ALB
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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:
Quote: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.
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.
There's an article in today's Times by Dieter Helm, Professor of Energy Policy at Oxford University, where he makes the following claim:
Quote:There is no shortage of oil, gas or coal. We are not running out of any of them. There is enough to fry the planet many times over.A summary of the article can be found here:http://www.thegwpf.org/dieter-helm-lost-gamble-forcing-energy-bills/The whole article shows why it is impossible to pursue a rational energy policy under capitalism as the relative prices of the various source of energy are always changing, with governments forced to go for the cheapest for the capitalist industries within their borders to remain "competitive".So much for peak oil. It looks as if it is the scare over this that has peaked. But, as long as energy derived from burning fossil fuels is cheaper than from using renewable sources, this is what will happen. So the danger is not the collapse of capitalism through oil running out but of more CO2 being emitted affecting global warming.
The two are not incompatible, admice. The main purpose of this forum and the Yahoo WSM Forum is to "promote our platform" (after all, we pay for them and our members devote their time to maintaining and moderating them) but we do this by encouraging discussion, including criticism, of what we stand for. Since you've been here you'll have noticed "dissenting opinions" from reformists (look at the current discussion on the Luxemburg thread), currency cranks and even out-an-out racists as well from others who don't agree with our approach on how to get to socialism. We welcome this because through discussion is one of the ways in which people become socialists. It also tests the validity of our views.
Interesting interview here on how and why Mandela and the post-apartheid ANC government had to compromise with world capitalism (rather than go for national state capitalism):http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mA5N5hca_WY
I know they are a strange bed-fellow but UKIP also accepts that:
Quote:Every attempt to tax wages sets in motion a “shifting” process whereby the tax finishes up as a corporate impost anywaySee their proposed tax policy here (scroll down to point 1.3):http://www.ukip.org/issues-2/policy-pages/tax
What was interesting about that 1928 reply was that it said that a Socialist councillor, if so instructed by those socialists who elected them, could vote to defy the law, contrary to the embarrassing episode in one of the local by-elections we contested this year where a party member questioned another candidate's right to stand for saying he would be prepared to defy the law.Presumably the editorial committee had in mind incidents like Poplar rates rebellion of 1921:http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk/poplar-rates-rebellion-1921
That blast from the past is very good. We can use it next time we face opposition from TUSC candidates, probably in next year's London borough elections.
Here's the review from the Socialist Standard in 1939 of the first English translation of her pamphlet:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1930s/1939/no-415-march-1939/reform-or-revolution-rosa-luxemburgThe quotes given here bring out that she did distinguish between "legislative reform" (the term used repeatedly in chapter VIII as the alternative offered to "revolution") and trade unionism.Incidentally, in the original German she did not use the word "reformism", despite the translator (an SPGB sympathiser in the US) giving the title of chapter V as "The Consequences of Social Reformism and General Nature of Revisionism". The original does not contain the words in italics. Presumably the word was not in use at the time in its current sense, another reason why she cannot be said to have described trade union activity as reformist.
They better hope that somebody doesn't start a "No Platform for Radical Feminists" campaign. That's where this sort of hooligan politics leads, as the SWP is now finding to its cost. Direct action to prevent free speech is as bad state legislation to do this.Here's how our members have behaved in such circumstances:
Quote:“Students at the London School of Economics last night voted strongly to apologize to Professor H. J. Eysenck for the incident on Tuesday during which he was punched and kicked as he started to address the school’s Social Science Society. But although voting was about five to one at a mass meeting attended by about 600 of the school’s students, a later motion attacked Professor Eysenck’s views on race, heredity and intelligence and said that those responsible for the attack should be actively defended against any disciplinary action . . . Moving the successful motion to apologize to Professor Eysenck, Mr D. Zucconi, who said he was a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the World Socialist Society, said: ‘An issue like this in general cuts across political differences. The events on Tuesday were a disgrace and discredit to socialism and a blow for fascism’. Responsibility for the attack on Professor Eysenck has been attributed to the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist).” (Times, 11 and 17 May 1973).The Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) again!
If I remember rightly, Immanuel Wallerstein in his book Historical Capitalism argues that among the first capitalists were sections of the old feudal ruling class who, seeing the world capitalist system develop from the middle of 16th century, decided to reconvert into capitalists and invest their wealth in production for sale on a market with a view to profit. A bit like sections of the nomenklatura in the old USSR converting themselves into capitalists when the state capitalism there collapsed.
What you seem to be saying in effect, pgb, is that Lenin was essentially right when he said that the working class is only capable of developing a trade union consciousness. Agreed that that is all it has done so far but socialists must hold that they are capable of more. Otherwise we'd have to resign ourselves to trade unionism or Labourite type politics (or go fishing or live our life without bothering about politics).
alanjjohnstone wrote:One thing we have to be clear upon and what Luxemburg explicitly explains – the SPD will only be the party of opposition , regardless of the reformist position and won't enter parliament/council in coalition to take office or minority party to run capitalism' and end up in the same predicament as the Greens in Brighton. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/dec/15/greens-blown-it-in-brightonThis from another thread can also usefully appear here too. The Greens are running Brighton as a minority administration. Next year they will be forced to make cuts as a result of central government funding being reduced and, having taken responsibility for running capitalist administration at local level, have to decide what to do. Apparently there are some Green councillors would want to pursue the same policy as proposed by TUSC. The Guardian journalist met one of them
Quote:Ben Duncan is one of the alleged watermelons, and the councillor who accused Kitcat of betrayal in his blogpost.(….) Now, he is really on the warpath. There is mileage, he reckons, in the idea of the Greens following the lead of Trotskyite Labour councillors in 1980s Liverpool, refusing to set a cuts-based budget, and thereby putting Brighton in the vanguard of UK-wide anti-austerity resistance.Appropriately enough, we meet in a city-centre cafe called the Red Roaster. "I think we need to do something that makes people think: 'Hang on – if you vote for the Greens you get something different,'" he tells me. "On behalf of people around the country, we need to make it Brighton and Hove versus this government, about austerity. We should either refuse to set a budget or try and set a budget that under the current legislation would be unlawful, and say to the government, 'Well, you come in and do it – you see how local people benefit from you sending a hit squad in to take over from elected politicians who won't deliver your austerity measures.'"Makes you wonder if some Trotskyists have decided to "enter" the Green Party. The Green Leader of the Council is opposed to this:
Quote:Kitcat isn't impressed. "It's absurd, frankly," he says. "Gestures like that will actually change nothing for residents, because the government will impose a budget on the council anyway."True.
