ALB

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Viewing 15 posts - 6,376 through 6,390 (of 10,502 total)
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  • in reply to: European Single Market: Will Britain stay in? #120186
    ALB
    Keymaster

    The editorial in today's Times suggests that joining the European Economic Area (like Norway) could be an "interim" solution:

    Quote:
    The decision on June 23 was to leave the European Union, and EEA membership is a perfectly sensible way out.

    Joining this as an interim measure would buy more time and, later at any time, the UK could withdraw from that too. But no doubt the Times and the majority section of the British ruling class hope that EEA membership would turn out to be permanent.

    ALB
    Keymaster

    Why don't yous try and comment on other things like in this one.  I'm sure there'd be no problem.

    lindanesocialist wrote:
    Bill, workers are living on the streets, starving, cold and if lucky if they are sleeping on a friend;s settee. I couldnt give a fuck about the clubs of big business. The party needs to prioritise and the EU is of no relevance to us'How about a special meeting on HUNGER and HOMELESSNESS andPersonally I dont give a fuck about brexit
    in reply to: Left and Right Unite! – For the UBI Fight! #104103
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Like we've always said this confirms that it all just tax reformism

    ALB
    Keymaster

    Tim, I've been a trade union representative too and often the solution found was a pragmatic one. This is the case here as in practice nobody is being prevented from posting here, i.e. a way round the "ban" has been found which has been accepted by everyone.

    in reply to: Marx and the bluebooks #121610
    ALB
    Keymaster
    alanjjohnstone wrote:
    Can't say there is much i dissent with in that.

    Personally I've never thought much of that well-known quote from Proudhon. It is individualist anarchism which any anarcho-capitalist would endorse. In fact do endorse. And it was Proudhon's objection to "communism" to which he was vehemently opposed all this life.I read (ploughed) all the way through that anthologyof his writings  Iain Mckay gathered and I can let you know that you've missed nothing by not having read him. His stuff is just turgid and pompous with it. There's nothing of interest in what he wrote except perhaps his understanding that working for wages was an indignity. Only he didn't want to end it by going forward to the common ownership, democratic control and production directly for use of communism/socialism but backwards to an imagined society of independent (self-employed) producers, some organised in coops, producing for the market. He's not one of us and deserved the ridicule Marx gave him.

    in reply to: Marx and the bluebooks #121602
    ALB
    Keymaster
    alanjjohnstone wrote:
    TWC, in your haste to defend Marx, you appear to read that when i quote Iain Mackay's opinion, you ascribe them to me.

    But I think the way you introduced MacKay's view did suggest that you endorsed it..

    alanjjohnstone wrote:
    I believe Iain Mackay's book on Proudhon is critical of Marx's habit of distorting certain parts of Proudhon's writings.

    How else are people to interpret the words "critical of Marx's habit" which is accepting, as MacKay alleges,  that Marx did have this habit?If you want to be nice to those anarchists who are near to us, there is no need to do so for those who aren't  such as Proudhon who was an anti-socialist and his modern-day supporters who stand for a state-free market economy.  I have never understood why anarchists want to see Proudhon as their founding father.

    in reply to: Labour MPs revolt against Corbyn #120340
    ALB
    Keymaster

    My (conspiracy) theory as to why the ruling class, echoed by their media, are so hostile to Corbyn is that he is against Britain having nuclear weapons and being part of NATO. They can't afford to have Her Majesty's Opposition and alternative government committed to this. Remember the last time this risked happening. They split the Labour Party so that it didn't have a chance of getting into power. They could well do it again.Of course, we know that the Labour Party has always been undemocratic (controlled by its parliamentary leaders not its membership) and that in government it won't be able to behave much differently from governments under capitalism everywhere. So the Labour leadership election is a bit of a side show for us though the anti-Corbyn campaign in the media is revealing in that it shows how they try to manipulate things in the interests of the ruling class.

    in reply to: Marx and the bluebooks #121600
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Fortunately this time the allegations are readily available. Here:http://anarchism.pageabode.com/pjproudhon/appendix-proudhon-and-marx.htmlI've had a quick look and they seem more like disagreements than distortions.

    in reply to: Marx and the bluebooks #121593
    ALB
    Keymaster
    alanjjohnstone wrote:
    A more detailed expose

    I don't think "exposé" is the right word here as it begs the question that there was something underhand to "expose". If you wanted to be neutral rather than taking the critics' side, a better word would have been "claim" or something like that.

    in reply to: Marx and the bluebooks #121589
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Not been able to find the original article to see exactly what they wrote. But here's what Eric Hobsbawn, who evidently has read it, says in his How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism:

    Quote:
    The first serious attack on Marx's scholarship as we have seen came from two Cambridge dons in 1885 (Tanner and Carey) (…) It is the tone of denigration rather than the content of the Cambridge critics which is interesting: phrases like 'the mongrel algebraical expressions' of Capital or 'an almost criminal recklessness in the use of authorities which warrants us in regarding other parts of Marx's work with suspicion' indicate – at least in economic subjects – something more than scholarly disapproval. In fact, what made Tanner and Carey mad was not simply his treatment of the evidence – they shied away from 'the charge of deliberate falsification especially since falsification seems so unnecessary' (i.e., since the facts were black enough anyway) – but 'the unfairness of his whole attitude towards Capital'. Capitalists are kinder than Marx gives them credit for; he is unfair to them;  we must be unfair to him. Such, broadly, appears to be the basis of the critics' attitude.

    So, according to him, the answer to your question is "No, Marx did not falsify what he found in the blue books". The two did not make the charge of "falsification" nor  of "misquoteation" only of "misrepresentation" of role of capitalists. Not at all the same thing but just the sort of defence of capitalism you'd expect from Cambridge economists, then as now.Their article has recently become part of anti-Marx folklore but I doubt if most of those using it will have read it.

    in reply to: Marx and the bluebooks #121585
    ALB
    Keymaster
    mullrae wrote:
    Did Marx falsify what he found in the blue books to suit his own ends.

    Who makes this claim and what is their evidence?

    ALB
    Keymaster

    Re the group in Turkey that has contacted us, for obvious reasons both sides have suspended communication for the time being.

    in reply to: Varoufakis on Negative Interest rates #121517
    ALB
    Keymaster
    Young Master Smeet wrote:
    We already have negative interest, given inflation is below most available interest rates

    I think you mean "above" not "below" don't you? All current accounts have been paying negative real interest (where what you get back will buy less), the money in your bank account being in effect (and law) a loan to the bank. What is now new is that we are entering the territory of negative nominal interest too (where you actually get less money back). I've already got some krugerrands under my bed.

    in reply to: Michael Albert goes for the lesser evil #121174
    ALB
    Keymaster

    How can you take seriously someone who advocates that your neighbours and/or your work colleagues should have a say in what clothes you buy and what magazines you subscribe to?  Not participatory democracy but a totalitarian nightmare.

    in reply to: Jill Stein and the American Green Party #121494
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Fair enough but these people standing in the US presidential elections seem more likely to talk about Debs than the Greens:http://vote-socialist.org/Hopelessly reformist of course.

Viewing 15 posts - 6,376 through 6,390 (of 10,502 total)