[Richard]

I'm tempted to just make a big bowl of popcorn and sit back and watch the fur fly, but I'll try to contribute! I think somewhere in here LBird mentioned "biological existence" and the "ideological concept" of the individual and maybe that's the key, or at least one number in the combination for the lock.How about this: I am a biological entity, an individual human being. However, since roughly the Renaissance the idea of individuality has been promoted for various reasons. Maybe the social concept of individuality was needed for the development of capitalism. From what little I know of Medieval society it was probably a more organic society than ours and as the influence of the Church declined in Europe that organic cohesiveness fell apart and before you could say "Protestant work ethic" everyone was buying smart phones! That's my version of Western history – eat your heart out, Kenneth Clark!So, we have biological individuals who came to see themselves more and more as socio-economic individuals. This socio-economic concept of individuality may be unique to Western society or it may be spread as capitalism spreads; maybe it's part and parcel of capitalism. I don't know.

[Richard]

Thanks for the links!Human beings seem to have a need for religion, maybe it's a kind of security blanket in a troubled world. I don't think banning organised religion would do any good and would probably be counter-productive. Why create martyrs?As far as the former Soviet republics in Asia are concerned, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Saudis have been funding madrassas and general propaganda to turn the people back to religion, the Saudi version of Islam in particular.The Russian state is using religion even more than nationalism in an attempt to rally the people. Religon is being used to make the case that Russia is unique and not "just another" European nation. A true Russian of today is an Orthodox Christian believer; "communism" goes out one door while Christ comes in another! An exchange of myths. I have people in Russia I correspond with on a regular basis who have confirmed this for me.

[Richard]

I'm glad you found the interview interesting, Meel. I think Wolin has some very interesting ideas and his thoughts on the US political system hit the nail on the head! Oddly enough, I don't ever recall Sheldon Wolin being interviewed by the mainstream media…Words are very important to me and I agree with Wolin about the historical baggage of the word "revolution". "Revolution" has been tainted by the Soviet experience, among others. Corporate propaganda is much more insidious than government proaganda. A new lexicon is needed if we are to reach the man in the street.

Meel wrote:

An interesting piece of information which I didn’t know – apparently the US Republican Party has, in effect, been bought by two brothers – the Koch brothers.  Does anyone know more about this?  Well, I guess the Republican Party is a concern like any other – but what a sign of the times.

Ah yes, the Koch brothers. Charles and David Koch are multi-billionaires thanks to the fortune their father left them. They use their money to bankroll campaigns and candidates that they deem worthy. They have established a super PAC. A PAC is a Political Action Committee that can raise money to support the election of candidates and the passage of legislation but cannot operate openly with a political party. The Koch super PAC (called the Freedom Partners Action Fund – a very Orwellian name!)  is used to pay for propaganda. In 2010 the US Supreme Court ruled that that limits on the amounts donated to political campaigns are unconstitutional – billionaires rejoice!http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=465AB626-A4C2-41F6-8790-0A41197593F4The Koch brothers network plans to raise the obscene sum of $889,000,000 for the 2016 presidential election. They've bought Congress, now they want to own the White House!http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/us/politics/kochs-plan-to-spend-900-million-on-2016-campaign.html?_r=0The Kochs have also been supporters of the Tea Party movement (named after the Boston Tea Party)  which started off as a grass-roots movement by people opposed to the bailout of people with sub-prime mortgages and to the Obama administrations attempts to get the economy moving by "priming the pump" with government spending. The Tea Party is more of a political movement than a political party but it has had a significant impact on the Republican Party. I think the Koch brothers see the Tea Party supporters as useful idiots and throw them some money to keep the movement afloat.In the June, 2014 Ontario provincial election it was leaked that the Ontario Conservative Party was being advised by Michael Prell, a Tea Party campaign adviser and this contributed to the Conservative loss in the election. Canadian political parties are bad enough, we don't need those whackos from south of the border! Contamination of the Canadian political system continues through US money to support conservative think tanks and political parties in this country.The existence of super PACs and the incredible political clout of people like the Koch brothers might just be proof enough that capitalism cannot exist alongside any true form of democracy. Not a very upbeat note to end this post on but perhaps a realistic note. 

[Richard]

Alan,Do you have a link for this survey?Just a few thoughts off the top of my head:1.) The definition of religion used in this survey might be a bit conventional. Fascism, National Socialism, Stalinism, "communism" in China, "juche" in North Korea, the list goes on, all of these were/are religions. All of them had a mythic figure to worship from afar, promised a better future through sacrifice, had a core set of beliefs and, in my opinion, these political religions relied in large part on faith.2.) Maybe the Japanese are less religious because they used to believe that their emperor was a descendant of a goddess and had believed this for over a thousand years. The end of the Second World War and Emperor Hirohito's public admission that he was not divine must have had a significant impact on religiosity in Japan.3.) Many people in Muslim countries won't admit that they're atheists out of fear. Remember what happened to Avijit Roy. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/02/bangladesh-authorities-arrest-man-atheist-bloggers-murder-avijit-roy

[Richard]

Meel wrote:

On the topic of keeping us all "happy", no matter what:http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/10/un-international-day-of-happiness-makes-me-miserable

 I can't believe I missed International Happiness Day!  Oh well, maybe I'll remember International Reality Day. 

Quote:

I would not go so far as Slavoj Žižek who, asked what he found most depressing, answered “the happiness of stupid people”.

I love this! LOL Slavoj Žižek appears to be someone else I'll have to look into; I like his honesty! Meel, have you had time to watch the other parts of the Wolin interview? I'd be interested in hearing your opinion.

[Richard]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

And here again is Wilhelm Reich“Against the principle of self-denial preached by political reaction, we must set the principle of happiness and abundance…Any socialist political economist can prove that sufficient wealth exists in the world to provide a happy life for all workers. But we must prove this more thoroughly, more consistently, in greater detail than we generally do”

An excellent quote! I've never read Reich but he appears to have had all his marbles and a great amount of insight to boot! Let the capitalists preach austerity and sacrifice (i.e., sacrifice by the 99% and not by the 1%) while we promote equality, democracy and a meaningful way of life!

[Richard]

Okay, I've read this entire thread and have been thinking about this over the last few days. I've come to two conclusions:1.) LBird and robbo203 are actually an old married couple. 2.) Individuals obviously exist and have existed since before capitalism. However, in order to analyze our society it's necessary to focus on economic classes and the exploitative relationship between the capitalist class and the working class, not on individuals. However it also important to recognise that capitalism exploits individuality through marketing creating a "cult of the individual". That's how I see it, right or wrong.

[Richard]

Hi Meel,I'm glad you enjoyed part 1 of the interview. Sheldon Wolin is very interesting to listen to, he has a very interesting take on the US political scene and, by extension, politics in other Western nations.You're right that people like to be a part of the herd, it gives people a sense of security, I think. Creating economic uncertainty is not difficult, and keeping people passive and apathetic is easy given the capabilities of mass entertainment. Economic uncertainty leads to fear, a sense that "things could be worse" so it's best to keep your head down and take what you're given. A sense of helplessness, powerlessness, naturally follows.Maybe capitalists do have a little book with instructions on how to do this. "Taming the Herd – Part 1: Random Firings, Stagnant Wages and Disneyland". In all seriousness, I think people who attain a certain amount of power and wealth just see it as natural that they should use whatever means necessary to keep "the little people" quiet. Pure self-interest.Democracy is not democracy. The apathetic herd must be roused every few years to trudge off and vote and then return to their consumer toys or to sit at home worrying about whether they'll get fired on Monday like So-and-So was fired last week. Well, whatever is happening in the world at least I can reaffirm my individuality by heading off to the mall and buying a gold iPhone just like everyone else.

[Richard]

This has turned out to be a very interesting thread. For now, I agree with robbo203 that society is made up of individuals. On the other hand, I agree with LBird that exploitation is the key to understanding capitalism. The way I see it is that classes of individuals exploit other classes of individuals and the individuals within each class feel a certain class loyalty. Membership in a given class can't be fixed since a person could lose their ability to exploit others or they could gain the ability to exploit others.I think I understand the concept of classes in the Marxist sense yet I also feel that to give up our innate sense of individuality would be a mistake. Human beings are individuals who are either born into a class or develop a class identity based on their role in society.

[Richard]

LBird wrote:

One thing you should bear in mind, Richard, is that ‘class analysis’ (ie., including the identification of ‘workers’ and ‘capitalists’) is not concerned with placing every individual in a ‘perfect category’. In the sense meant by non-Marxists, this will appear ‘fairly arbitrary’, because non-Marxists tend to have an ‘individualist’ perspective, and so are far more concerned with identifying the ‘cut off point’ between which every individual can be placed….The best way that I’ve thought of explaining this is by analogy to a colour spectrum. No rainbow has clearly defined ‘cut off points’ between its various colours: there are zones of blurring of adjacent colours. If one is concerned to accurately specify every particle of colour, then one has a problem, because there are numerous ‘mixed colours’ outside of the seven core colours, which we regard as making up a rainbow. But if one is merely concerned, for one’s purposes, to identify the seven colours, to teach what a rainbow is, then this is sufficient….The placing of individuals within the categories of ‘working class and capitalists’ is not an important concern, rather the understanding of the relationship between these two ‘colours’ is our concern.As I’ve said, you can disagree that this is acceptable in helping to analyse society, but you can still come to understand the difference in these two approaches, the ‘individualist/pointillist’ versus the ‘society/spectrumist’, in understanding ‘classes/colours’.

 LBird,This helped a lot, thanks. I guess I've always looked at society as an organic entity but one made up of individuals. But for the purpose of understanding the Marxist perspective, I like the analogy of colours blending into each other. It works for me!Karl Marx had a very unique way of looking at society and I've never really taken the time to seriously study his work – maybe I should.As for me, I tend to be very detail oriented and so I naturally gravitate to the individualist approach; I try to pigeonhole people. But I am open to new ideas.One thing that does bother me about viewing society strictly in terms of classes is the potential for collective punishment based on classes. If socialism is to be attained by the general consensus of society how will the capitalist class be treated during the transition from capitalism to socialism? Will people lose their sense of decency and humanity by viewing their neighbours, their fellow creatures, as "a worker" or "a capitalist" and not as a human being? Experience has taught me that brutality lies just beneath the surface of many people. Thinking of people as individuals often helps to rein in our more violent impulses.The Bolsheviks abused the idea of class identification in their brutal collectivization efforts; the kulaks didn't fair too well under Bolshevik rule.I'm not saying that using class divisions is necessarily wrong nor am I equating the SPGB in any way whatsoever with the Bolsheviks. However I do believe that classification by class could open the door to potentially inhumane behaviour down the road. History has lessons for us and we'd be foolish to ignore them!Just thinking out loud,Richard

[Richard]

gnome wrote:

Modern production is social in character, the wealth produced is by the common effort of the whole of society, but it is not owned in common; it remains the private property of a few.

Okay, understood.

gnome wrote:

Yes, providing those individuals who are managers do not possess sufficient means to enable them to live without selling themselves for a wage or salary to an employer.

Fair enough, although that means there must be a fairly arbitrary cut off point between working class and capitalist.

gnome wrote:

Marx wrote:

If all taxes which bear on the working class were abolished root and branch, the necessary consequence would be the reduction of wages by the whole amount of taxes which goes into them. Either the employers' profit would rise as a direct consequence by the same quantity, or else no more than an alteration in the form of tax-collecting would have.  Our argument is that although some taxes are paid by the working class, the burden of taxation rests on the capitalists and has to be paid out of the profit accruing to them in the form of rent, interest and profit, the basis of which is the unpaid labour. Criticism and Critical Morality (Marx and Engels Collected Works—Volume 6.)

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/depth-articles/state/taxation-myth

Thanks for the link. I've read the article on "The Taxation Myth" as well as the article on "Where Do Profits Come From?" and I think I understand. Although I still have some questions.The article on taxation states: "The worker's wage, remember, is the price of his or her labour power, which, all other things being equal, will tend to gravitate around the 150 mark in this instance, which is the real sum received all along". Why will it gravitate around the 150 mark? In this age of globalisation a corporation can move to a lower-wage labour market or even bring in foreign workers to replace indigenous labour (this has happened more than once recently in Canada). Marx was writing well over one hundred years ago, did he take into account (could he have taken into account) the rise of global capital able to move quickly to exploit differences in labour costs?There are some good articles on this site and I look forward to reading more!

[Richard]

That was an interesting article!I can recommend Sheldon Wolin's "Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism". Wolin discusses a political system (in the US but it applies to most liberal democracies) in which the leaders at the top are interchangeable and move between the political and corporate worlds with ease. Unlike traditional authoritarianism (Fascism, National Socialism, Bolshevism) inverted totalitarianism requires an apathetic, disengaged public in order to allow Big Business to get on with the business of controlling society's agenda. According to Wolin, capitalism has shaped the political system to the detriment of populist democracy.Bruce Levine asks the question: Do our societal institutions promote passivity, isolation, boredom, fear, economic uncertainty, a sense of helplessness? Sheldon Wolin answers that, yes, our society does promote such feelings and does so intentionally in order to keep the herd quiet.This is a very interesting interview with Sheldon Wolin by Chris Hedges: http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12550 

[Richard]

Maybe what's happening in Lebanon is partly due to their tradition of tolerance for different religious beliefs (think of Kahlil Gibran). Compared to the rest of the Middle East Lebanon has often been seen as an oasis of toleration.Also, an educated person is far more likely to think for himself and to resist simplistic religious propaganda.

[Richard]

 

gnome wrote:

The capitalist class is comprised of those individuals who, because they possess the means of production and distribution, whether in the form of legal property rights of individuals backed by the state or collectively as a bureaucracy through the state, do not need to work and live on privileged income derived from surplus value produced by the working class. The capitalists personally need not – and mostly do not – get involved in the process of production. Social production is carried on by capitalist enterprises which are overwhelmingly comprised of members of the working class who have to sell their mental and physical energies to an employer in order to live.

1.) Could you please define "social production"? How is this different from production for private profit? What is the social value of an existing drug simply remarketed as a "new" treatment for a different medical condition? Drug companies often do this to save money on research and to increase profits coming from an existing product; it's pure marketing.2.) There is a large pool of CEOs who simply move from one corporation to another collecting large incomes and bonuses based on the mental energy that they sell (albeit at grossly inflated rates). Your definition as given above would make these CEOs members of the working class. Is the managerial class a part of the working class? 

gnome wrote:

…in the long run taxes are a burden on the capitalist class only.

I don't understand what you mean here. In the long run taxes are less of a burden on the capitalist class due to tax loopholes for individuals and corporations. The wealthy lobby for lower income tax rates on the highest marginal income brackets as well as lower tax rates on passive income such as investment income. In the long run, they play while we pay.

gnome wrote:

Wages and salaries (not some theoretical gross, but what is actually received, what the employer invests as ‘variable capital’) corresponds more or less to the cost of maintaining and reproducing the working skills which employees sell to employers. During their time in employment employees perform surplus labour, they create surplus value which belongs to the employer. The upkeep of the state and its machinery of government ultimately fall on surplus value, or incomes derived from surplus value, through taxation. Furthermore, it is in the interest of the ruling class to maintain the state apparatus because it maintains their dominant social position – though of course that doesn’t stop them complaining about the cost and demanding cuts in its running charges.

Agreed that it is obviously in the interests of the capitalists to maintain as much control of the state as they can, however that control is not absolute and the state does maintain some autonomy and is responsive to public pressure. Corporations realise this and avail themselves of the research done by the state at public expense. They sponge off publicly-funded scientific research.

gnome wrote:

Rises in tax (direct and indirect), by increasing the cost of maintaining employees and their skills, are generally passed on, through the operation of market forces, to employers in the form of increased money wages and salaries.

Okay, you've lost me on this point.  Please understand that I'm not trying to be difficult. I think we're approaching these issues from different but not entirely discordant directions.

[Richard]

This is a very interesting topic and I highly recommend Jacque Ellul's "The Technological Society" and his follow up book "Propaganda". Ellul built on the work of Lewis Mumford yet he went beyond Mumford's focus on technology to look at how what Ellul called "technique" changed society. Technique is a form of organisation in mass technological societies and its sole aim is efficiency. Efficiency above all else!Propaganda, or "public relations" as Edward Bernays called it, is necessary to condition human beings to function in a society which, on the one hand places great emphasis on individuality, but requires conformity, efficiency and regimentation; a society of mass men who believe they are individuals. A neat trick!Certain mental illnesses can, at least in my opinion, be viewed as a form of rebellion against society. Society defines what is "normal" behaviour and what is not normal. If certain people can't adapt to our society they can be labelled "deficient" or "disturbed". We live in a regimented society with very little tolerance for true individuality. Our sleep patterns, our social relations, our relation to work and to consumption, the environment, and our health have all suffered as a result of the never-ending demand for efficiency and constant growth.Thanks for posting the link to Levine's article, I look forward to reading it – time permitting, of course!

[Author]

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