‘S’ responded to my posting to the recent lengthy discussion on the worldincommon discussion forum on the subject ‘Socialism must prove itself.’ (My reply to S is below.) The point he picked up on was:

The idea of building on the chain of stages in the means of production is an historic one and risks perpetuating the alienation and exploitation that’s developed over the past 300 years or so. Even eliminating the harmful or useless activities: arms and finance etc. doesn’t make what’s left viable. The other idea that’s been put forward in postings is that socialism can be tried on a small scale and would provide case studies demonstrating that widespread socialism is possible. I’d give a cautious ‘yes’ to that, but these little experiments are bound to be vulnerable to the very powerful forces of capitalism, and may look pathetic to the audience we want to persuade.

To which ‘S’ says:

This is very true, and I believe the challenge is to build socialistic experiments that don’t look pathetic, that are efficient, on the cutting edge of developing sustainable technologies, and that will grow and expand to other localities.

Consider this as a possible scenario, a micro-brewery that utilizes its waste products for the production of mushrooms, and those waste products go for worm farming and the production of humus and organic gardening. In conjunction with this, the production of tomatoes, lettuce peppers, herbs, etc, in conjunction with that, small scale fish farming, tilapia, carp, and freshwater shrimp. In conjunction with all of this , a restaurant that utilizes a part of this production, perhaps with a menu featuring a dozen dishes from various parts of the world (Café Internationalé perhaps) and even a small resort that caters to tourists who are interested in this vision.

Furthermore, consider that a small group of dedicated revolutionaries launches this project. It is successful, grows, and all the bugs are worked out, and a key group from the original project goes of to another locality with some backing from the original project, and perhaps even a grant from the capitalist state, and does it again, and again. Give us a couple of decades and there could be a Café Internationalé next to every MacDonald’s. Now keep in mind, these people aren’t doing this because they want to get rich, but rather to build for a revolutionary change, at the same time building a revolutionary political movement, and even helping to agitate for revolutionary unionism.... and it would be a project without exploitation that utilises sustainable technology. Besides the ideas discussed here, there would be room for all kinds of spin-off projects, revolutionary cooperative schools, machine shops, woodworking, transport, clothing production. Of course, none of this is easy, but create that first cell, with as few as 20 dedicated, intelligent, like minded revolutionary and technologically savvy people, and work out all the details, and make that first cell viable, well, from there on out, a lot of really interesting things could suddenly become possible.

S

My reply to S:

Hi Scott,

This is great stuff! I’m all for this kind of thing (with the personal reservation that I’ve a close family member who’s an alcoholic, so I’m not that keen on breweries, however micro), and I put your post on my web site: http://www.des4rev.org.uk/socialisticexperiments.htm . But, just for the purposes of this WiC discussion, I’d question your designation of ‘socialistic experiments’. What you describe here could be called a ‘cooperative experiment’, which is also fine, and many people I know would call it a ‘permaculture experiment’ or a ‘permaculture project’, because of the centrality of design and diversity in the scheme you describe.

I received my education in ‘real’ socialism at the SPGB. I have ceased to have any faith in the old prediction/prescription of ‘when we’ve educated the workers into how they’re being exploited by the capitalist class, the working class will rise up in a body and take over the means of production, and the police and armed forces will not interfere because they’d know they are working class too.’ What I still do agree with from that story is ‘you can’t have socialism in one country’, and obviously, by extension, you can’t have socialism in one cooperative project. What would make the kind of experiment you describe revolutionary would be placing it in the context of what I call a ‘design for revolution’, which can be done on a country by country basis. I could nominate now a team of people capable of drawing up a ‘permaculture design for Britain’, which could be an element in a design for global revolution. By ‘ Britain’ I don’t mean the (major part of the) nation state, but an easily demarcated lump of planet earth. The team I’d nominate might well want to subdivide this lump bioregionally, and to make up the full design for revolution, there would need to be designs drawn up for the full set of global bioregions. Sounds daunting, but not an impossible task, with the design tools and skills already developed. Within that, the kind of case study you’re proposing could be an element in the global design – and there would be other studies and research projects which should be part of that too – and then we’d be talking ‘socialistic experiments’.

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