Socialism

Posted: 19 Sep 2004 01:57 am Post subject:

Reprinted from _The People_, newspaper of the Socialist Labor Party,
"Special Centennial Issue", Sept. 22, 1990, p. 9:

POLITICAL ACTION

To establish socialism, political unity under the banner of a mass
political party of labor is needed. The role of the party is to
educate the workers to the need for the abolition of capitalism, to
agitate for the formation of class-conscious industrial unions, to
express the revolutionary mandate of the working class at the ballot
box, to capture and dismantle the political state.

ECONOMIC ACTION

Economic unity in classwide socialist unions is needed to organize
workers' real strength in the struggle for working-class emancipation,
and to back up the decision made at the ballot box. It is needed to
take, hold and operate the industries and services of the land in the
interests of all - to establish the socialist society, the cooperative
commonwealth.

Posted: 23 Sep 2004 08:00 pm Post subject:

One thing I have never really understood is why De Leonism has had a somwhat hard time in being accepted by the wider socialist movement. It seems that many supposed socialist parties think that political action, either in simply telling people to vote for socialism, or offering a plate of reforms or transitional demands, is all that is needed, and then the working class can just follow the party, or even worse, that once the state is captured everything else will follow.
I remember when I first encountered De Leonism I was initialy impressed, and as I read more and understood more it now seems to me that the SIU program is just the logical extension of a very viable route to revolution that the advanced section of the working class can follow.
So...any ideas on why other socialists may be hostile to De leonism?

Posted: 24 Sep 2004 05:44 am Post subject:

One thing about that has always puzzled me. When someone proposes organizing politically, and says nothing about industrial organization, the left calls it progressive. When someone proposes organizing on the industrial field, and and says nothing about organizing politically, the left calls it progressive. Then when the De Leonist says, in effect, "You're both half-right -- we need to do both," the left calls it "sectarian" and "dogmatic." Somebody explain that one to me!

Another part of the problem, I think I understand. It's extremely tempting to express agreement when someone proposes any reform to make life better.

Let's suppose we were in the days of slavery. Suppose someone makes a speech and says, "It's terrible that the owner of a slave is allowed to whip the slave without limit. I propose passing a law requiring that the number of lashes of the whip cannot exceed twenty on any given day." It would be very tempting for a humanistic and compassionate person to agree with that proposal. But when we think about it further, such a proposal assumes the continued existence of slavery as an acceptable institution. I would argue: People should call for abolishing slavery, not for switching over to a less miserable form of slavery. But then the person proposing the reform would object to me: "How dare you deny people who are suffering an improvement which is more likely to be achievable sooner, for the sake of a more radical idea which has much less chance of success?"

I think this is the kind of bog socialists are in. De Leonists believe that calls for reforms, even those reforms which would alleviate some human suffering, distract people from discussing the central question of building a completely new social system.

Of couse, groups like the Communist Party and the Trokskyist groups don't see it this way. They are vanguardists, meaning that they want to "demand immediate reforms" as a way to sucker angry people into quickly joining their groups, in the hope that the "leadership" can later "declare" the "revolution", which the suckered-in membership would supposedly enact. We know from experience where that Pied Piper approach leads. It leads directly to a system which has self-appointed bureaucrats in total control, like the Soviet Union. That's why De Leon insisted, "Educate first, organize afterwards." The results of a revolutionary change won't be grass-roots-democratic unless the people are fully aware of why they are doing everything that they do.

It's slow and difficult to make a large social movement that's not based on blind reliance on leaders, but it's the only way.

Opinion by Mike Lepore, Stanfordville, New York USA

Posted: 24 Sep 2004 01:07 pm Post subject:

The vanguard will attempt to rubbish anyone they see as a threat, which is usualy anybody who isnt a member of their group. They will take this to new lengths in our case since with any other vanguard groups they see each other as "brothers in intelect" where as the De leonists, seeking real working class emancipation, are just seen as an irritating manifestation of class sentiment.
The thing I like about the dual nature of political and industrial struggle, is that while there is still emphasis on the educational aspect, it doesnt rule out industrial action in defence of workers economic interests. Granted, these are rearguard actions against the assualts of capital, but I think the Intervention and Union work book sums it up well that we can learn from such struggles, and indeed these struggles from militant unions will allow great strides in the consousnesss of the workers to be made. What we need to avoid though, is keeping a distance and holding ourselves up to be some kind of great educator of the working class, and thus limiting ourselves to simply propaganda and supposdly education work, and shunning everything else as "reformism". This is a dead letter, and my interpretation of De Leonism is all about the development of class sentiment via the struggles, both economic and political, and also understanding what reformism is i.e. using government institutions to attempt to reform capitalism, not militant working class defence of its economic interests. The former is reformism, the latter class struggle, and as a class party, we are a part of such struggles and should never move away from them.

Posted: 24 Sep 2004 08:53 pm Post subject: Sectarianism

The SIU program ostensibly should appeal to many, and Magoo wants to know why some socialists are hostile to it. The SIU program has often been counterpoised to Marx's proletarian dictatorship. The SLP always argues against that dictatorship, saying that 'it isn't needed in technologically advanced countries.' The trouble with the SLP argument is that they don't define Marx's dictatorship the way Marx defined it, preferring instead to define it as 'over the peasantry', so that they can further argue that 'the USA doesn't have much of a peasantry, so it doesn't need much of a dictatorship over a barely existing peasantry.' However, most of the left righteously understands Marx's dictatorship as 'over the bourgeoisie', which is why so many socialists of other persuasions have little use for the SLP. I hope Magoo writes to the SLP and informs them of their mistake. In fact, many people ought to write to them and inform them, and then maybe they'd get around to correcting that mistake. -KE

Posted: 25 Sep 2004 05:19 am Post subject:

Welcome, Ken. By the way, before I forget, please feel free to start a "topic" here specifically about your book, and therein give the url. It's critical of De Leonism, and probably more critical of application to date, but it's on-topic, and therefore it has a welcome place here.

As for "dictatorship of the proletariat" -- this phrase which was made famous by Marx's use of it in Critique of the Gotha Programme, like his other phrase made famous by the same pamphlet, "From each according to his abilities, etc." -- both phrases were originally used by Louis Blanc. In refering to them Marx omitted the quotation marks probably because the pamphlet was originally a private correspondence to a few guys who knew of the background of these two phrases. Both phrases had become cliches within that circle. I'm unusual among marxists in that I don't consider these two comments to be fundamentals of Marx's thought -- if the author had considered them fundamental he probably would have said them once in a while in some work that was actually intended for publication.

Anyway, what does the phrase mean? Many philosophers have commented that oligarchy is dictatorship of the few over the many, while democracy is dictatorship of the many over the few. The proletariat (everyone who doesn't receive sufficient income from invested capital to be able to live on it) is certainly the many. I think that is the essence -- "dictatorship of the proletariat" is a synonym for "democracy."

I perceive the additional intent in Marx's context to imply the restoration of social order in the event that the deposed ruling class resorts to terror tactics. There is some tendency of deposed ruling classes (or, more accurately, their conservative puppets, many of whom are class-unconscious members of the exploited class) to resort to violence and vandalism. What I say may be a minority opinion among marxists, but I think the phrase means, primarily, this: If people riot, society can and will have riot control measures. (And what society wouldn't?)

That of course means something special when the legislatures, and, perhaps more importantly, the commander-in-chief of the army, are publicly elected offices. When Marx left Germany in 1843 and embarked on his Paris-Belgium-London phases, he knew that Germany was then a totalitarian state, and no doubt that was on his mind throughout his later years. The meaning of "dictatorship of the proletariat" depends strongly on the type of political system that already exists in the pre-revolutionary society.

"Universal suffrage is the equivalent of political power for the working class of England, where the proletariat forms the large majority of society. The carrying of Universal Suffrage in England would, therefore, be a far more socialistic measure than anything which has been honoured with that name on the Continent."

-- Marx in article in the New York Daily Tribune, Aug. 25, 1852

"You know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of various countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries -- such as America, England, and if I were more familiar with your institutions, I would perhaps also add Holland -- where the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means."

-- Marx in Sept. 8, 1872 speech at the Hague

Posted: 25 Sep 2004 05:33 am Post subject:

Posted: 25 Sep 2004 08:57 pm Post subject:

Thanks to Mike for the warm welcome, as well as for the interesting background on Marx's dictatorship.

Economic liberation from exploitation is certainly fundamental in Marxism. Political liberation derived from universal suffrage is also fundamental. The proletarian dictatorship was to be exercised by a socially controlled democratic republic. 'Universal republic' is a different term for the same idea. Marx's First International fought - not just for democracy - but also for socially controlled democratic republics. While ordinary bourgeois republics offered democracy only to property owners, the disenfranchisement of peasants (as they became agricultural wage laborers) gave rise to social democratic movements. So, it is perfectly legitimate, within a Marxist context, to equate "dictatorship of the proletariat" with "democracy". Undemocratic and despotic monarchies ruled Europe in Marx's day, so 'deposing ruling classes' was a major Marxist goal back then. But, the concept of 'deposing a democracy' makes no sense at all from a Marxist perspective, since the process of replacing rotten-ripe absolute monarchies with social democracies was fully endorsed by Marx.

Within the context of social democracy, reform is all that is possible, but reform is good enough to get workers all that they need. Since unemployment is determined by social policy, nothing prevents workers from eliminating as much unemployment as they want to eliminate. Emulating France's 35 hour week would be a good beginning.

Posted: 26 Sep 2004 04:36 am Post subject:

Reform might get us a 35-hour workweek. But, as a socialist, I oppose the entire method of raising private capital as the way to apply resources to industry, the entire method of hiring wage-labor as the way to apply labor to industry, and the entire method of the competitive marketplace as the way to distribute the products.

DeLeonists often call it "the social question" -- consideration of the matter of which kind of socioeconomic system would be optimal, and what people can do to construct it. The basic premises -- type type of structure -- the kind of representation -- everything is on the table for sorting. Nothing has to be retained merely due to inheriting it from the past.

This is the most banned subject in the mass media in the United States: "What basic type of political and/or economic system should we have?" This question is so banned in the U.S. that several decades may pass before anyone gets away with asking this question on TV, and, if we miss that brief instant, several more decades pass before we might hear anyone say it again.

Without a doubt, it's the most censored remark that anyone could possibly utter in public:

"What fundamental type of social system should we have?"

Posted: 26 Sep 2004 01:57 pm Post subject:

Reform may not provide as instant a gratification as a revolution, but the whole capitalist system will be with us for only another couple of decades. Be prepared for an invasion of new appliances in every home: devices that will produce whatever is needed whenever needs arise. The need to run out of the house every day to apply talents to make others rich will soon vanish, the capitalist system will collapse, and our mutual dream of 'liberation from capitalist exploitation' will be realized. It won't happen according to traditional socialist scenarios, but it will happen, and "the social question" (deciding upon a socio-economic system) will hardly have to be considered along the way. Socialism will be decided for us by the march of technology, and by a mutual willingness to abandon old institutions of no further benefit to anyone. Private ownership of the rusting old means of production will no longer benefit owners, so owners will gladly kiss it all off as a liability, and leave it to swarms of nanobots to recycle. Without private ownership and inequality to protect, the state will evolve into an administration of things. Out with the old theories, and in with the new. -KE

Posted: 26 Sep 2004 08:05 pm Post subject:

I’m not sure how such a technological revolution could take place, and why it would remove capitalism? What would follow in its wake? The way I understand things, it seems capitalism is more than aware of such technological currents that may upset its rule i.e. the repeated use of cheap fossil fuels instead of resorting to cleaner but more expensive methods. The focus here is not on efficiency but on profit, and there are several cases of technological development being hindered by our current economic system, mainly from the usual motive of “no profit, no production”.
Also, there’s the issue of reforms. I would say that the possibility of the capitalist class granting us reforms is completely based on the total level of profit in the relevant society. Capital finding itself with nowhere to turn, total dependency on limited markets, and finding itself limited to a simple cheap export economy (like most of the "third world" countries) are going to be incredibly more hostile to working class efforts than say, the governments of the advanced countries of the west, who find themselves in a optimum position in the world market, and so a few reforms granted will not encroach on their total profit levels in any meaningful manner.

What’s important here is that we differentiate reformism from class struggle. Some parties appear to falsely interpret any kind of struggle initiated by the working class that doesn’t yet have "abolish the wages system" as reformism. The thing I like about the SIU program is that it does not belittle the workers union struggles; in fact I see these as vital to the development of consciousness. Some groups refuse to even see the union struggles as proletarian; they simply see the pro-capitalist leadership without the workers developing sentiment, and just write off the unions as simple negotiators. This is of course extremely sectarian, and completely fails to see any kind of revolutionary potential within the working class outside of political parties.

It’s better to just see reformism as entering parliament (or congress etc) to attempt to modify capitalism, not remove it. Actions taken by the working class, either class conscious or not, to better its wages and improve its conditions, are not reformism, they are class struggle. I see little reason for socialist organisations to want to maintain capitalist by offering up methods to modify it, however these organisations should never fail to see the differences between reformism and class struggle.

Posted: 27 Sep 2004 02:52 am Post subject:

It used to be that the wealthiest people were the millionaires, and now they are the billionaires. If capitalism continues, I expect that eventually the wealthiest people will be trillionaires. We will indeed see marvelous new technology, but private owners of the production facilities will always have ways to put price tags on it, or meter it, and keep us working long hours to pay for it. They can think of novel ways to meter whatever technology can provide, e.g., they now digitally encrypt satellite TV broadcasts. Why wouldn't they, if they can? Due to technology, in absolute terms, our standard of living will continue to rise, and relative to the amount of concentrated wealth hoarded by the few, our standard of living will continue to fall. Will we recognize that fact, or will they buy our loyalty with new electronic gadgets?

Posted: 27 Sep 2004 04:29 pm Post subject:

Magoo asked "how such a technological revolution could take place, and why it would remove capitalism". New machines are being dreamt about that will someday soon be installed in many households. Through the magic of nano- technology, anything that a household needs and uses will be created from nothing more exotic than sunlight and dirt. People will be less and less economically compelled to go out and earn a living. Freed from wage labor, they will develop more independent attitudes and will question the old ways of doing things. Mass withdrawal from the formal economy will undercut the power and influence of the war-mongers. Technology will further advance until EVERYONE is freed from wage slavery, and will no longer be economically forced to do evil things for pay.

I wonder how your observations about reform relate to what's been said about 'political action in republics being limited to reforms'. Do you agree, or do you think that bloody revolutions in democracies are possible or likely?

Why 'differentiate reformism from class struggle', when they are so closely linked? Why do you think Marx and his First International so fervently wanted the 8 hour day enacted in the developed world?

What indications do you see of 'revolutionary potential within the working class outside of political parties'?

How can capitalism possibly be 'removed' during the era of human labor? Can there be such a thing as a 'socialist mode of production based on human labor'?

'Modifying capitalism by means of reform' is questionable. 'Reform' means 'modifying LAWS', not 'modifying capitalism'. Reform has often been demonized, but you won't catch Marx himself doing that. Find Marx somewhere demonizing reform, and let us know what you find. -KE

Posted: 28 Sep 2004 05:44 am Post subject:

The only part of the classical DeLeonist program that I disagree with is the idea that the political party can ever win at the ballot in the first place. The ruling class will never let that happen, and history has shown that (plus with the ballot access laws in this country as a barrier it's even less likely).

Other than that, I think it's good stuff.

Posted: 28 Sep 2004 07:28 am Post subject:

Sam, what ballot access laws? It's easy for the political process to exclude a movement with some thousands of members. How could it exclude a movement with, say, a hundred million members? All talk about revolutionizing society has to assume that we're talking about a future time when a majority wants that change to occur. The operation of socialism itself requires that the majority want it, and so do the preliminary political and industrial organization for establishing socialism.

Posted: 28 Sep 2004 08:00 am Post subject:

Ken, you and I agree that technology is exponentiating. I think our difference is that I see social relationships determining the usage of the technology, not technology itself changing the social relationships. My background is in engineering and physics. I too expect the advent of nanotechnology. Unfortunately, I also expect that buying one of those gizmos could be something like a thirty year mortgage. It seems that you feel that the capitalist would have no motivation to do that do us. Have hoarders of property ever shown any tendency to decide that they own enough, and have extracted enough? Let me put it this way: suppose automation were so advanced that one minute of human effort per day were enough to sustain production. In that case, why wouldn't the capitalist have us work that one minute per day to sustain it, and then require is to continue to work for another eight hours anyway? (I know that you know what the theory of surplus value is.)

Joke from 'Mad' magazine: Bill Gates has joined the fad of self-improvement through repeating positive affirmations. Every morning he meditates on the phrase, "There is still some money in the world that is not yet mine."

Okay, nanotechnology producing fabulous wealth out of sunlight and dirt. Even so, why wouldn't an unelected administrative class still behave that way?

Or will we first be doing something such that there won't be any unelected adminstrative class?

Posted: 28 Sep 2004 04:55 pm Post subject:

Posted: 29 Sep 2004 05:29 am Post subject:

Im sorry for the late reply. Anyway, I think we were talking about nano tech and also if Marx was a reformist. First thing, we have all heard before that technology will in effect free us from having to work at a certain date, and I belive there were views expressed earlier in the middle 20th century that by the year 1999 we would only have to work a few hours a day and spend the rest of the time at liesure. Well, that hasnt happened, and while capitalism has raised the living standard of certain sections of the working class, in reality the overall living standard of the GLOBAL working class(which is what matters)has declined. The starving and abused masses of workers and peasants in asia and africa outnumber the somwhat comfotable "middle class" workers of the west many times over. From what I know, increased use of machinery that cuts into labour time simply leads to an increase in the ratio of constant capital to variable, throwing people out of work and lowering the rate of profit. Hence in China with its increasing industry to meet the demands of the global market, with no less than 20 million people out of work, and the great mass of its workers living spartan lives at the disposal of capital.

As to Marx supporting reform, I must admit I know little about the exact mechanics of the First International, however this quote by Marx on reformist trade unions springs to mind:
"They (The Unions) ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the cause of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady"

Thus, I do belive that while Marx may have of course supported efforts by the working class to throw up a defence against capital, he was also very much aware of the circular and self defeating effects that pure out and out reformism can bring.
I prefer to think of reformism as the simple actions of political parties to alter the economic nature of capitalism(an impossible task) where as class struggle is the spontaneous actions of our class, and such actions must be elaborated on while the struggle is taking place, to as not belittle such a struggle nor allow it to be hi-jacked by a self appointed vanguard party or diverted into reformism.

Posted: 29 Sep 2004 08:40 am Post subject:

"Do you really think the ruling class would ever let an electoral movement reach that point" ---- I don't think think there's any "let" on the part of the ruling class. It's the other way around: the ruling class can't do anything that the working class doesn't approve. Approve -- and also do for them. The working class prints their dividend checks and delivers them, joins their armies and police, and reelects their politicians. At election time, workers count the votes and report the results. The workers wear chains that are unlocked are are not willing to remove those chains. There's no "they" conspiring against us -- we are our own "they." When we struggle for socialism, our only struggle is with the psychology of our working class family, friends and neighbors. I don't think that "our 'democracy' is a fraud" -- it just seems that way to us socialists because we're disappointed by the fact that we are currently vastly outvoted.

As for the perception that socialism can be "voted in": no, of course not -- socialism, which must be constructed by workers' workplace-based associations, cannot be "voted in." But neither can socialism be established without some generally-recognized measurement of the will of the majority, and some kind of authorization for socialism by the majority. However imperfect in current practice, elections are generally recognized as a device to measure the will of the majority.

Posted: 29 Sep 2004 08:59 am Post subject:

Marx was a bit flipfloppy on the issue of reformism, but he lived in an age when socialists believed that all we had to do was get some kind of working class momentum going and then historical events would move in an inevitable track to the next necessary social phase. We now know from experience that there are all sorts of things that can go wrong, including capitalism which is commonly mistaken for socialism, and statism that is commonly mistaken for socialism. Now that we are aware that diversions are possible and even likely, we have to be more cautious than Marx and Engels might have anticipated.

Posted: 29 Sep 2004 08:56 pm Post subject:

Reply to Magoo:
It's true that we could be down to a 20 hour week if enough of us wanted, but not enough people want productivity increases to accrue to free time and freedom. Instead, people allow productivity increases to continue to accrue to higher profits. One side effect of the 'high profit' road is 'big capital investments in high tech', which ensure maintaining a double exponential rate of tech progress. The silver lining to the 'no freedom' cloud is that a lot of people may wake up one fine day and discover that their reasons for going to work will have suddenly vanished, and they end up totally free of toil.

What source are you using for your 'living standards decline' assertion? The World Bank says that 'the number of people living in absolute poverty declined 14% from 1993-8.'

Your phrase 'reformist trade unions' is a contradiction in terms. A trade union is an economic organization, fighting over wages, hours, and benefits, usually in single shops. To cure the 'malady' of which Marx spoke, unionists were urged to form into parties representing interests common to the entire working class, so as to make their struggles more efficient. A single shop could fight for and win a struggle for an 8 hour day, but why not fight to make that 8 hour day general for the whole class? That was the difference between struggling on the economic front vs. on the political front. Marx saw the labor PARTY as a giant step towards curing working class woes.

If Marx allegedly was aware of 'the circular and self defeating effects that pure out and out reformism can bring', then I'm sure you will be able to dig up some corroborating evidence in the works of Marx. But, I don't think there is any such evidence. I suspect that you have been lied to by people with revolutions to sell, and they despise reforms. Revolutionaries can afford to dispense with reforms because they can make a good enough living selling pure revolutionism. Real workers, on the other hand, need every reform that does something real to alleviate oppression.

Revolutionaries can also afford to tell you that 'altering the economic nature of capitalism is impossible'. But, its economic nature has suffered so many alterations that a look at the Fair Labor Standards Act might be a good place to start. OSHA is another. Some things, such as the profit motive, are pretty immutable, but at least 'the AMOUNT of profit' is quite mutable. The amount of profit we let them get away with depends upon the will of the people, Congress, the President, etc. No one need be reminded of how high the Bush administration is pushing profits.

Hard and fast conclusions about the alleged 'spontaneity of the working class', the alleged 'dangers of a vanguard party', or the alleged 'dangers of reformism' should be avoided. Do your own research with an open mind. The revolution is so unlikely in a democracy that there is little left for revolutionaries to do but to create competing little business interests known as 'sects'. One of the sects can afford to sell as ridiculous an item as a 'proletarian dictatorship over the peasantry', and no sectarian will object to it. Morality in the revolutionary sector is not as high as it could be. -KE 9/29

Posted: 30 Sep 2004 04:55 am Post subject:

"What source are you using for your 'living standards decline' assertion? The World Bank says that 'the number of people living in absolute poverty declined 14% from 1993-8.' "

and also the number of those starving hit a record level last year. I would say that to starve you would have to be living in absolute poverty no? I dont really think the World Bank is an unbaised source to obtain figures on poverty.

"If Marx allegedly was aware of 'the circular and self defeating effects that pure out and out reformism can bring', then I'm sure you will be able to dig up some corroborating evidence in the works of Marx."

I thought I just did, if you want I can root around for more, and there is more. Even a look at volumes such as capital you will find that its a mere critique, it offers no hodge podge solutions to make capitalism function in a more amicable way to the working class. Rest assured I do conduct my own research and do indeed attempt to keep an open mind. Im not aware of anyone lying to me. Im not really sure why you think Marx was an out and out reformist, if he was why would he bother with such an eloquent critique of capitalism? If he was all for reform he would have just dealt with surface effects instead of spending much of his life in devling deeper into our economic system.

"Your phrase 'reformist trade unions' is a contradiction in terms. A trade union is an economic organization, fighting over wages, hours, and benefits, usually in single shops. To cure the 'malady' of which Marx spoke, unionists were urged to form into parties representing interests common to the entire working class, so as to make their struggles more efficient. A single shop could fight for and win a struggle for an 8 hour day, but why not fight to make that 8 hour day general for the whole class?"

I dont really see why its a contradiction, and also these struggles you speak of to obtain an 8 hour day have not been successful, many people here in the UK work 10 or even 12 hours per day, over five days a week. While the working week here is supposed to be decline, its in fact going up in places like Germany with no corresponding increase in wages. Of course the workers should form into parties representing their own interests, but the parties of labour that claim support from the Trade Unions do not represent anyones interests apart from that of nationalised capital. A century of this has led to a vast list of misdeeds commited by the supposed party of labour here in Britain, an example being when they even used the army against strikers in 1945 and of course the recent war in Iraq when the supposed labour party fought alongside that of americas traditional party of conservatism.

May I also remind you that now more people, workers or peasants, are starving in this world than the entire global population in Marxs day.

Posted: 30 Sep 2004 05:00 pm Post subject:

Magoo wrote that "those starving hit a record level last year", but corroboration could not be found at any web site I visited. When comparing levels of hunger or starvation between Marx's day and ours, it would be more fair to compare percentages rather than absolute numbers.

Magoo wrote that Marx's Capital "offers no hodge podge solutions to make capitalism function in a more amicable way to the working class." Capital enumerated the downsides of allowing surplus value to grow without limits. Limiting surplus value is best accomplished by limiting the length of the work day and work week. In the third volume, Marx roughly stated that 'the shortening of the working-day is the basic prerequisite of freedom.' Reducing the length of the work day and week can be accomplished in capitalist societies, if enough people go for it. The whole developed world has laws regulating work hours, vacations, holidays, retirement ages, etc. If the laws are not tight enough to ensure full employment and prevent social misery, then the divided workers have no one to blame but themselves.

It is not correct to imply that 'one need be a revolutionary in order to deliver an eloquent critique of capitalism.' Debs was a non-revolutionary socialist and a 3rd party candidate whose critique of the status quo won him a record number of votes for a socialist.

Another mistake is to oppose reform vs. revolution, whereas the solution in Marx's time boiled down to reform AND revolution, more specifically: reform in democracies, and revolution in despotic monarchies. What was necessary for social justice was determined by the political system in which people lived. -KE

Posted: 01 Oct 2004 04:41 am Post subject:

Ken, when you say "reform in democracies, and revolution in despotic monarchies", are you sure you're not tripping over the popular connotation of the word "revolution" -- barricades in the streets, smash the state, etc. ? Revolution as in "revolt" and revolution as in "revolve" are related etymologically in that both imply "to completely turn around." Things can be completely turned around regardless of where we are situated along the spectrum from democracy to despotism. Either way, a skeletal restructuring is a revolution. Comparison to reform is a distinct issue. A reform maintains the same skeleton and modifies the surface. Do you believe that some sufficient number of reforms can amount to a revolutionary change? If so, please indidate that so I can gauge where each of us stands relative to the other. I assert that reform is a bottomless pit to consume our efforts for an indefinite period of time, without achieving a single step in the direction of revolutionary change.

Posted: 01 Oct 2004 10:57 am Post subject:

‘Reducing the length of the work day and week can be accomplished in capitalist societies, if enough people go for it. The whole developed world has laws regulating work hours, vacations, holidays, retirement ages, etc. If the laws are not tight enough to ensure full employment and prevent social misery, then the divided workers have no one to blame but themselves.

This does not remove the exploitive relations in capitalist economics though, the quote I provided from Marx on the Trade Unions shows what he thought of efforts to mitigate effects alone instead of working to remove them outright, in this case the efforts to simply lessen the rate of surplus value.
Hmm, thing is though that a drop in working hours can be rendered null and void by an increase in the intensity of labour, something Marx understood. I will say again that the success of reform measures are largely dependant on the total rate of profit in the relevant society, the theory being that a cornered and antagonised capitalist class in economic stagnation is going to be generally hostile to workers rights. Just take a look at any "third world" country who’s economy is almost entirely dependant on cheap exports to the west.

"Debs was a non-revolutionary socialist and a 3rd party candidate whose critique of the status quo won him a record number of votes for a socialist. "

How can you be a non-revolutionary socialist? Surely the terms socialist and revolutionary go hand in hand? The very act of the advocation of socialism instead of capitalism is a revolutionary process.

Marx understood that the concessions would be made to the working class via the pressure it would exert in pursuit of its own class interests, however I doubt very much that he would support indefinite reform in the parliamentary sense, he supported class struggle, not reform, as do I. In a time when the working class was still in development and striving for political access he understood how vital it was not to belittle such struggles, as it still is today.

"Another mistake is to oppose reform vs. revolution, whereas the solution in Marx's time boiled down to reform AND revolution, more specifically: reform in democracies, and revolution in despotic monarchies. "

Marx spoke on several occasions about a workers revolution being achieved via peaceful means within the democracies, he did not intend to overthrow feudalism and then simply reform capitalism, heres a quote(an entire letter actually)that might be of interest:

"On violent Revolution: If you say that do not share the views of my party for England I can only reply that the party considers an English revolution not necessary, but – according to historic precedents – possible. If the unavoidable evolution turns into a revolution, it would not only be the fault of the ruling classes, but also of the working class. Every pacific concession of the former has been wrung from them by ‘pressure from without’. Their action kept pace with that pressure and if the latter has more and more weakened, it is only because the English working class know not how to wield their power and use their liberties, both of which they posses legally.
In Germany the working class were fully aware from the beginning of their movement that you cannot get rid of a military despotism but by a revolution. At the same time they understood that such a revolution, even if at first successful, would finally turn against them without previous organization, acquirement of knowledge, propaganda, and…(gap in manuscript) Hence they moved within strictly legal bounds. The illegality was all on the side of the government, which declared them an dehors la loi. Their crimes were not deeds, but opinions unpleasant to their rulers. Fortunately, the same government – the working class having been pushed to the background with the help of the bourgeoisie – becomes now more and more unbearable to the latter, whom it hits on their most tender point – the pocket. This state of things cannot last long…"

You will note that Marx does not claim that revolution entails violence, but that the methods of revolution may differ on the situation in the relevant environment. He makes it clear that somewhat peaceful revolutionary action can be attained in a capitalist democracy such as Britain. However the situation at the time in Germany differed from England. he is also speaking of "pressure from without" and the "weakening" of the working class who stand away from revolutionary action and instead limit themselves to pressure for reforms alone, showing that Marx’s revolutionary credentials were not in the slightest reformist.

Its strange that you couldn’t find a website to provide you with figures on the worlds starving, anyway heres another quote, this time from the Socialist Standard: "According to a new United Nations food and agricultural organisation (FAO) report, the state of food insecurity in the world 2003, across the planet 842 million are malnourished and the figure is growing by 5 million per year. This includes 10 million in the industrialised countries, 34 million in “countries in transition” (to modern capitalism) and 798 million in developing countries."

Notice these figures are not figures on those living in absolute poverty, just those who are malnourished. It goes without saying that 842 million is a huge figure that I would venture was greater than the world’s population in the 19th century.

Posted: 01 Oct 2004 10:12 pm Post subject:

Mike wondered if I believe that "some sufficient number of reforms can amount to a revolutionary change", and the answer is yes. Marx's daughter Jenny confirmed her father feeling the same way when she wrote to her husband on 23 November 1880 (me46.473):

"As to the revolutionary side of the struggle for the limitation of the working day, he [Marx] thinks you have passed it over without notice in your answer to those revolutionists of the fire and sword. -- From the Capital you will see that the fight of the English working class assumed more than once the character of a revolution, and that the governing classes only granted what they dared not refuse. If Massard and Co. thirst for fight, they will derive much satisfaction by a perusal of the history in England of the limitation of the working day! Apropos, as to the question of the fixation of a minimum salary, it may perhaps interest you to know that Papa did all he could to persuade Guesde to omit it from their programme, explaining to him that such a measure, if adopted, would, according to economical laws, produce the result of making of this fixed minimum a maximum. But Guesde stuck to it, on the plea that it would give them a hold on the working classes if it did nothing else. Guesde, you see, is opportunist like the rest of them."

Posted: 02 Oct 2004 01:38 am Post subject:

Ken -- well, you gave me a direct answer to my question, and I thank you for that :-) But you have studied socialist literature for a long time, and I thought we had a common vocabulary for observing that the ability of reform to win higher wages and shorter hours is a different discussion. Those things are not socialism.

Posted: 02 Oct 2004 02:20 pm Post subject:

Magoo wondered about the relative values of trying to reduce exploitation vs. outright abolish it. Unfortunately, insinuated on Marx was a disdain for mitigation that never existed, perhaps due to not knowing that Marx equated exploitation with surplus value, both of which Marx favored mitigating. Also insinuated on Marx was an alleged preference for 'outright removing exploitation', in which case, surplus value would have to be diminished to zero, which is impossible during the era of human labor. Though M+E cannot be found advising 'outright removing exploitation', they did advise 'abolishing the wages system'. Provided that equating 'removing exploitation' with the 'abolition of the wages system' will not be too vigorously protested, the only tangible method of doing the latter was provided in Engels' 1880 article entitled "Trades Unions". Here is its bare essence (me24.387): ... "the struggle for high wages and short hours ... is ... a means ... towards a higher end: the abolition of the wages system altogether."

Apparently, 'abolishing the wages system' cannot be achieved except as the result of a long process. Nothing can be done by you, me, or the proletariat to run out tomorrow and 'outright remove exploitation' or 'outright abolish the wages system'. For as long as we are stuck with having to overcome scarcity by means of human labor, we are stuck to some degree with wages, exploitation, and surplus value. It doesn't mean that 'THE MOST RUTHLESS exploitation and suffering have to be the rule.' M+E urged implementing self-defense measures, both political and economic. After the nanotech revolution enables abolishing human labor, then exploitation, surplus value, scarcity, and the wages system, will all go the way of the spinning wheel. It could happen in 25 years, which should prove fast enough for most anyone.

Fighting for 'more time off for everyone' is one of the noblest and purest struggles conceivable, purely humanitarian. I certainly hope that this quest can be found preferable to the smash and grab expropriationism espoused by many revolutionaries. Messing about with property relations during the era of human labor is the most futile thing going. Marx recognized that 'labor creates private property', so it doesn't make much sense to try to abolish that which is in the process of constant creation. Eliminate human labor by implementing better technologies, and the abolition of private property and exploitation will have a much better chance.

Magoo asks 'how to be a non-revolutionary socialist'. Lots of different groups assert exclusive rights of ownership to the terms 'socialist' and 'socialism', and so do the non-revolutionaries wanting to 'expropriate the means of production with compensation', which was (and maybe still is) the program of the SPUSA. 'Expropriation with compensation' even enables governments (such as the USA) to expropriate private property for the purpose of building and moving roads, etc., as well to nationalize industries such as utilities and railroads. Part of my aunt's property was expropriated with compensation in order to take a dangerous curve out of a nearby highway. 'Expropriation with compensation' is supported by the 5th Amendment to the Constitution: "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

About reform: class struggle (in democracies) is political, and is pursued by means of reform, not revolution. Why would a democracy need a revolution, given the past history of people revolting in order to win democracy and independence? Would not 'revolution in a democracy' be totally redundant? New leaders are elected when the old leaders make wrong choices, which is plenty good enough of a change for most people.

'Overthrowing feudalism' is not a proper concept. It's just as improper to speak of 'overthrowing ancient slavery', or 'overthrowing primitive communism', or 'overthrowing capitalism'. Overthrowing a specific feudal monarchy never even equalled 'overthrowing feudalism'. Monarchies never ripened for overthrow until the burgeoning forces of capitalism became so powerful that the monarchies could no longer hold back popular demands for representative government. Similarly, socialist production (i.e., production not based on human labor) will grow up within and alongside of capitalist production over the course of the next few decades, as people purchase nano-factories that will obviate having to go to work to earn a living. Naturally, the upper classes will have the new toys first, but popularity will spread down into the middle classes as the new technology gets cheaper and cheaper. Finally, everyone will be freed of toil. If some laws have to be reformed in the process, then so be it. One thing is very certain: the old-fashioned revolutions of the fire and sword variety are obsolete, for they were best fitted for winning suffrage, democracy, and independence.

Another problem arises around the notion of 'peaceful revolution in democracies'. Perhaps you could describe what transformations would occur in political institutions and in the ownership of the means of production, during and after such a revolution.

As for England, their suffrage at the time was nowhere nearly as complete as it is today, which explains why some people back then were pushing for overthrow, while more moderate elements favored slow reform. Germany, on the other hand, had a political structure similar in some ways to Russia's early Duma, which theoretically was a representative body, though all real power was in the hands of the monarchy. Either Germany or Russia could have used a revolution to clean house and start fresh, but Germany avoided a violent rupture by compromising. But, the further East in Europe, the more despotic the governments. There was sort of a wave of revolution that started in Holland, went West to England, further West to the USA, then turned around and swept East through France, Germany, Russia, China, and South through IndoChina, Africa, Cuba, etc. Though bourgeois-republican while traveling West, the revolution becme social-democratic while traveling East, and took on communist characteristics during the 20th century. State ownership is now a dying fad. Even so, the relatively wide acceptance of state ownership at the time demonstrated the enormous influence wielded by Marx and Lenin. In 1989, however, the popular tide turned again in favor of private property. The tide is bound to reverse yet again and go against private property, and Marx hinted at the method in The German Ideology: ... "the abolition of private property will become a reality only when it is conceived as the abolition of "labour"" ... Technology will abolish human labor, not a band of misguided revolutionaries.

842 million is indeed a huge figure, and the fact that famine is growing is a sad commentary on mass apathy. Famine is far more caused by politics than economics. There is no economic excuse for such mass hunger, because the world can easily feed everyone, Malthusianism to the contrary notwithstanding. -KE

Posted: 02 Oct 2004 11:59 pm Post subject:

Mike thanked me for the info about 'Marx thinking that struggles for higher wages and shorter work hours are revolutionary', but then advised that 'the struggles for higher wages and shorter work hours are not socialism.'

But, the struggles for shorter work hours and 'sharing the remaining work' lead precisely to socialism, because socialism cannot help but result from the abolition of human labor, which translates into 'the abolition of class distinctions'. Without a distinction between worker and boss, capitalism can not be regarded as still in operation. With the relation between capital and labor abolished, capitalism will come to an end, and socialism will have arrived. This may not be the same old 'expropriation of the expropriators' path to socialism, but that old path was discredited by the events of 1989 et seq. Socialists absolutely must consider a different path to socialism. Failure to consider the 'abolition of human labor' path to socialism will indicate a rigidity of thought unbecoming the science of socialism. But, ridigity of thought within the socialist community is precisely what I have witnessed over the past decade. M+E elevated the struggle to abolish class distinctions far above merely socializing ownership:

me6.545 Communism denies the necessity for the existence of classes; it wants to abolish all classes, all class distinctions.

me10.127 ... the proletariat increasingly organises itself around revolutionary Socialism, around Communism, for which the bourgeoisie itself has invented the name of Blanqui. This Socialism is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionising of all the ideas that result from these social relations.

me10.553 The real emancipation of the proletariat, the complete abolition of all class distinctions and the complete concentration of all the means of production, in Germany and France presupposes the co-operation of Britain and at least a doubling of the means of production now existing in Germany and France. But precisely that is the precondition also for a new form of warfare.

me24.70 The German workers' party strives to abolish wage labour and hence class distinctions by introducing co-operative production into industry and agriculture, and on a national scale; it is in favour of any measure calculated to attain that end!

me24.92 ... with the abolition of class distinctions all social and political inequality arising from them would disappear of itself.

me24.320 The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into State property. But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, abolishes also the State as State.

me25.146 ... if the whole of modern society is not to perish, a revolution in the mode of production and distribution must take place, a revolution which will put an end to all class distinctions.

me24.193 ... "the productive forces of society, which have outgrown the control of the bourgeoisie, are only waiting for the associated proletariat to take possession of them in order to bring about a state of things in which every member of society will be enabled to participate not only in production but also in the distribution and administration of social wealth, and which so increases the productive forces of society and their yield by planned operation of the whole of production that the satisfaction of all reasonable needs will be assured to everyone in an ever-increasing measure."

These excerpts prove that the abolition of private property was no better than a means to higher and more humanitarian ends: helping abolish class distinctions, and enabling fuller participation in the economy. If socialism were to be defined as 'no greater than the abolition of private property', socialism would be robbed of its wealth of humanitarian content. -KE

Posted: 03 Oct 2004 03:29 am Post subject:

Ken ... I think you jumped too fast to "without a distinction between worker and boss." We were talking about automation and other technologies vastly reducing work time. Still, the need to work, while perhaps asymptotically approaching zero, doesn't reach zero. Also, technology doesn't do everything that it can do, if only because some possible uses contradict other possible uses, whenever proposed policy A and proposed policy B are mutually exclusive. Someone makes desicions. If that someone who makes decisions isn't some kind of democratic congress, then it's some kind of "boss." Even with all those robots and nanobots, we are left with the need to decide explicitly whether to have class rule or whether to have socialism.

Posted: 04 Oct 2004 02:04 pm Post subject:

Your right, it does not make sense to simply advocate the abolition of the wages system with no practical work involved, for the simple reasons that it will remain an abstract slogan with no effort to cultivate class sentiment.

By the way Im sorry if this is another late reply but my internet connection has been down for the past few days. Anyway, I am in complete understanding of Marxs views on the exploitation of labour power by capital, but I dont think it is fair to say the idea that Marx was in favour of removing the wages system outright is wrong. Lets not forget the earlier quotes regarding his views on the trade Unions, nor those of Engels when he says:
"The Trades Unions of this country have now for nearly sixty years fought against this law - with what result? Have they succeeded in freeing the working class from the bondage in which capital - the produce of its own hands - holds it? Have they enabled a singe section of the working class to rise above the situation of wages slaves, to become owners of their own means of production, of the raw materials, tools, machinery required in their trade, and thus to become the owners of the produce of their own labour? It is well known that not only they have not done so, but they they never tried"

Of course this does not in any way atll show that Marx and Engels were not in favour of mitigating exploitation, but it does lay clear what they thought of those who simply wish to mitigatge without dealing with the root cause. Only the most sectarian of the sectarians would refuse to participate in such struggles that the working class will undertake in order to secure its own existence against capital, but simply dealing with effects, instead of causes, is somthing Marx and Engels were certainly opposed to, as are Marxists today.
To force this point home I would like to induge in another quote from Engels about the futile nature of simply wishing to mitigate effects: "The law of wages is not upset by the struggles of the Trade Unions. On the contrary, it is enforced by them. Without the means of resistance of the Trades Unions the labourer does not receive even what is his due according to the rules of the wages system. It is only with the fear of the Trades Union before his eyes that the capitalist can be made to part with the full market value of his labourers working power. Do you want proof? Look at the wages paid to the members of the large Trades Unions, and at the wages paid to the numberless small trades in that pool of stagnant misery, the East-end of London.
Thus the Trades Unions do not attack the wages system. But it is not the highness or lowness of wages which constitues the economical degradation of the working class: this degradation is comprised in the fact that, instead of receiving for its labour the full produce of this labour, the working class has to be satisfied with a portion of its own produce called wages. The capitalist pockets the whole produce (Paying the labouerer out of it) because he is the owner of the means of labour. And, therefore, there is no real redemption for the working class until it becomes owner of all the means of work - land, raw material, machinery, etc. - and thereby also the owner of THE WHOLE OF THE PRODUCE OF ITS OWN LABOUR."

Therefore its made clear that there is no opposition to the increasing of wages via working militancy, but I would venture they certainly would stand opposed to those who advocate a mere reforming of our economic system, and ruling out workers emancipation as impossible.

"Magoo asks 'how to be a non-revolutionary socialist'. Lots of different groups assert exclusive rights of ownership to the terms 'socialist' and 'socialism', and so do the non-revolutionaries wanting to 'expropriate the means of production with compensation', which was (and maybe still is) the program of the SPUSA. "

Many many groups will of course claim the word socialism as their own, but this certainly does not mean that they are socialists. The SPUSA is stuck in a mire of reformism with all revolutionary principles long since removed. Saying your a socialist and working towards a raise in living standards, but being "non revolutionary" in the sense that you dont want to overthrow capitalism is not being a socialist at all.

"About reform: class struggle (in democracies) is political, and is pursued by means of reform, not revolution. Why would a democracy need a revolution, given the past history of people revolting in order to win democracy and independence?"

I think we need to get away from the concept of a revolution being about street fighting and flag waving, many socialists including myself see the ballot box as a way for the working class to use its political power in a revolutionary way. We need to get away from the sterotype of the paris commune here.

"'Overthrowing feudalism' is not a proper concept. It's just as improper to speak of 'overthrowing ancient slavery', or 'overthrowing primitive communism', or 'overthrowing capitalism'. Overthrowing a specific feudal monarchy never even equalled 'overthrowing feudalism'. Monarchies never ripened for overthrow until the burgeoning forces of capitalism became so powerful that the monarchies could no longer hold back popular demands for representative government. "

Of course, and this is what occured. If I overthrow Tony Blair and make myself Prime Minister, I am not overthrowing capitalism. If a monarch of europe in the 18th century was overthrown, fuedalism was not removed. If the revolutionary capitalist class was able to remove the traditional organs of fuedal rule, and with that remove such impediments that were dragging on the progress of developing capitalism, then they have overthrown fuedalism. If the working class organises on the economic and political field and seizes the state along with the idustries and forces through its own class rule, then it has overthrown capitalism and lurched into a progressive period of transition.

"Another problem arises around the notion of 'peaceful revolution in democracies'. Perhaps you could describe what transformations would occur in political institutions and in the ownership of the means of production, during and after such a revolution. "

I think De Leon could phrase such questions better than me when he talks about the structure of economic democracy in a socialist republic.

I would really like to know though, why you think that labour cannot hope to emancipate itself from capital till labour itself has ceased to be a factor in production.

Posted: 04 Oct 2004 04:49 pm Post subject:

Mike drew lessons from mathematics to throw doubt on my theory that 'work for humans will disappear altogether.' As machines improve, we can probably agree that the historical trend has been for necessary labor time to approach zero, and for surplus labor time to approach infinity. Disagreement arises where I say that 'those asymptotes are bound to be reached someday.' If humanity were infinitely large, then I would agree that 'the asymptotes can be approached, but never reached.' But, society is finite, so society's actual path can never perfectly coincide with mathematically pure curves. When necessary labor time gets close enough to insignificant, human intellect will step in and declare the capitalist game ended, and volunteers will step in while smart machines acquire the additional smarts needed to run themselves without human intervention. With no class distinctions, policies are bound to be decided thoroughly democratically. -KE

Posted: 05 Oct 2004 07:40 am Post subject:

Posted: 07 Oct 2004 12:49 pm Post subject:

I for one would now like to talk about somthing else, and I might start up another subject. For now though, I would not rule out the possibility of a great stride forward in productive power, but without a profound social change, it will remain a mere alteration in the technical capacity of capitalism. The comment about "misguided revolutionarys" or somthing to that effect, was unfair, and I would like to think such personal remarks will not occure again on this forum. I struggle for my interests and the interests of my class here and now, and while I do not know what may happen in the future, I certainly will not stop the struggle because a great invention may appear in the future that will supposdly cause the capitalist class to go "ah lets just pack it in" and then socialism will just arise from nothing. Without the actions of the working class in pursuit of its own interests against capital, there will be no change in society.

Posted: 07 Oct 2004 03:30 pm Post subject:

Mike wrote: "It seems that Ken believes that coming real soon, right around the corner, will be that "replicator" device on Star Trek. Tell the computer you want food and clothing, and it just pops out."

Zammatter of fact, just yesterday this story about 'High-Tech Tweezers" showed up in the Chicago Sun newspaper, evincing great progress being made towards a "replicator": "This technique makes possible nano-assembly lines," said Chicago entrepreneur Lewis Gruber. "You can use it to put things together, twist them, rotate them, fix things in locations at the microscopic or atomic level. It makes possible, for the first time, a factory floor under the microscope capable of manufacturing components and assembling them into products at high throughput, just as is done in the industrial world."

Naturally, this 'small step forward' hints at much better things to come: machines that will eliminate all necessary labor. Without necessary labor, surplus labor will also disappear, so 'the rulers of the system' will lose their grip on the workers, and capitalism will disappear. It used to be that the rulers needed human labor to make the rulers comfortable, but, with machines providing all labor someday, I can't figure out what rulers would then have workers doing for them, except as 'trophy back scratchers'. Plus, with workers' needs being automatically supplied as well, I can't figure out what would motivate a worker to 'go to work' for a ruler when the ruler wouldn't have much for the worker to do anyway. Come up with something really concrete for workers to have to do for rulers, and I'll reconsider. -KE

Posted: 07 Oct 2004 05:01 pm Post subject:

Magoo apologized for his internet connection, but, a slower pace to the discussion works better for me than a rapid-fire exchange.

It's true that M+E thought that expropriating the expropriators would deal a great blow to exploitation. But, in the Marxist scenario, expropriating the expropriators all at once was feasible only under one condition: after overthrowing a mass of despotic monarchies and establishing the universal republic (the dictatorship of the proletariat). Marx's scenario is presently out of the question, because Europe managed to become democratic without simultaneous social-democratic revolutions, and the political conditions in which Marx lived no longer exist in that part of the world.

Expropriating the expropriators all at once wasn't even perfectly supported in their published works. The most optimistic estimate occurred in Engels' 1894 article entitled The Peasant Question in France and Germany (me27.500): "As soon as our Party is in possession of political power it has simply to expropriate the big landed proprietors just like the manufacturers in industry. Whether this expropriation is to be compensated for or not will to a great extent depend not upon us but the circumstances under which we obtain power, and particularly upon the attitude adopted by these gentry, the big landowners, themselves. We by no means consider compensation as impermissible in any event; Marx told me (and how many times!) that in his opinion we would get off cheapest if we could buy out the whole lot of them."

Much earlier, in The Communist Manifesto, M+E only went as far as (me6.504): "The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible."

'By degrees' is a far cry from Engels in 1894, as well as a far cry from Lenin's 'expropriation of landowners on the very first day of the Bolshevik revolution'. Even earlier than the Communist Manifesto, M+E, in The German Ideology, contradicted forceful expropriation with their (me4.279): "the abolition of private property will become a reality only when it is conceived as the abolition of labour" ...

The German Ideology probably contained the most realistic prediction of all, especially considering what happened to the notion of state ownership after the 1989 fall of the Berlin wall. So, how do you wish to deal with private property? Do you agree with a lot of socialist, anarchist and communist groups and insist upon forceful immediate expropriation? Or, do you prefer to go with early Marx and abolish private property by abolishing human labor? It would be nice to hear a definite answer, or let us know what might prevent you from deciding, and then hopefully it can be further discussed.

I totally agree with 'M+E wanting to deal more with causes than effects'. One must also wonder what causes the social misery of the lower classes. Is it simply 'private property'? If so, then abolish it! But, the outright abolition of private property is a pretty tall order, and would require lots of force. And then it would have to be decided whether to replace the capitalist state with a communist workers' state, or with an anarchist classless and stateless adminstration of things. Again, it's your choice, and let us know what you would do about the revolutionaries on the other side of the table who would prefer doing the other thing.

Or, maybe the miseries of the lower classes could be regarded as the result of insufficient participation in the economy, and it could be decided to try to deal with that in a civil fashion, as in the following lines from Engels' 1845 "Condition of the Working Class in England" (me4.507):

... "something more is needed than Trades Unions and strikes to break the power of the ruling class. But what gives these Unions and the strikes arising from them their real importance is this, that they are the first attempt of the workers to abolish competition. They imply the recognition of the fact that the supremacy of the bourgeoisie is based wholly upon the competition of the workers among themselves; i.e., upon their want of cohesion. And precisely because the Unions direct themselves against the vital nerve of the present social order, however one-sidedly, in however narrow a way, are they so dangerous to this social order. The working-men cannot attack the bourgeoisie, and with it the whole existing order of society, at any sorer point than this. If the competition of the workers among themselves is destroyed, if all determine not to be further exploited by the bourgeoisie, the rule of property is at an end."

So, there's a very civil way to end the rule of property: abolish competition between workers. And, the best way to do that is by reducing the length of the work week, raising the overtime premium to double time, enacting more paid holidays, longer paid vacations, earlier retirements with full benefits, etc., and escalating those demands as machinery gets smarter and smarter, enabling laying off more and more workers. Would M+E oppose these measures, even though they admittedly are 'mere reforms'? Do these reforms necessarily 'rule out workers emancipation as impossible'? What is the nature of workers emancipation, anyway? Tell us if 'such reforms violate Marxism', and describe exactly how.

Magoo wrote: "I would really like to know though, why you think that labour cannot hope to emancipate itself from capital till labour itself has ceased to be a factor in production."

The answer has to do with the flow of history. The Russians did the Marxist thing of 'concentrating capital into the hands of the state' after taking power, but that was reversed for a billion people after 1989. China is allowing more and more stuff to be privatized, kicking off a tremendous explosion of capital investment, though their 'proletarian dictatorship' seems to be impeding sound environmental practices. 'State ownership', as an ideology, has very little life left in it. No one in the world, outside of a few diehards, seem interested in collectivizing ownership, or any other plan that goes against private property. So, activists need to recognize that modern fact, and then look at all of Marx and Engels' proposals, take lessons from them, and then consider their CIVIL proposals to be just as Marxist as 'expropriating expropriators', and a heck of a lot more feasible. Hang onto the memory of the fleeting political conditions under which the Marxist expropriatory scenario seemed feasible to M+E, ask yourself if those conditions still avail today, and then consider if some liberatory scenario (other than expropriating expropriators after overthrowing a mass of despotic monarchies) might better suit today's conditions. The decision is yours, think it over, and let us know what you think. -KE

Posted: 08 Oct 2004 10:02 pm Post subject:

Magoo threatened to change the subject, but why change when we have yet to achieve clarity and agreement on the old subjects? The old subjects aren't so convoluted that they can't be understood by everyday people. Very good reasons have to exist as to why the world didn't revolt according to the classic Marxist scenario, why Marxism lost popularity, and why a popularity boost doesn't appear likely. Why can't we all get on the same page on these subjects? This isn't rocket science or high math; it's only politics.

Being a misguided revolutionary isn't the rarest of occurrences, and is nothing to have to deny or cover up. I was a misguided revolutionary at one time, and the story of my personal misguidedness can be found in my online book at: http://www.geocities.com/kenellis2020/lwlindex.html -KE

Posted: 08 Oct 2004 10:28 pm Post subject:

I've been reading the new book On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. He mentions the predictions made in 1950 about what life would be like in 2000: we will have atomic reactors in our basements, we will take vacations on the moon, etc. Ken, be cautious of that sort of thing.

It's fun to speculate, but here's what we know today: The industries are the means of life -- work or starve. Property and administrative arrangements are social institutions, susceptible to change. Quoth Benjamin Franklin, " Private property ... is a creature of society, and is subject to the calls of that society...."

I'll put it this way, Ken -- (1) I hope that you're correct; (2) I fear that your aren't.

Posted: 11 Oct 2004 08:07 am Post subject:

Posted: 12 Oct 2004 06:34 am Post subject:

Ken, I moved your most recent post, and my most recent reply, to a new forum topic called Science and Technology. Let's please continue it there.

This isn't something special. I will do this whenever the conversation begins to suggest a new thread.

Posted: 12 Oct 2004 06:46 am Post subject:

To all: See the FORUM INDEX link above. I made a separate section to focus on the fundamentals of Marx and Engels (the materialist conception of history, Marxian economics, and the concept of the class struggle).

Posted: 30 Apr 2005 05:59 pm Post subject: Need helping hand

Don from Real Union Of Social Science.

I received a notice from a new contact in Jersey City, New Jersey, who has organizaed what he calls, A Conference on DeLeonism. He asked for information and I sent him some SLP De Leon pamphlets. He also is publicising the event as much as he can to build up attendance. No one from our organization is able to attend. I also talked him by phone and it seems that he is short on helping hands. The conference is being held on Saturday May 7 at Hudson County Community College 25 Journal Square Jersey City, New Jersey. If anyone is available, I can make arrangements to contact him if he wishes so. Real Union Of Social Science will be taking credit for such help. Anything that promotes De Leonism is credit enough.

Thanks

Don

Posted: 01 May 2005 08:18 am Post subject:

This is for people who want to know what "The Internationale" sounds like
(instrumental - that means no lyrics)
http://www.deleonism.org/midi/internationale.mid
fast download - midi files are small - this one's 5k

bad thing about midi's - the type of instrument it sounds like
depends on the brand of sound card inside your computer

I taught myself how to play the piano with this song Smile

but this file isn't a recording of me playing it - it's someone else

in honor of May Day
also don't forget Karl Marx's birthday May 5
season's greetings to all

"We wish you a Merry Marxmas and a happy May Day"

Posted: 01 May 2005 10:58 am Post subject:

Magoo wrote:

10/07/04 12:49:18

Without the actions of the working class in pursuit of its own interests against capital, there will be no change in society.

Ken wrote:

10/07/04 17:01:22
It's true that M+E thought that expropriating the expropriators would deal a great blow to exploitation. But, in the Marxist scenario, expropriating the expropriators all at once was feasible only under one condition: after overthrowing a mass of despotic monarchies and establishing the universal republic (the dictatorship of the proletariat). Marx's scenario is presently out of the question, because Europe managed to become democratic without simultaneous social-democratic revolutions, and the political conditions in which Marx lived no longer exist in that part of the world.

Dave writes:

As to Magoo:

If the working class does nothing there certainly will be a change in society. (but perhaps Magoo meant change of societies).

As to Ken:

But expropriation of the expropriators will still take place none the less - it will continue at an ever increasing pace. Because the big expropriators in general will continue to eliminate the smaller ones - Walmartization - not only of competitors but of suppliers as well.

Expropriation of the expropriators under capitalism leads to the inexorable concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands whether labor does anything or not. This is why socialism is not an option but an imperative.

International Labor Day 2005

signed Dave

Posted: 10 May 2005 09:17 am Post subject:

(1) Why is it that pro-capitalist workers think that competition is the only incentive for workers, not only to make finacial gains by stepping on and over people in a corporation, but to invent new items?

(2) Why do Libertairians think it is not okay to be taxed but it is okay to extract profit from the backs of workers?

Social

Posted: 10 May 2005 10:48 am Post subject:

(1) Lots of capitalist propaganda from a young age. People are told that the "profit motive" is necessary for new inventions, when much actual innovation was done independently of the profit model, or in the last century actually directly financed by governments since it wasn't profitable.

(2) Libertarians think that with ownership of capital comes the right to the profit generated by use of that capital. They also deny the labor theory of value and go to market theories that are basically superficial. Libertarianism is based off of the junk economics that exist basically so capitalists don't have to acknowledge Marx's deconstruction of classic liberal economics in Capital (which is the single best book a socialist can read).

-Wayne

Posted: 10 May 2005 11:05 am Post subject:

agreed.

Posted: 10 May 2005 11:09 am Post subject:

Any news from the DeLeon symposium?

Posted: 10 May 2005 06:25 pm Post subject:

A Libertarian will argue that both the capitalist and the worker have freely entered into an agreement with each other, and both have done so because both realize that they are better off making that agreement than if they didn't, so the agreement by both parties to the working conditions is a win-win situation for everyone.

A totally bogus explanation. You could say the same thing about a slave. Hey, slave, aren't you better off working for the master than you would be if you refused and therefore died? But you could have refused and therefore died, if that were your choice, right? So you freely chose the option that is better for you! Ah, what a fair system slavery must be!

Posted: 11 May 2005 01:18 am Post subject:

I have been a pondering thusly:

A friend of mine - a real blue colar kind of a guy, last election asked me who I voted for. I told him that I voted for one of the socialists on the ballot - "There you go, says he - it's your kind that put Bush in the White House."

What do I say?? - well both Republicans and Democrats support caotialism and blah blah blah!!

Then I started to think that people support poltical parties the same way that they support baseball teams. I read an interesting comment by David Brooks of the NY Times. He said if just before a game between the Yankees and Red Socks, it was announced that all the players that were on the Red Socks were sold to the Yankees and vice versa - that the fans of the Yankees would still cheer like crazy for the Yankee team and the fans of the Red Socks would still cheer like crazy for the Red Socks team.

I'm going to continue this tomorrow.

Dave

Posted: 11 May 2005 09:41 am Post subject:

Strictly speaking, it's the 51% of voters proportioned adequately to capture more than 270 electoral votes who voted for Bush that got Bush elected. Voting Socialist is not, despite common minority-party rhetoric, a vote for the other guy; in point of fact, it's a vote for a Socialist.

I take to heart what Eugene V. Debs said: "I'd rather vote for what I want and not get it than vote for what I don't want and get it." Screw Kerry; he was a capitalist, imperialist candidate just like Bush. I voted Socialist.

-Wayne

Posted: 11 May 2005 10:14 am Post subject:

You think that you need to tell me this? But what percentage of workers voted for Socialist (workers world etc) candidates even in the few states that had them on the ballot?

The point that I was eventually going to make before an exposition of sleep came upon me (what is that from?) was that the workers view the political parties much as they view (capitalist owned) sports teams.

One of the problems is that electoral politics is very much a lesser of two evils game.

We just had a U.S. Senate race open up in Vermont with Jim Jeffords bowing out of the 06 race because of health problems in his family -

We've got the "socialist" Bernie Sanders running and up until last week had the possibility of a real horse race if Governor Douglas a moderate republican had run. Even if it was not impossible for me to spend anywhere near the time to mount even a skeletal campaign - if I did pole a few votes and that number of votes could have made the difference between electing the "socialist" and the moderate republican - I would forever be known as the one who split the left vote and gave the election to the Republicans.

We can rhetoric this to death but that is not going to change this reality (at least it is a reality to me)

dave

Posted: 11 May 2005 10:58 am Post subject:

Dave -

Well, I've been talking to a few comrades up in Vt. (Mal Herbert, who was the Socialist Party's Vice Presidential candidate last year, and Peter Diamondstone, who's apparently run as just about everything under the sun), and from what they tell me it's a pretty unique situation up there. (I made my note in support of what you were saying.)

Bernie Sanders is one of the relatively few mainstream candidates where we can even talk about splitting the Left - because, with his social democratic tendencies, he's actually identifiable as being on the Left. Not that I support him; he doesn't call for the end of capitalism and the formation of a democratic workers' republic. But most American politics isn't even about lesser-evilism; it's about which of the two corporate parties is running the capitalist imperialist machine. Any time someone brings up how you're empowering the Bush regime, you can point out that Bill Clinton - the "great" Democrat - passed NAFTA and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which is where some of the harsher anti-civil liberties sanctions are coming from, not the USA-PATRIOT Act.

I sincerely believe, at a far deeper than rhetorical level, that lesser evilism is an absolute dead end. The Democrats are a force that actively crushes the Left, not the lesser of two evils.

-Wayne

Posted: 11 May 2005 11:28 am Post subject:

An interesting article about the spoiled brat philosophy of Libertarianism

http://www.zompist.com/libertos.html

Social

Posted: 11 May 2005 11:40 am Post subject:

Responding to Wayne:

You are preaching to the choir.

In politics perception is reality. Lesser of two evils is how people see it - and it is just as irrational as me as a resident of New England thinking that the world is a better place because the Red Sox swept the World Series. It being irrational does not make it perceive not to be. Perception is enough to win in any election.

It doesn't matter that democrats are not left. It only matters that they are perceived to be to the left of the republicans - therefore any real left candidate in that field is going to be perceived as a spoiler.

In the last campaign that I worked on the Democrats and Republicans actually nominated the same person so it was a little easier for the socialist message to filter through - but then we also had the phenomenon of the protest vote for our guy. It was nice to actually see a socialist candidate get out of the single digits but none of those voters hung around for the next election when the democrats and republicans actually bothered to nominate different people.

dave

Posted: 14 May 2005 03:06 pm Post subject:

We still don't have a report from the DeLeon symposium. Anything from anybody?

Is there a collection of the complete works of DeLeon?

Is there a collection of the complete works of Debbs?

Dave

Posted: 14 May 2005 05:45 pm Post subject:

I don't know about De Leon (I don't think too much of his stuff, aside from Socialist Labor Party pamphlets, is in print), but there isn't one of Debs. The relevant books to look for are:

Walls & Bars, published in 1927 by the Socialist Party.
Letters of Eugene V. Debs, 3 volumes, published in 1990-1991 by the University of Illinois Press.
Gentle Rebel: Letters of Eugene V. Debs, published in 1995 by the University of Illinois Press. Edited by Robert J. Constantine.
Debs: His Life, Writings, and Speeches, published in 1908 by the Appeal to Reason.
Eugene V. Debs Speaks, published in 1970 (reprinted in 1996) by Pathfinder Press.

Walls & Bars - a critique of prisons - is Debs' only full-length writing. The Letters are fairly complete (to and from Debs); Gentle Rebel is a selection from them that's much more affordable. The Life, Writings, and Speeches book, I'm still waiting for; Eugene V. Debs Speaks is a collection of some of his best speeches with a lengthy introduction by key Socialist Workers Party (at the time the premiere Trotskyist party in the US) leader James P Cannon that's actually not bad, even if the Trotskyism in it is a bit much. A lot of this is in the Marxists Internet Archive at marxists.org - though by no means all.

-Wayne

Posted: 22 May 2005 11:26 am Post subject:

Article on Johann Most - anarchist, from Harper's Mag. republished at

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/harp/0522.html

(you probably will have to set up a free account with the NY Times to access it.)

Dave

Posted: 22 May 2005 12:39 pm Post subject:

This is an intersting article. Here is an exerpt from it:

Anarcho-syndicalism and Its Presuppositions

2. The Doctrine of the Class Struggle

One thing that follows from minimal materialism is the doctrine of the class struggle, that this is how society changes over time. The idea is that class struggle is the central factor in the evolution of human social formations.

Marx said that one of his most important ideas was the distinction between labor and labor-power. Within capitalism the ability to work is what the proletarian sells to the employer.

She sells her ability to work to a firm to use for a certain period. She can't tell her labor power to go to work and stay at home in bed; she has to drag herself into work with her labor power. There is then inevitably a fight between the employer and the worker over exactly how the worker's ability to do work is going to be used. Advanced capitalism developed a very elaborate hierarchy of bosses and their professional advisory groups precisely to try to control workers, to protect the interests of the owners in maximizing profit over the long run.

So, this generates an ongoing class struggle, the fight against the power that the bosses have over us in social production.

Minimal materialism by itself does not entail any commitment to economic determinism or any idea of there being any inevitable direction to history. It just says that the class structure, and the conflict it generates, is very central to understanding what happens in society.

Historically the anti-authoritarian left has rejected the idea of an inevitable collapse of capitalism, and has been sceptical about Marx's crisis theory. The anti-authoritarian left -- both councilist Marxists and anarchists -- have emphasized the positive role of worker self-activity, personal development, solidarity and self-organization in the process of self-emancipation.

3. Is Minimal Materialism Class Reductionist?

As minimal as it is, minimal materialism has been subject to a certain criticism in recent decades, namely, that it is "class reductionist." The complaint goes something like the following. Because the materialist says that class is the only fundamental structural element of contemporary American society, it can't do justice to the oppression and conflict on lines of gender and race and political authoritianism. That is, we can't reduce the struggle against gender oppression, against racism, against political authoritarianism to just the class struggle. This criticism became increasingly salient over the past half century, with the struggles of the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the gay and lesbian movement having a big impact on how people perceive faultlines in society.

To activists of color, racism seems just as fundamental a faultline; feminists are likely to see things in terms of the struggle around gender inequality.

For example, some feminists will argue that the "family wage" system in the USA in the 19th century, which helped to cement the subordination of women as a gender caste, was a kind of deal between workers and capitalists, to control the labor of women, with male workers gaining control over women in the home. Thus for some feminists, gender is the most basic structure and the conflict between male workers and male bosses was just a conflict internal to the ruling group.

Now, I think one possible line of reply would be to acknowledge that racism and patriarchy and authoritarian hierarchies can each generate its own dynamic, that affects other things, including the class struggle itself. For example, the authoritarian hierarchy in AFL-CIO unions creates its own problem for the class struggle.

4. The Four-Forces Theory

Some people will take this to the conclusion that the underlying structure of contemporary American society really has four distint facets or structures -- patriarchy, racism, class, and political authoritarianism. Each is equally fundamental, they will say, with each acting as a distinct influence on everything else. This is what I call the "Four Forces Theory." For example, you'll find this theory worked out in the book "Unorthodox Marxism" by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel.

Since socialist-feminists in the '70s had convinced me that gender was equally basic as class, I'm not going to try to defend "minimal materialism" nor am I going to try to answer the question of whether the Four Forces Theory is the best way to understand contemporary American society. I'm going to leave that as an exercise for you to figure out.

I do want to make one point however. What I want to claim is that anarchosyndicalism is just as compatible with the Four Forces Theory as it was with Minimal Materialism or the views of the socialist-feminists.

The reason is simple. All of these theories acknowledge that class is basic. They are all thus implicitly committed to the inevitability and importance of the class struggle. They are all consistent with the idea that it is through a movement developed directly by workers that class oppression can be overthrown and workers control over production created.

5. Critique of the Marxist Theory of Class

I've talked about class structure, but What is class?

What I want to argue is that Marxism has a mistaken theory about class. Marxism historically has assumed that there are only two major classes in capitalism, namely, labor and capital. Marxism assumes that it is ownership that is the key relation that defines class. The investor class, who own the means of production, are thereby the ruling class. Everyone else must seek work as hired labor.

The problem with this theory is that it leaves out a class. There are in fact three major classes in advanced capitalism, not just two.

Ownership may be the most important basis for power over social production in advanced capitalism but it is not the only such basis. There is also another class of people, who I call the techno-managerial class. Their role is that of controlling the labor of the working class. This is the class that includes the management hierarchy and the professional consultants and advisors central to their system of control -- as lawyers, key engineers and accountants, and so on.

The point is that it is *power* relations in social production that creates a class stratification, and there are different ways that people can have power over others in production; ownership of productive assets is just one such basis.

Historically the techno-managerial class developed as capitalism reorganized the nature of work, diminishing the dependence of employers on the skill and intellectual ability of workers to coordinate their own work, and vesting this increasingly in a layer of expert intellectual cadre. The redesign of work processes, to break up work into pieces and minimize the reliance on skills in the workforce aimed at changing the balance of power against the workers and making the whole process more dependent on management coordination.

The members of the techno-managerial class may have some small capital holdings, either via things like stock options or small investments or ownership of their houses or other small property. But that is not what their livelihood and way of life is based on. Rather, they have their class position because of their relative monopolization over knowledge, sklls, and connections. This what enables them to gain access to the positions they have in the corporate and goverment hierarchies. They share in common with the working class that they are hired labor.

It's true that there are relative differences in power and privilege within this class, but this is true of all classes -- there are huge differences in the wealth and power of different capitalists, and among different groups of workers there are big differences in wage rates and conditions of work or autonomy in work.

Another thing to note about the techno-managerial class is that it is capable of being a ruling class. This is in fact the true historical meaning of the Soviet Union and the other socalled Communist countries. They are in fact systems that empower the techno-managerial class.

What is interesting is that the failure to see or appreciate the significance of this class is a central blindspot in Marxism. This is one of the things that enables Marxists to fail to see aspects of Marxism that programmatically lead to techno-managerial class dominance.

http://www.workersolidarity.org/

Posted: 22 May 2005 07:25 pm Post subject:

Whatever floats a person's boat - that's what that person should do. In that article it seems like a lot of jargon for the sake of having jargon - but that's just me. People ought to be treated as people - sexual orientation - disability - sex gender color creed ethnicity age culture on and on. No matter what social system that we live under. a lot of the cause for it is purely ignorance driven. Years ago - my jaw dropped when I heard a very educated comrade talk about the "fact" that homosexuality was "unnatural" because (and this was his very argument) what if everyone were homosexual - the human race would die out - this from a comrade and his wife who chose to not have children.

And a lot about what we do about discrimination issues says (I think) more about our own personal tastes in what kind of battles we like to fight than about any actual political theory about which is the CORRECT path to follow.

IMHO

Dave

Posted: 23 May 2005 10:36 am Post subject:

I wonder if the author was correct about the techno-managerial as being a class in and of itself. Or would be more like the petite bourgeoisie in management positions?

Posted: 23 May 2005 11:07 am Post subject:

S.G. wrote:

I wonder if the author was correct about the techno-managerial as being a class in and of itself. Or would be more like the petite bourgeoisie in management positions?

Dave writes:

I think I would file it in the "distinctions without a difference" category.

I think the rationale is that the plain old two by four class ananlysis that we've had for so many years must be lacking becuase we don't now have socialism - so something must be added to make it sound new and exciting.

"I am not a member of the working class - I am a techno manager". That is sure to get a big laugh down on the unemployment line.

Dave

Posted: 23 May 2005 11:43 am Post subject:

I have a question for the members here.

I watched George Galloways address to the US Senate Oil for Food subcommittee chaired by Norm Coleman.

I am a member of the Irish Anti-War movement and have attended several addresses by Galloway to the IAWM.

I would like to get the opinion of the members here as to their view of Galloway.
For the record, I am very impressed with Galloways sincerity on the question of the war in Iraq and his early socialist credentials are evident.
But I do hear some dissenting voices accusing Galloway of being a champagne socialist.
Do members here have an opinion about Galloway ?

Posted: 23 May 2005 07:26 pm Post subject:

I've seen his picture on the BBC news page but to tell you the truth I haven't given him any second thought but there is a lot that gets by me. Ditto Socialist credentials, I didn't know that he had any. How are those credentials being used in the UK? To the extent that he speaks against George Bush's Iraqi fiasco I agree with Galloways.

Dave

Posted: 23 May 2005 11:43 pm Post subject:

Posted: 25 May 2005 10:56 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the info John.

On a different topic, anyone wanting to read about Amnesty International's report go to:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4580991.stm

Posted: 29 May 2005 02:48 am Post subject:

David Brooks column in the NT Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/29/opinion/29brooks.html?hp

"Karl's New Manifesto"

You may have to set up a free account to read this.

Dave

Posted: 29 May 2005 08:51 pm Post subject:

NY Times article on Museum in China on the Cultural Revolution

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/29/international/asia/29museum.html?8hpib

you may have to set up a free account to read this article

Dave

Posted: 29 Aug 2005 05:20 am Post subject:

I made a new forum area to share ideas about all kinds of socialist media projects ... internet, audio, video, etc.

http://www.deleonism.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=5

Posted: 01 Sep 2005 04:41 am Post subject:

Analogies:
Messages moved to a separate topic.