Decade of Centenaries: opportunities for contributing to a critical re-analysis of the origins of the State in the WW1 context;

....The all-Ireland issue over the Century: a personal and family historic view...

Global Warming: analysis of the problem of how best to get the issues understood and on to the political agenda; this has 3 aspects:

....Fossil Fuel Combustion as main source of greenhouse gases...

....Lobby Groups such as Feasta, an Taisce...;

....Political Parties: the need for broad-Left alliance with a 'Green' policy component.

Energy System Analysis: in agriculture, transport, urban and rural planning etc...

IT System Design: some problems arising from the growth of knowledge-base complexity.

Economic Modelling and the need to decouple employment from 'growth'; the need to re-define the latter.

Introduction

What follows is an attempt to supplement the record of experience outlined in my book 'Century of Endeavour' published in 2003 by Lilliput (with support from Tyndall Publications in Carlow) by integrating material from some diverse critical comments I have made, mostly in the social media, during the few years since the current crisis developed, and the property bubble collapsed.

They touch on areas like urban planning, agriculture, forestry, energy, global warming, and focus particularly on industrial and finance capital, and the need somehow to democratise the ownership of the firms involved. I see this as a key policy issue for the various movements claiming to be of the 'left', and regard it as a 'common-ground' topic with potential for bringing about a united democratic broad-left movement capable of taking State power.

The negative lessons of earlier such attempts need analysis, with a view to to avoiding centralised bureaucratic models (eg USSR, China etc), and recognising the role of the market as a component of a feedback control system in the context of a dynamic process. There are insights into this problem rooted in the origins of the Irish State in the first world war and its aftermath, and I hope to develop this in some critical analysis in the contexts of centenary events.....

The foregoing is adapted from an early draft and will be developed further as the subsequent material takes shape. RJ 19/10/2012.

Decade of Centenaries: opportunities for contributing to a critical re-analysis of the origins of the State in the WW1 context;

I have in mind here to take a critical look at the way the Home Rule Bill was handled, in the context of the imperial strategy which was directed at maximising British impact on Germany in the coming war. The Larne and Howth gun-runnings were basically elements in the British deception plan, to get the Germans the impression that the Irish civil war threat would prevent them responding to a German attack on France via Belgium. It would also help to wreck to Home Rule process by introducing the gun into Irish Home Rule politics. There is also some critical analysis of the role of de Valera in gestation. There are many contact-points in this area with early chapters of the Century book. RJ 19/10/2012.

....The all-Ireland issue over the Century: a personal and family historic view...

Here I develop an integrated abstract of the references in my Century book to work done by my father and by myself, initially by my father to try to avoid, and subsequently to try to reverse politically, the Partition disaster.

Global Warming: analysis of the problem of how best to get the issues understood and on to the political agenda; this has 3 aspects:

....Fossil Fuel Combustion as main source of greenhouse gases

In this I review the current position in the light of the current scientific evidence, starting with some background analysis of how progressive environmentalists in Ireland became aware of the problem prior to 2000, linked with some Century book references, the one below relating to a Feasta event:

http://www.rjtechne.org/climate/fsta0807.htm

....Lobby Groups such as Feasta, an Taisce...;

Here I review current and earlier activities of the environmental movement, again with some focus on my own concern with it earlier; see for example

http://www.iol.ie/~rjtechne/century130703/sociotec/sustain.htm

....Political Parties and the need for a broad Left alliance with a serious 'Green' policy component;

Here I outline the experience of work with the Green Party, from the time I joined it circa 1988 up to its catastophic period in government with FF during the 'bubble burst' period. I also attempt to asses the potential of other parties for absorbing environmental policies, with a view to laying the basis for a 'green-left convergence' process.

Energy System Analysis: in agriculture, transport, urban and rural planning etc...

....Agriculture and Forestry

http://www.rjtechne.org/polit/frmfrst.htm

....Transport

....Urban and Rural Planning

http://www.rjtechne.org/regpol/dublin91.htm

Economic Modelling: Labour, Capital, Added Value; the need to decouple employment from 'growth'; the need to re-define the latter.

What follows is an early draft, written prior to the emergence of the above structure. RJ 19/10/2012.

The basic productive process involves intelligent human labour adding value to inputs, to produce outputs for which there is a demand. The value added involves capital resources, such as sheltered work-space, tools, machinery, all these being the products of work done in the past. This suggests a natural division of work into (a) that which is involved in the production of utility for consumption (consumer goods) and (b) that which is needed in support of a productive process (producer goods).

The success of such a productive process depends on the output generating enough revenue to cover all input, labour and productive process costs. The value added by labour is necessarily substantially greater than the cost of producing the labour. The productive system however in general is owned by a 'capitalist', who may be of a type ranging from 'individual innovative entrepreneur', through various types of 'venture' or 'speculative' capitalist, to 'pension fund management system', Rarely is there any worker ownership.

Attempts in the past have been made to bring about worker-ownership via a "workers' State". These however have tended to become bureaucratic monopolistic systems 'owned' in effect by 'political' elite groups; in the USSR case, the productive system reverted easily to monopoly-capitalist mode. Far from demonstrating the 'superiority' of capitalism, or its 'inevitability', as some analysts have suggested,, this implies a serious need to develop a robust system of democratic ownership, by those actively concerned with the production process. The embryo of this process exists in the co-operative movement.

In the past however the co-operative movement has tended to be either 'consumer', 'producer' or 'supplier' based. In the North of Ireland, ther consumer role dominated, as it did in the industrial towns of the north of England, where it emerged as th alternative to the exploitative 'company store' owned by the capitalist who was the prime local employer. In the south-west of Ireland, where milk production dominates, producer co-ops have evolved to handle the processing and marketing of milk products. Consumer co-ops have seldom replaced the multiplicity of working owner-managed retail outlets servicing consumer needs. Worker co-ops are rare, but some exist in skilled crafts.

The time perhaps has come for the feasibility to be explored of replacing capitalist ownership of complex integrated production systems by a managed combination of supplier, worker and consumer interests. The ratio of these interests in each particular case would need to be related to their degree of dependence. There are lessons to be learned from the Yugoslav exprience, where worker-co-ops in food firms were seen as exploiting local farmer suppliers, and from the Irish experience of farmer co-ops becoming multinational plcs exploiting their workers and consumers.

The solution to problems of this nature is for a progressive government, at an appropriate local, regional or national level, to legislate rules of the eonomic game such as to enable them to act as referee, and to define in each case the ratio of worker, supplier and consumer interest in the membership of the Board of Directors. The State, at whatever level, should also have an interest, depending on the extent to which it had to put up capital, at incorporation-time.

The State would also need to define the rules of the incorporation process, in that most firms would be likely to originate as working owner-managers starting up, employing a few workers and finding markets and suppliers. If successful, thy expand, and need capital. The processes whereby they get capital would need to be influenced by rules of the game defined by the progressive State. It could offer additional capital, in some defined proportion, to suppliers, workers or consumers, depending on an assessment of the relative dependence on the productive process of each group. The results of these rules would be subject to monitoring and adaptation, in such a way as to spread the ownership equitably.

I hope to develop the foregoing, supported by material in the earlier sections, including material developed from earlier references as hotlinked. RJ 19/10/2012.

As this develops we will need footnotes, and I am providing a template for this:

NOTES

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Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 2012