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I see what you mean. Workers cooperatives, mutualist financial institutions, etc. But who is Chris Wright anyway to deserve top of the bill treatment ?
Most new applications for membership now come through the internet. So, apart from election inserts, do most requests for a free three-month trial subscription to the Socialist Standard. This is something we want to increase as it allows contacts to get a better understanding of our position. We operate on the theory that the more people take this up the more will take out a permanent subscription. In fact it’s virtually the only way of increasing subscriptions.
The advertisement for this can be found in two different places on our website, under Publications/Socialist Standard and Contacts. The second is the easiest to find. So if comrades active on other forums and comments want to draw attention to this offer here’s the link:
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/3-free-standards/
I think we are to an extent but the lesson would be that we should concentrate on saying how horrible capitalism is rather than how nice socialism would be.
But look at the question again:
“Capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good in the world.”
This leaves open the answer that capitalism could/should be reformed so as to change this rather than done away with completely, So why isn’t this “resonating” with reformists or vice versa? Why did the Labour lose the election? Why did the Australian Labor Party not win the election down there? And why will Sanders if he is selected lose the coming US elections; in fact why will Warren?
The answer is that it probably is resonating with more but not enough people. Which I think answers your specific question.
Even if he was tricked into saying it by some scumbag journalist, that would be in accordance with Hallam’s previously expressed views. He has said rationing must be imposed on people and commandeering private property (which all governments give themselves the power to do in time of war, and do) would be expected by him to deal with a climate emergency in which he thinks millions are going to die. It’s a Nuremberg trial and shooting those found guilty that the scumbag journalist would have tricked him into saying. But he always has come across as a raving nutcase and it is possible that this was one of his ravings.
Why haven’t XR dumped him? The trouble for them is that their other leaders share his end-of-the-world-is-nigh analysis, from which false premise he has drawn some conclusions as to what this means would have to be done. Did somebody say ecofascism? The dictatorship of the 3.5 percent?
Yes, there is a confusion in Pena’s article between “labour” as the creator of the “value” that underlies the exchange value/price that products have in a market economy and work as what transforms materials that originally came from nature into something to be used by humans. The latter exists whatever the type of society humans live in and is in fact a condition of human existence.
Humans have to transform parts of nature — the definition of “production”— in order to live. No doubt the amount of human energy needed to be expended to produce some particular thing could be measured and would be a legitimate area for scientific study, but it would have nothing to do with the Marxian labour theory of value.
Despite Pena’s and similar criticisms “value” is not something material in the sense of something tangible even though it is the characteristic of something that is. Pena makes great play of the word used by Marx’s English translator — “congealed” — to describe this, but it is not meant to be taken literally. It could equally be expressed by the word “acquired” as it is something that products of labour have when, and only when, they are produced for sale on a market. It is why in a socialist society, where products will not be produced for sale, they will not have such a “value” despite involving an expenditure of human labour.
Anyway, Robbo has written a detailed refutation of Pena’s criticism of the Marxian Labour Theory of Value that should be appearing in the March Socialist Standard.
If you are going to say what our position in the second world slaughter “effectively” was (other than socialist internationalism) it would have to be pacifist. What was, rightly or wrongly, being “effectively” said was that limited political democracy was important for the working class but could not or should not be defended by war. This is not the same as the “left communist” position that “bourgeois democracy” is not worth defending as bourgeois democracy/fascist state same difference.
Agreed. But the editorial never said that what we have under capitalism is democracy. It merely remarked that the 2016 referendum was “a democratically-made decision”. A choice was put before the electorate, votes were cast and counted, and a majority obtained for one of the choices. So, was it “democratically made” or not? Ray seems to be saying that it wasn’t but his arguments for saying so imply that no vote or election under capitalism can be described as “democratic”. Which I don’t think we can say is the case.
Actually, under capitalism democracy is not much more than the counting of heads (which is Britain is done fairly and accurately) but it is significant for us where the result of the counting decides who gets to control political power.
The other aspects of (“bourgeois”) political democracy are important too, in particular the freedom to organise trade unions and parties and the freedom to publish journals and pamphlets and to hold meetings.
If you don’t want to use the term (limited political) “democracy” to describe this situation you will have to find some other way of distinguishing it from political dictatorship where these facilities don’t exist. Otherwise you end up like those “left communists” who don’t think it matters whether the working class is living in a “bourgeois democracy” or a fascist state.
I see that one of the obscure non-entities standing for the leadership of the Labour Party called Rebecca Long Bailey or something like that has probably thrown away her chance of taking over from Corbyn, if she ever had one, by her position on this issue,
It’s a bit ironic that the Corbynite standard-bearer should be a member of the Pope’s Brass Band.
Ray seems to be using the same argument as the Remainers that the 2016 referendum wasn’t democratic because (a) a majority of the electorate didn’t vote for it and (b) that those that did were misinformed. In fact he seems to be going further and saying that these apply to all elections under capitalism.
But neither stand up. If (a) was true then our party will probably never have taken a democratically valid decision and that this will be rare even in socialism. Having said this, I can agree that, in important changes to devcision-making provcedures, a “super-majority” could be required. I also think it shows that referendums are not the best way to make decisions.
As to (b), no doubt the majority of those who vote for capitalism have been brainwashed in one sense or another and maybe enough voters were misled by lying propaganda during the referendum campaign to get Leave over the line. But that’s not the issue. It is not why people vote for what they do, but whether elections, here in Britain under capitalism, accurately record how they voted and so are democratic in that sense.
I would say they do. I have been an election agent for the party in many elections and have attended many counts. At these I have never seen any evidence thst the elections were not properly conducted or that the votes were not accurately counted. The sad fact is that the vast majority in Britain currently want capitalism in one form or another and any election, however perfectly organised and conducted, will give this result. A majority want capitalism and get it.
The other thing of course is that we as socialists do not require or expect the political institutions of capitalism to be perfect from a democratic point of view (they can’t be in a class-divided society), only that they are sufficiently democratic to allow a socialist majority to win control of political power. It has always been our case that in Britain they are.
No I didn’t see that list (it doesn’t appear automatically) but have now and it is interesting who is on it and who isn’t. It might be as you suggest because we are a registered political party and contest elections. That might explain the absence too of the Communist Party of Britain but not that of the New Communist Party nor, as far as I could see, any of the Maoist parties.
Maybe it is just a list of commonly seen logos. I would agree with your point that it is probably a good thing we’re not on the same list as them.
There was a strange one for the Anarchist Communists — a combination of the anarchist A sign and the hammer and sickle — but does a group with that logo actually exist?
How do you know we are not on this list? Have you seen it?
“Among the groups listed with no known link to terrorist violence or known threat to national security are Stop the War, the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, vegan activists, anti-fascist groups, anti-racist groups, an anti-police surveillance group and campaigners against airport expansion. Communist and socialist political parties are also on the list.”
Or the government will continue some of it and proclaim it as some new initiative to “regenerate” the North or wherever. In any event, ordinary people are not going to notice much difference either way. Certainly not on 1 February (except for the sound of church bells chiming in some places), if only because the UK will still be in the EU economically. They won’t notice much difference either on 1 January 2021, when new trading arrangements with the EU are supposed to come in. But much of these are likely to be window-dressing with the UK taking the “independent sovereign decision” to do what it would have done had it still been in the EU.
Meanwhile Greta is accused of wanting to get rid of capitalism. If only, but who knows, after all it is the logic of her position.
