ALB
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More have been added. These ones show what a despicable lot the leaders of the “Communist” Party were and the lengths to which they were preoared to go in the blind obedience to their masters in state-capitalist Moscow:
The Communist Yes—No—Yes Policy on Colonial Peoples, November 1939
More About the People’s Convention, March 1941
Quick Changes by the Communist Party, July 1941
Communists support for Conservative candidates, December 1941
Communist Arguments for Lifting the Ban on the “Daily Worker”, February 1942
Death of the People’s Convention, February 1942
The Communists and Mr. Churchill, March 1942More on what happened here. Financial mismanagement seems to have a lot to do with it. Quite a few Party members went there.
I think you must mean something like “too much meat-eating” and it would meat-producing not meat-eating as such.
Head office confirm that there is a spare copy for sale (for nothing like £54 !) Just contact them with your address.
The failure of the movements for political democracy (basically for freely elected civilian governments) in Burma, Hong Kong, Belorussia and before that in Egypt and perhaps now even in Tunisia unfortunately bears out our position on the importance of who controls the armed forces. Whoever does is in a position to control the situation, especially if it is the armed forces themselves that control the state. As long as the armed forces are united and obey their leaders then they are going to get their way.
I think it was Trotsky who once pointed out that political regimes had only been overthrown where the army was disunited or went over to the opposition (as in Russia in 1917, Portugal in 1974 or Eastern Europe in the 1990s). In none of the cases mentioned above is this likely to happen (except perhaps in Tunisia where the jury is still out).
I wonder whether this calls into question advising workers to take on even peacefully a government which is in full control of the armed forces, even more so if the armed forces are the government. We have of course always advised against using armed violence in such situations. But it seems that even mass street demonstrations can be dangerous and even counter-productive. I don’t know what those in Hong Kong who organised the trashing of the legislative assembly building thought they were doing. The demonstrations in Hong Kong seem to have resulted in the loss of the elements of political democracy that existed before.
In any event, what interests socialists at the moment about political democracy is not the election of those who make up the government and decide and implement government policies. Even the armed forces can concede that as in Algeria at present and in Turkey in the past, only intervening if the civilian government goes too far from their point of view. In fact the Burmese army did concede this and then changed their mind and seem to be envisaging it again in a couple of years.
It is rather the freedom to organise and to propagate political ideas. That’s what’s in the interest of the working class and the socialist movement as it provides the best framework within which to wage the class struggle. But how separate this from struggles for an elected civilian government of capitalism?
There may be a copy at Head Office. There will certainly be a copy in the Library which you would be able to borrow if all you want to do is to read it (as a book rather than online). I’d email HO to confirm.
Despite his basic position of reformism by direct action (as opposed to through Parliament) mysteriously morphing into a struggle to end capitalism, he is still arguing that post-capitalist society must be one without money.
In a preface dated May 2021 to a re-edition of George Caffentzis’s 1989 book on John Locke’s theory of money, Cleaver writes:
“This last objective — escaping money — has only recently returned to the agenda of revolutionaries . . . a combination of factors . . . have made a growing number of those looking beyond capitalism conclude that the decommodification of life and escape from money are essential to the conceptualization and building of new, non-capitalist worlds. . . It is not a call for all of us to ‘drop out of club of money users’ into some isolated, demonetized commune, it is a call to free society from a money (and even labor) measure of the value of all things and to celebrate the diversity and richness both of “needs/desires” and of our abilities to satisfy them — creating a multiplicity of values of an imposed and impoverished single one.”
Not bad. Of course it never left the agenda of some revolutionaries . . .
I haven’t been following this closely but today’s i paper carries a report from Reuters news agency headed “Castillo appoints fellow Marxist PM” which says:
“Peru’s new President, Pedro Castillo, has named Guido Bellido, a fellow member of his Marxist party, as prime minister. … As a candidate for a self-defined Marxist-Leninist party, Mr Castillo has already spooked investors.”
Is this true? That he claims to be a Marxist and his party defines itself (oxymoronically) as “Marxist-Leninist”, I mean, not that he has spooked investors.
I think we discussed this before on another thread (one of those on the Labour Party, I think). There’s also an article about it in next month’s Socialist Standard out here online on Sunday but already on its way to subscribers to the paper version.
Yesterday I received through my letter box a leaflet from the local Green Party, one news of which, headed “Time For New Big Ideas” said:
“The Council has backed the Green’s motion to trial Universal Basic Income (UBI). UBI is a regular, non-means tested government payment to everyone, regardless of their income or work situation.”
I have sent the following email to the local Green Party councillor:
“Thanks for the leaflet delivered yesterday. I have a question about the proposed trial of this ‘regular, non-means tested government payment to everyone, regardless of their income or work situation.’
Will the trial that the Council is calling for be a trial of this, i.e., of everyone in a selected area being paid for a period a non-means tested sum of money regardless of their income or work situation?”Watch this space for her reply so we can see whether the proposed trial would be of UBI or of something else.
Well, they went and done it.
I would have thought that it’s wrong to describe the expelled groups as “far left” except the Trotskyist “Socialist” Appeal or even as pro-Corbyn (even though his anti-lockdown brother turned up to protest, but then JC is not his brother’s keeper).
They seem to have been expelled for taking an anti-Zionist position rather than a pro-Corbyn one. Anyway, the Jewish Labour Grouo was pleased. Labour’s traditional Muslim voters probably not, as may become evident in future elections.
A perfect example of perfide Albion. Clearly Johnson signed the Northern Ireland Protocol with no intention of implementing it just to be able to say he had “got Brexit done” and win an election on that basis.
He hasn’t got Brexit done as is now becoming evident. Not over Gibraltar either.
I don’t think the EU will give way on this. The notoriously perfidious Johnson is about to find that he can’t have his pork pie and eat it.
Added to the Edgar Hardcastle Internet Archive, 8 more articles from the Socialist Stadard of the 1920s:
The capital levy, August 1923
Why Socialists Oppose Nationalisation, November 1924
The Capitalist and his Case, April 1925
The shorter working day, January 1926
Shall we emigrate?, July 1926
The Struggle for World Trade, August 1926
Personalities and Socialist politics, October 1926
Is Britain over-populated?, August 1927”Socialist Appeal sources argue that they don’t allow anyone to stand against Labour, they always call for a Labour vote . . .”.
Of course and they will continue to call for a Labour vote even after they’ve been booted out. As other Trotskyist groups that have voluntarily withdrawn from the Labour Party, such as the SWP, always do. In fact “Vote Labour till Doomsday” could almost be said to be a basic tenet of Trotskyism. They certainly behave as if it is.
The Labour leaders won’t mind. Volunteer vote-catchers for them which they can disclaim responsibility for.
I saw that in the papers this morning. The Times, presumably on the basis of something Labour HQ told its journalists, describes “Socialist Appeal” as “communist”. This is wrong both in terms of the logical meaning of the term (a society based on common ownership of productive resources, what we call socialism) nor in the popular misusage of it (to mean support for Stalin and the overseas agencies called “communist parties” that the rulers of state capitalist Russia sponsored). They are of course our old friends, the Militant Tendency (the relatively honest section that didn’t try to usurp our name). And of course they have been banned before by Neil Kinnock.
