ALB
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Anathema = “something or someone that one vehemently dislikes”.
I don’t think the election results show that “the overwhelming majority” vehemently dislike socialism as a word let alone as properly understood.
Opinion polls show that an increasing number of people, particularly younger people, don’t mind the word “socialism”. Of course there are some people who have suffered under some state-capitalist dictatorship calling itself socialist who do hate the word (we met a couple in the course of our campaign).
When socialism, as a society of common ownership and democratic control with production to directly satisfy people’s needs not profit, is presented to people they don’t dislike it but don’t think that it is practicable. Which is not at all the same thing.
More psephology. There was only one other group using the word “socialist” standing in the GLA elections — TUSC, the front organisation of the spurious socialist but actually state-capitalist organisation that calls itself SPEW.
They stood in 4 geographical constituencies like the 2 we stood in. Here is how they did:
North East: 5595 2.7%
City and East: 4710 2.6%
Croydon & Sutton: 2766 1.6%
Havering & Redbridge: 2145 1.2%The same league as us even if higher up the table despite offering attractive sounding reforms in the hope of garnering votes. A minor reformist party that can’t compete with the bigger ones when it comes to that.
Their task is as difficult as ours but at least ours — socialism — is worth campaigning for.
Yes, that’s a good article (but you didn’t say it was going to be a “long read”!). I agree that blaming “neo-liberalism” for the growth of conspiracy fictions is a weak part. After all, Jewish conspiracy fictions pre-date that by a long way and were around under state capitalism let alone Keynesianism.
Anyway, neo-liberalism seems to be on the way out as the main capitalist ideology, especially as concerns international trade with the leading capitalist states imposing sanctions on rivals ostensibly for political reasons. Even internally, the trend is towards state support for selected private capitalist enterprises in the form of contracts and subsidies — the sort of “crony capitalism” that the Labour Party is proclaiming from the rooftops it is aiming to practise when it takes over later this year.
Looks like not many voters followed Ed Griffiths’s advice (which we didn’t endorse) and voted for us in the constituencies and the Communist Party for the party list vote:
In Barnet & Camden the CPB list got 719 votes and in Lambeth & Southwark 945.
I met the Reform UK candidate, Tony Sharp, at the count and he described the CPB as tankies. I suppose most of them would have been. Apparently he was once the deputy leader of UKIP.
Result for Lambeth & Southwark just declared:
LAB 84768
GRN 35144
LD. 22030
CON 21121
RFM 8942
SOC 2082 or 1.2%Today they verified the number of votes cast. Tomorrow they will count the number cast for each candidate.
Here are the figures for Barnet and Camden. They give the size of the electorate (413,809) and the number of voters (163,657). So, turnout here of just under 40%.
The figures for Lambeth & Southwark are 448,552 and 175,428, a turnout of just over 39%.
Don’t know if that is the real reason but that’s how it will be seen :
https://labourlist.org/2024/05/local-elections-results-2024-council-2/?amp
Serves them right.
Ever since central banks decided to raise the rate of interest they charge commercial banks to borrow money from them (the bank rate) the financial pages of the papers have provided a continual stream of evidence to expose the Thin Air School of Banking as, well, a load of hot air.
Here’s an example from today’s Times:
“The Financial Conduct Authority, which is the industry regulator, also warned the industry last July that ‘the pace and scale at which firms pass through higher interest rates to savers needs to improve’.
Banks have responded to this pressure by improving their savings rates, while depositors have also become more active in managing their money by moving their cash to accounts that pay better rates of interest.
(….)
These deposit trends, combined with more intense competition in the mortgage market, are putting downward pressure on banks’ margins after a period of rapid expansion.
Lloyds Banking Group said in its first-quarter results last week that its net interest margin, which reflects the difference between what it charges for loans and pays on deposits, fell to 2.95 per cent from 3.22 per cent a year earlier.
Similarly, NatWest’s first-quarter margin slid to 2.05 per cent from 2.25 per cent in the same period in 2023.”Of course banks need deposits — people or institutions lending them money — to function. That’s what they do — borrow money at one rate of interest and lend it at a higher rate. To suggest that banks can, and do, just create out of thin air the money that they lend is just ridiculous.
Well, the CWO theory has been disproved by the facts. The last world war (which ended with a couple of atom bombs being dropped) ended in 1945. That’s nearly 80 years ago. Meanwhile capital accumulation has continued way beyond replacing what was destroyed in WW2. Yet while wars have continued there has been no world war.
80 years is a long time. 80 years before 1939 is 1859. Capital accumulation since 1945 is many times greater than in the period 1859 to 1939.
Clearly there is something wrong with a theory that says that capitalism needs the destruction caused by world wars to keep going.
Hopefully, you are at least reassured that a world nuclear war does not have to break out for the reasons they give.
Another mention in the local media:
Lambeth and Southwark election candidates for London Assembly
We had to ask for the original version to be corrected because it had us advocating TUSC’s programme of reforms.
I know that’s not what you believe but the CWO at least have a theory about why the End is Nigh even if a completely mistaken one. You have no theory of why there’s going to be another world war, this time involving nuclear bombs. Just your own irrational fear unless your talk about those in charge of states going to war to avoid losing face can be called a theory.
Anti-antizionism bill passed:
https://news.yahoo.com/house-vote-gop-antisemitism-bill-200600525.html
As Hugo Rifkind pointed out in his “Ban the marches and Jews will get the blame” article above, this will be counter-productive in that it will tend to increase genuine antisemitism since some people will blame “the Jews” in general for this restriction on free speech.
