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An analysis of the 100 or so requests for more information received at Head Office (by email, phone or letter) shows that about 37 of these have come from Wales. Since only 25% of the 1.35 million leaflets were distributed in Wales this requires an explanation. All I can think of is that Wales is a more "leftwing" or "anti-Tory" area than the South East so that the word "socialist" gets a better hearing there. It could be to do with the election broadcast but I doubt it as I don't think that that many viewers will have a pen and paper handy to take down the contact details at the end of one. The response to the election video (in terms of hits on our website, now nearly 2800) will have come from Youtube rather than the broadcast itself.  On the other hand, the percentage vote in Wales was lower than in the South East.So, something that needs explaining.

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L. Bird, I don't think there was anything unconstitutional about the decision in question. The EC is not obliged to accept the recommerndation of one of its sub-committees and 5 members present is a quorum and so can make valid decisions.What was unwise was for those 5 (out of 10, actually 9 as there was a vacancy) not to have postponed a decision on such a contraversial issue to a meeting at which more EC members would be present.If 5 members shouldn't make any decision then all the other decisions made (e.g to follow up the election campaign and to implement the Conference motions voted on by the membership) would be equally invalid.So we are talking about the wisdom and appropriateness of a decision not about whether it was against the rulebook.Decisions can be reversed (a move to try to do this has already been made and recorded in the minutes of the same EC Meeting). More generally, EC Members can be called to account for what they do at the next Conference or Autumn Delegate Meeting or even be made subject to a recall vote.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

Weekly Worker has a review of the book by Michael Robertshttp://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1013/unpicking-piketty/

He raises a point which has occurred to me: to what extent is the tendency that Marx postulated for the rate of profit to fall in the long run compatible with Picketty's data? As Piketty has concluded that there is a tendency for the rate of return on capital to increase faster than the rate of increase of production, in theory it would still be possible for this to happen with a declining rate of profit but as long as the rate of increase of production ("growth") declined too but more.  Is there any evidence that the rate of growth has declined?Roberts seems to want to defend the tendency of the rate of profit to fall at all costs, but I don't see that this is necessary since the evidence seems to suggest that the counter-tendencies Marx identified as working to raise the rate of profit have also operated, to such an extent that it is not possible to predict what will happen in the long run to the rate of profit in the real world.Ironically, if Piketty's "law" is correct and the rich have a tendency to get richer wouldn't this be a stronger criticism of capitalism than that the rich will tend to get poorer and poorer?

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

ALB wrote:

Was reviewed in the May Socialist Standard:

Was that actually a review (as in the author had read the whole book)?  I took it as a report of the news controversey, and we were waiting for a more detailed review.

You're right. It wasn't a review but a comment on the controversy surrounding him and his book. We must do a proper review. A copy of his weighty tome is being ordered.

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Anyway, I think someone has linked to Harvey's review before, but in case not:http://socialistworker.org/blog/critical-reading/2014/05/18/david-harvey-reviews-thomas-pi

This review is terrible. Harvey is getting worse and worse. There is an underlying endosement of "underconsumption" arguments and what's he mean by this:

Quote:

From his data (spiced up with some neat literary allusions to Jane Austen and Balzac) he derives a mathematical law to explain what happens: the ever-increasing accumulation of wealth on the part of the famous one percent (a term popularized thanks of course to the “Occupy” movement) is due to the simple fact that the rate of return on capital (r) always exceeds the rate of growth of income (g). This, says Piketty, is and always has been “the central contradiction” of capital. But a statistical regularity of this sort hardly constitutes an adequate explanation let alone a law. So what forces produce and sustain such a contradiction? Piketty does not say. The law is the law and that is that. Marx would obviously have attributed the existence of such a law to the imbalance of power between capital and labor.

Would Marx have?

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

 Kshama Sawant in her own words:" If we organize as workers, with a socialist strategy, we can tackle the chasm of income inequality and social injustice"

That the classic reformist argument. The question is whether, as a Trotskyist, she is just saying this in pursuit of their "transitional demand" tactic or whether she really believes this, i.e is a classical reformist. I suspect the latter.

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LBird wrote:

… Piketty can logically argue that it can happen again?Can reforms once again reduce the 'top 10% wealth share' to '60%'?If not, why not?

Piketty's basic argument is that the returns to capital tend to increase faster than production (GDP) and that, as a consequence, those who hold capital (the rich) get richer in relation to those who don't.This is not incompatible with a change in the distribution of the income from capital which would reduce wealth inequality. For instance, the same total capital income could be divided between a large number of small property owners or a smaller number of large property holders. In fact in Britain the latter is the case due to members of the capitalist class, such as the Duke of Westminster,  whose wealth originally came from owning land in town centres as opposed to industrial production; which is not the case in other countries, where the distribution of wealth is not so unequal.While he doesn't think that the basic tendency for returns to capital to increase faster than production can be changed (at least I don't think he does), he does think that its consequences can be mitigated through government intervention to reduce the amount of income from capital going to individuals and to distribute it differently. He is on record as advocating for instance an 80% tax on property incomes and a world-wide wealth tax to achieve this.As Graeber says:

Quote:

Piketty, in contrast, begins his book by denouncing "the lazy rhetoric of anti-capitalism". He has nothing against capitalism itself – or even, for that matter, inequality. He just wishes to provide a check on capitalism's tendency to create a useless class of parasitical rentiers. As a result, he argues that the left should focus on electing governments dedicated to creating international mechanisms to tax and regulate concentrated wealth. Some of his suggestions – an 80% income tax! – may seem radical, but we are still talking about a man who, having demonstrated capitalism is a gigantic vacuum cleaner sucking wealth into the hands of a tiny elite, insists that we do not simply unplug the machine, but try to build a slightly smaller vacuum cleaner sucking in the opposite direction.

This is not going to happen of course even if theoretically it could. But even if it did there would still be capitalism and the exploitation of wage-labour as this is the source of capital incomes. And it's this that we are against not the way its proceeds are distributed, isn't it? In other words, we are against the fact of there being income from capital rather than how this income is distributed.

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Was reviewed in the May Socialist Standard:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2014/no-1317-may-2014/cooking-books-capitalism-and-inequalityKey point is:

Quote:

The similarity between Piketty’s view and that of Marx on how capitalism works to make the rich richer is obvious but there is a difference. Piketty is more concerned with the distribution of the income from capital while Marx was concerned with the accumulation of capital itself irrespective of who owns it (whether individuals, corporations or the state) or who benefits personally from it.

Also this from the dreaded David Graeber (which is not too bad, considering it's him):http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/30/savage-capitalism-back-radical-challenge

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Alberto has already pointed out that Jose Carlos Monedero is also a supporter of Chavez and Chavism. Some stuff in English by him here:http://hiredknaves.wordpress.com/2014/05/27/podemos-left-unity-participation-and-the-right/http://cunninghiredknaves.tumblr.com/post/9919061644/run-social-democrats-runMore here on the thinking behind some of those in Podemos:https://hiredknaves.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/occupy-representation-podemos-and-the-politics-of-truth/https://hiredknaves.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/podemos-representation-and-overflow/To tell the truth I'm not too sure what they are trying to get at.

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This was discussed at Conference, when the "Vote No and write World Socialism" idea was shot down in flames. All will become clear when the Proceedings are out, soon.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

My main concern with the London Mayor idea is that it reinforces the impression that we are mainly a London party. That is inevitable but would require to be countered somehow.

Elections to the Welsh Assembly will take place the same day in May 2016.Elections to the Scottish Parliament are also scheduled for that day too. Of course in the unlikely (in my opinion) event of Scotland having broken away by then the situation there would be different. Presumably, there'd be a separate Scottish Electoral Commission with which we'd have to register. Be interesting to see if they would accept one from a party calling itself "The Socialist Party of Great Britain" or, in fact, whether we'd want to register under World Socialist Party (Scotland) instead. All very (very) hypothetical.

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Send him the "Poles Apart" DVD of a debate between us and an environmental activist (who has since joined the party) which explores this sort of issue, in this case in respect to the Arctic:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/catalog/dvd/poles-apart-capitalism-or-socialism-planet-heats

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I'm not sure where the figure of contesting 50 seats to qualify for a election broadcast has come from (maybe it was once the case) but the current Ofcom rules on political broadcasts state:

Quote:

Other registered parties if they are contesting one sixth or more of the seats up for election in the case of first-past-the-post, multi-constituency elections such as a General Election.

There are currently 650 MPs. One-sixth of this is 109.Frankly, I don't think we could do this, even if we relaxed the Rule about candidates standing in single-member constituencies having to have passed the Speakers Test.  Incidentally, the Rule currently says that in multi-member constituencies only one of the candidates has to have and in fact in the South East Region only one of the 10 had. Despite this 7 of the others were interviewed or wrote statement or letters to the press. They were quite capable of expressing the socialist case. After all, we have no leaders. The Speakers Test is essentially a test of knowledge and could probably be done away with (it already has for everything else) but one lesson of this election is the need to train members to answer questions on radio and TV.In any event, I don't think the PEB itself had much more than symbolic significance. It wasn't it that brought in hits to our website, but its posting on Youtube.  We could still do this even if we didn't qualify for one (as I can't see us doing). Also, the television interview with one of our candidates on the BBC2 Daily Politics Show will have been seen by many more than saw our PEB on the two occasions when it was broadcast.Obviously we have to follow-up our Euroelection campaign at the General Election by contesting seats in the areas we contested. The results, both in terms of votes and responses, identify Oxford and Brighton as must-contests. Also in Wales Swansea. Others such as Reading, Canterbury or Cardiff or Rhondda could be added.Outside the areas where we contested, we could do, say, 3 in London, and, taking into account where we have people on the ground (I think Brian has a valid point here), one in Norwich, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Lancaster, Doncaster, Sunderland, Glasgow and Edinburgh. That would be 19 or 20 as a realistic maximum figure. That would still be 4 times the largest number of seats we have contested before. I don't think that in practice we would reach that figure. Try convincing the branches in the North West and Scotland to engage in election activity !Looking beyond the 2015 general election, there's regional assembly elections in London, Wales and Scotland in 2016. These are easier to manage except there's no free postal distribution in them.If you want to think big there's the London Mayor election in 2016. It costs £10,000 to stand but every elector in London gets a booklet with statements from all the candidates. Here's the one from 2012. That's more than 5.4 million. We've never covered that number before. It's 4 times what we've just done. The "Independent Working Class Association" took advantage of this in 2004 mayor elections. But, since we are against the principle of elected mayors, could we contest these?Two other points. Candidates wouldn't have to be their own agents. And if we put up the same candidate in different constituencies we'd look silly (but we wouldn't need to as we could easily find 20 candidates. In fact, with the local elections in London and the Euroelections, we just fielded 17).

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Actually it's 114, but still 8th best out of 67. It was the Roman Party, campaigning for more recognition for what the Romans did for Britain, that got that but he was a local candidate.Results here too: http://www.reading.gov.uk/council/elections-and-voting/election-results/european-election-results-2014/

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For the record, here are the other two articles that appeared in the Powys County Times.From Friday 1 May:To enlarge click here.From  Friday15 MayTo enlarge click here.

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Grillo likes Farage and UKIP:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10862817/Nigel-Farage-is-no-racist-says-Italys-Beppe-Grillo-in-defence-of-possible-Ukip-alliance.htmlHow is this possible? Doesn't he realised that they are not much more than breakaway Tories? If he doesn't some of the others in the Five Star Movement seem to.

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