Socialism v capitalism

[ahinton]

Of course, during the whole of that time Belgium had fully-functioning police forces, provincial governments, judiciary and all the other appurtenances of a hierarchically-organised nation state apart from a central legislature, so to call the resulting situation "anarchy" in any sense would be silly.

Indeed it would - and I was not doing so, of course!

[french frank]

And there's the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra which always plays without a conductor [...] And most of John Cage's orchestral pieces are intended to be played without a conductor. (Of course they're also supposed to sound "anarchic" which won't please everyone. )

(edit) Oh, and of course there's the Prague Chamber Orchestra which was founded in 1951, and the Australian Chamber Orchestra too. Wikipedia has this:

Getting back to politics, the Ecology Party (or was it the Green Party by then?) was beaten by the system and abandoned the idea of having no leader ...

You can have a monarch, you can have an oligarch, but can you have an anarch?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Getting back to politics, the Ecology Party (or was it the Green Party by then?) was beaten by the system and abandoned the idea of having no leader ...

There was even a suggestion that David Icke would become leader.

[french frank]

The post above wasn't really edited by me, btw. It just looks as if it was ...

[french frank]

Getting back to the meaning of anarchy: I queried whether there could be such a word as 'anarch' (there is), because a monarchy is ruled by a monarch, an oligarchy is ruled by oligarchs. But what would an anarch rule?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Getting back to the meaning of anarchy: I queried whether there could be such a word as 'anarch' (there is), because a monarchy is ruled by a monarch, an oligarchy is ruled by oligarchs. But what would an anarch rule?

I tried replying to this earlier, during the "closed Thread" period. An "anarch" would be a "non-ruler" (rather than a "ruler of nothing"): the possibilities for satire are endless!

[gurnemanz]

Old Eastern block joke:

Q What's the difference between Capitalism and Communism?
A in Capitalism people are exploited by people, in Communism it is the other way round.

[Serial_Apologist]

Old Eastern block joke:

Q What's the difference between Capitalism and Communism?
A in Capitalism people are exploited by people, in Communism it is the other way round.

Reminds me of another old one about a group of journalists being shown around the newest Aeroflot. "And through here we have the first class section" announces the guide. "Excuse me, I thought the USSR was supposed to be a classless society", queries one of the reporters. "That is perfectly correct", the guide says. "Then, how come this first class, second class business?" asks the journo. "Simple", the guide replies"; "to travel first class you must pay more".

[MrGongGong]

Why do Marxists drink herbal tea ?

[Serial_Apologist]

Why do Marxists drink herbal tea ?

Because it doesn't take much stirring?

[MrGongGong]

Proper tea is theft

[handsomefortune]

i bet edgely rob puts that one in his notebook, ready for eczemas (and new year) threads!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Proper tea is theft

- much better than my guess ("because they've nothing to lose but their stains". Told you.)

[aeolium]

No, it isn't very likely at the present juncture - because the "modernity" and "complexity" you speak of are constructed precisely so as to make it less likely: internationalisation of capital while keeping the working class fragmented along national lines (a significant achievement of the EU, at least so far). But things can change very rapidly and I think it's necessary to keep the ideas alive and responsive and developing against the time when they'll be needed.

[apologies for the delayed response - I was away most of Sunday and all of yesterday]

I'm not sure that the complexity comes about entirely as a result of conscious design but also because of the nature of increasingly interrelated and mobile societies, and the high degree of organisation needed to sustain modern life - unlike that of prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies. I'm also not that clear as to what you mean by "working-class" these days when, in Europe for instance, manufacturing industry only occupies around 10% of all employment (compare that with Marx's time) - where is the dividing-line between "worker" and "bourgeois" drawn? Are teachers or people who work in the tourist industry - plenty of the latter move across national borders - part of the working class?

But ultimately I think the failure of Marx's prescription for realising his utopian vision lies precisely in the model he provided for revolutionary transition to the final phase of communism. It requires the concentration of enormous power and all-reaching control in the state which is to supervise and intervene in almost every aspect of human life. For a state to acquire such power, securing its control over a considerable period of time, and then freely to divest itself of that power so that the final communist phase, the "free association", can pertain, seems hugely improbable to me. Yet actual failures in the way such states have developed, where the revolutionary leaders have sought to implement the transitional model, have not persuaded Marxist thinkers that there might be something flawed in the transitional model, that the model is more likely to produce the dystopian societies that actually came about than Marx's free association.

Over and above this, I think the idea of the achievable utopian vision - whether from rationalist or theocratic principles - is deeply flawed. I agree with Isaiah Berlin on this, and particularly what he wrote in his last essay: " it seems as if the doctrine that all kinds of monstrous cruelties must be permitted, because without these the ideal state of affairs cannot be attained - all the justifications of broken eggs for the sake of the ultimate omelette, all the brutalities, sacrifices, brainwashing, all those revolutions, everything that has made [the twentieth] century perhaps the most appalling of any since the days of old, at any rate in the West - all this is for nothing, for the perfect universe is not merely unattainable but inconceivable, and everything done to bring it about is founded on an enormous intellectual fallacy."

But what do you mean by "democratic socialism"? There's no such thing as "undemocratic socialism", when the latter word is properly applied.

I only added democratic to distinguish the idea from the socialism of those states where there wasn't any democratic element at all. Even here I would say I support certain principles underlying the idea, such as the principles behind the domestic policies of the post-war Labour government and in Scandinavia. I don't think capitalism can be completely overthrown without extreme violence and authoritarian policies, or massive global natural catastrophe (and the latter might be more likely than the former).

[PhilipT]

I don't think capitalism can be completely overthrown without extreme violence and authoritarian policies ...

Isn't the reason why these are necessary that there is no democratic consensus that the complete overthrow of capitalism is necessary and desirable; or, to put it another way, that it will be necessary to use violence because the majority of people don't know what is good for them?

Quite separately, once capitalism was overthrown, how would you keep it that way? Consider the recent history of China, where an overbearing state that holds on to power by extreme violence and authoritarian policies has effectively reintroduced capitalism by the back door? This link sheds an interesting light on a possible cause for recent events there.

You will understand that I have no desire to live in your utopia.