ALB
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This bit is good:
“What is missing from the classical or neoclassical account of the economy is that it treats supply and demand as a relation between producers and consumers. The regulation of that relationship by the need of capitalists to achieve a certain level of profitability is ignored. But in fact the market is essentially regulated by the need of producers to make a level of profit large enough to accumulate, to continue expanding their businesses. What determines supply is the possibility of making a profit from the sale of goods of a particular type. What determines demand is, with respect to consumer goods, the level of the wage and the living standard that people are used to. For producers goods, it’s determined by what inputs are needed to make those goods which can be sold for profit. So demand ultimately depends on the ability of firms to make an adequate level of profit.”
As to his theory of why the price level
Has been rising non-stop since the war — due to monopolies competing with other capitalist firms for a share of profits by restricting output and rising prices — I am inclined to share the incredulity of the German group:“What you seem to be saying about price formation seems to me a very far-reaching claim. Market competition by cost-cutting and lowering prices is a core mechanism of capitalism and you’re saying that it’s not operating anymore. I have a problem with this thesis. (…)
You seem to be claiming that this mechanism of competition and cost-cutting and price formation is not valid anymore.
Aren’t you basically saying that firms can decide themselves what prices they want and then that’s how market prices are created? The way you claim that companies set prices, again, leaves me hesitant because I believe that they can’t just raise prices arbitrarily because they’re in a state of competition. Even if there’s an oligopolistic situation, that’s still a situation of competition and it still means that cost-cutting and lowering prices is a very good competitive strategy.”I am not sure either about his claim that capitalism has entered into an era of permanent stagflation that will eventually lead to its economic demise.
In fact I think Mattick has gone off the rails (or is it the rail !) on both these points.
More of what Reeves told business leaders on Thursday:
“Be in no doubt, we will campaign as a pro-business party — and we will govern as a pro-business party” (this weekend’s i paper).
Why are they doing it? They seem to be afraid of what happened to Truss happening to them. Or maybe they are just facing reality — that the profit system which they support can only function as a profit system and so they have to give priority to allowing private enterprises to make profits as the quest for these is what drives the capitalist economic system, the motive for the “growth” they promise.
More from Reeves, at the Labour Party’s pro-Business meeting yesterday. The would-be future Chancellor of the Exchequer told her audience of businessmen and women:
“This Labour Party sees profit not as something to be disdained but as a mark of business succeeding”.
She also pledged not to increase Corporation Tax (a direct tax on profits) for the whole period of the next Labour government (assuming it lasts the full five years).
Labour evidently feels the need to convince Business that under a future Labour government British capitalism will be in a safe pair of hands, but they don’t need to convince us.
“The shadow chancellor has told the BBC Labour would not reinstate a bankers’ bonus cap that was scrapped last year by the Conservative government”.
“… we don’t have any intention of bringing that back. And as chancellor of the exchequer, I would want to be a champion of a successful and thriving financial services industry in the UK.”https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68145720.amp
Comment is superfluous.
Eugene Debs, the American Social Democrat, put the case against tactical voting in political elections rather well:
“It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don’t want and get it.”
Baltrop’s quip would have had more validity if he had said that without the Bolshevik seizure and maintaining of power Lenin would be remembered as a minor Russian revolutionary called Ulyanov.
Even today local councils can’t adopt by-laws or regulations that go against national legislation. Local councillors are essentially elected civil servants. If they step out of line they can be sanctioned by the central government, as has happened on a number of occasions when leftwing Labour councils have tried to defy the law.
Here’s what happened in 1972 in Clay Cross.
Note what happened to 11 of the councillors:
“But the 11 councillors … eventually paid a heavy price for their opposition as they were surcharged and banned from holding public office.”
Anyway, in the context of a political situation where there is a so large a majority in favour of socialism that they have won political control it is highly unlikely that a local council anywhere would have an Islamist majority. If there was and they did try to impose Islamic values they could easily be removed.
In fact if this situation occurred today under capitalism the same fate would befall any council and councillors who tried this.
“Imagine after the initial revolution the UK, France and Spain have elected SPGB like parties, and we’re still waiting on the other states to have their revolutions.”
I suppose something like that could happen but, if it did, the socialist movement in the other countries of Europe (and in the other capitalistically developed parts of the world) would not be far behind so there will be strong socialist movements there.
What are you suggesting? That the socialist administration in the three countries you mention should ban the entry of Muslim refugees? Since by then the adherents of that religion would have been reduced — by defections to secularism and rationalism let alone to socialism — to a small, uninfluential minority, what would be the danger? In fact, we could expect organisations like this one to be much more influential :
And not just in your three countries but elsewhere too.
I must say that you must have a particularly woke council in Bath if they let people be intimidated into not putting up a xmas tree.
Don’t worry. Socialists regard islam like all religions as superstitious and irrational nonsense to which we are implacably opposed and expose as such — but in public debate and persuasion not by banning them or discriminating against those under their influence.
The ruling of the ICJ seems quite clever. They have decided that Israel has a case to answer for breaching the Convention on Genocide (without prejudging whether they have). Evidently the court saw there was no point in ordering a ceasefire as they knew this would be ignored. Instead they ordered some specific measures that Israel may well ignore too but which, if they do, could affect the court’s final decision.
There is another effect too. The ruling over-rides part of the tendentious definition of anti-semitism (drawn up by supporters of Israel) by reducing its scope and so extending free speech. Unless the court itself is guilty of anti-semitism, “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is now no longer necessarily
legally anti-semitic.Actually, as you pointed out, many of the second generation of refugees whose parents came from areas dominated by backward religious and cultural ideas and practices come to reject these. It’s the best thing that could happen to them. There are quite a few MPs in Parliament of all parties of “Muslim heritage” (as we have to say) but none of them as far as I know what to bring in legislation to oppress women or ban homosexuality. Quite the opposite. Many are women.
I think you are exaggerating the likelihood of climate change leading to mass migration on the scale that you are basing your worries on. But if it did happen, capitalism wouldn’t be able to cope with it properly and the last thing socialists should do would be to join those calling for pulling up the drawbridge to keep out “undesirable” refugees. We should be insisting that only within the framework of a world based on common ownership could any necessary mass migration be dealt with properly ie rationally and humanely.
You seem to be assuming that the revolution could take place in just one country but how could it? The very fact that you are assuming a climate crisis causing mass migration shows that we are talking about a global problem and so one that only has a global solution.
Capitalism, being politically divided into different capitalist states, is incapable of solving this problem. If it arose it could only be solved within the framework of a worldwide society based on the common ownership of the world’s productive resources. Then, if the worse cane to the worse, and climate change gets so bad that large numbers of people have to move, then such a society provides the framework in which this could be arranged rationally and in a humane way.
The other assumption which is unreasonable is assuming that the socialist movement could win political control in one state while the rest of the world remained capitalist. As socialism is a world concept and as conditions are basically the same the world over, if and when it takes off this is likely to spread at more or less the same rate everywhere. This is dealt with in chapter on Socialism and the Less Developed Countries of this pamphlet:
One implication of this is that most of the the people living in currently “Muslim” countries will no longer be Muslims but will have abandoned that religion and its prejudices and embraced socialist ideas. That these ideas will have spread there too.
Looks as if lefties in the US will face a dilemma over who — Biden or Trump — is the lesser evil again to vote for.
Trump said to be against capitalism:
Our position is clear of course:
Biden, Trump, Take a Running Jump
Report from Sheffield:
“Attended the rally on Saturday last and can advise that in the region of 250 to 300 gathered with various speakers, some of whom were clearly SWP members, addressing the crowd.
On behalf of the party I distributed about 160 leaflets and in some instances had a chat with those whom interested, so hopefully the party will have received some hits on our website using the QR code.
There was at one point a distraction of 5 or 6 people signing Rule Britannia whom were largely ignored and told to move on by the police so didn’t come to anything.”Since that Saturday there have been 10 hits on our site from the QR code on our leaflet.
Imposs1904 has just posted on his blog this relevant and good article from 1982:
http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2024/01/promised-land-1982.html?m=1
Tomorrow the “International Court of Justice” will give a ruling on whether to grant an injunction calling on Israel to stop its campaign of destruction and killing of civilians in Gaza pending the Court’s decision on whether or not Israel has contravened the convention on genocide.
If they grant the injunction it wouldn’t make any difference on the ground as Israel will ignore it. If they don’t grant the injunction then they may as well change their name to the International Court of Jokers.
How would the market do that?
Most wars are not fought over markets but over sources of raw materials and trade routes and strategic points and areas to protect these.
As the late comrade Hardy pointed out in an article on “Markets, Monopoly and War” in the July 1985 Socialist Standard:
“What then are the causes of international conflicts of interest and war? Some, but not many, wars are fought over markets. For example the opium wars, when British traders were able to get the government to go to war to compel China to allow the import of opium. In the modern world, markets take second place to strategic issues. (…)
The most frequent cause of conflict and war is the effort of national sections of capitalism to obtain control of needed overseas sources of food and other materials and to protect transport routes. Petrol products have bulked large in this century. It has not been competition by oil producing countries to sell their oil that has threatened war but the importing countries’ need to have dependable supplies (…)
Lenin made a valid point in his Imperialism about some annexationist wars. He wrote that sometimes the powers try to annexe regions ‘not so much for their own direct advantage as to weaken an adversary and undermine its hegemony’.”Lenin’s point explains why NATO, ie the US, wants to control Ukraine — and why Russia went to war to try to stop this. Since NATO wants to control Ukraine not because it is of any particular advantage to them but to weaken Russia I can’t see them giving Ukraine nuclear weapons or them putting Russia in a position where it might feel it has to use its H-bombs. In fact, their declared position is to weaken Russia by keeping it bogged down in a long-lasting war with “conventional” weapons.
The wars in the Middle East have clearly been about the West’s need to have dependable supplies of oil (and now gas). I can’t see how this could lead the US unleashing a nuclear war, can you? It would rather defeat the purpose. Why do you think that Blinken is rushing around trying to prevent even a conventional war breaking out there?
