Young Master Smeet
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Quote:Reformists can’t imagine everybody having the same say in the production, distribution and consumption of our wealth.
This is just blithering nosense. Many "reformists" would say they agree with our ends, but disagree with the means, and believe that piecemeal change can work. Essentially, it is a project management question. They either suggest peice by peice implementation (or parrallel running, in some circumstances) but we suggest a hard change over.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Wasn't Robin Cook removed as foreign minister at the behest of the Israelis for his lack of 100% support for them?Don't know where you've heard that, ISTR he resigned rather than support the Iraq war (and the constant undermining of the "Ethical Foriegn policy") I think we need to be careful, there's a lot of wild rumours and exagerations about Israel, specifically that it punches above its weight in the British Foreign Office (which has traditionally be pro-Arab anyway, if Yes Minister is to be believed. The British establishment control British foriegn policy in the interest of the British ruling class.
http://theconversation.com/labour-takes-baton-from-piketty-as-it-ramps-up-for-election-year-28063This article shows the sort of disconnect thebween the readers (and implementers) of Piketty's book and his policy prescriptions.
Quote:Beyond the popular image, it does not take long to realise that Piketty is no socialist thinker – when asked: “What’s the matter with inequality”, he affirms that inequality per se is not a problem. The issue is rather in the way inequality is becoming blatantly inimical to how the economic system works and is impeding its recovery. I wasn’t sure that the audience at the Class event, filled with progressive thinkers, would agree with such statement – and it got me wondering.[….] The debate at Class found him also proposing new solutions such as share ownership schemes, popular in Germany.But, the imjportant thing to note is that his r>g has shaken the sort of social-democrat thinking that saw micro-economic efficiency leading to economic growth being the solution to poverty (and inequality, perhaps).
What is ideology? As I've said before, I can probably list about six different meanings of the word (without putting much effort in). For instance Althusser maintained that ideology is lived and subjectivity is a méconnaissance, so claims to a communist ideology could only be spurious in such a context where the subject lives in the material reproduction of capitalism.
There are shades of Marc Dutroux here.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Dutroux#Allegations_of_cover-upCertainly, we now have more than prima facia evidence that Cyril Smith was a serial child rapist. Avoiding charged words like 'network' and 'ring' it seems clear that he knew and was enabled by other politicians engaged in similar activities. As per the allegations around Elm Guest House, it seems otehrs were invovled.Now, this does not mean there was a cover up. Taking the occam's razor approach, we need to distinguish several different problems.[*]1) An inclination by police not to get caught up in political scandals, and perhaps a deferential approach to politicians.2) Politicians and officials not taking the offences seriopusly, and not triiggering or flagging them when they crossed their desks (this also relates to the so-callde missing files, I'm told by ex-civil servants that civil service records management isn't up to snuff, and orutinely destroys entire sections unless someone marks them as important or still active).3) Active collaboration or interference, either:i) through invovlement in the abuse themselves, or,ii) Through callous desire to protect their mates (or be owed a favour).If this story is true: Editor explains why he didn't publish Barbara Castle's paedophile dossier
Quote:Hale said special branch officers arrived at the Messenger's office, showed him a D-notice and warned him of imprisonment if he failed to hand over the dossier.Then we are beginning to have to start seriously thinking about the upper end on the scale of conspiracy.That said, i think our general approach remains unchanged. We need to be wary of power, deference and control. Child abuse is not a class issue, but cover ups and abuse of power are.[*] The Lib-Dems have been hard hit by all this, as David Steel has had to explain why he didn't take action. They have also had their own version of the Comrade Delta scandal in the form of Mike Hancock and also Lord Rennard. They are big enough not to implode over the issue.
To get a handle on the way this book has been discussd on the radio, this podcast is interesting. Having the BBC discussing rising inequality and capitalism itself is a novelty. http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/moreorless/moreorless_20140602-1200a.mp3
Rulebook wrote:Branches, Groups and members shall neither publish, sell or distribute any political literature in the name of the Party, excepting handbills and leaflets, which has not been approved by the Executive Committee or the New Pamphlets Committee. Election Statements and Election Manifestos, being Official Party Statements, must be approved by the Executive Committee.Per the letters page in the weakly wanking :http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1019/letters/I thought there was an extant conference resolution permitting members to put the party name on their letters to the press, but this may have just been an EC ruling (I couldn't find any such resolution).
Quote:But the good news for the publishers is that they have a surprise defender in the party that claims to be Britain’s second-oldest, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, which says it is wrong to pick on one firm for doing what any publisher would do. Instead we should all “condemn the socio-economic system which has led to the repugnant concept of ‘intellectual property”.Or, for the time short, you can read the unofficial Executive SummaryAnyway, I don't know about the rest of you, but I tend to find when people accuse others in debate that their opponent is missing the point, that that is poor argumentation. The default assumption must be that they aren't explaining themselves clearly enough (especially when they go on to explain to their opponent who is "missing the point" a point they have made themselves three posts ago).
That's a different keettle of fish entirely: we're discussing not what the catch is, but knowing how it was caught and what it is: we're not discussing the piece of cod that passeth all human understanding. It could turn out the bouregois glue is highly flammable, and we might be able to hurl molotov porpoises back at them…
Or, put another way: if we know the rod, know the river and the time we can accept the fish for our own porpoises. We don't condemn for such choises, that would be foolish, because those choices mean something to us too.
Well, to the extent all utterances are dialogically layered with intersecting significations no ideology is total but always contingent, mediated and contested. The perlocutionary forces of assertives are other focussed, necesarilly so, thus it is otiose to analsyse the deixis of a given utterance rather than it's dialogical position in the language game.It really is that simple.
Quote:For me, reading bourgeois economists like Piketty is a bit like reading a 700 page account by a child about how the tooth-fairy puts a tanner under the pillow. It's full of 'interesting' detail like the wingspan of the fairy, how the pillow is filled with 'magic-down', so that the pillow floats up holding the head of the sleeper whilst the tooth-fairy deposits the 6d…That analogy doesn't hold, though, does it, by your own account. The selectivity of evidence presupposes that there is phenomenal evidence to select from. To return to my natural history theme, it's a bit like those nature documentaries. When it's about seals, it's about how they have to raise their pups, catch fish, and avoid being irritated to death by killer whales. If the doc was about killer whales, it would be how they have to drown seals to feed their young. So, the only point of contention is the extent to which an author:Is aware of their premises/presuppositionsArticulates their premises/presuppositionsConceals or attempts to concceal their premises/presuppositionsIf Piketty does lay out his prmises/presuppositions and general social/ideological deixis then that is not a point of criticism, just a necessary observation, shirley.
Quote:In my ideological opinion, he wrote a book called 'Sharks' and discussed only the eating habits of nice, cuddly pussy cats.Really, your objection hitherto was that he discussed capitalism without discussing exploitation: so the object of his study is capital (or, rather capitalists), aka sharks. Ignoring reproduction, or the contaxt of sharks (that is exploitation) still means he's discussing sharks.Last I checked ideology has twenty seven and a half different meanings, so I'm not sure what you're asking me. I'd say my main leanings come from an acceptance of the full implications of all yorkshiremen being liars…
