[ALB]

That's good stuff about a slogan we still use and which sums up what socialism is all about.. We should all read it. It's not very long.

[ALB]

We keep getting emails at HO from prominent Labourites. Here's one from the Leader himself:

Quote:

People sometimes say that they don't know what we — what I — stand for, so I'll put this in the simplest terms I can, so no one can have any doubts. This country is too unequal, and we need to change it. So here are the promises I'm making to you about the kind of Britain I will lead:First, I will undo the damage the Tories have done to our country:I will scrap the Bedroom Tax, which unfairly punishes the disabled and the vulnerableI will scrap the Health and Social Care Act, which damages and undermines our NHSI will scrap the gagging law, which limits our freedom of speech and right to campaignI will reverse the Tories' £3bn tax cut for millionaires, so we get the deficit down but do it fairlySecond, I will take on the powerful vested interests that hold millions back:I will force energy companies to freeze gas and electricity bills until 2017I will give power back to those who rent their homes, by scrapping letting fees and stabilising tenancy agreementsI will raise money from tobacco companies, tax avoiders, and a mansion tax to fund doctors, nurses, careworkers and midwives for our NHSI will reform our banks so that they properly support small businessesI will stop recruitment agencies hiring only from abroadThird, I will start to rebuild a fairer, better Britain:I will raise the minimum wage, to ensure that everyone that does a hard day's work is properly rewardedI will promote the living wage by giving tax breaks to companies that pay itI will ban the damaging zero-hours contracts that exploit British workersI will bring in a lower 10p income tax rate, cutting taxes for 24 million workersI will support working parents with 25 hours of free childcare for three- and four-year-oldsI will help more young people get on the housing ladder by getting 200,000 homes built every yearI want to know — is this the kind of Britain you want to see? Tell me now which of my three promises is most important to you:

At least he calls them promises., but he omits the word "piecrust".

[ALB]

Here's the result:

Quote:

Mark Reckless (UKIP) 16,867 (42.10%)Kelly Tolhurst (Conservative) 13,947 (34.81%)Naushabah Khan (Labour) 6,713 (16.76%)Clive Gregory (Green) 1,692 (4.22%)Geoff Juby (Lib Dem) 349 (0.87%)Hairy Knorm Davidson (Official Monster Raving Loony Party) 151 (0.38%)Stephen Goldsbrough (Ind) 69 (0.17%)Nick Long (People Before Profit) 69 (0.17%)Jayda Fransen (Britain First) 56 (0.14%)Mike Barker (Ind) 54 (0.13%)Charlotte Rose (Ind) 43 (0.11%)Dave Osborn (Patriotic Socialist Party) 33 (0.08%)Christopher Challis (Ind) 22 (0.05%)

Confirmation as to why we no longer contest by-elections – the risk of being discredited by being beaten by such as the Monster Raving Loony Party. A warning too, maybe, of contesting general election seats where we've nobody on the ground.Interesting the way the Labour Party is entering the anti-immigrant stakes. After Gordon Brown was criticised during the last general election for calling a bigot a bigot, now one of their frontbench spokespersons is forced to resign for mocking the flag of St George.

[ALB]

Just read through the whole debate. It was obviously made for MPs with odd ideas on money.Here's Douglas Carswell, once again committing himself (and now UKIP?) to supporting "free market capitalism":

Quote:

Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP): I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing this important subject to the attention of the House. Does he agree that, far from shoring up free market capitalism, the candy floss credit system the state is presiding over replaces it with a system of crony corporatism that gives capitalism a bad name and undermines its very foundations?

And Austen Mitchell (Labour):

Quote:

I speak as a renegade social creditor who is still influenced by social credit thinking; I do not pledge total allegiance to Major Douglas, but I am still influenced by him.( …) Some argue—Major Douglas would have argued this—that credit should therefore be issued only by the state

In fact, there was a disagreement amongst the Monetary Reformers as to what precise reform was needed, with those on the left like Mitchell and Michael Meacher advocating that the State should issue all money and those on the right like Baker and Carswell arguing that the state should not interfere.The only person to give anything like a realist picture of how banks operate was Andrea Leadsom, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury (presumably on the basis of what her officials wrote for her):

Quote:

Whenever a bank makes a loan, it credits the borrower’s bank account with a new deposit and that creates “new money”. However, there are limits to how much new money is created at any point in time. When a bank makes a loan, it does so in the expectation that the loan will be repaid in the future—households repay their mortgages out of their salaries; businesses repay their loans out of income from their investments.In other words, banks will not create new money unless they think that new value will also in due course be created, enabling that loan to be paid back.

[ALB]

I should have added Steve Baker to the list of currency cranks in parliament. He supports the US Tea Party and wants to abolish the Federal Reserve and, presumably, the Bank of England:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXnavnAvMVMhttp://www.stevebaker.info/2014/11/understanding-the-money-creation-and-society-debate/He runs the Cobden Centre and is an admirer of Baron Ludwig von Mises.And of course there's Caroline Lucas and the Green Party.

[ALB]

Interesting breaking news:

Quote:

A bipartisan subcommittee report issued Wednesday showed that parent companies of major U.S. banks have acquired massive trading positions in commodities even as businesses under their control sell uranium, operate coal mines and metal warehouses, stockpile aluminum and operate power plants.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/11/20/goldman-sachs-jpmorgan-morgan-stanley-senate-hearing/19293581/If banks can make money simply by creating money out of thin air and charging interest on it why do they bother to acquire physical commodities, not just to trade in them but in their production? Answer: because they can't and don't create money out of thin air.

[ALB]

I think the debate will be in Hansard. It will be interesting to see who the currency crank MPs are apart from Douglas Carswell (UKIP) and Austen Mitchell (Labour). Maybe there will even be some who do understand banking properly.

[ALB]

No it wasn't anything to do with the fact that we were socialists (or that the owner of Wetherspoons is a supporter of the UK getting out of the EU). It was a blanket ban on anybody with leaflets or placards or rosettes or badges. Later, after we had left for another pub, they did admit people even with placards. Either they had overcome their panic or the prospect of making more sales had made them change their mind. Incidentally, the other pub also asked some people (with Green Party placards, as it happened) to leave them outside. We kept our leaflets in our pockets but the "People Before Profit" candidate was also there, so we did have a political discussion there on whether this was possible under capitalism (we said "no", he said nothing). Not that it was likely to develop into a pub brawl. We also talked to another customer who said she had already voted by post for the Greens.I think the publicans of Rochester are more used to tourists than politicos.

[ALB]

SocialistPunk wrote:

Please show me where I discussed the case and used intemperate comments?

SocialistPunk wrote:

The issue now becomes how does the Party deal with someone like that in its ranks. If the footballer first mentioned on this thread were a Party member, how would the Party deal with the negative publicity such a person would bring? It's important to keep in mind the denial of any wrongdoing. Would members say let bygones be bygones, he's served his time, who cares if he denies the crime? Or seek to distance themselves from such an unsavoury and harmful character?

[ALB]

Looks as if the LU has been outmanoeuvred by the Trotskyists behind TUSC:http://www.independentsocialistnetwork.org/resolution-on-electoral-unity-with-tusc-as-agreed-at-lu-november-conference

[ALB]

SP has shot himself in the foot band and shown why we musn't go down the road he proposes. With his intemperate comments on the footballer whose case was at the start of this thread he has shown how some members would, probably inevitably,  allow prejudice to sway their decision.This is not and open and shut case (not many are):http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/18/legal-watchdog-fast-tracks-ched-evans-rape-inquiryhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-30093565

[ALB]

See following

[ALB]

I think the manager was overwhelmed by the situation. Not far from the pub there was the confrontation going on between the Britain First fascists and those who wanted to stop them marching down the high street (past the Little Dorrit tea rooms, Pip sweetshops and Two Cities cafes). I don't suppose Rochester had seen anything like it before and the manager was afraid that if he let in anyone political fighting would break out in his pub. An over-reaction. We were just the innocent victims, even though his behaviour to us was overbearing.

[ALB]

So that's what you've been trying to say all along !Alfred Sohn-Rethel, (ex-CP) who he mentions, seems interesting and to be saying something similar (though abstract thought will have evolved long before Acient Greece). See:http://danieltutt.com/2012/11/15/sohn-rethels-necessary-false-consciousness-and-marxist-epistemology/http://www.internationalmarxisthumanist.org/articles/contra-sohnrethel-philosophical-roots-anticapitalismby-david-blackThis description of his view from the first above:

Quote:

Like Marx, he claims that all cognitive concepts are derivatives from the material being from which they arise, and because cognitive concepts are derived from this being, and not the being of external nature and the material world, it is the social being of the historical epochs in which these concepts arise and play their part that matter most in terms of analysis

and this from the second:

Quote:

Sohn-Rethel seems to think that he can avoid this dilemma through recourse to “materialism.” This is not to say that Sohn-Rethel subscribes to a vulgar dialectical materialist orthodoxy. He asserts that the reality Marx opposes to forms of consciousness is not “matter” but social existence; in order to derive consciousness historically from social being, we must presuppose “a process of abstraction which is part of this being.”

His Intellectual and Manual Labor: A Critique of Epistemology looks like another book to add to your reading list.

[ALB]

DJP wrote:

I think physically assaulting or threatening other members, or members of the public whilst representing the party should be taken seriously also.

OK. Fair enough.

[Author]

Posts