ALB
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Actually the US ruling class knew very well that what existed in the old USSR wasn’t socialist.
In 1959 one of the members of the Russian ruling elite, Mikoyan, visited the USA. On his departure he gave a farewell message in which he described Russia as socialist. The US Secretary of State, the notorious John Foster Dulles, replied on behalf of President Eisenhower:
“The President is aware that you operate under a system of State capitalism . . .”
See here.
Yes he is. I read that article and was disappointed by it as in other articles he had dismissed the idea that the riot on the Capitol was an attempted fascist coup. The Republican Party certainly is going in for practices that in other countries would be regarded as corrupt but then American politics has always been corrupt.
Rubio is right that identity politics is divisive but wrong in thinking that Marxism supports it. Marxism is opposed to id(iot)pol precisely because it divides the working class against itself, setting one section against another for the crumbs capitalism has to offer. We are for working class unity against the capitalist class.
I don’t know how the myth originated that we opposed votes for women arose. Probably from some malicious opponent. As Alan has pointed out, what we were opposed to was the Suffragette demand for votes for women on the same terms as it then was for men. This, on the grounds that it would have meant more votes for members of the propertied class than for workers.
As to universal suffrage, we weren’t against this but argued that it wasn’t necessary as enough workers already had the vote that could be used to win control of political power to bring in socialism. I think there’s another quote from an early Socialist Standard saying that universal suffrage would be introduced as soon as the socialist-minded workers won political control.
Ok, we didn’t campaign for Universal Suffrage but that’s not the same as being opposed to it. There are lots of things we don’t advocate but are not opposed to. And if the implication is that we should advocate whatever we are not opposed to, then that really would be the thin end of the slippery slope to reformism.
Incidentally, in the referendum I think it was in 2011 on whether to change electoral system to introduce the Alternative Vote the Party didn’t take up a position either for or against, effectively giving the working class including party members a free hand. I don’t know about you, Paula, but I voted for it.
Yes I remember there was a bit of a cult of Dylan in the Party in the late 60s. According to the November 1968 Socialist Standard, on Sunday 3 November there was a talk in Glasgow on “Changing Times of Bob Dylan”. I don’t know if you were there, Matt. I think the same talk was also given in London.
I see this scheme isn’t actually being billed as a UBI experiment like many others are. The U in UBI is supposed to stand for Universal, so the proposal is that everyone is to be paid a Basic Income unconditionally (I suppose the U could mean that too).
Schemes like this are experiments to see if it would be better (and cheaper) to pay certain categories of the poor a regular income, unconditional in the sense that if you meet the condition to be in the category you will be paid the money without any other conditions like family allowances are. If adopted it would just be a tweak to the Poor Law. And will never be more than this.
Left wingers and others who plug UBI as a solution are deluding themselves and misleading others. It won’t happen and would never work. By comparison socialism is a much more realistic proposition. But these left wingers shy away from proposing that as they don’t want to be labelled utopian for envisaging the disappearance of money.
Hardly surprising. He might have been a counter-cultural icon in the 1960s but went off the rails when he became a born again Christian in 1979. I don’t think he produced anything worthwhile after that, certainly nothing counter cultural, did he? But he must have pleased someone as they gave him a Prize named after a Master of War.
This result of this election in May for the position of “Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough” shows what could happen if tactical voting against the Tories caught on. The voting system for mayors (where voters have a second preference vote) allowed Labour and Liberal voters to gang up against the Tories with their second preference votes.
It looks as if electoral reform to extend this voting system to parliamentary elections might be the only way for Labour professional politicians to ever get a crack at trying to run capitalism again. But will they offer the Liberals that?
You mean Liberal and Labour voters get together? Though as Labour and Tory are Tweedledee and Tweedledum their voters could easily get together. Or are they Tweedledum and Tweedledummer?
“Zecharia Sitchin, who studied at the London School of Economics, wrote his best seller, The 12th planet, based on his interpretation of ancient Sumerian text, which clearly reveals that humans were genetically engineered from homo erectus into homo sapiens as slave-workers for the aliens, referred to as ‘the Anunnaki’.”
Classic pseudoscience and pseudohistory. It is not just UAPs that need to be explained but also what motivates some people to believe this sort of stuff. And this one claims to be a socialist. As if we didn’t have a big enough cross to bear.
Of course the Clarion Cycling Club never meant by socialism what we did — and we were rivals before the WW1 as our members also went cycling on propaganda missions — but only the sort of thing the old ILP meant (nationalisation, municipalisation).
Even so it’s rather sad that their organisation should be taken over by trendies who object not only to the word socialism but to the whole concept. And who have pushed through an amendment to commit the club to “fairness, equality, inclusion and diversity” which as they themselves say “can hardly be argued against”. Indeed. Not even a Tory would argue against those.
They deserve a split. I secretly hope they do.
Just found this article on them from the July 2011 Socialist Standard
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2020/07/pedalling-in-ever-decreasing-circles.html
I am not sure whether he’d be throwing NI under the bus. The DUP and other hardline unionists, yes, but most other members of the Stormont assembly support the protocol, not just the nationalist Sinn Fein and the SDLP but also the Alliance Party and the Green Party.
To prevent the re-erection of customs posts on the border between the two parts of Ireland, the withdrawal agreement and subsequent trade agreement provided that Northern Ireland should remain in the Single Market.
This means that what is produced or sold there has to conform to the Singke Market regulations. These include provision for controls and checks on imports of certain foodstuffs. The understanding was that these controls should take place in “Irish Sea”, in practice either before leaving Great Britain or on entering Northern Ireland.
When Theresa May brought back an agreement which included this Johnson denounced it as an affront to British sovereignty, and that there could/would never be customs controls between two integral parts of the United Kingdom, etc, etc, and the deal was scuttled thanks to him and the other hard core brexiteers.
But the deal he got negotiated contained the same arrangements. Even so, he still went around saying that would be no controls between two parts of the UK, thus indicating, I think it can be inferred, that he had no intention of implementing it.
A six month period of grace was granted from 1 January this year and so is due to expire, in a few weeks time, on 30 June. After that the agreement has to be implemented.
The overall withdrawal agreement also provides that if one party does not implement the agreement the other party can impose proportionate sanctions, such as quotas on imports. Which the EU is indicating it might do if the UK doesn’t implement the agreement. Meanwhile Johnson is turning up the nationalist rhetoric.
Of course both sides might just be manoeuvring to strengthen their negotiating position. There are plenty of compromises possible. Personally, I can’t see how Johnson can get out of implementing it. He will have to compromise.
Looks as if that after all Boris didn’t get Brexit done like he said and won an election on the basis of it.
He seems to have signed the Northern Ireland Protocol with no intention of implementing it, just so he could say he had got Brexit done.
No wonder the EU are pissed off. They thought they had a signed agreement whose implications were known to both sides. But now they find out that the Britain is trying to wriggle out of it.
All the arguments that Boris is using to try to get out of it were known before, that the unionists wouldn’t like it and might threaten to pull out of the Peace Process. As to sausages, you can’t take them into Australia either and won’t be under the proposed trade agreement with them.
It remains to be seen if Boris really will push it to the point of provoking a trade war with the EU, stirring up the unionists as a bargaining chip
