ALB
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alanjjohnstone wrote:Another insight into OWS organising and decision making here http://www.thenation.com/article/165087/fracturing-occupy-wall-street
Having been to Occupy London a number of times now I think the same distinction between the political activists and homeless occupiers exists there though without the conflict.Here is a description of the situation in Oakland towards the end (not what I expected from some of the glamorised reports of it as a hot bed of working class resistance):
Quote:Here are some points that someone who has not participated in an Occupy meeting won’t understand (and this is based on common trends in West Coast Occupy spaces — but comrades have said some apply to others elsewhere): 1.) the majority of those camping at the sites are people dismissively referred to as “chronic” homeless; many are veterans of wars, as far back as the one in Vietnam 2.) a significant part of the population at the encampments have serious mental health issues 3.) there is open and widespread use of marijuana and alcohol, as well as other drugs that are used more covertly All 3 factors are interrelated. Since I’ve still had beautiful interactions with people afflicted by all 3, I see Occupy sites as places of healing and for the possible reintegration of long-term homeless people into housed working class communities. I have seen people who in the past were noticeably mentally ill start to adjust and appear more stable after taking on collective duties in the safety of the encampments. Never having been anywhere near homeless myself, I can imagine that the safety in numbers must making sleeping outdoors seem much less dangerous. Yet these encampments, especially on the margins of Occupy Oakland where the guy got shot dead last week, have lumpen characters prowling around the fringes looking for some hustle or something to rip off. There’s this strange paradox of safety within the core and danger at the margins. I’ve seen a few fist fights myself, mostly between drunks, all of which got broken up due to the thankless efforts of stable people at the encampment. If you know the counter-cultural reference, you’ll get this description a friend made: Occupy camps are a cross between a Rainbow Gathering and jail. That pretty much sums it up.I think the Occupy London political activists are going to have a similar issue to face when they end it (and go back to their homes) of what to do about the homeless people they have attracted and given a sense of community to.Perhaps we’ve concentrated too much on the political aspects of the Occupy movement and overlooked the social effect for some of those involved.
I wonder what the people of Lewisham would have made of this. Luckily for them it was only distributed in Vauxhall in Lambeth.
That would be an interesting development as the SWP are still supposed to be in coalition with Militant and Bob Crow in TUSC (Trotskyists United with Stalinist Crow) which is trying to cobble together a list of militant trade unionists to fight the Greater London Assembly elections next April. It wouldn’t be the first time that these two would-be vanguards have fallen out over which of them is to “lead the working class”.I’m still not convinced, however, that People Before Profit are not genuine reformists who really believe that capitalism could be made to work in the way they propose (as opposed to the insincere reformists that the Trotskyists are with their “transitional demands” which they know can’t be achieved under capitalism).If TUSC and People Before Profit do have rival lists for these elections I would think that People Before Profit would do better as they would be appealing to a wider audience than just trade unionists. In any event, we’ll be standing in at least one area advocating the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources and production solely for use not profit (socialism) and nothing but.
Interesting meeting last night in the middle of nowhere at which some interesting facts emerged.1. That Malatesta was never actually a member of the Socialist League but merely knew some of the anarchist members of the League and attended some of its meetings. He did meet Morris at that time (1889-90) but they would have had to have spoken to each other in French since Malatesta didn’t speak English then.2. That Malatesta actually shared some of Morris’s criticism of the anarchists who drove him out of the League, eg their talk of “absolute freedom” and advocacy of “individual appropriation” as also their belief that all that was required was to destroy capitalism (by bombs or “the new chemistry” as it was known in the anarchist movement) and an anarchist society would spontaneously arise on its ruins.3. On Morris’s death in 1896 Malatesta wrote what was described as a “rather bitter” obituary in which he criticised the fact that in his will Morris, like a good bourgeois, left all his money (some £1.5 million) to his family and not a penny to the workers’ movement or to workers. Morris, said Malatesta, was a socialist in literature but a bourgeois in life (and, it’s true, Morris did not abandon his bourgeois lifestyle, though over the years he did give considerable sums of money to the socialist movement). Malatesta, suggested the speaker, was criticising Morris for not doing what he had done. Malatesta (who was born in 1853) himself came from a bourgeois background (though not as privileged as Morris’s) and gave up his medical studies to learn a trade (in the event, as an electrician, then the cutting edge technology). Incidentally, £1.5 million would be worth at least 100 times that amount today, so Morris was definitely one of the 1%.4. Peter the Painter and those involved in the Sidney Street siege a hundred years ago were not anarchists (as in the popular imagination and as anarchists sometimes claim). They were in fact Latvian members of the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic party. Malatesta was only incidentally involved in this since they had borrowed an acetylene torch from his electrician’s business without him knowing what for. It was in fact to use in their raid on the jewelry shop.
The discussion on BBC Radio 4 yesterday morning on the ancient Greek philosopher Heraklitos (the first “dialectical monist”?) was very interesting. It’s now here.
Here’s the London Occupy LondonSX official statement on their meeting yesterday with the head of the Financial Services Authority.Looks as if they being drawn into making suggestions as to how to run capitalism and are setting off down the reformist road.
Just realised that you wrote “transnational” in the title when you meant “transitional”.Also, although we reject such terms as “transitional state”, “socialist state” and “workers state”, we are not anarchists and do envisage that the workers, once they have become socialists, should aim to win control of political power, ie of “the state”, in order to stop it being used against them and to co-ordinate the changeover to socialism and, even, to deal with any violent resistance by a pro-capitalist minority (however unlikely).The point is that, since workers already run society from top to bottom and since private property is at present guaranteed by the state, this working class control of the state need not last very long. In fact, private property in the means of production can be abolished at a stroke by simply declaring all stocks and shares and all property deeds null and void. They can then be used to make lampshades.
Here’s the answer given to the government’s claim that their debt is our problem by a striking healthcare worker on 30 November (and published in the Times the next day):
Quote:The Government is in debt but why should I have to pay for it?Good question.
There’s this article on this site about “The Myth of a Transitional Society”. There is also an article on “The ‘Transition Period'” in the January 1946 Socialist Standard but this does seem to be on (yet?).As to the history of the SPGB, online are this, this and this.There’s also this article but you have to register and pay to see it, so that’s no good then.And there’s this on the “impossibilists” of the Socialist Party of Canada.
This seems the best way to deal with islam. Leave it to ex-Muslims (rather than ex-Christians and ex-Jews). Unfortunately this is not a debate with real Muslims but with a breakaway sect, the Ahmadiyya, who are not regarded by orthodox muslims as muslims and are in fact persecuted in Pakistan and Iran.I heard Maryam Namazie speak at a meeting of SW London Humanists. She’s good. She’s also a member of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran which has the same definition of socialism/communism as us.
Quote:The immediate aim of the worker-communist party is to organise the social revolution of the working class. A revolution that overthrows the entire exploitative capitalist relations and puts an end to all exploitations and hardships. Our programme is for the immediate establishment of a communist society; a society without classes, without private ownership of the means of production, without wage labour and without a state; a free human society in which all share in the social wealth and collectively decide the society’s direction and future. Communist society is possible this very day. (….)The essence of communist revolution is abolition of private ownership of the means of production and their conversion into common ownership of the whole society. Communist revolution puts an end to the class division of society and abolishes the wage-labour system. Thus, market, exchange of commodities, and money disappear. Production for profit is replaced by production to meet people’s needs and to bring about greater prosperity for all. Work, which in capitalist society for the overwhelming majority is an involuntary, mechanical and strenuous activity to earn a living, gives way to voluntary, creative and conscious activity to enrich human life. Everyone, by virtue of being a human being and being born into human society will be equally entitled to all of life’s resources and the products of collective effort. From everyone according to their ability, to everyone according to their need – this is a basic principle of communist society. [From here]The trouble is that they are Leninists and have a minimum programme of democratic and social reforms to be implemented under capitalism.And I don’t think she reveals that she wants (like us) a classless, stateless, moneyless, wageless society when she’s speaking as a secularist-humanist. Pity.
Six of us there again today. Despite the cold the usual discussions, leafletting, video interviews, etc. A young Irishman, who said he’d taken part in the occupation of Panton House in the Haymarket after the unions strike march on Wednesday, told us that while occupiers in Glasgow and other places were into banking reform and funny money theories a lot of the people at Occupy London were New Age mystics who were awaiting the Great Awakening next year. We have no way of knowing whether or not this is the case. It could well be, but would be disappointing. As an occupier himself, he’s in a better position than us to know. Be that as it may, some of the visitors have come because they are attracted by the camp’s anti-capitalist image and we’ve had more discussions with them than with those in the tents. We’ll be back next Sunday.
Believe it or not I actually saw the first part of the programme in question and before I switched it off I heard him answer a question about why he never travelled by train by saying that it was because they were always held up by someone falling on the tracks. The two idiots interviewing him joined in the general laughter. It’s since emerged that the whole thing was a set-up with the programme’s producers encouraging him to be outrageous. It’s clear that TV producers are just as much scumbags as the editors and newspaper executives being exposed before the Leveson inquiry.
Quote:It is understood Clarkson earned £479,000 in dividends in the 12 months to March 2009How can you earn dividends? In the past even the Inland Revenue recognised that dividends were “unearned income”, as they are. They’re a property income, a tribute levied on the labour of those who work. So it’s not surprising that Clarkson was against the strike. He’s a Fat Cat himself (and even looks like one).
A clearer picture of the front of the march at Kingston dominated by SWP “He’s Got to Go” placards. This gave the wrong impression about what the strike and march were about. Kingston is in fact an administrative centre in its own right and there were pickets outside the Crown Court, Surrey Council County main offices, Kingston University, Kingston hospital as well as Kingston Council. There weren’t any pickets outside the local Jobcentre. In fact I saw strikebreakers there at their desk, no doubt striving to fulfil their quota of hounding people off benefits. At the outdoor rally the chairperson asked those who were on strike for the first time to put their hands up. Over half of the 500 present did. Capitalism is educating a new generation of workers.
Banking reformism seems to be rampant at the moment. Here’s what was proposed in yesterday’s Mourning Star (handed out for free at the trade union rallies) by Jerry Jones, their economic expert (and also that of the Communist Party of Britain). He’s talking about how to re-impose the sort of credit controls that existed in the 1950s and 1960s:
Quote:This could be achieved by restricting bank lending to, say, 80 per cent of savers’ deposits plus what the Bank of England was prepared to lend banks at an interest rate that it decided depending on the economic circumstances.This amounts to calling for banks to maintain a cash reserve of 20 percent of deposits. Not quite as economically illiterate as calling for them to hold a cash reserve of 100 percent. But just as irrelevant.
