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LBird wrote:alanjjohnstone wrote:The issue of decision-making is an intriguing one. Robbo's local sewage plant may well be opposed by NIMBY localists against the proposals of LBird's bugbears, the technocrat elitists who have all manner of environmental reasons for the location's benefits.You're really not reading what I write, alan, and have accepted robbo's version of 'What LBird says'.I have no problem whatsoever with 'technocratic elites' – they simply explain their views to us, and we vote on them.That is, we make the decision, not the 'technocratic elite'.If they claim either not to be able to explain, or that we can't understand, then we'll reject them and that ideology, and replace them with experts who can explain to everyone. The 'technocrats' will be elected, and removed if they don't serve our social needs, interests and purposes.That democratic method in science will be a feature of socialism.There are no needs, interests or purposes that are not amenable to democratic controls. To argue otherwise, is to sanction an elite within social production.That's not socialism, alan. Socialism is we determine our 'environmental reasons'.
This begs the question, if the technocratic elite only advise and do not decide what is the purpose of electing them?
twc wrote:The moral solution to amoral capitalism…Keen, lost deep inside his Minskian models of the capitalist economy — in abstraction from the amoral world of practical capitalist profiteering — demands that the banks make his models, which reveal the amorality, work morally in the interest of capitalism.He tells the banks to kickstart capitalism by gifting everyone money to pay off “debt” — the essential capitalist necessity — or suffer the stigma of “profligacy” — the essential capitalist virtue.Here we can view the folly of pursuing a purely phenomenological modelling of the capitalist economy, and passionately believing in the rules that make the model work in abstraction from the human necessity of reproducing society under capitalist social relations of ownership and control of society’s productive forces.And then, emerging from his phenomenological model into the world beyond it, and pontificating on human conditions such as the “morality” of debt repayment, and not its essential necessity for capitalism and his model of it.Keen forgets that it is precisely the amoral capitalist class that demands its debts be settled — under compulsion of capital to actuate itself — in order that the capitalist may remain the personification of his vital bloodsteam: capital.God, and the aggrieved investor, bless moral Keen…Quote:As a transition from todays debt stagnation, Keen suggests that the central banks create a lump sum to put into everyone’s account. Debtors would be required to use their gift to pay down the debt. Non-debtors would keep the transfer payment – so as not to let demagogic political opponents accuse this plan of rewarding the profligate.If this solution is not taken, debtors will continue to lumber on under debt and tax conditions where only about a third of their nominal wages are available to spend on the goods and services that labor produces. The circular flow between producers and consumers will shrink – being siphoned off by debt service and government taxes to bail out bankers instead of their victims.This should be what today’s politics is all about. It should be the politics of the future. But that requires an Economics of the Future – that is, Reality Economics.You can join the debate here: https://www.facebook.com/CounterPunchOrg/
Just picked up this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPdc75epOEwWhilst the cause is mentioned at 15.55 unfortunately it ends on the usual note that the problem can be resolved through market mechanisms.
gnome wrote:moderator1 wrote:Swansea Branch will be holding an emergency meeting on the Monday1st May to decide whether or not to contest the General Election. Also within the next few weeks a South East Wales Regional Branch will be established and based in Cardiff.Going forward both branches will be holding street stalls on the 1st Saturday of the month in Cardiff and the 3rd Saturday of the month in Swansea.Great news, Brian. Let us know when you've decided on the precise locations for the street stalls.Will the emergency meeting be held at your usual venue?
Cardiff stall will be located at the Newport Road end of Queen Street (10 am to 12 noon). Swansea stall will be located around the entrance to the market on Oxford Street (11 am to 1 pm).The emergency meeting will be at Howard Moss's house 7.30 pm all branch members have been notified and 5 have confirmed attendance.
ALB wrote:moderator1 wrote:Seeing there's no rule on deliberately bumping of posts I've locked the thread where this was occurring.Good. Thanks. Now let's bump it down to the bottom by bumping up other threads
Yet the bumped up continues.
ALB wrote:moderator1 wrote:Introduction here: http://www.thenewhumanrightsmovement.com/why-this-book/Just realised that this, already on the internet, contains this passage which reflects, consciously or not, the Marxist approach to social systems;
Quote:A social system is defined as the means by which a society organizes itself to facilitate survival, prosperity, and, ideally, peaceful coexistence. (…) However, any challenge to the integrity of the system is really a challenge to the integrity of its core foundation, and that core foundation is economic. How a society organizes its resources, labor, production, and distribution is by far the most defining and influential feature of culture. This is why when people discuss social systems in general they usually refer to them by their economic modes.PJ is conscious of the fact he's taking a materialist approach. Yet theres no mention in the intro of a class struggle taking place.
Seeing there's no rule on deliberately bumping of posts I've locked the thread where this was occurring.
Vin wrote:ALB wrote:You mean you did on those 4 or 5 threads ! So the jury is still out on the "conspiracy theory".Yes. I was simply showing how easy it is without editing to bumb post. This is what Pizza is doing No virus. Just free ads
I repeat what I said in #20 Pozzi is not the culprit. For some of the posts which have been bumped he's not been a contributor too.
ALB wrote:You mean you did on those 4 or 5 threads ! So the jury is still out on the "conspiracy theory".I've not edited any posts. Posts are seemingly getting bumped up on a daily basis. Until Admin detects the cause and fixes it we are in the dark.
Vin wrote:ALB wrote:Except that it happened yesterday on 4 or 5 General Discussion threads all within 5 minutes of each other at around 6pm yesterday, which Ponzi is not or cannot have been on (one has the last contribution in 2015).It was not believed that Ponzi could bump his own threads. I proved otherwise. No virus but user manipulation: Ponzi bumping his own thread. Easy try it yourself. Select a thread you started click 'edit' then 'post'. Simples. Now can we get rid of the ads?
Yes a user can bump a thread by editing, nevertheless that don't explain how other posts got bumped and they were not edited. Also, they are threads which Pozzi hasn't made any contribution too.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Quote:I have a strong suspicion his way of getting "there" will be similar to the Civil Rights Movement in the US.In that case, perhaps you can elaborate on just what that is politically and how different it is from a mass movement for socialism, describing the strengths and weaknesses of such a civil rights movement campaign for socialism.(incidentally, can you say who would be the MLK and Malcolm X of such a civil rights movement )
Until I've read the book it would be foolish of me to elaborate on my suspicions. My suspicions are based on PJ's admiration for the CRM and their appeal to the human condition and social values and the way they organised the struggle for equality..Note in this respect PJ is placing the emphasis on Human Rights not Civil Rights.
ALB wrote:I'm half-way through reading it and actually it's rather good. Peter Joseph has come along way since his first Zeitgeist film and its conspiracy theories. He now openly identifies capitalism and its production for sale on a market with a view to profit as the root cause of most of the problems facing society, even contrasting "the ownership class" with "the wage-working majority" and talking of a "class war" of the "upper class" against the "lower class". He also argues that it is ultimately futile to try to change this system as it can be changed to work in any other way than it does, so "only deep system changes will prove to have long-standing effects". It's almost as if he's taken on board some of the criticisms we have made of Zeitgeist, e.g. that it's not a question of convincing enough people of good will to bring about a non-money, non-market society but that it's going to have to involve a struggle against a well-entrenched privileged minority. I know what his alternative to capitalism is going to be but am reading on to see what he is going to suggest as to how to get there.I have a strong suspicion his way of getting "there" will be similar to the Civil Rights Movement in the US.
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