alanjjohnstone
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I'm curious to know how Russel Brand's language compares with Trump's. Brand like Trump is a professional communicator one a salesman, the other a showman, and both roles overlap for both people.But is Trump receiving too much credit for resurrecting a tried and tested way of fooling the people…Reagan…he had all the homesy style of talking…and Carter had that Southern preacher approach.. FDR used the radio medium effectively for informal fireside chats. Here is another video de-constructing Trump's language https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrqqQAfenUo
I note i am in the minority of one, (not for the first time but has that ever stopped me from harping on) but surely we should make a video that can be used for a long time.Apart from earlier criticism that it is interruptive to show TWO (not just Neil) interviewers presenting THEIR questions, it also dates the video…We should try to make it time-less. In 10 years time a new generation will be viewing the video and wondering…who the hell is that geezer…Andrew Neil will be as well known as Reginald Bosanquet is today. And i agree the text can consist not just questions but observations using statistics and quotes to prepare and introduce our members contributions.
I don’t know where to begin. There is so much wrong with the case that you make which can only be judged as a pretence of being socialist. Even this reply won’t be able to do justice to disproving your arguments. But here goes.Shall we begin with your claim that you “don't believe in women's rights” and that they should be encourage to take up employment because it is encouraging them to wage-slaves. How noble and gallant you are to remove the choice from them? An almost identical argument was made by the slave-owning plantation-owners of the American South to defend their instution…better to be a chattel slave than a wage slave. But what is good for the goose is good for the gander, so why then do you condemn the threat of unemployment to European and UK workers, when you declare that immigrants taking their jobs as you seem intent upon insisting, is saving indigenous workers from being wage slaves.Staying on the topic of womens’ rights, all the experts, and I do mean all the experts, project a declining population for Europe as a whole, the demographic prediction is that there will be a drastic drop of people of working age and a rise in the population of old folk which means less productive workers supporting more and more who are dependent upon them. I take it you are not in favour of euthanasia for the old and feeble so there are two options. One is the rational choice, invite the young from those parts of the world that has rising youth numbers …or two…turn European women into baby machines to reverse the trend, perhaps following the Hitlerite and Stalinist models of presenting medals for those who breed the most. Somehow, with your attitude towards women not permitted to make their own decisions, I think you’ll pick the secon and penalise females for not having kids.You simply can’t see that your case consists of protecting vested interests. “ workers, even socialist ones, have the right to fight for better conditions and oppose things that might result in worse conditions.”And that is exactly what some workers said about the black workers or unskilled workers and female workers entering the work-force and now about immigrants and exactly what I accused you of doing. You want to keep your “privileged” position at the price of excluding and keeping down other people and refusing to turn your wrath and ire at the very folk that take advantage of your myopia. Yes, the quote I gave in the previous post is very apt…stop being a bully and instead when look down on people make sure it is only because you are bending down to give them a helping hand up.“eventually replaced by that group.” You have accused me of emotional rhetoric but are blind to your own. Care to tell me the % of the Europe’s population that the current arrival of refugees present? I shall offer you this. The TOTAL foreign-born population residing in the EU in 2014 amounts to 33 million people, or 7% of the total population of the 28 EU countries (above 500 million people). The number of followers of Islam in Europe was in 2010 13 million. By 2030, Muslims are projected to make up 8% of Europe’s population…Are we to be replaced by less than 10% of the population. And you say I am wrong when I call you scare-monger.There is no denying that the arrival of so many people so quickly is a logistical and infrastructural nightmare, but it is not a situation which cannot be overcome. When Algeria got its independence from France one million pied-noirs departed and arrived in France. France coped. When Germany re-unified 2 or 3 million Ossies in a relatively brief period headed to what was West Germany. Germany coped. What we are discussing in not just one country being part of the solution but the whole of Europe. Where there is the will, there is the way. Has mass immigration made America stronger or weaker, you ask? Can I state the very obvious. Immigration made America, as it did Canada, Australia and Argentine. All countries made up of immigrants. How can you say it has weakened these countries? The American continent’s First Peoples and the Aboriginal people and the Maori of New Zealand, would perhaps rightly challenge me on this. Your “indigenous” people aren’t native, are they, but interlopers. Nor are the blacks in the America’s immigrants…they were forced to go live there, in chains and still they are being made to pay the price “Are you saying that British workers should not be allowed to defend their living standards?” Are you saying the English are not entitled to defend their standards from in-coming Welsh and Scots? That those in the Home Counties should not defend themselves from those Northerners new-comers. Should east-enders in London should now stop those from south London from re-locating. Shall we now stop those from the bottom of the street applying for jobs that those at the top of the street also seek. Imagine if in the United States of America moving from the Eastern sea-board to the West Coast in search of employment was banned? But of corse they tried, didn't they. "Grapes of Wrath" and all that, didn't matter if the okies from the dust bowl came over in the Mayflower, western states tried to turn them back…for the same reason you wish to apply to foreigners…you are a competitor, a rival. Before the chickens came home to roost from a refugee rise caused directly by European and American war policy, UKIPs concern was the number of Eastern Europeans. Farage railed against the Poles and Romanians stealing jobs and cutting wages and causing crime. The fact is the law gives EU workers the right to go live and work anywhere in the EU they choose. I well remember the TV series ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Pet’. Of course, you don’t like our SPGB case because it is backed up by official research. Eastern European are not stealing jobs, many were creating them, nor apart from some localized effect did they contribute to British workers suffering pay cuts. Facts I am sure since you claim to be knowledgeable will be aware of, but you choose to dismiss to suit your own agenda. The Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs show that most east European immigrants take jobs that no Dutch worker would accept, such as picking vegetables in greenhouses. They pay more in taxes than they claim in benefits but you prefer to blinker yourself to this information since you don’t want to accept it. The only effective way to reduce immigration is to lower living standards, reduce real pay and increase poverty to make coming here unappealing. This has now been shown to be the Cameron’s immigration policy and do not be fooled that it will only apply to incoming migrant workers. Simply look at the vast numbers of benefit claimants sanctioned for declining low-paying or even no-pay zero-contract employment. Anti-immigrant rhetoric is employed only as a means of preparing the way for attacks against the entire working class.Ike, you may well bemoan the loss of traditions and blame foreigners for eroding them. But you overlook the penetration of the city centres by real estate speculators and rural beauty spots exploited by tourist industry over-development. Nor have you expressed outrage by the Americanisation of culture that contains more consumer decadence with its McDonalds or Starbucks than anybody coming from the Middle East. There is far greater damage caused to tradition and culture by financial speculation and capitalist globalisation than by migrant groups insulating themselves in their own little communities. History shows that language and religion are not insurmountable obstacles to social integration. The conflicts fought between protestants and catholics were, in most of Britain, long and bloody (Northern Ireland and parts of Scotland are still dealing with this) but for most part, whether a person is a Church of England, Welsh chapel or Church of Rome is now an irrelevance. Anti-gay bigots are increasingly finding themselves isolated is another example of how social attitudes change for the better. To garner votes, politicians are willing to create an atmosphere of fear than one of mutual respect and solidarity and despite all your proclamations of expressing international solidarity, I fail to see any proof of it. Have you in your replies supported an increase in foreign aid spending, the end of expansionist wars, of compensation for passed Empire crimes, of curtailing tax havens which are mostly in British protectorates? Have you advocated cross-border strikes and boycotts? No, you play lip-service to internationalism but you are effectively supporting our class enemy…the ruling class. The scapegoating of immigrants is especially grotesque. The reason why Britain (and much of the rest of the world) has been economically devastated has more to do with the City of London and Wall St than foreigners sweating in back-breaking work backs in the fields and food factories of East Anglia. But Big Business have much better PR departments. And, in the end, politicians don’t argue with their pay-masters for long. The poor, the vulnerable and the defenceless – especially those who do not share the same language or customs or religion – have always been a convenient scapegoat for a society’s various ills. It’s the oldest trick in the book and regardless of your self-image as someone who thinks – you have been gullible enough to have fallen for it.People don’t normally interpret the world through a series of facts and logic. We often understand the world through what we are told, picked up from the media. Where people are forever being told that immigration is responsible for all of the ills of the world, the effect of highlighting immigration is mostly to confirm to people the stories in their head which tell them to blame those of other races than themselves, those less rich than themselves. When life gets tough, people turn on those they define as the other, the outsider. Maligning migrants becomes fair game, especially for vote-seeking populist politicians. Austerity effects all workers but the clamp down usually begins with the vulnerable and weak. We see this with ATOS and attacks on the disabled and sick. A few years ago, it was all single mothers fault getting deliberately pregnant to jump the housing waiting list that we had homeless and now the blame of the refugee. Is it not immigrants but rather the capitalist class which are constantly out-sourcing work abroad and opening factories in other countries who is the enemy.Reading your comments on the other posters responses to you, i could go on and on but i leave them to answer you in their own way.I should perhaps for full disclosure, reveal I am an immigrant.
Ike, your argument is one with a long history within the workers movement and over the years it has been directed at many peoples. Fear-mongering and divisive politics play well in creating more xenophobia and it has a long history. You blame the capitalist class for the problem but punish the worker. “The Voice of the Aliens’, a manifesto published by Jewish workers which we recommended as a read. We will quote from it: “To punish the alien worker for the sin of the native capitalist is like the man who struck the boy because he was not strong enough to strike his father.” http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2007/04/voice-from-aliens.html There is much truth in what it says and you are an echo of those in the trade union movement it criticised At the turn of the 20th C it was the Chinese that American workers feared and took action to restrict their entry. No doubt you know of Eugene Debs who opposed this tendency that you presently reflect in his letter to his party. https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1910/immigration.htmWhat is less known is that this was a departure from an earlier position where he opposed the arrival of immigrants. Debs had inherited the prevailing prejudices of the "Know Nothing" Party. He attacked the immigration agents as representatives of capital – “enemies of American workingmen” who wished to “chinaize the county” and he openly welcomed legislation that permitted the authorities to return “to their despot cursed home” the “victims” of these agent’s efforts. Debs found the Italian’s even less desirable than the Chinese. “The Dago” he claimed “works for small pay, and lives far more like a savage or a wild beast, than the Chinese,” This Italian “fattens on garbage” and cares little for civilization, and therefore, “able to underbid an American workingman” Only in this way can the Italian appear industrious and Debs warned that Italy “has millions of them to spare and they are coming”Jews fared little better, too. When it was announced that the London Board of Guardians had instated a program to transfer Russian-Jewish immigrants to the United States, Debs claimed that that this would increase the already increasing hostility towards immigrants. Identifying these immigrants as “criminals and paupers” Debs bemoaned the fact that most were able to “take up a permanent residence” and strongly asserted that “it was possible to end the infamous business”Debs views on negroes at no time ran counter to the ARU members ant-black feelings. Reporting that a new Texas law required separate coaches for black and white Deb’s stated “There might come a time when in the South whites and blacks will be on terms of social equality , till then it were better to fight separately”. Debs supported without any record of dissent the Brotherhoods attempts to rid the railroad of black firemen and the anti-black clause in the Fireman’s constitution.These early views of Debs all changed from experience and made the unions and the Socialist Parties ever more stronger as the recorded influence of the foreign-born sections of the IWW, SLP and SP, shows and these positive factors were highlighted by the Irish immigrant James Connolly when he was a labour organizer active in America and organised many non-English speaking Italians.Yes, as you can see, fellow Europeans, such as the Poles and the Romanians, followers of the same "culture", the same religion and competitors for the same jobs have all been castigated in the recent past by British workers with proposals of restrictions upon them at the risk of destroying European "unity", the EU.If we go back not too far in history the anti-Irish workers in the UK also demanded that they "go home " too. Same in the USA…was not there nickname …the black Irish…just one level above slaves.Here in Scotland the capitalists used Lithuanian immigrants. At the beginning of the 20th century in Lanarkshire, there was much vitriol against Lithuanian incomers. They were employed in the iron works and the coal pits, and they too were accused of wage-cutting and scabbing. Nevertheless, the Lanarkshire County Miners’ Union, in the space of some 15 years, went from offering support to miners willing to strike against Lithuanian workers to demanding that Lithuanian miners in Lanarkshire should not be deported. During those 15 years, the Lithuanians had joined the union in large numbers and were active in it. Unionisation was the key to improved relations between the Lithuanian labour force and the LCMU. Once the Lithuanians began to respond positively to local strike demands, the other allegations made against them were simply not an issue. The adoption of a more class-conscious attitude and the strength of their newfound loyalty to the union was in part due to the fact that the union had taken some very positive steps to encourage Lithuanian membership, such as printing the rules in Lithuanian and offering entitlement to claim full benefits.But you say immigrants come here en masse and destroy our society. The other side of the coin is that they build society. Which worker has not eaten spaghetti and meatballs, indulged in curry and drank some lager. Immigration creates diversity that is welcomed by people unless of course you are one of those few who thought that rock'roll was the devils music of the negro as many bigots did as the decried Elvis Presley…music is something that crosses over differences. No, even empirically, you are wrong about our "culture" being destroyed. On the contrary, it is strengthened by incorporating other peoples ideas and imagination and customs.Capitalism is built upon two freedoms…the free movement of capital and the free movement of labour…How strange it is that all the attention is placed upon restricting the second of those …I do not see the vigilantes out on the street picketing Amazon from re-locating its profits to a low-tax foreign country. But people who went to Australia and America and Canada and Argentine and many other places…(almost two million UK ex-pats in the EU) …all went as economic migrants…yet,now they are safe, they are tossing away the ladders they used for others and you want to shut the door on peoples who have only one reason for leaving their homes families and friends, to better their lives…something you too aspire to but you merely seek to ensure you keep out the competitors…Your grandfather probably opposed women's equality in the work-place, for the same reason…a woman who was not in the kitchen and who wanted to work was a rival for a job , and the bosses could under-cut pay by employing them…until they organised with the unions..The youth too had wage differentials imposed and not so long ago …every company had pay scales determined by age…up to 30 in some cases….Divide and rule goes beyond race, colour and nationality…skilled worker v the unskilled worker…uneducated and diploma-certificate holder…Don't be a pawn in their power games, Ike…Don't accept the propaganda and look at the bigger picture and the longer term. Also look around you at your fellow bed-mates, your "allies", and wonder what side you are really on…Trump the billionaire?….
My cable provider gave access to North Korean state tv and i can vouch for the surreal content of its programmes. Surprisingly for all the anti-Americanism, there was little evidence of it on tv. The female news-readers were amazingly animated reading their prepared text. I found some of the footage transfixing…
Apparently there will be something called The Patron's Lunch will honour the Queen's lifetime dedication to service and mark her patronage of more than 600 charities and organisations….Its title is crying our for some group to do a "Peoples Lunch" in its vicinity and no doub there will be…Perhaps food served up from a food bank…Maybe we could soup kitchen theme, dress up in rags and dish out bowls of soup and chunks of bread. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35318389
I think i will also add my observation that a member seeking to contribute to the Party and only being too willing to oblige is not being provided with the necessary tool to do so…access to the twitter account and i take it that means the password.It is surreal.
Quote:PS. this debate puts into perspective the support for 'parliament' amongst the SPGB members, who don't seem to think that parliament will self-disband in the face of workers' councils. The SPGB seems to think the electoral and organisational structures of parliament will survive the blossoming of workers' power.Again i would like this backed up with evidence and citationThere has been an acknowledgement that certain state ministeries/organisations may well remain. not intact but adapted…health, agriculture, statistics…Some members have said that local administration we inherit from capitalism, parish councils, local councils, and again certain departments can be adapted …housing, social services, food standards…Similarly with industry, workers councils will take over the infrastructure of capitalism. I know Dave Douglass praises the health and safety laws in mining in the UK compared with other countries, and i am sure rail workers won't be calling for the dismantling of their safety rules. Airspace over the UK and the USA will still operate under the same worldwide administration of IATA and it will be those involved in air travel who will have the authority of determining the rules. The Law of the Sea has had centuries to develop. Are you suggesting we throw that all away? Overall, all industry, many of the international trade organisations and professional associations have existing by-laws and structures that will be integrated within any workers councils system. We do not need to re-invent the wheel. We don't start from nothing. We take what is there and we adapt and adjust and make fitter for purpose, shedding its capitalist features and strengthening the co-operative ones. We do not hand over ownership of the means of production and distribution to a section of the community as syndicalism and pro-co-operatives argue. Workers councils administer the work-places, they do not control them. Society as a whole has common ownership and democratic control over the "economy" and these range from various levels through a mix of direct decision making and accountable delegates. What will apply in a factory complex, is one shop-floor having say about things but not total say over other units and departments, there will be various committees set up and a system of co-ordination created. Not every decision requires a full factory assembly. One local production unit in an industry does not determine the whole manufacturing process. Workers councils will reflect in general how all society will function. Community and work-place democracy will be mirrors of one another.
I was just thinking a moment ago about the issues LBird has brought up concerning science. They are problems that we must face directly, even today.Take the question of GMO food. The overwhelming scientific opinion is that it is safe. Yet people still wonder about this. So it actually did go to a vote, at least, in a number of states in America, concerning the legal requirement to list on food products if it ingredients are GM to offer consumer a choice of believing scientific truth or going by their irrational beliefs. Scientific democracy in practice. Even huge corporation such as Campbells probably for market reasons bowed to consumer opinion rather than their own scientists because of the votes that have taken place and their expectations of the outcome of future ones. (I know ALB believes the EU and Russia's position on GM is protectionism rather than scientific.) But one scientific truth is defeated by another truth…ideologically based one…We also have a similar situation with fracking. Most scientific opinion, again, says it is safe if certain precautions are carried out but many oppose fracking challenging the authority of the research. So should it be imposed by a central body, or should the NIMBYs be permitted a veto by local vote or overruled by a wider vote since the demand for fracked gas comes from elsewhere but they don't risk the supposed water contamination or localised earthquakes. NIMBYs will vote for their version of ideological science and others less affected will opt for their own truth on the matter. I think the socialist solution is that we go for the alternative…Again, Robbo discusses this…Liebig's law of the minimum – whereby you economise most on those factors that are relatively the scarcest…or which in this context is the biggest hassle to get agreement on what to produce…we have lots of substitutes for fossil fuel gas as other options to fracking. But it also got me remembering one reason why i found Parecon such a pain…the endless negotiations it involved to determine prices and jobs etc etc. Needless bureaucracy compard with fee access. Which really is what i think you meant by LBird's Leninism, Robbo. I don't want endless votes eating into society's and my own time. The more the world runs on automatic pilot, the better it suits me and i think everybody else…even if this is letting technology take over many of the decision roles …And as with the internet and search engines and net neutrality we have to be wary of what we delegate and what we maintain hands-on control. YMS has explored automation and robotics more than i have, so i am sure he can suggest how mankind and machines are integrated . Anyways some thoughts that popped into my head that i want to get posted before the Moderator deems my contributions out of order…
A brief exposition of our attitude towards unions has been put online by DarrenOhttp://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/01/workers-resistance-1986.html
Oh , i just noticed that Parliament voted for a probable X-Factor style decision making to choose a new national anthem for England…i wonder how they will stop people in Scotland and Ireland and Wales from voting ?…an exercise in democracy tht went beyon the Scots who got the dire dirge of Flower of Scotland foisted upon them…King Edwards Army and a' that crap…Give me Men of Harlech , any day
Robbo, you know full well that we shouldn't make words mean something that it doesn'tLeninism – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeninismI'm not googling all the definitions of what Leninism means but there are agreed features to it…and as i and LBIrd agress (and you too), Leninism has its birth in the 2nd International and Kautskyism. Taling one aspect of Leninism and making it an ism on it own to win a political argument doesn't strike me as quite accurateI'm sure there is a practical way for 7 billion to vote but just periodically…the Chinese and the Indian populations are both well over a billion each and they can organise it every few years…And Tim has referred to X-Factor but there could be a global mechanism to register views and opinions…We chose songs via Eurovision contest that i believe is now based upon viewers registering their choice, it could be adjusted and YMS has studied various methods of this. Also Pollsters use various means without everybody being asked and the error rate can be reduced to negligible…You yourself have talked of a variety of consumer research feedback determining production choice and implementing hierarchy of Maslows hierarchy of needs…why can't they be scaled up to get the feedback of several billion on some issues. A global vote is difficult by not unaccomplishable and not desirable upon everything….but i note that House of Commons debates are demanded by a online petition, American states do this too as does Switzerand and other nations probably, a petition for full referendums …New Zealand is choosing a new flag, are they not? So that mechanism can be used to decide to trigger local, regional and worldwide votes. LBird has made it clear several times that he supports workers councils, that is usually a decentralised delegatory structure of manufacture, not a command economy….But some decisions have to be…agreements on building standards and quality control specs, etc or global coordination agreements…Those with no vested interest will probably not become involved in the determination, but i don't think there will be a rule about excluding people from participating unless a rule is made..again i don't think every tom dick or harry should have a voice in determining the procedures of a heart operation…specialists have to deem who is skilled and knowledgable…but to do that they have to first make their case for it which involves everybody who cares to be is involved. LBird's views on the SPGB which he expressed i think can be treated with scepticalism since now with his own answer it is not based on a investigation or a full awareness of the history or practice of the SPGB but limited to the responses of just a few online members. His accusations that we are Leninists can be dismissed as founded upon lack of knowledge and study…just as my opinion upon this philosophical debate cannot be treated the same as those with wider understanding…
Quote:Get robbo to give a detailed plan of socialismWell the nearest a socialist model to my knowledge he has posted has been thishttps://libcom.org/files/CommonVoice3.pdfSo feel free to critique the "democratic control" it proclaims …i am sure he would be interested in where you find it in error or where his socialist ideas are badly expressed. Fire away your broadside. LBird…you have the first shot…then Robbo can return fire…
Our posts crossed in the internet ether, LBird. As you see, i did start to provide a caveat for my insistence that you provide me with actual examples by the fact you are not a member and suffer from an understandable ignorance of the SPGBOf course you are right to take this argument further back to before Lenin, who for all his reputation merely adjusted the orthodoxy of the Second International to Tsarist conditions. We in the SPGB did spring forth from the same waters as the SDF and HM Hyndman, bourgeois intellectuals that we repudiated and lo and behold developed our own interpretations of democracy that we implemented in our D of P and our party rules. Having bitter first-hand experience of an elite in control, the SPGB designed the Party so the same failing could not be repeated, and if it was, it would self-destruct the SPGB as a revolutionary socialist organisation. I did try one time to study philosophy but it did make my head sore. But who i tried to read was Dietzgen…"the workers philosopher" as i think Marx called him on one of his better days when discussing people and Pannekoek's summaries of him.
Quote:“Mind is as real as the tangible table…Mind is material and things are mental. Mind and material are real only in their interrelations”As he did in actual politics, blurring the differences between socialists and anarchists , his philosophy tried to join together ideas and matter and end a false dichotomy dissolve things into one big giant melting monism pot…So …perhaps i can offer an alternative to your challenge here
Quote:If I could quote just one example of a member saying 'I agree with Marx and not Engels', I would revise my views."I agree with Dietzgen…and by extension, Pannekoek…rather than either Marx or Engels"
