[robbo203]

rodshaw wrote:

 I think there's a lot to be said for this way of looking at it. This idea of 'habitus' is reinforced by the fact that people mostly just want to get their heads down and get through the next working day. Any idea which is too wacky, doesn't conform to their normal view of life or is in some way seen as threatening is quickly pushed aside. At the same time it's part of the reason why those with a super-high IQ or all the leisure time in the world to think about things don't automatically arrive at a socialist view – it's not rocket science but it's a million miles from what they know of the world and how they think it should work.

 Exactly.  Which brings out another point which i think Ozy is entirely missing: dont judge a book by its cover,  Dont be fooled by mere appearance.  I dont imagine for one moment  that in my line of work (garden landscaping cum ground maintenance ) , for instance, any of my customers have the foggiest idea of my political affiliations and would probably be horrified to discover I was revolutionary socialist.  There is one very nice couple I work for – both stalwart Labour Party supporters –  who love to engage me in political discussion but I find I have to very often bite my tongue and be circumspect.  I dont want to risk antagonising them for obvious reasons so have developed a kind of oblique way of talking politics with them. From their point I probably come across as a relatively non committal, mildly left of centre person.  Im sure many in the SPGB must often find themselves in the same boat. Expediency is the name of the game and in my view it is a very important understated  reason why people are not drawn to socialism in their droves – not because they are "stupid".  It frankly shocks me that fellow socialists can describe members of our class in these condescending terms,  Apart from anything it is such a simplistic superficial way of looking at things To some extent I think David Graeber , the anarchist anthropologist, with his concept of the "Communism of Everyday Life" makes a valid point.  There is an interesting reference to this here:http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/David_Graeber__Hope_in_Common.htmlIt makes a refreshing change to the hopelessness and  class defeatism that Ozy preaches

[robbo203]

Ozymandias wrote:

Obviously the guy making the video is just inviting us to laugh along with him at how utterly stupid the majority of US workers are. I actually think the Internet is making workers more and more dense. Not the other way round. This along with online porn, football, gadgets, daily rags,  shit on telly, faecesbook, celebrity twitter tattle, mind numbing movies, religion and video games. Dished up to appeal to the addictive side of human behaviour. Workers minds are dormant. They are now more stupid than they've ever been in history. I believe this.Its cool to be stupid now especially among young workers. They are trying to "out-stupid" each other. Just look at any docu-soap on telly about young proles on holiday or at the workplace. Total cretins. It's all a product of the concerted effort by our masters to radically dumb down the whole of society in the past 30 years. The proles are lapping it up. The dullard donkeys love being slaves. I detest them. Shoot me down if you like. I don't give a fuck.A Socialist Revolution? Never in a million years. It's about as likely as the 2nd coming. The masters will be in power forever…or at least until they blow the planet up to fuck or let it roast in an irriversable environmental catastrophe. "Humanity" is just a horrible virus polluting this Earth and Capitalism is its face. The planet will eventually get rid of us in its own way. 

 Personally, I think this whole line of argument is fundamentally flawed and smacks not a little of "Great Man" conspiracy theory – the super-intelligent Übermensch that is our master class  have cunningly ensured  the relentless dumbing down of the  proles and their slavish adherence to the status quo.  As if.  Our masters don't strike me as being any more – or less-  intelligent than us and most  of them have only got to where they are by virtue of having chosen the right parents I think the fact that the majority of workers continue to basically accept capitalism and all that it entails has got sod all to do with intelligence –  or, rather, the lack of it .  Dissing your fellow workers as cretinous buffoons, apart from being incredibly insulting, is plainly false. You mention the internet, Ozy. But if you have the cognitive capacity to surf the web or accomplish any of the myriad of other  technical tasks that goes with living a life of a modern wage slave then you sure as hell have the raw ability to grasp the simple case for socialism.  Unfortunately your  use of the term "stupid" implies that they lack that ability. This points to  what i have long thought is a basic weakness in the SPGB´s approach – its over emphasis on rationality.  The basic assumption is that the case for socialism is pretty much self evident and mere exposure to that case, given our basic rationality,  will compel individual workers to accept it.  When they fail to accept it,  this can seem utterly incomprehensible and  at times can lead  to a quite opposite response – a complete repudiation of the assumption of rationality to which the individual had previously appealed  in putting forward the socialist case.  Some would argue that it is a characteristic of black-or-white thinking that you can switch so easily from one extreme to the other. I would suggest it would be helpful to turn our attention elsewhere if we are to discover why it is that workers are not currently coming round in their droves to  accept the case for socialism,  I'm not a great fan of the French sociologist/anthropologist,  Pierre Bourdieu, but I do think something like his key concept of habitus goes quite a long way to explaining why this is the case: There is a succinct explanation of ´"habitus" in Wikipedia as followsBourdieu thus sees habitus as an important factor contributing to social reproduction because it is central to generating and regulating the practices that make up social life. Individuals learn to want what conditions make possible for them, and not to aspire to what is not available to them. The conditions in which the individual lives generate dispositions compatible with these conditions (including tastes in art, literature, food, and music), and in a sense pre-adapted to their demands. The most improbable practices are therefore excluded, as unthinkable, by a kind of immediate submission to order that inclines agents to make a virtue of necessity, that is, to refuse what is categorically denied and to will the inevitable And also here Habitus is one of Bourdieu’s most influential yet ambiguous concepts. It refers to the physical embodiment of cultural capital, to the deeply ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions that we possess due to our life experiences. Bourdieu often used sports metaphors when talking about the habitus, often referring to it as a “feel for the game.” Just like a skilled baseball player “just knows” when to swing at a 95-miles-per-hour fastball without consciously thinking about it, each of us has an embodied type of “feel” for the social situations or “games” we regularly find ourselves in. In the right situations, our habitus allows us to successfully navigate social environments. For example, if you grew up in a rough, crime ridden neighborhood in Baltimore, you would likely have the type of street smarts needed to successfully survive or steer clear of violent confrontations, “hustle” for jobs and money in a neighborhood with extremely low employment, and avoid police surveillance or harassment. However, if you were one of the lucky few in your neighborhood to make it to college, you would probably find that this same set of skills and dispositions was not useful—and maybe even detrimental—to your success in your new social scenario.http://routledgesoc.com/category/profile-tags/habitus This chimes quite a lot with how I see things.  Workers don't reject socialism  because they are "stupid", they reject it because they cannot see the immediate relevance of socialism to their lives and the structures of everyday living.  If we can break through that particular impasse we stand a chance of gaining ground and social influence. Habitus reminds me a little of the ideas of George Walford and his Systematic  Ideology (Walford, for people, who may not have heard of him, was a trenchant and long standing critic of the SPGB).  Accept that Bourdieu´s concept of habitus is not a static one – like Walford´s hierarchy of ideological types – but dynamic.  I would like to think that as the socialist movement grows it will reach a critical threshold where factors that once worked against us – including habitus – will start to work in our favour Looking at the question of socialist consciousness from the perspective of "habitus", seems to me to be a much more rewarding approach than simply appealing to workers´ rationality – or indeed discounting the ability of workers to think rationally for themselves as you seemingly do, Ozy.   In fact I would go so far as to say that part of the reason why workers fail to be drawn to socialism is because of attitudes such as you express here.  If you have such low expectations of workers then to be quite blunt  you can hardly expect them to join you, can you?  All  you are doing is reproducing or reinforcing a ruling class ideology that keeps them in their place     

[robbo203]

pgb wrote:

If I failed to address your earlier point – that there is no such thing as a free lunch in capitalism – it's because I didn't see your point. Distinguishing between the money wage and the social wage didn't make it any clearer. Saying that "free hospital care comes at a cost" is a truism. In a socialist society "free" hospital care would come at a cost too. Were you suggesting that because it wasn't truly "free" therefore workers had been hoodwinked into getting it and supporting it, or duped by those awful "reformists"? With your single-minded focus on costs, you have missed what I think is an important reason why socialists should support such things as free public health provision. By being "free", medical care is "decommodified" – it is not available only through the market, but available by right, to all without distinction of wealth, class, race or whatever. I see that as supporting the values of socialism – production for need and equality of access to society's resources. If health care were a truly capitalist provision it would be a commodity accessible only through the market, and it would be provided only if it were profitable. Same argument applies to public schooling. Although nominal fees (as opposed to prices) may play a part in mediating the allocation of these public goods, the allocating mechanism is not sale, but simply rights to free use (usually supported by legal claims). Saying that the provision of public goods is in the interest of capital doesn't disturb this fact, but of course it puts limits on them which will always be a focus of political contestation (eg. current austerity budget cuts in the UK).

Well, yes, I can see that you didn't "see the point" judging by the little red herring you offer here. I wasn't actually intent on uttering a "truism" in the sense you mean – that   "free hospital care comes at a cost" – or trying to get you to acknowledge the blindingly obvious. Of course even in socialism –  in any society – there will be opportunity costs involved in the provision of health care.  My point was a rather different one and hinged precisely on the distinction between the social wage and the money wage which comprise the two basic components of the workers' standard of living. I thought I had made it clear what that point was but obviously didn't in your case.    So as they say, if you don't at first succeed, try again.What I was trying to get you to see is that these two things – the social wage and the money wage – stand in inverse relationship to each other which is precisely what the labour theory of value would lead us to expect. In other words and all things being equal, an increase in the social wage will tend to result in a fall in the money wage. That is actually what I meant when I said  "free hospital care comes at a cost", not that it costs something  (in terms of resouces) to provide hospital care.  To put it simply. the more things that workers get for free – including, literally, that free lunch at their workplace –  the smaller will be their wage packet at the end of the day. This is because the direct costs to the worker of producing and reproducing his/her labour power have fallen which will then have the effect of pulling down wage levels.  This works the other way too.  If things that were once free are no longer free then the consequence of that will be to push up the money wage to cover the increased direct cost to the worker of producing and reproducing his or her labour power.  But as I said this is not something that just happens automatically through the market process.  It is mediated by class struggle and influenced by the "respective powers of the combatants" (Marx) engaged in that struggleOnce you  understand this point we can then go on to look at your point about the "decommodification" of goods and services such as health care provision and schooling which you suggests expresses the "values of socialism".  I can sort of sympathise with what you are trying to get at here there but I still think you' ve got all this seriously wrong.  It reminds me of the supermarket slogan "buy one and get one free". Now you wouldn't cite that as instance of "decommodification", would you?  Or perhaps you would. Perhaps you really do believe  that the supermarket is blazing a trail to a commodityless socialist future by offering us one free bottle of gherkins for every other one we buy.   A sort embryonic growth of socialism within the womb of capitalism  nicely packaged and located somewhere along the second aisle next to the baked beans that unfortunately  remain stubbornly capitalist and completely commodified. I dunno. You tell me.In any event, I disagree strongly with you on this point that the free provision of public goods is somehow, in and of  itself, consonant with the expression of "socialists values".  There is no necessary connection at all and I would remind you once again that it was ultra-conservatives like Otto von Bismarck who pioneered the idea of state welfare. Read again my earlier posts which provide relevant quotes that back up this point. This notion thoughtlessly  peddled by some on the Left – including, it seems, your good self  – that the  limited process of "decommodification" in the sphere of consumption as represented by the free provision of public goods is a good thing in that it somehow embodies what they, and  you , chose to call "socialist values",  is utterly naive and simplistic.  To the contrary, I question completely the claim that this kind of supermarket "get-something-for-nothing" approach  to the provision of goods and services has anything necessarily to do with socialist values at all. It could just as easily accommodate itself to a bourgeois egoistic outlook and bind workers over all the more more solidly to the capitalist social order.   Lenin's labour aristocracy theory got it all wrong, I reckon. It is not the elite of the labour force that are bribed out of the superprofits made in the third world, to promote reformism and reject revolution  It is the working class in general that is bribed or seduced into the supporting the existing social order  through the provision of free health care and the like. The subtext is that if capitalism can provide us with such things for zilch it must surely have our welfare at heart and so we should be eternally grateful and not try to rock the boatThe illusion of a system of universal benefits is that we live in a universe in which our interests are all the same.  This also has distinct nationalist overtones: "we" are meant to be proud of "our" national health service  which is supposedly the "envy of the world".  I might finally add that it is not for no reason that the whole area of "public goods" has been subjected to "tragedy of the commons"  or "free rider" type of analysis by bourgeois commentators; they presume the existence of a capitalist market and competing economic actors which will of course undermine integrity of these so called public goods and for good reason since the provision of such public goods in no way alters the fundamentally capitalist nature of the society we live inI would suggest to you that if you are looking to some kind of "prefigurative"  form that encapsulates or embodies what you call socialist values then this is to be found not in the sphere of consumption but rather in the sphere of production – human activity. It is the decommodification of human labour that really holds far more significance, potentially at least,  as far as "values of socialism" is concerned – that is to say, in the extent and nature of what is called the non market "grey "economy  – rather than in  the passive consumption of  so called free goods and services as such which, as I say,  can just as easily be conditioned  or appropriated by a non-socialist,  or even virulently anti "socialist",  ethos and always come with strings attached.  But  I guess all this is the subject of another thread and we ought really  to focus instead on the immediate matter at hand: reformismOne final point – you  do finally seem to agree that the provision of public goods must be in the interests of capital and that this "puts limits" on the extent of such provisioning. The case of the welfare state demonstrates this. It simply would not have materialised  had not significant sections of the capitalist class sanctioned it and seen that it was in their own class interests .  It was not imposed on a reluctant capitalist class by an idealistically driven , well meaning labour government presumably embodying the "values of socialism" from your point of view and the quotes I provided completely destroy this kind of mythic view you seem to harbour concerning of the role of that obnoxious anti-working class capitalist entity  that is the Labour Party.  The point is that things are different now compared to back then .  Then it suited the capitalist class very well to decommodify some things like health care because the benefits in terms of lowered costs and increased efficiency outweighed the disadvantages .  Today it is you who is are swimming against the tide as far as capitalism is concerned in that what we are seeing  is not the "decommodification" of goods and services but rather a clear trend in the opposite direction: the increasingly commodification of more and more aspects of our lives and a withering of the provision of public goods. What was once in the interests of capital is not quite to the same extent anymore. As they say,  "he who pays the piper plays the tune". You cannot operate a capitalist system of production except in the interests of capital. The form in which these interests express themselves is historically contingent and subject to changing conditions. The funding crisis in the NHS, prescription charges  and the development of an internal market are all part of an unfolding story in which the underlying narrative is what best serves the interests of British capitalism or  (any other national capitalism)  in the current circumstances

pgb wrote:

Why shouldn't socialists join in this fight? Your position seems to be that since welfare state provisions are of interest to capitalists, therefore they cannot be in workers' interests even though you say workers can benefit from them. Therefore socialists cannot support political action to maintain or defend these provisions. This is only so because you have chosen to define the interests of workers (their "true interests") as being essentially antagonistic to the interests of capital. You should ask workers what they see as their interests. Your so-called "paradox" has been fabricated out of your own definitions and preconceptions. I have no idea why you say that I don't care much for Marxian economics, since the opposite is true. But I don't see it as the universal truth about everything in a capitalist society. I said that the LTV is a no-no as a theory of wage determination – which is a small part of Marxian economics. And I only said that because it's wrapped up in the SPGB view of taxation which I have argued against many times on the old WSM Forum and have no intention of getting involved in again.

No once again you are misunderstanding or downright misrepresenting what I am saying.  I do not say that specific welfare state provisions  cannot be in the interests of workers  or benefit them – I think, incidentally, the  distinction you  make between these two words is a totally spurious one  – but rather that they are implemented within the framework of a society that must necessarily operate  against the interests of those workers since it is fundamentally based on the systematic exploitation of them.  This is the point I was making and this is what I meant by the "paradox" in question.  It is hardly case of me having "fabricated"  such a thing out of my own "definitions and preconceptions" since such a paradox is logically implicit, or  inheres, in your perspective as well. After all , you have agreed that workers are indeed  systematically exploited under capitalism and thus by extension that capitalism cannot be operated in their interests.  By its very nature a system of exploitation can only operate in the interests of those who do the exploiting and not those who are exploited. So consequently you too must accept that there is "paradox" at work here in that any reforms implemented that might appear to work in the interests of workers are nevertheless implemented within a society that must systematically work against those interests.The point is that socialists want to get rid of this system of exploitation rather than perpetuate it or attempt to make it more palatable. Reformism – that is the advocacy of reforms – does not in a way threaten this system or seek to get rid and, insofar as its diverts energies away from the goal of overthrowing capitalism, it actually services to consolidate capitalism. This is the key point that you stubbornly refuse to acknowledge. You persist in saying that certain reforms can benefit workers when nobody is actually denying this. What has been said  instead is that such reforms can never be enough and can never solve the underlying problems that workers face under capitalism; they are palliatives Furthermore, even as mere palliatives they cannot be relied upon. There is no guarantee that the mere existence of a legislative enactment will even be acted upon in practice. As I said before reforms can be, and have been,  widely ignored or watered down and rendered ineffectual in practice. Not only that, one reform can directly compete with another in a bid to attract more funding from an obviously limited state budget.  So reformism as well as detracting from the need to fundamentally overthrow a rotten society  can be hugely divisive in pitting one reform lobby against another .Above all, reforms will only be introduced if that suit the interests  of the capitalist class (or significant sections of that class) to do that.  Any benefits that workers derive from reforms will be incidental to this primary purpose and used as means to further that purpose. This is the point that you consistently  ignore but it is actually rather  fundamental to a whole critique of reformism. How can the promotion of reforms which ultimately benefit the capitalist class lead in any way to the establishment of a society in which that class no longer even exists? You have nothing to say on the subject whatsoever  except to lamely profess to holding  "socialist values".  What good are socialists values without the commitment to work for socialism?  The reformism that you advocate is a black hole  into which  your socialist pretensions will simply disappear leaving only the empty rhetoric.

pgb wrote:

Oh dear, being upbraided am I! Isn't it a bit of a conceit to expect me to accept your particular definition of reforms? I don’t think it’s a good definition. This is mainly for the reason that it's not easy to separate what's "economic" from what's "political", particularly in advanced capitalist economies today where institutions in civil society (schools, media etc) are so important because of their ideological function, but also (particularly in my part of the world) where a lot of key economic relationships are legitimated through institutions of the capitalist state (eg. industrial arbitration). What about education, which has both economic and political functions? The SPGB website includes education (and housing, child employment, work conditions and social security) as examples of "successful reforms which have made a difference to the lives of millions". You don't explain clearly what "reforming capitalism" actually entails. The word "reforming" to me suggests something positive, like welfare state provisions. Elsewhere you refer to "mending" capitalism and in context it suggests that mending is what reforming does. But I think mending capitalism should refer to those actions of governments which maintain and extend the capitalist economy, but which have no direct benefit to workers, like regulating the finance sector as part of a govt. action to avoid financial instability. That's mending, not reforming. You seem to run the two concepts together. So I'd agree that you can't both mend and end capitalism. But certainly you can want to end it and also pursue reforms.

Saying that it is not easy in practice to separate  the economic domain and the political domain does not mean they cannot be analytically distinguished. In fact there is a rather neat example of this in Marx's letter to Bolte in 1871 in which he states: “The attempt in a particular factory or even in a particular trade to force a shorter working day out of individual capitalists by strikes, etc. is a purely economic movement. On the other hand, the movement to force through an eight-hour, etc., law, is a political movement". Trade unions, of course, frequently cross the line between the economic and political domains by lobbying for particular pieces of legislation or by explicitly supporting certain political parties and even providing funds for them. Nevertheless for the purposes of analytical clarity you have to make such distinction even if these different domains  represent only "ideal types"Reformism, Ive  argued, needs to be understood as political action undertaken in the political domian in the form of legislative enactments of decrees which have as their focus issues arising fundamentally within the economic domain .  Capitalism being an essentially economic system, it then follows that reformism – the  attempt to reform capitalism –  must have as its focus the economic domain since it is precisely in that domain that capitalism is fundamentally constituted.  That is to say,  capitalism is basically defined as a system of ECONOMIC  relations based on private ownership of the means of production . It is the attempt to work with and through this system  of economic relationships to achieve certain economic ends  that is meant by "reforming" capitalism. I see no substantive difference between this and "mending" capitalism. Mending capitalism can also suggest something "positive" and regulation of the financial sector can also be construed as "benefiting" the workers by mitigating the damaging prospects of "financial instability" – to use your example –  which would directly affect them.  In either case it is not the direct benefit to the workers that is the primary concern of the reform in question  and you need to separate the rhetoric surrounding a reform from the practical consequence of such a reform. Of course politicians will always try to sell a reform to the electorate on the grounds that it benefits them. Nevertheless, their  primary concern has to be the interests of capital –  what is "best for business – since it is the capitalist class that hasin the end  to fund the reform in question. Any benefits that the reform offers the workers is incidental and conditional upon the interests of capital being served.  Go back to my previous post and the quote from Courtauld which amply illustrates this very point . State welfare measures, he is saying , which benefits  workers also make them more productive.  This is a well worn theme. The canny slave owner of past ages knew well enough that a better fed slave made for a more productive slave.Not all reforms are strictly reformist. Some are but many are not.  You mention education. Well, some educational reforms  are clearly reformist e,g, education funding   but others are not e,g.determination of the contents of school curricula such as the way in which history is taught in schools. In the latter case the focus of such reforms is the ideological domain  (and obliquely also  perhaps the political domain) rather than the economic domain as such.The case against reformism is that capitalism cannot be reformed  – not that reforms cannot be attempted – and in saying that capitalism cannot be reformed we are referring to its essential as nature as an economic system – how it operates in economic terms.  Looked at it in this way we can begin to see how the distinction between the economic domain and the political or ideological domains makes intuitive sense – even if in practice there  will be a blurring of such a distinctionPolitical reforms – like universal suffrage and freedom of expression – are different in nature to economic reforms.  This difference becomes apparent when we look at the kind of impediments of constraints that are brought bear on each.  So for example  a  piece of legislation that  permits a free press to function and to voice criticism of the government is of course a reform that can be realised and has been realised. It is perfectly compatible with the existence of a capitalist system of society.  With economic reforms that have as their focus the economic domain we find a find a different set of circumstances applying where such reforms  are seriously constrained by the workings out of the immanent laws of the capitalist economy itself as Marx put it.  So for example there is in  capitalism  a built in tendency for the economy to move through distinct cycles of boom and bust.  The capitalist trade cycle is thus an ineradicable aspect of capitalism that can be reformed out of existence  and the practicality of economic reforms such as government spending is closely conditoned by to this fact. and the need to ensure profitability.  That is why in economically straightened times you will see government spending being cut back – retrenchment. Governments cannot risk killing the goose that lays their golden eggs through excessive taxation – namely the profits accruing to capitalist businesses.  But if we look again at political reforms we see that there is no intrinsic reason why for example a capitalist society cannot function on a more or less  indefinite basis with the trappings of a liberal bourgeois democracy.  Overt political dictatorships  are an eradicable aspect of capitalist society in a way that the capitalist trade cycle is not.  This is what I mean by the kind of structural constraints confronting different kinds of reforms providing grounds for making an analytical distinction between these different kinds of domainsThis connects incidentally with  the materialist conception of history and the base-superstructure model it employs. It would be crudely reductionist to claim that society's superstructure – its dominant ideology and political institutions etc – merely reflect its economic base.  Rather the former exercise a degree of autonomy in  its own right in these base -superstructure interactions. When we turn to consider what constitutes the (economic) base in this model, however,  we see an important difference.  The whole point of a Marxist critique of capitalism surely is that capitalism is not subject to conscious control and regulation but is governed by forces – "laws" if you prefer –   beyond the power of governments to direct. It is the economy itself that appears to be autonomous rather than the subjective will of human beings in respect of what happens in the material base of society. No one for example consciously wills  that a recession should come about yet a recession happens. Why ?  Because what happens in the economy  is subject to abstract economic forces beyond our ability to control. If we could control them then there would be no such  thing as an economic recession since how could it possibly  benefit the capitalist class to  inflict a recession upon themselves when the inner dynamic of capitalism itself is all about growth and accumulation which economic competition obliges them to pursueSo that then is the grounds on which I claim that a distinction between the political or ideological domain., on the one hand,  and the economic domain, on the other makes good  intuitive sense and why I argue that not all reforms are necessarily reformist in the strict sense i.e.. they don't necessarily have as their focus the economic domain.  It is the futility of  pursuing reforms in the strictly reformist sense which is what I am arguing about but it is not to be inferred from that  that this  necessarily makes non reformist reforms worth pursuing either. That depends very much on circumstances on what a political movement to abolish capitalism requires in order to effectively function.  Such reforms would include basic democratic  rights  such as freedom of speech and assembly and obviously the right to vote.  These are the kind of reforms that I argue a socialist movement should pro-actively advocate and pursue.  Other kinds of non reformist reforms may only  serve as a distraction and a diversion of energies  that detract from the revolutionary goal of overthrowing capitalism

pgb wrote:

My comments on liberal democratic rights was a response to your insignificant remark that "rights are not inviolable” and your significant ones revealing the way you saw liberal democratic politics, eg. legislation being "scraps of paper", "workers going cap in hand, etc. etc." which I thought to be driven by dogmatic a priori propositions of the kind usually found amongst the fringe left . But revealing too, because they were part of a theory of the state and politics which I thought fairly poor – probably because Marxism has always lacked a serious political theory because "politics" is regarded as ("essentially") a matter of something else ("economics"). Also, I get a sense that for you, "rights" are useful only in an instrumental sense ("indispensable as a precondition for the existence of an effective socialist movement") and have no intrinsic worth as they have for me. It's ironic however that you should mention the "right" to privacy to shore up your claim to be a better sceptic then me with regard to the viability of "rights", since I originally intended to include it in my list but thought better of it and deleted it. This was because the right to privacy is the quintessential bourgeois right and I didn't want to be verbally slammed for mentioning it on a socialist website. Since you referred to the recent NSA cellphone spying program in the US as an example of a right to privacy it's worth mentioning that a Federal Court judge in the US recently ruled the scheme unconstitutional, a violation of the 4th Amendment. He called the program "Orwellian". As I said before, some rights are whittled away and whittled back, some services and entitlements are reduced , but they have not been wholly questioned, so I see them as part of the permanent landscape of a liberal democratic state. A fascist/military coup could change all that of course, but I don't see much evidence of that in western democratic states at present. Meanwhile, workers must fight to defend these rights. I am supporting Get-Up campaigns here for this purpose. Not much, I admit. What are you doing?

Actually it strikes me that your position here is actually  the "dogmatic apriori one",  not mine.  And what strikes me even more is the complete unrealism of so much of what you have to say.  Marxism lacks a serious political theory, you say,  "because "politics" is regarded as ("essentially") a matter of something else ("economics")."    Really? But hang on here! So much of politics IS  a matter of economics when you think about.  Politicians are forever bleating on about how "we must make Brtiain more competitive" whether the banks need to be rescued, how we must restain wage demands etc etc  Politics has very much as it focus precisely the economic domain (which is what I mean by reformism) After all , what the hell do you think your earlier comments about limits being put on that the provision of public goods  being  a "focus of political contestation" , amount to ?  Ironically you yourself explicitly  locate such  "political contestation" in an economic environment of austerity  –  (eg.the  current austerity budget cuts in the UK). Your thinking on this matter seems  very muddled..And once again you confuse political reforms and economic reforms, My reference to workers going cap in hand to governments to lobby for reforms applied to the latter not the former. As I said before the question of  basic democratic reforms is different  from that of economic reforms (reformism properly speaking) since without a modicum of democratic rights – like the franchise or freedom of speech – it would be very difficult for a socialist organisation to even function. Yes that is an " instrumentalist" view of democratic rights but that doesn't preclude such rights having an intrinsic worth in themselves, does it now?  I can quite conceive of the right to free speech having value in itself while insisting that it is of crucial importance to the existence of a socialist political party.  It is only because we are talking in this context of what stance a socialist political party needs to  take that I emphasised the instrumentalist aspect of rights. You view is a little  too black or white I think.On the question of the right to privacy being a  quintessential bourgeois right  well I think this is a little naive, frankly and smacks precisely of the kind dogmatic a priori propositions of the kind you say is  " usually found amongst the fringe left"   . It is actually about the power of the capitalist state to intrude into the lives of its subjects ultimately for the purposes of exerting social control on its own terms. If it is "bourgeois" of me to see something sinister behind the efforts of the NSA to tap into phone conversions and email correspondence of individuals then I plead guilty to succumbing such bourgeois sentiments.  Am I to take it  that you regard the prospect  of the capitalist state being able to enhance and extend its control over its subject, to curb dissent  and engender a sense of paranoia and fear in the population as a matter of complete indifference?  I would be shocked if you didIncidentally your point about the Federal court judge ruling that the NSA program was unconstitutional and Orwellian rather bears out my point that that the existence of a paper commitment to some principle is no guarantee to it being flouted in practice.  As for political reforms so also for economic reforms You say " some rights are whittled away and whittled back, some services and entitlements are reduced , but they have not been wholly questioned".  But they don't have to be "wholly questioned" . it is enough that they can be "whittled away and whittled back" to prove my point. That point rather undermines  the whole Bernsteinian-cum-Fabian  paradigm of a progressive irresistible  trend at work   bringing about a fundamental change in society through incremental reforms. .

pgb wrote:

No, I don't reject the notion that exploitation, strictly in the sense in which Marx used that term in his LTV, is applicable to a modern capitalist economy. But I reject the dogma that puts Marx's concept of exploitation at the heart of a socialist political strategy for advanced capitalist societies in the 21st century. Where the objective condition of exploitation exists the subjective experience of it rarely does, in my experience. Eg. a worker is highly exploited, but is convinced she/he has never had it so good and is not in the least exploited. No doubt you would say she is a victim of false consciousness. However, it's possible things are different in different capitalist societies. Eg: amongst rural labourers in Andalusia with its anarchist millenarian traditions.

This is confusing. You don't deny that workers are exploited  but you do reject the dogma that puts Marx's concept of exploitation at the heart of a socialist political strategy for advanced capitalist societies in the 21st century.  So I take it then that you regard the fact that workers are exploited as being merely a trivial matter not worthy to be placed at the "heart of a socialist political strategy" .  The fact that the exploitation of  wage labour is the source of surplus value out of which capital is  accumulated and that it is the relentless accumulation of capital that defines capitalism and gives rise to the very issues that reformist try to grapple  with – all of this seemingly counts for very little in your book. The mind boggles as to what exactly you think ought to constitute the "heart of a socialist political strategy" in your view if not the desire to get rid of the system that exploits the workers. Of course the objective fact of exploitation is often not matched by the subjective realisation that we are exploited as workers. You are not telling us anything new here.  But you yourself have agreed that workers are objectively exploited and therefore you are obliged to logically accept  what follows from this  – that those who think otherwise are mistaken. Its either that or you are mistaken in thinking the workers are objectively exploited  You cant be both right!The subjective perceptions of workers  are moulded by precisely  the kind of assumptions that underlie a reformist mode of  thinking such as the idea that that state is some kind of neutral  body that hovers over society and strives to work evenhandedly in the interests of everyone.  Similarly the mistaken idea that workers share the burden  of taxation underpins the idea that we live of a stakeholder society in which everyone has a stake and ought therefore to contribute financially  to its upkeep and running 

pgb wrote:

You are right that I am not offering an "exit route from capitalism" because I don't think there are "exit routes" from one mode of production to another. There are transitions over very long periods of historical time, therefore I don't envisage socialism as an emergent society "founded" in one decisive act built on the revolutionary consciousness of the working class who replace capitalism with socialism in an afternoon or a week, all over the world. You seem to believe that because I reject revolution therefore I see reforms as the way to go – that the steady advance of reforms eventually leads to socialism, somewhat like Bernstein's conception. I have never thought this. I support reforms where they advantage the working class. Whether eventually they lead cumulatively towards socialism I simply don't know (neither do you). But they can have a socialist character (as described before re public provision of free health care etc) and this I support. I am a socialist because I support the values of socialism : equality, fraternity, common ownership, freedom (self-realisation etc) and grass roots democracy. So where I see these things emerging I support them. Where they are threatened I defend them.

If there is no exit route from capitalism then of course it would be difficult if not impossible to see how capitalism can be transcended at all. What you are saying, however, is  something slightly different  which is that you don't know of such an exit route and are therefore not offering one  . Fair enough.   But there is surely  a little more that can be said about the matter than than this  kind of non committal agnosticism you offer.  The establishment of socialism, presupposes  something more that just a commitment to what is vaguely called  "socialist values". It has to also entail , surely, a reasonably clear conception of what a socialist society is about and the conscious determination  to bring such a society into being.   You cant bring about socialism without knowing roughly what it means, can you?Despite what you say, that unavoidably involves the emergence of a revolutionary consciousness. Revolution is not, as you seem to think , about the duration or manner  (violent or peaceful) of the process of changing from one kind of society to another.  Whether is happens in week or a day or an entire epoch is besides the point even if that  might be an interesting matter to speculate upon.  Revolution is actually about the change itself from one mode of production to another. If you reject revolution as you say you  do then you reject  by implication  the need to change society from it current capitalist form. In short you support the retention of  capitalism. That is what is meant by rejecting revolution. 

pgb wrote:

In referring to "empowerment" I was referring to the experience of people engaged in a struggle to improve their working conditions or defending public goods or democratic rights which I have seen and participated in. It is a simple expression of what happens through participatory democracy: people engage in changing their conditions and through that process they change themselves : they develop a sense of political efficacy and self confidence and they learn how to organise themselves in fighting for a practical program. There is plenty of empirical evidence to support this. Reformist activity, even allowing for your restricted definition of reforms, surely can be a site for “empowerment” just as much as revolutionary activity IMO. You can’t accept this because you persist in believing that if reforms help maintain capitalism, therefore they cannot be in the of the interest of the working class. But history has proven you wrong. So if you want to blame someone for the failure of the workers to become a revolutionary class, don’t blame the insidious ideology of reformism, or betrayals by reformist politicians or the BBC or whatever. Blame History.

Sorry but this is  dangerously naive and complacent.  You don't seem to see that struggle , while it can indeed lead to empowerment and a sense of political efficacy,  also has the capacity to bring about the very opposite –  disempowerment and a severe loss of "political efficacy".  So much depends on the outcome of the struggle in question and the terms in which it conducted.The socialist analysis of reformism is that it is incapable of succeeding on its own terms and that that failure is built into the reformist project from the very outset. Capitalism cannot be run in the interests of workers and to promote the belief that it can is bound to lead to disappointment.. You have admitted yourself  that rights have been whittled away and welfare provisions cut back. It is not out  of a sense of "empowerment" that reformist politics has afforded workers that they still, despite everything, continue to press for reforms or vote for capitalist parties, but out a sense of desperation at their plight  resulting from the very failure of reformism to solve the problems that afflict them in the first placeIt is a sheer cop out to  just  say "Blame History" .  What the hell does that mean anyway?  You sound positively Hegelian in your idealism.  Your are substituting empty verbiage for concrete analysis.   Like that daft Fukuyama with his ridiculous  End of History thesis.  Do we blame "History" for the First World War or do we blame the imperialist struggle between nations over trade routes markets, resources and spheres of influence. If you don't learn from history then you are doomed to repeat itThis applies equally to failure of reformist politics to succeed in on it own terms . It has not as you claim left workers feeling more politically efficacious and empowered.  One or two minor battles  may have been won here and there but the war has been long last  Workers have not been empowered through the politics of reformism but on the contrary have been disempowered and left demoralised and disillusioned by the failure of reformism to deliver what it claimed it would.  I think you totally underestimate the extent to which this is the case and the way in which it has impact on workers.  The massive cynicism and political apathy that we see around us can be directly attributed to this failure.The "betrayals"of reformist politicians only play a part in this sorry saga insofar as the mechanics of reformist politics  requires one to place one's trust in these politicians who cannot possibly deliver on their promises.  You cannot be betrayed by those in whom  you refuse to put your trust and about whom you cultivate no illusions.  Socialists do not put their trust in politicians to sort out the problem of workers for the workers.The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself  With the best will in the world the politicians will still fail to operate capitalism in the interests workers.  This is why socialists do not talk in terms of "betrayal".  It presupposes an assumption which socialists do not holdThe real problem is not the politicians who are little more than puppets doing what the interests of capital bids them to do.  The real problem is that workers have bought into the illusion that things could be otherwise  and that capitalism could be induced though the implementation of reforms to work in their interests.  The fact  that it is demonstrably not working their interest, that society is becoming more and more starkly unequal , that workers themselves are experiencing  sometimes savage cuts to their own already meagre standard of living  to function in their own interests, that levels of stress and insecurity are rising relentless  – all of this cannot  but generate a sense of despondency and despair.   The whole strategy of refromism has had ramifications which have directly contributed to a significant sapping of the confidence of workers and in the larger scheme of things has significantly  increased their sense of powerlessness.

[robbo203]

pgb wrote:

Reformist politics hasn't led workers to a dead end. If anything, it's empowered them.

 Talking of which, here's something from Luxemburg again Now I ask: can this model be applied to our situation? No. Precisely those people who prattle on about the economic power of the proletariat overlook the huge difference between our struggle and all previous class struggles. The assertion that the proletariat, in contrast to all previous classes, leads a class struggle not in order to institute the rule of one class, but to do away with the rule of any class, is no empty phrase. It has its basis in the fact that the proletariat creates no new form of property, but only extends the form of property created by the capitalist economy by turning it over to the possession of society. Thus, it is an illusion to believe that the proletariat could create economic power for itself within current bourgeois society; it can only take political power and then replace capitalist forms of property. Bernstein criticizes Marx and Engels for applying the schema of the great French Revolution to our situation. Yet he and other adherents of “economic power” apply the economic schema of the great French Revolution to the struggle of the proletariat. http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1899/10/11.htm

[robbo203]

pgb wrote:

Hi Robbo:All you seem to be saying re reforms having to "benefit the capitalist class in some way" is that any reform has to operate within the structural constraints of a capitalist economy which sets limits to what is realistic and realisable. But what is the significance, apart from saying what is common knowledge – that there are limits to the scope of reforms within a capitalist system (or any system)? I am not aware that workers and TU' s who fought for reforms were unaware of this. Not the ones that I know of anyway. Saying that reforms are functional for capitalism doesn't mean that workers' interests have been "betrayed" or that workers who fought for them exhibited "false consciousness" or whatever. I think if I asked most workers here how do they feel about, say, free hospital care, they'd say they support it. And if I then said but capitalists benefit from it too, they'd probably say "so what"? I mean if it works, why does it matter if a capitalist approves or not? I won't go into your argument about capitalists paying for the capitalist state through taxes again. It's a uniquely SPGB shibboleth. I certainly wouldn't be asserting the Marxian law of value! It's a no-no as a theory of wage determination in a modern capitalist economy.

OK lets look this.  You agree that reforms have to operate within the constraints of a capitalist economy and have to benefit the capitalists (in whose interests, obviously, the capitalist economy is operated) in order to stand a chance of being implemented and this is all "common knowledge". So far so good.  But then you ask what does it matter that the capitalists approve of the fact that workers have access to a free hospital as long as the latter benefit.  No doubt, they do benefit and as I said before it is not my argument that reforms cannot benefit workers.  But once again and with all due respect, you have completely missed seeing  the wood for the trees.I can't help noticing that you have failed to address  my earlier point – that there is no such thing as a free lunch in capitalism.  Free hospital care, while I'm sure it is desirable, inevitably comes at a cost.  It means the capitalists are able to get away with paying workers lower money wages as a result.  The social wage and  the money wage thus  stand in inverse relation to each other as different components of the workers standard of living that is determined by other factors – what it costs to produce and reproduce the labour power of workers under current conditions, the efficacy of trade union organisation, the general state of the economy etc etc .   This is what the Marxian law of value allows us to see. Now I realise you don't care much for Marxian economics. That's fair enough. Its entirely your prerogative.  But, in this instance I think it would profit you to be a little less sweeping in your knee jerk condemnation and consider what it has to say.  That fact that there is no free lunch in capitalism and that free hospital care comes at a cost for workers is precisely an instance of the structural constraints of a capitalist economy  – which you agree exist – setting limits to what is "realistic and realisable". Realism tells us that workers are not going to to handed something on a plate that is supposedly free without it costing them in some other way.  After all they have to fight tooth and nail for a wage increase, so its pretty reasonable to assume there is a quid pro quo involved in them getting free hospital careWorkers can derive some benefit from reforms.  How these reforms are often transient and fragile, dependent on the state of the economy,  and will only be implemented if they are functional to an economic system that by its very nature must operate in the interest of capital – as you seemingly  admit – and therefore against the interests of workers.  That is the paradox which strangely you don't seem to see or want to see  You are trying to patch and improve a system that cannot be run in the interests of workers but instead must necessarily  be based on the systematic exploitation of those workers – unless of course you reject that aspect  of Marxian economics as well as being inapplicable to a "modern capitalist economy"  Whats more, and this is the really depressing thing about your whole political stance, is that you offer us absolutely no idea whatsoever of an exit route from capitalism. Apparently, according to you, we workers must focus on pushing for reforms on the pretext that this advances in some nebulous fashion our "class empowerment". Empowerment to do what? You don't explain.  If capitalism cannot operate in the interests of workers, if capitalism depends instead on the systematic exploitation of workers, then what you are recommending is the perpetual continuation of a system in which we are enslaved and to that extent remain forever powerless.What I don't get from you is any notion  of how we are going to move onwards and forwards as a class.  How are we going to get rid of capitalism in your view?  What is it you are trying to tell us? That bit by bit as we struggle for reforms capitalism will be progressively transformed into something else and then once we reach the point where the problems afflicting workers have been sufficiently addressed then perhaps we can finally  turn to address  and act upon the question of the socialist reorganisation of society.  This is utterly naive, PGB, and you must surely see this.  You must surely see that you cannot pretend to both want to mend the system and end it and that it has to be one or the other.  Reformism is never going to remove the problems that workers face and if you believe it can then to be scrupulously honest and consistent, you should admit that you do not see any point therefore in embracing socialism.  You would be better advised to embrace your political soul mate, Eduard Bernstein

pgb wrote:

Your reference to the Beveridge report suggests that the origin of Britain's Welfare State can be explained by the functional need for it, i.e. by the political action of capitalists (like Courtauld). I know little about the origins of Britain's Welfare State, but what I have read suggests quite the opposite, eg: "It was the growing strength of labour organisation that caused the shift leftward in public opinion that brought the Labour Party to power and thus was responsible for the passage of the welfare state reforms of the late 1940s" (J Stephens, The Transition from Capitalism to Socialism, 1979). When I put this up against your description of the political/legislative process, eg "some white paper being debated by a bunch of parliamentarians", "a mere scrap of paper", and workers going "cap in hand to the capitalist state" maybe you can understand why I was struck by the lack of realism, and why your propter hoc fallacy simply didn't work for me.

Well, look,  let me once again point out to you that I have never denied that reforms like the welfare state can have some benefit to workers albeit within the framework of a system that systematically works against their interests.  The perception by workers who are overwhelmingly still reform-minded that the welfare state is of benefit to them can of course provide grounds for them thinking that the welfare state is something worth politically struggling for.  But in no way does this alter the fact that the British ruling class (and the so called "Labour" party which presided over the setting up of the welfare state) considered the welfare state to be highly beneficial to the interests of capital at the time.  Without the endorsement of the capitalist class and people like Courtauld the welfare state would not have come about. Its as simple as that.  What you are doing is committing the time honoured error of confusing function and agency.  Its like the Leftists who naively think  the Bolshevik revolution was a "proletarian revolution" because it was carried out overwhelmingly by proletarians.  It wasn't. Rather it was a (state)capitalist revolution carried out by proletarians on behalf of their future masters and enslavers – the pseudo communist party .  And, yes, at the end of the day welfare state legislation is but a scrap of paper put together by a bunch of parliamentarians the implementation of which is basically contingent upon the needs of capital and the state of the economy.  You may deny this till you are blue in the face but I would suggest to you that workers at the sharp end of capitalism who face savage cuts in social welfare at a time when capitalism is in deep crisis have a better sense of "realism" than the cosy benevolent image of capitalism yielding magnanimously and graciously  to the legitimate demands of workers that you seem to entertain

pgb wrote:

You say that legal rights are not inviolable. Of course not. But that's no way of answering the only question that matters: have legal rights been done away with? Well, in my world there is the usual catalogue of liberal democratic rights such as the right of assembly, the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to strike, etc. and in fact none have been taken away. There have been attempts to whittle them away from time to time, and attempts to whittle them back again, and there are inequalities of access to these rights, but no evidence so far that they have been seriously undermined let alone taken away. I could say the same about welfare state provisions such as medical and health care, etc. I have just made a mental list of reforms in my time and I don't find any that have been done away with. Workers fought hard to get them and keep them! You say I haven't noticed that workers rights are being rolled back in many parts of the world right now – well, sorry, I haven't noticed it here. What has been rolled back is workers' share of national income and their real wages, though not here so much as in the US though even there I haven't noticed a significant rollback of rights as such.

In the first place you are doing once again what I earlier upbraided you for doing – which is lumping together political reforms  with economic reforms.   Reformism as I explained to you has to do with the latter, not the former.  Capitalism is something that is defined in essentially economic terms.  Since reformism is the attempt to reform capitalism it then follows that  for reformism to be called reformism at all , it has to have as its focus the economic domain and not the political domain. I dont have any quarrel with you  about your "usual catalogue of liberal democratic rights such as the right of assembly, the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to strike etc".  This is NOT what I am talking about and, yes, of course such "liberal democratic rights"  are indispensable as a precondition for the existence of an effective socialist movement.  Having said that,  I am less sanguine than you about the solidity of such legal rights in the face of current developments. In Spain where I live there is draft bill before parliament at the moment which represents a serious clampdown on protest, whereby unauthorised demonstrators can be fined 60,000 euros.  Similar legislation is being considered in the US, the UK and other parts of the world, I believe.  Other examples that spring to mind that somewhat dent your complacent rose-tinted view of "liberal bourgeois democracy" is the whole saga of the spying scandal and murky goings on of such shady operators as the NSA.  What ever happened to our "right to  privacy", huh?Still, as I say, I am concerned here with economic reforms rather than political reforms. I guess in this context I take a somewhat  wider view of what constitutes a "right" than you do with with your narrowly legalistic view of right.  But even on your own terms I would question your claims. Welfare state provisions have not been undermined you say.  Really? What about the shift from universal benefits to means-tested welfare that is happening in many parts of the world in the current financial climate Is this not an erosion of rights in your own terms?But, as I say, I take a wider somewhat view of rights than you do.  To take the case of Spain again, since 2008, 350,000 families (which I guess must amount to more than a million people) have lost the right to live in their own home;  they have had that right taken away from them by the scumbag banking mafiosi.  Even when these poor buggers have lost everything they are still indebted to the banks and still liable to pay the mortgage to the bank that now owns their property ( I think this is still the case but it might have changed recently). Then there's the so called "right to work". Ha! Here in Spain, its a joke. In Andalucia where I live unemployment  has grown to above 30% and youth unemployment is 57%.    And you still think our  "rights" have not been rolled back recently, eh?

pgb wrote:

Our fundamental disagreement is that I believe in the importance of political struggles and you don't because you regard all or most political struggles as "reformism". You ask for examples. OK, some of great importance to me, and in which I have taken a part, would be: political campaigns to defend free public schools against the threat of funding cuts in favour of private sector schools. A really major issue here at the moment. Another is defending the public broadcaster (ABC) against privatisation. Another is supporting asylum seekers arriving here as so-called "illegal" migrants. Another is to legislate for rights of indigenous (aboriginal) workers. These are all "reformist" political struggles, right? I'm not expecting that on my own I am going to awaken my fellow worker-activists to a revolutionary consciousness, but it should raise their level of political efficacy, and that is surely important in making socialists. Why should I regard this as "mending" capitalism or lead me to a "dead end"? Reformist politics hasn't led workers to a dead end. If anything, it's empowered them.

No, once again, you are confusing things.  Not all the reforms you cite are strictly reformist.  Some are, some are not.  Nevertheless, a  political campaign that it is not strictly reformist is not necessarily one worth bothering with either. It too can be a pointless distraction.   I mean, "defending public broadcasters against privatization" You serious?  I couldn't care a toss if that obnoxious organ of capitalist propaganda, the BBC  (no doubt the ABC as well) was privatised, frankly. It makes no difference to me either way and I'm certainly not going to get hot under the collar about it.  So called public broadcasting like so called public ownership is a myth and I'm frankly astonished you could fall so easily for the salesman's patter peddling these pseudo "public" institutionsYou are quite right not to expect to awaken your fellow workers to a revolutionary consciousness through the reformist struggle and for the very good reason that it is never ever going to happen that way in any case.  Revolutionary consciousness is necessarily predicated on the abandonment of a reformist consciousness.  It is predicated on the desire to end capitalism rather than mend capitalism.You seem to have opted decisively for the latter but still you want to pretend to yourself that somehow is some nebulous way this is a precondition for the former. Raising political efficacy,  you solemnly intone,  is "surely important in making socialists"   and "Reformist politics hasn't led workers to a dead end. If anything, it's empowered them."   I don't know whether to laugh or weep at such arrant  nonsense.   I would claim the very opposite is true.  Workers feel LESS  empowered now and MORE threatened now than ever before in the face of massive structural forces over which they have no control.  That is precisely why political apathy and cynicism about politics in general and politicians in particular is so pervasive. Trade union membership across the industrialised world has been in steep decline partly because the balance of power has shifted more and more in favour of employers in an era of so called "neoliberal austerity" but partly also because workers  themselves see trade unions as no longer being able to do much for them. The changing nature of work itself has reinforced this sense of powerlessness with the shift towards temporary and part time contracts.  There has been  massive cultural shifts too which  likewise point to a growing sense of powerless – the breakdown in traditional solidarities, the focus on consumer individualism and the drive to escapism so graphically represented by the explosion in drug abuse.  Many people have simply given up on hoping things can get better, So they turn inwards. Rather than seeking to change the world, they seek release from a world they increasingly see cannot  be changed. So much for raising their level of "political efficacy". If desperation drives them to a take up a political cause this is not a vindication of reformism but rather proof of the failure of reformism to prevent the very conditions against which individuals rebelThe very fact that today, unlike say a few decade earlier, there is a brooding pervasive sense of  deep pessimism  about the future seems to me to be a clear indication, not of empowerment, but of a loss of power.  While I would hesitate to attribute this entirely to the cynical shenanigans of reformist politics which has become  little more than an an empty ritual  of self aggrandising professional politicians vying  to outbid each other in the promotion of their empty promises, there is absolutely no question in my mind that the whole ideology of reformism has played a major role in bringing about this state of affairs. Above all, and this is the real killer for me, it has resulted in  the virtual closing down and eclipse of any kind of genuine socialist alternative to this brutal hegemony of capitalism.  In that sense the reformist politics you espouse have led us directly to this "dead end" and if you think otherwise then I respectfully suggest  you are harbouring a serious delusion

[robbo203]

pgb wrote:

Your reference to the Beveridge report suggests that the origin of Britain's Welfare State can be explained by the functional need for it, i.e. by the political action of capitalists (like Courtauld). I know little about the origins of Britain's Welfare State, but what I have read suggests quite the opposite, eg: "It was the growing strength of labour organisation that caused the shift leftward in public opinion that brought the Labour Party to power and thus was responsible for the passage of the welfare state reforms of the late 1940s" (J Stephens, The Transition from Capitalism to Socialism, 1979). When I put this up against your description of the political/legislative process, eg "some white paper being debated by a bunch of parliamentarians", "a mere scrap of paper", and workers going "cap in hand to the capitalist state" maybe you can understand why I was struck by the lack of realism, and why your propter hoc fallacy simply didn't work for me.

 Interesting article here which gives a rather different perspective on the rise of the welfare state. In particular, thisIn 1908, when Asquith became prime minister, there were almost no models of state welfare anywhere on earth. The exception was Bismarck’s Prussia, which to the dismay of German Social Democrats had instituted compulsory health insurance in 1883. That created a sudden panic on the left. Karl Marx had died weeks before, so the socialist leader August Bebel consulted his friend Friedrich Engels, who insisted that socialists should vote against it, as they did. The first welfare state on earth was created against socialist opposition.By the new century Prussia was setting an example. Lloyd George and Churchill, as members of Asquith’s cabinet, went there to watch state welfare in action; Churchill, the more studious of the two, read published reports. In 1909 he collected his speeches in Liberalism and the Social Problem, where he made a case for seeing state welfare as an essential prop to a free economy. The Left had good reason to fear it, as he knew. Welfare promotes initiative, initiative promotes growth, and “where there is no hope, be sure there will be no thrift.”Welfare, what is more, had an imperial dimension. The Boer War had been won with a volunteer army, and the nation had been shocked to hear of the high incidence of ill health among recruits. An empire needs troops. There was nothing socialist about state welfare, and socialists were right to fear the specter of a national health service. They continued to fear it, and when years later the Beveridge report appeared, in December 1942, it proved a bestseller but was roundly condemned in a letter by Beatrice Webb, an old Fabian, as a disastrous idea—though fortunately, as she added, very unlikely to be acted on. In the event, Labour was the last of the three British parties to accept a National Health Service, and William Beveridge, whom I knew as a neighbor in his last years, was endlessly bitter about the derision that Labour leaders had once heaped on his ideas.  (my bold)http://theamericanscholar.org/the-forgotten-churchill/#.UrU_sftFJSU 

[robbo203]

pgb wrote:

Where I do disagree is with your views about the state and political action, as distinct from strictly economic (TU) action. Your picture of political action is so far away from my experience of politics in a modern (liberal democratic) capitalist state that I wonder am I on another planet. Why do you insist that pushing for reforms means "cap in hand supplication to the capitalist state"? That isn't even fair to those 19th century Chartists who pushed for democratic reforms (with the active support of one K Marx)! Why do you call legislation that enforces workers rights to eg. free medical and health care or occupational safety "a mere scrap of white paper etc"? Are you seriously suggesting that the legal entrenchment of a right is of no consequence for workers? In my part of the world these reforms were introduced via political parties and pressure groups and did not represent merely a "ratification of what happened on the ground". Your post hoc propter hoc fallacy doesn't fit. Making the propagation of ideas a principal role for a revolutionary socialist party today is fine. But it is a long way from what Luxemburg and other Marxists believed in and practised. For them, the propagation of socialist ideas was meaningful only in the context of an active working class movement. The lesson here for me is that socialists must actively engage in the political and economic struggles of the working class if their propagation of ideas is to be more than what you call “abstract propagandism”. Does the SPGB do that? But what if there is no working class movement to speak of? What if after a century and a half there is not the slightest evidence that the working class is “essentially” or even potentially a revolutionary class? Anyway, thank you for the opportunity to give my views on Rosa Luxemburg. It forced me to read again her pamphlet which I first looked at more than fifty years ago.

 Hi PGBMy post was accidentally deleted by the moderator and I don't have a copy which is a bit of a bummer but never mind.  I think since we agree on some things it might be more useful and pertinent to turn to those matters on which we don't appear to agree – like the above First of all, to make myself clear, by reformism i mean legislative enactments or decrees undertaken by the state in the political domain which are fundamentally concerned with issues that pertain to the economic domain .  Capitalism is defined in essentially economic terms and so to be consistent and faithful to the meaning of the term,  reformism has to be seen as having as its focus the economic field or domain. It is capitalism that reformism seeks to reform, after all.  For that reason, I don't regard political reforms as strictly an example of  reformism. The  chartist movement that you cite was not a reformist movement in this sense.  The 6 basic reforms embodied in the  People's Charter were political reforms, not economic reforms – that is, the focus of such reforms was on the political field and has to do with such matters as the basic  right to vote – universal suffrage. I support such a right and the struggle to get  it.   I believe that is the position of the the SPGB as well.   Yoy cannot effectively propagandise for socialism without a modicum of democratic rights in place Where I part company with you is on the question of economic  reforms – reformism, properly speaking. To clarify things, I don't say that certain economic reforms are not beneficial to workers. Free medical care which you mention is a case in point.  But you seem to have this rather naive idealistic view of such reforms if you think they were introduced essentially with the welfare of the workers in mind,  The Beveridge Report in the UK which published in 1942 and which roughed out the basic outlines of the welfare state established after the Second World war made it abundantly clear what is was all about. In 1943, the millionaire industrialist and Tory supporter, Samuel Courtauld commenting on the Report: said this  "Social security of this nature will be about the most profitable long term investment the country could make.  It will not undermine  the morale of the nation's workers; it will ultimately lead to higher efficiency  among them and a lowering of production costsThe point is that while some reforms may benefits workers, in order for them to be implemented they have also to benefit the capitalist class in some way as well.  The capitalist class after all has to foot the bill for it through taxation which ultimately is a deduction from profits, not wages, as Marx argued.  Thus, if there is not something in it for the capitalists too  a reform is unlikely ever  to see the light of day.  Reforms that have been implemented that don't sufficiently suit the interests of the capitalist class (or some fraction within it) can be circumvented, watered down or simply ignored That is why I reject your suggestion that a  post hoc propter hoc fallacy doesn't fit the situation. I think it fits it very well and the example of the welfare state is a case in point,   The subsequent erosion of many of the founding principles of the welfare state further supports my characterisation of such legal enactments as a mere "a mere scrap of white paper etc"? Am I  "seriously suggesting that the legal entrenchment of a right is of no consequence for workers"?  Well, let me throw the question back to you – does the fact that a right is legally entrenched means that it is inviolable ? What can be given with one hand under capitalism can be taken away with another.  It is not a question of whether a right is of no consequence but rather of whether they can hold onto it The point I was trying to make is that it is the power of the workers organised in the industrial field that counts far more than some white paper being debated by a bunch of parliamentarians.  But even this power that workers possess is limited and conditioned by the state of the economy.  Economic recession not only undermines the bargaining position of workers vis a vis their employers but as we have seen, can mean the wholesale watering down and abandonment of many reforms expediently introduced by the state in more prosperous times.  You say from the way I describe things you wonder whether you are on another planet.  Well on this planet, PGB, in case you hadn't noticed , workers living standards and workers rights are being rolled back in many parts of the world right now despite the legal entrenchment of reforms you place so much confidence in Your position seems to be that what is called the "social wage"  is something quite separate from the actual wages workers receive and that there is, somehow,  no connection between them. The Marxian law of value would assert otherwise.  There is no such thing as a free lunch is capitalism. What we get for free – like medical care under the NHS – we pay for in other ways – notably in terms of relatively lower wage levels. Employers don't have to pay  their workers as much as they might have to if medical care was not available for free to the workers. Of course there is nothing automatic about this and workers will still have to struggle for that increased wage to cover the costs of such things as medical care Finally you say socialists must engage in the political and economic struggles of the working class if their propagation of ideas is to be more than what you call “abstract propagandism".  Well, this is far too sweeping a statement to be considered acceptable.  What struggles are You talking about.?I can agree wholeheartedly with the idea of  socialists – at least in their individual capacity –  participating in economic struggles against the employers, But political struggles?  This seems to me to be code for reformist struggles and allow me to point out again this is dead end.   We are never ever going to move forward and onwards to a new kind of society as long as we are being constantly sucked backed into the unending business of wanting to patch up and improve existing capitalist society.  You are inviting us to get on a treadmill that is simply going to go nowhere What you are advocating is in effect no different from what Bernstein was advocating even if you may passionately declare your commitment to the goal of socialism and see reforms as a mean of awakening workers to a revolutionary consciousness,.  So did the the Marxist faction in the SDP but Bernstein was really only telling them the unpalatable truth of what lay at the end of line of a policy of pressing for reforms..  It doesn't awaken workers to a revolutionary consciousness; it deadens them to that.   Capitalism was not transformed.  What or rather who was transformed were those who imagined that by engaging with capitalism through a process of reformism they could move society to the point  where capitalism could be transcended and socialism introduced.  With the benefit of hindsight we now know that was an utterly forlorn hope Let me reiterate again –  I'm not saying some reforms might not be of benefit to workers  however transient and fragile these benefits turn out to be. I'm saying that even so socialists shouldn't be drawn into the business of proactively advocating or pursuing reforms which is what I strongly suspect you mean by "political struggles".  You have to draw line somewhere and there is absolutely no getting round this simple fact. Either you want to end capitalism or you want to mend  capitalism. You cant possibly do both

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

Certainly her pamphlet defends the day-to-day practice of the SPD of the time, i.e having a minimum programme of reforms as well as a maximum programme of the capture of political power for socialism. But is having or defending having a minimum programme automatically of itself reformist? I thought our position was more subtle, i.e that having a minimum programme runs the high risk of a party becoming reformist as its support will be built up on this basis rather than for socialism and eventually someone (like Bernstein) will come along and call for theory to be brought into line with practice. And the party become a reformist party.

 I don't see how having a  minimum programme could not be construed as reformist.  What you really seem to be saying is that having  a minimum programme does  not necessarily mean that on balance the party should be considered a reformist party if it continues to advocate revolution. That may be true but it does not detract from the fact that having a minimum programme is indeed "automatically of itself reformist".  Of course what will happen – inevitably – is that the reformist element of the party will crowd out the revolutionary element so you will end up with a completely reformist  party rather than a hybrid that it might at first be 

ALB wrote:

What I'm suggesting is that we restrict the word "reformist" to those who advocate that socialism can be established gradually by a long series of reform measures. But maybe this is too narrow as reformist (in this sense) parties go on to suffer a further degeneration and drop even the pretence that "socialism" is the long-term goal and end up just advocating reforms to capitalism as an end in itself. In other words, the link between "reformism" and "socialism" is completely broken. In practice we've more or less accepted this evolution of the word "reformism" and apply it to parties such as the Tories, Liberals, Greens and Nationalists which have never even claimed to be socialist.

 Aren't you slightly contradicting yourself here?  If the Tories et al are to be considered "reformist"  then how can you restrict the term reformist to those that advocate  that socialism can be established gradually?.  The Tories don't advocate socialism so what would you call them then in that case?  Non reformists?  Surely not.A  better approach would be simply to acknowledge that there are different varieties of reformism .  In my view the earliest variety was that associated with the Social Democratic movement  which in fact coined the very term "reformism",  Another major and more recent  variety of reformism does not have as its objective the structural transformation of capitalism into something else .  It is this particular variety of reformism, I suggest, that is the default form of reformism in general and to which all other forms of reformism will naturally  tend to collapse in the long term

ALB wrote:

Even when Luxemburg wrote her pamphlet (at the turn of the century) the SPD had become reformist (Bernstein was right).  Its voters and most of its members wanted social reforms and political democracy in Germany not socialism. Her mistake was to not realise this and to assume that it was a mass socialist party. On this assumption some of the things she says about reforms in the quotes Alan has given make more sense. A mass, genuinely socialist party would not neglect the position of workers under capitalism while this lasted. After all, even we can countenance Socialist MPs and local councillors when they are a minority voting for reforms or other pro-worker measures under some circumstances.

 Yes but the key difference here is refraining from the pro-active advocacy of reforms – legislative enactments. Once you get into that ball game you've crossed the Rubicon  and nothing but the slippery slope awaits you which will deliver you  into the quagmire of reformist politics from which there is no escape.  I might be wrong but I think some of the passages from Luxemburg Alan quoted hint at such an approach of not pro-actively advocating reforms but rather,  of "wringing concensions " from the state – that is, forcing the state to offer reforms as a sop in a bid to buy off the revolution

[robbo203]

Here are a few random links on the general subject of Mandela and apartheid which I offer without comment. You will no doubt be able to draw your own conclusions  …. http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2013-12-10/mandela-%E2%80%93-a-hero-for-capitalismhttp://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/mandelas_cult_like_worshippers_rewriting_history/14410#.UqyrQ2eA3rchttp://www.theamericancause.org/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=1016&cntnt01origid=15&cntnt01returnid=29 Personally,  I find this all this compulsory  beatification of Saint Nelson, distasteful and the relentless insistance on casting Mandela in the role of some kind of  "great man" who made history while the rest of us were merely onloookers  or bit players, utterly depressing and deluded.  Little wonder that the likes of Obama should flatter Mandela in these glowing terms – to bask in the reflected glory of being a celebrity politican himself.  It is something  these political con artists  are particularly adept at and for good reason – the  art of mutual flattery is the means by whiich they massage their own egos. Still, at least the petty-bourgeois traders  in trinkets,  T shirts and memorabilia of all kinds have been able to make a killing on the flourishing market for such things.  I believe the extended Mandela family, when they have not been busily stabbing each other in the back and accusing each other of betrayal, have been falling over each other to milk his brand name for all its worth. Apparently there is even a  "House of Mandela wine collection"  you can now savour  and mull over – or given that we are now well into that most dreaded time of the year, the festive season,  turn into mulled wine!  For the curious, the details are here:http://thegrio.com/2013/12/11/mandelas-legacy-lives-on-through-house-of-mandela-wine-collection/

[robbo203]

pgb wrote:

Hi Robbo In the Introduction to her pamphlet Rosa Luxemburg refers to "the daily struggle for reforms, the amelioration of conditions of the workers within the framework of the existing social order, and for democratic institutions…." So she's identifying reforms with anything that ameliorates workers' conditions, which seems to me to be wide enough to include strictly trade union activity (eg. wage demands) as well as state or government activity (eg. welfare legislation). On this reading, "the daily struggle for democratic institutions" is treated separately from "the daily struggle for reforms". However, further on she refers more generally to "the struggle for reforms" and it is clear she is referring to both . But does it matter? The important thing is that she treats both as part of the class struggle, as a means for engaging in the "proletarian class war". And from this she takes the orthodox Marxist line, that the "struggle for reforms" provided the proletariat with the necessary practice to undertake the final battle which was of course the socialist revolution. The struggle for reforms was a means to the revolutionary end. This goes to the heart of her dispute with Bernstein. While for Bernstein and other revisionists the struggle for reforms was an end in itself, for Luxemburg this meant turning their backs on the ultimate goal – socialism. When Luxemburg said that reforms would fail, she meant that reformism (a la Bernstein et al) would fail to bring about socialism. I agree with ALB here. I don't think she ever believed that reforms of the kind fought for by workers and the SPD were necessarily "unrealisable" in themselves; only that they were "inadequate" as a means to the ultimate goal of socialism. Only in this sense would they "fail". In the same sense, she said that reforms on their own would be "meaningless" – if they were not a means to the conquest of power. As for comparison with Trotsky's transitional demands, I don't see that there's a total incompatibility. As I understand it, a transitional demand is one made in the knowledge that it would be unrealisable under normal capitalist conditions, like. eg. the demand: "Jobs for All!" I've heard demands like that made over many years by trade unionists in May Day marches! Whether they work or not is an empirical question. I don't think you can argue that they are inherently "unrealisable". Lenin's slogan "Peace, Land and Bread" is an example of a highly successful transitional demand. Given Rosa Luxemburg's strong belief in the role of the mass strike as the most effective weapon of working class revolt, I doubt that she would have rejected demands that she might have believed were unrealisable if they nonetheless had the promise of energising workers to deepen their struggle against capitalism.

 Hi PGBThanks for your useful comments. You say that Luxemburg's definition of reform is wide enough to include anything that might ameliorate the workers' conditions.  This would mean lumping together trade union activity with government or state activity as in the case of welfare legislation. That is precisely what I would see as problematic; it is insufficiently nuanced as an approach and therefore fails to heed what follows from the necessary distinction that needs to be made between the economic domain of class struggle and the political domainTrade union struggle in the economic domain is of course necessary and desirable but is essentially only a defensive struggle against the downward pressure exerted by capital; it cannot leadof itself  to a revolution since as the saying goes starvation always works on the side of the capitalists.  The struggle for reforms via the state is different matter: it  locates  itself on the the very terrain in which the revolution is to be effected – the political domain ( and I would argue necessarily represents a preference for reform over revolution on that terrain)  You maintain that Luxemburg   took the "orthodox Marxist line, that the "struggle for reforms" provided the proletariat with the necessary practice to undertake the final battle which was of course the socialist revolution" . If that was the case then I would suggest that this supposed  "orthodox Marxist line" is very much  subject to a fundamental flaw.  The struggle for reforms ( or reformism) in the sense of  measures undertaken the the state   cannot possibly prepare the working class to undertake the final battle in the form if the socialist revolution.  On the contrary,  it can only make for the perpetual postponement and eventual abandonment of that revolutionary goal  As one prominent Trotskyist , Duncan Hallas of the International Socialism group (forerunner of the British "Socialist Workers Party"),  once put it:  "Socialism will not be on the agenda"  if " capitalism can concede, for an indefinite period, the demands and aspirations of working people then, of course, it will be enormously strengthened" .  (Duncan Hallas, "Controversy: Do we support reformist demands?, International Socialism (1st series), No.54, January 1973. On the other hand , if capitalism cannot concede to the demand  and aspirations of workers in the form of particular reforms then  how can struggling for such reforms possibly prepare workers  to undertake the final battle  in the form of socialist revolution.  It is only by realizing the futility of such struggling  and of going cap in hand to the ruling class that workers will properly begin to prepare themselves for  that battle.  Refomism is a treadmill going nowhere, a quagmire into which any hope of revolution will disappear completely.That is the basic problem,  you see, and I don't really see how it is logically possible to get round:it.  You cannot  both seek to reform , and inadvertently,  strengthen the very system you have  supposedly set your sights on overthrowing. That just does not make any sense however you look at it. Inevitably the former will crowd out the latter and the whole sorry history of Second International is clear evidence of the truth of  this claim.  No Labour or Social Democratic Party anywhere any longer pretends even to want to overthrow capitalism let alone establish a genuine socialist alternative . The struggle for reforms is not and cannot be a means to revolution as Luxemburg claimed and it was Bernstein paradoxically who grasped better than Luxemburg what that struggle was about: – that  the goal would become nothing and the movement , everythingThat aside, I question the whole premise on which reformism rests.  In my view, measures enacted by the state do not so much initiate improvements to the conditions of the workers as respond to pressures in the economic domain that call for such improvement.  Reformism in other words is based on  a Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy  – "after this, therefore because of this". In that sense that reforms are simply a ratification of what is happening on the ground. It is a fetishistic way of looking at things to hold  that it is a mere scrap of white paper over whose  contents a bunch of parliamentarians have debated that is in any way decisive in the matter.  What the matter really boils down is the relative share of the social product  going to the workers vis a vis the capitalists which as Marx put it, is a function of the relative strengths of the combatants in the class struggle – the practical organisation of the workers in the industrial field  – which would be weakened and compromised by reformism  and which is in turn influenced by such background factors as the state of the economy e.g. whether the economy is in a boom or a recession.  State enacted reforms are worth little more than the paper they are typed on and as we all know they can be widely ignored , more "honoured in the breach than in the observance",  watered down or even simply simply scrapped and consigned to the bin of history.On the question of Luxemburg's  attitude towards reforms I'm not sure you are correct in saying that when she observed that they were "inadequate" she meant from the point of view of obtaining socialism.  What I think she meant by inadequate or insufficient was from the point of view of meeting the needs of workers  under capitalism.  It was the realisation that they were inadequate from that point of view that would cause workers, in her view,  to turn to socialism insteadOn the question of transitional demand, well, I think that point  is that by definition such a reform is one that capitalism is meant to be structurally incapable of delivering or implementing and that consequently the implementation of such a reform would indicate that it could no longer  be considered a transitional demand. – something that was "unrealisable".  Trotsky as I said was not averse to supporting mere reforms.   More to the point he indicated that mere reforms could be converted into transitional demands should economic conditions render the former impracticable and unrealisable.  But the converse was equally true. You say of transitional demands that i I don't think you can argue that they are inherently "unrealisable".  But that is part of the very definition of a transitional demand – that they are unrelisable. If conditions changed that enable them to become  realisable  then this would indicate they were no longer transitional demands but had become "mere reforms"I m also not sure that the Bolshevik slogan "Peace, Land and Bread". is a good example of a " highly successful  transitional demand". Land reform for sure followed in the wake of the Bolshevik takeover but "peace" and "bread"? From what I understand the Russian working class in the early years of the revolution melted back into the countryside in large numbers  precisely because, amongst other things of the dire problem of food provision in the cities. And as for peace , well, one only has to mention the bitter civil war that ensued soon after the Bolshevik take over to put that particular claim to rest 

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

And of course, although we don't advocate them (so as not to suffer the fate of the SPD and become a reformist party), we ourselves are not opposed to all reforms. Wouldn't we too describe any favourable reforms obtained as "inadequate"? We do regard some proposed reforms as "unrealisable" but say this openly and that workers are wasting their time pursuing them. Which of course is the basis of our criticism of Trotskyist "transitional demands".

 Yes  exactly.  And the nonsensical thing about Trotsky's crackpot theory of transitional demands  (so called) is a that it commits its proponents to maintaining the illusion that such reforms are not only achievable under capitalism but are of such a nature as to fully satisfy the needs of workers – that is to say are adequate should they be achieved  That being the case,  it cuts from under their feet the very grounds upon which they might want to advocate socialism to replace capitalism – namely . that capitalism cannot possibly be operated in the interests of workers  and adequately meet their needs.  This is why the Trots are almost driven by the very logic of their own thinking to play down the case for socialism for  fear of being lambasted as  " impractical dreamers"  (and is also why they criticise socialists for being "utopians"). To argue that socialism is the only answer is to imply that capitalism cannot be reformed to adequately meet the needs of workers which in turn directly runs counter to the illusion they are intent upon fostering for the purpose of recruiting workers to their cause – that transitional demands are indeed both achievable and fit for the purpose. In private, of course, they know otherwise but for the purpose of public consumption and political influence they are obliged to conceal this discomforting  fact.  Only the select few that comprise the vanguard can be trusted to safely digest this fact  and rationalise it away in terms a dialectical sleight of hand.  The theory of transitional demands requires them to make these demands to serve as a "bridge" to revolutionary consciousness.   According to the theory,  it is when workers realise the impossibility of such demands in capitalism they will turn to socialism. The truly laughable thing about such a deplorably manipulative and cynical tactic is that probably most workers already know well enough that such demands as,  say, a doubling of the minimum wage or reducing the pensionable age to 55, is just a pipe dream under capitalism .  But you don't see them flocking to the socialist cause, do you now? . To the contrary many of them will happily endorse Mrs T's old mantra that we must all live within our means  and give the likes of her the thumbs up when it comes to elections. For all the frantic efforts of the Trots to come across as pragmatic  realists, thoroughly grounded in the concrete day to day struggles of workers they are the very ones who end up looking the impractical dreamers in the eyes of most workers On the question "opposing reforms" and "opposing reformism " there is the interesting case of Samuel Gompers and the American Federation of labour circa  late 19th century. Gompers' rather tortured  reasoning for opposing reforms and not merely opposing reformism was a sort of dogmatic rendition/extension of a kind of  quasi Marxian stance . Since the state represented the interests of the ruling class, all legislation emanating from the state  would ipso facto  be bound to further the interests of that class and so work against interests of the workers.  On these spurious grounds, Gompers actively campaigned against reforms such as the eight hour day in certain states on the West coast of America. Gompers seemed to have subscribed to a purely voluntaristic concept of working class activism  which restricted itself to the economic field alone i..e  in the  trade union movement  – lest it be tainted by politics and hence the influence of ruling class ideas.  His ideas find some echoes in the thinking of the so called Economists (not to be confused with the practitioners of economics) who Lenin savaged in  "What is to be Done" (1902). The Economist movement  published a document entitled Credo (1899) in which it was argued  that it was to the liberal bourgeoisie to which the workers should defer to take up the political struggle against tsardom  and that the workers should confine themselves to such matters as fighting for higher wages and better working conditions. Here we see, once again,  the distinction being made the economic domain and the political domain  to which I earlier alluded. It was not the distinction as such that was invalid but how it was applied and in the case of  the two examples cited it was applied quite inappropriately , I would suggest

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

But I don't think she can be found guilty of advocating Trotsky's dishonest and stupid policy of advocating reforms they know can't be achieved under capitalism in the expectation that workers will turn to "revolution" (insurrection under the leadership of a vanguard party) after the struggle for the unrealisable reforms inevitably failed. This assumes that the reforms struggled for can't be achieved, but there is no evidence that Luxemburg thought that the reforms she favoured the SPD advocating and struggling for were unrealisable. She merely says that they would be "inadequate", which is not the same as "unrealisable".I think her position was that if the working class struggled for reforms on a class basis this would help prepare them for the final and more important struggle for political power (and that this wouldn't happen unless there was a body of socialists consciously advocating this, so it's not going to happen on its own). 

 Thanks for your explanation, Adam.  It certainly does seem that the title of Luxemburg's pamphlet was somewhat misleading.    However,  I am not fully convinced that the distinction between Luxemburg's advocacy of reforms and Trotsky's transitional demands is quite so stark as you suggest though there is a formal sense in which they differ as you point out.  Where Luxemburg thought reforms would prove "inadequate",  Trotsky thought they would be "unrealisable"  in the case of so called  transitional demands (although it has to be remembered that Trotsky also advocated mere reforms along the lines of the SDPs minimum programme).  Nevertheless,  in substantive terms the outcome is basically  the same.  In both cases,  the needs of the workers would not be met  and, in both cases,  such reforms were to be  advocated in the full knowledge that such needs would remain unmet.  One might be forgiven for inferring a certain degree of cynicism in both cases – although, no doubt, Luxemburg was honest about  admitting the inadequacy of her reforms where Trotsky was deceitful in concealing the unrealisability of his.   There is also a certain structural similarity between Trotsky's metaphor of a  "bridge" and Luxemburg's idea of the Party steering a middle course between two "rocks" – the reformist aspirations of the working class and the revolutionary  intentions of the hardline  politicised revolutionariesThere is something else that occurs to me as well – what exactly did Luxemburg mean by reforms and reformism?I have always taken the view that reformism essentially entails the enactment of measures by the state operating in political field or domain that have as their focus issues arising in economic field or domain.  This seems to follow from our conceptualisation of capitalism as a fundamentally economic construct and reformism is an attempt (classically so in the case of Bernstein) to modify the economic behaviour of capitalism itself.  Trade unionism, for example, is not to be equated with reformism since in this  case, the field in which trade unions ideally  operate is the economic field and not the political field  – even if trade unionism has the same focus as reformism being the economic field or domainThese two conceptual categories of FIELD  and FOCUS are, I suggest,  vital analytical tools to distinguish  between different kinds of activities – like  reformism and trade unionism – in terms of the particular kind of configuration applying to each. I realise in practice  the political field and the economic field are thoroughly intermeshed.   So for example what is called  the "labour movement" stereotypically  comprises two wings – the political and the economic – having an overlapping membership and is (supposedly) represent respectively  by the social democratic-cum-labour parties,  on the one hand, and the trade unions on the other. Nevertheless we are talking here of ideal types and for the purposes of analytical clarity, it is sometimes necessary to resort to ideal types to get a better grasp of the subject under discussion.Which brings me to the point  Could it be be that by reforms, Luxemburg meant something different to measures enacted by the state?  You say that she held the classic SPD position of a socialist party having a maximum (socialism) and a minimum (reforms under capitalism) programme and the latter would certainly be classed as a measure to be enacted by a state but is there any possibility that she might have meant by reforms something more vague and having to do with the day to day struggles of workers to improve their pay and working conditions?  In other words could she possibly have been conflating the economic struggle and the political struggle in the guise of advocating reforms as a "means" to social revolution?The answer to that question might have a bearing on the legacy of Luxemburg who, to this day, remains a significant political icon to the revolutionary Left.

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

robbo, since we both agree that ‘individualism’ is entirely historical, I think we can leave that concept alone.But, when we come to your ‘individuality’ as ‘transhistorical’, even you concede that it isn’t.

robbo203 wrote:

Individuality is something different. It has to do with the inner life of the person, the sense of self hood. This is something that is both historical and trans-historical.

So, even ‘individuality’ is ‘both historical and trans-historical’, not just simply ‘transhistorical’. But then you go further:

robbo203 wrote:

That is why I contend that this aspect of individuality is trans historical. It is a necessary built-in aspect of infant development in all human societies. Of course the content of our inner lives is also historically contingent and subject to social influence.

[my bold]So, the apparent essence of ‘individuality’ is ‘inner life’ and ‘self hood’, which is the bit which is ‘transhistorical’. But… even this you concede is ‘historically contingent and subject to social influence’ It seems to me that your thesis depends upon identifying just what the ‘necessary built-in aspect of infant development in all human societies’ consists of. You identify this as ‘individuality’, but I’m not so sure. It seems to me to be perfectly possible to identify this ‘necessary aspect’ with purely biological functions: that is, the infant ‘in all human societies’ must be taught to feed and water itself, keep itself warm, etc. This is a long way from any notions of ‘individuality’ in any modern sense; after all, most animals go through this process of ‘necessary self development’, which enables them to exist biologically as a species. That is, without an initial stage of close support from (usually) the mother, the ‘infant’ (child/pup/kitten/etc.) would die.

Hi L BirdWell, yes, sure there is a biological basis to this in the sense that obviously consciousness  – in this case , awareness of ourselves as individuals –  is dependent on the brain.  But you are still missing the essential point which is that the emergence of this sense of self is the product  of (and is dependent on)  a process of social interaction  and so is not purely a matter of biology. The brain does not automatically or spontaneously generate  or produce  this sense of self awareness on its own, it requires also the intervention of others. It is through interacting with significant others – most particularly of course  the mother – that the infant comes to to recognise the existence of others outside of itself  which, in the process, enables it to define itself as someone separate from these significant others and thus  acquire a sense of self hood.  I repeat this happens in EVERY society without exception (so you are quite wrong to say I "concede" that individuality is not in this respect transhistorical ) but the form that the social interactions take  (which then shapes the individual's particular sense of herself)  is obviously socially conditioned  and historically contingent.  It is for that reason that I say that individuality is BOTH historical  and transhistorical and that this corresponds to the form and the substance of the phenomenon of human individuality . What you are doing, with respect, is confusing this "form" with this "substance" when they need to be analytically distinguished, I don't think this is a particularly Freudian perspective, incidentally,  and as I said to ALB it is quite consonant with Mead's concept of the self.,  Freudian psychology, as I further said,  has been discredited on grounds quite other than what we are talking about – in particular the role it imputes to the unconsciousness mind

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

Vin Maratty wrote:

I don't think the  SPGB's case for socialism is based on a moral objection to capitalism and if it is then best of luck with that one

Officially it isn't.In 2010 Conference passed the following resolution by 64 votes to 52 "Socialism is both scientific and ethical." Six branches then called a Party Poll to rescind this resolution. The result of this vote later the same year was:

Quote:

Results of the Party Poll on the following motion :  "That the 2010 Conference resolution that 'Socialism is both  scientific and ethical' be rescinded on the basis that 'the case for socialism  is one of class interest not one of morality.' Are you in favour? Yes / No"  No of votes cast : Yes      –  81 No         – 39 Abstain –   3 Spoilt    –   2  Therefore the 2010 Conference resolution – Socialism is both scientific and  ethical – is rescinded.

 Well in that case I think the SPGB merely succeeded in shooting itself  in the foot.  It looks pretty damn silly condemning capitalism in strident moral terms and then claiming the case for socialism is not in part a moral one. Class interest by definition entails a moral dimension since its implies a concern for the welfare and wellbeing of others (in the working class) which, actually, when you think about it , is what morality is about

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

In terms of early childhood development what we see, to begin with. is what psychoanalysts call a stage of primary identification in which the infant develops a strong emotional attachment to the "significant other" (most particularly, the mother) but is unable to distinguish itself from the latter  whom it sees as a mere extension of itself.  This is followed by a form of identification called narcissistic identification  which derives from  the experience of loss of, or alienation from,  the other in question.  In coming to see our mothers as separate from ourselves we gain a sense of self hood.

I don't disagree with the basic point you are trying to make, but am surprised that you are making an appeal to "psychoanalysis" when Freud's theories have been so thoroughly discredited. The rival behaviourist theory is also capable of giving an account of the emergence of "self". See, for instance, this from GH Mead:http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/mead3.htmI was a bit surprised to find this on the Marxist Internet Archive but it's there and probably deserves to be as his theory does have socialist implications. His Mind, Self and Society used to be recommended to Party members for those interested in the subject as it provides a social materialist theory of "mind".

 Sure, Freudian psychoanalysis has been largely discredited but I dont think that means we must reject the basic explanation for the emergence of sense of self  as being contingent upon a process of  "objectifying" others. It  is by becoming aware of the existence of others as separate from ourselves that we begin to define ourselves as individuals. I dont think Mead's theory of the self contradicts this at all. Meads central argument is that the self is an emergent property of social interactions which is what I'm saying too.  The mother interacts with the infant and over a period of time  the infant becomes aware of the existence of the mother as an entity outside of itself  and so in the process becomes aware of itself. You can dispense with the Freudian-type jargon but I think the basic argument remains sound.   In any event,   I thought what was descreditable about Freudian psychoanalysis  was the imputed role of the unconscious  in human beings and the whole contrived typology of id, ego and superego.

[Author]

Posts