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I don't think Mattick is arguing against the so-called 'Spanish Revolution' (the takeover of some factories and farms by anarchists and others) is he? What he is criticising is the position taken up by the CNT of supporting the Republican government against the Franco rebels. Maybe if a socialist revolution had been on the cards in Spain this criticism might be justified, but this was not the case.The choice was not between capitalism or socialism, but political democracy or political dictatorship. In this case the CNT position was not entirely unreasonable. The situation was complicated by the fact that the Republicans were backed by those Mattick rightly calls the "Moscow Fascists" and between them and Franco there was no essential difference (only over who would impose the dictatorship and do the oppressing). But saying there is no difference between Franco Fascism and Moscow Fascism is one thing. Saying, as Mattick comes close to here and as the 'Left Communists' still do, that there is no difference as far as the working class is concerned between Fascism and Political Democracy is another. Clearly there is, even if recognising this presents the problem of what attitude socialists should take in such a situation (as it did for us in the 1930s with regard to the Spanish Civil War).In any event, I think the 'Spanish Revolution' has been exaggerated as pointed out in 1996 in this article from the now defunct magazine Subversion:http://libcom.org/history/spain-1936-end-anarchist-syndicalsim-subversion

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steve colborn wrote:

I can see a time when it could be, "behave or it's a bullet in the head" though.

I can't. Modern capitalism could never function on that basis.

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There's a review in the January Standard (already out but not online till 1 January). I don't think we are necessarily committed to his view (extensively argued, with graphs and statistics, in this pamphlet) that there was no redistribution of income (which would be brought about by the spontaneous operation of the economic laws of capitalism) from the working class to the capitalist class in the years preceding the outbreak of the present crisis in 2008. This would certainly show that crises are not caused by the working class coming to consume too small a portion of national income but is not absolutely or logically necessary to demonstrate this point.The speakers from "Internationalist Perspective" disagreed with him on this and I think we too, accurately or inaccurately, have accepted and publicised that working class living standards in the US have stagnated over the past 30 or so years. He may be right that in fact they didn't but have even increased (taking into account the so-called "social wage") but this is still a matter of controversy. In any event, as one of the IP speakers pointed out, quoting CLR James (originally Marx), that whether their wages be higher or lower the working class are still exploited.

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imposs1904 wrote:

The IP is holding a joint meeting in NYC on December 2nd:http://fischerzed.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/can-redistribution-solve-capitalisms-crises-public-meeting-in-new-york/I'm hoping to pop along to it, but it depends on family considerations.

There's a You tube video of this meeting here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGxp4C04YbA#t=4996In their opening speeches the four speakers virtually put our case against "underconsumption" theories of crises and of an increase in popular consumption as the way-out.One of them coins the new word "redistributionism". I think that might convey better what we mean as it's a good description of the policies of those who say "Tax the Rich to pay for the Crisis they caused", e.g. the trotskysit groups and leftwing trade union leaders.All the speakers call for the aboition of wage-labour (as opposed to higher wages, which like us they are all for, though not for "redistributionist" reasons), though only one (McIntosh of IP) explicitly spells out that this involves the abolition of money too. He also rejects "labour-time vouchers" (whick Kliman and the MHI don't, but they didn't rise to the bait).          

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mcolome1 wrote:

Rosa was ambivalent because she ended up supporting the uprising of the Spartacists

She did support it, yes, but I thought this was because she respected a party decision which she had spoken against, i.e she thought that the uprising was ill-advised but loyally went along with the majority decision. I think she was also outvoted on her view that the Spartacist League should take part in the elections to the Reichstag. In other words, she realised that the Spartacist uprising, being that of a comparatively small minority, was likely to fail. She was right, but it cost her her life.

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An excerpt from the December EC Minutes has been given, in fact it was from a report from the election committee to the EC, but not the follow-up. The EC rejected the election committee's recommendation to drop the party election video and passed instead the following resolution:

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Motion 17 – Foster and Cox moved that the EC authorises Cdes M Foster and J Mercer to use existing scripts to explore other ways of producing an election film, which need to be completed before the end of March 2014. Agreed.

The two comrades are already working on this on the basis of a script which had already been agreed and which concentrates on putting over the positive case for (world) socialism and how it would affect people's everyday life (as opposed to attacking our political opponents).A previous EC Meeting (in September) had considered a request from South West Regional Branch to seek permission to use "Imagine". This was not agreed:

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Cox and Craggs moved that the EC makes an informal approach to the PRS to find out costs and the likelihood of using the lyrics of the song Imagine. Lost (2-5-0)

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As it's the supposed season of goodwill, apologies, seafire, but there's a good (actually, excellent) article on this here:http://www.critique-sociale.info/category/english/

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Sorry, mate, we've been had by scammers from the Ukraine before. So were others:http://www.internationalist.org/ukraineimpostors0803.html

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Today's Financial Times contains a full page (and the FT is a broadheet) reply to the Pope trailed on the front page as "Capitalism's promise. The Pope is wrong about inequality".  Actually, this is not really an accurate description of what the article, by John Gapper, actually argues. More accurate is the subheading:

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Capitalism While the income gap in industrialised societies grows inexorably wider, global inequality is shrinking.

Grapper's argument is that capitalism can claim the credit for reducing the gap between the industrialised and industrialising countries as it spreads in China, India, etc. He is not so keen to proclaim that it is capitalism that is leading to the "inexorably wider" income gap in the industrialised countries, even though this follows from his argument.He also produces a quote from the same papal bull:

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The Pope loves everyone, rich and poor alike, but he is obliged to remind all that the rich must help, respect and promote the poor.

Not a Marxist then, just an advocate of charity, as of course we knew.

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Our record of contesting elections in the North East is quite impressive:1989 European Parliament elections (Tyne & Wear) 919 votes (0.5%)1997 General Election (Easington) 502 votes (1.2%)1997 General Election (Jarrow) 444 votes (1.0%)1999 European Parliament elections (North East)  1510 (0.4%)Local elections in South Tyneside 1998, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2004Local elections Durham County Council: 1999, 2003, 2005Local elections Seaham Council 2003

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I don't know whether this, from today's Financial Times, should be in the joke section instead:

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Suleyman Aslan, Halkbank chief executive, has said cash at his home — police reportedly found $4.5m in shoeboxes — was for charitable purposes.

Or maybe it's just an application of the saying "charity begins at home".

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Aren't we native English-speakers lucky then. But it also means that most people in the world will be bilingual, which is not that difficult if you have to be. It would be nice if native English-speakers would reciprocate by learning another language too, but what's the chance of that?

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All the results since 1906 are in the archives at Head Office, ready for someone to do their Ph D thesis on. Having looked at them over the years my impression is that any research would reveal that we do better in Labour seats and that in fact our vote could be proportional to the Labour vote. The explanation for this would be the language we use (capitalism, socialism) and that our appeal is directed to the "working class" (which will tend to be heard more by those who consider themselves this).Other factors affecting our results will be the total number of candidate (the more, the less we get; in fact the less all the candidates get) and also if there is another candidate describing themselves as "socialist" (which also reduces our vote).In any event our average must be between 1 and 2 percent.  Steve Colborn in Seaham gets much more than this because there we are in a straight fight with Labour (the shape of things to come in the last says of capitalism?).  John Bissett in Hebburn has also done better than average probably because he is known also  as a local activist (school governor, etc).Anyway, the material is there for whoever wants to do the research.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

the new approach of the NUMSA is to now to discard the gentleman's agreement on not poaching members from one another and actively seek NUM members.

Actually this was one of the more disturbing parts of the news report as it opens the way to mineworkers in South Africa being divided along political lines and organised into rival politically-motivated unions, as in most of Europe. The founding manifesto of the World Socialist Party (India) in 1995 made this point about this sort of situation:

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In countries like India workers have the legal right to form trade unions. But there, too, unlike Europe and America, most of the big trade unions have been organised from above as fund-raising, vote-catching political subsidiaries of self-seeking "leaders" than as spontaneous, grass-root, independent and autonomous organisations of the working class to defend their economic interests. Moreover in the absence of factory-wide free election of trade union functionaries, there are as many unions as there are political parties, most of them operating with their hired gangsters and peculiar flags having very little regard to class-unity. Actually these trade unions are not genuine trade unions. Still workers' organised resistance against exploitation is a must; and for that matter, their resistance struggles must have to be freed from the infamy of remaining divided and subservient to various capitalist political parties. This they can achieve by organising themselves in fully integrated and independent trade unions of their own, by throwing away all kinds of  blind faith and submissiveness regarding the wretched hierarchy of subscription-squeezer and flag-hoister "leaders". The working class movement is a movement of equals — organised by the workers and in the interest of the workers. No "leader", supposedly having some unknown "god"-given or "intrinsic" trick-finding qualities given is necessary to lead the working-class movement. For a "trick" cannot throw profit overboard. Simply because private property lives to levy its tribute on labour. All workers are equal; all members of the animal species Homo Sapiens, are essentially equals; all human brains are intrinsically the most adaptable and uniquely creative brains, except the few mentally-disabled ones. All workers are able, rather abler than the "leaders", to understand their own class-interests only if they are fully informed of their circumstances from local to global. And to be informed of what is happening around, and what has happened earlier, what they require is to meet in regular general assemblies, discuss and debate all that matters keeping ears and minds open and decide to take such steps as deemed useful. In case a strike is to be declared, they would need a strike committee to be formed of recallable delegates elected and mandated in the general assembl — thus retaining the ultimate control in their own hands. Where there are many rival trade union shops in a single factory or workplace operated by many capitalist political parties, a socialist worker can neither keep on supporting the one he is in, nor go on seeking membership of one after another or all at the same time, nor can he open his own "socialist" trade union instead. What he can, and should, do as an immediate perspective, is to try to form a "political group" with like-minded fellow workers and campaign for a class-wide democratic unity as stated above. Whenever an opportunity arrives the group must use the assemblies as a forum for political propaganda to expose the uselessness of "leaders" and show that the trade union movement is unable to solve the problems of crises, insecurity, poverty, unemployment, hunger and wars.

I don't know whether the trade union situation is South Africa is more like that in Britain or more like that in India. My guess would be that it's more like that in India, but I could be wrong. Perhaps someone else knows. 

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Interesting development but I'm not think we're keen on a trade union officially supporting one particular party. Mind you, supporting an opposition party would not be so bad as supporting the government party, as most South African unions havebeen doing  until today (including this one, I think).The "socialism" is likely to be that of the South African Communist Party and the ANC earlier, i.e. some sort of state capitalism. And it could be a launching pad for the political career of some trade union leader. Don't forget that leading South African black capitalist Cyril Ramaphosa was once the leader of the miners' union there.

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