ALB
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He will have been sent our review of his previous book as are all authors of books we review. It will be interesting to see if has taken on board any of our comments:
Book Reviews: ‘Utopia for Realists’, & ‘A Place of Refuge – An Experiment in Communal Living’
We’re ahead of you ! We had already asked for a review copy and two members had bought their own. One of them will review it for August or September Socialist Standard.
His previous book wasn’t that bad. His “utopia” is a civilisation based on UBI, not envisaged as some reform to the poor law system but as a way freeing people from drudgery and money-hunting. The sort of UBIer we can talk to. He should be a socialist.
The author of the book review on food production has received the following reply from the book’s author:
“Thank you very much for your kind message below left on my website and for your very generous and thoughtful review of Sitopia. I am delighted that you liked the book so much and feel that there is much in it with which socialists could agree – I do consider myself a socialist at heart and clearly the metaphor of society being a place in which everyone eats well – and by implication has the means of leading a good and meaningful life – is, I believe, at the heart of socialism. We are clearly agreed that capitalism has proved itself unable to deliver such an outcome – and I accept your point that one cannot lay the blame for totalitarian regimes such as those of modern China and Russia at the feet of Marx – although I found myself very taken with Proudhon’s argument that his optimism in vesting all power in the state had its own inbuilt pitfalls! In any case, I welcome your comments, and with the caveat that I am just an architect who has learned to think through food and by no means a scholar in political philosophy, I should be delighted to continue the dialogue!
With very best wishes, Carolyn Steel.”Additions here including where he explains the Marxian theory of value and the materialist conception of history (MCH) in easy-to-follow terms:
The wise captain of industry is Mr. Selfridge.
Added to the Gilbert McClatchie Internet Archive:
- Irish Notes, April 1917
- Irish Notes, May 1917
- A brief exposition of socialist theory: Class Struggle, July 1920
- A brief exposition of socialist theory: Political Action, October 1920
- A brief exposition of socialist theory: Value, December 1920
- The “Wisdom” of a “Captain of Industry”, September 1921
- A brief exposition of socialist theory: Value, November 1921
- How “Ability” directs, April 1922
- Co-operation—A hopeless experiment, July 1923
- The staging of another pantomime, July 1923
- Prosperity and “dividing-up”, February 1926
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.
