[ALB]

I think he and Engels simply meant "ordinary" or "pure and simple" or "common or garden" democrats, i.e people who wanted a democratic republic and nothing else, as opposed to people like them who wanted a democratic republic and socialism. Their equivalent in England would have been the Radical wing of the 19th century Liberal Party. I don't think "vulgar" was meant in any particularly derogatory sense (which it has more in English than in German or French — the German word he would have used is "Vulgärdemokratie".). Even "vulgar Marxists" (not that Marx used the term) only means "unsophisticated Marxists" not Marxists who tell dirty jokes.

[ALB]

Nearly all quack remedies "work" in some cases in that there's an improvement however temporary. Snake oil probably does too. The point is they don't work for the reasons their supporters advance.  In the case of homeopathy the reasons given (water distilled until there are hardly any active molecules left and shaken in a particular way) is just laughable. Have you heard the one about the homeopath who forgot to take his medicine and died of an overdose?To prove the uselessness of homeopathic remedies, in 2004 a hundred Belgian Skeptics attempted to commit mass suicide by taking an overdose of homeopathically diluted snake poison, belladonna and arsenic. They survived. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10:23_CampaignMore details (and explanation) here: http://www.csicop.org/si/show/belgium_skeptics_commit_mass_suicide/This thread is not really necessary unless we need some practice in shooting ducks on a pond ….

[ALB]

Well, at least homeopathy as such can't do anybody any harm. Drinking distilled water is harmless. Which makes it the least harmful of all the quack remedies. It could result in indirect harm, though, if someone with something seriously wrong with them (eg diabetes, cancer) forwent (is that the right word?) getting proper treatment in the mistaken belief that drinking distilled water could cure them.

[ALB]

You don't appear to have read The Road to Wigan Pier.

[ALB]

ALB wrote:

I can see now (I could write) what the reviews of his book in the Trotskyist press are going to say on this.

Here's what the SWP do say:

Quote:

Mason is one of the last fans of Nikolai Kondratieff—a Menshevik minister in the government the Bolsheviks overthrew—and his theory of long cycles. Kondratieff used arbitrary statistics to force the history of capitalism into “waves” of 25 good years followed by 25 bad ones.

(Actually, they probably have a point about Kondratieff's wave theory.)Anyway, here's the full review:http://socialistworker.co.uk/art/41027/Postcapitalism+-+Will+the+system+die+a+natural+death?They seem to contradict themselves:

Quote:

And while Kondratieff aimed to show capitalism was stable in the long run, Mason thinks the waves spontaneously decay into “regime change”.Both take history out of human hands to fix it into a rigid pattern of dodgy maths.

versus

Quote:

Mason accuses revolutionaries of wanting to use the state to impose socialism from above, while he lets “post-capitalism” flourish from below.He says this is already taking shape, from online peer-to-peer networks and “grassroots” food banks to traditional cooperatives and credit unions.But these keep being crushed or co-opted. So “we have to promote them with regulation just as vigorous as that which capitalism used to drive the peasants off the land”.Coercive state power is to be the midwife of Mason’s fluffy new world.

So Mason can plead not guilty to the charge of economic developments spontaneously taking history out of human hands but not to the other charge of gradualism and reformism.

[ALB]

Isn't Corbyn teetotal and a vegetarian and believes in homeopathy? I wouldn't be surprised if he wore sandals and drank carrot juice too.

[ALB]

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/george-galloway-says-hell-return-6168139I don't suppose they'll let him vote though. So a Corbyn win will mean the end of the Respect Party. And of Left Unity?

[ALB]

The thread about "Why Labour Lost" never got off the ground, but here's one analysis from the Labour Party itself, by MP John Cruddas. Here is what he says according to the Times (13 August):

Quote:

Our enquiry findings show a deeply worrying trend. Labour is becoming more culturally exclusive in both its membership and which parts of the electorate it appeals to …. It is now largely a party of socially liberal, progressive-minded people who value universalist principles such as equality, sustainability and social justice. It is losing its connection with large parts of the voter population who are either pragmatic in their voting habits or who are socially conservative and value their family, their community and their country. On welfare, people value justice based on the principle  of contribution.

The enquiry found that a majority of people who vote are pro-business, pro-austerity and anti-welfare and don't believe or are not interested in the sort of policies Labour members and MPs would like to implement (and tell us we should support Labour to get "in the meantime").This presents a dilemma for a party that wants "power" to implement "universalist principles such as equality, sustainability and social justice". To get "power" they have to pretend that they don't want these things. I think Bill got this exactly right in his article in this month's Socialist Standard when he makes the point that about Corbyn that he is a traditional Labour MP and that

Quote:

The only thing he does differently, is that he believes in putting the case openly, instead of pitching to a marketing strategy in order to win power to make reforms on the quiet.

Corbynmania seems to be the revolt of Labour supporters against the duplicity that this marketing strategy involves. It is also finding an echo amongst the general public who value honesty in a politician but probably not enough to elect an honest Labour Party.

[ALB]

There could be more to this. Here's Alex Salmond on Jeremy Corbyn:http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13462923.Salmond_says_SNP_could_strike_deal_with_Jeremy_Corbyn_to_oppose_welfare_cuts_and_Trident/Note Salmond saying he's more in favour of private enterprise, i.e more "business friendly",  than Corbyn. Hint as to what a breakaway Scotland might be like. Painting the pillar boxes tartan.

[ALB]

Do we know how many people in Scotland are entitled to vote in the election for the Leader of the UK Labour Party (or rather GB Labour Party) than were entitled to vote in that for the Leader of the Scottish Labour Party. I take it they didn't have the system of allowing supporters to vote?

[ALB]

galas wrote:

Essentially the article is arguing that (…) there is no point in engaging with any struggles except to end the capitalist system. A familiar argument and by no means particular to the Greek situation.

This is not what the article was saying. As long as capitalism lasts workers should struggle to get the best deal they can but they should do this through trade unions, etc, not by relying on reformist parties and governments which, when in office, are inevitably forced to apply the economic laws of capitalism. It is true, though, that the most effective struggle would be one to end the capitalist system.

[ALB]

So he was actually a member of the SWP. The only book of his I've read is It's Not A Runner Bean about what stand up comedians have to do to get started (drag themselves around from pub to pub performing before drunken audiences, if there is one).There's hypocrisy on both sides here. He's ex-SWP. The SWP denounces Labour as a "rotting corpse" yet urged workers at the last election to vote Labour where TUSC and a few other weren't standing, i.e in most constituencies. So they do support Labour in this sense. On the other hand, the Labour Party doesn't reject their votes. Or, at future elections, will Labour election addresses say (like we say about support for socialism):

Quote:

Don't vote for us if you do not support the aims and values of the Labour Party.

That'll be the day.

[ALB]

Mark Steel revealed in yesterday's i paper that he is one of those who have been barred from voting on the grounds that "we have reason to believe that you do not support the aims and values of the Labour Party". He is a former supporter if not member of the SWP. His riposte was to say that unless concocting false evidence to justify an invasion of another country is pary of Labour's "values" then Tony Blair and his supporters should also be banned from voting.It looks like the band of professional career(ist) politicians who control the Labour Party (and always have) are beginning to panic as they see their prospects of climbing higher up the greasy pole being diminished. After all, the only people to suffer from the Labour Party being out of office for a decade are them.Basically, to stop Corbyn, they've got four options: stop the ballot, rig the ballot, declare the result invalid, depose Corbyn if he wins and call a new election in which he won't be able to able to stand because he won't find 30 of them to nominate him.

[ALB]

I've now finished reading the book. Actually, it's quite interesting and worth reading. What he sees as the final goal is a non-market, non-hierarchical world of abundance in which goods and services will be free, recognisably what we mean by socialism though he doesn't call it that (though he might call it communism if pressed). He sees this as being made possible by present and future developments in information technology.One of his aims is to get people who are discontented with capitalism to think in terms of the bigger picture of a postcapitalist society rather than concentrate only on trying to protect or restore past social reforms. Something we try to get them to do of course, only to be pooh-poohed even by some people here as utopian dreamers. Well, we're not the only ones.Reading the book clears up one point. Although he sees a transition to this society as having started spontaneously he doesn't think it will come into being spontaneously, but through the actions of "a government that embraced postcapitalism". So he does stand for political action. The trouble is that it's gradualist, reformist action within the present capitalist economic and social structure. TWC has already listed the reforms Mason envisages such a government introducing. And we know that the capitalist economy will not be able to digest anti-profit reforms and will reject and undermine them, whatever the intention of a government that wanted to introduce them.Also, he sees the development of postcapitalism out of capitalism as being like that of capitalism out of feudalism — and lasting just as long, maybe centuries rather than decades before money finally dies out. In the meantime what we have is an imagined transitional society which is a hybrid between capitalism and postcapitalism. Which is clearly a leftover from his days as a Trotskyist, even though he decisively rejects the rest of the Trotskyist legacy (including the vanguard party, Bolshevik rule in Russia, the idea of the economic collapse of capitalism triggering the revolution, and of the factory proletariat as the agent of this revolution).

[ALB]

galas wrote:

would reduce the living standards of Greek workers but I think it's universally agreed that part is inevitable.  Pretty much agree with the rest.

Yes, unfortunately and that's the point. Whatever option was chosen the workers would suffer.

galas wrote:

If it's a choice between two evils I'd want to keep the country's sovereignty but I don't blame them for backing down in the end as the risks were immense.

I don't think the "sovereignity" of their rulers is all that important to workers. As Marx put it in an article published in 1847 on "The Protectionists, the Free Traders and the Working Class" (http://hiaw.org/defcon6/works/1847/09/23.html) which is still apt today:

Quote:

Let us return to the protectionists proper, who do not share the illusions of Herr v. Gülich.If they speak consciously and openly to the working class, then they summarise their philanthropy in the following words: It is better to be exploited by one’s fellow-countrymen than by foreigners.I do not think the working class will be for ever satisfied with this solution, which, it must be confessed, is indeed very patriotic, but nonetheless a little too ascetic and spiritual for people whose only occupation consists in the production of riches, of material wealth.But the protectionists will say: “So when all is said and done we at least preserve the present state of society. Good or bad, we guarantee the labourer work for his hands, and prevent his being thrown on to the street by foreign competition.” I shall not dispute this statement, I accept it. The preservation, the conservation of the present state of affairs is accordingly the best result the protectionists can achieve in the most favourable circumstances. Good, but the problem for the working class is not to preserve the present state of affairs, but to transform it into its opposite.The protectionists have one last refuge. They say that their system makes no claim to be a means of social reform, but that it is nonetheless necessary to begin with social reforms in one’s own country, before one embarks on economic reforms internationally. After the protective system has been at first reactionary, then conservative, it finally becomes conservative-progressive. It will suffice to point out the contradiction lurking in this theory, which at first sight appears to have something seductive, practical and rational to it. A strange contradiction! The system of protective tariffs places in the hands of the capital of one country the weapons which enable it to defy the capital of other countries; it increases the strength of this capital in opposition to foreign capital, and at the same time it deludes itself that the very same means will make that same capital small and weak in opposition to the working class. In the last analysis that would mean appealing to the philanthropy of capital, as though capital as such could be a philanthropist. In general, social reforms can never be brought about by the weakness of the strong; they must and will be called to life by the strength of the weak.

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