ALB
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These articles deal with the antics of the Communist Party in the 1920s and with their attempt to pass off Lenin’s views about smashing the State as Marx’s.
Just added where Hardy deals with the antics of the CP in the 1920s and attempts to pass off Lenin’s view on the need to smash the State as Marx’s:
4 June, 2020: Added to the Edgar Hardcastle Internet Archive:
On illegal organisations, December 1921
The Collapse of Capitalism, February 1922
Socialism and Empire, October 1925
Socialism or Chinese Nationalism. A criticism from Australia, October 1927
The Irish elections. More Communist trickery, October 1927
Saklatvala on Socialism, May 1928
The ballot or the barricade?, May 1928
Ballot or barricade again, June 1928
Ballot or barricade? Mr Chapman’s last word, August 1928
Communist rioting, June 1929Good explanation of the two types of negative interest rates in Monday’s Evening Standard (I June), by HSBC’s Senior Economic Adviser, Stephen King. HSBC are of course against formal negative interest rates since, as he explains, this could threaten banks’ profitability but he explains clearly how banks work and where their income (part of which is profits) comes from. No nonsense about banks’ income coming from charging interest on loans conjured up out of thin air.
“Banks traditionally make money through the “spread” between the interest rate offered to depositors and the interest rate demanded from borrowers. With negative interest rates, banks would effectively have to take money, out of savers’ bank accounts, a deeply unpopular outcome. In the face of this banks might end up letting lending rates fall more than deposit rates, in effect cutting the “spread”. That, however, would lower bank profitability and reduce the volume of lending, the opposite of what policymakers would be hoping for. Borrowing costs would be lower, but a dwindling proportion of people would actually be able to get access to credit. The biggest objection to negative interest rates, however, is that they have the same redistributional consequences as periods of unexpectedly high inflation. In the 1970s, those with cash savings — pensioners, most obviously — ended up poorer as a consequence of inflation being continuously higher than interest rates. Now, the Bank of England is thinking of doing roughly the same thing, this time by making sure that interest rates are continuously lower than inflation (even when inflation itself is excessively low).”
It seems to be a case of Chauvin by name and Chauvin by nature:
I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that there are a disproportionately large number of blacks in the US army. Of course they are trained to obey orders and would do so but that wouldn’t change how they might feel in private.
Very interesting. Confirmation of our view that not “All Coppers Are Bastards” which is the view of anarchoid groups like Antifa but are workers with much the same views as other workers.
Incidentally, I once stayed in Camden for a few weeks when one of my brothers was living and working there. It is virtually a suburb of Philadelphia which is on the opposite side of the river that marks the border between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
A headline in today’s Times echoes the title of this thread: “Coronavirus has united left and right on value of universal basic income” in which their Economics Editor says:
”If nothing else, the crisis has proved that there is a role for a guaranteed minimum income. Recessions are indiscriminate and means-testing is intrusive and dehumanising, not to mention expensive (£8 billion of the Department for Work and Pensions’ budget is spent on administration).”
Of course a guaranteed minimum income is not the same as a universal basic income. That exists today (in Britain it’s called Income Support) but is not unconditional as it’s means-tested. The term is being used here to mean that an unconditional minimum income.
And the idea is that it would be paid through the tax system as a “negative income tax” ie anyone whose tax return showed an income below the minimum income level would receive a payment from the state to make it up to that level. Nobody else would notice anything dramatically different.
Not quite the same as everyone receiving a cheque or bank transfer from the state for a given amount. It would also be sort of checked up on as the tax authorise will presumably want to do at least some sample checking that the figures in anyone’s tax return were accurate.
But this, rather some radical reform that would supposedly undermine capitalism and aid the struggle against it, is the most that all the campaigning for UBI will end up achieving.
One of the reason the “right” want this system is that they prefer to give people the money to spend rather than provide free services for them. For instance, they would abolish free health care and give people enough money to buy private health care. A fact alluded to in the report from France as you why some on the “left” are opposed to UBI.
This is better :
Trump has said that he wants to add an organisation called Antifa (short for anti-fascism) to the list of terrorist organisations.
I am not sure he can do this by executive decision. I hope not because that would give the President dictatorial powers to ban any organisation he decide was terrorist.
For those who want to know more about Antifa and their policy and practice of street violence, last year the online magazine Poliquads, edited by a former member of the Socialist Party of Canada and to which Party members have been invited to contribute ( including this one), did a special issue on them. It includes a defence of their pretty indefensible position but people can judge for themselves. Here’s the link;
“I love this music too, and have just watched again the BBC’s 1978 Pennies From Heaven,and ordered more Al Bowlly CDs.“
I thought you would have preferred Doctor Doolittle and listening to Percy Edwards all day.
A typical populist. Not really a man of the people but someone selling himself to one section of the elite to mobilise people against another.
Now getting his comeuppance for getting Boris to suspend Parliament years ago it seems now.
The various studies mentioned here concentrate on the effect on employment/unemployment as those who run capitalism don’t want UBI to undermine the pressure on workers to find a job. They will be pleased with the finding that UBI (as a reform of the poor law system) would not undermine the wages system.
What would be more interesting from the workers’ point of view would be the effect on wages. In 2002 the ILO did a study of the Alaska payment (Permant Fund Divided) which does mention this (and published on the site of the BIEN, the international organisation of those proposing a basic income for all) :
“Even without a PFD induced increase in the labour supply, the PFD could be exerting downward pressure on the wage differential between Alaska and other, lower cost, regions of the United States. If employers could lower the Alaskan wage rate because of the dividend, then determining the impact of the dividend on the distribution of income would be more complicated than simply observing the addition to incomes directly attributable to the dividend. Of course the dividend could also be driving up the wage rate if, in the absence of in-migration, the labour force participation rate fell.”
[Note: The other studies seem to show that the labour supply has been unaffected, i.e., that the labour force participation rate didn’t fall.]
“However, another possible effect of the dividend that has been completely ignored might be a reduction in the Alaskan wage rate by the amount of the dividend. If the labour market worked in this way, Alaska workers would be sharing the benefits of the dividend with business owners, non-workers, and non-residents.”
“The average real wage in Alaska has fallen by about 10 per cent in the last decade, but it is unclear the extent to which that is due to other factors such as a change in the mix of jobs and a fall in the relative cost of living. But it does raise the possibility that the apparent higher incomes from the dividend are being partially offset by lower real wage rates.”
Further research is needed to see whether or not this possibility is a reality but the comment already recognised that the level of wages generally is linked to the cost of living, which UBI would reduce.
Someone from India has sent HO this account of what happened in Bombay during an outbreak of the plague there in 1897, which might give some idea of what might have happened if the government had done nothing and simply let the current pandemic rip — workers following their instincts and leaving the city so creating a labour shortage and employers increasing wages for those left in a bid to keep production going
“Bombay, India in 1897 was a port city of 800,000. Eighty thousand workers in cotton mills, majority being spinning mills for export of yarn to China.
Bubonic plague in Bombay. In December 96 alone 1,271 deaths. By end-January, half of the population fled the city. Ten thousand deaths due to the plague.The bosses doubled the wages, daily payments instead of monthly wages, and daily bonus to run the factories. But by March 1897, weaving was completely shut down and of the over two million spindles only 65,000 were working. The plague subsided in May and workers returned to the factories. Spurt of the plague during monsoons. And the plague continued but workers started taking it as one more fatal disease like T.B. In India deaths due to TB in 2018 were 4,40,000 and in the world 1.5 million.The plague in Bombay affected the labouring population in 1897. The bosses were not affected by the plague and went all out to run the factories.”
