twc
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No it demonstrates that capitalism can cure social ills, which you claim it is doing after its fashion. That’s all that can be expected under capitalism.It’s come to a sorry pass when capitalist exploitation is not seen as the culprit.How many horrifying scenarios—and there are equally horrendous ones everywhere—do you want to attend to, after a capitalist fashion, before you get round to Socialism?And, yes, naive in not realising that your free-willed “socialist” reformer is caught in the cleft stick that Engels pops him in.Which of items 1, 2, 3 or 4 should he adopt, and watch how his action damns him.Which one, please?
Robbo wrote:It is NOT being suggested that such delegates should themselves actually propose any such legislation which would indeed be reformist.Its a question of what sort of message you are sending out by abstaining on a peice of leglislation that could mitigate but never eliminate the exploitation of workers.Robbo, my reply to you is more or less the same as that to Alan.Then you are restricting socialist delegates to voting for a capitalist framed bill, with all the baggage that entails. Not a very bright strategy for a “socialist” reformer to cripple his “socialist” drafting hands, and meekly vote on capitalist designed legislation. He’s already crossed the boundary to reformism, why not go the whole hog?Socialist delegates are in parliament to propagate the socialist case and to expose capitalist legislation for exactly what it is; not to endorse it. Endorsing (shonky) capitalist legislation just as surely “sends a message” of abject admission of socialist defeat. You seem eager to be “doing something” that “sends a message”, however capitalist at the core, instead of crafting a message that exposes the rotten core of capitalism to the light of day.Why on earth waste precious socialist time and effort in supporting the damn social system we seek to eradicate?
alanjjohnstone wrote:But, TWC, are you saying our socialist delegates … would not vote for those remedial repairs because it meant reformism I think not.On the contrary, I do think so, for the following reasons..Your confident claim is predicated upon the ignorantly naive assumption that the bill for remedial repairs will be drafted to satisfactory “socialist” standards.In the actual world of capitalism, any rational capitalist remediation bill will be drafted to meet, not “socialist” but, capitalist expectations, which necessarily conform to the capitalist conditions under which it must operate.Just look at world-wide mining remediation practices, if you seek evidence!Capitalist remediation is at best an economic compromise solution; at worst something altogether disgusting. In either case, it will necessarily fall short of “socialist” standards and satisfaction.What is our “socialist ”reformer then to do when faced with a capitalist remediation bill:Endorse the capitalist cost-cutting remediation bill, as is.Negotiate—horse trade—with the capitalist bill-framers to seek to reframe their bill to the “benefit of the working class” (and “detriment to the capitalist class”).Draft his own bill that he imagines can meet compromise “socialist” standards under prevailing capitalist constraints.Back off.If our socialist reformer drinks from any of these poisoned cups, he kills his “socialism” by:Supporting a shonky remediation process, i.e. shafting his socialist supporters.Horse-trading with [alleged labour, avowedly capitalist] political opponents, though he entered parliament expressly to oppose them.Actual reformism—the very treachery he repudiated when he stood for parliament.Enough said!Engels, who was far more prescient, wrote…
Quote:What he can do is in contrast to all his actions as hitherto practised, to all his principles and to the present interests of his party; what he ought to do cannot be achieved.In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whom conditions are ripe for domination. In the interests of the movement itself, he is compelled to defend the interests of an alien class…Whoever puts himself in this awkward position is irrevocably lost.Or, as Marx said, he will soon discover that capitalism is full of irreconcilable contradictions.So much for your breezy future “socialist” reformer, whom you unconditionally invite me to admire.To quote your own confident words back at you: “I think not.”
Quote:we do not seek to attract non-socialists wanting half-measures and gradual changes.Then there is no pressing need to pander to half-measures and gradual changes. Socialists understand.Poisoning the water supply is not regional, it’s global. Like poisoning the atmosphere, and the land. What capitalist solution can fix it?What about drying up the water supply? Pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Removing nutrient from the land? Denuding the rain forests. They are not regional. They are global!They are also systemic. The system urgently needs to be addressed over, apparently pressing, regional issues, no matter how disgusting and enraging.Think World. Think World Socialism
ajj wrote:Whatever strengthens the potential power of the working class, what keeps it healthy and virile, is a benefit to it and a benefit to the goal to achieve socialism when we have strong, physically and mentally healthy fellow-workers, in a fit state to heed our message, but more importantly to reach their own socialist conclusions, without necessarily having heard our voice.My challenge remains “by what criterion can you judge what will benefit the working class in a system that operates solely by exploiting it?"There may well be answers, but how do we judge them?Once we know how to evaluate what “benefits the working class” under capitalism, a second question intrudes—Why should the Socialist Party devote precious Socialist time and resources over the form taken by a capitalist issue whose essence remains captive to capitalist controlling conditions? Thus, returning to your provisioning of health-and-education criterion—which dismally supported social provisions we started off with—the obvious upshot is that Socialists should be actively supporting a reform of gym-for-all and after-hours schooling.But comfortably deferring this, apparently pressing, health-and-education reform to the future merely squibs this, apparently pressing, social issue now. And postponing it cannot escape simultaneously binding the Party to future reformism.Sending it off to the never-never, enshrines it in the here-and-now. It slackens the Party’s here-and-now resolve on reformism (as instanced by taking sides on capitalist referenda, etc.)Can you see the problem?Reformism, whisked off into a future time and place, lays us open to the charge of finally succumbing to the pressures of capitalism, and capitalist thought? Our ultimate capitulation after [an apparently misguided] century of opposing reformism?Why didn’t we realise the “benefits we might have conferred upon the working class” so much earlier?That’s what bothers me.
ajj wrote:We cannot bind a future party and its elected members to a policy of abstaining on every issue that comes before it when we don' know what those issues might be. The bigger the threat socialism becomes the bigger the scraps they will throw usIt’s you who are unconsciously binding a future Party to act out reformism, on a humanitarian(?) case-by-case basis. I am merely asking for a rational justification for your ready acceptance. If reformism is essential in the future, why isn’t it now? A reasonable enough, but ticklish, question.I seek clarity. Will binders of a future Party to reformism please clarify?
Alan, anyone would have to be a moron not to accept the bleeding obvious about our insignificance. That was never the putdown, and you know it.Your put down was that it’s all a little too abstract. Which one might be tempted to believe you meant, until you immediately proceed to indulge in lots of concrete instances of a situation you consider to be a little too abstract.If future reformism is really a little too abstract, then we should all rightly leave it alone. Forget the future fantasies.. I entered the fray because people were hotly defending abstract hypotheticals about future reformism.I challenged the confident pro-reform view, implying that no convincing argument—despite past scuffles–had made the case for selectively putting future reformism ahead of Socialism.All of a sudden the substantive issue of reformism ahead of Socialism becomes a little too abstract.Well, let the issue of selective future reformism over Socialism, and its attendant concrete instances, remain vapid abstractions, where they currently belong.
Tim, I don’t think the Socialist Party has to “solve” all the world’s problems in a capitalist parliament—no matter how dire the capitalist predicament.A capitalist parliament supposedly acts in the interests of its electors.If Socialists hold steadfast to their conviction that they can’t solve capitalism’s problems in capitalism, it’s downright dishonest—as well as political poison—for them to curry favour with an electorate in order to solve a problem that they advocate can’t be solved.That’s what will kill a Socialist Party stone cold motherless dead, just as it did every other party that allowed itself to succumb to reformist tactics on the urgent grounds of:just as an exception—a special case because of [pop in your exceptional circumstances here].just this time—even though we are about to establish a reformist precedent.A Socialist Party can survive the ignorant wrath of liberal humanist voters who see our stance as their betrayal.But a Socialist Party can’t hope to survive its tactical capitulation to liberal humanist fantasies. Remember, they are our, avowedly labour, political enemies. We only defeat them by opposing them.As you rightly fear, we may be kicked out of parliament on such perceived urgent (exceptional) special issues. So what? We pick ourselves up, and dust ourselves off to fight another day. Like love, the path to socialism won’t run smoothly, but it must run true to its Socialist cause, or not at all.In parliamentary confrontation over Socialism, he who bends loses. It is the electorate that must bend before Socialism.It’s no counter argument for anyone to fret that we may [shock!] be rebuffed by that humiliated product of capitalist exploitation, the electorate! What, by the prescient electorate that gave us xxx, yyy, zzz, [who shall remain nameless]!The unconscious cowardice expressed by all advocates of exceptional future reformism—apparently on case-by-case merit—is timidity over being rebuffed by the electorate.For crying out loud, of course we may be rebuffed along the way. One has every reason to think that a century of constant rebuf might have steeled us somewhat.Steadfast holding to Socialism is the only reliable, theoretically justifiable, Socialist course. And that implies: No compromise to reformism — Socialism before reformism.
ajj wrote:I simply find this all rather abstract…a few members in an organisation of negligible numbers choosing to decide what billions must do. Isn't this similar to why we are reticent about devising blueprints of socialism…it is not our task to do so, but for the future generations who have that jobDon't come the snarky put down I simply find this all rather abstract, when you just feverishly proffered a grabbag of concrete cases for which, quite apparently, you do want “a few members in an organisation of negligible numbers choosing to decide what billions must do”.Sorry to inconvenience you.When I challenged you to think carefully about your hypothetical future, which up til then you had been deliriously hypotheticising over, you backed out, because you now daren’t. So you come on all brave and dismissive.Tu l'as voulu, Georges Dandin! [You brought this upon yourself; as you have made your bed so you must lie on it—Molière]
Tim Kilgallon wrote:Twc, are you seriously saying that we should abstain from such a vote, allow the supression of free speech, the shackling of trades unions? I think the working class would be very unforgiving of such a move.Dear Tim, yes I suppose I am.Everyone else is defending reformism, i.e. voting—as a matter of socialist life and death—on purely capitalist issues, on the grounds of changed conditions.Why won’t steadfast advocacy of socialism, as now, receive its true platform in these changed conditions?Steadfast advocacy of socialism strikes me as being even more important then, when we are at last called on to demonstrate our worth. I think people, caught up in the fantasy of capitalist hypotheticals, are consciously suppressing socialist theory in place of their [quite cheap and untrammelled] imagination.Yes, this is my challenge to those who advocate reform under changed capitalist conditions.Capitalism, like a crocodile, is ever itself. Its conditions are unchanging exploitation, actually so even under hypothetical changed conditions. Capitalism can’t be reformed. As that expert on hypothetical conditions, Sir Toby Belch (or perhaps, Falstaff), quite rightly objects “I’ll reform myself no better than I am!”
robbo wrote:By reducing the rate at which it is robbed, pehaps? Isnt that of some benefit?But that flies in the face of “return on investment”, which is the driving force of capitalism, and manifests itself as the driving motive of the capitalist.A capitalist parliament, with or without socialists, has to guarantee social reproduction. But social reproduction is capitalist reproduction, and remains so, whatever the rate people are robbed at, for they are still robbed.Parliament is there to guarantee this driving force of social reproduction, i.e. to act on behalf of dear old capital expanding itself.The robbing I refer to is the essential mechanism of capital expansion, i.e. Marxian exploitation. Watch the capitalists panic when their precious market rate falls! It is life or death to those whose motive drives the system—those bearers of the will of capital to expand itself.Reducing the mere rate of robbing is a fantasy solution of liberal humanism in an illiberal inhuman world. It forgets, or fails to comprehend, that we are dealing with a dynamical process that is necessarily insatiable.We dealing with something enormous—an entire social system, or mode of production. Not fixing its minor unfixable problems.The socialist case is diametrically opposed to liberal humanism—a position that wallows in glorious defeatism.The socialist case abolishes the illiberal inhuman conditions that generate liberal humanism. Ours is a consciously victorious case.
Robbo wrote:we shall probably see a signficant shift in the patten of state spending away from such things as defence (or for that matter, splashing out 200 million quid plus on refurbishing the royal household such as has just been sanctioned) to spending on things like healthcare.When capitalism comes to this sorry pass, it is already on the ropes. Why then should Socialists palliate an agonised conscience-stricken death-fearing patient? Euthenase the poor demented creature.As to “a signficant shift in the patten of state spending away from such things as defence”…Here’s Marx on this very subject, in his 61st year, 35 years before World War I—the supreme instance of a war that “stopped all future wars”!https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/bio/media/marx/79_01_31.htm
Quote:Question: But supposing that the rulers of Europe came to an understanding amongst themselves for a reduction of armaments which might greatly relieve the burden on the people what would become of the Revolution which you expect it one day to bring about?Marx: Ah, they can't do that. All sorts of fears and jealousies will make that impossible. The burden will grow worse and worse as science advances, for the improvements in the Art of Destruction will keep pace with its advance, and every year more and more will have to be devoted to costly engines of war. It is a vicious circle—there is no escape from it.That is the position we need to hold in parliament.Not to fall for the liberal humanist placating of impossible dreams. Instead explain why such liberal humanist dreams are impossible. Impossibility is our sole case. It is our greatest propaganda weapon.Reform shatters our greatest weapon, and annihilates our case. Think carefully that you are not succumbing to liberal humanist fantasies in an illiberal non-human world.
JohnD, the Socialist Party does not enter parliament to horse trade with anybody. We are there to abolish capitalism.Our parliamentary position—for a political party—must be our greatest socialist strength.Consequently, we steadfastly hold politically that:Reform is always subject to running the system, which runs entirely subservient to capital.Abolish the conditions of private ownership in the means of production, which are the foundation of the capitalist mode of production, and you abolish the need for piecemeal indefinite reforms.So equipped, we face the howling mob. It is they who need to learn and bend. Not we.
Come on, ajj…The Socialist Party is not here to “benefit the working class”.It’s here to abolish the working class precisely because, so long as the working class—a capitalist category—exists, it can’t be benefitted. Otherwise, why Socialism?Please consider carefully before you attempt to explain, in logical terms, any reform “to benefit the working class” that you would champion todaythat you can explain exactly how it will benefit the working class in a social system based on exploiting it.
ALB, note carefully that I did not claim that reforms “were inevitably detrimental to working class interests”.Instead I issued the challenge: “how on earth can anyone tell what reforms are beneficial to the working class in a system based on robbing it?”Again, on the point about “stopping a war”. Wars are stopped every second week in the Middle East. People have won Nobel Peace prizes for stopping wars that continue to rage.I repeat, with variation, “how on earth do you stop wars when the system continually breeds warfare in the first place?”There are no permanent solutions for these conundrums.These conundrums are only meaningful under capitalism, where only liberal, or humanistic, solutions spring to mind. It is then easy to assume that they are socialist solutions. But are they?Such liberal humanist solutions will always emerge of their own accord so long as capitalist economic conditions permit them to.These are such questions, to which there are no permanent answers under a capitalist class-based system of Society. Otherwise, why Socialism?I am happy, perhaps, for members to decide such undecidable capitalist questions on liberal humanist grounds. But we should be aware about exactly what we are doing.This is my point.
