ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
ALB
KeymasterAs in previous years, West London branch have already booked a stall.
ALB
KeymasterClause 6 and 8 of the WSPUS's Declaration of Principles are not quite the same as ours. Why should they be, e.g. there is no aristocratic privilege to overthrow in the US?http://www.wspus.org/sample-page/declaration-of-principles/
April 6, 2017 at 3:37 pm in reply to: ICC public forum, London 15 April: The Trump election and the crumbling of capitalist world order #126420ALB
KeymasterALB
KeymasterI don't think Prakhash bans squandering money on pets, does he?
ALB
KeymasterBoth sides have used (permitted) chemical weapons but it is not that plausible all that the Syrian government would choose now to use sarin (they are not in that desperate a position, in fact the opposite). More plausible is that it was the rebels to discredit the government, egged on or even arranged by the Turkish or some other regime that wants to escalate the war now that the government is winning. After all, they do think they have god on their side and god can do no wrong.A discussion here:http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_SYRIA_CHEMICAL_WEAPONS_ANALYSIS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-04-06-06-53-07
ALB
KeymasterYou forget that cats weren't originally pets. They performed a useful role in homes and in farms of keeping mice and rats (which eat food supplies) down. I can't see why this couldn't be so in socialism, especially on your small-scale farms.
ALB
KeymasterTHe full name of "The Socialist Party of Great Britain".
ALB
KeymasterWe now know who are opponents are in Guildford West:Chandler (Tory), Dokimakis (Lab), Purvis (Green), White (LibDem) and Morris (Peace Party).White is the outgoing councillor. There is no UKIP candidate (no point anyway, now they've won the referendum).The Peace Party is a christian-inspired pacificist party, based in Guildford, which regularly contests elections there, including the last General Election. They are on the ballot paper as "The Peace Party – Non-Violence, Justice, Environment".In the rest of Surrey, there is one other candidate using the word "socialist" on the ballot paper: TUSC in Staines.
ALB
KeymasterAlan is right. If you think "fiat money is made from debt" you haven't been following this thread. But what's the basis for this claim?
ALB
KeymasterHey, moderator, can't you do anything about this poncy ponzi? He's abusing our hospitability by making minor changes to past posts so his thread always appears at the top. A mark mof a real obsessive crank-pot
ALB
KeymasterPrakash RP wrote:[ Would like to add the following text to my comment dated 02 April 2017: ' I wish British socialists would NOT fail to take cognisance … ' ] ' We hold that socialism ( or communism, the same thing ) can only come into being when a majority want it, i.e. it depends on majority political action,but you are never going to get a majority behave as you propose. ' [ ALB's comment dated 27/03/2017 ] I'd like to substitute the expressions ' a majority ' and ' majority political action ' in the above quote with respectively ' the majority of the politically active section of the working people ' and ' the political action of the majority of the politically active section of the working people '.Now we are getting to the bottom of it. This sounds like a formula for minority political action. Is it?
ALB
KeymasterI'm reading (or re-reading, can't remember) Rudolf Hilferding's classic Finance Capital from 1910. He clearly understood how banks work:
Quote:As a provider of credit, the bank works with all the capital at its disposal; its own and that of others. Its gross profit consists of interest paid on the capital which it has lent. Its net profit – after deduction of expenses – is the difference between the interest paid to it and the interest, which it pays on deposits. This profit is not, therefore, profit in the strict sense, and its level is not determined by the average rate of profit. Like that of any other money capitalist it arises from interest. The position of middleman that the bank occupies in credit circulation enables it to profit not only from its own capital, like any other money capitalist, but also from that of its creditors to whom it pays a lower interest than it demands from its debtors.(…) The level of interest depends upon supply and demand of loan capital in general, of which bank capital is only a part. This level of interest determines the gross profit. In order to attract the greatest possible amount of money for their use, the banks in turn pay interest on their deposits; and the amount of such capital at the disposal of any bank depends, ceteris paribus, upon the level of interest which it pays on deposits. Competition for deposits compels the banks to pay the highest possible rate of interest. The difference between the interest which the banks receive as creditors and the interest which they pay as debtors constitutes their net profit. (p. 172)Of course, some banks also make profits from other activities such as share flotations but this is the investment banking side of the activities and of investment banks, which Hilferding is more interested in.
ALB
KeymasterPrakash RP wrote:I wish British socialists would NOT fail to take cognisance of the following two points.( 1 ) There exists an irreconcilable contradiction between your matrimonial mission and your communist mission. By your matrimonial mission, I mean your duties and obligations towards your wife, supposing you're a man, and children, and your matrtimonial ( or familial ) duties and obligations are, in my view, ensuring the social and financial security and well-being as well as a decent lifestyle of your family members each and decent upbringing of the kids and decent livelihood of the grown-up kids. Nevertheless, the brute and inescapable truth is men are pitifully defficient in their capacity and calibre they need be possessed of in order to make a worthy husband or a worthy father.That might still be the situation in India but it is no longer the predominant one in Britain. Here, both "partners" work and in fact have to to maintain the same standard of living as in the times when the husband was the only "breadwinner". Here, the only women who marry to get a "meal ticket" are those who manage to catch a rich man, which means they don't need to go out and work for a wage — and who, when they get divorced, sue their ex-husbands for as much as they can get (and are regarded with contempt by most women as well as by all men). "Culture clash", as I said.
ALB
KeymasterPrakash RP wrote:A communist, by my view, must appreciate that their way of living, like their words and actions, ought to be inspirational for the benighted millions, the born poor and deprived, that sweat blood, like beasts of burden, to produce all wealth and luxuries but lead a hard and humble existence themselves throughout their life.There seems to be a bit of a "culture clash " here. Is there some tradition in India of "holy men" who live like this and are respected by "the benighted millions"? I don't know. In any event, it is only the "masses" who can establish/socialism by and for themselves and not by following some minority of right-behaving socialists/communists.
ALB
KeymasterHarry Young also said that vegetarianism was a capitalist plot to reduce wages by getting the workers to eat grass.
-
AuthorPosts
