alanjjohnstone
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Quote:but I'll need a bit of convincing that this charter brings anything positive to a thirteenth centuryserf.
Can you be convinced that it brings something positive to the 21st Century working class?
I think you are right…Both Marx and Engels were often too optimistic on the development of workers consciousness…
ALB, this is why i do think it might be a useful thing to have an article at least about Larry, even if we don't do a formal interview with selected questions about the differences in their politics…Why he resigned from Labour, why he joined the Greens…whereas his brother refuses to follow suit…Larry, of course will no doubt be very circumspect with answers from family loyalty and probably some shared views but I'm being a spin-doctor, a PR pundit, an advertiser for the Socialist Standard so to boost its ratings and circulation.We should try every trick to increase visitors to our sites. It will produce hits and links when punted around the American "liberal progressive" websites. Certainly, it did the Billy Beer trade a lot of benefit with Jimmy Carter when Billy took advantage of the family name. Just an idea to toss about for your editorial committee. SOYMB has another lengthy post on Sanders …just waiting for the appropriate opening…
Perhaps the download link DJP provided me might helphttps://www.torproject.org/about/overview.html.enBut if you can't watch, briefly it says that the big food companies impose restrictive contracts upon farmers that drive them into poverty by making them compere with one another
Overlooking the bad satire and humour , this 20 min. video exposes another side of the animal industry…chicken-farmers (the term isn't actually chicken-farmer…but chicken-grower), being exploited by the food industry…treated like dirt-poor share-croppers by the corporaations…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9wHzt6gBgI
The flavour of the month appears to have been all but forgotten so i thought soe will be interested in this book review by Pikettyhttp://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/06/07/practical-vision-more-equal-societyI know nothing of Atkinson, some here may well know more about his ideas, but it seems that Piketty is still travelling along his fiscal reform road to resolve capitalism's bumpy path
The BBC takes up the question Is the Pope a Communist?http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33024951One issue is the article when it discusses dictatorships as an influence upon John Paul II completely writes out the era of the Generals in Argentine as an influence on Francis preferring to infer he is a creation of Peronism…which maybe true for all i know.
The story of the Beretta investment emerged in 2012 but there seems to be some doubt about this and the original source is now thought to be fake. A press release from Fabbrica Armi Pietro Beretta (FAPB) denying that IOR (Istituto per le Opere di Religione = the Vatican Bank) has any stake in Beretta Holding or in any company controlled by the holding. The press release reaffirmed that Beretta Holding is a private company wholly owned by the Beretta family.The only verifiable link between Beretta and IOR was that by 2005-2006, UPIFRA (the holding company for Beretta) had a small stake (less than 5%) in Banca Lombarda, which was part of a consortium named Gruppo Lombardo, together with IOR and other 2 companies. At that time, the consortium had a small stake (again less than 5%) in Intesa Sanpaolo Bank. But this has nothing to do with IOR being a shareholder in any of the companies owned by the Beretta family.A bank linked with the German Catholic church was found to have investments in a company that produced contraceptive and the British arms company BAE and BAT tobacco and when it was revealed they apologised and sold their shares. I certainly don't believe the history or even the current policy of the Catholic Church is pacifist. They recently supported the Nigerian military's campaign against Boko Haram. I deliberately opened the post to be provocative. Francis supports the principle of humanitarian interventions but he is on record as making important caveats “Never war, never war,” he said at his Sunday Angelus on July 27, 2014 . “I am thinking, above all, of children who are deprived of the hope of a worthwhile life, a future. Dead children, wounded children, mutilated children, orphaned children, children whose toys are things left over from war, children who don’t know how to smile. Please stop. I ask you with all my heart, it’s time to stop. Stop, please!”But a few weeks later, he told journalists onboard the papal plane. “Where there is an unjust aggression I can only say that it is legitimate to stop the unjust aggressor,” he told reporters on the plane. “I underscore the verb ‘to stop.’ I am not saying ‘bomb’ or ‘make war,’ but ‘stop him.’ The means by which he can be stopped must be evaluated. Stopping the aggressor is legitimate.”Addressing the 28th Session of the Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion on March 11, 2015 Tomasi laid the groundwork for endorsement of military action. “The appeal to religion in order to murder people and destroy the evidence of human creativity developed in the course of history makes the ongoing atrocities even more revulsive and damnable,” he said. “An adequate response from the International Community, that should finally put aside sectoral interests and save lives, is a moral imperative.”I am using this thread merely to highlight the hypocrisy, not of the Catholic Church, but of the "liberal", "left", "progressive" political establishment …those "lesser evils"…. by showing that the supposed reactionary medieval religionists are more radical when it comes to exposing and denouncing capitalism's social problems.But Marx long ago had this to say
Quote:As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism. Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the State? Has it not preached in the place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and Mother Church? Christian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.– Communist ManifestoI often use facts and figures from Catholic Church sources on the myth of over-population, well aware that their motive is not one shared by socialists i.e. simply to discourage the use of contraception and abortion but regardless, the information they sometimes provide helps the socialist case.
Pope Francis the Pacifist Peace-makerMany conflicts across the planet amount to “a kind of Third World War being fought piecemeal and, in the context of global communications, we sense an atmosphere of war,” the pontiff said “Some wish to incite and foment this atmosphere deliberately,” he added, attacking those who want to foster division for political ends or profit from war through arms dealing. But war means children, women and the elderly in refugee camps; it means forced displacement, destroyed houses, streets and factories: above all countless shattered lives."http://rt.com/news/265486-pope-francis-sarajevo-bosnia/
Further food for thought
Quote:There is no better road to theoretical clearness of comprehension than "durch Schaden klug werden" [to learn by one's own mistakes]. And for a whole large class, there is no other road, especially for a nation so eminently practical as the Americans. The great thing is to get the working class to move as a class; that once obtained, they will soon find the right direction, and all who resist, H.G. or Powderly, will be left out in the cold with small sects of their own. Therefore I think also the K[nights] of L[abour] a most important factor in the movement which ought not to be pooh-poohed from without but to be revolutionised from within….A million or two of workingmen's votes next November for a bona fide workingmen's party is worth infinitely more at present than a hundred thousand votes for a doctrinally perfect platform.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/letters/86_12_28.htm
Food for thought
Quote:N.B. as to political movement: The political movement of the working class has as its object, of course, the conquest of political power for the working class, and for this it is naturally necessary that a previous organisation of the working class, itself arising from their economic struggles, should have been developed up to a certain point.On the other hand, however, every movement in which the working class comes out as a class against the ruling classes and attempts to force them by pressure from without is a political movement. For instance, the attempt in a particular factory or even a particular industry to force a shorter working day out of the capitalists by strikes, etc., is a purely economic movement. On the other hand the movement to force an eight-hour day, etc., law is a political movement. And in this way, out of the separate economic movements of the workers there grows up everywhere a political movement, that is to say a movement of the class, with the object of achieving its interests in a general form, in a form possessing a general social force of compulsion. If these movements presuppose a certain degree of previous organisation, they are themselves equally a means of the development of this organisation.Where the working class is not yet far enough advanced in its organisation to undertake a decisive campaign against the collective power, i.e., the political power of the ruling classes, it must at any rate be trained for this by continual agitation against and a hostile attitude towards the policy of the ruling classes. Otherwise it will remain a plaything in their handshttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_11_23.htm
There has been a history of free schools…i mean genuine libertarian education schools, not those contemporary hijacking of those terms by the Tories.Summerhill, pioneered by the late AS Neil, for instance. So we are not working from a vacuum. Marx himself seemed to link education with work experience…promoter of technical colleges and part-time training on the jobSome sources to follow uphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_and_educationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchistic_free_schoolhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_educationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_education
I note they call us the "formerly Socialist Party of Great Britain" as if we have given up the name and then they say we are comrades of the SPEW, still identifying us as left-wing. Perhaps we should make use of the spin-doctor's slogan…"We're the Real Thing"…It is a sad indictment that the same the clip from Life of Brian is still being re-played so there has not been any resolution of the situation that is repetedly highlighted despite Taafee optimistic claims that they stand for the broad church approach of a federated socialist party and their attempts, failures.As i have suggested, i think we should invite all those "socialist" parties to a hustings-type meeting and make it incumbent upon them to explain why.
I found this article started of well, placing the Greek Syriza in the context of austerity economicshttp://dissidentvoice.org/2015/06/the-class-logic-behind-austerity-policies-in-the-euro-area/#more-58665It emphasises the importance of class in the economic crisis of Greece but sadly the solution is going to be a siege economy for Greece and we all know who the winners will be.We are perhaps witnessing the beginning with the very recent refusal to fulfil debt repayment scedules and the propaganda appeal to be treated with dignity.
Chris in an optimistic mood for The Revolutionhttp://www.alternet.org/we-are-revolutionary-moment-chris-hedges-explains-why-uprising-coming-and-soonBut having had my attention drawn to his religious background, cn't help but keep noticing it now
Quote:In the end, those who rebel require faith — not a formal or necessarily Christian, Jewish or Muslim orthodoxy, but a faith that the good draws to it the good. That we are called to carry out the good insofar as we can determine what the good is; and then we let it go. The Buddhists call it karma, but faith is the belief that it goes somewhere. By standing up, you keep alive another narrative. It’s one of the ironic points of life. That, for me, is what provides hope; and if you are not there, there is no hope at all.
