ALB
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The one about hairdressers seems to be a variation of the one about the professor of logic who wouldn’t get on an escalator because it said “dogs must be carried” and he didn’t have a dog with him.
I don’t think so! Actually, what we are talking about is the principle of the party in power bringing politically-motivated charges against their opponents. I know it’s difficult, perhaps it’s even impossible, to separate this principle from the Trump case since most decent-minded people can see what an obnoxious character he is and wouldn’t mind seeing him behind bars.
The “Democrats” like to think that they are occupying the moral high ground but they are not. They are down in the swamp with Trump and the rest of the professional politician who all believe that the end of holding and keeping political office justifirs the means.
Those are how the charges are presented and that’s the counter-argument but, given that politics in the US is utterly corrupt and anything goes, I don’t for one moment believe in the sincerity of the “Democrats”. They have found a stick to beat an opponent and are using it for all its worth.
Ok forget the Russia comparison (but see below) but you don’t see any parallel with the treatment of Lula and Rousseff in Brazil?
As to Navalny, the US has an almost exactly parallel case in the prosecution of the leaders of the “African People’s Socialist Party” for being foreign agents and spreading misinformation:
Those are how the charges are presented and that’s the counter-argument but, given that politics in the US is utterly corrupt and anything goes, I don’t for one moment believe in the sincerity of the “Democrats”. They have found a stick to beat an opponent and are using it for all its worth.
Ok forget the Russia comparison (but see below) but you don’t see any parallel with the treatment of Lula and Rousseff in Brazil?
As to Navalny, the US has an almost exactly parallel case in the prosecution of the leaders of the “African People’s Socialist Party” for being foreign agents and spreading misinformation:
Yes, I could be wrong. The “Democrats” strategy could be not to prevent Trump
standing for president again but to ensure that the Republicans choose him again as their candidate — who Biden can be expected to easily defeat.In any event, leaving aside the charges of sexual and financial irregularities, to charge someone with refusing to accept the result of an election is a political and politically-motivated charge. And that’s the sort of thing they do in the rest of the Americas. Look what happened to Lula and Rousseff in Brazil. Was that democratic?
I am talking about a political practice that goes against the principles of political democracy.
Ok, I know that Trump is a horrible person with obnoxious views but there’s a point of principle involved here — it is not democratic to prosecute an opposition politician with a view to maintaining the ruling party in power. As for instance in Pakistan:
Is the Biden regime trying to do anything different?
There’s also this:
https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/crisis-in-niger-west-africa-at-the-cusp-of-a-proxy-war/?amp
There are uranium mines there that supply the French nuclear power stations.
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.
