ALB
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LBird wrote:gnome wrote:Although this particular individual claims to be a communist he insists that the class struggle alone will be the basis for the change without the need for education by an external 'elite', by which he means, in this instance, the SPGB.What would your response to this person be?
My response would be: "Communist workers are not an 'external elite' ".
Exactly. Those of us who have become socialists/communists are just members of the working class arguing the case for socialism with our fellow workers. We are not an elite from outside the working class, not even those of us who have got together in a separate organisation to do this more effectively.What in fact we are doing is trying to ensure that hearing the argument for socialism is part of the "experience" of the working class since (as all of us here know) there is no such thing as experience without thought. So the Trotskyists (and others) are wrong to argue that the working class can learn to be against capitalism through mere struggle or by the experience of failure to achieve some reform without them also hearing the case for socialism argued. Which they reject as casting pearls before swine.
Police intelligence must have got in wrong again. There were no anarchists on the march and so no danger of any "incident" as they were all at an obscure event in Mile End contemplating their navels.
gnome wrote:Actually I did. Comrade J.W. introduced himself to us at the literature stall there.Apologies. By way of reparation I will recount your remark on a demonstration organised across the road outside MacDonalds by the bakers union in pursuit of this campaign. Bakers demand more dough.
Fair enough. It was just an example. Maybe penal taxation on the rich isn't really an unrealisable "transitional demand" but a practicable reform under certain circumstances. It still remains true, though, that if the working class was strong enough to impose this it could also be strough enough to abolish capitalist ownership of the means of production altogether. All the effort to get the working class to demand that the rich be taxed till the pips squeak would have been better directed to get them to abolish capitalism. Certainly the socialist movement should built itself up on this basis not of demanding reforms, unrealisable or no.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Could you elaborate on this so i can whinge on LibcomPersonally I don't think that's a good idea because we'd come across as, well … whingers. If they don't want us, fair enough. Fuck 'em.
That article puts the classic, absurd case for "transitional demands", where a vanguard party campaigns on a demand that it knows is unrealisable so that the workers can learn this through experience (of failure). But, as Joan Robinson is quoted in the article as saying, if a government (that's her term, we'd say the working class) is strong enough to impose, say, heavy penal taxation on the rich it (they) would also be strong enough to abolish the whole capitalist system. So why not campaign directly for this (socialism) in the first place? Trotskyist answer: because the mass of workers are incapable of understanding the direct case for socialism and can only follow such slogans as "tax the rich".But, to return to Piketty, after listening to this talk he gave earlier this month (it's 40 minutes from the 8th minute on) I see that he is now saying that the r (rate of return), in his "fundamental structural contradiction of capitalism" that where r is greater than g (rate of growth of GDP per head of population) then the inequality in the ownership of wealth will increase, is the rate after tax. The book gives the impression that it was before tax.But that changes everything. It means that he is no longer trying to state a basic economic law of capitalism but that his formula already includes provision for the reformist political measures he proposes of an increase in taxes on returns from capital as a means of stopping the "economic law" he claims to have discovered from operating and of overcoming the "contradiction of capitalism" he thinks he has identified. Talk about begging the question (in its proper sense) !
Gnome, there was a 14th member who you probably didn't know about: a comrade from the North East down with his trade union and who said hello to us at Marble Arch.The Parks police have adopted the same policy as the Anarchists: not allowing stalls inside Hyde Park as one previous occasions (even though this was technically against the regulations). So all the stalls were outside the main entrance at Marble Arch. Apart from us, there were Militant (under various disguises), the SWP and the Revolutionary Communist Group (still banging on about imperialism and the imperialist Labour Party).Most of the time we had to put up with the Trotskyists using a loudspeaker to try to raise trade union consciousness. Not that theirown understanding was all that high since at one point one of their leaders Linda Taafe actually said that it was "even nnecessary for employers that we get a pay rise so we can have more money to spend". I can't remember how many times we heard the call go up for "decent wages" (apparently a £10 an hour minumum wage satisfies this). "Decent jobs at decent pay" was how it was often put. Not much change since Marx in 1865 criticised the call a "fair day's wage for a fair day's work".There's nothing wrong with demanding and struggling for better wages and conditions but this should be accompanied by an understanding that there's nothing "decent" or "fair" about wages and the wage system and of the need to abolish them altogether by making the means of production the common property of everybody.To make Speakers Corner more of a tourist attraction the Park authorities have erected a number of columns giving the history of the place. One of them has on it the iconic picture of a Party speaker (Steve Ross) speaking from one of our platform's on which is written Marx's alternative call "Abolish the Wages System".Pity not many of the marchers would have stopped and seen it, but quite a few did get our leaflet.
Some very disabled people obviously are less productive but that doesn't mean that they can't contribute anything. That wouldn't be a problem in socialist society since the principle of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" would apply. But it is a problem in capitalist society where everybody (apart from the owning class) is expected to fend for themself or rely on charity.
DJP wrote:ALB wrote:He died shortly after attending an SPGB meeting at which a Party member tried to convince him that you can derive an "ought" from an "is".How do you do that then? The suspence is killing me.
By coincidence the comrade concerned just rang. He remembers the incident and says that he called Walford an 'empirical reductionist' who couldn't see beyond what existed.
Yes,I will read through what you've written on Piketty. I'll email you as I'm doing a talk on him this Sunday.
steve colborn wrote:As Socialists, we know that Freud and Bowman are merely saying the way it is.Exactly my thoughts on hearing this news item. As far as capitalism is concerning some people are incapable of reproducing the value of the minumum wage let alone of producing a surplus value over and above this for their employer and so are effectively unemployable and useless from a capitalist point of view. Objectionable as he is (with a ten bedroom mansion in central London he seeks to justify the bedroom tax) on this occasion he is right and is being hounded for telling the truth. His critics are hypocrites.
Just remembered. Isn't the Richard Brenner who moved the resolution on voting Labour a member/leader of the Workers Power/Fifth International group? Or was? Seems the Trots of various hues have well entried LU.
Quote of the Day, from President Erdogan of Turkey:
Quote:Mr Erdogan questioned the motives of the anti-Isis allies and accused them of meddling in the region's affairs for the past century. "Do you think they come for peace, with their planes and their missiles?" he asked an audience at Marmara University, Istambul. "No," he said. "They do it to get the petrol wells under their control." (Times, 14 October)
