ALB
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kenax wrote:I assume you've heard of the Zeitgeist movement?
Yes, we have. Here's some of what we've written on it:https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2013/no-1302-february-2013/zeitgeist-and-‘marxism’www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2017/no-1354-june-2017/peter-joseph-indicts-capitalism
Turkey's invasion of Syria has the full support of the religious establishment there:http://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/01274f26-9a5a-4479-8989-0967194d82adMeanwhile the Grand Mufty of Damascus supports the Syrian government:http://www.irna.ir/en/News/82802289So, it looks as if allah is facing the same dilemma as the christians’ god in the the First World War. He won’t know which way to turn. Of course, if he really was “All Mighty” or “the Greatest” then he could intervene to stop the slaughter and destruction. So either he's a bastard or doesn't exist (or is useless).
Oxfam tries to fight back:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/16/oxfam-boss-mark-goldring-anything-we-say-is-being-manipulated-weve-been-savaged
Quote:I ask if he thinks the anti-aid agenda is at the root of the attacks on Oxfam. “The intensity and the ferocity of the attack makes you wonder, what did we do? We murdered babies in their cots? Certainly, the scale and the intensity of the attacks feels out of proportion to the level of culpability. I struggle to understand it. You think: ‘My God, there’s something going on there.’” Is it that political opponents of international aid – the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Priti Patel – are exploiting Oxfam’s crisis? He hesitates. “Others are better to judge whether that’s right or wrong. I don’t think it’s right for Oxfam to say that at the moment, because even that feels self-serving. What I’m really concerned about is that this is not used as an approach to attack aid.” But it already is. “Yes. It is.”In December, Goldring was criticised for writing in the New Statesman that most of the globe’s new wealth has gone to the richest 1%. Does he think that has anything to do with the current political backlash against Oxfam? “Part of our mission,” he replies carefully, “is to challenge the things that keep people poor. You don’t resolve people’s poverty by helping with a school and a well and a nurse, if that’s all you do. We go beyond that and say, what’s keeping people poor? We challenge that and a lot of people don’t like that.” If Oxfam’s crisis is politically motivated, it’s working.I would have thought, though, that the damage has been done. That it's mission accomplished to discredit Oxfam for asking this question (even if what they propose should be done about it is quite inadequate).
kenax wrote:i'm for a combination of capitalism and socialism, that may have existed to some degree before Reagan and his susequent era and fairytales of trickledown theories. and if average joe could submit an idea and the rest of us vote on it, this could lead to greater innovation of thought and ideas, as opposed to handing full control to representatives who would make all the decisions over a four period and our only power of choice is the elections once every four years.It is not a question of who can vote for what, but whether or not the economics of capitalism will allow what people vote for to be implemented. No doubt, given a chance to vote for better housing, health care, education or less pollution, that's what most would vote for. But capitalism is governed by economic laws which lay down that profts must come first before improving life for people or there'll be a slump in economic activity.What existed before Reagan (and in the UK before Thatcher) was not a combination of capitalism and socialism, but just a different combination of private and state capitalism. "Leftwing" parties, like Labour in Britain, claimed that the state could be used to tame and humanise capitalism but instead of that happening the experience of capitalism tamed them and led to them becoming just an alternative management team to "rightwing" parties, involved in a game of ins and outs.Basically, it's an illusion to imagine that political action can make capitalism work in the interests of the majority. It can't. So, rather than concentrate on trying to get political reforms it's much more instructive to work to replace capitalism's with its class ownership and production for profit with common ownership and production for use, i.e. with real socialism.
Looks as if his socialist period is going to be sidelined in pursuit of some feminist agenda. Incidentally, in view of some of the things he wrote both in his fiction and political writings, this speculation could well be valid:
Quote:The restoration of Charmian London means the downsizing of Jack’s first wife, Bessie, and their two daughters, especially Joan, who wrote one of the first books about her father that she subtitled “An Unconventional Biography.” If dad had lived until the 1920s, Joan argued, he would have become an admirer of Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist. That’s a stretch, though London certainly admired Nietzschean supermen.I still say that the Tories have been waiting for this chance to get at Oxfam. Remember this from the Daily Torygraph a few years ago?http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10888966/Oxfam-MPs-shocked-by-disgraceful-political-campaigning.html
Here's an example someone has sent in of the sort of information Oxfam puts out that its opponents would dearly like not be heard:
Quote:Richest 1 per cent hoover up bulk of new global wealth.Growing inequality resulted in 82 per cent of new global wealth going to the richest 1 per cent, last year, while the prosperity of the poorest half flatlined, an Oxfam report has shown.It means that if the £7.8trn increase in global wealth between July 2016 and June 2017, £6trn went to 75 billion people, while the bottom 3.7 million had no increase.This trend resulted in the sharpest increase in the number of billionaires ever recorded, to 2.043, with one created every two days, according to Oxfam's report, published ahead of the annual World Economic Forum of global political and business leaders in the Swiss si resort of Davos.The wealth of those billionnaires increased by £550bn over 12 months, it added.Mark Goldring, chief executive of Oxfam GB, said the statistics signal that "something is very wrong with the global economy"."The concentration of extreme wealth is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a system that is failing the millions of people on poverty wages who make our clothes and grow our food."He said change was essential if work was to be a "genuine route out of poverty." (Guardian, 22 January)Without being a conspiracy theorist, it is not difficult to see why those who think that the present system is alright would seize on an opportunity to do down Oxfam.
I think Turkey might qualify this month rather than the "Zionist entity". They have invaded Syria to ethnically cleanse a border area of Kurds or at least submit them to the rule of the savage jihadi militias who are their proxies.
More. Clicked on title to read:
Quote:12 February, 2018: Added to the Edgar Hardcastle Internet Archive:Socialism and the Fascisti, April 1923 Is it War?, February 1937 Roads to Socialism, July 1937 Should Socialists Support Federal Union?, May 1940 The Daily Worker writes about its Former Hero, September 1940 What the Soldier Wants and How to Get it, May 1941 Reconstruction: A Lesson from the Last War, October 1941 Echoes of the People's Convention, December 1941 Communists support for Conservative candidates, December 1941 Note on Nationalisation, September 1948Dave B wrote:I thought it would be obvious with numbers like that it would be just the last stage ie assembly.Thanks. That's what I thought.
Quote:Earlier, Mr McDonnell told BBC Radio 4's Today programme taking services into public ownership would not ultimately increase the burden on taxpayers because government bonds could be swapped for shares in a revenue-producing company.So the parasites are going to continue to get a share of surplus value as interest on bonds instead of dividends on shares. Just like under the post-war Labour government's nationalisations which McDonnell now wants to distance himself from.His "worker-consumer" cooperatives wouldn't work either as their managers would still have to apply the laws of the market and seek to make profits (if only to survive).
What's happening in Syria shows just what a scrap of paper the UN charter is. It outlaws war … except under certain circumstances such as "self-defence", so all the countries currently attacking Syria (USA, Turkey, Israel) use this let-out clause to continue their bombing, even though some of their arguments are manifest lies.
Dave B wrote:“…..According to Strategic Work Systems Inc., an auto manufacturing consultant, Nissan Motors was the most productive vehicle manufacturer in North America as of 2007, averaging 28.46 labor hours per vehicle. This was followed by Toyota (29.4 hours per vehicle), Honda Motor Co. (32.51 hours per vehicle), and Chrysler Group (33.71 hours per vehicle).So what? That will be a measure of the "labour productivity" at the last stage of the production of a car, won't it? In other words, the time taken to assemble one in a car plant from previously produced materials and parts. But that's not the point at issue. That statistic could be of some use in socialism to measure the direct labour-time needed or spent — along with the materials and energy — to produce something (though not with a view to speeding up the assembly line of course).In other words, your statistics are not a measure of the total amount of labour-time involved in producing a car from start to finsh, which would have to start with the labour-time involved in mining of the iron ore, aluminium and other metals, in their transporting and processing, and go on to that involved in the production of the parts and energy, (and in transporting these), and to the wear and tear of the machines and buildings. David Ricardo, who adhered to a labour theory of value, made the point that all this has to be taken into account in what determines the exchange-value of a product (in his day in the 1810s textile manufacture was the thing):
Quote:If we look to a state of society in which greater improvements have been made, and in which arts and commerce flourish, we shall still find that commodities vary in value conformably with this principle: in estimating the exchangeable value of stockings, for example, we shall find that their value, comparatively with other things, depends on the total quantity of labour necessary to manufacture them, and bring them to market. First, there is the labour necessary to cultivate the land on which the raw cotton is grown; secondly, the labour of conveying the cotton to the country where the stockings are to be manufactured, which includes a portion of the labour bestowed in building the ship in which it is conveyed, and which is charged in the freight of the goods; thirdly, the labour of the spinner and weaver; fourthly, a portion of the labour of the engineer, smith, and carpenter, who erected the buildings and machinery, by the help of which they are made; fifthly, the labour of the retail dealer, and of many others, whom it is unnecessary further to particularize. The aggregate sum of these various kinds of labour, determines the quantity of other things for which these stockings will exchange, while the same consideration of the various quantities of labour which have been bestowed on those other things, will equally govern the portion of them which will be given for the stockings (https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/ricardo/tax/ch01.htm).No doubt your computer whizzkid friend could calculate this too, but this would only be of academic interest (to show that it can be done) rather than of any practical use.I could be wrong. So, to see which one of us has scored a own goal can you check whether the statistics you quote refer just to the last stage of the production, i.e. the assembly, of a car or not.
It is not the lack of perfected democratic procedures that is the problem. There are certain things that capitalism rules out happening even if people vote for them, like making capitalism put people before profits. So no matter what democratic reforms are introduced, this won't alter the fact that under capitalism profits have to come before people. That's the built-in nature of the system.What is needed is to replace capitalism's minority class ownership and production for profit by the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and production solely and directly to meet people's needs. In other words, socialism. On that basis real democracy can flourish.Incidentally, referendums aren't necessarily the best way of making decisions. They are alright when it's a simple yes or no decision but most decisions are not like that.
