Politics, Fantasy, and Reality

Yes, indeed I believe I did. Then you said they weren't what you were talking about. I asked for your defs and got generalities. I said be specific.For government, what is required (structure, organs, documents) to be a government, and what is its role as opposed to the role of this so called "organized structure" which you say is different.For permanent revolution, and this one is much more important, what is the exact nature of the revolution in its inception and continuation. Is it just a mental exercise or is it physical? What are the physical requirements of maintaining a permanent revolution? What would that look like once a revolution has secured itself from the original state? The statement that people should be left free to produce and trade, and that will make things work better, clearly does not take into account limits.That is why capitalism can be just as Utopian. Yes, mind-boggling isn't it? When I point out that over the periods of time since an inception of a new government till it begins to slip into full authoritarian mode, there are major player changes and power changes and etc etc you say that doesn't mean anything, just the inevitability of government failure.Yet when I correctly point out the same thing can be seen in a revolution, given the criteria YOU set out, then my analysis is "cartoon-like"?You need to make up your mind Contra. There is evidence, there is not evidence, there is evidence, there is not evidence. Which is it and stick to it.By the way I agree no other theory of social evolution comes close, and none any farther either. Social evolution as idealized by political-economic theories is a bunch of pseudo-science.Your resort to talking about plenty of evidence, and then retreating to say no positive evidence because its about the FUTURE, then returning to plenty of evidence (oh but you can't count the counterevidence because that's not what I'm talking about) is just about all the evidence anyone needs... pure snake oil. I never said ANY of these things. Communism is NOT defined as believing in a permanent revolution with no state.My criticisms have been launched against overuse of revolutions (as well you should note as totally damning them). To the degree Marx, and the marxist version of communism, requires overuse of revolution and an abandonment of government, I am criticizing it.This is all about a very specific thing... revolution as a tool of populations to change their way of life. Saying revolution must be eternal is a dogmatic statement no matter how you slice it.Indeed you have proven so, in that in real life you concede that survival may necessitate abandoning eternal revolution. Gosh golly. That means sticking to it in those conditions would have been: DOGMATIC... right?If you say eternal revolution, well with exceptions, then that is the same thing as saying eternal government, well with exceptions. The question is only on degree necessary. Welcome to McCarthyism. You are definitely there. When will you renounce McCarthyism, contra? When will YOU give it up? I'm waiting. Do you ever stop and notice how full of shit you are? You keep superimposing this wierd political belief system over my specific critical stance.I have already said I am not beholden to capitalism or communism or any other ism. Specific versions of all pol-eco theories are open to the criticism of dogmatic thinking. I am only on a case by case basis and it is hardly black and white.As far as claims of social evolution, I am a scientist and will require more than negative evidence, and heavily qualified so-called positive evidence. And I will need much more than vague definitions anyone can use. I never said it could do none of the above. My criticism is that such mechanisms are insufficient to run a nation. Yes, WTF is a very appropriate word for this occasion. Revolution is violent it is not violent it is violent it is not violent. Resistance and noncooperation do not require violence, only noncooperation.If the above description is NOT a description of status quo working with one's enemies, I do not know what else is. That is exactly how it worked in business (small and corporate) as well as government.And by this I am talking between management and employees. They are ALL WORKERS.But that said, without some heirarchy and government structure MISCOMMUNICATION and NONCOOPERATION can bring some functions to a stand still. Just because people are "workers" does not mean they will agree on everything or be able to read each others minds.For a guy that works at some huge something, have you not encountered the mechanisms necessary to control that entity to produce something specific? Have you not encountered terrible communication and workers at odds with each other that required a "boss" to finalize a decision? That's spelled BS. I didn't say anything like that. Inherently incapable? Find where I said that.All I said is that YOU had said there was no such thing as human nature, then utilized a direct statement about "human nature", and what's worse described an inherent degree of cooperation which is utopian.It is NOT TRUE that just because people are workers they will cooperate.Or at least if you are able to say this given the degree of cooperation that exists, capitalists are able to use that claim between management and employees. Has it ever occured to you that someone might criticize something with similar arguments as someone else, but they both got there from different routes and had different agendas.If you want to claim my analyses are incorrect, and then present evidence, that is one thing. To consistently claim my analyses are McCarthy propaganda (especially when some of may analyses contain issues AFTER McCarthy was gone) is something else.You are the liar Contra. And following well in McCarthy's footsteps. If you don't like my analyses, debate them, don't label them McCarthyism or propaganda. I think I'm going to start a tally on how many examples you give that are actually supportive of my statements.I would dispute none of the statements above... I win. If you remember, my comment regarding communism was that it worked best in small settings, tribal, low industrial, things like that. That is what the above says.YOU said marxism was ONLY about industrial nations and not agricultural societies. Don't you remember that,and my confusion? And now here you are resting it on primarily agricultural societies.Here's an analysis for you. The reason why marxism has never worked so far in an industrilaized nation is that communism (of which it is a verion) is best suited to WHOLLY small, agricultural or minimal industrial countries... nations where resources are readily available and transportable to all members of the populations without much technology.That said, I might question whether the anthro work you discussed showed marxism or communism. Since you defined marxism as permanent revolution, are you saying all these nations were in permanent revolution? Yes. Nothing you showed changed that. A government can always enforce its will on an individual using those who continue to support it.If that individual manages to get away, or convince enough people to no longer support the government, it will fall.Your asinine rebuttal of this proposition only cuts your own throat. Without the above proposition being true then revolution is impossible, and certainly revolution to a state of nongovernment is impossible.I cannot fathom how you miss that FACT.And I might add that even in a revolution of workers, if one tries to move beyond the will of a revolution then that person will face opposition. Does that make the movement less voluntary? If so, then your theory is shot to hell.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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For government, what is required (structure, organs, documents) to be a government, and what is its role as opposed to the role of this so called "organized structure" which you say is different.

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And I told you, but you just dismiss it as "generalities".

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For permanent revolution, and this one is much more important, what is the exact nature of the revolution in its inception and continuation. Is it just a mental exercise or is it physical? What are the physical requirements of maintaining a permanent revolution? What would that look like once a revolution has secured itself from the original state?

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for the Nth time - it is the same system of organisation as was used to overthrow the status quo. In the Russian case, that would be soviets.But I'm sure you'll just say thats propaganda again, sigh.

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The statement that people should be left free to produce and trade, and that will make things work better, clearly does not take into account limits.

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Why are they related?Material limits to the natural environemtn are not subject to human legislation. They are externalities which we formulate our systems to deal with.

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Yes, mind-boggling isn't it? When I point out that over the periods of time since an inception of a new government till it begins to slip into full authoritarian mode, there are major player changes and power changes and etc etc you say that doesn't mean anything, just the inevitability of government failure.

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So, you take a mishmash of periods, impose interpretations on jargon you are not familiar with, and then you interpret this as the inevitability of governmetn failure?What is the quesrtion you are asking? I have aleready proposed that we abaondon this now completely contorted line by line response, becuase you are clearly having tremendous difficulty distinguishing between marxist theory, the acticvityes of the bolsheviks, the activities of non-bolsheviks, and the material conditions.

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There is evidence, there is not evidence, there is evidence, there is not evidence. Which is it and stick to it.

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Yes of course there is evidence that supports the actual theory, but people keep asking for invalid types of evidence that support a false view of what the theory should be. I can give you the former, not the latter.

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By the way I agree no other theory of social evolution comes close, and none any farther either. Social evolution as idealized by political-economic theories is a bunch of pseudo-science.

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And heres where I say nonsense. This is just another baseless allegation, by your own standards. If you want to argue against the theories claims 0 say, base and superstriucture for example - do so. Don't just proclaim ex cathedra that it cannot be so.

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Your resort to talking about plenty of evidence, and then retreating to say no positive evidence because its about the FUTURE, then returning to plenty of evidence (oh but you can't count the counterevidence because that's not what I'm talking about) is just about all the evidence anyone needs... pure snake oil.

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Thats Bullshit Holmes; far too much arguing your conclusion. you depend on misrepresenting what the theory claims in order to demand impossible "evidence" and then procalim victory. this is exactly the theist tactici of saying "a theory is just a theory" or debnying the possibility of historical evidence becuase "we were not there".In order for you to understand the support the thoery has, you first need to engage with the theories claims, but you keep running away from that like a chicken. Why?

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I never said ANY of these things. Communism is NOT defined as believing in a permanent revolution with no state.

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Communism IS defined as no state, that has been available and public since the work of Marx and Engels, look it up. Permanent revolution is a Trotskyist theory developed during the Russian revolution to explain parts of the failure of that revolution.

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My criticisms have been launched against overuse of revolutions (as well you should note as totally damning them). To the degree Marx, and the marxist version of communism, requires overuse of revolution and an abandonment of government, I am criticizing it.

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OK - that is at least clear. But the attribution is abysmal - Marx said nothing about a permanent revolution. As to the "over-use" of revolutions, this points to the error that I have already identified in this thread which is the implication that Marx specifically advocates that we should go out and start a revolution. That is NOT his arghument at all - it is that capitalism UNDERGOES revolutions of its own accord.If all the marists vanished overnight, the propsect of revolution would not be any less, and the frequey would not be reduced. so any criticism of the "over use" of revolutions is NOT a criticism of Marx at all.Why then are you raising this point?

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This is all about a very specific thing... revolution as a tool of populations to change their way of life. Saying revolution must be eternal is a dogmatic statement no matter how you slice it.

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Well then, saying the sky is blue must be dogmatic too.

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Welcome to McCarthyism. You are definitely there. When will you renounce McCarthyism, contra? When will YOU give it up? I'm waiting.

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Why, because I dare you to address a real argument instead of the cartoon of one? Jesus the hubris is astounding; according to you, then, all science is dogma and propaganda.Thats just ridiculous. as I remarked earlier, the main thing thats interesting about the American approach to this topic is the adamant denial that a criticism of MArx should proceed from Marx actual work. All these are just excuses to avoid having to do basic reserach and thereby having comfortable delusions punctured.

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Do you ever stop and notice how full of shit you are? You keep superimposing this wierd political belief system over my specific critical stance.

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FFS; I have already VOLUNTEERED to start from scratch because this point-by-point discussion, rushing from concept to concept based on the most superficial appreciation of the jargon appears only to be confusing you. Or if you don't want to know, then why are you posting to this thread?

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I have already said I am not beholden to capitalism or communism or any other ism. Specific versions of all pol-eco theories are open to the criticism of dogmatic thinking. I am only on a case by case basis and it is hardly black and white.

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But you are NOT on a case by case basis becuase you do not know, and don;t seem interested in finding out, what my arghument actually is. Every time I say anything you claim its dogma, and you keep reciting a local American set of tropes as if they were common knowledge.You won;t even let me ARTICULATE the theory without accusing me of dogma, let alone tryiong to demonstrate that the argument is digmatic or falsified in any sense. So where is you case by case analysis? You are just attacking a straw man of your own creation, it seems to me.

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But that said, without some heirarchy and government structure MISCOMMUNICATION and NONCOOPERATION can bring some functions to a stand still. Just because people are "workers" does not mean they will agree on everything or be able to read each others minds.

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Of course not. But I have already answered the question you are heading towards 5 times: SOVIETS. Thats what HAPPENED, spontaneously. Thats WHY it is now in Marxist theiory, because of the EVIDENCE.

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For a guy that works at some huge something, have you not encountered the mechanisms necessary to control that entity to produce something specific? Have you not encountered terrible communication and workers at odds with each other that required a "boss" to finalize a decision?

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Yes of course. But THAT has nothing to do with whether or not that boss should be appointed by the fiat of a person who's only claim is control of capital, and this claim defended by the armed might of the state. It is precisely becuase as you admit the managers and bosses who do this are ALSO WORKERS that I can say WORKERS CAN RUN THE SOCIETY THEMSELVES.

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All I said is that YOU had said there was no such thing as human nature, then utilized a direct statement about "human nature", and what's worse described an inherent degree of cooperation which is utopian.

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No, I said the TERM "human nature" was always ideological and is never suffiently precise to allow effective communication in my experience. Any and all observable human behaviours are relevant to the topic.

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It is NOT TRUE that just because people are workers they will cooperate.

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And yet you acknowlegdge that coordinating and resolving differences in perception and analysis are a WORKERS role. I NEVER said that worker status makes veryone into happy clappies; I said that the idea that we CANNOT cooperate at all without a coercive state enabled to use lethal force against the citizenry is untenable.Do you agree, or not agree, with that position?

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Or at least if you are able to say this given the degree of cooperation that exists, capitalists are able to use that claim between management and employees.

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Yes. My criticism of the relationship between management and workers as it exists in capitalism has to do with lack of accountability in capitalist heirarchies (that is, a manager is accountable to other managers or to the owners, not the workers) and the spurious social authority that people gain from these relationships.These are particular structural criticisms, not a blanket rejection of all organisation.

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Has it ever occured to you that someone might criticize something with similar arguments as someone else, but they both got there from different routes and had different agendas.

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Yes of course. But that does not explain the remarkable consistency of the criticism. I do not observe any indepenant thinking in your crtiicism so far, certainly not enough independance to actually read the Marxist argument.

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If you want to claim my analyses are incorrect, and then present evidence, that is one thing. To consistently claim my analyses are McCarthy propaganda (especially when some of may analyses contain issues AFTER McCarthy was gone) is something else.

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I have done so; the argument to consequence exhibited in the starvation in Russia argument is clearly one such. But it seems to me impossible for me to falsify your argument given your premises, becuase every time I tell you haw actual Marxist theory differes from your percpetion of that theory you tell me I am being propagandist.In Kendmyers thread, someone remarked that in no other field do people routinely tell others that they do not believe what they self-report to believe. But that is exactly what you and Hambre and Paisano have done; when your expectation of what positions a Marxist should hold are falsified, you retreat to claiming that the positions I claim to hold are themselves untrue and that I dnot hold them.A good example of this is that I say I want people to be free of overweening dominance like that of the state, and people come back saying that I'm just interpolating state domination as freedom.

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You are the liar Contra. And following well in McCarthy's footsteps. If you don't like my analyses, debate them, don't label them McCarthyism or propaganda.

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When you start analysing positions I actually hold, rather than attributing to me positions I do not hold, then I will retract my claim. I hope to obviate this by proposing some topics that you may wish to engage with at the end of this post.

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I would dispute none of the statements above... I win. If you remember, my comment regarding communism was that it worked best in small settings, tribal, low industrial, things like that. That is what the above says.

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Well, in fact the above did not say that becuase it was an account of modern anthropological reserach on bronze age societies which exmeplifies the mode of Marxist analysis without emanating from Marxism.Secondly, your statement amounts to another semantic game. In Marxist theory, what you are describing is primitive communism, a particular historical mode of production. Marx' argument is that with the advent of industrialism, the class-rule societies that replaced primitive communism in a sequence of social evolution are now themselves redundant, and a mode of production that is INDUSTRIAL communism is now viable.Again you reterating to the Idealistic definition of "communism" without engaging with the actual Marxist argument. And becuase you HAVE NOT ADDRESSED that argument, you most certainly DO NOT win.

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YOU said marxism was ONLY about industrial nations and not agricultural societies. Don't you remember that,and my confusion? And now here you are resting it on primarily agricultural societies.

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No no no!!!! Look, what I said was, I cannot say over here is a technical STATE that used communism as an example. There are none. But the ARGUMENT is that it is feasible, for various and sundry reasons to do with the nature of industrialism. But the THEORY which gives rise to that conclusion is based on an analysis of ALL periods of human history, their state relations, class relations, and productive relations.The argument that "a non-state society is impossible" is easily invalidated by the historical record of non-state societies.As I said in that point, you keep trying to twist Marxism into being a proposition for a new government rather than a theory of social evolution. Marxism observes the progress of evolution in human societies, tries to deduce the rules governing those societies and their transitions, and therebu to predict what kind of transition that industrial age SHOULD, in these terms, be triggering in our day and age.

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Here's an analysis for you. The reason why marxism has never worked so far in an industrilaized nation is that communism (of which it is a verion) is best suited to WHOLLY small, agricultural or minimal industrial countries... nations where resources are readily available and transportable to all members of the populations without much technology.

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I think that was a reasonable position 200 years ago. Its reasonable as applied to the people of the technological level of Athens, say. But by IMO the technical aspect of our society is what makes it MORE doable, not less, for several reasons: 1) the much higher level of technical education, 2) massively improved communications technology, of which the internet is a prime example, 3) the well-recognised interdependancy of a global economy[which remainds me: globalisation was another of Marx predictions, that capitalism would chase profit all over the globe. Thats part of the theory, and so when people say that Marx failed to account for the new globalised world, they are 100% wrong]

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That said, I might question whether the anthro work you discussed showed marxism or communism. Since you defined marxism as permanent revolution, are you saying all these nations were in permanent revolution?

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The anthro work shows neither, what I cited were examples of heirarchical, state based socities. What I said was the the mechanisms of MArxist anaysis, examining the material conditions of that society, how material evidence dmeonstrates that the producers are being expropriated by a social elite, and that this reinforces Marx theory by validating its predictions despite the fact that Marx never did any research on the pre-Inca states of Peru.

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If that individual manages to get away, or convince enough people to no longer support the government, it will fall.

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Inasmuch as you are saying all states are human creations, thats unremarkable. But if you acnkowledge that the state can coerce by relying on those who still give it loyalty, then you have conceded my point.

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Your asinine rebuttal of this proposition only cuts your own throat. Without the above proposition being true then revolution is impossible, and certainly revolution to a state of nongovernment is impossible.

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A state is not voluntary at all in terms of its relationship to the individual. I do not regard the state as legitimate, and yet it is still imposed upon me. I cannot opt out of the state; and if the state decides that my behaviour is unacceptable, it can and will exercise violence against me. To the point that violent confrontations between large numbers of citiziens and the state authorities are commonplace. If your argument were true, how did the state of Saddam Hussein survive for so long and (allegedly) require external intervention to fall?

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I cannot fathom how you miss that FACT.

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the FACT that you miss is the role of ideology in legitimising the state. That is, the state controls schools, and who rocks the cradle rules the world. The state is bigger than people, has become a self-fulfilling entity and prophecy. And I suggest that much of your argument rests on just this sort of constructed legitimacy - first you argue that the state is a requirement for imposing order and resolving conflicts, and acknowledge its coercive powers, and then you want to de-fang the state and say our accession to state power is only voluntary.It is BECUASE the state has no true ontological necessity that it can be discarded; and it is also BECUASE the state requires consent that one of its main functions is to manufacture that consent.

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And I might add that even in a revolution of workers, if one tries to move beyond the will of a revolution then that person will face opposition. Does that make the movement less voluntary? If so, then your theory is shot to hell.

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No, because I am not obliged to sacrifice my wellbeing at the altar of anothers wishes. But equally, if we have ablished coercive structures like the police and army, then I have a very limited capacity to coerce them or they to coerce me. Either way, if coercion is applied because either I or they can command sufficient consent for essentially informal coercion, this still does not fall afoul of the many criticisms of state authority. In non-state systems, much such coercion is psychological or social rather than punitive or rehabilitative. I can discuss, for example, coercive systems in the non-state societies of Celtic Ireland, if you like.Again, you are confusing the criticism of the states coercion with an absolutist position then refutes all coercion of any sort. My argument is much more subtle than that; my argument is that the permanent and standing threat of physical violence as a basic mechanism of state-based social order is unecessary, given our level of technology.

Some propositions for quaestions that might prodcutively be discussed:What is the general Marxist analysis of social evolution?What does Marx mean by class rule, class dictatorship, and class in general?Why does Marx argue that revolution is the basic mechanism of social evolution?What does Marx mean by "mode of production" and how is this relevant to the evolution of socities?Why does Marx argue that industrialism and the advent of the proletariat should trigger the next stage of social evolution?These are just good starting points for getting your head around the substance of the argument, IMO. But I'd be prepared to entertain other suggestions if you have any.

No one is forcing you into a line by line response. When miscommunication is so great you consider it wholly worthless, you can do what I am about to do... a summary. And what's great is I'll keep it on topic.The problem here is not me, it is YOU. All of my points have been proven again and again, and it seems to be that most of the reason you don't understand this is that you are arguing against someone else.I started in this thread criticizing MrH regarding the nature and utility of revolution. I said nothing about communism or marxism or anything. The topic was revolution, and once more for the record... I was against mrH.Then you responded to my posts with some pretty BIG CLAIMS regarding permanent revolutions and marxism. Namely you claimed that historical evidence, and lots of it, PROVED YOU RIGHT.Now I stated up front that I was not a marx scholar and would allow you all the freedom in the world to describe what he said and I would accept that as true.However, on your claims of proof, that permanent revolutions were useful and necessary, I needed to see some evidence. Evidence within a set of criteria, is required to separate pseudo-science from real science. That is why I am not saying "a theory is a theory". I was holding YOUR THEORY up to the conditions for proper scientific theories.Yet, even when I gave you a list of questions to help you form your definitions in a useful way, you continued to give me generalities. And what's worse, you kept claiming I wouldn't accept them because I am falling for McCarthyist lies, and repeatedly calling any evidence you gave as propaganda or dogma.Interestingly enough I pretty much only referred to the quote by Trotsky as propaganda, and you have labelled your own evidence dogma more times than I ever have.Now here's where it really gets stupid. You kept talking about marxism and permanent revolutions together. Since I was allowing you to define marxism and you never once mentioned that PR was not a part of marxism, what on earth was a supposed to think? Since you are a scholar in this, what you should have understood (if you understood anything I was saying) was that I was not even trying to address marxism, but Trotskyism. My position in this thread was only about revolution, and with you PR.I never once tried to feign like I knew marx said PR was the way. Yet you used your own position to drag out a miscommunication YOU should have realized and stopped.So let's get to where we are now...You said there was historical evidence proving marx right, and (as it relates to PR) trotsky right. You have even called this a "social evolutionary" theory.But what evidence have we seen?First of all, there is evidence in history of civilizations having adopted communism, what you now refer to as primitive communism. And of course I already said this and your evidence did NOTHING but back me up.History shows that some did do this and were successful. So far that is fact based description.Apparently marx used this to put forth a HYPOTHESIS that within industrial communities, societies will go through a similar process until they reach a form of industrial communism.Great. No problem there. However the evidence then is not evidence FOR his theory. It is simply factual descriptions from which Marx was extrapolating. It is possible, not plausible, not proven, not even supported, just possible.I might add at this point that while the evidence is there, there was also evidence of other cultures doing other things and being successful. This does not make Marx wrong, only it shows that such changes in government are not necessary or organic, even to primitive cultures.But let's leave that aside.In order for Marx's hypothesis to be proven right, or have support, we would then need evidence of an industrial community transforming as he suggests and being successful at that transition.For this you carted out the RR. Only the RR failed to qualify as evidence beyond the opening uprising. Indeed, I never said people wouldn't or couldn't rise up against a capitalist system (or any system) in the manner described.My statement was that after that revolution a government of some kind would be necessary to take care of some specific issues worker owned industries could not.There was ample evidence of THIS from the RR. That does not mean that marx would be wrong, but it now faces a hurdle of some counterevidence.Apparently Trotsky addressed this by coming up with the PR idea. The reason the RR failed was not continuing the revolution.... whatever the hell that means, as I have yet to get any explanation for the exact nature of that.Okay, so what that is is a modification of a hypothesis. It is there, it is possible, but there are questions which I have raised, and you have not answered, as well as their being counterevidence!China certainly acts as counterevidence to the PR idea, and you have admitted so. In the face of survival needs, endless PR is not the best option. Of course you swear that off as being related to China not being industrial enough.Fine.So what we are left with is a theory with evidence available to form a hypothesis, and NO evidence to suggest it will work. That is what we would have to wait for.And I have raised credible questions, specific questions, about the efficiency of the system described in the theory. I have not said it was impossible, I have only said that it seems like it will not be the most effective system. There is a huge difference between the two.I have said, and evidence seems to point this out (in agricultural systems at least and that is what we are extrapolating from right?), that an insistance on PR could turn out to be dogmatic.Communism is not dogma, though anyone can pursue it in that fashion. PR has a greater tendency (especially given the P) of being dogmatic. The first is proven in small communities and so far unproven in industrial ones, and the latter (PR) is wholly without historical evidence to create the hypothesis and if anything has some counterevidence.If there is anything wrong with this assessment, you explain it carefully and leave out all the dogma, propaganda, and McCarthy shit.PS---The sky is colorless. Refraction/reflection of particles in a cloudless sky during the day appears blue to most people. People that are colorblind might not be able to distinguish it from other colors. At night it is black. In the intervals between day and night it shows a myriad of colors.Thus the statement "the sky is blue" would be dogma, especially if it was then decided that blue must be the better color of sky and we should strive for that.PSS-If marx were right, then why do you appear to have so little faith that you must challenge people to move towards it. In essence (especially if it was about social EVOLUTION) there is no better about it, it is simply fact and will happen when it needs to and wherever we are right now is just fine.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Those could be interesting, but are irrelevant. My whole position is regarding the utility of revolutions as tools for a populace to change its organization.And in specific, the idea of PR... which I have come to understand is Trotsky and not marx.What would be productive is a discussion of what Trotsky meant by PR, and as it reflects on marx, his definitions of (decriptions of functions and mechanism) state, government, and revolution (and maybe revolutionary organization).Then we need evidence that Trotsky's version of he hypothesizes would have fixed the failed RR revolution has worked in reality somewhere else. Or barring that, a description of how the nonstate (or let's say government) entities propose to deal with the problems I discussed, especially in a mode where all entities must remain working on revolution against a government.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Leon Trotsky's writings (and he was certainly prolific) are an interesting study. It's informative to go back and compare some of his earlier works with later ones (such as "If America should go Communist"). His criticism of Stalin is very informative.You can read much of his writings at the Marxist archive.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I have been trying to avoid this thread because it makes me so angry. So I do not have much to say today but hope to respond tomorrow in more depth.

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Those could be interesting, but are irrelevant. My whole position is regarding the utility of revolutions as tools for a populace to change its organization.

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I know that that is your question. That is why I proposed those topics. Because the argument ABOUT the use of revolution DEPENDS on the historical materialist analysis of social change.I experience your argument as rather like the argument about "we do not see kind changing into kind. dogs do not give birth to donkeys". But very idea of dogs giving birth to donkeys depends on the speaker not understanding the argument as to how evolution works.I can't explain the WHAT of the Marxist analysis of revolution without discussing those premise. The communist party as a revolutionary instrument is built according to a set of principles that arise from the overall historical analysis.As I have suggested several times already, lets forget about permanent revolution. I'm sorry I mentioned it; perhaps we can come back to it later. It would be better if we concentrated on the earliest analyses of revolution to establish the general case before moving on to a specific argument that arises from an applied case.I cannot discuss the HOW of the Marxist view of abolishing the state without discussing the Marxist view of the state and its origins. Or at least, any such discussion would founder on non-shared assumptions, like the voluntary-ness or otherwise of the state.

I want you to read #49 first, because it is a summary of the argument so far. I think it is accurate even with what you just added here. Well that's just bullshit. I have only been asking for positive evidence for your claims. Even if I did not fully understand the mechanisms, which does not seem to be the case here (merely the defs), I still have an idea of what counts for positive evidence and you are NOT presenting any.And by "counts for positive evidence", I don't mean specifics like "if marx were right we'd have seen a growth in industrial production after the RR", but just that you would have been able to supply some sort of hypothesis, a predictor (a means for falsification), and the evidence which fulfills the criteria.All I have seen is factual historical statements which allow the building of a theory and a hypothesis, which is fine. Then an example of something happening according to the hypothesis, and then failing. Then an adjustment of the hypothesis, with no further evidence (testing).In other words we can forget about WHAT COUNTS AS EVIDENCE FOR MARX'S SPECIFIC HYPOTHESIS, and deal just with WHAT COUNTS AS POSITIVE EVIDENCE.In complete honesty, you argument sounds like ID theorists saying that methodological naturalism is too strong and is being used by materialists to unfairly lock them out of science. Whatever... I sure as heck didn't start this. I was pretty clearly just saying to MrH that I thought revolutions were a useful tool, though it should be used wisely. You were the one that jumped on me with the "no it has to be permanent" thing. Then we're already in trouble. That assumption of mine (voluntariness of the state) is based on pretty strong historical evidence.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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Well that's just bullshit. I have only been asking for positive evidence for your claims. Even if I did not fully understand the mechanisms, which does not seem to be the case here (merely the defs), I still have an idea of what counts for positive evidence and you are NOT presenting any.

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Once again Holmes, start conversing ans stop assuming. this is your response to my note that I find your request for an existing communist state to be like the theists argument of us not seeing kind coming from kind.Whather YOU find it bullshit is fucking irrelevant; you assume an insulting intent here where none exists. The two scenarios are very alike becuase they both distort the scale of question, and ask an impossible question by demanding a proof which the argument itself does not predict. Its an obviously manipulative strategy.--As I said, Marx argument is not about a "form of government", it is about "modes of production". A mode of production is rather like an evolutionary niche, because it is a whole life-style category. Thus, when we consider Feudalism as a mode of production, we are talking about the level of technology available, the geopolitical surroundings, social organisation and methodology, the ideology of rule etc.These are not of course static forms any more than a particular morphology is permanent in animals. The major engine of this change is the material conditions under which the mode of production occurs, that is, the technical baseline of the society in question.And thats what makes it radical, in fact: the presumption that only physical, material causes drive the social formation a society employs. Not political, or ideological, or moral developement. Democracy was seen in Atherns, the modern democracies do not exist becuase we have reached a new plateaus of rationality and enlightnment, but becuase we have a tehnical baeeline that makes it feasible across whole continents.This mode of change is rather like punctuated equilibrium, Marx argues. We see series of incremental changes, enhancements, clarifications, of the technical base on which a society depends. But we also, of course, see coercion and competition being conducted withing that society, and often with external societies. the vast bulk of this coercion occurs within a society, as some people appropriate the products produced by others labour, backed by violence. This constitutes exploitation; not as an emotive term indicating disaproval, but as a descriptive term indicating the actual relationship between the two.Exploitation of this nature is not always premised on the direct exercise of force, in the form of direct theft, because this is simply inefficient. It occurs mostly through the establishment of a social order, a doctrine of that legitimises the ruling classes right to rule and the labouring classes duty to labour.The transition from feudalism to bourgeois democracy was one of these transitions. It was foreshadowed by small outbursts of discontnet, large movements, contrary doctrines (of which Protestantism is a prime mover) that challenge the divine right of kings and lords. Eventually not one, but a series of national democratic revolutions, across Europe and centuries, make it abundantly clear that the era of monarchic feudal rule is over. This does not occurm, as mentioned above, becuase of some new development of intellectual clarity or insight, but because real tangible power had passed out of the hands of the aristos and into the hands of the shopkeepers and professionals - even if the aristocracy still held the public legitimacy to rule.Bourgeois social democracy did not materialise out of whole cloth at one revolutionary moment. Needless to say, the aristos fought tooth and nail and slandered their oppoition. Your own "horror" at the Red Terror of the french revolution is an excellent example of this precious hypocrisy - are we to serously believe that it would have been cheaper in lives to have remained a monarchy? But concern about lives is not what drives these criticisms, it is a conflict of ideological justification of which class rules society as a whole. Those who argue the Red Terror was too high a price to pay are only arguing that human life is valueless, and that the aristos should have been left to continue squandering it by right. I have no sympathy with this argument.--As I mentioned above, these are necessarily all exploitative societies. They establish a group of people to act as rulers, to whom critical decisions are referred. A doctrine of this class rule justifies and reinforces these ideas to the point that, as we know, by and large the whole society "consents" in as much as it is able, unless driven beyond consent by specific circumstances. But because these are only ideological arguments, rather than a descriptive of a real difference in capacities of human beings, when the doctrine confonts material reality the doctrine must fall. As stated in in the Manifesto, ALL hitherto societies have been class divided societies, whose major feature has been the division of the populace into a ruling minority and ruled majority.Furthermore it is often the case that competition WITHIN the ruling class causes this confrontation to occur. In addition, all such societies exist in permanent competition with any similar external society. As a result, class divided societies are wracked by endemic conflict, and it is no suprise that by and large the ruling class has also been the military class (with a notable excpetion in China). Class rule rests on exploitation even when that exploitation is doctrinally legitimised and "consensual", but this "consent" is always backed by the control of military power.--Looking at this from the perpsective of the 19th C, with a series of European revolutions rising against the bourgeois states, Marx applied this model of social developement to his own era. His argument is that the developemetn of industrialism has changed the relationship of humans to the world in a fundamental way, and that exploitative class societies are now tehcnically redundant. Consider that prior to industrialisation, for the most part human activity exhibited a net energy loss. Sunlight turned into food through farming is lost through spoilage and rodents, and even when consumed some is radiated wastefully rather than necessarily turned again into productive work. The few non-human sources of energy we have been able to exploit have been animals and plants; and of course, fire. Btu when we developed industrialism, this relationship changed by an order of magnitude. We no longer merely exist with a slight edge over entropy, in an economy of scarcity, and with a burgoining opulation continually at the edge of its carrying capacity, to one of abundance. Our problems are the problems of overproduction and disposing of our consumed goods, rather than their production in the first place. Meeting a demand was rplaced by creating a demand through advertising; the most presssing global problems arise precisely from the sheer quantity of energy we process through technical production.Like the advent of the iron and bronze ages, roughly speaking, this change in the human relationship to the external world SHOULD be triggering a developement ofd our social arrangements. A new mode of production, of social organisation, should be developing in conjunction with the new technical substrate we enjoy. But that has not happened; what has happened instead is that the doctrine of heirarchy and rule that was applied in the Feudal period, and was only slightly modified by capitalism, are still in place. Whats more, the ruling class simply can't even imagine a new way of doing things, no matter how pressing the environmental and social necessity. Its a feature of the legimising doictrine to reassure those who benefit that their status is inevitable, just natural. And yet it is not - it is dependant on the coercive power of the state.--Thus we finally reach the point at which we can discuss the RR. As I said, the request for an example of a communist society exoisting surrounded by a capitalist mode of production is just nuts. Marx never argues such a thing is possible, and in fact argues the very opposite: given the global nature of capitalism, and the projection of the capitalist mode of production to all corners of the world, capitalism is a global phenomenon and must change accordingly. Either its a chift of the whole mode of production (not just the formation of the state) or its is merely a realignment of orthodox power, as to be expected in capitalisms competitve environment. A change of authority structures FROM BELOW is the only way that a real social transformation can be affected.[And that in fact is also why Mussolin and Hitler were right - capitalism finds its highest expression in imperialism and fascism. I'm sure Marx would have found it totally unsurprising that the most powerful capitaliust entity, the US, is also the worlds largest military power.]What we see in the Russian Revolution is in effect a single mutation. It is one of the many attempts that will be made, and have been made, to replace this redundant mode of production with one that accomodates the realities of the economy of oversupply rather than scarcity. And much of modern marxism is derived from the experience of the RR, and the insights into the process of social transformation that it afforded. And in so doing we see much verifification of Marx thesis; for example, Marx predicted that a revolution that occurred even in the remaining monarchies (like England at the time) would not limit itself to bourgeois reforms that brought about parliamentary rule, but would instead pass right through that stage and on to the communist revolution as a whole. And thats exactly what happened in the USSR; the breakdown of social order arose from monarchist exploitation, but the Provisional Authority could not satisfy all factions, and ultimately Lenins famous statement "all power to the soviets" triggered the seizure of power by the common proletarians.Thats just one example of the kind of verification that Marx argument has received continually over the last hundred years. It is NOT surorising that we spent most of the last century locked in world war or the threat of such - that is how bourgeois rule works. It is not surporising that "free trade", under bourgeois terms, really means free for the bourgeoisie and extremely expensive for the producers. It is not surprising that modern technology allows informal, semi-autnoomous groups to efectively stalemate the worlds only superpower, because industrialism has changed what is possible.THIS is why Marx argues that revolution is necessary, unavoidable, if we are talking about real social change. Sure you can have your petty coups, and you can even use the proletariat to replace one bourgeois rulership with another. But thats just pissing in the wind; capitalism is not going to be able to hold back the tide of technology history any more than the bronze age could hold back the iron.And that, I hope, shows why your question is not legimiate, but mischievously constructed. You live in a state that has spent 50 years with an identity defined by fighting communism, and you don't consider it even possible that the public argument to which you were exposed is false? Neither did a peasant question the divine right of kings. Asking, as you and Paisano have done, for a "succesful communist state" is just as false and dishonest a question as a creationist asking to be shown a dog giving birth to a donkey as evidence of evolution.

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Then we're already in trouble. That assumption of mine (voluntariness of the state) is based on pretty strong historical evidence.

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Such as? You';re an American, living in a society that was ruled by the bourgeoisue long before you were born, which was forged by war out of its parent state, which was itself forged by war by "William, named the Bastard, later the Conqueror". Where is this evidence of voluntary societies?

Just going to show you aren't listening to a word I am writing. I did not ask for what you write above. Indeed I think I said you could set whatever evidence would be appropriate. I was only concerned with having ANY POSITIVE EVIDENCE.I don't understand how you still don't get I am giving you complete free reign on what to be looking for.With one exception. You DO have to show me an example of any revolutionary group using the mechanisms of revolution to run itself. That was your claim. Let's see the evidence. This is not my position and your defense of the Terror as somehow worthy misses the value of hindsight. If you do NOT BELIEVE that excesses occurred such that it became a hindrance to the very people it purported to help then you are ignoring evidence.I was not against the revolution, or the destruction of the upper classes. I have only criticized the movement for losing control of their own mechanisms and moving well beyond what they ever had to do.You seem stuck in some stock dilemma fixation. Nice monologue. It didn't do jack. You still need definitions, you still need hypotheses and you still need evidence. Nice monologue.You ever consider the possibility that since you have never been to the US, that all you are doing is reciting public arguments that you were exposed to and they are false?You do know that there WERE communists in the US right? You do know that not everyone there listens to capitalist propaganda and believes it, right?It is quite apparent you have no idea what I believe or what I have been exposed to.I will repeat again I have not required that you show a successful communist state. I left it up to you to define what needed to be shown, with the exception of whatever else you say you need I wanted evidence of a communist state using revolutionary mechanisms to take care of business. YOU SAID it could be done, NOT ME.Other than assertions and detours into rants about what position mrH and Paisano hold, I have yet to see you answer my actual questions. Nowhere there... did I say that was evidence?You're an african, with no experience of the US, and no evidence for what you claim can be done. Let's deal with that before we move onto the voluntary nature of GOVERNMENTS (notice I did not say SOCIETY).

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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I don't understand how you still don't get I am giving you complete free reign on what to be looking for.

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The anti-WTO rallies. The formation of the Soviets. The methodology of what we erroneously refer to as international terrorism. The developement of the mass strike.

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With one exception. You DO have to show me an example of any revolutionary group using the mechanisms of revolution to run itself. That was your claim. Let's see the evidence.

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I can't answer a junior grade question at the same time as a senior grade question and expect them both to make sense. One depends on arguments established by the other.

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This is not my position and your defense of the Terror as somehow worthy misses the value of hindsight. If you do NOT BELIEVE that excesses occurred such that it became a hindrance to the very people it purported to help then you are ignoring evidence.

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A hindrance to WHICH people? Although the terror was a local problem, it served as a very effective threat against the aristocracy, one which exercised them greatly although the way up to the victorian period. So you benefit from that terror today, like it or not.

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I was not against the revolution, or the destruction of the upper classes. I have only criticized the movement for losing control of their own mechanisms and moving well beyond what they ever had to do.

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I know that is your intent, but that is not your behaviour. Because you keep asserting that government is inevitable - in other words, you are advancing the same argument that lead to the terror in the first place, as I see it.

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Nice monologue. It didn't do jack. You still need definitions, you still need hypotheses and you still need evidence.

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... at which point I remind you I charge 10/hour, or you can educate yourself on the web. If my description of the Marxist argument is somehow unacceptable to you, by all means go and read the argument yourself.

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You ever consider the possibility that since you have never been to the US, that all you are doing is reciting public arguments that you were exposed to and they are false?

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Yes, becuase I have never heard that argument aired publicly. But I don't need to go to the US to talk to Americans, do I? And it is the universally false beliefs of Americans in this regard I am addressing. I also get to see American TV, in which these positions are quite forcefullt expressed. Its a globalised world, after all.

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You do know that there WERE communists in the US right? You do know that not everyone there listens to capitalist propaganda and believes it, right?

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I know it very well; unfortunately most Americans do not appear to know it. And furthermore, the American groups such as the Wobblies appear to have been pretty much written off as peaceniks, and the Communist argument in America has vanished. Trotsky even lead a strike in Pittsburgh.

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I will repeat again I have not required that you show a successful communist state. I left it up to you to define what needed to be shown, with the exception of whatever else you say you need I wanted evidence of a communist state using revolutionary mechanisms to take care of business. YOU SAID it could be done, NOT ME.

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No, I did NOT say it could be done; I couldn't have because the very idea of a COMMUNIST STATE is tautological, as I have just tried to explain. A mode of production is not a state; did you bother reading anything I wrote? Furethermore, I have said more than once that addressing the permanent revolution is a bad idea while you are still covering the basics of what Marxism is actually about, so please stop presenting this straw man.

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You're an african, with no experience of the US, and no evidence for what you claim can be done. Let's deal with that before we move onto the voluntary nature of GOVERNMENTS (notice I did not say SOCIETY).

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And yet, you keep referring to STATES. If you had bothered to educate yourself, or had bothered to listen to me as an actual Marxist explaining Marxism, instead of defaulting to your McCarthyist assumptions about the big terrible state that all communists want to impose on freedom loving people, you would not be making such a kindergarten error. Fine - I'll withdraw my conclusions as to the reason you make this error, but then you propose an alternate reason that Marxism is so innacurately represented in America.I also note this note is essentially content-less, apart from the spurious demand for evidence of a permanent revolution when you barely even undertstand what I mean by revolution at all, let alone a permanent one. It seems to me you are deliberately asking a question out of your depth so that you can resort to an ad ignorantum defence.

This is evidence of revolutionary mechanisms against governments or institutions that are no longer being accepted by a group of people for one reason or another... though I will add that many terrorist groups today are not necessarily revolutionary but actually trying to impose their will over an area.I have no problem with this as evidence, nor evidence of this being (in some cases) a result of worker-producer dynamics. Okeydoke. But that is not necessarily evidence of what those dynamics are set to produce and for how long. This answer is no good. It is very simple to explain what mechanisms a revolution may use, and then how it will use them after the state has been overthrown in order to keep society functioning.This is completely separate from evidence that marxism or trotskyism works, and should be easy as you claim to already have the evidence. Indeed it doesn't even have to be a communist revolution which has done this. I think it's bizarre to argue that everything that happened was necessary when the revolutionaries themselves have dismissed portions of it as wanton and worthless.It did start as an effective threat against the aristocracy. That was fine. It then became a threat to those even within the revolution.To answer your question "which people?" My answer is it is obviously THE people, the ones supposedly being protected from the aristocracy. It is not just that it is inevitable, as I have even said there can be no governments at local levels. What I have said is that they become necessary at certain stages of size and development of a community. Necessary for smooth running that is.Government does not necessitate strict class boundaries, nor does it require laissez faire capitalist predation by those with means on those who have not. You never told ME this before, so you can't be reminding me about it.However I have worked and in a way still work as a consultant/analyst. Depending on the job I earn $30-300/hour.I am currently here free of charge analyzing your arguments and writing. If you feel that you need to be charged providing material, I will charge you for its analysis... where shall I send the bill? You need to go and live in the US, or at least visit it for a while, to know how people actually live and act. Forums hardly give one and idea about that.And I cannot believe you are using TV as an indicator of what the US is like.Let me explain something, TV... even the news... is not a reliable source for forming opinions about whole groups of people.In the Netherlands many people think Americans are like X (I'll use that in place of full descriptions). They get that opinion from the same place YOU just described. My gf came to live with me in the US and then returned to the Netherlands. She found out Americans are NOT what the media show.Indeed the programs chosen by Europeans are some of the worst the US has to offer. We come off as total ignoramuses.She also had relatives that went to live in the US for a bit and they came to the same conclusion.I have found that many foreigners that go to the US are pleasantly surprised and come away with a different opinion.Do you think I can formulate an adequate picture of Africa and all Africans from what I see on TV in America and Europe and talking to a few African friends?Your version appears so completely skewed from the reality... and I CRITICIZE THE US ALL THE TIME... that you really need a reality check. Read em and weep:from post #27... post#31... There were no definitional problems earlier. Only when your explanations failed did you start raising a ruckus. I never said this. I use state and government as handy terms for the bodies which enact legislation or regulation over individuals or organizations based on the wishes of the community.I have not once said communism is incompatible with freedom, nor that its "state" would be any more oppressive than a laissez faire capitalist one.I did however ASK how an individual would be free to act as his own producer in that individuals would be hampered from receiving or using materials unless within a collective, correct? But that says nothing of the above two points.You are now warned. One more statement about McCarthy and that I am taking some position that communism is inherently "against freedom" or for a "big burdensome state government" and I am no longer going to discuss anything with you, because you are obviously NOT TALKING TO ME! I would suggest that you have an inaccurate representation of America. Indeed it is so absolutely warped that you cannot even read the plain words I write, and instead impose "MADE IN AMERICA" upon them.I did not make the error you suggested I did. That alone points to where the inaccuracies begin. Or at least the ones YOU ought to be concerned with. I have not asked about a permanent revolution in keeping with your request to drop it. My only request is evidence for revolutionary mechanisms being used to run in place of previous state mechanisms. You had no problem in the beginning, After being discredited you have one now. It seems like... in addition to arguing against points I am not even making... you are deliberately pretending something is out of my depth such that you do not have to ever answer valid questions.This message has been edited by holmes, 09-22-2004 06:01 AM

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

NoBalls?NO BALLS???What are you, 9 years old?

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And yes, I think the US is the most propagandised, ideologically manipulated state on the planet today.

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Um, hello, in China the internet is controlled by the state so their people aren't able to get or send any "unacceptable" information. All of the content of people's internet activity is monitored by the state as well.journalism.berkeley.edu/projects/chinadn/ en/archives/Control%20of%20the%20Internet%20in%20China.doc

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What are you, 9 years old?

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a) why do you care,
b) hre gave it himself,
c) deliberate ignorant liars are not wirthy of respect.Get off your high horse.