ALB
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The links below shows that conspiracy theories are not just wrong or something to laugh at but can have dangerous consequences. Anti-5G conspiracists have obtained considerable publicity by saying that 5G has made the current Coronavirus epidemic worse. Fortunately this seems to have backfired with scientists coming forward not only to reject this but that 5G is harmful.
https://fullfact.org/online/5g-and-coronavirus-conspiracy-theories-came/
It is just unfortunate for humanity that this pandemic, something like which was predicted to happen at some time, should have occurred while we still have capitalism.
This means that stopping people going to work so they self isolate means depriving them of their source of income needed in a buying and selling society to acquire what they need to live ie their wages.
Under capitalism the government has to step in to ensure that their labour power is maintained for capitalist enterprises to exploit when capital accumulation resumes but it doesn’t cover everybody and in Britain involves a cut in living standards of those affected by at least 20 percent.
If this pandemic had occurred once we had established socialism we would still have to self isolate, but this would not deprive or reduce people’s access to what they needed to live as everybody would have continued access to what they needed by virtue of being members of society.
I have been spending part of my time on home detention scanning the Socialist Standards of the 1920s. Most writers called our aim Socialism. Others used Socialist Commonwealth. There was also Socialist Cooperative Commonwealth and one Socialist Republic. Communism with a small c was also used in some contexts.
But in 1920 the word Socialism had yet to be sullied by its association with the Russian state capitalist dictatorship and failed Labour governments.
This is good on the perverse effects of this pandemic having happened under capitalism where things are produced for profit and most people’s income depends on working for wages:
I’d say took us on the road that will eventually lead us to socialism.
But what do you mean by “manipulation and exploitation”? If you mean killing and eating then this would have started a lot longer before then; even before Homo sapiens evolved. In fact our species wouldn’t even have evolved biologically let alone socially if our preceding species of Homo hadn’t eaten animals.
Eating animals has nothing to do with class society, You could even saying that it is part of biological human nature as it is of other omnivores. Cruelty to animals is a different matter and could well be linked to class society. Certainly there will be no reason for it in the classless society that socialism will be.
“the manipulation and oppression of our own human race originate in the manipulation and exploitation of other animals.”
I would have thought it’s more the other way round, isn’t it?
Apparently when he was younger he was associated with some Trotskyists even if he might not have known that they were:
I am not arguing that the pandemic has nothing to do with capitalism and the factory farming method of production it has adopted as cheaper and more profitable. I am sure a good case for this can be made out.
My point is that this is something outside the system’s internal workings which result in the boom/slump cycle — the pursuit of profits leading to overproduction in a key sector and the consequent cutback in its production having a knock-on effect on the rest of the economy resulting in a generalised slump in production (and slump creating the conditions for an eventual resumption of production). Such slumps are caused by the internal workings of capitalism and so are “endogenous”.
A pandemic sparked off by factory farming (or whatever) is not part of the operation of the capitalist economy that leads to regularly occurring falls in production. A slump caused by this has a cause outside this and so will have been caused “exogenously”.
Saying this is not to let capitalism off the hook for causing this external factor but merely to classify a slump it causes as different from “normal” slumps resulting from the way the capitalist economic system works.
Even so, can you advise on whether or not flu is a virus that crossed to humans from our feathered friends?
I don’t think that factory farming would qualify as an “endogenous” cause as it is not something that is inherently part of the way the capitalist economic system works.
This is how Wikipedia defines the difference (not giving a link as that just seems to bugger things up here at the moment) :
“In an economic model an exogenous variable is one whose value is determined outside the model and is imposed on the model (…) In contrast, an endogenous variable is a variable whose value is determined by the model.”
The 19th century economist Jevons’s theory that capitalist crises were caused by sun spots (because of their effect on agricultural production) would be a good example of an “exogenous” theory of capitalist crises.
Not into econometrics myself. It didn’t exist in my day.
Here is something Paddy has just put on our internal discussion forum:
Here’s an indication of the ruling class’s worst nightmare, if this news report is reliable:
Footage shows him shouting at officers, telling them the family has no money, his mother begging them to go to their home so she could show them they have no food. It’s hard to watch. It’s what desperation looks like.
He gestures to his little girl who is eating a piece of bread and says: “Like my daughter, other children in a few days won’t be able to eat this bit of bread. Rest assured, you will regret this because we’re going to have a revolution.”
Images have also emerged of police descending on supermarkets in Palermo in Sicily after reports people have started stealing to feed themselves. And groups have been set up in the last few days on social media to organise raids of supermarkets.
“Discomfort and malaise are growing and we are recording worrying reports of protest and anger that is being exploited by criminals who want to destabilise the system,” said Leoluca Orlando.
Italy is ahead of other countries in this outbreak and unrest threatens to be the next chapter in this crisis.
From https://uk.news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-italy-becoming-impatient-lockdown-social-unrest-brewing-203100320.htmlI think someone who knows what they’re talking about should explain to us exactly what “asymptomatic” means. Until I looked it up I thought it meant you hadn’t got it, but I see it means you’ve had it but didn’t show the symptoms ie you didn’t know you’d had it. Is this right? And is it a good thing or a bad thing?
I don’t think that the ruling class and their political representatives have been “struck by altruism”. In fact I don’t think they are doing what they are doing for any ideological reason.
Their representatives happen to be in charge of society’s central organ (currently taking the form of a state) at a time when there’s a threat to the whole of society. They are essentially just taking pragmatic measures to try to mitigate the consequences. Objectively these are in the interests of all the members of society, including themselves. But I don’t think we can say that have made a conscious decision to do what they are doing this just or even primarily to protect themselves. They are just doing it because they have to do something. They are navigating by sight.
Maybe, in fact probably but it won’t be an example of a crisis caused by the internal workings of the capitalist economic system as most are and as explained by Marxian economics.
It’s a rare example of a crisis provoked by something outside the system (the pandemic was not caused by the operation of the capitalist economy). What the academic economists call an “exogenous” factor as opposed to the “endogenous” one. In this case it happens to be one that would adversely affect production in socialism too.
