[robbo203]

jondwhite wrote:

If Trump wins, Democrats owe an apology to Berniehttp://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_sanders-5565.htmlor should Bernie have run as a third party candidate?

 Too late for Bernie now.  He blotted his copy book by endorsing Clinton and, for many of his supporters, that was unforgivable. If Trump becomes President Trump, as is now looking likely. this will once again expose the folly of that tactic of voting for the lesser evil instead if sticking to your guns

[robbo203]

Capitalist Pig wrote:

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/immigration/item/12431-illegal-aliens-a-drain-on-us-taxpayers-report-saysaccording to the CIS, 47 percent of illegals use welfare; 39 percent use food assistance and 35 percent use Medicaid.  remind me again how illegals are getting nothing and stregthening our economy? I'm not demonizing immigrants I just don't want someone to walk into our country, illegally vote in our elections, and collect goverment benefits that our veterans don't even recieve. Is that too much too ask for?

 CP.  Amerikkka is not your country in any meaningful possessive sense.  The workers "have no country" as the Communist Manifesto put it way back in 1848, "We cannot take from them what they have not got".  Why do you identify so strongly with the delusional abstraction you call your country? The nation state was an invention of capitalism and served the interests of capitalist class that required the intervention of a state in the affairs of society. Primitive accumulation that kickstarted capitalism would not have happened without the armed might of the state to enforce it.   Nationalism is just the the nationalisation of our sense of cultural identity in the interests of the capitalist class. But the capitalists themselves don't practice what they preach.  They invest their capital in whatever part of the world yields the greatest financial return.  They have no loyalty to their supposed motherland. Yet sheepishly you expect the workers display such loyalty. In era of capitalist globalisation nationalism is an irrelevance .  Its primary purpose is to sow divisions among the working class along so called national lines in order to more effectively rule over them.  If you identify with this thing you call your nation then ipso facto you ally yourself with the capitalist minority in this nation and oppose yourself to fellow members of your own class in other nations It is very sad to read a fellow worker extolling the virtues of this toxic abstraction called the nation state,  the identification with could conceivably reduce humanity to a pile of ashes through a nuclear war aided and abetted by the utterly stupid and misguided ideology that is nationalism.  By then it will be too late to discover that we have a common interest in opposing nationalism

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Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

.  I am suggesting and building a prototype of an alternative exchange system and a change to how goods and services are exchange.  Marx suggested an alternative exchange system too.  (by "exchange" i mean any trade or giving or voluntary sharing of time in which you will act as someone elses servant using whatever means and abilities you own.   When you're trading time, ownership of the property doesn't come into the question.  Property is not necessarily owned in a time value exchange system just like time is not necessarily owned in a capital goods exchange system.   it's not required for a time exchange economy to have private property, but it's not excluded either.  A time value exchange economy is ambivalent about the need for a property ownership. All that's required to make an exchange in a time value currency is that you have time you can offer or time you need from someone and that you or they have the means of working as agreed for that time.  It's vaguely related to the means of production since you can't trade an hours time running a corn planting tractor assembly without the ability to come up with a corn planint tractor assembly to spend your hour as promised.  But if nothing is owned and their's no private property then nothing much changes for a time valued market exchange. The time value market exchange system could keep functioning in a world without private property, but it can also function in a world with private property.  I think it would probably work better in a society without property, but that's one of the questions I'm here to research answers to.  

 Its a pity you did not heed my key point about what constitutes an "exchange economy".  Had you done so we could have all been spared this long rambling – not to say haughty –  lecture of yours which only succeeds in evading the point and in you tying yourself up in knots.  Once again, and for your benefit, what makes an exchange economy an exchange economy is the quid pro quality of the relationships that define it.  In other words, I give you something ONLY ON CONDITION that you give me back something in return.  Necessarily, this implies an exchange in ownership  titles to the things being exchange.  In other words it implies private property. I am NOT talking about "exchange" in the looser sense such as  when people "exchange" ideas over the internet. I am talking about a very specific narrow meaning of the term as applied to the field of economics.  You don't seem to understand this..  In the looser meaning of the term we can indeed talk about there a kind of exchange or reciprocity in a socialist or communist society.  The anthropologist term "generalised reciprocity" neatly sums up for me what a socialist society is all about. You freely invoke Marx but nowhere do you cite any source which makes me wonder how familiar you are with the subject anyway.  Allow me to quote from the Critique of the Gotha Programme where Marx says this: Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning. Did you get that Steve? The producers do not exchange their products And so we come to your fanciful idea of a "time value market exchange system" which you try to reassure us " could keep functioning in a world without private property, but it can also function in a world with private property".  Really? So in this " time value market exchange system" if I offer to expend a certain amount of time doing something for you and you decline to reciprocate that means no "market exchange" will then take place – yes?  If not why call its a market exchange at all.  How can you separate the exchange of labour time from the aforementioned "exchange of products" which that this labour time served to create? Note the thoroughly bourgeois content of your whole argument.  Exchange  of time is perceived as a matter of purely self interested concern and confined to dyadic one-to-one exchanges between individuals..  There is no conception of the wider community in your vision which seems to have its roots ina mythical  petty commodity producing society To that end you debase the very meaning of words like market and exchange economy and reduce them to meaningless drivel .  You remind of the economists who glibly talk of the "natural capital" that Mother nature provides thereby universalising pr "naturalising" and  rendering timeless, the capitalist mode of production. If your "time value market exchange system" does not signify private property then why on earth give it such a ridiculous name? Socially necessary labour time is of course how value is constituted in capitalism.  It seems to me this is what you fanciful scheme boils down to – just another version of the same society in which time is bought and sold

[robbo203]

An example of what I m talking about which I have just literaly come across in the last 5 minutes .  In response to the question "why would anyone supprot capitalism?" this contributer writes,,,,, Ozgur Zeren, Author at ViaPopuli.comWritten Jan 3 #1 reason is because they don't know what Capitalism is.Just like how they don't know what Socialism, Communism, Democracy, Fascism etc are.They think that going to some store and choosing a product to buy, or their mother-in-law opening up a small shop, or them being able to quit their current job and take up another job somewhere else, is 'Capitalism'.Some even go as far to equalize it with 'Freedom', or * gasp * 'Democracy'.What is Democracy ? Communism ? Do you really know ? Capitalism is Halliburton. Capitalism is Exxon. Capitalism is Koch brothers being able to buy Congressional elections:Capitalism is an economic system in which there is no limit to the amount of wealth, therefore ownership of, and power over the economic and social life by a tiny minority in a society.It's a modified version of Feudalism, in which everyone is told "You can also become a small baron if you 'work hard". Except, no one gets rich by working hard.Working Hard? Thinking You will get Rich by Hard Work? Endless praise and retelling of stories of those who 'made it' from 'rags to riches' are repeated from the media, giving a false impression to the people who watch it.Another movie about Steve Jobs is coming, this summer. What they fail to say is that, for every Jobs that succeeded, there are hundreds of thousands of very talented, very well educated and sharp people who never make it to that level, with most not making it to any level but just working under those people who 'made it'.Then think about those who were just average people. Think how much chance these people have.And people like Jobs are an exception too – most of those who dominate the social and economic life of the society do not come from inventor, scientist or creative backgrounds, having created something greatly useful for the society – look at Mitt Romney. Dick Cheney. Even, Trump. They are the majority, not people like Jobs…And people arent aware that the concentrated ownership of wealth has massive effect on their lives. These stuff, these characters like Trump, Cheney etc seem like personas in a far away place, seen mostly on TV, and have some say in some far recesses of the socioeconomic life of their country.They are not aware that a few major Telecommunications companies like Verizon, AT&T, Comcast are currently in the process of suing the Federal government to force it  to acknowledge Internet backbone in USA, as their 'own property', which will give them the right to do anything with the internet traffic that passes through it. Which means that if they want to censor a site by charging them 'fees' to let that site 'access their subscribers', they have a right to do it. Which means private censorship, but hey – if Federal government loses the court case and the internet backbone -a strategically important infrastructure of an entire country – is declared the 'property' of those who own/leased it, then it will be their 'right' to do anything with their 'private property'.At that moment the websites, blogs, small businesses of all these people who were praising capitalism without knowing it, would face the actual capitalism – being subservient to the whims of the biggest property holder. It would be funny to see how would these people cope up with entire internet backbone being privatized as such, leaving no option for anyone who wants to access ~200 million people in US but to bow down to the terms of these top dogs, but, hopefully it will never come to pass."……I can only see capitalism being beneficial to satiate greed….."You are seeing it incorrectly: Not only greed can never be satiated, but also Capitalism rewards, encourages and enforces greed:Those who stop at nothing to maximize their profit, accumulate more wealth (capital), which allows them to wield more power in their economic environment. Those who stop at any morals, ethics, laws or regulations get left behind, and are bought out, competed out, or destroyed by those who don't. And in the eventual end you end up with a sociopath socioeconomic environment in which the most ruthless of the players dominate everyone and enforce their values…………Go to YouTube and see Milton Friedman screaming "I believe in Freedom", equating Capitalism with "Freedom" in panels, interviews and debates regarding the issue. As if there could be any freedom for one's mother in law and her small shop in a rural neighborhood in US with Walmart around.But true – its about freedom – its about the freedom of the exceedingly wealthy minority do do as they please with the economy and society. Not with the freedom of anyone else in that society.Private Tyranny.  People are not aware of this. They are unaware that their choices, freedom and whatsoever they think to exist in this system actually don't exist. They are limited by their money/wealth, and will never attain the amount to be truly free. They are unaware of this, because they don't even know that they don't know, as Noam Chomsky puts it.Hence, they subscribe to things they don't even know, mirroring narratives that are sold to everyone by those who perpetuate those things for their own benefit.Just look at the spectacular examples in other answers – people who can't properly define Communism are talking  about how it "just doesn't work", people who don't know a modicum of world history talk about how 'everything else having been tried', people who don't know about alternatives to capitalism call you to come up with alternatives.People don't know Capitalism. That's why they support it.843 Views · View Upvotes

[robbo203]

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

 NO NO NO.  You foolish person.  who told you that nonsense and why do you believe it?  What exactly do you mean by "exchange" because I exchange air just by breathing?  And I exchange time with friends and with advertisers on TV and with you guys here on the forum.  So everytime two people get together, they are exchanging time with each other.  So when you say there will be no exchanges, it sounds like you're saying people won't talk to each ohter and won't exchange favors or gifts.  Is that what you're intending, or can you clarify what you mean by the quote? and if people are exchanging things they can cary or things they can say or time, then what do you call that instead of using the word "economy"?  Can I just replace the word "economy" with "Socialism" in my statements and make that work if you think an economy is the opposite of a socialism?  You're making up non-sequiters and passting them off as QED 

 Sigh.  You evidently dont understand what I'm driving at, Steve, or you are not familiar with the jargon or whatever.  When I say common ownership logically entails the demise of any kind of exchange economy, I am NOT talking about "exchange" in the trite sense that you allude to.- exchanging ideas,  breathing etc . I would have thought that was pretty obvious and I didnt need to spell it out. Its just a silly objection you are raising here. I am talking about an  exchange economy.  Do you understand what is meant by this?  It means goods and services in general are exchanged on a quid pro quo basis.  They are bought and sold because the  means of production are privately owned .  Common ownership thus logically precludes economic exchange whether this takes the form of money-based exchange  or barter.  You have been going  on about the need for a "unit of currency for collecting taxes that is hourly based" .  But "taxes" and "currency" are forms of exchange-based phenomena – meaning all you are really putting forward here is an alternative arrangement for administering a system of private property relationships. Thats not what socialism is about….

[robbo203]

For a slight variation on this theme of group sex, this might be of interest.  It seems that sex with other human species might have been the reason for Homo sapiens's success https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-with-other-human-species-might-have-been-a-secret-of-homo-sapiens-s-success/?WT.mc_id=SA_EVO_20161024

[robbo203]

Steve What you need understand is that socialism is the proposition that the productive resources of the world should be made the common property of everyone in the world.  Production today is a completely socialised process. There is literally nothing that is produced today that does not involve directly, but mainly indirectly, the entire world's workforce.  Socialism amounts to bringing the nature of property relationships into line with the character of modern production. Hence the very word "socialism" itself.  It denotes not just social or common ownership of the means of production; it is also a reference to the the character of the production process itself This is important because, historically speaking, the rationale for capitalism promoted by its early ideologues like Locke was based on what was called a "labour theory of property".  Namely if you expended your own labour on something that product by right becomes your property.  However, this is looking at the isolated – and essentially mythic – worker creating things on her own and asserting her right of ownership over those things by virtue of the labour she expended on it,  Even if this idea had any merit in the past, it is absolutely no longer relevant  today.  Everything you touch and see and use as a product of human labour today contains within itself the congealed labour of millions upon millions of workers – like the workers who  mined the ore that was transformed into finished products like the turbines that drive the power stations manned by other workers that provide you with the electricity that powers the computer your are typing on and so on and so forth. So socialism entails common ownership of the worlds productive resources but what does this in turn entail? Above all it entails the demise of any kind of exchange economy To develop this point- we would not, for instance, think it sensible to talk of you having to buy a loaf of bread from the bakery you own.  It is because you own it that you can dispense with the formality of buying that loaf baked within its four walls.  The same logic would apply if a group of people owned that bakery or, indeed, if the whole of society owned it.   Actually, ownership by the whole of society of, not just the bakery, but all the means of the means of producing and distributing wealth – what is called a system of “common ownership” or communism/socialism – would in fact logically spell the complete disappearance of the market, of all buying and selling transactions, altogether.  This what the famous Communist Manifesto of 1848 was getting at when it talked of the “communistic abolition of buying and selling”.  Common ownership is what would make this possible It is frankly depressing to hear you talk of  the need for a "unit of currency for collecting taxes that is hourly based"  or of "outlawing fractional reserve banking so we don't have contend with bankers competing for power with us".  You seem to be completely trapped within the loop of reformist thinking that pertains to  an exchange based economy and, hence, a system of private property in the means of production.  It is little wonder that you are not having much traction here You need to raise your sights higher and begin to see the wood for trees

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Dave B wrote:

I think it is interesting to compare what it used to be like to now. Unemployment in the UK started to rise in the mid 1970’s reaching about 5% which is roughly the level it is supposed to be now. But I think the general political attitude towards it was more sympathetic then and it was less a matter of scroungers than a failure of the system. 

 Well, by way of contrast, here in Sunny Spain unemployment officially hovers around 20%. Has been like that for quite a while. On the other hand, to look on the bright side, the black economy is booming.  Most folk around  here are into it.  Check this out http://fortune.com/2014/02/14/spains-underground-economy-is-booming/ Paradoxically it is the misfortunes afflicting the official economy that is boosting the fortunes of the unofficial economy. Reduced tax revenues ,and  its impact on the  infrastructure of surveillance to implement a system of bureaucratuc surveillance effectively as well as the sheer numbers of unemployed workers, relatively speaking, makes it easier to get way with being in the black market.  Spain doesn't have that totalitarian feel about that Big Brother Britain has with its countless surveillance cameras and its overbearing anti-social security measures which monitor everything you do and your state of health,  as a precondition for being granted so called social security.  Its laughable that these people talk of the state providing social security.  The whole system is designed to induce a sufficient sense of insecurity to force you back into wage slavery. I suppose the other difference with Spain is the degree of corruption.  When politicians often used to get backhanders from property developers and get away with it – some still do – is is hardly surprising that peoples attitude here is thoroughly cynical.  "If they can do that and get away with it then why cant we" is an understandable sentiment. Of course, what Spanish workers get away with is absolutely small change by comparison You get the feeling this sense of outrage over prominent corruption cases which partly led to the rise of Podemos is what provoked the authorities into tightening up its anti corruption dragnet .  Instead of relentlessly  chasing after the myriad of little fish for their ill gotten gains which the state probably does not consider to be a very cost effective strategy at this point in time, my guess is that it is concentrating on  hauling in a few big ones in the hope that it will stems the tide of the black economy through the power of example,.  And also of course to placate public opinion which, as ever, is a vote winner in the turbulent political times for Spain

[robbo203]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

If you do, Robbo, PM me so i can send you copy of my letter which is a rip-off some of your own ECA articles so we don't duplicate our replies. Or anybody else, for that matter

 Hi Alan  Yes by all means send me a copy of your latter so I can have a crack at Mr Sharpe. Cheers-

[robbo203]

+5

Subhaditya wrote:

 And of course you believe monogamy will solve all problems, the data that is showing otherwise you will not even go through it..

 Subhaditya Nobody here is saying that monogamy will "solve all problems" or, indeed, advocating monogamy per se.  I don't know why you keep on making this claim.  Very likely socialism will give rise to a  wide range of relationships but the key thing here is that this will be a matter of choice and free association.  That in itself undermines the central premiss of your argument – that socialism will fail if sex is not used for group cohesion. I understand the argument you are making but it is highly reductionist and over simplistic.  Group  cohesion depends on many factors quite apart from sex.  There are even groups that cohere on the basis of complete celebacy.  Human beings are more than the sum of their sexual dives – much more – and if your argument held any water and these sexual drives gave rise to serious tensions, then  society itself would naturally adjust with respect to the pattern of sexual relationships. We don't need to adopt an overprescriptive approach that upholds group sex as some kind of obligatory practice and turns into a dogma to be universally adhered to.. The point is we don't know for sure how the pattern of sexual relationships  will pan out in a socialist society.  It is conceivable that some people will prefer to be in a monogamous relationship and I for one fail to see how such a preference could serve to undermine group cohesion in a socialist society

[robbo203]

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

@Robbo203,You wrote. . .

robbo203 wrote:

I can very easily imagine an organisation such as this continuing to operate and do useful work in socialist society catering for the sexual needs of men and woman who perhaps might find it difficult to do this on their own and  need someone to advocate on their behalf in a caring and respectful manner.  The big difference of course is that these sexual services like all human labour  will be provided on a completely free and voluntary basis which is the logical corollary of the free access to goods and services that will be hallmark of a socialist society 

I don't think we need an "organization" and I think any organizations in a post socialist revolution society need to be considered with skepticism. How do we ensure the organization isn't extracting surplus value from the workers? Maybe that's the nature of organizations? If the "organization" you descibe did exist after the socialist revolution, then how would socialist leaders ensure the suruplus value extracted from any free assoication and exchange wasn't used by the organization in ways not of benefit to the people?  Even if we had the power and authority to stop these organizations in a socialist world, We'd still need to monitor and endorse or veto almost every voluntary free exchange offer between people and that would take a lot of time for someone or some "organization".   

 SteveThere is nothing wrong with the notion of organisation per se.  The Socialist Party is an organisation for example.  So is a Mothers and Toddlers Club,  So is the local association of Lifeguard  volunteers. How do you propose to organise a post capitalist world without …organisations!? An  organisation according to Wikipedia  is simply " an entity comprising multiple people, such as an institution or an association, that has a collective goal and is linked to an external environment".  A local community has to have some kind of organisation to effect decision- making on a democratic basis.  So does a factory or other workplace in a socialist society. Otherwise we end up with a "tyranny of structurelessness"  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness Your focus is quite misplaced.   It is not organisation per se that is the problem but its purpose and its relationship with the world around it that matters.  A socialist society will not harbour organisations within it that are  intent upon the extraction of surplus value from workers because a clear majority of people who had consciously set up such a society will have done so with the clear aim of abolishing exploitation and the existence of social classes that this implies. The collective goals of such a society and its social environment will be quite different to contemporary capitalism.Its as simple as that

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twc wrote:

 Robbo, ultimately value collapses into money  M — C — M′.  Sure estimation is integral to the phenomenon, as price, but it isn’t the essence of the process of valorisation.  The bourgeoisie are at liberty to do whatever they please with their slice of the social surplus.

 I am not quite sure what this means or how it connects with my earlier comment.  Can you explain?  To me it doesn't make much sense to talk of valorisation without this entailing a subjective aspect.  If socially necessary labour time is basis of value then you have he problem of how to differentiate between different kinds of labour inputs and their differential contribution to the value of a commodity. To some extent this must surely be a matter of interpretation and subjective judgment.  There is no way of measuring objectively how much more productive a doctor is than, say, a nurse  – that is to say their respective contributions to the commoditiy in question assuming healthcare is a commodity in this instance

[robbo203]

twc wrote:

 The theory of conceptual-commodity-value-management is founded on the ‘idea’ that the Marxian categories of value and surplus-value:are subjectiveare inherently arbitraryare independent of Marx’s labour power—i.e. now have nothing to do with how much labor-time is objectified in a commodityare ‘reified’ subjectively—i.e. established by decree—by network- and/or group-formationsare ‘stabilized’ and ‘standardized’—i.e. managed and controlled—by subjective manipulation and estimationall in accordance with money capital’s network and/or group common self-interests and self-image.

 The problem is that there is almost bound to be a subjective aspect to the labour theory of value and the Marxian categories of value and surplus value which is not the same thing as advancing a purely subjective theory of value as per marginalist economic theory which takes as its point of departure use value or utility.  The subjective – objective dichotomy is a false one. Socially necessary labour time is not something you can "objectively" measure with a stopwatch.  It is a theoretical construct.  For instance there is the problem of the heterogeneity of labour – different grades not to mention kinds of labour (unskilled , semi silked and skilled)  and their relaltive contribution to the product. How do you measure this relative contribution in each case. Marx got round the problem by simply ignoring it, saying that skilled labour was a multiple of unskilled labour- a reasonable supposition but it does not explain by how much precisely skilled labour is supposed  to be more productive than unskilled labour, or a doctor than a strucutural engineer.  We can only guess.  And is indeed subjective values that help to inform our guesstimates Ironically for all the nonsense that is written about the labour theory of value by its critics in mainstream economics, the capitalist class itself falls back on a kind of bastardised labour theory to justify its own existence.  A three hour lunch break by entrepreneurs gorging on lobster and quaffing Champagne and "discussing business" is reckoned to be well worth the "effort"  expended and justifies the grotesque differentials in the compensation package they receive vis-a-vis what shopfloor workers receive by way of a wage.  A difference in the order of magnitude of several hundred fold in dollars or pounds per unit of time. It is difficult to see how this not a subjective evaluation of the worth of their contribution by the capitalists which we, in the same vein, repudiate

[robbo203]

Subhaditya wrote:

At the height of the Victorian Age there were 80,000 prostitutes in the streets of London.The British army had an elaborate system to ensure their soldiers got sex from 'non local' prostitutes, probably for security reasons 'local' was avoided.Disabled people(men and women) make use of them as 'sex surrogates' and pay them for their services….. to say such a service is not required in a thoroughly monogamous society is a joke.If you fail to add this 'pleasant/unpleasant' task (which I understand will be voluntary like every other task) in a socialist society will mean socialism will fail in its promise to meet people's needs through peaceful cooperation.

SubhadityaWho is suggesting socialism will be a "thoroughly monogamous society" anyway?  I suspect it will be a highly variegated society in that respect. Actually, this is already  the case today: According to the Ethnographic Atlas, of 1,231 societies from around the world noted, 186 were monogamous; 453 had occasional polygyny; 588 had more frequent polygyny; and 4 had polyandry   (Wikiedia) In any case, extadyadic relationships – sex with more than just one partner – is not unheard amongst  monogamous couples, By monogamy is usually meant marriage with one partner only but the above article makes an interesting distinction between social monogamy and sexual monogamy. These categories allude to different, albeit overlapping, phenomena: The amount of extramarital sex by men is described as "universal" in 6 cultures, "moderate" in 29 cultures, "occasional" in 6 cultures, and "uncommon" in 10 cultures. The amount of extramarital sex by women is described as "universal" in 6 cultures, "moderate" in 23 cultures, "occasional" in 9 cultures, and "uncommon" in 15 cultures. These findings support the claim that the reported amount of extramarital sex differs across cultures and across genders You refer to disabled man and women making use of sex surrogates.  Although some disabled men and women do have long term intimate relationships,  I don't see a problem with the practice of sex surrogacy.  Just at random, a quick search on Google revealed a link to one such organisation – the TLC Trust – .  which has as its mission the goal of finding "responsible sexual services" for  disabled men and women  http://www.tlc-trust.org.uk/ I can very easily imagine an organisation such as this continuing to operate and do useful work in socialist society catering for the sexual needs of men and woman who perhaps might find it difficult to do this on their own and  need someone to advocate on their behalf in a caring and respectful manner.  The big difference of course is that these sexual services like all human labour  will be provided on a completely free and voluntary basis which is the logical corollary of the free access to goods and services that will be hallmark of a socialist society 

[robbo203]

Some comrades here, I think, need to gem up on How to Win Friends and Influence People.  I mean, really – this guy is just promoting what he sees as an "informational tool" but he has been jumped on and savaged for the privilege.  He has been accused amongst other crimes of being a rightwinger, a CIA spy and taking commission for selling the idea .  What next – ethnic cleansing? C'mon – chill out guys.  This is way over the top.  With holier-than-thou attitudes like this it is little wonder the WSM is struggling. It may very well be the case that holacracy is of no practical use as far as promoting socialism is concerned but do you really need to go about pointing this out in a manner that is so downright rude and unpleasant? If it happens to be the case that Steve is not a socialist or knows little about socialism – so what? Is this not a public forum?  Are non socialists not allowed to participate and to learn from the discussions they help to generate?Ironically, Marcos goes on about how the WSM yahoo group is more or less dead.  But it was he, as moderator of this group who was at least in part,  responsible for this decline.  He took it upon himself to evict one or two free marketeers at the time because he felt that they were diverting attention away from a discussion on  socialism,  A silly claim anyway because opposition to socialism or socialist ideas is actually an invitation to socialists to explain why our ideas are valid. As a result the forum went from being a lively arena of public debate to being as dull as dishwater. I bitterly opposed this decision as completely misguided and shortsighted – even undemocratic and against the sprit of democratic debate – and I was right to do so.  The fruits of the pudding are in the eating.  If you want to turn socialist forums into nothing more than an echo chamber for socialists only all you will hear is the few and steadily diminishing number of socialists voices getting fainter by the year. This is not a sign of confidence or belief in ourselves as socialists. It is a sign of weakness that we should see the need to take refuge in the narcissistic  comfort zone of our own dogmatic shells  Socialists can do better than that – a lot better

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