Simon,
I was fascinated to read your comment:
> Please, not imperialism. Capitalism.
Well, I had no idea that there were socialists of any sort who
actually opposed the word Imperialism entirely. It is hardly a
Leninist term as the the nice Mr. Hobson was a staunch Liberal.
Unless you are accusing Lenin of being a Liberal (perhaps the logic
could be taken as far as labelling Good old Uncle Joe as that great
Liberal leader Stalin ! !!). There are also many Trotskist who use
the term some like Workers Power openly and many other just throw it
in from time to time, though preferring late capitalism or monopoly
capitalism. Does the SPGB actually believe capitalism has changed at
all since Marx & Engels were writing or your Party came into being
(which I think was just before Hobson wrote his book).
More seriously though your definition of socialist revolution in this
post and the litany of metaphors did rather confuse me. Especially
when you said
> social revolution is the production of a new historical form
> dictated by the physical nature of the entity - in this case, the structure
> of the brain
Not by the body?
Most socially revolutions have been very bodily affairs. Unless by
brain you would include head-butting police officers.
> This is, I would argue, the basis for
> "dialectics": there is nothing dialectical about the universe, but there is
> about us.
So there is no convincing you of the merits of Dialectical
Materialism or the arguments of Engels? Also if there is nothing
dialectical about the universe but there is about us does it follow
that we are not part of the universe (or is that problem solved
dialectically too).On this subject, scientifically how would you
explain locomotion?
>We don't pull an idea out of the hat: we *recreate* it in
> ourselves and in our organization
Unless your polyphony of metaphors is just clouding my understanding,
isn't this just Hegelianism - pure and simple?
> The working class IS the socialism... socialism is the sum total of
> our human relations
You complain about people using the term Imperialism (which at least
we all know what is meant by it nowadays) but what on earth do YOU
mean by socialism.
Do you mean by socialism what Marx and Engels went out of there way
to define as communism? Or do you mean any form of socialism from
utopian socialism to national socialism to market socialism to soviet
style socialism to Fabian socialism to democratic socialism to all
the other brands of socialism? I don't want to sound rude but I
really have no idea what you mean by it?
Finally on the quote above, Surely any society is the sum total of
our human relations. Capitalism is the sum total of the certain
class-based human relations existing at at a certain historical
stage. As you said back in the beginning of you post if i understand
correctly; humanist is the substance of these various forms.
Oh well I don't seem to be agreeing with much you are saying now
perhaps we should go back to discussing the family.
Regards,
John
>
> > Simon's metaphor shows that he understands actual historical economic
> > developments to be natural and ahistorical, the product of one
> > undifferentiated humanity, and not a process determined by class struggle.
> > This is of course equally obvious in his criticism of Dave's presentation
> > of Marx's view of value, in which Simon sees value as the eternal,
> > historically undifferentiated product of human labour (or worse, essence
> of
> > human labour).
>
> Whoa there. What I am saying is that change is due to the material logic of
> human existence, and not your ahistorical idea of an outside agency acting
> on it, which is religion whether that agency is the angelic host or the
> heroic vanguard. And on value, well, we've been over this. You are talking
> about suspending the PRICE mechanism. The system that treats human labour
> as a value, alienating human labour from human existence, is the
> abstraction, and judging the "value" is done by an arbitrary method. The
> internal logic of capitalism is, since you are treating a human as an
> object, their value is based on what it takes to reproduce them as an
> object, the same as any other commodity: whether this is determined by the
> market or by the commissar doesn't matter, except that the commissar is
> taking an arbitrary relationship and then being arbitrary about its
> judgement, and claiming to abolish the relationship! How alienated can one
> person get?
>
> > This leads to a political line that is compounded of theoretical fatalism
> > (it'll happen as a natural process, inevitably) and its hyperactive
> > counterpart, individual heroics ("we, the heroes, must act since no-one
> > else understands anything).
>
> Now you're really fantasising. You're trying to put words in my mouth which
> I never said. Red card for you. It also is completely the opposite of my
> position. I am arguing that members of the working class can have the
> revolution themselves, rather than have to be led by the nose by some
> tinpot bolsheviks! How much further can you traduce someone's argument?
>
> Simon
>
> Only messages signed by a Party officer are considered official
> communications
>
>
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>
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