ALB
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Put off by the title “Covid-19. More evidence that capitalism has become a danger to humanity”, I started to read this article thinking it was going to be more ICC millenarianist nonsense about capitalism bringing about the literal “decomposition” of society, but, actually, apart from the tendentious title and a few references to “decomposition”, it’s not all that bad and makes a few good points:
https://en.internationalism.org/content/16810/more-evidence-capitalism-has-become-danger-humanity
Interesting historical article here on how Turkey acquired a strategic region which would have been part of Syria, still a bone of contention between the two states and which could become significant if the war between them becomes “official”
The recent deaths among the Turkish armed forces that have invaded Syria has heightened tensions in the area between Turkey and Russia as each pursues its strategic interests in the East Mediterranean area. Russia to protect its naval base at Tartus in Syria and Turkey its search for offshore oil and territorial expansion to protect its southern border.
Meanwhile, as usual in wars, it is the innocent inhabitants of the area that suffer as they seek to escape the combat zone.
It’s chapter 3 of this book.
Mind you, Morris was a case of a Socialist putting the case for not contesting elections, at least up until the 1890s.
Thanks. That’s good, but I think a more appropriate place to have moved the posts to would have been
Non-serious discussion, joke sharing and anything else.Which is more “academic” and for academics: discussing unproductive labour or discussing whether reality is real? At least they discuss the first down the pub from time to time while Dr Johnson settled the other one 250 years ago by kicking a stone.
“Usually they give us a choice of bad and worse, so we chose bad to avoid worse. This time it was just the worst, so why bother?” Rouhollah, an unemployed engineering graduate from Teheran, said.
Shahram, a conscript on military service, said that all military personnel had been forced to vote, but he had spoilt his ballot.
–from today’s Times.
Not much different from here, then.
By accident we seem to be carrying out an interesting experiment on libcom in the thread on those 1911 articles from the Socialist Standard on anarchism, with you as Mr Nice and me as Mr Nasty, you as the good cop me as the bad cop, which has gone on for more than 60 posts. But the response from dyed-in-the wool anarchists has been the same: hostility. I get accused of being a dogmatic Marxist while you get accused on opportunism.
It makes me wonder if anarchists really are our “fellow travellers” as in the Conference resolution passed last year. Personally, I never thought they were but then we are not expecting to win over dyed-in-the wool anarchists but only those who consider themselves vaguely anarchist and anti-capitalist. There are also those following the debate as by-standers.
In any event, at the present stage of the revolutionary movement, I think it best that each group keeps its independence and puts its own views before other workers.
Well, well, another of the mighty falls but at least he recognises the need for some form of political action, so perhaps he is a better anarchist than them.
There is a passage in Kohn’s articles saying that in France anarchists also sometimes voted :
“They condemn political action but vote for politicians who promise Government subsidies for union premises !”
Unfortunately he doesn’t give a source, but I am sure it will have happened.
This is a good read :
https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1884/useful.htm
Great title too.
This classic criticism of classical anarchism, from 1911, has just been added to the Study Guides in the Education section of this site. Stirner, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Jean Grave, they are all dealt with.
Why Socialists Oppose Anarchism. Its Fallacies and Dangers Exposed
Actually, in Britain at least, it is a sociological fact that people do in effect make a distinction between “productive” and “unproductive” workers — and get it wrong.
The most common usage of the term “working class” is those who work with their hands, ie produce something material, while “pen pusher” is a common term of abuse of those who work in offices, ie just shuffle paper. And we have seen “workerist” attitudes and antipathy to theory and “academics” expressed here, In the US too, I think, a distinction is made between “blue collar” and “white collar” workers.
Maybe people aren’t interested in the issue as an aspect of economics but you can’t say that people are not interested in the type of job people do. In fact, people widely judge and judge themselves on the basis of it.
Of course we are all agreed here the Marxian distinction is not a value judgement on people for the job they do. The working class is made up of all those obliged by economic necessity to go out on to the labour market and find an employer to pay them a wage (or salary!), irrespective of what job they do. For those of us who accept the Marxian distinction, it is only a tool for analysing how capitalism works.
If you are a leftwing Keynesian then naturally you think that capitalism can be, has been, or is propped up by state spending. This in fact is the economic theory that reformists embrace as it provides justification for their case.
Marxian economics, on the other hand, shows that state spending has to be financed by taxation that ultimately falls on the surplus value producing sector of the economy. If such spending on public services is extended beyond what is required to ensure a trained and healthy workforce, it will undermine the competitivity of products produced within the state’s borders due to less surplus value being left to invest, and actually being invested, in new cost-cutting methods of production. There will eventually be a financial and/or economic crisis and state spending will have to be cut back to allow the economy (profitability) a chance to recover. It used to be called “retrenchment”. Now it’s called “austerity”.
In other words, there cannot be a permanent “public services” economy where the state diverts surplus value from capital accumulation to providing services for its subjects. Reformist governments everywhere have failed every time this has been attempted.
Another misunderstanding held by leftwing Keynesians is that capitalism has an inbuilt tendency to underconsumption and so to permanent stagnation (some even think it has a tendency to collapse because of this). If you believe this then, again, you will think that capitalism can be saved by state spending whether on arms or on public services. In fact, however, capitalism has no such tendency and so doesn’t need to be “saved” by the state stepping in to boost consumption. Capitalism always recovers from a slump because during it the conditions are eventually created (restored profitability) for capital accumulation to resume (until the next slump).
Robbo, the points you make had occurred to me but I didn’t mention them.
The advocates of workers cooperatives instead of socialism, who come in for regular criticism here, argue that workers in such cooperatives are not exploited as any surplus value over and above their wages legally belongs to them; this gives them the “right” like any property-owner to decide how to use it. Our argument is that this legal right comes up against economic reality which forces them, as the price for staying in the competitive struggle to sell their products (and so have a surplus income over their wages and other costs), to reinvest their profit in improving productivity by introducing more up-to-date machinery and methods of production. In other words, to make the same sort of decisions as a capitalist enterprise would. Hence the concept of “self-exploitation” that we have used. I doubt, though, that this can be applied to the self-employed in the same meaningful sense.
The other point you make is that productive (of surplus value) labour is not all that widespread in the countries Cope refers to (you mention 20% as the percentage of the workforce in the “formal sector” in India and that will include many who don’t produce surplus value). Since he claims to adhere to the same definition as Marx of “productive labour” this rather undermines his case as stated by you (not read him myself) as I would think it could be open to doubt that more surplus value is produced in the so-called “Global South” than in the developed capitalist countries. Though the distinction isn’t really between countries but between sectors of the world economy, the capitalistically advanced one of which is to be found in all countries if in varying degrees.
