ALB
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The person asked to review this book reports that it’s turgid in the extreme and that they couldn’t get any further than a couple of chapters.
On the principle that if a book is no good there’s no point in reviewing it we shan’t be.
This assumes that they will be able to do popular stuff later on nearer the next general election. They might calculate on doing this but we know that, capitalism being capitalism, they can’t guarantee that they will be in a position to do this.
In fact we know, from our knowledge of how capitalism works and that it can’t be controlled by governments, that they are unlikely to be able to. Such popular stuff as increasing real wages and social handouts (one of their election promises) is not something in their power to bring about.
This said, there is a chance that they could be lucky in that capitalism might happen to be entering into the boom phase of its cycle a year before the election. I suppose that, if you are a government that has to seek re-election, that this might happen is a gamble worth taking. In fact that’s all they can do.
How can people like him — in fact all left and council communists and other assorted libertarian communists — get away with this when after Marx wrote the passage they misquote or misinterpret he made it clear in a speech a year later that he thought that it might even be possible in some countries and in certain conditions for the working class to win political power by peaceful means:
“Someday the worker must seize political power in order to build up the new organization of labor; he must overthrow the old politics which sustain the old institutions, if he is not to lose Heaven on Earth, like the old Christians who neglected and despised politics.
But we have not asserted that the ways to achieve that goal are everywhere the same.
You know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of various countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries — such as America, England, and if I were more familiar with your institutions, I would perhaps also add Holland — where the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means.”https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/09/08.htm
Of course this is Marx’s view and it doesn’t make it right just because he said so. But these people want to claim the authority of Marx for something they advocate but which he did not.
Why don’t they come out openly and say that Marx was wrong on this point?
And we mustn’t forget the Carter Doctrine which is still the cornerstone of US policy in the Middle East to this day:
The Syrian “revolution” explained?
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/syrian-military-housing-former-rebels-101507316.html?
As the French say, “Ote-toi de la, que je m’y mette” move out of the way so I can take your place.
The French phrase is the title of a cartoon by Daumier of a Turkish Sultan which makes it even more relevant to what has happened Syria.
Just noticed that the blurb for the Bernes book says:
“When Marx wrote that the Paris Commune of 1871 showed that the “the working-class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes,” he identified a principle that will remain true as long as capitalism and its class antagonism persists.”
I hope this doesn’t mean that he has read “simply cannot” for “cannot simply” as many anti-parliamentarians have, as that was not what Marx meant. Marx’s point, consistent with what he wrote elsewhere, was that the working class should lay hold of the “ready-made state machinery” but would have to change it (make it more democratic) before “wielding it for its own purposes”.
That Bernes article was heavy going even though he argued that labour time vouchers were useless but harmless. But he didn’t mention the waste of resources that would be involved in the bureaucratic procedures to manage any such system.
We reported that here a week before the Daily Excess!
Labour has paved the way for any rise in ReformUK by beating the patriotic drum and waving the Union Jack to gain votes by showing that they have changed. They wanted to be a “party of government” not a “party of protest”, leaving this spot vacant — which Forage and his mob are having some success in filling. And, as the party in office, they are finding that they can’t control capitalism. They don’t even seem to be competent even by capitalist standards.
They have now publicised their reply (and publicity for our view) on Twitter:
https://x.com/workersliberty/status/1872650056723263548
Not surprising that they have sprung to the defence of their slogan. Search “workers liberty tax the rich” and see what comes up. It seems to be their answer to everything.
That’s a revealing quote from Trotsky and doesn’t conform to what Stalin wrote in 1906. Stalin there envisaged a gradual weakening of the state till it disappeared, not it getting stronger before it finally did. Ironically, Stalin and his supporters later adopted the position Trotsky outlined to justify their own ruthless rule.
I think it is fair to say that Trotsky didn’t really understand what socialism was. In his early writings he identified socialism with nationalisation and he always thought that the state sector in Russia was socialist. His refusal, when deposed and in exile, to describe Russia as state capitalist was based on this belief that the nationalised sector represented a change in property relations and was why he still regarded Russia as a non-capitalist, “workers’ state”, even if a “degenerate” one (due to Stalin rather than him being in charge).
SPEW, which contests elections under the pretentious title of TUSC, the so-called “Trade Union and Socialist Coalition”, has recently registered a new variant of this name that can appear on the ballot paper — Independent Trade Union and Socialist Coalition:
https://search.electoralcommission.org.uk/Registrations/PP804
Presumably they are trying to attract some of those leftists who stood as “Independents” in the general election.
Or maybe to avoid confusion with this group:
Why there are so many civilian casualties in Gaza:
So middle-ranking officers in the Israeli killing machine are authorised to kill up to 20 civilians just to kill one ordinary Hamas fighter, such as the fighters’ family and neighbours. And have been on a mass scale.
No doubt they are authorised to kill 100 or more to try to kill a Hamas commander. And will have done.
By anybody’s standards this is deliberate and planned mass murder .
Who says Zionist Israel can’t be compared with Nazi Germany?
“They grab people and send them to war. It’s slavery,” another migrant said, adding that he does not want to defend a country “in which the government and oligarchs own everything, and the people own nothing.”
This statement from a Ukrainian migrant in Germany is quoted by a Russian state propaganda outlet but they themselves are quoting from a German news channel. So it can be regarded as genuine.
Of course there could well be Russian migrants in Germany who would say the same about Russia.
Headline in today’s Times across two pages: “Economy has ground to a halt since Labour won the election”.
Recorded here not to show how incompetent the Labour government is (the Tory line) but to show that no government can conjure up “growth” at will as the Labour career politicians promised.
Incidentally, the prime minister’s spokesperson is quoted as saying that the Labour is still committed “to getting growth in the economy that delivers for working people that they feel in their pay slips”. Which would seem to be a promise to increase real wages (money wages will go up anyway as the general price level rises though not necessarily by as much).
