ALB
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According to Nigel Farage, and also Robert Peston on the BBC (who's echoing who?), the deal imposed on the Greek government "shows that national democracy and membership of the eurozone are incompatible"(today's Times). Others, from the left as well as the right, have made the same point, but it's misleading. If Greece withdrew from the Eurozone – or if Britain withdrew from the EU – the trappings of 'national democracy' would be restored, but what its 'sovereign' government would be able to do would still be restricted by the pressures of capitalism in a slump. Austerity would still be the order of the day, only it would now be by an independent decision of a government exercising unrestricted 'sovereignty'.Less of an affrnt to 'national dignity' perhaps but who cares about that.
alanjjohnstone wrote:I think Chomsky once defended the so-called respectable press on the grounds that the ruling classes must have a view of reality without the the spin to make its decisions. Seems as the Telegraph has assumed that role in the UK of being rather more accurate in some of its reporting than other papers.If I was a member of the ruling class I wouldn't read the Torygraph for objective information to inform my decision-making. It is owned by the notorious Barclay Brothers who have commercial reasons for being anti-EU (see http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/rodopi/es/2004/00000020/00000001/art00008?&authenticated=true). Their reporting on the Greek debt crisis has been consistently Eurosceptic, hoping that the Euro project will fail and revelling in its diffuculties. Not objective or neutrally informative at all. I'd stick to reading the Financial Times myself and leave that Eurosceptic Tory rag alone (except for the crossword or unless I particularly wanted to know what the Barclay Brothers were thinking).
That's the same Steve Hedley who once called us "Mensheviks" (see here). I think we know what he means by "socialism". Still, it is interesting and perhaps significant that some trade unions are beginning to use the word "socialism" again. Though with friends like these ….
It's not actually Head Office but a "committee room" in the constituency (Paddington North) for the duration of the campaign, but I can see what point you're making. But that slogan is a statement of fact not an exhortation to do something. I agree with you, though, that I can't see anything unprincipled about saying "Vote Socialist" or "Vote Socialist Party". "Vote Groves" (or whoever), however, would have been going much too far.For those unfamiliar with this old-fashioned term, here's the definition of a "committee room":https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_room
I would have thought that, even without any free postal distribution, it would be worth paying a mere £500 to get coverage throughout the whole of Glasgow on radio, TV, the local press, internet, hustings, etc. even if you did nothing else. But of course you should be able do something else, eg some street stalls, some leafletting (maybe commercial, though personally I wouldn't think it worth the cost — we did it in West London for the London Assembly elections in 2012 in a selected area of Wandsworth, Tooting as it happens.. I'm not sure it was effective).
That's just pre-negotiation rhetoric. Unless they are completely stupid they must know that the only government capable of imposing austerity in Greece to get some of their money back is a Syriza-led one. But then there is some evidence for the Cock-up Theory of History.
saaythatagain wrote:The only way capitalism can grow consistantly in the west is by expanding the financial market. Debt after all is borrowing from your future income. Unless you become more productive in the future, the interest will siphon off a portion of your income and therefore your spending in the future will be less. Which is why there are booms and busts in the modern capitalist economy.Is this Steve Keen's view too? It doesn't sound right. Surely what keeps capitalism going is profit and the possibilities of extracting this from the surplus labour created by the class of wage and salary workers. Interest is just a subdivision of surplus value (and not its most important). And you seem to be offering a purely monetary explanation for booms and slumps rather than one based on overproduction in the real economy.Again, paying interest may reduce your spending but it will increase that of those who you are paying the interest to, so overall spending won't alter, just its composition (which could have consequences of course). Actually I think Keen (if not some of his followers) makes this point himself. For instance, here:http://www.peakprosperity.com/discussion/85806/enough-money-pay-interest-steve-keen-says-yes
I'm not in favour of vivisection (far from it, certainly not in its original sense of cutting up animals while they are still alive) but that's not a logical argument.It's about as logical as arguing: Paul Lafargue wrote The Right To Be Lazy and was not against vivisection, therefore vivisection is not bad. This doesn't follow either. And of course there are all sorts of people who didn't vivisect and still came up with garbage …
Osborne also stole the Green Party's clothes:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29066870
Quote:The Green Party of England and Wales is calling for the minimum wage to rise to £10 an hour by 2020.In an address to Greens' autumn conference, party leader Natalie Bennett said Britain was a low-wage economy and people deserved "a decent return on their labour".Under the plans, wages would rise by £1.15 to £7.65 an hour next year before increasing each year until 2020.The only difference is that under Osborne's plan the aim by 2020 is £9 an hour with the increase next year to £7.20.A real stroke of Orwellian genius to rename the Minimum Wage the Living Wage since there already is a so-called Living Wage which, in London, is already £9.15 an hour. Still peanuts of course.Meanwhile, as we know from another thread here, Warren Buffett is calling for an increase in tax credits, partly on the grounds that increasing the mimimum wage (other than marginally) is a "job killer":http://www.wsj.com/articles/better-than-raising-the-minimum-wage-1432249927
Amusing article from last weekend's Financial Times about what happened in Ireland when the bank workers there went on strike for weeks:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b8bc4a7a-20c3-11e5-ab0f-6bb9974f25d0.html#axzz3fQMr1QQaUnfortunately, it's not that funny in Greece.
Imagine if Labour had done this. Now it's the Tories who are "Anti-Business", forcing employers to pay a higher mininimum wage, dragging their feet over expanding Heathrow Airport, and risking Britain's membership of the EU.
It seems to be a hare-brained scheme to cancel ordinary people's debts as a way of encouraging them to spend and so set the economy going again. Irrespective of the details (converting debts into cash), it's based on the mistaken assumption that the capitalist economy is driven by consumer spending rather than by business investment (with the level of consumer spending depending on this, going up and down with it). If it was tried I imagine it would give an initial boost to the economy but eventually lead to galloping inflation.At one point Keen says that if his scheme is not adopted then the Irish economy will stagnate for 20 years. I don't know how reliable or durable this is but here's the lastest news about the Irish economy:http://news.sky.com/story/1444877/ireland-raises-a-glass-to-economic-recoveryI see he also takes a side-swipe at Paul Krugman, a dyed-in-the-wool Keynesian, who also thinks increased spending (rather than business investment) can lead to a recovery, only he favours government spending. Looks like a case of reformists falling out over their pet reforms.Incidentally, Steve Keen now teaches at Kingston University in South West London where he hopes to develop a school of "alternative", new economic theory:http://www.kingston.ac.uk/news/article/1393/17-sep-2014-eminent-academic-steve-keen-to-help-kingston-university-become-world-class-centre-for-new-economic/Since this is just round the corner West London branch could try to gate-rash his lectures to present the real alternative.
Our position only came up when at one point he said that "democracy" was not enough because the same "laws" would still apply even if a majority voted for something. He meant this as a criticism of those who favour workers democracy while retaining the market system, so the "laws" he was talking about were economic ones. But members misunderstood him as saying that you couldn't get socialism through democracy and voting because "political" laws wouldn't allow it. Anyway, this provided a chance for us to present our view. Wait till you can hear the recording. His general view on contesting elections is given in his answer to the last question here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2014/no-1316-april-2014/relevance-marxian-economics-todayOf course he didn't buy a round. He was our guest !
We Voted ‘No’ to Slavery, but ‘Yes’ to Our ChainsGood title but crap analysis, blaming Greece being in the euro not capitalism and its current slump:http://dialogosmedia.org/?p=5407As if things would or could be better if only Greece left the eurozone…
Mike Macnair's article on the Magna Carta can be (could have been) found here:http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1051/magna-carta-and-long-history/
