: And world socialism will co-ordinate on teh local regional, whatever level is practical to ensure the goods of teh earth are fairly useed and distributed...Red, you are a pretty arrogant individual---which wouldn't be such a bad thing if you knew it all (but, alas, you don't). Your other post---'We are the real socialists'---shows how absolute the World Socialism Movement's brand of socialism is. Thatıs exactly the sort of thinking that has led Utopia 2000 to abandon Marxism.
: Neither do we, we undrstand that humans are social animals, and that within that society is capable of organizing itself. The aim is to abolish the distinction between individual and society, not set up a better contract. the 'control' you speak of comes through social interaction, and a willingness to co-operate in scoeity, rather than through an external forces, the does the controling for society...
I think I understand what it was you were trying to say in the above statement (I include my prompting statement only to show the context---or lack of it---of yours). Certainly Utopia 2000 agrees that humans are social animals. That observation alone, however, will not establish organized cooperation. (Problem of the Commons).
: : [My challenging his statement that] everyone will have free access, only those that wish to retain property and exploitation will find themselves denied.
: No, they will have access to it as well, only they will be denied to the 'right' to deny others access to anything. And then only if they wish to horde something that is necessary, if tehy want to piss off to a back-woods ranch and play emporer of teh known unverse, let them...
Free access to some things (or behavior), no access to other things (or behavior)...Here is the issue. Freedom to, freedom from. WHO will be making these determinations? Can you deny that such determinations are necessary?
(Your inference that Utopia 2000 wishes to 'play emperor of the known universe' is crude propaganda...)
: We go on producing them [goods to meet needs], and place them in such a way as we can monitor our use...
See above.
: [W]e offer teh vast majority a chance to get living conditions that they are denied, we offer security, a control over ones life, and end to poverty, a sense of belonging and society....
Without any sort of initial agreement on values? Or are you simply presuming all interested parties share yours?
: [Socialism] cannot be 'enforced' by a controling agent, it cannot be rammed down folks throats...
First of all, 'control,' the Skinnerian term, ALWAYS refers to positive, non-aversive reinforcement.* (Please do not infer that 'control' is meant by behaviorists in the vulgar sense, as propagandists do in order to exploit the word as most people unacquainted with behavioristic terminology understand 'control.'**) Can the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' claim as much? If communitarian socialism is devoted to one idea, it's that NOTHING should be rammed down ANYONE'S throat---please stop inferring otherwise.
: However, since Marx in the German ideology...
We've been over this before. The German Ideology, as all Marxist scholars readily acknowledge, was written by the immature Marx, prior to the Manifesto. It was not published during his (or Engels') lifetime for a reason, and that was because Marx revised his thinking on many topics---division of labor being one of them.
: I cannot believe that [Marx] saw [the social division of labor] as a necessary part of communism...
It would, however, explain why the USSR, China, Poland, GDR, Yugoslavia, North Korea, Cuba, South Vietnam, etc. never expressed any need to address division of labor as an issue!
: [S]ince the extract is torn from its context...
Considering your lack of familiarity with the material, you are pretty bold to allege that I have taken the quote out of context. Space will not permit me to repeat the paragraph that I cited before [see 'Exactly---plus dicvision of labor']. I shall, however, quote Marx's first statement on the subject found in Capital, vol. 1:
'To all the different varieties of values in use there correspond as many different kinds of useful labor, classified according to the order, genus, species, and variety to which they belong in the social division of labor. This division of labor is a necessary condition for the production of commodities, but it does not follow, conversely, that the production of commodities is a necessary condition for the division of labor. In the primitive Indian community there is social division of labor, without production of commodities.'
(International edition, 1967, chapter I, sec. 2, p. 42)
Marx's summing statement on the topic concludes the section 'Division of Labor in Manufacture, and Division of Labor in Society' in Capital, vol. 1. (This section, containing the other passage I quoted, is the most complete treatment of Marxıs on the subject.) Remember, Marx does criticize division in the workshop (the detailed specialization); the point I have been making is that he did NOT criticize 'occupation' specialization:
'While division of labor in society at large, whether such division be brought about by exchange of commodities, is common to economic formations of society the most diverse, division of labor in the workshop, as practiced by manufacture, is a special creation of the capitalist mode of production alone.'
(International edition, 1967, chapter XIV, sec. 4, p. 359)
Meaning: SOCIAL division of labor has been common to all societies, despite economic formations. (It was on this issue that feminists blanched in the early 1970s.)
: [C]an one have a system of divission of lavbour, byond the voluntary necessity of getting a task done quickly...?
What is 'the voluntary necessity of getting a task done quickly'? Obviously, division of labor (both in the workshop and social) is more expedient for producing goods---and, conversely, less satisfying for people desiring intellectual challenges from their work. (Aristotelian Principle). Since you are such an expert on Morris (didn't read the contract link I put in, eh?---the Utopia 2000 preamble mentions Morris as a primary influence...), letıs check in with his essay 'Useful Work Versus Useless Toil':
'Variety of work is the next point, and a most important one. To compel a man to do day after day the same task, without any hope of escape or change, means nothing short of turning his life into a prison-torment...A man might easily learn learn and practice at least three crafts, varying sedentary occupation with outdoor-occupation calling for the exercise of strong bodily energy for work in which the mind had more to do.'
(News From Nowhere and Other Writings, Penguin Classics Edition, pp. 299-300)
Does this abolition of the division of labor infer less abundance?
A few paragraphs later:
'I do admit, as I have said before, that some sacrifice will be necessary in order to make labor attractive. I mean that, if we could be contented in a free community to work in the same hurried, dirty, disorderly, heartless way as we do now, we might shorten our dayıs labor very much more than I suppose we shall do, taking all kinds of labor into account. But if we did, it would mean that our new-won freedom of condition would leave us listless and wretched, if not anxious as we are now, which I hold as simply impossible. We should be contented to make the sacrifices necessary for raising our condition to the standard called out for as desirable by the whole community.'
(p. 303)
It is obvious that Morris suggests making MATERIAL sacrifices to raise the LABOR standards called out as desirable, etc. There is a reason that Morris was an opponent of Marx, and there is a reason that Morris also opposed Bellamy's vision of state socialism---and social division of labor delineated his opposition!***
: How could a minority withstand the vast , majority simply carrying out their desire to
establish socialism, espcially if denied access to military or other violent monopolies of teh current ruling class?
Sounds like violent confrontation to me...All ruling classes are 'minorities.'
: That [socialism] could work on a gloabal scale is obvious---capitalism is a global thing now, it involves taking teh structures and means of capitalism, and using them for ourselves.
Iım sorry, Red, but the logic of 'since capitalism is global, socialism has to be, too' doesnıt bear scrutiny. Capitalism is COERCIVE, global capitalism backs everyone into a corner. Again: how can global socialism be voluntary when the world is divided into such disparities of 'class consciousness' as well as material standards of living?
Your response has been:
: [W]e offer teh vast majority a chance to get living conditions that they are denied, we offer security, a control over ones life, and end to poverty, a sense of belonging and society....
Again, I ask: Without any sort of initial agreement on values? Or are you simply presuming all interested parties share yours? What if everyone in China wanted the cooperative global socialism they have just fought for to produce enough automobiles so that everyone in China has a car, but everyone in Europe wants to reduce their work-week because they already have all the luxuries they need? Who decides this, Red, and by what process? (Finicking about numbers...)
: Well, people recognize that the building needs to be kept clean, and so someone will have to do it, its up to them to define how that happens. try reading William Morris's 'News From nowhere'--- he certainly wasn't a blend of marxism and anarchism.
OK, letıs return to Morris. Ever notice how the narrator of that novel (and his companions) never actually got around to doing any work? As much praise as Utopia 2000 has for his insights into division of labor, we do not retain the 19th century notion of 'instinctive' cooperation. (Free-Rider Problem). Organization of labor is just as crucial as organization of distribution. We advocate job rotation (by age). Most Marxists hedge on the issue---and your concluding statement is, unfortunately, a fine example of such prevarication:
: [A] body, that collects data and gives out advice is certainly very different from a state, lacking teh co-ercive measures, teh repressive measures to inflict its will, merely to advise and help. The central bodies are only tehre to co-ordinate,a nd provide a place for different communities to come together, and co-operate and plan. no quasi legalistic contract will help them do that. No one can set up a plan for socialism now, it can only form throuhg the practical implementation of socialism. you do not need contracts, merely the will for each person to want to live in that sort of society, and co-operate with otehrs over achieving their desires, democratically...
Compare that statement with this:
'The state will be able to wither away completely when society adopts the rule: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," i.e. when people have become so accustomed to observing the fundamental rules of social intercourse and when their labor has become so productive that they will voluntarily work according to their ability. "The narrow horizon of bourgeois right," which compels one to calculate with the heartlessness of a Shylock whether one has not worked half an hour more than somebody else, whether one is not getting less pay than somebody else---this narrow horizon will be crossed. There will then be no need for society, in distributing products, to regulate the quantity to be received by each; each will take freely "according to his needs."'
Isn't this what the W.S.M. promises?
I regret that we, both socialists, have differences.
As I understand it, W.S.M. sees socialism as an spontaneous mass movement, a flowering (if you will) of collective class consciousness and organic cooperation resulting in the 'higher phase of communism' on a global scale. Utopia 2000, on the other hand, sees socialism as an effort to change human behavior (conditioned by capitalist institutions and ideology) requiring the democratic determination of collective values in order to know what aspects of the social environment should be altered in order to produce the implementation of said agreed-upon collective values for a small community united by a common behavioral program (contract).
Differing on issues of implementation, we both hold similar wishes for a socialist future where all people are empowered to run their own economies, societies, and individual lives. We wish your efforts success. Our support is unconditional---but critical.
* See Walden Two (Macmillian, [1948]1976 edition), pp. 244-45; Science and Human Behavior (Free Press, [1953] 1965, chapter XII , pp. 182-93 for two early Skinnerian repudiations of aversive control (punishment and/or withdrawal).
** Both Ayn Rand and Noam Chomsky sink to this level in their respective critiques of Beyond Freedom and Dignity. See Rand, The Stimulus and the Response, Philosophy: Who Needs It, (Signet, 1984) and Chomsky, Psychology and Ideology, The Chomsky Reader, (Pantheon, 1987). Yes, Rand praises Chomsky in her critique.
*** For more information on Morris' influence upon Skinner, see Skinnerıs News From Nowhere, 1984, Upon Further Reflection (Prentice-Hall, 1987), pp. 33-50. This sequel to Walden Two provides a good example of Skinnerıs criticisms of Marxism (following Morris' original ones).
