ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Who ever thought that the free marketeers weren’t stupid.
It’s a bit of jump (and fault of logic) to move from saying some people are stupid to saying all people are stupid.
Now they are accusing Trump of “state capitalism” and “MAGA Marxism”:
https://fortune.com/2025/08/12/maga-marxist-maoist-trump-assault-free-market-capitalism-socialism/
Trump seems to be saying that it was NATO’s bid to expand eastwards right up the Russian border by incorporating Ukraine that provoked the Russian invasion as the rulers of the Russian state regarded this as an existential threat.
At least that is how his statement that the war would never have happened if he had been President on 2023 can be interpreted. In other words, he would have backed down in the face of Russian opposition and not insisted on Ukraine joining NATO.
Whether he would have done at the time is another matter. In any event, he is now saying that Ukraine shouldn’t join NATO, which is a shift from the position the rulers of the US took at the time. This could also be interpreted as admission by the US of the failure of its previous policy.
Another example to record of everyday matter-of-fact acceptance by practitioners and journalists that banks can’t make loans without deposits. This time an article in today’s Times on non-bank financial institutions that raise money to lend to businesses to buy out another business known as “private credit”.
“Many argue that central banks are unnecessarily alarmed. Private credit funds may better because they provide semi -permanent capital, unlike banks which are dependent on their short-term deposits staying steady.
… Ludovic Phalippou, professor of financial economics at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, … told a House of Lords committee last month: ‘They are, in fact a very natural type of lender -— pools of committed capital making long-term loans. Structurally, this is far more stable than deposit-based banking’.”Nobody dares suggest of course that private credit institutions conjure up the capital that they lend out of thin air.
If there really were a ‘deep state’ what would be the point of socialists trying to win an election? It wouldn’t give the majority of socialist delegates in the central law-making body control of the state. It would justify the insurrectionists’ view that the only way to overthrow capitalism would be to smash the capitalist state in a violent uprising.
Lord Palmerston put it rather well in 1848 when he was Foreign Secretary:
“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”
He later became Prime Minister. No ‘deep state’ was needed to tell him what policies to pursue. He already knew.
Wez: “It has long been known that the US has a long term strategy of destabilizing Russia with the aim of regime change. Presidents come and go but the aim of global hegemony stays the same – who makes these decisions if not some kind of ‘deep state’?
I don’t see why there is a need to posit some kind of shadowy group to explain why different governments consistently pursue the same policy. Capitalist states will have strategic interests that don’t change over the short term and which any group of politicians coming to be charge of running the state will recognise and pursue, simply because they are committed to defend and furthering the general overall interest of its capitalist class.
Are you really saying that, for instance, when Starmer became prime minister last year some member of a ‘deep state’ told he must pursue the general interest of the British capitalist class in keeping trade routes for getting oil out of them Persian Gulf from being controlled by a hostile power? He had no need to be so instructed. He will have been able to see for himself what was in the capitalist interest.
The problem with positing some shadowy group instructing elected politicians what to decide to do is identifying who are the members of this group and how do people get to become members of it. And of course why has nobody, journalist or historian, been able to name names or describe its structure? Why has no member or operative ever spilt the beans?
Answer: because there is no such group. If you think there is, produce some evidence. Who are they? Continuity of pursuit of a policy is not a proof as there is a much simpler explanation for this for which there is plenty of evidence.
We distributed another 600 or so leaflets yesterday in Cranford in a part just outside Heathrow Airport’s perimeter fence. The people living there have to put up with the constant noise of planes landing and taking off literally just above their house. But workers can’t be choosers.
In all, that means 900 leaflets have been distributed. We are not expecting much of a response in terms of the QR as this is an experiment to see what might be expected in an area where most of the inhabitants are descendants of recent immigrants.
The contest here, perhaps unexpectedly, seems to be between Labour and Reform. As mentioned, Reform is not running a xenophobic campaign about asylum seekers with medieval views (they are leaving that to the Tories). We did meet one elector — the son of a “Kenya Asian” — who did express derogatory views about all Muslims. He wasn’t going to vote but said he would consider voting Reform at a general election.
Here is an example of the sort of campaign that Reform are running here:
https://x.com/PrabhdeepReform/status/1952829839158731218
They could be mistaken for LibDems. Incidentally, neither the LibDem or Greens candidates appear to be doing anything.
I don’t think that Vanessa Beeley can be regarded as a useful source of information or analysis. According to her Wikipedia entry, she is known as a purveyor of various conspiracy theories (including that the attack on the twin towers in New York was not the work of Al Qaeda).
The clue is in her tweet when she refers to the “Russian and US deep states”, the term “deep state” being part of conspiracy theorists’ language.
One definition of “deep state” is:
“a body of people, typically influential members of government agencies or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy.”
This makes the ostensible top political decision-makers the puppets of some shadowy group who make the real decisions.
So, in Russia, it would not be Putin and his clique who decide Russian policy but some other, secret clique that gives him orders. But, supposing this to be true, who are they and how are they chosen and renewed? As to the US, to suggest that Trump takes orders from some secret clique is just as absurd. Ironically, many of his more vocal supporters expect him to dismantle the deep state they believe to exist.
There are some cases where the politicians are not really in control. Pakistan for instance (and for a long while Turkey) where the politicians elected to control the government machine can’t go beyond what the leaders of the armed forces want. But there is nothing secretive about this. Who the leaders of the armed forces and what they want are known.
This is not to say that there is nothing in what she says, though saying that Russia is serving Israel’s interests sounds a bit dodgy.
Another critic of E.O. Wilson and his biological determinism (and opposition to real socialism) died on 7 July — Steven Rose. He was a co-author with Lewontin and Kamin of the 1984 book Not in Our Genes.
Here’s an extract from his obituary in yesterday’s Times which explains why his work was so useful to socialists in refuting the human nature argument against socialism.
“An academic ‘with a strongly philosophical and political cast of mind’, Rose took a stance against the idea that human behaviour was determined by genes. He was adamant that ‘we are free to make our own futures, though in circumstances not of our own choosing’.
This view placed him in opposition to those thinkers who argued that human nature was largely honed by evolutionary forces, and took no qualms with ferociously critiquing their views. Chief among his targets were the ‘reductionist’ entomologist Edward O Wilson, the evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins and the ‘romanticised Stone Age nonsense’ of the cognitive neuroscientist Steven Pinker.
He also directed his wrath at the enthusiasm for IQ testing in education and employment in the 1970s.”For reference, here is what Wilson wrote in 1978 against socialism:
“The perception of history as an inevitable class struggle proceeding to the emergence of a lightly governed egalitarian society with production in control of the workers is ( . . . ) based on an inaccurate interpretation of human nature” (On Human Nature, Penguin, 1995, p. 190).
One good thing about this will be the demise of TUSC. They have offered their name to the new party pending registration but, judging by this result on 7 August, that would be the kiss of death:
CANNOCK CHASE Hednesford Green Heath
JONES, Paul (Reform UK) 525
PEARSON, Alan (Labour Party) 230
HEWITT, Phil (Conservative Party) 126
ROCK, Rachel Lauren (Green Party) 101
JAGGER, Sharon Denise (Independent) 31
DRYHURST, Terry (UKIP) 5
KNOX, Gareth (Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition) 1We hadn’t expected another local by-election before the full council elections next May and certainly not in August, the height of the holiday season. But another one has been called in Hounslow on 21 August following the death of one of the councillors for Cranford Ward.
As we weren’t expecting one we have no more copies of our non-candidate local election leaflet. So we are using the surplus of leaflets printed for the Durham miners gala. 250 of these were distributed door to day and a further 600 will be next Thursday.
We met the Reform Party candidate, Khuswant Singh, supporting a light blue turban. Their names suggest that the Labour, Tory and Green candidates are also of Sikh background. This reflects the composition of the ward, 52% classifying themselves in the 2021 census as “Indian”. The fifth candidate, for the LibDems, has a Rumanian name. Nothing wrong with that as it indicates an integration into politics here.
https://www.hounslow.gov.uk/elections-voting/statement-persons-nominated-councillor-cranford
The Reform Party leaflet does not mention immigration, only potholes and fly-tipping. The Tory one does with a photo of their candidate pointing at a hotel in the ward used to accommodate asylum seekers and stating that “the safety of our children and women is being compromised”. They must be really desperate in out-prejudicing the Reform Party.
The ward is normally a safe Labour one, in fact the safest in Hounslow (over 70% of those who voted). If they lose Labour will be in dire trouble.
There another end of the world scenario you have missed — a comet or asteroid on a collision course with Earth. The late comrade Pieter Lawrence wrote a novel about this. In fact in it socialism comes about in sort of way you are suggesting. People — and governments — cooperate to deal with the threat and end up establishing socialism without setting to. It may not be your cup of tea as it’s not stupid humans who are cause the threatened disaster.
It can read here:
https://libcom.org/article/last-conflict
And here’s the review in the Socialist Standard:
By coincidence, Imposs1904 has just posted on his blog this article from the August 1937 Socialist Standard analysing the economic stakes at issue in the Spanish Civil War for the various capitalist states at the time.
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2025/08/what-is-behind-governments-spanish.html
Yes, that’s quite a good article setting out the various theories about the nature of banks and banking and very useful as a background to what the issues are. Some of the authors they refer to challenge the view that banks are essentially different from other lenders such as finance companies and pawnbrokers. Good point: if banks can create money from thin air, why can’t these other lenders? But then the theory that a single bank can create credit out of thin air has been thoroughly debunked, both in theory and in practice.
