ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I have started reading a pamphlet I bought last night with the attractive title of “Resisting Trumpist Reaction (and Left Accommodation)” and have come across this passage which shows just how far down the slippery slope they have slipped:
“The anti-neoliberal aesthetic, especially among young Sandernistas, is such that many would rather allow Trump to be elected than to dirty their hands voting for a centrist neoliberal like Clinton. As the 2018 midterm elections approach in the US, we are bound to encounter the same discussions we encountered when we wrote that the extraordinary dangers of Trump and Trumpism make it important for people to understand the difference between voting against Trump and supporting Clinton. “Supporting” constitutes a wider sphere of thinking and action than “voting” does. One can vote against Trumpism, even if that means voting for a centrist, without being in support of centrism.”
I suppose this could be true: you could vote for something even if you didn’t support it. However, this is not how anyone else will interpret your action, especially not the vote-hunting “centrist” (what is a “centrist” anyway?). It will be interpreted as support — and will in fact be support — however tight you might hold your nose when you vote.
Eugene Debs put the case against this rather well: “It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don’t want and get it.” In other words, if you vote for a centrist and the centrist wins that’s what you will get. Or, if you vote for a capitalist politician capitalism is what you will get even if you don’t want it.
Professor Stephen Coleman, aka Steve Coleman, used to reply that this was being offered a choice between the evil of two lessers — a good title for any piece on the subject.
Depends what you mean by “senior years”. They only stayed for one drink after as they had to go to work the next morning.
I went to that meeting of the “Marxist-Humanist Initiative” yesterday evening. From their point of view, it was a flop. I was the only visitor and duly made sure that the rest of the audience got a copy of our leaflet, all three of them, all MHI members. All the same, it was still interesting as I wanted to know why, and see how far, a group which has certain keys things in common with us (analysis of capitalism, need to end commodity-production) had gone off the rails. I am afraid they really have. They view Trump as a threat to political democracy in the US and urge people there to support the Democrat Party and others either to impeach him or to vote him out.
Their argument is this:
- Political democracy is important to the working class as it provides the best framework for the development of the working class and socialist movements.
- Trump is undermining political democracy and there is a very real danger that he might succeed.
- Therefore socialists should work with others to defend political democracy (the speaker called it “bourgeois democracy”) and defeat “Trumpism”.
The first premise is true but the second is not and even if it were true the conclusion wouldn’t follow.
It is true that Trump has been behaving in a high-handed fashion but stuffing the Supreme Court with your political supporters is part of the US political tradition (all Presidents do this if the opportunity arises). However, it is quite over the top to say that there is an immediate prospect of political democracy being overthrown in the USA.
Trump has to stand for re-election in 2020 and even if he wins cannot stand for a third term, i.e. he’s gone in any event by 2024. There was speculation at the meeting, apparently serious, that Trump might refuse to leave the White House if defeated in 2020 or even, like some African dictator, change the constitution to allow him to serve a third term ! Which planet are they living on?
This is to show an ignorance both of how the US political system works (it is extremely difficult to amend the constitution and impossible if even a quarter of the states are opposed) and of how capitalism works. If Trump is replaced by some Democrat or his Vice President (if he’s impeached he’ll be replaced by the Vice President, Mike Pence, who’s a raving Christian fundamentalist) capitalism will remain. The problems it causes will continue, even fuelling popular support for demagogues like Trump. So will political democracy in US (such as it is) … and US imperialism.
Our comrade Stephen Shenfield in the US has an article in the Poliquads online magazine issue on the opioid epidemic there:
https://www.poliquads.com/post/capitalist-responsibility-and-opioids
and also a rejoinder to an anarcho-capitalist take on the problem:
https://www.poliquads.com/post/anarcho-coalitionism-and-the-opioid-epidemic
That reminds me. I meant to look up how the Independent Climate Emergency candidates did in the Euroelections. They stood 7 candidates in London, who got 4939 (0.22%) between them and 2 in the South West region who totalled 2477 (0.15%). Looks as if they’ve got as far to go as we have. But at least neither of us are extinct.
To qualify as a “Lassallean” Wolff would have to advocate state aided producer coops. I don’t suppose he’d be opposed to this but does he actually advocate it? If he’s just advocating the formation of producer coops to (somehow)outcompete traditional capitalist firms then he’d be a “Proudhonist” ! Or maybe he’s just an “Owenite”. In any event, he’s not a Marxist. Trust you’ll be tearing him to pieces in a whole chapter not just a paragraph or few.
This is assuming that there will be a Labour majority in the House of Commons. I would have thought that it is much more likely that Labour will emerge as the party with the largest number of MPs but without a majority and so will have to govern with the support of the Liberals and/or the Scots Nats. In which case these could make their support conditional on some other Labour politician being prime minister. That would allow Corbyn to retire from front line politics gracefully and tend to his allotment. In any event, it would provide the Labour Party with an alibi for not carrying out their policies or for why they didn’t work.
I went to a meeting last week at which the speaker quoted from a Labour Party document in which the word “socialism” was defined. The document (a discussion not a policy one) entitled Alternative Models of Ownership advocated workers cooperatives and municipal ownership. The passage reads:
“What we have presented, as an alternative, amounts to the first steps in challenging that dominant model of ownership and control. We have shown, in simple, practical terms, how a government committed to addressing those profound, structural problems could implement key policies that would rectify them. Its goal would be nothing other than the creation of an economy which is fairer, more democratic, and more sustainable; that would overturn the hierarchies of power in our economy, placing those who create the real wealth in charge; that would end decades of under-investment and wasted potential by tearing down the vested interests that hold this country back
The historic name for that society is socialism, and this is Labour’s goal.“ (emphasis added).
Actually, state-subsidised producer cooperatives is what Ferdinand Lassalle advocated in Germany in the 19th century and which Marx criticised in part III of his Critique of the Gotha Programme. So the Tories who are denouncing Corbyn and McDonnell as “Marxists” have got it wrong. They should be calling them “Lassalleans”. Not sure, though, that this would have any contemporary resonance.
Some of these greens aren’t half misanthropes. And this one is illogical with it. There is only one species that is biologically capable of managing the biosphere in an ecological way and that’s us, homo sapiens, so there’s no point in running us down. We are the only hope of the planet. And how does she think that humans could practise what the original inhabitants of America used to do if parts of the Earth continue to be owned by private individuals, capitalist corporations, or national governments? The passage she quotes from us doesn’t even use the word “ownership” with its possible connotation that the owner can do what they like with what they own.
She also distorts what our leaflet said by omitting what immediately followed:
“on the basis of ‘from each according to ability, to each according to need’. Free of ownership by the few and the rule of ‘no profit, no production’, this is the only framework within which problems such as global warming, growing inequality and wars can be tackled for good.”
Yes, he would have been sent it. In fact, two comrades ensure that anyone mentioned in the Standard gets sent a link to the reference. They get some responses, even if only a thank you.
They would have inherited the same position even if some of them would have been embarrassed by it. At the time this policy was adopted in 1911 it did cause some members opposed to a minority of Socialist MPs voting for reforms to leave. More on this in this from the June 2004 Socialist Standard:
In February 1910 a letter from “W.B. (Upton Park)” was sent to the Socialist Standard asking “What would be the attitude of a member of the SPGB if elected to Parliament, and how would he maintain the principle of ‘No Compromise’?” The perspective of this small group of members was that no reform of capitalism could ever be supported by the party claiming to represent working class interests as it was not the job of socialists to take part in the running of capitalism. Any attempt to do so would run counter to the famous ‘hostility clause’ of the Declaration of Principles.
The Standard ’s reply on the matter,backed by the Party’s Executive Committee, stated that each issue would have to be looked at on its merits and the course to be pursued decided democratically. This did not satisfy the members who had raised the question, who formed a ‘Provisional Committee’ aimed at overturning the position espoused in the Standard’s reply and who set their case out in an ‘Open Letter’ to Party members, arguing that socialists were required to oppose measures introduced by capitalist parties on each and every occasion. This was again rebutted firmly by the EC who contended that it would be ridiculous for socialists, by way of example, to oppose a measure designed to stop a war in which the working class was being butchered.
Believing this approach to be a violation of the principle of ‘no compromise’ several members resigned over this issue during 1911, a small number going on to found the Socialist Propaganda League. The SPL’s principal speaker and writer was Harry Martin, Snellgrove having been one of those from the Provisional Committee later to rejoin. Though Martin was sympathetic to the Party in all other respects, he continued to denounce the SPGB’s willingness to engage in ‘political trading’ in pamphlets and on the outdoor platform until his death in 1951. One of the SPL’s pamphlets, From Slavery To Freedom, was critically reviewed in the Socialist Standard in November 1932.
Finkelstein has form on criticising socialism, real socialism that is (let’s give him some credit for that). But also in not responding. Since he didn’t.
Cooking the Books: Answer on a Postcard (to Lord Finkelstein)
The < em>Surrey Advertiser has duly published today that letter of correction under their (good) heading of “Our alternative to leave or remain” and layout;
I am afraid your description of our policy in your piece on the European elections in the Surrey Advertiser on May 17 (pages 12 and 13) was mistaken.
We were not advocating so-called “Lexit” (a leftwing Brexit).
We are not a petty British nationalist party.
We were for neither Leave nor Remain as, in both cases, capitalism and so the problems it causes would continue.
It exists in the EU and would in a Brexit Britain.
What we were proposing as the alternative to both Leave and Remain was replacing the capitalist system of ownership by the few and production for profit by common ownership, democratic control and production directly to meet people’s needs, not just in Europe but throughout the world.
