I was glad to see that you mentioned the well-known axiom, 'if a lion could talk we could not understand him,' for it says succinctly what I have been attempting to point out---namely that differences in people's perspectives are as many and as varied as they are (often) insurmountable. This has been my complaint about your vision of 'global shared consciousness.' But lions are not the only form of life unable to find agreement with the human form of life; it is equally credible to question whether disparate peoples can also 'understand' one another. Consider what Wittgenstein says shortly before the famous line:
We...say of some people that they are transparent to us. It is, however, important as regards this observation that one human being can be a complete enigma to another. We learn this when we come into a strange country with entirely strange traditions; and, what is more, even given a mastery of the country's language. We do not understand the people. (And not because of not knowing what they are saying to themselves.) We cannot find our feet with them.(1)
Forms of life, they are many. Do American women and Muslim men have only capitalism between them? Do English clerks and Pakistan garment workers the same?
How about doctors and nurses? There is more than capitalism (and capitalist ideology) between these different people. There is, for one thing, division of labor between them---gender divisions, geographical divisions, professional divisions of labor. Will equally distributing the means of production amongst them alter or even abolish these divisions of labor? If only it could be said that capitalism created these divisions, then perhaps socialism in itself would mitigate or end these divisions, but we know that these social divisions preceded capitalism---indeed, it can be inferred that these divisions created capitalism.
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: ...I have said that the reactionaries will be ignored, and the majority will go ahead and
enact their plans and use the means of production as they will, teh reactionaries can
either fuck off and form a little island community somehwere, they can recognise defeat, or if they actually try and use violence to stop teh will of the majority, they will be restrained. If I gave a figure, say 75% for the majority, your next question would be 'what if there were only 74%?'...
No, I want to draw attention to the 25% (or 26%) that do not acquiesce. Why do you assume that they will 'abide,' 'be beholden,' etc. as you would in the great global elections you anticipate? This inference that other people would act as you would is the problem. You say the 'reactionaries' (dissenters) 'will be restrained.' How is this different from other 'total' forms of socialism? Isn't global total? (You say that dissenters can form a 'little island community somewhere'; who decides the location---them or the 'majority'?)
You also say that socialism will not occur until the 'vast majority' decrees it (through united revolutionary action). I maintain that divisions of labor will prevent this anticipated global united action; that is why Utopia 2000 advocates small voluntary associations. Again, a key merit of such a small model is that the smallness of such a community can help render unnecessary the very mediation (specialized 'restrainers' of the 'reactionaries,' for example) that any global model must use. Or to put it bluntly, your vision necessitates police (call them 'worker's councils' or 'the people' if you will, they still have to 'restrain' someone); the Utopia 2000 vision does not have to engage in the business of restraint.
To sum: Utopia 2000 believes that 'waiting' for global consensus is to refuse action; to build a socialist pilot (with a handful to individuals who share similar histories) is to commence action...
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: Whilst we're on it, I have a couple of questions for a change:
1: Will all your communes be entirely self sufficient?
Self sufficiency is paramount for survival. Increasing living standards will necessitate the formation of other communities (production specialization) associated by cooperative exchange. (Rotation of jobs, rotation between communities, will prevent any one community from attempting to exploit another. Communities will specialize; individuals will not.)
Utopia 2000 advises, as a first step, the production of a necessary product (use-value) that could be used to trade with other socialist communities as well as marketed out to the capitalist economy. (The latter exigency would be required, initially at least, because one small community can not, alone, produce everything it needs.) The second step would, of course, be the creation of a network of small communities, each producing a necessary product to exchange amongst one another in a long-term effort to free each and all associations from having to deal with, and indirectly support, the capitalist economy. (Gradual, not sudden revolution.)
: Or will they exchange between each other:
See above.
: i) If so, how do you account for their differences in means of production (i.e. that some will have car factories and others not), and further, how would you square this with the fact that Marx saw differences in teh meenas of production and geographical wealth as the starting point for social division of labour?
It would behoove communities to settle in areas that were most conducive to producing the necessary item that they decided to produce. (Transportation costs are one reason reliance on exchange with capitalists would initially be required.) As far as Marx is concerned, job/community rotation would obviate both concerns about the means of production and geographical fortune engendering a renewed social division of labor. Not that I would agree with Marx's assessment: hierarchy in labor, I believe (following Veblen), is the starting point for the social division of labor.*
ii)If not, how would such a system of society benefit fiolks in relatively poor, resource wise areas of the world?
I have intimated that poorer people would not be so readily interested in 'voluntary simplicity.' The history of modern communitarianism (at least in the States) bears this out.** To repeat an old adage, the poor are often those most beguiled by riches (and hierarchy). Utopia 2000 does not attempt to solve these massive problems---the problems of the world; Utopia 2000 only attempts to initiate a 'first step'---which is the formation of a small society employing socialist principles (with the application of the science of behavior).
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: Living conditions will varying according to the climate and needs of an area, the revolution will be to replace poverty with comfort. The west will not need to lower their abundance to raise that in other countries', since theirs will be ahieved by the freed labour of their own peoples.
The living conditions of the poorer nations 'will be achieved by the free labor of their own peoples.' Is this not a qualification of your earlier position that socialism will only be realized if it is global? Does that not infer that nations (with varying standards of living) will exchange use-values (reflecting these varying standards) between one another? (If not, why is global socialism so essential?) Since '[l]iving conditions will vary according to the climate and needs of an area,' you do allow discrepancies between national standards of living. What would create a revolutionary bond between nations if their standards of living were to remain disparate? They already are---and this, I maintain, is exactly the reason that there can be no global 'socialist consciousness.'
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: Ending property does not end difference of ideas, it merely ends property as a barrier of interest, preventing teh proper resolution of ideas.
Is this not saying the same thing---namely that ending property will result in shared values, shared perspectives, shared forms of life?
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: People are 'beholden' if they enter into a democratic process to accept its outcome- it happens a lot you know, people accept election results, laws only exist because we agree to obey them, all governments are anarchies at heart. People can be governed by their bvalue systems, by their custom, and by their desire to make socialism work, and recognise the mutual interest involved in their activities.
All governments are anarchies at heart? I prefer Skinner's definition: '[G]overnment is the use of the power to punish.'(2) Perhaps you would prefer Engels: '[A] power, apparently standing over society,...necessary to moderate the conflict [of class contradictions] and keep it within the bounds of "order"'(3)---which is a dainty way of saying the former. What makes you sure that other people will 'enter into a democratic process' and 'accept election results' like you will? For that matter, why don't you presently (as if you were a minority vote in the capitalist regime being 'ignored' as you would have the capitalist supporters be 'ignored' in the socialist world that you envision)? You presently 'go along' with the majority 'vote' (if governments are, as you claim, anarchies at heart, then people are accepting capitalism, are they not?), I suspect, because the State has the power to punish you if you do not. This problem---punishing the minority that fails to accept the majority vote---would not be solved by W.S.M.'s plans for global socialism ('restraining' those who object).
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A bit on language.
: If language were not [universal], how could all languages be translateable?
What I have been saying is that, concerning various forms of life (including various divisions of labor), languages are not. Remember, 'language games' are many types of games. This is one reason why I do not believe in a 'global socialist consciousness.'
: Grammar is not universal, grammar is based on a generative grammar that is common to all language, a set of switches, a deep structure underlying teh whole of language.
The Chomsky thesis. I believe that grammar, as both Wittgenstein and Skinner maintained, is context, and that language is behavior. 'Every sign by itself seems dead.What gives it life?---In use it is alive.'(4) Is there some internal grammar chart, as Chomsky supposes? '[D]ictionaries do not give meanings; at best they give words having the same meanings.'(5) (And: '[T]here are no dictionaries for sentences.'(6)) Chomsky says that language has innate rules---rules separate from or prior to usage (behavior). Where could such a chart be? In the mind---or in the contingencies that shape behavior where we see language development actually occur? Chomsky's formalism fails to explain, for one thing, the zillion misunderstandings that occur every day within his alleged 'universal' grammar...
: This is why I regard behaviourism as a tad reductive, you reject all attempts to even try and examine the internal structures of personality and mind.
I do not deny the presence of 'feelings,' 'values,' or 'perspective'; methodological behaviorism (1920's) often did, certainly (current) radical behaviorism does not.*** I do not, however, attribute behavior (and language must be considered behavior, otherwise it would be private) to internal agents (structures) which lack verification. Social contingencies (structures in the real world of human interactions) adequately explains much of behavior, at least to my satisfaction. The use of 'internal structures' (consider Freud's 'mechanisms') is, for my taste, a retreat to mentalistic speculation---the very 'dualism' that Marx so dramatically swept aside.
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I am not implying that you are wrong and I am right. I only remain untouched by the contingencies in your history that has led you to your set of beliefs as I remain under the control of the contingencies in my history that has led me to mine...
* See Veblen: 'The institution of a leisure class is the outgrowth of an early discrimination between employments, according to which some employments are worthy and others unworthy'(Theory of the Leisure Class, Modern Library Edition, p. 8.), especially his distinction between the 'coercive utilization of man by man' (p. 10) (skilled labor) and the 'power over...all the elemental forces' (ibid.) (unskilled labor). As you can tell, this upsets the notion of a unified working class, as defined simply by lack of access to the means of production, for those who 'utilize' others may be mere managers who also lack such access. Even the early Marx (and Engels, who I believe differed from Marx on this point---I am thinking of the famous 'porter/architect' example in chapter VII of the much later workAnti-Duhring) made this distinction when he (they) said: 'Division of labor only becomes truly such from the moment when a division of material and mental labor appears.' (German Ideology, International 1970, p. 51).** See Kinkade, Is It Utopia Yet? (Twin Oaks Publishing, 1994), pp. 193-95; also Communities, Winter 1997, p. 6.
***This is a very important consideration in lieu of Wittgenstein's several expressed antipathies toward behaviorism.
Notes:
1. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, 1953), p. 223.
2. Skinner, Science and Human Behavior (Macmillan, 1953), p. 335.
3. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (International, 1970), p. 229.
4. Wittgenstein, op. cit., § 432.
5. Skinner, Verbal Behavior (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1957), p. 9.
6. Pitkin, Wittgenstein and Justice (University of California Press, 1972), p.80.
None.
