True Scientific Socialism?

Marx did not believe he was designing a value system or ideology, but rather thought he was engaged in creating "scientific socialism". I'm certainly no expert on Marxism, so I'll leave it to more knowledgeable minds to argue over which parts of Marx's work bear relevance to society.

Clearly he got some things right, and his theories provide a good account of why crises occur and the exploitative nature of wage labour. However, the idea of Marxism as "scientific" has drawn a lot of criticism - most notably from Karl Popper, who distinguishes theories like Marxism from science on the grounds that the former is unfalsifiable, but not everyone agrees with this claim. As stated, I am no expert and if I start making conclusions about Marxism's scientific credentials having read nothing more than the Communist Manifesto and half a volume of Capital then I'm going to start offending people (looking at you Dom Curran!).

The essence of science is experiment and falsifiability, not grand philosophical theorizing. Grand theoretical thought has its place in science, but most often in order to design experiments, to create falsifiable hypotheses.

Libertarian socialism is a true "scientific" socialism, not in terms of its theoretical basis, but in its practice - by calling for spontaneous cooperation and organisation along with radical decentralisation, it allows myriad experiments - a practical science of social organisation. By overturning the sterile uniformity of the state, an anarchistic society could see areas alongside one another using different models of social and economic organisation - mutualism, syndicalism, communism.

Possibilities for experimentation abound: communal versus individualist settlements; highly automated industrial regions versus agrarian eco-communes and religious societies; decisions by consensus versus democratic voting versus networks of small, non-institutional affinity groups.

Without compulsory political communities people could choose the system, or non-system to live under, communities could learn from one another and the track records of different approaches could be looked at scientifically. A radical shift in society's social, economic or democratic organisations would no longer need us to wait for years to elect new representatives to decide how tens of millions of people are or are not allowed to live and cooperate. John Stuart Mill got something right when he talked about limiting government to allow "experiments in living" - the problem was that he didn't go far enough, failing to challenge property rights or the existence of a centralized territorial state.

If you believe Marxists, there has never been a society "truly" organised on Marxist lines - the USSR and other "communist" societies are widely accepted to have been nothing of the sort. On the other hand, we have clear instances of libertarian-leftism in action - Maknovista Ukraine, anarchist Catalonia (read Dolgoff's The Anarchist Collectives), cooperative economic institutions, factory occupation and self-management movements, small Intentional Communities (communes), the student movements of 1968, Occupy Wall Street and so on. Thousands of written accounts exist documenting the successes and failures of these movements and institutions.

So, do you agree that libertarian socialism is the only true scientific socialism?

The Problems of Political Fiction

Political novels, especially those with a utopian/dystopian flavour, have been formative in the intellectual development of many an ideologue. Some are fairly uncontroversial, for instance 1984's critique of totalitarianism or Animal Farm's superb analysis of Stalinist communism (if one even considers Stalin's reign worthy of the honorific "communist"). Others lead to more contested ideological territory - Ayn Rand's work springs to mind as does Huxley's Brave New World. The former leads many readers to adopt an egoistic moral acceptance and worship of capitalist meritocracy while the latter seems to imbue its critique of hedonistic manipulation of man's nature with a healthy dose of sexual and moral puritanism.

The problem lies in the tension between the impact of the book on the political mind of the reader and its actual empirical value. It is hard to diligently critique the underlying assumptions and values imbued in a novel while reading it; the reader suspends disbelief and allows the author to set the rules. This is innocuous enough in a work of pure fiction, if George R R Martin wants to implicitly condone violence, rape and slaughter of civilians as "normal" within his universe then fine, it needn't spill out further than that - we can, on a limited basis, accept those norms in our reading of his work. It is when a work of fiction steps into the realm of polemic, of political-philosophical tract, that things get muddled. 

In Ayn Rand's universe the poor really are scroungers, moochers, takers; they do not create wealth, they are not exploited but in fact benefit from the schemes of the rich. Technology in Rand-land is the result of single, dedicated inventors who create miracle products - this hero-inventor mythos is patently false, ignoring the contributions of collective scientific advancement in laying the foundations for such advances and the origins of many modern technologies in military R&D projects (the internet for one).

In this alternate reality projects based on "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" really are ego-trips that inevitably lead to a poisonous climate of workers hiding their talents while other big up their needs. Back home on earth, workers are managing factories in Argentina without reliance on the talents of superhero-esque industrialists; in Italy the region of Emilia-Romagna produces 30% of its GDP through co-ops and is thriving for it; Mondragon continues to employ tens of thousands in a network of small, relatively egalitarian, cooperatives; and, collectivised workplaces with total income equality have a proven track record in the short-lived anarchist control of parts of Spain in the Civil War.

Monopolies are just and beneficial - after all, if everyone chooses one provider, why should they not be allowed to supply the entire market (yes, somehow this applies to natural monopolies such as Dagny Taggart's railway project, which miraculously is not a natural monopoly in the novel). The rich are superheroes, geniuses, mavericks, both highly virtuous and wholly selfish (not a contradiction in Rand's topsy-turvy political fiction).

It might not be true, but it is very effective - through simple conditioning the slog through all 1500 pages of Atlas Shrugged left me subconsciously reacting against certain phrases - innocent ideas such as "serving humanity", opposition to "profiteering" and "living for others" triggered mental red flags, brought my mind back to the depictions of Rand's novels - the witless and unsympathetic philanthropist, or the ego-tripping creators of the cooperative factory that set John Galt off on his task to destroy society to protect the privileges of the wealthy.

One striking point is that capitalistic novels are scrubbed clean of sympathetic "weak" characters. Oppressed members of other races, LGBT people, the disabled - all are missing or presumed worthless.

In reading Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", a sympathetic portrayal of an anarcho-capitalist society on the moon, it is notable that Heinlein makes all women on Luna beautiful, earth diseases are rare to non-existent, all must work and there is no charity yet few appear to starve or go homeless. It is also interesting that very few characters seem to work as permanent employees of others on Luna - Mannie, the protagonist, chooses to do odd jobs because he says he was "born free" - other characters work on a short term basis or own smallholdings and trade goods at market.

Capitalism is invariably portrayed in fiction as involving independent people as bosses or without bosses per se, or toxic workplace hierarchies, or small business owners. It is an idealised vision of voluntary trade in a largely artisan or farming economy - this sidesteps innumerable problems that arise with large scale industrial capitalism. The idea of egoistic individuals promoting their own wellbeing, looking out only for themselves, is talked a lot in Heinlein and Rand's work but the pure egoist is never really shown - family and custom always constrain these "rational egoists"

Heinlein's work is not without merit of course and, aside from being a great read, does provide a lot of new ideas - something sci-fi is able to do very well by distancing us from current norms and models of politics and showing creative alternative models. The exploration of private law is interesting, its take on family structures and gender relations provides food for thought and its anti-authoritarianism is refreshing. The underlying political philosophy, "rational anarchism" is interesting and may be discussed in a later post.

Political fiction needs to be seen as just that, fiction, which doesn't mean it is useless but simply that we should be sceptical - interrogate the novel's premises - ask what the author is assuming and see if it appears to hold true here in the real world.

Now given my interest in politics and my desire to write, it is not unlikely that at some point in the future I may put together some work of political fiction, some unrealistic little utopia offset in a distant galaxy far far away where things function differently than in our parochial little here-and-now world.

In such a case I urge you to treat me with suspicion, dust off this little article and critique me with it.

Update.

Just to let my readers know, I will be writing a guest post on Connor Woodman's blog, Manufacturing Hegemony. The article will be titled the "The Anti-Science Left" and will focus on the tendency of some on the Left to refuse to accept or understand certain scientific ideas for ideological reasons, with specific emphasis on GM crops.

Connor will in turn be writing a guest post here on, I believe, the situation in West Papua, about which my knowledge is seriously lacking, so this will hopefully be enlightening for me and for my readers. Connor writes about foreign policy, mainly, and his posts are well written and researched so you should definitely check out his blog.

We're hoping to expand our readerships (though at ~600 views I'm trailing behind Comrade Woodman) so, to anyone directed over here from Manufacturing Hegemony, welcome and I hope you check out the rest of the blog!

Resources.

A friend recently asked what YouTube videos / websites I was using to inform my views and get news; this prompted me to put together this list of resources for both my views on atheism/scepticism and my political ideas. If you are looking for things to read, listen to or watch to further indoctrinate yourself into my viewpoint then here is my officially approved list of resources:

Podcasts:

• As mentioned in a prior post reading Marx's Capital has been helpful for me in terms of political understanding an I will restate the recommendation here: read it with David Harvey's lectures.
• The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is a great weekly podcast, especially for allowing any of my fellow weak-minded humanities students to keep up with scepticism and developments in scientific thought and technology. Seriously though, understanding science is vitally important for avoiding a coterie of irrational beliefs - anti-GM environmentalists for example, ought to take note of where the scientific consensus is on the issue.
• Atheism-wise, The Atheist Experience can be entertaining; and, The Thinking Atheist is good for a whole variety of social, political and scientific issues surrounding religion and non-belief. Godless Bitches is also excellent - especially for keeping abreast of developments in reproductive rights and other feminist issues from an atheistic standpoint.

Websites:

• Libcom.org - good for news, also has an excellent library of books, articles and pamphlets.
• Reddit is your friend, trust me, - acts as a kind of aggregate news feed as well which does a pretty good job of moving the most important content to the front page - also good for community - if you have a question about a political ideology then there's unfailingly a subreddit to meet that need - r/anarchism, r/cooperatives, r/anarchismpdfs and r/libertariansocialism are good places to start if you're looking for an insight into left-libertarianism. 
• http://www.opendemocracy.net/
• Noam Chomsky is probably the best person to articulate and elucidate any number of issues - the main two being US foreign policy and libertarian socialism - http://www.chomsky.info/index.htm is a good website, which aggregates a lot of his essays, books and lectures.

YouTubers:

• The Young Turks is my main source of US political news; they are much better than any mainstream sources (CNN, MSNBC etc) and help to elucidate, to those who haven't worked it out yet, the decisive role of moneyed interests in US politics.

Pamphlets and books:

• The Spirit Level - explains the societal benefits of economic equality.
• Abundance: Why the Future Is Better Than You Think - vital reading for everyone - especially those who have been demoralised by those who try to claim that the world is just getting worse and worse.
• Inefficiency of Capitalism - provides a practical critique of free markets from the perspective of efficiency rather tan morality or political values 
• Chavs: The Demonisation Of The Working Class - read it, see what Thatcher did to us, how the media creates stereotypes and never use the "c" word again!

Hope this has been helpful to someone - obviously the list is not exhaustive and I don't endorse everything that emanates from the

We're winning!

Uruguay just passed marriage equality, the tide appears to have turned; if even in traditionally conservative, Catholic South America progress can be made on this issue then we are clearly getting somewhere (although bear in mind that Uruguay is considered the most secular country in South America with only 45% of the country identifying as Catholic).

Marriage Equality: A Short Introduction

Gay marriage has recently become a political issue on both sides of the Atlantic; In the United States two cases have come before the Supreme Court, in the first opportunity for the body to make a decision on the issue; In Britain the "Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill" is steadily progressing towards passage through Parliament over the ever louder whines of religious leaders. In France protesters opposed to a proposed equal marriage law clashed with riot police on the Champs-Elysée (full story here). 

In the USA the question is played as a civil rights issue while in Britain a centre-right PM advocates gay marriage as a conservative cause, much to the chagrin of the reactionary right of his party.

This post will cover a number of areas and try to provide an overview of the issues around marriage equality:

• The Supreme Court cases - I will point in the direction of resources that explain the legal issues better than I could ever hope to.
• A look at changing attitudes in the US - why have the polls shifted? Are conservatives moving away from opposing equality?
• Examine the libertarian* argument against gay marriage - should the state be in the relationship business at all?

The Cases

There are two cases before the US Supreme - one involves the "Defence Of Marriage Act" (DOMA) and centres mainly on the right of the federal government to refuse to recognise state laws; the second is about the constitutionality of California's "Proposition 8", a ballot initiative which sought to "ban" same sex marriages in that state.

ScotusBlog is a good place to start, as is this excellent AMA on Reddit, I don't profess to be an expert - read for yourselves if you really want to know!  Here are the ScotusBlog pages for - Hollingsworth v. Perry and US v. Windsor.

Winning the Culture Wars

The Christian Right still exists, of course, and its as insane as ever - the Family Research Council** and others like them continue to churn out hideously offensive sound-bites for Right Wing Watch to chronicle - like this, this and this. Increasingly the country is beginning to see these people as what they are - trolls.

However, the recent statements by Bill O'Reilly explain something of the shift - the gay rights activists have successfully made it into an issue of fairness and rights - hence the prominence of the term "marriage equality" - as O'Reilly puts it, their case has been: "we're Americans, we just want to be treated like everyone else". 

Views have changed hugely in the last decade - Pew polling suggests that in 2003 58% of Americans opposed gay marriage and 33% supported it - today 49% support equality while 44% still oppose it. The poll suggests that it is mostly the more secular, open-minded, "millennials" that have made the difference. 

The Libertarian Argument - Get Government Out Of The Marriage Business!

The anti-gay marriage conservatives, it appears, are fighting a losing battle. Now, self-proclaimed "libertarians" are coming out of the woodwork, putting out a message summed up by the above picture - they  argue that human relationships flourish best outside of the purview of the state, that human sexuality and social relations should not be subject to law and regulation. Reasonable, one may think, but there are problems.

One is tempted to wonder, how much of this new found libertarianism is a face-saving exercise, a post hoc rationalisation for holding a bigoted position, but perhaps that is somewhat unfair. A more relevant critique is that this argument is a distraction, a red herring - abolition of opposite sex marriage is not on the horizon any time soon, equalization of marriage is - the cause of equality should not be impeded by a long term principle - think of the people who oppose affirmative action to correct racial inequalities because they can better be dealt with by no longer "talking about race" and shoving the legacy of segregation under the rug. 

Gay marriage is important as an affirmation of society's respect for gay rights, a rejection of traditionalistic bigotries.  In any case, the state is "in charge of marriage" because there are complex issues of property, custody of children, inheritance and so on.

This "Libertarian Case Against Gay Marriage", for example, while attempting to appear neutral, is stocked with anti-gay tropes (or well-meaning "positive" stereotypes) and conservative attacks on the Democratic Party and "political correctness". The author talks about gay "propaganda" in schools, trivialises the ideas that gays may face discrimination (after all, they can always hide their sexual orientation) and perpetuates the idea that marriage only exists because of the need to rear children and is thus inapplicable to gays - except, of course, that gay couples can and do raise kids. 

His political partisanship comes through here:

But the legislative agenda of the modern gay-rights movement is not meant to be useful to the gay person in the street: it is meant to garner support from heterosexual liberals and others with access to power. It is meant to assure the careers of aspiring gay politicos and boost the fortunes of the left wing of the Democratic Party. The gay-marriage campaign is the culmination of this distancing trend, the reductio ad absurdum of the civil rights paradigm.

By the way, the phrase "homosexual agenda" makes it obvious when a libertarian critique is insincere...

Don't get me wrong - there are libertarians and anarcho-capitalists who want the state out of marriage because they genuinely the state to be corrupting and illegitimate. They suggest that the full gamut of human relations cannot and should not be covered by a legal framework and that in fact the natural fluidity and passion of relationships is harmed by contracts and registrars and divorce lawyers.

Final thoughts

While it is not in question that LGBT rights are vitally important (if you don't think so - get off my blog, bigot), I will leave it up to you decide whether it is the state's business at all - this post has not even addressed the case made by some LGBT activists that gay marriage is either not worth the effort or even represents a step backwards or a co-optation by conservative forces.

Personally, I think the shift on gay marriage across the West is a good thing; it is a barometer of shifting social attitudes that are promising for supporters of social justice and tolerance. Right-Libertarian utopianism is all well and good***, and, in a perfect world, maybe the government wouldn't define what relationships gets social and legal approval; however, in this one, US federal law gives 1,138 benefits, rights and protections specifically to married couples - it is unjustifiable for that package of rights to be denied to a section of the population.

..............................................................................................................................................

*In the sense of the socially liberal, isolationist wing of the American capitalistic right rather than the traditional usage of the word to mean anarchist or libertarian socialist - see this left-wing critique of the Ron Paul crowd's usage of the word libertarian.

**To anyone new to the US's "culture wars" - "family" in the name of a pressure group is a red flag (and not the good commie type) - it more often than not means a hate group.

***Really, I have no problem with wholesale reduction of state influence in social life - there is absolutely nothing wrong with a good dose of utopianism - as Oscar Wilde put it: "a map of the world without utopia is not worth glancing at".

Indeed...

And one more thing - since 1966, the incomes of the bottom 90% of Americans have grown by $59, adjusted for inflation, while those of the top 10% have risen $116,000 - isn't trickle-down economics marvellous!

Christianity's Persecution Complex.

"Help, help! I'm being repressed"

Sure, we've come a long way since Christians were thrown to the lions in Ancient Rome. Sure, Christianity is now a dominant world religion which in many places is dangerously intertwined with the state. But repression against those who chose to follow Christ still exists, even in the (primarily) Christian West (apparently)...

Britain's Christian population is being oppressed and downtrodden; their church organisations are locked out of influence in the state and denied resources. Society from the PM down is practising a war of "aggressive secularisation" and Christianity is being insulted and blasphemed constantly. 

Or at least that's what you'd think if you took seriously the Lord Careys and Anne Widdecombes of this country - incidentally, Lord Carey - when did we elect him to our legislature? Oh, that's right - he's entitled to his position (along with 25 other pious old men) because of his affiliation with the Church of England, the state church - oh sorry, state church? How did they manage that in an age of aggressive secularism and discrimination against Christianity? What about the fact that 33.78% of state schools are faith-based - paid for by our (parents') tax money. Or the fact that the Queen is the also the head of the Church and the "Defender of the Faith". Or that daily collective Christian worship is still a legal requirement in our school system.

So, that editorial, let's see if Lord Carey has a case to make here, shall we? Okay, well, at least he acknowledges that "few in the UK are actually persecuted"; the article goes downhill from there though. Here come all the old anti-gay tropes:

I am very suspicious that behind the plans to change the nature of marriage, which come before the House of Lords soon, there lurks an aggressive secularist and relativist approach towards an institution that has glued society together for time immemorial.

By dividing marriage into religious and civil the Government threatens the church and state link which they purport to support. But they also threaten to empty marriage of its fundamental religious and civic meaning as an institution orientated towards the upbringing of children.

1) Gay marriage doesn't "change the nature of marriage", at least not for straight couples - when was the last time a married couple were harmed by someone else having the right to marry?

2) What has "glued society together" is relationships, people, love - not a particular kind of a particular social contract, families don't require a marriage license to exist.

3) Threatening the "church and state link", emptying marriage of "fundamental religious...meaning" - good, go right ahead!

4) Do I have to hear this one again - "what about the children?" - fine, fertility tests shall be required for marriage licenses, no one can marry if they are infertile, old, celibate, or just unwilling to procreate (a tragic decision for our dangerously underpopulated planet - hang on...) is that how it works? No, it isn't, and besides that - why can't a gay couple be involved in the "upbringing of children" (quick hint - they can!).

Carey then goes on to cite some cases of discrimination that will, he claims, result from the law - all I have to say is that the freedom to be bigoted should exist in public speech, it should not be allowed to impinge on professional conduct or an individual's ability to do their job - if, as a registrar, you refuse to marry a couple that is legally allowed to do so, tough luck.

Right, so marriage equality is the problem here...even Bill O'Reilly gets it, the fundies are on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of justice (skip to 4.45 for the important bit):

Adding to the collective moan of self-pity from a Christian lobby that is rapidly losing its grip, Anne Widdecombe recently produced a "documentary" for the BBC called "Are You Having a Laugh? - Comedy and Christianity" - "documentary" being a generous term for this hour long fit of whining and crying wolf. Her argument was that though there have "always been jokes about Christianity", they have in recent years become more aggressive and nasty; maybe the fact that in previous eras " jokes about the Church would have been met by state repression, up to and including torture and execution, the last British arrest for blasphemy was in 1992.

At least not everyone seems to share her attitude - even the Christians don't agree - one points out that a "mature Christian should have a sense of humour" and Marcus Brigstocke is there to challenge her and inject some lightness into the endeavour - when Widdy says that watching the abuse of a communion wafer is like joking about a recent bereavement, Marcus is quick to ask "how long is the grieving period for Jesus, then".

Her argument was interesting - that mocking of Christians is okay, but not mocking of their dogma - I've always thought of it the other way round - attack ideas, not those who hold them - apparently though, for the devout among us, their faith is more personal than their very person.

At least she is right about one thing - mockery is a weapon in the cultural and intellectual war on religion, and so it should be, though old Widdy seems to find this idea horrifying; apparently assertive Bible-thumping is a-ok but assertive statements of non-belief are not. Christians should be out and proud and proselytising; atheists, back to the sidelines please, bow your heads and pretend you haven't worked out the scam yet.

You have no right not to be offended, grow up and get over it. Oh, and here is an "offensive" and "nasty" comic about Christianity, enjoy ;) 

The Peace Prize President's Drones.

Maybe I don't need to write the drone piece after all - this infographic pretty much says it all.

Anyway, an outline of my views:

1. US use of drones sets a dangerous precedent - China is already preparing to deploy drones as are other countries
2. Killing civilians is bad, killing children is even worse
3. "Anyone of military age in the Middle East" is a bad definition of an enemy combatant
4. The policy must be illegal under all sorts of international laws
5. Sovereignty, if we have to use that outdated concept, surely applies to nations other than Europe, Israel and the USA, other nations like, oh I don't know, Pakistan shouldn't be bombed by outside forces. Imagine America accepting such violations from another country - what if Mexico uses drones to kill a drug lord staying in LA, which just happens to kill a whole load of civilians? This is justifiable on national security rationales even stronger than those used by the USA - 9/11 killed 3000 Americans, the Drug War has killed upwards of 50,000 Mexicans.

Thinking out loud...

So, the 6th post in 2 days; don't worry, I'm sure I will reduce this frenetic pace once I've run out of steam, or got myself a life,  or stopped procrastinating from the work which I am most definitely not using this blog to avoid...

I'm addressing a readership as if I had one, of course, but hey, I figure if I write it, they will come (to badly paraphrase a well known saying). I have, rather pathetically, adopted the habit of compulsively checking my view statistics whenever I open up my web browser as if I hope that in my absence thousands of eager fellow politics nerds will have arrived to pore over my naive scribblings for their inner meaning.

So this post is really intended to flag up some of the things that I am thinking of writing about in the near (or far) future, here goes:

• A close reading / deconstruction of Lee Strobel's "The Case For Faith", or if that seems too much hassle, maybe I'll just point and laugh at its unbelievably weak arguments. 
• Reporting on the US Supreme Court hearings on gay marriage; I'd like to have a look at the more reasonable "anti-gay marriage" proposals (hold on, read the rest of the sentence - I haven't spontaneously become a bigot) such as taking the state out of the marriage altogether, or the arguments of radical gay rights activists against the conservative nature of marriage.
• I might try my hand at some fiction, though I am weary of entirely humiliating myself!
•  The obligatory drone post must be on its way soon - they are, without doubt, one of my pet issues.
• A continuation of the "My Politics" series which began with my views on libertarian socialism - I hope to cover my stances on religion, social policy, foreign policy among others.
• I am considering, as a means of exploring my politics in more detail and educating myself and my readers on political issues, taking the "political compass" questionnaire and answer each question with an in-depth blog post detailing the main arguments for and against and my position. This would be a mammoth project and would probably last months if not years but might be interesting to structure my blogging along the way...

The Next Crash?

Take a look at those figures (and watch the full video here).

Now, I'm no expert on complex financial instruments - I think part of the problem is that they're so complicated that no one really is - but I know a large number when I see one, especially as a ratio of the world economy.

Here's the scary thing - a tiny error, a minor fault in the predictions of the banksters and bourgeois economists in a quadrillion dollar market equals a major economic upheaval and there's not much we can do about it.

After all, in a "globalized" world our paper-shuffling, post-industrial, no-longer-productive financialized economies rely on "competitive" regulation (or so we are told) - hence the Tories' opposition to financial regulation at the European level.

On the plus side, if enough firms go out of business maybe we can generate sufficient public anger and desperation to follow the Argentine model (see my earlier post) or the example of the Greek workers at Vio.Me.

After all, though the 1% might collapse the economy, nothing physical is destroyed by a derivatives crash. Though corporations file for bankruptcy, the factories, the human and intellectual capital (also known as people), the inventories and the resources are still there for humanity to use to meet its needs.

Though they create sub-prime mortgage bubbles, make a killing and then force the poor out of their homes, the houses are still there to be reclaimed; foreclosure and homelessness are economic constructs that can be overcome through direct action.

Debt, money and property are conventions, they exist on trust, trust which can be withdrawn.        

Worker's of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your bosses! Occupy. Resist. Produce.

On Your Marx. Get Set. Go Read Capital.

Claiming that those who haven't read this or that particular work are ill-qualified to refute your pet belief is generally seen as academically elitist (shock horror!), indeed in the case of religious fundies or pseudo-science types it is downright annoying - "oh, but you haven't read my holy book cover to cover. Isn't rejecting it just closed-minded?". But, in some cases I believe this demand that one must read the base text before downright rejecting a set of ideas is fair; a case in point being Marx's work. 

There is a reason why so many serious political economists and theorists are Marxists - his ideas have merit, they are a powerful theoretical framework for understanding the world. Now, making a statement such as this will usually illicit from conservatives a rant that blames Marx for everything and everyone from Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot to North Korea, gulags, labour camps, the Berlin Wall, economic stagnation and so on - when one patiently points out that no serious modern Marxist defends these things and in fact see them, rightly, as a perversion of Marxism this is shouted down as special pleading and an attempt to escape blame. Even most  lefties will tell you that communism was the "god that failed" and that this kind of socialism has no place in the modern world - liberalism is triumphant at last!

Michael Gove making a fool of himself again
(and this time not with his education policy!)

The fact is, however, that Marx needs to be read and studied as a critic of capitalism and an economist; not as a proxy for every despot who stood beneath a red flag. As our lecturer on Marxism last term pointed out - most people who write off Marx as a totalitarian (e.g. our learned friend Mr Gove*) haven't engaged with his work in any sense. 

Next time someone uses the USSR to dismiss Marx, ask them how the fall of the Berlin Wall disprove's the labour theory of value, or the idea of exploitation that is derived from it, or the dialectic, or historical materialism.

My recommendation to my readers is to get a copy of Marx's 'Das Kapital' and read it along with David Harvey's excellent lecture series, I'm halfway through Volume 1 and it is proving very eye-opening.

*This misguided minister deserves his own post - suffice it to say I don't think the best education policy in a globalized world is one which focuses on learning dates, promoting a somewhat fictionalised national narrative/myth and, of course, bringing a dying and globally obsolete system of measurement back into maths lessons

My Politics: Libertarian Socialism (Pt. 1)

"I am Arthur, King of the Britons"

"Who are the Britons?"

"We all are and I am your King"

"I didn't know we had a king...I thought we were an autonomous collective!"

Introduction

A formative influence in my political outlook was Wilkinson and Pickett's 'The Spirit Level' which presents a pretty compelling statistical case that economic equality is beneficial to societies - this doesn't mean equalisation of wealth at any cost is justified though and it is quite possible that many attempts to redistribute wealth that you could imagine will, on the whole, be bad for human well-being - the authors themselves condemn the Soviet Union as a "failed experiment with state ownership" that simply transferred productive power from a few private individuals to a corrupt bureaucratic elite.  

Their suggestions of finding new forms of ownership for companies and "building a new world in the shell of the old" set me on to the idea of economic democracy as a means of more equitably distributing wealth and control over the economy to the people (the seed was also planted by a reference to a worker-owned co-op in Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story'), without a repressive and inefficient state running the show.

The idea has been cropping up more and more recently in the wake of the financial crisis and the resulting Occupy Movement - people are looking for alternatives to the rabid individualism and glorification of greed left to our generation by the legacy of Thatcher and Reagan (though the Solidarity v. Rugged Individualism debate has been carried on throughout history in various guises) - worker's self-management can be seen, in fact, as the "true" form of socialism, as the ultimate empowerment of the working class.

Authority is, to say the least, problematic - just take a look at the results Milgram Experiments, or the Stanford Prison Experiment to see this - having just watched 'Compliance' I can say that the power of a supposed official position is shockingly absolute. As Noam Chomsky points out: 

"There is no human institution that approaches totalitarianism as closely as a business corporation. I mean, power is completely top-down. You can be inside it somewhere and you take orders from above and hand ‘em down. Ultimately, it’s in the hands of owners and investors."

 The corporate market is, then, a problem - it ordains hundreds of thousands of private tyrannies which force grown adults to submit to petty and capricious authority, it is destructive of human dignity and of the capacity for humans to develop their skills and intellectual capacities. So, corporations are bad, but can alternative means of ownership and organisation work in practice? Here are some concrete examples:

1. Mondragon

Located in and around Catalonia, the former CNT heartland, Mondragon employs over 80,000 people in over 200 separate "companies" and is one of the largest corporations in Spain; it is also owned entirely by its workers. It runs factories, workshops, a bank, a chain of supermarkets and even a university. Recently Mondragon has worked with US trade unions to set up workers' co-ops in de-industrialised areas of the US.

The pay differentials are tiny - the CEO of the whole corporation earns only 8x the salary of the lowest paid workers - in the top US companies the ratio of the CEO's pay to the average worker was 231:1 in 2011.

Just so you see this isn't some leftist propaganda, here is some analysis by the Financial Times, that notorious Trotskyite rag. 

2. Waitrose/John Lewis Partnership

Waitrose is not under "worker's self-management", it is not run by direct democracy on a day-to-day basis but it does distribute its profits to the workers in the form of bonuses instead of to shareholders, the feudal lords and absentee landlords of our modern capitalist system. 

This cooperative, it must be admitted, represents a very middle class kind of socialism - the products it sells are geared towards affluent consumers and supermarket staff wear tasteful shirts and ties - not very proletarian!

However, this should not put us off, in fact it should act as an argument against those who suggest that affluent rural communities with their upmarket supermarkets, farm shops and pubs (in other words, quintessential Tory utopias) would be destroyed under socialism - state communism is certainly associated with grim, concrete, urban sprawls, with pollution and radiation and standardisation and factories towers pouring out smoke. The localised, decentralised economics of libertarian socialism would act in favour of preserving these small communities while co-operative supermarkets would be much more likely than Tesco and Asda to give the farmers which form the backbone of rural life a fair price for their goods.

3. The occupied factories of Argentina

Naomi Klein's excellent film 'The Take' is a good starting point for anyone wanting to understand the expropriation movement in Argentina - the narrative is simple (maybe suspiciously so...this may need more investigation) - President Carlos Menem took the country from a path to first world affluence backwards to poverty and starvation by accepting the strictures of the IMF - the film includes the chilling warning that "this is what a globalized country looks like". 

The response of the people, in many places, to occupy bankrupt factories and restart production under control of the workers - 20,000 people now work in occupied factories and a combination of public support and direct action have forced the government to recognise this movement and officially expropriate certain bankrupt workplaces at the behest of the workers - "Nationalisation Under Workers' Control" is the new slogan.

General Assembly of the workers at the occupied Zanon tile factory in Argentina

Results have been mixed and some factories have chosen to operate under direct democracy without hierarchy while some have taken the less revolutionary path of appointing managers. A great account of the difficulties and benefits of the self-management approach can be found here, with reference specifically to the Zanon factory, a shining example of Mr Zanon's hard work and wealth creation abilities - it was built on public land with public subsidies in a corrupt deal with the government.

The Argentine example shows how change can be achieved through direct action, by bypassing politics and simply mobilizing enough people in the streets to force the hand of the state - a tradition with a long and shining history. To those who worry about property rights or the rights of capital - just remember that these are utilitarian social institutions created to promote the growth of business and the provision of employment - in a country where 50% of the industrial capacity lies dormant the utilitarian balance surely tips in favour of allowing this productive capability to be used instead of rusting away.

Where the market has failed the people, the workers, must step in and allow common sense to prevail - factories should not lie vacant while there are idle labourers and those who have to go without.

Closing thoughts...

This post is a mere outline, a simple sketch of my views - I recognise they are incomplete and that many schools of thought, economic theories and so on I have not mentioned, nor even read about yet - Proudhon's mutualist ideas, Marx's work (which I have just begun to engage with), the experiences of the CNT-FAI unions in the Spanish Civil War among innumerable others. 

The Einstein Status...Again!

So, I'm sure most people who read this will have had the misfortune the come across this ahistorical, scientifically  and philosophically illiterate and generally facepalm-inducing status on your newfeed before. 

It is the kind of overt display of idiocy that forces one into the dilemma of whether to engage in what will likely be a very frustrating debate (usually with a complete stranger) through that most excellent medium of reasoned academic discourse -  facebook comments (and maybe even messages if it gets really serious). 

It reads like this:

...................................................................................................................................................................

"Professor : You are a Christian, aren’t you, son ?

Student : Yes, sir.

Professor: So, you believe in GOD ?

Student : Absolutely, sir.

Professor : Is GOD good ?

Student : Sure.

Professor: Is GOD all powerful ?

Student : Yes.

Professor: My brother died of cancer even though he prayed to GOD to heal him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But GOD didn’t. How is this GOD good then? Hmm?

(Student was silent.)

Professor: You can’t answer, can you ? Let’s start again, young fella. Is GOD good?

Student : Yes.

Professor: Is satan good ?

Student : No.

Professor: Where does satan come from ?

Student : From … GOD …

Professor: That’s right. Tell me son, is there evil in this world?

Student : Yes.

Professor: Evil is everywhere, isn’t it ? And GOD did make everything. Correct?

Student : Yes.

Professor: So who created evil ?

(Student did not answer.)

Professor: Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things exist in the world, don’t they?

Student : Yes, sir.

Professor: So, who created them ?

(Student had no answer.)

Professor: Science says you have 5 Senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Tell me, son, have you ever seen GOD?

Student : No, sir.

Professor: Tell us if you have ever heard your GOD?

Student : No , sir.

Professor: Have you ever felt your GOD, tasted your GOD, smelt your GOD? Have you ever had any sensory perception of GOD for that matter?

Student : No, sir. I’m afraid I haven’t.

Professor: Yet you still believe in Him?

Student : Yes.

Professor : According to Empirical, Testable, Demonstrable Protocol, Science says your GOD doesn’t exist. What do you say to that, son?

Student : Nothing. I only have my faith.

Professor: Yes, faith. And that is the problem Science has.

Student : Professor, is there such a thing as heat?

Professor: Yes.

Student : And is there such a thing as cold?

Professor: Yes.

Student : No, sir. There isn’t.

(The lecture theater became very quiet with this turn of events.)

Student : Sir, you can have lots of heat, even more heat, superheat, mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat. But we don’t have anything called cold. We can hit 458 degrees below zero which is no heat, but we can’t go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold. Cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it.

(There was pin-drop silence in the lecture theater.)

Student : What about darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as darkness?

Professor: Yes. What is night if there isn’t darkness?

Student : You’re wrong again, sir. Darkness is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light. But if you have no light constantly, you have nothing and its called darkness, isn’t it? In reality, darkness isn’t. If it is, well you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn’t you?

Professor: So what is the point you are making, young man ?

Student : Sir, my point is your philosophical premise is flawed.

Professor: Flawed ? Can you explain how?

Student : Sir, you are working on the premise of duality. You argue there is life and then there is death, a good GOD and a bad GOD. You are viewing the concept of GOD as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, Science can’t even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing.

Death is not the opposite of life: just the absence of it. Now tell me, Professor, do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?

Professor: If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, yes, of course, I do.

Student : Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?

(The Professor shook his head with a smile, beginning to realize where the argument was going.)

Student : Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor. Are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you not a scientist but a preacher?

(The class was in uproar.)

Student : Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the Professor’s brain?

(The class broke out into laughter. )

Student : Is there anyone here who has ever heard the Professor’s brain, felt it, touched or smelt it? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established Rules of Empirical, Stable, Demonstrable Protocol, Science says that you have no brain, sir. With all due respect, sir, how do we then trust your lectures, sir?

(The room was silent. The Professor stared at the student, his face unfathomable.)

Professor: I guess you’ll have to take them on faith, son.

Student : That is it sir … Exactly ! The link between man & GOD is FAITH. That is all that keeps things alive and moving.

P.S.

I believe you have enjoyed the conversation. And if so, you’ll probably want your friends / colleagues to enjoy the same, won’t you?

Forward this to increase their knowledge … or FAITH.

By the way, that student was EINSTEIN."

...................................................................................................................................................................


So, getting the easy part out of the way first - this is ahistorical, i.e. it never happened and in fact misrepresents Einstein's religious beliefs - he was an agnostic and/or a pantheist (depending on which quotes you prefer to use) and certainly would not have demeaned and misrepresented science so crudely (more on that later). 

The main premise of this steaming pile of intellectual laziness is that faith is required to accept science, so what's so bad about using it to believe in a deity? This is absurd and the "professor" character is a ridiculous strawman - any academic stunned into silence by such a misguided student would be deserving of immediate firing. 

The strawman is this - science is about what your 5 senses can tell you and thus belief in evolution, electromagnetism and so on is a leap of faith. 
But science is not just about what an individual can observe with their senses: we can't "see" ultraviolet light but we can observe its effects, we can measure it, create it etc. With evolution the case is also clear - we have a wealth of evidence which includes observation of mutation and adaptation of a species within the lab. The brain example is just asinine - we observe the effects of the professor's brain (though it appears to be quite feeble if the response to our young "Einstein" is anything to go by) in his speech, muscle movements and  ability to teach a lecture.

On the question of "faith" we tumble further down the rabbit hole - is the author's implication that faith in God is just as justified as scientific "faith" (and in the same way), because if so that suggests we have some serious physical evidence for god if he manifests as clearly as electricity or electromagnetism. Maybe they mean that since we all have faith we might as well believe in the Christian god, in which case I would suggest the reader take out all uses of the word God and replace at will with other concepts (flying spaghetti monster, invisible pink unicorn, Odin, Thor) - that should give an idea of how much value comes from arguing on faith.

I've probably bored anyone reading this to death but I felt this needed to be refuted (if I missed anything let me know), at least now when this is posted you can link here so you don't have to endure the tedium of writing out a response to this childish nonsense. 

Introducing: The Annoying Peasant.

So, I've decided to start a blog...

I'm going to talk mostly about politics as well as atheism issues to begin with but generally I'll let the remit expand depending on what I feel like writing at any particular time.

Enjoy the Python clip, it matches my politics pretty closely, hence the name.

What to expect:

• Ripping apart of any religious/pseudoscience apologetics or memes that particularly irritate me (including the Einstein fb status which will be duly shredded in the next post).
• Passing on and commenting upon any news or studies that I think are worthwhile or important.
• Allowing you, dear reader, to share in my frustration at the latest idiocies of the Christian Right or of the ranty, shit-stirring right-wing press (a.k.a. The Daily Mail).
• Musings on politics and economics (expect to become very bored of the terms "economic democracy", "worker's self-management" and "socially constructed").
• Links to my writings for other publications - mostly studenty stuff.
• Anything else I see as important or worthwhile to write about.

My Politics:

I consider myself a libertarian socialist, meaning I think that working class ownership of the means of production means just that - workers should have practical, democratic, day-to-day control over their workplaces - this is realistic, local, decentralised socialism: no gulags, no bureaucratic central planning, no grim concrete soviet cities.

It can, and does, work in practice - Mondragon, factories in Argentina and, that great bastion of communism, Waitrose - but more on that later.

IMPORTANT NOTE: my political views are provisional, incomplete and no doubt naive in parts - I haven't yet experienced enough of the world or learnt or read enough to have all my ideas set (and in the spirit of good scepticism I hope I will never feel I do!). I might wake up tomorrow and decide to become an anarchist, or a Marxist or a conservative (god forbid!) but I will leave my past posts as they are as a record of my political evolution.