ALB
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I’d be more worried about the very real prospect of ‘non-world” wars such at the moment in Gaza and Ukraine (and before that in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia. etc, etc, etc) continuing to break out from time to time for as long as capitalism lasts. The case against capitalism as the cause of wars is strong enough without needing to invoke (or getting anxious about) an apocalyptic vision.
Actually, in saying that a socialist society could easily decide what consumer goods should be produced Mises made an enormous concession, even though he was just stating the obvious.
David Ramsay Steele (another one-time socialist who went funny) recognises this in his From Marx to Mises, a title that reflects his own itinerary, and criticises Mises for it.
Mises, he wrote on page 118,
“wrote ‘in any social order, even under Socialism, it can very easily be decided which kind and what number of consumption goods should be produced. No one has ever denied that.’”
Steele commented:
“Well I deny it. A society that cannot value factors ipso facto cannot value final goods-therefore a society that can value final goods can value factors, so Mises’s unwarranted concession about consumer goods contradicts his economic calculation argument. Without knowing what consumer goods cost to produce, the administration is in no position to select the kind and number of consumer goods.”
Why not? Of course it can, even if it is only a wish list. The decision of what to produce is a quite different decision than how to produce it.
Mises’s reply to Steele would no doubt have been to say that his argument was that a society without a market mechanism would not be able to decide how to produce what it wanted in a “rational” way. But, as has been pointed out, Mises’s argument here is circular as he defines “rational” as what the unrestricted market decides.
If it was a Labour poster about the Gaza war it would be a photo of Starmer saying “I won’t call for a ceasefire until Biden does. In the meantime, as a responsible prospective prime minister of capitalist Britain, I will follow his lead on the matter”.
The two ex-comrades have still gone funny. One of them has written a book which the other has praised:
https://moneyweek.com/books/review-effective-governance-dan-greenwood
They appear to have gone over to supporting a “decentralised system of private ownership and entrepreneurship”. Which means of course that they can vote Labour instead of Tory if they want to.
Looking for something else I came across this article from the Socialist Standard of March 1988 which is of contemporary relevance:
Yes that would just be typical, almost obligatory war propaganda to motivate the soldiers to hate and kill the other side. Ukraine played that card too and Israel needed a new story after nobody believed the one about beheaded babies.
Actually, in this particular case, Hedges may well turn out to be right. Israel can and will no doubt crush Hamas but the way they did it will be remembered for years to come.
Israel will have trashed its reputation and will find itself in the same category as South Africa used to be.
In any event, it won’t be able to permanently rule over and hold down the population of the West Bank. It’s a bit surprising that there are politicians and generals in Israel who seem to think that it could. They should have sought the advice of FW de Klerk and Pik Botha about that.
The Israeli ambassador to the U.N. has more than once called the U.N. “a moral stain on humanity”. That is a term that may well come to circulate throughout the world though not in relation to the U.N.
Report from Glasgow:
“managed to distribute over 200 of our ant-war flyers.”
Report from Cardiff:
“We found it hard to get people who were going to be part of the demo/march to take our leaflets, passers-by seemed more willing but only about 30 in total. There were around 300 demonstrators at the most, SWP and ‘Socialist Party’ (ex-Militant) prominent amongst them.”
Report from London
“Local members covered an event this morning at the entrance to Brockwell Park, which is only 2 miles from Head Office. Turned out to be just a literature stall. After leafletting the few there the comrades leafletted the nearby Herne Hill market for about an hour, handing out some 80 in all. No sightings of any SWP, etc.”
There is another national demonstration planned for 13 January. Hopefully it won’t need to happen as a permanent ceasefire will have been agreed by then. Otherwise how much further destruction, killings, maimings and other miseries will those at the receiving end have had to suffer.
One thing that the Gaza War has confirmed is that Geneva conventions, the laws of war, international humanitarian law, etc, etc are just scraps of paper if one side feels that it is not in its interest to abide by them. As clearly, in this war, the Israel state has decided that it isn’t.
The Israeli Attack Force has committed all the war crimes in the book and is getting away with it and in all probability will (except in the unlikely event of them losing).
The only way to stop the atrocities that wars inevitably involve — quite apart from fact war itself is an atrocity — is not international conventions to regulate how they should be fought. It’s to end capitalism which is based on economic competition to make profits which, from to time, breaks out as war.
Report from Oxford :
“Jeremy Corbyn was putting in an appearance so that always draws in a few more. Probably slightly under twice what we had two weeks back. Got rid of quite a few leaflets.”
Local press report here:
Hopefully it is these sort of sentiment that motivates most protestors (rather than Palestine nationalism) :
“One demonstrator Jed said: “I find the whole scenario upsetting. People shouldn’t do this to each other. People just feel they want to do something don’t they, have your voice heard.”
Paul Garroway, who marched with his son Otis, said: “I want to stop the genocide. This is a human rights disaster.”This could have far-reaching effects, reintroducing the supply chain problems that Covid led to, resulting in prices rising more:
There’s an article in today’s Morning Star putting the Venezuelan nationalists position on the dispute. Not an accident of course that the issue has lain dormant for over a hundred years until oil was discovered in the area.
As we have always said, wars and threats of war occur over economic matters such as control of raw materials. And the frontiers between Latin American countries are just lines drawn on a map that have changed many times (as can be seen from the article).
The article concludes “we must all support Venezuela’s stance”. No, we mustn’t. Socialists don’t take sides in disputes between capitalist interests over who controls sources of raw materials.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/guyana-venezuela-dispute-no-us-exxonmobil-push-war
I was going to have a rest this Saturday saying I would only leaflet an event that was on my doorstep. Then I bought a copy of the Morning Star (to see our ad on page 2) and saw that there one in Kingston only a couple of miles away.
There were about 70 there. Apart from Muslims, many seemed to be christian do-gooder types though there was also a banner from Jews Against the War. No sign of SWP, SPEW, FIFR, the new RCP, etc. When I approached one of the speakers who had led chants of “No Peace without Justice” and suggested “No Peace without Socialism” might be better even he said he didn’t know about these things.
The other chant was “No Ceasefire, No Vote” presumably aimed at the Labour Party. That won’t make any difference round here where all three local MPs are LibDems (including their Leader). All three voted for an immediate ceasefire in that House of Commons vote but the speaker was a bit churlish in claiming that they didn’t really mean it, presumably because she didn’t want the chant to be interpreted as a call to vote Liberal.
About half of those present got a leaflet.
