ALB
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I'm not a Guardian-reader but another comrade has pointed to this article, which seems relevant to this thread:http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jul/01/-sp-tory-summer-party-drew-super-rich-supporters-with-total-wealth-of-11bn
Vin Maratty wrote:The centre of Durham is closed to traffic from 7.00 am. How have members managed to get the table, banner, lit etc to the racecourse in the past?I emailed this question to comrade JB who used to organise having our stall there and his reply is:
Quote:In the past it's been a case of us turning up before 7am at the gala – always with a car which is parked on the main field behind the gazebo ( stall holders are allowed vehicles on the field) – it makes for a long day though as you usually can't get off the site until about 5.30 pm.This year we won't have an official stall but when I went there once I just parked my car anywhere and walked. Two people should be able to carry a paste table and bag with pamphlets to the field and set up an unofficial stall (as has been suggested). In the past we had a gazebo (which is still in JB's house in Newcastle) which would be a different proposition.
The various versions of our old Questions of the Day pamphlet used to have a notice at the back saying read the Socialist Standard
Quote:For the socialist viewpoint on current affairs backed by incontrovertible facts and logical argument.We seem to be re-running the old "is socialism a moral as well as a scientific case" discussion. It would be an own goal if the "moralists" denied any place for facts and logical arguments just as much as if the "scientists" ruled out indignation at what capitalism does to people as part of the socialist case.OK. Piketty's book is some 600 pages long but this has never put socialists off recommending a book. After all, Thorold Rogers Six Centuries of Work and Wages which the early party used to recommend and EP Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class which we still recommend are just as long. Piketty's book is not full of algebraic formula as are many modern academic books on economics (less so than Marx's Capital in fact) and is a relatively easy read as unlike most French academics he writes clearly, simply and unpretentiously.
Of course we don't agree with Piketty's reformist politics but I think it is unfair to use this as a reason for not regarding his research and conclusions as worth taking into account and quoting. After all, in the 1910s and 1920s we used to quote the findings on the distribution of wealth of Sir Leo Chiozza Money and Sir Arthur Bowley despite their politics (Chiozza Money was a Liberal MP for a time).You say, Alan, that we all know that the rich get richer but surely it is relevant to know why and also how and why the distribution of wealth and income has changed over time which is what Piketty's book is about. When the party was founded over a hundred years ago, the top 10% did own 90% of wealth ( a statistics we frequently quoted), but this fell in the period 1910-1950 to about 60%. Piketty argues that it was this period, not the pre-WWI period, that was exceptional as during it wars and inflation destroyed or devalued much capital (so g grew faster to recover and the famous gap between the r and g was less). He argues that the "natural" tendency under capitalism is not just for the rich to get richer but for the distribution of wealth to return towards pre-1910 levels. This, surely, is a powerful finding and argument to expose the futility of reformist attempts to redistribute wealth from the rich to the rest.There has, as Piketty's describes, been an apparent evolution in this direction (though not as a result of government policies) which is here to stay: the middle 40% below the top 10% and above the bottom 50% have come to acquire some wealth (mainly a house they've finished paying for but also some interest-bearing savings). This doesn't make them capitalists of course nor enable them to avoid selling their ability to work for a wages or a salary. The position of the bottom 50% has not changed.There are other interesting and relevant findings in his book. For instance, a hundred years ago the income of the top 1 percent came overwhelmingly from owning property (profit, interest, rent, dividends). Today an equal amount comes from the "salaries" that "supermanagers" pay themselves. Does this require us to widen the definition of a capitalist as someone who is simply a rentier? Are these super-salaries an alternative way of distributing surplus value to the rich?
One for our media dept then. Perhaps the trots concerned will change their name back to Militant to avoid getting confused with us. I'm sure the AWL too will be shocked to be accused of being associated with us. One of our members who is in the NUT I talked to didn't think much of the Leftwing caucuses in it. He said they weren't really representative of the membership.
Heard Ed Balls on the radio yesterday trying to jump on the current anti-immigrant bandwagon by saying that the Labour government had made a mistake in 2004 in allowing straightaway unlimited immigration from Poland, etc when they joined the EU (they could have delayed this for 5 years as was done when Rumania and Bulgaria joined).But the "mistake" here was to believe and act on the basis of Gordon Brown's claim to have eliminated the boom/slump cycle. The Labour government assumed in 2004 that boom conditions would continue and so that an inflow of workers would be needed. The boom came to an end in 2008 so not so many immigrant workers were required. But they will be if/when the recovery speeds up. At that point the anti-immigrant bandwagon will slow to a halt even if UKIP get off and try to push it on.
rodshaw wrote:But has the party, or any sympathisers, even tried to get in touch with him?Yes, he has been given a copy of the article (also used for a leaflet) on him in the Socialist Standard via a member who knows his father:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2013/no-1312-december-2013/russell-brand-attacks-capitalism
Thanks, YMS, for his appendix on Marx. Actually, his "first fundamental law of capitalism" (page 52) α = r x ß, or share of income from capital in national income = rate of return on capital x stock of capital/national income, can be translated into crude Marxian categories (s = profit; v = wages, C = stock of capital).In crude Marxian categories his first law is s/(s + v) = s/C x C/(s + v)As this is an identity it can be turned round to get:rate of return = share of income from capital in national income x national income/stock of capitalor s/C = s/(s + v) x (s + v)/CThe (s + v)s cancel each other out, leaving s/C = s/CHis "second fundamental law of capitalism" (page 166), ß = s/g, or capital income ratio = rate of saving divided by rate of growth of national income per head, is more tricky but it would be something like: percentage of (s + v) accumulated as new capital divided by rate of increase of (s + v) per head. This is not an identity but depends on what s and g happen to be at any time in any country.I know he's going to end up concluding that where r (rate of return on capital) is larger than g (rate of increase of national income per head) then α (share of income from capital in national income) will increase and the rich will get richer compared to the rest of the population whose income comes from work, but I haven't reached there yet and am waiting to see the steps he takes to arrive at this (though it does seem to be intuitive).Then, of course, he's got to show that there is in practice a tendency under capitalism for r to larger than g (and that this tendency isn't be nullified by any counter-tendencies).
To be more scientific, he defines Occupy's top 1% as the first centile. Now that's a slogan: Down with the First Centile !
Stuart, pgb and anyone else reading or who has read Piketty's Capital, I have just finished reading chapter 6 but I can't understand the criticism of Marx he makes in the section "Back to Marx and the Falling Rate of Profit" (which I've read three times).He seems to be attributing to Marx the view that there is no growth of national income per head under capitalism or at least of not taking this into account. I can understand why Piketty might want to discuss an interesting limiting case where there is no such growth, but not why he would want to attribute this view to Marx (and Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, etc). Perhaps because he seems to think that Marx held the rate of profit will fall "inexorably" as capital accumulation proceeds.Anyway, what do others think he is trying to get at or of what he says?The ironic thing is that in this chapter Piketty argues that there is a tendency for the rate of profit (as the rate on return on capital as he defines it) to fall, though for different reasons than Marx or Ricardo, but that this can, has been and is offset by counter tendencies. Which of course was Marx's view too.Despite what he is reported to have said, Piketty clearly has read some of Marx as he discusses what Marx wrote in part of Volume I of Capital and in Value, Price and Profit. In fact, in footnote 33 on pages 600-1 he says he has done a detailed analysis of what Marx wrote in these places about profits' share and the rate of exploitation and that this is in the "online technical appendix". I can't find this part of the appendix online if anyone can help.
Actually, when Greenpeace were carrying out a campaign against nuclear power stations I always wondered whether or not they were funded one way or another by the coal industry because, under capitalism, that's who would benefit if they won.I still say there's nothing wrong with fracking in principle and that it is not implausible that some anti-fracking groups are being funded by Russian gold. Why not? That makes sense from the Russian government's point of view. We shouldn't jump on this bandwagon and, insofar as some members seem to have, they should jump off now.
NATO is claiming that the Russian government is secretly funding anti-fracking groups with the aim of furthering its own economic interest:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/fracking/10911942/Russia-in-secret-plot-against-fracking-Nato-chief-says.htmlI don't know whether or not this is true but presumably NATO has information from its own secret agents. In any event, it is not implausible and a warning against us getting involved in campaigns to put pressure on capitalist governments to adopt one energy source rather than another.
Thanks. That's a useful summary of this school of economic thought's point of view, but it looks as if for once students of economics are generally being taught the accurate thing:
Quote:Endogenous money is the idea that rather than the central bank determining the amount of money in the economy – exogenously, the amount of money is instead determined by the supply and demand of loans. In shorthand, MMTers (and Post Keynesians in general) would say, “Loans create deposits”. That is to say that banks create money by extending loans to customers, while at the same time creating a corresponding deposit. This runs contrary to what is generally taught to students of economics – that savings are loaned out with banks acting purely as intermediaries, or at best leveraging an initial injection of government money by a predetermined ratio.Meanwhile in China the view that early goldsmiths issued more receipts for gold than they actually had and that this was the origin, and still the practise, of modern banking is being refuted by events. If they had done this (and any that did) this would have been exposed sooner or later and could not be the basis for a viable and stable banking system:http://qz.com/216059/chinas-investigation-into-missing-metal-could-spark-a-much-bigger-crisis/and this from the Financial Times of 12 June:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/85f594a8-f210-11e3-9015-00144feabdc0.html#axzz354iGvZZ7
My copy arrived yesterday. Going to start reading it tomorrow. Don't know when I'll finish it as i's 670 pages.
