[alanjjohnstone]

Another related optimistic video to watch is by Jeremy Rifkind https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=37&v=EW3pQ0IXAPo

[alanjjohnstone]

Oh, i am sure some will say Mason's strategy is through all those self-help schemes…after all, he kept telling us about his visit to Greece and witnessing all those enthused young folk doing lots of imaginative stuff…Graeber gave us roughly the same narrative with his visit to Rojava …I suppose when necessity is the mother of invention many innovative initiatives are created……1917 war and famine in Russia made the workers committees…(not the soviets, they were started by the parties unlike 1905) …1919 saw city-wide general strikes with all the local services placed under the administration of the people, a civil war in Spain offered an opening for the syndicalists to implement workers councils…Likewise a Russian invasion in Hungary …Argentina's economic melt-down and absentee owners created the space for workers to take over to survive…..The insurgent Zapatistas resisting central government buildin a civic society based on their existing indigenous structures.So is it only if capitalism is doomed and in a death-throes that will bring people to applying alternative strategies of living and defending their standards but which will also offer socialists like us an opportunity of arguing for a non-exchange economy. Or will chaos and barbarism get there first? …"the mutual ruination of the contending classes"…

[alanjjohnstone]

Another article to read once the busy weekend is over. http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/07/24/reports-capitalisms-death-have-been-greatly-exaggeratedAs the video referred to, "post-capitalism" is to be treated as a holding term for …the transitional society ….and that is what most Trotskyists strive for and expect to happen…. so just how far forward has Mason pushed the debate? Not far from where he originally started from, it seems.  And count how many times the word taxes is used in the positive manner by all the speakers to regulate this "not-capitalism but not socialism" system.Plus listen to the contradictory roles they all give the State…first it is the accomplice of the information monopolies then it is transformed into a nurturing State…And how vague is that panel upon how that change of the State's role takes place…Mason side-steps it even more than what Stuart thinks we in the SPGB do. Post-capitalism is not socialism and nor is it new in describing a world of potential abundance…Jeez…i'm sure these intellectuals all read Paul Lafargue so why the blinkers in claiming something fundamental has now changed.Will Mason's book be a tool for revolution…i doubt it. Capitalism does have a beginning, a middle and end as Mason suggests capitalism has ….but its end isn't the same for him as it is for us.I dare say all the media attention to Graeber and Piketty and Brand that has dissipated into the ether will be the fate of Mason's book…But before it does, i have no problem cherry-picking whatever is of value to our own case from his book and using it for socialism and against him.Hmmm???..i recall i was very iffy about Piketty, too, at the time, much to the annoyance of some. (The token prat from the Henry Jackson Society, his smarmy facial expressions simply wanted me to smash his face and my proletarian background reacted to that public school accent by wanting to rip out his tonsils…but i suppose as an intellectual i should respect him …no doubt he writes well …but does he mean well…!!!!)

[alanjjohnstone]

Plenty of coverage of Turkish bombing of ISIS. Less so that Turkish warplanes have bombed military positions of Turkey's Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Iraq.http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/07/turkey-extends-bombing-campaign-pkk-targets-iraq-isil-150724212302167.html

[alanjjohnstone]

A couple of quotes from it."Raising the minimum wage is a defense against capitalists' perpetual imperative to intensify exploitation of labor by lowering wages, not an offense against the structures by which capitalists are able to do this." Quite observant"Running on a platform with a non-reformist reform" – a phrase i encounter with anarchists and trotskyists …which Rolling Stone means a guaranteed job and the government being employer of last resort…(They don't mention it preferring Thomas Paine and MLK but no reference to FDR's New Deal and their federal work schemes) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_guaranteeHere's an article all for it which describes it being quite ambitious as a permanent barometer of capitalism's need for labourhttp://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2014/01/27/lets-compare-the-job-guarantee-to-the-alternatives-not-against-some-distant-utopian-vision/ 

[alanjjohnstone]

This also may be of interest https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2015/07/21/paul-mason-and-postcapitalism-utopian-or-scientific/The comments are also worthy of read but a bit confluted in parts for my limited knowledge. 

[alanjjohnstone]

Seattle is the high profle reference to the minimum wage struggle with Kshama Sawant but even there , the reality is not what it seems 

Quote:

This is a lesson in how frustrating advocating and achieving a reform can be. Seattles $15 is “a minimum wage plan so complicated reporters can’t understand it,”Workers will fall under one of four classes depending on the size of the business they work for, whether they get tips and whether the employer provides healthcare.The proposal gives big business—defined as those with more than 500 employees nationally—three years to raise wages to $15 an hour, and four years if they provide healthcare. “Small” businesses, which cover more than 99 percent of businesses in Seattle and 70 percent of full-time workers, have seven years—until 2021—to get to $15 an hour if they only offer wages. If the employer offers healthcare or the worker earns tips, then those dollar amounts will be added to wages so their “minimum compensation” is $15 an hour by 2019.What will happen to workers’ wages if a business adds or cuts healthcare that changes its schedule? Could a Burger King manager put out tip jars for employees and claim the tips count toward the minimum compensation? Given that fast-food corporations indemnify themselves from any legal responsibility for workers in their outlets, what if McDonald’s franchise owners claim they are independent small businesses and hence fall under the seven or even 11-year schedule? How will Seattle enforce these provisions? After the city criminalized wage theft in 2011, it failed to prosecute a single case for two years, despite City Council hearings last year where workers exposed “pervasive” wage theft in the fast-food industry.Why the plan is so complicated, labor leader, David Rolf, a committee co-chair and president of Service Employees International Union Healthcare 775NW tells In These Times, "Our goal was to negotiate something that had business and labor support and the highest chance of moving through the City Council." Asked why profitable megacorporations like McDonald's can't afford to pay workers $15 an hour immediately, Rolf says that, "They undoubtedly could," but "a purist position" would not have gotten a supermajority of committee support.50 percent of the mayor’s advisory committee represents Seattle businesses, including two Chamber of Commerce representatives. Through the Chamber, Starbucks got a seat at the table, but the workers of Starbucks didn’t get a seat at the table.Kshama Sawant, elected to the Seattle City Council last fall on a platform of a $15-per-hour minimum wage, says the proposal is a step forward but also that the committee “watered down the proposal as much as they could.”Having struggled to get a reform passed, the struggle is now to get it implemented, and then another struggle in the future to keep it from being rescinded

http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-problem-with-reforms.html

[alanjjohnstone]

Again i think our blogs have raised this issue and related topicshttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-british-slave-trade-you-probably.html From 2013http://socialist-courier.blogspot.com/2013/02/scotland-built-on-slavery.htmlAnd a very brief mention in 2010http://socialist-courier.blogspot.com/2010/12/slavery-paid.htmlAlso mentioned in other posts on the same blog is the chattel slavery that existed in Scotlandhttp://socialist-courier.blogspot.com/2012/10/when-miners-were-chattel-slaves-and-not.html

[alanjjohnstone]

Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HMs0kkUvq8Paul Mason on the End of Capitalism and a debate over his views 

[alanjjohnstone]

I read this and found it an interesting topic and not too far removed from the topichttps://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22730310-300-after-the-crash-can-biologists-fix-economics/No mention of class conflict…orthodox economics, oh , yes…but any other type…doesn't appear to exist…only the model they made up in their heads …

Quote:

For would-be revolutionaries, it’s not just a question of whether economists should do biology. It’s about viewing the world through a different lens. It’s about basing economic modelling on what biology tells us about human behaviour – and how we can channel that into creating the outcomes we desire. What is the right balance between competition and cooperation? How should we value welfare? Can we pull together to solve global problems? How do we create a more equitable form of capitalism? These are daunting questions – but all revolutions have to start somewhere.

my emphasisYup…lets not question capitalism existence…for sure,  lets view the world from different angles…lets relate it to actual human behaviour…but lets make sure we discuss only how we can make capitalism niceLBird might well be right…science is not reality. It creates a false world so it can answer its own a prior questions and answers… bit like you, Stuart   Now i'm becoming more anti-science as i am anti-intellectual because of this thread..

[alanjjohnstone]

How convenient, Stuart, that you entirely ignore a clear reference i made in a post to developments in the US of A. as part of my arguments. Not only do you pose your own question to answer but you now tell others what their questions are so that you can answer them (or casually dismiss them) Capitalism hasn't ended because the 9-5, 5-day contract has disappeared and replaced by zero-hour contracts…we'll text you when we want you…and fro tax purposes, consider yourself self-employed so we don't pay benefits…People only need to look at the labels on the clothes they wear and the goods around their house to understand that capitalism hasn't disappeared because the local factory got knocked down and made into a tech-park that is experimenting with 3-d and nano-technology. Capitalism merely moved location….and again this is not new…nor will it end…Asian manufacturers now look towards nations in Africa as their next new sweat-shops …once again i refer to our blogs.http://socialistbanner.blogspot.com/2015/07/search-for-ever-cheaper-labour-leads-to.htmlJust how many times do we need to be treated to intellectuals telling us the world has changed or is changing, when nothing of substance really changes, just outward appearances. Is what we now being lectured on much different from the Technocrats of the 30s.https://www.marxists.org/archive/novack/1934/12/utopia2.htmhttps://www.marxists.org/history/usa/unions/iww/1933/wiener.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/technocracy.htm Same old story in a new cover. 

[alanjjohnstone]

YMS, not wrong – but an objective observation of how the world is and will be under captialism.Those ghost cities in China were not built by 3-d or robots but by human labour, if in a science lab they have built a house. Sure – prototype 3-d – stuff has hit the headlines…i recall the gun making the news…but certainly the day 3-d weapons replace the AK-47 isn't here. We have that solar powered airplane flying around the world, does that change things? I don't think so. War atrocity won't end with drones and so-called selective targetting. Hunger won't end with 3-d food, (nor with every field growing GMO) It may well be the case that the problem for capitalism is that it has outlived the capability of technological advances and development and may well purposefully slow down or retard its potential. But, it reached that point over a hundred and odd years ago. It is not a new problem. Robotics is increasing that is for sure. But is it contributing to a trend to make things free as the singularityists expect? I don't think so. It simply doing what machinery has always done since the 19th C. Nothing qualitative is changing ….Uber is another name for sub-contractors and even then, plenty of legal cases contest that claim and declare them employees.  If Mason and others wish to study Elysium (and i dare say for all practical purposes it is already in existence for the 1% without the necessity of 3-d and nano tech) by all means but not at the expense of ignoring the reality of those who are still chained to wage-slavery and substituting a struggle-free evolution towards socialism to free us, just as not all of us will be in a caring sharing co-op where capitalists companies don't deem of sufficient importance or market necessary to compete with. When they do, just which of them go out of business?  

[alanjjohnstone]

Posing your own question and then answering it, doesn't get us anywhere, Stuart.Certain assumptions have to be supported. The militancy around the world is not in Silicon Valley. It is in the factories of Dhaka, Manila, and umpteen other Asian cities. The struggle is as old fashioned, as brutal and as bitter as it always was. New technology isn't proving to be liberatory tools but exploitative, oppressive and repressive. That's the world-view i see. Where's your answers for that?        And if we wish to bring experience back to the more familiar ground, i suggest you read the SOYMB blog on the American South and the original article it used as a source. http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2015/07/slavery-returns-to-american-south.htmlAgain, old fashioned capitalist exploitation, nothing fancy. Just the same old shit that there always been…And no-one will be surprised by my conclusion that it is getting worse…not better…Woe, Woe and Thrice Woe…So my anger is righteous at those who want to lead us all off on some Magical Mystery Tour, without destination and without a road-map and without a clue of where we have already been.    

[alanjjohnstone]

When the men came to Circe's [aka Mason] palace, they heard her singing as she weaved. She welcomed them to her table, but she mixed a potion into their food that erased their memories of home and turned them into pigs. They lingered for a full year. “She gave then all comfortable seats, and made them a posset, cheese and meal and pale honey mixt with Promneian wine; but she put dangerous drugs in the mess, to make them wholly forget their native land. When once they had swallowed it, she gave them a tap of her wand at once and herded them into pens; for they now had pig heads and grunts and bristles, pigs all over except that their minds were the same as before. There they were then, miserably shut up in the pigsty. Circe threw them a lot of beechnuts and acorns and cornel-beans to eat, such as the earth-bedded swine are used to.”

[alanjjohnstone]

Oh, the quote was relevant, the restatement of the principle of self-emancipation and self-liberation…being actors in the process of history, not spectators. 

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