[DJP]

“Are you sure you’re not a CIA plant?”

Has it really got that bad?

[DJP]

“The owners of a mobile home ( manufactured home ) renting land from landlords are capitalists too according to this analysis”

You misunderstand. “This analysis” isn’t that whoever pays ground rent is a capitalist, but that tenant farmers aren’t really “bourgeois” – they’re not urban merchants.

The fact that farmers in England had to pay competitive rents on the market meant that they had to keep finding ways to increase the productivity of labour, otherwise, become uncompetitive and not able to continue in the rental market – it was this that set the whole dynamic of capitalism going – according to Brenner and Meiksins Wood.

[DJP]

I haven’t read all of this thread, but it seems a bit odd describing early capitalists in England as “bourgeoise” since they were tenant farmers operating in a rental market, not middle-class urban merchants. This was the key discussion in the Brenner debate; whether the genesis of capitalism is in an outgrowth in mercantilism or whether it was more to do with a specific set of property relations that originally only existed in the English countryside. Apologies if this has already been touched upon. “Bourgeois” and “capitalist” are not necessarily synonyms.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by DJP.

[DJP]

We in the Socialist Party have always insisted that socialism and communism are two words which differ in the same way as spade and shovel, i.e. not at all.

Socialism and communism may be the same thing, but a spade and a shovel are different things – a shovel has raised edges and is used for moving materials around, a spade has a flat edge that is designed to cut into the ground and to dig.

[DJP]

He did great interviews with Mattick and with Kliman, and as Alan points out was a very good writer.

Not of particular importance, but the Kliman interview was done by myself not Stuart Watkins.

[DJP]

Prof John Drury, a member of a subgroup to the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage)

If people don’t know, John Drury is a founder member of the journal Aufheben. There was a minor scandal when his identity was revealed.

[DJP]

I read this book the other day. It’s well written and very good. Obviously a few, minor and not central to his argument, things that could be argued with but definitely worth a read.

There’s an interesting discussion between him and Steven Pinker here: https://thepanpsycast.com/panpsycast

[DJP]

What’s wrong with mobile phones?

A general loss in the ability to focus for long periods of time. Though how true that is I don’t know. I keep meaning to look up some studies, but keep getting distracted by notifications on my social media.

[DJP]

I don’t know about the rest of you here but I’m not going to download that app allowing my movements and who I meet to be tracked.

Well if you use a smartphone with Google Maps already all your movements are being logged anyhow.

[DJP]

Anti-mainstream view (and without conspiracy theory):

What did you think about the article and why share it? To me this read like an article denying climate change or something. In the UK excess deaths are now tens of thousands above average, according to the ONS. It’s not at all comparable to the WMD thing before the invasion of Iraq. The WMD’s didn’t exist, I think it now takes a fair amount of self-delusion or conspiracy thinking to believe that there isn’t a major health situation going on.

[DJP]

All is not lost:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200220190257/https://sapiencia.eu/

[DJP]

Wot you been up to?

Not washing my pants. But I digress…

[DJP]

The only ones who need fear such monitoring are the advocates of violent acts, who don’t want to be seen.
Socialists have no fear of being monitored because we have nothing to hide.

There’s plenty of other reasons why people may not what the state snooping around your dirty laundry.

[DJP]

Another real life consequence of people mindlessly spreading this nonsense about 5G

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-52395771

 

[DJP]

But the population density in Sweden is nothing like that in the UK, Spain, Italy etc. I found this map which shows the population density *of urban areas* (there’s not really much point averaging the land mass against population numbers, we want to know how densly populated the areas are where people actually live). By looking at it seems to map onto Covid19 hotspots quite well.

It’s from this webpage:
https://www.citymetric.com/fabric/these-maps-reveal-truth-about-population-density-across-europe-3625

There’s no point comparing apples and oranges…

[Author]

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