ALB
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You're probably right. The stuff he's talking about is pretty marginal to production and the theoretical point Marx posited of the labour content of a unit of physical commodities becoming so negligeable that they might as well be given away free is a long, long way away.
Quote:DOMINIC LAWSON: Comrade Corbyn's biggest problem? He never smiles! (Even though his Marxist views are such a joke)So now he's a Marxist and a Trotskyist. Leaving aside the contradiction between being both, is there any evidence for either? I imagine the Daily Wail is just making up the "Marxist" one as that's what they call anyone who is "anti-business" even describing Ed Miliband as one for saying he wanted to freeze energt prices for a year or so. I can see too that a Labour MP might see Trotskyists under every bed, but was Corbyn ever in a Trotskyist group? I know they say his brother was in the IMG in the 1970s, but so what? My brother was once in the Labour Party but that doesn't make me a Labourite..
alanjjohnstone wrote:We are rejecting their consensus on the safety of GMO, on fracking and nuclear energy through parliamentary legislation.Who is "we" here? It can't be the Party since we've always taken the view that there is no reason in principle why techniques such as these and others couldn't be employed safely in a profit-free context. And it's certainly not me. We, the Party, have never been anti-technology. Just the opposite. Every scientific advance makes socialism all the more plausible.Genetic modification of crops in particular opens up immense possibilities.I know we shouldn't be discussing this here but this thread is not going anywhere anyway for obvious reasons.
I'm not sure that the Liberals are a sunken ship yet. There's been 4 local council by-elections here in South West London (where they lost both MPs, both Cabinet Ministers). They won all 4, gaining one from the Tories. Looks as if some people are beginning to regret that their votes resulted in a one-party Tory government, especially as the Tories are interpreting their victory as a mandate to continue with their old nasty party agenda (bashing the unions, bashing the BBC, reintroducing hunting). The Tories seem to be overlooking that they only won because Labour lost. If they carry on as they've started there'll be a backlash from which the Liberals could be in a better position to profit from that the pathetic Labour party (pink Tories who are now openly pro-business and anti-welfare to try to steal Tory votes). What the one-party Tory government is doing also gives credibility to the Liberals claim that, when in coalition with the Tories, they were a restraining influnce on them.OK, it's all just boring capitalist politics …
That's a bit disturbing and reflects badly on him. But more disturbing is that the current Cabinet Minister responsible for the NHS also believes in this nonsense:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-signed-parliamentary-motion-in-support-of-homeopathy-in-2010-10393413.htmlI suspect this is part of a campaign to descredit Corbyn. I wonder what else they'll come up with.It is true that homeopathy works for some people as he tweeted, but not for the reasons given by the quacks and distilled water salesmen behind it. All sorts of things can work because of the placebo effect. But at least the distilled water homeopathy recommends can't do you any harm (unless it prevents you going to a proper doctor if it turns out that there's something seriously wrong with your health).
One good (or not bad) thing about the BBC is that there is no advertising (commercial lying) on it. Bringing that in would be a step backward and represent yet another area colonised by naked commercialism..
Here's the Trotskyist "Socialist Alternative" (sister party to SPEW in the US) take on Bernie Sanders. It's a bit long. The gist seems to be that they should infilitrate the Elect Sanders campaign hoping that its other supporters will turn to them (or the Green Party candidate, they don't seem to mind) when he lets them down when he endorses whoever is chosen as the Democratic Party candidate. The usual "transitional demand" tactic of leading workers up the garden path in the hope that they will learn by the experience of failure and turn to the Trotskyist vanguard for correct leadership:http://www.socialistalternative.org/2015/07/07/response-howie-hawkins/
Oh I see now. That's what the secret is: Head Office is to be decorated with expensive William Morris wallpaper in keeping with its enhanced value:
Not quite all. He says he votes for the Green Party ! I notice too that he endorses Kshama Sawant, the Trotskyist councillor in Seattle. More here:http://townhallseattle.org/event/chris-hedges-kshama-sawant-and-jill-stein/Ironically, she too has been criticised for nob-nobbing with the Democratic Party:https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/03/25/sawa-m25.htmlI know this is from a rival Trotskyist group (which also likes one of our names) but we know how Machiavellian Trotskyists are here in relation to the Labour Party.There's a defence of her courting support from Democrats here:http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/25/is-kshama-sawant-really-caving-in-to-the-democrats/
I wasn't criticising the decision to buy a trellis (after all, didn't he write a book we like) but that we have been reduced to discussing this here. And still are.
Something that Harold Wilson is said to have considered in 1968 may or may not have been feasible but if it had been done it wouldn't have avoided austerity. And that, surely, is the point. Whatever a government decides there is no way of avoiding austerity in an economic crisis.Varoufakis, in the interview with the New Statesman someone mentioned above, also had an alternative plan:
Quote:HL: Right. So there were two options as far as I can see – an immediate Grexit, or printing IOUs and taking bank control of the Bank of Greece [potentially but not necessarily precipitating a Grexit]?YV: Sure, sure. I never believed we should go straight to a new currency. My view was – and I put this to the government – that if they dared shut our banks down, which I considered to be an aggressive move of incredible potency, we should respond aggressively but without crossing the point of no return.We should issue our own IOUs, or even at least announce that we’re going to issue our own euro-denominated liquidity; we should haircut the Greek 2012 bonds that the ECB held, or announce we were going to do it; and we should take control of the Bank of Greece. This was the triptych, the three things, which I thought we should respond with if the ECB shut down our banks.… I was warning the Cabinet this was going to happen [the ECB shut our banks] for a month, in order to drag us into a humiliating agreement. When it happened – and many of my colleagues couldn’t believe it happened – my recommendation for responding “energetically”, let’s say, was voted down.This wouldn't have avoided austerity either of course.He also suggested, in an article for the Guardian on 10 July, that Greece would probably not be able to manage a changeover to a new currency:
Quote:To exit, we would have to create a new currency from scratch. In occupied Iraq, the introduction of new paper money took almost a year, 20 or so Boeing 747s, the mobilisation of the US military’s might, three printing firms and hundreds of trucks. In the absence of such support, Grexit would be the equivalent of announcing a large devaluation more than 18 months in advance: a recipe for liquidating all Greek capital stock and transferring it abroad by any means available.No wonder Tsipras opted for the devil he knew.
What this shows is that you can't beat the capitalist system. The economic laws of capitalism will impose their will one way or another.I know it's ancient history now but just checked the detailed results of the 5 July referendum on wikipedia here.I see that there were 5.8% invalid or blank votes. Surely a significant figure.
Just had an email from a member which says:
Quote:There's also a shortened version of it on BBC TV, under the red button and the Politics section. It's quite prominent.What an irony, some of the best publicity we've had in years, but we always suspected one day it might be.Can someone check. I don't know what or where "the red button" is.
