ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
alanjjohnstone wrote:Not read the pamphlet " The Revolution Will Be Hilarious" but perhaps it may be of interest to this thread -. Maybe the Library Committee could order it.
We've already got it. Review already done, to appear in the December Socialist Standard.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Basically, i feel the same sympathetic argument is being made in support of Brand as with the Occupy Movement. They both have made the subject of revolution popular in the media, returned it to the public domain, once again made it a respectable topic for the over the dining table.That's the point (not too sure about the dining table, though). Just as Occupy helped to make "capitalism" a dirty word Brand has popularised the concept of "revolution". Both things we can only welcome as they provide us with an openingHave we missed the boat on this? Not necessarily. For instance, there's another local by-election coming up near Head Office next month. Up to now we've been using on our election address the slogan "Vote for yourself for a change". We could change this to something like "Revolution Not Reform" or "Why We Need a Revolution" or even "Let's Make a Revolution" or "Time for Revolution". Anyway, something with "revolution" in it.
Interesting twist to the arguments we have been having on another thread (the one of Pannekoek) where one assumption has been that there are three factors: the object (the real world of experience), the subject (the experiencer) and knowledge (the subject's understanding of the object). Which are you saying "we" are?
More on Brand's views and where he's coming from here:http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/WSM_Forum/conversations/messages/51790
The latest issue (November/December) of the Skeptical Inquirer has just arrived from America. There's something in one article which may (or may not) be relevant to something we've discussed here:
Quote:Plausibly, the survival advantage of vision gave rise to our reflexive bias for believing that the world is as we perceive it to be, an error that psychologists and philosophers call "naive realism". This misplaced faith in the trustworthiness of our perceptions is the wellspring of two of history's most famously misguided theories: that the world is flat and that the sun revolves around the Earth. For thousands of years, people trusted their raw impressions of the heavens. Yet, as Galiledo understood all too well, our eyes can deceive us. He wrote in his Dialogues in 1632 that the Copernican model of the heliocentric universe commits a rape upon the senses" — it violates everything our eyes tell us.There also this chapter from our pamphlet Socialism As A Practical Alternative which explains how we think a production-for-use system could work (nothing to do with the state capitalist system in the old USSR):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/socialism-practical-alternative#ch4
There's nothing to argue about in this case. Everybody here accepts that the human mind is entirely determined by the surrounding world.Historically there is an argument about how: is it a simple reflection (as Lenin held) or does the human mind play an active role (as you and us hold) ?There are of course other more or less interesting things we argue about (see the thread on Pannekoek) but not about human knowledge being the result of the interaction of the human mind with the ever-changing external world of observable phenomena (or rather, as Morgenstern, reminds us, perhaps the word "external" is not entirely accurate as we and our minds are also parts of the world of observable phenomena, even mental constructs out of it too).
LBird wrote:'all our knowledge is derived from the interaction of humans with the ever-changing world of experience'.That's just nit-picking since this statement doesn't exclude, in fact is premissed on, the statement that all our [i.e. us h umans] knowledge is derived from the ever-changing world of experience; that the human mind is entirely determined by the surrounding real world.Adding "from the interaction of humans" merely qualifies it and doesn't make you or anyone else (e.g me) an idealist. In fact, it is so obvious that it doesn't need stating since by "knowledge" we mean "human knowledge", so obviously humans are involved. That's what we're talking about: human knowledge.I don't understand why you always seem to want to pick an argument when there's nothing to argue about.
Here's the article he wrote as guest editor of the New Statesman. Rather long and not so good but he does make some good points in passing. He seems to be into "spirituality" too much. A latter-day George Harrison who even looks like someone ftom that era !http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/10/russell-brand-on-revolution
I understood Morgernstern to be making the basic point that all our knowledge is derived from the ever-changing world of experience and that anyone who claimed otherwise was an idealist, whether religious (more likely) or not.Anyway, does this (the quotes not the accompanying text and the silly idea that you can get something done about global warming by signing a petition) help restore Engels's reputation and show he wasn't completely out of his depth on scientific matters:http://links.org.au/node/3554
simondv wrote:" but from a capitalist point of view is unnecessary as bank lending depends on the state of the economy and it is this that governs the demand for bank loans." I disagree, the state of the economy depends on bank lendingsimondv wrote:All new money should be created by the central bank, free from debt and interest, and free from political influence, to be spent into the economy. The present system is manic depressive, more lending encouraging a boom, a bust occurring when banks lend less and people try to pay down debt because there is less money.Since we agree that the claim that a single bank can create the money it lends out of thin air is nonsense and also that the textbook model of multiple loans is unrealistic (see this article from 1971), this is the crux of the matter, as Alan has just pointed out. Does the state of the economy depend on bank lending or does bank lending depend on the state of the economy?Your theory offers a purely monetary explanation for the boom/slump cycle — and a purely monetary way of avoiding it. No attention is paid to what happens in the "real economy" where wealth is actually produced, for profit. No notice is taken of the competitive struggle for profits leading to overproduction.A boom is a situation in which markets are expanding. Businesses assume that this will go on for ever and plan to expand their productive capacity to meet this. They are eager to get finance to do this and turn to the banks to borrow money to invest in increasing production. Bank lending increases. The demand for finance drives up the rate of interest. This is one of the factors bringing the boom to an end, but the main one is overproduction (in relation to the market) in a key sector which results when all the planned-for increased productive capacity comes on stream.In the ensuing slump, the demand for bank loans falls off and interest rates fall. As long as it remains unprofitable to invest as much as before, the government can encourage banks to make loans as much as it likes but this won't have any effect. Nor is there any way that the banks can force businesses to take out loans they don't want. The initiative for a recovery has to come from profitability being restored by events in the real economy (such as the clearance of unsold stocks, the decline in real wages due to increased unemployment, the weeding-out of unprofitable firms which their assets passing cheaply to their rivals).We are seeing this right now. The government has offered all sorts of incentives for the banks to lend, but they are not doing so. The fact is that the government can no more force banks to lend in a slump than it can stop them lending in a boom. How much banks lend depends on the state of the economy, on whether it is in the boom or the slump stage of the business cycle.There is no monetary policy or monetary or banking reform way of avoiding the boom/slump cycle. This cycle is built-in to capitalism and is caused by events in the real production-for-profit economy. The only way to avoid it is to end capitalism by converting the means of production into common ownership under democratic contro,l so that they can be used to produce to satisfy people's needs instead of for sale on a market with a view to profit. Then there will be no need for money or banks.
You've missed the question mark and the subtitle "The cases for and against the revolutionary use of parliament" !
Why didn't you tell us he was talking about revolution? I didn't bother to look at it until now because Brand has always struck me as a self-publicist and a clown, but actually he's not too bad here. He even commits himself to seeing the outcome of the revolution he thinks is coming as some sort of "socialist egalitarian system". Listen to it. It's only 8 minutes.
I think you are being too harsh on Engels. His writings on history such as The Peasant War in Germany and The Origin of the Family don't betray any influence of the dreaded "positivism". In fact, we quote from them all the time.And his The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man is not bad for its time.I'm not convinced either that Marx had a different understanding of the scientific developments of his day than Engels. They frequently discussed these in their correspondence and I don't think there is any evidence of Marx telling Engels that his approach was wrong (even if it was).As to what Ricky Tomlinson (of the Scargill Labour Party) should have said, it was "Dialectics of Nature? My Arse!" rather than all dialectics.
