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Brilliant article in today's Times by David Aaronovitch entitled "The glory of independence is just a mirage" and subtitled "As a separate nation Scotland would end up with less autonomy as it dragged along in the tow of its bigger neighbour". Unfortunately you have to register or pay to read the Times on line.The best part is where he imagines the arguments a fictional Marxist used to put against Scottish independence:
Quote:Let us imagine a true Scots Marxist of the old scholarly school and call her Catriona Lenin. Subjecting what has happened since the 1960s to a "class analysis" she would doubtless conclude that the Scottish bourgeoisie found its interests imperfectly represented by British Toryism and so gradually went over to the SNP.Catriona would have no trouble in showing how the Scottish elite has got behind nationalism and independence, disguising (as it always does) its own interests in the language of idealism. Imagine how that part of the Scots establishment that doesn't live in London or Los Angeles stands to gain from independence! Think of all those new ambassadors to the US, Paris, and Buenos Aires! The new Scottish Broadcasting Corporation with its own DG and parallel bureaucracy! All those government contractsgoing to Scottish architects, subsidies to Scottish artists and so on. Valhalla with better food.Meanwhile nothing else, predicts grumpy Catriona, will change. She points out the cake-and-eat-it character of Salmondism, in which no difficult choices are made, almost nothing is actually altered — not the Queen, taxes, currency or property — yet everything is somehow different. Young people will be better off with a Yes! There'll be no austerity in Scotland with a Yes! And no bill.One of his arguments is that his neighbours who used to put this argument no longer do but have gone over to supporting independence as they imagine that an independent Scotland would be able to pursue a more reformist policy (but which he convincingly argues they wouldn't be able to because independence for small countries is a mirage). Would could his neighbours be? Tariq Ali for one?Bring back Catriona (Marx) !
Email received from a sympathiser in Canada who is not on this forum:
Quote:You have possibly seen this article by Paul Craig Roberts. I only got a little way into it and I clicked on the second link below and I have not yet finished reading Roberts. Apparently there are two articles, one following the other.]The article in Global Research, whose articles on all sorts of subjects are usually well researched, is an excellent documentation of the evolution of Ukraine and Russia's present relationship. At the end of this description the author describes the likelihood that Ukraine is being set up as an American base — leading to the possibility of outright war. [Roberts is more or less confirming this in his documentation.] From the political point-of-view Russia could not afford to have theFifth Fleet anchored in the Crimea and had to take it back. Will the threat of American troupes training with and supplying military equipment on their Ukraine border be acceptable to Russia?Perhaps when the Ukrainian population realises the terms of the World Bank loans, which will throw the country into even worse poverty, they may create another Maiden to throw this government out, but that could become a bloody civil war since the U.S. wouldn't want to let Ukraine go.Trevorhttp://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39229.htmThe World Is Doomed By Western InsoucianceDon't expect to live much longerBy Paul Craig Robertshttp://www.globalresearch.ca/collapse-of-ukraine-government-prime-minister-yatsenyuk-resigns-amidst-pressures-exerted-by-the-imf/5393168Collapse of Ukraine Government: Prime Minister Yatsenyuk Resigns amidst Pressures Exerted by the IMF By Prof Michel Chossudovsky ____________________"If everyone demanded peace insteadof another television set, then there'dbe peace."1940 – 1980 – John LennonThe Monument is an entertaining read but it's not really a history of the SPGB, more a series of anecdotes (some of them rather dubious) about events and members. It probably doesn't do us any harm though, even if the title was deliberately chosen from an opponent's jibe that the "SPGB is more a monument than a movement". Baltrop was not a member of the party when he first drafted it. As we said in his obituary:
Quote:He was best known though for his work The Monument (1975), which remains a fascinating and entertaining introduction to the history of the SPGB. The book was largely written in the 1960s while he was out of contact with the Party, which explains the contentiousness of some of its many stories, anecdotes and perceptions.So enjoy it but don't take what it says as gospel.
Not sure about that. If we want to go down that road it would have to be 'Neither Edinburgh nor London' since we haven't got anything against the elected assemblies as such that sit in Holyrood or Westminster (have we?). But I still say it makes more sense, for a write-in vote (since this is what it is), to reject the two choices on offer on the actual ballot paper.
Revealing insight into the mind of the petty nationalist. They really do seem to think that a change of venue where decisions to put profit before needs are made (or rather imposed by the workings of capitalism) will make a difference. And what about the really naive one who thinks that a separate Scottish state could end the need for food banks.
The Irish article is about the distribution of income whereas, for us, the key factor is the distribution of wealth. To a large extent the distribution of income (which is less unequal than the distribution of wealth, which itself is less unequal than the distribution of income-yielding assets) is a consequence of the distribution of wealth, with a big chunk going as property income to the property owners.
That's not just any old article but one by the man himself, Jeremy Rifkind. It would be nice if this really was "the invading socialist society" but it isn't even if it makes our case more plausible.
I agree that it's a fair point to say that Piketty's has provided a theoretical justification for reforms that the Left were advocating anyway just as Keynes did in the 1930s. Whether his intention is to "save capitalism" by diverting attention and activity from campaigning for socialism is more debatable. I doubt it but it doesn't really matter. In any event, he doesn't appear to think that realistically capitalism can be saved from itself.
LBird wrote:YMS, I'm a Communist, not a Liberal.Why you continue to engage me with individualist ideas, I'll never know.Why not start a thread named 'Science for Individualists', and leave this one to the self-professed Communists?Ironically, it is your view that gives some standing to "individualist" ideas in that it makes any individual's "bias" (the new word here for "ideology") as good or as bad as the next while YMS's view says that it is possible for humans to share the same "bias", over non-social science today and over most things in socialism/communism, so that a common understanding/interpretation can be reached and acted on. He could claim to be more "common-ist" than thou. In the end of course It's relativism v universalism again (and again).
A contemporary reference to Grayson in the Socialist Standard:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1900s/1908/no-43-march-1908/graysonss-gratitude-sdf
LBird wrote:Are you implying that the term 'ideology' should be used in the context of 'scientific knowledge'?No. It's better to find some alternative term since, in the Marxian tradition, "ideology" is a prejorative word.
LBird wrote:It seems to me that his whole works are opposed to the notion of a "fixed, timeless, Truth", which is required if no ideology is held to be present in scientific knowledge.Totally agree with the first part, but not the way the second is expressed (because it uses the word "ideology"). Better to say something like "which is required if the brain/mind produces a simple photograph (or 3-D picture) of the world". Which of course it doesn't.
I wasn't saying Marx was right or wrong, merely what I thought was Marx's use of the term. I don't think, either, that
Quote:Marx thought that the world could be understood as it is, rather than through the prism of human ideasbut that he didn't use the term "ideology" in this context.
Young Master Smeet wrote:If we look at ideology as the ways and means by which the ideas of the dominant class become the dominant ideas, this changes things dramatically. First off, it suggests that without a dominant class there will be no ideology (this is conconant with the claim that without class there is no politics, we move from the dispute over who gets to make the decisions, to actual technical decision making based on reason). To my mind this means a communist ideology cannot exist (saving some Stalinist notion of bthe dictatorship of the proletariat as communists rule over non-communist classes).I agree that is how Marx used the term "ideology" and that therefore, for him, to talk of a "communist ideology" would be an oxymoron.
The discussion about the latest figures for GDP in the UK, which show that they have reached (after 6-7 years) their pre-crisis level, brings out what Piketty means by g (growth) in his formula r (rate of return on capital) > growth. He means not crude GDP but GDP per capita (per head of population). This makes a difference.UK GDP has indeed reached its pre-2008 level but, as has been pointed out, GDP per head of population is not expected to reach its pre-crisis level for another three years (because of course the population has increased since then).By defining g as GDP per capita rather than simple GDP (which would be more logical and what most people might understand by it) Piketty makes "growth" slower, which suits his argument better about the slower the growth the more the inequality of wealth ownership.It is as well to be aware of the two different meanings of "growth".
