ALB
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Of course I did. I challenged the view expressed by the CWO speaker that the overthrow of the Tsar in March had been a proletarian revolution but that it had been a bourgeois revolution. I agreed that the bourgeoisie proved unable to hold on to power and that in the chaos the Bolsheviks, as a determined well-organised group, were able to seize power in a well-planned coup and bring about some sort of order, but that in the end all they could do was develop capitalism in one form or another as anyone familiar with Marx could have predicted.Their reply was that the Bolsheviks were internationalists and had only seized power because they expected to soon be relieved by the world revolution that they had started spreading especially to Germany and that when this failed they were doomed. I didn't come back and point out that Lenin was deluding himself in thinking that a world socialist revolution was imminent and that he mistook deep discontent amongst large sections of the working class in the defeated countries (Germany and the remnants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) about living conditions as a sign of this.The ICC said that, because the SPGB had opposed WWI and initially had not been as hostile to the new regime as we later became, we were still part of the "proletarian milieu".
I went to this. It was interesting and (unlike some ICC meetings in the past) good-humoured. About 30 people there, mainly ICC and CWO members. They defended the "proletarian character" of events in Russia in 1917 as the overthrow of, first, the Tsar and, then, the Provisional Government as the work of workers organised in "soviets" with the Bolshevik Party merely as an instrument in their hands.Of course they realised that things went wrong, especially when the expected world revolution failed to materialise, and expressed the view that it had ended in the worst possible way — the evolution of Bolshevik rule into a brutal state-capitalist dictatorship claiming to be "socialist", so besmirching and discrediting the whole idea (which is indeed how it ended and the effect this had). They didn't spell out what a "better" failure would have been, presumably either the Bolsheviks handing over power to some other political group (never on the cards) or the overthrow of the Bolshevik government by reactionary elements followed by a massacre as after the Paris Commune in 1871 (but could they really be wishing for that?).Sold some copies of our Martov pamphlet. I re-read it after the meeting and it really is hard-hitting in its criticism of the soviets as a magic formula, quoting Bolsheviks as saying that they were only useful if controlled by them. Martov also denounces the aim of "decomposing" the State into a federation of local soviets (once for a while, believe it or not, endorsed by the Bolsheviks even if this was only a ploy to win support) , as opposed to capturing, democratising and using it, as an anarchist rather than a Marxist position. Which might explain why the CWO are allowed to have a stall inside the Anarchist Bookfair..
"House of Delegates". I like it. Good new name in Socialism for the House of Commons and the House of Representatives.
You can see why people on benefits wouldn't want to vote for the Tories, but is there evidence that they vote Labou rather than adopting a "they're all the same" or a "plague on both your houses" attitude and not voting at all?. In any event, surveys suggest that Corbyn activists are mainly university-educated young people. Labour, as distinct from Corbyn, has the support of public sector workers and so-called "ethnic minorities".
Yes, she does seem to contradict herself. The argument between the two of them seems to be about whether banks create new money "from thin air" or "out of nothing".
jondwhite wrote:Were any volunteers able to come forward for these?Don't fancy the SWP or Historical Materialism ones but can go to the ICC/CWO one on Saturday with a dozen or so copies if I can avoid the crowds on the way celebrating the First World Slaughter..
Interesting. Was this an election to the Virginia State legislature ("House of Delegates") rather than the national "House of Representatives"?
It's not as if Labour politicians don't know about this. Here's Harold Lever (later a Cabinet Minister and a Lord) over 50 years ago, though it's possible that they too have forgotten or don't know their history:
Quote:Labour's economic plans are not in any way geared to nationalisation; they are directed towards increased production on the basis of the continued existence of a large private sector. Within the terms of a profit system it is not possible, in the long run, to achieve sustained increases in output without an adequate flow of profit to promote and finance them. The Labour leadership knows as well as any businessman that an engine which runs on profit cannot be made to move faster without extra fuel. So, though profits may be squeezed temporarily by taxation and Government price policy, they must and will, over a longer period, increase significantly even if not proportionately to increased production (Observer, 3 April 1966).Eleven more have been added (from Imposs1904's MySpace blog). Click on title to read:
Quote:9 November, 2017: Added to the Edgar Hardcastle Internet Archive:The Peace Society, November 1921 Workers Under “Labour Rule”,February 1929 The Passing of Snowden, June 1937 The Coming Slump: Does the Gold Standard Matter?, October 1944 Where Do They Go From Here?, April 1946 What Comes After the Labour Government?, July 1947 War and Secret Diplomacy, September 1948 Attlee and Bevan: Much Ado About Nothing, April 1952 The Future according to Galbraith, October 1967 The Report on Trade Unions, August 1968 Marx the Revolutionary: 100 Years of Development and Distortion, March 1983jondwhite wrote:I thought jacobin was DSA whose origins at least are the same as ours, pre-Leninist socialism.Ok (but of course trots infiltrate evertwhere) but why choose so obviously an elitist name as "Jacobin"? Have they explained this somewhere?
jondwhite wrote:The big question is why a "workers hero" is pandering to the CBI.Because Labour's plans to reform capitalism involve leaving "the commanding heights of the economy" in private capitalist hands; which means that a Labour government under Corbyn will depend on the capitalist firms' willingness to go on investing which they will only do if the government does nothing to endanger their profits and their profit-making. It's so obvious that this is going to happen but there are many, including some ex-socialists who ought to know better, who don't realise this and don't want to.
Actually, it is not really surprising that a magazine calling itself Jacobin should like Lenin. After all, didn't Lenin famously/notoriously say:
Quote:The Jacobin indissolubly linked to the organisation of the proletariat now conscious of its class interests, is precisely the social democratic revolutionary. (One Step Forward, Two Steps Back)In fact , won't this why they chose the title of the magazine they did?
But it doesn't say that the grant was given to the AV Committee but simply that it was decided to spend that amount of money !
