ALB
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I am not sure that the Party has a rigid take-it-or-leave-it position on the so-called "transformation problem" nor that it really needs one. After all, no one would be barred from joining if they didn't agree with whatever position was taken on the subject !Having said this, we have suggested that it is a false problem as here:www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/z-marxism/tand here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2017/no-1353-may-2017/book-reviews-money-and-totality-dirty-secrets-how-tax
Actually, although of course humans make history (they act), there is something to be said for technological determinism. After all, it's always worked in the past, in the end in one form or another.
Yes I think that's right. No single bank can lend more than it has or can get quickly but the whole banking system can create new "money" but central to this system is the State bank which is the ultimate source in the system that can create new money (claims on wealth) "out of thin air" (and cause too much inflation if it gets it wrong, it being official policy in Britain, the US, etc to inflate the currency by about 2 percent a year). Not the same as creating more wealth of course. Only humans applying their mental and physical energies to materials that originally came from nature can do that.
Good question. Here's a possible answer:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2010/no-1274-october-2010/aliens
Quote:23 June, 2018: Added to the Gilbert McClatchie Internet Archive:Where Russia Stands. Our Attitude Supported by Latest Literature, May 1921 Where Russia Stands, June 1921 Where Russia Stands, July 1921 Where Russia Stands, October 1921This series of articles is very impressive, dating as it does from 1921. It's all there. In Russia it was the dicttorship of the vanguard party not of the proletariat, conditions weren't ripe either economically or politcally for socialism, the regime there was not like the Paris Commune, with quotes from Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Bukharin. It was in fact making the same analysis as Martov was at the same time but unbeknown to us till his became available in English in 1939. No wonder Party members liked his pamphlet.I don't understand why the Party never seems to have promoted this series, to show that we were on to what was happening in Bolshevik Russia straightaway, in the way that we promoted the original August 1918 article. The series is just as impressive.Click on title to read.
In this article, from a series he wrote in 1921 on Russia:https://www.marxists.org/archive/mcclatchie/russiastands_july.htmhe quotes a translation in Sylvia Pankhurst's Workers Dreadnought of a speech Lenin gave;
Quote:Under the heading "Elections to the Constituent Assembly" the following appeared in the Workers' Dreadnought, 21.8.20:"This is a process which the representatives of the Second International have never been able to understand, namely that the proletariat can be victorious without conquering a majority of the population. To limit or condition this victory to the acquisition of a majority of votes at an electoral contest under bourgeois domination is evidence of chronic intellectual indolence, or else, quite simply, of a device to deceive the workers. In order to bring the majority over to its side, the proletariat must first overthrow the bourgeoisie and take possession of the power of government, and then, after having destroyed the old state apparatus, introduce the Soviet system, whereby the domination and authority of the bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeois democrats over the non-proletarian labouring masses is at once nullified. It must finally complete the destruction of the influence of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeois democrats over the majority of the non-proletarian labouring masses by satisfying their economic needs in a revolutionary manner, at the expense of the exploiters."Comparison with a more recent translation of what Lenin wrote shows that this was not an accurate translation.
Quote:The traitors, blockheads and pedants of the Second International could never understand such dialectics; the proletariat cannot achieve victory if it does not win the majority of the population to its side. But to limit that winning to polling a majority of votes in an election under the rule of the bourgeoisie, or to make it the condition for it, is crass stupidity, or else sheer deception of the workers. In order to win the majority of the population to its side the proletariat must, in the first place, overthrow the bourgeoisie and seize state power; secondly, it must introduce Soviet power and complete]y smash the old state apparatus, whereby it immediately undermines the rule, prestige and influence of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeois compromisers over the non-proletarian working people. Thirdly, it must entirely destroy the influence of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeois compromisers over the majority of the non-proletarian masses by satisfying their economic needs in a revolutionary way at the expense of the exploiters.This is from here :https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/dec/16.htmSo, Lenin was not saying that socialism could be established without a majority wanting and understanding it, but the lesser error of saying that no such majority can emerge as long as the capitalist class retain political power and that a socialist minority therefore has to overthrow capitalist rule and then educate a majority into wanting socialism. Of course this didn't work, and was never going to work, and led to the minority evolving into a new privileged, ruling class themselves. Others supported this mistaken view from Blanqui in the 19th century to Marcuse, Castro and Che Guevara last century.
He is the person who once talked about "fully-automated luxury communism", isn't he? After hearing him talk on this on the radio we contacted him to see if he'd be interested in doing a talk on this (he had mentioned the abolition of the wages system) but he didn't reply. I think he's been all over the place politically, Green Party, Labour Party, and still is, a Brexshiteer and now for Remain (with British capitalism as it is):https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/aaron-bastani/why-ive-changed-my-mind-on-brexit
The Bank of International Settlements in Basel has just produced a report setting out why bitcoin (and similar so-called "cryptocurrencies") will never replace fiat money:http://www.itpro.co.uk/strategy/28261/bitcoin-newsThe BIS is the central banks' international so this is what you'd expect the "gnomes of Zurich" to say, isn't it? Perhaps, but that doesn't make what they say here wrong. Bitcoins are based on nothing. Fiat money is backed by the State and so has less chance of vanishing into thin air.In fact, ordinary money is better in this sense than all the "alternative" currency schemes that have been proposed, LETS as well as Bitcoin. Bitcoin was a scheme thought up by anarcho-capitalists to create a currency independently of the State. It is this but it is not only anarchists who don't like to be regulated by the State — drug dealers, arms merchants, money launderers, tax dodgers and sanctions busters don't either.As long as capitalism lasts ordinary State-backed money is going to be best (safest) for the sort of monetary transactions workers have to engage in. The only viable alternative to it of course is a society based on common ownership and production directly for use not profit where it too would become redundant.
Sympo wrote:Does that mean that it's the idea of SNLT that convinces you that the LTV is correct?No.
