Young Master Smeet
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It has always struck me as odd that Engels is used as the alibi to protect Saint Marx, clearly, Engels was a less subtle thinker (and dmitted as such), but as we see from things like his 'Principles of Communism' he brought a great deal to the manifest. Given that that work, and the German Ideology are co-productions with Marx, it's fair to give him crdit, and to assume that both stood by the words in them both (although it is interesting to see how the manifesto differs from the principles, clearly Marx brought a substantial amount to the text). And, obviously, Engels bears a lot of responsibility for Capital 2 & 3, which he edited to print.
Lbird,
Quote:If we start, like the 'materialists', from 'matter', it will inexorably lead to a minority (who claim to have a special consciousness) determining what 'matter says', to the exclusion of the views of the majority.I'm afraid you have never demonstrated why the existence of an objective reality leads to minority domination of society, which is significant if you call for us to assess Engels in the light of this claim.Anyway, Kautsky's obituary of Engels:https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1887/xx/engels.htm
Quote:The publication of the second and third volumes of Capital was the last great gift of Engels to the proletariat. We speak of it as a “publication,” but it was really a new creation; in spite of the fact that Engels, with that modesty which is only the possession of great spirits, always belittled his activity as compared to that of his friend. He has, as no other could have done, followed the course of thought through the fragments, extracts and observations that were left behind, and completed the last two volumes of Capital. The greater part of the material was, so far as the form of the language was concerned, merely hastily thrown together, a simple jotting down of the thoughts as they passed through the mind of Marx – not arranged; in some points almost completely worked out, in others merely fixed by catchwords, partly German, partly English and French, often almost unintelligibly written. To follow out the method laid down in the first book, which dealt with the process of production in a masterly analysis of the process of circulation of capital, and develop from the material left behind the further course of surplus value, the division of profit into rent and entrepreneur wage, and the doctrine of ground rent, was a task that not only required the highest physical exertion, but a brain power not inferior to that of the original composer. Engels was the only one capable of this, for no other living person was so in accord with the author in the method of reasoning and the views, to the smallest details, of the relations in the economic development of capitalism. In the last two volumes of Capital Engels erected to the memory of Marx a more enduring monument than any cast in bronze, and, without so intending, carved upon it in imperishable letters his own name as well. Just as in life Marx and Engels were inseparable, so Capital cannot bear the name of either alone, but must always be known in the history of political economy as the Capital of Marx and Engels. And although Engels has marked with brackets and the letters “F.E.” to places where he has taken the actual material left by Marx and developed it to the necessary conclusion in as much as possible the “Marxian spirit,” yet no man can ever say which came from the spirit of Marx and which from the spirit of Engels.LBird wrote:You might as well be saying 'what is piffle is poffle, and what is poffle is piffle', for all the understanding you have of the political issues at stake for the democratic producers.But then, like robbo, you're not a democrat, but an individualist (and thus, an elitist), and so you can continue to spout mysterious phrases, which are meaningless, and so keep the workers in their place.Let's just all note that once again you fail to defend your major premise, and move on.
LBird wrote:If we start, like the 'materialists', from 'matter', it will inexorably lead to a minority (who claim to have a special consciousness) determining what 'matter says', to the exclusion of the views of the majority.You've neversubstantiated this claim. It doesn't follow.Oh, and what is actual is rational, and wht is rational is actual.
I'll just quickly add: a previous instance of this was factory tokens: ekmployers would pay with coin that could only be redeemed in their own shop. Workers movements fought tooth and nail against that trick, lets not recreate it.
https://theconversation.com/cuba-is-poor-but-who-is-to-blame-castro-or-50-years-of-us-blockade-69528A canny article:
Quote:We have to consider these real circumstances at every juncture. For example, when the US embargo was first implemented, 95% of Cuba’s capital goods and 100% of its spare parts were imported from the US – and the US was overwhelmingly the main recipient of Cuban exports. When the Soviet bloc disintegrated, Cuba lost 85% of its trade and investment, leading GDP to plummet 35%. These events produced serious economic constraints on Cuba’s room for manoeuvre.Basically, Cuba swa[pped dependence on the US for dependence on USSR. As the author notes@
Quote:Where can medium and low-income countries get the capital to invest in infrastructure and welfare provision? How can foreign capital be obtained under conditions which do not obstruct such development, and how can a late-developing country such as Cuba use international trade to produce a surplus in a global economy which – many claim – tends to “unequal terms of trade”?At a basic level, it is a demonstration that capitalism must be replaced globally, and how taxing the rich won't work (they'll just bugger off to whatever enclave they can find).
https://cabnet.richmond.gov.uk/mgElectionAreaResults.aspx?ID=81&RPID=503020385DescriptionNumberUnmarked or void for uncertainty56Voting for more candidates than the voter is entitled to21Writing or mark by which the voter could be identified1Total rejected78Very low spoilt ballot rate, still, a handful in thee for us, no doubt.
Yes, although in many ways Zimbabwe and SOuth Africa Struggles were classical nationalist ones, tehre was also a real democratic issue, and, of course, the Southern African workers played an immense part in their own liberation, but the military rule of the colonialists would have been much harder to break without the Cuban assistance. I don't for a second think this exonerates Castro, or means he was worthy of support, but in strict historical assesment, it is somethign worth mentioning.
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:Money comes with laws and regulation about what it can and can't be used for. you can't use money to buy love in most parts of california, but you can in prague.That's not money, that's contract law: if you're sprecifying how your money is used afterwards, that, like create commons is because you continue to own it, that's the only way, but restricted money is not money (which is a universal equivilant) what you're arguing for sounds like a form of barter system.
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:So what if you had a form of money that didn't belong to any government, but instead belonged to individuals.That's been done, it's called gold. Didn't work.
Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:So my money works better than your money for socialist goals.No, your money works worse, because it doesn't work as money, if I did a job for you, and you told me that my payyment would include a rewquirement that I not spend the money on beer, then I'd be pretty ticked off…
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-chinese-debt-global-imbalances-by-yanis-varoufakis-2016-11Back to Varoufakis:
Quote:Today, China’s credit boom is underpinned by collateral almost as bad as that on which Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and the rest were relying in 2007. Moreover, because the Chinese renminbi is grossly overvalued, corporations are borrowing dollars to repay their legacy dollar-denominated debt early, putting downward pressure on the exchange rate.What Varoufakis is calling for is in effect a World Currency, administered by the IMF:
Quote:A new ICU, or NICU, would be as Keynes had envisaged it. But, in place of the abstract bancor, it would feature a common digital currency – say, Kosmos – to be issued and regulated by the IMF. The Fund would administer Kosmos on the basis of a transparent digital distributed ledger and an algorithm that would adjust total supply in a pre-agreed manner to the volume of world trade, allowing for an automatic countercyclical component that boosts global supply at times of a general slowdown.This to end the situation that in a downturn it is the poorer and debtor nations that are hit first and hardest, and also to impose some responsibility ojn creditor nations to restructure their debts to cresate equilibrium across the world economy.
There is a significant possible argument that this could be Castro's real legacy:http://theconversation.com/fidel-in-africa-how-the-cuban-leader-played-a-key-role-in-taking-on-apartheid-69665
Quote:So, although Fidel has a mixed record at home – one of authoritarian, sometimes brutal rule, tempered by huge cultural investment and immense strides in health care – his African reputation is as a man who changed history.Our position of course is to oppose all wars of capitalism (and, indeed, lets not forget, even as that article shows, Cuba was objectively the catspaw of Moscow using 'anti-imperialism'; but just as objectively, Castro's government ended apartheid by demonstrable force. Just as Abraham Lincoln was quite objectionable and had a dubious human rights record, we can grant him the ending of slavery, so too can Castro claim a luarel for his role against the physical oppression of African states and peoples.
You vote for one in the first round, the top two (if no one has 50%+) go into a run off. Le PEn is polling at 28%, Hollande at about 12%, Juppé was on about 28%, so it's reasonably clear the two right candidates will make the run-off, unless Macron or Melenchon can cannibalise each other and Hollande.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Republicans_(France)_presidential_primary,_2016
Quote:Unlike previous Union for a Popular Movement primaries, this was the first primary to be open to the general public.[2] The first round of voting took place on 20 November 2016. A runoff was held on 27 November after no candidate obtained at least 50% of the vote in the first round.[1]4,288,214 voted.
I was always absurdly pleased that this article had been picked up by Cuban Social Democrat dissidents:https://web.archive.org/web/20080102151255/http://www.psrdc.org/archivo/notas75.htm
Lets not forget that voting was mandatory in the SU. Thee have been plenty of dictatorships that had lots of lovely votes, democracy means much more than voting, voting is just one means of assisting democracy along.You're reading some sort of unelected determining minority, it's more likely that after a vote a lightly held majority would back down if the minority loudly and vociferously continue to hold their position, for example.Lets take the example of a cultural/racial minority in a given area, that would lose every single vote, there might be a matter important to them which, perhaps unknowingly, a mjaority might vote against, the minority has to have the right to protest the result, demonstrate the strength of their feeling, and ask the majority to think again. A vote does not end the matter (vide Brexit).ISTR Otto Neurath who described the difference of democracy between enemies and democracy between friends.Democracy between enemies is like bandits holding up a stage coah, and the occupants and the bandits counting which side has the most guns, and surrenderign according.Between friends it's like a trip to the cinema: you all want to go together, and agree to go together, and while, say, you might not like rom-coms, another friend has screaming nightmares if they see blood-splatter gore movies. You might fancy the gore movie, the majority might fancy it, but that would mean going without the friend.On some points, I demand my right to be outvoted, I'm against strict consensus, but democracy always has the presupposition that we want to be together.
