ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Sympo wrote:What makes Capitalism a system of slavery?
In the days of chattel slavery in Ancient Rome and the antebellum South in the USA, not all slaves were productive but they were slaves nevertheless. Capitalism is a system of slavery because the majority, excluded from ownership of means of production, are economically dependent on the minority capitalist owning class, forced by economic necessity to sell their working skills to an employer for a wage or salary to get a living. The whole working class is enslaved, not to individuals as chattel slaves were, but to the whole capitalist class. They can escape one master but must find some master. It's wage-slavery.
The result is of course one in the eye for the media who were unaminously and in some cases viciously against him. Of course he's not a socialist and will fail but it's good to see that there are many people who are not swayed by the media.As to what the rebels MP's should "honourably" do, the 50 Years Ago column in the August Socialist Standard makes a pertinent point, though then the shoe was on the other foot:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2016/no-1344-august-2016/50-years-ago-rebels-too-late
The good news is that hopefully they will now dissolve themselves as a public party and re-enter the Labour Party leaving to us one of the names we've called ourselves since 1904.
While we're being cyncial. Some of the Syrian rebels are media-savvy and some of the photos of babies and children they put out have obviously been staged (not that babies and children haven't been killed but not with a man with a camera nearby).
What's wrong with you Brian? Let that thread go round in circles and not open another one for our feathered friend. This forum is to discuss socialist ideas not the bizarre theories of some eccentric individual. Sometimes we are our worst enemies.
Apparently referendums in Hungary have been lost due to abstention leading to a turn-out of under 50%:
Quote:In 1990, there was a referendum on the direct election of the president. The turnout was 13.8 per cent and the measure was supported by 86.0 per cent of those voting. However, the measure failed because it was supported by less than 50 per cent of the eligible voters.I don't think there is any danger of TV companies going after us, but the chances are increased as long as we keep publicising this possibility…..
Twford John wrote:decision to play the stock marketTwford John wrote:making capital investmentsAssuming for the moment that you are sincere, on what basis do you make your claim that we have decided to do these things?
I agree that these days trying to make things less worse is like running up a downward moving escalator. The trouble is that if you stop running you'll slip back even further.Not that people will stop running anyway. All this — having to run fast just to stand still or not slip back — is in itself a powerdul condemnation of capitalism and a reason to get rid of it.
twc wrote:You could shamefacedly cast a reformist “NO” on a Referendum ballot paper while simultaneously ‘writing-in’ a revolutionary message W O R L D S O C I A L I S MActually, that is precisely what some Party members have done in some referendums, eg. the 1997 one of Welsh devolution. Of course in this country it's regarded as a spolit vote. In fact if you write anything on the ballot paper this is the case on the (absurd) grounds that the voter's intention is not clear.
Tim Kilgallon wrote:If for example a local council put the question of whether a local park should be used as a children's football pitch or turned into a golf course, would it be anti socialist to take part in a decision making process that could be used as an example of the value of participatory democracy?I don't think it would be anti-socialist but this could be left up to individual members to decide without the Party itself having to take up a position. I remember in the late 60s or early 70s Haringey Council in London organising a local referendum to give it the power to pay electricity and gas bill arrears where the landlord had not paid and where the tenant was therefore in danger of the supply being cut off and then to try to recover the money from the landlord. This seemed a reasonable minor mitigation of benefit to some workers. I don't think I was being anti-socialist in voting for. After all, while nobody, not even us, can make capitalism work in the interest of the workers, it is still possible to make things less worse — though of course that's not the job of the party either but of other working class organisations such as trade unions and tenants associations.
