[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

I've said all this before, though, Brian, and those who disagree with workers' control of scientific knowledge (ie. the 'materialists') will never tell us what their method is.

If I might intervene in what, unfortunately, seems to have become a perpetually belligerent and pointless slanging match….Some of the points you make, LBird, strike me as being pretty sound and spot on; others I'm not too sure about.  It perhaps with regard to the latter that much of the confusion and subsequent backbiting has arisen.  So it would be mutually beneficial for all concerned if you could perhaps clarify your position with respect to the latter.You see,its like this.  I'm totally in agreement with you when you say science is a social activity.  We don't live in the 18th century era of amateur "gentleman scientists" (and even their activity was still "social" inasmuch as their discoveries were built on the discoveries of others). I also fully agree with you that in a communist society the barriers between the so called "scientific community" and the "general public" should be broken down as far as possible, Science should become a matter of concern and interest to everyone.Where I begin to depart from you is what I perceive to be – correct me if I am wrong – your apparent fetishisation of , or a totalising approach towards, the "democratic control of science" and scientific endeavour.  I really don't get the point of this but then again I might have misread what you are saying…Let me explain myself by way of an analogy.  I look at this matter from the perspective of someone who has engaged in numerous debates over the years with individuals of an anarcho-capitalist persuasion.  Almost all of them, I find, are wedded to the idea that a communist or socialist economy  would be a centrally planned economy – that is, one in which there would be one single society wide plan (or matrix) covering to the totality of inputs and outputs for the entire economy and specifying in advance the quantitative targets for each and  every single conceivable good that would be produced.  There are several different arguments our anarcho-capitalist friends make against this proposal, the most important of which is the informational complexity argument chiefly associated with FA Hayek.  Hayek's argument is that the dispersed nature of knowledge in society necessitates a self regulating market.  Trying to concentrate this vast amount of information within the rigid framework of a single giant plan is totally unrealistic.  Moreover, we are talking about millions upon millions of different kinds of goods – from 3 inch screws to stainless steel tumble dryers. Trying to reach a decision about how much each of these goods ought to be produced is daunting enough in itself; trying to reach that decision democratically would be infinitely more difficult.  How on earth is the global community going to decide on the global output target for, say, 3 inch screws? The whole idea is a preposterousSo Hayek and co are correct in that respect and they are also correct in deducing that if you are going to have centrally planned economy in this classic sense it almost lends itself to a form of governance that might be called a technocracy – rule by a tiny technocratic elite.  The logistics of decision making under this hypothetical arrangement virtually guarantees such a form of governance.My response to our anarcho capitalist friends is to say this is a complete straw argument. Communism will not and cannot be, a centrally planned economy but, on the contrary, will be a mainly decentralised economy  Indeed, most of the decisions that will be made in a communist system will not even need to be subjected to democratic control at all but will simply be part and parcel of an automatic self regulating system of stock control. Production unit X123 receives an order for 200 tins of baked beans from distribution centre Y445.  You don't need a democratic debate on whether to meet  that order; you just do it!  Because a communist society is about meeting needs, which needs are expressed as an order for 200 tins of baked beans in this case. This kind of response, of course, always floors our anarcho-aps since they imagine in their folly that they have cornered the market in the idea of a "self regulating system of production" .  The market is such a system but there is another much more effective version of that which dispenses with the market altogether: real communismSo what place has democracy in this mainly decentralised communist scheme of things?  The need for democracy arises where there is a potential conflict of interests and this has somehow to be resolved.  This can happen at different levels of spatial organisation – local regional and national.  It would not make much sense, for example, for the global community to debate on whether my local community should go ahead and construct a childrens nursery but it would make sense for the global community to talk about action to counter global warming for example. The level of decision making should be appropriate to the kind of decision that needs to be made and vice versa.So returning from this longwinded detour back to where we started off – what precisely is the point of the democratic control of scientific activity and how precisely would it be implemented?   Forgive me if I am grossly misinterpreting you but you seem to be almost suggesting that if there are several rival theories attempting to explain a particular phenomenon a vote needs to be taken to determine the truth of the matter. But why? This seems to me to be a very peculiar way of proceeding. You are not  going to dissuade a person from holding a particular theory just because he or she discovers s/he finds her/himself in a minority.  Nor should you even try to – at least not on those grounds!  Several centuries ago if the advocates of a heliocentric universe had had their theory tested against the rival theory of geocentric universe by democratic debate and voting rather than by authoritarian diktat on the part of the Church authorities would you have recommended that the former relinquish their silly idea about the earth revolving around the sun just because a majority believed to the contrary that it was the sun that revolved around the earth?  No of course you wouldn't.  A sample poll of scientists might conceivably  be useful for some purposes but I don't quite see where the need for democratic control of scientific knowledge as such comes into the picture.  A healthy science is a self-critical science – one which always opens itself up to rival theories as opposed to bludgeoning its practitioners  into conformity with the prevailing paradigm – duly interpreted as the democratic will of the majority.  There is also the also the question of whose democratic  will are we talking about.  To go back to my argument-cum-analogy  about central planning, you wouldn't expect the citizens of Shanghai to vote in a communist society on where the citizens of Seattle should site their brand new mainline railway station.  Unless maybe you had been to Seattle and knew its layout.  Similarly there is little point in democratically voting on certain rival  scientific theories unless you were familiar with the subject matter. Its a question of what is humanly and logistically possible.It is thus not really the scientific knowledge as such, I suggest, that should be the subject of democratic control but rather the application of that knowledge or even the process of making resources available for specific areas of scientific endeavour to generate more such knowledge.  These latter things I can sort of understand as being appropriate to democratic control but I would still like to hear from you how in practical terms you would want to have democratic control implemented in these cases. What would this democratic control actually look like?

[robbo203]

stanislavdoskocil wrote:

It seems you brain washed "Socialists" or whatever you may call yourself, don't understand the idea of owning what you worked for. I guess you slaves of collectivism don't have a sense of entitlement to your work, or as SocialistPunk suggested you could live in a system where there is no ownership for an individual and the man is simply a slave to the global Zionist system. Wow i knew you "Socialists" loved to sit on your masters lap and beg to have you property, wealth, work, everything even your humanity taken from you by not one man, but everyman. Thinking all the propaganda and all the altruism you thought saving the world was just enslaving it. I envisioned a dream where all men worked and they benefited from the labor they produced, a world where a crook government didnt strangle money from you, a world were people didn't ask for there share, instead they picked up there shovels and worked for it.

 So lets get this straight – you want a world in which individuals are not  beholden to anyone else,  do not ask for their share from others but simply takes possession of what they themselves produce by  picking up their shovels and working for it, so to speakWell lets look at this. Of course I assume your shovel is a metaphor for any kind of tool or implement – from JCB diggers to data communication equipment.  But sticking with the idea of  shovel in a literal sense,  allow me to ask – who do you think made this shovel?  Where did the steel that constitutes the shovel's blade come from?  What about the wood that forms the handle of the shovel?  Who operated the saw mill that sawed the wood out of which that handle was fashioned? Who produced the energy that powered the saw mill? Who produced the the rivets that hold together the turbines that produces the energy that powers the sawmill that saws the wood that forms the handle of your shovel?   And so on and so forth. You get my point, yes? The world we live in today is the product of our  COLLECTIVE labour. So for all you going about the evils of "collectivism" we live in a world that is, as a matter of fact,  essentially collectivised.  You and your little shovel wouldn't  last one day without you sharing in the fruits of other people's labour The problem is, Stan, it is not us, but you,  who does not understand the idea of "owning what you work for".   We socialists understood all too clearly  the totally interdependent nature of modern production.  We understand that nothing that is produced today does not also involve, directly or indirectly, the labour contributions of millions upon millions of other workers – all over the world Furthermore , since production is socialised so , we argue, ownership should likewise be socialised and that, when it comes down to it, there can be no justification whatsoever for private or sectional ownership of the means of production – the factories, farms , utilities etc However, the world in which we live is precisely one in which, overwhelmingly,  theses means of production are owned by a tiny minority.  According to a just released Oxfam report .  The combined wealth of the richest 1 percent will overtake that of the other 99 percent of people next year unless the current trend of rising inequality is checked http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2015-01-19/richest-1-will-own-more-all-rest-2016.  The richest 80 individuals in the world own more wealth than the bottom 3.5 billion put together – thats 3,500,000,000 people!Now I ask you, Stan – do you think that those 80 stupendously wealthy individuals "worked" for their wealth?  Do you not consider that it is far more likely that they got their wealth from employing others to work for them? That means paying these others less than the value of what they produce while grabbing the surplus for themselves Actually for all your muddleheaded grasp of even the most basic facts about society, the nature of work and so on, we socialists want the very opposite of what your claim.  Far from wanting to "beg" our masters to take our property  and our dignity away from us , we want to get rid of our masters completely – or rather to get rid of a situation in which there exists masters and underlings at all. If you want that as well then there is hope that you might also some day become a socialist But please don't confuse us with the "Bolsheviks". The Soviet Union was a state capitalist society , opposed by socialists right from the start, and one in which  masters and underlings existed just as they would under your own absurd little anarcho-capitalist dystopia even if you cannot yet see this.

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

Your (Robbo, that is) long well-argued postings are a good example of the rationalist approach of trying to convince people by argument Keep it up.

 Hi Adam. Well yes- there is nothing wrong with the rationalist approach.  Im all for it but I do think it needs to be complemented at times with another approach.  These things are not mutually exclusive – and thats me thinking with my rationalist hat on!

[robbo203]

twc wrote:

 It sends to that “more politically inclined”, and so already politically committed, section of the population the anarchist message:  Abolish the national state! The national state is a necessary part of the social superstructure of capitalism.  All the hating in the world won’t abolish the nation state before we capture it and change its social base from private to common ownership and control of the means of social life.

Yeah and thats precisely why this would  afford you the opportunity to explain in your press statements leaflets etc that the nation state is bound up with capitalism and can only be made to disappear with the elimination of capitalism itself.  Your argument is akin to saying socialists shouldn't talk about abolishing poverty because poverty too is bound up with capitalism.  You have to start where people are at – with their existing state of consciousness.   Some people are vehemently opposed to nationalism without being necessarily socialists.  Its up to socialists to help them to join up the dotted lines

twc wrote:

Really?  Do you imagine we have so little confidence in our science that we can’t foresee the consequences?

 I think our "science" should always be self critical, open minded and experimental in approach. We are not in the business of consulting crystal balls.  We cannot really know apriori what the consequences of a publicity stunt like this may be

twc wrote:

No, I don’t think, maybe or otherwise, that people might sit up and ask anything at all; they’ll already “know” all they need to “know”, because provocative stunts fuel little more than existing prejudice.

 No I don't think so.  Here, I can only speculate  but, for the nationalistically inclined, I think the shock of  an incident that calls into question ALL nationalisms could, if anything, be disconcerting and disorientating, causing the person to rethink his or her position.  I say this because I think the logic of nationalism grounds itself  and sustains itself within a conceptual framework within which all other nations are viewed in fundamentally antagonistic terms – as "The Other".  I don't want to get into a long winded sociological treatise on the ontology of nationalism but I think at a fundamental level nationalism sees difference as an existential threat to itself – different cultures , different people, different ways of living.  Louis Dumont had something interesting to say about this and talked of the connection between nationalism and individualism. In individualist mythology, the individual is pre-social or "natural"  – which, incidentally,  is why capitalism relies so heavily on the "human natrure" argument.  We are said to be "formed in nature".  Remember Hobbes and Locke and all that nonsense about the Social Contract?  Well, "the Nation" is the Individual writ large in nationalist ontology. Consequently, differences  between individuals  must therefore signify the influence of society upon the individual which, in turn, represents a threat to the sovereign autonomy of the individual.  Which is why "other nations", being other Individuals writ large, are perceived as being in some deep sense a threat to the thoroughgoing nationalist..  It ties in with individualistic basis of modern nationalism Anyway, to cut a long story short,  I think the only way you are going to break through this nationalist-cum-individualist thinking is to fundamentally attack its basic premiss through the deployment of shock and awe tactics, so to speak. How else are you going to shift those "existing prejudices" you speak of?  It is precisely because they are prejudices – pre-judgments – that the mere presentation of the "scientific case for socialism" is just not gonna work, TWC – or at least not to any significant extent.  This bears it my long standing critique to the traditional SPGB approach to doing things  – its hyper rationalism. Rationality is a very good thing and I'm not knocking it, but it needs to be complemented by other ways of doing things that engage the more irrational side of human beings and tap into the enormous  power of symbolism. And we all have an irrational or emotional side to us.  You too TWC

[robbo203]

stanislavdoskocil wrote:

Hello, my name is Stanislav Doskocil I was born in communist controlled Czechoslovakia in 1966. I was a rather regular individual, but I believed in a certain conviction that would rouse me above the collectivists and made me truly great. This conviction was one could own what one earned. So in 1989 I made my exodus of such insanity, I left the collectivist Marxists to there collective farms and there four year plans. I came to America were I believed with the sweat of my brow I could create all that I have envisioned. I have been very successful, I have earned for all i have worked for. But you may ask what is the difference between me and others, nothing simply but i believe in working for what one earns. But it sickens me when parasites asks "wheres my share?", you create something they say "what will the neighbors think", you invent they say "watch out, or you might tread on the toes of god". This is what the collectivists long ago said to me. People like this only exist to weigh down the greatness of man.

 Yeah,  but according to you these collectivists are "altruists" and I'm still waiting to hear from you how you figure that a bunch of parasites " weighing you down" and leeching on your efforts are altruistically inclined?  The poverty of your argument is exposed for all to see and yet you make not the slightest attempt to address this great big glaring contradiction in your whole argument.. How come? And for your information, revolutionary socialists have been opposing what you call "communist controlled Czechoslovakia" and the like  – in reality, state capitalist Czechoslovakia – from the word go and long before you were even a twinkle in somebody's eye. You need to acquaint yourself with some elementary political facts before spouting your ill-informed nonsense. "Collectivism" is one of those empty headed terms bandied about by deluded free marketeers who still think America is the Land of the Free. Its more the land of Big Corporations, Big Brother NSA and Big Rip Offs inflicted on those  whose labour has ensured a tiny minority enjoy stupendous wealth while a majority endure varying degrees of poverty and debt servitude.   Talk about "working for what one earns". Do you seriously believe that the leaching  billionaire class have …erm …"worked" for what they earn?  For some reason, the words "pig" and "fly"spring to mind.  We live in a "collectivist" world anyway.  Who produced the laptop your are typing your posts on? Actually, directly and indirectly , your laptap is ultimately the product of the the world's entire collective labour force.  The only question is do we want this collective world to be run in the interest of the few or in the interests of all. You have made it quite plain where you stand on this matter.

[robbo203]

twc wrote:

   Totally agree with ALB.Such provocative voluntarism kindly gifts those in political power the opportunity to distort the self-styled “critical thought” supposedly behind the action in countless ways prejudicial to the Party.All voluntarist political “thought” should seriously think beyond the stunt itself to the political consequences of its proposed action.  Unfortunately, it is prevented from doing so by its essentially creative free-wheeling seat-of-the-pants nature.  Like Robbo’s proposal, voluntarist “thinking” stops short at the “cunning plan” stage.Beyond that, voluntarist “thought” turns into voluntarist delusion, imagining miraculous consequences of its action, where it perpetually dwells as “half thought”—or only half thought out—best characterized as thought’s coitus interruptus. 

 Not quite sure what you are going on about, mate.  Nor would I think Joe or Jill Public down in the Duck and Hounds enjoying a swift half.  But I would say this, though – whatever we do and however we do it, is going to be  "distorted" in an environment that is fundamentally antithetical to socialist ideas at the moment.  Socialists just have to live with that and do they best they can.I repeat again – a publicity stunt of this nature  doesn't have to be at the expense of critical thought; it can be accompanied by critical thought throughout in the form of press statements, leaflets and whatnot. Don't you want more publicity? Why is the SPGB standing in the General Election at great expense, if not? Of course you cannot control the way others perceive you at the moment but the more publicity you generate the more the public takes note of you and the greater the chance that people on the same wavelength making the effort to approach you.I can imagine a certain section of the population, the more politically inclined – the people you ought to be targeting first in my view – sitting up and saying "Blimey, the SPGB! Who would have thought of it., Good on 'em.  I hate effing nationalism too!"As I said , you don't know until you try it. The uniqueness of a publicity stunt of this nature is that it doesn't discriminate between any flag; it burns the lot. Don't you think maybe, just maybe. that might make people sit up and ask – what are these guys on about?

[robbo203]

stanislavdoskocil wrote:

 Let me ask you, what is the greatest lie ever created. What is the most vicious obscenity ever perpetrated on mankind. Is it slavery, the holocaust, dictatorship. No its the tool with which all that wickedness is built, altruism. Whenever someone wants to do there work they call upon there altruists, never mind your own needs they say, think about the needs of whoever, of the state, the poor,of the army, of the king, of god, the list goes on and on. What catastrophes were launched with the words "think of yourself", its the king and country crowd that light the torch of destruction. This ancient lie has chained humanity to this endless cycle of guilt and failure.

 I would still like to hear from  this poster how he or she can come to this conclusion when manifestly it is not the altruist that is the cause of the "vicious obscenity" referred to but rather those who "thinking only of themselves" cynically exploit the good intentions of the altruistically inclined This whole line of argument  presented here is positively Randian in outlook. The poster refers to the "Bolshevik poison"  and the "parasites of Moscow" he or she left behind behind and in so doing perhaps unwittingly echoes  a comment made by Ayn Rand in a lecture delivered at Yale University on February 17, 1960,  namely  that the “ultimate monument to Kant and to the whole altruist morality is Soviet Russia” (http://freedomkeys.com/faithandforce.htm) But hold one here! That doesn't make sense at all does it now? How is a "parasite" compatible with  altruism, eh? Soviet Russia cannot possibly stand as the "ultimate monument" to altruism if it happened  to be administered by a bunch of parasites which in fact it was.  The Soviet capitalist class was a tiny parasitic class – effectively,  the apparatchiks – that brutally and systematically exploited the Russian workers through its complete stranglehold on the state machine and economic decision makingOf course the Soviet Union would have talked about "working for the common good" etc  but – Hells Bells! – name me one capitalist state that doesn't talk in these terms?  Cameron is forever going on about working together for the "good of the nation".  So is Obama. So is Hollande or Merkel .  So is every other capitalist statesman.  Whats so unusual about that?.  All this disreputable  bunch of good-for-nothing smooth-talking inveterate liers have in common is that they are more than willing to cynically exploit the altruistic tendencies of people for their own ends and the capitalist class they represent.  Just like in the Soviet Union in fact…..

[robbo203]

sarda karaniwan wrote:

I'm sorry, but I don't believe altruism exist and those capitalists have proven that.About that "drowning child" (the usual argument case), it is not about altruism or being a hero, it is only about responsibility, if everyone took up responsibility accident will not happen.

 Sarda,Of course altruism exists! I suspect you have a very narrow and misleading interpretation of what altruism means.  All it boils down to basically is concern for the welfare and wellbeing of others.  Everyone exhibits such a concern in their daily lives – perhaps barring the odd sociopath – from the  mother who provides milk for her newborn  to the young person who vacates her seat on a crowded bus to allow some elderly person to sit. Charities would cease to exist if altruism did not exist.  Come to think of it, even the capitalists exhibit altruism contrary what you claim.  Capitalists  after all frequently  bequeath their worldly goods to their kin or  endeavour to assist the latter in numerous other ways in life.  This is a variety of altruism dubbed "kin altruism" in evolutionary psychology; another is "reciprocal altruism".  Google the terms and see for yourself As for your argument about the Drowning Child example – well, how on earth do you figure this is not altruism.  The "responsibility" you refer to presupposes an altruistic concern for the child in question and the moral imperative to act on that concern. Being altruist doesn't make you a socialist but it does make you a human being . So, no, you are quite wrong to sayIf altruism exist in every human being then we don't need to change anything at all, all we need to do is wait for those capitalists to show their altruism and everything will work out fine. This is a misunderstanding of what the argument is about.  Altruism doesn't necessarily have socialist implications.  Actually, the rabid nationalist -or indeed suicide bomber – who professes to be willing to die for his or her "nation" is, in  an important sense, thinking as an altruist.  Socialists reject nationalism, of course. Our concern lies primarily with the welfare of our fellow workers with whom we express solidarity. That is why we refuse to cross a picket line when workers strike. That is why we protest when workers are evicted from the homes. And so on and so forth.  We take these actions because the welfare of those workers matter to us.  We are being altruistic in other words We need much more of that kind of altruism – socialist altruism.  The ridiculous idea that seems to be implied in your position – that socialism is purely a matter of self interest – is actually the most insidiously anti-socialist argument imaginable.  If self interest is all that matters – the Smithian paradigm of the Market's Invisible Hand  – then socialists might just as well shut up shop and busy themselves with  advancing their own careers and stabbing their fellow workers on the way up the greasy pole of job promotion. Self interest is part of the reason for wanting socialism but it can never ever be the whole reason.  If it were that would negate  everything that socialism stands for which is implied in the very word itself – SOCIALism

[robbo203]

stanislavdoskocil wrote:

Let me ask you, what is the greatest lie ever created. What is the most vicious obscenity ever perpetrated on mankind. Is it slavery, the holocaust, dictatorship. No its the tool with which all that wickedness is built, altruism. Whenever someone wants to do there work they call upon there altruists, never mind your own needs they say, think about the needs of whoever, of the state, the poor,of the army, of the king, of god, the list goes on and on. What catastrophes were launched with the words "think of yourself", its the king and country crowd that light the torch of destruction. This ancient lie has chained humanity to this endless cycle of guilt and failure.

 This is a ridiculous argument, frankly. Its the same naff argument trotted about by the likes of Ayn Rand and the Objectivists.  It doesn't even make sense. You are misattributing the blame to "altruism" yet telling us that the problem arises when some call upon others to behave altruistically in the name of whatever cause. You could just as easily argue that it is the egoism of the former in cynically exploiting the altruism of the latter that is the real cause of the problem. Altruism and self interest are two sides of the same coin that is our human species. Neither are dispensable. Its what makes us human beings In evolutionary psychology there is an argument gaining ground that "group level" selection – not just individual selection – may have been a powerful factor in the evolution of our species. That is to say, groups exhibiting a stronger degree of solidarity amongst it members tended to be those that survived.  In other words, concern for the wellbeing of others – and the word "altruism"  derives from the Latin word “alter”, meaning “other” – was a factor in group cooperation and survival.  Put simply those groups whose members did not display a minimal degree of altruistic feeling towards others in the group simply perished.  The development of Game Theory in the post war years has massively reinforced these conclusions and has shown that purely egoistic strategies are very clearly sub-optimal.  Google the "Prisoners Dillemma" and see for yourself. Altruism is the basis of morality and there is a strong argument (promoted by the likes of Chomsky  and others) for saying that our disposition towards moral behaviour., like our capacity for language,  is something that is hardwired into us. Its not the specific moral beliefs or practices that I am talking about – these things are indeed culturally and historically  conditioned – but the fact that we are inclined to think and behave in moral terms at all.  The discovery of “mirror neurons” in the brain by Giacomo Rizzolati and his colleagues in the 1990s, which neurons seem to be linked to our capacity for empathy – a basic building block of morality – supports this argument. At the end of the day we are neither purely egoistic or altruistic but both – and necessarily so.  The nonsensical rant of the Objectivists against what  they call  "altruism" underscores their totally impoverished worldview.  It hasn't got a leg to stand on.  To use Peter Singer's classic example of the Drowning Child, would you pass by a pond  in which a child was drowning without being perturbed in the slightest, without wanting to help? No of course you wouldn't.  No normal human being would – though a clinical sociopath might.  Your "praxis" in the world , to coin a phrase, thus stands in total contradiction to your absurd claim that altruism is some kind of unmitigated evil.

[robbo203]

jondwhite wrote:

I'm happy for it to be suggested, and wouldn't object to members of the general public doing it but flag-burning is not something the party or members should be doing. It doesn't encourage critical thought, rather the opposite. Nationalists (ever-ready to shut down critical faculties) would readily be enraged and respond emotively, and the apathetic would remain apathetic.Stunts are not the way to raise our profile. They're certainly not a shortcut to consciousness raising either. Stunts aren't a strategy, they're the absence of one.

 Ok, its just a suggestion and I'm not too hung about  it but I would have thought it would be quite possible to combine an approach that embraces "critical thought" with a symbolic gesture of this sort. – for instance in the form of a leaflet opposing nationalism which could be distributed before, during and after the event in question.. Ditto a press statement to explain the significance of the event. Things are not black-or-white.

[robbo203]

Came across this site  –  the US Holocaust Memorial Museum – which makes a distinction between "holocaust denial" and "holocaust distortion": http://www.ushmm.org/confront-antisemitism/holocaust-denial-and-distortion Amongst other things, it asserts that "Common distortions include, for example, assertions that: the figure of six million Jewish deaths is an exaggeration"  and that "Denial and distortion of the Holocaust almost always reflect antisemitism".  If that is the case then it would appear that a large number of historians, including Israeli historians, are guilty of distortion and are likely harbouring anti-Semitic sentiments. I cannot pretend to know much about historical details of the holocaust.. Like most people, I suspect, I simply took it for granted that 6 million was the correct figure. Now I discover that many historians themselves dispute this figure and that some put the true figure at around 1 million.  As I said,  even 1 million is bad enough. It is a grotesque obscenity that it should have happened at all that so many Jews (and, of course, many others too) should have died in this fashion.  But, apparently, to say this and to suggest that the numbers involved might have been only 1 million and not 6 million is highly likely to indicate "anti-Semitism".  I think the reasoning behind such a claim is utterly absurd and spurious.   Frankly I smell a rat. It is a way of silencing criticism through the manufacture of a taboo. Without going along with any particular figure as such – I simply don't have the knowledge yet to reach an informed decision – I would nevertheless assert that it is entirely possible to reject the official figure as a literal statement  of fact AND reject anti-Semitism as a repugnant and totally unacceptable standpoint. . The US HMM seems to presume from the outset that the matter has already been settled and that anyone who dares question the figure it bandies about is engaged in a "distortion".  This is actually a close-minded, dogmatic and arrogant approach to history.  Paradoxically, IF it so happens that the figure is a gross exaggeration then the effect would actually be to cheapen the memory of those Jews who lost their lives in this horrific fashion by feeling the need to embellish the historical record in such a fashion:  do we really need to artifically boost the numbers involved in order to find the whole thing morally repulsive? The link I referred to at the outset suggests that those who accuse others of distortion are themselves guilty of a gross distortion.  It suggests also reasons why they might want to engage in such a distortion. The Israeli capitalist state is no different from any other capitalist state in wanting to clothe itself in the mythology of nationalism. As in war, truth is often the first casualty.  "History" becomes just another propaganda tool.  And the holocaust, I think, plays a central role in the ideology of a state that seeks, as all states must do, to justify its own existence from some morally unassailable or impregnable high ground. Not just history but prehistory too .  I recall Steven Pinkers arguments in "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined"  (2011). According to him,  violent deaths have declined dramatically from about 15% in pre-state societies and  "today we may be living in the most peaceable era in the existence of our species" ("Violence Vanquished " , The Wall Street Journal, September 24, 2011).  The hidden agenda behind such thinking is to justify the existence of the Hobbesian state: we need the state to quell our "natural instinct" to inflict violence on each other at the slightest pretext. It is, of course, a junk theory that Pinker and others have been busily pushing . First off, he overlooks the distinction between band societies and tribal societies.  The former characterise the vast majority of humankinds existence on this planet and exhibited a built in mechanism of conflict avoidance through fissioning and nomadism. Tribal societies, though not  yet class societies, are much more recent and arguably did show signs of militarism and hierarchy.   Also as anthropologists like R. Brian Ferguson, considered to be the foremost expert on the early history of war, has pointed out Pinker and co have grossly misinterpreted the evidence of forensic archeology:  "Many hominid remains once thought to establish the most ancient evidence of homicide or cannibalism were actually gnawed by predators or just suffered postmortem breakage  ("The Birth of War" R. Brian Ferguson , Natural History  Jul/Aug 2003, Vol. 112, Issue 6).   This is to say nothing of  the findings of studies on contemporary hunter gather groups – like the one recently conducted by researchers from  the Abo Academy University in Finland looking into violence in early human communities. That study concluded that such violence  was "driven by personal conflicts rather than large-scale battles" and  that "war is not an innate part of human nature, but rather a behaviour that we have adopted more recently"   ( "Primitive human society 'not driven by war' ", BBC News: Science and Environment,  18 July 2013). The point that I'm making here is that there may well be parallels between the way prehistory has been rewritten to suit the ideological outlook and prejudices of establishment thinkers and the way in which recent history has also been presented.  The holocaust phenomenon is a case in point. Mass murder is an obscenity, however you look at it, but there is undeniably also something quite distasteful about the way in which states cynically and sanctimoniously employ the evidence of "history" for their own ulterior purposes.

[robbo203]

Hi   all,  Thanks for your obsrvations and suggestions.  Incidentally, specifically in relation to the question of inflation I came across these two references in the wiki entry on QE which appear to contradict each other  until you realise that "money supply" or "injecting more money into the economy" may not be the same as printing more currency. But can QE involve an element of printing more currency and if so how does this happen? What is the process?Quantitative Easing Explained. London: Bank of England. 2011. The MPC's decision to inject money directly into the economy does not involve printing more banknotes. Instead, the Bank buys assets from private sector institutions – that could be insurance companies, pension funds, banks or non-financial firms – and credits the seller's bank account..Bank of England . The Bank can create new money electronically by increasing the balance on a reserve account. So when the Bank purchases an asset from a bank, for example, it simply credits that bank's reserve account with the additional funds. This generates an expansion in the supply of central bank money  

[robbo203]

1875 wrote:

If a majority of socialist workers should take power only in a country like the United Kingdom, then there wouldn’t be a socialist revolution; only managing capitalism would be possible.

 There is, I think , an intermediate position between that of socialism-in-one-country  and that of instantaneous  worldwide revolution, neither of which seem plausible for different reasons.  That is to acknowledge that, were a majority of socialists to take power in one country first, this would necessarily presuppose a near majority of socialists almost everywhere else. It is inconceivable  that you could have significant spatial lags in the spread of socialist ideas given the potential of modern telecommunications as well as the increasingly interdependent nature of modern production. Not to mention the determination and resolve of the  globally based socialist movement itself to minimise the extent of such spatial lags through the redirection of effort and assistance to those parts of the world where the growth of socialist conscious appeared to be lagging most. Therein perhaps lies the key to an approach that the socialist movement might increasingly put into practice the larger it become.  The domino theory of revolution, as I like to call it, fundamentally differs from the socialism-in-one-country model in that the latter regards the spread of socialist ideas outside of the country in question , though useful, to be essentially a matter of indifference whereas the former regards that spread to be absolutely indispensable.Socialism in one country is a recipe for managing capitalism under the aegis of the so called dictatorship of the proletariat  – an oxymoron if there ever was one – which will sooner or later morph into just another capitalist government  managing some kind of state capitalist variant (probably) of capitalism; the domino theory, on the other hand, allows for the direct implementation of genuine socialism in some or other part of the world first to be followed soon enough afterwards by others parts.  Its confidence and ability to take that giant step depends on the certain knowledge that other parts of the world are hard on its heels. It recognises the external constraints on implementing full free access socialism immediately, given the fact that t has still to deal with a residual capitalist world outside and with which it will still have to maintain certain economic relations for a little while longer, relations which will probably take the form of barter. But internally,  it eliminates the commodity relation altogether and administers society no longer under a state (since classes will have disappeared) but through the democratic organisation of society itself within the temporary and increasingly porous territorial shell of the now completely extinguished nation state. In short, there is no country anymore and therefore no socialism-in-one-country. If there is a sound rationale behind the distinction between a "lower" and "higher" phase of socialism/communism  as outlined by Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Programme then perhaps it derives its force from this distinction that could be made between the external relations a newly constituted socialist zone has to maintain with the residual, if rapidly shrinking, capitalist world outside and its own internal mode of production and way of life

[robbo203]

Came across something by Chris Hedges on the subject which makes for an interesting read….http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/a_message_from_the_dispossessed_20150111 There are organisations like PEGIDA in Germany – there is a Pegida offshoot in the UK too – that seem to want to focus on the nature of Islam itself as a suppposed threat  to democracy, free speech etc etc.  As far as I know –  someone can correct me if I am wrong –  Pegida turns out to be of the far Right and ultra-nationalist in persuasion.  A leftie on my local FB group had recommended Pegida to me before discovering to her dismay what it was all about. Hedges  seems to me to take a sound approach which focusses attention instead on the conditions which Islamic communities face in Europe and elsewhere.  Their particular religious beliefs is not the reason why a tiny minority resort to such obscene acts of violence but rather an excuse or pretext.  I recall Hedges saying something on an RT interview the other day about a militant Islamic group he had encountered somewhere – Syria perhaps?  It turned out that only one of their number had ever even read the Koran  despite them all putting on the front of being devout Islamists! Incidentally,  it appears that there have been more than 50 French trademark applications for the phrase "Je Suis Charlie" for commercial purposes, of all things. Capitalism just cannot resist gettings it grubby hands on anything that moves.  Seems its not just the professed commitment of opportunist politicians to free speech that rings hollow.  See herehttp://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-30797059?ns_mchannel=email&ns_source=inxmail_newsletter&ns_campaign=bbcnewsmagazine_news__&ns_linkname=na&ns_fee=0 

[robbo203]

duncan lucas wrote:

You are tumbling over yourself to make your "we are all the same people " fit in with your political logic when the truth is we are as different as chalk and cheese . You seem to deny nationality of countries and people so you feel easier saying "We stand for one people wherever they are " .This defies logic ,the truth common sense and perceived actuality. Each nation is people unto themselves who think ,act  differently .

  But, Duncan, aren't you the one who is tumbling over yourself in your haste to assert that "we are all the same people" as far as the Scots are concerned in contradistinction to, say, the English?  An English worker has far more in common with a Scottish worker than the latter has with the capitalist class.  So why then chose to disaggregate society along nationalistic lines when it makes far more sense to do  so along class lines?Sure there are cultural variations between different regions – although much of this exists only in the fertile imagination of nationalist mythologisers (see Benedict Anderson's illuminating book  on the origins of nationalism, entitled Imagined Communities http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagined_communities).  Socialists don't decry cultural differences; if anything we celebrate them.  It is global capitalism and the "McDonaldisation" of society that is eroding national differences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonaldization) just as nationalism was itself – and still is – a force for cultural homogenisation and the obliteration of local cultures and dialects. However,  Scotland is no less part of the global capitalist world than anywhere else and you delude yourself with your fantasy of an  independent  "socialist" Scotland . The overwhelming majority of Scottish workers support capitalism in one form or another just as the overwhelming majority of English workers do likewise – however reluctantly or unenthusiastically.   To be be brutally frank they have no conception yet of an alternative to capitalism – to wage labour, to buying and selling, to the money system.  Your talk of a "socialist" Scotland shows that you too do not have a  clear idea of what socialism means either, unfortunately.To equate it with the "welfare state" or whatever is ludicrous.  The welfare state was actually introduced with the full support of the big capitalists back in the 1940s. As one of them, Samuel Courtauld,  put it, 'Social security of this nature will be about the most profitable long term investment the country could make. It will ultimately lead to a higher efficiency among workers and a lowering of production costs.'You don't seem to understand the point that capitalism can take many different forms and that to a large extent these forms themselves are the product of historically contingent factors.  In an increasingly competitive globalised economy  and with the decline in economic growth – and profit –  rates since the 1970s placing a burden on government spending, governments of all political persuasions have in recent years tended to evolve towards a neo-liberal form of governance.  It bears out the expression that "its not governments that run the system but the system that runs the governments".Believe you me, the government of  an independent Scotland, had it materialised, would be no different in any fundamental sense. It would be no less ruthless in its attacks on the working class than the present  conservative government and while it might appear to give more with the one hand it will also take more with the other. There is no such thing as a free lunch in capitalism. Since it has no intention to transcend the profit system such a government would have to abide by the rules of the game that require it to act in the interests of capital and therefore against the interests of wage labour.The fact that it is Scottish workers that the Scottish capitalists are exploiting will make absolutely no difference in the long run.  If it did those patriotic Scottish capitalists would simply relocate their capital elsewhere where they can get away scot free – to coin a phrase – from having to pay punitive levels of taxation that a militant Scottish  "socialist" government might want to impose on them to fund their ambitious welfare programme.  That will soon enough tame such a government and bring it to heel

[Author]

Posts