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gnome wrote:

A James Kenny wrote:

As a Manchester United fan and a voter in the Brighton, Pavilion constituency, before I vote on May 7th I would like to know whether you will support legislation to reform football governance? We believe legislative changes are necessary as outlined here: http://www.votefootball.org/proposal

Howard Pilott wrote:

Hello James, Thank you for your email.  My understanding is that Manchester United plc is registered in the Cayman Islands and quoted on the NYSE, and as such is a multinational company. In 2014 they made over £400m. This is a business which exists for the benefit of the shareholders [mostly US family the Glazers] selling shirts and viewing rights and merchandising, oh and also playing some football.  Players are predominantly from overseas. The association with the town of Manchester or England is coincidental to their activities: if they thought they could make money out of it they'd move to Milan or Los Angeles. I have nothing against those who enjoy watching football or those who play it.  I have an issue with a created marketing culture which treats a local sport as a product to be ruthlessly advertised and merchandised. I grew up living locally to Arsenal football ground where you could see players walking along the local streets, and talk to them; some dated girls at my secondary school; friends went for trials and we could get in for a song. Now players earn more in a matter of months than many fans do in a lifetime; they are super celebs. The £250+m wages bill at Old Trafford means £250+m has been sucked out of our economy when it could have been spent on schools, hospitals, railways, care of the elderly, etc…but that's what happens in this cockeyed system. The current system may produce some great players and even sometimes some great games, but what is hidden is the real cost of doing so. Somehow our world spent £5.1bn on premier league viewing rights while we have 4hrs+ waits in A&E.  Ask yourself if that is a good balance. Because football is now big business, you cannot make meaningful reforms: it's like trying to reform a scorpion – what will always come out top is what is good for business. A reform here and there – they'll find ways around it if they want to. However if capitalism was abolished, football and football teams would no longer be big business: the whole thing would be run by whoever is involved, not by non-doms or overseas billionaires. Games would be free and players could play for the sport of it. Ask yourself why footballers need millions of pounds to play well whereas olympiads do it for nothing. I prefer the model of the olympiads myself. Not sure this answered your questions but hopefully it may raise some others. Regards, Howard Pilott The Socialist Party of Great Britain candidate http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/

  

  Yes I agree with Northern Light – that is a model answer by Howard which exactly hits all the right spots 

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

All my time in the party i have never encountered anybody who does not accept the importance of ideology/education  in class consciousness but we do need a receptive fertile soil to sow the seeds…an a farmer like yourself, Robbo, knows you have to turn a field up before you can spread the seed …

 LOL. Not quite a "farmer", Alan – I keep chickens and grow some veggies – but around here people swear by goats manure if you want to have a "receptive fertile soil" to sow your seeds in! But to be serious – yes, you are quite right regarding the importance of ideology/education and I think Socialist Studies are raising  a straw argument in thinking  that anyone in the SPGB thinks otherwise.  Even Rosa Luxemburg who held a collapsist view of capitalism maintained that workers had to come to a revolutionary perspective before you could move on to establish a socialist society.  She too in other words emphasised the importance of  education or "propaganda" but thought it would be assisted by the prospect of capitalist collapse. I don't think that follows necessarily and there are plenty of counterexamples to make us wary – in particular, the rise of fascism out of conditions of severe economic depression.  Conversely, the 1960s when the political climate was changing in a relatively "progressive" direction,  was also a time of economic boom. Which brings us back to Kliman. His arguments seems to be that the Keynesians bought into the folly that capitalist crises could be staved off or at least moderated thought the policies of deficit financing . boosting consumption etc That didn't happen but the measures that have been more recently implemented have had the effect of somewhat cushioning the destruction of capital values and thereby, as I said earlier, of ensuring that the restoration of economic growth has been somewhat more feeble than might have been expected. His position is fundamentally critical of the underlying reformist perspective of the underconsumptionost theorists grouped around the Monthly Review Press.  What they are advocating could actually make matters worse for the working class in the long run. He seems to be saying that we need to grasp the nettle or grab the bull by the horns and realise that the problem is capitalism itself and that you cannot reform capitalism out of its boom/bust cycle.   He does not seem to hold a collapsist position but does seem to think that things could get worse – economically and politically  – as a result of a misguided attempt to reform capitalism through some kind of revamped neo-Keynesian approach.  We should learn from the failure of the Keynesian experiment  and get back to what the socialist movement was supposed to be about – bringing about a fundamental change in society Though I am somewhat sceptical of the emphasis he places on the centrality of the falling rate of profit as the underlying cause of economic crises – I think disproportionality theory is a more convincing explanation because, as I say, profits can fall for reasons other than the "rising organic composition of capital"-  I think a lot of the political conclusions he draws from his analysis are sound But the question of how to make workers more receptive to socialist ideas still remains unanswered.  Personally I think the most important proximate reason why the socialist movement remains so small is quite simply because of what I call the  "small party syndrome".  It tends to be a self perpetuating conation.  Because you are a small you are not considered credible and that deters interest and involvement and so  keeps you small.  Its only when you break through a certain critical threshold numerically speaking that you will be able to overcome this condition and experience exponential growth such as certain reformist political outfits like Podemos here in Spain have been experiencing lately. That incidentally is a compelling argument for simplifying or relaxing conditions for membership of the SPGB – some of which are quite redundant, superfluous and potentially offputting,  in my view – and retaining only what is absolutely essential to ensure the socialist integrity of the organisation.  The quicker you can get more people into the organisation the sooner you will reach that critical threshold.  But thats for another thread I guess…

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Coincidentally. I came across this article in the Socialist Studies journal while surfing the Web http://www.socialiststudies.org.uk/article%20record%20straight.shtml#collapse It touches on the question of the falling rate of profit and makes some interesting claims about the SPGB and Dave Perrin's book on the Party which I had never heard of before (the claims I mean).  I wondered if a response had been issued. The relevant para in the article is this one: Marx goes on to point out that the effect of over-production of capital would simply mean that some part of the capital “would lie fallow completely or partially…while the active portion would produce values at a lower rate of profit, owing to the pressure of the unemployed or but partly employed capital” (ibid). Could capitalism recover? “Yes”, said Marx, since among the consequences of this is the “slaughtering of the values of capitals”, a fall in wage-rates and a rise in the rate of profit due to the fall in prices of the elements of constant capital itself:  As I understand it, Kliman's argument is in part  that the  “slaughtering of the values of capitals”, has not been sufficient to offset the fall in the rate of profit since the 1970s and this is why economic growth has been comparatively weak, historically speaking, despite the ending of recession   

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DJP wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Profits can fall for reasons other than a change in the organic composition of capital and the latter is too slow a process to account for a crisis anyway –  at least as I understand it.

Seems to me that you've understood Kliman too simplistically. See the interview in the Standard and this exchange with David Harvey:http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/economic-crisis/harvey-versus-marx-on-capitalisms-crises.html

 Interesting article but it does not dispel the argument that essentially, for Kliman, crises are linked to the falling rate of profit though he does argue that financial crisis – the credit system – can operate as a "triggering" factor.  I still have this problem with the advocates of the "falling rate of profit" theses as an explanation for crisis in that they don't really explain how the one thing translates into the other.  Disprorportionality  theory, it seems to me at any rate, is the unacknowledged and missing piece of the jigsaw that would permit such an explanation .  However, disproportionality theory has had a bad press because of its early association with reformist advocates of "organised capitalism" like Tugan-Baranowsky and Rudolph Hilferding who believed that the "anarchy of the market" could be overcome by planning, but also because it has been misunderstood to apply solely to imbalances on the demand side  whereas it also applies to the supply side-  the uneven development of the forces of production ,  The result is that commonly we find the debate on the question of "what causes crises?"as being presented as one of underconsumption theory versus the falling rate of profit thesis:  disproportionality theory as a paradigm in its own right tends to be pushed out of the picture. But no explanation of crises would be adequate without a reference to the in built tendency towards disproportional growth.  I think Marx said somewhere – I forget where – that all crises commence as partial crises before becoming generalised. The question is how or why the beginnings of a generalised  crisis can always be traced back to one or two sectors of the economy at the outset. That said, Kliman is not an advocate of what someone called the "naive version" of  the falling rate of profit theses.  He gives due weight to the counteracting tendencies to the falling rate of profit caused by a rise in the organic composition of capital  – such as the destruction or writing off of capital which tends to restore the rate of profit and allow economic growth to commence again.  As I understand it his position is that economic growth since the 1970s has been comparatively feeble in historic terms partly because there has not been enough in the way of capital being destroyed or written off. He is however very good when it comes to exposing the futility of the reformist or neo Keynesian agenda of the underconsumptionists!

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Richard wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

What, for example, is the extent of socialist consciousness in formally secular or atheistic states?

robbo, could you please give me an example of a secular or atheistic state, past or present? The USSR? The Bolsheviks repressed Christianity and replaced it with "socialism". Work hard, comrades, and your children will live in a communist heaven! Comrade Stalin has spoken! Sounds like the same old story with new characters. Nazi Germany? The Nazis created their own religion based on racial purity, Christianity was seen as "incorrect" in National Socialist circles. Hitler wrote some nasty things about Christianity in "Mein Kampf" (which was kinda like a Nazi bible when you think about it). The Khmer Rouge? They tried to wipe out established religions in their attempt to return Cambodia to "Year Zero". I suspect Pol Pot saw Buddhism and Islam as dangerous competitors in his bid for social control of the people. North Korea? They have the state ideology of Juche and the people worship the Kim family (of course in the West we worship the Kardashian family, but that's another matter). There has never been a secular or atheistic state. You need to widen your definition of "religion".

 Hi Richard.I am not quite sure where your argument is leading to – unless it is to suggest that the concept of religion should be widened sufficiently to embrace atheism as well.  If so, I would be inclined to agree.  Etymologically speaking, the word “religion” itself derives from the Latin word "re-ligare" meaning to re-bind or re-connect (like the “ligament” which joins the muscle to the bone).  This original meaning of the term perhaps helps to explain the occasional characterisation one comes across of the state-sanctioned atheism of some countries, like North Korea, as constituting the "official religion" of the country in question. I merely qualified my argument by suggesting that in formal terms such regimes were nominally hostile to "religion"; in the wider sense of the term you advocate, insofar as it is congruent with the original meaning of the word religion, you could well say that regimes are themselves religiously based Of course,  this raises all sorts of interesting questions. If we go along with your wider definition of religion for a moment  then we might well ask whether any kind of human society can do without "religion" in that sense? I suspect not. In that sense the term, "religion "is  stripped of any supernatural connotations, such as belief in a God or an afterlife, and is rendered virtually synonymous with the concept of "social solidarity".  No society is conceivable without the concept of social solidarity.  In his influential work,  The Elementary Forms of Religious Life  (1912) the famous French sociologist, Emile Durkheim analysed the religious rituals of the Australian aborigines which, he argued, were based on a simple kind of religion called “totemism”.  Durkheim attempted to show that the real purpose of such rituals was to revitalise and reinforce the "collective consciousness" of the participants.  In short, to dramatise and strengthen the moral bonds between them in order to create a more cohesive social unity and counteract the effects of dispersal and isolation arising from a hunter-gatherer way of life.  In short , what was really being worshipped behind this display of religiosity was society itself But as I say, I am using the term religion in its formal or usual sense as denoting some form of supernatural belief. Unfortunately, the decline in such belief has not at all translated into greater receptivity to socialist ideas – if anything the opposite is true and the extent of socialist consciousness now is lower than when religion was more widely upheld and practiced.  More fatal to the argument that socialists must implacably opposed religion in all its myriad forms is the simple and demonstrable fact that some people who hold religious ideas in this sense are much more understanding of socialism and sympathetic to the cause than the vast  majority of atheists who obediently go along and support capitalism and some capitalist political party come elections. This is why I agree with Meel that a trenchant and undiscriminating opposition to religion by a socialist political party may be very largely a waste of time and only serve to alienate those who would be our natural supporters but happen to hold some religious beliefs.  There are more than enough safeguards built into the admissions process to ensure that such individuals do not stray politically from the sole objective of a socialist party: socialism 

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DJP wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Kliman belongs to the (somewhat dodgy) "falling rate of profit" school of thought..  

Depends what you mean here, there isn't really a single "falling rate of profit" school, If you think he can be lumped with those that prophesied the collapse of capitalism because of this you're flat wrong.

 No I dont think that.  I agree that you can subscribe to the falling rate of profit theory of crises without holding a collapsist position which as far as I know is what Kliman does.  Its just that I cant see how that particular theory holds water. Profits can fall for reasons other than a change in the organic compostion of capital and the latter is too slow a process to account for a crisis anyway –  at least as I understand it.

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As far as explaining crises is concerned , Kliman belongs to the (somewhat dodgy) "falling rate of profit" school of thought..  This might be an opportunity to question him on that and on the merits of disproportionality theory which is I believe the theory that the SPGB endorses.  See Simon Clarke's cogent defence of the latter here    https://marxismocritico.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/the-marxist-theory-of-overaccumulation-and-crisis.pdf

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Meel wrote:

I am wondering why we should be too bothered about the decline of religion, though.  I would only think it mattered if, when religion declines, socialist consciousness increases, or at least some kind of conscious understanding of how society is constructed.Is there any evidence that this happens when beliefs in religions decline?  Have they developed a higher socialist consciousness – as it would be defined on these pages – in China or Japan? 

I would have thought the opposite has been the case, on the face of it.  Secularisation as a long term trend has coincided with a long term decline – relatively speaking – in socialist consciousness. What, for example, is the extent of socialist consciousness in formally secular or atheistic states? Some of the most ardent pro-capitalists I know of are convinced atheists Of course, correlation does not signify causation but we should be wary of any claim that the growth of secularism is something to be welcomed because it facilitates the spread of socialist consciousness.  There is the counter argument that it far more likely facilitates the spread of "materialistic values" in the vulgar sense of the word i.e.. consumerism .  To put it differently, an invisible god might very well simply be replaced by money as the focus of this new religion. 

Meel wrote:

If not, why should we worry about ordinary, "common or garden" religion?  I do not mean the murderous fundamentalist or "intelligent design" kind, we can do without them.

 Absolutely.  Couldnt agree more.  It is simply not possible to generalise about religion or spirituality. Not every example, necessarily prevents one from wanting and coming to understand, the socialist objective or what is required to achieve it and we all know of personal examples where this is the case.

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More on the subject of ritualistic cannibalism in the Paleolithic period here http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150416093928.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28Latest+Science+News+–+ScienceDaily%29 As article suggests cannibalism may have been "part of a customary mortuary practice that combined intensive processing and consumption of the bodies with the ritual use of skull-cups"  A case of waste not, want not , I guess….Anyone for Seconds?

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Richard wrote:

 Bingo! Give that man a cigar! That's what I've been trying to say all along! Different societies have placed different emphases on individuality but it was always there. We are individuals; to deny this is to deny our basic Humanity.

 Yes. I would say that this  "over-socialised" model of the individual as lacking in individuality is something that sprang from 19th century sociology in the shape of people like Comte, Durkheim Tonnies etc. This marked a shift away from the 18th century Enlightenment idea of society as a contract between (rational, self interested and fundamentally atomised) individuals to the idea of society as a community bound together by moral obligations.  You can see this in Tonnies very important distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft .  Durkheim too, with his emphasis on the division of labour, sought to show how the form of solidarity between individuals (without which no society was possible)  was changing: the mechanical solidarity of traditional societies based on the idea of similarity between individuals was being replaced by the organic solidarity of modern societies based on an advanced division of labour and hence marked differences between individuals – individuality! The religious ties that kept people together in traditional society (the word "religion" comes from the world " re-ligare" meaning to re-bind or re-connect – like the “ligament” which joins the muscle to the bone) were weakening in an increasingly secularised  and mass urbanised society and people like Durkheim fretted over the implications of this development for the maintenance of social order.  For that reason he advocated a kind of secularised religion in the guise of the state. The state should increasingly play the role that religion had played in traditional society What I'm trying to say here, and what this illustrates, is that the 19th roots of much contemporary sociology  are in  a sense fundamentally conservative and reactionary and we should be aware of this.  The big theme of 19th sociology was, as I say, how to maintain social order in the context of a society undergoing disintegration with the rise of industrial capitalism.  To that end  the logic of the argument deployed by sociologists like Durkheim  required that traditional societies be portrayed by way of contrast as completely lacking in individuality compared  to modern societies (and, by implication, the expression of individuality was posited as being somehow problematic for modern societies).  This was armchair Sociology based on theoretical deductions and abstract reasoning, not empirical investigation.  20th centruy Anthropology has repudiated this idea of traditional societies as lacking in individuality.  However back in the 19th century Anthropology , Sociology's cousin, which focussed more directly on these supposed primitive traditional societies had clear links with the whole imperialist project and the "white man's burden" which it sought to justify in social darwinist terms. It too had a reactionary aspect to it – like Sociology Ironically, there is a sense in which it can be said that the greatest threat to individuality was capitalism itself – in the conformity it sought to impose in era of "Fordist mass production" and standardisation ( in the early 20th century).  These days we have supposedly moved beyond this centralised "Fordist" conception of society in which "big is beautiful" into a post modern era underpinned by computer technology and the Internet , in which differences are supposedly celebrated and individuals are encouraged to "do their own thing".  But while that seems like a good thing there is a reactionary twist to this as well in postmodernism's abandonment of all "grand metanarratives" (including Marxism for example) and in its determination not to see the wood for the  trees.  But thats another subject for another thread I guess….

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150416-our-ancestors-were-cannibalsOf course cannibalism may not be a result of any violence but simply a utilitarian tactic for survival…why let potential food go to waste.

 It probably also has religious significance as seems to be the case for a number tribeshttps://spirituality.knoji.com/ritual-cannibalism-past-and-present/

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Richard wrote:

I'm tempted to just make a big bowl of popcorn and sit back and watch the fur fly, but I'll try to contribute! I think somewhere in here LBird mentioned "biological existence" and the "ideological concept" of the individual and maybe that's the key, or at least one number in the combination for the lock.How about this: I am a biological entity, an individual human being. However, since roughly the Renaissance the idea of individuality has been promoted for various reasons. Maybe the social concept of individuality was needed for the development of capitalism. From what little I know of Medieval society it was probably a more organic society than ours and as the influence of the Church declined in Europe that organic cohesiveness fell apart and before you could say "Protestant work ethic" everyone was buying smart phones! That's my version of Western history – eat your heart out, Kenneth Clark!So, we have biological individuals who came to see themselves more and more as socio-economic individuals. This socio-economic concept of individuality may be unique to Western society or it may be spread as capitalism spreads; maybe it's part and parcel of capitalism. I don't know.

 Hi Richard If you can get hold of a book called "Sovereign Individuals of Capitalism" by Abercrombie et al it is worth a read.  The authors make a distinction between individuality and individualism – the latter being an essentially outer-oriented socio-economic concept whereas the former has to do with one's inner subjective life, one's apprehension of oneself as a distinct thinking feeling being There has always been individuality in this sense but the social emphasis placed on it has varied historically . For the overwhelming bulk of our existence as hunter gatherers , human beings exhibited a very marked degree of individuality. It went hand in hand with a fiercely egalitarian way of life. It was the rise of class society that brought about the attempt to suppress individuality – though as I have argued, this could not ultimately succeed and for which reason you had such things as "slaves revolts" predicated on a sense of outrage on the part of the slaves at the treatment they received The medieval organic society you refer to was a rigidly hierarchical one in which individuals were expected to know their "place".  But even back in the 12th century or even earlier there were cultural  inklings of developments that were to come like the practice of taking private confessions in church which was symbolically quite an important shift You saySo, we have biological individuals who came to see themselves more and more as socio-economic individuals. This socio-economic concept of individuality may be unique to Western society or it may be spread as capitalism spreadsThis is correct as far it goes except that what you are talking about is individualism not individuality! In fact , in many ways individualism pits itself against individuality and you cannot begin to understand the whole backlash of the Romantic movement against a "soulless" industrial capitalism without recognising this  difference. It is absolutely key to everything about that movement It is individuality, not individualism, that socialists should be stressing and it ties in completely with our egalitarian ethos (remember the point about hunter gatherers!).  What we oppose is individualism which is predicated on the idea of  the self-interested atomised individuals competing with his or her fellows. Individuality is something totally different and ties in with the humanistic concept of the individual striving for self actualization (Maslow's hierarchy of needs)Marx and Engels were fierce advocate of individuality but opponents of individualism. This is absolutely clear from comments I have already posted like this oneWe have further shown that private property can be abolished only on condition of an all-round development of individuals, precisely because the existing form of intercourse and the existing productive forces are all-embracing and only individuals that are developing in an all-round fashion can appropriate them, i.e., can turn them into free manifestations of their lives. We have shown that at the present time individuals must abolish private property, because the productive forces and forms of intercourse have developed so far that, under the domination of private property, they have become destructive forces  (German Ideology) In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”, (Communist Manifesto) My emphases

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Dave B wrote:

I think there is a natural bias in the way we look at things in an attempt to predict events from the starting or present position. Whether that is an accurate reflection of ‘reality’ is another matter.

 DaveThere is great quote from J.B.S. Haldane for you to savour“Teleology is like a mistress for a biologist: he cannot live without her but he’s unwilling to be seen with her in public”  (https://biologistsmistress.wordpress.com/) 

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Capitalist Pig wrote:

ok so you guys are basicly saying that all science is formed from ideologies, which means there is no such thing as objective thinking because everything we know is based on ideology

 Hmm. I would put it somewhat differently – that there is no such thing as purely objective thinking. In the social sciences this refers to the problem of "reflexivity"- that we are part of the very thing we are meant to be "objectively" observing.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexivity_%28social_theory%29)  But even in the physical sciences there is the "observer effect" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_%28physics%29)  – that is quite apart from the other factors I mentioned and which Kuhn touched on in the formulation of scientific theories… Hope this helps!

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CP,  I think what LBird is trying to say but in his usual offensive and patronising manner is quite simply that science is not "value free" –  that its agenda is shaped by economic interests and that the practice of its practitioners (the scientists) are ideologically informed. We can see this in the way scientists will cling on to their pet theory in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence, for example T S Kuhn's famous 1962 work "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is a seminal source in this regard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions) and is worth a read if you can get hold of a copy..Although the thought  will horrify LBird, I actually agree with him on this point although I think on a quite a number of other points he is daft as a brush – particularly his unbelievably silly idea that the entire world population should vote on the "truth" of thousands upon thousands of scientific theories. Can you ever begin to imagine it … Its just that LBird has a habit of rubbing people up the wrong way.  But don't be put off by his mannerism; on this point at least there is some sense in what he is saying

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