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

Thu Nov 10 09:49:59 CET 2011

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 3:15 PM
Subject: Fwd: Workers control, the state and its ending
To: econowmix at googlegroups.com

interesting thread, on the same old topic ...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: david bangs <dave.bangs at virgin.net>
Date: Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 12:58 AM
Subject: [TheLandIsOurs] Workers control, the state and its ending
To: TheLandIsOurs at yahoogroups.com

**

**

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 <b_m_boal at yahoo.com>
*To:* TheLandIsOurs at yahoogroups.com
*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 <dave.bangs at virgin.net>
*To:* TheLandIsOurs at yahoogroups.com
*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 <dave.bangs at virgin.net>
*To:* TheLandIsOurs at 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 <b_m_boal at yahoo.com>
*To:* TheLandIsOurs at yahoogroups.com
*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 <robinsmith3 at gmail.com>
*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.html
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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