ALB
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But these people are not on our side. Their wrong predictions are re-inforcing the myth used to justify capitalism that socialism is not possible because there will always be scarcity and that in fact it's getting worse.I don't think the doomsaying, scarce-mongering approach is the best anyway. I once heard a debate between Tony Benn and a Green Party representative (I can't remember who) who was arguing that there'd be economic and ecological collapse within 40 years (that was 20 years ago). Benn made the valid point (in my opinion) that people don't make revolutions out of fear but out of hope. We should hold out the hope of the rational use of modern technology. I shan't be around in 2050 but by then I hope there'll at least be a human on Mars.
Latest news from Syria:http://news.yahoo.com/teenager-15-executed-islamist-rebels-syria-154751521–abc-news-topstories.htmlMeanwhile in Lebanon, BNP Leader Nick Griffin is praising Hezbollah.
This is what the report says on this without trying to attribute which contributed what to the decline in the share of workers in manufacturing:
Quote:However, over time, technological advances have allowed process lines to become more mechanised and require fewer workers to operate them. Heavy industries, producing large volumes of low-value goods, such as steelmaking, have become more efficient and so are able to produce the same amount of output from fewer manufacturing sites employing fewer people. These heavy industries have been replaced in part by smaller industrial units producing high-value goods, such as the aerospace and electronics industries.The speed at which globalisation has affected industries has increased over the last half-century. Foreign markets have become more competitive and increased globalisation offered cheaper labour and plant facilities abroad, making imported goods more affordable and adversely affecting the manufacturing industry within England and Wales. This contributed to reducing the manufacturing workforce and improvements in communication and transport links have created an increased interdependence for trading goods and services throughout the world.Here's another article on this theme — again from the Daily Torygraph. It seems that even some Tories are not happy with the government's policy here. UKIP is opposed too.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10100943/Can-David-Cameron-explain-why-he-has-put-us-on-al-Qaedas-side.htmlThe analysis of what it's really about isn't bad either:
Quote:Certainly, the liberal elite in which the Prime Minister places such hopes was involved at the beginning of the uprising. But armed elements funded and supplied by interested parties in Saudi Arabia and Qatar were also present from the start. Their fundamental aim was nothing to do with human rights and the protection of minorities. It was to destabilise and destroy President Assad, Iran’s closest ally in the region, and therefore assert Saudi dominance.The article also mentions the statement by a disillusioned pro-democracy activist which Alan has already drawn attention to. It's well worth reading.
He doesn't actually say that Christian villages are amongst those to be wiped off the map, only Shiite and Alawite ones.
Here's the review in the Socialist Standard of one of John Holloway's books:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2010/no-1274-october-2010/book-reviews
Here's the wording of the leaflet:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2013/no-1306-june-2013/socialism-only-alternative
Members did go to both these events. The one in Hyde Park had some 40,000 or so, mainly churchgoers and with no "political" presence apart from us. At least those there could see the contradiction between the world being capable of producing enough food for all and millions going undernourished or starving, even if they didn't attribute this to capitalism. Even Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the world, who spoke, could see this. But even if he gave all of his millions to the starving it wouldn't solve the problem.About 80 people attended the ex-SWPers meeting. The only other group leafletting the meeting were the AWL but they didn't seem too satisfied with it.
There's also this from the Pathfinders column in this month's Socialist Standard:
Quote:Bones of ContentionA fuss has apparently broken out over where to rebury the newly disinterred remains of Richard III, the last Plantagenet king, who has been failing to push up daisies under a crypt and then a concrete car park in Leicester for 500 years until his recent sensational rediscovery. Plans to stick the semi-fossilised ex-sponger in Leicester Cathedral are being challenged by his avowed relatives who prefer York Minster. But what relatives would these be after 500 years, given that Richard had no children and was not famous for even liking them? A BBC Radio 4 programme on mathematics (More or Less, 10 May) has estimated that if Richard’s near kin produced 2 children each, and this output continued at a steady rate, there would be a million relatives by now. However if they had bred at the average rate for the period, at 2.3 children, this number would jump to 17 million. The programme went on to cite a respected 1970s study which suggested that everyone in the UK not from foreign extraction was probably descended from Edward III, Richard’s own ancestor. So what gives these ‘relatives’ the right to start arguing the toss over where to bury the bones, the programme wanted to know? Well quite. But then, what gives any of these royals or privileged poseurs the right to anything based on inheritance? Any given set of genes has a half-life of one generation, so genetically speaking, their connection to their distant forebears is at homeopathic levels anyway. You, dear reader, are probably just as ‘royal’ as they are. But that’s capitalism for you, fetishising utter silliness in the service of the elitist rich.If this is true and that most of us on this island off the North West coast of the European mainland will be descendants of Richard III or at least of Edward III, then perhaps a referendum should be held to decide where his bones should be reburied: York or Leicester?
One witty opponent once summed up our definition of the working class as:
Quote:"everybody's working class apart from the fat controller".It was a caricature of course but not far off, but the idea seems to catching on that, as the Occupy Movement put it, it's the 99% against the top 1%,Someone who had been to some event left a copy at Head Office of a magazine they had picked up called The Platybus Review (you'll have to ask JohnD who they are). It contained an interview with an American academic called Jodi Dean in which the following question was put to her:
Quote:Besides sovereignty, the other component in your reformulation of “the dictatorship of the proletariat” as “the sovereignty of the people” is “the people.” Following Hardt and Negri and Badiou, you distance yourself from the classical Marxist notion, elaborated by Lukács, of the proletariat as the “subject” of communism or history. Instead, you “offer the notion of ‘the people as the rest of us,’ the people as a divided and divisive force, as an alternative to some of the other names for the subject of communism—proletariat, multitude, part-of-no-part” (18–19). How does this amendment to the traditional concept of the “subject” of communism or history help to improve Marx’s theory, or at least bring it up to date?To which she replies:
Quote:One of the ways it brings Marx’s theory up to date is really pragmatic. When you’re talking to a bunch of people today, almost no one says that he’s a member of “the proletariat.” They may say they’re part of “the people.” (This, even though Marx and Lenin are very clear that “the proletariat” is not an empirical category). The term “proletarianization” is still accurate and useful, however, so I think it’s important to keep that concept and think of “the people” as “the proletarianized people.” For folks in the US, “proletariat” suggests factory labor too strongly. There are many people who don’t feel like they’re proletarians, even as they might recognize their existence as proletarianized, especially today because we’ve lost so many manufacturing jobs. There are so many precarious workers, fragile workers, so many non-workers—widespread unemployment, people who are underemployed. It’s hard for those folks to think of themselves as “the proletariat.” The sense of “the people” as a divided group better encompasses our own time. Frankly, I also think it includes more of the “reserve army” of the unemployed, the Lumpenproletariat that classical communism had mistakenly abandoned.So it looks as if others have been thinking along our lines (not that we have ever liked or generally used the term "proletariat": even a hundred years ago almost no-one would have said they're a member of the proletariat).She expresses some other, quite unacceptable views in the interview (after all, she's a Leninist), but the idea that the basic division in society is between the ruling oligarchy and the rest-of-us seems a sound one. Her reformulation of Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat" as meaning the same as the "sovereignity of the people" seems good too.
Maybe if volunteers come forward and let Head Office know by email.It's organised by the churches but maybe some non-believers will also turn up. It's definitely an issue on which we have something to say, i.e that the world can produce enough food to feed every man. woman and child on the planet (and more) but that this is being prevented by the capitalist system of production for profit and its rules on "no profit, no production" and "can't pay, can't have".
Reply from the author of the article:The writer of this comment, Jon Griffith, was one of three European mountaineers who in late April were at some 21,000 feet up Mount Everest, working to establish a new route to the summit unassisted by ropes or oxygen, when they were attacked by a group of Sherpas who were laying some fixed ropes nearby. The incident was reported by, among others, Oliver Thring in the Sunday Times of 5 May. In that report Griffith was quoted as saying ‘For people like us the normal route to climb Everest is just like walking.’ He was also reported as expressing negative feelings about those he called ‘commercial climbers’ – presumably referring to people who pay a lot of money to be luxuriously accommodated before being respectfully guided up the mountain. And then there were his thoughts on the restrictions which arise from such arrangements: ‘Being told not to climb on a certain day just because other people are there is against the freedom of the hills.’Jon Griffith also questions the statement in the article that the Nepalese government had intervened. In fact a report by Ed Douglas in the Guardian on 1 May stated that the Nepalese authorities had intervened, by trying to involve all parties to concede that mistakes had been made and that there would be no more violence. But the Europeans rejected the offer and returned home with Griffith saying that he no longer felt safe above base camp on the mountain. In addition the Nepalese police arrested three Sherpas.In its entirety the piece was intended to set out one of many examples of how Mount Everest, once regarded on one side as holy ground and on the other side as a supreme test of moral fortitude, has descended into just another sordid participant in capitalism's commodity culture.
This will be shown at the TUC in London on Thursday 20 June. We've asked for a ticket so we can do a review, but anyone can go as long as you book earlySERTUC FILM CLUB- FREE ADMISSION Screening + Director Q&AA new documentary feature film by Michael Wayne & Deirdre O'Neill- THE CONDITION OF THE WORKING CLASSRuntime: 82 mins Everything changes and yet everything stays the same. 1844: Friedrich Engels writes his book 'The Condition of the Working Class in England', a classic denunciation of the appalling living conditions for working people living at the heart of the industrial revolution in Manchester, England. In 2012: a group of working class people from Manchester and Salford have the job of devising a theatrical show from scratch based on their own experiences and Engels' book. They have 8 weeks before their first performance. The Condition of the Working Class follows the process from the first rehearsal to first night and situates their struggle to get the show on stage in the context of the daily struggles of working people facing economic crisis and austerity politics.Review: http://vimeo.com/66049819Thursday 20 June, 7- 9.30pmLOCATION TUC Congress House, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3LSFREE ADMISSION Booking essentialBOOKINGS: sertucevents@tuc.org.uk or 020 7467 1220Please book early to attend (all welcome).
