Interview: Paul Cockshott on Econophysics and Socialism

Posted on 06/02/2013 by Gavin Mendel-Gleason

Towards a New Socialism by W. Paul Cockshott and Allin CottrellPaul Cockshott is a Scottish computer scientist and a reader at the University of Glasgow. His major areas of work include array compilers, econophysics and the physical foundations of computability.

He has written a number of books including Towards a New Socialism and more recently Classical Econophysics (in PDF format).

Interviewer questions are in bold

You’ve done work recently in Econophysics, can you give a brief introduction to what that is and how it’s relevant to socialists?

I can see that it may seem a bit obscure, but you have to remember that Marx said he was out to discover the laws of motion of capitalism–a sentiment very influenced by physics. What is econophysics? Well in the main it covers any attempt to understand economic phenomena in terms of the conceptual apparatus that physics has developed for the study of systems with a high degree of freedom. As such it borrows heavily from ideas developed in statistical mechanics.
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Posted in Economics | 4 Comments

The Legend of US Manufacturing Decline

Posted on 03/02/2013 by Gavin Mendel-Gleason
US Unemployment

US Unemployment

It is a well known fact that the US is suffering from high unemployment and under-employment. This fact creates a host of social problems: it exacerbates poverty, increases inequality, weakens workers’ bargaining hand when looking for jobs and generates social unrest.

There is another well known fact: part of the reason the US is suffering from such high unemployment is that it has outsourced its manufacturing base to other countries, especially China.

The difference between these two facts is that the latter is false.
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Review: A Very British Coup

Posted on 23/01/2013 by Gavin Mendel-Gleason

A socialist Labour Party government has finally come to power in Britain. Harry Perkins, a third generation communist, wins the position of Prime Minister. He and his cabinet immediately embark on a programme to break up media monopolies, nationalise industry, declare military neutrality and make radical steps towards government transparency. Civil society is sent into a tumult as the media lambasts his government and industry and the secret state colludes to ensure that no serious changes in the social order take place.
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Telekommunist Manifesto: a useful but faulty map

Posted on 17/01/2013 by modulus
St. Brendan Celebrating Mass on a Seamonster.

St. Brendan Celebrating Mass on a Sea-monster.

There’s a common wisdom, especially prevalent in the anglosphere, where it is, admittedly, closer to being true, that “information workers”–computer programmers, network and system administrators, and the like–have a particular affinity for capitalist ideology, in its most extreme forms as articulated by the Austrian school and so-called right-libertarians. This should be surprising to Marxists, given that, exceptional aberrations aside, information workers are members in good standing of the working class. There have been a number of explanations given to this phenomenon, from a culture of anti-authoritarianism, to self-serving justifications about the “end of history” and the imminent triumph of the market economy. They all seem unsatisfying to me, because they don’t appear to be connected to material forces: why information workers? If they had an anti-authoritarian culture, for instance, why would it develop in that particular sector and no others? Is it a purely contingent matter?

Whatever response we can give to this question–and I will attempt to address it elsewhere some time–the Telekommunist Manifesto demonstrates that there is a strong and vibrant strand of socialist thinking in the hacker community, which though not exclusive of Europe seems to manifest more strongly here than in the English-speaking countries. This work attempts the important task of linking two traditions of struggle: the hacker culture and socialism. To this end, it uses historical materialist arguments and applies them to the modern conditions of production resulting from computerisation and automation. While it doesn’t say the last word in these matters, it is a first step in a long path we must follow in order to deal with the modern instantiation of capitalism.

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Posted in Politics, Proletarian politics | 4 Comments

Which road to socialism?

Posted on 15/01/2013 by Snowball
Sign with multiple turns.

But Which Left Turn?

Socialism is about power. Fundamentally any conception of socialism worth its salt must include the empowerment of the working class to be the master of its own destiny. Whilst we can debate the high ideals and sketch visions of what a future society might look like, all these discussions will prove meaningless unless we can find away to accrue the power required to make them concrete. The key question then for socialists, especially given the seeming powerlessness of the working class at present, is by what means can the working class be elevated to power?

Firstly, we must inspect where power lies in society as it exists today. An obvious starting point in this inspection is the political classes, parliament and the house of lords. Clearly however our politicians do not have a free hand, they are subject to pressures and interests, most obviously from big business, in whose interests they frequently govern. Business derives its power from its finance and its means to generate it, its control over the economy. This control is decreed by law and the laws in turn enforced by the security apparatus of the state, the army and the police.

All of this of course is utterly dependent on the workers who work in these various institutions and in the wider economy. This is why Marxists have focused upon the working class as opposed to various other oppressed categories. It is the workers who make society tick and they who can shut it down. In a sense the working class already has a massive latent power over society just waiting to be realised, the task then is unlocking this power, the solution: organisation.
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Posted in Politics, Proletarian politics | 2 Comments

On ideology and culture

Posted on 11/01/2013 by yeksmesh

One of those weird ideology graphs

“Related to this, but not entirely the same, is the tendency to classify certain movements not by their actual structure, forms, and ways of struggle, but by the specific, formal ideology they adopt to describe themselves. As such, a movement with perfectly socialist content could easily describe itself in nationalist terms, as movements often adopt certain ideologies that have a base in the collective memories of the participants without necessarily accepting all of the implications this ideology presents. Nevertheless, it is common practice to dismiss and criticize movements solely based upon certain ideological shortcomings, instead of focusing upon the actual practices these groups employ; which, of course, is a natural continuation of the focus upon voluntarism employed by the radical left in its analysis of revolutions, because if revolutions are shaped by the ideological attitudes and the adoption of the “correct” programme by the political groups involved in the process instead of by the concrete practices of the groups involved and the specific conditions and circumstances these groups need to act within, then off course ideological deviations can be deadly for a potential revolution.”

This excerpt is from a previous post I made on the methodological problems within radical leftist treatment of revolutions, in which I primarily critiqued the tendency to analyse revolutions based upon the actions of revolutionaries and their thoughts and actions, while ignoring objective underlying conditions as determinants in the outcome of revolutions. In this post I would like to go deeper into the issue of ideology and consciousness, and I will argue that ideology is not necessarily the clear cut rounded whole that its creators envisage it to be but instead is understood differently and adapted when it goes through the different levels of hierarchy within an organisation. And besides that that the ideology a revolutionary movement adopts isn’t necessarily based upon how much a certain ideology is supposed to resonate with a certain group within society but also upon the traditions of struggle and political action that exists within the collective memory of the people involved in this movement, a collective memory that off course doesn’t necessarily correspond to the historical reality of the movement in question. Now this might all sound quite vague and unclear at this moment, but that’s what this text is gonna explain. Now seeing that alot of these subjects have already been touched upon in the works of a wide range of scholars with explaining power far beyond my own. This text will have a different structure from the normal article posted on this site, the main portion will be composed of excerpts of relevant articles that I think illustrate my point well interspersed with comments of my own. In this way I prevent myself from half-heartily parroting ideas that have been written down by people with levels of intelligence and with writing skills far exceeding my own. Note that I have not used correct academic citation to refer to books and articles as this is not an academic context and they can be really annoying to get completely right, rather I have simply chosen to simply put the information that is necessary to find the original text in the citation so that you are only a google search away from finding the origins of the quotes in question.

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Posted in Cultural analysis, Culture, Politics, Proletarian politics | Comments Off on On ideology and culture

Forum of Contradiction: a complementary space

Posted on 10/01/2013 by modulus

IRC makes for a very good way to communicate in realtime, especially for multi-user chat with people one doesn’t necessarily know already. In my view, it is a far superior means to the modern so-called instant messaging systems such as AIM or the like. However, nothing is perfect.

IRC is at its best in interactive discussion, where people exchange arguments back and forth. It is not so good for exposition of a topic, formal debate, or arguments which require much care with sources and quoting. Out of ##marxism, the IRC channel, came Spirit of Contradiction, as a way to cover one of these holes. On the blog, channel members–and others–can develop our arguments in detail, and expose our thinking. That said, although blogs do have comment systems, they are also not ideal for complex discussions.

In the middle between a blog and an IRC channel, in terms of formality, ideal length of contribution, latency, and interactivity, would be a forum. I don’t much like much of the forum software around, for reasons I’ll go into below, and generally prefer mailing lists, but in the end I was convinced to try out and install a forum for us all. It’s been quietly linked on the top of the page for a while now, as Forum of Contradiction, and now that it’s no longer empty it seems high time to announce it to society more openly.

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Everything You Know About Decentralisation is Wrong

Posted on 09/01/2013 by Gavin Mendel-Gleason
Centralisation versus decentralisation as graphs

Centralisation versus decentralisation

Decentralisation has become a fashionable notion in modern politics, finding common expression in both the libertarian left and the conservative right.

It seems that Greenpeace, local-food advocates 1, anarchists and even Tories 2 are united in the belief that decentralisation is almost always good.  The days when Marxists felt confident in championing centralisation are long gone.

The question of centralisation has doubtless been made murky by the slow bureaucratic behemoths of both the state in the USSR, and  large corporate entities elsewhere with centralisation becoming synonymous with a kind of arbitrary and purposeless power with little responsiveness to those unfortunate enough to have to interact with it.

Nevertheless, the impetus to centralise may be either progressive or regressive depending on the circumstances, while the notion that decentralisation is, on the whole, better does not stand up well under closer inspection.
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Posted in Critique of the Left, Politics | 4 Comments

“Mass partyism”: a dissenting opinion

Posted on 30/12/2012 by Maximilien Robespierre

“One must not allow oneself to be misled by the cry for ‘unity.’ Those who have this word most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension, just as at present the Jura Bakuninists in Switzerland, who have provoked all the splits, scream for nothing so much as for unity. Those unity fanatics are either the people of limited intelligence who want to stir everything up together into one nondescript brew, which, the moment it is left to settle, throws up the differences again in much more acute opposition because they are now all together in one pot (you have a fine example of this in Germany with the people who preach the reconciliation of the workers and the petty bourgeoisie)–or else they are people who consciously or unconsciously (like Mühlberger, for instance) want to adulterate the movement. For this reason the greatest sectarians and the biggest brawlers and rogues are at certain moments the loudest shouters for unity. Nobody in our lifetime has given us more trouble and been more treacherous than the unity shouters.” — Friedrich Engels in a letter to August Bebel dated 20th June, 1873

Comrades modulus and Gavin have recently written and published two posts which bring up important issues. As any regular reader to Spirit of Contradiction (yes, all six of you) knows, they represent more or less the majority opinion of the regular contributors. Nevertheless I have seen it fit to give a dissenting opinion based on my own misgivings about their treatment of the subject. The subject, as always, is about the “party question.” In contrast to my usual style I will not engage in shameless self-promotion and link to previous posts of mine on the subject (I promise)3.

I just hope I don’t sound too pretentious.

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Posted in Politics, Proletarian politics | 2 Comments

Notes on Left-Unity

Posted on 29/12/2012 by Gavin Mendel-Gleason
Unification Algorithm

Unification Algorithm

Currently there is a quite a lot of reflection along the left about how we are going to recompose as a political force. The idea that this is necessary is widely shared, since it’s absolutely absurdly obvious that despite a massive hiccup in capitalism – potentially a relatively long term stagnation – the left has turned this into almost nothing approaching success. This goes strongly against a popular dogma that a heightening of economic contradictions would provide us the objective conditions for stronger political awareness, and thereby lubricate our ability to organise. Many in 2008 were crying out that neo-liberalism was dead, and yet neo-liberalism has merely marched forward with new vitality.

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Posted in Politics, Proletarian politics | 8 Comments

A socialist party for our times

Posted on 28/12/2012 by modulus

The question of the party, broadly understood as the nature and relation to the working class of its political organisational form, whether we call it a party or not, has produced a fecund and abundant literature within Marxism and elsewhere on the radical left.4 There are good reasons to ponder such things as the form of organisation of the class, the way it should relate to it, and to other non-political class organs such as unions, etc. However, I think this debate has been hampered by certain historical controversies5 that, although in my view no longer relevant to current issues, keep focussing attention, to the detriment of more operational concerns. So I don’t intend to rehash arguments on the vanguard, the mass party, or the “genuine” Bolshevik form, but instead I will consider what our party needs, here and now. This does not of course mean being oblivious to previous historical experience, but it does require a certain psychological distance from sectarian concerns. Whether this or that position was or not correct at a given time and place is less relevant than what we should be doing to create a political organ to represent our class.

It’s possible that I will be accused of trying to create overly detailed schemas, of ignoring the lessons of history, or of a certain technocratic bent. All these accusations are nothing less than I expect, and I’ll contest them by saying that what the class needs now is a clear direction towards a well-defined organisational form, that this form must be the appropriate one for this particular moment, and that it’s the hallmark of our class at its best to innovate not only in the content of our demands, but in the way we organise ourselves to attain them. The conspicuous use of agitprop, clandestine printing presses, illegal party organs of opinion, cell structures, and so on, demands nothing less from us than our best in utilising whatever means of organisation, persuation and resistance we may obtain, and such means are to be sought–and found–in the realm of information technology and its yet unleashed revolutionary potential.

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Posted in Politics, Proletarian politics | 2 Comments

Cutting the crap: epistemology, science, the left and you

Posted on 19/12/2012 by modulus

Science and the Left

Once upon a time the relation between science and socialism was pretty direct and self-explanatory. Not in vain, Marxists call ourselves scientific socialists, when we can stop our unceasing and largely fruitless factional struggles, that is. Unfortunately, and here I think it fair to lay the blame at the feet of the so-called New Left and the influence of the Frankfurt School, this relation has become more problematic over time. The uptake of certain attitudes from the counter-cultural milieu, as well as an ill-conceived and reflexive regard for spontaneity, with its corresponding distrust of institutions and organisation, received from anarchist and ultra-left circles often hiding behind Rosa Luxemburg’s corpse, have led many in the movement to disdain the “pharmaceutical establishment”, particle physics, or biotechnology, with an animus hitherto reserved for reactionary institutions such as the military or the churches.

It’s undeniable that, both in the capitalist countries and under really-existing socialism, science has been instrumentalised for the pursuit of profit and the production of ever more destructive weapons. Nonetheless, an inability to separate the epistemological grounds for scientific knowledge from the particular conditions under which research takes place would seem as misguided as attributing the working conditions of industrial capitalism to machinery and efficient organisation of labour. We can no more set aside the discoveries made by biology or the potential of nuclear power, than we could smash our way into revolution, one cog at a time.

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Posted in Critique of the Left, Philosophy, Sci-tech | 12 Comments

Against Adhocracy

Posted on 21/11/2012 by Dara McHugh

OCCSYDOCT20_0288
Should we believe that we should organise outside of parties, outside of the State and outside of Left or Right? That with the right process people can come together as people and produce an impetus towards progressive social change? If we strip away presumptions and allegiances can we unite a popular movement such as has never been seen before? I think these arguments show that there are many presumptions intact.

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Notes on electoralism

Posted on 20/11/2012 by yeksmesh

For the record this article is not an attempt by me to sketch out an all encompassing view on the uses of electoralism in the revolutionary process, as I think that such a view needs to be based upon thorough analysis of long ranging historical processes, something for which I do not have the time nor the willpower at the moment. Nevertheless this article will probably be interpreted in this way anyhow, and will (hopefully) lead to a range of good discussions on the subject of the use of elections by revolutionaries. My intention therefore is to elaborate on some thoughts I have on the subject of elections and provide a useful contribution to the discussion of elections within the radical left.
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Posted in Critique of the Left, Politics, Proletarian politics | 6 Comments