ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I noticed this from one of Indo’s comments:
“Also, Council Communism doesn’t “proposes that workers’ councils are the basic form of organizing for workers”. The Council Idea [and other related terms], as it has been called, denotes self-organization. Workers’ Councils were one of the many expressions of this and might never arise in their traditional form in the future but that doesn’t render the Council Idea obsolete, which only denotes self-organization, irrespective of form.”
If the “council idea” just means self-organisation, then we must be Councillists! After all, we say that workers should self-organise on the political field to win control of political power. In other words, into a democratically organised political party without leaders that contests elections. This in addition to self-organising on the “non-political” field (at work, in communities, etc).
But of course contesting elections is anathema to Council Communists, Left Communists, etc. This suggests that Indo’s definition of the “council idea” is too broad for his purpose.
Also, it doesn’t rule out workers self-organising in cooperatives producing for the market.
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe there are Councillists who are not dogmatically opposed to workers self-organising to contest elections.
Not quite sure what all this has to do with Glasgow COP-OUT 26.
Yes, it is reviewed in next month’s Socialist Standard out next week. We eventually found someone to read it through to the end.
Actually I had heard of him but forgot as he’s mentioned in the section on “Communism” in Raymond Williams’s Key Words.
More on him here:
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/goodwyn-barmby-first-communist
Reading a book I bought the other week in a secondhand bookshop — Industrialization and the Working Class by John Belchem — the author says that John Goodwin Barmby was “the first person in England to call himself a communist”.
According to his entry in Wikipedia:
“Barmby also authored the first attested writing (1841) of communist in English; having translated it from communiste in French while claiming he first spoke the word in 1840 in Paris, France, the same year he went there to meet the advocates of le communisme as had been written in at least a French article and pamphlet by then, the former by Étienne Cabet and latter by both Théodore Dézamy and Jean-Jacques Pillot. By his claim, he first discussed “communism” with some followers of François-Noël Babeuf, describing them as “some of the most advanced minds of the French metropolis”. He introduced Engels to the French communiste movement. They founded the London Communist Propaganda Society in 1841 and in the same year the Universal Communitarian Association. Barmby founded the Communist Chronicle, a monthly newspaper later published by Thomas Frost.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Goodwyn_Barmby
The claim is not that he first coined the word in English but that he was the first to call himself a communist. Not necessarily the same of course.
I’d never heard of him before.
More NATO “democracy”. After Rumania another NATO state bans an opposition presidential candidate:
Despite regular evidence from the financial pages showing that banks do need deposits, whether from individuals or from other financial institutions, to be able to lend, the myth persists — and not only amongst open currency cranks — that banks can create the money they lend from thin air.
Yesterday. Close Brothers, which is a financial institution specialising in financing loans to buy a car, reported half yearly results:
One factor in the loss was a reduction in its net interest margin (the difference between the rate of interest paid to those who lend it money and the rate it charges borrowers). This is the source of a lending institutions’ income and, after paying running costs, of their profits.
“The group’s net interest margin reduced by 30 basis points to 7.2 per cent from 7.5 per cent.”
It is forecast to fall further this year to 7 per cent, so reducing its income.
Another reason is a fall in deposits from other financial institutions:
“Corporate and council treasurers are already voting with their feet. They pulled a net £700 million of their deposits from Close last year, reducing its non-retail deposits by 22 per cent.” (Today’s Times).
The obvious question to put to those who claim that banks don’t need deposits to make loans is: why would this matter?
Another scrap of paper torn up:
“Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia say they’re pulling out of the Ottawa Convention, a treaty banning anti-personnel landmines, citing the growing military threat from Russia.”
Added to the Harry Young Marxist Internet Archive article on the old “International Marxist Group” (IMG) manifesto for the February 1974 General Election:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/young-harry/1974/smash_elections.htm
Revealing article here (from Hong Kong) about one of the vultures waiting for the end of the war to invest in Ukraine, whether in the part ruled by the government there or in the part controlled by Russia. They want to know where the line of demarcation will be as, wherever it is, it will pass through the area where the rare earths and the rich agricultural soil are.
Yes, Starmer’s “coalition of the willing” is (fortunately) more a coalition of the silly than a coalition of the killing.
Actually, the anti-Gaza war demonstrations in London haven’t entirely petered out. In fact there’s one today. We shan’t be leafletting it as the majority of those left on them now are Muslims concerned about the fate of their co-religionists, not a group likely to be interested in socialist ideas.
According to Wikipedia the ongoing but slow-moving Undercover Policy Inquiry:
“As of April 2018 the inquiry has confirmed that undercover police had infiltrated the following groups and movements:
Anarchist groups, Animal Liberation Front, Anti-Apartheid Movement, Anti-Fascist Action, Big Flame, Black Power movement, Brixton Hunt Saboteurs, Anglia Ruskin Churchill Society (Young Conservatives), Colin Roach Centre, Dambusters Mobilising Committee, Dissent!, Earth First!, Essex Hunt Saboteurs, Friends of Freedom Press Ltd, Globalise Resistance, Independent Labour Party, Independent Working Class Association, International Marxist Group, International Socialists, Irish National Liberation Solidarity Front, London Animal Action, London Animal Rights Coalition, London Boots Action Group, London Greenpeace, Militant, No Platform, Antifa, Operation Omega, Reclaim the Streets, Red Action, Republican Forum, Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation, Socialist Party (England and Wales), Socialist Workers Party, South London Animal Movement (SLAM), Tri-Continental, Troops Out Movement, Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, West London Hunt Saboteurs, Workers Revolutionary Party, Young Haganah, Young Liberals, Youth against Racism in Europe.”By “normal profits” I meant the profits that a capitalist would normally expect to make in whatever line of business they chose to invest.
The situation envisaged is that of a protective tariff, ie one imposed to protect domestic producers from cheaper imports. The assumption is that the call for this will have arisen because the domestic producers are being outcompeted by imports and so have been unable to make the profits they once made or would normally expect to make.
A tariff always makes imports more expensive. If the importers wanted to continue to sell the same amount they would have to reduce their price by the amount of the tariff; which would reduce their profits. They are more likely to reduce or even stop importing. This would reduce the supply and so lead, in the first instance, to an increase in the market price of the product in question.
An increase in its price would mean that domestic producers would be able to make the “normal” rate of profit again. Their profits would be protected.
That’s the theory and logic behind protective tariffs.
Tariffs can be imposed for other reasons. For instance, to raise revenue for the government. The aim then would not be to keep out imports as that would reduce the revenue. So, this type of tariff would be imposed on a product that can’t be produced locally or not in sufficient quantity.
The situation before the tariff is imposed is that domestic producers cannot make a normal profit if their product has to sell at the same price as the imported product.
After the tariff has been imposed they no longer have to compete with cheaper imports but unless the price rises they will still not be able to make the normal profit.
The imposition of a tariff by reducing the profit of the importers will lead to them importing less and to total supply falling. In these circumstances prices will rise.
Once prices have risen then the domestic producers (old and maybe new entrants) will produce more as they can now make the normal profit, though not necessarily as much as the previous total as with a higher price market demand might not hold up. On the other hand, it might but in any event the price will have to have gone up.
