[ALB]

Here's Marx's contribution to this discussion:

Marx wrote:

The level of wages expressed, not in terms of money, but in terms of the means of subsistence necessary to the working man, that is the level of real, not of nominal wages, depends on the relationship between demand and supply. An alteration in the mode of taxation may cause a momentary disturbance, but will not change anything in the long run. ('The Communism of the Rheinischer Beobachter, 1847]

Marx wrote:

If all taxes which bear on the working class were abolished root and branch, the necessary consequence would be the reduction of wages by the whole amount of taxes which today goes into them. Either the employers’ profit would rise as a direct consequence by the same quantity, or else no more than an alteration in the form of tax-collecting would have taken place. Instead of the present system, whereby the capitalists also advances, as part of the wage, what the worker has to pay, he [the capitalist] would no longer pay them in this roundabout way, but directly to the state (Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality, 1847).

[ALB]

Inspired no doubt by the current survey, Imposs1904 has reproduced on his blog the report of a survey 25 years ago of readers of the Socialist Standard:http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/readers-survey-results-1992.htmlIt's out of date now of course but there were some interesting results about what papers subscribers read and who they had voted for in the previous general election.

[ALB]

Yes, it is interesting how they start from the same assumption we make that what matters are net wages and that, in the end, taxes on wages are paid by the employer:

Quote:

In most countries employers and employees both contribute to the taxes (or social security contributions) levied on labour. Employers pay taxes on top of the wage they transfer to employees and employees pay income taxes on the money they receive from employers. For many decades, economists thought that it should not matter who pays. Employers were thought to care only about total labour costs (gross wage paid plus employer taxes). Employees were thought to care only about their net wage (what’s left of the gross wage after income tax). The gross wage itself should be of interest to neither of them, so it should not matter who pays the taxes.

They don't seem to be challenging the argument that, in terms of what workers get, net wages are what's important. Their argument is about how the method of collecting taxes is perceived and how it affects people's political attitudes, but we have never denied this. Our position has only been that in the end taxation is a burden on the employing class, with direct taxes on wages being passed on to employers (and indirect taxes too in so far as they effect the overall cost of living).The ideological aspect (that taxing workers gross pay gets workers to think that they are part of a tax-paying community) is important, but there is another aspect why governments wanted to tax wages — to "redistribute poverty", to redistribute the total wages bill so that nobody gets too much, i.e gets paid for something they don't need, eg from single workers to married workers and from workers without children to workers with children. This too of course has an ideological effect — it gets workers arguing amongst themselves as to who deserves what — but I don't think this was the reason this was introduced.

[ALB]

Actually, while other animals don't lack pain, they do lack "reason" in the sense of being able to think abstractly through symbols. Only humans can do this. That doesn't mean that we can treat other animals as we please. On the contrary, it means that we are the only species that can assume responsibility for other animals getting a better life..

[ALB]

Quote:

In sum, it was St. Thomas Aquinas who allowed the guilt-free usage of animals.

Isn't this putting the cart before the horse or, in Marxist terms, the superstructure before the base? In Mediaeval Europe animals were used as essential means of production and as means of consumption. Aquinas's views were an ideological reflection of this basic material fact. It wasn't because he taught this that animals were used for human ends but the other way round.

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Just heard someone on the radio say that bitcoins were better understood as a "crypto asset" than as a "crypto currency", so I looked up "crypto asset". Clear explanation here:https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@cryptoassets/what-are-crypto-assets-and-how-do-they-workLike this articel, the person on the radio said bitcoins were more like gold than money, "digital gold" if you like which, like gold, people can use as store of value and speculate on its price going up (but it will go down as well of course).Made sense to me.

[ALB]

Vin wrote:

troobele –  arsole, moron, cretin, nob, imbecile

That won't work because he's a "knob", hardly a "nob".

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From last weekend's i paper. Difficult but the answer is the Party case:

Quote:

Worker left after a long time in progressive movement (4,5)

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Oh dear, John Oswald isn't going to like this title:http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/we-are-human-beings-not-animals.html

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That will be the Deleonist one not the Scargill one of course.

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In her Notebook column in yesterdy's London Evening Standard Lo Dico said she had met a "crypto-currency idealost" who claomed that

Quote:

had Karl Marx seen the power of computing he'd have seized on Bitcoin.

I don't think so.Meanwhile there's an article on blockchains in this month's Socialist Standard also out yesterday:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2017/no-1360-december-2017/pathfinders-rattle-blockchains

[ALB]

The John O'Neill who will be one of the speakers is an ex-Party member whose writings show some evidence of having been influenced by passing through us:http://www.lifewithoutmoney.info/authors/john-oneill

[ALB]

But the opposite is not true, i.e a world without monarchies would not necessarily be a "just" world. Look at France which abolished it. Look at the USA which never had one or, rather, has an elected one since the US Constitution is a democratised version of the 18th century UK constitution with the Senate as an elected House of Lords and the President as an elected King (and Trump doing a good impression of George III). A "just" world would be a world without states and heads of state, whether hereditary or elected.

[ALB]

Did I hear right. Is he going to marry Miss Marple?

[ALB]

This is still the best analysis of Bitcoins:https://antinational.org/en/bitcoin-finally-fair-money/ A pontless attempt, and waste of energy and ingenuity, to recreate the anomynity of notes and coins. I'm sure we can think of a more socially useful way to use blockchains in socialism.

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