alanjjohnstone
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Apparently there ishttp://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/IJSE-04-2012-0134
Quote:Findings – This research found that investor psychology is influenced by the full moon, but no effect was recorded during the new moon phase. Confirmed by the paired t-difference test, the small correlation, in addition to the quantitative model, the results show the full moon impacts market behaviour during its orbital phase. Consequently, the authors surmise that the full moon does influence investor cognition and emotion disarray, mood disorders, and aggressiveness, resulting in poor stock trading performance.Practical implications – The need for an active investment strategy is the major implication of this study. During the full moon phase, investors tend to be more aggressive and moody and seek hedonic utility instead of the traditional economics utility, meaning that they tend to follow the sentiment of the market.The Dhaka Tribune in Bangladesh picks up one of our Twitter tweetshttp://www.dhakatribune.com/world/north-america/2017/02/06/trump-steps-attack-judge-court-system-travel-ban/
All the best for those May elections. Looking forward to reading the election manifestoes and those very likely local press candidate statements.
Along a similar sentiment but one restricted to the Labour movement is this articlehttps://libcom.org/blog/american-labor-isn%E2%80%99t-dead-definitely-needs-wake-13022017
Quote:For many years now, a widespread cry has been raised of the imminent death of American Labor; of the end of working people as a living force in the life of the United States. We hear that the workers’ movement is currently is in its last painful death throes – irrelevant, dying, lonely and forgotten by a technologically rapacious consumerist society that has moved past Labor as a social force and relegated it to a long forgotten past….this death cry comes from our so-called mainstream media, where working people are constantly bombarded with messages of the futility of any sort of identity or action that is not tied to their role as active consumers in a capitalist order. Working people are not encouraged to see the basic unity of their circumstances – whether they be in the workplace, unemployed, or even retired – and instead are drawn into any number of subcultures which ultimately drain energy and purpose, and which mask the nature of our social relationship…But Labor – the concerns of working people as manifested in union activity and solidarity – will never really die. It may be handed some serious societal and global setbacks, but there has been a general march throughout human history that will not come to an end here or anywhere on the planet, as long as there are people determined to be free and who believe in equality and justice. The names and terms will change perhaps, but the great constructive work of strengthening bonds, communicating, effecting positive change is ours to complete,Negative thoughts create negative actions…perhaps sometimes i am guilty of this in my pessimistic prognosis of the Party. Perhaps i should be more positive and optimistic. But it does mea, adapting and re-shaping ourselves…because times they have a-changed, and that is for sure.
Aren't we getting bogged down here on definitions?I linked to Wiki to purposefully show how wide and how diverse the concept of a constitution is.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Law_of_PeaceLikewise, Robbo tried to differentiate between possessions and owning property. Do you believe that owning private property gives you the right to deprive another person of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (to quote a constitition)?Recall New Orleans and the Hurricane Katrina? Restoring "law and order" with orders to shoot "looters", those who went into flooded Walmarts in search of bottled water and food and other necessities for survival? If a diabetic when a natural disaster struck, wouldn't you flout the sacred right of property and bust into a pharmacy for your insulin, even if it meant the risk of being killed as a "looter"Wouldn't you say that the workers of a factory and the community dependent around it have more rights than investors on another continent endowed with the title deeds because they bought shares on Wall St?
Here are some quotes that maybe food for thought“A period of revolution begins not because life has become physically impossible but because growing numbers of workers have their eyes suddenly opened to the fact that problems hitherto accepted as part of man’s unavoidable heritage has become capable of solution…No crisis of capitalism, however desperate it may be, can ever by itself give us socialism ” – Will Capitalism Collapse? “If we hoped to achieve Socialism ONLY by our propaganda, the outlook would indeed be bad. But it is Capitalism itself unable to solve crises, unemployment , and poverty, engaging in horrifying wars , which is digging its own grave. Workers are learning by bitter experience and bloody sacrifice for interests not their own. They are learning slowly. Our job is to shorten the time , to speed up the process” – Socialism or Chaos We can quote from Paul Mattick with his understanding to his own political experiences:“There is no evidence that the last hundred years of labour strife have led to the revolutionizing of the working class in the sense of a growing willingness to do away with the capitalist system…In times of depression no less in than these of prosperity, the continuing confrontations of labor and capital have led not to an political radicalization of the working class, but to an intensified insistence upon better accommodations within the capitalist system…No matter how much he [the worker] may emancipate himself ideologically, for all practical purposes he must proceed as if he were still under the sway of bourgeois ideology. He may realize that his individual needs can only be assured by collective class actions, but he will still be forced to attend to his immediate needs as an individual. It is this situation, rather than some conditioned inability to transcend capitalism. He may realize that his individual needs can only be assured by collective class actions, but he will still be forced to attend to his immediate needs as an individual. It is this situation , rather than some conditioned inability to transcend capitalist ideology, that makes the workers reluctant to express and to act upon their anti- capitalist attitudes…” – Marxism, Last Refuge of the Bourgeoisie Also from Sidney Hook in his From Hegel to Marx who said“…the struggle to achieve institutional change produces changes in those who participate in the struggles. The Praxis of trying to bring about a new order, no abstract doctrine, educates the workers …Marx‘s great insights that human beings cannot change the world without changing themselves, and that social struggles, under certain conditions, are the best school for acquiring an education in social realities are not isolated thoughts but organically connected with his materialistic theory of history .… The class struggle is not a doctrine, but the school in which doctrines arise are tested and used or discarded. The working class not only becomes conscious of itself in these struggles, but it changes and re-educates itself by its revolutionary practice" Another insightful comment upon the non-commital and non-involvement of many workers in creating socialism comes from Hegel in his Philosophy of the Mind:“If, therefore man does not want to perish he must recognise the world as a self-dependent world which in its essential nature is already complete, must accept the conditions set for him by the world and wrest from it what he wants for himself. As a rule, the man believes that this submission is only forced on him by necessity. But ,in truth , this unity with the world must be recognised, not as a relation imposed by necessity , but as the rational …therefore the man behaves quite rationally in abandoning his plan for completely transforming the world and in striving to realise his personal aims, passions and interests only within the framework of the world in which he is a part” Anton Pannekoek describes in The Workers Council that“[class consciousness] is not learned from books or through courses on theory and political formation, but through real life practice of the class struggle” While Wilhelm Reich in Sex-Pol describes class consciousness ande explains:“Everything that contradicts the bourgeois order, everything that contains a germ of rebellion, can be regarded as an element of class – consciousness; everything that creates or maintains a bond with the bourgeois order, that supports and reinforces it, is an impediment to class consciousness”and again“Against the principle of self-denial preached by political reaction, we must set the principle of happiness and abundance …Any socialist political economist can prove that sufficient wealth exists in the world to provide a happy life for all workers .But we must prove this more thoroughly, more consistently, in greater detail than we generally do”and again“Question: If two human beings, A and B, are starving, one of them may accept his fate, refuse to steal, and take to begging or die from hunger, while the other may take the law into his own hands in order to obtain food. A large part of the proletariat, often called the lumpenproletariat, live according to the principles of B .Which of the two types has more elements of class consciousness in him ? Stealing is not yet a sign of class consciousness but a brief moment of reflection shows , despite our inner moral resistance, that the man who refuses to submit to law and steals when he is hungry, that’s to say, the man who manifests a will to live, has more energy and fight in him than the one who lies down unprotesting on the butchers slab …we have said that stealing is not yet class consciousness. A brick is not yet a house , but you use bricks to build a house” Finally, we have from Murray Bookchin's contribution in his article Listen Marxist “ The Marxian doctrinaire would have us approach the worker, better still – enter the factory – and proselytize him in preference to anyone else. The purpose ? to make the worker class conscious. In the end , the worker is shrewd enough to know that he can get better results in the day-to-day class struggle through his union bureaucracy than through a Marxian party bureaucracy …the worker becomes revolutionary not by becoming more of a worker but by undoing his ‘workerness‘. His ‘workerness’ is the disease he is suffering from, the worker begins to become revolutionary when he undoes his ‘workerness' , when he begins to shed exactly those features Marxists most prize him – his work ethic, his character-structure derived from industrial discipline, his respect for hierarchy, his obedience to leaders, his consumerism, his vestiges of Puritanism. In this sense, the worker becomes a revolutionary to the degree that he sheds his class status and achieves an un-class- consciousness. He degenerates and he degenerates magnificently. What he is shedding are precisely those class shackles that bind him to all systems of domination. He abandons those class interests that enslaves him to consumerism , suburbia and a book-keeping conception of life” So, Cyber, we hold only generalisations but possess a political approach that when exercised will not be counter-productive or have a negative effect. One of the great principles of the SPGB is our opposition to leadership, so whatever weaknesses or mistaken views we hold or accused of, they cannot be imposed upon others with possibly even worse consequences. The validity of the SPGB's ideas will either be accepted or rejected by discussion and debate, plus by actual concrete developments on the ground. The SPGB are not going to become entryists or a vanguard who proclaim that we are possessors of the Holy Grail, that all must follow.Anyways, your question is a question the Party has always consideredhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/jackson-ta/articles/1906/07/class_conciousness.htm
Finding the appropriate formula for inspiring and insitgating social revolution is, of course, the Holy Grail for all socialists and through history various strategies, as you say, Cyber, has been tried and found to be wanting. The old slogan is the only one we have to go by, "educate, organise and agitate".Presently, the Party is having to re-evaluate how we go about this in practical terms since it is clear that we (and our left-wing rivals) are not being successful. Capitalist ideas of nationalism and faith in reformist politics are still prevailing and it isn't just a temporary fad as with Brexit or Trump but a long-standing obstacle to the advancement of socialism.But saying that, there has been many socetial developments that have grown successful and assists us. Sexism, homophobia, and even racism, although not disappeared, has very much diminished in their influences. In our own lifetimes, we have witnessed the changes in attitudes grow more and more inclusive. Even religion despite the apparent resurgence of militant islam has less power and many churches scramble to re-define themselves to maintain popularity.I have not found anyone who disagrees with our goal but have met many who doubt it can be achieved by the means and methods we advocate. Our task is to instil a confidence and hope within our fellow worker that the status quo cn be overthrown without detrimental effects upon them, themselves, since events in history seems to indicate that revolution always has a neagative downside.One thing is very obvious, we need new members, so if you do agree with our principles, cheering us on from the sidelines is not sufficient. We need you as part of the team.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConstitutionAre we really talking about anything very different from the guidelines and rules of even this forum, or the adoption of our object and declaration of principles and the rule-book of this political party? Of course, the UK is famous for not having a written constitution but does it make the British State and its laws any less legitimate?Nor does having a constitution any guarantee that it is upheld.You may call it an anarchist view that was described but we consider democracy (or collective decision-making) is an integral and necessary part of socialism and equally as important an ingrefdient in the movement to achieve socialism. Means and ends cannot be separated. Once again, there are various alternative methods of applying democracy and there is no one size that fits all. But if push becomes to shove again, and you insist upon an example to follow, i think many of the United Nations declarations can be be seen as a general global model for socialist constitutions.As for Article 17 of the Declaration of Human Rights, doesn't the manner you hold property conflict with Article 23 and socialism resolves this contradiction as Robbo explainshttp://www.humanrights.com/what-are-human-rights/universal-declaration-of-human-rights/And of course within the UN there re competing "constitutions" such as the International Convenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CESCR.aspx
I think, CP, that you have visited the forum enough to understand that we have no sympathy with a type of government ruling over us and that we seek the end of the State.The nature of the administration and management of society is up for speculation and debate and even SPGB members differ on the priority and emphasis of the possible organisation bodies. The world is a big diverse place and many peoples have their own customs and traditions. It will also depend on at what level we are discussing. Locally maybe it will be the town-hall meetings as proposed by Bookchin, similar general assemblies, advocated by some anarchists. But there will be an evolution of the present manner of reflecting peoples wishes, i don't envisage local councils being discarded right away, although they may empower parish councils more to be more responsive. But a delegated form of decision -making will be necessary at a global level. However, we do have the influence of the internet, computer and phones, that can now be applied imaginatively. Check out whats called collaborative filtering…an answer to those who say we be spending an inordinate time at meetings . I think it will be horses for courses, or as other say, different strokes for different folks, maybe a mixture and balance of economic democracy and civic democracy. But if i am pushed i find nothing too wrong about Lincoln's dictum…"government of the people, for the people, by the people"..as a general statement of principle.
An article on the march for sciencehttp://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/02/13/why-id-rather-not-march
Ah, the proper thread for this posthttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/events-and-announcements/marx-movies
Whither the Netherlands, as well.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/geert-wilders-netherlands-dutch-election-freedom-pvv-far-right-donald-trump-a7576456.htmlPolls predict Geert Wilders will be the biggest winner after the Dutch elections on 15 March. He seems even nastier and more extreme than Le Pen, Farage and Trump, although he shares a coiffure that looks equally as riduculous as Trumps .
Quote:UK employers are increasingly struggling to fill jobs in shops, factories and hospitals according to a new report that suggests the shortfall may be down to fewer EU migrants seeking work in the UK in the wake of the Brexit vote.Company bosses are reporting labour and skills shortages throughout the food supply chain as well as in sectors such as manufacturing, healthcare and hospitality, according to the latest Labour Market Outlook from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and The Adecco Group, which polls more than 1,000 employers.One in four also had evidence that the EU nationals they employed were considering either leaving their organisation or the UK in 2017.Also
Quote:At the end of last year industry groups representing the major supermarkets and food manufacturers warned that EU workers provided “an essential reservoir of skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled labour” and without them food prices would rise.Quote:what do you agree…. / disagree with….Where we agree, I think the SPGB in various articles and pamphlets, have made the case that production for need involves also designing products sustainably by making them re-cyclable and repairable, that many items such as tools can be held in common and shared, just as hire companies do now, but operated more like free libraries, and public transport and car-pools as alternatives to the private car.Where we disagree is that self-sufficiency (autarky) and such as the local food movements are always ecologically sound practices. Research has shown that often the carbon-footprint is larger than transporting some produce from a distance but where they are grown under more appropriate natural conditions, requiring less input.What is so undesirable about a division of labour geographically? We have vast industrialised agricultural regions of the world in existence right now…the Prairies and the Steppes and the Pampas. Are these to be simply neglected.For sure, there will be great changes in farming and agriculture in socialism but these will be made in the context of feeding the world, and not just supplying the nearby towns and cities via farmers markets. Socialists aren't promoters of the idea that local capitalism is any better than global capitalism. You seem to assume the "small is beautiful and better" mom and pop capitalism can out-compete the corporations power. but under capitalism the local corner convenience store transforms into a Walmart (read the history of that transnational) or goes bust as we are witnessing with what is called "food deserts" in the High Street and Main Street. As for generating our own power, already numerous states in America impose taxes on such actions and just this week the CEO of Ireland's electricity board, warned that the bills of the poor who cannot afford solar panels will pay the subsidies to the wealthy who will invest in home-energy and add to the power-grid.All the being said…when socialism is established all manner of innovations will be possible. Africa cannot afford a vast power grid based on centralised energy from dams or whatever but as you suggest, every village and town can build its own alternative energy source for its own needs.
