Wez
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‘The meaning of words is set by those that are using them to communicate, is an organic process rather than one set by decree.’
Well you try to define socialism the way we do in the mainstream media without feeling the weight of decree from the owners. Words like ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘justice’ etc. are all defined by decree and any deviation will cost you your job as a journalist.
‘I think perpetual misinterpretation is an inescapable feature of human language.’
Perhaps but there is also an Orwellian component here since the powerful get to define words and their meaning and it obviously suits them to define socialism by the Bolshevik interpretation.
‘Not sure what you mean here. Labour taking the form of ‘value’, as meant by Marx in Capital, can only occur in a society of generalised commodity production.’
DJP – I’m talking about use value here. Many cultures have valued gold historically but not so many have valued Nike trainers. I thought that the LTV was restricted to capitalism?
DJP – ‘But the distinction also has to be made between ‘exchange value’ (expressed in quantities of other things – a relationship between things) and ‘value’ (an amount of embodied social labour – a relationship between the thing and the producer).’
I’ve always thought that ‘exchange value’ was based on the amount of socially necessary labour contained within it and that use value was a matter of utility or perceived utility? There have been many incarnations of ‘value’ within different cultures at different times but capitalism has transformed value in to a universal form ultimately expressed in the universal commodity called money. Anyway that’s how I’ve always understood the subject.
DJP – Things made for personal use may have ‘use value’ but not necessarily ‘exchange value’ whereas commodities must contain both use and exchange value.
That’s rather a sweeping statement. Do you have any evidence other than your dodgy book? Are you of the dumbing down cultural school? Personally I believe TV drama is pretty good – ‘The Queen’s Gambit’, ‘Ozark’, ‘Picard’ etc. and I’m also enjoying an immense collection of audiobooks on YouTube. I have noticed, courtesy of the Marvel & DC franchises, a definite dumbing down of the narratives in popular Hollywood cinema. On some of the ‘reactor’ sites on YouTube you sometimes get someone who’s introduced to good music and films, in contrast to their usual Hollywood diet, and it is a delight to see their enthusiasm. So I think the appetite is there but popular media is not supplying quality stuff enough.
Robbo – wasn’t diamond production and sale controlled by a monopoly cartel? Is it still? If so doesn’t this explain the price of diamonds?
Prakash RP – Volume one of Marx’s Capital gives a fascinating history of what societies considered to represent value and how that has changed.
‘Class identity etc. did not prevent English, French or German workers from seeing Britain, France and Germany as in some sense “their country” in World Wars I and II. Tragic it surely was, but it’s an historical fact.’
pgb -But the 2nd International had a chance of stopping the 1st world war ever starting but was betrayed by leftist reformists and you, I fear, would have been one of them.
‘All this media attention. Yet the Iraq war barely got a mention, least of all the 1m dead’
James19 – yes and the utter hypocrisy of the Haig embarking immediately on an investigation of ‘crimes against humanity’ in the Ukraine war. Apparently the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis doesn’t count as a war crime and the oligarchs Blair and Bush can rest easy in their dachas.
‘Where do the capitalists find these second-raters to look after their political affairs?’
I’d be interested to know who ALB considers as a ‘first rate’ statesman or woman? I’m sure you’re correct that there has been a drop in quality of these careerist lickspittles of the parasite class but who do you consider the best of a rotten bunch?
‘But WHY do states such as Germany and France go along with it? They must be afraid of Washington, since they are opposing their own capitalist interests.’
As we keep trying to explain to you – the ruling classes of any nation state, such as Germany & France, are not one homogeneous group with identical economic interests. Capital is global so the interests of one capitalist is not identical with that of another. This has to be balanced with the necessity of preserving the illusion of ‘National interests’ for the working class so dividing them against each other politically.
‘What’s wrong with appeasement? Surely, the socialist movement being so small and ineffective, this is the best outcome we can expect under capitalism? Anything but war. Better anything than the shedding of a single drop of working class blood.’
Exactly – who cares which parasitic class claims to own which patch of mud?
