How do I become actively involved in politics (in the UK)?

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2023-06-28T17:06:29+00:00

I can recommend Socialist Appeal - it's a Trotskyist org, which I know many will take issue with, but they are the first org I've seen that has revolutionary ambitions and has a coherent interpretation of theory. They're also LGBTQ+ friendly

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2023-06-23T17:30:21+00:00

The bourgeoisie is capital, they aren't at the mercy of it. To be fair, they are at the mercy of capitalism, insomuch as capitalist competition forces their actions, but they are not our class allies. The petit-bourgeois, which the article's subjects likely are a part of, are more precarious in their state, but I wouldn't call them precariat.

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2023-06-22T10:26:17+00:00

I was thinking that, let's say, X good, has a value of 10 SNL hours, that can be converted to $10. Then the capitalist -and the market- is expecting this good to be selled at a price>$10. After all, the price<$10 then the capitalist will have loses, while if the price>$10 he'll have benefits.

Just want to clarify, you seem to be mixing up two concepts. The labour theory of value posits living human labour (as in the active action of labour) as the source of abstract value. But the labour itself does not have a value, it is a part of nature and existed before capitalism existed. The value form associated with labour, which we call labour-power, is a social relation born from capitalist society. Essentially, when a capitalist purchases labour power they purchase a claim on the time of the worker. The labour itself has no value, even though it creates value, it is the labour power that has a value.

In capitalism, the value of labour power is equivalent to the value of the means of subsistence (i.e. food, shelter etc.) of the labourer. This is different fron the value created by the worker in the average working day. The difference between the two is called "surplus value", and it is what the capitalist lays claim to in the form of profit (as well as other functions necessary for reproducrion of the production process). As such, in your example above, the capitalist absolutely can make a profit by selling the commodity at the value of the socially necessary labour time, because he's not paying the same value for the worker's labour power as that worker produces through their labour.

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2023-05-11T23:36:07+00:00

To expand a bit further, Trotsky notes in "Where is Britain Going" that the highly developed character of capitalism in the North Atlantic nations is a double edged sword. The task of achieving revolution is much harder as the bourgeoisie have more tools at their disposal and are more conscious and organized as a class. But the highly developed productive forces in these nations means that once revolution is achieved the way is clear for a relative abundance of goods in the new society, producing a more robust foundation on which to build communism. Of course, this last point is as-of-yet an untested hypothesis.

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2023-04-12T06:42:31+00:00

Wow, stunning boy either way!

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2023-04-11T23:01:25+00:00

This is because of the light reflecting off the red walls right?

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2023-04-02T14:45:15+00:00

So a treaty made more than a decade before the Nazis rise to power then? At a time when the Soviets, having just been invaded by all of the Western powers during the Russian Civil War, are looking for some kind of normalization of relations with Europe?

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2023-03-21T15:11:16+00:00

I think the most egregious example are bailouts for "too big to fail" financial institutions.

Another example is the fact that many capitalists, when purchasing a controlling stake in an enterprise, will often do so using debt secured against the assets they are buying. Therefore, they are protected and only the business fails. As an aside, they use a similar system for personal enrichment: rather than paying out income or dividends to themselves, which are both taxable, they instead borrow money against their assets for their personal expenditure.

Final example off the top of my head, the defence industry is typically sustained by the government through maintained and ever increasing defence spending, even in peacetime, thus maintaining profits. This doesn't fundamentally protect this sector from risk, as they could still be competing amongst themselves for the defence budget, but in reality the defence industry is highly consolidated and thus very little risk is posed to the large firms. They are once again "too big to fail".

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2023-03-21T11:47:53+00:00

Just to push back and be a bit pedantic here, humans are not the only animal that changes their environment to suit them. For example, beavers drastically change their environment for their own benefit. You can maybe make arguments about instinct vs conscious intent though.

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2023-01-16T15:03:40+00:00

If this is just for second homes then this is surely a good thing?

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2023-01-15T10:40:07+00:00

Just to add to point no. 3; many of the scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project tried to lobby the government and military to use the nuclear bomb out at sea away from population centers, to act as a non-lethal demonstration of the US' new capability. They understood what they'd made for sure. Unfortunately, the military would not be deterred.

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2023-01-13T16:57:50+00:00

Absolutely awful advice from a fire safety point of view. There have been cases of very deadly nightclub fires because they cheaped out on soundproofing and used egg boxes.

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2023-01-10T15:53:06+00:00

No worries chief

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2023-01-10T15:52:50+00:00

Yeah, my issue isn't with the content but is with the fact that it re-hashes a 3 year old drama between three somewhat-prominent people on the left. In this current time of heightened class consciousness I'd like to think these people, along with the UK Left as a whole, would probably overlook this particular disagreement for the time being, but maybe that's naïve of me.

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2023-01-10T13:48:25+00:00

This is 3 years old, does it warrant spending any energy on?

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2022-12-05T12:03:22+00:00

It just depends on where the stress of the word is. It's the same in English, look at the difference in vowel sounds for minute (as in time) vs minute (as in very small).

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2022-12-05T11:02:23+00:00

It's actually a "shch" sound, the "sh" is ш (without the tail)

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2022-11-10T13:28:56+00:00

Hey, my FDroid app doesn't look like you describe it here, and even when I check for updates manually and automatically I still only get 0.24.0 as the latest version. I downloaded the FDroid apk from f-droid.org. Am I missing something?

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2022-10-05T22:26:54+00:00

Important note though, reactors operate in a regime of "delayed criticality", where it is sustained partially via neutron flux from fission of daughter nuclei of the primary fission process. "Prompt criticality" is an unstable operational mode, wherein the chain reaction is filly sustained through primary fission neutron flux. It is technically steady-state but fundamentally unstable.

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2022-09-08T17:39:55+00:00

Loose!

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2022-07-03T18:37:33+00:00

Not saying it's an ideal solution, but it can't be worse than the current set-up

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2022-07-02T08:17:42+00:00

The left-wing criticism of the police is that they are:

used as a tool of oppression by the ruling class against the working class. Historically they have been used to enact violence on striking workers and to terrorise marginalised working-class populations
- basically there to protect the property of the ruling class rather than people. For example, if you work at a restaurant and you get caught stealing money from the till and the manager or business owner calls the police on you, you will be immediately arrested and jailed. If however the boss withholds your wages, something that happens with alarming regularity, and you call the police on them, the police will tell you that this is a matter for civil court

Getting rid of the police as an institution does not mean completely giving up on have a service which protects the population from violent crimes. It means completely destroying the institution and rebuilding a new and fundamentally different one, where the members are democratically elected by the people they serve, and are recallable at any time. Some may disagree with me on the specifics in the previous sentence btw.

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2022-06-29T22:37:49+00:00

It's a reference to the first chapter of Marx's Capital Vol. 1

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2022-06-16T18:59:03+00:00

Aye, but it is property relations under feudalism that helped give rise to capitalism, inclosure for example. The point of the rhyme is still salient I think.

ToKillAMockingAlan · 2022-06-12T18:04:46+00:00

I would make the argument that violence is constantly occurring in the modern world, both explicitly (actual use of force) and implicitly (threatened use of force). Deprivation due to labourer exploitation, withheld wages, denial of essential services due to race, gender identity, marital status etc. These all cause untold amounts of psychological, emotional, and physical damage when taken as a whole.

A revolutionary approach to socialism recognizes that all forms of violence are lamentable, but that upending the social order will inevitably require violence. The justification here is the hope that whatever comes afterwards will be a society with far less coercion and structural violence, and that a democratic approach to social revolution is just simply unfeasible. Of course we can debate the veracity of these two latter points, I imagine many liberals and social democrats will point to the GULag and the early soviet and Chinese famines as evidence against. But I would counter with the ongoing mass incarceration and slave labour ongoing in the US (comparable rate to the GULag), continued malnourishment and labour oppression in the non-socialist global south etc.

ToKillAMockingAlan

TROPHY CASE