ALB
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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/
Part Two on the Chartists was ok too.I now know how to pronounce Engels properly (it's more like eccles than angles).
kenax wrote:I assume you've heard of the Zeitgeist movement?Yes, we have. Here's some of what we've written on it:https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2013/no-1302-february-2013/zeitgeist-and-‘marxism’www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2017/no-1354-june-2017/peter-joseph-indicts-capitalism
Turkey's invasion of Syria has the full support of the religious establishment there:http://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/01274f26-9a5a-4479-8989-0967194d82adMeanwhile the Grand Mufty of Damascus supports the Syrian government:http://www.irna.ir/en/News/82802289So, it looks as if allah is facing the same dilemma as the christians’ god in the the First World War. He won’t know which way to turn. Of course, if he really was “All Mighty” or “the Greatest” then he could intervene to stop the slaughter and destruction. So either he's a bastard or doesn't exist (or is useless).
Oxfam tries to fight back:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/16/oxfam-boss-mark-goldring-anything-we-say-is-being-manipulated-weve-been-savaged
Quote:I ask if he thinks the anti-aid agenda is at the root of the attacks on Oxfam. “The intensity and the ferocity of the attack makes you wonder, what did we do? We murdered babies in their cots? Certainly, the scale and the intensity of the attacks feels out of proportion to the level of culpability. I struggle to understand it. You think: ‘My God, there’s something going on there.’” Is it that political opponents of international aid – the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Priti Patel – are exploiting Oxfam’s crisis? He hesitates. “Others are better to judge whether that’s right or wrong. I don’t think it’s right for Oxfam to say that at the moment, because even that feels self-serving. What I’m really concerned about is that this is not used as an approach to attack aid.” But it already is. “Yes. It is.”In December, Goldring was criticised for writing in the New Statesman that most of the globe’s new wealth has gone to the richest 1%. Does he think that has anything to do with the current political backlash against Oxfam? “Part of our mission,” he replies carefully, “is to challenge the things that keep people poor. You don’t resolve people’s poverty by helping with a school and a well and a nurse, if that’s all you do. We go beyond that and say, what’s keeping people poor? We challenge that and a lot of people don’t like that.” If Oxfam’s crisis is politically motivated, it’s working.I would have thought, though, that the damage has been done. That it's mission accomplished to discredit Oxfam for asking this question (even if what they propose should be done about it is quite inadequate).
