stuartw2112
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I’m not a party member and have no opinion on what the party should do or not do. I can’t see, though, what is counter-productive or misinformed about Occupy Norwich’s action. Seems to me that they are part of an effort (a global effort, more successful in some places than others, depending on the level and militancy of such efforts) to impose the losses (inevitable devaluation) of the crisis more on the ruling class than on the working class. Good luck to them.
You’re right, he’s not really a Marxist I suppose. I meant he’s a “sort of” Marxist in the only way it is sensible to be, ie, he is influenced by Marx, but makes his own mind up, based on the evidence.You’ll have to follow my blog and find out when I do, but I’m not sure you’re right that he has a “quite different” theory of money. At one point, if I remember rightly, when I read (most of) the book before, he says something like “So is money a commodity or debt? The answer, of course, is both.” Marx’s account of money (in Capital) is abstract, and based on the speculations of the political economists. Graeber acknowledges the genius of this. But then, he says, you have to ask: are these speculations reasonable, do they have any basis in history or anthropology? His answer is, No.Relatedly, what do you make of this, specifically the claim that money did not exist in the Soviet Union?http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004736Cheers
Yes, interesting video, making many of the same arguments as Graeber, even if coming from different political perspectives.Graeber is not only some sort of anarchist, but some sort of Marxist, in the sense that he is well read in, and sympathetic to, Marx. He argues that wage slavery is just a transformation of the usual kind, and we need to abolish the wages system (he is a member of the IWW). As an anarchist and normal human being, he also argues that’s there’s all kinds of other things we can do to make this a better world to live in while we’re organising and arguing for more radical change.I discuss Graeber’s book chapter by chapter (currently reading chapter 3) at myblog below.Cheers
Ha ha ha, thanks for sharing that Gnome! Just goes to show how *hilariously* ill-informed some people are. I suppose the guy who made the image relies for his information on the lamestream media.http://www.alternet.org/story/153548/10_winning_moments_for_the_99_in_2011
Would I support and/or vote for any of those people in certain circumstances? Possibly, it all depends. But in any case, voting in an election is only a very tiny and relatively unimportant part of political activity, including Chomsky’s. Was it Chomsky who said it’s not the ballot box that counts but the brain box? It might as well have been.
Chomsky does not feed illusions. He says very clearly, and over and over again, that the Republicans and the Democrats represent two wings of the Business Party, and that it won’t make a huge amount of difference who gets in, certainly not when it comes to foreign policy and so on. But although it won’t make a huge amount of difference, it will make a small amount of difference (Chomsky quotes empirical evidence to support this) to some of the poorest people in the country. So, do you care? They do. Chomsky’s position on voting is born out of compassion and class solidarity. Supporting the lesser evil is a pretty obviously sensible and decent thing to do.
DJP: “But why would you expect it to be any other way? I think there is a tendency for people to project their own wishes on to large and visible movements and then to feel disappointed when they do not act in the way they hoped.”Absolutely right.And in reply to ALB, the Occupy the London Stock Exchange camp is over. The Occupy movement as a whole, here too but especially in the States, is as lively as ever: so lively it’s impossible to keep up with everything that’s going on.
Hi DJP,Chris Knight’s views are eccentric, and not generally accepted among his peers. The most recent (friendly) criticism I read was by human origins specialist Chris Stringer, who said that Knight’s answers are ingenious, but are answers to the wrong questions. Having said that, no one among his peers doubts that his (eccentric) views are nevertheless built solely on widely accepted theories and on the most up to date findings in the relevant fields (primatology, archaeology, anthropology, etc). It’s a long time since I’ve read it but I think I’d still recommend Chris Knight’s Blood Relations (1991) for the same kind of reasons that Dawkins and other scientists recommend Roger Penrose’s books on consciousness: even if the central eccentric idea is wrong, you’ll nevertheless learn a lot about the present(ish) state of play in science by reading it. It is also an attempt (to answer your first question) to rescue Engels/Morgan and defend the general validity of their ideas.Anthropologist David Graeber’s books are also worth pursuing, particularly his new one on Debt, which mentions Morgan in passing.CheersStuart
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” There’s no end of fools who storm in to try and get one over on Chomsky, I’ve never yet seen anyone succeed. Chomsky is in fact always accurate, as his replies to his critics make abundantly clear, and you can hardly hold him responsible for what other people make of his work.He admits himself that his talks and writing style are boring, and says that’s how he likes it, because he wants people to consider the issues, and make up their minds for themselves, not be swayed by rhetorical/oratorical brilliance. Having said that, who can fail to be amused and impressed at how he takes people apart in debate, merely by calmly referring to the plain facts? I particularly enjoy his demolition of Andrew Marr:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu1ONVg362o
PS Check out this tiny bunch of middle-class anarchists, wasting their time with pointless reformism. What concrete thing do they think they’re going to achieve? It’s not as if the right to peacefully assemble and deliberate democratically without being brutally broken up by the police matters from the point of view of socialism,does it? If only they had some kind of correct theory to work by instead. And I bet some of them were Christians. Losers. Ho hum.http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/3/video_report_from_streets_of_oakland
Hi Alan,Nice post. I don’t agree with it, but it was well argued. And I think you’ve spotted something that I’m becoming more and more aware of: that my position is essentially Chomskyan, anarchist if you like. It’s me that’s in the wrong party, not all you lot.One final point: I agree that you as an individual and the party as an organisation should be a part of the debate, if it wants to be. But in my view, we have more to learn from Occupy than they have to learn from us. There’s no recognition in your post or in anything the party ever says or does that it has anything to learn. That’s what I mean when I say that there is more delusion and ignorance inside the party than outside it. Most of its members are essentially fundamentalist. The good news is that socialist consciousness is also more prevalent outside the party than inside it, which is what we’ve all always wanted.All the best to you allStuart
I quite agree, I too can’t at all understand the hostility directed towards the Occupy movement, or the felt need on the part of socialists to get their backs up by telling them they’re all wasting their time.
What concrete things have the Occupy movement achieved? Seriously? Is this a serious question?So that’s what all this debate has been about? Members are just totally ignorant of what’s been achieved?Well, OK, I suppose that’s no crime. If you rely on the mainstream media for your information, you wouldn’t know what’s happening (although, to be fair, The Guardian, Russia Today and Al Jazeera haven’t been too bad). Off you go then, leave this forum, go and check it out. Come back when you’ve learnt something. For example, I don’t suppose you know that, when the Occupy Oakland camp was brutally suppressed by the police and cleared, it came back in greater numbers the next night and retook the square? That in the fight a cop shot an Iraq veteran in the head, very near killing him? That in response, a general assembly declared a general strike, and that this strike succeeded in shutting down a major port? No? Of no interest? Send them a leaflet titled “Introducing the SPGB”? Any “theories” that might be of use that we can send them? I’m all ears…
“It is foolish to think that the socialist party is the source of revolutionary consciousness. It is equally foolish to think that these ‘Occupy’ camps will automatically lead to an upsurge in socialist understanding.”I’m glad you stand against the first foolishness. As for the second, I don’t know anyone who belives that anything in social life happens “automatically”, so I’m not sure who it’s aimed at.”As I said before consciousness is an expression of material circumstances. Therefore, there is as much to gain (in fact more) by communicating with people who are not involved in these camps as there is with those that are. Our gaze should be on the population as a whole not just a tiny minority who are making the most noise at the minute.”Obviously true, I hear it all the time at the camps. What do you think they’re doing there if not trying, with a great deal more success than we have ever had, to reach out to the rest of the population?”As a group of proles (and some capitalists) who have come to the conclusion that the market system is the root cause and / or an obstacle to the solution of social problems today; we can help ourselves and others who have came to a similar position to clarify their ideas, and so push the direction further. In fact this is the only thing we can do.”I hope you’re right and that Socialist Party members are truly interested in clarifying their confused ideas and in pushing things on. There is some evidence for this, and it is indeed a good thing. As for “this is the only thing we can do”, that is so obviously wrong I don’t know how to answer it. We can do all sorts of things.<<What in practical terms does ‘solidarity with working class struggles’ actually mean in concrete terms, in terms of action? In reality not much I feel.>>Chomsky gets asked this all the time, and it’s an extraordinary question to ask, a sign of decades of defeat and powerlessness I suppose. What we can do to promote solidarity with working class struggles is something we have to ask ourselves all the time (that is, if we are genuine socialists, if socialism really means anything), and answer honestly, and do what we can. As Chomsky says, while people in the West are asking him that, people in Latin America and other places with mass social and democratic movements instead *tell him what they are doing*. It’s time we followed the good example.<<By keeping alive the idea of a non-market post capitalist society we are acting in the interests of the whole of the proletariat, this is the most meaningful act of solidarity we can undertake.>>If it falls to a small group of elderly blokes to keep an idea alive, it’s already dead. You should blow out the candle and go home. Thankfully, as Occupy and other movements are showing, they’re not dead, they’re very much alive.<<In terms of action then, we should be doing anything and everything that makes our theories easier to be found by those who will know how to use them.>>You have a touching faith in the idea that “our theories” will be of any use to any bugger. I’m afraid it’s not a faith I share. It’s a peculiarly arrogant view when you compare what we have achieved in the past century with what Occupy Wall Street achieved in one month. It would be more fruitful by far if we studied their theories and actions, and figured out what we can learn from them.CheersStuart
“I think the most worthwhile practical support we can bring to these is a knowledge of the possibilities of going beyond the market system. So Standards and pamphlets are one way of doing this.”A knowledge of a possibility is not practical support. It’s not as if these camps are against political discussion. A major purpose of them is to start them and organise them.”The party has never claimed that ‘the revolution’ can start in parliament without first starting in the minds (and therefore actions) of the masses. Both revolutionary and reactionary-reformist forms of consciousness can be explained by the contradictory nature of social life in capitalist society.”Your point is not relevant to the point I made. Party members deny the caricature (socialism must all come through parliament) with the correct argument that, in the course of revolutionary change, all sorts of things will be going on: working class organisation, strikes, boycotts, protests, etc. Yet when faced with “all sorts of things” in a time of, if not yet revolutionary, certainly unprecedented and extremely serious change, members disapprove because it isn’t going through the channels they first thought of (as if revolutions ever do! As if Marx wasn’t as shocked as anyone by the Paris Commune!). Party members deny the caricature that they are idealist (everyone must become a socialist first in their heads) with some (correct) attempt at an explanation of changes in capitalism and struggle giving rise to socialist ideas (ie, capitalism and struggle produce socialist ideas, not the vanguard socialist party). But when faced with a situation of change and struggle and a ferment of ideas, members go back to the caricature: oh, I’m not impressed, they aren’t socialist, what we need to do is get down there with our leaflets.So which is it, comrades? Retreat to the caricatures we’ve spent so many years fighting against? Or consider instead just what “revolutionary socialism” might mean. Is it just words, hot air? Or does it mean something in practice? Might it not mean solidarity with working class struggles? I’ll answer my own question: if socialism doesn’t mean solidarity with working class struggles, then it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just hot air, or “agitated layers of air”, as Marx had it.”Revolution is of course a process and not an event, but if the Occupy camps represent a tipping-point in this process I’m not yet convinced.”As if the point is to wait to be convinced instead of jumping on the other side of the tipping point!All the bestStuart
