ALB
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He wants to a Labour MP in the tradition of other former Trots. Sounds like he would make a good one. If he plays his cards right, he might even end up as a junior minister.
It seems that Mick McGahey’s joke did have sone basis in fact. There was a party called the British Section of the International Socialist Labour Party and it did contest municipal elections in Edinburgh. Here’s the results of the 1936 elections.
Scroll down to South Leith. It seems that McGahey exaggerated at bit. Their candidate got 27 votes. Which was 0.3 percent of the votes cast.
Our candidate in Tunbridge Wells got 0.5 percent. Which is 1 in every 200 people who voted. Which if repeated throughout the UK and if there was exact proportional representation would mean 3 MPs.
While we are wandering off topic, I didn’t realise that in Edinburgh in the mid-1930s there was a strong sectarian Protestant party. You live and learn.
That reminds of the joke that Mick McGahey, the Communist Party miners’ leader in Scotland, used to tell about an organisation in Edinburgh called the International Socialist Labour Party. They had ten members in the constituency, enough for them all to sign the nomination paper. Their candidate got 11 votes — and was expelled for reformist vote-catching.
Here is Milei explaining some of the implications of anarcho-capitalism as a nightmare dystopia where everything, literally everything, is subjected to being bought and sold:
“In June of last year, he referred to the sale of organs as “just another market” during a radio debate. “Who are you to determine what [a person] does with his life?” Milei questioned. Things then spiraled out of control. Days later, a journalist asked him if he subscribed to another theory that suggested “the sale of children.” Milei replied, “It depends,” and further got himself tangled up. “Shouldn’t the answer be no?” the journalist pressed. “If I had a child, I would not sell it,” Milei said. “The answer depends on the terms in which you are thinking; maybe 200 years from now it could be debated.”
Milei is promising to abolish the Central Bank of Argentina, echoing the demand of US currency cranks who want to abolish the Federal Reserve.
It would be instructive to see what would happen if he did actually abolish it. We would then see if banks on their own can “create credit” without being part of a system involving a central bank which uses them to put new money into circulation. With no central bank to issue new money it would certainly stop inflation.
But his plan still involves a central bank — ironically, the US Federal Reserve itself as that would be a consequence of his plan to “dollarize” the Argentine economy (“Dollarization is the term for when the U.S. dollar is used in addition to or instead of the domestic currency of another country”.)
So, we wouldn’t actually see what would happen in a capitalist state if there was no central bank at all.
Milei calls himself and is called an “anarchist-capitalist” but whether they would regard him as one of them is another matter. We know them of old and have debated against them many times, in both writing and speech. So it would be interesting to see one of them have a go at trying to implement their policy (even though it might be thought that an anarcho-capitalist president was a contradiction in terms).
She’s lucky that Einstein is dead. I have just re-read that article of his and you are right he really would have wiped the floor with her. Here are the arguments she would have had to have dealt with:
“The situation prevailing in an economy based on the private ownership of capital is thus characterized by two main principles: first, means of production (capital) are privately owned and the owners dispose of them as they see fit; second, the labor contract is free.”
“Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society.”
“Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an ‘army of unemployed’ almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers’ goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before. This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism.”
His argument is mainly directed against private capitalism but that’s precisely what she is defending and wants to see more of.
Instead of a debate she could do a talk on “Why Einstein Was Wrong”. That would bring them in.
What we are talking about here is an imaginary debate between two people who happen to be astrophysicists, not as such but as ordinary people who are reasonably well-informed.
Added to the Edgar Hardcastle Internet Archive:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/index.htm
Fallacy of a National Incomes Policy, August 1965
Inflation and Prices (part 1), July 1965
Inflation and Prices (part 2), August 1965
Inflation and Prices (part 3), September 1965
Inflation and Prices (part 4), October 1965
George Orwell: War Broadcasts and War Commentaries, December 1987
That would be interesting a debate for astrophysicists on “Capitalism or Socialism?” between Albert Einstein and Sabine Hossenfelder.
There’s this TED talk by Jade Saab at Edinburgh University:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jade_saab_a_world_without_money
Of course we are not out just to “abolish money”. It’s to replace a society whose economic system gives rise to money (as a result of separate ownership of resources and production for sale). What we want is a society of common ownership with production directly to satisfy people’s needs — which makes money redundant.
This said, people who already have no problem with envisaging a society without money ought in principle to be more receptive to socialist arguments.
Incidentally, elsewhere Saab declares himself to be a member of the IWW.
No, Sabine, Capitalism Is Not Good and Your Explanation Is Nonsense.
The great “mentor’s” video (referenced above) is just a bog standard child’s guide to the supposed merits of capitalism such as might be put out by free-marketeer think tanks like the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute for Economic Affairs (or in the US the Cato institute).
What I don’t understand is why she risked trashing her reputation as a serious scientist to echo such views. The only reason I can think of is to make money, not just from the advertisements that interrupt her talk, but on behalf of the “sponsor” whose paying services she advertises at the end. It looks as if she has been paid by them to say “capitalism is good”.
Just because she is an expert in astrophysics doesn’t mean she is also an expert in economics. Outside her field her views are worth not more than anyone else’s, probably less in fact if she is just parroting them to make money.
(By the way, she has appeared on this forum before trying to argue that everything that has happened since the Big Bang was predetermined at that moment.)
I think the Free World Charter, like the Moneyfree Parties in various countries is an offshoot or product of the Zietgeist Movement. Meanwhile Peter Joseph soldiers (and sometimes rambles) on.
And does anyone seriously give a toss about what happens after they’re dead?
Are you saying that people don’t (which is open to question — I would have thought that most people do) or that they shouldn’t? If the second case, you are up against not just us socialists but anybody who wants to improve things in a period longer than they expect to live.
Go tell David Attenborough that capitalism is the only game in town and that he is being stupid in worrying about what happens to nature after the next five years (or maybe ten if he lives as long as James Lovelock).
I see a Labour government was involved in watering down standards:
“The film begins in 1963, with the Conservative Minster for Housing Keith Joseph setting an annual target of 400,000 new homes. It was this that kickstarted the ‘numbers game’, which prompted Labour to pledge, in their 1964 election-winning manifesto, that they would build 500,000 homes, and which continues to dominate political discourse about housebuilding today.
Labour’s Housing Minister Richard Crossman introduced subsidies for contractors to adopt offsite manufacturing methods that were intended to allow local authorities to deliver housing from a factory production line.
Contractors such as Wimpey, Laing’s, McAlpine’s, and Costain, began to court council leaders like T. Dan Smith for public contracts, offering ‘package deals’ that would encompass all aspects of the project, taking advantage of the perceived complexity of the new building systems. The new approach was summed up by one council leader as, “build it quickly, think later.”
The contractors began to build across the country with the mindset of building as cheaply and quickly as possible. The contractors’ workforce was often unskilled labour on wages that were determined by how quickly work was completed, thereby tacitly encouraging the corner-cutting and time-saving that became endemic.“(https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Adam_Curtis_-_The_Great_British_Housing_Disaster)
It would be surprising if the same mindset didn’t apply to the building of schools, hospitals, etc during the same period by the same capitalist enterprises.
“my mentor being Sabine Hossenfelder – you may have heard of her…. but I very much doubt it”
Oh yes, we have:
https://groups.io/g/spintcom/topic/physicist_on_youtube_explains/101119513?p=,,,20,0,0,0::recentpostdate/sticky,,,20,2,0,101119513,previd%3D1693685452634955325,nextid%3D1690712473118989563&previd=1693685452634955325&nextid=1690712473118989563
So that’s why you think that capitalism is the only game in town.
