After the revolution.

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

After the revolution in Britain wont our living standards go down.

Because we wont be exploiting other nations anymore and wont be able to get trade with alot of nations and may even face blockade, in other words wont we live simply so other can simply live?

I am working class and live on a shitty estate, yet ive got an ipod a computer and am well fed, when we turn socialist, how will we feed our people, we dont grow enough food on our little islands, and if we have a blockade and dont force other nations to give us their natural resources how will we stop the starvation of millions.

Then there is a need for energy and oil for cars, buses etc, venezuala may help, but i hear they are having trouble getting their own people electricity.

How do we sell the fact, that in socialism, our lifestyle will become less privellaged so the third world can become less oppressed and poverty stricken, it seems alot of proles wouldnt be willing to give up their life of strictly come daancing and macky Ds.

Get at me.

[¿Que?]

There's a documentary, "Capitalism and Other Kid's Stuff" that claims there's enough food to feed the whole world 12 times over. So food shouldn't be an issue.

As for ipods and computers, we did quite well for 2000 years without them, we'll manage. Either that, or we'll find a way for everyone to have one.

[Proletarian Ultra]

After the revolution in Britain wont our living standards go down.

Because we wont be exploiting other nations anymore and wont be able to get trade with alot of nations and may even face blockade, in other words wont we live simply so other can simply live?

I am working class and live on a shitty estate, yet ive got an ipod a computer and am well fed, when we turn socialist, how will we feed our people, we dont grow enough food on our little islands, and if we have a blockade and dont force other nations to give us their natural resources how will we stop the starvation of millions.

Then there is a need for energy and oil for cars, buses etc, venezuala may help, but i hear they are having trouble getting their own people electricity.

How do we sell the fact, that in socialism, our lifestyle will become less privellaged so the third world can become less oppressed and poverty stricken, it seems alot of proles wouldnt be willing to give up their life of strictly come daancing and macky Ds.

Get at me.

You may be right, but the party is already coming to an end.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

I understand your question, but you see i think you have a kind of one-sided picture of what socialism is. It seems to me that you refer to countries in the former east-block, Cuba and so when you talk about living standard, wich is understandable because this are the places where they have tried to build socialism, but you have to remeber that they stared theire building as developing countries, they hadnt so much reasorses to handle with and therefor there living standard never got up to the levels of the west (who all the time worked against there proggres). Im sure that if a rich country like Brittain whould becomme socialistic your development will mean that the living standard will increase for all prols, so keep fighting and il do the same here :thumbup1:

[Delenda Carthago]

First of all, there is going to be a redistribution of the wealth,which in UK's case,is more than enough for the people to live wealthy.

Secondly,after the revolution the proper thing for me to do,is to abolish work in the means of production .This can be done nowdays easily,since the technology gives you the ability to do it.Only when people will be free from the slavery of work,there will be real socialism.

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

There's a documentary, "Capitalism and Other Kid's Stuff" that claims there's enough food to feed the whole world 12 times over. So food shouldn't be an issue.

As for ipods and computers, we did quite well for 2000 years without them, we'll manage. Either that, or we'll find a way for everyone to have one.

You are right there is 10 times enough food, but i mean, if Britain has a revolution before other nations, how will we make it work, i dont mean a world wide revolution.

And yes the capitalists throw food away rather than feed the people, because if they did the price of food would go down rendering it unprofitable, so it seems 25,000 a day is a price worth paying for the provenzante, we really need a revolution

[Delenda Carthago]

And personally,I dont understand the logic behind "we wont have ipods,but we ll manage".

Why wont we all have ipods and why is it ok not to have an ipod?
Is revolution for you a better way to not be able to listen to music?the means of production of ipod will be destroyed?i dont get it.For me,if there is no "ipod"(and every "ipod")the revolution will be a fail.

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

I didnt say we wont have ipods smartarse, the point i was making is im working class, yet because i live in Britain, i am afforded some things which the third world do not have access to, thus in a revolution, i and everyone else must forefit such things, as our lifestyle will become harder as we will no longer force nations to sell us crops and natural recources at the barrel of a gun.

[Delenda Carthago]

I was talkin on Augoustin's post.Other than that,you should not worry for the after the revolution in UK,you should worry why the left is so weak today in UK.

And no,your lifestyle wont be harder.It will become wealthier.

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

i dont think so, but i would be happy to live less of in order to let the rest of the worlds living conditions rise, we must accept, the decadence first world imperialist nations are privvy to must stop, we will have hard times but id rather that than force the workers of another country to give us their food at the barrel of a LA80 A2 and under the glare of a bomber.

[bailey_187]

We have the ability to produce much more in Britain than we do now. Rather than all the estate agents, casino banks etc, we can turn our economy to actually producing stuff we want.

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

Still luxuries like brand clothes, gadgets, stuff alot of workers have become consumed by, will go, it seems to me large parts of the community are bought off by consumerism, so how would we even start the revolution, because people dont want to lose what they got?

In my opinion if your morals are that low your as bad as a provenzante.

[Sir Comradical]

After the revolution in Britain wont our living standards go down.

Because we wont be exploiting other nations anymore and wont be able to get trade with alot of nations and may even face blockade, in other words wont we live simply so other can simply live?

I am working class and live on a shitty estate, yet ive got an ipod a computer and am well fed, when we turn socialist, how will we feed our people, we dont grow enough food on our little islands, and if we have a blockade and dont force other nations to give us their natural resources how will we stop the starvation of millions.

Then there is a need for energy and oil for cars, buses etc, venezuala may help, but i hear they are having trouble getting their own people electricity.

How do we sell the fact, that in socialism, our lifestyle will become less privellaged so the third world can become less oppressed and poverty stricken, it seems alot of proles wouldnt be willing to give up their life of strictly come daancing and macky Ds.

Get at me.

The average British worker has pretty much nothing to gain from Britain's imperialist domination of other countries. When it comes to war, the British taxpayer pays the costs and British workers pay with their lives while British Petroleum reaps the profits. British workers can afford Ipods because they earn a larger fraction of the value they produce when compared to a worker in Indonesia for example. The reason British workers have a higher standard of living than those in third world countries is because of years of class struggle, so why credit capitalism with the gains that workers have made against capitalism?

Under socialism we'd probably be more inclined to forgo luxury consumer items like Ipods and Playstations so that our resources, time and labour can be directed at bigger and better things like geothermal energy, super-computers, magnetic-levitation trains, sustainable water management etc. I'd be more than happy to forgo some luxuries if I could vote for projects like that, furthermore, we wouldn't have to pay capitalists to buy the raw materials needed to build these things.

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

I would forgo those things, but those rich proles who drive ford focuses and big ass houses wouldnt, they dont want a revolution because they would have to surreneder their decadent lifestyle.

What are we to do with thoses people?

[bailey_187]

Still luxuries like brand clothes, gadgets, stuff alot of workers have become consumed by, will go, it seems to me large parts of the community are bought off by consumerism, so how would we even start the revolution, because people dont want to lose what they got?


The revolution isnt going to make us forget how to make stuff though. We will need to open new factories, shut down the unproductive centres of the economy etc.

the cost of production may rise as we wont want to rip of the countries we but the materials needed for production from, but at the same time, we wont have the parasites making a profit (so increasing the cost) of what we produce



In my opinion if your morals are that low your as bad as a provenzante.

the fucks that meant to mean?

[bailey_187]

I would forgo those things, but those rich proles who drive ford focuses and big ass houses wouldnt, they dont want a revolution because they would have to surreneder their decadent lifestyle.

What are we to do with thoses people?

Why would they have to give up driving Fords? We make Fords in the UK.

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

Im not talking about the car specifically, im talking about the type of well to do proles that drive them, you know the typre, expresso, tie wearing muppets who call us common.

TBH i would like to put em against the wall, though i know none of you will agree with that.

[Sir Comradical]

I would forgo those things, but those rich proles who drive ford focuses and big ass houses wouldnt, they dont want a revolution because they would have to surreneder their decadent lifestyle.

What are we to do with thoses people?

These rich proles are most likely over-worked, stressed and resort to consumerism because they're alienated. Who knows, they might welcome a shorter working week along with some real democratic control over how their labour is utilized.

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

somehow i doubt it can be blamed on stress, its more to do with hating communism and growing bitterness at the loss of the empire, mixed in with casual racism and mysogyny, i hate those guys, especially the ones who have them massive expensive barbicues to show offin the summer, they might as well stuff a sock down thier pants.

[Sir Comradical]

somehow i doubt it can be blamed on stress, its more to do with hating communism and growing bitterness at the loss of the empire, mixed in with casual racism and mysogyny, i hate those guys, especially the ones who have them massive expensive barbicues to show offin the summer, they might as well stuff a sock down thier pants.

Ok fine. Drastic solution. Re-education camps.

[bailey_187]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U4e6ALxOhk

In this video Paul Cockshott claims that the only people to loose out in Socialism would be the top 25% of males in office jobs. All manual workers would benefit, all women would benefit (?) and 75% office workers would benefit. (he says this about 3.30 in).

Paul Cockshott posts on here i think, so maybe he can elaberate.

Some of his works on Socialist economic can be veiwed here:
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/index.html#books (http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/index.html#books)

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

case in point

i was walking near salford quays and there was a posh couple in an audi, the woman said arsenal were all foreigners (listening to the match in their car) and the guy infront ofhis wife and little son went, you mean mean they are all fucking niggers.

He had a green party sticker on his car, so its not even the right wing, its those who have more than oithers treating the rest of us like shit.

Its like there is an underclass, ie benefits crime, then the working class,then the upper working class, middle class and then rulling class

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

Thanks bailey, i will have a look, also does anyone have any statistical evidence to show britain has enough production capabilities to carry us through the begining of the revolution, because if we are blockaded, we will have to become extremely productive.

[Sir Comradical]

case in point

i was walking near salford quays and there was a posh couple in an audi, the woman said arsenal were all foreigners (listening to the match in their car) and the guy infront ofhis wife and little son went, you mean mean they are all fucking niggers.

He had a green party sticker on his car, so its not even the right wing, its those who have more than oithers treating the rest of us like shit.

Its like there is an underclass, ie benefits crime, then the working class,then the upper working class, middle class and then rulling class

Like I said, re-education camps!

[¿Que?]

On the issue of ipods and such, I was merely indicating that it serves no purpose to measure progress through consumer electronics. In this respect I was making a cultural criticism, rather than considering the material foundations of progress. In retrospect, it seems a bit silly to think people are not going to be able to listen to music, and even sillier to think they will regress to an earlier technology. However, it is worth considering that "ipod" is a brand name...

[bailey_187]

http://www.worldbytes.org/programmes/002/002_006.html

You may find this relevent

Basicaly, you shouldnt be wanting Britain reduce its living standard to be equal with the underdeveloped word, but for the underdeveloped world to raise its living standards to where ours are today and beyond.

As Imperialism is what keeps nations underdeveloped, a revolution in such a major imperialist state as Britain (and therefore an end of British Imperialism) should have a positive impact upon the underdeveloped nations.

[ckaihatsu]

Still luxuries like brand clothes, gadgets, stuff alot of workers have become consumed by, will go, it seems to me large parts of the community are bought off by consumerism, so how would we even start the revolution, because people dont want to lose what they got?


Speaking from an international proletarian perspective, it's not the consumerism *itself* that's the problem, as others have mentioned here. After all, what's the *point* of controlling the means of mass production -- besides ending imperialist control, of course -- if not to run it *for* workers, *by* workers -- ?

[ckaihatsu]

And, besides, where exactly should we draw the line at where to *stop* someone else's pleasure, as from enjoying the fruits of consumer goods -- ?

This *isn't* merely a rhetorical or argumentative question -- it's a *practical* one, since *no one* could realistically be in a mode of enjoying pleasure, 24/7, continuously, for months and years on end, anyway. My point with all of this is to say that, as things are now, the owners of capital have disproportionate access to luxuries and advanced technological tools that, while easily dismissed as extraneous, could also be seen as life-*enhancing* rather than self-*distracting*. By way of comparison, disadvantaged people are exactly that -- disadvantaged -- unable to partake of as many *advantages* in life to do the things that they want to do.

[ckaihatsu]

Tarring *all* access to material goods with the thick brush of "consumerism" is a liberal misnomer at best, really a smokescreen or red herring. Either people have the access and advantages that they can use to better their lives, or they don't. Stylish clothes aren't the problem, the virtual enslavement of sweatshop labor to produce the clothes *is* the problem. Gadgets aren't the problem, the forced mass mining and death toll required to retrieve precious metals like coltan for electronic components *is* the problem.

So what we need isn't an "end" to "consumerism" -- we need an *enlightened* *access* to high-tech tools and pleasures that doesn't require exploitation or encourage self-absorption.

[ckaihatsu]

People will most likely report back better-lived life experiences as a result of their access to more variety in their clothing choices, better materials, freedom of choice, and lower maintenance effort in owning all of it. Likewise the moment in history we're fortunate enough to happen to be living in has brought us the maturation of digital media tools like the Internet, mp3 players, DVDs, and so on. It would be authoritarian and misguided to say that people would somehow be "better off" *without* such technological conveniences of cultural access.

Perhaps more of the *value* of what you're saying is in the part about people being "bought off" -- to generalize, at what point does *any* pleasure detract from political consciousness and the striving for collective interests?


Chris

[JAH23]

I've always thought that the problem with capitalism is not the outcome, but the method. So, in a socialistic society, I would think we would still have every product we have now in capitalism, it would just be owned and manufactured in a different and more effecient way. Just a personal theory.

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

But say a factory is owned in post revolution britain, we can either produce 1000 fancy detailed pieces of clothing and distribute them, or we can produce 1500 simple pieces, it would be material, shallow and plain wrong to make clothing based on "style" rather than getting clothes out to those who need them.

Same with producing ipods, laptops etc, i think to do that in socialism rather than use that labour time to make nessecities is plain wrong, so i wouldnt accept an ipod in socialist britain, material objects shouldnt be made over what the people actually need.
Get back to me

[ckaihatsu]

But say a factory is owned in post revolution britain, we can either produce 1000 fancy detailed pieces of clothing and distribute them, or we can produce 1500 simple pieces, it would be material, shallow and plain wrong to make clothing based on "style" rather than getting clothes out to those who need them.


In this scenario you're assuming a condition of scarcity -- more realistically there would *not* have to be such a bottlenecked either-or decision to make. Regardless of the mode of production in place (capitalism or socialism) some body of workers would be tasked with procuring *more resources*.

[ckaihatsu]

The *real* variable here would be about what the liberated workforce was *willing* to do -- perhaps someone had already set up a machine and software to *automate* all of the fancy detailing for the production of the more stylish clothes (or luxury cars or advanced gadgetry).

Perhaps -- quite realistically -- the only labor involved would be the setting up of certain computerized routines that schedule the powering-up and running of the machines that make the products on the assembly line. As long as other workers had already run routines to make *other* machines dig out the raw materials from the ground and transport them on rail lines to the factory everything would be set up to run smoothly making luxury products for an indefinite period of time.

[ckaihatsu]

Same with producing ipods, laptops etc, i think to do that in socialism rather than use that labour time to make nessecities is plain wrong, so i wouldnt accept an ipod in socialist britain, material objects shouldnt be made over what the people actually need.
Get back to me


So as you can see, the correlation between labor input and *quality* of output is no longer a *linear* one, due to industrial production. After the creative designing process the *production* of a more stylish luxury product may very well be the same *industrial* process as for simpler, less sophisticated products.

[ckaihatsu]

Of course I agree that supplying the necessities of living for *everyone* should take priority over all other kinds of production -- I've created a simple chart that borrows from Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to illustrate this:


Supply prioritization in a socialist transitional economy

http://i45.tinypic.com/30204e8.jpg


But the pitfall that exists for us as revolutionaries is falling into the trap of religious-like eschewing of material demands and consumption on the basis that *our* consumption causes scarcity elsewhere.

[Robocommie]

Here's a question for the Brits, how much does Britain rely on imports for food? You have several large cities, but I don't get the impression you have an overabundance of arable land, not compared to other regions, and I recall during WW2, the ability to get supplies across the Atlantic was a crucial issue for the nation, not just the war effort.

[ckaihatsu]

Industrial production yields incredible levels of productivity for minimal amounts of labor input, across all kinds of consumer goods. This means that, in an ocean of production and potential production, the taking or not taking of goods in one area will have *no effect* on the overall potential to produce more goods, even goods of a more complex or sophisticated composition.

Our actions *as consumers* do not affect the (capital-based) ownership and management of the production process *at all*. All one can really say is that time spent in personal *enjoyment* of *any* kind of leisure is time that is *not* spent in more collective-oriented activities of building political class consciousness.

[Robocommie]

But the pitfall that exists for us as revolutionaries is falling into the trap of religious-like eschewing of material demands and consumption on the basis that *our* consumption causes scarcity elsewhere.

I think it's more owing to the idea that consumerism requires an imbalanced world market, where the resources and labor of colony nations are exploited, sometimes viciously, to provide a level of comfort to imperial nations.

Edit: Chris, I have to admit I'm having a hard time understanding your supply prioritization chart. :p

[ckaihatsu]

But the pitfall that exists for us as revolutionaries is falling into the trap of religious-like eschewing of material demands and consumption on the basis that *our* consumption causes scarcity elsewhere.





I think it's more owing to the idea that consumerism requires an imbalanced world market, where the resources and labor of colony nations are exploited, sometimes viciously, to provide a level of comfort to imperial nations.


Hey, Robocommie. Yeah, to clarify, there's no doubt that as revolutionaries we are in agreement on your point here. I was mentioning another, *different* point that addresses some stances just to the right of us.

[ckaihatsu]

While we can receive a great deal of tacit political support and even solidarity from people from more traditional and religious backgrounds, there *will* be some differences of politics as I mentioned -- we have to make sure that we don't fall into moralistic types of reasoning while we live in an age of highly labor-leveraged industrial production.

Traditionalist types of mindsets -- surprisingly prevalent -- come from the mistaken worldview of *pre*-industrial production, where the quantity and quality of consumer products were in direct relation to the amount of individual or small-group *artisan* labor that went into their manufacture.

[ckaihatsu]

Today people's basic needs can be supplied with the products of *mass*, *industrial* production, which doesn't have labor-*power*-centric implications as much as it has labor-*political*-centric implications. And now, even more plentiful, are the *digital*-based cultural goods that are available to today's consumer, in which the costs of making additional *perfect* copies for mass consumption are literally virtually costless, thanks to the microchip.

So in this *contemporary* reality the retail pricing for both *mass-produced* and *digital* goods is *highly* debatable owing to vanishing costs of production in the first place. Until capitalism's economic blackmailing and threats against people's lives are ended for good people will continue to be subject to the rule of capital over all.

[ckaihatsu]

Chris, I have to admit I'm having a hard time understanding your supply prioritization chart.


Sure, no prob -- basically it's a ranking to show the *phases* of completed material development, enabled by socialist revolution, for covering the human needs of every single last person on earth. The *most important* is the first phase, described by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It applies to all of us and says that we can't progress as individuals in [social] and self-developmental ways until we have satisfied more-basic, lower-level needs, as for food, water, and shelter.

[ckaihatsu]

In the second "phase" in the diagram, called "needs ranking", I posit that those dispossessed from the cash economy should be given priority for the receipt of manufactured goods. This is equivalent to the phasing out of the cash- and commodity-based economy, towards production based on collective decision-making by the population as a whole and with the agreement of liberated, uncoerced labor.

The third "phase" is to indicate that, all other factors being equal, preference of labor production should be given to satisfying *greater numbers* of people -- even if the quality of goods has to be stepped-down -- over satisfying *fewer* people with *better* goods. With industrial production -- as I already noted -- this tradeoff probably won't even become an issue most of the time, but a better-quality process could always be deferred to a later date in favor of supplying *more people* *earlier* with some product that's functionally equivalent, if less sophisticated.

[ckaihatsu]

The other part of the third phase addresses how liberated labor is to be compensated for its labor input. A more sophisticated, quality manufactured good would require relatively more labor attention and background education / training / expertise, at least initially in the creative and design process. My idea is to implement a mass survey that allows a massively parallel inter-subjective index to emerge from "exit polling" on labor roles of every sort.

This survey-derived labor role index would show the relative *difficulty* and/or *hazard*, of labor roles to each other on a 1-through-10 scale, providing a set 'multiplier' on labor hours for each labor role. Labor hours times the difficulty/hazard multiplier would yield various rates of *labor credits* per hour of freely chosen work by liberated labor.

[ckaihatsu]

(I do *not* advocate an exchange of direct material compensation, or "purchase", for labor credits earned in a post-capitalist society, since such conventional exchanges would be *problematic* in such a non-commodity-production-oriented society. Please see the excerpt below for a treatment from a past discussion on this point.)

[ckaihatsu]

---





Currently production requires [1] labor, and [2] capital, right? Without the abstracted, bullshit capital-market-pricing valuation at play we would have to have a *political economy* that *collectively, consciously* assumes mass control and planning over society's productive capacities, right?

But this *political* aspect doesn't speak to the *labor* component in a post-capitalist political economy -- sure no one could be blackmailed into work roles against their basic human living needs, but how would the potential, willing labor *supply* be treated by the *larger*, *overarching* political society -- the "demand" -- ?

This is where *past work completed*, quantified into labor credits, would confer a kind of *seniority* or *labor social status* in organizing the (numerically smaller) supply of labor to potentially meet the (numerically larger) population's requests ("demand") for production runs.

[ckaihatsu]

---





The material proceeds would become the resources of the collective, common population. In terms of actual possession and consumption, *that* would all be *pre-planned*, right? It would have had to go through a mass political decision-making policy process in order to even be *initiated* in the first place -- so everything is according to political will, set quantities, schedules, and logistics.

The workers who work on any given production run do *not necessarily* have to be the *consumers* of the resulting products -- they could even be *traveling* / *itinerant* laborers who are not *from* the locality -- *this* is another good reason for introducing a labor-hours credits system, so that a locality has the *flexibility* of finding suitable labor without being *tied down* to geographical constraints, or a labor workforce's *personal* interests and *personal* voluntarism.

[ckaihatsu]

---





This would be akin to a syndicalism of sorts, though one gauged to actual track records of past work effort put in. With more labor credits comes more coordinating, labor-executive-like political power over future locality-planned projects. The transfer of labor credits also functions as a *formal material fulfillment* of rewards for work completed, because many (most?)(all?) of the labor-credit-possessing workers would *also* be residents of the same local locality, so their *putting up* of the labor-credit "funding" would be a further demonstration and representation of the locality's political intention.