ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
alanjjohnstone wrote:I'll hazard a guess that many in Occupy will be adopting nationalise the banks slogans, based upon arguments presented by the likes of Ellen Brown here. http://www.alternet.org/economy/its-interest-stupid-why-bankers-rule-world?paging=offWe should be ready to counter that interest is from the surplus value extracted from workers.
That's why the October Socialist Standard was a special issue on this, but I'm afraid we are facing an uphill task here. West London branch is covering another meeting in the New Putney Debates series this evening on "A New Economy". Apparently, it will be a workshop run by Clive Menzies, a currency crank who wants to abolish interest and has argued that monetary reform is necessary to avoid …. revolution:http://theoccupiedtimes.co.uk/?p=3015Should be fun.
I left my email address at the Occupy New Putney Debate on Land and Democracy and have received the following email from them. It gives a good idea of where they (or at least their Environment Working Party) are coming from and want to go. Not too different, it seems, from existing activist groups in this area.
Quote:Dear All,thanks so much for coming to our Putney Debate on Land and Democracy last Thursday. At Occupy London we hope that all of the debates will help build a community of people who want to do more than talk, and come together as part of a wider movement against neoliberalism and the corporate takeover of society, and for real democracy and sharing of natural resources, to help bring about real changes in our society and around the world. Details of how to get involved in our group can be found at the bottom of this message. Of course, the talk is important, for working out a coherent diagnostic of what is wrong with society and the kind of changes we wish to see. Action without thought is blind. Lots of interesting ideas came out during this session, and our occupier friend Tina has written a very good overview of the evening here: http://occupylondon.org.uk/archives/17849 You can also find a livestream of the event here, courtesy of our friend Obi: http://occupylondon.org.uk/archives/17835 Just a few of the ideas (based on what people have sent back to me) raised in the breakout groups (send in any others you have as a "reply all" to this message):*build and reinforce communities where we are*Occupy empty buildings/expand squatting (increasingly a necessity for many young people)*demand that the City of London make all its accounts transparent*learn from & get together with friends to replicate successful alternative community experiments, such as the occupied library at Friern Barnet (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/11/squatters-reopen-friern-barnet-library) and the Diggers' camp at Runnymede (http://diggers2012.wordpress.com/) *devise strategies to counter "privatist" propaganda in every way we canThe event was organised by the Occupy London Energy, Equity and Environment Working Group (EEE). We are also organising an Environment Day, with some brilliant speakers like the energy expert Jeremy Leggett and Polly Higgins, leader of the campaign for Ecocide to be adopted by the UN as an international crime. There'll be lots of audience participation, and dealing with the crucial themes of food, energy, and environmental law. We hope you can come and invite lots of friends! The facebook page for this event can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/114672452021499/ The full programme for the Putney Debates can be found here: http://thenewputneydebates.wordpress.com/programme/If you agree with us that voting every 5 years or going on an occasional march won't change anything in any significant way, then we hope you'll get involved with Occupy London, UK Uncut, the Fuel Poverty Action Group, the Climate Justice Collective, Femcells or any of the groups that are part of the wider anti-neoliberal movement. EEE is an autonomous grassroots working group within Occupy London, set up 18 October 2011 to connect the dots between environment and economy, and put the environment at the heart of the Occupy movement in London, which I think we can say we have successfully achieved. We organise a mix of educational events, protests and direct actions, sometimes in association with other grassroots environmental groups, sometimes independently. If you would like to get involved with this group, please email me by reply.Best wishes,PeterOccupy London EEEIndividual capitalists and capitalist firms may have an immediate interest in paying a section of the working class less than another section, but in the long run this is not necessarily in the interest of the capitalist class as a whole since this is to deny themselves access to a pool of potentially more productive (ie producing more profit for them) workers. That's why I used the term "overall interest". It's why of course the capitalist class in South Africa was opposed to apartheid and why this fell. I was suggesting that the same thing will eventually happen in the case of discrimination against women and has in fact already begun to happen
No, this is not utopian. It's perfectly achievable within capitalism and is in fact being achieved even if slowly. Capitalism has no reason to discriminate against half the working class. In fact it is not in its overall interest to do so.
More co-option of "morality" by capitalism from yesterday's London Evening Standard:http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/capitalism-has-to-relocate-its-moral-compass-8289264.html
While it is understandable to a certain extent why some people should have voted for Obama what is utterly incomprehensible is why so many should have voted for Romney, a self-satisfield capitalist who has made no attempt to disguise his disdain for the workers. A sad reflection of the low level of political consciousness amongst workers in America I suppose.
alanjjohnstone wrote:So i think it is a bit easy to put it down to a generational thing.I tend to agree. From my experience of attending 2 or 3 meetings in their New Putney Debates series over the past week or so, I would say that most Occupy activists seem to be university-educated professional workers in the 30s and 40s. As to those attending their meetings, very few were in their 20s or under and there were plenty of over 50s. And, perhaps surprisingly, a massive under-representation of women.
Just remembered. The first speaker in this video, from a party political broadcast by the Socialist Labor Party of America in the 1956 Presidential elections (in which Eisenhower beat egghead Adlai Stevenson), says it all:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iulqp9xlCFg&feature=relmfuPity nobody seems to be saying it this time.
The main reason that it makes no difference is that politicians and governments do not, and cannot, control the way the capitalist economy works. They have to navigate by sight in the face of what the capitalist economy throws up and so can do no more than react to how the economy moves. This quite apart from the fact that their remit to govern in the overall interest of the capitalist class. In fact, far from them controlling the way capitalism works, it's the other way round. That's why Obama failed to honour his promises. Listening to the extracts from Romney's speeches reported over here, he seems to be making extravagant promises claiming that he personally can turn the American capitalist economy round and create millions of new jobs. I don't whether he is dishonest or stupid. Probably both, not that it makes any difference as not even a saint could control capitalism or make it work in the interest of all. Come to think of it, he thinks he is a saint, even if a Latter Day one.
In the end only two of us went to this meeting. It was organised on the "open space" principle, ie no fixed agenda just a general theme (in the instance "capitalism is crisis") with people attending posting on a board something they wanted to talk about and for others to choose to go and listen to them and join in the discussion there. It worked very well. Perhaps we could experiment with it at our summer school.Those present, fifty or so, were a variety of "anti-capitalists" (including, oddly, Joseph Choonara, the SWP's expert on Marxian ecnomics). Most seemed to be concerned with acting now to create alternatives to capitalism today inevitably within capitalism to start with, such as local democracy, community trusts, co-ops and other not-for-profit or profit-sharing mutual societies. We pointed out that whatever might be the merits of these they could only be marginal within capitalism and would never be able to outcompete and take over "the commanding heights of the economy" currently controlled by capitalist corporations, which would require political action (via the ballot box). They also talked about introducing laws to permit this and to stop that, without thinking how these might come about without political action of some kind that would bring them up against the vested interests of the capitalist corporations and their owners and political representatives. The SWP continued to insist that the focus of struggles today should be the workplace rather than local communities. They also insisted that the only way to get control of the state was by violent insurrection, which didn't find any echo at all amongst those present. Tha is clearly not what present-day "anti-capitalists" are into.The trouble is that they are not into what we advocate either (democratic political action to win political control to end capitalism). The aim of the whole series of New Putney Debates is to draw up a New Agreement of the People. A draft for this gives an idea of their general approach. Basically, it's a draft for a new constitition for Britain which would be fully democratic (and so republican) with the usual civil and political rights guaranteed. The economic part reads:
Quote:* the right to co-operative ownership in place of shareholder control* the right to democracy and self-management in all areas/activities of the workplace* the right to common land ownership in towns and rural areas.Forty years ago this might have been described as "self-managed socialism" but "socialism" is not a word that modern anti-capitalists seem to like (though some will admit it privately). The criticism we made of a self-managed market economy of worker-controlled workplaces put forward by such groups as Solidarity in the 60s and 70s applies to them, but our problem is how do we get across the need for some degree of centralisation and for political action. Another drawback is that, unlike those we argued with at that time, modern anti-capitalists are not using the same language that we are used to (socialism, working class,class struggle, Marx, etc). But at least we've haven't got the baggage of vanguardism and insurrection that the SWP and other Trotskyists have.
Went to a meeting in the London Occupy's New Putney Debates series last night. It was on Land and Democracy. About 100 people there in the same church where the original debates took place. The speakers were George Monbiot, Natalie Bennett (new Leader of the Green Party) and someone from a new "Digger" camp in Runnymede.What was revealing was how the Occupy moderator introduced the Green Party speaker. He said that Occupy didn't normally associate with political parties but that the Green Party had supported them. When you think of it, this was going to be the most likely place Occupy activists would find congenial. The audience appeared to be natural Green Party supporters.As to the substance of the talks and discussions, they seem to have a vague idea that the land should somehow be commonly owned (or at least more equally distributed) and/or democratically controlled, but no hint that the same ought logically to apply to all wealth since this comes from the land (nature) in the first place. Henry George got a mention. Plenty of praise for Gerrard Winstanley. So, hopefully, our leaflet based on this will have gone down well.Three of four of us are planning to attend the one on "Capitalism is Crisis" on Sunday mentioned in message #300 above.
I see that the article in this month's Socialist Standard on the Rastafarians says:
Quote:The yearning for righteousness is a very human ideal born of the suffering endemic within the exploitation of Capitalism (the Babylon System) and is shared by Socialists.Wow, so now we are "the righteous" too!
Thanks. Just booked to go. In the meantime I see that the book's argument is that the Second World War was a war to re-divide the world amongst imperialist powers, but that unlike the First World War was still "a war worth fighting" as a way " to end the scourge of fascism and Nazism".http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/conferences/annual9/submit/a-peoples-history-of-the-second-world-war.-resistance-versus-empire
jondwhite wrote:I wonder how it compares with A People's History of the Second World War by SWPer Donny Gluckstein (book launch 10th November)Sounds as if we should review the two books together. From this it appears that the SWP one will take a quite different approach, ie support for the war as an "anti-fascist" war. But where is the book launch taking place?
Ozymandias wrote:Have just watched this latest interview with PJ on Russia Today. He has had quite a few opportunities to appear on TV…opportunites the WSM would NEVER have, yet I have never heard this guy state on TV that he advocates a world without Capitalism, money, governments etc etc. He never ever comes out with it.This is just not true. On a number of occasions Peter Joseph has explicitly argued for a world without money. For instance in this interview with RT:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr7-Qbbrwywand in this one:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYH57Cw644kThere's also this hour-long demolition of the so-called "Economic Calculation Argument" against a moneyless economy:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozy52bZ6JTwNor would I describe the video you criticise as "waffle" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XOyEil_o38&feature=relmfu)It's actually quite a good explanation why voting within what he calls "the market monetary system" never gets anywhere and the "Global Redesign Institute" he mentions at the end sounds as if it will be doing the work of our Production for Use Committee for us.OK, he doesn't use the same language as us but much of the time he is saying the same as we do.
