robbo203
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Hi there,
Are you a member of the SPGB?
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Toby – Yes, I am. Are you wanting to say something? Make a comment about what I wrote?To anticipate any flak for saying what I said in my comments about the Maduro regime (since I seem to have run into some flak elsewhere!), I should copy and paste something here that I posted elsewhere (slightly amended for greater clarity). If anyone can show me that I am mistaken in writing what I have written, I would be grateful if you could point out specifically where and how I have erred. This is my genuine understanding of what the situation is in Venezuela but I am open to correction if I am wrong….
…………………………………………Yes of course we should be sceptical of Western sources and statements from the US State Department. We should also be sceptical of sources like Consortium News, that Alan linked to, that come to quite different conclusions about this election. We should accept no argument at face value but should examine the evidence forensically. I am fortunate in this respect in that my partner is Venezuelan and has explained how the procedure works in detail.
The evidence centres on the “Actas de manos” or voting tallies that each voting machine on every table in every voting centre throughout the country, produces. The Acta is a long slip of paper which has a QR code and a unique identification number that cannot be forged. It is also time dated. At the end of the vote copies are given to accredited witnesses of the different parties present, signed and counter signed by the person responsible for the voting centre. The results are sent to the CNE the central electoral body, but the people on the ground have physical proof of how the voting went in the form of the Acta. It’s an excellent system – the best in the world in fact according to the Carter center that monitored the elections but it precisely because it is so good that the Maduro regime, I believe, was found out to have committed fraud on a grand scale. It was caught with its trousers down.
What happened is that it did not anticipate that the opposition had a plan to deliberately collect together all of these actas and totalise the results to ensure the vote was accurate. Nearly every acta produced throughout the country – about 90% at last count I believe – has now been published on its website and made available for complete public scrutiny. I repeat again – you cannot fake or forge an Acta. It has a QR code and a unique identification number. The totalised result of the Actas on the website show that the opposition got somewhat more than twice the number of votes that Maduro got.
This is the basic argument in support of the claim that result declared was a fraud.
Significantly the CNE declared Maduro had won before all the votes had been counted and to date has still not provided any factual evidence that he got 51 per cent of the vote . I could not care less if it so happens that the US State Department or other western outlets have come to the same conclusion or that the opposition is a “right-wing bourgeois party” I obviously oppose it without reservation but what we have here is the principle of democratic practice that is at stake.The evidence seems pretty overwhelming that a fraud has been committed. We shouldn’t allow the fact that US State Department has said this to prevent us from saying this as well. Even the Communist Party of Venezuela has declared that the result was a fraud and, like I say, it is very telling that the CNE, has still not published any actual evidence supporting its claim that Maduro won. That’s because it is in an impossible situation, in my view, that it never anticipated would happen. What happens next I have no idea…
Starmer. What a hypocrite
https://x.com/TweetForTheMany/status/1818220080439742825
(IN case people here don’t have access to X – Twitter – what the script accompanying the video of the Starmer interview says is as follows:
“Keir Starmer talked before the election – he was worried about pensioners who struggle to afford to put the heating on – even WITH the winter fuel allowance!
Yesterday, the allowance was removed from millions of pensioners who earn basic £220 per week.”
Useful idiots like the so-called Venezuelan Solidarity Campaign lending their support to a gangster capitalist state like Venezuela seem to be utterly oblivious to the utterly corrupt nature of the regime. Economic inequality in Venezuela is one of the highest in the world and the gini coefficient has steadily increased over the last decade to a staggering 0.6
A tiny clique of extraordinarily wealthy and well-connected economic parasites has flourished under this regime which ranks as number 177 out of 180 countries in terms of corruption according to the Transparency Index. According to this article, “the Maduro family heads up a racket aiming at pillaging gold mines in the south of the country, by buying up the gold at low cost and then selling it overseas through the central bank”.
https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/gamechangers-venezuela-maduro-criminal-ties/
It makes my stomach turn when I come across expressions such as “Chavista socialism” or so-called “21st-century socialism” in Venezuela. This is as bad as the abuse of the term “socialism” by the Nazis. Maduro and his cronies have nothing whatsoever to do with socialism. They are a bunch of capitalist criminals out to enrich themselves and cynically using politics to achieve their aim. Those who support him should be exposed for what they are- useful idiots
More anti-working class measures from the Party of Business
The authors seem to have been overly influenced by Cockshott and Cottrell´s so-called “cyber socialist” approach. The latter advocate central planning and consider the Soviet Union to have been basically “socialist” but not sufficiently democratic and also lacking, at that time, in the computer technology that could have made central planning a success – allegedly.
This bit from their article is revealing:
“Fully resolving the demand side calculation problem requires a mechanism which ensures that the consumer valuations captured by token prices will also be reflected in production targets. For this purpose, Cockshott and Cottrell (1993) proposed a double control loop through which the plan target is continually adapted to consumer demand. In the first control loop, the token prices of final goods are continuously adjusted to approximate the market clearing rates at which demand matches supply as described above. Should demand for a good exceed its supply, its price must be increased. Should demand be below supply, the price must be reduced. In the next step, the approximated market clearing rates of each are compared to the cost of producing it. Cockshott and Cottrell (1993) use labor values as a measure of cost, while Dapprich (2022)uses shadow prices instead.”
This is a world away from anything we would recognise as being socialism tbh….
There is also this curious passage in the article.
“We highlight the potential for such an immanent critique, explaining how, in light of technological advancements, planning processes might be capable of fulfilling the same kind of epistemological functions that markets fulfil.”
What are these supposed “epistemological functions” that markets are supposed to fulfil? Markets don’t tell us much about human needs or production costs, for that matter (think of the problem of externalities)
So no – sadly there was not much in the article that one could sink one´s teeth into. It did not say anything new. Perhaps a future article might be more interesting if it shifted the focus away from a system where you have a single universal unit of account (necessary only in a society based on a market exchange) to a system involving calculation in kind and where the only purpose of production is to directly meet human needs. In other words, socialism as we would define it
Bit of a disappointing (and rather predictable) article, really…. Doesn’t really go much beyond the stale old limited choice of the market versus central planning (both of which we can reject) and doesn’t really question what is meant by “demand” or even “economising of resources”(the so-called “least-cost combination” of resources is not a reliable guide in that respect). The only thing that is slightly interesting is Dapprich´s “socialist tokens as an alternative to money”. Not quite sure what he has in mind but it ain’t labour vouchers apparently…
Im still puzzled at what you think the relevance of this is to anything?
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More money to spend on other things, obviously!Jayzus, you people are fucking clueless.
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So more money is available to be spent on other things. Which means the market demand for other things increases. Which means, all things being equal, the price of other things increases….yeah?
Or alternatively, the downward pressure exerted by capital on wages increases bringing the latter into line with the value of labour-power
Despite what Lizzie45 thinks, there is no such thing as a free lunch under capitalism. Workers have to struggle to hold on to their share of the social product and if her dismal view of the potential for working-class militancy is correct, that does not augur well for their future economic prospects under capitalism.
I came across this article on Gorgeous George that might be of interest. An opportunist who courts both the Left and the Right by all accounts
“And that, sadly, is why socialism will never be established.”
Could I borrow your crystal ball, Nostradamus?
“An anarchist unit in the Ukrainian army ! What next?”
So they are pro-capitalist statists – not actual anarchists – defending the existence of a particular capitalist nation-state in the form of “Ukraine”. They are no better than the deluded nationalists who support Russian nationalism and the capitalist, Putin.
“(Lindsey) Graham stressed that helping Ukraine in its fight against Russia could also have strategic economic benefits for the U.S. and Western countries.
“They’re sitting on 10-12 trillion dollars of critical minerals in Ukraine. They could be the richest country in all of Europe. We don’t want to give that money and assets to Putin to share with China,” he told Brennan on Sunday.”Interesting insight into the changing structure of Russia´s capitalist class
https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/moscows-war-yields-new-type-russian-oligarch-2024-06-05/
“Another example I remember is being in a bar (quelle surprise), many years ago and explaining, to a very senior member of the Militant Tendency (who is now a successful playwriter) that real Socialism would mean the abolition of the wages system and of money. He genuinely said to me, “that’s a really stupid idea, that would never work!! Why would a barmaid choose to spend her night pouring pints to people in a pub”.
_________________I am not surprised BD. Trots are some of the most conservative or narrow-minded individuals I’ve come across tbh. Little wonder so many of them find it so easy to “defect” to the far Right or virulently “anti-communist” positions later on in life once they have burnt themselves out.
Here’s the ex-prosecutor general Sir Keith Starmer praising National Front flag-waving day.
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Will the (anti) Labour Party now be accepting applications from members of the English Defence League? Starmer is in danger of making Sunak appear positively libertarian. It’s enough to make anyone want to reach for the nearest bucket….
