ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
That defence of Von Mises by the Adam Smith Institute does not deny that he supported Fascism in Italy and Austria. It merely seeks to explain this as him seeing fascism as a temporary measure to save free-market capitalism (called “civilisation”) from not only Bolshevism but also even reformist Social Democracy. Quite a few capitalists and other of their apologists took up this position at the time, only to find that once they had surrendered control of political power to some dictator and his cronies they were unable to get it back and re-introduce free-market capitalism. That took a world war.
Baron von Mises is often presented as a liberal but in fact he was an opponent of political democracy who favoured an authoritarian political regime, as exposed by Quinn Slobodian in his recent book Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism. In his review of it in the 19 August edition of the London Review of Books Alexander Zevin, basing himself on Slobodian, notes:
“In July 1927, the acquittal of three right-wing militia members for the murder of a war veteran and a child in a working-class district set off a general strike and demonstrations. Protesters put the Palace of Justice to the torch, and the police fired into the crowd, leaving 89 dead. ‘Friday’s putsch has cleansed the atmosphere like a thunderstorm,’ Mises wrote. ‘The street fight ended in complete victory for the police.’ He believed Mussolini’s victory had for the moment ‘saved European civilisation. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history.’ Talk of workers’ ‘right to the street’ or of ‘universal, equal and direct voting rights’ was often, he believed, cover for ‘terror and intimidation’. By contrast, he insisted to a group of German industrialists in 1931 that ‘the capitalistic market economy is a democracy, in which every penny constitutes a vote.’ Elected by means of what he called a ‘consumer plebiscite’, the rich depended on the ‘will of the people as consumers’, even when their wealth was inherited, since it could ‘be preserved only by those who keep on earning it anew by satisfying the wishes of consumers’. In 1934 Mises joined the Patriotic Front, launched the year before to rally support for the Catholic conservative and nationalist regime of Engelbert Dollfuss, which banned the Nazi and Communist Parties and forged an alliance with Italy. In February, Dollfuss moved against the socialists, putting down a fitful uprising of workers in Linz, shelling Karl Marx Hof in Vienna, expelling the Social Democrats from parliament and passing a new corporatist constitution”
So, Von Mises’s opposition to socialism was not just on theoretical grounds but involved active support for moves to put down and destroy the workers movement in his native country while he lived there.
We should return the compliment (perhaps instead of engaging in endless arguments with his followers about the so-called “economic calculation” argument against socialism). In any event, his support for Mussolini and for the Dollfuss dictatorship in Austria is something we can point out.
There is a certain logic in his opposition to political democracy if, like him and fellow Austrian Baron von Hayek, you think that people vote with money when as consumers they decide what to buy.
I don’t think quantitative easing can be described as hyper-inflation, at least not in the sense of leading to a huge rise in the general price level. This hasn’t happened because the extra money is made available not to the general public but only to “financial markets”. Here it does have an inflationary effect, raising the price of stocks and shares which has the effect of reducing their “yield” (the income they bring in as a percentage of their nominal value). The aim is to reduce the rate of interest more generally and to make more money available (by buying bonds off them) for banks to lend and so kick-start an economic revival that way.
The trouble is that bank lending is demand-led not supply-led. So, making it easier for banks to lend will have no effect if there is not a demand (from creditworthy borrowers) for loans, which in turn depends on profitable production prospects. In the absence of this, all QE does is increase the price of stocks and shares. It doesn’t lead to an economic revival. You can bring a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. Which seems to be what’s happened. Pouring more water into the drinking trough want make any difference if the horse doesn’t want to drink.
Good point which explains why so many looking for a way-out have turned to various money and banking reform schemes, which we know will make no difference (in fact some could make things worse). This diverts critics of the consequences of capitalist society from the real way out: a political and social revolution that will lead to the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life so that production can be directed towards directly satisfying people’s needs and distribution take place on the basis of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” — and in which money and banks will have become redundant.
So, as was to be expected, a deal has been done. Also, as was to be expected too, it doesn’t give the religious sectarians of the DUP a veto as was initially floated. Apart from the arrangements for Northern Ireland, the withdrawal agreement is exactly the same as May’s.
The Irish backstop (which would have kept the whole of the UK in a customs union with EU in the event of no trade deal being negotiated with them) would probably never have been invoked as some trade deal was bound to be agreed. It did, however, strengthen the EU’s hand in these negotiations. The EU has now agreed to give this up. In the (unlikely) event of no trade deal within 5 years it’s only Northern Ireland that risks remaining aligned (which, incidentally, is what the EU originally proposed; it was May who in a concession to the DUP insisted that whatever applied in NI should apply to the whole UK).
The “political declaration” is also different in that it holds out the prospect of the future trade deal being a free trade agreement rather than some closer trading arrangement with the EU. That’s not really what the dominant section of the British capitalist class want but the political declaration is just that — a non-binding declaration of intent, just a piece of paper. If the withdrawal agreement itself is accepted, nothing prevents a future government ignoring the political declaration and negotiating a different trade agreement retaining a closer alignment with the EU and easier access to its single market. That’s still to play for for the dominant section of the capitalist class even if the new deal is accepted.
The opposition parties, who are representing the interests of the capitalist class better these days than most Tories, still seem to think that they can get the UK to remain in the EU and are going to try and sink the new deal. With the help of the DUP they may well do so. We’ll see on Saturday.
If they succeed, then what? More of the same, the same old, boring and irrelevant debate about the trading arrangements of the British capitalist class, complicated by the political ambitions of the career politicians on both sides of the House of Commons. It’s a dismal prospect. The side show has ceased to be amusing and it’s time the actors were booed off the stage.
Looks like Facebook’s scheme for a new, cheap international payments system is running into trouble. According to an article in today’s Times by its Technology Business Editor:
“The Facebook founder’s plans for a new digital currency are in their death throes. Over recent days, his cryptocurrency project, Libra, has suffered an exodus of early supporters, including Paypal and Stripe, the payments groups, and Ebay, Mastercard and Visa.”
It is not just the unions that have criticised the anti-working-class action this morning by XR elements but even the Green Party has. Here’s a tweet from Green Party MEP Alexandra Phillips (one of our opponents in the recent Euroelections in the South East region):
“Extinction Rebellion protesters obtained it so incorrect this morning:
– sure to disruption
– however not on public transport
– or focusing on working class communities
Wish they might hold the deal with politicians & the highest of huge firms & banks.”Talk about an own goal — that could be the abiding memory of XR’s attempt to disrupt life in London for 2 weeks.
Interesting and revealing discussion here on ASLEF’s condemnation of XR’s action:
You beat me to it. I was just about to post this:
This was predictable in view of the stupid tactics adopted by XR’s leaders. They’ve probably put more people off than attracted support for their aim, coming across as arrogant, self-righteous and anti-democratic.
However, they can claim to have pressurised the government to move … an inch.
During the debate on the Puppet’s Speech in Parliament yesterday, Johnson made a pathetic attempt at humour while at the same time trying to smear the Labour leaders as Communists when, according to the Grauniad referring to Corbyn he said:
“Frankly I fear for his political health. We can see the Soviet-era expulsions that are taking place in his circle. As one by one, his lieutenants are purged as Lenin purged the associates of poor-old Trotsky. And there is Lenin, the veteran fabricator of GLC budgets, as the shadow chancellor tightens his icy-grip on the Labour party.”
John McDonnell was probably secretly flattered to be compared to Lenin. But Johnson has got his facts wrong. Lenin never purged Trotsky’s associates. They were great buddies as they planned the Bolshevik coup and began to lay the basis for state capitalism in Russia. It was Stalin who, after Lenin’s death in 1924, purged Trotsky’s associates when he and Trotsky fell out as to who was to be Lenin’s successor as dictator of state-capitalist Russia. Maybe Johnson knew this and that he wouldn’t get away with likening McDonnell to Stalin.
Three new added, including his speech at the Paris Commune Anniversary Meeting (which the Party used to hold in those days) in 1905 which happened to be at the time that the 1905 Russian Revolution. Fitzgerald comments that as soon as he heard that the students were involved he knew it was a “middle class” (bourgeois) revolution. The one from 1912 shows that we have consistently held the position from the start that socialism has to be a worldwide system.
Added to the Jack Fitzgerald Internet Archive:
The Commune in Paris, April 1905
Socialism must be international, February 1912
Answer to correspondents on industrial unionism, February 1914I am afraid, Rudy, that life has no meaning. Marxists are materialists and non-religious and leave providing a meaningless answer to such a metaphysical question to priests and idealist philosophers.
Observation reveals that all life-forms come into existence and act in a way so as to continue to exist until they die and cease to exist. This applies to humans too. Humans, however, have the advantage over all other life-forms of being self-conscious and of being able to change their conditions of life. So we can adopt the aim, both as individuals and as groups, of consciously pursuing surviving and living in the best possible conditions.
At the present stage of the evolution of human society and its material productive basis, this is a worldwide society based on the common ownership of the world’s resources so that they can be used to directly satisfy human needs and allow us to live peaceful, satisfying lives and to develop our talents. That was Marx’s aim and is the still the aim of present-day socialists.
This second podcast is even worse than the first. Kliman describes Trumpism as a “mortal threat” understood literally as a threat to the life of people like him (and us) who risk being “liquidated”. He describes Trump as a “proto-fascist” who represents a threat to “liberal democracy” and “the rule of law” in the US and talks of him declaring himself “President for life” and exiling his opponents in Congress. Naturally he argues in favour of impeaching Trump, and he calls for mass protests and general strikes to bring down his government. He doesn’t actually call here for workers to vote for his Democratic Party opponent, whoever he or she might be, in next year’s presidential elections (the easiest way to get rid of him, if that’s your priority). Maybe that’s for the third part.
I can’t understand what’s got into him as a person who has an understanding of how capitalism works; that it can’t be reformed to work in the interest of the working class; and that attempts to reform it lead to state capitalism and not socialism as a society which abolishes “value” (as something that rises only when there’s production for sale). He also understands, as he does point out here. that “the Left” wants power to introduce state capitalism, not the self-emancipation of the working class by conscious, democratic action.
Very odd.
To get back to the subject, of course, Nansir. There’s a whole pamphlet on this here:
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlet/socialism-practical-alternative/
Chapter 4 in particular explains how the production and distribution of wealth could be organised without money (which of course becomes redundant once the means of life are owned in common and democratically controlled).
If the rumours about what the UK government is now proposing are true, ie that Northern Ireland should be in a customs union with both the EU and the UK, the businessman Bijou met last month will be happy:
“I was talking to a small businessman from Northern Ireland last week and for him this was the dream solution, as part of the UK they would have access to all (if any) trade deals that the UK have as well as having free access to the UK, they would also in effect be part of the EU for trade purposes. It would make Northern Ireland a very attractive part of the world to set up manufacturing plants in.”
At least for an exporter. An importer might not be so happy with the added bureaucracy but when it comes down to it Northern Ireland is not much more significant for the UK economy than the Isle of Man (except it costs more).
