ALB
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Here’s what we are up against:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/8/pakistan-court-sentences-three-to-death-for-blasphemy
And we’re supposed to have sympathy for them when they get a mild taste of their own medicine?
It seems that the super-opportunists who now control the Labour Party want, not only to win back their voters who deserted to the Tories in December 2019, but also to steal some traditional Tory voters by appealing to the Tory Working Man.
In any event, it is clear that it’s back to Labour, Tory, Same Old Story, which, perhaps hopefully, will lead to people voting for neither bunch of career politicians who merely aspire to form a government within capitalism.
Note the change, by the journalist, from “could” in the headline to “is likely to” in the text. Plenty of things “could” happen without being at all “likely to”. Sloppy journalism compounded by the “could” referring to a “worst case warming scenario”, but how likely is that? (Such scenarios are normally based on the assumption that no action is taken to deal with the threat, which is unlikely to be the case and in fact is not.)
Actually, it was within quotation marks but anyway it’s clear now. Another possible source of some people’s confusion may be that the first part of the Robinhood definition reads very like how we might put it. After all, we could endorse this (except pehaps the word “business”):
Warning: this is from Robinhood site not me.
“The primary component of a socialist system is collective ownership. In a socialist system, nobody owns the land, natural resources, or business interests within the country. Instead, the entire population theoretically benefits from any wealth that is created.“
Maybe it’s just me but it’s not immediately clear who’s actually saying this.
I think it is just you as it obviously the Robinhood site that is saying this. Why I drew attention to their definition of socialism was that it got parts right but others wrong, perhaps suggesting that they were trying to be fair or had even come across a definition similar to ours.
The first part of the passage you quote — about nobody owning the means of production and everybody benefitting from what’s produced — is more or less ok. On the other hand, the bit you put in bold (and the reference to socialism as defined in the first part having existed in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) is not.
“Funny, isn’t it, how whenever the middle and lower classes begin to establish some sort of financial foothold and flex their power, the richest among us will move as quickly as possible to crush them?”
I hope nobody here is going to suggest that this is part of the struggle against corporate capitalism and that workers should show sympathy for the small investors in their class struggle against the corporates!
Incidentally, this brings out the shortcomings of the term “corporate capitalism” — that it implies there’s not so much wrong with non-corporate capitalism.
In one of his presidential campaigns Eugene Debs said that the difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party was that the Republicans stood for capitalism as it is while the Democrats stood for capitalism as it was. It seems that the leftwing of the Democratic Party is trying to revive this.
You must be thinking of this:
Nobody is going to stop you enjoying incense. I’m not sure that it being Palaeolithic is a good argument for it, though. In that case so would eating other animals and wearing animals skins (or just fig leaves). It is enough that you like it and that it doesn’t harm others or you.
Of course, to get socialism, a majority won’t have to have read the Theses on Feuerbach or Anti-Dühring. They just need to be secular in practice and not subscribe to the sentiment in the favourite christian hymn “I am weak but thou art strong” or prostrate themselves while chanting “god is greater” in Arabic. Instead they will be thinking and maybe singing “We are strong and thou art irrelevant (if thou existest)”
I think you are underestimating the extent to which capitalism is and will continue to secularise people. Of course there is likely to be a minority practising historical organised religions, some of whose members might even want socialism.
Pity you missed this talk and discussion on Discord on 18 December:
“Celebrations and Socialism
Speaker: Andy Thomas.
Why do humans celebrate things? Is it a natural impulse or manufactured by class societies? How are celebrations linked to social/economic systems (tribal, feudal, capitalist)? How do religious ceremonies support class-divided social relations? What might we choose to celebrate in a socialist society, for example, if we are involved in decisions about food and the natural environment will we celebrate ‘ancient’ change of seasons?”I am sure it will be available on our website under Audio-Visual in due course.
ps.If you send me a photo of your christmas tree I’ll send you one of mine.
You’re lucky, comrade, as the nearest church to Head Ofice is one of those. Next time are up for a meeting you can go there while the rest of us go on to the Manor Arms pub a few hundred yards down the same street. Smoking is not allowed there, so it will be better for our health:
And there’s a transvestite bar just round the corrner.
I suppose there could be a few British capitalists who will agree with the logic of leaving a huge market on their doorstep to concentrate on the furthest possible away market:
If I was a British capitalist I would regard the Brexit government currently in office as bonkers.
Just realised that that letter in the Financial Times of 29 January is behind a paywall for some. So here are some extracts from what Daniel Gross, of the Centre for European Poliy Studies in Brussels, wrote (emphases added):
“A major supplier, AstraZeneca, has just announced delays in its delivery schedule while the pandemic continues unabated. How did it come to this?
The EU negotiators made two mistakes. First, they concluded their contracts much later than other large buyers, for example three months after the UK (as reported by AstraZeneca). AstraZeneca could thus confidently start to prepare for increased supplies to the UK much before doing the same for the EU. Moreover, the EU haggled for a low price, creating an incentive for companies to serve first those who ordered first (and paid a higher price).
(…).
But with a constant price per dose the companies have no incentive to ramp up production overnight given that they would not be compensated for the additional costs.
Bygones are bygones. The EU is now sitting on contracts which specify a low price for a large quantity; but only “best effort” promises on timely delivery. However, something could still be done.
The EU should offer to pay AstraZeneca or BioNTech/Pfizer an additional premium for any doses delivered early.”
Yes, that’s the sort of language they’d understand. How stupid of the EU negotiators not to have realised that you only get what you pay for. I would have thought that they would have had more experience of how capitalism works to have known that.
More on the pricing policies of the drug companies which reveals that the issue is not “vaccine nationalism” but the drug companies dubious business practice.
Interesting snippets from the British Medical Journal:
“A string of revelations about vaccine prices has focused attention on a practice considered normal in the drug industry but often frowned on elsewhere: charging different prices to different customers for the same product.”
“AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson have committed to not making a profit from the pandemic, while Moderna and Pfizer did not. AstraZeneca reserved the right, however, to declare the pandemic phase over and take profits from later vaccine sales.”
This fom the Financial Times suggests that the way out for EU is to offer to pay more.
