[ALB]

Thanks, Brian,. I see that James Phillips was billed on the advertising for the meeting as representing the Venus Project as well as Zeitgeist. That would explain why the meeting seemed to be a regression to the time when Zeitgeist was linked to the Venus Project of establishing a circular city in the Amazonian jungle financed by the UN or some friendly capitalist. I thought TZM had abandoned this silly idea. In any event, the report of the meeting will give you and Socialist Punk a clue as to where to put the accent in your discussions with them on Monday.

[ALB]

Two members did attend the Zeitgeist meeting in London on Tuesday, but haven't yet got round to reporting what happened and what they thought beyond saying that "funny money" and decision-making by technocrats came up.

[ALB]

Just read the one on the SDF. It's crap.

[ALB]

Ozymandias wrote:

I have never read an article in the Standard concerning regional accents and how they have impacted on the class divide.

Maybe because the accent divide does not correspond to the class divide. In the 19th century capitalists spoke with a regional accent. So, apparently, did the aristocracy. Here, for instance, is what the Dictionary of National Biography says via wikipedia about the 15th Earl of Derby (1826-1893) who was an MP and Cabinet Minister:

Quote:

He lived much in his own county, spoke, like his father, with a Lancashire accent

His father, the 14th Earl, was three times Prime Minister  in Victorian times. So the 14th Mr Wilson was not the first Prime Minister to speak with a northern accent.I'm not quite sure why we're discussing accents in a thread on Zeitgeist since, being in the Technocracy tradition, they probably think we should all speak like Stephen Hawking.

[ALB]

twc wrote:

In actual human production, we only need to swamp costly human labour by cheap robotic labour to approximate humanless production — to approximate a valueless condition of capitalist production.Valueless capitalist production would, of course, be catastrophic for capitalism and for the capitalist class, as a capitalist production process only generates value through human labour and not through robotic labour, which [if truly humanless] is valueless in Marxian terms.(…)If social labour at all stages of capitalist production ever becomes predominantly robotic, then consumer products become predominantly valueless. In a competitive capitalist economy — one which through competition enforces strict value production — the prices of consumer goods would plummet.

You are right. Marx did speculate about this in a passage in the Grundrisse where he says, after discussing the deplacement of direct labour by machines in production:

Quote:

As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few, for the development of the general powers of the human head. With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of penury and antithesis.  http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch14.htm )

Incidentally, this is (I think) the only passage where Marx uses the word breakdown ( "zusammen") in relation to capitalism. What he is saying is that if capitalism continued long enough it would eventually reach a stage where, thanks to mechanization, an individual product would have so little labour (indirect as well as direct) embodied in it that its value, and so its price, would be virtually zero. At which point the change-over to production to give away or take freely would become a necessity for the survival of society.I don't think that Marx thought that this stage would ever actually be reached, but was merely extrapolating trends discernable under capitalism to their logical conclusion (a bit like he did too with his mathematical demonstration that eventually the rate of profit must fall). Capitalism is nowhere near this stage now over 150 years since Marx wrote and, despite robotics, is still (very) far away from it. Hopefully, the workers will have put an end to capitalism long before it reached this theoretical breakdown point. Marx must have thought so too. Otherwise why was he active as a socialist in his day?Basically, then, we are still living in the stage of capitalism described by Hardy not the end-days of capitalism as extrapolated by Marx in the passage above.

[ALB]

Ozymandias wrote:

Does the party have one single stance on this?

I'm not sure about a single stance, but this classic article from 1965 by Comrade Hardy put exaggerated claims (either way) about automation into perspective. The same applies to robotics:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1960s/1965/no-725-january-1965/automation-perspectiveComrade Hardy had already made the same point in an article dating from 1934:http://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/production_productivity.htmAs he pointed out, productivity (which automation, computerisation, robotics, etc increases) only increases relatively slowly, at between 1 and 2% a year. This is because what needs to be taken into account is not the labour saved at the final stage of the production of some product but the labour saved on producing the product from start to finish. This is just Marxian economics and an application of the labour theory of value..It has also been borne out by the facts about what happened since 1934 and 1964. None of the dire threats or promises predicted at the time and mentioned in the articles materialised.Just read the claim made in 1934 that "that mechanical progress has gone so far in the direction of increasing output per head that we are within measurable distance of 'one immense robot factory, employing no workmen at all'". And the "forecast" made in 1964 that "'before the end of the century,' in every industrial country, certainly in the West, most of the essential work will be performed by about 20 per cent of the people – chiefly the most intelligent".I suspect that the same will be seen in 50 years about what some are saying today about robotics — unless of course socialism has been established by then.

[ALB]

SocialistPunk wrote:

I think I'll give the TZM Team Speak 3 a go on the 22nd.

You realise that they can't understand a North East English accent in America, don't you? Look what happened to Cheryl Cole. But good luck all the same.

[ALB]

Brian wrote:

Just checked the link to the Minneapolis Chapter web site and it appears that their Mission Statement is the one by Peter Joseph.  Luckily I had saved their old one:

Actually, they are both there. The good one which you reproduced is under About/Resource Based Economy here:http://www.zeitgeistminneapolis.com/RBE

[ALB]

http://votingforjesus.com/writein.htm is interesting as it shows that the situation in many US States is much more formally democratic than here. A write-in contest between "Darwin" and "Jesus" would be interesting. The trouble is, in the US, "Jesus" would probably win.A write-in vote has no basis in UK electoral law. If you write anything on the ballot paper it is regarded as an invalid vote (and, curiously, classified as "voter's intention uncertain", even though in many cases it is quite clear what the voter meant). They don't (and won't) make provision for a box for "None of the Above" either.  In Belgium, where voting is compulsory, there is provision to cast a "blank" vote, even with electronic voting machines.

[ALB]

SocialistPunk wrote:

If the speakers earlier referred to from TZM UK are advocating monetary reforms as a solution then they are at odds with the movement goals

In the ZM Mission Statement that Brian referred to it says:

Quote:

The range of The Movement's Activism & Awareness Campaigns extend from short to long term, with the model based explicitly on Non-Violent methods of communication. The long term view, which is the transition into a Resource-Based Economic Model, is a constant pursuit and expression, as stated before. However, in the path to get there, The Movement also recognizes the need for transitional Reform techniques, along with direct Community Support. For instance, while "Monetary Reform" itself is not an end solution proposed by The Movement, the merit of such legislative approaches are still considered valid in the context of transition and temporal integrity.

In other words, officially they see "Monetary Reform" (incidentally, without defining exactly what) as a transition to a money-free society.We have been plugging away amongst ZM members in London to show that seeing monetary reform as a step towards getting rid of money altogether is illogical and inconsistent. This leaflet suggests we may have made some headway. It says (on the back);

Quote:

Even if reformed, the Monetary System is incapable of becoming the tool to build the kind of egalitarian emancipated societies we need in order to thrive. Why? Because going back to the gold standard, outlawing interest, letting governments distribute money debt free and such like, have logical merits, but the Monetary System, in whatever form, still maintains resource and equality imbalances and holds back our progress, while creating by its fundamental design, poverty and scarcity of basic needs. This is the underlying problem that needs to be solved.

This is  the same point (minus the concession that the monetary reforms listed "have logical merits", which they don't) that we've been making in the discussions at the Occupy New Putney Debates. In this respect ZM is ahead of Occupy.Incidentally, I can't believe that Peter Joseph wrote that wordy and jargon-filled Mission Statement since he is normally a good communicator. Anyway, here's a much better ZM statement (and much nearer to what we say):http://www.zeitgeistminneapolis.com/RBE

[ALB]

SocialistPunk wrote:

Now as ALB has pointed out the SPGB have voted in favour of TZM being seen as a political party

That's not what I pointed out or what the resolution said. It said that Zeitgeist was to be regarded as "a political organisation within the meaning of rule 6". It does not say that Zeitgeist is a political party and nobody has claimed that it is. You yourself accept that there is a difference between a "political party" and an organisation that can broadly be considered to be political. What I said was that the resolution(s) meant that no one can be a member of both the SPGB and Zeitgeist. This was in fact the context in which the debate took place. Whether or not Zeitgeist is a "political party" is a different debate which didn't take place, maybe because nobody could reasonably argue that it is. So, yes, you are mistaken or rather have got the wrong end of the stick.

[ALB]

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.

[ALB]

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".

[ALB]

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.

[ALB]

I think we should record Steve's joke:Why did Proudhon drink herbal tea?Because he thought that proper tea was theft.

[Author]

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