ALB
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That’s good. The more that do that the merrier. But let’s hope he’s not going to join the Scotch Nats. In any event he is wrong about Starmer & Co going after voters in “the shires of England”. Labour’s leaders know that it has no chance there and have left the field(s) there free for the Liberals to go after Tory voters. Their strategy is to win over voters in urban areas of England. They may have miscalculated this time as there is quite a bit of sympathy from other workers with the RMT and other strikers.
Starmer seems to be following Neil Kinnock’s advice of “getting the betrayal in first”, ie, before being elected, instead, that is, of waiting to be in government to do this. As a self-styled “government in waiting” he wants it to act as it will, and will have to if it was the government.
(Incidentally I’ve searched on the internet to find this quote from Kinnock but haven’t been able to find it, if anyone knows when and where — and if — he said it.)
Sharon Graham of Unite hit the nail on the head when she said that Labour was “becoming more and more irrelevant to ordinary working people”.
I don’t know if it means anything but we have received a couple of enquiries in recent weeks about membership from people resigning from the Labour Party.
Sacked for going on a picket line ! Confirmation that the Labour Party not just isn’t the party of the working class but no longer even wants to be considered to be. Good, the more people that realise this the better.
There is a certain logic in Starmer’s position. He supports the present system of class ownership and production for profit and wants to run the political side of it. He understands that he can’t do so in the interest of the working class and in fact that this involves coming into conflict with them.
On the other hand his position might simply be that he and the rest of his team want to further their careers and become ministers of the crown and have calculated that supporting strikes will lose them votes.
Actually Macron probably does see autonomy for Russian-speakers as part of any settlement in Ukraine (at least he did once). It’s Borys and Truss (who seems likely to take over as prime minister for a couple of years) who want in effect to ethnically cleanse them, sending millions to Russia as refugees.
While the politicians talk about manipulating interest rates and tax levels, it looks as if workers are taking their own action to try to mitigate the effects of the current rapid rise in the cost of living. Good on them.
Easier said that done. As long as the ruling class control political power no amount of minority civil disobedience will be able to drive them out. They have the upper hand because they control the coercive power that is the state.
On the other hand, if a majority want this the easiest way to do it is to use the ballot box, where available, to win political control, accompanied of course by mass organisation outside parliament ready to take over control of productive resources and, if need be, back up the result of the ballot.
I was not suggesting that workers will turn against the war on socialist grounds. In fact it is more likely to be on populist grounds — why should we suffer because the government wants to support a war in “some faraway land”? I was just suggesting that the war will become unpopular.
Nor was I suggesting that workers “will rise because of hardship”. But I don’t think they will accept lying down their standard of living being cut. In fact they are not. Ok, it is not manifesting itself in a massive growth of socialist understanding (though I would expect some growth however little) but only in increased trade union activity. But it is not nothing.
I don’t agree that, faced with the immediate prospect of an atomic war, workers would simply prepare to die. I doubt if you really think that either.
Meanwhile in Britain there are politicians promising “growth, growth, growth” as if governments could bring this about just by willing it. The two most prominent at the moment are Sir Keith Starmer QC and Liz Truss.
The UK government is also anticipating having to impose more “pain” on workers in pursuance of its policy of supporting the Ukrainian oligarchs against the Russian ones.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/30/millions-homes-warned-winter-blackouts/
It remains to be seen how much and how long workers will put up with this pain. The likely interim Prime Minister to take over in September, the ineffable Liz Truss, will delight in imposing this to help the Ukraine regime but it could be her undoing. Workers may come to recognise that they have no interest in the war there.
Much better than in Durham but I see that at one point he distinguished “the middle class” from the “working class”. He seems to be advocating a sort of non-revolutionary syndicalism.
The original of the abstract of his research will put you in an even worse mood when you consider how clearly he wrote when he used to write for the Socialist Standard.
How far did you get before you gave up, realising that “those within the academy” speak a different language, unintelligible to the rest of us !
I have heard it said that he himself didn’t think he could command the sea and that he only tried to in order to show his courtiers that he couldn’t. Sounds like someone who might have understood that capitalism cannot be reformed to work in the interest of the wage-working class.
Wasn’t he Danish rather than Anglo-Saxon?
It looks as if she’s going to win but my guess is that she will be PM for a year or so and after that the Leader of the Opposition.
On the issue itself I think Lynch is exaggerating a bit. It will depend on what the “minimum service” levels are. Even during the miners strike the NUM agreed to safety workers working. If it’s anything more than this, as her rhetoric suggests, then it will be unenforceable. What are they going to do, send requisitioned rail workers or teachers who refuse to work to jail?
By coincidence they tried this fifty years and it didn’t work.
“Long-Bailey, who as shadow business secretary was one of the leading figures in Jeremy Corbyn’s team, said her proposed contract would deliver a defined decent standard of living for all citizens, guaranteeing housing costs, food and fuel bills were affordable.
A minister for living standards at cabinet rank in the Treasury with the same standing as the chief secretary would ensure the contract was delivered and legally enforced, she said.”Is that the best Leftwing Labourites can come up with (plus amending company law ie the law which authorised the legal establishment of profit-seeking private enterprises, and so which are to continue under their proposal)?
A government law to maintain a given standard of living under capitalism. I think King Canute tried that sort of thing 1500 years ago or whatever. The current term for this I believe is “fairy tale economics”.
It looks as if the Left in the Labour Party is as bankrupt as the Right.
Why don’t they propose socialism as the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources with production directly for use and distribution according to needs. That would much simpler and more practical.
“Doesn’t Ukraine know what happens to spies?”
They know very this very well as the last time they urged their subjects to do this led to the Russian army executing those who followed that advice (shot with their hands behind their back) as in places like Bucha, now a tourist attraction for visiting Western politicians.
They may even be counting on this happening again as a way of combatting the “Ukraine fatigue” that is setting in in the West. The cynicism of those in charge of a state at war and fighting for its existence knows no bounds.
I thought I’d double-check that article on Zelensky in case it was Russian propaganda. It’s not. It was reported at the time and before Zelensky was canonised, in this article in the Guardian:
Zelensky does have a defence but I doubt if he would use it — that Ukraine is so corrupt (it has a reputation of being Europe’s Nigeria) that only a fool who had pots of money would leave it there. It wouldn’t be secure.
In fact Zelensky fatigue seems to be setting in with some Western media outlets beginning to look at his feet and finding evidence of clay there:
https://amp.dw.com/en/opinion-zelenskyy-is-the-problem-not-his-friends/a-62540903
