alanjjohnstone
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Oh, on a purely personal point, i am, if i return to the UK, subject to all the anti-migrant legislation, that has been passed and will be passed, such as deprived of free access to the NHS except in an emergency and only until the emergency passes, (if i did become a health tourist, i know it wouldn't be to the UK where the cost of the hospital car-park is more than the fee to see a top consultant in a private hospital, in some places) deprived of job-seekers allowance, housing benefit and a council house itself (if one was available) I cannot bring a wife and or any of her children to the UK for my income is not suffice, 18,600 pounds income for the spouse and 2500 pounds for each child. While abroad i am subject to the tit-for-tat visa rules. India, for instance, has relaxed its visa regulations for 40 countries, the UK is not amongst them, nor expected to be in the future, due to their treatment of Indian citizens.I am indeed Johnny Foreigner in the eyes of the UK government.
Lets be truthful, they are only saying what so many green environmentalists say…begin at the personal level with individual changes and choices…Stop the great unwashed from breeding. Can we blame when corporatons takes its cue from the supposed opposition and co-opt their belief system and turn it into a smoke and mirrors to obscure the true reality that we need system change at society level . BTW, what is the central heating temperture set at for HO..turn it down 1 centigrade and if we all do that, that's one powerstation that can be mothballed…balderdash…But it is so easy to play the game
T o be uncharitable about these discussions, workers' democracy implies to me that i can safely leave to others to argue the number of angels dancing on a pin-head because in the bigger picture, the threads i have been referring to are not going to be contributing to any social change. It simply isn't engaging the majority, its ideas aren't relating to their reality. YMS is a member of the electoral committee of the SPGB and i simply have not seen anything produced in all these exchanges that i can think of as a positive step to adapt as a general approach to include in our interacting with our intended audience in our daily politics. ( i say that just to get him and others to actually bring such to the forefront iin the discussion)Yourself by your own account are even more isolated…no-one to even call a comrade-in-arms and i consider that unfortunate. I also think it is misguided. You have become a party of one and i invite you to become one of the 300 Small and limited as it is, and despite the occasional rancorous debates, we have demonstrated the inclusiveness of our politics and once more despite your assertions that there is too much of a separation and difference in our ideas, something i think you and (maybe one or two of your adversaries) highly exagerrate and it is little different from the responses i get on Libcom when i raise the issue that we can cooperate more once we understand that our positional differences need not stand us apart. Too many of our similarities are indeed basic to all our politics, and where we disagree is secondary. (i'm no proposing a false unity built upon false premises before anyone suggests i am…) It is a matter of distinquishing what is essential, what is crucial, what is our essence…then reaching an accommodation on where we diverge. I have always been accused of being utopian…and perhaps such a mission is, but if one-to-one individual face-to face i can call another comrade, then surely some organisations can recognise our respective organisations can still see and treat each other as unique parts of the indivisible whole. Stop being a diva and prima donna, Lbird. It's cold out there. Come inside, sit yerself down, take off your boots, and warm yourself with the glow of cameraderie and solidarity. No-one i think is suggesting your views should be silenced even if membership may require you to temper you exhortations that some are not socialists/communists because they understand some philosophical point diferently from yourself. And you have to tolerate other members like myself who lack adequate learning to understand some things. http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/membership-applicationhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/party-rules-amended-conference-2009What you scared of…agreement?
Watched these vids before, DJP, but re-watched them and recognise their benefits and i agree with the positive comments already made. Is there a way we could ask for permission or get license to reproduce them on our website and as stand alone DVD for our literature selection? To add to my previous post, i don't see theory as superfluous, its role is to be the ideology to combat other rivals in the battle of ideas but i also think it simply that it is not a necessity for socialist consciousness as some seem to believe, nor do i want to claim that people wouldn't understand it, especially when the reasons for revolution can be televised and put on YouTube!
Quote:The whole basis of social revolution is based on an understanding of exchangevalue. – VinThis i find very deterministic. Did the working class need to wait for someone like Marx or any other economist to come along and define what they were experiencing before they would act? For sure, i like a doctor to come along, give me an exmination and then say what is the mtter with me, then discuss the proposed treatment . But do i need the micro-biologist to then explain how my cells are being penetrated by a virus and how the process is disrupting my immune system. It may add to the doctor's diagnosis but brings little practical benefit. We are proud that before Dr. Karl Heinrich Marx came along, workers themselves were already recognising they had symptoms of poverty and powerlessness and that the cause was wage slavery imposed by a few privileged people. Many had already been working on the cure such as the Chartists. They didn't require an explanation of exchange value. And when it was discovered and explained it didn't help them to understand the problem any better by knowing about its cellular causes, nor did being told about exchange value effect the soutions and cures they themselves had come to conclude were beneficial. At best, it was simply, reinforcement of their own findings and conclusions derived by specialists but it was not truly a self-discovery. I dare say some can direct us to other writers other than Marx who were reaching similar conclusions but using different terminology and words and perhaps different tools of analysis that maybe would offer simpler but just as truthful explanations(William Thompson?)Vin you suggest we should seek better ways of presenting such ideas. The other alternative is to simply miss them out entirely as superfluous.We can much easier describe the detrimental impact of capitalism on people and the planet by describing the fevers and shivering and tremblings and we can give a prognosis that they will increase the temperature in more ways that figuratively because the cause is capitalists who act as as a parasite upon the body of others and they contagious and infectious so we have to quarantine – remove- them from all sociial contact. This pathological madical analogy i think is basic but who really needs the tendency of the declining rate of profit that we have an increasingly sick world and we aren't getting any better. To incur the wrath of LBird i do accept that division of labour is not all bad particular in science and ideology. I can easily leave the knowledge of bio-chemistry to a few and only become interested when any findings they reach have gone through a process and reached mplementation stage that make their equations real…and produce a pill or medicine and my control over them is the choice to decide democratically in a process of consumer democracy if it does what it says on the bottle (albeit taking into account the placebo effect – in politics perhaps it is reformism). That makes the science democratic and true. If on the otherhand, the drug is not effective as prescribed but turns out to be useful for some other malady…which is often the case…it doesn't invalidate the science but simply an improvement …trial and error – experience- ever so basic even if it can be elaborated into something a little more complex….as Dr. Karl Heinrich Marx did with class struggle and socialism. Rambling over…
I know i am going to be crucified for this and accused of having a blinkered approach to politics but i really have a problem that over the past year we have had a series of extraordinary long threads on what i shame-faced would describe as abstract Marxist esoterics. A few times i have said i wonder how they can be related to real life…the material world…and what sort of ideology it can be presented in which can be conveyed to my fellow workers. Over the years i have raised topics and created links to what i consider practical problems for socialist politics. Perhaps i have been wrong in my choice but it seems some are still more interested in arguing in their interpretation of the world than changing it. Discussing our internal party policies and political approach doesn't seem to be as riviting as quoting obscure writers as if name-dropping them in the pub will transform the discourse. Lbird, a few times, i have suggested you join the party…even if it is the party with the small p and not be our own but you have pigeon-holed the entire thin red line of non-market communists as little different from Leninism or Trotskyism because of this infernal materialism/idealism, is Engels a Marxist debate.It is social revolution we seek and that can only be undertaken by social action. You are now saying you may well withdraw from all engagement which IMHO, will mean retreating into the isolated atomised position of book-worm…Knowledge is meaningless unless applied. Ideas are only material when there is action from it. I think Dietzgen said something like that somewhere, sometime…but i might have made that up in my imagination. Even Marx got fed up of the British Library and joined the 1st International to do something…even when it meant compromising with all sorts. Lets debate these things …political parties and parliament , trade unions and workers councils, community/environmental groups and direct action. Lets discuss the manifestations of workers consciousness that are occurring in what some would say are misdirected ways. Lets ask questions of why Podemos in Spain grows and the LU undergoes splits.Let us ask the most important question….why the fuck are we all alone?Why is it that we as a party never get cited or reference in current political debate but only rarely appear as a footnote in some history article? Why are we ignored and neglected yet some academic with a few initials after his name has his obtusely worded thesis regurgitated ad nauseum. Why do all our scholarly members feel the need to leave and move on? Why are we so fucking isolated that a few minutes on the BBC or a brief letter to the Guardian is hailed as a breakthrough…and nothing happens…Fuck it, i get frustrated that we discuss the design of our head office front and not ask why our branches are about to disappear one by one…No doubt the moderator will now say i am off topic…and that is the most usual controversy which arises on this forum…never ever about our politics and our analysis and our application…I don't fucking care about the Law of Value….it's always going to be a thing that exists in our heads…because i can't fucking pick it up, and show it to another worker…because he won't be able to see it or touch it except in his imagination…so who fucking cares…i want to understand how to get the guy next door whether UKIP or LU to understand that we can have another world, based on the things he or she knows about this one…that we take what is tangible and visible and take it to the next logical step of knowing…and have the confidence that it is possible to achieve a different and better future. Rant over…
I find the Nordic countries an intriquing topic …Up to the early 20th centurey they were poverty stricken, at times close to famine, and contributed in great numbers to the emigration to Canada and the USA. The Finnish appeared to be fairly militant and formed language centred socialist groups in both countries, and there was even some iealist Finns who decided to set up a socialist utopian commune in Soviet Union. But nowadays there is a tendency to play down the wealth gap that exist in these countries…but it basiclly is much the same as elsewhere, no need to mention the owners of IKEA and Electrolux and Nokia.We know Nokia mainly for th phones but they have been a giant conglomerate since the 19th c. Who has heard of the Wallenberg dynasty. Their family motto is "Esse non Videri" ( "To be, not to be seen"Vast council estates exist on the outskirts of Stockholm much as Paris put theres away from the tourist sights where Swedish immigrants are usually housed. Piketty cites the Scandinavian countries a re-emerging inequality nations. the Nordic model of generous welfare state is being cut back.
"i don't tell them what to think…i tell them what i think..i encourage them to develop their own ideas…" When i'm 85 as he is i hope i still am as clear minded and still as determined as Noam to work for society's change. I won't be around for when Brand is 85 so i have no idea as if he will be as a persistent supporter of revolution as Chomsky.
But if it is words you want, came across this on today's cyber odyssey http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/alternatives-to-capital/marx%E2%80%99s-critique-of-socialist-labor-money-schemes-and-the-myth-of-council-communism%E2%80%99s-proudhonism.html Don't know if it says much in regard to this debate but i found it a good read
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZhtRTvwR48A picture particulary a movie picture is worth a thousand words
Those from Africa send them back to Africa….ooops, that's all homo sapians in the world…Prove you are a neanderthal…and then you can stay…(but i don't want to upset any neaderthals by implying the knuckle-dragging original poster is one…who will no doubt retort that he has some sort of PhD, which only goes to prove you don't need to be intelligent to be clever)Some people you simply don't argue with if you want to keep your sanity…you walk away, after having expressed an opinion on theirs.
As been pointed out the nationalism debate up here has not disappeared as some expected post-referendum. Perhaps the price of an ad will be prohibitive…the appropriate committee will take that into consideration when deciding size and design of the ad. It is simply a good idea to investigate further. A waste of time? I think that is a matter of opinion. Any of our activity can be accused of the same if they are to be judged upon results.The reality is on the ground in Scotland we no longer have the presence we once had, and all credit to Glasgow and Edinburgh members present and past in that it was once a prominent presence. Every opportunity should be taken now to raise our profile. If not, to return to an earlier thread, we might as well anticipate the future and rename ourselves the Socialist Party of Southern Britain…the SPSB….hmmm??…Does have a catchy sound to it, doesn't it ?(apologies to the Welsh and North of England branches)
Quote:I've taken on this task myself, and can explain 'value' is terms familiar to workers, like using 'cars', 'castles', 'watches', so that they can get a hook into Marx's value,Any chance you have something on it that can go online. The blog could use some simplification of Marxian theory. I'll of course credit you
