[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/

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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:

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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

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

That about 1.75 million.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

[ALB]

ALB wrote:

Oxford West seems to be the place. We've received a third invitation for our candidate there. This time to speak on a Sunday evening at a meeting in St Margarets Institute, Polstead Road, in North Oxford. The organisers are inviting all seven candidates declared so far (Tory, Liberal, Labour, UKIP, Green, National Health Action Party and us) to speak on their own and answer questions. The first, with the National Health Action Party candidate, is this evening:http://www.smi-oxford.org.uk/editor/content/upload/The%20Sunday%20Politics%20Helen%20Salisbury.pdfWatch this space for when our candidate, Mike Foster, will be the speaker.

It's earlier than expected — this Sunday, 8 February at 8pm.For more details see:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/meet-socialist-candidate-oxford-west-8pm

[ALB]

Just got another reply from them:

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Hmm, apologies, I forwarded your email to the curator for the script who provided that source from his notes. The particular detail which you highlighted must have come from elsewhere – I'll have a dig around but I'm afraid we don't have anything to show you immediately since that article was the only reference attached to this note. I'll let you know if I find anything.

The mystery continues.

[ALB]

Philip Collins in that article in Friday's Times (where he got Thomas More wrong) makes a couple of other points:

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You would never have known it from Ms Bennett's account but the citizen's income is, in large part, a replacement for a means-tested welfare state, not a supplement to it. The Citizen's Income Trust has calculated that if we gave £56 a week to people aged under 24, £71 a week to those between 25 and 65 and £142 to the over-65s, the total cost would be £276 billion. Means-tested benefits would be abolished to the value of £272 billion. Add in your saving on fraud and the reduced costs of administration and you're in the black.

In other words, the proposal is another case of what we said about the Beveridge Report: that it's about "reorganising poverty".And

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To the extent that immigrants taking benefits is a problem (which is hardly at all), that would also be impossible under a scheme that, as the name suggests, grants an income only to UK citizens.

So, maybe UKIP will soon be adopting it too.

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John Oswald wrote:

Areas of southern India have been vegan for millennia – without thinking about it.

I find it hard to believe that whole areas have been vegan (as opposed to sects living in part of an area alongside meat-eaters). What is the evidence for your claim?Hinduism might ban eating cows (an ideological reflection of the fact that they were essential to agriculture) but I don't think it bans eating fish or birds. In fact I find it hard to accept that any people, even in South India, living in a coastal area would have abstained from eating fish. It just wouldn't make sense. And I find it only slightly less hard to accept that people living in inland areas wouldn't eat birds, eg chickens. That wouldn't make sense either.I suggest that vegetarianism has only ever been a minority practice everywhere pursued by religious or other sects amidst a majority meat-eating population. And always will be ….

John Oswald wrote:

Interestingly, numerous members of the Japanese feudal nobility committed seppuku – both sexes – rather than allow meat to be eaten at home following the Meiji revolution. In all, two million samurai killed themselves, for many reasons, but slaughter of animals for food was one powerful motive too. (See one instance of this in the classic autobiography, Daughter of the Samurai.)

I think your claim that some "two million" (your emphasis) Samurai committed ritual suicide (by self-disembowelment) a mere 150 years ago  is also very dubious. Two million would in fact been all the Samurai then existing. It would have been an event of world-wide significance and knowledge. I suggest it is completely untrue. What is your evidence for it?

[ALB]

Oxford West seems to be the place. We've received a third invitation for our candidate there. This time to speak on a Sunday evening at a meeting in St Margarets Institute, Polstead Road, in North Oxford. The organisers are inviting all seven candidates declared so far (Tory, Liberal, Labour, UKIP, Green, National Health Action Party and us) to speak on their own and answer questions. The first, with the National Health Action Party candidate, is this evening:http://www.smi-oxford.org.uk/editor/content/upload/The%20Sunday%20Politics%20Helen%20Salisbury.pdfWatch this space for when our candidate, Mike Foster, will be the speaker.Meanwhile, elsewhere in Oxford, we have begun distributing a leaflet announcing that we are standing in both Oxford constituencies. Here's what it says:

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The General Election: We will be standing hereIn both Oxford East and Oxford West & Abingdon.We are standing to raise the issue of the need to end capitalism and replace it with a system geared to meeting people’s needs rather than to making profits for the few. We want a world cooperative society where wealth is produced and owned in common and freely shared according to need. A classless democratic society where decisions are made for the common good rather than to benefit vested business interests.Tinkering around with the present system trying to fix it has been tried for years but the same problems remain and for the same reason: capitalism is a profit-driven system where making profits takes, and has to take, priority over meeting people’s needs and safeguarding the environment. No government can change this. What is required is a complete Revolution to get rid of capitalism altogether. We will be standing for that and nothing else.Our candidates will be Kevin Parkin in Oxford East and Mike Foster in Oxford West & Abingdon.

The next occasion to distribute this will be on Thursday 5 February when the leader of the French Front National, Marine Le Pen, is due to speak at the Oxford Union Debating Society and the "No Platform for Fascists" lot have organised a demonstration to try to stop her speaking.

[ALB]

The other side of the coin: the decline of the established centre-left party in Greece PASOK:http://www.policy-network.net/news/4028/State-of-the-Left-%E2%80%93-The-threat-of-Pasokification

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While long-anticipated, Syriza’s victory in Sunday’s Greek general election represents a mini-electoral earthquake which has further divided European social democracy.Parties are split on the implications: some factions see a great awakening, some a useful pressure point against Angela Merkel’s Europe, others either fear ‘Pasokification’ (the annihilation process that saw Greece’s centre-left Pasok party fall from 43.9 per cent in 2009 to 4.7 per cent last weekend) or a dangerous injection of wishful thinking at a time for hard truths.

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