alanjjohnstone
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We’d like to say thank you and extend a warm Glasgow welcome to @GretaThunberg
Camaraderie and solidarity to all school strikers marching with @FFF_Glasgow we will be proudly joining you on the 5th Nov
With climate justice and social justice, there can be no-one left behind pic.twitter.com/nguZwCkbnC
— Glasgow GMB (@GMBGlasgowCC) October 27, 2021
They might not yet be fully there as yet but some are now considering a money-free society
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/11/04/world-without-money
Biden approved a $650m sale of air-to-air missiles to Saudi Arabia.Raytheon would be the “principal contractor” for the sale of AIM-120C-7/C-8 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles
Joe Biden attended Cop26 earlier this week with fellow world leaders, announcing a slew of climate proposals from ending deforestation by 2030 to a pact to cut global emissions of methane, a potent, short-term greenhouse gas.
In the US, expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure continues despite Mr Biden promising to ban new federal oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters during the election.
Days after Cop26 ends, the Biden administration is slated to hold a sale of oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico.
Mr Goldtooth also pointed to the Dakota Access pipeline which cuts through the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota and the 1,000-mile Line 3 pipeline which also crossed tribal land and has seen mass protests organized by Indigenous women in Minnesota.
Recent analysis from Oil Change International found that if Mr Biden used executive action to halt two dozen fossil fuel projects, it would cut 1.6 gigatons of emissions, equivalent to approximately 20 per cent of 2019 US emissions.
“I was hopeful that maybe with this Democratic president, we might be able to get some things going for ourselves as Indigenous peoples, economically as well,” Mr Goldtooth said.
“Around climate policy, I was hoping for something better. He made so many promises on his road to presidency that he was going to tackle climate change and end fossil fuel investments on public lands. He’s lying.
“He said that he was going to recognize Indigenous rights [but] he’s continued to perpetuate a legacy of broken treaties. Many members of our network that are here don’t trust this person.”
A Glasgow city council property in Tradeston, a former homeless services unit, has been restored to habitability over the past few days by a group of local activists frustrated at reports of visitors forced to sleep rough.
Baile Hoose as they have named the enterprise – said the building now offers sleeping space and donated food as colder weather descends on the encampments springing up in Glasgow’s parks.
Well, they have been telling such tall tales since the one about the man who walked on water and when executed he returned to life and rose into the sky to heaven. They are still waiting for his return to give his followers ever-lasting eternal life. That claptrap has lasted 2000 years.
Some say it is the greatest every story told…or the biggest conspiracy there has been.
A collapsed Lagos high-rise building, bringing the death toll to 22 people, the emergency services said.
Two other smaller buildings in Lagos also collapsed on Tuesday following heavy rains in the densely populated city a day earlier, though no one was killed, he said.
Building collapses are tragically common in Lagos and across Africa’s most populous nation where substandard materials, negligence and a lack of enforcement of construction standards are major problems.
https://guardian.ng/news/nigeria/national/death-toll-climbs-to-22-in-lagos-high-rise-collapse/
China’s economy faces new downward pressures and has to cut taxes and fees to address the problems faced by small and medium-sized companies, according to the country’s Premier Li Keqiang.
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/11/3/chinas-premier-warns-of-new-downward-pressures
A useful if lengthy read
https://brooklynrail.org/2021/11/field-notes/Capitalism-and-the-Climate-Apocalypse
“Socialism, the abolition of class society, which only recently was thought to be an unrealistic, utopian pipe dream, can now begin to be recognized not only as a distinct possibility, but as the only real alternative to the collapse of human civilization.”
Pfizer has lifted its 2021 forecast for revenues from its Covid vaccine to $36bn (£26.3bn), and forecast another $29bn sales next year after it started shipping booster jabs and shots for children.
It now expects to make total revenues of up to $82bn this year, and underlying earnings a share of $4.13 to $4.18, compared with its previous forecast of $3.95 to $4.05.
The campaign group Global Justice Now accused Pfizer of “making a killing” out of “the most lucrative medicine ever produced,” while “most of the world has been locked out of this vaccine”.
Its director, Nick Dearden, said: “Just 1% of Pfizer’s supplies have been sold to the international distribution mechanism Covax, as the company has put sales of third and fourth doses in wealthy markets ahead of selling doses to where they’re most needed. This will undoubtedly prolong the pandemic.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/02/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-sales-2021-biontech
I readily concede that I am no expert in Marxian economics. I am persuaded that by the argument that the employer acts as the de facto tax-collector for the state and that wages reflect the cost of living including taxation (although the non-smoker tee-totaller benefits from his or her consumer habit)
Perhaps these quotes acquired crudely acquired by Google search might be of use for those more informed than myself
Question 17: What will be your first measure once you have established democracy?
Answer: Guaranteeing the subsistence of the proletariat.
Question 18: How will you do this?
Answer. I. By limiting private property in such a way that it gradually prepares the way for its transformation into social property, e. g., by progressive taxation, limitation of the right of inheritance in favour of the state, etc., etc.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/06/09.htm“…There might, in fact, another question he raised. It might be asked, whether a man who earns say 12 cents a day can be fairly expected to pay 1 cent with the same ease with which another, earning $12 a day, pays $1? Both would relatively contribute the same aliquot part of their income, but still the tax might bear in quite different proportions upon their respective necessities. Yet, Mr. Bright has not yet put the question in these terms, and, if he had, the comparison between the burden of taxation, borne by the British wages laborer on the one hand, and the British capitalist on the other, would perhaps have struck nearer home than the comparison between Indian and British taxation…”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1858/07/23.htm7.
Direct and indirect taxation
(a) No modification of the form of taxation can produce any important change in the relations of labour and capital.(b) Nevertheless, having to choose between two systems of taxation, we recommend the total abolition of indirect taxes, and the general substitution of direct taxes. [In Marx’s rough manuscript, French and German texts are: “because direct taxes are cheaper to collect and do not interfere with production”.]
Because indirect taxes enhance the prices of commodities, the tradesmen adding to those prices not only the amount of the indirect taxes, but the interest and profit upon the capital advanced in their payment
Because indirect taxes conceal from an individual what he is paying to the state, whereas a direct tax is undisguised, unsophisticated, and not to be misunderstood by the meanest capacity. Direct taxation prompts therefore every individual to control the governing powers while indirect taxation destroys all tendency to self-government.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1866/08/instructions.htm#07from last year rather than almost 40 years ago
There is confusion over what constitutes “the Party”, similar to the various usage of the term by Marx and others.
I think they are mistaken in their interpretation of the role of the Bolshevik Party. That is the baggage they carry and must discard.
“…we need to stress certain things about the new organisation which are not often expressed directly. In the first place the new party had also drawn the lessons from the experience of the failed revolution in Russia:
1. The Party as a product of rising class consciousness of the wider class would remain a minority of the class. It would not be a mass party like those of Social Democracy nor would it use any old tactical expedient or manoeuvre simply to widen the party membership but operate on the basis of a consistent revolutionary strategy. The party represents the revolutionary gains of the working class in all its episodes of struggle against the system.
2. The Party was an indispensable element in guiding and inciting the destruction of the state of the exploiters BUT…
3. It did this only by giving a lead to the wider class movement as only the working class in its mass organisations can actually build a socialist society through their actions. Socialism does not arrive by decree but by workers organising themselves across society…”http://libcom.org/blog/introduction-work-cwo-ict-05012021
“…We are for the Party, i.e. the coming together of the most conscious in advance of the wider working class movement of the future. But we are not that Party. This will be the product of the future class movement which will emerge from the continuing failure of the system to solve its deep contradictions and pose the question of revolution once again. Instead of the numerous splits of a retreating class movement which has characterised the recent past we will see old differences resolved by the real movement. Old ideas will be discarded and new ones appropriate to the situation may have to be adopted, as part of the process of the formation of a new revolutionary movement. This will be the mass movement which will create a real class party to guide the path to dismantling capitalist power and then capitalist relations of production…”
“…Unlike the other currents of the Communist Left which seem to see the working class as some idealist abstraction called “the proletariat” we have always seen that it is made up of real human beings. It is not endowed with any special or mystical character other than its place in production which makes it the natural antagonist of capitalism but which will only come to consciousness of the need to shake off exploitation under particular conditions. Our task is to become part of the wider class and learn with it in all its struggles…”
We too have to develop a relationship with the wider working class. At the moment it isn’t a particularly deep connection. The more we do reflect it, the more we will evolve as a political organisation.
But they do share one of my aspirations.
“…Comrades in other organisations which share our ultimate vision of a classless and stateless society may be rivals but they are not enemies. With them we must always start from where we agree and adopt a tone of comradely persuasion in our exchanges and avoid egotistical point scoring. Our purposes are too serious for anything else…”But the CWO can speak for themselves. I believe some of its members occasionally visit this forum. Up to them to take up the debate rather than me offering my personal view.
