Bijou Drains
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“Without them the task is not hard but impossible (at least if we care that we have a factory full to the brim with useless tartan paint while the fertiliser factory down the road goes without key raw materials)”
It’s a good job the capitalist system of production doesn’t lead to mass shortages of key materials such as food, housing, power, clean water, etc.
I’m pretty sure the goods discussed in the article below will be available in tartan, ironically
Am I the only person who finds it amazing that Von Mises’ argument is even consider worthy of debate (I know it still has a high profile in the US).
Von Mises argued that in the capitalist mode of production, the law of value, money, financial prices and the impact of capital goods and private ownership of the means of production is more efficient and productive than a system of production based upon common ownership.
The reality of this mythical system is somewhat different.
Me and my mates buried a friend of more than 50 years yesterday. He died because the Company he worked for, from the age of 16, thought it was more efficient and productive for welders not to have proper masks, and that that the cost of effective safety equipment would reduce their levels of profit and make him as a worker “inefficient”.
Prior to his early death he spent 10 years using an oxygen cylinder to breathe.
The company he worked for have, predictably, gone bust. The insurance companies who covered the company have also gone into hiding. They have accumulate their capital, distributed their dividends, and they and the share holders have fucked off and are never to be seen again, or to hold any kind of liability. Very efficient.
I’m sure his family will love to hear the modern day Von Mises and his devotees explaining how it is that capitalist production is the only efficient and effective way of producing the things we need to live and that the only measure of that efficiency is price, the price of lives.
Even if, in a socialist society, we produce too many cigars and cigarettes (to use Von Mises example), even if we end up with stores of things that we do not require, so what? It will be a scratch on the surface of the inefficiencies of capitalism.
Inefficiencies? What about all of those futile years of labour spent in the banking industry, brokerage, buying and selling. All of the buildings used as cathedrals to the exchange and sales system (banks, building societies, etc.). All of those wasted lives spent as administrators of capitalism (invoice clerks, account managers, wages staff, insurance arrangers, stock brokers, etc. etc.).
And all of this is before you even start to look at the massive waste of the armaments industry, the killing machines of the state, the environmental degradation of the planet.
If a socialist society ends up producing a few too many school uniforms, a few thousand left handed screw drivers that aren’t used and a few too many tins of tartan paint taht sit on the shelf, I’m pretty sure we could be easily be forgiven. Esspecially if fewer welders die in the process.
Rest easy Geordie, your marras miss you, keep a’had!
Milburn used to work at a left wing bookshop in Newcastle which was called “The Days of Hope” usually known as “The Haze of Dope”.
He caught a mate of mine, who was a 17 year old Trot at the time, shoplifting a copy of the collected work of Enver Hoxha. He didn’t call the law but asked him to work voluntarily in the shop for a few hours to recompense.
A worse punishment would have been to make him read the bloody book!
Not wishing to be critical of the internet department, but if we have qr codes going out as part of the campaign material, would it be possible to update the Socialist Standard page to show the July standard. Although the front cover is online, the content is from June (really good cover cover by the way)
“Ah bless Timmie.”
So you try to find out the first name of an obscure member up in the north, but of course you’re not obsessed.
Looking at the figures, assuming things have not changed is the last thing I would be doing!
Given the gap between 18-29 year olds believing in creationism 28% and the numbers in other cohorts
Between 44 to 50%, depending on cohort, I think it is reasonable to expect that after 10 years that trend would continue.If the current 18-29 year olds follow the trend and there is a halving of creationist belief they might be at around 15%, a very promising statistic.
I think astually what you are seeing is not a rise in the religious right, it’s a sign of the desperation of religion in the US, trying to recreate their previous power.
Thankfully they are pissing wind:
I think Lizzie is a bit like a soppy teenager who doesn’t know how to express their love interest. Instead of making their feelings known, they run up to their object of desire, punch them on the arm and then run away and then feel bad afterwards.
I think we should just accept the love she shows us, even if she can’t express it.
We love you too Lizzie
And continue the real life solutions such as the ones Kier Starmer has put forward, i.e. – “I’ll just magically create economic growth”
p.s. don’t spend the extra 33p a day you will have to play with due to the generosity of Octopus, straight away. A mate of mine (who usually gets it right), works in wholesale energy sales and he says the reduction is short lived and prices will go up again steeply very shortly.
Might be good idea to lock your price in now if you can and then you can, with confidence, deliberate on how you are going to splash out on your 33p.
I might suggest a Curly Wurly (much diminished in size and quality since the 1970s, in my opinion) available at 25p from Azda (but you’ll have to walk there, as you don’t have enough left over for the bus)
You must be proud of being bought off by a Curly Wurly
The question isn’t what the SPGB have achieved, the real question is, what has been achieved by all of the so called socialists who told us there’s was the way to the promised land?
The Fabians and the soft leftist have told us for decades that to elicit change we need to be in government and that capitalism will disappear like the Cheshire Cat’s grin. (Looks to me like the Cheshire Cat has only stopped grinning because he’s busy pissing his pants laughing)
The “hard left” have told us that we need to promise reforms to show that capitalism can’t be reformed and this will lead the Working Class to throw off reforms and become revolutionary, that’s worked well, not.
Perhaps more importantly, what would have happened if those who claimed that they agreed with the idea of common ownership and “from each according to their ability to each according to their need”, had actually joined us to campaign for such a thing?
The reformists claim that they have achieved a welfare state and progressive social changes, yet if you look at The Republic of Ireland, it has all of those things yet always been governed by centre Right governments.
It looks suspiciously like all the reforms that have been achieved are reforms that benefit the accumulation of capital.
As to Phil Hammond’s article, he should have asked “what has 100 years of chasing every bandwagon available achieved for him and has like”.
Then we have the Trots deride us for our achievements over 120 years, good job for them Trotskyism has been such a roaring fucking success!
As a rather disinterested bystander of the election pantomime, at times the downright stupidity of some of the “leading” politicians seems incredible. With Ed Davey spending his time on water slides and other stunts, etc.
But Sunak seems to have an absolutely incredible knack for dropping himself in the dog shite.
He’s just told everyone that he is “not being investigated about betting” even though no one has ever suggested that he had been.
If you have deny doing something before anyone has suggested that you had, people automatically assume you did it.
What a berk
Just watched Gorgeous George in his election broadcast. Red, white and blue rosettes and a slogan of “make Great Britain Great”. It’s the love child of Nigel Farage and Harry Pollitt!
Doing comedy quips now Lizzy, don’t give up the day job. What’s the day job again Lizzy? I have a vague recollection that you may have mentioned being an Astrophysicist. Wonder if your dad was a toolmaker?
You say that people are reluctant to try a completely untried and untested alterative, but any progress in society has been untried and untested. This has not been a bar to progress in the past, why should it be a bar in the future.
As to the idea that what we are proposing is so alien to everything they have experienced in their lives thus far, I would dispute this. There are lots of evidence of people working together on a mutual basis for the benefit of others, trades union activiites, allotment societies, food banks, sports clubs, youth groups, volutary organisations, etc. etc.
Since the start of humanity, the whole human experience is one of people working together to work mutually for their own benefit (presumably with the singular exception of Keith Joseph)
