[robbo203]

PaulB wrote:

 
Would Party members please resume posting on the WSM Forum. Not in reply to McTet but on some other issues (ANY other issues would do). I’ve tried to get discussions going, but without success. I wonder how many non-members are still bothering to look at the forum, given how boring it’s become.

 
Perhaps it  only appears “boring” precisely because of the non participation of members in the debates going on. Its a self fulfillling prophecy, in other words.
Strewth,  I can’t understand you guys sometimes. The anarcho cap arguments are piss poor and feeble and you are complaining about them hogging the discussion when you have more than ample opportunity to floor them,again and   again and again, with scintillating, incisive and above all very interesting socialist arguments that will demonstrate conclusively  to each and all the superiority of the socialist case. And yet here you are turning  down such a heaven sent  oppportunity! Nope, I just dont geddit at all.
Cmon guys  – get in there and do the job! Stop complaining and taking on this plaintive “passive -reactive” role,  As an experiment why not just try taking on one or two of their claims in bited sized fashion. Bill has  produced some brilliant short snappy posts  – like his example of the Incas refuting the claim that a large scale societies cannot exist without money.  This is the sort of stuff that any curious onlooker would appreciate and doubtless the contrast with the waffle offered up by our free marketeers would not be lost on them

[robbo203]

Nod Glodnig wrote:

“Not even an end to world hunger and the threat of ecological disaster? Well poor braindead old you.” Obviously every thinking person does. How one achieves that, is another matter.
There is enough food on this planet to feed everyone. The problem is distribution – and starvation occurs usually in war-torn or corrupt countries that prevent this – plus no infrastructure like roads, petrol stations and transport to get it there.

 
This is true but this itself is part of a larger problem that is capitalism and the priorities it pursues which often promote corruption and sometimes war

Nod Glodnig wrote:

Many countries produce surplus foodstuffs that they dump onto the world market to keep the price locally high – to please their farmers. This to me is a good solution, who cares how it comes about, if it gets food to the mouths of people who need it.

 
Dumping food on world markets can sometimes simply have the effect of transferring the problem elsewhere. If I remember correctly, India’s decision to reverse its policy on food exports a number of years ago had adverse consequences for a number of  other food exporting countries whose farmers suffered as a result.  As it happens much of the food surpluses at the time succumbed to spoilage because of inadequate warehousing facilities due to poor funding. It is also well known that well intended charitable efforts at delivering food to people who desparately need it such as in times of drought  can undermines efforts to to revive farming locally. Such is the perversity of the market system
Apart from that, there is the literal dumping  (meaning destruction) of food. – not just at the retail end of the supply chain as when supermarkets dump stuff in skips etc  but at the production end as well. Locally , here in Spain Ive seen tons of cherry tomatoes rotting in the barrancos around the grotesquely ugly greenhouse belt  along the coast  between Adra and Almeria (the only other man-made structure you can see from outer space  – apart from the Great Wall of China, apparently).  These greenhouses proliferating like a cancer are a particularly vivid illustration of the utter irrationality  of market capitalism and the ecological disasters it brings in its train. Many of the greenhouses now stand empty. Ilegal wells having drained the acquifer have enabled an inrush of sea water to fill the vacumm leading to salinisation of the water supply.. The surrounding countryside has been affected too and as the vegetation suffers erosion sets in, compounding problems
There is of course also the deliberate withdrawal of agricultural land prompted by apparent overproduction in the form of  food surpluses. Millions of hectares of land have been affected by this within the EU alone.

Nod Glodnig wrote:

Ecological disaster – another subject. One that I have been active in my own little way for many years.

 
Good . So you  are not  quite of the Im-alright-Jack-And-Stuff-The Rest-Of-You  persuasion that came across strongly in your original post. Glad to hear of it!

[robbo203]

J Surman wrote:

This seems a rather strange communication coming from out of the blue. I’m wondering what motivated ‘Nod’ to write in at this time, perhaps he’ll tell us more if he wants any serious replies.
Just one point, what’s his opinion on the really nasty parasites who cause so much death and destruction around the world while they’re focussed on their never-ending quest for accumulation?

 
Yes  very strange indeed,  He is almost a parody of your stereotypical Daily Mail reader – with his complacent,  self-satisfied , I’m-all-right-Jack–and-stuff- the-rest -of-you attitude  . And the guy clearly doesn’t have much of a clue about socialism either with his  objection to distributing  his hard-earned cash to others, who have contributed nothing to society, for the sake of equalisation. 
It just doesn’t add up .  The chirpy familiarity – “Hi Guys! (and Dolls)” – and the odd Marx quote suggesting someone  who has done a little reading around and whose outlook on life is a little broader than singlemindedly  getting on in the rat-race, making loadsa money and dying of a pre retirement heart attack,   just doesnt seem to sit easily  with the naff and drearily predictable sad sentiments of your typical right-up-your-own-backside egotistical type. “Look at  me!. Look at what a success I am,  having  got where I am through sheer graft.. Why should I share what I have achieved with you. So fuck of!!”.  Strewth,  give us break.. This is , well., so passe,  luv.  Gordon Gecko said it all back in the 1980s and we’ve moved on since then.
But what intrigues me is why reestablish contact  with an organisation with you were evidently only very fleetingly acquainted all those years ago and with which you today have so little in common.  Now there’s a mystery. Perhaps Mr Mystery Man  should tell us more about this voyage of self discovery he has seemingly embarked upon

[robbo203]

I posted something  from Yahoo news on Revleft about Clarksons’s comment on shooting strikers. To be fair though it does seem that Clarkson’s comment  was somewhat  taken out of context – it was just his feeble and rather tasteless attempt at being satirical . Someone on Revleft reproduced part of the transcript of the intereview which I had not seen before and it seems clear from this that the guy was only joking.  This was not particularly obvious from the Yahoo News article which so incensed me to begin with  Still it doesnt make him any the less an overpaid buffoon with a seemingly limitless capacity for sticking  his foot in his mouth

[robbo203]

PaulB wrote:

 
I think there’s no point in ‘discussing’ with McTet. Ignore them, and return the WSM Forum to dealing with the Socialist case.

Hi Paul
I dont quite understand your argument.  Yes, the McDonagh/Tet double act can be exasperating at times and,  yes,  they are a prize pair of twits but it is actually  through dealing with their sundry claims that the strength of the socialist case becomes all the more evident.  Ironically, they are doing socialists and the WSM a big favour by exposing the utterly nonsencial basis of their objections to socialism and this is  something which no  reasonably balanced or sensible  outside observer could fail to notice.  Like I said , the point of taking on such people  is not to convert them; it is for the benefit of those looking in on the debate and we should not forget that. (It  also benefits us by sharpening our debating skills but that is a lesser concern)
You should be capitalising on the opportunities presented by the likes of McDonagh and Tet. Grind the buggers down with logic and facts,  Dont just ignore them. Ignoring them only sends out the message that you have no confidence in your own ideas whereas socialists have every reason to feel hugely confident

[robbo203]

gnome wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Ive noticed lately a serious drop off in participation by members in the WSM forum which seems to be increasingly monopolised by free marketeers and others. Is it being abandoned in favour of this forum? Personally,  I think that would be a great shame and a great waste

 
Well, if there has been “a serious drop off in participation by members in the WSM forum” then I would venture to suggest that it’s due, at least in part, to persistent posts by various nutjobs such as Searle, Tapping, Howes, Tet and the biggest nutjob of them all, McDonut.  I know for a fact that many members are heartily sick of reading posts from these individuals with super-egos who are, unwittingly no doubt, aided and abetted by well-intentioned folk who consider these monopolisers are ultimately capable of being swayed by reasoned argument.
There’s more chance of plaiting fog; the best way to deal with these people is to ignore them.  Eventually they’ll go away!

 
Well i for one do not entertain any illusions at all about swaying such people by “reasoned argument” (though  I dont think you can reasonably put Nick Tapping and Bob Howes in the same boat  as Tet and McDonut – NT is fervant advocate of a moneyless society even if his approach to getting there may be questionable)
 
The reason for engaging these people in debate is not to “convert” them.; it is for the benefit of any third party who may be looking in on the debate  and , indeed, ourselves too. I am a strong believer in the value of sharpening our critical teeth against any and all opponents.  We should not be running away from critical arguments or burying out head in the sand and  hoping they will go away if we ignore them.  Even the most crackpot opponent can occasionally come up with something that tests our steel and prompts us to rethink. –  even if it only means qualifying or rephrasing what we earlier said. 
All this is grist to the mill of constantly improving and enhancing the case for revolutionary communism

[robbo203]

Thanks for that Adam . Yes very interesting.  I notice on the very first page Bukharin distinguishes  Adam Smith’s subjective LTV from Marx’s objective version of the same  characterising the latter as an extreme example of objectivism.   Its a long peice so it will take some time to read through but it will be interesting to see what comments he comes up with on marginalist economics. 
This question of how to allocate inputs under conditions of scarcity in proportion to the relative importance of end uses needing them is something that is preoccupying me just at the moment.  I wonder if anyone here has any thoughts on the matter?  We cannot just assume that in socialism the available supply of an input will be ample enough to satisfy every possible end use .  We have to prioritise end uses in that case and allocate the input accordingly  but how and in what proportions?  Are we talking about some kind of cascading model of allocation – end use 1 gets is requirements fully met, end use 2 likewise and then, when the supply starts running out, end use 3’s requirements are partially met , while 4 and 5;’s are completely neglected.   And so on and so forth.
Capitalism can, of course, fall back on the “equimarginal principle” to resolve this particular problem.  But  what about socialism? Might  marginalist economics actually have something useful to say after all  about  the practical organisation of a non market  socialist system?  Hhmmm

[robbo203]

Thanks for that  DJP  – I will follow up the links
 
I wasnt thinking so much of diseconomies  of scale  which relates more specifically to corporation size but the classic presentation of diminishing marginal utility. You know –  the one about  the first ice cream consumed yielding a high marginal return in terms of the pleasure it provides, the second somewhat less and  the third even less. And so on and so forth. Granted  utility or “utils “is not exactly something that can be measured in a cardinal sense although in the early period of utilitarian thought  (a la Bentham & co) the workinga assumption  was indeed  that utility  could be thus measured.  All the same as the icre cream example demonstrates there is undeniable kernal of  truth in marginalist economics – its not alll cock and bull stuff.
 
Question is – does it have any possible appplication to the way a socialist society could organise production?  For example , given two  or more  particular ends uses how might one allocate a given input common to both of  them ?   And in what proportions? Is there a case for saying that something like the “equimarginal principle” – the opttimal allocation of an input, as in this case, between several end uses  – might  apply and, if so, how might might  we apply it?

[Author]

Posts