ALB
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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,
Actually, that has long been the choice facing the British capitalist class, as this letter in the Times on 14 August pointed out (anticipating Macron) :
“Sir, When I voted to join the Common Market in 1975 it seemed to me that the future of our country lay either with Europe or the US. Your leading article “Strategic Pivot” (Aug 13) makes it clear that nothing has changed. If we leave the EU we shall, inevitably, become a client state of the US, expected to follow the policy of the US government in which we have no voice. We may not always agree with the policy decisions taken by the EU, but we do at least have the opportunity to influence them. In a world controlled by competing power blocks, the idea of pursuing an independent path is a mirage.
Professor Richard Carter, Carnforth, Lancs.”I was at the talk which was the basis for that article by Ian Wright on Labour’s economic policies. He was searching for something in them that encourages worker coops and dug up this definition of socialism (in an obscure policy discussion document on “Alternative Models of Ownership”) :
“What we have presented, as an alternative, amounts to the first steps in challenging that dominant model of ownership and control. We have shown, in simple, practical terms, how a government committed to addressing those profound, structural problems could implement key policies that would rectify them. Its goal would be nothing other than the creation of an economy which is fairer, more democratic, and more sustainable; that would overturn the hierarchies of power in our economy, placing those who create the real wealth in charge; that would end decades of under-investment and wasted potential by tearing down the vested interests that hold this country back. The historic name for that society is socialism, and this is Labour’s goal.”
It didn’t, and probability won’t, find its way into Labour’s election manifesto. So it’s just a curiosity, an obscure attempt by some Labourites to define socialism.
I can confirm from discussions with him that he sees nothing wrong in principle with interest (which will survive into his petty commodity production by workers coops economy). It’s only profit that he objects to as a something-for-nothing income.
From today’s papers President Macron’s assessment of what a no-deal Brexit would mean for capitalist Britain:
“Can [the cost of a hard Brexit] be offset by the United States of America? No. And even if it were a strategic choice, it would be at the cost of a historic vassalisation of Britain. I don’t think this is what Boris Johnson wants. I don’t think it is what the British people want.
“The British are attached to being a great power, a member of the Security Council. The point can’t be to exit Europe and say ‘we’ll be stronger’ before, in the end, becoming the junior partner of the United States, which is acting more and more hegemonically.”But maybe it was the point of those who financed the Leave campaign?
Ian Wright knows the Party and is sort of sympathetic to us. He follows us on Twitter and may even have voted for us. However he doesn’t agree with our non-market conception of socialism.
This doesn’t come out in this article (as it didn’t need to) but he is a market socialist of sorts envisaging an economy of workers cooperatives still producing for the market but not for profit, selling their products at their labour-time value rather than at their “price of production” (cost price + average rate of profit). A sort of simple commodity economy where the producers are workers coops rather self-employed artisans.
It must be a moot point whether or not this really represents the abolition of the wages system.
