Young Master Smeet
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LBird wrote:These are all amenable to democratic control, and will be in a socialist society, which will ensure that its social production is democratically controlled.
Two questions: are there any limits to what we can decide to socially produce together, or is our will and imagination the only limit?Second question: if there is not, why do we need democratic control? Couldn't the minority group choose to construct a reality of their own alongside the majority reality? Why do we need democratic decisions? (Is this something to which we are constrained, or could we choose to abolish this requirement?).
Mais non, mon chere, I am trying o explore Chuckies views. What is the role of inorganic nature if all the qualityare attributable to human activity. A sculptor works with the properties of the marble, but if the stone is undifferentiated, and only gains it's qualties from the sculptor, then the stone does not exist, n'est pas?WEngels never existed. He is a delusion of historians.
When I put an ingredient into a cake, it has properties: sugar sweetens, flour thickens, water smooths, different ingredients do different things.
LBird wrote:We 'differentiate'. That is, humans are the active side in this relationship, as Marx argued, in his Theses on Feuerbach.So, erm, what role does this ingredient play? Does it have any properties?
LBird wrote:He called this 'external reality' inorganic nature, and it is an ingredient into social theory and practice.Is this ingredient uniform or differentiated? Are there things we cannot do with this ingredient?
Quote:As will emerge below, what is essentially required of the court is its interpretation ofone particular clause in the current Labour Party Rule Book (‘the Rule Book’) in thecontext of the rules as a whole. It is therefore a very narrow legal issue. It is uponthat issue that this ruling is focused. All other matters are irrelevant unless they areneeded to help in arriving at the correct interpretation of those rules. Even then,anything that is arguably to be regarded as “political” would be approached with veryconsiderable caution by any court and, as will be apparent in due course, had it beennecessary for me to consider matters that might have trespassed into the politicalarena I would have trodden a very cautious path. Mr Westgate quite rightly said thatthe court should be extremely careful not to find itself picking sides in a politicaldebate.and this beauty:
Quote:The Rule Book runs to some 84 pages and contains a wide range of provisions. I do not know to what extent it was drafted with legal assistance, but the expression “without prejudice to” appears in three places and “for theavoidance of doubt” in five places, both expressions commonly used by lawyers. The expression “null and void” appears in six places and the word “deemed” appears in many places. The inference I draw is that that there has over the years been some legal input into its drafting. What is, however, certain is that it has been altered by various amendments (some major, some minor) over the years and it therefore represents something of an amalgam of instances of drafting at various times: it was not the product of one drafting exercise. That may be of some importance when considering some issues raised in theseproceedings (see paragraph 53 below).And this is important:
Quote:owever, I find it difficult to understand how a court could conclude that an erroneous interpretation of the rules was reasonable: a conclusion of law is either right or wrong and a memberof an unincorporated association has the right to ask the court for its decision.Well, the legal issue is that technically, the party doesn't exist. The good news is that it limits the liabilities of members to their voluntary donation, the bad news is the trustee is liable for all the parties debts (in strict terms, all the property of the party belongs to the trustees personally, as individuals, and we are the ones who get taken to court if anyone sues the party as a party – the party did get sued once for libel).In terms of the issue of courts: basically, the law of contract applies, and where not contract, the principles of justice and equity. So, if, say, a HOO one day changed the locks, and pevented the gen sec coming in, the Gen sec could say they were sacked without due process, and without the rulebook being followed. They could appeal to the courts for redress.Likewise, if the EC decided to spend the parties money on a visit to a brothel, the courts could stop that as it wiouldn't be money spent in keeping with the object of the party.The big lesson of the Labour fiasco, is don't change the rules as a procedural fix, and make the rules as clear as possible.
DJP wrote:Sure, but when we use the word "value" in this way I don't think we're using to mean the same thing as we do when we talk about "value" in the context of Marxian economics. As I'm sure you'd agree.Well, I was using value in the context of Marxian economics, and using the examples of rip-off and bargain to explain the difference between value and price. The value is there, even if the person making the contract isn't consciously aware of it.
DJP wrote:This isn't what "Value" means in Marxian economics. Value and price never converge, or if they do it's by accident.Quite right, but we still have a notion of worth behind the price, so, yes, price and value will (usually) not be equal: if you buy a rolls royce for a penny you know that someone has undervalue it (or you have overvalued a crock).
Value and price are different, the concepts of bargain and rip-off occur when you pay above and below the value of a good. You can buy something that has no value. A work of art is unique, it cannot be reproduced, so it has no value (you can't buy another Mona Lisa), value only matters for reproducable goods.Value is not the same as exchange value: exchange value is when you express the relative value of a good by comparison to another. By analogy, the length of any object is its length, it's relative length in centimetres is a relative expression of its length compared to light waves. So when we say something is 10 centimetres long, we are saying it is one tenth of the distance that light trabvels in a certain measure of time.
Operation reverse ferret begins:http://www.itv.com/news/update/2016-07-15/theresa-may-article-50-will-not-be-brought-forward/"Look at all those problems with Brexit" they say, as the grass grows longer…
Paul Mason points out that Hammond this morning on R4 said financial srvices need membership of single market, so EEA option only way…
Useful argument from teh New SoS for Brexit:http://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2016/07/david-davis-trade-deals-tax-cuts-and-taking-time-before-triggering-article-50-a-brexit-economic-strategy-for-britain.html
Quote:Single countries, with the ability to be flexible and focussed, negotiate trade deals far more quickly than large trade blocs. For example, South Korea negotiated a deal with the US in a single year, and with India, which is notoriously difficult, within three years. Chile was even faster, negotiating trade deals with China, Australia and Canada in under a year.and
Quote:So within two years, before the negotiation with the EU is likely to be complete, and therefore before anything material has changed, we can negotiate a free trade area massively larger than the EU. Trade deals with the US and China alone will give us a trade area almost twice the size of the EU, and of course we will also be seeking deals with Hong Kong, Canada, Australia, India, Japan, the UAE, Indonesia – and many others.So, throw in regualtory changes, and active state aid, and the stage is set for a state capitalist economy, maybe that is why May is talking about social justice issues. Maybe they want to be the home version of the Chinese communist party…
Ralph wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong though but in over 100 years the party has really failed to reach out to any audience let alone a broad one, doesn't that suggest that maybe a different approach is needed?If, after logical analysis of the situation, all we can do is to promote socialism, then that is what we must continue to do. If nothing happens then either we're wrong (in which case we are doing no harm and indeed some good in keeping some hobbyists occupied) or, conditions and events will prove us right, in which case we cn aid and speed the process that will produce socialism. We can't make socialism by an act of will or by a cunningly persuasive argument, the basic deire for socialism has to be there before people will even listen to the case.
