ALB
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I think you should have published the whole extract:
Item 26 Manchester Branch “The party is against capitalism, not individual particular capitalists”
In response to a promotional suggestion, one forum post commented ‘Amazon is the last company in the world we should contemplate having any truck with’. This seems to imply there are particular capitalists who we treat differently, some with more rancour than others. Perhaps some members think the party view is that surplus value can be extracted from workers more ethically by some capitalists than others? Perhaps some members think our case against capitalism is that some capitalists are extracting surplus value from workers not as ethically as they could be.
Aside from the practicalities of agreeing what an ethical extraction of surplus value under capitalism looks like, this has the potential to be a serious impediment to the party doing necessary business (or business judged beneficial for us) with capitalists for goods and services, to carry out the party’s job of making socialists. This isn’t an objection to singling out individual capitalists for propaganda purposes (in the Standard etc.). But in using it as an objection to doing necessary or beneficial party business with individual capitalists, this puts a non-systemic case against capitalism that is not Marxian and more akin to the Green Party.Something else on that story I came across when looking for something else. I suppose it has some marginal relevance for us as even some of our Party’s members seem to have been affected by the view that the “big tech” companies are worse than other capitalist companies. According to a motion down for this year’s Conference, the EC has twice turned down a proposition to sell our books via Amazon Advantage, apparently on the grounds that this means associating with them. There doesn’t seem to a similar objection to us using Facebook. Anyway, the membership is going to get a chance to decide on this.
I wonder if there is any significance in Trump using the less incendiary “anti-Jewish” rather than “anti-Semitic”? Even so, his statement infringes that IHRA definition of antisemitism by identifying all Jewish people with Israel. It’s probably just vote-catching anyway.
Actually, that quote from Lenin is not all that bad (incidentally, I don’t think Varouflakis quoting him means he has Leninist sympathies). For the benefit of those who didn’t read the link, here’s the quote (from October 1913):
There can be no doubt that dire poverty alone compels people to abandon their native land, and that the capitalists exploit the immigrant workers in the most shameless manner. But only reactionaries can shut their eyes to the progressive significance of this modern migration of nations. (…) capitalism is drawing the masses of the working people of the whole world (…) breaking down national barriers and prejudices, uniting workers from all countries (…).
The full article (and full quote) can be found here.
ZJW, her stupid and nasty remark has been widely mentioned in the media. Just type “McDonagh antisemitism” into a search engine. I wouldn’t say that it has been taken up as part of the current smear campaign against Corbyn and the Labour Party. In fact most commentators have been critical. I would agree with the view expressed in this headline in that sensationalist rag the Daily Express that the interviewer himself was surprised at what he heard. Listen to exchange there and judge for yourself.
McDonagh is a friend of Joan Ryan, the chair of Labour Friends of Israel until she resigned to join the breakaway “Independent” group of MPs. So I imagine that this is the sort of thing they will have discussed privately as something to say but the main reason for the antisemitism smear campaign will be Corbyn’s pro-Palestine position rather than the anti-banksterism of some new recruits to the Labour from the Occupy milieu. Still any stick will do, though I suspect this one could be counter-productive. After all, “capitalism” has become a bit of a dirty word again and “anticapitalist” sentiments (if not understanding) have a fairly wide audience.
The Petition to recall Fiona Onasanya, the ex-Labour MP for Peterborough just released from prison, has been launched:
https://www.peterborough.gov.uk/news/council/notification-received-from-speaker-on-recall-petition/
They’ve got 6 weeks from 19 March to get the signatures of 10% of the electorate (about 7300 names). Be interesting to see how and if this works. The last one, in North Antrim, failed because they only got 9.4% of electors to sign in the time period. If they get the 10% the MP will be recalled and a by-election held.
Meanwhile the Gang of Eleven, who have betrayed their mandates (rather than merely lied to the police about a minor traffic offence), get away with it and can keep their seats (and their salaries) till the next General Election (scheduled for May 2022).
A review of that book by Doctorow has been lined up for the April Socialist Standard.
In the meantime I’ve tracked down a quote from Tony Cliff and Russia and Ford:
About the second argument, that in Stalinist Russia there is a planned economy, while under capitalism there is no plan. Not correct. The characteristic of capitalism is that there is a plan in the individual unit, but no planning between units. In the Ford factory there is a plan. They will not produce one and a half engines per car, nor three wheels per car. There is central command about how many engines, wheels, etc they produce. There is a plan, but there is anarchy between Ford and General Motors. In Stalinist Russia there was a plan for the Russian economy, but there was no plan between the Russian economy, and, let us say, the German economy.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/2000/millennium/chap05.htm
Did I hear right, Alan, did he just say that we should live in mud huts in the future? I think he said his name was Ted Trainer.
This is more like it:
https://boingboing.net/2016/01/12/keep-your-scythe-the-real-gre.html
Love the title of the book being reviewed: Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts. It seems to make some good points too:
…[G]rowth under market conditions also requires pollution/extraction/waste/overproduction:
“The firm not be able to pay for new materials or labour or the upkeep of its machines and will go out of business. This is why capitalists, left to their own devices, have no choice but to pollute or extract or pump out CO2 or catch fish at a rate that is heedless of what remains of our store of resources. It is not that they are evil or greedy. If one capitalist says to herself “To hell with the profits! The planet is more important!” then she will quickly be beaten by a rival who is not so scrupulous. To keep going, they will have to give up on such high-minded thoughts. And this is true regardless of size, whether a globe-rogering, $11-bajillion-market-cap, Taibbian vampire-squid investment bank or a mom-and-pop corner shop that sells nothing but thimbles of rosewater-scented whimsy and hand-sewn felt puppets of characters from Wes Anderson films. If right next door, a big-box chain-store Whimsy-Mart opens up with vats of all-you-can-eat cut-price Owen Wilson dolls and that small business doesn’t toughen up, then they’re fucked.”
Companies can only abstain from harmful conduct when the market is regulated — no longer “free” — and they are required to do or not do certain things that the state has banned. If all companies are required to follow the rules, then following them won’t mean being undercut by a competitor. But regulation can’t solve the problem, because it’s always fighting a rear-guard action:
“…[H]owever much we want to regulate capitalism, there will always be some new commodity or market inadvertently ‘polluting’ that has yet to be regulated. So the regulator is always playing catch-up. Further, capital’s need for self-valorisation tends to strain at the leash of regulatory restraint, as there is always some jurisdiction where this regulation does not exist. Which means that there is a force in the economy constantly pushing toward pollution that we are forever trying to push back against, a beast we cannot tame or cage. This is why social democracy goes further toward preventing pollution than less regulated forms of capitalism, but cannot absolutely prevent the problem.”
Here’s another book from the same stable (spotted by comrade Imposs1904):
https://boingboing.net/2019/03/05/walmart-without-capitalism.html
We gotta review it. Bound to better, as the reviewer says, than the hair-shirt stuff and people scratching around for potatoes that we’ve been hearing about.
I recall that in his original book on state capitalism in Russia Tony Cliff did liken the USSR to Ford, i.e. as a single capitalist entreprise without internal competition or market links between its sections. Not sure, though, that the USSR was like that as there were market links between the legally-different state enterprises.
Comrades who didn’t read down to the end will have missed these two interesting SPC calendars :
Socialist Party of Canada 2019 Calendar £19.25:
https://www.zazzle.co.uk/socialist_party_of_canada_2019_calendar-158951425439478504Greatest Impossibilists 2019 Calendar £19.25:
https://www.zazzle.co.uk/greatest_impossibilists_2019_calendar-158115142299860432More added (click on title) to the Edgar Hardcastle Internet Archive:
Who wants an Incomes Policy?, September 1962
Prices since the 1200s, August 1969Trade Unions in a trap, March 1978
The Tories and the Closed Shop, August 1979
Economists’ bunk exposed, March 1984Just checked (didn’t want to go by her name alone) and that Mcdonagh woman is a Roman Catholic and a practising and active one. So what a cheek to accuse anticapitalists of being antisemitic. As if it wasn’t the Roman Catholic church that virtually invented antisemitism and sustained it for centuries. Her slander is like arguing: the Catholic religion teaches that the Jews killed their god, ergo they are anti Jewish people.
Here’s a transcript of what she said. At about 7.36 John Humphries asks her if she thinks it’s the case that the Labour Party is not taking antisemitism in its ranks seriously.
MacDonagh: I’m not sure that some people in the Labour Party can because it is very much part of their politics, of hard left politics, to be against capitalists and to see Jewish people as finances of capital, ergo you are anti Jewish people.
Humphries: In other words, to be anticapitalist you have to be antisemitic?
MacDonagh: Yes. [pause] Not everybody but there’s a certain stand of it.
