ALB
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Here's Steve Coleman's analysis of the Trump phenomenon made before he got elected:https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-both-the-old-crazy-and-the-new-normal-58728It seems he hasn't completely lost his old style of writing as when he used to write for the Socialist Standard
After Brexit. Now this. What next? Any bets on Marie Le Pen as president of France next year?There does seem to be a trend against globalization and a retreat into narrow nationalism. This is what happened the last time there was a prolonged period of slump and stagnation, in the 1930s. Whether there'll be a return to trade wars as then remains to be seen.The small mercy is that politically this is not taking the form of a movement to replace political democracy by political dictatorship. In fact it's rather more the opposite, with both "left" and "right" demanding more accountability and more direct democracy. That won't make any difference to the way capitalism operates (to put profits before people) though. What happens, then, when Trump fails to bring "prosperity" for the victims of globalisation he appealed to and who voted for him?
alanjjohnstone wrote:Is it simply because of the Leninist legacy and the damage? Or a hang-over from our founding fathers sympathy for Kautsky's writings? Wasn't it from Kautsky we got the socialist consciousness will enter the working class from the outside via the intellectuals in the Social Democrat Party and Lenin merely seconded that.Our party ("we") has never endorsed the view you attribute to Kautsky.Also, Kautsky's point was that socialist theories were originated by "bourgeois intellectuals" like Marx and Engels. This was wrong as, on the contrary, Marx and Engels became socialists through contact with ideas that had already been thought up by workers in France, Britain and Germany.I don't think Kautsky thought that this was a permanent process (your "will" enter), and that "bourgeois intellectuals" were still needed in his day to bring socialist ideas to the workers (though Lenin did, at least as concerned Russia), only that this was how these ideas originated in the first place (more "did originally" enter)..
Actually, in other of his writings Morris endorses something similar to the "council communist" system, the "federal principle" advocated by anarchists. In Socialism Its Growth and Outcome which he and Belfort Bax wrote, they suggested that the basic units (they use the term "lowest unit") should be the "township" and "the trade or occupation organized somewhat on the lines of a craft-guild":
Quote:On the other hand, the highest unit would be the great council of the socialized world, and between these would be federations of localities arranged for convenience of administration …. Though in the lower units of this great Federation direct expression of opinion would suffice for carrying on the administration, we cannot see any other means than delegation for doing the work of the higher circles.This seems to suggest that the "townships" would decide things at town meetings,i.e.by direct democracy. The individual would get a vote here, including to choose the delegates to the next level up. After that, delegates would choose other delegates to the next level.In the end it's a question of where you draw the line. Obviously (I assume) the members of the World Council would not be elected directly, but chosen by those at the level below (continental, regional as ex-national). Personally, I don't see any problem with continuing with the system that has evolved, where individuals get to directly elect the local council, the next one up (where there is one) and the "regional" (the equivalent of today's parliaments). There are also direct elections to the "continental" councils that the US House of Representatives and the European Parliament are.But of course it's not up to us today to lay down what should happen, but given that socialism won't have to start from scratch I imagine it will take over, and develop and democratise, the administrative units inherited from the political superstructure of capitalism.The anarchists favoured "federalism" because they were afraid of the so-called "tyranny of the majority" Morris dismisses in the passage that YMS quotes. But we are (social) democrats not anarchists.
Probably, but of course it's rigged as those "elected" at the first level are hand-picked supporters of the regime and so therefore all those at the higher levels.. I'm not sure there's any example of the system working as it's supposed to.
I see from an article in today's Times about someone who tried to stand as an independent candidate that China still uses the indirect system of election where the individual only gets one vote as favoured by Council Communists and others:
Quote:Once every five years urban residents may vote for grassroots "people's deputies", the lowest level of the toothless "people's congress" system that extends all the way to the parliament in Beijing. It is also the only level directly elected by the public, at least in theory.That's why during the Falklands War I boycotted the British papers and read the Irish Times instead.
In that election Eugene Debs was the candidate of the old Socialist Party of America. Pity there's no a recording of his rhetoric. For instance:
Quote:The Socialist party is the political expression of what is known as “the class struggle.” This struggle is an economic fact as old as history itself, but it is only within the past generation that it has become a thoroly [sic] conscious and well-organized political fact. As long as this struggle was confined to its economic aspect the ruling classes had nothing to fear, as, being in control of all the means and agencies of government, they were always able to use their power effectively to suppress uprisings either of chattel slaves, feudal serfs, or free-born and politically equal capitalist wageworkers. But now that the struggle has definitely entered the political field it assumes for the present ruling class a new and sinister aspect. With the whole power of the state — the army, the navy, the courts, the police — in possession of the working class by virtue of its victory at the polls, the death knell of capitalist private property and wage slavery is sounded.This does not mean, however, that the workers will wrest control of government from the capitalist class simply for the purpose of continuing the class struggle on a new plane, as has been the case in all previous political revolutions when one class has superseded another in the control of government. It does not mean that the workers and capitalists will merely change places, as many poorly informed persons undoubtedly still believe. It means the inauguration of an entirely new system of industry, in which the exploitation of man by man will have no place. It means the establishment of a new economic motive for production and distribution. Instead of profit being the ruling motive of industry, as at present, all production and distribution will be for use. As a consequence, the class struggle and economic class antagonisms as we now know them will entirely disappear.He got 420,852 votes, or 2.84%. The trouble is that most of these would have been votes to reform capitalism as the SPA also advocated reforms and not just socialism.Even so, speed the day when another US presidential candidate will utter the words above.
You've missed the point as well as revealing your own prejudices.If you look again Clinton is given the same treatment too. And they were being gargoylised not demonised. See the accompanying article:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2016/no-1347-november-2016/ditch-these-ugly-gargoyles
