[ALB]

Already signalled and under discussion from this post onwards on this thread:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/thomas-more-and-abolition-money#comment-20245

[ALB]

Here's the debate that got away. Since our candidate in Oxford West & Abingdon had just given a talk at Head Office on "Health and Homelessness" and since we learned that the National Health Action Party was also standing we wrote to their Oxford branch suggesting a debate on some such topic as "Which Way to a Lasting Free Health Service?" They have replied:

Quote:

I'm not sure whether a debate between just our 2 parties would be a good use of either your candidate's time or ours – there's very unlikely to be much difference on either NHS nor the vital necessity of challenging the neoliberal consensus of the past 30 years! If you can persuade Nicola Blackwood and Layla Moran to agree to an debate where they can be asked publicly to defend their support for Lansley's dismantling and privatisation of the the NHS, alongside Sally Copley to provide answers about the disastrous PFIs and embedding of the market (not to mention Alan PwC Milburn's and Patricia BUPA Hewitt's contribution to Labour party health policy), by all means come back to us.   If, as I strongly suspect, the other PPCs are reluctant to defend their parties' record on the NHS beside a working GP, I suggest both Helen and Mike take every opportunity to challenge them rather than arrange a meeting where we all agree on getting the market out and reversing HSCA. Helen is already being backed publicly by large swathes of the most eminent medics and academics in Oxford – including Iain Chalmers, Profs Danny Dorling and David Stuckler ("Why Austerity Kills") as well as authors Mark Haddon and Philip Pullman. If Mike and his supporters are sincere in wanting to replace our Tory MP and call for a publicly owned, publicly accountable NHS in this highly marginal seat, the most effective action would be to come behind the NHA party campaign and vote for Dr Helen Salisbury. Best wishes, Penny Ormerod, Scretary Oxford NHA party

(Nicola Blackwood and Layla Moran are respectively the Tory and LibDem candidates while Sally Copley is the Labour one.) We are of course sincere in wanting to replace the current Tory MP but equally sincere in not wanting her to be replaced by someone from some other party that supports capitalism, the real cause of why people's needs are neglected in the field of health care but in all other fields too. Because capitalism is a profit-driven system in which profits have to come first, an economic law which in the end all governments, whatever party or parties form them, have to comply with and apply.

[ALB]

The appendix at the end of this long, essentially factual article on Syriza from an ultraleft group has another killer quote from one of Syriza's leading economic advisers,  the John Milios mentioned earlier in this thread:http://internationalist-perspective.org/IP/ip-texts/text_on_syriza.pdf

Quote:

The transition from capitalism to communism is necessarily related to the abolition of value form, i.e. money and commodity, and the form of enterprise. (John Milios, The critique of political economy as a critique of the Left, Thesseis #101, 2007)

[ALB]

Today's news about Rotherham shows what is likely to happen to a local council, whether socialist or not, if it refused to respect the law or follow what the central government has laid downhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-31130750

Quote:

Mr Pickles said he planned to give control of the council to a team of five commissioners, including an overall lead and one tasked specifically with looking at children's services.They would "provide new leadership" and take over the roles of the "wholly dysfunctional cabinet," he said.The council has 14 days to respond to his "wholly exceptional" proposals, Mr Pickles said.He also plans to impose early elections in 2016.The elections would give people a chance to "renew the membership of their council and elect those they have confidence in", he explained.He said he hoped control would be returned to Rotherham Council as "rapidly as possible".A statement announcing the resignation of Rotherham's cabinet was released shortly before Mr Pickles outlined his plans

It's what would happent today  if, for instance, some local council refused to implement the cuts in spending the central government wants by adopting an illegal budget. as some are standing for election on a pledge to do so.

[ALB]

The full interview can be found here:http://truth-out.org/news/item/28879-looking-toward-a-moneyless-economy-and-sleeping-well-at-nightThe title of the interview ("Looking Toward a Moneyless Economy … ) itself is indicative of how the idea has spread but, as you say, he spoils it by what follows. We've discussed here before his "funny money" proposal (that what is needed is an "oxidisable" money, by which he means money that cannot be accumulated but can only circulate). There's also a criticism of his views on this (and other matters) by the London Wine & Cheese Appreciation Society here:http://truth-out.org/news/item/28879-looking-toward-a-moneyless-economy-and-sleeping-well-at-nightThe give a source for his funny money theory (which he hints at at the end of the interview):

Quote:

But if you had a money form that dissolved, that is oxidisable, we would end up with a very different kind of society. You would have a money form that would aid circulation but that would not facilitate accumulation.David Harvey on Platypus panel Radical Interpretations of the Present Crisis (1'55"19), 14 November 2012

Still, just be raising the possibility of a moneyless society he is lending credibility to the idea.

[ALB]

It has happened. In fact, when we can, the editorial committee send the layout team more articles than they need so they can have some leeway in fitting things in from a design point of view. We do indicate which articles to give priority to, but this is not always followed. For instance, a short piece on the recent elections in New Zealand got left out. Perfection is only an ideal especially when working to a tight deadline.

[ALB]

markusuboy wrote:

The video is particularly interesting because right at the beginning he addresses the question of why he thinks it is worth rescuing capitalism from its crisis rather than welcoming its collapse (which he seems to assume is a possibility). His answer simply comes down to the idea that "the Left isn't ready for power" and that if the crisis is not remedied Europe is headed for something much worse (=fascism). So, behind all of his undeniable eloquence and erudition (and knowledge of capitalism), is a very tired reformist logic.

This is the same argument Yanis Varoufakis, the new Greek Finance Minister, employed in the 2012 article from which the killer quote about what Marx didn't expect came from:http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2012/04/04/on-keynes-marx-and-the-value-of-models-at-a-time-of-crisis-a-reply-to-david-laibman/

Quote:

Why did Marx not consider the possibility that a recession, a crisis, can lead to a depression, a capital ‘c’ Crisis? Because, the answer is, he was in the business of, what David and I refer to, immanent criticism (see below for more). And what is immanent criticism? In brief, it is the following: You take the establishment theory, the dominant paradigm, and you refrain from criticising its basic presumptions. What you do is to show that, by its own criteria, on the basis of its own assumptions, the model (or theory) which the Establishment accepts as valid, produces ‘subversive’ results. Nothing upsets the Establishment more than to have something like this demonstrated; that its ‘favourite’ theory recommends views and policies which are detrimental to the Establishment’s own ideology.In practical terms, what Marx did was to take the model of capitalism that had the most kudos in his time (i.e. the theories of Adam Smith ad David Ricardo) and show that, by their own criteria, and under the force of their own assumptions, even the most efficient, most competitive, corruption-free capitalism would, unavoidably generate crises. To show this, Marx strove to demonstrate that, even if all profits were automatically saved, capitalism would periodically fall in deep holes of its own making. This was quite an achievement; one with lasting value. For it alerts us to reasons why crises occur in capitalism; reasons that go well beyond the creation of (Austrian, Hayek-like) bubbles, of a depletion in optimism (negative animal spirits, as Keynesians might have called it), of over-indebtedness by governments, corporations etc. And Keynes? Without ever having acknowledged Marx’s contribution, he instinctively understood something  important about capitalism that Marx did not allow himself to dwell upon: that when capitalism digs a hole and then falls into it, it is perfectly capable of failing to climb out again. You see, the difference between Keynes and Marx was that Keynes believed in capitalism; he thought of it a little like Churchill thought of democracy (a terrible form of government but the best of all available alternatives). In fact, Keynes was eager to save capitalism from itself; to identify faults in its functioning and fix them so as to prevent crises from turning into implosions with the capacity to undermine its long term future.Marx, on the other hand, had an agenda for transcending capitalism (socialism, he called the ‘next’, more developed, phase). For this reason, his analytical endeavours were all about concentrating on a utopian capitalism (one in which, for example, all profits are automatically invested) in order to show that, even in its utopian guise, capitalism is irrational, inefficient, unnatural, wasteful.

Actually, I think that Marx (and us) do do what he says. But that doesn't mean that Keynes had discovered a formula for saving capitalism from permanent depression, if only because capitalism has no such tendency.Here's the killer quote again:

Quote:

Marx was right: capitalism cannot be civilised by means of some benevolent government that applies the right dosage of fiscal and monetary policy at the right time.

[ALB]

That's because you persist in arguing with L. Bird.

[ALB]

All letters sent to the Socialist Standard, especially those from non-members, receive a reply whether or not they are published. Some get crowded out at the last moment at the layout stage but are then held over to the next month. We can't know this the weekend when the layout is done.

[ALB]

Thanks for the clarifications.

John Oswald wrote:

I understood the samurai and their retinues in total numbered some 35 million.

According to this article, 35 million was the total population of Japan at the time (middle of the 19th century):http://www.willamette.edu/~rloftus/LastSamurai.htm

Quote:

the samurai class was about 5 percent of a population of thirty-five million

That about 1.75 million.

Quote:

Perhaps it's too much to expect that our entertainments have a factual basis. But now I have to deal with the aftermath, with students who will think that all samurai (all five hundred of them, instead of nearly two million) were pure warriors who lived in the mountains, instead of as underemployed urbanite bureaucrats. I have to explain how rare seppuku (ritual suicide, also known as hara-kiri) was.

Your source wasn't Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai was it?

[ALB]

Here's Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett giving sound advice on what to do if no candidate stands for what you want:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omVQfnJiciQprovided, that is, that "Socialism" is considered a rude word. Who knows, it might be in Australia. Anyway, it's what we'll be doing even if there is a Green Party candidate standing.

[ALB]

Actually, having an article already published elsewhere is one reason why we do turn down articles, but I'm afraid there's no guarantee that we won't use your article now that we've gone to the trouble of preparing for publication. So there's no guarantee it won't appear.

[ALB]

I wouldn't say he's putting the knife in. In fact he seems to rather like the idea seeing it as a sort of "transitional demand"  After all, he was once a Trotskyist (in "Workers Power" of all things) but maybe he's more into what Andre Gorz called himself "revolutionary reformism", i.e, proposing and campaigning for reforms that are supposed to undermine capitalism, basically an attempt to justify a gradualist, reformist approach.  That was in the 1960s when capital accumulation was proceeding at a much faster rate than today, which made reformism seem feasible (even though still not a way to socialism). A reform like "basic income" that would bring some benefit to workers, cost billions but not bring much benefit to capitalists or the capitalist economy is just not on the agenda. Today reformists have to spend all their time trying to stop previously acquired reforms being taken away.

[ALB]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

My latest is a failed submission to the Socialist Standard

It's not a "failed" submission but merely one that has not yet been published. The editorial committee gives priority to articles on contemporary events and your article was held over, probably till March or maybe April. The same goes for your article on the Incas. The committee never turns down an article without explaining to the writer why in detail. Basically, the position is that if you get an acknowledgement of receipt of an article and don't get a "failure" email then it will appear, sooner or later.

[ALB]

SocialistPunk wrote:

Any idea as to where in More's "Utopia", Phil Collins gets his idea of a basic income for every citizen?

No idea. Throughout the second part of Utopia, where the traveller describes how things are organised on the island, it is quite clear that it is a society without money (except for external trade). People produce for use not for sale and don't have to pay for what they need to live. They either have free access to it or are supplied with it free. There is no question of them being supplied with money to buy what they need. As Kautsky puts in in his book Dave B mentions, "They themselves have no money" and.

Quote:

We have seen that the Senate of the Utopians consists of delegates from the various communities; it is this representative body of the nation which organises production, estimates the needs which it is to supply, and divides the labour produce according to the results of these statistics. the local communities are not commodity producers, exchanging their products for those of other cimmunities. Each one produces for the whole nation. The nation, not the local community, is also the owner of the means of production: above all the land.

I can't see how any other interpretation is possible. Read Book II and judge for yourself. Book I is also an interesting criticism of economic conditions in England at the time (when people were being driven off the land to make way for sheep farming to produce wool for export):http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/more/utopia-contents.htmlI've emailed both Collins and the editor. When/if they reply I let people know.

[Author]

Posts