ALB
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stuartw2112 wrote:"OK, when, and by what standards, and compared with who or what?"
Ok then, what are the standards by which you will judge the success or otherwise of the new Left Party?
ralfy wrote:Don't be fooled by those who look at dollar values. Instead, look at energy returns. If other sources of energy do not provide the energy returns needed to keep the current global capitalist system going, then it is useless to imagine that these sources will allow the same system to continue.In short, no matter how profitable a source of energy becomes, it will not allow the capitalist system that it feeds to be sustainable unless it provides high energy returns, equivalent to 10 or better.This discussion echos the one in this debate:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/video/poles-apart-capitalism-or-socialism-planet-heatsand which puts us in the invidious position of seeming to say that capitalism is not as bad as some say it is ! In this debate the speaker for Arctic Voice is saying that capitalism is doomed because it won't be able to deal with global warming while the SP speaker is saying maybe it can, not that that makes capitalism any less undesirable and socialism any less necessary.Here you are saying (or seem to be saying) that capitalism's appetite for oil will mean that it will eventually breakdown because it will exhaust oil reserves and won't be able to find an efficient alternative. I'm arguing that maybe it can find an alternative (or even enough oil) and that it won't collapse for this reason.But whichever of us is right, socialism is still the answer. If you are right, then it is only within a socialist world that the effects of peak oil/global warming could be mitigated. In fact it would make socialism and campaigning for it even more urgent as, if capitalism were to collapse before there was a majority in favour of socialism, all the dystopian films about the collapse of civilisation could turn out to be realistic.
jpodcaster wrote:Is the Left Party Platform perfect? No, of course not – I would personally like to see a more strongly worded anti-capitalist thread running through it and a stronger committment to deepen and extend 'the commons' in all its forms. But at the moment I think its the best of the three platforms in terms of the future of Left Unity as an organisation that is likely to make a real difference on the political stage.I agree that there is a space in Britain for a vaguely anti-capitalist left of Labour party. This exists in all the other countries of Western Europe and also in Australia and New Zealand, but there are major obstacles to it getting off the ground here:1. The first-past-the-post election system. To be credible as a party "likely to make a real difference on the political stage", the Left Party will need to have elected councillors if not an MP. But the election system in Britain makes this very difficult (such parties have been able to make some headway in other countries because there's proportional representation there).2. The existence of a left-leaning Green Party which espouses most of ideas favoured by those behind the Left Party platform. The Left Party would have to squeeze out the Green Party; which seems unlikely. I can't see it appealing to many beyond ex-members of the SWP, WRP, Militant and other lesser Trotskyist groups, the old Communist Party, Respect (and the odd ex-member of our party). As typified by the officers of the already-registered "Left Party": Kate Hudson (ex-CP, ex-Respect) and Andrew Bourgin (ex-WRP, ex-Respect).3. The "squabbling Trotskyist sects". This is what prevented the SLP and then Respect from filing this niche and was only resolved by the actions of an authoritarian Leader but (to its credit) the Left Party wants to be an open, democratic party. The Trotskyists are and will remain in it. They will present a problem.In any event, if the Left Party does manage to get off the ground on the basis of the "Left Party Platform" and sustain, say, 5% of the vote, so what? As the famous "Socialist Platform" puts it, "capitalism does not and cannot be made to work in the interest of the majority."
jpodcaster wrote:I guess we'll see what happens?Yes, we will.
Yes, it is an interesting interview. Sperber's new 600-page biography of Marx will be reviewed in next month's Socialist Standard.At the start of his book Sperber says his aim is to show that Marx was not "our contemporary", and of course in many ways he isn't as he was politically active in a period of history when the capitalist economic system and its political forms were neither widespread nor well established and so adopted positions which are not relevant today. Actually, we have recognised this, as for instance in this article from 1973:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1973/no-829-september-1973/marx-his-timeAt the end of the interview Sperber explains Marx's support for Polish and Irish independence in the same way we do in this article.On the other hand, we'd say that Marx's theory of history and his analysis of capitalism are still relevant. It's the day-to-day political positions that he took up that are 19th century.
I can see the point you are making, but the claim was that oil production as such, whether "conventional" or not, would begin to decline by a near date. It hasn't and does not seem likely to. As you point out, as the easier accessible supplies are exhausted the price of oil rises, making less accessible sources profitable. Eventually it will become profitable to extract oil from the Arctic ocean, but oil won't run out.It is in fact not possible for the world to adopt a rational energy policy because shortish-term profit considerations drive what competing governments and corporations do. It is illogical to burn oil to produce electricity as this does release CO2 into the atmosphere, but this is unlikely to stop under capitalism until a cheaper source of fuel becomes available (probably nuclear, as the price of oil and gas will have to rise a lot higher before non-renewable energy becomes profitable on a wide scale). This is why what the International Energy Agency urges is not likely to happen, at least only as too little, too late:
ralfy wrote:In order to deal with this predicament plus global warming, the IEA argues in its 2010 report that governments must work together and coordinate to lower oil demand, use renewable energy, and force oil companies to maximize productions, even if it means lower profits.Force capitalist corporations to make lower profits ! That's not going to happen.
ralfy wrote:Given the fact that countries have not done this the past few decades and has not prepared for peak oil and global warming due to the need for "business as usual" does not make me confident of the future.You could be right and, if you are, the only way out is a world socialist society in which the Earth's resources have become the common heritage of all humanity. That's the only framework within which a rational (world) energy policy can be worked out and applied. See this article from the Socialist Standard:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2008/no-1247-july-2008/too-little-too-late
I know that, unlike the Trotskyists, the CWO does not envisage a vanguard party winning state power and ruling in the name of the workers, but they still stand for a vanguard party. After all, until a few years ago the name of their international organisation was the "International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party" and before that in Italy they were the "Internationalist Communist Party".This article (taken from their website) on events in Argentina a few years ago gives a good idea of how they see their vanguard party operating:
Quote:One of international capitalism's weakest links has snapped and huge numbers of proletarians and the disinherited have been propelled into action by a single overriding need. Bourgeois reaction is doing its cowardly work. It is like a play already written and rehearsed a thousand times over but with two conspicuous absences: that of a real revival of the class struggle and a party capable of steering it.Absent from the sceneThe absence of these two elements allows the bourgeoisie to produce an alternative that confines itself to tinkering with its own political power set-up whilst the economic framework and relationships of exploitation remain firmly in place. The class content of a movement does not only derive from its sociological aspect, that is from the presence of proletarians, but above all from the political objectives contained and developing within it. First there must be an awareness of class antagonism, then the recognition of the conservative function of the trades unions and of the political left and the necessity for the violent overthrow of the whole capitalist economic and political frame. An indication of the second condition is the active presence of a revolutionary party that is well-rooted inside the proletariat as a whole. This alone can transform the anger, the determination to struggle and spontaneous rebellion into social revolution. Such a party will have clarified the terms of the revolutionary programme and its strategy. In the short term its task is to identify the class enemy and its accomplices on the Left in order to remove the political obstacles on the road to insurrection. In the medium term clarity is needed about what constitutes the new proletarian power and the economic programme stemming from it. In the long term, although a step towards its realisation must be made from the outset, there will have to be an international dimension to the struggle which, if it remains only a national experience, will inevitably end in defeat.In Argentina the devastation of the economic crisis has taken a strong and determined proletariat towards struggle and self organisation, making it capable of expressing a sense of the hostility between classes and of identifying its political enemy. However, the second condition, the one concerning the existence of a revolutionary party, is nowhere to be seen, for the simple reason that the vanguard of the revolution does not come into existence from one day to the next, nor is it the product of immediate events.Either the party will have to be worked for through time and for it to become rooted inside the proletarian masses, or the insurrectionary waves will always be dispersed and give way to defeat and a sense of impotence. The imperative for today's meagre revolutionary vanguards who are active internationally, if only in restricted circles, is to grow, to connect up, to accelerate the process of clarification of events in terms of the class struggle and of political perspectives, even if these are not immediate.Historical necessity imposes the immense effort of giving life to political organisations capable of absorbing the advanced proletarians who are part of these spontaneous movements, so that the next outburst, wherever it happens to be, does not remain without an alternative class strategy.Against the bourgeoisie in whatever guise it presents itself. Against trade union traps. For the organisation of the proletariat in Latin America. For the construction of the world party of the proletariat.I hope for their sake that the organisers of the Anarchist Bookfair don't follow discussions on this forum !
How come that the CWO, which favours political action by a vanguard party and envisages a transition period with a state, are admitted to the Anarchists Bookfairs while we are banned? Not that we are going to go begging to be allowed a stall there.
Apparently, some of the signatories of the "Socialist Platform" are members of the "Alliance for Workers Liberty", a Trotskyoid group organised as a vanguard party. Others are in the party misleadingly calling itself the "Communist Party of Great Britain" (they've nothing to do with the defunct party of this name) who publish the Weekly Worker. Both these organisations have on occasions called on workers to "Vote Labour". I can't believe that they would dissolve their organisations into a party formed on their Platform's principles, let alone into the proposed new Left Reformist Party.I'm still trying to work out what their game is, but the statement is still worth discussing at its face value.
Yes, you are right. In a 10-member constituency, for a list to get an MEP it would have to have got about 10% of the votes cast. Less in fact, as the votes for lists with well under this are not taken into count. In 2009 Labour got its 1 MEP in the SE Region with only 8.2%. I hadn't realised Labour had done so badly as the region does, after all, include some big towns such as Southampton and Reading.
jpodcaster wrote:So shoot me down in flames but here's a suggestion to WSM members, sympathisers and other libertarian socialists – sign up to the pledge and get involved in Left Unity. See if we can influence the direction the organisation takes.Tempting perhaps, but of course we've got principles which include being above board and so rule out "entryism" into other organisations. But you're not bound by these principles and can enter LU. Keep us informed of what happens !I'm a bit surprised, though, that you are prepared to go into the proposed new party to support, not a modified version of the "Socialist Platform", but the wishy-washy, reformist and openly opportunist and vote-catching "Left Party Platform" as exemplified from this passage from the link you give:
Quote:The space to the left of Labour is enormous – and as Labour moves further to the right, it gets bigger every day. In this moment of crisis and the rise of UKIP, even a moderately successful left party could pull the whole debate in society back towards the left, and win real defensive victories over the welfare state. The Socialist Platform, by contrast, takes the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement with socialism as its starting point. It is a far narrower statement – just about acceptable to a few different kinds of socialist, but distinctly unappealing to most people on the wider left. It is a recipe, I think, for narrowing the party to those who are already convinced socialists, plus a few more who we might be able to persuade as we went along.That's the issue (as it always has been): a "narrow" party of convinced socialists or a "broad" rag-bag party of all sorts of reformists?
Alex Woodrow wrote:Finally could I ask, if we stood in the South East, how many candidates need to stand in the region and do these candidates need to be evenly distributed across different parts of the region to represent everyone across the region?Elections to the European Parliament are for lists in multi-member constituencies with the seats allocated to the lists by proportional representation.The South East Region elects 10 MEPs, but a list doesn't have to have 10 candidates. It could have anything from 1 to 10. At the last Euroelections in 2009 we presented a full list of 10 in the London Region. We'll no doubt present a full list of 4 for the Wales Region.Any EU citizen from any part of the EU can stand on a list (even a one-person one). If we stood we shouldn't have any difficulty finding 10 candidates but we could equally choose to avoid the extra paperwork involved by putting up a list of 4 or 5. Electors vote for a list not individual candidates.
Actually contesting the South East Region instead of London might be another option. We have 2 branches in the area and West London and South London branches wouldn't have to venture too far to reach it:
Quote:The constituency corresponds to South East England, in the south east of the United Kingdom, comprising the ceremonial counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Kent, Oxfordshire, Surrey and West Sussex.We've done London once, so this would be a chance to get our case across to a further, but different, six million electors.We'd also be standing against the Nigel Farage himself.Also, we would be less likely to face opposition from other lists calling themselves "socialist", eg the Scargill Labour Party. Apparently, Bob Crow of RMT is planning to revive the "No2EU" party so the Left can join in the xenophobic frenzy that these elections are going to be. A reason, incidentally, why we should contest under the registered variant of our name of "World Socialist Movement".Interesting to learn what Kent & Sussex and South West England branches think about it. Something to discuss at ADM.
Just been pointed out to me that one of the signatories of the "Socialist Platform" is Joseph Healy who was the Green Party candidate in Vauxhall in the 2010 general election at which we stood. Perhaps he was convinced of some of his current views by listening to our candidate Danny Lambert at the various hustings that took place ! Another of our opponents in this election has also joined (well, entered) LU, Jeremy Drinkall of Workers Power, but he hasn't learned anything as he's one of the signatories of the rival (and terrible) "Class Struggle Platform".
alanjjohnstone wrote:London branches i believe will be concentrating their resources on the London Assembly elections rather than the Euro-election.It's actually the London borough elections, but there will also be local elections in other places where we have active branches, like Norwich, Maidstone (and Tunbridge Wells!) and Manchester. I'd hope that the branches there would want to contest too.The euro and local elections will take place on the same day: Thursday 22 May 2014.We've not actually decided whether or not to contest the London Region in the Euroelections (as we did in 2009). This is down for discussion at our Autumn Delegate Meeting in October. It costs at least £5000 to contest (that's the deposit you lose if you don't get 5% of the vote).
