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That was Stuart's point: that the rise of Syriza to power backs up our case that ideas can change fairly quickly. Trouble from his point of view is that Left Unity is progressing even slower than us !

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The other thing that comes out of the Weekly Worker report of the TUSC Conference is the lack of support from the RMT. It looks as if, with Bob Crow replaced as General Secretary by a Labour Party member (not just any old member but a former member of Labour's NEC) Mick Cash, RMT is drifting back into line with the other unions and backing Labour.There are two significant reports here of what is happening locally:

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The situation in Brighton Kemptown is complicated for several reasons. We understand that the local RMT branch is supporting the Labour Candidate as she has made a commitment to highlight the call for the renationatisation of the railways in her literature. As Clive Heemskerk made clear at the recent TUSC meeting in Brighton, this wouldn't necessarily lead to a veto from the RMT nationally but would mean the local RMT branch couldn't support the campaign.

and

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Since this meeting the Socialist Party have had to pull out standing a candidate in Dover because the RMT union are now backing the Labour candidate.

In other words, SPEW is not going to stand against Labour where the candidate is supported by RMT. The RMT's new attitude is logical from a "Labourist" point of view. The Labour Party may have adapted itself to merely running capitalism but at least it has a chance of bringing in a few pro-union reforms whereas a party like TUSC, which counts in votes in hundreds rather than Labour's tens of thousands, is completely useless from this point of view. If you want reforms you might as well support a party that is likely to be in a position to bring some in (even if they won't work).

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I don't think TUSC and Syriza are comparable. Syriza has managed to get away from the activity of the Trotskyist sects of seeking to appeal to trade union militants to build another trade-union based "workers party". Their (conscious) equivalents in this country are Left Unity whose leaders are also tyrying to get away from this dead-end. Maybe when TUSC collapses (as I think it will) LU's turn with come. But any Syriza-type movement in Britain would have to involve the Greens, perhaps a Green/LU coalition, but then that supposes that LU gets off the ground which it is not showing any signs of doing.

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You might be impressed, Alan, that he has replied but I'm not impressed by this part of his reply:

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man is simply a slave to the global Zionist system.

I must confess, though, that it is unusual to find anti-semitism amongst anarcho-capitalists. I thought that anti-racism, etc was one thing they were ok on.

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I see the Oxford Greens have taken up the idea of their colleagues in Brighton of proposing a referendum to increase the council tax beyond the government's 2 percent maximum so as to avoid such savage cuts in services:http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/11755960.Greens_wants_tax_hike_to_stop_disabled_facing_cuts/It would be interesting to see what the result of such a referendum somewhere would be. And which way the Trotskyists, with their loud protests against austerity, would jump. Against a referendum? a No vote? as their colleagues in Brighton have suggested, which shows that their real aim is not so much to fight the cuts as to exploit popular discontent over them.

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Your (Robbo, that is) long well-argued postings are a good example of the rationalist approach of trying to convince people by argument Keep it up.

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Impossible1904 has very timelely just reproduced on his Socialist Standard Past and Present site an article from the August 1981 Socialist Standard on the last time people calling themselves Marxists took responsibility for trying to get capitalism out of an economic crisis: the PS/PCF coalition government that entered officein France in June 1981:http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/communists-in-government.htmlNo doubt the follow-up article, two years later in the June 1983 "France: from failure to fiasco", explaining what happened next. is being scanned as we speak.The main difference is that the Syriza government in Greece has taken power under much severe economic conditions so will have even less chance of succeeding in making capitalism bend to its political will. Sad perhaps, but that's the cruel truth.

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Here's George Monbiot's case for voting Green:http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/28/convictions-politics-fear-syriza-podemos-snp-greenHe does make one valid point though, echoing Debs' "I rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don't want and get":

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Here is the first rule of politics: if you never vote for what you want, you never get it

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This is what happens if you put a foot wrong when mentioning the H word::http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-2929834/Trident-base-compared-Auschwitz.htmlBut what was actually wrong in itself with what he said?

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Speaking the day after the world marked 70 years since the end of the Holocaust, the peer made clear that Plaid would be "tremendously opposed" to shifting the base from Faslane naval base to Pembrokeshire.Asked whether the move would have some positive benefits, such as bringing jobs to the area, Lord Wigley – a former leader of the party – replied: "Look, this week we have been remembering what happened in Germany before the war, no doubt there were many jobs provided in Auschwitz and places like that but that didn't justify their existence and neither does nuclear weapons justify having them in Pembrokeshire." Challenged as to why he was comparing a Trident base to the notorious death camp, he replied: "The number of people that will be killed by Trident will be infinitely more."

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So the AWL are the last Trotskyist group standing saying, like they all used to, "Vote Labour till Doomsday". Sorry, just remembered, the "Socialist Appeal" lot do as well.

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This is what our pamphlet  Are We Prisoners of Our Genes? has to say about altruism:

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Nor does socialism require us all to suddenly become altruists, putting the interests of others above our own. In fact socialism doesn’t require people to be any more altruistic than they are today (a behaviour which is greater than biological determinists like to admit and which presents them with the insoluble theoretical problem of how a gene for such behaviour, which they have obliged themselves to believe in, could have evolved). We will still be concerned primarily with ourselves, with satisfying our needs, our need to be well considered by others as well as our material and sexual needs. No doubt too, we will want to “possess” our toothbrush, our clothes and other things of personal use, and to feel secure in our physical occupation of the house or flat we live in, but this will be just that—our home and not a financial asset.Such “selfish” behaviour will still exist in socialism but the acquisitiveness encouraged by capitalism will no longer exist. Under capitalism we have to seek to accumulate money since the more money you have the better you can satisfy your material needs, and as an insurance against something going wrong (like losing your job) or as something to hand on to your children or grandchildren. People are therefore obliged by their material circumstances to seek to acquire money, by fair means or foul and if need be, when push comes to shove, at the expense of others. This is why capitalism has earned the name of “the acquisitive society”.Socialism won’t be an "acquisitive society" and won’t need to be, as everybody will be able to satisfy their material requirements as of right and without needing to pay money. In fact, because productive resources and the social product will be owned in common there won’t be any need for money; just products—useful goods and services—ready to be distributed for people to take and use. And, because people could always be sure that the stores will always be stocked with the things they need, there would be no incentive to grab and hoard; that would be an irrational and pointless behaviour in the new social conditions.

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stuartw2112 wrote:

 That it will achieve *nothing* to alleviate the suffering of the Greek people  ("reformism doesn't work"), however, is almost certain to be proved entirely wrong. If "history" won't convince you of the folly of this argument, perhaps contemporary affairs will.

Actually our position is a bit more nuanced than'nothing'. This is what we said on our blog item 'The return of leftwing reformism' about it:

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The Syriza government might, by taking some of the measures outlined above by Milios, be able to mitigate a little the ‘humanitarian disaster’ in Greece where there’s been a massive increase in destitution leading to, among other things,  an increase in mental ill-health, suicides and the infant mortality rate. But it won’t be able to boost the accumulation of capital.

So, yes, the new Syriza governnment maybe able to reorganise austerity a bit to ease the fate of the hardest hit a little, but it won't be able to spent its way out of the crisis. We'll see who contemporary affairs makes a fool of

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Headline in today's Times: "Greece sends in Marxist to haggle with eurozone". Later on the article says more accurately:

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Mr Varoufakis, described as a Keynesian with a touch of Marx

Actually, that's a good description of many academics and leftists who call themselves Marxists. They are really leftwing Keynesians.

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And of course Russia, Moscow, the Bolsheviks, etc weren't "socialist" but state capitalist. But by the sounds of it you'd be against even the mildest milk-and-water social reformism and no doubt in favour of selling your grandmother for medical research.

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Our candidate in Oxford West & Abingdon has received the following invitation:

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Dear SPGB. Over the weekend 7/8 March, people living in Cumnor are organising a clean up on the roads in our area. This is an annual event and this year we propose to invite all the candidates standing in the General Election in May 2015 to participate. I have been asked to get in touch with all the candidates and I wondered if you could give me the email address for Mr Mike Foster who I understand will be the Socialist Party candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon.

As we say that it's the "case not the face" that counts, maybe he can plead this and some other member go along.

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