ALB
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Quote:The crowd around us got bigger, comrades very much on our side and the others, men who seemed utterly heartbroken (pissed off) that we were chanting “kill all men”. One well-meaning chap explained how his mum was a feminist and how he had support for women but he felt alienated by phrases such as the one we were using.
I bet he was and the rest of the male working class too.On my way to the fair I passed a woman in a burqa. I would have thought that the energies of these people would be better directed at those who force "their" women to do this. Wouldn't like to see what happens, though, when they shout "Kill All Men" in this context.
At the Anarchist Bookfair on Saturday I was given a free copy of the latest issue of Kittens put out by the Wine & Cheese Association (section in England of the group from Germany Gegen Kapital und Nation). In one of the articles there are a couple of paragraphs refuting the idea, embraced by trade unions and the Left and propagated by groups like Militant (even if they don't believe it or at least their leaders don't), that increasing workers' consumption is a way out of the slump and in fact good for capitalism:
Quote:Some Left parties and the TUC claim that companies are being irrational when they suppress wages, and they do not mean the simple fact that workers are having a hard time to make ends meet. They point out that somebody has to buy the commodities with which capital makes its profits. Their proposal is: wage increases create more effective demand and this benefits everyone – workers have more wages and capital more profit. Capitalism could be a nice symbiosis if companies were not so short-sighted.What is remarkable about this theory is that it is only ever proposed to support rather limited wage demands: a minimum wage, a wage increase of 3% or even an unconditional basic income of a few hundred pounds. Why are the proponents of this theory so humble? Why not an hourly wage of £50, a wage increase of 100% and an unconditional basic income of £5000? If the theory was right, then this would make the economy go pop. Their humbleness shows that they themselves do not really believe their own theory. Rather, these advocates are looking for a reason to have their interest in higher wages recognised in the national discourse.The theory is also simply wrong. For one, a single company has no advantage if it increases the wage. Even the workers of Nestlé spend only a small part of their wage on Nestlé products. Of course, if other companies pay their workers higher wages, then Nestlé might make more sales. However, it is not the logic of a single capital to pay its workers more for this effect.Yet, sometimes competitors must be obliged for their own benefit. This is why the Left looks to the state which ought to enforce such wage increases. Workers get more money because the state mandates it. All companies sell more commodities to workers and, hence, attract more money from them. However, the imagined advantage for everyone is not realised: what companies pay more to their workers, they get back through their sales. Though these proponents of higher wages in the interest of capitalist success would not admit it, from the standpoint of the rate of profit, the ratio of advance and surplus becomes worse.And of course, as it's the pursuit of maximum profit that drives the capitalist economy, reducing the rate of profit will have negative consequences. Which is why this won't work or even be tried. So what's the point of campaigning for it (instead of for socialism)?It's online here: http://antinational.org/en/wage-and-profit-rate
The Unity Trust Bank seems better, but it has close links with the Co-op Bank which provided the initial capital and still has a 26.66% share in it. We used to bank with the old Girobank, as a state as opposed to a private bank, but this got privatised in 1989 and is now owned by Santander. Maybe the new Post Office Bank to be set up next year (it's only Royal Mail not the Post Office that has been privatised), which is a sort of attempt to revive the Girobank, could also be suitable.
I knew he had gone off the rails (relatively speaking since he was only in the Trotskyist IMG at one time) but hadn't realised that he had gone that far, but weren't there a couple of other ex-IMGers in Blair's cabinet? Still, he can't have been all bad as we recommend his book Marx and Human Nature on this site here (under H).
Falling into the hands of hedge funds and vulture capitalists ! What an undignified end to a bank used by the trade unions, the Labour Party and their branches and which thousands of people switched to in response to the appeals of Move Your Money (I wonder if the FSA will do it for mis-selling?)Bad timing too for a book released a couple of weeks ago by the New Internationalist and the Ethical Consumer:http://newint.org/books/politics/co-operative-alternatives-capitalism/We have got a review copy. The accompanying leaflet explained:
Quote:… last year, in a bid to open up global debate on achievable ways of doing business, Ethical Consumer, a research and campaigning co-operative asked: "Is there a Co-operative Alternative to Capitalism?" [their bold]Capitalism has given them the answer: No, except perhaps on the margins catering for a niche market; try to expand further and take on ordinary capitalist enterprises and you'll either become like one of them or being eaten alive by them.It will always be Capital Over People under capitalism. Capitalism and any other "ethic" than maximising profits are incompatible. As we've said all along. Not that that stopped some of us banking with the Co-op. That reminds me. I must rush to join the queue of people at my local branch waiting to withdraw their money.
OK, I too have a wish list of things I'd like to see happen when socialism is established but they are to do with demolishing buildings and statues (eg the Sydney Opera House) not killing people.
Somebody else who noticed us:http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/anarchist-bookfair-2013-october-19th.315271/page-9#post-12640908
gnome wrote:A rather different account of the incident here:http://libcom.org/forums/announcements/london-anarchist-bookfair-19th-oct-07102013#comment-526313Well, yes, from one of the disrupters. Here's another from another of them in which she admits that at one point they were chanting "Kill all men":http://samambreen.wordpress.com/2013/10/20/there-is-no-anarchism-without-feminism/I thought this sort of stuff had died out 30 years ago.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Did someone say that the revolution will only come when the last investment bank trader is hung by the guts of the last hedge-fund manager?Nobody here did. But some currency crank or funny money merchant might have.
Although it's tempting to want to see arrogant and greedy bankers get their come-uppance, it was the whole capitalist system that's to blame for the present slump. In fact singling out "the bankers" not only let's other sections of the capitalist class off the hook but deflects attention from the need to get rid of the system.
According to the discussion of this incident on Urban75 they were "intersectionalists" (whatever they are, some kind of "identity politics", I think)
alanjjohnstone wrote:In another article of interest is the coping mechanism of an Andalusian village that has become a co-op with occupations of land owned by the rich.http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/marinaleda-spanish-communist-village-utopiaWe discussed this in the Socialist Standard in June 2012 (it's always coming up): http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2012/no-1294-june-2012/cooking-books-socialism-one-village
I went to the talk yesterday at the Anarchist Bookfair by the Wine & Cheese Appreciation Society on "Don't read Marx with Harvey". I had expected a criticism of his underconsumptionism or his Keynesianism or something like that, but the criticism was more fundamental. They handed out a sheet containing the following statement made by Harvey at a meeting in New York last 14 November in which he talked of an alternative money:
Quote:Representation of value in the money form is a perversion of what value is about, it's a contradiction.[…] What this would suggest is that if you want to prevent class formation, if you want to prevent the individual appropriation of social value, then you would have to come up with a money form that is anti accumulation. Marx says that gold and silver are the money commodities because they are not oxidisable. […] They maintain their character. You can accumulate value, social power. And we see what happens in societies… But if you had a money form that dissolved, that is oxidisable, we would end up with a very different kind of society. You would have a money form that would aid circulation but that would not facilitate accumulation.This apparent advocacy of an "oxidizable money" has become a standing joke in some circles and has completely discredited Harvey in their eyes — as, if true, it should. A video of Harvey stating this can be found here:http://vimeo.com/53579139#t=1h55m19sThe speaker's case was that this showed that Harvey had not understood that in the opening chapters of Capital Marx was criticising the whole concept of exchange, of producers working separately and then exchanging their products to get what they needed to live, and that this had led him to think that Marx was objecting only to money that could be accumulated but not to one that couldn't be.Unfortunately, it was presented as Harvey misunderstanding the difference between "socially necessary labour" and "abstract labour". This may be the case but the point would have been clearer if the speaker had simply said that, as Harvey was speaking of a new form of money that could not be accumulated, he had completely misunderstood Marx who clearly held that the end of capitalism meant the end of exchange, money and value.If Harvey really does advocate an "oxidizable money" then he will join the long line of people who are quite good at putting over Marx's criticism but are hopeless when it comes to the alternative to capitalism (as were those historians who were very good at applying to the materialist conception of history to the past but had a blind spot when it came to the USSR).
gnome wrote:Saturday, 19 October from 11.00am – Queen Mary's University, E1 4NSLiterature Stall at the Anarchist Bookfairhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/literature-stall-anarchist-bookfair-east-london-1100amSeven members were there at various times to maintain a stall from 11am to 5pm — outside, because as a "party" we are banned from having one inside, even though much more "authoritarian" groups from an anarchist point of view are admitted, e.g. CWO and the Marxist-Humanists. Got some sympathy from some for our situation. Gave away leaflets, made a few sales, chatted with some sympathisers and ex-members, got some contacts. Witnessed an ugly incident outside. An Australian supporter of Wikileaks who was addressing an outdoor meeting was shouted down by a group of feminists chanting "rape apologist" and "no platform". And we thought anarchists were supposed to be in favour of free speech. Perhaps they were anarcho-trots.
admice wrote:Where can I find more info on broad-church or multi-tendency" approach?Here, for instance:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latitudinarianhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_ChurchBut, seriously, the Labour Party in the UK has been described as a "broad church", i.e anybody can join whatever their views as long as they broadly share its aims.
