ALB
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Robbo, now he's added insincerity as well as dishonesty to his repertoire as well as scoring a spectacular own goal. He should check who wrote that book review Mod 1 mentioned:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1980s/1986/no-987-november-1986/socialism-and-democracyFor the record, both the author and the reviewer of the book are still members of the Socialist Party and will still hold the same view, including the anti-Leninism.
Still more (click on title to read):5 February, 2017:Added to the Edgar Hardcastle Internet Archive:Must Wages Come Down?, January 1931 Socialists and War (on Boris Souvarine), August 1932 Debate with I.L.P., January 1933 Inquest on the I.L.P., May 1943 Interpreting Shakespeare, February 1950 That Yellow Metal again, February 1967 Money for Nothing, March 1967 Hendrik de Man, April 1967 Objectors 1914.18, August 1967 Who Gains through Devaluation?, January 1968 Floating to Nowhere: The Currency Crisis, August 1973 Debate with Sir Keith Joseph, June 1975 James Maxton: a political failure, July 1988
Tim Kilgallon wrote:As to your nonsensical proposal to have votes for every single scientific development,Tim, it's not just on scientific developments that he wants a vote. It's also on how we describe everyday things such as a table — the perceivable and perceived regular pattern in "external conditions", "inorganic nature", "the world of phenomena", "matter", or whatever you want to call it, that was called (in French and then English) "table" generations ago without a vote having been taken, a description and social convention passed on to succeeding generations through learning and which will no doubt continue into socialism:
A Funny Man wrote:How can you consciously know 'matter', ALB, without a vote being taken by your fellow social producers?Here's a prime example of his intellectual dishonesty
ALB wrote:read the article on the following page on "Men, Ideas and Society":http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1973/no-829-september-1973/men-ideas-and-societyHe will see that it ,too, specifically repudiates the viewQuote:that the brain is a kind of camera photographing the worldDishonest Intellectual wrote:when you have a consciousnessless access to matter.Tim, and he's intellectually dishonest with it. He's just now accused us of being sympathetic to Trotsky's politics. Imagine.
Robbo, it looks as if there's only a single "democrat" in the whole wide word. It's obviously a waste of time engaging with such a deluded person. Especially as he's also intellectually dishonest in accusing us of "Leninist politics". See our blog today:https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/what-kind-of-revolution-marx-or-lenin-2.html
Dave B wrote:I actually think he probably didn’t even write it as such and it was probably drafted for him by the Bolsheviks intellectuals and had his name attached to it.This sounds a bit like intellectual snobbery. It is true that, unlike most Bolsheviks of the time who were from the university-educated intelligentsia or (like Lenin) a petty noble, Stalin was a worker and why couldn't a worker write a pamphlet himself? The founder-members of the SPGB did, at the same time.And of course the series of articles was written in Georgian not Russian, so who would have been the ghost writer?Was he sincere or not at the time? I don't know, but why not? He didn't have to put his freedom on the line and become an anti-regime agitator under an autocracy..In any event, whoever wrote it, part III of that pamphlet contains a simple, clear definition of what socialism means..
A joker wrote:No matter what Marx says, you're not going to have workers voting about whether 'matter exists' or not, are you?robbo203 wrote:the silly idea that scientific ideas – tens of thousands of them – should be put to a democratic vote by the global population …, if your silly idea were ever to be attempted I suspect less than 0.0001 per cent of the populace would even bother to vote on whether sting theory was true or not.I agree with you, Robbo, that if the issue "Does matter (external reality) exist? Yes/No" was put to a referendum, most people would vote with their feet — in the same way that Dr Johnston did when he answered the same question by kicking a stone. And if the No side won the Brexiteers' dilemma would be nothing compared with theirs. No doubt, our joker would be there to insist that "Exiting Reality means Exiting Reality". Who could disagree with that?
A joker wrote:No matter what Marx says, you're not going to have workers voting about whether 'matter exists' or not, are you?LBird wrote:Young Master Smeet wrote:The truth is, Stalin did argue for democratic workers power…I'm beginning to think that you're unhinged.
Well done, YMS. Now at least he knows what it feels like to be called a Leninist when you're not. The biter bit.
Not literally though, as Social Credit and MMT use different arguments to reach a similar conclusion — that the state should issue more money. As the article pointed out:
Quote:But there’s nothing ‘modern’ about it. It’s an old illusion of those who see unemployed workers and idle resources alongside unmet needs and think that the obvious solution is simply for the government to create and spend more money. Various schools of currency crankism have been proposing this since the first capitalist economic downturn in 1825. To be fair, MMT rejects the view that banks can create money out of nothing; they correctly say that only a government can.Major Douglas's Social Credit is based on a simple factual mistake (that there's a chronic shortage of purchasing power built-in to capitalism as we know it), two such mistakes in fact as it also imagines that banks can create credit at the stroke of a pen. MMT makes neither of these mistakes. It's just that the policy it advocates (the state issuing more money) wouldn't work in the way they imagine.
Just checked and it seems that the famous article was not in fact written by Barry McNeeny. He didn't join the Party till 1974. The article was signed B.M. There was another member with these initials who wrote articles for the Socialist Standard. So BM will be Brendan Mee ( I think he was a member of our then Bolton branch).Here's another of his articles (correctly attributed):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1973/no-823-march-1973/poison-nationalismThis article on "Lenin and the State", which makes it quite clear that we have nothing to do with Leninism, is also by him (but wrongly attributed):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1972/no-820-december-1972/lenin-and-statePS These misattributions will have to be corrected on on archive site.
LBird wrote:Just for ALB to read, once again.The obsessive refuser has just shot himself in the foot again. I read that article long before he did as I was a member of the editorial committee at the time and can assure him that it went in with the full approval of the committee. He should also read the article on the following page on "Men, Ideas and Society":http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1973/no-829-september-1973/men-ideas-and-societyHe will see that it ,too, specifically repudiates the view
Quote:that the brain is a kind of camera photographing the worldOn the other hand, some people's brains seem more like a gramophone record.
LBird wrote:the SPGB now has a pretty mainstream Leninist view about 'matter'Why do we continue to entertain this obsessive who continues to tell lies about us despite us repeadtedly refuting them. For instance:https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/why-we-are-different?page=1#comment-36702
robbo203 wrote:What ever happened to Barry?Apparently he's a railway enthuisiast:https://www.flickr.com/photos/brizzlebornandbred/7991733619Not that that's a barrier to being a member. There are other trainspotters in the Party.
