ALB
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I wonder if workers in Estonia are prepared to put up with the pain inflicted on them by the economic sanctions their government has imposed on Russia. And if so, for how long?
Mutual Assured Depression working out.
We have now have some figures on the QR experiment. Up to 6 May, 31 in Lambeth had used it to access a page on our website. As some 4700 leaflets were distributed that it a rate about 1 per 150 leaflets.
As 150 leaflets can be pushed through letter boxes in one hour, we have to decide whether or not this is “cost effective” in terms of Party members’ time, bearing in mind that it could take about 30 hours member-time to distribute 4700 leaflets.
(Incidentally, it is pure coincidence that the number up to 6 May is the same as the number of votes obtained. This is because perhaps as much as 1500 of the leaflets were distributed outside the ward.)
The figure for Tunbridge Wells for the same period is 4 for 2000 leaflets. At the same rate as in Lambeth it would have been 13. But Lambeth is overwhelmingly Labour while Tunbridge Wells has just been captured by the Liberals from the Tories. We have noticed before that we tend to have less response in non-Labour areas than in Labour ones. In the Tunbridge Wells ward the Labour vote was 10 percent compared with 66 percent in Clapham East.
The next step will be to distribute 4000 to 5000 leaflets with a QR outside of an election time.
I think you underestimate the cynicism of those in charge of a state at war and the extent to which they are prepared to sacrifice their own troops to gain some advantage considered more important.
This video interview below is Russian propaganda but quite effective I would have thought:
https://www.rt.com/russia/555139-ukraine-mariupol-surrender-baranyuk/
Your basic thesis seems to be that everything that has a price will be a product of labour and that this demonstrates the validity of Marx’s labour theory of value.
The trouble is that Marx’s theory is a theory about the value of “commodities”, defined as reproducible objects of use produced for sale. His thesis is that (if there was not production for profit) the value of a commodity would be determined by the amount of labour required on average to produce it from start to finish. As, with increasing productivity, the amount of labour required to produce a particular commodity changes (decreases) so would its value, and this would apply to any produced and unsold before the change in value. So the value of a commodity is the amount of labour required on average to reproduce it.
This is why the labour theory of value only applies to useful things produced for sale that can be reproduced. It does not apply to a product of labour, even one produced for sale, that cannot be reproduced, e.g. a painting, a sculpture or other work of art. The price of such a one-off product of labour does not depend on the amount of labour required to produce it. As you say, it depends on the
market demand for the product, its market price. It has no “value” in the sense of the labour theory of value.Some things that are not the product of labour can also have a market price. Marx mentions honour, conscience, etc. Another is “uncultivated land” in the sense of land that has not been transformed by human labour (more likely to be found in the wilderness or on the frontier of human habitation than in the centre of a town). The price even of land that has been transformed by labour does not reflect just that. It is more like a work of art in that it cannot be reproduced. Its place is where it is and its price therefore depends on the market demand for it for the uses to which it can be put.
Nobody is claiming that “an artist of extraordinary skill possesses more talent than a movie maker or an inventor of a life-saving therapy such as the COVID-19 vaccine.” The only claim is that the price individuals can claim for their exceptional ability depends on the market demand for it. It is not, as you point out, a measure of their usefulness to society. It might in fact reflect the distorted priorities of society.
You can call anything that is bought and sold a “commodity” if you like, but the ironic result of this is that you end up with the bourgeois theory that the price of everything sold depends on the market demand for it since this is the one thing they all have in common.
In Clapham East the local branch spent £265 (from its own funds) on 4000 leaflets. The printer delivered nearly 4700. Nine branch members and sympathisers took part in distributing the leaflets, 6 through letter boxes and the others from street stalls.
This is revealing. The Ukrainian regime has clearly ordered their soldiers in the steel plant in Mariupol not to surrender as any other soldiers in the same hopeless situation would have done weeks ago. They are in effect ordering them to die for the “g[l]ory of Ukraine” as this would be good propaganda. Naturally, their families don’t agree and are protesting:
Note too what happened to the men at the protest.
Here is the result for the Clapham East ward of Lambeth council.
Leigh (Lab) 1127
Collins (Lab) 1073
Hattersley (Green) 411
Willians (LD) 224
Freeman (Con) 215
Hindson (Con) 193
Cranney (TUSC) 38
Lambert (Soc) 31As electors had 2 votes the way to calculate the percentage is to compare votes with the 1744 ballot papers returned. 31 is 1.8 percent of this.
Turnout was 23 percent.
RESULT FTOM TUNBRIDGE WELLS
Pantiles & St Mark’s Ward
Gavin Barras (Liberal Democrats) 1386 58% Elected
Dogan Delman (Conservatives) 715 30% Not elected
John Anthony Hurst (Green Party) 132 6% Not elected
Lorna Blackmore (Labour) 130 5% Not elected
Shannon Phineas Trahern Kennedy (The Socialist Party (GB)) 11 0.46% Not elected
Voting Summary
Seats 1
Total votes 2374
Electorate 5264
Number of ballot papers rejected 12Alan, did you see this from your favourite Pope?
https://news.yahoo.com/pope-francis-suggests-apos-barking-221515078.html
The same sort of question can be asked about Germany, France, Italy and Britain: How long will the voters there be prepared to put up with the consequences of sanctions and increased arms spending on their cost and standard of living? Will they force their governments to adopt a less war-mongering approach?
I don’t think that ordinary people are as much in favour of prolonging the war, by pumping in more arms, as the governments are.
Lavrov was talking bollocks and has apparenty been disowned by his boss:
None of the so-called BRICS countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — singled out as ripe for development to the next capitalist stage — are supporting the NATO war with Russia. Nor are any of the others imposing sanctions on Russia. I don’t suppose they will be happy with the US, the EU and Japan for plunging, through their sanctions, the world economy into a slump.
Yes, despite what both sides are saying, it really is a war between NATO and Russia.
Meanwhile, on the economic front, both sides are pursuing Mutual Assured Depression. It’s mad even from a capitalist point of view.
Marx also goes into the semantics of the word “value” in a footnote in the first few pages of Capital:
“‘The natural worth of anything consists in its fitness to supply the necessities, or serve the conveniencies of human life.’ (John Locke, “Some Considerations on the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, 1691,” in Works Edit. Lond., 1777, Vol. II., p. 28.) In English writers of the 17th century we frequently find ‘worth’ in the sense of value in use, and ‘value’ in the sense of exchange value. This is quite in accordance with the spirit of a language that likes to use a Teutonic word for the actual thing, and a Romance word for its reflexion.”
Since then of course “worth” has come to be used to mean “value for money” not how useful something is.
Abenezer, you’ve been reading the Daily Wail again !
The two stories you highlight don’t bear the interpretation you put on them.
The Russian equivalent of the Mail is not saying that there are occult forces at work but claiming that some Ukrainian soldiers think there are.
The same with the story about Sweden. The bus stop ads are not saying that Sweden is a Nazi state but that some famous Swedes were Nazi sympathisers.
No doubt the Russian media are portraying the war in Ukraine as a struggle between Good and Evil but they are not the only ones.
