Right said Fred

Present-day society, which breeds hostility between the individual man and everyone else, thus produces a social war of all against all which inevitably in individual cases, notably among uneducated people, assumes a brutal, barbarously violent form — that of crime. In order to protect itself against crime, against direct acts of violence, society requires an extensive, complicated system of administrative and judicial bodies which requires an immense labour force. In communist society this would likewise be vastly simplified, and precisely because — strange though it may sound — precisely because the administrative body in this society would have to manage not merely individual aspects of social life, but the whole of social life, in all its various activities, in all its aspects. We eliminate the contradiction between the individual man and all others, we counterpose social peace to social war, we put the axe to the root of crime — and thereby render the greatest, by far the greatest, part of the present activity of the administrative and judicial bodies superfluous. Even now crimes of passion are becoming fewer and fewer in comparison with calculated crimes, crimes of interest — crimes against persons are declining, crimes against property are on the increase. Advancing civilisation moderates violent outbreaks of passion even in our present-day society, which is on a war footing; how much more will this be the case in communist, peaceful society! Crimes against property cease of their own accord where everyone receives what he needs to satisfy his natural and his spiritual urges, where social gradations and distinctions cease to exist. justice concerned with criminal cases ceases of itself, that dealing with civil cases, which are almost all rooted in the property relations or at least in such relations as arise from the situation of social war, likewise disappears; conflicts can then be only rare exceptions, whereas they are now the natural result of general hostility, and will be easily settled by arbitrators. The activities of the administrative bodies at present have likewise their source in the continual social war — the police and the entire administration do nothing else but see to it that the war remains concealed and indirect and does not erupt into open violence, into crimes. But if it is infinitely easier to maintain peace than to keep war within certain limits, so it is vastly more easy to administer a communist community rather than a competitive one. And if civilisation has already taught men to seek their interest in the maintenance of public order, public security, and the public interest, and therefore to make the police, administration and justice as superfluous as possible, how much more will this be the case in a society in which community of interests has become the basic principle, bind in which the public interest is no longer distinct from that of each individual! What already exists now, in spite of the social organisation, how much more will it exist when it is no longer hindered, but supported by the social institutions! We may thus also in this regard count on a considerable increase in the labour force through that part of the labour force of which society is deprived by the present social condition.

1845, Frederick Engels: Speeches in Elberfeld

To understand isn't to condone, or encourage, but the beginning of amendment. Socialists are not in a war with the police, but seek to render them unnecessary by other means.

Interestingly, listening to some of the rioters (well, the looters), a meme of them "getting something back" seems to be running through, claiming their 'reclaiming their taxes' - that might be worth future study. A mix of a feeling of entitlement and of being put upon.

Kautsky on revolution

Kautsky is best known negatively, the great betrayer, the renegade - people only read of him rather than read him.

Frankly, I rate Kautsky as a writer - and that rating is that he is worth reading, even where you disagree with him. He's not like David Icke who you can not bother with because the refutation isn't productive, refuting Kautsky bears fruit. I was scrolling through his book The Social Revolution and on the day After the Social Revolution.

It is an intriguing glimpse of Marxistant social democracy - and something the present day left so lost in the wilderness would do well to catch. here's his prescription for a victorious proletariat:

In the first place it is self-evident that it would recover what the bourgeoisie has lost. It would sweep all remnants of feudalism away and realize that democratic programme for which the bourgeoisie once stood. As the lowest of all classes it is also the most democratic of all classes. It would extend universal suffrage to every individual and establish complete freedom of press and assemblage. It would make the State completely independent of the church and abolish all rights of inheritance. It would establish complete autonomy in all individual communities and abolish militarism. This last could be brought about in two ways; through the introduction of universal armament and the dissolution of the army. Universal armament is a political measure and dissolution of the army a financial one. The former can under certain conditions cost as much as a standing army. But it is essential to the security of democracy, in order to take away from the government its most powerful means of opposing the people. Dissolution again aims mainly at a diminution of the military budget.
[...]
Undoubtedly the victorious proletariat would also make fundamental reforms in taxation. It would endeavor to abolish all the taxes that today rest upon the laboring population – first of all the indirect ones that increase the cost of living, and would draw the sums necessary to the covering of governmental expenses from the great properties by means of a progressive income tax supplemented by a property tax. I shall return to this point later. This must suffice for the present suggestion.

A particularly important field for us is that of education. Popular schools have always occupied the attention of proletarian parties and they even played a great role in the old communistic sects of the Middle Ages. It must always be one of the aims of the thinking proletariat to deprive the possessing classes of the monopoly of culture.
[...]
There is one problem above all others with which the proletarian regime must primarily occupy itself. It will in all cases be compelled to solve the question of the relief of the unemployed. Enforced idleness is the greatest curse of the laborer. For him it signifies misery, humiliation, crime.

I'll leave the question of taxation to another post, since it is encompassed in my point of significant disagreement.

What is interesting is although he consciously commits to radical bourgeois measures, he tags on the significant radical measures of anti-militarism (a biggy in Germany) and also a clear class conscious necessity of dealing with unemployment, in effect (and this is made clear later in the passage) destroying the labour market, by removing the compulsion of poverty.

If the laborer can once be secure of existence even when he is not working, nothing would be easier than for him to overthrow capital. He no longer needs capitalists, while the latter cannot continue his business without him. Once things have gone thus far the employer would be beaten in every conflict with his employees and be quickly compelled to give in to them. The capitalists could then perhaps continue to be the directors of the factories, but they would cease to be their masters and exploiters. Once the capitalists recognized, however, that they had the right to bear only the risk and burdens of capitalist business, these men would be the very first ones to renounce the further extension of capitalist production and to demand that their undertakings be purchased because they could no longer carry them on with any advantage.

This would enable many differing forms of joint ownership by the workers - nationalisation, municipalisation and co-operativism.

The point being, contrary to the Labour movement, he didn't see state power and nationalisation as the means to socialism, but rather a clear class analysis led him to see resolving and abolishing the wages system as the means of dissolving the market system.

More another day.

The Socialist Programme against the cuts

I think this point needs to get across. the left are wetting their knickers over the increased top rate of tax.

Lets get down to socialist brass tacks on tax. The burden of taxation doesn't fall on wages/salaries. That is, when taxed, formally, wages/salaries adjust so that the loss, the pain, falls elsewhere, mainly on capitalist profits.

The real wage, the take home wage, the money in your pocket is, to borrow a Darwinian term, the unit of selection. It is take home pay that drives the market, it's rises and falls in real wages that prompt market behaviour. If a tax hike lowers real wages, then wages were due to fall anyway under prevailing market conditions, and tax has stepped in a taken the share that would have gone to the employer.

Ordinarily, however, market pressure, through individual informal and formal action (and preferably through collective union action) would act to restore the previous status quo.

What this means is that our "immediate" objective is to shore up our unions, they are the only hope of seeing this through - although when unemployment rises, they'll be shredded too. So we urgently need to organise a conscious and explicitly socialist movement, not for tax rises or capitalist bailouts or passing the burden back and forth, but clearly and resolutely set on the abolition of capitalism. This is the only practical self defence we have.

Really, seriously, get your mates, get anyone you've ever heard, meet together, debate, discuss. Form a socialist group. Form an international. Form a reading circle. Join the Socialist Party. Set up workers' councils. Whatever you do, raise the banner of "the abolition of the wages system" now, before its too late.

O-settee-ah? O-seesh-ee-ah?

The BBC says the former, the Georgians appear to pronounce the latter. Given the endless fighting during the Kosovan war over the difference between Kosovo and Kosova (I mean, within the British left) I am left wondering if there is a bias implicit in the pronunciation game?

Anyway, another ruddy war - the rules are different here, BBC reporters openly state that Russian forces have hit civilians - were it a Nato force you can be sure they would give balance to the official denial and merely state there have been "reports". The same goes for most of the reporting. But that's just an interesting aside.

Here's the skinny - a heavily armed superpower played for this and got it. It's old, old stuff. They recognise the breakaway republic. They guarantee them, they give them citizenship and claim relationship. Said breakaway republic thus drains rival power, and happens to contain the exit to a tunnel through a nigh impenetrable mountain range so that you can drive a column of tanks into the region easily.

Sit back, prod occasionally, and wait for warrrrr to break out.

Then there's t'other side, I mean Nato. Slowly encircling Russia, recruiting in it's traditional sphere of influence, buying influence over the Caspian oil routes.

I note as an aside that I can only boggle at the psychopathic mindset that it must take to be a General in any army. Any. They sat down and modelled this carnage out. They bought the guns, the tanks, the planes - casually plotting mass murder.

I note that Loonie is pro-Russia, seeing Georgia as a US stoodge, rather than as an independent actor with murderous aims and goals of its own. Mind, no one else seems to be commenting. HP are silent. Osler is silent. Clearly the enemy is at home.

So, for the record - as a socialist I can only aim for one thing from this conflict, immediate peace, irrespective of boundary outcomes. My allegiance is with the workers of Ossetia, Georgia and Russia - the wage-slave hired killers sent to die. The famillies slaughtered. The civillians cut down by the pass and fell of warring great powers. All other analysis aside, nation states are units of property - their wars are wars of property, mafia gangfights for loot. Workers do not benefit from these wars, we only die in them. The only way to stop these wars is to rid ourselves of the property system, and all the conspiracies to murder that are standing armies that stem from it.

The world for the workers, and nothing less.

Update: Young master Stross on the e-war side of things. Macleod has some comments as well. Chris Floyd (Whom Macleod links to) talks sense...

DAF lives

Right, the campaign is over, so I'm back to writing here. I have a couple of ideas, but first, Fritzl.

It is just such an horrific story - perfectly Sadean in its construction of an underground Kingdom in which the unfettered desires of its creator could be given free reign, and which would not exist without him. Indeed, had fritzen died at some point over the last 24 years, all his children in the basement would have been condemned to lingering deaths. Maybe he liked that thought.

Here he was, not just the father, but the sole possesor of his children, and their provider. Without him, they would perish.

Its hard to find a word for such egomaniacal behaviour other than wicked. In its pure form, there was no necessity for it, no grounds of poverty, just the pure exiercise and abuse of power fit for 121 Days of Sodom.

Now amount of punishment could constitute retribution for his crime. No amount of deterrent could have stopped him. he found the perfect way to comit hundreds and hundreds of rapes - and threw in torture beyond imagining - all with no way of being caught.

I wouldn't pretend for a moment that such people would not exist under socialism. I would hope that a change in family relations would erase this sadean patriarchal drive, but doubtless such manifestations of personal egocentricity on such a grand scale would occur. Obviously, with the near eradication of property related crime, such cases would be so few and far between that not only would we be deeply shocked by them (as we are by this) but would have machinery on hand to deal with them effectively.

Finally. I nearly cried when I heard a passing comment on the radio. The children, it seems, stood and gaped open mouthed the first time they saw the moon.

They gaped open mouthed the first time they saw the moon.

Bastard.

Why I (re)joined the Socialist Party(*)

I suppose I never really blogged on my adventures into reformism. Partly, I think, because some of the issues were background personal ones rather than political theoretical. Partly because I don't think it involved that much of a change of position for me. That much. Anyway, here goes to try and explain my reversion of the masthead of this blog, and my re-application to join the Socialist Party.

OK, my basic political principles are that I am a democrat, and believe that the minimum requirement is to "just get involved" - the mere involvement of millions changes politics. That's important. Involvement plus objective circumstance is what makes things move.

As a democrat, I have to accept when I am outvoted, and argue to change the view of the majority. What difference, thinks I, does it make if I do that from within or without the Labour Party, recognising, as a basic, that it is a part of the workers' movement, and that it does contain socialists (albeit ones of a different tradition). Either way, I will be outvoted.

I suppose, what I missed, or underestimated, was the role of a political party in reinforcing ideology/identity in an organised and communal sense. I tried joining various strands of Labour organisation, but tended to find that unless you were prepared to be a hyperactivist who won your spurs through performative acts of loyalty (leafletting and phone canvassing), you were going to get no-where. How, though, could I canvass when I was profoundly at odds with the thrust of the party's policies (though believing that, at worst, they were better than the Tory/Liberal alternatives).

To stretch an anology, early on, Labour surrendered to the symbollic hegemonic conservative values on entering their first period in office, they won their spurs by demonstrating a loyalty to the existing ordering (including Ruritanian privy council costumes). They pegged for small wins, without overly rocking the boat.

My still small voice was as drowned in the Labour party as it is without it. Except, the problem of politics is how to square the big picture with the day-to-day. Ramsay MacDonald - who can be described as the real ideological founder of the Labour Party, much as he is reviled as its great traitor - Oedipus Rex, anyone? - proposed a tripartite structure - Trade Unions, Parliamentary Labour Party, Independent Labour Party. The latter was to function as an almost purely propaganda vehicle for Socialism, leaving day to day legislation to the PLP, workplace struggles to the Unions. He would chide the ILP for getting too involved in government policy, rather than promoting socialism.

The reality is, that, for many in the Labour Party, there isn't time for a big picture, they hae councils to run and opponents to chivvy and chide. Big politics is scary and a gift to the opposition. But we need the big picture.

Except, for much of the left, the big picture has been a sort of fantastic support, a utopia which make the present possible and bearable - the lunatic derangement of the impossiblist is to think the fantasy can somehow become real and thus pursues it. We're trying to climb up to our castles in the air. But, this willful, instranigent belief in faerie tales breaks the Labour compact, the idea that taking care of the pennies now will win us pounds in heaven.

So, we return to the other vexing question, what does the revolutionary minority do in a time of class peace and majority support for capitalism? They get outvoted, and get themselves seen to be outvoted.

(*)If they'll have me, that is.

The new Majority

According to Alan, over at Mailstrom the majority of the world now live in cities.

This has an obvious impact on the prosects for socalism - the majority of the world are also workers, and are now living in the highly interdependent circumstances of a city. It's easy for peasants and rural folk to latch onto structures of feeling connected with independence, rugged individualism, and the like. In a city, though, life revolves around communal infrastryucture, socialised dependencies (whether that is a privately owned, i.e. capitalised social space, or a state owned or a genuinely common one). The cheek by jowl nature of uran life teaches collectivity.

In Britain, the drive to humanise the slums was one of the big advances in socialisation, the pressure, the drive to do the same the world over can only grow with the urban population.

Vote Labour?

Over in ireland, they're having elections this month as well.

Their Labour Party has launched its manifesto today (here).

Now, just a couple of paragraphs:

To be a socialist is to recognise in each of us, the common humanity that binds all of us. The Nobel prize-winning philosopher-economist, Amartya Sen wrote that ‘a common characteristic of virtually all the approaches to the ethics of social arrangements that have stood the test of time is to want equality of something’. To do otherwise, is to place one person on a different level to another – it is to deny our common humanity.

In the Fair Society, the talents and potential of all are equally valued, and society is structured so as to allow for the development of that immense human potential. As Richard Tawney wrote: ‘A society is free in so far and only so far… as its institutions and policies are such as to enable all members to grow to their full stature’. It is the task of government to confront the arbitrary interests and the concentrations of power which hold people back, and through positive measures ensure that all have the opportunity to fulfil their potential – to bridge the gap between our circumstances, and what is within us to become.

Labour is the authentic Irish expression of the great European socialist and social democratic movement. For a century, our movement has worked to improve the lives of hard working families and to protect the vulnerable in our society. Our values of democracy, equality, community and solidarity are unchanging. In common with our sister parties across Europe,we constantly debate and reassess the best means and policies through which our values can be given expression in a rapidly changing world.

Yes, I know, motherhood and apple pie, but quoting great thinkers? Putting flesh on values? Using the S word? Committing to Continuing to enhance the adequacy of social welfare payments? How unlike over here.

I know, the Irish labour Party is reformism warmed up, and they keep (bizarrely) getting into bed with the formerly fascist Fine Gael, but it does show how altering the mood music can make something of a difference. Of course, the main differene is Labour in Ireland are not going to be the main party of government any time soon, they need their coalition.

Update: Just to show I haven't gone totally soft, here's some Rrrrrrevolutionary pictures