ALB
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Irrespective of which institution — the state or the churches— should look after the poor, the Times of London headlines its report of the same document that started off this thread: “Churches want state aid to keep them going”.
Incidentally, the main church concerned — the Church of England— is actually a part of the UK state as the established church in England (but not in Wales or Northern Ireland). In Scotland the State church is that of a different Protestant sect — the Presbyterian Church of Scotland also known as the Kirk,
When the Queen as head of the UK state crosses the border into Scotland she undergoes a religious conversion from being an Anglican (Episcopalian) to being a Presbyterian. Not many people know that rather trivial piece of information.
“I do NOT have any trouble combining the struggle for socialism with the struggle for survival.”
Nor do I. After all, it’s the Party case. Except that the socialist party itself as such only advocates socialism while recognising that all workers as workers, whether socialist or not but including socialists as individuals, have no alternative but to struggle to survive and can do this better collectively.
You could be right that millions of people in the world have to concentrate on just getting their next meal. This could be one reason why the movement for socialism is more likely to take off in those parts of the world where this is not the case for most people.
This reminds me of something our late comrade Richard Montague used to say — we want socialism, they need it. Not quite sure what the implications of this are.
Opposing and denouncing all forms of prejudice and discrimination is one thing, Advocating or condoning measures within capitalism to rectify this by improving the conditions of one section of the working class at the expense of another section is quite another. Socialists do not stand for an equal distribution of the problems capitalism causes workers.
Actually, under capitalism the best that could be done would be to treat everyone as an individual not as a part of some artificial identity group. Which is what will happen in socialism of course.
“And aren’t there certain occupations which now advertise that “extra consideration will be given from applicants” from a particular sector of the population that were previously discriminated and not fully represented.”
There certainly are but there shouldn’t be unless you want to split the working class even more. It’s based on the whole mistaken, divisive and dangerous concept of “white privilege” and should be rejected out of hand by socialists.
Talk about wanting to redistribute poverty evenly amongst different identity groups according to their proportion in the population. Socialists can’t have anything to do with that as an aim. It’s worse than ordinary reformism.
That sounds like Marx too in his talk to English trade unions in 1865 later published as the pamphlet, Value, Price and Profit:
”the necessity of debating their price with the capitalist is inherent to their condition of having to sell themselves as commodities. By cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement.”
I don’t know why you think, Alan, that the trade union activity on the issue that you describe and support is in any way incompatible with the Party’s principles.
The Party has always supported trade union action on sound lines and yours was a clear example of that. However, if a union advocated job reservation or so-called “positive” discrimination that would be an example of unsound action which we couldn’t support.
My experience of trade unionism in a civil service context was that union members and other workers were very concerned about promotion. The union’s policy was to try to ensure objective criteria for this and that they were abided by so that the management couldn’t discriminate in favour of those it liked or against those it didn’t. We also had colleagues on less secure contracts and the union policy was to give them a chance to get onto the same conditions as the rest of us. The everyday sound activity of a union to try ensure equal treatment of all those working for a particular employer. Naturally this includes opposing discriminating on the basis of skin colour, not that this was an issue as the management wasn’t that stupid or backward.
As you point out, the state can remove legal discriminations such as used to exist against “niet blankes” in apartheid South Africa and currently against non-Jews in Israel. But this is because it is not a zero-sum situation. Everybody can be given the right to vote and other legal rights. Everybody can become “privileged”.
However, when it comes to social matters like employment, housing, promotion, education, it is a zero sum situation. As there are only a limited number of crumbs available workers really are struggling against each other for a share of the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table.
I am not sure you have fully worked out the consequences in this situation of the “white privilege” theory you seem to be embracing and what can be done about it.
What are the options?
One would be to call for “black” and “white” to unite to get more social reforms so everybody can enjoy the same “privilege” that “whites” supposedly enjoy. But that won’t work as capitalism can’t offer the reforms, or not enough of them, to ensure this. So “Black and White Unite for More Money for Social Reforms” won’t work.
Another would be to reserve some jobs, houses, etc for the “non-whites”. But that means taking away some jobs and houses from “whites” to give to “non-whites”. A sure-fire recipe for a “white backlash” and a “race war”. In any event for dividing the working class.
The only way out, literally, is socialism where, the profit obstacle removed and the means of production owned in common, enough can be produced so that nobody’s needs are not met. In the meantime, our campaign slogan should be something like “Whites and Non-Whites Unite for Socialism” or, better, “Workers of the World Unite for Socialism.”
Marcos has sent this which suggests that more and more US capitalists have decided that Biden is the Greater Good for them. Liberals, progressives and other reformists, in calling for a vote for Biden as the Lesser Awful, are helping this campaign by putting their mouths where the capitalists’ money is. In any event, by taking sides in this vote, workers are being used by different groups of capitalists.
We have received an email at Head Office attacking “White Corporate UK” as if there weren’t any “non-white” capitalists, for instance these two who have just taken a big share in ASDA.
The divide in society is not between privileged “whites” and unprivileged “non-whites” but between privileged capitalists (whatever their skin colour) and unprivileged workers (whatever theirs).
Thanks. It will be interesting to see how many people in those states exercise their right to do this eg perhaps for the Green Party or the Libertarian Party assuming they are not in the ballot paper there. Might be something our companion party there could do at a later stage if its development.
The old Socialist Labor Party of America used to run presidential and vice-presidential candidates till 1976, (scroll down to see their names and votes), I remember a member of our US party telling me that he used to secretly vote for them.
“I have a blog post in the pipeline concerning write-in votes. Basically there are only seven states that accept such votes unconditionally, nine reject them out-right and the rest only if they meet certain pre-set conditions.”
So, some states are more democratic than others. Of course the lack of uniform election regulations is due to the fact that electors are not voting directly for the presidential candidates but for the state’s delegates to the Electoral College. And this is not just just a fiction as a candidate can win the Electoral College despite getting less of the popular than their main rival. It happened in 2000 and in 2016.
Be interesting to know which are the seven states which permit write-in votes unconditionally, but presumably, to be a valid vote, you have to write in a name rather than a concept like “World Socialism”? Or do you?
The symbolic action makes a point but the theoretical justification of it must surely win a prize for being the most “woke”:
“We believe … that maintaining control of who has access to housing is a form of oppression that is intentionally leveraged as part of a greater oppressive system that disproportionately affects Black people, people of color, disabled people, trans people, sex workers, neurodivergent people, people that identify as LGBTQIA+, and others.”
But in any society, including socialism, there must be some decision-making body or procedure about who has access to housing— in socialism it will be democratic, presumably some local council.
But they are in effect demanding something to be implemented under capitalism, a housing authority that distributed housing strictly in proportion to their number in the population. A classic redistribution of poverty.
I know what you mean. One set of my grandparents were Plymouth Brethren (open, the closed are worse). Sundays weren’t fun at their house. In fact no days were fun. Nothing was. You only associated with the ungodly to sell them something. But at least they didn’t preach hell-fire and brimstone like your We Frees.
Something I don’t understand. Why are they queuing to vote by post? I thought the whole point of postal voting was that you didn’t have to go to a polling station but could vote from your home.
In any event there is something odd, even undemocratic, about postal voting in so far as people can vote before polling day. This means that they vote before the campaign is over and so cannot take into account anything that happens between then and polling day. For instance, here in Britain in general elections, before all the candidates’ election addresses have been distributed free by the post office in accordance with electoral law.
There is nothing wrong in principle with postal voting even if it is open to more abuse than in-person voting. The problem is the timing. Logically they shouldn’t be allowed to be posted before polling day. That would of course delay declaring the result but would be fairer from a democratic point of view,
