ALB
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During the debate on the Puppet’s Speech in Parliament yesterday, Johnson made a pathetic attempt at humour while at the same time trying to smear the Labour leaders as Communists when, according to the Grauniad referring to Corbyn he said:
“Frankly I fear for his political health. We can see the Soviet-era expulsions that are taking place in his circle. As one by one, his lieutenants are purged as Lenin purged the associates of poor-old Trotsky. And there is Lenin, the veteran fabricator of GLC budgets, as the shadow chancellor tightens his icy-grip on the Labour party.”
John McDonnell was probably secretly flattered to be compared to Lenin. But Johnson has got his facts wrong. Lenin never purged Trotsky’s associates. They were great buddies as they planned the Bolshevik coup and began to lay the basis for state capitalism in Russia. It was Stalin who, after Lenin’s death in 1924, purged Trotsky’s associates when he and Trotsky fell out as to who was to be Lenin’s successor as dictator of state-capitalist Russia. Maybe Johnson knew this and that he wouldn’t get away with likening McDonnell to Stalin.
Three new added, including his speech at the Paris Commune Anniversary Meeting (which the Party used to hold in those days) in 1905 which happened to be at the time that the 1905 Russian Revolution. Fitzgerald comments that as soon as he heard that the students were involved he knew it was a “middle class” (bourgeois) revolution. The one from 1912 shows that we have consistently held the position from the start that socialism has to be a worldwide system.
Added to the Jack Fitzgerald Internet Archive:
The Commune in Paris, April 1905
Socialism must be international, February 1912
Answer to correspondents on industrial unionism, February 1914I am afraid, Rudy, that life has no meaning. Marxists are materialists and non-religious and leave providing a meaningless answer to such a metaphysical question to priests and idealist philosophers.
Observation reveals that all life-forms come into existence and act in a way so as to continue to exist until they die and cease to exist. This applies to humans too. Humans, however, have the advantage over all other life-forms of being self-conscious and of being able to change their conditions of life. So we can adopt the aim, both as individuals and as groups, of consciously pursuing surviving and living in the best possible conditions.
At the present stage of the evolution of human society and its material productive basis, this is a worldwide society based on the common ownership of the world’s resources so that they can be used to directly satisfy human needs and allow us to live peaceful, satisfying lives and to develop our talents. That was Marx’s aim and is the still the aim of present-day socialists.
This second podcast is even worse than the first. Kliman describes Trumpism as a “mortal threat” understood literally as a threat to the life of people like him (and us) who risk being “liquidated”. He describes Trump as a “proto-fascist” who represents a threat to “liberal democracy” and “the rule of law” in the US and talks of him declaring himself “President for life” and exiling his opponents in Congress. Naturally he argues in favour of impeaching Trump, and he calls for mass protests and general strikes to bring down his government. He doesn’t actually call here for workers to vote for his Democratic Party opponent, whoever he or she might be, in next year’s presidential elections (the easiest way to get rid of him, if that’s your priority). Maybe that’s for the third part.
I can’t understand what’s got into him as a person who has an understanding of how capitalism works; that it can’t be reformed to work in the interest of the working class; and that attempts to reform it lead to state capitalism and not socialism as a society which abolishes “value” (as something that rises only when there’s production for sale). He also understands, as he does point out here. that “the Left” wants power to introduce state capitalism, not the self-emancipation of the working class by conscious, democratic action.
Very odd.
To get back to the subject, of course, Nansir. There’s a whole pamphlet on this here:
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlet/socialism-practical-alternative/
Chapter 4 in particular explains how the production and distribution of wealth could be organised without money (which of course becomes redundant once the means of life are owned in common and democratically controlled).
If the rumours about what the UK government is now proposing are true, ie that Northern Ireland should be in a customs union with both the EU and the UK, the businessman Bijou met last month will be happy:
“I was talking to a small businessman from Northern Ireland last week and for him this was the dream solution, as part of the UK they would have access to all (if any) trade deals that the UK have as well as having free access to the UK, they would also in effect be part of the EU for trade purposes. It would make Northern Ireland a very attractive part of the world to set up manufacturing plants in.”
At least for an exporter. An importer might not be so happy with the added bureaucracy but when it comes down to it Northern Ireland is not much more significant for the UK economy than the Isle of Man (except it costs more).
Yes, one moment you are living in relatively peaceful conditions leading an ordinary life. Next moment a state sends in its trained killers to ethnically cleanse you. It seems that the Kurdish nationalists overplayed their hand by trying to establish a mini-state which included a large Arab minority, always potentially a fifth column just as the Kurdish minority in Turkey are. The idea of the “nation” state encourages ethnic cleansing and they all do, or did, it.
Interesting background article here on the “Kurdish Question”. Not that developing an effective Kurdish nationalism is the thing that can save them — the emergence of yet another “effective” nationalism would just make things worse for everybody in the area, with more ethnic cleansing and discrimination against minorities who find themselves in the “wrong” state.
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/the-only-thing-that-can-save-the-kurds/
Just noticed that Arthur Scargill’s “Socialist Labour Party” is now claiming to be a re-constituted version of the impossibilist Socialist Labour Party of Great Britain formed in 1903. What a cheek as brazen as the Militant Tendency stealing our name of “Socialist Party”. Here is their claim in black and white:
Anti-Brexit court case involving workers for once:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49960647
Can’t see them winning, though.
XR UK’s attempt to shut down central London for 2 weeks kicks off today. I predict they will lose all the sympathy they built up the last time. The media will turn against them. The police will not be so polite especially under the new hang em and flog em Home Secretary. And the general public will get fed up with their daily life being upset. It will be completely counterproductive and won’t advance their cause at all.
I don’t know what they think they are doing unless they really believe that a civil disobedience by a minority can force a government to do (a) what it doesn’t want to do and (b) what it can’t do anyway. That won’t work as they will find out to their cost.
They have made their point and pushed the problem higher up the agenda but it looks as if they are about to throw all away by pursuing a mistaken tactic based on a false theory .
There will also have been some non-members who do this. Still insignificant of course. And we know that at least a couple of members voted Remain (because they said they were going to).
On the main issue I don’t see why there can’t and won’t be a deal. In proposing that Northern Ireland stay in the single market the UK has made a huge concession and there already exist border controls for VAT and excise duties. The proposed DUP veto will have to go of course. We’ll see.
Revealing piece here on Trotskyist (SWP) attempt to infiltrate XR. I expect other Trot groups will be doing the same. No wonder the XR leaders don’t like them, They are right.
http://londongreenleft.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-socialist-workers-party-is.html?m=1
Robbo, that’s the perfect amendment to that confusing resolution that was carried:
Delete “political fellow-travellers (e.g. anarchists, libertarian socialists etc.) and insert “those who explicitly call for and advocate a non-market, wageless classless and stateless alternative to capitalism”.
That will clarify things. “Fellow traveller” was never a good term to use in view of its association with state-capitalist Russia’s “useful idiots” as Lenin called them.
It would also separate the sheep (those who want socialism) from the goats (eg. XR).
Anyway, compound interest is not the Eighth Wonder of the World. It is perfectly rational within a money system. Say A lends B $100 for a year at 5% interest p.a.. Neither is going to enter into this deal unless both expect B to use the money to end up with more than $5 at the end of the year. At the end of the year B repays A the original $100 + $5 as agreed. If B has made more than $5 B keeps it. If B wants to continue and A doesn’t want to cash the $5, then A is in effect lending B for the next year not $100 but $105, also at 5% p.a., which means that at the end of the second year B has to repay $105 + $5.25. What’s so wonderful about that?
Of course, all this assumes that B is using the money to make more money so as to end up with more than 5% of the amount borrowed. This can only be done by using to produce something that can be sold for more than the amount borrowed. Which is what happens under capitalism, with profit as the extra amount. This is why what is important under capitalism is profit not interest. In fact interest always has to be less than profit. It can’t be more whatever the mathematical formula for compound interest says. Interest cannot go on being compounded unless more and more profit is being made somewhere from production.
In other words, compound interest cannot go on accumulating divorced from reality (production). Marx gives an amusing example of the conclusion drawn by someone, the Rev. Dr. Richard Price, who writing in 1774, thought it could:
“One penny, put out at our Saviour’s birth to 5 per cent compound interest, would, before this time, have increased to a greater sum, than would be contained in a hundred and fifty millions of earths, all solid gold. ” (quoted by Marx, Capital, volume 3, chapater 24).
Now that would be a Wonder of the World.
Whatever the scale of the problem, the answer is the same — the establishment of the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources as the only framework within which it can be rationally addressed and effective and lasting actions taken.
XR can “demand” as much as they like that “the government solve this problem”. The government won’t, not because it might not want to, but because it can’t, due to the constraints that operating within the framework of the competitive struggle for profits that is built-in to capitalism.
