Young Master Smeet
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Just a couple of quick points.The membership test exists to ensure that all members of the party are equal (rather than, as many other organisations do, relying on ad hoc notions of soundness).The party is a materialist party, grounded in an approach that says humans make history, and create their own institutions. this approach as a matter of course precludes any approach to the world that involves intervention by transcendent entities, be they God, D’jinn or Faeries.Now, someone who believe Bob created the universe and then buggered off and does not, cannot have any say in its workings is not necessarilly in contradiction with that position, though they may hold that there is an ideal to which the universe normitively does/should (especially should) tend and that is incompatible with a materialist approach.But, let’s not forget, that the membership test cuts both ways. We are also telling applicants where we stand, and if they feel that their religious position is incompatible with our tennets, then they don’t join. If their belief that Bob created the world is sufficiently strong that they can’t simply say: “OK, renouncing it doesn’t matter” then really they don’t want to join.The point is, in discussion, does the applicant show adherence to materialist method to such an extent that they can be trusted to vote on party policy. That is the only member benefit they gain. Else they can attend branches, speak, help out, vote for us, etc.
We have the biography of Haywood in the library. He was the leader of the Mineworkers union in the States, and also a big noise, IIRC, in the IWW. He was serially tried for murder during the violence that accompanied the typical strikes in the US mining fields, and eventually emigrated to the USSR where he lived out a quiet life, and IIRC died of alcoholism (he was an orthodox CPer by that point). Just double checked his Wikipedia article… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Haywood
Hud955 wrote:They can do it because every loan creates a deposit. (So far so good).And herein, like says law, is the Achilles heal. Why does a loan create a deposit? What if I draw my loan out as cash? A certain percentage of loans will go out into cash and will not come back into the banks but will continue to circulate.
On the question of secondary exploitation, I had a half remembered quote, which I’ve managed to find.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/housing-question/ch01.htm
Engels’ On the Housing Question wrote:The distribution of this surplus value, produced by the working class and taken from it without payment, among the non-working classes proceeds amid extremely edifying squabblings and mutual swindling. In so far as this distribution takes place by means of buying and selling, one of its chief methods is the cheating of the buyer by the seller, and in retail trade, particularly in the big towns, this has become an absolute condition of existence for the sellers. When, however, the worker is cheated by his grocer or his baker, either in regard to the price or the quality of the commodity, this does not happen to him in his specific capacity as a worker. On the contrary, as soon as a certain average level of cheating has become the social rule in any place, it must in the long run be leveled out by a corresponding increase in wages. The worker appears before the small shopkeeper as a buyer, that is, as the owner of money or credit, and hence not at all in his capacity as a worker, that is, as a seller of labour power. The cheating may hit him, and the poorer class as a whole, harder than it hits the richer social classes, but it is not an evil which hits him exclusively or is peculiar to his class.Again, if generalised personal debt becomes the norm, in order to make up for falling wages, that is in a sense the employer outsourcing a part of their exploitation, a wage of £x becomes a means to servicing a debt of £y, and the employer need only lose the surplus value of the interest to the lender (which may, through share ownership, be the employer, themself again).
DJP wrote:By the 17th century trade, mercantilism & money lending had grown and developed in Europe but these by themselves did not undermine the foundations of feudal society. The mere existence of commodity production, wage labour, merchants capital and money lenders capital are necessary but not sufficient conditions for the full development of capitalism. ‘Or else ancient Rome, Byzantium etc. would have ended their history with free labour and capital’ (Marx, Grundrisse p 506 )So it becomes a question of looking at what specific historical factors come together to create a rupture with the old social relations.ISTR the story goes: Plantagenet kings ran up war debts, and had to find cash to repay the Lombard money lenders. their route to this became the export of Wool and Wool products. This attracted persecuted Flemish weavers, and also drove an impetus to clear peasants from land to be replaced by sheep. The value added character of this leads on (truncatedly) to capitalist mode of production, and provides part of the impetus for the revolutionary wars of the 17trh century (particularly the strains within craft guilds regarding the limitations on apprentices, later to become proletarians).
I think the simplest way to approach this is to ask: why are banks different from any other firm?You can do the “Bank creating money” story for any sort of business. A retailer could extend credit to customers (and buy its stock on credit, or even future options on not-yet existent stock), but this simply wouldn’t be creating money. Thus: I have £100 (of my own capital). I’m a good salesperson, I buy £90 worth of stock and sell it all (on credit) and keep £10 cash in till. I then buy another £90 worth of stock, on tick, which I then sell on credit for £90. I then sell another £90 worth and then place the order with my wholesaler (and arrange credit for myself). By this point I’m owed £270, so can extend my order to the retailer by another £90; but I’d better start getting some cash in soon or I’m in trouble. The only qualitative difference is that banks are hooked up, ultimately, to a mint.
Actually, the “Boris Bikes” give a sense of the liberation from property: when I hire one I can ride across town, and just leave it, whereas with my own bike I have to plan around securing it, and then getting the damn thing back home. I think in socialism we would probably most of us have a bike we regularly take home, but maybe also store houses of bikes you can just take one from and back to.There’ll soon be no need to own a car, they’ll be robot/computer driven and you’ll just ring it on your mobile for pick up, and then let it go once it’s taken you where you need to go.
I for one welcome the electoral turn of the Occupy movement: http://lukeakehurst.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/council-by-elections_27.html “The 4th was in Farringdon Within Ward in the City of London. City elections uniquely involve a business franchise as well as residential voters, and are usually contested on a non-partisan basis. This one was won by the former Tory parliamentary candidate for Tooting, running as an Independent. He took 59% of the vote. A candidate who had been involved in the Occupy movement got 13%. The remaining 28% was shared between two more independents.” Mind, that’s only 23 votes for Bryn David PHILLIPS (did well getting on the ballot paper, mind).http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jul/18/city-of-london-electoral-challenge?CMP=twt_gu
Quote:Isn’t responding to tripe such as this part of the remit of the Media Department?No, it’s not.
Adam,cheers for pointing that out. We’re 23 strong, so in the same boat as yourselves. I missed that reading, have to say. I agree, and reckon 3 for a quorum is inapproriate for a branch of that size.
Also:http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=28922http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=28920One blogger on the ground I’ve been reading suggests that what has happened is that, having fought to a stalemate, The Muslim Brotherhood and the Military have cut a deal, MB will have power where the military doesn’t think it will effect their interests. Essentially playing the same role as the Ayatollah’s in Iran, or the Turkish military. I think the chief hope in this situation is the abstention rate (nearly 50%) which means MB can’t be sure of their base; and the role of the unions in the revolution. Maybe some sort of autonomy for the central metropoli can allow some space to flourish, while the rural vote gives the Islamists the control of the national government.
jondwhite wrote:But what if a significant proportion of producers where prepared to continue to produce for free, then why would it only be a temporary fall in prices? Also what if distribution was widespread and global in reach, how could any goods or services with a price outcompete those without?This circumstance occurs pretty frequently, whenever there is an economic crisis. Part of the point of crises is that they re-impose scarcity, after capital has pushed productive capacity beyond what the market can sustain. 2001 saw “overproduction” of cars, 2008, houses (and yet, they stand empty).
DJP wrote:All prices paid come out of the general wealth, which in a capitalist society is the same thing as the total value in society. Prices can be under value for sure, they can also be over, but isn’t the fact the some prices and under value that allows for others to be above?Well, if I exchange one valueless item for another, both of which have a large price figure, there is no value exchanged. Two million pound opaintings could be so exchanged, and amillion pound price deal established without any comensurate value being involved.
DJP wrote:But since all prices are just an expression of an amount of the total value, you cannot create more value by just creating more money, to do so just decreases the amount of value that a certain amount of money represents.I wouldn’t agree that price is an expression of value, price is a definite relation expressed in commodity money. The way I see it, it’s like saying total rulers equal total lengths, and there are more lengths than have been measured.
DJP wrote:So I’m still not sure what it would mean if prices and value did not equal in aggregate. Would this not imply that you could create wealth by just raising prices?In fact, it means the opposite, that raising prices creates no wealth. I would agree that the value of total prices cannot exceed total value, that is the real limit.
DJP wrote:I know some interpreters of Marx refer to price and value as being to separate systems, is this the school from which you are drawing?Yes, I suspect so, certainly I have one book at home that talks of the “Value domain” and the “price domain” in Marx as related but separate things.
DJP wrote:A further consequence of total prices not equaling value would be that all of Marx’s arguments about exploitation go out the window.Not at all, profits realised as money still come from surplus value. What it means is that there are fiddles and tricks for screwing folk over over and above the inherent exploitation of the wages system.
DJP wrote:I don’t think this supports at all what you are saying; the price paid from them comes out of the total surplus value, unless they are bought with funny money how can this not be the case?The price paid for valueless objects can come out of general wealth, not just surplus value, and it is undetermined (anyone can pay any price they like). they establish the concept that price can be independent of value. This opens the door to the idea that prices can be under value, and generally a large chunk of value goes unrealised.
DJP wrote:Interesting. I would agree that for an individual commodity, price = value only by accident, I think Marx would have said this?I was just reading a passage in Grundrisse (link) t’other day where he said pretty much that.
Marx wrote:The value (the real exchange value) of all commodities (labour included) is determined by their cost of production, in other words by the labour time required to produce them. Their price is this exchange value of theirs, expressed in money. […] The value of commodities as determined by labour time is only their average value. […] The market value is always different, is always below or above this average value of a commodity. Market value equates itself with real value by means of its constant oscillations, never by means of an equation with real value as if the latter were a third party, but rather by means of constant non-equation of itself (as Hegel would say, not by way of abstract identity, but by constant negation of the negation, i.e. of itself as negation of real value).DJP wrote:Socially necessary labour time is determined through the mechanism of market exchange. If capital fails to become valorised, i.e expanded in production, it is because it has not been invested in socially necessary avenues.Value transfers across branches of industry via the rate of profit (i.e. the price of a good is calculated as the price of prduction plus the rate of profit) in those industries with relatively large labour inputs transfer surplus value to industries with large capital inputs. It’s perfectly reasonable to say that some surplus value is not realised as price, but merely transfers direct to consumers.
DJP wrote:In Marx total value = total price is true by definition. To say something else is to depart from what Marx said, which would mean having to use a completely different analysis.Marx was wrong on this one, his maths on the transformation problem have been exploded, and all other attempts to make that work are truly tortuous, it’s easier to say that prices can’t equal value. The simplest disproof are antiques and arts: their prices are not at all determined by value (since they are unique and cannot be reproduced).
