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For the record, back numbers of the Socialist Standard were distributed to those attending. The report-back was that far less than the organisers anticipated turned up and that the Stop Trump Coalition is just another SWP front organisation. Nothing new — or interesting — there then.
This is what happened when Britain changed to the current calendar in 1752:http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Give-us-our-eleven-days/
Because at the time Russia was using an old calender which was 13 days behind the one used (and still used) in the West, the Tsar was overthrow in March not February 1917 of course and the Bolshevik coup took place in November not October. So the "Great October Revolution" is a myth even on this level — it took place in November.
There are County Council elections in Durham too, which the Party has contested on a number of occasions.
This article contains an outline of Jevons's thinking and argumentation on this point:http://www.economictheories.org/2008/08/jevons-sunspots-and-commercial-activity.htmlI particularly liked this quote from him:
Quote:If the planets govern the sun, and the sun governs the vintages and harvests, and thus the prices of food and raw materials and the state of the money market, it follows that the configurations of the planets may prove to be the remote causes of the greatest commercial disasters (Investigations, p. 185).Is this a theory of what causes sun spots too?
What was absurd about Jevons's sun-spot theory of crises was not that crises (economic downturns) cannot be caused by some natural event (some obviously have been) but that a natural event explained the regular boom/slump cycle. Here's how Jevons set out his theory in his textbook Political Economy (1878):
Quote:Good vintage years on the continent of Europe, and droughts in India, recur every ten or eleven years, and it seems probable that commercial crises are connected with a periodic variation of weather, affecting all parts of the earth, and probably arising from increased waves of heat received from the sun at average intervals of ten years and a fraction. A greater supply of heat increases the harvests, makes capital more abundant and trade more successful, and thus helps to create the hopefulness out of which a bubble arises. A falling off in the sun's heat makes bad harvests and deranges many enterprises in different parts of the world. This is likely to break the bubble and bring on a commercial collapse.As a statistician he was able to present figures showing some correlation between sun-spots and commercial crises, but this could surely serve as a classic case of the dictum that "correlation does not mean causation".The other objection to the theory is that it tries to explain the regularly recurring economic downturns that are a feature of capitalism by some event outside the system rather than by something inherent in the system itself.
At one time those who think that the exchange value of a product is determined by its "marginal utility" thought that utility could be measured in terms of some unit called perhaps a "util". They soon realised that this could not be done and now only argue that all that can be measured is whether or not one thing is more useful than something else:https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Principles_of_Economics/UtilityI'm not sure, though, how this helps them explain the different prices of different goods. I'd have thought it made it more difficult.
Yes, the man who thought that economic crises were caused by sunspots:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2011/no-1280-april-2011/cooking-books-1don%E2%80%99t-ask-jevonshttp://www.economictheories.org/2008/08/jevons-sunspots-and-commercial-activity.html
There is something odd about this link as Terry Barrett died about ten years ago, so why is it being published now?. John Palmer, an IS original who would have known him personally, writing in 2009 said (scroll down to comment 4):
Quote:Terry was an exceptional militant and socialist – who received his political education by the way NOT in the CP but in the SPGB.We'll need to check in our archives to see whether he was actually a member or just a sympathiser.
Young Master Smeet wrote:(I wouldn't be surpised if some London planner is looking at pulling Ireland out of the EU to resolve the border question).Maybe but I don't think the Irish ruling class is going to accept that. The Republican tradition has always preferred to be dependent on Germany rather than Britain. Hence their support for Germany in both world wars and in 1978 the choice to join the European Monetary System breaking the 1 to 1 link between the Irish punt and the British pound, i.e in effect tying it to the DM. I can't see them going back on that.
The Turkish Army is having difficulty in capturing the ISIS provincial outpost of Al Bab in Syria:http://syriadirect.org/news/contrary-to-turkish-optimism-an-arduous-battle-against-a-%e2%80%98dug-in%e2%80%99-islamic-state-in-al-bab/Meanwhile here's what the "moderate" rebels recently booted out of eastern Aleppo are up to:http://syriadirect.org/news/when-islamic-police-raid-a-school-for-girls-to-examine-their-clothing-an-impromptu-protest-forces-them-to-release-the-arrested/
He's actually based in the Kingston University which falls within the area of West London branch, so we could contact him. What, a debate on "Is the Labour Theory of Value" valid?
Dave B wrote:I think computing software and associated paraphernalia is an interesting example as they are machines after a fashion and once created can be replicated for nothing.In that case they have nothing — no value — to transfer to the product. Robbo's quote from MacCulloch makes this point, as does Marx in this passage from Chapter 9 of Volume I:
Quote:If we look at the means of production, in their relation to the creation of value, and to the variation in the quantity of value, apart from anything else, they appear simply as the material in which labour-power, the value-creator, incorporates itself. Neither the nature, nor the value of this material is of any importance. The only requisite is that there be a sufficient supply to absorb the labour expended in the process of production. That supply once given, the material may rise or fall in value, or even be, as land and the sea, without any value in itself; but this will have no influence on the creation of value or on the variation in the quantity of value.
