Is capitalism really such a good system?

[P. G. Tipps]

Have any far-left candidates ever stood in your constituency, PGT? Because they haven't in mine, anywhere. Until people reach a stage of utter disillusionment in the existing order, the least implausible option of voting for the least objectionable candidate most likely to get elected is preferable to anything else, really.

Well yes, even in the Chancellor's constituency ... we've had them all here over the years especially in Neil Hamilton's time!

However, even if you are correct in your theory of 'utter disillusionment' surely long before that is the time when voters look around for some sort of possible alternative?

There will always be political dreamers like George Galloway and Nigel Farage & Co who take advantage of this and rock the consensus centrist boat from time to time. In turn, voters simply use these people as useful ammunition to bash the Establishment at relatively unimportant elections.

Afterwards, back in the real world ...

[Richard Barrett]

I really don't know where this obsessive denial of the term "ruling class" comes from. It should be obvious that Serial_Apologist and I are using the very clear definition of the term used in Marxist thinking, which goes something like: the ruling class under capitalism "consists of those who own and and control the means of production and thus are able to dominate and exploit the working class, getting them to labour enough to produce surplus-value, the basis for profits, interest, and rent (property income). This property income can be used to accumulate more power, to extend class domination further. The economic power of such a class gives it extraordinary political power, so that state or government policies almost always reflect the perceived interests of that class." I am quoting from the Wikipedia article "Ruling Class". I was under the impression that anyone with internet access would be able to look up definitions of terms like "ruling class" using the search engine of their choice, but maybe not everyone is aware of this useful technology.

[P. G. Tipps]

I have to confess that the plea from Richard Barrett that members might be assisted by consulting their dictionaries/phrasebooks did make me smile broadly.

Rather more unexpectedly, I also now appear to be a member of the 'Ruling Class' as I own some shares in a few companies which dominate and exploit the Working Class. Since retirement, I've also rented out a small holiday home to others who, incidentally, seemed happy, even delighted, with the domination and exploitation at the time.

However, I have also worked and toiled hard to earn a relatively meagre crust all my life, so I've always assumed if I were a member of any 'Class' I'd be right down there with the comradely workers. I'm sure there are many thousands like myself in the UK.

So can I and the others claim to be a member of both 'Classes' or have we now simply been kicked Upstairs?

[ahinton]

The answer lies in taxation, surely - as a general principle (without entering specifics here)?

There's already IHT (Inheritance Tax). Its threshold has remained unchanged at £325K for some years; everything above it's taxed at 40%. OK, there are tax planning vehicles as well as government advice to mitigate liability, but it remains in place nevertheless. Might you have in mind another viable proposal for a tax régime that wouldn't be so punitive as to encourage the wealthy to choose other tax régimes under which to be taxed and which might be more equitable than the current IHT system?

One couldn't blame anyone for not wanting to assume responsibility for a bank that was taken over under pain of losing all its customers' money! A genuine properly constituted people's bank would periodically elect its bosses to look after its customers' accounts.

Indeed, but what would a "people's bank" be, how would it differ from other clearing/investment banks and on what grounds could it be any less at risk than others? The nearest that we've had to one in UK is the Co-op bank; look what's happened to that!

Outwith capitalist relations of accumulation and distribution I don't see the problem; you need x number of accommodation units, y the number of bricks and other building materials needed, and z number of construction workers. A geographical network of peoples' banking outlets would apply vigilance to prevent speculative runs on the currency through its staff.

What would be the funding source to build on so a scale vast enough to achieve all of the desired results and then manage/maintain/insure/administer the properties that are earmarked for letting rather than sale? And how would a "people's bank", however trustworthy, guarantee prevention of currency or other speculation when such speculation is down to markets over which it could not exert full control, especially when at least a certain amount of foreign money would be coming in to buy or rent these properties. Where would be the guarantee of affordability to rent or buy?

It isn't taking the Chinese that long to build! What the CCCP leadership has ordered is more of whatever that polite word for printing money is - competitive easing? A socialist administration would reunite the split between actual added value and money supply so the value of money would once again be made congruent with working reality and transparent.

I'm not sure of the Chinese funding source but that example's a potentially dangerous one not unakin to the rampant and ill-considered homebuilding in Spain in recent years that has since collapsed, wreaking havoc on the property market in parts of that country where around 1 in 4 of the workforce is without work (an statistic on a par with that of Greece). France takes an opposite view - renovating wrecks, especially in rural areas, is usually encouraged over and above new builds - but a recent paper suggests that its property market, already in the doldrums for several years, will continue to worsen for another decade http://www.french-property.com/news/...fall_10_years/; from the same source is a piece on proposed tax reductions (mainly to benefit the less well off) http://www.french-property.com/news/...eduction_2014/ where massive social charges levied on French taxpayers are so punitive that many French pay little or no income tax; unlike UK, social charges are tax-deductible (and, at those swingeing rates, they'd have to be, otherwise they'd bankrupt hundreds of thousands of taxpayers) but, again unlike UK, social charges are payable for life by those who continue to be employed or self-employed beyond state retirement age.

Explained by how the overweening ideology we live under from cradle to grave courts a survivalist, all-against-all mass mentality in practically every field of human activity, then brings in religion and/or psychiatry to force the square pegs thereby created into round holes. Short of a class analysis I don't know of any philosophy of living, with the possible exception of secular Buddhism, capable of withstanding its pressures to fit in. How otherwise can, for instance, racism be accounted for into mature adulthood, other than by way of one or another of its divide-and-rule tactics?

My concerns are that, for one thing, those who bandy the "class" term about are usually socialists whose use of it seems largely to stem from the use of "working class" and expands from there, but we're not all socialists and, for another, it strikes me as an artificial contrivance for the convenience of trying to pigeon-hole people in order to explain what those who do it want to explain, but it's divisive by nature and makes scant allowance for those who might be argued to have passed from one class to another.

Why, for example, would long-term unemployed be described as "working class" when, for whatever reason, they are not actually working?

If, due to factors including technological development, there becomes ever less work for people to do to produce the capital growth that should ensure continued availability of work, does this not signify a depletion of the "working class" in any case?

What of the asset rich/income poor, some of whom work and others don't? To what class do they belong? Do they all belong to the same one?

What of those born into a "lower middle class" environment who better themselves financially? Do they thereby change class?

What of the wealthy who don't need to work for a living but who nevertheless do paid work?

I also think that the classification obsession might have contributed to fostering the concept of the "middle class" which has itself undermined the meaning of "class" as effectively as has anything else but, be that as it may, there are too many exceptions to make the promotion of the idea of distinct social strata as credible as those who do it would like it to be.

Socialists have long argued that working people have but little alternative to withdrawing that which produces surplus value, their labour power, as ways of gaining concessions in terms of more leisure time, better incomes and conditions of work, or combatting redundancies, wage or job cuts, breaches of employment contracts etc., inadequate and inconvenient to the ordinary public though strikes may sometimes be. A revolutionary struggle would pose the question of who owns the plant - the employer or those doing the work - by the latter determining the product and who and how many are involved in its manufacture on a basis of objective need, and, if the boss doesn't concur, taking on ownership and control. This would take place under circumstances of wider social readiness - for one thing one would need the solidarity of refusal from, let's say, organised workers abroad being bribed into taking on the blacked work, (us pitted against us in class terms); for another a ligitimising government at local and national levels, since I don't personally think British workers, with their long historical identification of institutions of enablement such as local authorities, ngo's and co-ops, would go straight for unmediated forms of workers' democracy in the forms developed in Russia betwen 1905 and 1917.

Your first sentence refers to strikes, "work-to-rule" arangements &c., but withdrawal of labour can also mean mass resignations, a far more powerful message to unscrupluous employers (including state owned ones) than any strike, yet no one seems yet to have had the courage to risk it.

As to "who owns the plant", my answer is twofold. Firstly, it's identical to my comment about "owning" RBS; were I an industrial employee, I wouldn't want to own the land, premises, plant &c. because I would be unwilling to assume and incapable of taking due responsibility for it. Secondly, that argument hardly applies in the same way in service industies that aren't as "plant" dependent as manufacturing ones.

Also, workers who seize control of employers' assets and try run the businesses themselves (which means seizing control of taxpayer funded assets in the case of disgruntled public sector workers) will find themselves in competition with other like businesses, so I don't quite see how this could be guaranteed to bring about anything like as much of a change as some might assume.

If we're talking about rich philanthropists, I agree that they do exist, and good for them, but they constitute a minority; and as Ams and Flossie have pointed out in the past, is charity really a dependable, let alone satisfactorily accountable way to distribute largesse to causes which are really outcomes of capitalism's inability to meet basic needs?

No, of course not, but one reason for that is that, as you note, such philanthropists "constitute a minority". If some of that wealthy majority are not somehow encouraged to believe that getting involved in philanthropy could help to feather their own nests as well as those of the less well off, we'll get nowhere and there will remain the spectacle of an ugly and destructive divide between wealthy philanthropists and wealthy hoarders; if ways can be found to foster such a change in attitude, serious progress might indeed be made, social as well as economic. OK, it looks like a far-fetched rose-tinted argument, but I believe that it has more going for it than workers' revolutionary confusion!

[ahinton]

I really don't know where this obsessive denial of the term "ruling class" comes from. It should be obvious that Serial_Apologist and I are using the very clear definition of the term used in Marxist thinking, which goes something like: the ruling class under capitalism "consists of those who own and and control the means of production and thus are able to dominate and exploit the working class, getting them to labour enough to produce surplus-value, the basis for profits, interest, and rent (property income). This property income can be used to accumulate more power, to extend class domination further. The economic power of such a class gives it extraordinary political power, so that state or government policies almost always reflect the perceived interests of that class." I am quoting from the Wikipedia article "Ruling Class". I was under the impression that anyone with internet access would be able to look up definitions of terms like "ruling class" using the search engine of their choice, but maybe not everyone is aware of this useful technology.

Of course the motivation for yours and others' use of the term is understood and accepted, but that doesn't of itself justify its validity. If, in the example mentioned by S_A, workers take over the factory and run the business, that surely turns them into members of the "ruling class" by reason of having done so, but I don't imagine that this is what's meant; someone has to "own and and control the means of production" and, in any case, the business, whatever its ownership, will remain in competition with other like businesses. The "means of production" has in any case a rather different connotation in manufacturing industries to that which applies to service industries - and, since you mention that "useful technology" the internet, that has surely helped in altering the balance between numbers of employees involved in the former and those involved in the latter to the advantage of the latter. Furthermore, what place would such meanings have for those who run small self-employed businesses, especially those who do not employ anyone?

I cannot help but think that the "ruling class" definition might well have had more credence in Marx's day than it can possibly have today.

[Richard Barrett]

So can I and the others claim to be a member of both 'Classes' or have we now simply been kicked Upstairs?

Now you're just being silly, aren't you. Of course there is a difference between someone like yourself and a "captain of industry". Owning a few shares and a bit of property is not quite the same thing as employing people on an industrial scale. Having said that, owning shares is something I'd personally never consider doing, and owning real estate is also something I'm happy to have been able to avoid. Small-scale share ownership is of course encouraged under capitalism precisely because it causes the owner to have literally bought into the system, having thereby an interest in the system's continuation, even if in other (perhaps more important) ways they might not have such an interest. This kind of conflict of interest is, as you say, shared by many people, and very many people in elections for this among other reasons vote against their own class. Not that there's really any alternative, as S_A has said. Leaving aside socialist organisations, we see how the Green party in the UK is ignored by the news media, in comparison with UKIP which of course is yet another men-in-suits party dedicated to upholding the capitalist status quo. Any political organisation in the "democratic" West which explicitly sets itself against that status quo has not so much an uphill struggle to be noticed as a vertical-hill struggle, under present conditions at any rate.

[Flosshilde]

I cannot help but think that the "ruling class" definition might well have had more credence in Marx's day than it can possibly have today.

Does that mean that you think there is no longer a group of people who wield power, or that the people who wield power cannot be thought of as a single group, or that there are people who wield power but they cannot be identified (by which I mean that it is not possible, not that it is not permitted - although that is a possibility, given how libel laws work in the favour of the rich & powerful).

[ahinton]

Does that mean that you think there is no longer a group of people who wield power, or that the people who wield power cannot be thought of as a single group, or that there are people who wield power but they cannot be identified (by which I mean that it is not possible, not that it is not permitted - although that is a possibility, given how libel laws work in the favour of the rich & powerful).

Of these three, certainly not the first. The second pretty much accords with what I meant and so might the third if I correctly understand your meaning of "cannot be identified" as being "is impossible (specifically) to identify".

[ahinton]

Of course there is a difference between someone like yourself and a "captain of industry". Owning a few shares and a bit of property is not quite the same thing as employing people on an industrial scale. Having said that, owning shares is something I'd personally never consider doing, and owning real estate is also something I'm happy to have been able to avoid.

Well, that's your prerogative, as indeed it should be in both cases. However, were everyone else to follow suit and never buy shares in any business, how would those businesses expect to be funded instead? By massive additional borrowings? Likewise, if no one purchase his/her own home, who would own all those homes instead?

Small-scale share ownership is of course encouraged under capitalism precisely because it causes the owner to have literally bought into the system, having thereby an interest in the system's continuation, even if in other (perhaps more important) ways they might not have such an interest.

Understandable as this is insofar as it goes, where would your commend small investors to invest their money instead? Those who pay pension contributions (private or under employers' schemes) and those who deposite money in current and deposit accounts at banks and into NS&I accounts all invest in shares, because that what those institutions do with their money, the only material difference being that this constitutes indirect rather than direct investment in shares.

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, that wouldn't seem to be the case; there is already IHT (Inheritance Tax) which covers lifetime gifts as well as legacies upon death; the threshold below which estates are exempt from it has remained unchanged at £325K for some years and everything above that is taxed at 40%. MIght you have some other viable proposal for a tax régime in mind that would not be so punitive as to encourage the wealthy to choose other nations' tax régimes under which to be taxed?

If they don't like it here, I say let 'em go: they're bad role models for the young. Of course there should really be an embargo on them agreed worldwide, but with people, let's say in charge, prepared to fete them into their respective countries with tax bribes and assurances offered about weak trade union and other opposition, that isn't likely to happen.

But what would be a "people's bank" and on what grounds could or would it be any less at risk than others? The nearest that we've had to one in UK has, I think, been the Co-op bank and look what's happened to that!

The Co-op offers yet another example of an assumption of "no alternative" to how banks are run today.

But, as I keep asking, where's the money coming from to build on so vast a scale as would be required to achieve the desired results - and then to manage, maintain and administer such of thoses properties that are earmarked for letting as distinct from purchase? And how would a "people's bank" - however trustworthy it might be - guarantee the prevention of speculation when such speculation is down to the markets over which it could not have full control, especially given that at least a certain amount of foreign money would be coming in to buy or rent these properties. Where would be the guarantee of affordability, either to rent of buy?

Volunteers seem to be offered as the solution to running libraries short of funds, so why not building houses and banks?

I think that the Chinese example is a potentially very dangerous one not entirely unakin to the rampant building in Spain in recent years that has collapsed, ruining the property market in most of that country which now has around 1 in 4 of the workforce without work (an unemployment statistic on a par with that of Greece). In France, there's the opposite of such a plan and renovation of wrecks, especially in rural areas, is usually encouraged over and above new builds, but a recent paper suggests that the property market tghere, which has already been in the doldrums for several years, will continue to worsen for another decade - see http://www.french-property.com/news/...fall_10_years/ - and, from the same source, a piece about proposed reductions in taxation (mainly to benefit the less well off) - http://www.french-property.com/news/...eduction_2014/ - where the massive social charges levind on French taxpayers are so punitive that only a smallish fraction of French pay income tax at all; unlike UK, social charges are tax-deductible (and at those swingeing rates they'd have to be, otherwise they'd run the risk of bankrupting hundreds of thousands of taxpayers) but, again unlike UK, social charges are payable for life by those who are employed or self-employed above the state retirement age.

I agree - which is why I said monetary values will have to be brought back into accord with the social hours put into creating value in the first place, before it's all gambled in stock market equivalents of casinos.

My concerns about it are that, for one thing, most people who bandy the "class" term about are usually socialists whose use of the term seems to stem from the use of "working class" and expands from there, but we're not all socialists and, for another, it strikes me as an artifice, a contrivance, for the convenience of trying to put people into pigeon-holes in order to explain what those who do it want to explain, but it's divisive by nature and doesn't as a rule allow for those who might be considered to passfrom one class to another. Why would any of the long-term unemployed be described as "working class" when, for whatever reason (often beyonf their control), they are not actually working? If there becomes less and less work for people to do to produce the capital growth that should ensure continued availability of work, does this not signify a depletion of the "working class" in any case? Whatg of the asset rich and income poor? - to what class do they belong and do they all belong to the same one? What of the person born into what might be thought of as a lower middle class environment and who betters him/herself financially? I also think that the classification obsession might be one factor that's helped to encourage the concept of the "middle class" and that has itelf undermined the meaning of "class" as effectively as has anything else but, be that as it may or may not, there are just too many exceptions to make the promotion of the idea of social strata as credible as those who do it would like.

Class is commonly, and not just colloqually, used in non-socialist circles, so accusing those of us who are of some sort of special pleading is misplaced. Working class people are working class whether or not they happen to be in work, because they have no alternative but to sell their labour power. The division is prior to its description. Who said anybody can't move between the classes? Certainly not us, I assure you! The growth of the middle class is a vital adjunct to capitalism inasmuch as the increased productivity of labour enables its expansion - a portion of productive value going to assisting in the production of surplus value by servicing and policing it.

By your first sentence you are referring to strikes, "work-to-rule" arangements and the rest, but withdrawal of labour can also mean mass resignations, which would be a far more powerful message to unscrupluous employers (including state owned ones) than any strike would be - but no one has yet had the courage to risk it.

But hasn't it occurred to you that workers would be no more likely to get their jobs back than if they struck? Better alternatives to strikes are occupations, go-slows, work-to-rules, refusing to cover for redundant job functions, and worker's alternative plans, because they pose the question of who owns the product of work.

As to the question of "who owns the plant", my answer is twofold; firstly, it's identical to my comment about "owning" RBS in that, were I an industrial employee, I would simply not want to own the land, the premises, the plant and the rest because I could not take responsibility for it and, secondly, that argument hardly applies in the same way in service industies that aren't as dependent upon "plant" as are manufacturing ones. There's the additional factor that workers who seize control of their employers' assets and try run the business themselves (which means seizing control of taxpayer funded assets in the case of disgruntled public sector workers) will find themselves in competition with other like businesses, so I don't quite see how this could be guaranteed to bring about anything like as much change as some might assume.

The problem with the top-down, management from above model adopted for the post-WW2 public sector and nationalised indistries was their non-inculcation of any sense of ownership and the responsibilities attaching thereto by workforces. The capitalist ethos of "leave it to us to manage, go and enjoy your telly", not helped by trade union "economism", i.e. looking after wages & conditions and limiting it to that while trade union bureaucrats hob-nobbed on capitalist-sized salaries with the other side, was transferred, making it clear that nationalisation was not Step 1 to socialism but a mere infrastructural adjunct to a private sector that couldn't do without it. It was very difficult in the circs for socialists to argue that the mixed economy would one day come the cropper that it has, when ordinary working people were seeing the contrast between a dictatorial communinst system based on total nationalisation and a return to the Victorian values of the harsh mill owner, and benefitting in higher living standards. Now everyone's aware of the perpetrated con, but control won't willingly be handed over - not because the capitalists have convinced themselves there is no better system than the one they benefit by, but because it allows them to.

No, of course it isn't - but one of the reason for that is that, as you rightly observe, such philanthropists "constitute a minority". If some of the majority of wealthy people are not somehow encouraged to believe that getting involved in philanthropic activities could help to feather their own nests as well as be in the interests of other less well of than themselves, we won't get anywhere and there will remain the spectacle of an ugly and destructive divide between the wealthy philanthropists and the wealthy who keep their assets and incomes to themselves; if ways can be found to encourage such a change in attitude, then serious progress might indeed be made - social as well as economic. OK, it looks like a far-fetched rose-tinted argument, but I believe that it has at least as much going for it than workers' revolutionary confusion!

Stockhausen came out with something similar back in 1991, didn't he! - calling on the Japanese banks to support high culture! The interviewer asked, "You mean, like King Ludwig did for Wagner?" - Ha!

[ahinton]

If they don't like it here, I say let 'em go: they're bad role models for the young.

That one's been said many times before. I wasn't talking about "letting 'em go" or even their necessarily going - I was talking about them choosing to be taxed elsewhere, which isn't the same thing - but never mind that; I asked - and still ask - whether you have in mind some other viable proposal for a tax régime. "Bad rôle models for the young? Some of them ARE the young!

Of course there should really be an embargo on them agreed worldwide

What sort of "embargo" do you have in mind?

The Co-op offers yet another example of an assumption of "no alternative" to how banks are run today.

I'd asked, but you don't seem yet to have answered, "what would a "people's bank" be, how would it differ from other clearing/investment banks and on what grounds could it be any less at risk than others?", other than that it would be one that's not run along the lines of the Co-op one.

Volunteers seem to be offered as the solution to running libraries short of funds, so why not building houses and banks?

Few who volunteer for running such libraries would likely do so, I imagine, unless they thought that they have most of the skills to do it. Building many undreds of thousands of houses, however, requires planning lawyers to negotiate land acquisition and permission to build on it, all the building skills required to do it and all the skills required to manage/maintain/insure/administer the properties earmarked for subsequent rental; both the skills sets factor and the sheer numbers of people that would need to be involved in the entire process would make it impossible for volunteers and could hardly be compared to volunteer library staff either in skill sets terms or numbers terms. As to banks, would you put a penny into a bank run largely by unskilled volunteers? Wouldn't that seem even more risky than putting money in banks run as they are now?!

I agree - which is why I said monetary values will have to be brought back into accord with the social hours put into creating value in the first place, before it's all gambled in stock market equivalents of casinos.

But how would you envisage being able to exert full control over those monetary values and guarantee protecting them against the wiles of skilled and determined speculators? - and where's the money coming from in the first place?(!)...

Class is commonly, and not just colloqually, used in non-socialist circles, so accusing those of us who are of some sort of special pleading is misplaced.

I'm not accusing anyone of anything here, believe me - merely reflecting what my experience tells me, rightly or wrongly. Would you not, however, agree that, today, "class" discussions have become more the province of socialists than of others than seemed to be the case 40 years ago?

Working class people are working class whether or not they happen to be in work, because they have no alternative but to sell their labour power.

But if they're unemployed (whether or not through any fault of their own - and it's usually not their fault), they can't sell their labour power so, until such time as they can (either by landing a job or by starting up a business), they would appear to have no "alternative" at all to being unemployed!

The division is prior to its description. Who said anybody can't move between the classes? Certainly not us, I assure you! The growth of the middle class is a vital adjunct to capitalism inasmuch as the increased productivity of labour enables its expansion - a portion of productive value going to assisting in the production of surplus value by servicing and policing it.

OK, fine - but if the "growth of the middle class is a vital adjunct to capitalism", is not that very class thereby identified as an inherent constituent of capitalism and thus a phenomenon of which many a socialist would disapprove? Regardless of how some people (socialists or otherwise) might seek to "classify" others now, what kind of class structure would you seek to advocate in a future socialist world?

But hasn't it occurred to you that workers would be no more likely to get their jobs back than if they struck? Better alternatives to strikes are occupations, go-slows, work-to-rules, refusing to cover for redundant job functions, and worker's alternative plans, because they pose the question of who owns the product of work.

Of course - but workers who resign en masse wouldn't want their jobs back - at least not as thos jobs were; in most such cases, employers would not suddenly be able to replace an entire workforce and carry on as usual regardless of the mass resignations. You describe "occupations, go-slows, work-to-rules, refusing to cover for redundant job functions, and worker's alternative plans" as "better alternatives to strikes", but "better" for what and/or whom? They're all comparatively untidy irritations and far less powerful; employers have better chances of getting around them, at least in part, than they have if an entire workforce strikes and much better ones again than if an entire workforce resigns.

"Who owns the product of work"? Those who pay for it to be done, presumably, until such time as said product is sold by those payers and, thereafter, it's owned by its purchasers and, meanwhile, the workers who have produced that product own their skills in so doing; it might not appear to be quite so clear-cut in the case of those who work in service industries, however - what actually IS the product created by those who work in the stock exchange, banks, investment institutions, insurance companies and the like? If, by implication, you would seek to advocate that the workers should own the product and be seen to do so, those workers would have have both the reponsibility and the need to sell that product, otherwise there'd be nothing with which to pay them for their work.

The problem with the top-down, management from above model adopted for the post-WW2 public sector and nationalised indistries was their non-inculcation of any sense of ownership by workforces.

See above. Workers owning the skills for which they're hired to create products and services is not the same as their owning the products and services that they're paid to create and I do not see why the former should be regarded as presuming the latter.

The capitalist ethos of "leave it to us to manage, go and enjoy your telly"

...is just plain patronising, put like that, but it doesn't alter the fact that not all workers in manufacturing or service industies have the skills or desire to manage, still less to market the product.

not helped by trade union "economism", i.e. looking after wages & conditions and limiting it to that while trade union bureaucrats hob-nobbed on capitalist-sized salaries with the other side, was transferred, making it clear that nationalisation was not Step 1 to socialism but a mere infrastructural adjunct to a private sector that couldn't do without it. It was very difficult in the circs for socialists to argue that the mixed economy would one day come the cropper that it has, when ordinary working people were seeing the contrast between a dictatorial communinstr system based on total nationalisation and a return to the Victorian values of the harsh mill owner, and benefitting in higher living standards. Now everyone's aware of the perpetrated con, but control won't willingly be handed over - not because the capitalists have convinced themselves there is no better system than the one they benefit by, but because it allows them to.

Plenty of good points here.

Stockhausen came out with something similar back in 1991, didn't he! - calling on the Japanese banks to support high culture! The interviewer asked, "You mean, like King udwig did for Wagner?" - Ha!

Nice one! - but, that said, whoever supports "high culture", it will be done at least in part with money, some of which will be seen by at least some as "ill-gotten gains". Even governments who tax the rich risk taking a share of the spoils of at least some people's "ill-gotten gains" and, in so doing, they indirectly support their ill-getting.

Anyway, much as I respect your well-considered thoughts and enjoy reading and engaging with them as best I am able (which probably isn't much of a "best"!), I think that I ought now to shut up for abit and let others contribute!

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, nobody apparently wants to join the fray, so I'll try and answer some of your questions, where I can.

I asked - and still ask - whether you have in mind some other viable proposal for a tax régime.

Income, property and wealth taxes, concurrent and in some sort of combination with the phasing in of a new currency for spending on UK produce; taxes on non-sustainable energy usages rising over time in parallel with an opposite shift towards renewables, with assistance with domestic insulation and installations contributing to, rather than feed off energy supplies, for lower income groups.

What sort of "embargo" do you have in mind?

Countries should combine to stop the business elite using nations against each other; first they would have to stop inter-competing in the ingratiation stakes for who can offer the biggest inducements; and here is where much greater internationalisation of worker/community solidarity, and a politics deriving therefrom, becomes the basis for a re-prioritisation of world trade on behalf of environmental sustainability and an end to poverty.

I'd asked, but you don't seem yet to have answered, "what would a "people's bank" be, how would it differ from other clearing/investment banks and on what grounds could it be any less at risk than others?", other than that it would be one that's not run along the lines of the Co-op one.

One in which people's savings were safe: for a start, not investing in dodgy ponzi schemes, drugs, sexploitation, armaments, environmentally damaging or sweatshop-type industries.

Few who volunteer for running such libraries would likely do so, I imagine, unless they thought that they have most of the skills to do it. Building many undreds of thousands of houses, however, requires planning lawyers to negotiate land acquisition and permission to build on it, all the building skills required to do it and all the skills required to manage/maintain/insure/administer the properties earmarked for subsequent rental; both the skills sets factor and the sheer numbers of people that would need to be involved in the entire process would make it impossible for volunteers and could hardly be compared to volunteer library staff either in skill sets terms or numbers terms. As to banks, would you put a penny into a bank run largely by unskilled volunteers? Wouldn't that seem even more risky than putting money in banks run as they are now?!

I was being sarcastic when I suggested volunteering as the solution, because I wouldn't put it past the Conservatives to suggest it, having already done so in the case of libraries otherwise threatened with closure!

But how would you envisage being able to exert full control over those monetary values and guarantee protecting them against the wiles of skilled and determined speculators? - and where's the money coming from in the first place?(!)...

We're talking a different basis of wealth, as I've said previously, in which value resides in the labour put into manufacturing product not in some over-determined longterm process of accumulation, depreciation or contrived scarcity. Wealth isn't some static quantity, true for all time, only what is agreed to be worth at any given point in time and history. It was only when USSR citizens wanted Levi jeans etc that the American dollar suddenly became attractive. The new currency would constitute the basic means of exchange, and in terms of the vast wealth today based on gambled proceeds of capital accumulation wouldn't be worth gambling on; present legal tender would indeed be made illegal and production of notes and coinage discontinued; the populace of a politically more accountable system more motivated to be vigilant than the present one of "leave it to the forces of Laura Norder" and, if they don't do the job, "well, there's no structures to enable me to do anything about it". So as to keep the wolf from the door, short of establishing such a currency, which as I see it would have to be introduced for payment of essential products and services, spending on inessentials such as Trident and HS2 would be terminated.

Would you not, however, agree that, today, "class" discussions have become more the province of socialists than of others than seemed to be the case 40 years ago?

They've been making a big comeback - you obviously haven't noticed - even in America!

[I]f the "growth of the middle class is a vital adjunct to capitalism", is not that very class thereby identified as an inherent constituent of capitalism and thus a phenomenon of which many a socialist would disapprove? Regardless of how some people (socialists or otherwise) might seek to "classify" others now, what kind of class structure would you seek to advocate in a future socialist world?

Well, believe it or not, a classless society! One model proposed earlier was the early Kibbutzim in Israel, in which jobs were revolved so everyone got to take responsibility and do the most menial tasks.

"Who owns the product of work"? Those who pay for it to be done, presumably, until such time as said product is sold by those payers and, thereafter, it's owned by its purchasers and, meanwhile, the workers who have produced that product own their skills in so doing; it might not appear to be quite so clear-cut in the case of those who work in service industries, however - what actually IS the product created by those who work in the stock exchange, banks, investment institutions, insurance companies and the like? If, by implication, you would seek to advocate that the workers should own the product and be seen to do so, those workers would have have both the reponsibility and the need to sell that product, otherwise there'd be nothing with which to pay them for their work.

People own what they've paid for? I don't understand any of the above because I don't think one can "own" abstractions such as skills or ideas.

not all workers in manufacturing or service industies have the skills or desire to manage, still less to market the product.

Plenty of existing managers shouldn't be managers right now, but how does one stop them?! Hatred and envy of those higher up the greasy pole plays its part in divide-and-rule, but people, who will always need supervision of some sort, are generally more accepting of it from those not being paid exorbitantly more than themselves to do nothing but lord it over them on superior pay, so electing them on a trialled basis or a revolving jobs set-up would be a popular means for deciding who. Those not wanting to have a go can always decline!

[ahinton]

Income, property and wealth taxes, concurrent and in some sort of combination with the phasing in of a new currency for spending on UK produce; taxes on non-sustainable energy usages rising over time in parallel with an opposite shift towards renewables, with assistance with domestic insulation and installations contributing to, rather than feed off energy supplies, for lower income groups.

We already have income and property taxes and neighbouring countries such as France and Spain have wealth taxes whereas we do not yet; I don;t know whether or to what extent they'd be a good idea but they'd be bad news for the assets rich and income/ disposable capital poor, they might be harder to collect than most others and they'd be unlikely to contribute much to the Exchequer's income any more than they do where they're already in operation. Rates and thresholds for existing taxes can be played about with, of course, but the end result must always be affordable in a way that the French social charge system largely isn't.

Countries should combine to stop the business elite using nations against each other; first they would have to stop inter-competing in the ingratiation stakes for who can offer the biggest inducements; and here is where much greater internationalisation of worker/community solidarity, and a politics deriving therefrom, becomes the basis for a re-prioritisation of world trade on behalf of environmental sustainability and an end to poverty.

I agree with much of this although I'm not sure how easy it would be to bring about in practice and I don't in any case think that it could only happen as a consequence of "much greater internationalisation of worker/community solidarity, and a politics deriving therefrom" as the incentive and motivation would need to be more wide-ranging than just that but, that said, in principle, I'd be largely in favour.

One in which people's savings were safe: for a start, not investing in dodgy ponzi schemes

Like National Insurance, for example?(!)

[QUOTE=Serial_Apologist;412784]drugs, sexploitation, armaments, environmentally damaging or sweatshop-type industries[/quote
Yes, indeed - but that alone wouldn't suffice to define a "people's bank", would it? - and it certainly wouldn't of itself reduce the risk of mismanagement, incompetence and advantage-taking from within that we've witnessed with clearing banks who are also investment banks; I do think that separating these activities would be a good start for the banking profession.

I was being sarcastic when I suggested volunteering as the solution, because I wouldn't put it past the Conservatives to suggest it, having already done so in the case of libraries otherwise threatened with closure!

Fair comment!

We're talking a different basis of wealth, as I've said previously, in which value resides in the labour put into manufacturing product not in some over-determined longterm process of accumulation, depreciation or contrived scarcity. Wealth isn't some static quantity, true for all time, only what is agreed to be worth at any given point in time and history. It was only when USSR citizens wanted Levi jeans etc that the American dollar suddenly became attractive. The new currency would constitute the basic means of exchange, and in terms of the vast wealth today based on gambled proceeds of capital accumulation wouldn't be worth gambling on; present legal tender would indeed be made illegal and production of notes and coinage discontinued; the populace of a politically more accountable system more motivated to be vigilant than the present one of "leave it to the forces of Laura Norder" and, if they don't do the job, "well, there's no structures to enable me to do anything about it". So as to keep the wolf from the door, short of establishing such a currency, which as I see it would have to be introduced for payment of essential products and services, spending on inessentials such as Trident and HS2 would be terminated.

I'd love to see the last of those happening! - in fact, re-appropriation of unnecessary and ill-considered defence spending would be greatoly socially beneficial. The problem with the currency idea, however, seems to me to be the same as that about valuing labour as part of the product; the currency has to be marketable otherwie it stays within the country (which wouldn't work) and the labour value issue has to take on board that the value in the workers' product is recognised when it's sold.

They've been making a big comeback - you obviously haven't noticed - even in America!

Pity, then; they always seem so inherently divisive.

Well, believe it or not, a classless society!

You and I both, then!

One model proposed earlier was the early Kibbutzim in Israel, in which jobs were revolved so everyone got to take responsibility and do the most menial tasks.

Hmmm - the last bit can be useful to the extent that if the CEO doesn't know how to make the tea and use the paper clips and post-it notes he/she won't likely do his/her job as well as if he/she did, but I'm less confident about the Kibbutzim idea as being applicable as universally as you're talking about here; it has its virtues but also its disadvantages.

People own what they've paid for? I don't understand any of the above because I don't think one can "own" abstractions such as skills or ideas.

Well, you can patent them on occasion but no, you can't "own" skills in the same way as material goods, of course - but what I was talking about here was the improbability of workes who create product "owning" it when they've been paid to make it and someone else has to sell it - and I'm not sure how such an idea would work in service industries anyway.

Plenty of existing managers shouldn't be managers right now, but how does one stop them?! Hatred and envy of those higher up the greasy pole plays its part in divide-and-rule, but people, who will always need supervision of some sort, are generally more accepting of it from those not being paid exorbitantly more than themselves to do nothing but lord it over them on superior pay, so electing them on a trialled basis or a revolving jobs set-up would be a popular means for deciding who. Those not wanting to have a go can always decline!

It's a tough one to get right in any system, methinks - but that's only for the employed sector; what about the self-employed?

I said that I'd shut up - and I haven't! Apologies! Over to someone else!...

[Serial_Apologist]

Just to notify, the "alternative economist" Noreena Hertz makes a guest appearance on tomorrow morning's The Wright Stuff on Channel 5 - the tongue-in-cheek thinking person with a GSOH's recommended start to the weekday:

http://www.channel5.com/shows/the-wright-stuff

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noreena_Hertz

http://www.noreena.com

I first came across her on a TV documentary in 2001 titled "Politics Isn't Working: The End of Politics", in which she presented a thesis of national government power expropriation by big business globally.

[Serial_Apologist]

The article below makes one wonder if apologists for the system we endure under will ever come up with a worn out platitude not thought up in the timezone between downing the dregs of a last drink and going to relieve themselves:

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/mikeshedlock/2014/08/18/german-economy-contracts-france-stagnates-italy-in-recession--maybe-time-for-a-rethink-n1879035

Such wasteful devaluation of what once passed for critical comment is equivalent to David Cameron's use of the word for a long time used to dismiss anyone slightly to the left of Tony Benn: extremist.

Under the spectre of threats which are leading large majorities in polls to support a return to British military engagement inside Iraq, the question I now ask myself is: am I prepared to set aside my view of capitalism as to blame for the world's problems in the teeth of some greater danger that renders my way of seeing things of secondary importance to the possibility of any of us, rich, middle earning or poor, Muslim, Christian or atheist, being indiscriminately blown to smithereens or worse?

Like many such as myself probably felt on the eve of WWII, I find myself poised, ready to throw in my lot with our rulers, provided they will give the likes of me, or those of broader anti-capitalist persuasions (e.g. Occupy), the time of day for a reconsideration of principles. After all, when the jihadists are eventually defeated - and remember, Cameron thinks it will take the rest of his political lifetime to accomplish this - there is still a finite world, run by shysters of another kind, awaiting a wiser humanity to be worthy of accommodation.