ALB
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I take it as given that animals feel pain and should not be made to suffer it. But I followed the links to try to find out what exactly had been decided. It seems that an amendment to the Brexit Bill was voted down. I wouldn't have thought this represented a change in government policy on the matter, certainly not "scrapping what animal protection laws exist". This sounds like exaggeration by a well-meaning pressure group.
Quote:there are 6 biscuits (and no way to make more)Why this assumption? It rules out examining the conditions under which biscuits are produced and, typical of bourgeois marginalist economics, concentrates on the market. As comrade Goldstein went on to point out:
Quote:Actually, of course, the average price of an article is fixed prior to supply and demand.Sympo wrote:What would be the direct answer to the question "If it takes 5 hours for company A to make something and it takes 10 hours for company B, C, D etc to make the same thing, is the SNLT 5 hours?"On the assumption that only company A is capable of (re)producing the commodity in 5 hours while all the other companies producing the same commodity can only do so in 10 hours, then the SNLT would be 10 hours (even on your arithmetic mean it would be only just under this). This is because the total amount of the commodity required by the market cannot be supplied at 5 hours labour-time a commodity.What would happen in your hypothetical situation is that company A would be making extra profits. This would be an incentive for the other companies to adopt the same production methods as company A. The more that did the lower the price (and SNLT) would become until, when (and if) all companies adopted the same methods, the SNLT would fall to 5 (and company A lose its extra profits). As a matter of fact, this is how the price of commodities (other than from mining and extraction where costs tend to increase as the easier seams and oil wells are used up first) comes to fall — one firm innovating and making extra profits, both providing the other firms with an incentive to follow suit and competition putting them under pressure to do so to stay in the race for profits.
The amount of socially necessary labour time in a commodity is not something that is, or can be, established mathematically. It's established by the market. Sometimes more is produced than the market requires; in which case the labour time involved in producing the unsold surplus is wasted and would not enter into your average (arithmetical mean). Also, it is not the cost of having produced a commodity that is relevant but the cost of reproducing it. As in most industries (mining and extraction are exceptions), with the introduction of more efficient machines or ways of organising production, this will tend to fall. All this means that in practice the amount of SLNT in a commodity will be less than your arithmetic mean (supposing it could be established).
After stamps, let's discuss the economic status of Guernsey. It's in the EU Customs Union so has to apply the common external tariff for imports from outside the EU. It is in the Single Market for manufactured goods (not that they manufacture much) and follows the rulings of the European Court of Justice on this. A precedent for another, larger island of the North West coast of Ireland when it too is reduced to the status of Guernsey?
It's a bit like war. War is banned under the UN Charter, so when States go to war to protect their 'vital interests' they have to find a legal pretext for this. Military coups are no longer the flavour of the month in Africa so the military has to find a 'legal' way of overthrowing a government, in this case invoking Zimbabwe's paper constitution.
Next they'll be doing stamps for Bernardo O'Higgins, who led the struggle for Chile's independence from Spain, and President MacMahon of France. Or perhaps they already have. Just checked. They did for O'Higgins:https://www.stampnews.com/stamps/stamps_2010/stamp_1288619010_107115.html
This is virtually a French version of our pamphlet as it contains exactly the same articles by him (and nearly the same photo on the front) in which he shows how the Bolsheviks distorted Marx to try to justify the dictatorship over the proletariat that they were establishing. In addition, there is an extract from his autobiography (hence the title "How I became a Marxist") and some other, shorter articles, mainly on the aftermath of the 1905 Russian Revolution. Martov recounts how he became a Marxist, i.e someone who relied on the working class to overthrow Tsarism (as opposed to the Narodniks who relied on the peasantry) while a student at St. Petesburg University in 1892.Interesting that someone else should see republishing Martov on the Russian Revolution as a fitting analysis of what went on in Russia in 1917 and after. We could almost buy a few copies to re-sell. In fact we should though it can easily be ordered online.
The report in today's Times highlights another aspect of this study:
Quote:The researchers used the sizes of houses. Working out the economics of past civilisations, particularly prehistorical ones, is extremely difficult, but houses are something we do know about. "You look at a big mansion, it's probably someone pretty wealthy," Professor Smith said. "You look at a little shack, it's probably not."Using the ratio of the smallest homes to the largest, he and his colleagues produced estimates of inequality which they published in the journal Nature.(…) The paper converted the house size ratios into the gini coefficient, a measure used today in which "0" means no inequality and "1" means the highest possible inequality.Hunter-gatherer societies had a gini coefficient of about 0.17, an egalitarianism not now matched by any country. When people shifted to growing crops, it grew, to 0.35. When Rome was at its height it was 0.48. In Britain today, it stands an about 0.7.By coincidence this is exactly the same example that Marx famously used in Wage Labour and Capital to make the point that increasing wages did not make workers consider themselves better off if the profits of capitalists increased even more:
Quote:A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.An appreciable rise in wages presupposes a rapid growth of productive capital. Rapid growth of productive capital calls forth just as rapid a growth of wealth, of luxury, of social needs and social pleasures. Therefore, although the pleasures of the labourer have increased, the social gratification which they afford has fallen in comparison with the increased pleasures of the capitalist, which are inaccessible to the worker, in comparison with the stage of development of society in general. Our wants and pleasures have their origin in society; we therefore measure them in relation to society; we do not measure them in relation to the objects which serve for their gratification. Since they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature.Having said that, it appears that most people are not that worried about increased inequality as long as their own consumption increases. Could that be one reason why, contrary to Marx's expectation, capitalism has survived so long?
I didn't realise that his father was called Lynch and was of Irish origin. You live and learm:https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-10-13/ireland-celebrates-che-guevaras-irish-roots-stamp-despite-oppositionAnd I'd forgotten the irony of someone who said he wanted to see the end of money being in charge the country's central bank.
Just in case some are misled by the title of the original post, what we are talking about now is not finding a new Lay Out member of the committee (there already is one, as will have been noticed from the change in style of front covers in recent months) but someone to help out and be made familiar with the work involved with a view to perhaps taking over at some point or at least standing in as a replacement in an emergency.
ALB wrote:jondwhite wrote:Were any volunteers able to come forward for these?Don't fancy the SWP or Historical Materialism ones but can go to the ICC/CWO one on Saturday with a dozen or so copies if I can avoid the crowds on the way celebrating the First World Slaughter..
For the record, I went to this meeting but only sold one copy of the Russia pamphlet. But I did sell 9 copies of the Martov pamphlet (which is very suitable for "Left Communists" and almost aimed at them).
