Bijou Drains
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MBellemare wrote:No worries, Alan, Personallly I love good solid quotes! A small point on TWC and fictious capital, to broaden the term. There maybe such a thing/concept as "unquantifiable" fictitious capital/value. Isn't the whole so-called Royal Family-Apparatus, a form of "unquantifiable" fictitious value? A nonsense founded in the conceptual-perception of people? Why would anyone, in Canada, pay 35.99 for a plate, worth in reality 99 cents, with a picture of a royal wedding on it? Yet, Canadians do pay and pay in large numbers. Doesn't this pricing index seem a bit arbitrary and artificially fabricated? Hence, how the conceptual-perceptions of a segment of the canadian population can imagine into existence value, value that is not really there. This is post-modernism at its best.Cheers,M. Bellemare
Again you seem to be using the term value and price interchangeably. In marxist terms they are not. The price of the plate may well be $35.99, the cost of producing the plate may well be 99 cents, however the Value in Marxist terms is neither of those to things.
MBellemare wrote:3. Shareholders place pressure on these companies and/or capitalist to augment profits, annually. So out of the blue or via group agreement, one of the nodes of the network will raise his or her prices, thus profits as well, slightly over time. It may be only a few dollars here and there. They label it inflation, and there maybe some inflation involved, but what stops a capitalists from raising prices, other than the network in general he or she belongs to, inflation plus a little more is nothing. The public won't even notice, its the price of doing business. My competitors, who are not really competitors, due to our mutual networking set of rules, feeling the same pressures will raise prices, accordingly, thus raising profits, across the specific sphere of production. Why would they do this, when they could lower prices and undercut their adventurous competitor? They do this so as not to trigger the coercive laws of competition, which are bad for everyone across a specific sphere of production.You claim that you are not like the currency cranks who can create money at a stroke, however this passage from your notional scenario betrays you. If one group of producers raise prices, in a system where there is a finite amount of currency in circulation, this has the impact that there is less currency to be used for the purchase of other commodities, therefore the amount of other commodities being purchased or the price paid for these purchases will fall. The Price/value equilibrium will be maintained across the economic activities. Prices cannot be raised without impact, just as a man cannot pull himself of the ground by his own boot straps and you cannot pull price up without reference to value.Perhaps you should read, or re-read this:https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/
gnome wrote:A total of 70 enquiries from the inserts in the New Statesman and New Scientist have now been received. Nearly all have taken advantage of the free three month subscription to the Socialist Standard and over 40 also opted for the information pack containing a copy of the current Socialist Standard, the pamphlet From Capitalism to Socialism, an introductory leaflet and a covering letter.The next batch of inserts will be included with the September edition of the William Morris Society magazine which goes out to 1100 subscribers.Thanks for the update, that news alongside the video launch makes for some good news about activity.
I don't know if it's just me, but observing Socialist Studies slow decline takes me back to the childhood experience of watching a wasp caught in a spider's web, slowly losing it's potency and gradually falling into the icy grip of death.Not particulalry educational, but you've got to admit it's compelling viewing
jondwhite wrote:Bob Hope, comedy's answer to Kissinger, ever-willing to entertain the troops on the latest US military adventure.Quote:Bob Hope was the establishment. Bob Hope was friends with Nixon. Bob Hope was speaking in favor of the [Vietnam] War. Bob Hope was expressing that kind of backward, suburban, WASP view of minorities, homosexuals, the women's movement. Even his comments on the women's movement were very condescending. He did a special in the '70s on the women's movement and it was so silly, so backward. And [in his act] the woman who had some big political office was dusting the chairs in between her meetings. It was just awful. He got mail … from feminists.He was clueless at that time. That was why that generation of comedians turned off to him. … It's hard to be [a] comedian and be part of the establishment because comedians, their job is to satirize and to poke fun at the powerful people. And this is something that Bob was — one of the powerful people. So just as a comedian, he became less and less relevant.http://www.npr.org/2014/11/24/366137941/the-rise-and-fall-of-comedian-bob-hope
The author asks who started stand up? and comes up with the answer Bob Hope?"I was always wondering who kind of started standup comedy," Zoglin says. "And I really think you have to say it was Bob Hope." Guess he's never heard of Mx Miller, who was way ahead of Hope, in more ways that one!
Bob Andrews wrote:What evidence is there that Kropotkin was an influence on the founders of the WSM? Anarchists were anti-marxist even before the capitalist class sat up and took notice. Kropotkin at one time describing Bismarckism and Marxism as 'two sides of the same coin'. Which might help to clarify why he did not oppose the First Great War.Apologies if this is also straying slightly off topic, but The Clousden Hill Free Communist and Cooperative Community was founded about 200 yards from the house I was born and brought up in and which Cde Kilgallon senior (my mother) still lives.Rumour has it that Kropotkin and Tom Mann were regular visitors and sometimes went for a drink at the Clousden Hill Hotel (where I made my debut as a drinker and whose football team Clouden Hill Celtic (139 appearances 3 goals, two broken legs (not mine) I later played). As a child I used to play in the derelict house which formed part of the commune and made tarzan swings from the decaying roof. Perhaps Kropotkin had a sub conscious influence on me?http://www.ic.org/wiki/clousden-hill/
Daniel Cotton wrote:check out Solidarity, a socialist party working in Australia to tear apart the brutality of colonial capitalism: http://www.solidarity.net.au/aboriginal/capitalism-and-aboriginal-oppression/And no doubt introduce the brutality of Leninst dictatorship!
ALB wrote:Tim Kilgallon wrote:ALB wrote:That's assuming that he ever "was" when there's no solid evidence for vthis. Quite the opposite, only forgeries.Absence of evidence isn't necessarily evidence of absence, as they say.
True, but the only evidence is stories written down years later and forgeries by christian monks. No non-christian mentions him as a historical figure, only a cult based on a person called "Jesus". Redeemer cults, of which original christianity was one, were common in the Hellenistic world.Here's a review of a book on the subject from 1911:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1910s/1911/no-80-april-1911/did-jesus-ever-liveSee also Nicholas Walter's reply here:http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/jesus-christ-myth-or-reality-1980.html
Josephus (possibly) referenced Jesus, so it's' not completely accurate to say that it is definite that a non-Christian writer never mentioned him as a historical figure.
DJP wrote:Did the material conditions for communism exist in 1848?I think you could say the material conditions existed to consider that communism was a possibility in the not too distant future.
ALB wrote:That's assuming that he ever "was" when there's no solid evidence for vthis. Quite the opposite, only forgeries.Absence of evidence isn't necessarily evidence of absence, as they say.
Perhaps I can put it in my own somewhat crude and simplistic way:I go to work with an apple in my lunch box. When I get to work my mate Bob says he has no apple. As I don't really fancy the apple today, I give Bob my apple and write down in my diary, "Bob owes me an apple".Bob decides he's rather have a pork pie from the canteen (wise man is my mate Bob) and gives Sally the apple on the agreement that she will give Bob an apple back tomorrow. Bob makes a note in his calendar for tommow "Sally one apple".Sally walks off and sees Julie who is diabetic and badly needs some food. Sally agrees to give Julie the apple, but being as tight as a frog's back passage wrties a post it note on Julie's computer saying "you owe me an apple!!!!"It doesn't really matter that a long streak of miserable, paralysed piss, called a work place auditor, comes in looks at the various entries and decides there are three apples, in reality there's still only one fucking apple!
ALB wrote:Since staying in the tariff-less and friction-less single market is in the overall interest of the British capitalist class, there can only be two explanations for the behaviour of the Tory Breshiteers: either they are using popular prejudice to further their careers and climb further up the greasy pole or they are stupid (or both of course). Business chiefs are beginning to get fed up with them — sometimes their political representatives get out of hand and bugger things up for them. This could be a case in point.it might be argued that some elements of the capitalist class have no real interest in a tariff free and frictionless single market. For some small capitalists the hassle and cost of European regulation may outway the benefit. Not all businesses export and import. In my opinion the Brexit debate is one between big capital and small capital. In the short term small capital has won. In the long term big capital will always win out over small capital.
robbo203 wrote:I have noticed recently a disturbing trend on some of the lefty forums I frequent – posts enthusiastically promoting much the same the kind of arguments you might expect to find in a reactionary Right wing-outfit like the National Rifle Association (NRA). On one such FB site contributors were invited to voyeuristically share information about guns in their possession and from exchanges with some people on that site it was clear that they took the view that socialism could only ever be achieved by an armed uprising. To oppose such an idea was casually dismissed as a case of liberal squeamishness. On another site, historical precedent was cited as reason enough for this leftist veneration of guns. See this post for example with the caption" Guns are fine — racism is not’: Armed redneck lefties are waging a different kind of war on Fascism" (http://www.rawstory.com/2017/07/guns-are-fine-racism-is-not-armed-redneck-lefties-are-waging-a-different-kind-of-war-on-fascism/). The so called “Battle of Blair Mountain” in 1921 rsulted in over sixty workers losing their lives , almost 1,000 miners being arrested and, subsequently a precipitous decline in union membership but who cares about the costs involved when there is the romance to be savoured of taking on the state in a headlong exchange of bullets I dont know if this is a peculiarly American phenomenon – this leftist fantasising over guns – but opposing it as I do has got sod all to do with holding certain Liberal scruples. ("Liberal" like the word "fascism" has become little more than a swear word to be presented in lieu of any kind of plausible argument). I oppose glorifying gun culture because I do not believe the ends and the means can ever really be separated and I do not want to live in a society in which the gun has the final word and where "might is right". A leftist worshipping of gun culture will only reproduce the latent and manifest authoritarianism of the reactionary Right itself but then that streak of authoritarianism has always been there in the case of the Left in the guise of the Leninist vanguardist theory. It is anathema to a Marxist position that the emancipation of the working class can only be carried by the working class itself and not from above That apart, the whole idea is pointlessly provocative and doomed to backfire. What we will end up with is one bunch of thugs shooting up another in a mindless game of tit-for-tat with nothing much of substance to distinguish them apart from their respective left and right wing sounding labels. Quite likely some of these will degenerate even further into mafia – type business outfits intent upon enriching themselves at the expense of those they prey upon and extort. It is not as if this hasn’t happened before – the transition from fiery radical to self-aggrandising sleazeball cynically using one's political connections simply as a means of accumulating wealth As for the modern state – certainly in any of the advanced economies of global capitalism – there is absolutely zero chance of this ever being overthrown by a bunch of would be Left wing generals plotting military coups from the comfort of their parents back garden shed. I despair when I read stuff like this. Has the Left learnt nothing from the past? Is it forever doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past when nothing was really achieved except to reinforce the very system that finally co-opted them into the ranks of the apathetic and the compliant when it did not consign them to some anonymous grave?It's an old quote, and I can't remember which party member said it but it runs along the lines of "a gun is a metal tube with a member of the working class at end"
