ALB
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The nomination papers for our list in Wales have just been accepted. So we're off and en route for our first party election broadcast.
Apparently, this new party, based in Petersfield in Hampshire, will be standing in the South East Region:http://yourvoiceparty.org.uk/Can't work out what they stand for if anything. Anybody know?
There is state monopoly capitalism and state monopoly capitalism. It depends where you put the hyphen. State monopoly-capitalism is what the various CPs of the world (whether pro-Moscow or pro-Peking in the olden days) say modern capitalism is. In fact the use of the term is a way of identifying them from an article or a leaflet. State-monopoly capitalism, on the other hand, is what (we say) they stand for.
Actually, it's the person who runs this site:http://bataillesocialiste.wordpress.com/which has a section on "l'impossiblisme anglo-saxon":http://bataillesocialiste.wordpress.com/limpossibilisme-anglo-saxon/which (scroll down) has articles in French, English, Spanish and Italian from us, the Socialist Party of Canada and the Deleonist SLP of America.
There's another blatant, and even cruder, example of Militant's workers-can't-buy-back underconsumptionism here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/events-and-announcements/lse-marxist-society-debate-lse-hayek-society
The first 8 minutes of Booth's opening are not too bad as a demolition of the "free market" argument but from then on it's downhill all the way. In the following 4 minutes he outlines a crude underconsumption (which he calls "overproduction") theory of capitalist crises: the workers can't buy back all they produce; production was only sustained over the past 30 or so years workers being given credit to buy things; this came to an end in 2008; hence the current crisis.No wonder he has argued elsewhere that capitalism has now entered a period of "permanent slump":
Quote:The use of credit to artificially maintain demand and avoid a crisis is a symptom of the contradictions of capitalism itself: primarily the contradiction of overproduction, due to the nature of capitalism as a system whereby production is in private hands and is only for profit, which means that – since profit is nothing but the unpaid labour of the working class – the working class (as a whole) can never afford to buy back (with wages alone) all that they produce.The current crisis is a reflection of this contradiction unravelling itself on a global scale. All the chickens have come home to roost for the capitalists, and now they –and society as a whole – are faced with an organic crisis of capitalism and a new normality.In fact since it's a permanent feature of capitalism that "the working class (as a whole) can never buy back (with wages alone) all that they produce" on this argument capitalism ought always to have been in a state of permanent stagnation or even not have been able to come into existence.The fallacy of course is that paying demand is not made up just of workers' wages, but also of capitalists' profits. In other words, what the workers can't buy the capitalists can, especially on investment, or buying things to continue and expand production; there is no permanent underconsumption built into capitalism. Put very simply, crises occur when capitalists don't spend/invest because the prospect of making a profit has fallen or disappeared.Booth's theory of crisis is a disgrace to Marxism, but then we have always known that Militant were wrong on this.
Oui, c'est Harry Baldwin. The other is Jim D'Arcy, in 1983. Not seen that photo before. Don't know whether Stuart will be flattered or embarrassed.
Interesting article here in the Weekly Worker making the point that No2EU, although still nominally supported by SPEW (probably only to get money from RMT to finance TUSC), is essentially now a CPB front. It is also standing in Wales where its list is headed by the CPB's General Secretary, Robert Griffiths.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Graeber in the Guardian seiing on the reporthttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/18/truth-money-iou-bank-of-england-austerity.The actual report can be read herehttp://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q102.pdfSomeone else making the same criticismas us of Graeber here:http://libcom.org/forums/theory/has-david-graeber-become-currency-crank-22032014?page=2#comment-536963Especially, this:
Quote:But more to the point, the argument about the possibility of a Keynesian fix for the crisis doesn't really have anything to do with the BoE "letting the cat out of the bag" about how money is created. It's not at all obvious – and imho Graeber doesn't come close to demonstrating – why an acknowledgement of how money creation works means austerity is unnecessary and basically limitless money can be conjured up to fund social programs.It seems that some Trotskyist groups within LU are also uniting (wisely not having anything to do with the Weekly Worker/"CPGB" lot):http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/online-only/regroupment-conference-april-26-bulletin-no-1
It seems likely that the so-called Harmony Party will be standing. They were registered on 1 April, but the variants of their name don't sound very harmonious (unless they are an April Fool):
Quote:Zero Immigration, Anti-EU, Pro-JobsZero Immigration, Out EU, Staying BritishZero Immigration, More Jobs, Anti-GlobalizationJust noticed this on the TUSC site describing some of those standing under their banner:
Quote:And candidates who are members of organisations not currently part of the TUSC coalition – a couple of Labour Party members (not for much longer!), and some who are members of Left Unity or Respect, who have taken up TUSC's offer to participate in the campaign with the same rights as other candidates to promote their organisationsI recognise one candidate in Barnet and another in Exeter who I know have dual membership of both LU and TUSC (as members of the Independent Socialist Network). I thought the recent LU conference voted against their members standing as TUSC or at least against endorsing this. (Incidentally, a SPEW member I met at local hustings meeting in Lambeth last Saturday ventured the opinion that LU wouldn't last a year because most of its members were members of other groups too).We'll know more when the lists of nominated candidates are published on 24 April (next Thursday).
That's interesting. I see that's what happened is that the party registered since March 2013 as the "Left Party" has changed its name to "Left Unity".The other descriptions registered are revealing:
Quote:fighting racism and warbuild hospitals and schoolsfor equality and no to discriminationLeft Unity PartyLeft PartyFree and inclusive education of ALLsocialist, feminist, environmentalistjobs not bombsAnyway, congratulations are in order. LU has finally decided to put its money where its mouth is. We will see (and scrutinise!) the results.
I don't think we should adopt the term "monopoly capitalism" since, as you point out, it was a favourite of the old "Communist" parties where it had a definite political significance. The French Communist Party interpreted it in a "popular front" fashion to mean that everybody, including non-monopoly capitalists, should unite against the monopoly capitalists. I think a residue of this can still be found in the policy/strategy of the Morning Star and the CPB.
