ALB
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There's no such thing as an "ethical" investment as, in the end, the whole world capitalist class exploit the whole world working class. There's just investment.All investments are linked to each other and you can't really separate them, except artificially or on the surface. As this article pointed out:
Quote:Even if you are more engaged, it is not necessarily any easier to keep track of where your pension pot is being invested. The church did not invest directly in Wonga, after all – it invested in a venture capital firm that put a fairly small proportion of its funds into the company. And, despite Welby's embarrassment, it did not breach its ethical investment policy as Accel, the firm in question, did not commit 25% of its capital to Wonga..
Vin Maratty wrote:I would gamble that the vote relates directly to the 'morality' vote within the SPGB.Don't you mean , the 'anti-morality' vote?. I'm not sure they are connected. After all, does saying that socialism is not an ethical issue imply that anything goes, even from a socialist party? I don't think so.
Ed wrote:Rather than the thread being about the evils of charity, I am more interested in the fact that in order to secure the greatest return on their investment they had to compromise their principles and contradict their aims.It is only capitalist companies and charitable trusts that are forced to seek the greatest return on their investment, either by the economic force of competition or by law or both.Charities and other trusts are in fact under greater pressure to maximise the money entrusted to them than companies as they are legally obliged to seek this. If they don't the trustees can be done. This does not apply to individuals or unincorporated associations (which the party is) which can use their money as they please. In any event, I'm not as pessimistic as Ed that Party members should have voted 3 to 2 in favour of the principle of placing funds not for immediate use in some investment fund. My guess is that the members who voted for this did so as a way of trying to protect such funds from being whittled away by inflation rather than because they want the party to see "the greatest return", i.e the majority voted not to make a profit but to not make a loss. I can't see this as compromising our principles (even though I didn't vote for it, because I don't think it practicable for us).If the question had been "Are you in favour of the party placing funds not needed for immediate use where they can secure the greatest return?" there would surely have been a quite different result.
Isn't Zundap right to the extent that if someone puts their savings into a deposit account paying less than the rate of inflation then the bank will use that money (together with other such deposits) to lend at a higher rate of interest probably higher than the rate of inflation? So that the bank would be getting the protection against inflation plus more which the saver could in theory have got if he or she could have invested their money where the bank did. The trouble is that the saver normally doesn't have the amount of money nor the expertise to do this.Of course if the saver kept the money under the bed nobody would gain.
Quote:To finance their lending, investment or proprietary trading activities, banks will have to borrow or raise the necessary national currency from savers and investors.But that's essentially what they do now !The Green Party likes to position itself to the left of Labour but it has committed itself to a purely monetary theory of crises more usually associated with free-market fanatics:
Quote:Through the interest charged on the loans on which all credit is based, the current banking system increases inequality. It also regularly causes economic crises: banks create and lend more and more money until the level of debt becomes unsustainable, boom turns to bust, and the taxpayer bails out banks that are “too big to fail”. Finally, the need to service the growing mountain of debt on which our money is based is a key driver of unsustainable economic growth that is destroying the environment.Someone else has pointed out that this part of the resolution commits the Green Party to monetarist theory. On the other hand, another part commits them to roaring inflation:
Quote:The Green Party believes that the power to create money must be removed from private banks. The supply of our national currency must be fully restored to democratic and public control so that it can be issued free of debt and directed to environmentally and socially beneficial areas such as renewable energy, social housing, or support for community businesses.So what the banks are no longer going to be allowed to lend, some government monetary authority will simply issue. Money is needed to finance some reform? Simple. Just print it. How naive can you get?I wonder what Derek Wall thinks of all this in view of his recent article in the Morning Star on Marx.
He was alright when he stuck to working-class history (even though he was a Maoist) but then he became a "philosopher" and veered off into aesthetics. It's unbelievable what passes for "philosophy" in France. Bring back Rosa Lichtenstein !
Quote:We … still consider the accomplishments of the Russian Revolution the high point of human history, and the construction of a working class vanguard a historic necessity for the possibility of capitalism’s overthrow… bla, bla, bla..That's when I stopped reading.
Don't worry. It's not you, it's them. I don't know who said "when I hear the name Foucault I reach for my gun". I agree and the same goes for Bordieu, Derrida, Lyotard, Deleuze,etc. They are just pseudo-intellectuel poseurs, windbags with nothing interesting or relevant to say.
Itsn't that the definition of charity: the poor people in the rich countries give money to the rich people in the poor countries?
A couple of quotes from Soweto and Durban residents in today's Times:
Quote:Neighbours in Soweto, minutes from Vilakazi Street, where people have flocked to celebrate their former leader's life, said that the ANC was full of empty promises. One, Sinazo Ntaka, said: "If you speak out in South Africa, you will be killed. Just like the apartheid time, you spoke up, you get killed. Worse: this time you are killed by your own people."At a march inMandela's honour, shack-dwellers in Durban lambasted the ANC, saying: "Today we are experiencing leaders who are black Boers. They are leaders that evict us, beat us, torture us, arrest us and kill us."Actually, although it could have been written by an ex-member, even by a member (there's a good criticism of Lenin's post-1917 theory of imperialism), it's a reprint from the CWO.http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2012-03-01/anc-%E2%80%93-a-hundred-years-in-the-service-of-capitalBy co-incidence there's a review of them in this month's Socialist Standard here.
There was an ex-member of the party, Adam Ford, who wrote for them, e.g.http://thecommune.co.uk/2012/06/15/sparks-show-the-way/Where has he gone to?
It seems that they are evolving from being a self-appointed Leninist vanguard and changing into an ordinary reformist "vanguard" ("vote for me and I'll doing something for you") elected by non-socialist voters.
He might be a reconstructed Stalinist but much of what he writes is not implausible, especially this (and even though he takes the side of Russia):
Quote:Ukraine's refusal to sign an EU association agreement, the ensuing protests and the attempt to oust the government in a failed no-confidence vote all have their origins in a grand geopolitical battle being waged between Germany and Russia.To be dependent on either Germany or Russia has always been the lot of the smaller states of east Europe. In the Ukraine some have wanted to side with Germany and some with Russia, as in the Second World War and still to-day. Any socialists there would obviously be saying a plague on both your houses.
