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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.
So would I! Patrick Cockburn is a reporter specialising in the Middle East who, like Robert Fisk who died last year, doesn’t echo the official narrative. Incidentally, his father was the 1930s Stalinist hack, Claude Cockburn.
I would trust him more than the hacks serving the pro-Biden gang that has now got its snout back in the trough again.
Hannah, if you re-read the article by Greenwald you will see he deals with both the Munchal and the retired officer’s cases — the prosecution does not allege that they brought them with them. Also, in the second article, Munchal says he left his guns outside the building because his mum told him they would both go to prison if they took them in. Some planned insurrectionists ! But also evidence that they did not intend to kill anyone.
It is no good quoting from the media from the period before Greenwald wrote his article. They are precisely the type of coverage he is arguing was over the top.
The Daily Beast article would seem to be an example of what Cockburn and Greenwald were referring to. I had never heard of Greenwald but I have read many articles by Cockburn and he writes some good anti-war stuff and certainly has no brief for Trump or the rioters. In not following the dominant US media approach he has run a serious risk since as Greenwald points out:
“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.”
In any event, it was clearly a riot not an insurrection.
Before making up your mind on this read the article by Greenwald mentioned by Cockburn (which also deals with the zip tie handcuffs):
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-false-and-exaggerated-claims
What could be explanation for these claims by a part of the US media? I suggest that it is pro-Biden elements being taken in by their own claim (put forward to get people to vote for Biden) that Trump was so dangerous that,in the event of him losing, he would refuse to leave the White House and attempt a coup to rule as dictator.
If you recall, there was a Trotskyist on this forum who argued this. An article in the December Socialist Standard dealt with this fantasy:
No, none of you have been saying this, Matthew. Not one.
Otherwise, you’d all have agreed with Marx’s democratic method, rather than Lenin’s elitist ‘materialism’.He has just done it again — accused us of agreeing with Lenin. This despite have been introduced not only to Bogdanov but also to Dietzgen, Pannekoek, critical reviews of Lenin’s book on materialism, etc. None of this made any difference. He continued to denounce us as natural-science materialists and even dismissed Pannekoek as one.
It is true that nobody here (or any other human being, past and present; not one and certainly not Marx) has supported the view that questions of astronomy, physics, etc should be decided by referendum.
It is true, however, that there have been others who have claimed that a tree doesn’t exist when we are not looking at it.
