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My experience of the Black Blob was at a European trade union demonstration in Amsterdam. They came on the train from Italy. The riot police were lined up waiting for them at the station. They got off and lined up opposite them. The stand-off lasted for hours with passengers walking in between them. I wish I'd had a camera. I think that in the end they got back on the train and went back to Italy.The real objection to them is not so much that they want to break the law but that they are acting undemocratically compared to what most of the other demonstrators want, i.e. a peaceful demonstration.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

Old crusties such as myself,

You were once a crusty? Did you have a dog on a piece of string?

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jondwhite wrote:

His criticism of the Black Bloc was criminal

Why was his criticism of the Black Bloc criminal. Don't they deserve to be criticised?

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J Surman wrote:

(PS – sorry, don't know how to create links on here, if you want them you'll have to copy and paste)

But you did create links ! A bit like the character in one of Moliere's plays who didn't realise he'd been speaking prose all his life.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

“It is not my intention here to go into the history of overwork in England since the invention of machinery. The fact is that as a result of these excesses there broke out epidemics whose devastating effects were equally threatening to capitalists and workers; that the state, against tremendous resistance from the capitalists, was compelled to introduce normal [working] days in the factories (later imitated in greater or lesser degree all over the Continent)” [Perhaps my reading is wrong but i think he means the “Luddite” excesses forced the hand of Parliament.] http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/economic/ch26.htm

I think by "excesses" he meant factory-owners overworking their workers by making them work too long for the good of their health. And that he meant "epidemics" in the literal sense of cholera, tryphoid, etc outbreaks that spread due to the weakened health of the over-worked workers and from which members of the ruling class died too. Doesn't he describe the struggle for the "normal" working day being that of the workers in trade unions aided by Tory landowners who wanted to get their revenge on the free-trader Liberals for abolishing the Corn Laws? I don't think he could have been talking of the Luddites who had been defeated a decade or so before and who, anyway, were independent producers who owned their own means of production (hand looms, etc) rather than waged factory workers (even if that's what they became when finally driven out of business by competition from factories owned by capitalists who employed more productive machinery).Also, that's one reason why I think the word "lumpenproletariat" is not applicable to them either: they weren't (yet) members of the "proletariat", but independent handicraft producers struggling to try to stop becoming "wage slaves" which they rightly saw as an indignity. The other reason is that I don't think we should call any of our fellow workers "lumpenproletariat" even if Marx did.

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Just read the details in today's papers. Part of the White Paper reads like an election manifesto, i.e is full of empty vote-catching promises:

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The Scottish government White Paper sought to attract swing voters with a lengthy list of political promises. The most eye-catching pledge included an extension of childcare provision for two, three and four-year-olds. Also on the list are an abolition of the bedroom tax, an end of the Universal Credit programme, a promise to raise tax allowances and credits in line with inflation, a guarantee to return thé Royal Mail to public ownership and a vow to increase thé minimum wage.

Voters in Scotland will be mugs if they believe all this. As we've always said: governments propose, but capitalism disposes.There's also this:

Quote:

The new military would have a small fleet of warships. including two frigates, an Army brigade and a squadron of 12 Typhoon jets at an annual cost of £2.5 billion, Mr Salmond hopes.

What a joke. 

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Isn't the Plebgate affair of relevance here as it shows that the police do not necessarily like their political masters? This was over a "trade union" issue of their terms of employment.  My guess is that he did call the police plebs (as that's how leading Tories are brought up to think of people who don't come from their class) but knows that nobody can prove it. He protests too much.

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NB. "Libertarian" doesn't mean the same in the US as in Britain. Over there "libertarian socialism" would be a contradiction in terms, another oxymoron. Mind you, US "libertarians"  are poxy morons.

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jondwhite wrote:

International means between nations. Nations aren't constructs that are useful.

Good point and why we don't really like the word. We use it but recognise its inadequacy from a theoretical point of view. That's why we list as one of our contributions to socialist theory at the end of our pamphlet Questions of the Day:

Quote:

Realisation of the world-wide (rather than internaticna)l character of Socialism. Socialism can only be a united world community without frontiers and not the federation of countries suggested by the word 'international'.

i.e we prefer to see and describe ourselves as "world socialists" rather than "international socialists".Raymond Williams (see thread on EP Thompson in the events section) unintentionally re-inforces this position in his discussion of the word "Nationalist" in his book Keywords:

Quote:

The compexity has been increased by the usually separable distinction between nationalism (selfish pursuit of a nation's interest as against others) and internationalism (co-operation between nations). But internationalism, which refers to relations between nation-states, is not the opposite of nationalism in the context of a subordinate political group seeking its own distinct identity; it is only the opposite of selfish and competitive policies between existing political nations.[His bold]

I don't think he's right to see "internationalism" as referring just to relations between "nation-states". It also refers (as in this discussion) to co-operation between subjects of different "nation-states". In any event, it assumes and accepts the concepts of "nations" and/or "nation-states".Incidentally, the last part of this passage might explain why he felt that there was no incompatibility between being an "internationalist" and being a "Welsh nationalist" as he seems to have been at least for a while.  Perhaps there isn't. But there is between being a "world socialist" and being a Welsh (or English or Scottish or any other) nationalist. 

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

Ian Bone picks up a good point:

He forgot Commander Boaks who came last with 27 votes.

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There's this old pamphlet which deals with the idea of "world government" (as opposed to world socialism):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/should-socialists-support-federal-union

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jondwhite wrote:

Robert Griffiths of the CPB/ Morning Star commented on Channel 4 News

That could have been us, but I can see why he felt a particular need to repudiate the group. The media are saying that "Comrade Bala" was once a member of the "Communist Party of England". This was a Maoist group which has nothing to do with the "Communist Party of Great Britain" and its successor the "Communist Party of Britain". But I suppose that we should be grateful that it is only the CP and not socialism or Marxism in general that is being smeared.We will see if we can get in on the act locally as the place where the cult lived in Lambeth is only a few streets away from the ward we are contesting in a local council by-election.Griffiths, incidentally, doesn't get his facts right either. He says that the group/cult went out of existence in 1978. We have a leaflet of theirs in our archives advertising a meeting in December 1980.

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The "capitalist press" have in fact been phoning us to see if we have an information on this group. We received 4 calls today at Head Office from various media (fortunately not the Daily Wail). We've not been able to tell them much beyond that they contested the same by-election in Lambeth in 1978 as us calling themselves "The South London People's Front" and that we have one of their leaflets in our archives. Naturally, we have explained to them the difference between socialism and Maoism.If there is any member out there who remembers the 1978 by-election and who me them in the course of it they would problem like to interview him or her, admittedly probably to find confirmation sabout how strange they were.They probably phoned us because we are in the area, but one of them had clearly read either this thread or our SOYMB item

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KAZ wrote:

Apart from a rather strange obsession with North Korea

Surely support for the North Korean regime and its ruling dynasty in the name of socialism automatically qualifies for being described as "nutty".

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There's also this article from the Socialist Standard on a Maoist cult in America:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2005/no-1215-november-2005/cult-professional-revolutionary

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