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The backlash against that unspeakable woman over this has begun:
“Joel Rosen, the president of the Union of Jewish Students, asked for her to withdraw the “offensive” remarks. He said: “Many students have reached out to me in light of Liz Truss’s remarks … As UJS Sabs, we have spent hours educating student unions and university officials about antisemitic tropes.
“Her comments about setting up a business being a Jewish value constitute an inaccurate and offensive portrayal of the Jewish community … Many Jewish students have found her remarks to be ill-judged and offensive. We hope she reflects on her words, withdraws these remarks, and reaches out to our community.”What a stupid thing to say but typical of her. Imagine if Corbyn had said that all Jews want to become petty capitalists. What about the vast majority who are wage-workers and whose aspirations are no different from any other workers — and whose interest is to get rid of capitalism.
I wonder whether there won’t be a backlash against this.
When I first came across him he was a Trot calling for armed militias to be formed to keep the pits in Doncaster from being closed. Since then of course he has moved on and has come to accept a more reasonable position. What is he now? IWW? But “taking and holding” the means of production won’t work without workers also organising to win political control, taking it out of the hands of the capitalists and their representatives. And will/should the administrative structure of future socialist society be based on industrial unions?
This is a criticism of the way the market works under “free enterprise capitalism”.
But he is not against markets as such as there will still be buying and selling in his economy of workers’ coops producing for sale, ie for the market. He doesn’t say anything about this, though the nature of his criticism does not exclude that the market might be alright if purchasing power was more or less equally distributed amongst consumers (and workplaces owned by coops rather than capitalist individuals or corporations).
I don’t suppose this will do any harm but it is a gross exaggeration, in fact a delusion, to claim that “our collective power will force an end to this crisis.” How? The idea seems to be put pressure on the government to do something. But not even the government, with much more “force” at its disposal, can “end this crisis”, even if it wanted to. They can mitigate it to some extent by tax changes and hand-outs till the price of oil and gas comes back down to what it was but that won’t be before the war in Ukraine ends.
In any event, cancelling direct debits can’t bring down the price of gas.
Personally I don’t pay my energy bills by direct debit anyway. Hope that doesn’t mean I will miss out on the £400 hand-out that’s supposed to be on its way soon
I contacted a member who I knew had worked in Bermuda which I thought was a “free port”. Here is what he says:
“Regarding Free Ports or even Free Zones, I consider them to be in the same category as a Free Lunch, ie to be taken with a pinch of salt, as I don’t know of any instance where a worker or any working class organization has ever proposed any of the above.
Bermuda was not technically a Free Trade Zone as far as I understand it, simply a free MONEY zone for big business masked by the sovereignty of a tiny society that sanctimoniously declares that they are entitled to structure their tax laws to suit the needs of their citizens. Bermuda can thus be a tax haven if their corporations are Bermudian corporations simply going about their humble businesses. “We have no income tax” they can honestly declare, because government revenue is all raised by VAT and other non-income tax methods.
So tax avoidance rather than tax evasion.
Free Ports and Free Economic Zones are an attempt at ameliorating the tax burden on participating corporations, and IMHO do not work due to ‘Newtons Third’ – for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. I found a great article on this which I include here:https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/trade-freeports-free-zones
I see the Ukraine regime didn’t like that Amnesty report. Their representative in Ukraine has resigned on the grounds that the report “did not take into account the views of the Ukrainian Defence Ministry”.
In a report on war crimes a state’s war ministry’s account is the last thing you would take into account. But she was probably wise to resign, otherwise she could have been picked by the Ukraine secret police and detained for pro-Russian propaganda.
Asked among others what he thought should be done about the cost of living crisis, Dr Tony Sykes, senior economics lecturer at the University of Salford, said that the most important way to help would be a solution to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the worldwide repercussions it has had.
“Dr Syme called on ministers to ‘work on a diplomatic solution’. He said that is ‘the most important and long-lasting solution to the current cost of living crisis.’” (Today’s i paper)
Fat chance of that happening if, as seems likely, Liz Truss becomes the new Prime minister. Mind you, you never know what might happen if the year or two’s stagflation predicted by the Bank of England yesterday turns out to be deeper and lasts longer that they are saying.
It’s looking more and more like the Tory leadership contest is one to choose the next Leader of the Opposition, after a brief period as prime minister of a government trying unsuccessfully to cope with a major economic crisis.
I wouldn’t be surprised if secretly Sunak won’t mind losing as that way he keeps his reputation as a reasonably competent chancellor (from a capitalist point of view, that is) while Truss will go down as a failure, a spectacular failure in fact in view of the wild promises she is making about how she can control the workings of capitalist economy by giving it the Magic Growth Pill.
I don’t follow this thread but I’m surprised that none of you who do haven’t yet mentioned the result of the referendum on the issue in Kansas:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/02/us/elections/results-kansas-abortion-amendment.html
I am quite satisfied with the paper copy delivered through the post. A subscription doesn’t cost much.
I have been following events in Ukraine and have noticed that recently more articles are appearing critical of the Ukraine regime. It seems that ukraine fatigue is setting in. Zelensky may even end up being seen more as a Nero than hero (apologies to the front cover of this month’s Socialist Standard).
Revealing discrepancy here between what is said now and what was said at the time.
This from the Times of 3 August:
“The Royal College of Music in London has suspended one of its tutors after he was filmed performing outside the remains of a bombed theatre in the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol.
Alexander Romanovsky, a pianist born in Ukraine who has performed as a soloist with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, played outside the site of an attack that Amnesty called “a clear war crime”. More than a dozen people died in the bombing in March. Mariupol fell to Russian forces in May after Ukrainian troops, who had retreated to the Azovstal steel plant, surrendered.”At the time there were reports that hundreds had been killed in the bombing of the theatre:
“Close to 600 people died in the Russian airstrike on the Mariupol drama theatre on March 16 evidence from an Associated Press investigation suggests.”
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6440722
There are two possible explanations for the discrepancy. Either the 3 August Times reporter was wrong (though technically 600 is more than 12) or that the earlier figure of 600 was a product of the Ukrainian lie factory.
At least he’s not a Leninist or anarchist insurrectionist, not what Neil Kinnock once called a “toy town revolutionary”. Workers here are not going to go along with that sort of thing.
Yes, apart from seeming to be a good trade union negotiator, politically he is a reformist but a rather timid one if what he wants to do is merely redistribute wealth from the rich to the workers. That was what the Labour Party used to say what they would do, but it’s a losing battle as the tendency under capitalism is for the rich to get richer, with the result than any redistribution away from them that might be achieved is eventually overcome by what capitalism is all about — the accumulation of capital (Picketty produced figures to show that, even if he imagined that it could be reversed). And anyway it presumes the continued existence of a class of rich people.
Socialists of course don’t advocate a redistribution of wealth within capitalism. What we stand for is the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth-production, currently monopolised by the ruling owning class. We want these taken away from them and vested in the community as a whole. The end of the division of society into the rich and the rest. A quite different approach and proposition. A revolution in the sense of a complete change in the basis of society. That, not reformism, is the alternative to toy town insurrectionism.
I have found a reference to Kinnock saying getting betrayal in first, though not to when he would have originally said it. It is in an article in the Independent by Andrew Marr on 19 April 1995.
It is no accident that the article was about the relationship between the Labour Party and the trade unions. Here’s what Marr wrote:
”One day, it seems, Tony Blair is likely to be in Number Ten and, therefore almost certainly, will be in confrontation with public sector workers. He has, in Neil Kinnock’s rueful phrase, got his betrayal in first.”
Substitute “Keir Starmer” for “Tony Blair” and Marr could have been be writing today.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/blair-can-dump-unions-but-not-the-poor-1616359.html
