Young Master Smeet
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Alaric,I'm happy to discuss the feasbility of socialism, but you took us off on the wee tangent about whether people should (that word again) have a balance sheet of risk/benefit before they go about making socialism.To take your rocket analogy, though, at the early stage of such a project, all that is needed at the early stage is the idea that it is possible. Once rockets ame into being, people realised that space flight could happen. The senate committees that approved the project didn't concern themselves with the colours of the rockets, or the precise mechanisms of the valves on the air feed pipe. What they did satisfy themselves of, was that there would be enough minds sufficiently capable of dealing with such problems on the job. The idea was agreed in principle, and then people began to work towards the minutia.Currently, 1 in 20 of the available human workforce is unemployed. Many millions more are involved in tasks that exist only to support the existing system of society, and millions more in administering and we can call this planning it. If we consider repurposing every accountant, actuary, insurance broker and stock broker, with all the ancilliary mathematical and computational expertise that associates with them, we know we have the capacity to work out a lot of difficult problems.The answer to most of your list above is: we'll have a ruddy long and fierce argument about it. Different methods will be used in different bits of the world, as happens now.A partial answer to point four above, though, is that we could look at minimising the amount of work anyone has to do. If the claim that we could feed, clothe and house every man woman and child for two days work a week each holds up (and I think it does), then that's what we're looking at, divvying up the two days work (of course, I'd expect a lot of other work to happen in the other five, but they'd be "hobbies").
Quote:This whole discussion I have been trying to get a discussion about the feasibility of socialism. However, as soon as you realised that you don't actually have any good evidence for this you started trying to avoid the debate. And now we have ended up with an argument of the form "We don't need evidence for the revolution is foretold.".I usually find it unwise to try and second guess the motivations of those I'm debating with: I am not a mind reader, and there is good evidence to suggest you aren't. As it stands, you are promoting an utopian position, I am trying to oppose it. I've no interest in trying to prove that Castles in the Sky are feasible, I'm interested in how society is and the underlying logic of its movement. Further, I don't think they should fight for the whole hog, I think they'll have to. Beyond that, all we need is to be aware that mechanisms other than the monetary exist and can work, thus meaning that working class emancipation is possible and the end choice needn't be barbarism.
As Bernard Shaw wrote, Anarchy is a game at which the police will beat you. They are the biggest bestest anarchists of them all. Fighting them is pointless and futile (and unnecessary), since the political machinery of state can be captured via the ballot box.Frankly, persuading the police to kill fewer people through soft-power tactics sounds like a good service to our class.
The reason I don't think people need evidence it will make them better off, is that I think the revolution will be compelled upon us by circumstance. Like I said, it isn't a software app we can just install, it isn't something chosen from a menu, it will be a fight of necessity.On a descriptive basis, then, we can delineate what a post-revolutionary set up might look like, and we can feed that idea in to ease the passage.The job of the party isn't to persuade people to want socialism, but to find socialists, to find people who are already thinking this way, and coalesce them into a force for class struggle.
Alaric wrote:(1) If somebody is going to support a revolution do you think they need evidence that the revolution is going to make them better off?(2) Do you think there is strong evidence that a socialist revolution would make people better off?My answers are Yes then No (by nearly any sensible definition of better off). What are your answers?No and Yes.I'd suggest "should" remains prescriptive, rather than descriptive, whether applied to socialism or boats.
Alaric wrote:1) People should not support a global socialist revolution unless there is overwhelming evidence that world socialism being better than capitalism.Ah, if you're moving from would to should not, then we definitely have a big disagrement. I'd support socialism if it made everyone, including myself, materally worse off: but at least we'd be free. I think the "should" is an unnecessary bar to pass, who are we to set conditions on the working class's aspirations?
Another interesting feature is the aspect of managed capitalism (or State Capitalism) organised by the RFL — Super League clubs are now subject to franchises, based in part on the quality of the facilities they offer, rather than success on the pitch with automatic qualifications/relegation. This has allowed the RFL to try and extend the range of the game beyond its heartlands. Coupled with the salary cap, this should have stopped clubs over extending.The Reds are not the only club to suffer difficulties, the Bulls have only stayed in business by the skin of their teeth (and through some very generous fans). A recent BBC report suggests Super League Clubs are £68 million in debt; given attendances are much lower than top-flight soccer, this is a serious burden. Of course, television revenue and sponsorship deals may well come to the rescue, but that is really turning the supporters into the product.So, even planned markets fail: a lesson to the reformist left as well.
I was, necessarilly, abbreviating a much longer process: however, I believe what is depicted is not punishment, but an enforced time-out. It was specifically to address the point of how long people stay on moderation. The answer being, as long as needful. I'm sure a moderator would take public apologies when heads have cooled into account. I have to ask, though, how much time we're expecting moderators to put in?
Quote:The answer has fairly systematically been "Nice idea but it will never work.". I am sure you are familiar with this reply. There are a few exceptions.Actually, it's more often "Nice idea, but no one else will go for it." this chimes in with an interesting project I read about yesterday, whereby some film makers recorded some despairing people saying "It's awful there's nothing to be done" about poverty, etc. they played the film back to the people involved, and it had a staggering effect: having their despair echoed back to them, and hearing that otehr people felt the same way.I don't think it's just "Will it work" that holds people back, it's a mix of feeling there is nothing they can join in with, nothing that reflects their aspirations, waiting for someone else to act, etc.
OK, let's try a little roleplay:
A wrote:: I'm a pacifist.B wrote:Pacifists are no better than fascists.A wrote:Are you calling me a Nazi?B wrote:If the cap fits…A wrote:Arsehole.Moderator wrote:Knock it off, the pair of you: this is a warning.B wrote:Why are you warning me, you fascist, A abused me.A wrote:Coz you're an arsehole.Moderator wrote:Right, you're both on moderation.OK, a little vignette. How long would each stay on Moderation? As long as it takes, is the short answer. Suppose A's next post is on the same thread
A wrote:I am a pacifist, but I am also an anarchist, I believe in standing up to the friends of power, who would use the fascist bogey to pursue their own authoritarian ends.Such a post might get through, it's not in violation of the forum rules, but, in the Mod's opinion it is carrying on the dispute, and A is showing no sign of letting it go. B posts on a different thread entirely, but snarks the Mod. B, though, has form and has been under moderation on several occasions.In my opinion both would stay under moderation until it was clear the heat had died down, and both had shown that they were not itching to get back at each other's throats…
I don't think, as such, we're disagreeing. All I'm saying is that socialism isn't a software upgrade to be market tested and installed complete and functioning. When the abolitionists called for an end to slavery, they didn't come up with a complex detailed plan for what the slaves could do next. We are the abolitionists of wage-slavery, we don't, and can't, know what will come next, all we need is to know that we can do things differently.The working class isn't going to be convinced by a nice blue-print of how socialism will work, what will convince us is that the wages system becomes unsupportable.Medieval anti-communists used Aesop's 'The Belling of the Cat' to explain why the peasants would be crushed by the aristocrats. No-one would be willing to actually put the bell on the cat, despite thinking it's a good diea. Class struggle, and necessity, is our answer to that: the workers will have to put the bell on the cat, at some point.
http://piraniarchive.wordpress.com/home/investigations-campaigns-and-other-stuff/the-break-up-of-the-wrp-from-the-horses-mouth/ Simon Pirani gives an account of the break-up of the WRP (hat tip Stuart, late of this Parish).
This is a useful discussion, since I'm slated to give a talk entitled 'Can socialism work' sometime in March. What I would say, is that in some senses, it doesn't matter: we're not selling a plan, or a thing in itself, we're selling class struggle. We stand for the emancipation of the workers, and don't give a damn about the precise ins-and-outs of how that will be achieved, ending the wages system is what matters. After that, it's up to free workers, who can co-operate to achieve their collective ends, to sort out the nimminy-pimminies.
Sorry, I wasn't clear, not 'If we're right that socialism can work.' but 'If we're right that the class struggle will lead the working class to need to fight against the current system and replace it with some mechanism under its own control.' we can't check that, as such, since that's an analysis/prediction extrapolated from current and past events (we can, though, look for counter-indicative events/trends/logics). We can feed in, and try and shape that debate with, the evolved ideas of the blue sky thinkers, as well as the gleaned crop of experimentally/theoretically proven methods. After that, we can rely on the simple fact that folk are smart enough to run their own lives; for propaganda purposes, all we need are two things: to show it could work, and that society can change its organisational methods. Beyond that, and we're heading into utopianism.
Alaric wrote:The examples you give are, at best, prima-facie evidence for the feasiblity of a socialist society that is better than the current.I'd suggest that is all that is needful at present, for us (although that is not to suggest that further research isn't useful). Beyond that, I don't think we need to persuade people to a particular model of society at all, if we're right, then through class struggle such ideas will emerge and grow *of necessity*.
