ALB
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Yes, just the music for a socialist to have played at their funeral instead of “I did it my way” ! But I doubt if Lennon was influenced by us. I think he composed it at a time (1971) when he was strongly influenced by Tariq Ali and his paper Red Dwarf (an influence also shown by Lennon’s support for the IRA). Ali was then a Trotskyist in the “International Marxist Group”. He definitely knew us and that we wanted a society with no religion, no countries, no possessions and no money. I’ve got a letter from him dated 1968 in which he says that he doesn’t think he could give “a vary illuminating talk on abolition of money to SPGB comrades” and asking if we had a pamphlet on the subject.
I’ve now finished reading that book on “Anarchist Economics” and am pleased to report that there are 2 chapters, by writers describing themselves as “libertarian communists” (Deric Shannon and Scott Nappalos), making the same criticism as us of both “market anarchism” (derived from Proudhon and propagated today by modern “mutualists” such as Kevin Carson) and of Michael Albert’s “parecon” — one of them even refers to our pamphlet Socialism As A Practical Alternative. Both writers advocate instead “from each according to ability, to each according to need”Nappalos criticises Albert’s blueprint for proposing a modified wages system (by linking people’s consumption to the amount of work effort they put in). He also makes the same critcism as us of having your fellow workers judge how hard you work:
Quote:Having coworkers judge each other’s work would turn the gossip and infighting at work presently from an annoyance into a system of power over wages.Yes, it would be worse than now when this is judged by management !
Something to please Stuart (and us?):http://gothamist.com/2012/03/28/did_you_get_a_free_ride_on_the_subw.php
I challenged him to put his money where his mouth was and to bet that massive deflation (falling prices, yet higher unemployment, food and other shortages, debtors prisons, etc) would happen within the 2-5 years he predicted against my bet that it wouldn’t. Some of the ZMers in the audience were shocked as, after all, Jacque Fresco and Peter Joseph argue that technologically we could have a world of abundance now. I’ve since emailed the organisers offering to debate him at next year’s Z-Day in Cardiff on “Why the economic system will not collapse” and in 5 years time on “Why the economic system did not collapse”.He was mixing up two things: so-called peak oil and the economic collapse of capitalism through some flaw in its monetary and banking side. The second is not going to happen because the supposed flaw doesn’t exist. As to peak oil, if this is the case, as it becomes more and more difficult to extract oil then its price will rise. This will have two consequences. It will make it profitable to exploit previously unprofitable sources including tar sands, shale and deposits under the North Pole. And it will accelerate the search for substitutes such as renewable energies and nuclear power. He claimed this wouldn’t work because it would cost more energy to use these than the energy they would produce (I’m not competent to comment on this but maybe there’s an engineer in the house?), but he himself admitted that there was enough coal to last for centuries.So, don’t be alarmed. It’s not going to happen (even if nothing is going to go smoothly and without undesirable side effects as long as we have capitalism). No need to stock up tins of food or convert your savings into gold.
From the Raconteur supplement on “Funding Britain’s Growth” in yesterday’s Times:
Quote:It is not in the nature of a bank to take risks. As a rule, they make a relatively small profit on lending — usually in single digit percentage points … [Doug Richard, founder of School for Startups]What Richard is talking about is the net interest margin, a key concept for understanding how banks work and which currency cranks ignore.
stuartw2112 wrote:it’s sometimes hard to tell if you’re not actually there.You’re not saying, are you, that this means being there in a tent? Or can visiting occupations and talking to people there, reading their leaflets, blogs, etc count as well?
It’s not easy from over here to work out exactly what’s been happening in Oakland. Here’s a rather different analysis, from some “ultraleftists” on the spot (taken from one of their discussion forums I’m on). Don’t know if there’s any truth in their allegation that the movement there has been hijacked by a bunch of varied vanguardists (and of course any contacts with the organised trade-union movement would be anathema to ultraleftists even if not such a problem for us and a delight to vanguardists):http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/01/30/18706115.php
The examples we used to give to back up our argument that socialism and communism meant (and mean) the same thing were:1. Engels’s 1888 Preface to the English edition of the Communist Manifesto where he explains why, when it was “the most widespread, the most international production of all Socialist literature”, in 1848 it was called the Communist rather than the Socialist Manifesto.2. The Manifesto of English Socialists, issued jointly in 1893 by the Social Democratic Federation, the Hammersmith Socialist Society and the Fabian Society (!) and signed by, among others, William Morris, George Bernard Shaw, Hyndman and Sidney Webb, which declared:
Quote:On this point all Socialists agree. Our aim, one and all, is to obtain for the whole community complete ownership and control of the means of transport, the means of manufacture, the mines and the land. Thus we look to put an end for ever to the wage-system, to sweep away all distinctions of class, and eventually to establish national and international communism on a sound basis.Marx himself seems to have preferred to call himself a Communist. Which is why he referred to two phases of communist society rather than to socialism and communism being to separate phases of post-capitalist society. We have to admit, though, that there was one pre-Lenin socialist who did use the terms in this way — William Morris, though even he called himself indifferently a socialist or a communist.There were also reformists who said they stood for “socialism” (meaning nationalisation) and not for “communism” (abolition of wages system, no money, to each according to needs). Thus, Ramsay MacDonald wrote in the chapter of his The Socialist Movement (1911) entitled “What Socialism is not”:
Quote:“From all according to their ability; to each according to his needs ” is a Communist, not a Socialist, formula. The Socialist would insert “services” for “needs.” They both agree about the common stock ; they disagree regarding the nature of what should be the effective claim of the individual to share in it. Socialists think of distribution through the channels of personal income ; Communists think of distribution through the channels of human rights to live. Hence Socialism requires some medium of exchange whether it is pounds sterling or labour notes; Communism requires no such medium of exchange.So, Lenin would have got his distinction, not from Marx, but from Ramsay MacDonald ! Come to think of it, they did have something in common: despite coming to power in different ways, both tried to make capitalism work in the interest of the workers and both failed (because this is not possible).Engels’s articles calling for the abolition of the wages system were written for the trade union paper the Labour Standard in 1881 and can be found here.
Funny you should mention this as I’m reading a book on “Anarchist Economics” that AK Press have sent us for review. And what does the first article advocate but “parecon”? I see there’s an Afterword by Michael Albert himself. I’m hoping that in between some more sensible ideas will emerge. After all, there are anarchists who are communists and want the same sort of classless, stateless, moneyless, wageless society we do.I can’t understand why some anarchists should fall for Albert’s detailed blueprint for a society which would be a bureaucratic nightmare of form-filling with your consumption monitored by your neighbours and your work performance by your work mates, and with rationing taking place through plastic cards registering the “labour-credits” you’ve earned instead of conventional money.
Just remembered. Nader can’t plead the Lesser Evil since wasn’t he once a candidate for the US presidency with the result, some say, that George W. Bush (Chomsky’s Greater Evil) got elected instead of Gore?
Actually, the “Nobel Prize” for Economics is not a real Nobel Prize as it was not provided for in the will of Alfred Nobel (who died in 1896). It was started by the Bank of Sweden in 1968 and seems to be awarded to whoever happens to have put forward the economic theory that is the flavour of the moment. So, when Keynesianism was in it went to one of them. When Monetarism was in one of them got it. I don’t know who gets it today but someone who knows nothing about economics seems appropriate.
Rosa Lichtenstein wrote:Or does SPGB stand for ‘Spiritual Party of Great Britain’?Of course not and the spiritualists don’t think so either, but they do have the honesty to draw attention to our criticism of them as here:http://www.spiritualismlink.com/t1529-science-v-spiritism-socialist-standard-1927-ukAnd here’s the Society for Psychical Research publicising this too:http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=373797202648627&id=295503008217Obviously they consider us worthy, materialist opponents.The full exchange (recently added to our archives section on this site) which went on for months can be found here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1920s/1926/no-268-december-1926/materialism-v-spiritism-criticism-and-our-replyhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1920s/1927Incidentally, Isabel Kinglsey was a Leninist, expelled from the CPGB for her spiritualist views.
There’s also this, especially the last two, more general chapters:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/strike-weapon-lessons-miners%E2%80%99-strike
