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Here’s how Lucian described the Christians of his day (the second century);
“The poor wretches have convinced themselves, first and foremost, that they are going to be immortal and live for all time, in consequence of which they despise death and even willingly give themselves into custody; most of them. Furthermore, their first lawgiver persuaded them that they are all brothers of one another after they have transgressed once, for all by denying the Greek gods and by worshipping that crucified sophist himself and living under his laws. Therefore they despise all things indiscriminately and consider them common property, receiving such doctrines traditionally without any definite evidence. So if any charlatan and trickster, able to profit by occasions, comes among them, he quickly acquires sudden wealth by imposing upon simple folk.”
No wonder their views appeared outlandish to the educated people of the time. Unfortunately they had the last laugh and suppressed the views of people like Lucian until they were rediscovered by Erasmus and others.
Lucian’s short satires are still worth reading today with his merciless denunciation of superstitions and the charlatans who peddled them whose equivalents still exist today.
The Passing of Peregrinus is a good example and can be found here
I noticed that in the match last night, when they were both asked what book they would give each other for Christmas. Corbyn replied quick as a flash “A Christmas Carol” so Johnson could identify himself with Scrooge. Johnson hesitated and fumbled the answer. I thought he was going to say another copy of Das Kapital but he didn’t. Anyway, Corbyn won that round.
In the meantime on the same day that the LibDem leader, some non-entity who imagines she’s going to be the next prime minister (the men in white coats must be waiting be in the wings to take her away to the place where others with similar delusions are kept), was telling the CBI that her party was the “party of business”, a leaflet from them came through my letter box which said:
“The Liberals Democrats will build an economy that works for everyone, not just the richest.”
They can’t have it both ways. Either they are “the party of business” and so support an economy that works “for the richest” or they are for the pipe dream of an economy that doesn’t. A pipe dream as no government can make “the economy” work for everyone as it’s based on profit-making and can only work in the interest of those who get richer and richer out of the profits businesses make.
Our election address for Cardiff has been approved by Royal Mail and is at the printers. If all goes to plan it will be delivered to the 45 500 households in Cardiff Central next Thursday 28 November.
Election addresses only need Royal Mail approval to see they conform to their layout design and don’t introduce surreptitious advertising. It is not censorship though too blatant racism is banned. Ordinary xenophobia is not.
Interesting that he stills retains a left wing perspective, And his defence of a reformist position is better than Kliman’s if only because it doesn’t claim to be revolutionary.
The LibDems are continuing their campaign to regain their old position as the main party of the British capitalist class or “party of business”. Here’s their leader and here’s their deputy leader pitching for this. We can let them, the Tories and Labour slog this one out. What about the “party of the workers”?
Fair enough but the Amit Pandya that wrote that article is an American lawyer. The Amit Pandya I knew happened by pure coincidence to live in the same street as me in North London in the late 1960s and so I knew him fairly well. I understood that he came from Kenya (one of the articles he wrote in the Socialist Standard was about that country) and that he had to go back there to serve in the Kenyan army to protect his family’s tea plantations (there was a law saying that companies there had to have a Kenyan national on the board). I always wondered what happened to him. Strange, though, that an American lawyer should be a member of the Labour Party.
Appears alright on my browser. The interview with Paul Mattick Jnr was in the October 2011 Socialist Standard and the one with Andrew Kliman in April 2014.
Sounds interesting. I wonder how the author handles the contradiction in Rosa Luxemburg between her mistaken theory of capital accumulation and how military spending supposedly helps capitalism from collapsing.
The trouble with Michael Roberts is that he stands for nationalisation of the banks and thinks that this has something to do with socialism.
Are we sure it is an ex-member? There was a member of that name but there are more than one person with it even from East Africa. Just put it in a search engine and see how many come up.
The Basque tourist board would say that, but, apart from being the oldest living language in Europe, it’s unverified — and unverifiable — hype. Nobody knows, and never will, what language cave men spoke and it’s certainly unlikely to be “at the seeds of articulate language”. Some people do talk nonsense but in this case I don’t suppose they really believe it.
I don’t know what the Catalan nationalists are complaining about. As far as their language is concerned— the only thing that distinguishes them from other workers — they have got full cultural autonomy just as they would in socialism. The only people to benefit from a separate Catalan state would be local capitalists who wouldn’t have to pay so much tax as they would no longer be taxed to pay subsidies to the poorer regions of Spain.
But there’s a risk it could end in tears if some idiots form a Catalan Liberation Front or a Catalan Republican Army and start assassinating people and throwing bombs around. The Spanish state, with its superior might, will react and the same sort of cycle of violence will begin that the Basque Country and Northern Ireland suffered and have only recently escaped from.
All for nothing, especially since Catalan-speakers cannot even claim to be oppressed because of the language they speak — and if they were the solution would be cultural autonomy not the establishment of a Catalan state.
Looks as if the pro-democracy demonstrators have blown it by resorting to violence. They can’t win against the armed might of the state and will be crushed. The only chance of winning they had was mass demonstrations backed by public opinion. In abandoning that they are doomed.
That was him in 2016. Here he is in 2019:
https://www.thefullbrexit.com/brexit-party-heartfield
Maybe he now believes that the workers of Britain are “super-exploited” by the capitalists of Europe. He was going to stand for the Brexit Party against Corbyn in Islington North in the coming general election but withdrew or was withdrawn. Maybe because they discovered his previous and perhaps continuing support for the Irish Republicanism which, actually, wouldn’t go down too badly in that part of London where they still sing “A Nation Once Again” in some pubs.
The group in this country which defends the theory of super-exploitation the most vehemently is the “Revolutionary Communist Group” and their paper Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!. Here’s an extract from what they say they stand for:
“As an imperialist country, Britain depends on the super-exploitation of the labour and resources of oppressed nations (…) Britain derives monopoly profits from the super-exploitation of oppressed nations and these have made it possible to split the working class by creating a privileged section of workers within this country. These workers, a labour aristocracy, constitute the social basis of opportunism. The upper stratum of the working class now dominates the British labour movement and ties it to imperialism – the economic foundation of its status and privileges. The labour aristocracy expresses itself politically through the Labour Party and it controls the trade union movement.”
Classic Leninism of course. They don’t go as far as the writer Robbo has just mentioned as they are only saying that some workers in Britain benefit from “the super-exploitation of oppressed nations”, but they don’t say which workers these are. But they need to as the also say that they support “the struggles of the whole (!) working class to defend jobs, wages and living conditions.” But this means that they support the struggle of some workers to obtain a bigger share of the profits of super-exploitation. But, again, who are they? The railway workers, the post office workers, who? Maybe university lecturers and junior doctors? We need to know.
That’s good news. It looks better than this site, if only because there’s more colour.
It means our case in other languages than English is back. Probably not by accident, the most populated section is Spanish with full translations of two of our pamphlets Are We Prisoners of Our Genes? and Women and Socialism. But this could be because there is also a separate and still active Italian-language blog whose total might exceed Spanish. I’ve not checked but could a link to it be added from the Italian-language section?
I am not sure the “Community” thing will work. We already have three forums on which members are active: here, Spintcom and our Facebook page. Comrades from India and Canada are already active participants on the last one. In all, given that some comrades are only on one of these there must be 30 of us involved in them. Another forum might be spreading ourselves too thinly (I am thinking of the complaint that not enough contribute here).
Anyway, well done to those who did it. Was that you, Matt?
Here’s him saying it today and adding that a LibDem government would be a “government of business”. The LibDems are certainly making a serious pitch to become the main party of the British capitalist class as they once used to be. Whether they will succeed is another matter.
Former LibDem leader, Vince Cable, had already nailed their colours to the capitalist mast when, in an article in City AM on 14 May this year, he confessed:
“Capitalism is being questioned in Britain more intensely than for decades. Some want to destroy it. Others believe that it is the only economic system which works, but want to reform it. I am in the latter camp.”
