# Misuses of the word "anarchy"



## DrRingDing (Jun 11, 2011)

"20 years of anarchy"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12285365

Yes BBC, Somalia is a fine example of anarchism in action.


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## butchersapron (Jun 11, 2011)

It's a very good example of anarchy though.


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## Mrs Magpie (Jun 11, 2011)

It's a very old word though. 1600s, long before Kropotkin and his ilk.


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## DrRingDing (Jun 11, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> It's a very good example of anarchy though.


 
Next to no government yes but with rampaging islamists and other groups with various nefarious backers that is not anarchism.


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## DrRingDing (Jun 11, 2011)

Mrs Magpie said:


> It's a very old word though. 1600s, long before Kropotkin and his ilk.


 
Tis much older than that. It's a Greek word.


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## JHE (Jun 11, 2011)

Anarcho-Wotsits have no monopoly on the word 'anarchy'.  If they don't like the way others use the word, that's their bad luck.


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## DrRingDing (Jun 11, 2011)

JHE said:


> Anarcho-Wotsits have no monopoly on the word 'anarchy'.  If they don't like the way others use the word, that's their bad luck.


 
Yea right, you tell us JHE.


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## butchersapron (Jun 11, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> Next to no government yes but with rampaging islamists and other groups with various nefarious backers that is not anarchism.


 
Does it mention anarchism?


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## stethoscope (Jun 11, 2011)

Quite, it says in anarchy, not anarchism.


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## Mrs Magpie (Jun 11, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> Tis much older than that. It's a Greek word.


I was going with the OED and its first written appearance in English.


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## butchersapron (Jun 11, 2011)

Or Greek.


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## JHE (Jun 11, 2011)

stephj said:


> Quite, it says in anarchy, not anarchism.




Yes, but that's not going to cheer up Dingaling.  *One* of the meanings of 'anarchy' *is* the wonderful stateless future that Anarcho-Wotsits want, but the word is used in other ways and no one has copyright on the word.


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## stethoscope (Jun 11, 2011)

Frankly after some of your comments on the EDL coming to Tower Hamlets thread, you can fuck right off too JHE.


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## ViolentPanda (Jun 11, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> Next to no government yes but with rampaging islamists and other groups with various nefarious backers that is not anarchism.


 
No, it's *anarchy*. The article doesn't mention anarchism. It's only you conflating anarchism (a philosophy) with anarchy (an absence of order).


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## ViolentPanda (Jun 11, 2011)

JHE said:


> Anarcho-Wotsits have no monopoly on the word 'anarchy'.  If they don't like the way others use the word, that's their bad luck.


 
Why would anyone want a monopoly on a word or phrase?

E2A: Except a daft twat like you with your pat "Islamo-" phrases, obviously.


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## ViolentPanda (Jun 11, 2011)

stephj said:


> Frankly after some of your comments on the EDL coming to Tower Hamlets thread, you can fuck right off too JHE.


 
Surely you're not surprised by the barely-veiled prejudice JHE spouts?

Didn't you know? A camel once looked at his mum in a funny way, and now he hates all Muslims.


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## ernestolynch (Jun 11, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> Yea right, you tell us JHE.


 
You're an anarchist now are you?

LOL


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## peterkro (Jun 11, 2011)

Anarchy:An:without,Archy: rulers.See Matriarchy,Patriarchy,Monarchy etc. I realise the word is often misused and will continue to be misused but a misuse it is.It came into common use by the Royalists as a term of abuse against the Parliamentarians in England.Somalia if anything is an example of competing governments, I doubt you'll find to much in the way of non-heirachical social organisation.


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## JHE (Jun 11, 2011)

peterkro said:


> I realise the word is often misused and will continue to be misused but a misuse it is.


 
It's not a misuse at all.  It simply reflects a view of government very different from (and, as it happens, much more widespread than) the Anarcho-Wotsits' view:  that without effective government to keep people in order there would be chaos and mayhem.


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## butchersapron (Jun 11, 2011)

You are a massive cunt though aren't you? A really nasty one at that.


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## peterkro (Jun 11, 2011)

If you base meaning on etymology it's a misuse,if you base meaning on usage it has two meanings at least.Presumably you would say "waiting with baited breath" was the correct expression as it's more used,I would say "waiting with bated breath" as it's etymologically correct.Arguing for non-hierachical social organisation at present is a bit like being an atheist in the middle ages, a lot of people lack the ability to see outside the shackles that confine them.


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## JHE (Jun 11, 2011)

The use of the word 'anarchy' that you dislike is *just* as much based on etymology as the use you approve.  When people talk of Somalia being in anarchy, to take the example Dingaling gave earlier, they mean that there is no effective government and that the undesirable features of the situation, including the horrors, are a result of that lack.


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## Proper Tidy (Jun 11, 2011)

peterkro said:


> .Arguing for non-hierachical social organisation at present is a bit like being an atheist in the middle ages, a lot of people lack the ability to see outside the shackles that confine them.


 
Free me from my shackles Peter. Lol


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## ernestolynch (Jun 12, 2011)

peterkro said:


> Anarchy:An:without,Archy: rulers.See Matriarchy,Patriarchy,Monarchy etc. I realise the word is often misused and will continue to be misused but a misuse it is.It came into common use by the Royalists as a term of abuse against the Parliamentarians in England.Somalia if anything is an example of competing governments, I doubt you'll find to much in the way of non-heirachical social organisation.


 
Hi, 'Prince'!


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## ernestolynch (Jun 12, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> Free me from my shackles Peter. Lol


 
He'll get a cob-on reading that, dirty old 'Prince'.

The only proper anarchists in these islands are the tinkers.


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## Captain Hurrah (Jun 12, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> Free me from my shackles Peter. Lol



lol


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## peterkro (Jun 12, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> Free me from my shackles Peter. Lol



If your waiting on me or anybody else to free you you'll be waiting a long fucking time.


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## ernestolynch (Jun 12, 2011)

peterkro said:


> If your waiting on me or anybody else to free you you'll be waiting a long fucking time.


 
'Prince' swore LOLz


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## frogwoman (Jun 12, 2011)

peterkro said:


> If you base meaning on etymology it's a misuse,if you base meaning on usage it has two meanings at least.Presumably you would say "waiting with baited breath" was the correct expression as it's more used,I would say "waiting with bated breath" as it's etymologically correct.*Arguing for non-hierachical social organisation at present is a bit like being an atheist in the middle ages, a lot of people lack the ability to see outside the shackles that confine them.*


 
Spot the contradiction here.


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

It's orthodox trot stuff. You've just joined an orthodox trot group. See the contradiction?


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## frogwoman (Jun 12, 2011)

Not that they lack the ability for anything no.


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

Yes. The same. Without the party they lack the ability. BY definition. Or the party does not need to exist. And it does need to exist doesn't it?


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## frogwoman (Jun 12, 2011)

But they need to have the ability to "see outside the shackles" (Lol) to join the party in the first place tho no?


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## ernestolynch (Jun 12, 2011)

frogwoman said:


> But they need to have the ability to "see outside the shackles" (Lol) to join the party in the first place tho no?


 
Which party? AFED? AYN? SPEW?


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

frogwoman said:


> But they need to have the ability to "see outside the shackles" (Lol) to join the party in the first place tho no?



Of course. How is this different from the orthodox trot:



> a lot of people lack the ability to see outside the shackles that confine them



It's bog standard trottery. I don't believe it. No one real does. You've just signed up for it though. You don't believe in it either. Yet it's the organsational principle of the group that you've joined.


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## frogwoman (Jun 12, 2011)

Any of them.


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## ernestolynch (Jun 12, 2011)

By racism, sexism and other forms of oppression, as well as war and environmental destruction the rulers weaken and divide us.


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## frogwoman (Jun 12, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Of course. How is this different from the orthodox trot:
> 
> 
> 
> It's bog standard trottery. I don't believe it. No one real does. You've just signed up for it though. You don't believe in it either. Yet it's the organsational principle of the group that you've joined.


 
no, i don't believe in it. and i haven't heard anyone say that, and even if i did, i would think it was bullshit. i don't think most people are incapable of relating their experiences back to politics etc. that's why people join these groups (or perhaps don't join them).


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

You've just joined a party that's existence is based on the inability of people to do just that.


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## peterkro (Jun 12, 2011)

frogwoman said:


> Spot the contradiction here.



I do see your point clearly "ability" was the wrong choice of word.Of course everybody has the ability to see outside of their own personal situation.I was trying to say that because of personal circumstances and prevailing ideologies it can be very difficult to see (for me as much as anyone else) that humans can organise themselves in better ways.When I see the situation for lots of Muslim woman for instance, I don't think there's a person who lacks the ability to live their life as they please, I think the pressures to conform to other peoples expectations have made it extremely difficult to see a way out of the situation.It doesn't mean I think they are stupid or ill informed or any less a human,it does mean I see in them the potential to be free and firmly believe sooner or later they will be.


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## DotCommunist (Jun 12, 2011)

no offence, but that is very patronising. It sort of looks as though you are viewing people as ignorant rather than wearily indifferent cos it is all the same shit different day. There is a cynicism around that idea that I can't agree with. It isn't ignorance.


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## peterkro (Jun 12, 2011)

DotCommunist said:


> no offence, but that is very patronising. It sort of looks as though you are viewing people as ignorant rather than wearily indifferent cos it is all the same shit different day. There is a cynicism around that idea that I can't agree with. It isn't ignorance.



I clearly stated I didn't think ignorance was a factor.I also don't see what is patronising about what I said,it's quite possible that i was inadvertently so please point it out.


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

DotCommunist said:


> no offence, but that is very patronising. It sort of looks as though you are viewing people as ignorant rather than wearily indifferent cos it is all the same shit different day. There is a cynicism around that idea that I can't agree with. It isn't ignorance.


 
You're a pretend Stalinist on a board where it's been done better and more thoroughly. Is that cynicism? What is it?


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## frogwoman (Jun 12, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> You've just joined a party that's existence is based on the inability of people to do just that.


 
i dunno, but whenever discussions around this sort of thing have come up the arguement is always that people can and do learn through their life's experience, and frequently end up drawing those conclusions from their life, their workplace, etc. I'm not saying some people don't believe it, but i think they're very, very wrong. 

i don't think that everyone who's not enlightened is just some sheep, thas just daft, and increidbly patronising. (and dangerous).


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

frogwoman said:


> i dunno, but whenever discussions around this sort of thing have come up the arguement is always that people can and do learn through their life's experience, and frequently end up drawing those conclusions from their life, their workplace, etc. I'm not saying some people don't believe it, but i think they're very, very wrong.
> 
> i don't think that everyone who's not enlightened is just some sheep, thas just daft, and increidbly patronising. (and dangerous).


 

Doesn't matter what you think. Your parties existence is based don what i said - that separation. Geri wasn't a trot when she joined, did that chnage the parties basis? It's founding  politics?


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## DrRingDing (Jun 12, 2011)

Swappies hate/fear the w/c.


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## frogwoman (Jun 12, 2011)

peterkro said:


> I do see your point clearly "ability" was the wrong choice of word.Of course everybody has the ability to see outside of their own personal situation.I was trying to say that because of personal circumstances and prevailing ideologies it can be very difficult to see (for me as much as anyone else) that humans can organise themselves in better ways.When I see the situation for lots of Muslim woman for instance, I don't think there's a person who lacks the ability to live their life as they please, I think the pressures to conform to other peoples expectations have made it extremely difficult to see a way out of the situation.It doesn't mean I think they are stupid or ill informed or any less a human,it does mean I see in them the potential to be free and firmly believe sooner or later they will be.


 
Fair enough then  I do understand what you're saying and agree with most of it, and no worries, to be honest i'm probably in the wrong state of mind to be thinking about this sort of stuff. I'm not sure if it's always other people's expectations though although that is certainly part of it, sometimes people just cant, or don't have time to think about getting involved in any activism, for financial, family reasons etc. a lot of people, including me , just want escapism and to collapse on the sofa and watch tv at the end of ten hours work and who can blame them?


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 12, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> Swappies hate/fear the w/c.


 
Who on this thread is a Swappy?


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## DotCommunist (Jun 12, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> You're a pretend Stalinist on a board where it's been done better and more thoroughly. Is that cynicism? What is it?


 
it's six cans for seven quid butch, as you well know


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## frogwoman (Jun 12, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Doesn't matter what you think. Your parties existence is based don what i said - that separation. Geri wasn't a trot when she joined, did that chnage the parties basis? It's founding  politics?


 
Yeah, i get you.

It's just that I've not come across anyone who's saying that people are too thick to think for themselves to the extent that they would be too stupid to get involved in a group (or anything else that would change their lives). You're right that for some people there's a tendency to think only they are right and nobody else on the left could have "the right" view on something, but you get that, sadly, with every group and also with quite a few anarchists aswell. But I think that's different to saying that the majority of people are stupid and lack the ability to think for themselves. And if everyone thought that there wouldn't be any point in trying to get anyone to join, if they thought most people were too stupid to come around to those views anyway.


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

But your parties hard structures exist because of this belief. Regardless. It doesn't matter how nice or nasty people are. How much they really believe in this or that. It doesn't matter who you've come across or saying this or not/ What on earth do you think a trotskyist party is other than a party that believes that the working class cannot, under it's own guidance achieve emancipation, and so requires a party to centralise and generalise the political conclusions that the working class cannot, and that this party needs to lead the revolution or it will be frittered away. And the party you've joined is that party.

Why?  You don't believe this bollocks.


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## ernestolynch (Jun 12, 2011)

DotCommunist said:


> it's six cans for seven quid butch, as you well know


 
£5.50 round our way


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 12, 2011)

My experience of the SP is the same Frogwoman. I know what BA is getting at, I've seen it myself in a certain slightly larger Trotskyist organisation but so far I haven't seen any of it in the SP, though that's not to say it doesn't exist, we've seen on this thread that anarchists are no more immune to it than anyone else. I wouldn't have joined the SP if that was the prevailing view in my branch, and would leave if it became so.


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

Nonetheless, it's the explicit reason for the party you've joined existing.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 12, 2011)

That may be the case, and I don't pretend the SP is perfect, no organisation is. But I've already outlined my reasons for joining in another thread so I'd rather not clutter this one up by repeating it. Regardless of the organisations we belong to/don't belong to it seems that we agree, as does frogwoman, that people aren't too stupid to figure it out for themselves.


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

It doesn't matter it if it's perfect or not. This is what it is. You joined. If your experiences destroy the basis for the party then wtf is a) the party doing existing and b) you being it C) You not destroying it?


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 12, 2011)

God knows lol.

I joined because I'm in a new city where I don't know anyone, where I have no access to the kind of networks you need to be active and effective politically (trade unions, informal links to people in unions/workplaces, contacts in the local community, etc.) and the SP can introduce me to those links. I joined on the basis that if it turned out to have the kind of sneering attitude towards ordinary people that I've seen elsewhere I could always leave and would at least have been able to make some links with people in the area. I've found so far that this isn't the case - whenever I've talked to people in the SP about this they've agreed that people are able to draw what I consider to be the right conclusions from their experiences alone, without the need to be "guided" by "enlightened" party hacks. Regardless of what the formal justification for the existence of the SP is, it enables me to be more effective, it enables me to get involved locally in ways I wouldn't otherwise be able to.

I'd be happy to discuss this further on the other thread if you want but I'd rather not derail this one any more.


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## frogwoman (Jun 12, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> But your parties hard structures exist because of this belief. Regardless. It doesn't matter how nice or nasty people are. How much they really believe in this or that. It doesn't matter who you've come across or saying this or not/ What on earth do you think a trotskyist party is other than a party that believes that the working class cannot, under it's own guidance achieve emancipation, and so requires a party to centralise and generalise the political conclusions that the working class cannot, and that this party needs to lead the revolution or it will be frittered away. And the party you've joined is that party.
> 
> Why?  You don't believe this bollocks.



It's more a case of organisation being required though to get the (quite specific) ideas that the sp (or anyone else) want to put in to practice, to come about, rather than people being incapable of thinking and coming up with that themselves. It's not that people cant draw those conclusions themselves but that it needs to be organised in an effective way, and it would be difficult to do this without a party or some sort of party-like thing (tho perhaps not impossible). I'm not saying they're right, but that's the arguement, not that everyone is stupid except people in that party, like some sort of religious sect type thing. 


and i joined because i think it's one of the only far left organisations thats actually doing anything at the moment in terms of community work etc, and also dont view everything as a recruitment tool rather than trying to do good in the community. I'm not saying that its perfect or i agree with everything, because i don't. 

I know what you're getting at though because I've seen it elsewhere, but it's not been my experience, honestly


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

It doesn't fucking matter if its your experience of  individuals or not. This is what the party believes and is set up to do.  It doesn't matter how nice or nasty people are. How much they really believe in this or that. It doesn't matter who you've come across or saying this or not/ What on earth do you think a trotskyist party is other than a party that believes that the working class cannot, under it's own guidance achieve emancipation, and so requires a party to centralise and generalise the political conclusions that the working class cannot, and that this party needs to lead the revolution or it will be frittered away. And the party you've joined is that party.


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

Even the SP members don't know what their party is about


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## ernestolynch (Jun 12, 2011)

YEah Frogwoman - take your party seriously godammit!

Ask em for some pamphlets at yr next mtg.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 12, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Even the SP members don't know what their party is about


 
It's like we're too daft to understand it for ourselves and need you to tell us


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> It's like we're too daft to understand it for ourselves and need you to tell us


 
It'd be nice if you admitted all that stuff is crap and why. And tell the party that's existed for 50 years that you've been in for 6 months based on that crap that this is the case. That they've changed since you joined. _Because_ you joined.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 12, 2011)

They changed since I joined? Because I joined? I haven't said that, have I? I joined because from what I'd seen they didn't have that attitude - I joined because it didn't appear to need changing. And I have told them I don't believe people are too stupid to figure it out for themselves - nobody's had a problem with that.


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

So this:



> What on earth do you think a trotskyist party is other than a party that believes that the working class cannot, under it's own guidance achieve emancipation, and so requires a party to centralise and generalise the political conclusions that the working class cannot, and that this party needs to lead the revolution or it will be frittered away. And the party you've joined is that party.



Still holds,  regardless of the nice people you or GW meet. Seemingly unaware of the aims of the party that they've joined.


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## Edie (Jun 12, 2011)

You know butchers your quick to tell people when and how they are talking shit but you never say what you think.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 12, 2011)

We're going round in circles here. We both know that the likelihood of the SP ever rising to power is negligible at best - I'm in the SP so that I can make a difference in the community I live in, not because of some ideological programme or something. I get to find out about what's going on in the area and support people when they go on strike, get involved in the anti-cuts stuff, etc. And the people I work with in the SP are committed activists who genuinely want to improve things for ordinary people - not party hacks whose first thought is always recruitment. I won't pretend that I'm making a massive difference on my own but the alternative for me is to sit alone in my flat and rant about the Tories on the internet. I think I made the right choice - you clearly don't - that's fine. I don't expect everyone to agree with me.


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## frogwoman (Jun 12, 2011)

exactly @ spiney 

and the reason why a party is thought to be necessary (lets say any party, lets forget the SP for a sec) isn't because they think everyone except them is stupid and can't think, like some sort of trot version of david icke, it's because of the practicalities of organisation etc, because it's simply easier that way to produce a coherent force that will be able to get into power and carry out the programme (whatever it is). I don't think that is the same at all as what you are argueing, that trot parties think like conspiracy theorists that everyone is a "sheep" who needs to be "woken up". i've been argueing agianst that shit for years on here and i wouldn't join an organisation that promoted those views. 

you're saying that trotskyist parties think that people need a party to reach conclusions, which is obviousky not true because otherwise there wouldn't be those parties in the first place without people first coming up with the ideas in their heads. 

and you're right its nothing to do with people being nasty or nice , i joined the sp because i agreed with most of their ideas and i've seen the good work that they have done in locally with helping with strikes etc and community work and also around the country, at the moment they are about the most effective large-ish far left group in my opinion, i joined it not because people are nice - anyone can be nice - but because they are serious and organsied. it doesn't matter how nice someone is, i know that.


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## frogwoman (Jun 12, 2011)

Edie said:


> You know butchers your quick to tell people when and how they are talking shit but you never say what you think.


 
To be fair he has said what he thinks and does. (see the edl thread for example). I dont think thas fair mate.


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## The39thStep (Jun 12, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> You're a pretend Stalinist on a board where it's been done better and more thoroughly. Is that cynicism? What is it?


 
Top form tonite boyo


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## The39thStep (Jun 12, 2011)

Edie said:


> You know butchers your quick to tell people when and how they are talking shit but you never say what you think.


 
Not my experience at all


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## JHE (Jun 12, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> We both know that the likelihood of the SP ever rising to power is negligible at best...


 
I read a little article earlier today by someone who calls himself a Church of England Atheist.  Now I find that there are also Trotless Trotlets:  Trots who don't believe in Trottery!


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## Proper Tidy (Jun 12, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> It's orthodox trot stuff. You've just joined an orthodox trot group. See the contradiction?


 
It isn't though.


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

Yeah it is.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 12, 2011)

JHE said:


> I read a little article earlier today by someone who calls himself a Church of England Atheist.  Now I find that there are also Trotless Trotlets:  Trots who don't believe in Trottery!


 
Yeah but you're a bit of a twat, aren't you?


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## Proper Tidy (Jun 12, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> But your parties hard structures exist because of this belief. Regardless. It doesn't matter how nice or nasty people are. How much they really believe in this or that. It doesn't matter who you've come across or saying this or not/ What on earth do you think a trotskyist party is other than a party that believes that the working class cannot, under it's own guidance achieve emancipation, and so requires a party to centralise and generalise the political conclusions that the working class cannot, and that this party needs to lead the revolution or it will be frittered away. And the party you've joined is that party.
> 
> Why?  You don't believe this bollocks.


 
It's the belief that the most active and conscious elements of the working class should organise themselves into a political organisation in order to bring about change. It is what the working class has been doing since the working class came into existence.


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> It's the belief that the most active and conscious elements of the working class should organise themselves into a political organisation in order to bring about change. It is what the working class has been doing since the working class came into existence.


 
Trotskyism is more than that - and it's exactly as i said. Are you a trotskyist? How many of your members are? I've just found two that aren't.


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## DotCommunist (Jun 12, 2011)

knight of the long cans


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## DotCommunist (Jun 12, 2011)

The39thStep said:


> Top form tonite boyo


 
reach around


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 12, 2011)

Am I involved in some kind of bizarre show-trial here?


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## Proper Tidy (Jun 12, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Trotskyism is more than that - and it's exactly as i said. Are you a trotskyist? How many of your members are? I've just found two that aren't.


 
Truthfully, I am a trot of convenience, which is a label that probably applies to a large proportion of SP members.

And it isn't much more than that. The aspect you seem to take the most offence to - the vangaurd - is an aspect that predates either Lenin or Trotsky, and has been around since the working class has striven to bring about change. It is there in a lot of self-declared 'libertarians' and anti-vanguardists too. You've said as much yourself, before now. Other 'traditions' or however we term it may be unwilling to state this, at least trotskyism is honest in its theory about how revolutionary change happens.

Do I think it must, absolutely, be the SP who leads our future glorious revolution, or otherwise it will be squandered? No. Do I think that there will need to be an organised and disciplined political leadership for the working class to achieve change? Yes. Fucking right I do.


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## DrRingDing (Jun 12, 2011)

So you want to discipline the working class = trots hate and fear the w/c.


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## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> Truthfully, I am a trot of convenience, which is a label that probably applies to a large proportion of SP members.
> 
> And it isn't much more than that. The aspect you seem to take the most offence to - the vangaurd - is an aspect that predates either Lenin or Trotsky, and has been around since the working class has striven to bring about change. It is there in a lot of self-declared 'libertarians' and anti-vanguardists too. You've said as much yourself, before now. Other 'traditions' or however we term it may be unwilling to state this, at least trotskyism is honest in its theory about how revolutionary change happens.
> 
> Do I think it must, absolutely, be the SP who leads our future glorious revolution, or otherwise it will be squandered? No. Do I think that there will need to be an organised and disciplined political leadership for the working class to achieve change? Yes. Fucking right I do.


 
So where is this resistance to what the party is? Why not sort it out?


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 12, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> So you want to discipline the working class = trots hate and fear the w/c.


 
Oh fuck off you empty anarcholol cunt. Less lifestyle, more politics. Try it.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> So you want to discipline the working class = trots hate and fear the w/c.


 
Give it a fucking rest will you? Idiot.


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 12, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> So where is this resistance to what the party is? Why not sort it out?


 
Sorry butchers, what do you mean here?


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> And it isn't much more than that. The aspect you seem to take the most offence to - the vangaurd - is an aspect that predates either Lenin or Trotsky, and has been around since the working class has striven to bring about change. It is there in a lot of self-declared 'libertarians' and anti-vanguardists too. You've said as much yourself, before now. Other 'traditions' or however we term it may be unwilling to state this, at least trotskyism is honest in its theory about how revolutionary change happens.



Condemns all instances of it. What's the problem?


----------



## DrRingDing (Jun 12, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Give it a fucking rest will you? Idiot.



On the pop on a Sunday night?


----------



## The39thStep (Jun 12, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> On the pop on a Sunday night?


 
Having a pop on a Sunday night perhaps.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> Sorry butchers, what do you mean here?


That your party is set up on a very specific basis



> ...a party that believes that the working class cannot, under it's own guidance achieve emancipation, and so requires a party to centralise and generalise the political conclusions that the working class cannot, and that this party needs to lead the revolution or it will be frittered away. And the party you've joined is that party.



You're arguing that you've not quite got it all, just fuck knows, history or something. So why aren't you arguing this in the party? You know why not. I know why not. Want to tell everyone else?


----------



## frogwoman (Jun 12, 2011)

.


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 12, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Condemns all instances of it. What's the problem?


 
Aye, fair enough if you condemn it in every instance. But why does the working class movement, for want of a better phrase, keep ending up at vanguardism, whether that vangaurdism is honestly stated or hidden away? Genuine question. My conclusion would be because time and again events and struggles lead us to recognise the need for disciplined and coherent political leadership.

If you want to condemn it in every instance then great, but it seems to me that these criticisms are only ever leveled at those who honestly state it and have at least some degree of democratic controls to ensure the theory isn't abused in practice. Meanwhile, plenty of others who subscribe to a much more jaded and cynical vanguardism - one of whom started this debate within a debate in the first place - get to prick about screaming blue murder at the dreaded trots without anybody ever pointing out that they don't subscribe to anything different, just a cruder and more cynical and patronising version of.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

frogwoman said:


> no, its not to do with disccipline in that sense as in discipline meaning punishment.
> 
> it's like - to take a really crude example, you would not want someone in the leadership of a party who was stealing thousands of pounds from the party's finances, and using the money to buy fancy cars or something. you would need to kick them and there would need to be a strucutre in place to enable you to do that. that's what i understand by a disciplined leadership, it's got nothing to do with punishing anyone.


 

Sory, fw, i love you, this is fantasy. You're whipping yourself into discipline about something that you don't support!! What are you going to be like when it's something you like?


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 12, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> That your party is set up on a very specific basis
> 
> 
> 
> You're arguing that you've not quite got it all, just fuck knows, history or something. So why aren't you arguing this in the party? You know why not. I know why not. Want to tell everyone else?


 
I'm not trying to be obtuse BA, I don't really get what you mean.

I think you are asking why some members ignore, or choose to, the trotskyist (and thus SP) position that, as the vanguard of the working class, it is, so the theory goes, us that will provide the coherent and disciplined political leadership I mentioned above. And I would say that it is because, whilst these members - myself included - largely believe in the need for the political leadership, we are nonetheless unconvinced that we are necessarily it. If that is what you mean.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 12, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> Aye, fair enough if you condemn it in every instance. But why does the working class movement, for want of a better phrase, keep ending up at vanguardism, whether that vangaurdism is honestly stated or hidden away? Genuine question. My conclusion would be because time and again events and struggles lead us to recognise the need for disciplined and coherent political leadership.
> 
> If you want to condemn it in every instance then great, but it seems to me that these criticisms are only ever leveled at those who honestly state it and have at least some degree of democratic controls to ensure the theory isn't abused in practice. Meanwhile, plenty of others who subscribe to a much more jaded and cynical vanguardism - one of whom started this debate within a debate in the first place - get to prick about screaming blue murder at the dreaded trots without anybody ever pointing out that they don't subscribe to anything different, just a cruder and more cynical and patronising version of.



It doesn't. The great social movements from the 1792 onwards have never used vangaurdism as their organising model. They all charged against it, they all warned against it. So you're fucked.


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 12, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> It doesn't. The great social movements from the 1792 onwards have never used vangaurdism as their organising model. They all charged against it, they all warned against it. So you're fucked.


 
Bollocks. Show me one that hasn't subscribed to vanguardism in some form or other?


----------



## DrRingDing (Jun 12, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> I'm not trying to be obtuse BA, I don't really get what you mean.
> 
> I think you are asking why some members ignore, or choose to, the trotskyist (and thus SP) position that, as the vanguard of the working class, it is, so the theory goes, us that will provide the coherent and disciplined political leadership I mentioned above. And I would say that it is because, whilst these members - myself included - largely believe in the need for the political leadership, we are nonetheless unconvinced that we are necessarily it. If that is what you mean.


 
Please show us the way Proper Tidy.


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 12, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> Please show us the way Proper Tidy.


 
I do sometimes wonder why all the vacuous, empty, apolitical cunts end up as anarchists.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 12, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> Please show us the way Proper Tidy.


 
The post you quoted was expressing the exact opposite sentiment to the one you're attempting to ridicule you pillock.


----------



## DrRingDing (Jun 12, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> I do sometimes wonder why all the vacuous, empty, apolitical cunts end up as anarchists.


 
Lead me, chastise me, commandante.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 12, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> I do sometimes wonder why all the vacuous, empty, apolitical cunts end up as anarchists.


 
Not all of them - there's also the Lib Dems and the SWP - I don't think any tradition is immune to be honest.


----------



## DrRingDing (Jun 12, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> The post you quoted was expressing the exact opposite sentiment to the one you're attempting to ridicule you pillock.


 
Says the fucking trot.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 12, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> Lead me, chastise me, commandante.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 12, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> Says the fucking trot.


 
Incisive!


----------



## Blagsta (Jun 12, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> I do sometimes wonder why all the vacuous, empty, apolitical cunts end up as anarchists.


 
thanks

my missus is a trot btw, oh the pillow talk we have about Kronstadt!


----------



## DrRingDing (Jun 12, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> I do sometimes wonder why all the vacuous, empty, apolitical cunts end up as anarchists.


 

It's because we suffer from _infantile disorder_. Which, is ultimately your doing as you've failed in your role of revolutionary leader.


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 12, 2011)

Blagsta said:


> thanks
> 
> my missus is a trot btw, oh the pillow talk we have about Kronstadt!


 
I am well aware that there are plenty of anarchists who are not vacuous empty apolitical cunts. Not all anarchists are vacuous empty apolitical cunts, but every vacuous empty apolitical cunt is an anarchist type of situation.

Fwiw, I am reliably told that until the late 1980s all the vacuous empty apolitical cunts were trots. Fashion and all that.


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 12, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> It's because we suffer from _infantile disorder_. Which, is ultimately your doing as you've failed in your role of revolutionary leader.


 
Let me guess, you spent some time in the SWP.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 12, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> It's because we suffer from _infantile disorder_. Which, is ultimately your doing as you've failed in your role of revolutionary leader.


 
Nothing that re-education camp can't remedy. You tedious plum.


----------



## DrRingDing (Jun 12, 2011)

You need to get out more PT.


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 12, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> You need to get out more PT.


 
I really don't.


----------



## DrRingDing (Jun 12, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> Let me guess, you spent some time in the SWP.


 
I was never that daft. I've seen how authoritarians behave when the shit hits the fan. I was not impressed.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 12, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> You need to get out more PT.


 
Good to see you're keeping it political.

I thought the problem was the we got out too much, all those paper sales and stuff? I think I need you to be more clear about where we're going wrong - we need your leadership DrRingDing, you're the real vanguard and you're letting us down.


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 12, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> I was never that daft. I've seen how authoritarians behave when the shit hits the fan. I was not impressed.


 
Another allusive reference to how you've seen all this at the sharp end, like with teh islamists.

Did you flee a civil war? Or get in a barney down the pub? Somewhere in between?


----------



## DrRingDing (Jun 12, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> Another allusive reference to how you've seen all this at the sharp end, like with teh islamists.
> 
> Did you flee a civil war? Or get in a barney down the pub? Somewhere in between?


 
You may well be suprised


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 12, 2011)

Surprise me then


----------



## DrRingDing (Jun 12, 2011)

We don't need to be lead by a vanguardist party.


----------



## frogwoman (Jun 12, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Sory, fw, i love you, this is fantasy. You're whipping yourself into discipline about something that you don't support!! What are you going to be like when it's something you like?


 
yeah you're right, that was a stupid thing for me to post.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 12, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> We don't need to be lead by a vanguardist party.


 
That's the surprise? I never expected you to say that!


----------



## LLETSA (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> You know butchers your quick to tell people when and how they are talking shit but you never say what you think.





That's supposed to be me, actually.


----------



## TopCat (Jun 13, 2011)

Blagsta said:


> thanks
> 
> my missus is a trot btw, oh the pillow talk we have about Kronstadt!


 
Opportunities for great role play here.


----------



## Edie (Jun 13, 2011)

LLETSA said:


> That's supposed to be me, actually.


Well yer that is you. I actually have no idea what butchers thinks, I think he is an anarchist like blags maybe. I can't be fucked to read that EDL thread it's about a million pages long. What's DottyC- just a straight commie or a subclass of Trotskyist or Lenninist? What were you lletsa, before you saw the light and realised we're all fucked whatever way?


----------



## LLETSA (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> Well yer that is you. I actually have no idea what butchers thinks, I think he is an anarchist like blags maybe. I can't be fucked to read that EDL thread it's about a million pages long. What's DottyC- just a straight commie or a subclass of Trotskyist or Lenninist? What were you lletsa, before you saw the light and realised we're all fucked whatever way?





I was a Trot after a teenage flirtation with social democracy (Bennite) and Stalinism/eurocommunism. Realised it was all done for around 1987-8, although I hung around for a couple more years. Never could believe that the fall of Stalinism opened the way for genuine socialism (or whatever).


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 13, 2011)

TopCat said:


> Opportunities for great role play here.


 
LOL


----------



## DotCommunist (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> Well yer that is you. I actually have no idea what butchers thinks, I think he is an anarchist like blags maybe. I can't be fucked to read that EDL thread it's about a million pages long. What's DottyC- just a straight commie or a subclass of Trotskyist or Lenninist? What were you lletsa, before you saw the light and realised we're all fucked whatever way?



colour me red but conflicted factionally. I have sympathy for the anarchist outlook but in practise it has never worked a functioning polity for any length of time- and the ptb don't mess about. IMO the anarchist experiment, or model cannot run outside of a tolerant and benign state communist framework. Also they all have dreadlocs and smoke weed too much etc etc


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 13, 2011)

DotCommunist is having an identity crisis


----------



## DotCommunist (Jun 13, 2011)

heart and head spiney. Like said to butchers the other night it boils down to win or die when it comes to power transferences of the scale we desire. We win first.


----------



## Edie (Jun 13, 2011)

Christ that wiki page on communism is fucking shit 



> In Marxist theory, communism is a specific stage of historical development that inevitably emerges from the development of the productive forces that leads to a superabundance of material wealth, allowing for distribution based on need and social relations based on freely-associated individuals.[2][3] The exact definition of communism varies, and it is often mistakenly, in general political discourse, used interchangeably with socialism; however, Marxist theory contends that socialism is just a transitional stage on the road to communism. Leninists revised this theory by introducing the notion of a vanguard party to lead the proletarian revolution and to hold all political power after the revolution, 'in the name of the workers' and supposedly with worker participation, in a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism.


WTF?


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

DotCommunist said:


> heart and head spiney. Like said to butchers the other night it boils down to win or die when it comes to power transferences of the scale we desire. We win first.


 
Who's we? _*There is no we *_TM

(Truxta's new political motto).


----------



## DotCommunist (Jun 13, 2011)

wikipedia is notoriously shit on politics and contentious history. Edit wars. 'supposedly' slyed in there.


----------



## DotCommunist (Jun 13, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Who's we? _*There is no we *_TM
> 
> (Truxta's new political motto).


 
there is no such thing as society eh


----------



## Edie (Jun 13, 2011)

What does 'emerges from the development of the productive forces' _mean_? 

And why does it lead to a superabundance of material wealth?


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

DotCommunist said:


> there is no such thing as society eh


 
Nonono, not the same idea at all.


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> What does 'emerges from the development of the productive forces' _mean_?


 
It means "I haven't a fucking clue what I'm on about, but it sounds kinda cool, so who cares?"


----------



## LLETSA (Jun 13, 2011)

DotCommunist said:


> there is no such thing as society eh


 
Truxta is having a dig after recently losing another bruising encounter with me. I noted that, as any sensible person must, that there is no 'we' in the abstract sense that he was using it.


----------



## DotCommunist (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> What does 'emerges from the development of the productive forces' _mean_?
> 
> And why does it lead to a superabundance of material wealth?




it is basically saying communism emerged as a political force among a post industrial revolution society. 

I think.


----------



## LLETSA (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> Christ that wiki page on communism is fucking shit
> 
> WTF?





Don't see anything difficult to understand there, to be honest. And I hate jargonistic theory.


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

LLETSA said:


> Truxta is having a dig after recently losing another bruising encounter with me. I noted that, as any sensible person must, that there is no 'we' in the abstract sense that he was using it.


 
Not everything revolves around you LLETSA, and that you think we were in a competition says it all I guess. IIRC I said "there's no we" before we got into that stuff, in response to something ymu posted.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 13, 2011)

DotCommunist said:


> heart and head spiney. Like said to butchers the other night it boils down to win or die when it comes to power transferences of the scale we desire. We win first.


 
I know mate, I wasn't being serious. I actually agree with you.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

This is the situation in the UK is it? Massive state power or something else? Or nazism. Even the laudatory examples are shit, time bound and tied to fucking ww2. This is school kid politics -  i gave up on dot communist years back because of this. It's a 15 years olds understanding of the world.


----------



## LLETSA (Jun 13, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Not everything revolves around you LLETSA, and that you think we were in a competition says it all I guess. IIRC I said "there's no we" before we got into that stuff, in response to something ymu posted.





Don't let yourself get agitated again. Light a candle and do some deep meditation.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 13, 2011)

Sorry, I don't understand what you're getting at. Surely by definition it must be massive state power or something else? And I'm not sure where the WW2 stuff is coming from. I'm sure you have a point but I'm struggling to see what it is (which may well be my fault rather than yours)


----------



## DotCommunist (Jun 13, 2011)

people daring to admire some of the gains made by the w/c post ww2- he likens them to fetishes


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> Sorry, I don't understand what you're getting at. Surely by definition it must be massive state power or something else? And I'm not sure where the WW2 stuff is coming from. I'm sure you have a point but I'm struggling to see what it is (which may well be my fault rather than yours)


 
Win or lose. Be a Stalinist or destruction occurs. It's a childs understanding of social dynamics - never mind the context. And if i want to talk to children theres an app for that.


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Win or lose. Be a Stalinist or destruction occurs. It's a childs understanding of social dynamics - never mind the context. And if i want to talk to children theres an app for me.


 
While I can't presume to speak for Dots I always had the impression - and didn't you say as much yourself - that it's more of an act than anything else.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

TruXta said:


> While I can't presume to speak for Dots I always had the impression - and didn't you say as much yourself - that it's more of an act than anything else.


 
So he can't moan when actors act.


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> So he can't moan when actors act.


 
Err... ok?  Do you mean he's got no reason to complain when people who don't share his views do their thing?


----------



## DotCommunist (Jun 13, 2011)

it isn't 'or' though is it.


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

DotCommunist said:


> it isn't 'or' though is it.


 
Win _and_ lose?


----------



## DotCommunist (Jun 13, 2011)

I mean, that 'or' is as sly as edies wiki link authors 'supposedly'


----------



## DotCommunist (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Win or lose. Be a Stalinist or destruction occurs. It's a childs understanding of social dynamics - never mind the context. And if i want to talk to children theres an app for that.



or it occurs. LOL. it does.


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

DotCommunist said:


> I mean, that 'or' is as sly as edies wiki link authors 'supposedly'


 
How so?


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Err... ok?  Do you mean he's got no reason to complain when people who don't share his views do their thing?


 
Of course he hasn't. Problem is, real people.  You can do your pathetic INTERNET shit but...here are  people who believe what you craply post.


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Of course he hasn't. Problem is, real people.  You an do your pathetic INTERNET shit but...here are  people who believe what you craply post.


 
Believe me or Dots? You're a bit hard to parse atm, b.


----------



## DotCommunist (Jun 13, 2011)

TruXta said:


> How so?


 
both might as well have had bunny ear finger gestures around them


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Believe me or Dots? You're a bit hard to parse atm, b.


 
dot communists be a Stalinist or the nazis will get you crap. It's embarrassing. I live in  2011.


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> dot communists be a Stalinist or the nazis will get you crap. It's embarrassing. I live in  2011.


 
Right, cheers. Again I don't believe he actually believes that, whether he says so or not. I refuse to believe he's that simplistic. Have you considered he's doing it just to wind people up?


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Right, cheers. Again I don't believe he actually believes that, whether he says so or not. I refuse to believe he's that simplistic. Have you considered he's doing it just to wind people up?


 No haven't that doesn't happen.

He's going to be one empty cunt when that's removed mind.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Right, cheers. Again I don't believe he actually believes that, whether he says so or not. I refuse to believe he's that simplistic. Have you considered he's doing it just to wind people up?


 
He's being ironic?


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> No haven't that doesn't happen.
> 
> He's going to be one empty cunt when that's removed mind.


 
That's not for you to say is it?



butchersapron said:


> He's being ironic?


 
Fuck knows. Quite possibly he's no better informed as to his motivations than we are.


----------



## DotCommunist (Jun 13, 2011)

pmsl, presumably once the stalinist ego trip has passed I will be a broken shell, bereft.


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

DotCommunist said:


> pmsl, presumably once the stalinist ego trip has past I will be a broken shell, bereft.


 
I'll be here for you Dots.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

DotCommunist said:


> pmsl, presumably once the stalinist ego trip has past I will be a broken shell, bereft.


 
Or an isolated individual whose written their isolation into a great stalinist principle, into the reason for their isolation. You idiot. It's *because* your politics are shit.


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Or an isolated individual whose written their isolation into a a great stalinist principle, You idiot.


 
Methinks you're taking him a bit too seriously butchers.


----------



## DotCommunist (Jun 13, 2011)

your old man said follow the van and you dilly dallied like a cunt- sort it out


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Methinks you're taking him a bit too seriously butchers.


 
Why laugh at him?


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Why laugh at him?


 
Laughter is medicine.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Laughter is medicine.


 
For who TruXta?


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jun 13, 2011)

Doing a fine job of ruining the boards today, butchers. Well done.


----------



## DotCommunist (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Or an isolated individual whose written their isolation into a great stalinist principle, into the reason for their isolation. You idiot. It's *because* your politics are shit.


 
ah the meat and veg of it. The whining of the political tradition that never held anything for any length of time- how unsuprising that we come down to that


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> For who TruXta?


 
For most people. Research is ongoing.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Doing a fine job of ruining the boards today, butchers. Well done.



Cheers. Two threads posted on. I have fucked the boards.Nice when your smug crap never gets challenged.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

DotCommunist said:


> ah the meat and veg of it. The whining of the political tradition that never held anything for any length of time- how unsuprising that we come down to that


Why do people laugh at stalinism?


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Doing a fine job of ruining the boards today, butchers. Well done.


 

You don't know how shit a board dominated by people like you might be do you?


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

No denying you've been one cranky fucker today tho, butchers. Not that that's unusual behaviour on your part. Bit harsh to be accused of "ruining the boards" tho.


----------



## DotCommunist (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Why do people laugh at stalinism?


 
they aren't living under it


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

TruXta said:


> No denying you've been one cranky fucker today tho, butchers. Not that that's unusual behaviour on your part. Bit harsh to be accused of "ruining the boards" tho.


 
I'm an arsehole. I try to keep it to threads that i'm on and that i'm talking about. Even then i try to keep it within the topic. I don't kill forums, i don't kill boards.


----------



## past caring (Jun 13, 2011)

You'll laugh on the other side of you face when I catch you/get you home.


----------



## Edie (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Why do people laugh at stalinism?


Wasn't he the dictator that sent huge numbers of people to Siberian death camps? You don't seriously fucking think he had the political answer to todays fucking mess?


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> I'm an arsehole. I try to keep it to threads that i'm on and that i'm talking about. Even then i try to keep it within the topic. I don't kill forums.


 
If you say so! I noticed your little foray into suburban the other day... didn't go too well did it?  No single person can kill a forum of this size.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

DotCommunist said:


> they aren't living under it


 Who is?


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> Wasn't he the dictator that sent huge numbers of people to Siberian death camps? You don't seriously fucking think he had the political answer to todays fucking mess?


 
Butchers doesn't (I fucking hope) - it's Dotty who seems more taken with old Josef.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

past caring said:


> You'll laugh on the other side of you face when I catch you/get you home.


----------



## Edie (Jun 13, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Butchers doesn't (I fucking hope) - it's Dotty who seems more taken with old Josef.


Yes, that's who I meant. Still don't know what butchers actually thinks


----------



## past caring (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> I don't kill forums, i don't kill boards.


 
But do you kill fascists?


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> Yes, that's who I meant. Still don't know what butchers actually thinks


 
Not even butchers knows that. Hence me calling him Mystic Meg.


----------



## LLETSA (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Cheers. Two threads posted on. I have fucked the boards.





I wish you'd quit stepping into my territory today. Apparently I'm single handedly responsible for the poor state of the international revolution after posting in two threads that only about eleven people have read (the ones posting in it) in the space of a week.


----------



## revlon (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Why do people laugh at stalinism?


 
it has good punchlines


----------



## Edie (Jun 13, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Butchers doesn't (I fucking hope) - it's Dotty who seems more taken with old Josef.


 you know sometimes I forget that this place is full of absolute mentalists who believe that dead Russians had the answer to politics, despite the terrifying conclusion of communism. You don't believe this shit do you TruX? You seem like a fairly normal person. 

I can see the lefts arguments for practical stuff like more council housing, against private schooling, against the excessives of capitalism and why capitalism is a bad idea. Urban is really persuasive about shit like that. But then you get on to what the alternatives are to capitalism and it's all just _absolutely_ bonkers *shakes head*


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> you know sometimes I forget that this place is full of absolute mentalists who believe that dead Russians had the answer to politics, despite the terrifying conclusion of communism. You don't believe this shit do you TruX? You seem like a fairly normal person.
> 
> I can see the lefts arguments for practical stuff like more council housing, against private schooling, against the excessives of capitalism and why capitalism is a bad idea. Urban is really persuasive about shit like that. But then you get on to what the alternatives are to capitalism and it's all just _absolutely_ bonkers *shakes head*


 
Believe what shit - Stalinism? Nah. Wouldn't really call myself a communist - not since age 13 anyway. Mostly I'm disillusioned. That last sentence of yours - don't you think it's interesting that you live in an era where perhaps the majority of people like us (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Developed = WEIRD) _literally cannot imagine _a world where capitalism isn't the only possible status quo? You've read some history, you know it's not always been this way.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Win or lose. Be a Stalinist or destruction occurs. It's a childs understanding of social dynamics - never mind the context. And if i want to talk to children theres an app for that.


 
I wasn't arguing that and if he was then I've misunderstood what he was saying. It seems I've walked into an old argument I didn't follow at the time.


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## frogwoman (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> you know sometimes I forget that this place is full of absolute mentalists who believe that dead Russians had the answer to politics, despite the terrifying conclusion of communism. You don't believe this shit do you TruX? You seem like a fairly normal person.
> 
> I can see the lefts arguments for practical stuff like more council housing, against private schooling, against the excessives of capitalism and why capitalism is a bad idea. Urban is really persuasive about shit like that. But then you get on to what the alternatives are to capitalism and it's all just _absolutely_ bonkers *shakes head*


 
of course he/she doesn't.


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## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

frogwoman said:


> of course he/she doesn't.


 
You talking about me?


----------



## DotCommunist (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> you know som tetimes I forget that this place is full of absolute mentalists who believe that dead Russians had the answer to politics, despitehe *terrifying conclusion of communism*. You don't believe this shit do you TruX? You seem like a fairly normal person.
> 
> I can see the lefts arguments for practical stuff like more council housing, against private schooling, against the excessives of capitalism and why capitalism is a bad idea. Urban is really persuasive about shit like that. But then you get on to what the alternatives are to capitalism and it's all just _absolutely_ bonkers *shakes head*


 as opposed to the perfect world of liberal democracy where nobody ever gets cunted off


----------



## LLETSA (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> you know sometimes I forget that this place is full of absolute mentalists who believe that dead Russians had the answer to politics, despite the terrifying conclusion of communism. You don't believe this shit do you TruX? You seem like a fairly normal person.
> 
> I can see the lefts arguments for practical stuff like more council housing, against private schooling, against the excessives of capitalism and why capitalism is a bad idea. Urban is really persuasive about shit like that. But then you get on to what the alternatives are to capitalism and it's all just _absolutely_ bonkers *shakes head*


 
Communism (as in societies ruled by parties belonging to the movement dominated by the Soviet CP and adhering, of necessity, to the Soviet model) didn't have a particularly terrifying conclusion though. That's one of the ironies of history: the Communist governements mostly resigned with barely a shot being fired (I was in Moscow when the phoney 'coup' was attempted in 1991, and it wasn't that scary; it seemed somehow staged and artificial). There were periods of terror, especially in the USSR and China, mostly due to attempting vast top-down social experiments where the conditions for them didn't exist, but by the time the end came, these societies had seen very little actual terror for decades. To find terror you had to look at places where the West was involved in fighting off the threat to Western interests from Communists and other left or nationalist forces, and arming bloodthirsty tyrants to do so. 

And if you want to find historicl examples of all manner of horrors, capitalism trumps attempts at socialism/communism every time.


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## frogwoman (Jun 13, 2011)

yeh - you were argueing against stalinism


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## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

The reason 'dead russians' are still an influence is because they actually had a revolution which took power away from the bourgeoisie and oversaw the most rapid industrialisation in human history. And this was less than a hundred years ago.

Admittedly taking power away from the bourgeoisie didn't ultimately translate into giving power to the working class, mind.

Nobody really knows what a post-capitalist society would like like of course, nor how it can be achieved. Just as nobody knew what a post-feudal society would look like.


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## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

frogwoman said:


> yeh - you were argueing against stalinism


 
I said as much two posts before yours. I wasn't arguing against stalinism either, just agreed with Edie it's bonkers.


----------



## frogwoman (Jun 13, 2011)

TruXta said:


> I said as much two posts before yours. I wasn't arguing against stalinism either, just agreed with Edie it's bonkers.


 
fair dos. tbh i dunno if im coming or going at the mo lol.


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

frogwoman said:


> fair dos. tbh i dunno if im coming or going at the mo lol.


 
From/to stalinism? I thought you're a trot?


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## frogwoman (Jun 13, 2011)

lol i've obviously confused you, course im not a stalinist lol


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## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

But you are trot, ja?


----------



## Hocus Eye. (Jun 13, 2011)

It is interesting that some of those who want to criticise anarchism and communism, do so because they associated it with Russians and in particular dead Russians. Is this because Russians are inherently to be disapproved of? Also what is the particular problem about ideas having been promoted by people who are now dead? Does being dead invalidate the ideas of anyone?


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## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

Hocus Eye. said:


> Does being dead invalidate the ideas of anyone?


 
Depends, if there's a connection between being dead and having certain ideas, then yes.


----------



## Edie (Jun 13, 2011)

Hocus Eye. said:


> It is interesting that some of those who want to criticise anarchism and communism, do so because they associated it with Russians and in particular dead Russians. Is this because Russians are inherently to be disapproved of? Also what is the particular problem about ideas having been promoted by people who are now dead? Does being dead invalidate the ideas of anyone?


Seems to me Russia was a massive experiment of communism, which failed badly. People were terrified of saying things or they'd get taken away in the night. There was a secret police. People got sent to death camps in Siberia. There was mass deprivation, huge bread queues. By the end of it people were so fucking desperate to be free of the ruling elite that there were revolutions and they tore the berlin wall down. Didn't Orwell predict how it would go wrong in Animal Farm, in the end some animals are just more equal than others.

Even China now. Censorship, people scared to say things, people told how many children they can have, undemocratic ruling party. Maybe capitalism isn't any better (although at least we're not starving and we can say what we want), but communism doesn't seem like a solution, more like a nightmare.


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

Hocus Eye. said:


> It is interesting that some of those who want to criticise anarchism and communism, do so because they associated it with Russians and in particular dead Russians. Is this because Russians are inherently to be disapproved of? Also what is the particular problem about ideas having been promoted by people who are now dead? Does being dead invalidate the ideas of anyone?


 
In fairness, there is an issue with presentation. In terms of the ideas and experiences that have formed it, socialism is brand spanking new compared to capitalism and feudalism. But capitalists don't tend to bang on about dead people so much, much less think it appropriate to stick the heads of various dead people on loads of stuff, so the impression people get is that Marxists are stuck in the past.

Russians do also have quite a dour image, it must be said. Unfair but true.


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## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

It might have been a nightmare, but no more of a nightmare than capitalism is for the non-developed world.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 13, 2011)

TruXta said:


> But you are trot, ja?


 
If you read the early pages of this thread you will see that FW is, like me, a non-trot trot. Or something.


----------



## frogwoman (Jun 13, 2011)

TruXta said:


> But you are trot, ja?


 
yeah. 

edie - stalinism was indeed horrific, but what happened under the soviet union differed between times (ie Brezhnev's reign was very different from that of stalin, gorbachov, etc) and also people's experiences varied hugely depending on both the time and also the country where they lived. it wasn't always a nightmare. there is a huge amount of nostalgia in eastern europe for communism, and i'm not saying they're right, but you need to look a bit more into this stuff imo.


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> If you read the early pages of this thread you will see that FW is, like me, a non-trot trot. Or something.


 
Or something indeed.


----------



## Edie (Jun 13, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> Russians do also have quite a dour image, it must be said. Unfair but true.


They have a bad rep, that much is true


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> Seems to me Russia was a massive experiment of communism, which failed badly. People were terrified of saying things or they'd get taken away in the night. There was a secret police. People got sent to death camps in Siberia. There was mass deprivation, huge bread queues. By the end of it people were so fucking desperate to be free of the ruling elite that there were revolutions and they tore the berlin wall down. Didn't Orwell predict how it would go wrong in Animal Farm, in the end some animals are just more equal than others.
> 
> Even China now. Censorship, people scared to say things, people told how many children they can have, undemocratic ruling party. Maybe capitalism isn't any better (although at least we're not starving and we can say what we want), but communism doesn't seem like a solution, more like a nightmare.


 
It wasn't really like that though, for most people and at most times. Although all that bad shit happened.

Of course, things equally as bad and much, much worse have happened and continue to happen with depressing inevitability in capitalist societies. But the bad things that happened under Stalinism were the faults of Marxism, whereas the bad things that happen under capitalism are nothing to do with capitalism, at least in popular discourse.

Life was better for the vast majority in the Soviet era than it was before the Soviet era and than it is after the Soviet era, btw. That isn't an endorsement of Stalinism. Your nightmarish vision of what the USSR was like is v common, and understandable given the way it is presented, but not very accurate for what most people's experiences of it were.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

> Life was better for the vast majority in the Soviet era than it was before the Soviet era and than it is after the Soviet era, btw. That isn't an endorsement of Stalinism



Yes it is.


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

It isn't though.


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## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

It is a simplification though tbf


----------



## Edie (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Yes it is.


 does sound pretty much like an endorsement to me.


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## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

No more than saying life was better for most Germans after the Nazis got smashed to fuck is an endorsement of liberal democracy, or that most Cubans had it better under Castro than Batista is an endorsement of the Cuban model.

Statement of fact, innit.


----------



## frogwoman (Jun 13, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> If you read the early pages of this thread you will see that FW is, like me, a non-trot trot. Or something.


i am a trot, and i do agree with most of it, but its like pt says, i'm not entirely convinced that if there's a revolution, that the group i'm in will necessarily be leading it. 

also every far-left group has members that think their group/ideology is perfect and beyond criticism. i've not encountered many of those sort of people in the sp, although they are there lol. but i don't think that's an attitude that is confined to trots, there are plenty of anarchists etc who are just as bad if not worse (I know that's not an excuse, im just saying).


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> Seems to me Russia was a massive experiment of communism, which failed badly. People were terrified of saying things or they'd get taken away in the night. There was a secret police. People got sent to death camps in Siberia. There was mass deprivation, huge bread queues. By the end of it people were so fucking desperate to be free of the ruling elite that there were revolutions and they tore the berlin wall down. Didn't Orwell predict how it would go wrong in Animal Farm, in the end some animals are just more equal than others.
> 
> Even China now. Censorship, people scared to say things, people told how many children they can have, undemocratic ruling party. Maybe capitalism isn't any better (although at least we're not starving and we can say what we want), but communism doesn't seem like a solution, more like a nightmare.


 
How was it different from this before 1917? There were food shortages prior to the revolution - it's one of main reasons why the revolution happened in the first place. The Gulag was unforgivable, but let's not forget that the British empire had concentration camps in southern Africa at around this time - and it wasn't quite the same as Auschwitz. From what I can gather from speaking to people who lived there at the time, the "revolutions" were in reality calls for democratisation, not capitalism. And judging by the impact of the free market reforms on things like life expectancy, literacy and child mortality it doesn't look like things got any better after either.

And although China is still run by the communist party it is not communist in any meaningful way - it's capitalist. They have the worst of both worlds - the tyranny of the market and an anti-democratic, authoritarian government.

And if we're going to look at the modern neoliberal form of capitalism that wasn't born in any peaceful way either (and neither was early capitalism). The policies were so unpopular that the only way they could be introduced under normal economic conditions was under military dictatorships (Chile and Argentina being cases in point).

The thing is, the problems with soviet communism were very real, nobody sane would deny that - there was unnecesary bloodshed and a lot of it. But it's beaten hands down by the brutality of capitalism, only we don't get to hear about that. We lead, in comparison to most of the world at most points in history, relatively comfortable lives. But that's not the case for people living at the sharp end of capitalism, in special economic zones in the far east, in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan in the middle east and in countries like Columbia in South America. 

You mention animal farm - I take it you realise that Orwell was a socialist, and he fought for the POUM, a quasi-Trotskyist militia in the Spanish Civil war.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 13, 2011)

frogwoman said:


> i am a trot, and i do agree with most of it, but its like pt says, i'm not entirely convinced that if there's a revolution, that the group i'm in will necessarily be leading it.
> 
> also every far-left group has members that think their group/ideology is perfect and beyond criticism. i've not encountered many of those sort of people in the sp, although they are there lol. but i don't think that's an attitude that is confined to trots, there are plenty of anarchists etc who are just as bad if not worse (I know that's not an excuse, im just saying).


 
I know, I was being facetious.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> No more than saying life was better for most Germans after the Nazis got smashed to fuck is an endorsement of liberal democracy, or that most Cubans had it better under Castro than Batista is an endorsement of the Cuban model.
> 
> Statement of fact, innit.



No, it's an endorsement. Are you arguing *for* liberal democracy?


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## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

No, and I don't argue for Stalinism either.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

Oh god, we're getting the full just joined the party justed read the stuff no have to say bollocks.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> No, and I don't argue for Stalinism either.


 
So why aren't you arguing that capitalism brought up the living standard in state after state?


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## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

No we're not.


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## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> So why aren't you arguing that capitalism brought up the living standard in state after state?


 
What?


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

frogwoman said:


> i am a trot, and i do agree with most of it, but its like pt says, i'm not entirely convinced that if there's a revolution, that the group i'm in will necessarily be leading it.
> 
> also every far-left group has members that think their group/ideology is perfect and beyond criticism. i've not encountered many of those sort of people in the sp, although they are there lol. but i don't think that's an attitude that is confined to trots, there are plenty of anarchists etc who are just as bad if not worse (I know that's not an excuse, im just saying).



You're not a trot ffs.


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

((Sparts))


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> You're not a trot ffs.


 
She's a non-vanguardist trot. Amirite?


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> What?





> Life was better for the vast majority before capitalism than it was before the capitalist era and than it is after the capitalist era, btw. That isn't an endorsement of capitalism



Yes it is.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 13, 2011)

Can someone please explain to me how this thread turned into a thread about who is and who isn't a trot please? I may be partly responsible but I still don't have a clue how it happened.


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Yes it is.



No it isn't. 



Proper Tidy said:


> No more than saying life was better for most Germans after the Nazis got smashed to fuck is an endorsement of liberal democracy, or that most Cubans had it better under Castro than Batista is an endorsement of the Cuban model.
> 
> Statement of fact, innit.


 
Was life better for people under Tsarism? Is it better under capitalism? Is it fuck.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Yes it is.


 
It's just a statement of fact isn't it? What's your take on it? (Not being arsey, I'd genuinely like to know)


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## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

Capitalism increased living standards. Just facts.


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## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Capitalism increased living standards. Just facts.


 
You mean from feudalism to capitalism? Yeah, of course it did. What did you think, that I would deny that? 

Does acknowledging that count as an endorsement of capitalism, Butchers? Lol.


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Capitalism increased living standards. Just facts.


 
So now _you're_ endorsing capitalism? Fuck me, never thought I'd live to see the day.


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

Bizarre, isn't it


----------



## frogwoman (Jun 13, 2011)

edie i've lived in a post soviet country and i can tell you that there's a huge amount of nostalgia for the former Soviet Union among people who were around at the time, especially older people etc. at the same time there are a lot of people who were affected very badly by the repressive policies even relatively "benign" leaders like brezhnev and so on introduced, which centred around dividing resources unequally between different minorities and filling all the top positions in the republic with some petty russian bureaucrat from Moscow who knew literally nothing about all of the issues involved there, treating the majority of the population as illiterate peasants and so on. They had a life expectancy comparable to the west, since the collapse of communism the average life expectancy has dropped by about twenty years. There are many reasons for this, and of coruse the average life expectancy etc thing masks the fact that in urban and rural areas the quality of life etc was very different, and some areas were almost untouched by communism (i saw people gettin water out of wells, horse and carts, etc, when i've been to russia and while I was living in Moldova). That said I don't think you can say that it was all shit, in the same way you can't say that capitalism was all shit. It did make real improvements to a lot of people's lives in countries which people had often "written off" in terms of development. *So has capitalism. *

you also have to separate say countries like Poland and Romania which had stalinism basically imposed on them, to the USSR itself. In a country like Romania the population were (unsurprisingly, given their history tbh) overwhelmingly opposed to russian imperialism and the dictators which moscow backed during that time were extremely brutal, they of course were backed up by the threat of force used by the soviet union. In the soviet union itself, it was often a different story (which depended on where you lived and when you lived, as well). And of course, whether you were an ethnic russian or not. The soviet elite played differnet nationalities against each other, and tried to forcibly -at least in the early years - assimilate people into being "soviet" (ie russian). But while it was very repressive the level of censorship etc was often overestimated at least in the later years of the ussr - if you ever get a chance check out some of the old soviet cartoons on youtube , it's very surprising what kind of satire and pisstaking they were allowed to get away with - well it was to me anyway. 

the problem, imo, with stalinism is that it was almost all of the time, even when it was becoming more "free" and "democratic" etc as in the 70s under brezhnev it was imposed - especially on the populations of the ussr that were captured during the war (estonia) or had been part of the tsarist empire like the chechens etc - on a top down level and on a level which favoured one part of the population above the others, even if they made an effort not to be openly doing so. Communism became used as a means to justify similar policies to what was going on in the USSR before the revolution. There's a lot more i can write about this, but basically it's a lot more complex than what you were saying.


----------



## Edie (Jun 13, 2011)

Sounds shit. Just a different kind of shit to Capitalism. Dunno why you support it to be honest.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> You mean from feudalism to capitalism? Yeah, of course it did. What did you think, that I would deny that?
> 
> Does acknowledging that count as an endorsement of capitalism, Butchers? Lol.



Now, use your own logic. Think it through. Where next?


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

She doesn't.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

TruXta said:


> So now _you're_ endorsing capitalism? Fuck me, never thought I'd live to see the day.


Am i?


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Now, use your own logic. Think it through. Where next?


 
I have no idea, Butchers. Why not just say, instead of more cryptic self-aggrandising bollocks.


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Am i?


 
According to the logic with which you tried to pin PT down, I'd say yes. Knowing you you're probably doing that whole "a point too subtle for you" thing again, which you seem to think is some kind of didactic magic bullet.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

frogwoman said:


> edie i've lived in a post soviet country and i can tell you that there's a huge amount of nostalgia for the former Soviet Union among people who were around at the time, especially older people etc. at the same time there are a lot of people who were affected very badly by the repressive policies even relatively "benign" leaders like brezhnev and so on introduced, which centred around dividing resources unequally between different minorities and filling all the top positions in the republic with some petty russian bureaucrat from Moscow who knew literally nothing about all of the issues involved there, treating the majority of the population as illiterate peasants and so on. They had a life expectancy comparable to the west, since the collapse of communism the average life expectancy has dropped by about twenty years. There are many reasons for this, and of coruse the average life expectancy etc thing masks the fact that in urban and rural areas the quality of life etc was very different, and some areas were almost untouched by communism (i saw people gettin water out of wells, horse and carts, etc, when i've been to russia and while I was living in Moldova). That said I don't think you can say that it was all shit, in the same way you can't say that capitalism was all shit. It did make real improvements to a lot of people's lives in countries which people had often "written off" in terms of development. *So has capitalism. *
> 
> you also have to separate say countries like Poland and Romania which had stalinism basically imposed on them, to the USSR itself. In a country like Romania the population were (unsurprisingly, given their history tbh) overwhelmingly opposed to russian imperialism and the dictators which moscow backed during that time were extremely brutal, they of course were backed up by the threat of force used by the soviet union. In the soviet union itself, it was often a different story (which depended on where you lived and when you lived, as well). And of course, whether you were an ethnic russian or not. The soviet elite played differnet nationalities against each other, and tried to forcibly -at least in the early years - assimilate people into being "soviet" (ie russian). But while it was very repressive the level of censorship etc was often overestimated at least in the later years of the ussr - if you ever get a chance check out some of the old soviet cartoons on youtube , it's very surprising what kind of satire and pisstaking they were allowed to get away with - well it was to me anyway.
> 
> the problem, imo, with stalinism is that it was almost all of the time, even when it was becoming more "free" and "democratic" etc as in the 70s under brezhnev it was imposed - especially on the populations of the ussr that were captured during the war (estonia) or had been part of the tsarist empire like the chechens etc - on a top down level and on a level which favoured one part of the population above the others, even if they made an effort not to be openly doing so. Communism became used as a means to justify similar policies to what was going on in the USSR before the revolution. There's a lot more i can write about this, but basically it's a lot more complex than what you were saying.



And that it was shit. Still the means of production went up and the av age. Not like under capitalism.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

> Life was better for the vast majority in the Soviet era than it was before the Soviet era and than it is after the Soviet era, btw. That isn't an endorsement of Stalinism



Yes it is. Pretty simple.


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

I'd take a break before you become a complete fucking parody of yourself if I were you


----------



## Hocus Eye. (Jun 13, 2011)

TruXta said:


> According to the logic with which you tried to pin PT down, I'd say yes. Knowing you you're probably doing that whole "a point too subtle for you" thing again, which you seem to think is some kind of didactic magic bullet.


I don't like the idea of a didactic magic bullet. It evokes a 180% ricochet.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

TruXta said:


> According to the logic with which you tried to pin PT down, I'd say yes. Knowing you you're probably doing that whole "a point too subtle for you" thing again, which you seem to think is some kind of didactic magic bullet.


 It's a pretty obvious point. Conditions improved for the w/c under capitalism. Why are you and PT not calling for more capitalism? There's no trick here.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> I'd take a break before you become a complete fucking parody of yourself if I were you


Or you can do this.


----------



## TruXta (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> It's a pretty obvious point. Conditions improved for the w/c under capitalism. Why are you and PT not calling for more capitalism? There's no trick here.


 
Where have I called for the end of capitalism? I happen to think markets can work under certain conditions. Markets =/= capitalism of course.


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## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

Because there is a better alternative to capitalism. And there is a better alternative to stalinism.

It's the same position.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> It's a pretty obvious point. Conditions improved for the w/c under capitalism. Why are you and PT not calling for more capitalism? There's no trick here.


 
But they also got worse in Russia after it went capitalist, no? I don't understand what you're trying to say BA, and it appears I'm not alone. Could you spell it out in terms that an ignoramus like me might understand?


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## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Or you can do this.


 
Yes, I can. Not that it would do much to remedy your week-long incoherent wobbler.


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## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> But they also got worse in Russia after it went capitalist, no? I don't understand what you're trying to say BA, and it appears I'm not alone. Could you spell it out in terms that an ignoramus like me might understand?


 

First thing, stop thinking about Russia. Living conditions went up in capitalist countries over the last 100 years. What does that have to do with this argument?



> Life was better for the vast majority in the Soviet era than it was before the Soviet era and than it is after the Soviet era, btw. That isn't an endorsement of Stalinism



The answer is pretty important. Especially for a socialist.


----------



## LLETSA (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> Seems to me Russia was a massive experiment of communism, which failed badly. People were terrified of saying things or they'd get taken away in the night. There was a secret police. People got sent to death camps in Siberia. There was mass deprivation, huge bread queues. By the end of it people were so fucking desperate to be free of the ruling elite that there were revolutions and they tore the berlin wall down. Didn't Orwell predict how it would go wrong in Animal Farm, in the end some animals are just more equal than others.





As I hinted at just above, people tend to get this the wrong way round and imagine these were states run solely by terror throughout. It simply isn't true. After the Soviet Communist leaders themselves were rid of Stalin (some say that, sick of the Communist Party being chief victim of the terror, they did away with him), the terror dropped away almost to nothing. It was still dictatorship, but very few people were killed by the regime from that point onwards. Punishment for transgressions was usually a black mark against your career prospects or making it harder for your kids to get the university places they wanted. In the Soviet satellite states of eastern Europe there was no terror on the scale of that practiced by Stalin's regime. Solzhenitsyn said when he was expelled from the USSR that the dissident movement was a figment of Western imagination and that there were perhaps less than five hundred dissidents in the country. Living standards rose dramatically between the 1950s and '70s.

The situation was the same in the satellite states (except Poland). Happy or not, people just got on with their lives. There was no great desire to change the political system. Gorbachev recognised this when he gained the Soviet leadership. Realising that change was needed, he and the reformers around him set about deliberately engineering a mood for change, including pressuring the Communist leaders in their allied states. The Berlin wall came down because of that pressure. If Gorbachev hadn't pressured Honecker and co., it might still be there.


----------



## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

Proper Tidy said:


> Yes, I can. Not that it would do much to remedy your week-long incoherent wobbler.


 
Bit of honesty on your part - would be welcome.

_I don't like the trains running on time but....._


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## revol68 (Jun 13, 2011)

I like Dotcommunist but his politics are fucking awful, not just that he is naive but that he's a lazy wee wanker who is more interested in trotting out the ironic stalinist shite than educating himself.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> First thing, stop thinking about Russia. Living conditions went up in capitalist countries over the last 100 years. What does that do to this argument?



I didn't even bring Russia up, I'm as tired as anyone of the obsession some have with the USSR - I was answering a post where someone else mentioned it.

I really don't understand what you're taking issue with here. Capitalism and Stalinism both, generally speaking, improved conditions for the w/c as compared with feudalism. Both are a load of shite though, I want to see workers' control. And my understanding of the USSR doesn't come from the SP, it comes from my own reading, from proper academic sources, not all of which were Marxist. I haven't been given a USSR a,b,c or anything like that if that's what you're trying to imply.


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## LLETSA (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> Even China now. Censorship, people scared to say things, people told how many children they can have, undemocratic ruling party. Maybe capitalism isn't any better (although at least we're not starving and we can say what we want), but communism doesn't seem like a solution, more like a nightmare.




China has a capitalist system run by a party with origins in the Communist movement, and a potentially nightmarish runaway population problem. Those Chinese that are experiencing a nightmare these days are those herded into the polluted, cramped slums of the overcrowded cities as capitalism dramatically expands the Chinese economy. 

A closer look reveals that, these days, few Chinese are overly concerned about the shortcomings of their political system.


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## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> I didn't even bring Russia up, I'm as tired as anyone of the obsession some have with the USSR - I was answering a post where someone else mentioned it.
> 
> I really don't understand what you're taking issue with here. Capitalism and Stalinism both, generally speaking, improved conditions for the w/c as compared with feudalism. Both are a load of shite though, I want to see workers' control. And my understanding of the USSR doesn't come from the SP, it comes from my own reading, from proper academic sources, not all of which were Marxist. I haven't been given a USSR a,b,c or anything like that if that's what you're trying to imply.



So, when someone, in the context of a post about the USSR, someone from your party says:



> Life was better for the vast majority in the Soviet era than it was before the Soviet era and than it is after the Soviet era, btw. That isn't an endorsement of Stalinism



? What, what do you say? Fuck all. Despite that clear endorsement.


----------



## revlon (Jun 13, 2011)

LLETSA said:


> China has a capitalist system run by a party with origins in the Communist movement, and a potentially nightmarish runaway population problem. Those Chinese that are experiencing a nightmare these days are those herded into the polluted, cramped slums of the overcrowded cities as capitalism dramatically expands the Chinese economy.


 
but improved slums surely, better slums under capitalism


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## Edie (Jun 13, 2011)

LLETSA said:


> As I hinted at just above, people tend to get this the wrong way round and imagine these were states run solely by terror throughout. It simply isn't true. After the Soviet Communist leaders themselves were rid of Stalin (some say that, sick of the Communist Party being chief victim of the terror, they did away with him), the terror dropped away almost to nothing. It was still dictatorship, but very few people were killed by the regime from that point onwards. Punishment for transgressions was usually a black mark against your career prospects or making it harder for your kids to get the university places they wanted. In the Soviet satellite states of eastern Europe there was no terror on the scale of that practiced by Stalin's regime. Solzhenitsyn said when he was expelled from the USSR that the dissident movement was a figment of Western imagination and that there were perhaps less than five hundred dissidents in the country. Living standards rose dramatically between the 1950s and '70s.
> 
> The situation was the same in the satellite states (except Poland). Happy or not, people just got on with their lives. There was no great desire to change the political system. Gorbachev recognised this when he gained the Soviet leadership. Realising that change was needed, he and the reformers around him set about deliberately engineering a mood for change, including pressuring the Communist leaders in their allied states. The Berlin wall came down because of that pressure. If Gorbachev hadn't pressured Honecker and co., it might still be there.


 Why did they do that, if people broadly felt they had a good thing going on with communism (although I find it hard to believe tbh).


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> ? What, what do you say? Fuck all. Despite that clear endorsement.


 
Am I suddenly responsible for him by dint of being in the same organisation? I've never even met or spoken to PT, I've only ever encountered him on these boards. And it doesn't look like a clear endorsement to me - it's just stating facts, I agree with that statement. In fact he explicitly states that it's _not_ an endorsement. If I were to say being stung by a wasp is better than being bitten by a snake does that mean I'm endorsing wasp stings?


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## DotCommunist (Jun 13, 2011)

revol68 said:


> I like Dotcommunist but his politics are fucking awful, not just that he is naive but that he's a lazy wee wanker who is more interested in trotting out the ironic stalinist shite than educating himself.


 
Revol, can you in future reserve mugging me off onto threads where I am winning. It's not that I don't value your input but I would take the critic less ill if I wasn't already getting a shoeing


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## revol68 (Jun 13, 2011)

DotCommunist said:


> Revol, can you in future reserve mugging me off onto threads where I am winning. It's not that I don't value your input but I would take the critic less ill if I wasn't already getting a shoeing


 
Just saying you're a bright lad and you love reading so there's no excuse for trotting out the same undeveloped knee jerk pseudo stalinist crap.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 13, 2011)




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## butchersapron (Jun 13, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> Am I suddenly responsible for him by dint of being in the same organisation? And it doesn't look like a clear endorsement to me - it's just stating facts, I agree with that statement. If I were to say being stung by a wasp is better than being bitten by a snake does that mean I'm endorsing wasp stings?



You are responsible for your parties views yes. Tough shit. Don't join if you think otherwise.

And no, there's stating facts and there's stating facts. The living standard of the US w/c went up more than those of the USSR in the period 1917-1989. So what do you support and why? US style capitalism? Why not? Don't you support rises in living standards for the working class?


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## Random (Jun 13, 2011)

revol68 said:


> Just saying you're a bright lad and you love reading so there's no excuse for trotting out the same undeveloped knee jerk pseudo stalinist crap.


 
You've got to look at the audience he's playing to, though. Shocking liberal brixton party heads with leftishness doesn't take much effort.

edit: but he is very likable, which makes up for so much


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## revol68 (Jun 13, 2011)

Random said:


> You've got to look at the audience he's playing to, though. Shocking liberal brixton party heads with leftishness doesn't take much effort.


 
very true.


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## DrRingDing (Jun 13, 2011)

This is not what the thread was created for.

Jeeez.


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## Edie (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> You are responsible for your parties views yes. Tough shit. Don't join if you think otherwise.
> 
> And no, there's stating facts and there's stating facts. The living standard of the US w/c went up more than those of the USSR in the period 1917-1989. So what do you support and why? US style capitalism? Why not? Don't you support rises in living standards for the working class?


I'd genuinely be interested to hear the answers to that.


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## frogwoman (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> Sounds shit. Just a different kind of shit to Capitalism. Dunno why you support it to be honest.


 
Where did i say i support it


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> You are responsible for your parties views yes. Tough shit. Don't join if you think otherwise.
> 
> And no, there's stating facts and there's stating facts. The living standard of the US w/c went up more than those of the USSR in the period 1917-1989. So what do you support and why? US style capitalism? Why not? Don't you support rises in living standards for the working class?


 
I'm responsible for my party's views but not the views of all its members. It's a political party, all political parties are coalitions of one sort or another and so you'll get differences of opinion within the party. It's not a cult. But in this instance I agree with him - living standards did go up in the USSR, and the part you seem to be unwilling to acknowledge is that they also went down after Russia went capitalist. 

What's the difference between stating facts and stating facts then? You can recover from bites from venomless snakes faster than you can recover from a wasp sting if you're allergic. Don't I support recovery? (Christ, I'm doing it now, even I don't understand that metaphor but I'll leave it in for the lols) I support neither US style capitalism nor Stalinism. Workers' control would delivered greater improvements to the lives of the w/c - and that's what I support.

e2A: Does the fact that living standards in the US went up faster than in the USSR over this period (I wasn't aware of that fact but I'll take your word for it) mean that they would have done so in Russia had they adopted US style capitalism? Were the conditions the same in both countries? Did both have the same potential for economic development?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> I'd genuinely be interested to hear the answers to that.


 
I'd like to see some evidence that it is true first. Living standards of huge numbers of people at the end of the Tsarist regime were appalling. 

But I fully endorse what Proper Tidy has been saying about that. Saying that Soviet Russia (post-Stalin at least) was a marked improvement on Tsarist Russia is not itself an endorsement of Soviet Russia.


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## frogwoman (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> And that it was shit. Still the means of production went up and the av age. Not like under capitalism.


 
I agree. It was shit. But it isn't some cartoon version of shit if you know what im saying. Just like capitalism isn't.


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## peterkro (Jun 13, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> This is not what the thread was created for.
> 
> Jeeez.



Silly me, I thought they were demonstrating what anarchism isn't.


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## Edie (Jun 13, 2011)

frogwoman said:


> Where did i say i support it


I thought you were a communist FFS!


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## DotCommunist (Jun 13, 2011)

revol68 said:


> Just saying you're a bright lad and you love reading so there's no excuse for trotting out the same undeveloped knee jerk pseudo stalinist crap.


 
remember I like books where people win revol. Unfamiliar concept eh


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 13, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> This is not what the thread was created for.
> 
> Jeeez.


 
It's a damn site more interesting and informative than your drivel though.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> I thought you were a communist FFS!


 
If someone's a capitalist do they have to support Pinochet's dictatorship?


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## Edie (Jun 13, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> If someone's a capitalist do they have to support Pinochet's dictatorship?


What? Dictatorship isn't capitalism.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 13, 2011)

Why not? Pinochet's dictatorship was most definitely capitalist. Liberals love to pretend that capitalism and democracy are interchangeable terms. They aren't.

Red isn't apples. But some apples are red nonetheless. Likewise, dictatorship isn't capitalism but some capitalist regimes are dictatorships. (That's the last metaphor, I promise. I'm shit at them and I'm even annoying myself now)


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## frogwoman (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> I thought you were a communist FFS!


 
if what u mean by communism means deporting whole populations and chucking people in jail for singing songs in their language etc, then no i'm not.


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## frogwoman (Jun 13, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> If someone's a capitalist do they have to support Pinochet's dictatorship?


 
Exactly.


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## frogwoman (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> What? Dictatorship isn't capitalism.


 
It so often is though.


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## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Bit of honesty on your part - would be welcome.
> 
> _I don't like the trains running on time but....._


 
Yes, I have a big banner of Uncle Joe in my bedroom.

It's like debating with a crack fiend.


----------



## Proper Tidy (Jun 13, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> So, when someone, in the context of a post about the USSR, someone from your party says:
> 
> 
> 
> ? What, what do you say? Fuck all. Despite that clear endorsement.


 
Is this, or is it not, true?



> Life was better for the vast majority in the Soviet era than it was before the Soviet era and than it is after the Soviet era, btw.



You want to argue that life was better under Tsarism, then do so. Or that it is better, now, under capitalism, then do it. Both would be a fucking lie though.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 13, 2011)

You can't say that, that's endorsing Stalinism that is.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 13, 2011)

Surely the Soviet Union post-Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin is best considered as a different regime from the Stalinist era.


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## frogwoman (Jun 13, 2011)

yeh , stalinism imo's not the best term for it.


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## LLETSA (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> Why did they do that, if people broadly felt they had a good thing going on with communism (although I find it hard to believe tbh).




I didn't say people generally had a good thing going under Communist rule. I said that there was no generalised political expression of discontent. In actual fact, as we saw in the elections shortly after the fall of Communist rule, there was a considerable amount of support for the Communists to the end.

I also said that these states were not (after Stalin) run primarily on terror.

Living standards rose dramatically from the 1950s up until the seventies and then hit a brick wall, as the centralised economy couldn't innovate fast enough and the nuclear arms race took its toll. Gorbachev and co. recognised this and tried to do something about it, and events overtook them.


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## LLETSA (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> What? Dictatorship isn't capitalism.




In the modern era, there have been far more dictatorships with capitalist economies than under any other system.


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## LLETSA (Jun 13, 2011)

Edie said:


> I'd genuinely be interested to hear the answers to that.





There's no revelation to be had. The USSR underwent the trauma of the First World War and then the revolution and civil war, during which tens of millions were slaughtered and the socialist movement destroyed, except for the Communist Party, which, for good or ill, coped by making the temporary dictatorship they'd always said was necessary into a permanent feature. In many ways the dictatorship replicated the structures of the Tsarist police state, which was lumbering, bureaucratic and inefficient, deepening these features, and inherited an already backward economy reduced to ruins. Then, in WW2, everything was destroyed once again and tens of millions more butchered. A big contrast to the US, a relatively new society with new structures, a labour shortage guaranteeing constantly rising wages, with no wars on its soil, no loss of civilian population and the ability to profit economically from the slaughter going on elsewhere etc etc. Yet despite the vast relative disadvantages, living standards in the USSR did rise dramatically.

While on the subject of the USSRs inefficiency, there's a bloke with a blog called Dmitry Orlov, a Russian-American who's lived under both systems, who reckons that the inertia of the Soviet economy (among other factors) was an advantage in its collapse period, as its bureaucratic inefficiency meant that transport kept running, people still went to the factories, which may not have been producing much but which were often involved in distributing vital foodstuffs and fuel etc to workers, was unable to switch off the (virtually free) hot water, heating and telephones to housing schemes and so on. There was also a strong tradition of barter and mutual aid in the population. He concludes that when the USSR collapsed it was a trauma but that when the US collapses-as, like all societies it must do at some point whenever that may be-it will, due to the relative inefficiency of its economic institutions and its social atomisation, be a nightmare. Personally, I suspect a US collapse would take all of us with it.


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## Captain Hurrah (Jun 14, 2011)

frogwoman said:


> yeh , stalinism imo's not the best term for it.



It is, in terms of the Stalinist political system remaining, minus the vast repressions, and despite some partial reforms that could never really supplant the Party's deeply-ingrained practices. Indeed, were never intended to.  It could be said that until the stagnation for worker and intelligentsia, the immediate post-war, then post-Stalin period with its considerable investment in reconstruction, the USSR seemed to promise a future where the economy could take off to new heights, and new but fleeting political and cultural freedoms would allow for a more civil and humane society. It was compared to the Stalin era, but the bureaucratic dictatorship lumbered on.

Khrushchev's speech at the 20th Congress didn't fully dislodge Stalin's contribution to the 'building of socialism' in the USSR either, he was very much lauded in some respects.  The excesses of his rule and his supposed infallibility as leader were criticised as being a deviation from Leninism, to the shock of those who had until then publicly denied, but privately knew that it was awful, and they had played their own roles in it.   Khrushchev himself was knee-deep in the blood of thousands of innocents when Party boss of Ukraine SSR during the 1930s.


----------



## Edie (Jun 14, 2011)

LLETSA said:


> There's no revelation to be had. The USSR underwent the trauma of the First World War and then the revolution and civil war, during which tens of millions were slaughtered and the socialist movement destroyed, except for the Communist Party, which, for good or ill, coped by making the temporary dictatorship they'd always said was necessary into a permanent feature. In many ways the dictatorship replicated the structures of the Tsarist police state, which was lumbering, bureaucratic and inefficient, deepening these features, and inherited an already backward economy reduced to ruins. Then, in WW2, everything was destroyed once again and tens of millions more butchered. A big contrast to the US, a relatively new society with new structures, a labour shortage guaranteeing constantly rising wages, with no wars on its soil, no loss of civilian population and the ability to profit economically from the slaughter going on elsewhere etc etc. Yet despite the vast relative disadvantages, living standards in the USSR did rise dramatically.
> 
> While on the subject of the USSRs inefficiency, there's a bloke with a blog called Dmitry Orlov, a Russian-American who's lived under both systems, who reckons that the inertia of the Soviet economy (among other factors) was an advantage in its collapse period, as its bureaucratic inefficiency meant that transport kept running, people still went to the factories, which may not have been producing much but which were often involved in distributing vital foodstuffs and fuel etc to workers, was unable to switch off the (virtually free) hot water, heating and telephones to housing schemes and so on. There was also a strong tradition of barter and mutual aid in the population. He concludes that when the USSR collapsed it was a trauma but that when the US collapses-as, like all societies it must do at some point whenever that may be-it will, due to the relative inefficiency of its economic institutions and its social atomisation, be a nightmare. Personally, I suspect a US collapse would take all of us with it.


Thanks for that.

Do you think it is inevitable that socialist and capitalist systems (or in fact any system) will always end up being dominated and run for an elite?


----------



## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

Edie said:


> Thanks for that.
> 
> Do you think it is inevitable that socialist and capitalist systems (or in fact any system) will always end up being dominated and run for an elite?



Any system which allows power to be concentrated in the hands of an elite will see that elite use it to further its own interests.

That is true of the economic power afforded to a small capital-owning class, and of the political power afforded to a small ruling class which runs government.  And, often, not only is there a considerable overlap,  but also that power becomes self-reinforcing i.e. power affords the opportunity to increase influence, and thereby gain more power.  Typically, this results in a tiny capital-owning ruling class becoming increasingly powerful.

The solution is to prevent the aggregation of power, by rejecting capitalism and statism.  That is, broadly speaking, an anarchist position.  Whereas Marxists would typically argue that, although capitalism should be abolished, there must still be a state (at least in the short term), albeit it in the hands of the workers.  Whilst this might sound atttractive in principle, history shows us that the reality is that states inevitably fall under the control of small ruling classes which then amass capital, and aggregate power.


----------



## frogwoman (Jun 14, 2011)

Captain Hurrah said:


> It is, in terms of the Stalinist political system remaining, minus the vast repressions, and despite some partial reforms that could never really supplant the Party's deeply-ingrained practices. Indeed, were never intended to.  It could be said that until the stagnation for worker and intelligentsia, the immediate post-war, then post-Stalin period with its considerable investment in reconstruction, the USSR seemed to promise a future where the economy could take off to new heights, and new but fleeting political and cultural freedoms would allow for a more civil and humane society. It was compared to the Stalin era, but the bureaucratic dictatorship lumbered on.
> 
> Khrushchev's speech at the 20th Congress didn't fully dislodge Stalin's contribution to the 'building of socialism' in the USSR either, he was very much lauded in some respects.  The excesses of his rule and his supposed infallibility as leader were criticised as being a deviation from Leninism, to the shock of those who had until then publicly denied, but privately knew that it was awful, and they had played their own roles in it.   Khrushchev himself was knee-deep in the blood of thousands of innocents when Party boss of Ukraine SSR during the 1930s.


 
Yeah, the stalinist political and economic structures remained unchanged but there wasn't the level of terror etc which there was after Stalin (except in soviet sattelite states and in a few isolated cases - not saying it didn't exist though). And I know Kruschchev was also a bastard, but didn't know he'd been party boss in the ukraine ..


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## Captain Hurrah (Jun 14, 2011)

Rising star there through both the Orgburo and Politburo, then transferred to Moscow on the recommendation of Stalin's associate Lazar Kaganovich.  Returned in the late 30s, and oversaw some of the purging at its height.


----------



## Edie (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> Any system which allows power to be concentrated in the hands of an elite will see that elite use it to further its own interests.
> 
> That is true of the economic power afforded to a small capital-owning class, and of the political power afforded to a small ruling class which runs government.  And, often, not only is there a considerable overlap,  but also that power becomes self-reinforcing i.e. power affords the opportunity to increase influence, and thereby gain more power.  Typically, this results in a tiny capital-owning ruling class becoming increasingly powerful.
> 
> The solution is to prevent the aggregation of power, by rejecting capitalism and statism.  That is, broadly speaking, an anarchist position.  Whereas Marxists would typically argue that, although capitalism should be abolished, there must still be a state (at least in the short term), albeit it in the hands of the workers.  Whilst this might sound atttractive in principle, history shows us that the reality is that states inevitably fall under the control of small ruling classes which then amass capital, and aggregate power.


How could you ever prevent the aggregation of power, when some people will always have to be elected to make decisions on behalf of the group?


----------



## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

Edie said:


> How could you ever prevent the aggregation of power, when some people will always have to be elected to make decisions on behalf of the group?


 
Because Representative Democracy is not inevitable: People don't need to be elected to make decisions on behalf of the group.  An alternative is Direct Democracy, whereby people make their own decisions.  Under that sysytem, any elected post holder would be a delegate, whose role is to convey the will of the people, not exercise decision making power on the people's behalf.


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## revlon (Jun 14, 2011)

did marx ever lay out the conditions of decision making in a communist society?


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## Edie (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> Because Representative Democracy is not inevitable: People don't need to be elected to make decisions on behalf of the group.  An alternative is Direct Democracy, whereby people make their own decisions.  Under that sysytem, any elected post holder would be a delegate, whose role is to convey the will of the people, not exercise decision making power on the people's behalf.


You can't vote on every issue to work out what the will of the people is, people with more knowledge have to make the decisions. That places them in a position of responsibility and power. Also, what happens when there is a disagreement within a group? A 60:40 split?

I really wanna believe this stuff, but I just can't. Like wanting to believe in God but not being able to  It just seems to place this unrealistic expectation on the goodness of humans, and doesn't seem to account for the idea that people who default on the system (or cheat) will be at an advantage. That temptation will always be there, and there will always be people who can justify doing it.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 14, 2011)

Sadly I think you're probably right there Edie. I've yet to be convinced that a 100 percent non-hierarchical society is possible. But I do think we could improve representative democracy by making them more accountable and making sure they don't earn too much more than the people they represent. I also think things could be much, much better if there was democracy in the workplace.


----------



## Edie (Jun 14, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> Can someone bring me up to speed - what are we talking about now? This thread confuses me.


Anarchism.


----------



## revlon (Jun 14, 2011)

> Can someone bring me up to speed - what are we talking about now? This thread confuses me.



misuses of the word stalinism,


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

revlon said:


> did marx ever lay out the conditions of decision making in a communist society?


 
Eh?


----------



## revlon (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> Eh?


 
how a communist society would function. Did he ever give an indication in his writings about what form societal organisation would take once people were free from capitalism and a classless society had emerged?


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 14, 2011)

Cheers, I've figured it out (see edit)


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 14, 2011)

Edie said:


> You can't vote on every issue to work out what the will of the people is, people with more knowledge have to make the decisions. That places them in a position of responsibility and power. Also, what happens when there is a disagreement within a group? A 60:40 split?


 
You can't, no. There is another issue with this, which is that an electorate cannot be held personally responsible for its decisions. Sometimes those that take decisions need to be held accountable for the consequences of those decisions. 

So-called 'direct democracy' only has a very limited scope, imo. In Switzerland, where it is in place, its results have been mixed to say the least - it tends to lead to a vocal and organised minority getting its way most of the time.


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

Edie said:


> You can't vote on every issue to work out what the will of the people is, people with more knowledge have to make the decisions. That places them in a position of responsibility and power. Also, what happens when there is a disagreement within a group? A 60:40 split?
> 
> I really wanna believe this stuff, but I just can't. Like wanting to believe in God but not being able to  It just seems to place this unrealistic expectation on the goodness of humans, and doesn't seem to account for the idea that people who default on the system (or cheat) will be at an advantage. That temptation will always be there, and there will always be people who can justify doing it.



Why can't decisions be made by the people?  Small groups can make decisions which affect only themselves, and send delegates to federations to convey their views on issues which reflect wider communities, and so on up the chain.  The important point being that it's power being sent from the bottom upwards, rather than the other way around.

The issue about the potential for tyranny of the majority is a good one, and slightly more difficult to answer.  As a starting point, you could look at the Anarchist FAQ, at section I.5.6 (http://www.infoshop.org/page/AnarchistFAQSectionI5#seci56).

Anarchism doesn't rely on some fanciful notion of the innate goodness of human nature.   Rather it is predicated on the understanding of man's worst inclinations i.e. to aggregate and misuse power in his own interest.  The idea that anarchists are fluffy idealists who won't take steps to defend the gains of revolution is simply not true.  But it's the difference between the people wielding power to defend their interests, and a minority wielding it in the name of the people, but, in reality, to further their own interests.


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> You can't, no. There is another issue with this, which is that an electorate cannot be held personally responsible for its decisions. Sometimes those that take decisions need to be held accountable for the consequences of those decisions.
> 
> So-called 'direct democracy' only has a very limited scope, imo. In Switzerland, where it is in place, its results have been mixed to say the least - it tends to lead to a vocal and organised minority getting its way most of the time.



Switzerland is not a direct democracy operating in post-capitalist conditions, though.  So hardly a fair comparison with the anarchist vision of the same.


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

revlon said:


> how a communist society would function. Did he ever give an indication in his writings about what form societal organisation would take once people were free from capitalism and a classless society had emerged?



Well, he gave an indication what form it would take after capitalism: the dictatorship of the proletariat.

As far as I know, he didn't give an indication of what it would look like after the state had withered i.e. communism had emerged.

But, to me, the idea that power would just wither away seems ridiculous.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> Switzerland is not a direct democracy operating in post-capitalist conditions, though.  So hardly a fair comparison with the anarchist vision of the same.


 
Same problem of accountability, though.


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Same problem of accountability, though.


 
When others wield power in our name we need to hold them to account; it's not so important when we wield it ourselves.


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## Edie (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> The issue about the potential for tyranny of the majority is a good one, and slightly more difficult to answer.  As a starting point, you could look at the Anarchist FAQ, at section I.5.6 (http://www.infoshop.org/page/AnarchistFAQSectionI5#seci56).


Can you just summarize the position?  What happens if the majority think that being gay should be punishable by death? Do we need people in control who are 'more wise than the majority'?


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

Edie said:


> Can you just summarize the position?  What happens if the majority think that being gay should be punishable by death? Do we need people in control who are 'more wise than the majority'?


 
Just cooking the kids' lunch. Will try to, later.


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## revlon (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> Well, he gave an indication what form it would take after capitalism: the dictatorship of the proletariat.
> 
> As far as I know, he didn't give an indication of what it would look like after the state had withered i.e. communism had emerged.
> 
> But, to me, the idea that power would just wither away seems ridiculous.


 
fair enough. I would've assumed every marxist would have jumped on the idea (and almost certainly used it as a model in the here and now) if he had said something about how a communist society would decide things post capitalism.


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## Random (Jun 14, 2011)

Edie said:


> What happens if the majority think that being gay should be punishable by death?


 What _does_ happen if the majority of people believe in something that you strongly disagree with?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> When others wield power in our name we need to hold them to account; it's not so important when we wield it ourselves.


 
I don't agree. Sometimes a decision has to be made in such a way that the one(s) making the decision know that they will be held to account for its consequences. Hence, for instance, the fact that elected parliaments tend to be less keen on the death penalty than opinion polls. With the best will in the world, you're not going to get everyone to think such issues through properly. They may have neither the time nor the inclination. But if you haven't thought something through properly, why should you have an equal vote on the issue with someone who has?


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## Edie (Jun 14, 2011)

Random said:


> What _does_ happen if the majority of people believe in something that you strongly disagree with?


Dunno. I sometimes think that the laws would be pretty different if everyone voted on em. I think there'd be the death penalty and I reckon immigration would stop for example.


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## Random (Jun 14, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> if you haven't thought something through properly, why should you have an equal vote on the issue with someone who has?


 Let's bring this priciple in for all elections, then.


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> I don't agree. Sometimes a decision has to be made in such a way that the one(s) making the decision know that they will be held to account for its consequences. Hence, for instance, the fact that elected parliaments tend to be less keen on the death penalty than opinion polls. With the best will in the world, you're not going to get everyone to think such issues through properly. They may have neither the time nor the inclination. But if you haven't thought something through properly, why should you have an equal vote on the issue with someone who has?


 
So, essentially, you're arguing that people are too ignorant to govern themselves?  But not too ignorant to make the right choice as to whom they want to make decisons for them?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> So, essentially, you're arguing that people are too ignorant to govern themselves?  But not too ignorant to make the right choice as to whom they want to make decisons for them?


 
Ignorant is the wrong word. But yes, for many of the minutiae of decision-making, people need to choose someone to make those decisions, who can then be held to account for the consequences of those decisions.

You haven't answered my question btw: Should someone who hasn't shown that they've thought about an issue have equal right to an opinion to someone who has? Is everyone's opinion equally valid?


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## TruXta (Jun 14, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Should someone who hasn't shown that they've thought about an issue have equal right to an opinion to someone who has? Is everyone's opinion equally valid?


 
No, but everyone is entitled to an opinion. Where do we go from there? You'll have a nightmare on your hands if you'd want to sort voting privileges on "ignorance". It's not like politics is math.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 14, 2011)

TruXta said:


> No, but everyone is entitled to an opinion. Where do we go from there? You'll have a nightmare on your hands if you'd want to sort voting privileges on "ignorance". It's not like politics is math.


 
Which is why you don't have a referendum on single issues all the time, but rather have everyone elect representatives to make decisions. I'm not advocating sorting voting privileges on 'ignorance'. I'd actually rather do it by lot than anything else - a parliament chosen by lot where the people chosen listen to all the arguments before voting on whatever issue comes before them.


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Ignorant is the wrong word. But yes, for many of the minutiae of decision-making, people need to choose someone to make those decisions, who can then be held to account for the consequences of those decisions.
> 
> You haven't answered my question btw: Should someone who hasn't shown that they've thought about an issue have equal right to an opinion to someone who has? Is everyone's opinion equally valid?



In the process I am talking about, decisions would be arrived at following discussion.  That would mean that experts would get to offer their opinions, and that, as such, those making the decisions wouldn't be entirely ignorant.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> In the process I am talking about, decisions would be arrived at following discussion.  That would mean that experts would get to offer their opinions, and that, as such, those making the decisions wouldn't be entirely ignorant.


 
That's fine where you're talking about decisions that involve perhaps hundreds of people. Less fine where those decisions involve millions.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 14, 2011)

What do you understand the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" to mean Athos?


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## LLETSA (Jun 14, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> That's fine where you're talking about decisions that involve perhaps hundreds of people. Less fine where those decisions involve millions.





While decentralised decision making is undoubtedly integral to any viable socialism (or whatever you want to call it), why must we assume that people generally want a say in anything and everything? Or to endlessly attend meetings in order to vote on this, that and the other? In my experience, most people would rather do something enjoyable with their spare time. And what of the many areas of life where only expertise is valid (and absolutely fallible even then?)


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## _angel_ (Jun 14, 2011)

LLETSA said:


> While decentralised decision making is undoubtedly integral to any viable socialism (or whatever you want to call it), why must we assume that people generally want a say in anything and everything? Or to endlessly attend meetings in order to vote on this, that and the other? In my experience, most people would rather do something enjoyable with their spare time. And what of the many areas of life where only expertise is valid (and absolutely fallible even then?)


 My thoughts exactly.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 14, 2011)

LLETSA said:


> While decentralised decision making is undoubtedly integral to any viable socialism (or whatever you want to call it), why must we assume that people generally want a say in anything and everything? Or to endlessly attend meetings in order to vote on this, that and the other? In my experience, most people would rather do something enjoyable with their spare time. And what of the many areas of life where only expertise is valid (and absolutely fallible even then?)


 
Yes, I agree. This is one of the problems with the Swiss model. Where there is a highly publicised plebiscite, they get a turn-out of perhaps 50%, but mostly the turn-out is about 25%, and that's with onlline voting and every other kind of convenience. Such a situation leads to bad law made by and on behalf of well-organised minorities, usually from the wealthier sectors of society. Systems need to be realistic about how real people are, imo, rather than hoping that a revolution will magically turn them into what they think they should be. 

Also, in an industrialised society, many decisions need to be made at a much higher level - transport or energy policy, for instance. Where these decisions involve any kind of ethical dimension, they cannot be left entirely to experts. This is where I would probably favour a parliament chosen by lot, but even then, I think you'd need an executive to formulate coordinated policies, and they would have to be elected.


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

Edie said:


> Can you just summarize the position?  What happens if the majority think that being gay should be punishable by death? Do we need people in control who are 'more wise than the majority'?



It's really not a long section. 

I'm not going to summarise it entirely; if you're genuinely interested, you'll read it. 

But, I'll reproduce a few salient passages (with some editing), to give you the general thrust of it:

...

_There is, of course, this danger in any society, be its decision making structure direct (anarchy) or indirect (by some form of government). Anarchists are at the forefront in expressing concern about it... 

...

However, rather than draw elitist conclusions from this fact of life under capitalism and urge forms of government and organisation which restrict popular participation (and promote rule, and tyranny, by the few) -- as classical liberals do -- libertarians argue that only a process of self-liberation through struggle and participation can break up the mass into free, self-managing individuals. Moreover, we also argue that participation and self-management is the only way that majorities can come to see the point of minority ideas and for seeing the importance of protecting minority freedoms.

...

In the current system, as we pointed out in section B.5, voters are mere passive spectators of occasional, staged, and highly rehearsed debates among candidates pre-selected by the corporate elite, who pay for campaign expenses...  The function, then, of the electorate in bourgeois "representative government" is ratification of "choices" that have been already made for them! 

 By contrast, in a direct, libertarian democracy, decisions are made following public discussion in community assemblies open to all. After decisions have been reached, outvoted minorities -- even minorities of one -- still have ample opportunity to present reasoned and persuasive counter-arguments to try to change the decision. This process of debate, disagreement, challenge, and counter-challenge, which goes on even after the defeated minority has temporarily acquiesced in the decision of the majority, is virtually absent in the representative system, where "tyranny of the majority" is truly a problem. In addition, minorities can secede from an association if the decision reached by it are truly offensive to them. 

And let us not forget that in all likelihood, issues of personal conduct or activity will not be discussed in the neighbourhood assemblies. Why? Because we are talking about a society in which most people consider themselves to be unique, free individuals, who would thus recognise and act to protect the uniqueness and freedom of others. Unless people are indoctrinated by religion or some other form of ideology, they can be tolerant of others and their individuality. If this is not the case now, then it has more to do with the existence of authoritarian social relationships -- relationships that will be dismantled under libertarian socialism -- and the type of person they create rather than some innate human flaw.

...

In an anarchist society, however, a conscious effort will be made to dissolve the institutional and traditional sources of the authoritarian/submissive type of personality, and thus to free "public opinion" of its current potential for intolerance. In addition, it should be noted that as anarchists recognise that the practice of self-assumed political obligation implied in free association also implies the right to practice dissent and disobedience as well.

...

If an individual or group of individuals feel that a specific decision threatens their freedom (which is the basic principle of political morality in an anarchist society) they can (and must) act to defend that freedom. 

...

As they no longer "consent" to the decisions made by their community they can appeal to the "sense of justice" of their fellow citizens by direct action and indicate that a given decision may have impacts which the majority were not aware. Hence direct action and dissent is a key aspect of an anarchist society and help ensure against the tyranny of the majority. Anarchism rejects the "love it or leave it" attitude that marks classical liberalism as well as Rousseau (this aspect of his work being inconsistent with its foundations in participation). 

...

 This argument applies with even more force to a self-managed community too and so any system in which the majority tyrannises over a minority is, by definition, not self-managed as one part of the community is excluded from convincing the other ("the enslavement of part of a nation denies the federal principal itself." [P-J Proudhon, The Principle of Federation, p. 42f]). Thus individual freedom and minority rights are essential to direct democracy/self-management.

...

Hence most anarchists have recognised that majority decision making, though not perfect, is the best way to reach decisions in a political system based on maximising individual (and so social) freedom. Direct democracy in grassroots confederal assemblies and workers' councils ensures that decision making is "horizontal" in nature (i.e. between equals) and not hierarchical (i.e. governmental, between order giver and order taker). In other words, it ensures liberty._


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> That's fine where you're talking about decisions that involve perhaps hundreds of people. Less fine where those decisions involve millions.


 
Not insurmaountable with the right structures, though.  I agree that it wouldn't be easy, but it's better than the alternatives.


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

LLETSA said:


> While decentralised decision making is undoubtedly integral to any viable socialism (or whatever you want to call it), why must we assume that people generally want a say in anything and everything? Or to endlessly attend meetings in order to vote on this, that and the other? In my experience, most people would rather do something enjoyable with their spare time. And what of the many areas of life where only expertise is valid (and absolutely fallible even then?)



I'm not assuming that everybody want a say about everything, and would want to spend all their time discussing these issues.  But I think it important that they have the opportunity to do so.

And I can't conceive of any area where only expertise is valid i.e. in which even experts couldn't make themselves sufficiently well understood to a reasonable proportion of laymen.


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Yes, I agree. This is one of the problems with the Swiss model. Where there is a highly publicised plebiscite, they get a turn-out of perhaps 50%, but mostly the turn-out is about 25%, and that's with onlline voting and every other kind of convenience. Such a situation leads to bad law made by and on behalf of well-organised minorities, usually from the wealthier sectors of society. Systems need to be realistic about how real people are, imo, rather than hoping that a revolution will magically turn them into what they think they should be.
> 
> Also, in an industrialised society, many decisions need to be made at a much higher level - transport or energy policy, for instance. Where these decisions involve any kind of ethical dimension, they cannot be left entirely to experts. This is where I would probably favour a parliament chosen by lot, but even then, I think you'd need an executive to formulate coordinated policies, and they would have to be elected.


 
As I've already said, the Swiss example is a red herring.

Why do decisions need to be made at a much higher level?  And, even if they do, why can't the will of the people be expressed upwards to that higher level (rather than downwards from the top)?


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> And I can't conceive of any area where only expertise is valid i.e. in which even experts couldn't make themselves sufficiently well understood to a reasonable proportion of laymen.


 
One example I could think of - it may be decided that as a society nuclear power is no longer wanted. The decision to end nuclear power may be taken by non-experts, but once that decision has been made, only the experts' opinions are valid as to how it should happen, how long it will take, what safeguards need to be put in place, etc. For such complicated, dangerous operations to take place, you do need hierarchical structures. Someone has to be in charge at a nuclear power station.


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## TruXta (Jun 14, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Which is why you don't have a referendum on single issues all the time, but rather have everyone elect representatives to make decisions. I'm not advocating sorting voting privileges on 'ignorance'. I'd actually rather do it by lot than anything else - a parliament chosen by lot where the people chosen listen to all the arguments before voting on whatever issue comes before them.


 
Not a bad system.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> Why do decisions need to be made at a much higher level?  And, even if they do, why can't the will of the people be expressed upwards to that higher level (rather than downwards from the top)?


 Because they affect more people. Should London have Crossrail? A project that costs billions, will be used by millions and whose desirability can only be judged after a complicated cost-benefit analysis. That's a strategic decision that has to be made at a much higher level. 

And yes, the higher levels have to take precedence over the lower ones. To preserve fish stocks, decision have to be made at a supra-national level, and they have to be enforceable. It's no good your local coop deciding on its own that it is going to increase its quota.


I don't have good answers to all this, btw. The situation throws up contradictions and paradoxes. How do you ensure that legitimacy comes from the bottom while allowing for certain powers to be exercised from the top, which you have to do? I don't know.


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> What do you understand the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" to mean Athos?


 
As I understand it, Marx was talking about a socialist state controlled entirely by the working class, through a democratic system.

Whislt that might sound not unlike the form of organisation about which I am talking, I think the key difference is the presence vs absence of a state.  The nature of statehood is that it is something independant of, and 'above', the people, which means top down control.  That opens the door for the agregation and misuse of power (in pursuit of self-interest) by those who seize the reins of the apparatus of the state.

And that is the lesson from history of marxist revolution.


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Because they affect more people. Should London have Crossrail? A project that costs billions, will be used by millions and whose desirability can only be judged after a complicated cost-benefit analysis. That's a strategic decision that has to be made at a much higher level.
> 
> And yes, the higher levels have to take precedence over the lower ones. To preserve fish stocks, decision have to be made at a supra-national level, and they have to be enforceable. It's no good your local coop deciding on its own that it is going to increase its quota.
> 
> ...


 
I think you're missing the point.  It's not that all decisions will be made in my village, and we'll then do what we want.  Rather, local decisions are made following debate in my village.  Regional decisions are made by delegates from the local villages to an appropriate confereration i.e. our delegate is mandated to represent our views.  He does, listens to the view of other delegates, and reports to us.  We then reconsider, then send him back to relay our decision.  The other villages' delegates will do the same.  Then a vote is taken.  This is scaled up to national or international decision making.  The key point is that our delegates are merely conduits for our collective decisions, not being empowered to make decisons on our behalf.  Thus power comes from the bottom up, not from the top down.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> As I understand it, Marx was talking about a socialist state controlled entirely by the working class, through a democratic system.
> 
> Whislt that might sound not unlike the form of organisation about which I am talking, I think the key difference is the presence vs absence of a state.  The nature of statehood is that it is something independant of, and 'above', the people, which means top down control.  That opens the door for the agregation and misuse of power (in pursuit of self-interest) by those who seize the reins of the apparatus of the state.
> 
> And that is the lesson from history of marxist revolution.


 
So this is a semantic disagreement then - provided the dictatorship of the proletariat is genuinely democratic by your definition it is not a state? I'd say that's the lesson from the Russian revolution - not from "Marxist" revolution. It wasn't just ideology that shaped the direction of the Soviet state - the conditions in which it was established played, in my view, the defining role.


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## TruXta (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> I think you're missing the point.  It's not that all decisions will be made in my village, and we'll then do what we want.  Rather, local decisions are made following debate in my village.  Regional decisions are made by delegates from the local villages to an appropriate confereration i.e. our delegate is mandated to represent our views.  He does, listens to the view of other delegates, and reports to us.  We then reconsider, then send him back to relay our decision.  The other villages' delegates will do the same.  Then a vote is taken.  This is scaled up to national or international decision making.  The key point is that our delegates are representing our collective decisions, not being empowered to make decisons on our behalf.  Thus power comes from the bottom up, not from the top down.


 
What if decisions need to be made _now_?


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> One example I could think of - it may be decided that as a society nuclear power is no longer wanted. The decision to end nuclear power may be taken by non-experts, but once that decision has been made, only the experts' opinions are valid as to how it should happen, how long it will take, what safeguards need to be put in place, etc. For such complicated, dangerous operations to take place, you do need hierarchical structures. Someone has to be in charge at a nuclear power station.


 
But what makes you think that people won't listen to experts?  If they can make a good case, the course of action they propose will be decided upon.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 14, 2011)

TruXta said:


> What if decisions need to be made _now_?


 
That's one problem. Another is that decisions need to be coordinated with each other. There need to be _plans_. We have no hope in hell of not fucking up otherwise, not with 7 billion people on the planet.

I have no problem with the idea of sending delegates to progressively higher levels. But those delegates then need to be empowered to make decisions themselves, not to merely relay decisions made at the lower levels.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> But what makes you think that people won't listen to experts?  If they can make a good case, the course of action they propose will be decided upon.


 
But the experts make an excellent case for smoking killing people. I know it's killing me, yet I still smoke. People aren't always 100% rational. If it's possible to be as irrational as I am over smoking, even though the only victim is me, surely it's possible for there to be collective irrationality when it comes to decisions where you have to balance long-term prospects against short-term fulfillment, and where the long-term consequences may not even be felt by many of those who are voting?


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## TruXta (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> But what makes you think that people won't listen to experts?  If they can make a good case, the course of action they propose will be decided upon.


 
Do you honestly think so? What if the experts don't agree? What if what the experts propose is against commonly held values?


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

TruXta said:


> What if decisions need to be made _now_?



It is conceivable that exceptional circumstances could arise whereby some limited decision-making power would have to be vested in an individual i.e. a war, but this would need to be as close to anarchist peinciples as possible i.e. those decision makers would need a clear mandate, and would have to be instantly recallable, and the short-term nature of their post recognised by all.


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Do you honestly think so? What if the experts don't agree? What if what the experts propose is against commonly held values?


 
If so-called experts can't agree, then why should we be giving one of them the power to decide, anyway?


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## TruXta (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> If so-called experts can't agree, then why should we be giving one of them the power to decide, anyway?


 
Disagreement among experts doesn't mean that they're not experts. There's plenty of legitimately contentious areas of science and technology.

ed - i'm not for a technocracy (altho it has its merits), but the question of the role of science and experts in decision-making processes isn't as simple as you seemingly make it out to be.


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> But the experts make an excellent case for smoking killing people. I know it's killing me, yet I still smoke. People aren't always 100% rational. If it's possible to be as irrational as I am over smoking, even though the only victim is me, surely it's possible for there to be collective irrationality when it comes to decisions where you have to balance long-term prospects against short-term fulfillment, and where the long-term consequences may not even be felt by many of those who are voting?


 
What's the alternative?  If you think it possible for the people to vote against their own interests, what makes you think it less likely that a ruling minority would make decisions contrary to the people's interests?!


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Disagreement among experts doesn't mean that they're not experts. There's plenty of legitimately contentious areas of science and technology.


 
I know but LBJ's point was that we shouldn't let people decise about the running of the nuclear power station, but that we should leave it to the experts.  if the experts are disagreeing, where does that leave us?  which one should run it?


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## TruXta (Jun 14, 2011)

It's not only possible that people vote against their own interests, in a lot of places it's the norm.


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## TruXta (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> I know but LBJ's point was that we shouldn't let people decise about the running of the nuclear power station, but that we should leave it to the experts.  if the experts are disagreeing, where does that leave us?  which one should run it?


 
Me.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> I know but LBJ's point was that we shouldn't let people decise about the running of the nuclear power station, but that we should leave it to the experts.  if the experts are disagreeing, where does that leave us?  which one should run it?


 
Well the appointment of the expert can be under democratic control, but once appointed, they have to be given executive powers - while at the same time they are held accountable for the consequences of their decisions. There's no other way to do it.

There's a grey area between the decision 'what should be done' and 'how should it be done' - deciding whether or not to have nuclear power in the first place is one of those. There are no clean solutions, I don't think, but there are clear areas where only an expert should be allowed to decide how to do something.


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## TruXta (Jun 14, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Well the appointment of the expert can be under democratic control, but once appointed, they have to be given executive powers - while at the same time they are held accountable for the consequences of their decisions. There's no other way to do it.


 
Nah, you need non-experts in the room as well, or at least people that aren't directly involved in the field in question. It's just too damn easy for specialists to lose sight of the bigger picture.

ed - good point about the how to/what to grey area. As always the devil is in the details, and "how" very often turns into "what and why" without being challenged on that. The internet is a brillant example - the protocols like IP and HTTP can otoh be seen as mere technical detailsm, but in reality they also have a heavy influence on the _what and why_ as well - see for example Lessig's _Code_.


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jun 14, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Nah, you need non-experts in the room as well, or at least people that aren't directly involved in the field in question. It's just too damn easy for specialists to lose sight of the bigger picture.


 
Yes, true. Handling complicated things like nuclear power stations is complicated!


----------



## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> So this is a semantic disagreement then - provided the dictatorship of the proletariat is genuinely democratic by your definition it is not a state? I'd say that's the lesson from the Russian revolution - not from "Marxist" revolution. It wasn't just ideology that shaped the direction of the Soviet state - the conditions in which it was established played, in my view, the defining role.


 
No, it's not just semantics.  Mechanisms by which the working class exercise power directly, from the bottom up, without a state, are qualitatively different from states.

Which Marxist revolutions were ultimately succesful, and different in character to the USSR?


----------



## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

TruXta said:


> It's not only possible that people vote against their own interests, in a lot of places it's the norm.


 
And elites always act in the people's interest?


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## TruXta (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> And elites always act in the people's interest?


 
Not at all, how on earth did you get from what I said to that?


----------



## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Well the appointment of the expert can be under democratic control, but once appointed, they have to be given executive powers - while at the same time they are held accountable for the consequences of their decisions. There's no other way to do it.
> 
> There's a grey area between the decision 'what should be done' and 'how should it be done' - deciding whether or not to have nuclear power in the first place is one of those. There are no clean solutions, I don't think, but there are clear areas where only an expert should be allowed to decide how to do something.



I can agree that the smaller and more technical and less political/ideological decisions become, the more likely they can be left to experts.


----------



## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Not at all, how on earth did you get from what I said to that?


 
Because I accept that majority decision making isn't perfect, but what's the alternative?  The status quo of elites making decisions and imposing them on the rest of us?


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## Edie (Jun 14, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Yes, I agree. This is one of the problems with the Swiss model. Where there is a highly publicised plebiscite, they get a turn-out of perhaps 50%, but mostly the turn-out is about 25%, and that's with onlline voting and every other kind of convenience. Such a situation leads to bad law made by and on behalf of well-organised minorities, usually from the wealthier sectors of society. Systems need to be realistic about how real people are, imo, rather than hoping that a revolution will magically turn them into what they think they should be.


God, totally right. And what lletsa said, most people don't give a shit they just want to be left alone to get on with there lives. People go on about voter apathy now, and it's easy to say well that's cos they feel disempowered with how politics is now. I think it's probably that the majority of people don't give a fuck.


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## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

Edie said:


> God, totally right. And what lletsa said, most people don't give a shit they just want to be left alone to get on with there lives. People go on about voter apathy now, and it's easy to say well that's cos they feel disempowered with how politics is now. I think it's probably that the majority of people don't give a fuck.


 
Because representative democracy is a sham. It offers no real opportunity for change.  No wonder people are disengaged.  You need to remember that the recent experience of the west is not typical of all human expperience over time and space; in large parts of the world, and here in the past, politics had enormous immediate importance to most people.  Of course, that was when it offered the potential for real change.


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## TruXta (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> Because I accept that majority decision making isn't perfect, but what's the alternative?  The status quo of elites making decisions and imposing them on the rest of us?


 
My argument wasn't that because some (many?) people vote for candidates who will objectively lessen their prospects of a happy life we should do away with majority decision making, it was simply pointing out an almost trivial fact.


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## Random (Jun 14, 2011)

TruXta said:


> My argument wasn't that because some (many?) people vote for candidates who will objectively lessen their prospects of a happy life we should do away with majority decision making, it was simply pointing out an almost trivial fact.


 Are you talking about the US worker class Republicans? Ames off the Exiled has an interesting theory, that they vote for oligarchs because they hate snooty liberal democrats even more. So it's still class consciousness, just expressed in the impossible context of the US political system.


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## TruXta (Jun 14, 2011)

Random said:


> Are you talking about the US worker class Republicans? Ames off the Exiled has an interesting theory, that they vote for oligarchs because they hate snooty liberal democrats even more. So it's still class consciousness, just expressed in the impossible context of the US political system.


 
Them, and anyone else coming from a w/c or otherwise marginalised segment who votes for the very elites that keep them downtrodden.


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## LLETSA (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> I'm not assuming that everybody want a say about everything, and would want to spend all their time discussing these issues.  But I think it important that they have the opportunity to do so.
> 
> And I can't conceive of any area where only expertise is valid i.e. in which even experts couldn't make themselves sufficiently well understood to a reasonable proportion of laymen.





The trouble with what you're saying is that it's completely abstract, assuming the most ideal of situations. Anybody who's been a shop steward will know that many people do not, even when fully comprehending the facts, always (or even usually) vote in their own interests, but out of fear and pressure from others, or else because propagandists with superior skills putting the opposite case have been able to plants doubts in their minds. Often the dedicated, militant minority is left beleagured. This is like a post-revolutionary society in microcosm almost, as the remnants of what went before will inevitably retain a lot of influence, power and (if only from offshore or abroad) vast sums of money with which to continue to fight for their interests. They would probably have poweful support from capitalists and states in other parts of the world, and the continued support of millions here, including among the working class. That's why there will always be a danger of the dedicated activists who know what they want, whether formally organised into a centralised party or not, seeing no alternative other than to form a dictatorship.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> What's the alternative?  If you think it possible for the people to vote against their own interests, what makes you think it less likely that a ruling minority would make decisions contrary to the people's interests?!


 
I'm not arguing in favour of technocracy or elitism, just trying to find the weaknesses of your model.


----------



## LLETSA (Jun 14, 2011)

Edie said:


> God, totally right. And what lletsa said, most people don't give a shit they just want to be left alone to get on with there lives. People go on about voter apathy now, and it's easy to say well that's cos they feel disempowered with how politics is now. I think it's probably that the majority of people don't give a fuck.




I don't rule out a situation where the current apathy is transformed into a mass desire for change, but it would inevitably be far from straightforward, as I tried to explain above. And there has never been revolutionary change yet where even dedicated activists, let alone the working class as a whole, do not get worn down by the pressures and unforeseen problems. This is when the enemy seizes its chance, particularly if the revolution rests on shaky foundations, and the temptation of the revolutionaries to cling on through naked dictatorship surfaces.

If you're genuinely interested in this kind of stuff, you could do worse than seek out a copy of Victor Serge's novel Conquered City (bearing in mind that it's describing a revolution in a society infinitely backward when compared to ours.)


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> No, it's not just semantics.  Mechanisms by which the working class exercise power directly, from the bottom up, without a state, are qualitatively different from states.
> 
> Which Marxist revolutions were ultimately succesful, and different in character to the USSR?


 
Marxism does not promote any specific mechanisms, it's for the workers to decide. Some Marxists have, but that's different.

Which anarchist revolutions were successful and different in character to the USSR?


----------



## LLETSA (Jun 14, 2011)

Random said:


> Are you talking about the US worker class Republicans? Ames off the Exiled has an interesting theory, that they vote for oligarchs because they hate snooty liberal democrats even more. So it's still class consciousness, just expressed in the impossible context of the US political system.


 
Christopher Lasch traced the origins of this phenomenon in The True and Only Heaven and Revolt of the Elites. Well worth a read,although his political conclusions are unrealistic. Chris hedges is also currently writing and talking a lot about the disengagement of the US liberal class from the working class. Also well worth a listen.


----------



## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

LLETSA said:


> The trouble with what you're saying is that it's completely abstract, assuming the most ideal of situations. Anybody who's been a shop steward will know that many people do not, even when fully comprehending the facts, always (or even usually) vote in their own interests, but out of fear and pressure from others, or else because propagandists with superior skills putting the opposite case have been able to plants doubts in their minds. Often the dedicated, militant minority is left beleagured. This is like a post-revolutionary society in microcosm almost, as the remnants of what went before will inevitably retain a lot of influence, power and (if only from offshore or abroad) vast sums of money with which to continue to fight for their interests. They would probably have poweful support from capitalists and states in other parts of the world, and the continued support of millions here, including among the working class. That's why there will always be a danger of the dedicated activists who know what they want, whether formally organised into a centralised party or not, seeing no alternative other than to form a dictatorship.


 
I understand the very powerful reasons. I just don't think it's the right way to go.


----------



## Athos (Jun 14, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> Marxism does not promote any specific mechanisms, it's for the workers to decide. Some Marxists have, but that's different.
> 
> Which anarchist revolutions were successful and different in character to the USSR?


 
Not sure I agree with first point. Marx talked about a post-revolutionary state. What is that if not a mechanism to exercise power. Now I know he didn't flesh out the intricacies of how it would function, but, to me, the very fact that it is a state its good reason to reject it.

With regard to the second point, I would say that there hasn't been any modern long-term anarchist mass societies. My point is that there are plenty of examples of post-revolution states which purport to be guided by Marxist philosophy, and of which the consequences have been horrendous. To my mind, that's an inevitable consequence of the existence of a state.


----------



## LLETSA (Jun 14, 2011)

Athos said:


> I understand the very powerful reasons. I just don't think it's the right way to go.





I'm not advocating it.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 15, 2011)

Athos said:


> Not sure I agree with first point. Marx talked about a post-revolutionary state. What is that if not a mechanism to exercise power. Now I know he didn't flesh out the intricacies of how it would function, but, to me, the very fact that it is a state its good reason to reject it.
> 
> With regard to the second point, I would say that there hasn't been any modern long-term anarchist mass societies. My point is that there are plenty of examples of post-revolution states which purport to be guided by Marxist philosophy, and of which the consequences have been horrendous. To my mind, that's an inevitable consequence of the existence of a state.


 
But was Marx using your very specific definition of the term "state"? 

You've confirmed the point I was making in the second paragraph. Just as attempts at more libertarian Marxist revolutions have failed, so too have anarchist ones. It may be that it is simply not possible to carry through and defend a revolution without bringing about a degree of centralisation that makes degeneration virtually inevitable. The Bolshevik centralisation of power wasn't about following Marxist ideology, it was about the Bolsheviks doing what they thought they needed to do to defend the revolution. I have yet to see anything that has convinced me that capital and its defenders can be beaten off without some fairly unpleasant, authoritarian measures.


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## Random (Jun 15, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> The Bolshevik centralisation of power wasn't about following Marxist ideology, it was about the Bolsheviks doing what they thought they needed to do to defend the revolution. I have yet to see anything that has convinced me that capital and its defenders can be beaten off without some fairly unpleasant, authoritarian measures.


 Unpleasantness doesn't mean the creation of an all-powerful state. Grassroots groups have done some very effective, often violent, repression against the ruling class the world over.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 15, 2011)

But whenever it's come to a full on revolutionary situation they've, to the best of my knowledge, been brutally smashed. When I've mentioned this before I've been told about the anarchist militias in Spain and the Makhnovists. But they both lost.

Someone mentioned above that in some circumstances you have to allow representatives to make snap, on the spot decisions. This is one of those instances - and once you've given someone the authority to do that how do you take it away again?


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## DrRingDing (Jun 15, 2011)

It's possible to make fast consesus decisions.


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## revol68 (Jun 15, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> But whenever it's come to a full on revolutionary situation they've, to the best of my knowledge, been brutally smashed. When I've mentioned this before I've been told about the anarchist militias in Spain and the Makhnovists. But they both lost.
> 
> Someone mentioned above that in some circumstances you have to allow representatives to make snap, on the spot decisions. This is one of those instances - and once you've given someone the authority to do that how do you take it away again?



The defeat of the revolution in Spain and Ukraine had little to do with the speed  of decision making, infact there are testimonies from even Trots about how the workers committees and councils in Spain were far faster and more efficient in their functioning than those of the Republic. 

Likewise in the Ukraine the success of the Makhnovists was their capability to move swiftly.


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## revol68 (Jun 15, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> It's possible to make fast consesus decisions.


 
yes but the fetishising of consensus to the point where majority voting is disregarded as the final call is a joke. Thankfully in revolutionary situations the organs thrown up by the working class don't tend to be full of the anarcho liberal twats who insist on total consensus and who enjoy meetings for the sake of meetings.


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## TruXta (Jun 15, 2011)

Hang on a sec - not having spent much time with srs bznsz capital A anarchists - is it the case that many of them insist on consensus-creating procedures for all (most?) decisions? Seems so obviously a tool with clear limitations.


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## revol68 (Jun 15, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Hang on a sec - not having spent much time with srs bznsz capital A anarchists - is it the case that many of them insist on consensus-creating procedures for all (most?) decisions? Seems so obviously a tool with clear limitations.


 
only the liberal anarchos, the class struggle groups go with majority decision making.


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## TruXta (Jun 15, 2011)

revol68 said:


> only the liberal anarchos, the class struggle groups go with majority decision making.


 
Right. One more group of numpties to avoid then.


----------



## Athos (Jun 15, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> But was Marx using your very specific definition of the term "state"?
> 
> You've confirmed the point I was making in the second paragraph. Just as attempts at more libertarian Marxist revolutions have failed, so too have anarchist ones. It may be that it is simply not possible to carry through and defend a revolution without bringing about a degree of centralisation that makes degeneration virtually inevitable. The Bolshevik centralisation of power wasn't about following Marxist ideology, it was about the Bolsheviks doing what they thought they needed to do to defend the revolution. I have yet to see anything that has convinced me that capital and its defenders can be beaten off without some fairly unpleasant, authoritarian measures.


 
What is my very specific definition of 'state'?

You are right that there are no examples of long-term post-revolution success by anarchists. However, I would make three points:

First, there haven't been any such successes for post-revolutionary regimes which claimed to be animated by Marxism.

Secondly, that there have not been any post-revolutionary conditions in which anarchism has been the dominant ideology (whereas there have been many in which it was claimed that Marxism was).

Thirdly, there have been limited successes for anarchist organisation post-revolution (Ukraine and Spain), and their ultimate defeat owed more to self-proclaimed Marxists than to the forces of reaction.

Also I would add two points about the need to do unpleasant things to protect the gains of revolution:

First, that the history of the Makhnovischina and anarchist fighters in Spain (Durutti etc) suggests that they were willing to do what was necessary to defend themselves from the forces of reaction.

Secondly, the lesson of history seems to be that states resort to such measures all too readily, thereby becoming little better than that which they replaced.


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## revol68 (Jun 15, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Right. One more group of numpties to avoid then.


 
maybe it's cause i'm less involved these days but there seems to be a substantial drop in anarcho liberal numbers from the heady days of the 90's and early 2000's, class struggle anarchism seems to have re emerged as the dominant strand again.


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## Athos (Jun 15, 2011)

revol68 said:


> yes but the fetishising of consensus to the point where majority voting is disregarded as the final call is a joke. Thankfully in revolutionary situations the organs thrown up by the working class don't tend to be full of the anarcho liberal twats who insist on total consensus and who enjoy meetings for the sake of meetings.


 
Surely demanding consensus is anathema to anarchism. The anarchists I know all recognise the importance of fraternal dissent.


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## Athos (Jun 15, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Hang on a sec - not having spent much time with srs bznsz capital A anarchists - is it the case that many of them insist on consensus-creating procedures for all (most?) decisions? Seems so obviously a tool with clear limitations.


 
Only a few fools who are so doctrinaire that they don't mind hamstringing themselves.


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## revol68 (Jun 15, 2011)

Athos said:


> Surely demanding consensus is anathema to anarchism. The anarchists I know all recognise the importance of fraternal dissent.


 
oh i agree, consensus can be far more authoritarian than majority decision making, at least dissent is acknowledged in the latter.


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## DrRingDing (Jun 15, 2011)

revol68 said:


> yes but the fetishising of consensus to the point where majority voting is disregarded as the final call is a joke. Thankfully in revolutionary situations the organs thrown up by the working class don't tend to be full of the anarcho liberal twats who insist on total consensus and who enjoy meetings for the sake of meetings.


 
Deep breaths......in through the nose.....


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## revol68 (Jun 15, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> Deep breaths......in through the nose.....


 
sorry sat through too many of such meetings in my teens and twenties when I should have been out partying, not that i resent it...


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## TruXta (Jun 15, 2011)

Clearly not


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## DrRingDing (Jun 15, 2011)

revol68 said:


> sorry sat through too many of such meetings in my teens and twenties when I should have been out partying, not that i resent it...


 
We sat around the other night really chuffed that we were no longer going to have epic meetings like our liberal counterparts in town. Until I checked my phone to see we'd been there 3 hours.


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## stuff_it (Jun 15, 2011)

I keep misreading the thread title as Misusses of the word anarchy.

((((Mrs anarchy and her straying husband))))


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## Random (Jun 15, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> But whenever it's come to a full on revolutionary situation they've, to the best of my knowledge, been brutally smashed. When I've mentioned this before I've been told about the anarchist militias in Spain and the Makhnovists. But they both lost.


 
In both cases by being stabbed in the back by Leninists - I don't see how this is an argument for Leninist-style organisation.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 15, 2011)

Athos said:


> What is my very specific definition of 'state'?



I'm not quite sure to be honest. A mechanism for the exercise of power. But there's clearly something (I'm not sure quite what - illegitimate power maybe?) more to it than that. You stated earlier that at times it is necessary to allow a representative to make on the spot decisions without first gaining the consent of "the people" for that specific decision. Isn't this the exercise of power? If you can give a precise definition of the state, and explain how it excludes this I'll be a bit clearer on what we're talking about.



Athos said:


> You are right that there are no examples of long-term post-revolution success by anarchists. However, I would make three points:
> 
> First, there haven't been any such successes for post-revolutionary regimes which claimed to be animated by Marxism.



I know, that's my point really. I'm yet to be convinced that it's possible to take on capital without centralising power, without having state or state-like forms of organisation. I'm not sure what you mean here anyway - people identifying themselves as Marxists have been able to overthrow the bourgeoisie and fight off the inevitable counter-revolution, something that anarchist have unfortunately not been able to do.



Athos said:


> Secondly, that there have not been any post-revolutionary conditions in which anarchism has been the dominant ideology (whereas there have been many in which it was claimed that Marxism was).



Point taken, but it can't have been far from the dominant ideology in Catalonia? And we have to ask why this is the case too.



Athos said:


> Thirdly, there have been limited successes for anarchist organisation post-revolution (Ukraine and Spain), and their ultimate defeat owed more to self-proclaimed Marxists than to the forces of reaction.



Which really backs up my point - they have been defeated by forces that have been centrally organised - whether they be fascist, Stalinist or capitalist.



Athos said:


> Also I would add two points about the need to do unpleasant things to protect the gains of revolution:
> 
> First, that the history of the Makhnovischina and anarchist fighters in Spain (Durutti etc) suggests that they were willing to do what was necessary to defend themselves from the forces of reaction.



I'm not arguing that anarchists are pacifists - I'm not that ignorant. But they lost - and I'd say the fact that they weren't centrally organised was a contributory factor.



Athos said:


> Secondly, the lesson of history seems to be that states resort to such measures all too readily, thereby becoming little better than that which they replaced.


 
I maintain that Soviet Russia, despite its faults, was far better than Tsarist Russia. You could in fact make a decent case for it being far better than post-Soviet Russia. Particularly after Stalin was replaced. I'm not necessarily arguing for Marxism here (though I am a Marxist) - I'm making a point about organisation, and in particular the organisation of defence. For example, Chavez in Venezuela, he's far from perfect but in my view he's infinitely superior to what went before and what would be likely to replace him if he were to be removed from power.


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## Random (Jun 15, 2011)

revol68 said:


> maybe it's cause i'm less involved these days but there seems to be a substantial drop in anarcho liberal numbers from the heady days of the 90's and early 2000's, class struggle anarchism seems to have re emerged as the dominant strand again.


 I hope so. These days I'm more and more enraged by my liberal anarcho friends who seem to aspire to be nothing more than the radical wing of the green party.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 15, 2011)

Random said:


> In both cases by being stabbed in the back by Leninists - I don't see how this is an argument for Leninist-style organisation.


 
It isn't. I'm arguing that any movement that doesn't seek to seize state power, or at use state-like forms of organisation, will be defeated by more disciplined forces. It doesn't matter who or what they are.


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## revol68 (Jun 15, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> It isn't. I'm arguing that any movement that doesn't seek to seize state power, or at use state-like forms of organisation, will be defeated by more disciplined forces. It doesn't matter who or what they are.


 
discipline and power are not a monopoly of the state, the anarchist militias could have crushed state power in Catalonia, the problem was fuckwit liberals arguing that destroying state power was the same as seizing it.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 15, 2011)

I know they aren't - hence the term "state like". But I maintain that without some forms of military hierarchy you will always be defeated by centrally organised forces.


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## Athos (Jun 15, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> I'm not quite sure to be honest. A mechanism for the exercise of power. But there's clearly something (I'm not sure quite what - illegitimate power maybe?) more to it than that.


Hang on, it was you talking about my definition of the state.  But now you're not sure what that definition is?

It's certainly not just a mechanism for the exercise of power.  After all, the bottom-up anarchist organisation that I favour is simply a mechanism for people to exercise their own power.

This is in contrast to my definition of a state, which would include focus on the top-down nature of control.  To my mind, a cruicial feature of the state is that it is a powerful tool which is liable to be seized by a minority (and thereafter used in that minority's intersts).





SpineyNorman said:


> You stated earlier that at times it is necessary to allow a representative to make on the spot decisions without first gaining the consent of "the people" for that specific decision. Isn't this the exercise of power?  If you can give a precise definition of the state, and explain how it excludes this I'll be a bit clearer on what we're talking about.



In post 348, I said this:





			
				Me said:
			
		

> It is conceivable that exceptional circumstances could arise whereby some limited decision-making power would have to be vested in an individual i.e. a war, but this would need to be as close to anarchist peinciples as possible i.e. those decision makers would need a clear mandate, and would have to be instantly recallable, and the short-term nature of their post recognised by all.








SpineyNorman said:


> I know, that's my point really. I'm yet to be convinced that it's possible to take on capital without centralising power, without having state or state-like forms of organisation.


Which is the crux of our disagreement.  And, to be honest, I don't know that I'm convinced that it's possbile.  But I am convinced that it's worth trying; and I'm convinced that I'd rather give it a try than adopt the alternative form of post-revolution organisation i.e. a state.





SpineyNorman said:


> I'm not sure what you mean here anyway - people identifying themselves as Marxists have been able to overthrow the bourgeoisie and fight off the inevitable counter-revolution, something that anarchist have unfortunately not been able to do.


Which Marxist regimes have endured without tyranny, though?





SpineyNorman said:


> Point taken, but it can't have been far from the dominant ideology in Catalonia? And we have to ask why this is the case too.


I'm not sure about the extent to which it was, to be honest.

But, in any event, the acceptance of an ideology in itself is not enough: practical concerns are crucial (see my comments below about the reasons for the Spanish anarchists' defeat).

And if your asking why it isn't the dominant ideology, I'm not sure of the relevance of the question.  As a Marxist, you must know that the value of an idea isn't necessarly reflected in the extent to which it becomes dominant, especially in the face of the forces of reaction, and the propaganda and coercive power those forces wield.





SpineyNorman said:


> Which really backs up my point - they have been defeated by forces that have been centrally organised - whether they be fascist, Stalinist or capitalist.  I'm not arguing that anarchists are pacifists - I'm not that ignorant. But they lost - and I'd say the fact that they weren't centrally organised was a contributory factor.


  Yes, those forces were centrally organised, but I'm not sure that was the reason they suceeded.  In both instances, they had vastly more personnel and materiel.





SpineyNorman said:


> I maintain that Soviet Russia, despite its faults, was far better than Tsarist Russia. You could in fact make a decent case for it being far better than post-Soviet Russia. Particularly after Stalin was replaced.


I'm not sure how much value there is in arguing about the merits of the Russian revolution.  All I would say is that tens of millions died, and generations were opressed, and now capitalism is more rampant there than ever.  By that measure, I have to be sceptical as to its success.





SpineyNorman said:


> I'm not necessarily arguing for Marxism here (though I am a Marxist) - I'm making a point about organisation, and in particular the organisation of defence. For example, Chavez in Venezuela, he's far from perfect but in my view he's infinitely superior to what went before and what would be likely to replace him if he were to be removed from power.


I too can see Chavez's myriad faults.  Which is why I would aspire to something better.

I guess it boils down to whether you're willing to accept some improvement in the working class's conditions, despite the faults of that new regime, or whether you'd prefer to take the risk of aiming for something better, nothwithstanding that those greater gains might be harder to defend.  You prefer the former; I prefer the latter.

To me, your approach is more akin to reformism than revolution. And, more importantly, I believe that, because of the nature of states, and the way that they are used by those who direct them for their own interests, is doomed to fail in any event.


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## DotCommunist (Jun 15, 2011)

butchersapron said:


> Or you can do this.


 
realised where the butthurt set in btw, you didn't like me rumbling your unsubtle agenda on another thread- you could have denied the agenda existed and I'd have bought it but you went on your marxist father jack routine again. Catharsis, yeh.


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## Athos (Jun 15, 2011)

Wot?


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## Random (Jun 15, 2011)

yeh btw


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## Athos (Jun 15, 2011)

eh?


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 16, 2011)

Athos said:


> Hang on, it was you talking about my definition of the state.  But now you're not sure what that definition is?



Your definition was clearly very specific, given that it didn't include the anarchist non-state in which representatives could, at times, make decisions on behalf of the people. I just wasn't quite sure what it was.



Athos said:


> It's certainly not just a mechanism for the exercise of power.  After all, the bottom-up anarchist organisation that I favour is simply a mechanism for people to exercise their own power.
> 
> This is in contrast to my definition of a state, which would include focus on the top-down nature of control.  To my mind, a cruicial feature of the state is that it is a powerful tool which is liable to be seized by a minority (and thereafter used in that minority's intersts).



Which most definitely is not the same as Marx's definition of the state, which is the mechanism via which one class imposes its rule on another. Your bottom-up anarchist non-state would fit this definition - immediately post-revolution there would be things we'd need people from outside the w/c to do, the tasks they had performed pre-revolution that nobody else was yet trained to perform. The Marxist state, or anarchist non-state, would need to force them to do it - in other words the w/c is using the state/non-state to impose its rule on another class.



Athos said:


> Which is the crux of our disagreement.  And, to be honest, I don't know that I'm convinced that it's possbile.



Exactly.



Athos said:


> But I am convinced that it's worth trying; and I'm convinced that I'd rather give it a try than adopt the alternative form of post-revolution organisation i.e. a state.



Fair enough.




Athos said:


> Which Marxist regimes have endured without tyranny, though?



Which regimes/societies of any kind have endured without tyranny?




Athos said:


> I'm not sure about the extent to which it was, to be honest.
> 
> But, in any event, the acceptance of an ideology in itself is not enough: practical concerns are crucial (see my comments below about the reasons for the Spanish anarchists' defeat).






Athos said:


> And if your asking why it isn't the dominant ideology, I'm not sure of the relevance of the question.  As a Marxist, you must know that the value of an idea isn't necessarly reflected in the extent to which it becomes dominant, especially in the face of the forces of reaction, and the propaganda and coercive power those forces wield.



I was wondering out loud to be honest, but even that could be related to the ideology itself, no? A centrally organised movement is bound to have more coercive power and a more coherent propaganda narrative, isn't it?



Athos said:


> Yes, those forces were centrally organised, but I'm not sure that was the reason they suceeded.  In both instances, they had vastly more personnel and materiel.



Granted. But in the case of the Bolsheviks _why_ did they have so many more resources to call on?





Athos said:


> I'm not sure how much value there is in arguing about the merits of the Russian revolution.  All I would say is that tens of millions died, and generations were opressed, and now capitalism is more rampant there than ever.  By that measure, I have to be sceptical as to its success.



And this is better or worse than it would have been if Kornilov or some other monarchist had taken over, which I'd say is what would probably have happened.



Athos said:


> I too can see Chavez's myriad faults.  Which is why I would aspire to something better.



A genuine question: had you been in Venezuala at the time of the coup attempt would you have done what you could to help the Chavistas bring the president back or would you have refused to help them because that would be supporting a state? Leftish state regimes aren't perfect, far from it, but there's a very real space between them and the right wing alternative - and many people depend on this space for their livelihoods. Unfortunately I don't think it's possible to win without going against your principles. So we can either stay principled and lose, meaning that these people are fucked, or we can be pragmatic and win, acknowledging the limitations of statist politics whilst also acknowledging the differences between those and the really existing alternative.



Athos said:


> I guess it boils down to whether you're willing to accept some improvement in the working class's conditions, despite the faults of that new regime, or whether you'd prefer to take the risk of aiming for something better, nothwithstanding that those greater gains might be harder to defend.  You prefer the former; I prefer the latter.



It's not just about the gains being harder to defend. If you lose the reaction is likely to be even worse than what came before.



Athos said:


> To me, your approach is more akin to reformism than revolution. And, more importantly, I believe that, because of the nature of states, and the way that they are used by those who direct them for their own interests, is doomed to fail in any event.


 
Well, if in order to be a revolutionary one must take the "perfect revolution or nothing" stance then colour me reformist. My aim is to improve the prospects of the working class - anything that achieves that is worthwhile. The only reason I'm not a reformist is that I don't think it's actually possible to do this under the existing structures.


----------



## Athos (Jun 16, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> Your definition was clearly very specific, given that it didn't include the anarchist non-state in which representatives could, at times, make decisions on behalf of the people. I just wasn't quite sure what it was.



Fair enough.  Though I did stress that those situations would be vary rare e.g. states of emergency, and that the power would be subject to some very stringent limits.





SpineyNorman said:


> Which most definitely is not the same as Marx's definition of the state, which is the mechanism via which one class imposes its rule on another. Your bottom-up anarchist non-state would fit this definition - immediately post-revolution there would be things we'd need people from outside the w/c to do, the tasks they had performed pre-revolution that nobody else was yet trained to perform. The Marxist state, or anarchist non-state, would need to force them to do it - in other words the w/c is using the state/non-state to impose its rule on another class.



I don't follow you here.  I am not sure what these functions that cannot be carried out by the working class are?  What skills are unique to the owners of capital?





SpineyNorman said:


> Which regimes/societies of any kind have endured without tyranny



I know anarchists are often caricatured as naive idealists, but isn't this going to the other extreme?  Do you really believe that there is no mode of social organisation which does not depend upon tyranny?





SpineyNorman said:


> I was wondering out loud to be honest, but even that could be related to the ideology itself, no? A centrally organised movement is bound to have more coercive power and a more coherent propaganda narrative, isn't it?



I guess you're right about that.  As I've already said, the challanges of anarchist organisation are great.  But I believe the potential gains to be worth that risk; or, more accurately, I believe the inevitability of tyranny in other forms or organisation means that anarchism is our best hope.





SpineyNorman said:


> Granted. But in the case of the Bolsheviks _why_ did they have so many more resources to call on?



Well, in Spain for example, the Comintern had the expertise, manpower and material resources of the USSR; vastly out-resoursing the anarchists. 





SpineyNorman said:


> And this is better or worse than it would have been if Kornilov or some other monarchist had taken over, which I'd say is what would probably have happened.



It's a moot point, I suppose.  We will never know, and could keep going over it forever.





SpineyNorman said:


> A genuine question: had you been in Venezuala at the time of the coup attempt would you have done what you could to help the Chavistas bring the president back or would you have refused to help them because that would be supporting a state?



I like to think I'd have helped the Chavistas, though that would depend on my courage holding out!  I suppose, it'd be the least bad option.  I guess Chomsky isn't the only anarchist who can hold his nose to pursue real-world gains.





SpineyNorman said:


> Leftish state regimes aren't perfect, far from it, but there's a very real space between them and the right wing alternative - and many people depend on this space for their livelihoods.



I like the way you put this.





SpineyNorman said:


> Unfortunately I don't think it's possible to win without going against your principles. So we can either stay principled and lose, meaning that these people are fucked, or we can be pragmatic and win, acknowledging the limitations of statist politics whilst also acknowledging the differences between those and the really existing alternative.



I respect your position here.  I'd much rather people do what they can for the working class, whilst recognising that there may be some tension between the real world and their ideology.  Those who really scare me are either those who do nothing, in the hope of retaining their theoretical purity; or those who abandon all idealism, thinking that the end justifies whatever the means.





SpineyNorman said:


> It's not just about the gains being harder to defend. If you lose the reaction is likely to be even worse than what came before.



I think you're probably right about that.





SpineyNorman said:


> Well, if in order to be a revolutionary one must take the "perfect revolution or nothing" stance then colour me reformist.


 
Sorry, I didn't mean to sound critical or doctrinaire.  Of course it's not all or nothing, and there is a need for pragmatism: ideals are pointless if they are so hifalutin as to paralyse us - worse than pointless, a positive hinderance!





SpineyNorman said:


> My aim is to improve the prospects of the working class - anything that achieves that is worthwhile. The only reason I'm not a reformist is that I don't think it's actually possible to do this under the existing structures.



I suppose the last two lines of your post are the most important.  And with regard to those, we are in absolute agreement.

I guess we'll never agree about anarchism, but, ultimately, you come accross as the sort of Marxist who I think is on the same side as me, and with whom I'd happily work to make the world a better place for the working class, in the here and now.


----------



## frogwoman (Jun 16, 2011)

What would be an example of a state of emergency under anarchism? And who would impliment it? 

Not having a go here, Im genuinely curious


----------



## Athos (Jun 16, 2011)

frogwoman said:


> What would be an example of a state of emergency under anarchism? And who would impliment it?
> 
> Not having a go here, Im genuinely curious


 
I was thinking about some of the military decisions which Makhno made on behalf of the Ukranian anarchists, because speed and secrecy were essential.  Makhno had a clear mandate, acepted that he could be instantly recalled, stressed his equality with the rest of the Black Army, and always argued for and took steps toward social organisation in accordance with anarchist principles.

Now, I guess you would argue that a post-revolution situation would constitute an emergency (because of the threat from the forces of reaction), and that, as such, representative democracy of the working class could be justifed then, too.  Obviously, I don't agree.


----------



## frogwoman (Jun 16, 2011)

Thanks for your reply. I wasn't thinking of a post-revolutionary situation actually but say if there was a natural catastrophe like a flood or something, or if the community was, say, being attacked from outside. 

But who would decide whether it would be implimented or not? What would it involve that would be different from "normal" - and what would happen to people who didn't comply with it?


----------



## Athos (Jun 16, 2011)

frogwoman said:


> But who would decide whether it would be implimented or not?



I really dislike trying to set a blueprint for the future, and have to say that I don't purport to have all the answers.  However, one conception could be as set out below:

The community would have to decide that the situation was so acute that there was no alternative but to devolve some decision making powers to an elected representative body.  However, that would be subject to very stringent limits.  For instance, that decision making body would be instantly recallable and have explicitly stated its committment to anarchist forms of organisation, and it would be understood by all to be a far from ideal, and short term, state of affairs.




frogwoman said:


> What would it involve that would be different from "normal"?



Necessity.  Ordinarily, decisions could be made effectively from the bootom up.




frogwoman said:


> What would happen to people who didn't comply with it?



Nothing _per se_.  If however, that non-compliance amounted to an act of aggression against the working class community, that community could defend itself, appropriatley.  For instance, if, in a time of war, the community decided to march on an opposing army and one member of the community did not agree on that corse of action, he would be allowed to live by his conscience i.e. he would not be compelled to do so.  If, however, he went further and it was discovered that he planned to warn the enemy of the impending attack, then the community would be justified in using the minimum coercion neccesary to prevent this.


----------



## Streathamite (Jun 16, 2011)

peterkro said:


> Arguing for non-hierachical social organisation at present is a bit like being an atheist in the middle ages, a lot of people lack the ability to see outside the shackles that confine them.


oh dear, us shackled thickoes will just have to awairt with baited breath your superior wisdom to guide us, won't we?


----------



## peterkro (Jun 16, 2011)

Streathamite said:


> oh dear, us shackled thickoes will just have to awairt with baited breath your superior wisdom to guide us, won't we?



Fuck off I replied that I used the wrong word and apologised,it's called a metaphor,by the way did you mean baited or bated.


----------



## frogwoman (Jun 16, 2011)

aye to be fair following the first post you were pretty polite and reasonable throughought i thought.


----------



## DrRingDing (Jun 16, 2011)

This thread was not meant for right-wing communists and city liberals.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 16, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> This thread was not meant for right-wing communists and city liberals.


 
I take it you're the latter then?


----------



## Athos (Jun 16, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> This thread was not meant for right-wing communists and city liberals.


 
Which are you?


----------



## TruXta (Jun 16, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> This thread was not meant for right-wing communists and city liberals.


 
Takes one to know one I see.


----------



## DrRingDing (Jun 16, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> I take it you're the latter then?


 
I'm a rural UKIP voter.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 16, 2011)

Athos said:


> Fair enough.  Though I did stress that those situations would be vary rare e.g. states of emergency, and that the power would be subject to some very stringent limits.
> 
> I don't follow you here.  I am not sure what these functions that cannot be carried out by the working class are?  What skills are unique to the owners of capital?
> 
> ...


 
Fair dos, I was tempted to clarify the point you questioned but we're in danger of going back and forth forever so I'll leave at that. I think I understand your position better now anyway so cheers for that.


----------



## Athos (Jun 16, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> Fair dos, I was tempted to clarify the point you questioned but we're in danger of going back and forth forever so I'll leave at that. I think I understand your position better now anyway so cheers for that.



I've enjoyed learning to see things a little more from your perspective, too, and having to re-examine my own views.  Thanks.


----------



## frogwoman (Jun 17, 2011)

that's what it's about


----------



## The39thStep (Jun 17, 2011)

Nothing like a discussion about Makno and the spanish revolution to prove the relevance of anarchism today


----------



## Athos (Jun 17, 2011)

The39thStep said:


> Nothing like a discussion about Makno and the spanish revolution to prove the relevance of anarchism today


 
And what do you make of Marx's recent writing? 

I was asked for historical examples, and gave them. But I take your point.

Could you point me to the highlights of contemporary Marxism? That's a serious question, by the way; I want to read more about contemporary Marxism.


----------



## ernestolynch (Jun 18, 2011)

Athos said:


> Wot?


----------



## Athos (Jun 18, 2011)

I love you Mr Chips.


----------



## ernestolynch (Jun 18, 2011)

Athos said:


> I love you Mr Chips.


----------



## frogwoman (Jun 18, 2011)

ernestolynch said:


>


 
Lol.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 18, 2011)

Athos said:


> And what do you make of Marx's recent writing?
> 
> I was asked for historical examples, and gave them. But I take your point.
> 
> Could you point me to the highlights of contemporary Marxism? That's a serious question, by the way; I want to read more about contemporary Marxism.


 
I don't know if it's what you're looking for but I recently read The Enigma of Capital and A Brief History of Neoliberalism, both by David Harvey. Well worth a look and they're both on this site, which butchersapron linked to a while back on another thread. Some of John Holloway's stuff might appeal to you too.


----------



## Athos (Jun 18, 2011)

ernestolynch said:


>


----------



## Athos (Jun 18, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> I don't know if it's what you're looking for but I recently read The Enigma of Capital and A Brief History of Neoliberalism, both by David Harvey. Well worth a look and they're both on this site, which butchersapron linked to a while back on another thread. Some of John Holloway's stuff might appeal to you too.


 
Thanks, I'll take a look.


----------



## revol68 (Jun 18, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> I don't know if it's what you're looking for but I recently read The Enigma of Capital and A Brief History of Neoliberalism, both by David Harvey. Well worth a look and they're both on this site, which butchersapron linked to a while back on another thread. Some of John Holloway's stuff might appeal to you too.


 
to be fair most of the interesting or relevant contemporary marxist stuff has been ultra leftist and as such in agreement with large parts of class struggle anarchism, see Gilles Dauve, John Holloway and even large parts of Negri.


----------



## Athos (Jun 18, 2011)

revol68 said:


> to be fair most of the interesting or relevant contemporary marxist stuff has been ultra leftist and as such in agreement with large parts of class struggle anarchism, see Gilles Dauve, John Holloway and even large parts of Negri.


 
Cool. Another mention for Holloway. I think I'll look for some of his stuff. Any particular titles of note?


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 18, 2011)

Crack Capitalism.


----------



## Athos (Jun 18, 2011)

SpineyNorman said:


> Crack Capitalism.


 
Ta. On my wish list, now.


----------



## CyberRose (Jun 18, 2011)

Is anarchism a good way to make friends?


----------



## revol68 (Jun 18, 2011)

CyberRose said:


> Is anarchism a good way to make friends?


 
dunno


----------



## ernestolynch (Jun 19, 2011)

Athos said:


> Thanks, I'll take a look.


----------



## Athos (Jun 19, 2011)

ernestolynch said:


>



Give it up Ern; you're man amongst boys, but just a boy amongst men.

Haven't you got some marking to do, or something?


----------



## Athos (Jun 19, 2011)

CyberRose said:


> Is anarchism a good way to make friends?


 
It's what bought me and Ern together.


----------



## ernestolynch (Jun 19, 2011)

Athos said:


> Give it up Ern; you're man amongst boys, but just a boy amongst men.
> 
> Haven't you got some marking to do, or something?


 
LOL

Nerd


----------



## ernestolynch (Jun 19, 2011)

Athos said:


> Give it up Ern; you're man amongst boys, but just a boy amongst men.
> 
> Haven't you got some marking to do, or something?


 
LOL

Nerd


----------



## Athos (Jun 19, 2011)

ernestolynch said:


> LOL
> 
> Nerd


 
I realise you have a lot of free time, Ern, but can't you think of anything better to do with it than this shit?

It's like Little Britain created a faux Stalinist: mildly amusing the first time, but then just dull and repetitive.

Your posts are completely devoid of content.


----------



## ernestolynch (Jun 20, 2011)

Athos said:


> I realise you have a lot of free time, Ern, but can't you think of anything better to do with it than this shit?
> 
> It's like Little Britain created a faux Stalinist: mildly amusing the first time, but then just dull and repetitive.
> 
> Your posts are completely devoid of content.


 
Go back to your pamphlets and slogans, Tarquin.


----------



## Athos (Jun 20, 2011)

ernestolynch said:


> Go back to your pamphlets and slogans, Tarquin.


 
Yes, Sir.  Sorry, Sir.

I must not ridicule Mr Lynch.
I must not ridicule Mr Lynch.
I must not ridicule Mr Lynch.
I must not ridicule Mr Lynch.
I must not ridicule Mr Lynch.
I must not ridicule Mr Lynch.


----------



## Captain Hurrah (Jun 20, 2011)

ernestolynch said:


> Go back to your pamphlets and slogans, Tarquin.



FAQing.


----------



## JHE (Jun 20, 2011)

People who don't like the grim violent Islamist-infested situation in Somalia being called anarchy may be sorry to hear the title of this evening's edition of Panorama, but the programme will probably be interesting whether you like the title or not.

*Land of Anarchy*

Today, 20:30 on BBC One

It's the ultimate failed state - a land of war, banditry and piracy. And after Bin Laden's death, its civil war with Islamist extremists has gained even greater importance to the West. But what is it like to live in the anarchy of Somalia?

Reporter Peter Greste goes where no western journalist has been to witness a crisis that threatens millions of lives. He ventures through the streets of Mogadishu, dubbed the most dangerous city in the world, to meet those who attempt to live amid a deadly civil war.

Greste visits refugee camps - among them the world's largest - as well as hospitals and markets along the frontline to witness the fighting at first hand.​
See:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0125mlb


----------



## Athos (Jun 20, 2011)

Captain Hurrah said:


> FAQing.


 
FAQ u 2!


----------



## Athos (Jun 20, 2011)

JHE said:


> People who don't like the grim violent Islamist-infested situation in Somalia being called anarchy may be sorry to hear the title of this evening's edition of Panorama, but the programme will probably be interesting whether you like the title or not.
> 
> *Land of Anarchy*
> 
> ...


 
I'm not sure I understand your point?


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 20, 2011)

This is a thread about the "misuse" of the term anarchy. That documentary "misuses" it in the way that appeared to get the OP's goat.


----------



## Athos (Jun 20, 2011)

Yes, but the point about the BBC's misuse of the word was made in the first post, and was pretty comprehensively dealt with by post #10. I thought he was saying something new, which I'd missed.

Reason for edit: I'd got my facts wrong!


----------



## ernestolynch (Jun 21, 2011)

Athos said:


> Yes, Sir.  Sorry, Sir.
> 
> I must not ridicule Mr Lynch.
> I must not ridicule Mr Lynch.
> ...


----------



## Athos (Jun 21, 2011)

ernestolynch said:


>


 
Must try harder.


----------



## ernestolynch (Jun 22, 2011)

Yah


----------



## Athos (Jun 22, 2011)

ernestolynch said:


> Yah


 
It's your own time you're wasting.


----------



## DrRingDing (Jun 22, 2011)

JHE said:


> People who don't like the grim violent Islamist-infested situation in Somalia being called anarchy may be sorry to hear the title of this evening's edition of Panorama, but the programme will probably be interesting whether you like the title or not.
> 
> *Land of Anarchy*
> 
> ...


 
Land of Anarchy?

Land without Rulers? There seems to be lots rulers within Somalia that are battling. Not exactly anarchy is it?


----------



## ernestolynch (Jun 22, 2011)

Athos said:


> It's your own time you're wasting.


 
Keeping you away from your social work.


----------



## LLETSA (Jun 22, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> Land of Anarchy?
> 
> Land without Rulers? There seems to be lots rulers within Somalia that are battling. Not exactly anarchy is it?





Wasn't this question dealt with very early on in the thread?


----------



## DrRingDing (Jun 22, 2011)

LLETSA said:


> Wasn't this question dealt with very early on in the thread?


 
I got bored by the trot guff very early on.


----------



## LLETSA (Jun 22, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> I got bored by the trot guff very early on.




It wasn't only Trots explaining the difference between anarchy and anarchism.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 22, 2011)

Just leave DrRingDing alone on this thread with his crayons, at least then he's not making a nuisance of himself elsewhere.


----------



## TruXta (Jun 22, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> Land of Anarchy?
> 
> Land without Rulers? There seems to be lots rulers within Somalia that are battling. Not exactly anarchy is it?


 
Who gives a fuck, honestly? Does it matter so much what gets called anarchy?


----------



## DrRingDing (Jun 22, 2011)

Make an effort Spineless.


----------



## DrRingDing (Jun 22, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Who gives a fuck, honestly? Does it matter so much what gets called anarchy?


 
Language does indeed matter.


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jun 22, 2011)

In an anarchist organisation (yes, such a thing is possible), nobody is in charge. The success of whatever it is you are coming together to do relies on the fact that all of you want to do that thing, whatever it is. It is possible. Indeed, we all do it at various times in our lives, even if it's just organising a party or sorting out a houseshare. The ways in which houseshares can go wrong show the limits of such organisations, imo. The question 'what do you do about slackers?' is a big one for anarchists.


----------



## LLETSA (Jun 22, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> Language does indeed matter.




Maybe that's why, in the article on Somalia etc they are using the term anarchy correctly.


----------



## LLETSA (Jun 22, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> In an anarchist organisation (yes, such a thing is possible), nobody is in charge. The success of whatever it is you are coming together to do relies on the fact that all of you want to do that thing, whatever it is. It is possible. Indeed, we all do it at various times in our lives, even if it's just organising a party or sorting out a houseshare. The ways in which houseshares can go wrong show the limits of such organisations, imo. The question 'what do you do about slackers?' is a big one for anarchists.




There are people in charge really though.


----------



## TruXta (Jun 22, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> Language does indeed matter.



Less than you think. Actions speak louder etc.



LLETSA said:


> Maybe that's why, in the article on Somalia etc they are using the term anarchy correctly.


 
Yes. The fact that anarchists don't like the way the term is used colloquially is really their problem and not that of the rest of the world.


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jun 22, 2011)

LLETSA said:


> There are people in charge really though.


 
Kind of. But the informal divvying out of responsibilities - and deferring to the opinion of certain people on certain matters - doesn't necessarily imply that they are 'in charge'. As an example, an old housemate of mine worked in an anarchist print shop. Now, this place fell apart after a while, but it actually worked well for some time before that happened (and capitalist businesses fall apart too of course). Nobody was in charge, but everyone was in charge. Nonetheless, one of them was in charge of the accounts and since nobody else wanted to do the accounts, his decisions regarding them were always accepted. That's only sensible - you are not being bossed by that person, you're just recognising that their opinion on this particular subject holds more weight than yours.


----------



## DrRingDing (Jun 22, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Less than you think. Actions speak louder etc.


 
You wouldn't know action if it taxed you loud hailer spanked your bot bot with it.


----------



## LLETSA (Jun 22, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Kind of. But the informal divvying out of responsibilities - and deferring to the opinion of certain people on certain matters - doesn't necessarily imply that they are 'in charge'. As an example, an old housemate of mine worked in an anarchist print shop. Now, this place fell apart after a while, but it actually worked well for some time before that happened (and capitalist businesses fall apart too of course). Nobody was in charge, but everyone was in charge. Nonetheless, one of them was in charge of the accounts and since nobody else wanted to do the accounts, his decisions regarding them were always accepted. That's only sensible - you are not being bossed by that person, you're just recognising that their opinion on this particular subject holds more weight than yours.




I hope they all took a turn at taking the bins out. And the washing up.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 22, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> Make an effort Spineless.


 
I'm sure the FAQ says something about playing around with usernames... Have you worked out the difference between anarchy and anarchism yet?


----------



## TruXta (Jun 22, 2011)

DrRingDing said:


> You wouldn't know action if it taxed you loud hailer spanked your bot bot with it.


 
???


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Jun 22, 2011)

You poke fun, but the more I think about it, the more houseshares are a good example of anarchism in practice in everyday life. It's a bit sad and pathetic how often they go wrong, really.


----------



## SpineyNorman (Jun 22, 2011)

TruXta said:


> ???


 
As far as DrRingDing is concerned anyone who disagrees with his simplistic brand of "anarchism" is a megaphone wielding swappy.


----------



## LLETSA (Jun 22, 2011)

littlebabyjesus said:


> You poke fun, but the more I think about it, the more houseshares are a good example of anarchism in practice in everyday life. It's a bit sad and pathetic how often they go wrong, really.




I've only ever tried two house shares and that was a long time ago, but both just cried out for a Stalin figure or a military coup.


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## littlebabyjesus (Jun 22, 2011)

I haven't been in a houseshare for over a decade now, but I was in probably a dozen or so before that. None of them was without problems. Some were on the whole pretty good, others absolutely horrible. People really do lose friends over issues such as washing up and taking out the bins! 

You can't expect everything to be perfect. And in reality, if I were in a houseshare again, I think I'd be far more assertive about certain things. But that often involves taking it upon yourself to solve a problem before it becomes a problem: going out and buying six months' worth of loo paper, for example, just so that it is not an issue. 

I've never properly understood what Sartre meant by 'Hell is other people', but perhaps he was referring to a bad experience he had in a houseshare once.


I was going to say that the problem is that houseshares usually involve younger people, but just the other week, a friend of mine was boring me shitless with the minutiae of her house politics and she's nearly 40.


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## TruXta (Jun 22, 2011)

Hell is other people - when you live in France. House-shares are indeed very good micro-cosms. I've been in some great ones and some that were horrible. Mostly at the same time.


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## Random (Jun 23, 2011)

> Frenchman Says, 'Hell is Other Frenchmen'


 Historical Onion headline on sartre iirc


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## DrRingDing (Jun 23, 2011)

So, who's off to Marxism next week?


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## TruXta (Jun 23, 2011)

You, and you alone.


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## DrRingDing (Jun 23, 2011)

After all I am an _elitist_.


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## SpineyNorman (Jun 23, 2011)

That's a new word for it.


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## manny-p (Jun 23, 2011)

I house share with two dickheads. Never again will I move into a place without at least knowing one of the occupants! Both are selfish lying backstabbing cunts.


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## revlon (Jun 23, 2011)

allybaba said:


> I house share with two dickheads. Never again will I move into a place without at least knowing one of the occupants! Both are selfish lying backstabbing cunts.


 
they hooked up behind your back, after one spurned your advances? 

Stalin would've sorted it.


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## manny-p (Jun 23, 2011)

revlon said:


> they hooked up behind your back, after one spurned your advances?
> 
> Stalin would've sorted it.



They both hate each other as well. Stalin would have found it hard to live here.


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## Anudder Oik (Jun 24, 2011)

Misuse of the word Anarchy?

How about in a song about the longest ever running uk soap "Crossroads"


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## TruXta (Jun 24, 2011)

allybaba said:


> I house share with two dickheads. Never again will I move into a place without at least knowing one of the occupants! Both are selfish lying backstabbing cunts.


 
Knowing them isn't any sort of guarantee.


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## ymu (Jun 24, 2011)

TruXta said:


> Not everything revolves around you LLETSA, and that you think we were in a competition says it all I guess. IIRC I said "there's no we" before we got into that stuff, in response to something ymu posted.


 
I had no idea this thread had gone interesting. Thanks all. Not got to the end yet, but been meaning to comment on this "we" bee you have in your bonnet, TruX.

"We" is a very general word in English. It means "me and at least one other, not necessarily including you (but it might do)". It's very unsatisfactory, but you can't read it so literally. It's almost a placemarker in some sentences.

Not that it isn't sometimes a valid question to ask, but it seems to have become as fashionably misused as sneering at wiki was a while back.


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## TruXta (Jun 24, 2011)

I can't remember wtf that was all about, whymu.


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## ymu (Jun 24, 2011)

NP, TEEarryouEXteeay.


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## TruXta (Jun 24, 2011)

well then.


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## revlon (Jun 24, 2011)

Anudder Oik said:


> Misuse of the word Anarchy?
> 
> How about in a song about the longest ever running uk soap "Crossroads"




"coronation street"


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## ernestolynch (Jun 24, 2011)

revlon said:


> "coronation street"


 
Posh twerp probably never watched ITV.


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## Athos (Jun 27, 2011)

ernestolynch said:


> Keeping you away from your social work.


 
Talking with you is rather like care in the community.


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## DrRingDing (Aug 8, 2011)

There's a plethora of daft misuses this evening.


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## peterkro (Aug 9, 2011)

There certainly is.


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## skitr (Aug 9, 2011)

http://twitpic.com/63lgin

Bastards.


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