Brand New Start

Regular followers of my blog will know I am a very avid admirer of the CHANGINGMAN - also known as The MODFATHER.  Also known as Paul Weller - Punk Prince, Mod Mandarin and Britpop Buddy.  I've NEVER met Mr Weller in the flesh - they say ... "Don't meet your heroes."  And in this case I would like to keep it real.  Today I wonder what he had for breakfast this morning?  As I have done every day since early 1977.

Paul wrote a beautiful song called BRAND NEW START and it means alot to me.




See here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ClTktEf4CA

Hardy

A Towering Socialist thinker - Hardy is one of my political heroes.  He was a massive influence within the Socialist Party of Great Britain - the SPGB - during the 20th Century.  But at the end of each day, as he stated himself, he was merely an 'ordinary member' of a leaderless political party of equals.

Edgar Hardcastle—or Hardy as he was simply known in the Party gave a great input into the Party particularly to the Socialist Standard, serving on the editorial committee for over thirty years and contributing articles from the early 1920s onwards. He was also a member of the Executive Committee for decades and a Party lecturer and representative in debates as well as serving on the new pamphlets committee.

Edgar Hardcastle

The son of a founder member, he went to prison as a socialist conscientious objector in the First World War, formally joining the Party in 1922. After studying at the London School of Economics under Professor Edwin Cannan he worked all his life as a researcher in the trade union movement, first for the Agriculture Workers Union, then for a short while for the international trade union movement in Brussels, then till his retirement for the Post Office workers' union where he was chief adviser to a succession of UPW General Secretaries.

Hardy had the reputation of being a “theoretician” of Marxian economics but in fact he was something different and rarer in the socialist movement: a person who combined a wide knowledge of Marxian economics with a knowledge of the contemporary empirical evidence.

Hardy's main interest was monetary economics. From the 1930s on, as his articles testify, he did battle against Keynes on behalf of Marx and also, more curiously it might be thought, on behalf of his old professor, Cannan. Edwin Cannan, a largely forgotten bourgeois economist of the first part of this century (he died in 1935), could be described as the last of the Classical Political Economists and, as such, shared with Marx certain economic views. In particular that inflation was a purely monetary phenomenon caused by an excessive issue of an inconvertible paper currency and that banks were merely financial intermediaries without any power to “create credit”. Both of these positions were denied by Keynes whose views became part of the economic orthodoxy.

 

Hardy’s empirical bent enabled the Party to refute, with the necessary statistical evidence, theories which have sometimes been attributed to Marx such as under-consumptionism, the increasing pauperisation of the working class, the collapse of capitalism (Hardy was the author of the famous 1932 Socialist Party pamphlet Why Capitalism Will Not Collapse) and—more controversially within the Party—the increasing severity of crises.  I am certain Hardy was absolutely right on that issue.

 

It was a pitiful business that towards the end of his life, Hardy found himself a member of a branch which was expelled by a poll of all the membership (the only way anyone can be excluded from the SPGB) for deliberately and repeatedly refusing to apply a democratically-arrived-at Conference decision. This was a sad end to a lifetime’s contribution to the development of the socialist movement.

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Remembrance Day

I doubt there is not one family touched somehow by the ravages of war during the last 100 years - and for many before.  And we should remember all the fallen with respect - but take seriously the notion it should never be that way again.  The shibboleth that they fought so we may be free is partly true - but only after we liberate world society from the heavy yoke of the irrational capitalist system will we ever truly liberate humanity.

The ribbons arrayed the honours displayed

The medals jingling on parade

Echo of battles long ago

But they’re picking sides for another go.

The martial air, the vacant stare

The oft-repeated pointless prayer

“Peace oh’ Lord on earth below”

Yet they’re picking sides for another go.

The clasped hands, the pious stance

The hackneyed phrase “Somewhere in France”

The eyes downcast as bugles blow

Still they’re picking sides for another go.

Symbol of death the cross-shaped wreath

The sword is restless in the sheath

As children pluck where poppies grow

They’re picking sides for another go.

Have not the slain but died in vain?

The hoardings point, “Prepare again”

The former friend a future foe?

They’re picking sides for another go.

I hear Mars laugh at the cenotaph

Says he, as statesmen blow the gaff

“Let the Unknown Warriors flame still glow”

For they’re picking sides for another go.

A socialist plan the world would span

Then man would live in peace with man

Then wealth to all would freely flow

And want and war we would never know.

J. Boyle 1971