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No2EU held a meeting in London last Thursday:http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-84ce-No2EU-campaign-to-visit-London/I see it is labelling itself (or rather the Morning Star and CPB are) a "radical anti-imperialist coalition", but it is still promoting the mistaken view that the problems facing workers in Britain are due to the EU and therefore the equally mistaken conclusion that they would be improved if Britain withdrew as if that would make any difference.The only other region I've been able to find where they are standing is the West Midlands where the list is headed by ex-Labour MP and leading SPEW member Dave Nellist:http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/18375I don't know about "radical anti-imperialist" but it is a coalition, a rather bizarre one between the Stalinists of the CPB and the Trotskyists of SPEW.

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jpodcaster wrote:

It does seem to me to have a genuine connection to working-class people and their organisations/communities and seems to be far more representative of working-class interests in the here and now, rather than what we'd like them to be at some point in the future.

This amounts to a claim that LU is a genuine expression of "trade union consciousness", but this is open to serious challenge. Someone once described the Labour Party as an alliance between trade unions and the "progressive middle class".  In the possible (but pointless) emergence of a Labour Party Mark 2 I'd suggest that LU represents the latter. There is no evidence that LU possesses any significant degree of trade union support, but plenty that it is concerned with issues such as "intersectionality" and "safe spaces" which are of marginal concern to  trade unionists but a high priority for some women of the "progressive middle class". The claim to be the trade union element in any future Labour Party Mark 2 would be more justifiable in the case of TUSC.

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stuartw2112 wrote:

Doesn't it follow as a matter of common Marxist sense that, once having seized control of the state, one of the things that the controlling party would have to do would be to impose capital controls and nationalise the banks? Given that this is almost certainly what would have to happen, isn't it reasonable to call this the "common ownership" or "democratic control" of the means of exchange? If not, why not?

While you were away, Stuart, Robbo started a thread of how a socialist minded working class (not, incidentally, a "controlling party" separate from them) would act if it won control in just one part of the world. I can't remember the title but I'm sure Robbo will.Nobody in this discussion suggested they would impose capital controls or nationalise the banks. Everybody agreed that they would have to abolish capitalist private property rights and introduce production directly for use. I'd imagine them in this hypothetical situation declaring all property titles, all stocks and shares, all bills and bonds, all limited liability companies and corporations (which are just legal fictions) null and void. "Money capital" and "banks" would disappear. So, no, merely controlling them would not amount to "common ownership" (but, rather, to "state capitalism" — which, I freely admit, is what in effect the Communist League of Germany was advocating in, and for, 1848).

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Why are we talking about "reforms" and "reformism" when there haven't been any reforms for ages (he last I can remember is free bus travel for old age pensioners).Workers' struggles these days are about trying to stop things getting worse by existing reforms being taken away. So the classic reformist strategy of gradually advancing towards socialism by a series of reforms (as advocated for instance by Peter Tatchell in his debate against us the other day) doesn't have any credibility.Nobody is against people trying  to stop their conditions getting worse, though it can be questioned whether this is helped by being linked to a political party (whichever, and LU is not the only one, just the latest) still wedded to a reformist strategy and still asking for reforms when none are to be had (why campaign, for example, for a citizens income when there's no chance at all of getting it, not that it would solve workers' problems anyway?).

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Yes, the term "hard working families", introduced by Labour (Gordon Brown used it a lot), is part of the rhetoric aimed at demonising those on benefits, i.e who don't work. Unfortunately, it does seem to have worked to large extent to split the working class by getting one section to blame the other instead of capitalism for their problems,

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Very disturbing. It reflects worse on the censoring perpetrators. Let's hope this sort of thing doesn't spread  It's got to be condemned out of hand.

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Père Duchêne wrote:

Section by section seems a rational thing to do.Chapter 1 'Bourgeois and Proletarians' – Week commencing Monday 14 April ?

I'd suggest rather the week after, i.e after Easter, to give some who have expressed an interest but who are not on this forum the time to do so.Anyway, I'll creating a separate thread for each section, so that they are ready for whenever we want to use them.

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jondwhite wrote:

Perhaps it could be argued to play devils advocate, that rather than censors falling out, this seems like a supportable 'ban', as 'banning' not free speech but something visible and liable to cause needless understandable trauma, distress and upset?

That's precisely the excuse that theperson who posted the justification for banning SWP "paraphernalia"  invoked. Frankly, I don't believe that the presence of SWP placards or whatever on a demonstration causes anyone "trauma, distress and upset" and I don't believe the person who claims that they cause them this. And even if it did this would not be a justifiable reason for banning placards, papers, etc. After all, where would it end? All sorts of things cause different people offence. I find the flag of St George's and christian icons of someone being crucified offensive, but I am not in favour of banning them.Banning things because they "offend" someone is the new intolerance which unfortunately seems to have embedded itself in certain would-be radical circles.

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stuartw2112 wrote:

The classical Marxist position is that the communist party, or the working class organised politically, should first of all settle matters with its own national bourgeoisie, by seizing state power and establishing a "dictatorship of the proletariat", ie, rule by the majority class, democratically organised. Marx and Engels, at least, were clear that a necessary step in this process would be the immediate nationalisation and centralisation of the means of credit, the banks, and the establishment of currency and capital controls.

I presume you are referring to the 10 measures, outlined at the end of Section II of the Communist Manifesto, that the Communist League of Germany proposed should be implemented if the working class won control of political power in 1848-9 or soon after.By coincidence we've just started a Communist Manifesto reading group on this forum where these 10 immediate measures and what they meant and were meant to mean will no doubt be discussed and dissected. Why not join the reading group? Might be better to begin at the beginning rather than leap straighaway into Capital as many do. Here's the link:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/reading-groups/marx-and-engels-manifesto-communist-party

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stuartw2112 wrote:

the Labour party is watching us nervously.

Why should they be? They are only concerned with vote-catching not ideas, so as long as LU doesn't contest elections they have nothing to be worried about. And the chances are that when and if LU does put up candidates this will be in safe Labour seats for fear of being accused of splitting the vote and letting the Tories in (and in fact from a genuine belief that Labour is better than the Tories). So nothing for them to fear there either. Most LU members will probably be in favour of voting Labour where there is no LU candidate, won't they? Moving more in LU circles you'd know better than me.

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While you're here, Stuart, can I take advantage of your presence to ask what is the LU party's intention with regard to elections. Will there be some standing in next year's general election or will you be giving TUSC and/or the Green Party a free run?

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They're giving Ralfy a real run for his money on libcom. See from here on:http://libcom.org/forums/thought/peak-oil#comment-535849

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This seems like a return to the election promises of yesteryear. Up until the 1970s unemployment in Britain was about 2%, as this article from the November 1971 Socialist Standard pointed out:http://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/fullemployment.htmEconomists had preached that it could be kept at around 3%, but when it rose to 4% in the 1970s this was regarded as a disaster.  To explain this economists developed the concept of the "natural rate of unemployment" as the rate above which the general price level would rise (what they called "inflation").  Apparently this is not incompatible with a rate of unemployment of as high as 4%, which can even be regarded as "full employment":

Quote:

Sometimes the natural rate is known as the full employment level of unemployment

At one time economists were saying that it was 6%. Some still do:http://www.clevelandfed.org/about_us/annual_report/2011/unemployment.cfmMost people will probably understand "full employment" to exist when the unemployment rate is at 2-3% as it was in the 20 or so years after 1945.So it would be interesting to know what level Osborne considers to be the "full employment level of unemployment". 2%? 3%? 4%? 6%. In Britain the level of unemployment is currently 7%.Or is he just being a demagogue? Don't all answer at once.

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The EC decided on Saturday to "Go for a Million" by upping the number of areas (Westminster parliamentary constituencies) where we take advantage of the free postal distribution from an earlier 14 to 20.The constituencies to be covered (from North to South and from West to East) are: Milton Keynes North, Oxford East, Oxford West & Abingdon, Reading East, Slough, Southampton Itchen, Southampton Test, Portsmouth North, Brighton Kemptown, Brighton Pavilion, Crawley, Dartford, Gravesham, Chatham & Aylesford, Maidstone & the Weald, Sittingbourne & Sheppey, Hastings & Rye, Canterbury, Follestone & Hythe, Dover. There are about 980,000 electors in these areas, the remaining 20,000 (maybe more) will be distributed in other areas door-to-door or at literature stalls by members and sympathisers.As there are just over 4 million electors in the South East Region, this means that some 25 percent of electors in the area will receive our election leaflet. We will be doing our best to get our message across to as many others as possible through media publicity

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In case people wonder what happened to this after it was rejected by the founding conference of Left Unity last November, it has now been adopted by the "Independent Socialist Network" (one of the constituents of TUSC) as its Statement of Aims and Principles:http://www.independentsocialistnetwork.org/2014/04/whats-happened-to-the-socialist-platform/

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