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Text coloring decodes as follows:

Black: Ken Ellis
Red: Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc.
Green: Press report, etc.
Blue: Recent correspondent
Purple: Unreliable Info
Brown: Inaccurate quote


7-01-01

I've gotten so much input lately that I'm having trouble
keeping up. I'll try to get to everyone eventually.

Adam wrote on the 27th:

"Ken, you're wrong about Lenin. He was the one who
first introduced the false distinction between "socialism"
and "communism"* (what we and everyone calling themselves
a Marxist till then called "socialism", ie a classless, stateless,
wageless, moneyless society) and he did define "socialism" as
"state capitalism made to serve the people". .... In other words,
he introduced this new distinction between "socialism" and
"communism" so as to be able maintain that he was aiming
at a socialist revolution in Russia whereas in fact what he at
was seizing power (from other anti-Tsarist revolutionaries, not
Tsarism: the Tsar had already been overthrown) and introducing
state capitalism there. To give him his due, he never denied that
state capitalism was his immediate aim. Unfortunately for the
workers of Russia he succeeded magnificently."

* 2002 note: Notes to the MECW (me3.603) claim that in 1844,
Marx used 'socialism' and 'communism' opposite to how Lenin
instructed in his 1917 "State and Revolution". But, a billion people
learned to use those terms the way Lenin did. (End of note.)

To respond first to the second part: Lenin certainly was in
competition with other parties for the prize known as state power.
Getting rid of the monarchy left a huge vacuum that had to be filled.
Figuratively speaking, someone had to win the race, the winner took
all, and his name just happened to be Lenin. Anarchists would complain
about anyone who took state power. Lenin was also assaulted on many
sides for Russia's failure to achieve 'socialism' after the revolution. In the
context of an impending collapse of production, here is what he said about
state capitalism half a year after the Bolshevik revolution at a "Session of
the All-Russia C.E.C., April 29, 1918" (LCW 27, pp. 293-5):

"For example, the main argument of the group of Left
Communists against us is that there can be observed a
Right-Bolshevik deviation, which threatens the revolution
by directing it along the path of state capitalism.

"Evolution in the direction of state capitalism, there you have
the evil, the enemy, which we are invited to combat.

"When I read these references to such enemies in the newspaper
of the Left Communists, I ask: what has happened to these people
that fragments of book-learning can make them forget reality?
Reality tells us that state capitalism would be a step forward.
If in a small space of time we could achieve state capitalism in
Russia, that would be a victory. How is it that they cannot see
that it is the petty proprietor, small capital, that is our enemy?
How can they regard state capitalism as the chief enemy? They
ought not to forget that in the transition from capitalism to socialism
our chief enemy is the petty bourgeoisie, its habits and customs, its
economic position. The petty proprietor fears state capitalism above
all, because he has only one desire - to grab, to get as much as
possible for himself, to ruin and smash the big landowners, the
big exploiters. In this the petty proprietor eagerly supports us.

"Here he is more revolutionary than the workers, because he
is more embittered and more indignant, and therefore he readily
marches forward to smash the bourgeoisie - but not as a socialist
does in order, after breaking the resistance of the bourgeoisie, to
begin building a socialist economy based on the principles of firm
labour discipline ..... - but in order, by grabbing as much as possible
for himself, to exploit the fruits of victory for himself and for his
own ends, without the least concern for general state interests
and the interests of working people as a whole.

"What is state capitalism under Soviet power? To achieve
state capitalism at the present time means putting into effect the
accounting and control that the capitalist classes carried out. We see
a sample of state capitalism in Germany. We know that Germany has
proved superior to us. ... state capitalism would be our salvation.

"I said that state capitalism would be our salvation; if we had it
in Russia, the transition to full socialism [proletarian dictatorship,
not classless and stateless society - KE] would be easy, would be
within our grasp, because state capitalism is something centralised,
calculated, controlled and socialised, and that is exactly what we lack;
we are threatened by the element of petty-bourgeois slovenliness,
which more than anything else has been developed by the whole
history of Russia and her economy, and which prevents us from
taking the very step on which the success of socialism
[proletarian dictatorship - KE] depends."

So, for Lenin, the success of proletarian dictatorship depended
upon first establishing state capitalism, which he regarded (on
page 297) as: "... the painstaking establishment of accounting
and control, only the strictest organisation and labour discipline,
will lead us to socialism. Without this there is no socialism."

Context, context, context. After the revolution, the economy
crawled to a standstill, but Lenin never lost sight of his goal
of building a true proletarian dictatorship, and considered state
capitalism, which he defined above, to be a necessary step between
the economic disaster that ensued after the revolution and a true
proletarian dictatorship. They were on their own to figure out how
to fix it, and no theory of Marx would have helped much at that
stage, for the Marxist scenario didn't allow for much of what
happened in Russia after 1917.

As for the first part: Going back to Marx's "Critique of the
Gotha Program", there can be no doubt that Marx theorized two
separate stages of POST-revolutionary future society. Marx's
lower stage signified proletarian dictatorship, or the proletariat
organized as ruling class, and his upper stage signified classless,
stateless society. Marx's "Critique of the Gotha Program" clearly
states 'lower and upper stages'.* I don't know if Marx had a single-
word designation for his lower stage, and a separate single-word
designation for his upper stage. Maybe it wasn't a big issue in his
day because all they had was theory to play around with anyway,
unless, with Engels in 1891, people would want to consider the brief
Paris Commune to be an example of proletarian dictatorship. But,
after 1917, socialists had both theory and longer-lasting practice to
deal with. Because there were too few socialists in Marx's day to
initiate a proletarian revolution of their own making, Marx hoped
that the lower classes of Europe would unite to overthrow the many
feudal monarchies of Europe, and hoped that socialists would lead
the resulting bourgeois-democratic revolutions to further develop
the resulting fledgling bourgeois democracies into a European-
wide proletarian dictatorship. If capitalists cooperated with the
victorious proletarian dictatorship, they would initially be allowed
to continue to produce, according to the Communist Manifesto:
"The proletariat will use its supremacy to wrest, by degrees,
all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments
of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat
organised as ruling class; and to increase the total of productive
forces as rapidly as possible." Political supremacy came first,
and 'wresting' came second, you will notice. No immediate
expropriation of capitalists was considered necessary under a
proletarian dictatorship, if capitalists cooperated. So much for
the establishment of classless and stateless society after the
revolution, at least according to Marx.

* 2002 note: I wish I had gotten my terminology more precise
when I wrote that 2 years ago. Both in my Selected Works, and in
the MECW I use today, the English words of Marx's Critique of the
Gotha Programme are "first phase" (for proletarian dictatorship) and
"higher phase". Apologies, for I had no excuse for not being precise,
and then hypocritically attacking the precision of others. (End of note.)

If the revolutions in Europe had gone the way Marx wanted,
then the great proletarian dictatorship would have spread to
include all of the most advanced industrial countries, making the
great proletarian dictatorship impervious to counter-revolution from
hostile bordering countries, leaving the proletarian dictatorship in
peace to abolish distinctions between town and country, abolish
distinctions between mental and manual labor, abolish distinctions
between classes, shorten the length of the work-day and week, and
peacefully proceed to classless, stateless, etc.less society. They would
accept into the fold all neighboring countries wanting to be part of the
grand vision. If the Paris Commune had successfully triggered that
great European revolution, the world would be far different today.
The 'specific form' of that proletarian dictatorship, as Engels put it,
was to be nothing more nor less than a democratic republic, which
would die out [stirb ab] as class distinctions and capital were
gradually abolished. The lower stage, i.e., the era of proletarian
dictatorship, was to be an abrupt and revolutionary departure
from ordinary capitalist rule in the Marx-Engels scenario, and
was to be a transition era to the upper stage of future society
which could only approach slowly, as the state and classes could
not disappear in the stroke that the anarchists were advocating.
After the desired simultaneous revolutions, the abolition of
classes could only be a slow process that would also depend
on future advances in productive capacity.

Absorbing all of those lessons, Lenin may have done the world a
favor by terming Marx's lower and upper stages as 'socialism' and
'communism', respectively, but only as regards Marx's theories, for
never was Marx's concept of either stage of communism realized
anywhere in the world, including Russia. Lenin's definitions were
simply a way of instantly bringing people onto the same page of
Marxist theory using the simple, one-word terms 'socialism' and
'communism' to replace Marx's lower stage and upper stage, aka
his 'proletarian dictatorship' and 'classless and stateless society',
respectively. Lenin wasn't the first to 'make the distinction' of 2
stages; Marx made the distinction earlier, and Lenin merely gave
the two stages* different one-word names. Due to the interminable
sectarian confusion that has erupted over Marx's impossible scenario,
what one ideologue claims to be socialism or communism either in
theory or practice might be considerably different from what another
ideologue might claim them to be, which is why it is of great importance
to read a lot of Marx in order to figure out what he wanted for his time.

* 2002 note: If Marx used the terms "first phase" and "higher phase",
then he obviously wasn't limiting his future scenario to a mere 2 stages.
(End of note.)

People in this forum often allege that the advanced nature of our
productive capacities in the West will facilitate an ascendancy to
classless, stateless, moneyless and propertyless society immediately
after the revolution, but this is wrong, and I'll tell you why. First,
there will be no revolutions in our democracies. Second, the notion
mentioned vaguely has its roots in Marx, but the notion has been
twisted around for many years, and no longer bears a direct relation
to what Marx theorized. Something special, according to Marx, was
indeed possible in the most advanced countries as compared to the
backward feudal monarchies of Europe, but that something special
was definitely not their possible avoidance of the dreaded (by
anarchists) transitional stage of proletarian political rule. Associated
with the most advanced capitalist countries of Marx's time - England
and the USA - was the fact that these two countries were also
democracies that didn't need to be overthrown. In Marx's 1872 Speech
at the Hague, he conceived of 3 countries: the USA, England, and
possibly Holland, where workers could achieve their ends by peaceful
means, by their working class parties becoming dominant in their
democracies, and embarking on a socialist program. Many people
since then have pointed out that winning elections never allowed
socialists or communists, as in France and Italy, for example, to
socialize ownership of means of production. But, people forget that
winning an election in one country without winning elections in the
others, and without simultaneously further developing bourgeois-
democratic revolutions into a universal proletarian dictatorship in
the many other countries, would doom the single country with the
victoriously elected socialist party to have to sit on the sidelines
while the proletarians of the neighboring countries got their acts
together, unless someone wanted to initiate a blood-bath in the
single socialist country. But, there was always a fringe that threw
rocks and bottles at newly electorally victorious socialist parties
for not immediately socializing ownership of means of production
in those lone countries. Pure stupidity.

How did my old American SLP handle this question of the
'special status' of the USA and England? They completely
ignored the fact that it was the republican nature of the
governments of England and the USA that enabled Marx to
project peaceful take-overs of those governments by proletarian
parties, and the SLP instead simply asserted that it was because
the means of production in England and the USA were allegedly
so much more developed than the rest of the countries that allowed
for a peaceful transition from capitalist slavery to classless and
stateless society in a single burst of revolutionary enthusiasm,
provided that workers in the special countries used the SLP's
Socialist Industrial Union (SIU) program. The SLP gave another
reason for Marx assigning a special status to England and the USA,
which they also hoped would dissuade those workers from considering
trying to become supreme in their states; the SLP used quotes out of
context from Marx and Lenin to justify their fraudulent claim that 'the
proletarian dictatorship was a proletarian dictatorship over the peasantry,
and because American peasant labor has largely been replaced by agricultural
wage-labor, America and England do not need proletarian dictatorships (over
largely non-existent peasantries)'. Most leftists know that the proletarian
dictatorship was designed by Marx to be a dictatorship over the uppermost
classes, and that Marx advised alliances, where possible, between workers
and petty bourgeois elements like peasants, in order to overthrow monarchies.
You should be able to perceive the gross fraud that the SLP perpetrated by
preaching what it did. If you can, then you should also ask yourself about
the validity of 'isms that people find necessary to lie about as they promote
them. If anyone thinks that the development of the means of production in
the West has anything to do with the success of their revolutionary schemes,
become aware that that assertion cannot be validated by anything that Marx
or Engels wrote.

Anarchists have traditionally despised the notion of proletarian
dictatorship. Marx in his day often accused Bakunin and some of
his followers as being connected with reactionary states and with
police. As hard as it is to imagine reactionaries being in favor of a
state dominated by working class interests, so also did the anarchists
remain in a state of denial over the notion of a 'proletarian dictatorship'
or 'workers' state power' at a time in history when the Marxist scenario
was still quite plausibly a danger to bourgeois rule.

So, Adam, if Marx distinguished between lower and higher
stages of post-revolutionary society, and if Lenin labeled those
two stages as socialism and communism, respectively, how can
you fairly accuse Lenin of 'introducing a false distinction'? Is not
the story more like 'anarchists obliterating the distinction between
the separate eras of proletarian state power and classless, stateless
society in order to keep workers' minds off politics, for fear that
they might take an interest in day-to-day struggles, and will work
for reforms that might get them places'?

Ken Ellis

7-03-01

On the 27th, Len wrote that, according to Lenin,

"This minority elite of revolutionaries was to lead the workers.
It was this party alone which would establish and exercise the
"dictatorship of the proletariat" in the so-called "interests" of the
mass (a program advocated by August Blanqui and his followers)."

Lenin has already demonstrated his rather low regard for
Blanqui. At the Tenth Party Congress at the very end of
1920, Lenin stated (LCW 32, pp. 20-1):

"Within the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the
trade unions stand, if I may say so, between the Party and the
government. In the transition to socialism the dictatorship of the
proletariat is inevitable, but it is not exercised by an organisation
which takes in all industrial workers. Why not? The answer is given
in the theses of the 2nd Congress of the Communist International
on the role of political parties in general. I will not go into this here.
What happens is that the Party, shall we say, absorbs the vanguard
of the proletariat, and this vanguard exercises the dictatorship of the
proletariat. The dictatorship cannot be exercised or the functions of
government performed without a foundation such as the trade unions.
... the trade unions are a link between the vanguard and the masses,
and by their daily work bring conviction to the masses, the masses
of the class which alone is capable of taking us from capitalism
to communism."

Lenin further explained later: "... in all capitalist countries (and not
only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so
divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in
some countries) that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat
cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised
only by a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of
the class. The whole is like an arrangement of cogwheels."

2002 note: This passage well demonstrates the frustration Lenin felt
over making a socialist revolution in a less-developed country, but
the language about the alleged need for the party to play a dominant
role is not comforting, and I can today better relate to Len's concerns.
Still, I think that the failure of Europe to revolt in sympathy doomed
the Russian revolution from the getgo, and fall it did. (End of note.)

When faced with the impossible task of bringing socialism
to Russia, Lenin compromised and improvised. Monday night
quarterbacks faced with practical tasks would have done the
same in order to save a socialist revolution that was rendered
impossible by the unwillingness of European workers to support
the Bolshevik revolution by having revolutions of their own.
Would it have been better for everyone to call off the revolution
because Europe didn't support it, or to salvage what they could?
No one could have sworn up and down that it was doomed
to ultimate failure until a decade ago.

Len wrote:
"Marx and Engels used this term [dictatorship of the
proletariat] a handful of times and then looked upon such a
"dictatorship" not as a form of state or government, but as the
social structure of state power in the immediate transition to
Socialism, that the working class indeed "won the battle of
democracy." (COMMUNIST MANIFESTO). Indeed, this
"establishment of democracy" was the first step in Socialist
revolution by raising the working class to political power."

2002 note: In an 1848 article, M+E did indeed speak of (me7.352):
"the establishment of democracy on the ruins of feudalism and on the
wreckage of the short-lived bourgeois dream of power." (End of note.)

Engels, in his 'Critique of the Erfurt Programme', which Len also
quoted from in his same message, stated that 'the specific form
of the proletarian dictatorship is a democratic republic.' What is
a democratic republic if it isn't as much a form of state as any
absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, federal republic, or
any other form of state? Besides, if it wasn't for the existence of
reactionary classes surviving beyond the revolutionary act, then
the term 'dictatorship' would not have been necessary for Marx to
include. What is a proletariat elevated to ruling class supposed to
do except to dictate to the capitalist class? If the term 'proletarian
dictatorship' doesn't prove that classes remain after the revolution,
I don't know what would, which is probably why anarchists
hardly ever mention that era, or else distort its significance. If the
alleged 'program of the proletariat' had not been designed to so
aggravate the propertied classes, then I'm sure that the workers
could have gotten by without such a hostile sounding name to
describe the essence of their state power.

Len wrote:
"The proletariat - being the immense majority - would come to
power because all other classes would look to it for leadership."

How can Len be so sure that Bill Gates would regard the
likes of us with awe and respect? Len must have been joking.

Len wrote:
"... in previous revolutions the bureaucracy and military would
simply be handed over to the new regime, it was the duty of the
working class to dismantle* them "at the earliest possible moment".

* 2002 note: The word 'dismantle' appears in the MECW only once,
and only in the middle of a quote from a third party. (End of note.)

The working class would dismantle the opposition, all right,
because it would also have created a military machine of its own
in order to defeat the bourgeois opposition. The programme of
the First International included universal military training for the
proletariat. Was that so that the victorious proletariat would fit in
well with sewing circles? Anarchists would dismantle reactionary
forces, and follow that up by dismantling its own forces on the
same day, like Bakunin did in Lyons in 1870 (see Marx to
Beesly, Oct. 19, 1870), which is another point on which Marx
differed with the anarchists. One class does not 'dictate' to
another without maintaining the threat of force of arms.

Len wrote: "Lenin showed a serious misunderstanding
(if not deliberate) of this. In his STATE AND REVOLUTION
he assumed the state itself would be "smashed"."

There was no need for Lenin to 'assume' anything, for there was
lots of historical precedent in the Paris Commune (among other
places) where Marx upbraided the Central Committee of the
National Guard for too soon turning over its authority to the
elected Commune (Marx to Kugelmann, April 12, 1871). Lenin's
pamphlet quoted the same works of Marx that you did, and lots
more. He knew that the state machine that gets smashed is the
OLD state machine, while the state machine the workers create
is preserved to fulfill the purposes of its dictatorship.

Len wrote about Russia: "The dictatorship, rather than giving free reign
for all tendencies to appear through the establishment of the fullest
democracy and the convergence of both executive and legislative
"real working body" (as noted by Marx in his admiration for the
Paris Commune of 1871, see CIVIL WAR IN FRANCE), would be
suppress all oppositional forces and every Socialist tendency."

More than once I have blamed the failure of the Bolshevik Revolution
to live up to expectations on the failure of Europe to have its own
supportive revolutions. A socialist revolution cannot succeed in just
one country, nor can socialism exist in just one country. Marx knew
that, and pretty much stated the terms of socialist success in his 1872
Speech at The Hague when he spoke of simultaneity of revolutions in
Europe. If anyone like a Lenin or a Mao tries to do otherwise, then
they are doomed to failure, and doomed to being critiqued to death by
every 'purist' socialist who ever thought that THEY could do it right,
given the chance. But, it all amounts to flogging a dead horse. Lenin
wasn't to blame, I repeat. It was Europe. And if it wasn't the fault of
Europe, then blame Marx for giving us impossible dreams to fulfill,
like going after the property of the rich. In hindsight, going after
the property of the rich was a terrible petty-bourgeois mistake
that cost a lot of lives, but some people just won't learn.

Len wrote: "To Lenin, it was this "dictatorship" openly exercised
by his party alone, which would lead the working class from a lower
stage of socialism to that of communism (STATE AND REVOLUTION),
even though neither Marx nor Engels ever made such a distinction,
Marx only commenting in CRITIQUE OF THE GOTHA PROGRAM
of the lower and higher phases of communist society."

For my response to that allegedly false distinction,
see my July 1 message to Adam.

Len wrote: "And Lenin's conception of Socialism was a particular
distortion since to him "Socialism is nothing but state capitalist monopoly
made to benefit the whole people" (THE THREATENING CATASTROPHE
AND HOW TO FIGHT IT). In short, the dictatorship by the party would
be exercised to establish this so-called "Socialism" despite the
protests of the working class itself."

In "The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat it", Lenin
said approximately those words, but it needs more context to help
people understand the situation just weeks before the Bolshevik
revolution, when Lenin was attacking the Mensheviks for the
emptiness of their alleged 'revolutionary-democratic'
Kerensky republic (LCW 25, pp. 361-200):

"You will find that, given a real revolutionary-democratic state,
state-monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably implies
a step, and more than one step, towards socialism!

"For if a huge capitalist undertaking becomes a monopoly, it
means that it serves the whole nation. If it has become a state
monopoly, it means that the state (i.e., the armed organisation
of the population, the workers and peasants above all, provided
there is revolutionary democracy) directs the whole undertaking.
In whose interests?

"Either in the interest of the landowners and capitalists,
in which case we have not a revolutionary-democratic,
but a reactionary-bureaucratic state, an imperialist republic.

"Or in the interest of revolutionary democracy - and then
it is a step towards socialism.

"For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist
monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist
monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people
and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.

"There is no middle course here. The objective process of
development is such that it is impossible to advance from
monopolies (and the war has magnified their number, role
and importance tenfold) without advancing towards socialism."

Context, context, context! How can socialism be a state-capitalist
monopoly on the one hand, and, on the other hand, cease to be a
capitalist monopoly? Only by removing the word 'capitalist' and
becoming a 'socialist monopoly', I would guess, but Lenin's
rhetoric isn't easy to decipher, and borders on the paradoxical,
like Engels' statement about 'the proletariat abolishing itself as
proletariat, and abolishing the state as state'. Once again, we
have a situation in which a quote out of context can definitely
convey an incorrect impression of Lenin's intentions.

Len wrote: "And as the guns of the Bolsheviks slaughtered worker and
peasant sailors at Kronstadt who demanded elementary democracy,
Lenin put forward the view that "Soviet socialist Democracy is in
no way inconsistent with the rule and dictatorship of one person.""

I remember Lenin saying something similar to that, but only
in regard to factory management, and more like: 'management
by a single boss at a factory would not be inconsistent with
proletarian dictatorship.' Maybe Len could tell us where he
found his dictatorial quote. The one piece of documentation
I was able to uncover was in the context of an argument with
Bukharin and Trotsky over 'industrial democracy', where
Lenin said (LCW 32, pp. 26-7):

"Industry is indispensable. Democracy is a category proper only to
the political sphere. ..... Industry is indispensable, democracy is not.
Industrial democracy breeds some utterly false ideas. The idea of
one-man management was advocated only a little while ago. We
must not make a mess of things and confuse people: how do you
expect them to know when you want democracy, when one-man
management, and when dictatorship. But on no account must we
renounce dictatorship either - I hear Bukharin behind me
growling: "Quite right." (Laughter. Applause.)"

Try to remember also that those years were low points for Russia.
Almost anything bad you can think of was happening then, but I
have never known an anarchist to display much compassion for
Bolsheviks when 'principles of democracy' were being violated in
Russia, no matter what the reason. Civil war, famine, economic
standstill, etc., don't matter to some people.

Len wrote:
"Lenin's proposition was that under his so-called Socialism
"all citizens are transformed into hired employees of the state,
which consists of armed workers" (STATE AND REVOLUTION).
The state thus becomes the absolute capitalist."

Lenin's quote looks a little 'troubled'. I don't know why Len could
not have quoted Lenin directly (LCW 25, p. 475):

"The selfish defense of capitalism by the bourgeois ideologists
(and their hangers-on, like the Tseretelis, Chernovs and Co.)
consists in that they substitute arguing and talk about the distant
future for the vital and burning question of present-day politics,
namely, the expropriation of the capitalists, the conversion of all
citizens into workers and other employees of one huge "syndicate" -
the whole state - and the complete subordination of the entire work
of this syndicate to a genuinely democratic state, the state of the
Soviets of Workers' and Soldier's Deputies."

What Lenin actually wrote doesn't sound anywhere nearly
as awful as what Len said Lenin said. Once again we have a
quote out of its full context. Is a familiar pattern emerging?

Len wrote immediately after: "It was Engels, however, in
ANTI DUHRING who made it clear that the "proletariat seizes
power and turns the means of production into state property. But
in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes the state
as state." Poor Lenin, who realized too late that Socialism was
not on the agenda for Russia. Tsarism's "Asiatic barbarism"
would infect the new state bureaucracy."

Len would have made a great abolitionist, because he goes for
the word 'abolish' like a bee goes to honey. It's too bad that
Engels was describing a process, instead of a one-day act. In
Lenin's very next paragraph, which Len could not have avoided
unless he had his blinders on, Lenin stated (Ibid.): "In fact, when
a learned professor, followed by the philistine, followed in turn
by the Tseretelis and Chernovs, talks of wild utopias, of the
demagogic promises of the Bolsheviks, of the impossibility
of "introducing" socialism, it is the higher stage, or phase, of
communism he has in mind, which no one has ever promised
or even thought to "introduce", because, generally speaking, it
cannot be "introduced"."

2002 note: That quote is quite similar in intent to what Engels
wrote in 1874 with regard to 33 Blanquist refugees (me24.17):
"The German Communists are Communists because through all
intermediate stations and compromises, created not by them but
by historical development, they clearly perceive the ultimate aim:
the abolition of classes, the inauguration of a society in which
there will be no private ownership of land and means of production.
The thirty-three are Communists because they imagine that as soon
as they have only the good will to jump over intermediate stations and
compromises everything is assured, and if, as they firmly believe it, it
"begins" in a day or two, and they take the helm, "communism will be
introduced" on the day after tomorrow. Neither are they Communists
if this cannot be done immediately. What childish naivite to advance
impatience as a convincing theoretical argument!" (End of note.)

Lenin's problem with anarchists, that of improperly bringing up
the issue of classless and stateless society, occurs over and over
again, even today. Some people cannot learn, while others refuse
to learn, no matter how often it is taught that, in Marxist theory,
classless and stateless society follows proletarian dictatorship.
Because anarchists cannot conceive of proletarian state power
in advanced capitalist countries, they skip right over proletarian
dictatorship and speak almost exclusively of classless and
stateless society, and have the nerve to call that 'socialism'.
Pure cheek. Among the right crowd, it passes for pure science.

Len wrote: "Marx understood that appropriating the property
of the capitalists was not enough to create Socialism."

That sounded strange, because I could never remember Marx
separating the two events. Socialism and property expropriation
are too much like love and sex to live apart for very long. In their
"Feuerbach: Opposition of Materialistic and Idealistic Outlook", M+E
wrote (MESW 1, p. 39): "... by the overthrow of the existing state
of society by the communist revolution and the abolition of private
property which is identical with it, this power, which so baffles the
German theoreticians, will be dissolved; and that then the liberation
of each individual will be accomplished in the measure in which
history becomes transformed into world history."

Len should try to find some documentation that would
contradict M+E in their Feuerbach piece. While perusing
that article, I ran across a paragraph which people might
find interesting (MESW 1, p. 65):

"The separate individuals form a class only insofar as they have
to carry on a common battle against another class; otherwise
they are on hostile terms with each other as competitors. On the
other hand, the class in its turn achieves an independent existence
over against the individuals, so that the latter find their conditions
of existence predestined, and hence have their position in life and
their personal development assigned to them by their class, become
subsumed under it. This is the same phenomenon as the subjection
of the separate individuals to the division of labour and can only
be removed by the abolition of private property and of labour itself."

'Abolish private property AND LABOR'? On p. 67, M+E continued:

"Thus, while the refugee serfs only wished to be free to develop
and assert those conditions of existence which were already there,
and hence, in the end, only arrived at free labour, the proletarians,
if they are to assert themselves as individuals, will have to abolish
the very condition of their existence hitherto (which had, moreover,
been that of all society up to the present), namely, labour. Thus they
find themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the
individuals, of which society consists, have given themselves collective
expression, that is, the State. In order, therefore, to assert themselves
as individuals, they must overthrow the State."

It sounds like the abolition of labor is part of the program.
What better way to abolish labor than by shortening the length
of the work week, which Marx advocated us doing in Volume 3
of 'Capital' during the era of proletarian dictatorship. Marx wasn't
ALL wrong by any means. He will remain an inspiration to me
and many others for many long years to come. He just needs to
be regarded in hindsight, instead of socialists trying to resurrect
his revolutionary plans that only applied to the era Marx lived in.

The rest of Len's message consisted of a long rant against Lenin
and Russia, as if they had not tried hard enough to be good Marxists.
By not blaming the failure of socialism on its own essence, which is
its pre-occupation with changing property relations, socialists can
only instead flog dead horses and get nowhere fast.

Ken Ellis

7-04-01

Bob wrote on the 29th: "There would be very few people in the
WSM who would disagree with your goals of reducing hours of
work and sharing the work that is available equitably. How to
bring it about is the question."

By reforming laws already on the books. Can anyone imagine
that we got from a 12-hour day to a 10-hour day to a 9-hour day
to an 8-hour day over the course of nearly a couple of hundred
years in any other way? How else does anyone think we could
get to a 35 hour week? By preaching socialism? Socialism
preaches redistributing wealth and property, not redistributing
work. No matter how well or poorly wealth and property get
distributed, we will still have to redistribute work to everyone who
would rather work than turn to the dole, or to a life of crime, or to
sponging off relatives, etc. With productivity on the rise, and with
robot smarts ever increasing, we have to plan for the day when none
of us will ever have to go to work any more. IBM just built a monster
super-computer with the intelligence of a mouse to be delivered to
Lawrence Livermore Labs, and the same scientists predict a computer
with the intelligence of a human by 2010. The only trouble is that it will
take up the space of a football field in 2010, but 10 years after that will
probably fit in a teacup. In the meantime, socialists are still advocating
a means of property redistribution that was only conceivable for the
1800's, when socialists would have ridden the coat-tails of bourgeois-
democratic revolutions and further developed them into a universal
proletarian dictatorship covering the entire advanced world that would
have had the might both to socialize ownership and to prevent counter-
revolution. Socialism is unfeasible by any other imaginable method, and
if it didn't happen in 1871 or 1917, then it surely isn't going to happen in
a world full of democracies, which is why the socialist dream is dead, and
is why it must be replaced with a dream that is appropriate for the times
we live in.

Bob wrote: "Capitalism creates work/employment in order to make a profit"

That is true, but far be it for us who know where profits come
from to worry about the survival of the bosses. It is a very strange
thing in the socialist world, that whenever someone comes up with
a plan to cut into the profits of the capitalist class, that socialists
immediately become more concerned with the profits of the capitalists
than with the welfare of the class that the socialist party represents.
Marx very ably told us that surplus values come from extending
the length of the work-day far beyond the period necessary for
the production and reproduction of labor power, and also by
introducing improved technology. It won't kill the bosses if the
working class decides to reap the benefits of improved technology
in the form of increased leisure time and work shared among all,
instead of the bosses reaping the benefits of improved technology
in the form of increased surplus values and profits. They can well
more afford to live a little less high-off-the-hog than we can afford
to watch another fraction of our class succumb to poverty.

Bob wrote: "Ecological considerations will always be ...
secondary to the making of profit, otherwise the companies close
down and the people are denied the wages that they subsist on."

That may be the way it is, but it needn't be that way ALWAYS.
In fact, with the complete replacement of labor by robots and new
technology in this century, making profit off human labor is doomed
after a few more decades. What's it going to be in the meantime: us
forever fighting for the last of the long-hour opportunities to make the
rich richer? Or, us instead creating the kind of artificial scarcity of labor
that would provide jobs and leisure time for everyone who wants it, as
well as the kind of workers' control over the economy that would enable
us to boycott senseless jobs like land-mine manufacture? It's up to people
like you and me with half a brain in our heads to decide if the obsolete
socialist dream is worth taking to our graves, or whether we instead see
that it is better for us to do the best we can for our class in the here-and-
now, no matter what it means to our belief system. Socialism is stupid
on a number of counts, and we can do better than having to be
stupid for the rest of our lives.

Bob wrote: "Less than 40% of the people employed in the US
today will be actually producing goods for consumption, the rest
.... are mainly propping up the system"

That's only because we let it happen that way. If the US is
40 times more productive than it was 200 years ago, that means
that we could get by with each worker putting in a mere hour of
PRODUCTIVE work per week, albeit at a low standard of living,
perhaps similar to that of 200 years ago. I mention that only
as one (rather extreme) example of what's possible today.

Bob wrote: "... you are right Ken sharing it will bring it down
to a very tolerable level."

There's not much of a way around that bit of truth, Bob. Glad to
hear you agree with at least that much. It's time for you to figure
out why you can't agree with the rest. Really think about it, if you
can spare the time. There's the rub, for who has time to seriously
reflect anymore? Sometimes, if you think it's really worth it, you just
have to make the time. Which is how I felt in '92 about seriously
thinking through my SLP experiences of the '70's. I had no inkling
that I would today be advocating what I do. I thought the most I would
get out of it was that I would prove the superiority of Leninism over De
Leonism. That's all I set out to do, but it was such a revelation to find
that, not only Leninism, but the essence of Marxism was flawed as well,
and we now have no one to turn to except ourselves. We are on our
own, with no great genii of the past to lead us anywhere except astray.

Ken Ellis

7-04-01

Stuart quoted me on the 4th:

> Ken, You say: "Socialism is unfeasible
> by any other imaginable method,"
>
> What other methods have you given the careful thought you
> keep exhorting us to give to your proposals? Why are these
> other methods unfeasible? Have you given the WSM proposals
> for extending democracy this careful considered thought?

One other variation on Marx's theme that Lenin and Stalin
were counting on was for workers in democracies to smash
their democracies and replace them with 'workers' states'. But
workers have been unwilling to smash their democracies (with
the exception of social-democratic Chile in 1973, which a lot of
unions considered to be too far to the left to be worth defending).

Some in the social-democratic camp would tax and spend their
way to protections for the lower classes, which would get too
expensive as time goes by and many more people are laid off as
a result of introducing new technologies, and existing taxpayers
rebel against having to support a growing army of unemployed.
For that reason, ordinary social-democratic solutions will fail in
the long run.

I have never heard 'the WSM path to socialism' clearly and
concisely spelled out in one small paragraph, so I'm wondering
if you could spell it out for me. If it can't be enunciated in one
small paragraph, then it may end up being too complicated for
ordinary people to accept.

Ken Ellis

7-05-00

Our High Lord of Red Death proclaimed, on his colony's Independence Day:

> last I checked, there wasn't a maximum working week here
> in the UK until Labour signed us up to the EU Social Chapter
> in 1997 - anyone can correct me if I'm wrong

As far as the work-week goes, I haven't checked to see if you
have a five-day week or not, but I would guess you are familiar
with England's 12, 10, and 9 hour day laws of times past, some
of which Marx hailed in his book 'Capital'.

> i think you'll find that the fall in the working week has come
> about largely due to increased productivity, i.e. advances in
> tech, which means that workers need to be used less -
> capitalists have found that they can increase productivity
> without increasing the working day."

It's true that the two trends coincide. Here in the colony, even
though people with jobs are working more hours per year than
they did in the '60's, average hours of labor per year are down to
1800 due to the rise in part-time labor, and yearly average hours
are still falling. (They peaked in 1870 at 3,000 per year, which is
like a 60 hour week.)

> Your proposals could be equally counterposed with the
> suggestion that instead of decreasing the working day,
> we should gradually increase wages (which haven't
> fared nearly so well as the length of the working day)

Over a century ago in the colony, before protective legislation
for non-government employees, the old timers had a saying:
"Whether you work by the hour, or work by the day, shortening
hours increases the pay." In other words, shorter hours means
higher wages if we change the labor market. A glut of labor on
the market enables bosses to offer lower wages to workers
desperate for any kind of a wage. Centuries of experience prove
that directly legislating wages is a bureaucratic disaster. The
market will be the best way to raise wages if we gain control
of the market by controlling our own supply of labor. That's
all we have to do in order to fix the system.

> But it [socialism] does preach redistributing the work, it would
> mean that 'them as need not work because they own' would find
> themselves in a position of needing to work like the rest of us, it
> would mean that there is no more dole, no more unemployment, etc.

That redistribution of work also sounds like it would have to be
preceded by the abolition of classes. What army are you going
to gather to help you do that, and what's in it for them?

> Dictatorship of the proletariate did not mean a dictatorship in
> the Modern or leninist sense

If you're going to make an assertion about what Marx meant
by proletarian dictatorship, you should also be kind enough to
back it up with something a little more concrete. Did you ever
read what Marx wrote about the mistakes of the Communards
in Paris? Their failure to march on Versailles, their failure to
grab the bank's assets, etc. - very highly authoritative acts
that they failed to do - may have spelled their own doom.

> Nor was it only on the backs of bourgeoise revolts, since
> Marx and Engels agitated in England where the bouirgeoise
> revolution was nearly two hundred years old, and in America,
> where there never had been feudalism.

That's all very true, which is why in my last few messages I have
indicated that it would have been necessary for the proletarian
parties in the democracies to be victorious in their elections as
well. Talk about a tall order! All those countries having to go
socialist at pretty much the same time.

> All they ever did was try to maximise the input of the
> proletariate, because it is the class that must abolish classes
> to emancipate itself - so long as we have wages there is class,
> and so las there is class there is class struggle. there, my
> friends, is the flaw in the essence of your plan - whilst the
> capitalist class control the political state, and have the veto
> on production, enforcing the Law of no-profit no-production,
> we cannot gradually change our way to freedom.

If the capitalist class was as tightly-knit and opposed to us as
what you indicate, then I wonder how we ever managed to get a
40 hour law at all. If the capitalists were really demons, then they
would have horns on their heads, and the poor wouldn't be so
interested in being like the rich. Who would want horns on their
heads? If the capitalist class controlled the state, then they wouldn't
be able to do it in the context of a democracy, and we wouldn't have
democracy. But, guess what? We do have democracies in the West,
and the bosses don't control the state - we do. If there is a certain
amount of injustice in our democracies, then it is because the majority
of the people, including a lot of well-off workers, can live with the
injustices. That is a very big problem for parties and groups that fight
for social justice. Our ideas, our characterizations of injustice to the
public, and our solutions all have to be reasonable enough to appeal
to the majority. If they don't, then to the degree to which they don't is
the degree to which we find ourselves marginalized. I've been on the
margin for a long time, and I'm talking to other marginalized people.
Maybe together we can correct the error of our ways. Eh? But, let's
try a little harder to say things that we know deep down are true.

Ken Ellis

7-05-00

On the 4th, Columbo wrote:

> if you use the state to legally cut working time, what you are
> doing is challenging actual/real property relations, but what
> you're doing is challenging the real property relations, without
> challenging the nominal, but so long as some real property
> rights remain, like the right to withdraw investment, to hire
> and fire, to direct finance capital towards the most lucrative
> source, then you ain't gonna do squat. So, like, I dunno,
> I might be stoopid or somting, but I reckon that you are
> challenging property relations, inevitably so, since that
> is the root of what the class war is about.

That's a heavy statement, but what's that first sentence again?

> if you use the state to legally cut working time, what you
> are doing is challenging actual/real property relations

2002 note: My answers below reflect my ignorance of Marx's
identification of private property rights with absolute monarchy,
and republics with limitations of property rights. These ideas are
explored in far greater detail in 2002 correspondence. (End of note.)

I don't think that's true in any direct sense. How does shorter
hours challenge property relations except very obliquely? I think
that socialism is the DIRECT challenge to property relations, like
taking away the property of the rich is a direct challenge. The
program to trim hours of labor is an overt challenge to the bosses'
right to keep us at work for an absurd number of hours. Even if
we were successful in shortening hours, that wouldn't threaten
Bill Gates' right to retain his share of ownership of Microsoft, or
Warren Buffet's share of what he owns of Berkshire Hathaway.
Maybe you could fill me in on how shorter hours might equally
threaten property relations compared to socialism.

> I reckon that you are challenging property relations, inevitably
> so, since that is the root of what the class war is about.

2002 note: I was being too contrary below. Tightening the labor market
can be regarded as an indirect attack on 'free enterprise'. (End of note.)

As far as socialists go, that is what THEIR class war is all about;
but, for workers, their class war is their fight to ensure that everyone
in their class gets work in order to eliminate the competition that drives
wages down. This is the sore point where M+E often criticized Trades
Unionists - their exclusive struggle for high wages and shorter hours.
M+E were as wrong about workers' class war as they were about
both democracies and monarchies merging into a giant proletarian
dictatorship so as to abolish private property.* But, let's not laugh
at them. They almost succeeded. But, the new movement to shorten
hours is going to succeed at getting to classless, stateless, moneyless,
propertyless and workless society like socialist movements were
doomed not to. Just you wait, Henry Columbo Higgins.

* 2002 note: How did that sentence get past the editor? Monarchies
could never merge with democracies into the proletarian dictatorship.
Monarchies were to be smashed and replaced with democracies.
(End of note.)

Ken Ellis

7-05-00

Deathy wrote on the 5th:

> the military force was not a standing army but a democratic
> workers' militia, the commune was elected under universal suffrage

That's true. Because the majority of the Commune was not
socialist and was not addressing the situation the way Marx
would have, the Commune thought that it could afford to be
very scrupulously democratic in its affairs, but look at the defeat
that resulted. I'm not by any means arguing for withholding
democracy today as a result of that lesson. I'm merely pointing
out that Marx indicated that they could have shelved their ultra-
democratic measures until they were sure that they weren't going
to lose, and that might have meant them going additional months
or years without much democracy.

Deathy quoted me:

>> All those countries having to go socialist at pretty much the same time.

And he replied: "Well, indeed, but we live in a world-wide
economy, where economic conditions tend to go pretty much
evenly across the board, and where political trends tend to
sweep across the board"

Like I indicated somewhere else, capitalism grew up alongside
and within feudal societies, and eventually overtook them both
economically and politically, and sometimes by force. On the
other hand, the 'socialist' world has been shrinking for the past
decade, and that which you call 'real socialism' is nowhere to be
found. Shouldn't your real socialism be GROWING within the
shell of a rotting and decaying capitalist system in order to give
you an inkling of hope that you are on the right track? Instead,
everyone knows that capitalism is thriving, and the American
economy is near an all-time peak, and everyone here wants to get
into the action by gambling on the stock market to ensure them a
comfortable retirement, except me, cuz I was very idealistic for
much of my life about bringing about social justice here and
there by means of revolution. So, in other words, in order for
your socialism to be established, it's going to take one hell of an
explosion of growth sometime in the near future, but, at the rate
your socialism is coming, the robots are going to completely take
over first, and will deprive you of experiencing the joy of receiving
and pinning on your wall your very first labor voucher. How about
scheduling a party conference (soon) to re-evaluate your party
program in the light of this reality? Or, are certain people making
enough money selling 'what they got'? I know that's the way it is
with my old American SLP. They'll never change. They'd never
sponsor a forum like this one without censoring it.

> We do have *limited* democracy. Look at it this way, the
> political parties are all utterly dependent on money from a
> handful of wealthy backers, and the goodwill of a media
> owned by capitalists, even when they come to power, they
> find that the vast majority of political decisions are beyond
> their control (political is anything which effects the community,
> so what food to grow, what clothes to make, what factories
> to build, are all really political decisions, but decisions which
> continue to be privatised). The power of appointment is not
> used by the elected legislatures, but is usually two or three
> stages away from public control - the Prime Minister and
> presidents wield vast powers of appointment.

No doubt, these problems are very real, and are the cause of
a great deal of concern among a lot of people. Do we keep on
creating the enormous surplus values that gives them all of their
economic power, and which in turn enables them to buy political
influence? I haven't brought that up before in this forum, the fact
that we fund our own oppression with our own overwork, which
is all the more reason for us to withhold our labor power in the
labor market enough to ensure everyone who wants a place in a
more sane economy, and which also would cut down on those
surplus values that gives them all of that power. Wouldn't shorter
hours be a good way to address the problems that are created
by our too-eager willingness to work long and hard to our own
disadvantage? Shorter hours would cure just about everything
that's wrong in the West.

> A lot of very powerful people have worked hard to eliminate
> democracy from the field of military action - over here, parliament
> didn't even have a say in the kosovan war, no vote at all.

It's true that our powers of persuasion over the military
sphere are too limited, and it's been that way for a long time. I
particularly anguished over Vietnam and then the plight of Central
America in the '70's and '80's, especially when Ronald Reagan was
bombing El Salvador for who knows what reason. That chapter of
our history, with all of the shenanigans of Oliver North, and the
guns-for-drugs scandal, was all very sad and depressing, and
all we could do was write letters and march in the street. An
amazing thing happened after Clinton got elected, however,
and our military actions seemed all so very humanitarian and
the protests melted away to practically nothing after the Gulf
War. With the European Union, the prospects of our returning
to a state of war almost anywhere are vanishing all over the globe.
It seems to be a very different world, even from a decade ago, but
people still don't have much control over the military, though no
one I know is going sleepless over that issue.

> we vote for rulers, who have no obligation (Burke)
> to do anything we tell them

Except if they want to get re-elected, which applies especially
to representative and senators.

> any attempt to reform or run capitalism our way flounders on
> the basic problem that the capitalists ... continue to control it
> as they will.

Well, there are reforms and there are reforms. We have yet to
really apply pressure on hours of labor, but, if we ever can see
the value of it and make any progress in that direction, then
you will see real social progress.

> the billions of dollars spent on propaganda in the U.S. alone,
> as a material condition for this mode of consciousness.

That's true, but, we also know that the moolah for advertising
comes out of surplus values which the working class is presently
in a desperate and mad rush to produce. Once we diminish surplus
values, then you will see advertising budgets get decimated. I can't
wait, cuz I always mute commercials or switch channels. Ordinary
programming changes every day, but commercials go on and on
and on and on ...... and it seems like the proportion of commercials
increases every year. When shorter hours puts better wages in the
pocket of every worker, they will contribute to programs and
information in their own class interests.

Ken Ellis

7-05-00

Hi Len, glad to see you made it back from your concert.
I hope you had a good time and are fully refreshed.

You wrote on the 5th:

> In past emails you questioned my assertion that Lenin's
> program, strategy and tactics had more to do with the
> Jacobin tradition and that of Blanqui.

I think I inferred that Leninism was based on neither, but
am since finding more evidence of Lenin's greater respect
for the Jacobins than for Blanqui. Leninism is based upon
Marxism to an extraordinary degree. Lenin based many of
his day-to-day tactics and arguments upon references to what
Marx did and thought in certain situations that bore similarities
to that of his own Party in revolutionary struggle against both
tzarism and petty-bourgeois competing parties. I am absolutely
certain that Lenin's success was based upon his greater familiarity
and respect for Marx above all others. You can hardly read one of
Lenin's refutations of other leaders and parties without reading his
constant reference to Marx and/or Engels. Because Lenin stood so
close to Marx on theoretical issues is probably the reason Lenin was
able to surpass the rest of the pack that was trying to fill the vacuum
left by rotting tzarism. I hope no one thinks Lenin bullied his way to
the top. That would be a good joke to play on naive revolutionaries.

As a realist, and certainly not a peacenik, Lenin knew that
socialism would require lots and lots of revolutionary terror.
Taking away the property of the rich was no easy feat. Lots
of blood was shed. Makes me shiver to think of the blood that
would flow if anyone tried to do that today. Thank the goddess
that there are too few people to try to bring revolution to our
democracies. We had a few in the USA not very long ago. The
SLA, I think they called themselves. The government eventually
caught up with them all, I believe.

I found about 50 or so references to a Felix Dzerzhinsky in the
Name Index to the 45 volumes of Lenin, beginning with volume
24, which is probably close to the beginning of 1917. He might
have had a nickname of Yuzef. Probably one baaaaaad hombre.
Because I understand that few people are lucky enough to have
these Indexes, I would be glad to provide the actual cite numbers
to anyone interested.

Poor old Blanqui never had much of a chance to be a leader.
Marx thought that freeing him from jail would have given the Paris
Commune a 'head'. Maybe that's why some people thought Marx
was a Blanquist. Who knows what Blanqui would have done if
he had had a shot at leading the Commune?

It matters little to the workers of year 2000 if Lenin was a Blanquist
or a Jacobin. No one is going to be part of a revolution anyhow. We
just don't have the material conditions. For what it's worth, in Volume
41, p. 117, Lenin wrote in some notes for a speech on the Commune:
"The Commune's deeds. Its minuses:
- lack of class consciousness (Proudhonists, Blanquists)
- lack of organization (failure to take the bank and attack Versailles)
- infatuation with nationalistic and revolutionary talk.
Its pluses: A) political reforms
a. separation of church from state. Expropriation of church properties.
Abolition of all state payments to the church. Free public education.
b. abolition of standing army
c. abolition of bureaucracy. Government of the workers.
Regierungsfahig [Capable of governing.-Ed.]
(1) All officials elective and removable
(2) Small salary, to be not over 6,000 francs.
[managed to do with a quarter of the officials]
d. Equal rights for aliens - a German - minister of the Commune.
Participation of Poles (Dabrowski, Wroblewski).
e. Self-government of communes."

And so on. Someone reported on one of Lenin's party speeches
on May 8 (21), 1917 (LCW 41, p. 433): "You cannot disregard
the people. Only dreamers and plotters believed that a minority
could impose their will on a majority. That was what the French
revolutionary Blanqui thought, and he was wrong. When the
majority of the people refuse, because they do not yet
understand, to take power into their own hands, the
minority, however revolutionary and clever, cannot
impose their desire on the majority of the people."

Does this end the discussion that 'Lenin was a Blanquist' yet?
Or, do I have to find the last few references for you? Be sure,
in other forums, that you include the references to the contrary
that I have provided for you. Of course, you could always assert
that 'Lenin was a non-Blanquist in word, but a Blanquist in deed.'
But, be sure to say just exactly how Lenin might have been a
Blanquist in deed. Which reminds me, exactly what did Lenin
do or say that was so Blanquist? Impose certain strategies on
the 3rd International? In what way did that make Lenin a
Blanquist? Or, should I perhaps stretch my imagination?

Ken Ellis

7-05-00

Stuart quoted me: "the robots are going to completely take over
first, and will deprive you of experiencing the joy of receiving and
pinning on your wall your very first labor voucher."

And Stuart replied: "Labour vouchers? Ah, so you haven't listened
to a word we've said after all. Thought not."

Mea culpa, Stuart. This is embarrassing to me. So, exactly what
will you use instead? I know it won't be 'money'.

Stuart wrote: "How successful have you been at withholding
your labour power? Hungry yet?"

As a class, Stuart, as a class. We can't get anywhere with social
progress except as a class. As Engels said somewhere, 'To get
the working class to move as a class. That is the great thing.'

> I challenge you to name one day in the past century or in this
> one when there was not a war on.

There's always a war somewhere, I guess. It's just a little harder
to place in the year 2000. It certainly isn't 1943, however, which is
why the wars, wherever they are, seem so remote. I never read
Chandler, among many others. In 25 words or less, what is this
'big sleep' you referred to?

Ken Ellis

7-06-00

Hi Len,

You quoted me on possible differences between Marx and
Lenin on a substantive issue: "Lenin's inclination to replace
democracies with 'communist' states, a policy retained by
Stalin, and extended to the American Communist Party's
program of the '20's and '30's."

You said in response:

> Wait a minute! You are getting me confused. First you stated in
> previous emails that Lenin was a Marxist all the way. Now you
> are stating that indeed there was a difference. In previous emails
> you stated that Lenin knew he was not building Socialism, and
> yet here you state that he was building a "'communist' state".

In a moment of weakness, I might have said very early on that there
was no essential difference between the two, but I later remembered
that Lenin differed from Marx by advocating that Western workers
smash their democracies and replace them with 'workers' states', which
I think I've been saying for the past month. I put the 'communist' in single
quotes to refer to the Stalinist content of that term in the 20th century.
Many people would not distinguish an alleged 'communist state' from
an alleged 'workers' state', especially if referring more to the practices
of those states than to their theory, but I'll refrain from further use of
'communist state'. The term flies in the media with little objection, but
all it does here is make things worse.

Len stated of the WSM program: "It [the taking of power] is a
democratic act because it will hopefully be done by election, by
the immense majority wanting it. Otherwise it won't work. It is
also a revolutionary act by changing the fundamental basis of
society as a whole and toppling capitalism. Revolution does
not necessarily mean minority action, or violence."

What do people do the day after they win the election? Do they
pass a law to topple capitalism? What would the law say?

After I inquired: "Is there much of a difference between
the WSM program and Marx's program for democracies?"

Len asked:
"What was Marx's "program for democracies"?"

A workers' party winning the election, and then pushing its
programme through Parliament or Congress, I would assume.
It's funny that Marx never wrote anything like 'the expropriation
of the bourgeoisie' into the programme of the First International,
and it wasn't in the programme of the Paris Commune, either,
except for turning over abandoned factories to the workers.*
Piece of cake, when uncontested. Both programmes included
limitations on working hours. The first real point of the First
International's program, written by Marx, was: "3. LIMITATION OF
THE WORKING DAY - A preliminary condition, without which all
further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove
abortive, is the limitation of the working day." The other program
points included: the internationalization of the workers' struggle,
limitations on child labor, promotion of co-operative labor, promotion
of trades unions as "organising centres of the working class in the
broad interest of its complete emancipation", direct taxation (sales
taxes), and the arming of the people, and their organization into
militias as a replacement for standing armies. That's pretty much
the important categories of the first program from the First
International as found on pp. 340-51 of Volume One of
the 5 Volumes of Documents.

* 2002 note: That wasn't really planned ahead of time. Some bosses
fled Paris and abandoned their factories, and workers took advantage
of the opportunity to take them over and run them in their own interests.
They offered to pay rent, however, proving they were not interested in
'expropriation without compensation'. (End of note.)

Ken Ellis

7-07-00

Hi Len, I see that we're getting down to some real nitty-gritty.
Very good. Maybe we can make some progress here.

Len wrote: "Firstly, you admit that Russia, Cuba, China, etc.,
and various other forms were never Socialist. Let's establish that
first. Because on that basis, if they were not Socialist, how could
Socialism have failed as you assert?"

I agree that they were not really socialist, because they didn't fit
in with Marx's scenario for a world-wide proletarian dictatorship.
Those countries mentioned did manage to concentrate property
into the hands of their states, but that wasn't enough to give them
status as parts of an all-encompassing Marxist world revolution.
Socialism won't happen in the future, either, because there's no
compelling interest in socialism as a solution, based as it is on
the wielding of brute force, which clashes with people's desires
to live in civil societies instead of totalitarian ones. Socialism is
based upon force because the only time changing property
relations was feasible was after overthrowing feudal monarchies
or liberating colonies, when socialists had the force of the state
behind their intentions, but was not possible after socialists and
communists won mere elections in single countries, such as in
France and Italy, which shows that socialism is based upon
having the amount of force needed to alter property relations.
There also is very little will in the West to deprive anyone of
their property. Even after the South had been crushed after our
American Civil War, and it would have been relatively easy to
carve up the plantations to provide the freed slaves with their 40
acres and a mule, there was no political will to accomplish that
act. There is no real need for people to turn to socialism in order
to provide social, political and economic justice in the West. I
challenge you to name a single social problem that couldn't
better be addressed by us more equitably sharing work.

Briefly, what did the workers' control experiments 'in Yugoslavia,
in Russia, ... Sweden, Germany, Britain .. France and Spain'
consist of? Did they have a strategy in common?

Len wrote: "Wait a minute! You said in previous emails that what
Marx and Engels spoke of was outdated. Yet in you also said that
we should follow the strategy of the First International (which was
in the 1860s and early 1870s). That strategy was adapted for a
particular movement (which was not a socialist movement) and
developed for particular historical reasons, with particular political
ends. Marx's strategy is outdated, but the International's is not?"

We may have apples and oranges again. I think that there was
a FAR cry between what Marx had to buckle down to do on a
practical level in the First International compared to what he
dreamed up on the theoretical level in his notes on the Gotha
Programme and in other theoretical refutations. Those aspects
of his rich life were two quite different things. He could go only
so far with his theories while he wrote documents for the First
International without too much alienating the conservative trades
unionists he worked with. Not everything that Marx stood for is
outdated by any means. The struggle for shorter work hours that
he endorsed is still very much on the table, and more so than ever,
especially on the environmental front, considering the extreme
amounts of damage that can be done at the touch of a button, and
considering the numbers of eager hands desperate to push those
buttons. Boggles the mind, the damage that can be done in a relative
instant compared to what could be done in Marx's day with a shovel.
More than ever, we have to give those eager hands a rest.

Len asked: "Furthermore, in regard to today's struggle by French
workers for shorter hours (a struggle that was waged by Swedish
and German workers many years before) - How is that going to
end economic crises inherent in capitalism? How will it end
unemployment? How will it raise workers wages? How will it
significantly change capitalism and lead to a classless society?"

Back in the twenties in the USA, at a time when the bosses
decided to hang tough and not allow future improvements in
technology to redound to workers in the form of added leisure
time, labor leaders such as Bill Green of the AFL warned of
economic troubles when surpluses would pile up in warehouses
and not be sold; and, sure enough, labor was correct, and the
stock market collapsed in 1929. In other words, if the bosses
had been wise enough to allow workers to take more leisure
time as technology permitted, the economic bust of the '30's
need not have happened. Shorter hours is the perfect method
for naturally counter-acting improvements in technology.
Capitalism need not have economic crises if the political
economy of the capitalists can be replaced with the political
economy of the workers, which Marx indicated was 'stricter
regulations on hours of labor'. Equitably sharing work through
shorter hours would eliminate unemployment by spreading the
work to everyone who could use some. Wages would rise as a
result of the artificial shortage of labor we could impose on the
labor market, eliminating wage-lowering competition. Taken to its
logical end, hours of labor would get shorter and shorter, and work
get so well shared until we get to the point where what little work
that remains for people to do would be taken over by volunteer
labor, which would end capitalism as an economic system right
there. Our societal determination to share work would soon mean
that we wouldn't have to worry about sharing the necessities of
life when we no longer have to go to work to earn our 'stuff'. We
would learn so many humanitarian lessons just by deciding to
equitably share work that we would soon after be able to kiss
dog-eat-dog goodbye forever. Sharing work through shorter
hours would raise wages and lower surplus values so much that
owners would beg workers to buy them out, which they would
do, and form that great co-operative venture that Marx wanted
to see. Engels said, in more than one place, that 'Marx told me
that he thought we could get off cheapest by buying out the
whole lot of them.'

2002 note: The 'buyout of the capitalist class' may have reflected
M+E's own doubts about their revolutionary scenario, but I was
mistaken to buy into either of their power and property schemes.
The only way out of our mess is to reduce surplus values by
reducing labor time. (End of note.)

Len quoted my statement: "social-democrats betrayed labor's
interests by instead pushing for New Deal programs that created
jobs by means of government spending. People were thus put to
work, but the economy that resulted is very wasteful."

And then added: "This is a leninist-trotskyist verbiage that
"workers are betrayed" by "misleaders"."

2002 note: Out of 141 uses of the word 'betray' and its variations (in
MECW), M+E personally used it at least 35 times in the sense of lower
classes being betrayed by upper classes or leaders. (End of note.)

Did I say anything about Lenin, Trotsky, leaders, or mis-leaders?
Does every use of the word 'betrayal' mean a regression into left-
wing cliches? If a fact is at dispute, please enunciate what troubles you.

Len then added: "Who were these "social democrats" who
betrayed the workers? Can you name them? I didn't realize that
social democrats had so much control over the workers movement
in the U.S. and over U.S. legislators and the president."

All the names that one would need to get started on the subject
can be found in Prof. Ben Hunnicutt's 'Work Without End'. If
labor wasn't in control of the nation's agenda in the '30's, and if
too many people were going hungry and homeless, then what
else does an administration do (if it can't accept labor's agenda)
but add reforms to spend money to create programs to take care
of the aged and infirm, and put people to work? What would you
call that agenda except for social-democratic reforms? One writer
of note said that they added a socialist appendage to America's
capitalism. A lot of social-democrats were in FDR's brain trust.
Why are you seemingly outraged over simple facts like these?
We're not a whole hell of a lot less social-democratic than
Europe. The USA just got there a little later than Europe
and failed to add all of the bells and whistles.

Len then added: "The idea that workers are betrayed is one I highly question."

Competing tendencies have added a lot of mystique to what
happened in the '30's. It's a fact that a 30-hour bill made it
through the Senate, but FDR himself had it sabotaged,
perhaps on the advice of his brain trust. If labor wanted
something, you can guess who didn't want them to have it.

Len then added: "By making workers more productive through
technology (the second side of your equation, something which
you admit workers have no control over), the hope that cutting
working time will take us to the promised land completely falls
apart. Capitalist production cannot be so neatly divided as you
assume, that workers can control the "labour market" while
capitalists control all else (that workers control the length of the
work day and thus the creation of "absolute" surplus value while
capitalists control "relative surplus value"). This is nonsensical."

If workers took what you wrote to heart, they might be afraid to
do anything for fear of getting it wrong. Workers in our society
don't have control over much, but they can withhold their labor
power if they will it, which is proven every time they go on strike.
Instead of us allowing our withholding of labor power to forever
be accomplished in such a piecemeal fashion as 'one strike at a
time', we should organize our withholding to be universal to
accomplish the nobler and humanitarian goal of ensuring everyone
a place in the economy. Withholding our labor power will accomplish
everything we want, and we can do it. We've done it before. We just
have to organize it. I would find it hard to believe that 'it would be
easier to organize for socialism than to withhold our labor power.'
The best thing that we could do for ourselves (as well as for the
planet) would be to slow ourselves down. What does the boss
want us to do instead? Speed up! In that way, as well as
others, our class interests are opposed.

Len asked: "You advocate that workers "control" the "labour
market". How do you define the "labour market"? And how
are workers going to "control" it?"

The labor market consists of our waking up one sad morning
to find that our parents are no longer willing to feed, clothe and
house us, and send us on our merry way to do those things for
ourselves. The first thing we need is to make some money.
Some of us run off with old ladies' purses, while others look for
work. 'Sorry, not today, got too many workers already' is the
answer we hear when the market is bad, or 'come right in, but I
can't afford to pay you much' when the market is good. That's
been my experience, more or less. Because we aren't organized
with our fellow job-seekers, we fight one another over the last
of the long-hour opportunities to make the rich richer than their
wildest dreams. I say: Organize to change this. Organize to co-
operate to withhold our labor power until there's room in the labor
market for all of us. Then we will have a benign labor market. No
more primping and preening to put on our best faces for the boss.
Did anyone out there ever try to find a job? Disgusting job in
itself, that. The thought of having to try to find a new job is
often ugly enough to cause a person stick with the old one,
no matter how disgusting, degrading or destructive.

Len wrote: "the WSM has ALWAYS dealt with the question
of shorter work hours."

What's the WSM position on that issue today? Where does
one find that info? In a platform plank? I'm getting excited.

Len added: "We as Socialists have always maintained that if
workers decided to create a Socialist society they could do so.
The possibility is before them and they could significantly ease
their hours of work."

That sounds akin to Marx's idea in Vol. 3 of Capital that 'shorter
hours is best pursued during the era of proletarian dictatorship.'
For Marx, it was: political supremacy first, shorter hours later.
I don't think we need the full dominance of a new workers' party
in the state in order to do that. If I may theorize, we in democracies
can treat our democracies as though they are potential proletarian
dictatorships, knowing that the form of a proletarian dictatorship is
a democratic republic anyway, the majority rules anyhow, we are
the majority, so whatever we want will be. Our problem is that we
have little will to share work right now. Maybe the same amount
of will, or less, for socialism.

Len asked: "What is "economic justice"?"

In my estimation, approximately: 'everyone who wants work
can find some at a decent wage.' Other elements may probably
compatibly fit in with that definition.

Len added: "And while work hours have been cut from 12 to
perhaps 8 over the last century, we are not any closer to a
more "equitable" society."

That's true, but I feel that's ONLY because we haven't gone as far
in that direction as we could or should have by now. We've both
cited recognition that our productivity increases have made larger
labor-time reductions possible, but we didn't get them. Many labor
people have claimed that our overall standards of living are high as
a result of our long hours, and that lots of people have wanted our
standards of living to increase rapidly. It could be that a similar
dynamic might be in place today and is responsible for our
tolerance of overwork, but how do we know unless
organizations with resources take polls?

Len wrote: "Changing from private capitalist property to state
property changed the FORM of property. It did not change property
RELATIONS. The worker remained a worker, employed for a wage,
was exploited and still dispossessed of any ownership other than his
or her labour power. Socialists do not advocate changing the form
of property alone, but of changing property relations."

I get your point, but change was change, which was possible only
under certain conditions not likely to be replicated any more, and
Marx and Engels also said that state ownership was a legitimate
roadside stop on the way from capitalism to classless, stateless,
etc.less society. They ADVOCATED state ownership in the
Communist Manifesto, and in Socialism: Utopia to Science,
even within the context of their world-wide revolution, which was
the only scenario for a true socialist revolution. The difference
between 'state capitalism' and proletarian dictatorship for M+E
was the content of the state, i.e., whether a socialist or a bourgeois
party was dominant in the state. Trying to get to classless, stateless,
etc.less society without going through the stage of proletarian
dictatorship and proletarian state property is not Marxist. Maybe
the WSM has a good reason why it may differ from Marx and
Engels on proletarian dictatorship. What might that reason be?
Not the advances in the means of production, I hope.

Len wrote: "This may have been a scenario [replacing monarchies
with democracies, and further developing them into a universal
proletarian dictatorship] Marx and Engels briefly talked about
in the 1840s and early 1850s when they were actively engaged
in the revolutions. It certainly wasn't what they spoke of from
the mid-1850s when they learned from those experiences."

What different scenario did they talk about in the mid-50's? This
statement of yours could have been an exciting revelation for me if
you had followed through, which I hope you will do for next time. I
remain skeptical. Given the small number of socialists and communists,
the larger number of bourgeois-democratic revolutionaries, and the
plethora of monarchies waiting to be overthrown, I wonder how much
could have changed on that score that might have led Marx to consider
a very different scenario.

> Ken, you have made assertions, subjective statements lacking
> any cogent economic analysis, no statistics or hard examples,
> the examples you give accuse us in the name of a false
> "socialism" to which you assign us blame, and then you have
> made some rather generalized statements, none of which can
> be considered "proof".

With all of the disinformation floating around about solutions to
our problems, we need to work together in order to better define the
root of our problems so as to better rectify them. Millions of people
could benefit by us getting it right. Let's not disappoint them.

Ken Ellis

7-08-00

On the 7th, Len wrote: "Time simply does not allow me to
answer and deal further with our debate on Marx, Lenin, etc.
To that end, I have reprinted here an article written by Cyril
Smith (much of which I agree with and some I disagree with)
on the relevance of Marx today. I hope it can be useful."

Len, don't go away. We need your vast knowledge and
experience. I hope that we can continue to debate, especially
in the light of this marvelous Smith article on the Communist
Manifesto, which you thoughtfully provided for us. Allow me
to replay 2 of his more interesting remarks.

"When Marx looks at the struggles of workers for a higher
price for their labour-power, or for a shorter working day, he
sees this as a form, the content of which is the struggle of the
dispossessed to be recognised as human beings. This demand,
the essence of Marx's communism, is the only possible
foundation on which to rebuild the working-class movement.
In "Marxism", communism and the movement of the proletariat
were torn apart, after the Manifesto had so brilliantly unified
them. To heal this breach is the task facing us today.

"How on earth did we, the "Marxists", so totally misunderstand
Marx? Of course, it was not just a matter of intellectual inadequacy.
It was really because we forcibly squeezed Marx's notion of what
was truly human into an iron framework which was truly brutal."

Notice how Cyril Smith considers the essence of Marx's
communism to be 'workers' struggles for higher wages and
shorter hours'. That's quite a statement! A lot of corroboration
for that view can appear while studying Marx's involvement in
the First International, but I wouldn't have gone as far in that
direction as Smith did. But, don't get me wrong, for I'm not
complaining at all. I'm pleased as punch.

As far as Smith's second selection goes, I had the fortunate
or unfortunate experience in the '70's to be part of a group
that evolved out of the First International, and whose leaders
understood Marx as well as it was possible for a group to
understand him, but for whom Marx's philosophy was nowhere
nearly as good as Bakunin's, but who could not possibly compete
with other groups on the basis of Bakuninism, so they determined
to sell Bakuninism disguised as 'Marxism for highly developed
countries'. I determined this after a painstaking analysis of their
propaganda. What does it say about some people in the socialist
movement except that their 'mistakes' were based, not on honest
efforts, but on efforts to deceive? What else can it mean except
that: their propaganda was the result of plotting and planning at
the top of their 'leadership', and the party program's development
was uninfluenced by the masses of workers. My old party serves
the bourgeoisie well, even today, by diverting workers away from
what was described by Smith to be 'the essence of Marx's
communism', ever since the party was taken over by bourgeois
anarchists in 1889. Before that year, Engels himself had praised
the American SLP's program as correct for the times they lived in.
The SLP had proudly put 'shorter hours commensurate with the
development of technology' at the top of its list of demands for a
number of years. It is very mysterious how a party whose program
before 1889 was praised by Engels could be subverted to serve
the interests of the bourgeoisie. How could that happen?

Similarly, how could so many parties today that claim to
represent the interests of the working class perpetrate the
garbage that they do without being run into the ground by
the working class? Workers must truly be living up to their
old 'live and let live'* philosophy. It is as though all of these
parties are driving down the road in a bus that long ago overshot
its exit ramp, but whose driver continues to drive down the road
unchallenged because of a certain mystique of infallibility. Some
people in the bus may have an uneasy feeling that they should
have turned off the highway a long time ago, but are presently
not speaking up, not nudging their elbows into one another's
ribs, and are not taking a minute to ask, 'shouldn't we have
taken that exit ramp an hour ago, a decade ago, a century ago?'

* 2002 correction: According to Marx's Class Struggles in France,
'live and let live' was actually a motto of the Second French Republic,
1848-51 [me7.670]. (End of note.)

Are you the bus driver, Len, or are you one of the passengers
asleep in the back seat? Is it time for you to wake up yet? Or
are you going to continue to pretend that your branch of the
movement is still on the right track? Billions of people have
never needed for people in your position to start asking the
difficult soul-searching questions more than they need you today.

Ken Ellis

7-08-00

Hi, Julian

I think you have it right about the essence of Marx's communism
being "the struggle to be recognised as human beings". I read it
too fast. I stand corrected. You also wrote:

> Are you saying that the struggle for a shorter working-day/more
> wages will in and of itself bring about a class-less society? If you
> are, then you are ignoring the double-edged nature of communism -
> yes, as a struggle in the present (although I wouldn't confine this
> struggle as you seem to do to battles in the workplace) but also
> as a struggle BEYOND capital which must involve a conscious
> majority of workers gaining control of the means of production
> in their communities.

I have no particular axe to grind for or against abolishing
property. It will be done someday, I am sure, but where I differ
with socialists is in the timing. Socialists want to do it all at once,
immediately after their victory, and they would need an enormous
state apparatus in order to accomplish that. I say that we should
instead use our influence and intelligence to abolish class
distinctions. After that, all else would fall into place. Taking
control of the labor market and abolishing competition for scarce
jobs would be a tremendous step forward toward the abolition of
class distinctions. For one thing, it would eliminate poverty by
supplying jobs to everyone who needed one. I don't see how that
would make the bosses any richer in the process, but our primary
concern should be that of taking care of our own class.

We all want to get to classless, stateless, propertyless, moneyless
and workless society someday. I threw in 'workless' because I think
we would all like to someday abolish unwanted (but necessary) work.
As a recent article about the latest IBM computer indicates, a computer
as smart as a human will arrive by 2010. Though it will then cover two
basketball courts, by 2020 it should be as small as a grapefruit or so,
meaning that the age of truly intelligent robots will dawn a mere 20
years from now. As we gradually abolish class distinctions by
militantly insisting that technological improvements redound to
workers in the form of more leisure time, we would also someday
be able to retire wage labor in favor of an all-volunteer work force.
Once we abolish wage labor, we would have also abolished the
worker-capitalist relation, which would end the class distinction
between worker and capitalist.

With capitalists no longer able to make money off the
capitalist-worker relationship, the inclination to amass property
would cease. Property would then gradually merge into the
collective. As it merges, the functions of state would also decline,
and money as well would lose its previous significance. There
would be no need anywhere along this line to have to apply
extraordinary amounts of violence, and most likely none at all,
but there would be violence if we insisted upon some kind of an
immediate expropriation. That would make this new scenario
much more attractive to the man on the street than the socialist
scenario. People are tired of violence and would rather stop it
so that we could someday apply ourselves to other pressing
problems. There isn't a heck of a lot of difference between my
scenario and traditional socialist scenarios. I merely take the
emphasis off of property and let it decline at its own speed, and
I instead place the emphasis upon taking care of those old class
interests that Marx and Engels tended to deride, but which could
be accomplished in a peaceful and civil fashion. People who are
motivated by hate and revenge would get little satisfaction from
my scenario, but those motivated by love for their fellow humans
would find the going quite comfortable.

2002 note: M+E criticized limiting struggles for shorter work hours
and higher wages to the economic field, i.e., to workshops and factories
only. M+E wanted those struggles to be taken to the political field, so
that laws limiting hours of labor could apply to everyone. (End of note.)

This new movement would be a very open organization. There
would be no need for secrecy, for there would be no attempts to
lord any entity over another. There would be a number of projects
to apply oneself to, e.g., trying to get labor laws to apply to the
whole class. Right now, many agricultural workers are excluded.
Secondly, we could try to raise the minimum overtime premium
from time and a half to double time to better discourage overwork.
We could encourage longer vacations and get behind the current
movement to adopt a three-week vacation in the USA. We could
work for earlier retirement. We could also work for the adoption
of universal labor standards for all countries. All of these different
struggles complement the grand scheme of eliminating wage-
lowering competition among workers. The relative handful of
people who are wasting their efforts trying to attract people to
back-stabbing socialism would find a whole new humane mode of
co-operative struggle. The separate branches of the work-sharing
movement would not be competing among themselves over
mutually exclusive property expropriation schemes like socialism,
communism and anarchism. People could not simultaneously
adopt both a communist scheme and an anarchist scheme. They
would have to choose one, and others would be left out, sowing
bitterness. The disunity itself would kill any property expropriation
scheme. Leave property expropriation schemes to the petty-
bourgeoisie, where they logically belong. The reason so many
people are interested in expropriating property in the first place
is to gain control over all of that property, to the exclusion of
competing sects, no matter what their propaganda says. There
never was anything particularly humanitarian about forcefully
separating the rich from their property, a malady totally
avoided by the movement to equitably share work.

Ken Ellis

7-08-00

Paddy, I stand corrected. You and Julian were right. See my
latest posting to Julian. Thanks for the good work. I'll take
my thirty lashings with a wet noodle.

Ken.

7-08-00

Len,

You, Paddy and Julian were all correct. I read the Smith article
without really thinking about it enough. It happens sometimes.
Please, if you have time, comment on what I wrote to Julian. I
would appreciate it. Thanks.

Ken

7-9-00

Brooooooh,

snip personal data

That socialist forum I've been part of since the end of May is still going
strong. A guy named Len joined the fray about 3 weeks ago, and is about
ready to throw in the towel. The shit he comes up with to justify his socialism -
lordy, lordy, lordy. I could spend 24 hours a day writing e-mails and still
not get fully caught up. You can read freely at:
http://www.egroups.com/community/WSM_Socialism_Forum

It's very educational. They have a list of who wrote what and when.

Be good,
Bro'Ken

7-10-00

Hi, Len

You wrote quite a bit on the 6th that I can agree with.
Allow me to comment on your last paragraph:

> One cannot infer that the issue of expropriation to Marx. In
> his greatest work - Capital - he indeed shows the movement to
> which capitalism is headed and that it sounds its own "death
> knell" which could only be resolved by the "expropriation of
> the expropriators".

2002 note: In the incomplete Collected Works at hand, "death knell"
appeared 13 times, but only once in relation to 'bourgeois society'. Most
appearances referred to the Second Empire or to other monarchies, or to
complaints from bourgeois economists over the alleged impending demise
of British industry due to laws limiting the length of the working day. (End of note.)

To the extent to which Marx aimed for a willful abolition of private
property is the extent to which I think Marx was wrong. The only
positive change that can ever be immediate is a power change, such
as 'the bourgeoisie being in power one day, and the proletariat in
power the next', after which the means of production could be
'wrested, by degrees' out of the hands of the capitalists and into
the hands of the proletariat organized as ruling class in a state
of its own making. But, I see no mass interest in such a scenario
today, and since 1989, declining interest. We should instead try to
abolish class distinctions first, and then let the rest of the chips -
like state, property and money - decline at their own natural rates.
Because going after the property of the rich was only feasible after
overthrowing monarchies and liberating colonies, and because those
conditions are not as applicable today as they were in Marx's day,
people ought to spend more time rethinking Marxism instead of knee-
jerk defending it. Socialists should ask themselves why the world is
moving away from anything that smacks of socialism, which name
intuitively informs people of its intent, viz., socializing property
ownership, or, if you insist, converting to a non-property relationship.
Between that upper stage and where we are now, Marx always
insisted upon an intermediate stage of proletarian state ownership.

Socialists go wrong by wanting to abolish property before the
conditions for its peaceful abolition arrive. No one wants to be
expropriated in this age of dog-eat-dog, and even the threat of
expropriation would make people fight back ferociously. Even the
world's best approximations to Marx's first stage of proletarian state
ownership were only feasible after overthrowing feudal monarchies,
or after liberating colonies, but were never feasible after winning
mere elections in Western democracies, which proves that trying to
get to Marx's lower stage of proletarian dictatorship and proletarian
state ownership would take lots of force in order to accomplish and
enforce. To the chagrin of many a socialist and social-democrat in the
USA, far more movements abound whose intentions are to keep the
state from getting any larger than what it already is, and to keep the
state from interfering any more than what it already does. The
violence associated with the state expropriations of the past surely
indicates similar troubles for future attempts. The most carefully
crafted program for property expropriation is bound to be a
formula for civil war. Just what we bloody need.

As Cyril Smith wrote at the very end of his article: "Certainly,
the working class has still to "become fitted to make society
anew". That implies that, in the new millennium, the issues
which found their first expression in 1848 face humanity
with far greater urgency. Today we can say that we either
learn how to live humanly, or we shall cease to live at all."

2002 note: "fitted to found society anew" is from Feuerbach (me5.53). (End of note.)

Notice that Smith gave 'learning to live humanly' a very high
priority. Does he think that we would first have to live bloodily
by expropriating the expropriators before we can learn to live
humanly? It's hard to believe that engaging in a bloodbath would
be a good preparation for us learning to 'live humanly'. It's hard
for me to believe that we would need a bloodbath in order to
provide jobs for everyone who wants one. For that reason, we
need to radically critique Marxism so as to move away from
expropriation, and to progress to more humane methods of
addressing social problems. It is not because some people are
such great thinkers that they 'adopted socialism before the rest
of the world', it's rather because their thinking is so mediocre
that cynical manipulators can still make a living off of their
folly. That is why socialist parties for the most part are still
mired in dog-eat-dog secrecy, censorship, sectarianism, cults
of personality and bureaucracy. Dog-eat-dog is as alive in
socialist parties as it is in society at large. Rank-and-file party
members have their choice of 'marketing the party line, or else
finding a party more to their liking'. The fatal flaw of advocating
expropriation causes all of their problems. It is a road that
stretches back for over 150 years, and is littered with bodies
as far as the eye can see. New bodies are being added daily.
We should keep in mind some of what Cyril Smith wrote:

"The way would be opened to a human society, where life would
be made consciously, by individual humans who no longer
clashed with the collective will of humanity as a whole."

"there is no way we can evade the problem of how to live
together on the planet. This is not a problem for a set of
doctrines to solve, or for a political tendency to answer,
but for billions of human beings to tackle for themselves."

Ken Ellis

7-12-00

Hi, Len,

You wrote:
> The goal of these parties was NOT common
> ownership and ridding ourselves of the wage system.

I can't imagine a party calling itself socialist or communist that
has never held out the carrot of the ultimate goal of classless and
stateless society. You would be hard pressed to name a party that
does not have that goal somewhere in its propaganda or ideology.
State ownership was never the ultimate goal of any of them. State
ownership was only ever intended to be a roadside stop along the
way to classless and stateless, etc.less society, provided that the
whole rest of the world co-operated toward attaining that very same
goal. With all of the dissension in the world, a party calling itself
socialist or communist that happens to come to power is supposed
to 'prove' its socialist intent to the ultra-left by becoming an isolated
island of classless and stateless society with hostile neighbors on
its border? The Bakuninist American SLP demands the same thing
of all parties calling itself socialist or communist. Remember the
nine short weeks of the Paris Commune, and the reasons Marx
gave for its defeat in his 1872 Speech at the Hague. An isolated
Commune could never survive, but hundreds of communes
might have been another story.

Len wrote:
> "The "force" we (the WSM) is the immense majority of
> the working class making a conscious decision. We have
> never talked about "brute force". If you must argue against
> us then argue against US and OUR program, not that of
> other so-called "socialists" and "communists".

I never mention what other parties say or do
unless it has some relevance to the subject at hand.

Len quoted me:

>> There also is very little will in the West to deprive anyone of
>> their property. Even after the South had been crushed after our
>> American Civil War, and it would have been relatively easy to
>> carve up the plantations to provide the freed slaves with their 40
>> acres and a mule, but there was no political will to accomplish that
>> act. There is no real need for people to turn to socialism in order
>> to provide social, political and economic justice in the West. I
>> challenge you to name a single social problem that couldn't
>> better be addressed by us more equitably sharing work.

And answered:
> Not true. The very act of abolishing slavery was depriving
> the Southern slave-holding class of their property.

That's true, in one sense. The country did abolish a very immoral form
of property ownership, viz., the ownership of people by other people.
But, the ownership of nearly everything else that can be claimed for
ownership seems to be fair game, including ownership of non-human
means of production. If people were willing to fight to their death to
defend as immoral a form of property ownership as slavery, then just
think how hard they would fight to defend their ownership of non-
human means of production. Socialism doesn't have a snowball's
chance in hell of succeeding in a world that places such a high value
on property, and such a low value on changing property relations for
the sake of achieving measures of social justice. That's the lesson
from our Civil War that socialists do not particularly like.

Thanks to Len for the overview of struggles for worker's control in Europe.

Len made an interesting statement:
> Because we are paid a wage
> we are forced to compete against one another.

That's news to me. I thought that we competed against one
another because there aren't enough jobs to go around.

Len wrote:
> You may propose a program of shorter work days in the United
> States and higher wages, but capital is such that it moves to those
> places where capital can achieve the greatest profit maximization
> (that is what capitalism is all about). Capital can thus leave the U.S.
> and be re-established in Mexico or Korea or wherever wages
> are lower and workers are forced to work longer hours.

No more than I would advocate 'socialism in just one country' would
I advocate 'shorter hours in just one country', though I wouldn't exclude
the progress that could be made in one country at a time. The struggle
for shorter hours will have to be an international struggle for precisely
the reasons Len indicated.

Len wrote:
> The capitalist class can introduce new technology and squeeze
> more profit from workers. If hours of work are cut and wages
> raised, then work becomes more intensive, more stressful, workers
> are forced to produce more faster. How are capitalists able to do this?
> By virtue of the fact that they OWN the means of production.

It is true that workers can sometimes produce more in 6 hours
than they can in 8, as proven by experiences in a Hewlett-Packard
subsidiary in Germany. But, due to natural limitations of the human
body, it's doubtful if workers could always produce more in 4 hours
than they could in 8. Workers have physical and mental limits beyond
which they cannot easily or tirelessly go, and when workers feel as
though they are overly stressed, but the boss won't listen, they go
on strike, for which reason they have struck before, and probably
will in the future. Workers can't give the bosses everything they
want, and the bosses know that, which is why they replace
workers with machines wherever possible.

Len quoted me:
>> He could go only so far with his theories
>> while he wrote documents for the First International
>> without too much alienating the conservative trades
>> unionists he worked with. Not everything that Marx
>> stood for is outdated by any means.

And answered:
> So, you are saying that we have to follow a strategy that was
> only acceptable to conservative trade unionists in 1860 - 1871
> and not try to go beyond that? By the way. it wasn't only in his
> "theoretical" work that Marx called for going much further. His
> working in writing the program of the French socialist movement
> was essential. That was also practical work.

Now that France is a full-fledged democracy, it would be
redundant to advocate changing much about it today, whereas
Marx criticized the French 'republic' of the 1870's as 'a monarchy
without a monarch', for which a more radical program would have
been appropriate. In today's world, it is necessary to go beyond the
First International's call for an 8-hour day, and even go beyond the
pre-1889 American SLP's call for 'shorter hours commensurate with
technological progress.' Today, we should also include struggling for
an overtime premium of double time after both 8 and 40, legislate
against unions bargaining away their rights to overtime premiums in
exchange for other benefits (due to that practice's detrimental effect
on competition among workers), minimum one-month vacations per
year, earlier retirement, etc. These are all very simple reforms whose
effects would be very ameliorative in the short run, which by no means
signifies having to give up hope for workless, classless, stateless,
propertyless, and moneyless society, for these reforms, constantly
amended as often as made possible by technological improvements,
are a means of getting to the upper stage of communist society. In
the words of the Communist Manifesto (MESW 1, p. 136): "The
Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the
enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in
the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the
future of that movement." Nothing can take care of both their long-
term and short-term interests better than reducing hours of labor by
law. This is so obvious that one would have to live in a permanent
state of denial to propagandize otherwise.

People should ask themselves: what's really going on in the
world? What IS dynamic is the ongoing replacement of human
labor with machine labor, with all benefits of that replacement
presently going to the upper classes. Every one of our problems
can be traced back to that dynamic, which only the most massive
movement of Luddism could halt. A successful implementation
of a program of shorter hours would take care of our immediate
worries, and a militant insistence upon carrying through the
program to its logical conclusion of abolishing labor altogether
would also take care of our future problems as well, and would
someday get us to workless, classless, stateless, propertyless, and
moneyless society. Shorter hours for modern democracies is the
best implementation of Marx's communism in the here, now, and
short-term future, for it's only a few decades until labor in the West
is abolished one way or another. The program would also answer
the dreams of women like Magda who want to feel connected to
useful work in the present, but who would also like their political
work to meet the needs of future society. Many people in this
forum wonder why there's so few women in it. Maybe it's because
the struggle for socialism is so impractical and utopian.

Len wrote:
> And why do workers have no control over this. Because
> the means of production AND destruction are OWNED
> in private hands or by the state (which is the administration
> for capitalism). Lowering the work day and raising wages
> won't get us any nearer to a safe environment when we cannot
> completely control in a democratic way production. And one
> can only CONTROL production if one OWNS it.

Like I've said before, we workers don't have power over much,
but we could unite to withhold our labor power, as is proven
every time we go on strike. We just need to universalize it into
a general slow-down strike. Socialists understand that workers
are someday going to have to unify over something, but we will
not unite over something as impossible as socialism. Len is very
good at reminding us that "workers have no control over this" or
that, and if I were to believe Len, I would just go surfing the net
for greener pastures. It's because I know that the working class
has potential power and control over both its labor power and
everything else that I advocate what I do. We must organize our
laziness and make laziness rule in order to save both ourselves
and the planet. I can't imagine the really intelligent robots getting
here in a mere 20 years without our having organized ourselves
in this manner. These are exciting times to live in. The prospect
of abolishing labor within the lifetimes of a good portion of the
existing population is exciting and challenging.

We have potential control over the whole kit and kaboodle.
Imagine us getting organized to accomplish the first step of our
program. It then becomes the policy of the working class in the
state, just the way Marx described the passage of the 10-hour
law in England, and we put far more people to work, reduce
unemployment by a significant amount, making a dent in the
prison population, which allows some police to be laid off, and
the economy re-adjusts itself all around to become more benign
to people and the planet. But, more people soon get replaced by
machinery, the first step wasn't anywhere nearly thorough-going
as it could or should have been, so we plan and implement the
next step. If it isn't one victory after another for us in the next 2
decades, then it will only mean further immiseration of the lower
classes until we get to the point where it really begins to affect
the middle class workers, and then you will see an out-pouring
of sentiment like we saw in the middle 90's when so many people
were getting down-sized, the New York Times ran a special series
about it, and I read the whole series over the air on Free Radio
Berkeley to the horror of some ultras who wondered why I was so
concerned over all of those middle-class people. What we got in the
'90's was just a glimpse of the future immiseration of the middle
classes unless we begin to soon do something real about the plight
of the lowest classes by making room for them in the economy.

After I wrote about what happened earlier in the century in the USA,
Len wrote:

> Wait a minute. That's a very simplistic explanation of the
> Depression! The entire history of capitalism worldwide has been
> growth of production, boom followed by bust. Increasing workers
> leisure time would not have ended that cycle. Paying them higher
> wages would not have ended it either. Is this a roundabout way
> of saying that capitalist crisis is due to underconsumption by the
> working class? The workers get paid a wage - which is always
> LESS than what they actually produce. They could never buy
> back what they produce. And what they produce is OWNED
> by the capitalist class or state.

We know that many crises in capitalist production are traditionally
considered to be crises of over-production, but we also have to
consider what that means and ask ourselves: 'Would it have been a
crisis of overproduction if every consumer - worker and boss alike -
had consumed as much as had been produced?' If consumption by
society as a whole, and not just by the working class, had matched
the rate of production, then there would not have been a crisis, so
over-production and under-consumption are really the two sides
of the same coin. I can't understand how we could have over-
production without simultaneously experiencing under-
consumption. If consumption matches production,
then we have balance.

Unmanageable growths of warehouse stock point toward both
over-production or under-consumption, which have traditionally
been handled by laying off workers. Lay-offs are fine unless they
aren't fine with workers who might resent the interruptions in their
lives, and who would rather force shorter hours on their bosses, or
upon society, in order to prevent unwieldy growths of stock and
enforce a more predictable pattern of living. 'Who owns what' isn't
going to prevent workers from doing what they can to protect their
interests when the going gets tough. They aren't going to tell one
another that 'they can't do anything' just because they don't own the
means of production. I can just imagine one laid-off worker saying
to his friend: "Oh darn, we're screwed into submissiveness because
we don't own the factory. We will have to abolish capitalism before
we can do anything."

Len quoted me:
>> Taken to its logical end, hours of labor would get
>> shorter and shorter, and work get so well shared
>> until we get to the point where what little work that
>> remains for people to do would be taken over by
>> volunteer labor, which would end capitalism as an
>> economic system right there.

And answered:
> Hold on Ken. you said you DIDN'T want to end
> the capitalist system. Now you are advocating that
> we should. You have to make up your mind.

What if I want it both ways? Which I do. I've never said that
capitalism would go on forever, nor have I ever wanted it to go
on forever. I've never given up on the ultimate goal of working
our way to workless, classless, stateless, propertyless and
moneyless society, but I don't want to end capitalism until the
conditions for its abolition have arrived, and then its end won't
come with a bang. Capitalism will fade away, along with all of
the other things we don't particularly love, such as work, class
distinctions, the state, property, and money. I share those
ultimate goals with communists, anarchists and socialists, or at
least those who have not forgotten about those ultimate goals.
I'm glad that the WSM is working for the same ultimate goals,
or nearly the same, as I am. It's 'how to get there' which is the
problem that we have between us. As little as WSM may think
we can get there by helping the bosses abolish labor, that's the
extent to which I think we can get there by abolishing property.

Len wrote:
> While capitalism survives hours cannot be cut for all
> workers worldwide. Unemployed workers are one of
> the conditions needed for capitalism to function.

The first sentence is a mere assertion. The second sentence
almost begs people to end capitalism by ending unemployment
by means of sharing work through shorter hours.

Len continued:
> Lowering the numbers of hours worked will not
> necessarily mean capitalists have to hire more workers.

But that was the program of labor in the Depression, and
it's been a time-proven method of sharing work for almost
2 centuries. We have to go with what works.

Len continued:
> Because they OWN the means of production they can extract
> more surplus value with less workers. And you yourself said
> that the working class has not control over how technology
> is used and introduced.

In "Capital", Marx listed 2 common ways of extracting more
surplus values: one, by extending the length of the working day,
and two, by introducing more machinery. Marx might have been
amused by the notion that more surplus values could be produced
with fewer workers.

Len wrote:
> The last century has shown that the number of workers who
> actually create commodities has grown smaller and smaller. The
> rest of the working class works in non-productive spheres, in
> bureaucracy, advertising, selling, etc. etc. So, are you saying that
> there should be more workers hired in advertising for capitalism, for
> bureaucracy, for wasteful work too? Otherwise, the capitalist system
> cannot function by hiring all these workers. And you support the
> capitalist system because you want us to work for wages.

Len's first and second sentences are indisputable. Because we
are so productive, and increasingly so, and we lately haven't been
allowed to take the benefits of increased productivity in the form of
increased leisure time (as we did in the Progressive Era), certain
mechanisms absorb the excess products: unchecked (and even
encouraged) population growth, advertising to promote consumerism,
and government spending. I used to be able to think of one more
mechanism. Can anyone out there think of another? The program
of shorter hours, while it is designed to put more people to work,
should also be used to diminish the total quantity of work to enable
us to be friendlier to the planet. If we could diminish the overall
quantity of work, the first jobs to be sacrificed would be the less-
essential jobs Len mentioned, such as advertising, bureaucracy,
sales, etc., and we could empty some of the prisons if people
were not forced to turn to lives of crime. Pigeon-holing
people in wage-slave jobs was never my final goal.

End of part A

Ken Ellis

7-12-00

In a previous message, Len wanted the names of some social-
democrats in FDR's 'brain trust', and I inadequately answered with:

>> All the names that one would need to get started on the subject
>> can be found in Prof. Ben Hunnicutt's 'Work Without End'.

Len answered:
> I don't have the book. so, could you name a few
> prominent "social democrats"?

According to Hunnicutt on p. 251: "Just as the 30-hour bill seemed
about to be passed by Congress in 1933, Rexford Tugwell published
the book "The Industrial Discipline and the Governmental Arts". This
work, more than any other single document, presented what was to
become the [FDR] administration's position on work creation vis-a-vis
work reduction. ... Tugwell devoted his book to challenging the idea that
reductions of work were necessary or desirable in the depression and
detailing specific policy alternatives that were to be embodied in the New
Deal. ... Tugwell later described the last chapter of this book as "a preview
of the NRA"." On p. 257: "To his satisfaction, Tugwell saw much of what
he prescribed in 1933 coming to pass by 1935." On p. 258: "Tugwell was
one of the first people in the administration to sound this "idleness
reemployed" theme and one of the first to use it to justify the New
Deal's spending and monetary policies." Other people in the FDR
administration included William F. Ogburn, David Weintraub of the
WPA, Vannevar Bush of the OSRD (Office of Scientific Research
and Development), Raymond Moley, Hugh Johnson, Harry Hopkins,
and a host of others in favor of work creation by government policies
vs. work reduction by means of shorter hours.

Len wrote:
> Well, I would say that what you are proposing in terms
> of shorter work days and higher wages as a political
> programe is nothing but social democratic reforms ...

In a democracy, not much more than reform can be on the agenda.
But, it's good enough to get the working class to where it wants to go.

Len wrote:
> It seems, however, that you are outraged
> because you called them betrayers.

I'm indignant over the fact that we got wasteful social-democratic
taxing-and-spending instead of shorter hours.

Len wrote:
> Note - you say that the 30 hour Bill was quashed "PERHAPS
> on the advice of his brain trust" [my emphasis]. You have made
> a statement claiming it as "fact", do not provide the information
> on naming any names as to responsibility, then say that "perhaps"
> this happened, thus negating any so-called "fact".

OK, so you made me run for my book. This book used to be
available on the IWW web site, and still might be. One could
hardly read a better book, and the price is right. Dig this real
history, from page 153:

"By April 1933, Roosevelt had ignored the shorter-hour "thunder
from the left" as long as he could. After the Senate passed the 30-
hour bill without major modification on April 6, reports were widely
circulated that should the House version of the bill (introduced by
William Connery of Massachusetts) reach the floor, it would pass
with little opposition. Ernest K. Lindley characterized these
developments as a "revolution boiling up from the bottom."
Roosevelt, prodded to action, directed Secretary of Labor
Frances Perkins to draft an administration response."

The next few pages showed how more moderate thinkers
machinated against the bill. From page 163:

"Trouble also arose for Perkins from labor, which continued
to oppose the addition of minimum wages. Matthew Woll, for
example, accused Roosevelt of trying to make "serfs" out of
American workers by telling them how much they could make
and what kind of work they should be doing. Labor leaders also
held steadfast to the 30-hour principle and opposed making the
proposed legislation flexible, reasoning, as they had always
done, that the only way to control over-production and reduce
unemployment was to limit hours by law - to reduce work time
for the majority of workers, not just regulate hours for the
relatively few who were "overworked."

"Finally, in response to Perkin's attempts to turn the Black bill
into an administration vehicle and blunt the 30-hour provision,
the House committee suggested that the administration gather
together all the amendments they were offering the committee
and present them to Congress as a separate administration bill
- let the Black and Connery bills stand on their own, on the
30-hour principle.

"Roosevelt, his advisers and Cabinet, then broke with the 30-
hour bill and its share-the-work rationale and began work on
a National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) to replace the Black
and Connery bills and Perkins's revisions of them. On May 1,
Senate Majority Leader Robinson reported that the Black bill
was no longer "part of the President's program," a report that
Connery attacked the next day as misleading. But Hugo Black,
aware of the change in administration policy, countered in the
Senate by introducing an amendment to a Washington, D.C.,
appropriations bill to prohibit government purchases from
industries that worked their employees more than 30 hours
(the amendment died in committee)."

The next paragraph details how Wm. Green of the AFL
gradually was encouraged to endorse the NIRA by means of
some sweetening agents like: guaranteed rights to organize,
collective bargaining, and outlawing yellow-dog contracts,
which later became associated with the famous Wagner Act.

Len quoted me:
>> Instead of us allowing our withholding of labor power to
>> forever be accomplished in such a piecemeal fashion as
>> 'one strike at a time', we should organise our withholding
>> to be universal to accomplish the nobler and humanitarian
>> goal of ensuring everyone a place in the economy.

And answered:
> What you are saying here is very much like the syndicalist
> union program and the anarcho-syndicalist program. It also
> is very similar to the program of Upton Sinclair and his
> social democratic program when he ran for governor of
> California in the 1930s.

I don't advocate mere union action isolated by itself, which action
is more appropriate when working within totalitarian regimes. I
much more advocate political action and reform of labor laws to
get what the working class needs. In case of a complete stoppage
in the political system, workers could still get what they wanted by
union action alone, by unions co-operating to see that the remaining
work gets shared equitably, but I doubt if politicians in democracies
would want to be at loggerheads with labor over such a humanitarian
issue when their re-elections at stake.

Len asked:
> say that the workers around the globe are so completely
> organised and powerful in such a way. Why should we
> accept the crumbs of higher wages and lower work hours,
> work for wages and create surplus value for another class
> when we could accomplish so much more with Socialism?

If workers could ever become that successful to be organized
and powerful, then socialism would become one of the furthest
things from their minds. We'll then be too smart to fall for any
kind of 'get from here to there in an eyeblink' scheme, for we
will understand that our progress in abolishing classes will be
a function of technological progress combined with putting
our humanitarianism where our mouths are.

Len wrote:
> So, this is the General Strike? We hold back our labour,
> fold arms and then starve while the capitalist class uses the
> whole power of the State and every means at its disposal
> (including setting scabs against us), the military and
> bureaucracy to fight us, starving us out? Wouldn't it be
> better to capture the state so they couldn't do that to us?

It's only a general slow-down strike. No need for anyone to get
excited. We wouldn't need to have state power unless we wanted
to do something nasty, but it won't mean that we won't have our
own party and run our own candidates, if that's what the party
wants. Such a course of action would probably be a good way
to draw attention to our program. If the general strike is really
general, scabs wouldn't exist any more.

Len wrote:
> The majority may vote, but they do not RULE. And the WSM
> does not advocate the Socialist parties take power on behalf of
> people and then set about making laws. The immense majority
> will make the changes themselves once they are conscious
> of what they have to do.

Everyone knows that we have majority rule in our democracies.
Why contradict popular knowledge? A party need not rule in the
state in order to influence legislation. In the '30's, a 30-hour bill
that was clearly in the interests of the working class made it all
the way through the Senate. I certainly don't insist on a workers'
party dominating government. If labor could get as far as it did in
the '30's without being dominant, labor could do the same thing
again if it wasn't so infatuated with taxing and spending.

In a previous message, Len asked: "What is "economic justice"?

I answered with:
>> In my estimation, approximately:
>> 'everyone who wants work can find some at a decent wage.'
>> Other elements may probably compatibly fit in with that definition.

Len quoted that and wrote:
> So, you support capitalism with a "human face". That's
> different from what you said above when you spoke of
> getting rid of the capitalist class. According to this sentence
> you see economic justice as us working for a wage. In my
> view, that means we would change our chains to capital
> from a steel one to a gold one. Much wouldn't change.

Len continued:
> As i said above, your proposal for economic justice
> is nothing but a reform of capitalism. Reforms have failed.
> Capitalism is capitalism. Exploitation is exploitation. Capitalism
> will not work the way you wish it to function (everyone employed
> with high wages). It just doesn't work that way (and any economist
> be they Marxist, Socialist, or an apologist for capitalism can tell
> you that. You want capitalism not to function like capitalism.

My program is a reform program, and is a transition from
where we are now to workless, classless, stateless, propertyless,
and moneyless society. I've indicated that in various ways many
times. Marx's upper stage of society is what many socialists,
communists and socialists hold in common as a long-range goal,
while some hyper-radicals think we can get there immediately.
Marx's upper stage is still my goal, even though I can't count
myself as an anarchist, communist or socialist due to their
absorption in getting to propertyless society before getting
to workless society. Workless will come first, for it is the only
thing that the 'all-powerful' capitalist class is helping us to abolish.
They certainly will not assist anyone's attempts to abolish the state,
property, money or classes. I say, let us do the Zen thing of helping
the capitalists along in abolishing labor, but let us use what power
we have to participate in their program to abolish labor by protecting
our interests along the way. Not much more than that should we want
to accomplish, for it will be a total victory on our part just to do that. It
will ensure that, once we get to workless, we will have simultaneously
arrived at classless as well. After that, the other 3 chips will fall by
themselves of their own dead weight at their own pace.

Len quoted me:
>> We've both cited recognition that our productivity increases have
>> made larger labor-time reductions possible, but we didn't get them.

And answered:
> We didn't get them because the working class does not
> control production. And you can't control it unless you own it.

The only thing that we have much of a chance of controlling is our
own involvement in the labor market. To organize to control that is
not only possible, but mandatory for the creation of a humane society.
It is impossible for workers to do anything about property. It isn't even
the cause of their problems. Unemployment and competition among
workers causes most of the workers' problems, as recognized by Engels
in 1845 in "The Condition of the Working Class in England".

Len quoted me:
>> Marx and Engels also said that state ownership was a
>> legitimate roadside stop on the way from capitalism to
>> classless, stateless, etc.less society. They ADVOCATED
>> state ownership in the Communist Manifesto, and in Socialism:
>> Utopia to Science, even within the context of their world-wide
>> revolution, which was the only scenario for a true socialist
>> revolution.

And answered:
> No, no, no! They may have advocated a transitional program
> of worker demands when in conflict with the newly established
> bourgeoisie, but their ultimate demand was "an administration
> of things" not state ownership!

Len's answer is unfortunately all wrong. The administration of
things, or the upper stage of classless, stateless, etc.less society,
will not come about as the result of anyone's demand, it will
merely be something that we gradually and silently approach,
both in my scenario, and in Marx's scenario. How to get to that
upper stage is where we all part ways, viz., my way is different
from Len's way, which is also different from M+E's way in the
Communist Manifesto (MESW 1, p. 126): "The proletariat will
use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from
the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the
hands of the State, i.e., the proletariat organised as the ruling class;
and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible."

Property, in the Marxist scenario, was to become the property
of the proletariat organized as ruling class, i.e., workers dominant
in a state of their own making, like the Paris Commune. In his
pamphlet "Socialism: Utopia to Science", Engels wrote (MESW
2, p. 146): "Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and
more completely transforms the great majority of the population
into proletarians, it creates the power which, under penalty of its
own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. Whilst
it forces on more and more the transformation of the vast means
of production, already socialised, into state property, it shows
itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat
seizes political power and turns the means of production into
state property. But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat,
abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, abolishes
also the state as state."

From today's perspective, the scenario has to be absurd, but that's
what was in black and white, and Engels was highly influenced by
what was going on in Germany. In his scenario, the era of proletarian
state ownership was to coincide with the era of proletarian dictatorship,
which era was to be transitional to a higher phase of communist society,
aka classless, stateless, etc.less society. My way of getting to a higher
phase is different from M+E's, which seems to be different from WSM's.
Some unity! But that same disunity is the result of the infinite number of
ways to expropriate property and deal with government, and revolutionaries
being unable to decide on a common plan, which is why expropriation never
happens, and never will, but no one can let go of that broken dream as long
as a few people can make a living by selling it.

Len quoted me:
>> The difference between 'state capitalism' and proletarian
>> dictatorship for M+E was the content of the state, i.e., whether
>> a socialist or a bourgeois party was dominant in the state.

And answered:
> Jeeez Ken. How can you say that? It is not
> in my reading of anything they've said.

Back in his pamphlet "Socialism: Utopia to Science", Engels
wrote (MESW 2, p. 144): "In any case, with trusts or without,
the official representative of capitalist society - the state - will
ultimately have to undertake the direction of production. I say
"have to." For only when the means of production and distribution
have actually outgrown the form of management by joint-stock
companies, and when, therefore, the taking them over by the state
has become economically inevitable, only then - even if it is the
state of today that effects this - is there an economic advance, the
attainment of another step preliminary to the taking over of all
productive forces by society itself. But of late, since Bismarck
went in for state ownership of industrial establishments, a kind
of spurious socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again,
into something of flunkeyism, that without more ado declares
all state ownership, even of the Bismarckian sort, to be socialistic.
Certainly, if the taking over by the state of the tobacco industry
is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered
among the founders of socialism."

According to Engels, even bourgeois STATE capitalism would
be an advance over ordinary capitalism, and he distinguished
between Bismarck's state capitalism (German state ownership
of industries) and his and Marx's socialism, which he clearly
enough defined as proletarian state ownership. If the bourgeoisie
was in control of the state, then Engels would not have qualified
that particular state ownership as socialistic state ownership. Even
though Len might think that "Marx never spoke of proletarian
state property", that phrase is a good way to sum it up, for we
now know 2 things: M+E certainly intended for the proletariat
to wield state power, and they certainly intended the means of
production to be owned by the proletarian state (or dictatorship),
so, by doing some Boolean addition of 'proletarian state' and 'state
ownership', it's not difficult to arrive at 'proletarian state ownership'.

End of part B

Ken Ellis

7-12-00

Even though I can hardly follow the gist of Lawrence's writings,
I'm with Toby against censorship.

Ken Ellis

7-13-00

On the 10th, Deathy wrote:

> a democratic revolution by the mass majority would obviate
> the need for such violence.

That's what you may wish, but did you ever consider the reasons
why people have had revolutions in the past? Which absolute
monarchy in the West needs to be replaced by a democracy?
Which colony in the West needs to be liberated? Others in the
forum have already notified us that the U.K. is a very limited
monarchy. The inability of the royals to keep their house in order
often sparks talk of abolishing what's left of the monarchy
altogether. The monarchy has been limited since the Magna
Carta, hasn't it? I ask because I'm not sure of what possible
lapses into absolutism might have occurred since then.

Deathy quoted me:
>> capitalism grew up alongside and within feudal societies,
>> and eventually overtook them both economically and
>> politically, and sometimes by force.

And answered:
> That was capitalism, not socialism, they won't make their
> revolutions in the same way, hence the odd comments about
> unconscious masses, and Socialist revolution being the first
> revolution about the future, etc (18th brumaire IIRC).

I'm also pretty sure that feudalism grew up alongside of the
system of ancient slavery, and eventually replaced it. Likewise,
the system of ancient slavery grew up alongside primitive
communism, and also produced the 7 wonders of the ancient
world. There is something that is happening within capitalism
that we should take advantage of. Because we don't play the role
of willing wage-slaves as well as the bosses would like us to,
the bosses are soon going to make life very 'easy' for us by
replacing us all with robots in the next few decades. Their
successful replacement of us all will also mean an end to the
very system that made them our masters. Shouldn't we sort of
help them along and help them realize their goal? Shouldn't our
whole class become cognizant of this development so as to
better prepare ourselves to take care of our own class interests
along the way? We either share the remaining work, or else
we prepare for a horror scenario.

Deathy wrote:
> the powers that be are worried enough to want to try and
> ride roughshod over the constitution and enable low ranking
> military officers to suspend the constitution (that plan failed,
> but why was it put forward?).

Quite a few people have pointed out that similar freedom-negating
powers under FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Act)
already exist. All it takes is for some kind of tornado, hurricane
or flood for them to establish their own brand of martial law
to keep the population out of the affected areas.

Deathy quoted me:
>> Shorter hours would cure just about
>> everything that's wrong in the West.

And answered:
> No, because it would precipitate a massive capital strike
> as finance capital finds an utter non-availability of
> profitable investment portfolios.

I doubt if they would be as spiteful as all that.
This sounds like a tale of 'them vs. us to the death'.

Deathy quoted me:
>> An amazing thing happened after Clinton got elected, however,
>> and our military actions seemed all so very humanitarian and the
>> protests melted away to practically nothing after the Gulf War.

And answered:
> The humanitarianism is a cover for more of the same old shit -
> last I checked, starving Iraqis to death isn't very humanitarian, nor
> is manufacturing a war in Yugoslavia (Allbright was very explicit
> going to Rambouillet that the plan was get the Albanians on board,
> and then threaten to bomb the serbs, U.S. Officials were overheard
> saying they deliberately set the terms so as to be unacceptable to
> the Serbs). Further, it doesn't matter what the cause is, the fact
> is that the military is not under our control...

Deathy is correct about the battlefields not being pleasant places,
but we couldn't have the hated Milosevic running around like a little
Hitler ethnically cleansing Kosovo. Somebody had to stop him. Our
policy on Iraq, on the other hand, continues to be cruel and without
merit. If I had it my way ... Deathy is right about the military
not being under popular control.

Deathy quoted me:
>> Except if they want to get re-elected, which
>> applies especially to representative and senators.

And answered:
> Once every five years we get a choice of rulers who will do
> what they want for the next five years, the control there is
> marginal at best, manifesto commitments change in the
> light of 'events'.

Our governments don't appear to be very democratic in Deathy's
estimation, which is probably why he is a revolutionary. I would guess
that he would like to help bring 'real' democracy to the U.K. and the
world. Sounds like a lonely mission. I know what those are like.

Ken Ellis

7-13-00

Len wrote:
> Just a question. did you say you are
> a member of the U.S. Labor Party?

No. I never was. I think that the U.S. Labor Party is a Larouche group. Yuk.

There is a new party calling itself Labor Party that grew out of
Labor Party Advocates in 1996 that is based mostly upon union
representation. It is very social-democratic. They believe a lot in
taxing and spending. They respect FDR's New Deal. I was a
member of it from '96-7 to try to influence it to pay more
attention to shorter hours, which they include in their
program. I let my membership lapse when I moved.

Ken Ellis

7-14-00

On the 9th, Paddy quoted me:

>> the only time changing property relations was feasible was
>> after overthrowing feudal monarchies or liberating colonies ...

And then answered:
> It's no good, I just don't get why you keep saying this.
> We westerners are just too damned advanced to be
> capable of change, is that it?

Wellllll, not really. The inability of socialists to expropriate
property in the West is not the fault of the socialists, nor because
of a lack of revolutionary zeal. It's just that the institution of private
property is very valuable in the West, lots more than it was in most
other parts of the world in Marx's day. Engels wrote somewhere that
the institution of private property in his day barely extended south
or east of the Mediterranean, so the West was the place where people
really valued it and were more likely to fight ferociously to defend it.
In the areas of the world where there might be a few scattered factories
and still lots of land where the memory of its communal farming was
fresh in the minds of the people, as in Russia, socialists had a
theoretically easier time of concentrating it all in the hands of the
state, especially after overthrowing a totally non-democratic regime
in 1917 gave them the power to do what they wanted. Socialists were
once able to play major roles in revolutionizing non-Western countries,
where private property wasn't as highly prized as in the West, and where
totalitarian regimes screamed to be overthrown. Because the world is
presently so much more democratized than what it was a scant century
ago, socialists in the West consequently have few to no opportunities
to lead democratic movements in the interests of the vast majorities like
they did in the past couple of centuries, so you may never again see a
situation where socialists will be able to gain control of total state power
by non-electoral means. I hope you'll find this explanation a little better,
but be sure to complain if it still isn't good enough. And try to be more
specific about what the trouble is. If we are sincere, we can iron out
the rough spots in a civil fashion.

Paddy wrote:
> War. Try that. I challenge you to show us how your work-
> sharing scheme will solve that little perennial irritation.

All right, shorter hours does nothing about war, but are people
going to revolt just because Western powers try to keep tyrants
like Sadam or Milosevic from walking all over their neighbors?
People in the West will continue to support military action to keep
tyrants in check, and many Westerners will continue to risk their
own lives to keep other warriors from getting too close to one
another's throats. I used to be a war-tax resistor, and while there
were plenty of reasons in the '70's and '80's to want to resist, they
considerably declined in the '90's, and the war-tax resistor groups
went through some tough times, and I didn't get anywhere near as
many mailings as before. But, suppose we do make progress on the
work-sharing idea, and it begins to tickle people's consciousness.
Part of the consciousness is that people are all in this together.
United we stand, divided we fall. The more the work-sharing idea
spreads to the parts of the world where wars are more likely, then
the more people may resist taking up arms against their neighbors.
I know that shorter hours will do nothing about war in the short
run, but the humanitarianism of it might rub off eventually.

Paddy wrote:
> Well, I thought the US crash was a credit bubble actually, not
> an overproduction crisis. But let's examine your reasoning.
> Just because Bill Green warned of economic troubles due to
> surpluses does not mean that was the reason for the Crash.
> On that logic, prophets who predict dire things because we
> have displeased God must be correct, whenever there's an
> earthquake.

Bill Green wasn't the only one, by any means. Prof. Ben Hunnicutt, in
his book "Work Without End", researched the views of many prominent
economists and politicians in the '20's. Here's a small sample of what a
couple of them thought (pp. 56-7): "The widespread public concern over
the problems of overproduction, or "underconsumption," were influential
in the rise of a new "subfield," consumption economics. ... But [Hazel]
Kyrk noted that when surpluses did occur, as they had after the war
[WW One], old habits and traditions of consuming and thrift, born of
scarcity, could continue. They could easily result in the dangerous
"oversaving" and "underconsumption," causing fluctuations in the
economy and even depressions. ... if savings made possible in times
of surplus were put "into the production of staple necessities," there
may be "oversupply." "The poor cannot buy more and the rich will
not." ... The way out of this dilemma was what Thorstein Veblen
called "the emulative propensity of man." ... The richer classes led
the way to progress, consuming new luxuries, which, coveted by those
in social situations just below them, turned the wheels of economic
advance. Advertising and "producer activities in marketing" also had
a role in this "dynamic growth of consumption," since they "augment
and accelerate the changes in the standards of living." Kyrk suggested
that economic growth required a dynamic standard of consumption
that "necessitates expenditures upon luxuries" - luxuries for the well-
off that eventually turned into "necessities" for the poorer classes.
Chronic unemployment and periodic depression could be avoided if
"dynamic consumption of luxuries" provided expanding domestic
markets. ... Although it was impossible to divide the market between
more and less necessary products and services, still some workers
seemed not to be as interested in the newer things being produced;
they were not as spontaneous in their buying as before. This had
resulted in a "productive loss ... of national concern." New slack
had developed in economic growth: the sluggishness of workers to
consume new things and their regrettable tendency to take leisure
rather than these new goods. ... The intelligent few, businessmen,
the rich, economists, and even government officials could and should
lead the masses to consume new products and attain "the common goal"
of increased production and consumption, instead of leaving work for
"unproductive reasons." Advertising and other aggressive methods of
persuasion had become vital parts of the economy, necessary to
sustain growth and adequate "levels of employment.""

Monsignor John Ryan of Catholic University also believed, along
with labor, that (p. 90): "Not lack of money or credit for productive
operations but lack of demand for goods already produced was the
cause of the Depression."

Paddy asked:
> why exactly would workers WANT to take more leisure time,
> since their income would obviously fall pro rata? Even if the boss
> forced them to take a cut in hours and rates (we had a 3-day week
> in Britain in the seventies) the long-term effect would be to reduce
> the buying power of the working class so much that profits would
> fall, dragging prices and wages down into a deflationary spiral.

As noted earlier, labor PREFERRED to take leisure time, as
reflected in Bill Green's push for the shorter-hour solution to the
unemployment crisis of the Depression. Shorter hours wasn't
something that 'labor bosses' were trying to force down the
throats of reluctant workers who might have been looking
forward to the days of the future when their hard work would
win them a house in the suburbs, a two-car garage, a swimming
pool, a boat, a personal computer, radios, TVs, refrigerators, gas
ranges, washing machines, diamonds for the wife, etc., and other
stuff they didn't have back then, or very little of. Workers back
then preferred the free time, but the bosses and the government
wanted to keep them working long hours producing more and
more, and it was bosses and government who wanted (or invented)
advertising, consumerism, quick and easy credit, unchecked
population growth, expansion into foreign markets, government
spending, etc., so that over-produced commodities would find
ready markets. Workers would rather have had the free time back
then, although I'm not sure of their attitude now. They may have
bought the New Deal message - hook, line and sinker - if today
is any indication. Now we are crazy over stuff, but don't anyone
try to take it away.

Paddy wrote:
> If the workers expect the boss to pay the same wage for fewer
> hours (well, they can dream, can't they?), why don't they just go
> on strike for it anyway, regardless of whether there is any new
> technology or not? The point is, there is no logical connection
> between these two things despite you putting them together.

It's a very old relation going back to the 19th century. As Hunnicutt
said on page 7: "According to the nineteenth-century doggerel:
Whether you work by the piece or work by the day, decreasing the
hours increases the pay." But, Hunnicutt described the more recent
relations between hours and wages as more complex than that, and
saw the Depression as the turning point in which we switched from
the century-long quest for more leisure time (1820-1920) to the
present age of 'work and wages'. Hunnicutt is doubtful if workers
were even conscious of the choice made for them in the '30's.
He also doubts whether, even if they understood that choice,
they could have acted on that choice for themselves.

High or low wages are a subsidiary issue to me. I can't really
get excited over the possibility that they will go up, down, or
stay the same as the result of sharing work. The big issue
for me is whether we can rally humanitarianism by
choosing to share work through shorter hours.

Paddy asked:
> Next, what is the point of counter-acting improvements
> in technology, from the boss point of view? That's like
> buying a calculator and then counting on your hands.

From an individual boss point of view, shortening hours would
probably be detrimental, so most would resist it. Some New Deal
programs prevented individual bosses from bearing the brunt of
policies that they might have wanted to adopt on their own as
humanitarian gestures, but, if undertaken individually, would have
been financially ruinous. It's funny, though, that the Kellogg (Corn
Flakes) Company adopted a six-hour day in the '30's, and because
of the enlightened views of the owner, didn't get around to
completely phasing out the reduced hours until the late '80's.

Paddy asked:
> Further, what makes you think bosses have the faintest idea
> what tomorrow's market is going to be like, a required insight
> if they are going to 'manage' production in the way you imply?
> Of course, if managers all had second sight, and laid off workers
> prior to an overproduction crisis, then there would in theory be
> no crisis. But very few bosses commune with the spirits.

Such large planning decisions are more in the realm of government
responsibility than the responsibility of individual bosses. The
government nowadays keeps its finger on the pulse of the economy
very closely, and uses its expertise to keep the economy from going
awry on the scale of the Depression. In the USA, Alan Greenspan
chairs the Federal Reserve Bank, which sets interest rates for loans
to member banks, which lend to investors. To cool the economy,
he raises the interest rate, to speed it up, he lowers it.

Paddy wrote:
> You didn't answer my post (some time ago) about doctors
> and nurses, and the training involved. How about it?

Maybe Paddy forgot what I wrote on June 20. I hereby quote
my answer given then:

"In his section on economics, Paddy made some valid points
that got me to re-think a propaganda point. Twenty-four hour
institutions like hospitals normally operating with eight-hour
shifts could not switch to 6 four-hour shifts very easily. Though
I more intended the zero-hour day to be construed in a figurative
sense, Paddy's comments may be reasonable enough to restrain
me from talking about zero-hour work days and instead switch to
talking about zero-hour work-years and lifetimes. I am as sure as
Paddy that hospitals aren't going to switch to a whole bunch of
small shifts. People will find better ways to share work, whether
it's an extra day off per week, an extra week off per month, an extra
month off per year, an extra year off per lifetime, etc., but they won't
do it with as many 4-hour shifts as what a slow transition to a 'zero-
hour day' conjures up. All of those people traveling back and forth to
their 4-hour shifts would also be an ecological disaster, I think many
of us would agree. What do you think, or is 'the zero-hour day' still
good enough a concept for propaganda purposes?"

Paddy skepticized:
> Moreover, I can't see why a full-time worker should consider
> giving up a portion of their working week to help some slob
> like me who doesn't have a job. What's in it for them?

It wouldn't or shouldn't come down to a decision for a bloke to
make on his own. It will be the policy of the state that generalizes
whatever sacrifices the people have to make. Paddy here nailed the
whole crux of the problem that will increasingly come to bear on us
all as time goes on. Will people want to do anything for the good of
the human race, and express their concerns to their governments
who will hopefully do something real, or will workers instead try
to maintain their narrow, individual, selfish interests, even if it
produces suffering of biblical proportions? That is the question
that only the action or inaction of billions of people (pressuring
or not pressuring their governments) will answer. I can only
guess that when the problems really hit the middle classes (like
they did temporarily in the mid-'90's), the middle classes will want
to do something real about sharing work. Individual workers will
be spared the burden of sharing work on an individual, or even
on a union basis, for they will all demand government action.

Paddy opined about my alleged intentions:
> Some vague notion of dictatorship by the workers,
> it seems, which would lead to nothing but unprofitability,
> financial disaster, rapidly falling living standards for all and
> ultimately, repressive state legislation? A circus run by the
> animals is still a circus, only more, not less, chaotic.

Hasn't all I've written indicated my opinion of the obsolescence
and undesirability of dictatorships of any sort, as well as that of
state ownership, socialism, communism, anarchism, etc.? The
worst that can be said of me is that I advocate amending laws
that have been on the books since 1938. I hope that's not TOO
reactionary for everyone, but I would understand that it WOULD
be too reactionary if everyone out there regards reforms from
the same perspective as the state-smashing anarchists of my
old American SLP, who want to throw out all 'capitalist laws'.

Paddy quoted me:
>> Wages would rise as a result of the artificial
>> shortage of labor we could impose on the labor
>> market, eliminating wage-lowering competition.

And then answered:
> I wish you were right about this, I really do.
> Because it would give the WSM something concrete to shout
> about in the here and now, and we're always being criticised for
> being too 'removed'. But you think about how we behave in this
> job-jungle a moment. There's no solidarity. We'd all knife our
> best friend to get a better job. The union movement is a ghost.
> Reagan and Thatcher did their best to produce an 'individualistic'
> mentality and they succeeded. Nothing short of a major paradigm
> shift is going to work, and certainly not a minimal idea like this.
> As we keep saying to you, your 'solution' takes as much class
> consciousness and cooperation as ours, but for a fraction of the
> gains. Even your theory (extrapolated for our benefit?) that it
> might lead on to some propertyless (etc) society is pure
> speculation. It might, it might not. You don't know, and nor do I.
> But what an elaborate, meandering and multi-staged programme
> you have devised, compared to ours! All those links to negotiate.
> All those break points to cross. All those places where something
> can go wrong. If in doubt, go for simplicity. Even if you don't agree
> that it would work, you have to admit our 'solution' is simpler than
> yours - the abolition of capitalism in just ONE class act.

2002 note: In the Collected Works, M+E never used "abolition
of capitalism" or "abolish capitalism". (End of note.)

Allow me to clarify that I think that wages would rise for the
lowest-paid workers, but may not rise for the better-paid
workers. I can't get much more definite than that.

Paddy is right about our present lack of solidarity. But, I think that
the working class needs a feasible program over which to achieve
solidarity. Our deciding to switch from dog-eat-dog competition
to equitably share work would be all of the paradigm shift that
we could handle, or would find desirable. At the rate we are
going, it will take a major paradigm shift just to obtain an
amendment in the interests of the working class.

I wonder what Paddy meant by:
> Even your theory (extrapolated for our benefit?)

It sounds like a hint that I may not actually believe everything
that I've written, and that I might really believe in something else,
and that I might be hiding my full agenda. If that's what's being
hinted at, there's no reason to be shy about it. I can understand
the paranoia. I came to understand quite a while back that no
revolutionary can trust another revolutionary, nor can ex-
revolutionaries be trusted, nor even revolutionaries within ones'
own party. It's a dog-eat-dog world, in or out of the parties.

I don't think that my program is all that meandering or elaborate.
All that it needs to be successful it to amend laws that have been
on the books since 1938. That's pretty simple, but, at the same
time, difficult for all of the mass support that must be gathered.
The WSM program seems to have more than one step than just
'abolishing capitalism'. The election must be won, and then
control of the state taken in order to put it out of its misery.
I guess then it's up to the people to abolish property, state,
money and classes, and then somehow carry on production.
Do I have that right? I'm never sure.

Paddy wanted to know where Engels spoke of Marx opining on the
relative cheapness of buying out the capitalist class, which would be
a very civil act, as in United Airlines employees buying their own
airline, but more on a total scale. In his 1894 article "The Peasant
Question in France and Germany", Engels wrote (MESW 3, p. 474):

"As soon as our Party is in possession of political power it
has simply to expropriate the big landed proprietors just like
the manufacturers in industry. Whether this expropriation is
to be compensated for or not will to a great extent depend not
upon us but the circumstances under which we obtain power,
and particularly upon the attitude adopted by these gentry, the big
landowners, themselves. We by no means consider compensation
as impermissible in any event; Marx told me (and how many times!)
that in his opinion we would get off cheapest if we could buy out
the whole lot of them. But this does not concern us here. The big
estates thus restored to the community are to be turned over
by us to the rural workers who are already cultivating
them and are to be organised into co-operatives."

Note to Len, who opined of what Engels just wrote:
> This was made as a humorous and sarcastic commentary, not to be
> taken seriously as the basis for a political and economic program.

Which part of Engels' text was sarcastic and humorous, except
for the "(and how many times!)" portion? Len's comment seems
to be a perfect example of flak, the purpose of which is to persuade
people to disregard the intent of M+E on some very serious problems
and solutions. I couldn't find anything else humorous in the rest of
Engels' 20-page article. A certain amount or sarcasm can be identified
therein, but, for Engels, sarcasm was a tool that he used to highlight the
folly of his opponents. He was dead serious in presenting his readers
with the most logical reasoning he could muster in favor of his views,
for the Germans to whom he addressed part of the article daily
confronted both censorship and suppression of freedom of
speech. He wrote, at the very end of the article (MESW 3, p. 476):

"It is here, in East-Elbe Prussia, that the decisive battle of our cause
will have to be fought and for this very reason both government and
Junkerdom will do their utmost to prevent our gaining access here.
And should, as we are threatened, new violent measures be resorted
to to impede the spread of our Party, their primary purpose will be
to protect the East-Elbe rural proletariat from our propaganda.
It's all the same to us. We shall win it nevertheless."

Socialists were under the gun so often back then. Germany
suffered under an anti-socialist law from 1878-90, so Engels
was being very serious about the threat of a restoration of
oppression. Socialism in the West today, however, is such an
incredible joke of a program that most of the people attracted to
it hardly have to worry about credibility, so have given themselves
carte blanche to say anything expedient. Civil actions such as
'buyout of the capitalists' and hot topics like 'proletarian state
property' do not fit in with the WSM scenario. So, guess what,
folks? If someone in the WSM says that you can disregard some
of the writings of M+E, then go ahead and disregard them. You
have your marching orders. Just be warned that Len's propensity
to misrepresent their views indicates that he is not really interested
in seriously considering all possible solutions to the problems that
beset us. I think that Len owes his readers an apology and a retraction.

Paddy quoted me:
>> Not the advances in the means of production, I hope.

And then answered:
> Why not? Len has told you several times that the
> revolutionary programme of 1848 is not relevant today, and
> that there is no need for a transition period of state ownership.

The problem that I have with the 'improvements in the means of
production' argument against violence and dictatorship is that it does
not really explain why violence and dictatorship are not necessary
today. What if someone were to ask 'why' improvements in the means
of production make violence and dictatorship unnecessary? What is it
about an economic fact of life that could nullify the political oppression
that Marx encouraged for revolutionary situations? Here we are getting
closer to an answer, for the word 'revolution' is key. In Marx's estimate,
the reason the USA, England and possibly Holland in his day could have
avoided violent revolution and dictatorship was because he counted those
countries as democratic enough for workers to get what they wanted by
means of garden-type variety democratic practices. The reason it seems
like the most advanced countries can get away without violence and
dictatorship is that they are coincidentally democracies. 'Advances in
means of production' was never a correct answer, unless, of course,
someone thinks that they have a better answer.

Len was right about us not needing the revolutionary programme
of 1848, and about us not needing transition periods of state
ownership. In fact, we don't even need expropriation to get to
workless, classless, stateless, propertyless and moneyless society.

Ken Ellis

7-15-00

Hi, Nicholas,

snip personal data

Sorry to be so delinquent about responding to your comment about my
comment on 'socialism'. You wrote: There will always be work to do.

Did you catch the recent article about the new computer IBM is sending to
Lawrence Liverless Labs? It covers 2 basketball courts and allegedly has the
smarts of a mouse. By 2010, they expect a computer of that size to have the
smarts of a human. After another 10 years, I expect they should be able to
shrink that brain power into a teacup. After that, the robots will really march
in and take away our jobs. You and I will be past retirement age anyway,
so it won't be any skin off of our teeth. I just worry about the kids
running around today. That's what my concern is about.

One of the WSM's big geniuses is giving me a flak attack. He bombards me
with useless and spurious, but high-falutin garbage that he manipulates into
making my arguments look bad. Len W. of the WSM is a worthy successor
to the Arnold Petersen of my old SLP who wrote most of the lies that I had
to refute in my book. Too few people in the forum understand enough
history to know that this is what's going on in front of their eyes.

Bro'Ken

7-16-00

On the 14th, Len wrote:
> Sorry Ken, but I believe I am correct. Engels'
> comments about "buying out" the capitalists
> was meant to be sarcastic and humorous.

There wasn't much in the context of what Engels wrote that
was humorous or sarcastic. I can't understand why Len has to
continue to deny the existence of Marx's 'buyout of the capitalist
class', unless he feels as though he must automatically deny
everything in Marx and Engels that the WSM doesn't stand for.
The buyout is well-grounded in history. In one of Marx's drafts
of "The Civil War In France", Marx spoke of the Communards
compensating the capitalists for the abandoned factories that
they took over. Once again, the Communards did so because of
their own magnanimity. Acting magnanimously is what workers
did in history, and will probably continue to do so until they are
abolished as a class. Until then, they do not look at one another
with smiles and gleams in their eyes with the thought of 'all of
that property out there that could be ours in a stroke'. The people
who think in that manner are the petty-bourgeois socialists who
can't get the idea of 'all of that property' out of their heads, and, for
that reason, put expropriation at the top of their agenda for 'when
the proletariat comes to power'. Workers, on the other hand, will
continue to want to implement civil solutions to their problems.

In his 1847 "Principles of Communism", Engels included
among other post-revolutionary demands (MESW 1, p. 90):
"Gradual expropriation of landed proprietors, factory owners,
railway and shipping magnates, partly through competition on
the part of state industry and partly directly through the
payment of compensation in currency notes."

Is Len sure that the title to Engel's essay was "A Fair Day's Wage
for a Fair Day's Pay"? He probably meant '... for a Fair Day's
WORK'. If socialism wasn't such foolishness, I'm sure that Len
would have spent a minute editing out the many typos in his
messages. But, since he probably knows that what he advocates
doesn't have a snowball's chance anyway, who cares about
accuracy, either for typos, or for historical facts. Details!

Ken Ellis

7-16-00

On the 13th, Mahyar wrote in response to my claim that
the West was justified for going after Milosevic and Hussein:

> This is ridiculous, Ken. There are many much bigger tyrants
> out there who the USA and other imperialist powers won't go
> near because they protect the current order of US hegemony and
> nanny-state capitalism. The only reason Milosevic and Hussein
> are considered tyrants by yourself and most others is because it
> is drummed into our pathetic heads on a daily basis that they are,
> and the only reason they have been attacked is because they defied
> the master's plans. The US has no qualms sending in the goons in
> Latin America and funding quasi-military states like South Korea
> and Indonesia, where labour, i.e. human, rights are a sham. What
> about Israel and Saudi Arabia, two highly oppressive and abusive
> recipients of US "aid", or Kuwait, the oil fiefdom with no regard
> for anyone outside the aristocracy? US (western) foreign policy
> is not the realm of humanitarianism, regardless of what our "free"
> media tell us. It is blatant, outright state protection of unjust
> capitalism. If you think otherwise, you're a big-time dreamer.

With his ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, are we to believe that
Milosevic didn't borrow some ideas from Hitler? I suppose
Hussein just had to set those fires as he backed out of Kuwait.
Those aggressions were very inflammatory. Some or all of the
other countries mentioned by Mahyar have had low level conflicts
for awhile, but not as close to the scale of the two tyrants in the two
dictatorships I mentioned. If Mahyar has an opinion about whether
the proletariat is going to revolt because of the skirmishes around
the world in the past 10 years, he don't seem to be rushing to say
"Yes! Maybe tomorrow!" If workers in the West are not going to
revolt over the wars going on, then just what are they going to revolt
over? Workers in the West have their democracies, don't they? They
don't have any absolute monarchies to overthrow, do they? So, just
what are they going to revolt over? The oppression of the proletariat?
The 10% unemployment rates in the West? The crime? The grinding
poverty? The concentration of ownership in the hands of a few? There
has to be a reason why we are supposed to revolt someday. Help me,
Mahyar, help me think up a reason why we must revolt so that we can
continue to think that the revolution might arrive tomorrow, which will
give us an excuse for avoiding the day-to-day struggle.

Let me give Mahyar a more concrete indication of why people
revolted in the past. In his Oct. 18, 1882 letter to Bebel, Engels
wrote (MESCorrespondence, p. 333): "This at last is the dreamed-
of realisation of the phrase "one reactionary mass". All the official
parties united in one lump here, and we Socialists in one column
there - great decisive battle; victory all along the line at one blow.
In real life things do not happen so simply. In real life, as you also
remark, the revolution begins the other way round, by the great
majority of the people and also the majority of the official parties
rallying against the government, which is thereby isolated, and
overthrowing it; and it is only after those of the official parties
which still remained have mutually, jointly, and successively
brought about one another's destruction that Vollmar's great
division takes place, bringing with it the chance of our rule. If,
like Vollmar, we wanted to start straight off with the final act
of the revolution we should be in a terribly bad way ....."

Ken Ellis

7-17-00

Hi, Stuart,

You are right to mention the dozens of conflicts around the world,
and Western and NATO complicity in them. As this old war-tax
resistor can tell you, war is not much fun. Nor is attempting to
starve the resources of one's own government in order to reduce
their abilities to make war, like I tried to do in the '80's. They just
came after me, that's all, but, having no resources, all they could
do was 'garnish' my wages, which sounds a little odd, as though
they put a sprig of parsley on my wages. What 'garnish' meant
was that about 80% of my paycheck was funneled directly into
the war machine, so I took a leave of absence, and later quit.
Whatever little I accomplished with my token resistance, maybe
it was worth it. One person's little symbolic vote against war in
Central America. No one voted for Reagan's wars at the ballot
box, but Reagan did it anyway. You are right over our relative
powerlessness on the issue of war.

You can probably tell how much I personally enjoy war. The
perspective from which I wrote to Mahyar had a bit of Devil's
Advocate in it. You were correct, in turn, to recount the litany
of abuses our Western nations have been party to.

I guess one could say that "Stalin was on "our" side during the
Second World War" because Hitler was attacking both Russia
and American allies in Europe, and threatened democracy and
civil solutions that we'd grown accustomed to, but you noticed
how the hot war of the '40's was replaced with the cold war of
the next few decades. The Arabs, I believe, have a saying: 'the
enemy of my enemy is my friend.' Remove the Hitler enemy,
and the USA and Stalin could go back to being enemies again.

I can hardly believe that the USA would go into the Balkans or
Iraq if some of those countries hadn't started hot wars on other
people's turf. Using Stuart's logic, it's a wonder why the USA is
not shooting up Argentina or Costa Rica right at this moment,
and just for the fun of it. I have few qualms about the West
preventing a tin-pot dictator from setting up an empire where
he doesn't belong. Stuart has yet to make clear whether he
supports the little ventures of Milosevic and Hussein. Since
Stuart hasn't mentioned their crimes, and only talks about the
big bad capitalist West, what else is a person to conclude
except that Stuart supports Milosevic and Hussein, and
everything they do in the mid-East and the Balkans?

Stuart wrote:
> Oh yes. Workers have "their" democracies all right. But
> don't hold your breath, because workers will be sent to
> their deaths again soon enough. Why will they go so
> willingly? Because people like Ken and others who
> support "our democracies" will tell them that there
> is another Hitler to deal with, conveniently forgetting
> that it is a Hitler sending them there in the first place.

So, Western workers get sent to their deaths because Western
democracy-lovers are all victims of Western propaganda, and
Milosevic and Hussein are our innocent victims? Just the footage on
CNN could inform you otherwise. I wanted to smash my democracy
for 22 years. For the 4 years I was in my party back in the '70's, we
constructed webs of lies that somehow hung together in a perverse
little network of 'logic' that seemingly could explain everything.
Whatever bits of reality that intruded upon our consciousness were
seemingly insignificant enough to allow us to deny everything that
interfered with what the party had defined as immutable truth. Sects
always prey upon the need for people to belong to something by
creating webs of beliefs that people outside of the sects would
consider to be odd, indeed.

Stuart pleaded:
> Please tell me how to avoid day-to-day
> struggle. I, for one, am sick of it.

Stuart puts himself outside of the day-to-day struggle by
advocating a program that does not address the long hours
and low wages that he practically predicts to be inevitable for
his boss to impose on him and his fellow workers. Perhaps he
forgot what M+E wrote in the Communist Manifesto (MESW 1,
p. 136): "The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate
aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working
class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and
take care of the future of that movement." Nothing can take care of
both their long-term and short-term interests better than reducing
hours of labor by law. If Stuart has a complaint about long hours
and low wages, and if his fellow workers have similar gripes, but,
if all that Stuart can do for himself is to pine away for a socialist
solution, then he isn't going to be of much use to his fellow
workers to whom Stuart could already be talking about uniting
over a shorter-hours solution to their immediate problem.

Ken Ellis

7-18-00

Hi, Gamma,

Got your message. Property certainly is a basic human right in today's
society, but I can foresee a time in the not so distant future when it might
merge into the collective, like 'the air we breathe'.

What will happen: The rich will continue to automate and put people out of
work. IBM just delivered to Lawrence Livermore Labs a new computer the
size of two basketball courts with the smarts of a mouse. They say that a
computer that size 10 years from now will have the smarts of a human. I
say that a computer with the smarts of human ought to be able to fit into a
teacup by 2020, after which we will see some real robotization going on. If
the working class can learn in the meantime to share what little work that has
yet to be taken over by machines and technology, it will have also taken an
essential step toward learning how to share the products of whatever entity
it is that will create the future necessities of life, at the same time that
'workers' will have no way of going to work to earn their salt. What
a crisis for workaholics and the Puritan work ethic!

Anyway, the scenario continues: The ongoing replacement of labor with
machinery finally reaches the middle class who decides that it and the working
class should share the remaining work until no one ever has to 'go to work' any
more. At the same time, sharing work creates a shortage of labor that not only
drives wages up, but also so decimates profits that owners plead for workers
to buy them out. Learning to equitably share work also prepares the lower
classes to share the products of whatever entity that creates the means of life
after no one ever has to go to work again. Class distinctions then fade away.
Because no one can make profits the way they used to, property ownership
loses its appeal, and property gradually merges into the collective. As that
occurs, government also loses its functions and gradually disappears,
starting with the most repressive aspects first. After work, classes,
and the state fade away, property and money will also fade away.

Where socialists go wrong is in advocating expropriation or redistribution
of property before the conditions for its abolition have arrived. In the
meantime, the conditions for the abolition of labor are fast arriving, while
the socialists have nothing to say about that because they are fixated on
expropriating property. I've suspected for a long time that their fixation
is symptomatic of their petty-bourgeois nature, which is reflected in
their general lack of connection to workers and unions.

Libertarians have a nice philosophy, and just about the only fault that I can
find with them is that they might disagree with the regulations on hours of
labor that will be required so that the lower classes will be able to equitably
share work. Let me know what you think.

Epsilon

7-18-00

Mahyar wrote on the 17th:
> I think you've been spared by the fact that
> I'm a computer moron and I can't trace your original.

What's the significance of that comment? I'll bet that
I'm even more of a computer moron than Mahyar.

Whether bombing was ever 'humanitarian' or not, the only point
that I really wanted to make about the subject of war is that people
in the West are not likely to revolt in protest over the war policies
of NATO countries. That's all. Maybe it was a mistake for me to
use the word 'humanitarian' in any proximity to the West's halting
of tyrants like Milosevic and Sadam. I certainly feel punished enough
over that. I certainly didn't intend for bombings to be interpreted as
humanitarian, if that's what people read into my writings. That's all
ancillary to the main topic, anyway, which is that: the West probably
won't revolt over our latest military involvements. The most notable
recent demos have been over the subject of 'free trade' and the WTO,
if I'm not mistaken. I can't remember a notable war demo in the USA
since ex-President Bush's Gulf War, but even if I'm wrong about that,
what's a demo compared to a revolution?

Mahyar wrote:
> You have much knowledge in your head, which can be a
> dangerous thing when used incorrectly. When you constantly
> misquote and misrepresent, and constantly talk about socialism
> to mean authoritarian regimes and state capitalism, you do
> yourself and your 'zero-work' argument no good at all.

In the past, communism and socialism have been closely
associated with "authoritarian regimes and state capitalism", so
people in general have very little interest in anything resembling
socialism, communism or anarchism, no matter in what glowing
terms anyone defines any of those terms. People will continue to
associate the terms 'socialism' and 'communism' with things that
failed in the past, and responsible for a lot of bloodshed and
inefficiency, so will reject them for their names alone. People will
continue to uphold the institution of private property, and will fight
to protect it. If people in the USA were willing to fight to the death
to preserve as immoral a form of property ownership as slavery,
and then refused to divide the plantations to provide freed slaves
with their promised '40 acres and a mule', then just think how
hard people would fight to preserve private ownership of land
and other means of production. Better than anything else I can
think of, this historical example of what people in the West are
willing and not willing to do, proves that mucking about with
property relations is impossible at this stage of our development,
and that it is better to wait until after we have abolished work, a
task which the capitalist class is actually helping us to accomplish.
As class distinctions then fade away, property will then fail to attract
the esteem that it enjoys today, which is when you will see property
begin to merge into the collective, but you won't see any fading in
interest before then. In Marx's day, taking away the property of the
rich was conceivable after overthrowing feudal monarchies all across
Europe and creating the giant proletarian dictatorship that would have
made counter-revolution impossible, but socialists no longer have
opportunities to lead democratic movements because we already have
our democracies, so will not be able to find another compelling issue
over which to lead people into circumstances providing the access to
power that would make socialism feasible, which is another historical
lesson that proves that mucking about with property relations is
presently unfeasible. The lack of opportunity to lead mass democratic
movements will prevent socialism from happening, at least until after
the abolition of classes, and the American slavery observation
demonstrated the unfeasibility of socialism as well. Those are 2
powerful historical arguments against 'socialism now'. How would
Mahyar counter those 2 arguments? Does he have enough interest
in the lower classes to actually carefully consider those arguments
against his plans for society? Or, can Mahyar 'afford' to dismiss
those observations as irrelevant or uninteresting?

Mahyar has yet to make a case for me using my knowledge
incorrectly, nor for misquoting or misrepresenting. On many
important points, I have sought backing from the works of M+E.
I have quoted at length from their works. I have included lots of
contextual material to show that I did not quote out of context. I
give page numbers so that people can go directly to the pages in
question. I am willing to discuss the points in dispute. What
more could anyone want from someone who is trying to
prove his point in a principled manner? Capitulation?

On the other hand, I have received in return nothing substantial
to overturn the bulk of my arguments. On the occasions when
I have been shown to be wrong, I have admitted such, and have
gratefully accepted valid corrections. But, when I show from
actual text that M+E intended for workers to replace old states
with workers' states, and show that M+E wanted workers to take
state power and practice proletarian policies in states of their own
making (for which M+E specified a democratic-republican form),
and when I show that they wanted workers to shorten their hours
of labor under the aegis of their proletarian dictatorship, and when
I show that M+E wanted workers to concentrate all capital in the
hands of workers' states, and when I show that workers' revolutions
would have been meaningless unless occurring simultaneously in
the most advanced countries, what do I receive but objections? All
of a sudden, I am the one who is misquoting and misrepresenting,
but my accusers are seemingly helpless to PROVE me wrong.
They bluster and assert, and quote from irrelevant texts, but their
assertions are good enough to stand as gospel with the rest of the
converted. If I think that I have proven someone wrong to my
satisfaction, will anyone ever admit it? None have done so yet.
Is it fear of losing their auras of 'socialist infallibity'? Is it a
profound state of denial? What can I do except remain patient,
continue to press my arguments, try to establish a good track
record, try to maintain a certain amount of decorum in the face
of violent objections ("This time my gloves are off. This letter
is written with some anger which I believed justified"),
and hope for the best.

Mahyar wrote:
> Your condescensions are also not appreciated. No
> wonder you hate anarchists so much. They're too egalitarian
> for such an elitist. And what's with bagging Len for his typos?
> Who gives a flying fuck and how does that relate to his
> arguments? You seem too smart for this nonsense.

If anyone feels as though I've been condescending, I apologize. Since
smoke indicates fire in a lot of cases, I'll turn on my smoke alarm.

I don't hate all anarchists, only anarchist leaders who knowingly
and willingly mislead their followers. I think that it's a weakness
for me to hate anyone, and just as weak to make excuses for my
hatred, but I am weak. I was badly burned by the American SLP,
willingly and knowingly. After I quit in '77, one of the 4 who also
quit at the same time (for reasons unrelated to mine) told me that
one of the inner circle writers had told him: "Ken really got f****d
over." Because of my own experience, I can only sympathize with
rank and filers who are willingly and knowingly misled. Many of
them think that they live in cozy egalitarian societies, but watch
out if they ever disagree with their leaders, for they are bound
to get a good lesson in 'class struggle within the party'.

Len's typos are one thing, but it's the incomplete and/or faulty
sentences that cause me to have to turn into a 'master code
breaker' in order to guess at what he means. At least Mahyar
writes good English. Hey, Mahyar, what do you think about
the silk winders' banner at the bottom of this message?

Ken Ellis

-------------------------------
"Live working or die fighting."
-------------------------------

"The watchword of the modern proletariat" that the silk winders
of Lyons inscribed upon their banner during their strike (From
Marx's 1869 "Report on the Basle Congress").

7-18-00

After I wrote about Marx's 2 stages of communism, Len wrote on the 14th:

> Let's put the Communist Manifesto in historical perspective. It
> was written in 1848. 1848 is not the year 2000. .... The "wresting by
> degrees" was the only move the working class could take AT THAT
> TIME. The economic conditions for Socialism not available (note that
> last line where Marx says were the proletariat must "increase the total
> productive forces as rapidly as possible". Again, appropriate perhaps
> for 1848. Inappropriate for 2000. And in later years, Marx and Engels
> would both look at the Communist Manifesto as something written down
> in a specific historical setting in a new movement, not appropriate any
> longer for what took place 20 years and more afterwards.

Len seems to be saying that the tremendous advances in the
means of production have superannuated M+E's program in the
Manifesto which included: a proletarian dictatorship which would
gradually wrest capital out of the hands of capitalists and put it
into the hands of the state. The proletarian dictatorship was to be a
transition to classless, stateless, etc.less society. The lower stage of
communism aka proletarian dictatorship was to occur first, and the
upper stage of communism aka classless, stateless etc.less society
was to gradually develop out of the first. Agreeing that this was
Marx's 1848 scenario by no means signifies that either of us would
necessarily have to espouse this program for the year 2000. It is
important, however, that we agree upon what Marx's program for
1848 consisted of, merely because we need some common ground
upon which to build, and so that we can better understand why our
own programs vary from Marx's. Is this not a noble goal? I don't
know how this possibly could be interpreted as 'my advocacy of
Marx's 1848 program'. People in this forum know quite well that
I advocate a program of sharing work that is entirely unlike what
Marx advocated in 1848, and also happens to be unlike the
program which the WSM presently advocates. While impossible
to change Marx's mind, I hope that people who are still alive and
breathing will someday come to see the greater necessity of sharing
work while 'what little that remains for humans to do' gets totally
abolished for Western nations in the next 50 years or so.

Assuming that Len would put his stamp of approval upon my
interpretation of what Marx intended in 1848, let us proceed. What
is it about an economic fact of life (the enormous improvements in
the means of production and productivity since 1848) that would
superannuate Marx's political program of proletarian dictatorship?
Len should try to show a 'cause and effect' relation between vast
increases in productivity and the West's supposed resulting
independence from Marx's proletarian dictatorship, and,
consequently, why the West could supposedly go from capitalism
directly to Marx's upper stage of classless, stateless, etc.less society,
and skip the proletarian dictatorship altogether. The WSM may
assert the possibility of us today excluding the lower stage of
communism because of productivity increases, but I think that
the WSM should be able to make a logical causative connection
between productivity increases and workers' supposed new
ability to exclude political rule in their own state.

Len wrote:
> Engels and Marx never said they wanted
> to build a "proletarian state".

2002 note: The incomplete MECW does not contain "proletarian state", but
two instances of "worker's state" were found. Here's they are, at me10.91
and me24.520 respectively:

"The National Assembly had itself forbidden the coalition of the workers
against the bourgeois. And the clubs - what were they but a coalition of the
whole working class against the whole bourgeois class, the formation of a
workers' state against the bourgeois state?"

"If Mr. Bakunin were familiar even with the position of a manager
in a workers' co-operative factory, all his fantasies about domination
would go to the devil. He should have asked himself: what forms
could management functions assume within such a workers' state,
if he wants to call it that?" (End of note.)

If the proletariat were to be elevated to ruling class, then how
could they rule without state machinery of some sort? M+E
wrote in the Communist Manifesto (MESW 1, p. 126): "The
proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees,
all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of
production in the hands of the State, i.e., the proletariat organised
as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as
rapidly as possible." Notice that M+E defined the 'State' as the
proletariat organized as ruling class. It's pretty obvious that, after
proletarian victory, the proletariat was not going to immediately lose
its identity as a class, nor were the capitalists to immediately lose their
identity as a class, even after their defeat. Again, none of this should be
interpreted as my endorsement of making a workers' party supreme in
the state. In my scenario, it may not be necessary for an identifiable
workers' party to be supreme in the state in order to create the
artificial scarcity of labor that would get all workers what they
need, especially a decent living wage with lots more leisure time.
There would only be a 50 (or so) year transition period in the
West to the total abolition of labor and the abolition of classes,
so this scenario by no means condemns workers to an eternal,
hellish wage-slavery, as has been unfairly charged in the past
by some people who misunderstood my intentions.

If, as Len asserted, M+E never said they wanted to build
a proletarian state, does this mean that Marx thought that the
proletariat was supposed to use the BOURGEOIS state to keep
the bourgeoisie in check, and that the proletariat was to concentrate
the means of production in the hands of the bourgeois state?

Len wrote:
> Neither did they say that they wanted "state ownership".

But, I thought it was pretty clear that M+E said (from above):

"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to ... centralise
all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., the
proletariat organised as the ruling class ..."

Plus, we have the crystal clear words of Engels in "Socialism: Utopian
and Scientific" that were even ITALICIZED (MESW 3, p. 146):

"The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means
of production into state property." In fact, that was the only
italicized sentence on that whole page.

2002 note: The question was not one of 'state property', but
rather of 'state ownership'. Six instances of 'state ownership'
were included in the MECW, including 2 mentions in the
same pamphlet quoted above. Here is one (me25.265):

"But the transformation, either into joint-stock companies, or
into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic
nature of the productive forces."

State ownership was obviously not their FINAL goal, but was just as
obviously an integral part of their transitional program. (End of note.)

Doesn't that mean that M+E wanted to concentrate the means
of production into the hands of the new proletarian state? Or, is
black and white tricking me again? Or, is this a bourgeois state
that would receive the means of production? The latter is what
the American SLP alleges.

I'm wondering if Len can provide any text or context to show
that M+E thought that:

> 1) the working class (not a dictatorial party,
> or vanguard) controls the state

On the other hand, I recently demonstrated that Engels wrote in
1894 (MESW 3, p. 474): "As soon as our Party is in possession
of political power it has simply to expropriate the big landed
proprietors just like the manufacturers in industry."

Len will please note that Engels wrote as late as 1894, a year before
his passing, that the 'PARTY is in possession of political power';
Engels didn't write 'working class in possession of political power'*.
Imagine, according to Engels, a Marxist party in political power! No
wonder Lenin was such a fan of Engels, as well as of Marx. Maybe
Len can come up with 'WORKING CLASS in possession of
political power' somewhere else in the writings of M+E.

* 2002 note: M+E did formulate that very idea in other places,
but not in that particular spot. See next note.

Note from late 2001: From his 1883 letter to Van Patten: "the proletarian
class will first have to possess itself of the organised political force of the
State and with its aid stamp out the resistance of the Capitalist class and
re-organise society." (End of notes.)

Len wrote:
> 3) by winning the battle of democracy the working class is in
> control and declares bourgeois property to be state property
> at the same time that it "smashes" the bureaucracy and the
> military (in other words, the State as a "class" instrument of
> oppression). The working class abolishes itself as a class.

All in a day's work, Len? And, can Len find Marx saying
all of that in a sentence or a paragraph?

Len wrote:
> 4) by abolishing the State as an instrument of class
> oppression they abolish the state as such, the state
> no longer owns anything, the people do.

Which state? The capitalist state, or the workers' state,
or is the state independent of class?

Len wrote:
> The above is based on the many references
> from Marx and Engels work that I already noted.

But, can Len find M+E actually saying those words? Or, does
Len have to extract a bunch of words from a bunch of different
writings and put them together the way Len wants?

Ken Ellis

7-19-00

On the 18th Stuart wrote:
> So when Ken implies that we are fired-up, angry Marxists
> who want to smash everything in sight, set up a dictatorship,
> indoctrinate people with false ideas, boss our "followers"
> around, use bloody violence to expropriate property ...

Because those particular qualities and attitudes are antithetical
to uncensored forums, I don't think that I would even be allowed
to communicate with anyone here if the WSM were guilty of all
of those awful things. The WSM is a socialist party, and I was a
socialist and a revolutionary for some 22 years, so I have a lot in
common with WSM philosophy, viz., we both strive for justice for
the lower classes and we strive for a classless, stateless, etc.less
society. Where we differ is in how to get to Marx's upper stage
of communism. The WSM would get there by concentrating on
abolishing property, whereas I want to get to classless, stateless,
etc.less society by first of all abolishing labor, simply because the
capitalists are helping us to abolish labor, and only they have the
resources to help themselves do that. That particular capitalist goal
is as progressive as when, in the old days, their bourgeois ancestors
helped our working class ancestors to replace monarchies with
democracies. We should help the capitalists abolish labor just the way
our ancestors helped them to abolish monarchies; but, in the meantime,
instead of allowing workers to fight to the death for the last of the long-
hour opportunities to make the rich richer than their wildest dreams,
we should take care of our own class interests by equitably sharing
work until the very last person [no longer] has to go to work.

Those of us who want to get to classless, stateless, etc.less society
are a small minority of the population, and yet we are bitterly divided
within our own ranks. Why the acrimony over the best way to achieve
our common goal of classless, stateless, etc.less society? None of the
existing sects will ever be strong enough to get there on their own, no
matter what kind of pretty picture any of them paint for getting to
socialism, and they all paint pictures. I think that we could smash
sectarianism by smashing the socialist, communist and anarchist
fixation on mucking around with property. Property is doomed one
way or another in both the WSM scenario and my scenario. We could
smash sectarianism by communicating our ideas in free, uncensored
forums like the WSM's, which is a wonderful service to the working
class. May the best ideas win the battle for hearts and minds. Only
when the best ideas rule in the marketplace can we go forward as a
class. We should all honor this free forum by striving to express our
most noble intentions toward one another and toward our class, and
by doing our best to be accurate.

Ken Ellis

7-20-00

On the 18th, Nowhere Man wrote:
> The money system has consequences like banking,
> insurance, taxation, advertising, social security, customs,
> secret service, lawyers, police, prisons, debt collection, sales,
> armed forces, defense industry, mafia, muggers, con men, arsonist,
> embezzlers, prostitutes and politicians etc etc etc, none of which
> produce anything positive or useful, and when it's remembered
> that those doing useful work are producing for the market,
> producing for sale, then quality is at best, secondary.

That's very true. As I have pointed out in the past, labor's program
for a 30-hour week to solve the unemployment problem in the USA
during our Depression disturbed the bosses too much, so we got the
New Deal and a 40-hour week instead. If we had adopted labor's
program of 'less work', we would have kept the essential jobs, the
economy would have run smoother and less wastefully, and some
less essential jobs may never have been dreamt up. I look forward
to the day when we can get back on the shorter-hour track. The
first jobs to be sacrificed will be the less-essential jobs, some
of which you mentioned. That was a pretty good list of them.

Nowhere Man wrote:
> as we see it in a society where everything and everyone
> has a price (wage, salary or fee) how can anybody
> be free, and if we aint free.....what are we?

I have felt the same way about freedom since entering the world of
work at the age of 7. I would rather have played with my friends,
none of whom had to work like I did, and I resented the system
from a very early age. Maybe that's why I became a socialist later
on, because of the way I resented the whole system - schools,
parents, businesses, teachers, counselors, clergy, doctors, you name
it, they were all seemingly bent on seeing to it that they got their share
of work out of my hide. Marx, on the other hand, became like a friend
to me, especially after I found in Volume 3 of Capital (paraphrasing
here): 'The precondition to freedom is a shortening of the working
day.' In other words, the more of the day (or week) that we spend
working for someone else, the less freedom we have to do what we
want with our time. Beware of those who say they have a plan for
winning instant total freedom for us. I went aground on that reef in
the early '70's, and it took a lot of thinking in order to figure out how
to float free again. If a plan sounds too good to be true, then it usually
is. My plan doesn't offer anything better than another 30-50 years of
work, but at least it would be for fewer hours per week, labor time would
constantly diminish, and would be as productive and non-wasteful as
society would want to make it. We just have to get over a certain hump
of 'rallying our humanitarianism to see that the remaining work gets
equitably shared'.

Nowhere Man wrote:
> Now we invite you to try and calculate a true price on this vast
> archive of work that makes up everyone. We can't, we reckon
> we're all priceless, beyond price, so why accept one? To do so
> is irrational, as to do so accepts slavery and the neuroses that
> underpins it. Nothing too difficult in the above to over stress
> the common human's ability to understand, is there Ken?

I think I sort of followed the argument right up to this last section,
but now I'm lost. Help me a little bit here, Nowhere Man, if you please.

Ken Ellis

7-20-00

> Hi Ken,
> Have you ever read Huxleys 'Brave New World', it illustrates
> this point beautifully. I am sorry not to have a copy to hand as
> I would like to quote from the foreword, but the gist is 'the best
> slave is one who believes that (s)he is a free man'.
>
> Kevin

Hi, Kevin,

Not in a while. I had to read it for a college course some 35 years
ago, so can't really remember much more than an impression. I
still have the book, though. You are right about the psychology.

Ken

7-20-00

On the 19th, Stuart wrote:
> The number of people employed (largely in completely useless
> jobs) continues to rise. ... There's more of the disgusting stuff
> about than ever. Perhaps you could explain why that is ...

That's true, but only because machines can't yet think as well
as we can. Wait another 10 years, and the computer of the
enormous size like which IBM just delivered to Lawrence
Livermore Labs will be able to think as well as a human,
according to them. If it works out that way, then I think that a
computer with that capability should be able to fit into a teacup
by 2020. Then you will see some real robotization going on, and
the bosses won't need to hire any humans for much longer after
that. Not only the useful jobs, but the useless jobs will disappear
as well. What'll we do then, and why? Or, is it too far off in the
future to cause anyone to have to worry about it today?

Stuart wrote:
> I see you've completely changed your argument again.

Which argument? You should describe the argument in question
more carefully so that I can hopefully explain myself a little better.
My arguments evolve, and thanks to the keen minds in this forum, my
arguments have evolved faster since the end of May than ever before.

Ken Ellis

7-20-00

After quoting at length from Engels' 1894 article about "The
Peasant Question in France and Germany", Len wrote on the 17th:

> I will allow any other readers in the debate to judge for
> themselves as to whether Marx and Engels believed their
> political program should revolve around "buying out"
> the capitalists for the working class agenda.

Well, anyone can see that M+E's program certainly didn't
REVOLVE around the buyout of the capitalists, and I doubt if
anyone can show that my intention was to PORTRAY the buyout
as M+E's main agenda. Engels' text clearly indicated that he was
counting on a rather quick and painless expropriation in Germany,
but, what if things didn't go quite as well for implementing that
plan? If the requisite force could not be gathered for plan A, then
plan B might have been the buyout of the capitalists, which was
only regarded by M+E as a civil alternative to the forceful and
revolutionary expropriation plan A.

Len wrote:
> Ken, you first made remarks that Lenin and Marx both saw
> that the problem of the Commune was that it did not centralise
> enough power, that it did not use dictatorial power long enough.
> I disagreed with your point about Marx and the Commune.
>
> Then, in your last email, in contradiction, you referred to the
> Commune again and said one of the brilliant strategies was
> that the workers were so "magnanimous" to the capitalists.
> You contended that Marx supported the Communards paying
> for expropriated land, buildings, means of production. I held
> that Marx simply described what happened and did not take
> this as HIS political program.
>
> So, on one hand you said Marx said they should have been
> more dictatorial. On the other hand you said that Marx agreed
> with them because they weren't. Which is it?
>
> You agree in one email that the Commune was not a socialist
> revolution and could not be, then you give it as an example of
> what a socialist revolution is to Marx, thus seeking to take Marx in
> twists and turns out of context to suit your own inconsistent ideas.

One issue here seems to be 'Ken's credibility'. If Len can
successfully demonstrate inconsistencies on my part, then the
spotlight will have been taken off of the works of M+E, and
instead placed upon my alleged inconsistencies, which will help
to nullify anything I have to say, as well as nullify my use of the
works of M+E. The successful discrediting of Ken will reinforce
Len's arguments. Will Len be successful? Let us see.

Len wrote:
> ... you ... said one of the brilliant strategies was that
> the workers were so "magnanimous" to the capitalists.

I never described the Communards' compensation of the capitalists (for the
abandoned factories the Communards took over) as a 'brilliant strategy'. I
never described the magnanimity of the workers to the capitalists as a 'brilliant
strategy'. I never used the term 'brilliant strategy'. I never would have implied
that the Communards' magnanimity would have been confined to their relations
with the capitalists. I never "contended that Marx supported the Communards
paying for expropriated land, buildings, means of production." I only mentioned
'factories', and I never said that Marx supported the Communards' compensation
program.

I would agree, however, "that Marx simply described what happened and did
not take this as HIS political program", because that was my own position. I
remember Marx mentioning the compensation in passing, and that he nowhere
related it to his political program in that particular draft.

I described the workers' desire to compensate as 'magnanimous'
because of all of the other magnanimous things that they did that
may have more hurt their cause than helped them, but workers are
workers, and they have a profound sense of what's fair and what's
not fair. I qualified the compensation of the capitalists for the
abandoned factories as 'magnanimous' in order to reinforce the idea
that workers prefer civil and equitable solutions over all other kinds.
I wrote on the 15th, in the message entitled 'Len on sarcasm':

"In one of Marx's drafts of "The Civil War In France", Marx spoke
of the Communards compensating the capitalists for the abandoned
factories that they took over. Once again, the Communards did so
because of their own magnanimity. Acting magnanimously is what
workers did in history, and will probably continue to do so until they
are abolished as a class. Until then, they do not look at one another
with smiles and gleams in their eyes with the thought of 'all of that
property out there that could be ours in a stroke'. The people who
think in that manner are the petty-bourgeois socialists who can't get
the idea of 'all of that property' out of their heads, and, for that reason,
put expropriation at the top of their agenda for 'when the proletariat
comes to power'. Workers, on the other hand, will continue to want
to implement civil solutions to their problems."

Does that look like I was praising compensation as a 'brilliant
strategy'? No more than Marx would have. He probably would
have considered compensating capitalists for taking over
abandoned factories to be a little nicety that could easily have
been dispensed with, considering the number and quality of
dangers faced by the Commune. Marx was already critical of
some of the practices of the Commune. In his draft, I can't
remember Marx assigning any particular quality to the act
of compensation, good, bad, or in between.

A few years ago, I researched the actual policies of the Commune
because I was curious to know what their attitude toward private
property actually was. Their actual policy seems to have been far
from being a confiscatory policy that would have helped communist
ideology. Instead of being confiscatory, it was very civil. In that regard,
the Commune's attitude towards private property seems to have been
different from Marx's attitude, which may go a way toward explaining
why his mentioning of factory owner compensation never got past his
draft of "The Civil War in France". But, there it is in the Collected
Works of M+E in plain English, so people can look it up if they want.

2002 note: I was wrong about the reference not making it to the final
production of "The Civil War in France", though the intent of the
'under reserve' in the following isn't as unambiguous as may be
humanly possible (me22.339):

"Another measure of this class was the surrender, to associations of
workmen, under reserve of compensation, of all closed workshops and
factories, no matter whether the respective capitalists had absconded
or preferred to strike work." (End of note.)

One of the things that attracted me to socialism way back in the
early '70's was that it promised to explain what masses of people
actually do for themselves in times of stress and hardship. That
element of 'what people do' seemed missing in all of the stuff that
I had read before discovering socialism. I then became captivated
by ideas of people taking state power, unionizing, organizing
themselves, and once I got a little taste of it, I wanted to know even
more about what masses of people actually do for themselves. In
that regard, Marx and Engels have been more reliable and helpful
about what people did in the past than any other writers I can think
of. In the present, it's a shame that I had to go far away from socialist
literature before I got much of an idea of what people in the USA did
about unnecessarily long hours. Socialist parties seemingly don't
want to have much to do with that particular aspect of 'what people
do', for they only seem interested in organizing people to take state
power so as to do various things about property. As much as Marx
wrote about shorter hour struggles, even he was critical of workers'
and unions' struggles for shorter hours and higher wages to the
exclusion* of going for the kind of political supremacy that would
have given them the power to expropriate, and 'abolish the wages
system'. Maybe it was too early in the development of capitalism
for M+E to understand the kind of total (but gradual) liberation
that could be won by success in the struggle for shorter hours
just by itself*. But, he did know that shorter hours are liberating.
Marx wrote in the 3rd volume of Capital, and I'm paraphrasing
a lot of words here: 'the precondition for freedom is a reduction
in the length of the working day'. It only makes sense that the less
we work for others, the more freedom we have for ourselves. Today,
it's a shame that we are still wasting so many resources with our
unnecessarily long hours. The dynamic of it is that the waste increases
every year, but, someday, the quantity of waste and inefficiency will
turn into quality, and we will see the errors of our ways. Speed that day.

* 2002 correction: Nothing in M+E's literature discouraged workers
from struggling for shorter work hours and higher wages. They merely
preferred workers to extend their struggles for improvements in their
economic conditions to the political sphere, so as to improve the
condition of the WHOLE working class. (End of note.)

Len wrote:
> So, on one hand you said Marx said they should have been
> more dictatorial. On the other hand you said that Marx
> agreed with them because they weren't. Which is it?

I never said that "Marx said they should have been more
dictatorial." I don't think that Marx would have used the word
'dictatorial' under the circumstances at play in the Commune. I
also never said that Marx agreed with the Communards; I only
remember him mentioning their compensation policy in his draft.
I suspect that he may have found 'what they did' to be as foolishly
magnanimous as when the Central Committee of the National
Guard surrendered power to make way for the Commune. In his
April 12, 1871 letter to Kugelmann, Marx wrote (MESC, p. 247):

"History has no comparable example of similar greatness! If they
are defeated only their "good nature" will be to blame. They ought
to have marched at once on Versailles after the withdrawal first of
Vinoy and then of the reactionary section of the Paris National
Guard. They missed their opportunity because of moral scruples.
They did not want to start a civil war, as if the mischievous dwarf
Thiers had not already started the civil war with his attempt to
disarm Paris! Second mistake: The Central Committee surrendered
its power too soon, to make way for the Commune. Again from a
too "honorable" scrupulosity!"

Again, the Communards' actions and policies were motivated by
greatness, but their greatness also played a part in their defeat.
Marx was critical of their acting too honorably and scrupulously
at the same time that the success of their rising was at stake. With
all due respect for Len's intent, I do think that Marx would have
preferred them to have used their authority with consistency and
perseverance. If Len intended little other than that with his use
of the word 'dictatorial', then I would have to apologize for going
to lengths. But, 'dictatorial' is a loaded word.

Len wrote:
> You agree in one email that the Commune was not a socialist
> revolution and could not be, then you give it as an example of
> what a socialist revolution is to Marx, thus seeking to take
> Marx in twists and turns out of context to suit your own
> inconsistent ideas.

Well, I don't know quite what to make of this, because I wasn't
presented with an EXAMPLE of my alleged 'giving [the Commune]
as an example of what a socialist revolution is to Marx', and then
'seeking to take Marx in twists and turns out of context to suit [my]
own inconsistent ideas.' Perhaps Len can fill us in with some details.

For many years, and all throughout this forum, my opinion of 'what the
Commune was' has been the same as Marx's in his Feb. 22, 1881 letter
to Domela Nieuwenhuis: "One thing you can at any rate be sure of: a
socialist government does not come into power in a country unless
conditions are so developed that it can immediately take the necessary
measures for intimidating the mass of the bourgeoisie sufficiently to
gain time - the first desideratum - for permanent action. ... Perhaps you
will refer me to the Paris Commune; but apart from the fact that this was
merely the rising of a city under exceptional conditions, the majority of
the Commune was by no means socialist, nor could it be."

But Marx's opinion of the Commune as 'a mere rising' did not
necessarily mean that Engels, in the closing paragraph of his
1891, 20-year Anniversary Introduction to Marx's "The Civil War
in France" could not allow himself to write (MESW 2, p. 189):
"Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been
filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the
Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know
what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune.
That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat."

Would Marx have objected to that? Considering who wrote it, I
doubt if Marx would have complained very much. I don't recall
M+E disagreeing over very much, unless their disagreements
were all edited out of the smaller collections of their works that
were intended for more of a mass audience. Maybe the MEGA
might have something to say about their possible disagreements,
but how many of us in this forum would have to go that deep
in order to figure out what to do with the rest of our lives?

Len wrote:
> I wish no longer to debate the issue of what Marx or Engels
> said. I cannot because you change your arguments daily.

We thank Len for his contributions to the debate and wish him our best.

Ken Ellis

7-21-00

Matt wrote on the 20th:
> If you wouldn't mind, could you share with
> us your past experiences as an anarchist,
> a socialist, and as a worker in general?

You twisted my arm. I'm just putting the finishing touches on
a draft of my book that I wrote about my experiences with the
American SLP, and I expect to have it available on the Net in a
week. It has a lot of autobiographical material, and it weaves my
evolving ideologies with my personal experiences. As soon as I
have an address for it, I will post it here. Thanks for your interest.

Ken Ellis

7-21-00

On the 20th, a.c. of the 'Citizens of the World' reported on a 1960
boast by G.E. of their ability to build a light-bulb factory operable
by an insignificant number of workers, but G.E. seemingly very
ominously reported 'no plans to build that factory', as though they
had a sinister intention to keep the working class forever enslaved
to boring, ugly jobs for the rest of time. Scare-eeee, a.c.

If, in a.c.'s estimation, the bosses are allegedly so reluctant to
automate, then why has agricultural labor in the USA fallen by
half since 1960, from about 4% to less than 2% today? Perhaps
a.c. can also explain why labor-saving technology is still being
implemented in just about every conceivable industry anyone
can think of. Could it be that no one but GE became part of the
automation plan? That wouldn't make sense, profit-wise. I think
what a.c. wrote was intended to get us to shiver in our boots and
to more heavily crave an end to capitalism and its complicit state.

Ken Ellis

7-21-00

Hi Paddy,

Glad to see that you made it back to the ranks of the living.

Thanks, first of all, for that very interesting article about the Internet
in the latest Discussion Bulletin. Half a dozen years ago, I used to
be able to get a little letter into that journal once in a while, but after
I got a little too critical of the revolution, I was cut loose.

You are right about the lengthiness of my messages. When I look at
how short most other contributions are, I tell myself, 'I wish I could be
brief like them.' But, maybe life is too complex for our issues to be
overly abbreviated, but I do regard brevity as a worthwhile goal.

Paddy wrote:
> war is really about ownership and property

My memory of the cause of war has faded, but let's see if I can
remember my old American SLP ideology ... let's see ...
capitalists fight for domination of foreign and domestic markets
.... capitalists overproduce lots of surpluses and then have to
compete on the markets to dispose of their surpluses, and when
competition abroad gets too hot, they go to war ... is that it? If
that's the case, here's my solution: Because hours of labor are set
too long in the West, surpluses pile up, so the obvious solution to
that is to set the hours shorter so that we don't produce so much,
and then capitalists wouldn't have to compete to the point of going
to war; but, that couldn't be the right answer because it falls right
into MY lap, so the cause of war must be something else. If it is
something else, and if 'war is really about ownership and property',
I hereby humbly request that someone make a solid logical connection
between war and property. There has to be something about property
that causes war, but I'm drawing a blank after shooting my wad on
over-production. Help!

> Now, Ken, try famine. Let's see you solve this with shorter hours.

OK, we'll use an example of a country in Africa, because North
Korea is too complicated for now. So, let's try Africa. A resource-
poor country of Africa. Negative balance of trade, probably. Maybe
on the edge of the Sahara, the encroaching Sahara, Sudan. One of the
last feudal monarchies. Peasant economy. Primitive tools. Scratching
out a bare existence, subject to all of the vicissitudes of Mother Nature.
Drought. No resources. Guess what? I can't imagine shorter hours to
be of any use in this locale. Perhaps even longer hours might be more
fruitful if they could stand to work more hours. Shorter hours fails again.

Closer to home, though, I do remember that 'one out of six
California kids goes hungry every day' in a major breadbasket
state of the USA. If Americans could unite over the issue of
sharing the remaining work so that no one would be left out of
the economy, then I couldn't imagine hunger in the USA lasting
much longer after that. Less than 2% of Americans work in
agriculture, compared to 80% two hundred years ago, proving
that hunger in the USA isn't caused by a lack of resources,
especially if we can afford to send food overseas.

> When you've done that, you can move on to industrial pollution.

When workers compete for scarce jobs, they have to take what
comes along, even if the jobs are not necessarily good for the
soul. When it comes to just one aspect of industrial pollution,
viz., the illegal or unsanitary dumping of toxic waste, we know
that workers who are struggling to survive have to follow orders
in order to help the bosses maintain their profit margins, even if
it means helping their bosses to improperly and cheaply dispose
of toxics. Whistle-blowers often find their jobs terminated, so
most people become afraid to do anything except what the boss
tells them to do. If we could create an artificial shortage of labor
that would eliminate competition for scarce jobs, we would be
less fearful of 'getting into trouble by doing the right thing', and
the kind of anxiety that keeps us repeatedly doing the wrong
things against our better judgment would disappear. We would
then have the kind of internal security it takes to boldly fight for
proper disposal, or, in case of extreme boss intransigence, we
could boycott the entire operation and shut the place down and
move into other jobs without fear of economic hardship.

> Then you can try violent crime.

Just the other day, a drug dealer on the telly claimed that he
would gladly work if he could find a decent job at a decent wage.
The fact is that the working class doesn't take care of its own. If
we someday create the kind of artificial shortage of labor that
would eliminate unemployment, then those who presently find it
more lucrative to turn to crime could someday be absorbed into
the general population. Then the whole wasteful penal system
could gradually fade away.

> Perhaps you'll say your poor little reform can't think of
> everything. But in that case, it must be inferior to something
> which DOES take these things into account, mustn't it?

It's true that my poor little reform can't think of everything right
away, but just letting it get a foothold so that people could see the
progress they will have made under its influence, that progress
will get people to become even more militant about shorter hours.
To be in the race for labels like 'inferior' or 'superior', a program
would first of all have to be 'feasible'. Because socialism isn't
feasible, shorter hours wins the race by default. Shorter hours
just needs a few little amendments to laws already on the books,
which makes it feasible, whereas socialism* is far outside the realm
of what's feasible for most of the world (for reasons that were given
in other messages). Therefore, there's no competition. Socialism is a
nice scenario in theory, just the way my shorter hour scenario is nice
in a lot of ways as well (except that a few people consider it to be 'not
nice' for us having to live with wage-labor for a while longer). The
question is: What will people do about their problems? What kind
of solutions are they interested in, and which solution have billions
of people already rejected forever, if only because of its name? Have
you had your ear to the ground lately? Do you hear footsteps slowly
fading away over the horizon? Where'd they all go? Certainly not
to the shorter-hour solution yet. Maybe to the Internet.

* 2002 note: Here, as in so many other places, I was using the word
'socialism' in the sense of 'expropriation of the means of production'.

Paddy quoted me:
>> I know that shorter hours will do nothing about war
>> in the short run, but the humanitarianism of it might
>> rub off eventually.

And answered:
> Oh boy, that scientific brain of yours! Reread
> your words slowly, and don't forget to laugh.

Paddy is correct if we want to regard the 'it' I was referring to
as 'war', but I really meant the 'shorter hours' to be humanitarian.
Sorry for the ambiguity. 20 lashes with a wet noodle, again. Ouch!

> I don't think you entirely believe what you are writing, not
> because you are deliberately dishonest, but because you're
> trying to dress it up to make it look attractive to us.

At least two things are happening. One, my ideas are NEVER
fully fleshed out. My ideas are constantly evolving, thanks
especially lately to the input from the forum. Secondly, I have
been dressed down mightily in the past for my alleged incorrect
use of the word 'socialism', even though a thousand times more
people in the world use that word the same way I became
accustomed to using it. So, I have had to carefully watch how I
use my words. Those are 2 very good reasons why it may seem
as though my message may have changed since I started, but
I think the essence remains pretty much the same.

I was a socialist revolutionary of one sort or another for 22 years.
What I have especially in common with the WSM is the classless,
stateless, etc.less aspect of Marx's ideology. We differ strongly on
how to get there. I would get there by means of a militant shortening
of hours of labor as made possible by improvements in technology,
while the WSM would get there by taking state power in order to
abolish property, classes, state, etc. Those are two very different
theoretical means of getting to our common goal, and I will ALWAYS
disagree with trying to get to our end goal by immediately dealing
with property. I say that my plan can also get us to propertylessness
in the long run, after class distinctions and work fade away, so it's the
difference in methods of getting to our end goal that is the main source
of disagreement. I will probably never change my shorter hour method
for getting to our common goal, so I am waiting for the WSM to change
its method. As many are the problems that press for us to do something
real (and soon), I know that I can't rush you to change your minds. All I
can do is argue my points as well as I am able. You can lead a horse to
water, but you can't make him drink, as they say. Our difference on
methods of getting to the end goal is clear cut, and there's nothing I
would ever want to do to 'dress it up', blur it over, or sort of try to
moosh-merge our solutions together, because I know that 'for
people to be able to stop what they are doing and suddenly start
doing something else' takes a CONSCIOUS decision on their part,
and there is nothing that I would ever want to do to rob anyone of
making important decisions like that as consciously as possible.
The departure from socialist ideology, to be effective, must be
nothing less than RADICAL if people are to suddenly stop
advocating one thing and start advocating something else. I
think that I have good ammunition to get people to change
their minds about the possibility of socialism, so I will be
patient about using that ammo to the best of my ability.
There's a lot of future suffering at stake here. People
have suffered enough, and it's time for people to think
seriously about the usefulness of their beliefs.

> .... here's the dishonest bit. Without bothering to comprehend
> the world as we see it, without the slightest concern for our
> arguments, you try to sugarcoat your 'working day' hypothesis
> with some vague promises of a never-never land that will, might,
> may, could, just possibly, maybe, you never know, come about
> as a result.

I wouldn't go quite as far as you just did in your portrayal
of my alleged lack of concern for your arguments. In your
last message, you quoted me on July 19:

>> K> The WSM program seems to have more than one step
>> than just 'abolishing capitalism'. The election must be won,
>> and then control of the state taken in order to put it out of
>> its misery. I guess then it's up to the people to abolish
>> property, state, money and classes, and then somehow
>> carry on production. Do I have that right? I'm never sure.

And you answered:
> Hmm, not bad actually. No mention of state ownership,
> bloodbaths or authoritarian leadership. Trouble is, the idea
> that you HAVE been paying attention is even worse than if
> you HAVEN'T, because then you really have no excuse at all
> for the things you have imputed to us in almost every single
> post you've made, and that really is dishonest.

Well, I can understand now where Paddy is coming from. I'll bet
that some people have often thought that I have imputed violent
or undemocratic qualities to the WSM program that it just didn't
deserve. But, if you look a little closer at what I was actually trying
to say, you will see that I was doing little more than taking a cold
hard look at what 'actually existing socialism' (or communism
especially) has meant for the peoples of the world. I will be among
the first to admit that the WSM puts at least a 10-foot pole between
what it stands for and what socialism or communism in the real world
has meant to billions of people. If I am certain that prematurely
attempting to do something about property relations will only
mean awful things like dictatorship, civil war, and stuff like that,
it's only because I am trying to relate lessons from history to get
people to become more aware of what past programs that dealt with
property have meant to other people, and what they are guaranteed
to mean to people in the future, considering the West's powerful
attachment to property, and their willingness to fight to retain even
as immoral a form of ownership as slavery. We know that slavery
is wrong, but it didn't stop people from killing one another to retain
slavery, so think how hard people would fight over ownership of
everything else. I will continue to try to deliver little history lessons
from the past, but I will also try to more carefully distinguish what
happened in the past, or what other parties espouse, from the untried
WSM program of socialism. But, careful as I may try to be, that may
not stop some people from intentionally 'misunderstanding' what I
say in order to throw a wet blanket on my arguments, and to thereby
enhance the attractiveness of socialism in comparison. It happened in
my old American SLP, and it's still happening. But, the nice thing
about talking to you, Paddy, is that, as skeptical as you are, and
have a right to be, if you misunderstand me, I don't think that
it's with malice intended.

If I'm not mistaken, Paddy argued against the possible future need of
violence and dictatorship (in the WSM's socialist scenario) because
of 'the relatively enlightened modern and benign treatment of skilled
workers in the industrialized, democratic West'. If that correctly
summarizes the WSM position in part or in full, I am still wondering
if the argument adequately addresses the distinction between the
violence and dictatorship of Marx's ideology (viz., the violence and
dictatorships of feudal, bourgeois and proletarian state powers) and
the WSM's alleged 'lack of necessity for state violence in the
industrialized West while abolishing classes, state, money and
property'. In other words, just because surplus values are now
more civilly extracted than they used to be in the distant past,
does that make the government and bosses more amenable
to a peaceful transfer of total political and economic power?

Ken Ellis

7-23-00

Hi, Paddy,

This is a quick response to your inquiry about the Discussion
Bulletin, P.O. Box 1564, Grand Rapids, MI 49501, USA. I'm a
little surprised that you didn't know about this De Leonist journal,
102 of which have been published semi-monthly for quite a few
years. Frank Girard is the prime mover. We were both in the SLP.
I quit in '77, and he quit a few years later.

He wrote by way of introduction to the first installment of your
article: "Paddy Shannon, writing for the Socialist Party of Great
Britain's Socialist Standard weighs the implications of the computer
and its relationship to the market system as a whole. The fact is that
the Internet seems to have been devised for a moneyless economic
system. As the author points out "The Internet seems to be gift
oriented." Subsequent installments, from the February, March,
and April issues of the SS examine other aspects of the Internet:
Its facility for distributing information useful for workers hoping
to encourage discussion and unfortunately, as the author points out,
ruling class disinformation as well. Shannon, though, believes the
basic incompatibility of the Internet and capitalism will make such
propaganda less than credible".

I hope that this info is useful.

Ken Ellis

7-24-00

Paddy wrote:

> Godwin was a prophet of technological progress; he believed that
> industrial development would eventually reduce the necessary working
> time to half an hour a day, provided men lived simply, and that this
> would facilitate the transition to a society without authority.
> (Political Justice - 1793) Encyclopaedia Britannica online.
>
> It's always nice to know one can quote authorities, Ken!
>
> Paddy

Never heard of the bloke. Thanks for the tip. But I'm looking
forward to WORKLESS society in 50 years.

Ken Ellis

7-25-00

On the 24th, a.c. wrote:

> To this day General Motors has not built the electric light
> factory, apparently much to the chagrin of Ken Ellis. Perhaps
> Ken Ellis should find out why? instead of attributing words and
> ulterior motives to me. In no way did I ever "estimate" that "the
> bosses are allegedly so reluctant to automate" and all the other
> nonsense statements that he makes.

When I first read it the other day, and even when I read it again,
the story ended before it really elucidated much of anything.
Frustrated by the dour tale, and instead of being bright enough to
simply ask for illumination, I merely scratched around in hopes of
shedding a ray of light, but I apparently only sparked dissent. I will
now inquire: what was the purpose of the little story of the light bulb
plant, or will a.c. instead treat us to yet another psychoanalysis of my
alleged dim-wittedness? Stay tuned for another dark chapter of the
unending story of the GE light-bulb factory.

Ken Ellis

7-26-00

Hi, Matt Harley, et al,

As promised, I put part of my book of experiences with the American
SLP on the Internet. I expect to add one part per month for the next 4
months. This first part is introductory and contains no theory, but the
rest of the book, to be added later, has lots of Marxist vs. SLP theories.
This first installment also includes an appendix of revealing letters
from Engels about America and the SLP, etc.

On the free web site, there's no way of just reading the file without
downloading it into your computers. I couldn't even correct a minor
date error I discovered. Good luck. The first installment is at:

http://homepage.mac.com/kenellis1/FileSharing.html

2002 note: I haven't visited that particular file in well over a year. (End of note.)

Ken Ellis

"... it's enough to be a Marxist and Engelsist to stay young forever!"
Part of a letter from Laura (Marx) Lafargue to Engels

7-28-00

On the 21st, Len wrote:
> you say you do not accept most of Marx's work,
> that you are not a Socialist and yet every time we
> have a debate you refer back to him!

Marx and Engels can be very useful, both to socialist sectarians,
and to non-socialists like myself who are interested in breaking
down sectarianism. I don't remember my license to quote Marx
being revoked, but we all know how the mail is nowadays. Don't
forget that I also subscribe to our common goal of classless,
stateless, etc.less society, which I consider to be the best part
of Marxism, communism, anarchism, and socialism, because it's
what all of us want as the ultimate goal. The controversial part is
how to get to that goal, which separates a lot of people into various
sects. Every plan on 'how to get there' should be re-examined in
relation to history. If Marx were still around to re-examine it for
us, then there might not be as much for us to fight about, because
we would then have someone of unsurpassable stature, like a Tiger
Woods of political economy, to correct the errors of our ways. But,
we don't have Marx, so we have to rely on our own meager resources.
How can I be such a fan of M+E? Because, though they did make
mistakes, they were correct on a wide variety of other issues, and
they were correct because they sincerely believed in what they were
doing, which drove them to be accurate and scientific in what they
did in their life's labor. I wish that we could all take as many pains
as they did for us.

Len delved deeply into M+E's treatment of the subject of property
in the Communist Manifesto, but retained the same perspective on
'abolishing property' that he seems to have always had. Len doesn't
understand, or maybe doesn't want to understand, that the proletariat's
relation to property was to differ markedly at the beginning of the
proletarian dictatorship from its end stage, which end stage was to
have been synonymous with classless, stateless, etc.less society. Len
always leads us to think that Marx would have had us abolishing
property the day after the revolution, whereas Marx would have had
us only BEGINNING to abolish property, the state, class distinctions,
etc. What Len wrote reminds me of the 33 Blanquist emigrants whom
Engels scolded in his 1874 article (MESW 2, p. 385):

"However, as soon as we leave theory aside and get down to practice,
the peculiar stand of the 33 becomes evident: "We are Communists
because we want to arrive at our aim without stop-overs at intermediate
stations, without entering into compromises, which only put off victory
and prolong slavery." The German Communists [on the other hand] are
Communists because through all intermediate stations and compromises,
created not by them but by historical development, they clearly perceive
the ultimate aim: the abolition of classes, the inauguration of a society in
which there will be no private ownership of land and means of production.
The thirty-three are Communists because they imagine that as soon as
they have only the good will to jump over intermediate stations and
compromises everything is assured, and if, as they firmly believe it, it
"begins" in a day or two, and they take the helm, "communism will be
introduced" on the day after tomorrow. Neither are they Communists
if this cannot be done immediately. What childish naivete to advance
impatience as a convincing theoretical argument!"

And this was no 1848 argument; Engels wrote this in 1874. Back
then, there was no shortage of people who wanted to introduce the
upper stage of communism the day after the political victory of the
workers. Is Len's problem the same as that of the 33 Blanquists -
a surfeit of good will? For Len, it appears as though the revolution
means only one thing - classless, stateless, etc.less society, but he
usually neglects the distinctions M+E made between the lower and
upper stages of post-revolutionary society. In his letter to Florence
Kelly of Dec. 28, 1886, Engels wrote: "Our theory is not a dogma
but the exposition of a process of evolution, and that process
involves successive phases." Len has a strong prejudice against
M+E's theoretical early phase of proletarian dictatorship, when
communist society was to be still branded with the birthmarks
of its ascendancy from capitalism.

Perhaps Len needs another quote to add to the ones from the
Manifesto and "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" presented the
other day. Engels referred to a "Demands of the Communist Party
in Germany" leaflet that he and Marx distributed in Germany in 1848,
one of the points of which reads (MESW 3, p. 183): "7. The estates
of the princes and other feudal estates, all mines, pits, etc., shall be
transformed into state property. On these estates, agriculture is
to be conducted on a large scale and with the most modern
scientific means for the benefit of all society."

As late as 1885, Engels maintained about his 1848 leaflet: "many
a one can still learn something from it even today". Engels never
disavowed the 'state property' aspect of Marxism, no more than
he did when he wrote similarly in his 1880 'Utopia to Science'
pamphlet. As stated everywhere, state ownership was to be but
a transition to common ownership.* And, it was to be proletarian
state ownership, not capitalist state ownership.

* 2002 note: A reading of the Collected Works reveals that, in
many contexts, 'state ownership' was regarded by M+E as little to
no better than private ownership, because 'state ownership' to them
ordinarily meant little other than 'bourgeois state ownership'. On the
other hand, 'ownership' of the means of production by the proletarian
dictatorship was regarded with the same high reverence as toward
common ownership. (End of note.)

Everything that M+E wrote about converting all property into state
property were words that were wasted on Len, who, when faced
with M+E's words when we corner Len with them and there's no
escape, can only respond with, 'Well, that was 1848.' Len exhibits
such an enormous state of denial that it may mean 'incurability'.
No word medicine conceivable by the mind of man seemingly
is of use. But, Len's isolation from the real world doesn't mean
that Len doesn't have people cheering him on, for there are quite
a few others to give mutual support in situations like this, and, if
they all support one another, and if they can all afford to insulate
themselves from 'the real world of communist theory' (sort of an
oxymoron in itself), then there is no saying how long they will all
hang together in their mutual state of denial. Len and his fellow
believers remind me of those WW2 fighters on South Sea Islands
who never were notified about the end of the war, were finally
discovered many years later, but were still in a state of war
against the world. Shouldn't Len be getting some telegrams
to let him know what the real world thinks about his futile
war on words and history? We all know how difficult or
impossible it is to educate Holocaust deniers. Now we are
faced with the task of educating 'state property' deniers.

If it hadn't been for 'the conversion of means of production into state
property' aspect of Marxism, then people like Lenin, Mao, Castro, etc.,
would not have converted the means of production in their countries
into state property, and they would not have sought to honor the
memories of M+E in their literature, propaganda, names of roads,
squares, hospitals, etc., and popularize the ideas of M+E among
billions of people. Because the revolutions that occurred were never
really part of M+E's scenario of WORLD revolution, no one can say
that the means of production were 'concentrated into the hands of
the armed workers', for we know that aspect of M+E's scenario
didn't happen, but the means of production did get concentrated
into the hands of various types of state apparati. Now Russia is
privatizing, and others will follow suit soon enough, because half
the world mucked around with property relations prematurely,
before the conditions for its abolition had actually arrived, which
history has proven to be a gross error that the WSM would only
have people commit anew. The 'communist' world foolishly tried
to abolish capitalism, and now some of them are going back to
capitalism.

The intent of what M+E wrote time and again was that 'state
property is a legitimate roadside stop on the way from capitalism
to classless, stateless, society.' It is impossible to interpret their
writings any other way. I claim that 'going after property' was
a mistake, no matter who advocated it, and that it was M+E's
mistake as well. The mistake of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, etc.,
was to actually implement M+E's mistaken plan to convert capital
into state property. The WSM's mistake is to ignore M+E's plan to
convert capital into state property, and to substitute M+E's hope
for total, perfect propertylessness that rightfully belongs to M+E's
upper stage of communist society when the state will have died out.
As Engels wrote specifically in answer to anarchists in "Socialism:
Utopia to Science" (MESW 3, p. 147): "The state is not "abolished."
It dies out." In 1848, M+E placed the importance of the abolition
of classes on an equal par with the abolition of private property, but
by his "Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Programme of 1891",
Engels seems to have upgraded* the abolition of classes somewhat
when he wrote (MESW 3, p. 432): "The abolition of classes is our
basic demand, without which the abolition of class rule is economically
inconceivable. Instead of "for equal rights of all," I suggest: "for equal
rights and *equal duties* of all," etc. *Equal duties* are for us a
particularly important addition to the bourgeois-democratic *equal
rights* and do away with their specifically bourgeois meaning." It
should be pointed out that 'equal duties' are inconceivable without
equal access to the economy.

* 2002 note: That sentence appears to have been a stab in the dark.
I never found evidence of an 'upgrade'. (End of note.)

When gracious enough to admit that the concept of state property
exists at all, the WSM also never fails to add that they think that
the state property aspect of Marxism is obsolete, which history
has shown to be true, but, for what reason? The only historically
accurate reason is that the entire Marxist scenario of getting to
classless, stateless, etc.less society by means of mucking around
with property is obsolete. The Marxist scenario included a universal
proletarian dictatorship, which could only have begun in Europe in
the 19th century, before adequately democratic structures were
introduced. After gradual democratization sufficiently superannuated
violent democratic revolutions, socialists no longer had opportunities
to lead Europe to overthrow oppressive monarchies, and no longer had
the opportunity to orchestrate the resulting fledgling democracies
into a unified proletarian dictatorship. Without primitive political
conditions available for violent overthrow on a mass scale, which
would have delivered full state power into the hands of European
socialists, socialist revolution in the advanced countries became
impossible, because changing property relations historically requires
enormous amounts of state power to effect. When Europe failed to
adequately support the Russian Revolution, the fate of M+E's
theories about socialist revolution was sealed forever.

In the USA, where people died to defend as immoral a form of
ownership as slavery, and where they didn't have the political will to
carve up the plantations to give the freed slaves their 40 acres and a
mule, countries like the USA that are so wedded to private property
are not going to vote socialist. Magda knows that socialism is dead in
her neck of the woods, and socialism died in the West before birth, so,
where is socialism going to be implemented in the world? Socialism is
a theoretical system whose chances of being implemented died when
European countries failed to follow the events in Russia with long-
lasting revolutions of their own. It is a mistake not to look upon
history for what it was, and a mistake not to use those historical
lessons to move on and look for better plans for bringing social
and economic justice to the oppressed people of the world.

One possible reason why the WSM doesn't want to admit that the
program of M+E included proletarian dictatorship, proletarian state
power and proletarian state property, is that the WSM would then
also have to admit that they are dumping those legitimate features
of theoretical Marxism due to their inapplicability to the West in
the year 2000. Some people might then ask, 'if you are dumping
those features of Marxism, then why not dump the rest of it as well?'
People could also legitimately inquire, 'How is it that you can still call
yourselves Marxists if you dump proletarian dictatorship?' Then the
WSM would have tough questions on its hands. One way to get
around those tough questions is to: DENY everything about
Marxism that they do not like, and quote only the aspects of
Marxism relating to abolition, classless, stateless, etc.less society.

The word 'abolition' plays heavily in WSM ideology. 'Abolition'
is part of the context of Marxism that the WSM agrees with, and
which gets glorified in its ideology. Abolition of the wage system,
abolition of classes, abolition of property, abolition of money,
abolition of the state. This is all permitted in the WSM version of
Marxism, except for the abolition of labor, the only thing that the
capitalists are actually helping the workers to abolish. So, the
abolition of labor then becomes taboo as an idea, and the people
living in future classless, stateless, propertyless and moneyless
society are supposedly condemned to have to go to 'work', but will
have to 'work' for no money. Why is this? I could speculate that, back
in 1904, few could conceive of a workless society. Not until later did
they use the term 'robot' the way we mean it today. But now, some
people are predicting a workless society as soon as 2050, but the
WSM can't plan ahead for that because we are all supposed to
implement THEIR program in spite of whatever else goes on.

Len also appreciates: "The emancipation of the working class must
be the act of the working class itself". It's not very difficult to figure
out why Len likes that phrase so much, which takes away nothing
from the truth of it, however. The key for Len is in the word "act".
Yes, folks, one single 'act' will liberate you from centuries of abuse.
You see? Once you clue in to the code, deciphering WSM ideology
becomes easy. The single 'act' is nothing less than the 'abolition' of
this, that and everything else no one particularly likes.

Lest we forget that, Len reminded us that:
> And keep in mind that despite the Manifesto's call of
> "wresting by degrees" property, etc., the solution is "abolition".

How could we ever forget! But, since our memories
are all so bad, Len treated us to yet another reminder:

> Further note that in contrast to all other revolutions the working
> class is making the revolution for the immense majority, they
> will not change forms of property, they will abolish it.
< ... and ... >
> In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up
> in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
< ... and ... >
> Note that they have criticised the reforming of capitalism.

And what did Len offer as proof for their alleged critique of
reform? Not a solitary line! Nothing but his own good word.
But, we do have an 1884 letter from Engels to Bebel that stated:
"Here in England where the reform bill gives the workers new
power, this impulse would come just in time for the next election
in 1885 and would offer an opportunity to the Social Democratic
Federation - which consists only of the old literati on the one
hand, old sectarian remains on the other hand and a sentimental
public in the third place - to really become a party." (me47.198)

Imagine a reform bill giving workers new power! It doesn't look
like Engels was against that particular reform, nor did he oppose
workers winning shorter hours, or any other reforms in their class
interests. If reform was good enough for M+E, then why isn't it
good enough for the WSM? Is the WSM afraid of 'workers
getting new power'?

M+E were not aglow over ALL reforms. There was a certain type
they didn't like, as they opined sarcastically in their 1879 "Circular
Letter" (MESW 3, p. 92): "The Social-Democratic Party *is not*
to be a workers' party, is not to incur the odium of the bourgeoisie
or of anyone else; it should above all conduct energetic propaganda
among the bourgeoisie; instead of laying stress on far-reaching aims
which frighten away the bourgeoisie and after all are not attainable in
our generation, it should rather devote its whole strength and energy
to those petty-bourgeois patchwork reforms which, by providing the
old order of society with new props, may perhaps transform the
ultimate catastrophe into a gradual, piecemeal and as far as
possible peaceful process of dissolution."

M+E were able to distinguish between petty-bourgeois reforms
and working class reforms that truly furthered working class
interests, such as shorter hours. But, modern-day abolitionists
do not distinguish between various types of reforms, and would
instead toss all of them out.

In case Len hasn't noticed, the "self-conscious, independent
movement of the immense majority" in the West has been to
acquire property, which the WSM would take away from people
before they get psyched up to abandon it on their own. In the
USA, half of the population owns stock. Most stocks are owned
by retirement funds, rather than by rich capitalists, but it wasn't
like that in 1904, I'll bet. But, 1904 information and ideologies
will always attract some people, no matter how outdated.

Len quoted M+E on the proletariat being organized as the ruling class,
but he again strained credulity to the breaking point when he added:

> It does not say that the state would stand above society,
> nor that a new state is to be created.

So, we have a hypothetical situation, where, *for the first time
in history*, 'the proletariat is organized as ruling class', but do
you think that there's anything NEW about 'the proletariat being
organized as ruling class'? If you do, folks, then you are WRONG,
according to Len. Don't even let yourself think that there's anything
new here. If there's nothing new here, maybe you should prepare
yourselves to learn that: 'when the proletariat organizes itself as
ruling class, it uses the OLD state machine'! What else can be
concluded, if there's no NEW state? It's funny how the American
SLP openly adopted that very same position, which is why the
ASLP went as far as to say that 'M+E invented state capitalism',
in spite of the fact that Engels leveled a devastating critique at
state capitalism in his "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific", as
well as in many other places. Perhaps a reason why the WSM
may not be in quite as bad shape as the ASLP is that the WSM
perhaps doesn't allow itself to go quite as far as to boldly state
things like: 'M+E wanted the proletariat to rule with the old
capitalist state machine', or, 'M+E wanted workers to concentrate
the means of production into the hands of the old capitalist state
machine', or, 'M+E would have had the old capitalist state machine
wither away over time.' For the ASLP, proletarian state power and
proletarian state property were as inconceivable as they seem to
be for the WSM. When the ASLP occasionally DID allow itself to
conceive of proletarian dictatorship, it was only 'a proletarian
dictatorship over the peasantry', so that they could further argue
that 'the replacement of the peasantry with agricultural wage labor
in the USA renders the proletarian dictatorship (over the non-
existent peasantry) obsolete'. That was a clever and handy way
to dispose of M+E's theory of proletarian dictatorship, but
unfortunately contradicted M+E's worker-peasant alliance.

Continued with part B

Ken Ellis

7-28-00

Len wrote:
> Marx and Engels refer here to the "party", but please
> remember that the term "party" meant something different
> in 1848 than it did in 1880 or 1917 or in year 2000. Back
> then it meant a tendency or current of opinion or policy.

A short while later, Len wrote:
> In Part II of the Manifesto, Marx and Engels deal with the question
> of the "party", who the communists are: "The Communists, therefore,
> are on the one hand practically, the most advanced and resolute section
> of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes
> forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the
> great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding
> the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results
> of the proletarian movement." [me6.497]

What M+E wrote in the Manifesto in 1848 sounds more like what real
parties are today compared to the insignificant 'tendency' or 'current of
opinion' that Len tried to make the older parties out to be. It's funny how
the ASLP also tried to create a political and economic gulf between 1848
and more recent times. About similar nonsense, Engels wrote in "The
Housing Question" in 1872 (MESW 2, p. 356):

"But the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party, just because
it is a workers' party necessarily pursues a "class policy," the policy
of the working class. Since each political party sets out to establish
its rule in the state, so the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party
is necessarily striving to establish its rule, the rule of the working class,
hence "class domination." Moreover, every real proletarian party, from
the English Chartists onward, has put forward a class policy, the
organisation of the proletariat as an independent political party,
as the primary condition of its struggle, and the dictatorship of
the proletariat as the immediate aim of the struggle."

See, Len? 'Proletarian dictatorship was the immediate aim', not the
abolition of this, that and the other thing. With the establishment of
proletarian dictatorship, the only things Engels would have abolished
anytime soon was to have been 'capitalist political rule' and private
property. Engels also pretty well vaporized any nonsense about a real
party being a mere 'tendency', because 'tendencies' don't take state power.

Len wrote:
> It is clear. The Communists are not a "vanguard".
> They are part of the working class movement which "pushes"
> forward working class demands (again, in the context of 1848).

On the other hand, it is easy enough for anyone to see that
Engels never distinguished the theoretical rule of the workers'
party from the rule of the working class. Engels wrote above:

"... the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party is necessarily striving
to establish its rule, the rule of the working class, hence "class domination."

Whatever could be clearer than the 1872 words of Engels himself?
And this lesson included what M+E had learned from the Paris Commune.

Len may not have exercised the greatest of care where,
on the one hand, he wrote:

> That is one reason why Marx and Engels
> referred to the Manifesto as "outdated".

And, on the other hand, Len quoted M+E as saying:

"the general principles expounded in the document
are on the whole as correct today as ever."

When someone states that a certain work is 'outdated', it is easy
for an observer to conclude that the whole thing is outdated, but
here is what M+E actually found to be outdated, from their 1872
Preface: At least some of the 10 post-revolutionary measures of
Section 2, which measures M+E did not specify; their criticism
of socialist literature; and the relation of Communists to various
opposition parties, some of which parties had disappeared. Also,
'what was especially proved by the Commune' was that "the
working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State
machinery, and wield it for its own purposes." By not specifying
which parts M+E felt were outdated, did Len hope that people
would then think that 'proletarian dictatorship is outdated'? But,
M+E never disavowed the proletarian dictatorship, nor
proletarian state ownership of means of production.

Len wrote:
> the proponents [of petty-bourgeois socialism]
> wished to maintain property, much as you do Ken.

Len knows quite well that I have advocated the ascension
of society to workless, classless, stateless, propertyless, and
moneyless society in many of my messages, so he is once again
taking out of context my many remarks about 'maintaining property
until the conditions for its abolition have arrived'. I used to hope that
the dialogue in which Len and I would engage would be principled,
but it appears as though the principles that he adheres to are
different from mine.

Len took issue with my use of the term 'petty-bourgeois
socialism', which I used in the following messages:

MARX VS. LENIN: "In hindsight, going after the property
of the rich was a terrible petty-bourgeois mistake that cost
a lot of lives, but some people just won't learn."

Smith article 2: "Leave property expropriation schemes
to the petty-bourgeoisie, where they logically belong."

Len on sarcasm: "The people who think in that manner
are the petty-bourgeois socialists who can't get the idea of
'all of that property' out of their heads, and, for that reason, put
expropriation at the top of their agenda for 'when the proletariat
comes to power'. Workers, on the other hand, will continue to
want to implement civil solutions to their problems."

Len then showed how M+E used the term 'petty-bourgeois socialist',
and proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that I didn't use that term
in my messages in the Marxist sense, though I never promised in the
first place that I would use it in the Marxist sense. I used that term in
a more modern sense denoting an extraordinary pre-occupation with
matters of wealth, money and property.

Len was not far off the mark when he stated:

> Marx and Engels end with a point about the communists
> which you would have us deny:
>
> "In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the
> leading question in each, the property question, no matter
> what its degree of development at the time." [me6.519]

It was never my intention for anyone to deny anything out of hand,
without a good reason. It is my opinion that the downfall of socialist,
communist, and anarchist movements in democracies has been their
major goal of mucking around with property relations, and this is why
such movements are small and will never get any larger. To the extent to
which they push for that single goal to the exclusion of all other issues,
they become increasingly irrelevant as means of securing social and
political justice for the lower classes. 'Mucking around with property
relations' was just as much M+E's mistake as it is anyone else's. I
recently searched for a possible excuse M+E might have had for
concerning themselves with property questions, but came away from
it still not knowing exactly what mucking around with property in a
modern context would precisely do for the working class. In one
instance, Engels indicated that it went back to thinkers dating from
the beginning of capitalism itself. In 1848, if the Marxist scenario
had actually happened, then we know that converting property into
state property would have been just one of the many things that
would have been possible with full state power, but to advocate the
abolition of capitalism in democracies? It would be silly for its total
unfeasibility. It's unfeasible because it will never be a popular demand.
It will never be a popular demand because too many other people want
all kinds of property for themselves. People want property because it's
one of the few things that can make people feel good. If the WSM had
a program that could make more than a few people feel good, it would
be more popular.

People don't have to repeat Marx's and Engels' mistakes for the
rest of their lives, unless they want to use their mistakes, and the
mistakes of successors like Lenin, De Leon, Stalin, Mao, etc., as
bases for building and maintaining sects that are guaranteed to
decline. People are bound to eventually detect the real movement
of history, which movement is bound to accelerate with every new
'chip' that wends its way into the burgeoning stream of technological
progress. Robot sales have recently been doubling annually, and that
doesn't have to happen for too many years in a row before society
gets overwhelmed by them. As Engels wrote in his Dec. 28, 1886
letter to Florence Kelley: "There is no better road to theoretical
clearness of comprehension than to learn by one's own mistakes,
"durch Schaden klug werden" [To learn by bitter experience]."
Or, 'misfortune imparts wisdom.'

Because mucking around with private property is such an
enormous mistake that requires a monumental state of denial
and false propaganda to maintain, then it may be safe to conclude
that perpetuating such a 'mistake' in the here and now serves an evil
purpose, viz., sectarianism. If 'the mistake' is allowed to be propagandized
as gospel, perhaps it is because 'the mistake' serves to split the working
class movement, which may be the real goal of socialist movements.
Without a little good will extended toward a serious re-examination
of socialist belief systems, the bad will of sectarianism will continue
to further the bourgeois cause of infighting in the working class
movement.*

* 2002 note: Without a party of its own, 'working class' is a figment
of an overactive imagination. A reasonable facsimile of a working class
party in England didn't exist in Marx's day either. (End of note.)

Sectarian foolishness over nonsense to the exclusion of practical tasks
helps to make the capitalist class richer than their wildest dreams. And,
what can the rich do with the surplus values that oppressed workers
create for the rich? If the rich ever feel threatened by a practical scenario,
they will be the first to dump enormous amounts of money to fuel
sectarianism, for they know that many workers will be only too glad
to make money by helping the upper classes spread sectarian nonsense.
How can workers boycott the job of cutting their own throats as long
as competition for scarce jobs makes them desperate enough to accept
very destructive jobs? At my web site, people can now read about my
own conflicts on that precise issue, while I was working for the ASLP.

Making M+E out to be pure and simple 'abolitionists' of this
and that plays to sectarianism, and provides people with an
adulterated product that will never appeal to any more than
a small segment of society, but not to the masses. If the same
message has been around since 1904, a very similar product
put out by the American SLP has been around since 1905.
(Funny how the dates of origin of these two similar forms of
adulterated Marxism also originated close to the same date. It
may be enough of a coincidence to send me back to the library.)

It seems like a lot of what Len opines about what M+E wrote
in 1848, or most any other year, can be easily contradicted by a
plain old worker like myself. Does Len do what he does because
the success of his particular branch of the socialist movement
means more to him than anything else? People in this forum
should demand an end to people justifying their programs
with incomplete or faulty information.

FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE At LE PERREUX
(ELC II, pp. 194-5) London, February 4, 1889
. . . "Well, I hope the new paper will come out; we must take the
situation as it is and make the best of it. When Paul gets to work
at a paper again, he will brace himself up for the fight and no longer
say despondently: il n'y a pas à aller contre le courant [There's no
going against the current]. Nobody asks of him to stop the current,
but if we are not to go against the popular current of momentary
tomfoolery, what in the name of the devil is our business? The
inhabitants of the Ville Lumière [Paris] have proved to evidence
that they are 2 millions, "mostly fools," as Carlyle says, but that
is no reason why we should be fools too. Let the Parisians turn
reactionists if they cannot be happy otherwise - the social
revolution will go on in spite of them, and when it's done
they can cry out: Ah tiens! c'est fait - et sans nous - qui
l'aurait imaginé! [Bless my soul, it's happened - and
without us - who would have thought it!]"

Socialism in the West today can be nothing but tomfoolery.
Sensitive, thinking, and concerned people ought to become
indignant over the tomfoolery of justifying their 'abolitionism'
through the works of M+E, and should start thinking about
seriously re-examining their belief systems. Only by seeking
to be honest in all that it does and thinks will the working
class movement be able to make progress.

Ken Ellis

"The burning desire to act, face to face with the impossibility
of doing anything effective, causes in many intelligent and
energetic heads an overactive mental speculation, an attempt
at discovering or inventing new and almost miraculous means
of action. The word of an outsider would have but a trifling,
and at best a passing, effect." - Engels

7-29-00

On the 28th, Paddy requested:

> Ken, how about providing that 'falsification factor'
> I asked for? You know, the one that would disprove
> your theory to your OWN satisfaction. Without that,
> you just don't have a theory to begin with.

I regret to have to report that I am totally unfamiliar with Paddy's
terminology: 'falsification factor', nor do I understand what is
meant by 'disproving my theory to my own satisfaction'. May I
inquire if this is a method of some sort? Academically rigorous,
perhaps? I really am in the dark and have no idea where to begin
to take up this challenge. If more details would get me on the right
track, then I would be appreciative. An example or two would be
especially helpful. Thanks for bearing with me.

Ken Ellis

7-29-00

Everyone!

I searched all day looking for the exact place where M or E stated
that their program of expropriation followed a long tradition 'since
the beginning of capitalism'. I had that quote in my hands just hours
ago, but now I can't find it any more! It's somewhere in the 3 volumes
of Marx-Engels Selected Works.

But, I found something else, at least as interesting, and perhaps
even more. In an 1877 biography of Marx, Engels GAVE THE
REASON for expropriating the expropriators (MESW 3, pp. 85-6):

"... that historical leadership has passed to the proletariat, a class
which, owing to its whole position in society, can only free itself
by abolishing all class rule, all servitude and all exploitation; and
that the social productive forces, which have outgrown the control
of the bourgeoisie, are only waiting for the associated proletariat to
take possession of them in order to bring about a state of things in
which every member of society will be enabled to participate not only
in production but also in the distribution and administration of social
wealth, and which so increases the social productive forces and
their yield by planned operation of the whole of production
that the satisfaction of all reasonable needs will be assured
to everyone in an ever-increasing measure."

I always wondered why we were supposed to take away the
property of the rich, and finally we have the answer: so that we
can ALL realize our desires to participate in the economy. I can
only imagine that, back in the days of rampant feudal absolutism, M
+ E couldn't imagine many other ways of arriving at full participation
other than by converting bourgeois property into the property of the
armed workers. Are there any other reasons beside 'full participation'
for workers to want to expropriate? If there are, maybe people can
do a little research and come up with concrete citations.

In our democracies today, everyone would be able to participate
in the economy if we just decided that we wished them to do so,
and made some simple amendments to the hours-of-labor laws
which all countries in the West have adopted over the past century.
As the conscious element in society, our duty to the working class
is becoming clearer, and our need for expropriation is diminishing
daily as we more clearly understand the original purpose for
expropriation. We know that expropriation was conceivable in
the West only during Marx's era, and later if Europe had followed
Russia's lead, but, expropriation is no longer practical or feasible
today. We must exhaust our civil remedies before we turn to
revolution. So, let's go to it. As Engels said at the end of a letter:
"vogue la galere!" [And let it rip!] . . .

Ken Ellis

One for all, and all for one!

7-29-00

Paddy wrote on the 22nd, in response to my question
about the cause of war:

> I just don't believe this. And you claim to have read Marx.
> What the hell do they teach people in the SLP? Here is the
> link in a sentence: capitalism is the most advanced form of
> property society, but all forms of property society feature
> war, as well as oppression, unequal distribution, famine etc
> etc. Will that do, or do you still need me to explain this?

This seems to boil down to, if I'm not mistaken: 'capitalism ...
features war'. If Paddy could excuse the density of my gray
matter, please explain what it is about capitalism that induces
it to feature war. There must be some particular aspect of
capitalism that must be more responsible for war than its other
aspects. I can't imagine its democratic aspect causing war, so
responsibility must lie somewhere else. It can't be its 'creation
of too many surpluses' or 'trade wars' aspect, because I brought
that up in my last posting, and Paddy would have said if he
agreed with it, which he obviously did not. So, this capitalism-
related cause of war is what I'm still trying to figure out.
Thanks in advance for your help.

Paddy wrote:

> If this is supposed to be dealing with the question of famines
> and why they happen, it's a pretty poor effort Ken. It does not
> deal with the well-known fact that during many famines, food is
> being exported, or locked away under armed guard. The New
> Internationalist and Oxfam have both stated that the cause of
> famine is NOT lack of food, but the unequal distribution
> of it. This is clearly an issue of private property.

I did admit that I didn't think that shorter hours would help
famine in Africa, so I might have agreed with Paddy on that
part, but apparently for incorrect reasons. I didn't bother
looking anything up. I trusted my instinct, which failed me.
I'll try not to let it happen again, but, knowing me, it could.

Paddy wrote:

> Well, you admit this in the case of the USA, where you
> think you have a solution. But what solution is there for
> people in the Third World, with no access to USA standards
> of living and no jobs? You have no real answer to this. That
> is my point. Your reform does not deal with these things.

I don't think I ever claimed that sharing work would be the instant
solution to everyone's problems all over the world. It would only
be a helpful measure in the West to begin with, and I merely
think that it would have increasingly beneficial repercussions on
the rest of the world as the reform picks up steam in the West.

Paddy wrote:

> But you didn't explain why the bosses have these wicked
> polluting ways to begin with. What makes industries pollute? Is
> it natural evil? Is it hatred of birds and bees and bunny rabbits? Is
> it to save money? If it's to save money, how does 'work-sharing'
> make any difference to this? If profit = pollution, what
> difference could your theory possibly make?

Well, I only wanted to cover the issue of toxic waste disposal
to begin with, and, like I said and implied, it costs big bucks to
properly dispose of toxic wastes, and bosses can sometimes
make more profits than their competitors if they can manage
to get away with cheaper (and often improper) disposal. The
bosses themselves don't do the dirty work. They leave that to
workers who probably have as many doubts (or more) about the
desirability of cutting corners at the expense of polluting, but are
loath to blow the whistle because of what's happened in the past to
other whistle-blowers. We in the USA have our Karen Silkwood
as a related example who had a very dramatic movie made about her.
Every other country can count other martyrs as well, but, who wants
to be a martyr? Not too many, which is why we have enough of a
toxic waste problem to be of issue in most communities. Here on
the home turf, capacitor manufacturers disposed of PVCs in our
river for years, and that has yet to be fully cleaned up. The factory
board chairman the didn't personally dump barrels of PVCs into
the river, nor did he personally and secretly build a pipeline from
the plant to the river. Workers did those things, and workers in the
know don't want to make martyrs of themselves. Workers have to
do what they get hired to do, or they get de-hired. In its present
state of disorganization, the working class is not about to make
room for people who want to boycott destructive jobs or blow
whistles. Not the way things are now, which is why we have to
create the artificial scarcity of labor that would give people of
ordinary good intent the freedom to boycott and/or shut down
destructive and useless occupations, because they would then
have the confidence of always being able to find work in other
areas if they abolished their own destructive jobs. Wouldn't
this be a good way to empower people?

Paddy wrote in response to the drug dealer who would rather
have worked if he could have found a decent job at a decent wage:

> If you believed that drug dealer you're daft. What job is he going
> to get that can earn $1000 a day? Why do you think the drugs
> trade is so hard to stop? Because it's so fantastically profitable
> that people will do anything, run any risk, kill anyone, to keep it
> going. Once again, profit motive. You seriously think drug dealers
> are going to give it all up so they can work some crappy little job
> in a diner which your 'work-sharing' scheme has found for them?
> I think they would tell you where you could stick your diner job.

Sometimes you just have to take people at face value for what
they say, other times not. I have no way of knowing whether or
not the dealer was lying, nor does Paddy. I think that some drug
dealers could be as cut-throat as what Paddy indicated, but could all
of them get from where they came from to automatically resemble
Paddy's portrayal? Every civil industry has its own division of labor
and class distinctions. There are big fish and little fish, and the little
fish don't have anywhere near as much fun or money as the big fish.
Please, let's not stereotype all drug dealers as cut-throat, Bentley-
driving swashbucklers. The guys at the bottom are not much better
off than anyone else, which is why the relative tranquility of mundane
jobs can sometimes offset their probable financial disadvantages.

Paddy wrote about an exchange we had about how the humanitarianism
of sharing work would rub off to someday help prevent war:

> Nope, you don't get out of it that easy. I knew exactly what
> you meant. You tried to claim that a more humanitarian society
> (because of shorter hours) might in the long term have fewer
> wars. That is what I was laughing at. It supposes that the reason
> we have wars is because we're not very nice people.

Europe has gone further to share work than any other region of
the world. When is the last time Germany invaded France, and
when has any Western power invaded another Western power?
Nowadays, wars begin and are fought out in less-developed and
less-democratic countries.

I had mentioned the fact that a thousand times more people
understand 'socialism' the way I do, which I had meant to include
the Leninist, Maoist, Cuban, etc. interpretation, but Paddy somehow
thought that I was talking about the De Leonist concept of 'socialism',
which is a lot closer to WSM ideology than it is to 'communist' ideology.
Sorry for not making my statement a little less ambiguous. My old ASLP
was down to a couple of hundred members not very long ago, which places
it in size alongside many other tiny sects. Paddy opined about the ASLP:

> For instance, they (I believe) envisage socialism as a form
> of small-business capitalism, Granny and her bread oven,
> Grandpa and his awl, etc.

Maybe that's why Paddy wasn't aware of the Discussion Bulletin,
which began re-printing Paddy's informative series on the Internet,
but the ASLP and the Discussion Bulletin adherents, as Adam can
testify, all believe in a form of socialism very much akin to the WSM
version, espousing classless, stateless, etc.less society, and skipping
the era of dictatorships and violence altogether.

Paddy wrote:

> It is not, and never has been, the WSM case that we should do
> [something about property relations] prematurely. The lessons
> of history which you point to certainly indicate that any premature
> attempt to smash capitalism will have adverse effects. No disagreement.

The WSM socialist program puts a high priority on abolishing
private property. The WSM declaration of principles states:

"Therefore the only way to eliminate the antagonism is to
eliminate the class system and establish a system of common
ownership where the previous antagonism has no basis."

The WSM doesn't call itself socialist for no reason at all. 'Premature'
is how I would describe trying to abolish property and ownership, which
would also effectively expropriate expropriators against the will of property
owners, which would create strife. We now know that the historical purpose
of expropriation was to allow for complete participation in the economy, and
we also know that abolishing property would mean strife, given most people's
present strong attachment to property, so, very good reasons exist for people
replacing proposals for changing property relations with civil proposals for
complete working-class participation in the economy. Let us hope that the
WSM will turn out to be more interested in the welfare of the lower classes
than in maintaining obsolete program proposals. A working-class program
of merit cannot mention property relations at all, given the overwhelming
public approval of present property relations. Socialists might as well try to
change the orbit of the planet as try to do anything about property relations.

Ken Ellis

7-29-00

On the 28th, Stuart wrote:

> ... Ken expects us to read all his mega-posts
> when he doesn't listen to the answers we give him
> or respond to the questions we put to him ...

I'm sorry not be able to respond to all questions and all mail.
I am quite far behind in answering my mail. If I answered it in
same the order as it came in, and shelved all of the new mail for
later, I would be approximately 3 weeks behind at this point,
which would make all of my posts irrelevant to current issues.
I am so far behind in my mail that I never even got around to
reading one of Len's longer messages, much as I wanted to, but
that was a couple of weeks ago, and I don't know if I'll ever be
able to delve that deeply into my 'in' box again. The recent long
piece on the Manifesto A and B took at least 24 hours to research
and write over the course of a week. I am a slow writer, and I
usually edit my messages many times before posting them, which
still doesn't prevent some blunders from occasionally getting by.

My most humble apologies to anyone who might feel slighted.
I really would like to follow etiquette more strictly, and I don't
even dare give an excuse for not doing so. All I can do for now
is to apologize for only being able to answer part of my mail,
and to wish that I had many more hours in the day.

With regrets,

Ken Ellis

7-31-00

On the 30th, in reference to my exchange with Paddy, a.c. wrote:

> his [Ellis's] intimation of your inferior intellectual position ...

Paddy and I are not in an intellectual war of any sort. If we were,
I would probably lose anyway. We are merely working our way
toward clarity. I merely forgot where to find Paddy's partially
familiar challenge, so I asked Paddy to remind me, which he
gratefully reposted, and I will be posting my next results shortly.
That's all that happened. Just a momentary glitch. The machinery
is back up and running, and production continues. Stay tuned for
further developments. We will reach clarity someday. I am glad
that a.c. is observing the debate with interest.

I hope a.c. will not forget to answer the question I posed on the 24th:

>> what was the purpose of the little story of the light bulb plant ...

... if the purpose wasn't to scare us into revolting,
as I had assumed in my message of the 21st?

Remember what M+E said in the Communist Manifesto: (MESW 1, p.
111): "The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the
instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with
them the whole relations of society. ... Constant revolutionising of production,
uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and
agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones."

If we look around us, what M+E wrote has to be as true today
as in their day, which doesn't sound very much like the bosses
are interested in plotting to bring us to the static stage of
enslavement the ASLP propagandized as 'industrial feudalism'.

Ken Ellis

7-31-00

On the 29th, Paddy wrote:

> But you seem so wedded to this 'working hours'
> theory (did you invent it, is that why?)

It's a mighty big world, with billions of people, so I don't know
if anyone invented my theory ahead of me, but it came to me
independently while writing my book about my experiences with
the American SLP. In 1976, I proved to my satisfaction that the
ASLP version of socialism was based - not on Marx's theory - but
upon a Bakuninist critique of Social-Democratic theory that the
ASLP insisted was Marx's theory. In 1976, I unfortunately left my
analysis incomplete due to a total demoralization over having to
leave the ASLP before I could complete my work with them, and
I didn't begin to more thoroughly flesh out my theories until
another 16 years had gone by, when the editor of the Discussion
Bulletin personally requested that I write about my experiences
with the ASLP. I never expected to write any more than a pamphlet,
at most. But, once I began writing in the summer of 1992, I couldn't
stop, and filled 600 pages by 1995. In '94, I discovered that changing
property relations was feasible only after overthrowing feudal
monarchies like Russia, or after liberating colonies like Cuba,
occasions when communists enjoyed full state power, which
proved right there that changing property relations in history was
based upon having and using enormous amounts of force. I also
concluded that no more than nationalization with compensation
was feasible in the West, because winning elections in democracies
like France and Italy never gave socialists the kind of full state
power that was required to expropriate means of production
without compensation. If Marx's theory had been a truly
correct theory of world evolution, then socialism would have
been easier and more appropriate for the advanced capitalist
countries (where M+E thought it would happen first) than for
the backward countries where changing property relations in
a socialist-inspired manner actually happened first. (If no one
thinks those revolutions were not socialist-inspired, look at
whom Russia, China and Cuba, etc., look or looked up to.)
Instead of the most advanced countries acquiring a universal
proletarian dictatorship that would have rendered socialism
impervious to counter-revolution, the world got nationalization
of land and industries in backward and peripheral countries,
which certainly was not part of Marx's scenario of world-
wide simultaneous revolutions.

That all proved to me that the Marxist scenario was fatally flawed.
If it was fatally flawed, then to what could workers look to give
them hope? I didn't have the answer in my hand immediately after
my discoveries, but I did have to finish my book, which had begun
as a defense of Marxism and Leninism vs. the ASLP's Bakuninist
distortions. After discovering the faultiness of Marx's and Lenin's
theories in '94, my book also had to include a consignment of their
theories of revolution to the ashbin of history. While Marx and Lenin
helped me to refute ASLP theories of revolution, history refuted the
revolutionary theories of Marx and Lenin. I was quite disappointed
at that point, because I heavily relied on Marx and Lenin to prove that:
most of the quotes that Arnold Petersen of the ASLP used to justify
his De Leonist program of Socialist Industrial Unionism had been
taken out of literary or historical context. As I polished my refutation
of 2 of AP's pamphlets, I gradually got acquainted with the issue of
workers' struggles for shorter hours, which happened to be easier to
accomplish in the USA and Britain than in less developed countries.
I observed Marx's somewhat qualified endorsement of shorter hours,
and I gradually became enthused about that particular mode of putting
more people to work for fewer hours. Eventually, I became aware that
taking shorter hours to its natural conclusion could abolish capitalism
itself, for, with no hours of labor, there would be no working class,
there would be no more exploitation, and no more capitalism. So, I
independently discovered a way to overcome capitalism in the
West, and without firing a shot.

Paddy wrote:

> Assuming that you are not merely expressing a blind faith,
> what is the test which would prove your theory wrong - to
> YOUR satisfaction? Does it actually exist? If you can't think
> of one, then your theory is unfalsifiable.

I guess that the ultimate proof of the pudding is in the eating,
and if people turn to socialism instead of reducing hours of labor,
that would prove me wrong to our satisfaction, and then I would
owe people a huge apology for wasting their time while the
critical problems of the lower classes went unsolved at the
same time that I was trying to lead them away from socialism,
and into reforming their democracies. Guillotine, anyone?

Until the working class chooses one plan over the other, my
theory of 'what workers will do' rests on the rather iron-clad
observation that changing property relations was less feasible
in Western democracies than elsewhere, while reducing hours
of labor is more feasible and applicable to Western democracies
than elsewhere.

That was the observation, but the theory is this: Instead of
workers uniting to abolish capitalism and private property,
workers will unite to share work by reducing work hours.
Well, since that is also an observation as well (because workers
have a history of sharing work in times of crisis) the theory then
has to be an escalation of that observation: As the ideology of dog-
eat-dog competition gets replaced with work-sharing ideology, the
resulting progressive and militant reductions of labor-time will
reduce profits drastically enough to cause capitalists to request
workers to buy them out*. After that, workers will continue to
reduce working hours as technology permits until low enough
for us to phase over to a volunteer work force, which will dissipate
as we further approach workless, classless, stateless, propertyless,
and moneyless society. According to IBM, big computers will be as
smart as we are in a mere 10 years, and, according to me, computers
that smart should fit into tea-cups by 2020, but it will take another
few years after that to entirely phase out human labor, physical
and intellectual.

* 2002 note: I no longer subscribe to the buy-out of the capitalists,
because that 'solution' has its roots in changing property relations.
No such changes will occur until after the abolition of labor, and the
abolition of class distinctions. Property ownership at that point will no
longer benefit owners, so property ownership will gradually fall into
disuse and be abandoned. As Marx wrote in The Holy Family (me4.279):
"Hence the abolition of private property will become a reality only when
it is conceived as the abolition of "labour"" (End of note.)

Just the way Marx's theory of socialist revolution was based
upon what workers were actually doing for themselves in the
revolutions of 1848 and 1871, my theory is based upon what
workers in the West have actually done for themselves and will
continue to do. Marx saw European workers taking and holding
full state power for increasing lengths of time in each succeeding
struggle, while I have seen European workers continuing to fight
for reforms to share work by means of shorter hours.

Paddy wrote:

> According to the conventions of science, a theory which
> is unfalsifiable is not a theory at all. Eg. God exists, the
> universe is imaginary, aliens walk among us etc etc are not
> theories. As a counter example, the theory of socialism (as
> we understand it, remember) is falsifiable. Tests are available
> to disprove it. One principle test is this: if it can be shown that
> resources are limited but wants are unlimited (and I say shown,
> not merely asserted), then socialism is impossible.

Though I will never be the one to prove it, I doubt very much if either
human wants or resources are unlimited, so that test would favor socialism.

Paddy wrote:

> Another: if it can be shown that wars are fought over ideologies, not
> over material resources, then the materialist conception of history
> collapses. If this collapses, the materialist basis of our politics
> falls down, and socialism reverts to being a utopian ideal. OK?

Not having studied its cause, I can't claim that wars are fought
over ideologies. If materialism and socialism still work for Paddy,
those two tests by themselves don't exactly salvage socialism for me.

I would like to propose other tests for the viability of socialism.
First we would have to define socialism, and, no matter what other
elements might be included in its definition, I think that we could
agree that socialism includes altering property relations. Perhaps
we could then agree that socialist theory includes 'the necessity
of altering property relations due to obvious discrepancies in
quantities and qualities of wealth and property distribution'.
If capitalism distributes wealth and property unequally, then
socialism distributes it equally. That seems fair, and maybe
the reason why so many people are socialists is because they
are fair-minded, but is socialism feasible? Socialists burn with
passion to bring a fairer distribution of wealth and property to
the people, but, is socialism feasible? No fair-minded person
would dare critique out of hand or dismiss a fair-minded
program like socialism, but, is socialism feasible? I have
the highest regard for the noble intentions of socialism.
The only fault I can find with it is, to paraphrase Frank
Zappa: 'It can't happen here. I've been checking it out,
and it can't happen here'.

I would love to find a test for sharing work that meets the criteria,
but it proceeds so quickly from being an observation to becoming
a prediction of further development along the same line, that I'm
having trouble getting started. I proposed a couple of tests for
the viability of socialism, so I'm wondering if someone could
reciprocate by suggesting tests for a program for sharing work.

Ken Ellis

8-02-00

Hi, Bob,

Sorry I haven't been keeping up with correspondence. As I've
mentioned before, I don't know how to handle my inability to keep up.

Bob wrote:

> You fail to make the distinction between work, and employment.

I can't remember promising to. I tend to equate the two, especially
if both can be considered to be compelled by economic necessity,
as in 'work or starve', or 'make money or suffer economic insecurity'.
Employment sounds like a technical or legal term that covers the
boss-worker relationship. In the common parlance of the class we
would like our messages to reach, people more often 'go to work'
than they 'go to their places of employment'.

2002 note: Later I discovered that Engels made a note in Capital
differentiating between the words 'labor' and 'work' (me35.57):
"The labour which creates Use Value, and counts qualitatively, is
Work, as distinguished from Labour; that which creates Value and
counts quantitatively, is Labour as distinguished from Work."

> Ken you have dismissed socialist ideas as being unworkable,
> but it is obvious that you have never considered Marx's 'labour
> theory of value', otherwise you would never consider capitalism
> with a zero workweek as a serious proposition.

From a propaganda point of view, the phrase 'zero-hour work
week' has less and less value, so I no longer use either the phrase
or the concept. The only reason I ever brought up the 'zero-hour
work week' in the first place was that I hadn't carefully thought
through the scenario before I joined the forum. This is what I
mean by us 'working our way toward clarity'. It's much more of
a process than a finished product. The input of others has been
gratifying, all of it, even the most frustrating parts of it, for it
proves that, if I am being ineffective in my arguments, then a
reason for my ineffectiveness must exist, if only I can find it.

We will never have to get to a zero-hour work week to get what we
want. Just getting where we collectively demand full participation
is my real goal. That will be enough to put the human race on the
path to peaceful cooperation instead of hardship. Is it within our
human capacity? I think so, which is why I work for it, but only
time will tell anything for sure. It's a brand new scenario that
awaits us in the future, whatever it turns out to be.

After the happy day of our mutual determination to work for full
participation in the economy, the work-week or work-year will
eventually decline so much that the thought of having to actually
legislate a zero-hour work-year will seem anal at best. I'm pretty
sure that our mutual humanitarianism and altruism will ensure
that the remaining human 'labor' will be done on a basis other
than with the present well-known attitude of 'having to get up
in the morning to go to work'.

Onwards to the challenge of the 28th:

(1) 'Employers would hire workers to work only five or ten hours
per week' if it were legislated thus. Not many people I know, rich
or poor, want to be caught breaking too many laws. We all know
about the retributions that have to be paid if the abuse of laws is
too flagrant.

(2) 'Workers are to be persuaded to adopt my ideas' if mine are
better than the other ideas.

(3) 'Workers will survive while creating an artificial scarcity of
workers' because they will still go to work and produce what they
did before, only for fewer hours per year. Increased productivity
will make up for the shortfall of hours applied.

> (4) Show us why the owners of the robots that create a zero work
> week for the working class will want to share the benefits with the
> workers that are no longer necessary to the productive process.

The question, though confusing to me, I believe contains the
premise of a workless society, as implied by the 'zero-hour
week'. The kind of workless society that I want to help to create
is one that has already learned to share work, which will prepare
us for being a classless society as soon as we reach workless,
so we will also be prepared to share the products of the entity
that creates the means of life. Just exactly what mechanisms will
exist to provide for everyone, I cannot predict. If we cannot learn
to share work soon, we will get to workless society anyway, but
class divisions would remain to the end of work, at which time
only the capitalist class would survive. In light of our previous
history, that scenario is so absurd that I have full confidence of
our reaching classless society simultaneously with workless society.
That doesn't mean, however, that we won't drag our feet in creating
the workless, classless society until absurdly and dangerously late
in the game. With the degree of insanity society exhibits today,
we will have a long way to go to perfect our humanitarianism.

> (5) Show us how you will bring about a classless society when some
> people have lots of property, and others no means of acquiring any
> because they are no longer needed to produce goods and services.

The situation of people owning lots of property while others are
living in poverty describes the present stage of things, which will
cease to exist not long after we learn to equitably share work. That
situation will never return to haunt us unless the big meteor strikes,
or something of that nature. The very fact of our finally having
learned to share work will signify an enormous leap forward in
human consciousness, which will end the old dog-eat-dog mentality
forever. At present, it's so hard for us to imagine that happy state
of affairs that people in the forum habitually insinuate dog-eat-dog
modus operandi on the post work-sharing society. It is not an easy
gear shift to negotiate. As a result, lots of gear teeth get gnashed.

> Please Ken show me by reasoned economic argument how to arrive
> at your zero work week and I will be delighted to join your campaign.

First, we have to drop all talk of the zero hour work week.
It's obsolete. Please redefine what you want me to explain.

Ken Ellis

8-02-00

["Warm Gun" is Simon W. - Shaun]

I was happy to hear from Warm Gun about current issues, but
was disappointed in the tone of his critique. It was as though we
had become sworn enemies for some reason or other, but I can't
imagine why. We are as yet merely theorizing about some future
societal development which has yet to materialize to favor either
socialism or work reduction, so I'm wondering what all of the
rancor is about. We are merely trading opinions and suggestions
by which we can move forward together as a society. If I were
selling Fords and he were selling Fiats, then a market share would
be something to fight over, but neither of us seems to have much
of anything of value to successfully 'sell', and I was hoping that
we could, in the meantime, all take the attitude of applying mutual
cooperation and understanding to the great goal of getting to
classless, stateless, etc.less society in peace and harmony.

> Marx didn't have a scenario for all times and places,
> even though you've misunderstood the one he had.

M+E brought up the topic of WORLD revolution often enough
to be indexed in little collections of their works, and world
revolution certainly includes 'all places'.

> Anyone with revolutionary sympathies can easily find a party of
> their choosing. The problem is the lack of revolutionaries, not the
> lack of a party with a killer idea.

That's where we presently would have to disagree, for I maintain
that the reason that revolutionaries are not getting very far is that
ALL revolutionary programs in democracies are invalid, because
the purpose of revolution in the past has been to bring democracy
to where it didn't exist before. Once people get to Western levels
of democracy, then its up to them to use democracy to further their
personal and/or class interests. Marx often stated that democracies
are the form of state in which the class struggle is to be fought to
a finish, and he also meant us to use it right up to the arrival of
classless, stateless, etc.less society. We can't fight the class struggle
to a finish in an absolute monarchy, because the bosses would always
win, and we'd have to overthrow the monarchy to establish a form of
state in which the majority could prevail over the minority. The class
interests of the majority cannot be imposed on a minority unless
we can do it relatively peacefully and legally in democracies.

> Then why the hell do working hours constraints have to be
> imposed from outside, arbitrarily, on the economy? Vis New
> Labour in Britain. New technology EXTENDS the working day.
> Someone in a call centre can work sixteen hours when they
> wouldn't last more than 8 pulling a plough.

The working class isn't organized to protect its class interests. The
upper classes therefore find it easy to run roughshod over us. Workers
may instinctively feel indignant over the abuses, but, with so much of the
activist element fighting for socialism, who is left to look after important
issues like hours of labor and full participation?

I wrote earlier:
>> As the ideology of dog-eat-dog competition gets replaced with
>> work-sharing ideology, the resulting progressive and militant
>> reductions of labor-time will reduce profits drastically enough
>> to cause capitalists to request workers to buy them out.

2002 note: There I go again with Marx's obsolete buy-out. I no longer subscribe to it.

Warm Gun responded:
> Or workers will suffer from massive unemployment and be cutting
> each other's throats on the streets for work, as is happening in
> Turkey at the moment. Capitalists love that kind of shit.

Warm Gun's comment was a rather obvious underestimation of the
power of organization. The only reason the bad things mentioned
happen all of the time is due to our lack of organization.

> Socialism IS THE ABOLITION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY.
> Stop typing, start reading. This is the thing you have been trying
> to dodge. If you have a problem with this definition, then make
> entries on this. Short ones.

We've already been round and round on this one. I hold that the WSM
definition is very unpopular and clumsy compared to the definitions used
on the street, and by a billion people familiar with Lenin, Mao, Castro, etc.*
People shouldn't set up strict definitions unless they are prepared to also get
themselves dismissed as sectarians. Unpopular definitions imply that the sect
knows everything better than the rest of the world, and that the world is going
to have to go knocking on their door in order to find salvation.

* 2002 note: There I had in mind the communist world's definition of socialism
as 'proletarian dictatorship'. But, my answer was inadequate. (End of note.)

> You think that socialism is about the regulation of labour

On the contrary. I know that socialism is about changing property
relations. I want people to get over their socialism, and to get over
trying to do the impossible so that they can direct their energies
toward something useful.

> I want socialism for myself, not as some christian trying to
> save the black babies.

Socialism was supposed to be for everyone; If Warm Gun could
get socialism for himself, he'd be able to buy it at the corner store.

Ken Ellis

One for all, and all for one!

8-03-00

On the 30th, the crown commander of crimson carnage wrote:

> I signed up as a member of the WSM forum, expecting quality
> discussion among Socialists and genuinely, interested parties.
> I have no desire to contribute to such a forum ...

On the 1st, he wrote:

> I don't believe it was intended to be nearly monopolized
> by Utopian ideas that a workless world is achievable or even
> desirable. In spite of others taking the time and effort to respond
> with scientifically valid arguments, he apparently hasn't absorbed
> anything and continues to persist in this ridicules notion.

Whether or not the 'workless world is achievable or even
desirable', it is rapidly approaching. If workers manage to
achieve their class interests of 'full participation' and manage
to abolish class distinctions while abolishing labor, then property
in a workless and classless world will not redound to the benefit
of capitalists the same way property ownership redounds to their
benefit today. No working class = no profit. No profit from
productive property means that ownership of means of production
won't be worth anything to individual capitalists any more. When
hours of labor are forced sufficiently low to give ordinary people
the time to spend on matters of common concern, the monopoly
political power of the relatively small class that owns a great deal
is bound to decline. The reason they control so much today is that
we run ourselves ragged just to get by from day to day and are
forced to leave the big decisions to the class with the time to spend
on the important matters. Give us the time, and we will expand our
democratic input and become a force for progressive change.
Capitalists want to keep us enslaved to long hours in order to
preserve their monopoly on the political process, as well as
for the higher profits from long hours. Would Deathy find
a low-work, high-power situation 'undesirable'?

As for the alleged 'scientifically valid arguments' of others, I wish they
were. Thanks to the forum input, I have voluntarily scrapped some of
my arguments, but no one else seems to have adjusted their views.

I would find it difficult to believe that my input could in any way
put a damper on anyone else's input. There's plenty of room for
us 150, and we don't have to read the messages we don't want to
read. If everyone in the forum were uniformly socialist, then who
would there be to convert? The forum requires skeptics like me
for socialists to practice their conversion skills, just like my
program requires skeptics for me to convert.

Ken Ellis

"... it's enough to be a Marxist and Engelsist
to stay young forever!" ... Laura (Marx) Lafargue

8-03-00

On the 28th, Len wrote:

> Thus, no reform save for his own scheme will do.

I'm with M+E on distinguishing between working class and
petty-bourgeois reforms. The 10 hour Bill was a reform lauded
by Marx, and the 8 hour demand of the First International was
to be implemented by means of reforms that the bosses would
have to obey individually and collectively.

> How would workers get to shorter work days? Ken is a little
> muddy on that. Somehow we would all withhold our labour
> power. Whether that can happen all at once, he is unclear.

'What to do' is rather clear. In a democracy like the USA, we could get
to a shorter work-week simply by amending the Fair Labor Standards
Act, the same law that presently provides time and a half after 40. Both
time-and-a-half AND 40 happen to be arbitrary figures that are waiting
to be modified to better meet working class interests.

Len wrote:
> ... the labour market (which is the demand for labour) is:
> (1) determined by the state of production; (2) that the labour
> supply and the natural reproduction of the working class and,
> (3) the momentary degree of productivity of labour. And these
> remain outside the sphere of influence of the working class

The labour market is determined entirely by the state of
organization or disorganization of the working class. During
the Depression, labor was organized enough to get time and a
half after 40, but not the 30 that labor wanted. American workers
haven't been that well-organized since.

Len nearly paraphrased my intent:
> The class struggle between capitalist and working
> class would remain, but the capitalists would, in
> the end, legislate laws that would end capitalism.

Marx in his 1872 Speech at the Hague said that workers in democracies
could get what they wanted by peaceful means. M+E often referred to
democracy as the form of state in which the class struggle would be
fought to a finish. Hours of labor are precisely the issue that will
have more to do with abolishing class distinctions than anything
else we could fight the bosses over. Socialists are having trouble
understanding that labor time is the all-important topic, not the
abolition of property.

Len wrote:
> And what if that general strike, I mean -
> general slow-down strike - is not general?

In that case, capital would flow from the countries with more
labor protection to countries with less labor protection. It happens
constantly now, and will happen in the future until we can make the
rules truly international. Isn't an international standard for conditions
of labor a worthwhile goal?

Len wrote:
> He says above that work can be "phased out" gradually
> "as technology permits", but he is adamant and unbelieving
> that today we have the technology available for Socialism
> to that very end. Nor does he admit that under capitalism
> the question of who owns the technology is of any relevance.

M+E repeated that the technological level for socialism existed
in their day, so the technological level probably exists today as
well. But, the question of the possibility of socialism, for the
past century and a half, has always been a political one, and
consisted of whether or not socialists had the kind of state
power to abolish bourgeois property.

Len wrote:
> As if withholding labour power (going on a prolonged strike)
> can affect what is produced under capitalism! Ken above talks
> of "the workers" achieving all this as if this will somehow be a
> humanizing, emancipatory struggle. But does this jell with his
> conception that the workers need not achieve state power?
> That a few politicians can produce this FOR the working
> class? How does this supposedly humanizing struggle
> not even call into question the exploitation of wages?

It's merely a universal slow-down strike. Because we haven't yet
had a militant universal slow-down strike, we can't yet know what
is or isn't possible under that condition. We have to organize over
something. If there's no sign of us organizing for socialism, we might
as well organize to put our whole class to work, which American
workers did for themselves to a certain extent in the Depression of
the 30's, and will likely do again once this economic boom is over
with. We have to remember that the purpose of socialism for M+E
was to allow for full participation in the economy, not simply for the
sake of taking away the property of the rich, or for putting the means
of production into the hands of the state. People seem to have forgotten
the greater motivating goal over abolishing bourgeois property. All of the
humanitarianism of Marx's goal of full participation has been replaced by
a seeming vendetta against bourgeois property, as if socialism has become
'a thing in itself', separate from the higher goal of communists looking out
for working class interests. In a democracy, a workers' party will be able
to get what it wants, and it may not even be necessary for it to have a
majority in Congress.

Len wrote:
> The fact that workers are forced to go on strike proves
> that the bosses do have control. The fact that they must
> sign a contract to go back to work to the means of production
> owned by another class proves the bosses have control. The
> fact that if they are fired for going out on strike (and this
> happens worldwide even in the "democratic" United States
> with all its labour laws), proves the bosses are in control.

The only thing that proves that the bosses are in control
is the fact that the workers are not organized.

Len wrote:
> But it's a funny kind of political economy of the workers if they
> work for the reform of capitalism rather than its abolition.

The 10 hour Bill was good enough for Marx to crow over in his
day, but it doesn't sound as though similar acts would be good
enough for today's socialists. In their democracies, workers will
get to the abolition of labor, classes, the state, property and money
by one way only - by reform of their democratic states for as long
as their states still exist. The only revolution that needs to occur is
a revolution in socialist thought, a negation of its own anachronistic
negation of property. Once Europe failed for sure to support
Russia, socialism died forever. R.I.P.

2002 note: Without the CD of MECW, I surely repeated my same old arguments a lot.

Len wrote:
> But even with a capitalism with shorter work days
> he glosses over the fact that the working class
> would be forced to work for a wage.

It would be something to celebrate if EVERYONE
who wanted to work could do so for a living wage.

Len wrote:
> And thus, to Ken, the capitalists will abolish work ..

They are abolishing labor. It's up to workers to see that
the remaining work gets equitably shared.

Len paraphrased:
> But that property won't earn them a profit so property
> will disappear naturally. And thus the State and money
> will disappear only later because some people may be
> really into the state and money. Talk about blurring!

After we decide to equitably share work, the resulting higher
wages and lower profits would cause owners to beg workers to
buy them out*, sort of like our United Airlines, but on a wider
scale. Property ownership will cease to be profitable after work
and classes disappear, so property will slowly merge into the
collective, like the air we breathe. The functions of state will
dissipate along with class distinctions and property concerns.
With electronic transactions increasingly universal, money as
what hangs around in our pockets will gradually disappear, and
electronic transactions will also decline. Just the way for Marx the
big thing was the creation of the universal proletarian dictatorship,
after which all puzzle pieces would fall into place, so for me is the
creation of the universal slow-down strike, after which all else will
fall into place. As Engels said, "The great thing is to get the working
class to move as a class; that once obtained, they will soon find the
right direction, and all who resist, Henry George or Powderly,
will be left out in the cold with small sects of their own."

* 2002 note: I no longer hold to the buy-out, nor to the reason stated for it. (End of note.)

Of course, Engels thought the workers would move toward socialism,
but it didn't happen in democracies.

Len gave us data from 1904:
> What Ken was unable to answer is that the working class is not
> "ga-ga over property". How could they be when they don't own
> bourgeois property and all they own is their labour power?

In the USA of the present, half of the population owns stocks.
Most of the wealth in stocks belongs to workers' retirement funds.
As a country, we are ga-ga over property, which is one of the major
things that distinguished the USA from Europe. In an 1886 letter to
Florence Kelley, Engels wrote: "America after all was the ideal of all
bourgeois; a country rich, vast, expanding, with purely bourgeois
institutions unleavened by feudal remnants or monarchical traditions
and without a permanent and hereditary proletariat. Here everyone
could become, if not a capitalist, at all events an independent man,
producing or trading, with his own means, for his own account."

It didn't last, of course, but what does? Even though Engels
thought the USA was heading for a 'Purgatorio', it's so hard for
us to lose our vision of the great American dream, which certainly
includes a car, a home, etc., and even a business of our own. In
1987, small business dominated industries in the USA employed
over 46 million people, or nearly half the work force. What made a
lot of the growth possible was the long hours that made high wages
possible. Will workers willingly give up long hours to help put more
people to work? At least in the short run, many will still be willing to
fight over the last of the long-hour opportunities to make the rich
richer than their wildest dreams, but that's part of what fuels the
insanity of the American experience. We are all heading for the
loony bin. Is there any wonder why an idealist such as I should
try to make the WSM an ally in trying to bring sanity to British
and American workers? If I fail, I fail, but at least I will have tried.

Len wrote:
> As for the socialist mode of production growing alongside the
> capitalist mode, this is nonsensical since capitalist production
> is based on private and state property while the socialist mode
> is based on common or non-ownership of property.

If common ownership were worth anything, we would see it grow
alongside capitalist ownership, just the way capitalist ownership
grew alongside feudal land ownership, and feudal land ownership
grew alongside of slave ownership. The socialist scenario, on the
other hand, sounds like quite an abrupt change for society. At
least the shorter hour scenario includes birth, maturation and
decline within capitalism, while socialism implies an abrupt
replacement of one by the other.

Len wrote:
> Every revolution of the past has been a political
> revolution and property has changed hands.

Property will disappear in the work-sharing scenario as well. The
work-sharing scenario just doesn't include anything like a quick
abolition of anything.

Len thinks that I claim that the WSM favors brute force, but I only
ever said that *it would take* brute force to do what the WSM
wants with property, considering that people were willing to fight
to the death to defend as immoral a form of ownership as slavery,
and then didn't have the political will to carve up plantations to
provide freed slaves with their promised 40 acres and a mule.
Ownership is so highly respected in the West that it will take
nothing less than a complete change in the mode of production.
Will the abolition of labor and classes be enough of a change?

Len wrote:
> But to Ken, this sharing of work might lead to "voluntary
> labour". Anyone would know that the capitalist class and
> the State would shout "HOORAY, we can extract surplus
> value completely with 100 per cent exploitation*!"

* 2002 note: The rate of exploitation is the ratio of unpaid labor
to paid labor. 100% exploitation may sound awful, but it actually
corresponds to a meager rate that Marx commonly used as an
example, when half of a 12 hour day represented wages, and the
other half represented surplus values. If labor is 40 times more
productive than 200 years ago, and if subsistance could be earned
with a mere hour's worth of work per week, then a "39 to 1" rate of
exploitation, or 3,900% would not be uncommon today. But, that
seemingly high rate will itself pale before the nearly infinite rate
of exploitation to be realized when the robots become really smart
in another few years. Productive output, divided by zero labor, equals
infinite productivity. Fasten your seatbelts, or prepare to make war
on truly unnecessarily extravagant surplus values. (End of note.)

Once the work-year becomes ridiculously short, people will
reject the idea of formally legislating a zero-hour work-year.
People who will want to 'work' will do so, and those who
don't, won't. The volunteer 'work'-force scenario would
not be compatible with private profit, so the buy-out of
the capitalist class would have to occur first.

2002 addition/correction: Marx's buy-out is no longer part of my
program, and never should have been incorporated to begin with,
which demonstrates the value of dialogue, to help work our way
toward clarity. What should have been said was that 'the abolition
of wage labor precludes the existence of a capitalist class and
capitalist profits.' (End of note.)

Len unfortunately got confused where he wrote:
> workers would no longer have to "earn our stuff"
> (even though we would still be working for a wage)

When workers no longer have a means of earning their stuff,
the capitalist system would have already ended, so wages would
not be compatible with that particular era in the scenario.

Len wrote:
> and through these wages (whether high or low, Ken is not
> sure) we could "share" the "necessities of life". But again,
> this may not be the case since the capitalists won't even be able
> to pay even a low wage because they're not making any profits!

Again, unfortunate confusion. Our having learned to share
the remaining work will prepare us for sharing the products
of whatever entity creates our stuff when there no longer is
a way for anyone to earn it.

Len wrote: The capitalist state is a capitalist state to hold
capitalism in place (even against the will of individual capitalists).

I can't imagine capitalists objecting to capitalism
being 'held in place' for their benefit.

Len wrote:
> simply passing laws to regulate the labour market and
> workdays on a worldwide scale would accomplish the
> [bureaucratic monstrosity] he criticizes us for.

At present, regulating hours of labor takes up an insignificant
portion of the total work of government. Even giving the laws
better teeth would not necessarily significantly increase the
bureaucracy, which is the beauty part of enacting a law that can
be regulated by the ticking of a clock whose accuracy not very
many people would argue over. Just getting the working class
to equitably share work will begin to seriously erode the welfare
bureaucracy, the penal system, the health care bureaucracy, and
so much other government waste, that the savings in other
domains would far outweigh whatever minor enhancements
might need to occur in the labor department.

Len unsuccessfully tried to equate my advocacy of the abolition
of classes with Bakunin's 'equalization of classes'. Everyone
knows, on the other hand, that I use 'the abolition of classes' in
the same sense that Engels used it in his "Socialism: Utopia to
Science" (MESW 3, p. 148):

"But if, upon this showing, division into classes has a certain
historical justification, it has this only for a given period, only
under given social conditions. It was based upon the insufficiency
of production. It will be swept away by the complete development
of modern productive forces. And, in fact, the abolition of classes
in society presupposes a degree of historical evolution at which the
existence, not simply of this or that particular ruling class, but of any
ruling class at all, and, therefore, the development of production carried
out to a degree at which appropriation of the means of production and
of the products, and, with this, of political domination, of the monopoly
of culture, and of intellectual leadership by a particular class of society, has
become not only superfluous but economically, politically, intellectually, a
hindrance to development. This point is now reached."

In their anti-Bakuninist "Fictitious Splits in the International", M+E wrote
(MESW 2, p. 254): "The equalisation of classes, literally interpreted, means
harmony between Capital and Labour so persistently preached by the bourgeois
socialists. It is not the logically impossible equalisation of classes, but on the
contrary the abolition of classes, this true secret of the proletarian movement,
which forms the great aim of the International Working Men's Association."

What better way to begin to abolish class distinctions than by
the working class winning full participation in the economy?
That would eliminate poverty right there.

Len wrote:
> Ken would rather have the capitalist slowly strangle to death
> (he conveniently does not speak of the economic crises of his
> capitalism without profits to render) which then renders a
> working class powerless since they have given up political
> authority to the politicians of a capitalist state.

With far fewer resources with which to buy politicians, the
latter would have fewer reasons to listen solely to a class
whose extinction was advancing.

Len wrote:
> those who would move in to maintain the order
> would be the fascists to save a faltering capitalism.

So, 'if we don't all become socialists, we are doomed to suffer
from being taken over by fascists.' This sounds like the old
socialist scare tactics again.

Len wrote:
> ... why would the petty-bourgeoisie want to expropriate property?

The class interests of the petty-bourgeoisie are to rally workers to
help them strip the power and property of the big bourgeois who
ruin and oppress the little bourgeois, and to turn over control over
all of that property to a state controlled by a petty-bourgeois party.

Len wrote:
> How can one first abolish class and only then
> abolish property (not even abolish, but decline!) ?

By the very end of class distinctions, property would not
redound to the benefit of owners in the form of profits, so
society as a whole would lose its fascination with trying to
obtain it, and it would decline in social value and eventually
merge into the collective, like the air we breathe.

Len wrote:
> Ken wants to eliminate advertising, bureaucracy, sales and
> even crime by diminishing the quantity of work. But who
> would pass and regulate the laws that Ken has mentioned?

Once we diminish profits by means of reducing hours of
labor, owners will not have anywhere near as much influence
over government. There is no choice as to where to fight the
final battle between workers and bosses anyway, for, as Marx
wrote in his "Critique of the Gotha Program" (MESW 3, p. ):

"Even vulgar democracy, which sees the millennium in the
democratic republic and has no suspicion that it is precisely in
this last form of state of bourgeois society that the class struggle
has to be fought out to a conclusion - even it towers mountains
above this kind of democratism which keeps within the limits
of what is permitted by the police and not permitted by logic."

If democracies are going to be the final battleground of the
final class struggle, then we will have to use our democracies
to gradually abolish labor and classes. Property, money, and
even the state will decline as well, everything at its own pace.

Len wrote:
> On the one hand Ken wants the workers to organise at
> an international level for shorter hours, shorter work days in
> order to finally attain stateless, moneyless, propertyless society.
> On the other hand, he doesn't because Socialism (the very thing
> he wants) will be "the furthest thing from their minds".

Socialism implies getting to the upper level of communism by
means of altering property relations as a direct goal. The shorter
hour scenario is a non-property-oriented means of getting to the
higher phase of communist society.

Len wrote:
> On the one hand he states that we should revert to "Luddism".
> On the other hand he wants technology to abolish work completely.

I never suggested converting to Luddism unless we were
interested in putting an end to technological progress, but
ending technological progress doesn't seem like it's on too
many agendas. I merely mentioned it as an undesirable
alternative to our headlong and mindless rush to worklessness.

Len wrote:
> Ken has learned little about Socialism in his years in the U.S.
> Socialist Labor Party. He worked with the advocates for a Labor
> Party (much like Canada's social democratic NDP or UK's Labour
> Party). He left both and has now brought forward his scheme to us,
> to tell us we are just wrong. I can only think that he hopes to recruit
> some members of this forum to his own beliefs, perhaps form a
> group. If he does so on the basis of what he advocates, then it
> will just be another confusionist groupling, unaware,
> contradictory, reformist and utopian.

It would be nice to make converts in this forum, but I have yet to
see any evidence of that. It may turn out to be a mere exercise in
debating, for which experience I have already been grateful. It has
been a wonderful test of my ideas and a learning experience for me.

Ken Ellis

-------------------------------
"Live working or die fighting."
-------------------------------

"The watchword of the modern proletariat" that the silk winders
of Lyons inscribed upon their banner during their strike (From
Marx's 1869 "Report on the Basle Congress").

8-03-00

> Ken, my question is: in your scenario -- with working hours reduced
> to zero -- why don't we starve before the revolution happens?
>
> Toby

I wouldn't plan on any more revolutions in the West. The West
has its democracies. It will be all evolution from now on.

Creating a shortage of labor will so undermine profits that owners will
no longer pretend to be interested in production, so workers will buy out*
industries and create the great cooperative association of workers advocated
by Marx. Once the work-year becomes ridiculously short, people will reject
the idea of formally legislating a zero-hour work-year. People who want to
'work' will do so, and those who don't, won't. The volunteer 'work'-force
scenario would not be compatible with private profit, so the buy-out* of
the capitalist class would have to occur first. Ordinary people will then have
the time to spend on matters of public concern. Give us the time, and we will
expand our democratic input and become a force for progressive change.

* 2002 note: Marx's buy-out is an unnecessary transition to
the abolition of classes, which can be entirely accomplished
by regulating intangible labor time. (End of note.)

Ken Ellis

8-04-00

Dear Cultivator,

snip

Besides, I know what I want to do in my life now, which is to talk to people
over the Internet. I'm doomed to try to persuade people to see things my way
until I am just totally and permanently rejected, which could happen someday,
I don't know yet. You should see some of the hostility directed against me at
that web site lately. For 5 days, I polished a 'masterpiece' that created a few
sparks at: http://www.egroups.com/community/WSM_Socialism_Forum

What with all of my communications, I stopped playing my nephew's
computerized chess set. I just don't have time for chess anymore, what
with my new obligation to educate the proletariat, though I'm also pretty
sure that the anarchists I'm communicating with could give a flying fart
about changing their Bakuninist tune.

snip

The rest of the time I spend composing on the computer. I could spend
24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and still not catch up with unanswered
messages. The nice part about that is that I'm finally getting more
proficient with the keyboard.

snip

You may be right about our health care system becoming more socialized
due to subsidization. That's one way to get there, I guess. We may arrive at
socialized medicine some day, especially if the medical establishment can
figure a way to make as much profit as before. You are right about the
unnecessarily poor treatment of poor people.

snip

When I wrote about thoughts not always coming in fast thick streams like
they used to, and struggling to get out a tenth of a thought, I guess that I was
referring to the fact that some of my thoughts are not fully formed. A lot of
times I will get an inkling of something, but it will fly away before I have a
chance to write it down or otherwise do something with it. When I was young,
that wasn't the problem it is now. Now that I can type faster, it isn't the problem
it was when I seemed to have so much to say, but it would take forever to type
in. I can still get a good flow of thought pushing the mower around. Too bad
I always forget everything I thought of while mowing.

snip

Getting back to basic human rights again: a trusted old friend from childhood
turned into a Libertarian, and swears that the best thing he read about rights was
Ayn Rand's "The Rights of Man"*. You could probably find it online if you type
in Ayn Rand into a search engine. I'm sure that at least some of her writings could
be downloaded. I guess that I would equate basic human rights with innate human
rights. I wonder why you seem so jaded about them and the Declaration of
Independence. What could have gone wrong for you?

* Later: All of the Ayn Rand sites seemed very commercial, and I couldn't
find anything about 'rights of man' there, so I looked under 'rights of man'
and found a little ditty by old Tom Paine with the same name. Here are
some salient excerpts:

"Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence.
Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all
those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness,
which are not injurious to the natural rights of others. Civil rights are those
which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every
civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the
individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not,
in all cases, sufficiently competent.

Declaration Of The Rights Of Man And Of Citizens By The National Assembly Of France

The representatives of the people of France, formed into a National Assembly,
considering that ignorance, neglect, or contempt of human rights, are the sole
causes of public misfortunes and corruptions of Government, have resolved to
set forth in a solemn declaration, these natural, imprescriptible, and inalienable
rights: that this declaration being constantly present to the minds of the members
of the body social, they may be forever kept attentive to their rights and their duties;
that the acts of the legislative and executive powers of Government, being capable of
being every moment compared with the end of political institutions, may be more
respected; and also, that the future claims of the citizens, being directed by simple
and incontestable principles, may always tend to the maintenance of the
Constitution, and the general happiness.

For these reasons the National Assembly doth recognize and declare, in the
presence of the Supreme Being, and with the hope of his blessing and favour,
the following sacred rights of men and of citizens:

ONE: MEN ARE BORN, AND ALWAYS CONTINUE, FREE AND EQUAL
IN RESPECT OF THEIR RIGHTS. CIVIL DISTINCTIONS, THEREFORE,
CAN BE FOUNDED ONLY ON PUBLIC UTILITY.

TWO: THE END OF ALL POLITICAL ASSOCIATIONS IS THE
PRESERVATION OF THE NATURAL AND IMPRESCRIPTIBLE
RIGHTS OF MAN; AND THESE RIGHTS ARE LIBERTY, PROPERTY,
SECURITY, AND RESISTANCE OF OPPRESSION.

THREE: THE NATION IS ESSENTIALLY THE SOURCE OF
ALL SOVEREIGNTY; NOR CAN ANY INDIVIDUAL, OR ANY
BODY OF MEN, BE ENTITLED TO ANY AUTHORITY WHICH
IS NOT EXPRESSLY DERIVED FROM IT.

FOUR: POLITICAL LIBERTY CONSISTS IN THE POWER OF DOING
WHATEVER DOES NOT INJURE ANOTHER. THE EXERCISE OF THE
NATURAL RIGHTS OF EVERY MAN, HAS NO OTHER LIMITS THAN
THOSE WHICH ARE NECESSARY TO SECURE TO EVERY OTHER MAN
THE FREE EXERCISE OF THE SAME RIGHTS; AND THESE LIMITS ARE
DETERMINABLE ONLY BY THE LAW

FIVE: THE LAW OUGHT TO PROHIBIT ONLY ACTIONS HURTFUL
TO SOCIETY. WHAT IS NOT PROHIBITED BY THE LAW SHOULD
NOT BE HINDERED; NOR SHOULD ANYONE BE COMPELLED TO
THAT WHICH THE LAW DOES NOT REQUIRE

SIX: THE LAW IS AN EXPRESSION OF THE WILL OF THE COMMUNITY.
ALL CITIZENS HAVE A RIGHT TO CONCUR, EITHER PERSONALLY OR
BY THEIR REPRESENTATIVES, IN ITS FORMATION. IT SHOULD BE THE
SAME TO ALL, WHETHER IT PROTECTS OR PUNISHES; AND ALL BEING
EQUAL IN ITS SIGHT, ARE EQUALLY ELIGIBLE TO ALL HONOURS,
PLACES, AND EMPLOYMENTS, ACCORDING TO THEIR DIFFERENT
ABILITIES, WITHOUT ANY OTHER DISTINCTION THAN THAT
CREATED BY THEIR VIRTUES AND TALENTS

SEVEN: NO MAN SHOULD BE ACCUSED, ARRESTED, OR HELD IN
CONFINEMENT, EXCEPT IN CASES DETERMINED BY THE LAW, AND
ACCORDING TO THE FORMS WHICH IT HAS PRESCRIBED. ALL WHO
PROMOTE, SOLICIT, EXECUTE, OR CAUSE TO BE EXECUTED, ARBITRARY
ORDERS, OUGHT TO BE PUNISHED, AND EVERY CITIZEN CALLED UPON,
OR APPREHENDED BY VIRTUE OF THE LAW, OUGHT IMMEDIATELY
TO OBEY, AND RENDERS HIMSELF CULPABLE BY RESISTANCE.

EIGHT: THE LAW OUGHT TO IMPOSE NO OTHER PENALTIES BUT
SUCH AS ARE ABSOLUTELY AND EVIDENTLY NECESSARY; AND NO ONE
OUGHT TO BE PUNISHED, BUT IN VIRTUE OF A LAW PROMULGATED
BEFORE THE OFFENCE, AND LEGALLY APPLIED.

NINE: EVERY MAN BEING PRESUMED INNOCENT TILL HE HAS BEEN
CONVICTED, WHENEVER HIS DETENTION BECOMES INDISPENSABLE,
ALL RIGOUR TO HIM, MORE THAN IS NECESSARY TO SECURE HIS
PERSON, OUGHT TO BE PROVIDED AGAINST BY THE LAW.

TEN: NO MAN OUGHT TO BE MOLESTED ON ACCOUNT OF HIS
OPINIONS, NOT EVEN ON ACCOUNT OF HIS RELIGIOUS OPINIONS,
PROVIDED HIS AVOWAL OF THEM DOES NOT DISTURB THE PUBLIC
ORDER ESTABLISHED BY THE LAW.

ELEVEN: THE UNRESTRAINED COMMUNICATION OF THOUGHTS
AND OPINIONS BEING ONE OF THE MOST PRECIOUS RIGHTS OF MAN,
EVERY CITIZEN MAY SPEAK, WRITE, AND PUBLISH FREELY, PROVIDED
HE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ABUSE OF THIS LIBERTY,
IN CASES DETERMINED BY THE LAW.

TWELVE: A PUBLIC FORCE BEING NECESSARY TO GIVE SECURITY
TO THE RIGHTS OF MEN AND OF CITIZENS, THAT FORCE IS INSTITUTED
FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE COMMUNITY AND NOT FOR THE PARTICULAR
BENEFIT OF THE PERSONS TO WHOM IT IS INTRUSTED.

THIRTEEN: A COMMON CONTRIBUTION BEING NECESSARY FOR
THE SUPPORT OF THE PUBLIC FORCE, AND FOR DEFRAYING THE
OTHER EXPENSES OF GOVERNMENT, IT OUGHT TO BE DIVIDED
EQUALLY AMONG THE MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNITY,
ACCORDING TO THEIR ABILITIES.

FOURTEEN: EVERY CITIZEN HAS A RIGHT, EITHER BY HIMSELF OR HIS
REPRESENTATIVE, TO A FREE VOICE IN DETERMINING THE NECESSITY
OF PUBLIC CONTRIBUTIONS, THE APPROPRIATION OF THEM, AND
THEIR AMOUNT, MODE OF ASSESSMENT, AND DURATION.

FIFTEEN: EVERY COMMUNITY HAS A RIGHT TO DEMAND
OF ALL ITS AGENTS AN ACCOUNT OF THEIR CONDUCT.

SIXTEEN: EVERY COMMUNITY IN WHICH A SEPARATION OF POWERS AND
A SECURITY OF RIGHTS IS NOT PROVIDED FOR, WANTS A CONSTITUTION.

SEVENTEEN: THE RIGHT TO PROPERTY BEING INVIOLABLE AND SACRED,
NO ONE OUGHT TO BE DEPRIVED OF IT, EXCEPT IN CASES OF EVIDENT
PUBLIC NECESSITY, LEGALLY ASCERTAINED, AND ON CONDITION OF
A PREVIOUS JUST INDEMNITY.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I. Men are born, and always continue, free and equal
in respect of their rights. Civil distinctions, therefore,
can be founded only on public utility.

"II. The end of all political associations is the preservation of
the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights
are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.

"III. The nation is essentially the source of all sovereignty;
nor can any Individual, or any body of men, be entitled to
any authority which is not expressly derived from it."

"The operation of government is restricted to the making and
the administering of laws; but it is to a nation that the right of
forming or reforming, generating or regenerating constitutions
and governments belong; and consequently those subjects, as
subjects of investigation, are always before a country as a
matter of right, and cannot, without invading the general rights
of that country, be made subjects for prosecution." - Tom Paine

There's a tremendous amount of info about the rights of man
on the Internet nowadays.

I don't really foresee any future disasters arriving after the robots take over
completely. I see more problems arriving before they take over, while we are
trying to adapt to their complete take-over. We still have yet to learn to share
the remaining work, and so I worry about the suffering of the lowest classes
as they get caught in the stampede for the last of the long-hour opportunities
to make the rich richer. But, the stampede won't last long. As soon as the
unemployment crisis hits the middle classes, they will be the first to advocate
sharing work, just as they did during the little down-sizing crisis we had in the
mid-90's. Did you know that, during our Depression, half of the businesses in
the USA voluntarily adopted some form of work sharing by means of shorter
hours? Did you know that, during a crisis of employment in Britain in the '70's,
they adopted a 3-day week for awhile? I don't even know what I worry about
sometimes. We will surely share work again. The lowest classes always get
the short end of the stick, but I firmly believe that, as we abolish work and
share what little is left along the way, class distinctions will fade, and then
the state, property, and money will all fade away.

When I use the term 'class distinctions', I always mean differences in economic
class, such as our ownership or non-ownership of means of production. When
economic class distinctions no longer exist, we will still classify one another by
our physical characteristics, the same way we still do, but it won't be used as a
basis to deprive people of rights and employment opportunities.

The point I wanted to make about migrant workers wasting gas going from
job to job is that they don't always find jobs, and probably get turned down
more often than they get hired. That kind of waste could be eliminated by better
communication, even through the Internet, where jobs could be posted, and job
availability better communicated. With less competition for scarce long-hour
jobs, workers would be able to stay in one spot for longer periods. Naturally,
job availability does shift regionally, but travel could be made a lot less chaotic
with a little more planning. Bosses don't have to conspire to create structural
unemployment. I doubt if they ever did. The government has always stepped
in to do it for them. The bosses only figuratively 'conspire to produce'
structural unemployment to help to augment their bloated profits. They leave
the dirty work to Alan Greenspan and Co. to fool around with interest rates.

I think that the old saying that 'the emancipation of the working class is the
class-conscious act of the working class itself' applied when socialists saw
emancipation as irrevocably tied up with expropriation of property. I lately
put less stock in that old saying. I doubt if the lowest classes will emancipate
themselves. The great 'silent majority' will feel the pressure as jobs dry up
and will lead the movement to share work in the common interest. During
our Depression of the 30's, half of the businesses voluntarily shortened
hours to equitably share work, without any government coercion. In some
kind of employment crisis in Britain in the '70's, they adopted a 3-day week
for awhile. I have renewed confidence that we will do the right thing for one
another. At some point, activists will demand that everyone work share
equitably. Then you will see my theories take hold and activists start to
militantly insist upon egalitarian work-sharing, even among the lowest
classes. It will merely take a few brief more years to get things going.
The better-off workers will really move things along.

The other major distinction between my views and socialist views, in spite
of our same final, ultimate goal of someday achieving workless, classless,
stateless, propertyless and moneyless society, is that I would get to that
upper stage by first abolishing labor, while socialists would first come to
power, and then use their power to abolish the property of the rich. My
scenario doesn't involve changing property relations by force, so it therefore
may not be necessary for a workers' party to come to power, or fight for
political supremacy over the other parties. It certainly could run candidates
for election, and if it wins, then it could implement reforms more thoroughly.
The resulting artificial shortage of labor would raise wages to a very livable
level for the lowest classes. The curtailment of profits would cause bosses
to beg workers to buy them out, which we would*. We would later be able
to move to a volunteer work force.

* 2002 note: There's that obsolete buy-out again, darn it.

It sounds like you still favor redistributing wealth and property. Socialist
theory includes 'the necessity of altering property relations due to the obvious
discrepancies in quantities and qualities of wealth and property distribution
among the population'. If capitalism distributes wealth and property unequally,
then socialism distributes it equally. Socialism seems fair, and maybe the
reason so many people are socialists is because they are fair-minded, but is
socialism feasible? Socialists burn with passion to bring a fairer distribution
of wealth and property to the people, but, is socialism feasible? No fair-
minded person would dare critique out of hand or dismiss a fair-minded
program like socialism, but, is socialism feasible? I have the highest regard
for the noble intentions of socialism. The only fault I can find with it is, to
paraphrase Frank Zappa: 'It can't happen here. I've been checking it out,
and it can't happen here'. I would love for wealth and property to be fairly
redistributed, but 'try putting your sticky little fingers on anything that
doesn't belong to you, and see how far you get'. That is the crux of the
problem. There is no way for socialists to be able to do what they want to
do, so they must stop wanting to do what they want to do, and they must
begin to start wanting to do what's feasible, unless they would rather waste
their entire lives just wishing and hoping for the socialist miracle. Advocating
work-sharing is a way for socialists to salvage their activist energies. They could
write letters to their editors about sharing work, and not be condemned by the
public as fit for the loony bin for 'wanting to take away people's property, the
principle that this great country was founded upon'. Sometimes, instead of
socialists trying to lead the people, they have to be martial artists or Zen artists
and let the people lead them. That way, they would know whether they were
going in the right direction. The trick is to move a little in a certain direction,
put up the antenna and see if anyone is listening, and, if they are still with
you, move a little further, and repeat the process.

I made an important discovery the other day, for myself, at any rate. I have
always wanted to know exactly why Marx and Engels (M+E) wanted to take
away the property of the rich. Finally I found the answer in a 1877 biography
of Marx, where Engels wrote: "... that historical leadership has passed to the
proletariat, a class which, owing to its whole position in society, can only free
itself by abolishing all class rule, all servitude and all exploitation; and that the
social productive forces, which have outgrown the control of the bourgeoisie,
are only waiting for the associated proletariat to take possession of them in
order to bring about a state of things in which every member of society will be
enabled to participate not only in production but also in the distribution and
administration of social wealth, and which so increases the social productive
forces and their yield by planned operation of the whole of production that
the satisfaction of all reasonable needs will be assured to everyone in an
ever-increasing measure."

I always wondered why we were supposed to take away the property of the
rich, and finally we have the answer: so that we can ALL realize our desires
of participating in the economy. I can only imagine that, back in the days of
rampant feudal absolutism, M+E couldn't imagine many other ways of
arriving at full participation other than by converting bourgeois property into
the property of the armed workers. Are there any other reasons beside 'full
participation' for workers to want to expropriate? I can't think of any. It
wouldn't do me any good, as a worker, to suddenly have to - not only go
to work every day - but to also have to manage property at the same time.

Marx also made it very clear that it was bourgeois property that was to be
expropriated, but where can anyone nowadays draw the precise line of 'who
will be expropriated, and who will not'? Today, ownership is such a crazy quilt,
that no committee of workers would want to try to figure out who owns this and
who owns the other. Such a chore would only bog people down. The WSM's
answer is to merely declare the whole mess to be common property, but a society
that fought to the death to preserve as immoral a form of ownership as slavery,
and who didn't have the political will to subdivide the plantations to give freed
slaves their 40 acres and a mule, is not the society that is going to willingly
turn over every piece of property to the common lot. Not the way people
think nowadays, when our individual sense of security is wrapped up in
our own property, and everything else we own. Just imagine being
without your own stuff for a minute.

In my work reduction scenario, collective action plays a major role. It's not a
mindless 'technological progress' that will win the day. In the struggle between
boss and worker, bosses always try to get workers to stay on the job as long
as possible, but the interests of the working class militate us going home early
enough so that every other person in the class gets a crack at making a living.
After I discovered that socialism is impossible in the West, I felt kind of a gulf
of separation between myself and socialists. Now that I know that M+E's purpose
for socialism was to allow full participation in the economy, I feel a renewed kinship
with M+E's sentiment. If only other socialists could tune into that sentiment of
M+E, and then they might be able to draw closer to wanting to scrap 'impossible
expropriation' in favor of feasible work-sharing.

I'm glad you decided to comment on the 8 points I made. I only wanted them
to be something that you and I could agree with, but never intended for this to
become a public document. I'll repeat them, and then comment on your comments:

1) Changing property relations is the essence of capitalism, communism,
socialism and anarchism.

You were right about wanting to include capitalism with the others because of
the way it appropriates property created by the working class. We can even get
by with scrapping the part about the Manifesto, which I did above. But, on the
basis that the others are proposed 'solutions' to the problems of capitalism, I don't
think we should include capitalism, so I hope you can agree to drop it again.

2) Changing property relations was possible after communists overthrew
feudal monarchies in backward countries, such as Russia, China, etc., or
after communists liberated colonies, as in Mozambique, Angola, Cuba, etc.
History proved that one.

The point I wanted to make with this was to make sure we were both on the
same page. Sometimes it's hard to get socialists to agree with me on anything.

3) Changing property relations did not happen after socialists and communists
won mere elections in Western European democracies, such as in France and
Italy. There is little evidence to show that workers are willing to smash their
democracies for the purpose of changing property relations.

4a) The reason for the failure indicated in #3 is that winning mere elections
never confers the degree of physical force which is required for either
expropriation, or for significant wealth and property redistribution.

4b) That is a reasonable observation, compared to the actual communist
successes noted in #2.

4c) Communism is based upon having the physical force requisite for
expropriation.

4d) Not many capitalists willingly turned over their assets to communists.

I separated all of the sentences. See how you like them now.

5) Communism has been proven by the history of the affected countries to be
incompatible with democracy. There has never been an example of democratic
communism.

As requested, I eliminated the question at the end of #5. 'Many people believe
that' doesn't really fit in with the first sentence. Why don't you rewrite it the
way you want it, and then I will comment. I would find it hard to believe that
anyone could find democracy and communism to be compatible. In which
country were they compatible?

6) If reasonable people of ideological frames of mind would look at things from
the perspectives of #1-#5, they would immediately begin to look for a solution
that makes more sense than socialism, for most of them are basically honest
people who sincerely want to be effective, and will not let their advocacy of
worn -out ideologies that are ill-fitted for Western democracies to forever
stand in their way of moving forward. They will reject the old and adopt more
intelligent ideas if progress is more important to them than sentimentality.

Some of this comes out of wishful thinking, giving the rank-and-file the
benefit of the doubt, plus an appreciation of mass confusion in the ranks
of the left. The job of clearing the heads of divided, sincere, passionate and
confused activists is enormous, but is required if the left is to make any kind
of a positive difference to our future. As much as they want to, their convictions
may forever prevent them from doing so. One big problem is that they think that
they understand how to change the world better than the people who believe in
capitalism, the flag and motherhood. Little do they know. Wait until the middle
classes decide to share work. Since the left is so hung up on expropriation,
all that many of them can do is wait for their revolution.

7) One impediment to enlightenment includes the fact that ideological leaders
have vested interests in the success of their movements, so the news that their
ideologies aren't appropriate to the West is no more welcome than any other
threat to their security, so they ignore and denigrate any threats to their
empires. They create bureaucratic sects that operate in secrecy, and
they censor their opponents. That is my experience.

Yeah, you are right about 'so what'. It was a revelation to me at one time to
discover that parties and groups can be run like businesses, but few others
have been interested. Thanks for the comment. Maybe we can drop #7 as
'unproductive'. When we build our own party, we'll be sure to have learned
from our mistakes and will do things differently.

8) The better idea for full employment and an end to poverty is a militant
insistence upon equitably sharing increasingly scarce work by means of
winning shorter hours for workers, for our increased productivity not only
makes shorter hours possible, but also makes it essential to prevent
exploitation of resources, overconsumption and overproduction.

If you couldn't agree with points 1-7 wholeheartedly, then it isn't hard to
understand why you wouldn't fall head over heels over #8. I'm glad that you
gave it the old college try. Your feedback is both valued and appreciated.

Let me know if you have any thoughts about M+E's original motivation for
advocating socialism, and if that revelation changes anything for you.

snip

Yer olde pal,

Ken Ellis

8-05-00

Hi, Bob, you wrote:

> You seem to be saying that we can have a shorter work-week by simply
> making it unlawful to work longer than the legal maximum. Are you
> suggesting that employers will not allow it for fear of going to jail?
> I think you will be getting into deep water there Ken.

Few would want to make it UNLAWFUL to work longer than
a normal maximum. For decades we've had a civil remedy for
overwork in the USA called 'the overtime premium'. If society
says that a reasonable work-week is 40 hours, then bosses can
expect to pay a premium for asking for more work than that. In
that way, if $8.00/hour is the normal wage for 40 hours, then the
time and a half pay-rate of $12.00 provides a certain disincentive
to asking for overwork. American unionists have long criticized
time and a half as too small a disincentive, and for not really
discouraging much overwork. Some people with full-time jobs
now work more than they did in the sixties, because it's cheaper
to keep people on the job for more than 40 than it is to pay
benefits to new full-timers. Time and a half is an arbitrary figure,
and double time would surely be a greater disincentive. It would
only take an amendment to the American Fair Labor Standards
Act to change that. Merely converting to double time would
reduce overwork and would create an even greater demand for
labor, raising wages and employment levels, and having an even
better effect upon crime rates. It is common knowledge that
crime and unemployment march hand in hand. Higher overtime
premiums should also be an international demand.

Secondly, laws on the books are usually enforced. An acquaintance
worked as an engineer in a shop that didn't pay an overtime premium
for years. One of the engineers finally decided to ask the Labor Relations
Board, who investigated, found that the engineers were indeed entitled to
a premium, and they were happy to receive nice settlement checks. These
stories do not often make headlines in our newspapers, but, if I know of
a certain little story, then chances are that someone else has heard of a
similar story as well. It can't be that unique, I am sure. I think that
2 billion extra dollars of profits are extracted every year from
California workers by such and similar cheating.

> In the US and throughout the world there is a shortage of people
> with skills in information technology. How would you pass a law to
> reduce the work-week when there are not enough people to keep up
> with current demand for those skills, MARKET DEMAND.

Lower-paid ambitious workers detect benefits of changing careers
and develop their skills, enabling them to fill higher-skilled jobs,
which happens often enough to semi-balance the labor market. At
least for another 10 years, after which they expect giant computers to
become as smart as people, expect information techs to keep on being
in greater demand and making more money than office clerks. Fuller
participation in the economy would solve social problems for the lower
classes, while creating labor-shortage problems for the upper classes.

> Some of them [country doctors] have worked continuously for three
> years without a break. How will changing the law affect these situations?

Sorry not to have an easy answer to that specific situation.

> Wages for unskilled work are lower now than they were twenty
> years ago. Economic pressure causes this situation, the economics
> of capitalism, wage slavery causes this pressure on people and
> coerces them to work long hours for low wages.

That's because people are not organized. If we don't fight back
and stand as a unified force against long hours, we fall by our
lonesomes, divided and demoralized. At this point in the West,
I think that higher overtime premiums would be a more effective
first step in creating a beneficial labor shortage than simply
legislating a 35 hour week. Overwork prevention requires
effective disincentives. Similarly, mandating minimum month-
long paid vacations for all would bring the USA more in line
with other countries enjoying long vacations. That's another
reform beneficial to the lower classes that can simply be
legislated anytime we are ready to do it. The only people
against it will be the upper classes and their mouthpieces.

Why can't the WSM openly advocate similar beneficial reforms? Is
it because they are for socialism and little else? To be a socialist, does
it mean to be against reforms in the interests of the lower classes? If so,
then one had better not let the workers know that, unless the message
is that 'reforms only prolong their agony under capitalism'. Socialists
are therefore interested in revolution, as in 'reform vs. revolution'. I
bought that argument when I was wet behind the ears, but I later asked:
Revolution in democracies? I guess the term revolution needs to be
defined, because the WSM revolution certainly doesn't include the
violence of the French revolutions, or the Russian Revolutions. I can
understand that the workers would have to collectively decide to do
something astoundingly different about property compared to the
way they regard it today. Making it common property, and doing
it peacefully means a simultaneous collective mind-change. Do
they one day lust after Porsches, and the next day don't?

> Ken, why don't you propose a law that makes it illegal for
> people to go to bed hungry at night, because it happens to
> plenty of poor people. According to you if you make things
> illegal, people won't let it happen!!

In the USA, people go to jail for breaking laws,
even multi-millionaires like Michael Milken.

> Seriously Ken, you really need to tackle "the labour theory of
> value", and then you will understand how capitalism works and
> why its effects cannot be legislated away.

I have seen this topic come up before: the theory that I am
deficient in my appreciation of the labor theory of value. Maybe I
am. Marx's 'Value, Price and Profit' was one of my favorite early
texts and contained a lot of valuable lessons. Could you be a
little more specific as to what passages I should take to heart?

> You can only abolish the wages system when the majority of
> people understand how it operates, and want to replace it with
> a system that will operate in their interests.

Will they want to abolish the wages system in one stroke? I think the
abolition can be done slowly, when people are sufficiently affected by
their further replacement by increasingly smart machines, which will
move people to organize to maintain at least current levels of participation.
Because we have tolerated poverty for millennia, I don't see us being overly
philanthropic in the short run, nor even immediately after the beginning
stage of openly demanding for work to be shared, but it will become
increasingly absurd after that for some people to go hungry when
so many others will live better than ever.

Ken Ellis

One for all, and all for one!

8-6-00

I was encouraged by the news that your party seeks a higher overtime premium
and a shorter work week, but there are things in the text of the website, such as
calling for the abolition of welfare before the conditions of its abolition have
actually arrived, that are bound to alienate the very class you wish to attract.
Is there a free forum where issues like this could be freely addressed?

Ken Ellis

8-07-00

a.c. jumped the gun again! Such impatience. Pay attention, a.c., here it is:

On the 1st, Paddy wrote:
> It [socialism] IS easier in advanced capitalist countries, and
> [socialism] DIDN'T happen first in backward countries, as you
> know perfectly well. This is dishonest, as is the deliberate
> fudge 'socialist-inspired manner'.

I was hoping that Paddy and I would have a wonderfully productive
dialogue, but his latest post has filled me with doubt. I thought Paddy
would find 'socialist-inspired' acceptable, for only someone in a complete
state of denial over the inspiration Lenin got from Marx would have found
fault with that term. Combine that with my observation that 'changing property
relations in a socialist-inspired manner actually happened first in backward
countries' was enough to get Paddy to question my integrity. Paddy would
probably subscribe to a version of world history similar to:

'Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Castro weren't socialists or communists.
They were really state capitalists who put the means of production
into the hands of their parties and states. Consequently, the socialist
revolution has yet to happen, and, when it does, it will happen
simultaneously in the most advanced countries of the West (just
the way Marx predicted it would) and then it will spread to the rest of
the world. When it begins in the West, workers will abolish property
because the bosses own it all. The American Civil War was fought
over trade issues, so emancipation resulted purely from Northern
supremacy. The abolition of private property will eliminate class
differences. With no class differences, the state will have no more
excuse for existence. With no property, classes, or state, money
will disappear. People will still have to go to work, but probably
for fewer hours, considering the waste that we can eliminate.'

Sounds good, especially if people can be convinced to abolish
property. There are only a few things wrong with that scenario,
however. First, practically everyone in the world knows that Lenin,
Stalin, Mao, Castro, etc. were communists and Marxists, and one
still is. Few except intransigent sectarians would quarrel with widely
accepted dictionary definitions of socialism and communism. Second,
a reading of Marx "On America and the Civil War" shows that slavery
remained an unresolved issue from the founding of the USA in 1776,
and that the South attacked the North to try to retain slavery by
dictatorship, for the South had become increasingly fearful that
its diminishing pro-slavery majority in the Senate would soon be
lost, and that slavery would be banished by law. Southerners were
willing to smash the Union of States and fight to their death in order
to preserve as immoral a form of ownership as slavery, so modern
people are probably willing to die ten times over to preserve all of
the 'moral' forms of property ownership.