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That is why I changed “US government” in a first draft to “those in charge of the US state” but on further investigation I could have left the first draft.
The prosecution has been mounted by Jack Smith who was appointed by a member of the Biden administration, the Attorney General, as a Special Counsel with powers to prosecute Trump.
Here is the incriminating document:
https://www.justice.gov/d9/press-releases/attachments/2022/11/18/2022.11.18_order_5559-2022.pdf
I would add that I don’t think Biden is in control of anything and that he just signs and says (not without the occasional gaffe) what his officials tell him (though I imagine he is all in favour of prosecuting Trump). This is not the case with all or even most US Presidents but seems to be in his particular case.
So those in control of the US state machine have decided to put a prominent leader of the opposition on trial on a political charge. This is the sort of thing that authoritarian regimes like Erdogan in Turkey and Putin in Russia do. And the left said Biden was the lesser evil.
For anyone missing the contributions from True Scotchman, here is an email we (amongst others) have received from a banned political party in Ukraine. Mind you, people expressing, holding or having held such views are being arrested and tortured in Ukraine. They seem to be a offshoot of the old CPSU and its succesors. Naturally, we don’t endorse their views but this will give an idea of what such people are saying.
“Dear comrade!
Someone wants to kill you, to rob you, and you will be next!
You are being addressed by Derzhava, a Ukrainian Political Party banned by the neo-Nazi government of Zelensky. Most of the media lies and hides from you the fact that your government openly supports Zelensky’s fascists, openly helps neo-Nazis and actually preaches fascism itself, directing efforts to exterminate as many people as possible.
The political scientist Lawrence W. Britt outlined 14 signs of fascism:
1 – A strong manifestation of nationalism;
2 – Contempt for human rights;
3 – Search for scape-goats;
4 – The supremacy of the military;
5 – Rampant sexism;
6 – Controlled mass media;
7 – Obsession with national security;
8 – Religion and the ruling elite tied together;
9 – Protection of corporate power;
10 – Suppression of workers’ associations;
11 – Disdain for intellectuals and art;
12 – Obsession with crime and punishment;
13 – Rampant cronyism and corruption;
14 – Fraudulent elections.
From this list, the Ukrainian neo-Nazi government put all 14 positions into its service. Those who do not agree with this, face assassination on the street or death in prison dungeons. Prisons in Ukraine are overflowing with political prisoners persecuted for dissent.
The Ukrainian neo-Nazi government operates under the leadership of world imperialist led by USA and NATO. US imperialism, in its deepest economic crisis, organized Ukrainian fascism in order to maintain and expand its hegemony by war. Unfortunately, many people live in countries whose governments, acting in the selfish interests of the ruling elites, support NATO. By paying taxes to such a government, people, unfortunately, are forced to support fascism. You can’t keep silent about it. You can’t turn a blind eye to it.
The price of silence and support for NATO fascism is high: worsening living conditions and cut-back medical services leading to impoverishment and sickness, and the inevitable shortening of the lifespan of people in the NATO countries.
A small bunch of traitors in the governments of different countries, support NATO with the aim of furthering the unhindered robbery of their own people. Every day they brazenly take away the surplus value and value added from each working hour of a working person (laborer, worker, employee, policeman, doctor, lawyer, teacher, military man), take one part of the stolen money to enrich themselves and give the rest to NATO to continue the plunder and murder.
US imperialism, which supports the puppet Ukrainian neo-Nazis, continues to pump them full of weapons to prolong the bloodshed and the mass resettlement and extermination of the people in Ukraine.
But this is not enough for traitors and US imperialists. They are steadily leading people like a herd to slaughter, having already launched weapons of mass destruction in the form of cluster munitions and nuclear shells with depleted uranium. They’ve been helping Ukraine create a dirty bomb. They even want to blow up nuclear power plants and bring the war in Ukraine into a nuclear phase.
Everyone will pay for this – those who actively helped the neo-Nazis for their 30 pieces of silver and those who stood aside and did nothing, turning a blind eye to the ongoing hell.
In order to save ourselves from this madness, we offer a simple and understandable solution – to unite and, together with the International Ukrainian Anti-Fascist Solidarity (IUAFS), to follow the path for a safe and peaceful life.
Together we win! “I just re-read that introduction and see that the term “Society of the future” was used at one point, to mean just that.
One problem with “degrowth” is that it is linked to “growth” as currently defined as an increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is a measure of the market price of all the goods and services that are newly sold in the course of a period, say a year. In other words, it assumes a common unit of account by which to measure what is produced — in the instance, money. (GDP also has other defects such as double counting government spending and not counting resources that are used but not to produce a product for sale).
Obviously in socialism the present concept of GDP can’t exist since money will not exist either as a measure of value or as a unit of account. But it is still clear that there will be a decrease in waste such as, in fact, anything to do with money and of course the armed forces and their armaments. That will represent “degrowth” as measured by the current definition. On the other hand, there will be an increase in the production of goods and services and infrastructure and amenities to meet people’s needs (though here too savings can be made through recycling, standard spare parts, etc.).
Since the main units of account (plural, since there won’t be a a single, general one) will physical units of particular products (calculation in kind) “degrowth” would be a reduction in the amount of some of these, eg fossil fuels, some types of plastic. But such degrowth could only take place rationally on the basis of the common ownership of resources and the ending of production for sale and profit and of the economic laws to which it gives rise.
For a socialist attempt to use the concept of general degrowth in terms of less labour time employed see:
ps I see that the CWO are arguing that capitalism is more likely to lead to a world war than to ecological collapse.
I suppose that in the end it comes down to which you think is worse : pro-worker reformism or bourgeois revolutionism? At least the first is a spontaneous and understandable outcome of conditions in developed capitalism. The second is an import from quite different, backward political conditions.
I thought it was generally agreed that Lenin got his idea of a revolutionary organisation as one of professional revolutionaries organised on top-down military lines from previous anti-Tsarist Russian revolutionaries such as Tchakev and Ogarev rather than from the German Social Democratic Party and Lasalle.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyotr_Tkachev
I see that, again, Draper disagrees but Lenin was one of that section of the Russian “intelligentsia” that turned from seeing the peasantry as the mass basis for overthrowing Tsarism to seeing the working class as this and became “Marxists”.
That the Social Democratic parties of Europe were not organised on this basis doesn’t exonerate them from socialist criticism. It is just that our criticism of them is different — basically, that in practice they were merely parties seeking political democracy and social reforms within capitalism, reformists who believed that the working class condition could be improved and eventually ended by parliamentary legislation.
But you are right. That in the end Kautsky probably did see “socialism” as some sort of democratically-run state capitalism.
I don’t think that Draper was right. Yes, both Social Democratic and Leninist parties seek to lead the working class and to act on its behalf doing something for the workers. In that sense both are “vanguards” that reject working class self-activity and that the emancipation of the working class can only be the work of the working class itself.
But the internal organisation of these two types of party is different. Social Democratic parties, at least on paper, are organised on a democratic basis, with local branches that can propose motions for debate at their conference which decides policy; there are internal elections and sometimes a vote of the whole membership. Ok, these parties are generally controlled by their parliamentary leaders but they are not in complete control.
Contrast this internal structure with that of a Leninist party. Members of these can elect the committee and officers of their local branch but that’s the limit. The leadership decides policy. Conferences don’t vote on motions presented by branches but on a “perspective” or “thesis” proposed by the leadership on a take it or leave it basis. The leadership itself is not elected from a list of individuals proposed by branches but from a slate chosen and presented by the outgoing leadership, once again on a take it or leave it basis. Individuals can’t stand against this slate; those who might disagree with what the leadership slate stands for have to present an alternative slate. Such a party has a built-in (and unapologetic) top-down command structure in the hands of a self-perpetuating leadership that renews itself by co-option.
That is what is more usually the meant by a “vanguard party”. It is a Leninist theory and practice. Social Democratic parties can be described as “vanguards” but not as “vanguard parties”.
Lenin may have originally intended this structure only for Russian political conditions under Tsarism but once the Bolshevik party got power it imposed this structure on the parties in the West that supported its rule. The transformation of these parties from Social Democrat parties to “vanguard parties” was called “Bolshevikisation”.
Anyway, here’s the view we expressed at the time on the Kautsky-Lenin debate:
The following articles have been added to the Jack Fitzgerald Internet Archive:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/fitzgerald/index.htm
November 1911: Asked & Answered: Prices and Values.
November 1914: Birds of a feather.
March 1915: The Confusion of the “Clarion” “Economists”.
June/July 1915: Capitalist economics.
March 1918: Working Harder for the Capitalist.That completes all the articles in the Socialist Standard signed by him
Yes, the podcast was interesting. What struck me was how their discussion of the version of Marxism we inherited from Kautsky led to the same sort of discussions and conclusions as we have had in our party — about the inevitability or not of socialism (more the inevitability that capitalism cannot continue indefinitely); the futility of drawing up blueprints since we can’t know the situation when socialism is established; how the “underdeveloped countries” cannot avoid capitalism as long as the developed parts of the world remain capitalist; how governments can only manage the capitalist status quo and how they have to comply with the economic laws of capitalism.
On this last point, the podcasters amused themselves by describing governments as “middle management” carrying out decisions made higher up the chain of command, their boss being the workings and imperatives of the capitalist economy. This analogy had already been made by Peter Joseph of Zeitgeist. It’s good and one we can take up.
British banks seem to be moving towards the situation of banks in the US of having to put up the rate of interest they pay savers so as to retain them.
Under the heading “Barclay’s slides as margins come under new pressure”, today’s Times reports the bank’s financial director as saying:
“Customers are seeking higher yields for their savings and we have changed our pricing in response.”
No only that, many of those they lend money to to buy a house or flat are repaying their loans quicker, so reducing the total income from these loans:
“She said that more than a quarter of customers with home loans were overpaying to reduce their borrowings before remortgaging’”
So their “net interest margin” (“a measure of the difference between what a bank earns from loans and pays to depositors”) is being squeezed from both ends. As this is the source of their profits after paying their running costs, their profits are suffering. As a result the price of the bank’s shares have slid as more investors sell than buy them.
Banks of course are in business to provide an income from their shareholders.
Marx himself used the word a few times in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. He used it in the literal sense of a future State as a political institution as he was criticising the programme’s advocacy of a “free people’s state”. He used it to show that their “future state” was the already existing capitalist state in countries like the USA and Switzerland.
At one point he also asked about “the future state of communist society” (“ zukünftigen Staatswesen der kommunistischen Gesellschaft” by which he said he meant “what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions?” (as of course will some administrative and other functions such as education).
I don’t know if there is any significance in the fact that he didn’t use the word Zukunftsstaat in this connection.
In any event, the content pof the section with that heading in Kautsky’s pamphlet indicates that he was using the word there in a wider sense than just the state as a political institution.
In English the title of chapter IV is has been rendered as ‘Commonwealth of the Future’. But as you can see here in the German, what he has is ‘Der Zukunftsstaat’, that is, ‘The Future State’).
Are you sure that in this context Zukunftsstaat means the future “government machine, or the state in so far as it forms a special organism separated from society through division of labour”, as Marx referred to the state in his Critique of the Gotha Programme?
In Germany at the time Kautsky was writing, the word seems to have had more the meaning of “future society”. In fact at the turn of the century quite a few books with that in the title were published. Kautsky actually wrote the preface to one of them by Atlanticus (Carl Ballod), which was a sort of German equivalent of Edward Bellamy’s utopian novel Looking Backward:
https://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/kautsky/1898/xx/atlanticus.htm
In his preface the word clearly means “future society” rather than future state in the narrow sense (even if a state in that sense was a feature of that society).
It would have been natural for Kautsky to use the word in the same sense in his booklet.
Incidentally, the German original of von Mises’s notorious 1920 article “Economic planning in the Socialist Commonwealth” was “Wirtschaftliche Berechnung im sozialistischen Commonwealth”. Make of that what you will.
