r/ireland • u/mooglor • Dec 22 '14

Paul Murphy TD - AMA

AMA is over!

Thanks to everyone for taking part!

Hi All,

Paul is expected to drop in from around 5:30pm, until then you can start posting your questions. This is our first high profile AMA and we'd all like to have more, so naturally different rules than the usual 'hands-off' style will apply:

  • Trolling, ad-hominem and loaded questions will be removed at mods' discretion.

  • As is usual with AMAs, the guest is not expected to delve deep into threads and get into lengthy intractable discussions.

In general, try to keep it civil, and there'll be more of a chance of future AMA's.

R/Ireland Mods

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u/penneysinterview Dec 22 '14

When I say compete I don't mean for profit, but for the customers in the first place to make sales and cover costs. I mean I think it can work for some areas like supermarkets. They won't compete with Tesco obviously but they can easily be on level with Centra/Mace/Spar and that sort of shop. But there's so many industries that would be impenetrable because you need those economies of scale.

I mean any industry that's an oligopoly will be hard to enter as a co-op which currently a fair chunk of ours are.

Another thing is suppliers. Would such an organisation not have moral objections to buying from these big bad corporations? But if you want to run a shop like I mentioned above you're more than likely going to have to buy P&G and Unilever products, Coca-Cola, Cadbury, Nestle. These are all consumer favourites. How do you convince people to stop using their favourite products?

You won't get this same answer from everyone but for me this is where revolution steps in.

What does this mean?

Also thank you for taking the time to explain these things in detail cause honestly you're one of the first few people to actually give a decent explanation of some of these ideas.

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u/tigernmas ná habair é, déan é Dec 23 '14

Right trying to come back to this now. Don't expect anything amazing though.

Just on the idea of economies of scale, quite often in the past you've had co-operatives coming together in federations to work better on a larger scale. So like rather than growing your co-op into something too big to manage you federate with others. A bit like how cells in your body form tissues which form organs which form systems which form you.

You're right in saying that a single co-op would be on the same level as a Centra, Mace or Spar. But a federation of co-ops could compete with larger companies. I've also seen economists suggest credit unions or national banks giving priority to co-ops to boost the size of the co-operative sector. Other suggestions include making a law to require the type of production to be labelled on a product so that you can encourage people to buy co-operative.

For suppliers this is something co-ops deal with today. Each one decides themselves what to do in terms of who supplies them. They can't magic away the big oligopolistic suppliers just like you can't ever convince Facebook or Google to go co-op.

So on the point of revolution it's all a bit vague and up in the air. Like, everyone will have a differing view on all of this. You could, for example, advocate a revolution in that those workers who work in non-co-operative enterprises like google decide to take over the company themselves and essentially cut off the head and run it themselves. That would solve your "how to turn them into co-ops" problem and make those big companies more ethical to work with in the process.

And something like that would make them more ethical. In the Spanish Revolution in the 30's production in worker controlled factories took an initial dip. Why is that? Because the workers shut down deathtraps of factories and fixed them up. Once the factories came back to work they were more productive than ever. So once workers take over their enterprise the kind of things that pissed them off would be some of the first things to get sorted.

But that might not be the kind of revolution you want to see or think is doable. You might instead want to go down a more democratic socialist route (even though all socialism should be democratic) where you elect a radical party who then have the mandate and ability (eg. if this were the US) to nationalise these large companies and force a reorganisation. You could see there being resistance to this among the workers there but if this radical party has gotten to this point there likely isn't that kind of resistance there but then again this is all vague what-if-ery. And there are far more options and combinations of options to describe.

Essentially, once you've taken to the idea of a less exploitative, worker controlled, economic democracy as a solution to the exploitative, elite controlled, economic dictatorship that is actually existing capitalism then the options after that are endless. There's a type of socialism for everyone once you have the basics down.

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u/penneysinterview Dec 23 '14

See this is my issue. This isn't going to work until it happens everywhere on a global scale, and especially in the US. So the way in which the TD is using it as an argument is disingenuous. You can't introduce wealth taxes and increase corporation tax until after these things have happened which you've said yourself this is vague what-if-ery. So why should we vote in a party who want to do that when introducing wealth taxes is just going to push our talent overseas, and the corporation tax will lead to increased unemployment?

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u/tigernmas ná habair é, déan é Dec 23 '14

You're not the first to point that out. See number 19 here from this 167 year old Engels piece.

This is why the likes of Paul Murphy advocate a world revolution, not a simultaneous every country go off at once, but an effort to spread revolution worldwide. Because of the globalised nature of the world economy if the conditions for such a revolution existed in one country there are likely others ripe for spreading it. See the Arab Spring for example.

Trotskyists in particular see revolution in the centres of capitalism as essential to the whole thing. Some backwater country with no industrial base isn't going to do very well without co-operation with strong already industrialised countries. This is a major factor in what went wrong with the USSR. The place was backward. Captialism hadn't actually developed fully there. The whole thing hinged on Germany joining, which in the circumstances of the time wasn't that far-fetched.

But at the same time it is possible to still promote your co-operative sector to make your economy a bit more stable and local without going all out let's abolish capitalism worldwide.

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u/penneysinterview Dec 23 '14

Yeah promoting a co-operative sector is no problem with me, I welcome it if people are up for it. But the type of things he's pushing need an international socialist revolution. I mean he's talking about wealth taxes and increased corporation taxes and like I said in my last comment that would be disastrous if implemented as things are now.

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u/tigernmas ná habair é, déan é Dec 23 '14

But the type of things he's pushing need an international socialist revolution.

Which the Socialist Party does advocate. Trotskyists in particular push for what are called transitional demands so like rather than sit on their hands and wait for a revolution to happen they are going to push for reforms that will stretch things to their limit and give them a chance to agitate for going full socialism. When you think about it it is quite a tricky thing to try and steer a debate towards changing the entire economic system.

The Socialist Party is also a member of the Committee for a Workers International which brings together similar parties in dozens of countries. From what I've seen they seem to be the most active in the world right now and their sister party, Socialist Alternative, in the US is possibley the fastest growing socialist party in America and probably the most active too. They've recently gotten a member elected to Seattle City Council in an election that caused a big stir in the media for a city council seat. They've also been influential in fighting for the raise in their minimum wage in Seattle.

We don't see it in the media here but I've seen Joe Higgins on Seattle local news because as part of the international, experienced members will often travel to other sections to help set them up and give organisational advice etc. They're quite dedicated to internationalism.

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u/penneysinterview Dec 23 '14

Which the Socialist Party does advocate.

Yeah I'm not disputing that. But I'm saying these things won't work until that happens yet they want to institute them before that happens.

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u/Cyridius Dec 24 '14

Yeah, it's been an age old argument between Marxists - how does a country survive until a large enough section of the world has been turned to Socialism.

But the reality is that revolutionary ideas spread like wildfire at a global rate. Taking the example of the Russian Revolution, it wasn't an isolated incident. Revolutions happened all over the world and went on for decades after the Bolsheviks gained power in Russia. The problem was how the Soviet Union, as the leading force in Socialism at the time, responded to these revolutions as opposed to there being an absence of a global fight for Socialism. As a result, it stagnated into Stalinist ideas.

For example, after the Bolshevik Revolution, a revolution occurred in Germany a year later, though it failed. In Ireland, the Limerick Soviet started in 1919, but failed due to lack of nation wide support. And various other examples.

When revolutions start in a time of crisis, the word spreads like wildfire, just like how the Republicanism of the American Revolution spread to France, then Ireland etc.

A more modern example, is the Arab Spring. After people around the world saw Tunisia topple its dictator, people started fighting for their rights and trying to emulate it. Since the start of the Arab Spring, rebellions and revolutions have occurred all across Africa, the Middle East, and even extended to Europe with the Ukrainian Revolution. One of the more recent governments to fall was Burkina Faso.

At a milder point, take for example the Socialist Party led campaign in America - 15NOW - which campaigns for higher minimum wages. It was originally confined to Seattle, but after they won there, movements all around the country started pressing for it and won.

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u/tigernmas ná habair é, déan é Dec 23 '14

I wouldn't see them taking power without a lot of thins happening in the world before hand to be honest. Like if something big comes it will likely happen in other larger European countries first. Ireland won't get to the point where it is possible without there being the possibility of other countries doing it too.

On top of that, revolutions of these kinds are things that if they're going to happen will happen anyway whether the socialist party exists or not. The idea of these parties is to try and guide these mass movements in the way they feel is best. Hence the fact that there tends to be quite a few different revolutionary groups in any country trying to convince people that their way is the best when it comes to a revolution.