ALB
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Yes, if they hadn’t been in the party they wouldn’t have known anything about Von Mises (we were the only people from the 1980s on to take on the task of refuting his claim that you can’t rationally organise the production and distribution of wealth without money and markets). Now they seem to be commercialising the knowledge they acquired from us.
Von Mises was a supporter of the pre-war tinpot Austrian dictator Dolfuss who did this to the Social Democrats:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/1934/austrian_workers.htm
Shortly afterwards Dolfuss was overthrown by the Nazis and murdered and Austria joined with Germany. Von Mises wisely fled to Switzerland and began his new career as an ideologist of Liberalism.
Ironic then that our two ex-comrades should tolerate him when if need be he would have justified crushing them just as he did their equivalents in pre-war Austria. He preferred Italian/style fascism not just to Bolshevism it to social democracy too.
I think you are right, Robbo. I don’t think Dan has been infected with Von Misesism. He’s just a common or garden reformist who accepts and provides a theoretical justification for the the existing “mixed economy”. Maybe he wants to tweak it a bit and, I’d imagine, supports Labour or the LibDems or both. A sad fate for someone who used to be a good socialist.
But if you support the market economy why single out the two Austrians barons for special praise? Surely there are others who are better champions of this, especially as he supports a mixed private/state capitalist economy. Keynes for instance. Von Mises and Von Hayek weren’t even political liberals when they were still in their native country but supported authoritarian regimes and were implacable opponents of the Social Democrats and all their works. No wonder Thatcher liked Von Hayek and made him a Companion of Honour.
Yes sorry. That what automatic spelling prompts bring about! Tony Robinson is a bit of leftie, isn’t he?
Just checked. Sir Anthony Robinson was a long-standing Labourite even sitting in its National executive committee.
It looks as if the protests have been hijacked by the ‘anti-fascist’ mob so that they can indulge in street scuffles with Tony Robinson’s mob this weekend. Fat lot of good that will do.
I hope they are not going to use all these empty plinths to put on statues of William Wilberforce. Yes, he opposed chattel slavery but was all in favour of wage-slavery, to the extent of opposing the Factory Act, thus acquiring a merited notoriety in the working class movement.
This extract article from the Socialist Standard of April 1909 (not yet on our website) explains why wage-slavery apologists like Wilberforce wanted to end chattel slavery:
“It is well known that free labour is often far more profitable to employers than slave labour. Mr. Brassey in “Work and Wages” cites some interesting cases, and informs us on authority that prior to the emancipation of the slaves in Jamaica, 18 cwt. of sugar per acre was thought excellent, while under free labour it averaged 1 ton. He further attributes to the British Consul at Pernambuco a detailed statement of the comparative cost of work done by slave and free labour, which shows that sugar costing £4,251 to produce by slaves, would have cost only £1,080 by free labour. To further emphasize the point that free labourers, or slaves with the opportunity of earning their freedom, are more profitable than ordinary slaves, he says of some coffee-carriers in the Brazils, carrying bags of coffee weighing 2 to 3 cwt., that they worked with intense vigour in order to earn a sufficient sum to purchase their freedom, and generally succeeded in accumulating the amount in three or four years—an effort which too often broke their health. It was the knowledge of such facts as these that caused the abolition of chattel slavery, and not the sentimentalism of moralists and alleged Christians.”
So I am still on your new year card list after all. But I don’t know on what grounds you conclude that all meat-eaters “regard other species merely as ‘resources’ for human exploitation”. This is just another example of your exaggerations that weaken whatever case you might have.
There are plenty of members of the RSPCA, the RSPB, etc who eat meat as do the millions of dog, cat, budgie and hamster owners and who clearly don’t regard other species “merely” as “resources for human exploitation.”
I know I am not as holy as thou but I am a member of the Cats Protection League if that counts.
At one point we agreed that this subject had been argued to a standstill and you tried to change the subject. Unfortunately someone else didn’t take the hint and re-ignited the controversy.
In any event this is my last contribution to this thread.
So the mass debate continues. I am sure, Alan, you will continue to relay information about conditions in slaughterhouses but what’s the point? Nobody here is defending them or imagines that they could continue into socialism. And of course the Party campaigns only for socialism and so does not take part in campaigns to reform or stop them under capitalism.
But there are plenty of other products of daily use that are also produced under appalling conditions or with appalling effects. Some of the lithium that goes into mobile phones (child slave labour), palm oil products (destruction of orangutans’ habitat), etc.
Nobody here defends any of this but we still use the products. Are we to be told that we only do so because we rationalise away these conditions to soothe our consciences and that, unless we do, our morally-superior, condescending and judgemental mutual friend won’t deign to speak to us? (Not that that would be a too much of a loss since most of the time he seems to be operating from an animal rights boiler room)
Let’s use this forum to put over the case for socialism and not to try to convert existing socialists to something some seem to consider a higher priority.
According to Wikipedia, the slaves that were transported from Africa to the Americas were bought off other Africans:
”The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade were people from Central and West Africa, who had been sold by other West Africans, or by half European ‘merchant princes’ to Western European slave traders (with a small number being captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids), who brought them to the Americas.”
Those referred to here as “half Europeans” were of course also “half Africans” and today would be classified as Blacks — exposing that the absurdity “race” classifications, which are cultural and political not scientific.
That link does a good job in demolishing white suprematist claims about Irish slaves in America but historically there were “European” slaves in North Africa obtained in raids by slavers from there on the Christian parts of Europe:
https://www.theguardian.com/guardianweekly/story/0,12674,1171347,00.htm
I don’t think this can be described as Africans enslaving Europeans since the skin colour of people living on both sides of the Mediterranean was the same and still is today, the difference was religion.
Muslim slavers also enslaved black Africans which makes it particularly ironic that some Black Nationalists rejected christianity in favour of islam and adopted Islamic names.
Yes, the ironic thing is that after the US Civil War the newly enfranchised black voters supported the Republican Party.
Sock it to him, Matt, on behalf of the majority of Party members that he looks down on from his proclaimed position of moral superiority.
From that Dundas link, first “black” MP in 1832! You live and learn. Doesn’t sound like a good role model though but then I don’t suppose he regarded himself as “black”.
Ok. You’ve convinced me. He was a racist.
They say Nelson was a slave-holder. Have you got anything on that?
I see that the person who painted on the statue of Churchill that he was a racist is reported as saying :
”he didn’t fight the Nazis for any personal freedoms, he fought the Nazis sheerly to protect the Commonwealth against the invasion.”
There’s some truth in this, except that he means the Empire and “sheerly” is overstating it, but the war wasn’t about defending democracy and personal freedoms.
The Hitler government did offer a deal, which some politicians at the time found attractive, in which Britain would be spared attack and could keep its Empire in return for allowing Germany to dominate the Continent. Churchill was the head of the faction of the British ruling class that didn’t think this was a good deal for British capitalism (as it probably wouldn’t have been). So the war was fought from the British side not just to defend the Empire but also to stop Germany dominating Europe which would have been detrimental to British capitalism.
Anyway it was an imperialist war just like the First World War of which it was in effect Round Two.
I don’t know about Churchill being a racist but he was certainly antisemitic seeing the Bolsheviks as part of a Jewish conspiracy.
