ALB
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It is interesting (perhaps) to speculate on how a minority of Socialist MPs might be instructed to vote on the various indicative options MPs could be called to vote on next week. Bearing in mind that the criteria are how any measure might further or harm the interests of the working class and/or the socialist movement and that the issue at stake is the trading arrangements of the capitalist class, how about:
Revoke Article 50: doesn’t really matter except that this could be seen as undemocratic (overturning a referendum result) even if not unconstitutional (the referendum was in law only indicative). Express concern, but not actually vote against?
Second Referendum: this would inconvenience the working class by involving them in arguments about a purely capitalist issue. So, not support. Abstain rather than actually oppose? Wouldn’t matter if it passed because it would provide an opportunity to run a campaign for a mass write-in vote for world socialism.
Leaving without a deal: this would quite unnecessarily inconvenience the working class even if only temporarily. So oppose, maybe even vote against it if there was a chance of it being carried?
Theresa May’s deal, Norway Plus, Common Market 0.2, (re)join EFTA, Canada + and all the rest. Couldn’t care less which one the other MPs choose on behalf of the capitalist class. Irrelevant, so not even take part in the vote, just go fishing? Or maybe make a speech saying this (and advocating world socialism) and then conspicuously leave the chamber?
Five members were out leafletting this. Obviously they ran out of leaflets. One took a photo of this reply to Theresa May’s notorious declaration at the 2017 Tory party conference that “if you believe that you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere”.
Here is Twitter’s reply. It is what we expected:
Hello, We’ve investigated the reported account and have determined that it is not in violation of Twitter’s impersonation policy. In order for an account to be in violation of the policy, it must portray another person or business in a misleading or deceptive manner. Read the full policy here: https://support.twitter.com/articles/18366 Thank you for your report, and please note that any documents you may have uploaded will be deleted. Twitter Support
Indicative votes. We’ve got them too:
“This conference resolves that from 2014 indicative votes of delegates at conference shall be recorded in the conference report for all instructed resolutions and amendments.”
Afrosocialist
What’s that? Sounds a bit racist rather than socialist. I thought socialism was about uniting all workers and, in socialism. all people.
Parliament wouldn’t dare do that, i.e. withdraw the request to leave, as that would blantantly be over-riding the result of a referendum. From a democratic point of view this could only be done by another referendum. But what this shows that is tomorrow’s anti-Brexit demonstration in London could well be the biggest one since that against the Iraq War in 2003. That’s why we will be there, not of course to support the demand for a second referendum, but to leaflet the hundreds of thousands who will also be protesting against the xenophobia of the Brexiteers (not that we have got that many leaflets). Meet at Speakers Corner Marble Arch at 12 noon.
So, after last night’s EU decision and if/when May’s deal is rejected, then the choice, by 12 April, will be no deal or taking part in the European parliamentary elections in May. From our own narrow party interest, the UK having to take part in the Euroelections would give us another chance to get our name of the ballot paper in an area with millions of electors like we did last time in 2014 in the South East Region (electorate nearly 7 million, i.e. bigger than many EU countries, including Ireland). A no-deal would be an unnecessary nuisance and disruption of everyday life for a while, even though things would eventually settle back to humdrum normality with nobody noticing the difference.
According to a recent opinion poll, “half of young Americans would rather live in a socialist society”. But what do the mean by “socialism”? Another poll result:
This increased visibility of socialism and the prevalence of candidates who in one way or the other are associated with the socialist label makes it important to understand how this concept is understood by average Americans — the objective of the current research.
The broad group of responses defining socialism as dealing with “equality” are quite varied — ranging from views that socialism means controls on incomes and wealth, to a more general conception of equality of opportunity, or equal status as citizens.
In addition to the 17% of Americans who define socialism as government ownership of the means of production, other more traditional or historical views of socialism include those who say it means modified communism (6%) or restrictions on freedom (3%).
That leaves 19% of all mentions which are focused on a “gentler, lighter” view of socialism — government provision of benefits and services, liberal government or some type of cooperative plan. In addition to 6% non-specific derogatory comments, 6% describe it as getting along with other people, 8% give miscellaneous responses, and about a quarter of Americans (23%) said they couldn’t answer the question.
Still, better that more people there are coming to see the word “socialism” as something “good” rather than the object of “non-specific derogatory comments”. At least that should allow us a better hearing.
The front page of today’s Sun compares her to Wolfie Smith of the Tooting Popular Front proclaiming “Power to the People”.
Did anybody else notice that when that “stupid woman” made her populist appeal to “the nation” last night the union jack rags behind her were arranged to look like the English one, which was also the favourite of the National Front and the BNP on their marches? No wonder some MPs are now in fear of their life. A provincial clergyman’s daughter as a rival to Tommy Robinson, what next?
A new conspiracy theory is born. A fruit case has posted a clip on our facebook page claiming that the video the nutter took of his massacre must have been doctored or perhaps is a fake.
I’ve got to concede Alan, that you might have picked a winner there. It’s not just the Grauniad but the other papers that have been highlighting him. Texas is a big state (population nearly 30 million) and he seems to be well known there, more than some of the UK political non-entities (population not much more than twice that of Texas) we have been discussing are known here, the one called Ummana or something like that for instance. So, it could possibly be “All Hail to President O’Rourke” but, as Marcus keeps reminding us, it’s the horse not the rider that’s the problem.
Dave, more for your speech at Conference — a 20-page Marxist analysis of Amazon as a new capitalist business model (signaled by a lurker on this forum — thanks):
Wages and working conditions are discussed on pages 14-16. From this it appears that working conditions as very bad (as generally in such warehouses):
Various reports, whether authorised or not by the management, compiled in warehouses and by Amazon managers, show that the working conditions in force in this company are comparable, equivalent, to those experienced by the majority of proletarians in the advanced countries in industry or largescale distribution. The physical strain, in particular in the little-mechanised warehouse-factories where the pickers walk 10 to 15 kilometres per day and where, conversely, the packers experience long periods of standing in one place, the duration of work, the repetitive tasks at a frantic rhythm imposed by the machines, the surveillance and the permanent pressure from the managers, is accompanied by a company patriotism based on a culture of always producing more. The big boss, the big cheese of Amazon who is the centre of everything, Jeff Bezos, promotes an ideology of “high standards of quality” and a “customer orientation” with slogans such as “You make history” (“Work hard, have fun, make history” plastered everywhere). Yet the average time served in the company is no more than a year.
As to pay, it could be worse as Amazon pays its workers a bit above the minimum wage:
Concerning its wages policy, Amazon tends to pay slightly above the minimum wage in force in the states where it is established. For example, in 2018, Amazon stated that permanent staff would get €12.22 per hour starting salary, in Germany, and €14.31 in Spain. In the UK, the basic wage in the company is £9.50 per hour (£10.50 in the London area). In France, Amazon refuses to apply the collective labour agreement in force in logistics, preferring its own scale which starts at 2.79% above the SMIC (minimum wage). In 2018 the management granted a wage increase of 2.8% to all employees in warehouses in France. In the US, Amazon has stated that it pays employees working full-time in warehouses (250,000 people) at the rate of $15 per hour on average (special payments and bonuses included)
As you say, that statement of Conrad’s is ridiculous for the reasons you give. He cites Erich Fromm. I checked this and Fromm was not talking about Marx in particular but about the idea of socialism in general. What he wrote was:
Marxist and other forms of socialism are the heirs of prophetic Messianism, Christian Chiliastic sectarianism, thirteenth-century Thomism, Renaissance Utopianism, and eighteenth-century enlightenment.
Maybe, but I would have thought that, in Marx’s case, the last was what influenced him.
Marx’s Jewish Question is a criticism of the state and money and, as Conrad points out, does advocate giving full political rights to Jews (as those who practised Judaism). Because it was an early work, dating from the same year (1843/4) that he became a socialist, Marx still identified capitalism with money; which would be why he identified Judaism as the religion of capitalism. But capitalism is not about money-lending and “huckstering”. It’s about production for profit and capital accumulation. In which case it is Protestantism (Calvinism rather than the semi-Protestantism, or semi-Catholicism, of the Church of England), because it preached abstinence and so saving rather than spending money earned from working, that fills better the role of the religion of capitalism. I’m not sure either that Judaism is a religion of money. It’s a tribal religion based on adherence to rituals. To that extent Marx’s criticism of Judaism was unfair.
I think Marx would have been influenced by Moritz Hess (as he then was) who, the following year, published an article advocating communism as a moneyless society
Watching the debates in Parliament (as you can on the BBC Parliament channel), it is striking how much of the procedure is similar in many respects ours, e.g. on motions and amendments to them, with an original motion if amended becoming the new “main” motion (what we call the “substantive” resolution — actually “main” is clearer).
There are differences of course, in particular that it is not the chairperson of our conferences who decides what motions are voted on (that’s decided by a standing orders committee) as the Speaker does and “points of order” which are not really points of order, i.e. of procedure, are not tolerated. Our procedures were borrowed from those of smallish craft unions rather than Parliament but Parliament’s are more or less democratic.
There is even provision in our procedures for the meeting to overrule the chairperson. Clause 16 of our Conference Standing Orders reads:
… the ruling of the Chair shall be binding, unless challenged by one of the following Resolutions; ‘That Comrade X leave the chair” or “That the Chair is directed to rule that …”
If I understood what the pundits were saying last night Parliamentary procedures also provide for MPs to move a Vote of Direction to the Speaker. Whether or not this will be used to overcome “Bercow’s Bombshell” remains to be seen. I doubt, though, that anyone will move “That Comrade Bercow leave the chair”
