Hi Chris, Good points, but I am feeling a bit gruff just now, excuse the language.
But in technical terms there is a > substantial problem about selecting information and communicating. Correct. In the Leninist party of the type Ernest Mandel envisaged once, the party itself would be like an organic abstracting device of sorts, i.e. the experience of the cadres would be centralised and the abstractions or themes of the leading bodies would be given more content by the cadres, assuming that the leaders got to where they are, through real competency, i.e. their real ability to lead. Which is somewhat similar to the mass line idea proposed by Mao Tse Tung. However there is still a real danger of bureaucratic hierarchy in such schemes, which is to say, the problem of articulating collective interests has yet to be theorised effectively, using the latest evidence, and not some kind of ideological primitivism. The bourgeoisie doesn't have that problem, at least not in the same way, because hierarchy is established according to ownership or control over capital. I had this problem yesterday, as in the last few days I had to instruct a new colleague who is replacing me in the management of the archival information and database which I did over the last year and a half or so. As such, he was a nice guy and he had had more horrible problems in his personal life than I had had. But his attitude was that of an over-confident bourgeois "know it all", and rather than ask me practically "how do I learn to manage this archive in the most logical, efficient manner, knowing we have limited time together to take in information about different tasks and procedures" he just had lots of stories about how the archive management could be different and better, how he has 20 years experience in information management, and how he can tell the function, purpose and destination of a document without even reading what is in it. And I got mighty angry at one point, especially seen as he refused to listen, learn and show real ability to perform the simplest operations involved in the job which he needs to get started. This goes completely against the culture of my workplace, which is very co-operative, modest and friendly, because we try to do a lot of complex jobs with insufficient staff. I do not mind if people criticise or aim for improvement in my (now former) place of work, but the purpose and context has to be kept in mind. I considered later that I overreacted, that I was too harsh, it is just that I can get really wild when fascist, snobby, arrogant Dutch intellectual pricks act as thought they are my boss. You have to understand, the Dutch, especially Dutch men, tend to be very hierarchical, their first impressions of a person are based on an evaluation of "do I rank higher or lower than this person, am I worth more or am I worth less, where do we fit in the pecking order". And they do this more or less unconsciously, and it comes out in their manner. There are of course quite legitimate skill hierarchies based on real competence, but what we are dealing with here are arbitrary apriori hierarchies based on class, gender, cultural and racial prejudices which are still deeply ingrained in Dutch bourgeois and pettybourgeois ideologies. One of the useful functions of the immigrant population is that, bit by bit, these prejudices are being smashed up. And I was still seething inside when I left the office, took a left and walked on, and that was a mistake too. Which shows that emotions can affect your ability to select information and communicate in a big way, even when you have been a lucky guy so far. > Like others, I have been impressed by the arguments of Paul Cockshott and > Allin Cottrell who wrote in "Towards a New Socialism" 1993, that the power > of modern computers is sufficient to manage a complex economy. That must be > even more the case now. But I am not sure they adequately addressed the > question of how one level of the economy would select information to report > up. Schweickart in his model of "economic democracy" has the same problem. I really like Cockshott and Cottrell, they understand what the problems are, I just disagree with them about imperialism and the history of that. Bill Warren is certainly correct in saying that imperialism was the "pioneer" of capitalism, this is historically absolutely irrefutable in my opinion, but Warren errs in his assessment of primitive accumulation within Western Europe and in the development of imperialism on a capitalist basis. I am not a technology worshipper nor do I believe that new technology is a panacea for everything. Technologies are developed on the basis of a given form of social organisation that they have to fit into, and, the same technology can be applied in different ways depending on the mode of social organisation. Therefore a great deal of "technical efficiency" hinges on the forms of association, the social organisation that you actually have. Unfortunately, people often confuse and conflate technology with social organisation, they think technology determines social organisation, or that social organisation determines technology in some crude way, abstracting from human and class interests. I constantly find myself forced to reframing the issues concerning socialist political economy because of the sheer backwardness of thought, the crude ideology and dogma, I am dealing with. Ernest Mandel moots this idea of a general theory of socialist transition (if I only can track down a copy of the mimeo; in the FI, information management skills are not always of a high standard so you just cannot find back a valuable idea that somebody had). Point is, a general theory is useful for the specification of goals, but in every country socialist transition has its own specifics, as Makoto Itoh points out, and when Mandel tried to advise Lula, it is mainly just generalities, and Lula could not use that. (Castro would not even talk with Mandel, I do not know whether this had to do with Mandel's Trotskyism, but Castro has a job of running a country he has revolutionised, and that is a different ballgame from rigorously working through the intracies of Marxist theory at a university). Lula cannot use socialists who do not come up with constructive, specific socialist policies, and he would be quite happy to work with non-socialists insofar as they are more competent, have a better knowledge of specifics, and he does so within the context of a very devious and sometimes highly questionable political game. Whereas if you look at Belgium, there is no large and vibrant Trotskyist party there at all, i.e. we have all these amazing people who are "experts" on some other country than their own, which has its consequences, and which reflects the fact that they are themselves still trapped in imperialist ideology. Then they start to talk about "globalisation" or "pragmatic holism" or god knows what else. And in the Dutch Socialist Party that sort of approach has been ditched. I do not say that the Dutch SP necessarily has an adequate conception of Dutch imperialism and the history of it, but there are people here who do know a hell of a lot about it, and they are going to raise this issue, when it is politically relevant. > > The capitalist mode of production is ruthless at economising labour time in > the interests of the accumulation of capital. A more democratic or > socialist mode of production could tend towards minimising the amount of > work done within each unit of labour time. This might slow the pace of > technological change, and might be well worth it, in return for the massive > increase in use values across the world, by the spread of the existing > technology in a socially responsible way. I do not see why you cannot do both at the same time, i.e. spread good technologies, improve the quality of technologies, and invent better ones. The problem is NEVER the lack of good ideas, the problem is the mode of social organisation and the fact that you are dealing with the private property and market barriers that Michael Perelman among others identifies quite clearly. What socialists have to keep hammering on, is that market economy, although it is sometimes efficient and desirable, is not a panacea and that market economy, if made into a religious dogma, leads to total inefficiency and unworkable, ungovernable societies. The exaggeration of private property and market principles just means that the bourgeoisie flouts those principles in practice, and just steals and robs anything it requires to get private enterprise going and keep it going. And if that trend continues we get vampire capitalism in a stinking, swampy version of Transsylvania. > > But as the cluster of newsitems I sent up yesterday illustrated, there is a > problem of reporting by the top intelligentsia running companies in both > the capitalist sector and the not for profit sector. Yes, the profit and non-profit sectors depend on each other, but HOW do they depend on each other ? This is the question, and if you start to talk about this while abstracting from the basically capitalist economic structure and from the capitalist state, you don't understand anything. > > Consciousness after all is selective. We each select what to make conscious > and share on this list. If access to future development funds, or the right > to retain a portion of your accumulated surplus depends on what you report, > the upper intelligentsia under socialism or capitalism will be selective, > and from time to time will be dishonest and corrupt. If I may take the place I worked at as an example, there is NOTHING our director could do at work that the workers could not know about. And as regards myself, there is almost NOTHING that anybody who bothers to investigate it could not investigate and discover, bar a few episodes perhaps. You are turning things around, you are just trying to make socialism difficult, whereas socialism is easy, the only problem is a political one, how do you get a good articulation of political interests, what is the basis for cooperation. Personally, I confess I am sick to death of people trying to make socialism difficult, trying to make building socialist parties difficult, I have absolutely no use for these twits. > > It may be that these contradictions are only resolved when we are at the > stage of communism, when our needs are more than easily met by the > abundance of use values, commodity exchange does not dominate social > bonding, and work is humans' prime need. Socialism is in my head, communism is in my pants. Look, unless you are totally blind, THERE IS ABUNDANCE ALREADY. This is why neoclassical economics keeps on running into paradoxes, because the theory says "there has got to be scarcity". The poor and starving experience scarcity, sure, but that is only because of private property barriers. But neoclassical economics doesn't give a fuck about the poor, that's just a marginal utility problem. > > Meanwhile yes, lets have more transparency about reporting even if it means > massive reports buried in the internet, and reforms that consciously > undermine the private ownership of the means of production by capital, and > alteration in the status of workers as sellers of labour power, by changes > such as tax credits, and better, citizens income. The way the bourgeoisie does this is by trying to produce transparent individuals, because it has got to be methodological individualism, shudder the thought that the masses would cooperate and dare to build an egalitarian society where the role of private property is vastly reduced and world problems are really solved. > > And a bit of class struggle. Especially if the top strata no longer trust > their elite intelligentsia. Once I had a love and it was a gas Soon turned out had a heart of glass Seemed like the real thing only to find Mucho mistrust, love's gone behind In between what I find is pleasing And I'm feeling fine, love is so confusing There's no peace of mind if I fear I'm losin' you It's just no good, you teasin' like you do Once I had a love and it was divine Soon found out I was losing my mind It seemed like the real thing but I was so blind Mucho mistrust, love's gone blind Lost inside adorable illusion and I cannot hide I'm the one you're using, please don't push me aside We coulda made it cruisin', yeah Coulda made it cruisin', yeah Once I had a love and it was a gas Soon turned out to be a pain in the ass But I was so blind Mucho mistrust, love's gone behind Yeah, riding high on love's true bluish light, ooh, oh PS - Jim Devine is a friend of mine.
