ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Most of the points he makes are valid enough but there is something odd about this passage:
“Marx seems far ahead of his time in explaining why money need not be a commodity, since it is its role in circulation and not its physical substance that allows it to represent commodity values. This is why, he stresses, it is in credit money—like today’s Federal Reserve Notes, the basis of the worldwide money system—that ‘money … takes on its own peculiar form of existence …’”
The first sentence is correct: gold (or silver) coins don’t need to circulate but can be replaced by metallic tokens or pieces of paper (or, these days, a computer code). Other writers before Marx had made this point.
But the second sentence doesn’t follow from the first and is incorrect. Marx did not say, let alone “stress”, that “credit-money” was money’s particular form of existence.
The full quote is the Penguin translation of part of this passage from chapter 3, section 3B (Means of Payment) of Volume I of Capital:
“Credit-money springs directly out of the function of money as a means of payment, in that certificates of debt owing for already purchased commodities themselves circulate as a means for transferring those debts to others. On the other hand, the function of money undergoes expansion in proportion as the credit system itself expands. As the means of payment money takes on its own peculiar forms [NB forms plural not form as in Mattick] of existence, in which in inhabits the sphere of large-scale commercial transactions. Gold and silver coin, on the other hand, are mostly relegated to the retail trade.”
In other words, he is talking about money as a means of payment not about money in general. He was not defining money as debt.
A footnote indicates that what Marx had in mind were bankers’ and merchants’ bills, which were accepted as means of payment (until their due date). He was not talking about Federal Reserve Notes, which fit his description, earlier in the chapter, of an “inconvertible paper money issued by the state and given forced currency”. And dollar bills are hardly the basis of the world money system. Maybe he is thinking of US Treasury Bills?
This (from the paper of the American Communist party) on the results of other votes that took place on 5 November is interesting. It shows that workers are capable of distinguishing voting for Trump from everyday bread-and-butter issues he might not agree with.
Anyway, here it is:
Voters back pro-worker and abortion rights measures across the country
More on the Corbynist candidate here:
https://www.islingtontribune.co.uk/article/independent-calls-for-council-shake-up
2000 leaflets arrived yesterday at Head Office in Clapham. Distribution will begin tomorrow at a street stall outside Archway tube station at 12.
Here is the “Corbynist” candidate, Jackson Caines, expounding his policy on local housing:
More on him and his views here:
Well, it’s happened. If you noticed that the percentage votes for the two main candidates in the various states didn’t add up to 100% it will be because there were other candidates standing;
Our election leaflet published here:
ISLINGTON LBC; Junction (Lab resigned)
Candidates:
CAINES, Jackson
JONES, Rebecca (Liberal Democrat)
MARTIN, Bill (Socialist Party of Great Britain)
OSBORNE, Devon (Green)
POTTER, Brian Steve (Independent)
POTTS, James Christopher (Labour)
WILKIN, John (Conservative)2022: Lab 2111, 2004, 2001; Grn 761, 545, 507; Con 279, 252, 240; LD 240, 194, 182
Devon Osborne (Grn) stood in Tufnell Park in 2022 and John Wilkin (Con) in Holloway. Wilkin stood here on previous boundaries in 2018. Rebecca Jones (LD) was the candidate for Hackney North & Stoke Newington at the General Election and North East at the London Assembly elections this year. Bill Martin (Soc) stood in Clapham & Brixton Hill at the General and Barnet & Camden at the London Assembly elections and stood in this ward back in 2018 on previous boundaries.
Current Council: Lab 43; Islington Ind 4; Grn 3; 1 vacancy
Here’s a couple of articles on this sort of subject:
TM, any chance of you reading and reviewing the first one?
Of course we must be careful not to draw conclusions from the behaviour of one animal about the behaviour of another, including (and especially) not about human behaviour.
Humans are, like many other aninals, social by nature in the sense of living together. In our case, due to our biological nature, we can adapt (and have adapted) to living in a wide range of different societies.
From this we can conclude that we are capable of living in a socialist society but not that capitalism is against “human nature” and that socialism is the “natural” form of human existence. After all, capitalism too involves co-operation and no human society could exist without it. Both capitalism and socialism are compatible with human biological nature.
The following articles have been added:
September 1938 The real issue in Czechoslovakia https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/1938/real_issue.htm
November 1955 Why Socialists Oppose the Labour Party https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/1955/oppose_labour.htm
September 1956 What is Behind the Fight for Suez
https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/1956/behind_suez.htmApril 1978 Rising prices and the EEC
https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/1978/eec_prices.htmMay 1978 Trade Unions and the Law
https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/1978/unions_law.htmJuly 1978 The slump in the nineteen-thirties
https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/1978/slump_thirties.htmNovember 1978 Planning the road to nowhere https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/1978/planning_nowhere.htm
March 1979 Lessons of the Spanish Civil War https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/1979/spain_lessons.htm
November 1979 Busy doing nothing
https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/1979/busy_nothing.htmThe Labour leaders are getting nearer to defining “working people”. Here’s Bridget Phillipson, the cabinet minister in charge of education:
“Appearing on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Phillipson said the manifesto pledge referred to people “whose main source of income is the income they earn from going out to work”.
“Speaking on Sunday, Phillipson said she could not give specific information on what would be in the Budget but said: “When people look at payslips they will not see higher taxes”.
(https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c789915n5elo.amp)So they are taking about workers with payslips, the members of the working class who are actually in employment. Woe betide those who aren’t as workers on incapacity “benefit” are about to discover.
The debate over who they meant has brought out some interesting points. Here’s a stupid comment Kwasi Kwarteng, Truss’s unfortunate Chancellor of Exchequer, in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday which nevertheless has an element of truth:
“Class war is back. The stupidity of trying to distinguish between workers and investors in property and other assets is pure socialism.”
Yes, socialists do say that the basic class division in society is between those whose main source of income is what they are paid for working for an employer and those whose main source of is unearned income from property ownership (profit, rent and interest).
And yes, there is a class war, an irreconcilable conflict of interest, between these two classes. This, irrespective of whether some capitalists choose to work and many workers have savings on which they get some interest.
What has been forgotten in this debate is that Labour pledged not just not to reduce take-home pay but to put “more money in people’s pockets” (https://labour.org.uk/updates/stories/labours-plan-to-power-up-britain/). They may be keeping to their other pledge not to reduce nominal take-home pay but they are definitely reneging on this one.
Although this clashed with one of national internal meetings 4 members leafletted the counter-demonstration:
20,000 people march against Tommy Robinson and the far right
We would challenge the figures of numbers. We didn’t see the anti-immigrant march but even the organisers of the counter-demonstration concede that there were less on it than on Robinson’s.
The SWP and its breakaways were there in force. Not surprising since Stand Up to Racism which organised the counter-demonstration is one of their front organisations. Which might explain the absence of SPEW who wouldn’t want to help a rival vanguard.
In a thread about this meeting on Libcom the ICC had this to say:
“a comrade from the SPGB was there and informed us that some comrades in the organisation are beginning to think that we are in an increasingly catastrophic situation, not just the endless cycle of boom and slump that the SPGB usually puts forward against the communist left’s notion of a decadent system which is posing a real threat to the survival of humanity.”
(https://libcom.org/discussion/icc-open-meeting-5-october-london).They like to pooh-pooh our view that capitalism will not collapse automatically for economic reasons but will continue going through cycles of booms and slumps.
Their view is that capitalism will collapse economically through a failure to find markets outside the capitalist system which it has to do as it produces more than can be sold within the system Luxemburg’s mistaken view). They haven’t mentioned this so much recently but their Spanish-language section has just produced a full-blooded defence of this position and that this supposed problem for capitalism is now more acute than it has ever been.
We will have to wait for the English translation to engage with them on this.
