DJP
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Perhaps I’m playing Devil’s advocate here, but if the argument is that production goods cannot be effectively allocated without a pricing mechanism how is saying “planning will be decentralised” an answer to that? Surely Von Mises could just say that even in a decentralised system this problem would still persist, there is still no way to compare dissimilar goods and make efficient allocative decisions in the face of competing demands.
If Von Mises is saying something like “only markets can effectively allocate production goods, and you can’t have markets without prices” then I would have thought it would be better to target the assumptions he’s making about needs and market efficiency. Or is he saying more than that?
FWIW – “For what it’s worth”. I.e I don’t think this is worth making much out of. I’ve not read the Mises essay, and was just responding to the short paragraph you mentioned. The whole of which is below:
Under socialism all the means of production are the property of the community. It is the community alone which can dispose of them and which determines their use in production. It goes without saying that the community will only be in a position to employ its powers of disposal through the setting up of a special body for the purpose. The structure of this body and the question of how it will articulate and represent the communal will is for us of subsidiary importance. One may assume that this last will depend upon the choice of personnel, and in cases where the power is not vested in a dictatorship, upon the majority vote of the members of the corporation.
The “powers of disposal” just means “abilities to decide how to make use of”. Looking at the last two sentences, it seems Von Mises thinks his criticism would apply equally whether this power is concentrated or not.
But as far as know, Von Mises is just saying that without a single unit of account (i.e prices in units of money) you wouldn’t be able to make calculations and allocations based on this single unit of account. The question for us to ask is if such a single unit of account is as necessary as he thinks.
Bijou Drains. FWIW You don’t seem to be disagreeing with Von Mises claim in that sentence, that a socialist society would have to have some kind of organisational structure that coordinates production and distribution, just suggesting different ways in which this body could be organised
‘Genocide’, another word being devalued by over and mis-use. The Israeli army is not looking to murder every last person calling themselves Palestinian.
This is from the UN genocide convention. Nothing about murdering “every last person” https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/Genocide%20Convention-FactSheet-ENG.pdf
“According to the Convention, genocide is a crime that can take place both in time of war as well as in time of peace. The definition contained in Article II of the Convention describes genocide as a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.”
Wasn’t it Harold Wilson who said a week is a long time in politics?
In other words, a lot can happen in a very short space of time.Yes, big events can happen quickly and unexpectedly. But I don’t think the imminent collapse of the Israeli state and its replacement with a Palestinian one is at all on the cards. Whatever you think about it morally, due to the balance of forces internationally and locally Israeli domination of Palestine is the only game in town right now. Anything else is dreamworld wishful thinking.
The depths to which the Israeli state is descending is further illustrated by the report below.
But the fact that the Israeli state can do these things is an indicator of its strength, not of its weakness or imminent collapse, don’t you think?
However, the dissolution of the state of Israel may well be ‘on the cards’; the establishment of your dream world most certainly isn’t.
If you think of revolutions as being like a whodunnit; for a socialist revolution the working class has both the means (they have the numerical numbers to win the battle of democracy and they are the people that already conduct production) and motive (for workers capitalist production is experienced as a form of domination – non-domination is a near-universal good).
Who do you see as the group agent that would have both the means and motive for wanting to dissolve the Israeli state?
So what will your little band of bruvvers (and two sistahs) do to retain your recruits, assuming you make any in the first place?
The SPGB doesn’t manipulatively ‘recruit’ in the way that the Trotskyists do. They (the SPGB) are looking for fully understanding members who can fully participate in the group’s democratic functioning. The opposite of the Trotskyists, who are looking for foot soldiers to do the leg work and so churn through members and restrict participation.
If you want to criticise the SPGB for anything, I don’t a failure to retain members can be high on the list. Most members are long-standing.
But still, I’m puzzled why you’re so concerned.
“if so, could you acquire a new domain purely to have a landing page (for SEO) which then links to the existing worldsocialism.org/spgb content (to preserve the WSM structure and connection)?”
I think Google are wise to those kind of tricks. If you try and trick it, it can end up making the ranking worse.
Either way, we are both talking about things for other people to do. And I’m not sure those that deal with that kind of thing even look at these posts?
“That suggests it is worth putting a QR code on our leaflets and handing out leaflets.”
Sure does. Not a bad response rate I would say.
Think you get more points for the word being in the domain name (ie before the .org or .com or whatever).
This website seems to be hitting number two, after Wikipedia for searches on “World Socialist Movement”. BTW
“Would it not be a good idea to change our HTML <title> from “worldsocialism.org/spgb – Part of the World Socialist Movement” to “Socialist Party – Part of the World Socialist Movement”, and if possible, do the same for the HTML <description> ? I think that would give us a top 5 Google ranking.”
Search Engine Optimisation is a bit more complicated than that, but having the URL of worldsocialism.org/spgb (rather than something like socialistpartyofgreatbritian.org) won’t be helping either. If the keywords are in the URL that helps a bit too. This is one of the reasons why SPEW is beating the SPGB in the search rankings for sure.
ALB: “This was one of the 120-word short pieces posted on the home page of our website that are changed every few days so that people can see it changes (as has been called for).”
Why not incorporate the SOYMB blog into the website properly and put those posts on the front too? Just a suggestion..
