Socialism, when invented, meant ‘The ownership and control of the means of production by the workers.’ This must be a potent idea given the way it’s constantly rewritten, obfuscated, and obliterated.
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Yay for the line in the OP: “Let’s take over the machine, not turn it off!” There’s something gloriously anarcho-steampunk about that, right in line with Magpie Killjoy’s Steampunk Magazine motto: “Love the machine, hate the factory.”
Three questions …
Are there procedural rules of thumb actual projects may best use to balance democratic legitimacy with using the machine to efficiently “do stuff” for communities? Would Rawlsian principles work (e.g. “veil of ignorance,” “inequality principle,” etc.)? Or are more critical and/pragmatic guidelines necessary … better?
Aren’t more open codes and networks needed (in general) to (democratically) pwn the machines? … I’d say that’s a giant yes.
Are there real — admittedly imperfect — examples of social democratic “machines” solving community problems that will scale? I vote Maker movement and FreeGeek, but not (any more) Burning Man.
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In 1895, one could probably make the case that the population of New York City had reached its material limits due to the fact that (1) there was no more room above the streets for all the individual power and phone lines and (2) there was no longer any more capacity for the streets to hold the daily accumulation of horse shit. And if the “precautionary principle” had been aggressively applied with respect to any technological fixes for those limits, said limits would still probably be in place. Giddy-ap, Nellie!!!
Relating the horse shit analogy to this discussion, on the one hand there would have been people who would be suggesting that we should reduce the use of horses in the city. On the other we would have people suggesting that everyone should have as many horses as they desire because some solution that we don’t know about will come along and save us from this steaming pile of horse shit. Luckily for New Yorkers something did come along but it still would have come along even if the city had reduced its use of horses as a risk reduction measure.
I’m completely happy with the idea of promoting abundance and leisure for all, but only once we’ve worked out how the hell to achieve it. Blindly ploughing on in that direction by trusting that technology will somehow muddle through for us is fraught with risk.
If fusion power can be made to work cheaply then great! Let’s go for it. But until we crack the energy supply problem, we should be moving in a direction that makes our economy and society much leaner and more resilient. That way if it doesn’t arrive we are in a much stronger position to weather the challenges and if it does arrive, it’ll be much cheaper and easier to implement.
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Thorium, meanwhile?
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Go for it if you want. I think it’s a dead end.
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Lots of thorium supply, and a reactor tested and found working. Today, the reactors are again under active development, with numerous technological and safety advantages. The principle was tested in 1965-1969 and was not deployed wider partially because of the existing political investment into the uranium-based technology and the fissile material ecosystem built around nuclear weapons.
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When people discuss socialism, I generally stop by Marx and Engels first…
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Marxists blame capitalism for being a system that demands that firms pollute to whatever extent they can, right up the point where the fines outweigh the savings.
Ok, I’m no fan of unfettered capitalism as a religion, but both Soviet Russia and Communist China had, (and have, in the case of China) a history of enormously worse ecological destruction than the US or any western country.
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What does that have to do with Marxism?
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Much in the same way that when people claim to be christians, even when they’re going against everything christ ever said, I have to take their word for it. I can’t sit here in the peanut gallery claiming to know who’s a christian and who’s not, and I can’t really do it for marxism, either. When you start claiming that all the X who don’t X the way you do aren’t really X, you can always get the same result with X = “scotsman”
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Or you could research Karl Marx and figure out what Marxism actually is before saying that it’d be responsible for environmental devastation like ‘China and Russia’.
Just sayin’
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Maybe you missed the point. I can’t read what Jesus said and find out what christianity actually is, and then completely reasonably conclude that Ted Cruz isn’t a christian, and we shouldn’t consider him one or his works the result of that religion. By the same token, I can’t read Marx and say that clearly Lenin wasn’t a marxist and shouldn’t be considered one when we’re talking about marxism.
I didn’t say read, I said research.
At the very least, see if the association comes from the people who are advocating the policies or their detractors. What do people who call themselves ‘Marxist’ or are friendly to Marxism say?
And since this tangented from socialism…it’s even easier (Marxism honestly isn’t that heavily followed). Do the people who advocate for socialism here in the West espouse policies like those you saw as ‘responsible for environmental devastation’, or are they people who are environmentalists and are opposed to policies that are currently damaging the environment?
(it’s the latter)
So, why make the association at all? Why even bring it up?
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Shorter: Clap harder or Tinkerbell gets it!
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I just came here to ask people to stop trying to palm off their scythes on me. I already have one, and a sickle, too, thanks - but I find my electric tractor does a better job on the lawn.
That’s how I feel about nuclear fission, too. I mean, c’mon, it’s literally just steam engines powered by heating rocks. Obsolete 19th century foolishness that most people in the world quite sensibly want nothing to do with.
Lots of excellent discussion in here, to which I regret I have added nothing new. But thanks, peeps.
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I’d say the new part is which rocks to pile up in what way to get them self-heat.
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It’s still a kludgey antique steam engine. Research is better allocated to fusion and LENR in the USA (and I strongly encourage India to develop thorium fission since they are up to their ears in the stuff).
Fission plants of all kinds are a defense nightmare, and their highly concentrated power production makes them economic chokepoints as well. Agriculturally based fuels are the no-brainer for places like the USA and the Ukraine, so you can have networks of resilient, distributed, carbon-neutral and sustainable power production. It’s like the difference between old mainframe-based computing and the modern Internet - distributed and fault-tolerant is better. And the USA already has more than half of what we need for a national methane distribution grid, and methane-consuming appliances are cheap and readily available everywhere in the US…
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Capitalist rule is just as bad for abuse of power as statist socialism has been.
What about the anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-communism or the various other types of libertarian socialism that have been proposed over last two and a half centuries though?
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Marxism is a moderately useful theoretical framework for analyzing the economic structure of societies, somewhat more applicable to the 19th and early 20th century than to today.
Clearly, what Marxism is not is a useful principle for organizing a successful government (if “success” is defined by minimal corruption, an overall high standard of living, and environmental protection).
I think that word “proposed” is what blunts your point somewhat…
