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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:

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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:

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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.

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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 !

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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.

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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.

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Another retro photo from the same period:Which one was the spiv?

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Itsn't that the definition of charity: the poor people in the rich countries give money to the rich people in the poor countries?

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A couple of quotes from Soweto and Durban residents in today's Times:

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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."

 

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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):

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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.

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I wasn't agreeing with them, but if you read on you'll come across something more to your liking:

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Economists seem wont to believe that their “thinking like an economist” mindset is merely a technocratic, ideologically neutral one, but in fact it often comes with a whole lot of baggage. For example: an insistence on quantifying things that may not be quantifiable, and comparing incommensurate concepts (cost-benefit analysis for environmental catastrophe); the idea that people are mostly driven by incentives (see Freakonomics); a use of particular criteria – such as Pareto Efficiency and GDP – to judge the economy/society. We are not claiming that this mindset is ‘wrong’ per se, but that all too often it is taught to students as if it is unquestionable and scientific, rather than simply one of many lenses through which to view the world.

No?

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Vin Maratty wrote:

ALB wrote:

 Come on, let's not say that the formal abolition of apartheid made no difference and wasn't a welcome advance.

But you are not saying that a single 'great man' was responsible for that 

No, of course not. It was something that had to happen sooner or later as apartheid was hampering the normal operation of capitalism in South Africa. In any event, it would be F.W. De Klerk rather than Mandela who'd be the imagined "Great Man" here. South Africa's equivalent of Gorbachev.I see that Imposs1904 has just published Pieter Lawrence's excellent 1985 article "Democracy and South Africa" on his Socialist standard Past & Present blog:http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/democracy-and-south-africa.html

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Thanks but I must confess I had to look up DSGE and IS-LM, but I did understand straightaway headless chicken economics:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz-PtEJEaqYlI agree with this comment you referred to:

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“Sixth, I am happy to discuss and debate Marx and variants of Marxism with you. Historically he is a great and important thinker. However, he is less relevant to modern societies and economies as we have abandoned command economies for the very simple reason that they do not work. Don’t believe me? Take a trip to North Korea. Take a trip to Cuba (I have). While his ideas are intellectually appealing but Marxist theories have not found success in practice.”The intentions behind the letter are good, but common, saying this, really ? Usually it is the habit of people who have no clue about Marx to reply “North Korea” as soon as they see “Marx” written somewhere (I am not saying it is the case of this Professor, but he uses the same rhetoric). It is indeed another reason to teach more of Marx economics.

Not so sure about this one, though:

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Suffice to say that Marxism is really just a tool for understanding capitalism, rather than a blueprint for alternative societies.

but as you say:

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To start, it bears repeating that as a society we do not have political aims. We are not lobbying to get rid of central banks, overthrow capitalism, save the planet or what have you. We are not merely pushing to have “Marx and Keynes”, or any other thinker in economics, taught simply because we happen to like them.

Fair enough.

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Brian wrote:

I don't see any one here agreeing that the formal abolition of apartheid made no difference or that it was not a welcome advance.  What is being strongly argued is that the outcome made no essential difference to the situation – other than the introduction of representative democracy – and explaining why and how this major advance came about.

I think it meant rather more than the introduction of representative democracy. It meant above all the abolition of the colour bar, which so far has meant more for the everyday life of  the "Non-Whites" than has political democracy.

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