The politics of the left in the UK

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

a further illuminating review of Picketty

aeolium it seems to my understanding that you are asking for a version of Gellner's Civil Society [rule of law; pluralism; multiple institutions with separation of powers; public discourse of accountability &c] which it seems to me we more or less have except that the politics/power is captured by the plutocrats not the people ... and that as Barrington Moore made clear in Social Origins of Dictatorship & Democracy an affluent middle is vitally necessary to a thriving society [as argued here] ... in our present circumstances we suffer a great inequality and an impoverished middle with an increasing proportion of full time employed workers requiring state benefits ... while the corporate masters of employment who benefit from this state welfare enjoy their growing share of personal wealth and very high incomes [as Picketty makes very clear not at all the same thing]

[Serial_Apologist]

a further illuminating review of Picketty

"Picketty ends Capital in the Twenty-First Century with a call to arms - a call in particular for wealth taxes, global if possible, to restrain the growing power of wealth. It's easy to be cynical about the prospects of anything of the kind. But surely Piketty's masterly diagnosis of where we are and where we are heading makes such a thing considerably more likely".

<erm>

[ahinton]

"Picketty ends Capital in the Twenty-First Century with a call to arms - a call in particular for wealth taxes, global if possible, to restrain the growing power of wealth. It's easy to be cynical about the prospects of anything of the kind. But surely Piketty's masterly diagnosis of where we are and where we are heading makes such a thing considerably more likely".

<erm>

Wealth taxes (which we don't have in UK but apply in France, Spain and elsewhere) are one of the bluntest instruments in the fiscal toolkit. Even when they're collected successfully (which isn't always possible), the amounts that they generate are usually a tiny proportion of the country's total tax take. Furthermore, like most other taxes, governments usually only accept tax payments in cash, so asset wealthy people with insufficient readily realisable assets to pay the tax levied have to sell off assets, which then in turn risks reducing the value of certain assets which again in turn risks adversely affecting the asset valueds of those who are not wealthy enought to be liable for such taxes; the more this happens, the less asset wealthy people become, with the corollary that they'll become liable for less wealth tax so the government takes less in via this means, which reduces the benefit of levying wealth tax in the first place.

A call for global harmonisation of tax régimes is on a Haydn to nothing; apart from the obvious fact that it could not (and indeed should not) even be contemplated when different countries' economies vary as widely as they do now, we can't even agree about them within the Eurozone!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I recently read Ken Livingstone's autobiography. I ended up full of admiration for the man. Obviously it was his own account, but it tallied with what I remembered.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

ahinton i am glad you are making the Russell Brand case; there is nothing to be done following the logic and practice of our present parliamentary situation ....but are you a fatalist or a revolutionary?

[ahinton]

ahinton i am glad you are making the Russell Brand case; there is nothing to be done following the logic and practice of our present parliamentary situation ....but are you a fatalist or a revolutionary?

I am not making the Russell Brand case or indeed any other individual case, as should be clear from the fact that I mentioned no individuals in what I wrote about wealth taxes. For the record, since you ask, I am neither a fatalist nor a revolutionary. As I tried to suggest (perhaps with insufficient success), wealth taxes, even when collected successfully, involve the risk of the law of diminishing returns in that, when levied on non-readily realisable assets (i.e. land and buildings, jewellery and artwork and the rest), they tend to bring down the values of those assets which not only means decreasing the wealth tax take but also adversely affecting the values of assets owned by those of relatively modest means, which is surely unfair. I am not against taxation perse, obviously (or at least I hope that it's obvious!); I merely think that tax - how it's levied, how, at what cost and how successfully or otherwise it can be collected and how beneficially and justly it's distributed - are matters of sufficient importance to warrant exercising the mind about differences in net values and effectiveness of particular taxes and, for me, wealth taxes and inheritance taxes are less effective and potentially beneficial than others.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i think you are whistling in the wind

this is a non tax approach that appears to have merit

[ahinton]

i think you are whistling in the wind

You may think that; I couldn't possibly comment (other than to observe that I'm not whistling at all and, for the first time in almost a week, there's little wind here)...

[Serial_Apologist]

Wealth taxes (which we don't have in UK but apply in France, Spain and elsewhere) are one of the bluntest instruments in the fiscal toolkit. Even when they're collected successfully (which isn't always possible), the amounts that they generate are usually a tiny proportion of the country's total tax take. Furthermore, like most other taxes, governments usually only accept tax payments in cash, so asset wealthy people with insufficient readily realisable assets to pay the tax levied have to sell off assets, which then in turn risks reducing the value of certain assets which again in turn risks adversely affecting the asset valueds of those who are not wealthy enought to be liable for such taxes; the more this happens, the less asset wealthy people become, with the corollary that they'll become liable for less wealth tax so the government takes less in via this means, which reduces the benefit of levying wealth tax in the first place.

A call for global harmonisation of tax régimes is on a Haydn to nothing; apart from the obvious fact that it could not (and indeed should not) even be contemplated when different countries' economies vary as widely as they do now, we can't even agree about them within the Eurozone!

It will be interesting to see what becomes of the new currency Scotland seems likely to be forced into adopting should it go for independence. Will they join the Eurozone, or go it alone? If the latter, what would such a currency be worth in the tides of global speculation? Precious little would seem to be the inescapable conclusion. Unfortunately Salmond seems to think Scotland could hang onto its social democratic ethos in the teeth of EU strictures against so-called anti-competititive practices. Social democratic practice, as long as tied in one way or another with neoliberal economics globally, and via those neoliberal-friendly anti-competitive regulations inextricable from US trade and thereby the vicissitudes of Sino/US economic symbiotics, is bound to fail. This has been the reality, effectively, since Callaghan threw in the towel in '79, handing the dwindling levers of control to Thatcher. Pressured from below, to prevent a stripping of its national assets in defense of its claim to progressivity, a Scottish independent government would be forced to take key businesses and industries into public ownership. Speed would be of the essence to circumvent sabotage, but absolutely key to sustainable success would be a priori recognition that the old models for this had failed by not installing mechanisms for popular control determining production and management accountability. It is likely such an outcome would achieve massive popular resonance beyond Scotland's borders once people were made aware of society acting beyond confected divisions, but it would mean the ditching of currencies tied into unmonitorable complex processes from which a tiny controlling minority benefit at the expense of the rest, in favour of new currencies devised for the straightforward purpose of exchanging use-values but valueless from the point of view of gambling on the global stock markets.

[amateur51]

It will be interesting to see what becomes of the new currency Scotland seems likely to be forced into adopting should it go for independence. Will they join the Eurozone, or go it alone? If the latter, what would such a currency be worth in the tides of global speculation? Precious little would seem to be the inescapable conclusion. Unfortunately Salmond seems to think Scotland could hang onto its social democratic ethos in the teeth of EU strictures against so-called anti-competititive practices. Social democratic practice, as long as tied in one way or another with neoliberal economics globally, and via those neoliberal-friendly anti-competitive regulations inextricable from US trade and thereby the vicissitudes of Sino/US economic symbiotics, is bound to fail. This has been the reality, effectively, since Callaghan threw in the towel in '79, handing the dwindling levers of control to Thatcher. Pressured from below, to prevent a stripping of its national assets in defense of its claim to progressivity, a Scottish independent government would be forced to take key businesses and industries into public ownership. Speed would be of the essence to circumvent sabotage, but absolutely key to sustainable success would be a priori recognition that the old models for this had failed by not installing mechanisms for popular control determining production and management accountability. It is likely such an outcome would achieve massive popular resonance beyond Scotland's borders once people were made aware of society acting beyond confected divisions, but it would mean the ditching of currencies tied into unmonitorable complex processes from which a tiny controlling minority benefit at the expense of the rest, in favour of new currencies devised for the straightforward purpose of exchanging use-values but valueless from the point of view of gambling on the global stock markets.

How many Weet-a-bix this morning S_A?!

[Serial_Apologist]

How many Weet-a-bix this morning S_A?!

We're all in the ruff, ruff, ruff age now, ams!

[ahinton]

It will be interesting to see what becomes of the new currency Scotland seems likely to be forced into adopting should it go for independence. Will they join the Eurozone, or go it alone? If the latter, what would such a currency be worth in the tides of global speculation? Precious little would seem to be the inescapable conclusion. Unfortunately Salmond seems to think Scotland could hang onto its social democratic ethos in the teeth of EU strictures against so-called anti-competititive practices. Social democratic practice, as long as tied in one way or another with neoliberal economics globally, and via those neoliberal-friendly anti-competitive regulations inextricable from US trade and thereby the vicissitudes of Sino/US economic symbiotics, is bound to fail. This has been the reality, effectively, since Callaghan threw in the towel in '79, handing the dwindling levers of control to Thatcher. Pressured from below, to prevent a stripping of its national assets in defense of its claim to progressivity, a Scottish independent government would be forced to take key businesses and industries into public ownership. Speed would be of the essence to circumvent sabotage, but absolutely key to sustainable success would be a priori recognition that the old models for this had failed by not installing mechanisms for popular control determining production and management accountability. It is likely such an outcome would achieve massive popular resonance beyond Scotland's borders once people were made aware of society acting beyond confected divisions, but it would mean the ditching of currencies tied into unmonitorable complex processes from which a tiny controlling minority benefit at the expense of the rest, in favour of new currencies devised for the straightforward purpose of exchanging use-values but valueless from the point of view of gambling on the global stock markets.

Very interesting thoughts indeed - and expressed with your customary eloquence and elegance. However, I cannot help but fear that it won't make a whole lot of difference to those things that exercise your concerns here whether or not Scotland chooses independence from UK other than that such independence would likely generate a knock-on effect on what remains of UK. Currencies can be bought and sold and countries can be bought and sold but those "tides of global speculation" look set to ebb and flow for the foreseeable future whatever else happens. Even (or perhaps especially) the attempted overthrow of capitalism in a new state such as an independent Scotland (not that I'm suggesting that any such attempt would be made there) would throw out not only capitalism itself but also a golden opportunity for speculators to trade in and with the new system and to throw it and the capitalist systems still in operation elsewhere into competition with one another in order to gain advantage; my principal fear of any attempt to replace a capitalist system with an alternative one anywhere is that it would inevitaly play into the hands of cannily manipulative speculators. "Production"? "Public ownership" of firms that manufacture goods? In a country the size of an independent Scotland with a population of a mere 5.3m or so and where most production of goods is likely to end up under other nations' ownership or part-ownership? Not Pygmalion likely, methinks! (although, that said, I would be less than surprised if capitalist interests on one kind and another outside Scotland itself will ensure that Scotland decides against independence, not least since they've shown their hand in so doing to no small degree already).

[Serial_Apologist]

Very interesting thoughts indeed - and expressed with your customary eloquence and elegance. However, I cannot help but fear that it won't make a whole lot of difference to those things that exercise your concerns here whether or not Scoalnd chooses independence from UK other than that such independence would likely generate a knock-on effect on what remains of UK.

Yes but that knock-on effect would also be affected by responses before and to it within the independent Scotland. Noting how that country was managing, notwithstanding, and continuing to protect subsidised college fees and care for the elderly in the name of the social democratic ethos once shared by its larger neighbour, many on the English side would have reminders of what they had forfeited for the mess of potage represented by private interests.

Currencies can be bought and sold and countries can be bought and sold but those "tides of global speculation" look set to ebb and flow for the foreseeable future whatever else happens. Even (or perhaps especially) the attempted overthrow of capitalism in a new state such as an independent Scotland (not that I'm suggesting that any such attempt would be made in such a new state) would throw out an opportunity for speculators to trade in and with the new system and to thrown it against the capitalist systems still in operation elsewhere in order to gain advantage; my principal fear of any attempt to replace a capitalist system with an alternative one anywhere is that it would inevitaly play into the hands of cannily manipulative speculators.

This was, of course, the fate which befell the young Soviet Union - one which Lenin and others foretold would lead to the return of capitalism were the state to remain isolated - which turned out true in the long term.

"Production"? "Public ownership" of firms that manufacture goods? In a country the size of an independent Scotland with a population of a mere 5.3m or so where most of its production is likely to end up under other nations' ownership or part-ownership? Not Pygmalion likely, methinks! (although, that said, I would be less than surprised if capitalist interests on one kind and another outside Scotland itself will ensure that Scotland decides against independence, not least since they've shown their hand in so doing to no small degree already).

By no means a foregone conclusion!

[aeolium]

An article on the internecine warfare in the SWP in recent years, which might be of interest to some. OK, perhaps just one or two. S_A?

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/05/comrades-war-decline-and-fall-socialist-workers-party

[Serial_Apologist]

An article on the internecine warfare in the SWP in recent years, which might be of interest to some. OK, perhaps just one or two. S_A?

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics...-workers-party

I wasn't in the SWP ever, back in the day. Differences of one specific kind on the Trotskyist Left in the 1960s and '70s were always a butt of jokes, revolving as they did around whether or not the Soviet Union - and by derivation, the E Bloc countries, China, N Korea, Cuba, Vietnam etc etc - really were post-capitalist countries, or "state capitalist", as the IS/SWP always maintained. In terms of the triumphalism of neoliberalism and the New Right, that issue would turn out of course to be rather more fundamental after the tumbling of the Berlin Wall. Leaving that aside, there were always deficiences in IS/SWP politics, reflected in their party organisation and practices, though even I am astonished to read the above article, as I only ever came across good people of integrity in it, (unlike in Militant, for example) however misguided some considered them. I can understand their double-bind, in a way; consistency to principle would demand non-recognition of the bourgeois legal system for sorting out individual behavioural problems and complaints thereof; but this springs from a characterisation of democratic institutions unaltered by wider historical collective experience that enabled "the comrades" to maintain advocacy of smashing the state apparatus and building a new one ab ovo. I think Trotskyism as a whole never ceased from being bedevilled by that.