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The nomination papers for us to stand in the three wards have now all been accepted, Our candidates (just names for people to put an X against if they want socialism) are:Isligton Junction ward: Bill MartinRichmond Barnes ward: Adam BuickSouthwark Borough & Bankside ward: Kevin ParkinThese are all in areas we contested in he Greater London Council elections in 2016.We won't know who our opponents are till after nominations close at noon on Friday. The election leaflet (based on the inserts we have been putting in national newspapers and magazines) will hopefully be delivered next Friday.
This idea of "equal recompense" for "equal work" is a reflection of the exchange of equal values in commodity society and makes no sense in socialist/communist society where there won't be commodity-production. The basic socialist/communist principle is "from each according to ability, to each according to needs". That's part of the ABC of socialism.
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.
