alanjjohnstone
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I think this article another where Sanders is making his case for the Labor Secretary job.
Is it also a veiled coded message to Biden to deliver? If so, it is short on strategies and tactics.
George Monbiot on Brexit
Interesting new terms for capitalism
housetrained capitalism. It seeks an accommodation with the administrative state, and benefits from stability, predictability and the regulations that exclude dirtier and rougher competitors.
warlord capitalism. This sees all restraints on accumulation – including taxes, regulations and the public ownership of essential services – as illegitimate. Nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of profit-making.
I prefer them to such euphemisms as neo-liberalism and corporatism …and such like
UK facing risk of ‘systemic economic crisis’, official paper says | Politics | The Guardian
The government has privately admitted the UK faces an increased likelihood of “systemic economic crisis”
Economic chaos could raise the risks of a breakdown in public order and a national mental health crisis, while reducing the “financial levers” available for the government to respond to other risks, this description of “planning assumptions” warns.
A confidential Cabinet Office briefing seen by the Guardian also warns of a “notable risk” that in coming months the country could face a perfect storm of simultaneous disasters
From the media response they are all a-flutter with flattery approving Biden’s appointments, claiming they please both the conservative and progressive wings of the Democratic Party and full of talk of diversity – as if we don’t know how meaningless that is with Priti Patel
I note however that who would be the labor secretary is still not announced, the cabinet job Bernie Sanders has made no secret that he wants. Maybe he will get it but perhaps he will not because of his pro-labor positions
Sanders supports unionization in Amazon
“For example, the shoe-maker [or scientist] is my representative in so far as he fulfils a social need, just as every definite social activity, because it is a species-activity, represents only the species; that is to say, it represents a determination of my own essence the way every man is the representative of the other. Here, he is representative not by virtue of something other than himself which he represents, but by virtue of what he is and does.”
Marx makes the point, i think, that a specialist is a representative because of the nature of his or her actual contribution to society i.e. all fellow citizens. Not because of personal talent or gift. He or she is not an elite above or apart others by possessing any special attribute other than to serve society.
Perhaps we could bring in Bakunin’s boot-maker at this point.
“In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism censure. I do not content myself with consulting authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority…”
Neither Marx nor Bakunin encroaches on the expertise of the specialist by imposing any outside agency such as “democracy” or “voting”, do they? Neither talks of actual power arising from social roles. It would be an apt moment for them to say so but the silence is deafening. There is a choice.
For Marx it is reflected in the individual’s function within society, by the way we associate with one another. For Bakunin it is reflected in the voluntary nature of the relationship, which he believes to be democratic control.
And MS is right…without action, without translating ideas into practice, idle chatter leads no-where…mere pub-talk…which brings me back to my earlier message on your political inactivity, LBird… no power…no democratic control…no political point.
Can i have a comment on the following article where this stood out for me.
“For example, the shoemaker is my representative in so far as he fulfils a social need, just as every definite social activity, because it is a species-activity, represents only the species; that is to say, it represents a determination of my own essence the way every man is the representative of the other. Here, he is representative not by virtue of something other than himself which he represents, but by virtue of what he is and does.”
Notes for a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, by Karl Marx (marxists.org)
Hegel and Marx are a mystery to me but i somehow think that the answers LBird looks for are hidden there.
More promising news on the energy front. Volcanic power
The Biden administration now is taking shape…and still no left progressives included although some are being approved by the liberal left.
Money Rebellion would have been a good slogan for those of our ilk…to make it actually mean something substantive.
Perhaps the theme of a future SS issue.
Money Rebellion…not at all as radical as it sounds but a campaign of debt and tax strikes.
My point was more the fact that once you vote for the lesser evil, it remains an evil and need not shift to become an even lesser evil
“Man lives on nature–means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.”
To say you control nature places you outside of nature, not a part of it.
But i suppose you could interpret control as
“…man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates, and controls the metabolism between himself and nature. He confronts the materials of nature as a force of nature.”
Yet once again, integrated within nature, in other words, as i said “We live with what is around us” (my emphasis)
I fail to find where Marx suggests mankind has mastery i.e. control over nature, other than interacting as part of nature and it doesn’t always lead to domination over nature as in the sense of controlling nature, it means as i suggested adaptation.
Isn’t separating men and women from nature, dualist and not what most Marxists are – monists.
