stuartw2112
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Is there anything wrong with not drinking alcohol, drinking carrot juice, eating vegetables or wearing sandals? Doesn't homeopathy do a great deal of good, working at least as well as placebo (which works surprisingly well, even if you know it's placebo, probably because merely to be listened to and sympathised with does you more good than the average trip to the reductionist materialist GP). As for Rush, better leave that to another thread!
Excellent point Darren, but you're forgetting that your taste in music is wrong and punk was just awful.
Bill's piece in the Standard is brilliant. But wouldn't a "return to the 1960s" be a thrilling prospect for radicals and socialists of all stripes? Could the song so beloved of Corbyn and party members have come out of any other decade? I'm voting Corbyn, if only for the musical prospects. (Only slightly a joke – the music of the period was made possible by full employment and the welfare state.)
“Some people are more certain of everything than I am of anything”http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/96a620a8-3a8d-11e5-bbd1-b37bc06f590c.html?siteedition=uk#axzz3hviIksET
I wonder whether it's possible for someone who doesn't agree with the party's objective to nevertheless have interesting things to say and not be a complete dupe and fool and idiot? I don't know, just wondering.
OK, thanks Robin, nothing to add for now. I may be confused, but the ideas I'm trying to get over aren't so much so. Anyone interested in what I'm trying but failing to get over might like to try:From Marx to Mises by David Ramsay Steele The Economics of Feasible Socialism by Alec NoveSmall Is Beautiful by EF SchumacherWhat the Buddha Taught by Walpola Sri RahulaOver and out for now, and all the best
Thanks for the sermon Alan, very uplifting! I'm very sorry to hear about your wife. And I don't doubt the things you think I do, but no doubt I have not made myself very clear. That's because I'm not all that clear in my own mind what I do think. But thanks everyone for indulging me. I am off on holiday very soon, but see you all down the road no doubt. All the best
I've already given the answer to your question YMS. All societies organise some things communistically (internal organisation of capitalist firms say). None organise everything like that (you can help yourself to the stationery cupboard, but not to the coal stocks at a mine – even if that mine belongs to "the workers").
Ha, it is interesting that LB is chipping in here, isn't it? LB is wide open to the Hayekian/Misean critique. (Democracy adds enormous complications to a Stalinist command economy, but does nothing to resolve the issues.) The Robin/YMS point of view has been developed in trying to answer that critique, ie, to take into account consumer needs and markets and coordination and all the rest of it. So for LB it's turned basically into free market capitalism. Interesting!
Re Engels, yes, but no one is denying that communism in some form is possible and desirable. The argument is only that it is not possible to organise global modern industrial society entirely on that basis.
Some wags in the SPGB, when I was a member, used to dub "Socialist As A Practical Alternative", one of the party's pamphlets, as "Socialism: Practically The Same As Capitalism". I'm reminded of that gag now. You are asking us to believe that the global production line could be taken over, and that instead of using the current system of markets and states to coordinate it all, we'll put in place a better system that will work just as well if not better. So, all those people who can't currently afford an iPhone can have one, and all those people going to be bed hungry tonight can have steak and chips tomorrow. As in everything in economics, though, there's a trade off. Because after you've wolfed down your steak and chips, you'll be getting a bleep from somewhere telling you that the mine you work in is going to need to produce an extra few million tonnes of iron ore this year because of the soaring demand for cars in Africa. So you've got to put your knife and fork down and rush off to put in some overtime. With no incentive to do that apart from your fellow feeling for your African comrades, who you've never seen or met and never will do. And with no command structure to force you if you feel like a lie in instead, perhaps to sleep off all that meat. But never mind, you'll just do it because you're an angel, because you 'understand and want' socialism, and after all, the steak warehouse is open 24/7, so it's swings and roundabouts.No doubt this betrays the fact that I've never ever understood the SPGB case at all, that my argument is, as Robin likes to remind me, "preposterous", "ridiculous", etc, etc. But has it never occured to Robin that millions and millions of people, all of whom have some understanding of and desire for socialism, might differ with him, or with the "non-market market" he has created, on the desirability of those million tonnes? Clearly not, since this is the "only conceivable" way out of capitalism, and Robin has already worked out that such preposterous, ridiculous problems just won't arise because, well, because they're silly, dammit, and I won't have any silliness spoiling my lovely dreams of the future.I'm more sceptical. But not depressed, because, contrary to Robin's confidence, other ideas are absolutely "conceivable". And doable.
