ALB
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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.
That seems a reasonable analysis and interpretation. Brexit does seem to have been an issue that interested ordinary non-political people more than the sham Tory/Labour fight at elections. Pity it revealed how narrow-minded most were. But I suppose that was predictable in view of the years and years of patriotic and nationalistic propaganda that people have been subjected to.
I also noticed, despite the idiot adverts in the link, another point Steve Coleman made:
“ you have Conservatives up here in the North, who are voting because they think the Conservative Party is going to do what Labour used to do which is spend more on them,”
They’re in for a shock, not that Labour did much for them either. Isn’t this what in US is called pork barrel politics?
Three more articles from the Socialist Standard added:
The Class Struggle, March 1925
Henry Ford or Karl Marx?, August 1926
The Mirage in Spain, April 1934QE does cause inflation but limits this to “asset” prices which increases the nominal wealth of “wealthy asset holders” as the House of Lords calls them. It doesn’t seem to do much else.
MMT would cause a massive and uncontrollable rise in the general price level as in Weimar Germany and present-day Zimbabwe. Only a big player like the US (possibly only the US) could get away with it without too much of this because most of the extra money would be used by other countries.
QE is not currency crankism. MMT is.
Yes, herd immunity is back on the agenda in Britain. The policy is to achieve this by a combination of vaccinating as many as possible and letting the virus rip amongst the unvaccinated who are assumed to be mostly the young and so less likely to end up in hospital and/or die. That way enough people should have enough anti-bodies to keep the virus at bay.
I hope they know what they are doing as many informed commentators are referring to it as an “experiment”, which suggests that they are not sure whether it will work, ie achieve herd immunity.
I think we should stop calling this sort of scheme UBI and start calling them VBI — very basic income.
For a start they are not universal (ie not for everyone) and, second, they are just tweaks to the system of how to deal with people who would otherwise be destitute. In other words, a reform of the Poor Law system.
