Socialist Anarchism

Joycey

The best use as a means to what end? If the goal of "efficiency" is simply the propagation of a society where you have the vast majority forced into unequal and unfree social relations for the benefit of a select few then it is perfectly reasonable to simply opt for the mode of organisation which results in the largest profits regardless of any other concerns. If, however, the goal of human economic activity is in order to better the lives of those engaged in the activity then it follows that simple "efficiency" in terms of the largest figure possible being the bottom line, should not be the primary aim, let alone the sole one.

silverharp

Joycey wrote: »

The best use as a means to what end? If the goal of "efficiency" is simply the propagation of a society where you have the vast majority forced into unequal and unfree social relations for the benefit of a select few then it is perfectly reasonable to simply opt for the mode of organisation which results in the largest profits regardless of any other concerns. If, however, the goal of human economic activity is in order to better the lives of those engaged in the activity then it follows that simple "efficiency" in terms of the largest figure possible being the bottom line, should not be the primary aim, let alone the sole one.

If we were Ants I'd agree with you , but given that no two individuals are the same and the environment itself offers different opportunities globally I see no justice in taking a rolling pin to anyone up who sticks their head up to attempt to live an above average life. Also the Soviet system which is being defended here clearly from a central perspective put new Submarines ahead of X-ray film for the "grey masses". I'll pick a number but if the Soviet system was investing 25% of national output in their security apparatus how did this "digging and filling" non productive activity help the people?
You will need to define your "select few", for example my wife works as a sub contractor for Microsoft , in 10 years I have never heard her complain that she is somehow a slave to Bill Gates and that her labour surplus has been expropriated in an unfair manner , does she need to have any scales removed from her eyes?

Joycey

silverharp wrote: »

Also the Soviet system which is being defended here clearly from a central perspective put new Submarines ahead of X-ray film for the "grey masses".

The fact that the States have millions of people below the poverty line and without any form of health insurance while their military budget is the highest in the world is ample evidence that those kind of problems arent endemic to societies purporting to be socialist.

You will need to define your "select few", for example my wife works as a sub contractor for Microsoft , in 10 years I have never heard her complain that she is somehow a slave to Bill Gates and that her labour surplus has been expropriated in an unfair manner , does she need to have any scales removed from her eyes?

Well exactly where you draw the line between those who are advantaged and those who are disadvantaged by the capitalist mode of production is certainly interesting, and I would like to hear Synd's views on the extent to which he believes your wife to be alienated or subjugated or whatever due to her being a componant part of a large MNC.

However I think its apparent that your wife is most likely in the upper echelons of those employed by Microsoft either directly or indirectly worldwide. As a result, the extent to which your wife is afforded a comfortable, empowering job whereby she is able to express herself and have her ideas listened to and respected, is directly reliant on the labour of some number of people below her rank in the company and its affiliates, who:
- work for less money,
- in less comfortable conditions,
- are treated worse,
- have no access to information relating to the overall operation of the organisation which is reliant on their labour, and as a result can have no say, even were democratic decision making oppurtunities present to allow them one in theory,
- have no oppurtunity to develop a skill useful outside of their precisely prescribed role in a predetermined infinitesimally small sub-operation which is part of some larger operation,
- and given less (or no) room to assert their humanity (as opposed to being reduced to animal, or machine) in their working lives.

So whether your wife feels herself to be alienated is of no real significance, she may or she may not. The fact of the matter is that her relatively advanced level in the heirarchy of the company is built on the subjugation of those below.

silverharp

Joycey wrote: »

The fact that the States have millions of people below the poverty line and without any form of health insurance while their military budget is the highest in the world is ample evidence that those kind of problems arent endemic to societies purporting to be socialist.

And I'd agree with you, I am not a neocon so cruise missiles and US empire in general is a theft on ordinary people as well

Joycey wrote: »

Well exactly where you draw the line between those who are advantaged and those who are disadvantaged by the capitalist mode of production is certainly interesting, and I would like to hear Synd's views on the extent to which he believes your wife to be alienated or subjugated or whatever due to her being a componant part of a large MNC.

Interesting indeed, I just dispute your view of "few" but I'll argue from the standpoint that inequality is not a bad thing in and off itself. At the same time I am against rent seekers but from my point of view they tend to be the off shoot of gov. policy.

Permabear

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Joycey

donegalfella wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

I apologise, I have abused the term "alienated".

The term alienation (which gradually faded out of usage in Marx's later works, which I haven't read at all) is given most attention in the Paris Manuscripts. Here, Marx is attempting to identify a set of objective, empirically discoverable social relations which arise out of the specific operations of the worker under a capitalist mode of production. I slipped into the usage which later academic sociologists conceived of when they begin attempting to uncover the workings of capitalism through issueing surveys and questionaires of individuals' reported subjective states as opposed to attempting an analysis of real, objective social conditions. This is what I was attempting to get at when I said that whether Silverharp's wife felt alienated or not was irrelevant, but I conflated the issue by not elaborating on what I have said above, and by making an entirely distinct argument to that which involves her own alienation, namely that of those below her in Microsoft.

Although I cant here attempt an explanation of the entirety of Marx's theory of alienation (apart from anything else because I find it pretty hard myself to understand), I will have a go at giving a very brief summary (bear in mind I dont have any book in front of me so apologies if I make a balls of it).

There are 4 distinct ways in which the social role adopted by a worker under the capitalist mode of production (or presumably any other where the conditions are met) can lead to the worker's being alienated.

1. Alienation from the object of production.

The worker becomes alienated from the product of his/her labour when some object is created through the process of his labour which has a 'power independant of the producer' and this power no longer remains his to be exercised on completion of the object. 'The product of labour is labour that has solidified itself into an object'.

What I take this to mean is that, if, say, a worker is engaged in the production of a table, in a factory under standard capitalist conditions, along with many other workers who's labour comprises the force necessary to complete the table, that when the table has reached completion, the finished product has the "power" of being able to rest things on it, or that it is now possible to eat dinner off it. The fact of its no longer belonging to any of the human beings who actually created it through their own unique capacities, yet has a power independant of said capacities, means that anybody who laboured on that table has become alienated from the product of their labour, and thus, themselves, due to the fact that their labour has now become a part of that table.



On second thought, im not even going to try going through the other three, because having dug out material on it I really dont feel like I can do it justice.

Id highly recommend checking out "Karl Marx: His Life and Thought" by David McLellan, pg 109-115 if you want a readable but indepth analysis of the ideas involved. The whole book is an excellent intro to Marx's writings.

The point im trying to make DF, is that to talk about whether people feel themselves to be alienated when living under various societies which we may or may not agree to be communist is to entirely miss the point of what it is to be alienated. They are alienated to the extent to which their human capacity for labour is exercised under very specific, objectively verifiable conditions which are to some extent independent of what name we choose to give to the social/political organisation of the society within which they occur.

johnl

Socialism in
One country failed, would this
Anarchism win?

synd

I think comparing Russia to Brazil is a non runner , in broad terms Russia had close relations to Europe be it East or West prior to the revolution , odds would favour that in the absence of a communist revolution, some other form of revolution/reform would have occured over time and a market economy would have developed. I'd expect that a Eurocentric Russia would have been alot richer in economic terms at the 1990 point of time then communist Russia.

No actually its about as close a runner as your likely to get. Russia and Eastern Europe where agrarian backwaters around the time of the 1917 revolution, they had virtually no infrastructure and unlike the core regions of Europe had not industrialized. You would need to go back to pre-Colombian times before you would find a comparable socio-economic landscape in eastern Europe or Russia. The entire region essentially served as a pool of material resources for the emerging textile/metal industries of the western sphere. As for this supposed close relation - eastern Europe basically shared the same relation with the UK and France as Brazil did with the US during industrialization. Latin America has long been utilized by successive American regimes as pool of cheap natural resources - the parasitic relationship has quite clearly stunted any potential for native development. The old relationship is only now starting to capitulate as left wing movements seek to bring natural resources under social control and to an extent dispossess the native capitalist classes of their stranglehold over the national economies. It is most likely that western Europe would have merely utilized the eastern regions as pools of cheap labor and raw materials - thwarting genuine development by exposing them to advanced competition ect. The progression of the USSR on the economic front would most certainly never have occurred under a liberal regime. Latin America is by all accounts the most comparable in both geo-political and economic respects. In fact the US was afraid of soviet advancement precisely because it offered an alternative mode of development. Moreover - the rate of industrialization is also a very revealing feature - for instance soviet Russia industrialized at a faster rate than Germany ect. The world bank actually released a report in 1990 that described Russia and china as (relatively successful societies that developed by extricating themselves from the international market) - strange sentiments considering the world bank are hardly Marxists.

Yeah its obviously a common argumentative tactic to throw statistics around to prove that one point of view beats another. So in isolation the fact that Russia doesnt match Japan doesnt prove alot just like I would not condemn an African country for having a lower standard of living compared to a western country, I'll happily give you credit for pointing that out.

It not onlly a common tactic - I would argue that its a central component of liberal economic thought. Its a comparison that developmental economists quite frequently make, I remember reading a first year textbook on developmental economics and finding it there - unbelievable.

However you can analyse any economy and make a judgement if it makes the best use of its resources. Given that the USSR rated its security/defense structures above supplying decent and innovative services plus the economic argument that free economies are more productive than command economies then my conclusion is that communism in Russia was a failure for the people that lived under it.

I agree with this in part. The USSR failed on its preferences with regards the distribution of social produce. It quite clearly had the capacity to provide more adequate living standards - but chose to direct its resources towards military advancement, largely in response to US pressure. The same criticism can be made of the US relative to its productive output however, the amount it spends on defence is ridicules ie $651.2 billion in 2009.

plus the economic argument that free economies are more productive than command economies

The developed economies can hardly be classified as free, they generally advanced under large scale state regulation. Free economies in strictest sense have shown very little progress - Somalia ect. As for your assertion that ''free economies'' - by which you presumably mean the ''monopolistic capitalist states of the west'', have in many cases developed/industrialized at a slower rate than command regimes.

And thats before getting into the lack of personal freedom ,

Personal freedom can be interpreted in many ways ie. freedom from hunger ect. In this respect many developing liberal nations have a worse track record than command economies given the laters general tendency to at least meet basic needs. With regards freedom of speech ect - again, many nations working on the liberal state capitalist model have been just as repressive as the USSR. Its also important to understand that in terms of individual liberty Russia today is hardly less repressive than the latter era of the soviet union.

body counts and the many that were imprisioned for thought crimes.

Predominantly under Stalin yes - the same can be said of Pinochet or the numerous US backed juntas in Latin America who espoused a doctrine of liberal parliamentarianism though.

No doubt the transition may not have been peaceful but I find it hard to imagine any other civil war setup that would have produced anywhere near the body counts then under their actual history.

The transition from monarchy to liberalism isn't a particularly large one in my opinion - power is merely being transferred from one oligarchical minority to another. In order for direct democracy to be realized property must be socialized - this will, quite naturally cause massive violence on the part of the capitalist class - however the blame is, from my perspective on those who seek by forceful means to retain minority rule over society.

Ostrom

Joycey wrote: »

The term alienation (which gradually faded out of usage in Marx's later works, which I haven't read at all) is given most attention in the Paris Manuscripts. Here, Marx is attempting to identify a set of objective, empirically discoverable social relations which arise out of the specific operations of the worker under a capitalist mode of production.


It slipped into the usage which later academic sociologists conceived of when they begin attempting to uncover the workings of capitalism through issueing surveys and questionaires of individuals' reported subjective states as opposed to attempting an analysis of real, objective social conditions.

I think this brought out some of the worst in sociology. Blauner and Braverman popluarised the term 'alienation' throughout the 1960's-70's and tried to measure it through empirical research, which I think missed the point of the term. I had always identified the philosophic manuscripts with a more general application of the term, before Marx had moved away from notions of 'species being'.

Joycey wrote: »

The point im trying to make DF, is that to talk about whether people feel themselves to be alienated when living under various societies which we may or may not agree to be communist is to entirely miss the point of what it is to be alienated. They are alienated to the extent to which their human capacity for labour is exercised under very specific, objectively verifiable conditions which are to some extent independent of what name we choose to give to the social/political organisation of the society within which they occur.

As you encounter it in Marx's middle-late works (Capital and beyond) the term becomes much less value-laden (and unfortunately overlooked by later analysts). The idea of separation complements the economic conception of history well (the idea of technology and economic relations structuring social relations - feudal society and the hand mill etc....). I think it is only best used as a technical term in the context of a broader concept of social change, as in its 'human condition' form, it leads to all kinds of value judgements and superiority assumptions.

donegalfella wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Again, I feel this approach undermines its possible usefulness. The concept of alienation enters into Marx's analysis of the capitalist mode of production through a discussion of the labour process and the working day. Its significance is to highlight the nature of labour, insofar as it preserves the value of fixed capital through productive consumption, and its technical (if not subjectively experienced) 'exploitation' by the owner. It gives emotive weight to concerns such as the extent of necessary labour/surplus, the history of legislation regulating the working day and the effects of industrialisation on the urban poor. In a technical sense, it addresses the historical decline of the guild as a bulwark against larger scale co-operative wage labour, and shows how specialised divisions of labour develop out of this tendency.

Joycey

efla wrote: »

I think this brought out some of the worst in sociology. Blauner and Braverman popluarised the term 'alienation' throughout the 1960's-70's and tried to measure it through empirical research, which I think missed the point of the term. I had always identified the philosophic manuscripts with a more general application of the term, before Marx had moved away from notions of 'species being'.

Thats interesting, I actually encountered an explicit critique of bourgeois academic sociology in the intro to one of Braverman's books. He deliberately illustrates the manner in which the term alienation has been abused and misunderstood by the academy in an attempt to return to deep analysis as opposed to a scattered attempt at mapping subjective states through direct or indirect questioning. I did, however, notice some less than ideal usage of the term within the body of the text, though I can see how difficult it is to talk about something which affects an individual in such a way without recourse to discussion of inner subjective states.


As an interesting aside, I got into a conversation last night about the first way labour can become alienated, especially about the way in which Marx describes the specific manner in which someone's creative drive leads to the product of their labour being an expression and embodiment of their being. He actually uses the term "solidification". As I understand it, under conditions whereby the human who has laboured on the object no longer remains in control of it upon its completion, and the object is appropriated from him/her, the human then becomes alienated from himself.

Isnt this precisely the same mechanism which is held to be in operation when someone like Nozick asserts that when I labour upon some part of the natural world, that I "mix" my labour with it, thus rendering it "mine". So where you have Marx saying that it becomes part of me as a result of the solidification of my labour (me) in the object, Nozick is saying it becomes "mine" (but presumably also a part of me?) as a result of a "mixing" which occurs when I work on it.

Thus both thinkers (although it pains me to compare Nozick to Marx) have fundamentally the same conception of what happens when labour is carried out on a piece of the natural world. Where Marx realises that appropriation of the product of labour violates certain aspects of our humanity, Nozick asserts that some "right" (I take this to be an unexamined and conventional way of expressing what Marx identified as being a more fundamental issue, a 'right' is merely a way of transferring into legal/jurisprudencial terms what requires a deeper analysis) which I have by virtue of being human is violated.

So given the two have a strikingly similar view of labour, at least on this admittedly partial part of Marx's analysis, where does the disconnect in terms of the political ideology which follows from their views arise?

My attempt at an answer would probably be to say that whereas Marx sees any appropriation of labour which comes about under these set, specific conditions as being a violation of one's humanity (and thus something which should be opposed), Nozick sees this violation as something which one can willingly submit to (perhaps Marx does too) in certain contractual contexts. So the sticking point then is the matter of identifying when a contract should be considered valid or what we consider to be unfair coercion or an already compromised bargaining position, and also, possibly, whether it is/should be even possible to submit oneself to being alienated and reduced to the being of animal/machine.

Ostrom

Joycey wrote: »

Thats interesting, I actually encountered an explicit critique of bourgeois academic sociology in the intro to one of Braverman's books. He deliberately illustrates the manner in which the term alienation has been abused and misunderstood by the academy in an attempt to return to deep analysis as opposed to a scattered attempt at mapping subjective states through direct or indirect questioning. I did, however, notice some less than ideal usage of the term within the body of the text, though I can see how difficult it is to talk about something which affects an individual in such a way without recourse to discussion of inner subjective states.

It was an interesting study, but the 'deskilling' argument fell aside throughout the 80's as education became more widely available. Most of the arguments against it pointed out how specialisation created the need for technical knowledge. It was definately an interesting approach.

Joycey wrote: »

As an interesting aside, I got into a conversation last night about the first way labour can become alienated, especially about the way in which Marx describes the specific manner in which someone's creative drive leads to the product of their labour being an expression and embodiment of their being. He actually uses the term "solidification". As I understand it, under conditions whereby the human who has laboured on the object no longer remains in control of it upon its completion, and the object is appropriated from him/her, the human then becomes alienated from himself.

The term used was 'being', as opposed to 'unrest'. 'What on the side of the worker appeared in the form of unrest now appears, on the side of the product, in the form of being, as a fixed, immobile characteristic' (Chapter 7). 'Species being' is limited to the universal of 'conception' - what separates man from animal is the ability to conceive of an article before entering the labour process. The significance of the quote is more in the manner in which he uses the term 'appears', as it sets up another aspect of fetishism under capitalism - the social forms under which the labour process operates come to determine the extent to which the object is recognizable as a product of purposeful and meaningful labour.

Joycey wrote: »

Isnt this precisely the same mechanism which is held to be in operation when someone like Nozick asserts that when I labour upon some part of the natural world, that I "mix" my labour with it, thus rendering it "mine". So where you have Marx saying that it becomes part of me as a result of the solidification of my labour (me) in the object, Nozick is saying it becomes "mine" (but presumably also a part of me?) as a result of a "mixing" which occurs when I work on it.

Thus both thinkers (although it pains me to compare Nozick to Marx) have fundamentally the same conception of what happens when labour is carried out on a piece of the natural world. Where Marx realises that appropriation of the product of labour violates certain aspects of our humanity, Nozick asserts that some "right" (I take this to be an unexamined and conventional way of expressing what Marx identified as being a more fundamental issue, a 'right' is merely a way of transferring into legal/jurisprudencial terms what requires a deeper analysis) which I have by virtue of being human is violated.

So given the two have a strikingly similar view of labour, at least on this admittedly partial part of Marx's analysis, where does the disconnect in terms of the political ideology which follows from their views arise?].

Agreed, but the significance of the labour process itself only becomes apparent much later, and perhaps more so in Grundrisse (specifically pre-capitalist economic formations), where you have the possibility of an agricultural labourer producing commodities under a system of feudal rent, which in turn gave rise much later to world systems and dependency theory.

The economic argument would be that it is impossible to separate production from circulation, which by my thinking only holds true if you are dealing with a fixed social form. In Ireland for example, the labour process is key to understanding the mode of production, as a significant number of pre-famine peasants laboured as communal subsistence tenants, or simple commodity producers, with the possibility of their surplus produce in turn becoming for example, speculative capital, or simply spent elswhere. You cant understand it completely from the point of view of ground rent accumulation without looking at the feudal or communal forms under which production operated - the labour process.

This in turn has fed into the new left ideas of metabolic rift by starting at the level of production.

Joycey wrote: »

My attempt at an answer would probably be to say that whereas Marx sees any appropriation of labour which comes about under these set, specific conditions as being a violation of one's humanity (and thus something which should be opposed), Nozick sees this violation as something which one can willingly submit to (perhaps Marx does too) in certain contractual contexts.

Agreed, which makes an operational concept of alienation less valid. Alienation tends to sit within the old dual 'means of production-relation' class concept, which is unfortunate. Many authors made the mistake of placing some sort of subjective emotive weight on alienation (true though it may be) without treating the overall argument in which the significance of labour presents as a useful theory for social change.

Joycey wrote: »

So the sticking point then is the matter of identifying when a contract should be considered valid or what we consider to be unfair coercion or an already compromised bargaining position, and also, possibly, whether it is/should be even possible to submit oneself to being alienated and reduced to the being of animal/machine.

Chapter 9 is interesting in this respect, as you get a (dense) historical discussion of (class?) struggles over regulation of the working day. One point that emerges from this is the role of constitutional law in defining the family and reflecting industrialist understandings of the appropriate 'natural state' of man as labourer. My answer would be that to understand the defining of 'contract validity' historically is to look at how class interests converged in the political-legal sphere. 'The Working Day' gives a good outline for how to go about this. EP Thompson is worth a look also.

Joycey

efla wrote: »

It was an interesting study, but the 'deskilling' argument fell aside throughout the 80's as education became more widely available. Most of the arguments against it pointed out how specialisation created the need for technical knowledge. It was definately an interesting approach.

I disagree. Education being widely available does not directly adress what I think was the main point of the argument. The argument is that the worker is no longer in possession of (a) the information required to understand the entirety of the operations which comprise the production of an object (b) the capacity, or power of altering any of the operations distinct from his/her own in the labour process (c) the skills necessary to bring an object from its origins in raw material to its completed form.

So you have a clear, institutionalised separation in the labour process of the planning which you mention as being a distinctly human capacity (and even this mental work has now been departmentalised), and the physical labour required to actualise the plans. So it doesn't really matter if there are "more educational oppurtunities" in the rest of society, the point is that in the process of production, a worker is not only not required to have any knowledge/skill relating to the overall production process, but is in fact actively discouraged from attaining any level of proficiency above his own by management, due to it being cheaper if you have a virtually unskilled labour force doing tiny, distinct operations than if you have someone who is capable of more and isn't happy with simply being reduced to a profit creating hunk of flesh.

Ostrom

Joycey wrote: »

I disagree. Education being widely available does not directly adress what I think was the main point of the argument. The argument is that the worker is no longer in possession of (a) the information required to understand the entirety of the operations which comprise the production of an object (b) the capacity, or power of altering any of the operations distinct from his/her own in the labour process (c) the skills necessary to bring an object from its origins in raw material to its completed form.

Absolutely, my comment was just to point out the criticisms levelled against Braverman and others. I think they were short sighted criticisms, as much of the conditions you note in points a,b and c above were extensive at the stage of industrial developmet Marx was writing about. It comes back to the initial problem many of Bravermans critics had with a technical definition of alientation, which left it open to all kinds of limited criticisms. My own problem with Bravermans use of the concept would be that it ignores the complexity of moments that produce change - of the many determinisms arising from Marx, 'labour-determinism' in the process of social change was but one.

The real effects of the developing complexity of labour are valid points, and worth considering, but in terms of an overall theory of change, they dont do much on their own. Those who limited themselves to working definitions of alienation - useful though they certainly were - did so at the expense of other elements producing 'deskilled' working conditions.

Joycey wrote: »

So you have a clear, institutionalised separation in the labour process of the planning which you mention as being a distinctly human capacity (and even this mental work has now been departmentalised), and the physical labour required to actualise the plans. So it doesn't really matter if there are "more educational oppurtunities" in the rest of society, the point is that in the process of production, a worker is not only not required to have any knowledge/skill relating to the overall production process, but is in fact actively discouraged from attaining any level of proficiency above his own by management, due to it being cheaper if you have a virtually unskilled labour force doing tiny, distinct operations than if you have someone who is capable of more and isn't happy with simply being reduced to a profit creating hunk of flesh.

There I would disagree, as Marx also did. The separation of the production process into specialised departments is a requirement of the production of surplus. In 'the division of labour and manufacture' he has that famous quote about 'anarchy in the social division of labour, despotism in the manufacturing division of labour' - the labour of the worker must preserve the value of the capital, which in turn must adapt to new technical requirements. It is key to efficient production.

At the level of absolute surplus, the shortening of the operational costs of the worker and reduction in necessary labour time may discourage education (as you say above about an unskilled labour force performing tiny tasks), but at a relative level, intensity cannot be maintained but through educated and directed labour - depending on the nature of the task.

I dont think was was able to predict the extent to which complexity would produce new specialism, although he does introduce the possibility in the dicussion of the transition from manufacture to large scale industry. For certain types of labour, I agree with you, but I dont think you can view it as a universal under capitalism.

I would broadly agree with you though - certainly on the tendency of capital to disporportionately (and also at a spatial level) deskill and upskill certain labour processes. It is misuse of this point that tends to sit at the heart of the more idiotic responses to Marx - that a rise in relative living standards through the cheapening of the value of labour destroys any argument for social change/reform.

silverharp

synd wrote: »

No actually its about as close a runner as your likely to get.....

I just do not see this as a logically verifiable argument. It seems to suit a style of debate where you have a position and pull stats out of the Ether to suit your case and ignore the ones that dont fit. There are far too many factors involved to argue why one particular country out performed another country over a specific timeframe. I'm no expert on South American economic history but for instance Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world at the start of the 20thC and one of the factors in its decline was the end of the British Empire. After that its a case of analysing how the various economic actors reacted to the changed circumstances. There is nothing to conclude that communism was the answer for South America in the 20thC.

Using you line of reasoning, why was East Germany and North Korea such basket cases compared to the sides that remained capitalist? Can I not draw a conclusion that if you split any country in 2 and one side goes communist that the communist regime will underperform by a large degree? It would seem closer to a lab experiment then your Russia Brazil example?

synd wrote: »

In fact the US was afraid of soviet advancement precisely because it offered an alternative mode of development. Moreover - the rate of industrialization is also a very revealing feature - for instance soviet Russia industrialized at a faster rate than Germany ect. The world bank actually released a report in 1990 that described Russia and china as (relatively successful societies that developed by extricating themselves from the international market) - strange sentiments considering the world bank are hardly Marxists.

It depends what you are measuring. Given that the USSR was centrally planned for sure they could change the mix of capital investment versus consumption items, the people could be forced to save as it were, but overtime as the quality of the capital stock declined through neglect or by virtue of not keeping up with capital development in the west, the comparisson with elsewhere would become pretty meaningless. The very fact that USSR industry had no tradeable value by 1990 surely indicates that the USSR capital stock was inferior to elsewhere.

synd wrote: »

Personal freedom can be interpreted in many ways ie. freedom from hunger ect. In this respect many developing liberal nations have a worse track record than command economies given the laters general tendency to at least meet basic needs. With regards freedom of speech ect - again, many nations working on the liberal state capitalist model have been just as repressive as the USSR. Its also important to understand that in terms of individual liberty Russia today is hardly less repressive than the latter era of the soviet union.

So you would agree then that communism offers nothing in this regard to someone living in Europe or similar countries.

Joycey

efla wrote: »

Absolutely, my comment was just to point out the criticisms levelled against Braverman and others.

Ah right sorry I got you mixed up.

There I would disagree, as Marx also did. The separation of the production process into specialised departments is a requirement of the production of surplus. In 'the division of labour and manufacture' he has that famous quote about 'anarchy in the social division of labour, despotism in the manufacturing division of labour' - the labour of the worker must preserve the value of the capital, which in turn must adapt to new technical requirements. It is key to efficient production.

This is an issue I had with Braverman too, he asserts that the manufacturing division of labour (specialisation to the point of the deintegration of the skills necessary to complete a task in one human) is necessary to the continued survival of our highly complex society, as indeed it is. However I fail to see then, how we can criticise Nozick, or any other liberal, for saying that under certain conditions it is right and proper that an individual be alienated from their labour. Is it not just the same thing, that if the alienation of the worker is deemed "necessary", or key to "efficient production" and we are to say that it is legitimate as a result, as to say that under "free starting conditions" that a worker's exploitation is deemed acceptable?

It doesnt seem to me enough to simply brush aside the deep insight that some central aspect of our humanity is being supressed when we operate under such a division of labour by simply saying that it is OK if the worker owns the finished product. There seems to me to be something in the process of the work itself that cannot be ameliorated by the simple fact of the object which has been created through the machinelike work being the worker's to dispose of as he/she wishes. Its the fact that the labour takes place under dull, repetitive, uncreative and ultimately repressive conditions that seems to me to be the important point. This is not to belittle the owning the means of production point obviously, just to say that I dont feel that one precisely cancels the other out, which is what I felt was being asserted on reading about the subject.

drunken_munky52

"Anarchism" is a word that is so mis-understood by most people when they hear it, becuase it is straight away associated with "anarchy", which is often associated with images of looting and general disorder.

But when you actually look at the definition of it, you see that it is exactly the opposite.

I believe that anarchism should be used as an intial ideology to spawn a new age without ideology. In fact, I think it is the only ideology that can be applied in order for an ideology free world to occur.

Correct me if I am wrong on the above. I can not see one other ideology which can match it with this aim in mind.

thomasmi

hello

the answer ;where to start again- is- a no corp camp behind the scene in any leadership.

drunken_munky52

drunken_munky52 wrote: »

"Anarchism" is a word that is so mis-understood by most people when they hear it, becuase it is straight away associated with "anarchy", which is often associated with images of looting and general disorder.

Yes, this is a shame. Anarchy is not synonymous with chaos.

ANarcho-Munk

drunken_munky52 wrote: »

I believe that anarchism should be used as an intial ideology to spawn a new age without ideology. In fact, I think it is the only ideology that can be applied in order for an ideology free world to occur.

Correct me if I am wrong on the above. I can not see one other ideology which can match it with this aim in mind.

How about Nihilism? Or particularly moral nihilism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_nihilism


I recently came across this too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilist_communism
I'm not sure what to make of it really, there's a free book there to read on it if you're interested.
It seems like it could be interesting but I reckon there's a high chance that it could be a complete load of politically poetic nonsense.

Never judge a book by it's cover though.

Joycey

ANarcho-Munk wrote: »

I recently came across this too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilist_communism
I'm not sure what to make of it really, there's a free book there to read on it if you're interested.
It seems like it could be interesting but I reckon there's a high chance that it could be a complete load of politically poetic nonsense.

Never judge a book by it's cover though.

Found the wiki article interesting enough anyway. Probably wouldnt take the time to read the book any time soon tbh. Not sure I see the point in the whole logical falacy = argument thing, sounds like someone has aspirations to be Derrida or something.

Iwasfrozen

drunken_munky52 wrote: »

"Anarchism" is a word that is so mis-understood by most people when they hear it, becuase it is straight away associated with "anarchy", which is often associated with images of looting and general disorder.

But when you actually look at the definition of it, you see that it is exactly the opposite.

I believe that anarchism should be used as an intial ideology to spawn a new age without ideology. In fact, I think it is the only ideology that can be applied in order for an ideology free world to occur.

Correct me if I am wrong on the above. I can not see one other ideology which can match it with this aim in mind.

Socialist anarchism is in itself an oxymoran however.
Acording to Marx the only way to a Socialist society is by what he termed a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" which will follow the inital seizure of power from the current capitalist Dictatorship of the Bourgeois which is a feature of Imperialist capitalist system.

If we take into account this quote of Marx:

Marx wrote:

Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing, but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

And this quote of Lenin:

Lenin wrote:

The proletariat cannot achieve victory without breaking the resistance of the bourgeoisie, without forcibly suppressing its adversaries, and that, where there is forcible suppression, where there is no freedom, there is, of course, no democracy.

Then we see that the notion of Social-Anarchy is impossible to a true Marxist. As one cannot guarantee democracy when one does not have a country to guarantee it in.



P.S: Sorry for the slight bump.

Joycey

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

Then we see that the notion of Social-Anarchy is impossible to a true Marxist. As one cannot guarantee democracy when one does not have a country to guarantee it in.



P.S: Sorry for the slight bump.

Hmm possibly to a dogmatic Marxist... Im not sure how useful the term "Marxist" really is anyway, I mean there are many many different people who update/carry on his thinking that differ in their views, are these people Marxist or not? If you think that they arent then we can bypass the issue by saying socialist instead of marxist.

I see both anarchism and socialism as aiming towards pretty much the same thing, a fair society where exploitation of humanity is not built into our primary system of production. The difference is in the tactics used to achieve the goal.

Iwasfrozen

Joycey wrote: »

Hmm possibly to a dogmatic Marxist... Im not sure how useful the term "Marxist" really is anyway, I mean there are many many different people who update/carry on his thinking that differ in their views, are these people Marxist or not? If you think that they arent then we can bypass the issue by saying socialist instead of marxist.

I see both anarchism and socialism as aiming towards pretty much the same thing, a fair society where exploitation of humanity is not built into our primary system of production. The difference is in the tactics used to achieve the goal.

Socialism has many different branches with many people adding or taking away from Marx's true ideal. Hence why we use the word "pure" to refer to those who follow Marx and perhaps Engels to the letter and numerous other terms to refer to those who diverge from his teachings, such as Leninism, Maoism etc.

As for Anarchism, again I refer you to the quotes from my two favourite Socialists, Lenin and Marx above.

Anarchism simply cannot work in a system that calls for a Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the seizure of the methods of Production.

ANarcho-Munk

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

As for Anarchism, again I refer you to the quotes from my two favourite Socialists, Lenin and Marx above.

Anarchism simply cannot work in a system that calls for a Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the seizure of the methods of Production.

There's a slight over-view of sorts on your perspective of anarchism there mate, mainly in that it doesn't call for a Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
It stands for self-organisation of people coupled with direct democracy without any unneccesary imposed hierarchies.
Anarchist organising is also quite distinctly set apart in that their decision making structures and processes are entirely democratic without any (or as little as possible) of the authoritarian tendencies that are evident in other Socialist/Communist circles.


Michail Bakunin summed it up nicely:

"Liberty without Socialism is privilege & injustice, Socialism without liberty is slavery & brutality"



Although your argument does sound sort of similiar to some critiques that have been directed at The Platform for being "too authoritarian".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platformism
And one last note, your argument would be much more credible if you engaged with some Anarchist Philosophy and sources rather than condemning it completly out of hand from the altar of Marxism.

Iwasfrozen

ANarcho-Munk wrote: »

There's a slight over-view of sorts on your perspective of anarchism there mate, mainly in that it doesn't call for a Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Anarchism may not but Socialist anarchism does, it is socialist isn't it ?

ANarcho-Munk wrote: »

It stands for self-organisation of people coupled with direct democracy without any unneccesary imposed hierarchies.

As does Socialism but how can such a society prevent the remergence of the bourgeoisie without some sort of central governing system.

ANarcho-Munk wrote: »

Anarchist organising is also quite distinctly set apart in that their decision making structures and processes are entirely democratic without any (or as little as possible) of the authoritarian tendencies that are evident in other Socialist/Communist circles.

What authoritarian tendencies are these, you mention I should engage your points but then you don't explain them.

Here's another quote form Lenin to try and explain my point more:

Lenin wrote:

A state of the exploited must fundamentally differ from such a state; it must be a democracy for the exploited, and a means of suppressing the exploiters; and the suppression of a class means inequality for that class, its exclusion from democracy.

Soldie

ANarcho-Munk wrote: »

There's a slight over-view of sorts on your perspective of anarchism there mate, mainly in that it doesn't call for a Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
It stands for self-organisation of people coupled with direct democracy without any unneccesary imposed hierarchies.
Anarchist organising is also quite distinctly set apart in that their decision making structures and processes are entirely democratic without any (or as little as possible) of the authoritarian tendencies that are evident in other Socialist/Communist circles.


Michail Bakunin summed it up nicely:

"Liberty without Socialism is privilege & injustice, Socialism without liberty is slavery & brutality"



Although your argument does sound sort of similiar to some critiques that have been directed at The Platform for being "too authoritarian".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platformism
And one last note, your argument would be much more credible if you engaged with some Anarchist Philosophy and sources rather than condemning it completly out of hand from the altar of Marxism.

I can understand why collectivist anarchists are eager to disassociate themselves from Marxism. The fact is, though, that anarchism is subject to the same fundamental problem that besets state socialism in that it cannot allocate resources efficiently due to the lack of a pricing mechanism. Not to mention the absurd labour theory of value that is also held in common.

speedboatchase

Socialist Anarchism sounds like a screamo band of 14 year old middle class Californians