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I agree it's basically a good leaflet but it will need a bit of editing. For instance, the first paragraph opens:

Quote:

The problem is not Austerity … it's POVERTY.

but then goes on to talk about "Soup Kitchens" and "Food Banks" but these are signs of destitution rather than what we usually mean by the word "poverty", non-ownership, i.e exclusion from ownership, of the means of production. Leaving it as it is would give the impression that we want to do something only for "the poor". In any event, most workers do not have to resort to food banks and don't regard themselves as poor in that sense (and in fact aren't).There are various ways this could be edited, eg. The Problem is not Austerity … it's That We Have to Work for Wages ( a bit unwieldy) or The Problem is not Austerity … it's the Wages System" (shorter, but less immediately understable by non-socialists). Since the leaflet uses "it's Wage-Slavety" later, perhaps it should be The Prolem is Not Austerity … it's Employment. And then go on to say something like:

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As long as we work for wages what we get to meet our needs is rationed while the rich get richer. We can't hope to end this and inequality , etc

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

There was the Iceland option

Almost forgot about that. There's a sort of precedent in that they held a referendum that rejected an international debt deal. The economy seems to be doing ok now, i.e growing, but I don't think they avoided austerity, did they?

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

SNP's Nicola Sturgeon on Greece.

She's got another admirer. Today the Times interviewed Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Podemos in Spain which is organising rallies in support of the Greek government.:

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During the interview with The Times in Catalonia, Mr Iglesias expressed his support for Sinn Fein and the Scottish National party. "For me the fundamental element has to do with the defense of social rights, as with Sinn Fein, defending the rights of the working class," he said. "I admire the story of the Labour Party and the unions in Britain but I am not optimistic. What happened in the last British elections was not the victory of the Tories but the failure of Labour."

If Scotland has been an independent country in 2008 she would have had a chance to put her money where her mouth is. An independent Scottish government would have been unable to bail out the two big failed banks in Scotland (RBS and HBOS) and would, like Ireland, have had to rely on loans from the EU to do this. Which would have come with strings attached. She could have organised a referendum to reject them ….

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We know that most of the money the Greek government owes is owed to German and other European banks, but is what that Guardian economics correspondent, Philip Inman, says below correct? It sounds odd:

Guardian wrote:

Unlike most of Europe, which ran up large budget deficits to protect pensioners and welfare recipients,

Is that what really happened in Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain, even in Germany and France or Britain. That's not my recollection. I wonder what his source is.

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Given him his due. He's more honest than Scargill. Like Scargill he's probably leading his followers to a magnificant defeat but unlike Scargill who voted no to going back knowing that a majority of the NUM NEC would vote yes he's showing that his call for a no vote is not just a pose.Interesting passage in an article in today's Times by their (Tory) leader writer Oliver Kamm:

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So, if you discount the fantasy of a revolutionary uprising that will sweep away the capitalist order and establish a socialist utopia, this is what you're left with. Greece's banking sector will collapse and its economy will need to generate surpluses year after year while in deep recession. And the euro would probably still be the national currency.

I didn't know this before but apparently a country can use the euro as its currency without being a member of the eurozone or even of the EU: two other European countries, Montenegro and Kosovo, do. Neither has their own currency.To answer my own question, since a Socialist can't vote YES and a NO vote would make no difference, in fact would probably make things worse, then what Socialists should be doing in the referendum is writing on their ballot paper something like  "I want a revolutionary uprising that will sweep away the capitalist order and establish a socialist utopia" (ok, not quite as  "democratic revolution" would be better than "revolutionary uprising").In any event, what is happening in Greece will provide some relevant lessons as to whether or not it is possible to say "No to Austerity" under capitalism and the consequences if you try to (a lesson which the left here won't learn of course). Quite literally, the choice is Socialism or Austerity?

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I don't see the point of this cartoon or, rather, I do and it's wrong as it's suggesting that there is an alternative to austerity under capitalism in a slump whereas there isn't as events in Greece are about to confirm.  TINA is wrong as there is an alternative in socialism but TINAUC is true  — there is no alternative under capitalism.

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It looks as if Syriza has chosen to go down fighting. Good on them in a sense I suppose but they won't win. Whatever happens the outcome is going to be continued austerity. I doubt if they will survive long as the government either. To get their referendum proposal through they had to rely on the Greek equivalents of UKIP and the BNP. Ominous as to which way the Greek people, who are not socialist but nationalist minded, might jump?The other thing is that the currency cranks who claim that banks don't have to rely on deposits and loans from other banks to function are not saying anything. If they were right the Greek banks wouldn't need to worry — they could just use their supposed power to "create money out of thin air". Another nail in the cranks' coffin.

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According to this, the question will be:

Quote:

According to the cabinet proposal, voters will be asked to respond to the following question:“Greek people are hereby asked to decide whether they accept a draft agreement document submitted by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, at the Eurogroup meeting held on June 25.”Those citizens who reject the institutions’ proposal will vote, “Not Approved / NO”, while those citizens who accept the institutions’ proposal will vote, “Approved / YES”, according to the cabinet proposal.

It seems that, according to another report, I guessed wrong about the attitude of the KKE.

Quote:

Greek lawmakers on Sunday authorised prime minister Alexis Tsipras’ proposed 5 July bailout referendum, setting Greece  on course for a plebiscite that has enraged international creditors and increased Greece’s chances of exiting the eurozone.The government easily passed the 151-vote threshold needed to authorise the referendum, with deputies from the far-right Golden Dawn voting with the government and pro-European opposition parties New Democracy, Pasok and To Potami and the KKE Communist party voting against.

Apparently they want a YES/NO referendum on whether to withdraw from the EU instead. Here's a typical anti-Syriza article from their website. It's what we used to say about the Labour Party ("used to say" because it's not even that now).

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

An article that is so pro-Syriza, you'd think it was the Morning Star.

Actually the Morning Star has not been particulary pro-Syriza. In fact it supports more the position of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) which is hostile to the Syriza government and  wants Greece to withdraw not only from the euro but, like the CPB here, also from the whole EU. Here's a typical example from last week:http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-a04d-Greece-Athens-backs-harsh-steps-to-win-bailout#.VY7hpVKebTQI imagine, though, that the KKE will support a No vote in the referendum. And us if we were there or socialists who are?

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SocialistPunk wrote:

Never mind "this could have a reformist….interpretation",  I read it and instantly saw old school Labour Party oozing from it.

I agree with your conclusion about what the order of priorities of a socialist party should be, but this passage is far too flattering to Old Labour. I don't think they ever came anywhere near advocating what Haywood and Bohn did. I would say rather that their views expressed those of Old Leftwing Social-Democracy (from which, incidentally, our Party emerged) which still justified a socialist party having a "minimum" programme of reforms under capitalism as well as a "maximum" programme of socialism which eventually disappeared more and more into the background, turning the party into a completely reformist one.

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Got to be honest. Continuing my researches I've found a reference to the brown dog affair in a non-anti-vivisection source. There's a mention in the autobiography of the pioneer British Trotskyist Harry Wicks Keeping My Head who was born and bread in Battersea:

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Most of the Labour women I've mentioned had been involved in or near struggles over vivisection and vaccination. In their image, these two often blurred. Before the First World War, Battersea Council had become famous for erecting a statue of a little brown dog which had been vivisected at a London hospital. A mob of medical students had come down and destroyed it. Battersea became the site of the Anti-Vivisection Hospital (which guaranteed to dissect no live animals). Those Labour women were important among the friends of that hospital. My mother was at least aware of all this. By chance, though, my direct experience of the Anti-Vivi was to be confined to paying two shillings in 1932 for having as many teeth extracted as could be while the gas lasted!Battersea had also seen terrific opposition to compulsory vaccination. In or near the labour movement, it was a regular thing to refuse to have your children vaccinated. Certainly, when my sister was born in 1915, my mother, who was not the meeting-going type (she had left that to my father), decided to pay a solicitor the seven shillings and six pence he demanded for getting an exemption form signed. I remember how distraught she was over how to get the money together, what with my father in the army. But pay she did. After 1919, of course, when the Labour Party became able to nominate some JPs, a signature on the certificate became a costfree formality. Not that Battersea was in the least unusual in this, in the late 1920s, I knew a man from Aberdare in South Wales, a miner, who dumbfounded our hosts by refusing vaccination. This was at the International Lenin School, I'm racing ahead again.

I'd have been dumbfounded too. Why would members of the Labour Movement be opposed to vaccination? Just because it was compulsory?Incidentally, I think Wicks got some of the facts wrong. I don't think it was the Council that erected the statue nor did the medical students actually destroy it (in the end I think it was taken down by the Council)?

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Belated publication of contributions by the candidates in Oxford West & Abingdon in Oxfordshire Voice, quarterly publication of the Oxfordfordshire Council for the Preservation of Rural England here:http://www.cpreoxon.org.uk/resources/item/2453-voice-spring-2015?highlight=WyJ2b2ljZSJd  Mike's contribution is on page 9.

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Boris enters the fray:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3137332/Boris-warns-Cameron-Osborne-against-hacking-tax-credits-firms-start-paying-workers-more.html

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Five of the country's biggest retailers – Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's, Morrison's and Next – reportedly receive £1billion-a-year in taxpayer-funded subsidies for their wages bill.Ministers hope that a move to cut tax credits, potentially back to levels last seen more than a decade ago, will put pressure on firms to increase wages.But it will not have an immediate impact on the incomes of people who rely on the money, sparking concern among campaigners.Speaking last night, Mr Johnson said the government should 'certainly be cutting welfare' but warned against hitting working families on low pay.He said: 'Before we start hacking back on people's in-work benefits we've got to look at the low pay from corporations that could be coughing up much, much more to help them.'

Sounds like a cue for the trade unions to step in to try to get the low-paying firms to cough up the more than Boris says they can. They certainly won't pay up just because the government says they could nor just to reduce the tax burden on the rest of the capitalism class.What all this shows, of course, is the continuing relevance of the socialist call to abolish the wages system. 

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Here's Buffett's take on the idea of a $15 an hour minumum wage in his 21 May article "Better than Raising the Minimum Wage" in the Wall Street Journal:

Quote:

I may wish to have all jobs pay at least $15 an hour. But that minumum would almost certainly reduce employment in a major way, crushing many workers possessing only basic skills. Smaller increases, though obviously welcome, will still leave many hardworking Americans mired in poverty. The better answer is a major and carefully crafted expansion of the Earned Income Credit (EITC), which currently goes to millions of low-income workers.

In other words, subsidise their wages, tax the rest of the capitalist class for the benefit of those paying the below poverty line wages. Which is what Cameron, Osborne and Duncan Smith seem to be worried about.What I think he is saying about a high minumum wage is that this would mean that workers whose labour-power is worth less than $15 an hour wouldn't be able to get a job.It looks as if there's no way out  for the capitalist class as well as for the working class.

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Reading another old pamphlet Industrial Socialism by "Big Bill" Hayward and Frank Bohn that came out in 1911, here's what it says on this subject. The "Socialist Party" in question is the (reformist) Socialist Party of America:

Quote:

What will the Socialist Party Do?-The great purpose of the Socialist Party is to seize the powers of government and thus prevent them from being used by the capitalists against the workers. With Socialists in political offices the workers can strike and not be shot. They can picket shops and not be arrested and imprisoned. Freedom of speech and of the press, now often abolished by the tyrannical capitalists, will be secured to the working class. Then they can continue the shop organization and the education of the workers. To win the demands made on the industrial field it is absolutely necessary to control the government, as experience shows strikes to have been lost through the interference of courts and militia. The same functions of government, controlled by a class-conscious working class, will be used to inspire confidence and compel the wheels of industry to move in spite of the devices and stumbling blocks of the capitalists. (p. 54-55)The Socialist Party and the Government of Cities – The Socialist Party has a further function. Modern industrial cities are a product of Capitalism. They are growing and will continue to grow constantly larger. The governments of cities are much more than the agents of the capitalist class. They develop social service departments, such as the fire department, the waterworks, public schools and parks. Through a department of public health, they can, by means of scientific hygiene, protect and promote the health of the community.These governments of cities are at present run by politicians, in the interests of the capitalists, for graft. They must be captured and used in the interest of the workers. But at present, city government in the interest of the workers is made almost impossible through the capitalist control of the states. With $he growth of the Socialist political power they can more, and more be liberated to serve the working class.The mission of the Socialist Party is therefore threefold: First, it must lay hold of all the powers of political government and prevent them from being used against the industrial organization of the workers.Second, it must be the bearer of sound knowledge, using its great and growing organization to teach Socialism.Third, it must use the governments of the cities to advance the social interests of the working class. (pp.58-59).

You can see that this could have a reformist as well as an industrial unionist interpretation (both authors were associated with the IWW as well) but even so.These passages are from the 6th edition. The second passage was omitted from the 7th edition, which is the one on libcom here.

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