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Just heard Sir Ed Davey, deputy leader of the LibDems, say that they want to “decarbonise capitalism”, so emphasising that they support and want to retain capitalism. Here is his what amounts to a eulogy of capitalism:
This is the bit I like:
“There will of course be a maze of overly complex regulations to cut through – but it must not detract from this vision to rebuild the City as a global centre for sustainable capitalism, where the needs of the planet and people have to come first.”
Makes you wonder what planet he’s living on.
We always knew of course that LibDems were an avowedly capitalist party, but it’s nice to have them confirm this so openly.
Johnson has just described Labour’s promise to provide free broadband for everyone as a “crazed communist scheme“.
It is not clear which part of it he finds “crazy”. Is it the nationalisation of part of BT or that it is crazy to provide any service free? Or he may just be continuing his party’s absurd smear campaign against Labour under Corbyn and MacDonnell wanting to establish a state-capitalist dictatorship in Britain similar to what existed in the USSR, dropping the euphemism “Marxist” for the real smear “Communist”.
That sort of anti-Communism is old hat and is unlikely to go down that well these days, at least not with anybody aged under 40, but in associating the word “communist” with “free services” he may inadvertently be doing us a favour. Yes, broadband will be free in a socialist society; so will telephones, television, gas, electricity, water, transport, health care, education and all other services. What’s crazy about that? Surely the rational purpose of society is to satisfy people’s needs.
What is crazy is the capitalist scheme to require people to pay for these.
There is this article “Lenin, theorist of nationalism” on the WSP (India)’s website here (scroll down) and this article in the May 2017 Socialist Standard “‘Imperialism’ Where Lenin Went Wrong”.
Having said that, I don’t think we can say that one “country” cannot exploit another “country” as long as “country” is understood, not as the whole population living there, but only the capitalist ruling class there.
One capitalist state, acting on behalf of its capitalist class, can exploit the capitalist class of another capitalist state by depriving it of some of the surplus value extracted from its working class and, also, by bringing it about that the capitalist class in that country doesn’t get its full share of the average rate of profit. But this doesn’t concern the working class of that country since it has already been exploited to the limit by its own capitalist class. It’s a dispute between two sections of the world capitalist class over the share-out of surplus value. A case of thieves falling out.
There are 7 candidates standing in Cardiff Central. There, our opponents are, as expected, Labour, Liberal, Tory and Brexit. There is a Welsh nationalist candidate but not Plaid Cymru and also an independent. There is no Green candidate as this seat has been reserved by the “Remain Alliance” for the LibDems.
The Welsh nationalist party is a rightwing outfit calling itself “Ein Gwalad” (Our Country) and is standing in some other seats. Its description on the ballot paper is “Gwalad Gwalad” which is part of the chorus of the Welsh “national” anthem — which will give an idea of how nasty it is. It opposes Plaid Cymru as being too leftwing and in fact Plaid (which simply means “Party”) has on occasion even called itself “socialist”, ridiculously of course.
Nominations closed at 4pm and it turns out that there are 8 candidates standing in Folkestone & Hythe. Our opponents are: Tory, Labour, LibDem, Green, SDP (yes, they still seem to exist), Young People’s Party, and an Independent (Henry Bolton, who was leader of UKIP for a few months).
The Young People’s Party is not really that at all, but a party advocating the views of Henry George, the 19th century supporter of capitalism who wanted to replace all other taxes by a Single Tax on land values. Their candidate, Rohen Kapur, stood there in the 2015, as did we.
The nomination papers for our candidate in Cardiff Central (Brian Johnson) were handed in today and accepted.
As a Labour-held seat there will be a Faragist candidate but, as it’s one of the constituencies in the “Remain alliance” deal, there will be no Green or Welsh nationalist candidate, only a LibDem one.
After the hype for (and against) Facebook’s so-called money, it looks like they have decided to fall back to Plan B — a new payments system:
https://cryptopotato.com/doesnt-wait-for-libra-facebook-introduces-facebook-pay/
I see the media are having a go again at Corbyn for refusing to commit himself to being prepared to press the button to continue a nuclear war and saying that he’s unfit to be prime minister. He is, but that’s a compliment.
The Labour Party’s pathetic and hypocritical response is that the decision would not be taken by Corbyn himself but by a committee, so as to show that the Labour Party is as fit to run the British capitalist state as it has always been:
The nomination papers for our candidate in Folkestone & Hythe (Andy Thomas) were handed in today and accepted.
We won’t know who are opponents are till nominations close on Thursday but as this is a Tory-held seat, under Farage’s cunning plan there won’t be a Brexit Party candidate. So, there could just be the usual gang of three (Tory, Liberal, Labour) plus the Greens.
That’s what I would have thought. Agree with you about the Catalan nationalists. The same situation could occur here in a couple of years with the Scots Nats. Already the Tory party is positioning itself as an anti-Scottish English nationalist party — I had a one of their leaflets through my door last week which declared that “voting Liberal Democrat risks a Labour/SNP government for the next 5 years.” And does anyone think that the Orange Order and Rangers supporters in Glasgow and elsewhere will take a Scottish breakaway lying down?
Safer to accept “national” boundaries as they are and work with all workers within a particular state to win control of it, in conjunction with workers in other states doing the same, with a view to dismantling them all. In any event, not to support breakaway movements within states. That just divides workers even more, setting one section against another.
So the far-right Vox party has increased its representation in parliament but at which other parties expense?
Just audio but this should be good enough specially if the background militarist music can be edited out.
Relatively successful meeting with 25 or so present and members from outside London. Members will be glad to hear that among those there was Danny Lambert, his first reappearance since his accident.
The talks were recorded. Unfortunately it was the day of the Lord Mayor’s Show and the militarist music of the drum and flute bands as they marched down Fleet Street might be audible in the background.
Just realised I forgot Farage’s mob. They might expect be standing. But I can’t think of anything to rhyme with Brexit except Schmexit.
Cardiff Central, where we will be standing, is one of the seats allocated to the LibDems under the Liberal/Green/Plaid Cymru election pact just announced. That means two less reformist candidates standing – no Green and no Plaid. Good. There are already too many reformist parties.
That means we can revive the old slogan:
Labour, Liberal, Tory
Same old same old story
