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Just heard a reporter on Al Jazeera give as an example of the “derussification” campaign in Ukraine the decision of a church in Lvov to conduct its services in Ukrainian instead of the traditional Church Slavonic. But that’s not the same as Russian. Anyway Church Slavonic will only be understood by a few obscurantist priests and will have influenced Ukrainian as well as Russian, won’t it?
From the BBC live reports:
“Lavrov: ‘Nato, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia’
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said deliveries of Western weaponry to Ukraine mean that the Nato alliance is “in essence engaged in war with Russia”.
In an interview aired on Monday, he said: “These weapons will be a legitimate target for Russia’s military acting within the context of the special operation.”
Lavrov also told state television: “Nato, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy. War means war.”Meanwhile the US minister of war, Lloyd Austin, had made NATO’s war aims clear:
“US wants to see a weakened Russia”
It leaves you wondering whether this wasn’t its aim from the start.
Following the visit today of the US Secretary of State and Minister of War to Kiev and their statements, it is now patently clear that what is going on in Ukraine is a war against Russia by the US and its allies, particularly Britain, with Ukrainian armed forces as their proxies. A war between one capitalist bloc and another capitalist state. I can’t see how anybody can deny this any more.
Yes of course. But how can you compare the usefulness of a bulb to, say, a clock or the usefulness of either of these to different people? How can you compare apples and oranges?
To close the file. When we out leafletting in Brixton yesterday for the local elections, we were given a leaflet saying that Maoist cult leader Aravindan Balakrishnan had died on 8 April.
“Murdered by the British fascist state for telling the truth! Unique proletarian internationalist fighter who loved and humbly served the people of Brixton and the world: He died a martyr in Dartmoor Prison fighting racism and fascism!”
“His legendary daring and courage in the face of fascist terror will be remembered for ever!”Evidently the cult lives on (or one of them does).
Despite our Annual Conference taking place at the same time, election activity continued in Clapham yesterday. We covered a “day of action” by local campaigning groups in Windrush square. The were half-a-dozen stalls but not many takers. After giving the stallholders a leaflet we moved on to outside Brixton tube station where (amongst the Christian and Muslim religious fanatics who are always there) we gave out leaflets to the many passers-by.
There are now only 300-400 leaflets left.
There are quite a few Latin Americans living in the area. We met two with contrasting political views. One, from Venezuela, was hostile to the word “socialism”. The other, who came to Britain as a child when Pinochet overthrew the Allende government in 1973, took a leaflet to give to her daughter who is an elector in Clapham East ward.
H. M. Hyndman, the leader of the Social Democratic Federation in Britain, gave a lecture in 1894 with expressive title of “The Final Futiity of Final Utility”:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/hyndman/1896/economics/7-futility.htm
More on the Lambeth hustings to which we were not invited. After being assured yesterday evening, concerning the statement we had submitted, that
“I’ll make sure this is read out tomorrow”
this morning we received the following email:
“A number of relevant questions have come through overnight from residents that we need to prioritise in the schedule for tonight, and so won’t be able to fit the statement in I’m afraid. Sorry about that. I hope the remainder of your campaign goes well.”
To this feeble excuse — it would only have taken a minute or so read out our 170-word statement — we replied:
“We note your undemocratic decision to no-platform us, even to the extent of not mentioning that we are standing. We would like to think that it wasn’t made behind closed doors by a small handful of selected insiders.”
We could have openly called the organisers hypocrites, as called “Lambeth Ref 2002” (www.lambethref.co.uk), they are campaigning for a referendum in Lambeth to end the present system under which a full-time cabinet runs the council and return to a previous system where committees of councillors make the decisions.
How can they tell from the long-range photos that the soldiers come from the Caucasus? Chechens perhaps?
Only Americans use the word “Caucasian” in a non-geographical context so this could be a double fake !
We have not been invited to the online hustings in Lambeth this evening. So we have sent them a statement to be read out at the meeting;
“Statement by Danny Lambert, Socialist Party candidate in Clapham East ward
I make no apology for raising the nature of the present world economic system – capitalism – in a local election. Local councils have to run things inside the framework of capitalism and that restricts what they can do. They are also restricted in that most of their money comes from central government.
The priority under capitalism is profit-making. Having to respect this priority means that what the central government can make available for local social services and amenities takes second place. That’s why they are never as good as they should be, in spite of the efforts and promises of the other parties. Capitalism simply cannot be made to work for the benefit of all. Only a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources can do that.
If you like to know more about Socialism as the alternative to capitalism, call in at our Head Office in Clapham High Street or visit spgb.net.”
Details here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lambeth-community-hustings-tickets-307494082077
Just heard on the BBC radio 4 6 o’clock news someone who voted for Mélenchon in the first round saying he was going to vote Le Pen in the second on the grounds that when there is a choice between cholera and the plague you have to vote for lesser evil. (Actually you don’t, you have to run a mile.)
It’s 16 minutes in here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0016hhq
The last time I heard this advice as to how to vote was during the 2002 second round between Chirac, the outgoing conservative president and Le Pen’s father. The Trotskyists were saying vote cholera by which they meant vote Chirac.
Now, apparently, it’s his daughter who’s the lesser evil. Times change.
According to a news item in today’s papers, the lack of public toilets is indeed a pressing issue:
“Nearly two thirds of public laboratories have been scrapped by local councils, according to the British Toilet Association. Some 60 per cent have gone, it says. The cost of running a public lavatory can reach £15,000 a year. A community scheme in which businesses open their facilities to the public has been adopted by only a third of councils.”
Maybe Red Fightback are on to a good transitional demand after all.
Incidentally, believe it or not, the address of the British Toilet Association is – 2-4 Balloo Avenue, Bangor in Northern Ireland.
You say that “… the principle of ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs‘ … seems irreconcilable with very basics of communism …”
But why? The case for communism (or socialism, the same thing) is that today the actual process of production — a vast network of interdependent production units spanning the world — is already “socialised” in the sense that it is already a collective work effort. The contradiction is that, despite this, the products are owned individually (either by individuals or artificial individuals called companies or corporations or states).
Socialism removes this contradiction by “socialising” also the ownership not just of the products but also of the means and instruments for producing them. This means that what is produced is also socially or commonly owned and the question that arises is how to distribute this to people or to give them access to it.
Since work is a collective effort it is not possible to attribute to individuals any particular part, “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” seems the most logically communistic way. All the more so, since the existing productive forces are capable of producing enough, even plenty, of what people need.
If you think this won’t work because there would be a large number of idlers, it is up to you to demonstrate why this should be. You won’t be arguing, I hope, that it is because it is “human nature” for people to be lazy?
Now we know all about parish pump politics in Tunbridge Wells described by one of the candidates as a commuter town in the surround of a big metropolitan area.
Our candidate was able to show that he knew what the issues were and how and why they had arisen and that we favour more democratic participation generally; and, in the discussion about measures to reduce carbon emissions locally, that the problem was caused by a global system that had found burning fossil fuels the most profitable way to generate energy.
It is difficult to put across the socialist case in a local election since there are some small measures that a council can take to improve daily living to which we would not be opposed but can’t advocate.
It looks as if online hustings may be a by-product of the epidemic. The whole hustings can still be listened to at the link already given.
