alanjjohnstone
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Indeed Podemos are ahead in the polls http://www.elmundo.es/espana/2014/11/24/5472339c268e3ee96d8b4593.html I think the question i'd really like answered is why they can claim substantial support and Left Unity remain on the fringes.
Would a capitalist enterprise turn away a paying customer especially at the start-up stage?What was that joke Marx cracked? …a capitalist would sell us the rope that we intend to lynch him with.There are many occasions where a newspaper have published paid advertisements that have opposing position to the papers editorial policies. I recall the George Harrison funded Yoga/Hare Krishna consciousness Natural Law Party placed full page small-print ads is all the newspapers at one time (even claiming that people bouncing on their arses was a form of levitation) If they declined, which as i said i don't think they would, it would still be ideal for us to claim they were not interested in democratic debate and wished to suppress contrary opinions. So much for the freedom of the press!
But wasn't Grundisse simply his private notes and rough drafts, not for publication but for his own use and own aide memory and not intended to be read by others. So surely we cannot apply the same rules on clarity. He knew what he meant when he wrote it and when he includedbits of it in what he intended to be his public works, he re-wrote it re-worded it and re-phrased it to make the meaning clear. He didn't expect it to be published several decades after his death for all and sundry to study like the Hebrew scholars of the Talmud and unlike German Ideology which was meant for publication but never saw the light of day during his lfetime.
"Bhaskar's works are as difficult to read as Marx's, which is why we need to 'translate' them into terms understandable to most workers, and to sort the wheat from the chaff. There is much that is useful in both Marx and Bhaskar, but there is also lots that is either meaningless or simply wrong." Never heard of him, myself and if DJP's extrat is anyway reflective of his writing i won't be reading him except through an interpreter.Be interesting to know what you consider meaningless in Marx. I always thought he was very concise with his words. Perhaps they may be meaningless in the context of today (all that anti-Slav sentiment, for instance) but are you saying they were also meaningless in his own time?
Left nationalists love to quote Marx or Engels about the Irish or the Poles or India but totally ignore what they said about Slavic nationalism. They can't quite comprehend the materialist conception of history that the 19thC conditions are no longer applicable…we no longer require to strengthen capitalists by undermining feudalistic states or the political hang-overs of them. For those who consider themselves further to the left, they have to diminish Rosa Luxemburg's stand against national self-determination and adopt Lenin's real politik such as his pro-Turk position but even he had the justification that he was defending a "workers state" in a hostile world so opportunistic alliances were excusable…but just what are the left nationalists defending? What supposed "advance" is worth sacrificing principle to pragmatism. At times, it simply is crude anti-Americanism being expressed. As has been pointed out, the beneficiaries of the referendum has been the pro-capitalist SNP and the proponents of "social-democratic" Nordic economic policy (nations who themselves are shedding such reforms). And if left nationalists hope for an electoral advantage of SNP support they require Sturgeon's stamp of approval, cap-in-hand deference to the Establishment instead of being a truly independent workers party.
Remember the slogan "It's Scotland's Oil"No doubt it will be chnged to "It's Scotlands Water"http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/14bn-plan-to-share-scots-water-with-england-1-3613430
You might find this thread helpful http://libcom.org/forums/general/disability-work-19112014
I thought this article on the banking crisis quite readable.http://truth-out.org/news/item/27584-the-history-of-a-dangerous-idea-mark-blyth-talks-austerity-greece-and-the-global-economic-crisis
We shouldn't make the mistake that Scottish nationalism has disappeared with the referendum result. As they promised the pro-independence camp is still there and still active. LU may have had 500 at their conference, Radical Independence in Glasgow had 15,000. The SNP picked up the referendum support, not the Left Nationalists. SNP memberhip grew nearly four-fold.There is actual talk now of UDI if London reneges on promises of more power or if UK exits EU. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/scotland-blog/2014/nov/22/radical-independence-and-nicola-sturgeon-take-glasgow-by-storm The 54% No vote was not all about the UK union nationalism for i am sure there were many who were anti-nationalist in principle who voted No. We should try and reach those. But to be honest…i expect another missed opportunity to stake our claim and mine for members.
That is how i instinctively read the word to mean. Certainly not that a region or district populated by any particular colour is a racialized community. It gives the undertone that somehow its a voluntary state.
This 1983 documentary by Stuart Hall is worth a watch and in regards to Marx's grave thread it directs us to his real grave and not the statuehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8bdndigRA8
It may be a good idea for the media committee to investigate the costs of placing an ad in this new paper. Being a new paper i'm guessing its introductory rates should be reasonable to try and attract advetisers.My reasoning for an ad is that many readers will be more politically minded than the average reader of the existing newspapers. We could place a One World, anti-nationalism World Socialist Movement advert which i think would draw attention and provoke a response.
The Daily Telegraph carries an interesting storyquoting Prof David King http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/nuclearpower/11244499/Nuclear-power-may-not-be-needed-says-top-atomic-advocate.html
Quote:Britain “might well” be able to do without atomic power altogether, and that the real priority should be on developing ways of storing electricity so as to be able to depend on famously intermittent sun and wind. “We have to keep reassessing the situation”, he said. “I believe that what we need, more than anything, is a surge of activity to develop energy storage capability….Once we can do that technologically, why would we not just keep with renewables.” For a country like India, with plenty of sunlight and deserts where it can be collected, he went on, “there’s no reason” for it not to go “directly wholesale into solar energy”. After all it was already “three to four times” cheaper to provide villages unconnected to the grid in India and China with solar electric panels and batteries than to connect them up.And another story reflecting the class dividehttp://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2014/Nov-17/277865-food-prices-in-douma-spark-clashes-between-rebels-residents.ashx#axzz3JXDnHvt9
Quote:fighting broke out Friday and continued Saturday between residents and members of the Islam Army in the suburb of Douma…the clashes began when residents attacked the storage units of influential merchants who dominate the local food distribution business to protest high prices…The militia receives funding from some of these merchants, activists say, and is fighting residents to defend them. “People are angry with the Islam Army because they back the merchants"IS creates a health insurance system, widowers pensions and marriage allowances "The cost of the welfare system sometimes exceeded the expenditure for the purchase of weapons"http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/islamischer-staat-is-hat-sozialsystem-errichtet-a-1003150.html
