ALB
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Three of us went to the "New Economy Workshop" last night in Putney. Together with 30 or so others we heard the speakers expound a combination of the views of Henry George and the Campaign for Interst-Free Money. As the meeting split up into 4 discussion groups we were able to put our view across in 3 of them.What emerged was that the speakers, apparently in the name of the London Occupy Economics Working Group, were advocating what the programme called a "land backed interest free currency — spent into the economy to create infrastructure, rental income to fund citizens income and public services". What this meant was that the government would raise money by a Single Tax on Land Values (as advocated by Henry George) and spend some of it directly and distributed the rest to everybody as a Basic Income. One of the speakers was a Henry Georgist we had met at St Pauls last year.Whn we pointed out that production for profit not banks lending at interest was the problem, we were met with the answer that profit was ok since an element of risk was involved while interest was not since it was a certain income and so was "usury" (they mentioned that this was what the sharia law taught too). These people are not opposed to capitalism even in words, which of course reflects Henry George's view that capitalism was ok and that all that was required was to tax away the rent of the land monopolists. When we mentioned common ownership and production for use without money we were told that this was "communism" and had been tried in China under Mao with terrible results.I have to say, though, that members of the audience were more hostile to "capitalism" (we got a round of applause when we said expropriate the 1% not tax them and when we denounced profit rather than interest). Which it is why it is worth our while being at these meetings.I agree with Alan that what seems to have happened is that the Working Groups have sort of been taken over by activists with their own agendas. On the other hand, their message (down with bankers and banking) and respect for the land (as part of Nature and ecology) have found an echo amongst the sort of people Occupy attracted. What we have to do of course is to point out that it is not bankers (or land monoplists) who are to blame and that therefore banking (and land reform) is not the solution.As to Socialist Punk's point, since they don't see themselves as a political party but still want laws to be passed they have effectively relegated themselves to being lobbyists of the government and the parliamentary parties to get the legislation they want (eg banking reform, reform of company law, closing tax loopholes, ending tax havens, etc, etc) even if they take "direct action" too.I think Occupy played a useful and important role last year in sparking off a wave of anti-capitalist sentiment (howver vague) but they should probably have left it at that instead of trying to continue as yet another campaigning (within capitalism) group.
The whole question of our attitude to Zeitgeist was discussed at our Annual Conference in 2011. The result of the votes were:
Quote:"This conference rules that the Zeitgeist Movement is a political organisation within the meaning of Rule 6". Carried. For 49. Against 47.Quote:"This Conference considers that active support for the Zeitgeist Movement is incompatible with membership of the Socialist Party". Carried. For 69. Against 30.Draw what conclusion you will from the closeness of the first vote: that we are half-heartedly opposed to Zeitgeist?Actually, in view of what Rule 6 says ("A member shall not belong to any other political organisation") both resolutions mean the same and amount to a rejection of dual membership and "entryism".
Here's a refutation of the view that money to pay interest to banks can only come from further bank loans which is the basis of the currency crank view that it is banking system that is forces the economy to grow even at the expense of the environment and resources (which I've heard repeated many tims at Occupy meetings). This is to mistake the shadow for the substance as it is the drive to accumulate capital that results in such growth. Banks merely circulate money to help finance this. It is the pursuit of profits not the payment of interest (most of which comes from profits anyway) that is the problem.This refutation is all the more significant in that it comes from a supporter of "full-reserve banking", Michael Reiss, author of What Went Wrong With Economics, who was present at our debate against Positive Money. This page is from pages 18-20:
Quote:But what about the interest?The question remains around the lending and repayment of money: what about the interest payments? The answer is that when a loan is paid back, the original money created by the loan disappears, but the bank is allowed to keep the interest repayments. This is how banks get their income.Some people, when presented with this information about how the banking system works, become concerned about where the supply of money for interest payments could possibly come from. They say things like: "If the total size of the money supply was fixed then there is no possible source of money for paying interest." This may be followed by: "So this proves that the money supply is forced to increase forever, otherwise borrowers could never pay the money buck." They suspect that a proportion of borrowers must on aggregate, almost by definition, be unable to repay the interest. This view is however, mistaken. Indeed Professor Steve Keen of the University of Western Sydney has recently produced computer simulations to prove it. The key thing to note is that the interest paid does not simply accumulate at the bank. The interest is shared between bank owners, employees and savers, all of whom will be spending their earned interest back into the economy. This flow of money is a source of money for the interest payments.The supposed impossibility of repaying interest is bit like the following dilemma. Imagine two people on a desert island: Mary and Sue. Sue owes Mary $20 but there are only $10 in existence and this is currently in the hands of Mary. At first glance it appears that the debt could never be repaid but this apparent impasse is easily solved. All that has to happen is for Sue to sell Mary some good or service. Say, for example, Sue spends some hours catching fish. She could sell the fish to Mary for $10. This $10 could then immediately be given back to Mary as part payment for the debt. Now simply repeat the process one more time and the debt is cleared. The total amount of money that can be paid by Person A to Person B is not limited by the total amount of money that exists in an economy.In other words, the money to pay interest comes out of the income generated from future production (whether profits or wages). Reiss goes on:
Quote:Sadly Steve Keen's proof of the repayability of interest is not widely known and it is all too common for both economists and politicians to assume that it is essential for the money supply to continuously grow in order for an economy to function.The fact that there is no in-built mathematical paradox to avoid when paying back interest does not necessarily guarantee that all loans will be paid back; far from it. If someone borrows a large a sum on the basis that they expect healthy future income to repay the interest there is always scope for things to go wrong. They may lose their job, or they may become ill; perhaps their business plan was flawed and the product they are making proves unpopular. Any of these problems may lead to a situation where the loan repayments are larger than the borrower can ever reasonably pay back. This is possible even if the loan was interest free.In conclusion we can now see that it is not essential for the money supply to grow in order for interest payments to be made on loans without default. There are a variety of problems caused by fractional reserve banking, some of them severe (as we shall see later), but inherently unpayable interest is not one of them.I think we should record Steve's joke:Why did Proudhon drink herbal tea?Because he thought that proper tea was theft.
alanjjohnstone wrote:I'll hazard a guess that many in Occupy will be adopting nationalise the banks slogans, based upon arguments presented by the likes of Ellen Brown here. http://www.alternet.org/economy/its-interest-stupid-why-bankers-rule-world?paging=offWe should be ready to counter that interest is from the surplus value extracted from workers.That's why the October Socialist Standard was a special issue on this, but I'm afraid we are facing an uphill task here. West London branch is covering another meeting in the New Putney Debates series this evening on "A New Economy". Apparently, it will be a workshop run by Clive Menzies, a currency crank who wants to abolish interest and has argued that monetary reform is necessary to avoid …. revolution:http://theoccupiedtimes.co.uk/?p=3015Should be fun.
I left my email address at the Occupy New Putney Debate on Land and Democracy and have received the following email from them. It gives a good idea of where they (or at least their Environment Working Party) are coming from and want to go. Not too different, it seems, from existing activist groups in this area.
Quote:Dear All,thanks so much for coming to our Putney Debate on Land and Democracy last Thursday. At Occupy London we hope that all of the debates will help build a community of people who want to do more than talk, and come together as part of a wider movement against neoliberalism and the corporate takeover of society, and for real democracy and sharing of natural resources, to help bring about real changes in our society and around the world. Details of how to get involved in our group can be found at the bottom of this message. Of course, the talk is important, for working out a coherent diagnostic of what is wrong with society and the kind of changes we wish to see. Action without thought is blind. Lots of interesting ideas came out during this session, and our occupier friend Tina has written a very good overview of the evening here: http://occupylondon.org.uk/archives/17849 You can also find a livestream of the event here, courtesy of our friend Obi: http://occupylondon.org.uk/archives/17835 Just a few of the ideas (based on what people have sent back to me) raised in the breakout groups (send in any others you have as a "reply all" to this message):*build and reinforce communities where we are*Occupy empty buildings/expand squatting (increasingly a necessity for many young people)*demand that the City of London make all its accounts transparent*learn from & get together with friends to replicate successful alternative community experiments, such as the occupied library at Friern Barnet (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/11/squatters-reopen-friern-barnet-library) and the Diggers' camp at Runnymede (http://diggers2012.wordpress.com/) *devise strategies to counter "privatist" propaganda in every way we canThe event was organised by the Occupy London Energy, Equity and Environment Working Group (EEE). We are also organising an Environment Day, with some brilliant speakers like the energy expert Jeremy Leggett and Polly Higgins, leader of the campaign for Ecocide to be adopted by the UN as an international crime. There'll be lots of audience participation, and dealing with the crucial themes of food, energy, and environmental law. We hope you can come and invite lots of friends! The facebook page for this event can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/114672452021499/ The full programme for the Putney Debates can be found here: http://thenewputneydebates.wordpress.com/programme/If you agree with us that voting every 5 years or going on an occasional march won't change anything in any significant way, then we hope you'll get involved with Occupy London, UK Uncut, the Fuel Poverty Action Group, the Climate Justice Collective, Femcells or any of the groups that are part of the wider anti-neoliberal movement. EEE is an autonomous grassroots working group within Occupy London, set up 18 October 2011 to connect the dots between environment and economy, and put the environment at the heart of the Occupy movement in London, which I think we can say we have successfully achieved. We organise a mix of educational events, protests and direct actions, sometimes in association with other grassroots environmental groups, sometimes independently. If you would like to get involved with this group, please email me by reply.Best wishes,PeterOccupy London EEEIndividual capitalists and capitalist firms may have an immediate interest in paying a section of the working class less than another section, but in the long run this is not necessarily in the interest of the capitalist class as a whole since this is to deny themselves access to a pool of potentially more productive (ie producing more profit for them) workers. That's why I used the term "overall interest". It's why of course the capitalist class in South Africa was opposed to apartheid and why this fell. I was suggesting that the same thing will eventually happen in the case of discrimination against women and has in fact already begun to happen
No, this is not utopian. It's perfectly achievable within capitalism and is in fact being achieved even if slowly. Capitalism has no reason to discriminate against half the working class. In fact it is not in its overall interest to do so.
More co-option of "morality" by capitalism from yesterday's London Evening Standard:http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/capitalism-has-to-relocate-its-moral-compass-8289264.html
While it is understandable to a certain extent why some people should have voted for Obama what is utterly incomprehensible is why so many should have voted for Romney, a self-satisfield capitalist who has made no attempt to disguise his disdain for the workers. A sad reflection of the low level of political consciousness amongst workers in America I suppose.
alanjjohnstone wrote:So i think it is a bit easy to put it down to a generational thing.I tend to agree. From my experience of attending 2 or 3 meetings in their New Putney Debates series over the past week or so, I would say that most Occupy activists seem to be university-educated professional workers in the 30s and 40s. As to those attending their meetings, very few were in their 20s or under and there were plenty of over 50s. And, perhaps surprisingly, a massive under-representation of women.
Just remembered. The first speaker in this video, from a party political broadcast by the Socialist Labor Party of America in the 1956 Presidential elections (in which Eisenhower beat egghead Adlai Stevenson), says it all:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iulqp9xlCFg&feature=relmfuPity nobody seems to be saying it this time.
The main reason that it makes no difference is that politicians and governments do not, and cannot, control the way the capitalist economy works. They have to navigate by sight in the face of what the capitalist economy throws up and so can do no more than react to how the economy moves. This quite apart from the fact that their remit to govern in the overall interest of the capitalist class. In fact, far from them controlling the way capitalism works, it's the other way round. That's why Obama failed to honour his promises. Listening to the extracts from Romney's speeches reported over here, he seems to be making extravagant promises claiming that he personally can turn the American capitalist economy round and create millions of new jobs. I don't whether he is dishonest or stupid. Probably both, not that it makes any difference as not even a saint could control capitalism or make it work in the interest of all. Come to think of it, he thinks he is a saint, even if a Latter Day one.
In the end only two of us went to this meeting. It was organised on the "open space" principle, ie no fixed agenda just a general theme (in the instance "capitalism is crisis") with people attending posting on a board something they wanted to talk about and for others to choose to go and listen to them and join in the discussion there. It worked very well. Perhaps we could experiment with it at our summer school.Those present, fifty or so, were a variety of "anti-capitalists" (including, oddly, Joseph Choonara, the SWP's expert on Marxian ecnomics). Most seemed to be concerned with acting now to create alternatives to capitalism today inevitably within capitalism to start with, such as local democracy, community trusts, co-ops and other not-for-profit or profit-sharing mutual societies. We pointed out that whatever might be the merits of these they could only be marginal within capitalism and would never be able to outcompete and take over "the commanding heights of the economy" currently controlled by capitalist corporations, which would require political action (via the ballot box). They also talked about introducing laws to permit this and to stop that, without thinking how these might come about without political action of some kind that would bring them up against the vested interests of the capitalist corporations and their owners and political representatives. The SWP continued to insist that the focus of struggles today should be the workplace rather than local communities. They also insisted that the only way to get control of the state was by violent insurrection, which didn't find any echo at all amongst those present. Tha is clearly not what present-day "anti-capitalists" are into.The trouble is that they are not into what we advocate either (democratic political action to win political control to end capitalism). The aim of the whole series of New Putney Debates is to draw up a New Agreement of the People. A draft for this gives an idea of their general approach. Basically, it's a draft for a new constitition for Britain which would be fully democratic (and so republican) with the usual civil and political rights guaranteed. The economic part reads:
Quote:* the right to co-operative ownership in place of shareholder control* the right to democracy and self-management in all areas/activities of the workplace* the right to common land ownership in towns and rural areas.Forty years ago this might have been described as "self-managed socialism" but "socialism" is not a word that modern anti-capitalists seem to like (though some will admit it privately). The criticism we made of a self-managed market economy of worker-controlled workplaces put forward by such groups as Solidarity in the 60s and 70s applies to them, but our problem is how do we get across the need for some degree of centralisation and for political action. Another drawback is that, unlike those we argued with at that time, modern anti-capitalists are not using the same language that we are used to (socialism, working class,class struggle, Marx, etc). But at least we've haven't got the baggage of vanguardism and insurrection that the SWP and other Trotskyists have.
Went to a meeting in the London Occupy's New Putney Debates series last night. It was on Land and Democracy. About 100 people there in the same church where the original debates took place. The speakers were George Monbiot, Natalie Bennett (new Leader of the Green Party) and someone from a new "Digger" camp in Runnymede.What was revealing was how the Occupy moderator introduced the Green Party speaker. He said that Occupy didn't normally associate with political parties but that the Green Party had supported them. When you think of it, this was going to be the most likely place Occupy activists would find congenial. The audience appeared to be natural Green Party supporters.As to the substance of the talks and discussions, they seem to have a vague idea that the land should somehow be commonly owned (or at least more equally distributed) and/or democratically controlled, but no hint that the same ought logically to apply to all wealth since this comes from the land (nature) in the first place. Henry George got a mention. Plenty of praise for Gerrard Winstanley. So, hopefully, our leaflet based on this will have gone down well.Three of four of us are planning to attend the one on "Capitalism is Crisis" on Sunday mentioned in message #300 above.
