ALB
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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”.
I have started reading a pamphlet I bought last night with the attractive title of “Resisting Trumpist Reaction (and Left Accommodation)” and have come across this passage which shows just how far down the slippery slope they have slipped:
“The anti-neoliberal aesthetic, especially among young Sandernistas, is such that many would rather allow Trump to be elected than to dirty their hands voting for a centrist neoliberal like Clinton. As the 2018 midterm elections approach in the US, we are bound to encounter the same discussions we encountered when we wrote that the extraordinary dangers of Trump and Trumpism make it important for people to understand the difference between voting against Trump and supporting Clinton. “Supporting” constitutes a wider sphere of thinking and action than “voting” does. One can vote against Trumpism, even if that means voting for a centrist, without being in support of centrism.”
I suppose this could be true: you could vote for something even if you didn’t support it. However, this is not how anyone else will interpret your action, especially not the vote-hunting “centrist” (what is a “centrist” anyway?). It will be interpreted as support — and will in fact be support — however tight you might hold your nose when you vote.
Eugene Debs put the case against this rather well: “It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don’t want and get it.” In other words, if you vote for a centrist and the centrist wins that’s what you will get. Or, if you vote for a capitalist politician capitalism is what you will get even if you don’t want it.
Professor Stephen Coleman, aka Steve Coleman, used to reply that this was being offered a choice between the evil of two lessers — a good title for any piece on the subject.
Depends what you mean by “senior years”. They only stayed for one drink after as they had to go to work the next morning.
I went to that meeting of the “Marxist-Humanist Initiative” yesterday evening. From their point of view, it was a flop. I was the only visitor and duly made sure that the rest of the audience got a copy of our leaflet, all three of them, all MHI members. All the same, it was still interesting as I wanted to know why, and see how far, a group which has certain keys things in common with us (analysis of capitalism, need to end commodity-production) had gone off the rails. I am afraid they really have. They view Trump as a threat to political democracy in the US and urge people there to support the Democrat Party and others either to impeach him or to vote him out.
Their argument is this:
- Political democracy is important to the working class as it provides the best framework for the development of the working class and socialist movements.
- Trump is undermining political democracy and there is a very real danger that he might succeed.
- Therefore socialists should work with others to defend political democracy (the speaker called it “bourgeois democracy”) and defeat “Trumpism”.
The first premise is true but the second is not and even if it were true the conclusion wouldn’t follow.
It is true that Trump has been behaving in a high-handed fashion but stuffing the Supreme Court with your political supporters is part of the US political tradition (all Presidents do this if the opportunity arises). However, it is quite over the top to say that there is an immediate prospect of political democracy being overthrown in the USA.
Trump has to stand for re-election in 2020 and even if he wins cannot stand for a third term, i.e. he’s gone in any event by 2024. There was speculation at the meeting, apparently serious, that Trump might refuse to leave the White House if defeated in 2020 or even, like some African dictator, change the constitution to allow him to serve a third term ! Which planet are they living on?
This is to show an ignorance both of how the US political system works (it is extremely difficult to amend the constitution and impossible if even a quarter of the states are opposed) and of how capitalism works. If Trump is replaced by some Democrat or his Vice President (if he’s impeached he’ll be replaced by the Vice President, Mike Pence, who’s a raving Christian fundamentalist) capitalism will remain. The problems it causes will continue, even fuelling popular support for demagogues like Trump. So will political democracy in US (such as it is) … and US imperialism.
Our comrade Stephen Shenfield in the US has an article in the Poliquads online magazine issue on the opioid epidemic there:
https://www.poliquads.com/post/capitalist-responsibility-and-opioids
and also a rejoinder to an anarcho-capitalist take on the problem:
https://www.poliquads.com/post/anarcho-coalitionism-and-the-opioid-epidemic
That reminds me. I meant to look up how the Independent Climate Emergency candidates did in the Euroelections. They stood 7 candidates in London, who got 4939 (0.22%) between them and 2 in the South West region who totalled 2477 (0.15%). Looks as if they’ve got as far to go as we have. But at least neither of us are extinct.
To qualify as a “Lassallean” Wolff would have to advocate state aided producer coops. I don’t suppose he’d be opposed to this but does he actually advocate it? If he’s just advocating the formation of producer coops to (somehow)outcompete traditional capitalist firms then he’d be a “Proudhonist” ! Or maybe he’s just an “Owenite”. In any event, he’s not a Marxist. Trust you’ll be tearing him to pieces in a whole chapter not just a paragraph or few.
This is assuming that there will be a Labour majority in the House of Commons. I would have thought that it is much more likely that Labour will emerge as the party with the largest number of MPs but without a majority and so will have to govern with the support of the Liberals and/or the Scots Nats. In which case these could make their support conditional on some other Labour politician being prime minister. That would allow Corbyn to retire from front line politics gracefully and tend to his allotment. In any event, it would provide the Labour Party with an alibi for not carrying out their policies or for why they didn’t work.
