ALB
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Actually, the Pirate Party stood against us in Vauxhall in last year's general election but their manifesto wasn't all that different from the other parties — local candidate, sending his kids to the local school, would judge what reforms to propose or support by consulting people by email or whatever. Didn't get the response they seem to be getting in Iceland. They got 201 votes to our 82. So we're both non-league clubs at the moment. But then they're not the answer in Iceland either even if they've got promotion to the First Division there.
What is interesting about these developments in Spain and Italy as well as it seems Iceland is thast dissatisfaction with the way the "old gang" of politicians (for not being able to live up to their promises) is not taking the form of blaming political democracy and going for dictatorship or that of anarchist anti-electoralism, but of using the electoral system. A confirmation that, when the movement to replace capitalism with socialism takes off, it too will express itself electorally. Of course neither the Pirate Party, nor Podemos nor the Five Star Movement will be able to manage things any better since it's capitalism, not the politicians who run its government, that's to blame.
Be interesting to see if this materialises and Podemos follows Syriza in joining a government that will have to end up governing capitalism on capitalism's terms:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/12116384/Spains-anti-austerity-Podemos-proposes-forming-government-with-Socialists.html
Dave B wrote:Hi Adam.For what it matters to start with; the theory, category and concept of simple commodity production, whatever that maybe, was fully embraced by all the major Marxist theorists in the first half of the 20thcentury. Eg Rosa, Lenin, Kautsky, Rubin et al.For them it was historically pre capitalist and later co-existed within capitalism.You have the common view on this, re opening chapter not being about simple commodity production, that you also share with Professor Michael Heinrich and his Die Linke friends.I know because I have debated with them at length on libcom.They take umbrage in particular, logically enough, at the statement from Fred that I agree with;“This makes clear, of course, why in the beginning of his first book Marx proceeds from the simple production of commodities as the historical premise, ultimately to arrive from this basis to capital — why he proceeds from the simple commodity instead of a logically and historically secondary form — from an already capitalistically modified commodity. To be sure, Fireman positively fails to see this.”https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/pref.htm(They don’t dispute that ‘simple production of commodities’ and ‘simple commodity’ that Fred was on about is all part of the ‘simple commodity production theory’.)Nor do I. There is no argument about the nature of the concept of "simple commodity production" (an economy of independent producers working with their own instruments of production and exchanging their products with each other). The argument is about whether such an economy ever existed historically or whether this was just a logical model employed by Marx in developing his analysis of capitalism, the highest form of commodity-production.It is a historical fact that independent producers owning their own instruments of production did exist. It is also a fact that some one them evolved into capitalists employing wage-workers. But that's not the same as saying that a market economy of independent producers ever existed or that capitalist commodity production developed out of simple commodity production.I suppose that the nearest there might have been to an simple commodity production economy might have been New England, New York and Pennsylvania for a while in the 17th and 18th centuries but even then there were already wealthy landowners and merchants and instrument-less workers.Another difficulty of assuming chapter 1 of Capital as a historical description rather than the logical development of an argument is that a simple commodity production economy would have to have existed on the basis of barter before money evolved. And there's certainly no historical evidence for saying that anything like that ever happened. There never was a whole economy based on barter.In any event, the development of capitalism presupposes the existence of a landless and instrument-less class and there's no logical reason why simple commodity production should lead to this. It clearly had another cause, set out by Marx in Part VIII of Capita on "The So-Called Primitive Accumulation", chapters 26 to 33 with the self-explanatory titles such as:
Quote:Expropriation of the Agricultural Population from the landBloody legislation against the Expropriated, from the End of the 15th Century. Forcing Down of Wages by Acts of ParliamentGenesis of the Capitalist FarmerReaction of the Agricultural Revolution on Industry. Creation of the Home-Market for Industrial CapitalGenesis of the Industrial Capitalist.There are many books by those in the Marxist tradition going into this in more detail. I don't think even any non-Marxist or pro-capitalist historian has been able to describe a peaceful evolution of capitalism from simple commodity production. They couldn't. It just didn't happen.
We've missed out this significant one for us: the 500th anniversary of the publication of Thomas More's Utopia:http://utopia.somersethouse.org.uk/
Costas Lapavitsas was one of the Syriza MPs who left and who has always argued that the "solution" was to leave the euro and restore the drachma. He stood against Syriza in the elections in September and wasn't re-lected. So there might be a bit of sour grapes there too. In any event, as you point out, leaving the euro wouldn't have meant that the government could have abandoned austerity.
There are plenty of articles in the Archive section of our website on why we think Russia was capitalist and not socialist and that state ownership does not abolish capitalism. For instance:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1990s/1997/no-1119-november-1997/russia-was-never-socialist-%E2%80%93-and-why http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1980s/1985/no-975-november-1985/nature-russian-state-capitalism http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1980s/1987/no-992-april-1987/state-capitalism
Dave B wrote:Then Karl himself, I think, takes his eye off the ball and starts to subliminally associate value with exchange value, as Adam and his common fellow Hienricians do;evidenced by the progressive disappearance of exchange value in the three volumes.You are trying to argue that "value" exists independently of exchange. If you define "value" as the labour-time content of a product then it does. It's a definition as any other but does it help us understand how capitalism works, eg why in capitalism it manifests itself as exchange value/price but not in other societies? I don't think so.It's a rather peculiar use of the word "value" (even more abstruse than Karl's). It would be much simpler to talk in terms of something being the product of so many hours of work, as I'm sure people did in non-commodity societies. "Value" more naturally means use-value. People only begin to talk of value in another sense when the products are exchanged.
Dave B wrote:The opening chapter in volume one is not in fact about capitalism, it is about ‘Proudhonist like’ simple commodity production; and Silas Marner, the linen weaver.And actually a critical appraisal of that ‘rudimental’ economic system which was the ‘starting point’ of capitalism or the economic system from which it emerged or evolved out of. Wage labour, ie capitalism ‘as a category had no existence’ in chapter one!I don't think chapter 1 of Capital is meant to be a description of an economic system that ever existed. So-called "petty commodity production", where independent producers owning their own tools and equipment exchange their products on the market, was a theoretical concept created as part of the development of an argument. Wage-labour, where the actual producers no longer own their instruments of production but sell their ability to work, is introduced later.
Dave B wrote:The ‘bourgeoisie’ quite literally emerged from the Proudhonist and artisan ‘guild socialists’; fertilised admittedly with capital from the merchants and the enlightened intellectual section of the aristocracy.I don't think this is historically accurate. It's once again misunderstanding the steps in the development of Marx's argument from "petty commodity production" to capitalism as the highest form of commodity-production. This was a logical development not a historical one. How Marx thought that capitalism really developed is set out in the historical chapters at the end of the book( which are far from describing a peaceful economic evolution from petty commodity production).
Missed this at the time. One of the components of TUSC breaks away to join (rejoin, in many cases) Labour under Corbyn:http://www.independentsocialistnetwork.org/independent-socialist-network-agrees-new-direction-agm/Some of the names mentioned here stood for TUSC at the general election as well as at local elections. But in this year's elections they'll out be campaigning for Labour. Mind you, they can only bring Labour a hundred or so extra votes.
It's some time since I've read this but, you're right, there's some good stuff in it (even if rather dated). For instance:
Quote:The only value known in economics is the value of commodities. What are commodities? Products made in a society of more or less separate private producers, and therefore in the first place private products. These private products, however, become commodities only when they are made, not for consumption by their producers, but for consumption by others, that is, for social consumption; they enter into social consumption through exchange.Quote:Commodity production, however, is by no means the only form of social production. In the ancient Indian communities and in the family communities of the southern Slavs, products are not transformed into commodities. The members of the community are directly associated for production; the work is distributed according to tradition and requirements, and likewise the products to the extent that they are destined for consumption. Direct social production and direct distribution preclude all exchange of commodities, therefore also the transformation of the products into commodities (at any rate within the community) and consequently also their transformation into values.Quote:From the moment when society enters into possession of the means of production and uses them in direct association for production, the labour of each individual, however varied its specifically useful character may be, becomes at the start and directly social labour. The quantity of social labour contained in a product need not then be established in a roundabout way; daily experience shows in a direct way how much of it is required on the average (…) Hence, on the assumptions we made above, society will not assign values to products. It will not express the simple fact that the hundred square yards of cloth have required for their production, say, a thousand hours of labour in the oblique and meaningless way, stating that they have the value of a thousand hours of labour. It is true that even then it will still be necessary for society to know how much labour each article of consumption requires for its production. It will have to arrange its plan of production in accordance with its means of production, which include, in particular, its labour-powers. The useful effects of the various articles of consumption, compared with one another and with the quantities of labour required for their production, will in the end determine the plan. People will be able to manage everything very simply, without the intervention of much-vaunted “value”.Quote:The concept of value is the most general and therefore the most comprehensive expression of the economic conditions of commodity production. Consequently, this concept contains the germ, not only of money, but also of all the more developed forms of the production and exchange of commodities. (…) The value form of products therefore already contains in embryo the whole capitalist form of production, the antagonism between capitalists and wage-workers, the industrial reserve army, crises. To seek to abolish the capitalist form of production by establishing "true value" is therefore tantamount to attempting to abolish Catholicism by establishing the "true" Pope, or to set up a society in which at last the producers control their product, by consistently carrying into life an economic category which is the most comprehensive expression of the enslavement of the producers by their own product.Value as "the most comprehensive expression of the enslavement of the producers by their own product". Strong stuff, and why we've always described an exchange economy based on workers coops producing for the market as "workers self-exploitation".
Sepehr wrote:I will not waste my time responding to those who obviously know nothing more than reiterating their dogmatic views, and therefore do not seek to learn the slightest point.No wonder you don't want to defend your dogmatic views on "value" as you haven't got a leg to stand on. That Marx thought that value would/could continue into socialism is just plain wrong. It's also wrong irrespective of what Marx may or may not have thought. Socialism is a non-market and therefore a non-value society.
Sepehr wrote:One of the main features of Marx's method is the fact that all of its elements are interconnected. Therefore a seemingly minor error in one place will have massive ripple effects in all directions. I say this because I believe your position on internationalism, nationalism and value theory are interconnected. Revision in one area will necessitate revisions in all other areas.If this were true (which it isn't) then this would apply with even more force to you since you are not just "revising" Marx's value theory but are totally rejecting it in favour of a rival one.Discussions about Marx's strategy and tactics in the 19th century for furthering the cause of socialism are interesting from a historical point of view but in adopting them Marx was wanting to further the cause of socialism, i.e a classless, stateless, moneyless, wageless society of common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, not your cause of an exchange economy of competing workers co-ops. That wasn't his aim and so the political positions he adopted in the conditions of the time had nothing to do with achieving it. There were of course people around at the time who did have this aim, Proudhon and his followers for instance. Dave B has suggested that Duhring ( of Anti fame) might have been one too, if we want to revive the arguments of the 19th century.
According to this, Israel is still toying with the policy of balkanising Syria proposed in that document from the 50s or 60s that Dave B dug up and mentioned here.Here's what Nuttyahoo said at Davos the other day:
Quote:Regarding the future of Syria, the prime minister said he “doubts” a unitary Syrian state can ever reemerge.“I wish it could happen, but I’m not sure you could put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I’d say the best result you might be able to get is a benign Balkanization, benign cantonization in Syria. That’s as good as you’re going to get.”The establishment of Israel itself was of course a Balkanization of Palestine and his government is implementing a not so benign cantonisation of the part of Palestine not (yet?) included in Israel.
Dave B wrote:Don’t be a rotter Adam and throw Wolf in my teethThat really would be a rotten thing to do, but I didn't. I was making the point that Wolf didn't even advocate the sort of general labour-time accounting that you seem to be (and which maybe Marx did though he didn't regard this as value calculation), but that he actually envisages the continuation of production for the market and so of value (in the Marxian sense) and monetary calculation; which of course you don't.I'm not quite sure what to call Wolff's scheme for an exchange economy of competing workers coops. It has more in common with anarchist mutualism or Green small is beautiful capitalism than socialism. Utopian is an obvious description but then we shouldn't use this in a perjorative sense like others do to us. Anyway, it's not the solution to the problems that the wage and salary working class face under the capitalist exchange economy.
