JimW
支那暗杀团
There's that quote from US business historian Alfred Chandler in that long piece on economics the IWCA put out last year that also puts a lie to the idea of a classic liberal free market:
SPGB
- Thread starter Proper Tidy
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If this is an allusion to the Misesian calculation argument perhaps you might care to substantiate this claim.
In my view there is no basis to this claim whatsover (nor your assertion that socialism has been tried "plenty of times before" when the indispensable preconditions for it to be successfully implemented have not yet materialised anywhere to date - most notably, the mass understanding and desire for genuine socialism) . But the economic calculation argument has been comprehensively deolished anyway and if you are interested in finding out how, I would be happy to take you through the counter arguments one by one.
The SPGB incidentally have initiated a discussion forum http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ecaworkinggroup/?yguid=90109900 precisely to discuss the issue of calculation in a socialist economy
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
The contradiction persists; as it has to if you're going to peddle this rubbish.
Louis MacNeice
If the SPGB is vanguardist, then how does that square with clause 5 of our Declaration of Principles which states: "That this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself"?
and that can only happn when the working class agree with you
No argument there. However, we aren't "waiting for the working class to catch up", we're doing our best to convince workers of the need to establish socialism.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
The left that you criticise so often make exactly the same declaration (and without the stupidity of the hostility clause to undermine it). The Soviet Union declared itself 'socialist' - was it? The GDR called itself 'democratic' - was it?
Gravediggers
New Member
Butchers I'm getting sicked off with your continual accusations of calling the SPGB a vanguard party. How you come to such a view beats me but you may well have your own criteria of definition if so post it up so we can all look at what the fuck you are on about and decide for ourselves whether or not its applicable to the SPGB.
You are a vanguard party by any definition of the word I understand. You have the truth, you know the path that the working class need to take. Like Jesus without the miracles
Gravediggers
New Member
Just like butchers. And just like butchers provide a criteria or definition. Are you related?
If your argument is that words cease to have meaning in the political context, then you have a problem, and there is no purpose in having a discussion on any subject. None of these states you mention were socialist. If they were, then we aren't socialists!
It's up to you to investigate the SPGB's definition of socialism, and see if it is something that appeals to you.
Our hostility clause states that we are opposed to all other political parties (in this country), "whether avowedly capitalist or alleged labour". The latter makes it clear that we don't consider these organisations socialist, or otherwise acting in the interest of the working class. How the clause undermines our position I fail to understand. Many of these allegedly socialist parties will do deals with each other to further their reformist non-socialist aims. How many of them are prepared to give a clear definition of socialism?
Jean-Luc
Well-Known Member
The reason why Gravediggers and others are getting upset by being called "vanguardists" is that they and you are using different definitions of the term "vanguard party". On your definition any propagandist or educational group or any group that wanted to convince others of their point of view would be a "vanguard party". In fact insofar as you want to convince anybody you would be a one-person vanguard party,
But this is not the sense in which the term has been used in leftwing political circles. Here it goes back to Lenin who introduced the idea into the working class movement. He held that, because workers left to themselves were not capable of developing a socialist consciousness (ie working out socialism for themselves) but only of developing a "trade-unionist" consciousness, they needed to be led to socialism by an enlightened minority, an intellectual elite organised as a centralised and highly disciplined party.
All Leninist and Trotskyist groups are organised on this top-down basis and all set out to lead the working class. For instance, see this from a Trotskyist vanguard party group:
No wonder people get upset when such elitist views are attributed to them!
Ok Freddy, it seems that you think you have the truth about the SPGB, and we'll tell you different, so to give you something to consider and criticise here's the object and principles of The Socialist Party.
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/gbodop.html
If you belong to any organisation that expouses particular ideas, then you act as if those ideas are correct. You also constantly re-examine those ideas for weaknesses and modify your behaviour accordingly, if necessary.
If you always keep an "open mind", then you will never make any decisions. You'll go through life weighing up the pros and cons of courses of action to take, and not take them any of them.
Apologies for the sloppy proof-reading!
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
No, i have no problem at all. The argument is simple - it's easy to say that you're not vanguardist. The claim doesn't make it so - and you recognise this yourself by criticising the left as not actually believing that the emancipation of the working class must be their own work, despite saying they do. Form can and often does contradict content - as i believe it does in the case of the SPGB.
Your anti-vanguardism is based on a disguised vanguardism - you already have the truth in advance of the w/c who refuse to think about their social conditions and the social relationships they take part in. That you refuse to consistently follow through this sort of vanguardism on the political level because you can recognise how damaging its proven to w/c self-emancipation over the last 100+ years is just another internal expression of
an internal contradiction - and an incoherence that is fed by your refusal to enage in class struggle - it would be exposed sharpish by the real struggle by real people - as has happened to the case when presented here on an unimportant bulletin board, never mind real life.
I have investigated the SPGB and no, i'm not interested in you as an organisation preciesly because of your vanguardism. I find your decriptions of the working of the wider aspects of capital fine, as is your understanding of what communism is - but they're dead if you remove them from real life by this aggressive quiestist vanguardism.
The hostility clause and the following one undermine the argument that you are anti-vanguardist by outlining in the clearest possible terms your messianic vanguardism. It's naked and it doesn't, hasn't and won't stand up to real life. It's laughable frankly.
SPGB said:
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
What you don't do is declare your grpoups ideas to be correct and all others wrong because they've been propounded by a particular group. That's circular, sloppy arrogant vanguardism that leads (and has led in fact) to a situation in which the correctness or usefulness of an idea, an approach or an analysis depends entirely on whose articulated it - not its coherence or its correspondence to real social conditions. It's unbelievably crude - it's modern day lysenkoism - and again, when tested in the real world, it falls apart - which then makes it handy that part of the dogma is not to test it in the real word. It's genius!
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
I'm using it in this sense as i've made clear over many many posts on this issue. And your outline of classical leninism above, whilst historically inaccurate, does have the virtue of making it very clear where and what the similarities with the SPGB are.
Gravediggers
New Member
But you have not made yourself clear have you? I asked you for a criteria or definition and you have failed to provide either. Granted you have accepted Leninism has the definitive description of vanguardism but bemoan its inaccuracy. So we are not going to go anywhere on that one I presume. But we have got a comparison where we can compare like with like.
So OK butchers if you see a similarity between Lenism and the SPGB how do you explain the following: The SPGB have no leaders; the revolutionary process is not about building the party but making socialists; the SPGB are not involved in the political system but are involved in the political process; once the revolutionary process is completed the SPGB acknowledges that their purpose and function will have been fulfilled and they will be disbanded; the SPGB see themselves as a vehicle for self-emancipation to used by the working class as they see fit.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Is this really the level of your self-analysis? Why aren't you *** despite these similarities? Because we say we're not. But what about *** & ***? But we say that we're not. Why else would we say we're not other than if we're not?
Come on. This is childs talk.
Come on. This is childs talk.
What you don't do is declare your grpoups ideas to be correct and all others wrong because they've been propounded by a particular group. That's circular, sloppy arrogant vanguardism that leads (and has led in fact) to a situation in which the correctness or usefulness of an idea, an approach or an analysis depends entirely on whose articulated it - not its coherence or its correspondence to real social conditions. It's unbelievably crude - it's modern day lysenkoism - and again, when tested in the real world, it falls apart - which then makes it handy that part of the dogma is not to test it in the real word. It's genius!
I wasn't saying that the SPGB was correct, just that any organisation assumes its ideas to be correct, and then proceeds on that basis, otherwise there'd be no point in joining anything.
Are you opposed to socialism as we define it--or our methods? If so, why do you concern yourself with us?
Where are our ideas (what you call "dogma") not tested against the "real world"?
Gravediggers
New Member
No butchers you are being the big kid by kidding yourself you do not have to provide a viable explanation for the lack of comparison between the SPGB and Leninism. Your reply above is a confirmation that you find it impossible to make that comparison and can only resort to assertions. Robbo is correct you are an agent provocateur. But I much prefer shit stirrer.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
The reasons why you reach the conclusion those ideas are correct is centrally importnat. The SPGB appear to think they're correct by virtue of being expunded by the SPGB - a theme you share in common with classical vanguardism. And that's without even going into what 'correct' means in political terms - does it mean that your parties needs supercede those of the wider class? If not, why not? That your interpretations of social reality take precedence over those of the wider class? If not, why not?
I'll debate with who i want about what i want thanks, but surely you as the great educators should be concerned about me - shouldn't you?
The ideas are tested primarily in the tiny little sphere of public life called debate in which equality is presumed (in line with the bourgeois myths about freedom of speech and so on) in which you present 'the case for socialism' - everything else is condemned - by definition, as it's not the SPGB and it's not debate - as reformism. Of course, that's everything except this mythical pure class struggle you habitually pay obeisance to without ever showing any understanding of the various messy contradictory forms it takes - beyond, of course, condemning it precisely for being messy.
No, thats not the definition of a vanguard in the political sense. Vanguardism means the emancipation of some larger group being dependent on some smaller group. The SPGB is clearly saying it cannot , and will not even attempt, to emancipate the working class or act on its behlaf. The working class has to emancipate itself.
As to how that might happen - the "path that the working class need to take" - yes, the SPGB has a particular view which it obviously holds to be correct. Dont we all believe that the views that we happen to hold are necessarily correct (or why would we hold them)? However, holding a particular view about something and believing it to be right does not make you a vanguardist. A dogmatist maybe if you are not willing to at least consider other points of view but a dogmatist is not the same thing as a vanguadist at all. Some people here seem to be very confused about these terms...
The point is that having a view about the path that workers need to take is neither here nor there unless and until the workers themselves do take it. The SPGB does not propose to take that path for or on behalf the workers so clearly cannot be considered vanguardist.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Your fellow traveler thinks i'm an 'agent provocateur'* - wtf?
And you agree! Seriously, get off the magic roundabout.I've outlined above and also on the plaid cymru thread why i see the SPGB as vanguardist - your only response is the same as the stalinist who insists the USSR was communist because it said so in the 1936 constitution.
*agent provocateur - a person employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act. More generally, the term may refer to a person or group that seeks to discredit or harm another by provoking them to commit a wrong or rash action.
You've done enough harm to yourself these last weeks without my prompting.
Jean-Luc
Well-Known Member
I'm sure the SPGB will reciprocate by agreeing with your criticism of the intervention of the Leninist vanguard party, the SWP, in the trade union negotaitions over the BA cabin crew dispute.
Ibn Khaldoun
the present is dead, long live the future . . .
Indeed.
We are not the "great educators" you accuse us of being. We are workers who have come to an analysis of society, which we see as not benefiting our class. We propound and debate our ideas because we want to see a better society. Of course, we may be wrong.
What is your reason for debating?
[?
The ideas are tested primarily in the tiny little sphere of public life called debate in which equality is presumed (in line with the bourgeois myths about freedom of speech and so on) in which you present 'the case for socialism' - everything else is condemned - by definition, as it's not the SPGB and it's not debate - as reformism. Of course, that's everything except this mythical pure class struggle you habitually pay obeisance to without ever showing any understanding of the various messy contradictory forms it takes - beyond, of course, condemning it precisely for being messy.[/QUOTE]
I'd like to discuss your understanding of the various messy contradictory forms class struggle takes. What are these messy forms?
The ideas are tested primarily in the tiny little sphere of public life called debate in which equality is presumed (in line with the bourgeois myths about freedom of speech and so on) in which you present 'the case for socialism' - everything else is condemned - by definition, as it's not the SPGB and it's not debate - as reformism. Of course, that's everything except this mythical pure class struggle you habitually pay obeisance to without ever showing any understanding of the various messy contradictory forms it takes - beyond, of course, condemning it precisely for being messy.[/QUOTE]
I'd like to discuss your understanding of the various messy contradictory forms class struggle takes. What are these messy forms?
For the benefit of a newbie could you reiterate what you said on the Plaid Cymru thread, or direct me to the link?
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