ALB
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While the politicians talk about manipulating interest rates and tax levels, it looks as if workers are taking their own action to try to mitigate the effects of the current rapid rise in the cost of living. Good on them.
Easier said that done. As long as the ruling class control political power no amount of minority civil disobedience will be able to drive them out. They have the upper hand because they control the coercive power that is the state.
On the other hand, if a majority want this the easiest way to do it is to use the ballot box, where available, to win political control, accompanied of course by mass organisation outside parliament ready to take over control of productive resources and, if need be, back up the result of the ballot.
I was not suggesting that workers will turn against the war on socialist grounds. In fact it is more likely to be on populist grounds — why should we suffer because the government wants to support a war in “some faraway land”? I was just suggesting that the war will become unpopular.
Nor was I suggesting that workers “will rise because of hardship”. But I don’t think they will accept lying down their standard of living being cut. In fact they are not. Ok, it is not manifesting itself in a massive growth of socialist understanding (though I would expect some growth however little) but only in increased trade union activity. But it is not nothing.
I don’t agree that, faced with the immediate prospect of an atomic war, workers would simply prepare to die. I doubt if you really think that either.
Meanwhile in Britain there are politicians promising “growth, growth, growth” as if governments could bring this about just by willing it. The two most prominent at the moment are Sir Keith Starmer QC and Liz Truss.
The UK government is also anticipating having to impose more “pain” on workers in pursuance of its policy of supporting the Ukrainian oligarchs against the Russian ones.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/30/millions-homes-warned-winter-blackouts/
It remains to be seen how much and how long workers will put up with this pain. The likely interim Prime Minister to take over in September, the ineffable Liz Truss, will delight in imposing this to help the Ukraine regime but it could be her undoing. Workers may come to recognise that they have no interest in the war there.
Much better than in Durham but I see that at one point he distinguished “the middle class” from the “working class”. He seems to be advocating a sort of non-revolutionary syndicalism.
The original of the abstract of his research will put you in an even worse mood when you consider how clearly he wrote when he used to write for the Socialist Standard.
How far did you get before you gave up, realising that “those within the academy” speak a different language, unintelligible to the rest of us !
I have heard it said that he himself didn’t think he could command the sea and that he only tried to in order to show his courtiers that he couldn’t. Sounds like someone who might have understood that capitalism cannot be reformed to work in the interest of the wage-working class.
Wasn’t he Danish rather than Anglo-Saxon?
It looks as if she’s going to win but my guess is that she will be PM for a year or so and after that the Leader of the Opposition.
On the issue itself I think Lynch is exaggerating a bit. It will depend on what the “minimum service” levels are. Even during the miners strike the NUM agreed to safety workers working. If it’s anything more than this, as her rhetoric suggests, then it will be unenforceable. What are they going to do, send requisitioned rail workers or teachers who refuse to work to jail?
By coincidence they tried this fifty years and it didn’t work.
“Long-Bailey, who as shadow business secretary was one of the leading figures in Jeremy Corbyn’s team, said her proposed contract would deliver a defined decent standard of living for all citizens, guaranteeing housing costs, food and fuel bills were affordable.
A minister for living standards at cabinet rank in the Treasury with the same standing as the chief secretary would ensure the contract was delivered and legally enforced, she said.”Is that the best Leftwing Labourites can come up with (plus amending company law ie the law which authorised the legal establishment of profit-seeking private enterprises, and so which are to continue under their proposal)?
A government law to maintain a given standard of living under capitalism. I think King Canute tried that sort of thing 1500 years ago or whatever. The current term for this I believe is “fairy tale economics”.
It looks as if the Left in the Labour Party is as bankrupt as the Right.
Why don’t they propose socialism as the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources with production directly for use and distribution according to needs. That would much simpler and more practical.
“Doesn’t Ukraine know what happens to spies?”
They know very this very well as the last time they urged their subjects to do this led to the Russian army executing those who followed that advice (shot with their hands behind their back) as in places like Bucha, now a tourist attraction for visiting Western politicians.
They may even be counting on this happening again as a way of combatting the “Ukraine fatigue” that is setting in in the West. The cynicism of those in charge of a state at war and fighting for its existence knows no bounds.
I thought I’d double-check that article on Zelensky in case it was Russian propaganda. It’s not. It was reported at the time and before Zelensky was canonised, in this article in the Guardian:
Zelensky does have a defence but I doubt if he would use it — that Ukraine is so corrupt (it has a reputation of being Europe’s Nigeria) that only a fool who had pots of money would leave it there. It wouldn’t be secure.
In fact Zelensky fatigue seems to be setting in with some Western media outlets beginning to look at his feet and finding evidence of clay there:
https://amp.dw.com/en/opinion-zelenskyy-is-the-problem-not-his-friends/a-62540903
Critisticuffs have produced an article on the so-called “wage-price spiral”:
https://critisticuffs.org/texts/wage-price-spiral
The first part is good but it is not clear where the second part is leading — to the view that credit-financed businesses cause a rise in general price level?
As they point out in the first part, businesses can’t simply fix prices at will. They have to take into account market demand. In fact, businesses always charge “what the market will bear” (or what they think it will). As explained by the business editor of the Times yesterday:
“Until businesses feel it in their sales volumes, they are going to continue to carry on pushing up prices as fast as they possibly can.”
However, at some point a business will “feel it” in its sales volume. At that point it will no longer be able to increase the price of what it sells without losing sales, and so won’t; in other words, the market won’t bear the price increase.
The Tory MPs have chosen the two names — a rich capitalist seeking something to do and a shamelessly opportunist career politician — to go to the habitués of Golf clubhouses and Constitutional Clubs to choose the next Prime Minister.
Last week Sunak accused Truss of promoting “socialism”. According to today’s Times, Truss has “has cast Mr. Sunak as a closet socialist”. So the farce continues.
At least the word “socialism” has returned to contemporary political discussion if in an unexpected form.
I don’t understand the logic of the bit in the first paragraph about the marginal cost of production and incentivising Russian oil exports.
Oil is one of those products which, depending on geological conditions, can be extracted at different costs of production in different places. To meet a given paying demand, the price will be what it costs to extract in places where the cost of production is highest. Or, the other way round, the higher the demand the more higher cost extraction sites will be brought into use (the margin will move). The highest costs sites will just make a normal profit. Sites where it is cheaper make super-profits in the form of rent. Which (rather than normal profit) is the main source of the wealth of the Gulf Sheiks and Russian energy corporations.
The aim seems to be to artificially reduce the price of Russian oil so as to reduce Russia’s rent income while still expecting Russia to supply the same amount but only making normal rate of profit (at least that’s what the first paragraph seems to mean). But of course, as the Russian minister stated, if the price is reduced then so will the supply. Why would Russia forgo super-profits (rent) and be satisfied with normal profit only? The West seems to want to have its cake and eat it.
Anyway, some experts are suggesting that the whole project is ridiculous and won’t work. The West has, in fact, got itself into a mess over this, resulting in higher oil prices and so bigger rents for Russia — and the Gulf sheiks, who Biden is grovelling before to get them to give up some of these to help the West punish Russia.
