ALB
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Further admission in the Times today that "tax credits" are a subsidy to low-wage employers. In her opinion column Rachel Sylvester quotes "an ally of the work and pensions secretary" (Ian Duncan Smith) as saying:
Quote:You’ve got some big businesses that are making huge profits but paying their workers poverty wages. They get away with it because workers are supplemented by the tax credit system but why should ordinary taxpayers subsidise these companies?She reports that, unlike Buffett, Duncan Smith wants to increase the minimum wage instead, so shifting the burden of paying for the working poor from the state to employers.This is a dispute within pro-capitalist circles as to how to deal with the problem of workers unable to sell their low quality labour-power for a so-called ‘living wage’. Does the state try to make employers pay them a living wage? Or does it top up the low wages which are only what employers are prepared to pay? Or again, does it simply pay them ‘welfare’ for not working?In the end, as with many political issues, it comes down to which section of the capitalist class should bear ‘the burden’.
I wouldn't have thought so. They are more likely to have been class-struggle anarchists. After all, the SWP was advocating voting Labour in most constituencies. See this fro Socialist Worker of 14 April:http://socialistworker.co.uk/art/40340/Use+your+vote+to+strengthen+the+leftEspecially:
Quote:Millions of workers who do not think much of Ed Miliband will nevertheless vote Labour to eject the Tories and block Ukip. In a withered and distorted way Labour retains a link to organised workers through the union leaders. If there is no left or radical candidate then we are for voting Labour.Since there won't have been more than 200 such candidates on their definition this was a call to vote Labour in the other 450 constituencies.
Paul Scivier wrote:In WSM litereture I have seen a reference to the Peasants revolt of 1381 in which John Ball is quoted. What was missing from that quote was the Lollard John Ball quote " When Adam delved and Eve Span, where was the getleman?"Can't have been this, then:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2004/no-1204-december-2004/book-reviewsor this:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2014/no-1314-february-2014/book-reviews-poor-mans-heaven-state-capitalism-a
Paul Scivier wrote:Both John Ball and Gerard Winstanley were both calling for real socilaism long before marx,and the word socilaism existed, and both followed the teachings of Jesus the nazarene.In those days, all ideas were and , on pain of death, had to be expressed in religious terms. Actually, Winstanley was as near to a materialist as you could then have publicly become. More a pantheist than an orthodox christian.These days, three and half centuries later, we can express ourselves in secular terms.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Alterbnatively, fight austerity the anarchist wayI don't think so. Emma Goodman was a vanguardist and certainly not a role model. Here's what the September 1924 Socialist Standard wrote about her:
Quote:Emma Goldman in her book Anarchism and Other Essays says the majority is always wrong. The Anarchists, therefore, will either rule with a minority or be wrong if they become a majority. She further states the great mass of the people never were and never will be the ones to progress. Just the intellectual few. Such views mean that the great body of people will depend upon the kindness and wisdom of the Anarchist intellectuals to guide and mother us.The offending article can be found here, particularly in chapter 2 "Minorities Versus Majorities" and its concluding sentence:
Emma Goldmann wrote:In other words, the living, vital truth of social and economic well-being will become a reality only through the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not through the mass.Interesting. This thread discusses the same idea (and its limitations within capitalism):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/consumerism-v-sharing
It's not just Tories who can, and maybe will, take advantage of Labour's open primary system for seleting a Leader. Judging by leaflets handed out at yesterday's anti-austerity march, non and even anti Labour Leftists will be too. The front page of the Weekly Worker is given over wholly to a photo of Corbyn and the two words VOTE CORBYN and there are a couple of articles inside arguing for this. One of them reports a resolution passed at a meeting of Left Unity's national council:
Quote:If Jeremy Corbyn is on the ballot paper LU will support him via a press statement in discussion with his campaign. Indivudual members may want to support him in any other way.This can only be interpreted as including signing up as a Labour supporter so as to be able to vote for him. This is what the Weekly Worker and its party, the self-styled CPGB, are explicitly urging.Writing in Counterfire (ex-SWPers) Lindsey German looks forward to a "mass campaign … with meetings up and down the country, drawing on the whole of the left", ending less rather than more cryptically:
Quote:And any member of a trade union affiliated to Labour (which is most of them) can vote if they register to so before 12 August.This is true, but there is a catch. The Corbyn4Leader campaign was handing out registration forms. This shows that members of unions affiliated to Labour can register for free (whereas others have to pay £3) but they and others have to sign and date a declaration:
Quote:I support the Labour Party's aims and values and am not a supporter of any organisation opposed to it.Which would seem to rule out members of another party or of groups which support candidates standing against Labour. Of course this won't stop members of an Machiovellist-Leninist group like the Weekly Worker, who are already members of Left Unity as well as their own party (and, some of them, no doubt of the Labour Party too under a different "cadre name"). Nor the Trotskyist organisation with their notorious tactic of "entryism"..Or perhaps the various Trotskyist groups can justify signing on the grounds that their "organisation" is not really opposed to Labour.In any event, Labour's open primary system is open to abuse and will no doubt be abused. This could turn the whole thing into a farce (or, rather, even more of one).
Seven members distributed all our leaflets (so there will have to be a new leaflet for the next one) to a small portion of the demonstrators. Some (the organisers) are saying there were 250,000.That can be doubted but I don't know how you estimate such things, but there were a lot, more than we'd expected, mainly public sector trade unionists, a lot of Greens and some local Labour parties as well as the usual suspects (SWP, Militant, etc). We leafetted both the start outside the Bank of England and the end in Whitehall and Parliament Square but it was raining at the end.The star speakers were Russell Brand and Charlotte Church but we didn't hear them as we stopped off at the Wetherspoons pub in Chancery Lane for lunch. As we approached the Savoy Hotel in the Strand we saw a group outside who appeared to be shouting "The Ritz, the Ritz, We've gotta get rid of the Ritz". But on getting nearer saw they were not performers hired by the Savoy to do down a rival, but Class War shouting "The Rich, the Rich …" A dozen or so of them then set off down the Strand accompanied by the same number of police. We could have mounted a bigger "march" than this (after all, we got more votes than them in the general election). In Whitehall the cenotaph was boarded up, providing a convenient space for grafitti. We added one calling for the abolition of the wages system (photo available) as well as adding "and Labour" to one which said "Down with Tory scum".
Interesting meeting in Oxford. From which we learned that the Magna Carta really dates from 1217 when it was readopted by King John's successor, Henry III or even 1225 (when it was definitively readopted). Mcnair's argument was that the current celebration of the Charter reflected the Whig interpretation of British history as one of gradual progress towards a constitutional monarchy such as was achieved in 1688, with the Magna Carta as the first step on this road. This contrasted with the "Tory" view that there was nothing special about it, but that it was just one event in mediaeval history, a view which is still being expressed.Mcnair said that the Charter could indeed be seen as a step on the road to the bourgeoisie winning control of political power, even though at the time it was a dispute between barons and their leader. He criticised those (such as Peter Lindeburgh) who see the Forest Charter part of a step towards the recovery of commonly owned land. Mcnair was particularly scathing in his criticism of this view, pointing out that the commons were commonly owned only by commoners in a particular area and that the goal of socialists was not to go back to this but to go forward to the common ownership of the whole world by everybody. No doubt his talk will appear some time in the Weekly Worker.It emerged from the discussion that Cromwell probably never did call it the Magna Farta but that this was something put about by the Royalists when they regained power in 1660. Also, that it really was a dispute between Norman barons and their leader. The proceedings were conducted in French and King John (or should that be King Jean) was a native French-speaking as was his son and successor Henri III. That the words "free men" in the Charter referred only to non-nobles who owned the freehold of the land they worked and so excluded over half the population who were serfs ("villeins") who worked the land for their feudal masters as well as themselves (and that the couple of rights given to women were to widows only of barons and free men). Also, that the Charter certain trading and navigation rights to the merchants of the City of London (the foreunners of the capitalist class)..I've since read a speech by one "Tory" interpreter of the Magna Carta, to which Mcnair referred, Lord Sumption of the Supreme Court (and literally a Tory). It's quite good. I hope that doesn't make me what Mcnair called a "Torified Marxist" (he called Sumption a "Marxified Tory"). The front cover of the June Socialist Standard would certainly seem to be in this tradition. The speech can be found here:https://www.supremecourt.uk/docs/speech-150309.pdf
Here's something they could cut (if cuts they have to);https://euobserver.com/defence/128300That's a higher percentage than even Britain which has imperial(ist) ambitions. Guns before electricity for pensioners, then?But I suppose their rightwing, nationalist allies in government (Greece's equivalent of UKIP) won't let them. Or maybe the colonels-in-waiting ….Also this from a couple of years ago:http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2012/03/07/germany-france-holland-sold-greece-e1-billion-of-arms-amid-debt-crisis/
Two of us are going to this meeting in Oxford tomorrow:
Quote:Guest speaker Dr Mike Macnair will speak at this Thursday’s Oxford CCS public meeting on The continuing contemporary irrelevance of Magna Carta, which will be held in the upstairs function room of the Mitre. As usual, there will be a short talk, Q&As, and discussion. The details are:The continuing contemporary irrelevance of Magna CartaSpeaker: Dr Mike Macnair (Associate Professor in Law, University of Oxford)7.30-9.00pmThursday 18 June, The Mitre, corner of High St and Turl St.We won't forget to ask him about the Forest Charter. He should know what he's talking about as he specialises in medieval law. He writes regularly for the Weekly Worker too.
We will be meeting at Mansion House tube station at 12 noon, to pick up leaflets and Standards, before dispersing to hand them out and try to sell them to the demonstrators gathering up the road outside the Bank of England (because the organisers think, or say they think, it was greedy bankers rather than capitalism that caused the crisis).
gnome wrote:ALB wrote:For the planned exhibition at Head Office in July on the 1945 General Election…..This July? Haven't heard or seen anything about it.
It's all fixed up now. Here's the details (being posted elsewhere too, with more details):
Quote:OUR '45: THE SOCIALIST PARTY AND THE 1945 GENERAL ELECTION A display about our election campaign and the election of the post-war Labour government at 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN. Open Saturdays in July 11am to 4pm. Free entry.
