More news from St Paul’s. We
More news from St Paul’s. We were there yesterday for a couple of hours or so to leaflet and discuss with occupiers and passers-by. One discussion was with someone who had apparently flown over specially from Oakland in the US to be there. She was a member of the “Freedom Socialist Party” which seems to be a trotskyist organisation. For the record, one of the leaflets she was handing out criticised the Occupy Wall Street people for being opposed to leaders (a position we can commend them for), saying
Par for the course from a would-be vanguard of course. And the “clear programme” was (again of course) a list of reforms such as “Nationalize the banks under workers control”, “Cancel the debts on student loans”, “Establish a national public works job program at union wages”, “Tax the rich and corporations to restore social services for those hardest hit by the economic crisis”.The Occupiers have their own list of reforms but not these tired old trotskyist “transitional demands” which pretend to presume that capitalism can be reformed to benefit the “99 percent”. But, to be fair to the “Freedom Socialist Party”, they weren’t the only trotskyist group there putting them forward. Also doing so was the SWP and another US group which I can’t remember whether it was called the “Workers League” or the “Communist League”. Perhaps some leftwing trainspotter here can identify them, though I’m not sure it’s really worth the bother.The leaflets we were handing out said (among other things) that we want “a world of equality without leaders or followers”.