stuartw2112
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By the way, when I said "all the billionaires", I obviously meant "three or four billionaires", but you see the point!Yes, Alan, I think you have me roughly right. Nove, for example, says he has absolutely no problem accepting the case for full communism if we accept 1. abundance and 2. the existence of "Socialist New Men", who are prepared to act as angels and not as human beings. (I'm putting my own spin on it and from memory, but I think this is roughly right.) So, I agree with him. Abundance, literally speaking, is a nonsense. Only makes sense spiritually. The development of Socialist New Men, too, are a hopeless dream within a materialistic/realist/cynical/hardheaded worldview. Only makes sense religiously.So, yes, Socialism is completely impossible. Long live socialism!(PS Love Dietzgen's materialist cosmicness. It's more or less exactly what Buddhism says as far as I can see.)
To take your argument at its word, then, there's no need for a Marxist party presumably. All we need to do is get investors to accept massive losses instead of profits? (Not as laughable as it sounds since all the billionaires are giving their money away, setting up charities and begging governments to tax them more.)
Hi Robin,Yes indeed, this is exactly the "error" I've fallen into, though obviously I don't share your judgement of the arguments! I accept the argument that, with the best will in the world, any attempt to seize state power and implement full communism will see the economy lunge disastrously down a Bolshevik type road. You obviously cannot object to the possibility of this in principle, for it's precisely analagous what you say happens to well-meaning types who take over capitalist governments.There are dangers lurking in the whole Marxian project: The first is that modern industrial society can be or should be subject to conscious control and planning, and that this will give better results than the spontaneous order created by the market. For me, this danger is not in the least averted by someone assuring us that the planning will be democratic, or that the centralising impetus will be checked by all kinds of decentralising good intentions. The centralising logic is inherent in the whole argument and intent. The second is that Marxists are thoroughly opposed to creating blueprints for the future. But neverthess, they are intent on taking state power in order to usher in the future society. This means that, when Marxists take power, they have absolutely no idea what they are supposed to do with it. But they have power, they have an idea that they are in the right and God (sorry, History) is on their side, that they must keep their enemies in check and start planning the economy so it works for the benefit of everyone. A chilling prospect. In other words, I now accept totally that Stalinism is a warning to all socialists, even those who strenuously reject Stalinism and are jolly nice chaps.These are not original arguments, obviously, but they strike me as convincing. Convincing as they are, they are not to me depressing. It doesn't stop me being a libertarian socialist. On the contrary, it frees one from unrealistic hopes and expectations and makes one sensitive to the dangers in authoritarianism of all kinds (including the authoritarianism of those who are damn sure they've got it all sussed out).
Thank you Alan – you are spot on, that's exactly what I've been getting at. That's the "spiritual" angle (if you want to call it that, though you'll only put Adam off listening).On the material plane, perhaps I might switch to Graeberian terms to get a more sympathetic hearing. All socieities have things that they organise on the basis of hierarchy and tradition, things they organise communistically (from each according to ability, to each according to need), things the organise on the basis of equality and exchange. I'm sceptical that modern industrial society can be organised on communist lines, or that it would be desirable if it could be. But unless you're a "totalitarian, all at once" type, this doesn't affect ones political activity as a socialist/anarchist/libertarian all that much. You just push for progressive change in any area and any small way you can.
Yes, I'm using "abundance" in two different, contradictory ways. If you think that in itself destroys the argument, then just pick another word that you like.The idea that human wants are infinite and insatiable cannot be "bourgeois" since identification of the problem is at least 2,500 years old, if not more. We are hungry ghosts with infinite bellies. Capitalism's craziness is in the belief that these can be satisfied and then we'll be happy. In this sense, (free access) socialism is capitalism's deluded child.
Fair dos. I just reread your post and couldn't find anything objectional in it at all. Must have been the mood of the moment!
I don't have a key concept and I've made my arguments already. Have nothing to add for now. All the best
LB: I'm happy to answer your questions, but could you first please tell me your sex, age, class, occupation, and so on, so I can know where you're coming from ideologically?
I don't buy the pscychology stuff I'm afraid. I wouldn't deny that we have a psychology, and obviously an evolved one, and that this must determine our decision-making, including in ways that aren't rational. But the line of argument presented by Meel seems to point in dangerous directions. Why do all these people not agree with me when what I think is so obviously rational and right? Must be cos they is mental in some way. Scary political conclusions may follow. So, one reason why most people reject socialist arguments may be for the simple reason that the arguments are wrong or shoddy, or do not chime with people's sense of right and wrong. "Give everyone stuff for free," sounds not only like a dream, but morally wrong and environmentally and economically dangerous. "Everyone should work and receive rewards according to their desert," sounds realistic, desirable and morally upright.Of course, maybe socialists are right and conservatives wrong. But you have to make the argument, and make it more and more convincing. You can't just say, why are these irrational fools disagreeing with me? (I'm not saying Meel thinks like this, it just seems a worryingly short leap to such conclusions for me.)
I didn't say my own individual mind. I just said my mind. Which obviously is conditioned by the historical period I'm living in, cultural norms, my biology, my values, etc. What I want to know is why you don't also tells us about these things when you say you're a "Democratic Communist" as an explanation of how your mind is conditioned. Why don't you also say (guessing): I'm a Democratic Communist, and a man, age 45, who was brought up in a working class household in Birmingham, whose parents were Labour supporters and very loving and supportive when I was growing up, who works as a clerk in an office, who is never happier than when out in the countryside, eating chocolate, etc, etc, etc….
If you can forgive the narcissism, this is a piece I wrote on related themes recently. It embarrasses me to think of the gap between my prescriptions and my own behaviour, but I hope it's of interest. What is socialist consciousness? “… socialist consciousness requires workers to experience ‘a process of complete mental reconstruction. Years of thoroughly impregnated prejudices and attitudes towards social behaviour must be overcome . . . the whole ideology of capitalism will be rejected lock, stock and barrel.’ Images of The New Socialist Man come to mind – but socialists do need to think very carefully about this question of what it means to have achieved the necessary consciousness for social liberation.”–Steve Coleman, ‘Impossibilism’ The Socialist Party of Great Britain stands alone among socialists and Marxists in its peculiar insistence on the importance of “socialist consciousness”. Socialism, in this view, is impossible unless and until a majority of the world’s workers undergo a “process of mental reconstruction”. To put it another way, that the inner transformation of individuals is more important than, and logically prior to, any meaningful transformation in the structures and institutions of the outer world. This may be a peculiar point of view, but it is surely the right one. An unaddressed question, however, is precisely what is meant by socialist consciousness and how it is to be achieved. Steve Coleman, quoting an author in the Socialist Standard, puts his finger on it (see epigraph above). Socialist consciousness is a “process of complete mental reconstruction”, one where years (indeed millennia) of “thoroughly impregnated prejudices and attitudes towards social behaviour” are decisively overcome. Socialists must, as Coleman rightly says, “think very carefully” about what all this might mean. In his own essay, Coleman makes the observation and lets the thinking stop there. He doesn’t tell us what socialist consciousness is or how it is to be achieved beyond stating that it is a matter of “understanding” and “desire”, before going on to imply that the task is mostly one of propaganda and education and political organisation. This is perhaps necessary but surely inadequate, as we shall explore below. Socialism really is impossibleOne way of thinking about this is to imagine, for the sake of argument, that “socialist consciousness”, whatever it may be, really is not possible under capitalism, as the Leninists insist. The logical conclusion, if this were so, is that socialism would be impossible too. Grasping this point will help us understand and sympathise with every right-wing and common-sensical objection to socialism we’ve ever heard. To give just the most obvious examples, human nature, as it manifests in capitalist societies, clearly does make socialism an unlikely proposition. Greed and violence really does make stateless abundance and free access improbable ways of organising economies. Revolutions really must end in the establishment of new tyrannies. A party taking power in the name of the workers really would end up having to impose a dictatorship. The SPGB links arms with socialism’s opponents on every point. Having linked arms with our new anti-socialist friends, perhaps we might sit down to consider together what “socialist consciousness” might be, ie, what kind of inner transformation might turn socialism from a “nice idea” into a real practical possibility. It’s not what you think it isTo the knowledge of this writer, very little has been written, either within or without the party, on what socialist consciousness might mean. A more common conception among Marxists generally is the related idea of “class consciousness”. But by this seems to be meant little more than knowledge or awareness that one is part of a social class. We must all surely know of people who have such awareness, but are nevertheless not socialists. Indeed, there’s no obvious reason why such a class-conscious person might not also be a Tory, depending on their political views and upbringing, precise position in class hierarchies, and so on. Class consciousness is clearly not necessarily much help to us. Is it, then, a matter of “understanding” or “desire”, as Coleman puts it? The way to see that it is not is to conduct a scientific experiment of our own. Think of a person you know who lays claim to a good understanding of socialist issues – perhaps they’ve read every word of Marx and Engels and Morris and so on – and who has a burning desire for socialism. Now closely watch that person as they conduct themselves in social life. Do they, to use Coleman’s words again, demonstrate by their actions that they have overcome, lock, stock and barrel, impregnated prejudices and attitudes towards social behaviour? Have they achieved a “complete mental reconstruction”? Have they achieved “the necessary consciousness for social liberation”? Whether the person you are observing is yourself or your worst enemy doesn’t in the end matter, and in neither case is moral judgement or censure implied. If your subject is the worst arsehole and hypocrite imaginable, he or she is only sharing in the general social madness, and is no doubt nevertheless very nice indeed to their dog. But while we refrain from judging, let us nevertheless continue to observe closely and carefully. Let us see what is there, and think about the implications. You might see that socialist “understanding” and “desire” has, if anything, made us worse. Our superior understanding alienates us from our fellow workers, and we get frustrated and angry that they can’t see as we do. Our desire for socialism burns to anger at the social injustices we must live with every day, and we turn into monsters of negativity and aggression. Frustration, anger, pride in superior knowledge, alienation from our fellow man, negativity, aggression – are these the characteristics of the “necessary consciousness for social liberation”? Surely not. If socialist consciousness isn’t then what we think it is or what we desire, what is it? What I would like to suggest is that socialist consciousness is what arises spontaneously and without volition from a total awareness of our situation. That starts with us as individuals – the exercise I suggested above needs to be continued. Proceed carefully and slowly, for such scientific observation demands great skill and subtlety and patience. Watch and appreciate every aspect of your own consciousness and experience – the thinking and the emotions, and how they feed each other; your desire to be proved right; to do the right thing… and get applause for it; the aggression and irritability; the constant search for gratification and entertainment; your childishness when you don’t get your own way in even the slightest degree; your shyness and desire to assert yourself; your pride in achievement; your desire to go out and change the world, and to curl up in a darkened room and forget the whole thing. That’s the internal aspect. We hardly need to go into the external aspects when all we have to do is switch on the news. But make this too part of your scientific experiment, your awareness of the world we live in – the world we help to create and sustain everyday by our thoughts and our actions. The wars. The violence. The greed. The stupidity. The ecological destruction. The ugliness. The pettiness. The class struggle. The SPGB is quite right to insist, against other Marxists, than socialist consciousness does not arise spontaneously out of the class struggle, but rather out of our consciousness of and reflection on the total situation we find ourselves in. This then is our answer to the question in the title. Out of the total awareness of our total situation arises a consciousness adequate to that situation – a direct and immediate consequence of that awareness is that we grow up and become and act as responsible adults in this crazy and immature world. Those who were hoping for an intellectually satisfying answer to the question might be very disappointed by this anti-climax. But the truth is that the whole question of consciousness is a very tricky one scientifically and philosophically. As a practical matter, however, we can just accept the unsatisfactoriness of it. We may not quite be able to grasp consciousness – let alone socialist consciousness – scientifically or intellectually, but consciousness is the one thing we have good access to and a measure of control over from the inside. So let’s start with what we have – the common inheritance of all humanity – and begin our study of ourselves, from the inside, to see whether the answer to the possibility of socialism doesn’t lie within. Although we don’t really know what socialist consciousness is, nevertheless “by their fruits ye shall know them”. We know it when we see it. We know it by its signs – friendliness, kindliness, patience, compassion, service, work freely given without expectation of reward, moderation, open mindedness, good heartedness, forgiveness, altruism, sharing, generosity. When socialist consciousness comes into this world, then so too inevitably does socialism.
YMS: Possibly, but my broader point is that it is internal changes that are most important – ie, we should think more about what it might mean to self-actualise, rather than how we could provide the bloater tinkering with his Death Star with more sausages. Which is not necessarily at odds with the SPGB view, with all its talk of "consciousness", though it doesn't have much to say about what that means.LB: I'm not using any political theory to understand these things, just my mind. But I think we've been here before.
Alan: I'm certainly still up for pints of ale, but only if it's organic real ale from local craft brewery.
I tried to answer your questions in my own words in my post, and not sure I have much to add. I'd just recommend reading the first two chapters of Nove's book, which were shocking eye-openers to me. Link: http://digamo.free.fr/nove91.pdfLB: Good points actually, mostly agree, except democracy is no answer to the economic question. See link above.That's a very nice post Alan and I'm pleased to say I agree wholeheartedly with almost all of it! It just leaves me then to try to explain as shortly as possible where I'm coming from. Free-access socialism is, as I think everyone agrees, only possible on the basis of material abundance. But abundance is unfeasible. In relation to human desires and to the competing uses to which resources and time and energy may be put, resources are always scarce. You need then a method of deciding how to put scarce resources to use. The market provides such a method. Others may be possible, but are unproven (or proven to be disastrous). Even if it were possible, the attempt to satisfy infinite human desires on the basis of the provision of abundance would surely lead to ecocide – as our current system of state capitalism is doing. But there is another way to abundance – the practice of satisfying our needs in a minimal way while realising that the way to human happiness is not actually the pursuit of material goods or the satisfaction of all our desires and sensual pleasures, but the pursuit instead of a good life where we take care of one another. The sort of thing Marxists everywhere dismiss as sandal-wearing lentil-munching hippy nonsense because for some reason they want to seem as cynical and materialistic and hardheaded as the capitalists and military. The development of a practice, a way of life and a politics that is in tune with these insights has fallen I believe to the spiritual traditions and to green philosophy and politics. What's most impressive about the latter is its attempt to include all levels of life in its analysis – from what individuals can do in the here and now to the broadest global levels – and including serious thinking about the problem of transition. But the main reason I've become a Green is because I wanted to fulfil a prediction Darren O'Neill made a few years ago that that is where I'd end up. He's smart that guy!
