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CWO’s reply here, re-affirming that they still think that another world war will ultimately be needed if capitalism continues and their explanation why this hasn’t happened yet:
https://libcom.org/blog/review-money-totality-fred-moseley-28082019#comment-615245
So if global warming does get us a global war will. Talk about doom and gloom.
Amid all the events going on in Westminster at the moment this news item is perhaps not getting the significance it might deserve: the DUP agreeing to a border down the Irish Sea for agriculture and food products.
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/brexit/dup-open-to-talks-on-allireland-food-zone-to-ward-off-backstop-38464852.html
“DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds says his party is open to discussions with Prime Minister Boris Johnson on a possible all-Ireland food standards zone as part of a solution to the Brexit backstop.
Mr Johnson told MPs yesterday that he wants talks on an all-Ireland approach to agriculture and food products.
He has suggested that agri-food could continue to be regulated on an all-island basis after Brexit, creating a regulatory barrier down the Irish Sea.”
Don’t know if the EU will agree to this, but it maybe part of the face-saving formula the Johnson regime is working on.
Definitely two (Cardiff Central and Folkestone & Hythe). We could add a third, in London, if a branch wanted. If so, the best would be Vauxhall (in which Head Office is situated) and where we have stood many times.
Somebody gave me their copy of the 15 August issue of the London Review of Books. There’s an article by Alexander Zevin ( of New Left Review) which makes a relevant point:
“The image of the EU held by those who still hope to reverse the Brexit vote is rarely darkened by its actions, from the devastation of Greece under Troika-imposed austerity, to the stagnation of Italy, whose modest fiscal stimulus runs foul of Europe’s draconian deficit and debt rules, to the way it treats those who cross its southern and eastern borders. Membership of such a club may look preferable to exclusion from it, but it’s unclear why there should be much enthusiasm about the choice.”
Or, of course, why people should get worked up in favour of the choice to leave it.
Here’s my answer to Jem Bendell, posted here a few days out:
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.
Of course we are. We’ve been nursing two constituencies: Folkestone & Hythe and Cardiff Central.
The Election Committee has not been in favour of contesting a London constituency in view of the really derisory vote last time but maybe North London branch will want to stand again against Corbyn as at the last two general elections. Personally I’d be against this since, like the Euroelections, this one will be fought on a single issue with us not being able to get a word in edgeways and our small vote being squeezed even more, making us look stupid. We will have a chance to stand in London, covering a much wider area, in the Greater London Assembly elections next May.
Missed this at the time (last week, 26 August) but here’s Corbyn denouncing no deal as a “bankers’ Brexit”:
The anti-Corbyn media, i.e. most of them, criticised this as absurd, pointing to the list of bankers and other financiers who had bankrolled the Remain campaign. I didn’t notice any mention of the fact that a different group of financiers bankrolled the Leave campaign. Clearly, there was a split amongst financiers, with the mainstream City establishment supporting Remain (for fear of being cut off from selling their “financial services” in the EU) with a smaller number of mavericks engaged in less respectable dealings supporting Leave (as they didn’t want EU regulation of their activities).
The second lot will indeed benefit from a No Deal Brexit, in fact from any Brexit. Which is why of course they bankrolled the Leave campaign.
Yes it is linked to their theory that another world war is needed to devalue capital, by literally destroying what is it embodied in, so that the rate of profit can be restored (the same amount of profit on a smaller amount of capital) capital accumulation can resume. Since, however, it is nearly 85 years since the end of the last world war, they need a theory to explain why there has not been another one and how capitalism has survived — hence their recourse to a monetary explanation.
Ok, will post something on libcom blog.
The article in this month’s Socialist Standard does not criticise her nor her condition (in fact it shares her own assessment of it that it means she gets straight to the point). It was a criticism of making her a celebrity and the dangers of this. Personally, I think she is alright, just drawing attention to the problem and saying something must be done about it. At least she hasn’t talked about 6 million people perishing starting in 2029 nor claimed to have been moved to act in response to a message from some god. Good luck to the schoolkids’ strikes.
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.
