ALB
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Rather cruelly yesterday’s Guardian recalls Boris’s hero Churchill’s description of Roosevelt’s New Deal as “this war on wealth and business, this ruthless war on private enterprise”.
Article from the Socialist Standard here:
“The American South, despite its slave labour, was basically a commodity society in which goods (including slaves) and services were produced for sale on the market with a view to profit. A more fitting designation for the system is <i>Plantation Capitalism</i>.”
Even Peake has admitted that she was wrong, tweeting “I feel it’s important for me to clarify that, when talking to The Independent, I was inaccurate in my assumption of American Police training & its sources.” She didn’t explain why she immediately jumped to the conclusion that the Israeli secret service must have been involved.
According to Cook, she also thinks that we are being ruled by “capitalist, fascist dictators”, another indication of how prone she is to conspiracy theories. On the other hand, she might just be a joke. Citizeness Smith.
Yes, Keynes was merely providing a theory to justify policies already pursued by left-leaning reformists… and others. Not that Johnson is planning to do anything as radical as either Roosevelt or Hitler, essentially not much more than implementing more rapidly spending plans that had already been drawn up.
“You are the idealists and the elitists, very much like Lenin in fact, if you think only of making the rest of humanity into copies of yourselves. In fact, you are wanting others to follow you, in fact if not in theory.”
I am not clear Mutual whether this is you quoting our feathered friend or your own view. It would be rather strange if the latter coming from someone who has put the Party case in the Socialist Standard and other publications for years. But I suppose the “if” would let you off the hook since we don’t actually think only of making the rest of humanity into copies of ourselves.
Our role is merely to help the class struggle that is going on anyway become a conscious struggle to end the capitalist system of class ownership and production for profit and replace it with common ownership and production directly for use, in line with the development of the methods of production that have taken place.
Yes, ever since it came into being capitalism has had a problem of what to do about “the poor” as those who, for one reason or another such as illness, disability or old age, are not able to maintain themselves. Hence the “poor law” and its various successors in Britain (National Assistance, Social Security, Income Support, etc), payable mainly to the “unemployable”, i.e those no employer is going to employ because the quality of their labour power is so low. Even capitalism can’t let such people — and they amount to some 10 percent of the population — die and so has to provide them with the minimum necessary to keep them alive. UBI in its basic form, and in any form that is likely to be adopted, is merely a reform of existing “poor law” provisions, as are the various cash handouts that are also being discuss.
“The traditional view has millions of workers becoming conscious Marxist materialists.”
What traditional view would that be? Certainly not Bukharin (since, as a Bolshevik, he would have thought that under capitalism workers are only capable of reaching a trade union consciousness). Certainly not Marx (as he wouldn’t be so arrogant or such a megalomaniac). Not us either, since we have always talked about a “class conscious” working class majority; which only requires an understanding that capitalism cannot be reformed to work in the interest of the working class, an understanding of what socialism is and a desire to establish it involving political action. That does not require having read Marx’s philosophical writings or Engels’s Anti-Duhring or indeed any of their writings.
As to “materialism”, most people today in the developed capitalist areas of the world are materialists in practice since, whatever they may profess to believe in when asked, in practice they live their lives without expecting some “non-material” entity to intervene in it.
Added to the Edgar Hardcastle Internet Archive:
‘Revolutionary Christianity’, August 1921
“Higher prices mean fewer jobs”, October 1921
The Great Discoveries and their economic effects, February 1926
Rationalisation and unemployment, June 1929
Potash and Palestine. Dead-sea Fruit, October 1929
Wicked Bankers and Kind Captains of Industry, November 1929
Armaments and Unemployment, July 1961Just been reminded by a comrade in the south of Ireland that;
”Of course the Greens were in government before (with Fianna Fail) until they were all turfed out of parliament by an angry electorate after the financial collapse debacle of 2008.”
Forgot about that.
You mean like the Hindus? At least they make no bones about the fact that they worship idols and not some airy-fairy nebulous concept.
The Church of England really are a pathetic lot. Now they want to paint the face of the idol they worship black. This won’t please the feminists among them who will want him portrayed as a woman. There is a possible solution. They could make their idol a mixed race hermaphrodite. An earlier group of Christians had a more radical solution— destroy them all, as the soldiers in Cromwell’s army started to do— but then they weren’t C of E.
To be fair, the statement that Long-Bailey didn’t object to was anti-Semitic even if maybe not intentional. Why bring the Israeli secret service into it unless you’ve got an agenda? It was also incorrect. See:
Long-Bailey was being either naive or more probably arrogant in refusing to remove her endorsement of the article as she thought she was irremovable. We don’t need to shed any tears over her fate as she slides down the greasy pole a bit.
They’ve gone and done it.
We can use this thread to document the anti-worker measures they going to be responsible for as part of a government of capitalism. Could be some useful stuff that we can use to expose the capitalist reformism of the Green Party here too.
“Beyond Politics” is one of XR’s three demands. See here where it is explained in more detail. It probably won’t be much different except that they might now be demanding citizens’ assemblies for more things that climate change.
They are not yet registered as a political party with the Electoral Commission but will have to if they want to be able to contest under that name.
Their strategy doesn’t seem to be very coherent. XR initially envisaged their demands being met by minority civil disobedience. Now they want to contest elections to local councils while at the same time transferring some of councils’ decision-making powers to Citizens assemblies.
And then they say: “The current political system is incapable of making the structural changes necessary” but then they want take part in it to the extent of standing in elections.
True, it can’t be used to successfully reform capitalism to work in the interest of the majority (not could citizens assemblies either), but why can’t a parliament elected by universal suffrage be used to abolish capitalism and usher in socialism when a majority want it and are organised outside Parliament to participate in this revolutionary change?
Or maybe the whole thing is just a stunt. Not a bad one actually, if only the purpose had been to publicise free access.
“Extinction Rebellion’s co-founder Roger Hallam is a driving force behind the party.”
Oh no, not that raving lunatic ! He doesn’t stand for free access but, besides predicting 7 billion deaths before the end of the century, is on record as advocating the rationing of basic foodstuffs as a way to try and avoid this.
It will be interesting to see if this new party will be amongst our opponents on the ballot paper when we contest the Barnet and Camden constituency in next May’s elections for the Greater London Assembly.
