ALB
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Just got round to reading this. It’s really two articles. One on Moseley’s book. The other on capitalism in the 20th century. The part on Moseley is okay, saying more or less what we did when we reviewed it
But they imply it’s only valid for the so-called ascendant period of capitalism up to 1914 when capitalism for them supposedly entered into its period of “decadence”. Here they go off the rails by seeming to suggest, as Noa points out, that capitalism has been kept going, as it were “artificially”, by inflation of the money supply by both the state central bank and by private banks.
But while the state can create more money-tokens commercial banks cannot. They are, as Mark himself accepted, essentially financial intermediaries shuffling already existing money. Their lending cannot cause inflation.
Banks can only be regarded as creating new money if you extend the definition of money to include bank loans. But this only confuses things.
What is really surprising is that a group in the Martian tradition should reference a rightwing banking reform group like Positive Money which seeks to explain why booms end in purely monetary terms.
Perhaps what the CWO has in common with them is that it offers a purely monetary explanation for capitalism’s continuation beyond the sell-by date they have fixed for it.
‘Doing something effective about climate change’ and ‘making society aware of the problem’ are not the same thing.
I agree that XR including the ineffable Roger Hallam will have done much recently to make people in Britain more aware of the problem. So have Sir David Attenborough and Greta what’s-her-name, perhaps more so.
But none of them are proposing the only effective way to deal with the problem. With his alarmist catastrophism Hallam is muddying the waters while the other two are not offering much more than putting reformist pressure on capitalist governments to do more.
As capitalism is both the cause of the problem and an obstacle to its solution, nothing practical really lasting can be done till we’ve got common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’ s resources.
So working for that is the most effective thing that those concerned about climate change can do today.
Having said that, I should add that there are plenty of scientists today working on ways to mitigate the problem that won’t be able to be properly put into practice till we’ve replaced capitalism by socialism.
In reply to your assertion that Hallam’s views are the “current scientific consensus” , I refer you to what Paul Arbair says in the article that sparked off the exchange here:
“Over the next decades, up to six billion people could die from starvation or be slaughtered, meaning that there could be only a billion people left on the planet at the end of the century. All this is really what the science says, he insisted.
Whatever one may otherwise think of Extinction Rebellion, the claims made by Roger Hallam are not, as he contends, based on climate science. They are based on extrapolations and interpretations that do not form part, as such, of the ‘climate science consensus’. The models used by climate scientists and the reports and scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) do not make it possible to assert with any degree of certainty that mass starvation will start in the next decade or that six billion people will die from starvation or slaughter during this century.
Hence, Roger Hallam’s claims have triggered some pushback in the climate science community. These exaggerated claims, in fact, make Hallam an easy target for climate change deniers, who can portray him as either a nutcase who is just peddling fiction to foster “global warming hysteria”, and/or as an unscrupulous political activist who (mis)uses climate science to serve his political aim of overthrowing the current economic, social and political order. Either way, his claims about what “science” allegedly says do not necessarily serve the cause of climate action.”
I stand by what I said about Hallam. He is a Truther who believes that an elite is hiding from the people the Truth about climate change (you can almost hear the capital T when he utters the word). As Arbair puts it rather politely, whatever his intention (and I’m not doubting his sincerity, only his views) Hallam is not helping the cause of doing something effective about climate change..
Schekn, so you are not prepared to criticise someone or some group which says that, unless some unrealisable demand is met by 2025, Armageddon will begin in 2029 and 6 billion people will perish? Such views are making a laughing stock of those wanting to do something about climate change. Criticising this is not negativism. It’s trying to bring some rationality into the debate.
But I am not criticising the people XR’s leaders have “mobilised” to express their concern and frustration about global warming. They are right to be concerned. What I am criticising is the ideology of XR’s founders and leaders.
Nor am saying that it is impossible to do anything about it. What I said was impossible or, rather, unrealisable is to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2025, as some of XR’s leaders are well aware (though perhaps not a raving lunatic like Hallam). What are we supposed to say when some of them go around saying “The end of the world is nigh in 10 years” and that only 1 billion humans are going to survive, i.e. that 6 billion of the world’s current population are going to perish? Just let it pass without challenging it. I don’t think so. How, if we don’t, are we going to win over those “mobilised” by XR’s leaders to see what the rational way out is (not that I think most of them will need convincing that Armageddon is not going to start in 2029)? Which is what some of our comrades in Manchester, England, will be trying to do as we speak.
Personally I don’t see any difference between mystical and religious or spiritual. You can’t be any of them and rational and scientific, which you need to be to work out what is the effective and lasting way to deal with the threat of global overwarming.
where is the “mystical” part you mention?
This is the sort of stuff I mean:
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/topic/extinction-rebellion/page/7/#post-186274
There’s plenty more of that in the book. And the Afterword is written by a former Archbishop of Canterbury.
your criticism of “They are not even really convinced that their demand of net zero carbon emissions by 2025 is possible.” is laughable at best and possibly dangerous.
The author, Hazel Healy, was the one who suggested that no one knew if it was possible.
In that BBC interview the following exchange takes place:
Hallam has just said that the elite and media were telling lies. Stephen Sackur, the interviewer, then says:
“But aren’t you lying and misleading people too because you are suggesting that it is possible, for example in the United Kingdom where the group was founded, that we could in the UK move to zero carbon emissions by 2025 and that really isn’t possible?
Hallam: Of course it’s possible. Anything is possible. It’s a matter of whether there’s a political will.
Sackur: OK, let me rephrase the question. It’s not possible within the framework of our capitalist economy without causing unimaginable damage to people’s lives.
Hallam: Well, the damage is imaginable and proportionate and it’s necessary because the alternative is social collapse.”
Make of this what you will but after watching the whole of that interview I think Hallam is a raving lunatic. But I don’t imagine all of those XR’s ideologues are that bad. Hazel Healy, for one who at least had the honesty to wonder whether net zero carbo emissions could really be achieved within 5 or 6 years of now.
Authors in the book are suggesting “system change”, and they do not write that it has to be capitalism.
You are missing the point. I wasn’t suggesting that Hallam or XR were advocating capitalism, but merely that the collapse/overthrow of a government opposed to XR’s policies would not amount to ending to capitalism, to “system change”. My point was what comes next after the 1-3% minority has brought down the government? The sort of participatory democracy that the authors you mention want (let alone the common ownership of the Earth’s resources, which they are vague about but which I don’t suppose all of them would necessarily oppose) could not come into being with only 1-3% of the population in favour. You can’t force people to cooperate voluntarily or to voluntarily participate in decision-making. They’ve got to want to. It’s not something that could be imposed by a minority. It can only come about when a majority want and understand it, not by the civil disobedience by a small minority. You’ve got to have a majority on your side before you can achieve a lasting alternative to capitalism.
So merely overthrowing a government by minority action would still leave capitalism in existence since the majority desire and understanding needed to end capitalism would not exist. You’d be back to square one.
Good stuff (except for the use of the term “eco-communism” at the end). Only lacking is a criticism of XR’s mystical spiritual beliefs.
I’ve just finished reading the XR Handbook,This is Not a Drill published for them by Penguins, which expounds the ideology behind their actions.
Here’s an example of their alarmism, from Professor Jem Bendell (echoed by Roger Hallam in that interview):
“My guess is that, within ten years from now, a social collapse of some form will have occurred in the majority of countries round the world … A likely collapse in rain-fed agriculture means that governments need to prepare for how to ration some basic foodstuffs …”
I predict that in ten years time he’ll have egg on his face. If I’m wrong, I’ll let him have some of my ration tickets.
They are not even really convinced that their demand of net zero carbon emissions by 2025 is possible. Hazel Healey writes of it being just a scenario:
“What if we aimed to cut absolute carbon emissions to zero by 2025? No one knows if it’s possible — let alone at this rate — but it’s instructive to imagine how such a scenario would play out.”
If you are doubtful that your key demand is possible (actually, it’s unrealisable even if socialism were to be established tomorrow). why put it forward? It does seem to be, as the author of the article Alan has linked to suggests, to offer some hope, amidst the gloom about human and other animal extinction and the collapse of civilisation, that something can be done to avert this.
And here’s Roger Hallam on how little support XR needs to overthrow a government that refuses its demands?
“The arrogance of the authorities leads them to overreact, and the people — approximately 1-3 per cent of the population is ideal — will rise up and bring down the regime. it’s very quick: around one or two weeks on average. Bang: suddenly its over.”
Yes (that’s what happened to the state-capitalist regimes in Eastern Europe), but then what? There’d still be capitalism, the cause of the problem and an obstacle to its solution, and to get rid of that requires majority understanding and action not civil disobedience by a relatively small minority.
Of course most of the thousands that XR is currently “mobilising ” (it’s a term they use) won’t adhere to these views. They will just, rightly, be concerned about the threat of global overwarming and frustrated that nothing effective is being done about it. They certainly won’t agree with the way-out views expressed by Hallam in that BBC interview.
My non-science-based prediction is that XR will disappear after a few years, a bit like Occupy did. It will have raised consciousness, about climate change, but that’s all. Hopefully, some of those they “mobilised” will have come to see that the only framework within which the problem can be solved is a society based on the common ownership (no ownership) and democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources,
Revealing article. MMT is generally embraced by reformists who think they’ve found a theoretical justification for their programme of unlimited spending on reforms (they think MMT stands for Magical Money Tree). The economist in question, Stephanie Kelton. is a top economic adviser to Bernie Saunders.
However, the theory was thought up and is financed by a capitalist who doesn’t want capitalists to pay taxes (and has found a way of not paying any himself) — according to MMT, governments don’t need to raise taxes before they can spend, therefore they don’t need to tax capitalists. This is the bit I liked, about the economist Laffer who was associated with the theory’s launch:
“Most helpful was Art Laffer, the architect of supply-side economics, whose lifework, arguing for reducing taxes on the rich, recently earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Donald Trump. ”
The article mentions one view that MMT is essentially a variety of Keynesian. I think there’s a lot of truth in this, especially when MMT advocates explain, as Kelton does here, that its implementation wouldn’t lead to a Zimbabwe situation but only to a deliberately limited inflation.
Report from a comrade who went to see the rebellion in Manchester this weekend:
“I’m just back from the Extinction Rebellion demo in Manchester. Deansgate was closed to traffic (the part including Kendals/House of Fraser), and there were notices about it being closed over the weekend too. Plenty of police there, but no trouble that I could see. Probably a few hundred people, with a stage with speakers, drummers and various small gatherings. Just a couple of people selling leftie papers and handing out their stuff. I gave out nearly all the leaflets I took with me (Q&A, and ‘The problem isn’t the Tories or Labour’).
The XR people want government to declare a climate emergency and cut greenhouse gas emissions to zero, and that a citizens’ assembly be set up to oversee the changes. “More comrades might return to leaflet and discuss on Saturday and/or Sunday.Oh dear! That’s going to mean that the media are going to tell us again about “Marxist guerillas” in Colombia like they used to despite our protests.
That’s not the only thing that climate scientists don’t know for certain. They don’t know the exact relationship between an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the consequent rise in average global temperature. There is a causal link but nobody knows exactly what. Hence the differing views of different scientists depending on their assumption. The proof of the pudding is going to be in the eating, not that any of us here are going to be around in 2100 to eat it.
The political theatre over Brexit is getting more exciting or boring depending on your point of view. Besides exposing that political democracy is Britain isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, the government’s planned suspension of parliament is probably aimed at strengthening the government’s hand in its negotiations with the EU. I don’t know whether or not Boris wants a no-deal Brexit. Because of its consequences for the British capitalist economy from it suddenly becoming more difficult to access one of its major export markets, I wouldn’t have thought so. I imagine his strategy is to get some face-saving changes to the backstop and then come back to propose May’s deal with these.
The backstop, by making a customs union and common regulatory area the fall-back position in case of non-agreement on a wider UK-EU trade deal, strengthens the EU’s hand in these negotiations. So you might expect a UK government to try to water it down. The idea is being floated that instead of a blanket arrangement covering everything, the same result could be reached on a sector-by-sector basis:
“Under a potential sector-by-sector approach EU product safety checks, especially on food and farm goods, would apply across the whole of the island of Ireland but different sections of the economy would have the freedom to follow new, British rules, under a ‘baskets’ approach. Diplomatic sources understand that such a plan would be designed to avoid the need for the current backstop by keeping a common regulatory framework in certain key areas…. Under such a scheme Britain or Northern Ireland would align with EU rules on safety of farm products and for ‘common prohibited goods’, such as dangerous chemicals, smuggling or counterfeiting.'(Times, 28 August).
This might work especially as both Ireland/UK trade and Northern Ireland/UK trade, neither of which involves the Irish land border, are more important than Ireland/Northern Ireland trade. That might save Boris’s face as well as meet the EU’s concern about Northern Ireland being a backdoor into the EU single market for goods that didn’t meet its regulatory standards. We’ll see.
As we’ve said all along, it’s all to do with the trading arrangements of the capitalist class and so not a concern of socialists or the working class generally, despite the efforts of politicians supporting various different capitalist interests to get us to take sides. Having said this, a no-deal Brexit at Halloween would unnecessarily, if only temporarily, make things worse for many workers and so not something to be welcomed.
These figures don’t add up unless some people have a positive view of both capitalism and socialism. The situation in Canada would seem to be worse than in the US with at least 16% (58 + 58) having a positive view of both as opposed to 7% (42 + 65) in the US.
But ALB was wrong when he wrote in #189857 above that global warming had already risen by 1.5 degrees since pre-industrial times. Actually it has risen only by about 1 degree. So a rise to 4 degrees by 2055 would be a further increase of 3 degrees rather than 2. 5, making it even less realistic or realisable.
I think you should put Jim Mason right on this. Even in referring to Hoffer as a “trade unionist” Mason was casting aspersions on the working class movement. According to that article in Jacobin, Hoffer was only a trade unionist in the sense that he was a member of a trade union; which must apply to thousands of other writers without defining or being relevant to the views they express.
I agree that early Marxists were not vegetarians and saw socialism as a society geared to serving human needs and interests but that did not mean that they were in favour of the destruction of the environment or of cruelty to animals, as the 1909 article by Pannekoek in this month’s Socialist Standard mentioned earlier in this thread shows; as does this other article in the same issue.
I accept that Engels’s taking part in fox-hunting when he was in Manchester is difficult to defend but doesn’t have to be defended, even if opponents use it as a stick to attack Marxian socialism.
