alanjjohnstone
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Preparing for the Apocalypse – the first Horseman on his white horse is called Pestilence.
Matt Hancock said: “We are working with the supermarkets to make sure that, if people are self-isolating, then we will be able to get the food and supplies that they need.”
But supermarket sources said they had not discussed getting food to homes.
One executive said he was “baffled” by the suggestions.
An executive told BBC business editor Simon Jack: “Matt Hancock has totally made up what he said about working with supermarkets. We haven’t heard anything from government directly.”
He added that sales of cupboard basics such as pasta and tinned goods have “gone through the roof”. There was no suggestion that there were food shortages, but people bringing forward some purchases was creating logistical challenges, he said.The executive added: “While I think people don’t need to panic buy and should just shop normally, I’m not sure the government can guarantee all food supply in all instances.”
” I would prefer to work in coop under capitalism”
Indeed, Robin, just as a slave or serf preferred a master that did not whip.
We would all seek employment conditions where we can choose our manager, have a say in the running of the business, a bigger share in the profits. But the issue is, can capitalism offer such employment to more than just a minority and can such organisations survive competition from conventional structured rivals. Can co-ops achieve systemic changes.
Mondragon’s constant concessions over the years appear to suggest that there will always be a limit to Woolf’s workers self directed enterprise model.
A nation-wide co-op system relies on a worker-friendly State to nurture and protect it for its growth and expansion. And of course since the world is divided into nation-states, one country’s co-op is not immune from international competition from another country’s co-op (actually there would also be different conflicting interests within cities, regions and within countries)
I am always surprised that people have not wondered why there are so many retail co-ops rather than producer co-ops on the scale of a steel mill which is in the global market (btw, a solution to the malaise in the US steel industry Woolf tried to offer his WSDE as an a answer.
Who remembers the TSB bank and how it was “stolen” from its account-holders ? No owners meant that the government determined it could be privatised and all its deposits given to future buyers..
‘As it considers that the TSB belongs to no one, the government apparently intends to appropriate the assets by Act of Parliament, fix the price, make the sale and return the payment with the goods. In other words, the existing assets would be a free gift to the purchasers of the shares.’ – Financial Times
https://www.solhaam.org/articles/tsb.html
It led to all the mutually owned building societies built from the ethos of the Victorian self-improvement era going the same way.
What is the number of co-operatives that became conventional businesses
As an aside, during my time in Royal Mail, Edinburgh’s high level of unofficial strike action resulted in the post office bringing in a industrial relations expert to interview staff. One finding was that we did indeed suffer from bad managers. In fact, the conclusion of the expert’s report was the staff were better at identifying and respecting good managers and those were not necessary the more lenient managers but rather fairer individuals who knew the job and could also be stricter in staff discipline. Needless to say, despite this clear conclusion that workers were better than senior management in recognising good bosses it did not lead to any reform of how managers were recruited or promoted as it would have undermined Royal Mail’s authority and its hierarchy.
“What Sanders is advocating is something approaching the social-welfare systems of other economically developed countries and that’s a far cry from the socialism Fox News is using as a boogeyman to frighten conservatives.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51750252
John Lewis, an employee partnership, is often cited as a progressive success story. But its recent troubles show that co-ops are not immune from the effects of capitalism, like any other enterprise
Profits fell by 23% last year to £123m – the third year in a row that profits have fallen. Staff bonuses have been set at 2%, the lowest since 1953. Three Waitrose stores would close later this year
Definitely if it had been Bloomberg there would have been a boycott.
With Biden I think even many on the left will rally around the slogan “Anyone but Trump” even Kliman and co.
The Sanders camp has released a devastating anti-Biden statement.
To tell the truth, I haven’t seen any articles on the Green Party this time around compared with 2016. Perhaps they are waiting to see if Sanders is defeated before getting active.
I think Warren is deliberately staying in the race so to keep many of her supporters from switching to Sanders and hoping to get a Secretary of State job as Mayor Pete has already been promised by Biden. Not sure if Amy has.
Robin, I think the choice of Labour Party leader, the lack of interest in maintaining Corbyn’s agenda answers your question.
The defeat in the General Election demoralised the “radical” wing of the Labour Party and have no emboldened their policies. A few token gestures but nothing of substance.
The actual social reforms in their manifesto did not cause the Labour Party to lose, but it was the vacillations on Brexit and the media smears of Corbyn.
With Sanders it is a bit different, there is general approval ratings for his proposals such as Green New Deal and Medicare For All and free college education and the end of student debt. But the tax rises on the corporations necessary to fund his policies is why he got no Big Business endorsements and instead was targeted by the mainstream media.
He has not suffered too many personality attacks and the majority of people view him as sincere and genuine – an honest politician
When he loses, there will still be movements for the environment such as Sunrise and the $15 minimum wage. It may be the basis of a continued independent grassroots campaign without him other than perhaps as their voice.
I see no prospect of any Labour Party activism. What happens in the UK will be outside the Labour Party but it is much more nebulous and less organised than in the USA. The environment movement such as XR fail to become anything more than a one issue protest…there is no real economic analysis.
It is perhaps at that level, socialists can act as a catalyst by pushing the feasibility of a non-market economy as the ONLY solution. We have to present socialism as the REAL eco-friendly society. That would be my focus, right now. Hopefully, the plans for Glasgow’s COP26 can be our springboard. But somehow, and I appreciate the problems and difficulties, it has to be more than one intensive weekend of activity.
But who am I to say being thousands of miles away from my fellow-workers in Britain. I no longer have any direct connection to make reasoned and informed views on their thinking and their consciousness. You live a bit closer, geographically and culturally, and may have a better insight but still you too are not completely alongside your UK fellow-workers and might lack much needed knowledge.
So really you and I rely on our fellow Party members in the UK to provide the necessary insight for us to determine our actions. Is this required analysis sufficient? Or is our own Party distanced too?
The article did provide me with a quote approvingly cited by Marx
“…With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent. certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent., positive audacity; 100 per cent. will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence and strife will bring a profit, it will freely encourage both…” – T. J. Dunning, ‘Trades’ unions and strikes’ (quoted at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm)
The xenophobes blame the foreigners – just as we expected
Yup, and now it is the “Come-back Kid” Biden.
Buttigieg and Klobachar fall by the way-side, Bloomberg still to show his worth, Warren under-performing everywhere
No national media is following up on Biden’s false-memory syndrome where he lies about being an activist in the civil rights movement and that he was arrested in South Africa for trying to see Nelson Mandela. If that was Sanders making up stories …well…he would be described as going senile.
He lies as much as Trump
Biden claimed that he graduated in the top half of his law school.
He graduated 76th in a class of 85.“If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where Bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me. Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are. ” about time his helicopter had to make a landing not because of Al Qaeda but due to a sudden snowstorm.
“When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.” –Joe Biden, apparently unaware that FDR wasn’t president when the stock market crashed in 1929 and that only experimental TV sets existed.
“Stand up, Chuck, let ’em see ya.” Joe Biden, to Missouri state Sen. Chuck Graham, who is in a wheelchair.
His racism
“In Delaware, the largest growth of population is Indian Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7/11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”
And his African American racism that was never mentioned in South Carolina primary
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” About the then US presidential candidate Barack Obama
These will no doubt come out from the Republicans if he is the Democratic nominee and make way for Trump victory but for now…but for now even his Democratic rivals decline to tell the truth.
“Texas and California—the two states with the most pledged delegates to award on Super Tuesday—view socialism more positively than capitalism, according to a CBS News/YouGov tracking poll released Sunday.
The survey showed 56% of Democratic primary voters in Texas and 57% in California have a favorable view of socialism. Just 37% of Democratic voters in Texas and 45% in California have a positive view of capitalism, ”Researcher Kadira Pethiyagoda wrote Monday that Texas voters’ relatively positive view of socialism is “no surprise… for those of us who’ve long highlighted the history of economic left-wing politics in rural areas—the original populism!”
But as Jacobin says it is an undefined socialism
“I care more about advancing class struggle and a political program that can help working people than how an undefined ‘socialism’ and ‘capitalism’ polls, but this is still an absolutely remarkable development,” tweeted Bhaskar Sunkara, publisher of the socialist magazine Jacobin.
Nor do I quite comprehend his attraction to it.
Perhaps he believes it is a stepping stone towards socialism but for his scenario to succeed requires a leap in consciousness of the worker that if it takes place there no reason for them to stop short of socialism and not just placing the workplace under the cooperative industrial democracy, but making the whole of society a social democracy.
But the other surprising thing with Wolff, his model of co-ops competing with conventional businesses calls for the intervention of a worker-friendly government to prop up co-ops which goes against the Marxist analysis of the role of the State.
Although he is provided with ample coverage on the progressive websites, he cannot indicate too much success other than continue to direct us to the Mondragon project, despite its numerous flaws.
Luxemburg go free
https://www.dw.com/en/luxembourg-makes-public-transport-free/a-52582998
“You will no longer need a ticket to board any national bus, train or the tram,”
No doubt this article will be seized upon by co-operative advocates.
“…Ownership at Work has found that employee ownership, whether achieved through direct shareholdings or an employee-owned trust, proves popular wherever the company operates and whatever the industry….
“Employee ownership is clearly liberating for many workers,” says Stern. “But with that freedom to operate comes responsibility, accountability and a genuine sense of ownership – the benefits which accrue from that, but also the seriousness that goes with it. Taking ownership means thinking harder about how you work and how you make money.”…
A survey of managers at the same businesses, released this week, showed they need to make an even bigger leap, shedding any bombast and egotistical tendencies on their way to the boardroom…”
Not all bad news. China’s pollution levels drop.
Pawns on the power play – Syrian refugees
