ALB
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https://tass.com/politics/1742961
Scary headline but if you read what he is saying it is that, if ever there would be a war between NATO and Russia, there is no prospect of this being a war with conventional weapons and so all the talk in Europe about needing to build up conventional forces there to meet a supposed threat of a Russian invasion is meaningless as this would be pointless.
I don’t think his explanation of why European politicians and militarists are talking up the possibility of a Russian invasion holds up. It is probably more to do with the military-industrial complex lobbying for more business for the merchants of death.
It might be a good idea to discourage, even ban, Chelsea tractors from entering Chelsea but 54.6% in favour in a turnout of 5.7% is hardly the “clear choice” that the non-socialist mayor of Paris claims. I make that 3.1% of the electorate in favour.
And here it is from The Man Who Woukd Be Prime Minister himself :
This is getting boring. But there might still be a few people around who imagine that the Labour Party is the party of the working class. The Communist Party of Britain, for instance, whose General Secretary, Robert Griffiths, describes the Labour Party, in a book published this year, as “the mass electoral party of the labour movement” (The Gleam of Socialism, p. 58).
He’ll be voting for the Party of Business then (and urging others to do the same)? We won’t.Some big capitalists are so unconcerned about a world nuclear war that they are buying “trophy homes” in prime locations in big cities like London (which are surely likely to be annihilated in any nuclear war) rather than having bunkers built for them.
It’s on page 23 of the print and PDF editions here:
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/SS-NOVEMBER-2023-web.pdf
This bit is good:
“What is missing from the classical or neoclassical account of the economy is that it treats supply and demand as a relation between producers and consumers. The regulation of that relationship by the need of capitalists to achieve a certain level of profitability is ignored. But in fact the market is essentially regulated by the need of producers to make a level of profit large enough to accumulate, to continue expanding their businesses. What determines supply is the possibility of making a profit from the sale of goods of a particular type. What determines demand is, with respect to consumer goods, the level of the wage and the living standard that people are used to. For producers goods, it’s determined by what inputs are needed to make those goods which can be sold for profit. So demand ultimately depends on the ability of firms to make an adequate level of profit.”
As to his theory of why the price level
Has been rising non-stop since the war — due to monopolies competing with other capitalist firms for a share of profits by restricting output and rising prices — I am inclined to share the incredulity of the German group:“What you seem to be saying about price formation seems to me a very far-reaching claim. Market competition by cost-cutting and lowering prices is a core mechanism of capitalism and you’re saying that it’s not operating anymore. I have a problem with this thesis. (…)
You seem to be claiming that this mechanism of competition and cost-cutting and price formation is not valid anymore.
Aren’t you basically saying that firms can decide themselves what prices they want and then that’s how market prices are created? The way you claim that companies set prices, again, leaves me hesitant because I believe that they can’t just raise prices arbitrarily because they’re in a state of competition. Even if there’s an oligopolistic situation, that’s still a situation of competition and it still means that cost-cutting and lowering prices is a very good competitive strategy.”I am not sure either about his claim that capitalism has entered into an era of permanent stagflation that will eventually lead to its economic demise.
In fact I think Mattick has gone off the rails (or is it the rail !) on both these points.
More of what Reeves told business leaders on Thursday:
“Be in no doubt, we will campaign as a pro-business party — and we will govern as a pro-business party” (this weekend’s i paper).
Why are they doing it? They seem to be afraid of what happened to Truss happening to them. Or maybe they are just facing reality — that the profit system which they support can only function as a profit system and so they have to give priority to allowing private enterprises to make profits as the quest for these is what drives the capitalist economic system, the motive for the “growth” they promise.
More from Reeves, at the Labour Party’s pro-Business meeting yesterday. The would-be future Chancellor of the Exchequer told her audience of businessmen and women:
“This Labour Party sees profit not as something to be disdained but as a mark of business succeeding”.
She also pledged not to increase Corporation Tax (a direct tax on profits) for the whole period of the next Labour government (assuming it lasts the full five years).
Labour evidently feels the need to convince Business that under a future Labour government British capitalism will be in a safe pair of hands, but they don’t need to convince us.
“The shadow chancellor has told the BBC Labour would not reinstate a bankers’ bonus cap that was scrapped last year by the Conservative government”.
“… we don’t have any intention of bringing that back. And as chancellor of the exchequer, I would want to be a champion of a successful and thriving financial services industry in the UK.”https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68145720.amp
Comment is superfluous.
Eugene Debs, the American Social Democrat, put the case against tactical voting in political elections rather well:
“It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don’t want and get it.”
Baltrop’s quip would have had more validity if he had said that without the Bolshevik seizure and maintaining of power Lenin would be remembered as a minor Russian revolutionary called Ulyanov.
Even today local councils can’t adopt by-laws or regulations that go against national legislation. Local councillors are essentially elected civil servants. If they step out of line they can be sanctioned by the central government, as has happened on a number of occasions when leftwing Labour councils have tried to defy the law.
Here’s what happened in 1972 in Clay Cross.
Note what happened to 11 of the councillors:
“But the 11 councillors … eventually paid a heavy price for their opposition as they were surcharged and banned from holding public office.”
Anyway, in the context of a political situation where there is a so large a majority in favour of socialism that they have won political control it is highly unlikely that a local council anywhere would have an Islamist majority. If there was and they did try to impose Islamic values they could easily be removed.
In fact if this situation occurred today under capitalism the same fate would befall any council and councillors who tried this.
“Imagine after the initial revolution the UK, France and Spain have elected SPGB like parties, and we’re still waiting on the other states to have their revolutions.”
I suppose something like that could happen but, if it did, the socialist movement in the other countries of Europe (and in the other capitalistically developed parts of the world) would not be far behind so there will be strong socialist movements there.
What are you suggesting? That the socialist administration in the three countries you mention should ban the entry of Muslim refugees? Since by then the adherents of that religion would have been reduced — by defections to secularism and rationalism let alone to socialism — to a small, uninfluential minority, what would be the danger? In fact, we could expect organisations like this one to be much more influential :
And not just in your three countries but elsewhere too.
I must say that you must have a particularly woke council in Bath if they let people be intimidated into not putting up a xmas tree.
Don’t worry. Socialists regard islam like all religions as superstitious and irrational nonsense to which we are implacably opposed and expose as such — but in public debate and persuasion not by banning them or discriminating against those under their influence.
The ruling of the ICJ seems quite clever. They have decided that Israel has a case to answer for breaching the Convention on Genocide (without prejudging whether they have). Evidently the court saw there was no point in ordering a ceasefire as they knew this would be ignored. Instead they ordered some specific measures that Israel may well ignore too but which, if they do, could affect the court’s final decision.
There is another effect too. The ruling over-rides part of the tendentious definition of anti-semitism (drawn up by supporters of Israel) by reducing its scope and so extending free speech. Unless the court itself is guilty of anti-semitism, “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is now no longer necessarily
legally anti-semitic.
