ALB
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It looks as if a future Labour government is heading for a head-on clash with the unions who still think that a government has an alternative to giving priority to profits over wages and that the resulting austerity is just a political choice rather thn a capitalist ecoomic necessity.
PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka said:
“These cuts aren’t inevitable or a necessity, this rotten government is making a political choice that makes you and your family worse off.”
Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said:
“As for the Labour Party, they appear to have accepted the economic premise of the black hole rather than challenge it. That is a mistake.”
“As a country, we must now begin a discussion on how to do things differently. We need different rules and to make different choices. We need an economy that works for all.”These union leaders may be good negotiators over wages and working conditions, but when it comes to politics and economics they are null. If Graham ever became prime minister and tried to make the capitalist economy “work for all” she’d last an even shorter time than Truss.
Instead of demanding that the government try to make capitalism work in a way it just can’t, like “for all”, why don’t they realise that it can’t — the first step to coming to undetstand that socialism is the only way out.
If they can’t or won’t do that, they should stick just to negotiating better (or less worse) wages and working conditions and not pronouncing on politics or economics. That way they won’t sow illusions (or maintain the Labour Party’s illusions of yesteryear) amongst workers.
This is hilarious too. The US Congress has passed an Inflation Reduction Act as if inflation (understood as a rise in the general level of prices) could be stopped by an act of parliament any more than by an order from King Canute.
Actually, the Act has nothing to do with reducing rising prices (let alone inflation in its proper sense of depreciating the currency) but is a name chosen for vote-catching purposes.
https://www.democrats.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/inflation_reduction_act_one_page_summary.pdf
Labour’s response has not been to criticise the proposed changes as it’s what they would have done. Instead they are arguing that the present situation, where people’s real living standards are falling and are expected to fall more, is the result of Tory mismanagement of the economy over the past 12 years. They would say that of course but it assumes that if there had been a different government or a different policy this wouldn’t have happened. Does anyone believe that? Do they believe it?
It’s the old illusion that governments can control the way capitalism works, when experience after experience as well as theory shows this not to be the case. It’s not the Tories who are to blame but the capitalist system. As the Labourites will find out if they win the next general election in 2024.
As the title of one of our leaflets says, The problem is not the Tories, it’s capitalism. A new version may have to be prepared for after 2024 headed: The problem is not Labour, it’s capitalism.
What exactly is it that you want to achieve? Is it to get the government to do more to reduce the amount of money you personally have to pay for light and heating (to what it was in April this year)? If it’s that and you think you have a 50/50 chance of getting it then it’s you who are living in cloud cuckoo land.
Fair enough but you said that the “strike” was being called because the Sunak government had said it was to end the energy price cap from April next year (though they had they were going to replace it with something targetted on just the poorest).
They have extended it, for everyone not just the poorest, but have raised the cap by £500 to £3000 until April 2024.
I am not a Don’t Pay strategist but I would have thought that would undermine to some extent potential support for the “strike”. When you go on a proper strike you don’t necessarily expect to get all you initially say you want.
Anyway, we will see what happens on 1 December. Do it if you want to. I wouldn’t want to stop you or anyone else, even though I can’t see how it can achieve much.
Will Dont Pay be calling this a “victory” and calling off their 1 December “strike”:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/20446961/energy-bills-capped-april-autumn-budget/amp/
Mick Lynch was in Ealing, London, yesterday evening so I went to hear him. He expounded his plan for a “new workers movement” based on the trade unions but bringing in identity groups and climate change activists. It is to be a broad church (he was as dismissive of the Trotskyist paper sellers at the door as he was sceptical about the Labour Party). The strategy seems to be to built up this movement and that will bring the Labour Party to take it and its demands into account.
He said that he and some other union leaders are trying to get the TUC to coordinate action on a single day of all unions in dispute with their employers or the government. In effect, a stealth general strike. Why not? It might work. If you don’t test what the labour market will bear, you will never know. But of course it would be defensive trade union action.
Although none of the speakers (he wasn’t the only one) thought much of the Labour Party, the enemy was seen as “the Tories” and “the Establishment”. One of the speakers, from the teachers’ union, called them “bastards”. He also claimed, to widespread applause, that austerity was a political choice not an economic necessity, implying that it could be avoided if there was a different government.
But could it? If a Labour government is elected it will have to preside over the operation of the capitalist economy and prioritise profits and profit-making, including limiting spending on education, health and other public services let alone not paying public sector too much. Then he can call them “bastards” instead of realising that capitalism cannot offer anything to the wage-working class.
The problem is not the Tories, it’s capitalism.
There is something very suspicious about that missile that killed those two poor sods in Poland. Why is Zelensky denying that it came from Ukraine when everybody else (the US, Poland, Russia) is saying that it did and could only have?
We know that Zelensky makes things up and tells lies to put pressure on NATO to supply his armed forces with more and more powerful weapons, but why would he fall out with his masters over this? Why continue to lie when his masters know he is lying? Why upset them when he knows or should know that without NATO military and US financial support his regime is nothing?
Zelensky caught making things up again just as he was in his notorious “babies under the rubble” claim when a Russian missile damaged a hospital in Mariupol in which no babies died.
Now he has claimed that a Russian missile killed two people in Poland:
It turns out that they were killed by a Ukrainian missile. A case of friendly fire then, if not a Ukrainian false flag operation. Or maybe it was Russia but NATO wants a pretext not to respond.
In any event, the lesson is: Don’t believe a word the man says or what Ukrainian propaganda machine churns out (any more than what the Russian propaganda machine does).
Meanwhile on the other side of Ukraine just over the Russia side of the border three other members of the working class were killed by NATO-supplied missiles fired from Ukraine.
https://meduza.io/en/news/2022/11/15/three-people-dead-after-shelling-in-russia-s-belgorod-region
This is what Wikipedia has on him:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Oliver
He seems a bit of a controversialist (eg over covid restrictions). Not surprising that he has a slot on GB news (“the Farage channel”) given what we know about it and the audience it seeks to cater for, to make profits for those who have invested capital in it, from propagating views these might not necessarily agree with and probably don’t. But it’s a niche market no other profit-seeking enterprise is seeking to profit from.
Their goal is to disrupt narratives and mobilise resistance. That requires building consciousness among those parts of the populace more receptive to their message, swelling the ranks of activists prepared to take part in civil disobedience, and making life ever harder for things to continue as normal.’
That is precisely their strategy. The aim of their campaign is not to stop oil but to build up their following. Their leaders and ideologues (as opposed to their foot soldiers) have the same mindset and approach as the Trotskyists — put forward a slogan that cannot be achieved with a view to those who fall in behind it turning, when it’s not achieved, towards more radical action. In some respects their vanguardism is even more extreme than that of the Trots as their leaders think that they can change the world through the action of 3 percent of the population.
Once again, Alan, you have posted something without introducing it. Anyone reading the post will think that the first two paragraphs are you expressing your own view. It is only because we regulars here know you are a socialist that we know that you weren’t😊
I see that Zelensky is pushing the “mass graves” propaganda again, this time in relation to Kherson:
The term “mass grave” suggests that people have been rounded up and shot. In fact most of the bodies in them will be people killed in the crossfire, including by Ukrainian shells and bullets; no doubt a few will be armed civilians shot by Russian soldiers.
But Kherson city — wisely — surrendered to the Russian forces without the armed resistance urged on by the Ukrainian regime. So nobody was killed in any crossfire. So there will be no mass graves there (unless the Ukrainian regime fakes one).
Nearer the front line and far from the city and on the moving front line there will probably be graves of those killed in the crossfire.
Note that even Reuters says that Zelensky’s claim is unverified, the nearest they can come to say they don’t believe him.
The Ukrainian regime exploits these “mass graves” to the maximum (one has even become a tourist attraction for visiting politicians), both to keep up the hatred of its own subjects for the Russians as sub-human and to win sympathy abroad to bring pressure on governments to keep sending arms — meaning there will be more mass graves.
