ALB
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There is an intriguing mention in today’s Times in an article about a famous building there that collapsed the other day:
“Majid’s younger brother Bargash succeeded him in Zanzibar and built the Palace of Wonders for himself in 1883, ten years after he issued the decree that finally ended the African slave trade”
So the slave trade in East Africa did not end till 1873. I thought I’d check and found this:
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/east-africas-forgotten-slave-trade/a-50126759
The wokies don’t say much about this, perhaps because they are afraid of being accused of “islamophobia”.
By coincidence the 50 years ago column in the January Socialist Standard (being despatched tomorrow) is about the split in the IRA that led to the formation of the “Provisional” IRA which later became the main one. The split was over the same issue. The traditionalists thought that the “Official” IRA had gone too leftwing, even “Communist”. Twenty years later, it seems, that some of them thought the same about their own Sinn Fein merely going social-democratic reformist. The Officials party was renamed the Workers Party and still exists and contests elections:
“ i’m not so sure you can say that Scottish separatism would have been detrimental to Scottish workers. Some could justifiably argue that they would be marginally better off than the English and the Welsh workers.”
I can’t think of a single benefit, not even a marginal one, that workers in Scotland would gain from Scotland becoming a separate capitalist state. Many workers from Scotland might believe that it would but not “justifiably”.
I can only think of disadvantages such as the disruption to their daily life caused by the change-over (new currency, new border control, etc). Then there would be the more virulent nationalism. You hint that a separate Scottish government might be able to pursue a Keynesian policy (of engineering smooth growth out of which social reforms can be financed) but why should this work in Scotland when it has failed everywhere else? Especially when the British capitalist state’s subsidy to the Scottish administration is ended.
At best the creation of a separate “independent” capitalist state would be pointless from a working class point of view.
By the way, you have already started a border dispute by annexing the territory currently in England between the Scottish border and Hadrian’s Wall.
Actually, Rod, I think Brexit can be classified as a bad reform ie a change within capitalism that will make things worse for many workers. Certainly the promised benefits of it are bogus as far as workers are concerned.
So, if someone held a gun to our head and said you must choose between Leave and Remain we would have had to choose Remain.
The same can be said of a Scottish breakaway from the rest of Britain. It too would put the clock back (to 1707!) and also make things worse for most workers living there.
But, surely, just as we don’t campaign for reforms even if they do improve things for workers so we don’t campaign against reforms that make things worse — especially as in both the above cases this would involve campaigning and voting for a status quo which is far from satisfactory.
So, basically, we campaign only for socialism and neither for nor against particular reforms, while denouncing some proposed reforms as counter-productive and/or anti- working-class.
“The proof of the pudding will be in the eating, it seems.”
Or as Max Hastings puts it in today’s Times:
”The completion of Brexit represents a declaration of British exceptionalism. The great question that lies ahead, which will not be fully answered until years after this prime minister has resumed his lucrative career as an entertainer, is whether we possess enforceable economic and political claims to such specialness.”
By “we” of course he means the UK state acting on behalf of the British capitalist class.
Yes, these two tweets seem to be particularly pertinent;
”The whole thing is the illusion of sovereignty and the ability to diverge while acknowledging in reality that the EU is a regulatory superpower and we will therefore continue to follow its standards.”
and
”No surprise at all from an Irish perspective. Prior to the single market, Ireland had to shadow many a UK regulation and law, because of economic necessity. That this bit of economic reality is formally codified in wooly language in the EU/UK treaty is probably a good thing.”
The agreement also provides for tit for tat tariffs as currently going on between the USA and the EU. Be interesting to see if this comes to anything or is just the Daily Wail dreaming.
This from that link shows just how bonkers this type of Brexit is from a capitalist point of view:
“Examples of inevitable change on 1 January 2021:
The free movement of persons will end: UK citizens will no longer have the freedom to work, study, start a business or live in the EU. They will need visas for long-term stays in the EU. Border checks will apply, passports will need to be stamped, and EU pet passports will no longer be valid for UK residents.
The free movement of goods will end: Customs checks and controls will apply to all UK exports entering the EU. UK agri-food consignments will have to have health certificates and undergo sanitary and phytosanitary controls at Member States’ border inspection posts. This will cost UK businesses time and money.
The free movement of services will end: UK service providers will no longer benefit from the country-of-origin principle. They will have to comply with the – varying – rules of each Member State, or relocate to the EU if they want to continue operating as they do today. There will be no more mutual recognition of professional qualifications. UK financial services firms will lose their financial services passports.”Johnson has redeemed his promise to “fuck business”. Will they forgive him?
I am wondering whether this listing of Biden’s appointment of conventional centrist politicians to his administration is not at risk of giving the wrong impression— that if had appointed more progressive ones that would make a difference?
We know from experience that the personal character or political views of those running the political side of capitalism isn’t the important factor in what they do when in office. They are governing within the framework of capitalism and in the end have to accept and apply its basic economic law of “profits first”. A whole string of governments made up of leftwing reformers has demonstrated this time and again. They start off making a few reforms but then they are “blown off course” by the workings of capitalism’s economic laws.
They forgot to put a cross against booze cruises. The Vote Leave government’s withdrawal from the Erasmus programme allowing students from European countries to study in other European countries seems just a vindictive expression of anti-rest of Europe phobia. Even the official reason given — that it cost the UK more as more students from other countries came to study here than vice versa— is shabby. Apparently it is to be replaced by a programme to pay for UK students to study in top universities in other countries, inevitably mostly those in the USA. No more need then to learn another European language.
A change, I suppose, from depicting this legendary figure as a revolutionary. My speculation would be that, if he had existed, he would have been more of a Jehovah Witness preaching that the end of the world was nigh. The most absurd speculation about him of course is that he was the son of a god.
Peter Cruddas, who Johnson has just made a Lord in defiance of a negative opinion by the committee which vets such appointments, was one of the maverick financiers who bankrolled the Vote Leave campaign.
No wonder Johnson feels he owes him a debt. Cruddas will be pretty happy too — he has avoided his financial dealings being regulated by the EU and has become a member of the House of Lords (sometimes called the House of Frauds). A symbolic reminder of which section of the capitalist class won the Brexit referendum.
A foretaste of what a sudden no deal Brexit will mean;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55389505
Trading with Australia won’t been able to compensate as it’s rather far away..
At the moment the capitalist class, via its political representatives, control the centre of political control and so have responsibility for looking after society as a whole. Ok, they’ve been dealt a crap hand as they have to try to do this within the context of capitalism (but that’s what they want).
But in England they have been failed spectacularly, in part because the chairperson of their executive committee is an incompetent buffoon.
So our message to the capitalist class is: step aside and let the working class take over on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life, with production and distribution directly to satisfy people’s needs. Then the crisis provoked by the out of control pandemic can be dealt with rationally.
Interesting — and accurate — observation in an article in Thursday’s Financial Times about the “sovereignty” that Johnson and his backbenchers are braying about:
”the Brexiters’ fatal confusion between sovereignty and power is about to be exposed. Untrammelled sovereignty sounds alluring, but in a world in which each nation’s security and economic wellbeing is inextricably connected to those of others, it turns out that it does not confer real power.”
Exactly. “Sovereignty” is something that exists only on paper and which does not confer the power on a government to do what it likes. Its exercise is limited by external circumstances, notably the workings of world capitalism which places severe limits in what a state can do.
In fact, its exercise in opposition to capitalism’s tendencies — as with reformism but also the attempt to turn the clock back that Brexit is — risks making things worse rather than better.
If Johnson really believes that it is better for capitalist Britain to trade on Albanian terms rather than being an integral part of a large frictionless pan-European single market and gets a chance to try this, then he will soon find out the limits of “sovereignty”. As will his deluded followers and supporters. And most of the British capitalist class will never forgive him.
This is misleading as it suggests that the Venezuelan government is to abolish any elected law-making assembly whereas in fact it is only abolishing a “constituent assembly”, technically an assembly to draw up a new constitution and therefore by definition a temporary institution. The National Assembly still exists.
I am not commenting on how democratically elected or legitimate either assembly is (obviously we hold no brief for the Maduro government and its claim to be somehow socialist) but the article’s headline is completely misleading and probably meant to be, echoing the propaganda of the US government.
