ALB
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Besides being a purveyor of antisemitic “tropes”, Truss is a first class hypocrite. She is known to want to move the UK embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and denounces her civil servants as antisemitic for advising against this (how her civil servants must hate her). On Ukraine she shouts that Russia must be seen to lose as not losing would set a precedent that state borders can be changed by force and so is a threat to the rights-based international order, etc, etc, blah blah blah. But when Israel changes its internally-recognised borders by annexing East Jerusalem, the Golan heights, parts of the West Bank, that’s ok. Israel has done everything Russia has.
It sounds like that statement was expressing, in the author’s own words, this view expressed by Marx in 1847 in “Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality”.
“If therefore the proletariat overthrows the political rule of the bourgeoisie, its victory will only be temporary, only an element in the service of the bourgeois revolution itself, as in the year 1794, as long as in the course of history, in its “movement”, the material conditions have not yet been created which make necessary the abolition of the bourgeois mode of production and therefore also the definitive overthrow of the political rule of the bourgeoisie. The terror in France could thus by its mighty hammer-blows only serve to spirit away, as it were, the ruins of feudalism from French soil. The timidly considerate bourgeoisie would not have accomplished this task in decades. The bloody action of the people thus only prepared the way for it.“
https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1847/10/31.htm
Those French ecowarriors are behind the times if they want to get at “the leisure industry of the most privileged”. It’s no longer golf but cycling:
https://www.businessinsider.com/cycling-is-the-new-golf-2015-2?amp
That’s where, apparently, the contacts and deals are made these days. Wheeling and dealing as it were (apologies).
Is history about to repeat itself? It looks as if the Tories, like Labour a few years ago, is going to choose a Leader with a way-out economic policy which will fail.
Some long-standing Tory MPs will remember the “Barber Boom” of 1972-4:
“Barber’s first assault was on the tax system. In his speech accompanying the 1971 budget, he said of taxation in Britain ‘it too often stultifies enterprise. Too often it discourages the pursuit of profit. Too often it penalises savings on which the nation’s worth and the growth of the economy so largely depend.’ Comprehensive reform was required and so began a series of income tax cuts, an overhaul of the ‘purchase tax’ and the introduction of VAT.”
Older members and workers will remember how it ended with the 3-day week and shortages with Heath calling an election in 1974 on the question of “who rules—us or the miners?”. To which the voters replied “Not you, mate”. A Labour government took over and made an equal mess of things, ending in the Winter of Discontent of 1978/9 with rubbish piling up and bodies waiting to be buried.
Will it be “the Truss boom” followed by a doomed Labour government?
Thought I would check and in the UK too golf courses (and bowling greens) are exempt from hose-pipe bans — by law, on health and safety grounds (not sure what the danger to health and safety would be)
Where are the hosepipe bans and how do they affect golf irrigation?
Lucky that pétanque isn’t played on grass, otherwise the French eco-warriors would have to take on the working class as well as the “most privileged”.
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
