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admice wrote:

And thanks for this http://www.alisonassiter.com/revisiting-universalism/Can anyone synthesize her for me assuming I've had basic philosophy?She is one smart, cool, cookie.

I think her book is basically a criticism of the so-called "post-modernists" who teach that there is no such things as universally valid values or even universally valid scientific theories, i.e they are relativists who say "anything goes" or as one wit has put it "cannibalism is a matter of taste".Assister is defending the modernist tradition inherited from the 18th Enlightenment that there are such "universals" that are valid for all humans. Marx was in this tradition and so basically are we.The Socialist Standard reviewed her book in 2003. Although she is no longer a member her book does contain a relatively favourable reference to us (quoted in the review):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2003/no-1192-december-2003/book-reviews

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Here's an article on syndicalism from our (vast) archives:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1980s/1986/no-986-october-1986/syndicalism-its-origin-and-weaknessSome people have called us "libertarian socialists" on the grounds that we stand for a society without a coercive state as opposed to so-called "state socialists" (really, proponents of state capitalism) who do. It's not a term we use ourselves though (nor do we accept the concept of "state socialism" — as it's an oxymoron like "military intelligence").

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

good uck to Tactical Unity,

Are we supposed to fill in the missing letter ourselves? Is it "duck" or "luck" or what? Or maybe you simply meant "uck"?

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jpodcaster wrote:

You knew him much better than I but I wouldn't necessarily agree that he would have rejected LU. For example in his resignation letter he talked of the likelihood of a working-class socialist party being formed outside of the SPGB.

Since John Crump is no longer with us it's all speculation but I still think it highly unlikely that someone who became anti-parliamentary anarcho-communist would support a party committed to engaging in electoralist politics, reform programme and all.

jpodcaster wrote:

Also let's not forget that, whatever your views on the "wishy-washy reformism" of LU, the organisation contains a significant minority of men and women with a commitment to a socialism virtually indistinguishable from that envisaged by the SPGB, including ex-members and sympathisers.

Does that mean that Robin Cox's World in Common group has decided to "enter" the new party?

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An editorial in the business section of yesterday's Daily Telegraph attributes the Co-op's current plight to its democratic structure, arguing that is not possible to run a business of its size on such lines:

Quote:

Its democratic structure, with a Byzantine relationship between area committees, regional boards and the group board, was held up as a paragon of virtue. It was, as has been proved, a recipe for disaster.

Quote:

It is difficult to imagine any corporation with a business of this magnitude being governed by archaic gouvernance standards more suited to a village charity than an organisation with its sights on major expansion.

Although the way the Co-op was run wasn't that democratic at least it was far far more democratic than any normal capitalist enterprise.The Daily Telegraph is right: it is not possible to run a big capitalist enterprise on anything like democratic lines and the plight of the Co-op has shown this to be the case. Confirmation of the arguments we have used against people like Peter Tatchell (and no doubt will be using when we debate him on 5 March next year) who hold up co-operatives as one way to "economic democracy".

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mcolome1 wrote:

I think it is a very sad situation to leave the Socialist Party to join a Trotskyist organization

This is a misunderstanding, mcolome. Stuart left the Socialist Party because we wouldn't give all our money to the Occupy movement not to become a Trotskyist. And the new party he is now interested in is not a Trotskyist or Leninist outfit, but another wishy-washy reformist party of whose policy and tactics he is a prominent and eloquent defender. It is a pity when a member goes off the rails but at least he hasn't become a Trotskyist.

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jpodcaster wrote:

And there we have the real epitath of the SPGB: "Missing a trick since 1904." (copyright John Crump)

Bit of a cheek to try to use John Crump to back up Stuart's case (and yours?) for a new leftwing reformist party which rejects socialism (as a classless, stateless, moneyless, wageless society) as an impossible and irrelevant long-term dream and which wants to concentrate on trying to obtain or retain "possible" reforms of capitalism. He shared this aim and differed from us mainly in that he came to disagree with using parliament in the course of establishing it. See this:http://theoryandpractice.org.uk/library/thin-red-line-non-market-socialism-twentieth-century-john-crump-1987Also, the other articles by him on the same section of the same siteIn fact, I would have thought that he would have been just as opposed, if not more so, to the Left Unity project than us. Another ex-member, Mike Ballard, with whom he was associated in the group Subversion (which gave up the ghost some years ago now), told me at the Anarchist Bookfair last month that he (Mike) loved the front cover of the October Socialist Standard (even I had my doubts about describing the proposed new party as a "monster"!).We'll be there at that hotel in Bedford Square a week Saturday to hand free copies of it. Maybe see youse there.

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Fair enough. The trouble is that joking and banter don't come over well on the internet. They work best in face-to-face situations.Anyway, back to substance of the argument. I think your position is summed in this part of your reply to YMS:

stuart2112 wrote:

As for dinner, you try telling someone who's hungry that unhealthy snacks are a diversion from the glorious Michelin starred restaurant that awaits us at the end of a 40 year journey.

This seems to be the classic "possibilist" argument that we should go for what reforms are or seem to be possible rather than for some long-term and possibly unachievable goal — an argument for rejecting which we were dubbed "impossibilists". Or that what we should go for is not the whole loaf but only for a few crumbs.The trouble is that this begs the question by assuming that incremental reforms are possible and/or can be maintained while the experience of capital shows otherwise. In fact, isn't the whole LU programme a call for a return to the reforms of the post-war Labour government that have since been whittled away by the normal operation of capitalism of profits first?

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stuartw2112 wrote:

With your silly mudslinging and sectarianism, you are, as usual, missing a trick.

It was your sneering in your first post in this exchange that invited replies in kind:

stuartw2112 wrote:

we've already come further than you have – and you've had a 110 year head start.

If you want a serious discussion on which way forward, you need to stop doing this.

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stuartw2112 wrote:

As for LU not being a socialist organisation, that's just the kind of sectarian silliness LU is hoping (perhaps, again, overoptimistically) to leave behind.

Sounds like a good epitaph for the new party. A bit too long perhaps.

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stuartw2112 wrote:

Members of this forum might be interested to hear that, in just a few short months, Left Unity has already exceeded 1,000 founding members, and has been respectfully if critically reported in The Guardian, BBC Radio 4, The Huffington Post, New Statesman, Russia Today, Sky News and other media outlets. So, yes, we've got a long way to go. But we've already come further than you have – and you've had a 110 year head start.

Well, we can piss higher than you and for longer:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2004/no-1198-june-2004/others-have-seen-usAnd it remains to be seen if the new Left (pseudo-Unity) Party (or whatever it's going to be called) is going to last 2 years let alone a hundred. Yet another leftwing reformist party is the last thing that's needed. I can't see you getting more than 2 to 3% of votes when you put your money where your mouth is and put up candidates. Rendez-vous after the local elections of 22 May next year.

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ALB wrote:

Just emailed Professor Joffee a link to this article (the same one kohara sent Post-Crash Economics):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/depth-articles/economics/economists-not-planetHe should like the title "Economists: Not on this Planet".

I got a friendly enough reply from him and an electronic copy of an article of his on  "The root cause of economic growth under capitalism". He identifies this as competition to cut costs by "firms", defined as legal and continuing bodies employing wage-labour and producing for profit. He distinguishes "firms" from others producing for the market which he calls variously "sole traders", "sole producers" or "petty producers", basically single person or family production units.The difference with Marx mentioned in the abstract of the article seems to be that Joffe does not accept the averaging of the rate of profit which he sees as neither empirically confirmed nor necessary to explain how capitalism works.He says in passing (and presumably this is his criticism of economics as taught today) that Adam Smith analysed an economy mainly made up of such producers, as was indeed the case in his day but has long since ceased to be, yet theoretical economics still assumes that it is. Following Smith's premise means that the economy is conceived of in terms of trading, of such producers exchanging their products on the market to meet their needs. According to Joffe, Smith's framework cannot explain growth; in fact to the extent that growth occurs in such an economy it is by the emergence and spread of "firms" that outcompete the sole traders and lead to a different type of economy.  It seems a fair enough criticism of the arguments used by apologists for capitalism, such as the self-styled  Adam Smith Institute, to defend capitalism. Certainly most street-level defenders of capitalism assume that it is still based on individuals, including workers, trading what they have to sell to get what they need, when it's actually a system of capital accumulation driven by competition between profit-seeking firms and in which therefore profits always come before needs..

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There's a meeting on him in Central London a week today. See here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/events-and-announcements/ep-thompsons-legacy

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Interesting analysis here from some who don't seem to have many illusions about the new Left Unity Party to be founded on 30 November, at least not about it having any chance of becoming anything more than another small leftwing party:http://www.independentsocialistnetwork.org/?p=2613

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imposs1904 wrote:

OK, I found the Harrington article via a zip file I downloaded from my old MySpace Socialist Standard page:http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2013/11/a-better-kind-of-capitalism.htmlI'm sure it will go on the Party website in the fullness of time.

Thanks. Incidentally, and with reference to the rather oddly titled thread on "women", the author of this article later went on, under her real name of Alison Assiter to become a leading feminist theorist:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Assiter

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