SocialistPunk
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DJP wrote:How about this? But it would be some help if you could try and say what it is you don't understand first..Revolutionary Self Theory wrote:For example: suppose I want a cup of coffee from the machine at work. First of all, there is the cup of coffee itself: that involves the workers on the coffee plantation, the ones on the sugar plantations and in the refineries, the ones in the paper mill, and so on. Then you have all the workers who made the different parts of the machine and assembled it. Then the ones who extracted the iron ore and bauxite, smelted the steel, drilled the oil and refined it. Then all the workers who transported the raw materials and parts over three continents and two oceans. Then the clerks, typists and communications workers who co-ordinate the production and transportation. Finally you have all the workers who produce all the other things necessary for the others to survive. That gives me a direct material relationship to several million people: in fact, to the immense majority of the world's population. They produce my life: and I help to produce theirs. In this light, all partial group identities and special interests fade into insignificance. Imagine the potential enrichment of one's life that is presently locked up in the frustrated creativity of those millions of workers, held back by obsolete and exhausting methods of production, strangled by alienation, warped by the insane rationale of capitalaccumulation! Here we begin to discover a real social identity: in people all over the world who are fighting to win back their lives, we find ourselves.http://theoryandpractice.org.uk/library/revolutionary-self-theory-beginners-manual-anon-1985
Or this
Fredy Perlman wrote:The everyday practical activity of tribesmen reproduces, or perpetuates, a tribe. This reproduction is not merely physical, but social as well. Through their daily activities the tribesmen do not merely reproduce a group of human beings; they reproduce a tribe, namely a particular social form within which this group of human beings performs specific activities in a specific manner. The specific activities of the tribesmen are not the outcome of "natural" characteristics of the men who perform them, the way the production of honey is an outcome of the "nature" of a bee. The daily life enacted and perpetuated by the tribesman is a specific social response to particular material and historical conditions.The everyday activity of slaves reproduces slavery. Through their daily activities, slaves do not merely reproduce themselves and their masters physically; they also reproduce the instruments with which the master represses them, and their own habits of submission to the master's authority. To men who live in a slave society, the master-slave relation seems like a natural and eternal relation. However, men are not born masters or slaves. Slavery is a specific social form, and men submit to it only in very particular material and historical conditions.The practical everyday activity of wage-workers reproduces wage labor and capital. Through their daily activities, "modern" men, like tribesmen and slaves, reproduce the inhabitants, the social relations and the ideas of their society; they reproduce the social form of daily life. Like the tribe and the slave system, the capitalist system is neither the natural nor the final form of human society; like the earlier social forms, capitalism is a specific response to material and historical conditions .Unlike earlier forms of social activity, everyday life in capitalist society systematically transforms the material conditions to which capitalism originally responded. Some of the material limits to human activity come gradually under human control. At a high level of industrialization, practical activity creates its own material conditions as well as its social form. Thus the subject of analysis is not only how practical activity in capitalist society reproduces capitalist society, but also how this activity itself eliminates the material conditions to which capitalism is a response.http://theoryandpractice.org.uk/library/reproduction-everyday-life-fredy-perlman-1969Nothing wrong with that DJP. The kinda stuff I gravitated to when I was in my late teens early twenties, through contact with SPGB literature. Looking back now I probably read articles in the Socialist Standard that explained "value" in user friendly ways, as I don't recal feeling baffled that often, though human memory is not as reliable as we think.I think the problem lies in certain phrases that cloud the basic issue. Phrases such as "relative magnitude", a phrase used in economics, from mathematics, I believe. Then there is the phrase "socially necessary abstract labour".Terms and phrases such as the ones I highlight seem highly unnecessary. If I didn't know otherwise I would say they are designed to confuse rather than enlighten. Where in the real world would such terminology be met with understanding approval?7. What is value? A social relationship between people which expresses itself as a material relationship between things. The value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary abstract labour time needed for its production and reproduction. Price is the monetary expression of value.8. What is exchange value? A relative magnitude which expresses the relationship between two commodities. The proportion in which commodities tend to exchange with each other depends upon the amount of socially necessary labour-time spent in producing them. Commodities actually sell at market prices that rise and fall according to market conditions around a point regulated by their value.
DJPJust checking to see if your last post is in answer to my post?If it is I'll digest what I can and get back to you asap, with any relevant questions etc.
Ahh…crossed wires there YMS.I get that knowledge is important, but knowledge is only important for socialists if it can be understood fully and passed on and so far I haven't read a clear explanation for value yet.The quote below is from the Party Speakers Handbook that was used a couple of pages back as an..err…explanation. Several words spring to mind, "mud", "clear" and "as". It's either that or I must be as thick as a plank measuring somewhere between one centimeter and one meter.Surely after 110 years there must be a clearer explanation?
Quote:7. What is value?A social relationship between people which expresses itself as a material relationship between things. The value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary abstract labour time needed for its production and reproduction. Price is the monetary expression of value.8. What is exchange value? A relative magnitude which expresses the relationship between two commodities. The proportion in which commodities tend to exchange with each other depends upon the amount of socially necessary labour-time spent in producing them. Commodities actually sell at market prices that rise and fall according to market conditions around a point regulated by their valueYMS, I'm sorry I should have been cleareer in my question.What I was getting at is, what value is there in knowing "What is value" in the task of getting the socialist message across to as many people as possible? What difference will it make to the average person etc? How important is it to know such a thing? That's what I was getting at.
Alan, I know where you are coming from. You are treading a dangerous path. Not long after I joined this site I thought it a good idea to get to grips with what is going wrong and I got my head bit off. I'm now seen as a trouble maker by some.
Something about the last line in the opening post suggests to me that this is a statement only, that there will be no backing up of the position. "Share it now. Like it while you're at it."It's probably been posted on a number of political forum sites, if it resonates with some, as no doubt it will, they may be inclined to share it and so it has achieved its intention.As Jondwhite pointed out, the supposed rigid lines of racist ideology are often twisted out of shape to accommodate the acquisition of profit. Something the adherents of racist ideology so often fail to grasp.
I'm in a comradely mood today LBird, so I'll go with Light of the Universe.Seriously though, I just don't get it when people engage with you on a thread and then blame you for ruining it. It's like they see their own part in the unfolding situation as being totally blameless.
My race, is the human race. However I will say I was pretty good at the 100 meters sprint when I was a gangly teenager at school.
Surely DJP, if a person posts something on a thread that others find annoying or "disruptive", the others don't have to engage. That's why I said it takes two to tango.Many moons ago I argued that the likes of "off topic" was a minor irritation, because multiple conversations can be going on at once on the same thread as people engage with and ignore whomever they so choose.You and others are drawn like moths to a flame when it comes to LBird, but unlike the proverbial moth, you do have a choice.Calling for a ban on people because you find them annoying is a slippery slope. It'll probably be my head next.As for Libcom, what are you saying about it in comparison to this forum?
DJPSo what is it you want or wanted from this thread? Is your discussion on Libcom really less doomed than here?You seem to have given up pretty quickly, after a set to with LBird that needn't have happened in the first place. It takes two to tango, as they say.So come on, get back into the saddle. If there is something to this, it could go some way to help explain why we have such difficulty getting our brand of socialism across to people and could possibly help to enhance propaganda tactics.
The most interesting thing about the 5 so called logical fallacies, is that they are not that interesting.Like LBird sys they are ideologically in favour of the prevailing socio economic system, as the emphasis of the "science" is that we are hard wired to behave the way we behave.The science:Modern society is the way it is today, because evolution wired us up, not to accept when we're wrong, to seek to dominate or win, to be untrusting towards others. So society and our present behaviour must be the way it is because of our early evolution.My favourite is the following:
Quote:"'Reasoning doesn't have this function of helping us to get better beliefs and make better decisions,' said Hugo Mercier, who is a co-author of the journal article, with Dan Sperber. 'It was a purely social phenomenon. It evolved to help us convince others and to be careful when others try to convince us.' Truth and accuracy were beside the point."Notice the "it was" "it evolved" and "were" in relation to evolution, as if evolution for humans ended abruptly when we first left the trees, that it fixed our brain as well as our mental and social abilities as we know them today. It's essentially "evolutionary psychology" in the vein of Pinker. That our brains and henceforth our social behaviour only evolved to deal with our primitive environment and that it can't adapt so well to modern society.But then I've just proven the idea behind the article, as I disagree with it.
Pulled this off Wikipedia
Wikipedia wrote:In sociology, racialization or ethnicization is the processes of ascribing ethnic or racial identities to a relationship, social practice, or group that did not identify itself as such.[1] Racialization and ethnicization is often born out of the interaction of a group with a group that it dominates and ascribes identity for the purpose of continued domination. While it is often born out of domination, the racialized and ethnicized group often gradually identifies with and even embraces the ascribed identity and thus becomes a self-ascribed race or ethnicity. These processes have been common across the history of imperialism, nationalism, and racial and ethnic hierarchies.The question is, does this identity come from the author of the article or is it something they are drawing attention to? The following quote further into the article suggests to me that the author attributes the process of racialization to the authorities.
Quote:There are legitimate concerns in the Afrikan community and among police accountability advocates about racist policing in racialized working-class communities. After years of denial by former police chiefs and police union bosses as well as elected and appointed officials, racial profiling of Afrikans by the cops in Toronto is now a well-documented fact.Not really. The picture suggests a stereotype of ignorant, nationalistic, working class people. But as we know, there is more to the working class than that which the picture suggests.
