[P2P-F] Fwd: Workers control, the state and its ending

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <[email protected]> Date: Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 3:15 PM Subject: Fwd: Workers control, the state and its ending To: [email protected] interesting thread, on the same old topic ... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: david bangs <[email protected]> Date: Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 12:58 AM Subject: [TheLandIsOurs] Workers control, the state and its ending To: [email protected] ** ** Hiya Brendan,**** ** ** I’m commenting on your last mailing re: the state and property & the market...Quotes from you in *bold.* **** ** ** ** ** *“What is a state?”* ** ** The state is an institution designed to act as the *final, overarching, guarantor for a ruling class*. Its core function, therefore, is to have a *monopoly of violence* over its territory. It is, in its essentials, *“armed bodies of men”*. The modern capitalist state may have many other economic, regulatory, administrative, and ownership functions, and many of these may be ameliorative....but they are ultimately measures of social control...the velvet glove on the iron fist.**** ** ** The ideology of the capitalist state (unlike previous feudal and slave states) is that of neutrality between classes...universal rights...and its ameliorative functions and use of its monopoly of violence to enforce civil peace give credence to this. Miners on the picket lines in ’84-’85, students occupying the Tory Party HQ last year, rioters in Hackney, and insurgents in Afghanistan and Vietnam know better, though, wot the reality of the modern capitalist state is... **** ** ** ** ** *“Given that a movement sufficient to overthrow a nation state would involve millions, how do you avoid turning back into a de facto state with a professional, political elite from which most people are distanced and effectively disenfranchised?”* * * Democracy is at the very core of the fight for socialism and in its building after the overthrow of capitalism. It is not some add-on. You cannot build the comradeship, build the alliances, and the correct strategic direction unless your practice is that of thorough going democracy. You need all the guarantees...rights of recall, rotation of office, employment on an average workers wage , annual elections (at least), assemblies and decision making at the lowest level possible for each issue, compensatory measures for those suffering double oppressions...all that and more.**** ** ** The self-activity of the mass of the class and its allies is the greatest guarantee that leaderships will not develop private interests over and against their base...and the prospects for that solidity against bureaucratic regression get better as our cultural level rises over time. The descent into stalinism’s barbarities was helped greatly by the cultures of deference, patriarchy, feudal ranking and kow towing, that characterised the largely peasant countries where the biggest 20th century revolutions took place. **** ** ** You must have faced some very bad experiences, Brendan, to damn socialists in the way that you do (end paragraph...*“but then I do trust ordinary people, I'm not a socialist”). *I sympathise, and have struggled with the same bitter feelings myself over the years against the sectarian and manipulative behaviour of some other ‘socialists’. Many of them have internalised the practices of the stalinists they denounce (just as, in earlier times, the stalinists internalised the oppressive practices of the monarchies they overthrew). On the other hand, the socialists I have met include many of the best people in my life...who I would trust with my life. **** ** ** ** ** *“The Arab spring has been wonderful to behold (particularly the tortured hypocrisy of the US/Israeli axis) and the Greek workers may yet burn the temples of power, but do you actually think there will be a permanent overthrow of the state in either of these arenas?”* * * Not now, and not soon, of course. The huge defeats that the workers and socialist movements have suffered globally over the last thirty years mean that we are at the beginning of a protracted process of rebuilding our movement. **** ** ** The arab revolutions have not passed beyond the stage of *political*revolutions (that is, revolutions overthrowing particular governments) to that of *social *revolutions (that is, revolutions overthrowing whole ruling classes), though there are major elements within them who are fighting on a class basis - for free trade unions, for militant action against the employers and the state.**** ** ** I think we can be confident that that revolutionary process will continue and radicalise.**** ** ** I don’t think, too, that I was clear in my first posting to you on this issue. I do not think (as anarchists do) that anti-capitalist revolutions can result in the immediate abolition of the state. They result in the abolition of the *capitalist* state, of course. That *has* to be smashed in the course of the revolution...And the new *workers’* state will *wither away *as we build socialism. But it cannot be abolished immediately post-revolution for the reason that our newly victorious class needs its own monopoly of violence to prevent the capitalist class from slugging back into power....For the one thing we can be absolutely certain of is that the global capitalist class will not relinquish its power peacefully. A class that organised the overthrow of the democratically elected Marxist government of Allende in Chile in 1973 and threatened annihilation so many times against the tiny Cuban revolution will need to be surrounded and carefully disarmed with great thought and tactical care...and it cannot be done without our class being protected against their violence.**** ** ** As I said earlier, though, I do not think that the post-revolutionary withering away of the state will take that long in the most developed countries, which have already reached a high cultural level and a point when they can potentially provide for all basic needs.**** ** ** The functions of the state, as it withers, will reduce to *administrative*functions, as all its separateness dissolves into civil society. Thus, for instance, its legal functions will both change and dissolve. I believe about *90% *of all bourgeois state law is *property *law (which confirms beautifully the class character of the state). Thus, with the withering away of private property, this huge and ramshackle apparatus of legal bunkum will become redundant, too.**** ** ** ** ** *“The horror of socialism is that it claims to be on the side of the workers but will not, under any circumstances, trust them with direct control of resources. That's why we need to keep the guarantee of private ownership, (and I mean ownership) moderated by regulation to prevent the accumulation of excess.”* * * You are just extrapolating from the 20th century’s nightmare of stalinism, Brendan, and your “horror of socialism” takes you in a bad direction if it just drives you back into the arms of private property.**** ** ** There have been many experiences of workers control within the militant labour movement over the past century, and many socialist experiments in workers self management over the past century...many quite small, but others very large. The revolutionary government of Tito, after its victorious anti-nazi revolution in 1945 (the only other successful anti-capitalist revolution in Europe apart from the Russian Bolshevik revolution) instituted a nationwide programme of workers’ management in all industry, which lasted right up to the fragmentation of Yugoslavia in the ‘90’s. This was not one of the multitudinous manipulative shams that we all grew so weary of in the stalinist states...it was a profound and real experiment in workers self-management. You may remember that this issue did come up during the fratricidal conflicts of the ‘90’s and one of the targets of the pan-European ‘Workers Aid to Bosnia’ convoys was to bring relief to one of the Bosnian towns that still retained that self-management regime and was determined to defend it. **** ** ** The great limitation of this self-management experiment was that it did not extend beyond the level of individual plants to plan at industry-wide, national, and federal state levels...and that was a drastically weakening limitation. For all that, though, it was an experiment well worth studying and disseminating widely. **** ** ** The General Secretary of my own socialist organisation was invited to Algeria after the success of their revolution against French colonialism in 1962 to drive forward their experiment in workers self-management in both their factories and the taken-over farms and vineyards. Sadly, the socialist government of Ben Bella was overthrown after three years, in 1965, by a right wing military coup. **** ** ** If you do not know them already, Brendan, you would really enjoy reading about the two experiments in workers control which have most inspired me. ** ** ** ** ONE was the Lucas Plan in the 1970’s when the many unions (13, was it ?) in Lucas Aerospace combined to create a plan to convert the whole combine to the production of socially useful products. Lucas Aerospace (the predecessor of current British Aerospace) was a weapons manufacturer, just as it is now, and the workers devised, and even made and tested, a whole range of alternative socially useful products – kidney machines, energy efficient vehicles, low-tech stuff for poor countries – and lobbied and drove forward the plan against their management. With limited help from the Labour government (Tony Benn was at the technology ministry) they even got, if I remember rightly , the formal acceptance of the plan at the highest level. They were undermined, in the end by the national trade union bureaucrats and the Labour Party leadership.**** ** ** I don’t want to give the impression that this was some small bit of fancy tinkering. It was actually a huge and detailed effort by a very diverse workforce of many thousands, using their technological and political skills to drive forward a major effort at industrial conversion by the exercise of workers control...**** ** ** Read *‘The Lucas Plan, a new trade unionism in the making’* by Hilary Wainwright and Dave Elliott. Allison and Busby (1982). **** ** ** TWO was the Green Bans movement by the New South Wales Builders Labourers Federation, again in the ’70’s. This trade union drove forward an incredibly inspiring campaign of action for a socially responsible building industry. They campaigned with middle class bush protection groups to halt the bulldozing of virgin bush. They campaigned against the gentrification of working class districts for up market malls and offices and posh houses. They joined with students protesting against discriminatory building projects. They campaigned against the Springbok tours. They campaigned against anti-gay and anti-women projects. They campaigned against the bulldozing of ancient veteran native trees near the Sydney Opera House development...and so on and on...and their campaign went on for years... It was, like the Lucas Plan, not defeated by the employers (who they very seriously damaged...to the extent of many millions of dollars of lost profits) but by the stalinist bureaucrats of their own trade unions. It is one of the most inspiring campaigns I know of (as an eco-socialist). **** ** ** If you can get it, read *‘Green Bans, Red Union, Environmental activism and the New South Wales Builders Labourers’ Federation’*, by Meredith and Verity Burgmann. UNSW Press (1998). **** ** ** ** ** *“Even posh people need somewhere to live, and if they're using their economic advantage to nab ex-council houses, that's indicative of the general shortage of housing rather than the fact that some of the stock has changed hands, albeit in a deeply undesirable way from poor to rich, in wealthy areas.”* * * I think that is only partly true, Brendan. I do not think there is a general shortage of housing. The issue is one of *distribution*, not of an absolute lack of supply. Development under capitalism is inevitably geographically and socially uneven. That’s why there’s much less demand for housing in your neck of the woods relative to mine. The answer is to end the geographical inequality of capitalist development, so that all regions develop sustainably and equally. **** ** ** For that you need to democratically control and plan the productive forces. It is (to go full circle) the market and concomitant private ownership of production that inevitably creates these regional inequalities.**** ** ** ** ** Enough from me now...I’m going to bed**** ** ** Take care**** ** ** Dave Bangs**** ** ** ** ** ** ** ----- Original Message ----- *From:* Brendan Boal <[email protected]> *To:* [email protected] *Sent:* Monday, November 07, 2011 3:22 PM *Subject:* Re: [TheLandIsOurs] The RSI: Will Robin Hood make the wealthy richer or poorer? Hi again Dave, Yes this is good fun. Your response implies that if a revolution can be fomented and sustained then a stateless condition can be attained, but this begs the question: What is a state? In autonomous, anarchist collectives we are able, usually, to do things by direct consensus because we are few in number. The numbers involved are still insignificantly small once direct consensus is no longer possible and a delegate system is needed . I have experienced such systems on big actions like the G8 and Climate Camp and even when it involves only a couple of thousand people and those people are politically astute radicals, there is already the beginnings of a sense of disconnect from the centre of power. Given that a movement sufficient to overthrow a nation state would involve millions, how do you avoid turning back into a de facto state with a professional, political elite from which most people are distanced and effectively disenfranchised? Your explanation of why the state didn't go away after the Russian revolution is interesting, but surely the key point is that it *didn't* go away! The Arab spring has been wonderful to behold (particularly the tortured hypocrisy of the US/Israeli axis) and the Greek workers may yet burn the temples of power, but do you actually think there will be a permanent overthrow of the state in either of these arenas? Once you've had your revolution you have to put something into the state shaped hole you've made, even if it's only to keep the lights switched on, there has to be an administrative body and it has to be accountable. So whether you call it a state, a worker's state, a commune, a co-op, collective or a politburo, the real question is: How do we make it work for the general good and stop the thieves from taking it over. I agree that it's a long shot, getting the state or whatever replaces it (choose your euphemism) to be a fair administrator, a kind of super facilitator and not just a corrupted adjunct of monopoly capital, but it seems more likely than some improbable vacuum. I think all nation states can be located somewhere on a theoretical scale of freedom, with perfect, unattainable democracy at one extreme and similarly unrealisable tyranny at the other. They can be pulled in either direction by the forces acting on them but cannot be destroyed (except perhaps by absorption into another state). These forces can be reforming or revolutionary but the struggle between them will never cease. Coming to such a realisation is not pessimism; Ceasing to believe in future utopias is rather like realising that God doesn't exist, you stop hoping for pie in the sky and get on with what's possible. I certainly do not “confuse ownership of productive resources (factories, farms, forests) and ownership of domestic space”. I am quite clear that people can own their homes *and* their place of work. Nor do I “talk as though the smallholding is the typical productive unit in our society.” What I actually said is: “There is something profound and good about the sense of security that ownership brings, it might be a small-holding, it might be the house you need to live in or a share of some larger co-operative enterprise.” I think people who work in large and complex enterprises are likely to be the most able to form co-ops to own and run them. Anyway, if we've created a stateless utopia and hanged the capitalists, who* is* going to own the factories? The horror of socialism is that it claims to be on the side of the workers but will not, under any circumstances, trust them with direct control of resources. That's why we need to keep the guarantee of private ownership, (and I mean ownership) moderated by regulation to prevent the accumulation of excess. Consumer capitalism infantilises people, socialism turns then into vassals of the party/state. It is central to our development as full human beings that we stand on our own feet, form relationships and create economic activity in the million and one clever, useful, creative and fulfilling ways we're capable of. Anything that knowingly prevents this is evil. Given the single proviso that we must not take more than our share of resources, each of us has the right to direct our own lives unmediated by authority, however benevolent it claims to be. I am genuinely affronted by the notion that anyone has the right to inflict organisation anyone else, government should share out and then butt out. The true brilliance of humanity is only realised through true freedom, if we accept anything less we're just cattle. I take your point about gentrification of former council houses in the south, that *is* different to where I live. But even posh people need somewhere to live, and if they're using their economic advantage to nab ex-council houses, that's indicative of the general shortage of housing rather than the fact that some of the stock has changed hands, albeit in a deeply undesirable way from poor to rich, in wealthy areas. My solution is as follows: 1. Allow, and if necessary, require local councils to tax second homes and empty properties onto the market. This measure alone will yield a million + extra homes. 2. Require the big monopoly builders to yield up their unused land banks for self-builders rather than allowing them to continue using the De-beers method of drip-feeding the market to keep prices high. 3. Allow a planning exception for rural dwellings based on Simon Fairle's criteria of sustainable development. This would, I think, be more popular than most people realise. Simon himself remarked at our recent gathering that the people we know about who want to live on the land are probably just the tip of a very large iceberg (sorry if that's not verbatim Simon). This measure would also have the desirable effects of re-connecting people to the land, giving them extra income options and, therefore, a greater degree of control over their own destiny. 4. Extend the right-to-buy into the private rented sector on the same terms, i.e., you get it cheaper if you've paid rent (yes, I know Thatcher didn't invent this to be nice to the working class – but so what). Although this will not add to the stock because these houses are already occupied, it will, together with the above measures, cause a big reduction in the artificially high price of houses, thus removing much of the need for council housing in the first place. Finally, design property taxes so that big houses with hardly anybody in them are too expensive to sustain. I think it's worth emphasising that control of real property goes right to the heart of monopoly capitalism and not just in relation to domestic property Virtually every business on the high street or industrial estate is paying rent. This means that pretty well every good and service we purchase has some element of rent in it. For this reason I would allow businesses also to have the right to buy the premises where they operate, with the same kind of discount based on previous rent paid. Taking the hidden hand of the landlord out of all our pockets would be of universal benefit. It's all about breaking the capitalist monopoly, and we won't achieve that by allowing the state to take it over and herd people into council estates. A free market is simply a means of exchange unencumbered by monopolists, state or private. A true free market must, therefore, be divested of all corporate entities, their entire viability in the market place being based on their ability to monopolise. It follows from this that the free market does not have to be red in tooth and claw, on the contrary, by breaking corporate monopoly we greatly strengthen the hand of the many decent human beings who might wish to direct their share of market resources for the universal good, and to do so in the myriad of clever, inventive and original ways that socialism disallows. I think our kind of people find it hard to take this idea on board because the very phrase “The free market” causes such a visceral reaction that they tend to stop thinking and start compiling lists of reasons why it's crap. Selfish materialism, what Depak Chopra rather nicely refers to as:“the superstition of materialism” is largely a product the domination of culture by corporate capitalism. If this horror was removed from our midst by disseminating real property to the grass roots, I believe we would see a renaissance in human conciseness and a general tendency towards fair trade rather than it being a marginal activity, tolerated by our corporate master because it has no significant effect on the size of their profits. At least lets give it a try, after all, it's not as though socialism hasn't had a fair go in the 20th century - and been found wanting! Yes, I know you'll say that we haven't seen real Socialism and if only the Stalinists hadn't taken over etc, etc... But isn't it a perennial problem of all hierarchical systems that they tend naturally to select the most ruthless and unprincipled leaders? You refer to successful cooperative enterprises as thought their success negates my argument for free markets, but don't you see, the opportunity to choose ethical methods of exchange is a function of freedom in the marketplace, based on the ability to freely and independently acquire the means of production, I just want to expand the opportunity to do so. Did you know that the Radical Roots co-op is effectively it's own bank, lending only to those whose business plan is based on sustainability and pro-active social engagement, and they've never had a default – how fantastic is that! These clever, agile, small scale grouping are so much better in every way than the dead hand of monolithic socialism or the depredations of big capital. Independent, grass-roots action is at the heart of everything I believe in most strongly. The large and increasing number of co-ops are the backbone of much of the practical radicalism in this country and around the world. They are a direct result of people working independently to acquire the economic means to reduce and ultimately escape completely from dependence on rapacious corporations. By contrast, much of the brutality of the existing market is caused by the (literally) inhuman nature of those very corporations. If all property, and therefore production, was disseminated to actual humans I trust that they will behave better than, Krupps, Bayer, Monsanto or for that matter Stalin, but then I do trust ordinary people, I'm not a socialist. Brendan. P.S. The notion that this discussion is a function of the free market is based on my belief that corporate capitalism insinuates it's values into the general consciousness through it's monopolisation of economic activity and that, therefore, publicly articulating an opposing view must be a function of the free market. Feel free to disagree. ------------------------------ *From:* david bangs <[email protected]> *To:* [email protected] *Sent:* Saturday, 5 November 2011, 2:10 *Subject:* Re: [TheLandIsOurs] The RSI: Will Robin Hood make the wealthy richer or poorer? Hiya Brendan, You’ve provoked an excellent exchange !! I know other contributors have made great points, but I’d like to take up points from your reply, please. *“As an anarchist (not a socialist) I am instinctively attracted to your stateless utopia, I just can't see how it can be brought about”.* ** You don’t have to be so pessimistic. It can be brought about by the same social agents – all those of us who sell our labour power and our allies – who have led previous revolutionary waves. We’re both old enough to have seen the latter part of one HUGE wave of anti-capitalist revolutions from 1917 right through to the success of the Vietnamese revolution in 1975. Since then we have seen a long counter-revolutionary wave right up to this year, which has seen the stalinist tyrannies revert to capitalism and the terrible weakening of the workers’ movement in the metropolitan countries. ...But that counter-revolutionary wave has now been stalled...and this spring of 2011 we have seen what we can hope is the birth of a new revolutionary wave, with the arab revolution sweeping North Africa and the Middle East, and now the move to a pre-revolutionary stage in Greece... The reason the state didn’t go away after the Russian bolshevik revolution was because that revolution took place in a largely-feudal society pressed on all sides by the imperialist powers and weakened almost mortally by civil war and imperialist intervention. That near-defeat was then compounded by the capture of the weakened workers state by a bureaucratic strata, led by Stalin, which was only able to secure its rule by a gigantic strengthening of the repressive state that later reached the level of genocide...As always, though, that necessity to rule by violence was a sign of *weakness*, not of strength...weakness, because the totalitarian Stalinists were ruling a state which had been founded on an ideology of equality and workers’ democracy ! The Stalinist bureaucracy had none of the strengths of a *ruling* *class*(that has its own ideology, mode of production and deep social roots). It was, rather, just a parasitic layer on the working class....a parasitic layer that showed the bankruptcy of its own rule by ultimately choosing to deliver Russia back to the capitalist world fully and completely. You cannot extrapolate from that counter-revolution to say that all revolutions are similarly doomed to failure. To look at it very schematically...revolutions in the under-developed world are relatively easy (!!!) to make but very difficult to maintain, but revolutions in the advanced capitalist world are very difficult to make but will be much easier to maintain because of our much more advanced cultural and productive level. ** I don’t think the vision I laid out is utopian because I think we can identify the social agents...the class forces...that will bring it about. I think, though, that your vision of a neutral state IS utopian...and, in fact, is ultimately the same vision that bourgeois democracy pumps out at us all the time...that the law serves us all...that the armed forces are OUR armed forces and defend us...and that the institutions of the parliamentary state can be class-neutral and open to control by all tendencies within society. *“I don’t think ownership is theft, owning too much is”.* ** You confuse ownership of productive resources (factories, farms, forests) and ownership of domestic space. I love shutting my door on the world as much as anyone does. That right to private space is crucial to socialism...that’s partly why we fight, for instance, for decent housing for all. Furthermore, you talk as though the smallholding is the typical productive unit in our society....But it aint. Most of us work in huge corporations with highly complex social divisions of labour...Smallholdings or homes are a different kettle of fish from giant chemical, electrical, engineering, or energy plants, or a complex transport system or service provider...like hospitals or universities... We live with the paradox that the whole mode of capitalist production is hugely *social,* but the appropriation of its surplus (profit) is *private*. We work in a *collective* world, but the wealth we create is appropriated * privately*...by the class of owners. Furthermore, you confuse a right of ownership with a right to use. They are very different things, though. It may be that large sectors of a sustainable agriculture are best managed by small producers. That is not the same as ownership, though. It does not imply a right to sell the asset or to pass it on to others without collective consent. And it constrains that private usage by a socially determined collective framework. Usage is not the same as ownership. Let me take one small example from the issue of forests (which I’ve been involved with).... - On the one side you have a vision of public ownership which wants to see small wood and timber contractors paid well for their trade and given the autonomy and status they deserve (rather than being elbowed out by the big timber contractors like Tilhill and Fountains). It wants to see the small operators’ woodland *usage* respected... - On the other side you have a developing trend in woodland ownership called ‘woodlotting’ which encourages *atomised ownership* of our woods for a range of private, mostly recreational, purposes, and stymies public access, systematic nature conservation, and wood production. It is damaging many woods. It counterposes atomised private ownership to the general public good. *“A favourite bete-noire of the left is Thatcher's right to buy council houses, yet those houses have not ceased to exist, nor have they ceased to be occupied by working class people”.* ** Maybe it’s like that where you are, Brendan, but it aint like that down here on the south coast !!! In my area entire huge council estates have been gentrified...I can think of one estate where the new owners are so universally well off and up-market that I didn’t realise for years that it was an ex-council estate !! Just up the road from me 3 bedroom ex-council houses that - if they were still council - would be rented now for £90pw, are being rented to students for *£1000 pm*...and are re-selling at £280-290 grand and more. Whole suburbs of family housing are now being lost to working class families and are just being used to super-exploit students. It has been a major local election issue for years... In another working class seaside town not far away I know one council estate where 80-90% of the stock has been right-to-buy’d, and yet the number of needy families living there is just the same as it was when it was all council...because these private sector sharks have bought up all the houses and are now re-letting them at exhorbitant rents to housing associations or even back to the council. The difference for the residents is that they now live in grossly under-maintained properties at greatly inflated rents...and without secure tenancies. And, by contrast, in those estates which are at present unattractive to the sharks and gentrifiers, needy families and singles are crammed in cheek by jowl in unmaintained blocks with lifts and doors that don’t work, broken windows and mess. The right to buy has been an unmitigated social tragedy for many hundreds of thousands of needy folk. ...And I only partially recognise your picture of nicely improved right-to-buy’d homes...One other good way of telling RTB’d properties is by their tatty neglect, not by their improvement...If they still don’t have double glazing, have peeling wood work and ancient front doors, that means that some family was conned into buying their council home and never could afford to do it up !! *“Why should working class people be forever condemned to pay rent?* *My objection to the right to buy is solely that it is not extended into the private rented sector on exactly the same terms”.* ** Good question...and I agree. Even in the old days when council rents were much lower they were STILL much higher than they needed to be, because the ultimate source of finance for council house building was the private banking sector. If we were to rid ourselves of the interest on that credit then public sector housing rents could be reduced to not much more than a service charge...for repairs and administration. ...But your cavil that the right to buy should be extended to the private sector is no small matter of just amending a bit of law...It is much more than that...The right to buy is a dagger aimed at the public sector...the owning class have no interest in losing their own factories, fields and houses. *“Now for the really incendiary bit: **I'm in favour of the free market!”* ** Incendiary, yes, but not a surprise, Brendan. The wave of pro-capitalist ideas has penetrated deep into many erstwhile secure places of rebellion. You write, again, as though we live in a world of craft and peasant producers, not in a world of a global division of labour, with hugely ramified production of even the simplest items...a piece of clothing or a food item...Your implied vision of small and cooperative production is, again, utopian. Let me be clear...*It is theoretically possible to imagine a capitalism in which ALL production is done by cooperatives or worker-managed enterprises*...yet it would *still* be subject to all the nonsense of the capitalist market...competition for market share, the cycles of over-production, followed by collapse, mass unemployment, and social misery. There was a huge cooperative enterprise with many branches of production in northern Spain. Perhaps it’s still there. It developed as a response to the Franco dictatorship and had very wide roots...yet, when a major slump hit in the ‘70’s it had to sack its workers and close its plants just as if it had been Ford or Bayer or Krupps or the Bank of Scotland. They could talk about cooperation as much as they wanted...but they lived under a capitalist market...and sunk under it. We live in a world, Brendan, where we have the ability to make *democratic,* *social *decisions about all important matters. We do not have to rely on the market to make post-facto choices – blindly- for us. With all the potential of technology we can make real social decisions about what and how much to produce, how long to work, and for what. We can properly take all the external costs into account. We have the ability to collectively plan. And that is a better way of doing things than endlessly competing for market share in our own private units of production. *“Monopoly capitalism can be state or private, both are objectionable though of the two, state capitalism is the worse. This is because, ghastly as liberal capitalism is, it is not totalitarian and there is some room for manoeuvre in the gaps, which people like us exploit”.* ** Try telling that to the ghosts of the hundreds of thousands of victims of the restoration of capitalism in Russia...sent to early graves as the age of mortality dramatically fell after that restoration, which saw unemployment and destitution spread like diseases, and homelessness, and the collapse of the state education system, and all the environmental protections that existed even under stalinism unravelled, and now see nature doubly pillaged,. Liberal capitalism might not be totalitarian in Britain, Brendan, for we live in the privileged imperialist heartland...but try telling suicidal farmers in the plains of India controlled by Monsanto’s GM products that they should “manoeuvre in the gaps” of the system, or try telling the victims of our inperialist wars for oil in the moslem world that they should have manoeuvred in the system’s gaps... *“A free market in ideas and communications is vital to democracy - this exchange is a small example of it”.* ** That’s rubbish, Brendan. You and me are just *communicating*...exchanging information to our mutual gain...we are not *selling* anything...no * commodities* are involved...Talking with your mates is not participating in a “free market”...it’s just being wot we are...*social* human beings who are dependant on each other for support and information... I like hearing your ideas, Brendan, but I don’t want to *buy *them !!!...I want ‘em for free !! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All my stuff above is about *differences*...But I can really see how much we agree on...masses...That’s why I’m enjoying debating with you... comradely Dave Bangs Hi Dave, As an anarchist (not a socialist) I am instinctively attracted to your stateless utopia, I just can't see how it can be brought about. When humanity moved from hunter gathering to sedentary agrarianism, people organised themselves politically and the state came into being. Even when people get so sick of the status-quo that they prefer a blood-soaked revolution, the thing doesn't go away, it can't, it's a function of our ability to organise and communicate. The question, therefore, is how to make it serve the the general good, rather than being subverted by sectional interests. I don;t think ownership is theft, owning too much is. There is something profound and good about the sense of security that ownership brings, it might be a small-holding, it might be the house you need to live in or a share of some larger co-operative enterprise. The right to close your door and say to authority: "No, you may not fuck with me" is central to our freedom and does not have to be contingent upon others being excluded from similar freedom in ownership. A favourite bete-noire of the left is Thatcher's right to buy council houses, yet those houses have not ceased to exist, nor have they ceased to be occupied by working class people. If you go round any council estate you can spot the owned houses by the way they have been individualised and are generally in better condition. There is a pride and a pleasure in modest ownership that is too easily dismissed by middle-class lefties. Why should working class people be forever condemned to pay rent? My objection to the right to buy is solely that it is not extended into the private rented sector on exactly the same terms. I'd love to see the buy-to-let crew out of business and out of pocket, along with the state-created ghettos that so dis empower working class people. And while we're at it, shall we confiscate the unused land-banks of the monopoly builders and distribute them to self-builders, thus providing much needed housing without cost to the public purse whilst giving people control of their own destinies and reducing the artificially high cost of housing for everyone? *Now for the really incendiary bit: **I'm in favour of the free market!* How can anyone who believes in freedom, justice and equality say such a thing? Well I'll tell you: The term 'free market' is the most traduced in modern English, it is generally taken to mean the removal or non-existence of regulations, thus enabling corporate monopolists to steal everything. That is not the free market and I'm not in favour of it. A free market is where anybody is free become a provider or purchaser of goods or services and to succeed/fail/make their choice, solely on the price and quality of those goods or services. It could equally mean people choosing to use their share of resources to take part in co-operative trade arrangements (I think I'd be one of them). For this to come about requires the destruction of monopoly capitalism. *Monopoly capitalism can be state or private, both are objectionable though of the two, state capitalism is the worse. This is because, ghastly as liberal capitalism is, it is not totalitarian and there is some room for manoeuvre in the gaps, which people like us exploit.* The free market is not just economic either. *A free market in ideas and communications is vital to democracy - this exchange is a small example of it. *A true free market would exclude corporate thieves and share out resources so we can organise our lives in any way we damn well please, and isn't that the point of being alive? Brendan. ------------------------------ *From:* david bangs <[email protected]> *To:* TheLandIsOurs@yahoogroups. *Sent:* Wednesday, 2 November 2011, 22:06 *Subject:* Re: [TheLandIsOurs] The RSI: Will Robin Hood make the wealthy richer or poor of her? heft. OOPS..sent the last one before I'd proof-read it to the end...here's the version with my proper ending... Dave Bangs ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No, Brendan, state ownership is not the only alternative to private ownership...and, furthermore, it is possible to envisage not just the disappearance of private property, but of the state as well ! Indeed, I would argue that the exact opposite of your proposition is true....That is, that as long as private property exists the state will exist....and the disappearance of the one will go in tandem with the disappearance of the other... Thus... As long as *private property* exists *market exchange* and *production for profit *(ie commodity production ) will exist. Those 3 hang together. Private property functions as the tenurial framework for the market exchange of products for private profit. The inherent tendency of this market exchange is to generate ever greater inequality. The market naturally drives both the aggregation of market share and property for some sectors and and the loss of market share and property for others... ...And the owners of these unequally large shares of resources will be continually reproducing various forms of state to defend their enlarged private shares. The state is their guarantor of ownership. At its root it is "armed bodies of men" who exist to defend the ruling class...which in our time is the capitalist class of owners. Paradoxically, though, under capitalism, state ownership does one absolutely crucial thing...it takes the state owned resource out of the orbit of the market...and thus erodes the market's destructive power. That is not to say that state ownership under capitalism is *people's*ownership...for it plainly is not. Thus, the nationalisation of steel, coal, and rail industries by the post-war Attleee Labour Gov't was plainly in the interests of one section of the owning class ...but their state ownership, like that of the NHS, state education, public housing, and social welfare services DID constitute great gains for the working class movement, becos it enabled the elimination of some of the worst results of the market...appalling working conditions, widespread preventable ill health, bad housing, lack of universal education etc...(And I take the working class to include the great majority of the middle class as well as the underclass of unemployed...that is, more than 90% of us all). We can see this progressive potential of state ownership under capitalism particularly sharply with public forests, where the modern Forestry Commission is vastly more efficient than the private sector, not just in terms of timber and wood production, but in terms of providing public values like statutory access, nature conservation, and so on. As socialists we do not argue for bourgeois nationalisation as a solution (for we all know how progressive the just-nationalised banks have been !!) but as a *pre-condition for a solution*...which will lie in publicly/socially owned resources being managed by and for us all...a democracy of social self-management from the street and the factory and office and farm and forest right up to the nation state and the planet... Under socialism, however, (that is, when a revolution has overthrown the class power of the capitalist/owning class) we should look to the rapid and simultaneous dismantlement of both the state (the guarantor of private property), the market (the perpetual generator of inequality) and private property in productive resources, and their replacement with a host of different experiments in collective social management of resources. There was nothing inevitable about the victory of stalinist tyranny over the young Russian revolution...any more than there is anything inevitable about the control of my trade union by a bunch of self-serving bureaucrats...or of any new political party of our class, for that matter. We can all be in control if we have the ideas and collective organisation to take the power and keep it... Dave Bangs ----- Original Message ----- *From:* Brendan Boal <[email protected]> *To:* [email protected] *Sent:* Wednesday, November 02, 2011 1:12 PM *Subject:* Re: [TheLandIsOurs] The RSI: Will Robin Hood make the wealthy richer or poorer? Actually, it's* monopoly* in land and the resultant ability to exploit the surplus of other people's labour that is the problem. Abolishing all private property in land means investing all power in the state. When you concentrate that much power you simply attract the exploiter class to to to take over the mechanism of the monopoly state instead. It's interesting to note that when the former Soviet bloc changed from public to private monopoly, many of the same faces that were previously running the 'communist' system, simply re-emerged as the new robber-baron/oligarch class. The real problem is how to limit the power of bosses, whatever clothes they wear. ------------------------------ *From:* Robin Smith <[email protected]> *To:* *Sent:* Wednesday, 2 November 2011, 10:39 *Subject:* [TheLandIsOurs] The RSI: Will Robin Hood make the wealthy richer or poorer? http://gco2e.blogspot.com/2011/11/what-would-actually-be-effects-of-tobin.ht... ke What would actually be the effects of a Tobin tax? A tax on trade and exchange always discourages exchanges. Right? Fewer transactions needs less labour. Banking would become more efficient. Productivity would increase in, general, in proportion. Land values would rise. Economic rents. The tax would be used for public revenue. Rents would increase even further. In the end, who would benefit from Robin Hood's noble work? Workers? Enterprise? Land owners? You know where I'm going with this right? The robber who takes all that is left<http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/George/grgPFT25.html> READ MY LIPS: While private property in land persists. 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