- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Are you hitting the sauce again?

Posted by: Stoller on January 18, 19100 at 18:42:04:

In Reply to: are you condemning strikes now? posted by Lark on January 18, 19100 at 14:59:03:

Stoller: The industrialized abundance that modern socialism must be based upon (would the working class overthrow the bourgeoisie for only lower standards of living?)...

: If we just take this as an example where have all the revolutions been? Agrarian Russia, Agrarian China, Cuba etc. it is all the people with nothing stop this middle class crap about people wont rebel if they havew nothing, if they have nothing they have nothing to lose!!

I have been talking about your expressed desires to return to PREindustrial standards of living, something I believe 'liberty in the workplace' would result in.

Russia, China, and Cuba, I believe, were failures in socialism largely because the level of industrial development was not high enough to sustain them. To point out these countries, Lark, is rather to support my contention about industrialization being necessary for socialism to thrive.

: Discipline? Centralisation? Why dont you turn spin doctor to some corporation and make the capitalists very happy, that is just the same damn dog with a different collar, if I go into work on day two of the revolution and see same boss, same customers etc. it doesnt mean anything has changed because everyone worships the party and calls each other comrade!!

Have you not heard a single word I've ever posted?

How could job rotation, equal pay, and a democratic application of production possibly lead to the 'same boss'?

Indeed, my proposals would make EVERYONE 'the boss.'

Stoller: There's no way an assembly-line---or even a street-paving crew---can permit the anarchist 'ad hocary' of day-to-day individual liberty in the workplace.

: Why the fuck not? Sounds like capitalist prejudice or one dimensional thinking to me, sure lets talk up 'absolute equality' and talk up 'absolishing the division of labout' and then just strengthen the division of authority of master and slave, damn it can't you see?!!! Your making a recipie for all the Russias, all the Gulaks, all the worker murdering regimes!!!

What hysterical and misrepresentative slander.

If job rotation, equal pay, and democratic production are, as you say, formulas for 'Gulaks' and 'murdering regimes,' why then was job rotation, equal pay, and democratic production NOT a characteristic of ANY of the socialist failures you so crudely associate with me?

Stoller: If a worker refuses to show up or to do such-and-such a task, production will be hampered, even stopped. That means commodities people expect on the communal store shelves will not be there.

: So what are you condemning strikes now?

Who was talking about strikes (a necessary class weapon in the struggle against capitalism)?

I was talking about socialized production.

Are you drunk?

: Maybe we should just conform to capitalism to ensure the comfort of all the people going shopping now a days, I hate this, these false revolutionnaries who care for NO PRINCIPLE and just for some FANATICAL violent putsch implementation of some pie in the sky BLUEPRINT, I hope you never, ever suceed, if you do I wont be calling it socialism and I'll blow it to bits!!

You and the good doctor, I suppose...

Stoller: Pollution. If one (even one) person wants to pollute, then ALL of society is subjected to pollution. In order to free everyone from pollution, that one polluting person must be stopped (nothing voluntary about that)...

The same applies to job rotation.

: Do not be stupid, if we're all working the same as in capitalism, subject to the same jack booted authority it is just capitalism reborn, can't you see?!!

Are you hard of hearing?

Job rotation, equal pay, and democratic production puts authority in the hands of WORKERS.

Stoller: If one (even one) person wants to do only skilled work, then everyone else must take on the added unskilled work that the one shirker leaves undone... [In order to free people from having to do exclusively unskilled work, skilled work must not be appropriated exclusively.]

: So we spread the poison around a bit right, if one is miserable we're all miserable?!! This is insane, it's not freedom it's equal injustice, shared torture and equal share of capitalist social relations for everyone!

Here's where we REALLY get to what's bugging you.

Doing an equal share of---some---any---of the unskilled work is repulsive to you.

You just want an ideology that will allow you the opportunity to do ONLY the skilled work you want to do---and to hell with everybody else.

If that's 'liberty in the workplace,' then I say that 'liberty' was PURCHASED by a secondary education. Your 'liberty' is nothing more than the privilege of that opportunity expressed in 'anarchist' vernacular.

It's petty bourgeois reaction.

Stoller: Let us imagine that job rotation is voluntary.

: As it is in successful miners co-ops in Britain.

All all those miners doing ANY OTHER WORK other than mining?

I suspect your problem is the fear that those miners might look at you attending college and saying 'Hey, we want to do some of the skilled work, too---move over.'

: This is the same logic as the capitalist. You are a Capitalist, I'm no longer debating with you.

Well, I've been called many things in my time, but THAT is a first.




Follow Ups:

The Debating Room Post a Followup