alanjjohnstone
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Abortion was legalised in Northern Ireland on 31 March after a decades-long campaign. Terminations can now be carried out up to 12 weeks on request, and up to 24 weeks if the mother’s mental or physical health is jeopardised.
A leading reproductive rights group and a doctors’ organisation say that GPs are refusing to refer pregnant women to hospital services so they can access the tablets needed to undergo a medical abortion. They are also aware of midwives and nurses refusing to care for patients before and after the procedure.
According to biblical sources, the problem goes back to Abel – the herdsman and Cain, the arable farmer, who murders the hunter-gatherer.
So let’s not have any fratricide among comrades, comrades.
But the story is even older, going back to Sumerian times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_between_sheep_and_grain
CHAZ
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/06/seattle-project-cop-free-world-200612213944832.html
But there are no leaders in the zone. Problems have been addressed as they come up, and regular “town hall” meetings are beginning to give structure and rules to living there.
The “No Cop Co-op” grocery store doesn’t charge for its food or drinks, yet stock remains plenty.
“The goal of this zone is to set an example for the world, that we do not need the current police system to maintain order. We do not need a man with a gun to show up at our door every time we have a problem and call 911”
I just re-read the Left Unity thread, all 39 pages.
Stuart has a wonderful turn of phrase, a literary style to be admired.
He made no secret of moving towards a reformist position and defended it, strongly. He was a worthy sparring partner for the party.
Over the hundreds of posts, i’m not surprised that some excellent points we made by all the contributors.
A timely re-publishing
https://www.marxists.org/archive/mcclatchie/1923/coop_hopeless.htm
Meanwhile in Canada…
James, some of Leopold’s relations are still in denial about the atrocities
A member of Belgium’s royal family has defended the role played by King Leopold II in the exploitation of the colony that became the Democratic Republic of Congo. Prince Laurent – brother of the present King Philippe – acknowledged in an interview with the Sudpresse newspaper that abuses were committed in the Congo colony but not by his ancestor. He said King Leopold could not have hurt people there because he never went to Congo, though he owned it as his personal estate.
With that logic, Hitler is absolved of the Final Solution because he never went to Buchenwald
https://moneyweek.com/economy/601346/are-we-back-on-the-road-to-serfdom
I find it incredulous that they begin with reference to the pandemic and conclude, “Mises’ century-old challenge should spur a rethink about how states can effectively achieve goals that will not be secured by markets.”
I thought the search for a coronavirus vaccine was originally neglected by the market as there was insufficient profit motivation but now the State has had to fully intervened with R&D risk being underwritten by the State and manufacture financially subsidised by the State and the results of the research assured of a future market by the State buying the vaccines, was evidence enough that capitalism requires the services of the State.
But also that the privatisation of the NHS or the cuts in other countries health services or the American private health system led to equipment shortages and privately owned care homes suffered the brunt of the fatalities showed that the market has failed in the midst of the pandemic.
And as for searching for the vaccines, the planning certainly not being centralised, except by the US and the UK, with the creation of a WHO inspired global cooperation network of shared knowledge. In fact it appears that it is the market itself which requires centralisation if we consider the proposed merger of AstraZenaca and Gilead
But I do see they concede that “The rapidity with which the state had to step in and take control of everything from the railways to paying workers’ wages in the wake of the spread of the coronavirus would seem to have placed the Austrian case for markets under significant strain.”
But we know from history that the laws of capitalism and the market can sometimes be suspended as in the case of all-out war and i’m sure Mises and Hayek were well aware that such State intervention in war-time is not the end of capitalism or even challenging it.
Update on Capitol Hill Free Zone as it hits the mainstream media’s radar
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/11/chaz-seattle-autonomous-zone-police-protest
Meanwhile Trump blames it all on “ugly anarchists” and “domestic terrorists”, instructing the mayor of Seattle and governor of Washington state to “take back your city NOW. If you don’t do it, I will…”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/11/trump-seattle-threats-protests-twitter-complaints
Elsewhere, statues continue to be targeted. In Virginia, Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy and four other confederate statues . In Miami, Christopher Columbus and conquistador Juan Ponce de León.
We may need a separate thread for this topic if it continues
“A council’s plans to remove a statue of the founder of the Scout movement amid fears that it would be targeted by anti-racist activists were thwarted when it was surrounded by dozens of locals refusing to allow it to be taken away.”
As an aside, in Scotland there was a religious bigotry issue. Catholic youth usually joined the Boy Scouts, the protestants always joined the Boys Brigade.
Black Lives Matters organisers said they had decided to call off a planned protest at Hyde Park at 1pm on Saturday, warning that “many hate groups” were threatening the safety of those planning to come.
“We want the protests to be a safe space for people to attend,” a post from the BLM LDN organisers said. “However, we don’t think it will be possible with people like them present.”There are fears among anti-racist campaigners that marauding gangs of hooligans will seek out BLM protesters around London with the intention of confronting them.
However, it is unclear whether BLM protesters will heed the call to stay away because other protests are still currently listed as going ahead. Another event – “Antifascists support Black Lives Matter” – is also due to take place on Saturday lunchtime. This event is supported by the Labour pressure group Momentum, among others
Far-right groups, with the support of extremists such as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself Tommy Robinson, plan to hold a “defend our memorials” event at Winston Churchill’s statue on Parliament Square, where considerable numbers could be present. The extremists claim they intend to prevent the landmarks from being targeted after Churchill’s statue was daubed with graffiti. Several far-right groups were continuing to push their “patriotic unity” event on extremist channels and chat groups as an opportunity to stage a show of strength.
As for predictions, we have the Materialist Conception of History which does predict the nature of systemic change. We predict a change in peoples personal behaviour. We also predict no war, no crime, no religion, no racism, etc, etc, because the material conditions have changed and those that give rise to an individual’s development and to those wider problems have disappeared.
I agree that socialism is the science of generalism, its philosophy is monist, causes have effects and vice versa. Too often, it is said we should avoid blueprints but that should be placed in context. We aren’t laying down the ground-rules of some Utopian community, or imposing a pre-conceived culture or lifestyle such as Bellamy or Morris or even Ursula Le Guin.
But we are expected to put forward a reasonable description of how socialism will differ from capitalism and how socialism will have an effect upon us. If it resembles the present day society too broadly, working people may well conclude, why bother with change, better the enemy we know.
I know Marx said socialism will inherit much of capitalism with his emerge from the womb quote, and I too have suggested there will be much from capitalism we will adopt and modify and adapt – but we still have to emphasise and highlight the radical differences between the two types of living, not in abstract ways but how daily life will not be the same in our social and personal relationships with one another, the hierarchy of work, the division of labour in production of social wealth, our access to the products, our consumption patterns of those products, plus our extraneous indulgements in the arts and other leisurely pursuits.
We have a rich literature on all the possibilities. We are not devising schemes based upon nothing. Keeping to our analogy, our cook-shop menu is based upon what the kitchen has in its fridges and larders. The menu will not be set-meals, one, two or three, but more a pix and mix buffet. But for various reasons and purposes, some food items will be missing, or the portions smaller, and alternatives and substitutes included instead to placate the palate.
To finish, Star Trek got around the who will do the menial service work question in part by creating a species Bolian. We need not, instead we say that if no-body is willing to wait upon another then it will be done by oneself or not at all.
I cannot go along with what you are saying Alan. How a future society would organise food production is something we cannot possibly predict
I’m a bit puzzled. We already have numerous predictions being made. But you suggest we will not make any mention of any proposals that will mitigate climate crisis, nor heed the advice of experts and science. Apparently the best scientific advice available right now cannot be accessed by ourselves, nor used in any campaign for socialist ideas.
We already are acquainted with the effects of reduced numbers of cattle. Foot and mouth emptied the fields and decimated farm livestock for several months so we do have information to go upon if livestock numbers are reduced.
And industrialised farming is a big problem with the intensive use of fertilisers and pesticides. But there are many problems with going solely organic. Many problems with locavore policies.
My post specifically refers to the use of specialist organisations such as the FAO in applying knowledge and advice.
Marx and the First International did not condemn children working.
“We consider the tendency of modern industry to make children and juvenile persons of both sexes co-operate in the great work of social production, as a progressive, sound and legitimate tendency, although under capital it was distorted into an abomination. In a rational state of society every child whatever, from the age of 9 years, ought to become a productive labourer in the same way that no able-bodied adult person ought to be exempted from the general law of nature, viz.: to work in order to be able to eat, and work not only with the brain but with the hands too.”However there is a caveat and condemnation of “the tendencies of a social system which degrades the working man into a mere instrument for the accumulation of capital, and transforms parents by their necessities into slave-holders, sellers of their own children. The right of children and juvenile persons must be vindicated. They are unable to act for themselves. It is, therefore, the duty of society to act on their behalf…We say that no parent and no employer ought to be allowed to use juvenile labour, except when combined with education.”
An update on the statue posts. Rather out of sight, out of mind, Edinburgh will be placing a plaque alongside the Dundas monument explaining his politics.
“On the plinth at the centre of St Andrew Square stands a neoclassical column with a statue at the top. This represents Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742 – 1811). He was the Scottish Lord Advocate and an MP for Edinburgh and Midlothian, and the First Lord of the Admiralty. Dundas was a contentious figure, provoking controversies that resonate to this day.
“While Home Secretary in 1792 and first Secretary of State for War in 1796 he was instrumental in deferring the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. Slave trading by British ships was not abolished until 1807. As a result of this delay, more than half a million enslaved Africans crossed the Atlantic.
“Dundas also curbed democratic dissent in Scotland.
“Dundas both defended and expanded the British empire, imposing colonial rule on indigenous peoples. He was impeached in the United Kingdom for misappropriation of public money and although acquitted, he never held public office again. Despite this, the monument before you to Henry Dundas was funded by voluntary contribution from officers, petty officers, seamen and marines and erected in 1821, with the statue placed on top in 1827.
“In 2020 this was dedicated to the memory of the more than half a million Africans whose enslavement was a consequence of Henry Dundas’s actions.”https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-52997858
This may well be a worthy job creation programme for unemployed history graduates to check out all the statues in cities and towns across the country and place historical context.
