ALB
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This extract from Milei’s victory speech is worth recording as an example of the populist appeal to the poor against a corrupt ruling caste:
“Today we begin to turn the page of our history and return to the path we should never have lost. Today ends the impoverishing model of the omnipresent state, from which only a few benefit, while the majority of Argentines suffer.
Today the idea that the state is a booty to be shared among politicians and their friends is over. Today the vision that the victimizers are the victims, and the victims are the victimizers is over.
Today we return to the path that made this country great. Today we embrace again the ideas of freedom, the ideas of Alberdi.
In short, the ideas of our Founding Fathers that took us in 35 years from being a country of barbarians to becoming the first world power. These ideas are based on three very simple premises.
A limited government, and I want to make this clear, that fulfills to the letter the commitment it has made.
Regarding private property and free trade. I want to be very clear about something, the model of decadence has come to an end. There is no turning back. The results of this model are there for all to see. From being the richest country in the world, today we are the 130th. Half of the Argentineans are poor and 10% are indigent. Enough of the impoverishing model of the caste.Today we are once again embracing the Liberty model to become a world power again.”https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/javiermileipresidentialelectionvictoryspeech.htm
Of course limited government, private property and free trade won’t do anything to improve the lot of the impoverished majority. But his election victory shows that it is the failure of conventional reformist politicians to make capitalism work for the majority that paves the way for the rise of populist politicians like him. At least it’s not fascism this time.
For the record, a comrade did pass by the anti-antisemitism march but didn’t hand out any leaflets. They probably wouldn’t have elicited any positive response from a march led by such war-mongers as Boris Johnson and the Chief Rabbi. Not that there would be anything wrong with a march against antisemitism if that’s what it had been.
They haven’t even achieved their aim. Fortunately, otherwise we’d be living in a a state-capitalist economy ruled by a vanguard party.
But the really odd thing about Grant’s successors setting up an independent “revolutionary” party is that this goes against everything he advocated for over 50 years till his death in 2006 — that Trotskyists should stay in the Labour Party as it was the mass party of the working class and that when the working class began to move towards becoming revolutionary this would initially express itself inside the Labour Party; hence Trotskyists should be there to lead them.
It is quite clear that the new RCP will end up no different from the WRP, SWP and SPEW, another would-be mass Trotskyist party with not much more support amongst the working class generally than us. It will also leave a niche for any Trotskyist group that stays in the Labour Party to take advantage of the inevitable failure of a future Labour government.
I imagine that Grant’s successors. having built up some support amongst students, has thought this — and that capitalism is supposedly “dying on its feet” — up as something to keep these recruits occupied and motivated in order to retain them.
This review of a collection of Grant’s writings in the March 1990 Socialist Standard by DAP brings out that he was well aware of us. Also that, in the debate within the Trotskyist movement about the nature of the USSR, he scored a good point against Tony Cliff theory that Russia only became state capitalism in 1928 (after Trotsky was expelled from Russia) when he pointed out that the economy in Russia was exactly the same pre and post 1928 and that Cliff, if he had been consistent, should have said that Russia had been state capitalist since 1917 (which of course we did).
Here are some of the things he said about us:
“If all that was required of revolutionaries was to repeat ad nauseam a few phrases and slogans taken from the great teachers of Marxism, the problem of the revolution would be simple indeed. The SPGB would be super-Marxists instead of incurable sectarians. As Trotsky remarked of the ultra-lefts, every sectarian would be a master strategist.”
And again,
“Unfortunately, the movement of the working class does not proceed in a straight line. Otherwise, all that would be necessary would be to proclaim from the street corners the need for a revolutionary party – as the SPGB has proclaimed for 50 years the superiority of Socialism over capitalism – but with completely barren results.” (https://www.marxists.org/archive/grant/1959/03/entrism.htm)
Perhaps, when the members of the new RCP study the works of Grant they will be intrigued to find out more about us. Who knows?
The others handed out about 400 or so. We wanted to find a copper to exchange our leaflet for this one they were apparently handing out telling demonstrators what not to do but couldn’t find one.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/1C17/production/_131819170_policeleaflet.jpg
There’s a counter-demonstration tomorrow which we should probably leaflet (if we dare).
It will be interesting to see if the police leaflet that demonstration.
I can’t believe it. It is Ted Grant. This is carrying the leader-worship and cultism that is a feature some Trotskyist sects to an extreme. Not even the followers of Gerry Healey elevated him to that status. I wouldn’t have thought Grant would have wanted it either, but you never know.
He did a very good impression of being a leftwing Labourite. He didn’t appear to know all that much about Marxism though. I remember tackling him ages ago at a meeting of Newport Young Socialists about whether there would be wages and money in socialism. He defended the view that there would be but then of course, like all Trotskyists, by “socialism” he meant “state capitalism”. I didn’t realise that I had been arguing with a future demi-god.
Incidentally, at first I too thought of that RCP (the one that published Living Marxism but which we called “Dead Leninism”) but I think it more likely that’s it’s an attempted reincarnation of a previous RCP that united most Trotskyists in the 1940s.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party_(UK,_1944)
Here’s another one and clearly a liar too.
https://theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/23/james-cleverly-stockton-remark
There is another national demonstration in London tomorrow, starting at Hyde Park and ending in Parliament Square.
https://www.stopwar.org.uk/events/ceasefire-now-national-demonstration-for-palestine/
Once again London and Kent members and sympathisers will be leafletting it.
The arrangements will be the same as last time. Head Office at 52 Clapham High Street SW4 will be open from 10.30 to 4pm for members and sympathisers to pick up leaflets.
This one is organised by the Stop The War Coalition rather than Palestine Solidarity Campaign and so should in principle be more anti-war than pro-Palestine. Whether it will be remains to be seen.
At least they got to demonstrate even if they were censored and self-censored on what they could say.
This was interesting:
“Many speakers, Arabs and Jews, talked about the fact that there are millions of Arabs and Jews living between the river and the sea and that the only solution is to have full human rights and equality for all.”
That’s an idea. If the demonstrators in Britain were to chant “From the river to the sea” followed not by “Free Palestine” but by “Full political rights for all” that would put those who want to ban the slogan on the defensive. It would then be a democratic rather than a nationalist slogan.
Of course it still wouldn’t be “the only solution” — socialism would be — as it would still leave capitalism intact but it would be a step in the right direction.
South Wales branch report on leafletting this meeting:
“Two of us gave out leaflets outside tonight’s Stop the War meeting at the Unison offices in Cardiff. There was an attendance of around 70 and just about everyone there got one. Surprisingly there were no other organisations giving their stuff out, and that made it easier. The meeting was addressed first by John Rees of STW who spoke at length (too long). It must be said that he’s a hell of a good speaker and did it all ad lib with eloquence and power, but not in a rabble-rousing way. As for the content, well he never attempted to back Hamas but focused on the need for a ongoing ceasefire, something I think we would all, at least on a personal level, consider positive if it were to happen. He also mentioned the underlying economic elements, the kind of thing that’s done very effectively indeed in the editorial on p.3 of this month’s Standard. It’s unsigned, but whoever wrote it, congrats. Anyway the next three speakers were an MP, a Palestinian living in Cardiff and a poet, but after that we left. This was partly because the room was so hot, but also because 8 more speakers were billed, so it’s probably still going on now.”
This will please KAZ. Mind you, it has been subject to criticism and pushback:
Begin took the money for Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 and then 4 years later presided over the bombing of Beirut. I don’t think they asked him to pay it back.
I see the utter nutter won. Now let’s see how successful he is in introducing anarcho-capitalism in Argentina. Mind you, capitalism is pretty anarchic anyway.
Here’s the front cover of the September 1982 Socialist Standard, the last time the Israeli government (Begin was prime minister) ordered the Israel Attack Force to do this sort of thing — flatten parts of Beirut and hold the ring while they let a Lebanese Christian militia slaughter Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. This time they are doing their own dirty work. Read the article called Holocaust2. It could be reproduced almost word for word today.
