STRANGE TIMES

In this time of great decision, I have come to Cairo not to talk about the past, but to look to the future — to a future that Egyptians can lead and can define.

Ladies and Gentlemen: In our world today, a growing number of men and women are securing their liberty. And as these people gain the power to choose, they are creating democratic governments in order to protect their natural rights. We should all look to a future when every government respects the will of its citizens — because the ideal of democracy is universal.

For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East — and we achieved neither.  Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.

….. We know these advances will not come easily, or all at once. We know that different societies will find forms of democracy that work for them. When we talk about democracy, though, we are referring to governments that protect
certain basic rights for all their citizens — among these, the right to speak freely. The right to associate.
The right to worship as you wish. The freedom to educate your children — boys and girls. And freedom from the midnight knock of the secret police.

Securing these rights is the hope of every citizen, and the duty of every government. In my own country, the progress of democracy has been long and difficult. And given our history, the United States has no cause for false pride and we have every reason for humility.

After all, America was founded by individuals who knew that all human beings — and the governments they create — are inherently imperfect. And the United States was  born half free and half slave. And it was only in my lifetime that my government guaranteed the right to vote for all of its people.

Whoops, wrong speech!!  That was Condi Rice speaking in Cairo,  back in 2005.  

Obama’s speech was so much more..well,  nuanced.  Whereas Condi chose to focus on the struggle for democracy in the Middle East, Obama preferred to talk about “relationships”and  in particular what he called “the tension between the USA and Muslims around the world”. What is central, according to Obama, is to understand difference, find what we share, discover our common humanity (etc etc..).

As I said in a previous post,  I think that Obama will have to continue what the Bush regime started, no other policy would make any sense..The biggest sign of this was that he spoke quite firmly about the need for a Palestinian State, and was prepared to arouse the wrath of the most militant Zionists.

Continue reading ‘Obama in Cairo (therapy for liberals)’

The Productivity Commission Report is worth a gander. It is called Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage: Key Indicators 2009

As Paul Kelly in The Australian points out this two yearly report will start to make government accountable by showing whether its policies are doing any good.

Noel Pearson has an interesting piece in the same publication. He says that government bureaucrats cannot be trusted to come up with decent policies. Watching them in action is a bit like watching Ground Hog Day. The leadership has to come from the indigenous community.

Another piece from The Australian has a revealing quote:

“Mr Rudd admitted the unavailability of reliable data meant he was unable to say whether his $4.6 billion Closing the Gap policy package was having any effect in lifting indigenous living standards in crucial areas such as health and education.”

I’ve been trying to figure out how things will go in the Middle East under Obama, and have half-written a post about his Cairo speech, which I hope to finish very soon…… meanwhile, I’ll post this…

My half-baked view (which I’ll expand upon in my future post)  is that he knows that he has no choice but to continue what was begun under Bush.  Nothing else would make any sense.   I think the main clue to this was in his remarks about the necessity for a Palestinian State.  He was more forceful than I’d expected about this.

However,  the entire tone of his speech suggests that the Obama administration  is utterly lily liver’d when it comes to fighting tyranny and propogating the democratic revolution.    The bulk of what he said  was just  liberal waffle about  ‘understanding difference’,  ‘looking into our hearts’, ‘finding what we have in common’  etc etc.   Relationship counselling  stuff…

"The Holy Bible tells us "Blessed are the peacemakers…" ' (or was it 'cheesemakers')..

Continue reading ‘Obama dragged by history’

Senator Wong has provided a written answer to Senator Fielding’s three questions. It will be interesting to see what debate ensues. For climate skeptics, it should be a good test of their metal one way or the other.

A rejoinder from the scientists who accompanied Fielding to the recent meeting with Wong can be found here. A somewhat acrimonious exchange can be found at JoNova.

The Australian Climate Science Coalition will no doubt keep us up to date on developments.

a banned demonstration!

I  have no detailed knowledge of what’s happening in Iran. However it seems fairly clear that the people of Tehran want their freedom and are pushing back hard at the regime.  The fact that Mousavi  is himself just as about reactionary as Ahmadinejad seems to be of little importance right now. The people are on the move.

It’s possible to get a bit of a feel for it by following the minute by minute commentaries on various twitter sites.  eg persiankiwi

With a Shia-based democracy taking root right next door in Iraq, I think the mullahs will be feeling really worried.  This may not be “it” for them, I’m sure there will be many twists and turns, but their days are clearly numbered.

Marxists are often accused of doing a lousy job of explaining how socialism would do consciously what the capitalist market system can do without anyone being all that aware of what is going on.

But that’s OK, because the efforts of bourgeois economists more than make up for this. Their mission has been to show how capitalism is good at allocating resources efficiently (if sometimes with a bit of restrained government tweaking). But in the process they have had to explain what this means and the role of a price system in achieving  it. Thank you chaps. The revolution will be forever grateful.

We just need to drive home how a system of social ownership will be able to avail itself of this unintentionally provided wisdom. Making the case is fairly easy. Debunking the “calculation debate” is particularly easy. (More on that in a few months but in the meantime see here.)

The hard job for people like me will be (1) convincing ourselves and others that we really can transcend the profit motive and rely instead mainly on intrinsic motivation and (2) developing a transitional program given that it will take time for people to take on the abilities, habits and inclinations needed to make social ownership viable.

By the way, I now find it easier to tell people what I am working on without being put on the defensive. I usually say something to the effect that it’s been a bit unfashionable for quite a long time but now that capitalism is collapsing all around us I am expecting a bit more interest. This is generally greeted with a nod.

I’ve just revised the sections on investment, money and public goods in the main article at my Economics of Social Ownership website. I have cleared out all mention of quasi-public goods and removed all the murky speculation from the money section. The old versions of these sections are stored here purely for reference.

The green ascendancy can be a depressing thing but there have been a number of recent developments that have cheered me up.

First, of course, is the growing recognition that the greens are a fire hazard. This is an issue that we have already discussed extensively .

Noel Pearson’s response to the Queensland government’s plans to “protect” aboriginal land in Cape York will help to discredit green politics and hopefully give them a bloody nose. (See here.)

The challenge by “Lawyers for Forests” to the government approval of Gunn’s Bell Bay Pulp Mill project failed in the courts.

Australia’s first GM canola crop has been a roaring success and the farmers love it.

I’m not following climate stuff much now but I suspect that Plimer’s new book will make a splash. It will certainly make it easier for politicians and others to raise their doubts. There was also a great story in The Australian about how the Antarctic is definitely NOT warming.

Jennifer Marohasy made an interesting point about how there are now whole scientific disciplines that have developed around the belief that Nature is a “fragile life-support system”. So it is not just a matter of few greeniess with PhDs. It is worse than that. Oh dear. I’m not feeling quite so cheered up now.

“Whine” was inspired by Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’, a 1950s Beat poem that, for all its faults, at least had some gutsiness behind it. While howling represents a kind of rage and anger, whining captures what the pseudo-left does best: whining from the sidelines. Endless complaining because ‘things just keep going from bad to worse’ – as all the reactionary conservative old-timers have said since time immemorial. The footage accompanying the video was filmed during a visit to New York, and mostly shows W42nd Street and Upper New York Bay.

I’ve just read a review of a book about Engels entitled The Frock Coated Communist (due to be released on May Day).

Having not read the book itself,  I can’t really comment on it.   But the review prompted me to want to write something about Engels because he is so often overlooked.

The review opens  by saying  “It is a truth now universally acknowledged that capitalism’s most insightful philosopher is Karl Marx.” and the first paragraph ends with “Today, in the midst of a once-a-century crisis of capitalism, Das Kapital has raced to the top of the German bestseller lists and even President Sarkozy has been caught leafing through its pages.”   The rest of the article is an account of the importance of Engels in the development of Marx’s economic views.

Continue reading ‘Let’s not forget Engels!’

Light up to celebrate human progress!

What bothers me when I look at this beautiful photo is the dark bits!

Catallaxy reports on the recent threat to fine the hosting service of broadband discussion site Whirlpool. Catallaxy’s report follows on from a report by the Public Polity site.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority threatened the host after a discussion thread on Whirlpool linked to an anti-abortion site banned by ACMA.

This makes a mockery of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s claims that his proposals to censor the internet are not about wanting to censor political speech:

Freedom of speech is fundamentally important in a democratic society and there has never been any suggestion that the Australian Government would seek to block political content.

How would prices be established in the absence of a capitalist market?  This question has come up in the Who Needs the Owners? But What’s the Alternaitive?” thread.  Arthur pointed out proper discussion of this issue could get quite technical and therefore  deserves a thread of its own.

The question of pricing arose via comments from Jad, who has been arguing in favor of “technocracy” as an alternative to capitalism.

(It’s worth perusing that other thread in order to see how that discussion evolved, before jumping in here.)

I’ll republish the comment from Jad which prompted Arhur’s call for a new thread, followed by Arthur’s reply, and we can take it from there.

________________________________________

Jad:

Hi Again, A bit more on technocracy, after having looked at “Bright Future”.

I agree that the technocrats are hopelessly Utopian in that they offer almost no practical steps regarding how their proposed system can be arrived at, but I think a similar criticism could be made of Bright Future. In any case, I don’t think small doses of crackpot, utopianist speculation now and then do any permanent damage, so I thought I would offer some comparisons between the resource allocation model in Bright Future (BFM) and the Energy Accounting Model (EAM) model of the technocrats. ( By the way, although I’ve only been seriously investigating Marx for a couple of years and was in nappies in ‘68 when some of you folks were stomping the streets, unfortunately I no longer consider myself very young!).

In relation to the determination of what is produced, for both BFM and EAM, this is dependent on consumer demand. To measure demand, BFM would rely on things such as past consumer behaviour, consumer surveys and demographic predictions, whilst EAM emphasizes the electronic recording of all purchases made. There is no difference of any substance here. Of course, both EAM and BFM recognise that supply will never be perfectly matched to demand, due to changes in consumer preferences.

In relation to individual’s consumption rights, under EAM all individuals would have the same consumption entitlement (which is based on the premise that without the waste of private ownership aggregate supply capacity would exceed aggregate demand), whereas under BFM, initially at least, consumption entitlements would depend on the amount and quality of work performed.

I agree that EAM, whilst more communistic, is unrealistically utopian here in not recognising that it would take time for people’s consciousness to change and that it is not just the technical aspects of the production system that are relevant.

Both EAM and BFM see factors such as prestige, enjoyment and intrinsic reward as becoming more important than material reward as a motivating factor for work. The major difference between EAM and BFM is in relation to the pricing of goods and services. Under EAM the cost and price of goods and services is determined by the energy required for their production. Under BFM allocation of resources to production units is dependent on demand for consumer goods, and consumer goods are exchanged for work. I presume that the price of consumer goods would therefore be dependent on the socially necessary labor time necessary for their production, in an application of the labour theory of value.

I think the EAM method and theory of pricing is superior to BFM for two interrelated reasons.

Continue reading ‘Price Systems’

Over the years I’ve done a lot of talking with people, friends and workmates in various workplaces, about the idea of the workers ‘taking over’ and running things for ourselves. It’s an idea that holds great appeal to me, so I advocate it. Most times, people respond by rolling their eyes – they generally think the system can be fixed so that it functions more fairly. I then try to point out that the system ain’t broke – unemployment, alienation and periodic crises is precisely capitalism functioning. Fortunately, people are skeptical and therefore willing to listen to new ideas. Some ask what the ‘workers taking over’ would actually mean, how would it be different/better, what would it look like?

I then point out that, in most situations, the workers ‘run’ things anyway – this happens on a day-to-day basis. Who in a workplace ever sees the boss – I mean, the real boss, the owner of the industry or service-provider? Sure, we see our foremen and managers, who – like us – need their weekly wage to survive. But the big boss, the owner? So, things day-to-day are pretty much done by the workers on the ‘floor’. While most people I’ve talked with reckon we need the foremen and managers, no-one has ever stated that we need the owners. No-one has declared: “Oh no! Without the owner of our industry, everything would collapse!”. Under the current economic crisis, the reality is that, with the current owners of industry, etc. in charge, everything is collapsing.

Continue reading ‘Who needs the owners? But what’s the alternative?’

“Freeview” (Wikipedia) is a campaign by Australian free-to-air channels to convince you that free-to-air TV is not mostly boring rubbish. The campaign boasts about the fact that Australians will have fifteen digital channels to choose from on free-to-air TV, instead of the six free-to-air channels that Australians have (at least the ones who live in a major city).

What the campaign doesn’t mention is that most of the new channels are just exact rebroadcasts of the already-existing free-to-air channels (exceptions include ABC2 and SBS World News, which broadcasts foreign-language news reports). So some Melbourne comedians doing a show about TV today decided to parody the Freeview TV commercial.

The parody was posted on the Internet’s most popular video-sharing site, YouTube, but yesterday it disappeared, due to a “terms of use violation”.

However the video is available on several other video-sharing sites, including this copy from break.com:

Freeview: More of the same sh#t – Watch more

Continue reading ‘Freeview Australia gets spoof ad pulled from YouTube’

We haven’t said much on Strange Times about what is now looking to be the most serious capitalist economic crisis since the Great Depression (and quite possibly far worse than that one).   That’s because we’re floundering. Well I am anyway, and I have no desire to hide that by just coming out with “Marxist” platitudes about the inevitability of it, “we told you so”, “look what capitalist greed leads to” etc.  And I also don’t have enough of a grip on it to write anything which goes beyond superficial handwaving  about the falling rate of profit, over-production, debt, and all the rest of it.

When I see our leaders pontificating about the crisis and proposing various ‘stimulus packages’ it appears queasily Monty Pythonesque.  I don’t think they really know what they’re doing. It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.  Nevertheless I just don’t know enough about Marxist or capitalist  economics to produce any sort of informed critique.

So that’s my excuse for staying quiet.

Nevertheless, it’s clearly of the utmost importance for us to get our heads around it rather than to just sit on the sidelines and watch things fall apart.   So to make a start on this I’d like to launch a discussion of an old (1981) paper entitled  Unemployment and Revolution.   It’s an analysis of why unemployment occurs under capitalism and why moving to social ownership makes far more sense than waiting for capitalism to rise phoenix-like from the ashes, yet again.

Continue reading ‘Unemployment and Revolution’