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No need to tell us that the Labour Party is no good. We've been saying that since they came into being in 1906.  We've been saying the same thing about the SNP and the other parties too — because they all support capitalism in one form or another and  think they can make it work in the interest of the majority class of wage and salary workers, But they can't. Neither (to stay on thread) can Syriza.

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See next post.

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Can't remember if this was the thread where people were arguing whether or not the SPGB was known, but here's an anecdote on the subject.On Thursday four of us went to Oxford in the context of our election campaign there. Having a couple of hours to spend before a political meeting we were going to attend started we were looking for a confortable place fo spend the time. As we passed one pub there was someone outside who I recognised from the Burford Levellers Day event where we've had a stall over the years. It turned out that he had voted for us in the euroelections instead of for the Greens as he normally does. As we beat the BNP in Oxford by one vote he claimed the credit for this. He was drinking with someone else who knew the party from the activities of comrades in Cumbria. As we were drinking and talking with them someone came in with a hammer-and-sickle on his bobble hat. None of us knew him. He turned out to have met Harry Young. Who says no one has heard of us?I think we sometimes beat ourselves up too much. In other words, the answer to the question in the article in this month's Socialist Standard "Are Socialists Sadists?" is "No, we are Masochists" or at least some here are.

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Here's what the Council of ex-Muslims of Britain has to say about this:http://ex-muslim.org.uk/2015/01/after-the-charlie-hebdo-massacre-support-those-fighting-the-religious-right/Here's a quote from their statement:

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What is needed is a straightforward analysis of the political nature of armed Islamists: they are an extreme-Right political force, working under the guise of religion and they aim at political power. They should be combated by political means and mass mobilisation, not by giving extra privileges to any religion.

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Not sure about that but the State is certainly mightier than the Kalashnikov as those wielding one are about to find out.

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Just looked at the facebook page of their society at Oxford (in the context of our election campaign there) and noticed that

Quote:

Next term some of us at the Oxford Marxist Society will be reading Trotsky's Transitional Programme and other great Marxist classics. Although it's from 1938, the Transitional Programme could have been written today:

Actually it reads as if it was written in 1838, so I sent this comment:

Quote:

"The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat." "The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership." Is that really true, ie that's what lacking is the right leadership? I'd have thought it was rather a lack of socialist consciousness. The answer to which would be "making socialists" rather than offering a programme of reform ("transitional demands") for non-socialist workers to follow.

I still can't believe that there are people who proclaim that "The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership."  Talk about delusions of grandeur

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Vin wrote:

http://news.sky.com/story/1403662/gunmen-hunted-after-11-killed-at-paris-magazine Is this magazine similar to Private eye?   

Yes, but much cruder. Not like the BBC who are so polite that they were referring to him this evening as "the prophet" mohammed.

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

I assume they could be contacted and asked for their source…

I emailed them and just got this reply:

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Thanks very much for your email – this page was put together from script notes for the 'Ladies and Gents' episode of QI Series L. The information came from an article in History Today’s ‘History Review' (1997, issue 27) “The Women’s Movement” by Martin Pugh.

Have you got east access to the HIstory Today article to see what it said?

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I don't agree. Having been an election agent on numerous occasions and having just read through the rules and regulations for the coming general election I would say that the procedures for nominations, voting and counting the votes are scrupulous and fair to all candidates. The only areas where there can be abuse are electoral registration and postal voting. The latter is not only open to abuse (and no doubt frequenty is abused) but also undemocratic as it allows some voters to vote before the campaign is over, i.e before voting day. In my opinion, this possibility should be abolished except for those who are genuinely unable to get to a polling station. Apart from this, I can't see why these procedures couldn't continue into socialism. They will certainly ensure that any majority vote for socialism will truly reflect what voters want.On postal voting, you do have a point: the tuling class gets its legitimacy through its representatives being elected. The less people that vote the less legitimacy they can claim. This no doubt is why they have  allowed and encouraged postal voting, despite its laxness, to grow as it boosts the number of voters.

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But so will our younger members. In fact everybody in the world will be. I'll go further and make a prediction: everyone alive on Earth today is going to die.

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Later written up and published in the Socialist Standard:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2013/no-1311-november-2013/karl-marx-anthropologist

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Since we've got one, I'ive done a comment on the separate thread on him:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/ian-bone-stand-parliament

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Darren redstar wrote:

I would love to think of my old comrade ian bone as an election advisor, if it wasn't for the rather dismal reformist sludge th class war party has adopted. 

I don't think Alan was being that serious, but you are right they are miles away from us in practice:OK, this is partly a take-off on the Trotskyists demands (which are just as unrealistic) but this is not how it's going to be seen except perhaps by us.What will be interesting will be to see how they do compared with us, the Money Free Party, TUSC and Left Unity. I suspect we'll all be playing in the same league.

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You're right that there is a close parallel between policies of Syriza and Podemos. I don't think it is accidental but because the programmes will have been drawn up by the same kind of leftwing "Marxist" intellectuals in both countries who will have read each other's stuff.The Left Flank (an SWP fragment) article you link to says of a Podemos document on economic policy:

Quote:

The new “emergency plan” was presented as a “discussion document” in a press conference, but in practice is being treated by Iglesias as Podemos policy. Its analysis is that the crisis is fundamentally one of “under-consumption” (which Iglesias agrees is “the problem”) caused by mushrooming socio-economic inequalities under neoliberalism (including a sharp decline in wages’ share of GDP) — a view that overlaps with those of Thomas Piketty, Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman. The solution is thus to increase consumer demand through expansionist public spending (a la Keynes). They then neatly tot up how exactly this can be funded though measures such as combating relatively high levels of tax fraud (mostly carried out by the rich), reintroducing inheritance and property taxes, and debt restructuring.

Compare this with Syriza's programme here:http://www.transform-network.net/de/blog/blog-2014/news/detail/Blog/-5ed1064aab.htmlIncidentally, could Left Flank be those Counterfire (another SWP fragment) are criticising when they say:

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Faced with the prospect of a radical left actually attaining office, some have written off a Syriza government before the first ballot has even been cast. Citing its leadership’s support for the eurozone, assorted pieces of the European left have been content to provide lectures about the dangers of “reformism” and “left Keynesianism”.

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I spoke to John Lee (who joined in the late 40s) about this and we think he must be Ron Paulus, especially as you say he wrote again in 1970-71. According to John, he too joined in the late 40s and must have dropped out for a while as he rejoined Haringey branch  in 1969/70 of which we were both members at the time. Julian Vein remembers the name but not the person. Unfortunately, the branch minute books for the period are lost.   A member left them on the top of his car and drove away without realising and they must have dropped off somewhere. It wasn't me but a member called Malyon who told an interesting story about the end of the war. He was in the army in Norway at the time the German troops there surrendered and was part of a detail taking the details of each soldier. He says that the British soldiers robbed all the Germans of their wrist-watches. That must have been against the Geneva convention. Another anecdote for Monument: the Continuation.

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