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alanjjohnstone wrote:

And i was just thinking, when was the last time anti-fracking protesters in the United States turned up with AK-47s and an assortment of other assault rifles…i can't properly recall…

I thought the best advice when you are in a hole is to stop digging

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Vin wrote:

So should we support the 'IN' vote

Only if someone holds a gun to our head and says you've got to choose either IN or OUT !But of course we're not in that position and don't have to choose either of the two options on offer. That said, I don't think we lose anything by accepting that the relative free movement of labour that the common labour market has brought about was a small advantage for workers, even if not enough to vote IN. On the other hand, I can't see a single advantage of OUT and the big disadvantage of it stoking up British nationalism.

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Sort of. Nobody can spend what they don't have, whether their own or borrowed. Businesses including banks can't either. But of course there are differences between you and a bank. A bank aims to make a profit and practises double entry book-keeping.A bank's profit comes from the interest it charges (not all of it but what's left after it has paid its expenses including staff wages and interest on any money it has itself borrowed).Double entry book-keeping means that when a bank (or any business) acquires an asset or a liability this must be balanced, in the accounts, by a corresponding liability or asset. Thus, when a bank makes a loan this liability has to balanced by a corresponding entry in the asset column (the borrower's IOU to repay the loan). But nothing new has been created. This is just an accounting convention. That's all that the famous "stroke of a pen", or these days keyboard stroke, does.A better example would be if you were a moneylender, i.e if like a bank you lend money but your own money. You could even practise double entry book-keeping. But you would not be able to lend more money than you had. You could try but you would soon come unstuck and find yourself unable to honour a promise to pay someone money. The difference between a bank and moneylender is only that a bank is lending other people's money.Banks are essentially financial intermediaries, borrowing money at one rate of interest and relending it at a higher rate. Their economic role under capitalism is the useful one for capitalism of making available for investment and other spending purchasing power that would otherwise remain dormant.

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Looks more like the sort of direct action that anti-frackers, etc take in this country only, being America, guns come into it. As we know, America has a traditional of guns being used, on both sides, even in trade union struggles.

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I might have guessed. The Monument is a good read. The trouble is that not all the anectdotes are true. For instance, Glasgow branch have been annoyed about the story (p. 111) of the member expelled for wearing a gas mask. It was a nice story but it just wasn't true. See:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1990s/1995/no-1087-march-1995/letter-nail-coffinGlasgow anarchists tell a similar story about one of theirs; which is probably the source of the story. Go here and search for Lennox.Baltrop drafted the book when he was out of the party and hostile to it (as the title suggests). Even though it was published after he had rejoined not all of the previous hostility was edited out. The passage you quoted will be one example.It will not without significance, in the context of the Party's attitude to WW2, that Baltrop himself chose to take part in the war, joining the RAF while most (but not all) other members were conscientious objectors. See his obituary here.

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What is the source of that claim? The 1939 Anti-War manifesto, published in the October 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard, ends:

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The Socialist Party of Great Britain therefore pledges itself to continue its work for Socialism, and reiterates the call it issued on the outbreak of war in 1914:“Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our goodwill and socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism and the triumph of Socialism.”THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, S.P.G.B.September 24th 1939

See:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1930s/1939/no-422-october-1939/socialist-party-great-britain-and-war

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Actually the introduction of machinery (mechanization, automation, robotization) under capitalism is not just about technology: it depends on whether installing and using the new machine is cheaper than employing workers to do the work by hand. Because of this capitalism in fact holds back,or rather slows down, the use of machines.A minor example of this was reported in the Times a couple of weeks ago (14 December):

Quote:

Garage owners said that the number of car-washing machines has more than halved in the past 15 years because they are struggling to compete with migrants doing the job by hand…. [T]he number of automated “rollover” car washes in Britain has more than halved, from about 9,000 to less than 4,200 in 2015. It is estimated that the number of dedicated handwashing sites has ballooned from 4,000 to at least 20,000 over the same 15-year period.

So, ironically (or is it perversely?), if robotisation were to lead to increasing mass unemployment the downward pressure this would exert on wages would make it more profitable is some cases to revert to employing workers.So Hawking is not quite right when he says:

Quote:

If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed.

It will depend rather on who owns the machines. If the machines stay owned by a capitalist minority, it will be the economic laws of capitalist that will continue to decide. If society owns them, as socialists advocate, then society can decide democratically and apply the old socialist principle of 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs'.

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Actually, although he doesn't actually use the word capitalism, he does say so in so many words:

Stephen Hawking wrote:

If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.

This is not going to happen of course unless society as a whole becomes the machine owners. Only then can we decide how what is produced can be distributed.Quite apart, that is, from cheaper labour power being an obstacle to complete automation coming about under capitalism, So the wages system would have to go too. But then common ownership and the abolition of the wages system are two sides of the same

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Good find. Actually, Hawking's reply probably deserves a thread of its own;

Quote:

I'm rather late to the question-asking party, but I'll ask anyway and hope. Have you thought about the possibility of technological unemployment, where we develop automated processes that ultimately cause large unemployment by performing jobs faster and/or cheaper than people can perform them? Some compare this thought to the thoughts of the Luddites, whose revolt was caused in part by perceived technological unemployment over 100 years ago. In particular, do you foresee a world where people work less because so much work is automated? Do you think people will always either find work or manufacture more work to be done? Thank you for your time and your contributions. I’ve found research to be a largely social endeavor, and you've been an inspiration to so many.Answer:If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.

This is not going to happen of course unless society as a whole becomes the machine owners. Quite apart, that is, from cheaper labour power being an obstacle to complete automation coming about under capitalism, So the wages system would have to go too. But then common ownership and the abolition of the wages system are two sides of the same coin.

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Couldn't read it because you have to subscribe but why do all these articles assume that if the government gives everybody, working or not, a regular income this is going to have no effect on wage levels? They seem to be assuming that this would be in addition to income from work whereas what is likely to happen is that it would exert a huge downward pressure on wages and that over time real wages would on average fall by the amount of the "basic" income.In other words, that it would be essentially a subsidy to employers. It would be "basic" in the sense of being a mimumum income that employers would top up to the level people needed to be able to reproduce and maintain their particular working skill. Don't they understand how their much-vaunted law of supply and demand works?Reformists do come up with some crackpot ideas.

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From last weekend's i paper's croosword;

Quote:

Political group, prats possibly, sheltered by body of people (9,5)

There's no question about them "possibly" being prats. They definitely were !

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This whole thing is ridiculous:

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Banks won’t be able to create money for themselves anymore, they’ll only be able to lend money that they have from savers or other banks, or even, if necessary, money that the Swiss National Bank has provided them,

This is more or less what happens today !I think that what they are proposing is that banks should no longer be able to lend out money deposited in a current (as opposed to a savings) account. They'll just have to keep it as if they were a safe deposit service. That doesn't make sense from a capitalist point of view as it means that temporarily unused money won't be able to be channelled to those who want money to spend and are prepared to pay interest to borrow it.It is also likely to mean that banks will have to charge for storing people's current account money, i.e charges will go up. No more "free" banking. I imagine that this is what the opponents of the measure will be emphasising during the referendum campaign and could be a winner for them. We'll see.Strictly speaking, this is not currency crankism as the proposed measure is feasible, just silly.

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I know he has said he wants to rejoin Labour and said he would if Corbyn became leader but he can't do both, i.e stand for mayor against the official Labour candidate and rejoin.

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What is more interesting is the trajectory of the members of this leading Suffragette family. The mother ends up a Tory. One of the daughters a Seventh Day Adventist,  another a fascist and a Roman Catholic and another an admirer of the Emperor of Abyssinia. I wonder if this was typical of the Suffragettes. If so, it would back up our contention that, essentially, what they stood and struggled for was Votes for Rich Women and so not worthy of socialist or working class support.  A demand for universal adult suffrage would have been more acceptable but that's not what they wanted, only votes for women on the same terms as men at the time. Which would have left most women and one-third of men without the vote. And we're supposed to admire them.

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Not as bad as suggesting that there are some members who sympathise with bombing ISIS. Sometimes you go too far.

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