See all archived forum posts

Author	Message
mikelepore	Posted: 17 Sep 2004 05:06 pm    Post subject: The Industrial Union Daniel De Leon wrote: "The mission of unionism is not to act as rear guard to an army defeated, seasoned in defeat, habituated to defeat, and fit only for defeat. The mission of unionism is to organize and drill the working class for final victory --- to take and hold the machinery of production." Let's discuss this crucial subject.
mikelepore	Posted: 19 Sep 2004 02:37 am    Post subject: The following excerpt is how Marx ended his public lecture on economics "Value, Price and Profit" (1865), later published as a pamphlet. The entire text is available at http://www.marxists.org/ . The pamphlet is an excellent introduction to Marxian economics, but I post this here for Marx's comments on the role of unions. These few hints will suffice to show that the very development of modern industry must progressively turn the scale in favour of the capitalist against the working man, and that consequently the general tendency of capitalistic production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages, or to push the VALUE OF LABOUR more or less to its MINIMUM LIMIT. Such being the tendency of THINGS in this system, is this saying that the working class ought to renounce their resistance against the encroachments of capital, and abandon their attempts at making the best of the occasional chances for their temporary improvement? If they did, they would be degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation. I think I have shown that their struggles for the standard of wages are incidents inseparable from the whole wages system, that in 99 cases out of 100 their efforts at raising wages are only efforts at maintaining the given value of labour, and that the necessity of debating their price with the capitalist is inherent to their condition of having to sell themselves as commodities. By cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement. At the same time, and quite apart form the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the MATERIAL CONDITIONS and the SOCIAL FORMS necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the CONSERVATIVE motto, "A FAIR DAY'S WAGE FOR A FAIR DAY'S WORK!" they ought to inscribe on their banner the REVOLUTIONARY watchword, "ABOLITION OF THE WAGES SYSTEM!" After this very long and, I fear, tedious exposition, which I was obliged to enter into to do some justice to the subject matter, I shall conclude by proposing the following resolutions: Firstly. A general rise in the rate of wages would result in a fall of the general rate of profit, but, broadly speaking, not affect the prices of commodities. Secondly. The general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages. Thirdly. Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. The faily generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system.
Social Greenman	Posted: 24 Mar 2005 01:23 am    Post subject: Quote: The SLP insisted that an attempt to establish social ownership of the means of production through industrial organization alone would amount to "physical forcism". It would invite a "massacre" of workers by the state, whereas the ballot box permits a "peaceful trial of strength." The IWW insisted that the process of industrial organization can occur only if the union considers the worker's choice of whom to vote for to be a personal one, and, therefore, the union must avoid making political party endorsements. The two organizations also accused each other of disruptive actions. Following some name-calling episodes in 1908, all connection between the SLP and the IWW came to an end. The SLP then rejected the original IWW, describing it as having been "captured by physical forcists." The SLP called the original IWW the "Chicago IWW" because of the location of its headquarters, while the SLP formed another "Detroit IWW" based on the SLP's dual political/industrial program. In 1915 the Detroit organization was renamed the Workers International Industrial Union. The WIIU was dissolved in 1925, and since then there has been virtually no De Leonist tendency operating on the industrial field. As I was reading the article and the above quote started me to think. While we are advocates of SIU, are there plans to introduce a political/industrial program; you know, A De Leonist tendency operating on the industrial field in the future? Or is IDF that political/industrial program? Perhaps I better read it again. Social
Social Greenman	Posted: 24 Mar 2005 02:02 am    Post subject: I read the IDF proposal and it's good. It is like the sumary I wrote to an on-line friend that we are an independent group who are advocates of SIU who would like other Socialist to come on board which would not intrerfere with their own beliefs. Social
Social Greenman	Posted: 24 Mar 2005 02:04 am    Post subject: Sorry, double post. Social
mikelepore	Posted: 24 Mar 2005 06:31 am    Post subject: Social Greenman wrote: A De Leonist tendency operating on the industrial field in the future? For years the SLP has argued that the SIU has to be born big, it has to be formed when it will be large from the beginning. That would mean that the preliminary (and lengthy) activity of educating the working class would have to be done elsewhere. This has never made any sense to me, personally. I have never understood why the SIU couldn't be established at any time, with any two or more members, and from there work on growth. I also think the SLP has always misunderstood the IWW. The SLP thinks that the IWW is against political action. It is not. The IWW says that any political action by its members will be done by them according to individual choice, without a formal endorsement from the IWW as a whole. Some of the articles in the IWW's newspaper speak against political action, but articles in the IWW's newspaper reflect only the views of their individual writers, a fact of which the SLP may not be aware, because all articles in the SLP's newspaper conform to the party's official positions. In some ways the IWW is organized as the SIU should be. Unlike the AFL-CIO, etc., the IWW follows industrial unionism instead of craft unionism. It openly expresses the goal of locking out the bosses and adopting collective ownership.
mikelepore	Posted: 24 Mar 2005 06:33 am    Post subject: This is the Industrial Union department structure of the IWW: http://iww.org/ .... 100 department of agriculture and fisheries ..........110 agricultural ..........120 lumber ..........130 fishery ..........140 floricultural .... 200 department of mining and minerals ..........210 metal mine ..........220 coal mine ..........230 oil .... 300 department of general construction ..........310 general construction ..........320 ship builders ..........330 building construction .... 400 department of manufacture and general production ..........410 textile and clothing ..........420 furniture ..........430 chemical ..........440 metal and machinery ..........450 printing and publishing ..........460 food ..........470 leather ..........480 glass ..........490 pulp and paper .... 500 department of transportation and communication ..........510 marine transportation ..........520 railroad ..........530 motor transportation ..........540 municipal transportation ..........550 air transportation ..........560 communications ..........570 data storage and retrieval .... 600 department of public service ..........610 health ..........620 education ..........630 recreation ..........640 restaurant, hotel, and building service ..........650 park and highway maintenance ..........660 general distribution ..........670 public service ..........680 household service
Social Greenman	Posted: 24 Mar 2005 10:42 am    Post subject: Are they an actual union representing workers in the work place? I read the IWW's mission statement. Would they support the TLV concept since they want to abolish the wage system? In a sense, the SIU structure is already in place within IWW. I am going to have to read their web site later on today and write more later. Social
davesearles	Posted: 24 Mar 2005 03:08 pm    Post subject: S.G. quoted from somewhere: The SLP insisted that an attempt to establish social ownership of the means of production through industrial organization alone would amount to "physical forcism". It would invite a "massacre" of workers by the state, whereas the ballot box permits a "peaceful trial of strength." The IWW insisted... Dave asks: Can you tell us where that came from? I didn't see it refered to in this topic prior to this, or are these posts imported from another topic? Dave
mikelepore	Posted: 24 Mar 2005 06:37 pm    Post subject: Social Greenman wrote: Are they an actual union representing workers in the work place? Yes, the IWW is the "officially recognized" union in a small number of workplaces. In past decades they did a lot of organizing in mining and lumber and certain other industries.
mikelepore	Posted: 24 Mar 2005 06:45 pm    Post subject: Social Greenman wrote: Would they support the TLV concept since they want to abolish the wage system? The IWW would keep membership requirements to a minimum, meaning that individuals have their own private visualizations of the future society. The official position is that the workers produce all the wealth but the capitalists steal it, so capitalism must be eliminated. They realize that worker ownership isn't the same as state ownership. If people get specific with the goal then opinions may vary. Some of them would like to see a world of independent collectives trading with each other, which I think is a bad idea. By all means, read the literature on their web site, beginning with the "Preamble".
mikelepore	Posted: 24 Mar 2005 06:47 pm    Post subject: davesearles wrote: Can you tell us where that came from? S.G. was quoting the article I wrote about De Leon's life story, which is linked off of my front index.htm .
Social Greenman	Posted: 24 Mar 2005 09:47 pm    Post subject: So, thay are a actual union. I will read later (and what premable?) since I have a few things I want to take care of. However, and I am just assuming, that the union people are socialists of different stripes and they want to abolish the wage system and workers owning the means of production. If I assumed right then why not talk to the union members about LTV's since the I.W.W. already has an essence (for lack of a better word) of SIU? Would not IDF play in this part if I read about it correctly? From what I been learning, there is a structure that just has to be unified somehow. Socialist of different stripes coming together in agreement on SIU and TLV and yet not compromising their beliefs. If this can be accomplished then this united force can be able to effectively educate and agitate workers for Socialism. Perhaps more so than any other time in American history. Social
mikelepore	Posted: 25 Mar 2005 09:29 am    Post subject: Preamble to the IWW Constitution The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth. We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers. These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all. Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system." It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
mikelepore	Posted: 25 Mar 2005 09:59 am    Post subject: Social Greenman wrote: coming together in agreement on SIU and TLV SIU is fundamental. It's the one basic thing that must be conveyed here. TLV is my own pet project, and, if you agree with it, I would love to have you work on it with me. De Leon supported the suggestion to replace replacing money with labor vouchers, in his 1914 pamphlet Fifteen Questions About Socialism. In listing fundamental principles in order of importance, many De Leonists wouldn't put it near the top of the list, and some might disagree with it entirely. The idea of "federating" was to allow people to organize separately around various beliefs of we-need-this and we-need-that, with all of these affiliated into a group of groups. For example, I know that Dave agrees with me about the need for the SIU, but it would be okay if he were to think that my TLV ideas are stupid. We need a few a basic core principles as the center of the solar system", at the same time we benefit from a do-you-own-thing attitude.
mikelepore	Posted: 25 Mar 2005 10:07 am    Post subject: Social Greenman wrote: then why not talk to the union members Yes, we can adopt the task of interfacing with the IWW (and other groups) as some of our things-to-do projects. We must respect the IWW principle of no affiliation with political parties and non-interference with political party ideologies. Individual IWW members -- if we can find them -- may be receptive to the De Leonist principle that the working class needs to both industrial and political organization.
Social Greenman	Posted: 25 Mar 2005 12:24 pm    Post subject: Quote: TLV is my own pet project, and, if you agree with it, I would love to have you work on it with me. De Leon supported the suggestion to replace replacing money with labor vouchers, in his 1914 pamphlet Fifteen Questions About Socialism. In listing fundamental principles in order of importance, many De Leonists wouldn't put it near the top of the list, and some might disagree with it entirely. Thanks for finding the IWW premable. I haven't gotten over there yet. I tried looking for that pamphlet on the SLP website and the Marxist Internet Archive but it was not listed. Are you saying that you came up with the alogrithims for TLV? When I first looked I said, "This is great." I have been to other Socialist websites that make claims that they want to change the Capitalist system over to a Socialist one. However, nothing written even came close to what that economy would be. All of them were vauge or cited what Marx wrote. The TLV concept was the first time I have actually seen how a Socialist economic system would work. Yeah, I love to work with you on this because I see it as a foundation and a good tool to agitate workers along with SIU. If other Socialist were to learn about TLV then it might help pulling everyone together in one form or another. Social
mikelepore	Posted: 25 Mar 2005 02:50 pm    Post subject: It's my algorithm in the sense that, what Marx and De Leon wrote in plain words, and what I thought they were tyring to say, I translated into algebra statements. Oops - let's try to discuss each topic in the proper "topic", and save this one for the union. I just looked at iww.org and couldn't find the various kinds of literature they used to have there. They have pamphlets by the names of "One Big Union" and "The General Strike" and so forth. I have some of this in files on disks, somewhere around here. If it seems that this material is no longer on their site, I'll try to find my files and upload them here.
Social Greenman	Posted: 26 Mar 2005 01:56 pm    Post subject: I see that the IWW has a link to the Anachro-Sydicalist website and the Anachro-Sydicalist has a link to the IWW. There mission statement reads: Quote: i. Revolutionary Syndicalism, basing itself on the class struggle, seeks to establish the unity and solidarity of all manual and intellectual workers into economic organisations fighting for the abolition of both the wage system and the State. Neither the State nor political parties can achieve the economic organisation and emancipation of labour. ii. Revolutionary Syndicalism maintains that economic and social monopolies must be replaced by free, self-managing federations of agricultural and industrial workers united in a system of councils. iii. The twofold task of Revolutionary Syndicalism is to carry on the struggle for economic, social and intellectual improvement in the existing society, and to achieve independent self-managed production and distribution by taking possession of the earth and the means of production. Instead of the State and political parties, the economic organisation of labour. Instead of government over people, the administration of things. iv. Revolutionary Syndicalism is based on the principles of federalism, free agreement and grassroots organisation from the base upwards into local, district, regional and international federations united by shared aspirations and common interests. Under federalism, each unit enjoys full autonomy and independence in its own sphere, while enjoying all the advantages of association. v. Revolutionary Syndicalism rejects nationalism, the religion of the State and all arbitrary frontiers, recognising only the self-rule of natural communities freely enjoying their own way of life, constantly enriched by the benefits of free association with other federated communities. vi. Revolutionary Syndicalism, basing itself on economic direct action, supports all struggles not in contradiction with its principles - the abolition of economic monopoly and the domination of the State. The means of direct action are the strike, the boycott, the sit-in, and other forms of direct action developed by workers in the course of their struggles leading to labour's most effective weapon, the General Strike, prelude to Social Revolution. These people would like to abolish the State right from the start but I wonder how they could acheive such an endeavor without taking over the State to begin with? Since they are in agreement with the IWW as to industrial unionism and their views are political in a sense. I wonder if a General Strike would bring revolution considering the Capitalist has their political arm intact. I mean, we need people in political office who can use the police to counter the paramilitary guards who would attack the strikers. I know that corporation have strike insurance which pays paramilitary personel to keep shipping and recieving open and to allow scabs to replace the strikers. Another thing, In essence, they don't agree with ParaCon as a economic model. In other words, they have some idea of an economic method but no real economic model to go by. Social Social
mikelepore	Posted: 26 Mar 2005 02:48 pm    Post subject: They're fuzzy about the goal, and being fuzzy about the goal often results in a goal that you didn't want but can't seem to get rid of. (The Bolsheviks were likewise fuzzy -- look what happened.) The IWW claims too much for the General Strike, one of their main buzzwords. Granted, they often give the term a wider meaning, not visualizing it as a strike in the sense of a walkout, but in the greater sense of the workers seizing the means of production. Still, if the workers don't have a political victory, then capitalism is still the law of the land, and the capitalist class has the armed forces and the police.
Social Greenman	Posted: 26 Mar 2005 03:23 pm    Post subject: Exactly what I was trying to convey in my last post. You can't sieze power at one end without siezing the other. The capitalist class would use their political power and, no doubt, increase the pay to the police, paramilitary groups and the military to force people back into the shops and kill those who won't. Social
mikelepore	Posted: 26 Mar 2005 03:50 pm    Post subject: Several times I've seen IWW articles say that a capitalist state can't squash a general strike, because the state needs to be constantly resupplied by the workers (weapons, vehicle parts, fuel, etc.), and the workers could withhold these things. I think they fail to realize that the military probably stores a huge inventory of anything it needs for a period of time necessary to kill millions of workers. If not, they would build up this huge inventory when they see the day approaching. Another problem is that the state could take whatever it needs first, before the average consumer. Say the issue is gasoline, or bullets, or vehicle parts -- is any store clerk or warehouse clerk supposed to be able to say 'no' to a division of soldiers, or a horde of hooded klansmen, or even one armed person from the FBI or CIA? If we want the revolution to be as peaceful as possible, the safest thing is to signal the union to grab the means of production very soon after a political victory. A political victory also respects the value that elections are the way the average person visualizes the will of the people being measured. The democratic ideal is to measure the will of the people and then enact it, which we hope will one day be the decision to have socialism. The IWW has a lot of things throught through right, but also some things that they haven't thought through sufficiently. They have the potential to develop further in the right direction.
Social Greenman	Posted: 26 Mar 2005 05:25 pm    Post subject: Dave wrote: Quote: I think they fail to realize that the military probably stores a huge inventory of anything it needs for a period of time necessary to kill millions of workers. If not, they would build up this huge inventory when they see the day approaching. Another problem is that the state could take whatever it needs first, before the average consumer. Say the issue is gasoline, or bullets, or vehicle parts -- is any store clerk or warehouse clerk supposed to be able to say 'no' to a division of soldiers Oh, they most certainly do stock pile weapons, bullets, gernades, etc., including tools, vehicles of various types, nuts, bolts, and anything else you could imagine. I seen a news report on this some years ago. So yes, they are ready for a workers revolt courtesy of the existing Capitalist government. Quote: If we want the revolution to be as peaceful as possible, the safest thing is to signal the union to grab the means of production very soon after a political victory. A political victory also respects the value that elections are the way the average person visualizes the will of the people being measured. The democratic ideal is to measure the will of the people and then enact it, which we hope will one day be the decision to have socialism. The IWW has a lot of things throught through right, but also some things that they haven't thought through sufficiently. They have the potential to develop further in the right direction. I belive you are correct that a political victory is needed before the workers can go ahead with revolution which I do hope is peaceful. Of course, Socialist themselves need to come to grips and become a unified force to agitate workers for Socialism which can be translated through the ballot box in the future. Right now most Socialsit are busying themselves over issues of reforms being rolled back. Perhaps they should but they also need to realise that reform in laws is not going to bring Socialism into being when the Capitalis class has a much larger and better propaganda machine which is used to keep control over the population. Well, I need to understand the IWW and SIU more in depth than what knowlege I possess now. The learning process occurs rather slow for me. I do hope that the steps taken in the IWW do go in the right direction. Social
mikelepore	Posted: 26 Mar 2005 06:12 pm    Post subject: This web page http://newunionist.org/DE_LEONIST_STUDY_COURSE.htm is a 266,000 byte file that you can save and then read at your own leisurely pace. It will provide a good education :o)
Social Greenman	Posted: 26 Mar 2005 07:05 pm    Post subject: Thanks Mike. I did download the page to read. I am beginning to learn that I have to put the basics on the front burners and the other more in depth stuff on the back burners. I was not sure if De Leon represented Libertarian Socialism but the first paragraph answered that question. This is off topic but why in the hell would certain people in the working class support Libertarian Capitalism which is of course, the Libertarian Party? I never could figure that one out but yet there they are at the Liberal Forum. Most of them college kids. Social
mikelepore	Posted: 26 Mar 2005 07:45 pm    Post subject: The name 'libertarian socialism' was made up in reaction to so many years of people using the word socialism incorrectly, as if to emphasize, "we don't want another dictatorship or a new all-powerful state -- we want a more complete kind of liberty." It's really a redundancy, because phony socialism doesn't deserve the term socialism at all, and genuine socialism shouldn't have to be specially designated as genuine, but a lot of folks like the overall effect that the term has, for its powers of emphasis. I have used the phrase occasionally. We have to be cautious because many anti-political syndicalists use that term. The phrase is a good ice-breaker or conversation-starter, but then hopefully a conversation will get more detailed.
Social Greenman	Posted: 27 Mar 2005 05:05 pm    Post subject: In other words, the term Libertarian Socialist had to define who we are in a sense. I know were a bit off topic but this was in the study course: Quote: Today, confronted with crisis on a worldwide scale, the capitalist class and its hired mouthpieces (politicians and religious and phony labor leaders) will do anything to turn workers away from analyzing the capitalist system and discovering the real cause behind all our problems. Just consider the following statement: "THE TROUBLE WITH AMERICA TODAY IS THE GOVERNMENT! If you just get big government and all its regulations off our back, everything would be all right." This concept is being touted everywhere, by corporations, politicians, the media and talk shows - by every group or organization with a stake or perceived stake in the system. The Libertarian Party best represents this idea and capitalists love it! Embodied in their use of the word libertarian, is the full blown capitalist' credo, The individual can do whatever he/she wants with his/her property. Libertarians promote the individual's aspirations over the desperate needs of society, the environment, and the world - despite the fact that we are totally dependent on each other and on a clean environment, for survival! Unfortunately, because some workers don't understand the overall function of capitalist government, they have climbed on the Libertarian Party bandwagon: 1. To protect private property rights, particularly capitalist' property, the source of the capitalists' power. 2. To protect markets and sources of raw material, and promote business, nationally and internationally. 3. To arbitrate rivalries between capitalists. To promote and protect small business enough to maintain the myth that anyone who works hard and saves can go into business and be successful. 4. To contain the class struggle which is real whether or not we acknowledge it! - By offering whatever reforms deemed necessary to keep the majority of capitalism's working class victims subservient. By imprisoning the remainder that can not be controlled. Of course, we all can see that in the course of performing the above functions, the government has grown into a huge bureaucracy. Big business lobbyists buy Congressional favors and politicians featherbed their own nests, but this should not distract us from understanding the real role of capitalist government - maintenance of capitalist domination over working people. Libertarianism will solve nothing for its worker adherents. They need to join us in the study of working-class economics and politics. Social
Social Greenman	Posted: 29 Mar 2005 11:50 pm    Post subject: To get back on topic of SIU I came across this from another discussion board called: http//:revolutionaryleft.com which I may or may not join: Quote: It is sound unionism not to express a preference for one religion or one political party or candidate over another. These are not union questions, and must be settled by each union member according to personal conscience. The union is formed to reach and enforce decisions about industrial questions. Its power to do this can be destroyed by the diversion of its resources to political campaigns. So that all the workers regardless of their religious or political preference may be united to get every possible benefit out of their job, the I.W.W. must be non-political and non religious. It lets its members attend to these matters as they personally see fit--and with the additional social consciousness, regard for their fellows, and general enlightenment that they derive from union activity. This does not mean that the I.W.W. is indifferent to the great social and economic questions of the day. Quite the contrary. We believe the I.W.W. provides the practical solutions to these questions. When the industry of the world is run by the workers for their own good, we see no chance for the problems of unemployment, war, social conflict, or large scale crime, or any of our serious social problems to continue. With the sort of organization the I.W.W. is building, labor can exert any pressure required to restrain the antics of politicians and even more constructively accomplish through direct action what we have often failed to do through political lobbying. I believe they are correct as not wanting to be political. They don't have to pay homage to any political party whatsoever. Now this got me thinking some and I came up with this: The I.W.W. already exist as an SIU minus the political aspect. Perhaps we should leave it that way. Get all the Socialist to endorse the SIU I.W.W. and become members. Now before you think, "What the Hell is he talking about now?", let me explain myself fully if you please What I am saying is that Socialist are divided over ideololgy and politics. I.W.W. is a fully funtional SIU and that it is non-political and non government being international. They were able to better establish themselves because they rejected political involvement. What we have to do is to unify Socialist politically without interfering with their ideology and that is not going to be easy sailing. We change our tactics here as to create the political aspect for the I.W.W. without interfering with how they function as a union and apart from them leaving them independent. There is no doubt in my mind that the existing members of this union are of many stripes. You guys have been trying to get Socialist Parties to endorse SIU and I believe they are thinking, "What Industrial Union are they talking about?" It makes me wonder if we are being too vauge and resulting in not getting any responses from them. I write this because this other discussion board members have written that they came accross this website and another poster wrote that De Leon's SLP was abstract and sydicalist. So, we begin to concentrate on the I.W.W. as the existing SIU. Next, we need to do a lot of discussion on how to have a plan to bring Socialists together not only to accept I.W.W. (SIU full blown) workers taking control of the means of production but to form a political coalition on some points of unity--perhaps more than some. I have no idea as to what they will be but Mike's TLV should be on the table as an economic model. This idea has been on my mind for awhile now. Reject it or accept it but I hope we have a good discussion over it. Think over it first before any of you respond. Of course, I will not write anything anywhere else until we have had a good discussion first. Social
mikelepore	Posted: 04 Apr 2005 08:57 am    Post subject: > I believe they are correct as not wanting to be political. They > don't have to pay homage to any political party whatsoever. At this point in history, yes. Eventually an SIU has to become political or else I believe we will have capitalism forever. That doesn't mean that the union has to endorse a party. The union itself can operate politically. > The I.W.W. already exist as an SIU minus the political aspect. There is certainly an SIU tendency in the IWW, along with anarchist, reformist, and other tendencies. As we get to know them better, we will find out who's who. > Get all the Socialist to endorse the SIU I.W.W. Before anything tangible can occur, the 100-year-old feud between De Leonists and the IWW has to be melted by more sunlight, more communication to make people warmer toward each other. If you want something you can do, you might search for out the locations of any IWW forums or email discussion groups. We will need a way to make some friends over there. > and become members. I believe IWW applicants must be wage workers, which some of us may not be. This needs to be verified.
Social Greenman	Posted: 04 Apr 2005 08:48 pm    Post subject: Mike wrote: Quote: At this point in history, yes. Eventually an SIU has to become political or else I believe we will have capitalism forever. That doesn't mean that the union has to endorse a party. The union itself can operate politically. I think this is confusing me. I am looking at existing structures and I see a big union that is not political but industrial and I see Socialist parties that cannot agree on most things. On the other hand, you are saying that a SIU needs to be formed to be both political and industrial. Are there plans to put together a new union here in the U.S. that is political/industrial? As for the rest. The Canadian I.W.W. does take in members if they are employed or not. Perhaps there are labor laws here in the U.S. which prevents them from having non-wage earners as members or, perhaps, it really is their policy. I been looking for I.W.W. discussion boards but usually they are anarchist instead. Another thing: What was the feud about that has lasted 100 years? Social
Social Greenman	Posted: 04 Apr 2005 11:19 pm    Post subject: Well, I looked for the answer about the fued. It was about the ballot box issue that people can vote for a change in government. The opposition was totally against it since they felt that only through economics can a society change through an industrial union. However, I did understand De Leon argument that a transition to socialism through the ballot box is possible because people have a right to vote for such measures. That reminds me of me early years when I was a member of Universal Health Care Action Network. I asked tis one important question: Why can we not put this issue on the ballot? All I got was a funny look and a negative response. Now I am wondering why a lot of things are not put on the ballot when such a course might bring change. It seems as though they want government to have the final say. Social
mikelepore	Posted: 05 Apr 2005 02:01 am    Post subject: The feud began with the ballot issue, but turned into a clash between individuals who just wouldn't forgive each other for calling each other names, and things like that, and, when they died of old age, the literature they wrote conveying their position in the feud to a new generation. For example, a great book, "The History of the IWW : The First 70 Years" (published by the IWW), describes De Leon basically as a dictator who, if he couldn't get his own way in everything, would rather destroy the labor movement out of spite. Some SLP literature has described the IWW as a bunch of bomb-throwing loonies. Old issues keep returning, for example, about ten tears ago, people on both sides started again repeating old stories accusing the other side of sellout behaviors in the Lawrence, Massachusetts textile strike of 1912. In short, we have some chronologically mature people who, when their buttons get pushed, act like babies. Your great-grandparents were unfair to my great-grandparents! Well, who the hell cares?! Beyond that, there are actual misconceptions on both sides. Each side misunderstands the other side. Many De Leonists believe that the IWW as a whole is formally opposed to use of the ballot, which is technically false. Many IWWs think that if any socialists were elected to public office they would have to act like "politicians" and join the game of smoke-filled back-room cronyism, which is an unfounded claim. So we need to get both sides talking, so that misconceptions can be corrected, and so that they will stop visualizing each other as monsters.
Social Greenman	Posted: 05 Apr 2005 09:54 am    Post subject: Correct me if I am wrong but the I.W.W., anarchist and others believe that the only way to gain the means of production would be a revolution or what they call a general strike. I can actually see the use of the ballot since, again correct me if I am wrong, that anything can be put on a ballot that is if people sign petition for whatever sole purpose to vote on. I am all for talking with the people in the I.W.W. However, I need to learn more about the ballot issue and the laws surronding them. In other words I need to be more educated before I can approach anyone to talk. Social
Social Greenman	Posted: 07 Apr 2005 01:26 am    Post subject: There is another thing I found on the I.W.W. website: The Sydicalist Review which was labeled as an unoffical member's project of the I.W.W. I have been thinking, a dangerous endevor for me , that perhaps I should join the I.W.W. even though there is no I.W.W. in my region of the U.S. Social PS if you all are wondering why I never use my real name it is because it is rare and about 100 or more people in the U.S. has it. The actual count was 47 in 1975.
mikelepore	Posted: 08 Apr 2005 07:47 am    Post subject: Social Greenman wrote: Correct me if I am wrong but the I.W.W., anarchist and others believe that the only way to gain the means of production would be a revolution or what they call a general strike. Yes, but in the IWW, when they say 'general strike', they have a rather wide view of what that can encompass, something like any "direct economic action" that the workers can "do for themselves" without "reliance on leaders", so seizing the means of production is included, and so is carrying on produciton in such useful areas as food production while shutting down produciton for war and suppression. So that much of it agrees with De Leonism, except that we don't use the term "general strike", which means something different to everyone outside the syndicalist groups, implying to the average listener just the aspect of shutting down and walking out.
mikelepore	Posted: 08 Apr 2005 08:00 am    Post subject: Social Greenman wrote: I can actually see the use of the ballot since, again correct me if I am wrong, that anything can be put on a ballot that is if people sign petition for whatever sole purpose to vote on. We will find most syndicalists and anarchists objecting that the ruling class "would never let us" win control of the state. Where I disagree with them is that I feel that there is no "they" to stop us -- the conservative members of the working class are the only "they." Yes, the state is always the oppressive instrument of the ruling class, but there's more to be said about that -- the reason the state is contorlled by the ruling class, thta is, the mechanism thta makes it happen, is the fact that most members of the working class are conservative, and vote for capitalits politicians. I believe that there is no other secret cabal or anything operating behind the scenes to prevent a majority, if the majority became socialist, from electing socialists. Opponents of the ballot will also bring up what happened in Chile -- a socialist was democratically elected and a CIA-backed military junta ousted him. In bring that up they are forgetting that the Chilean workers didn't form the necessary One Big Industrial Union, so the IWW people who raise this issue already know the answer to their own question, if they would just htink a little deeper about it before they jump up and protest that the ballot goal is unachievable. (Another difference is the solid tradition in the U.S. that a civilian president is always the top commander of the military, a tradition that is much more strongly entrenched in the U.S. system than in some other countries. In the U.S. a president could outright fire every officer in the military.)
Social Greenman	Posted: 08 Apr 2005 08:39 am    Post subject: Quote: The Sydicalist Review which was labeled as an unoffical member's project of the I.W.W. To clairify myself; If the I.W.W. can have a unoffical member's project then a political one can be done with members as well though it would not be acknowleged by the union. Perhaps joining the union may give one access to other members who may have the same like mindness. Just a thought. You are correct Mike that workers do indeed vote along Conservative politicians or even Liberal ones. Both capitalist nonetheless. My understanding is more clear on this and I have read through the study course three times and even printed it out along with writings and speeches by De Leon. Workers have to organize along the economic and political lines to have the greatest impact on society. One cannot be done without the other. Social
mikelepore	Posted: 08 Apr 2005 09:20 am    Post subject: Yes, that's what I'd like to see, an unofficial group within the IWW sharing ideas with us. Let me try to be humble and say I hope to learn a lot from them too, but the nagging feeling is that we have to teach them about the socialist potential of political action. By the way, I love the IWW music CD Rebel Voices, which has revolutionary lyrics set to music which is largely a bluegrass or Arlo-Guthrie-like style. (If someone uses my amazon link above to buy it, amazon pays me a referral commission, but this doesn't increase the price to the buyer.) When I find my file with some of the album lyrics, I'll post them.
Social Greenman	Posted: 08 Apr 2005 09:24 am    Post subject: Gad, I thought I was the only early morning riser. Thanks for the link to the CD. Social
mikelepore	Posted: 08 Apr 2005 11:14 am    Post subject: I didn't rise this morning - I was awake since yesterday! Computer completely died April 4, which is why I was absent for several days. Bought a new computer last night. Fastest notebook available right now, with the AMD Athlon 3 GHz 64-bit processor. Up all night reloading my files from backup CDRWs.
Social Greenman	Posted: 09 Apr 2005 09:09 am    Post subject: Gad, that is even worse but I've done that. Got yourself a powerful computer now and that is good. Social
Social Greenman	Posted: 13 Apr 2005 12:33 am    Post subject: Here is a link of interest: http://www.workersolidarity.org/ Social
Social Greenman	Posted: 16 Apr 2005 01:32 pm    Post subject: Gad, the people on the revolutionaryleft discussion board has a mismash of different concepts and goals which would give any sane person a headache. Co-operatives right on through to Western frontier capitalism. It would appear that anarchist have many different issues that they argue over and they don't really agree with each other. I read of the Workers International Industrial Union which disbanded in 1924. Why has there been no attempt to reform this SIU since then? The SLP has maintained a political presence but made no effort to re-establish the SIU. All these years have gone by and zip, nada, no union. Social
mikelepore	Posted: 16 Apr 2005 05:20 pm    Post subject: You got me. If anyone understands why the SLP feels that SIU formation should be delayed, I hope they will explain it. I have always felt that any organization can be started with two or more people, and that at least sets down something that can later experience reorganizations and mergers.
Social Greenman	Posted: 17 Apr 2005 02:22 am    Post subject: Then the SLP in in contradiction of educatiing about SIU and not re-establishing the Workers International Industrial Union. What is the point about educating when no effort has been made to make it a reality? The IWW wants to abolish the wage system but what is going to replace it? They should know better than to use the current system because the capitalists can re-insert themselves and they have had a lot of practice with the old Soviet Union to do it. Having a society without a solid based economy is just inviting disaster. Social
mikelepore	Posted: 17 Apr 2005 07:23 am    Post subject: I think the SLP has believed that an SIU created small would be captured by conservatives or liberals, captured by self-serving careerists, infiltrated by police spies, or other misdirections, so they decided to use a political party as a front for what is really an agitational and educational group, with the idea that when the SIU is finally established it would already be relatively large and already have a revolutionary goal. If we can get some SLP members in here, they could tell us if that's how they see it. If so, I think they have it backwards. In my own opinion, it's the union that must start first, and the political party that is needed later and eventually, to capture the state. What I think the SLP is missing is a concept of what good a small SIU could do for working conditions, and I think the answer to that is to have dual membership in the SIU and the larger and the more conservative union. The SLP was apparently thinking that the more conservative union has to be abandoned before the SIU starts forming, but I think that eventuality is impossible.
davesearles	Posted: 17 Apr 2005 10:08 am    Post subject: I see your point Mike - , the thing is the few of us out there are not going to start a union and as we can see, political parties do become inward focussed. I think that for where we are we are doing just the right thing, hanging out on the internet and publishing our views. Dave
Social Greenman	Posted: 17 Apr 2005 11:48 am    Post subject: But the SLP won't come and explain their views unless, if I am correct about what all of you wrote, they get permission to do so. Quote: I think the answer to that is to have dual membership in the SIU and the larger and the more conservative union. The SLP was apparently thinking that the more conservative union has to be abandoned before the SIU starts forming, but I think that eventuality is impossible. I don't think unions allow dual membership with another unions. I don't know that much about SLP but I take it as that if union members within the AFL-CIO or the Steelworkers decided that they wanted to become an SIU I think they would find themselves in a big legal dispute. So, the SLP does not want to play the dual role of Industrial socialism but has decided just to be an educational party because they are afraid of another anarchro-syndcalist take over. However, did the idea of precautions ever come to mind since they already have experience on what to look for? Social
Social Greenman	Posted: 02 May 2005 02:54 pm    Post subject: Here was a question posed to me on another forum from a former communist turned conservative. Quote: Can you explain how a new model of car would get designed and put into production? And how they would decide how many to make? And how they would make sure the necessary steel and rubber and glass and plastic got delivered in the right quantities and at the right time to the manufacturing plants. And how it would be decided who got one? I believe these questions were designed to make me out an idiot if I were to answer on my own with guesses. The person who posed the question already has been through the entire spectrum of the Left including the SLP. To give a proper and well thought out answer I decided that I needed help on this one. Though I have a thread there on SIU in another section, which this person only glanced over, this question was posed in the debate forum section which has conservatives, liberals, progressives, socialist, libertarians, etc. Social
mikelepore	Posted: 02 May 2005 04:52 pm    Post subject: Hi, Social. There's a good chance that the question is an outgrowth of what conservative economists call the "economic calculation argument", which comes from the anti-socialist economists Ludwig von Mises and later Friedrich Hayek. Their viewpoint is that prices set by a competitive market in a profit environment is a mode of communicating information, so under capitalism industry will then make what people want, in the amounts they want, with the use of natural resources that people most want, etc. Therefore, they conclude, socialism would have a built-in loss of "information", with no one haivng any way to know what efficiency even is, and industry will then waste resources, make things that people don't want, make too much or too little, etc. That's how the augument generally goes. It's popular mainly in the so-called Libertarian Party. I may answer this a little bit at a time, over a number of posts, over a number of days, because I'm not sure how much depth I'll want to go into. More coming ...
mikelepore	Posted: 02 May 2005 05:07 pm    Post subject: First of all, the flow of money under capitalism doesn't indicate "what people want". That "communication" is severely distorted by several important factors. 1. There's no way to "vote with your money" (as conservatives often say) if the item doens't already exist. For example, we can't use buying power to vote for the replacement of gasoline cars with electric cars, because we can only buy what is already made. 2. We but a selection of things in the narrow subset of things that we cna afford. Even if they make an electric car, but they price it at $50,000, our refusal to but it doesn't mean that we don't "want" it. (Note: It's the the worker-consumer's fault that industry owners didn't start fifty years ago putting research capital into the making lower-price electric cars.) 3. Even if spending money was a way of "voting" for the manufature of certain products, the unequal amounts of money different consumers have to spend would annihilate the flow of "information" about what most people want. Judging solely from the money spent, it might appear that what people want most are frivolous things that wealthy people are willing to pay for, such as the design of many new kinds of ornaments for limousines. So here I only discussed why capitalism offers no valid solution to the economic calculation problem. I haven't yet answered why socialism will solve it. Coming ....
davesearles	Posted: 02 May 2005 05:23 pm    Post subject: Why would any car be built after the revolution? To help fulfill the transportation needs of the society. Even under capitalism - in many instances what "model" is a non-issue because you get a very limited choice. When I rent a car at one of the Rutland rental agencies I get to choose roughly among three sizes. That's about it. Somehow I am never dissatisfied with the actual car I get. Henry Ford said that you could choose any color of his model T as long as it was black. If the purpose was to produce vehicles that would last a long time and last many miles - thus requiring fewer labor hours to keep the population in automobiles - we already know how to do that. "New" models, as they are now, are basically old models in a slightly different shape. Hell I think Ford used the same automatic transmission for practically every one of its models for over 35 years. I mentioned car rental above as one of the distribution systems under capitalism - some type of parallel system under socialism seems like it would be a good idea, where you could use a car for as many hours and miles as you need it and drop it off somewhere when you are done. I don't think the math would be to hard to calculate how many labor hours went into the vehicle, including distribution and fuel, for the hours or days the car was kept and miles driven. This isn’t the full explanation – but usually people aren’t looking for it. Dave
mikelepore	Posted: 02 May 2005 05:43 pm    Post subject: In articles that I have been writing for about fifteen years, I've been arguing that such problems as how many cars to make, etc., are solved by a policy that can be stated simply, and that the reason or motivation for having htis policy is not unique. The policy is simply: the more of this kind of item the shoppers buy, the more we will make. If they begin buy fewer, we will immediately begin to make fewer. If they increase their choice of this item, we will accelerate the production schedule. Everyone knows that capitalists try to do this. Their motivation is to maximize profit. My point is that the policy of "the more (or fewer) people buy, the more (or fewer) we will make" has to be adopted, but there isn't merely one reason for adopting it. Any reason would do, as long as the policy is in place. Socialism will also have the same policy, but the profit motive won't be the reason. The reason will be the common sense awareness of the need to keep production levels in sync with consumption levels. So that mysterious "information" quality that conservatives credit the competitive market for having, we can now see that it's merely the simple act of saying, in reference to each model number of each product, "the faster or slower it gets taken, the faster or lsower we have to make it." So it's not naything about capitalism at all that has provides this "flow of information." It's merely the practice of counting the number of things that disppear from store shelves in a given time, reordering them from a more central warehouse, and the warehouse reordering them from the manufactiring line. Of course, socialism and capitalism will have htis much in common. This is something that any conceivable kind of economic system would do, unless some top-down order from a "boss" specifically overrides this normal tendency. Business accountants are familiar with a simple equation. This equaiton may have different names in different places. When I wrote some software for the financial planning division of the IBM corporation, it ws called the ship roll equation or the inventory roll equation. The equation is applies to a single time period, such as each week, or each month. The equation is: (new inventory) = (old inventory) + (new product manufactured since last time) - (number shipped out since last time) Simple, isn't it? ANY economic system -- capitalism, statism, socialism -- any -- will use this simple formula. It's nothing but paying attention to the inventory as a dynamic process with an in-door and an out-door. It may be obvious to some that it takes the same form as the physicist's comservaiton of energy formula, and several other forms of "accounting." It is my opinion that this inventory roll equation contains everything a socialism society would need to "make the correct number of cars" (or however the challenging question maybe phrased from time to time.) All a socialist society needs to do is count consumer usage and reorder ffrom the plant. It's trivially simple. The reason questioners become misled is because they were thinking that there is only one possible reason or motivation for deciding ot have the policy of doing that, namely, the profit motive. By simply thinking about it for a couple minutes, anyone can see that socialism can do it also. It's nothing but the most elementary kind of arithmetic. Note that my own proposal for labor time vouchers already includes all of the essentials. The rest is merely a matter of writing computer software to give each manufacturing department a frequent report to indicate the optimum schedule. Mike Lepore
mikelepore	Posted: 02 May 2005 05:49 pm    Post subject: I think a number of socialists have come up with basically the same answer, independently of each other. For example, Robin Cox of the World Socialist Movement has for many yaar been answering the Mises-Hayek kind of debaters by saying that socialism will have what he calls "automated stock control." It seems that he and I are using our own personally favorite phrases to express what is basically the same idea. Of course, the World Socialists are opposed to using the labor time vouchers which I support, and they advocate "free access", but that difference is irrelevant to observing this particular similarity between his answer and mine to such questions as how industry would know how many cars to make, etc.
mikelepore	Posted: 02 May 2005 05:59 pm    Post subject: How would cars get "designed and put into production"? Why, is there more than one way? I worked as a design engineer for seventeen years, and I only know of one way. People who, in earler years, chose to study automotive automotive engineering, metallurgy, etc., would choose to work in the shops that do these things, then they would compare their ideas, analyze them in greater detail, and send the specifications to the manufacturing lines. To that extent, it seems to me, capitalism and socialism have some things in common. One obvious difference, of course, is that socialists want workers to democratically elect their own managers and supervisors, one person one vote, making a "republic" of each workplace. I don't see why that should confuse the issue for the person who asked the question, but perhaps it did.
mikelepore	Posted: 02 May 2005 06:04 pm    Post subject: "And how they would make sure the necessary steel and rubber and glass and plastic got delivered in the right quantities and at the right time to the manufacturing plants." The answer I gave above about the simple policy of "the more they use, the more we have to make" doesn't only apply to the end user, the person who buys the car. It also applies to what economists call "intermediate products", the outputs of one industry what become inputs to anohter industry, such as the rubber and steel. When the car plant reorders the rubber or steel from where these things are made, the production schedules at those other plants are continuously adjusted accordingly.
mikelepore	Posted: 02 May 2005 06:08 pm    Post subject: "And how it would be decided who got one?" If you want one, buy it. It you don't want one, don't buy it.
mikelepore	Posted: 02 May 2005 06:16 pm    Post subject: Dave - what you said - that's right, and it shows how where the money flows [under capitalism] isn't "what people want." If you were to ask people to fill out a quesitonaire, and ask them which is more important and should get higher priority, either more funding for research to cure childhood disease, or the annual cosmetic redesign of the body of each model of car, just about everyone would check the choice for the medical research. What people gneuinely want, and what the capitlaist economic system does, are grossly unequal.
mikelepore	Posted: 02 May 2005 06:26 pm    Post subject: A book I read a couple months ago said that the reason Henry Ford only used black was because, with the kinds of paint then available, the black enamel was the one that dried fastest, keeping up with the other conveyor belts that were doing other things. ("Goodbye Gutenberg" by Valerie Kirschenbaum, page 73) _____________________________________________ Maybe eventually I'll move this sub-thread to a new topic about industrial planning. It really isn't an SIU issue.
davesearles	Posted: 02 May 2005 08:21 pm    Post subject: Dave previously wrote: Hell I think Ford used the same automatic transmission for practically every one of its models for over 35 years. Dave clarifies: Well not the exact same one. They made a lot of them but they made them all the same. Dave
davesearles	Posted: 03 May 2005 12:34 am    Post subject: I like the rental model of distribution better than an outright sale for several reasons - maintenance - under the rental model we are a heck of a lot more assured that the car will be serviced regularly prevents overbuying. With the rental model, people will have the car that they need during that particular time. BUT the bottom up approach has some benefits - but I think there needs to be some kind of top down element in there. Optimally the top down approach would seek to modify the bottom up demand - encourage people to not utilize automobiles so much by restricting places where they could be used - which would increase the demand for public transportation or better yet, not traveling so much - an even more benign approach would be to give people reasons not to drive - e.g. free delivery - no malls to drive to - . BUT What do we do with tobacco. Simply allow bottom up demand to control? It’s no good stuff. Not good for people. Not good for the ground that it grows on. As I understand it tobacco requires a lot of fertilizer because it takes so much out of the soil. This is just what I heard – it may be perfectly benign to the soil. An interesting question is suppose there is a bottom up demand but farm workers say no – we’re not going to grow that stuff any more – or suppose the land managers say no – it is more efficient not to grow tobacco but to grow soy beans? How do you think that would work? Obviously I don’t smoke. Dave
mikelepore	Posted: 03 May 2005 04:45 am    Post subject: "under the rental model we are a heck of a lot more assured that the car will be serviced regularly" Maybe, but then drivers would have no attachment to the practice of reducing wear in the transmission by accelerating slowly, and reducing wear on the tires by decelerating slowly. "Not my problem, somebody else's problem." ------------- "restricting places where they could be used - which would increase the demand for public transportation" I would like to see every major point connected to every other major point by public transportation (except for wilderness, etc.). The metro in Washington, DC is a good example. Maybe there can be a way to use private transportation on the back roads and public transportation on main courses. Public transportation can carry your car! Note: there is NO energy consumption at all if a car is placed on a hover track above a superconductor magnet, inside of a vacuum to eliminate air resistance, and then transported. This is because the energy used to speed up can be fully recovered when slowing down. "Fully" doesn't apply to any type of heat engine (Carnot's efficiency principle), but does apply to an AC or DC motor. ------------ "What do we do with tobacco. Simply allow bottom up demand to control?" My opinion - yes, demand to control. No matter how bad it is. It being bad should lead to cultural efforts to reuce the demand. I think the major reason people smoke is the cultural images. Which craracters smoke in the movies? Heroes. Spies. Adventure seekers. Great lovers. Alphonse Capone. John Travolta. This must stop first.
Social Greenman	Posted: 03 May 2005 09:02 am    Post subject: Thanks Mike and Dave. I pretty much determined the questions had to do with supply and demand but I needed clarification since I am still learning and always will be. Social
davesearles	Posted: 03 May 2005 11:40 am    Post subject: Mike writes: Maybe, but then drivers would have no attachment to the practice of reducing wear in the transmission by accelerating slowly, and reducing wear on the tires by decelerating slowly. "Not my problem, somebody else's problem." Dave asks: And car ownership is the proposed solution to this? Even under capitalism the car rental model is able to work. Using the transmission to slow down? - Are you talking about a manual transmission? With front wheel drive Vermonters like to shift into neutral and use the brakes to avoid the fishtail. Way back in the 60s when Saab was the only front wheel drive (2 stroke engine) it had an automatic disconnect of the engine from the transmission that would not allow the engine to be pushed by the transmission. But that was from the Sweedish socialists : - ) As for tire wear I would still go with the rental model to assure proper tire pressure and proper tire rotation. Of course cutting horsepower by about 70% in many cases wouldn't be a bad idea either. As another top down pressure - I would make the real speed limit no higher than 50 mph everywhere. A car going 50 mph has just about half of the kinetic energy of a car going 70 mph, and if you factor in the reduction in weight becuase of a smaller engine and smaller gas tank it turns out to be significantly less than half, all for a sacrifice of just 29% of speed. (most horsepower in cars is not for speed anyway - its for accelleration) With the resourse savings people would not have to work as long - which would at least balance out the longer amount of time that they would have to spend in a car to go the same distance. (What a fucking dictator I would be) Dave
mikelepore	Posted: 03 May 2005 05:08 pm    Post subject: > And car ownership is the proposed solution to this? > Even under capitalism the car rental model is able to work. Sure. When operating at a profit, the costs are averaged. The car rental company makes a little less profit when the customer squeals the tires too much, and a little more profit when the customer doesn't. Socialism also has some averaging of burden, like if medicine is free. The line has to be drawn somewhere. > Using the transmission to slow down? I didn't mean that. I meant the EMF of a generator should be used to slow down (regenerative brakes). Some of the new electric cars for rich people already have this feature. The only thing I said about the transmission is that it's bad for the transmission when people accelerate too fast, stomping on the accelerator pedal soon as the light turns green. Actually, it's bad for the cylinder valves too and other things. > I would make the real speed limit no higher than 50 mph everywhere. As part of that, I'd like to see a new vehicle larger than a motorcycle but smaller than a car, a flat seat on three or four wheels, about 400 pounds (180 kg). If it's slower thna a car, just fine with me. > A car going 50 mph has just about half of the kinetic energy of a car > going 70 mph, 50^2/70^2 = 0.51 to be precise. "Thank you Mr. Spock." > and if you factor in the reduction in weight becuase of a smaller engine > and smaller gas tank it turns out to be significantly less than half, > all for a sacrifice of just 29% of speed. Right. Same with space travel, etc. Still, I'm a fan of hydrogen fuel cells. The whole idea of burning hydrocarbons disturbs me. > (most horsepower in cars is not for speed anyway - its for accelleration) This is cultural. Zero to sixty in ten seconds is a way to give other people the finger. No genuine need for it.
mikelepore	Posted: 03 May 2005 05:13 pm    Post subject: > What a fucking dictator I would be You would have to grow a beard first. And cultivate a taste for cigars.
Social Greenman	Posted: 03 May 2005 09:43 pm    Post subject: Mike, I posted your response early this morning because you can say better than I can. There has been no response as of yet though the questioner was there this morning. However, due to a new project, nothing about socialism, that I am involved with. I have to spend less time here to learn those lessons. Social
davesearles	Posted: 03 May 2005 11:12 pm    Post subject: I am sure I could learn to love Cuban cigars - I am an odd duck though - I do not smoke because I know that if I started that I would love it too much - however I could not grow a beard to save my life. I guess I'd better stay advocating for democracy. Dave
davesearles	Posted: 03 May 2005 11:30 pm    Post subject: Mike wrote: Maybe, but then drivers would have no attachment to the practice of reducing wear in the transmission by accelerating slowly, and reducing wear on the tires by decelerating slowly. "Not my problem, somebody else's problem." dave wrote: I don't know why when I read that it seemed that you were saying that people use the transmission too much to slow down - we are not big brake users. The last new car that we had, many moons ago, got 80,000 miles on the first set of brake pads. If you don't push that pedel they will not wear out. Dave
Social Greenman	Posted: 08 May 2005 12:46 pm    Post subject: I took time to look at the other forum and still no response; rather, it has sunk down to the third page. Social
Social Greenman	Posted: 21 May 2005 10:12 am    Post subject: Mike. I see that you are posting at revolutionary.com discussion board. I find that there is a lot of opposition to De Leon's concepts. We are accused of doing "nothing." http://www.iww.org/culture/articles/Gaylord1.shtml This article was a rehashing of the past and in no wise relevent to deleonism today. We are not members of the SLP. Nor do we want to elect officials to reform capitalism or to be career politicians. Just to take the weapon of capitalism and ajourn the state.
davesearles	Posted: 21 May 2005 11:49 am    Post subject: Thanks Vince for pointing this article out. Very interesting. On the whole I think that this article and its conclusion comes pretty close to my own views. (I was not impressed with the indirect attribution of DeLeon calling elements in the Chicago IWW "scum" and the like - there is no direct quote to DeLeon on this - only a reference to a book by someone saying that DeLeon stated this.) As it turned out by 1905 the SLP's insistence on politics could not be described as parlimentaryism. Probably if that cold have been understood better there would not have been that much cause for a rift, on that topic anyway. I do think that there is and has been too much dwelling on the end game - as if anyone of us could have the slightest ability to predict whether the revolution will wait until the end of an election cycle to assert itself. Politics is ONE vehicle through which the socialist message can be conveyed. I think that we have found that good old free speech sans party organization can be another vehicle. If people at a particular place and time think that resort to the ballot can be an effective vehicle I would encourage them to do that - but only if they have the self-discipline to not sell out to reformism. I think that DeLeon's and other's stridency on the issue of politics cost the party and cost the movement where it could have been dismissed as a minor question. If the workers did occupy a plant in the name of the revolution, what was the SLP going to say - now now - give it back - we haven't won at the ballot box yet? But the fact of the matter is ( and correct me if I am wrong) the movement never got that far - so the question was merely in the realm of theoretics and not something to split a movement over. IMHO Dave
davesearles	Posted: 21 May 2005 12:18 pm    Post subject: Mike wrote: "Note: there is NO energy consumption at all if a car is placed on a hover track above a superconductor magnet, inside of a vacuum to eliminate air resistance, and then transported. This is because the energy used to speed up can be fully recovered when slowing down. "Fully" doesn't apply to any type of heat engine (Carnot's efficiency principle), but does apply to an AC or DC motor." Dave writes: In Looking Backward, Bellamy in 1881 wrote about a system of pneumatic tubes to transport goods. http://eserver.org/fiction/bellamy/intro.html To me transport the goods - leave people where they are for the most part. Much like a preference for transporting space robots instead of people. Much more efficient and fewer consequences if something does go wrong. Do I really need to travel to the Grand Canyon to appreciate its marvel? I heard on NPR yesterday that since 1960 the world has CONSUMED more goods than ALL of prior existence. One thing I look forward to under socialism is security that will enable people to shed off as much as possible their need to accumulate material things.
Social Greenman	Posted: 22 May 2005 12:13 pm    Post subject: Why am I called Vince once in a while? Anyways, most of the time I cannot access revolutionary left for some reason. I get "the website has denied access" message quite often. However, I was able to read Mike's post and you have the "gift" of getting the point accross. You too Dave. I have read with much interest of your interaction with Ken. On another forum I am asking "by what method?" is socialism going to come about. I believe that this is important since the capitalist class uses psychological manipulation to sell commodities and to keep the working class compliant with promoting "individualism" and the "what's in it form me?" mindset. The capitalist class uses words and imagery to effectively condition the minds of the general population. Then I asked: "Can you really blame me for using words and mental imagery of SIU as to what method?"
davesearles	Posted: 22 May 2005 01:04 pm    Post subject: SG - did I call you Vince again. I am very sorry if I did. I'm trying to deal with a problem on the home front that is taking up practically all of the capacity of my solitary remaining brain cell. Sure the capitalists use "marketing". I don't worry about it. Here beneath the surface ain't too many people don't know something is wrong. Looks like Ken gave up on trying to convert me to his most peculiar outlook. This idea that the robotification of labor in the meantime is going to be beneficial to the workers while the workers are nothing but wage slaves is a little odd to me. Oh well, the debate was fun while it lasted. I got a kick out of how he repeatedly accused Arnold Petersen of lying - but when he used the same methods that he accused Petersen of, he couldn't stand to be called what he was calling Petersen. Such is life. Petersen was no hero to me - and it was rather strange that I was in the position of answering Ken's charges against him. As I have stated before - I have thought for years that everything the man ever wrote ought to be deleted burned shredded - whatever - because of its pedantry. But not one thing Ken wrote gave me any reason to believe that any of the material put forth by Petersen was an attempt to deceive anyone, however. Dave
Social Greenman	Posted: 22 May 2005 01:21 pm    Post subject: My hat is off to Ken for trying but I was not convinced either. Besides, I never read anything from Perterson and I did not see that it had anything to do with SIU.
Social Greenman	Posted: 23 May 2005 09:46 am    Post subject: If and when SIU comes into existence, would the unemployed, poor and needy be allowed to join? I see the IWW does not allow this in the U.S. but do in Canada. How will they be represented?
mikelepore	Posted: 23 May 2005 11:22 pm    Post subject: Social Greenman wrote: We are accused of doing "nothing." I saw that post too. It had no content, since the writer didn't take the few seconds needed to name something that should be done but isn't being done. The assertive tone of an objection can be great while its substance is little.
mikelepore	Posted: 24 May 2005 12:27 am    Post subject: For those who haven't seen these two SIU charts, I decided to upload them. They were made several years ago by an SLP artist. (And, yes, the artist says that he is sufficiently embarrassed to notice, only after the graphics job was done and distributed, that he had accidentally typed "automobole". Whether a later version fixed the typo, I don't know.) http://www.deleonism.org/i/chart.gif width 712, height 328 pixels 89,862 bytes http://www.deleonism.org/i/ballot.gif width 600, height 388 pixels 58,381 bytes
davesearles	Posted: 24 May 2005 12:53 am    Post subject: S.G. wrote: I never read anything from Perterson and I did not see that it had anything to do with SIU. Dave writes: Comrade Petrsen does cast a long shadow over the movement - and perhaps his writing should be read if only to take a peak behind the curtain. Dave
cmiller2005	Posted: 26 May 2005 02:48 am    Post subject: If anyone's interested, I have the complete WIIU Constitution, along with a couple of pdf pamphlets I found online bearing the WIIU seal. I will be more than happy to e-mail the constitution to anyone who is interested. The constitution is a trancsribed version from a photocopy. I did the transcribing, so any errors can be blamed on me. The pamphlets can be found here: http://library.indstate.edu/level1.dir/cml/rbsc/debs/pamph2.htm If you search for William E. Trautman or Karl Dannenburg you will probably come up with the WIIU booklets.
cmiller2005	Posted: 26 May 2005 02:50 am    Post subject: That link probably won't work, unless you add an 'l' to the very end, thats a lower case 'L'. the last four letters should be 'html' not 'htm'
cmiller2005	Posted: 26 May 2005 03:02 am    Post subject: The titles of the two pamphlets are 'One Great Union' and 'Road to Power', the first is by Mr. Trautman and the second is by Mr. Dannenburg. The first inludes a diagram of the SIU organization, it is in the shape of a wheel, which is practically identical to the one which can be found on the IWW website. You see, Mr. Trautman defected from the IWW to the WIIU, and his design of the chart is still used by the IWW today. In fact, the IWW continued to use Mr. Trautman's work long after he defected to the WIIU.
mikelepore	Posted: 26 May 2005 04:46 am    Post subject: Social Greenman wrote: If and when SIU comes into existence, would the unemployed, poor and needy be allowed to join? I see the IWW does not allow this in the U.S. but do in Canada. How will they be represented? I just did a text search of all the issues during the past approximately ten years of the SLP's paper The People in which they said that the SIU must include the "employed and unemployed." Searching only for that exact phrase, and not any variations, I found 8 matches: April 22, 1995 organize the entire working class -- employed and unemployed, blue August 26, 1995 organize the workers as a class, employed and unemployed, and December 4, 1995 employed and unemployed, from all the industries and services. September 1996 workers -- employed and unemployed, skilled and unskilled, young April 1997 a CLASS, employed and unemployed, skilled and unskilled, office December 1998 both employed and unemployed and fight against all April 1999 workers -- employed and unemployed, skilled and unskilled -- in all November 1999 education and organization of the employed and unemployed in
davesearles	Posted: 26 May 2005 11:16 am    Post subject: cmiller: Thanks for the link to the Debs and related material. http://library.indstate.edu/level1.dir/cml/rbsc/debs/pamph2.html Could you give a brief history of the WIIU as it relates to the IWW SLP SP Debs and DeLeon? Or give a link to a location that does? thanks. Dave
cmiller2005	Posted: 26 May 2005 12:26 pm    Post subject: Hello Dave, Well, unfortunately information about the WIIU is pretty scarce, online and otherwise. You probably know as much as I do about the WIIU. Of course, it started out as the Detroit IWW and they changed the name a few years later. The IWW called them the "Yellow IWW". As far as how the WIIU was organized, the details and such, I don't have much info. It consisted mainly of those who left the IWW when it was taken over and the De Leonist element was booted out. So I would venture to say that the dominant element was probably former ST&LA members and SLP members. De Leon was instrumental in the formation of the WIIU, but I am not sure who else was involved. The SLP endorsed the WIIU , but according to some folks it was always a stormy relationship after De Leon's death. The SLP dropped it's endorsement for the WIIU sometime in the early twenties. So, with the majority of it's members gone, the WIIU disbanded. I probably just rehashed everything you already know, but that is the extent of my knowledge. I find it a very interesting subject, and I wish that the WIIU could have held on like the IWW did. The WIIU is badly needed these days and I think workers would be more inclined to join the WIIU than the IWW. I think that reviving the WIIU is an idea who's time has come, in my humble opinion.
davesearles	Posted: 27 May 2005 12:04 am    Post subject: Thanks. It may be a rehash of something that I once knew or thought I knew but other memories have since crowded them out. It's always good to look back now and then. I just don't know what to say about looking at reviving the WIIU or something like it. Labor unions would be a tough tough business to get into in the best of circumstances. But I do not wish to dissuade anyone ever from doing anything. Dave
mikelepore	Posted: 27 May 2005 08:21 am    Post subject: That Indiana State archive is nice. Everyone should take the time to look at the 500+ Kbyte "full listing" page. I just downloaded Lafargue's funny "Religion of Capital" in pdf. I also see that using select-all in Adobe Acrobat does a fair job of OCR on the file, producing a managable number of typos. ________________________________________________ cmiller2005 wrote: If anyone's interested, I have the complete WIIU Constitution, along with a couple of pdf pamphlets I found online bearing the WIIU seal. I will be more than happy to e-mail the constitution to anyone who is interested. Let me know if you want to put this (or any other material) on the web. I have free gigabytes.
davesearles	Posted: 15 Jul 2005 02:31 pm    Post subject: (discussion continued from the topic: Topics raised in People for Cooperative Society website) Thanks for the questions. This is what I think anyway. As I stated, the workers can’t simply “amend” the constitution of the US federal government to set up and govern an entirely new society with an industrial rather than geographic constituencies. .............. “based on the structure of the industries” “Do (I) mean something where workers' councils/industrial unions are the government proper?” Pretty much, and I am sure that Rosa Luxemburg did allude to this, although I have not studied that specific writing. (but I surely will, now that you bring it up). The government of the current society consists of the various levels and branches and agencies of the state. But more importantly it consists of the entire structure of the private ownership of the means of production. It consists of the system of markets including the wages system. Government of Socialist society will of course mean the workers organized at work being the sole democratic constituency (just like the people organized within the states was the constituency of the new government set up by the US constitution) but “government” will also include those social changes that result from production not being for profit but being solely for the benefit of the workers’ and the society that the workers themselves choose. Not only DeLeon and Luxemburg (as you point out) talked about this, but also the entire left wing of the Socialist Party, cira 1909. From the Ira Kipness book, the American Socialist Movement: “…the revolutionary Socialists (of the SP) warned it must never be forgotten that the party existed to aid the industrial union, and not vice versa. Socialists were to participate in elections to help the unions in their fight to abolish virtually all political offices, not in order to fill those offices with Socialists. Since there would be no rich to oppress the workers under socialism, government would be industrial, not political. A socialist government would legislate for the individual only in regard to shop problems. Legislatures would be made up of representatives of various branches of industry and they would concern themselves only with improving production and conditions of labor and minimizing expenditure of labor power. Recognition of this proper relationship between the party and the union would prevent the party from abandoning its revolutionary program for the sake of reform policies designed to win votes and the spoils of office.” (citing articles in the International Socialist Review by Frank Bohn, Bill Haywood and an unsigned article, 1909 – 10) Of course, the devil is always in the details. The SIU idea was set forth by DeLeon 100 years ago this month. (July 10, 1905) I think there were some vague references before that. I would be interested to know if anyone before DeLeon hit the nail on the head quite like DeLeon hit it in 1905: "The evolution from the capitalist system to Socialism marks a revolution of first rank. The methods of the Socialist Republic will be methods that flow from its own material framework. The latter is so diametrically the opposite of the capitalist social framework that the two methods will bear no comparison. Capitalist society requires the political State; accordingly, its economics translate themselves into political tenets; Socialist society, on the contrary, knows nothing of the political State: in Socialist society the political State is a thing of the past, either withered out of existence by disuse or amputated - according as circumstances may dictate. .... "Take Congress, for instance, whether Senate or House of Representatives. The unity of the congressional representation is purely politically geographic; it is arbitrary. The structure of the congressional district reflects the purpose of the capitalist State political, that is, class tyranny over class. The thought of production is absent, wholly so from the congressional demarcations. It cannot be otherwise. Congress - not being a central administration of the productive forces of the land, but the organized power of the capitalist class for oppression - its constituent bodies can have no trace of a purpose to administer production. Shoemakers, bricklayers, miners, railroadmen, together with the workers in all manner of other fractions of industries, are, accordingly, jumbled together in each separate congressional district. Accordingly, the political organization of labor intended to capture a congressional district is wholly unfit to "take and hold" the plants of industry. The only organization fit for that is the organization of the several industries themselves - and they are not subject to political lines of demarcation; they mock all such arbitrary, imaginary lines "The central administrative organ of the Socialist Republic - exactly the opposite of the central power of capitalism, not being the organized power of a ruling class for oppression, in short, not being political, but exclusively administrative of the producing forces of the land - its constituent bodies must be exclusively industrial. dave
graymouser	Posted: 15 Jul 2005 05:08 pm    Post subject: Dave - Yeah, it was completely widespread in America in the early 20th century; I was reading today a piece from James Connolly's Socialism Made Easy, which lays out much the same argument you make. It's interesting to see Connolly, who is seen today as one of the chief founders of the modern Irish republic, espousing much the same view. I know he was in the SLP for a while, but my one book (Selected Writings by James Connolly, introduced and edited by Peter Berresford Ellis, published by Pluto Press) doesn't go into the details of why he left. I'm curious if anyone has any documentation on that? -Wayne
davesearles	Posted: 15 Jul 2005 06:37 pm    Post subject: Thanks Wayne. I'm going to put Connolly on my list of people whose writings I need to be more familiar with. dave
davesearles	Posted: 19 Jul 2005 01:50 am    Post subject: Wayne asked (in another topic that I am answering here): "The more I study early 20th century Marxism in the United States - whether that of Debs, of Irish socialist and martyr James Connolly, or otherwise - the more it seems that industrial unionism really was the consensus accepted on the left wing of the American socialist movement from about 1905 (the founding of the IWW) until 1917 (the Russian Revolution). And, in fact, the Socialist Industrial Union program is quite similar to that developed by Rosa Luxemburg and the successors to her ideological line, the Left Communists in Italy and the Council Communists such as Pannekoek and Mattick. In fact, Pannekoek in an essay refers to the IWW as basically the workers' arm of a successful model for organization of the workers. "So I have to ask: what makes De Leonism a separate ideology? I know the Socialist Labor Party is quite far from most of the organized Left, but nothing about its sectarianism seems inherent in De Leonist ideas." Dave answers: I would anser Wayne by saying nothing. Nothing makes DeLeonism a seperate ideology. For a parellel we can look at physical sciences. We had the three great scientists deal with the laws of motion. Gallileo, Newton and Einstein. Each had a different understanding of how and why objects moved. In many regards, but as pertains to our everyday lives, on our own we would barely perceive any difference in motions predicted by these three scientists unless we knew what to look for. Gallieo's undersatnding of motion held up to all science during his entire lifetime and well into and beyond the lifetime of Newton. Newton's ideas held up for almost 200 years - and they still hold up except to be modified slightly in the presence of speeds near the speed of light and great dense masses such as the magnitude of stars. Each of these scientists is accorded an "ism" - we say Galilean, Newtonian and Einsteinian physics - but no one that I am aware of regards these as seperate idea systems. You will notice that in a post above I quoted extensively from DeLeon's 1905 speech and I noted how the left wing of the SP 5 years later was using the almost identical idea. You quoted Rosa Luxemberg using similar terminolgy and the pamphlet that you cited was written by her in 1915. I asked in my post if anyone was aware of socialist industrial union type language as extensive but prior to DeLeon's 1905 speech. No one has replied. IF no one described the future industrial form of society as extensively as DeLeon by the time of the DeLeon speech 100 years ago this month, I have no problem what so ever with describing socialist industrail unionism as "DeLeonism". Would you? You note that: "nothing about (the SLP's) sectarianism seems inherent in De Leonist ideas." I would agree with you wholeheartedly. We all form sects given the chance. The internet, hopefuly, will prevent a whole lot of sectarianism in the future by all of us. dave
mikelepore	Posted: 20 Jul 2005 05:17 pm    Post subject: The People has had a column called Letter Box, where they answer questions but don't reprint the questions themselves. Here's one in which Connolly was mentioned. THE PEOPLE March 1997 Vol. 106 No. 12 LETTER BOX C.B., REDWOOD CITY, CALIF.--We are convinced that the man you had in mind was neither Michael Collins nor Eamon de Valera, but James Connolly. Of the three, only Connolly had any connection with the SLP. We don't believe Collins ever visited America, and de Valera, though born in New York City, was sent to Ireland at an early age and never returned to the United States. All three were involved in the Easter Rebellion of 1916. Connolly first came to the United States in 1902. The occasion was a speaking tour that lasted several months. Following the tour, which was conducted under the auspices of the SLP, Connolly returned to Ireland. Then, in 1904, he moved his family to the U.S. and joined the SLP. He resigned after three years, however, and went over to the Socialist Party. Connolly moved his family back to Ireland in 1910, where he later helped organize and participated in the 1916 rebellion. He was executed when the rebellion was crushed.