ALB
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A study by the University of British Columbia compared the economic and environmental impact of holding the global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as agreed in Paris in 2015, versus the current 3.5 degrees warming scenario.
I’m not sure it is entirely accurate to talk of “the current 3.5 degrees warming scenario”. This is the IPCC’s worst case scenario, based on the assumption that nothing is done to counter global warming. But something, however inadequate, is being done, so “current” is not the right word. “Currently” the world would seem to be on course for something less than 3.5 degrees but well above 1.5 degrees. NB these are figures for the increase above pre-industrial levels, but as there’s already been an increase of about 1 degree since then, we’re talking about a further potential increase before the end of the century of 0.5 degree and 2.5 degrees.
Maybe his Brexit Party will copy our policy and ask its supporters to write “BREKSHIT” across the ballot paper. Come to think of it that might not be a bad idea. A lot of people might do this anyway.
A comrade has drawn attention to this blistering attack on MMT in the Jacobin magazine. Some extracts:
“its main selling point is that governments need not tax or borrow in order to spend — they can just create money out of thin air. A few computer keystrokes and everyone gets health insurance, student debt disappears, and we can save the climate too, without all that messy class conflict. That’s a bit of a caricature, but as we’ll see, not an outlandish one.”
“You might be wondering where income earned on the job fits into all of this, but the world of production doesn’t play a large role in the theory.”
“MMTers show a strange lack of interest in the specificity of capitalism — how production and distribution are organized, how demand for credit arises in the course of commerce, how people earn their living and under what conditions.”
“It would be sad to see the socialist left, which looks stronger than it has in decades, fall for this snake oil. It’s a phantasm, a late-imperial fever dream, not a serious economic policy.”
The trouble is that the author’s alternative is the failed reformist policy of taxing the rich to provide better services for the poor. But at least he’s not a monetary crank like them.
Farage’s view is now being widely reported in the media, as here. This is grist to our mill in that it adds credibility to the political position of not voting where what you want is not on offer. When Farage says he wouldn’t vote in a May deal v Remain referendum “because it wouldn’t offer me Brexit“, he is applying the same logic we do with regard to socialism..
Looks as if Nigel Farage has anticipated our position:
Nigel Farage has threatened to boycott a second referendum, saying he would “rather go on holiday” than vote if the choice was between Theresa May’s deal and remaining in the EU.
Oh dear, what have we done wrong.
Today’s papers are reporting on a study, based on data for the period 2005 to 2015, which shows that “CO2 emissions are falling in 18 countries“.
One of the reasons for this was the slump in production during the Great Recession that followed the Crash of 2008:
the decrease in energy use was partly explained by lower economic growth reducing the demand for energy following the global financial crisis of 2008-2009.
Since capitalism is bound to have 4 or 5 recessions before the end of the century this would help keep global warming down below the worst case scenarios. But what a wasteful way to do it. But then capitalism is not a rational system from the point of view of meeting people’s needs or solving the problems humanity faces.
Just noticed the attack on “delegate democracy” as Leninist in the editorial in today’s Times:
“The alternative notion that officials are mere delegates does have a philosophical lineage. It is to be found in Lenin’s The State and Revolution. This revolutionary blueprint was a guarantee that Russia would become a totalitarian state, for it had no concept of how to mediate between incommensurate values and competing interests [whatever that means].”
Two points here. First, it wasn’t Lenin who thought up this. Second, he might have preached it but he didn’t practice it.
Lenin did indeed write of “all officials, without exception, elected and subject to recall at any time” (his emphasis) but he was expanding on Marx’s description of the Paris Commune of 1871 in his The Civil War in France:
“The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms.”
Marx recommended that this is what the working class should bring about immediately on winning control of political power. The Communards weren’t socialists but radical democrats and what they did was already practised in Switzerland and in some of the states of the USA where the “right of recall” still exists in their constitutions. Indeed, this sort of thing is reflected in the US Constitution which lays down that the House of Representatives shall be re-elected every two years (the British MPs who have betrayed their mandate can sit for a further 3 years; in the US they’d be out in less than 2 years).
It’s a simple, basic radical democratic demand — which of course Lenin never implemented or had any intention of implementing. Power in Bolshevik Russia was in the hands of the unelected Bolshevik Party whose officials were not elected by universal suffrage nor subject to recall (at least not by the electorate though they were by the Party hierarchy as were non-party state officials). And of course one of the first things the Bolsheviks did was to abolish the Constituent Assembly that had been elected by universal suffrage. No attempt was made to organise the state in Russia along the lines of the Paris Commune.
So, whoever wrote the editorial in the Times is either ignorant or dishonest or both.
There is in fact a provision in UK law to recall an MP. Under the Recall of MPs Act 2015, if an MP has committed a series breach of parliamentary rules or is given a prison sentence of less than a year (more than a year then you are out automatically), a petition signed by 10% of the registered electorate and drawn up within six weeks can provoke a by-election. This has only been attempted once, in the case of the Reverend Inane Paisley’s son who had done something wrong (taken bribes, I think, without declaring them). It nearly succeeded but didn’t reach the 10% in the six weeks. Another attempt may be made to provoke such a by-election, in Peterborough, whose Labour MP is in prison for a few months for lying about a motoring offence.
There is nothing in our Rulebook about recall (but there doesn’t need to be specifically as a minimum number of branches can call a Party Poll to do this).
Re elections, our Rulebook says that a Socialist MP or councillors would be answerable to the EC or the local branch which could, presumably, deselect them. I am not sure this is perfect from a democratic point of view since, more logically, this ought to be in the hands of those who elected them, i.e. including non-members who had voted for socialism, but how? Nor is it clear how it could be enforced if the offending MP refused to resign, though my union at work used to insist that its candidates for the staff committee sign and undated letter of resignation. I don’t think that would work either. Leaving deselection as the only way.
I see the issue of “deselection” and a proposal that MPs who change parties should have to resign has come and is being criticised, but what’s wrong with this, at least with deselection? Under the names of “recall” and “revocation” isn’t this an essential part of the sort of democracy we advocate? In other words, if someone elected doesn’t carry out the mandate that their electors voted for, then the electors have the right to replace them with someone who will.
Is one of those signatories,. Selma James, the Marxist-Feminst, founder of Wages for Housework and ex-wife of CLR James? If so, she must be getting on a bit. Strange though that’s she’s ended up in the reformist Labour Party.
Who is this nutty Frenchman who wants to make it a crime to question a state’s right to exist? We and the anarchists do for a start for each and every state.And China challenges the right of Taiwan to exist. There might well be some nostalgic Unionists who challenge Eire’s right to exist. And Pakistan as a state based on religion is just as much also an aberration amongst capitalist stats. What’s the harm in people saying these things?
Those Tory women are a bit more impressive than the original band of Labour malcontents and misfits but still capitalist politicians of course.
As for Hatton, there’s nothing particularly antisemitic about what he said in 2012. Everybody was saying it at the time as Israel was then bombing the hell out of the poor sods in Gaza. Some idiots had lobbed some rockets into Israel and the Israeli army was applying its usual policy of a hundred eyes for one eye.
Now you’ve mentioned him, I thought I’d look up more on this Shuker character. It turns out he’s a raving Christian fundamentalist. From the Wikipedia entry on him:
Shuker became leader and pastor of the City Life Church in Luton until he stood for parliament (…) Shuker was opposed to the introduction of same-sex marriage. In 2012 he threatened to resign if Ed Miliband whipped Labour to support equal marriage. (…) In March 2012, Shuker was one of three MPs who signed a letter sent to the Advertising Standards Authority asking it to reverse its decision to stop the Christian group “Healing on the Streets of Bath” from making explicit claims that prayer can heal. The letter called for the ASA to provide indisputable scientific evidence that healing did not work.
Pity Ivan isn’t still doing his “Greasy Pole” column in the Socialist Standard. He could have a field day with this lot.
One of their pretexts for leaving Labour was anti-Semitism, but within a couple of days it was revealed that over 14% of the new group’s membership is colour-prejudiced:
So the moral high-ground against prejudice has crumbled beneath them. They can’t have much of a future after the next general election in 2022 when they will all be booted out — though they can draw their MP’s salary and other perks in the three years till then. After that, into retirement or a job in the City.
Who wants another capitalist political party anyway?
p.s. this is not a split. It’s a splinter.
Today’s papers have a photo of what was daubed on the front:
“Memorial to Bolshevik holocaust 1917 to 1953. 66,000,000 dead”
I still think the Bolsheviks should not have been allowed to move the Marx family grave and erected the monstrosity over it. I wonder how they got permission. One of Marx’s great-grandson’s, Robert-Jean Longuet (grandson of his daughter Jenny) was at times a bit of admirer of the USSR and may well have given the family’s permission.
