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Another thread for Private Fraser, Cassandra, Jeremiah and Moaning Minnie but:this might prevent a few suicides:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/world-socialist-movement/are-physical-meetings-best-form-democratic-control-2015?page=5#comment-26497

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Meanwhile the other side of the battle line:http://syriadirect.org/news/every-child-left-behind-in-the-islamic-state%E2%80%99s-new-elementary-schools/I think I'd rather learn Kurdish.

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The Times is reporting today that according to booksellers books like The Establishment by Owen Jones, Chomsky on Anarchism and The Labour Party: a Marxist History by Tony Cliff and Donny Gluckstein "have been flying off the shelves since Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader":http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/retailing/article4596928.eceSome sort of confirmation that the heightened interest in "left" politics sparked off by Corbyn's campaign and election opens an opportunity for us too to put our views across.

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What this article reports would seem to suggest that they have not abandoned their Maoist ideology entirely:http://syriadirect.org/news/new-pyd-curriculum-in-northern-syria-reveals-ideological-linguistic-fault-lines/

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Cheerful images of Ocalan, juxtaposed with the Rojava flag and speaking with a young child, fill some of the pages of textbooks used as part of the new curricula, in pictures given to Syria Direct. Opposition to the new curricula is not only partisan, however. Educators have also pointed to the content of the new texts as an attempt to embed a “totalitarian ideology” into school lessons by “sanctifying the leader and militarizing the schools,” Jian Zakaria, the secretary of the West Kurdistan Teachers’ Union said.

Interesting also that the Syrian government has been continuing to pay for education (and health and other services too) in the areas controlled by the Kurdish Nationalists of the PYD/PKK.

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Just realised that this passage in the LibDem's blog where he describes the attitude of the Labour Party towards State payments to wage workers:

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Many Labour MPs actually opposed the first state pensions in the 1909 Peoples’ Budget because they thought they would get in the way of demands for wage increases. The Labour governments of 1924 and 1929-31 dismissed talk of such comprehensive extensions of the state as unaffordable, focussing instead on appeasing further trade union claims for wage rises until the Great Depression made that impossible.

is more or less the same as that we put forward in our other 1943 pamphlet Family Allowances:A Socialist Analysis:

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We would therefore ask the workers to examine the proposal for Family Allowances in the light of the foregoing remarks, bearing in mind that at best such a scheme can provide a slight and probably small improvement for a small section. Our advice to the workers is that they should not be fobbed off on the industrial field with small and doubtful gains for a comparatively small number, but that they should seize whatever opportunities may present themselves for winning improved conditions for all.

I suppose we could say something similar about Tax Credits. Better than relying on members of the House of Frauds.

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Samuel Courtauld, I think:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Courtauld_%28art_collector%29Seems to have been a bit of a philanthropist. He's mentioned in our 1943 pamphlet Beveridge Re-Organises Poverty:

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And Mr. Samuel Courtauld, millionaire chairman of the great rayon firm, speaking at the Manchester Rotary Club on February 18th declared himself:“strongly in favour of the principles and almost all the proposals of the Beveridge Report…. I have not the faintest doubt that if we can survive the first severe business contraction which arises after the war, social security of this nature will be about the most profitable long-term investment the country could make. It will not undermine the moral of the nation’s workers: it will ultimately lead to a higher efficiency among them and a lowering of production costs.” (Manchester Guardian, February 19th, 1943) (Italics ours.)

This is the pamphlet which quotes Tory MP Douglas Hogg (later Lord Hailsham, whose son of the same name is famous for his duck island) as saying:

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if you don not give the people social reform, they are going to give you social revolution.

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It's not really surprising that a minority government has been allowed to be formed in Portugal, but the reasons given by the President are scandalous from a democratic point of view. He sounds like a complete fool for spelling out what might indeed be the reason when he could have thought up some other more democratically acceptable one. I doubt if he or the new government will last long. It will be interesting to see how long it can survive with a majority of MPs against it.

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From that Guardian article:

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Where AWL admits it has stood candidates against Labour in the past through the Socialist Alliance, it said it only did this in seats that Labour was never going to lose.

This is true of TUSC and Left Unity and was their deliberate policy because, in the end, they prefer a Labour government (sometimes genuinely, sometimes because they [mis]calculate "after Labour, us").I don't think it is the policy of either the SWP or ex-Militant to support the Momentum group within the Labour Party. According to this recent interview with Peter Taaffe, SPEW is still dreaming a Labour Party Mark 2, a new trade-union backed "workers party":

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If the right continues to resist the will of the members for socialist ideas, then they must be taken on. The Corbyn campaign has within it, in reality, elements of a new party in the process of formation.

Looks as if they are banking on Corbyn failing to change the Labour Party, so opening the way for them. They don't seem to have changed strategy.

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Speaking of the Roman Empire, here's a quote from Marx about it (from chapter 25 of Volume i of Capital):

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But just as little as better clothing, food, and treatment, and a larger peculium, do away with the exploitation of the slave, so little do they set aside that of the wage-worker.

(Definition of peculium here). I realise that having more money is not the issue here but rather the perception of (wage) slaves  in this position. Admittedly, they don't see themselves as exploited (even though they are).

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jondwhite wrote:

The name James Morbin sounds like Jeremy Corbyn.

It didn't do him any good. Here's the result of yesterday's local by-election in Oxford:http://www.oxford.gov.uk/PageRender/decN/newsarticle.htm?newsarticle_itemid=57720Morbin got 9 votes for TUSC (1.4%). Labour romped home, increasing its share of the vote from 70% to 78%.There can't be much significance in this as the turnout was only 15% except perhaps that it's another example of UKIP coming second in an ultra-safe Labour seat/ward so that bubble hasn't burst. I don't think many Labour voters, at least at local level, care who their party's Leader is or what its national policies are.

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The Party once debated Julian Lewis — on 17 February 1983 on "What is the threat to world peace?" with him representing the anti-CND "Coalition for Peace through Security".(He was also due to debate us in July 1991 but didn't turn up). I'm not saying we influenced him (hardly). Anybody making a rational and objective analysis of the situation in Syria would reach the same conclusion as he has in the quote above. The only question that politicians running particular capitalist states have to decide is whether this is a risk worth taking and ultimately a price worth paying to remove a government in Syria opposed to their interests. Some evidently do.Lewis was one of the Tory MPs who voted against bombing Syria the last time it was proposed (and defeated) in 2013. At least he's consistent. Some (most) of those who wanted to bomb Syria in 2013 have changed their mind as to who to bomb (then it was the government, now it's their Jihadist opponents) but not to bomb. It seems they are simply bomb-happy.

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Yes, that's where they came from.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

His early act of withdrawing Canadian aircraft from bombing Syria and Iraq can only be applauded

This was the reason why some of our sympathisers supported Corbyn's bid to become Labour leader — that he would never agree to bombing anywhere.  No doubt he wouldn't but there are still some (many?) on the Labour benches who do want Britain to join in the bombing frenzy in Syria.

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Thanks, Alan. There was also a sting in the tail (but not as bad as the spirituality crap in Deep Space Nine):

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When Kirk landed with Spock and McCoy they came across some runaway slaves who were apparently "sun"-worshippers. Only later did they discover that they were really "son" (i.e son-of-god) worshippers. The SS Enterprise went away with its captain and crew satisfied that the Roman Empire would fall under the impact of Christianity, even if some 2000 years later. The only trouble is that the rise of christianity under the Roman Empire [not completed].

I imagine a summary of Kautsky's Foundations of Christianity was to follow or that this led to the rise of feudalism not industrial capitalism.

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In the meantime I've found that draft (it must be from the late 60s or early 70s):

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In a recent Star Trek adventure Captain Kirk and the starship Enterprise came across a planet whose technology exactly paralleled Earth's in the twentieth century but whose social development had not advanced beyond the slave society of Roman times. Indeed the Roman Empire still existed, with televised gladiator fights sponsored by motor manufacturers. The slaves were, for the most part, contented having been granted a free medical service and old age pensions.Of course anything goes in science fiction, but would it really have been possible for social development to have taken this course? Could modern technology have been developed on the basis of chattel slavery? No, not unless you are prepared to reject the scientific approach to history pioneered by Marx and argue that property forms are quite independent of the relations and methods of production.In Roman times industry was very little developed and largescale production was confined to agriculture, mining, road building and construction work. All these are labour-intensive projects requiring a mass of unskilled labour. Which is precisely why slave-labour was appropriate, and developed. Modern technology, capable of producing television sets and internal construction engines developed [not completed]If Spock had studied Marx he would have been able to tell Kirk and McCoy that what they saw on the planet's surface was a illusion of some kind.

I'm sure a trekkie like Alan seems to be will be able to identify the precise episode.

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