ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
stuartw2112 wrote:Not that I'm comparing myself to Jesus or anything…
But Cameron does. So let's cricify him. Or maybe first let him try to multiply leftover loaves from Tesco's to supply 5000 food banks.
james19 wrote:I got back, IMF say that the UK economy is set to grow by 2.9%. That Osborne is doing something right?Nothing to do with Osborne's policy. Sooner or later capitalism always spontaneously recovers from a slump, so this will happen anyway. He'll just claim the credit for something over which the government has no control as governments can't control the way capitalism works. It's the other way round: governments have to react and accomodate themselves to what capitalism does.
A comrade has pointed out that we reviewed two of Simon Clarke's books in the February 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard. The first Marx's Theory of Crisis was given a fairly favourable review but not the second What about the Workers? Workers and the Transition to Capitalism in Russia because, as the title suggested, it argued that Russia was something other than capitalism before the so-called "collapse of Communism" (which for us was the collapse of Russian state capitalism). Unfortunately, the review is not yet online but I could scan it if anyone is interested.
I think he is talkimg about the 'uneven development' of different industries within a capitalist economy with some expanding faster or slower than others, not about the uneven development of capitalism in different parts of the world.
I think he's making the point that you can't predict which industrial sector will overproduce nor whether this will have a knock-in effect leading to a crisis and a more widespread overproduction. Some (Ernst Mandel, for instance) have argued that it will always occur in the consumer goods sector. Clarke makes the point that this ain't necessarily so but could occur in any industry, at least in any key industry. It depends on the industry's weight in the economy.
Actually, in the Communist Manifesto Marx acknowledged that at the time a bourgeois revolution would have to proceed any communist (or socialist) revolution. His mistake was to assume that, in 1848+, this would be followed fairly rapidly by a 'proletarian revolution' in which the working class would gain control of political power even if they wouldn't be able to bring in communism immediately. But can we blame blokes in their 20s for being over-optimistic?I hope others are following this premature discussion and will join in now that the ball is in play.
I see what you mean. The 3 or 4 paragraphs before section 1. I suppose we could discuss whether or not it was so in 1848 that communism was a sepectre haunting Europe. I suspect not but that the spectre was rather political democracy (ie universal male suffrage electing a law-making body that controlled the executive in place of the various authoritarian dynastic regimes). There, I've jumped the gun and already started discussing when I shouldn't have done.
Yes, agreed that this, especially sections 5, 6 and 7, is a very clear exposition of the 'disproportionality' theory of crises setting out how and why disproportionality inevitability develops from (unpredictable) time to time. The earlier sections, pointing out the inadequacies of the 'falling rate of profit' theory as an explanation for crises (as opposed to being a long-run, secular tendency) are good too. Not so sure about sections 8 and 9 on the role of credit.
We already know that the Scargill Labour Party will be fielding a list in Wales. So, according to this, is No2EU. Presumably on exactly the same programme since the head of their list is none other than Rob Griffiths, the Secretary General of the Communist Party of Britain. So it looks as if the Stalinist vote will be split.
No2EU held a meeting in London last Thursday:http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-84ce-No2EU-campaign-to-visit-London/I see it is labelling itself (or rather the Morning Star and CPB are) a "radical anti-imperialist coalition", but it is still promoting the mistaken view that the problems facing workers in Britain are due to the EU and therefore the equally mistaken conclusion that they would be improved if Britain withdrew as if that would make any difference.The only other region I've been able to find where they are standing is the West Midlands where the list is headed by ex-Labour MP and leading SPEW member Dave Nellist:http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/18375I don't know about "radical anti-imperialist" but it is a coalition, a rather bizarre one between the Stalinists of the CPB and the Trotskyists of SPEW.
jpodcaster wrote:It does seem to me to have a genuine connection to working-class people and their organisations/communities and seems to be far more representative of working-class interests in the here and now, rather than what we'd like them to be at some point in the future.This amounts to a claim that LU is a genuine expression of "trade union consciousness", but this is open to serious challenge. Someone once described the Labour Party as an alliance between trade unions and the "progressive middle class". In the possible (but pointless) emergence of a Labour Party Mark 2 I'd suggest that LU represents the latter. There is no evidence that LU possesses any significant degree of trade union support, but plenty that it is concerned with issues such as "intersectionality" and "safe spaces" which are of marginal concern to trade unionists but a high priority for some women of the "progressive middle class". The claim to be the trade union element in any future Labour Party Mark 2 would be more justifiable in the case of TUSC.
stuartw2112 wrote:Doesn't it follow as a matter of common Marxist sense that, once having seized control of the state, one of the things that the controlling party would have to do would be to impose capital controls and nationalise the banks? Given that this is almost certainly what would have to happen, isn't it reasonable to call this the "common ownership" or "democratic control" of the means of exchange? If not, why not?While you were away, Stuart, Robbo started a thread of how a socialist minded working class (not, incidentally, a "controlling party" separate from them) would act if it won control in just one part of the world. I can't remember the title but I'm sure Robbo will.Nobody in this discussion suggested they would impose capital controls or nationalise the banks. Everybody agreed that they would have to abolish capitalist private property rights and introduce production directly for use. I'd imagine them in this hypothetical situation declaring all property titles, all stocks and shares, all bills and bonds, all limited liability companies and corporations (which are just legal fictions) null and void. "Money capital" and "banks" would disappear. So, no, merely controlling them would not amount to "common ownership" (but, rather, to "state capitalism" — which, I freely admit, is what in effect the Communist League of Germany was advocating in, and for, 1848).
Why are we talking about "reforms" and "reformism" when there haven't been any reforms for ages (he last I can remember is free bus travel for old age pensioners).Workers' struggles these days are about trying to stop things getting worse by existing reforms being taken away. So the classic reformist strategy of gradually advancing towards socialism by a series of reforms (as advocated for instance by Peter Tatchell in his debate against us the other day) doesn't have any credibility.Nobody is against people trying to stop their conditions getting worse, though it can be questioned whether this is helped by being linked to a political party (whichever, and LU is not the only one, just the latest) still wedded to a reformist strategy and still asking for reforms when none are to be had (why campaign, for example, for a citizens income when there's no chance at all of getting it, not that it would solve workers' problems anyway?).
Yes, the term "hard working families", introduced by Labour (Gordon Brown used it a lot), is part of the rhetoric aimed at demonising those on benefits, i.e who don't work. Unfortunately, it does seem to have worked to large extent to split the working class by getting one section to blame the other instead of capitalism for their problems,
