Young Master Smeet
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I was just looking something else up, when I ran across this:http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/3/034015/article
Quote:From the 41 crops analyzed in this study, 9.46 × 1015 calories available in plant form are produced by crops globally, of which 55% directly feed humans. However, 36% of these produced calories go to animal feed, of which 89% is lost, such that only 4% of crop-produced calories are available to humans in the form of animal products.Of course, animals produce more than calories, however, protein is a factor here too:
Quote:These changes in calorie availability are mirrored by changes in the availability of protein in the food system through changes in global crop allocation. Of the total plant protein produced, only 49% is delivered as plant and animal protein to the food system. Therefore, shifting all crop production to direct human consumption could double protein availability. In the United States, only 14% of produced protein is used as food and 80% of protein is used as animal feed. Because of the high proportion of plant protein being used as animal feed, only 27% of plant protein produced in the US is available for consumption (as either plant or animal product).The paper acknowledges that plant and animal proteins are not identical, and a real shift would have to include more vegetables. Further:
Quote:Shifting all crops currently allocated to animal feed back to human food implies that either the global population would stop consuming animal products, or else the only sources of animal products would be grass fed or wild caught. However, we also investigated different scenarios of diet shifts that could increase global calorie availability. Shifting grain-fed beef production equally to pork and chicken production could increase feed conversion efficiencies from 12% to 23%, which would increase global calorie delivery by 6% (or 3.52 × 1014 calories), representing 357 million additional people fed on a 2700 calorie per day diet. Alternatively, shifting all feed directed to meat production to the production of milk and eggs (or a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet) could increase feed conversion efficiencies to 35%, which would increase calorie delivery by 14% (or 8.04 × 1014 calories), representing 815 million additional people fed. In both cases the feed allocated to livestock production stays the same as it was during this study period, but more meat, egg, and dairy calories could be produced from this feed as a result of efficiency gains. Of course, reducing the consumption of meat and dairy can also have large impacts on calorie delivery. For example reducing the consumption of grain-fed animal products by 50% would increase calorie availability enough to feed an additional 2 billion people.This needs to be part of a global democratic debate, and we need common ownership in order to even begin to deal with the implications of this work…
We could retain the law as it is, allowing it to wither. A simple way, I feel to explain the socialist revolution is a simple legal change: making it a criminal offence to be an employer, instantly rendering all capital worthless.
Alan,1) It is established constitutional principle that the Parliament can remopve the monarch – the 1688 Bill of Rights establishes that…(http://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/WillandMarSess2/1/2/introduction ) (Much more important than Magna Farta),2) In any event the Prime Minister, in effect, wields all the power of the Crown (the Monarch is obliged to accept advice).3) Thus control of the Commons is sufficient to control the Privy Council, and abolish it and give its functions to various democratic bodies.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Vin, your position is that socialists should sit on their hands and do nothing until (in the UK) we achieve politcal supremacy at the polling booth. (apologies for stripping your argument down to the bare bones)No, it's that if we try to take over our workplaces now, we'll be sacked (and this remains so until we have practical control of the machinery of state to prevent that, including having the police and army around). Don't forget, De Leon swapped around which bit was the sword and which the shielf, for us political action is the sword with the shield of union action to back it up.
Just having a wee William Morris weekend…
Quote:Will Parliament help us towards the accomplishment of this aim? Take another question as an answer to that first question. What is the aim of Parliament? The upholding of privilege; the society of rich and poor; the society of inequality, and the consequent misery of the workers and the degradation of all classes.Clearly if this is its aim, its reason for existence, it will only exchange its aim for ours if it be compelled to do so, or deluded into doing so.Can it be forced? Well, Parliament is the master of the Executive; that is to say, of the brute force which compels the useful classes to live miserably; it will use that brute force to compel those classes into submission as long as it dares. When it no longer dares, it will practically no longer exist. Now I, for my part, say as I have always said, that in the last act of the Revolution the Socialists may be obliged to use the form of parliament in order to cripple the resistance of the reactionists by making it formally illegal and so destroying the power of the armed men on whom the power of the parliament and the law-courts really rests. But this can only come in the last act; when the Socialists are strong enough to capture the parliament in order to put an end to it, and the privilege whose protection is its object, the revolution will have come, or all but come. Meantime, it is clear that we cannot compel parliament to put an end to its own existence; or, indeed, to do anything which it does not believe will conduce to the stability of Privilege, or the slavery of the workers.https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1890/commonweal/06-antiparliamentary.htm
I argue for 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. I don't feel I need to be any clearer than that.
It seems, no matter how many times I say that I want the mass self-organised working class to take control of state institutions and run them through direct democracy, you still insist that secretly I'm planning for the technocratic élite under King Smeet. You keep knocking down Aunt Sallies, it's a really effective way of persuading people to change their minds…
I may have to change my handle to Aunt Sally, but, I admit defeat, I cannot argue against the positions you have made up for me.
Small changes have big effects, the simple fact of opening up the decision making to public scrutiny would transform decision making radically.And, of course, my election as Socialist King would see the self activity of theworking class realised through a true Kojeveian process…
Who cares where an institution emerged? The monarchy didn't emerge from the capitalist class but now serves their ends: our democratic self activity can take control of the physical structures and processes of state administration and transform them into the agency of emancipation.
Maybe the question isn't "Do we have to?" but "Wouldn't it be easier to?" yes, we could, possibly ignore the state, but it's making a rod for our own backs (and leaves the recalcitrant minority an opportunity for organising against us). Once we accept that we're going to lop off the coercive role, why object to taking over the administrative mechanisms that already exist?
Sorry, been short of time today.This discussion is conflating three things: coercion, co-ordination and authorisation.The state exercises all three, and the routes for the first two are the same. Individual capitalists cannot trust their rivals with the powers of coercion and co-ordination (for the latter, see the LIBOR scandal). Even where public utilities are run by a private firm, it is as a franchise, and under the auspices and control of the co-ordinating function of the state, backed up by the coercive power. Authority exists because sometimes someone or something has to call time on debate and say: make it so.The state contains systems of co-ordination we can use, and also the use values of data (area plans, details of sewage systems, demographic data, etc.) we will need much of that. Yes, freedom of information makes much of thast stuff available, but we need to secure it if we are to plan. The workers in quasi state bodies may be able to take control of their own departments, but they will still need to co-ordinate (and particularly, need to co-ordinate how to take over their departments, and when).Of course, we will continue to have authorities in socialism. A ship's captain at sea will still be implicitly obeyed, health and safety instructions at work will be obeyed, we'll still have to comply with building regulations and fire regulations (I for one am allergic to burning to death).
The point is that, for instance, local government has the plans of the towns, real material objects we'll need in order to make our transition; they have the telephone lists and the ermergency procedure points that we will need. Some workers in the GMC may well become active socialists, but others may not, but will refrain from sabotage as long as ccertain structures remain. the Privy council isn't a rubber stamp but a part of governance and co-ordination of many Chartered Societies (which often are backed up by legislation and regulation), it will simply be much easier to work with the grain of such structrues than against.
Alan,at present the state, including local health boads, holds the information and physical means of controlling co-ordination of those activities: yes, yes in socialism largely self organising groups will run affairs, but we ned the physical offices, documents, etc. as well as the current systems as they stand (controlled and regulated by the state) to fall into our hands, we don't need to set up a parrallel system. yes, those systems are run by workers now, but co-ordinated through the state machine.And a Royal Charter isn't a red herring, itr has a very direct link to the Privy Council system and the organisation of such bodies, backed up by statute.
The GMC has a Royal Charter, so it is a quasi state body, and it operates in a state controlled regulatory environment. The railways in most countries did have state co-ordination (if only to steal the land). I hate to point this out, but the UN is a state body, established under treaty between governments…In the final analysis we will ned some sort of world body as a final court of appeal over any decision, that world body, of course, being everybody.
