Young Master Smeet
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@LBird, the point was, twas ever thus, he does get some credit for a stated purpose of fighting corruption in his short lived regime (but when need arose, he didn’t shirk from corruption). Pretty much every authoritarian regime is against corruption, nominally (indeed, without law and regulation, in some ways it is difficult to be corrupt).
@LBird,
When Richard III became king he set about decrying abuse of justice and calling for fair courts (see propaganda here: https://richardiii.net/richard-iii-his-world/reputation/a-man-of-the-people-richard-iii-the-pursuit-of-justice/), yet before he was king, he was as capable as any feudal magnet of engaging in lawfare to hoover up manorial estates and revenues.By which, I mean, all authorities have always been against corruption, especially while trying to win support.
Just a note, we use the words socialism and communism interchangeably, as society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of producing and distributing wealth. In the 19th century, they both meant the same thing. When the Bolsheviks launched their coup, and began organising “communist” parties, the Socialist Party speakers avoided the term, to avoid confusion with Leninists. But what we advocate could equally be called communism.
It will be run democratically, since the majority of people will have a clear idea of what common ownership means they will organise accordingly, and with a desire for freedom that means that counter domination strategies will be deployed to ensure that elected bodies and delegated functions don’t become a means of recreating the state.
Finally, we don’t want a welfare state: we’d rather argue for what we want and not get it than argue for something we don’t want and get that.
grand, well, we’d argue that the long postwar boom did more to raise wages and living conditions than the cheeseparing of the welfare state did: that plus the cheapening of the means of living that came about through worldwide productivity growth. When Labour last left power, inequality in the UK was pretty much the same as it had been in the 1930s: poverty wears a different face, but it is still very much there.
“What the SPGB says it is and what it actually is are two different things. Of course it’s going to distance itself from failures.”
But, do you accept that those failures are of a completely different plan: a minority seizing power and forcing the population at gunpoint to enact their programme? We do not advocate that, and so absolutely do not consider those instances to be failure of what we advocate. Without the conscious and voluntary co-operation of the vast majority, you cannot build a democratic society of common ownership (indeed, Russia, China, Cambodia, etc. are proof of what we are saying, not a refutation).
As our Beveridge pamphlet shows, the welfare state is about rationalising insurance and saving the costs to the capitalist, it’s not a net benefit to the workers.
Grandpa,
you’re arguing against positions we don’t hold.
1: We argue that socialism can only come about when the overwhelming majority of people *understand* and *want* it, and this can *only* be done democratically. This also answers your question of ‘who would manage’ socialism, it would be everyone, democratically and freely, without coercion. Hence why comparisons with groups where someone has seized power as a minority are invalid.
2: You might find our pamphlet “Beveridge re-organises poverty” interesting (https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlet/beveridge-re-organises-poverty/).
3: Our object is very simple: “The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.” Now, that community is 8 billion strong, but it can be done.I believe they call this recuperation:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvde8g40xx42o
“”Only authorised union protests will be allowed in French towns and cities on Saturday, President Emmanuel Macron has said, after demonstrations across the country turned violent last weekend.
[…]
“The general recommendation is that there should be no demonstrations. Those who want to continue to demonstrate, when they are trade union organisations, will have alternative routes proposed by the prefects,” the French president announced. “When they’re not union organisations, wherever possible, they’ll be banned.””So, the Unions, which have offices, funds, organisation which can be targeted are being used to control and legitimate protest and keep it within channels. On the one hand, good, as it moves powers to organised workers, but at the expense of the absorbtion of the union bureaucracy into the state. The best clap back is to make these as big and disciplined as possible.
From memory of dealing with Lacan at university.
His main thrust is Freud via Hegel. the key concepts, as I recall, were that the unconscious is structured *like* a language: words have no fixed meaning but shift metonymically, ultimately anchored by arbitrary definitions the “point de capiton”, behind which lies ultimate structureless meaninglessness. I may be missing ideas, but that point de capiton becomes the object of desire, which Zizek argues is like Hitchcock’s Maguffin, the whole sense of the story, everyone wants to have it, but it is dangerous to have.
Further, is the idea of the mirror stage, we see ourselves reflected in the symbolic order, which positions us and defines us as a subject. If I recall correctly, this is what lead Althusser to his notion that ideology is lived, but we misrecognise ourselves as a subject. Zizek sort of returned to this arguing that our material world is our unconscious: the Hegel thing means that there is an advanced philosophical idealism at play.
A Lacanian reading of Hamlet is very plausible: the ghost is the Real father, the father of vengeance and castration, Claudius is the imaginary father, “your biological father who fucked you up” and Laertes is the brother, the mirror image to which Hamlet ultimately compares himself. etc.
I was peripherally aware of Julie Kristeva’s feminist readings and the notion of abjection, situating the female subject (IIRC) is the position of the object of desire; and I think some f this goes back to George Bataille, a kind of surrealist anthropologist.
Thanks ALB, that looks really good, must point more people to it.
So, thinking further about the content, this seems to be the crux:
The idea being to get rid of the secondary market in government bonds; but I can’t see how that can work, since even if the bond itself isn’t tradable, the owner can make a contract to give the interest and the bond redemption to a third party. These alternative contracts will then become available, and people will buy them rather than government gilts, and therefore this will affect the interest rate that the government will have to pay.
I think he admits as much here: “The objection is narrower: against a tradable gilt of the same term, the holder gives up the right to sell, and will want paying for it.” i.e. off-market financing will be more expensive than open market financing.
The alternative would be to actively forbid the bond holders from forming such contracts, this could be done via institutional investors (local governments, pensions, etc.) but then we are approaching state capitalism and an almost entirely planned market economy.
I wasn’t questioning your translations, but the fact that at the top is says “Traducción y notas por Edmund Griffiths (2026).” which gives the implication that the translations are by EG, when he’s only responsible for the English translation from the Russian.
I think if we’re posting French and Spanish translations of Edmund’s English translation, we should make a note that he isn’t responsible for those translations (are these machine translations?).
