ALB
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Nearly 30 people at the meeting in Oxford last night. Mike began by explaining why he wouldn't make a good MP:
Quote:Thank you all for taking the time to come along this evening to hear why I wouldn’t make a very good MP. Definitely don’t put a cross in the box for the Socialist Party of Great Britain if you somehow come to the conclusion that I would play the Westminster game for the benefit of everyone. Because I couldn’t, even if I tried. No-one can. The state, and the very way that our society is put together, can’t be made to work in the interests of the vast majority of people. MPs who start out with good intentions about reforms and representing their constituents soon get stifled by the cumbersome bureaucracy and made to follow vested interests or the dictates of the elite. MPs who don’t start out with good intentions probably have an easier job.If you vote for the Socialist Party, you wouldn’t be voting to put me in that position, thankfully. Instead, you’d be making the point that the whole system which we live under has to be replaced.He then put the case against the class-based, profit-driven system that is capitalism and for a socialist society where the means of production would be owned by everyone and no one but subject to democratic control and where work would be unpaid and people have free access to what they needed without money. This elicited the usual questions (about human nature, the incentive to work, has it been tried anywhere).The NHA party candidate was there but didn't say anything. As was the Green Party candidate in the constituency at 2010 general election (but has since left them). In fact he organised the meeting. Last week it was the NHA party. Next week it will be the Green Party and the week after that UKIP.
Not at all. I thought you were proposing that socialist society self-deny censoring any opinion, i.e that while it might reserve the right to do so it never would. Isn't that what you meant? Seriously.
The TUSC candidate for Tottenham is Jenny Sutton of the SWP, one of the 15 SWPers who will standing under the TUSC banner (most are SPEWers). There's a poster of her here posing as "the socialist candidate" and the list of their reform(ist) demands:https://www.swp.org.uk/resource/811Was this the one you corrected?
Party ballots would originally have been open because voting took place at branches. Secret ballots only became possible when postal voting was adopted. The Party seems more or less evenly divided on this issue. In 2007 the following resolution was carried by by 58 votes to 36:
Quote:This Conference decides that henceforth all central Party membership votes shall be conducted as secret ballots.In 2011 it was reversed by this resolution carried by 53 votes to 39:
Quote:That the practice of holding secret ballots be discontinued.The 2007 vote would have been an open one while the 2011 vote would have been secret. Don't know if this explains the difference. It could just be that it proved too much of a hassle to organise secret ballots.Now it's back for another vote. This time open again.
alanjjohnstone wrote:.When it comes to statistics what is always ignored that it is by far muslims being slaughtered by the Islamists.But that's one of the points the open letter is trying to make to the "Islamistophile" Left ! Look at the people who signed it — secularists, feminists, ex-muslims — they are on the side of the angels (sorry to employ christian imagery). I've just got my doubts about the one who signs himself "Marxist-Leninist".
The people who signed the open letter are secularists and some openly declared ex-muslims. The point they are making is the same one that George Orwell made with regard to the Leftwing intellectuals of his day who were soft on Russia. They are criticising today's Leftwing intellectuals who are soft on Islamism whereas it, too, is reactionary and anti-working-class. I would have though that that's a point of view we can sympathise with instead of going along with the view that to criticise Islam is to be "Islamophobic". it's not, any more than to criticise Israel is to be anti-semitic.
I don't think, Alan, that anyone on this thread disagrees that when it comes to policy and action about social matters the majority should have its way. The argument is about whether the majority has the right to prevent the expression of views. In other words, to not allow minorities to have their say. L. Bird is arguing that a majority could in theory do this if it wanted to (even if he doesn't think they should do so in practice). Robbo and me are saying that democratic decision-making doesn't and shouldn't extend that far and that if it did it would no longer be democracy since a key part of democracy is, precisely, the free expression of opinions.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Bellicose Russia simply following a policy begun by the tsars.Actually, in this case, I think it is rather the other way round. Most of what is currently called Ukraine has been historically part of Russia for centuries. It is the West that is being expansionist this time.
Quote:On quite a few websites it is seen as EU expansionismI think they are right. Didn't it used to be called the "Drang nach Osten"?In any event, workers have no interest in supporting either side. As usual they are the victims of war.
alanjjohnstone wrote:I found that the signatories are an unusual collection and the text very questionableWhat did you find "very questionable" about the text? I thought it made a valid point against those who softpeddle criticism of political Islamism on the grounds of it being "anti-imperialist" whereas it is a far-right ideology just like "fascism" (in fact, a case can be made for saying that both in ideology and in practice it is worse than fascism — for instance fascism was never that oppressive of women). Why is it "islamophobia" to point this out?
One thing the conflict there showsis that the Cold War wasn't about ideology but about spheres of influence. Putin has as much democratic legitimacy and popular support as Obama and Bush before him. He too won elections. He's not a "communist" but a Russian nationalist and supporter of the Russian Orthodox Church. It's a naked struggle for control of a strategic area. The "West" can't really have thought that they could just take over the Ukraine and take it out of the Russian sphere without those in charge of Russian capitalism just rolling over and letting them do it. Not sure it will lead to a European war though. They'll just divide up the Ukraine into a Western sphere and a Russian one. I don't suppose Russia wants to try to control the pro-German facists from western Ukraine any more than the West thinks it would be able to control the Russian-speakers of eastern Ukraine.
LBird wrote:I think that Marxism is a guide to action, but then that leads us to the interminable question about just what is 'Marxism'.Precisely. It's a phrase used by all sorts of Leninists and is interpreted by all of them differently, i.e to all sorts of different "actions". So it's not much of a guide to what to do. What is a guide must be something beyond the mere word "Marxism", eg. what is in the interest of the working class and socialist movement. Better to say this directly and skip the appeal to Marx.
LBird wrote:The key difference between us here, though, is the nature of the 'principle' at stake:'Individual freedom of speech' versus 'workers' democratic power to restrict any speech that they determine to be harmful'.I would say that the principle is everybody's freedom of speech. But your principle is dangerous as it can be used to justify censorship.Anyway, when "workers", or socialist-minded workers, have the power to restrict freedom of speech they won't need to because they will be in the majority and won't need to fear fellow workers being "misled" by hearing "wrong" views (a patronising and elitist view towards other workers anyway). Or you're not advocating that non-socialist-minded workers should have the power to decide to restrict "any speech that they determine to be harmful" are you? Are you? You've got me worried now.
Vin wrote:I have received a reply from moderation saying that your copy and paste verbatim is allowed because it is not from the Socialist Standard! Only the Socialist Standard is not allowed. So don't try an open letter from Clifford Slapper! But an open letter from Nigel Farage is fine.Could it be that it's because articles from the Socialist Standard are already published elsewhere on this site and people can tweet a link to them there. I think that also at the end of each article there is a section for comment — which ends up on the forum. It seems to be an argument about where on our website a tweet should link to: the Socialist Standard or the forum? Personally I'd have thought that the Standard was a better visiting card than here. Or you could do both, I suppose. Just post the link not the whole article on the forum and tweet a link to this. Seems a bit of a roundabout way, though.
Actually, I don't think that "Marxism is a guide to action" or rather that this phrase means anything. I was just quoting it to bring out that your theory didn't seem to help in dealing with policy decisions confronting socialists, e,g whether or not to support a policy of "No Platform" for selected opponents. The SWP wants "no platform for fascists" (who are not really a threat) but "a platform for islamists" (who are more of one).
What Ian Bone says should not be interpreted too literally. When he says "Bash the Rich" he does really mean that they should be hit or beaten. He's just being provocative. If he really meant it he would be in trouble in this country (UK) too for incitement to violence or something. But when you say "socialism" what do you mean by it? A world without frontiers or states where the Earth resources have become the common heritage of humanity with goods and services being produced to satisfy people's needs without money or buying and selling? Where we'd all be stateless because the world would no longer be divided into states, just citizens of the world, Earthpeople.
