ALB
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Apologies. I mistakenly assumed that you were an activist in Don’t Pay and went along with their view that the permanent solution is “a fair price for power”. I can now see that, in rejecting the idea of a permanent solution under capitalism, you are ahead of them.
I am not so sure, though, that, in arguing that socialism is a pipe dream and reformism is the only game in town, you are ahead of them on this.
The wording on their website suggests that they are against the profit system and so may well want to replace by some other system. It is true that the emphasis is on opposing “profiteering” rather than against profit-making but that might just be populist talk to gain the support of those just against the high cost of their gas and electricity.
They might have made a better case if they had said “don’t pay but don’t have any illusions about a ‘fair’ price; the only permanent solution is the end of the profit system and its replacement by a system of production directly for use based on the common ownership and democratic control of society’s productive resources.”
It’s how profits are divided amongst the capitalist class that’s not our problem.
Of course the rise in the cost of the gas and electricity is a problem for us as it reduces our standard of living.
You still haven’t said what your “permanent” solution to this problem is beyond a vague reference to a “fair price for power”.
Hope you are not suggesting that we should take sides in the capitalist dispute over who should pay for the subsidised price from 1 October.
The headline is a nice publicity for Centrica but it seems to be a policy of spreading the windfall profits over a number of years rather than reaping them all this year. As the article says:
“However, the Resolution Foundation has warned that the policy risked “delaying but locking in” windfall gains. There are concerns that the government negotiating team, led by the former head of the vaccines taskforce, Madelaine McTernan, is in a weak position as it will need to convince generators to forgo high short-term prices.“
But of course this is a problem for the capitalist class not us.
Thanks. I saw that too but it was written before the exact details were announced and the government was still toying with the idea of allowing the utility companies to increase bills for the next 20 years to enable them to repay loans to them. At least that it what I take “we are the ones who will pay for it for years to come” to be a reference to. Surely they can’t be referring to the extra interest on the National Debt that the Taxpayers Alliance is going on about, can they?
There are also signs of delusions of grandeur:
“The threat of 180,000 of us pledging to strike has already forced the government to act.”
Certainly, to try to allay working class discontent and avoid the threat of widespread social unrest will have been a factor in the government’s decision, but for Don’t Pay to claim the whole credit for this for their marginal campaign is a cheek.
There was a general understanding even amongst supporters of capitalism that something had to be done, as it had been in other European countries. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the distraction of the Tory leadership race, would no doubt have been done earlier. It was just a question of what the details were going to be.
As YMS pointed out on another thread, there is a dispute amongst the capitalist class as to how it was to be paid for — by the capitalist class as a whole through the National Debt or by the big gas producers by a tax on their profits.
In the event, the government decided to let the gas producers keep their windfall profits. Though they are making a pathetic attempt to get others who have benefitted (companies supplying electricity from other sources than burning gas) by politely asking them to forgo windfall profits:
But as the article says the generators are “likely to seek very attractive terms to compensate them for forgoing high prices now” and are in a strong bargaining position to get this.
He knows about us and our position as 3 years ago three of us had a discussion with him in a pub after a meeting at which he spoke.
Wednesday 6 November: Marx, Ecology and the Climate Emergency
There can’t be any objection to Wolff putting his case in simple, clear terms without going into the deeper theory behind it every time. After all, that is what we do when stating our case.
It’s the theory behind what he advocates that is mistaken. As pointed out in post #231446 above, in a book he co-authored in 2002 he states that exploitation takes place at enterprise level and concludes that, therefore, the way to end it is through worker ownership at enterprise level.
His mistake is in assuming that exploitation takes place at enterprise level, that workers are exploited only by their immediate employer. In one sense, of course, it does since that is where surplus value is extracted but, as Marx explains in the first part of volume 3 of Capital, due to the averaging of the rate of profit the whole capitalist class exploits the whole working class. The conclusion to be drawn from this is that exploitation can only be ended at society-wide level by making productive resources the common ownership of society as a whole.
Wolff’s theoretical mistake leads him to see a economy based on workers cooperatives producing for sale as the way-out. It isn’t and it wouldn’t be socialism either. It is something we need to expose and oppose as a non-solution.
That reminds me. Whatever happened to the pamphlet on workers coops that Alan drafted a couple of years ago?
This event can be seen as symbolic. It marks the end of an illusion and will be the last time the rest of the world takes an interest in the death of a British monarch.
From now on appearance and reality will coincide. The rest of the world will openly recognise Britain as the second-class power it has long been — since in fact a few years into the last monarch’s reign, in 1956, the US told Britain to call off its invasion of Egypt and occupation of the Suez Canal. Britain will be treated as just another Scandinavian monarchy where the change of monarch is of no particular significance. Who is the king of Denmark? Canute? Hamlet?
Imperialist posturing by British politicians, with their talk of “Global Britain” and the like, may take somewhat longer to die out.
We also dealt with this argument a few months ago:
As the graph in that Guardian article shows, the price cap will go up from £1971 in S22 to £2500 in Q4 22. Note also it is nearly double what it was last winter.
This, I suppose, is a measure of the pain the government considers acceptable to inflict on workers to support Ukraine in its war with Russia.
Will Don’t Pay still be advising consumers not to pay the increase? Or do they consider it an acceptable concession?
We will know the details later on this morning, but whatever they are, it’s so much for “free market” capitalism and for the “small state” (not that Truss stands for that anyway since she wants to increase spending on the state’s core — the armed forces).
We know that the capitalist class is split on this as that’s what the argument between Truss and Sunak was all about. It seems that most don’t think her plan to grow the economy through tax cuts, direct and indirect, on profits will work. Normally this would not have been left to be settled by a grouping of local councillors, small business people, and members of golf and Constitutional clubs. But it was and the result is what it is, ruling out the obvious solution (from the point of view of the capitalist class as a whole) of a windfall tax on those capitalist enterprises that had reaped windfall profits from the situation.
It is not just the gas producers who are reaping windfall profits but also companies producing electricity from non-gas sources (nuclear, renewables) since under present arrangements, for some reason, the price of electricity is tied to the price of gas.
Anyway, it’s their problem.
For the record, here is a classic Trotskyist criticism of Enough is Enough with their perennial demand for a “General Strike Now!” and ending :
“The critical issue facing the working class is the resolution of the crisis of revolutionary leadership.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/08/30/jsff-a30.html
Mind you, they are right that Enough is Enough is mobilising workers to vote Labour at the next general election.
This result has some relevance for campaigners for citizens assemblies instead of parliament such as Extinction Rebellion in Britain. Whatever the democratic way of making decisions the result will reflect what a majority think. Changing what people think is the problem, not changing the thermometer.
