alanjjohnstone
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Venezuela from the time of Chavez also tried to switch from oil dollars but never succeeded and I think this is often cited by conspiracists as reasons for Iraq invasion and Venezuela’s destabilization. But probably the currency issue is just ad hoc alternatives to evade sanctions (as are bartering agreements) as in EU efforts in the Iran case to come up with a way of avoiding the US embargoes.
I think Occams Razor explains the conflicts…the USA simply countering any threat or potential threat to its dominance in whatever continent (Africom being another prime example)
When Iran shoots down a US drone, it is a provocation, when the US shoots down an Iranian drone, it is provocation by Iran.
For those who think Iran is not willing to negotiate.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/18/iran-nuclear-deal-trump-mohammad-javad-zarif-sanctions
“…Iran has offered a deal with the US in which it would formally and permanently accept enhanced inspections of its nuclear programme, in return for the permanent lifting of US sanctions…”
Cheers Matt. I didn’t want to start yet another thread.
We have already discussed whether Trump can be described as fascist, and I think we agreed that he is not although I personally add the caveat that he is expressing a fascistic strongman leader image reflective of a dictator.
But is ALB’s description that he is engaged in identity politics another way of saying he is inciting a race war as a means to win his second term.
Perhaps presiding over a race war is a method of over-ruling the no third term rule. But maybe that is too speculative.
I have not seen evidence in the polls whether his “Make America White Again” is resonating with a white audience. I’m not sure it is but I am still guessing until I see some figures. But one thing is certain, there is an active campaign to gerrymander voting districts to exclude potential anti-Trump voters.
A more moderate interpretation is he is doing an anti-Corbyn. Associating “political extremists” with the Democratic Party and slandering them as anti-patriotic and anti-Semitic as the Medicare for All and Green New Deal may well appeal to many. Anyway…2020 is a long way off…and I am not sure I can take the stress and strain
After Trump told the lawmakers they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” his net approval among members of his Republican Party rose by 5 percentage points to 72%.
Overall approval remained unchanged. 41% of the U.S. public said they approved of his performance in office, while 55% disapproved.
An Israeli official accused Corbyn of Jew-hatred on Tuesday.
“I think Corbyn has proven himself, more than once or twice, to be a figure who quite hates the State of Israel and hates the Jewish people,” Zeev Elkin, a member of Netanyahu’s security cabinet and Likud party, told Israel’s Army Radio in an interview. “People often try to hide behind this anti-Israeli mantle and say, ‘We are not anti-Semitic, we’re only criticising the State of Israel and its policy’. And the example of what’s happening in the Labour Party under Corbyn shows the extent to which this cover is no true cover.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said, “There is no doubt that Labour, in Corbyn’s image, is a very big problem for Israel’s foreign relations,” she told Israel’s Reshet 13 TV.
Israeli Labour leader Amir Peretz signalled his party would now consider all of the British counterpart off-limits.
“As far as I’m concerned, I have no intention of generating contacts with (Britain’s) Labour as long as Corbyn is there. I do not intend to allow anyone from among us to have contacts of that kind,” Peretz told Army Radio. “I think he has crossed all the red lines.”Yet despite Marx’s knowledge , some still pull him up on his for not knowing everything.
““Should we put a limit on what Beyoncé makes? I don’t see why,” Steyer told the Guardian by phone. “I don’t think in the United States of America, we should put a ceiling on how far people can go.” Steyer transitioned to a critique of communism and the argument that “at the heart of every great fortune is a crime”: “What Karl Marx failed to take into consideration was software – that if you are Michael Jackson or Rihanna or Beyoncé or anyone producing an idea, with software you aren’t just the best singer in your village … you have an ability to reproduce that song infinitely at very low cost around the world.” ”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/15/tom-steyer-2020-inequality-democrats
Marx, of course, is famous for never ever in his life discussing machinery, new technology and labour-saving devices . I don’t believe he ever mentioned nuclear power making electricity either. And when did he ever talk about DNA.
Some expect him to have the prophetic powers of Nostradamus rather than laying down principles which can be applied to an analysis of society which would result in valid conclusions.
Luxemburg was not seeking to engage in a minority revolution, LBird, and specifically warned against such. Nor would I suggest were the Spartacist League sought to seize power.
I can cite chapter and verse of her expressing her opposition to a too early challenge against the ruling SPD and her criticism of the Revolutionary Shop Stewards and even of Liebknecht for taking the bait in the trap and resisting the government and the FrieKorps.
She fully understood any attempt to take power was premature but when her fellow-workers responded to the provocations, she reluctantly but loyally took part, knowing full well it would end in failure.
But reasonable minds can disagree even when faced with the same facts.
One caveat I would place on the analysis is that the SPD’s reformism that the SPGB had warned about came to dominate in Germany, allying itself with the right to do so. Hypotheticals aren’t the most fruitful ways of discussing history but there is a BIG IF.
I’m not confident of possessing a full and proper understanding of events, i’m not sure anyone has having read a few books on the topic, but I do believe the abortive German Revolution is crucial to having an understanding. It was the perhaps a crossroads and cannot be separated from other, for the want of a better words, “revolutionary moments.” that were occurring around the world during 1918-19.
One thing though is certain, workers were not fully educated or aware of what they wanted or were seeking. A sign was how Noske, the butcher, actually got himself voted as chairman of the workers council in Hamburg/Kiel (?) demonstrating how little political consciousness existed among the ordinary participants. Another was how the declaration of the Republic was actually a slip of the tongue with Ebert a little bit worse of wear having overindulged at meal went to the balcony to announce it.
Who knows how history may have turned out if by some miracle the Spartacists had prevailed and Luxemburg survived. Something for the sci-fi writers to speculate about in alternative histories.
What I was saying is that socialism aspires to as Marx said “we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”…(or vice versa as I seemed to have phrased.)
Perhaps it was badly expressed
I should have been clearer and pointed out socialism ends the alienation of the individual thus liberates her or him.
I don’t know how many times in the last few posts on this thread I have emphasized the “social” nature of our case, purposefully explaining it meant all of society against those who suggest democracy was to be exercised by just the actual producers as other socialistic groups have advocated and not by everybody in the community, at all levels of decision-making. What I did not do is lay down any preconceived rules on the matter, leaving it instead to members of society to work out for themselves.
That is your answer to your question, “who will create ‘individuals’ and how, according to whose social plan, whose social aims, whose purposes?” The SPGB since it was formed has had that position. Not that the Party decides, not even this present socialists living still under capitalism but the future generation who engaged in the revolutionary transformation of society and now have the responsibility of applying its principles, depending on a great number of variables such as history, tradition, geography. Socialism is not a one-size fits-all system.
You have often said we should be “telling” workers, well, LBird, our problem is that regardless of the content of what we tell them, we have no audience to tell and despite the internet, that audience is diminishing. One reason for that decline is some refuse to add their voices to our own – You, for example.
There is no rule that as a member that you cannot have an internal debate within the Party about your position. Take another look at the membership questions. Convince more than just yourself and there is a process to make something the Party policy.
Iran’s Jewish community
https://www.dw.com/en/celebrating-sabbath-with-irans-jewish-minority/a-49543137
“…In contrast to the situation in German-speaking countries, Jewish institutions in Iran do not require any security arrangements. Iran has not seen a single attack on a Jewish building…”
“After several major waves of emigration, the number of Jews living in the country has now stabilized. According to Israeli statistics, only 1,100 Jews migrated to Israel from Iran between 2002 and 2010. For those who remain, prospects are surprisingly positive. They have been granted official minority status, a permanent seat in parliament and freedom to practice their religion. They have their own butchers’ shops, their rabbis are permitted to conduct weddings, and the community can produce and drink its own wine for the Sabbath — and that, even though alcohol is otherwise subject to strict prohibition in Iran…and for some years now, Jews have had the right to take off from work on the Sabbath…”
“As Jews we have the opportunity of emigrating to Israel, and even receiving around $15,000 (€13,300) from the Israeli government for going. But if we went there, we would have to speak Hebrew, something we only ever do in religious contexts. That would be very strange for us and I would not feel at home there. Iran is our home.”
But as always and as in many parts of the world, regardless of religion, economic aspirations spur emigration, not discrimination.
Another set of accusations, same story, nothing new, but repetition
“…The very fact that Labour is, like the BNP before it, being statutorily investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission for racism is not a matter of housekeeping but a taint of international, historic shame,” the letter reads. “It is clear this is not just about Jeremy Corbyn, but the pernicious world view of a faction that has – temporarily we hope – taken control of Labour. Trust between Corbyn’s Labour and most Jews in Britain appears to be fractured beyond repair…”
I cannot be surprised that trust has been broken if the media constantly highlights supposed anti-Semitism where it is very questionable that it exists any more than in the Tories or any other large organization.
“…Concern about the far right was greatest among communities who feel under threat from such organisations, with 57 per cent of Jewish respondents and 62 per cent of Muslims naming them as the biggest worry…”
“…Home Office data from this year shows there were more convictions of white people for terrorism-related offences than any other ethnicity…”
Goodness me, another Liebknecht, one who I think very, very few ever knew existed. Next, you’ll be telling us Rosa Luxemburg had a wee sister called Nellie.
LBird, perhaps there is a sensitivity within the SPGB, and more often than not it is about not receiving the credit where credit is due. We are forever forced to correct mistakes and misinformation about ourselves, sometimes out of ignorance, many times out of malfeasance.
The Left does it best to ignore it when the SPGB says “we told you so” and ascribes its analysis to dogma and sectarianism rather than the application of Marxist materialist conception of history. That is the real “scientific” credentials of the SPGB. The left criticizes the SPGB of elitism, “the armchair revolutionaries who deign from dirtying their hands with the work of reform.”
Rarely if ever does their critique go any deeper to understand why a section of the working class refuses to engage in the political process for palliatives.
Nor did we ever subscribe to “state socialism” (disguising the intention of retention of capitalism under that oxymoronic term) as so many participants in the Left have done, and yes its roots are in the 19th C with Bismarck and Lassalle and the Erfurt Programme of the SPD.
I was a teenager when I was told by comrade that socialism was the science of generalization, not of specifics.
It was the Party who helped me to understand that we do not support sectional ownership like the syndicalists or proponents of workers councils but that our aim was to have society as a whole make decisions and that we would not impose any blueprint upon how this was to be done as the SLP and industrial unionists did, busy designing their diagrams and wheels but the SPGB insisted all of society must engage in directing production and distribution, not just the direct producers.
I was constantly reminded that it was not workers control we sought but the abolition of classes and the development of social democracy and common ownership as the means to liberate ourselves as individuals.
But it was not to us to go beyond setting out general prescriptive principles. It was not for the Party to substitute itself for the class and decide. The Party had one role, the tool of the working class for it to acquire political control by taking the State away from the ruling class. After which there was no longer any function for the Party. It wasn’t to act as an administrative body like the Bolsheviks. The SPGB dissolves itself.
I can think of nothing less elitist than that approach and nothing more based upon “workers” democracy. You can continue to place your concerns and reservations about the “Engelsian” SPGB as a reason for remaining outside of it, but i’ll be blunt – it is in no way contributing to any workers’ democracy nor the emancipation of labour from wage-slavery. The few SPGB members might not be doing much, but it is a helluva lot more than yourself. Once more, as I have done in the past, I suggest you join and start pissing out of the tent instead of pissing into it. Where you fully accept and agree with the SPGB case, then advocate and call for its recognition from your fellow-workers. We’re heading towards extinction if we can not garner more support and gather more members. Where shall we be then as workers? Any better off?
