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alanjjohnstone wrote:

The Socialist Party has made a spirited defence in not making reform demands, which if i guessed my dates correct was followed by De Leon's SLP who also dropped the minimum programme.

Actually it was the other way round. The SLP of America dropped all reform demands in 1900. So we followed them, probably consciously, when we were founded in 1904. Oddly, the SLP of GB, when it was set up in 1903, did have a reform programme.

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Aren't they the nearest equivalent in the US to the Labour Party here?http://www.dsausa.org/about_dsa

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As we are unlikely to see an immediate end to capitalism tomorrow, DSA fights for reforms today that will weaken the power of corporations and increase the power of working people.

So a 1000 extra active reformists. Compare with our position that

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As we are unlikely to see an immediate end to capitalism tomorrow, we campaign directly for socialism and so help the emergence of the majority socialist understanding without which capitalism cannot be ended and socialism established.

And don't they normally support the Democratic Party?

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Apparently they confirm it themselves, though it could be a tactical manoeuvre. But let's hope they get back in and dissolve their fake "Socialist Party". I've been waiting for this to bring their attempt bo steal our name to an end.http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/txt/451.pdf

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Phil Sharpe’s ‘market socialism’ is obvious nonsense (Letters, October 27). He uses an impoverished Russia and adoption of the New Economic Policy as proof. But the Soviet Republic’s strategic retreat back to the market has as much relevance for us today as does the Bolsheviks’ forcible requisitions of surplus grain from peasants under war communism or the suppression of free speech and banning of opposing parties.However, that does not mean that his Socialist Party of Great Britain critics are right (Letters, November 3). Together all of them unscientifically conflate socialism and full communism. As if, once the working class comes to power, we can instantly do away with every feature, every limitation inherited from capitalism. In fact, the struggle for the communist mode of production begins after the political victory of the proletariat and the establishment of a regime committed to socialism.Our starting point is therefore wage-labour, money and the market … under the rule of the working class. However, we seek to establish the communist principle of need.Contra the SPGB, the generally accepted Marxist term for this replacement of capitalism by communism, this period of transition from one mode of production to another, is ‘socialism’. Eg, in his Critique of the Gotha programme (1875), Marx distinguishes between a first, lower, phase of communist society and a higher phase (K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 24, London 1989, pp81-90).In the lower phase of communism the ruling principle is: “To each according to their contribution”. Individuals receive back from society – after necessary deductions – exactly what they have given in terms of labour contributed. There is, therefore, inequality because there is unequal labour time. Only in the higher phase does the principle, “From each according to their ability, to each according to his needs”, apply.When Lenin came to write his State and revolution (1917), it was “usual” to call the first phase of communism ‘socialism’ (VI Lenin CW Vol 25, Moscow 1977, p472). It was an orthodox Second International formulation. In other words, it was not the “opportunism” of Lenin and the Bolsheviks which introduced the distinction between socialism (communism – lower phase) and communism (communism – higher phase).As Marx recognised, life demands such a distinction. One can give the two phases of communism whatever name one likes – first and second, lower and higher, socialism and communism. What matters is the distinction.Jack Conrad

In this reply to us, Jack Conrad (of the Weekly Worke itselfr) confuses two "transitions". The one from capitalism to the first phase of communism/socialism and the one from the first to the higher phase of communism/socialism.  Marx, Engels, Kautsky and the others did envisage money, wages, coops, even capitalists, existing in the first transition but these would have disappeared by the time even the first phase of communism was established.But, given the quite different situation in terms of productive capacity and organisation today to the 1870s, it's pretty pointless basing what to do now on what Marx and Engels's assessment of the position then (150 years ago — it's as if they had based theirs on what things were like in 1720). Once a majority want socialism/communism the first transition can be got through very quickly (capitalism is only maintained by the laws of the state; as soon as these are abrogated so is capitalism and the first phase over).He is wrong, too, about the distinction between "socialism" and "communism". It wasn't "an orthodox Second International formulation" and he'd be hard put to demonstrate that it was. Not even Lenin himself made it before 1917.I suppose I'll have to send another letter making these points….

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mcolome1 wrote:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/electoral-college-slavery-constitution/

Interesting article on the origin of the Electoral College system.Even this system might have reflected more the popular vote if the members of the college reflected the vote for each candidate in each state, as can happen in two states and did happen this time in one (Maine):http://www.pressherald.com/2016/11/08/mainers-take-matters-into-their-own-hands-after-bitter-presidential-campaign/The US election system is so full of anomalies like this, and especially as regards who gets on the voter register (and who doesn't) differing from state to state, that the US is not really in a position to give lessons on democracy to other countries. As you say, if UN election observers were allowed in, their report would be very revealing.

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

As with Brexit, the disturbing thing is thre is no discernable working class movement, except in asserting nationalist rights: repatriate the jobs that the Otehr has taken away.  It really does call into question whether the working class is the agent of sociealism.  Should we then, as Paul mason suggests today, tail end liberalism as a lesser evil?

Depemds on what is meant by "working class".  Reading the papers and watching TV on the result of the election the term seems to be used to mean "non-college-educated white males" but for us, of course, the term has a much wider meaning than that — all forced by economic necessity, by virtue of being excluded from ownership of means of production, to seek to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage or a salary. That'll be over 90% of the population in the developed capitalist parts of the world. In the elections a majority of these voted against Trump who, in percentage terms, got less votes than those who in Britain voted to remain in the EU. Still, a disturbingly large number did.

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You're right, Marcos, that "Populism" does refer to one strand of anti-Tsarist revolutionaries, the Narodniks, but it's not the only use of the term. In fact, in the USA at the same time as the Narodniks in Russia, there was a political party that was known as the "populists". I know you don't like wikipedia but this link has other references:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Party_(United_States)

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Established in 1891, as a result of the Populist movement, the People's Party reached its zenith in the 1892 presidential election, when its ticket, composed of James B. Weaver and James G. Field, won 8.5% of the popular vote and carried five states (Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Nevada and North Dakota), and the 1894 House of Representatives elections, when it took over 10% of the vote. Built on a coalition of poor, white cotton farmers in the South (especially North Carolina, Alabama and Texas) and hard-pressed wheat farmers in the Plains states (especially Kansas and Nebraska), the Populists represented a radical crusading form of agrarianism and hostility to elites, cities, banks, railroads, and gold.

This too was an agrarian movement, so not really the same as Trumpism. Since then "populism" has also come to mean what Robbo says: demagogues railing against a corrupt political elite cheating the people. Trump certainly fits into that category (as does Farage and UKIP in Britain).

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Here's what we said about LETS schemes in their heyday (before most folded):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1990s/1994/no-1084-december-1994/lets-abolish-money

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mcolome1 wrote:

Only in the USA a patan like Donald Trump can become a president

Didn't they elect one in the Philippines earlier this year? .But, then, the Philippines did used to be a US colony.  

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Another anomaly in the US way of electing the president — due to the first-past-the-post system being used to elect the members of the Electoral College:http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-election-day/third-party-candidates-having-outsize-impact-election-n680921

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Actually, Clinton will have got more votes overall than Trump. It's just that he got more delegates to the Electoral College that formally elects the president in the US:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-us-election-results-latest-popular-vote-electoral-college-a7407826.html

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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

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

The Sanders 'Our Movement' ….

Is this the same as "Our Revolution"?

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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?

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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)..

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