Sympo
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Hud955 wrote:
"I don''t think that religion creates class division. Religion is used to justify or excuse class division, it is also used to motivate others to act in the interests of elites."Just to be clear, what I meant with "class division" was "members of a class who don't identify their interest as identical to those class members of a different faith, race, nationality etc". I didn't mean "when people of a society are divided in classes". I guess I could have used a better phrase (though I can't really think of one at the moment)."You cannot serve two interests, your own and those of your masters. Those that can be scared or intimidated by religious claims are also less likely to make a firm committment to socialism."I agree with you. A religious person who blindly obeys a religious authority is probably going to be told a bunch of anti-socialist stuff (Khomeini said for example that Islam was in favor of private property)."But people with looser forms of religious belief and less commitment to authority might well come to recognise their class interests and take a clear class view."What is your personal opinion on letting people of "loose" religious beliefs enter a World Socialist party? As I have understood it the present policy is to not let any religious person in, regardless of how strict they are.
I didn't read it that thoroughly but I probably will some time later. The part about "insulting the meat" was interesting (which commie doesn't love reading about the San people?).The idea that cereals lead to the formation of states was also pretty interesting. Though I can't say I have the knowledge to agree or disagree with this.
Hud955 wrote:Hi Hud955, thanks for contributing to the discussion!"there is nothing to prevent them taking the conclusions of Marx's materialist analysis and reinterpreting them ideologically, so that their class interests end up bing expressed through an ethical or even a religious lens."It's interesting that you think that religious people can (illogically) combine their faith with the want to establish Socialism."Marxian materialism presents socialism as the work of a class conscious working class who have identified their class interests. The more their minds are clouded by diverting ideologies like religion, however, the more difficult gaining that consciousness will be."Is religion inherently a thing that produces great class division? I totally see how Jihadism greately hinders socialist consciousness ("it is righteous to kill infidels"), but what about people like Nasser? To be clear, I don't think Nasser was a socialist. But would it be that hard for someone of similar religious beliefs to adopt a socialist mindset?"It doesn't mean that some religious individuals can't see through to the realities of their class position. It just means that for the working class as a whole religion makes obtaining that consciousness harder."Does this mean that you see Socialism as being established by a great majority of atheists?
Marcos wrote:Go to our website and read everything about religionlol I already haveSteve Coleman of the SPGB wrote that Gerrard Winstanley (a member of the Diggers) "can well be described as England's first articulate socialist." (source: Book Review: 'Left-Wing Democracy in the English Civil War' | The Socialist Party of Great Britain)What's your personal view on the Diggers? In case anyone visiting this thread hasn't heard of them:Diggers – Wikipedia
Marcos wrote:Socialism is based on the materialist conception of historyWhat if I want to establish a socialist (or quasi-socialist) society but I'm a Christian? Would this be impossible? Then how does one explain the Diggers?
Why can't a Christian, a Muslim or a Sikh be in favor of establishing a classless, stateless society where the means of production are democratically controlled?Here's from a 2003 conference:"Socialists hold that we live only once. Religious people believe in some afterlife. Clearly the two are incompatible.'"If it said "Marxists" instead of "socialists" then I might've agreed, but I'm not sure it's correct to say that atheism is a necessary part of socialism.What about the Diggers? Sure, they were utopians, but they still wanted to establish a type of egalitarian society. Why can't religious people today want to establish Socialism?Just to make things clear: I'm an atheist.
Marcos wrote:Probably, this is the best answer to your question:https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/socialism-and-religionhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/depth-articles/religionI am under the impression that some of the articles say different things.Here's a quote from Socialism and Religion:"Religion won’t disappear simply because Secularists and Freethinkers, or for that matter Socialists, refute it as untrue. It will only disappear when people are in a position to control the production of their means of life. This requires the end of the class ownership[…]"Which to me sounds like it's saying that religion as a whole will only dissappear after the end of class ownership.But here's what Religion: dying but not yet dead has to say:"In order to grasp the urgent need for and the possibility of achieving major social change one must first be able to think clearly and to understand just how capitalism works – or, quite often, doesn't. This is something men and women are much less able to do if their heads are full of religious fantasy and their thinking is correspondingly irrational."Which to me sounds like it's saying that religious people are incapable of becoming socialists, which implies that religion has to dissappear before we can establish Socialism.Am I misintepreting what's being written?What is your personal opinion on the subject of religion, Marcos?
DJP wrote:"I'd gladly answer any more questions later.."Thanks"Industries with a higher labour element are not necessarily going to be more profitable than those with a lower one. See the above."You wrote that profit rates are measurable, but is there some statistics about the profit rate of different industries? For the moment, let's pretend that industries with a higher labour element are more profitable than those with a lower one.Wouldn't it be impossible for Capitalism to function if capitalists didn't invest in industries with a higher element of constant capital?If so, wouldn't it be reasonable for capitalists to "sacrifice" some potential profit in order to be able to make the continuation of Capitalism possible? After all, even if they get a lower rate of profit, they would still make a net profit. It would just be lower than of the industries with a higher element of variable capital.
DJP wrote:"An individual enterprise does not receive the value it produces. In effect all value that is produced in the economy goes into a pot, called the market, and this value is distributed amongst the individual capitals according to market competition."I have some difficulty in seeing how exactly the value created by specific enterprises find its way into the pot."But if one sector of industry continually had better returns to invested money, that is the only sector people would bother investing in."Is it actually possible for every capitalist to only invest in industries where the vc is much larger than the cc?
DJP wrote:I think you might have misunderstood.The claim isn't that at any single moment in time every industry is going to have the same rate of profit.But that over time profit rates will tend to converge due to the workings of the market.I get that Marx doesn't argue that every industry gets the same rate of profit at any single moment.But how do we know that (over time) profit rates tend to converge?Is my description of kapitalism101's explanation correct? If so, how do we know that capitalists from industry A (with a lot of cc) invest in industry B (that has less cc)?
ALB wrote:In practice the price of a commodity oscillates due to short term changes in supply and demand not around its value but around its price of production I.e its cost of production plus the average rate of profit. It corresponds to what Adam Smith called it's "natural price", its longer run equilibrium priceOkay, so price oscillates around the price of production and not value, I'll try to remember that.How do we know that industries tend to have a similar rate of profit? Or have I misunderstood kapitalism101 when I intepret him as saying that the reason industries that produce more surplus value don't tend to make a much larger profit than those industries that percentually have less variable capital and more constant capital, is that the capitalists who own the factory filled with constant capital buy shares in the factory filled with variable capital?
alanjjohnstone wrote:Another example of suppression of free thought.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/richard-dawkins-islam-muslims-islamophobic-row-twitter-tweets-atheist-kpfa-us-university-of-a7854751.htmlHow is a radio station changing their mind about an interview "supression of free thought"?Off topic, Dawkins has said some stupid stuff about Muslims and Islam ("all Muslims are obliged to personally denounce Al Qaeda", "not many Muslims has won Nobel Prizes lol", "I salute Geert Wilders"). Not that he hasn't written good stuff about Islam.
How can the production of goods predate the set of relationships/actions that go into producing those goods?
