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Old Moore has a rival. This, from the mayday statement in Aurora, the paper of the left-communist CWO:
“The new scramble for Africa, and the Chinese and US manoeuvres in the Pacific, will not be limited to military moves by their proxies for ever. The future that imperialism is preparing for us is a future full of destruction, death and cruel barbarism never seen before”.
A real mayday message if ever there was one.
Their argument is that capitalism needs a world war to destroy capital so to enable capital accumulation to continue as reconstruction. If that’s true we may as well eat, drink and be merry (even with the lads).
Fortunately, their understanding of how capitalism works is wrong. Capitalism doesn’t need a world war for capital accumulation to continue.
Four of us handed out 400 or so of our leaflet at the May Day event in central London today, a march from Clerkenwell Green at the edge of the City to Trafalgar Square for a rally to be addressed by various leftwing trade union leaders including Mick Lynch.
We decided that the easiest way to move our stall from Clerkenwell Green to Trafalgar Square was to go with the march. But behind which banner? Certainly not any of the “Marxist-Leninist” contingents from workers from the Middle East and Asia with their hammer and sickle banners and especially not the one with a huge picture of Stalin. In the end we settled for Haringey trades council which happened to be the last one. So, we were as far away as possible from the vanguard(s).
The sad truth is that without the “Marxist-Leninist” contingents there would only have been a few hundred there. The trade union banners were followed only by 3 or 4 people. Also, some there seemed to think that there were on a pro-Palestine march.
At one point a man obvious City gent crossed the road between the marchers. We asked him if, as a capitalist, he felt intimidated by a workers’ march. He replied that he didn’t.
You mean the USA has plans to get Georgia to join NATO so it can move its missiles closer to Russia?
The first bank failure this year in the USA occurred a few days ago:
Look at the reason:
“Republic First Bancorp was seized by Pennsylvania regulators Friday, following a failed deal earlier this year to infuse the Philadelphia-based regional bank with new funds, amid a decline in deposits and a struggling mortgage lending business.”
Those who believe and teach that banks create out of thin air the money they lend have a number of questions to ask themselves.
1. If a bank can create money by simply making a loan (such as granting a mortgage), how come its mortgage lending business can be “struggling”? Couldn’t it simply reduce the rate of interest it charges and attract new borrowers that way?
2. If a bank can create money out of thin air, why would it need depositors? They would just be a drag on its finances through having to pay them interest? Why would a decline in depositors create a problem? It ought to improve a bank’s financial situation as there’s less interest to pay savers.
3. If a bank doesn’t need outside funds, how come that it can be saved by an infusion of funds from outside? Why would that make a difference?
Basically, a bank’s business model is to borrow money at one rate of interest (from depositors or other financial institutions) and lend out a part of that at a higher rate of interest; its income being the difference between the two.
So, the amount of funds a bank has or can get limits the amount it can lend and so its income. Similarly, if a bank can’t find borrowers (because the rate of interest is too high) then its income is reduced. That’s how a bank can get into trouble.
Every bank failure shows the absurdity of the Thin Air School of Banking yet it still won’t lie down.
Southwark News report, published today, on that Herne Hill hustings:
The Southwark News in its article on the mayor and assembly elections
https://southwarknews.co.uk/news/politics/london-elections-2024-how-do-they-work/
refers its readers for details on who the candidates are and what they stand for to this site:
https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/elections/gla.c.2024-05-02/london-assembly-elections-constituencies/
where, in the appropriate places, there is a link to a copy of our election leaflet.
Leafletting today in Brixton:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/10048538/4446544912577219645
150 or so there and in Clapham High Street. A further 250 in Streatham Hill.
More tweets from the hustings:
Discussions about alternative ways to increase housing stock. @Chrissie_W13 advocates modular construction @ChrisD_French talks about repurposing office blocks@ShinyShep: need to retrofit
Adam says the solution is abolishing capitalism.
— Herne Hill Forum (@hernehillforum) April 24, 2024
Adam says the police exist primary to protect property rights, not support the community.@ChrisD_French said mayor should not be police and crime commissioner- that should be someone else and met needs reform.@ShinyShep emphasised need to reform the met
— Herne Hill Forum (@hernehillforum) April 24, 2024
Leasehold reform. Member of public said @SadiqKhan had not carried out commonhold pilot scheme he had said he would@LabourMarina said she would look into the pilot issue.
Adam said leasehold is a feudal relic
— Herne Hill Forum (@hernehillforum) April 24, 2024
@ChrisD_French doesn’t own a car. Need a pavement up approach. Active travel is great but we need pavements clear of clutter and hire bikes
Adam said we should have free public transport.@LabourMarina said LTNs have improved active travel options
— Herne Hill Forum (@hernehillforum) April 24, 2024
Photo from the Herne Hill hustings;
Candidates now making final short speeches.
Thanks to all of them for putting themselves forward, and for attending tonight.
Thank you also to everyone for participating so positively.
A great community event. pic.twitter.com/vYjd7dZwIx
— Herne Hill Forum (@hernehillforum) April 24, 2024
When did we ever describe workers as citizens? We have always called them subjects. I remember us ridiculing Tony Benn’s suggestions that, if the head of state was elected, that would transform workers from subjects into citizens.
There is nothing to return to as we never departed from calling workers subjects (of some state or other).
This article by Hugo Rifkind well describes the situation between “secular Jews” and the religious Jews represented by the Board of Jewish Deputies (who led the campaign to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn and are now gunning for the London police chief).
The person at the centre of the controversy turns out not to have been a Jewish person returning from a synagogue but the leader of the “Campaign against Anti-Semitism” who set out to provoke an incident and did so probably even beyond his own expectations.
Ban the marches & Jews will get the blame
“For all the tin-eared idiocy of the Met, antisemitism is not a policing problem. It is a social one. Notice it, worry about it, counter it… have a care, all the while, not to make it worse” @hugorifkindhttps://t.co/BcBK5xZ5Mp
— Rupert Myers (@RupertMyers) April 23, 2024
“We’ll be the most pro-business government ever, vows Reeves” is the headline across two pages in today’s Times.
More pro-business than Gladstone in the 19th century, the Tory governments of the 1920s, or Madame Thatcher in the 1980s? That would be some achievement but the incoming Labour government is clearly intending to have a go.
The actual quote, for future reference and for throwing at Labourites and those who say we should vote Labour (it’s from an interview with the Times) is:
If I become chancellor, the next Labour government is going to be the most pro-business government this country has ever seen.
Never has Labour’s intention to govern in the interest of the capitalist class been so openly and unashamedly proclaimed.
Lesser evil? What lesser evil?
Full house of over a hundred at the hustings in Herne Hill last night. Over 70 leaflets handed out. Also leafletting outside the meeting were the Women’s Rights Network with a leaflet insisting that “women are defined by biological sex NOT by chosen gender identity” presumably aimed at the Green Party whose candidate for Mayor has aggressively taken the other side in this “culture war”. And a group of social housing tenants threatened with eviction by Lambeth’s Labour Council which they say they are going to resist.
No show by the Reform-UK candidate but the reformist position was ably represented by the Labour, Green, LibDem and Tory candidates. Questions about housing, crime, air pollution, buses and other problems of everyday life to which the other candidates offered solutions which amounted to no more than tinkering within the system of class ownership of the means of life and production for sale and profit. In any event, these proposed reforms could not be implemented by the Greater London Assembly which doesn’t have the formal power to even try to do anything; all it does is scrutinise what the Mayor does.
The local press were present. It will be interesting to see if and how they report the presentation of the socialist case that these problems arise from the wages-prices-profits system that is capitalism; and can only be dealt with within the framework of a society based on the common ownership and democratic control the means of living with production directly to meet people’s needs not profit.
Door-to-door distribution of the leaflet continued today and yesterday: 500 in The Elephant and Castle area, 350 in Clapham Common, 350 in Streatham and 250 in Kentish Town.
There are now only about 1000 left (out of 15,000) to distribute, 500 out for distribution and 500 at Head Office. These latter will be kept to hand out at stalls, hustings, other meetings and tube stations from now till polling day a week on Thursday.
