robbo203
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What’s lacking is a third voice — in-kind-calculationist, critiquing them both. In years past Robbo203 would have taken up this task with great relish.
ZJW
Well, actually, I have written reams of stuff on calculation-in-kind versus universalistic accounting metrics (like money or labour time values) in this little work which was published last month….
Do you have a link I can click on to enable me to contribute to the debate?
“In other words we don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. Every month that goes by we are further and farther away from Utopia. The Internet is proving to be their greatest tool. Just like TV was 75 years ago. A.I might finally give them exactly what they want. The unlimited power to gorge themselves on as much jerky as they desire”.
This post that I came across today puts a somewhat different slant on things. I dont think any of us has a crystal ball. When circumstances seem to be most bleak, changes can unexpectedly happen under our very feet that we had no inkling whatsoever.
Stay positive. The future is not predetermined
Jonathan Cook
@Jonathan_K_Cook
The Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci famously wrote in 1930 of the moment we are currently in: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek popularised these “morbid symptoms” as a “time of monsters”. But our monsters aren’t a Cyclops, a Hannibal Lecter or even an Adolf Hitler. Our morbid symptoms are Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, the exemplars of a dying western capitalism, the men who can tap directly into our minds and those of our children.
The greatest danger is that, with climate chaos accelerating, Gramsci’s new world will not be born at all. It will be stillborn. It may turn out that the proof needed to incentivise change comes too late to affect the outcome.
But if some of us do make it through the next decades, if survival is possible, one thing is certain: the society that emerges will look nothing like the one that worshipped jeans and iPhones.
It will draw on other, older trends in our history. It will prioritise community over the individual, cooperation over competition, mutuality over ownership – the very principles capitalism seeks to eradicate.
Nation-states, the incubators of capitalism, will have to be dissolved. Organised religions, competing over whose God is supreme, will need to be replaced by more ancient, spiritual ideas rooted in living with nature, not seeking to conquer or subdue it.
If all that sounds implausible or impossible, remember this. Your disbelief may only be the noise of capitalism speaking through you. It may be that the problem is yours, for being unable to imagine more than a new iPhone or pair of jeans.
If you believe this, you will believe anything
Mark Zuckerberg says Meta is building a future where billions of people could have a 24/7 AI agent that understands their goals, habits, relationships and personal lives.
In a lengthy essay titled The Future Is for Everyone, published on Meta’s official website on 10 August, Zuckerberg argued that superintelligence should not be controlled by a small group of companies, governments or experts. He also shared the essay on X, writing: ‘I believe everyone should have access to superintelligence, and I wrote a long piece about Meta’s philosophy and values for building a positive future for everyone.’
It looks like the US/Israel war against Iran is having knock-on consequences for the Russo-Ukrainian war. Iran had earlier threatened to fire missiles at selected targets in Ukraine in response to the latter destroying a ship (with military supplies?) en route to Iran.
Ukraine apparently backed down and promised not to do that again. However, it now faces a bigger threat because of the situation in Iran, which has resulted in a shortage of interceptor systems such as the Patriot system. It is now much more vulnerable to Russian missiles than ever before.
You have to wonder if this is indeed a “turning point”, as this article suggests, and whether the end of this stupid, pointless war might finally be in sight
“Witnesses and experts have suggested that an easing of controls by Morocco in the border area of Ceuta contributed to the recent mass influx of migrants into the Spanish enclave. Others are pointing the finger at American and Israeli involvement”.
It seems that the majority of the 60,000 who entered Cueta returned to Morocco – 48,000. There has been some suggestion that this was a case of the Moroccan government wilfully playing political games by allowing this to happen to spite Spain becuase of the latter´s rapprochement with Algeria (Algeria supplies Spain with natural gas). Algeria is opposed to Morocco on the question of the Spanish Sahara (what is now called Western Sahara) and supports the Polisario Front there.
At any rate, it does seem to be the case that the border guards and police on the Moroccan side might have been instructed from above to be more lax in their approach to preventing this sort of incident. France and Italy have tightened up on movements between them and Spain. This is where the grim logic of nationalist thinking leads you to
A socialist world without borders couldn’t come too soon
https://www.thelocal.es/20260731/spain-says-49000-migrants-stormed-ceuta-border-in-24-hours
The commercialisation of football sinks to a new low
https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/world-cup-infantino-donald-trump-37486609
Came across this today. A few paragraphs in and it’s already looking a bit iffy. The Soviet Union was not socialist but also not capitalist either, cos there were no markets. (Really? What did your average punter do in a Moscow supermarket if not engage in a market transaction?)
There is also something further on alluding to the concept of a social fund from which various deductions are made (an idea that appears in the Gotha Critique). To me, that’s a nonsensical idea and implies the existence of a universal unit of accounting (otherwise, how could you make these aforementioned deductions?). We dont need a universal unit of account in a post-capitalist society. Only calculation in kind
Still, the text makes some interesting points nevertheless
Burnham is already spelling out his priorities. Nothing is going to change under the (Anti) Labour government
Streeting says Burnham government will prioritise military over other spending
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/22/increased-defence-spending-uk-economic-growth-wes-streeting-military-andy-burnham?shem=dsdf,sharefoc,agadiscoversdl,,sh/x/discover/m1/4
Burnham is already spelling out his priorities. Nothing is going to change under the (Anti) Labour government
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/22/increased-defence-spending-uk-economic-growth-wes-streeting-military-andy-burnham?shem=dsdf,sharefoc,agadiscoversdl,,sh/x/discover/m1/4
Anything to be gained from standing a SPGB candidate here when there are no mainstream pro-capitalism parties standing (other than Nigel Facade’s Reform)?
I would endorse what Max suggests. There aren´t many occasions when spending money to cover a lost deposit is justified, but this seems to be one of them. It is likely to be quite a high-profile event, and if there are not even the usual Trot organisations standing to misrepresent the term “socialism”, it might encourage greater curiosity and interest in what the SPGB itself stands for.
Presumably, the EC would need to act quickly to get the ball rolling in this case if the SPGB wants to contest this by election.
One other thing. I remember seeing a party Facebook post yesterday, which I think mentioned that Farage´s decision to force a by-election would cost the UK 200,000 quid. We need to be a bit careful about how we phrase this, as I believe the Reform Party has offered to foot this entire bill.
They must have anticipated this particular criticism of Farage´s opportunist manoeuvrings being wheeled out by his opponents….
The politics of football made glaringly obvious to anyone
Can we surmise what sports and entertainments a socialist society would enjoy?
Much the same, surely, but within a very different kind of social setting. Nothing wrong with a football match, though I prefer rugby myself (hailing from South Africa, we didn’t have much of a tradition of football back then when I was a kid LOL).
TomandBob
There is some truth in what you say about the need to associate socialism with abundance, but I don’t think this is an either/or situation.
Many workers are increasingly concerned about the state of the environment and are disillusioned with the consumerist rat race. There have been studies that point to the fact that beyond a certain point, more money does not make you happier. As someone quipped, the most miserable people in the world are the very rich and the very poor.
We should be thinking of a more balanced approach to life. One of the great “selling points” of socialism, if I can put it like that, is that most of the jobs that we do today in a capitalist society will no longer need to be done in a post-capitalist society (all those jobs to do with handling money, for example). In effect, we can more than double the amount of labour and resources for socially useful production in a socialist society without imposing any greater strain on the environment – simply by diverting all this wasted labour and resources away from these socially useless activities that capitalism necessitates.
This is one of the strongest arguments for socialism. It should be hammered home at every opportunity
