ALB
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Just got round to listening to the 25-minute podcast interview with her on her book and you’re right it is based on Graeber and also on so-called “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT). I see from her CV that he claims to be a “socialist”. That’s odd. But then Graeber claims to be an anarchist.
In fact, as a collection of all the myths about banking and money in one book, it may be worth reviewing. She should certainly be sent a copy of our pamphlet on banking.
While she’s is wrong about banks being able to, as she puts it in the interview, “rustle up money out of thin air”, the state can do this. She argues that it should to finance all sorts of useful public services. The trouble is that, while the state can issue more money-tokens, it has no control over their purchasing power. That is decided by the needs of the economy. If MMT were ever to be tried (just issuing money to finance government spending) the result would be massive inflation, i.e the tokens would come to be massively depreciated, disrupting the whole economy and defeating the original purpose of providing better public services.
A rather more recent article of his (already drawn to attention here but the link didn’t work):
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/love-island-urge-bare-public-163507018.html
To keep to the theme of the thread, Boorish Johnson is a bit of a one-man reality show. Good thing that Marxist analysis shows that it doesn’t matter who is PM as in the end it’s capitalism that’s in the driving seat.
I was just making the point that it wasn’t me but Steve who thought up “the evil of two lessers”. And also, in answer to questions about what do in the meantime, to describe this period as “the mean time”.
I see that that the article repeats that statement too, and also uses the term “centrist neoliberal” in relation to Joe Biden — which (see the thread on Trump) the “Marxist Humanist Initiative” say people should be prepared to vote for to keep Trump out.
Not as straightforward, then, as his rival for the support of leftish Democratic Party members, Elizabeth Warren, who, according to yesterday’s Times
“has said she is ‘capitalist to my bones,’ seeking to reform the system rather than tear it down.”
Can anyone cite chapter and verse for this damning admission?
Monk, priest, lay brother, that’s nothing. How about saint which, according to the main Christian sect, the Roman Catholic church, More now is? According to them, he must be in heaven able to speak to their god as he has persuaded it to intervene to work two or three miracles. All rubbish of course, but anyone know what they’re supposed to have been?
More likely to be chemical, too much of what the brain needs to function normally. Hearing voices is not all that rare. Some people can live with it as they are able to distinguish most of the time between voices that are “internal” and those that come from outside. Unfortunately many others can’t. More here from Mind. Drugs can work but they will have side effects.
Sadly towards the end of his life, when he was 83, Owen became a Spiritualist and was conned by a medium into believing he was in contact with King William IV. Revealing in that he reverted to his original view that his socialism could be introduced from on high by some ruler rather than by the self-activity of the workers. On checking this I see that the spiritualists claim him as one of their own and even that his spirit laid down some of their principles.
In any event no more than Marx was he a Buddhist. Neither of them looked at the world and shrugged “shit happens” as Buddhists are popularly assumed to do (the limit of my knowledge and interest in Buddhism).
There’s an article in today’s papers which says that some people see this as “a jazzed-up payments system rather than a genuine alternative to sterling or the dollar.” That seems a fair assessment.
But whatever it is what it will do as a side-effect is that more people will get used to not using physical money, a prospect which is already worrying some supporters of capitalism, as this news item from the i paper of 15 June shows:
“Cashless society’s risk to children
Large numbers of children in Britain could grow up struggling with “financial illiteracy” if the UK becomes a cashless society and does not educate children on the concept of paying for things, a maths professor has warned.
Many children are failing to grasp the concept of exchanging money for goods because they have never seen their parents or carers handing over coins or notes to a cashier, warned Dr Jennie Golding, at the UCL Institute of Education.”
Risk? Warned? Bring on a society where everybody is financially illiterate !
What about “free access” or Ken Smith’s summary of the socialist aim in two words: “Everything Free”, i.e. work as well as things but I agree that me having to explain this means that it’s not immediately obvious what we’re getting at, so not really a good slogan.
I asked because “centrist” is also Leninistspeak, used to refer to those they regard as wavering between reform and (what they mean by) revolution such as the old ILP in Britain and the POUM in Spain. I see in ordinary political usage it means “moderate” like the LibDems in Britain. I suppose Hillary Clinton might be described as such but the MHI pamphlet calls here a “centrist neoliberal”, which suggests they regard her as moderate “neoliberal”.
Since “Sandernistas” (new word to me) are above all against “neoliberalism” they are not inclined to vote for any “neoliberal”, Hence MHI’s criticism of them on this point. Actually, they go further than this and criticise the whole theory of “neoliberalism” arguing, like us, that the problem is capitalism and that the replacement of “neoliberalism” by what went before, i.e. by a sort of “neo-Keynesianism”, which is what Sanders (and Corbyn) want is not the way-out and won’t work anyway. Andrew Kliman clearly wrote this part of the pamphlet.
His influence is also seen in the section which argues that “white workers” didn’t vote for Trump because they were the economic victims of globalisation. The pamphlet repeats Kliman’s argument that, when you take into account non-wage fringe benefits, working class living standards in the US have not fallen since the 1970s (or, rather, didn’t fall until after the Clash of 2008). This is the prelude to their argument that those “white workers” who voted for Trump voted for him because they were “white nationalists”; they produce statistics to show that outside the South Trump did well in the same areas that Governor Wallace, who stood for the Republican nomination and for a couple of times as an independent for the presidency in the 1970s, on a segregationist platform.
The MHI’s conclusion from this analysis seems to be to write off Trump’s voters as in effect proto-fascists and concentrate on persuading Sandernistas and Greens (they really don’t like them for splitting the anti-Trump vote) to vote for “neoliberals” to outvote them. Meanwhile any talk of socialism (as the abolition of wage-labour and commodity production which they agree with) takes a back seat. I suppose that makes them “confusionists”.
