Labour Party and the Unions

Max Sawicky sawicky at epinet.org
Tue Aug 3 07:57:43 PDT 1999


The LM snipe hunt continues . . .


>More socialismus interruptus from JH . . .
>
JH again:
>>
Forgive me if I decline an invitation to write recipes for the socialist kitchens of the future. >>

mbs: It's one thing to forego recipies. It's another to decline to choose between animal, vegetable, or mineral.


>>JH:
This much is merely a mundane restatement of Marxism, which I'm surprised is contentious.
>>

mbs: No you're not.


>>JH:
The assessment is that human society has alienated its own powers in the market and the state, and that, therefore, it needs to re-appropriate control of its own self- organisation.>>

mbs: "socialization of production" = "society self-determination" = "control of its own self-organization" = ???????????????????

I'm going to keep after you until you run out of euphemisms.


>>JH:
Clearly, I would be substituting myself for society as a whole, if I were to put forward a proposal for the allocation of social labour in a socialist future."

mbs: If you presume to tell people what or how to think, why not how to allocate, or more properly, how to organize allocation, or, how to decide how to organize allocation?


>>JH:
To take the discussion out of the Sunday School, the point is what question is posed by the present, or what form does alienation take. That is principally what LM is about - the problems of the present, the degradation of subjectivity, the culture of low expectations, and the hostility to social progress in the here and now. Now all of those analyses imply an attitude to the future, but they are not situated in an idealised future, which is of only speculative interest.>>

mbs: So, like, when we get our heads together then we can talk about how to reconstruct society?

Another tack: what is "social progress" beyond a more congenial attitude towards technology under capitalism (with which I am sympathetic, BTW)?


>>JH:
If Max doesn't like the answer, it's because he is asking the wrong question. I never claimed powers of clairvoyance, only a passing understanding of the problems of the present.
>>

Why not just admit, you have no political-economic clue? You're cultural commentators with a strong aversion to state capitalism, capitalism capitalism, and state- sponsored violence. And, like gender transmigration, there's nothing wrong with that.

If this is 'living marxism,' it's got a case of agoraphobia.

cheers,

mbs



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