SocialistPunk
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LBird wrote:Does anyone else have any comments to make, about Marx's views, or about how the democratically-organised proletariat should approach these issues?
Hi LBird,I previously asked whether you could put some "meat on the bones" of how knowledge, scientific "truth" etc, can be democratically controlled by a global, socialist population.I'd still be up for some ideas on the practicalities of your position?
Never mind "this could have a reformist….interpretation", I read it and instantly saw old school Labour Party oozing from it.The first and most important role of any real socialist organisation is to bring about socialist class consciousness among the workers. The revolution won't ever happen without a mass socialist movement. Yet this article has that as number two in order of priority. Suggesting that it is possible to have a socialist government working within capitalism to nurture and protect a growing socialist movement. It comes across like a vanguardist proposal.Surely it should be more like…Firstly the creation of a mass socialist movement. Second the mass movement must, where possible, democratically take power away from the capitalists. Thirdly, any existing State structures the movement deems useful must be used to advance the creation of global socialism.
Quote:Politicians today love to invoke Magna Carta as a bulwark for the rights of the ordinary man. But it would be more accurate to say that Magna Carta’s clauses variously offered special legal protection for the Catholic Church and the aristocracy, advocated tax breaks for the wealthiest, freed the City of London from regulatory oversight, promised total freedom of immigration and placed the burden of infrastructure maintenance on local communities instead of government. Any party that stood on a platform that was true to the spirit of Magna Carta today would be massacred at the polls.As with all mythical status historical documents, people pick and choose the bits they find relevant, but I knew there had to a reason it was popular with the Tories.
Would the following conference motion have any significance for the SPGB at this and future demos, considering it highly likely that there will be a turnout of a number of "left wing" groups/parties advocating anti-austerity. Afterall anti- austerity is a non revolutionary request.As far as I'm concerned such protests are relevant to social-ists, as it demonstrates our solidarity with other workers and as a mass meeting place for the potential exchange of ideas.Motion 1. Kent & Sussex Regional Branc"Conference re-affirms that in accordance with Principle 7 of the Declaration of Principles there is an obligation on members to be hostile to parties which support capitalism."Vote 1 For 94 Against 22. Carried.
Interesting and very informative leaflet ALB,.Did a bit of online digging regarding Labour and it's anti-working class credentials, and I found this. I know it comes from the SWP publication, International Socialism, but as far as I can tell (without reading the whole thing yet, my attention span only does small doses), it spills the beans on the myth of Labour being a political party looking after the interests of the working class.https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj2/1984/isj2-024/ellen.html
Quote:At the hands of what many workers believed to be ‘their’ government, striking dockers, gas workers, miners and lorry drivers were denounced, spied upon and prosecuted. Two States of Emergency were proclaimed against them and two more were narrowly averted. Above all, the government used blacklegs against these strikes, often with the connivance of the strikers’ own trade union leaders. On 18 different occasions between 1945 and 1951, the government sent troops, sometimes 20,000 of them, across picket lines to take over strikers’ jobs. By 1948, it has been argued, ‘strike-breaking had become almost second nature to the Cabinet.’ [3]That was in public. In secret, as recently-released Cabinet Papers show, the government revived the Supply and Transport Organisation which their Tory predecessors of 1926 had used to help crush the General Strike. And it did so with the active involvement of two of the most famous left-wing leaders Labour has produced – Aneurin Bevan and Sir Stafford Cripps. This little-known story is the subject of this article.I haven't been paying attention to the news recently, but on return to the land of the living, I'm not surprised to find this plot unfolding. Governments always get the really nasty stuff, they've been planning, in as early after an election as possible. I suppose in five years time, come the next general election, the electorate will have forgotten Cameron's pre election dismissal of tax credit cuts.
Quote:BBC Newsnight says allies of the Chancellor George Osborne are examining the plans, which they believe would increase “work incentives”.Quote:Political allies of Mr Osborne say the move would increase incentives to work.Notice once more, the use of a familiar tactic of suggesting benefit payments only encourage the "work shy". So if you're a "working family" with wages above the tax credit level, you're encouraged to see those in receipt of tax credits as lazy, undeserving, scroungers. A drain on society.Tory social Darwinism once more on display. Same old story.
Not quite Brian.In relation to this discussion we are not talking about a particular state and its accepted geographical and international legal boundaries, but what constitutes "the state". The concept of the coercive machine. It could be any country.I've identified a few key features that are found in most countries, probably all. In no particular order we have:1) Some form of government, either dictatorial or democratically elected representative. Along with the machinery of governmental administration.2) A military force.3) Police force.4) A secret service.5) Some form of "legal" system.6) A prison system.7) Some form of educational system This to me is what constitutes "the state" and its machinery. These are the instruments of oppression, the coercive forces. How are these to be turned into "the agents of emancipation"?
Brian wrote:To stimulate the discussion further it would serve a useful purpose if you would kindly draw up a list of the agreements and disagreements. Or I suspect this thread is going to go completly off-topic with your invite to LBird to put some meat on the bones on his version of a functioning democracy.I don't have a list of disagreements. The only thing I see as rather ambiguous, is the the bit in number 6 of the DoP that implies the state will be transformed into the agent of emancipation.It's in stark contrast to this the quote I used from "An A to Z of Marxism", even including a quote from Engels.
Quote:Moreover, the state and its machinery of government will have no place in a socialist society:‘The society that organises production anew on the basis of the free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machine where it will then belong: in the museum of antiquities side by side with the spinning wheel and the bronze axe’ (Engels, Anti-Duhring, 1878).So what's it to be? Active abolishion of "the state" and it's relegation to the dustbin of history, or transformation? That's all I was ever trying to resolve.
Bloody hell! I'm away for a day and I'm left playing catch up. There were several posts I wanted to respond to, DJP, Brian and Vin, and so on but instead I'll try and put my position across as I see it now.
Brian wrote:The state is the executive of a minority.Hud955 wrote:It wouldn't be at all easy to build an administrative structure from scratch, Adam, I agree, but this is a relative matter. Neither would it be at all easy to adapt the workings of central and local government to the needs of a socialist society either. Most existing computer systems would be useless, for instance and would have to be replaced with those geared to new needs, priorities and social relationships. Undemocratic and bureaucratic administrative systems would have to be reimagined, and so on. And the confusion that would result from trying to adapt one set of arrangements to another of a very different character especially given the creaky and inefficient nature of what we currently have would be horrendous. I would suggest that ultimately it would be more time and labour consuming than setting up new systems, which we could begin to prepare in advance.Couldn't agree more.I only use Britain as an example, but it's easy to get caught up with thinking in terms of highly developed western counties when trying to identify what constitutes "the state". It's why I previously suggested looking for common features found in all states throughout the world.Once more it boils down to what is recognised as "the State" and the machinery of the state. If we see the likes of the NHS as the machinery of the state, then the answer to transforming or abolishing is an easy one as no one here is suggesting the NHS would be dismantled and built from scratch, in some kind of Year Zero revolution. In my view the state and its machinery is the undemocratic, bureaucratic, coercive hub that in Britain revolves around Whitehall. Such machinery, as Hud points out, would be unfit for a democratic socialist society and new transparent, democratic structures would have to be introduced anyway. The only stuff of use from such an undemocratic structure would be the "bookwork".It's worth pointing out that the SPGB/WSM is already an example of a highly organised political, democratic structure existing outside the state. And I'm sure SPGB members would be delighted to see the WSM become the mass party of the workers socialist revolution.
Well LBird, it looks as though no members of the SPGB here want to discuss the points raised by either of us regarding the transformation or abolition of "the state", in the event of a successful socialist.Oh well, such a shame, especially as some bright spark stated that my points would be destroyed by the collective "we", as if I were an enemy. When in fact I'm here to learn.Anyway, I agree that there would need to be some democratic "authority" under socialism. How else would society be able to protect itself from rapists, paedos and the like. I'm not some idealist who thinks a socialist revolution would bring about a perfect society of love and harmony.I followed the previous discussions of yours regarding democracy and how far it should extend. So seeing as it is a related topic, I was hoping you could put some meat on the bones regarding how you see such extensive democracy functioning?
If we look at the discussion to date we see myself, YMS, LBird and Alan, still slogging it out, with three of us coming to similar conclusions regarding "the state" and its role in society.We still seem to have difficulty pinning down what "the state" is. So once more, from a socialist view we have the following. From the publication "An A to Z of Marxism".
Quote:The state is essentially a coercive machine (police, judiciary, armed forces, schools, etc.) for conserving the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers in a geographical area. This puts us at odds with the views of the ‘pluralists’ who argue that power is (or should be) diffused throughout a plurality of institutions in society (trade unions, pressure groups, etc.) and that the state is neutral in relation to the class struggle. However, history shows how the state evolved:‘The ancient state was, above all, the state of the slave owners for holding down the slaves, just as the feudal state was the organ of the nobility for holding down the peasant serfs and bondsmen, and the modern representative state is an instrument for exploiting wage labour by capital’ (Engels, Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 1884).Moreover, the state and its machinery of government will have no place in a socialist society:‘The society that organises production anew on the basis of the free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machine where it will then belong: in the museum of antiquities side by side with the spinning wheel and the bronze axe’ (Engels, Anti-Duhring, 1878).Pretty straight forward then. Not really, as this snippet from the SPGB Declaration of Principles, number 6 suggests.
Quote:the working class must organize consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation,So we're back where we started, with some believing an undemocratic system of coercion can be tamed and transformed into "the agent of emancipation" and others, myself included, believing that the agent of emancipation is the revolutionary working class itself, ie people. And that social organisation in a socialist society needs no state machinery to function.
Young Master Smeet wrote:SocialistPunk wrote:This is my essential point. The heart of "the state" is undemocratic, so I don't see how it can be transformed. Why would a democratic, socialist revolutionary movement have any need of undemocratic machinery. I just don't get it. Perhaps something is being lost in translation. Perhaps we haven't succeeded in pinning down what "the state" actually is.Well, one thing the state is is administrative skill and expertise, which we will need to utilise, but, you're right, the undemocratic aspects would have to be lopped off, the cabinet ministers meeting in secret would go, the office of Prime Minister would go, the Monarch and the House of Lords would go, etc. and business would be conducted in public.The bottom line is, whatever administrative units we divide the world up into (and, as I say, there's no reason why for different purposes different units could not overlap) there will need to be a co-ordinating body that would look for all the world like a parliament, after all, delegates would be frequently given free hands on many issues.
The issue I have in what you say YMS is you seem to identify "the state" with social organisation, as well as coercion. I on the other hand don't recognise the social organisation aspect of "the state" and see it only as a coercive body that can only exist in a class based, minority owned society.The state exists to conserve the status quo. It does not need to organise any social services in order to preserve the ruling class position.One way I suggest we could figure out what "the state" actually is, would be to look at those that are in existence today and identify commonalities. Obvious markers would be the existence of a military force and a police force. Pretty safe to say all states include those features. Some sort of legal framework is usually present. I might have missed one or two essentials, but I think everyone gets where I'm coming from.Everywhere I've looked on this site and from quotes SPGB members have provided from various socialist sources, says that "the state" is a coercive force. So I think it safe to say, "the state" is a coercive force for the preservation of class based, minority controlled society. Oh, and they also do waste disposal.I also accept the complexity of organising and running a socialist society. But I don't see why some kind of central control would be required. As I've said before many services are owned and controlled by private companies, there are also many NGOs. While there will be certain regulations they must comply with to operate within "the state" they have their own logistic teams and managers. Such systems would be used by the socialist society.I can't imagine a socialist society having a central control. Such an idea reminds me of this scene.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xNnRBksvOU
I accept your point about the "switch off" ALB, thanks for getting back to me.I'm not so sure about your confidence that we couldn't be manipulated into a position where we accepted certain restrictions to our freedom of expression in order to be safe from other "extremists". Your point about workers supporting measures aimed at undesirables could easily be directed at revolutionary socialist/communist and anarchist groups, if the establishment thought they posed a threat to the status quo.I wouldn't underestimate the power the ruling class have at manipulation.
I'm not just "parliamentary suicide" LBird, I'm suicide of the whole Whitehall machinery that is the heart of "the state" in Britain. But I know by the same token, you are also of this view.This is my essential point. The heart of "the state" is undemocratic, so I don't see how it can be transformed. Why would a democratic, socialist revolutionary movement have any need of undemocratic machinery. I just don't get it. Perhaps something is being lost in translation. Perhaps we haven't succeeded in pinning down what "the state" actually is. I back LBirds call for a bit more explanation of the transformation of "the state" into "the agent of emancipation".I'll have to add, before I'm misunderstood, that I accept the use of the likes of parliament as being the most effective method to gain "legitimate" control, along with it being a good indicator of how the mood for revolution is proceeding. I'm not against it, I never have been.But like LBird and Robbo, I think it vital that the machinery of "the state" should be dismantled immediately, once a successful revolution has taken place. But another question then appears. How do we quantify the revolution a success?
