Not like the rest at all ?

[teamsaint]

Very interesting thread now.

In response to Aeolium's #210, I wonder if there is a model for the dynamic of class support for the status quo?

I would see it as something like a pyramid structure:

The real wealth in the hands of a tiny proportion, maybe 0.1 % and their corporations and supporters in commerce.

Next level, down to say 1%, very wealthy, sharing same values.
Next 9%. Doing very comfortably, well off enough to buy in 100% to the system.

Next 20% (UK). Mostly doing enough to be comfortable, and with some hope of joining the next group up. Discontent limited to modifying the present structures. (greens?)

Next 40% . getting by. mostly too busy getting by to join any unrest or pressure groups.

Bottom 30% Living hand to mouth, no networks to enable them to combine to push for change.

I'm sure there are better, more sophisticated models, But that is how I see it in very crude terms.

[vinteuil]

... teams's pyramid may well represent a certain reality.

But it's also true that almost everyone (wherever they find themselves on that pyramid) seems to want the sparkly things that capitalism appears to dangle before their eyes. I don't think that basic human urge is going away. And I don't think those who are unhappy with capitalism have yet come forward with anything as attractive for most people as the ever-present attraction of more sparkly things.

[Serial_Apologist]

Don't you think that Marxian idea about the withering away of the state is the least convincing (and least historically informed) of all his theories? When has the state ever withered away, or looked like withering away, in modern times? Even revolutions have tended to make it stronger. Only in countries without any history of a strong state, like Afghanistan, has it remained weak, and there the power vacuum is not filled by popular communitarian activity but by powerful warlords. Where the state is weak in smaller third-world countries then powerful economic interests move in to manipulate it. The examples which are given of communitarian models, like the 1871 Paris Commune or the anarchist "structures" George Orwell admired in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, are models which operated in relatively small self-contained communities in time of war or civil war, and they did not last long.

Yes I was misguided to mention it - Marx and his successors only foresaw possibilities for the withering awway of the state arising when socialism (if not communism) had been established on a world scale. They, like him, foresaw capitalism collapsing or rather being overthrown in a kind of domino dynamic, similar to that feared by America and the West at the time of the Vietnam War. Indeed one might go so far as to say the sucess of socialism depended on it. In the early days of the Russian revolution Lenin urged the formation of mass recruiting communist-styled parties in all the advanced capitalist countries to prevent isolation of the young soviet state, and from memory (I still have my Peking copy to check!) "State and Revolution" contained repeated explanations that the workers' state would need to be a strong state to maintain the dictatorship of the proletariat - an unfortunate choice of definition that has given bourgeois ideologues endless excuses to claim Marxism authoritarian and dictatorial.

One of the divisions that split the Third International was the division that arose between the Stalinists, who spoke of building "socialism in one country", and the (initially) left opposition eventually led by Trotsky, who argued the internationalism of socialism to be based as much on the globalisation of capitalism needing a parallel globalised organisation of the working classes to succeed as on the brotherhood and sisterhood of humankind, and accused the Stalinist clique of making the international struggle secondary to protecting the Soviet Union (a self-defeating strategy in their view) and revising theory in justification of the return to nationalism that accompanied the securing of a self-serving privileged bureaucracy.

I agree about industrial democracy, and the Germans have moved much further in that direction than we have. But I think there will only really be effective popular resistance - one which translates into government action - against the huge power of the wealthy and the big companies, when the middle classes begin to feel that the system is no longer working for them. The underclass, the precariat, will not rebel unless they begin to be joined by the impoverished in the middle classes - as perhaps is beginning to happen in some of the Mediterranean eurozone countries with stratospheric unemployment.

I think you're right - even Lenin and Trotsky argued that for socialism to succeed the proletariat would have to win the middle classes to its side. This was seen as a practicable proposition as the middle classes found themselves squeezed between the collective powers, respectively, of the big bourgeoisie and an organised working class attending to individual needs through collective action - an argument well re-stated by Cardew in his 1974 book "Stockhausen Serves Imperialism", by the way.

[Serial_Apologist]

... teams's pyramid may well represent a certain reality.

But it's also true that almost everyone (wherever they find themselves on that pyramid) seems to want the sparkly things that capitalism appears to dangle before their eyes. I don't think that basic human urge is going away. And I don't think those who are unhappy with capitalism have yet come forward with anything as attractive for most people as the ever-present attraction of more sparkly things.

These phenomena arise, I would argue, from the alienation of the worker from the product of his or her labour, by the capitalist mode of production, and by the concomitant conscious ideological dumbing down of psychological pressures to isolate and enslave people to status and its embodied symbols. How much nicer if and when when people could design and make trinkets for themselves and their relatives and friends, rather than being kept in dependency to fashion designers dictating cool, ie the obsolescence-inbuilt.

[Serial_Apologist]

Bottom 30% Living hand to mouth, no networks to enable them to combine to push for change.

But very much prey to groups like the EDL - or the National Front back in the 1970s. I remember SWP branches parading new young recruits from the NF like trophies back then, and being told "We're doing them a favour - what else would they be doing with their lives without us?" "You mean, selling Socialist Worker around the estates and getting off on punch-ups with the police at demonstrations?"

[ahinton]

These phenomena arise, I would argue, from the alienation of the worker from the product of his or her labour, by the capitalist mode of production, and by the concomitant conscious ideological dumbing down of psychological pressures to isolate and enslave people to status and its embodied symbols. How much nicer if and when when people could design and make trinkets for themselves and their relatives and friends, rather than being kept in dependency to fashion designers dictating cool, ie the obsolescence-inbuilt.

One problem with your argument here, if I may say so, is its presumed dependence upon the need for a "working class" each of whose members is not "alienated...from the product of his or her labour". The labour market is quite different now to what it was when this kind of thing might have been possible to consider as though some kind of norm; far more people work for themselves or in service industries rather than producing "product" for an employer. The kind of small-scale production about which you write is in any case not dead - far from it, indeed - but very little of it is on a sufficiently large scale to support those who run their own businesses to do such things; not only that, most such small enterprises would generate insufficient profit to give rise to tax liabilities and the more people who fail to do that the harder it will become for states to fund provision of its services.

I get the impression, rightly or wrongly, that one of the things to which you object in capitalism is the phenomenon of the large corporation, but I don't see how some things could be produced without such entities. Making trinkets and such like is one thing, but running airlines, designing and marketing pharmaceuticals and running financial services institutions, for example, are simply unamenable to the cottage industry approach, as is any business that involves import/export; such an approach has its rightful place but not in these kinds of activity. That said, even the small business will inevitably find itself in competition with a similar one in the next street. I also think that those who work in service industries rather than activley involved at the front line in the manufacture of goods are likely to belong in principle to a rather different kind of "working class" (if any) to that of those who are directly engaged in and with "product". Built-in obsolescence is indeed a proble but one which is as likely to beset the tiny cottage industry as it is to be deliberately planned by the large corporations.

Socialist / communist states all have one thing in common, both with themselves and with non-socialist/communist states; they depend for their continued existence upon capital and for their global survival upon the international market place.

[vinteuil]

And I don't think those who are unhappy with capitalism have yet come forward with anything as attractive for most people as the ever-present attraction of more sparkly things.

.

How much nicer if and when when people could design and make trinkets for themselves and their relatives and friends...

... when I said "sparkly things" of course I didn't just mean trinkets. Many people want the newest of everything, whether it be fridges, cars, stereos, CDs, smartphones. We may say they are "wrong" in their false consciousness to be so beguiled - but the fact is that that is what they want, and what capitalism appears to offer. Those who are agin capitalism have to be more persuasive that they can offer something even nicer...

[ahinton]

... when I said "sparkly things" of course I didn't just mean trinkets. Many people want the newest of everything, whether it be fridges, cars, stereos, CDs, smartphones. We may say they are "wrong" in their false consciousness to be so beguiled - but the fact is that that is what they want, and what capitalism appears to offer. Those who are agin capitalism have to be more persuasive that they can offer something even nicer...

I understood what you meant as I'm sure S_A did as well. I don't think that it's only down to wanting such things as you illustrate here, though - I think that it's more fundamental than that, both in the sense that capitalism could be said of offer more than just that kind of thing and that people's expectations likewise go beyond just acquisition of the latest goods.

It's also important to try to distunguish between capitalism per se and capitalist malpractice and corruption - and there are such distinctions to be drawn.

Many of those who would wish to witness the global collapse of capitalism expect states to take responsibility for more things than most states currently do - but how can any state fund its projects and services for the benefit of all of its citizens without capital? In any case, if capitalsm does collapse on such an international scale, you can bet the bottom dollar that you no longer have that some canny speculators will take advantage of it immediately.

[aeolium]

.


... when I said "sparkly things" of course I didn't just mean trinkets. Many people want the newest of everything, whether it be fridges, cars, stereos, CDs, smartphones. We may say they are "wrong" in their false consciousness to be so beguiled - but the fact is that that is what they want, and what capitalism appears to offer. Those who are agin capitalism have to be more persuasive that they can offer something even nicer...

The other thing that capitalism has going for it that highly centralised powerful state systems such as communism (in its intermediate stage) and fascism don't have is that by its nature capitalism is highly open and pluralistic and has tended to allow a significant degree of free expression and free movement of ideas. And that has also allowed for powerful critiques of capitalism to arise from within strongly capitalist societies, so that Marx could conceive his communist theories within what was then the most powerful capitalist country in the world, anarchists and communists could flourish in Switzerland and France and the arch-revolutionary Lenin was given safe passage to the Finland station by the government of the ultra-bourgeois Germany. Somehow it has never been as easy for critics of communism or advocates of the open society to advance their views in avowedly communist societies, not least because communism as an ideology does not really permit alternative theories of government and society.

There is of course as evidence against this the strange example of state capitalism in China, but I think it will be difficult for the state there to hold back the flow of ideas and hence the growth of critical and alternative philosophies.

[Serial_Apologist]

One problem with your argument here, if I may say so, is its presumed dependence upon the need for a "working class" each of whose members is not "alienated...from the product of his or her labour". The labour market is quite different now to what it was when this kind of thing might have been possible to consider as though some kind of norm; far more people work for themselves or in service industries rather than producing "product" for an employer. The kind of small-scale production about which you write is in any case not dead - far from it, indeed - but very little of it is on a sufficiently large scale to support those who run their own businesses to do such things; not only that, most such small enterprises would generate insufficient profit to give rise to tax liabilities and the more people who fail to do that the harder it will become for states to fund provision of its services.

I get the impression, rightly or wrongly, that one of the things to which you object in capitalism is the phenomenon of the large corporation, but I don't see how some things could be produced without such entities. Making trinkets and such like is one thing, but running airlines, designing and marketing pharmaceuticals and running financial services institutions, for example, are simply unamenable to the cottage industry approach, as is any business that involves import/export; such an approach has its rightful place but not in these kinds of activity. That said, even the small business will inevitably find itself in competition with a similar one in the next street. I also think that those who work in service industries rather than activley involved at the front line in the manufacture of goods are likely to belong in principle to a rather different kind of "working class" (if any) to that of those who are directly engaged in and with "product". Built-in obsolescence is indeed a proble but one which is as likely to beset the tiny cottage industry as it is to be deliberately planned by the large corporations.

Socialist / communist states all have one thing in common, both with themselves and with non-socialist/communist states; they depend for their continued existence upon capital and for their global survival upon the international market place.

Yes but your arguments depend entirely on the acceptability of "funny money", whereas underlying all wealth-creation, as, as far as I'm aware, hasn't been disproved even by the most articulate advocate of unaccounted printed money, is the value put in by labour in the transmogrification of base materials into products. Money supply outdoing the number of social hours put into making product, whether on the large or the small scale, is the one thing that in the final analysis causes inflation. There is too much money swishing around to be absorbed by all the purchasers of its product when the Powers That Be just say, let's print more money; this will devalue our exports (which it does of course) making them more competitive - which comes back to sting them in the backside when paying for imports. At the end of the proverbial day capitalism can't do without human labour, even if the latter reduces to a handful of people making and operating robots on production lines, since wages are the one overhead whose costs the capitalist class as a whole, faced with having to meet paying its bills or bankrupt that part of itself that keeps it going with energy supplies, can treat as a manipulable variable and cut back on.

There was an excellent exegesis of this problem of money outbidding value under the conditions of late capitalism during today's discussion on the, in this context, significantly-titled "The Future is Not What It Used to Be", on Radio 4 at 9 am, for which I will try and find an iPlayer link shortly.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b042jfvz

[Serial_Apologist]

.


... when I said "sparkly things" of course I didn't just mean trinkets. Many people want the newest of everything, whether it be fridges, cars, stereos, CDs, smartphones. We may say they are "wrong" in their false consciousness to be so beguiled - but the fact is that that is what they want, and what capitalism appears to offer. Those who are agin capitalism have to be more persuasive that they can offer something even nicer...

A whole new mentality would have to arise - and understanding what all this is really about is an important precondition. I'm lucky - most of my "stuff" was inherited by way of my parents who made do with what they got when they married during WW2 from my grandfather's antique business, only replacing later stuff, ie boilers, cars and tellies; and that antique stuff hasn't worn out like so much of today's product, because in the 18th century they didn't make stuff with inbuilt planned obsolescence anywhere and only those above the peasantry and nascent working class bothered with fashions, whose shelf-life was probably longer than today's.

[Serial_Apologist]

I understood what you meant as I'm sure S_A did as well. I don't think that it's only down to wanting such things as you illustrate here, though - I think that it's more fundamental than that, both in the sense that capitalism could be said of offer more than just that kind of thing and that people's expectations likewise go beyond just acquisition of the latest goods.

It's also important to try to distunguish between capitalism per se and capitalist malpractice and corruption - and there are such distinctions to be drawn.

A post-capitalist society wouldn't automatically ditch the best of what capitalism has achieved, any more than its politics would ditch best and most ethical practices.

Many of those who would wish to witness the global collapse of capitalism expect states to take responsibility for more things than most states currently do - but how can any state fund its projects and services for the benefit of all of its citizens without capital? In any case, if capitalsm does collapse on such an international scale, you can bet the bottom dollar that you no longer have that some canny speculators will take advantage of it immediately.

Again this argument rests on as assumed need for "funny money" - without which there would be no basis for speculation, apart from hoarding. Remember we're talking about a different sort of society from that which devolves administration and publicity onto experts and bureaucrats, and by using technology to shorten working hours would allow involvement of more people than today in decision-making* and thereby acquire a new sense of collective identity and the fulfilment and sense of responsibility from being included denied them by the way capitalist society undervalues people and their creativity. I wonder what the music produced by such a society would be like!

*Unlike today, when involvement is to a somewhat justified degree seen as either a mug's game, given an unattainability of objectives, or only for control freaks.

[Serial_Apologist]

The other thing that capitalism has going for it that highly centralised powerful state systems such as communism (in its intermediate stage) and fascism don't have is that by its nature capitalism is highly open and pluralistic and has tended to allow a significant degree of free expression and free movement of ideas. And that has also allowed for powerful critiques of capitalism to arise from within strongly capitalist societies, so that Marx could conceive his communist theories within what was then the most powerful capitalist country in the world, anarchists and communists could flourish in Switzerland and France and the arch-revolutionary Lenin was given safe passage to the Finland station by the government of the ultra-bourgeois Germany. Somehow it has never been as easy for critics of communism or advocates of the open society to advance their views in avowedly communist societies, not least because communism as an ideology does not really permit alternative theories of government and society.

There is of course as evidence against this the strange example of state capitalism in China, but I think it will be difficult for the state there to hold back the flow of ideas and hence the growth of critical and alternative philosophies.

Yes but remember things got pretty heavy for dissenters under your vaunted capitalism, in its early days! <smiley>

[vinteuil]

A whole new mentality would have to arise...

ah, " a whole new mentality would have to arise"....


hmmm.

:sceptical emoticon:

[ahinton]

[QUOTE=Serial_Apologist;398372]A post-capitalist society wouldn't automatically ditch the best of what capitalism has achieved, any more than its politics would ditch best and most ethical practices.
I'm not suggesting that it would - or even could; my concern is that a "post-capitalist society" would have to depend upon something other than capital in order to justify its new name and I do not see how that could happen in practice. It's good that you recognise that, amongst all the corruption, incompetence and immorality that has managed to thrive within a capitalist system, capitalism has achieved something good!

Again this argument rests on as assumed need for "funny money" - without which there would be no basis for speculation, apart from hoarding. Remember we're talking about a different sort of society from that which devolves administration and publicity onto experts and bureaucrats, and by using technology to shorten working hours would allow involvement of more people than today in decision-making* and thereby acquire a new sense of collective identity and the fulfilment and sense of responsibility from being included denied them by the way capitalist society undervalues people and their creativity. I wonder what the music produced by such a society would be like!

But can any money be immunised effectively and wholly at all times against the risk of being turned into "funny money"? Capitalist society does not necessarily (still less inevitably) in and of itself "undervalue people and their creativity"; it's those who seize upon certain opportunitites offered by capitalism and determinedly corrput them for their own advantage who risk doing that.