robbo203
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“And that, sadly, is why socialism will never be established.”
Could I borrow your crystal ball, Nostradamus?
“An anarchist unit in the Ukrainian army ! What next?”
So they are pro-capitalist statists – not actual anarchists – defending the existence of a particular capitalist nation-state in the form of “Ukraine”. They are no better than the deluded nationalists who support Russian nationalism and the capitalist, Putin.
“(Lindsey) Graham stressed that helping Ukraine in its fight against Russia could also have strategic economic benefits for the U.S. and Western countries.
“They’re sitting on 10-12 trillion dollars of critical minerals in Ukraine. They could be the richest country in all of Europe. We don’t want to give that money and assets to Putin to share with China,” he told Brennan on Sunday.”Interesting insight into the changing structure of Russia´s capitalist class
https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/moscows-war-yields-new-type-russian-oligarch-2024-06-05/
And looking at Finland, Switzerland, etc., with all the money going into bunkers (and bunker drills in Russia), it indicates that they imagine a continuance of the accumulation of capital after such a holocaust, with the workers also being regimented into bunkers.
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Thomas,
If they can envisage the need for bunkers then presumably they would be fully capable of envisaging the circumstances in which such bunkers would be needed. I read somewhere that even a limited nuclear exchange between second-tier nuclear powers like Pakistan and India would plunge the world into a nuclear winter that would last for 10 years with a catastrophic drop in agricultural output. The global population would be decimated. A full-scale nuclear exchange with Russia would be far worse.
I can’t imagine any capitalist politician seriously contemplating the continuation of capital accumulation, post-apocalypse. This would surely be the end of their system along with the vast majority of humankind. Think of the global division of labour as it currently exists and the absolute disruption such an event would bring about. The few survivors would be reduced to a scavenging mode of subsistence.
You say “Their quarrels over spheres of interest etc actually blind them to the bigger, logical, consideration” Yet, it doesn’t blind them to the need to anticipate such an event by building bunkers and therefore, as I say, to what the consequences of such an event would entail. Anything would be preferable to that – even unconditional surrender to the enemy.
Yes, you can say there is a certain illogic in sinking resources into building bunkers that will never be used (though it would be far more illogical to create a situation in which they had to be used!). But look at it another way – you could also say these politicians are also being logical by taking steps (in the form of building bunkers) in anticipation of this hypothetical future event. So it is not as if all logic has entirely escaped them. And that´s the point – if they can be logical in that respect then why can they not use that logic to figure out that a nuclear war would definitely not be in their interest?
We all know what the consequences of a nuclear war would be. It’s not so much a case of applying logic as finding out the data. The information is all out there in the public domain. The politicians can get their research assistants to look it up if there is any doubt on that score.
I’m convinced that all this sabre rattling is just a cynical game of brinkmanship. Neither side has any interest in collapsing capitalism simply to achieve some pyrrhic victory over the other side (and they won’t even achieve that). Capitalist politicians on both sides are members of the same club and the whole performance is put on to keep their underlings in tow, cowering in submissive compliance. We shouldn’t buy into the propaganda…
“Another example I remember is being in a bar (quelle surprise), many years ago and explaining, to a very senior member of the Militant Tendency (who is now a successful playwriter) that real Socialism would mean the abolition of the wages system and of money. He genuinely said to me, “that’s a really stupid idea, that would never work!! Why would a barmaid choose to spend her night pouring pints to people in a pub”.
_________________I am not surprised BD. Trots are some of the most conservative or narrow-minded individuals I’ve come across tbh. Little wonder so many of them find it so easy to “defect” to the far Right or virulently “anti-communist” positions later on in life once they have burnt themselves out.
Here’s the ex-prosecutor general Sir Keith Starmer praising National Front flag-waving day.
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Will the (anti) Labour Party now be accepting applications from members of the English Defence League? Starmer is in danger of making Sunak appear positively libertarian. It’s enough to make anyone want to reach for the nearest bucket….
ActualSocialist10: “Even if we had the overwhelming majority of the UK’s workforce behind us, for example, 75% which would be unprecedented in history (not even this many were against slavery), that still leaves 25%.”
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I am not sure that this follows. Public opinion is a spectrum. If 75% of the workforce were socialist, I would say the great bulk of the remaining 25% would not be “reactionaries” but more likely en route to becoming socialists themselves – that is, accepting some or most of the ideas and values that a socialist movement embodies.
It is difficult to imagine that the growth of the movement would not have profound repercussions for the entire climate of opinion within society. For example, strengthening a culture of democracy. One set of ideas cannot continue to flourish (at least not to the same extent as before) in the same soil in which another set of ideas, diametrically opposed to it, has laid down roots and begun to flourish.
Reactionary ideas will recede to the same extent that socialist ideas advance
Thank christ for Generation Z in that case…..
“Patriotic emotions seem to be lacking in Gen Z, with the concept itself deemed as outdated, and patriotic symbolism (union jack flag, monarchy etc) are quite often associated with right-wing, nationalistic values, which of course, many younger generations oppose. So, it’s utterly unlikely that we’ll be willing to fight for ‘King and Country’ this time, given that the younger generations are already sceptical about the royal family. According to YouGov, among 18 to 24 year olds, only 30 per cent say the monarchy is ‘good for Britain’ vs the 77 per cent of those aged 65+ who believe it is.”
There is a lot of this sort of bilge on the MSM at the moment – sociopaths like retired generals and slimy politicians going on about how “we” must prepare ourselves now for the possibility of WW3. Loosely translated that means boosting military spending to enable “us” to better stand up to the “Russian” (or Chinese) threat. No doubt they are saying exactly the same thing about the West in Russia and China.
None of these people have any actual concern for the lives of workers in the event that actual war happens. It’s about manipulating public opinion for their own ends. Fearmongering to make us all fall in line. Pretty disgusting if you ask me. I dont believe a nuclear armageddon will happen – at least not by design though possibly by default. Not even politicians can be that dumb to imagine anyone would survive a fullscale nuclear exchange (including the billionaires in their bunkers) However, a frenzied climate of hyper-irrationalism and turbocharged nationalism might make the possibility of an “accident” more likely. All the more reason to pour cold water over articles like this one
nor am I, as I have said, as ideologically attached to the opinions I write about as you are to yours. In some of my pieces, I give equal weight to two or more completely contradictory arguments.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::.Perhaps, then, Stuart you might want to give equal weight to the genuine socialist – not leftist, please – argument against capitalism in your next article rather than the obvious nonsense you spouted concerning the free market version of capitalism in your last article.
Incidentally, just curious but weren´t you briefly associated with some leftist organisation – Left Unity or something like that – before disappearing into the void and reemerging as a free-market supporter? What happened to that group?
While we have been discussing how the production and distribution of wealth could take place in a socialist society as necessarily one without markets or money, ex-comrade Watkins has been at it again.
________________________________________From the article
“Capitalism puts the food on the table. Be grateful and don’t expect more than it can give, says Stuart Watkins.”
What a joke. I think Stuart has lost the plot completely. Does he not understand that capitalism is just an “ism” – an abstract set of rules governing production (and a pretty naff set of rules at that, that, for instance, allows food to be destroyed to bump up prices)? “Capitalism” doesn’t produce anything. It’s flesh and blood workers that produce everything in conjunction with naturally given resources.
I find it bemusing these kinds of blatantly bourgeois apologetics that people like Stuart have, apparently, now wholly succumbed to – a totally fetishistic upside-down perspective on the world. He is not alone, there are others who seem to likewise suffer from a kind of Stockholm syndrome towards “capitalism. For example, Trots who, having passionately advocated for what they call a planned “socialist economy” for a large chunk of their lives, suddenly and inexplicably have some kind of road-to-Damascus conversion (mid-life crisis?) to the so-called free market economy. Indeed, became some of its most dogmatic and religious exponents.
Very strange and very sad at the same time!
Titled ‘Forest and Factory: the Science and the Fiction of Communism’, here is a new contribution — having appeared just days ago — on the topic of production under socialism.
——————————I’ve had a quick look at this piece. It’s long and could do with another reading. It does contain many useful points.
I would focus on just one or two at this stage.
The authors seem to be quite strongly opposed to the “localist” bias of people like Mau. They say, for instance:
“However, our principle objection is not to localization tout court, but rather to the idea that “land, water, energy, [and] technology” can or even should be controlled locally. At the purely technical level, the reality is that very few of these things can be localized to a city-sized commune in a fashion that would actually provide for modern population sizes. Even assuming a given commune has large tracts of arable land, ample reserves of freshwater, and good renewable energy amenities, none of these resources can be efficiently utilized without modern industrial technology that is, on average, extremely difficult to localize. Good luck building and maintaining a water purification plant with no inputs from outside of a 200km radius!”
I agree but at the same time, there is no reason why we should not strive, as a matter of principle, to localise the sourcing of material inputs as far as practically possible (information goods are another matter since they are not scale-dependent). There is a concept called the “ecological transition” coined, I believe, by John Bennett in 1976. He is basically, coming out against the kind of thinking you see in Ricardo´s theory of comparative advantage. For instance, we would surely not want to have the kind of wasteful “Coals to Newcastle” type of phenomena we find today in capitalism e.g. the importation of coal from China or Eastern Europe or wherever. It makes sense to source materials as close as possible to where they are needed.
Bennett´s point is that an over-extended spatial division of labour tends to desensitize communities to the environmental impacts of production decisions. If you in the UK get your salad crops from the greenhouse belt in Almeria in Spain you are not going to worry as much about the environmental repercussions of all this greenhouse production, is what he is suggesting. It’s out of sight and more than a thousand kilometres away from the “White Cliffs of Dover”. In other words, local communities need to bear more of the burden of external costs they generate because it will then incentivise them to reduce these costs
Given that environmental constraints are likely to play a much more important role in decision-making in a socialist society compared to today one can go along with the logic of what Bennett is saying. I think the SPGB´s concept of planning in a socialist society as being multi-tiered – global regional and local – accommodates both this concern and the practical realities of supply chains that the authors refer to.
Another point the authors make concerns the “transition”:
“Communist construction is ultimately defined by its character as a transition from one society into another, and this transition is successful only if the remnants of capitalist society, including temporary measures that may bear some superficial resemblance to wage or price (i.e., labor vouchers or priority distributional weights assigned to scarce necessities) are being inexorably wiped away without regression.”
Of course, we (in the SPGB) don’t ourselves, go along with the idea of a labour vouchers scheme. I think it would prove a lot more administratively challenging and socially divisive than its proponents imagine. It will also, I believe, help to reinforce not diminish, a scarcity mentality. Not good news.
That said, I think a lot more discussion is needed around the subject of shortages – how they are going to be dealt with – in a socialist society, particularly in its early stage. What kind of goods are most likely to be subject to shortages and how ought they to be rationed? I don’t believe a universal system of rationing (like labour vouchers) is required. A partial or selective system would probably do the job
Interesting article but LOL this bit
“Earlier this month, it issued a detailed ideological statement in Qiushi, the party’s main official theoretical journal, calling on banks, pension funds, insurers and other financial organisations in China to follow Marxist principles and pay obedience to Xi Jinping.”
I think I’ve written about it twice, maybe three times, in my whole life
______________________________________Fair enough Stuart but this thread kicked off with a reference to an article that you co-authored with Dan Greenwood some time ago in which you explicitly said and I quote
“As Hayek in particular emphasised, the fundamental problem for a socialist economy concerns knowledge. The highly decentralised market process of exchange and price generation captures and communicates a vast amount of dynamically changing knowledge, responding to highly complex and ever-changing demand and supply levels and reflecting the locally situated goals and decisions of individuals across society. By contrast, state planning, even at a local scale and most certainly at national and international level, necessarily involves an element of centralisation”
Seriously Stuart? You reckon the fundamental problem facing a socialist system “concerns knowledge”? What is that if not an endorsement of Hayek´s own ill-informed take on the subject of socialism? Also, what is this “knowledge” the market is supposed to ever-so-efficiently process? The market responds to price signals. What is the information that prices themselves are supposed to convey? Human needs? Environmentally sustainable ways of disposing of pollution? What?
In your latest piece, you allude to the so-called Hayekian “knowledge problem” yet again:
” The question that came up straight away – as Dan Greenwood, an academic at the University of Westminster, related in a talk given at the launch of his new book, Effective Governance and the Political Economy of Coordination (2023, Palgrave Macmillan) – was, just how is any of that going to be achieved? Through top-down government interventions? Or through decentralised processes of innovation in the market and civil society? ”
I can surely be forgiven for thinking that you have swallowed hook line and sinker the Hayekian take on the feasibility of “socialism”. I appreciate that what you and he mean by “socialism” is what we in the SPGB called state capitalism as in the Soviet Union – although, in fact, the Soviet Union was far more decentralised than the carefully cultivated caricature of it as a “planned economy” suggests
But this is part of the problem. Free market types are forever going on about the false dichotomy of central planning versus the decentralised market as if the only way you can have a polycentric system of decision-making is through the market which is complete nonsense. I have yet to come across a serious critique of a polycentric non-market model of socialism. Perhaps you can be the first to attempt it….
