ALB
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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.
I agree that there is a realistic prospect of the UN target of limiting the rise in average global temperature to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century not being achieved. But that’s not at all the same as saying a rise to 4 degrees by 2055 is realistic or even possible.
Just heard this mentioned on the radio. It might mean I’ve a better chance to being alive in 2055 than you (not that I really set much store by such superficial research).
You’ve met your match there, Alan, in that Hunziker bloke:
“What happens if 4°C hits by 2055?
The short answer has gotta be: Pandemonium reigns supreme!
According to the scientific forum 4 Degrees Hotter: “Less than a billion people will survive.” Expect, on average, more than a million human global warming deaths every week. As such, mass graveyards stacked with bodies would become a new normal.
Prominent climate scientists were quoted in the 4 Degrees Hotter article:
According to Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, one of Europe’s most eminent climate scientists, director of the Potsdam Institute: “At 4C Earth’s … carrying capacity estimates are below 1 billion people.”
Echoing that opinion, professor Kevin Anderson of the prestigious Tyndall Centre for Climate Change stated:
Only about 10% of the planet’s population would survive at 4C.”
The good news is that this is only a scenario, a thought experiment, and that it’s not going to happen. In fact, I would say, in view of the time lag between the emission of greenhouse gases and the consequent rise in average global temperature, that it would be physically impossible to get average global temperature to rise to 4 degrees above pre-industrial levels (a further 2.5% compared with today as it’s now already 1.5 degrees above) by 2055, even if this was adopted as a deliberate policy by capitalist states, It might happen eventually but not by 2055, not that it’s not going to be adopted as a deliberate policy aim anyway.
I don’t suppose either of us will be around in 2055 but some here might be. I’m prepared to bet whatever you like that in 2055 average global temperature will not be 4 degrees above pre-industrial levels. I’d ask those here still around then to make a note in their diary to look up what was said on this forum on 27 August 2019 and call in your bet from the beneficiaries of your will and donate it to the socialist movement.
Why do people write such scare stories? To sell books, I suppose.
Thanks, but what makes you (or the person you are quoting) describe Hoffer as a “”Marxist”? In fact what is the source and date of the quote?
According to the leftwing US magazine Jacobin he was “The Right’s Working-Class Philosopher”, an admirer of Nixon and Reagan:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/the-rights-working-class-philosopher/
Yes, I thought of Jimmy Hoffa too but it can’t have been him as I don’t think he was a Marxist was he, though I’m sure he’d arrange for a jungle to be burned down if you paid him enough.
I thought that the main aim was political democracy ie that all the members of the Legislative Council should be directly elected instead of just some. Which I suppose would be a legitimate demand in itself, wouldn’t it?
Actually, by coincidence, it is exactly 50 years ago this month that hippies were causing a scandal by squatting an empty building in central London. Here’s what the Socialist Standard said at the time:
Click the link to 144 Piccadilly for more and a picture of hippies. There’s even an ageing hippie on our executive committee,
