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The other interesting part of this survey is right at the end of the City AM report:

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Out of the 10 largest firms by profit — which together make a staggering 50 per cent of revenues and 57 per cent of the FTSE 350's profits — three work in natural resources.

The Times (3 June) reported this as follows:

Quote:

The Profit Watch UK study also demonstrates the extent to which the share market is concentrated on just a few companies: the top ten companies account for 50 per cent of all revenues, while the top ten by profit accounted for 57 per cent of after-tax profits.

Talk about the concentration of capital (like Marx).

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

I am  astonished how there is more indignation of the possibility of the rich pensioner being deprived of his or her free tv licence than the imposition of an annual tax upon us all to maintain an establishment mouth-piece is readily seen as acceptable.At times i wish the SPGB was a campaigning reformist party because i know what supposedly independent corporation would be in my sights for abolition to save us all a few quid.

If we were a campaigning reformist party I think we should be careful what we wish for. The abolition of the BBC is what the Daily Mail is campaigning for and would leave the field free for the likes of Murdoch. Given the choice, I'd rather campaign for the abolition of the Daily Mail and Murdoch.I do agree, though, that the famous poem does apply to BBC journalists:

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You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God! the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to.

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I see he reveals that he was once a hard-line Trotskyist (member of the US SWP, not to be confused with the UK one).Anyone know whether or not the whole event was a flop?

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J Surman wrote:

It will be interesting to see what happens today and tomorrow as there's been a union call for a 2 day strike. On TV Russia Today has reasonable coverage -( you can watch RT online if there's no satellite coverage – is it banned in UK like Press TV is? They also do reasonable coverage.)

No, we can watch RT here in Britain. It's even on Freeview. Lots of members watch the Kaiser Report. Didn't know Press TV from Iran was banned, but you live and learn.More news on what's happening in Turkey here:http://www.democracynow.org/2013/6/3/a_turkish_spring_over_1_000

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Socialist Party Head Office wrote:

Further reply by letter from Laurens Otter:Mr Clayton is on the one hand citing the Aug. 1918 SPGB case; (Soc Standard, Aug 1918), arguing that Russia was not ready for socialism; (though, arguably the party's case was more nuanced, than that might suggest, Sammy Cash used to recollect that the Party's General Secretary sent Lenin a telegram of congratulation in December 1917.)

This Lenin Telegramme will be another figment of Laurens's fertile imagination. I wouldn't have thought either that Sammy Cash (a well-known Party member in the 1930s and 1940s who eventually left) said this. What the Party did do was publish an article in the January 1918 Socialist Standard congratulating the Bolsheviks for having stopped the slaughter on the Eastern front:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1910s/1918/no-161-january-1918/russian-situationThis is repeated in the famous August 1918 article (unfortunately, not yet available on line):

Quote:

As is admitted by the various sections of the capitalist Press, the Soviet representatives at the Brest-Litovsk Conference stood firm on their original proposals to the last moment. That they had to accept hard terms in the end is no way any discredit to them, but it was a result of conditions quite beyond their control. If they had done no more than this, if they had been compelled to give up office on their return, the fact that they had negotiated a stoppage of the slaughter and maiming of millions of the working class would have been a monument to their honour, and constituted an undeniable claim to the highest approbation of the workers the world over.

The article ends, hoping that the Bolsheviks and the Russian workers are not going to be punished for this:

Quote:

With the mass of the Russian people still lacking the knowledge necessary for the establishment of socialism, with both groups of belligerents sending armed forces into the country, with the possible combination of those groups for the purpose of restoring capitalist rule, even if not a monarchy, in Russia, matters look gloomy for the people there. If the capitalist class in the belligerent countries succeed in this plan, the Soviet Government and its supporters may expect as little mercy as—nay, less than—the Khirgiz Tartars received. It may be another Paris Commune on an immensely larger scale.Every worker who understands his class position will hope that some way will be found out of the threatened evil. Should that hope be unrealised, should further victims be fated to fall to the greed and hatred of the capitalist class, it will remain on record that when members of the working class took control of affairs in Russia, they conducted themselves with vastly greater humanity, managed social and economic matters with greater ability and success and with largely reduced pain and suffering, than any section of the cunning, cowardly, ignorant capitalist class were able to do, with all the numerous advantages they possessed.

Our criticism was of the claim made by some Bolsheviks and their supporters in Britain that what had occurred in Russia was a "socialist revolution" and that socialism was being established there, or could be in the existing economic and political conditions. So any hypothetical telegramme to Lenin would have said "Congratulations on stopping the slaughter on the Eastern front" (not "Congratulations on having carried out a socialist revolution").Later, when more information about what the Bolshevik government was actually doing emerged we took up a more critical position towards them, while still crediting them with having tried to stop the slaughter on the Eastern front (as we still do).In checking Laurens's claim by looking up the EC Minutes of the time I came across some interesting things which I might write up separately.

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Another relevant news item:http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/banking/article3781429.eceQuestion for those who think a bank can create money from thin air by a stroke of the pen: why did the Co-op Bank not do this instead of asking for a loan from the Bank of England?  The answer that they would have regarded this as "unethical" won't be accepted.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

I'm not sure if this is just a bit of clever placement of "establishment" news such as we had in the General Strike with police v strikers football or a genuine sincere Xmas Day Truce 1st World War game of footie between Brits and Huns but worth noting.Tea and biscuits and a game of football between mosque and EDLhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-22689552Nevertheless, it is an echo of our own approach that the solution to political violence is not counter-violence but a reasoned rational response, not demonisation

Apparently this is not a one-off:http://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/ipswich_edl_walk_through_town_centre_ends_without_incident_1_2218950Maybe someone will now organise a football match between the UAF and the EDL. More likely, though, is that the UAF will adopt a policy of: "No tea and biscuits for the EDL".

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

I find it mildly amusing that one ex-member’s enthusiasm for Occupy’s style of democracy has evolved into support for a left-wing united front which endeavours to create another political party by participants possessing principles of top-down decision-making and who sadly have not presented any self-criticism of such policies they hold but in fact desire to replicate them within Left Unity

I'm not sure that he has embraced top-down organisation (though that's how the proposed Left Unity party may well end up being organised), but he does accept that the "consensus decision-making" favoured by Graeber is not appropriate for a party. Here's what he says in reply to one comment on his report of the 11 May LU meeting:

Quote:

The only alternative I know of to motions and so on is Occupy style consensus. This is great, creative and very good at building solidarity. Is this what you had on mind? I’m not convinced it would be appropriate for Left Unity but would be open to hearing the arguments.

Yes, when a decision-making body gets beyond a certain size consenus decision-making is not even practical, however desirable it might or might not be.  Then motions, voting, majority-decision-making have to be brought in to ensure democratic control.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

Maybe this should be in the other thread and not a new one.

Yes, probably, as this is an SWP take on Left Unity..They are right that "left governments" always fail, but not for the reasons he gives (it's more to do with the impossibility of making capitalism operate other than as a system which has to be put profits before people). Not that that has ever prevented them telling workers to vote for one, "without illusions" of course.

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Socialist Party Head Office wrote:

WORLD SOCIALIST PARTY (NEW ZEALAND) – General Administrative CommitteeMeeting held at 51 Weymouth Road, Manurewa, AucklandDATE:                                    Sunday 5th May 2013.3.      Akshaay Ananth – Entry received for the essay writing competition.  Reply sent acknowledging receiving the entry.  Competition closes Tuesday 14th May.  Winner announced on Tuesday 28th May.

I wonder who won this and what they wrote.

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Interesting table. Obviously the Party is in the direct line of descent on the left to Marx's "the limit to capital is capital itself", i.e. that crises are crises of capital accumulation caused by not enough profit coming to be made to allow accumulation to continue at the same rate.What I don't understand is the branch on the right asking "do periodic fluctuations need fixes?"  Surely aren't "crises" and downward "fluctuations" the same? In which case "Real Business Cycle" theory could be classified as one negative reply to "So you're saying the limit to accumulation is internal to the structure of the accumulation process?" After all, they would answer "yes" to all the questions in the left line of descent till the last one.Again, answering "no" to the question "Is the kernel of crisis found in the sphere of production?" doesn't mean that you are necessarily an underconsumptionist. You could well be a monetarist or a follower of Ludwig von Mises who thinks that crises are caused by outside government intervention in the economy, a fairly popular view in some circles (even if not on the Left) and certainly as widespread as underconsumption theories. Or you could blame the banks and the bankers, as do both leftwing and rightwing populists. Just read any issue of the SPEW paper or Socialist Worker with their headlines such as "WE WON'T PAY FOR THE BANKERS' CRISIS!" (If you are a rightwing populist just insert the word "Jewish"  before "bankers" or, rather, if you are a leftwing one delete it.)Finally, a further question could be added to the line of descent on the left: "So crises will continue as long as capitalism continues and nothing can be done about it?" Yes: you are (or should be) a socialist. No: you are a reformist posing as a Marxian socialist but in fact agreeing with the "the right Keynsians" who think that "periodic fluctuations need fixes" and with "left Keynesians" who answer yes to "Will this extra consumption require extensive government intervention to generate?" Once again read any leftwing populist paper with their calls for "a massive programme of public investment".

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Here's how Nick Wrack, of the "Independent Socialist Network" (not to be confused with the "International Socialist Network of ex-SWPers), has described the statement prepared by by Kate Hudson for the 11 May Left Unity meeting:

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In so far as the politics of the statement can be understood, it is a call for the formation of a social democratic party, which seeks to reform capitalism. This is a wholly inadequate and ultimately futile objective.

As if there weren't enough reformist parties already (including TUSC of which Wrack is a member).

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Quote:

After international media attention, the Vatican attempted clarify how exactly one gets in to heaven, with Rev. Thomas Rosica, a Vatican spokesman, saying that people who know about the Catholic church “cannot be saved” if they “refuse to enter her or remain in her.”That is, atheists are still going to hell.

Yes, but this would mean not just atheists but also members of other christian sects too since they too will know about the Roman Catholic church and have refused to enter her.I was a funeral yesterday conducted by a Methodist minister who assured those present that the deceased had been saved by Jesus (christianity of course is the one saviour religion from Ancient Roman and Greek times that has survived). Apparently he was a fraud and a liar since the only people that go to heaven are Roman Catholics and a few people who do good without ever having heard of the Vatican (Plato may have been transferred there after limbo was abolished).I'm not sure that I fancy heaven anyway, spending the rest of eternity worshipping and bowing down before some dubious philosophical concept. I do agree, though, that hell sounds worse. Limbo sounded alright.The good news is that not only is there no limbo but there's no heaven or hell either.

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Nobody is denying that mechanisation (automation, computerisation, digitalisation, whatever) will result in job losses even when taking in account the extra workers involved in making the machines, etc — as long, that is, as nothing else happens in some other sectors of the economy. But ever since the Industrial Revolution it always has. Continuing capital accumulation has meant a continuing demand for workers, so over time the total number of employed has gone up despite mechanisation.Also, of course, capital is a world system. So even if unemployment turns out to become at a permanently higher level in Britain, this could still be offset by increased employment elsewhere in the world. In which case, the higher level of unemployment would not be technological, but the result of capital accumulation shifting from one centre to another (say, in China, India or Latin America).Those who predict steadily increasing technological unemployment must also explain why they think capital accumulation on a worldscale will stop or permanently slow down.

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Just read that Arab Christians also call their god "Allah", so a meeting under the title "There is no god, and his name isn't Allah" wouldn't work. But then we're just as much opposed to christianity as we are to islam..

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