ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Alan Kerr wrote:In the free socialist society, of the future, owner-workers need to compute (and better than a market) what kinds of labour, and how much labour is socially necessary. That is becoming possible and inevitable. Only then (with the new alternative in place) is there no more need for a market.
If you are saying here what I think you are saying, i.e. that in a socialist society we will need to calculate the amount of "socially necessary labour" in each product, then I think you are wrong, for reasons that have been discussed on other threads here."Socially necessary labour" only makes sense in a society like capitalism where products take the form of commodities, i.e. are produced for sale on a market rather than directly for use. It is what underlies their value and exchange value but can only be established through the market; it cannot be calculated independently of the market. In socialism, where there will be production directly for use, it wouldn't make sense, so it won't be a question of calculaing this "better than a market". It will be possible to calculate the actual labour-time taken to produce something, but that would not be the same as what its socially necessary value would be under capitalism. If you just mean that in socialism we will have to calculate how much of what kinds of labour are needed, alongside what materials and power, to produce some product that will obviously be the case. This would be part of more general "calculation in kind". But I suspect that you might be saying more than this, i.e. that something akin to "value" under capitalism will also exist in socialism.
Owen wrote:'What I call poverty is when people are not able to secure for themselves all the benefits of civilization; the necessaries, comforts, pleasures and refinements of life, leisure, books, theatres, pictures, music, holidays, travel, good and beautiful homes, good clothes, good and pleasant food.''If a man is only able to provide himself and his family with the bare necessaries of existence, that man's family is living in poverty.'Owen is giving two different definitions of poverty here. One, that someone is poor if they don't have access to "all the benefits of civilisation" and, two, that someone is poor when they can only access the"bare necessaries of existence".The ambiguity arises with someone who has access to more than the "bare necessaries" but not to "all" the benefits of civilisation but only to some of them, e.g. from Owen's list to books, music, holidays. Which is the situation of most workers today and always has been the position of some. This no doubt is what is behind the claim that most workes are not poor.The Party used to get round this by drawing a distinction between "destitution" (access only to the socially-determined mimumum necessaries) and "poverty" (exclusion from ownership and control of means of production). This definition of "poverty" moves away from access to means of consumption to access to means of production, even if it goes against the popular usage of the term.On Owen's second definition, most workers are not poor (only about 10-15% in Britain are). On Owen's first definition all workers are (as are many small business owners). On the definition the Party has used, all workers are too (but no small owners).
Quote:At this point the Ballot Committee reported they had received two further nominations for the 2018 Executive Committee – Carla Dee and Gwynn Thomas.It was AGREED that the two members be appointed (Rule 12 refers) and invited to take their seats.Cde Thomas was present and took his seat immediately; cde Chesham offered to inform cde Dee of her appointment. AGREEDThere is something odd about this. How could the EC declare elected two nominations before the deadline for nomnations (19 January) had passed? This was exceeding their powers. What if today we find that there are three further nominations, requiring a ballot between all 5 nominated for the 4 vacancies?
Looks as if somebody made a mistake which has set an unfortunate precednt. After all moderators, are only human but the mistake can be easily rectified.,
Actually whether or not there would/could be inflation/monetary depreciation (the same thing from different angles) in a purely cashless system is an interesting intellectual exercise. I say intellectual exercise since the coming of a completely cashless society is highly unlikely, even though there is clear trend towards less cash being used to make payments, with people using bank transfers, debit cards and contactless cards instead. According to an article in the Financial Times (9 December):
Quote:Cash payments are in decline. Last year, just 40 per cent of payments in the UK were in cash, down from 87 per crent in 1985.However, the value of what is paid in cash has been declining much more slowly:
Quote:Even though the number of cash transactions has been falling, the value has dropped more slowly, at least since 2005.Also:
Quote:There is more cash in circulation, The value of notes and coins has more than doubled since 2005 — rising from £35.4bn in 2005 to £73.2bn.Which is what you would expect as the government is aiming to achieve 2% a year compound inflation.
1. You are right. With a stable currency the individual prices of most goods and services will still tend to fall due to increased productvity. But the standard of price will not change (that's what a stable currency means). And of course even without a stable currency the prices of most goods and services still tends to fall in real terms. In practice these days governments don't aim at a stable currency but one inflating at the rate of 2 percent compound per year. Which of course leads to a steadily rising general price level and it not being immediately evident that real prices are falling. 2. I don't know where you got the idea from that I think "the Bank can create Bank deposits by lending money", not that it's clear what you mean anyway since Bank with a capital B generally means the central bank, the government's banker, in Britain the Bank of England. As the central bank, the Bank of England can create as much money as means of payment as it likes but if it creates more than is needed by the economy for its transactions then inflation and (the same thing from another angle) a depreciation of the currency will result. This will happen irrespective of whether the Bank prints paper notes for the government to use to pay its employees or contractors or whether the government pays them via an electronic bank transfer. It would happen in a completely cashless economy too (not that, for practical reasons, this is likely to come about).3. I don't know either where you got the even more ridiculous idea that I think "Bank deposits cause inflation" (I'm taking it that you mean commercial bank deposits rather than Bank of England deposits). As you say, that's never been true. It's the other way round: with inflation the face-value of commercial banks' deposits will go up. If, on the other hand, you mean Bank of England deposits I don't suppose you would mean money deposited with the Bank of England (by commercial banks for instance), so presumably you would have to mean lines of credit opened by the Bank (as for the government). This, in fact, is one way how a central bank can get more money into circulation. Once again, if the amount created in this way is more than the economy requires then inflation will result.
Alan Kerr wrote:Suppose pure electronic money. Then sum of prices paid in cash = 0. Then there are no coins or notes for the Bank to issue in excess – no more general price inflation.The famous cashless society. I am not sure that it would also be inflationless as electronic money also circulates and could be issued in excess to what the economy needed to maintain a stable price level. But that's perhaps the subject for another thread if you want to start one..
You've missed the point. The objection is not to you (or anyone else) criticising what we do stand for, but to you asking us to defend something you attribute to us but that we don't stand for (i.e.to defend something that doesn't exist). You can of course criticise that idea too but don't attribute it to us and don't expect us to defend it.
Good point, Robbo. It is a common mistake to imagine that socialism will substitute democratic, and therefore collective, decision-making for all decisions concerning the production and distribution of wealth. Obviously this will be he way that major decisions will be taken, but decisions as to what to take from the distribution centres can be left to the individual and an efficient system of stock control can ensure that these centres are always stocked with what people want based on what they have taken over a given period. In fact with this information being passed on from suppliers to their suppliers and ultimately to the producers, the production and distribution of consumer goods can be more or less self-regulating, a bit like the market system is supposed to be and to a large extent is, except that the suppliers and producers will be responding to what people have indicated they want by what they take rather than to what they buy out of their restricted income.
Prakash RP wrote:' The answer to your question is no I don't. I don't think Alan K does either. ' ( ALB #59 )Should I take it to mean that you don't think that ' all my points are " logical mistakes " ' ( Alan's comment #44 ), that ' Marx's concept of money is wrong, and that economists that belong to the marginal-utility school are right ' ( Alan's comment #44 ) ? If you say ' yes ', I think I can also take it to mean that you approve of my claim to have presented humanity with the first and only proof of the thesis that money cannot measure the worth of a commodity, OK ?Just because I don't think that all your points are logical mistakes doesn't mean that I therefore think none of your points are. For you to conclude that I do would indeed be a logical mistake of the simplest kind (some A are B, therefore all A are
.I am afraid I don't think you should be awarded a Nobel Prize or that statutes should be erected in your honour all over the world for the great service you imagine you have done to humanity by repeating something that has been known for over 2000 years.It is very near to Head Office which can in fact be seen on the first photo if you look carefully through the tree. Head Office is the next shop front down to the right after the Mexican restaurant. At the other end of the second photo you can see the shop where we buy milk and chocolate biscuits. There must be some other photos and videos out there in the media which show our front more clearly.This has happened before when a few years ago a black man was shot by the police in the bar on the other side of Head Office. Every time this incident was mentioned on TV it showed the bar with Head Office next to it.Who said Clapham High Street wasn't a good street to have our office in? It's going to stop the delivery of the reprint of our From Capitalism to Socialism pamphlet today, though.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Listen Marxist's Myth of the Proletariat seemed to want to address this. https://www.marxists.org/archive/bookchin/1969/listen-marxist.htm#h3David Ramsay Steele, when he was a socialist, wrote a brilliant reply to this:http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/listen-anarchist.htmlIronically, later he was himself to become an anarchist, a leading anarcho-capitalist writer and polemicist in fact.
TheMightyYoghourt wrote:There is scarcely a landscape in Britain that might be described as 'natural'.That's true but depends on what is meant by "natural". You seem to be using it in the sense of what it would be like in the absence of human intervention or indeed of humans. In which case most of Britain would be forest. The present landscape of Britain is the result of human intervention over more than 4000 years. As we put it in our pamphlet Ecology and Socialism:
Quote:Although the biosphere is one big ecosystem, it is still possible to distinguish various sub-systems within it on the basis of the different climatic and physical conditions that exist in different parts of the world. For the land area of the globe, ecologists have distinguished a number of such "biomes" as they call them. These range from the tundra of the Arctic through the coniferous and deciduous forests and steppes to the savannah and tropical rain forests of the regions near the equator. To each of these physical and climatic conditions there corresponds a stable ecosystem which evolves to its "climax" through a series of successive stages. This stable climax will be the situation where the amount of food produced by the plant life is sufficient, after taking account of the plants' own respiration needs, to meet on a sustainable basis the food energy requirements of all the animal life-forms within the system. It will be in fact the situation which makes optimum use, in terms of sustaining all the life-forms within the system, of the Sun's light rays falling on the area. Under present climatic conditions, for most of Europe this stable climax, in the absence of human intervention, would be the deciduous forest which developed after the last Ice Age and which existed in Britain in untouched form till about 4500 years ago. If humans were to withdraw from the British Isles it is this forest that would tend to develop again within a few centuries.But what would be the advantage in that?The aim should be to establish a stable global ecosystem which includes humans. In any event, even if/though it is humans (in the abstract) who have messed things up, we are the only species capable of putting things right. Again as we put it in the pamphlet:
Quote:As the only consciously-acting life-form within the biosphere, humans ought to act as the biosphere's "brain", consciously regulating its functioning in the interest of present and future generations. But before humans can hope to play this role we must first integrate our own activities into a sustainable natural cycle on a planetary scale. This we can only do within the framework of a world socialist society in which the Earth and its natural and industrial resources have become the common heritage of all humanity.
