robbo203
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“The event was the latest in a series of protest actions, including strikes, by Madrid’s public health workers against the capital region’s government. The unions said Madrid spends the least amount per capita on primary health care of any Spanish region even though it has the highest per capita income. They claim that for every 2 euros spent on health care in Madrid, one ends up in the private sector.”
————————————–Andalucía (where I live) is reputedly one of the poorest regions but also has one of the best healthcare systems in the country. It is currently under PP (conservative) control but is traditionally PSOE – like some of the “red wall” constituencies in England. I’ve had reason to use the public health care system system several times – both A&E and primary health care and it is good – far better than the rip-off private hospitals
“It really feels like in the near future society will either evolve to socialism or descend into a feudal like society where machines produce the large sum of products while most people get by on some sort of UBI plan or become mere entertainment for the lords. I don’t forsee capitalism surviving automation.”
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TBH I am sceptical about the possibility of capitalism imploding as a result of automation. The employed workforce worldwide has, after all, been growing not diminishing in the face of increasing mechanisation, robotisation and automation – although the composition and location of the workforce has changed. For example over 80 per cent of manufacturing now takes place in the global South
Alarmist stories of jobs being decimated are, I think, a bit exaggerated. Partly, this is because what is being looked at is only one segment of the production chain. A machine might make three workers redundant when it once took , say, 5 workers to do the job in question , leaving only 2 workers needed to get done. But this is to overlook the additional labour required to produce the machine itself or the additional labour required to produce the inputs that go into making that machine
Partly also it is because what is more likely to happen is that the nature of the job will change rather than the job itself will disappear . According to a recent MCkinsey Report:
“Almost half the activities people are paid almost
$16 trillion in wages to do in the global economy
have the potential to be automated by adapting
currently demonstrated technology, according
to our analysis of more than 2,000 work activities
across 800 occupations. While less than 5 percent
of all occupations can be automated entirely using
demonstrated technologies, about 60 percent of all
occupations have at least 30 percent of constituent
activities that could be automated. More occupations
will change than will be automated away”(McKinsey Global Initiative,
“A FUTURE THAT WORKS:
AUTOMATION, EMPLOYMENT,
AND Productivity”
June 2017)I think from a socialist point of view the more interesting trend to focus on would be the growing proportion of “socially useless labour” in capitalism (not the same thing as “unproductive” or non-profit-producing labour) which you might be hinting at in your comment….
Capitalism is back in business in China. Not that ever was not except in the mind of deluded Maoists
“Vice-premier Liu He, the economic plenipotentiary of Xi Jinping’s China, told a gathering of business leaders and ministers in Davos that China is back inside the tent and eager to restore the money-making bonhomie of the golden years.
“We must let the market play the fundamental role in the allocation of resources, and let the government play a better role. Some people say China will go for the planned economy. That’s by no means possible,” he said.”
“Erm, no. A stalemate is when neither side is winning. Russia is winning decisively. It takes a long time to turn an army of 600k into fertilizer.”
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The same dehumanising fascistic metaphor from our resident Putin bootlicker. Are fellow workers foolishly fighting other workers for the sake of their respective capitalist warlords to be regarded as “fertiliser”? This is the language of people who supported the use of the gas chambers in world war two.
Apart from that Russia is not winning decisively (present tense). It might theoretically win decisively in the future in the “logistics war” or it might not. None of us possesses a crystal ball. But anyone who interprets recent military developments in this war as Russia “winning decisively” is either living in cloud cuckoo land or has a poor grasp of the English language. Talk of the “noose now (tightening) around Bhakmut” . The Russian military and their private enterprise affiliates have been struggling for months to capture this place at the cost of huge numbers of causalities. Nothing decisive about this at all . This is to say nothing of Russian retreats elsewhere in Ukraine.
This is a squalid capitalist war over rival capitalist interests that looks likely to drag for quite a while.
“Who’s victory would that be?”
One capitalist warlord as against the other. The workers on both sides would yet again be the losers. But TS couldn’t care a toss about the interests of the workers in this sordid capitalist war- He is too busy licking his master´s boot
“…unconditional opposition to Russian invasion of Ukraine, NATO and the neo–Nazi Azov battalion in Ukraine is central to left politics for peace, solidarity and internationalism. It is ideological bankruptcy and reactionary politics to choose one over the other in the name of fighting the enemy and protecting the territorial sovereignty… Territorial nationalism is a ruling class ideology…”
_____________________________That´s refreshing to hear! Why is it so difficult for some people to comprehend that opposing one side does not have to mean supporting the other? We are under no obligation to support either side. To do so means in effect you are supporting capitalism, anyway.
Interesting BBC article on the declining fortunes of Ukraine’s oligarchs (the same might be said of Russia’s oligarchs) as a result of the capitalist war. Particularly interesting is the relationship between the central state and the oligarchs.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64075087
The article contends that “The war has only intensified the loss of earnings for Ukraine’s super-rich. But will their demise strengthen Ukraine’s democracy?” Of course, as with Russia, Ukraine hardly qualifies as a democracy – more an autocracy – but the idea that the oligarchs or super-rich are facing their demise (particularly in a country as corrupt as Ukraine which shares with Russia the dubious honour of being one of the most corrupt countries in the world) is utter nonsense. Some of these superrich have simply gone into exile and will no doubt return once the war is over. Zelensky himself has made quite a fortune. Capitalism inevitably produces an oligarchic or superrich capitalist class
This part is particularly of interest:
“The next blow came in late 2021, when Ukraine passed what was known as the “de-oligarchisation bill”.
President Zelensky’s new law defined an oligarch as someone who met three of the following four conditions:
Holding influence over the media or politics
Owning a monopoly
Making millions of dollars a year.All those who qualified were exposed to extra checks and banned from funding political parties.”
More on the parasite king of North Korea – Kim Yong-Un – and his royal entourage
Russia says 63 dead in this missile attack, Ukraine says “hundreds of Russian soldiers died. We don’t know what the true figure is but what a waste of young lives for such a stupid inhumane deluded cause – fighting for the one or the other capitalist warlord and their respective oligarchic cronies
No one is going to win this war except the arms manufacturers. The workers from whichever arbitrary spatial entity – “Russia” or “Ukraine” – will as per usual be the biggest losers
“Alex says this is an illusion (because everything that happens anywhere in the universe at one moment is determined by everything that happened before right back to the Big Bang). Maybe it is in that unhelpful sense (unhelpful because it doesn’t explain anything). Or maybe “free will” is the (unhelpful) name given to that illusion?”
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That’s what David Hume said wasn’t it? – that “The cause must be prior to the effect.” (A Treatise of Human Nature, 1739). It’s called mechanical determinism – or hard determinism. Everything is reducible to the order(s) of reality below it and ultimately, I guess, to the level of subatomic particles. Causation is strictly a one-way flow – from the “lowest” (or earliest) to the “highest” order we know of being conscious existence.
The opposite of the hard determinist perspective in relation to the free will question is the indeterminist perspective held by people like Sartre. This asserts the absolute reality of free will. We are absolutely free to choose what we wish which is obviously bunkum. Our choices are evidently conditioned by what is possible
There is however an intermediate perspective called “soft determinism” which seems to me to be the most plausible one and gets around the problems one encounters with an essentially “physicalist” explanation of reality provided by the hard determinists who completely deny the possibility of free will altogether. This soft determinist position is represented by “emergence theory”. This basically holds that a higher order of reality “supervenes” or depends on a lower order but is NOT reducible to that lower order. Non-reducibility is demonstrated by the fact that the higher order can exert “downward causation” on the lower order. For example, mental states can affect brain states and are not simply “determined” by the latter. There is a two-way interaction.
I’ve never really understood why some comrades appear to adopt what seems to be a hard-determinist position. It’s a position that came to the fore with the emergence of mechanical philosophy in the 17th century and, as it happens, lent support to the social contract theories of people like Thomas Hobbes around that time.
Hobbes was a leading exponent of individualist ideology. He posited the idea that human beings once lived in a “state of nature” when existence was (supposedly) nasty brutish and short. These pre-social beings then decided to come together and set up a human society. Hence the idea of a “social contract”. Of course, the whole argument is completely nonsensical but it does conform exactly to the strict one-way flow of causation upheld by the hard determinist model. Empirical individuals had to have preceded social formations according to the logic of that model.
This is surely contrary to everything that a Marxian theory of the individual upholds. According to this, individuals are socially produced. In saying they are socially produced we are acknowledging the possibility of downward causation – from the level of society to the level of the individual. Language itself is a social product, symbolic interactions between individuals only being possible on the basis of shared meanings. A so-called “social contract” could never have occurred between pre-social individuals who lacked the means of communicating their intentions to each other.
If we accept in principle the possibility of downward causation then this refutes the claims of hard determinism but without, at the same time, lapsing into the idealism of indeterminism. Even in a “hard science” like Physics the mechanistic model of the universe has long been discarded before and since Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle was formulated back in 1927. We can add to the list of counter-examples such developments as the “observer effect”, the “butterfly effect”, and “entanglement theory” which paint a picture of physical reality that is altogether more complex and mysterious than a hard-nosed deterministic cum mechanical model of the universe would suggest.
If that is true of the physical sciences how much more true would it be of the social sciences which is, after all, our terrain – the terrain of SOCIALists
“Right, cos killing Nazi stormtroopers is actually the moral equivalent of killing Jewish civilians. Lol”
____________________________________Mr Putin Bootlicker
What proportion of the Ukraine forces would you reckon consider themselves to be facto Nazi stormtroopers. What proportion of the Russian forces consider themselves to be facto Nazi stormtroopers? 3%? 5%? 10%? Have you done a social survey (and can you provide us with the evidence?) or is this just complete guesswork on your part? Whatever the case, it doesn’t excuse your disgusting nazi-like reference to workers being turned into “fertilizer” (along with thousands of civilians including children) even if they have been conned into supporting one or the other capitalist warlord in this sordid capitalist conflict.
You may consider Russia holding on to Crimea, Donbas, and its other imperialist acquisitions to be a “victory”. But it would be a victory for Russian capitalism, not the Russian working class who will pay for this stupid senseless war with their blood
But I come from a family that doesn’t just contemplate art but actually practises it !
https://www.artrenewal.org/artists/robin-buick/517
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Those sculptures, I have to say, Adam, are very impressive. I’ve tried my hand at sculpturing with terracotta clay myself but am a complete novice by comparison with this. Still, I can recognize a very accomplished artist when I see one and your brother is very clearly one of them !
“You’re so impatient. Unlike you, the Russians are in no hurry. Their aim is to demilitarize Ukraine. To grind their troops to fertilizer. The Ukrainians are obliging by sending more and more reserves into the meatgrinder.”
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Big deal. And so what if the repugnant capitalist regime of Putin manages to hang on to its imperialist gains in Crimea and the Donbas in its war against the equally repugnant capitalist regime of Zelensky? The victor will be Russian capitalism. The losers as always in any capitalist war will be the Russian (and Ukrainian) workers. I bet the thought of that must be working you up into a state of quivering orgiastic anticipation: Team Putin and his fellow capitalist cronies enlarging the surface area of Glorious Mother Russia.
Meanwhile to relish in the thought of fellow workers being reduced to “fertilizer” is frankly sick. This is the language of those who wished for the “final solution” in Nazi Germany. Disgusting.
Just as Ukraine has its Nazi supporters in this capitalist conflict so too has Russia. An interesting youtube video
“Bezos is one of a number of the super-rich that has faced criticism in light of their growing wealth — and as stated, COVID-19 didn’t do much to quell the financial growth of these moguls. If anything, most reports suggest that the rich have just gotten richer, and the poor have just gotten poorer.
Even Microsoft founder Bill Gates, himself one of the longtime richest people in the world, has weighed in on whether people should be able to accumulate this type of wealth. “For the first time in my life, people are saying, ‘Okay, should you have billionaires?'” Gates told Forbes. “If you really implemented something like that, the amount you would gain would be much less than the amount you would lose.”
The issue of extraordinary wealth remains mired in controversy. However, financial indicators point to the vast accumulation of riches continuing, and research shows that the era of the world’s first trillionaire may only be a few years away. ”
https://theweek.com/finance/1019328/the-rise-of-the-worlds-first-trillionaire
