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The remaining articles, from September, October and November 1928 have now been added, meaning that the whole year 1928 is now online.
New September ones
The transition period
Socialist Definitions—A Critic corrected
The socialist searchlight
The plain case for Socialism
Answers to correspondents
A look aroundHere: https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1920s/1928/no-289-september-1928/
New October ones
Questions on Socialism
Corrupt America and Pure England
The Secret of No Wages
Rationalisation or Socialism
The plain case for Socialism
Progress in Australia
What is the State?Here: https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1920s/1928/no-290-october-1928/
New November ones
The Labour machine in Conference
Do we want a censor?
“Modernism” v Materialism
The battleground of the class struggle
Socialist definitions: a rejoinder
The economics of the I.L.P.
A talk to wives & mothersHere: https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1920s/1928/no-291-november-1928/
Doesn’t addition of the word ‘independent’ make it a distinct name?
Yes and no.
It does for everyday purposes but not for UK electoral law where the issue is what name can be put on the ballot paper.
The UK Electoral Commission is pretty strict on party names and variants of them so as to avoid confusing voters. For instance, they refused to allow the Trotskyist “Socialist Party of England and Wakes” (SPEW) to register under that name as they held that would confuse voters with us. The SPEWers are however free to use that name on their election literature but on the ballot paper they appear under their registered name of “Socialist Alternative”. Just as the new ISPGB would be free to.
On the other hand, the Commission has just given us notice that they intend to strike off one of the registered variants of our name — The World Socialist Party (UK) — on the grounds that this doesn’t identify who we are to voters. We have appealed and are awaiting their final decision.
Incidentally, there is a suggestion that this new party might be a rightwing outfit rather than yet another “socialist” party. See the discussion here.
I think it is fair to say that by “material” in his materialism Marx meant “social conditions” and that, as these are created by human activity they can be changed by human action, at this stage of human social evolution democratically into socialism.
But this “material” is not the same as “matter” as the subject of human experience. As far as I know, the only place Marx discusses this is in detail is in this chapter of The Holy Family, another of his writings of the time (1845) in which he was settling his final accounts with German philosophy. People can make of it what they will.
https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch06_3_d.htm
Whatever it is that humans experience, it is not like social conditions, i.e., a product of human activity. Humans only describe it. They focus on a part of the world of experience (abstract it) and give it a name. This applies as much to tables and chairs as it does to “matter”. But this is not same as creating (bringing into existence) what is being described. That is there independently of human descriptions of it.
On this view, what scientists are doing is not “discovering” the world “as it really is” but describing it in various ways, ways that have changed over time, especially as technological advances have enabled humans to experience the world in new and different ways.
For the record, more par for the course about the Labour Party — support for nuclear weapons. No doubt Starmer would have no qualms about pressing the button if he was convinced that vital interests of the British capitalist class were at stake. In short, a psychopath. Or maybe he’s just saying it to win votes and not expecting his bluff to be called.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-politics-56198972
The present leadership of the Labour Party and most of their MPs are a despicable bunch of career politicians more eager to get their bums on the ministerial benches than anything else. After all, that’s why most of them “entered politics”.
Next month’s Socialist Standard has a review of The Deficit Myth by leading Muddled Money Theorist, Stephanie Kelton,
Yes, there was this article in the November Socialist Standard. There’s another in the March issue which should be in your doormat on Monday or Tuesday.
Two more pieces confirming that Marx was a materialist (without scare quotes). The debate about whether or not this is the case must surely be over. Perhaps it is.
Materialism is basically a rejection of theological explanations of experience rather than a commitment to a particular theory of the nature of “matter”. Materialists can have all sorts of theories about that or none. They can even be agnostic about it.
To weaken the power of the British state, rather than any belief that independence would bring some benefit to workers in Scotland (though of course in their propaganda for “the masses” they pretended that it would), was the reason given by many Trotskyist groups and other “anti-imperialists” for voting for separation in the 2014 referendum.
Funny how they should still align with Russia’s strategic interests even though its rulers have long since stopped claiming to be somehow “socialist” or even anti-capitalist. Nostalgia for the land of the Bolshevik coup perhaps, I suppose.
It looks as if April Fool’s Day has come early this year. According to this news item, the BBC is going to set targets for how many “working class” people it employs as workers.
Assuming this is not an April Fool, this should be an easy target for the BBC to meet since 100 percent of its employees will be, and always have been, members of the working class (though I suppose they could be the odd member of the capitalist class with nothing else to do but slum it by selling their mental and physical energies to an employer, in this case the BBC).
There’s an item in today’s Times headed “Tory rebels and Labour ready to block corporation tax increase”:
Apparently Sunak, the Chancellor, is expected to propose in his budget next Wednesday raising this tax from its current 19 per cent to 23 per cent.
Corporation tax is a tax on profits and used to be called “profits tax”. So you would expect to find some members of the Tory Party, as the Party of Big Business, opposing it. But Labour? It seems so, as one of the questions Starmer put at PMQ ysterday was: “Can the prime minister at least agree with me today that now is not the time for taxes rises for families and for business.”
John McDonnell must be squirming in his political grave as the Labour manifesto for the 2019 general election he helped to draft promised to increase corporation tax to 26 percent. Big Business must be happy: they’ve now got two parties openly pledged to defend their interests.
Labour defending the profits of big business, the shape of things to come. But also the ghost of Labour governments past. Mind you, there is a certain logic in their position: if you accept the capitalist system that runs on profts it is logical, but perhaps not to be so blatant about it, to accept that businesses should be allowed to make them.
The recent dispute between Facebook and the Australian government, presented as curbing the power of the tech giants in the interests of the people, is in fact a classic case of a dispute between two sections of the capitalist class over the share-out of profits. A dispute between Tech Giants and Media Moguls (such as Rupert Murdoch). Now referred to as a “revenue sharing” scheme, it was originally billed as a “profit-sharing” one. More honest but less likely to attract public support.
Despite the unpopularity of the tech giants, the issue of no concern to workers. Why should we help the capitalist press get a bigger share of the profits at the expense of the capitalist tech giants?
Scottish “Independence” would be a completely pointless exercise as it wouldn’t make any difference the position of the workers, except perhaps to make them worse. The only people to gain from it would be the local politicians leading the campaign.
Socialists won’t be upset in the least if it doesn’t happen.
I wonder if all this is part of the next Scottish independence referendum campaign as an attempt to discredit the SNP (as it undoubtedly does). As does the recent programme about the campaign to oust as MP Charles Kennedy, the former Liberal Party leader who died an alcoholic at the age of 55, waged on behalf of the current leader of the SNP in the House if Commons, Ian Blackford.
Considering the high stakes at risk for the British state we can expect the referendum campaign to be very dirty, particularly on the Unionist side.
I suspected this might be coming, as Greenwald had warned (but still surprising coming from an ex-member):
“What took place at the Capitol on January 6 was undoubtedly a politically motivated riot. As such, it should not be controversial to regard it as a dangerous episode. Any time force or violence is introduced into what ought to be the peaceful resolution of political conflicts, it should be lamented and condemned.
But none of that justifies lying about what happened that day, especially by the news media. Condemning that riot does not allow, let alone require, echoing false claims in order to render the event more menacing and serious than it actually was. There is no circumstance or motive that justifies the dissemination of false claims by journalists. The more consequential the event, the less justified, and more harmful, serial journalistic falsehoods are.
Yet this is exactly what has happened, and continues to happen, since that riot almost seven weeks ago. And anyone who tries to correct these falsehoods is instantly attacked with the cynical accusation that if you want only truthful reporting about what happened, then you’re trying to “minimize” what happened and are likely an apologist for if not a full-fledged supporter of the protesters themselves.”
The point he and Coburn were making was that the establishment media were exaggerating in order to create an atmosphere of fear in which oppressive legislation would pass more easily.
