ALB
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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.
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.
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".
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:
Quote: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).
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.
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.
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..
In the meantime the media are beginning to talk of the fighting in Syria being or becoming a proxy war between Russia and the West for control of the strategic region that Syria is. Same old capitalism then.
Here's how Chris Harman's review (from International Socialist Journal No 54, Spring 1992) of Chris Knight's book on Blood Relations and the theory behind it begins:
Quote:Every generation of Marxists has to fight its battle against those who produce the latest proofs — strangely enough, always the same old proofs — that Marxism is finished. But we have also had, repeatedly, to fight another, even more tiresome battle against people who claim to be on our own side. Ever since Herr Professor Durhing beguiled half the intellectuals of the German socialist movement with his ''revolution in science'' in the 1880s, Marxists have had to expose a series of intellectual quacks who have tried to present their pet systems of myths and half truths as the latest thing in scientific advance.Chris Knight's book about the origins of human culture falls straight into the same tradition of quackery.Every chapter is headed by a quote from Marx. But the intellectual basis of the book owes little to Marx's insistence that the social production is the key to the development of humanity.Rather Knight's acknowledges his debt to: ''sociobiology's achievements'' in seeing that ''what animates … the flesh and blood individual…are…genes…whose only law is to survive..'' to the mystical poets Peter Redgrove and Penelope Sharp, whose ''style and tone'', he tells us, is ''Jungian'' to those ''involved in the Greenham Common anti-missile campaigns of the early 1980s'' who refused ''to collaborate in the whole masculinist political set up…'' and to his ''political friends'' which include prominent Labour MP Ken Livingstone and two lesser known luminaries of the London Labour left, Keith Veness and Graham Bash.His politics are those of the Labour left of a decade ago — when Knight himself edited the ''personal politics'' section of the Labour Briefing, mixing Greenham Common feminism with municipal socialism — and his methodology is a similarly eclectic. The resulting confusion leads to absurdities like speaking of a ''class conflict…between genders'' among ''monkeys and apes''.I think Chris Knight's politics may have changed since then but not his basic theory. But we shouldn't reject Harman's criticism just because he was a member of the SWP. On this issue he could be right. Certainly the alternative view of the origin of human society that he presented in Engels and the Origin of Human Society is impressive.
Here's yet another article arguing that there will be increasing technological unemployment as more and more work processes are computerised:http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/speed-of-innovation-and-automation-threatens-global-labor-market-a-897412.htmlThis article does at least mention the counter-argument:
Quote:Still, many economists remain unconvinced. Critics argue that there have been constant warnings of the consequences of technological transformations since the beginning of the industrial revolution, yet these fears have always turned out to be exaggerated. These observers believe that this will also be the case now.Articles in the June Socialist Standard (which deals with theories of capitalist collapse) takes a similar position, but from a Marxist point of view, on the grounds that most of the unemployment today is cyclical (the reserve army of labour returning to its slump size) not technological and that there is a difference between technological invention and its actual application to production. (capitalist firms only apply inventions if these reduce the amount of labour, including that incorporated in machines, that they have to pay for, which is a much higher bar than simply saving total labour).While it is true that computerisation does reduce the total number of workers that need to be employed even taking into account the extra ones employed to make the machines, this will only lead to increasing unemployment if capital accumulation stops or slows down permanently. But economists like the two mentioned in the Der Spiegel article have yet to make a convincingly case for this.Unfortunately perhaps, capitalism is more resilient than some might like to think. Or perhaps not unfortunately, as, if capitalism collapsed before there was a majority in favour of socialism, the result could be worse in that some of the scenarios envisaged in the many dystopian novels and films could well come about.
"Anti-Possibilist" is better as it's the same as anti-Reformist. The trouble is that the term "possibilist" is not used by anyone today. When the German Green Party had a similar discussion they were divided into "Realos" ("Realists" who wanted to pursue what Green measures were considered achievable within the system) and "Fundis" ("Fundamentalists" who wanted to give priority to campaigning for a Green society). The Realos won and this is now the approach not just of the German party but of all Green parties. But we can't call ourselves "Socialist fundamentalists", can we (even if we are)?
Stefan has a point: why do we call ourselves "impossiblists"? I know the historical reason (label applied to us by the "possiblists", ie those who said the workers' movement should aim to get reforms that are "possible"), but surely it is those who think that capitalism can be reformed to work in the interest of the rest of us who are the real impossiblists?
alanjjohnstone wrote:There are an estimated 50,000 foreign jihadist fighters terrorizing Syria. MAIREAD MAGUIRE Nobel peace laureate.I don't doubt that there are thousands of them but 50,000 seems rather a lot. What's the evidence for this?
Here's what we said at the time about his dad:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1960s/1969/no-780-august-1969/book-review-state-capitalist-societyhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1977/no-871-march-1977/open-letter-professor-milibandActually some of his criticisms of the "far left" mentioned in the second article are not all that wide of the mark and still apply today.
