JKJ, An example of private production is anything made by an individual. Not much of that around but I suppose one could look to examples in the arts and crafts. Nearly everything of importance to our lives, our subsistence and our dreams, involves cooperative, or social production. Yet these social forces of production are also held back by the concentrated private ownership of the means of production. On one hand, social production; on the other private appropriation.

Can't help yourself, can you Joe? Perhaps I've never been a worker, you say in an attempted put-down.

I was an apprentice and did my time in carpentry and ended up with a Clerk of Works Certificate before I ended up doing the Leaving Certificate and gaining entrance to Sydney University.

So don't tell me about being a worker, Joe. My back still has problems.

Dear Barry,

<<JKJ, An example of private production is anything made by an individual. Not much of that around but I suppose one could look to examples in the arts and crafts.>>

So all that's left is some pittance which one cannot eat and doesn't stop the cold.

<<Nearly everything of importance to our lives, our subsistence and our dreams, involves cooperative, or social production.>>

As a side remark, the most important things are spiritual, needing no society or production, but let that aside (well you did mention "Nearly").

While some form of social cooperation is needed for subsistence, there is no need to get ALL people involved. Your theory seem to be black-and-white: either it's an individual or it's at least the whole state, if not the whole world, nothing in between.

Those items that are needed for subsistence and even for modest dreams, though they can rarely be produced by individual Robinson Crusoes, they can be produced by small-to-medium groups such as the family, including the extended family or the local tribe, or any other group of people that cooperate voluntarily.

The problem with progressives, is that their dreams are so big that they require the cooperation of extremely larger groups - which necessarily must include individuals and smaller groups that do not share those dreams and thus do not wish to become part of the larger group.

The typical progressive wants what they want so much that they are willing to use force to get others who do not share their dream to cooperate anyway. They then try to justify that by claiming that they "save those primitives from not knowing what's good for them".

My question to you is therefore:

As you are willing to extend private ownership to individuals over what they produce privately, are you willing to similarly extend group ownership over their own produce to small-to-medium groups which do not wish to become part of larger groups (such as states) or share your own dreams?

To Loudmouth. Your last two posts directed at David G were excellent. Although I disagree with your attitudes to insults. Whereas reading nothing but insults is dreary and accomplishes nothing, a few well directed and witty insults make for great entertainment.

It looks like David G is an old time true Believer dinosaur, like my old uncle Norm. I presume that he is still in shock after watching the Berlin Wall come down and the East Euros toss the statues of Marx "on the dustbin of history."

To David G.

I am insulted that you did not include me in your list of "bottom feeders" who oppose your religious faith in socialism. Take this, vartlet (smack!). And this, thou Satansquire (smack!)

Hi Yuyustu, I like Marxism because it proceeds from reality: analysis of the actual social relations defining a society at a particular historical stage of development. The reality in capitalist society is that food production and distribution are both 'mass' or social in the way they are done. This is one of the achievements of capitalism since the C19th. Very few people rely on growing their own food in the developed industrial countries. The same applies to 'shelter' - residential developments are generally large-scale and cannot happen without the coordinated labour of hundreds, if not thousands, of workers. This mode of production explains why many more people have adequate shelter today than a century ago. Production based on family and other small to medium groups was overturned by the rise of capitalism and the factory system. Engels once remarked that, in the manorial-feudal system, individuals may have had healthier environments but they were also close to brain dead (because their horizons and choices were so constrained by the need to remain in their village). I share this view, but I take it you would disagree. Fair enough, but in terms of defining a genuine left-wing outlook I do not see how going back to a previous time is progressive or in the interests of people in the C21st, especially our two billion brothers and sisters in pre-industrial societies who go to bed hungry each night and do not have access to clean water. I don't think it is realistic or desirable to go back to small-group production. Socialism, by contrast, is realistic because the basis for it already exists within the contradictions of capitalism: social cooperative labour. It is desirable too, because social production freed from the rationale of the motive of maximizing private profit can then be geared to social need - and fun and fantasy! (It is the C21st after all).

Hi LEGO,

You're welcome to join us ex-Left bottom-feeders any time, there's plenty of us down here :)

Barry,

Yes, the basis for socialism may exist but along with the "contradictions of capitalism" I look forward, one day, to a thorough analysis of the "contradictions of socialist production" as well. Has it worked anywhere ? Algerian and Yugoslav workers' co-operatives ? Soviet collective farms ? Chinese communes ? Pol Pot's 'work brigades' ? Mengistu's forced collectives in Ethiopia ? Even Nyerere's vijijini program ? No, nowhere. What's working in, say, Vietnam ? Pure capitalism and nothing but.

So let's put failures behind us and move on. Capitalism has its obvious inequities, but it's not either/or: if anything, the dilemma is to either find a third alternative (like Giddens' Third Way ? I don't think so), or while we are waiting for the next Marx, do whatever we can to minimise the faults of capitalism and ameliorate its effects, incrementally if necessary.

And after all, if workers' co-operatives could ever work, what's to stop workers even here in Australia from coming together and forming one ? It's not illegal, and I don't think Australia's capitalists would feel threatened in the slightest.

Ah yes, they've been tried here already: co-operative farming communities up on the Murray here in SA, in the first decades of the twentieth century under the first Labour government in the world, Tom Price's. All went bust within a few years. They appeared to have their own peculiar "contradictions".

Back to the drawing boards ?

Best wishes.

Joe