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It’s in the link given in the news item:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/02/does-capitalism-have-to-be-bad-for-the-environment/
Here is the relevant passage:
“First, firms in a capitalist setting are under enormous pressure to cut costs, because if they don’t, their competitors will. Since their competitors cut costs to be able to reinvest in the firm’s growth and thereby, become more competitive, if one firm refrains from doing so, it will be soon pushed out of the market by others.
As the economic sociologist Erik Wright of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said, one way of cutting cost is to project some of that cost onto the environment. Imagine, for instance, throwing a can of soft drink from a car window because this is a low-cost way of disposing of a can, and being totally indifferent to its negative impact on others. The same behaviour is often adopted by large businesses.
The market dynamics in capitalism do not provide any mechanisms in themselves to prevent this behaviour; it requires some forms of non-market intervention either by state or by organized social forces. States have shown that they are reluctant to or deliberately ignore taking measures against this.”
The Labour Party has sent us an email from Sir Keith Starmer addressing us, rather presumptuously, as “Friend”.
Here are some extracts:
“Frankly, things will get worse before they get better.”
“I’ll have to turn to the country and make big asks of you as well. To accept short term pain for long term good. The difficult trade-off for the genuine solution. And I know that after all you’ve been through, that is a really big ask …”
Actually it’s a bloody cheek.
How many times have government asked workers to put up with pain on the promise that things will get better? That before we can reach the sunny uplands we have to pass through the Valley of Austerity? Or that if we tighten our belts today we’ll get Jam Tomorrow?
It’s the standard government line when the state of the capitalist economy forces them to give priority to profit-making over meeting people’s needs.
As of course is for an incoming government to blame the outgoing one rather than capitalism.
There is also this which says that the court indicated that the election “results” should be published within 30 days after the proclamation of the result (whenever that was or is).
Exhortó al CNE a publicar los resultados en la Gaceta Electoral, según el artículo 155 de la Ley Orgánica de los Procesos Electorales. “El CNE ordenará la publicación de los resultados en la GE dentro de los 30 días siguientes a la proclamación»”, indicó.
It’s from this pro-governnent news site:
Venezuela: Supreme Court Delivers Electoral Review Verdict, Confirms Maduro Victory
They’ve still got till tomorrow to publish the detailed results. Let’s hope that you don’t end up with egg on your face!
Of course if they don’t then they will virtually be pleading guilty to the charge of ballot rigging.
If socialism never happens it obviously wasn’t possible. (….) You didn’t cross the road; you went into the store instead. You imagine it was possible for you to cross the road. But it wasn’t, because you didn’t.”
Oh no, no this sophistry again ! It is possible that I will reply in detail but I won’t. So I didn’t. So it wasn’t be possible after all. QED.
Can we move on to the next item on the agenda: How many angels can dance on a pinhead?
Ps. Don’t reply to this because if you do it will be impossible for me to reply.
I didn’t know this before — the Maduro government subsidising evangelical Christian churches in a bid to get their votes:
https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2024/april/venezuela-maduro-evangelicos-elections-chavez.html
I see they are saying that Starmer is going to make a speech later this week saying that things are going to get worse. That will be one promise he will keep.
Meanwhile, appropriately enough, the conspiraloon candidate, Robert F Kennedy Jnr, has endorsed Trump.
At least in the swing states. Under the undemocratic US election system, where it is not the candidate who obtains the most votes who wins but the candidate who wins the most seats in a “electoral college” made up of representatives of the various states who vote as a bloc, this makes sense.
This system also means that the candidates base their campaign on appealing to electors in these ten or so states. Thus, since he has no chance of winning there anyway, Trump can deliberately alienate electors in California (“lefty liberals”) and New York (“Wall Street versus Main Street”) in order to win votes in the swing states.
Then there are the legal manoeuvres by the Democratic Party to keep third party candidates off the ballot paper and by the Republican Party to keep voters off the electoral roll. And no effective limits on campaign spending.
What a farce ! Not that that stops US governments lecturing other states about how to hold “free and fair” elections.
As expected, the Venezuela Supreme Court has ruled that Maduro won the presidential election. But also:
“The TSJ president, who also heads the body’s electoral branch, additionally stressed that the CNE should publish the “definitive results” in the National Gazette before an August 28 deadline. Venezuela’s electoral authority has not published detailed results broken down by voting center.”
So, we still have to wait till next Wednesday to see if the electoral commission will publish results broken down by voting center and how they compare with those put out by the pro-US opposition.
Typical example of how the gutter press (which the Daily Torygraph has recently joined) use Venezuela to try to discredit the whole idea of socialism, and why we need to insist that, whatever it is, it is not socialist:
It’s sad, even tragic, when you come to think of it. Various sincere attempts in Latin America to try to improve the lot of the poor majority get off to an enthusiastic start but then fail. Before the Chavists it was the Sandinistas.
It seems that the Trotskyist analysis that these attempts failed due to a bureaucratic caste taking over and allocating itself privileges (an analysis that they derive from what they say happened in Russia) has some substance. But of course these attempts were directed by a vanguard in the first place, which was always the potential basis for the evolution of such a privileged “bureaucratic caste”.
The only one that seems to have partially achieved something is Cuba which, though still not socialist and still a one-party state directed by a vanguard, has at least provided minimum basic services for all and avoided great disparities of income and wealth developing.
The lesson would appear to be that there is no hope for the people of these countries other than world socialism but socialism depends on the workers in North America and Europe overthrowing capitalism. Until this happens workers and poor people elsewhere are condemned to have to put up with capitalism in one form or another. They are in a trap from which they can’t escape whatever they do or try to do.
More Venezuela news as everybody waits to see if the government there will publish the full results:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/brazils-lula-says-election-could-135511550.html
Apparently Biden himself is in favour of a re-run of the election (but as the lamest of lame ducks does he count any more?):
https://www.yahoo.com/news/brazils-lula-says-maduro-could-144125660.html
A Spanish/speaking comrade in the US has drawn attention to an English version of a statement by a different group of Venezuelan Trotskyists:
The headline is not too bad.
