ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Head Office has acquired a copy of the first issue (No.1, 24 January 2024) of “The Communist”, the journal of the proposed (third) “Revolutionary Communist Party”.
A picture of Lenin appears on 7 of its 16 pages. There are also articles by and about him. There is no mention of Trotsky on any page. It is not clear on what basis they have calculated that they will do better calling themselves “communists” with Lenin, hammer and sickle and the rest rather than posing as leftwing “socialist” Labour Party members.
Strange, because their origin is the part of the Militant Tendency that stayed in the Labour Party when the other lot left and tried to steal our name but ended up being know appropriately enough as SPEW. Their guru, Ted Grant, had always taught that Trotskyists should stay in the Labour Party until the revolution started as that’s where workers would apparently turn to when they began to become more radical.
Maybe his successors feel that “the revolution” (armed uprising) is imminent. Some of the articles and headlines suggest that they might think it is.
We are told:
“It is becoming increasingly clear that capitalism has reached its limits … the deepening crisis of world capitalism …Under capitalism we are heading for disaster.”
“Capitalism is in a profound crisis. Millions of workers and young people are drawing revolutionary conclusions, and are looking to the ideas of communism.”
Millions?! We haven’t noticed it and they themselves claim only 1100 members.
The editorial ends:
“We need a fighting communist leadership in the working class. That is what we are building”.
No thanks. The working class needs that as much as a hole in the head.
“We woz blown off course” is usually the excuse that governments invoke when they fail to deliver on their election promises. Starmer and the Labour Party have gone one better. They have invoked this to justify abandoning one of their election promises even before the election when Starmer announced yesterday that the party was abandoning a previous promise to spend £28 billion pounds a year on a grandiose “Green Prosperity Plan” because “circumstances have changed”.
The plan was never going to work anyway because governments can’t control how the capitalist economy works and so it was likely to have been had to be abandoned at some point due to “changed circumstances” — such as capitalists not being willing to take part in it since the profits from it were not high enough or because of a downturn in economic activity which meant that capitalist profits had to be given priority over taxing them to pay for the plan.
“Green Deals” are pie in the sky because they are based on the mistaken assumption that governments can make capitalism serve some useful social purpose. They can’t because what drives capitalism is the quest for profits and that will always prevail in the end. Capitalist enterprises will invest in green projects if that is profitable; otherwise they won’t. And governments can’t tax profits too much to pay for unprofitable projects without risking an economic slowdown or downturn.
But Labour are sticking to one promise, made by Reeves last week:
“we will campaign as a pro-business party — and we will govern as a pro-business party.”
We can’t fault them on that. That’s exactly what they are doing and will do. If you are not a business, take note.
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.
