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The sine qua non of socialismFrom worldincommon discussion forum:
Hi there ...,
I began this thread on ‘the sine qua non of socialism’ with this:
I’ve copied below three recent contributions which illustrate three views which I take issue with. B represents the ‘workers will take over the factories’ idea. The problem I see with that is concerned with land use. All the people in the world are not either working class or capitalist class; a vast number are still ‘peasants’. I put that in inverted commas because capitalism – aptly called ‘wage slavery’ – has seized much of the best land for mechanised plantations supplying urban populations, so people working the land largely for subsistence (hardly part of the cash economy, hence ‘less than $2 a day’) have to make do with marginal land. The plantation land has become seriously degraded by erosion, salinisation, deforestation causing localised climate change (floods and drought because not enough trees to recycle the rain across a land mass). This kind of land degradation has been associated with cities or ‘civilisation/s’ for thousands of years. It has resulted in major civilisations failing eventually. Present ‘Western’ civilisation is more devastating because of it sheer scale – when it fails, what’s going to be left of the land needed to feed people? (Climate change is just a part of this dire picture of the effect on human urban life on earth.) The remaining peasants could be humanity’s best hope for the future. The last thing we need – as I said earlier – is for these potential world-savers to be ‘extruded through the sausage machine of capitalism to get to the promised land’. Marx and Gramsci assumed this had to happen, but the industrial revolution looked promising to them; they wouldn’t advocate that now.
Some socialists seem not to have woken up to how threatened the planet is (not just climate change). If they did, they would realise that taking over the factories – even having shut down what is not useful, like armaments and finance – is not viable. If there is to be a future, we have to start with the basics – how we feed everyone – and mechanised plantations and food industries is not the way. It is ridiculous – sorry, but it is! – to assume that everyone in the world can enjoy the industrially produced goodies which we who can afford it get from technologically advanced production.
The other major disagreement I have is with the view of human nature that seems to assume we are all naturally grasping, greedy, selfish and lazy – so we have to impose rationing systems on each other. Apart from anything else, we wouldn’t be able to eliminate all the finance stuff; that would have to be adapted or re-written to work the labour vouchers system. I’ve pointed out – and others have too – that a tremendous amount of work is done voluntarily. That’s not only the domestic and caring tasks which have to be done – traditionally by women – but also things people do for fun and for interest. And the rewards for that voluntary work are not measured. We already live in a society which is ‘from each according to his/her abilities, to each according to his/her self-determined needs and wants’. (I haven’t read J’s article – it’s too long! – but the idea of ‘circles of trust’ sounds fine. What I am puzzled by is why he thinks we have to have a revolution first before we develop these.) Human nature is cooperative – read Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid for insights on this.
R said this: ‘You are quite right about the position of the peasantry in contemporary capitalist society. This is something that is not adequately theorised in socialist thinking with all the emphasis on the working class taking over the means of production. For vast numbers of people particularly in the so called third world, their experience with wage labour is fleeting or non existent. That in itself deserves a thread of its own!’
Love, Chris
Earlier posts referred to:
B said: Chris: Capitalism does create artificial wants as you have pointed out. It also promotes planned obsolescence. I agree here also. But who are you to proclaim that we don’t need airplanes, ships, washers, dryers, kitchen appliances, or several other items just because you don’t use them? I suspect others in your movement might produce a list that excludes their pet items too, which, by the way, might not pass muster on your excludables.
I agree with you on some industrially produced food, but not on much of it. Industrially produced food is generally better than some of the crap people come up with. Canned vegetables, for instance, last longer and are safer than most people’s canning operations.
And please tell us how computers, telephone and satellite communication systems become possible without involving high technology and places much larger than any bioregion than you are suggesting?
Even local activities can’t be isolated. Example: A sawmill that doesn’t depend on hand sawing lumber needs equipment that is very high tech. Modern sawmills make automatic calculations on how a log is to be sawed to maximize its lumber output. Surely reducing waste should be in all our interests. The newest ones use high pressure liquids or lasers to do the cutting. These advances are due to modern technology that depend on resources from all over the earth.
D said: In my simple estimation of things it would seem that the thing for the workers to do would be to take over the means of production and operate it for themselves, including democratically deciding issues as to distribution.
people have asked me how I thought a Socialist system could operate economically and I respond that the workers could set up some kind of labor share system as described by Marx in Capital. The main thing being that it will be the workers who decide it and could modify it at any time.
You come in with this “circles of trust” thing. Frankly John I’m not going to “trust” anyone to give me anything, nor would I advocate to the workers that they do that either.
I know. I am less than a perfect human being. I certainly cannot speak for the workers, but for myself, I feel a lot more comfortable urging that the workers not trust anyone for anything. And that which does not outright recognize that the workers have the right to democratically determine the distribution of that which labor produces, is suspect.
IMHO D
J says:
Thank you for reading what I wrote and letting me know your reaction. I guess you would be someone who would decide not to join a circle of trust, which would be your right. I do believe many people, however, would join such circles or their equivalent, since people already do that on a small scale today when they have the opportunity (nuclear families for example are circles of trust usually), and it seems to happen on a large scale when workers take things into their own hands, as they did during the general strike in Seattle, which formed a large solidarity economy equivalent to what I call a circle of trust.
All the best.
--J
B says: Hi J:
I read part of your article. Like most ideas that purport to be transitional it doesn’t address a major feature of capitalism. There are only two classes in modern capitalism: the working class and the capitalist class. Therefore any transition from a two class society must address some type of gradual transition, which you attempt to do.
Please note that there is no continuous progression of these classes from 2, say down to 1.9, 1.8, 1.7,. . . . on down to 1, or whatever may be your choices. Class rule is NOT a continuous variable. This is MAJOR failing of transitional notions. I don’t want to discourage you, but these plans have been advanced in several guises over several years. IMHO none of them will be successful because of a failure to come to grips with a class divided society and understand that this is a DISCRETE variable, i.e., taking on only WHOLE numerical values. Any transition that retains capitalism retains the 2 class system and by its very nature, cannot be transitional.
B |