[ckaihatsu]

And what is Marxism? What is the socio-economic foundation for the Marxist ideology? Excuse me for posting this a second time but it so hits the mark

https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ8ErcWRjCs

This is Eton the top school in Britain a bye word for privilege, yet its probably produced more Marxists than any other school in Britain. There are two other words that are bywords for privilege, Oxford and Cambridge. Guy Burgess the central character of the above film goes on to Cambridge. For centuries Oxford and Cambridge were the unchallenged top universities in Britain, yet again these bastions of privilege have almost certainly produced more Marxists than any other colleges in Britain. Its time to face reality Marxism is an ideology of the educational elite. Its not the only ideology of the educational elite but it is a massively important one.

The history of Marxism is the history of Middle and upper class intellectuals accusing each other of being Petit Bourgeois. Marxism is dead! Long live Marxism! By going Cultural, throwing the working class into the dustbin of history and by making an alliance with the Pharmaceutical-Sickness Industrial complex and the Big Tech -Monopoly -Surveillance Industrial Complex. Marxism is back, bigger and badder than ever before.

Jesus, Rich, just say 'Left' like everybody else. Thanks.

[ckaihatsu]

Waiting-by-the-phone, here, ingliz....


x D

[ingliz]

So who gets [what]

All industrial property is to be nationalised without compensation.

Objections to use

Only your preferred option. As Cooperativism makes 'little' capitalists, we can throw that out.

Utilities

All utilities are to be nationalised without compensation.

Broadcast, print, and online media

All are to be nationalised without compensation.

Housing

People can keep their houses until death, and then they revert to the state and can be allocated according to need.

Pleasure domes etc., etc. I can't be arsed, but something along the lines of 'All are to be nationalised without compensation'.

[ckaihatsu]

All industrial property is to be nationalised without compensation.

Objections to use

Only your preferred option. As Cooperativism makes 'little' capitalists, we can throw that out.

Utilities

All utilities are to be nationalised without compensation.

Broadcast, print, and online media

All are to be nationalised without compensation.

Housing

People can keep their houses until death, and then they revert to the state and can be allocated according to need.

Pleasure domes etc., etc. I can't be arsed, but something along the lines of 'All are to be nationalised without compensation'.

My 'cooperativism', as you put it, is for a specific reason, the *standardization* of socially-necessary social labor-effort, by the hour, times a hazard / difficulty / distastefulness *multiplier*, socially determined.

The reason for this 'labor credits' approach is *particularly* to gauge post-capitalist liberated-labor-efforts, without any resorting / backsliding to *markets*. I'll be glad to elaborate.

No contentions overall.

[ckaihatsu]

-> What's wrong with a 'One Big Commune' approach?

The absolutely *biggest* issue / question within the broad revolutionary 'tent' is that of centralization versus decentralization -- many are distrustful of *any* degree of centralization, and understandably so, since centralization, even at a modest, relatively-local scale, objectively implies some kind of *handling* of emergent social production, even if done in the purest bottom-up way by the actual workers themselves, collectively, as a social-component *addition* to their regular, productive work efforts.

So, even if relatively *decentralized*, the question remains: Who decides? As a test, how would just a *small-scale* bottom-up 'centralization' political process work, to 'funnel' the various positions of hundreds and thousands of local liberated laborers into a single *determining* policy that covers and mobilizes those same various workers collectively and consistently?

For example let's take a relatively uncontroversial social issue, that of child labor, to ask the policy question of 'Who should be considered a worker?' What would a self-liberated society do about the starting age for participation in the workforce?

The localist-communal response is 'Let each commune decide for itself'. But, if done this way, there's no *consistency* over social policy. One commune might say 'age 21', but a *neighboring* commune might say 'age 18', or even 'age 16'. How can this social policy be *centralized* so that it's *uniform* and non-dodgable? The local-communal / decentralized approach is obviously too *inconsistent* and 'patchwork' to be used appropriately, so we're already seeing, with just one critical social issue, that a *globally centralized* standard policy is required if society is to be truly 'egalitarian', with no loopholes or double-standards from one locality to the next.

And, scaling upward, 'One Big Commune' only *begs* the question -- can every single person of 7+ billion worldwide really be treated *identically* with their work efforts for the social good? No, because not all work roles *are* the same, though they may all be 'socially-necessary' (requested by *someone* for humane ends). It's only fairly recently that, through the benefits of online discussion, I devised the following generic 'scenario', or universal issue of any political economy:


[T]he layout of *work roles* would be the 'bottom' of 'top-down' (though collectivized) social planning, and would be the 'top' of 'bottom-up' processes like individual self-determination.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/threads/19...29#post2879529

Under the current 'market' mode-of-production paradigm it's *profit-making* that drives material production, but only at the expense of *systematically* exploiting labor and labor-power. Also, since the process is 'hands-off', it's effectively a runaway train -- the dynamic of 'primitive accumulation of capital' *never* stops, and is constantly being added-to, regardless of whether there is *enough* capital already accumulated, through the private expropriation of surplus labor value.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201211050 ... ?p=2889338

[Unthinking Majority]

When people are arrested for crimes, they are being punished for harm they already committed. The police are not stopping the crime or protecting anyone.

So even if people get arrested, police still do not prevent crime or harm, nor do they protect people.

Well cops can't be everywhere at once. So by the time a crime is committed the cops often arrive too late to prevent it, so they investigate, gather evidence, question witnesses, and charge a likely suspect and have a trial. Government creates disincentive for breaking the law because you'll be arrested by cops, put on trial, and go to jail if found guilty.

There were many governments in the Americas.

Yes, not much different than now. Because anarchy creates similar dynamics everywhere: large groups of people banding together with common interests into a bloc (polity) for leverage and protection, and creating alliances with other polities with common interests for protection and trade while defending against enemy polities who have conflicting interests. People outside of any polity who try to live and survive on their own are vulnerable to attack my these groups, it's a numbers name based on power.

The same dynamic formed in Europe, the Americas, Africa and anywhere large numbers of people inhabit.

By this logic, you are arguing that there is currently anarchy in the Americas.

Between countries, yes. There's no global government, or "South American government", so any country can invade any other if they're powerful enough with no legal punishment because there's no global police, unless the instigator loses the war and their politicians are captured and put on international trial. The UN attempts to bring some rules and law and order to the international realm in order to mimic government and create more conditions for peace and cooperation & disincentives for breaking international law to prevent another WWI and WWII.

Like Canada and the UsA, Indigenous nations prior to colonialism had treaties and border agreements and other things that kept the peace a lot of the time.

Yes. Just like the world today. They had war, peace, alliances, and colonial empires (Aztecs, Incas) that conquered, raped, pillaged. The typical result of anarchy.

I think what's more important than anarchy is people feeling they have self-determination, freedom (unless it harms others), and control over their own lives. I think more local government control and less central government control is good. Different groups can live how they want and a person's vote has more power.

[ckaihatsu]

Between countries, yes. There's no global government, or "South American government", so any country can invade any other if they're powerful enough with no legal punishment because there's no global police, unless the instigator loses the war and their politicians are captured and put on international trial. The UN attempts to bring some rules and law and order to the international realm in order to mimic government and create more conditions for peace and cooperation & disincentives for breaking international law to prevent another WWI and WWII.

The Cold War

The ‘Big Three’ powers celebrated their victory over Germany and Japan by establishing a new international organisation, the United Nations. Its founding conference in San Francisco in May 1945 promised the peoples of the world a new order of peace and cooperation which would vanquish war forever. It was claimed that this was going to be very different from its inter-war predecessor, the League of Nations, which had not been able to do anything to stop the Second World War. The claim struck a chord among people who had suffered and fought for what they genuinely thought was going to be a better world.

However, the ‘failure’ of the League of Nations had not been accidental—it followed from an intrinsic fault. It was set up by the victorious powers after 1918 as part of the Treaty of Versailles by which they parcelled out the world among themselves. Lenin described it as a ‘thieves’ kitchen’—and, as the saying goes, ‘thieves fall out’. The United Nations was no different, even if it had a ‘soup kitchen’ annexe in Geneva (comprising the children’s fund UNICEF, the World Health Organisation, and so on). Decision-making lay with four permanent Security Council members264—Britain, the US, France and Russia—and between them these dominated, oppressed and exploited the rest of the world.

They were already falling out behind the scenes by the time of San Francisco.

Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 543

---

Like Canada and the UsA, Indigenous nations prior to colonialism had treaties and border agreements and other things that kept the peace a lot of the time.

Yes. Just like the world today. They had war, peace, alliances, and colonial empires (Aztecs, Incas) that conquered, raped, pillaged. The typical result of anarchy.

I think what's more important than anarchy is people feeling they have self-determination, freedom (unless it harms others), and control over their own lives. I think more local government control and less central government control is good. Different groups can live how they want and a person's vote has more power.

Or -- gasp -- *no* government control, ultimately, since the workers of the world don't empirically require it.

Is the 'middleman layer' of capital and capitalists *really* necessary anymore, here in the era of Big Data -- nothing's *materially* or *logistically* impossible anymore. Communism is all about free-access and direct-distribution. No 'invisible hand' to feed.

[Morgan Le Fey]

Ingliz- Because I don't want it, and we don't need it.

If your socialism is just going to recreate the factories and working conditions then it's no better than the Capitalism we both say we want gone.

If you think you're going to take the Capitalists without major destruction...

Well I think you're as silly as you think I am.



All Good though. You will still purge the bourgeoisie. You know you will.

We may or may not as dual power principles eliminate "the need" to purge anyone.

I stand by that. I don't believe a vanguard will ever give up power, and I don't believe MLs are ever very socially open.

Your stance that we can only be petit-bourgeoisie is just stubbornness. I'm far poorer than you are, and have been for a long time. You wanna call poor Anarchists bougie for living their politics, fine by me, but I can't be both rich and poor honey.

Your rules are too binding, and your sensibilities too rigid. Like all ML's tend to be.

You never commented on James Masen. As far a I can tell NO Communists have done anything at all to stop the Nazis.

We put our asses on the line in the street.

It's the Communist fear of action and willingness to talk everything to death that is the real petit-bourgeoisie position. Do nothing, let the Capitalists win by default (Unless its your grand Vanguard, then its Total War).

Should we get into incomes in the Capitalism we both presumably live in before annointing who is bougie and who is not, ingliz?

[Potemkin]

You never commented on James Masen.

James Mason? That clown? He’s not worthy of being commented on, by anyone.

As far a I can tell NO Communists have done anything at all to stop the Nazis.

I seem to recall that the Communists in the Soviet Union had something to do with stopping the European Nazis of the 1930s and 40s. You know, the Nazis who actually mattered, who actually conquered nations, genocided ethnic minorities, and waged total war. Not clowns like James Mason.

[ckaihatsu]

I think there *does* need to be some discussion around these intra-revolutionary issues of vision and direction, for the camp overall, in general.

I'll throw out the following as a tool for discussion -- it has the custom components of 'global syndicalist currency' (workers internal currency), and 'labor credits' (workers internal efforts), but maybe it's a *starting point*:


[7] Syndicalism-Socialism-Communism Transition Diagram

Spoiler: show

[ckaihatsu]

standardization

---

Btw, additionally, I have a standing critique of the labor-chit-type 'labor club membership' approach, for *material-matchup* reasons. Here's from a past thread:

His [Robinson Crusoe's] stock-book contains a catalogue of the various objects he possesses, of the various operations necessary for their production, and finally, of the labour-time that specific quantities of these products have on average cost him.


We shall assume, but only for the sake of a parallel with the production of commodities, that the share of each individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour-time.

Okay, but there's no guarantee of quantities adding-up, inventory-wise, on the whole -- just *saying* 'rewards-for-labor-[time]' doesn't necessarily mean that quantities produced will properly correspond to materials consumed, because quantities-produced is apples-and-oranges in comparison to quantities-consumed, since workers individually produce at different rates, over different items, than they consume-at.

viewtopic.php?p=15172107#p15172107

And:


Again, though, I'm not taking issue with people's own varying *work* abilities, and the varying individualized *compensation*, per individual, indexed to the overall average rate of socially-necessary productivity, per work role, per hour -- what I'm finding lacking, technically-speaking, is what the most fundamental, key-indexing factor / variable is to be. With all labor notes / labor vouchers / labor chit proposals, it's work-role time (hours), indexed to *other* work-role time (hours), and I'm saying that, technically, that's *problematic*, because people are still being incentivized *individually*, with labor notes, while there's an overarching socio-political political interest in collective *egalitarianism*, for all rates of productivity, to the common good, to be equivalent (per work role, per hour of work).

In other words the *politics* of collectivism is lacking and taking a hit if the post-capitalist political economy isn't taking per-hour varying *productivity* into account, which these conventional labor-notes-type proposals / frameworks *don't*.

To be stark, if I work at the factory for 8 hours doing socially necessary work that produces 1,000,000 widgets, while the next person does 8 hours of the same but only produces 800,000 widgets, and we both get the same compensation, of an 8-hours-note, this is *not* equal productivity to *the collective*.

There would be a macro-level (socio-political) *societal* interest in all 8-hour-notes being issued to workers for work done with the same *productivity* resulting. Why should one person be off by 200,000 units compared to someone else, for the same compensation *from* the social commons?

viewtopic.php?p=15171952#p15171952

Here's another treatment of the same 'totality' dynamic, incidentally:


Pies Must Line Up

Spoiler: show

viewtopic.php?p=15254042#p15254042

[ckaihatsu]

TLDR: The post-capitalist egalitarian social ethos *requires* that the constellations of work roles be socio-politically formally *ratioed*, as in an index (from work-role exit surveys, in the 'labor credits' model), since all work roles *aren't* materially identical (real-world). This is my standing treatment.

For the sake of argument, if this index of work roles / ratios only existed *on paper*, it would be *Stalinism*, because 'paper' implies 'official copy on a desk in a bureaucrat's office'.

Fortunately the administrative-type technology of our times *rocks* and we're *overempowered* in many ways just with *email* alone -- hence here-we-are, politics, whatever.

So no standing bureaucracy empirically required, mass proletarian collective co-administration on wikis, even the circulation of 'labor credits' to realize emergent collective self-organizing qualities in and on the physical / material world.

Also, *zero* labor credits could be used, case-by-case, since the baseline is the communist gift economy.


labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'

Spoiler: show

https://web.archive.org/web/20201211050 ... ?p=2889338


Emergent Central Planning

Spoiler: show

[Pants-of-dog]

Well cops can't be everywhere at once. So by the time a crime is committed the cops often arrive too late to prevent it, so they investigate, gather evidence, question witnesses, and charge a likely suspect and have a trial.

Exactly. And this is why police and military do nothing to help or save people nor function as enforcers of any morality.

Government creates disincentive for breaking the law because you'll be arrested by cops, put on trial, and go to jail if found guilty.
[

I know that is the theory.

I am not sure it is actually accurate.

Yes. Just like the world today.

If we see international affairs as happening in an anarchic community, then please note that this arrangement has resulted in most countries observing peace most of the time.

[ckaihatsu]

constellations of work roles

---

[T]he layout of *work roles* would be the 'bottom' of 'top-down' (though collectivized) social planning, and would be the 'top' of 'bottom-up' processes like individual self-determination.

'material factionalism'

If *liberated-labor* is too empowered it would probably lead to materialistic factionalism -- like a bad syndicalism -- and back into separatist claims of private property.

If *mass demand* is too empowered it would probably lead back to a clever system of exploitation, wherein labor would cease to retain control over the implements of mass production.

And, if the *administration* of it all is too specialized and detached we would have the phenomenon of Stalinism, or bureaucratic elitism and party favoritism.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201211050 ... ?p=2889338

[Unthinking Majority]

Exactly. And this is why police and military do nothing to help or save people nor function as enforcers of any morality.

As I showed you, they provide disincentive to commit crime.

Yes I'm certain that if Israel gave up all its weapons and all their allies did as well that no Muslim country would invade immediately and kill every last Jewish person they could find.

If we see international affairs as happening in an anarchic community, then please note that this arrangement has resulted in most countries observing peace most of the time.

The security of most countries have been backed by the US or Russia since WWII, and these countries are almost constantly at war or backing wars, terrorism, and coups. Prior to WWII when it was a multipolar world, war was constant.

If you want to call the post Cold War era the most peaceful in history you may be right. It only took millennia of constant warfare, colonialism etc to achieve some semblance of stability.

[ingliz]

@ckaihatsu


What mechanism will bring about a 'global syndicalist currency'?

[ingliz]

Syndicalism...

Unions are the lieutenants of capital. Historically in competition for the 'crumbs', the factional nature of trade unions and their accumulated authority within each of their factions has made any attempt to turn them into revolutionary organizations nigh on impossible.

It's like herding cats.

[ckaihatsu]

@ckaihatsu


What mechanism will bring about a 'global syndicalist currency'?

global syndicalist currency

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=174857&hilit=global+syndicalist+currency

In other words it's a continued reliance on the market mechanism, but only within the social environment of emerging worker-controlled workplaces among themselves, after strictly human-need material requirements have been collectively fulfilled through the widespread internal use of the communistic gift economy -- the workers currency would address the social factor of 'discretion', more for 'wants' than for 'needs', such as for any infrastructure development or novel production among these liberated workplaces.

A sufficient international network of seized productive workplaces would be materially adequate for all internal needs, and for a number of individualized wants as well, dependent on local collective workplace total output. But local collectivization is key, both for political consciousness and for keeping the accounting locally centralized, simple, and transparent.

---

Syndicalism...

Unions are the lieutenants of capital. Historically in competition for the 'crumbs', the factional nature of trade unions and their accumulated authority within each of their factions has made any attempt to turn them into revolutionary organizations nigh on impossible.

It's like herding cats.

Agreed.

I have 'syndicalism' in an aforementioned diagram for the sense of *local workplace control*. I don't know if real events would *encourage* centralized vanguardist coordination from the get-go, or if things could be more bottom-up.

[Pants-of-dog]

As I showed you, they provide disincentive to commit crime.

No. You merely repeated the theory, but you did not show that police act as a deterrent.

Yes I'm certain that if Israel gave up all its weapons and all their allies did as well that no Muslim country would invade immediately and kill every last Jewish person they could find.


The security of most countries have been backed by the US or Russia since WWII, and these countries are almost constantly at war or backing wars, terrorism, and coups. Prior to WWII when it was a multipolar world, war was constant.

If you want to call the post Cold War era the most peaceful in history you may be right. It only took millennia of constant warfare, colonialism etc to achieve some semblance of stability.

No, most countries did not (and do not) have protection from the USA or Russia. In fact, these are the two countries that most often attack others.

Nor do I think that colonialism created peace.

This entire post seems to be based in incorrect premises.

[ckaihatsu]

[W]e know that the *dynamics* of capitalist functioning are far from sound. There's constant *overproduction*, *overextension* of capital and its leveraging, and an overimportance of social function for the role of finance / capital.

Just look at how *depersonalizing* you're allowing capital to get, here, with a *fetishizing* of its social role -- if this functioning of capital, as 'lifeblood', falters at all, as it has in 2019, 2020, and now 2021, then our overdependence on it and its fragility becomes apparent to all, with resulting *slowdowns* necessary for 'economic maintenance'.

I can simply counterpose, to your 'capitalist circuit', the political economy of 'a landscape of piles of stuff', meaning that *everything* could be in 'the commons', for workers to *replenish* local piles of stuff, with their labor, or not, depending on how all of society consciously *decides* to use stuff from all of the piles in socially constructive ways.

This post-capitalist approach replaces the capitalist 'hands-off' market mechanism, with a mass-conscious 'hands-on' *social* mechanism, so that nothing is ever again 'accidental' or a 'market failure'.

*Or*, why should there be *any* private property *at all* -- ?

You're showing the lengths and convolutions that you have to *go* to, to *retain* the social practice of private property. Once the interests and concerns of private property are *discarded* and left to the wayside, people would be free to refocus on what *matters* to them -- their own lives and direct interactions with the larger society and material world. Under *capitalism* everything of social significance always has to be through the impersonal intermediary of 'the markets', or of 'capital accumulations', which is thoroughly *disempowering* and *alienating*.

Whose world *is* it, anyway -- the *people's* world, or that of capital intermediaries.

viewtopic.php?p=15181515#p15181515