ALB
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I wasn’t expressing scepticism about a new recession coming (I think one will at some point as capitalist production is cyclical, but we can’t know when) but about the possibility of a no-deal Brexit scenario. It’s that that I don’t think will happen.
According to this from CNN it’s going to start on 30 March 2019:
The rest of the world should be far more afraid of a no-deal Brexit than it has been so far. Yes, this situation would be more damaging to Britain than to anyone else, but it is hard to see how a no-deal could take place that would not launch a global economic crisis and perhaps one to rival last decade’s financial crash in scale.
Personally I don’t think it’s going to happen, but you never know.
I hope there will be a speaker about being a socialist in a trade union as an example of being a socialist in a capitalist world.
Just finished reading his book. Reynolds is an anarchist with a good grasp of Marxian economics and makes the case that technological developments within capitalism are paving the way for
“A state of society in which wage labour and the production of value have been abolished. Each person contributes what they can according to their abilities and each person receives goods according to their needs.”
He calls this society “communism” and says further of it:
“a communist society would not compel its members to work for a wage. It would provide goods to its people for free, allowing them to fulfil their needs without having to worry about artificially produced scarcity. Production would be carried on entirely through voluntary work and would be defined by a cooperative spirit.”
Good stuff. The trouble is that, despite aiming to show that because of technological developments (3-D printers and automation where those who lose their jobs won’t be able to find employment in some other or new section of the economy as with past automation) production based on labour-value will collapse in the course of this century, he doesn’t see such a society as being the immediate aim.
Instead, disappointingly, he sees what he calls “socialism” as the immediate aim as a transition to a communist society. Defined as “a socio-economic system where the means of production are owned by, controlled by and operated for the benefit of the working class”, it turns out to be production for the market organised by workers’ cooperatives aiming to cover their costs. As he himself points out:
“It still requires forms of money, coercive taxation and meaningful scarcity to function.”
Proudhon’s “People’s Bank” is even to be revived.
Disappointing indeed, but nevertheless a straw in the wind that (real)socialism/communism is back on the agenda as an item for discussion amongst critics and opponents of capitalism.
More added. Click on title.
Capitalism Victorious in China December 1926
The Mask off in China May 1927
The Plebs on China July 1927
China Another Chapter August 1927Now 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.
