DJP
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gnome wrote:Idiot indeed. Another ignoramous who hasn’t a clue about the world he lives in.
Though in fairness he has previously changed his mind on certain things (i.e. 911 conspiracies) in light of the evidence. So perhaps he will correct himself here. I’ve emailed him a link to the Anarchist FAQ!I’m not holding my breath though!
Some thoughts in no particular order:Firsty the money / market system doesn’t effectivly solve these problems since market decisions are made according to ‘effective demand’ i.e who has money, not human need. But we all know this…The ‘community’ is the whole world so if needed scarce resources can be bought in from elsewhere.When the determining factor is not what takes the less labour-time but what fulfills needs to the highest degree, I think resources will rapidly be pushed into finding alternatives to materials that are scarce.Supply and demand can be tracked directly as goods flow through distribution centres. It is unnecessary to have a centralised plan or meetings to decide what people want.I’m not sure if it is really possible to rank needs in such a way as you are describing, since ‘use’ is something entirely subjective and it is impossible for individuals (and a society at large) to come up with a priotised list of wants, since these are constanly changing. I think you’ve bought this idea accross due to the influence of marginalist economics. (I’ll probably have to say more to explain this better)If there is no need or incentive for individuals to hoard I don’t think overconsumption would be a problem. An accumulation of stuff you don’t need is a burden.Here’s an article on labour vouchers. http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/depth-articles/history/labour-vouchersThere’s a lot more detail that could be gone into..
gnome wrote:And I see EARB is showing a film on the last Saturday of that month:-http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/human-resources-film-and-discussion-norwichIndeed there is. But unfortunately I will be at a day school at London School of Economics that day.So is weekend of 18th Feb good with people?
A nice potted history of the rise of marginalist economics is in Ben Fine & Dimitris Milonakis ‘From Political Economy to Economics’But neo-classical economics is possibly on the way out, there’s a lot of text being produced within the field itself which criticize it and suggest a move to more ‘heterodox’ approaches. But as well as Marxian approaches this heterodoxy includes everything from Austrian economics to behavioral economics.My Open University textbooks for this year include a lot of hetrodux stuff, but no Marx.
Not sure if you’re confusing profits with super profits?Don’t have my textbooks to hand right now. Is this what you’re talking about?It remains to be seen how you can achieve perfect competition in the real world.
Excellent. Just a slight modification of your idea. Instead of commentary on news items, which may go out of date, why not short FAQ type answers? We could film a bunch together then gradually release them on the youtube channel. I think there a lot you can do with 5 minutes…
gnome wrote:I think you’ll find Mark has already been nominated…………..and has accepted
One step ahead. I like it!
Without wanting to throw a damper on your enthusiasm. What the party suffers from is not a lack of ideas but a lack of people who are willing to put them into practice. So perhaps you should seek nomination to the AV dept and put your ideas into reality.
Brian wrote:But I was hoping Darren would reply to my question because it appears he’s assuming that a needs based society will not be producing wealth or value through default.Sorry Brian, I think you’re getting confused somewhere. I said:
Quote:Wealth and value are not the same thing, like as has been said a non-market economy would be governed by need, not socially necessary labour time.‘Value’ in the Marxian sense is the amount of abstract socially necessary labour time represented in a commodity.Wealth, is any use-value. So to say that a needs based society would not produce wealth is a like saying a needs based society would produce square circles, it’s a logical contradiction. That’s not what I said.Watch my talk here
At the risk of repeating some that has been said above…In capitalist society workers, in acting on the materials provided by nature produce all the wealth of society, yet not all workers actually produce ‘value’.It gets rather technical here, some sectors do not directly produce ‘value’ but siphon it off from other value producing sectors. This is not to say that the labour of non-value producing sectors is useful (though some of it may only be useful in the context of a capitalist system). In common usage the word ‘value’ means something different than it does in the Marxian sense.It is also worth noting that (intrinsic) ‘value’ and ‘exchange-value’ are not the same thing. To also further complicate things, as far as I know Marx did not use the term ‘labour theory of value’ to describe his theory, the labour theory of value really belongs to Smith and Ricardo. Some people think that Marx’s theory implies that commodities exchange at their ‘value’ equivalents according to necessary labour time, in fact this is what Ricardo not Marx claimed.If I’ve got it right Marx’s theory would not hold IF commodities exchange at value, in a capitalist society they generally exchange at price of production + average rate of profit, which is what Marx said. Marx’s theory is more to do with how labour is regulated in an economy governed by the law of value.Wealth and value are not the same thing, like as has been said a non-market economy would be governed by need, not socially necessary labour time.Clear? As mud
Had a look through this, nice looking video but the charter falls down on the first hurdle.1. “The highest concern of humanity is the combined common good of all living species and biosphere.”If that where true perhaps they should be starting a campaign to bring the small pox virus from extinction and tell people to stop using bleach as it kills micro-organisms…That said from point 3 onwards it’s not too bad, shame they trip themselves up early on.
J Surman wrote:I’m not good with labels and don’t like attaching them but I suppose this one is anarcho-communist. Please put me straight if I’m wrong.Not sure, but you’re definitely in the right ball park. They / she / he might instead use the label ‘libertarian communist’ the site libcom.org uses artwork from the same artist, not that that necessarily means anything. The pamphlets on the site are from a variety of people / positions.
I’m not sure if I’ve made my mind up about this but maybe starting from the point of ‘abolishing money’ is the wrong way to go. It’s like your presenting the conclusion first when really you should be explaining the arguments that led to it.There’s a common cause to all the problems you mention, perhaps showing this in an accessible manner is the way to go. There’s a new book out called ‘The Housing Monster’ this starts from looking at the process of how houses are constructed then spreads out into a full description / critique of capitalism, now the book will have it’s faults no doubt (I’ve only read exerts as yet) but perhaps this is a good angle to adopt. Start from a commonly experienced social problem and show how the causes run back to the same thing…Anyway, just throwing some ideas around.
