ALB
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The saga continues but is becoming more esoteric:
Society chose Barbarism and it has its own peculiar political economy
Apparently, since 6 April 1933 we have been living in a barbaric fascist society. Oh yes?
“But perhaps he does have a point that by ignoring the leave vote, it does open the door to questioning the legitimacy of so-called UK democracy and inviting extremism.“
But that begs the question by assuming that there is only one interpretation of the leave vote and would be buying into to the extreme Brexshiteers interpretation that Brexit means leaving not just the EU’s political institutions but the customs union and single market too.
There will have been many leave voters who didn’t interpret their vote that way; in fact one of the arguments of the Leave campaign was that when the UK joined the EU (or EEC, European Economic Community as it was then called) was just a “common market” but that since then it had developed towards a political union which wasn’t part of the original deal. So, any deal that involved withdrawing from the EU’s political institutions and project, as for instance May’s, would not be a betrayal of the 2016 referendum result. Anyway, it is the fault of the extreme Brexshiteers that the UK didn’t leave the EU on 29 March.
What would be undemocratic would be for Parliament to revoke off its own bat Article 50, i.e the application to withdraw. In accordance with our own rulebook that a Party Poll result can only be revoked by another Party Poll and not by a Conference Resolution, it would be undemocratic to overturn the 2016 result unless decided by a further referendum.
So, no, the Farage/Galloway argument does not hold water. It could even be argued that in refusing a second referendum it’s them who are being anti-democratic (though I’m not sure Farage among those as he thinks he’d win a second time, which could well be the case).
But of course the substantive issue at stake — the trading arrangement of the UK capitalist class — is an irrelevant issue from a socialist and working-class point of view so we are talking democratic theory here.
I watched President Macron yesterday addressing “the nation” on this event and that’s what he did, saying that Leur Dame was a symbol of the history, continuity and unity of the French “nation”. Real nationalist stuff that French rulers and politicians (and a lot of the people) are good at (after all, Chauvin was French). So, different people see this event and the place differently. Some like him as a nationalist symbol. Others see it as a major achievement of European civilization and culture or an architectural wonder. We see it as a major god-box of the Roman Catholic Church, the main christian sect. I don’t suppose it would be pulled down in socialism or used as a manure store, though it would make a good place for large (I was going to say mass) indoor meetings. It would just be a historical monument with no more symbolic significance than other ancient monuments like the Pyramids or the buildings of the Aztecs and Incas.
The Renew Party has folded:
A fitting end to this thread as another useless reformist party bites the dust. Next down Chukky Ubama and his band of Independent Renegades.
The place has an interesting history:
“1793-4 As the French Revolution begins the cathedral is rededicated to the Cult of Reason, then the Cult of the Supreme Being. Many of its treasures either destroyed or plundered. Twenty-eight statutes of biblical kings in the west façade, mistaken for statutes of French kings, were beheaded.”
It was nationalised in 1905 when the State and Roman Catholic Church were separated and like all French catholic churches is state property.
Subheading to an editorial in today’s Times (of London, that is):
“Democrats seeking the presidency must do better than promise a workers’ paradise”
Is that what they’ve been doing.
You will be pleased to know that the relic of the crown of thorns god’s alleged son wore at his crucifixion was saved.
I wonder what god’s representative on Earth has done wrong to provoke his master to devastate the so-called “Notre Dame” (more accurately “Leur Dame” as its their not our lady) building in Paris? It’s a pity it wasn’t the one in Montmartre build to celebrate the bloody suppression of the Paris Commune.
The saga continues:
This time Jehu has changed tack — what workers are paid is not wages let alone the value of their labour-power, apparently because it’s no longer possible to calculate how many troy ounces of gold what they are paid is the equivalent of.
I’ve also come across a new word “to gaslight” which seems to be all the vogue in America as a criticism of Trump’s behaviour. It seems a bit of nasty accusation. Anybody know exactly what it means?
Here is Corbyn recycling VincentM’s favourite quote from him:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-47916058
I like the quip from the other guy about May being the first prime minister in history to fall on their sword and then miss it. I wonder how long it took him to think that one up.
You are right. When introducing the concept of labour-power and its value in chapter 6 of Volume I of Capital Marx explains that, unlike other commodities, the value of labour-power contains “a historical and moral element” that varies from country to country and depends “to a great extent on the level of civilization attained by a country”. However, “at any given period” this is fixed. What this suggests is that the value of labour-power can change over a longer period, either up or down. In other words, as you point out, the value of labour can change through this historical and moral element coming to be reduced.
Marx is also fairly explicit about what paying workers less than the value of their labour-power over a long period would mean:
The minimum limit of the value of labour-power is determined by the value of the commodities, without the daily supply of which the labourer cannot renew his vital energy, consequently by the value of those means of subsistence that are physically indispensable. If the price of labour-power fall to this minimum, it falls below its value, since under such circumstances it can be maintained and developed only in a crippled state. But the value of every commodity is determined by the labour-time requisite to turn it out so as to be of normal quality.
It also means that reducing wages below the value of labour power is not likely to increase profits in the long run, as is being suggested, but rather to reduce them as a sub-normal quality of labour-power won’t be able to produce as much surplus value as labour-power of normal quality would.
Revealing tweet yesterday on the EU Brexit summit:
Too bad that the European Union is being so tough on the United Kingdom and Brexit. The E.U. is likewise a brutal trading partner with the United States, which will change. Sometimes in life you have to let people breathe before it all comes back to bite you!
Maybe this should have been posted on the Trade War thread but maybe it also provides a clue as to where the dark money to finance the media campaign for No Deal might be coming from, e.g. capitalist interests who want to weaken the EU by detaching the UK from it and drawing it into the US orbit instead.
Not quite sure, though, what the cryptic comment in Trump’s last sense means.
