UKC

Over the last year, the Conservatives have handed Labour chance after chance to score political goals. Even the Prime Minister offered to help by leaving his Red Box unattended on a train.

So what does Labour do?

It picks a fight with the hand that feeds it. The Conservative's default battle plan is divide and rule however it would seem that Labour is doing the job for them, and so close to the next election as well.

Are we really on the cusp of one party politics as Labour are about to go nuclear?

In reply to The Lemming: I hope so!

In reply to icnoble:

Not a fan of democracy then!

In reply to The New NickB:

I hope so too, rapidly followed by the Conservative party and Lib dems; because I am a fan of democracy

In reply to The Lemming:

Historically the Labour party has never assassinated their own leader and generally have a good unity (a few grumbles notwithstanding).

Unlike the Conservatives, whose backbenchers always have the knives close at hand, which is why their leader has had to do so many weird things...

In reply to The Lemming:

What is Labour? Old Labour exploded 25 years ago and Nulabour exploded three years ago. The embers can keep on fighting each other but until they have a new philosophy they're going nowhere.

In reply to icnoble:

Whatever you say Iain the UK would be a much unfairer society and the class divide much greater without the labour movement. We would probably not have National Parks the NHS and a minimum wage. Rights for women would possibly never have been considered and there would be thousands more homeless and living on the streets. They may not be perfect but at least most labour governments do try for fairness.

In reply to The Lemming: I can sort of see what they are doing. Given that elections are won in the centre ground and the unions are generally viewed as bring rather left wing, I can see why Labour is putting a bit of distance between themselves and the unions.

In reply to Al Evans:

That's true, but as Pat said that party exploded (or imploded) some time ago. Same for New Labour, they've been and gone, with a varied legacy.

The current incarnation seems rudderless.

In reply to Al Evans:

The labour movement was a fine thing before it was hijacked by Communists and latterly champaign socialists, who could not care less about "the working man". I don't understand why people cannot grasp that the parties they cling to exist only in a rose tinted corner of their minds. The modern parties are interested only in obtaining and holding power and any differences you think you see are only skin deep

In reply to andic:

agreed

In reply to andic:


All modern political parties are shadows of there former selves, with tiny and diminishing memberships who are in any case largely ignored and despised by the leadership of mainly indistinguishable Oxbridge PPE graduates. These PPEs have gone straight from student politics into being special advisors/researchers, then they normally stand as a candidate in an unwinnable seat before they are appointed to a rotten borough where the party in question would win if they stuck the appropriate coloured rosette on any ruminant animal.

The dynastic nepotism is slightly worse in the Labour party, with 20 year olds being parachuted into largely ethnic minority inner London seats just because they are somebodies daughter or son, or Islington latte drinkers (Fair Trade, Organic latte of course), being presented with Northern former industrial towns that they have barely heard of and certainly can't identify on the map, but the difference really is only slight.

There was a time when parties had memberships in millions, and internal debates at party conferences for example were passionate and the results unpredictable. Party conferences and all other internal fora are now of course utterly stage managed media affairs, while the idea that anyone is influenced by having a party worker persuade them of the rightness of the parties cause by knocking on their doorstep is ludicrous - elections are fought, if they are fought at all, on television.

If any party undergoes an expenses or other corruption scandal, it is unwise for the others to crow too much - it is largely coincidence that one of their own comparable scandals has not been exposed, and mostly a matter of time before something similar is exposed about one of their number. At the same time, due to FPTP and media laziness (not to mention an over-cosy media-politician circle), the barriers to entry for any new party are very high, with only UKIP in recent years looking even close to breaking through, so we are left with the existing main parties who no-one thinks are particularly good left in power solely due to inertia and lack of alternatives.

The main chance of breaking down this paralysis would be if people stopped voting tribally, so "safe" seats became much less so, so ceased to be rotten boroughs to be awarded to favoured offspring. But people generally tend to stop voting rather than vote for alternatives, so the old patterns remain, even if at much lower voter turnout.

Having said all that, even by the very diminished standards of modern politicians, Milliband really is a walking disaster who seems to invariably make the wrong choice, on the very rare occasions that he makes any choices at all rather than just dithering. Even given very low standards, he stands out as being peculiarly dreadful, so he is at least winning one race - the race to the bottom!

In reply to Simon4: I think he was dealt a tough hand at Falkirk, it seems likely that skullduggery was going on but various witnesses were leaned on before the final report, leaving him somewhat high and dry.

Having been put in that position, it seems to me he has seized the moment to bring in much overdue reform and reduce the Labour party's dependence on union bosses. If sold with some conviction this could well go down well with the general public; on the other hand the drying up of funding could well be catastrophic. Interesting times.

In reply to andic:

Jesus Christ, I can accept the champagne socialists (though I like your misspelling) but who on earth with any position of responsibility has been a communist in the Labour Party since the last world war?

In reply to Simon4: I have attended many party conferences over the years of all denominations, but only ever been scared by speakers at the Conservative Party conferences.

In reply to Simon4:

We get what we vote for, its down to the voters to sort it out. Until that happens it will carry on. So my view is the current system is what most people want, which is neither one thing nor the other, just middle of the road.

In reply to Papillon:

Well hopefully the people left in the boat can use the oars to steer it back on track.

In reply to The Lemming:
Personally, I don't want our politicians (of any party) to spend their time scoreing political goals, better that they work together and do something constructive.

In reply to Simon4:

One of the problems is that the big philosophical differences of the 20th century have been largely resolved (or at least undermined). The socialist solution was discredited by 1989 both by the experiences of Eastern Europe ad 1970s Britain. The "free market" solution has been undermined by the experiences of 2008. So the major parties have no big "story" and are left fighting with managerial "solutions" for the middle ground.

Furthermore, the increasing "sophistication" of electioneering has led them to focus their appeal on a small group of swing voters in marginal seats who, by definition are sitting in the middle ground.

As you imply, this narrow focus on those swing voters has actually had the effect of alienating the parties' natural supporters who have either switched to minor parties (eg.libdems or UKIP) or stopped voting. So the electioneering strategies have, in the longer run, been self defeating but without any big "philospshy" to win these voters back it seems the major parties are doomed to further decline.

In reply to neilh:


At best only partially true.

We can only vote for the parties that present themselves, given my comment about the immense barriers to entry for a new party. Certainly voters are not blameless, they really should not consent to be cannon fodder for these rotten boroughs.

Why specifically any white working-class English (and I use the word "English" intentionally, the situation is significantly different in Scotland), person would vote for a Labour party that views them with such contempt and derision is beyond me. The Mrs Duffy incident revealed this dramatically, but it was only symptomatic of a deep seated attitude. The incessant pejorative references to the papers that the working class are presumed to read, or their attitudes to "progressive" ideas are really largely class-based snobbery and sense (quite unjustified), of superiority - from self-proclaimed left-wingers.

In reply to The Lemming:

My brain hurts.

Is the fight that Labour are picking as simple as getting union members to opt into the Labour Party, rather than the default setting of saying that all union members are automatically considered as Labour Party members?

In reply to neilh:

I would love to know how, short of a revolution.

In reply to The Lemming:

Yes, but with it being about paying in to the Labour Party (I'm not sure if that is the same as membership). It seems like a sensible thing to do to me. Sort that out and then turn attention on the Tory's funding, which stinks.

In reply to Postmanpat:


FPTP is an added problem here, as is the EU.

FPTP was fine when candidates genuinely were local, the caricature Geordie representing Newcastle going to Westminster and saying "wa ha the lads", and fighting for his city and its interests. This produced a sort of rough and ready justice that made unrepresentative constituency sizes and badly drawn borders (often deliberately so) sort of OK.

Where the candidates barely know the name of the seat they supposedly represent, this becomes pointless. We should either scrap FPTP for some form of PR that retains some local link but ensures that the number of MPs corresponds much more closely to the number of votes, ignoring for a moment widespread postal vote fraud (multi-member constituency for example), or have a rule that says all candidates have to have lived in the constituency for 5 years. At present we have all the disadvantages of FPTP without the claimed major benefit, local representation and familiarity.

The EU is a major problem apart from all the many reasons that the EU is a failure, in that it leaves less and less power to decide with British citizens - no MP can genuinely influence matters if most important things are dictated by Brussels bureaucrats.

In reply to Postmanpat: That's fine about the big philosophical/economic strategies, but there are, or should be significant human rights issues within the parties, and traditionally the Labour and Liberal parties have defended the underdog while the Conservatives have defended big business interests in the main. I feel it is still essential to have a power in the nation that defends the rights/welfare of the underdog rather than the captains of industry, the Conservatives will never do this and thus Labour is not a spent power, it is essential for our democracy, even if it is a bit off track at the moment.

In reply to Simon4:

The only problem with PR is that it has never worked, it leads to weak government and leads to the decline of a country as with Italy now, a major user of PR and hardly a good recommendation. It leads to easier corruption in the voting process, and complete inability to deal with major issues without upsetting the coalition, seen to a lesser extent in the current government in the UK which wasn't arranged by PR, it would be significantly worse if it was.

In reply to Al Evans:

As an example of what Al is on about I note that Milliband is promising to 'get tough' on zero hours contracts. I cannot imagine a Tory leader doing the same.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

That is probably correct, but if he claims to be prime ministerial material, he has to show that he can deal with the many no-win situations that will present in that office. He seemed to manage to get the worst of all worlds, offending his financial backers while not likely to implement any real reforms.

It is extraordinary that anyone can defend the idea that people should be automatically assumed to be supporters of a political party, just because they join a union, especially as unions tend to project themselves as a sort of insurance company, should you ever have some dispute or problem with your employer. Imagine if your car insurance automatically enrolled you in the Tory party just because you had bought a policy with them! Also, was it not the case at Falkirk (and almost certainly elsewhere), that some unions were enrolling people in the Labour party without the people concerned even knowing they were supposedly members, let alone agreeing to it?

I can actually remember closed shops, where people had to join a union to get a particular job - it is almost unimaginable now, but it had its ardent defenders then, who claimed they were putting a high-minded and morality based argument. The idea of automatic enrollment in a particular party is as much of an anachronism, though clearly you could reasonably do something like offer a reduced rate to union members if they WANTED to join the Labour party.

In reply to Simon4: Seems like he's doing the right thing then?

In reply to Darron:

ah, but will he?

if i thought, as a dyed in the wool, old style tory, that Milliband would actually outlaw these dreadful, disgusting contracts - or at least ensure the didn't exist in the public sector, and that anyone deciding not to take one would not have their JSA removed - then i might vote for him.

but i don't. i *know* that he'll roll over under pressure (and cash..) from big business, that the treasury will say they cost too much that could otherwise be spent on chavs - err.. i mean skools 'n hospitals - and that they'll get called something else and the LP will claim they've eliminated them while doing nothing of the sort.

why vote for a party that proclaims social justice but does bog all for it - you may as well vote for the party of self interest and at least be honest about it.

In reply to Al Evans:

I'm sorry Al but that's rubbish. Have you never questioned why Italy is brought up time and time again by people who repeat this flawed argument, despite all these countries using PR?

http://tinyurl.com/brak95

There's some fairly successful countries in there, and some unsuccessful ones, but clearly no correlation.

In reply to Simon4:

You have completely misunderstood the reason for closed shops, they were not just political they were meant to uphold the standards and integrity of people within the proffesion and defend their rights. There was nothing to stop you being in a closed shop and being a member of the conservative party. Indeed the closest closed shop was probably Equity, the actors union which vehemently protected it's members rights, many of whom were wealthy people in the conservative party.
It was such a defender of actors rights that when we, as cameramen were used in a programme for transmission in a 'starring' role, we were paid the basic minimum wage for an Equity member so that we would not take actors jobs.
To join a closed shop you didn't just need to join a union, you needed to get to the standards of excellence that the closed shop required of it's members before being accepted, I see nothing wrong with that.

In reply to Al Evans: ' they were not just political they were meant to uphold the standards and integrity of people within the proffesion and defend their rights.'

Crikey Al, I'm a bit of a pinko but if you fell for that you really were naïve. Do you really think Red Robbo was campaigning to 'maintain the integrity of his profession?' Do you really think that printers bought Fleet St to its knees to maintain standards? Er no, they were classic examples of restrictive practices - make it impossible for anyone who isn't part of your club to get a job and so increase wages way above what would otherwise be a going rate. They were doing that back in mediaeval times, ffs, and it wasn't about maintaining standards then either.

There are plenty of ways of maintaining professionalism, ensuring quality skills etc, but forcing people to join a politically affiliated union isn't one of them.

In reply to Simon4:


Like that famous Dundonian Churchill? I think there has always been a mix of local and not-so-local politicians. While it's probably true the choice at the ballot box is limited, party policy is deeply affected by many factors. It's not true to say the populace has no way of changing the policies of the main parties. UKIP for example has pushed the Torys in to promising a referendum on Europe, and Labour had to become more tolerant of wealth under Blair or face never being elected again. FPTP means all the bargaining and negotiating on policy is done prior to government rather than in government, as in somewhere like Italy with a more proportional system. I am not sure the outcome in terms of the policies implemented is so different, and FPTP is certainly more stable.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

I really don't have a problem with what closed shops did, I was a member of one for gods sake, and I believe they were a force for the good of the working man and the professional skills of the workforce.
Plus, ITV bosses and all the companies preffered negotiating with one force rather than a fragmented workforce. The Unions/closed shops were all together when Thatcher ruined UK television for the benefit of rich entrepeneurs. There are many stories I could tell you about the so called liberalisation of television in the UK, suffice to say it did not do any of the staff or any of the great Television programme makers, or the viewing public , any favours.

In reply to Al Evans: I can remember turning on the telly as a child and seeing a blue screen informing me that no programs were being broadcast whilst there was strike action going on (70's).

Haven't seen that since Thatcher. So I think she improved my viewing pleasure

In reply to Al Evans:

Thanks for spelling this out so clearly, Al, for bigoted people who have no real grasp of the subject or the historical truth.

In reply to Al Evans:


....and led directly to the rise of a leader like Margaret Thatcher. There are no actions without consequences. Thatcher came to power because for every person in the 'work force' who benefited, two others were being held to ransom. The ballot box did the rest.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: Are you suggesting closed shops were similar to say doctors requiring registration with the General Medical Council? If so it hardly seems born out by the "historical truth".

In reply to MG:

I can only speak about the union I was in in the film industry, the ACTT. In that case, yes, extremely similar (from what I know of the medical profession as it was at the time ... my main climbing partner was a surgeon in S Wales.)

>If so it hardly seems born out by the "historical truth".

Haven't a clue what you're on about.

In reply to MG: Bit odd, creative people who presumably are confident of their technical and creative abilities seeking protection behind restrictive practices.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: Did people die then if you were incompetent and helped make a poor film?

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

Wrong again. It was the last thing I wanted when I left film school, and it took me 4 years to get a union ticket. But I came to respect the reasons for the closed shop, and was honoured, frankly, when I was eventually given my ticket. What it meant was that everyone, or just about everyone, in the ACTT was bona fide, had proved themselves, and was good/very good at their job. And there weren't huge numbers of people out of work. The system definitely sorted the wheat from the chaff i.e. the people who were really committed and good, from the dreamers and the cowboys.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


Well very little closed shop activity seemed to be about maintaining professional standards and an awful lot about restricting who could do what to artificially raise wages, and to pressurise political change. If what you say is true, you would also have expected very high levels of workmanship in the UK in the 1970s when the opposite appears to have been the case.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

There were very few poor films made then, actually (I really think there was a much higher success rate then.) People who were incompetent probably starved, yes.

In reply to Bjartur í Sumarhús:

If that happened, I can't remember if it did, it would have been once or twice only, hardly a significant moment in the class struggle compared to , oh for christ sakes all the bad she did, I can't even begin to bother to elucidate all the negative aspects of Thatcherism, except to say that they impacted on me and millions of others at the time and are still impacting on most of the 'less than rich'. Even if not physically you have been damaged by Thatcherism if only in the way you view poor people and indeed television (sic) these days.

In reply to Al Evans:

Well, that's FPTP for yer!

In reply to MG:

I've just said: I can only speak about the film industry, where the standards were always awesomely high (and are still quite high). It had very little to do with party politics, as Al has said, and in the film industry, at least, it worked, and worked well. I can't speak about closed shops elsewhere. There are other 'closed shops' nowadays which are rather more sinister. In many professions bullshit has risen supreme, and cliques and rather closed networks of people work very strongly to keep out anyone they see as a threat.

PS. I'll be writing quite a lot about this in very old age.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: IIRC there were very few films made at all in the UK, I don't know what proportion were any good. And what was the reason for that?

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Claptrap, the past viewed through rose tinted glasses. The print was a closed shop where sons and relatives of existing workers were given preferential employment over applicants from outside. It was a great club with great perks if you were in but getting in without knowing someone on the inside was nigh on impossible. The cinema film processing industry was the same through the '70s and early '80s. Practically a gentleman's club that did nothing to improve the lot of the majority of working class people.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Well I was thinking more about mining, dockworkers, car makers etc. In any case there is surely a distinction between unions (basically wanting higher wages etc.) and professional bodies (upholding standards). Confusing the two will inevitably lead to conflicts of interest.

In many professions bullshit has risen supreme, and cliques and rather closed networks of people work very strongly to keep out anyone they see as a threat.

I doubt this is anthing new, but if it is a bad thing then surely formalising it in the form a closed shop is doubly bad?

In reply to teflonpete:

Who said the film industry has ever been anything about 'improving the lot of the majority of working class people'? Yet, in the 60s there were some fantastic Social Realist movies by British directors that, for the first time ever, showed the lot of the working man truthfully ... so indirectly did a lot to help.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: 'In many professions bullshit has risen supreme' You might choose to do some careful research before you launch too enthusiastically on your crusade.

To give a single, specific example: the history of medicine is one where centuries of bullsh*t, repeating the mistakes of the past and restrictive practice have in recent years have become replaced with evidence based medicine, vastly higher ethical standards, and continuous training.

In what other professions do you believe that bullshit reigns supreme, (apart from my own of IT, which I sadly accept, though it's arguably not a profession anyway.)

In reply to MG:

What is your personal knowledge of the 'closed shop', I wonder?

In the film industry, at least, when it came to union membership, there was precisely zero bullshit. You had to be promoted and seconded by some top names. My first application was seconded by Walter Lassally, and still failed. It was extremely similar to joining the Alpine Club.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Isn't that what you and Al are saying that unions are for, improving the lot of working people? I'm saying the closed shops in the print and film industry did nothing of the sort in terms of jobs and wages open to all. Nothing to do with the creative aspect of the work of British directors and DOPs.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

The publishing world.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Based on knowledge of history , as I assume yours is other than direct experience of one niche area.


I don't follow your point and have no idea who Walter Lassally was. Am I meant to be impressed?

In reply to teflonpete:

No, I never said that. It was about protecting people in the industry, and making sure that dross wasn't allowed in. I know of no case of anyone who deserved to get into the industry who failed to do so. It went more or less entirely on merit (well ... there was a lot of nepotism, but that is a different subject ... and still applies in all walks of life - in fact, today more than ever.)

Why do you only mention directors and DOPs? You have failed to grasp the most fundamental truth of film making: that everyone on a film crew is equally important. All the great directors realised/realise/know that.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:
It went more or less entirely on merit (well ... there was a lot of nepotism, but that is a different subject

Eh? "It was all good, expect a lot of it was bad (but that's different)"

In reply to MG:

No, you're not meant to know who is is, just as no one is 'meant to know' about anything. My point is that you had to get some very well respected union members to support your application. Mr Lasally happened to win the Oscar as Director of Photography for Zorba the Greek.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: 'I know of no case of anyone who deserved to get into the industry who failed to do so.'

How on earth could you possibly know that???!!! You cannot possibly know how many creative, talented, enthusiastic people dashed themselves against some arcane gentleman's club admission policy before being forced to make a living by some other means. And how would you know them if they didn't get into the industry? Utterly self serving, self justifying tautology. You should know better than that.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:
. there was a lot of nepotism, but that is a different subject ... and still applies in all walks of life

You know, I can honestly say I have never known any nepotism influencing employment choices in my career, either as candidate or interviewer. Choices have always been on merit (sometimes poorly judged by that has always been the intention). I think you are coming at this from a very particular angle. Maybe the film world is a bit different to most walks of life?

In reply to MG:

That's not what I meant - how could it be? If I was in it how can you say I 'expect' it was different. The nepotism hadn't got much to do with the union, but to do with families being in a very advantageous position, and able to bring in assistants as trainees, without much question. As still happens, today, more than ever, completely irrespective of the existence of unions.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: Hi Gordon, when I was deputy shop steward in those troubled days for ACTT, my shop steward was a guy called Jim Grant, you may have known him, he was made redundant in the Thatcher purges and decided to become a writer, he is now called Lee Child and is a multi millionaire writer of the Jack Reacher series. I met him a few years after his dismissal and he said 'Al , get yourself made redundant and write a book' Well if we all had that talent
The thing is he was a socialist, also a barrister and a serious member of ACTT and all it's values. If any of you guys out there read Jack Reacher novels look inside them to the fair play aspect of the hero.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward: As far as I can tell Gordon is talking essentially about a guild rather than a union, as usually understood. Clearly for insiders guilds are great, but for everyone else the story is a bit different!

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

What I said was (might have to resort to upper case) 'I KNOW OF' ... I did not claim anything else than my own freelance experience of working for 15 years on dozens of film and TV productions. I know about almost everyone who was at film school with me (I think there were 18 in my year) and only about 5 of us got into the industry. As I say, it took me a long time, because I decided to go in at the bottom, as an assistant editor, whereas the three highest fliers got director's jobs almost immediately.

In reply to MG:

Well, you're right. The film union worked exactly like a guild.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:
Sorry Gordon, we're talking about opposite ends of the film industry, I'm talking about labs, where working class people work doing jobs like humping sacks of chemicals around and printing film in darkrooms, turning out millions of feet of film copy to cinemas every week. They were all members of the union too in the 'ups but it was a closed shop and nepotism was rife, same as in the print where the Father of the Chapple ruled the roost. They were clubs for friends and family of the people who were already in.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

PS to last. Almost nothing in the UK could be less like an arcane gentleman's club than the film industry. Below the top level of directors ... i.e. everything else, it was more or less completely working class, 99 per cent of whom had never been in higher education, and a large proportion of whom were very sharp East Enders with tenuous links with the criminal classes and circus industries. The BBC was utterly different (very much a gentleman's club), but in the film industry it was (and probably still is largely) a cut-throat world of pure talent. This was the world Hitchcock was born into, and the world we saw very much alive and well at the opening of the Olympic games, helmed by Danny Boyle.

In reply to teflonpete:
'70s, not 'ups. Phone typing!

In reply to teflonpete:

I don't remember any great issues with the labs. The key ones in London were very good, and I got to know quite a lot of the guys at Ranks very well. Great people, working very hard to the highest standards. The head link man, Chester xxxxx, was a great guy and much liked by the lab team and film directors alike.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:
I'm unclear. Why couldn't there simply be a meritocratic set of of transparent standards that people had to meet to be considered for employment and then the employer/producer/director etc decided who they wanted? What you appear to be describing is a system which may well, in this particular case, have ensured high standards but also, as you acknowledge, encouraged corrupt nepotism or at least enabled it by its lack of transparency.

There is, of course, quite a strong case for nepotism. The Royal Navy thrived on it in its heyday. If you knew you were going to depend on somebody for your life standing on the quarterdeck under fire you made sure you trusted their sponsor's judgement and in turn sponsored the right people yourself. However, I'm not sure that makes it a very fair way to run a modern industry.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


I think you've taken the phrase "gentleman's club" a little too literally. I think it was meant to mean a closed, self-appointing society. As said, like a Guild, or a Masonic Lodge, or an East End criminal gang... Entrance only open by invitation of those already inside.

In reply to Postmanpat:

As you say, of course there's an argument for a degree of nepotism. The system I described was totally meritocratic for incomers who had no contacts in the industry. If you take away those difficult entry requirements, as you suggest, with producers/ directors (well, each team under that, too) picking who they like, then the level of nepotism of course would be much, much higher. Of course, under the old system, the department leaders would still pick exactly who they liked, all down the chain. No one ever got in, except at the very lowliest trainee level, without a good track record. That was the Catch-22, and always will be/should be.

In reply to captain paranoia:

Incorrect. It had nothing to do with invitation. You applied through a formal application process. I tried first after one year (of working on a few jobs, very naughtily, without a union ticket), was rejected, and then waited another three years until I was working freelance on a succession of BBC documentaries for an editor who had taken me under his wing, and it was then more or less a formality. (The truth is that it's really a kind of word of mouth thing: roughly adding up to: this guy is good at his job and is a good bloke.)

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:
what were the ACTT's entry requirements?

In reply to The Lemming:

Re the charge that most MPs are simply lobby fodder. Can I point out that only a few days ago parliament decided that a Government should not take military action against another country.

Sometimes they get it right.

Re the unions. There must be more to this we're aware of. No one in the Labout party is going to piss off the unions to the extent that they'll withdraw their funding, unless there's a water tight plan B. I await plan B with interest.

In reply to Postmanpat:

Simply not so. From the Russian Revolution until the late eighties Russia had a state capitalist economy. To argue that the collapse of state capitalism is an argument against socialism is just plain wrong. And just to make you even more wrong, the Labour Party - until the abolition of Clause 4 - only ever advocated state capitalism. Now, you might want to argue that state capitalism is a poorer way of organising the profit system that so-called free-market capitalism but the fact is that both are pretty shit when it comes to meeting human needs. Socialism will be a classless, stateless, global society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. The Labour Party has never advocated that and has been a party that has sought a mandate to run capitalism.

In reply to Removed User:

Like a broken clock.

In reply to Postmanpat:

Officially, that you had been asked by someone to work as their assistant because no one else was available (e.g. at very short notice), and the person asking you had to be a union member. There also had to be someone else to vouch for you i.e. basically, two people had to say that in their opinion you should be a member.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: Dear God, in what world would that be considered fair, equitable, meritocratic or even efficient?

In reply to Chambers:
We've been through this before. "State capitalism" is what happens consistently in the pursuit of socialism, usually accompanied by undemocratic authoritarian rule. Despite your denials Lenin and the the rest of them were pursuing socialism. They failed and produced something quite horrible instead. It's inherent in the dream. End of.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: I'd take issue a bit with that, if you got a job with a TV company, be it BBC or ITV, you did 6 months to see if you made the grade, if you did you got sponsored by the company and a member of ACTT, if not you were probably fired, I don't know it didn't happen to me. But, the selection process was so good that hardly anybody failed, certainly nobody in my time in ACTT.
Gordon's experience may have been different coming in as a freelance whereas I had a job offered with ITV. I did know and climb with a lot of young actors seeking equity cards, for instance Jeff Rawles and his flatmate Terry King who both worked as trainees in Sheffield theatre before their television careers to get their equity cards. Neither seemed to mind it, I still think the closed shop was overall a good thing.

In reply to Chambers:
The Labour Party has never advocated that and has been a party that has sought a mandate to run capitalism.

Whoa! but until the abandonment of clause 4 it has always been a socialist party. Which is incidently when I resigned my membership.

In reply to The Lemming:

On the subject of nepotism:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/euan-blair-the-real-heir-to-t...

So we have the next generation of Blairs, Prescotts and Straws bringing their solid working class credentials to the Labour party.

In reply to The Lemming:
All three parties are in trouble. The Conservatives have lost their activists, Labour is about to lose its money, and the LibDems have lost their voters.

"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."

In reply to Postmanpat:

Agreed. Labour once the party of the working man and woman, is now the party of the chattering classes, the unemployed, and the disabled, single parent, Muslim, lesbian, asylum seeker.

In reply to Postmanpat:

Yes, we've been through this before. And you are still wrong. Your evidence for thinking the way you do is flimsy, to say the least, and hinges on a small excerpt taken from 'State and Revolution'. Lenin was very clear that the revolution that he and the Bolsheviks hijacked could not establish socialism, and that state capitalism was what was being established in Russia. Doesn't matter what he said before that, any more than it matters what Labour Party leaders might say before they take office. It's what they do when they have power that matters.

Now,as I've said, socialism - when it's established - will be a classless, stateless, moneyless society. Private ownership of the means of production will be abolished. There will be no government, no buying and selling, no wage-slavery. And here's the point that you really need to grasp in order to disabuse yourself of your misconceptions: It will only come about as the result of the political actions of a class-conscious majority of workers across the planet who understand that capitalism cannot work in their interests and have rejected the notion of leadership. And there's the rub. You can't impose socialism on people. They have to consciously choose it. So, once again, to argue that the thoroughly repugnant actions of elitist Leninist vanguards lead to a failure of socialism is to completely misunderstand socialism.

In reply to Al Evans:

No, Al, it was never a socialist party. Clause Four called for wholesale nationalisation of the means of production. That's not socialism, it's state capitalism.

In reply to Chambers: This will be administered by the fairies at the bottom of the garden then?

As a matter of interest, do you actually believe any of this gibberish, or is this just a wind-up?

In reply to Simon4: Well, Simon, I'm sure that I don't need to point out that there aren't any fairies. Any more than there are politicians that you can elect who will magically reform capitalism in a meaningful way.

I'm not sure where the gibberish charge comes from? Makes perfect sense to me. Why is it that you think I'm talking gibberish? Do you really think that there's no alternative to capitalism? Or perhaps you think that workers are incapable of organising themselves and co-operating in order to abolish capitalism? You see, it's difficult to respond to ridicule like this without actually knowing what your argument is.

In reply to Chambers: You may not have noticed but you are an ape, and a type of ape that has evolved to live in and form a heirarchical society. Even ignoring all the other problems you gloss over (why would anyone do anything??), this will mean you will never have a "classless" society

In reply to Chambers:

Yes yes yes, but can we talk about the real world for now, rather than a utopian dream that will never happen.

In reply to Chambers:

Do you find many people believe this? No, clearly not, so I think we can safely say that your utopian socialism has been discredited as well.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


You're sidestepping the point Gordon, the objective of a union should be to protect the rights of the working man and woman and be open to any man or woman working in the relevant industry to join, not by invitation to a club or through nepotism. At one point during the '70s you couldn't work at Ranks as a cleaner or plumber unless you knew someone in the union who could get you in. How is that fair to all the perfectly capable cleaners and plumbers who could have applied for a job there but never got the opportunity because they didn't know the right people in the closed shop?

The fact that both the union and the employer did a good job for the employer's customers and people like Chester forged good working relationships and personal friendships with Stanley Kubrik et al is neither here nor there when we're measuring who unions are supposed to be looking after.

In reply to Postmanpat:

Actually, PP, there are a growing number of people who look beyond capitalism and see an alternative along the lines that I advocate. But that's not really the point, is it? Now, the case for socialism is far from being utopian. In fact, it's thoroughly scientific. Which is one of the reasons why Albert Einstein thought that socialism was the future for human society. But look. You can't discredit ideas by simply asserting that the fact that they aren't widely believed renders them utopian. That's no argument at all.

In reply to teflonpete:

Do you mean the real world in which you can't solve problems without removing their root causes? Yep, that's the one I'm talking about. If you think - as your comment implies - that it is worth talking about ways of reforming capitalism by voting for leaders then I'm afraid that it is you that is the utopian dreamer.

In reply to MG:

I haven't glossed over anything at all and am happy to write for hours on what would motivate people in a socialist society. I probably will before long! But this ape thing. I've heard some funny explanations for the way society is currently constituted and the argument that capitalism is somehow a product of something in our nature is one of the more amusing. If capitalism is the product of human nature then most people clearly aren't human! But even if it were true - which I really can't believe - then you'd still have a lot of work ahead of you. You'd have - just for a start - to explain away the behaviour of groups of people who choose to live in non-heirarchical systems.

In reply to Chambers:
>
Frankly it's so silly it's not worth arguing. Over the years you've repeatedly been asked how this is going to come about and repeatedly failed to produce any answer, and repeatedly deny that the numerous socialist revolutions were trying to create socialism despite all the evidence that they thought they were.
Can I suggest that instead of reading your socialist website you get stuck into some anthropology?

In reply to Chambers:

We've had the discussion before my friend, I have no faith in the current capitalist system but no faith that the vice of greed that forms part of human nature can be overcome either.

In reply to Postmanpat: Dear oh dear. I've actually spent many, many hours reading anthropology and I find nothing in it that discredits the case for socialism. The problem here - or one of them - is that you know as little about the case for socialism as you did when you first attempted to engage in debate with me. Which is puzzling. If I was going to take on an opponent I'd spend a lot of time thoroughly investigating their ideas before engaging. You seem woefully unwilling to do that, which means that you spend all of your time attacking the wrong ideas.

Now, even if it were true that the leaders of your so-called socialist revolutions actually were concerned with establishing the kind of society that I'm arguing for it simply wouldn't be possible. You can't lead people to socialism. As for the question of how socialism can come about - the question which you erroneously accuse me of dodging - I've often made this clear. Most recently about twenty minutes ago! The problem, I suspect, is that you just don't see it because you think you know the truth of the matter. Socialism will come about when a majority of workers globally come to understand that capitalism cannot be reformed in their interests and organise democratically to overthrow it. Now that'll be a socialist revolution.

In reply to teflonpete:

I'll have to confess to knowing nothing about the relationship between the labs and the union (which I'm not even sure was the ACTT, but perhaps NATKE or BETA ??) I never heard that there was any requirement for cleaners and plumbers to be part of any film union in the studios - if they were, it was certainly not an issue I ever heard discussed, and I don't remember ever seeing anyone other than film technicians at the very few union meetings I ever attended. The situation you describe was, indeed, disgraceful, if it was exactly as you describe.

In reply to teflonpete:

And no doubt we'll have it again! You don't need faith. Just look at the evidence. For something to be a part of the dreaded disease that is human nature it has - by definition - to be displayed by all humans. It isn't. So greed cannot logically be a part of human nature. And even if it were it wouldn't be an obstacle to socialism. In fact, if workers were more greedy they might long ago have stopped accepting a few crumbs of what they produce and taken over the whole bakery!

In reply to Chambers:

That's not true, to be precise Clause IV.4 stated

"To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry of service."

That seems to me a reasonable description of socialism rather than state capitalism, it doesn't even endorse nationalisation wholeheartedly.

In reply to Al Evans: To fully understand my position on the non-socialist nature of the Labour Party, Al, it's necessary to grasp something of the origins of the Labour Party and what it set out to achieve. Towards the end of the nineteenth century there was a fierce debate going on in the labour movement as to what the movement could realistically hope to achieve. It isn't an oversimplification to suggest that the debate was polarised between those who argued for piecemeal reforms of capitalism as a way of bringing about a better society and those who argued - as I do - that capitalism cannot be reformed in the interests of the working class and that a working class party should not seek to administrate capitalism. This debate took place over a period of years and led to the formation of two distinct groups. In 1904 a group of revolutionaries committed to the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement with a classless, stateless, moneyless society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production formed the Socialist Party of Great Britain. The convoluted twists and turns of those in the labour movement who were willing to compromise the revolutionary position in favour of the struggle for piecemeal reforms within capitalism led to the formation of the Independent Labour Party in 1906 the Labour Party that we are now discussing.

An analysis of Clause Four furthers my argument against the reformist policies of the Labour Party: The clause envisages the continuation of a banking system, albeit a state-run one, within the framework of common ownership. SPGB'ers argue that socialism will have no need for banks since there will be no buying and selling. So clearly the SPGB and the Labour Party were talking about very different forms of society. If Clause Four describes socialism then I'm not a socialist!

In reply to Chambers:

So we have a better understanding of your position, can you point to some examples of successful socialist states? That way we can avoid any possible confusion between state capitalism and socialism.

In reply to Chambers:


That doesnt follow, an attribute doesnt need to be displayed by the entire population. It could just be genetic subset who dont show it and, unless it is being selected for (or against) could die out.

In reply to tony: Hi Tony. No, I can't do that. From the point-of-view of an SPGB member, the phrase 'socialist state' is a contradiction in terms. There will be no state in a socialist society. It will be a global society - just as capitalism is - and it will be based on the democratic control of the means of production. The kind of society I'm arguing for has never existed, and the countries that are widely referred to a 'socialist' are all forms of capitalism.

In reply to dissonance: I think the confusion arises out of the very term 'human nature' itself. Surely if something is going to be referred to as an intrinsic part of the make-up of something then all examples of that something must have that quality? Or can you have a table without legs?

In reply to Chambers:

Do you think there's a reason why the kind of society you're arguing for has never existed?

In reply to Chambers: I take your point there Chambers, but the SPGB state is about as likely as muslim suicide bombers are to get to heaven with 31 (or whatever) beautiful virgins at their beck and call. Both are futile attempts to make goals that will never be realised, at least clause 4 was feasible.

In reply to Chambers:

... So globally we shouldn't be surprised to find an economic system that reflects human selfishness and greed (as most people would agree that they are - to some extent at least - an intrinsic part of human nature ... just as a there is also a degree of selflessness and altruism)?

In reply to tony:

Yes, I do. I think there are a number of reasons, in fact. But there's no short answer and I'm going climbing now! I'll get back to this later.

In reply to Chambers:

Not really since name a characteristic and I suspect there will be exceptions.


yes, you could stick it to the wall, suspend it from the ceiling or have an anti grav pack holding it up.

In reply to dissonance:


Indeed, I saw a very nice 6 foot long cantilevered dining table on a narrow boat a couple of months ago. Quite a nice piece of engineering. But I digress...

In reply to Chambers:
You seem not to have noticed that I'm trying not to engage, for much the same reason that I don't engage with creationists. I don't know all the convoluted reasons that creationists use to provide spurious academic justification for their article of faith. I know enough to realise that on any rational level it's bollocks.

>
Except that this is not a clear at all. It's just an empty truism. It's like me saying I've told you how England can win the world cup. It'll be when England has the best team in the world. It doesn't address the question at all.
You have avoided the question of
a) How and why the workers will understand this?
b) How they will organise?
c) How will they agree on the alternative?
d) How will they persuade others that this is the right thing to do?
e) How will they disband the organisations that were created to achieve the change (commonly known in previous attempts as the "party").

The reason that the goals of "socialism" of so many socialists are unclear is because most of their writing is about how to achieve these goals rather than the actual goals.. Despite your wide reading on the subject you seem to have largely ignored the issue and think a simple sentence can replace libraries full of debate on the subject.

In reply to Postmanpat:


Before we get to those questions, what are "the workers"? I, like most people, work and also own shares in various companies that produce stuff. Am I a worker or an evil capitalist?

In reply to Chambers:
But even if it were true - which I really can't believe - then you'd still have a lot of work ahead of you. You'd have - just for a start - to explain away the behaviour of groups of people who choose to live in non-heirarchical systems.

Such as? Possibly there are some slightly odd communes that come close for short periods but basically all humans live in heirarchical societies.

In reply to The Lemming:

We will just get back to the two party system; Conservatives and UKIP

The trade unions brought this on themselves by block voting Ed Milliband in in preference to his considerably more able brother

In reply to MG:

Fascist! Come the revolution you'll be stripped of your evil capitalist wealth to have it... err... given back to you?

In reply to Postmanpat:

This is precisely the kind of non-argument that characterises your approach to debate. It's just the hurling of meaningless insults and it seems to be founded on nothing but a breathtaking arrogance. How is it that you feel able to dismiss a system of thought that has a pedigree that spans centuries with nothing more than a few ad hominem jibes? Unbelievable, really! You compare my position to that of a creationist. This, PP, is utterly ludicrous. Especially from someone whose blind faith in capitalism leads them to defend the most thoroughly anti-social economic system of society ever devised.

It most certainly does, but let's indulge your puerile nonsense for a while...


I haven't avoided any questions at all. You see, there are no difficult questions when it comes to the case for world socialism. It's all very simple. You just need to ask. So, question a. How and why will workers understand that capitalism cannot work in their interests?

The 'why' is straightforward enough. It's the truth. A matter of fact. The working class are forced by economic necessity to sell their labour-power to an employer in return for a wage or salary. Now, human labour-power sold on the market as a commodity has -as Marx so clearly points out in Das Kapital - has a peculiar characteristic in that it can create a value greater than its cost. And so, under the wages system, we have a situation where workers are paid for their labour-power and the application of their labour-power produces a greater value. The worker is being paid less than the value of what he produces. The surplus value is creamed off as profit. So we have an economic situation in which wage-workers are exploited. That's the nature of capitalism, whether the employer is the state or a private capitalist. So to argue that capitalism can work in the interests of the working class is like arguing that an abattoir can be run in the interests of the animals being slaughtered in it. Sounds like the kind of argument you'd advance, come to think of it.

But here's what happens: As people go through their working lives and get consumed by the system the lies that they'd believed from the outset about working hard and saving and getting ahead all begin to wear a little thin. People become discontented and disgruntled, especially when capitalism is going through one of its periodic slumps. They realise that actually, they've been had, and the only people who get rich through hard work are the rich, who are rich because other people work hard for them. A similar thing happens with people's trust in politicians. The more you listen to their empty promises the less convincing they sound. So the delusions get eroded. It's easier to talk to people about the case for socialism now than it ever has been. Most rational people know that capitalism can't satisfy the needs of the majority, and the growth of the anti-market, anti-capitalist perspective is beyond even what I thought possible thirty years ago. It's too late to stop that growth. The revolution is coming whether you like it or not.

As to the 'how' of the understanding, well, that's really simple as well. There's nothing difficult to understand, unlike the convoluted defences of capitalism. The case for socialism is less difficult to grasp than the off-side rule, and even Sun readers can grasp that one.

In reply to Postmanpat:
Let me tell you a little story...
About ten years ago, in the course of my work for the World Socialist Movement, I became involved in the running of an internet debating forum in which myself and others put the case for peaceful, democratic social revolution. We had some fierce opponents as well as the usual quota of bigoted idiots that you invariably get on an internet debating site. One of the more informed opponents was a very intelligent and well-read property lawyer. For some two years we argued the case with him. Here was an affluent member of the working class who was a very well-informed apologist for capitalism who firmly believed that capitalism would be just fine if we could only eradicate the poverty, the inequality, the racism and the inexorable drive to war...He's now an active member of the party. Members of the World Socialist Movement take every opportunity to discuss the case for a better world with our fellow humans. That's how ideas spread. And the struggle for socialism is nothing short of a battle of ideas. When it comes to understanding why society is the way it is now and how it might be changed, we're the guys who kick ass. You can hold on to your belief in capitalism as long as you like. You can look at the world however you like, but in this day and age failing to see that your ideas are outmoded and indefensible just makes you a reactionary, utopian dinosaur.

Question b. How will workers organise to overthrow capitalism? Here comes another simple answer. They'll organise democratically. Without leaders. The circumstances will differ depending on localised conditions, but those two things are crucial. Democratically and without leaders.

Question c. See question b.

Question d. Same again.

Question e. Let's assume that a majority of workers worldwide have achieved an understanding of the exploitative nature of capitalism and have developed the political will to abolish it and establish a classless, stateless, moneyless society based on production for use and not for profit. Such a situation will necessarily have arisen out of the growth of the World Socialist Movement, and the bigger the movement gets the more opinions on how the new society will work will be expressed. By the time that majority exists we'll have thrashed out the details. You see, just one more reason why so-called socialist revolutions haven't even begun to be socialist revolutions is that they've been revolutions enacted by and in the interests of a minority of people bent on imposing their will on the majority. That's inherently undemocratic and definitely unsocialist!



Just so. Now, it's clear to me that working out a blueprint by which people are going to live in a free society is a bit bleeding silly and not a little undemocratic. I know people who call themselves socialists who've worked out where everyone's going to sleep, what they're going to eat and the shape of the cities they'll live in. Those are the kind of people that Marx called utopian socialists. We're not of that ilk. We're scientific socialists, and we see the process of building the revolution as part of the revolution. Nevertheless, if you'd like to know how various socialists have envisaged socialism working then I can suggest a few texts for you to look at. But it's important to grasp that talking about future societies before they're established is a bit like writing sci-fi. In twenty years your writing will look dated.

In reply to Chambers:

So why has none of this happened yet?

In reply to tony: I hadn't forgotten your question from earlier in the day, Tony, and I will endeavour to answer it shortly. However, after two hours shopping for walking boots for my partner and a too-fleetingly brief visit to Horseshoe Quarry, I've not long been home. And now I need to cook dinner. Give me an hour or so! Plus I've got more questions to answer, as well!

In reply to MG:

Supposing I cite the example of a group of more than five-hundred people who have existed as members of a movement that has - since it's inception in 1904 - completely eschewed the concept of leadership and has organised its affairs in a thoroughly democratic fashion without recourse to the need for leaders? And that's happened within capitalism. But I'm just talking about my party. I know it doesn't really count...

But wait! There's a great deal of evidence that suggests that primitive human societies were considerably less hierarchically organised than present-day society. Is it not possible that human societies that pre-date our knowledge of human history were organised in a totally different way than the human societies that we have even limited knowledge of? I think it's possible. Although I don't think we can know for sure. Also, I don't think it matters. Not that much, anyway. PostmanPat exhorts me to read some anthropology. I don't know, but I think I've probably read more than he has. What does it matter? As a species we are capable of producing enough food, clothing and shelter to satisfy the needs of ten times the current population of the planet. If we stopped being dicks great things could happen.

Funnily enough, PostmanPat and I would agree on the historical necessity of capitalism. Capitalism as an economic system did something that no hitherto existing economic system could do: it centralised the means of production and developed them to the point where an absolute abundance of wealth could be produced with minimal effort. Capitalism made socialism possible. But now its outlived its usefulness and has become - just like feudalism did - a fetter on production. It's almost all over for capitalism.

In reply to Chambers:
It's not ad hominem. Remarkable though it may be, in addition to the ignorant rednecks there seem to be quite a lot of successful, intelligent and well educated creationists. They just happen to believe in an irrational idea. I guess the same is true of fundamentalist socialists.
>
Actually you were asked similar questions about 2 years ago and went climbing!

Marx described the theory of surplus labour in 1867, since which time amongst other things we've experienced numerous recessions, the Great Depression, a couple of world wars and countless revolutions.
Still the workers have apparently not got the hang of it. What is going to be different and when?

In reply to Chambers:
Let me tell you a little story. I knew a smart, materially successful and well educated couple, one a financial analyst, the other a bond specialist.
They gave up their careers to live in Hawaii and start a crystal healing centre. Well, Hawaii's nice enough but it doesn't really convince me that crystal healing is the future of mankind.

This is not sufficient answer. Given that this has not happened in the past 150 years you need to provide some explanation of how many millions of people nationally or globally will manage to agree on such principles when in the whole of human history such widespread agreement has never been experienced before.

>
You're not being asked the details of how people will live. we all understand, because we were taught when we were 12 years old, that a true communist (socialist if you prefer) society is Stateless, classless and private propertyless. The details are not the point.

The point, which most socialist intellectuals seem to have understood and discussed endlessly, is how to get from here to there and how to maintain the agreed principles if the human race ever got them.

You're answer seems to be, in a nutshell, is that its such a great idea that everybody will agree to it. That is not an answer.

In reply to Chambers:

Can you spot the difference between reaching an agreement amongst 500 self chosen individuals or related people in a primitive society and between 65 million of us?

Have you ever spotted that your little group seems to have quite a few rivals on the left. You can't even agree amongst yourselves!!! Are you the Judea People's Front of the Peoples Front of Judea?

In reply to Chambers: I have some bad news for you. Capitalism doesn't exist, per se: nobody invented it, plans it or implements it. It's basically a description of how people behave in industrial/post industrial economies. 'Destroying capitalism' is the same as saying 'blowing up the internet' or 'resisting gravity.'

And although it's terrible that there is such a huge disparity between richest and poorest, it's an uncomfortable fact that the poorest seem to become better off as their economies become more 'capitalist.'

In reply to Postmanpat: You're terribly negative about world socialism, I look forward to it. I'm sure it will be followed (or do I mean preceded?) by world peace.

In reply to tony:

I've been thinking about this - on and off - for much of the day, Tony. Why hasn't the revolution happened? Maybe it's because you aren't a member of the movement yet? Maybe you joining will finally tip us into a state of critical mass? How the hell am I meant to know the answer to this question? What we're talking about here is humanity finally waking up and throwing off its chains.

Marx thought that the revolution was going to happen sometime soon, but he was wrong. I could be wrong, too. Tell you what, I spent my early thirties thinking that I probably wouldn't see socialism in my lifetime. These days I think it could happen next week...

The point is this, I think: As capitalism develops it throws up contradictions. Here's an example. We can produce enough to feed everyone but two-thirds of the population of the planet go to bed hungry whilst food is destroyed to maintain profit levels. Here's another: Thousands of builders are sitting idle, without jobs. But there are materials enough to build houses for homeless people. Most folk can't be arsed with fighting people they never met, yet capitalist nations continually provoke wars with other nations. It's contradictions like this that get people thinking about different ways to live. Capitalism, as Marx said, creates it's own gravediggers. What's being created here is history. It's the working-out of an historical process. We can look back at history and try to interpret it, but no amount of historical interpretation will produce a crystal ball that allows us see into the future.

In reply to Chambers:


Did anyone ever leave that group after objecting to how it was run, form other groups etc?
If not must be the first political group never to splinter.


There is also a lot of evidence that suggests they were rather violent. Although this would depend on whether people clashed over resources or not.
Fun but irrelevant unless you are going to wipe out most of the worlds population to recreate the circumstances for those societies.


I think thats a rather large "if".

In reply to Chambers: 'It's the working-out of an historical process.'

And this is where you are wrong. There is no such thing as an 'historical process' - we are not 'going anywhere.' All we are doing is acting in accordance with our inherited characteristics tempered by a new phenomenon of self consciousness.

One of Elizabeth Gaitskill's characters summed it up best. I can't quite quote exactly, but the essence was that if everyone was made equal today, someone would get half an hour earlier tomorrow and become wealthier than their peers. And that's how it is.

In reply to Postmanpat:

PostmanPat, you outrage me! We really should go climbing. That'd be an interesting day out! We should get someone to film it! I've got some ideas written down already...

Look, capitalism hasn't changed in two hundred years. If you'd actually read Das Kapital as opposed to just having fooking Googled it to get some vague notion of what I'm talking about you'd know that the very same conditions that Marx was describing still exist in developing nations. It's all very well sitting there smugly and talking about the historical horrors that capitalism has produced and continues to produce on a daily basis whilst thinking that this in some way validates your unhistorical posturing, but really! What have you done on grit lately?!?!

We can bandy insults forever, my friend, but what you really need to do is to understand what capitalism is. It's an historical condition. Hasn't always existed and there's no reason to suppose that it will always exist.

In reply to Chambers:


But you haven't answered my question about what's different now.

(You seem to work on the basis that if people don't agree with you it's because they haven't read anything or don't understand what you saying. For your reference I probably first came across the theory of surplus of labour about 25 years before Google was founded. I've never read Das Kapital (I've been told its mainly pretty dull by people who had to) and it's possible that all the descriptions and discussions I've read of its content in the past 40 years are wrong and yours is right but I'll take my chance on that.)


No, it hasn't always existed. It was one of mankind's great achievements to "create" it.

Capitalism has changed. That's the nature of it. It morphs to survive and drive socialist nuts as it does it. That's why it survives:human ingenuity. I'm quite open to the idea that capitalism as we recognise it may change or even fail. I agree it has inherent weaknesses. I just probably disagree what they are or that a socialist nirvana will emerge spontaneously to replace it.

Oh, a handful of mid grades things at Burbage with a hangover ten days ago.

In reply to Chambers:

Oh, and apart from it being "the truth so everyone will agree" can you elaborate on how this will be achieved?

In reply to Postmanpat: Yes, I have answered your question about what's different now. What's different now is that the contradictions thrown up by capitalism are even more glaring than they were in the 1800s. And there's more. Capitalism has created some fantastic shit. (It's also created some really bad shit. Like a market for pet psychologists and 'reality television'. But hey! That'll disappear.)

Look, you've got me all wrong. I want you to disagree with me. I want you to prove me wrong. And I know exactly what you need to do to prove me wrong. But you're getting nowhere. First off, you mean either the labour theory of value or you mean Marx's explanation of surplus value. I'm not sure which you are referring to, but you clearly have no grasp of either. Which is fine. I'm not concerned with defending Das Kapital except to say that the only people who have had to read it have been ordered to read it by academics who don't understand it themselves. I've never met an academic who understood what Marx was talking about. Let's forget about Das Kapital for the moment.

So, what I'm interested in now is your defence of capitalism. I agree that it's unrealistic to expect a 'socialist nirvana' to emerge spontaneously, and I've never argued that that is a likely scenario. Perhaps you might explain the inherent weaknesses that you think capitalism has? Incidentally, capitalism doesn't drive me nuts.

In reply to Chambers:

(It's also created some really bad shit. Like a market for pet psychologists and 'reality television'. But hey! That'll disappear.)

What if you enjoy 'reality television'?
'Who' will decide that it should disappear?

In reply to Chambers:
Rubbish,all over the Western world people are materially better off than they've been in human history and the same process is beginning in the rest of the world. For an alternative to develop capitalism has to implode, which it may, but the existing contradictions are not enough to do .


Well if 65 million people agreeing without any leadership or organisation to do away with property, class and money isn't spontaneous how would you describe it? And why isn't the end "nirvana"?

And you get me wrong. As I said much earlier, I'm not much interested in a debate comparing a practical if flawed reality with an idea(your socialist vision) which I think is a fantasy. I'd be much more willing to defend market capitalism against a realistic alternative such as State socialism (or State capitalism as you prefer to call it) although i'm a bit bored by that as well.Since you entered the debate I thought I'd check out whether you had any more convincing explanations about how it should come about than last time but you don't seem to.

Incidentally, it's not 200 years of political philosophy I'm dismissing. It's your dismissal of the same. ie. 200 years of debate, discussion and violent struggle about how to achieve socialism which you claim has never been tried but will happen because its true and everyone will see that....

Happy cragging!

In reply to Chambers:
>
No, I was referring to what is widely known as his "theory of surplus value".Maybe because he described it in his work "Theories of surplus value". I don't doubt it's also widely known as his explanation of surplus value.

In reply to MJ:

So what if you enjoy 'reality television'? Well, let's see...Nah, I don't want to go there. It's perfectly possible that the kind of 'reality television' that capitalism produces for profit will continue in socialism, but I suspect not. From the establishment of socialism onwards I think that we'll be watching tv programmes that are representations of the reality of a world that has freed itself from the stupidity of capitalism. We might, for example, relax after a day's work by watching reality documentaries about how a group of fantastic people - freed from the constraints of the profit system - are shipping food to starving people and showing them how to grow their own. Or we might tune in to a piece on how people who have spent their lives producing useful things show ex-bankers or ticket collectors or royal families or stockbrokers or insurance clerks or hedge-fund managers or politicians or reality television producers or gameshow hosts or lottery administrators or newspaper editors or media hacks or papparazzi or pharmaceutical marketeers or anyone else you can think of who doesn't actually produce anything how to do meaningful work. I dunno.

What I do know is that when humanity comes to its collective senses and stops behaving like a semi-evolved primate we can all do what the f*ck we're best at, rather than sell ourselves like whores in the labour market. What I also know is that if people really want to create shit television in programmes in socialism they'll be able to, because there'll be free access for the whole of humanity to all socially-produced wealth. I just wonder how long such people will carry on making that kind of drivel when there's important work to be done.

In reply to Al Evans:

Clause Four was more than feasible, Al. It happened. We've seen it. It was rubbish. (You know, I don't have a huge amount to be proud of, but I am proud of the fact that I belong to a movement that pointed out over a hundred years ago that the Labour Party was doomed to fail.) The nationalisation of the mines and the railways was Clause Four in practice. The SPGB pointed out when it happened that it made not one iota of difference to the working class whether they were employed by the state or a private capitalist, and history proved us right. Don't believe me? Check this:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1940s/1947/no-509-jan...

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Hi Gordon. I think that what you're doing there is putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. Material conditions engender forms of behaviour, no? If people are born into a state of war - and let's be clear about this, that's exactly what capitalism is - then they are going to grow up in a society in which they never feel secure, are alienated from themselves and others, suffer the adversity of real or threatened scarcity, so on and so forth...F*cking astonishes me that we aren't more f*cked up than we are! Speaks volumes about what it is to be human, actually...

In reply to dissonance:

Yeah, those'd be exceptions. I think my point holds.

In reply to Chambers:

Yeah, yeah, apart from the exceptions your point holds (ignoring any exceptions of course).
Quick question, do you expect to see your version of socialism in your lifetime?

In reply to Postmanpat:


Kiss me, fatboy! Now you're claiming to know the whole of human history! See, I can imagine a time when we were down to maybe sixty thousand individuals spread across the savannah in Africa, and realised we might die out...Here's something of which I'm sure, PP. If - as humans - we didn't have a built-in genetic disposition towards solidarity with our fellow humans and the need to socialise and co-operate we would have died out.

Get this: If I come across someone at the crag who might need my help I don't ask them about their political perspective before I decide whether to help. Do you have a list of people that you wouldn't help?

In reply to Chambers:

There was war (e.g. tribal war) long before capitalism, mate. Cheers.

In reply to Sir Chasm:

Yes. Next week! On Wednesday. Just after I close my kitchen. Incidentally, it's not my version of socialism. Belongs to everyone.

If we're having a serious discussion - and I'm mindful that serious discussions on UKC are as rare as a grown-up ascent of anything harder than E5 - I do seriously think that the new society could happen very soon.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I'm well aware of that, Gordon. What I wasn't aware of was that we had suddenly become 'mates'. Last I knew I worked at a pub in Capel Curig and you came in flogging a book. Hardly makes us mates. Was there a point to this very obvious statement of the stark-staringly and blatantly f*cking apparent thing?

In reply to Chambers:

It was a very simple question and yet it was still beyond you. I asked if you expected to see your version of socialism in your lifetime. Not whether it could happen, but whether you expected to see it.

In reply to Sir Chasm: What on Earth are you on about? I have to assume that you've read some of my writing. How could you possibly thinbk that I'd waste my time pursuing an empty dream? Yes, since I apparently need to spell it out for you, I think that the socialist transformation of society can be realised within my lifetime. If I'm optimistic, that's another forty years.

In reply to Chambers: Although I still maintain that it could happen next week.

In reply to Chambers:


Not really. The point was whether or not an attribute had to be displayed by all to be considered a feature.
I was simply arguing that it didnt and that it would just need to be displayed by a fairly significant proportion of the group and that exceptions could occur.

In reply to Chambers:


This doesnt necessarily scale. For example Ants have extremely hard coded genetic dispositions to solidarity with their fellow group members. The rest of the ant world can go take a flying jump however, normally helped by another ants foot.
So just that we, may, have co-operated when there was a small population doesnt mean we will now. Which I think was Gordon's point, even with fairly small populations conflict occurs.

In reply to Chambers:

Still you can't answer. Not "can" it be realised, I'm asking if you expect to see it in your lifetime. Do you think it's going to happen in the next 40 (to use your figure) years?

In reply to Sir Chasm: Ah! Now I see what you're getting at. If only you'd made it clear from the start that you're playing infantile games with language I wouldn't have wasted fifteen minutes thinking about your shit. Yes, I expect to see socialism in my lifetime. I have a crystal ball. Fool!

In reply to Chambers:

(I'm starting to assume that you're someone having a huge laugh, possibly even a right-winger. Otherwise, it's reading a bit deranged. OK, it's late on a Friday night ...)

In reply to Chambers:


Whilst I am not opposed to a few random insults I am not pushing for a socialist revolution (or indeed a revolution of any flavour). Do you feel this is a good way to bring it round quicker, insulting rather than putting forward arguments?

In reply to Chambers:

As you seem to be struggling I'll try and explain. If I buy a lottery ticket I know I "can" win millions of pounds, but if I buy a lottery ticket I don't necessarily "expect" to win millions of pounds.
I know this may come across, to you, as playing infantile games with language, but in a written medium words is all wot weeve got.

In reply to dissonance:

And what I'm suggesting is that for something to be part of our 'nature', which is to say something that is a part of the essence of being a human being it must necessarily be a quality that is displayed by all human beings.

You see, I don't think that there's much we can really say with any kind of certainty about that. A handful of fairly basic imperatives, perhaps. The need for warmth - we're warm-blooded mammals, after all - the need for companionship, a sense of morality, the compulsion to communicate...

Other than that we're looking at things that can't be observed in isolation and - it seems to me - are impervious to empirical verification. One only has to witness the utter confusion of 'experts' who would tell us what to think on this matter to realise that there is no truth to be known nor, quite probably, that can be known. Personally, I'd jump over ninety-seven Steven Pinkers, seventy-three Douglas Adams and five-hundred and twenty-three thousand Steve Jones's to get next to one Karl Marx who said, in 1852, that 'Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.'

That - for me, at any rate, sums up what we can actually know. Certain people - and I use the word advisedly - under duress can kill to survive. Less certain people can't.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: I've read your books, Gordon, and I hear the ice underneath your feet creaking...

In reply to Sir Chasm: I seem to be struggling? Do you have any mirrors in your house?

In reply to dissonance: I'm really dreadfully sorry if you think that I've insulted you. I'm also going to try to make you feel dreadfully sorry if you can't explain what I've said that made you feel so insulted.

In reply to Chambers:

I preferred you when you were Gudrun.

In reply to stroppygob: Two things are clear, here, stroppygob. One: I don't know what you're talking about. Two: Nor do you. XXX

In reply to Chambers:

That's better, you're getting back to being Gudrun now.

In reply to Chambers: I've read pretty much all the posts on this thread , and I can't believe anybody still believes a thing Karl Marx wrote - you sound like all those socialist worker idiots I encountered at university - Marxs writing has been , indirectly I agree , responsible for the deaths of millions of people , but I suppose it's the same , after all , as all those neo nazis you get still kicking around .

In reply to Chambers:

genius the classic non apology. Think your groups non leader might need to sort out a communications and PR course.


not got the hang of quotes then? I was just finding it amusing your insults lobbed at Sir Chasm and the postie.

In reply to Chambers: Do you ever have any doubts about any of this? You seem very certain of your ability to predict the future.

In reply to Chambers:


hermits


sociopaths and psychopaths. Or any number of lunatic political leaders.


again see hermits.


ok, but you havent explained the relevance to over turning all modern cultures and reverting to a hypothetical early stage culture?

In reply to dissonance:


Have you noticed how hermits have gone out of fashion? I think there should be more hermits. Living in hermits' caves.

In reply to MG:

here you go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori

Although they fail on the caves bit.

In reply to MG:

You just cannot get decent caves these days.

In reply to Chambers: "Do not besmirch my reply as some bombastic attempt at wooing the masses. But I will repudiate my attachment to the beauty of the English language if it shall cast a fog over the crucible of my argument."

Add that one to your arsenal of pompous replies. It will be an improvement on your current ones. Maybe ask your highly intelligent ex property lawyer comrade for some tips.

In reply to Bergvagabunden:

First of all, the SWP are Leninists and Trotskyites and not Marxists, whatever they may claim. Secondly, they aren't socialists. They advocate state capitalism and not socialism. Third of all, Marx's analysis of capitalism is unsurpassed and as relevant today as it was 150 years ago. Fourthly, there is precisely nothing in Marx that supports the wholesale slaughter of workers that you refer to.

In reply to Bjartur í Sumarhús: You what?

In reply to Chambers:

Splitists!!

In reply to Postmanpat:

Once again, you're labouring under some serious misapprehensions, Patster. They'll be easily dispelled though. You speak of my little group - which is in reality a global network of companion parties - having rivals, and suggest that there's a problem with the fact that 'we' - as you put it - can't agree amongst ourselves. The whole of the left - whether it be the SWP or the CPGB or the name-stealing Socialist Party or any other left-wing sect are and always have been opponents of the case for socialism. Which is why we have clause seven of our Declaration of Principles. Clause seven reads "That as all political parties are but the expression of class interests, and as the interest of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of the the master class, the party seeking working class emancipation must be hostile to every other party." That should have cleared that up for you.

I think that you underestimate the scale and magnitude of the ways in which ideas can change. Sixty-five million people have agreed that we drive on the left. That might have seemed a pipe-dream 200 years ago. There's actually a lot more agreement between people than is sometimes acknowledged. I see no reason why a majority of people can't agree on a general framework for organising society in the interests of everyone.

In reply to MG: That's exactly what they are, yes.

In reply to dissonance:



Not sure what you're asking there. Can you clarify the question?

In reply to Chambers: Isn't that a bit of a problem for world harmony and agreement? Anyway, to return to a question above. Could you clarify whether I am a worker (I work) or a member of the "master class" (I own bits of compnaies)?

In reply to dissonance:

Yes, it has occurred often and continues to do so. It's usually as a result of scarcity - real or threatened. A socialist society will produce an abundance of wealth, however, and that wealth will be freely available. What do you suppose people are going to fight over when all of their basic needs are met?

In reply to MG:

Oh, yeah. I had made a mental note to answer that one. It got kind of lost in the melee, so thanks for reminding me. I'm still not sure what you're asking me with your latest question. Maybe I'm just mis-reading you, but I don't get it.

In answer to your question about class, that's straightforward enough. If economic necessity forces you to sell your labour-power to an employer then you are a member of the working class. Owning a few shares isn't relevant to your class position. If, on the other hand, you own and control enough to be able to live without working that makes you a capitalist.

In reply to Chambers:


so once you finishing working your entire life and retire at age 70 with enough to live off you suddenly switch to being a capitalist.

In reply to Chambers:

If, on the other hand, you own and control enough to be able to live without working that makes you a capitalist.

Many pensioners will live on income from shares in retirement. Does that mean they suddenly become capitalists on the day they retire after being workers all their lives? Your proposal seems a bizarre way to view the world. What about small - possibly one-man - business owners?

In reply to dissonance: snap!

In reply to Chambers:


Dont you think there is a rather large problem you have just casually dismissed?


For fun or because I want more than the basics and quite fancy your house as well.

In reply to Chambers:

And passion. You (and many socialists) appear to ignore emotion.
Throughout human history there are tales of love and the deeds done as a result.
On the plus side we have compassion, altruism and heroism, on the minus side we have jealousy, hate and treachery.

In the happy socialist compound of the future we will all live in our identical little boxes - except that I want to impress Ivana, by outperforming Ivan, or having a nicer little box, or giving her better presents, or maybe by just beating up Ivan.

So my motivation changes from "helping everyone else" to "hhelping myself".

In reply to dissonance:

No, of course not. Being a member of the capitalist class means having enough capital to invest with a view to making a profit. (See my posting above about surplus value.)

In reply to Chambers:
Will you be able to enter for the lottery in this utopia?

In reply to Chambers:

Well I do that. I must be evil. Sorry.

In reply to MG:

Nah! That's one of their shrieks, MG!

Do these guys have any interest in working people? I don't think so, do you? - except as fodder to fuel their own political ambitions. To do the splitz, you have to have something to split from. These politicos tore themselves from working class movements in 1917 when they saw an opportunity to seize power and ruthlessly exploit the very people they claimed to represent. Where have we heard that before? That's the nature of propaganda. People are defined by what they do, not what they say.

In reply to dissonance:

Nothing casual about it, at all. I just have limited time right now. But look, show me a conflict between humans that doesn't have property rights as its root cause?

In reply to Chambers:
Brilliant stuff! Have you thought of sending it off to John Cleese? He needs some cash to pay his alimony and may be able to incorporate it into his next film.
I forget, was it the Judean People's Front or the People's Front for Judea that wasn't the real voice of independence because it didn't hate the Romans enough?


We sort of gathered that. Just to clarify: because a network of groups that are connected to each other because they agree with other actually do agree with each other, this is evidence that everybody could agree with everybody? (Except, of course, the groups that aren't rivals because they don't agree with with the you?)

In reply to Hud:

Just so! Which is why the SPGB has opposed all left-wing parties as well as all right-wing parties for over a hundred years.

In reply to neilh:

LOL, You are very welcome to enter the lottery in our current Utopia, Neilh. And you might even win it! Till then, you can live on dreams. Gd Luck.

In reply to Chambers:


Thats the entire concept behind pension investments. To invest to make enough of a profit so you can give up work at some point in the future.

Or to try another tack. If I set up my one man business and it does rather well, at which point do I switch to being a capitalist?

In reply to Postmanpat: Do you think this "framework for organising society", might need some agreed rules, maybe we could give them a name, perhaps "laws"? Also, maybe the system for deciding on these laws, needs a name - how about "democracy"?

In reply to Chambers:


SO you are right and every else wrong and they all agree with you. One day.

In reply to Chambers:


That reminds me. You said this party has been around for a 100 years or so and that showed how sound the foundation was.
Did anyone ever leave (outside of death) either just to get out of the party or to join/set up a different organisation?

In reply to Chambers:

You couldn't make this up. The wiki entry for SPGB begins

"Not to be confused with British Socialist Party or Socialist Party (England and Wales). Socialist Party of Great Britain"

Heaven forbid!! And then continues

"... and is regarded as within the impossibilist tradition."

Yep!

In reply to MG: I am having a Poe's law moment after reading a bit more of the entry!

In reply to off-duty:

LOL, then I'll not follow you to your imagined, abstract and airless Utopia, off-duty! Socialists on the whole have a fair current and historical understanding of what capacities people have and the way they respond to their social and natural environments.

I notice the straw man arguments are beginning to pile up now. Always a sign of the emotion you were talking about.

Yep, indeed. We have started to reclaim that title. It comes, incidentally from a response to the French social democrat view at the end of the nineteenth century that it is *possible* to remain a socialist while taking power in a capitalist government. We said no, *impossible*. We're proud of that tradition of non-compromise. It's why we have survived and others haven't.

In reply to Chambers:


The Thirty years war started on religious grounds although then expanded.
However not sure even if your claim was true how this would help your case?
Since it gives a rather big hurdle to get past, particularly since plenty of wars have been instigated by leaders who had plenty of land but just wanted even more (or to piss off the neighbour).

In reply to dissonance:

Yes, of course! What would you expect? People are not robots, they change their minds; leave; come back; go elsewhere. We have had very few splits though in comparison to other parties, and the ones we have had have been very small, mostly just a few members; the largest was two branches.

In reply to Hud:

Doesn't bode well for this socialist utopia where everyone agrees on how to run the world if even a few 100 "believers" can't agree, does it?

In reply to Hud:

And a LOL right back at you. Not sure how it can be a strawman when it is in direct response to a list of basic human motivations by chambers.
I also notice that you utterly fail to mention how your system would address the basic human competition for love, other than by suggesting that you have a good understanding of it. Whatever that might mean.

In reply to MG:

Who is right and who is wrong can only be decided by public argument and debate. In the meantime, we individually choose our sides. Is there anything unusual in this, MG? Or have I missed something?

We are not principally interested in whether people agree with us, we are interested in helping them to see and acknowledge the exploitative nature of the world they live in and its consequences. If capitalism can be overturned by some other means than the one we advocate and a genuinely post-capitalist society established, then we're fine with that, or if it is achieved outside the framework of the SPGB and its companion parties, then we're fine with that too. In the meantime, taking the balance of argument and evidence, our members hold with Marx (and against Lenin), that a society with a genuinely co-operative structure can only be built co-operatively by the working class, and that there are historical precedents that indicate that this is achievable.

Hi Off-duty. I would take a different approach to Chambers on this. The vast majority of time that humanity has existed on the planet as a separate species, it has existed in hunter gatherer bands which are highly egalitarian in structure and generally unwarlike - though they are not without examples of individual conflict mostly initiated by young men. (Someone mentioned 'tribes' earlier. Tribal organisation is a much more recent phenomenon in which social stratification has developed, though not to the point of full class-division.)

Modern egalitarian hunter gatherer bands are very skilled at avoiding conflicts of the kind you mention and of effecting social reconciliation when they do occur.

We don't simply lift this as a straight model for a post-capitalist society as someone here assumed (straw man), since, its economic foundations would, for historical and technological reasons, be quite different. But the example of hunter gatherer societies, along with other evidence, does indicate that the kind of situations you propose are socially manageable.

Nor do we claim (another straw man) that a post-capitalist society would be Utopian or perfect or harmonious or realise some kind of 1960s hippy-dippy fantasy. That would be absurd. We do claim though that there is plenty of evidence to indicate that conflict in a post-capitalist world could be much more effectively managed than in capitalism and would not threaten the structure of society.

Not all conflict arises in the abstract uncontextualised way you present it though. Human behaviour is not a direct or blind expression of emotion but is mediated through a complicated system of social structures, institutions and beliefs. We also argue that a post-capitalist world would eliminate many of capitalism's unnecessary structural drivers towards conflict, waste and inequality.

In reply to MG:

Several straw men here, MG. See my comment above. Why would everyone have to agree in a post capitalist society?

By the way, the constitution of the SPGB encourages disagreement and debate among its members. That is the only way for ideas and understanding to progress, don't you think? Incidentally, if you are looking for a moral here, you might notice that this free and open structure has held us together much more effectively than the closed, authoritarian structures of Trotskyist and Leninist groups which are endlessly splitting, splintering and factionalising. With us, as I pointed out, splintering is minor and rare.

In reply to Hud:


Well they would at least have to agree not be capitalists!

Erm... OK, MG.

The clue is in the name: "post-capitalist society."

Societies have definite economic structures that support and limit the kind of economic relationships that can be formed within them. Try putting people to work as serfs and living as a feudal lord in 21th century Kensington, or surviving as a hunter gatherer on a medieval baronial estate, or as a slave-owner in a hunter gatherer band.

The concept of a post-capitalist society is structural, a society whose collective property institutions would not support an exploitative wage-labour/capital relationship. To be a capitalist in a post-capitalist world would not be a choice anyone could make.

In reply to Hud:


Are you serious ? do you think that human nature will have changed so much that no-one will try to turn a profit ?

In reply to Hud:
To be a capitalist in a post-capitalist world would not be a choice anyone could make.


And if I disagree? Say by offering some service that I am good at for other goods, what then?

In reply to Hud: So prostitution be free in this post capitalist world? F*ckin a!...why wasn't that your first line? Now we are interested. Do go on..

In reply to Hud:

I am somewhat curious how you managed to establish this, since its not the sort of thing which would appear in the archeological record as far as I am aware?


Even if we take this statement as true, how do you deal with the fact they are damned rare? How will you bring that model back into the mainstream?

ps. will the rest of the party be turning up?

In reply to dissonance:


Those are not a simple questions to answer as you clearly perceive in asking them, dissonance, but nor do they pose any problem for the analysis. Social classes and the relationships between them are not sharply defined like joints in a fine piece of cabinet making, but tend to shade into one another, as you would expect in a complex system with multiple levels of interaction. What matters is the big picture and what sustains it.

An entrepreneurial business person might in the early days of a new business join their employees in doing some productive labour, so their income may only be partly derived from surplus-value. As the business grows, though, that will change. Where the exact point of transition comes between worker and capitalist may be difficult to establish and there are other factors to consider like the poor survival rate of small businesses and low social mobility between classes within capitalism, but none of these affect the big picture of social relations within capitalism as a whole. The paradigms are clear.

The same can be said of investment in pension funds which is a way of using an element of the system to provide for the needs of retired members of the working class in some societies. Yes,it means that a small percentage of the value created by the working class is returned to them via surplus value, but this hardly makes up for a lifetime of exploitation. If it did, the system would collapse.

These interactions of the capitalist property system do nothing to obscure the fundamental relationship between capitalist and worker, since they are both minor and secondary. They are minor because they only apply to a small percentage of the population in the grey area between worker and employer and a small percentage of investment. They are secondary because without the wage/capital relationship or the primary function of surplus value as accumulated capital for reinvestment in production and consumption by the capitalist class, these other features could not even exist.

Actually, in the present state of our knowledge, the archaeological evidence for our 100,000-200,000 years as hunter gatherers is uncontroversial. The findings are not universal, and there is some recent evidence that tribal forms of organisation developed earlier than we supposed in some places, but the big picture is very clear and the evidence overwhelming.

As for why there were only a small number of hunter-gatherer bands today, I would have thought that was obvious. State-formation over the last 300 years forced pre-state peoples increasingly onto marginal land and then absorbed them into other forms of social relationship either through economic pressures or through coercion. Until the sixteenth century, however, a large portion, possibly most of mankind still lived in hunter-gatherer bands, tribal societies and chiefdoms.

Band hunter-gatherers still exist, though, on all habitable continents, and are interesting because, despite the impossibility of communication between them, they all have broadly similar social arrangements. All are egalitarian and co-operative, yet at the same time provide individuals with a freedom of action and sense of personal responsibility that would make the average American anarcho-capitalist sick with envy. As they have no permanent centres of power or influence, warfare is almost unknown among them, though it does exist in a few groups that live in close proximity to warlike neighbours or have been the victims of aggressive colonialism. They all have a deep understanding of the causes of social conflict and have sophisticated and well-developed ways of limiting it. If you need evidence of any or all of this, then the anthropological literature is very extensive.

As for your question 'how would you bring that model back into the mainstream?' I suggest you go back and read my post again. We cannot go backwards. We have to start from where we are and history places strict limits on what we can achieve. To repeat, we don't look to hunter gatherers as a model, only as a confirmation that institutionalised warfare and conflict are not part of an abstract human 'essence' as some claim but are manageable given economic relationships not based on conflict. Capitalism, by contrast, because of its institutionalisation of economic conflict right down to the level of the family and individual promotes destructive behaviour and provides working people with one among many reasons for moving on as soon as possible.

In reply to GrahamD:

Hi GrahamD.

Being a capitalist is not an innate quality of a human being like having two legs, a liver or a sense of smell; it's a social relationship. You cannot have capitalists unless you also have a very specific system of private property to support their role and one in which a degree of capital already exists in private hands. Nor can you have capitalists unless you have first created a body of wage or salary workers to work for them. And that requires a property system that has a) progressively denied a vast mass of working people the right to own land and b) given them no choice but to sell their labour to the capitalist class as their only means of subsistence.

And when you have those fundamentals, you still cannot kick off the capitalist/wage worker relationship unless you have a) evolved a property system which gives free title to ownership(one quite unlike the property system that prevailed in earlier medieval Europe for instance), b) created a financial system based on universal monetary values, c) developed a legal system that supports and promotes the institutions of usury and profit, d) developed a universal market system that allows prices to find their own levels without interference from local elites, e)a universal unit of exchange, etc, etc, etc.

Let me ask you a question. The modern capitalist appeared making a profit for the first time in human history very roughly around the end of the eighteenth century at the same time as these institutions began to develop. If being a capitalist is a natural and inevitable product of some abstract quality of our species called human nature, explain to me how, until 300 years ago, no obvious capitalists have been previously recorded or dug up walking the earth during all the vast period that behaviourally modern human beings have existed? And even more puzzling to me, explain how until some 10,000 years ago there is hardly any sign not just of a capitalist extracting surplus value out of a worker, but of any form of social organisation that shows an institutionally exploitative set of relationships.

Frankly, it sounds like you believe we live in a sort of social vacuum, where we behave like dolls which move around swinging our legs in empty space and behaving only according to the demands of our inner clockwork. The idea that we are born into a pre-existing world which has a complex social, legal and economic structure, a world which limits and shapes our choices, our identities and our roles, and one in which we undergo a protracted period of socialisation, development and learning seems to have escaped you, at least when you come to address this issue.

In short, Graham, you cannot climb the greasy pole unless there is a greasy pole to climb.

In reply to Hud: But there is a greasy pole. So how do you intend to persuade people to get rid of the greasy pole?

In reply to Bjartur í Sumarhús:

LOL, sorry Bjartur, I didn't realise you were so interested in the social analysis of human relationships, or I would have said something.

Yes, absolutely, by taking the means of production into common ownership, it follows that women would not be in a position to charge for sex. However, there is a small caveat to this. It also means that finding a woman at the kerbside who is willing to give herself to you for sex just for the asking might prove rather more difficult than you obvious imagine.

In reply to Hud: How can agreeing to sex be in 'common ownership'? Will people recieve instructions on who to sleep with?

In reply to Hud:

I am interested in your specific claims about the social structures, especially the lack of warfare. Where is the evidence for this?



Thats the point really. Those approaches and social structures didnt scale well with changing population. Its all well and good living peacefully with your fellow man if the only ones you will come across is your kin.


I see you are taking one of the more rosy views provided by the anthropologists. It tends to be a somewhat self selecting sample in that its quite difficult to write a thesis about the Mashco-Piro or the Sentinelese.



I have seen some and I know it is nowhere near as clear cut as you are suggesting.


Apart from the only time they seem to succeed is in small groups with abundent resources. Which is a rather big restriction.
If you manage to solve that issue then pretty much any system from feudalism to capitalism would seem peachy.

In reply to Sir Chasm:

Hey, at last, the $64,000 question. Phew! It's a good job I'm off work today to nurse my wounds. This will have to be the last post for now. My initial intention was to bat around a few cheerful insults and then retire. What happened? Chambers, if you are around, come back. What did I do?

I've covered this here already (I think? Or was that somewhere else. I'm getting tired). It's a matter of historical precedent. Overturning the existing order is what rising economic classes have done repeatedly throughout history. They have recognised that their interests are not being served by the current economic arrangements; they have acted together to take power away from the existing ruling class and they have then remade the economic structure of society in their own interest and likeness. That was sometimes a quick process; at other times it was prolonged. It took the British capitalist class at least 200 years through the Civil War, the Glorious Revolution and finally the First Reform Act to wrest control of the state from the aristos. Dozy bastards!

Capitalism has reduced the previously numerous classes down to only two: the capitalist class and the working class (or perhaps more accurately, the employed class). The working class is exploited by the capitalist class and used in other ways to further their interests (No time now to elaborate, sorry, apply to Chambers if it snags you.), so they have a collective interest in overturning the system. And ultimately people tend to follow their interests. That's the historical driver.

If they do that then the only sustainable way they can reconstruct society in their own interest is to act together as a social majority, remove the source of exploitation and the current source of class conflict - the private ownership of the means of production and restructure society. As far as I can see, the only way we will ever reduce human conflict is by removing the institutions that promote or support it.

There are no guarantees this will happen. It is only inevitable in the sense that there are strong historical precedents for it and social forces at work tending in that direction. But capitalism could wipe us out before then with its inability to get a handle on global warming, or fry us all in a nuclear conflagration (happy thoughts!)

And people like me? Well, we might have a small role to play countering the tonnage of propaganda that is pumped into people's minds by the education system and the media, but the process is a material one locked into the conflict-ridden nature of the capitalist system itself, which reflects continuously in people's minds. History shows that huge social movements spring up from nowhere. No-one was predicting the French Revolution the day before it happened.

Sorry, that's a bit pat, squire, yer lordship, sir. Gotta go and get some zzzz's. Going motorcycle camping at the weekend (if I'm recovered enough). Definitely need some fresh air. Lots of it. Thanks all for filling up a deadly empty time stuck in the house. Enjoyed abusing you all. Take care.

In reply to Hud:

Don't leave me this way
I can't survive, I can't stay alive
Without you love, oh baby
Don't leave me this way
I can't exist, I will surely miss
Your tender kiss
So don't leave me this way

In reply to Postmanpat:

these SPGB party members dont seem to have a lot of staying power.

In reply to dissonance:

Oh all right, this is my fun subject. Very quickly.


Try referencing any works on the !Kung, the Aka or the Ju/'hoansi for instance or the Inuit or Inupiat. The early chapters of Kelly's The Foraging Spectrum are worth reading for a history of how the research has changed. ('Forager' is an alternative title for hunter gatherers). Anything by Marshall Sahlins is interesting but be aware that some of his more polemical and roseate claims from the Man the Hunter conference have been qualified, though not entirely disproved. There was quite a useful textbook called Key Issues in Hunter-Gatherer research from the mid-90s I recall by Burch and Ellanna which covered some of the more conceptual issues. You could also try some of the general chapters at the back of The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Hunters and Gatherers, edited by Richard Lee and Richard Daly. But Lee and Daly tend to lump all hunter gatherers together, so it can be hard to distinguish one social formation from another.

It's not changing populations, but contact with other social structures which have exploitative forms of organisation that has caused their demise. But I agree with the point I think you are raising. Capitalism is now near enough a global economy, and requires a global response. A post-capitalist society would also have to be on a global scale.

Yes there is a problem of this kind but I think some careful reading will reveal that it is not as widespread as you suppose. I can't stress enough that when approaching this material, you need constantly to beware of definitional issues. Social anthropologists unlike their more scientific 'biological' cousins, can be quite woolly in their terminology. There are for instance two types of hunter gatherers: immediate and delayed return groups which should not be confused since they have quite different social structures. And many groups like the warlike Yanomami often referred to as hunter gatherers, aren't at all. They are largely horticulturalists.

Anthropologists have a fair understanding of the general structure of many modern non-state populations and we know which are band (aka immediate return) hunter gatherers and which are not. Groups like the Sentinelese and the Mascho Piro are largely unknowns but any group that has experienced hostile colonial contact in the past needs to be carefully bracketed. We also have no idea which hunter-gatherer group they fall into.

Having identified band hunter gatherers, it is also easy to research them since they are in fact almost all unwarlike and amenable to detailed study. If you can cut through the terminological confusion anthropologists are pretty much agreed on their egalitarian and predominantly non-warlike natures. (Individual violence within them is another matter and varies widely from the non-existent to the extreme. One of the interesting research areas of recent years is to determine if these differences are ecological).

it is not absolute. Nothing is absolute. But as above, I think you will find it becomes more clear cut once you have got past all the terminological confusion. This daunted me for years. Took me ages to even understand what the issue was.

All band hunter gatherer groups are relatively small, of necessity but their access to resources varies. Some go hungry at some parts of the year, others don't. But the degree to which social structures break down during periods of absolute dearth is to my understanding relatively low. You also have to factor in the fact that almost all existing hunter gatherer groups have been forced into marginal land, where making a living has become much harder. The size of the group would be a problem for our purposes, if we were expecting to model some future society on these structures, but as I've pointed out, we only use Hunter Gatherers society as a counterweight to the claim that some abstracted thing called human nature will lead all human beings in all societies to acts of violence and war. Any conceivable post-capitalist society would be light years from a hunter gather society technologically and in terms of its structures, and would have to evolve its own social means of limiting conflict. It would be foolish to assume it would do so completely. Despite the brickbats thrown at us we are not Utopians. We are looking at a potential post-capitalist society in relative contrast to a society like capitalism which acutally promotes warfare.


Look at this materially. If the problem of real scarcity had been solved by medieval times, the technology would have been different and it is unlikely that a feudal-type society would have emerged. Today meeting fundamental needs would not be a problem for a rationally constituted society. UN agencies have been producing report after report for years showing that if agricultural resources where rationally used we could feed the world population several times over, even at its current levels.

Scarcity is a modern economist's abstraction based on a bit of philosophical trickery. Scarcity exists, they say because human wants are infinite. But this just ain't so. Each society has its own dynamics that determine the level of human want. Hunter gatherers are the living refutation of the economist's claim. In many cases they collectively restrict their wants. Sorry this is very rushed, so hope it makes sense.

In reply to MG:

LOL, what IS going on in your head, MG. The working class only need to take the means of production into common ownership. The means of reproduction are quite another matter!!!! No-one is going to demand communal rights to your gonads! Not unless you want them to, that is. People are generally quite obliging, though.

In reply to Chambers:

I definitely preferred you when you were Gudrun.

In reply to The Lemming:

Personally I believe revolutions only cause regression to the mean - so in a place that has been held back from the path of progress (like some Middle Eastern countries courtesy of us propping up oil dictators) a revolution (Arab Spring) can improve things, but in countries where things like human rights are quite well-developed, revolutions are only going to make things worse.

That said, everyone who argues that 'socialist' ideas (and I have no idea how exactly 'socialism' will turn out, but the current setup is clearly non-optimal) are some sort of utopian dream should consider that we already live in a utopia. At least, it would look like that to someone from 100, 200, 300 years ago...

There are people who argue that once we create a socialist society there will be a surplus of wealth/resources; this is clearly silly. We will be able to create some sort of increasingly socialist, or at least fair, society as we acquire a surplus of wealth/resources. In an ideal world, no-one would have to work in primary production - and this is the way things are going even in our imperfect society. Consider the self-checkouts at supermarkets - one day there will be no 'McJobs' because technology will mean that these jobs can be done by machine. Of course the pattern of history is that we create more work for ourselves by demanding higher living standards, but at some point it won't matter if a significant fraction of the population don't work. Or at least it shouldn't - it only matters in a free-market capitalist society revolving around money. It is also interesting that we don't make so much stuff these days, so a lot of our 'work' involves things that are of no use to society in general - advertising, sales and marketing for example...

My political beliefs are simple: Aim left. Walk carefully. Keep walking.

PS much earlier in this thread people were arguing FPTP produced 'strong governments'. I have never understood why people want a strong government? If you want a 'strong government', look at Syria - Assad has not resigned in the face of civil war.

In reply to andrewmcleod:


How on earth is this perfect world going to manage the distinction between those who have to work to provide something essential society really does need and those who they support who don't need to work and can therefore just kick back?

At the moment work is rewarded, nominally speaking, by greater material comfort than not working.

In reply to Hud:


quick answer. You still fail to provide the 200,000 years worth of evidence. You may be trying to extend from some studies but that doesnt actually count as archeological evidence for the happy lifestyle you suggest.


ok, lets take the Inuit. Oral tradition of violence towards other tribes and known violent encounters with outsiders.Admitted those with low population density and encounters with outsider less so but that doesnt indicate anything other than lack of opportunity.



good luck with that.


This seems rather convenient. So you use an ultra tight definition and then go wahey some groups meet that defintion and so, it proves what exactly?



so by selecting those groups which arent violent you find non violent people. You dont feel there might be a certain bias in play there.



Seems selection bias at play.


The problem is you fail to do this. You confuse internal and external group interactions. The size of the group is rather important both for internal (larger it is the more you need rules rather than peer pressure) and external in terms of conflict over resources.


yet this seems based on perfect resources appearing from nowhere. Capitalism would do quite well under the same scenario. Peoples eagerness to fight goes down as the risk/benefit changes.


They arent since so few of those societies survive and most have external supplies now. There are exceptions to every rule but you seem to be basing your entire case on finding the exceptions and then extrapolating to them being the norm without explaining how you will get past the problems which made them the exception.

In reply to Hud:


Sorry, nations have been rising and falling on the back of commercial enterprise for as long as humans have lived at a high enough population density to make it practical on a large scale. Plenty of mediterranean civilastions came to prominence because they were on strategic trade routes.

In reply to dissonance:

That's only what you think, my friend! I work longer hours than most members of the working class. That's through choice, by the way. Unlike a lot of our class who work long hours for money because they need it I cook great food for people who love to eat it because I want to. But I am very tired now, and the woman I love needs my company. Hud and I, despite being members of the same political party, disagree on a number of matters. But we agree on the matters that matter. More on this tomorrow when I've closed my kitchen. Goodnight all. There's not one of you that I wouldn't help if you fell off a rock.

In reply to Chambers:

You don't get much more middle class than that.

In reply to stroppygob: You're absolutely right, stroppygob. I'm as middle-class as you can get. I work very hard for not much money, but that's fine with me. Most of the time it doesn't even seem like work, because cooking great food for people who love to eat it is what I like to do with my spare time when the sun's not out and I can't go climbing.

I don't work in a shitty factory or a shop or a warehouse anymore. I no longer ride a motorcycle around London for money. I've done my share of that. For money. Nowadays, I'm a chef. For money. Get it yet? I don't own the means of production. In fact, I own next to nothing. My knives, my climbing gear, some books and a few guitars. That's about it. Don't want to own anymore.

You see, class isn't about occupation at all. It's about your relationship to the means of production and whether or not you work for wages. I might run a kitchen that uses the finest ingredients to produce great food, but I'm just as much a wage-slave as the poor kitchen manager at any Wetherspoons establishment. The fact that I'd still do what I do now in a socialist society whilst the Wetherspoons slave would almost certainly choose to do something useful instead is neither here nor there.

In reply to Chambers:

That's a given.


I didn't know you could order in a rent boy, learn something new...


Have you figured out where you're going wrong yet?


No one said it was....

In reply to Chambers:

I don't work in a shitty factory or a shop or a warehouse anymore.

Nice!

In reply to Chambers:


The working class can kiss my ar$e,
I've got the foremans' job at last.
I'm out of work and on the dole,
You can stuff the red flag up your hole.
The working class can kiss my ar$e,
I've got the foremans' job at last.

In reply to stroppygob: I'd love to respond to your points before I go to work. Problem is, you didn't make any.

In reply to stroppygob:

I think it's a given that you miss the point. I work for about sixty hours a week at something I love to do and which I would do if we lived in a society where people no longer worked for wages. Within capitalism, I have to work for wages. I'm just fortunate to have found an occupation that pays me reasonably well and which doesn't even seem like 'a job' to me. Now, that clearly makes me a member of the working class. Which - and this is the point you missed - is about as middle class as you can get. Which is to say not at all. You are funny, you know?


You haven't actually learned anything there, have you? Just another cheap and puerile stab that serves only to emphasise the fact that you really have nothing to contribute here.

No. For the simple reason that I'm not going wrong anywhere. I lead a very contented life and have no need to own very much. It's a lifestyle choice. I'm not a slave to commodity fetishism like you are.
Well, actually, you implied it. But I suspect you don't think too much about the implications of your bletherings.

In reply to dissonance:

You gotta be joking! Over a century of relentlessly arguing the case for world socialism makes us the motherf*cking Duracell of the whole political spectrum. Look at any of the other parties and you'll see that they change their tune every election.

In reply to Chambers:

What nonsense, it makes you someone happy in his work, in one of the most capitalist industries out there. It affects your class not one jot.



I was responding to you at your level. Now yo have learned something, haven't you?


Ah, the choices available to one so middle class, you should thank the benefits of capitalism for that. Others, the real working class, do not have that option.


Interesting, you must know me so well to make that very middle class value judgement.


I definitely preferred you when you were Gudrun.

In reply to stroppygob:

And I prefer you when you shut the f*ck up. Look, you fool, you are clearly incapable of responding to me at my own level, which is why I'm getting a headache thinking down to yours. I work for wages. I am a wage-labourer. I generally work sixty hours a week and I get a pay-packet at the end of it. Chefs work harder than people in factories. I know this because I've done both.

There are no benefits to capitalism anymore. It's an obsolete system that should have been abolished by now. It's outlived its usefulness and, worse than that, it produces apologists for its own stupidity. Apologists like you. Devoted, ill-informed, ignorant and slavish.

In reply to Chambers: And furthermore, I have no idea who 'Gudrun' is.

In reply to Chambers: And incidentally, just before I go for a well-earned very long bath in which I'll be relaxing for the first time since Tuesday evening, I'll just point out the idiocy of your statement about the industry in which I'm exploited being one of the 'most capitalist'. I mean, really? Do you understand nothing about capitalism? All businesses under capitalism are businesses that operate under the laws of capitalism. Which is to say that production takes place primarily with a view to realising a profit. Actually, mofo, you should come and spend a few hours in my kitchen...you any good at washing pots? What you'd see would open your eyes a bit. See, 'cos I'm a revolutionary socialist mofo, my kitchen runs without any need for the usual shit you get in kitchens. No bullying, no super-exploitation, no sexism, no racism, no shouting or throwing things about, no chef tantrums and no-one makes more than seven knob-jokes a day.

In reply to Chambers: Nice bath. I do like a nice, hot bath now and then. I especially like nice bubbles in my bath, and pleasing soap, too. Wright's Coal Tar soap is my soap of choice. Reminds me of my childhood, which was awful. At the moment I've got some girlie Matey bubbles. Reminds me of my children's childhoods, which were nowhere near as awful as my own. Presumably, this is the 'progress' that defenders of capitalism keep banging on about. I don't quite get it, though. So maybe a tenth of the working class globally is better off. But there are still millions of people who can't get clean drinking water, let alone afford a hot bath. No progress at all, then.

In reply to Chambers: But let's get back to the Labour Party. That, after all, is what this thread is about. The Labour Party. Formed in 1906 along some seriously anti-working class lines of thought. Established by people who knew nothing about capitalism and even less about socialism. Let's talk about those mofos.

In reply to Chambers:

it doesn't take much to bring Gudrun out again, does it?

In reply to stroppygob:


nah it aint Gudrun, unless she is a damned sight more subtle with sock puppeting than I would expect.
In fact shame she isnt around since dont think Chambers attacks on soviet russia would go down to well.

In reply to stroppygob: OK. I can deal with your inability to form sentences, and now you've forced my hand. I'm going to have to - in the absence of you making any kind of sense at all - Google 'Gudrun'.

In reply to Chambers: I knew - deep down - that that would be a waste of my time.

In reply to Chambers:

Its another poster on here. Named after someone more famous, but its the poster being referred to.

In reply to Chambers: Any arguments against the case for world socialism? Previous applicants can suck my f*cking dick.

In reply to Chambers: Ok, you've persuaded me. How many people is that you've converted now? How many more until we form a majority and world socialism becomes a reality?

In reply to Chambers:

Perpetually responding to yourself, in a long series of posts involving no interaction with other posters - Gudrun, Naedan, etc, etc, check!


Attempt to reverse the burden of proof, Gudrun, Naedan, etc, etc, check!

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, there is no duty for those who think you are talking ludicrous nonsense to refute it, it is for you to prove it. Quite apart from the fact that you give no tangible description of what "it" might be, that they could refute even if it amused them to accept your totally invalid challenge.


Rapid reversion from the superficial semblance of coherence to foul-mouthed abuse - Gudrun, Naedan, etc, etc, check!

You do realise that the responses you inspire are of the car-crash sort? That people are (rather cruelly), laughing at you, not with you?

In reply to Sir Chasm:

Converted? You really don't get it, do you? This is no religion that I'm talking about. It's an inexorable historical movement that is taking place regardless of what I do or say. The growth of socialist ideas is a phenomenon that occurs because we live under capitalism. The contradictions of capitalism generate the movement towards socialism. As Marx put it, "Capitalism creates its own gravediggers".

How many people have become convinced of the case for socialism as a result of my political activity? I have no way of knowing. Nor do I need to know. I have, however, encountered many people who have come to similar conclusions without any apparent contact with the WSM. None of this matters. There are more people talking about the alternative to capitalism than ever before.

Of course, there are still more people who oppose the case for socialism than there are who embrace it. Often, and this thread demonstrates this clearly, those who oppose and ridicule the case are the very people who have failed to grasp it. New ideas that challenge the way that people think about their lives are often scary and disturbing, and ridicule is often a useful way of not being scared or disturbed. Poking fun at people is a common way of staying entrenched.

I'm sure that many of the posters on this thread think that they've made some conclusive point or other. Unless I've missed some postings, this is not the case. The anthropological objections - which were the strongest oppositional point - have been dealt with in detail. The argument is won.

I'm accused of making extraordinary claims. Nothing could be further from the truth. The only claim I'm making is that humanity can organise society along co-operative and democratic lines. Not a bold claim at all considering the fact that most of us behave that way under capitalism.

The piss-taking and abuse? Part of the game. Who cares?

In reply to Chambers:


remind me when he wrote that?


Tad confused by this. You clearly seem to care about your politics and as such I thought you would be doing your best to get people to share them.

I thought the traditional idea was convince people your ideas are right, get them out canvassing at the election, get power and carry out policies.
Seems a somewhat pointless party if you dont care about how the outside world relates to you.


wait, what? You have been saying how old your party is. So exactly how does it count as a new idea?


Nah, just checked. Cameron and co are still in power.

In reply to dissonance:

Certainly. In The Communist Manifesto, 1848. I know what you're going to say next. Hasn't happened, has it? Which isn't the point, at all.

Yep. I'd love to be able to convince everyone that capitalism can't work in their interests and that the socialist alternative to capitalism is something that should be pursued. Indeed, members of the movement seize on every opportunity to advance our ideas. But, ultimately, my activity is insignificant. If I thought that the revolution was dependent on the activity of a handful of people I'd have given up years ago. But it's an historical process that is borne out of material conditions thrown up by capitalism.

Sure. And we could water down our ideas to make them more palatable to workers. We could promise to run capitalism slightly differently to other parties. We could lie about what politics can actually achieve. We could, in short, do all of the things that other political parties do in their desperate, grasping bid for power. Sure, we could do that. But we wouldn't be socialists anymore, and we'd be as wrong and as useless as any other political party.
We do contest elections, however, but not because we seek power as a political party. Rather we argue that the working class must seize political power solely to abolish that political power. At present there is precisely no chance of even saving our deposit, and the exercise is one of taking the opportunity to publicise the case for socialism.

It's a new idea when it is put to someone who's never encountered it before.
Another point missed!

In reply to Chambers:

Neither do I but I think I can hazard a guess.


I'm really not sure that's the case. Certainly people were still talking seriously about socialism in the 70's in the mainstream media. It's become a dirty word now, something regarded as rather passe.

My take on this is that the evolution of capitalism in Eastern Europe after the end of the Soviet Union and it's empire showed how unlikley it is that socialism of any sort would develop even in a political vacuum. Think of all those countries who had rejected communism and had a blank political slate in front of them. What did they choose?

Anyway, if you want to convince anybody I'm afraid you are going to have to be a bit more prescriptive about how change can happen and how your ideal world would really work. For example, if money were abolished, how would I obtain a packet of my favourite Korean noodles? I don't see how you could organise trade of any sort of complexity without resorting to some form of money.

In reply to Chambers:

I'm intrigued as to who the workers to whom you refer actually are ? does it, for instance, include people who work on the stock exchange ?

In reply to MG:

There is little difference between the working man's 'union' and professional bodies. Many of the mangers that deride unions, are at the same members of these bodies , but seem to think it is ok to try and deny others a similar right.

In reply to Jim C: The difference as I see it is one is led by a desire to maintain professional standards while competing with fellow professionals, the other collective better pay etc. often at the expense of standards and competition. There be overlap but the difference is clear

In reply to MG:

Not that clear, they can do some good things, but not always ( same as unions)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_association

In reply to Removed User:
Anyone can a hazard a guess, yes. I know of at least twenty-odd socialists who are socialists because I introduced them to the case. Beyond that, I really don't know. Ideas change slowly, and I've certainly planted the seed of revolution in the minds of hundreds of people over the years.

Interesting. Because I'm really sure that it is the case. Here's why. The people who were talking about 'socialism' in the 70s weren't discussing the possibility of a classless, stateless, moneyless society along the lines that Marx envisaged, and the SPGB has been advocating for over a century. What was been discussed was state-capitalism. People's perceptions of socialism are coloured unfairly by the horrible events that occurred in the name of 'socialism' or 'communism' in Russia and its satellites. (Incidentally, Marx and Engels used the words 'communism' and 'socialism' interchangeably.)

They chose a different form of capitalism. Not much different than a western democracy sacking one government and electing another. It was state-capitalism that was rejected. But I think your point about socialism developing in a political vacuum is spot-on. Ain't gonna happen that way. We've always argued that socialism can only come about as the enactment of the political will of a majority of class-conscious workers. The systems that you're talking about were imposed by a vanguard party that seized political power in an extremely undemocratic fashion.

I agree that money - as a universal commodity exchangeable for all other commodities - is essential to trade. Indeed, it was through the development and expansion of trade globally that we ended up having money as a universal commodity. But there won't be any trade in socialism. It's not just the abolition of money that we're advocating, here. It's the abolition of the whole set of social relationships that demand the existence of money. No market-based economy, no buying and selling. Just free access to socially-produced wealth. In socialism there will be the common ownership of the means of production. Goods and services will cease to be commodities to be bought and sold on a market with a view to profit. We'll have production for use, instead. Under capitalism goods and services are produced primarily for sale. So what's likely to sell gets made. No profit means no production. In socialism we'll produce directly for human needs.

As far as being prescriptive is concerned, we are. But only to a point. We socialists are only too happy to talk about how we think socialism could be organised -indeed, we've published a lot of material on the subject - but, as scientific materialists and thorough-going democrats we fully recognise that the new society will be the outcome of the democratic discussion and debate of the movement that grows to the point where socialism becomes a reality.

In reply to GrahamD:

Those who are forced by economic necessity to sell their labour-power to an employer in return for a wage or salary.

In reply to Chambers:


handy that. So care to explain what you feel is going to change to make that statement true?


Near enough everything starts with a handful of people, the point is despite saying the party is 100yo it doesnt really seem to have gained any traction. What do you think is going to change?


so how is that going?


nope, seen it and working on past evidence dont hold out hope.


no, just taking the piss.

In reply to Chambers:


Err, not really.

It has been suggested that primal motivators such as love, jealousy and competition might not derail society - using the example of hunter gatherer societies as a model by which these traits apparently don't exist or are successfully managed within the community.

I have to confess that this is an area I find interesting and I will try and read some of the references Hud quoted. As such I am in no position to argue about the egalitarian nature of these societies.
My experience of human nature makes me deeply cynical - whilst I have witnessed heroic compassion I have also seen incomprehensible hatred, and I feel it is a little to glib to blame it all on "capitalism" or external forces.

However what is clear is that these societies appear to function as "hunter gatherers" only. They are subsumed into other societies, or transform themselves into other forms of society as a response to internal or external pressures.
They still exist today as subjects for study - due to the fact that they cling to their static way of life. And when I say static - that's what I mean. When the equilibrium of their society is disrupted - by the invention of technology, new methods like "farming", competition for resources then they either remove themselves from any "improvements" or the structure of their society fails.

If a modern socialist paradise is modelled on the ability of hunter gatherers to co-operate then it needs to very carefully consider the shortfalls of these societies. If the only way to live in a co-operative manner is to exist in small groups who have access to unlimited resources and movement then we are going to have to forego a lot of technology, and probably massacre people on a global scale.

In reply to Chambers:

Sorted.


You must you keep coming back under different guises for more. Strong streak of masochism there young lad.

What are you going to be called the next time you appear?

In reply to GrahamD:

Are you really 'sorry' Graham? You should be for repeating that kind of unhistorical garbage. I don't know what your politics are but that's the kind of statement usually put about by so-called Libertarians and ultra-right-wing apologists for capitalism who mangle history and wallow in category errors to promote their own bizarre vision of hell.

You speak of commercial enterprise and trade. Well, yes, trade has occupied a more-or-less important place in many societies throughout history and prehistory since the advent of state formations, but its centrality to many cultures during that time is not as universal as your comments suggest. In some its role was quite minor.

Trade is broadly a process of exchange which adapts its form to the specific kind of property relationship within a given society. The term 'Capitalism' on the other hand describes a unique productive system.

Capitalism is a private property system and therefore contains within it a process of trade or commercial exchange, but commercial exchange within capitalism has a number of unique features. Principal among them is the rather peculiar way the system allows the market to control exchange values, a major factor in its instability as a system and found in no other form of social organisation before the end of the eighteenth century.

But, that isn't really the issue. What primarily distinguishes capitalism from all previous forms of society before the end of the eighteenth century and makes it so unusual is that it has a unique system of production. In all previous societies goods were produced for consumption and no capital was systematically accumulated. The driving force behind capitalism, however, is not consumption or social need but capital accumulation. (The clue is in the name.) Capital, (loosely 'profit') is capitalism's primary product, not goods for consumption. In capitalism, if there is no 'profit' to be made, then there is no production, no matter how pressing the social need.

So no. The capitalist whose role in society is to accumulate capital is wholly unknown in human society in anything other than very recent centuries.

In reply to off-duty: Where and when did you do the observing you're talking about?

In reply to off-duty:


Can I suggest SC, that like the rest of us, you have no experience of human nature at all, since human nature is an abstraction and you cannot experience an abstraction. What you have deep experience of no doubt, is the way human beings behave and the consequences of those behaviours under very specific social conditions. Such conditions are, of course, those of a capitalistic society which has institutionalised conflict to such a degree within its property system that it is extraordinary that any of us are still capable of co-operating with each other at all. Put another way, if you and I grew up in a different society, we would be very different people.

As our experience of social formations is so limited, I'd suggest that is glib to draw any direct conclusions about 'human nature' directly from it - even cynical conclusions.

Once it becomes clear that human nature is not a direct experience, it very quickly reveals itself as an ideological construct which like other ideological constructs are merely covers for our deeper attitude to the human world.



This is not contested, SC. I think you are missing the point here.


Two points of information. Hunter gatherer societies tend to remain stable even though by no means all of them have access to unlimited resources, and few have unlimited movement. These are false presumptions. Your comment about massacring people on a global scale is, though, just a decent into cynical rhetoric. (Apply it to 21st century capitalism, however, and it might stand as an arguable case.)

You are still clinging defensively to straw men arguments. No-one envisions a paradise, socialist or otherwise, and no-one is proposing to model socialism on band hunter gatherer society.

You will understand the Marxian socialist position more clearly if you get hold of the idea that our views are underpinned by a thoroughgoing historical materialism. For us, socialism is not a dreamed up 'wouldn't-it-be-good-if-we-could...' construction, but an extrapolation of our reading of history. The shape of any post-capitalist society will of material necessity have to start from where we are. Modelling socialism on small groups of band hunter gatherers, or giving up technology, is just not feasible and any claims of that kind would be quite Utopian.

As I said before, our interest in band hunter gatherers is that they give us an opportunity to counter unreal and abstract arguments about 'human nature' by demonstrating that human behaviour is various and alters with altered social circumstances.

Perfection, too, is for fantasists. Our claim is that something better than we have now is possible(and given the horrors of capitalism, I don't think that is asking much.)

In reply to Hud:

What an interesting post. What you say might just happen eventually, in dire circumstances, out of sheer necessity, or we may simply die out/exterminate ourselves as a species through our sheer greed.

In reply to Hud: Are yes, our happy bands of peaceful hunter gatherers. What an extraordinarily unlucky coincidence it must be that the most recently discovered corpse of such a stone age hunter gatherer - the Otzl iceman - was, er, murdered.

If you want to read something other than the fantasies of someone who dreamt up most of his fantastical theories of 'historical progression' in the reading room of the British Museum, may I refer you to the Better Angels of our Nature, by Steven Pinker It may surprise you. But I don't suppose you expose yourself to the risk of having to modify your views, do you?

In reply to MG:

That was never the case in closed shops, fair pay and conditions was merely a spinoff, the main point was to build the masonic expertise of the members, just as in a 'professional brotherhood'.

In reply to Al Evans: 'the main point was to build the masonic expertise of the members'

What, a bit like the Chamonix guides in the 19th C? Where clients were obliged to take the next available guide, even though many of them were known to be incompetent and dangerous?

Or the mediaeval guilds, which were at least as much about keeping serfs in their place and maintaining wage levels as they were about passing on 'craft skills'.

And don't get me started on the Fleet Street closed shops. I loathe Murdoch with a passion, but some of the printers union bosses ran him close.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


The latter has pretty much occurred on a local level before. I say pretty much since it was more a massive population drop and collapse of the civilisation instead of complete extermination which would be fairly unlikely.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

LOL. Keep the ad hominems coming Rob. I've been reading anthropology for years and am currently doing a course of study. Do you think you are the only person in the world who has read Pinker's latest missive? Or do you really believe because you have read it, it must be the last word on the subject? There is a great deal to be said about Pinker, his dubious methodology and his misuse of empirical data. And a great deal has been said. May I refer you to the already extensive critical response to his book. As for Otzi, beyond the fact that he was murdered we know nothing about the *social* circumstances of his death, certainly nothing that allows us to draw definite conclusions, though there has been no end of speculation.

People have been pointing to this or that incident in human pre-history for years and drawing vast and unwarranted conclusions from them. The evidence of prehistory is huge and conflicted and needs to be weighted very carefully. Making sweeping generalisations from one book or one incident like this, and launching it on the back of a rather foolish sneer doesn't do much for your credibility.

I am well acquainted with the tribe of people who, never having read Marx in detail, resort to calling his theories names like 'fantastical' yet who are never able to say why they believe so. Marx was a painstaking empiricist and it takes more than a wave of the hand to meet his arguments. You give yourself away by describing his theory as one of 'historical progression.' Marx was not a historical determinist: he analysed historical movements without attempting to impose metahistorical trends on them. Come back when you have done some reading.

In reply to Hud:


This is bollocks, as sweeping statements like this tend to be. There were certainly capitalists in Ancient Rome (pretty much the only historical society I know anything about).

jcm

In reply to Hud: Unfortunately I received an upper second in politics and sociology from York University in 1977 at a time when it was considered one of the centres of academic Marxism, so I actually spent quite a lot of time studying Marx. FWIW I still think a great deal is insightful and heuristically useful; his insights into the relationships between culture and economics should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand 'how the world is.'

But he was still locked into German philosophical mode that believed that there was an inexorable march of history - he claimed to turn 'Hegel on his head' but suffered from the same delusion that there was a predictable historical progress. And his idea that his theories were 'scientifically proven' by praxis - 'we know its true because it is going to happen' - was plain bonkers. We're still waiting.

In reply to Hud:

I'd be interested to know how you think city states like Carthage got rich on the back of trade if it wasn't through a form of capitalism.

In reply to Chambers:



Anyone who works for a salary, then. So workers on the stock market are 'workers' by your definition. As are managers. The only people who aren't workers are the people who don't work and company owners (who ironically usually do much more work than their employees).

Glad that one's cleared up. We are all the workers !

In reply to Rob Exile Ward: " Wright's Coal Tar soap is my soap of choice. Reminds me of my childhood, which was awful "

That line from Chambers says it all as far as I am concerned. Not happy unless he's suffering. Explains the theories and is probably best avoided.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:


Be interesting to hear how Crassus, for example, doesnt count as a capitalist.

In reply to aln:

? C'mon polis.

In reply to aln:

What's the point of your question?Don't you believe that those extremes exist?
I've seen it when I am "on-duty" and also to a lesser extent in general life.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward: Poor Rob. If only you weren't such a closed-minded fool you might learn something useful. Nobody is denying that some hunter-gatherer societies were pretty brutal. If you actually followed the arguments rather than jumping in every now and then with your ill-informed glib nonsenses people might take you seriously. Furthermore, as has been made abundantly clear already, no-one is suggested that we model the new society on an old one.

As far as Marx is concerned, he has very little to say about the new society, and his work on analysing capitalism is nothing short of scientific. But you wouldn't know that because you haven't read Marx. And you think that you know all about socialism whereas you know nothing about socialism.

I've been a socialist for over thirty years. During in that time I've modified my views countless times in the face of new evidence. That's a part of thinking about society scientifically. It's something that socialists embrace. During those three decades I've met some incredibly well-read comrades, and, indeed, my own reading is both wide and not insubstantial. It might surprise you to find out that one of the books currently sitting amongst the (large) pile of books that I'm currently working on is 'Blank Slate' by your beloved apologist for capitalism. I find little to disagree with in his research. His conclusions, however, reveal a rather large axe in his hand with he fully intends to grind.

Now, instead of sitting there condemning others for being dogmatic why don't you actually go and find something out about the SPGB and come back with some informed questions?

In reply to Chambers:

ok, so why do you think the traits of the ones you like will win out?
Bearing in mind the results so far?


can you give any examples?


interesting, how exactly have you been carrying out your experiments?
What hypothesis are you currently testing and how?


All of them or just those who tick your boxes?


you mean he could find a member and try and get some answers from them?

In reply to Chambers: 'his work on analysing capitalism is nothing short of scientific.' Not by any reasonable definition of scientific. Interesting, yes. Insightful, definitely. Falsifiable? Hardy. Hypotheses capable of being tested, and the results used to refine the hypothesis? Hmm.

Now let's see, shall we. One of Marx's central tenets was that there 5 stages of historical development, each of which inexorably would lead to the next until we reached the final stage of communism. Well it's a bit of a beggar that the first time anything approaching a socialist revolution occurred was in a society that was still practically feudal. And in fact, no revolution has yet occurred in a developed capitalist society.

In science if you have a theory and it's proven wrong, that theory gets replaced by a better one.

Ummm... by exploiting slave labour, Graham. Carthage was a slave state. It held chattel slaves, as did its neighbours. The Carthaginians were great traders, but trade in a fair market does not create wealth for the trader: it merely increases the utility value of the trader's wealth when he exchanges goods he doesn't want for goods he does.

And to be precise, 'Carthage' didn't grow rich at all, only its elites did. They grew rich by sucking the labour out of others, principally the slave population. Their excess wealth was the measure of others' destitution.

Personally, I've never read anyone who was mad enough to argue that chattel slavery was a form of capitalism. But maybe a crazy 'Libertarian' might. One day.

Of course, the Carthaginian elites also grew rich on the booty of warfare, but that's not a capitalist process of capital accumulation either.

Well, that explains a lot, Rob. Under the influence of Leninist academics, it was fashionable for a long while in British universities to read Marx as a historical and economic determinist. I too have sat through many a lecture by these guys, and many in which every single statement about Marx was incorrect.

In reality, Marx was anything but a determinist. He described his materialist conception of history, for instance, not as a theory of history but as a 'working method'. And once you turn to his actual historical writing or analysis, this becomes clear. In his correspondence with Vera Zasulich, for instance, he gives a good demonstration of how his historical thinking turns on historical particulars and not on some grand theory of social progress. Or try the Eighteenth Brumaire (if you can struggle through it!). If you want to typify Marx's approach to history, his was a generalised theory of social change not of rigid social progression.

The fundamental statement of Marx's method couldn't be clearer: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." The one thing this does not add up to is a theory of historical determinism.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:


1. I'm not keen on calling Marx's work 'scientific' because in Marx's time that word had not yet achieved its modern meaning and it is not the meaning he gave it. The word that Marx used in German translates more accurately as 'evidence-based'. And Marx was nothing if not keen on researching evidence.

2. No he didn't. As in my previous post, Marx did not rigidly propose 5 stages of historical development, he merely described how the class dynamic he theorised had worked its way out in Western Europe. (He was quite aware that he was not describing a universal process, as is demonstrated by his research into (and description of) 'Asian' modes of production, for example, which did not follow the same pattern.)

3. Your Leninist influence is showing again. Because Lenin called his Russian coup a socialist revolution, that does not mean we have to slavishly follow his example. There was nothing socialist in Marxian terms about the events in Russia in 1917. All that happened there was that Lenin and his cohorts succeeded in seizing power and then constructing a form of state capitalism. ('State capitalism' was Lenin's term for what he was building in Russia, by the way, not mine. Though I'd pretty much agree.) You can describe the Soviet economy in various ways, but whatever you choose, it was unlike the classical pattern of western capitalism described by Marx, or his concept of socialism. But then, as the old boy said: Men make their own history...

4. You are right. No socialist revolution has yet occurred in a developed capitalist country - or anywhere, but to suppose that means it will not or cannot happen is a most basic logical fallacy. In reality, there is very little we can conclude from this fact.

5. Incidentally, in science, if counter-evidence for a theory is found, then the theory is very rarely replaced. First, it is adjusted, new hypotheses are introduced or old ones removed, and it is retested. The process then continues. It is only after all possible or reasonable adjustments have been made and the theory fails repeatedly that it is eventually discarded. In reality though, no such serious counter-evidence has occurred to throw doubt on Marx's MCH and the theory still has a great deal of juice in it.

In reply to Hud:

That's a reasonable point. Our experience of human nature is to a large extent an experience of humans response to the environment and society within in which we exist.


I'm not sure that you can then say it human nature is "ideological" - if by ideology you are suggesting that some sort of thought or philosophy underlies certain almost instinctive emotions that make up some of human nature.
I think there is still a debate to be had about human drivers like love, hate, jealousy which might well be better expressed or controlled in certain environments and societies - such as the hunter gatherer groups that you use as an example.
I am interested in finding out more about them - I find it hard to believe that they don't experience the same, sometimes irrational, emotions, though I can envisage that they might control them better, both individually and within their societies.


My point here, perhaps not made in the clearest manner, is that if the suggestion is that the negative aspects of human nature can be successfully overcome, or removed from existence and the demonstration of this ideal condition is illustrated within hunter gatherer groups then it is important to look at whether the organisation of these groups place any limitations on human behaviour or development.
Does the structure of such societies somehow have a built in failure mechanism such that it is unable to cope with increased numbers, technology, development?
It is clearly such a positive and beneficial way for humans to exist together there must be a reason it fails.

The limitations would appear to include the points I previously listed :- They still exist today as subjects for study - due to the fact that they cling to their static way of life. And when I say static - that's what I mean. When the equilibrium of their society is disrupted - by the invention of technology, new methods like "farming", competition for resources then they either remove themselves from any "improvements" or the structure of their society fails.



I agree perfection is for fantasists. I agree that from what you have written about hunter gatherers they appear to demonstrate a very positive display of human nature. I agree that there are things that can be learned from these societies eg- they work really well in this circumstance, they collapse when subject to this pressure, but we could avoid that by doing X, Y and Z.
However there appears to be no questioning on whether these egalitarian societies have inbuilt constraints as I mentioned above.
It may be, for the sake of argument, that when there are greater than say 300 people, considerations of communal good become subsumed by considerations of personal advantage.

It just seems a bit glib to suggest - "humans can definitely get along and work in an admirably socialist manner - hunter gatherers 'prove' it is possible" without at least some consideration of whether there are any drawbacks of this type of organisation.
And there must be drawbacks - they don't appear to survive some internal pressures - resulting in them becoming another form of less well-functioning society or external pressure other than by withdrawing.


PS :- What's the reason for referring to me as "SC"? Are you suggesting that I am a special constable? Why?