ALB
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It's Andy Newman, ex-Trotskyist (and ex-Respect Party member) and aspiring Labour councillor, who is wrong here. He's afraid that the stance of fellow Labourite, Anne-Marie Waters, will lose the Labour Party votes from Muslims. It might well but that doesn't make it wrong. It just shows what unprincipled vote-catchers Andy Newman and the Labour Party are. Newman is getting a well-deserved bollocking for this on Urban 75 and elsewhere.
Just read it. You're right it contains some interesting stuff, eg that in the period 1830 to 1913, the average length of the trade cycle was 8 or so years and that fluctuations in investment were an important "driver" of the cycle while changes in consumption were an effect (so much for consumption-led recoveries). Also, that the period of downturn was longer in the period 1871 to 1913 (4.2 years) and the upturn shorter (4.2 years) than in the period 1830 to 1871 (2.6 years and 5.4 years). Crises in the 18th century don't seem to have been due to the workings of the economy itself but to the outside factors of bad harvests and wars.
Young Master Smeet wrote:I find the chart 17 (page 286 (10th page of this article)) on Total Factor Productivity intriguing, as this would represent a chart of rate of profit in the UK since 1857 (or thereabouts).It's not supposed to measure this. In fact it's not clear what it's measuring. It's intended to be a measure of the difference between the rate of growth of GDP per capita and the rate of growth of the stock of capital, which is taken as a measure of technological progress. The figures show that this goes up in a period of upturn and down in a downturn (though the article warns that this latter could also be partly due to companies "hoarding" labour when output falls rather than immediately laying workers off).The chart defines "Total Factor Productivity" as
Quote:GDP growth minus the contributions of labour and capital weighted by their shares in output. The labour share includes the income of the self-employed.Capital is defined "as the non-housing whole economy capital stock" and labour as "the whole-economy total hours worked". Profit doesn't seem to enter into it, at least not directly.
More on the now correctly-named Free Pass Movement here.Meanwhile, in response to the unrest, the President of Brazil has been promising reforms, a factor to be taken into account when guessing how the last capitalist government might respond to a growing socialist movement.
The Emir of Qatar, who seized power from his father in 1995, has graciously handed over power to one of his sons. That's how things work in this dynastic state. Along with Saudi Arabia (where things are even worse), Qatar is the main supplier of finance and arms to the anti-government forces in Syria. And we are supposed to believe the propaganda put out by Cameron that the rebels in Syria are fighting for a liberal democracy. Pull the other one.
jondwhite wrote:Good work. I think there were a couple of other left events which clashed (AWL's Ideas for Freedom, ICC day of discussion) but this sounds like the best attended.Actually, two other members (and one ex-member) went to the ICC event, so proving that we have enough members to engage in two different political activities in the same town on the same day….Here's Ian Bone's confirmation of the number of anarchists who turned up for his People's Assembly Against Hot Air (can you spot the two Party members in the second photo?). Apparently, no anarchists attended the ICC thing. Meanwhile some wit has suggested that the other People's Assembly should be called the People's Ass for short.
I think the link you meant to give is this, Janet:http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/revolution/brazil.htmlWhile I'm writing, I'd just add re the point Ed raised about rigging elections that the reaction of the Brazil government in offering reforms to try to allay the discontent suggests that this is the more likely scenario that the last capitalist government will follow in the event of powerful and growing socialist movement.
I see the media have now corrected their translation of the "Movimento Passe Livre" to "Free Pass Movement", but it's still interesting, and intriguing, that someone should have initially thought of translating it as "Free Access Movement". Why? Perhaps because this was a familiar idea, even as a result of our own efforts at popularising the term? In any event, this shows how an idea can spread.
Ed wrote:For the record I said it was not beneath the bourgouisie to rig elections, not saying that they do in the UK. But they well might if we were an actual threat.I know members speculate about this sort of thing but, surely, when "we", i.e the working class movement for socialism, become a real force and a threat to capitalist rule, the balance of forces will have shifted so much in our favour that they won't be able to do this. It also assumes that the capitalist class will be united in their reaction to a growing socialist movement, but they are more likely to be split with one section wanting to trying to buy off the revolution with social reforms rather than resort to repression. Also, the personnel who actually run elections, mainly local government workers, are members of the working class and many of them will be influenced by socialist ideas. So I don't see the capitalist class getting away with it, at least not in this country.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Of all the reports i read, the commonality was this ….it was an UNIDENTIFIED flying OBJECT..no-body claimed to ever seen an actual space-ship…just something they personally couldn't explain.I think the words you are looking for are Unidentified Aerial Phenomena since the word "object" begs the question.I don't think this discussion is a diversion as the association of a political organisation or its members with unwarranted conspiracy theories about 9/11, Kennedy's assassination, etc discredits that organisation.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Pity we never managed to get access to the Anarchist mega-phones for a few minutes…i'm sure we could of if we asked nicely…Actually, at the end Ian Bone did ask if anyone else wanted to say anything and the thought of taking up his offer did cross my mind. I don't think he'd have said no but, quite apart from not liking to use a megaphone (they're not allowed in Hyde Park), we have our differences as well as points of agreement with anarchist-communists and its was their meeting. Ian Bone is a good bloke and has a soft spot for us (since his student days in Swansea) . He was also a witty opponent when we debated him 4 or 5 years ago. I'd have gone for a drink with him and the others too if the pub hadn't been so crowded. I'm sure the craic was better than if we gone for a one with a group of trots (bored with discussing the Russian revolution).
The reviewer, who is sympathetic to our view that Leninism is a distortion of Marxism and that Marx used the terms "socialism" and "communism" interchangeably to refer to a class, stateless, moneyless society, writes that the Hindustan Times
Quote:is read by 8 lakhs all over India and it's carried in all the editions.I think that means it has a circulation of 800,000.Here's another article by him that appeared in The Statesman of Calcutta in March:http://www.thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=449041&catid=39
We actually had a presence there from 9am to 4pm (not the same comrades all the time of course). Plenty of Trotskyist and Maoist groups but also some genuine trade unionists. The Green Party were there too, including their MP Caroline Lucas. The only unifying factor seems to be opposition to austerity and vague (and dubious) statements such as "debts can be dropped", "A living wage can begin to combat poverty", "Strong trade unions can help redistribute profit". Regional "People's Assemblies" will be held and "a national day of civil disobedience and direct action" is called for 5 November, a Tuesday, so we'll see what happens then (if anything).Ian Bone's "Peoples Assembly Against Hot Air" took the form of him and three other anarchists speaking to people outside the hall through a megaphone for 10-15 minutes. There weren't many more of them than us.. As opposed to the Trot's call for the TUC to call a general strike to oppose austerity, they called for people to follow the examples of those in Turkey and Brazil to take to the streets. They forgot to mention the abolition of the wages system, but some of the comrades still went for a drink with them.
By co-incidence, more amusing stuff from Ministry of Defence files released yesterday:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/21/last-release-mod-ufo-filesThe MoD seems to have been more patient than I would have been.
DJP wrote:FWIW my old philosophy tutor has an interested in conspiracy theories and unwarranted conspiracy theories.Here's an (unfinished) paper by him on the subject:http://www.uea.ac.uk/~j097/CONSP01.htmI read the whole 40-page paper last night and it's excellent. I trust the others taking part in the discussion here on conspiracy theories will too. It's surely the last word on this digression here.I liked two of his points in particular: (1) that when the conspiracy theorist starts to claim that the documentary and forensic evidence has been faked that's the end of any possible meaningful discussion with them, and (2) that in most cases the alleged conspirators would have been able to achieve the aim attributed to them by easier and less risky methods.I'm not a JFKennedy Assassination Theory buff but I am a Currency Crank one and noticed some of the leaflets distributed by currency cranks during the Occupy St Pauls in 2011 tried to argue that one of the reasons he was assassinated was that he wanted to transfer the power to issue the US currency from the Federal Reserve (central bank) to the Treasury (the government), as many US (and British) currency cranks advocate. See, for instance,http://www.john-f-kennedy.net/thefederalreserve.htmand the refutation here:http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/weberman/jfk.htm Clearly you can fashion your own Kennedy Assasination Conspiracy Theory to fit in with anything, even something which nobody considered an issue at the time. Presumably you can do this with other events too..
Yes of course but they were eventually found out and proved from official US government documents (and besides were carried out by the government not by some conspiratorial group). That's the point I was making. Such documents concerning a hypothetical 9/11 inside job, fake moon landings and suppression of evidence for alien landings have not been found and won't be because they won't exist. How else could you prove them except from government documents?
