ALB
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Just checked. No, the SWP are not covidiots. Their line is to criticise Bungling Boris’s handling of measures to deal with the pandemic. Common or garden populist stuff that vanguard parties specialise in, in accordance with Lenin’s tactic of trying to exploit any discontent to “build the party”.
Just realised that that article from Countercurrents Alan posted a couple of days ago partially answers this question. The author is the general secretary of a union representing agricultural workers. He laments the fact that so few agricultural workers are involved in the campaign:
“However, only the more conscious sections of agricultural labourers have yet participated in this on-going struggle. The vast section of agricultural labourers is not yet aware about the harmful effects of these laws upon their lives. Even the unorganized section of this class, who are the majority, perceive this agitation as an issue of the land-owners only and remain distant from this struggle. The weak organizational situation of agricultural labourers and the pain of casteism are among the several factors behind this.” (my emphasis)
According to wikipeia, the Khet Mazdoor Union is run by the “Communist” Party. As this party is even more opportunist and reformist than the French Workers Party Engels criticised in 1894 it is not surprising that it would want to involve agricultural workers in a struggle by their employers. His argument seems to be that the workers should support their employers as the government is planning to deprive them of a previously guaranteed market.
The article by Engels which YMS cites is largely a criticism of the agrarian programme adopted by the Frenh Workers Party in 1894. He took particular objection to one passage which stated that it was
“expedient to extend this protection also to the producers who, as tenants or sharecroppers (Metayers), cultivate the land owned by others and who, if they exploit day laborers, are to a certain extent compelled to do so because of the exploitation to which they themselves are subjected.”
To whih Engels retorted:
“Here, we are entering upon ground that is passing strange. Socialism is particularly opposed to the exploitation of wage labor. And here it is declared to be the imperative duty of socialism to protect the French tenants when they “exploit day laborers”, as the text literally states! And that because they are compelled to do so to a certain by “the exploitation to which they themselves are subjected”!”
So, for him, support for farmers who exploit wage-labour was non-socialist even if they were themselves exploited.
Do we know if the striking Indian farmers are employers (= exploiters) of wage-labour? According to this from 2019, there are 144.3 million (In think thst’s right if a crore = 10 million) agricultural labourers in India:
“However, while announcing direct income support of ₹6,000 annually to farmers in the interim Budget, the Centre left agriculture labourers high and dry though rural casual labourers constitute the single largest segment of the country’s workforce. Most agricultural workers are asset-less or asset-poor. There are 14.43 crore agricultural labourers, who constitute 55 per cent of the people involved in agriculture in India.”
Are they inolved in the protests and demontrations or is it just the farmers? What are the unions representing agricultural wage workers saying about the bandh?
Anybody know?
I am sure Matt will answer ( and move this to the website/technical section) but I can say what I do to find an article on a particular subject.
Go here (it can be found under publications/socialist standard/ standard index (full) ) and you can search for articles by decade on the basis of the words in their title.
Classic socialist statement against suppression of opinion, even anti-democratic opinion, in this editorial from February 1941 on the government’s decision to ban the Daily Worker:
They might if they notice the plandemic and anti-vaxxer stuff appearing on it, even if this is vigorously refuted by others. Which of course is the way to deal with mistaken views —- refute them not prevent them being expressed.
Mind you, from that point of view, the SWP have been hoist by their own petard as they are all in favour of no-platformimg selected opponents of theirs.
Who do Facebook think they are? Answer: they are the private owners of their platform and are just exercising their private property rights.
It’s bad enough states imposing censorship but private corporations with not even a pretence of democratic control or accountability. First they go for Trump and Ayatollah Khomeni or whoever is the big cheese there now, then they can come for anybody else.
I bet ex-LibDem leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has a hand in this. Some liberal ! He needs to re-read John Stuart Mill.
I think they represent more non-food shopowners in provincial high streets who have been particularly hit by the lockdowns rather than Big Business.
Just read it and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be from what you said. It’s only saying that this explanation is “plausible” ie not entirely unreasonable and so possible. It is not saying that it was the explanation.
I can see, however, why vegetarians and others opposed to meat-eating might want to dismiss it out of hand !
Here is Peter Joseph’s take on this (from the same podcast mentioned on the thread on him);
“… a lot of people out there are drawing great relief knowing that Trump will no longer have any national power. It is not a time to be complacent. Nothing has actually improved in the broad view. We just have had four years of general regression with neither the public nor the political establishment actually learning anything, as far as I’m concerned. We are simply back to a square one.”
That was my point. Why didn’t the authoritarian leader there appoint her minister of superstition or religion or culture rather than of health. He must have known that she was a bit of a nutter.
By the way didn’t know that Buddhists were into shamanism.
Here’s Peter Joseph puting exactly the same as us on the so-called “Great Reset” in his latest podcast
So the great reset was put forward by Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum, if I remember correctly. He started talking about this around the beginning of COVID-19 in early 2020. Here’s what it says on their actual website, “To achieve a better outcome, the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country from the United States to China must participate, and every industry from oil and gas, to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a great reset of capitalism.” Yes, the great reset of capitalism. Which makes no sense at all since capitalism is actually the fundamental problem, effecting sustainability and all other such issues that this great reset professes to address.
I suppose it’s good to see more conversation, especially when it comes to the environment, but the very fact that the limits of debate have been set and that this is really about preserving capitalism, even though they want to create some idealized version of it called stakeholder capitalism, all this simply reveals another well-meaning pro-establishment spasm in the end. No different than all the climate conferences and biodiversity conferences that accomplish nothing because everyone refuses to look at the system structure as the actual problem, the economic system. It’s actually quite comical if you think about it, “We want to change the world, but not capitalism.”
And of course this notion of stakeholder capitalism is one from a long line of nonsensical, qualifying adjectives that people amend before the word capitalism to try and pretend like some sub distinction would ever make a meaningful difference. You see all over the place, crony capitalism, responsible capitalism, vulture capitalism, the social entrepreneur. My favorite is conscious capitalism, as if it ever could be given the very nature and incentives of the structure, once again. It doesn’t matter who’s in the positions. It matters what the structural incentives are.
Just to be clear here, this stakeholder capitalism is defined as “a system in which corporations are oriented to serve the interests of all their stakeholders. Among the key stakeholders are consumers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, and local communities. Under this system, a company’s purpose is to create longterm value and not to maximize profits, and enhance shareholder value at the cost of other stakeholder groups.” I’m not even going to address the insurmountable idealism in that vague description other than to say, you can never take the core incentive out of the system if the system remains in any respect or form. It is nonsensical to say that somehow corporations are going to orient themselves respecting everybody in this kind of stakeholder environment and the ecosystem without maximization of profit and hence, exploitation. You can’t have capitalism without exploitation and profit and hence, exploitation. If those things are removed, then you’re in a completely different system by default.
So this great reset thing is just another spasm, a well-meaning joke, a ploy in fact to sort of pretend like we can make capitalism better when all empirical evidence shows that we can not.
Well, well, the latest exercise of “sovereignty”:
Would you believe it — a government minister in Ceylon has been advocating, and actually took, a quack remedy against covid, the minister of health no less.
How do idiots like this get into such a post?
The end of this story is that she has now got covid. Hopefully, this will discourage others from taking snake oil from a shaman.
