[Dave B]

As we are in that kind of transcendental vein? There is a topical version from our Christian friend Chris Hedges? At least it puts forward a positive programme in case there is some confusion as to what one may look like. At least it is less navel gazing and ego centric. Why do you want the rest of us to have meaningful lives anyway?    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46890.htm

[Dave B]

People take drugs of various kinds to escape from meaningless lives and the stresses associated with it etc. The fact that the escape is often a short term fix and reality returns sometimes with a physical dependency and or psychological dependency is another matter. Often it is referred to by those are more sympathetic and understanding and less pompous as ‘self medication’. Gambling can fall into a similar kind of category and is much more complicated varying adrenaline rushes to ‘meaningfully’ experiencing a  panoply of emotional rushes for people who normally have them generally repressed. According to the trick cyclists. A lot of these primitive human cultures use psychedelic drugs and get pissed occasionally on fermented juice. Other systems engage in self induced higher states of mind etc like the Buddhists. Saying what a meaningful life isn’t is one thing but where is the positive programme?  

[Dave B]

Post 24 might be a good question I thought. When new technology is introduced that lower the amount of labour time it requires to produce something. Then for sometime stuff is being produced at ‘two labour time values’. It becomes more and more the case as you need larger amounts of capital to set up new modes of production etc. Or in other words ‘socially’ switching from one to the other takes time. Karl dealt with it as dealt with almost everything and said that the commodity then had a ‘market value’.  I guess if you are using new technology and capital etc then the market value higher than your labour time value and you make better than average profits etc And if you aren’t the market value is lower than your labour time value and the new guys are either undercutting you and eating into your average rate of profit or they are just making a bigger profit. Capitalist using the old technology will if they can not replace slowly used up fixed capital with the same stuff and will gradually replace it with the new stuff. That can take 10 years or so as depreciation capital is generally set at about 10% per annum, as a rule of thumb, so the industrial accountants tell me. If the new technology is really good in a labour saving way the old capital can devalue to scrap value before it becomes technically useless. Sometimes it is not technically possible to just incrementally roll in the new technology and if the differential is great enough you just have face being wiped out in a couple of years from the entry of new capital or take the hit and join in. There was an interesting case in Huddersfield a hundred years ago with largest glass bottle manufacturer in England. A new technology became available and they went for straight away wholesale with the associated new machinery and plant etc. Only to be bankrupted 10 years later by yet another radical labour saving technology which was picked up a bit later by their competitors and new venture capitalists. Paul Masons book (which I am finding intensely irritating) does actually introduce this kind of idea. With surplus value going back to investing in new labour saving technology and capital. Which is the flaw in the Luxembourg argument about the workers not being able to buy back all of what they produce, or the surplus, and capitalism collapses. The capitalist use the surplus value to buy new stuff [fixed capital]; it wasn’t Rosa’s fault as Karl got into a muddle on turnover and by leaving out fixed capital in his two, should have been three, departments of capital.  I suppose a capitalist might invest say 100 million and ‘make’ gross 20 million in year one; 10 million in surplus value, at a rate of profit of say 10%,  and 10 million covers the depreciation of his fixed capital at 10% pa.  What spooks him is the convergence, or narrowing of the gap, between the falling rate of profit and the increasing rate of deprecation of capital which are flip sides of the same coin 

[Dave B]

 https://www.pri.org/stories/2012-11-02/energy-costs-oil-production "Within the field, this calculation is called: Energy Return on Investment, or EROI."Back in the 1920's, oil was paying off at 100-to-1," said Zencey. "It took one barrel of oil to extract, process, refine, ship and deliver 100 barrels of oil. That's a phenomenal rate of return. If you work out the percentage, that's a 10,000 percent rate of return."But that's not the rate of return today. Now, conventional oil production worldwide pays off at about a 20-to-1 ratio. And in Canada, where the oil comes from tar sands, it's closer to 5-to-1."Renewable energy sources are paying off at higher rates, 12-to-1, 15-to-1, 17-to-1. That tells you right there, hmmmm, the age of oil should be over."A few problems with that though… Calculating these figures is complicated and estimates fluctuate. One researcher I spoke with, Carey King at the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Texas at Austin, said he can look at the same wind farm and calculate a payoff of 20-to-1 or 4-to-1. He can also make the numbers dance for oil too, by the way. It depends on if he factors in things like salaries, taxes, or subsidies. Or, how the energy is actually delivered to the source where it's used, or rather, the calculation for that.Even if oil is getting relatively more expensive, weaning ourselves off of it is not a matter of simply flipping a switch — the modern world runs on oil and gas. And there are powerful interests that would like to keep it that way.But we can't keep going like this much longer, said Nicolas Kosoy, an ecological economist at McGill University in Montreal.Eventually, our oil supplies will run dry. And as we dig up more fossil fuels, we emit more greenhouse gasses and add to the problem of climate change. Kosoy emphasizes we need to get serious about limiting our use of fossil fuels."Either we do it now, and we do it systematically and organized, in an organized fashion. Or we will hit a hard boundary, and we will all have to reduce consumption, but as a must."

[Dave B]

Potato’s based on size have different uses apparently. Large ones for baking potato’s And small ones tend to be used for potato salads and things. If people intend to peel them for roasting and chips etc they might prefer medium sized ones/ The marketing people have noted that people seem to prefer a bag of potato’s as all having about the same size.  The supermarkets respond to anticipated and future demand (of size) by forward contracting to farmers to produce what is likely to be demanded etc. And that can be controlled to some extent by the cultivation and planned harvesting time, variety selected etc etc. I don’t think there are any very significant differences in cost for one or the other eg weight yield per acre etc. Although I suppose weather could affect that but I guess it could go either way. Then I guess you could have an over supply of one or the other. [There is a sort of separate issue of flavour, variety and suitability for what they are going to be used for etc as with I suppose baby carrots and cherry tomato’s. And the issue of early harvesting of immature new potato’s for flavour?which probably has a higher cost probably as a reflection of lower kilo yield per acre. With fixed gound rent cost adding to the per kilo cost or something- is this where you thought of going with it?]  Sorting, handling  and packaging technology is highly mechanised and doesn’t really impact price. My lodger worked at a factory that ‘processed’ fresh vegetables for the supermarkets but he is not here at the moment.    Only the pretty cabbages etc make it onto the supermarket shelves all ugly vegetables go to the processing industry for canning and ready meals etc.  Robots with magic eyes have been trained to select out the ugly vegetables for sometime and that technology is now being used to sort food packaging waste for recycling.

[Dave B]

There has been a series of good articles on the subject at consortium news including the one below were Parry takes the sensible approach of analysing the opinions of important sections of the ruling US political class with this quote from the Washington Post.   Kagan continued, “Trump……….. Now he has taken an important first step in repairing the damage, but this will not be the end of the story. America’s adversaries are not going to be convinced by one missile strike that the United States is back in the business of projecting power to defend its interests and the world order. … “The testing of Trump’s resolve actually begins now. If the United States backs down in the face of these challenges, the missile strike, though a worthy action in itself, may end up reinforcing the world’s impression that the United States does not have the stomach for confrontation.” https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/10/neocons-have-trump-on-his-knees/ And this one from Scott Ritter at ICH.  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46832.htm  I think there were quite a lot of Americans voted for Trump just in the desperate hope that he was less likely to start world war III with the Russians. Including members of the US Green party for whom he was the ecological anti-christ. When you think the stakes are that high, or as high as they can be, it is difficult to blame them really. The 180 degree turn that the Trump has made in a few days is so surprising, even by contemporary standards, it isn’t easy to fathom. As to the details and likelihood of the chemical weapon incident having been committed by Assad with Russian complicity (which would have to be the case as the Russians were at the airfield from which it was carried out) I think you would need to be a bit of a simpleton or badly informed to be just “sceptical”.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Himmler  It would have been quite simple to co-ordinate a WMD incident with a Syrian/Russian bombing raid. With more even more egregious implications. The Russians have for sometime being giving the Americans 48 hours notice of aerial bombing activity etc to avoid any potential difficulties concerning them both flying around at the same time and place etc.  [When Turkey shot down that Russian plane the Russian said they had given the flight plan to the US 24 hours beforehand and the Turkish planes that shot it down were waiting for it at low altitude to avoid being picked up by the on board Russian planes radar- so they said]  But all that is bollocks at the end of the day as was the 28 June 1914 Sarajevo‘ incident’. The last beat of the War Drum, and tick of the clock, is always when the innocent, and this time, ‘beautiful’ as well, babies enter the narrative. Be they impaled on bayonets or being tossed out of Kuwaiti incubators.  The ugly babies will no doubt come later; as night follows day. http://www.makewarshistory.co.uk/?p=938  Hegel remarks somewherethat all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm

[Dave B]

I suppose what is most relevant is not only don’t we have any control over what is going on we don’t even fully understand machinations behind the decisions that they are making. I think the theory that it was supposed to be a Mafia ‘horse’s head in the bed’ message to the Chinese is quite credible. It might have backfired and turned into a demonstration of the efficiency Russian military hardware. The jamming devices apparently interfere with the GPS system on which the cruise missiles depend. After the Russians electronically immobilised that, US ship using different technology apparently, they put six of their aircraft carriers into dock to be completely rewired with fibre optic cables. There was another article in the daily mail today on the fake 2003 Iraqi WMD thing and maybe we should be exercise caution re Assad did this one etc. It was left on the canteen table, it isn’t often I flick through the Daily Mail to find anything politically interesting.

[Dave B]

the reason for the attack may have been a bit more 'mundane'.  Russia says only 23 out of 59 cruise missiles hit the base. The others were shot down by air defense or diverted by Electronic Counter Measures. The Pentagon insists that all 59 hit. But the pictures and video from the base only show damage to 11 aircraft shelters. Additionally one radar, one missile launcher and a fuel depot were hit. That effect is too small for 59 impacts. The base was in use again 12 hours after the strike.  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46822.htmie checking each others military hardware out to see just how 'good' the new untested Russian anti missile systems were.

[Dave B]

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line

[Dave B]

There was an interesting article from the relatively right wing daily mail recently. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46812.htmAs I understand it there is no evidence that Assad has used chemical weapons.There is good evidence some of from western inteeligence agencies that the rebels had sarin and had been assemling these chemical weapons in Turkey and taking them into syria.   

[Dave B]

There seems to be some misunderstanding from Steve-SanFrancisco about how we understand [historical] division of labour, exchange and communism etc. Whilst we are not dogmatic Marxists but perhaps Kautsky’s Das capital for dummies might be a starting point for debate, discussion and crticism Karl KautskyThe Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx Part I.COMMODITIES, MONEY, CAPITAL  Be it observed that among this hunting people production is carried on socially; various types of labour co­operate in order to achieve a collective result. We can detect here the beginnings of division of labour and systematic co-operation. The hunters perform different kinds of work, according to their differing capacities, but are based on a common plan. The result of the co­operation of the various types of labour – “the exchange of energies,” as Marx puts it in Wage Labour and Capital; the spoils of the chase – is not exchanged, but divided…………  ………..Let us now turn to another and higher type of a social mode of production, for example, the Indian village community based on agriculture. Of the primitive communism which once prevailed there only a few scanty traces may now be found in India. But, according to Strabo. xv, 1, 66, Nearchus, Alexander the Great’s admiral, described countries in India where the land was common property, commonly tilled, and after the harvest the produce of the soil was divided among the villagers. According to Elphinstone, these communities were still in existence in some parts of India at the beginning of the last century. In Java village communism continued to exist in the form of a periodical re-distribution of the arable land among the villagers, who did not receive their share as private property, but merely enjoyed the usufruct thereof for a definite period. In India the arable land has mostly become the private property of the village communes. Woods, pasture land, and uncultivated land, however, are in many cases still common property, over which all the members of the community have a right of usage. What interests us in such a village community, which has not yet succumbed to the disintegrating influence of English rule, especially of the fiscal system, is the character which the division of labour assumes therein. As we have already noted such a division of labour among the American Indians, but a much higher type is presented by the Indian village communities. Next to the head of the community, who is called the Pateel when he consists of one person, or the Pantsch when this office is filled by a committee of five persons at the most, we find a whole series of officials in the Indian economic community: the bookkeeper, who has to supervise the financial relations of the commune to each of its members and to other communes and to the State; the Talker for the investigation of crimes and encroachments, upon whom also devolves the protection of travellers and their safe conduct over the communal boundary into the next community; the Toti, the fields patrol and surveyor, who has to see that neighbouring communes do not encroach upon the boundaries of the fields, a circumstance that can easily happen in the cultivation of rice; the water-overseer, who distributes the water from the common tanks for irrigation, and sees that they are properly opened and closed, and that every field receives sufficient water, which is of great importance in the cultivation of rice; the Brahmin, who conducts the religious services; the schoolmaster, who teaches the children to read and write; the calendar-Brahmin or astrologer, who ascertains the lucky or unlucky days for sowing, reaping, threshing, and other important labours; the smith, the carpenter, and wheelwright; the potter; the washerman; the barber; the cow herd; the doctor; the Devadaschi (the dance maidens); sometimes even a singer.All these have to work for the whole community and its members, and are remunerated either by a share in the open fields or by a share in the produce of the harvest. Here also, with this highly developed division of labour, we find the co-operation of various types of labour and the division of the products. Let us take an example which should be familiar to every body: that of a patriarchal peasant family, which satisfies its own needs, a social structure which has developed out of a mode of production such as we have just described in the Indian communal economy, a mode of production which may be detected on the threshold of the development of all civilised peoples with whom we are familiar. Such a peasant family likewise does not reveal isolated persons, but is a type of social organism based on the co­operation of various kinds of labour, which vary in accordance with age, sex, and season. Ploughing and sowing are carried on, the cattle are tended and milked, wood is collected, cut up and carpentered, wool is spun, woven, and knitted. The various types of labour co-operate and dovetail into each other; no more than in the previous example are the products here exchanged by the individual workers, but they are divided amongst them in accordance with the conditions. Let us now [1]assume that the means of production of an agricultural community, such as we have described, are perfected to such an extent that less labour than formerly is devoted to agriculture. Labour-power is set free, which, provided the technical means are sufficiently developed, will perhaps be devoted to exploiting a deposit of flint situated in the communal territory, and making flint tools and weapons. The productivity of labour is so great that far more tools and weapons are made than the community needs.A tribe of nomadic shepherds in the course of its wanderings comes into contact with this community. The productivity of labour has also increased so far as this tribe is concerned, which has reached the point of rearing more cattle than it needs. It is obvious that this tribe will gladly exchange its superfluity of cattle for the superfluous tools and weapons of the agricultural community. Through this act of exchange the superfluous cattle and the superfluous tools become commodities. The exchange of commodities is the natural consequence of the development of the productive forces beyond the limited needs of the primitive communities. The original communism becomes a fetter upon the progress of technical development when the latter has reached a certain level. The mode of production demands a widening of the circle of social labour; as, however, the separate communities are independent of, and even hostile towards, each other, this widening is not possible through the extension of systematic communistic labour, but only through the mutual exchange of the superfluous goods produced by the labour of the communities. It is no part of our purpose to investigate how the exchange of commodities reacted upon the mode of production within the community, until commodity production became production carried on by private individuals working independently of each other, and owning the means of production and the products of their labour as private property. What we design to make clear is that commodity production is a social type of production; that it is inconceivable without social co-operation; and that it even signifies an extension of social production beyond the limits of the communistic system (embodied in the tribe, the community, or the patriarchal family) which preceded it. But the social character of production was only implicit in the latter system. Let us take a potter and a cultivator, considering them first as members of an Indian communistic village community, and secondly as two commodity producers. In the first case, they both work in the same manner for the community; one hands over his pots, the other the fruits of his labour in the fields; one receives his share of the fruits of the field, the other his share of pots. In the second case, each carries on private work independently for himself, but each works (perhaps to the same extent as before) not only for himself, but also for others. Then they exchange their products, and it is probable that one receives the same quantity of cereals and the other as many pots as formerly. It seems that nothing has been altered in essentials, and yet the two processes are fundamentally different………..and so on https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1903/economic/ch01.htm

[Dave B]

So if you object to calling that an "exchange" because it's not what you personally consider "exchange" then please provide a word that you understand as a replacement.  I'm not really concerned with what it's called and am focusing on how it works.  Division of labour

[Dave B]

I think that analysis of ours re Adam quote was unfortunate; but common. Based on the ‘confusing’ appearance of the new capitalist class in Russia in new uniforms ‘not dealt with in any theory’ ie  leather jackets and clutching copies of the communist manifesto etc rather than in frock coats and top hats. To avoid this we must remember the fundamental thing that state capitalism in the form we have here is not dealt with in any theory, or in any books, for the simple reason that all the usual concepts connected with this term are associated with bourgeois rule in capitalist society. …………We refuse to understand that when we say “state” we mean ourselves………. the vanguard …….. State capitalism is capitalism which we shall be able to restrain, and the limits of which we shall be able to fix. This state capitalism is connected with the state, and the state is the ………… the vanguard. We are the state. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm  There was obviously the stuff about state capitalism for the workers etc. But that is no different to bourgeois or ordinary capitalism for the British etc.

[Dave B]

It was Lenin’s position in 1905 that if self described socialists attempted to take Russia from feudalism straight to a socialist revolution they would discredit themselves. [In an early Menshevik translation of that passage into English they used translated it as disgrace themselves.] https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/apr/12b.htm  That position hadn’t changed in 1914. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/jun/19.htm    I think it is a mistake to fall into the Leninist narrative of focusing on the October revolution of overthrowing the provisional revolutionary government rather than phase II; the armed overthrow of the constituent assembly in January 1918. The Bolsheviks in October 1917 [in fact Trotsky himself as spokesperson for the Bolsheviks] justified the imminent overthrow of the provisional revolutionary government as necessary to guarantee the convocation of the constituent assembly. The overwhelming majority of the members of the constituent assembly wanted to end the [imperial] war. I think small details can alter the details of historical outcomes. The Bolshevik leadership were not totally behind Lenin’s plans to seize power and keep it. I think Lenin was trying to save his own political neck from a constituent assembly ‘Chilcot Inquiry’ of the German funding of the Bolshevik party; an inquiry that Lenin had agreed to in the middle of 1917. [The German funding of the Bolsheviks was not that dissimilar to the US support for the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, al-Qaida in Afghanistan, ISIS in Syria etc, etc]    Subsequently they basically adopted the political programme of the left SR’s who almost succeeded in their own anti Bolshevik coup in July 1918. If the left SR’s had succeeded our 20th century neo-Leninists would all be flying under a slightly different ‘flag’ less tinged with ‘Marxism’.

[Dave B]

Perhaps it is interesting that in capitalist manufacturing and “packaged” raw material raw material delivered to factory gate etc. They are much more “conscientious” when it comes to return and re-use as is etc. Pallets;  http://www.palletlink.co.uk/pallets/pallet-pools/ pallecons etc http://cheppallecon.com/tracking/

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