[ALB]

I think that since then they've decided to bring forward the referendum to 30 March:http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-crimea-referendum-date-20140301,0,2305350.story#axzz2ustVGtSE

[ALB]

Brian wrote:

We get a mention in SPEW's review of his book:  http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/17458

This was already picked up at the time:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/millie-and-underconsumptionismThe Kliman interview was due to appear in this month's Socialist Standard but was held over by articles on current events (anniversary of Miners Strike, Ukraine, Davos). It's due to appear now in the April issue.

[ALB]

See here.

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Interesting article here from Der Spiegel explaining how the two oligarchs mentioned in the article in this month's Socialist Standard as supporting the "blues" dropped President Yanukovych and got their paid MPs to vote for the new regime:http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/how-oligarchs-in-ukraine-prepared-for-the-fall-of-yanukovych-a-955328.html

[ALB]

Latest news:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/events-and-announcements/left-unityorg-peoples-assembly?page=29#comment-11958The variants on their name that they have registered and can use on the ballot paper are:

Quote:

50% Mansion Tax Abolish the monarchy Abolish all public schools Double dole, double pension, double benefits Affordable housing for all

I thought they might be able to do better than that but then, unlike the Trotskyists who also propose to big increases in pensions, etc, they are not being serious.

[ALB]

Just seen that too. Also noticed that one of the variants of the party registered as "Left Party" is "Left Unity". Maybe that's what they're planning to do. I suppose that they didn't expect "Left Party" to be rejected as the new party's name at its founding conference.

[ALB]

As a member of the Co-op (for the divi) I filled in the online consulation they asked (I said don't give money to Labour Party, improve the terms and conditions of employees, and drop the "ethical" stuff). I have just got a reply from the Chief Execitive (I suppose everybody who filled in the questionnaire will have) in which he states:

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We have also put in place a business plan which we intend will restore us to longer-term sustainable profitability over time

Apparently this involves selling off some of its assets that it's had for years. The Co-op is now of course in the hands of US vulture capitalists. To tell the truth I feel a bit sad that all the efforts put in by workers over the years to built up the Co-op as an attempted alternative to normal capitalist enterprises should come to nothing, even though we told them so. Hopefully people will learn the lesson that you can't outcompete ordinary capitalist businesses and not try this all over again, as some are urging.

[ALB]

Further confirmation that the new Left Unity party are chickening out of testing how much support they have by putting up candidates. Here's a comment from Simon Hardy (incidentally a prominent member of the "Anti-Capitalist Initiative", a breakaway from "Workers Power" trot group, both of which are boring from with LU) on the Lambeth Left Unity facebook as to why they won't be contesting the Lambeth Borough Council elections in May:

Quote:

I think it is unlikely we will stand candidates in this election, we are a very new organisation and only just getting things together so our members felt that it might be a bit premature to stand at this stage and risk getting a poor vote.

The fact is that, despite their pretensions of being a "UKIP of the Left", they won't have much more electoral support than we do.As an electoral party LU seems to be dead in the water.

[ALB]

Another article recommended as informative can be found here:http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/support-ukrainians-but-not-far-right/Here is one passage written before the new government was formed on one of the parties in it:

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One of the major forces at Euromaidan is the far-right xenophobic party ‘Svoboda’ (‘Freedom’). They are dominant among the volunteering guards of the protest camp and are the vanguard of the most radical street actions such as the occupation of the administrative buildings in the center of Kiev. Before 2004 ‘Svoboda’ was called Social-National Party of Ukraine and used Nazi ‘Wolfsangel’ symbol. The party leader Oleh Tiahnybok is still known for his anti-Semitic speech. Even after its re-branding, Svoboda is establishing cooperation with Neo-Nazi and neofascist European parties such as National Democratic Party of Germany and Forza nuova of Italy. Its rank-and-file militants are frequently involved in street violence and hate crimes against migrants and political opponents. At Euromaidan, particularly, the far-right attacked a left-wing student group attempting to bring social-economic and gender equality issues to the protest. Several days later the far-right mob beat and seriously injured two trade union activists accusing them of being “communists.” Slogans, previously purview of far-right subculture such as ‘Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!’, ‘Glory to the nation! Death to enemies!’, ‘Ukraine above everything!’ (an adoption of ‘Deutschland über alles’) have now become mainstream among the protestors. On January 1st, ‘Svoboda’ organized a torchlight march to celebrate the birthday of Stepan Bandera – the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which for a certain period collaborated with Nazis, participated in the Holocaust and was responsible for the genocide of Poles in Western Ukraine.

Sounds a bit like Golden Dawn becoming part of the government in Greece.With 40% of the population implacably opposed to them they won't be able to implement their "radical nationalist" agenda, but this does expose the West's talk of  being concerned only with "democracy" in the Ukraine as propaganda to try to disguise their real aim of bringing the area into their sphere of interest.    

[ALB]

Another eyewitness meeting, by author of this article:MONDAY 10th MARCH 6:00 PM Revolution or Reaction?Crisis in Ukraine‘Eyewitness Report by Ukrainian Socialist'VOLODYMYR ISHCHENKOCOMMONS: Journal of Social CriticismForum hosted by John McDonnell MPCommittee Room 12, House of Commons via main St Stephens entrance, Westminster tube

[ALB]

Comment on the latest situation in the Ukraine from the comrade who has written the article on the Ukraine in the March Socialist Standard:Notes on the situation in Ukraine, 2/27/14Banderist (1)regroupmentIn establishing itself as a parliamentary party, the Svoboda (Freedom) Party of OlehTiahnybok has tried to present itself as ‘moderate’ and ‘respectable’, though without renouncing its ideological roots in the openly Banderist Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU). This entails, in particular, the rejecting anti-Semitism (partly for the sake of good relations with Orange oligarchs of Jewish origin) and supporting the goal of joining ‘Europe’ – previously denounced as decadent (in order not to alienate the EU and pro-EU forces within the Orange coalition).These moves toward respectability have enabled Svoboda to enter the new governing coalition and Tiahnybok himself to meet the US envoy to Ukraine, assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland (not to mention the Israeli ambassador). However, they have also opened up a political space to Svoboda’s right, which is now occupied by Right Sector (RS), an umbrella structure encompassing such organizations as Patriot of Ukraine and White Hammer. They are anti-Semitic, anti-Europe, and the other things that Svoboda can no longer allow itself.RS uses the Wolfsangel (Wolf’s Hook) (2) as its symbol. Its armed units have taken over ‘autonomous zones’ in and around Kiev. One video on the internet shows them vandalizing the Kiev offices of the Party of Regions; another shows them stopping a police car at a roadblock and checking the driver’s ID (to assert authority). Some 30% of the protestors on the demonstrations marched under RS banners. It was they who first attacked the police with Molotov cocktails, provoking violence in response. When the anarchist Anti-Fascist Union Ukraine tried to join the protest, they were intimidated and threatened by RS.Nevertheless, there are many signs that Svoboda and RS are not really in opposition to one another. There is, rather, a division of labor between them as parliamentary and extra-parliamentary forces sharing the same long-term goals. Tyahnybok’s deputy Yuri Mykhalchyshyn is thought to serve as the main link between Svoboda and RS.The existence of a radical-nationalist paramilitary force outside the weakened and demoralized state machine has been a major factor impelling Ukraine down the road to civil war, with similar ‘self-defense’ forces emerging on the other side of the political confrontation in the Eastern cities. Some analysts have been arguing that Ukraine is already in the early stages of a civil war.The atmosphere of mass violence is conveyed by another video, taken in the Crimean city of Kerch. A group of moderate (non-Banderite) Orange activists have come to set up a platform and hold an outdoor meeting with the local residents. The woman speaker has hardly begun when people begin yelling things like: ‘You are fascists, you have no right…’ and throwing things at them. Something lands right in the middle of her face. Then a group push break through the police line – the police seem to be doing their best to protect the visitors – and rush the platform. It topples over and the speaker is thrown to the ground. Then we see another group kicking and beating her companions, their faces already bloodied. The crowd eggs them on with cries of ‘Beat the fascists!’The new governmentIt had been announced that the new government would be a coalition of the three main Orange parties – Fatherland, the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR), and Svoboda. However, it turns out to be an alliance of only Fatherland and Svoboda plus a few non-party figures. UDAR says it decided not to enter the coalition but does not explain why; it promises to support the government in parliament.There is a clue: on Tuesday Tiahnybok expressed reservations about joining a coalition that would also include UDAR. Perhaps that reflected his dislike of UDAR’s conciliatory stance on language and other ethno-national issues. My guess is that both UDAR and Svoboda were unwilling to work together, so that Fatherland had to choose between them. Why did they choose Svoboda? A leaked phone call between Nuland and the US ambassador shows that the State Department did not want Svoboda in the government, suggesting that while the US has influence on the Orange politicians they are not helpless puppets of the US.My own answer is that only Svoboda can restrain RS and thereby hopefully halt the drift toward civil war. This is presumably a reality that the Ukrainians understand but the American (and European?) diplomats do not. The composition of the new government supports this hypothesis. The new head of the National Security and Defense Council, Andriy Parubiy, though recently aligned with Fatherland – he coordinated a volunteer security corps to protect the protestors – has a Banderite past (he co-founded the SNPU with Tiahnybok) and his deputy is none other than Dmytro Yarosh, grim-faced leader of the RS. Through this maneuver the radical-nationalist paramilitaries can be incorporated into the official security forces of the state.Svoboda has been given one of the three deputy prime minister posts (Oleksandr Sych) and the ministries for ecology and agriculture. The new education minister (Serhiy Kvit) is also close to the radical nationalists. And Svoboda keeps the state prosecutor’s office, a politically sensitive position already under its control.Besides the radical nationalists, several other members of the new government may disappoint those who believe in the ‘ideals of the Orange Revolution’. A number of new ministers have been targets of corruption allegations, and in some cases the evidence seems quite weighty. And some of the new people, especially in the economics ministries, are generally regarded as representatives of specific oligarchs: energy minister Yuri Prodan and finance minister Oleksandr Shlapak both have close connections to the wealthiest of the Orange oligarchs, ‘Benya’ Kolomoyski.(1). Stepan Bandera was the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which was active in Galicia (Western Ukraine) under Polish rule in the 1930s, under German occupation during WW2, and under the Soviet regime until suppressed in the early 1950s. I use the term ‘Banderists’ in order to leave open the question of whether movements in this tradition should be regarded as fascist, semi-fascist or merely radical nationalist.(2) [my addition — ALB]

[ALB]

link wrote:

I do think you should have read the link to Rosa Luxemburg which you suggest refutes my argument – Hardly.  One paragraph says: ‘In order to do this, is a majority in the National Assembly necessary?  Only those who subscribe to parliamentary cretinism, who would decide the revolution and socialism with parliamentary majorities, believe this. Not the parliamentary majority in the National Assembly, but the proletarian mass outside, in the factories and on the streets, will decide the fate of the National Assembly.”Do you agree with this then?

Of course only the "proletarian mass" outside parliament can establish socialism. To mean anything from a socialist point of view a parliamentary majority would have to be a reflection of the opinion of workers democratically self-organised outside parliament. So that the socialist MPs would be their delegates."Parliamentary cretinism" is the view that socialism can be brought into being by the action of MPs alone, as advocated at the time by the Labour Party and on the Continent by Social Democratic parties. They imagined that socialism could be gradually introduced by a parliamentary majority gained on the basis of promises to reform capitalism. Ed's dad, among others, demolished that one in his book on so-called "parliamentary socialism".Having said this, I wouldn't want to claim that Luxemburg's position was the same as the SPGB's. I was just making the lesser point that she was not dogmatically "anti-parliamentarist" and so it wasn't the same as yours.  In fact she specifically argued on this point against those you see as your intellectual forbearers.She seems to have underestimated the degree of support for socialism in Germany at the time (or maybe she didn't as she advised against the Spartacist uprising). For a contemporary socialist comment on this and the elections to the National Assembly see this article from the February 1919 Socialist Standard.

link wrote:

NOW you demand that I go back over ‘when and where has this happened’  which is precisely what I discussed in the first place.

There's been a misunderstanding here. I know perfectly well that there were "soviets" formed in Russia in 1905 and 1917, but I interpreted the following passage from your earlier post that you were saying that there had been workers councils that had actually run things "ignoring money, costs, profits":

link wrote:

When run by class conscious workers, they showed the capacity to enable workers themselves to run society according to  socialist principles ie ignoring money, costs, profits and focusing instead on need, on equality and recallable delegates.

It was examples of this that I was asking you to produce. But maybe I misread you or did you mean to suggest that there had been?

[ALB]

When in the 1960s all the Trot groups told us we should join Labour as "the mass party of the working class" we used to refer them to Catholic Church.

[ALB]

It looks as if the anarcho-capitalist idea of a non-state-backed money has come unstuck:http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/02/26/us-mtgox-website-idUKBREA1O07920140226So, they can't do with the State after all. How else are they going to prevent thefts?.

[ALB]

link wrote:

For example she goes on to say: “But in order to be able to overthrow it, the proletariat requires a high degree of political education, of class-consciousness and organisation. All these conditions cannot be fulfilled by pamphlets and leaflets, but only by the living political school, by the fight and in the fight, in the continuous course of the revolution.”

True, but the immediately preceding sentence reads:

Quote:

Absolutism in Russia must be overthrown by the proletariat.

Which confirms my point that she was advocating mass strikes and "workers councils" to obtain political democracy in Russia and that the revolution she was talking about was the bourgeois revolution.Later, after the collapse of the German and Russian empires in 1917-8, she did envisage these as weapons to try to overthrow capitalism too. But as can be seen from this article she did not adopt the abstentionist position you do towards participating in elections:http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/12/23.htmNote the reference in the opening line to the fact that the Workers Councils in Germany had voted to back the reformist Social Democrat government. In other words, there is nothing necessarily socialist about the Workers Council form of organisation.

link wrote:

When run by class conscious workers, they showed the capacity to enable workers themselves to run society according to  socialist principles ie ignoring money, costs, profits and focusing instead on need, on equality and recallable delegates.   This is Socialism in embryo appearing in practice, surely you can appreciate the importance of that? 

It would be, but when and where has this happened?

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