ALB
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Actually, I think his "spirituality" is rather more than that. He believes in "God". As a recovering addict he has been taught to imagine a "higher power" looking down on him and watching what he does. Presumably he feels the need to believe in that to stop him becoming an addict again. But he's not a christian but as far as I can work out some sort of New Age pantheist (we're all part of God).That doesn't necessarily detract from his political views, much of which is not all that different from ours as you point out.
Shocking news item in today's i paper:
Quote:Stone 'diminishes' anti-war songThe composer of the anti-war anthem "No Man's Land" (also known as "Green Fields of France") has criticised the pop-soul singer Joss Stone for recording a "sentimentalised" version of his song, which omits key verses about the horrors of war, as part of the Poppy Appeal.Stone teamed up with the guitarist Jeff Beck to record a version of the song, a reflection on the grave of a young man, Willie McBride, killed in the First World War, which was written by Eric Bogle. Chosen official single for the Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal, Stone will perform her version in front of the Queen on Remembrance Sunday.But Stone's version, sung to a gospel choice backing, removes the final two verses, which deliver a withering condemnation of the futility of war.The missing lines refer to "man's blind indifference to his fellow man. And a whole generation who were butchered and damned" and "the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame. The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain".This is worse than the nationalists hi-jacking "Jerusalem". It was a song that Islington branch members, when they met in the Queen Victoria pub in Holloway Road in the 1980s on a Saturday night, always used to request the band to play. (Despite its name the Queen Vic was an Irish pub where they sold An Poblacht and they always played "A Nation Once Again" at the end, but we didn't stand up).Alan, you're in Thailand or somewhere, but if you were back here you wouldn't believe what Poppy Day has become: a commercial as well as a nationalist feast-day. The shops are selling crimson cards and crosses. It's just like Easter, Mothers Day, etc. In fact, worse because it's putting over an onboxious message.
More on this sort of thing from this week's Economist:http://www.economist.com/news/business/21631055-intelligence-agencies-and-tech-firms-have-little-choice-compromise-crypto-wars-20Yet another example of how capitalism distorts and hampers the use of modern technology.
Before comrades (and ex-comrades) get enthusiastic about setting up a cafe at 52 Clapham High St, they should consider the fate of the cafe that Lewisham People before Profit set up. Called "Come the Revolution" it closed under acrimonious conditions:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg8Uzwe7_xchttp://crossfields.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/people-before-profit-embarrassment.htmlNo doubt in the future. when it's much bigger, the socialist movement will be able to do this sort of thing and succeed, but now, when we are so small, is not the time. We need to build a bigger socialist movement. Which is why (to return to the subject of this thread) we are leafletting Rochester next Saturday.Incidentally, the PBP candidate there, Nick Long, likes us(even though he doesn't agree with our stategy of advocating socialism and nothing else) and helped distribute our leaflets in a recent local council by-election in Lambeth.
Nick Long explains his position elsewhere:
Quote:Nick LongOctober 28, 2013To argue for the organisation of society on socialist lines needs the organisation and growth of a radical socialist party of the mass of working people. Lets follow the path of a establishing such a party – growing and sinking roots in working class communities, helping develop working class militants, holding work shops and study groups, running advice centres, socials, food banks, supporting workers in struggle, helping sustain local campaigns -this is the path we are following in Lewisham with LPBP. Building a broad inclusive party of all those opposing austerity and willing to campaign against it. The SP platform is no different from the founding principles of the SP or SWP and will not attract all those coming into struggle."People before Profit" is not a good slogan. It implies the continued existence of the profit system and that it is possible to get it to put meeting people's needs before profit-making. The occasional victory can be won but the system always wins the war.The proper socialist slogan of course is People NOT Profits
Yes, I always thought that it was a pity that the Cuban exiles didn't succeed in blowing up that monstruous bust of Marx that the authorities let the Russian state capitalist regime set up. In fact I wonder if they allowed it to be set up to discredit Marx and his ideas by associating them with the Russian regime and its oppression and exploitation of workers. It can be one of the many statues to come down when socialism is established.
These are only policewiomen not combat troops. As the person you are quoting from is ex-ICC he seems to have kept their view that there is no difference between political democracy and fascism. Obviously there is, and we've always taken the position that political democracy is a gain for the working class but that supporting a capitalist state in a war is not a legitimate way of defending it.People like him are saying that there is no difference between the very limited political democracy that exists in parts of the Middle East and an ISIS-type Islamic State. There clearly is. In fact ISIS is worse than the pre-war fascist regimes, both in ideology and practice. And we shouldn't be afraid to say so.
Why does he put "Islamist barbarians" in inverted commas? Doesn't he think that's what they are? I'd also like to see his evidence that these barbarians do have women combat troops.
This article by friend Stuart (when he was a socialist) discusses one theory as to why workers put up with capitalism that has not been mentioned in the discussion so far: "dull compulsion"http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2011/no-1280-april-2011/brief-history-public-relationsThe original article by Conrad Lodziak in Radical Philosophy in 1988, on which it is partly based, is also relevant (though it doesn't seem to be easily available on the internet or interweb as YMS calls it).Here's the conclusion (of Stuart's article):
Quote:We in the Socialist Party are often accused by our opponents, and even sometimes by our supporters, of not having made any progress in our 100-year history. What the foregoing arguments should have made clear is that it is not within our power to make the kind of progress demanded of us. The working class generally is ideologically indifferent, and accepts capitalism because it must. The only thing that can disrupt this to the advantage of socialists is, says Lodziak, ‘effective oppositional practices inscribed with oppositional viewpoints’ – in other words, the development of the class struggle. We can contribute to the development of this struggle, and we do, but it is not within the power of a small party such as ours to determine its course. The failure of sufficiently large and powerful oppositions to arise is down not to a lack of energy or dedication on the part of socialists, nor the absence of a sufficiently clever socialist advertising campaign, but to the power of economic necessity and state coercion.Article from our archives on the Hammersmith Socialist Society here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2003/no-1190-october-2003/william-morris-and-hammersmith-socialist-societyAnyway the Socialist League and its paper Commonweal continued under anarchist control for a few years afterwards.
Or we could do what this candidate for mayor of Lewisham did in 2010 (and again this year): say that if elected we'd abolish the post of elected mayor:http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/4878598.LEWISHAM__Candidate_vows_to_abolish_elected_mayor_system/
Even the demand for the "Abolition of the Wages System" was first raised by artisans who had previously worked for themselves and were protesting against being reduced to working for an employer. It emerged again at the turn of the 20th century when miners in the western US found themselves forced into the same situation — and the Western Federation of Miners was the main force behind the IWW which made this slogan well-known.In other words, it wasn't raised by propertyless proletarians but by people who knew what it meant not to be a wage slave. Generations of workers since have got so used to the wages system they do not understand what the slogan means, even though we like it.
For the SWP take on William Morris (and a criticism of it) see this book review (scroll down to the second one):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2008/no-1250-october-2008/book-reviews
Short review of Thompson's book here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1960s/1968/no-772-december-1968/classic-history-book
Yes, a pity he couldn't. His opponents in the Socialist League really were bomb-throwers as this article from the October 1911 Socialist Standard recorded:
Quote:In the flourishing days of Anarchism in England, when they had captured the "Socialist League," after William Morris, Eleanor Marx and others had left it in disgust., the Anarchists used its organ, the "Commonweal," to push its reactionary propaganda. Thus D. J. Nichol, the editor, wrote of a Trafalgar Square meeting : "Some people condemned the throwing of the bomb at Chicago ; for my part I think it would have been well in London if a man had been found courageous enough to hurl death and destruction among the ruffians who attacked a peaceful meeting." (Nov. 11, 1891)In the next issue they eulogised the Tennessee escaped prisoners who carried on open pillage in these terms : "You have shown the workers of America—aye, and of the world—how to free themselves, not at the ballot-box but with the rifle, the torch, and the dynamite bomb." It commended the Anarchist, Ravachol, who murdered and robbed an old man and was guillotined, in the following words : "Thus finished another stage in the career of a man who has shaken capitalism to its foundations and shown the workers an example worthy of emulation. We are anxiously awaiting the advent of some English Ravachols." (July 2, 1892.)Many other examples could be quoted but one more must, suffice. "We say that individual acts have always been a success. The man who strangled Watrin [a French mine-owner whose men were on strike], Pini, who robbed the banks, have opened more eyes than all the pamphlet writers in a century. Our aims can only be attained by accumulated individual actions against property and the men who hold it." (Dec. 19, 1891).When the Anarchist "movement" was less feeble its votaries carried out its teachings. In 1893 August Vaillant, the French Anarchist, threw a bomb into the French Parliament from the public gallery. Over 60 people were wounded and he was guillotined. In 1894 Martial Bourdin blew himself to atoms while fixing a bomb near the Royal Observatory, in. Greenwich Park. In the same year a Deptford "comrade," Rolla Richards, got 7 years for blowing up several South London Post offices, Emile Henry, too, threw a bomb from the balcony of the Paris Cafe Terminus, and 2 persons were killed arid 21 injured.The foregoing demonstrate that Anarchism is hostile to working class organisation. While it advocates individual violence, it paves the way for the armed forces of the State to intervene and crush it.No wonder Morris felt he had to distance himself from these nutters.
