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There will also have been some non-members who do this. Still insignificant of course. And we know that at least a couple of members voted Remain (because they said they were going to).
On the main issue I don’t see why there can’t and won’t be a deal. In proposing that Northern Ireland stay in the single market the UK has made a huge concession and there already exist border controls for VAT and excise duties. The proposed DUP veto will have to go of course. We’ll see.
Revealing piece here on Trotskyist (SWP) attempt to infiltrate XR. I expect other Trot groups will be doing the same. No wonder the XR leaders don’t like them, They are right.
http://londongreenleft.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-socialist-workers-party-is.html?m=1
Robbo, that’s the perfect amendment to that confusing resolution that was carried:
Delete “political fellow-travellers (e.g. anarchists, libertarian socialists etc.) and insert “those who explicitly call for and advocate a non-market, wageless classless and stateless alternative to capitalism”.
That will clarify things. “Fellow traveller” was never a good term to use in view of its association with state-capitalist Russia’s “useful idiots” as Lenin called them.
It would also separate the sheep (those who want socialism) from the goats (eg. XR).
Anyway, compound interest is not the Eighth Wonder of the World. It is perfectly rational within a money system. Say A lends B $100 for a year at 5% interest p.a.. Neither is going to enter into this deal unless both expect B to use the money to end up with more than $5 at the end of the year. At the end of the year B repays A the original $100 + $5 as agreed. If B has made more than $5 B keeps it. If B wants to continue and A doesn’t want to cash the $5, then A is in effect lending B for the next year not $100 but $105, also at 5% p.a., which means that at the end of the second year B has to repay $105 + $5.25. What’s so wonderful about that?
Of course, all this assumes that B is using the money to make more money so as to end up with more than 5% of the amount borrowed. This can only be done by using to produce something that can be sold for more than the amount borrowed. Which is what happens under capitalism, with profit as the extra amount. This is why what is important under capitalism is profit not interest. In fact interest always has to be less than profit. It can’t be more whatever the mathematical formula for compound interest says. Interest cannot go on being compounded unless more and more profit is being made somewhere from production.
In other words, compound interest cannot go on accumulating divorced from reality (production). Marx gives an amusing example of the conclusion drawn by someone, the Rev. Dr. Richard Price, who writing in 1774, thought it could:
“One penny, put out at our Saviour’s birth to 5 per cent compound interest, would, before this time, have increased to a greater sum, than would be contained in a hundred and fifty millions of earths, all solid gold. ” (quoted by Marx, Capital, volume 3, chapater 24).
Now that would be a Wonder of the World.
Whatever the scale of the problem, the answer is the same — the establishment of the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources as the only framework within which it can be rationally addressed and effective and lasting actions taken.
XR can “demand” as much as they like that “the government solve this problem”. The government won’t, not because it might not want to, but because it can’t, due to the constraints that operating within the framework of the competitive struggle for profits that is built-in to capitalism.
“XR are not saying exactly what a CA would decide because this is up to citizens to decide it. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a CA, don’t you think so?”
Entirely agree, Shrenk. But XR have pre-empted what a CA might decide by laying down 2025 as the date by which the government should achieve net zero carbon emissions, don’t you think?
Here is Will Hutton in today’s Observer admitting that what is at issue is which way to run capitalism:
”Once the referendum is won, which, given the polling numbers and gathering economic difficulties, is Remain’s to lose, the argument in the general election to follow will be how to reset British capitalism and society to address the scale of disaffection that fuelled the Leave vote.”
Good point about those Kliman calls the “anti-neoliberals” thinking they can win over people by offering them reforms to improve their economic position as this is all they are assumed to be able to comprehend ie Lenin’s explicit view that the working class are only capable of evolving a “trade union consciousness” but also implicitly held by many non-Leninist left wing reformists like the followers of Bernie Sanders (and in this country of Corbyn).
Nothing however on the MHI policy that socialists should vote for “centrist” Democratic Party candidates to defeat “Trumpism” as a sort of proto-fascism.
Incidentally, is this the sort of thing we could/should be doing (radio broadcasts, I mean, not voting for centrists)?
I don’t disagree with you that Britain withdrawing from the EU does represent turning the clock back in the sense that EU had evolved into a huge free movement zone and that Brexit means restricting the free movement of people to and from the Britain and virtually the rest of Europe. So it’s one of those reforms to capitalism which makes things worse.
But how to oppose it without taking sides in an internal capitalist dispute? There’s also our principle that a socialist party should campaign neither for or against a reform (but only for socialism). Vote Remain in referendum on a personal basis? A socialist couldn’t vote for the LibDems could they, especially as their tactics are likely to provoke a no-deal Brexit? Or any other capitalist party for that matter.
John, that thing from investmentmedia is just one of thousands on the internet attributing the quote to Einstein. Snopes and QI (which specialise in checking quotes) set out precisely to check this quote and found no evidence that Einstein was the first to say it or even said it. Their conclusion cannot be refuted by quoting one of the thousands of unsourced claims that it was Einstein. That would require a verifiable source (chapter and verse) of when and where Einstein said it. They searched for this but couldn’t find anything.
OK, here’s my reply to your charge of “false information misrepresenting the current scientific consensus on the topic”.
You suggest as “the current scientific consensus” what you describe as “the notorious ‘Hot Earth’ article published by Harvard scientists a year ago.” I have read through this and note that it is pretty tentative and full of “coulds”, “mays”, “ifs” and “potentially” and concludes with a call for further analysis:
“Our initial analysis here needs to be underpinned by more in-depth, quantitative Earth System analysis and modeling studies to address three critical questions. (i) Is humanity at risk for pushing the system across a planetary threshold and irreversibly down a Hothouse Earth pathway? …”
Their main argument seems to be:
“We argue that there is a significant risk that these internal dynamics, especially non-linearities in feedback processes, could become an important or perhaps, even dominatant factor in steering that the Earth system actually follows over coming centuries.”
i.e. an uncontrollable runaway global heating.
You interpreted to this in message #189444 of 10 August on the Climate Change thread as meaning:
“According to the latest scientific environmental predictions, there is a good chance of runaway global heating”.
This is going beyond what the paper says. A “significant risk ” is not the same as a “good chance”. A “good chance” suggests that it is more than 50% likely to happen. A “significant risk” will be less likely than this. Others take a different view, including the IPCC according to the wikipedia entry on “Greenhouse and icehouse Earth”:
The IPCC states that “a ‘runaway greenhouse effect’—analogous to [that of] Venus—appears to have virtually no chance of being induced by anthropogenic activities.”
In any event, you can’t legitimately read into the paper that it is saying that 6 out of the current 7 million humans on Earth will perish or that the Earth will become uninhabitable this century as a result (the paper’s perspective is centuries, not just the remaining 80 years of this one).
That certainly is not the “current scientific consensus”. So, what is? What can a layperson reasonably conclude? I would say take the position that most scientists take, which would be that of the IPCC.
The Harvard paper calls for “building more effective stewardship of the biosphere”. Yes, that’s what’s needed but human stewardship of the biosphere cannot be effective except on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources. It can never be effective under capitalism with its competitive struggle for profits and its division of the world into rival states which support this struggle.
It’s confusing that you’ve chosen to publish the same post in two different places here. There’s a discussion of Citizens Assemblies in the Socialist Standard Feedback section. Here I will only deal with what you claim as factual mistakes.
- 1. You claim that the article says:
“At this level, this (Citizens Assemblies) is pure reformism, calling on a capitalist government to implement some desirable measure within capitalism.” — this is wrong.
But it doesn’t. It is you who have inserted the words “Citizens Assemblies” which had not been mentioned at that point. What the article is saying is “pure reformism” is the demand mentioned in the preceeding paragraph that the aim of blocking some road was to “force the government to pay attention to the issue of climate change and take urgent and decisive action”. For confirmation, see:
2. You write: “Although this (net zero carbon emissions by 2025) does seem to offer hope amongst their doom and gloom, it doesn’t really as it’s not realisable (not even if socialism were to be established tomorrow).” – well, I suppose the author knows a better proposed date?”
Obviously, if socialism were to be established tomorrow, steps would immediately be taken to reduce carbon emissions with a view to achieving net zero emissions to as soon as possible. I was just suggesting that it would probably not be possible to achieve this by 2025, i.e in only 5 years (climate change is not the only problem facing humanity, there’s also world poverty which could be considered a greater, immediate priority). You want another date? The conventional political parties are already on to it. The government is promising 2050, the LibDems 2040, the Labour Party 2030 and the Trotskyists no doubt 2020. This is only for Britain (as is XR’s 2025 in fact) and so, even if achieved, would not make all that much difference. In fact, will probably be dropped if the rest of the world doesn’t follow suit; otherwise the competitivity of British goods on world markets would be undermined.
3. I will reply separately to your charge of “false information misrepresenting the current scientific consensus on the topic”, and on what is the reasonable position for a layperson to take in the face of conflicting scientific opinions.
Actually, it is not clear whether XR is demanding one Citizens Assembly on what to do about climate change or a many such assemblies. I understood it to be one, as their site says (under “The Truth/Our Demands”):
“Government must create and be led by the decisions of a Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice.”
I have not read anything in XR literature that they expect many such assemblies to be set up and for them to come to the conclusion that what is first required is the common ownership of the Earth’s resources. It would be nice to think that they would but, if they were going to, this would also reflect itself in other ways, in for instance not voting for political parties that wanted to retain capitalism but sending instead to parliament and local councils delegates mandated to pursue this, in fact even setting up their own citizens’ assemblies without waiting for the government to do so.
In other words, you are assuming that there is already a widespread desire for common ownership of the Earth’s resources, which XR’s leaders thinks the action of an active 3.5% can substitute themselves for.
I am afraid you are going to have to make another correction to your website, this time in the FAQ section where you say:
“Did physicist Albert Einstein say that charging interest on interest is the 8th wonder of the world? Yes.”
There is no evidence that Einstein ever said this. See:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/compound-interest/
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/31/compound-interest/
This myth is just another example of using some well-known person’s name to try to add some credibility to a trite or dubious statement.
Actually Karl Marx (and probably Adam Smith) argued that the Earth and its fruits had no economic value and so no price because no human labour had been mixed with them. That is why the air we breathe and the Sun’s rays are “ free goods” even under the buying and selling system ( exchange economy) that is capitalism.
The difference between Marx and Smith was that, while Smith thought that an exchange economy was natural, Marx saw it only as a passing stage in the evolution of human society to be followed by a society based on the common ownership of the Earth’s natural and industrial ( human fashioned) resources where wealth will be produced directly to satisfy people’s needs and made directly available for them to take and use without buying and selling. That really would be a different “mode of production “.
From your reply I gather you don’t think this would work because people would take too much?
