Dear Barry,

I understand that you like Marxism.
I also can name a few ideas that I like,
but I don't force them down the throats of others and wouldn't consider so even if I had the power.

I believe your sincerity when you claim that Marxism proceeds from reality, but "what is reality" is an enormous topic, which we had many discussions over, here in OLO, and one that we still dispute.
What if, after many attempts, you still fail for whatever reason(s) to convince some others that your idea of "reality" IS the correct representation of reality? Would you be right to enforce the consequences of your understanding of reality on others whom you believe "fail" to see it?

As for the opposing ideas of "progress" and "regress", they are of course relative to where one wishes to go, so assuming that our nature is inherently good, they depend on our specific values of what "goodness" is. It seems that you consider "mastery of nature" and "unleashing productive forces" as "good". I don't share those values. Rather, I consider "goodness" to consist of mastering from within one's own human nature and overcoming the productive tyranny of our genes. Similarly, I don't share your values of "internationalism" and "democracy" and even my reasons for disliking capitalism are different to yours.

Now we may debate differing values ad nauseam, and indeed you attempt to present the merits of yours, but you still haven't answered my previous question: suppose you fail to convince others of your values and for example they instead prefer to operate independently in small-to-medium groups: are you going to force them to cooperate against their will with your mega-society? If so, can you justify that?

My dreams and my happiness only require a small group of people around me who share a similar outlook. Yours OTOH, require *everyone*'s cooperation, including myself. You cannot find your materialistic happiness unless I also cooperate with you, but then, as a slave to dreams I do not share, I would be denied my own dreams and spiritual happiness.

What a conflict!

Yuyutsu, I am not forcing my ideas down anyone's throat - just presenting a case. As I do have democratic values, then I say it will be up to the people to decide on how they live, once we move beyond the retarded zombie system of capitalism. I really can't see many people wanting to go backwards.

The great moral issue of our time is the alleviation from poverty of two billion fellow humans. Reality, for them, is not an abstract debating question.

The only compulsion I believe in is the overthrow of the 'dictatorship' of the less-than-one-percent whose ownership of means of production holds back progress and restricts greater choice on the part of individuals. I have known groups in the 1960s and early 1970s who set up communes in rural Australia. They were funded by government payments or allowances from affluent parents, which I found strange and alienating. I would never deny their right to do that, in a self-sufficient way, however.

So, you will be able to grow your own veggies and I'll be able to take holidays to the Moon and beyond.

But progress cannot be reversed. Things cannot go back to how they once were

Byork
Even if someone made a meal or a chair at home, wouldn't they always be involved in making "things produced socially" because of the inputs produced by other people?

David
“If someone makes something for their own use with inputs they have purchased, that is not a social production, it is personal consumption.”

1. Not according to Barry, because capitalists purchase inputs, and this makes the resulting product “social wealth”. So can you sort out with Barry whether you or he is wrong on this point, and then get back to us on that?

2. What if they didn’t make it for their own use, but for someone else? Would that be private production or social wealth?

Barry? Can you answer those questions too please?

JKJ, you are misrepresenting me, so I feel no need to respond. Nowhere did I say that capitalists purchase inputs. They appropriate socially produced wealth.

Why is it a "misrepresentation" to say that capitalists purchase inputs? Do you deny that they do? How do they "appropriate socially produced wealth" (as distinct from what kind of wealth?), if not by purchasing it?

You still haven't been able to figure out whether something is social wealth or not, and since your entire theory depends on it, you are floundering in self-contradiction before you can even get to square one.

Even if someone made a meal or a chair at home, wouldn't they always be involved in making "things produced socially" because of the inputs produced by other people?

Yes, I wonder endlessly how many angels can stand on the point of a pin ?

Socialism has been tried, there are hundreds of years of its experience now, and it has failed. In 2014, we have had vastly more experience of it than Orwell or Koestler or so many others, and again and again it has failed.

(1) Not necessarily because it is inherently flawed theoretically, but because schemers and scum have crawled into its machinery and taken it over from inside: party hacks and careerists have quickly seen opportunities for personal power and taken them.

(2) As well, because a multitude of people have honestly differing points of view, they don't agree with the Party directives [see (1)] and therefore may have to be 'detached'. It's also called individuality. So, regrettably, the executioners.

No Utopia can encompass all of the aspirations, honest and genuine aspirations, of an entire population, and so it can't predict the future, not for a second. People differ in their opinions and aspirations. No two people on OLO agree completely about everything, so why expect entire populations ? So, regrettably, the executioners. And if gulags and laogai, then socialism has failed.

We got it wrong. So where do we go from here ?

It does seem to come down to dictatorship, even with its perfectly prescribed Book of Utopia (and, regrettably, the executioners), or democracy with all its uncertainties and imperfections, a sort of permanent work in progress.

So do we yearn for a retreat to a perfect Golden Age Utopia (perhaps we should leave that to ISIS and its hangers-on, even on the 'Left'), or deal with the real world with all its defects ?

New ball game, folks :)

Joe