alanjjohnstone
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I think the real point with taxation is that it is for the up-keep of the State and to provide for government spending.
How often do we see in the media that it is the “tax-payer” who bears the cost of the budget for government policies and when they squander it away wastefully.
The “tax-payer” is equated with the public generally, those who pay income tax and other indirect taxes such as VAT purchase taxes as well as excise on tobacco and alcohol.
The political intent is to make the State appear as “our” government because we “pay” for it. And therefore it should do what it is told.
It is also why many get upset with tax evasion or avoidance and view it as cheating and theft.
The recent international agreement between nations on 15% corporate tax indicates that the world capitalist class are trying to regulate international finance as they do with WTO rules and GATT regulations.
And it is presented as a benefit to working people who will now “share” in the higher government revenue that would otherwise be transferred off-shore.
It is not seen as an inter-capitalist dispute over who pays the price for what Marx called the “executive” committee of the collective capitalist class.
The reason we highlight taxes being a concern for the employing owning class is to demonstrate the class control of the State. It is not merely because of sociological factors of who becomes politicians or through lobbying and Party donations but all comes down to who maintains the State income.
But we also have to highlight that ultimately everything the capitalist class spends in expenses comes from the surplus-value it extracts or has extracted from the labour of the working class to preserve itself and to ensure the smooth running of capitalist economics via credit and interest to banks, the rent to the land-owners and property giants, and the necessary auxiliary industries to capitalism, lawyers, advertisers and so forth. And, of course, the taxes to governments for law and order and national defence.
But it all seems counter-intuitive to workers who aren’t aware of the Law of value regards wages. For the populist leftists, they conveniently neglect the economic theory and focus on the emotive appeal and the morality of “good and bad” capitalism rather than add complications to their campaigns.
Matt, we, ourselves, fully acknowledge the present ignorance of our fellow workers and their lack of class consiousness
We recognise that they have been imbued with false ideologies of nationalism and religion, racism and sexism.
The very big difference is that we hold that our fellow workers are capable of acquiring socialist knowledge.
Some of it will be acquired through our own efforts of bringing enlightenment through our writings.
But more importantly, we say the exploitative conditions of capitalism itself makes it its own grave-digger which will result in the self-emancipation of the working class.
We also reject the premise that government coercion can be used to force revolutionary ideas into the minds of workers.
BD, again like ALB your quote, “We argue that a fight for basic living conditions, which capitalism cannot grant, will be the basis on which the consciousness of the need to overthrow the system”, isn’t as condemnatory as you think it might be.
Another way of expressing its sentiments is that capitalism cannot be reformed (…a fight for basic living conditions, which capitalism cannot grant…) and the class struggle (…a fight for basic living conditions…) will produce the understanding that will bring the working class to replace the capitalist system.
Regards your second quote
We have to remember what leadership means. It is a political function.
It does not mean that we deny that there are better teachers than some, better writers than some, better speakers than some, deeper thinkers than some. Others will call them leaders. We don’t.
We describe them as knowledgable fellow workers who have educated themselves and who now educate others and it is understandable that some comrades defer to their intellectual authority but not to give them political authority, no matter how impressive an individual charisma one may possess.
Can you identify for me the leaders of the various Left Communist groups?
One thing often inherited is language although its application often changes from its original usage. We ourselves have dropped many expressions once common to Marxism because of the evolution of words (the dictatorship of the proletariat meaning working-class political power, for instance. We are very reluctant to employ the word communism although we always say it is a synonym for socialism.)
I’m not very well acquainted with the Left Communist internal organisation but I have not detected a democratic centralism structure akin to the Leninist and Trotskyist parties. Perhaps there is and if so, you may know of it and can describe its operation to me.
As I said, we do have a fundamental difference in the attitude to electoral action. It is for us and them to put our respective arguments forward to our fellow workers and it is the working people who will determine which is the stronger case. Nor does it mean workers are infallible and that we cease our advocacy for engaging in elections just because we are in the minority right now.
I see a crucial difference in being hostile to anti-worker and anti-socialist political parties such as avowed capitalist, nationalist or state-capitalist ones and what should be comradely disagreement and debate upon strategy and tactics within the non-market socialist sector, the “thin red line” as the late ex-member John Crump wrote about.
I based it upon what Marx in 1847:
“If all taxes which bear on the working class were abolished root and branch, the necessary consequence would be the reduction of wages by the whole amount of taxes which goes into them. Either the employers’ profit would rise as a direct consequence by the same quantity, or else no more than an alteration in the form of tax-collecting would have taken place. Instead of the present system, whereby the capitalist also advances, as part of the wage, the taxes which the worker has to pay, he [the capitalist] would no longer pay them in this roundabout way, but directly to the state.” – Criticism and Critical Morality.
But I am no Marxologist nor economist and if he says differently elsewhere, I bow to your own expertise as I always do to the Standard’s editors.
My own criticism of the SPGB case that what constitutes workers pay necessarily includes what they require to pay the State in taxes (albeit from the surplus value extracted) and therefore it is the employer who has to add that amount to the subsistence level of wages with taxes being simply another element of the cost of living.
But wages are a unique commodity and the price of labour-power is determined by class struggle and therefore there exists a time-lag where employees must engage with the capitalist class to compensate for any increases in taxes, and also resist employers lowering (or more likely freezing wage levels) when tax cuts benefit us.
Our pay is not automatically adjusted and the tax burden immediately transferred to the capitalist class. For some years and for some sections of workers, we do suffer the pain of taxation directly. At rare times, we might temporarily enjoy some relief.
Building an organised socialist party rooted in a broader workers’ movement is also our aim.
As our editors said:
” It won’t be the Socialist Party as an organisation separate from the working class that would have a parliamentary majority, but the socialist-minded working class. It is they who will have won political control and the socialist MPs will be their delegates. This presupposes, as you say, a socialist majority outside parliament, one which will have organised itself not just into a socialist political party, but also in places of work ready to keep useful production going. Also, there would be similar movements in control of political power or about to be in other advanced capitalist countries.”And until we become a mass socialist party we do operate as an educational group, made up of workers who have successfully acquired revolutionary consciousness and are guiding our fellow workers the best we can in directing them towards socialist conclusions.
We shouldn’t be looking for distinctions that perhaps do not exist. Your quote doesn’t show they actually advocate a vanguard party.
Nor does the quote actually say “fight against the climate crisis” under capitalism.
“Fight” could be how we often use the word, a struggle to end the climate crisis and all the other social ills caused by capitalism
We are not identical, we are not clones of one another but I suggest we are on a very similar wavelength, maybe close enough to even call one another comrades.
There are some Left Communists that are still burdened with the Leninist baggage but more often than not it is centred on historical interpretation, a legacy they inherited but I am not so sure that it affects them in modern circumstances. Nor will determine their future role.
Our strategy remains based upon acquiring political power through the ballot box when practicable. Too many Left Communists reject such tactics as impossible. On this issue, we are the Possiblists and they the Impossiblists.
Fellow-travelling comrades or class-ememies
http://libcom.org/blog/global-warming-ippc-report-ar6-writing-death-warrant-31102021
The US and EU trade war ceasefire but the UK steel industry excluded from the peace
Even so, he’s getting a lot of people to ask the right questions,
This was what many members said about Russel Brand when he was the media’s revolutionary darling.
Greta Thunberg too can be added to the list. It is a growing list I concede.
They all talk of system change but their definition of the system is far from being our own.
Our big problem is that we claim to hold the answers. But we are not alone.
We are no different from all the others, the reformist Green Parties, the NGOs and numerous experts who also say they know the answer with wealth taxes, Green New Deals and even CEOs of corporations suggest their carbon trading and off-setting is the answer.
XR and Insulate Britain go further and say they also have the answer to how to implement green policies with various direct actions to persuade the public to engage the State via civil disobedience.
Even though the concern about the environment has grown to be crucial among the public and those who have become active within the many mass movements, the message from ourselves are falling on deaf ears, if heard at all.
It is the same old problem. When people are asking questions they are not asking us for the answer.
This what I said on Libcom forum
“All these articles (plus my own organisation’s) make excellent points and I think we can agree on the consensus position from Amos of the ICC.
Quote:
“Capitalism, if it is allowed to continue, can only plunge the world into accelerating “barbarisation”. The only “transition” that can prevent this is the transition to communism, which in turn cannot be the product of appeals to governments, voting for “green” parties or protesting as “concerned citizens”. ”However and what the reality is, that despite such labels #uprootthesystem from the environmentalists, their definition of the “system” and ours diverge quite dramatically.
And to be blunt, our message is not just drowned out by the mainstream NGOs but by the many eco-activists who may be radical and imaginative in their protests and direct action but when it comes to goals, all advocate some version of tamed capitalism or an imaginary invented pre-industrial idyll as an answer.
I simply don’t think we are making progress and our message is not being heard because of too many other and louder voices.
A comrade often uses the phrase that pissing on a stone with persistence, patience and perseverance will eventually make a hole in it. The truth of the matter is that we don’t have the luxury of time, do we?
I won’t be in Glasgow. I know several members of my party will be and I am sure the local Glasgow anarchist group will be visible. If there are going to be a presence by others, wouldn’t it be useful for all to meet up some hostelry and over a few friendly pints to talk about a way of orchestrating our voices to make it louder? (If I was in Glasow, the first round would have been mine)”
So far what I said has not resonated even among some who can be viewed as closer fellow-travellers.
Am I surprised that the first organised protest in Glasgow was by a collection of faith groups, who I suppose trust in the Lord that the right thing will be done? Is this omnipotent invisible Being going to let us mere mortals undo its divine creation? Will it intervene?
But a more basic contradictory position is that of rightly blaming the corporations and businesses for the havoc they have wreaked upon the planet and then expecting the governments that they control through their powerful interests and influence to create the conditions for those capitalists to bring a halt to global warming at the expense of their profits.
Paddy, ALB, when I say dampen down I meant the many people believe that reforms and legislation from regulated capitalism can solve this climate crisis. It may bring temporary relief but that is all.
The radicalised youth of today still have much to learn and discover about the nature of society.
While the slogan “system change, not climate change” is a popular one and agendas claim to be anti-capitalist, I have not witnessed any coalescence of a political position that goes beyond tamed capitalism.
I accept that there has been a surprising degree of positive coordinated organisation and agitation, something we ourselves can indeed learn from, but it has been action without understanding.
If it is conceded that “we need to foster it and direct it in the right way” it means we have to choose a way of campaigning that leads to disagreement upon the ecology movement’s present course and indeed disillusioning them of their hopes of success at convincing politicians and parties to adopt measures incompatible with the logic of capitalism. We have to sever their current commitments to the government oversight of the many institutions of capitalism by resorting to mere moral authority.
Greta Thunberg is right, there has been too much “blah blah blah” but some of it comes from some of the eco-activists.
Some of my most virulent opponents in online debates have been the so-called radical eco-activists. They are more effective at disseminating neo-Malthusian almost green fascism than we have to spread our vision of a cooperative commonwealth.
COP26 is crucial for people’s and the planet’s future. Not only will its promises and pledges be broken but the proponents of an alternative are still far off-track that even if they can prevail, which is extremely unlikely, the prognosis is still very poor for the health of the planet and its inhabitants.
But happily, there are other comrades who can counter my pessimistic predictions. Hopefully, in their direct exchanges with those on the streets of Glasgow, they will know how best to express criticism and offer corrections without causing indignant offence and making the many sincere and genuine participants take umbrage at being told they have to go beyond what they are already doing.
That will be a hard thing to do. Many activists already see their sacrifices as a heavy toll and we are telling them that they are wrong. We cannot shirk that responsibility but it is all in the manner and tone of how we express ourselves when we engage with the climate protesters. I’m sure others are better at picking the right words to use.
I sometimes think of Pieter Lawrence book “The Last Conflict” where the world is faced with a catastrophic comet impact and to prepare have to over-ride the normal operation of capitalism and so society discovers socialism by its practical necessity. Was he far wrong regards the existential threat of climate change?
Is this the essence of the message we must deliver?
America’s B-1 strategic bomber flies over the Straits of Hormuz accompanied by fighter jets from Bahrain, Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia in a show of air power.
https://news.yahoo.com/american-b-1b-bomber-flies-075001626.html
Biden keeps remainder of JFK files under wraps for another year and blames Covid as the reason.
What secrets are being protected?
My guess, and it is only a guess, is that it centres upon the Kennedy and CIA plots to assassinate Castro and destabilise Cuba and proposed plans for false flag operations in the USA and nothing directly related to Oswald and any CIA conspiracy with him.
https://countercurrents.org/2021/10/the-u-s-has-an-unhealthy-obsession-with-cuba/
In September 2021, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) gave $6,669,000 in grants for projects aimed at “regime change” in Cuba
At least 54 organizations have benefited from the State Department, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID programs for Cuba.
In the last 20 years, this agency has given Creative Associates International, a CIA front, more than $1.8 billion for espionage, propaganda and the recruitment of agents of “change”
Many politicians in pre-talk briefings seem to be setting COP26 up to fail by stating how difficult the negotiations will be and all the obstacles. They are lowering any expectation that there might be a success and breakthrough.
Some on the far-right are indeed making analogies with Rome’s history forecasting the hordes of barbarians at the gates of civilisation, that is, mass migration of climate refugees. They have a similar answer, build a wall like Hadrian to keep them out.
And Australia is only one country that is fudging its facts and figures. From my reading only two countries in the World seem to be making progress, The Gambia and Costa Rica, of periphery importance, hardly the centres of industrialism.
Then we have the other side, the activists who appear so optimistic that they perceive a possible mass change in consciousness. Political veterans such as Chomsky place their revolutionary hopes in the youth of today.
The younger generation has indeed shown they can organise and agitate – but have they really gotten educated enough? And on this, it is ourselves who must dampen down any positive hope and expectation.
A summary of the findings by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) states most of the 17 US intelligence agencies agree that the virus had not been genetically engineered, a theory based on “scientifically invalid claims” whose proponents “are suspected of spreading disinformation”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/29/us-intelligence-report-covid-origins
