ALB
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Alan, you write:
how I detest the manner in how we repetitively say “wages or salary” at every turn.
But what should be call “the working class”? We know what we mean by it, but a lot of people out there don’t and either don’t think we are talking about them or that we are a group outside the working class that wants to do something for the poor workers.
That’s why we have to think of some term that conveys more immediately who and what we mean. I can only think of “wage and salary working class”. Other possible terms such as “the 99%” or “the people” don’t really fit the bill.
I realise that we should really be discussing this in a different thread, but it has come up here.
Even if it has been it’s still there at the moment:
From today’s Times:
A measure of short-term borrowing costs in the US known as the “near-term forward spread”, which is closely monitored by the Federal Reserve turned negative for the first time since 2008. This means that the market expects interest rates to fall in the short term because recession is looming.
Art Cashin, UBS director of floor operations for the New York Stock Exchange, said: “Everybody is terrified that this is a sign of a global slowdown.
In other words, not just a fall in Stock Exchange prices but a fall in actual production.
More on the “near-term forward spread” here:
journal.firsttuesday.us/using-the-yield-spread-to-forecast-recessions-and-recoveries/2933/
Not sure how reliable this is, but any downturn is predicted for 2020.
The good news, Alan, is that according to page 29 of the new Luxemburg pamphlet:
Workers everywhere are beginning to rise from their knees to their feet again.
!
Sorry to have to keep pointing this out but this article like many others is confusing about what any increase in global warming of 1.5 degrees C (or of 2 or 4) means because it omits to say in relation to what. If you don’t read these things carefully you might think that this is in relation to today’s average global temperature whereas it is in fact in relation to the pre-industrial times. As the temperature has already risen by about 1 degree since then, we are talking about a further rise of 0.5 (or 1.5 or 3) degrees by the end of the century.
So, when the caption below the photo says:
“A major IPCC special report released in October warns that even just a half-degree more of warming could be disastrous.
this is confusing. The “half-degree more” which the IPCC report refers to is not a half-degree more than the pre-industrial figure (taking it to a rise of 1.5 degrees since then) but a half-degree beyond 1.5 degrees to 2 degrees. In fact the whole IPCC report is making the rather obvious point that if the temperature rise is not limited to 1.5 degrees (since pre-industrial times) and rises to 2 degrees things will be worse.
The article again shows this confusion in the last section when, despite mentioning that there has already been a 1 degree rise since pre-industrial times, it repeats:
“Since the 19th century, the Earth has warmed by 1 degree Celsius. Now, a major IPCC special report released in October warns that even just a half-degree of warming could be disastrous.”
But IPCC report is not saying that a half-degree rise by 2100 would be disastrous. It is saying that the rise should be limited to this otherwise, if in particular it rises by a half-degree beyond that (i.e. to 2 degrees beyond pre-industrial levels) there is likely to be disastrous consequences.
The other thing of course is that the Common Dreams – or should it be Common Nightmares ! – article is dealing with is, as it states, the worst case scenario of “business-as-usual”, i.e. nothing being done to stop CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels continuing at their current rate. But they won’t (something is being done, however insufficient) and in fact can’t (it is only in theory that something can go on increasing exponentially as in practical there will always be physical obstacles to this, e,g. in this case coal or oil will become too expensive to extract).
This is not to say that there is not a serious problem that capitalism can’t cope with properly. There is, if only because the agreed aim amongst capitalist states is to try to limit the rise by 2100 to the 2 degrees the IPCC regards as disastrous and that they are not on course for this. Also, the further capitalist development of the “underdeveloped” countries, and the energy generation this will entail from whatever source is cheapest, will continue.
The article, however, does make a valid point when it says:
“apocalyptic thinking might be easy to mock, and not entirely helpful in inspiring political action if end times are nigh.”
Quite. If the end of the world is nigh, why bother?
A comrade who can read Chinese says that the placard the furthest to the left in the photo on the link reads: “We want a worker-peasant Marxist Group not a bureaucratic Marxist Group.”
Confirmation that the regime in China doesn’t want people there taking too literally its call to study Marxism:
According to today’s Times, the former head of the Marxist society wrote later:
We will make all-out efforts to fight for the students’ interests, to strive for room for Marxist societies to survive, to defend the glorious workers’ traditions, and to safeguard true Marxism!
Meanwhile the tame members of the reconstructed society were told by a professor that:
To oppose the party was to oppose Marxism.
Same old story there, then. It seems that the dissidents might be influenced by Maoism even though Mao would have agreed with the professor. Still, independent discussion of Marx’s ideas can’t be bad. In fact it can only be a welcome development.
Both those who control the Syrian government and those who control North East Syria claim to be “socialists” (but aren’t of course): the Baath party and the PKK, They are both secularist nationalists, the one Arab nationalists and the other Kurdish nationalists. Although this brings them into conflict over longer term goals, as secular nationalists they both have a common interest in opposing the Muslim fundamentalists supported by Turkey and/or inspired by Saudi Arabia whose aim is to turn the whole of Syria into an “islamic state”. There’s a certain logic in them getting together, especially with the US out of the way.
On this visit to troops in Iraq Trump declared that the US no longer wanted to be “the global policeman”:
President Donald Trump used a lightning visit to Iraq — his first with US troops in a conflict zone since being elected — to defend the withdrawal from Syria and declare an end to America’s role as the global “policeman.” (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-6531053/US-President-Donald-Trump-makes-surprise-Iraq-visit.html )
If true, this is surely a significant development. It would be a reversal of US policy since it belatedly joined in WW2 in 1942 and would meet the long-standing demand of groups like Stop the War (Corbyn must be happy too as that’s why he’s always been anti-American). But I don’t think that the Left is going to give him credit for this but will continue on autopilot denouncing “Trumpism” as more the enemy than capitalism. Of course we don’t know if the US really will return to isolationism.
The other thing that this confirms that it is the elected president and his administration not the unelected military that runs the US state. A repeat on a mini-scale of President Truman’s sacking of General MacArthur in 1951.
The “Great White Hope” was Jim Jeffries in a match against Johnson in July 1910. This was filmed and was widely circulated. Johnson won and (of course) the film was banned in the Southern States and in South Africa.
Here’s what the Socialist Standard of the time (August 1910) commented in marked contrast to London’s racist scribblings:
The risks of capitalists have been finely illustrated at the expense of the cinematograph people who shelled out some £30,000 to the principals in and promotor of the recent glove contest in America. One Jeffries essayed to “take up the white man’s burden,” which in this instance was to prove the superiority of the white over any other human complexion. It was thought a pretty safe calculation that the universal interest in the spectacle of “Mistah Jeff ” taking up the white man’s burden, would warrant the outlay, but alas ! for the “schemes of mice and men,” it was forgotten that the same pictures might show the black man helping him to lay it down again. Of course the overlooking of this contingency made all the difference.
Was it to be supposed that civilisation could stand it ? We all know that civilisation is based firstly upon the superiority of the white to the coloured races, and secondly upon the superiority of the capitalist to the ordinary or worker white. But what sort of an effect would these moving pictures have upon the social aspect in Africa, and what tale would they whisper into the ear of young India, and how would they be received on the banks of the Nile, where the burden of the white man’s civilisation sits none too lightly on brown backs ? The best black man has beaten the best white. The best black is better than the best white. The black is better than the white.
As Japan snatched the halo of sanctity from the Western brow when she drove the Russian legions before her, so these pictures of the best white man trying and failing to chew all he had bitten off might be taken by the dusky ones the world over as evidence that the miraculous no more belongs to the white skin than to the Western position, and that even the most godlike of white men has a crick in his neck if the axe is put on in the right place—and then goodbye to British misrule in India and Egypt, and farewell to white supremacy in East and West. And then when the worker white made the startling discovery that there was nothing inferior to him he might begin to seriously ask if there is anything superior, and such an inward searching really would place the foundations of our capitalist civilisation in jeopardy.
It seems that Sussex Police have put Inspector Cleusot in charge of the case. After arresting the wrong man (and his wife) he is now saying that there is no evidence that was a drone. Mind you, that’s a good place to start as we know from those who think they’ve seen a UFO that meterological phenomena, etc can be misinterpreted. UFOs are really UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). Maybe the Gatwick drone will turn out to be one too. I hadn’t thought of that.
For the period after 1920 there are these two books (which also cover the period before). Of course we are talking now not so much about the history of socialism as about the history of the main group of people in Britain who called themselves “socialists”:
Parliamentary Socialism by Ralph Miliband
The Labour Party — A Marxist History by Tony Cliff and Donny Gluckstein
Miliband, Cliff and Gluckstein, like Ensor and Beer, were aware of us but had their own, different political perspectives. Here they present a criticism of the Labour Party’s theory (“socialism” to be achieved gradually by a long series of reforms enacted by parliament) and practice (management of capitalism in the interest of the capitalist class), much of which we can go along with.
My bet is still that it’s the Unabomber.
That book is in the Party Library if you want to borrow it. Just contact the Library Committee.
Incidentally, before WWI Ensor (later Sir Robert) was a leading member of the ILP (a member of its National Council) and Labour member of the London County Council. The Party debated against him in January 1908, so he was aware of us and knew our position. The report of the debate in the February 1908 Socialist Standard reads:
At Poplar on Jan. 12th Anderson debated with R. C. K. Ensor the question of “Reform v. Revolution”. Ensor boasts of being the best educated man in East London, but his arguments on behalf of reforms were of the usual kind dealt with in these columns. Will Crooks M,P. was present at the debate and assisted the proceedings by shouting ” liar ! ” during the course of Anderson’s speech.
