ALB
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I was once at a debate between Wedgewood Benn and the Green Party at which he made the point that revolutions are inspired by hope of a better future rather than by fear of worse one (predictably, the Green Party representative was speaking doom and gloom and predicting the end of the world in 40 years, etc, etc). I think Benn had a valid point. In fact fear can lead people to support reaction rather than revolution.
This article from the Socialist Standard discusses the difference between national accounting in the West and in the one-time state capitalist countries of Russia and Eastern Europe:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2005/no-1207-march-2005/cooking-books-1-lies-damned-lies-and-statistics
Quote:The artifice that the government statisticians found to get out of this has been to treat government spending as productive, as resulting in a “product” (education, health care, administration, law and order, “defence”, though not “social security”). As a result, national output is inflated by as much as 20 percent. The former state capitalist countries of Russia and Eastern Europe did not count such government spending as productive, i.e. did not double count it as part of output, and when they adopted the same national accounting system as in the rest of the capitalist world their GDPs jumped by 18-24 percent depending on the country.G'day Mike and welcome to the forum. The reason why I mentioned De Leonism was this passage which suggests that socialism wouldn't be entirely "money-free" as there would still be a "medium of exchange", presumably labour-time vouchers or so-called "labour money":
Mike Ballard wrote:Socialism is a different mode of producing and distributing wealth. As use-values are no longer saddled with their exchange-value in order to be sold in the market for a price which fluctuates with supply and demand around exchange-value and instead, use-values are distributed on the basis of labour time put into creating the social store of goods and services, the medium of exchange is not longer a commodity–it is not traded on the market, it has no price, it no longer embodies the alienated wealth of the producers as the producers sociall own and democratically manage the collective product of their labour.I don't this system is either necessary or workable or even desirable (as it would still tie consumption to work done — and it would still involved "pricing" goods and services).
Kaz, I think you've got the wrong Mike Ballard. This one sounds more like he's been in the SLP (De Leonist).
Our feathered friend doesn't half lead us on wild goose chases. First, it was about whether the Sun moves round the Earth. Then, it was about whether external reality exists. Now, it's about whether 2 + 2 = 4. All of which are to be settled by a referendum. It's just not possible to have a meaningful discussion with him.
DId you mention this because Dan Billany was a member of the SPGB for a couple of years. See (scroll down):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2000/no-1151-july-2000/book-reviews
Actually we are getting more enquiries than before from the US via http://www.worldsocialism.org
I don't think socialist society would or could or should try to measure "socially necessary labour time". It doesn't make sense as this is a category of an exchange economy (established by the workings of that economy).Marx does seem to have favoured labour-time accounting but this wouldn't be trying to measure (the equivalent of) socially necessary labour-time. To be useful, it would have to be actual labour-time, i.e the actual use of the resource labour-power of various kinds.Attempts to reproduce "socially necessary labour" in a non-capitalist society (such as that of the Dutch Council Communists in the 1930s) have been internally inconsistent and have in effect re-introduced the sort of circulating labour-money that Marx criticised in John Gray, Proudhon, etc.It would be possible to fix some arbitary average labour (and vote on what it should be) and use this as a unit of account but this would take us to the nightmare society envisaged by Michael Albert and his "Parecon" where people get to vote even on precisely what an individual can consume (individuals have to submit a list of what they want to some committee). On the other hand, it might appeal to some as his blueprint involves virtually non-stop voting.
robbo203 wrote:So if you paid a bunch of workers to dig a big hole in the ground and then fill it in again, thereby achieving exactly nothing in real terms, the economy would have grown and we would all presumbly be that much richer! LOLThat's because they are measuring actual labour rather than socially necessary labour. Don't know how you would measure the latter. Not sure you can. In criticising various schemes for "labour money" in his day Marx suggested it couldn't be.
Actually, the problem they have come across brings out the validity of the labour theory of value. They seem to want to include use-value whereas in fact GDP is based on and is a measure of exchange-value. In Marxian terms GDP is the new value added in a year, or rather Net Domestic Product is because the gross figure includes depreciation which is replacing used up value. Basically, it's surplus value (and its subdivisions) + labour income. "Growth" is the amount by which this increases from one year to the next (not that it always does, of course, as the figure also "slumps" from time to time).One way they calculate GDP is, in fact, capital income + labour income, This means that national product = national income. The other way is measuring the "value added" (their terminology) by adding this up for each industry and field of activity. So, If you try to add "added use-value" (as,eg. from what is freely available or housework) then this equation will no longer hold as national product will be greater than national income. In trying to combine exchange values and use values it's no wonder they get into difficulties.
The Socialist Standard will be doing something similar each month from March to November, reprinting extracts from articles on Russia publised at the time.One thing we will need to avoid during this year of the overthrow of Tsarism and the Bolshevik coup is being too closely associated with the Mensheviks. Although some Mensheviks had a better understanding than the Bolsheviks of what was possible (and what was not) in Russia after the overthrow of the Tsar in March 1917, they were still reformist Social Democrats as an article in the April 1932 Socialist Standard pointed out:
Quote:A reader at St. John, New Brunswick, asks the following questions :—What was the programme, or principles, in brief, of the Mensheviks and the Left Social Revolutionaries, now under a ban in Russia? Have these extinct organisations much in common with the S.P.G.B. ?Yours, etc., M. WASSON.Reply. (….)In 1920 when a British Labour Delegation visited Russia the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries each issued a full statement of their position. These were included in the Report of the Delegation (Published by the Labour Party and Trades Union Congress, London).If the Mensheviks could be judged solely on this declaration of Socialist principles there would be little to find fault with.The S.R. declaration, on the other hand, contains little about principles, and is not in any real sense a Socialist declaration at all. It is merely a propaganda effort to justify the tactics of the S.R. Party and to blacken the Bolsheviks.The important thing is that the Menshevik document referred to above, although issued by the Central Committee of the Party, does not give anything like a full and true picture. Rather it represents the views of certain individuals on Socialist principles, completely divorced from the actions of the Party. This characteristic of the Mensheviks is one often found in the Labour Parties of Western Europe and elsewhere.Let us look at certain of their actions.The Mensheviks permitted their members to support the war—-in flat contradiction of' the Socialist principles they were supposed to understand and accept.The Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries (and the Bolsheviks) belonged to the Second International before the war. They accepted the absurd claim that that body and its affiliated parties were Socialist.The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries are still affiliated to the "Labour and Socialist International" and still push the reforms which make up the only stock-in-trade of that non-Socialist body.It will be seen, therefore, that the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries have no more in common with the S.P.G.B. than any of the other reformist parties which find it convenient to cover over their reformist programmes with a gloss of Marxian phrases and ideas.ED. COMM.Looks as if once again that the Far Right has stolen the Far Left's clothes, this time in denouncing globalisation and promising protection from it:http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-france-election-fn-idUKKBN15K0M2As the news item points out:
Quote:There are some similarities between Melenchon's platform and Le Pen's, both sceptical of the EU and globalisation, but with very different answers as the former Socialist staunchly criticises Le Pen's views on migration.Mélenchon is the leader of the Left Front, a political organisation supported by the French Communist Party and some Trotskyists and Greens.
I think it is wring to call Trump a dictator or imagine that he could transform himself into one. The US constitution was based on that of Britain at the time but without the hereditary element. Thus the President is an elected King but he can't do anything he wants. His "executive orders" are the equivalent of the "royal prerogative", now exercised in Britain by the government, and just restricted by the Supreme Court decision on triggering Article 50. Trump is finding that the courts in the US can also review his exercise of George III's royal prerogative. The US is not a dictatorship and Trump is not a dictator, just an arrogant jumped up businessman who has managed to get himself elected President and who will come unstuck if he carries on in the way he now is, e,g criticising federal judges.
