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One interesting thing to emerge from the debate last night with Federico Pistono of Zeitgeist was that he was a founder member and is still an activist of Grillo's 5 Star Movement. Which means that perhaps it should be seen as more than just a protest movement, at least as far as its activists if not its voters are concerned.Pistono's reason for supporting the Five Star Movement was that it favours direct electronic democracy, which, apparently, is how its members decide its policy and which they advocate should apply to local and national decisions too. I can't read Italian properly, but from his blog and this interview it appears that he criticises Grillo for being a leader (saying that the movement doesn't need one) and outlining a detailed scheme for electronic democracy. Perhaps someone who can read Italian can confirm this.http://it.federicopistono.org/http://www.publicpolicy.it/m5s-lattivista-federico-pistono-grillo-risponde-solo-a-chi-lo-insulta-4114.htmlThe other interesting thing, but which has more to do with Zeitgeist than Grillo, is that Pistono's position here contradicted his main criticism of us, expressed earlier in the debate, because we advocated political action to get to a moneyless world of abundance (whereas he advocated lifestyle changes and decentralised self-sufficient communities as concrete examples for people to follow and as transitional to this) as it meant that he, too, is for political action. Reformist political action, but still political action. The reforms he expects the Five Star Movement to extract (they hold the balance of power) being promotion of open source (free sharing of technological information) and direct democracy. The fact that he favours a "participatory democracy" also differentiates him (favourably) from Peter Joseph's more technocratic approach.Maybe the 5 Star Movement has more in common with the Indignados in Spain than with "rightwing" know-nothing protests we've been assuming.
Since nobody knows where today's SWP Conference is taking place, this is the obvious place to distribute our "Open Letter to the SWP" instead. So, Sunday 23 March in Vauxhall (just down the road from Head Office).
It seems you can't report the opening post in a thread but you can all others. Another thing I've noticed is that you can only report a post as "offensive" whereas you might want to report (ie draw the moderator's attention to) one as "off topic" or breaking some other rule without it necessarily being offensive.
Looks as if the media are already ganging up to put the boot into the SWP to co-incide with their special conference on Sunday:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21706292
TUSC actually won this election, with 60% of the vote:http://vote-2012.proboards.com/post/61075
Quote:The report also claims that Centrica provides £4.2bn in "total tax payments" including its own payments to HM Revenue and Customs of £1.1bn, national insurance and PAYE contributions from its staff and tax paid by consumers on their bills.This admission by Centrica (which owns British Gas, AA and other businesses) that PAYE deducted from workers' gross wages is really a tax paid by employers is important as there's an ideological battle going on to convince us that we are all "taxpayers" with a common interest. That's why the media always talk about Lloyds and RBS being owned mainly by "the taxpayer" when they mean the government. In the past they never used to talk about British Rail and the National Coal Board being owned by the taxpayer.They still don't talk about the tanks, warplanes and battleships of the armed forces being owned by the taxpayer, which would be just as (il)logical, but then this is government spending they want people to look on favourably. And they never call on the Taxpayers Alliance to give "balance" when they are discussing arms spending as they often do when discussing with trade unionists.Actually of course Lloyds, RBS and the armed forces are owned by "the taxpayers" but the taxpayers are the employing class not us.
I listened to this programme. I don't know if anyone else did. When we got back to them they said that the "socialist" slot had been filled but said we could send an email.They had indicated that a third of the programme would be devoted to whether or not Chavez was a socialist. As it happens, only the last 5 or so more minutes was. Before that, the only mention of the word was by some Venezuelan exile who said Chavez was practising "petrol socialism" by which he meant using oil revenues to bribe the poor to vote for him.The "socialist" slot was filled by Mike Gonzalez of the SWP. It could have been worse (for instance Alan Woods of "Socialist Appeal"), as the SWP does not think that Venezuela is socialist or even on the way to socialism. He avoided a direct question as to whether Chavez was a socialist by saying the Chavism represented a new form of resistance to global capitalism promoting participation from below but faced with a hostile capitalist world. Similar to what he says in this article (which, actually, is not too bad).We sent an email saying:
Quote:I don't think that Chavez could be called a socialist in the proper sense of the term. He was a populist (and popular) nationalist leader who tried to improve the lot of the poor but circumstances meant that he could not go beyond state capitalism and social reforms.Ironic that we should seem to be saying something similar to the SWP. The SWP's more orthodox trotskyist critics would say that it's the other way round and that that's a consequence of holding that Russia was state capitalist.
It's not been decided yet but, as the issue will also have an article on modern theories of the economic collapse of capitalism, June might be a good month, to co-incide with the G8 summit in London.
jondwhite wrote:Andy Newman replies to Pat Stack comment about non-SWP bloggers as filth http://socialistunity.com/what-is-filth/Andy Newman rejoined the Labour Party in 2010 and is set to become a Labour councillor next year. Which doesn't make him much better than the SWP. But it looks as if some trots are practising "re-entryism".He stood as a "Socialist Unity" candidate in Swindon North at the 2005 general election and got 208 votes. He was opposed by an Independent candidate, Ernie Reynolds, who stood on an "abolish money" platform, who got 195 votes. No doubt Newman has realised if you want reforms you may as well join a party that has some chance of trying to implement some.
Quote:The school will also see the official launch of a new CPGB book on imperialism: the first English translation of Karl Kautsky's 1898 text, 'Past and Recent Colonial Policy', which features a highly critical introduction by the CPGB's Mike Macnair.Sounds as if we should review this. But it does confirm the impression we got when we went to their summer school that they are (besides a leftwing gossip sheet) more a history society than a political party,
Oh dear. It looks as if the acrimony is going to continue whatever we do.The EC is trying to draw a line under the whole affair and let by-gones be by-gones (i.e, not to engage in recriminations as to who started it, who was to blame, etc) and start again, but nobody seems to be taking any notice.If people won't act reasonably or exercise self-restrain there's not much any rules or rule changes can do. But it's still not too late.
I don't think that being an "ex-stalinist" should be considered a crime. After all, there are a lot of them about, including some members of our party.In any event, it is rather ironic that someone in favour of renewable energies and the class struggle should appear to be defending the particular nimbies Aaronovitch was criticising since these were rich people who were opposing windfarms on the grounds that it spolled the view of the surrounding countryside from their mansions. Some of them will even be using the arguments of climate-deniers who argue that renewable energies are not necessary anyway, and have been exposed by Greenpeace for this. Some of them too will have been supporters of the Iraq war.I think we need to recognise that some of those accused of being nimbies really are nimbies and do misuse science to defend their vested interests, which was the point I was trying to make.On the more general issue of science and technology, the case for world socialism has always rested on the fact that the forces of production at the disposal of society have reached a stage where they could be used (if commonly owned and democratuically controlled) to provide enough for everybody on the planet to have a decent standard of living. This does involve an acceptance of modern technology as without this socialist society wouldn't be able to produce enough.We need to recognise that socialism will initially involve the construction of more electricity grids, windfarms, tidal barrages, dams, etc, more roads, railways, ports and airfields, the launching of more communications satellites and more mobile phones and other such devices. How else are we going to solve the problem of world hunger and destitution that socialist society would inherit from capitalism?So socialists are necessarily technological optimists. This does not rule out recognising that under capitalism science and technology can and will be misused in the service of profit and preparations for war. But this is a criticism not of technology as such but of ts misuse. In fact, socialists should welcome advances in scientific understanding and technology as every such advance makes the case for socialism even stronger.
For those following the discussion here who might not have access to the paper version, here is the supporting statement for Lancaster's discussion item in full:
Quote:Due to large numbers of acrimonious posts on our internal email lists, Lancaster Branch feels that tougher moderation of members who send such posts should take place. They should be put under moderation faster and for a longer period. The posts in question have caused a great deal of damage to members' morale and this has not been good for the Party. Many members called for an end to such posts and they still continued for a period of time. We fully support any action taken by the moderators to deal with such posts in the future and hope they will not recur.
