One Degree wrote:
@ckaihatsu , ‘hurrying the process’ has failed in every previous attempt. Global liberalism is the most successful attempt and we are seeing the beginnings of it’s end now. It is a cyclical mistake that we don’t learn from imo.
I am sure we won’t agree, but I enjoyed the exchange.
I basically mean that the clock is not on our side, regarding prospects for a worldwide 'upgrade' to socialism and socialist social relations.
I can appreciate your abundant concern with 'the social fabric', if I may, but I think that localist types like yourself don't get that such would happen 'automatically' (in the 'superstructure') once the 'base' is appropriately transformed
by collective workers control over social production.
Another way of putting this is that *businesses* today may be small or large, but the *customer's* experience (for the receipt of life-necessary goods and services, etc.) will be mostly-uniform no matter if the shop is mom-and-pop or a large transnational corporation. Likewise, in the *post*-capitalist context, people can certainly be provided-for by feasibly globally-reaching workers concerns (over various industries, for finished non-commodity products, for humane need).
If, *as individuals*, people can readily get their needs and wants met by a socialist material-economy, they would probably be much more inclined to *contribute* in some way back to that material collective economy, and also to use their spare time to commune with others, in the spirit of 'local community', if you like.
I think any regular revolutionary socialist will tend *not* to address matters of 'community' coffee- or bar-talk within the politics because it's generally understood as a 'given'. *Of course* people like to casually socialize, and would want to do so *even more* in a more relaxed, functioning world. But, paradoxically, the way to get there is *not* to practice-at-bar-community-culture, but rather to collectively make a world in which people would have the *free time* to do community things, as a matter of course rather than some kind of special weekend sign-up thing to squeeze in a few hours at some charitable tasks while dreading the coming of Monday.
Rancid wrote:
I know you're fucking around, but seriously. I'm all for socialistic stuff like socialized healthcare.
My point is, I don't buy that some sort of international workers socialism will work.
Could you elaborate on the latter part, Rancid? What would 'go wrong'?
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Rancid wrote:
I'm just saying, the best we can practically do today is to have socialism, or socialistic nations, that still compete/cooperate with each other on trade. Effectively capitalism between nation states. I don't really care about full socialism or full capitalism or whatever. It's what might practically work that matters to me.
ckaihatsu wrote:
What's your underlying *basis* for this assumption? You, like SSDR, are willing to *stop* revolutionary politics at the international level, and all based on what calculation / premise, exactly?
Rancid wrote:
When did I say I was willing or wanted to stop revolutionary politics at the international level? Why are you making shit up?
If you'll notice, I *asked* -- you made a statement that I followed-up-on. (Why leave international economics to capitalism, over nation-state entities, when such could be *revolutionized* as well as for *intra*-state matters.)
Rancid wrote:
Anyway, the "calculation/premise" is that people across cultures will simply not want to cooperate at this international level. People naturally think their culture/religion/etc is superior. They are completely willing to have their culture prevail at the expense of cooperation. For example, China will not be willing to put aside it's current global super power ambitions to help some poor worker in America, Africa, Latin America, etc. etc. No, they're after what they think is theirs. They're out to spread a hegemony that is favorable to them alone (much like the west has done post WWII). I'm picking China as an example because it's easiest to understand, but this will be true of just about any culture with influence on the planet.
Okay, this is a decent point about cultural 'inertia', if-you-will.
But what if various cultures of workers *do* want to cooperate at the international level? It happens *every day*, and there are rank-and-file-labor-union-types of networks that are in constant touch with each other, and are already doing labor-solidarity kinds of political work, today.
Your description sounds far more characteristic of *bourgeois nation-state* interests, propping up various yesteryear 'authentic' cultures for the sake of maintaining marketable group identities, for nationalism.
You're also describing *geopolitical* dynamics, which are rooted in capitalist nation-state rivalries.
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Rancid wrote:
Are you saying what we have today is full capitalism? Obviously it's not. Just as we haven't seen pure/true communism, we haven't see true/pure capitalism. Frankly, I don't care.
My overall stance is that some sort of mixed system would be best.
ckaihatsu wrote:
And what is this *based* on? What would be better about a 'mixed system', and how would it theoretically operate, according to you?
Rancid wrote:
Something that would take into account cultural differences and the natural inclination for different cultures to complete for starters. Hence, local socialism within a culture, and cross culture capitalism could possibly be a mix that might work in the near term. Ultimately, it's not clear what would really work. Hell humanity can't even agree on what metrics defines if a system "works."
Okay, I hear ya. *My* concern with the capitalist-international-ties thing is that such would still function on *capital*, and we've repeatedly seen the *problems* with such -- the Libor scandal immediately pops to mind:
Libor scandal exposes banks’ rigging of global rates
6 July 2012
Rotting in its own criminality, the capitalist financial system produces ever more powerful arguments for its expropriation and reconstitution under public ownership and democratic control.
The latest banking scandal, thus far focused on UK-based Barclays bank, goes to the heart of the global financial system. It provides a glimpse into the mechanisms by which a handful of giant banks rig the so-called “free market” to boost their profits and the fortunes of their executives and big investors. It is a process of economic plunder whose result is mass unemployment, poverty and ever increasing social inequality.
Barclays last week became the first of many big banks to admit to manipulating the most important benchmark for international interest rates, the London interbank offered rate (Libor). The daily Libor rate, which is supposed to measure the average cost of short-term loans between major banks, determines the interest rates for loans and investments that affect hundreds of millions of people around the world.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/07/pers-j06.html
So, at the *international* level capital and the policies regulating it, have no accountability because that's 'the top of the world' -- it's the highest of the financial hierarchy and the national governments themselves don't even reach that high, as to police it.
Rancid wrote:
My original point is that the level of international cooperation you are looking for just simply isn't practical in the current global culture. Humans are just too different and too self-interested.
You're describing typical social behavior within the context of alienated-individuated *capitalism*, but at the same time capitalism happens to bring wage-laborers *into contact* with one another, for the sake of capital's exploitation of labor-power at the workplace. It's *these*, rank-and-file connections, that contain the real-world potential for workers solidarity and more.
Rancid wrote:
Ultimately, to get what you're after is going to require MASSIVE cultural change. We would need a global mono-culture. This means most cultures on the planet will need to get wiped out. I don't think you can get people to just change their cultural norms/values/traditions in the name of international workers cooperation.
Forget about abolishing nation-states, you would need to abolish cultures.
Hmmmm, I'll have to disagree here -- like SSDR you're mixing-up culture with politics, and the two are *not* the same. Business culture, for example, long ago went multilingual in the reach for profits through colonizing non-Western countries and natural resources, and international *workers* have an intrinsic 'business interest' in collectivizing among themselves, though not for purposes of plunder, but rather for re-organizing and re-coordinating their own / our own labor power. Cultural matters could certainly continue at the same time, but it's a different 'realm' than *political* connections and (worker-type) issues.
SSDR wrote:
@ckaihatsu, Those are my political views, and my general views. You don't have to be interested in anyone's political views (if that's the case then there's no need for you to be on here since we all share our different political views). I don't sound desperate. You sound desperate for being manipulative and for making shit up.
Dude, *take a break* and don't be so *paranoid* -- I *can't* 'manipulate' you over a text-based system if you don't *want* to be manipulated. Remember, I'm *not* a Stalinist, and there's no base of power here, so I don't do 'palace intrigues'.
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SSDR wrote:
What makes you think that my politics won't have social services for the mentally ill? What causes mental illness is abuse, so the abusers would need to get punished. Child abusers, social worker abusers, care giver abusers, and criminals cause their victims to be mentally ill, so they would get punished.
ckaihatsu wrote:
This should have been your political position *upfront*, initially.
SSDR wrote:
Well the main cause of mental illness is child abuse and bullying. Since those things cause depression, anxiety, heart problems, paranoia, or even in extreme cases, schizophrenia. So punish all abusers to prevent and stop abuse.
https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/news/2017/stu ... later-life
Okay, I'm in agreement with you on this, and anything related, for the period of the socialist *workers state* (in its open class struggle with the bourgeoisie and capitalism) -- once the class division is ended humanity will be able to entirely pursue its own humane self interests, collectively, and any conceivable anti-social behavior at that time will confer no advantage then and so will 'wither away'.
SSDR wrote:
Stalinism is a type of socialism.
No, it's not -- this issue played-out a century ago:
The Left Opposition was a faction within the Bolshevik Party from 1923 to 1927, headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's illness and intensified with his death in January 1924. Originally, the battle lines were drawn between Trotsky and his supporters who signed The Declaration of 46 in October 1923, on the one hand, and a triumvirate (also known by its Russian name troika) of Comintern chairman Grigory Zinoviev, Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin and Politburo chairman Lev Kamenev on the other hand.
[T]rotsky founded the International Left Opposition in 1930. It was meant to be an opposition group within the Comintern, but members of the Comintern were immediately expelled as soon as they joined (or were suspected of joining) the ILO. The ILO therefore concluded that opposing Stalinism from within the communist organizations controlled by Stalin's supporters had become impossible, so new organizations had to be formed. In 1933, the ILO was renamed the International Communist League (ICL), which formed the basis of the Fourth International, founded in Paris in 1938.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Opposition
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SSDR wrote:
Some fascists are socialists,
No, they're not. They're not for the international working class.
SSDR wrote:
and some fascists are anti socialist.
*All* fascists are anti-socialistic because fascists defend the bourgeois nation-state, while socialists are for its *abolition*.
SSDR wrote:
Remember, fascism has socialist roots.
No, it doesn't:
What constitutes a definition of fascism and fascist governments has been a complicated and highly disputed subject concerning the exact nature of fascism and its core tenets debated amongst historians, political scientists, and other scholars since Benito Mussolini first used the term in 1915.
A significant number of scholars agree that a "fascist regime" is foremost an authoritarian form of government, although not all authoritarian regimes are fascist. Authoritarianism is thus a defining characteristic, but most scholars will say that more distinguishing traits are needed to make an authoritarian regime fascist.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]
Similarly, fascism as an ideology is also hard to define. Originally, it referred to a totalitarian political movement linked with corporatism which existed in Italy from 1922 to 1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism
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SSDR wrote:
And you are correct on how Nazis are NOT socialist.
SSDR wrote:
Yes full technological automation is the best desired goal for a socialist society. But that would also be the best in capitalism or in feudalism,
No, it would be *impossible* under capitalism or feudalism, for different reasons.
Under capitalism business investment is compelled to increasingly direct larger proportions of its investment capital to stay current with *technological* / infrastructure developments (meaning productive technologies), versus that expended on wages for labor.
[23] A Business Perspective on the Declining Rate of Profit
Any company that implemented full technological automation would soon go out of business because *every other* competitor could do the same and drive costs down to *zero* -- consider the availability of email accounts, for example, which today are *free* through several companies, even unaccompanied by advertising, due to the negligible hardware cost for such provisioning.
Also, on the horizon is automated *services*, which may still have a viable business plan due to it being a *service*, and not a tangible *good*, like Nuro --
https://nuro.aiFor tangible goods, we'll see if this domain is ever covered under capitalism by fully automated, fully non-labor productive processes, but I tend to doubt it. Consider 3D printing, for example, which has the potential capability / capacity of undercutting conventional *industrial production* altogether, adding to the ongoing declining rate of profit, overall. Already, in the technology's infancy, anyone with about $1000-$2000 can get *their own* 3D printer, production equipment that we'd typically be dependent on *factories* for the utilization-of.
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SSDR wrote:
so this reply in general has nothing to do with socialism, especially since that you claim that socialism could exist "prior to 1917" even though automated technology did not fully exist yet (and still doesn't as of 2019).
I've covered this point already -- for socialism the minimum would be *industrialization*, which *did* exist prior to 1917, while the maximum would be fully-automated industrialization, which *does* exist today (AI robots).
SSDR wrote:
Graffiti is ugly. Graffiti is social decay. And a strong military is needed to prevent Islamic, and neo-Nazi terrorism.
I tend to agree, and I think such would be covered by the *workers state*, as I asserted above for other things.
I supported U.S. intervention against ISIS at the time, though I think the U.S. should now leave Syria immediately because it no longer has significant ISIS targets.
SSDR wrote:
"You're too provocative and you're idealizing presumed conditions of crime, post-capitalism, without describing a sufficient social basis for such. That's why I call you an 'alarmist'." Rape can happen anywhere, rape has no capitalist motives.
Rape is often done for reasons of *punishment*, though, which is itself an act of petty, desperate *power*. After the class divide has been overthrown no one would have any more individual 'power' than anyone else and would definitely *not* benefit from the use of such personal violence due to revolutionized, mass-empowering prevailing progressive social norms that would be far more commonly attentive to the *prevention* of such violence, even before it happens.
SSDR wrote:
"No, you're not because up until this statement you've been touting state-collectivist / Stalinistic politics as being 'socialism', when it's *not*." So you want some drunk, ignorant bastards to lead a socialist society? You want some stupid uneducated fools who need religion to motivate them to be good to determine the conditions of society?
I'll suggest that the correct and most-appropriate term for what you're indicating is 'vanguard', as in a worker's vanguard is empirically the most politically advanced collection of revolutionary workers that happens to exist at any given moment. Derivatives would be a more-formally-organized 'vanguard party', and a 'workers state' for the prosecution and suppression of the bourgeois elite in overall conditions of open class warfare.
SSDR wrote:
I'm "obsessed" with crime because CRIME IS BAD and that crime is an enemy to socialism.
Fair enough, but keep in mind that much crime is currently levelled against property and wealth, in unorganized and organized ways, so this means that 'crime' is cross-class until you *define* it as this-or-that, *specifically*.
SSDR wrote:
Yes the Antifa fought against fascists and neo Nazis, but the Antifa are not socialists, they are GHETTO anarchists.
I don't quite agree with your disparaging characterization -- if you're going to shift to be a truly internationalist socialist then you would necessarily have to become more solidly anti-fascist.
SSDR wrote:
"Nope." Yeah you are an anarchist for strongly defending the anarchist Antifa.
No -- you're playing identity politics and *overgeneralizing* my politics based on a single united-front *strategy* / tactic with anarchists who are Antifa. Again, support for Antifa doesn't automatically make one an anarchist -- it's a limited-scope *strategy* or tactic based on a commonality of politics across the revolutionary-leftist spectrum, to address certain real-world developments, like an upsurge of fascist organizing and public displays of such.
SSDR wrote:
"What's your underlying *basis* for this assumption? You, like SSDR, are willing to *stop* revolutionary politics at the international level, and all based on what calculation / premise, exactly" In order for a pure global society to exist, there needs to only have one global culture, and you can't have pro rapists mix with anti rapists. Muslims support rape, while the West is against rape. Good luck mixing with that you fucking dumbass.
You've said that you support *social services*, so maybe you should apply that politics *here*, to *this* situation, instead of merely ranting about cultural demographics that you don't like.
I *don't* agree that socialism at the global scale requires a corresponding, like *culture* as well -- I'm not a Maoist.
You should strive to understand 'base-and-superstructure', as I've covered already.
One Degree wrote:
My neighbor was a multimillionaire inventor whose kids sold pumpkins and apples from his farm. No, I don’t have a picture on my iPad.
I think they sell iPads with that kind of thing already loaded-on.... (heh)
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One Degree wrote:
So my life experience is invalid, but yours isn’t? This is why international socialism must be authoritarian in reality. You simply disregard the fact not everyone shares your view of reality. You cross it off as ‘chatting shit’ to justify your authoritarianism. Socialism is all about what everyone I want.
You have no grounds to dismiss authoritarianism so out-of-hand -- please recall that authoritarian methods are just that: methods, or *means*, and such doesn't automatically have any political content of its *own*.
Using means-and-ends we can't ignore what the *ends* are at-hand -- authoritarianism for *what*? If the ends are justified then the means can be practically *anything*, as long as it helps society to realize its common interests, which, specifically, is for the overthrow of the class divide.
One Degree wrote:
Why don’t you just look at the posters with ‘announced wealth’ and those with ‘announced worker status’ and tell me how well it matches your textbook definition. Workers, on here, are seldom socialist. Workers are arguing against you. We have ‘textbook socialist’ who will cry their eyes out if anyone actually comes for their money. They are preaching equality from excess comfort.
No, this formulation is *identity politics*. You're erroneously conflating someone's background with what their stated politics are.
One Degree wrote:
How are you going to change the basis without changing communities which are the basis of civilization.
Your politics, OD, are, unfortunately, based on *geography* ('community'), and, as such, aren't *substantive*.
A class analysis looks to how any given person procures the means for their life and living, and, on the whole, looks to how society in general disposes of its material surplus, as Stardust already mentioned:
Stardust wrote:
What defines a particular social class, is its position in relation with the means of mass production and the distribution of wealth. Therefore, in each individual case, we need to look into both factors of this equation.
EDIT:
One Degree wrote:
The only other way is authoritarianism (centralization and globalization). It will fail and it is the cause of the problems you mention.
You're being too *inflexible* regarding means-and-ends, or 'strategies' and 'tactics', for a given political principle or goal.