People Q and A s

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davesearles

Joined: 01 Feb 2005
Posts: 329
Location: Vermont

Posted: 29 May 2007 11:05 am Post subject: People Q and A s

of http://www.deleonism.org/cgi-bin/text.cgi?j=91032302 Mike wrote: "Will full-time housewives be represented in the socialist industrial union government?" IMO, in their answer they seem do everything they can think of to procrastinate answering it. For example, they claim that the question "assumes that there will be substantial numbers of 'full-time housewives' in socialist society....", which is plain wrong -- the question is perfectly valid even if even one such person exists, and the questioner is justifiably concerned that this one or more individuals will be represented in what is purported to be a democracy. Then they get into all sort of totally irrelevant discussion of domestic relationships, etc. I think the plain truth is that the party has no prepared answer about this, because SIU representation as hitherto conceived is insufficiently democratic in structure. dave writes: I do think that the answer was fairly if not adequately addressed. I will put in my two cents. I will answer emphatically no. Your home is YOUR home. You can invite anyone in and create any kind of a domestic relationship/division of labor/whatever that you and the other person(s) are you yourselves capable of. Your personal relationship has NOTHING to do with the social relationship of human to the means of social wealth production. Do you want to have a kitchen garden where you can get fresh veggies and herbs only picked a minute ago. Great. Society will provide you with all of the technical support that you desire. The latest gadgetry will be available perhaps gratis on loan from the community - but you going out and pulling the weeds in your own garden IS NOT a part of the social industrial process. You do, however, get all the democracy that you can stand in the determinations as to how often you should go out and pull those weeds. Same thing with your bed in your home. House keepers in establishments for transients WOULD be part of the SIU. I suppose a person could live entirely in a hotel as you see in the movies sometimes. (remember the movie Dinner at Eight) but I imagine that it would be expected that one contribute back to society an equivalent amount of labor power in compensation for the accomodations, housekeeping, laundry and meals. dave (Dinner at Eight is one of my favorite movies - it has one of the greatest lines delivered by one of the early film greats. Marie Dresser.)

mikelepore
Site Admin

Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 438

Posted: 29 May 2007 03:48 pm Post subject:

Generally industry is about a large number of people cooperating on a common plan, toward a common goal. It's as a broad society that we need production, so its as a society we need to have specific places and plans for doing that. It's defined partially by what it excludes - the collective activity is in contrast to whatever isn't collective activity. There must be another part of life that is personal, and there we have personal goals and plans, not collective ones. The home and family are mainly personal. I think this makes it even more obvious that people in a socialist society need both political and industrial kinds of representation. Political opinion is relevant to the home or anywhere else because it's attached to the person's whole mind and body. Only some of us need to be represented at the meeting which will decide what kind of machine will be used to grind wheat into flour, but all of us need to be represented at the meeting where a policy about a moral issue will be formulated.

mikelepore
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Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 438

Posted: 29 May 2007 04:11 pm Post subject:

I hope the issue of democratic representation can be kept separate from the issue of compensation. I said that the homemaker doesn't need representation on an inudstry's board of directors, but does need political representation, and as an individual, not as a homemaker. What about compensation for the work by means of incomes? I think it would be illogical to compensate people for housework. This is because every kind of compensated labor that doesn't put material goods into society's inventory would have to be a kind of overhead or tax on the labor-time-prices of the material goods in the stores. The nurse and the farmer both get incomes, but the products of the farmer are tagged with labor voucher units, while the products of the nurse are not. This means that some part of the labor-price of the farm produce is effectively a tax to pay for the nursing. What has this got to do with personal house care? The point is that everyone performs care of the house and family. If any type of work which everyone does were to be compensated with labor vouchers, then it would be a zero-sum redistribution. As I tried to explain this point to others in the WSM forum in December of 2005: > To compensate this kind of work would be like > a club charging every member one dollar in dues > to raise the funds to give each member one dollar.

davesearles

Joined: 01 Feb 2005
Posts: 329
Location: Vermont

Posted: 29 May 2007 11:19 pm Post subject:

no compensation no representation in the SIU itself. No doubt however the SIU will mandate certain democratic bodies for various duties - PERHAPS a local schol board although personally I have a very hard time with professional educators being almost the exclusive formal education providers. A local flora and fauna bord to keep track of local species. I don't what all else. But for all of these bodies and ones similar, they should be democratically selected with voting open to all.

mikelepore
Site Admin

Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 438

Posted: 30 May 2007 12:40 am Post subject:

Maybe we oughta ask what the point of worker control is. If a job is skilled to the point that other people don't even understand what the issues are, the workers in that field are the only ones fit to make the decisions, and, if the decision power is to be delegated, the workers are the only ones fit to select those delegates. Say it's a chemical factory. The people of the city or society are not technically fit to vote on "should we replace the hydrochloric acid with hydrofluoric acid", and, furthermore, the people of the city or society aren't fit to identify a panel of experts that the quesiton could be delegated to. But who are qualified to do those things? The workers in that industry. Now lets look at an issue that the people of the community have opinions about. The school's new policy of teaching the details about human sexual reproduction in 6th grade. Understanding the technical details isn;t the issue in detemrining whose decision it out to be. This isn't a decision that a needs to be made by someone who understand the chemistry of hormones. We can see an anomaly here. Education is an industry. We want workers' control of their own industry. But some parents don't want their 6th grade children to see that sex video in school. This underscores the need for a hierarchy of powers. Just as today, the federal government is a higher power than the states, the socialist system will need to have the whole community, politically represented, as a higher power than a workers' association. The workers' association manages itself by default, and the political body can override.

davesearles

Joined: 01 Feb 2005
Posts: 329
Location: Vermont

Posted: 30 May 2007 11:48 am Post subject:

Mike wrote: If a job is skilled to the point that other people don't even understand what the issues are, the workers in that field are the only ones fit to make the decisions, and, if the decision power is to be delegated, the workers are the only ones fit to select those delegates. Say it's a chemical factory. The people of the city or society are not technically fit to vote on "should we replace the hydrochloric acid with hydrofluoric acid", and, furthermore, the people of the city or society aren't fit to identify a panel of experts that the quesiton could be delegated to. But who are qualified to do those things? The workers in that industry. dave writes: I wouldn't give that answer - who knows, they or at least some of them might be fit. That doesn't qualify them to decide anymore than if you were up on your politics of Vermont to the point where you were more fit than most to make an intelligent vote in one of our elections. Perhaps, that they don't meet the qulification to have a decsion would be better. Mike writes: Now lets look at an issue that the people of the community have opinions about. The school's new policy of teaching the details about human sexual reproduction in 6th grade. Understanding the technical details isn;t the issue in detemrining whose decision it out to be. This isn't a decision that a needs to be made by someone who understand the chemistry of hormones. We can see an anomaly here. Education is an industry. We want workers' control of their own industry. But some parents don't want their 6th grade children to see that sex video in school. This underscores the need for a hierarchy of powers. Just as today, the federal government is a higher power than the states, the socialist system will need to have the whole community, politically represented, as a higher power than a workers' association. The workers' association manages itself by default, and the political body can override. dave writes: Damned good point. Education is an industry. And I think too much so, espeicially education at the pre-adult levels. The question also brings up the matter that teachers are not independent actors to the clay that they mould anymore than a worker dealing with atomic matter is independent of community concerns, or a mineral extraction worker. Who was it, Mao? that said that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Without getting into the why or wherefore of the Mao statement, to us it seems undeniable that political power (polis - greek for city) grows or flows from the ability to provide for material needs to survive or at least to live well of the members of the polis, workers included.

mikelepore
Site Admin

Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 438

Posted: 31 May 2007 05:18 am Post subject:

Should parents and teachers share the authority to control the educational system? School rules are a pain in the ass. There's a rule here that children can't carry medication. When my kids decide to go to school with a borderline intensity of a headache, I tell them it's okay with me if they want to hide some tylenol in their backpacks. Who is this "they" out there, who gets to make rules for my kids to live by?

mikelepore
Site Admin

Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 438

Posted: 31 May 2007 05:28 am Post subject:

I'm one of the very few socialists that I have ever seen who, when asked "how will this be done in a socialist system?", replies: I don't know what WILL be done, but since I will get one vote like anyone else, I'll am telling you how I would vote for it to be done. That must be hard for many socialists to understand. When I pull that in the WSM forum, they don't know what I'm doing. They seem to recognize two possible answer to "how will this be done in a socialist system": either the most general platitude like "common ownership in the interest of all", or that guy's dictatorial prescription of a blueprint. They don't see a place for my "this surely is a specific blueprint, but it's only me telling you what my one-person's-vote would go to." SLP, pretty much the same problem.

davesearles

Joined: 01 Feb 2005
Posts: 329
Location: Vermont

Posted: 31 May 2007 11:17 am Post subject:

Presently the industry/polity interface with education of minors is more problematic than it would be under socialism ( I hope ) Really it is a matter of industry/individual interface. Presently the public education system is usually the largest employer in most small communities, and if you take it state by state its effect is huge. What I have run up against is that teachers/administrators believe that they are "professionals" and therefore are entitled to some great degree of deference by parents. I hope that in the future education of minors will be a more informal affair, more of providing support and encouragement to those who desire it, but for children with severe disabilities that total community support and commitment will be available.

davesearles

Joined: 01 Feb 2005
Posts: 329
Location: Vermont

Posted: 08 Jun 2007 03:58 pm Post subject:

http://www.deleonism.org/cgi-bin/text.cgi?j=19131108 Read the above DeLeon editorial which was written in the format of a Q. & A. According to DeLeon The People wrote articles in favor of women's sufferage and non-reform devices such as referendum and recall BUT NO the SLP would not have as a plank on it's platform the either of these measures ought to be adopted. This is another example where your own metaphor controls you. If you saw what you advocate as planks with which to build a platform you might choose one set of subject matter and reject others, not becuase you disagree with them but becuase they don't fit well with the plank and platform analogy.

mikelepore
Site Admin

Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 438

Posted: 08 Jun 2007 04:36 pm Post subject:

The SLP, in De Leon's time and in our own time, could benefit from a bit more imaginativeness in selecting the words that are available when discussing reforms. De Leon wrote there, "Why, then, does not the SLP insert the recall in its platform? For the same reason that it does not insert woman suffrage-that is, for the reason that, in advocating either, the SLP appreciates the need of warning against false expectations concerning them." Surely, they could find an eloquent way to say something like this: If one of our candidates does get elected to Congress, there will be occasions when reform bills, introduced not by socialists but by liberals who specialize in reforms only, will come our way for either a yes or no vote. When someone else's reform bill comes our way calling for a vote, whether it's a democracy issue like the suffrage or an economic issue like the minimum wage, only three available choices will be possible: yes, no and abstain. We will apply either a yes or no vote according to whatever benefits the working class, even if it's a very small or temporary benefit. However, when we declare what goals and principles we believe in, in our platform, we don't get distracted by discussing a hundred possible reforms that might benefit the working class in a very small or temporary way. Instead, in our platform, we focus on our main message about establishing a wholely new social system. Couldn't the party's writers ever think of an effective way to say that? The leaflets, pamphlets and speeches leave many people with the impression that the party actively opposes any reform. As Groucho sings in Duck Soup, "Whatever it is, I'm against it. No matter what it is, or who commenced it, I'm against it."

davesearles

Joined: 01 Feb 2005
Posts: 329
Location: Vermont

Posted: 08 Jun 2007 04:52 pm Post subject:

Perhaps if the SLP had survived the 1980s and with the internet breaking down a lot of the communication bug a boos regardless of Party stricture, (analogy alert) some air could have blown through. It didn't happen, R.I.P.

mikelepore
Site Admin

Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 438

Posted: 08 Jun 2007 04:54 pm Post subject:

The SLP needs to clarify its own thinking about issues that have to be addressed even after the hearer has already been persuaded of the need for collective ownership of industry. Mainly in the beginning of the 20th century, both the SLP and the SP had members who were all on board about social ownership of the industries but also found ways to mix this with the belief that a woman's place is in the kitchen. The SP, but not the SLP, as far as I know, even had a southern branches that called for a "socialism" with racial segregation. Clearly, then there are some issues that are orthogonal to the need for social ownership of industry, issues that must be addressed even if all of humanity were already prepared to adopt social ownership. Free speech, equal suffrage, civil liberties, these are issues of that kind. Even if we had social ownership of indutry tomorrow morning, we would still have to have public arguments about these things. That's why the suffrage and recall and civil liberties should be in a socialist platform. It's not because they aren't reforms. They ARE reforms. They should be in the platform because they aren't reforms OF CAPITALISM. They are reforms to our understanding of liberty and democracy, which we can support without any compromise to our principle that we won't propose reforms to the way in which economic slavery is implemented.

davesearles

Joined: 01 Feb 2005
Posts: 329
Location: Vermont

Posted: 08 Jun 2007 08:45 pm Post subject:

Mike wrote: ... Free speech, equal suffrage, civil liberties, these are issues of that kind. Even if we had social ownership of indutry tomorrow morning, we would still have to have public arguments about these things. dave writes: That is bullshit Mike and you know it.

mikelepore
Site Admin

Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 438

Posted: 09 Jun 2007 02:56 am Post subject:

Good argument you offered there, Dave. So carefully developed from premises and facts to the final conclusions. !! :lol: !! :lol: !! :lol: !!