ALB
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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,
It looks as if you’ve got a dilemma, Alan — which church to go to this morning: the Roman Catholic one headed by that nice Pope or the Church of England 😊 I think you might find the latter less dogmatic and less hierarchical.
And you forgot the Sally Army
That’s good but the same material seems to be appearing on Spopen too. But I thought this was meant for internal discussions amongst members of the various WSM parties not for external propaganda purposes.
Looked up see who he is. He’s the official Democratic Party candidate for a New York district in the US House of Representatives. Perhaps someone thought that this was going too far for that party of capitalism.
Anybody know anything else about him?
I don’t see how an increase in the US government’s debt is a “transfer of wealth (and power) from the working class to the corporate class” if only because the working class never had such wealth and power to transfer. It would better be described as a transfer of wealth within the corporate class, from one section of it to another.
In any event, there is no chance of the US government going bankrupt, ie being unable to repay what it has borrowed or the interest in it. If those capitalists who lend money to it had the slightest hint that this might happen they would be reluctant to buy US government bonds and interest rates on them would soar as, to attract buyers ( ie capitalists to lend to it), the government would have to offer a higher interest rate on them. But this is not happening. I think we can trust capitalists who lend to governments to know which way the wind is blowing and they show no signs that they think that the US government won’t be able to repay what they lent to it.
Incidentally of course it would be the government and not “ the country” that would go bankrupt. To describe the US government as “ the country” is to let go unchallenged the myth that the US government represents the interests of all the people living in the US (most of whom are workers) whereas in fact it represents the interests of the US capitalist class.
