ALB
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I see that the author of that article on Marx in the Statesman of Calcutta (see other thread vhere: http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/new-statesman-and-marx )has been contacted and is interested in the Party.Also, that someone has resigned/been asked to leave because he voted for another party (the Communist Party of India (Marxist)) in a recent election. Ah well, these things happen, but It is after all a hanging offence. Last time we did this it was somebody who had voted for the now defunct SDP (and proclaimed that he had done so), but others have resigned after voting for the Green Party or Scargill's SLP.
That sounds like the old (in the sense of moth-eaten) Trotskyist argument for voting Labour. Vote in a Labour government, see it inevitably fail and that'll get workers to turn against capitalism or, rather, to turn to he Trotskyist vanguard to lead them against capitalism (in fact to state capitalism). It has never worked. More often than not they turn back to the Tories.Better not to go down that cul-de-sac (or any of the many others on the road to socialism) in the first place.
It's a matter of public record that Brand did say these things but, as this is a thread on Owen Jones, I won't refer to Brand's video where he says he was virtually bounced by those around him into that interview and endorsement of Miliband.Anyway, it is possible to be a non-socialist without being a charlatan. Isn't it? I hope.
Jeremy Corbyn's chief economic adviser is Richard Murphy of the Tax Justice Network who thought up the idea and name of "people's quantitative easing" as a way to end austerity. Just discovered that we clashed with him in 2008:http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2008/02/04/living-in-a-sandwich/I wonder whether this is still his view:
Quote:I really do think they’re wrong. But I’ll give them full marks for one thing. They have spotted that I am content with a market system as long as it is as close to a level playing field as possible and is properly regulated to achieve that result.I expect it is.In the meantime the dye is cast. Voting for the new Labour Leader closed 5 minutes ago.
Owen Jones was probably one of those who tricked Brand into meeting Miliband and saying Vote Labour at the last election, an action Brand has regretted ever since.
Informative article here by Robert Peston as to why the German Vice-Chancellor can say, as he did yesterday, that Germany will be able to take 500,000 refugees a year over the next few years. Basically, it's because there's going to be a labour shortage there (and, we can add, where would capital be without labour?), i.e even the refugees are really economic (im)migrants. There are indeed our fellow workers.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34172729Note the criticism, from an economic point of view, at the end of the article, of Cameron's plan to take children and vulnerable people from refugee camps instead of the more enterprising and educated refugees who have made their way to Europe under their own steam: it's going to cost more to educate and maintain them. But it does provide a pretext for keeping out the others.
That's the opinion of the Independent (! ?) journalist and a flagrant example of the fallacy of "post hoc, propter hoc" (see DJP's talk at Summer School) of concluding that because one thing happens after another one the first one is the cause of the second. It wasn't a reason Brand gave. In fact, he didn't actually say vote for Corbyn, only commented ironically about why was what he said (on austerity, war, etc) considered so outrageous. But then, the Independent is backing one of the pro-business, anti-welfare candidates for Labour Leader (the one called Cooper, I think).
That's the solution to Robbo's problem. Get people whose only difference with us is over religion to declare that they support our aims and values, pay £3 and get to vote to choose our election candidates ….
We all seem to have missed this: Brand has retired from the social media as he doesn't want to be the centre of attention anymore as it distracts from the struggles he supports. So perhaps he really didn't want to be a leader after all.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/russell-brand-quits-social-media-and-the-trews-10464057.html
Greece has dropped out of the news recently but there's another general election there this month, on the 20th. According to this report (don't know how reliable it is) Syriza is set to lose:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11844657/Alexis-Tsipras-faces-shock-election-defeat-as-voters-on-course-to-punish-Syriza-at-the-ballot-box.htmlIf this does happen, it will be a repeat of the familiar pattern. Leftist party wins election, tries to make capitalism work for the workers, makes things worse, and is booted out at the next election.
A more measured analysis of the Syrian refugee question and where and what people are fleeing from by Patrick Coburn in The Independent on Sunday:
Quote:The four million Syrians who are already refugees mostly came from opposition or contested areas that have been systematically bombarded by government aircraft and artillery, making them uninhabitable. But the majority of the 17 million Syrians still in the country live in government-controlled areas now threatened by Isis. These people are terrified of Isis occupying their cities, towns and villages because of its reputation for mass executions, ritual mutilation and rape against those not obedient to its extreme variant of Sunni Islam.Half the Syrian population has already been displaced inside or outside the country, so accurate figures are hard to estimate, but among those particularly at risk are the Alawites (2.6 million), the Shia heterodox sect that has provided the ruling elite of Syria since the 1960s, the Christians (two million), the Syrian Kurds (2.2 million), and Druze (650,000) in addition to millions of Sunni Arabs associated with the Syrian government and its army. The forced flight of these communities could swiftly double the total number of refugees to eight million.Which makes nonsense of George Osborne's claim that the refugee crisis would not have happened had parliament voted two years ago to bomb the "Assad regime" to bring about "regime change" there as in Iraq and Libya (which would have opened the way for an Islamist takeover of Syria):
Quote:A move by the coalition government to bomb President Assad’s regime in Syria in 2013 was defeated by MPs after Labour opposed the move, a decision that Mr Osborne described as “one of the worst decisions the House of Commons has ever made”.On the contrary,as a decision not to go to war, it was one of the best decisions the Commons has ever made.
I see the man bringing this up is "Blue Labour", i.e anti-immigrant, British Nationalist, MP John Mann, a really nasty piece of work:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3093140/Slash-welfare-stop-mass-migration-win-power-Labour-MP-releases-Blue-manifesto-leader.html
According to a trailer it's going to accuse him of supporting the killing of British soldiers in Iraq:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34179201i.e is part of a sustained media campaign against him (probably because of his anti-NATO stance). Here's another part:http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article4545949.eceWe knew of course that his opponents would play dirty.
