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A demonstration of over 200 in Hounslow in west London was leafleted this lunchtime. Mainly Muslims but that would be normal for the area.
Among the “Free Palestine” placards was one that said “Boycott Starmer’s Labour Party” and “Don’t Vote for Cadbury” (the local Labour MP). She’s a Quaker (yes, of that family) but didn’t vote for a ceasefire. I thought they were supposed to be pacifists. Also chants of “local councillors, shame!” Only one resigned. I think she was one of the speakers:
Apart from us only the SWP were there. Not sure if they would agree with not voting Labour.
In her column in the Times on Tuesday (28 November) their economics editor mentions a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which identifies a link between austerity and the rise of “extreme parties”:
“An MIT study covering more than 200 European elections between 1980-2015 found that deep fiscal consolidation ‘leads to a significant increase in extreme parties’ vote share, lower voter turnout and a rise in political fragmentation’. The paper estimated that a 1 per cent reduction in regional public spending translated into a three percentage-point increase in the vote share of extremist parties. The researchers noted that centre-left governments paid the highest political price for their austerity drives.”
I don’t know about such a precise link, and why just a cut in regional as opposed to national spending? But some link between austerity and the rise of extreme parties makes some sense.
The mainstream political parties, whether “centre-left” or “centre-right”, promise that, if elected, they will make things better. Voters believe them but these parties always fail to deliver but often end being forced by economic circumstances to protect profits by imposing austerity
When (inevitably due to the nature of capitalism) governments repeatedly fail to make things better, some voters blame not capitalism but the politicians who have failed to make it work for them and see conventional career politicians as a self-serving elite.
Unlike in the 1930s these parties are not blaming political democracy; they blame the conventional reformist politicians who currently operate within it. They are ‘extreme’ in the sense that, being xenophobic and ultra-nationalist, they are at one end of the nationalist spectrum on which the conventional parties situate themselves.
Conclusion: the growth of support for the “far-right” parties is a consequence of the (inevitable) failure of the mainstream reformist parties to make capitalism work for the majority. Reformism is not just a dead-end. It has dangerous consequences.
Well, if you are thinking in terms of capitalism being the only game in town, the most realistic way to end the oppression of Palestinians by the Israeli state is the so-called “two-state” solution.
In other words, from the river to the pre-1967 border between Israel and Jordan (the West Bank has only been ruled and its population politically oppressed by Israel since 1967, ie 56 not 75 years; before that it was part of Jordan and ruled by the King of Jordan). That seems to be what the Powers want.
If you believe in playing the only games in town, why don’t you support it too as that’s what it seems to be, instead of propagandising for what you consider to be the ideal arrangement?
There is also this that Lloyd draws attention to in his article;
“Starmer’s pronouncements, like those of Rachel Reeves, address this Britain. The pair talk of a volatile, insecure, dangerous world. They describe national rot and decline with furious dismay.”
And make the Trump-like promise that a future Labour government will Make Britain Great Again.
Meanwhile Labour are still making empty promises to make workers better off. Here’s a “Labour spokesman” quoted in today’s Times:
“We will invest in British industry to boost growth, cut bills and make working people better off.”
Oh yes? Only a mug would believe that. Where are they going to get the money from to invest? As if, anyway, any government can control the way capitalism works and make it “grow” just like that through an act of political will.
And stopping bills from rising (if they do that, which is open to question) is not the same as making workers better off; it would only be stopping them getting worse off.
Starmer is a man without any principles but Reeves sounds as if she really believes that a government can make capitalism grow. Just like Liz Truss . . .
There are various events this Saturday in different cities and towns up and down the country.
Members in Bristol, Cardiff, Lancaster, Oxford, Yorkshire and Glasgow have leaflets to cover those in these places. Some will be distributed in London too. Southampton and Portsmouth have already been leafleted.
Are you sure? Both will require a change of consciousness. We envisage people coming to want socialism and do our bit to try to hasten this.
You have to convince the Jewish population of Israel to dissolve the state of Israel into a single Palestine state. You fancy your chances of being able to achieve that?
Unless, that is, you envisage imposing this by force of arms. In that case don’t forget that the Jewish Nationalists have the Bomb. That’s a recipe for more slaughter on an industrial scale.
To tell the truth, what you propose seems the least likely and most unrealistic outcome under capitalism. And of course, if you achieve it, with or without war, a Palestine ruling class would be “free”, but the vast majority of the people living between the river and the sea wouldn’t be, any more than in any of the existing Arab states. In fact, if Hamas has anything to do with it, they‘d be living under an Islamic dictatorship in addition to being economically exploited.
An Italian translation here:
https://socialismo-mondiale.blogspot.com/2023/11/guerra-israele-gaza-cosa-diciamo.html?m=1
Meanwhile an updated version has been prepared and will be considered at the meeting of the EC on Saturday.
An article in today’s Times by Will Lloyd of the New Statesman talks about “Dark Labour” and writes of it being the new Nasty Party.
Recalling that at the time of the 2011 riots Starmer was Prosecutor General (a key post on the repressive side of the capitalist state) and authorised the harsh prosecution of rioters:
“Comically cruel punishments were the consequence. A student was jailed for three months for stealing some water bottles; two men were send down for four years after inciting riots on Facebook, although no disorder occurred.”
Clearly the man is what the present Home
Secretary might call a “shit”.Lloyd goes on:
“Dark Labour is defined by its willingness to be harsh. . . On everything from migration and criminal justice to the war in Gaza, Dark Labour is the opposite of gentle and kind . . . The shadow cabinet is mirroring its leader, which is why members sound like prosecutors, not politicians.”
We have been warned. If a Labour government takes over next year we are in for a stretch of hard labour.
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)
