- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Penultimate Word for Barry...

Posted by: Red Deathy ( Socialist Party, UK ) on February 02, 19100 at 20:48:42:

I'll let you have the last word, man, I reckon we've hit circularity, but I've found some time, so I'll give you a definitive last target.

1:Given that you, me and Morris concur that Labour is one of the goods of society to be shared, then it also should follow, if you agree that skilled labour is more enjoyable than unskilled, that a socialist society should seek to maximise the possibility of skilled labour being done. This is the *extent* of Morris' proposition.

2:That our relations to technology and production would change - I should have knocked your bosses line for six - how can an organiser be a boss, if the workers are voluntary, and the organiser has no power of hire or fire, and no disciplinary measures available personally? Further, as Marx repeatedly noted, under Capitalism we are dominated by machinery, the machines are the workplace masters, labour-saving devices do not save us labour, they make us work harder and longer- teh entire ethos of capitalist production is to make work longer, and cheaper in terms of time per unit: such imperatives would not be there udner socialism, or relation to the factory would be one of getting the required quality necessary, even if it means taking more time.

3:I have constantly had the feeling we are talking past one another - let me try again on social division. If in lancaster Texas there is an Oil Field, and Lancaster England, a Postash Mine, and in Texas a shift in the oil fields is set on the rota, and not in a Potash mine (coz there isn't one), and in England vice versa, then does there, or does there not exist a social division between the people of Lancaster and the people of Lancaster, who are both members of the one world socialist society?

4:Conditions for socialism: basically, when you say that people are marked by the conditions of capitalism, you are casting them in the object role of the standard vanguardists, asssuming socialism to come before people are ready and willing for it - being marked by capitralism only means their subjectivities will be formed by relation to its conditions, not that they will remain as they were under its conditions. Democracy is about trust, my whole position has been that I trust people to sort out equitable divisions of labour, equitable production, for themselves, in social relations, without needing the intercession of the law - you don't seem to trust folk to run their own lives.

5:I remain convinced, personally, that there may well be a small number of people who will choose not to work at all under socialism - and frankly, I don't care. I think, basically, they're the ones who'd be losing out (see point 1). I think that trying to stop them would only make life shit for the rest of us - they're wankers, but to stop them we've got to treat everyone like a wanker. To make them work would be pure moralism, and socialists are moralists, our case is not a moral one, but a practical one, we do not denounce exploitation because it is wrong, but because it makes life shit for the majority of us. moralism, is utopian in extremis.

Thats my peice, have the last word squire, you've worked for it.


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