ALB
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Here is my question and his answer from his blog (see link given by YMS):
Are you saying that “abstract labour” and “value” will exist in a post-capitalist society but that they will no longer be misused by Capital?Thanks for your question. “Abstract labour” is capital’s concept of our causal powers. Like any successful concept it does refer to an objective property of the world, yet nonetheless it doesn’t fully capture its content (e.g., the scientific concept of heat does refer to something real and independent of us, yet nonetheless our concept of heat has evolved and subtly changed along with our theory and practice). So in a hypothetical post-capitalist society (presumably where capital no longer exists, and no longer controls us) then capital’s concept “abstract labour” will have ceased to exist. However, society, while it remains within the realm of necessity, will still need some mechanism to allocate labour-power, and therefore represent it and count it. So the political economy of a post-capitalist society will also need to reify the common causal powers of social labour; probably we’ll still need some kind of “average” and fungible concept of labour-power. Whether that would be a purely quantitative representation, or something more qualitative and complex, I do not know. My guess is that any new concept will bear a family resemblance to capital’s concept of “abstract labour” (I do not subscribe to Feyerabend’s incommensurability of paradigms). I hope this somewhat philosophical answer responds to your question.
Best wishes!
Ian.All religions have their particular way of intimidating people into abiding by their rules. Christianity and Mohamedenism threaten eternal damnation; those religions that believe in reincarnation threaten being reincarnated as some “lower” life form; the Jewish religion of the Old Testament threatened your descendants with being cursed down to the third or fourth generation.
They are all as bad as each other and none is worthy of respect. All of them are mistaken (there is no afterlife and there is no reincarnation), irrational and anti-human and have to be opposed.
Yes I too thought that that was an odd thing to say. Blaming conspiracy theories on the Age of Enlightenment and its mechanical view of all things doesn’t hold water.
The origin of the classic conspiracy theory that the world is controlled by a select group of humans who manipulated events was concocted by opponents of the Enlightenment to explain the overthrow in the French Revolution of the old order from which they had benefitted. It was no accident that the reactionary catholic defenders of the old order behind this theory saw this group as the Illuminati (a small and not very significant group of advanced thinkers that did exist for a while) as the word means the Enlightened in Latin. Far from them accepting a mechanical view of all things, they blamed this view for undermining the religious view that had justified the rule and privileges of the old landed ruling class, correctly in fact since it was part of the ideology of the rising bourgeoisie as in fact was the whole 18th century Enlightenment.
He also writes if we “stop eating species that are genetically similar to humans” this woud “reduce our vulnerability to zoonotic diseases.” (message #204345)
But I drew attention to that passage in his article myself ! My point was that it wasn’t just “the choice to domesticate animals as a source of food” that “has exposed us to additional zoonotic diseases” but domesticating animals for any purpose. If you want to introduce eating then you would have say that it was the “choice” to cultivate and store grain that exposed us to this too as it led to us coming into contact with rats, from whom humans contracted the deadliest of zoonotic diseases historically— smallpox and the plague.
But of course neither domesticating animals nor agriculture were “choices”. They developed as humans sought to survive better in the rest of nature just as all other animals seek to. In any event we couldn’t even consider doing away with the domestication of other animals for use as a source of power for transport and for ploughing fields to cultivate crops (not that anyone did, even Hinduism made cows sacred because cow dung was a useful source of fuel) until the full development of industrial capitalism which substituted other sources of power for these purposes.
Actually, zoonotic diseases are transmitted to humans by us being in contact with other, live animals, whatever the reason (e.g. transport, ploughing, carrying loads), rather than by eating them; in fact only rarely by eating them. After all, some of these diseases are transmitted via animals that we don’t normally eat such as mice and rats. This would suggest that one way to reduce our vulnerability to zoonotic diseases like the COVID-19 virus would be to keep our social distance from other animals as well as from ourselves.
Isn’t this similar to XR’s demand for a Citizens Assembly? In fact similar to what we have speculated could be tried in socialism with local councillors being chosen by lot.
It could work in socialism but I have doubts about it being an extension of democracy under capitalism with its vested interests. These are certain to try to pack juries by challenging jurors who might vote against them as they do in US courts now.
And do we really want to have to submit our proposal to dispossess the capitalist class by declaring all property rights and stocks and shares null and void to such a jury?
Best to stick to local councils and parliaments elected by universal suffrage as long as capitalism lasts.
Rebealing article in the latest (July/August) issue of the Skeptical Inquirer by Stuart Vyse on “Did Superstitution Cause The COVID-19 Outbreak?” His answer is, yes, it did contribute to it because Traditional Chinese Medicine and eating exotic animals as a luxury are supported by powerful economic and political interests.
“… it seems unlikely that the many references to superstition in the Chinese commercial market (e.g., red-colored products, lucky cats, the number eight, and feng shui) will ever disappear because they are sustained by the profit motive. Similarly, profit provides a strong incentive to promote Chinese live and wild animal markets using false claims of health benefits.”
“Peter Li, professor of East Asian Politics at the University of Houston-Downtown, points out that the Chinese government considers wildlife a resource, and wildlife breeding is a powerful and lucrative industry. ”
“What we can say, however, is that the unfounded beliefs of TCM and the practice of breeding wild animals—often mixed with wild-caught but sick and injured animals—creates dangerously unsanitary conditions in China’s wet markets. Where they exist, these markets are fertile incubators for new zoonotic diseases, epidemics, and pandemics, and every link in this pathogenic chain is supported by powerful economic and political forces.”He also writes if we “stop eating species that are genetically similar to humans” this woud “reduce our vulnerability to zoonotic diseases.”And of course expects to be accused of “cultural imperiaism”.Here’s the link (hope it works)A Socialist Party member in mid-Wales has been in touch with the local XR branch there and has had an email published in their latest Minutes (see item 7). Hope this link works for everybody.
And what about the working class? In Britain they were driven off the land by the Enclosure Acts and have produced, and been deprived of, an incalculable amount of surplus value since industrial capitalism began. The only way to “repair” this is for the working class to dispossess the capitalist class and make all this wealth that generations of workers have produced the common property of society so that they can be used for the common benefit of all.
In this sense the Socialist movement is a movement for reparations for wage-slavery.
Incidentally, Professor Craemer’s claim for an amount for “lost wages” is illogical. Slaves weren’t paid wages but they were provided with food and shelter to reproduce their ability to work. If they had been wage-slaves instead of chattel slaves their wages would have been spent on buying the food, housing, etc needed to recreate their ability to work. In fact, this was the position many former chattel slaves found themselves in after they were freed from chattel slavery. So reparations for “lost” wages would be double-counting — a weakness that opponents of reparations will no doubt point out.
Those in favour of the reformist demand for more money to be spent on social reforms to benefit Black people, presented as a demand for “reparations” for chattel slavery, will have to think up a better argument. For instance, reparations for the surplus product they were robbed of just like wage slaves were and still are, including those descended from chattel slaves — which of course can only be achieved by socialism.
They held a 9 hour conference on Zoom on Thursday (it doesn’t say if there were any breaks; hope there are for our Zoom conference on 18 July):
A two-thirds majority seems difficult ie having to overcome a blocking minority of one third plus one. It’s probably not in their electoral interests anyway as everywhere Green parties have taken part in running capitalism their voters have punished them at the next election, not so much for their minor achievements like more cycle lanes or less plastic bags as for the other things that the government they are part of has had to do.
The Green ministers concentrate on the minor reforms they want while leaving their openly pro-capitalist senior partners deal with the managing the economy side of things, inevitably on capitalist lines with the restraints on what can be done that this involves. No “Green deals” financed by taxing profits or anything like that.
But then if you are a career politician as the leaders of Green parties are or an ordinary party member who believes in “practical politics” then you find it hard to resist being “in power” and having a chance to have a go at implementing some of your reforms.
If they do decide to go into government it will be worth chronicling their failure to use against the Green Party here on the mainland.
The US armed forces were segregated in WW2 as well so there was the hypocritical situation of the US claiming to fight against the racism of the Nazis while practising it themselves. Of course they were really fighting for world domination against the attempt by Germany and Japan to get a place in the sun like Britain, France and them.
As the money accumulated as a result of the slave trade contributed in large measure to the “primitive (= original) accumulation of capital” needed before capitalism could take off, will those benefiting from capitalism apologise and agree to take down statues to capitalism?
Rhetorical question of course as what is needed is not apologies and taking down statues but taking down the system itself.
This is the bit I was referring to:
“The TPP also gives global corporations an international tribunal of private attorneys, outside any nation’s legal system, who can order compensation for any “unjust expropriation” of foreign assets. The tribunal can order compensation for any lost profits found to result from a nation’s regulations.”
Not sure that even the ECJ could order that. But the point is that the UK would be subject to the jurisdiction of an outside legal body and so not completely ”independent” as in the Brexiteers’ dreams.
Some of the criticisms seem to have been scaremongering on the part of reformists and in any event irrelevant from a worker’s point of view, later revived by Remainers as part of their campaign for the capitalist Britain to stay in the EU.
And of course in the end the US under Trump refused to ratify it ( Trump Sanders — Same Fight) and so the US is not a part of it. The papers are saying that the UK government is banking on Trump losing and Biden then ratifying the US joining. And so getting a trade deal with the US via the backdoor.
Like we said over the EU, the trading arrangements of the British capitalist class are for them to settle and no concern of the working class.
What did they expect? New Zealand only has a population of less than 5 million.
Now the government says it wants to join the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-approach-to-joining-the-cptpp-trade-agreement
I wonder what they think of its notorious provisions to allow companies to sue governments that had people jumping up and down? I can’t remember the exact terms but maybe there was something on our blog about them.
So Britain would be no more a sovereign lawmaker than when subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
