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I don't know whether there's anything in this or not but at least it's a contribution to the debate:http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/poverty-is-genetically-damaging.html
I see from the papers that it's the 40th anniversary of Dawkins's book The Selfish Gene and that they're bringing out a special anniversary edition of it. It's a terrible book. Even its basic scientific hypothesis (that the unit of biological evolution is the individual gene) has been open to challenge (look at the convolutions its supporters have to go through to explain "altruism" and the survival of females after they can no longer have offspring), but worse is the title which suggests (and was probably meant to suggest by the publishers, if not by Dawkins himself)and which successfully cashed in on the popular and populist illusion that humans are genetically selfish. Ok, Dawkins later recognised that he'd gone too far and he backtracked in the books he wrote after by introducing "extended phenotypes", grouped genes, "memes", etc.Having said that, his The Blind Watchmaker (also being repiblished) is a good popular science book explaining evolution. He's also done some other good work defending rationalism against religion and pseudi-science. Even so, The God Illusion (which is being republished too) suffers from being a purely rationalist criticism of religion that doesn't take into account the sociological reasons for its coming into being and continued existence.
Isn't there going to be a t-shirt of it for members to wear when handing out our leaflet? I think it might find an echo amongst an increasing number of people who must be beginning to get fed up with the lies and counter-lies of the two sides.
Yes of course they have. We've actually got more articles than we probably need. It's going to be a special issue on socialism, real and imagined, in the US rather than just on the founding of the WSPUS 100 years ago.
Meel wrote:As you know by now, I am fascinated by human behaviour and have quite an interest in genetics. You should also know that I am not a “genetic determinist”. I have to state this more or less each time I make a contribution; such is the “blank slate” theory of human behaviour still in vogue within the SP, and the consequent assumption that anyone who mentions genes and behaviour in the same sentence, must be a “genetic determinist”.Not true, the so-called "blank slate" theory is not in vogue in the Socialist Party. See for instance the review of Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate: The Modern Denail of Human Natrure in the April 2003 Socialist Standard (here) and in particular this passage:
Quote:We are not required to defend everything that Marx or the Cultural Anthropologists said or did. However, neither thought that the mind had no structure or that there was no such thing as human nature. Both Marx and the Cultural Anthropologists rejected Blank Slatism for one of the reasons Pinker advances for knocking down his straw man who believes in it: “That the mind can't be a blank slate, because blank slates don't do anything”. Precisely. The brain is not just a passive receptor of sense-impressions (experience) but plays an active role in organising these impressions so as to make sense of them (understand them). This capacity to organise sense-impressions is part of human biological nature. Clearly, before humans could develop culture – “accumulated local wisdom: ways of fashioning artifacts, selecting food, dividing up windfalls, and so on”, as Pinker defines it, which is learned and passed on by non-biological means – they had to have brains capable of learning and of using language and of thinking abstractly with symbols representing parts of the outside world. These brains had to have evolved and are just as much a part of “human nature” as walking upright and stereoscopic colour vision. So, there's no denial of human nature here.As to not wanting to mention genes, we have published a whole pamphlet on the question, Are We Prisoners of Our Genes?, which can be found here.Dawkins's “extended phenotype” is him backtracking on some of the more extravagant claims he made in his original "selfish gene" book.
Move over Bukharin, here's what FC Watts wrote on this theory in the January 1908 Socialist Standard (full article on Impossiblist1904's site here):
Quote:When the rising bourgeoisie were directly concerned in the processes of production, when their personal directing activities were also involved, their political economy, from Sir William Petty to Ricardo, came to recognise labour to the full as the creator of value. As, however, with economic development the capitalists became less and less personally connected with the labour process, as they become increasingly mere absentees, coupon clippers, and ignorant of production, which came to be carried on entirely by hirelings, and as moreover by the culmination of classic economy by Marx the kernel of capitalist exploitation was laid bare, so it became necessary to find a theory of economics that did not lead with inevitable logic to Socialism. At the same time, by the capitalist becoming a consumer solely, so the consumer grew in importance in his eyes and the attributes of consumption in the form of “demand,” “ utility,” etc. — the reflex of the value process — became its foundation from the inverted viewpoint of the parasite. Thus a school grew into prominence which no longer recognised value as a result of the application of labour to useful ends, but held in effect that under the guise of “demand,” “esteem,” and “utility,” the value of a commodity was the creation, not of the producer, but of the consumer! To the workers, however, in daily contact with the material basis of life, such a theory must ever remain unreal and fantastic, and with them the fact of the worker as source of value must retain its fundamental importance until and unless a time comes when wealth is produced without labour, and when palaces, banquets and motor cars descend ready made from heaven.There's another one just out by him in this Indian publication:http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/20/special-articles/twentieth-century-socialism.htmlnOt read it fully yet but it seems to make the same point as in his previous recent articles:
Quote:The 20th century brand of socialism, following the Bolshevik victory as the prototype of socialisms, has nothing to do with socialism as envisaged by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It can be considered only as one among different varieties of socialism such as guild socialism, anarchist socialism, market socialism, and so on. The Marxian socialism, as a portrait of an alternative society after capital, is based on the "associated mode of production." The fundamental characteristic which separates socialism envisaged by Marx from the prevailing socialism is that Marx's socialism, conceived as an association of free individuals, is a completely de-alienated society with no commodity, no money, no waged/salaried labour, no state, all of which are considered as instruments of exploitation and repression of a class society used to put down the immense majority of the humans. The 20th century socialism is quite aptly recognised as a system of party-state, two avatars. Characteristically, and in total opposition to it, in no discussion of the nature of the society after capital– that is, socialism–by Marx and Engels we find these two avatars. They disappear along with capital, the last class society.The penny has just dropped as to why the SWP is for Leave even though this will make conditions for migrant workers worse. It's that there are two types of migrant worker: those from the EU and those from outside the EU. Their target group is those from outside the EU (mainly Muslims from the Indian subcontinent) which the EU discriminates against but which an "independent" Britain could accommodate (UKIP makes the same point, at least on paper, but I don't suppose they really want non-EU immigrants either). Migrants from East Europe no doubt give the SWP, with its defence of the Bolshevik coup, short shrift. So there is some cynical logic to their position.
I think we're talking at cross purposes. Of course Marx's approach is different from that of conventional academic economists. I wasn't talking about this but about their views on how prices are calculated and realised in practice.As to whether academic economists now have a theory of value separate from a theory of price, here's what the Penguin Dictationary of Economics says (or said in its 1987 edition):
Quote:Late-nineteenth-century economists like A. MARSHALL subverted theories of value to theories of price, determined by demand and supply; with each determined by MARGINAL UTILITY or MARGINAL COST. Since then, the theories of price and value have not been separated except by followers of K. MARX.They seem to have more interest in "utility" rather than "cost", maybe because if they looked into cost too much they would find that this can't be separated from labour expended.
I'd have thought that Marx's and academic economics's view as to how prices are fixed is more or less the same, i.e.Marx: cost of production + going rate of profit.Academic economics: cost of production, including profit as (supposed) cost of entrepreneurship.Both allow for variation up or down depending on short-term market conditions but neither bring in subjective utility. In fact, doesn't conventional academic economics claim that it can explain everything without needing the concept of "value" (as opposed to price) and so these days doesn't have anything theory of value?
I thought that even followers of the view that use-value entered into economic value (the theory HM Hyndman described as "the final futility of final utility") had abandoned the view that subjective utility can be measured (as it differs from person to person, eg Tim) in favour a more "objective" approach based on averages. In other words, they think in terms of more and less (relative) than of an absolute figure. Or maybe there are still a few backwoodsmen around who think you can measure use-value?
The London Elects site has now published the results by borough (and ward). Here are our results by borough:Lambeth 729 (0.74%)Southwark 604 (0.69)Hounslow 504 (0.65)Waltham Forest 496 (0.64)Hackney 464 (0.60)Kingston 293 (0.50)Islington 333 (0.45)Richmond 268 (0.35)This confirms past experience that we do better in Labour areas than elsewhere, though it is not clear why this doesn't seem to be the case in Islington, especially as we have contested many elections there over the years. Or has it become gentrified but by Labour-voting gentry, so giving the false impression that it's still a traditional Labour area (both its MPs are Labour, including Jeremy himself)?
If "God" is dropped from his theory, it becomes "phenomenalism" which is a species of materialism but you know where this thread is bound to lead, don't you?
Spiked, a publication of former members of the now defunct RCP, places itself in the Leave camp on the specious ground that this would enhance "popular sovereignity" and "democracy in one country":http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/love-democracy-then-leave-the-eu#comment-2590440065The referendum debate, if nothing else, is bringing all sorts of things out of the woodwork.Even if it was the case, what difference would a slightly enhanced political democracy in Britain make? The traditional leftwing/Social Democrat policy of "reformism in one country" has always failed, one reason being, precisely, the international nature of capitalism. Which would remain the case and in the end force any breakaway UK government to put profits before people to maintain or enhance British capitalism PLC's competitiveness on world markets, which has been the fate and experience of all Labour governments here.
