Economics and Political Activity, Languages and Travels, Speculative Fiction

[tcpip]

The second part of my article of on the global financial crisis has been published on LeftFocus. Will be speaking at the St. Kilda branch of the ALP on the same subject next month. Primarily inspired to address concerns raised by forwrathandruin I have elaborated material regarding a transformation of policing and military forces under the title Arm The People, Abolish The State (this is, of course, just a sketch). Have arranged speakers for a public transport forum in early June; Gavin Putland from Prosper Australia, Tony Morton from the PTUA and Carlo Carli, former parliamentary secretary for infrastructure.

Continuing Bahasa studies; with a fortnight of simply reading through books have started to write-up what I've learned: lesson one, more coming during the week. On a completely unrelated travel matter, on Sunday I was informed that I had been nominated as one of two delegates of the Melbourne Unitarian Church to attend the ANZUUA conference in Sydney in October; so that's New Zealand, Indonesia, Brisbane (Gencon) and Sydney (ANZUAA) I have to get to in the next few months. I think I should plant a few trees to make up for all this.

My review of John Wick's "Houses of the Blooded" is up on RPG.net. Finished the final session (round-trip) of Gulliver's Trading Company on Sunday and playtest; have recommended to author that now the game system has a greater level of stability to work harder on the thematic content. On a related sombre note one of the greatest (in my opinion) psychoanalystic science fiction authors, J.G. Ballard (The Drowned World, Atrocity Exhibition, Vermilion Sands, War Fever) has died.

Comments

[thepanda.livejournal.com]

Welfare class??

Oohyeah. Which is why many people have so much investment in the current regime as it stands, I suppose. Regardless, the lower middle class and the middle class white collars are too many and near enough to the prole blue collars in that they provide labour (even though they are also more likely to be capitalists in larger amounts) so that there isn't really much to fault them for.

Speaking of which, I keep mentioning this (I think? I forget) but nobody seems to get it. There are many small food producers (like street stalls) and the main reason the prices keep rising, besides the cost of commodities, are also the landowners who rent out the place (or in situations, large organizations with the capital to do so buy the place or rent it, and then re-rent it out). Small capitalists too are being exploited and reduced to proles, despite being business owners, in these situation because hours are mandated and so on, and also they can't afford to hire too many workers so they have to produce the commodity (in this case, food) themselves. To be honest, as a Marxist I can't really fault small businesses, either; the best case scenario is really one of perfect market, I think, where true pareto optimality is acheived or is coming closest to.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Yeah, welfare class being those people who can't contribute labour (due to physical disability or circumstances) and derive an income from the welfare system.

You're absolutely spot on with 'small capitalists'. All the political economists from the classic period, from Adam Smith to Karl Marx, were quite open about saying that for all intents and purposes these people were actually members of the working class.