ALB
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Where you referring to this:
This week’s revelations of a catastrophic collapse in insect populations, jeopardising all terrestrial life
🙂
Apart from that, he does have a point. It would be interesting to know who is behind this campaign for no deal.
She makes some shrewd observations but her conclusion (“wars will break out, the planet will heat up, species will die out, but how many, how hot and what survives depends on whether we act.” reflects the current reformist approach — that capitalism is the only game in town, all we can do is try to stop things getting worse. If you rule out socialism, this is true but what a miserable perspective and what a change from their previous one of gradually making things better. Neither capitalism nor reformism has anything to offer.
Maduro has a point that, insofar as there is a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, imposing sanctions on the government is counterproductive as it makes things worse. It is always ordinary people who suffer from sanctions not the ruling elite. The calculation of Trump and the states he has in tow is that by making the situation in Venezuela worse people will turn to support their puppet replacement as president. Completely cynical without concern for the suffering people they feign to be concerned about. All they want is regime change and are prepared to play politics with people’s lives to get it. Nothing new there, then. Capitalist diplomacy as usual.
I was not arguing against the findings of the research (that insect extinction has been proceeding at a rate of 2.5% per year over the past 25-30 years) or that this does not present a problem. What I was arguing was the way in which it was presented, in particular this:
The 2.5% rate of annual loss over the last 25-30 years is “shocking”, Sánchez-Bayo told the Guardian: “It is very rapid. In 10 years you will have a quarter less, in 50 years only half left and in 100 years you will have none.”
It’s the use of the word “will”, especially as, here, the “if” or the “unless” part is missing. “Could” doesn’t cut it either as anything not logically possible could occur, e.g. socialism could be established tomorrow, or feudalism for that matter, in fact all insects could become extinct tomorrow. “Might” would be better, as that brings in the question of how probable something is. As would “would”.
Also, apparently, the survey does not actually say that all insect species “will” be extinct by 2119. That’s just common sense. You don’t have to be a entomologist to dismiss as absurd the idea that all the species of insect on the planet, including the millions in the untouched jungles of the Amazon, the Congo and Indonesia, “will” go extinct by 2119, not even if nothing is done to try to counter species going extinct.
By coincidence, the difference is neatly illustrated by the front page headline in today’s Times: TORIES WOULD WIN MAJORITY IF ELECTION HELD TODAY. If it had read ‘TORIES WILL WIN MAJORITY IF ELECTION HELD TODAY’ the meaning would be quite different (even if a pessimist might prefer it expressed the second way).
Saying “there is a problem, but it’s being exaggerated” is not the same as saying “there isn’t a problem”. All I am calling for is a bit of critical thinking when faced with sensational or tententious headlines.
Yes, re sending that warship to the South China Sea, there was some talk of Britain joining the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42549541
Doesn’t really sense. Perhaps Rees-Mogg will be in favour as a protection for his financial interests in Hong Kong, though, on the other hand, provoking China doesn’t seem a good way of doing this. In fact, Mrs May doesn’t seem very happy with her boy War Minister — she wants to trade with China rather than rattle sabres at them:
More from speech:
Speaking in London at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank, Williamson said Western allies must be prepared to “use hard power to support our interests”, and failing to intervene against aggressive foreign powers “risks our nation being seen as little more than a paper tiger.”
He is echoing here the realpolitik views of another militarist, the Chief of Defence Staff, General Carter, already discussed here. Thanks, anyway, to the both of them for revealing why there are wars under capitalism and always will be as states take military action as a last resort when the vital economic interest of their capitalist class (as over sources of raw materials, trade routes, etc) is at stake
At least one minister, someone called Williamson, who imagines he’s Minister of War (as in fact he is, “Minister of Defence” is Orwell’s Newspeak), thinks that Brexit provides a chance for a return the good old days of the British Empire:
“Brexit has brought us to a great moment in our history. A moment when we must strengthen our global presence, enhance our lethality and increase our mass.” The Cabinet minister will say that Brexit offers Britain the chance “to consider how we not only project but maximise our influence around the world in the months and years to come”.
He seems to have miscalculated as his speech is being widely seen as ridiculous. Nobody except him believes that the loss of economic clout in trade deals that Brexit will mean for the capitalist class can be replaced by military might (or “lethality” as he calls it). Another example of how the capitalist class’s interests are being looked after by incompetent non-entities.
Marx gives a good example of the fallacy of extrapolating existing trends to their “logical” conclusion in Chapter 24 of Volume 3 of Capital when discussing “the fabulous fancies of Dr. Price, which outdo by far the fantasies of the alchemists”:
“Money bearing compound interest increases at first slowly. But, the rate of increase being continually accelerated, it becomes in some time so rapid, as to mock all the powers of the imagination. One penny, put out at our Saviour’s birth to 5 per cent compound interest, would, before this time, have increased to a greater sum, than would be contained in a hundred and fifty millions of earths, all solid gold. (…)
His fancy flies still higher in his Observations on Reversionary Payments, etc., London, 1772. There we read:
“A shilling put out to 6% compound interest at our Saviour’s birth” (presumably in the Temple of Jerusalem) “would … have increased to a greater sum than the whole solar system could hold, supposing it a sphere equal in diameter to the diameter of Saturn’s orbit.”The claim that all insect life “will” be extinct in a hundred years falls into the same category of fanciful (“would be if the existing rate of extinction were to be maintained” would be more acceptable, but then that wouldn’t attract the same headlines).
Apologies. I don’t read that thread any more. Hoping it dies a death. Perhaps because he’s not a native English-speaker that he can’t tell the difference between “would” and “will” especially after “if” but then Spanish does have a subjunctive to express conditionality.
I thought I’d beat Alan to draw attention to this particularly absurd extinction story:
Insects could vanish within a century at current rate of decline, says global review
No doubt there is a problem but this illustrates the fallacy of extrapolating current trends to their “logical” conclusion. Here the assumption is that insect species extinction will continue at its current rate of 2.5% a year:
The 2.5% rate of annual loss over the last 25-30 years is “shocking”, Sánchez-Bayo told the Guardian: “It is very rapid. In 10 years you will have a quarter less, in 50 years only half left and in 100 years you will have none.”
Note that he is not even cautious enough to say “would” rather than “will”.
Of course insects won’t become extinct. I’d have thought they’d be the last life-form to go, as some could even survive a nuclear war.
I suggest that the prevalence of such “scientific” scare stories reflects not so much the facts as that capitalism has no hope of a better future to offer. It’s reached an ideological dead end and can’t justify even to itself its continued existence.
Roberts well brings out the point that, while the governments can create (whether indirectly via the central bank or directly via the printing press) as much money as they want, they cannot control the purchasing power of that money. If they issue more than the capitalist economy needs for its activities, then it will depreciate:
The MMT and Chartalists propose that private-sector investment be replaced or added to by government investment ‘paid for’ by the ‘creation of money out of thin air’. But this money will lose its value if it does not bear any relation to value created by the productive sectors of the capitalist economy, which determine the SNLT and still dominate the economy. Instead, the result will be rising prices and/or falling profitability that will eventually choke off production in the private sector.
But then he goes and spoils it by talking about a Marxist monetary/financial policy:
Unless the MMT proponents are then prepared to move to a Marxist policy conclusion – namely, the appropriation of the finance sector and the ‘commanding heights’ of the productive sector through public ownership and a plan of production, thus curbing or ending the law of value in the economy – the policy of government spending through unlimited money creation will fail.
Oh dear. Another MMT — Marxist Monetary Policy!
Roberts is in favour of “public service banking”. Asked what it meant, he gave the example of China.
A proper banking service should take our deposits, look after our savings and offer loans to households and small businesses for big ticket items at reasonable interest rates (….) As for investment, take the role of China’s state banking system. Whatever we might say about the autocratic, one party dictatorship in China, its state-owned banks provide credit to support a national investment programme that has transformed China’s infrastructure.
He is also co-author of a pamphlet, It’s Time to Take Over the Banks published by the Fire Brigades Union, advocating the nationalisation of the banks. But that’s no more useful to the working class than MMT.
It gets worse. Just noticed that the same issue of the Weekly Worker also carries an article on “Working Class Trade Policy”:
https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1232/working-class-trade-policy/
What next.
Revealing list of the demands that US lobbyists would like to be pushed in any US/UK trade deal:
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/us-lobbyists-brexit_uk_5c5b26c6e4b00187b5579f64
Of course this is only a wish list, some of which the US government might not accept and the UK government might try to resist, but it is an example of what is likely to be involved if the UK moves from EU to US regulatory standards.
This is not a necessary consequence of Brexit but of one type, that currently envisaged by the government under which the UK would be able to negotiate its own trade deals. Other types of Brexit, which keep the UK closely aligned to EU standards, as proposed by some Tories and now apparently by Labour, would avoid this.
Why not both, i.e twin-track, organisation to control and briefly use the state and organisation in workplaces (and elsewhere)? Actually, I think that’s what we’ve always said though insisting that the important thing is win political control. In any event, there will have to be coordination of the change to socialism (revolution) at society level. Since the means to do this already exists in the administrative side of the existing state, why not use this side for this purpose? Why re-invent the wheel by setting up a new administrative structure based on workplaces?
Come off it, Alan, you don’t really believe that, do you? It’s Monbiot at his worst turning himself into a vulgar conspiracy theorist. We know that there is a maverick section of the UK capitalist class that financed the Leave campaign in its own economic interest of escaping from EU regulation of its activities. And, yes, there will be, in far are, individual capitalists who are to banking on a no-deal to make a financial killing, but a group of “disaster capitalists” and “world plutocrats” plotting to turn the UK into
“a giant export-processing zone, exempt from the laws that govern other rich nations”?
I don’t think so. And even if there were they wouldn’t succeed against the will and political power against the dominant section of the UK capitalist class supported in all likelihood by the working class. It’s a fantasy.
A no-deal (if it happens, which is open to great doubt) would temporarily disrupt things but it wouldn’t bring about what Monbiot says these “world plutocrats” want. Eventually, things would settle down and capitalism as we know it in the UK continue.
Alan wrote:
Is Fully Automated Luxury Communism the way to go?
No. For a start, there doesn’t have to be “full automation” before communism/socialism can be established (otherwise it would be years away). Second, that everybody should live in “luxury” isn’t necessary either, bearing in mind the dictionary definitions of the word. “Abundance” or “plenty” is ok, but “luxury” is overdoing it. And the “hair-shirt” brigade you’ve been cultivating over climate change would be put off. 🙂
On the other hand, “Sufficiently Automated Abundance Communism” isn’t all that snappy.
What about “World of abundance”?
Actually it was the ineffable George Walford in his Idiotical Commentary who invented calling us “anarcho-socialists” as in this article from 1984:
He does come up with a good quip here, though, that the anarchists want to abolish the state the day before the revolution while we want to abolish it the day after.
I doubt that the NZ comrades would like us to take it up. After all, the word “anarchism” has negative popular connotations too (bomb-throwing, anarchy, individualism). So, by combining them, we’d get the worst of both worlds. I imagine what they’ve got in world is something like “free access society”, “world commonwealth”, “resource-based economy”.
