tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-356801944003371862024-02-18T21:26:46.771-08:00Red Anti-StateEssays and analysis concerning Libertarian Communism.Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-87803770453211837042012-04-08T07:48:00.001-07:002012-04-08T07:59:13.492-07:00Selma James on Unwaged Labour<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
</div>I recently noticed a new <a href="http://www.againstthegrain.org/">Against the grain</a> internet radio program which was recommended by a friend of mine, which was an <a href="http://www.againstthegrain.org/program/546/id/142126/wed-4-04-12-selma-james-class-and-gender">interview with Selma James</a> who is a leading proponent of the campaign of wages for house work.<br />
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I have to say that wasn't that impressed myself. First, she states that the reproduction of the worker is engaged in disproportionately by women and this does not represent a capitalist social relation as the relationship with the family does not enable wome to have wages. This is clearly true, however, she presents that Marxists have not understood this and that class analysis ignores it. That is far from the case. <br />
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The idea that the family unit is responsible for the reproduction of the worker, and that inside the family relationships are pre-capitalist was recognised already by Engels, written on by Bebel, Luxemburg, De Leon, Zetkin and others. I think they were much clearer on the fact that the relation was pre-capitalist, something which was not mentioned by James. We can see quite clearly that as capitalism has advanced, women have been incorporated in an increasing way into the capitalist social relations directly. Housework is now assisted by various machines, dinners are often pre-prepared, and women now make up a very large fraction of the work-force. While there are still aspects of reproduction which are unwaged, that fraction is smaller than in the past, and it represents a failure of capitalism to encroach on some areas in which it has been resisted. <br />
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Beyond this historical confusion her class analysis is confused. She oscillates on the meaning of working class, middle class seemingly arbitrarily. Sometimes it means wage earners, sometimes it appears to mean working poor. She additionally blames unwaged systems on capitalism, despite the fact that unwaged systems in pre-capitalist areas can not be blamed on capitalism as most of the world was once like that. This confusion in her own analysis doesn't make it easy to figure out what she is proposing.<br />
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It <em>appears</em> to me that she is suggesting a bourgeoisification of the reproduction of the worker. If that's the case than the demand is somewhat unusual, but not necessarily wrong. It's a sort of Menshevik feminism I suppose. It is not true that the reproduction of the worker can not be commoditised. It's simply the case that it has not yet been because we have resisted its complete commodification. However, purchase of sperm, eggs, surrogates, time with companions, child care, sexual partners etc. have all been commoditised, they are simply not yet dominant.<br />
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Her relationship with the welfare state was similarly confused. It seems to me that the best accommodation that the working class has as yet come up with to mitigate the oppression of women being involved disproportionately with unwaged labour is the welfare state. Indeed, school is a huge part of this as it serves as an effective government funded day-care allowing women more easy access to wage labour. If we are demanding wages, are we demanding commodification or social welfare from the state or something else? I'm left completely unable to understand.<br />
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She sees and talks of real problems but she doesn't seem to have a way out of them that goes outside of some rather strange slogans which do not make it clear to me how they are transformative in an effective progressive direction.Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-29962951283660072632012-03-24T11:26:00.000-07:002012-03-24T11:28:22.470-07:00The Household Charges Rally<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've only lived in Ireland for seven years, but I've been to more than my fair share of protests, rallies, marches, public meetings and the like. Ever since the financial crisis of the bankers was transmogrified into an austerity crisis for the working class I've wondered when and if people would start doing something in opposition. Well, apparently that time is now. <br />
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In my time in the Irish left, there is nothing which can compare to the enthusiasm which I experienced at the recent Campaign Against the Household Tax rally. The statistical fact that government is failing to get payment combined with the level of defiance witnessed by several thousand people at a single meeting makes me think that the government is very likely to be on the losing side of this battle. This is really very important as there is nothing like success to breed success, and success is definitely something the left has been lacking for yonks. <br />
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That said, I can't help but notice a few things which I think need to be taken into account in terms of strategy to make sure we make the most of a good thing. <br />
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First, the demographic was definitely on the side of those more advanced in years. Where are all the youth? Of course the household tax applies only to those old enough to own property, and hits the eldest hardest, but austerity is not just being applied to the elderly, but applies across the board. This demographic lopsidedness could prove to be a problem in the medium term.<br />
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Secondly, something like one third of the core activists appear to be anarchists. I can't help but think about how incredibly ironic it is that all of these anarchists are acting as foot soldiers helping to build campaigns which will ultimately benefit the ULA, and more specifically the SWP and SP. I certainly wouldn't countenance a withdraw from the campaign, and I believe success in this campaign is important for the working class generally. However, it seems to me that if the success can not be used to gain further successes for the anarchists, then they should really swallow their pride and join the ULA, where at least they'll have some input in the course of events. <br />
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This tax campaign is simply the first salvo in a war, and there must be a attention to the full dimensions. Several speakers put forward this point, yet I think it's not clear how it will move from this point on. From the enthusiasm in the room I can't help but think that this campaign should be transformed into a party. The people were clearly ready for a wider fight against austerity and financial capital. They shouldn't be disappointed by the almost inevitable parting of ways of the various leftist sects when we arrive at success or failure. It is not just the anarchists who should suck it up and join up for a broader fight against austerity, but also the WP, CPI, and all the rest of the remnant. <br />
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Last, there was a nearly deafening silence on the reality of the Global and European situation. This is not Ireland's austerity. This is a fully global attack on the working class in the advanced capitalist countries. There was entirely too much methodological nationalism present in the rally. The Portuguese are just after having a national strike and the Spanish are ramping up to one. Greece has been involved in pitched battles in the streets. It's silly to act as though this is a local problem with local solutions. We need to be thinking big about how we are going to defeat austerity as it simply can not be success at the level of the nation state. <br />
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The rally certainly gave a good idea of the scorching temperature of rage that people have for being screwed over yet again by the bankers, and any government official would be well advised to get out of the way lest they be burnt to cinders. Let us not let this fire go out - instead we should be looking at how to feed it. </div>Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-8814908075684337462012-01-03T08:54:00.000-08:002012-01-07T09:16:57.174-08:00The Transition<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The period of transition between our current capitalist economic and social system and a socialist economy is a very controversial subject among socialists. Maintaining an active dialogue and critique of this period is absolutely critical to our strategic and tactical understanding of how to achieve a socialist society. Nothing springs from the naked void fully formed*. The process which brings our contemporary society into a new social form must be understood or it will be impossible to affect it. We need to examine the best avenues open to us for changing our current social direction into a society we would like to bring into existence. <br />
<b><br />The Juncture</b><br />
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Capitalism is like a hot ember placed on a flammable object - the fire consumes the body in patches and gulps, some areas taking longer to catch, some areas exploding with flame and some areas quickly charred and brought to heel. Yet capitalism smoldered for a long period before catching fire. An economic, social and political regime can appear to remain stagnant while an apparent marginal economic activity moves towards dominance and finally erupts. Capitalism, which was once a marginal approach to economic activity, exploded onto the scene of history with dynamic force; a force which in a few centuries almost completely eliminated feudalism. A theory of social change will have to take into account the conditions which allow new social systems to ignite. It must also recognise that societies can exist in an admixture of various different economic systems. For this reason studying the entrance of capitalism onto the political scene is deeply important. Its genesis can give us clues to its demise. <br />
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No period is so exemplary of the manner in which capitalism erupts onto the political scene as the French Revolution. This revolution brought France from a period of decadent and decaying absolutist monarchy into republicanism, a radical departure for the entire social system. The French revolution can give us a window into how such radical changes can take place. When the French revolution occurred, there was already a new mode of production which was threatening to become ascendant. A bureaucratic, professional or “middle” class was seeking to expand its role in society. At the same time England was already seeing rapid capitalist development and its consequent dynamism threatened to leave France far behind. <br />
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Feudalism requires direct force and coercion to obtain surplus from those who produce. The peasant can live off his or her own subsistence, so it is only through direct taxation that the ruling class can find a share. This is a very inflexible system and it has a tendency to require a large security state and a large state bureaucracy to oversee taxation and advise the use of threat by the security state. It also does not encourage innovation, since those that produce have little incentive to change their mode. Acquiring much above subsistence does them no good. For example, mechanisation of agriculture is exceedingly hard for feudalism to manage**. <br />
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By contrast, this new mode of production, capitalism, was cutting-edge and outward looking. It encouraged trade and direct investment of returns in production itself. The reinvestment of surplus into the method of production itself allowed growth that could not be duplicated by feudalism. Additionally, it did not require direct taxation or forced labour to obtain surplus. Instead, workers were paid wages and the surplus was taken from the sales of the commodities produced, significantly simplifying the relationship for the ruling class and reducing the need for primitive methods of coercion.<br />
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Because of the economic meltdown suffered by France, the question of taxation and how it should take place came into direct conflict with this new middle class. The middle class found that it was being completely stymied in its efforts to unbind itself from the feudal regime by legal means. At the same time, economic unrest led to great and periodic riots. With these factors in place, the middle class moved forward, sometimes cautiously, or in the case of the Jacobins, sometimes ferociously, to completely eliminate the fetters on this new and vastly more dynamic mode of production.<br />
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The more modern Russian revolution took a very different course. The political aim of revolutionaries in the French revolution ranged from constitutional monarchism to radical democracy, but economically the ideas of how the economy would change were dominated by an envy of England. By contrast, the masses of society in the Russian revolution took up the banner of socialism. They were not looking to replace the economic system with that of a competitor, but instead hoped to forge a new one from scratch. The complete collapse of the Tsarist regime and the incompetence, financial weakness and disorganisation of the middle classes gave a window for the exceptionally well-organised Bolsheviks to take a stab at power; a stab which they found themselves successful in gaining with the help of a very supportive mass movement of peasants and workers.<br />
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When in power, they sought to establish a new mode of production entirely <i>ex post facto</i>; a mode of production with which they themselves had spent far too little time imagining or experimenting, and one which came not from the activities of the general population, but instead almost entirely by state decree. Bukharin, a Bolshevik and member of the central committee, realised this problem earlier than many of the other Bolsheviks. Eventually Lenin himself realised that the Bolsheviks would have to retrench and take a longer view to the transition and reorganisation of the economy; a view which lead to the establishment of the NEP.<br />
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Milovan Djilas <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9D#dji%E2%80%9D">[Dji]</a> has promoted a theory as to why so many problems were encountered in attempts to implement socialism. Essentially his theory states that the change in the mode of production might need to precede the revolution. Indeed, his contact with the problem was not the result of idle theorisation. Djilas was involved with an attempt to implement socialism in Yugoslavia after the success of the Yugoslav Partisans in World War II. The tremendous difficulties they encountered in changing the economic structure of society led him to look for some theoretical explanation. Djilas was steeped in Marxist theory and so he naturally looked for an explanation using Marx’s theories of historical change. The mode of production and its relationship to former revolutions therefore rose to the fore. <br />
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<b>The Old Mode of Production<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></b><br />
Assuming that Djilas’ thesis is correct, that indeed the new mode of production must be ready to replace the old order, and do so in a way that creates active participation of the mass of society, then what does this new mode of production look like?<br />
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To understand how we might change the mode of production, it is useful to think about capitalism itself and how it functions. The analysis of capitalism presented by the 19th century socialists and put perhaps most forcefully by Marx, describes capitalism as an economic system. This system has a class of capitalists whose major income source is the investment of their income in production with the expectation of profits. More precisely, they hope to engage their income in commodity production while paying less for labour and inputs than the sale price of the produced commodity on the market. There are also indirect capitalists, who invest in various different bodies which will administer the actual production for them as well as secondary, tertiary and so on, financial instruments, which are ever greater abstractions of the actual productive process but which rely fundamentally on profits in production itself. The wage labourer is the other major class in this system, known as the working class, involved in this production process. These workers sell their labour power in productive processes which capitalists see as enabling profits.<br />
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This mode of production leaves some individuals with a much greater income capacity than others. While it is true that wage labour can take on virtually any arbitrarily high number, it is equally true that the vast majority of the income is weighted towards some low-end peak. In fact, it follows quite nicely what is known as the Boltzmann-Gibbs distribution <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9D#drag%E2%80%9D">[Drag]</a>. Income, is in fact, bi-modal, and the income of the capitalist class is distributed according to a different modality. It is instead pareto-distributed <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9D#drag%E2%80%9D">[Drag]</a>. The underlying fact which may be obscured by this technical jargon is that the capitalists tend to make vastly more money than the rest of us. Wage labour does not give us the same type of access to the social product.<br />
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This inequality of access to what society produces is a tremendous problem. It leads to a very lopsided political economy which resembles plutarchy more than republicanism or democracy. The rich and profit-making interests, including corporations, control the lion’s share of all political decisions and virtually all financial decisions about the development of the economy, and what is required of investment. Our only input is in the periodic voting for various candidates pre-approved by corporate interests and a choice of various commodities to purchase. The latter wields even less power than the former.<br />
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This inequality of access, however, is only part of the problem. Perhaps worse still is that the circuit of capital requires profit at all costs. In the schematic description given by Marx we have: M-C-(M+ΔM). That is, capitalists put forward money M, to create commodity C in order to make back their investment in addition to some profit M+ΔM. <br />
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This profit motive for the production of all goods and services has two major deleterious effects. The first is that all goods which are public goods or common goods can not be usefully integrated into the system. They do not exhibit scarcity naturally, and therefore do not naturally command a price. Digital media such as music, films, software etc., are properties that do not exhibit scarcity after the initial prototype copy is produced. One can say either the labour content of each copy approaches zero, or equivalently that the marginal cost of production approaches zero. The response capitalism has come up with to date is the imposition of state force to require public goods to mimic private ones, and the situation may be even more dire with common goods. This has huge implications for our modern information age. <br />
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The second major problem is that production with the sole view of increasing profits puts enormous force towards the externalisation of costs (which are sometimes called externalities). The health of workers and the amount of their wages, the environments of workers and consumers, the quality of the goods, and any sort of knowledge asymmetry between the consumer and the producer, all lead the capitalist to produce a great amount of dis-utility while bundling up an actual or expected utility into the commodity which still obtains price. The relationship with the consumer and the worker is tantamount to predation. However the damage to common goods such as the environment is downright anti-social.<br />
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While the second problem makes capitalism undesirable and (perhaps terminally) destructive, the first problem threatens to go beyond even this and make it entirely unworkable. The extension of the security state which is absolutely necessary for price to be attributed to public goods may come to resemble extraction of the type more familiar from feudal times.<br />
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Socialists are often loathe to get into the exact details of what a socialist economy would look like. This is caused, perhaps in equal measure, by complete ignorance and an extensive knowledge of just how large the space of possibilities is. Indeed many proposals have been given about how a socialist economy might best be run.<br />
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The question of which system is desirable, in detail, is quite important. Unfortunately we cannot determine in abstract which system will work best and what problems will develop, though we can make guesses. To fully understand the consequences of an economic system can only be decided experimentally. This leads us to the chicken and the egg problem. How can we promote a new system without knowing what it will look like and if we don't have a new system to promote, how can we convince the broad masses that we should remove the presently existing system - however deformed our present system becomes.<br />
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The most viable solution to this Gordian knot is to attempt to create the new modes of production experimentally... <i>now</i>. It is the corporation which gives us the best experimental laboratory currently within reach and it is the democratically controlled corporation, or cooperative, which gives us the form most likely to succeed in a radically egalitarian programme of transformation.<br />
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This idea is not new at all. In fact, it was believed to be a necessary component of the struggle for socialism by both Marx and the Anarchists during the first international. The instructions given to delegates of the first international in 1866 which we put here gives a flavour of just how accurately the early socialists were thinking about this component:<br />
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<blockquote>
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Co-operative labour<br />
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It is the business of the International Working Men's Association to combine and generalise the spontaneous movements of the working classes, but not to dictate or impose any doctrinaire system whatever. The Congress should, therefore, proclaim no special system of co-operation, but limit itself to the enunciation of a few general principles.<br />
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(a) We acknowledge the co-operative movement as one of the transforming forces of the present society based upon class antagonism. Its great merit is to practically show, that the present pauperising, and despotic system of the subordination of labour to capital can be superseded by the republican and beneficent system of the association of free and equal producers.<br />
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(b) Restricted, however, to the dwarfish forms into which individual wages slaves can elaborate it by their private efforts, the co-operative system will never transform capitalist society. to convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and co-operative labour, general social changes are wanted, changes of the general conditions of society, never to be realised save by the transfer of the organised forces of society, viz., the state power, from capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves.<br />
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(c) We recommend working men embark in co-operative production rather than in co-operative stores. The latter touch but the surface of the present economical system, the former attacks its groundwork.<br />
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(d) We recommend to all co-operative societies to convert one part of their joint income into a fund for propagating their principles by example as well as by precept, in other words, by promoting the establishment by teaching and preaching.<br />
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(e) In order to prevent co-operative societies from degenerating into ordinary middle-class joint stock companies (societes par actions), all workmen employed, whether shareholders or not, ought to share alike. As a mere temporary expedient, we are willing to allow shareholders a low rate of interest.<br />
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- <a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1866/08/instructions.htm">Instructions to Delegates, First International, 1866</a></blockquote>
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Lest Marxists attempt to claim this is some concession to deviations from the correct programme required for pragmatic purposes we should also quote Capital:<br />
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<blockquote>
The co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new, although they naturally reproduce, and must reproduce, everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system. But the antithesis between capital and labour is overcome within them, if at first only by way of making the associated labourers into their own capitalist, i.e., by enabling them to use the means of production for the employment of their own labour. They show how a new mode of production naturally grows out of an old one, when the development of the material forces of production and of the corresponding forms of social production have reached a particular stage. Without the factory system arising out of the capitalist mode of production there could have been no co-operative factories. Nor could these have developed without the credit system arising out of the same mode of production. The credit system is not only the principal basis for the gradual transformation of capitalist private enterprises into capitalist stock companies, but equally offers the means for the gradual extension of co-operative enterprises on a more or less national scale. The capitalist stock companies, as much as the co-operative factories, should be considered as transitional forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one, with the only distinction that the antagonism is resolved negatively in the one and positively in the other.<br />
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- <a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch27.htm">Karl Marx, Capital, Volume III, Chapter 27</a></blockquote>
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In both of these quotes we see some very clear thinking regards cooperatives. Neither quotes give the view that cooperatives are unproblematic. However, both try to find ways to work with an imperfect form to maximise its capacity as a vehicle of socialist transformation.<br />
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There are at least two basic problems with cooperatives. The first is that the working class already has tremendous trouble accessing capital. This means that it is very difficult to find ways of funding the initial start-up cooperative which one might wish to create. In addition capitalism is ruthless at extinguishing those firms which are not productive and consequently, cooperative or not, the majority of firms will be bankrupt within the first five years. This presents a major pragmatic stumbling block.<br />
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However even after the cooperative starts there are dangers which are spelled out by Marx and the First International. Within capitalist society each constituent firm must attempt to sell at or below the price that other competing capitalist firms set on the market. The increase in the number of cooperative firms as a movement would not mitigate against this fact; it would simply increase the number of stars in the constellation of the capitalist system which are under worker self-management. This would not be a worthless undertaking in itself, but neither would it in itself be a threat to capitalism.<br />
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There are, however, some reasons to be hopeful. Firstly the need to form profit is not immediate for the worker-controlled firm. There are other opportunities present for the firm in terms of the use of surplus gained from production. It is always possible for workers to either make use of this surplus for new investment into their own capital or into expansion of the cooperative system. Workers can also suppress their own wages to weather periodic fluctuations in the market in a way that other small businesses generally can not.<br />
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In order to be a successful movement, however, the cooperative movement requires a very big vision: a vision of a transformed society and the attendant actions which could create it. In order to do this the cooperatives will have to attempt to make real the "Association of Producers". The association of producers was a broad vision of the integration of productive efforts of the workers on a cooperative, rather than a competitive basis. It would be production under the purposive direction of the workers themselves on a basis not driven by the profit motive.<br />
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It was a long standing problem of various cooperative movements and the Kibbutzim that whatever cooperative organisations or federations they made, they rarely found systematic ways of moving goods amongst themselves excepting for the sale of goods to each other through the market. A proper transformational movement would have to seriously experiment with a new system of internal exchange.<br />
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This is not an unthinkable idea. Indeed when a capitalist firm finds that it requires the services of another capitalist firm it has two choices. It can either pay a premium on the service which includes the profit margin required of capitalist firms to stay in business or it can acquire it outright and take the services at the cost of their production. In the latter case we see that the capitalist firm has moved the boundary at which surplus takes place from between the firms to between the two firms and the rest of the capitalist world.<br />
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Cooperatives can also avail of this fact. There is no need to charge other cooperatives surplus. The goods and services of an ever-larger association of producers should start bringing down the cost of goods within the entire network to within margins which would make capitalists jealous.<br />
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However, it is possible for cooperatives to go even further in this vertical integration to attempt to deteriorate the necessity of the wage itself. The greater number of useful goods and services that cooperatives in such a conglomeration produce, the greater number of potential goods could be given to employees "in kind". This would certainly provide a "reduced cost" to the worker in the cooperative system, but it could also potentially be used to avoid taxation. The lower the wages the less tax, and corporate tax is incredibly low. This tactic is already used widely by corporate executives. The production for production and the production for worker consumption would form a sort of "inside-outside" system in which profits were only necessary at the boundary. All other surplus would be under collective and democratic administration.<br />
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Many cooperatives have in their founding ideals that the should favour business with other cooperatives. This principle should be realised to its fullest extent. Much as in the united states, tariffs between states are illegal and all tariffs must take place at the outer-boundary of the state, so too should cooperatives look to eliminate surplus amongst themselves.<br />
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But how can we expect to find ourselves with the wide diversity of cooperatives which be necessary? This can really only happen with access to capital. In order to ensure that this occurs we will need cooperative organs of finance. The cooperatives themselves must have a privileged bank. In fact such peoples' banks were not only talked about but already Proudhon was attempting to establish one by 1849. This bank would invest only in cooperative endeavours which agreed to abide by some principles which would ensure the "inside-outside" type approach to the sale of goods and services described above.<br />
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Initially such a tactic would require some hard working and lucky activists to involve themselves in a large and long term project. It would require that they actively and politically attempt to find the largest surplus generating activity possible and that they devote the greatest amount of these surplus resources, not to themselves, but to the establishment of more cooperatives and the political movement that will be required to shield the movement from the machinations of big capital, which will certainly occur.<br />
<b><br />The Other Dimensions</b><br />
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Such a movement, if it were successful, will necessarily come under threat. No ruling class leaves its stage of history without being thrown off by more competent actors. Consequently it would be remiss to assume that a quiet transition to a new socialist system could be created without the ruling class impeding its progress. Any programme of transition will have to take this into account.<br />
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One of the stages on which the battle will have to be fought is the political. Currently political parties of the left are almost universally supportive of Keynesian policies and/or redistributive justice through taxation. The old centrist policy of the second internationalists such as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_of_Germany">SPD</a> of refusing to vote for budgets has been completely dropped. This is quite ironic indeed, considering the amount of vitriol and condemnation that the SPD come under from Leninist groups who denounce them as gradualist quietist whilst voting or themselve s promoting policies which would have looked completely alien to the vastly more Marxist SPD. <br />
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However even the SPD had too statist a view of the transition. It is in some ways mimicked by the current pragmatic orientation of the SP in Ireland (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_for_a_Workers%27_International">CWI</a>) with its focus on nationalisation of major industries. This is a programme with which <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Hilferding">Hilferding</a> et al. would have been quite comfortable.<br />
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Despite this, the active participation of political progressives in politics, indeed in the current electoral system will be a requirement. There are useful tasks which must be carried out. It is a fact that legitimacy can best be derived by attempting something through what is widely considered legitimate means first. When one is stymied by tyrannical impulses of the ruling class it simultaneously erodes the legitimacy of the institutions which stymie it and creates new avenues for legitimate action outside of the legal framework. There is no sense attempting to go straight to revolution without first holding the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estates-General_of_1789">Estates General</a>, before making the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_Court_Oath">Tennis Court Oath</a>.<br />
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Among the sectors of society which will be indispensable in the transitional society are the trade unions. The unions comprise a different relationship to capital and especially to productive and useful organs of the state such as health, transport and utilities. However the unions and syndicalism have a very hard time wielding much power beyond the power to obtain wage increases and better working conditions. The threat of general strike has never actually propelled forward revolutionary success, however terrified the capitalist class was of it during the early part of the 20th century. <br />
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The only successful syndicalist revolution was in Catalonia and it was incomplete and short lived, even if it has surpassed every socialist revolution since. The difficulty for syndicalism is that it requires to immediately move to extra-legal means, that is, expropriation, prior to the point at which it can go into production. In addition it must somehow do so without losing the necessary functions of the managerial and bureaucratic elements of the organisations. It is no secret that these organisations are not run with the view to ensuring that working members are in possession of all the skills necessary to run these firms. This creates a complicated power asymmetry even in the case of successful expropriation. Indeed accounts of the Catalonian situation tell of the rehire of managers who had to be chased down and forced back to work to ensure production <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9D#gas%E2%80%9D">[Gas]</a>.<br />
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How then can we enable these companies to come under the control of their workforce? How can we approach the radicalisation of the unions themselves? One possible alternative was proposed by Cockshott <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9D#coc%E2%80%9D">[Coc]</a>, in which legislation is passed which encourages such a transition. First each good would be printed with a labour value which would estimate the total labour content of goods produced. This would enable workers to clearly see the difference between the wages that they receive and the amount of surplus which is garnered by the capitalists who invest. The second stage would allow unions to sue for the full value of labour for the workforce. Such legislation, adjudicated by jury, both privileging unions and encouraging workers to form or join them, would completely suffocate the capitalist class and would quickly turn control towards the actual workers in the largest enterprises in society. It forms a much more realistic view of how democratic control of large assets could take place without having to go through a state directed nationalisation which has seldom lead to much real participation. Companies which do not see active participation by their union members would never be able to succeed in such a programme, ensuring that it would be a popular worker directed endeavour.<br />
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Of course, as always many socialists will say that this approach is naïve in viewing the capitalists as legalists. However, this charge of naïvete hardly amounts to much. Should the capitalists decide to thwart the legal process there is reason for a now activated and organised section of the working class to legitimately lock horns, and possibly with much greater popular support, on a footing more favourable.<br />
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It will not just be the unions which can useful be assisted by legislation however. It is also necessary for the continued existence of the cooperatives that they be defended politically by either blocking legislation intended to disarm them or putting forward and supporting legislation which enables them.<br />
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To do any of this, however, will require another component; that is, a party of the working class. This party will have to defend the unions and the cooperatives from attack as best as it is able and attempt to remove any impediment which can feasibly be removed to the establishment of a greater democratic movement of workers control over the means of production. The party will have the charge of promoting the historic mission of socialism; that is, the necessity of workers to take into their own hands the administration of the production and investment in society for their own interests, rather than the narrow interests of profit.<br />
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The unions and the cooperatives are those that are best able to garner surplus as they are taking part in the relations of production. It is from here that we will fund the political party and the other institutions of the working class which have atrophied in the modern era, such as workers’ media, workers’ cultural centres and whatever organs we find ourselves in need of. <br />
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The party must be constituted as a broad workers’ political party which does not adhere to any specfic sectist ideology. The tendency to define politics in terms of narrow political visions is incompatible with any approach save failure or insurrection. The need to simultaneously succeed in garnering cooperation amongst cooperatives and unions as well as those sympathetic to a more egalitarian approach necessitates a broad political approach. The traditional Leninist model of exegesis from the holy canon of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky and the anarchist approach of total disengagement with electoralism both need to be abandoned as a model for the party itself. The party will, however, have to accommodate itself to tendencies of these and other types if it is to be successful as is witnessed by the Left Bloc in Portugal, the NPA in France, the Scottish Socialist Party, the ULA in Ireland and Die Linke in Germany. It’s a curious fact that even in the contemporary period, parties which take this approach are vastly more successful than the narrowly ideological Trotskyist or anarchist parties yet this approach is still rare indeed.<br />
<b><br />Conclusion </b><br />
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Since the dominant elements of the left of the political spectrum have very little in the way of a plan for transition, the ground lies relatively barren. However, due to the capitalist crisis, Occupy Wall Street and greater general politicisation of the public, there appears to be a resurgence of interest in what a programme of transition might look like. This is clearly the time that such ideas must be put forward. <br />
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Capitalism did not ignite until the conditions were appropriate. Similarly we can expect that socialism will not burn until the fuel is dry. Our task then is to discover the conditions which will allow socialism to come about. Once these are understood then we can devote our energies to ensuring that these conditions are created. <br />
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* Unless one is talking about particles and even <i>they</i> spring back into nothingness shortly thereafter, baring the intervention of a neighboring black hole.<br />
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** Some might argue that the USSR under Stalin demonstrates one example of the possibility of doing so, if one first accepts that the USSR was bureaucratic absolutist, and obtained its surplus value analogously to the manner in which it is obtained under feudalism.<br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=35680194400337186" name="”drag”">[Drag]</a>Adrian A. Drǎgulescu and Victor M. Yakovenko, <a href="http://proceedings.aip.org/resource/2/apcpcs/661/1/180_1?isAuthorized=no">Statistical Mechanics of Money Income and Wealth</a> <br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=35680194400337186" name="”coc”">[Coc]</a> Paul Cockshott, Alen Cottrell and Heinz Dieterich, <a href="http://reality.gn.apc.org/econ/Berlinpaper.pdf">Transition to 21st Century Socialism in the European Union</a> <br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=35680194400337186" name="”gas”">[Gas]</a> Gaston Leval, <a href="http://libcom.org/library/collectives-leval-3#fn12.8">"Collectives in the Spanish Revolution"</a><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=35680194400337186" name="”dji”">[Dji]</a> Milovan Djilas, The New Class: Analysis of the Communist System</div>Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-53562099779580983052011-12-30T12:51:00.000-08:002012-01-03T08:50:07.837-08:00The War on Information<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Our age is currently experiencing the most epochal change in production that has occurred since the industrial revolution. The change presents a crisis that must be resolved one way or another but which cannot allow things to progress along the same dimension as the last 50 years. <br /><br />In the period leading up to the dot-com bubble the opening of the information age was widely heralded. It was going to bring new dynamism to the economy and presented huge opportunities for profit making and expansion. It did of course lead to massive profits and massive expansion. However, a large number of companies were soon viewed by investors as vastly over-valued, leading to a contraction. The fantastic nature of the new economy did not lead to steady long-term growth in the same way that the industrial revolution had. It similarly failed to demonstrate the growth that the more recent post-war boom did. Instead it lead to a credit bubble. The first credit bust was mitigated by an expansion of cheap-credit. However, this culminated in the financial crisis of 2008. <br /><br />During the French revolution, the masses demanded that there be a maximum placed on the price of bread. This was a move which they required to survive as inflation was causing the price of bread to rise rapidly. However, the repercussions of this demand were tremendous. The price of bread depended on the price of everything which was used to make the bread. In order to solve the problem of bread prices they had to solve the problem of the “general maximum”. The government constructed schedules to enforce the prices of general commodities, yet the profits which could be made from avoiding these schedules was tremendous. This created a huge incentive towards illegality. In the end, to save the general maximum required the imposition of extreme fines, and finally, at the demand of the masses, execution by guillotine. In the French revolution, to stop the manifestation of price in the capitalist system required terror.<br /><br />In our new economy exactly the opposite problem will be realised. Only through treat and terror will the manifestation of price be saved. Political and economic forces are already gathering to ensure that this is the case. Something deep in the organisation of the economy will have to change. The only question which remains is: which way will we change?<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #58b442; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: line-through; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Knowledge Production</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b> </b><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span><br />
The information age's capacity to change the way we live is very real. In 1983 hardly anyone would have imagined that in 2011 nearly everyone in the West would carry tablets and phones that would outperform the then-existing, and quite rare, mainframes. Even in underdeveloped regions many people have phones that outstrip the best personal computers of 1983.<br />
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The production of knowledge has become increasingly important. Software is now a large industry projected to be around 457 billion USD by 2013 <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=35680194400337186#two">[2]</a>. Two of the most well-known companies in the world are Microsoft and Google. Both have global recognition and global power. Facebook is now a household name and the number of people on social networks today exceeds the number of Internet users in 2006 <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=35680194400337186#four">[4]</a>. China's internet growth is so explosive that it now has internet penetration to 34% of the population and gained more users in three years than the US has in total <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=35680194400337186#five">[5]</a>. This process of an increasingly connected world is an inexorable trend.<br />
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The entertainment industry similarly is growing at breakneck pace in the third world. India expects its entertainment industry to grow by 15% in the next three years: this despite India being one of the largest producers of film in the world. China's film market has seen 64% growth in 2010.<span style="font-size: small;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><b> </b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><b>Automation</b><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span><br />
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At the same time we have seen an enormous increase in automation. Automation has always been a major factor in generating periodic crisis in capitalist economies. The famous Luddite revolt saw 19th Century English textile artisans suffering serious lack of income due to the introduction of automated looms. The increase in productive capacity from power-looms required fewer workers. So automation is no stranger to development. <br />
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However, automation is now reaching levels never before seen. From assembly lines and powered mechanical assistance has risen a new multi-purpose automating instrument: the robot. The automotive industry was one of the first enthusiastic customers of robotics and remains a major consumer. However, the number of robots being employed in diverse production is increasing at amazing rates. China is expected to see double digit growth in its robotics industry in 2011. Foxconn, the manufacturer of the iPhone and employer of almost 1 million employees, is now planning to obtain one million robots over the course of the next three years <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=35680194400337186#six">[6]</a>. The cost of the robots is expected to be about three times the annual wage of a worker but that cost is expected to be recouped within one year. These estimates are likely to be somewhat overstated by Foxconn; however it certainly does not bode well for workers in its workforce. The entire Pearl River Delta is seeing a booming trade in automation. As workers demand higher wages and become more discerning about working conditions, investors are searching for ways to weaken labour’s negotiating hand. <br />
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Since the beginning of the twentieth century there have been fears that labour would have its place in the economy stolen. In the 1950s, Luddite ideas of anti-automation began to gain prominence amongst workers in the United States and elsewhere <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=35680194400337186#seven">[7]</a>. Yet while this automation certainly did lead to unemployment of particular classes of labour, the post-war period was one of the greatest periods of growth in history. While it was bad in an immediate sense for the workers in these industries, it was good in general for the working class as productivity was high and growing and unemployment remained low into the 1970s.<br />
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The increase in automation by itself does not necessarily lead to problems for capitalism. It can create "growing pains" when large numbers of workers are thrown out of productive employment. While the productive capacity per worker increases, the profits require that there are consumers of the goods produced. Automation can continue as long as new markets are available. If unemployment due to automation spreads generally, however, there is a crisis. <br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Synthesis </b></span><br />
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The greatest impediment to the stability of growth in the system, however, has to do with the interaction of these two elements. Modern automation is not exactly like the automation of the past. Modern automation is highly computerised and in ever-greater reliance on knowledge as a fundamental component of the means of production. Modern computerised mills, for instance, are very generic, requiring only a CAD (Computer Assisted Design) schematic in order to directly produce something as complex as a Geneva Moment (a very sophisticated gear assembly). Engines are assured to be within tolerances not by inspection by expert engineers but by robots assisted by laser assemblies capable of much greater coverage and precision. In the past cloth which was cut by hand for garments is now cut by robotically controlled lasers. For each of these, a new design requires little more than a schematic with a bit of supervision and testing. One can imagine that it is not long before this supervision recedes into irrelevance.<br />
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Automation can now spread more rapidly and more generally using the more general purpose tools of robotics and knowledge production efforts for software and patterns which radically increases its flexibility. Whereas the automated looms of the past required supervision and only created a textile, the current trend in automation threatens to take even very skilled jobs. The trend will not stop with manual labour. Indeed middle class service sector jobs are also being replaced. The bank teller used to be ubiquitous but the ATM has replaced her. Store clerks are being automated away by self-checkout. Manual stocking is being replaced by RFID tracked robotic stocking. How long is it before knowledge warehousing jobs such as tech-support will be automated by natural language query interfaces? Odds are good that this will happen within a generation.<span style="font-size: small;"></span><br />
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The crux of the change is not simply the fact of automation itself. It is the flexibility of automation which allows innovation with information technologies to be immediately realised as new components to a commodity. What Marxists sometimes call “Deptartment I” production, that is production of commodities used by capitalists in production of commodities, is becoming increasingly dominated by designs and software, rather than the more concrete inputs of the past. Whereas in the 1950s a new commodity would require substantial changes to large and expensive fixed capital to automate a new process, it is now possible to simply change the software or the data which drives the software. <br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></b><b>A fundamental contradiction</b><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span><br />
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This meteoric growth in automation and the general economic dependence on knowledge production generates a calamitous contradiction. Knowledge itself is not a commodity. We are merely attempting to make it look like one.<br />
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Commodities are those goods which can be produced by the investment of capital to obtain some profit at the end of the production cycle by sale for a greater amount of money than went into the constituent input commodities and labour. This requires that the goods exhibit a scarcity which is limited by production. Air is not a commodity (yet) because its production simply requires breathing and as such it is difficult to sell*. By contrast, the light from street lamps is not charged for; not because it requires no productive effort, indeed it does, but rather because it is not scarce once produced. Such goods are called public non-rival goods. <br />
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Commodities really need to be private rival goods in order to serve their role of enabling profits. While in the past, knowledge in the form of books could simulate a commodity, if with some difficulty, by limiting the reproduction to relatively expensive printing presses. However, modern digital knowledge is almost a perfect non-commodity. A film costing 100 million to produce can be copied in a tiny amount of time for a tiny fraction of a cent. Once knowledge has been produced it is almost trivially possible to copy it. <br />
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We have been attempting to make knowledge look like a commodity with the use of copyright and patents. Both of these are legal means backed up with threats from the State of fines, or, likely soon, incarceration. Copyright is growing in influence and duration. There is an informal law known as the “Mickey Mouse” rule that copyright duration will always be extended to ensure that Disney has control of Mikey mouse. The rule has held thus far. Patents are also growing in their scope. They are now even being applied to mathematics itself <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=35680194400337186#eight">[8]</a>.<br />
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However there are new legal trends emerging. Reverse engineering, the process of how something is done, even if not patented, is illegal in some circumstances. DRM, euphemistically known as Digital Rights Management, but which is really a strait jacket designed to decrease the usability of your knowledge by making it act as if it exhibits scarcity, has required that looking at how things are made is illegal. The reason for these legal changes is that it is technically impossible for those with access to general computation to be thwarted from sharing information provided for this general computation platform. This has led us to a new war: the war on general computation itself. Prophetically, Richard M. Stallman predicted this in a dystopian short story in 1997. At the time it was regarded by some as paranoid speculative fiction. Now we have seen the first shots fired in this war.<br />
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All of these legal forays have not yet deterred people from making use of what is not scarce. While a surprisingly wide demographic views so-called "piracy" with as much of a stigma as haircuts, teenagers are exceptionally tolerant. Fewer than 1 in 10 teenagers believe that music piracy is morally wrong <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=35680194400337186#one">[1]</a>. The youth of this generation are growing up in a world where information is viewed as equally ubiquitous and undeserving of charge as air itself. <br />
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Capitalism requires that capital be invested for profit in order to produce commodities. Commodities require scarcity or it is impossible to charge for them. If things are not commodities we cannot invest money in their production. Such is our present conundrum.<br />
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The liberal and technological savvy spectrum of commentators has widely stated that piracy is not a fundamental problem for the production of software, music, films or really anywhere else. They have advocated for loose or non-existent patents, copyright or DRM laws and called for the unshackling of the internet. While I believe them to be on the clearly correct side of the information war, they are completely wrong in their analysis. The analysis of the right-wing and the major content producers such as publishers, software companies, record companies and film producers are all correct. The unshackling of information will lead to certain disaster for the profit motive in knowledge production.<br />
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There really are only two choices before us. There is one world in which we save the value of goods. In this world we will need to force knowledge to act like a commodity. We must bring down ever greater State coercion in fines, seizure, imprisonment, censorship etc. We will need to generously expand the security State apparatus in policing this. We will need to generously expand the judicial apparatus of lawyers and judges in adjudicating it. We will need to generously expand the state bureaucracy in order to recommend correctives.<br />
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There is another world where we abandon the profit motive and turn to a system of production which does not require it. In this world information is widely available and enjoyed. The production of information is instantly available to any who would enjoy its utility. Real goods grow in diversity and their accessible quantity. Creativity is no longer horded but can be shared synergistically.<br />
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The only reason that anyone could sensibly argue for the first world over the second world is if they are already tremendously wealthy, or they don't believe the second world can exist. Since there is no point in convincing the former, It would be better to challenge the notion that the second cannot exist. While I have in mind some ways in which this second "utopian" world could be constructed, I think that even if I did not, the former world is so dystopian that any sane person would need to look long and hard to find an alternative before simply accepting it.<br />
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* Unless it compressed but that requires productive effort and compressed air is scarce.<br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=35680194400337186" name="one">[1]</a> <a href="http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/5-barna-update/139-fewer-than-1-in-10-teenagers-believe-that-music-piracy-is-morally-wrong">The Barna Group, Ltd. Study on Music Piracy</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=35680194400337186" name="two">[2]</a> <a href="http://www.datamonitor.com/store/Default.aspx">DataMonitor - Abstract from Global Software Industry Guide - 2008</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=35680194400337186" name="three">[3]</a> <a href="http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-01-10/india/28358616_1_film-industry-chinese-film-chinese-movie">Chinese Film Industry Races Close to Bollywood - Times of India</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=35680194400337186" name="four">[4]</a> Mary Meeker: Web 2.0 presentation<br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=35680194400337186" name="five">[5]</a> <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/1790344/mary-meeker-says-the-web-doesnt-revolve-around-usa-any-longer">Mary Meeker says the web does not revolve around the USA any longer</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=35680194400337186" name="six">[6]</a> <a href="http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20111129000006&cid=1102">Twist their robot arm: Foxconn automation plan a forced gamble</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=35680194400337186" name="seven">[7]</a> Forging America - Ironworkers, Adventurers, and the Industrious Revolution, 2003.<br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=35680194400337186" name="”eight”">[8]</a> <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/08/appeals-court-says-only-complicated-math-is-patentable.ars">Appeals court says only complicated math is patentable</a>, Ars Technica<br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-70941759011968617442011-12-23T20:28:00.001-08:002014-03-21T02:51:37.501-07:00Insurrection and the Holiday Season - From Hanukkah to the birth of Christianity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGSQFiy_z5whrLcRPtYj9PSd2qT6hg0hMwUh5HXnBD-4VTa65pBUeOY4A-sQDSeZ9Ra6f5MmQJsxhbfvKaFJTLVe32JtRVSTtWzQ2gyW7frsrUGkVBGofw0jgzg2gpo5wP2EkYjVSXO9A/s1600/Stattler-Machabeusze.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGSQFiy_z5whrLcRPtYj9PSd2qT6hg0hMwUh5HXnBD-4VTa65pBUeOY4A-sQDSeZ9Ra6f5MmQJsxhbfvKaFJTLVe32JtRVSTtWzQ2gyW7frsrUGkVBGofw0jgzg2gpo5wP2EkYjVSXO9A/s200/Stattler-Machabeusze.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Hanukkah is a rather well known Jewish holiday; however, it is less well known that Hanukkah is not an important religious holiday. Instead it gained prominence in Europe due to its proximity to Christmas, a holiday which similarly was promoted as an alternative to earlier pagan mid-winter solstice holidays. It does however have a lineal relationship with the Christian tradition.<br />
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Hanukkah is a celebration of a nationalist insurrection against the Seleucid Empire in around 166BC, known as the revolt of the Maccabees. The revolt started as a response to the perceived Hellenisation of Jewish culture under the Seleucid empire, a Greek-Macedonian state, and was initially quite conservative. However, it often happens in the course of revolutions that the population’s realisation of power can have lasting consequences. In the case of the Maccabees, what had started as a radical cultural conservatism led to a new Jewish anti-clerical movement known as the Pharisees. <br />
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The Pharisees were a movement, a political party, and even a schismatic church. In traditional Judaism, overseen by the Sadducees observance of the religious law and the various religious functions was carried out by a priest class. Membership of this class was inherited - supposedly populated by the sons of Aaron, a character described in Exodus. By contrast the Pharisees were the more literate exponents of the Judean proletariat and did not have official status. <br />
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The Maccabees were eventually successful in displacing Hellenic influence and establishing the Hasmonean dynasty (during which much of the codification of the Old Testament is assumed to have taken place). It is this success which is celebrated during Hanukkah, with the Menorah representing the eight nights for which a signal lamp miraculously burned with only one day’s worth of oil. This success and the need of the revolution to have broad popular support cemented the importance of the Pharisees all the way up to the early part of the first century CE, which saw the birth of Christianity.<br />
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The Pharisees were a rabbinic tradition (rabbi meaning teacher), and as such there was much interest in discourse and debate about the correct observance of the scriptures and theology in general. In addition, Hellenic culture had introduced many new theological ideas and knowledge of other social structures. The Pharisees saw themselves as existing in opposition to the Sadducees, who had a relatively simple answer to the question of correct interpretation; namely that interpretation was performed by the priestly caste. The Pharisees, however, adopted much of what had formerly only been thought to apply to the priest caste, particularly the observance of various rituals of purity and observance which before had not been adopted by the general population.<br />
<b><br />
Roman Rule and Jewish Resistance</b><br />
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Judea became a protectorate of Rome in 63 BC. They were allowed to retain their King and religious laws restricting their administration to taxation policy and trade law. With the Pharisees opening the door to non-priestly interpretation, together with the influx of new cultural ideas from both Hellenic and Roman rule, we see the formation of many new theological and social movements. Significant among these are the Zealots and the even more radical Sicarii. <br />
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The Zealots come out of the Pharisaic tradition, but were much less tame. They were willing to employ violent means towards their aims of liberation from Roman rule. This included everything from insurrection to the expropriation of capital from the priest caste and their supporters. It is very probable that early Christianity found its supporters largely from the Zealots. In the book of Luke, for example, we hear that Simon was a Zealot. [1]<br />
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Although much of the New Testament is devoted to polemics against the Pharisees, this is not so much because the Pharisees were the greatest perceived enemy, but because they were the portion of society which was viewed as most in need of convincing by the more radical groups. It is probably more sensible to view the criticism as attempts to move the mass of society to a more radical position. In Luke we hear: "Damn you, Pharisees! You pay tithes on mint and rue and every herb, but neglect justice and the love of God. You should have attended to the last without neglecting the first.” [1]<br />
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According to the New Testament, Capernaum in Galilee was the base of operations for Jesus. This is significant as it was only several miles from Gamla, which was rife with Zealot insurgents. The belief in Messianic assistance was widespread amongst the Zealots. Many thought that some Messiah, though most often not a divine one, would assist in overthrowing Roman rule.<br />
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Perhaps the most extreme of the religious groups was known as the Sicari. The Sicarii's major base of operations was Galilee. The historian Hayim Ben-Sasson stated that the Sicarii "were fighting for a social revolution, while the Jerusalem Zealots placed less stress on the social aspect". [2] He also states that the Sicarii "never attached themselves to one particular family and never proclaimed any of their leaders king". Some scholars have contended that Judas Iscariot was himself a Sicarii although there are debates on which period the Sicarii became significant in. <br />
<b><br />
The New Testament - A Contested History</b><br />
<br />
The historical accuracy of portions of the New Testament is very hard to establish. It took quite a while for the New Testament canon to be assembled; dating of authorship is spread over a fairly large period and we have good evidence that some parts of the New Testament are likely to have been inserted at a later date. Many of the individuals in the New Testament might be allegorical. For instance, some scholars contend that Judas Iscariot means "Jew from the township". Suffice it to say that a conclusive determination is impossible, but some of the interpretations are interesting.<br />
<br />
Based on the associations with the Zealots and Sicarii and some information from the New Testament itself, some scholars believe that Christianity may have been far more insurrectionary than the portrait we now find. Among the various quotes from the New Testament that point to a possible insurrectionary history is the famous quote of Jesus from Matthew 10:34: "I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword". In Luke he says: "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one." Also in Luke we hear Jesus proclaim: "I came to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already ablaze." [1]<br />
<br />
Just as the Zealots were not averse to the expropriation of capital, we also see vestiges of class war in the New Testament. In Luke again we find "Damn you rich! You already have your consolation. Damn you who are well-fed now! You will know hunger. Damn you who laugh now! You will learn to weep and grieve. Damn you when everybody speaks well of you! Recall that their ancestors treated the phony prophets the same way. " [1]<br />
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Although these quotes come from the canonical gospels, they are viewed by the majority of biblical scholars as being from the Q Manuscript, which is believed to have been one of the common sources for Matthew and Luke. Q would have been a radical gospel indeed, even if it was more meek than some of the radical ideas which would have been circulating around Galilee at the time. The modern polite and obsequious versions of Christianity are at least partially the result of alterations by Hellenic and Roman Christians in later years and many of those changes would have been quite conservative. <br />
<br />
It is clear that the religions of Christianity and modern Judaism actually arose in the crucible of insurrection, even if their current forms have been moulded to buttress established power structures. Perhaps the "reason for the season" should have less to do with pious proclamations of spirituality and financial over-extension and more to do with radical change and disruptive opposition to injustice.<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[1] The complete Gospels, Robert J. Miller, Editor, Polebridge Press, 1992</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[2] History of the Jewish People, Hayim Ben-Sasson, Harvard University Press, 1985</span></div>Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-92062428647826485832011-03-15T01:32:00.000-07:002011-12-24T14:07:49.234-08:00The Risks of Nuclear<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The recent explosion and now likely meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant run by TEPCO has generated a lot of press and re-sparked the debate on nuclear safety. This is an especially important discussion in the present period as many countries throughout the world are currently assessing which potential alternatives to natural gas can serve as feasible replacements.<br />
<br />
The current reactor design is a BWR-type reactor which uses light water as a coolant. While it share some basic features with the notorious Chernobyl RMBK plant, it also has important differences. In addition to the RMBK's many mis-features which lead to the famous accident, RMBK also suffered from an almost complete lack of passive safety systems. It even lacked a primary containment vessel for the reactor. When it exploded it shot flaming graphite and radioactive products into the atmosphere which spread over a wide area - a seriously catastrophic event. <br />
<br />
Because of the existence of a primary containment vessel, under normal conditions the design at Fukushima should keep even a complete meltdown from causing a serious radiation danger to the public, much in the same way the Three Mile Island reactor was able to do. However, the conditions that the reactor has so far encountered are not particularly normal. After a 9.0 earthquake, it's very difficult to be sure if your design is going to act in the way you intended. <br />
<br />
Which leads us to the primary difficulty which has plagued the Fukushima reactor. The reactor design relies critically on an active coolant system. I have read in several places where people have wondered why the reactor wasn't scrammed (scramming means implementing emergency shutdown procedures). In fact it was scrammed. The problem is that it takes a long time to cool down. During this entire cool-off period, one needs to be flowing coolant past the core to avoid a meltdown. Unfortunately the pump system were unable to function because of a failure to power them. Without coolant the core melts and the problem becomes much more complicated and dangerous. In the worse case a complete liquification of the core could even lead to a return to criticality. This would be similar to the reactor core turning back on, except this time without the designed geometry. Essentially an uncontrolled and very difficult to control reactor. If this happens, things become much more complicated and dangerous.<br />
<br />
The assessment of safety for the Fukushima units was based on the idea that redundancy would provide sufficient safety. However, they neglected to calculate the risk of some event in which both causes were common - that the same cause of electrical failure would also knock out the generators. <br />
<br />
A passive safety coolant system should likely have been a requirement for any reactor design as this event shows. Reactors such as the Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor would not have been affected by a generator failure and would have been able to provide passive cooling for the period needed to cool the core to avoid meltdown. This would presumably lead to a greater margin of safety. <br />
<br />
However, we should still wonder whether or not if it would be safe enough. The fact that some coolant failure could lead to a meltdown and consequently a return to criticality should give pause. A worse case scenario becomes very bad indeed. <br />
<br />
There are many questions that are necessary to contemplate in evaluating the safety of various technologies. Nuclear designs as they currently stand, are somewhat peculiar compared to most of our other fuel technologies. Nuclear designs, have, per TWh proved to be extremely safe as compares other power generation technologies such as natural Gas. In Europe, nuclear is on the order of between 10 and 1000 times safer* in count of number of deaths per TWh from all causes than natural gas. <br />
<br />
Should we count Chernobyl into our calculations? How do we assess risk from cataclysmic events? The assessment of risk from low probability but potentially massive events is very difficult. Very low risks are very difficult to measure accurately since their frequency is so low that our estimates tend be dominated by guesses. <br />
<br />
In addition we need to compare the safety against other replacement technologies, or the possibilities of abandoning the technologies niche itself. In the case of nuclear power, this would be a search for baseload power replacements.<br />
<br />
When we begin to look at technologies in comparison we find that even in this tragic and improbable event in Japan natural gas has itself not been free from problems. Many people in Japan were incinerated from natural gas explosions. There were also 1800 homes washed away by a dam failure. It's not clear how many died from that, but the number is likely to be very substantial. Which energy source turns out to be more deadly under such extreme conditions will have to wait until after the scale of the nuclear threat is fully understood.<br />
<br />
Yet the nuclear power systems continue to drive more public fear. Some of this may have to do with the difficulty of providing an accurate risk assessment leaving us to guess exactly how bad things can get. When people look to the nuclear experts for opinion the best they can seem to do is say something along the lines of: We expect it will not be as bad as Chernobyl. Such statements are hardly very reassuring.<br />
<br />
The character of the particular technology itself is not irrelevant in our calculations. To take a rather less charged subject than nuclear power we can instead turn to the question of Hydro power. Hydro power deaths per TWh if taken in summation over the entire world turns out to be one of the worst offending technologies. Worse than even natural gas or coal. However, almost all of the problems with hydro occurred in impoverished third world countries. A single catastrophe in 1975 at the Banqiao Dam in China left over 20,000 dead directly from drowning and somewhere around 100,000 dead from famine and disease. <br />
<br />
No such legacy haunts Europe's dams. They have proved to be both safe and stable and hydro power in Europe deaths per TWh is effectively zero <span style="font-style: italic;">if</span> we exclude eastern Europe. A similar truth holds for nuclear power.<br />
<br />
Now we can perhaps say that large dams in Europe should be avoided on the off chance that some Typhoon or Earthquake hits - an event that while it may seem improbable - is not impossible. Since the potential death tolls would be tremendous, it's not totally unreasonable to overestimate the probability in order to provide some buffer of safety for ourselves.<br />
<br />
However, this same reasoning should not cause us to avoid micro hydro power, since the possibility of massive disasters from a small water turbine is impossible to imagine (though some deaths would not be impossible). Similarly, it should not be the case that we reject all nuclear power based on specific applications of the technology in specific circumstances. The evaluations of the worst case scenarios need to be made on the basis of the implementation.<br />
<br />
In order to understand nuclear safety, or the lack thereof, it helps to go back a bit in time to the creation of the US nuclear programme to see why we have the reactors that we do. <br />
<br />
Light water reactors are not by any means the only type of reactor. During the course of development there were a large range of reactors which were tested. The number of types now in operation is much less diverse than when nuclear power was in its infancy. <br />
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One might suppose that this was because we have settled on what are effectively the most safe and reliable nuclear reactors with the best characteristics. Unfortunately, to assume this would be to assume wrongly.<br />
<br />
The development of nuclear power has been closely coupled with the desire to develop nuclear weapons. Without understanding this fact it's impossible to understand the direction of nuclear development.<br />
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Several designs for nuclear reactors, including one of the first, the AHR (Aqueous Homogeneous Reactor) and a later design based on similar ideas, the MSR (Molten Salt Reactor) were dropped despite the fact that they had achieved similar potential viability as a comercial reactor technology to the now popular LWR (Light Water Reactors). Some of these designs were considered so safe that universities were given licenses to operate them for the generation of isotopes or neutron flux for experiments.<br />
<br />
These reactors had many potential advantages including intrinsic passive safety features. They allowed designs ranging from the truly tiny, around .05MW up to large scale reactors, around 1GW. These designs allowed cheaper fuel production, since they used a fuel slurry, liquid or aqueous suspension, rather than complicated metal cladded fuel pellets. Most surprisingly, they also allowed arbitrarily high burnup of the nuclear fuel. <br />
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In a standard LWR, one can expect somewhere around 5% of the fissile material to be used. In some of the most sophisticated high temperature reactors that have been operated, solid core configurations can reach 20%. The end result of these low burnups are high production of waste, and low efficiency in the use of fuel. If you can exceed 99% then you are potentially producing very little waste. <br />
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Liquid reactors are also able to evacuate Xenon 135 by bubbling it out of the core. The Chernobyl accident was exacerbated by a lack of primary containment. However, the initial instability was due to a build up a of the neutron poison, Xe-135. This element stops neutrons in the chain reaction as its absorption profile is enormous compared to anything else. Nuclear fission can cause a buildup in a solid fuel leading to a sudden drop in neutrons. However, when the Xe-135 decays one can find a sudden return to neutrons and a consequent heating of the reactor. Xe-135 is a major difficulty in the operation of solid fuel reactors, since they are not able to evacuate it, but must wait for decay.<br />
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If that weren't enough, these reactor types could also use Thorium as a fuel. Thorium is much more prevalent in the Earth's crust than Uranium and much more evenly distributed<br />
<br />
So why didn't the Atomic Energy Commission forge ahead with these reactor designs? As Kirschenbaum, who worked on the AHR, related, the design was rejected already in 1944 when they realised it would not produce Plutonium as quickly as the AEC wanted. The use of Thorium turns out to have been scratched for similar reasons. There is no good production pathway for Plutonium from Thorium.<br />
<br />
The AEC was dedicated, not to finding the most efficient fuel source as the "Atoms for Peace" moniker might lead one falsely to believe, but was interested in the production of weapons grade plutonium. As such it was completely dedicated to the "Plutonium economy", which included an array of LWRs and fast breeder reactors which would allow the production of large quantities for the nuclear weapons program. LWRs were to become dominant despite their lack of inherent safety features. <br />
<br />
During the 1960s, one of the great nuclear scientists, and lifelong proponent of nuclear power, Alvin Weinberg, was asked by the AEC to do safety assessments of LWR type reactors. What Weinberg and his team found in their assessments caused them some distress. The LWR designs indeed had very serious safety deficiencies. Weinberg then began attempting to warn the industry and the AEC about the shortcomings in the designs. <br />
<br />
Eventually, Weinberg was sidelined. US Senator Chet Holifield, a proponent of the "Plutonium Economy", famously said: "Alvin, if you are concerned about the safety of reactors, then I think it might be time for you to leave nuclear energy."<br />
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Whether or not nuclear power should take centre stage, be a bit player, or not even make the cut is a question that can't be answered easily. As for myself, I'm sympathetic towards nuclear power as a fuel source for a world that will need ever more energy. The question of course, requires a careful evaluation of the options and the associated costs of these options. <br />
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In the last analysis however, more important even than this careful analysis of our options, are the following two points:<br />
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There is only one all important factor in which energy source we use, and that is humans. It isn't how much the plant cost and it isn't about the strict conversion efficiencies of thermal energy to electric or any other such technical parameter. It simply matters if it will improve or disimprove our lives compared to not using it.<br />
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Lastly, what makes the most sense from this perspective is irrelevant if we haven't the power to make it happen. As we see clearly with the choice to develop LWR technology, those with the power call the shots. If we want the over-riding important factor to be how things impact people, the people are going to need a lot more power. <br />
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* Figures for deaths per TWh are from ExternE, and modified to include some of the most pessimistic estimates for Chernobyl</div>Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-43468114813867239582011-03-08T09:44:00.001-08:002011-12-24T14:08:12.323-08:00Knowledge Production as a Public Good<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Recently, I've read through a number of proposals regarding systematic attempts to allocate labour in a post-capitalist society. Most of these share the common feature that they don't attempt to look in detail at true public goods. With a knowledge economy that is becoming an extremely large part of our overall productivity, I think this is an oversight which should be corrected. <br />
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In addition, there is a belief by many that open-source approaches can directly solve the problem even within a capitalist system. However, open-source suffers from a number of deficiencies. It does not demonstrate the ability to support the labour of people involved by providing them with livelihoods. It fails at providing necessary resources in the case of more capital intensive knowledge production, for instance chemistry, genetics, hardware manufacture or even cinema. It also is weak at signaling when labour is widely desired. This leads to a tendency to be hobbyist focused, being as it is only supported as a recreation, and not focused on providing the greatest public good.<br />
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A perfect public good is non-rival and non-excludable. A non-rival good means I can use it, and you can use it and neither of us experience any loss at the others use. Television and radio are examples of perfect non-rival goods. Internet tends towards being an imperfect, as do roads etc. Non-excludable means that it's not possible to keep you from using it. Street lights [1] are good examples of something which is very hard to exclude people from using. Knowledge naturally fits into this category provided we drop things like copyright and patent. Copyright and patent are designed in order to make a non-rival good appear to be a rival good by generating exclusion through the use of legal force. <br />
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In terms of efficiency the use of exclusionary force is purely a drag on the efficiency of the entire system. The drag on efficiency is partly due to the fact that it requires labour for enforcement - a judicial system, legal teams, police, methods of tracking use, incarceration or the levying of fines, the generation of DRM technologies, including software and specialised hardware - all of which do nothing useful (in fact they have negative use-value). In addition this enforcement has the extremely deleterious effect of reducing the free spread of useful information and concepts which can make production processes more efficient. In software and hardware there are huge levels of redundancy of research and "clean-room" designs done for no other purpose than to avoid patent suits. A new more efficient process will be kept intentionally limited in application in order to derive monopoly rents. Just looking at the list puts me in awe at the absurd inefficiencies of the capitalist system. <br />
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It's much more sensible in a post-capitalist society to treat these goods very differently. Since there is no (sensible) rivalry it doesn't make sense to try and charge some price for it. Still, in the immediate future it's not going to be possible for everyone to devote all their labour time to poetry or films. If these types of knowledge production draw voluntary labour to an extent that other basic goods production is not taking place, we need some way to see that this is happening. <br />
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Even if all labour were allocated voluntarily it would be exceedingly useful to see where labour was most appreciated to society - so unless we really and truly get to a post-scarcity society - it makes sense to worry about this.<br />
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The amount of resources that should be allocated for a piece of software, film, research and development or some other information based good is insanely hard to calculate. It requires knowing its labour cost, divide total popularity over all time - which is essentially impossible. We can however guess that the labour equivalent for a Michael Jackson song should probably be a microsecond of labour devoted from each of Michael's fan base. However, at the time of production it's entirely impossible to know this, since there is no way to know the amount of labour society would eventually like to devote. Indeed as time passes Michael Jackson's music may not reduce in popularity. Perhaps even more extreme, what value would we assign towards Newton's research into forces in physics?<br />
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If we want these sorts of endeavours to be supported beyond recreational labour and easily acquired resources*, then it makes sense to fund them socially. Past performance is no guarantee of future success, but it is some indicator. Social allocation could be described by looking at such performance.<br />
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Publicly funded information production is often done in a very monolithic fashion (but then so is private funding of films and bands in the main part). However, this need not be the case. The National Science Foundation for instance gives out grants to various institutions on the basis of evaluated past performance. It is conceivable that we could structure such an arts council and software council to do likewise.<br />
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The allocation of public funding itself might not be dictated by a board of experts as done with the NSF. It might be a delegated ministry of art/software etc, or it might even be possible to have a vote style infrastructure - which would allow people to describe the amount of their socially devoted production that should be alloted to various social goods.<br />
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The output of such an enterprise would not have to be policed in terms of consumption, but would literally be free access. By doing so it should be easier to institute methods of tracking the consumption as there is little incentive to avoid doing so. A post-capitalist youtube for instance would give good information about the number and multiplicity of views of a music video. Though it's impossible to account perfectly, and there are ways at avoidance of such, there is little incentive on the part of consumers to do so. <br />
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Because resources for institutions would be in some way tied to a reputation based on consumption, there *would* be some incentive for individuals who wanted to inflate their social importance to mislead. However, since there is no longer any reason for public funding of infrastructure like cinemas, youtube, or software repositories to have any connection with the content producers themselves, it's likely that it would be institutionally difficult to do so. <br />
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It's important to remember that individuals would be seeking the resources for necessary capital infrastructure and labour time, not pursuing actual profit. The profit motive wouldn't be a driving motivation in this scenario, even if it would likely drive certain individuals towards the reproduction of their status as reliable producers.<br />
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There are many possible ways of arranging knowledge production more cooperatively that could be explored as long as we keep in mind some basic facts: <br />
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1) Public goods are very difficult to value accurately even in a system of perfect information as they require knowledge from the future. Therefor no systematic approach is going to be perfect. <br />
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2) Public goods should not be treated like other rival-goods in almost any conceivable system of accounting. We should not create rival goods from non-rival goods by wasting resources simply so that they look like other goods. <br />
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When we work with knowledge, we should keep in mind that the model needs to be cut to fit the reality rather than the reverse.<br />
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* Think of the amount of time and physical resources devoted to Avatar or Water World for instance, and you can see the difficulty of arranging some types of knowledge production on an entirely ad hoc basis.<br />
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[1] Street Lamps were mentioned as a non-excludable public good by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9sar_De_Paepe">César De Paepe</a> in his arguments with the Proudhonists.</div>Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-42195320125685809502011-02-19T05:48:00.001-08:002011-03-07T06:07:24.088-08:00How Violence Protects the State<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-JZd-8U6cMcfXojuxSMrvBXYbnkBZ_FR6wQ_fjHhUKVfd-dNsAMbyhkW55T0CF0fHqvyvbzgCssq1B3mAXU9UpuZAKVYzwY40-vYLcdSui8jgMyI6jmCrwXn9jCu-3xeMTK00usNVqBc/s1600/students.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 256px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-JZd-8U6cMcfXojuxSMrvBXYbnkBZ_FR6wQ_fjHhUKVfd-dNsAMbyhkW55T0CF0fHqvyvbzgCssq1B3mAXU9UpuZAKVYzwY40-vYLcdSui8jgMyI6jmCrwXn9jCu-3xeMTK00usNVqBc/s320/students.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5575399801730507970" /></a><br />Recently, due to the Egyptian and Tunisian revolution there has been a lot of discussion on the question of violence versus non-violence. Because of this discussion of the use of various tactics Gelderloos' book "How non-violence protects the state" has been brought up as an antidote to those who view non-violence or pacifism as the sole legitimate tactic.<br /><br />It might seem than that such a text would be useful. However, the argument provided by Gelderloos, aside from declaring that violence is sometimes a legitimate tactic, fails to explain to us the dynamics which should guide our thinking about the use of violence. <br /><br />Generally non-violent approaches are preferable to violent ones for a host of reasons. These include the ability to maintain the "moral high-ground" which can be extremely useful from a PR perspective. They are less likely to carry as heavy a legal burden as non-violent actions. It also has to be remembered that extremely violent revolutions tend to socialise violence, which itself creates long standing difficulties and cycles of violence in a population that was hoping for a positive transformation.<br /><br />Gelderloos does not view violence with the respect of one who understands its potential ramifications but instead tends to ignore the dangers. <br /><br /><blockquote><br />We are advocates of a diversity of tactics, meaning effective combinations drawn from a full range of tactics that might lead to liberation from all the components of this oppressive system: white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and the state. We believe that tactics should be chosen to fit the particular situation, not drawn from a preconceived moral code. We also tend to believe that means are reflected in the ends, and would not want to act in a way that invariably would lead to dictatorship or some other form of society that does not respect life and freedom.</blockquote> <br /><br />I agree fully with the sentiment expressed within this paragraph. However, the critical question at issue is the word "effective" and how we are to determine such. <br /><br />While he continually vacillates using ideas such as the diversity of tactics, he clearly views non-violence as fundamentally inferior as a tactic. The list of chapter titles gives a taste of the extent to which Gelderloos does so: nonviolence is ineffective, nonviolence is racist, nonviolence is statist, nonviolence is patriarchal, nonviolence is tactically and strategically inferior, and nonviolence is deluded.<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />At odds with science</span><br /><br />That Gelderloos understands much about the dynamics of violence is dubious. He makes the following assertion unsupported by any evidence whatsoever: <br /><br /><blockquote>It is vague, meaningless, and ultimately untrue to say that violence always produces certain psychological patterns and social relationships.</blockquote> <br /><br />Unfortunately science is not on Gelderloos' side here. The impacts of violence are physiological, real and do obtain remarkably consistent patterns and impacts on social relationships. The socialisation of hierarchy is in fact deeply rooted in violence and our pyscho-chemical relationships to it, altering everything from our gene expression to causing actual changes in brain structure [1]. Such a loose and dismissive wave of the hand is not at all consistent with a realistic and careful analysis of the role of violence.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">From moralism to moralism<br /></span><br />Instead of such a careful analysis of violence Gelderloos attempts to avoid the moralism of the pacifists by substituting a new moral precept.<br /><br /><blockquote><br />In other words, the concept of hierarchy has most of the analytical and moral precision that the concept of violence lacks. Therefore, to truly succeed, a liberation struggle must use any means necessary that are consistent with building a world free of coercive hierarchies.<br /></blockquote> <br /><br />The irony here is that violence in itself has shown an historical tendency to push organisations towards the hierarchical. The number of examples is huge, ranging from the Russian revolution, the Spanish civil war to the Republican paramilitaries in Ireland. One might very reasonably claim that this violence could not have been avoided, and I myself would be deeply sympathetic to this view. However I suggest a causal relationship between violence and hierarchy, leading - not deterministically or inevitably - but tendentially from the former to the later.<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Who is the revolutionary subject?</span><br /><br /><blockquote>Even if they were, who cares if the middle and upper classes are alienated by violence?</blockquote><br /><br />While this is not Gelderloos' quote, it is from the book and he evidently identifies with it. I think this quote nicely pulls to the fore one of the deep problems in his analysis. The agent of positive change is not clearly understood. A class analysis where middle class is grouped with upper class and working class is the true agent of change leaves us as some minority group - perhaps 1/3 of the population which is supposed to take on an majority. The position implicitly supports a social war of the minority using violence.<br /><br />A sensible approach to how activism should deal with violence very much needs to worry about whether the middle classes are alienated. If violence must be used to succeed than ways of stopping that alienation must be discovered. Otherwise the majority will back the state and one will be waging an inevitably failing guerrilla war against not only the state, but also the population. <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />An analysis with no explanatory power </span><br /><br />Throughout the book he attempts to show that non-violence leads to capitulation. However his attempt is really quite unconvincing since in almost every case there was a mix of violent and non-violent tactics and in no cases have we achieved full unqualified revolutionary success. Indeed that such a thing would be possible seems dubious. Instead he merely asserts that the failures are due to the dominance of non-violence and shows that the states elevation of such figures as Gandhi is evidence that they prefer it.<br /><br /><blockquote>The claim of a pacifist victory in capping the nuclear arms race is somewhat bizarre. Once again, the movement was not exclusively nonviolent; it included groups that carried out a number of bombings and other acts of sabotage or guerrilla warfare. And, again, the victory is a dubious one. The much-ignored nonproliferation treaties only came after the arms race had already been won, with the US as undisputed nuclear hegemon in possession of more nuclear weapons than was even practical or useful. And it seems clear that proliferation continues as needed, currently in the form of tactical nuke development and a new wave of proposed nuclear power facilities. Really, the entire issue seems to have been settled more as a matter of internal policy within the government than as a conflict between a social movement and a government.</blockquote><br /><br />First, the claim that this was an internal matter and not a consequence of social movements is absurd. The cost, difficulty and subsequent retreat from making nuclear power plants in the US because of social movements is well documented [2]. Secondly if it used both violent and non-violent tactics how can we attribute to the failure to non-violence?<br /><br />What we need is some theory of the dynamics with some explanatory power so we can state clearly a thesis regardings when it is likely to work and when it is likely to fail. A book which seeks to have an explanation of violence is hardly worth anything but the simple platitude that absolute pacifism is unwarranted if it can not supply such an analysis. <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />The strategy of tension <br /></span><br />The state in fact uses violence not only to defend itself but also to legitimate its own violence and repression against the people by engaging in false-flag and provocateur actions. Recently activists have documented a large number of cases of provocateurs everywhere from the police in Toronto to Brendan Darby. <br /><br />A much more careful analysis of how the state can use violence to legitimate repression is given by Victor Serge [4]. This text is essentially a real case study of a conflict with an immensely repressive state - the Russian czarist regime. In it Serge details the methods by which the state acted as provocateur to draw out militants and eliminate them.<br /><br />These actual examples, over a wide span of history, show that the state is interested very often in inducing violent actions in order to justify repression against social movements. <br /><br />This understanding that violence could justify repression was used on an epic scale in Europe in the strategy of tension [5]. Funding everything from assassinations to bombings - these actions helped to create a wedge between the general public and left groups in Italy and Turkey that was in fact quite successful. <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />How violence can overcome the state </span><br /><br />The dynamics of violence with respect to the view of that violence's legitimacy as a class activity in light of actual balance of forces is must be central to a theory of violence. This is what is lacking in Gelderloos' work and what is required to understand how violence actually can be used as an effective weapon against the state.<br /><br />What do I mean by this? The class as an actor in revolutionary change and its self-assertion of legitimacy, its claim on sovereignty and its willingness to dissolve, sweep aside and smash the remaining state is in fact what should be the core interest of revolutionaries. If violence is to be used it must in fact appear legitimate to the class. <br />As Abraham Guillen puts it quite well in his book on the Philosophy of the Urban Guerrilla [6]:<br /><br /><blockquote> <br />In revolutionary war any guerrilla action that needs explaining to the people is politically useless: it should be meaningful and convincing by itself. To kill an ordinary soldier in reprisal for the assassination of a guerrilla is to descend to the same political level as a reactionary army. Far better to create a martyr and thereby attract mass sympathy than to lose or neutralise popular support by senseless killings without an evident political goal. To be victorious in a people's war one has to act in conformity with the interests, sentiments and will of the people. A military victory is worthless if it fails to be politically convincing. <br /></blockquote><br /><br />We see in almost every successful revolution in history that the state suffers a serious blow to its legitimacy. The public no longer view it as a legitimate authority. The ability of the security services to effectively act in the states interest erodes. If at this stage the public is able to construct counter-institutions which provide a new legitimate force we have the capacity for real revolution. It's critical that violence play its role subordinate to our understanding of the absolute requirement of carrying forward a legitimate claim to power of the working class themselves.<br /><br />In the current climate, with the rise in the popularity of Gene Sharp's Albert Einstein Institute and his non-violent tactics designed to protect American imperial interests and the recent history of the colour revolutions we are indeed in need of a theory of revolutionary violence. Unfortunately, I think Gelderloos' book strikes quite far from the mark of such a theory.<br /><br />[1] Peter Gelderloos, How Nonviolence Protects the State<br />[2] <a href="http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/ptsd/content/article/10168/1727751">Biological Consequences and Transgenerational Impact of Violence and Abuse</a><br />[3] Critical Masses: Opposition to Nuclear Power in California, 1958-1978, by Thomas Raymond Wellock. The University of Wisconsin Press, 1998. xi, 333 pp.<br />[4] <a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/serge/1926/repression/index.htm">What everyone should know about repression</a><br />[5] Daniele Ganser, NATO's Secret Armies. Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, Frank Cass, London, 2005. <br />[6] Philosophy of the Urban Guerilla, Abraham GuillenGavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-88815558175208540422011-02-02T06:18:00.000-08:002011-12-24T14:08:33.545-08:00The Alienation From Democracy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXinV9O4pbJRehL59VdrXgXwfeVKh6iLpsmXc2t9alrJd0dqaRACOz9or5zocH4aDpkQGuMH8xsbB67HfLDCRNIoQ1XBhM1X7Lq2o2-5UgGMuonzhsdsMwYvGCBIwhu2hngLlLgPt5uRI/s1600/freedom.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5569098461706449826" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXinV9O4pbJRehL59VdrXgXwfeVKh6iLpsmXc2t9alrJd0dqaRACOz9or5zocH4aDpkQGuMH8xsbB67HfLDCRNIoQ1XBhM1X7Lq2o2-5UgGMuonzhsdsMwYvGCBIwhu2hngLlLgPt5uRI/s320/freedom.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 214px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 320px;" /></a><br />
The protests against Mubarak that are occurring as I write, represent a momentous change. The overthrow of Ben Ali as dictator of Tunisia has lit a fire in the Arab world that shows every sign of spreading. It is difficult to overstate the importance of these events. At this point, irrespective of whether or not Mubarak is forced out by a popular revolution, the Middle East will never again be the same; the balance of power has irrevocably shifted.<br />
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The courage of the Egyptian people is to be greatly admired. Standing up to a notoriously violent police force which is well known for torturing political dissidents is inspiring.<br />
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However, beyond the undoubted courage of the protesters there is something which has struck me about the demonstrations which causes me to reflect upon failings that I've seen in movements in the west of which I've been a part.<br />
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The US State Department has made clear that they would like to see an "orderly transition" in Egypt. To them this means changing as little as possible and conducting a pantomime of democracy to install a minimally altered regime.<br />
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When two million Egyptian people were out in the streets calling for Mubarak to step down, and he was claiming that elections would be held at some appointed time in the future, the thought struck me: We have been alienated from democracy.<br />
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How can the great mass of the Egyptian people be demanding democracy from a dictator? The contradiction displayed by Mubarak dictating the terms of democracy shows the system for what it has become: a tool used by power to display its own legitimacy. If the people are to be sovereign, then they must display their sovereignty.<br />
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The anti-war movement in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, with its millions of protesters in the street in countries world-wide, came right up against a very similar wall. The protests in retrospect turned out to be no more than an appeal to authorities. The US and all its allies went ahead with it despite the unpopularity. The insistence that the war go ahead despite its unpopularity was a demonstration by our authorities of where sovereignty rests. Democracy was outside ourselves.<br />
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It hasn't always been like that. In Paris, on July 13th, 1789, in the tumult of grain hoarding by the government and fears of invasion by the Kings troops, crowds formed at the city hall. They formed a standing committee and took decisions to form a militia for 48,000 men for the defence of Paris against the King.<br />
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From this standing committee, delegates were sent to gain arms from the Hôtel des Invalides from which they obtained 30 to 40k rifles. Despite the fact that the Hôtel des Invalides was guarded by armed men, they were not inclined to fire on the people of Paris. They had demonstrated their legitimacy and taken democracy to be something exercised by themselves.<br />
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Furthermore, by organising popular committees <i>and</i> by arming themselves they had demonstrated their independence from the regime. Control of the streets passed to the people and the regime could not easily reassert its dominance. In fact it never did.<br />
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It is now that the Egyptian people could be served best by creating similar constituent assemblies (or "sections" as they were called in Paris) from which to make decisions about their own destiny. The lower ranking soldiers would be faced with a choice: to side with the people or to side with the regime. Given their stance over the last week, the prospects for their siding with the people are good.</div>Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-9817664756875302852010-10-06T07:29:00.000-07:002010-11-17T04:48:34.850-08:00Anarchism and The StateThe state is a central concept in the political philosophy of Anarchism. Anarchism is often defined as being an anti-state ideology. While this is sometimes a useful way to distinguish anarchists from other state socialists it also leads to a fair bit of confusion. We will look at the source of this confusion with the aim of showing that anarchism is in its essence opposed to rulers and is not a naive or idealistic form of anti-statism.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">What is the State</span><br /><br />Anarchism emerges in Western Europe, in the dark times of the mid to late 1800s. The state is, at this time, of a quite brutal character. The welfare state is almost entirely absent. The institutions that exist are almost entirely either military in character (the police often not being distinguished from the military) or designed to adjudicate conflicts amongst the rich. While there were parliaments and courts, they served a function which is perhaps best described by James Madison:<br /><br /><blockquote>Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. </blockquote> <br /><br />Here we see expressed in no uncertain terms the role of the state as seen by the ruling class in this period. It is therefore not surprising that the content of anarchist writing in this period is preoccupied with the elimination of the state. In this context, anti-statism is clearly an opposition to an institution whose purpose is to stop the majority from having a fair share in society. <br /><br />The form of the state, has however, not stood still. The massive wave of socialism that occurred in the late 1800s and early 1900s had a transformative effect. The state found itself in a position where it had to change character in order to ensure its very survival against a revolution of the majority. Republics were made more democratic, institutions were made more egalitarian, and the welfare state was created.<br /><br />This transformation, which can perhaps be called the rise of Social Democracy has important implications as to how we conceive the state. The state of the early anarchists really is largely concerned with the <em>coercive</em> arm of the modern state. This view of the early socialists is summed up nicely by Engels: <br /><br /><blockquote>Further, in most historical states the rights conceded to citizens are graded on a property basis, whereby it is directly admitted that the state is an organization for the protection of the possessing class against the non-possessing class.</blockquote> <br /><br />The state, as describe here, is nothing more than a "special coercive force" (also Engels) meant to keep the majority from power. Anarchists generally share Madison and Engels view of the state.<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />A Difference without a Distinction?</span><br /><br />Anarchists want a radical restructuring of society along democratic lines, a democratisation of all organs of governance and importantly the productive forces of society. Because Anarchists speak favourably of democratic polity, or self governance, we are sometimes accused of playing linguistic games when we say we are opposed to the state. Yet the distinction between self-governance and the state is not arbitrary. It is a useful analytic tool that allows us to differentiate two very different states of affairs (if you'll excuse the pun).<br /><br />Weber, famously described the state as a "monopoly of violence". In fact the monopoly on violence being held collectively by a population in order to protect themselves is not something that should be opposed. Indeed the Anarchists during the Spanish revolution were not willing to allow the fascists to run about with armed forces in Madrid and Catalonia. This is hardly surprising, but it has sometimes been used to show that anarchists are actually statists. Under this definition of statism, they in fact would have to be classified as such. <br /><br />This description of the state, is however of almost no value at all. The types of situation that fit "statelessness" in this description of the state are places like Iceland in 1000 or recent Somalia. They tend to be enormously violent, and are not generally considered desirable by anyone (save some really strange Anarcho-Capitalist types). <br /><br />Anarchists are not opposed to the wielding of power as long as it is done collectively, with an absence of a ruling class, and in an inclusive society. The definition of state as given by Engels lets us clearly distinguish a situation in which we [the working class] are collectively guiding the development of society, from a situation of tyranny, guided by a limited "opulent" minority. <br /><br />The many forms of state socialism are without this analytic distinction, and to their great detriment. They find themselves unable to distinguish the seizure of the coercive arm of the state by a cadre of self described socialists who then declare a workers state, from the real development of a free inclusive and socialist self rule.<br /><br />The anarchist definition of the state is therefore concerned with the functionality. If it is democratic, inclusive, accumulation has been abolished and the productive forces are wielded democratically, it is a system of self-governance. If it is not, it is still a state. <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />What Lies Beyond</span><br /><br />The state in modern form is no longer merely a coercive force intent on guarding the accumulation of the wealthy, and the institutions that they hold. It is far more democratic now than it was in the past, and has all sorts of auxiliary institutions that serve the interests of the majority including everything from mass transit to the dole. <br /><br />So when anarchists say they want to eliminate the state, what can they mean? Are they intent on destroying our social welfare programs? Is the military industrial complex and health care all in the same class, both being equally reprehensible? Such an analysis would rightly be viewed as absurd by most people. <br /><br />The mechanism of transformation of the early republics towards social democracy in the 20th century was largely the result of the majority of people organising in unions and other mass organisations and forcing concessions from the state. They fought, through strike and other means, for the franchise, democracy, the 8 hour day, the 40 hour week, the social programs that we know today and many things besides. <br /><br />It is this expression of our own power, a power of people when organised amongst themselves that we are able to build the institutions of the new society. The mass movement of people, in opposition to the ruling class, is both the means and the ends. It is not just the mechanism by which democracy will come into being, it is itself inchoate democracy. The softening of the state was a transformation wrought by this power. <br /><br />The knowledge of self-organisation, of how to cooperate amongst ourselves, has been heavily eroded since the 1970s. Indeed, we face a situation where the state hopes to recede from the costly social welfare programs that were necessary concessions in former times. Times in which radical unions and a strong working class were present. It may succeed in doing so if the populace finds itself unable to muster forces. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">What Might We Do?</span><br /><br />It is imperative that we work to ensure that we don't lose further ground, but push forward until the state is truly laid to rest for good. Concretely, this should mean retaking or remaking organisations that represent us in such that they reflect the things that matter to us now. <br /><br />Democratic reforms were a big part of what socialists called for in the early part of last century. As those were given, the call for democracy receded into the background, while calls for wages remained. <br /><br />While clearly many people among the working poor, which constitutes up to a 1/3 of the population, are concerned with wages, as they should be, many wage earners are fairly comfortable. Instead, they are worried about other issues, such as official corruption, education, the environment and human rights. Recognising this change is important if we are to find a way to cooperate with each other to move forward. <br /><br />The most powerful tool that we as wage earners posses is our work. We are able to withdraw our labour. If we want to see a real impact on areas such as human rights and the environment, we should not look to the ruling class to do it for us. We should not focus our time on appeals to justice, to a ruling class which have shown themselves fixated on war and hardly lift a finger for the environment. <br /><br />Instead we should be using the power we have to ensure that it takes place. If a company is polluting, its employees could bring it to a halt. If a company is supplying arms or material assistance to those who violate rights, they can be brought to account. In other words, democratic assemblies of workers can help to bring about the changes we want to see, and in doing so, make the society itself more democratic.<br /><br />It is up to ourselves to create these organs, or to transform what exists already into a form that this is possible. If we don't do it ourselves, it will not be done.Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-20717420791978700622010-10-06T07:19:00.000-07:002010-10-08T06:26:25.823-07:00Where we are<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdyw4OBoZAqSo4Nw-1lALfCjZNQzNvyxo2MDBXD6ASUFKnkrhpXdI-VeZmVLh5qqbUIbPKd4Im4veT62_pYWZuERtttL1lkzZzFw8xSzxj7bVpK8iH6_Oxk9KN9mLmGTCIPxzf0YKf3Do/s1600/signpost.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdyw4OBoZAqSo4Nw-1lALfCjZNQzNvyxo2MDBXD6ASUFKnkrhpXdI-VeZmVLh5qqbUIbPKd4Im4veT62_pYWZuERtttL1lkzZzFw8xSzxj7bVpK8iH6_Oxk9KN9mLmGTCIPxzf0YKf3Do/s320/signpost.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524939456878532018" /></a><br />The Irish political landscape is dominated by three political parties. Of the three political parties only the Labour party purports to anything approaching an ideological stance and this is quite weak and malleable. Instead the political establishment functions on a sort of patronage system. Politicians function essentially as technocrats, attempting to maximise their outcomes in elections. In practice this comes down to a simple calculation: who is capable of giving the most support or trouble and what do they want. The end outcome of this is that the largest monetary interests can quickly dominate political decisions. <br /><br />The current economic situation in Ireland is bleak. Between 80 and 90 billion euro are expected to be poured into a failing banking sector. This sector which experienced a huge boom during the years of the Celtic Tiger, now has its losses being covered by public funds. Due to this huge transfer of wealth from public to private hands, the Irish Republic's credit rating was downgraded from AA to AA- reflecting the fear of even greater spending on the banks. <br /><br />The crisis results from a chain of events going back to the early 1990s. During this period the Irish government took a policy of creating conditions extremely favourable to foreign direct investment. This included extremely low corporate taxes and very lax financial regulations. This policy had the intended affect of increasing foreign direct investment, especially from US and UK companies. <br /><br />By the late 1990s the success of this policy had caused immigration to climb and emigration to decline to the extent that the net population was increasing [1]. At the same time, land in Ireland was monopolised by a fairly small number of wealthy landowners and this conspired with rising demand to produce a housing price boom. While some measures were taken in terms of tax restructuring, the political establishment, being beholden to the immediate economic interests of their patrons, did little to change the course. The ability to allocate land development by County Councillors became a valuable asset and helped reinforce the interest in political sponsorship by developers and bankers.<br /><br />By 2001 the Foreign Direct Investment cooled as a result of the Dotcom crash [2] and by 2005 was strongly negative. The property market became the most desirable place to invest funds and not just for the extremely wealthy. The professional classes and those who made significant enough incomes to obtain bank loans also attempted to cash in on the fantastic rise in property prices. The fact that the wealthy, the intelligentsia and the professionals had, themselves, largely become invested in property meant that all parties had an interest in a rise in property price value.<br /><br />Of course it is now well known that the meteoric rise in property prices was a bubble, leading to the current situation where there are over 300,000 [3] unoccupied houses and where the housing market has collapsed with prices falling by about 40% with no sign of abating. Of course, other industries of importance exist in Ireland outside of property: everything from medical devices and pharmaceuticals to airlines. Some of the very richest have even managed to maintain their fortunes by having diverse assets in countries less affected by the decline. However, the richest 250 in Ireland lost €43.7 billion to make their total worth approximately €41.7 billion [4]. This is, by any measure, a rather staggering loss.<br /><br />The wealthiest have quite predictably focused on retaining the value that they have left. The National Assets Management Association (NAMA) is part of this strategy, as it not only helps failing banks to move rapidly falling assets off the books, it also avoids a glut of property entering the market all at once as the result of bankrupt banks. Raising the funds necessary for the bank bailouts requires massive cuts to the public budget which would attack services, wages and jobs. The programme has been widely sold as being a necessary social cost with such slogans as "we are all in this together".<br /><br />The real opportunities for the rich in Ireland to jump-start the economy are, in fact, quite limited. Talks of Keynesian programmes, regardless of whether they are desirable, are completely infeasible. The domestic economy is simply too small. The banks are beholden to foreign bond investors and there is no local currency which can be devalued to fund such an endeavour. This means that the only feasible line of action is falling in line with international investors and the European banks, specifically the Germans. Practically this means a programme of austerity. With the continuing need for bank bailouts, the realisation that the property market has not ceased to sink and the ever increasing dole queues - This austerity programme will have to be quite deep indeed.<br /><br />At the same time the political establishment which supports the extremely wealthy has become quite brittle. In the polls, the political fortunes have wavered wildly. For a short time the Labour party was the largest party in Ireland, an historic first, only to recede again. A poll conducted by the Sunday Independent showed that 51% of respondents said that a new political party is needed in Ireland [5]. Clearly there is discontent, but none of the political parties can make a strong case for a better direction then the one already being carried out.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Where we want to be</span><br /><br />Our task is to create a new inclusive and democratic approach to politics which eliminates gross economic inequalities. This approach must provide us with the tools to deal with the global environmental problems. It will require an egalitarian system with a scale capable of dealing with the scale of our environmental and economic problems. A social system which scales from the very local to the global with the principle that each decision be made at the most local competent authority for that decision. In the immediate term it is too difficult to tell concretely how such a thing will be carried out as it is both too far in the future and we have not had sufficient success at a smaller scale to know what will be possible. But we must keep this vision in mind in order to know at least the vague direction in which we are to move.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Working backward</span><br /><br />Working backward from this end goal to what might plausibly proceed it, it is evident that such a restructuring will require a region with sufficient economic muscle to avoid being decimated by the whims of international markets. The region will need the strength to display some level of leverage over other players who do not share the same vision. The possibility of a simultaneous world restructuring is just too far fetched to be believable. It will necessarily happen in stages of unfolding - even if it happens quite quickly.<br /><br />From our perspective, being in Europe, it is most sensible to focus on the European region, with an eye to changing this first and quickly extending it to those movements most parallel in the global south. We therefor need to aim to at least capture the imagination of Europe and use this as a base from which to move forward. Moving beyond Europe will require a very international vision embedded deep within the project such that the movement is not retarded by Euro-centric currents. The concepts of human rights, anti-war sentiment and the environment, all of which are necessarily global, are the principles most likely to engender such a world encompassing view.<br /><br />The project of a popular democratic and egalitarian restructuring of Europe is an old one. However, some things have changed in our favour. The European state, while weak, creates an apparatus which we can use as a locus. It is a point on which demands can be placed, and it represents the most likely organ through which any concerted effort by the European wealthy to stop a popular progressive movement will be exercised. Already legal battles against workers are being elevated to the EU institutions, a move which seeks to avoid the inconveniences presented by the more democratic and less technocratic national political systems and to avoid coming into conflict with national movements. <br /><br />A concerted attempt to remove the reins from the European elite, however, can not yet be done as the idea to do so is not yet present in the general population. An alternative European vision has not been offered and not many practical steps have been made in this direction.<br /><br />European level solidarity for trade unions has been far and few between. This is partially because of the very different legal climates in which they operate and partly because a lack of vision. In fact the activist alter-globalisation movements have been much more international in both vision and practice. <br /><br />In Ireland the unions have been in retreat since around the time of Thatcher. The steady decline of industrial action in Ireland has been very marked culminating in a near total stop by the early 90s [6]. At the same time the density of the unions in the work place has declined and shifted quite heavily to the regions most easy to organise, especially the public sector.<br /><br />In our immediate period, in Ireland with unemployment at 13% and rising, unions become a generally less powerful option. The fear of joblessness and imminent replaceability make fights against employers difficult to impossible to carry out effectively. A one legged focus on the unions in a down-turn is unlikely to reap much in the way of immediate benefits. As such there is a need for a broader approach.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Our tasks</span><br /><br />The process of the decaying legitimacy of the Irish political establishment will have some endpoint. This will result either in a re-establishment of legitimacy after some time or the displacement with some new constellation of ideas and foci of power. Ideally we would use this time to promote a new current within the intelligentsia which would promote an agenda of equality - rather than allow this vacuum to be filled with other ideas.<br /><br />A recent poll by TASC showed that 87% of the people surveyed believed there was too much economic inequality in Ireland. Nearly half believed that there should be a maximum wage. Such revelations are quite shocking when one thinks about how dominant the current economic programme is imagined to be.<br /><br />In order to make a progressive movement successful in Ireland, it will be necessary to achieve some concessions. In order to capture the national imagination, they will have to be national in scale. While a fight in the trade unions can stave off wage decreases it has proved to result in very little support outside of the trade unions, which no longer carry the sort of general legitimacy in the population that they once did. While the trade unions will be a necessary ally and therefore need to be convinced of any programme to move forward, we will need a broader scale for a successful movement on the scale of Ireland. The alternatives would be to both reduce unemployment and increase union density significantly or to change perceptions of the trade unions in the general population. Those later alternatives are likely to be larger hurdles.<br /><br />The wealthy can not avoid attacking the conditions of the majority of the population if they are to protect their winnings and there are few financial solutions to our predicament: we are still beholden to international capital investment and must keep multinational corporations by keeping corporate tax competitive. It seems therefor that any progressive movement will have to come squarely on the side of dispossessing the native rich of some of their assets. How this dispossession happens concretely is hard to foretell because we have only a weak grasp of what is possible given our lack of information about attitudes.<br /><br />In general resistance to the cuts have often been only reactive, choosing to fight each attack as it comes. Waiting for the axe to fall in the current situation and then trying to fight each cut individually will be a losing battle. It will be much easier for the political establishment to divide people against each other, each group fighting in the hopes of getting their own concessions. Even worse, waiting around allows arguments that if stated in juxtaposition to reasonable solutions, would be irrelevant. Anti-immigrant sentiment and attacks on the weakest sections of society are often enticing to the middle sections of society when under pressure, as they can see clearly that a moderate push can shift the burden further down, without having to come into conflict with the political establishment. Much better would be to take an offensive stance and attempt to side-step these divisions as much as possible.<br /><br />As a supposition, a movement for a wealth tax or wealth max seems a sensible demand on which to pitch battle. It seems a reasonable option to many and it would not be too far fetched to believe that it could be implemented. A restructuring of income tax would not be capable of raising very significant funds and would be quite hard and expensive to assess. Property tax is too indiscriminate in its application and would make suffer many who are nominally owners of expensive properties, but which are not presently salable. In addition it is not really possible even in principle to value land in the current climate with the tremendous rate of decline and it would not be popular with many in the sociologically middle class. A wealth tax could start with the richest and work its way down - incurring an overhead that was not too great in proportion to the funds which could be appropriated. In addition it may be largely ignored by international investors, as it does not affect corporate profits. This could insulate such a movement from too direct interference before the movement was capable of weathering it.<br /><br />The implementation of such a tax would need to be looked at in detail. In order to be successful it would need to avoid conflict with the small enterprises such as rural pubs and the like which might have nominally large assets but fairly small revenues. If it negatively impacts people who do not seem rich to their neighbors and who are influential, it could likely be defeated as unfair. Research into an appropriate scaling of cut-off would need to be done in order to ensure that the majority of the population was not only in favour, but could be convinced that action was necessary.<br /><br />While it is true that giving over funds from the richest to the incompetent political regime might seem a hollow victory, it will provide a modicum of protection to the working class from some of the cuts. More importantly it would attack the logic of the assault which hinges on the premise that there are no alternative to diminishing conditions for the general population. If deeper cuts are sought, deeper taxation might be forced into effect which could lead to a chain reaction. A wealth tax would "place the tail of the snake in its mouth". If successfully achieved, a deepening of cuts could cause the burden to fall more greatly on the wealthy.<br /><br />A democratisation of corporate management should also be advocated. This on the basis that the current economic crisis is at least partly due to a failure of accountability by those in charge of the allocation of investment. The massive over-production of housing and the over-heating of the property market at the cost of investment in other projects much more important to the health of the economy are strong indicators that another direction should be taken. This demand is quite unlikely to be adopted as it would represent a profound break with the independence of investors from public responsibility. However it is useful in promoting the general idea which we hope eventually to implement.<br /><br />There are of course other demands and tactics which should be assessed. They should be reflected upon according to the criterion of timeliness and impulse. Timeliness means that the demands will not result in disaster if they are achieved, something which must be viewed in relation to our current position vis-á-vis the rest of Europe. The demands themselves may later become reasonable but are dependent on the environment. Demands which would cause a capital flight in the immediate period should be discouraged, though the populace is quite cognizant of the dangers of such demands and would be unlikely to accept them. The demand must also have impulse, in the sense that the satisfaction of the demand, its partial satisfaction, or indeed its failure to be satisfied should all be capable of providing a movement with momentum. Failure to achieve a maximum wealth demand in the face of a popular movement need not result in a collapse, but could be used as a further demonstration that the political regime is unresponsive and could be outlet into a more direct expropriation. Similarly, a satisfaction of a wealth maximum would in fact lead to a weakening of the ability of the wealthiest to direct policy autocratically and could start the ball rolling on further moves towards democratisation.<br /><br />An approach making use of a non-partisan volunteer organisation, seems the best vehicle through which to start such a movement. It can present itself as a reasonable political alternative, while bearing a programme which seems plausible. It need not become embroiled directly with electoral politics, but can act independently of the political consensus, while still putting pressure on it. It can avoid the competition over constituents which necessarily arises from the creation of a political party - cross cutting the usual conflicts the electoral approach presents.<br /><br />In order to gain support we can use organising techniques from union organiser models. The organiser model relies on the capacity to take quite wide grievances and direct them into a unitary solution. In the Union case this solution is a group of fellow workers deciding together on the solutions to their problems. In the case of a progressive economic movement, it should be the wide range of general benefits of equality [7] which will cover grievances relating directly to the cuts, but extends also to crime, health, education and many other factors. With careful training of volunteers and practice it should be possible to quickly develop an active base using these techniques.<br /><br />Such a volunteer organisation would have to start with quite small exercises of power. Legitimacy would be the key factor to allowing the demand to get some currency. This means that each step has to be taken with only a short lead on public perceptions. Likely the first steps will be fairly soft activities such as polls, petitions, letter writing campaigns and "equality compliance" score cards for politicians. As it becomes apparent that the politicians have no interest in actually doing what the general population wants it will be possible to move to more direct applications of power. The appropriation of unused property in conjunction with sympathetic community groups would be one possible activity. Even if it was unsuccessful, it could serve to further erode confidence in the political establishments sense of good will.<br /><br />The organisation would also need to cultivate links with prominent journalists, authors and cultural figures. Successfully achieving deep social changes, it is important that there be a network of sympathy amongst the more socially prominent. Without these people, the political establishment will find itself without a voice. The development of contacts and engendering of sympathy by presenting an alternative which is palatable is key to being able to get this group on board. People in the spotlight are unlikely to risk their reputations on something that sounds crazy - so presenting a message in the most palatable fashion is critical.<br /><br />A broader popular movement might also serve to give some teeth back to the unions. The argument that union members are simply trying to protect their own becomes harder to make if they were being spurred on by a wider group. Creating an environment in which the trade unions feel capable of acting is at least as important as their objective capacity. This is important because the capacity to withdraw labour still represents one of the greatest potential forces that the population possesses. <br /><br />At the same time we need to be looking at how to push parallel organisations in other localities. If the approach is even moderately successful, it should be possible to get some cooperation for such a movement in the UK or abroad in other areas of Europe. Replicating the model relatively quickly will be important for taking any further step - which really can not be done without a European scale - so it should not wait lest momentum be lost.<br /><br />There are no guarantees that any strategy can be made to work. The approach described here has the advantage however of being both plausible and appealing to a wide audience. It retains the core aims with an eye to the eventual goal while simultaneously putting them in a form that can be accepted by the general population and which has some chance of being achieved.<br /><br />[1] http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2007/07/28/net-migration-in-ireland/<br />[2] <br />World Bank, World Development Indicators <br />[3] Based at NUI Maynooth, Prof Rob Kitchin the Director of the State-funded academic study<br />[4] http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/specials/rich_list/article7107182.ece<br />[5] http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Is-new-political-party-in-the-works-for-Ireland-96751304.html<br />[6] http://www.lrc.ie/ViewDoc.asp?CatID=18&fn=/documents/work/statistics.htm&m=u<br />[7] http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-33489530531998952032010-10-06T07:12:00.000-07:002010-10-08T06:25:54.159-07:00Science and a Fair Society<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRx5qzZ2hdUpG7NfkeXIUoW-mvLFl3oZJp19RBIh6liiWPifZTh-vsycB3nvqnxMMESt42xWHg9xbDiBxdh-bZhkt9Zub2d0mAl559Py5eACdi60WRO248jyeT3zZw5IJbIk_EwVJEvx0/s1600/scales.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 260px; height: 170px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRx5qzZ2hdUpG7NfkeXIUoW-mvLFl3oZJp19RBIh6liiWPifZTh-vsycB3nvqnxMMESt42xWHg9xbDiBxdh-bZhkt9Zub2d0mAl559Py5eACdi60WRO248jyeT3zZw5IJbIk_EwVJEvx0/s320/scales.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524937104954113570" /></a><br />Since very early times, humans have wondered about how best to live together. What we now call political philosophy was initiated millenia ago. There have been many schools of political philosophy, many of which have given tacit support and justification of the present social order. Political philosophies of this type have always been popular with rulers, the nobility and the rich. They have for this reason enjoyed a great deal of financial and even legal support.<br /><br />However, there are also those who have sought to question whether the status quo is indeed the best manner in which humans might live together.<br /><br />In 300 CE Bao Jingyan wrote a treatise entitled "Neither Lord Nor Subject" [1]. <br /><br />"As soon as the relationship between lord and subject is established, hearts become daily more filled with evil designs, until the manacled criminals sullenly doing forced labour in the mud and the dust are full mutinous thoughts, the Sovereign trembles with anxious fear in his ancestral temple, and the people simmer with revolt in the midst of their poverty and distress; and to try to stop them revolting by means of rules and regulations, or control them by means of penalties and punishments, is like trying to dam a river in full flood with a handful of earth, or keeping the torrents of water back with one finger."<br /><br />This idea that our social structure itself is responsible for many of the conflicts that we experience has enjoyed resurgence periodically throughout history. Indeed, people are still investigating these questions.<br /><br />Science has provided us with powerful tools which allow us to systematically investigate phenomenon in the natural world. Psychology and Sociology have turned these tools towards the investigation of ourselves and how we relate to each other. Using these tools we now are in a better position to investigate these question than at any time in history.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Equality And a Healthy Society</span><br /><br />Equality has been an important feature of political thought in Europe since the Enlightenment period and gained widespread popularity during and after the French revolution.<br /><br />The republican revolutions of Europe removed the greater portion of the systems of nobility and privilege that separate people into various distinct legal classes. Feudalism is largely a thing of the past, and has been replaced with a legal equality. Over the course of the 20th century, legal equality has been extended to include nearly everyone (though citizenship is still restricted on grounds of foreign birth or sometimes even more restrictive rules about origin).<br /><br />However, there are still large material inequalities. In fact, income and wealth inequality in the US and UK has been on the rise for the last three decades.<br /><br />But why should we care? Is inequality something we should worry about or is it a good thing? Brian Griffiths, former adviser to Margaret Thatcher and an adviser for Goldman Sachs mentioned at a panel discussion in London in 2009:<br /><br />"We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,” [2]<br /><br />This is a bold thesis, however it is also one which does not stand up to scrutiny. Recently, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have gained some notoriety for a popular book, The Spirit Level [3] detailing their investigations into the question of the impact of inequality using statistical methods.<br /><br />Their findings give a staggering indictment of the above statement. In fact, increasing equality leads to huge benefits across the board. These benefits are so widespread that even some of the richest people in society benefit from the increase in equality.<br /><br />Based on the strength of the correlations between equality and improvement in social welfare a decrease of inequality by half in the UK would lead to a huge list of improvements:<br /><br />- Murder rates would halve<br />- Mental illness would reduce by two thirds<br />- Obesity would halve<br />- Imprisonment would reduce by 80%<br />- Teen births would reduce by 80%<br />- Levels of trust would increase by 85%<br /><br />Although the study has been attacked on the basis that it has derived the correlations by looking at different European countries with different social structures - effectively comparing apples and oranges - the results are so robust that extending the study to look at the various US states in terms of the economic inequality by state showed essentially the same features. It is rare that statistical studies on the scale of society are re-targeted to a new data set this way and retain so much predictive power. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Corrosion of Democracy</span><br /><br />It has been known since the time of the Athenian city-state, that large accumulations of wealth can have corrosive effects on democracy. Indeed this underlies the reasoning behind having a system of lots for many of the official positions, so as to avoid the influence that would-be oligarchs would have on the society [4].<br /><br />The ever increasing inequality in the UK and the US has lead to an erosion of what democratic principles existed. Thomas Ferguson undertook to study the impact of money on elections in the US in his book "Golden Rule" [5]. In his investigations he found that in 9 out of 10 US elections, the outcome could be predicted by campaign spending. <br /><br />Of course the impact of campaign contributions would be much less of a problem in a system in which individuals were much closer to material equality. The extraordinary inequality present in the US and UK mean that a very few people will have tremendous influence on who gets elected.<br /><br />While this means that those politicians who are most favourable to moneyed interests are much more likely to be elected, it does not necessarily prove that the money turns into policy decisions. Figuerdo Edwards’ investigation into this question showed that in fact money does buy policy. The study evaluates regulation with regards to telecommunications companies [6]. In his research he found a strong correlation between campaign contributions by telecom companies and favourable policy decisions made in proportion to the contributions given.<br /><br />Democracy becomes little more than a farce when policy is driven by the tyranny of the dollar and the only function of elections is to provide a veneer of respectability. A properly functioning democracy requires a substantially more equitable distribution of resources.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Motivation</span><br /><br />Those who claim the need for inequality often claim that without the material incentives given by unbounded income, people would cease working harder when they reached the top. In addition those who are at the very bottom wouldn't bother working at all if they weren't in permanent threat of poverty. <br /><br />This wisdom is widely accepted, but does it stand up to systematic investigation? Dan Pink wrote a popular survey of literature on the subject of motivation entitled Drive [7]. In this work he shows that a large body of research over the course of many decades has lead to evidence that material incentives often do not result in improvements in performance. Indeed, in a large number of cases they have the <span style="font-style:italic;">opposite</span> effect.<br /><br />The tendency for an outside incentive to reduce the capacity to solve a problem is known as the <span style="font-style:italic;">overjustification effect</span>. Perhaps the earliest demonstration of the effect was with children in the 3-5 year old range which were offered a ribbon for drawing with felt-tipped pens. A second group was given an unexpected reward of a ribbon. A third group was a control and was given no reward. Later, in a free-play setting the children who had been given a reward for the pens were less likely to play with the pens further [8]. The most widely accepted conclusion is that expected rewards undermine intrinsic motivation.<br /><br />Sam Glucksberg performed a similar experiment testing the ability to solve cognitive tasks on adults with monetary incentives. He found that again, the extrinsic rewards actually diminish the capacity to solve the problem. Since that time the effect has become very well established [7].<br /><br />So what serves as intrinsic motivation? As it turns out non-tangible rewards, such as verbal praise, do not appear to undermine intrinsic motivation. Praise can in fact reinforce intrinsic motivation [9]. People want to know that their work is both appreciated and socially important.<br /><br />If monetary incentives do not increase the ability to solve complicated problems then the question must be asked: why is that they we are paying huge amounts of money to CEOs, bankers and others who are supposed to be dealing with the complex problems of organising society?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Happiness</span><br /><br />The connection between material wealth and well being has been the subject of argument for a long time. It has often been claimed that material wealth does not lead to happiness. <br /><br />Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton performed a study of 450,000 responses to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index [10]. Their finding was that, indeed money does improve self reported emotional well being up to an annual income of approximately $75,000. <br /><br />Not only is inequality depriving a substantial number of people of emotional well-being, it is also of no benefit to the rich who horde it. In 2004 the mean income in the US was $60,528 [11], this is about 40% larger than the median income [12]. A 40% increase in income to most Americans would, according to this study, lead to a very substantial improvement in emotional well-being. This is without even accounting for the fact that there are even greater disparities in wealth than there are in income.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Conclusion</span><br /><br />Many of these ideas have been folklore among socialists for over a century. Of Course, folklore is not a sufficient basis for a fair and egalitarian society. However, it appears that the intuition behind this folklore stands up to scientific scrutiny, while the widely expressed myths of the usefulness of inequality do not. None of these investigations will ensure that we can construct a society that is at once focused on improving the conditions of humanity and base on a very realist, scientific and rational approach to the problems of humanity. However, they do lend powerful evidence that such a world is possible.<br /><br />[1] Anarchism: a documentary history of libertarian ideas, volume one, From anarchy to anarchism (300-1939) edited by Robert Graham. KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library (Kate Sharpley Library) (46-47). July 2006.<br /><br />[2] Caroline Binham, “Goldman Sachs’s Griffiths Says Inequality Helps All”. Bloomberg, October 21, 2009. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a8upOpH5Q3Tw<br /><br />[3] Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. London, Allen Lane, 5 March 2009<br /><br />[4] The Democratic Experiment, Paul Cartledge http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/greeks/greekdemocracy_01.shtml Retrieved Oct 5th 2010<br /><br />[5] Thomas Ferguson, Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Politics. University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (June 15, 1995)<br /><br />[6] de Figueiredo, Rui J.P. Jr., & Edwards, Geoff. (2005). Does Private Money Buy Public Policy? Campaign Contributions and Regulatory Outcomes in Telecommunications. UC Berkeley: Institute of Governmental Studies. Retrieved from: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/27r1m1zh<br /><br />[7] Pink, Daniel H., Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Riverhead Hardcover; 1 edition (December 29, 2009)<br /><br />[8] Lepper, M.R., Greene, D., & Nisbett, R.E. (1973). Undermining children's intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the "overjustification" hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28, 129-137.<br /><br />[9] Deci, E., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R.(1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 627-688.<br />[10] Kahneman, Daniel and Deaton, Agnus (2010), High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 107 no. 38. http://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489<br /><br />[12] "US Census Bureau, mean household income". http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032005/hhinc/new06_000.htm. Retrieved 2006-06-29.<br /><br />[11] "US Census Bureau news release in regards to median income". http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/012528.html. Retrieved 2007-08-28.Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-42596594610161174532010-03-29T07:22:00.000-07:002010-10-08T06:26:51.128-07:00Alice: Where Art Thou Going?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKi1GURy8YoZpvizB9DAYtjB_snDme3f4llDY2SjlZcg4bTfs5cM0mUcyoFBlxxoLBiYqXM7TeCoCgFXamL-vuygVEpGnISNBt1yb6iX5JbedqfkHRaUFWY6WI_bPInRtxByxwZiHcmvg/s1600/red-queen.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 258px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKi1GURy8YoZpvizB9DAYtjB_snDme3f4llDY2SjlZcg4bTfs5cM0mUcyoFBlxxoLBiYqXM7TeCoCgFXamL-vuygVEpGnISNBt1yb6iX5JbedqfkHRaUFWY6WI_bPInRtxByxwZiHcmvg/s320/red-queen.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5454061838730085394" /></a><br />I had heard that Alice, the new film directed by one of my favourite directors, Tim Burton, wasn't very good. That admonition doesn't come close to describing how I felt as I watched the film. <br /><br />It's fairly unusual for me to think about writing a review of a film while I'm watching it, since I have a tendency to become totally absorbed in even relatively vapid movies. I also don't tend to get put off too much by regressive political tendencies when watching films. For instance, I quite enjoyed Star Trek, despite the fact that it was sometimes a relatively obvious allegory for US "peace keeping" missions. It's therefor telling that I spent the entire film thinking about the scathing review I would write of it. <br /><br />Firstly, there was never a suspense of disbelief. Ironically, this is reflected by the main character, Alice, who also fails to have a suspense of disbelief while in wonderland, consistently reiterating that she believes it to be a dream and remains detached. <br /><br />The entire plotline follows follows a purely deterministic path, set by an oracle which is revealed to us at the beginning of the film. The world is clearly divided into "good" and "evil". All of the "good" characters are aware of this oracle. While not always beliveing that Alice will be the hero given in the oracle, they neverthless are steadfast in their knowledge that everything is pre-determined. It's hard not to be reminded of Calvinism while watching it.<br /><br />The tyrannical Red Queen has laid waste to vast swaths of wonderland. It is only by the heroic efforts of a single messiah, Alice, that the masses will rise up against the Red Queen. Or, as the white queen puts: "When a champion steps forth to slay the Jabberwocky, the people will rise against her." After overthrowing the Red Queen, Alice will transfer power and dominion to the White Queen, who can't do the dirty work directly because of her "vows". <br /><br />This presents us with a sort of bizarre bourgeois fantasy, where the corrupt rulers are replaced by the actions of a saviour. The correct order of ruler and ruled is maintained, but everything is better because we've got the "good" queen in now. To end things, we have Alice going back to her real life, and promoting herself as an effective entrepreneur, helping to expand the British trade empire into China. This final act is a vague gesture to bourgeois feminism and a rejection of Victorian virtues. <br /><br />Alice reflects the widespread revolutionary impulse that is presenting itself in our current socio-political climate. In both Avatar and Alice, we see a reflection of the distress that most people feel with the current social order. While Avatar pays tribute to primitivism and religious backwardness, at least it presents a collective struggle against the domination of coercive forces. Alice presents us instead with a trite, cliche and amazingly safe outlet for fantasies of changing society for the better.<br /><br />Unfortunately for Alice, however, the regressiveness of it's political dimension isn't it's only failing. It also presents idiotic dialog, poor acting and an obnoxious dance sequence at the end. Characters repeatedly quote the original text completely out of context and with no understanding of the logical inconsistencies they were meant to provoke. You can definitely safely give this one a miss.Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-70466606122184485762010-02-16T06:06:00.001-08:002010-10-08T06:25:38.564-07:00The Power to Do<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqKHcwJ25Pui7QRqxiIgslWsyE7uuvNDAaH4pl-SKIH3SIpAwJmUiUjTuv6lm1pWmZ3sKU5MgfmpqpuQROcvg4eb2PXu02ZkYjkAR7vSyIbGqt5uaVq2NNjea_RQ4jPa52R19Mj2PyyeM/s1600-h/Cathars_expelled.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 204px; height: 208px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqKHcwJ25Pui7QRqxiIgslWsyE7uuvNDAaH4pl-SKIH3SIpAwJmUiUjTuv6lm1pWmZ3sKU5MgfmpqpuQROcvg4eb2PXu02ZkYjkAR7vSyIbGqt5uaVq2NNjea_RQ4jPa52R19Mj2PyyeM/s400/Cathars_expelled.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438877798437528018" /></a>The Cathars were a Christian sect popular in parts of Europe during the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. The most popular strain of Catharism had a dualist theology, which posited a fundamental incompatibility between love and power. The god of the present world was material, and was named Rex Mundi. This god controlled material manifestation which was identified with power and evil. Another god, who was worshiped by the Cathars was a god of pure principle and untainted by material existence. Catharism defined itself to a great extent in opposition to a Catholic church which it identified with materialism and corruption. It saw the cause of the spiritual degeneration of the Catholic church as related to its power. <br /><br />The Cathar movement has interesting parallels with various strains of anarchism and council communism. Anarchism and council communism have posited themselves an antidote to the corruption present in the Leninist acquisition of power, thereby defining itself to a large extent as an oppositional tendency. This opposition, however, has largely been defined in the same way that the Cathars responded to the Catholic church. That is, rather than dealing with the concrete manifestations, it instead attempts to divorce itself from responsibility by adhering to a principle of inaction and the complete absence of power. <br /><br />As the Cathars discovered, power can not be ignored. The Albigensian Crusade of (1209-1229) fairly well eliminated the Cathar threat to the Catholic church. Anarchism has suffered a similar fate, once in the Russian revolution, falling finally and terminally at Kronstadt and again in Spain being crushed between the Hammer of Fascism and the anvil of Stalinism. These failures are of course tragic, but this does not absolve us of a study as to how they occurred, but rather entreats us to find out how they might <em>not</em> have occurred. <br /><br />Transcendence was the goal of the Cathar movement. That is, they viewed God, Love and the desirable qualities of purity as completely outside of and beyond the world. Immanence is the contrasting philosophy of what is material, that God is manifested in the world.<br /><br />The idea that we can simply remain uncorrupted by power if we simply fail to wield it is a theology of transcendence. In fact we necessarily exist in the material world, and any theory of power which will make real anarchist communism viable, must be entirely immanent to the material world. It must learn, itself, to be a theory for the weilding of power, rather than an abdication. <br /><br /><strong>The Perfecti</strong><br /><br />The Cathars were broadly divided into two camps. The first group, the Perfecti, styled themselves the "true Christian Church", adhering unyieldingly to the ascetic denouncement of the material world. This group was always small, yet it formed a pole of a attraction that existed throughout the time of Catharism's popularity.<br /><br />Within capitalist social relations it is inevitable that the vast majority of people will continue to engage in selling their wage labour to capitalists and buy goods from capitalists. However, periodically anti-capitalists invent some strategy which attempts to avoid the problem.<br /><br />The most obvious example of the anarchist Perfecti are those who posit a drop-out lifestyle, involving squatting, dumpster diving as a way to escape the social relations of capitalism. While of course, this does in fact work, especially in the rather richer countries, to escape wage labour and the purchase of commodities, it is unable to provide a challenge to capitalism, and it can only ever exist as an adjunct. Just as the Perfecti were only ever a tiny minority of the Cathar movement, so too is the drop out lifestyle. <br /><br />A recurring theme in utopian socialism is to make a commune of some form in remote location. The antiquity of this idea can be shown by Kropotkin's treatise "Advice to those about to Emigrate"<a href="#1">[1]</a>. This strategy shares the problem that it can only ever be an answer to a small minority, and does not challenge the basis of capitalism.<br /><br />Primitivism also is a tendency with a similar ideological stance. It posits that the basis of capitalist social relations are in technology itself, and hopes for an extreme form of ascetism which at times even rejects language itself. <br /><br />Clearly, any method that requires extreme ascetism and the complete rejection of capitalist social relations by individual or small group disaffiliation, rather than a collective struggle to overcome them, is doomed by design to remain marginal. Only the primitivists have some hope of having their dreams realised, if we are in fact nuked into the stone age by war mongering lunatics, or hit by a comet or some equally horrific disaster takes place.<br /><br /><strong>No Solution - Revolution</strong><br /><br />The tension between reform and revolution has two poles which are reconciled in a number of ways. The most conservative and popular model is the typical liberal model of reforming the system from within. This of course is in the interests of the capitalist class to promote, and is thereby the dominant ideological tendency throughout society.<br /><br />Anarchists have been the most consistent in objecting to parliamentarian approaches. Of all revolutionaries ideology, few have managed to remain so staunchly in opposition to electoralism. <br /><br />However, this adherence has often come at a price. The simplest way to defend such a position is to say that reform is impossible. Hence this argument itself has often come to define anarchism. Revolution is viewed in some sense an instantaneous transcendence, not an achievement of struggle.<br /><br />In fact, the rejection of electoralism should not be found on these grounds at all, but rather the pragmatic difficulties which electoralism represents. Reform <em>is</em> in fact possible, something shown by the 8 hour day, the 5 day work week, the improvement in living standards, the civil rights movement and the feminist movement. <br /><br />The problem with electoralism is not that reform is impossible, but rather that electoralism is fundamentally antagonistic to a more positive conception of the mechanism of revolution. If reform comes via parliament it is 99 times out of 100 because of the power of a mass movement. The legitimacy of the change is only later formally recognised through some act of parliament. In the 1 time of the 100 that it comes from within parliament itself, without a mass wielding of real power, it serves no purpose. It serves no purpose because it has not allowed us to build power, but has wielded power in our stead. <br /><br />When concrete demands are made of the capitalist class, some purists will cry out that capitalism can not provide such things. Again this mistakes the world we seek as being the pure transcendent, and not something we immanentise. A call for a maximum on wages for bankers could in fact be enacted with a sufficiently strong union movement. The power to do that should be a part of the world we seek.<br /><br />If this power doesn't exist, and the demand is purely aspirational, then such a demand may in fact not be reasonable. However, the demand should not be rejected on the basis of being a reform of capitalism, or one to manage capitalism for the capitalists. <br /><br /><strong>The Trade Unions</strong><br /><br />The Credentes were the other section of the Cathars. While they weren't required to live the pure ascetic lifestyle of the Perfecti, they were to refrain from eating meat, dairy or from swearing oaths. The failure to swear oaths in a time when most people could not read meant that no contracts between people could be made for the vast majority of population. Purity becomes a form of isolation.<br /><br />It's almost a universally accepted fact among anarchists that the Unions are hopelessly reformist. The three most commonly articulated strategies to deal with this problem are rejection of workplace struggles, anarcho-syndicalism and informal workplace organising. <br /><br />The total rejection of workplace struggles finds greatest currency in the United states. The tendency does, however, exist elsewhere, including Europe. This is partly based in the internalisation of anti-union propaganda and to some extent based on the relative conservatism of the current trade union movement. Some sections of the post-left even go so far as to claim that syndicalism is inherently authoritarian. <br /><br />More interesting are the approaches to workplace struggle advocated by the modern anarcho-syndicalists and those who push for informal methods.<br /><br />Many anarcho-syndicalists effectively ask that people join a revolutionary syndicalist organisation. This of course is not going to attract the majority of people in a work place in the present climate. While some percentage may join, it's hard to imagine very many workplaces becoming instantly revolutionary. Thus, anarcho-syndicalism generally reduces to attempting to organise people at the unit of a workplace with only a minority in the anarcho-syndicalist union.<br /><br />This approach of minority unionism means that the resources of a union, with its strike funds, full time staff and publications are not really available. In essence the anarcho-syndicalists are advocating a specific political group rather than a union properly and are thereby not really syndicalist at all. <br /><br />Again, some of this is because of the truly deplorable state of the unions currently, after having been smashed by neo-liberalism, we have gone into a long period of low class struggle. The residual substance is left in the union seems to be some admixture of business unionism and Trotskyists who have been involved in entryism since time immemorial. The current state of the unions should not however be taken as a permanent situation that is dictated by objective circumstances. We appear to be entering into a period of increased class struggle, and further global crises seem likely to many in even the established economic community. It would be a mistake to assume this period will be like the last. <br /><br />While the real problems existing in the unions should not be ignored, we can not afford to avoid oaths. We must not confuse what does exist with what must exist.<br /><br /><strong>Vaccination against the Transcendental Virus</strong><br /><br />Anarchism has certain strengths that make it an important political ideology. It is the original libertarian socialism with a continuous lineage which has accumulated both negative and positive experiential knowledge. The critique of electoralism has not been as deeply established in any other strain. The extension of democracy to all aspects of society which confront us makes it the most radically democratic movement in existence. <br /><br />It has however, periodically dissolved and dissipated as a movement. During the period following the first international and leading up to the syndicalist period, anarchism lost its traction and descended into a marginal current, even as Marxism began growing to grow. During the syndicalist period we see anarchism playing catch up in almost every revolutionary situation, excepting perhaps for Spain in Catalonia. Since then things have only been worse. Anarchist ideas have had virtually no influence for over a half of a century. <br /><br />This oscillation around a pole of disorganisation doesn't reduce simply to anti-organisational sentiment, though this does appear as a manifestation. Often there are anarchist organisations in the lulls between struggles. However, when these organisations exist, they have a tendency to exist purely as propaganda organisations. <br /><br />The root of the problem is in the fear of immanence. This fear is rooted, as the Cathar's fear in a horror and revulsion at what actually exists. Rather than have to cope with the very real problematic realities of the material world, it instead accepts a transcendent revolutionary moment which will in some singularity transcend all of the problems of the material world and the exercise of power. This does not mean accepting those things which are currently immanent, but, instead, actualising immanence.<br /><br />If Anarchism is again to be a force in the world, we need to find a way to dislodge ourselves from an orbit around the pole of transcendence. In order to do this, I propose that anarchism must start taking power seriously, not just in the sense of critiquing those in power, but in developing a theory of how we can exercise power. Not just in creating distinct groups of Perfecti, but how we can be fully immersed in the material as a process of becoming. We can not afford to reject all oaths, but must rather have ways of making oaths that bring us closer to the society we want to see. <br /><br /><a name="1"></a>[1] <a href="http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/kropotkin/emmadvice.html">Advice to Those About to Emigrate</a> - KropotkinGavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-16504202955796216592010-01-06T08:50:00.000-08:002010-02-16T08:28:07.619-08:00Assessment of the Uruguayan Tupamaros<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvJKmWt7CzC5epx59kVhuJe4QHPDTi3aDt7fH0cyphOKyYBg9VAalPjboOVG2Hbup0Ic2LSmkiDVpAffUjRfHwAKZMEho7vOn6VgB3VRvnZlVnCQHdvwzt7_GO0uG3rQOKxwF8wF2LnRQ/s1600-h/Bandera_dels_Tupamaros.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvJKmWt7CzC5epx59kVhuJe4QHPDTi3aDt7fH0cyphOKyYBg9VAalPjboOVG2Hbup0Ic2LSmkiDVpAffUjRfHwAKZMEho7vOn6VgB3VRvnZlVnCQHdvwzt7_GO0uG3rQOKxwF8wF2LnRQ/s320/Bandera_dels_Tupamaros.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438878916710905634" /></a><br /><blockquote>This is an excerpt from <span style="font-style:italic;">Problems of Revolutionary Strategy</span> by Abraham Guillen</blockquote><br /><br />To the credit of the Uruguayan Guerillas, they were the first to operate in the cement jungles of a capitalist metropolis, to endure during the first phase of a revolutionary war thanks to an efficient organization and tactics, and to confound the police and armed forces for a considerable period... With its failures as well as successes, the Movement of National Liberation (Tupamaros) has contributed a model of urban guerrilla warfare that has already made a mark on contemporary history - the scene of a struggle between capitalism and socialism with its epicenter in the great cities. The lessons that can be learned from the Tupamaros can be summarized in the following ten points. <br /><br />(1) <span style="font-style:italic;">Fixed or Mobile Front? </span> When urban guerrillas lack widespread support because of revolutionary impatience or because their actions do not directly represent popular demands, they have to provide their own clandestine infrastructure by renting houses and apartments. By tying themselves to a fixed terrain in this way, the Tupamaros have lost both mobility and security: two prerequisites of guerrilla strategy. In order to avoid encirclement and annihilation through house-to-house searches, the guerrillas can best survive not by establishing fixed urban bases, but by living apart (from each other) and fighting together. <br /><br />(2) <span style="font-style:italic;">Mobility and Security.</span> If urban guerrillas rent houses for their commandos, they are in danger of leaving a trail that may be followed by the police who review monthly all registered rentals. Should most of their houses be loaned instead of leased, then the guerrillas should refrain as a general rule from building underground vaults or hideouts which would increase their dependence on the terrain. To retain their mobility and a high margin of security they must spread out among a favourable population. Guerrillas who fight together and then disperse throughout a great city are not easily detected by the police. When dragnets are applied to one neighborhood or zone, guerrillas without a fixed base can shift to another neighborhood. Such mobility is precluded by a reliance on rented houses or hideouts in the homes of sympathizers, heretofore a major strategical error of the Tupamaros. <br /><br />(3) <span style="font-style:italic;">Heavy or Light Rearguard?</span> Urban guerrillas who develop a heavy infrastructure in many rented houses commit not only a military error, but also an economic and logistical one. For a heavy rearguard requires a comparatively large monthly budget in which economic and financial motives tend to overshadow political considerations. Lacking enough houses, the guerrillas tend to upgrade to positions of command those willing to lend their own. Among the Tupamaros detained in 1972 was the owner of the hacienda "Spartacus," which housed an armory in an underground vault. At about the same time the president of the frigorific plant of Cerro Largo was detained and sentenced for aiding the Tupamaros. He may well have embraced the cause of the Tupamaros with loyalty and sincerity; but as a businessman he responded as any other bourgeois would to his workers' demands for higher wages. Thus when promotion through the ranks is facilitated by owning a big house, a large farm or enterprise, the guerrillas become open to bourgeois tendencies. When guerrillas rely on cover not on a people in arms but on people of property, then urban guerrilla warfare becomes the business of an armed minority, which will never succeed in mobilising in this manner the majority of the population. <br /><br />(4) <span style="font-style:italic;">Logistical Infrastructure.</span> Although a mobile front is preferable to a fixed one, there are circumstances in which a fixed front is unavoidable, e.g., in the assembly, adjustment and adaptation of arms. These fixed fronts, few a far between, must be concealed from the guerrillas themselves; they should be known only to the few who work there, preferably one person in each, in order to avoid discovery by the repressive forces. In the interest of security it is advisable not to manufacture arms, but to have the parts made separately by various legal establishments, after which they can be assembled in the secret workshops of the guerrillas. <br /><br />It is dangerous to rely on a fixed front for housing, food, medical supplies and armaments. If the guerrillas are regularly employed, they should live as everybody else does; they should come together only at a designated times and places. Houses that serve as barracks or hideouts tend to immobilise the guerrillas and to expose them to the possibility of encirclement and anihilation. Because the Tupamaros immobilised many of their commandos in fixed quarters, they were exposed in 1972 to mass detentions; they lost a large part of their armaments and related equipment and were compelled to transfer military supplies to the countryside for hiding. <br /><br />In abusing control over their sympathisers and keeping them under strict military discipline, the Tupamaros had to house them together. But they were seldom used in military operations at a single place or in several simultaneously, indicating the absence of a strategical preparation. If urban guerrillas cannot continually disappear and reappear among the population of a great city, then they lack the political prerequisites for making a revolution, for creating the conditions of a social crisis through the breakdown of "law and order." Despite their proficiency during the first hit-and-run phase of revolutionary war, the Tupamaros have failed to escalate their operations by using larger units at more frequent intervals for the purpose of paralysing the existing regime. <br /><br />(5) <span style="font-style:italic;">Heroes, Martyrs and Avengers.</span> In revolutionary war any guerrilla action that needs explaining to the people is politically useless: it should be meaningful and convincing by itself. To kill an ordinary soldier in reprisal for the assassination of a guerrilla is to descend to the same political level as a reactionary army. Far better to create a martyr and thereby attract mass sympathy than to lose or neutralise popular support by senseless killings without an evident political goal. To be victorious in a people's war one has to act in conformity with the interests, sentiments and will of the people. A military victory is worthless if it fails to be politically convincing. <br /><br />In a country where the bourgeoisie has abolished the death penalty, it is self-defeating to condemn to death even the most hated enemies of the people. Oppressors, traitors and informers have condemned themselves before the guerrillas; it is impolitic to make a public show of their crimes for the purpose of creating a climate of terror, insecurity and disregard for basic human rights. A popular army that resorts to unnecessary violence, that is not a symbol of justice, equity, liberty and security, cannot win popular support in the struggle against a dehumanised tyranny. <br /><br />The Tupamaraos' "prisons of the people" do more harm than benefit to the cause of national liberation. Taking hostages for the purpose of exchanging them for political prisoners has an immediate popular appeal; but informing the world of the existence of "people's prisons" is to focus unnecessarily on a parallel system of oppression. No useful purpose can be served by such politically alienating language. Morover, it is intolerable to keep anyone hostage for a long time. To achieve a political or propaganda victory through this kind of tactic, the ransom terms must be moderate and capable of being met; in no event should the guerrillas be pressed into executing a prisoner because their demands are excessive and accordingly rejected. A hostage may b usefully executed only when a government refused to negotiate on any terms after popular pressure has been applied; for then it is evident to everyone that the government is ultimately responsible for the outcome. <br /><br />So-called people's prisons are harmful for other reasons: they require several men to stand guard and care for the prisoners; they distract guerrillas frmo carrying out alternative actions more directly useful to the population; and they presuppose a fixed front and corresponding loss of mobility. At most it is convenient to have a secure place to detain for shore periods a single hostage. <br /><br />To establish people's prisons, to condemn to death various enemies of the people to house guerrillas in secret barracks of underground hideouts is to create an infrastructure supporting a miniature state rather than a revolutionary army. To win the support of the population, arms must be used directly on its behalf. Whoever uses violence against subordinates in the course of building a miniature counter-state should be removed from his command. Surely there is little point in defating one despotism only to erect another in its place!<br /><br />(6) <span style="font-style:italic;">Delegated Commands.</span> In a professional army the leadership is recruited from the military academies within a hierachical order of command. In a guerrilla organisation the leaders emerge in actual revolutionary struggles, elected because of their capacity, responsibility, combativity, initiative, political understanding and deeds rather than words. However, at pain of forfeiting the democratic character of a revolutionary army and the function of authority as a delegated power, not even the best guerrilla commander can be allowed to remain long at the helm. A rotating leadership is necessary to avoid the "cult of personality"; powers should be alternately exercised by those commanders with the most victories, by those most popular with their soldiers and most respected by the people. Inasmuch as guerrilla warfare takes the form of self-dense, tis success depends on the exercise of direct democracy, on guerrilla self-management and self-discipline - a far cry from the barracks discipline typical of a bureaucratic or professional army...<br /><br />The people have more need of many revolutionary heroes than of a single outstanding leader like Julius Casesar or Napoleon Bonaparte. Epominondas, the Theban general who defeated the Spartan, held a command that lasted only two years. Although the greatest strategist of his time, he became and ordinary soldier when his command expired. Only because of his extraordinary skill was he made a military adviser to the new commander-in-chief. Guerrillas can benefit by his example. <br /><br />A delegated command is unlimited except for the time determining its delegation. The responsibility of subordinates is to discuss in advance each operation, to make recommendations, etc. But the discussion ends when the supreme command assumes responsibility for the outcome of a particular battle or engagement. If the commander is mistaken in his judgment, if the result is defeat rather than victory, his duty is to resign. Should he succeed in a vote of confidence he may retain his command; but to successive defeats should make his resignation irrevocable. <br /><br />One of the most common errors of Latin American guerrillas is to make legends of their leaders as they did of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. The resulting messianism conceals the incapacity of many guerrilla commanders who take their troops into the countryside - like the Tupamaros in 1972 - without revising mistaken strategies. Perhaps the leaders of the Uruguayan guerrillas have come to believe in their providential powers, thereby reducing the ordinary guerrilla to a political and military zero, to the status of a soldier in a conventional army. <br /><br />(7) <span style="font-style:italic;">Revolution: Which Revolution? </span>Youthful Leftists without a proletarian praxis, without having suffered directly the effects of capitalist exploitation, aspire to liberate the workers without the workers' own revolutionary intervention. When revolutionary action is limited to a series of military engagements between guerrillas and a repressive army, armaments ar of little use in mobilising the people for national liberation. The corresponding foquismo [exaggerated reliance on guerrilla focos, armed encounters and military tactics to spark a mass insurrection] is petty bourgeois in origin as well as outlook - evident in the token number of workers and peasants in the guerilllas' ranks. Actually it is an insurrectional movement of piling up cadavers, for giving easy victories to the repressive generals trained by the Pentagon. <br /><br />In the case of the Tupamaros the commanding cadres and the greater part of the rank and file have come from the universities, the liberal professions and the rebellious petty--bourgeois youth who have learned how to disobey. They long for a revolution. But what kind of revolution? Since there are few workers or peasants in the columns of the Tupamaros, it is understandable that the struggle is limited mainly to engagements between the guerrillas on one side and the army and police on the other. In these encounters the people are caught in the middle, leaving a political vacuum which only a different kind of guerrilla movement can fill: one providing support for all popular acts of protest, strikes, demonstrations, student rebellions, etc. Only through the intermediary of the people, in other words, can urban guerrillas pass from the first phase of revolutionary war to a generalised state of subversion leading to a social revolution. <br /><br />In their endeavor to create a state within the state through highly disciplined guerrilla columns, secret barracks, "prisons of the people," underground arsenals and a heavy logistical infrastructure, the Tupamaros have become overly professionalised, militarised and isolated from the urban masses. Their organisation is closer to resembling a parallel power contesting the legally established one, a microstate, rather than movement of the masses. <br /><br />(8) <span style="font-style:italic;">Strategy, Tactics and Politics.</span> If the tactics adopted are successful but the corresponding strategy and politics mistaken, the guerrillas cannot win. Should a succession of tactical victories encourage a strategical objective that is impossible to attain, then a great tactical victory can culminate in an even greater strategical defeat. <br /><br />The kidnappings of the Brazilian consul Dias Gomide and the CIA agent Dan Mitrione are instances of tactical successes by the Tupamaros. But in demanding in exchange a hundred detained guerrillas, the Tupamaros found the Uruguayan government obstinate, in order not to lose face altogether. Here a successful tactic contributed to an impossible strategical objective. In having to execute Mitrione because the government failed to comply to their demands, the Tuparamaros not only failed to accomplish a political objective, but also suffered a political reversal in their newly acquired role of assassins - the image they acquired through hostile mass media. <br /><br />The Tupamaros would have done better by taping Mitrione's declarations and giving the story to the press. The population would have followed the incidents of his confession with more interest than the interminable serials. Mitrione's confessed links with the CIA should have been fully documented and sent to Washington in care of Senator Fulbright. With this incident brought to the attention of Congress, the operation against the CIA would have won world support of the Tupamaros. Once the Uruguayan government had lost prestige through this publicity, the Uruguayan press might be asked to publish a manifesto of the Tupamaros explaining their objectives in the Mitrione case. Afterwards his death sentence should have been commuted out of respect for his eight sons, but on condition that he leave the country. Such a solution to the government's refusal to negotiate with the guerrillas would have captured the sympathies of many in favour of the Tupamaros. Even more than conventional war, revolutionary war is a form of politics carried out by violent means. <br /><br />With respect to Dias Gomide the Tupamaros lost an opportunity to embarrass politically the Brazilian government. They should never have allowed matters to read the point at which his wife could appear as an international heroine of love and marital fidelity by collecting sums for his release. Every cruzerio she collected was a vote against the Tupamaros and indirectly against the Brazilian guerrillas. In exchange for Dias Gomide, a man of considerable importance to the military regime, the Tupamaros should have demanded the publication of a manifesto in the Brazilian press. Its contents might have covered the following items: a denunciation of the "death squad" as an informal instrument of the |Brazilian dictatorship; a demand for free, secret and direct elections; the legalisation of all political parties dissolved by the military regime; the restitution of political rights to Brazil's former leaders and exiles including Quadros, Kubitschek, Brizola, Goular and even reactionaries like Lacerda; the denunciation of government censorship of the press; and a demand that popular priests be est free. With such a political response the revolutionary war might have been exported to Brazil. Guerrilla actions should not be narrowly circumscribed when they can have regional and international repercussions... <br /><br />The Tupamaros are perilously close to resembling a political Mafia. In demanding large sums of money in ransom for political hostages they have sometimes appeared to be self-serving. It matters little to the average citizen whether bank deposits pass into the hands of "expropriators" who do little directly to lighten the public burden - not because they do not want to but because they cannot do so in isolation from the people and without popular support. There is an historical irony about these would-be liberators who indirectly live off the surplus of the people the liberate. <br /><br />(9) <span style="font-style:italic;">OPR-33 and the Tupamaros.</span> Enormous losses were suffered by the Tupamaros in 1972 through more than 3000 detentions, including those of persons guilty by association. Popular hatred against the government has intensified because of its house-to-house searches and disregard for fundamental rights. If the Tupamaros had as much political and strategical sense as they have tactical skill, they might have achieved in 1972 a new polarization of forces culminating in a truce, a virtual recognition by the government of a situation of dual powers. <br /><br />But the political and startegical mistakes of the Tupamaros, their rigorous centralism and hierarchy of authority led instead to internal divisions and split-offs that further weakeneed the organisation. The deliberately mislabeled "Microfaction" broke with the movement. This group politically responseive to the Urguayan Revolutionary WOrkers' Party (PRT) - a political affiliate of the Argentine People's Revolutionary Army (ERP) - would hardly have been permitted to split peacefully were it not for the ERP. The "22nd of December" guerrillas likewise split with the leadership: a group concentrating on operations designed to mobilise the trade unions and other mass organisations without the military centralism of the Tupamaros' general staff.. <br /><br />Politically the Tupamaros follow an ambiguous line promising something of interest to everybody. On the other hand, the Tupamaro Courier, a bulletin of the organisation, has carried in its pages extracts from the speeches of conservative nationalists like Aparicio Saravia. On the other hand the Tupamaros' leadership forobids its cadres from criticising the pro-Moscow Communists. This political irresolution, indefiniteness and ambivalence have hurt the Tupamaros in their efforts to gain a foothold in the Communist-controlled trade unions. Although they penetrated and won over the leadership of the Union of Sugar Workers (UTA) and the workers of the Frigorifico Fray Bentos, they have been unsuccessful in pressing for immediate reforms because they anticipate that seizing political power will resolve everything. <br /><br />Unlike the Tupamaros, the anarcho-syndicalist Revolutionary Popular Organisation (OPR-33) uses armed struggle to support the workers' immediate demands without directly challenging the government and armed forces. Neither OPR-33 nor the "22nd of December" contributed to the 1971 electoral struggles of the Broad Front against the established political parties. While the Tupamaros supported the Broad Front, OPR-33 used its armed units to win the strike at the Portland Cement Company, where workers with anarcho-syndicalist tendencies demanded higher wages. Rodney Arismendi, secretary-general of the Communist Party, denounced the anarcho-syndicalists as adventurers for allegedly playing into the hands of reactionaries and ignoring the principal task of electing a new president, senators and deputies. But the Broad Front lost the elections, while the workers at Portland Cement won the strike. Moreover, the railroad workers also triumphed against the bosses, thanks to the armed backing of OPR-33 with the support of the Workers-Student Resistance (ROE) and the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation (FAU). <br /><br />OPR-33 and ROE also spurred a series of successful strikes in the metallurgical, rubber and clothing industries. The strike at SERAL, a footwear manufacturer, lasted more than a year. Where the Communist-controlled unions failed, OPR-33 and ROE succeeded. The anarcho-syndicalists initiated the strike at SERAL: they endured in hunger, asked for collections in the streets of Montevideo and mobilised popular support. But the owner, an ex-worker, could not be moved. Finally his son disappeared. OPR-33 was apparently behind the operation but, unlike the Tupamaros, admitted to nothing. No ransom was asked; words were unnecessary. In view of the circumstances it was tacitly understood that the owner, Malguero, could recover his son by negotiating with the workers. In this way the most difficult strike in Uruguay was won: the workers were compensated for lost pay; their union was recognised as the only legal bargaining agent. Thus during the first six months of 1972, when the Tupamaros were being detained by the hundreds, Malaguero's son was lost but reappeared with the resolution of the strike at SERAL. Despite the success of the repressive forces in uncovering the people's prisons and hideouts of the Tupamaros, the boy could not be found. Here was an altogether different style of guerrilla warfare from that of the Tupamaros' - and also more effective. <br /><br />The strike against the Frigorifico Modelo was won through a similar operation. In the midst of the strike the firm's president Fernandez Llado, disappeared. Thus a second company was coipelled to negotiate. In no instance has OPR-33 been pressured to execute hostages. For it has not made demands of its own, but has applied force only to obtain what hundreds of exploited workers have already been asking for. In this way, little by little, it may continue to win support from the workers until even the reformist trade unions fall into revolutionary hands. Once revolutionaries are in command of their own house, then they are ready for revolutionary action in depth: the occupation of factories that operate at less than full capacity; the transformation of these into producer's cooperatives or self-managed enterprises;p and a preparation for the seizure of political power. For what purpose? To establish a new kind of socialist society in which the people rather than bureaucrats or guerrilla leaders are the beneficiaries. <br /><br />(10)<span style="font-style:italic;"> MIR, ERP and the Tupamaros.</span> The Tupamaros were the first group of urban guerrillas to teach the world how to initiate an insurrection in the cities with few supporters and modest means. But their superb tactics have been nullified by a mediocre strategy and a questionable politics. <br /><br />Like OPR-33, the Chilean Movement of the Revolutioanry Left (MIR) and the Argenitine People's Revolutionary Army (ERP) offer new models of urban guerrilla warfare in which strategy and politics combine to reinforce the Tupamaros' tactics. The Chilean and Argentine organisations show great initiative in combat, a clar-cut program of national a social liberation, the capacity to mobilise large masses and a virtual absence of petty-bourgeois tendencies. They are openly critical of Right-wing nationalism and the opportunism of Social Democrats and Communists. Without such criticism, without liberating themselves from a naroow professional outlook, urban guerrillas can succeed in tactical engagements; but they cannot develop a revolutionary movement capable of winning power, if not for themselvs as bureaucrats, then for the people they represent. <br /><br />In 1972 MIR had the most effective revolutionary organisation in Latin America. Its leading cadres are directly responsible to the rank and file through a system of direct democracy; its politics are clear and unambiguous; it proposes at any moment only what it can actually accomplish. Nothing escapes the political analysis and synthesis of the MIR cadres. They are Chile's major revolutionary reserve. In the event Allende's government is overthrown, only they are presently equipped to fight for liberation under conditions of repression. They are acid critics of demagogy and adventurism. Their proposals are well reasoned and concrete with respect both to immediate issues and the future. <br /><br />The ERP is another model worth imitating. In Rosario it seized the British consul and the manager of Swift for the purpose of settling a major strike. IT has prepared the ground for surmounting the traditional trade-union tactics of the Peronist labor bureaucracy, the pro-Moscow Communists and genteel socialists. Even the tragic finale of Sallustro, president of Argentine Fiat, is an example of blood spilled not so much by the ERP as by the Argentine military. For the dictatorship countermanded the negotiations between the Fiat managment and workers as the price of his release. <br /><br />The Tupamaros faced their gravest crisis during the first havelf of 1972, when the repressive forces detained several hundred of them. That so many fell was due not to lack of secrecy, but to absence of autonomy. Their supreme command is centralised: it knows all, says all, does lal. Nothing can be more fatal to a guerrilla organisation than lack of self-direction under conditions in which the guerrillas cannot be continually united and in which each group or command has to adapt to the tactical situation at hand without waiting, as a conventional army does, for orders from above. Excessive centralisation of authority makes an organisation rigid and vulnerable: once the repressive forces discover a single thread they can begin looking for the spool. <br /><br />The Tupamaros acted precipitately in attacking the newly elected government of President Bordaberry. They provoked the as yet untested government to declare a state of war. Repression was escalated in the crudest forms: punitive expeditions, legalised terrorism, physical tortures. A formal democracy gave way to dissimulated dictatorship. Far better had the Tupamaros waited for the economic and social crisis to discredit the new regime. The prime necessities are in scarce supply; there is not enough meat, milk, sugar, kerosene to satisfy demand. Nonetheless, the government is strong because the revolutionaries' rhetoric is weak, and they have not mastered the art of mobilising popular discontent on these basic issues. <br /><br />A revolutionary organisation must demonstrate that it knows more that its bourgeois rivals in power. To displace the bourgeoisie and bureaucracy, it must convince the public of their incompetence, a task which cannot be done overnight. It must show how greater levels of productivity can be achieved compatible with human freedom, how the scientific-technological revolution can be advanced, how agriculture can be fully mechanised and electrified, how industrial integration can be achieved, how culture can be made to serve economic and technological growth, how atomic energy can be utilised, how the socialism of self-management can be introduced. If a revolutionary leadership fails to demonstrate humane qualities, scientific knowledge and social, political and economic skills, it may commit blunders by initiating an insurrection before fully mobilising popular support. Then is the time for military intervention. Thus in Peru the guerrillas were exterminated by the developmentalist generals who now pass for revolutionaries; and in Brazil the military waged a preventative coup, mortgaged their country to foreign capital, reduced corporate taxes, outlawed industrial unrest and depressed real wages in order to stimulate economic growth. <br /><br />From the Tupamaros we can learn from both their exploits and mistakes - magnifying their strengths and concealing their weaknesses can be of service to dogmatists and sectarians, not revolutionaries. The Tupamaros have served as the best revolutionary academy in the world on the subject of urban guerrilla warfare; they have taught more through actions than all the revolutionary theories abstracted from concrete situations. But their brilliance in matters of tactics has not been matched by their strategy and politics. Thus the revolutionary ideal must combine the tactical proficiency of the Tupamaros with the mass strategy of OPR-33 and the politics of Chilean MIR - a synthesis most nearly approximated by the Argentine ERP.Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-54261451210221687792009-11-09T16:01:00.000-08:002009-11-09T16:48:31.706-08:00Feminism and the WageI was reading through <a href="http://www.cso.ie/statistics/persons_by_sex_ecstatus.htm">CSO statistics</a> for Ireland (as one does on rainy days) and come across the following for 2008: <br /><br />Males On Home Duties: 6,700<br />Females On Home Duties: 526,300<br /><br />The way the statistics office looks at employment and unemployment stems from the classification of who is "in the workforce". Those that are not seeking jobs, are not in the workforce. Now, this point has been made often enough by voices on the left regarding the fact that it hides unemployment of those who have given up seeking employment. The statistic above brings out another aspect. The unemployment figures of women are low, not because they have given up looking for work, but because they are working without pay.<br /><br />Capitalism has an incessant drive<a href="#star">*</a> towards the expansion of commodification. The commons was conquered by the need for profit and we see capital trying continually to press the realm of information into it's sphere.<br /><br />However, not everything has been commodified. There are still large sections of human social relations which do not use exchange. Perhaps surprisingly, one of the most important of these realms is the reproduction of the labour force itself. <br /><br />The reproduction of the labour force is done with unpaid labour. Labour which exists outside of the rest of the sphere of commodity exchange. This creates some very strange dynamics. Indeed, thought it is impossible even to acquire food without money for exchange, and though the reproduction of the labour force requires it, there is no compensation for the production of labour. <br /><br />This means that those who work in the reproduction of the labour force, the greatest lynch pin of the entire capitalist edifice, must be subordinate to: a) Husbands, who will be the arbiters of how their wages should be distributed internally to the family, and more recently b) The state, which acts as a great arbitrary and derelict husband.<br /><br />I think as can be read quite clearly by the statistics above, women are the vast, vast majority of this labour force. The myth of the emancipation of women by liberal feminism strikes out in bold in these numbers. The vast majority of these women are at the whim of their husbands or the state. There has truly been no end to patriarchy. <br /><br />Now, not only should we see this and see how bankrupt liberal feminism is and how capitalism inevitably perpetuates patriarchy, but we should also see it as a cautionary tale for any future world we might conceive. <br /><br />Those who speak of economic democracy (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parecon">Parecon</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy">Economic Democracy</a>) have a duty to explain to us how to deal with this issue. Will we bring labour reproduction into the sphere of the market? Will the polity act as employer of last resort for reproduction? <br /><br />If instead we imagine a world based on the principle of fair access to the social product of labour, the issue disappears entirely. I believe that the abolition of the wage entirely is most consonant with the feminist project. <br /><br />* This is a very <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology">teleological</a> view of capitalism. I like telelogy and somewhat resent the dismissal of it by most of the modern science community. I think such statements are true in the same sense that directed behaviour is true of humans. Rather than being anthropomorphic to say that something "wants" something, I think it's quite the opposite. It expresses a sort of directed constrained behaviour, and as such the mechanistic processes which bring about teleology in humans are of the same kind as those that cause behaviours such as: "nature abhors a vacuum" or "the bacteria moves towards food". It is in fact anthrocentric to believe that humans somehow do something quite different. Likewise, processes underly the behaviour of capitalism, yet capitalism has aggregate behaviours with time dependent tendencies which can be expressed clearly as "final cause".Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-85947770522047176002009-10-29T10:30:00.000-07:002010-02-16T08:30:39.865-08:00What can we Learn from Lenin<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhnCJHkHPV7NK_MOcY64xzIjhRcALsDSKT-lRUdtTLUKpLudL3FMkYo_y6nzarvfXjqWvaq7KJhY8AysEuZXuiDMIoEbwS50PvfDUVYpsJhZagWOp_ir5Pi22r0hBPrxyXoXkIkqMSui0/s1600-h/lenin-cat.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 227px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhnCJHkHPV7NK_MOcY64xzIjhRcALsDSKT-lRUdtTLUKpLudL3FMkYo_y6nzarvfXjqWvaq7KJhY8AysEuZXuiDMIoEbwS50PvfDUVYpsJhZagWOp_ir5Pi22r0hBPrxyXoXkIkqMSui0/s400/lenin-cat.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438879566640536626" /></a><br />I thought Don Hammerquist's <a href="http://sketchythoughts.blogspot.com/2009/09/lenin-leninism-and-some-leftovers.html">Lenin, Leninism, and some leftovers</a> was a very thoughtful article and enjoyed the <a href="http://sketchythoughts.blogspot.com/2009/09/tom-wetzels-reply-to-hammerquist.html">response</a> by Wetzel as well.<br /><br /> Some of the questions that are brought up, I believe do not yet have satisfactory answers in our movement. Particularly the methods that should be used in relation the trade unions in terms of being most effective in promoting libertarian struggle, and also in dealing with un-eveness in the development of the class. How to organise in light of these features needs serious investigation both theoretically and in terms of practical activity. Indeed, I think many of them can't be "solved" without essentially trying different approaches and seeing which are least problematic.<br /><br /> Such attempts however should be made consciously and in a coordinated manner. And reviewed periodically to assess how positive the gains are made and published in such a way that we can share our experiences and replicate what appears to be working. This is particularly difficult because of the great deal of difference that can be created by different social contexts. It seems that it would be most useful in someplace like the US which has some level of homogeneity.<br /><br /> I'm not sure what the particular fascination with Lenin is that compels someone to attempt to reclaim the legacy. Indeed, it seems to me that Lenin was such a polemical writer and strategically minded towards a "success" that he often just wrote whatever he thought would be most advantageous to the Bolsheviks at any given time. Often this means incorporating anarchist and syndicalist slogans without really incorporating their content in any meaningful way. This can allow a "libertarian" version of Lenin to be created by carefully chosen selective blindness. A Lenin which I don't believe ever really existed.<br /><br /> I do however agree that anarchists often make oversimplified caricatures of the Bolsheviks. This is a serious failing since comrades who are very knowledgeable of the time period will not be convinced by such ahistoric simplifications. The time period was complex, and while Leninist directions had permanent repercussions with negative results, its important that we look at it in more than a strictly idealist "negative" sense.<br /><br /> When confronted with the need to increase production rapidly in order to keep the delicate alliance of peasants and proletariat what should we do. When confronted with trade unions that are characterised by a historically professional character, how should we deal with them? Do we support the soviets or the factory councils? How do we reconcile the potentially conflictual power struggle between them without losing a section of the professional class which can not easily be replaced?<br /><br /> Obviously we need not concern ourselves in too much detail with a social context so removed from our own. But we can look at this history to see how in fact we need to be more strategically minded in relation to the method of struggle that we actually support in our own context without oversimplifying the complex character of the social landscape in which we are going to be fighting.<br /><br /> Hammerquist does seem to get confused by differences in language. In particular this quote:<br /><br /><blockquote>I recently read a report by an Irish class struggle social anarchist about a tour he took around the U.S. and his impressions of the anarchist movement overall and in specific localities. One point that I noted with more than a little consternation was that he treated “insurrectionist anarchism” as little more than the anti-working class anarchist primitivism of the Eugene variant. It does seem that class struggle social anarchists tend to discount the politics of insurrection, ceding the issue to various “post-left” elements, including the “crazies” among the life style anarchists, where it becomes little more than an element of generational extremism, a theatrical pose that will evaporate in the face of any real repression, if not at the mere possibility of repression such as followed after 9/11.</blockquote><br /><br /> This seems to merely be a misunderstanding of Insurrectionist. It seems to me that the vast majority of Social Anarchists that I've talked to fully believe in the necessity of some level of insurrectionary force. It's quite difficult to imagine scenarios in which this doesn't occur. The problem is strictly that "insurrection" is not a stand in for politics and political organising. Insurrection is merely a tactic that should only be used to facilitate libertarian struggle and is worthless if it isn't doing this. In some contexts it may do this, in others it may do exactly the opposite.<br /><br /> This is something that is particularly important in the Irish context where we have a history of Republicanism. We can see the IRA at various points as an insurrectionary force in search of a political ideology. Here it is important to point out the need to put the horse before the cart.<br /><br /> I'm sure Hammerquist would agree, but failed to understand what was being argued against.<br /><br /><blockquote>(I have some experiences with all of the above, none particularly successful, but have always favored yet another option: organize a direct action mass grouping of workers at the point of production that can begin to understand the relevance of class issues beyond their particular shop floor--whatever the nature of the union or whether or not there is one. This approach has it problems as well, but they are a matter for a different discussion.)</blockquote><br /><br />I'd love to hear more about these experiences. The major problem (in my estimation) with current theory among anarchists is a lack of studies of actual attempts to use various strategies in relation to the unions.Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-65254744972433317672009-10-13T04:41:00.000-07:002010-02-16T08:44:17.043-08:00Engaging with the Class<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirYJqLECGC6Sss2Ug4VZ1XCiWMxggk88Y4SpUYCdtm8GfHSlbQH-eO0j8mmn96DWRhv7rpMDNhsF-VW4MwmSC8KihPP6P85nyCLNfVCkluU7IO6DcMy9SwSOHC3D75DgGHJevyUPyzSwk/s1600-h/nova_1105.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 360px; height: 235px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirYJqLECGC6Sss2Ug4VZ1XCiWMxggk88Y4SpUYCdtm8GfHSlbQH-eO0j8mmn96DWRhv7rpMDNhsF-VW4MwmSC8KihPP6P85nyCLNfVCkluU7IO6DcMy9SwSOHC3D75DgGHJevyUPyzSwk/s400/nova_1105.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438883087795925842" /></a><br />One of the deep insights of anarchist theory is that means and ends are inseparable. The method of struggle will have important repercussions on the realisable ends. The development of Anarchist theory and practice has been a search for liberatory methods that are likely to create the society that we hope to see. The role of the organisation then has to fall in line with those tactics and strategies that are liable to bring about a libertarian society. <br /><br />"The Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists" <a href="#1">[1]</a> (Abbreviated: The Platform) was first written after the failure of the revolution in Russia and the Ukraine. An attempt was made to give solutions to those factors in the struggle which had lead to failure.<br /><br />In 1936, a syndicalist revolution was attempted in Spain. This attempt also failed. The Friends of Durutti Group <a href="#3">[3]</a> formed in 1937 in an attempt to guard the ideological purity of anarchism, and to advocate against the regimentation of the military. This initiative however, came too late, after the argument had already been lost.<br /><br />Again, starting in 1956, we see the emergence of the FAU <a href="#6">[6]</a>, also in rough agreement with the guidelines given by the Platform though likely developed quite independently. Later we see the FARJ <a href="#5">[5]</a> express a slightly more nuanced understanding of how the anarchist organisation should function in relation to the mass movement. This understanding was born out of the practice in working with various social groups, including the unions and students.<br /><br />None of these initiatives were ultimately successful. However, the notion of Platformism, the Anarchist Vanguard group <a href="#2">[2]</a> <a href="#3">[3]</a> and Especifismo <a href="#4">[4]</a> have seen growing interest in recent years. This interest grows out of repeated failure by anarchists to gain traction since the failed revolution of '36 and a look at the (qualified) successes of the Especifismo approach.<br /><br />In order to have a libertarian revolution, the manner in which the power of the state is dispensed with is essential. The "seizure of the state", as Leninist groups approach the problem, simply replaces one form of rule with another. In order to change the structures of power fundamentally, from the base, it is necessary to have a social revolution.<br /><br /><strong>Specifism</strong><br /><br />Specifism is an hypothesis. One which has not fully been tested or seen unqualified success. This hypothesis however is rooted in experience, of both success and failure, gained in real struggles. Since the working class is at such a disadvantage, we have not seen any unqualified successes, and therefore those techniques that look promising must be evaluated with a combination of theoretical probing and active attempts at implementation.<br /><br />The hypothesis is that anarchists should organise into specific political organisations with the intention of promoting the development and radicalisation of elements in those sectors of society which can represent the interests of the working class. These sectors might include the unions, students, unemployed, community groups or anywhere else that strategic and tactical analysis would point towards as a promising sector.<br /><br />This interaction with particular sectors, which we will call <em>social engagement</em><a href="#star">*</a> involves the active participation of militants in these mass organisations and sectors in ways that will advance the class. The basic rule of thumb for determining advancement is summed up in the following maxim "anarchists should actively promote the increasing participation and power of the working class". That is, we would like to see self-actualisation, self-organisation and the building of prefigurative <em>libertarian</em> structures. This rule of thumb, however, is insufficient. We must attempt to express the libertarian worldview simultaneously. This can happen in the ideological vacuum that is a consequence of struggle, when the illegitimacy of the <em>common sense</em> notions that we inherit from capitalist society are exposed. We need to be bold in widening the division in thinking as the working class begin to see the bankruptcy of ruling class ideas.<br /><br /><strong>Towards Non-Substitutive Engagement</strong><br /><blockquote><em>Political revolution is the revolution of heroes, the revolution of a minority. Social revolution is the revolution of the common people, a revolution of the great masses.</em> - Liu Shifu</blockquote><br />Social engagement is an alternative to both the substitutionism of Lenin and Guevara, and its tacit rejection so often characterised by those who define themselves in opposition to Leninism in the anarchist milieu and the ultra-left. While not all Leninist or Guevarist tactics are substitutive, they tend to have no critique of the practice. If the revolutionary vanguard, the active or militant classes or the guerrilla armies <em>substitute</em> themselves for the working class then there is no libertarian revolution. <br /><br />This is true because the elements who substitute can not know the aims of the working class. In the subjective sense, this class can't even be said to exist in the absence of the realisation of their own position in society. In the absence of their own consciousness of existence, they can't have any collective sense of needs. Their needs would then have to be assessed by a group that did not include them, but was outside them. Liberty is about the capacity to make choices. Any revolution in which decisions are made in ones stead, or on ones behalf, is not libertarian. <br /><br />Neither can this substitutive element increase working class participation by acting in its stead. This participation is a crucial ingredient towards the creation of a new society run by the working class, for the working class. A substitutive group will eventually develop its own class interests.<br /><br />History has born out this lesson with impressive regularity including the great "communist" revolutions of Russia and China. In the end, both Russia and China devolved into oligarchic capitalism as the substituted revolutionaries relaxed naturally into their position as the new ruling class.<br /><br />The negation of the Leninist programme, which was first embraced by the ultra-left and later by many groups including the Forest-Johnson tendency, and various anarchist and other libertarian communist groups, is now widely accepted in the libertarian left.<br /><br />This negation views Leninism's direct active participation in struggle as so dangerous that any sort of activity is in danger of being substitutive. Interaction bears a threat of infection. In this atmosphere most libertarian groups have become either closed or interact only through propaganda, attempting to enlighten the class, but not to guide them.<br /><br />Social engagement however asks for a third path; interaction for the realisable gain of libertarian advantage. This means that anarchists would actively take part in organisations and communities attempting to build class power. They would argue in their unions for progressive politics and revolutionary goals. Pushing beyond arguments for improved conditions towards the complete removal of capitalism. They would argue in their schools for open access to education. They would argue in their communities to for common ownership of resources and services. All of this would be done by including and assisting cooperatively with the class.<br /><br /><a name="star"></a>* This has sometimes been called Social Insertion by South American comrades<br /><br /><a name="1"></a>[1] <a href="http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/platform/plat_preface.html">The Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists</a>, Dielo Truda (Workers' Cause)<br /><a name="2"></a>[2] <a href="http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/mlc/index.html">The Manifesto of Libertarian Communism</a>, Georges Fontenis<br /><a name="3"></a>[3] <a href="http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/spain/sp001780/intro.html">The Friends of Durutti Group: 1937-1939</a>, Agustin Guillamón<br /><a name="4"></a>[4] <a href="http://www.nefac.net/node/2081">Especifismo</a>, NEFAC<br /><a name="5"></a>[5] <a href="http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=9207">Interview with the Rio de Janeiro Anarchist Federation (FARJ)</a><br /><a name="6"></a>[6] <a href="http://www.anarkismo.net/article/14691">The FAU's Huerta Grande</a>Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-79301502396318452332009-04-26T10:41:00.000-07:002010-02-16T08:47:42.140-08:00The Role of The Specific Political Organisation<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOnmAKvViIWRqFFjsyUxsfUcRRq5tAdbroiKsGdMUlPe6bc9W_AtcEYdaijo7zhoYsBGIDJFwU3jwL-4FJdeVqvm5TFNLswv7HM0qLdP3BKaIChg7dbNWhwduuo4A_yeBoA0d78Yl9i0I/s1600-h/camarada.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 232px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOnmAKvViIWRqFFjsyUxsfUcRRq5tAdbroiKsGdMUlPe6bc9W_AtcEYdaijo7zhoYsBGIDJFwU3jwL-4FJdeVqvm5TFNLswv7HM0qLdP3BKaIChg7dbNWhwduuo4A_yeBoA0d78Yl9i0I/s320/camarada.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438883956902081058" /></a><br />There has been quite a lot written about revolutionary organisation and on the role that they play in broader progressive movements. Among the problems which must be addressed are those of theoretical and tactical unity and the role and function of the party and the organisation. Some of the ideas that form the modern platformist tendency, of which the Workers' Solidarity Movement is at least nominally in agreement were first expressed in "The Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists" <a href="../#1">[1]</a>.<br /> <br />The role of the revolutionary organisation is dictated by the present features of the political and social terrain. It must therefor hone its own theory on the analysis of current struggles, and the relationship and activity that the organisation has relative to those struggles. In addition the theory of the organisation must serve a predictive function as well. Analysis must be made of history (both remote and current) in order to understand the roles that the organisation <em>should</em> have in various changing climates in order to prepare for their eventuality.<br /><br />It is assumed hereafter that in discussing the role of the revolutionary organisation we imagine that the final outcome is libertarian communism. <br /> <br />There are two basic features (thought not purely separable) that can be distinguished when talking about the role of a revolutionary organisation. The first is internal organisation. The second is external. <br /><br /><strong>Lenin</strong><br /><br />The tendencies of revolutionary organisation for the left can not be said to start with Lenin, but 1917 was probably the most pronounced example of the Socialist revolution and therefor serves as a reasonable starting point for analysis. <br /><br />Lenin had developed a theoretical model of revolutionary organisation that includes the notion of the vanguard party and the notion of democratic centralism as its internal organisational method. <br /><br />The vanguard party is an organisation that was theoretically to serve an educational role and to act in a tactical capacity. Lenin argues in <a href="../../../#7">[7]</a> that the consciousness necessary for revolution had to come from an intellectual group that was able to serve as a catalyst and to serve a directive function to activities. For this reason the vanguard should be staffed with professional revolutionaries, those capable for both the theoretical and tactical tasks to effect the revolution. <br /><br />Here he argues for alteration of the internal structure of the organisation due to the way in which the organisation must interact with the proletariat. <br /><br />The notion of spontaneous action on the part of the working class is analysed by Lenin as the fruition of at least <em>embryonic</em> consciousness. <br /><br /><blockquote>... the ``spontaneous element'', in essence, represents nothing more nor less than consciousness in an embryonic form. <a href="../../../#7">[7]</a></blockquote><br /><br />However, Lenin rejected that the workers would acquire a fully realised consciousness of the role that the proletariat would need to serve to bring about socialism.<br /><br /><blockquote>The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc. <a href="../../../#7">[7]</a></blockquote><br /><br />The rejection of the capacity of the working class to come into consciousness of their role served as a later justification for the increasing control that was to be exercised by the Bolsheviks as the revolution progressed. This leads to the traditional idea of the vanguard party, acting as the agent of the working class and substituting itself as the dictatorship of the proletariat for some transitional stage. The external organisational principle follows from this as one of concentric centralisation of the politicised, the workers and indeed the whole of society around the party.<br /><br />A note should be made on the "dictatorship of the proletariat". This phrase has been used to mean a range of different things from its use to mean the domination of the working class because of their majority status in a democratic institution to a small cadre that would substitute itself in the interest of the working class. It is likely that the democratic notion is closer to Marx's original interpretation and that the later interpretation is a result of Leninist theory.<br /><br />We might reflect that this assertion that the working class can not come into consciousness of its own role is at odds with the experience of revolutionary syndicalism that was to come later in Spain. Though not perfect, it would be difficult to argue that the consciousness of the proletariat and the peasants in Spain '36 was merely embryonic in form.<br /><br />Democratic centralism is an internal organisational principle for the revolutionary party. Internally an organisation should have the freedom to discuss and debate and then finally vote on action based on the outcomes of the debate. This forms the "democratic" component of democratic centralism. "Centralism" describes an extreme tactical unity. That is, when decisions are made, there is total acceptance by the minority, which must go along with the decisions of the organisation. This notion of internal organisation formed one of the major arguments which lead to the split between the Menshevik and Bolshevik tendencies. <br /><br />A commonly recognised set of principles forming democratic centralism is the following: <br /><ol> <br /> <li>Election of all party organs from bottom to top and systematic renewal of their composition, if needed.</li><br /> <li>Responsibility of party structures to both lower and upper structures.</li><br /> <li>Strict and conscious discipline in the party—the minority must obey the majority until such time as the policy is changed.</li><br /> <li>Decisions of upper structures are mandatory for the lower structures.</li><br /> <li>Cooperation of all party organs in a collective manner at all times, and correspondingly, personal responsibility of party members for the assignments given to them and for the assignments they themselves create.</li><br /><br /></ol> <br /> <br />Interestingly, item 4 forms a sort of half-subsidiarity in that all higher decision making bodies are to be respected but the purview of these bodies is not in any way limited. Whereas with full subsidiarity additionally all decisions would be made at the least authority of competence.<br /><br /><strong>One Big Party</strong> <br /><br />Some groups take the internal and external roles of the political organisation and identify them completely. It might be noted that this is quite similar to evangelical religious conceptions of the church. One group which vocally advocates an international general party which the majority of the class should join is the Progressive Labor Party. Since the PLP takes democratic centralism as its organisational principle there is no further work other than to find effective methods of proselytising. <br /><br />This current can also be viewed as a subconscious current in many, or even most other political parties and revolutionary organisations.<br /><br /><strong>The Ultra-Left, Left Communism and Others</strong><br /><br />The ultra-left and left communism have differed quite a bit in both time and space on the question of internal and external organisational principles. Left communism has gotten some notoriety due to the fact that some vocal exponents have taken the mechanical determinism present in Marx to such an extreme that they theorise the role of the revolutionary organisation out of existence entirely. We will take a very cursory look at some organisational strains. For a more detailed exposition and critique of the various strains of Left Communism see <a href="../#8">[8]</a>.<br /><br />One of the first arguments against Leninism, a response to "Left-Wing Communism - An Infantile Disorder" was given by Herman Gorter <a href="../../#5">[5]</a>. Gorter actually doesn't directly confront Leninism as it manifested in Russia, but rather argues that due to the objective conditions faced by the proletariat in Germany and England, the movement can't but require mass consciousness on the part of the proletariat, and that a strong leadership really serves very little purpose. <br /><br /><blockquote>Unless the entire class or at least the great majority stand up for the revolution personally, with almost superhuman force, in opposition to all the other classes, the revolution will fail; for you will agree with me again that on determining our tactics we should reckon with our own forces, not with those from outside - on Russian help, for instance.<br /><br />The proletariat almost unarmed, alone, without help, against a closely united Capitalism, means for Germany that every proletarian must be a conscious fighter, every proletarian a hero; and it is the same for all Western Europe.<br /><br />For the majority of the proletariat to turn into conscious, steadfast fighters, into real Communists, they must be greater, immeasurably greater, here than in Russia, in an absolute as well as a relative sense. And once more: this is the outcome, not of the representations, the dreams of some intellectual, or poet, but of the purest realities.<br /><br />And as the importance of the class grows, the importance of the leaders becomes relatively less. This does not mean that we must not have the very best of leaders. The best are not good enough; we are trying hard to find them. It only means that the importance of the leaders, as compared to that of the masses, is decreasing. <a href="../../#5">[5]</a></blockquote><br /><br />Gorter is here advocating the role of the party in a much more educational role with engagement with the mass organisations rather than concentric centralising control. The consequence of his argument comes quite close to the (external) organisational method that is advocated in The Platform.<br /><br />In addition to Gorter, Gramsci developed ideas concerning the role of education, which he termed <em>philosophy</em> and its practical application to life and to the masses, which he labeled <em>politics</em> <a href="../#2">[2]</a>. For his divergence in theory from both Marx's mechanicism and Lenin's rejection of the masses coming into consciousness, Gramsci can arguably be called a left communist. <br /><br />While Gramsci advocated democratic centralism as an internal organisational principle <a href="../../../#10">[10]</a>, in terms of engagement with broader society, Gramsci brought forward the idea of ideological hegemony as a fundamental (but not exclusive) motive force in society. The idea is basically quite similar to the idea of <em>consciousness</em> described by Lenin but more fully developed and later reflected in the notion of <em>capillary</em> power by Foucault <a href="../#9">[9]</a>.<br /><br />Gramsci additionally makes an attack on the form of external organisation of anarchism, as he sees it: <br /><br /><blockquote>But there is one traditional party too with an essentially "indirect" character - which in other words presents itself explicitly as purely "educative", moral, cultural. This is the anarchist movement.</blockquote><br /><br />Here of course, the role of anarchist activity as <em>purely</em> educative does not correspond directly to the tendency present in the platform and may not even be historically accurate in terms of the militant syndicalism that was present in Turin, but probably does reflect some Italian Anarchist ideas present at the time (Malatesta?). That is, unless one views <em>all</em> activity in the mass organisations as propaganda by the deed, something Gramsci hints at, in which case the notion is entirely degenerate and identifies all tendencies between Leninism and Platformism.<br /><br />Additionally there is a current of thought expressed by Gilles Dauvè which recognises the need for organisations to develop theory which will then organically direct activity <a href="../#3">[3]</a>.<br /><br /><blockquote> Modern Leninist groups (Trotskyist groups, for instance) try to organize the workers. Modern ultra-left groups (I.C.O.., for instance) only circulate information without trying to adopt a collective position on a problem. As opposed to this, we believe it necessary to formulate a theoretical critique of present society. Such a critique implies collective work. We also think that any permanent group of revolutionary workers must try to find a theoretical basis for its action. Theoretical clarification is an element of, and a necessary condition for, practical unification.</blockquote><br /><br />This however does seem only to skirt the issue, since it is a theoretical question how best the organisation should interact with the rest of society. It seems to be hinted that the appropriate activity will develop naturally from a sufficiently developed theory of society, but it seems strange that such a well developed theory of society would not also lead to a well developed theory of the mode of interaction that the revolutionary group would take.<br /><br />For entertainment's sake, another theory was expressed by Sam Moss in The Impotence of the Revolutionary Organisation <a href="../../../#10">[10]</a>. Here Sam Moss doesn't agree with those left communists who reject the role of the organisation on philosophical grounds, but merely argues from a pragmatic viewpoint, that the organisation can never have any beneficial impact on the mass organisations. <br /><br /><strong>Autonomism, Affinity and Networks</strong><br /><br />The organisational approaches present in Autonomism tend to advocate more diffuse or network based approaches. It takes a much more spontaneous and self organisational approach to struggle, while simultaneously recognising a need for theoretical and intellectual explication of the struggle. As such it is difficult to identify definite arguments about the role of the revolutionary organisation in Autonomist currents.<br /><br />Similar in character to the ideas present in autonomism are those expressed by Day in <a href="../../#11">[11]</a>. These involve the idea of <em>affinity</em> as the basic principle that should be advocated set in opposition to hegemony. <br /><br />There seems in Day to be some confusion between the idea of ideological hegemony, due to contact with post-modernism. In fact homogeneity of philosophy never exists in any age or place, but there exist various influential currents. The idea of affinity as the most important organisational principle is in fact itself an idea that seeks to be hegemonic if it is to succeed as a principle, in which case the negation of Gramsci's notion of hegemony is not present in Day as it is supposed. <br /><br />There may indeed by a further, more developed theory that seeks to draw elements from both hegemonic and affinity or network based ideas. This theory would describe using activity and philosphical explication to promote growth of affinity and cooperation in non-concentric spheres of influence. The revolutionary organisation would serve as a particular sphere attempting to facilitate capillary institutions. <br /><br /><strong>The Platform</strong><br /><br />The Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists had an organisational section in which it was outlined what internal structure the revolutionary organisation should seek.<br /><ol><br /> <li>Theoretical Unity</li><br /> <li>Tactical Unity or the Collective Method of Action</li><br /> <li>Collective Responsibility</li><br /> <li>Federalism</li><br /></ol> <br /><br /><strong>Theoretical Unity</strong><br /><br />The first idea of theoretical unity is shared with democratic centralism and not much critique is made of its counter-part, a disorganised synthesism. However Fontenis has the following to say in support of theoretical unity:<br /><br /><blockquote>A questions arises: could the programme not be a synthesis, taking account of what is common to people who refer to the same ideal, or more accurately to the same or nearly the same label? That would be to seek an artificial unity where to avoid conflicts you would only uphold most of the time what isn't really important: you'd find a common but almost empty platform. The experiment has been tried too many times and out of 'syntheses' - unions, coalitions, alliances and understandings - has only ever come ineffectiveness and a quick return to conflict: as reality posed problems for which each offered different or opposite solutions the old battles reappeared and the emptiness, the uselessness of the shared pseudo-programme - which could only be a refusal to act - were clearly shown. </blockquote><br /><br />Indeed, this may go to far, as it in fact excludes the possibility of the masses coming into the necessary coherence under which libertarian communism could be established. In its polemic attack against synthesism, it may even exclude the known historic events attributable to anarcho-syndicalism in Spain. He almost immediately however corrects himself in the following quote: <br /><br /><blockquote>Now, a revolutionary programme, the anarchist programme, cannot be one that is created by a few people and then imposed on the masses. It's the opposite that must happen: the programme of the revolutionary vanguard, of the active minority, can only be the expression - concise and powerful, clear and rendered conscious and plain - of the desires of the exploited masses summoned to make the Revolution. In other words: class before party.</blockquote><br /><br />It seems that in fact the idea should instead be one of the <em>effectiveness</em> of the specific organisation it its role in advocating anarchist ideas in the mass organisations. This later formulation is advocated in The Platform:<br /><br />As an aside, the term vanguard party is used to denote the specific revolutionary organisation, not the centralised force of the revolution acting itself as the consciousness of the masses and seeking to establish itself as the dictatorship of the proletariat.<br /><br /><strong>Tactical Unity</strong><br /><br />Perhaps the most difficult notion to deal with is the one of tactical unity. As we have seen the principle in its extreme form is the one present in democratic centralism. That is, the total acceptance by the minority of the rule of the majority. In the most extreme hegemonic form of democratic centralism, we end up with a situation where there is no alternative to the organisation, since the organisation has in fact become the formal apparatus for all decisions in society. At this point, the possibility of leaving is not present, and we have collapsed into a situation where the tyranny of the majority is very difficult to avoid and must be combated by appeal to principles or parallel, extra-organisational means.<br /><br />We have a number of important distinctions that must be made. As has been pointed out by Murray Bookchin <a href="../../#12">[12]</a>, the organisational principle of consensus can lead to a tyranny of the minority: <br /><br /><blockquote>I have found that it permits an insidious authoritarianism and gross manipulations -- even when used in the name of autonomy or freedom.</blockquote><br /><br />One can imagine the minority blocking all activity and thereby rendering the organisation totally ineffective. A society attempting to abolish capitalism through democratic control of the economy in the hands of the majority would find itself incapable, due to blocking by the capitalist class, under a consensus organisational principle. Or for the small revolutionary organisation, a single infiltrator could halt all activity, or selected activity. Indeed we haven't escaped from the problem of the minority and majority at all.<br /><br />However, the majority does not derive a mandate purely with respect to numbers. The opposite recriminations that were levelled against consensus can easily be constructed for the majoritarian principle. In fact the problem lends itself to tension at a deep level is intertwined with notions of liberty, federalism and subsidiarity. <br /><br />The problem must be teased out into some constituent currents. <br /><br />One of these is the practical effect of decision. If a group is making a decision to perform some activity, especially one that will be engaged in despite decisions made by the organisation (Rossport for example) and since they will be engaged in autonomously the organisation can have no benefit in dictating a policy of non-activity unless that activity is actually in contravention to the principle of the organisation. This intransigent minority is at some level divergent because of a divergence of theory, but this does not represent an avoidable divergence and as such. If a group is negatively effected by a decision, and is opposed to it, then we have the classical problem of the tyranny of the majority.<br /><br />Another constituent is the level of actual dedication and various levels of responsibility that members are willing to take on. It can come to pass that decisions are made by the majority of the organisation, but with no actual executive power. Here the majoritarian viewpoint is entirely hollow and exists only in good intentions but without any contact with practical activity. <br /><br />The authors of The Platform attempt to deal with some of these problems:<br /><br /><blockquote><br />However, there may be times when the opinions of the Union's membership on such and such an issue would be split, which would give rise to the emergence of a majority and a minority view. Such instances are commonplace in the life of all organizations and all parties. Usually, a resolution of such a situation is worked out. <br /><br />We reckon, first of all, that for the sake of unity of the Union, the minority should, in such cases, make concessions to the majority. This would be readily achievable, in cases of insignificant differences of opinion between the minority and majority. If, though, the minority were to consider sacrificing its viewpoint an impossibility, then there would be the prospect of having two divergent opinions and tactics within the Union; a majority view and tactic, and a minority view and tactic. <a href="../../#13">[13]</a></blockquote><br /><br />Watching the practical activity in the Workers' Solidarity Movement these problems and features come to light. Indeed there have been times when the organisation is able to come to full theoretical unity on a particular subject, and it turns out that despite the highest decision making body, The National Council, coming to definitive and even unanimous support on a decision, no one is willing to undertake the activity. On the opposite side, there are activities which enjoy very active and dedicated support by large minorities, and yet the majority is quite critical of having involvement in the activity. <br /><br />The minority/majority problem should probably be though of in terms of subsidiarity, and this principle should ensconced as a constitutional principle which can be evoked. <br /><br />If some group feels compelled to carry out some practical activity, then the majority should allow the activity to take place as to do otherwise would give decision making authority to individuals not willing to take active engagement and who aren't otherwise suffering from externalities of the activity. <br /><br />Of course the prevention of activities, in the case that it contravenes the theoretical basis, or the majority believe that it will be tactically regressive, is still possible. One might even imagine an extreme situation where all activities must have total tactically unity to ensure the continued survival of the revolution. In this case members would need to consent to the majority or leave the organisation. One should be careful to remember, however, that this is exactly democratic centralism. <br /><br /><strong>Federalism</strong><br /><br />Although the fourth point is termed <em>federalism</em>, and the document makes a verbal attack against centralism, it seems to be speaking, in a rather clumsy way, about subsidiarity. That is, the reconciliation of the dialectic tension between individuality and collective responsibility in various spheres. Each level of collective responsibility above the individual in society is based on the requirement that the decision be made at that appropriate level to maximise freedom and the collective good.<br /><br />Indeed this last principle could stand further and more concrete elaboration especially in light of a more clear concept of subsidiarity, and possibly of notions of overlapping or aggregating subsidiarity. It should also make closer theoretical contact with the problems of methods of collective decision-making and collective responsibility.<br /><br /><strong>Conclusion</strong><br /><br />In the final analysis, since most socialists profess to want libertarian communism it is useful to survey the landscape of possible revolutionary socialist organisational models, the method of contact with the external and the historical outcome and corollary consequences of the model and the points of divergence and the reasons for that divergence. Indeed libertarian communists in the especifismo and platformist traditions could stand analysis and critique to be made much more explicit and precise on these fronts than it is currently. <br /><br />Socialist movements have often been rerouted into generating support for a replacement of the state with other oppressive state structures. The cause of this activity is at least partially related to revolutionary organisational principles. We should make sure that we are capable of both generating the climate for revolution, and carrying this revolution out in such a way as to move towards the goal. <br /><br /><br /><a name="1"></a>[1] Dielo Trouda (Workers' Cause) - <a href="http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/platform"> The Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists </a> <br /><a name="2"></a>[2] Antonio Gramsci - <a href="http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/archive/gramsci/editions/spn/study_philosophy/index.htm"> Study of Philosophy </a> <br /><a name="3"></a>[3] Gilles Dauvés and François Martin - <a href="http://www.geocities.com/antagonism1/etoc.html">Eclipse and Re-Emergence of the Communist Movement </a> <br /><a name="4"></a>[4] Georges Fontenis - <a href="http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/mlc/index.html"> Manifesto of Libertarian Communism </a> <br /><a name="5"></a>[5] Herman Gorter - <a href="http://libcom.org/library/open-letter-to-comrade-lenin-gorter"> Reply to Lenin </a> <br /><a name="6"></a>[6] V. I. Lenin - <a href="http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/index.htm"> What Is To Be Done </a> <br /><a name="7"></a>[7] Oisin Mac Giollamoir - <a href="http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=7162"> Left Communism and Its Ideology </a> <br /><a name="8"></a>[8] Foucault, M - Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings (1972-77).<br /><a name="9"></a>[9] Antonio Gramsci - The Modern Prince<br /><a name="10"></a>[10] Sam Moss - <a href="http://libcom.org/library/impotence-of-revolutionary-group-international-council-correspondence-moss"> The Impotence of the Revolutionary Organisation </a> <br /><a name="11"></a>[11] Richard J.F. Day - <a href="http://www.akpress.com/2006/items/gramsciisdeadanarchistcurrents"> Gramsci is Dead </a> <br /><a name="12"></a>[12] Murray Bookchin - <a href="http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bookchin/cmmnl2.mcw.html"> What is Communalism? </a> <br /><a name="13"></a>[13] Dielo Truda - <a href="http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/supporg.htm"> Supplement to the Organizational Platform (Questions and Answers) </a>Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-31672335038080024282009-03-15T05:05:00.000-07:002010-02-16T08:51:01.119-08:00Gifts and Debt<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikT3VhAt33yVq4JOrIubZQFGfu49WuqrOpYF1BiBDgBNhww8PvxgIP40lTvy-D14zDbtnU3pJGkUtqIfSRLDf43tdBlmHWVTpeSMRZN2qA-jS_lafMWie37Jvo_Xpcs3iDY_P7fvQasyA/s1600-h/Gift.jpg"><img alt="Man presents a cut of meat to a youth with a hoop. Athenian red-figure vase, ca. 460 BCE" style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 265px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikT3VhAt33yVq4JOrIubZQFGfu49WuqrOpYF1BiBDgBNhww8PvxgIP40lTvy-D14zDbtnU3pJGkUtqIfSRLDf43tdBlmHWVTpeSMRZN2qA-jS_lafMWie37Jvo_Xpcs3iDY_P7fvQasyA/s320/Gift.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438884760766147794" /></a><br />The capitalist economy is a nexus of structures and activities. The success of capitalism is in part due to the fact that it is based on cultural expressions of real aspects of the human social animal. Humans are capable of acting in ways that allow the increasing universalisation of capitalism in both physical and social space. Globalisation sees capitalism expanding in geophysical spatial terms. At the same time more parts of human existence that were formerly social become mediated by commodity exchange. Humans are capable of relating to each other, through the profit motive, in ways which encourage the maximisation of greed and accumulation. Indeed, they are capable of using violence and coercion to replicate this social order. <br /><br />However, this state of affairs has not always existed in its present form and it does not always have to exist. Anthropology shows us definitively the true breadth of possible social relations [4]. By taking a survey of human societies, we see that they can vary from the extremely authoritarian and violent to the exceptionally egalitarian and peaceful. <br /><br />Libertarians can recast society in a form that promotes a truly cooperative and non-combative mode of existence but this must exist with in the confines of the space of possible social relations. Any recasting of society that hopes to avoid the failures, combative anti-egalitarian, and authoritarian aspects of current society must understand both how these relationships come about, how they perpetuate themselves and how new social relationships can be formed in a way capable of sufficient homeostasis or internal stability to serve as an alternative. <br /><br />This essay does not attempt a survey of the totality of social relations and their basis, and ignores important external constraints on society related to self-reproduction. It is rather a brief exposition of some cultural institutions and social relations and their relationship to the organisation of society and the economy that have existed in the past or exist now and how they are related to human psychology.<br /><br /><strong>What is risk</strong><br /><br />All human activities which have a goal, either a processual goal or final goal state, contain an element of risk due to the impossibility of perfect prediction. Some events are more predictable than others and hence have lower risk than others if the goal is related to the prediction of the event or behaviour occurring. For instance, the prediction that an apple falls when one drops it has less risk then whether it will rain today. <br /><br />In essence risk is a means of thinking about prediction and the extent to which prediction is reliable. It is concerned both with time and behaviour.<br /><br />The methodology of human risk assessment in inter-personal relationships is <em>ad hoc</em>. It relies on dispositions and tendencies. In contrast probability theory provides detailed descriptions of risk. However, even this later science presupposes a detailed understanding of the system which in practice is often not possible.<br /> <br /><strong>What is trust</strong> <br /><br />Trust is a social relation that involves time displacement. It is a notion that some activity will be sustained or enacted in the future. Due to the predictive nature of trust, it involves risk.<br /><br />There are at least two conceptual stages of trust. In the first stage we have decided to accept an unknown amount of risk in order to determine the reliability of a social relation that has been entered. All trust starts initially with an uncertainty in even the risk involved. In the second stage, we are relating to a history of behaviours. Based on these behaviours we can evaluate the risk of future events.<br /><br />Trust as a social relation is often built through the taking of risks. It can be entered into deliberately or accidentally. <br /><br />Trust can be manufactured deliberately through a coordinated ritual that involves risk for both parties. This helps to create bonds in a situation in which both parties stand to lose from direct defection from cooperation. Objectively this ritual might seem absurd, as outside of the situation of risk neither party would have the same constraints which would ensure further social solidarity. However trust once developed between humans is often less brittle than the immediate circumstances in which it developed.<br /><br />The webs of trust that develop in a community through the knowledge of reliability, or low risk in the acceptance of responsibilities generate webs of trust. Social groups are often developed. <br /><br />The initial stage of trust can also be built and entered into verbally. When one utters that they "trust" someone to carry something out, they are making a transference. This act generates a potential social obligation not just from the direct recipient to the utterer, but also to anyone else within earshot. <br /><br />The transmission of gossip[5] is also useful in providing social bonds. It propagates both risk itself and a knowledge of risk within a community. This creates interpersonal dependencies due to norms of reciprocity. If someone's secret is deliberately revealed outside of the group then one might be subject to similar retributive acts. Those who reveal secrets or who don't reveal secrets can also be determined through this ritual.<br /><br />Trust is fundamental in the generation of coherent behaviour in groups. Without trust, the conduits for communication are too slow and tentative to generate effective tactical associations. One can see this concretely in the speed and precision with which action can take place after trust is developed between team mates in football or between veteran direct action activists. <br /><br />Groups seeking to behave coherently would do well to think of the sociological origin of trust and the fact that it is developed organically and inter-personally. The emergent behaviours of the collective of a group are to some extent dictated by the culture of trust.<br /><br /><strong>What are gifts</strong><br /><br />Gifts are a mechanism by which people enter into a relationship around a commodity [1]. This relationship is not the exchange relationship that sorrounds commodities and is the dominant mechanism for obtaining commodities in modern society. The gift was, prior to capitalism, perahps the most common mechanism by which economies functioned. <br /><br />Giving someone something is in a sense entering into a social relationship altruistically. There is some degree of personal risk involved, in that the other person may not be able to reciprocate. This risk builds a `social debt` in which the person who recieves it feels both comradery and respect towards the person giving the gift and at least some feeling of obligation of reciprocation. <br /><br />When a society is heavily involved in the exchange of gifts, as is the case when gift is the main mechanism of commodity circulation, then we end up with a society tightly interwoven and mutually supporting. <br /><br />In contrast, modern christian charity is profoundly different to the act of giving. While charity is not the same as the exchange of commodities in the market it is very similar since no social relations are produced in the act. In commodity exchange we receive equal value for equal value and the transaction ends. In charity one is given something and the transaction ends. It is a purely material relation between people and no social relation comes as a result. <br /><br />There may be <em>internal</em> changes to the participants. The individuals who exchange may each feel they have improved their lot. The philanthropist may have assuaged feelings of guilt. Indeed the recipient of charity may have growing feelings of guilt. However, these are internalised and atomic.<br /><br />It is interesting to speculate if charity arose in conjunction with or as a necessary result of the rise of the market. The major charitable religions do appear to arise around the same time as markets become a dominant form of economics in their regions[3]. The necessity to prevent social instability and the rise of purely mechanical and material relations between people create an interesting reinforcing symbiosis of charity and market.<br /><br />The notion that the most elevated form of gift must be the one with no social consequences is not actually a response against capitalism, but a response in symbiosis and in support of capitalism.<br /><br /><strong>What is debt</strong><br /><br />Debt is a notion related to reciprocation [2]. <em>Norms of reciprocity</em> are deeply embedded in the human psyche and exist across cultures. They cover everything from the notions of social responsibility to return a favour when possible, the notion of solidarity to the darker ideas of vengeance and blood debt.<br /><br />A <em>norm of reciprocity</em> is an enculturated mechanism of determining the appropriate response to some act. Debt is a system of accounting and remembering what acts are socially obliged. <br /><br />Systems of accounting extend from individual or social human memory of social obligation all the way through to modern double-entry accounting.<br /><br />Debt in gift economies involves the memories of the participants. Debt is eliminated by acts that successfully compensate. In some societies, such as the Tlingit [2], this gift debt even exists with interest, requiring the receiver to provide an even more lavish gift in the future.<br /><br /><strong>Groups and Social Relations</strong> <br /><br />The various social relations described in this essay are largely based on inter-personal relationships. The size of groups that can be formed from direct social relationships are highly constrained. It is generally considered to be the case that these groups amongst humans can not extend beyond approximately 150 people [5].<br /><br />Social mechanisms that have provided cooperation in numbers far beyond 150 people have had to use impersonal mechanisms of generating group behaviour. The capitalist mode of production and market exchange allow for vast complexes to be organised. Any replacement of capitalism is going to require that production and distribution can be organised using abstractions and not just direct human relations. <br /><br />Understanding this we must reevaluate the concept of debt, risk, trust and social relations and relations with an abstract society or symbolic social order. <br /><br />Gift economies are often raised as a plausible alternative to our current monetary society. Gift societies however require implicit accounting embedded in paired social relations. It can not scale beyond the village. If it is reified in relation to an abstract social order it will become nothing more than a system of debt accounting (though not necessarily monetary).<br /><br />A more libertarian version of gift might invert the gift process entirely. This inversion would place <em>hope</em> as primary. This would be a society that organises around desire rather than obligation. The accounting system here is a dual form to both gift and money. <br /><br />The extent to which this is possible as the main paradigm for a society would be related to the capacity of a culture to move from a <em>push</em> psychology to a <em>pull</em>. The demand for labour would be accounted as the labour most hoped for. Instead of an <em>obligation</em>, labour's value becomes a <em>hope</em>.<br /><br />Marxists have historically noted that commodity exchange becomes a material relation between people. The process of exchange is desocialised entirely. However, while this critique is correct, it seems to suggest that alternatives reassert social relations in the process of commodity relations. This view should be suspect due to the fundamental limitations which social relations among humans individually have in terms of scale. For an advanced productive society with a huge amount of commodity distribution it is simply impossible to coordinate society based on social relations.<br /><br /><strong>The Personal and the Political</strong><br /><br />There is a question which repeatedly presents itself. A question of whether society can be reshaped through the changing of social relations between individuals or whether a revolution is required to produce a new society. <br /><br />In fact this dichotomy is entirely false and the two things are but different sides of the same coin. Social revolution is a revolution not just between humans, but between humans and the symbolic social order itself. All of these facets are inter-related and inseparable. Changes taking place within the movement in the furtherance of realizing an alternative society will not work unless the perspective is a broad one of creating society wide change. That means we must be in constant outreach and contact with the broader society. At the same time we need to realise that creating a movement for revolution is only useful if it is a social revolution. The means of creating social revolution is through our own transformation and the transformation of our social relations with each other <em>and</em> with respect to an abstract society. A movement which does not transform itself will simply recreate itself in the image of its origin. <br /><br />[1] Lawrence C. Becker <em>Reciprocity</em><br />[2] Marcel Mauss <em>The Gift</em><br />[3] David Graeber <em>Five Thousand Years of Debt</em><br />[4] David Graeber <em>Towards an Anarchist Anthropology</em><br />[5] Robin Dunbar <em>Why Gossip is Good for You</em>Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-50834576897508871072009-02-27T09:40:00.000-08:002010-02-16T08:53:37.679-08:00The Cost of the Wage<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig47fn6mksYbDKs_skIoM8X8yIF92BH7iyXk_wOzTW5HbpAX7DCW7OlqSaORzgbR8KeGzEpbM3eK39MkuwDHvh9OgWbhzLRrwYQWKo_A7GgGsz9uL9y8dAnpbO3dHNPQYzm7eF6eFCj3s/s1600-h/IWW.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 264px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig47fn6mksYbDKs_skIoM8X8yIF92BH7iyXk_wOzTW5HbpAX7DCW7OlqSaORzgbR8KeGzEpbM3eK39MkuwDHvh9OgWbhzLRrwYQWKo_A7GgGsz9uL9y8dAnpbO3dHNPQYzm7eF6eFCj3s/s320/IWW.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438885494750615282" /></a><br />The wage has become a thing that is almost universally considered necessary. When looking at current capitalism it is ubiquitious and it's domain is growing. However, more importantly, looking at almost every future picture of the organisation of production that is currently popular, we find the wage to be central. From economic proposals as diverse as Schweickart's Economic Democracy [1] to Hahnel and Albert's Parecon [2] we have as a core feature of the system, the wage. <br /><br />While a mainstay of critiques by traditional libertarian communists and anarchist communists [3], the repercussions of the wage have been insufficiently evaluated in most modern libertarian socialist literature. These repercussions must be seriously evaluated in relation to a different system. A system of freely given labour, one in which satisfaction of demand is not dictated by the mode or type of ones labour.<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />What is a Wage</span><br /><br />At it's core, the wage is a mechanism for creating differences in the amount of consumption that people are entitled based on the way in which they work. The evaluation of the way in which they work can vary. Under modern capitalism, the wage is set entirely by market forces. In some envisioned socialist systems, the wage is set based purely on the number of hours worked. In Parecon the wage is set based on a combination of market forces and percieved "effort". Each of these will be dealt with in turn.<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Labour Notes </span><br /><br />The idea of remunerating labour based strictly on hours worked is an old idea. In addition it seems to have some basis in the Marxian Labour Theory of Value (LTV). If the value of goods is in their labour content (as it is in LTV), it gives a reasonably strong argument that people could be fairly remunerated in terms of labour time. <br /><br />This idea however has at least three serious problems. The first is that the LTV is a macro-economic theory of value, that is, it doesn't talk about individual products made by individual firms but rather broad emergent trends. Therefor different prices of goods will diverge from the actual labour time by product and sector. <br /><br />In addition, the fact that labour time is in aggregate the value of a product is an emergent property of capitalism, not socialism. It requires that capitalists are continually trying to undercut each other in competition and buyers are always trying to find the best price. <br /><br />Lastly, if factories started using labour time vouchers, and some factory produced goods and sold them at their labour time, what would happen if people didn't buy them? Then they would have to reduce the price. Then who would be paying the difference between the products sold and the full remuneration for labour time? It would have to be coordinated by a central clearing house that assured that workers were paid by their time and not the amount that the good sold for. <br /><br />Supposing that the workers decided to start doing a slow down. This means that they would be remunerated the same for their time, but would produce less. Then the price of the good would rise in the market and more scarcity but the same remuneration. Sectors that did this would exhibit price inflation. Now we have a wage, one that requires that you show up, but doesn't incentivise you to do anymore than if you didn't have a wage at all. It is more complicated than no wage, and serves no function.<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Remuneration for Productivity </span><br /><br />If productivity is the quantity rewarded then we are in a situation in which the differential becomes the important quantity again. Even with the total non-existence of profit we end up with competition. The worker who is able to produce 10 times as much of a good as another worker will get rewarded for their differential productivity. This immediately incentivises them to hide any productive knowledge from others in order to avail of the incentives that one would get for exceptional productivity. Surely a world where every worker would attempt to withhold productive knowledge is not one that we would like to generate. <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Remuneration for Effort </span><br /><br />Remuneration for effort is often held up as a remedy for this problem. The problem then becomes who gets to decide who is working well and expending effort. If you have a lot of people in a workplace, who is going to track this? Are you going to be putting quotas on individual workers? When quotas were instituted in the USSR they had all sorts of unintended effects, from having thousands of 1/2" nails to getting a few nails several feet long, all with the intention of satisfying the policy details, but not actually producing things of use-value. <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Witholding of Labour</span><br /><br />In a system with some form of remuneration tied to the distribution of goods we have the problem of the witholding of labour. Even in the system of labour notes, a particular key sector of society could strike to try to get a greater share or better treatement from society. The one solution to the problem of slowdown, the witholding of labour and sabotage is to ensure that work is done on a voluntary basis. At this point the collective responsibility is to provide opportunities for productivity. This turns the problem on it's head, allowing labour to be an opportunity to participate rather than a burden to bear. <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />The Attribution Problem <br /></span><br />“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted” -Albert Einstein<br /><br />At the core of Kropotkin's critique of the wage system is the impossibility of attributing the usefulness of work. The benefits of production are difficult to see with commodity production. As we move to intermediate commodity production used in production of other goods it becomes even more complex. However, when one starts looking at the effects of knowledge production, tracking the benefit becomes nearly impossible even in principle. What is the benefit recieved from the invention of Algebra, without which no engineering would be possible? How could that possibly be quantified? Such questions make a mockery of the notion that attributing the productive increase of an activity can serve as a means to decide a fair wage.<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />The Wrong Incentives</span><br /><br />The incentives that are provided by either remuneration for effort or remuneration by time encourage the wrong behaviour. The hours worked, or effort expended becomes a parameter which one must <em>game</em> in order to be remunerated. The end goal is never to produce the most socially desirable outcomes or to fulfil needs, or to be safe or happy, but always to fulfil some policy demand, whether it be piece work, quotas, hours or the <em>appearance</em> of being an efficient or hard working person, something which is necessarily a subjective measurement by others. The end result of such policy oriented systems are adherence to the structural laws.<br /><br />The only effective way to ensure the adherence to the specific meaning of the regulations is to create a managerial cast with the capacity of enforcing sanctions. This tendency has manifested itself repeatedly. In the Russian Revolution the Bolsheviks began calling for managerial control over the factories to ensure productivity [4]. This repeated itself in Hungary and Poland [5]. Indeed even in modern times with the National Health Service in Britain we've seen these systemic problems of attempting to use performance measures. <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />The Right Incentives</span><br /><br />Communism is unique in that it supplies the appropriate incentives for a just, egalitarian and free society. It demands that work be sufficiently satisfying and pleasurable that people are willing to do it. It is production were people find fulfilment by cooperation and play. The incentive structure strongly rewards the reduction of all undesirable labour towards total elimination. Nobody will be forced to work in some terrible activity. <br /><br />Communism gives a powerful incentive to share information. The ability to reduce unnecessary or undesirable work to nothing is potentiated by the total freedom to communicate. These two factors are self reinforcing in a way that moves our society towards one in which people will truely be free. <br /><br />[1] David Schweickart, Economic Democracy <br />[2] Michael Albert, Hahnel, Parecon<br />[3] Peter Kropotkin, The Wage<br />[4] Paul Averich, The Russian Anarchists <br />[5] Andy Anderson, Hungary '56Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35680194400337186.post-29618025147057683012009-02-05T15:28:00.000-08:002010-02-16T08:56:52.308-08:00What is Communism? - A Libertarian Communist Future<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkmZkd39qzbs6hvNKX5cjHLxi7Blzgz633zueZT11J88H0al3IENNsG6dR3wxkCqznPtuclN7xe-cc4xubsI1ailMdnR-AkGX0k6r9nt3dnalNofOMFY6FB-q_CWUZq1-ZYPEy4XVEDV0/s1600-h/libcom.gif"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 218px; height: 298px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkmZkd39qzbs6hvNKX5cjHLxi7Blzgz633zueZT11J88H0al3IENNsG6dR3wxkCqznPtuclN7xe-cc4xubsI1ailMdnR-AkGX0k6r9nt3dnalNofOMFY6FB-q_CWUZq1-ZYPEy4XVEDV0/s320/libcom.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438886260498011906" /></a><br />Communism has been variously described and various completely unlike systems have been described as communist. Communism in the analysis presented refers to libertarian communism, not the state capitalism of the USSR or other 'Socialist' regimes.<br /><br />Communism is sometimes described by the credo: "From each according to one's abilities, to each according to one's needs." This credo captures part of the essence of communism. That is, the free production of goods from labour and the supply of goods decoupled from any systematic valuation of labour.<br /><br />All wage systems effectively assign a value to labour by determining the amount of remuneration (in money, vouchers, or kind) to the productivity of the worker, and therefor violate this credo.<br /><br />Another way that communism is sometimes described is "production for use value". This means that the value of a good is only the value it has subjectively as an object for use, and <em>not</em> exchange.<br /><br />Under capitalism, the value of everything is determined by its exchange value. For commodities, this is often, though not exclusively the result of an equilibration between supply and demand. However, fictitious capital can also determine part of the exchange value of products. More will be said about this later.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;">The Necessity of Communism</span><br /><br />Capitalism is characterised by the exploitation of labour. The capitalist is able to obtain profit by controlling the means of production. This excludes the worker from manufacturing goods themselves. The profit comes from the fact that the price of a good on the market is less than all of the inputs needed to produce the product. Since labour transforms the inputs into the final product, this profit must come from a failure to give back the value for the full product of labour to the worker.<br /><br />However, even if the workers obtained the full product of labour from their work, they would still be in competition with each other. If two enterprises are competing in an open market over price, then this will force prices down. The only variable quantities in the production of goods which can allow a price decrease are labour or more efficient capital. If more efficient capital is employed, this has the effect of reducing scarcity of the good even further, leading to global price reductions leading right back to the original scenario with an even lower price. If the price decrease comes out of labour, this means that labour must speed itself up or lower its own remuneration.<br /><br />These factors ensure that competition creates precarity for the competitive workers, just as it does for capitalists in competition. The solution that capitalists have generally used is to produce monopoly, and this would be the reasonable approach for collectivised workers as well. In other words, the workers have incentive to control scarcity to ensure remuneration for productivity. Now the exploitation has been shifted from a fight over price in a given industry, to an attempt to generate unnecessary scarcity to ensure the differential advantage of labour against all other consumers.<br /><br />It is exactly communism which can rectify this state of affairs. The cooperative production of goods with the elimination of competition. The labourer may now be free of worry about how they will be remunerated given the exchange value of the product because exchange is no longer performed. The labourer is able to take freely of the goods produced.<br /><br />As scarcity diminishes due to increasing efficiency we have a situation where organising production and consumption around exchange value becomes increasingly absurd.<br /><br />Already, in the production of intellectual goods, goods with no scarcity after production, capitalism finds itself in an unresolvable quandary. In the <em>immediate</em> term exchange-value is impossible to determine. The first buyer could sell the product on for a price reduced from the original and, as this process is carried out, the exchange value of the product rapidly converges on zero. If the activity approaches zero exchange-value within capitalism it becomes impossible to perform the activity, excepting in the very limited free time which exists after agents are done with some other labour which remunerates.<br /><br />Alternatively, innovations or cybernetic advances within a given industry can produce vast differential advantages against competitors. This leads to a total non-communication of the information. These 'trade secrets' as they are often called can have enormous, even unbounded negative effects on the efficiency of the economy*.<br /><br />The traditional approach among capitalist states to the problems of zero exchange value or non-communication is to grant limited term monopolies over immaterial labour. This means that the state protects the value of the production by carrying out coercive actions against agents that attempt to obtain benefit from the immaterial labour without compensating the holder of the monopoly. Contrary to the notion of supply and demand that is usually held by neo-classical economists we have a peculiar situation of potentially infinite supply, held by a monopoly. The price is then set by the monopoly to maximise the profit.<br /><br />Again the results of this monopoly in the case of some innovation or cybernetic advance is that the entire productive economy suffers a diminished efficiency. Since immaterial advancements are often predicated on a large number of people using former immaterial advancements and innovating with respect to them, we find the global** economy suffering under massive loses in efficiency.<br /><br />As cybernetics and automation progress there is also the very real potential for singularities in production to arise. These singularities would arise from the automation of a task to the extent that no human labour is required to create the product. That is, the exchange value of the product, given that it could saturate demand, would fall to zero. Capitalism would be unable to produce such things at zero exchange value. In fact it is arguable that capitalism is unable to even approach the situation, as no investment could take place in a direction that would eventually remove all profits! The most rational approach to such a singularity would be to steer all investment clear of it. A situation which should be seen as totally intolerable for labour.<br /><br />Communism on the other hand, has no aversion to the reduction of the use of labour. Maximising the productivity means less total labour is needed to saturate demand. Communism measures progress by the minimisation of all non recreational activity such to approach, and hopefully at sometime reach, zero, while simultaneously providing the needs of society.<br /><br />Aside from the inability to progress, capitalism is bringing us towards disaster. The current ecological situation is intensely worrying. Capitalism, relying on completely local profits by capital, and a bourgeois democracy controlled by that capital, is unable to create any collective solution. It is only under a communal and collective approach to polity that we can devise a system which is capable of taking into account the totality of ecology.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >How Communism Might Work</span><br /><br />Communism, as defined earlier, can not be reduced to any absolute systematics. There are an infinity of systems which could arguably be called communist and would satisfy the idea of production for use value, or the communist credo. However, we would like to restrict these systems to those that are capable of supplying the entire current world with an alternative to capitalism.<br /><br />Of fundamental importance to any mechanism that would decide the distribution of goods and services is the need to know what goods and services are demanded. This can only be done by asking people what they want. A listing of what is wanted is known as a demand schedule. It should list all things that a person wants, from food, shelter and clean air to a new iPod.<br /><br />In addition to demand schedules, we must have information about productive potential. This means an assessment of all capital, and what its productive capacity is with given inputs. These inputs become contingent demands for a demand of output and necessary labour. The demands and contingent demands become the total input demand.<br /><br />Lastly, the labour that is available, that is, the labour that people are willing to freely give to a particular productive industry in order to satisfy the demands and contingent demands (until a fixed point is reached) is then determined by the labour force.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Filling in the Details</span><br /><br />This is a very simple exposition of an immensely complex process. We will now go into the various complexities that can arise.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;">Communal Management</span><br /><br />Durable goods that are frequently useful, such as a television, telephone and others, are most usefully thought of as personal effects of an individual. However, goods that are useful for only small periods of time (this might be a hammer if you aren't particularly handy, or a jack-hammer even if you are) should probably best be communally managed. Libraries are a common example of this activity, but really any good that is difficult to produce, used infrequently, has high maintenance costs or some combination thereof is more usefully placed in a borrowing model. Goods in the borrowing model don't need to be directly produced to fulfill demand, but rather can be collectively produced to fulfill a much larger collective demand.<br /><br />Even in the case of frequently used durables, we can think of the borrowing period as indefinite. At the end of the useful lifetime of the good (it fails), or at the point that you would like to requisition a different model, with different properties it could be returned. Necessary repairs could be done and it could be placed back in circulation, or broken into components in order to fulfill new productive demands. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;">Externalities</span><br /><br />Externalities are results of production which are unintended. Not all externalities are bad, some may be benign. However all pollution falls into the category of externalities as do health effects to labour.<br /><br />The assessment of externalities is a very difficult but important task. Demands such as "I would like clean air" have to be identified, and developed into measurable and quantifiably demands. Clean air would have to be with respect to both the health and safety of people, and the productive demands of people.<br /><br />Demands for things like "clean air" are not unreasonable, we hear them all the time from people, especially those living in areas of poor air quality. However, to determine what acceptable levels are, requires an open process where as much of the methodology and outcomes of the process are described as possible. It requires education both of the analysts, in terms of what these demands might mean more specifically, and of the people about the various levels of risk and effects of production.<br /><br />Production of externalities don't need to be removed. They need to be managed. In the event that deproduction or neutralisation of their effects is not possible, they can be minimised, or at least reduced to a level that is not harmful to continued human life or production.<br /><br />An example of this might be the use of fertiliser for farming. Fertiliser of some sort is required to create plants, and all fertiliser will produce some sort of nutrient increase in ground water. However, it is only when the levels become extreme that one has problems with eutrophication. Examples of disposal of externalities might be the use of scrubbing technologies to capture pollutants in a neutral or recyclable form.<br /><br />In the final analysis we can think of the non-production of externalities as a demand that can be satisfied. Clean air, clean water, quiet streets, low danger infrastructure, all of these are formulated as positive demands for the non-existence of the externality and can then be taken into the simplified framework of labour and demand.<br /><br />There have been attempts by capitalism to recuperate the ecological movement as "green capitalism". Green capitalism intends for the market to assign exchange value to various different externalities as a solution to the problem of assessing cost. However, many externalities are not even in principle exchangeable in the sense that the demands they satisfy may not even be related and no distributary or technological method can convert the two.<br /><br />Even if two externalities <em>were</em> interconvertible, there is no single objective value which could be placed on their interconvertibility. How would one establish the amount of mercury poisoning which is exchangeable for an amount of arsenic poisoning of the water supply. From what we know of toxicity it is much more likely that both should be limited by some threshold density. This means that no objective linear value for exchange could be decided in a rational way, and hence the notion of creating a market in externalities is not rational. The only way to deal with the problems of externalities is to look at how each of the costs affect us and what levels of production of a given externality are acceptable.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;">Time and Demand</span><br /><br />The demands of production can not be seen only in the short term. It is critical that when we envision demand schedules as something which operates over all time into the future.<br /><br />The most basic example of the necessity for such a time scale is that I may not want to work for a 3 day period in the future. This affects future productive capacity for goods and services. I may want to take a vacation to Morocco on the 28th of June. In order to ensure that labour and capital can fulfill my demand it is necessary to be able to speculate about what labour and capital will be available for that demand on the 28th of June.<br /><br />In addition, speculation is a critical feature. We need to be able to determine what is a likely method of meeting our demands and divert capital to it. This means speculating on the value of new capital investments. It will include diversion of capital towards direct production of infrastructure such as train routes or production of immaterial or human capital such as research into life-saving drugs.<br /><br />Some types of production will be resource limited in such a way that meeting immediate demand causes an inability to meet future demand. Fishing provides an excellent example. The use of fish as a resource which meets the demands of everyone in the world will, in very short order, lead to a world without fish. In order to meet future demand it will be necessary to take into account the ways which current demands can be met, and the ways in which they can't due to resource constraints.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;">Black Market</span><br /><br />This leads neatly into the problem of the black market. If goods, such as fish, are not produced by a systematic communist economy, and yet the real demand still exists, what will keep people from finding other means of producing it. Non-production within communism is very similar to prohibition under capitalism. While the good may or may not acquire contraband status, any production of the good outside the systemics will be effectively black market. The effects of the black market itself will likely have to be considered an externality of non-production which can not be evaded, but must rather be held in equilibrium. While pigovian taxes in capitalism are regressive and suffer from a lack of flexibility, democracy, and expert control (All simultaenously!) they have proved the ability of price controlled supply to mitigate the problems of the black market. That is, by allowing a restricted supply, one can make the opportunity cost of engaging in black market activity undesirable.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;">Maximisation and Minimisation</span><br /><br />The production of goods in industry must also look at the increase of efficiency both of the production of goods, but also of the minimisation of input resources. There are no systemic factors in communism that lead inexorably to the maximisation of production for use-value while minimising inputs. In order for maximisation and minimisation to continue improving and function, we will have to rely on principle.<br /><br />The local minimisation of resources, having no immediate affect on the well being of those involved have at times caused problems in communist contexts such as the Kibbutzim. Water-use, for instance, when unregulated by social control, can quickly end up being problematic. Examples that have worked in the Kibbutzim have included metering of water-taps, which increases the effectiveness of social control.<br /><br />In contrast, cost based systems, which make it difficult to acquire inputs, or which will eventually eat into profits if not carefully managed, are quite good at this type of minimisation.<br /><br />However, since the democratic communist economy is essentially an open computational system, it will be possible to look globally at where resources are being used, and to attempt to devote capital and attention to those areas which perform least well.<br /><br />In software it is well known that computational processes have "bottle-necks". These, usually very small, parts of programs will use disproportionate amounts of the resources. Optimising various different parts of the program will have almost no affect on the global performance unless one addresses these bottle-necks.<br /><br />While capitalism may be good at the level of enterprise optimisation of resources, it does not look at optimisation systemically.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;">Boundaries, Borders and the Collective</span><br /><br />The explication of demands will have to be made at a collective level for various types of goods. While individuals can freely associate their demands with those of others, the full articulation of demands can sometimes only be done collectively.<br /><br />A good example would be a mass transit system, which would need to set routes and the labour and capital required for creation and maintenance.<br /><br />In addition, the fulfillment of demands will have to be organised by organs which are somewhat specialised.<br /><br />Examples would involve the manufacture of buses, or the assessment of air quality. These would each need their own collective.<br /><br />Humans labour will associate in ways that can create finality to organs and bureaucratisation which may be unnecessary and possibly harmful. This tendency can not be eliminated, so the principle of openness and democracy must be maintained.<br /><br />When I was working in high-energy particle physics with the CDF group at Fermilab, I found that they did not release the CDF detector data. This is despite the fact that it was entirely funded by government bodies, in order to produce information for consumption (for free) by the scientific community. They kept their data because they were jealously guarding an exclusive ability to provide analysis and probably out of a fear that some analysis might be shown wrong if it was seen by many eyes. This tendency of information hiding can exist even without the profit motive, and the only remedy is vigilance for democracy and openness. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;">Absolute Scarcity</span><br /><br />Sometimes demand will exceed supply. There is nothing that can overcome this given that labour and productive potential is not infinite for every good. There are a number of ways in which scarcity can be dealt with.<br /><br />Ordering of demand schedules is one of the ways in which partial non satisfaction can be done in a relatively fair way. The ordering would mean that the system would prioritise satisfaction of those things high in the demand schedule, over those things that are not. Those things at the bottom of the demand schedule may be unlikely to be satisfied at all.<br /><br />Another way of dealing with it is lottery. Goods which are scarce will go only to those who win at some random game of chance. The utmost care would need to be taken to ensure that this could not be manipulated by those running the system. Ways to ensure this might mean making predictions of some widely visible naturally occurring phenomenon which is highly random. Perhaps the least significant digit up to precision of the time of the occurrence of the next sunspot.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Bad Jobs</span><br /><br />Bad jobs will be difficult to satisfy in communism since labour is given freely. There are a number of options at our disposal.<br /><br />One method is as a shared responsibility of the community which will be done collectively. This may be all at once, or by rotation, depending on the nature of the job. Its often the case that unpleasant activities that you know that <em>everyone</em> has to do, are less troublesome mentally than those that you specifically are required to do. This method, however, may not work in the presence of highly skilled bad jobs. Examples of this might include system administration and underwater welding. In order to deal with these, one would need to first de-skill them, or use another method. If deskilling is impossible it may need to use some other method.<br /><br />Another mechanism is the removal of some form of labour. If this is done immediately, it may induce scarcity which is unacceptable. It might however be possible to invest in the automation of the activity, the increase in the level of enjoyment that can be gained from the activity or the elimination of the activity by using some other processes. All of these would need to be explored.<br /><br />If the former processes don't work, people will either have to learn to live with the greater scarcity or some incentive will have to be introduced. It is possible to introduce incentives in terms of more complete fulfillment of demands, but the prospect is dangerous.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Ludics</span><br /><br />If labour is to be given freely, it should be given with as little view to austerity as possible. We need to recreate as much of work as fun as possible. Most of what I've done for a living has been an unbearable pain. However, I've often done very similar activities outside of work for my own enjoyment. Finding what makes people want to do productive activities that satisfy needs is one of the most important areas of research. Under communism it should be much easier for people to believe that work is meant to be fun, when they aren't under compulsion and being exploited for their labour.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;">The Defector and the Leech</span><br /><br />One common critique of communism is that, since there is no incentive to work, labour will not work, and instead freeload on the rest of society. This may be an even stronger, or more difficult tendency to deal with during any transitional period, where society is just learning about and coming into familiarity with a new communist economy.<br /><br />If there are a few "defectors" as they are termed in game theory, it probably isn't a problem. However, if large sections of society fail to produce the basic necessities the entire productive system will collapse and scarcity will become a scourge. There is no greater failure than a system to provide the basic necessities to its population and the price is often revolution.<br /><br />The public goods game provides some insight into this problem. In the public goods game people freely give some value into a communal pot. The communal pot is then multiplied by some value, and the goods are distributed back in a purely even manner. The game can suffer from complete collapse unless punishment rounds are carried out on defectors. That is, everyone withholds from the pot when someone tries to leech. Leeches, being rational will then start contributing again, in order to increase their payoff.<br /><br />In an extremely large system, it would be very difficult to carry out such witholding of full access to production for those that are non-cooperative. However, it may be possible at the communal level, or even at the level of a federation of communes (to punish a commune for clear dereliction of duty).<br /><br />These mechanisms of course are inherently coercive. It would be more desirable for people to give their labour freely of their own accord. Short of such punishment for non-cooperation however there appear to be only two other alternatives. Those are social control / social pressure and some sort of distributive incentive.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;">Socialism as a Transitional Programme</span><br /><br />We will take the meaning of the word 'socialism' to be: a processual "bridge" between capitalism and communism, allowing the continuation of the wage (in some regime) but allowing some phasing or transition towards communism.<br /><br />It may be that direct movement towards communism proves too difficult, in that it is impossible to get a sufficiently level of satisfaction from labour freely given. It is critical in a revolutionary situation to ensure that capitalism is not capable of reasserting control. If the economy is unable to rectify the problem of the satisfaction of critical areas of labour requirements, then some differentials will have to be introduced.<br /><br />The withholding of full remuneration, as decided by ones peers may be an effective way to encourage labour.<br /><br />The other alternative is the increase in the satisfaction of demands due to the free giving of labour activity.<br /><br />Both of these instruments may need to be used. The former is likely less dangerous than the later, and indeed it may be directed at only particular classes of demands that are deemed unnecessary.<br /><br />In the sense that differential compensation is being given, it could be argued that this in fact is the introduction of wage. It is not, however, a profit motivated system, and it is not involved in competition excepting in the sense that one might view oneself relative to ones peers. It still would retain many of the features of the full communist system. For this reason it seems a better transitional program than mutualism or collectivism.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >The Capitalist Interface</span><br /><br />In order to achieve a communist society there will almost certainly be an interface to capitalism. This interface will last from the inception of communism, up until the entire world is communist, and probably for some time afterwords (in the form of black markets). Determining exactly the best way of interfacing with capitalism so as not to be recuperated (infected) is critical to any theory of communism.<br /><br />It may be possible to begin instituting some of the communist modes of production of goods immediately, within a globalised capitalist economy.<br /><br />A single firm, if expropriated would allow the socialisation of capital among the workers. The workers would then given that they had or could raise sufficient capital to purchase the inputs to production could begin producing without exploitation. They could produce goods for themselves at a discount. This is effectively a workers cooperative. If in addition the collective administrates the purchase of collective goods for the purpose of workers, then one is moving towards a kibbutz model and we have moved into planning for consumption.<br /><br />If two firms are collectivised in this way, and the firms have no products in common in terms of inputs, then we have collectivism.<br /><br />If two firms are collectivised and one has inputs to the other, then the firms can begin planning for production. They can share the profit from final sales and plan the distribution of goods internally.<br /><br />Strategically, it would make sense to attempt to collectivise supply chains and merge the supply chains by way of planning. This could effectively eliminate competition along the supply chain and remove exploitation while allowing the workers democratic control of production. However, remuneration would still be in terms of the profit from sale of goods to the extent that the purchase of goods was not communally administered or the demands could not be decided in kind.<br /><br />If this type of activity could become widespread, and the mechanism of internal planning was developed it may be possible to exist along side capitalism. Particularly if capitalism is not functioning well, as workers would be looking for an alternative.<br /><br />This interface of exchange of money with external capitalism will exist in a manner similar to this until the entire globe is communist, so it is worth thinking about how it should be done.<br /><br />* Production of rubies was a trade secret for over half a century<br /><br />** global, in the sense of the economy in its entirety as a subject of study, not necessarily the 'world'.Gavin Mendel-Gleasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14899896537888421449noreply@blogger.com0