alanjjohnstone
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Quote:There is no way of measuring objectively how much more productive a doctor is than, say, a nurse – that is to say their respective contributions to the commoditiy in question assuming healthcare is a commodity in this instance
Probably naive of me but isn't that determined from socially necessary labour time…the training…experience …invested into the doctor…10 minutes of a consultant's time is equal to half an hour of a junior doctor's time which is valued at an hour of nurse's time etc etc I guess that too is a complex determination but i don't think it is subjective…a computer could work it out if fed in the requisite details.A doctor diagnoses and a nurse tends …i think i can be objective about who is the more productive in creating the commodity of healthy cured patients…but being a bit simplistic again, i am sure
Let's be fair, LBird, i frequently told you i couldn't follow your explanations, either, so no calling the kettle black
I'm not impressed by his association that some on the eco-liberal side are anti-vax.I happen to be anti-Pharma but it doesn't automatically mean i accept the irrationality of anti-vax. It is recognition that Big Pharma are motivated primarily by profits and like many corporations have used their political lobby power to impose their products or escape from responsibility of the product. And i can fully understand the criticisms of mono-culture industrial-sized farming for cash-crops impacting on certain regional eco-systems to its detriment. But it is pointless to go to the prairies and break it down into small holdings. I doubt there is enough agricultural expertise left in America to become small farmersAre the renewables and the accompanying energy efficiency programmes able to substitute for fossil fuels without the need for sustainable nuclear energy? After all electricity generation is less than a quarter of emissions and almost three-quarters of energy use can be saved by very rudimentary approaches in conservation and efficiency. Like GMO, i don't accept nuclear power as a silver bullet solution to problems that exist only within the capitalist system. As i think you say, in socialism, it will be very much horses for courses. Africa, for instance, does not require centralised power plants and connected electric grid to be built …it can be locally produced by a diversity of renewables.
Much better, twcWe have to keep our arguments as simple as possible for the numpties like me to comprehendThe overly-complicated stuff can be kept for the universities…oops…i hope LBird doesn't spot that. When i want a definition of a word, i'm not interested in its whole etymology, but i will accept some discussion on the context and synonyms so that the application is correct, but that's all. Point 2 …Will that be all about the transformation problem? i always keep hearing about being debated. I usually go into a glazed eye trance when it is being explained and stare out the window.
Many thanks for your explanation but sadly i found it just as difficult to follow as the original article. I'm just a simple wee soul with a limited education…I was hoping for something that i could understand but i am sure others will be able to appreciate your erudite and detailed answer.
Quote:“Our recognition of the class-based nature of society….Should we cease to use these terms or abandon our analysis of capitalism? I think not. But therein lies the dilemma”This takes us back to the difference between utopian and scientific socialists, doesn't it?.The utopian appeals to the moral and intellectual case of persuading individuals for the need for society change.TZM etcWhile the Marxist argues that capitalism has produced a class whose collective and objective interest is in abolishing its exploitation and so the working class will be the motor of change and in emancipating itself, liberates all others in the process.But how often do we concentrate upon that distinction in our writings? Don’t we have an editorial policy that discourages too much theoretical analysis in the Socialist Standard?How often do we qualify the class struggle aspect of it advancing workers towards socialism with a caveat that it is not an automatic nor deterministic process? That, in addition to just only material conditions driving history, there is also the ideological one, the battle of ideas of convincing fellow-workers.And don’t we make use of the literary tactics of the utopians in presenting our case, by emotive depictions of capitalist dark misery and sunny blue-sky prediction of the socialist world.Our main video (Kids Stuff) effectively avoided the terms but not the analysis. Some ex-members of the Party have re-written a critique of capitalism and promoted its alternative without recourse to the traditional Marxian/socialist language.Language evolves with usage. Words constantly change their meanings.Do we spend our energy rehabilitating certain terms from their abuse? Or do we move on as many others have by either dropping what is considered an outmoded and redundant style of language and simply re-invent socialism in a new garb.Either option involves explaining what we really mean when we describe how we see present-day society and what we want to replace it and how we wish to do it. We cannot avoid the laborious task of education. Does changing our presentation by dropping those aspects of our case that have become prejudicial make things easier. Or will it have no effect on our communication.
Quote:1. A moneyless society2. The corruption of democracy.3. The cause of war.I think the Iraq invasion did a tremendous amount to expose that economic reasons and the capture of resources was the main motivating forces involved. I found i was being lectured on the oil motive by people. But i think the subsequent Middle East proxy wars has somewhat fogged some of people's perceptions and religion has returned once more to the forefront as a major cause. Islam is now viewed as an aggressive instigator.(Israel and Palestine is a war with mixed interpretations, no longer one of secular "Marxist" national liberation fronts but Hamas and Hizbullah) Indeed the corruption of democracy has become a topic of interest for many. From various proposals to electoral reform to the Occupy critique of Wall St and buying political power from corporate financing.But it is a wide-ranging area of discontent from right to left. Have we forgotten the Tea Party? I often come across the left's industrial democracy/cooperatives alternative being espoused. So what particular hook is there for us to use. Money-free themed societies. Do we go down the road of the singularity proponents and concentrate on technology liberation and robotic abundance? Or stick to the abolition of the market and private property centred argument? So even deciding on the three main areas, we still have to narrow it down even further and develop a strategy to focus upon. Has TZM succeeded in this better than us? Maybe so. Perhaps New Zealand is an exception but they have displaced ourselves there as the main proponents for a money-free world of abundance. But they also displaced anarcho-communist influence too. And if so we need to understand what lessons we can learn from them.It seems it is not the content of the message which is 99% similar but the presentation of the message is where we suffer from.Or am i on the wrong track?
Sad that our companion party, the WSP(NZ), has almost disappeared from the political scene.The MFP certainly demonstrates that there is an audience in New Zealand for our message.Is our problem not one of the content but how we transmit our ideas? I recall at one conference Cde, Johnson of Swansea Br. repeatedly regaled us with references to the USP…Unique Selling Point…That we have to discover what is in our publicity and campaigns resonates with our audience and results in a receptive hearing. I think we are still struggling to identify the core elements of our propaganda that offers opportunities for us to build upon.
A revue show put on by Glasgow branch – comedy skits and songs …The Rid Rid Rotten Revue Show from the 1980sThe original links are now broken – this one still remains but may well disappear and the revue will be lost to posterity.
TWC, I take great umbrage at your audacity to determine what should and what should not be posted on this forum.I take exception, especially that you single out my own contributions to this forum which you clearly deem not of equivalent value as i suppose you believe your own possess. But that is your own personal prerogative. Some may well agree with you. Some might disagree.But your unnecessary and unwarranted sniping has done exactly what you did not wish to happen – create a distraction from this thread. Or did you expect my obeisance to your presumptuous post?
Beat you to linking to it on message #17, ALB, way back in April. The article is well over a year old now…
My apologies if i inadvertently offended you. That was not my intention. However, i will not accept that my fellow workers can be described as you wish them to be depicted. I have witnessed compassion and empathy as much as i have witnessed hatred and division. IPlayer is not available to non-UK residents but it is available herehttp://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/hypernormalisation-2016/But this expresses some of the estrangement folk feel in a shorter cliphttps://youtu.be/VASywEuqFd8
And so is the life-boat crew who go out into a stormy sea to rescue folk they don't know, and, do you know, there is a waiting list of volunteers ready to risk their lives. And what about the mountain rescue teams?Or your own mother who scrimped and saved to put a warm jacket around when you were a kid. Or all those charity workersYup, there are many manifestations of …us. There is a book by Colin Turnbull, the Mountain People…that really describes what happens when social bonds entirely breaks asunder. https://www.amazon.com/Mountain-People-Colin-M-Turnbull/dp/0671640984But you are not the only person who has this pessimism of the human character. I came across this Polish writer who had gone through the concentration campshttp://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2013/02/tadeusz-borowski.html
A good read.But i could do with it being expressed in simpler and easier shorter formatted articles.
