ALB
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Yes, but the solution is not for workers to change their eating habits (though they can if they want to) but for them to change the basis of society from class ownership to common ownership of the means of producion so that food is no longer production for profit.
KAZ wrote:'Propaganda of the deed' and 'illegalism' – obviously there were dicks back in the day too.They are still about:http://www.ekathimerini.com/226293/article/ekathimerini/news/anarchists-threaten-escalation-in-violence
I don't smoke myself but you are changing the subject. There are penty of other food faddists in the SPGB — not just vegetarians, nature cure people and partisans of various different diets, fruit juice drinkers, even vegans. People smoke all sorts of things too. So you'd be in good company if you joined. But we don't regard choice of diet as a political matter but as a private one for each member to decide for themselves.
Yes, it does seem to be endemic up there:http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/10202346.Councillors_told_to_play_nice/
When the SPGB was founded a lot of anarchists really were the bomb-throwers they are caricatured as:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1910s/1911/no-86-october-1911/why-socialists-oppose-anarchismOthers were "individualists":http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/the-conflict-between-anarchism-and.htmlIt is not true, eiher, that anarchism is a subset of socialism. Some anarchists do stand for socialism (as a classless, stateless, moneyless, wageless society) but only a minority.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Should we drop the air of respectability and shamelessly go out of our way to shock to make our points?No.
I don't think that was the sort of thing he had in mind but,as set out in the chapter, the survival of law as such with law courts, barristers, police and all, to deal with anti-social behaviour and also civil and procedural disputes. Obviously there will be rules and regulations in socialism so that, to some extent, the argument was about the word "law". The majority view was, and still is, not to use that word in relation to socialism.
The whole on his online book Practical Socialism; Its Principles and Methods (which Impos1904 made a copy of before it was taken down) is now online again. It includes his controversial view on law in socialism (for which he never found majority support in the Party).
Quote:Introduction to Practical Socialism: Its Principles and Methods, 2006 What Socialism Means, 2006 The Myth of Nationalisation, 2006The Conflict between Utopia and Practical Socialism, 2006 Methods of Practical Socialism, 2006 Democratic Organisation, 2006 Socialism and Law, 2006 Organisation of Production, 2006 Information, Planning and Decision Making, 2006 Waste and Destruction, 2006 Advantages of Production Solely For Use, 2006 The Fetishism of Money, 2006 Socialism in the 21st Century, 2006Are you sure that wasn't a reference to Jacomb's support for the Second World War? Which would make the argument not so much about establishing political democracy as about how, once established, it could or should be defended.
Today's episode was alright as long of course that you realise that Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald were not socialists in our sense. The series continues next week but is likely to be less interesting as it will be mainly about the Labour Party:https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09t896q/episodes/guideThere was an indirect reference to what we did when she said that MacDonald didn't fancy spending his life speaking on street corners trying to persuade workers to become socialists.
Here is the Russian government's point of view:https://www.rt.com/news/419618-syria-ghouta-distorted-coverage/Of course all the big and medium-sized capitalist states represented in the "League of Bandits" that is the UN are hypocrites on this issue. They have all also either supported or themselves done the same thing when they consider their "vital interests" are at stake, e.g. Mosul, Gaza, the Kurdish cities of South East Turkey, Yemen. In fact at this very moment the Turkish state is planning a similar operation in the Syrian town of Afrin, invoking the "vital interests" let-out clause to go to war in the UN Charter as jusification. From a working class and a generl human point of view war is senseless killing and destruction and, as the slogan puts it, capitalism means war.
The fourth episode today on "The Revolutionaries" — the Social Democratic Federaton and the Socialist League — was a disappointment. There were factual errors, e.g. Engels (pronounced differently this time) was never a member of the SDF. Engels's detractor ex-Blairite MP, Tristram Hunt, was allowed to get a dig in about him. Too much importance was attached to Edward Carpenter. The Socialist League was said to have pioneered "identity politics". While the SDF was in at the founding of the Labour Party's forerunner, the Labour Representation Committee, she failed to mention that it soon left (with the support of those who later formed the SPGB).We got an indirect mention when it was stated that there were splits from the SDF on both the left and the right; not that we could reasonably have expected anything more than this.While, as others who have been following the series agree, the previous three episodes were a useful introduction to Owen, the Chartists and the origin of the co-operative movement, this one was misleading. Tomorrow it's Kei Hardie and Ramsay McDonald. I wonder what she'll make of them.
Background information here on the groups currently controlling East Ghouta (and their ideology) that the media here is not giving and which are currently putting the population there through hell by refusing to give up their control of the area:http://www.egyptindependent.com/rebel-groups-fighting-syrias-eastern-ghouta/
