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In this article, from a series he wrote in 1921 on Russia:https://www.marxists.org/archive/mcclatchie/russiastands_july.htmhe quotes a translation in Sylvia Pankhurst's Workers Dreadnought  of a speech Lenin gave;

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Under the heading "Elections to the Constituent Assembly" the following appeared in the Workers' Dreadnought, 21.8.20:"This is a process which the representatives of the Second International have never been able to understand, namely that the proletariat can be victorious without conquering a majority of the population. To limit or condition this victory to the acquisition of a majority of votes at an electoral contest under bourgeois domination is evidence of chronic intellectual indolence, or else, quite simply, of a device to deceive the workers. In order to bring the majority over to its side, the proletariat must first overthrow the bourgeoisie and take possession of the power of government, and then, after having destroyed the old state apparatus, introduce the Soviet system, whereby the domination and authority of the bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeois democrats over the non-proletarian labouring masses is at once nullified. It must finally complete the destruction of the influence of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeois democrats over the majority of the non-proletarian labouring masses by satisfying their economic needs in a revolutionary manner, at the expense of the exploiters."

Comparison with a more recent translation of what Lenin wrote shows that this was not an accurate translation.

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The traitors, blockheads and pedants of the Second International could never understand such dialectics; the proletariat cannot achieve victory if it does not win the majority of the population to its side. But to limit that winning to polling a majority of votes in an election under the rule of the bourgeoisie, or to make it the condition for it, is crass stupidity, or else sheer deception of the workers. In order to win the majority of the population to its side the proletariat must, in the first place, overthrow the bourgeoisie and seize state power; secondly, it must introduce Soviet power and complete]y smash the old state apparatus, whereby it immediately undermines the rule, prestige and influence of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeois compromisers over the non-proletarian working people. Thirdly, it must entirely destroy the influence of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeois compromisers over the majority of the non-proletarian masses by satisfying their economic needs in a revolutionary way at the expense of the exploiters.

This is from here :https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/dec/16.htmSo, Lenin was not saying that socialism could be established without a majority wanting and understanding it, but the lesser error of saying that no such majority can emerge as long as the capitalist class retain political power and that a socialist minority therefore has to overthrow capitalist rule and then educate a majority into wanting socialism.  Of course this didn't work, and was never going to work, and led to the minority evolving into a new privileged, ruling class themselves. Others supported this mistaken view from Blanqui in the 19th century to Marcuse, Castro and Che Guevara last century.

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He is the person who once talked about "fully-automated luxury communism", isn't he?  After hearing him talk on this on the radio we contacted him to see if he'd be interested in doing a talk on this (he had mentioned the abolition of the wages system) but he didn't reply. I think he's been all over the place politically, Green Party, Labour Party, and still is, a Brexshiteer and now for Remain (with British capitalism as it is):https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/aaron-bastani/why-ive-changed-my-mind-on-brexit

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The Bank of International Settlements in Basel has just produced a report setting out why bitcoin (and similar so-called "cryptocurrencies") will never replace fiat money:http://www.itpro.co.uk/strategy/28261/bitcoin-newsThe BIS is the central banks' international so this is what you'd expect the "gnomes of Zurich" to say, isn't it? Perhaps, but that doesn't make what they say here wrong. Bitcoins are based on nothing. Fiat money is backed by the State and so has less chance of vanishing into thin air.In fact, ordinary money is better in this sense than all the "alternative" currency schemes that have been proposed, LETS as well as Bitcoin. Bitcoin was a scheme thought up by anarcho-capitalists to create a currency independently of the State. It is this but it is not only anarchists who don't like to be regulated by the State — drug dealers, arms merchants, money launderers, tax dodgers and sanctions busters don't either.As long as capitalism lasts ordinary State-backed money is going to be best (safest) for the sort of monetary transactions workers have to engage in. The only viable alternative to it of course is a society based on common ownership and production directly for use not profit where it too would become redundant.

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Sympo wrote:

Does that mean that it's the idea of SNLT that convinces you that the LTV is correct?

No.

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Not split, but expelled by a vote of the whole membership for breach of the Party's democratic procedures by deliberately and repeatedly infringing a Conference Resolution endorsed by a Party Poll.

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Actually, as the Socially Necessary Labour Time theory of value is one variety of the Labour Theory of Value, it's more the other way round: if the SNLT is true, then the LTV must be as well. Of course not all Labour theories of Value are true, for instance not one which says that the value of a commodity is determined by the actual amount of labour incorporated in it (actual labour time taken to produce it, from start to finish) nor one which says that the value of a commodity is determined by the labour added at the last stage of its production. Both, incidentally, misunderstandings about Marx's LTV.

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Good for him. That part of the definition is flawed and biassed. It gives as an example of anti-semitism:

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denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination.

i.e. denying Zionism's basic tenet. It's like saying opposing an independant Scottish state is, by definition, to be anti-Scottish (even if you are Scottish yourself).

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The internet committee have uploaded all the articles mentioned on this thread to the Archives section on our website here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/archiveSo they can be accessed here too, along with hundreds of other articles from past issues of the Socialist Standard.

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More, from 1931 including recording and analysing the failure and collapse of the Second Labour government. Click on title to read:

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13 June, 2018: Added to the Edgar Hardcastle Internet Archive:The Fallacy of Empire Trade, March 1930 Why Socialists Oppose Family Allowances, February 1931 The Case against The "Living Wage", March 1931 The Mosley Party. Old Fallacies Re-Furbished, April 1931 The Economic Crisis and the Workers, July 1931The Socialist Party and War, August 1931 The Labour Party and the Crisis, October 1931

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

It prohibits the “publishing or uttering of matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion” Ryan McChrystal of Index on Censorship commented:“Just ignoring the law because no one is using it right now means you are forgetting that, one day, someone might.”

I would have thought this might be a case of letting sleeping dogs lie. I don't know if anyone has been prosecuted under it but it should be difficult to convict anyone as both "intention" and "outrage among a substantial number" have to be proved. Difficult, I would have thought.I don't know about Ireland but in Britain anyone doing something like that can be prosecuted under other laws. In fact I was recently warned by the police under Section 4 of the Public Order Act for telling a cyclist to fuck off (they're a nuisance when they cycle in front of you in the middle of the road at 12 mph) because I was alleged to have caused fear or offence to a single person.So I suspect that what will happen if this is repealed is that it will be replaced by some more realistic threat to criticising religion. As I sad, maybe better to let sleeping dogs lie.

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My guess was right. It was what Positive Money advocate:http://positivemoney.org/2018/06/positive-money-welcomes-unprecedented-swiss-sovereign-money-referendum/http://positivemoney.org/2018/06/vollgeld-referendum-result-positive-money-response/

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

A helpful quote from the author to understand Marx

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Marx recognized the possibilities of reforming capitalism, ultimately based on relative surplus value. He himself refers to them in the Preface to the 1st edition of Capital, pointing out that “present society is not a solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and is constantly changing”. Marx, however, showed at the same time the limits of these possibilities.

I don't agree that  this is a helpful quote. It's a distortion of what Marx meant. In that Preface Marx is not talking about the possibility of reforming capitalism so as to make things better for workers. He is talking about the possibility of society being transformed into something radically different. In other words, revolution not reform: Here is the whole paragraph:

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In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the materials it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest. The English Established Church, e.g., will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1/39 of its income. Now-a-days atheism is culpa levis, as compared with criticism of existing property relations. Nevertheless, there is an unmistakable advance. I refer, e.g., to the Blue book published within the last few weeks: “Correspondence with Her Majesty’s Missions Abroad, regarding Industrial Questions and Trades’ Unions.” The representatives of the English Crown in foreign countries there declare in so many words that in Germany, in France, to be brief, in all the civilised states of the European Continent, radical change in the existing relations between capital and labour is as evident and inevitable as in England. At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Mr. Wade, vice-president of the United States, declared in public meetings that, after the abolition of slavery, a radical change of the relations of capital and of property in land is next upon the order of the day. These are signs of the times, not to be hidden by purple mantles or black cassocks. They do not signify that tomorrow a miracle will happen. They show that, within the ruling classes themselves, a foreboding is dawning, that the present society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and is constantly changing.

"Radical change in the existing relations between capital and labour" is what he had in mind, not reforms. Marx did think that pro-worker reforms could be introduced under capitalism, e.g. the Factory Acts, but that is not what he is talking about here.

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Alan has dug out a 1962 MA thesis of a US student, James Martin Swanson, on “An Analaysis if the Jewish Influence on Martov’s Revolutionary Career, 1891-1907”:https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/33368090.pdfAs it’s not easy to read online, here’s a summary ofthe part it on the so-called "Jewish Question":.Swanson’s basic thesis is:

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Although Martov's ideas were later to become altered in some respects, the crux of this discussion of the Jewish influence on Martov's revolutionary world view is his belief that emancipation must come about through identification with, if not participation in, the emancipation of the "universal struggling workers," in other words, through a revolution. (p.25)

In other words, that Martov thought that Jewish emancipation could only come about as part of the emancipation of all humanity.Swanson draws a distinction between the Russian-speaking Jewish intelligentsia and the Yiddish-speaking Jewish proletariat and summarises the general view of the Jewish intelligentsia as:

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The Jewish intelligent [sic] did resent the autocracy for its oppressive measures against Russian Jewry but he also saw in a revolution the chance to be the equal of the Russian. To bring about this revolution, to guarantee the equality of the Jew and the Russian, the Jewish Intelligentsia could not "wait for assistance from above," as Martov was to say in I891, they had to work for it. The Jewish proletariat had to push aside their peculiar habits fostered by their life in the ghetto. They had to speak the Russian language. They had to break away from their religion which regulated every act of the daily existence—including dress and diet—which stood in the way of Russification. (p.11)

He says that Martov’s experience in exile in Vilna (now Vilnius) in Lithuania to wjhere he chose to be exiled from St. Petersburg, as well as leading him to switch from propaganda to agitation, also changed his view on the use of Yiddish (if only to make agitation easier, indeed possible there):

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On May 1, 1895 Martov delivered an address, later published as a pamphlet under the title: "A Turning Point in the Jewish Labor Movement", which was to become an important document in Russian-Jewish socialist literature. Martov’s argument was that the success of socialism was due to the introduction of democratic and economic elements into the movement. He went on to point out that the hope of socialism in the future would rest on the solution it provides for the needs of the masses, and that the economic struggle of the worker would naturally lead him to battle eventually for political freedom. Most important, Martov’s May Day speech urged the organization of a special Jewish workingmans’ party. This was the first time in a public speech that a social democrat made any distinction between the needs of the Jewish worker and the Russian worker. Martov also suggested that the language spoken and written by the propagandist be changed from Russian to Yiddish—the only language understood by the masses of Jewish workers. (pp.27-.

However, when the Bund adopted a nationalist-autonomist position Martov opposed this:

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In 1901, however, the Bundist movement reached a turning point. At the Fourth Convention in Bialstok, the Bund expressed itself on the question of Jewish Nationalism. The convention pronounced itself in favor of a Russian state based on a federation of nationalities in which the Jews would become a constituent part. Martov opposed the declaration of the Bundist convention claiming that the whole idea was "bourgeois." But the assimilationist policy of the majority of Jewish intellectuals was overridden by the non-intelligentsia section of the Bund. (p.31)

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The reason Martov opposed the Bund was probably because the Jewish organization would not comply to the Iskra demand for a centralized party. Henry J. Tobias in his analysis of the relationship between the Bund and Lenin has this to say about Martov' s criticism of Bundist separatism:

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“Martov… criticized the Bund for its efforts to squeeze the Jewish workers into narrow nationalist channels when the chief evil afflicting them was a government policy which retarded their rapprochement with the surrounding population. He pointedly contrasted the Bund's behaviour with that of the Jewish workers in the South who worked hand in hand with their Russian colleagues for the general demands of the proletariat.”

While Martov had declared his opposition to the "nationalistic" trend followed by the Bund at their Congresses, in all fairness to the Bund, it would be a mistake to say that nationalism in 1903 was very strong. (pp. 68-9).

Swanson says that:

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The Jewish Bund after 1903 was hardly more than a trade union. (p. 86)

And of Trotsky at this time:

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Trotsky was once asked if he regarded himself as a Jew or a Russian. He replied: "Neither, I am a Social Democrat, and nothing else."

Good answer !

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Yes, I remember reading about that a few years ago myself:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2039453/How-America-planned-destroy-BRITAIN-1930-bombing-raids-chemical-weapons.htmlChemical weapons too ! I think it was a dispute about who was to control oil in Saudi Arabia.

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Yes, I remember reading about that a few years ago myself:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2039453/How-America-planned-destroy-BRITAIN-1930-bombing-raids-chemical-weapons.html

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