapons and massive pollution of the environment the old socialist challenge “Socialism or Barbarism?” is more relevant than ever. Socialism will not be inevitable until the working class decides to establish it.
It is true that the young Marx sometimes saw the socialist revolution as a more or less spontaneous process. But the mature Marx — “Marx the Marxist” — stressed that the change-over to Socialism must be a conscious act, “the conscious reorganisation of society” as he put it in volume III of Capital (chapter V, section II).
And this was not a question of consciousness among a small minority leading the great majority (as in the Leninist theory). As Engels put it in his 1895 Introduction to Marx’s Class Struggles in France 1848-50:Where it a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for, body and soul.
And in his 1890 Preface to the 4th German edition of the Communist Manifesto:
For the ultimate triumph of the ideas set forth in the Manifesto Marx relied solely and exclusively upon the intellectual development of the working class, as it necessarily had to ensue from united action and discussion.
Taken from here.
“Don’t follow leaders and watch the parking meters.” (Bob Dylan) 🙂
