DJP
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“Unless there is some technological process available to confirm the dynamic consent of the overwhelming majority of people from one day to the next”
So you think everybody has to have an opinion about everything?
“There would be capital (there has to be, otherwise industrial capacity is limited), and people would have private possessory property, including homes they live in or use, but there would be no property system”
What do you mean by capital here? Things like factories? Or financial capital?
“From that point, there would be no ‘world socialism’, as such, in the shape of a political authority. Instead, there would be a more complex post-socialist system – really a complex of systems – made up of individuals and groups making purely industrial decisions, probably at a very small scale, and mostly self-directed. In some respects, it would resemble a classical market system because production would be in response to both use/need and demand, except there would be no ‘market system’, as such.”
How is this different to the federalist ideas of the anarchist communists?
“It is the idea that socialism can simply be abolished, it does not have to be struggled for, and possibly it cannot be struggled for, and any such struggle is futile and always leads back to capitalism or some similar system. In other words, socialism can only be achieved by democratic means in the sense of people voting for it.”
This isn’t the Socialist Party case at all, more like a caricature version of it. Of course socialism has to be struggled for! The capitalists aren’t just going to hand it over, this means action outside of parliament will be just as important as that inside it, if not more. This is why majority understanding is crucial; if the parliamentary route is blocked (I have no doubts that there would be attempts to do this) the effect would be a further loss in the legitimacy of the capitalist class and a further empowerment of the socialist majority who wouldn’t just be sat about passively.
Not sure which part of the book you’re talking about, you could be right, but seems a bit of a vain criticism to me. I don’t think the SPGB is particularly relevant to the development of anarchism in Britain, or elsewhere. The SLP was mentioned in relation to Syndicalism and Guy Aldred, no?
The Heath book is a history of anarchism, so why would you need to mention the SPGB? The WSM is briefly mentioned in the book BTW. It’s just hard to find where since the book is let down by there being no index (or proper references). The Nick Heath book is worth looking at, in fact it’s right up there with the best on the topic. The Morris one is not bad, but it’s just a large pamphlet really.
“I agree with YMS, it should always be a return to class struggle.”
Despite their apparent esoteric appeal discussions about how finance, money creation and inflation work are of importance to the class struggle. They form part of the answer to the question “Why not reformism?”
“Can someone please explain how it is affecting the present cost of living crisis in the simplest of language?”
I don’t think the current cost of living crisis is actually caused by the kind of “inflation” we are talking about here (a fall in the value of money) but by something else, namely rises in the international price of gas and oil and basic foodstuffs which has been caused by various geo-political conflicts.
In common parlance “inflation” is used to describe any rise in prices, but we are talking about something more specific here.
FWIW The latest Michael Roberts blog post is on this topic too. It has a graph of US M2 and CPI growth compared. A lot of it seems to be talking about ‘inflation’ in terms of general price rises, rather than a loss in the value of money though – which may not necessarily be the same thing. But I guess as you cannot observe the value of money directly, we are stuck with using things like the CPI as a metric.
In one of my previous posts I said “Eventually, the total sums of credits and debits will have to match each other.” – On reflection, this ‘eventually’ is only a theoretical reference. In reality, the process never ends the ‘eventually’ never comes. New deposits and loans are continually being made and paid off.
All that a credit does is move a date of payment into the future. And, ‘in the end’ (which may not ever come) payments cannot be put off by seeking further credit indefinitely. Credit money speeds the circulation of commodities, so isn’t what we are dealing with here an increase in the velocity of money rather than a decrease in the value of it? Or is there some relation between the two?
If purchasing power (the ability to circulate commodities) is something created by banks issuing credit (possibly it is), how is this different to value and what is the relationship between the two?
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