alanjjohnstone
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https://libcom.org/blog/against-all-capitalist-factions-proletarian-independence-30012019
The ICT take.
“Neither Maduro nor Guaidó have anything to offer the working-class in the face of this turmoil. The United States, Brazil and Russia seek nothing but the best outcome in line with their own imperialist interests. Looming is the possibility of war. Guaranteed is civil instability and declining living standards…to declare allegiance with a Maduro regime which brutally exploits our brother and sister Venezuelan workers can only distance us from them”
I can see how trying to differentiate various reform groups is a difficult one, Robbo.
Civil and human right issues would be centred on State legislation and may well have little to do with the economic realm.
Immigration legal status overlaps both as seen in the debate over illegals in America.
We have a role in the conscious raising by supporting the anti-racist reform groups with our analysis explaining the cause and result of racist anti-immigrant prejudice, but the reformers also have an independent role themselves in demanding changes to the law and I think I already suggested that they are better suited to do so rather than we as a political party including such a demand in a minimum programme.
But because they seek to amend (not mend and definitely not to end) capitalism, it doesn’t mean we withdraw our sympathy from those groups. Nor does it mean we should not be critical, either. As I said to Vince, we invariably qualify our comments on reforms.
I picked anti-abortion as an example because of the emotional element. I could imagine a member condemning the apparent ease in some countries to abortion where it is possibly viewed as merely another form of late contraception and family planning and disregard it as an issue of woman’s well-being and health.
EM, unlike Imposs, I think what you say will be of interest to all visitors to this forum and would be food for thought and bring about, as Robbo said, a much needed debate on the topic.
But I agree (even though I am guilty of it) that long replies are difficult to properly digest and absorb.
Can I suggest you break your reply into sections and post them separately. We can reference the message number of the points we wish to address in our own responses.
Vince, it does not take the SPGB rubber stamp of approval for its members to support workers and engage with them in taking action to defend their working and social conditions.
I could go through the Socialist Standard and p and c numerous sympathetic references to social (albeit not socialist) resistance. Perhaps the trouble is for some readers they are always accompanied by qualification that protest and opposition to government policy is not enough and the message is that to end this ceaseless running on the spot, a socialist revolution is required – the “Big Bang” as EM puts it.
Many left wing parties will affiliate with existing reform groups to direct them and recruit or they go on to create their own “front” campaigns a la SWP and the Anti Nazi League. This is not what the SPGB does – quite rightly so.
As I said in my reply to EM there are many organization better positioned than the SPGB are to accomplish the reforms they seek and will actually benefit from not having us cheer-leading it on. As a socialist party I doubt we would get a hearing for opposing the sell-off of playing fields for instance even if we placed that specific immediate demand on a election manifesto. A PTA for instance would be better placed to exert its pressure.
Also remember that when many of those reforms actually fail to have any meaningful effect or result in an unintended consequence, as many do, we are not associated with its failure. Socialism is not blamed, although sadly when many reforms are described as “socialistic” this is what happens.
In the past the hostility clause may well have been applied to reform organisations but it was originally intended to be only used against political parties to stop alliances and coalitions with non-socialist parties and politicians but I think such a broad exercise of it no longer receives the sympathy of members and I don’t think a member would be criticized for endorsing or even participating in a campaign by a NGO, for example. But it is horses for courses. I would be critical of a member active in the anti-abortion movement. Maybe others would be more tolerant, but I doubt it. It is an example when the private and personal actions could well impact on the SPGB’s reputation, imho.
Oh, and it just occurred to me, EM, that if you are drafting a minimum programme, it will include a great number of minimum demands that were once achieved but have since been rescinded by both the Tories and Labour. One step forward, two steps back.
One specific point you did make was:
“Socialism to work would require people with golden hearts: be kind, be giving and co-operative.”
I would say – no. I recall a Situationist pamphlet called the “Right to be Greedy” which made the case that self-interest could motivate people into seeking a different society. The Socialist Party doesn’t agree that socialism is necessarily a society of saints and angels.
Socialism does not require us all to become altruists, putting the interests of others above our own. In fact socialism doesn’t require people to be any more altruistic than they are today. We will still be concerned primarily with ourselves, with satisfying our needs, our need to be well considered by others as well as our material and sexual needs.
The coming of socialism will not require great changes in the way we behave, essentially only the accentuation of some of the behaviours which people exhibit today (friendliness, helpfulness, co-operation) at the expense of others which capitalism fosters and encourages.
EM – Wez, I believe, is not a member of the SPGB, resigning to associate with an anarchist group, I think.
Myself, I was a member in the 1970s who resigned but joined again in 2000. I wouldn’t have re-joined if I had not witnessed a change of attitude in the SPGB. It is a mellower and friendlier political party. We now prefer discussion forums of Q and A with some opponents rather than adversarial formal debates
I offered you a lengthy rebuttal of your accusations against the SPGB but I still await your response to it.
I think many members agree with your pessimistic prognosis that time may well be running out for the establishment of socialism, but it is also very much running out for any chance of reforms can make on climate change. What is required is no more tweaking of legislation and the introduction of some regulations but a “big bang”.
Associated with Brexit has been the Tory immigration bill which turns the screws on the free movement of workers by imposing the pay threshold on skilled workers visas and more than likely inflicting the “hostile” environment on all others.
What was Labour’s response?
First to abstain and not vote against it.
A quick U-turn but still 76 Labour MPs didn’t bother to vote.
It is not to do with nationality. As a non-UK, non-EU resident, I am no longer eligible for NHS care other than immediate emergency treatment. It takes 6 months living in the UK for me to regain residency status.
I assume once UK is no longer in the EU then the reciprocal health agreement will no longer apply unless provided by a new bilateral country deal.
And if the NHS decide that you are not a resident of the UK, returning from your Italian villa for a hernia or hip replacement means a 6 month wait on top of the existing hospital waiting list.
I suggest as alternative, health tourism to a private hospital in India. Will be cheaper.
I think you’ll know that the topic you have raised has been subject to much debate and discussion ever since the 19th Century.
The SPGB has always supported workers defending themselves against the attacks of the employing class and the State hence our endorsement of the trade union movement and our support for them in industrial disputes. Trying to create a mass movement of people united against austerity attacks is one that must be supported. We have never advocate passive acquiescence to capitalism. When a member of the working class acquires revolutionary consciousness s/he is still compelled to take part in the non-revolutionary struggle. We fight in the here and now, where we are and where we can, as part of the working class and we don’t tell anyone to wait until the revolution arrives and nor do we say that class struggle is a diversion. As workers, socialists don’t sit around and wait for a revolution.
I’m sure you are aware that we do not oppose “all reforms” but rather we condemn a political policy which is solely directed at achieving them – reformism which views them as permanent palliatives to the many social problems we endure or see them as stepping stones towards socialism. Rejecting reformism is not the same as rejecting reforms that genuinely improve conditions for workers to the extent that this is possible. But there are better equipped organisations and groups to engage in the task of individual reforms than a socialist party. The Socialist Party neither promotes nor opposes reforms to capitalism. However, we believe that a socialist party shouldn’t work for reforms to capitalism.
The Socialist Party does not oppose reformism because it is against improvements in workers’ lives lest they dampen their revolutionary ardour; nor, because it thinks that decadent capitalism cannot deliver on reforms. But it is our condition as propertyless wage-slaves that undermines whatever attempts we make to control and better our lives through reforms.
Every organisation has to decide what it is working for, and whether that aim is important. We in the Socialist Party made a choice. The suggestion that there is no alternative to reformism and making a virtue of the necessity of them by pretending that reformism works is a danger for all see by turning socialism into a distant goal, not an immediate one and trying to convince them of socialism as a long-term aim is a mistake. A party without a clear commitment towards socialism will be mired in long-term reformism.
To repeat, the Socialist Party does not deny that certain reforms won by the working class have helped to improve our general living and working conditions. Indeed, we see little wrong with people campaigning for reforms that bring essential improvements and enhance the quality of their lives, and some reforms do indeed make a difference to the lives of millions and can be viewed as ‘successful’. There are examples of this in such fields as education, housing, employment of children, work conditions and social security. The Socialist Party acknowledges that the welfare state, the NHS and so on, made living standards for sections of the working class better than they had been under rampant capitalism and its early ideology of laissez-faire. Some reforms e.g. securing freedom of speech, extending the franchise, stopping a war, benefit the entire working class and socialist movement. However, we also recognise that such ‘successes’ have in reality done little more than to keep workers and their families fit to work and have rarely managed to remove the problem completely.
Reformism is a most excellent strategy if you want only minor cosmetic changes to society, and are easily satisfied with what you get. Over decades, millions have invested their hopes in so-called “practical” and “possibilist” organisations and policies, hoping against hope that they would be able to neuter the market economy when, in reality, the market economy has successfully neutered them. They turned out to be the real “impossibilists”.
Demanding the unattainable humane gentle capitalism is one of the greatest tragedies and it is made all the greater because it was all so predictable. Yet still many hold the idea that capitalism can be reformed into something kindly and user-friendly.
The Vultures Gather
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47036119
US lobby groups for agriculture and pharmaceutical firms want UK standards changed to be closer to those of the US in any post-Brexit trade deal.
PhRMA, which represents drug makers in the US said it wanted a deal to address the barriers to access it currently faces in the UK, pointing to items such as government price controls. It heavily criticised the current NHS drug approval system, pointing to the cap on the price of drugs as too restrictive, and highlighting insufficient healthcare budgets and “rigid” national processes. The organisation, as well as some other groups, are also hoping to secure patent protections for certain types of drugs for at least 12 years, among other demands.
The farming groups say any deal should move away from EU standards, including rules governing genetically modified crops and pesticides and herbicides, such as glyphosate. They also want to limit geographic labelling rules, such as those that bar US companies from using terms such as Prosecco. The meat lobby wants the sale of growth hormone-fed beef, currently banned, to be allowed in the UK.
Tech companies are against the UK’s proposed digital tax.
Another EU politician saying the UK is on a loser
“The European Parliament will block the withdrawal agreement if British MPs try to amend it, the body’s Brexit chief has warned ahead of a series of key votes in Westminster. Guy Verhofstadt told The Independent that the EU’s legislature, which has to approve any deal, would not consent to a “watered down” agreement and that the controversial Irish backstop could not be ditched.”
“The European Parliament will not give its consent to a watered down Withdrawal Agreement,” Mr Verhofstadt told The Independent. “The deal we have is fair and cannot be re-negotiated.”
Wall Street executives would love to be rid of President Donald Trump and are seeking for a centrist nominee like Michael Bloomberg.
“It can’t be Warren and it can’t be Sanders,” said the CEO of a giant bank. “It has to be someone centrist and someone who can win.”
Gillibrand has Wall Street backers who view her as pragmatic, a centrist and preferable to Warren or Sanders.
Larry Rand, a Wall Street veteran and visiting professor of economics at Brown University. “Wall Street likes her because she is a pragmatist, not an ideologue, and of the announced candidates so far she is the most electable.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/28/wall-street-2020-economy-taxes-1118065
Global Warming but get use to the icy cold
https://apnews.com/77d640ee81fa4890b689d39c6bea545d
A polar vortex is thanks to warm air in the Arctic. It’s called “sudden stratospheric warming.”
Democrats on Monday joined Republicans in favour of taking up anti-BDS legislation, introduced by Republican Senator Marco Rubio. It would allow US states and localities to retaliate commercially against companies or individuals supporting BDS.
The American Civil Liberties Union also said the anti-BDS measure “sends a message to Americans that they will be penalised if they dare to disagree with their government”.
Israel sees BDS as a strategic threat and accuses it of anti-Semitism
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/senate-advances-anti-bds-legislation-190129025241533.html
