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Sorry Alan I did not notice the second post that you made

The BBC did actually mention a peace offering by Putin. The article is called “Ukraine conflict: Putin lays out his demands in Turkish phone call”.

What statements from Ukrainian officials are you thinking of in particular?

Chomsky implies that the best thing for Ukraine to do is to let another state decide its internal affairs in order to avoid Ukrainian suffering. Should this be applied to internal politics as well?

“The Conservative government asks the SPGB to abandon its mission to establish socialism. Otherwise the government will execute hundreds of SPGB members and their families. The SPGB should comply in order to avoid bloodshed.” What is the big difference? Is the idea that most Ukrainians wish to give up?

Wez, I am aware of the battle for dominance between capitalist super powers. But does that mean that one has to say that any non-socialist should view Russia’s invasion as reasonable?

And if no capitalist state is ever worth defending, either militarily or in words, why is it so important to emphasize the “truth” that Russia is being provoked and acting defensively and that it’s all NATO’s and Ukraine’s fault? Why does that matter so much?

Sorry if I sound hostile, it is not really my intention. I think that I write like this partly because I am internally conflicted; a part of me wants to agree with the SPGB, but I feel that a true exorcism can only exist if I put up a fight.

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Thanks for the replies Alan and Wez

The Nazis were openly antisemitic and treated Jews like garbage even before mass extermination began. Why expect loyalty from groups you treat horribly? Most genocides can probably be justified like this, just like how all invasions of hostile countries can be justified with “they were a threat to us”.

Why does Russia need to control Ukraine in order to survive? The United States doesn’t need South Vietnam (which no longer exists). If Russia is next to NATO countries, what’s gonna happen? Do you believe that NATO is itching to invade Russia? Or is it Ukraine that was/is going to invade Russia?

If the West aims to “destroy the Russian Federation”…why didn’t they do it earlier when Yeltsin ran things? Wasn’t that the perfect time to do it?

It is true that Ukraine is receiving a lot of attention compared to other conflicts. Journalists (and readers) are less morally invested in conflicts far away. It is also depressing to see how people don’t see the hypocrisy of the United States and Britain condemning illegal invasions (Iraq).

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Is it possible that the members of the SPGB are so determined not to fall for Western propaganda that they’re falling for pro-Russian and pro-Chinese propaganda instead?

I feel ambivalent about the war. I know that the SPGB does not take any sides in wars. No capitalist state is worth defending, even if it is a democracy. No side deserves support, even when it is being invaded. No group is to be preferred, even if one side is the one committing the vast majority of atrocities (Hungary 1956, Srebrenica, East Timor genocide, all colonial conflicts ever etc). Every state is equally bad, we should only defend socialism. I don’t know if I can get behind that entirely.

Here is my analysis of what John Pilger had to say.

“Well, if you see it from the Russian side without taking the side of Russia, it looks rather different. ( . . . ) On the other side of the border, there were 60,000 Ukrainian troops who were massing on the line of contact right across Donbas. Now, Donbas, as far as the Russians are concerned, is the last stepping stone. You’re close by Russia. You have a strategic advantage over Russia. Everything in modern Russian history and in not-so-modern history tells us that the Russians will never tolerate this. That they regard this as a threat and they have much of their history to justify that. ( . . . ) Our ignorance of Russia, like our ignorance of China in the West, allows none of that historical sense of how people see the threat and how political forces see the threat. This is not in any way to, if you like, condone Putin’s invasion, but it has to be understood.”

So Pilger is not defending Russia – he’s merely arguing that it made sense to invade Ukraine because Ukraine was doing stuff that was scary to Russia. In the same way, I suppose, that it made sense for the Nazis to mass murder ethnic groups, whose existence they regarded as a threat.

Russia is talked of like a creature whose reactions must be accepted. If you don’t want a bear to hurt you, don’t poke it; if you don’t want Russia to invade you, don’t have troops near the border to an imperialist super power run by a dictator.

What about American backing of coups in Latin American democracies that Pilger has referred to in his career? Has Pilger ever argued that these “need to be understood”? “Well of course they’re helping [insert name of random scumbag general], they are afraid of communism!”

Pilger’s argument is victim blaming.

“What to remember here is the US doesn’t give a damn about Ukraine. Ukraine is simply a pawn in this. But the object, as the US defence secretary [says], and I paraphrase him, is to destroy the Russian Federation. That’s been known for a long time. That is probably the most dangerous project in the world today because the Russians are not going to allow that.”

This is a not all too uncommon journalistic “trick” to say things without saying them. The United States wants to “destroy” Russia. The United States therefore supports Ukraine. Russia will not allow its own destruction.

And so Pilger has planted an idea in our minds without ever having to actually say it: that the Ukrainian state is helping to “destroy” Russia, and Russia’s war is ultimately defensive. I don’t believe that.

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jondwhite wrote:

What do you think of the images in the yt vid in the link above?

I think they're alright, however they are repeated all over again and their relevance is only that they're covers of the the different groups magazines.Perhaps it would be better with two kinds of images.First, images of the opposing speakers combined with trivia about them ("he was born in the year of blabla, he joined the party in blabla, he wrote several articles about a certain subject, he died this year etc).Then, information about both groups with some historical pictures (without copyright or whatever) of the groups ("the SPGB was founded in 1904, it was early to criticize the Bolsheviks in Russia, the party opposes leadership" etc).

jondwhite wrote:

A whiteboard animation was a conference resolution.

What do you mean?

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I personally think that the image could just be a text that says.the names of the debaters and the organisations they belong to.Whiteboard animations are good but it would take a lot of time (and money I assume) to animate all of the debates

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Dave B wrote:

Skill as far as it affects value concerns and is only valid when comparing two identical commodities and should be used in that respect when comparing different ones.Thus the value of 5 hours of skilled bricklaying is twice as much as unskilled bricklaying because it produces a bigger wall in the same time.

With all respects Dave I am sceptical to this statement.Doesn't Marx argue that when industry becomes more productive, the workers still produce the same value but the value of each individual commodity is lower? For example if I used to make 1 widget/ hour but now I make 2 widgets/hour, the value of 1 widget is half as much as it used to be.Wouldn't this also apply to bricklaying?

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DJP wrote:

I think you are asking good questions.Try this:https://libcom.org/files/kliman.pdf

I did not read all of it (it's often a bit difficult to follow) but I think this part was of use:"Once all physical properties of the commodity that make it useful are rejected as the common property – they are qualitative properties, but the exchange relation, as a quantitative relation, abstracts from the qualities of commodities – it is then self-evident that 'only one property remains, that of being products of labour'.What is not self-evident, what no one before Marx had identified, is the dual character of this labour. The commodities are different not only as useful, concrete things, but (for the same reason) also as the products of the different sorts of useful, concrete labouring activities. Only as products of 'human labour in the abstract' are they the same.Viewing commodities from the standpoint of what they have in common, then, what remains, according to Marx, is only a 'residue'. Nothing physical, concrete, or useful – about them or the labour that produces them – is left. All that is left is a mere abstraction, a 'phantom-like objectivity; they are merely congealed quantities of homogenous human labour … As crystals of this social substance, which is common to them all, they are values – commodity values'."Can't this basically be summed up as:"The only thing commodities have in common is that they're useful and they're products of human labour. Usefulness is subjective, and cannot explain why commodities exchange at stable ratios. What we're left with is that they're products of human labour. What other solution could there be?But commodities are not products of the same type of labour. The type of labour that is used to make a chair is not the same type of labour it takes to mine diamonds. What all commodities have in common must therefore be that they are all products of human, abstract labour."A and B are two alternative answers on an exam.A cannot be correct. Therefore, B is correct.Is this faulty reasoning?

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DJP wrote:

It’s never going to be a fixed magnitude

I'm not sure what that means.Does there not exist a numerical expression for the SNLT of a widget?

DJP wrote:

There was a failed attempt at reading I I Rubin’s book on this forum. That should be one you should look through..

I assume you're talking about Essays on Marx's Theory of Value. I have now read a bit of chapter 16 but it didn't really say much to me. Thanks anyway for the tip, maybe if I read it again later I will understand it a bit more."The labor-time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time."What is meant by "normal"? What is meant by "average degree of skill and intensity"?If all sold widgets took the exact same amount of time then I would just go "okay I got what SNLT is and it makes sense".I would say the same if all sold widgets either took x hours or y hours ("out of 10 widgets 9 of them took 1 hours, therefore SNLT is 1 hour").But that's not how production is. Labour time is not a question of "A or B". It's a bunch of individual amounts of time: 1 hour, 1,1 hours, 1,3 hours, 1,37 hours etc.I'm sorry for having such a hard time understanding this

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Bijou Drains wrote:

Do you believe that the SNLT of a widget can never be figured out?

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

[The idea of SNLT] is a logical deduction based on the premises previously presented: we cannot apprehend value directly, all we can observe is prices paid and infer values therefrom: 

Is this a valid description of the reasoning?1. We can't find out what the value of a widget is until it has been sold, because widgets don't have value before someone has buyed it.2. It is only after it has been sold (i.e. become an "expression of value" or whatever) that we can figure out its value.3. Therefore, it's reasonable to believe that the value of a sold commodity is equal to the amount of labour time that it has to have in order to be sold.Maybe this above text is confusing; I'm not even sure I'm making sense to myself. If so I apologize.

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

Its important to note that value is not concrete within a commodity, it is abstract and represented by the commodity, and represents a general inter-human effort.

Karl Marx wrote:

The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is homogenous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power.

Does this mean that the value of one individual sock that managed to get sold is equal to the SNLT of a sock?If the answer is yes, I have another question: what makes you think this? What "evidence" is there?

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

Thanks for replying Young Master Smeet"I think you're missing some major premises."I'll take a look at these premises. "Commodities are goods that are exchanged between human beings."I agree."Rational humans will exchange equally (i.e. no-one wants to get the worst of an exchange)."Well…people want to exchange equally. But do they always manage to do so?"The only universal property of commodities is that they are the products of human labour. Therefore only human labour can form the basis for equal exchange."I agree."Labour expended on a good that is not exchanged is wasted and does not add to value."I agree."I think that's all that's needed, the operation of the market means that instances of types of good containing excess labour will find themselves disfavoured, and they will only be exchanged at around the same value as other instances of the type."I'm sorry but I still don't get it. I think it might have something to do with how you use the word "value" in the above sentence.Do the 6 hour socks of a seller actually have the value of the 3 hour socks that are being sold on the market? Or is it that the price of his sock has to be below its value in order to be sold?

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This thread is about SNLT, not for debating materialism.If people want to talk about that subject, create a new thread where it can be discussed.Anyone who keeps talking about it or replying to other people who are talking about are ruining the thread and filling it with irrelevant posts.Please start another thread.

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LBird wrote:

But you're asking about the theory of SNLT, not comparative usefulness to individuals.

I mean that none of apples are "more worked on" than the other in a quality sense.You wouldn't be able to tell which one you're holding and eating unless someone told you. Sometimes more time means more effort, but that isn't the case here. In this example someone is just being slower than what is socially necessary.If it takes 1 hour for you to make a shoe, and it takes 2 hours for me to make a shoe that's just as good, does my shoe have a higher value? I wouldn't personally argue that.

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I meant "identical" as in "one of the apples are as useful as the other one".

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