ALB
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Our criticism of Big Pharma is presumably that it is just another profit-seeking industry no better or no worse than any other?
And of course it is not just anti-vaxxer conspiraloons that criticise “Big Pharma” but many Greens who favour herbal medicine instead.
But I am still impressed that over 30,000 can turn out for a demonstration in Brussels.
He seems to want to keep the word “fascism” because if its negative connotations. Those he criticises
“have little or nothing to do with the legacy of Nazism. They are not totalitarian; not at all revolutionary; not based on violent mass movements or irrationalist, voluntarist philosophies. Nor are they toying, even in jest, with anti-capitalism”
In other words, not fascist but something else. He seems to be talking about so-called “ethno-nationalism”, the only thing those he criticises share with fascism.
Over 30,000 march against covid restrictions in Belgium ! That the same if not more than those protesting against climate change. Surely we must have something to say these discontented people? But if protests in this scale spread to Britain we need to have something to say them. I don’t know what but there may be some there more amenable to our message than the do-gooders and Christians on the “climate justice” marches.
Now the police are shooting anti-vaxxers in of all places the Netherlands. There must be a lot of discontent around beneath the surface using covid restrictions as the occasion to express it. Can’t think of any other explanation for this on the surface irrational protest.
It’s started. As usual in “civil disobedience” protests: once some have been jailed the emphasis shifts to protesting and to trying to get them out.
Notice that their main slogan is still the naive and misleading “Betrayed by My Government”
Pathetic as well as counter-productive.
Vauxhall Bridge is the main bridge you would take to get from north of the Thanes to get to our Head Office. So if they repeat this stunt next Saturday when South London branch meets we will go there to leaflet them.
But it looks as if some of them will be in gaol singing “I fought the law and the law won.”
Of course anyone who comes from those countries can put in a claim to be fleeing political persecution even if they are in reality economic migrants leaving those countries (some of whose economies have been ruined by western intervention and/or sanctions) to seek a better life in Europe. If I was from there I’d try to get out too and use ruses like pretending to be a Kurd from Turkey when you really from Iraq or Syria or vice versa. As I said, good luck to them. I hope playing the “political refugee” card works (as it has for some of our present and past members who are now UK citizens). That was the point I was making that they should have no compunction about lying to the state. And why should we accept that economic migrants are less worthy than political refugees ?
Actually, most of them will be economic migrants seeking a better life away from the countries where they were born, but that doesn’t matter. They are still victims of capitalism and its conflicts. If they can get away with being classified as “political refugees” good luck to them (nobody is under any obligation to tell a capitalist state the truth).
I see, that’s where the author was coming from? But the population “superfluous to commodity production” isn’t growing in developed capitalist countries; this would show itself in a growing mass of unemployed workers. But no such trend is evident. It’s not happening and, although predicted from time to time, there is no particular reason why it should.
It is true that a large proportion of those at work are not directly involved in commodity production (producing goods or services for sale) but are employed by the government in various activities necessary to the operation of capitalism (civil servants, local government officers, teaching, health service) but they don’t suffer from a lack of basic subsistence likely to provoke bread riots.
In any event, engineers would not be in a position to establish a technocracy (I know that’s not the argument being made) without mass popular support; which they wouldn’t get and there is not even a hint that they are seeking.
What’s wrong with the traditional view that capitalism is run from top to bottom (or from bottom to top) by wage workers of all kinds, but in the interest of the ruling owning class, and that socialism means them doing this in their own interest (which will have become the common interest) ?
I would have thought that it had more to do with the borders on the continent being land borders. Or does she envisage the migrants having to be kept in Greece and Italy?
She wants to see the clock put back and border controls and passports re-introduced on the continent just so migrants will find it more difficult to get to Britain. Quite apart from the US policy, enthusiastically backed by Britain, to bring about regime change in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya etc. aggravating the “migrant crisis”.
On your other question, just checked with the leaflets I collected at the Oxford event. The 4 Trotskyist group’s leaflets all had a QR on them but it took you to the home page of their website. The only leaflet that didn’t was the Green Party’s, maybe because it was on crappy recycled paper on which a QR wouldn’t have worked properly or because they want to turn the clock back to the days of small-scale capitalism. At least their leaflet was printed and not done on a roneo machine like 50 years ago. We probably need to explain, Alan, to most of our members what a stencil was.
I think they adhere to the social contract theory of government as set out in the US Declaration of Independence. That they see the government as having broken its side of the bargain is their justification for resorting to civil disobedience, ie, of any obligation to obey the government
Hence the over the top language they use about ‘betrayal’ and the government being ‘traitors’. Some of their foot soldiers actually appear to believe this student essay stuff.
I have just worked out why they think that ‘their’ government has ‘betrayed’ them. It will be because they subscribe to the myth that the government exists to serve and protect the people and that, in not doing enough about climate change (more specifically in not spending money on properly insulating all homes in Britain), the government has failed in its ‘duty’ and, worse, has betrayed those they are supposed to protect.
In other words, they subscribe to the conventional view of what governments are there to do, whereas in fact of course government are there to protect the interests of the rich owning class. It is their government not ours.
Their political consciousness has not evolved beyond the view of those who vote for parties to form a government to do something for them. They are naive reformists even if their tactics are to break the law to try to pressurise the government into adopting the particular reform they want.
I can answer some of those questions. At least 5,500 of the 9000 leaflets that we printed were handed out in Glasgow and elsewhere (more elsewhere as it happened). If it hadn’t rained in both Glasgow and Cardiff most of the rest would have been too. Those left over will be handed out later in Liverpool and London. 30 members throughout the country took part in this activity.
The QR experiment turned out to be a success and will no doubt be tried again. A full report will appear in the December Standard but I am sure Paddy will be able to go in more detail on that aspect before then if you want as well as about accommodation etc in Glasgow.
I think it is more a question of them sending themselves to prison, but who cares if that’s what they want. They seem to be consenting adults.
“Betrayed by my government” — what a pathetic slogan. It shows that they are still nationalists and are appealing to people who are still nationalists. Talk about the blind misleading the blind.
