alanjjohnstone
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We can now add the Lefty-capitalist's favourite model Mondragon, to the casualty list. http://www.economist.com/news/business/21589469-collapse-spains-fagor-tests-worlds-largest-group-co-operatives-trouble-workers One of the group’s constituent co-ops—has found its limit. Fagor has lost money for five years and has run up debts of €850m ($1.2 billion). Its sales have fallen sharply because of Spain’s property bust and low-cost competition from Asia. Even pay cuts of over 20% have not been enough to turn it around. Its factories all ceased production three weeks ago…In the past, losses in one part of the group have been covered by the others, but this time Fagor’s pleas for a €170m lifeline were rejected, even though the Spanish and Basque governments were ready to step in as part of the rescue. Eroski, another co-operative in the Mondragon group and one of Spain’s largest retailers, is also struggling in the face of stiff competition, and it and two other co-ops vetoed Fagor’s plan.
Well worth re-posting on our blog with an appropriate picture. http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-struggle-continues.html
Oh, we do discriminate…non-socialists are not permitted to join , nor those who hold religious beliefs, racist or sexist ideas. That alone reduces our pool of potential members. Our membership sadly does not reflect the population. It is mostly white, male and european . We have been described as Anglo-Marxist. We have also been accused of being the aristocracy of labour, even of being autodidacts as if that was a bad thing. Perhaps it is historical the reason for the geographic limitation of our influence. Even in the UK there appears to be an uneven spread of members. Maybe i am wrong but i would like to see a map of members locations and see where we are concentrated. Our foreign language section is quite extensive though. Our articles content always tries to be world-wide. SOYMB blog this week has covered about a dozen regions of the globe. We can never be satisfied with either though and are always improving on it when we can. We have never tried to appeal to any one section of the population such as create a youth wing or a student organisation or factory cells as many Leftists parties do. Members are treated with the same accord regardless of age or experience or sex or ethnic origin within the SPGB. We try to address certain social problems , hence pamphlets in the past on women , racism and education but our attitude is to link them to the whole and not a separate issues deserving of any special attention. There is no hierarchy of exploitation, in other words. Our skewed membership i think is shared with every type of organisation, political and non-political. How we ourselves overcome it just may be outside our power at the moment. But i don't think it is through lack of trying or will. We should never stop asking such questions though and seeking some answers and solutions to the problem.
These two blog posts on the Luddites may interest you http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/01/blood-for-blood-says-general-lud.html http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2011/05/lord-byron-and-luddites.html
"The evidence lies in the idea that the concept of death is a mere figment of our consciousness.Professor Lanza says biocentrism explains that the universe only exists because of an individual’s consciousness of it – essentially life and biology are central to reality, which in turn creates the universe; the universe itself does not create life. The same applies to the concepts of space and time, which Professor Lanza describes as “simply tools of the mind”…..he explains that with this theory in mind, the concept of death as we know it is “cannot exist in any real sense” as there are no true boundaries by which to define it. Essentially, the idea of dying is something we have long been taught to accept, but in reality it just exists in our minds.Professor Lanza says biocentrism is similar to the idea of parallel universes – a concept hypothesised by theoretical physicists. In much the same way as everything that could possibly happen is speculated to be occurring all at once across multiple universes, he says that once we begin to question our preconceived concepts of time and consciousness, the alternatives are huge and could alter the way we think about the world in a way not seen since the 15th century’s “flat earth” debate….He goes on to use the so-called double-slit experiment as proof that the behaviour of a particle can be altered by a person’s perception of it. In the experiment, when scientists watch a particle pass through a multi-holed barrier, the particle acts like a bullet travelling through a single slit. When the article is not watched, however, the particle moves through the holes like a wave.Scientists argue that the double-slit experiment proves that particles can act as two separate entities at the same time, challenging long-established ideas of time and perception…. Lanza says it can be explained far more simply using colours. Essentially, the sky may be perceived as blue, but if the cells in our brain were changed to make the sky look green, was the sky every truly blue or was that just our perception?In terms of how this affects life after death, Professor Lanza explains that, when we die, our life becomes a “perennial flower that returns to bloom in the multiverse”. He added: “Life is an adventure that transcends our ordinary linear way of thinking. When we die, we do so not in the random billiard-ball-matrix but in the inescapable-life-matrix." http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/is-there-an-afterlife-the-science-of-biocentrism-can-prove-there-is-claims-professor-robert-lanza-8942558.html i did say earlier on this thread that apart from dialectics, quantum leaves me flummoxed.
"I think it better to leave it to the comrades on the ground, Alan. Denouncing the Dean could led to them being hauled up before the Proctor or even the Master and rusticated or whatever they do to recalcitrant students.' Surely that is a reason why it should be ourselves who complain. If not directly to the dean, at least to the press as i also suggested. This is the slippery road to all manner of restrictions upon political freedoms…police already control when and where demonstrations can take place. They enforce summarily detention without arrest or trial – kennelling. They decide if picket lines are exceeding guidelines and have become "intimatory". A protest in the name of the party is publicity.
Perhaps we can link our reply to this story on police spies on campus and explain our policy of no restrictions on an audience means that police would be welcome to attend and they have no reason for subterfuge to discover what is being said.http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/14/police-cambridge-university-secret-footage
I suggest that a strongly worded letter is sent to this dean, with copies also sent the press (Guardian and Independent the Times Mail and Telegraph education editors. Perhaps one of them may pick up the ball and run with it ) explaining the encroachment of "academic free speech" and, of course, our own through the intererence of police pressure. (Also to be used as a basis of an article for the Socialist Standard.)As it cannot be approved by the next EC, i suggest it is written in the name of the media or campaigns committee or the Gen Sec. The silver lining is that it provides us with an opportunity to stir the shit a little at the price of a few e-mails.
I'd opt for World Socialist Movement for the Euro elections. And i would concentrate our propaganda on breaking down the walls of the EU Fortress – that pro-EU are just replacing one nationalism with another.World Socialist Party (EU) may imply that we support the EU as a stepping stone to a world government, World Socialist Party(GB) should have been (GB Section)
I notice the TUSC have slightly amended their name for the election. Trade Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts
http://rt.com/op-edge/conspiracy-theory-west-poisoning-648/ "The labeling of people as ‘conspiracy theorists’ by gatekeepers in the West has nothing to do with how much evidence there is to support a claim or the quality of that evidence, but is a political call, based on who the conspiracy theory concerns and who is making it." – Neil Clark
Comrade Charles putting the boot into capitalism again. "Prince Charles has accused the big supermarkets and their shareholders of profiting from Britain’s farmers while taking on “none of the risk” of dealing with the roller-coaster economics of food production." http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/supermarkets-give-farmers-a-raw-deal-says-prince-charles-8935681.html He sheds tears of sympathy for the farm-owner…who according to HRH's figures earns less than the farm-labourer he employs…ahhhh…the miracle of accountancy and tax deductibles and EU subsidies… He ignores the mega agro-industry estates and live-stock factory farming to defend the "peasant" hill farmer.
Indeed Hollyhead and that was the line that the blog took http://www.socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/11/quote-of-day_11.html
We may have not done a dedicated pamphlet to the co-operative idea but our blogs have not been idle in offering analyses. But it can all be summed up as that co-ops offer some people some form of temporary relief through the coping mechanism of co-ops but as for them being a stepping stone towards socialism, workers will be sadly disappointed.http://www.socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/07/utopian-capitalism.htmlhttp://www.socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2011/06/co-opting-co-ops.htmlhttp://www.socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2009/04/worker-co-operatives.html http://socialist-courier.blogspot.com/2013/09/self-managed-exploitation.html http://socialist-courier.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-co-op-cop-out.html http://socialist-courier.blogspot.com/2013/06/co-ops-are-for-coping.html http://socialist-courier.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-new-economics-dusty-old-ideas.html
Is Major real Labour? http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/11/john-major-shocked-elite-social-mobility Major – who went to a grammar school in south London and left with three O-levels – said: "In every single sphere of British influence, the upper echelons of power in 2013 are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or the affluent middle class. To me from my background, I find that truly shocking." He blamed this "collapse in social mobility" on Labour, claiming that despite Ed Miliband's "absurd mantra to be the one-nation party, they left a Victorian divide between stagnation and aspiration". Major said: "I remember enough of my past to be outraged on behalf of the people abandoned when social mobility is lost "Our education system should help children out of the circumstances in which they were born, not lock them into the circumstances in which they were born. "We need them to fly as high as their luck, their ability and their sheer hard graft can actually take them. And it isn't going to happen magically." The Commission on Child Poverty and Social Mobility, chaired by Alan Milburn, the former Labour cabinet minister, has found no evidence that social mobility slowed due to Labour policies.
