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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.
I see Kratakoa has erupted again. A big one, like that of 1883, could slow down global warming. As Wikipedia says of the 1883 eruption:
Average global temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 degrees Celsius in the year following the eruption. Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years and temperatures did not return to normal until 1888.
No, an ecowarrior attack on an airport would not be like a strike. All the two have in common, yes, is in being deliberate acts. But a strike is aimed at employers, with any harm or inconvenience to other workers being incidental or even accidental. An ecowarrior attack on an airport would be deliberately targeted at workers using it, either to express displeasure at them flying or to punish them for doing so. Quite different. Besides, a strike is part of the class struggle.
An ecowarrior attack is likely to be counter-productive even on its own terms. As Dave B has pointed out, those whose lifestyle is being criticised (in this case ordinary workers flying to a holiday destination) are likely, to defend their choice, to deny that there is a climate change problem and become or listen to climate-deniers.
Also, of course, we’d be hypocrites to sympathise with such a stunt. To be honest, I myself flew from and to Gatwick a couple of months ago, without feeling the slightest guilt. Many members will too (all the members of my branch do or have). And why not? Of course there’ll be airports and flights in socialism, though a trip in a balloon might be fun.
I agree there is a huge difference between death and harm but what they have in common is where the aim is to deliberately target workers.
The more valid comparison would be with the bombing of that pub in Birmingham and of the shopping centre in Wigan by IRA which were clearly anti-working-class in that they were directly aimed at harming workers.
For causing suffering and distress to tens of thousands of workers by disrupting and ruining their holidays. A direct attack on members of the working class.
The PKK had its origins in Maoism and, despite its change of aim, is still organised on top-down, Leninist lines. Ironically, it is this Leninist structure which has made its armed wing in Syria, the YPG, an effective fighting force. So no wonder the US decided to rely on them rather than the ragbag of unruly jihadists and simple gangsters that make up the other armed rebel groups.
