[ALB]

stuartw2112 wrote:

Members of this forum might be interested to hear that, in just a few short months, Left Unity has already exceeded 1,000 founding members, and has been respectfully if critically reported in The Guardian, BBC Radio 4, The Huffington Post, New Statesman, Russia Today, Sky News and other media outlets. So, yes, we've got a long way to go. But we've already come further than you have – and you've had a 110 year head start.

Well, we can piss higher than you and for longer:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2004/no-1198-june-2004/others-have-seen-usAnd it remains to be seen if the new Left (pseudo-Unity) Party (or whatever it's going to be called) is going to last 2 years let alone a hundred. Yet another leftwing reformist party is the last thing that's needed. I can't see you getting more than 2 to 3% of votes when you put your money where your mouth is and put up candidates. Rendez-vous after the local elections of 22 May next year.

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ALB wrote:

Just emailed Professor Joffee a link to this article (the same one kohara sent Post-Crash Economics):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/depth-articles/economics/economists-not-planetHe should like the title "Economists: Not on this Planet".

I got a friendly enough reply from him and an electronic copy of an article of his on  "The root cause of economic growth under capitalism". He identifies this as competition to cut costs by "firms", defined as legal and continuing bodies employing wage-labour and producing for profit. He distinguishes "firms" from others producing for the market which he calls variously "sole traders", "sole producers" or "petty producers", basically single person or family production units.The difference with Marx mentioned in the abstract of the article seems to be that Joffe does not accept the averaging of the rate of profit which he sees as neither empirically confirmed nor necessary to explain how capitalism works.He says in passing (and presumably this is his criticism of economics as taught today) that Adam Smith analysed an economy mainly made up of such producers, as was indeed the case in his day but has long since ceased to be, yet theoretical economics still assumes that it is. Following Smith's premise means that the economy is conceived of in terms of trading, of such producers exchanging their products on the market to meet their needs. According to Joffe, Smith's framework cannot explain growth; in fact to the extent that growth occurs in such an economy it is by the emergence and spread of "firms" that outcompete the sole traders and lead to a different type of economy.  It seems a fair enough criticism of the arguments used by apologists for capitalism, such as the self-styled  Adam Smith Institute, to defend capitalism. Certainly most street-level defenders of capitalism assume that it is still based on individuals, including workers, trading what they have to sell to get what they need, when it's actually a system of capital accumulation driven by competition between profit-seeking firms and in which therefore profits always come before needs..

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There's a meeting on him in Central London a week today. See here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/events-and-announcements/ep-thompsons-legacy

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Interesting analysis here from some who don't seem to have many illusions about the new Left Unity Party to be founded on 30 November, at least not about it having any chance of becoming anything more than another small leftwing party:http://www.independentsocialistnetwork.org/?p=2613

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imposs1904 wrote:

OK, I found the Harrington article via a zip file I downloaded from my old MySpace Socialist Standard page:http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2013/11/a-better-kind-of-capitalism.htmlI'm sure it will go on the Party website in the fullness of time.

Thanks. Incidentally, and with reference to the rather oddly titled thread on "women", the author of this article later went on, under her real name of Alison Assiter to become a leading feminist theorist:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Assiter

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This should probably be in the "General Discussion" as it might get lost here. As to Harrington, I'm sure we will have reviewed his books such ass The Other America and The Accidental Century but they've not be converted into electronic form to go on our Socialist Standard archives section here. The second, by the way, is included in one of our recommended reading lists, here:http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/better-read-than-red.htmlThere was an article in the July 1977 Socialist Standard critical of the reformist position he put in a debate that year with an open defender of capitalism. It exists somewhere in cyberspace but I'm still trying to track it down.

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LBird wrote:

'if anyone wants to employ 'scientific socialism', be my guest'.The fact that no-one can say what it is, seems not to cause any concern.

Fair enough but the same thing could be said about "proletarian science". In fact what's the difference between talking about "proletarian science" and talking about  "scientific socialism"? Given the choice I prefer "scientific socialism".

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I think the distinction you are trying to make is not between "bourgeois" and "proletarian" science, but between a "bourgeois scientific method" and a more adequate method or maybe between how science is conducted today and how it will be in socialism/communism (which of course can't be described as "proletarian" as someone has already pulled you up for suggesting since there will no longer be a proletariat in socialism).Pannekoek was not studying or teaching "bourgeois astronomy" if only because it's not clear what this might be. He was studying astronomy with a different scientific method from that which you call bourgeois" (but which you've admitted on another thread most mainstream scientists don't accept now anyway).You seem to be riding the same sort of hobby horse against "science" as RL does about "philosophy".

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LBird wrote:

All science is ideological.

That and the rest is all very well, but you still haven't said whether you think Pannekoek was studying and teaching "bourgeois astrology"

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LBird wrote:

There is no 'proletarian science' outside of the workers. 'Science', without any prefix, is a bourgeois ideological construct.

I think you must have caught it from RL, the tendency to throw out the baby with the bathwater, that is.In trying to draw a distinction between "proletarian" and "bourgeois" science in general you're on dodgy ground. Ok, yes, there's bourgeois sociology, economics, history, etc but not bourgeois astronomy, biology, engineering, etc.  Or is  Pannekoek for the chop too for being a professor of bourgeois astronomy?

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What has been overlooked in these (in my opinion unfair) attacks on Engels for creating "scientific socialism" is that this was not just Engels's personal opinion or invention. It was the general view of the German Social Democratic movement of the time. Here, for instance, is what Rosa Luxemburg wrote near the end of her 1900 pamphlet Reform or Revolution:

Quote:

Some time ago Lassalle said: “Only when science and the workers, these opposite poles of society, become one, will they crush in their arms of steel all obstacles to culture.” … Only when the great mass of workers take the keen and dependable weapons of scientific socialism in their own hands, will all the petty-bourgeois inclinations, all the opportunistic currents, come to naught..

Is she the next for the chop and inclusion in some Engels/Luxemburg/Lenin/Stalin amalgam !I don't think anyone will get us to ditch Engels. In fact to link Engels to Lenin and Stalin is a travesty as bad as linking Marx to them.

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Here's Cameron making that speech and calling for austerity. From here:http://www.businessinsider.com/picture-of-david-cameron-calling-for-austerity-2013-11

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It's not all workers of course, but it is true that a section (those in unions and on council and social housing estates) of the wider working class do continue to see Labour as their party, despite everything. Mind you, when you see the alternatives on offer (Tories and Liberals) you can understand this a bit. That's maybe why, when they feel betrayed by Labour, some turn elsewhere, to the BNP and even, incredibly, UKIP. (Incidentally, when we contest elections we do relatively better in safe Labour constituencies and wards than elsewhere, presumably because we speak the same sort of language of capitalism, socialism, working class as the Labour Party used to in the olden days).Besides being a sociological fact, I think this might also reflect the lesser evil position. These workers know that whichever government is in power is not going to make much difference, but if they are offered a choice they take it without much enthusiasm (even "without illusions") and vote for what they see as the lesser evil.  One Party wit used to turn this argument wrong and say that elections offered, rather, a choice between the evil of two lessers.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

Even in the UK there appears to be an uneven spread of members. Maybe i am wrong but i would like to see a map of members locations and see where we are concentrated

This has been done and it showed that the biggest concentration of members was in London, followed by Lancashire and then Scotland. It also showed that many Central Branch members lived on the coast in an arc from Cornwall to Norfolk, i.e of retired workers who had moved there after a life of wage-slavery.

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This news from Spain should be filed and sent to Clifford Slapper for the debate with Peter Tatchell on 5 March as co-ops were one of the things Tatchell (a Green Party member now, I think) advocated in his talk on "Economic Democracy".  Capitalism is continuing to back up our case that it can't be reformed to work in the interests of the workers.

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