ALB
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Now the government is resorting to what the Americans call “pork barrell” politics to try to get its deal through, with a Labour MP demanding money for areas that voted Leave in return for voting for the deal:
Of course they’d already done this to win the support of the DUP. As their leader in Westminster said after the vote of no confidence in the government was rejected.
The DUP props up the government with a Confidence and Supply Agreement in parliament.
After the vote, Mr Dodds tweeted: “The result of tonight’s vote shows the importance of our Confidence and Supply Agreement. DUP votes once again make the difference.”
He later added: “I’m always delighted when our opponents illustrate the strength of that relationship that we have, and what is delivering for Northern Ireland.
“When the people of Northern Ireland see the investment in education, in health and infrastructure they will thank this Parliament and this party and this Government for that extra investment.
It might work,
Although we are all speculating here, I think it is safe to assume on the basis of past and present experience that, as long as the vote exists (and there’s no reason to suppose that it won’t continue to) then people will use it even if without illusions. So, when the movement for a stateless, classless, moneyless, wageless society begins to take off it will express itself, among other ways, electorally, despite what anarchists and other abstentionists might be advocating from the sidelines.
So the question of how a minority of revolutionary councillors and MPs should do cannot be avoided. They could in theory decide to abstain on everything, but insofar as concessions and mitigations can be obtained I can’t see this position being maintained (except in the last days of capitalism when there’s about to be a socialist majority). That’s just not how people react — if they can see that things can be made slightly better or less worse they go for it. Ironically perhaps, the anarchist organisation to which KAZ belongs doesn’t just go for revolution and refuse concession,s as he says socialist councillors should, but devotes most of its activity to trying to get concessions.
Of course there will be dangers if the situation of being a minority in a local council or parliament becomes semi-permanent. The movement has to go on growing. If it stops then the same problem that the German Greens faced will risk happening — “realos” will emerge to challenge the “fundis”. “Possibilism”, or going for what you think you can realistically get in the immediate, is unfortunately the default position.
Rule 27 of our Rulebook reads:
Candidates elected to a Political office shall be pledged to act on the instructions of their Branches locally, and by the Executive Committee locally.
So, from our point of view, there is no problem with councillors being instructed by non-councillors. But there are two differences with “Socialist Action” in Seattle. First, Sawant was elected on a programme of reforms not on a straight socialist ticket. Second, all of meetings, including those to instruct socialist councillors, will be open to the public.
In the internal document “Socialist Alternative” acknowledge the tensions between their councillor elected by reform-minded non-members of their party and their local and national executive committees who want to prioritise their wider aim of “building a vanguard party”. Since a socialist councillor would also be elected by non-members even if on a straight socialist programme there could well be a tension about who the councillor was answerable to: the socialist-minded but non-member workers who elected them or the members of the party locally?
This is a less remote practical problem than dealing with a socialist MP, as what if ex-comrade Colborn had been elected for us to Seaham Town Council as opposed to for a group of anti-Labour independents?
A comrade has found this article on the activities of Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant and “Socialist Alternative”, the organisation she belongs to (the equivalent in the US to SPEW here).
It confirms that Trotskyist tactics are the same the whole world over. Of course a socialist councillor would be responsible to the socialist party outside the council. The difference is that “Socialist Alternative” is not organised on a democratic basis but run, as all Leninist organisations are, by a self-perpetuating elite.
Listen to this MEP (from the Belgian Green Party) explain that the EU insists on the backstop to prevent Northern Ireland being used as a backdoor to dump products that do not meet the rules of the Single Market and why they can’t give way on this point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsGuZGjtkrc
If May wants a legally binding document that the backstop won’t be permanent then the EU will demand a legally binding document from the UK that they won’t allow goods that do not meet the rules of the Single Market to be introduced into it via Northern Ireland (which is what the backstop amounts to and which they thought they’d got).
As we’ve been saying, it’s all about the trading arrangements of the capitalist class. It’s very sad to see workers demonstrating outside Parliament taking sides in this.
Yes, the vultures are indeed gathering and according to this article in last Thursday’s Times that’s what the extreme Brexiteers really want:
As Simon Nixon explained:
They complain that a close relationship with the European Union will require Britain to remain closely tied to rules over which they will have no say. But the real problem is that Brexiteers know that a deep free-trade deal with the EU would preclude their real prize, a deep free-trade deal with the US, which is keen to extend its own legal order and is sure to make any future deals contingent on Britain recognising American rules, not least in controversial areas such as agriculture.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them weren’t on retainers from US drug and agribusiness corporations. Somebody should check.
This, incidentally, will be the reason why the EU will not concede on the Irish backstop. UK politicians are concerned that it could theoretically tie the UK permanently into the EU customs union. The EU is afraid that, without it, Ireland could become the point of entry for products that don’t meet EU rules (eg chlorinated chickens and, in particular, GM crops). Especially as May is now reneging on something the UK had already signed, a classic case for them of perfide Albion
In the interest of intellectual honesty, I should point out that, though we didn’t intervene in the argument between the ACG and CWO over the “semi-state”, our position would have been closer to that of the CWO. After all, we argue that the working class should take over control of the state (via elections and parliament), lop off its undemocratic features, and use it to disposses the capitalist class and coordinate the introduction of socialism. You could even describe this residual state as a “semi-state” if you wanted (but we’re not going to as this is Lenin’s term). And of course, once socialism had been established, it would disappear, with any useful administrative parts being incorporated into the democratic administrative of socialist society.
The difference between us and the CWO would be (1) they argue that the working class should smash the existing state in an armed insurrection and then create a “semi-state”, and (2) that this is not what the Bolsheviks did, not even for a couple of weeks.
The CWO said it was a term Lenin coined to make the point that the state the Russian Revolution would establish was supposed to be temporary and a transition to a stateless society. The anarchists asked it meant that there would be a semi-army, a semi-police force, semi-courts and semi-prisons.
Just done a search and Lenin used the term in chapter 1 of his The State and Revolution where he wrote:
What withers away after this revolution is the proletarian state or semi-state.
Continuing what others are saying about Brexit, here’s the position of the Anarchist Communist Group from the latest issue of their paper Jackdaw, very similar to what we say :
The European Union seems some sort of advance on a stand-alone UK. Free movement of people exists within its borders. And its laws offer some limited but nonetheless real benefits to working people. But how long will these benefits last? Given the pasting given to Syriza in Greece and recent threats of the same treatment to Italy, the answer is ‘not long’. And such freedom of movement applies only to Europeans – the EU’s whites only Fortress Europe policy accounts annually for the deaths of thousands of helpless migrants.
Why should we be interested in their trading arrangements, the relations between their governments, the ‘deals’ they make between themselves? Our business is what concerns us, our lives, where we live and where we work. In or out we will still be under the thumb of our bosses. In or out, the destruction of the National Health Service will continue. In or out, sickness and unemployment benefit will continue to be eroded. The only fair and sane deal is the destruction of capitalism and all states — including potential super-states such as the European Union. We should settle for nothing less than this.Actually, there is already a banner hanging on the wall at Head Office which proclaims (speaking from memory): ABOLISH OF THE WAGES SYSTEM. NO WAR BETWEEN PEOPLES, NO PEACE BETWEEN CLASSES. In fact, that’s better, i.e. clearer, than NO WAR BUT THE CLASS WAR. I think it was inherited from Edinburgh or Glasgow Branch.
Alan, you write: “in all my political life, ever since the Vietnam war, it has been the very same problem we have encountered. We have not succeeded in presenting the alternative interpretations, either to the left or the right.(…) Other than doing what we always do, is there another strategy we can employ to counter the polarization of views and emphasise the socialist position of plague on both houses?
We are not alone about this. In fact it was one of the things discussed at the meeting between the ACF and the CWO in Dorking yesterday (see Events section). Suggested reasons as to why people feel compelled to take sides were: learning to do this in school on any issue, sympathy for the underdog, as well as “anti-imperialism” and nationalism when “your” state is involved. No alternative was suggested other that doing what we/they always do: stating the view, through leaflets, posters, meetings, and nowadays social media, that no working class interest is involved justifying the working class taking sides or joining in any war and why.
“Stop the War”, i.e stop the killing and destruction, is not such a bad slogan as such, except that it has been hijacked by those who want the other side to win (though during the Vietnam War these elements were more honest, advancing the slogan “Victory to the Vietcong”). “No War But the Class War” is much better, though harder to get across as it’s not immediately clear outside the so-called “milieu” what is meant by “class war”. “Against All War” (which we have occasionally used) avoids this but suggests pacifism (which at least is right about workers not joining in, if for the wrong reason)..
Actually, it was quite an interesting even enjoyable meeting. Three of us went, making up 20% of those there. We had assumed that it was just a general discussion meeting, but it was a meeting between the ACF and the CWO to revive a “No War But the Class War” group, to counter those who argue that workers should take sides in wars, as in Syria and the coming one in Venezuela, rather than proclaim that workers had no interest justifying this and that nationalism was a poison and “anti-imperialism” an invalid standard to judge by; a position we have always taken of course. It was a bit embarrassing in fact when they asked us if the SPGB would join the group. All the same, there was also time to discuss wider issues such as the changing composition of the working class and what makes individuals revolutionary and why we are so few. There was a clash between the ACF and the CWO about the latter’s advocacy of a “semi-state”.
On war, the CWO has the position that another world war is inevitable in order to devalue capital by destroying it so that capital accumulation can continue, something they predicted in the 1970s and are still expecting. The ACF and us argued that, while capitalism was the cause of wars due to its built-in competition over markets, source of raw materials, investment outlets and trade routes, a world war was neither necessary nor inevitable (in fact not really likely); but rather that war would continue to take the form of scattered proxy wars, in which the “Great Powers” (and some lesser ones) use locals in disputed areas as cannon fodder to further their interests, and probably become more frequent. Despite this divergence, everyone agreed that workers should not take side in wars.
After the formal meeting, we exchanged anecdotes and jokes about the Trotskyists, and also the Bolsheviks (the CWO didn’t join in that part).
As you know, Keefs was not present.
It’s also a modern application of the Monroe Doctrine, i.e. the Americas are our backyard where we can do what we like, so European powers keep out.
To continue recording what the various Leninist groups are saying about Brexit, here’s an extract from yesterday’s issue of the <News Line (yes, it’s still a daily):
It has become crystal clear that carrying through Brexit will take an explosion of working class anger and a workers revolution.
Which planet are they living on?
