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Mailman
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 Posted:
01 Jun 2007 03:47 am Post subject: education
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Let me start this off by saying I have never been
politically active up until recently. Ive always been quite content to
work my ass off and trust in those that are in power to make the right
decisions. Well right about the time that I quit drinking I started to
relize that all is not well for myself and those like me, that and the
goverment isnt doing a damn thing to help me. So I started looking into
diffrent political groups and their ideology hoping to find one out there
that gives a damn about the working class. After studying all your
typical parties to no avail I started to look into some of your lesser
know 3rd parties. Lo and behold I come across the SPUSA page and just for
shits and giggles decided to start reading. That was a month and a half
ago and ever since then Ive been devouring all the information that i could
find about Socialist ideology. I was raised in a Southern military family
and spent four years in Cold War Germany. I have resided in Montana since
1990, so for me to admit that my beliefs and Socialisms ideology are damn
near the same, is turning my back on everything ive ever been taught and
everything i know. in my research ive come across the Marxist-De Leon
theory of socalism and belive that this is the theory that most closely
matches my beliefs. Ive come to this forum in the hopes that those w/ more
experiance will help me expand my knowledge in Socialism. Im not college
educated so sometimes I might come across as ignorant about some things
or I might not catch on to the more technical theories as quick but
please hang in there. Im not stupid I just tend to be a hell of alot more
simplified then most folk. Anyways, my name is Mailman. Its a pleasure to
meet you all and I hope that ya'll can expand my horizen beyond what I
would be able to do myself.
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davesearles
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Posted:
01 Jun 2007 09:59 am Post subject:
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Hi Mailman.
I happened upon Deleonism through an organization
called the Socialist Labor Party many moons ago when I was in highschool
trying to get a handle on the ways of the world and particularly as to
seemingly inevitible inclinations of the society towards
war/poverty/oppression/environmental suicide. When very few people want
these things - we still get them in abundance. Hope that you hang around
a bit.
dave
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mikelepore
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Posted:
01 Jun 2007 02:48 pm Post subject:
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I'm looking to make it clearer how different theories
about socialism are different, not so much to make someone "believe
in" this or that. There are like a hundred different ways people
have used the word "socialism", ranging all the way from the
beliefs of Jesus to Stalin, so who were people like Marx or De Leon in
this whole scheme?
First, my opinion of Marx. Socialism isn't really a
matter of having better ideas or feelings. The real point is, in the past
there really wasn't enough to go around, and if you tried to have
everyone equal then all that would accomplish is make everyone poor. But
finally we have reached the automated age where there is plenty to go
around. The only reason we lack anything is because society's traditions
haven't yet caught up with the new reality and made a management system
that fits it. We're still trying to run the automated age with 18th
century institutions of management. I brought that up now because you
will hear people say "scientific socialism" is better than
"utopian socialism", and, in my opinion, this is another way of
saying: The point isn't to advise people to improve themselves in the
area of "feeling" or "acting" cooperation and peace,
but rather to to adopt a system of managing things that fits the modern
automated age.
Marx left the goal and program very fuzzy. He spent
his life studying history and economics in hopes of explaining where we
are now. As for what new system we're supposed to replace it with, or how
to get there, Marx made only a few vague comments in his whole life. This
is where De Leon comes into the picture. He worked on that problem. There
are a lot of ways that the goal can go either right or wrong, and a lot
of ways the path that people follow to get there can go either right or
wrong. Perhaps the first biggie was something that Marx began to realize
in his later years, something that the 60 year old Marx was realizing
more and more, and the 30 year old Marx missed completely -- this is:
socialism isn't something that a government can do. It's something that a
large workers' association has to do. A successful political movement can
get the idea of socialism adopted as the will of the people, but that's
all. Only a large organization of workers can put the new management
system together. Then De Leon went on to point out strategies that can
work and can't work, recommending the ones that point in the right
direction, and warning about the ones that lead in the wrong direction.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
01 Jun 2007 06:04 pm Post subject: Re: education
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Mailman wrote:
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turning my
back on everything ive ever been taught and everything i know
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That's a major strength you have, and it would be
great if more people had it.
"Common sense" is to believe whatever
we're taught. If we're born into a society that tells us repeatedly that
2+2=5, then most people believe that 2+2=5.
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Mailman
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Posted:
01 Jun 2007 09:37 pm Post subject:
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i was stunned when i found all the similarities
between Socialism and my beliefs. All my life ive had it drilled into my
head the Socialism was a bad thing. I had two choices. one was to believe
that all the information about socialism was just a lie. Propaganda to
lure people who were dissillusioned with the current state of the world.
Or that there was a shred of truth to it all. I was really split down the
middle about the whole thing untill I came across a statement in the SLP
web site the said "Socialism has never existed. Not in the
the old U.S.S.R, and it does not exist in China." I had always been
taught that the old U.S.S.R. was Socialism. That kinda settled it for me.
one of the reasons i was drawn to the De Leon camp was I just couldnt get
past the idea of the Vanguard. To me its like letting the fox into the
chicken coop after youve exterminated the wolf. that and it almost seemed
like the working man would be used for cannon fodder and after it was all
said and done here comes these ol boys goin "Aight! You boys done
good , we'll take over from here." If im going to fight for an ideal
and possibly not walk away from it (because you know the capitilist aint
gonna just look at us and go "well here ya go. its all yours.")
I definitly aint gonna just turn over the reigns to someone else after
the hard parts been done. I like the belief that the working class will
do the work and the political party will just kinda hold down the fort
while everything settles down, never taking the power away from the
working man. I dont know, maybe my thinking is overly simplified. All i
know is I would be one of those on the front lines not one of those with
the political theory and the college educated smarts. And if im gonna
back such a radical theory, especially in Montana, I am going to need a
working knowledge of Socialism so I can answer the questions that are
sure to be asked of me. im rambling. someone give me an opinion on my
thought process.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
01 Jun 2007 11:54 pm Post subject:
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Thant's not rambling. You're being crystal clear. You
wanna see rambling? I would tell you about the large sausage calzone I'm
eating right now. The way I like to do it is, I cut it into long strips
and dip each one into maranara sauce. Now that's rambling!
Now i'm gonna give my own interpretation of the
purpose of a socialist political party, which you mentioned, Mailman. I
never heard others say before quite like I like to say it.
I think there really is such a thing as human
civilization that climbs slowly from the primitive state to the more
modern. For thousands of years every political change meant a massacre.
Every time there was a conflict and it had to be resolved, that
automatically meant a bloodbath. There was something in the back of
people's minds telling them that had to be a a better way, some means to
resolve disputes with a more civilized method. Some new way that would
bring about (to use the phrase of a writer named Jeremy Bentham)
"the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people". It
took a lot of uphill clawing, but civilization ended up trying, and
actually liking, this new idea called "let's vote on it."
In the U.S.A. this new idea got developed very far,
to the point that the people can have anything -- anything at all -- you
want capitalaism? you want socialism? war? peace? slavery? freedom?
anything -- but with just one limitation: first you have to persuade the
majority of the people to agree with you. Now the entire battle is a battle
of trying to think of a better argument, to make a better speech, write a
better political brochure, to try to persuade other people to think about
something and to do something. It can get real discouraging at times,
when other people refuse to listen, or when they seem to enjoy being
brainwashed, but still it's the best way. So why do socialists need a
political party? Because if there's a chance of having a peaceful
revolutionary change, that chance will be found in the political process.
In my more cynical moments, I say it a bit
differently. I just say: If the workers attempt to take control of the
industries, while capitalist politicians still control the government,
then the army and police will massacre millions of workers.
I don't know if those are the same thing or not.
Maybe I'm saying the same thing in two different ways.
That was my opinion of why the socialist
reconstruction of society requires the use of a political party.
Needless to say, I have no interest in the smaller
subjects that many people call "politics." When a lot of people
say "politics' they mean the issue of where the town dump should be
located. To me, politics is about the Big Questions. If someone says to
me, "Hey, let's discuss politics!", I reply: "Okay, can
you think of a new political or economic system that would work better
than what we have now?" Not who is bribing who, or who is
fornicating with who. That's not politics to me . I go right for the
biggest questions. What kind of social system should we have?
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The Greenman
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Posted:
02 Jun 2007 12:02 am Post subject:
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Hi Mailman...Your thought
processes is just fine. I figured socialism reflected what I believed
when I was in my 30's but living in a political conservative county
hampered any investigations I had in mind. In many ways socialism does
reflect a lot of people's core beliefs but one thing about socialist
political parties is that it reflects certain moral ideologies that have
nothing to do with economic issues of a socialist industrial government.
De Leonism made more sense to me than any socialist political party with
vague explanations of socialism
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Quote:
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one of the
reasons i was drawn to the De Leon camp was I just couldn't get past
the idea of the Vanguard. To me its like letting the fox into the
chicken coop after you've exterminated the wolf. that and it almost
seemed like the working man would be used for cannon fodder and after
it was all said and done here comes these ol boys going "Alright!
You boys done good , we'll take over from here." If I'm going to
fight for an ideal and possibly not walk away from it (because you know
the capitalist ain't gonna just look at us and go "well here ya
go. its all yours.") I definitely ain't gonna just turn over the
reigns to someone else after the hard parts been done.
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My sediments about the Leninist
"Vanguard" is the same. They are trying to convince everyone
that they are changed and won't be mean to anyone any more but it's just
a lie. They want to control not only what your needs are but what your
beliefs are. I'm religious which is my right.
Socialism is workers management of production. It
does not mean that everyone would equally put their efforts into society
nor would they receive equally from society. Socialism is not about sharing
in the poverty as non Leninist Communist and Anarchist believe. Socialism
won't have those who are filthy rich or those in severe poverty.
Socialism will have more of a social balance. As Mike wrote: socialism
isn't something that a government can do. It's something that a large
workers' association has to do. A successful political movement can get
the idea of socialism adopted as the will of the people, but that's all.
We are also discussing about civil government in a socialist society to
enact laws and enforce them.
Mike wrote:
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Quote:
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So why do
socialists need a political party? Because if there's a chance of
having a peaceful revolutionary change, that chance will be found in
the political process.
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Why would that be called a revolutionary change
when people voted for that change? I still look at as an
"evolutionary" since those changes come in increments and
become social norms.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
02 Jun 2007 12:20 am Post subject:
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I was 13 and in the 9th grade. On a rainy Friday
afternoon, some guy named Dave Searles who was in the 10th grade handed
me a four-page SLP leaflet entitled "War -- Why?", and he just
kept walking. I read it while I was leaning on the fence and waiting for
the bus to pull up to the school along Eliza Street. I was hooked.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
02 Jun 2007 12:37 am Post subject:
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The Greenman wrote:
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Why would that
be called a revolutionary change when people voted for that change? I
still look at as an "evolutionary" since those changes come
in increments and become social norms.
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People who weere influenced by De Leon use the word
"revolution" to mean when political or economic (especially
economic) relationships, who owns and controls what, change over to a
completely different basis. No matter how it happens, or how slowly.
Because of this use of the word, I've heard the abolition of slavery sometimes
called the 2nd American revolution, and the abolition of capitalism
called the 3rd.
***
"Whenever a change leaves the internal
mechanism untouched, we have reform; whenever the internal mechanism is
changed, we have revolution.... We socialists are not reformers; we are
revolutionists. We socialists do not propose to change forms. We care
nothing for forms. We want a change of the inside of the mechanism of
society, let the form take care of itself."
-- De Leon, in _Reform or Revolution_ (1896)
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Mailman
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Posted:
02 Jun 2007 01:01 am Post subject:
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I love this! I do agree w/ you mike on the usage of
revolution. Im also digging on the quote by De Leon. So if yall had a
select list of reading material that covered all the bases, what would it
be? Ive got all the time in the world and i love to read. Oh and by the
way, i dont think i could find anyone local that i could sit here and
b.s. on these topics with. I do appreciate it.
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The Greenman
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Posted:
02 Jun 2007 01:55 am Post subject:
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Mike wrote:
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Quote:
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People who
were influenced by De Leon use the word "revolution" to mean
when political or economic (especially economic) relationships, who
owns and controls what, change over to a completely different basis. No
matter how it happens, or how slowly. Because of this use of the word,
I've heard the abolition of slavery sometimes called the 2nd American
revolution, and the abolition of capitalism called the 3rd.
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I believe that the term evolution refers to changes
that occur over time while revolution is a sudden change.
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Quote:
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"Whenever
a change leaves the internal mechanism untouched, we have reform;
whenever the internal mechanism is changed, we have revolution.... We
socialists are not reformers; we are revolutionists. We socialists do
not propose to change forms. We care nothing for forms. We want a
change of the inside of the mechanism of society, let the form take
care of itself."
-- De Leon, in _Reform or Revolution_ (1896)
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I never wrote about reforms. We have to make
changes that are permanent and this would happen slowly. The idea is to
challenge the system to change it politically for workers to have common
ownership of production.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
02 Jun 2007 02:12 am Post subject:
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Covering all the bases, hmmm, we'll think of these as
few at a time. Dave can help answer that.
Offhand, these come to mind....
The SLP took four of De Leon's speeches and
packaged them as a thicker pamphlet called Socialist Landmarks.
They were considered basic. The four individual titles are Reform or
Revolution; What Means This Strike; The Burning Question of Trades
Unionism; Socialist Reconstruction of Society. I don't really know if
it's better to read an "original" something in old fashioned
language from 100 years ago, or whether something new would be better. I
personally just like the old historical stuff, but I don't really know
what's more understandable.
The pamphlet called As To Politics, De Leon
argued by mail with the people in the Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW) who said that a union is enough, a party is useless. These letters
were published in the newspaper De Leon edited, the Daily People,
then collected into the pamphlet.
Being a nostalgic old fart myself, I collected the
SLP leaflets that I grew up on in the 1960s: http://deleonism.org/leaflets.htm . They were all intended to
be introductions for new people, in the form of mini-essays, with wording
that may sound a bit old fashioned now. At at slp.org the link called
"statements" is their present idea of this, the leaflets for
newcomers. But I can't let go of the clutter from my own childhood :-)
You said you'll want to be able to answer other
people's objections. To do that you'll need to learn some of the economic
theory, but it's not difficult at all. It's a simple explanation of how
it happens that workers always get robbed where they work. We can talk
about that later. Why? Because people you talk to will object, "Hey,
how can they claim the workers are being robbed? The workers sign the
employment contract voluntarily!" Doesn't matter. It still ends up
with people who sit on their butts getting most of the wealth, and the
workers who produce all of it are getting only a small fraction. But
Marx's economic theory explains in simple terms why it always has to
happen that way, as long as capitalism exists.
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mikelepore
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mikelepore
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Posted:
02 Jun 2007 02:42 am Post subject:
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The Greenman wrote:
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that the term
evolution refers to changes that occur over time while revolution is a
sudden change
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I'm guessing the suddenness comes from the word
"revolution" as being related to the word "revolt",
as in "rebel". If the people rebel we would expect that
something is happening with some suddenness. It think De Leon was
thinking of the "revolution" as being related to the word
"revolve", as in "turn around", so he's using the
word to refer to society pointing itself in a different direction.
Interesting how these ideas, revolt and revolve, have common roots in
language.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
02 Jun 2007 02:53 am Post subject:
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The Greenman wrote:
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I never wrote
about reforms. We have to make changes that are permanent and this
would happen slowly. The idea is to challenge the system to change it
politically for workers to have common ownership of production.
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Please tell me more. I always thought that the slow
part would be in trying to get apathetic people to listen, trying to
persuade them to want change. I have always pictured it as hundreds of
years going by as we try to do just that much, but then when people
finally get organized they can estabish socialism within a few days. Is
that unrealistic?
***
(Speaking of being apathetic and escaping from
reality, my wife and I are taking our daughter to New York Yankees versus
Detroit Tigers in August. We live about 100 miles north of NYC.)
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davesearles
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davesearles
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Posted:
02 Jun 2007 01:53 pm Post subject:
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revolution/evolution
Mailman - John (Greenman) and Mike are familiar
with my technique of always identifying analogies. To me they are too
often a substitution for thought. And it seems that once someone give a
good analogy, that's all that one remembers is the analogy and not the
basic concept.
DeLeon once used an analogy of reform being like
taking a fucking poodle to a doggie salon, so for 100 years that's what
SLPers think of first when you say reform and so for 100 years (it seemed
like it anyway) the SLP was fucked up on the reform/revolution matter.
http://www.deleonism.org/cgi-bin/text.cgi?j=19081102
But then you really look at the DeLeon analogy and
what does he define as revolution? Answer - evolution, or what we
understand today as evolution.
getting back to evolution/revolution:
Perhaps it's from an ability to get right down to
the nub of things, or just shear laziness but the dave searles answer to
the evolution/revolution question is to not get caught up in it at all.
If we can think of current society as having a
basic characteristic of the means of wealth production as not being in
the complete control/ownership of the workers - to me that characteristic
is a "is or isn't" thing. Perhaps that's just the limitation of
my own intelligence but that's the way that I think it. To me that's the
(analogy alert) next step. (continuing analogy) Going from from here to
there to a society that does have complete control/ownership of the means
of wealth production by the workers.
We can do things and try to get the larger society
to do things that perhaps will aid in people's understanding of that
issue or need to go from this basic societal (analogy alert) structure to
the next. Perhaps this is what John you are talking about as evolutionary
changes.
And perhaps the revolution will be when the
structure is finally changed from this to the structure that we hope
comes next.
But the evolution/revolution nomenclature really
doesn't matter much to me as long as we advocate that the workers take
over the means of production and operate them for the workers.
In this "basic" change we also have to
look at a couple of things that necessarily will go along with it, or
seems to me would - that the current ownership of the means of wealth
production will simply be dissolved without compensation. To me this kind
of thing results from a societal revolution - the king's laws concerning
the colonies were simply abandoned in favor local more democratic
government - the ownership of human beings simply dissolved by the 13th
amendment and the Emancipation Proclamation.
In my own thoughts but don't advocate this usage
for anyone else I look at the US Supreme Court decisions as to racially
restrictive deed covenants, and Brown v. Topeka as revolutions. Perhaps
also the Vt. Supreme Court Baker decision which opened the doors to
recognition of same sex rights as human beings. So while I might think of
these things as revolutions - they have nothing or next to nothing to do
with the workers taking over and owning the means of production.
dave
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The Greenman
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Posted:
02 Jun 2007 10:48 pm Post subject:
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mikelepore wrote:
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The Greenman wrote:
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that the
term evolution refers to changes that occur over time while
revolution is a sudden change
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I'm guessing the suddenness comes from the word
"revolution" as being related to the word "revolt",
as in "rebel". If the people rebel we would expect that
something is happening with some suddenness. It think De Leon was
thinking of the "revolution" as being related to the word
"revolve", as in "turn around", so he's using the
word to refer to society pointing itself in a different direction.
Interesting how these ideas, revolt and revolve, have common roots in
language.
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Perhaps the word “metamorphosis” would be a better
term than evolution. We want society to change and that
change would come quick on one hand and slow on the other but the result
is transformation. I really don’t like the term
“revolution” since it conjures images of the USSR as the term
revolt would apply along with "dictatorship". I
do believe that those "Marxian" term need updating to reflect
current word usage. We don't say "bourgeoisie" to identify the
capitalist class nor "proletariat" to identify workers. We know
what those term mean but ordinary folk don't.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
03 Jun 2007 03:11 am Post subject:
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De Leon's phrase "socialist reconstruction"
may be better because it would be a process of rebuilding and restoring.
The word "resonstruction" is remembered in the U.S. in
connection with the southern states after 1865.
I don't have a good word for the way I think of
building socialism. I think it has to be about making a new administrative
system "offline", in parallel with the currently running
system, but disconnected all the while it's being assembled, and then put
it "online" when its ready. In a past writing I called this a
switch-over theory. I feel this way because of the thoroughness of the
change, with the whole corporate management chain being fired, the
currency being declared worthless, etc. Without offline preassembly of
the new system, I don't know how anyone would know what they're supposed
to do on the next morning.
Maybe the word "revolution" has the
weakness of falsely implying a conspiracy theory. It implies that the
capitalists are thinking "I will treat you workers like a mere tool,
and I will be master", and the workers are responding "We
slaves will rise up against you." I wonder if that conception is in
the imagination. These institutions that we live under grew out of old
medieval trade, and gradually a capitalism that once meant progress
turned into a capitalism that now hinders progress. It's probably not a
grand conspiracy by the "masters", just a set of roles that
workers and capitalists alike find themselves being born into. What
engineers call "a systems approach" may be helpful here.
Instead of demonizing the bad Scrooge capitalist, we could focus on how
the system isn't the best of all conceivable systems. This is a tough
call. We are really being treated like dirt. Sometimes I really do think
of it as the revolutionary slave army of Spartacus taking on a modern
form. I must admit that this pulls me in two opposite directions.
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davesearles
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Posted:
03 Jun 2007 10:09 am Post subject:
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It
seems reasonable that all may agree that Capitalism progresses in in full
Walmartization mode. The process described by Marx in chapt. IX of Wage
Labor & Capital below seems to be in full swing. Note Marx's use of
the word "revolutionized". So whatever we may call it, the
conditions that put more and more put workers in full operational control
of the means of production significantly advance, literally day by day.
++++++++++++++++++++
WE thus see how the method of production and the
means of production are
constantly enlarged, revolutionized, how division
of labor necessarily draws after it
greater division of labor, the employment of
machinery greater employment of
machinery, work upon a large scale work upon a
still greater scale. This is the law
that continually throws capitalist production out
of its old ruts and compels capital
to strain ever more the productive forces of labor
for the very reason that it has
already strained them—the
law that grants it no respite, and constantly shouts in
its ear: March! march!
This is no other law than that which, within the
periodical fluctuations of
commerce, necessarily adjusts the price of a
commodity to its cost of production.
No matter how powerful the means of production
which a capitalist may bring
into the field, competition will make their
adoption general; and from the moment
that they have been generally adopted, the sole
result of the greater productiveness
of his capital will be that he must furnish at the
same price, ten, twenty, one
hundred times as much as before. But since he must
find a market for, perhaps, a
thousand times as much, in order to outweigh the
lower selling price by the greater
quantity of the sales; since now a more extensive
sale is necessary not only to gain a
greater profit, but also in order to replace the
cost of production (the instrument of
production itself grows always more costly, as we
have seen), and since this more
extensive sale has become a question of life and
death not only for him, but also for
his rivals, the old struggle must begin again, and
it is all the more violent the more
powerful the means of production already invented
are. The division of labor and
the application of machinery will therefore take a
fresh start, and upon an even
greater scale.
Whatever be the power of the means of production
which are employed,
competition seeks to rob capital of the golden
fruits of this power by reducing the
price of commodities to the cost of production; in
the same measure in which
production is cheapened, i.e., in the same measure
in which more can be produced
with the same amount of labor, it compels by a law
which is irresistible a still
greater cheapening of production, the sale of ever
greater masses of product for
smaller prices. Thus the capitalist will have
gained nothing more by his efforts than
the obligation to furnish a greater product in the
same labor-time; in a word, more
difficult conditions for the profitable employment
of his capital. While competition,
therefore, constantly pursues him with its law of
the cost of production and turns
against himself every weapon that he forges against
his rivals, the capitalist
continually seeks to get the best of competition by
restlessly introducing further
subdivision of labor and new machines, which,
though more expensive, enable him
to produce more cheaply, instead of waiting until
the new machines shall have been
rendered obsolete by competition.
If we now conceive this feverish agitation as it
operates in the market of the
whole world, we shall be in a position to
comprehend how the growth, accumulation,
and concentration of capital bring in their train
an evermore detailed subdivision of
labor, an ever greater improvement of old machines,
and a constant application of
new machines—a process which
goes on uninterruptedly, with feverish haste, and
upon an evermore gigantic scale.
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