ALB
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I don't know who associates us with "Western Marxism". Hardly appropriate if this only came into being in the 1970s when we'd being going for 70 years by then ! I'd prefer something like "Non-Leninist Marxism" or even "original" or "orthodox" Marxism.But at least you've proved Pavlov right. Just mention the word "Engels" and our feathered friend swoops down.
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:I think you are tool who was duped by John Gault. The government of the USA Psyops division did a similar trick with the media by promting the term "conspiracy theory" and associating it with crazy people.LOL. We don't half attract 'em.
If you've never come across a money crank before, now you have. They think up an alternative to the present money system and then go on and on and on about it. In this particular case, as YMS is pointing out, the cranky scheme is worse than the present system as it requires every single exchange to be recorded. Negative interest about sums it up.
From the 700 or so leaflets we distributed in the constituency we have had 2 replies asking, on a tear-off addressed freepost card, for an information pack and a 3-month trial subscription. This — 1 per 350 leaflets — is actually quite a good reponse rate these days. In any event, higher than the rate from the 3000 or so distributed during the Witney by-election: 3 useful replies (we actually got 9 replies, but 6 of these were blank ones from opponents, probably Tories who didn't like "socialists", who wanted to make us pay for using freepost — freepost is only free to the sender not the recipient). Of course we've no way of measuring the number who read them.The trick seems to be the tear-off reply card. I wonder if we can't find a way of incorporating one into our election leaflets — or would this provoke more malicious replies?
Here's this week's Weekly Worker letter page report:http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1133/letters/The debateson 'market socialism' continue with three letters from our side. They are replies to letters in the previous issue:http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1132/letters/
Party members votes will have been counted among those "void for uncertainty". This is the standard practice if anything is written on the ballot paper even if it is quite clear what the voter meant, eg "None of the Above". In my case, I wrote the word SOCIALISM in red in the box for each candidate (and one outside as there were 8 candidates but the word socialism has 9 letters). I suppose their logic is that it is uncertain which candidate you want to vote for. In some cases, eg where the x has been placed over two boxes, this will be the case. But in most cases it is quote clear that the voters intended to vote for none or the candidates or, the same thing, against them all.
The last few hundred of the "The problm is not the Tories … It's capitalism" leaflet have been distributed in the Kingston part of the constituency, in the same council ward that we contested in the 2006 local elections. Now, we can sit back and wait to see which capitalist candidate is elected — except that the Party members living in the constituency need to remember to go and cast a write-in vote for "WORLD SOCIALISM" on election day, this Thursday.
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:Why don't you stick to critiquing ideas and avoid the personal attacks as much as possible? That's what I do.Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:the biggest trick capitalist ever pulled on you, Mcolmee1, was getting you to agree to their values. They've tricked you good and they created the term money crank to discredit economic theories like those of marx. You've taking up the job of capitalist in defending capitalism and call it socialism. Well, you're wrong and a traitor to the poeple and you don't even know it because you've been bought and paid for by the capitalist disinformation system.Here's some of the things we've said about Castro and Cuba over the years:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1960s/1961/no-677-january-1961/cuban-background http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1960s/1961/no-680-april-1961/cuban-cockpit-and-castro http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1960s/1968/no-772-december-1968/abolition-wages-system-cuban-stylehttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1980s/1984/no-956-april-1984/cuba-under-castrohttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2003/no-1190-october-2003/cuba-no-workers-paradisehttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2008/no-1250-october-2008/cooking-books-1-cuba%E2%80%99s-wage-systemNaturally, there will be a major article on him in the January Socialist Standard.
jondwhite wrote:What if there is mass unionisation, can the workers organised stop wages falling as a proportion of profit?It's not quite clear what you mean by "wages as a proportion of profits" since wages are not a proportion of profits. Do you mean the ratio of wages to profits? Or do you mean wages as a proportion of newly added value (wages + profits)? Whichever, it's not something that unions can lastingly influence in any significant wayEssentially, all unions can do is ensure that their members get the full value of the labour power that they sell to their employer. In times of boom (particularly in a particular industry) they can push wages a little above this level. In times of slump, on the other hand, the most they can do is to stop real wages falling as much as they otherwise would.Even if they could of course there would still be exploitation, and employers would speed up the introduction of labour-saving machinery to push the rate of exploitation (profits divided by wages, expressed as a percentage) up again.
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:1) "Since capitalism is a worldwide class society and exchange economy, it is clear that the exploitation-less alternative to capitalism would have to be a classless world society without exchange." – well, sort of I agree. This has exchange, but it's not exploitative. people still do favors for each other and put objects in the hands of others and that's what I mean by "exchange".No he doesn't agree at all. Of course people will continue to do things for each other after capitalism has been ended but he wants to make things worse than they are under capitalism by applying the capitalist principle of equal exchange even to the favours people do for each other.PS I wish people would do what I've just done. Trim his posts when commenting (it's easy: you keep the [ quote] at the beginning and the [ /quote] at the end and delete the passages you're not commenting on). Otherwise his ramblings are up there twice and is a waste of space (but not of time if you don't bother to re-read them)
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:I did enjoy reading it and spent about an hour on reading, reasoning and writing my reply. Can I ask how much time you spent so I can estimate how much value you put into your reply in terms of time and offer a fair exchange of value with my time?What he proposes is worse than capitalism since he wants to reduce all human interactions to an exchange of equal values. Not even capitalism has achieved that.
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:I have created an exchange system that lets you run an entire economy without ever exchanging $1.Here's the classic definition of a money crank:
Quote:a person who believe that all, or the vast majority of, social ills are caused by the current money system and thus can be solved by implementing an imaginary money system that they have designed can be safely considered a money crank.
