Young Master Smeet
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@DJP,
I agree that I think the decentralisation argument isn’t sufficient (Cockschott, IIRC, would argue that if it can be calculated at the firm level, it can be computed at the global plan level).
For von Monkeys, IIRC, the issue isn’t consumer goods, but rational (and we will come back to that word) use of intermediate goods. He concedes that a socialist commonwealth can decide between 100 hectolitres of wine and 2000 hectolitres of oil, i.e. it can make consumer choices. But the production methods are opaque.
e.g. to produce the wine we can either use these two methods
Grapes….| 300 | 3000
Water……|1000 | 100
Wood……| 100 | 300With both methods producing the required quality and quantity of wine. Monkeys says we cannot rationally choose between the two without some sort of price metric, with knock ons for gluts, bottlenecks and shortages further down the production line.
As Robo says, we can use the law of the minimum, regulated stock control, etc. Cockschott says Kantorovich’s linear algebra can do the job.
My usual example of this is a sodoku in which one square is incorrectly filled in, after that all the other squares are filled in wrong, but they are filled in incorrectly while applying the rules correctly.
Now, Monkeys’ rationality is a flexible thing: in his introduction to a book about the Incas, a complex moneyless economy, he shifts the goalposts to say that this required tyranny to achieve. But usually, in rationality Monkeys is actually assuming his conclusion, a utility maximising market relation.
For instance, we could argue that so long as the goals of society are achieved, it doesn’t matter if a better productive method is available, our rationality is based on outcomes, not infinite ever increasing efficiency and sparing of labour.
Up at Wood Green today, smaller than previous gatherings there, I handed out a smattering of leaflets (there was a separate Fight Imperialism, Fight Racism grouplet that joined the march). They held a rally in Crouch End that I cycled past on my way home.
Some thoughts:
The Liberate Palestine angle does seem to predominate over stop the war or peace, maybe that’s just SWP successfully getting their branding out.
I wasn’t keen on their talk of booing MacDonalds and other businesses they feel support Israel, I think consumer boycotts are bad politics in any case.
I thought his argument was more that the working class was an active agent in its own creation, not simply a passive victim of impersonal forces, and so working class actors, in their own self interest, drove the creation of the wages system.
@Thomas More
Could you please start including some text (more than just one sentence) when you post a link: to give people confidence that they are not linking through to a harmful site, and also to comply with the purpose of the forum as a discussion place. I’m going to start binning posts that contain nothing more than a link.
This reminds me of the David Peace novel Occupied city which uses a framing device of a serial killer thriller to look at unit 731 (and also casts a pall over the serial killer genre by posing it against the backdrop of the world war and the atrocities of the Japanese army).
Wikipedia has a useful article on the Unit (I see that several of its members were princes, so it was clearly supported to the highest levels of the regime).
I suppose we should look at the world context of Japan as a dictatorship developing late and expanding it’s own colonial sphere: while looking at it’s mighty rivals, this line from the wikipedia article is chilling: “Japan started its biological weapons program in the 1930s, partly because the use of biological weapons was banned in interstate conflicts by the Geneva Protocol of 1925; they reasoned that the ban verified its effectiveness as a weapon.” I’d guess racist attitudes to the Chinese and other colonised peoples would have played a part, the idea of killing off ‘different’ people often appeals to colonisers.
Dear All, drunk on power as I am: I’m closing this thread, it is substantially off topic: General should be used for discussion/topical debates.
The forum scope is:
The SPGB web forums are operated by the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) and are intended to promote discussion of matters related to the SPGB, the World Socialist Movement, and socialism in general.
Simply posting music videos is not discussion.
I’ve created a new thread in Off Topic, please post any music related links there (unless it is for substantial discussion of the lyrics/context meaning of the song.
This seems to set out the terms of this debate
“James Hansen of Columbia University in the US published a paper with colleagues in November which claims temperatures are set to rise further and faster than the predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In his view, the 1.5°C target is dead….
“To regain some control over Earth’s rising temperature, Hansen supports accelerating the retirement of fossil fuels, greater cooperation between major polluters that accommodates the needs of the developing world and, controversially, intervening in Earth’s “radiation balance” (the difference between incoming and outgoing light and heat) to cool the planet’s surface.”
Part of the issue, if I understand it correctly, is how much latent warming there is in the system, even if we hit net zero.
The actual article by Mann proposes: “(1) a global increasing price on GHG emissions accompanied by development of abundant, affordable, dispatchable clean energy, (2) East-West cooperation in a way that accommodates developing world needs, and (3) intervention with Earth’s radiation imbalance to phase down today’s massive human-made ‘geo-transformation’ of Earth’s climate. Current political crises present an opportunity for reset, especially if young people can grasp their situation.” (Indeed, he recognises the political nature of the question, but his solution is a party not funded by “special interests”.
This is a useful article: “However it is becoming clear that Israeli military intelligence had collected specific information on how Hamas could invade. Additionally, they had evidence of what assets and techniques Hamas were likely to use, and what Israeli facilities and possessions would be targeted. From, observing rehearsals, they also had information about the level of violence Hamas terrorists were willing to inflict.”
But: “The assessment about Hamas appears to have been dismissed for three key reasons.
“First, a belief that Hamas did not have the capabilities to carry out the attack, nor the intention to do so because it would fall outside of their historic pattern of behaviour.
“Second, these beliefs about Hamas were not thoroughly challenged within Israeli intelligence nor through sharing the assessment with international partners who might have had useful intelligence on this.
Third, Israeli defences, be they deeply buried sensors, walls, or automatically defended sections of the border, were considered to be too strong for Hamas.”
This has fed conspiracy theories that Israel let the attack happen, I think the author of this article is probably closer, that groupthink and over-estimation of their own defences (plus the policy driven need to take troops to the West Bank) are to blame.
The added coincidence of the Nova festival (which added to the overall chaos of the situation) probably aggravated the plan.
But, this also tells us something, even in practical terms, when someone says “what else should Israel do?” well, maybe simply improving it’s intelligence and assessment programme would be a good start, certainly better than destroying all the homes in Gaza.
Of course, another option is Iron Fertilization of the oceans, but that seems likely to be less effective, and runs into a similar problem that despite the nonsense of national ownership of bits of the sea, the oceans are a global commons, and should be managed as such.
Forums › World Socialist Movement › Gaza War leaflet
#248906Broad application of rule 4, edited to remove potential identification of private individual not on this forum.
Forums › World Socialist Movement › Forum Moderation
#248884
@Lizzie45
1. The general topic of each forum is given by the posted forum description. Do not start a thread in a forum unless it matches the given topic, and do not derail existing threads with off-topic posts.
7. You are free to express your views candidly and forcefully provided you remain civil. Do not use the forums to send abuse, threats, personal insults or attacks, or purposely inflammatory remarks (trolling). Do not respond to such messages.And now we’ve got MMA fighter Conor McGregor claiming he’s thinking of standing for President of Ireland on the basis of his anti-migrant views (he doesn’t have a prayer, but you never know with these things, a man who’s been punched in the head repeatedly makes a great patsy).
I don’t have the means or the time to privately communicate with people. I have three moderating tools: edit (which is problematic, but I have used), bin and unapprove – my inclination is to simply bin pointless, boring or irrelevant posts: I don’t know if the users get any notification if I unapprove.
Rule 12 is clear:
12. Moderators may move, remove, or lock any threads or posts which they deem to be off-topic or in violation of the rules. Because posts and threads can be deleted without advance notice, it is your responsibility to make copies of threads and posts which are important to you.
The mod log is an attempt to be transparent without being intrusive and to avoid moderation becoming the sole endless topic of debate.
About 80 leaflets given out to a similar size (maybe 500 at a stretch) demo in Camden: rally outside the townhall, on speaker called for a campaign to unseat Starmer (which would be funny). Had a wee chat with an American from Revleft, who, although their position is similar (get rid of capitalism) thought our leaflet was a bit even handed. Also had a chat with a lady who seemed to remember an Iranian member of ours who did catering at conference, before my time(?)
Also had a few people who’d never heard of us, and thought we were a new party…
