[ALB]

DJP wrote:

Not sure if you’re confusing profits with super profits?

I don’t think Robin is but Walras and Steele certainly are. Both definitely meant the profits that accrue to firms because of some market condition over and above “normal” profits which they disguise under the name of “interest” (which is somehow mysteriously generated by fixed capital).Their definition is not followed by other bourgeois economists. For instance, here’s what Paul Samuelson writes in his widely-used textbook about the same imaginary situation envisaged by Walras where price (P) is exactly equal to long-run costs:

Quote:

Under such conditions of free “replication,” is it not obvious that long-run P cannot remain above this same critical breakeven point at which they all cover their long-run total costs—including in these(1) all labor, materials, equipment, tax and other expenses;(2) all wages payable to the identical managers at the level determined competitively by the bidding in all industries for people of such talents and industriousness; and(3) the interest yield that any of them could get on the amounts of capital that they tie up in this industry instead of investing it elsewhere?These “full competitive costs” are seen to include more than accountants usually include in costs: they include a normal return to management services, as determined competitively in all industries; and a normal return to capital as determined competitively everywhere by industries of equal riskiness. In the above sense we may say that “normal profits” are included in costs and that “excess profits” are competed away by entry and “abnormal losses” are eliminated by long-run exit of firms (Economics, 5th edition, pp.470-1).

Of course Walras’s “generalised equilibrium” is only a mathematical construct that is never realised and in fact never could be realised under capitalism, but despite this is considered by most bourgeois economists to be the normal state of capitalism. Capitalism in fact is in a permanent state of disequilibrium brought out precisely by firms seeking “super profits” and leading to recurring cycles of boom and slump.

[ALB]

ALB wrote:

The Occupy movement in London seems to be sinking lower and lower as the panel of speakers for this meeting on Sunday 15 January seems to show:

I may have been a little harsh as the audience of 100 or more at the meeting applauded those panellists who said they were “anti-capitalist” and critcised and even heckled those wouldn’t. So the spirit of anti-capitalism, however vague, still seems to be abroad amongst many occupiers.  The organiser had just set out to invite a panel of speakers suggested by members of the Occupation’s Economics Working Group and which he thought would be interesting without endorsing their views.Hopefully, the non-anti-capitalist performance of such speakers as Robin Smith, Ben Dyson and Fred Harrison will have discredited their views.  Of course even those who did declare themselves “anti-capitalist” weren’t in our sense, but it’s still good that capitalism should be a dirty word and we’ll get a better hearing from those who think it is than from those who don’t.I have to say, though, that interesting as the meeting was it could have taken place a 100-150 years ago, with speakers advocating interest-free banking (Proudhon), to tax away ground rent (JS Mill and Henry George), and co-operative societies (Robert Owen). Which are even less the way out today than they were then.

[ALB]

Romney’s views on capitalism and capitalist corporations may be conventional but his religious views are positively weird. As a Mormon he believes (and he really does as he was a bishop in that sect) that an angel called Moroni visited Joseph Smith in the 1820s and revealed to him where to find the Book of Mormon and that their god lives on a planet called Kolob. Mind you, Mohamet claimed the same sort of thing and christian claims about their demi-god are even more moronic. If Romney becomes US president David Icke will be able to entertain the hope that some day he can become prime minister of Britain.

[ALB]

Brian wrote:

In regards to use-values being subjective and therefore not capable of being measured into a common unit I have to disagree.  What about  the calculation in kind solution being used has a form of measuring use-value?

Of course different quantities of the same use-value can be compared in a single unit, whether that be number, weight, volume or whatever. What cannot be compared in a single unit are, for instance, steel (tonnes) and electricity (killowatt hours).Calculation in kind  will be calculation of the various use-values used (or useable) in production, but in their specific units, not in a common unit such as value and money as under capitalism. As a matter of fact calculation in kind (ie in use values) already occurs under capitalism, only it is duplicated by calculation in money. In socialism we will dispense will calculation in money and calculate in kind and make decisions on what to produce and how on this basis.

[ALB]

What? us? !!Didn’t you forget this:

[ALB]

Just listened to this and he himself is not advocating “a World Without Money” whatever the organiser of the event at which he spoke might have in mind. The argument he puts forward about a society charging interest being mathematically impossible in the long run because it requires an impossible exponential growth was refuted long ago by Marx in chapter 24 of Volume III of Capital where he quotes the Rev Dr Richard Price as writing in 1774:

Quote:

Money bearing compound interest increases at first slowly. But, the rate of increase being continually accelerated, it becomes in some time so rapid, as to mock all the powers of the imagination. One penny, put out at our Saviour’s birth to 5 per cent compound interest, would, before this time, have increased to a greater sum, than would be contained in a hundred and fifty millions of earths, all solid gold.

and comments:

Quote:

But Price entirely forgets that the interest of 5% presupposes a rate of profit of 15%, and assumes it to continue with the accumulation of capital. He has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual process of accumulation, but rather only with lending money and getting it back with compound interest. How that is accomplished is immaterial to him, since it is the innate property of interest-bearing capital.

Professor Hörmann makes the same mistake. The capitalist economy does not expand because banks lend at compound interest but because workers produce surplus value. As interest has to be paid out of surplus value it cannot be greater than this and in fact is a great deal smaller. It is profit not interest that drives the capitalist economy.

[ALB]

The Occupy movement in London seems to be sinking lower and lower as the panel of speakers for this meeting on Sunday 15 January seems to show:

Quote:

11:15-1pm: Session 1: Tax and GovernmentRichard Murphy (Tax Justice Network)Gordon Kerr (Cobden Partners)Robin Smith (Systemic Fiscal Reform)1pm-1:30pm Lunch Break1:30pm-2:15pm: Session 2: Money and SocietyBen Dyson (Positive Money)Dada Jii (Progressive Utilization)Peter Challen (Global Justice Movement)2:15pm-4pm: Session 3: Land, Commons and Cooperative EconomicsDerek Wall (Green Party, Goldsmiths)Fred Harrison (Land Research Trust)Cliff Mills (Mutuo)

Bem Dyson is a currency crank who thinks banks can create money out of thin air and who supports way-out Tory MPs Douglas Carswell and Steve Baker. Robin Smith is a supporter of Henry George (who stood for free market capitalism) and wants to stand at the next general election as a Tory candidate. Fred Harrison is another follower of Henry George who argues that George “proposed qualitative changes that would have built equity and greater efficiency into the capitalist mode of production”. The only person who knows anything about socialism as we understand it is Derek Wall who knows us well.Anyway, some of us will be there to leaflet and take part in the discussion as the meeting should attract some who really do want to go “beyond capitalism” and who won’t be interested in mere banking and/or land and/or tax reform.

[ALB]

Of course wealth (useful things fashioned from materials that originally came from nature) will continue to exist in socialism. It’s only exchange value that won’t exist (won’t come into existence since wealth will no longer be produced to be bought and sold). Wealth and use-values are the same or, rather, wealth is made up of use-values.The thing about use-value is that it is subjective in that what is considered (valued as) useful by one person or group of persons is not necessarily so considered by another person or group and so can’t be measured in a common unit in  the way that exchange value can.Socialist society will have to decide what it is useful (what use values) to produce and then individuals can decide what is useful to them and take this from the distribution centres without the goods (use-values) being priced and without having to hand over money or use a card.

[ALB]

The “CPGB” of course  is no more the old CP than Militant is us (they too are name stealers) and you have to listen to 8 minutes of how they would love to infilitrate the SWP before you get to the criticism of the statement on “What the SWP stands for” that is published in every issue of Socialist Worker.This begins :

Quote:

The workers create all wealth under capitalism.

The “CPGB” speaker says that this conflicts with Marx’s opening criticism of the Gotha Programme adopted by the German Social Democrats in 1875 that:

Quote:

Labour is the source of all wealth and all culture.

Marx comments:

Quote:

Labour is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labour, which itself is only a manifestation of a force of nature, human labour power.

Actually, this is not a criticism of the SWP statement nor of the what we say in Clause 1 of our declaration of principles where we talk of “the working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced”. Marx’s criticism was that the statement he criticised did not explicitly state that labour worked with and on materials that came from Nature to priduce wealth (personally, I think he’s nit-picking a bit here, even if he’s right). He wrote:

Quote:

The above phrase … is correct in so far as it is implied that labour is performed with the appurtenant subjects and instruments … And in so far as man from the beginning behaves towards nature, the primary source of all instruments and subjects of labour, as an owner, treats her as belonging to him, his labour becomes the source of use values, therefore also of wealth.

In other words, in any society  wealth is only produced by work and, under capitalism, it’s the work of the appropriately called working class that produces the wealth.Value is the form wealth takes under capitalism where there is production for the market with a view to profit (which is why it won’t exist in socialism) and is equally only created by the labour of the working class. As it’s a rather technical term in economics I don’t think it would be a good idea to change to change “wealth” to “value” in Clause 1.

[ALB]

Why is the thing about Free World Charter on both Events and General Discussion? When I replied to the Events one it also appeared on General Discussion. The same happened with the thing about the Boyles which is on both Off Topic and General Discussion.

[ALB]

Yes, we’ve shown the 6-minute video a couple of times at meetings in London to start off a discussion. Agreed the Irish bloke behind it (Colin Turner) has some things in the Charter itself we can’t agree with, but I thought the video itself was basically ok. The FAQ is made up of the sort of questions we get and some of the answers are those we give. I think people will understand by “communism” he means what used to exist in Russia, etc. In which what he says is true.

[ALB]

We clashed with Kevin (I’m tempted to call him Kit) Carson ten years ago on the WSM Forum. Here’s an example of his arguments against socialism (which also give some of our counter-arguments):http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/WSM_Forum/message/13851http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/WSM_Forum/message/14041http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/WSM_Forum/message/14090http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/WSM_Forum/message/14279I suppose we could review this new book if we can find a someone to read through pages and pages in praise of the market.

[ALB]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Confirmed panel participants include:Conservative MP for Wycombe Steve Baker who raised a private member’s bill last year on accounting standards

Not just that. He supports Austrian economics (ie Baron Von Mises), the Tea Party and Ron Paul. I think he wants to abolish the Bank of England. Which, I suppose, might appeal to some Occupiers.

alanjjohnstone wrote:

oops… a bit late for anyone who intended to attend

It may be Wednesday out East but it’s still Tuesday here.

[ALB]

And here’s what the Socialist Standard said about Mark Boyle and his silly idea of trying to live without money under capitalism:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2010/no-1267-march-2010/cooking-books-2living-without-money

[ALB]

I see that on Newsnight on Wednesday Jeremy Paxman said that Giles Fraser, the dean (or whatever he was) of St Pauls who had to resign because he welcomed the Occupiers there, was once in the SWP. I wonder if he was a member at the same time as Hitchens. They could have had some interesting debates.

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