ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I didn't know Robin's arguments against the "Economic Calculation Argument" had been translated into Spanish.
The witch-hunt is now getting out of hand and there are other victims. This poor sod, who merely stated a historical fact, might even lose his job. He's a member of the Weekly Worker lot. We've met him at various meetings and whatever else the "CPGB" is it's not anti-semitic. Be interesting to see what their paper out tomorrow has say on it:https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/london-council-officer-suspended-for-nazizionist-comments-a3804626.htmlWhat a nasty little shit that Tory MP is.Edit: Just remembered we actually debated Stan Keable in September 2013.
It's clear that there's a full-scale witchhunt under way against Corbyn with the prosecutors being satisfied with him being burnt at the stake. Obviously it's ridiculous to claim that he's an anti-semite. He doesn't hate Jews and doesn''t want to discriminate against them. His crime in their eyes is taking the Palestine side in the Israel/Palestine conflict. Unfortunately It looks like his pursuers have won their propaganda campaign and established a change of meaning of anti-semitism to include opposition to the creation of the state of Israel, which before the last World War was the position of most of those calling themselves socialists (apart from the Zionists it was the anti-semitic Right who wanted a "Jewish homeland" as somewhere to expel Jews to). You don't have to agree with his politics to admire the man for standing up to the bigots who are pursuing him.
It's a bit surprising that there are members clamouring for us to enforce copyright law when we are against the whiole concept. The following resolution was carried at 2007 Conference:
Quote:Be it resolved that all material created and published by the Party shall be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs copyright licence.Which (our expert on copyright told us) means that anybody can use our material as long as they don't change it and acknowledge the source. The famous flag would seem to meet both conditions.
I was wrong. I thought he meant by socialism/communism what we do, but it turns out that he is a rigid labour-time (voucher) merchant. Pity.Also, of course, he's still stuck in the 18th century when it might have been possible to envisage and measure an individual's contribution to production. That era has long gone. Production has long been collective. The whole idea of socialism/communism is that what is collectively produced should be collectively owned and then shared out amongst all members of society in accordance with their needs. Critics of capitalism and its individualism had already realised this by the middle of the last century but one.This is wrong too:
The Great Originator wrote:It's because means of production are, as the total amount of social wealth is, limited, and it will always remain so.Of course, once the profit barrier has been removed, production can be redirected, and increased, to produce enough to meet the needs of everybody on the planet.
The irony (or whatever) is that anti-semitism would have virtually died out if the state of Israel had not been set up.
Yes, at some point, the WSPUS changed its name from "Workers Socialist Party" to "World Socialist Party". Not sure when.
The definition of anti-semitism on the US State Department's website, and the examples given, seems reasonable enough, except that they have slipped in this one:
Quote:Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavorOf course setting up the state of Isael was not racist if only because the Jews are not a race (no groups of humans are as races don't exist) but this pushes the definition of anti-semitism too far as this would seem to rule out one side in any historical or political discussion about whether — and of course where — Israel should have been established as a "Jewish homeland". And, as has just been pointed out, why can a case for not establishing a state for Kurds or Biafrans or whoever be regarded as legitimate but not a case for not establishing one for Jews?It is tantamount to saying that to be anti-Zionist is to be anti-semitic. Which would make us, and even Jewish reformist groups like the Bund, anti-semitic since, before Israel was set up, we and they consistently opposed setting up a separate state as a political objective for Jewish workers rather than socialism or working with other workers within the existing state in which they lived.
Just looked up the author and it's nothing to do with us. The present Chinese government might be embarrassed too. See here.
Stan Parker put together a collection of articles under that title produced on our photocopier but it wasn't 381 pages.
The Notice of Poll was published on Tuesday. Nominations have to be by midday next Friday (6 April). In the meantime members of the branches involved are collecting the signatures of 10 local electors required to stand. Those for Barnes have already been collected and are due to be handed in on Tuesday.
Mike Foster wrote:And we need banners for people to muster under!Exactly. As Clause 8 of our Declaration of Principles puts it:
Quote:The Socialist Party of Great Britain, therefore, enters the field of political action determined to wage war against all other political parties, whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist, and calls upon the members of the working class of this country to muster under its banner to the end that a speedy termination may be wrought to the system which deprives them of the fruits of their labour, and that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom.Sad that some members want to muck about with the wording of this fine, rousing historical statement. Of course everything and anything is up for discussion but, hopefully, they will get the same response as to their attempt last year to abandon the publication of the Socialist Standard.
acke wrote:I have see so many web pages of socialist and communist movements who advocate more or less the redistribution of the current wealth. Well – some years ago the total wealth of High Net Worth Individuals (those with investable assets of 30.000.000 or more) was mere 50 trillion$. If we distribute this walth to the 5 billions of the most impoverished men and women then we get one-time injection of 10.000$ per capita. This is small amount for one time injection and it does not solve the problem of poverty. 10.000 is secondary education or higher education or housing or cost of raising children – only one thing and not all of then.Good point but Socialists (as opposed to naive and/or confused reformists) have long ridiculed the idea that we want to divide up the wealth of the wealthy, as this passage from a pamphlet from 1876 shows :
Quote:Concerning the division of money, I must relate an anecdote invented to ridicule people who are represented to have such intentions. One day in 1848, as the story goes, Baron Rothschild took a walk on the Common of Frankfort-on-the-Main. Two labourers met him and accosted him thus: “Baron, you are a rich man; we want to divide with you.” Baron Rothschild, not the least puzzled, took out his purse good-humouredly and answered: “Certainly! We can do that business on the spot. The account is easily made. I own 40 millions of florins; there are 40 millions of Germans. Consequently each German has to receive one florin; here is your share;” and giving one florin to each of the labourers, who looked at their money quite confused, he walked off smiling. This teaches that the division of money is but an idle invention.What socialists want is the common ownership of the means of wealth production, so that they can be used to produce things and provide services to directly meet people's needs. Today, given the current level of technology, to produce enough to go over to the principle of "from each according to their ability, to each according to theirs needs".
It is unfair to describe Prakash as a rightwing defenders of capitalism. He's a communist/socialist in our sense as this article of his shows:http://prakashrp-1.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/on-definition-of-communism.htmlThe problem is that he wants recognition as the "Originator" of the idea, a throwback to the the pre-Marx days of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier. It's infuriating arguing with him as he just keeps saying "I am the Great I Am".It must have been just as infuriating to have argued with them.
