SPGB
- Thread starter Proper Tidy
- Start date
The bit about clause 5 being traced back to the first International.
Gravediggers
New Member
Lol. The classic response of a control freak whose hit the wall when nobody is willing to respond to their freakery. I wonder if there's any link with participatory democracy and the arguments for the minority to veto the decisions of the majority? Going by what's occurred here it seems the majority decision is that you stew in your own juices.
Proper Tidy
Arsed
No, it is just that Knotted arrived late to the party. The rest of us realised about forty pages ago that debating with squeegees is like trying to harness flies.
Gravediggers
New Member
Which is one of the reasons why I joined the SPGB, for self-emancipation is essential to acquiring an understanding capitalism and socialism.
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
That's one giant leap for GD, but still nowhere near big enough to get him out of the hole he's dug.
Cheers - Louis MacNeice
I'm a sucker for sects - religious or political.
This conversation's turned weird, though.
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
But not literacy it seems.
Louis MacNeice
p.s. Don't think the attempt to steal 'self-emancipation' for the SPGB went unnoticed you little scamp.
Proper Tidy
Arsed
Some of the stuff in this thread has been great, but the only squeegees who seem to be worth debating with are Robbo (who isn't technically a squeegee and who appears to upset GD with his daring ability to think) and some chap from Carlisle, but he didn't hang about unfortunately.
Sure I can verify it. The compensation model seems to me to be the fairest and the most effective and streamlined form of rationing available to a post-capitalist than any other I can think of. The traditional labour voucher scheme doesnt really do much for me. It is too cumbersome and unwieldy and there is always the possibility that it might degenerate into a money based system. The point system advocated by Buick and Crump is better but a bit imprecise in its focus if it envisages multiple criteria being used to determine priority access.
I advocate the compensation model because it uses the single criterion of housing stock quality as the criterion for determining priority access to rationed goods. Sure, grading housing stock is to an extent arbitrary but is not likely to be that imperfect. The quality of housing stock inherited from capitalism will probaby be the single most important aspect of spatial inequalities inherited from capitalism and so lends itself to being a suitable criterion for a system of rationing. Including other criteria might make the system much more difficult to administer becuase it involves the relative weighting of several criteria against each other.
In socialism the allocation of resoruces will be subject to several influences including a braodly defined social hierarchy of production goals. This means that if any goods are likely to be starved of resources would be those goods low down in the production hierarchy. It is these goods that are therefore most likely to be scarce and therefore most in need of being rationed e.g. luxuries. There would thus be rationing of these goods and free access to other goods of a higher priority nature.
In rationing them I am suggesting there should be a discriminatory system in place which gives perferences to individuals who live in poor or substandard accommodation (for the time being) to "compensate" for the conditions they live in. Vouchers for rationed goods can be allocated in proportion to the grading value that a particular property received so that you would get more vouchers the lower the grading your property receives
I recommend this scheme to the SPGB. It deals constructively with a particular problem that has not really been seriously addressed in the party's literature - how does a socialist society deal with the problem of spatial inequalities inherited from capitalism
On Lenin and "socialism"...
For a start, Lenin was not always consistent in what he meant by "socialism". In The State and Revolution, for example, he claimed: "But the scientific distinction between socialism and communism is clear. What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the “first”, or lower, phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of production becomes common property, the word “communism” is also applicable here, providing we do not forget that this is not complete communism." In fact, this "scientific distinction" an actually an invention of Lenin himself; it was certainly not something ever entertained by Marx who, along with most of his contemporaries tended to use the expressions communism and socialism interchangeably. It should also be noted that Lenin's depiction of this lower phase of communism bore little relation to Marx's own. Where Marx advocated a system of Labour vouchers, Lenin talked of "all citizens being transformed into hired employees of the state". On the other hand, in The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It, Lenin also maintained that "socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly". How socialism can be both the lower phase of communism and a mere state capitalist monopoly (albeit one allegedly made to serve the interests of the whole people) is, to say the least, puzzling.
It would be difficult to underestimate the importance Lenin attached to developing state capitalism - embarassing though this may be to those Leninists who continue to deny the state capitalist nature of the Soviet Union. In "Left Wing" Childishness and the Petty Bourgeois Mentality he insisted that "state capitalism would be a step forward as compared with the present state of affairs in our Soviet Republic. If in approximately six months time state capitalism became established in our Republic, this would be a great success and a sure guarantee that within a year socialism will have gained a permanently firm hold and will become invincible in our country". Incredibly enough and just to demonstrate how far he had moved from a traditional marxian conception of socialism Lenin included such eminently capitalist institutions as the big banks into his own conception of "socialism" As he put it: "Without big banks socialism would be impossible. The big banks are the "state apparatus" which we need to bring about socialism, and which we take ready-made from capitalism;..A single State Bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus" (Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? October 1, 1917 Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 26, 1972, pp. 87-136).
As with the earlier quotation from The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It Lenin seemed to be suggesting that a distinction can be made between different kinds of state capitalism. Elsewhere in the same publication he expanded on this point:
But state capitalism in a society where power belongs to capital, and state capitalism in a proletarian state, are two different concepts. In a capitalist state, state capitalism means that it is recognised by the state and controlled by it for the benefit of the bourgeoisie, and to the detriment of the proletariat. In the proletarian state, the same thing is done for the benefit of the working class, for the purpose of withstanding the as yet strong bourgeoisie, and of fighting it.
That in my view is a distinction without any real difference. I prefer to stick with the intuition that if something waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck then it is reasonable to assume it probably is a duck. If the bourgeoisie continued to exist in Lenin's so called proletarian state they could only meaningfully exist as an exploiting class that exploited the proletariat.
Which calls into question the whole idea of a proletariat state. If the proletariat truly controlled the state why would they allow the bourgeoisie to continue exploiting them? Insofar as the proletariat continues to exist as an exploited class the so called proletarian state can be nothing more than a facade behind which a new class of state capitalist bourgeoisie governed supposedly in the name of the proletariat but in reality against the interests of the latter.
For a start, Lenin was not always consistent in what he meant by "socialism". In The State and Revolution, for example, he claimed: "But the scientific distinction between socialism and communism is clear. What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the “first”, or lower, phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of production becomes common property, the word “communism” is also applicable here, providing we do not forget that this is not complete communism." In fact, this "scientific distinction" an actually an invention of Lenin himself; it was certainly not something ever entertained by Marx who, along with most of his contemporaries tended to use the expressions communism and socialism interchangeably. It should also be noted that Lenin's depiction of this lower phase of communism bore little relation to Marx's own. Where Marx advocated a system of Labour vouchers, Lenin talked of "all citizens being transformed into hired employees of the state". On the other hand, in The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It, Lenin also maintained that "socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly". How socialism can be both the lower phase of communism and a mere state capitalist monopoly (albeit one allegedly made to serve the interests of the whole people) is, to say the least, puzzling.
It would be difficult to underestimate the importance Lenin attached to developing state capitalism - embarassing though this may be to those Leninists who continue to deny the state capitalist nature of the Soviet Union. In "Left Wing" Childishness and the Petty Bourgeois Mentality he insisted that "state capitalism would be a step forward as compared with the present state of affairs in our Soviet Republic. If in approximately six months time state capitalism became established in our Republic, this would be a great success and a sure guarantee that within a year socialism will have gained a permanently firm hold and will become invincible in our country". Incredibly enough and just to demonstrate how far he had moved from a traditional marxian conception of socialism Lenin included such eminently capitalist institutions as the big banks into his own conception of "socialism" As he put it: "Without big banks socialism would be impossible. The big banks are the "state apparatus" which we need to bring about socialism, and which we take ready-made from capitalism;..A single State Bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus" (Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? October 1, 1917 Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 26, 1972, pp. 87-136).
As with the earlier quotation from The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It Lenin seemed to be suggesting that a distinction can be made between different kinds of state capitalism. Elsewhere in the same publication he expanded on this point:
But state capitalism in a society where power belongs to capital, and state capitalism in a proletarian state, are two different concepts. In a capitalist state, state capitalism means that it is recognised by the state and controlled by it for the benefit of the bourgeoisie, and to the detriment of the proletariat. In the proletarian state, the same thing is done for the benefit of the working class, for the purpose of withstanding the as yet strong bourgeoisie, and of fighting it.
That in my view is a distinction without any real difference. I prefer to stick with the intuition that if something waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck then it is reasonable to assume it probably is a duck. If the bourgeoisie continued to exist in Lenin's so called proletarian state they could only meaningfully exist as an exploiting class that exploited the proletariat.
Which calls into question the whole idea of a proletariat state. If the proletariat truly controlled the state why would they allow the bourgeoisie to continue exploiting them? Insofar as the proletariat continues to exist as an exploited class the so called proletarian state can be nothing more than a facade behind which a new class of state capitalist bourgeoisie governed supposedly in the name of the proletariat but in reality against the interests of the latter.
Gravediggers
New Member
There are quite a few things I thought were interesting regarding this subject. But what I found concerning was where do you start and where do you end. Firstly, it assumes such a scheme is necessary to address those needs that are going to take some time to fulfill. But what if the community decides it is far too complicated to implement, due to the total amount of planning involved. And there is also the danger of the scheme putting the priority of needs on the back burner rather than facing it head on, besides heading for the terrors of central planning. And ending in the compensation scheme encouraging the production of luxury items rather than human needs.
Just a few thoughts but worthy of discussion.
The bourgeosie continued to exist in 1920's Russia. There is no need to talk about ducks. They really existed as an exploiting class. Private ownership of the means of production continued. Nobody has ever pretended otherwise. Lenin was explicit that Russia was not yet socialist. He explicitly said socialism could not be built in a backward country in isolation from the rest of the world. (State capitalism does not mean that the state is an exploiting class though - the state isn't the class, the bourgeoisie is the class).
This whole dispute that the SPGB have with Bolshevism is to do with the dictatorship of the proletariat and the transitional society. It has nothing to do with the nature of socialism, which is a completely different question. Lenin never claimed that socialism was a transitional society. The SPGB confuse this all the time (as do stalinists). This is a pity because the SPGB might have something interesting say about Russia if they weren't so obsessed with this idea that they are only ones who know what "socialism" means.
I'm so bored of this. It's just haggling over semantics.
I should add that the duck argument is always a terrible argument even when you happen to be right. The duck argument is one of the great evils of our time.
I dont really have any links relating to the compensation model because, to be honest, its just a term I coined myself while developing ideas about forms of rationing that might be appropriate within a broadly free access economy. I touched on Buick and Crumps points system in an article I wrote several years back http://www.cvoice.org/cv3cox.htm and of course there is Buick and Crumps book itself which is well worth a read - State Capitalism : the Wages System under New Management. I think if you pay a visit to the SPGB website and do a bit of searching around you might find some reference to rationing in the early stages of socialism but nothing to the compensation model.
My intuition tells me - though I may be wrong - that many comrades in the SPGB would probably be biased against the model because of a widespread prejudice against anything that smacks of "morality" or "justice". You cant talk about "compensation" because that is tantamount to "idealism". Such silly prejudices are a further reason for my reservations about the SPGB. I think the Party needs a thorough overhaul in so many ways if it is really going to constitute itself as a serious revolutiuonary force in society in my view (though having said that I still think it is streets ahead of any other political party I can think of)
On how the compensation model works - well, here's my take on it. First of all you have to determine what needs to be rationed and as I explained it is goods that are likely to be low down in the hierachy of production goals that are likely to be scarce and hence most likely to be subject to rationing. The compensation model provides for a way of rationing such goods by discrimminate between people on the grounds of quality of houysing stock they live in. Since we cannot all live in good quality housing straight after the revolution - it will take time to upgrade the housing, perhaps years - many of us will have to continue living in fairly poor housing stock in the meanwhile. Such individuals should be "compensated" for this.
The proposal is that individuals be issued vouchers by their local community in proportion to the quality of the accommodation they live in. Assuming housing stock can be graded into 5 categories ranging from high quality (grade 1) to low quality (grade 5) . Grade 1 housing attracts vouchers worth shall we say 100 points per year and grade 5 , 500 points. Correspondingly rationed goods could be assigned a numerical value calibrated to ensure all goods are cleared so to speak i.e. taken up by the community at large. You can do this by raising or lowering the points value of the individual rationed items so as to ensure a steady uptake.
Its like a price system responding to supply and demand except that these vouchers, like labour vouchers, do not circulate and do not constitute money. Unlike the labour voucher scheme, however, they apply to only a small range of goods - i.e rationed goods - and not right across the board so to speak
I hope this helps to clarify things somewhat...
It's an interesting model I have several off the top of my head criticisms.
1) There is not necessarily a connection between need for scarce resource and general relative poverty. Remember we are talking world socialism. The problem we face is providing for the areas that can't provide for themselves due to their relative under-development - it's not necessarily an issue of resources.
2) This is a charitable/consumption model. I think it has the similar defects as charitable relief efforts under capitalism. What's need is a redistribution/development of productive forces. It papers over the problem rather than solving the problem.
3) The problem you suspect the SPGB would raise. I think they would be right if they did. There is a material loss for people living in affluent areas. I appreciate that people can be motivated by their ideals, but you cannot guarantee that.
1) There is not necessarily a connection between need for scarce resource and general relative poverty. Remember we are talking world socialism. The problem we face is providing for the areas that can't provide for themselves due to their relative under-development - it's not necessarily an issue of resources.
2) This is a charitable/consumption model. I think it has the similar defects as charitable relief efforts under capitalism. What's need is a redistribution/development of productive forces. It papers over the problem rather than solving the problem.
3) The problem you suspect the SPGB would raise. I think they would be right if they did. There is a material loss for people living in affluent areas. I appreciate that people can be motivated by their ideals, but you cannot guarantee that.
The point is that socialism will face a potentially serious problem of huge spatial inqualities in the quality of housing stock. This could give rise massive resentments and social dislocation which we have to deal with in some way. How?
We cannot all live in good quality housing all at once. Manyof us are going to live probably for many years in fairly poor quality housing. This situation is crying our for some system of "compenstaion". It cannot be ignored
The compensation model is adminstratively simple to operate. It bears absolutely no comparison to central planning at all which is a totally different proposition and relates to coordination of inputs and outputs across the entire economy. In fact the closest analogy might be the way in which local authorities used to put properties within graded bands for taxation purposes. I dont know what the present arrangement is as its years since I lived in the UK
One final thing - the compensation model will definitely not "encourage the production of luxury items rather than human needs" precisely becuase they can only make use of residual resources - that is after resources have been allocated to high priority goods within the overall hierarchy of production goals. That hierarchy by defintion prioritises the allocation oif inputs to high priority goods so low propriority goods such as luxuries have to do with whatever is left over. Which is not to say of course that there will be no luxury goods, just that such goods are more likely to be scarce and hence subject to rationing.
I dont quite follow this. How does tackling under-development not involve resources
No this is not charity at all. In fact charity is based on a totally different set of assumptions as Marcel Mauss pointed out is his seminal work The Gift. Apparently disinterested charitable giving has its mirror image in completely self interested economic transaction. Charity in this sense is really only meaningful within a capitalist context.
Compensation in the sense that I am talking is not charity; it is a matter of equity in the face of spatial inequalities we will inevitably inherit from capitalism. It is not papering over the problem rather than solving it either since it is entirely feasible to effect a degree of compensation while at the same time taking steps to solve the problem of poor quality housing
But the point is that a socialist society presupposes that people want and understand it. That means they recognise that we all depend upon each other that we need to pull together for the common good becuase our own welfare depends upon it. Material loss is a loaded term. It depends on how much weight we attach to things like consumer durables. So much of what we materially desire today is really motivated by a need for status which no longer be linked to the accumulation of material possessions in a free access economy. Status based omn material consumption will in fact become meanigless. I suspect very much that there will be a degree of material "sacrifice" entailed for some - certainly the capitalists and a sizeable chunk of the labour aristocracy. What are currently two-car familiies might have to do with just one, for example. But this too has its compensations in terms of things like a much enhanced quality of life
which will vastly outweigh any material losses sustained in my opinion. Hardy , an eminent writer on economic matters in SPGB circles said something rather similar some years ago if I recall
Gravediggers
New Member
Just a quick thought on housing assessment. In last few years there has been the introduction of the Housing Quality Standard (HQS) for the social housing sector which from my own experience in housing could be a useful framework to be applied to all housing. To see how this is operating in practice do a search for 'RCT Homes' and also search for 'Welsh Quality Housing Standards' (WHQS) to see what is meant by 'quality' and how it is panning out in the here and now.
Sorry, should have been "scarce resources". Abundance is relative to need/want. If there is an abundance of resources relative to the needs of the population and the population desire more than is necessary and there is an unequal distribution of that resource then it is possible for there to be an abundance relative to need but not distributed to satisfy everyone's need. The question isn't really abundance or scarcity, it is distribution.
robbo203 said:
I'm not sure this really answers my point. I don't really care if you call it charity or not. The point is that it is compensatory produce for consumption not production. It doesn't solve the problem, but it might help alleviate the problem while the problem is being solved.
robbo203 said:
Just like you, I could give you an argument suggesting that people would be willing to do it. I can't give you an argument guaranteeing it. (cf butchers on theology)
There is deeper problem here. It's not just sharing out. It is the fact that some areas which retain greater forces of production and will have greater economic power and therefore greater economic political power. Remember we have not yet abolished politics - we still have democracy at this stage.
There is something of the white man's burden about the SPGB's socialism. The working class in the advanced industrial nations declare their socialism on mass and the rest of the world gets hand outs (they're not allowed to declare socialism because their productive forces have yet to develop to a sufficient degree).
To turn this arugment around - isn't the fact that we are using charitable measures an indication that we have still retained some elements of a capitalist context?
Gravediggers
New Member
Resentment on needs being unmet is always a possibility, but lets not treat it as a probability, when the fact is that there is every possibility that the community will be doing it for themselves. Especially, when we take into consideration what socialist consciousness actually entails in regards to a change in attitude and the amount of planning and preparation going on before the actual transformation.
For instance: Housing stock will have to assessed against housing needs; Standards will have to made and adhered to; Maintenance teams set up to improve each estate, or sections of large estates; The community being part and parcel of the whole project.
I could go on but you get my drift. Instead of like now where councils and HA's or private residents have the responsibility to maintain the housing stock it will become the responsibility of that specific community in that locality, be it consisting of 200 houses or 2000 to ensure a standard is met by such and such date. With this type of planning and preparation well advanced there is every possibility that the resentment you and others may envisage happening is going to be little to say the least.
Thoughts on the above would be appreciated.
Cheers, will do. I think its is useful to flesh out ideas like the compensation model of rationing with actually existing examples
But distributional issues would in fact already be taken into account in devising some broad hierarchy of production goals to guide the allocation of resources. This is not really what we are talking about here. We are talking about those goods that are more likely to end being scarce by virtue of being low priority goods and are therefore more likely to be subject to rationing than high priority goods. My point is about what particular criterion or principle we chose to employ in rationing out these goods
There is a big differeence between charity and compensation. Compensation implies a moral right to something, charity does not. The whole point about charity is that it is in theory carried out as a matter of free will by individuals who are not morally obliged to do what they do.
Compensation in the form of discriminatory rationing of scarce goods in favour of the materially disadvantaged doesnt solve the problem of social discontent arising fromn spatial inequalities but it does as you say "help alleviate the problem while the problem is being solved". Thats good enough for me.
Yes but production today is a globalised process which means different areas are vitally dependent on each other. Appreciating this and knowing that the welfare of one area depends on the welfare of others will help to overcome the problem you allude to
I dont think this is the SPGB postion at all. I have never heard it suggested at any time in SPGB circles that undeveloped countires are not allowed declare socialism becuase their productive force are insuffiently developed. In fact, it would be a matter of indifference to the SPGB where the revolutiuon broke out first since they argue that capitalism is a global system and can only be replaced by another global system. Being a global system this means that if socialist ideas are sufficently widely held in one part of the world they are likely to be not far behind elsewhere for various reasons (eg global telecommunications and the proactive endeavours of the world socialist movement to even out spatial imbalances)
I think there is something to be said for your model in terms of the day to day running of things. I don't think it helps transform society.
You're concerned about scarcity and the calculation problem. I think you've done some good work on this. But at the minute I'm more concerned about structural problems. As I said before the SPGB tend to reduce all problems that socialism will face down to questions of scarcity and abundance.
When the SPGB talk about Marx's contention that socialism will have to go through "birth pangs" ie. an early stage they usually:
1) Reduce the question to Marx's point about the individual producer receiving back from society exactly what he gives to it (after certain deductions). (ie. Labour time vouchers)
2) Reduce the problem to a problem of scarcity and abundance.
3) Reduce the problem of scarcity and abundance to the state of development of the productive forces.
I think all three reductions are spurious.
---
I should also say that the distinction between charity and compensation that you give is entirely subjective. The concept of compensation surely rests on bourgeois equal right at least as much as the concept of charity.
I think in absolute terms some people will always have a harder time than others. People will always have illnesses, disabilities or mishaps for example. Compensation cannot reverse their circumstance. I would prefer to see it not in terms of compensation but in terms of allowing each individual to live their lives to the fullest given their circumstance.
You're concerned about scarcity and the calculation problem. I think you've done some good work on this. But at the minute I'm more concerned about structural problems. As I said before the SPGB tend to reduce all problems that socialism will face down to questions of scarcity and abundance.
When the SPGB talk about Marx's contention that socialism will have to go through "birth pangs" ie. an early stage they usually:
1) Reduce the question to Marx's point about the individual producer receiving back from society exactly what he gives to it (after certain deductions). (ie. Labour time vouchers)
2) Reduce the problem to a problem of scarcity and abundance.
3) Reduce the problem of scarcity and abundance to the state of development of the productive forces.
I think all three reductions are spurious.
---
I should also say that the distinction between charity and compensation that you give is entirely subjective. The concept of compensation surely rests on bourgeois equal right at least as much as the concept of charity.
I think in absolute terms some people will always have a harder time than others. People will always have illnesses, disabilities or mishaps for example. Compensation cannot reverse their circumstance. I would prefer to see it not in terms of compensation but in terms of allowing each individual to live their lives to the fullest given their circumstance.
Here's another way to put it. Recall Marx's famous slogun, "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs." This slogun has two parts. It isn't simply about satisfying people's needs and some trivial stuff about everyone contributing the best they can. The society we live in does not utilise people's abilities. Being stuck in a menial job or being unemployed is depressing and demoralising beyond the fact that you struggle to pay your bills. It should be our want and our right to employ our abilities for the benefit of society. I think this is a very natural desire. If it is only a question of productive forces, scarcity and alleviating poverty (via the compensation model or other models) then we are missing half of what's important. I don't think allowing people to utilise their abilities to the full is a trivial problem.
Marx gives a short list of preconditions for a fully socialist/communist society:
1) No more enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour.
1') The above includes the antithesis between mental and physical labour.
2) Labour has become not only a means to life but life's prime want.
3) After the productive forces have increased with the all-round development of the individual.
4) All springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly.
I don't want to be dogmatic about what Marx said, I certainly don't want to suggest that these are the only preconditions. I don't want to insist that Marx was right about these being preconditions. But there is no doubt in my mind that what Marx says here is superior to what the SPGB typically say.
Only preconditions 3) and 4) are about productive forces and abundancy.
Precondition 3) is itself conditional on the all round development of the individual.
Precondition 4) is quite distinct from saying that society can produce abundancy relative to needs - it insists on "all springs" flowing "more abundantly". As I read it, it is not so much about producing an abundancy as it is about utilising our abilities and technologies to the fullest.
All in all, for the maximal purposes of creating a fully socialist society, I would suggest that the emphasis of Marx's slogun should be on the first half. From each according to their abilities... This is the really difficult bit. With today's technology, we can probably give hand-outs to satisfy the needs of all without too much bother. But that misses an important part of the point.
Marx gives a short list of preconditions for a fully socialist/communist society:
1) No more enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour.
1') The above includes the antithesis between mental and physical labour.
2) Labour has become not only a means to life but life's prime want.
3) After the productive forces have increased with the all-round development of the individual.
4) All springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly.
I don't want to be dogmatic about what Marx said, I certainly don't want to suggest that these are the only preconditions. I don't want to insist that Marx was right about these being preconditions. But there is no doubt in my mind that what Marx says here is superior to what the SPGB typically say.
Only preconditions 3) and 4) are about productive forces and abundancy.
Precondition 3) is itself conditional on the all round development of the individual.
Precondition 4) is quite distinct from saying that society can produce abundancy relative to needs - it insists on "all springs" flowing "more abundantly". As I read it, it is not so much about producing an abundancy as it is about utilising our abilities and technologies to the fullest.
All in all, for the maximal purposes of creating a fully socialist society, I would suggest that the emphasis of Marx's slogun should be on the first half. From each according to their abilities... This is the really difficult bit. With today's technology, we can probably give hand-outs to satisfy the needs of all without too much bother. But that misses an important part of the point.
I can discuss the SPGB's rejection of different phases of socialism, but when it comes to the SPGB's rejection of a transitional period to even get to socialism or the SPGB's educational road to socialism, it is so alien to me that I struggle to make sense of it at all.
You can't guarantee that the entire working class everywhere will have a perfect understanding of what they are doing. You can't guarantee that a small majority might make their move before the vast majority are with them. You can't guarantee success everywhere at the same time. You can't guarantee that revolutions will not be partial and isolated. There is a lot of difficult business getting from A to B. So when the SPGB finger wag at working class revolutions for being in backward countries before workers in advanced industrialised nations are ready and when the SPGB seem to think that the British parliament will somehow herald world socialism it's difficult not to conclude that this is a very imperialist concept of socialism.
But it is not meant to. It simply addresses and seeks to alleviate a situation of massive spatial inequalities (in housing stock) in order to prevent social discontent arising. Its a question of natural justice in other words. If some goods are going to have to be rationed anyway, why not this way? This does not stop determined effort being made in a socialist society to upgrade poor quality housing stock in the meanwhile.
I am not too sure that this is the case. Where did you get this idea from? The question of producing enough is important, yes, becuase free access depends on it but there are a range of other issues that the SPGB has also addressed from the need to tackle environmental problems through to the nature of work itself and how it can be made more satisafying. With respect, I think you need to dig a bit deeper before drawing stark conclusions about what the SPGB thinks. I have the advantage of having once been a member but even i know that the SPGB is not a static entity nor a monolithic one. On some issues particularly relating to future socialist society there is actually quite a variety of opinion within the SPGB - from hi tech cornucopians intent upon full scale automation to William Morris arty crafty types.
See, this is what I mean. If you did a bit of searching around you would discover that the SPGB is distinguishable from other socialist organisations of a de leonist persuasion precisely by the fact that it decisively rejects labour time vouchers
Sure but then the same logic applies here as Marx applied to his lower phase of communism. We are inheriting the spatial inequalities in housing stock from capitalism so not unreasonably a residual bourgeois notion of equal right should therefore also come into play in early socialism/communism. I dont see any great problem with this....
But there is a big difference between living in a shitty towerblock apartment and having to contend with a lifelong disability. There is not much you can do about the latter but one would hope a decent society would do evrything it can to ease the situation and enable the individual to fulfil as far as possible his or her potential. You can do something about living in a shitty tower block apartment however. True, compensation per se and almost by definition does not in itself change this situation but it certainly helps to know that society is acknowleding the inequity of spatial inequalities inherited from capitalism by "compensating" individuals in the interim in the way I have suggested. It is saying something about the worth of such individuals and signalling its intent to do something about the predicament in which they find themselves
Well I actually think the SPGB has a good point here. The idea of a transitional period between capitalism and communism is theoretically incoherent. Rather what has been argued in the SPGB is that if you must talk about a transition then in a sense we are already in the transition. In other words the transition is something that happens before not after the revolution and the revolution is just the culimination of this transformative process.
One of my criticisms of the SPGB however is that it does not adequately flesh out what it means by this and focusses simply on its role as a propagandist organisation. When I was a member some years ago, my branch in Guildford put out an internal circular called "The Road to Socialism" which sought to radically overhaul the party's "big bang" approach to revolution by envisaging the development of alternative grass roots economic , social and cultural institutions of a "socialistic" nature in line with the growth of the socialist movement itself. This is by way of analogy with the way capitalist relations developed within the interstices of a feudal society prior to the onset of bourgeois revolutions themselves. The party unfortunately rejected this scenario but it did go some way to acknowleging changes would happen prior to the revoliution but confined these to the cultural and social realms. For example it began to talk increasingly about the way we would begin planning for socialist production prior to the establishment of socialism. That is simply not enough in my opinion though...
You can't guarantee anything but that does not mean you cannot make informed statements on the basis of statistical porbability
You repeat again the assertion that the "SPGB finger wag at working class revolutions for being in backward countries before workers in advanced industrialised nations are ready". Frankly I have never heard of this before. Where did you get this information from? Can you cite a source.
I repeat- it is a matter of indifference to the SPGB as to where the revolution breaks out first. What matters is that the revolution should be a genuine socialist one and not just another bourgeois revolution. To the SPGB - and I think their logic is sound here - if the revolution breaks out in one part of the world that it implies that other parts of the workd are almost ready for a socialist revolution themselves.
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