[ALB]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Perhaps the Daily Record might compare Hardie with Farage. Speaking of the Poles at Glengarnock, he said "their habits are very filthy, six or seven males occupying a one-roomed house, and having women to cook for them"(…)According to Hardie, the Lithuanians migrant workers in the mining industry had “filthy habits”, they lived off “garlic and oil”, and they were carriers of “the Black Death”.

In what year did Hardie make these remarks and by "Poles" and "Lithuanians" did he mean "Jews" fleeing from areas that were then part of Tsarist Russia?

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Thanks for the translation. Just what I was looking for. Is there a Lanzarote in Mexico as well as in the Canary Islands off Africa?

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Thanks but something from him even in Spanish about Cuba being state capitalist and why will do as well.

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mcolome1 wrote:

PS The grandson of Ernesto Che Guevara is an anarchist and he has said that his grandfather was just a supporter of state capitalism, and the dictatorship of a single party rule. He has never said that he was a socialist or communist

I didn't know that. Where can I find more?

[ALB]

Here's the original reply to the famous "W.B of Upton Park" in the February 1910 Socialist Standard:

Quote:

W. B. (Upton Park) asks, what would be the action of a member of the S.P.G.B. elected to Parliament, and how would he maintain our principle of "no compromise" ?By compromise we understand "political trading," the "one-and-one principle" for example (see first page). The Socialist member of Parliament (while in the minority, of course), would advance the interests of the working class by caustic and enlightening criticism of capitalism in all its manifestations—political, industrial, educational, etc., etc. He would take every opportunity that offered to use this higher and well-heard platform as a means of spreading Socialist understanding.His presence, backed, as it must needs be, by a wide-awake electorate (suggestive of more to come and the threatened "end of all,") would in all probability evoke the initiation, by one or other of the capitalist parties, of measures that may conceivably contain some small advantage for the working-class. Now intellectual vitality requires the continual absorption, and digestion of new facts as they occur. So with Socialism and proletarian politics. The S.P.G.B. is always ready to consider new facts and phases when these present themselves, and therefore the question of whether Socialist representatives should support any such measures in Parliament, is one that we do not, in January 1910, pretend to answer. We can only say as to this, that as we progress and new situations arise, our membership, ever guided by the revolutionary principle of NO COMPROMISE, by our general understanding of Socialism and the requirements of the greatest interest of the working class, its emancipation, will DEMOCRATICALLY direct the action of its representatives. Each new situation, will have to be faced and Socialist action be decided upon the merits of the case. Meanwhile we may not claim rank with the Pope or Old Moore, and it should be understood that there is room for difference of opinion upon a matter that, at the present stage, is only of secondary importance. Our work to-day is to teach our fellow toilers their position and show them the indispensable steps they must take to win freedom.—(Ed. " S.S.")

[ALB]

Sympo wrote:

Does the "correct" theory of truth have a name?

The first point to note is that the Socialist Party does not lay down a "correct" theory of "truth". As far as we're concerned to be a member, as long as someone accepts that there's an "external world" outside mind and that no god or gods have intervened, are intervening or will intervene in the course of human affairs that's ok.Having said that, for those more interested in the question, we refer to those writers in the "Marxist tradition" already mentioned (Joseph Dietzgen, Anton Panneloek, Paul Mattick) who argue that what scientists are doing is not so much "discovering" the ouside world "as it is" as describing its course in a way that it can be more or less accurately predicted and so used to serve human purposes. Perhaps the clearest exposition of this point of view is Anton Pannekoek's Lenin As Philospher here.In this sense, what is "true" would be what is "useful to human survival". That's my view but other members may have a different approach. I think it has something in common with this view of Marx's that  "truth" is demonstracted by practice.As he put it, in his Theses on Feuernach:

Quote:

The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.

Even so, some of us seem to enjoy discussing "scholastic" questions.

[ALB]

ALB wrote:

Actually, Sympo, while this theory, "naive realism" if you like, is alright for everyday living, it's not really adequate.  Our minds don't simply reflect or photograph the world out there "as it really is".

L.Bird wrote:

The difference in the ideologies of Engels' (and your) 'materialism', and Marx's (and my) 'idealism-materialism', is that the former sees 'external reality' 'as it is', outside of social activity (labour),…

YMS, I don't know why you bother to engage with this serial, and possibly congenital and attention-seeking, liar.

[ALB]

Yes, of course, there would be some phenomena which we now call Mars even if we didn't. I don't think Marx subscribed to the view that there was no "external reality" before the human mind evolved than he did to the "20 trillion flies can't be wrong" theory of truth. If he had, his critics would have had a field day.

[ALB]

One for Brighton section of Kent & Sussex Branch here:https://m.facebook.com/events/660596360754487/?ti=cl

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Sympo wrote:

But something is true, or false, independently from what we think of the subject, right?

There is something out there that's independent of our minds, the "outside world" if you like, statements about which are either true or false according to a particular theory of truth. But, as statements are the product of minds, it can't be said "truth" or "falsity" are independent of minds.In other words, there is an external world outside the mind (or, more accurately, of which human minds are part). Only philosophical idealists (better idea-ists) hold that this is creation of mind (whether the mind of a "God" or of collective humanity or a single individual) but, in practice, they don't really believe this as they, like the rest of us, behave as if there was an independent, external world.

[ALB]

Couldn't read that but there were other articles in the press yesterday  comparing of the two, e.g. here:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3718044/Watch-Corbyn-Labour-party-pioneer-Keir-Hardie-branded-enemy-state-considered-life-prison-ministers-newly-published-archives-reveal.htmlA bit far-fetched as there was not the slightest chance of it being acted on as the Liberal government of the day depended on the support of Labour and Irish Nationalist MPs. And the last time the 1797 Mutiny Act was used was in 1834 to transport the Tolpuddle Martyrs to Australia.

[ALB]

Sympo wrote:

After reading what "correspondence theory of truth" means, then yes this is what I think is correct at the moment.

Actually, Sympo, while this theory, "naive realism" if you like, is alright for everyday living, it's not really adequate.  Our minds don't simply reflect or photograph the world out there "as it really is".There is something out there, a passing mass of ever-changing phenomena, which the mind makes sense of by describing and naming parts of it, this with a view to being able to better survive in it by being able to predict what will happen, both to take this into account (eg the apparent movement of the Sun in the sky which means that day will follow night) as well as to control it (if you do x, y will happen, eg plant seeds and food will grow). This is essentially what science is doing.

[ALB]

I don't think Marx did subscribe to the "20 trillion flies can't be wrong" theory of truth

[ALB]

Interesting report. I don't think most of Corbyn's supporters will be Trotskyists if only because there aren't that many of them. Two of my relatives joined Labour to vote for him. One of them asked me who Trotsky was.  I think most of his supporters were be more Green-types. After all, a lot of his policies and that of the Green Party are the same.

[ALB]

Sympo wrote:

ALB wrote:

"That the sum total of the prices all the goods and services on sale is the same as the sum total of their exchange-values. But don't forget the words "in principle" as this assumes that capitalism is a static economy whereas it is not."

Why do you believe that this is the case, that total price equals total exchange value? What leads you to this conclusion?

Marx's argument is that if, under capitalism, commodities sold at their value (the amount of socially necessary labour required to produce them from start to finish) the more profitable industries would be the labour intensive ones (since profit derives from unpaid, or surplus, labour as labour expended over and above the cost of reproducing the workforce's working capacity). But this is not the case as there is a tendency for the rate of profit on capital invested to be equal across all industries.His explanation for this is that the part of a commodity's value corresponding to surplus value is, as it were, pooled with that of all other commodities and shared out amongst capitalists in proportion to the amount of capital they invested. This is brought about by competition and capitalists moving their investment from less profitable to more profitable industries.His assumption is that total profit = total surplus value; which means also that total prices = total exchange values.But total prices = total exchange values is only a tendency towards an equilibrium position that is never reached in practice as capitalism is a dynamic system in which the factors determining value are always changing due to increases in productivity (which decrease the value of already existing or previously produced commodities).So, it's all to do with Marx's theory of surplus value as the source of profits.

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