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This weekend’s i paper has an article entitled “Banks accused of ‘ripping off’ savers over interest rates”. Amongst those making this accusation is Positive Money:
“Simon Youel, head of policy and advocacy at research and campaign group Positive Money, said: ‘Banks have made record profits from increasing interest rates for borrowers while paying depositors insultingly small rates on their savings.’”
This is true but it is odd coming from an organisation which denies that banks are financial intermediaries borrowing from some at one rate (savers) and lending to others at a higher rates (eg mortgages) and claims that banks can create money out of thin air simply by making a loan.
If this claim was true then banks could make even bigger profits by simply creating the money to loan so avoiding having to attract and pay interest to savers. But the fact that they do need to attract savers shows that the claim is not true.
But then currency cranks are nothing if not illogical.
I’d also suggest instead of having “how we are different” from other parties, instead we should have “Why X doesn’t work”.
Actually, we do have something on our website that does this (even if it is not very easy to find):
The Tory candidate manifests himself:
He claims:
“There are four varieties of socialism on offer. If you don’t like any of them, if you don’t believe in socialism, you can vote for me.”
Actually, there is only one candidate who states both on the ballot paper and on their leaflets that they are standing for socialism. The other three he mentions are just offering tweaks to the existing capitalist system.
It would be more accurate to say that there are six varieties of capitalism on offer. So if you want capitalism you’re spoilt for choice. Vote for one of them.
But if you want socialism — the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life with production directly to meet people’s needs, not for profit — there is only one candidate standing for this.
There is also this:
https://finimize.com/content/china-unearths-massive-gold-find-worth-billions#
Of course that gold in the ground is not worth that much. In fact it’s not worth anything. That’s only its notional value if it had been mined and processed (and that its appearance on the market wouldn’t reduce the price of gold) but the geo-strategic point at the end is valid.
Another leftwing endorsement of Jackson Caines, from “the Collective”, a group that wants to form yet another left-of-Labour political party.
https://x.com/wearecollectiv_/status/1858922247479849211
More on “the Collective” here:
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2024/09/16/jeremy-corbyn-collective/
When the vacancy occurred we decided to contest the by-election as we had stood in the ward on three previous occasions. Little did we realise that the by-election would attract national attention.
We have even been accused by some of Caines’s supporters of splitting the anti-Labour vote — by the same sort of people who in years gone by used to accuse us of splitting the Labour vote.
Yesterday the remaining part of the Girdlestone estate was leafletted as well as commuters leaving Upper Holloway overground station.
Re the Durham Miners Gala, wouldn’t it be better to organise the debate against a Labourite rather than a Tory? Otherwise we would just be providing entertainment for the anti-Tory participants. It’s the Labour Party we need to hit and hard.
Stand outside businesses, stations, ect with placards challenging this current system in smart ways that will get people to notice, come talk to us or visit our site. Stuff like that.
But it seems that’s what noone wants to do and I don’t for the life of me understand why.Nobody here has suggested we shouldn’t do that. It’s the general strike idea that has been questioned.
Personally I prefer leafletting protest marches and door to door during elections or regular street stalls. But there is no objection in principle to members doing what you suggest here. Put it to your branch and see what they think or to South wales branch. They do something every Saturday.
The SWP intervene. Guess who they are supporting.
You’ve been on some of the fortnightly anti-Gaza war protest marches and so will have seen the variety of papers and leaflets on them calling for all sorts of ways to free non-Jewish workers in Palestine from direct oppression by the Israeli state.
“Smash Israel”, “Socialist intifada”, “workers government”, etc, etc. from the various Trotskyist and Maoists groups. I was going to say I hadn’t read them all but suspected that at least one of them would have called for a general strike.
I then checked and found that I was right:
This is from the “Workers Revolutionary Party”. But it hasn’t raised their profile nor the number of votes they get when they contest elections — they get about the same as us.
We certainly do need to do more and maybe different to draw attention to the need for socialism but starting a campaign for a general strike over the Gaza war wouldn’t do this. So it’s back to the drawing board.
Is that 1000 votes figure correct?
Actually, as recently as May this year we got more than that in the Greater London Assembly elections, even over 2000 in one constituency (even if it’s because GLA constituencies are bigger than parliamentary ones).
The highest number of votes we have ever got in an election was 4050 for the European Parliament elections in 2009 in the London Region.
The highest we have got in a parliamentary election was 899 in Bethnal Green in 1959.
Apparently this thread has been noticed on the Leftist Trainspotters Facebook page (yes, there is one). A Leninist makes the following sarcastic comment:
“An exciting run down of the SPGB’s byelection campaign in Islington.
As Lenin once said, ‘Hand a few leaflets out and hope for the best.’”As if Leninists didn’t do that.
Actually it is not entirely a myth. Here’s what our candidate for a municipal election in Glasgow in May 1962 stated in his election address:
“As a candidate for the Socialist Party of Great Britain, I do not beg for your vote on any reform. If, in fact, you want some reform of the present social system, then your vote is not for the Socialist Party of Great Britain.”
And went on:
“What I stress again and again, is that in order to bring about Socialism the majority must understand it. If you understand and desire Socialism, if you are aware that Capitalism can never operate for the benefit of the working class, then you will be aware that a vote for any of our opponents is a vote for the retention of Capitalism and a vote for the Socialist Party of Great Britain candidate is a vote registering your protest against Capitalism, a vote for Socialism—the new world.”
Ironically, we’d get more publicity (and get people thinking more) if we stood outside a bank with a placard saying “Who Need Money?”
Or outside a station with one saying “Why isn’t public transport free?”
Or something like that which is directly relevant to the case for socialism.
Regarding your other idea — of a general strike in Britain to stop the bombing of civilians in Gaza — obviously socialists want that to stop too, immediately. In fact we want the whole war to stop. But in practice that is just a declaration of principle, important though it is to state where you stand.
Unfortunately, unless those who directly control the Israeli killing machine decide to do so unilaterally, only the US government could bring effective pressure on the Israeli government to do this.
So a general strike in Britain, even if it could be organised, would have no effect. Any general strike would have to be in the US but the chances of that are less than zero.
To have even the slightest chance of succeeding, a general strike (any general strike) would have to have overwhelming popular support. But in both the US and Britain voters have just elected pro-Israel governments. And as has been pointed out many times, if people won’t vote for something they are unlikely to strike for it.
So a huge effort would have to be put in to get people to change their mind. But the time and energy involved would be more effectively used to get people to realise that wars are a product of the competitive struggle for profits over sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets and investment outlets and that, therefore, the only way to stop wars breaking out is to replace capitalism by socialism. Which of course is what we are doing all the time.
