ALB
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I see SPEW, through their front organisation TUSC, are thinking of contesting the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election. But so is the “Scottish Socialist Party” (of Tommy Sheridan fame), another product of the old Militant Tendency. I wonder whether in the end they will agree on a single Trotskyite candidate.
Actually the figures are not as good (or as bad) as they might seem. We are not just sitting on a large sum of money and doing nothing, as not even the BBC reporter claimed.
For a start, half of the £2.6 million is the notional value of the premises we have owned since 1951. This £1.3 million cannot be spent. In fact owning property costs money, as on maintenance and taxes.
And we don’t do nothing. In fact our spending as on publishing the Socialist Standard, elections, meetings, publicity, etc. is, and has been for a number of years now, more than the income we get from what members pay and income from the sale of pamphlets and subscriptions to the Socialist Standard. This used to be covered from the money we hold in bank accounts.
But when we received a couple of large legacies (normal in an organisation that has been going for so long) we decided to invest some of the money and use the interest to cover our ordinary deficit. This hasn’t yet done so but may well in the next few years with the higher interest rates now being paid. It might even become enough to employ somebody.
I don’t think that article does us harm. Comrade Cox was able to get over that we stand for a stateless world society based on common ownership where money will be redundant. And he neatly dealt with the issue of so-called “ethical” investment by pointing out there is mo such thing.
I see the conspiracy theories, or more accurately the conspiracy rumours, have started already. This could be an interesting case study of how these originally start and spread.
Confirmation of our argument that the inevitable failure of reformist parties to make capitalism work in the interest of the majority class of workers paves the way for the growth of ‘right wing’ populist parties. An ‘anarcho-capitalist’ president opposed to abortion and sex education does sound a bit of contradiction. Of course he, too, would fail but he and his cronies might be able to line their pockets before being kicked out like Trump and Bolsonaro.
Looks as if Prigozhin has suffered the fate some said would bound to befall him. If so, a bit unfair on the others on the plane:
I can see an objection already if it applies to cars (and bikes?) turning right as well as left into a side street (or the other way round for those not living in Japan, Indonesia or the old British Empire). The driver has to concentrate on looking out for oncoming vehicles from their left and not on whether or not a pedestrian is trying to cross the side road.
I look forward to raising this objection when socialism is established.
Looks as if the strikes and threats of strikes have just about managed to keep up with the rising cost of living even if with a lag:
https://www.lrd.org.uk/payline/pay-bargaining-news
Trade union action has its uses, to defend living standards or to slow down them getting worse but is clearly not enough.
To escape from having to run faster to try to stand still the whole wages system — the buying and selling of people’s ability to work — has to go and be replaced by socialism, the common ownership and democratic control of productive resorces so they can be geared to turning out what people need, distributed in accodance with the principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”.
Even the mainstream media is beginning to report on draft-dodging in Ukraine:
Here’s something relevant on 19th century German materialism, giving some context to the intellectual world that Marx and Engels (and Dietzgen} moved in:
https://www.3-16am.co.uk/articles/on-german-materialism
This too is interesting showing that science confirms that the brain works to filter and interpret what the senses perceive (in this case, the eye):
It doesn’t make sense to call this “idealist” as it sees the brain and mind as part of material reality, not something separate from and outside it.
That’s good, TM. So you are a dialectical materialist after all. A poet who didn’t know it. Welcome.
I don’t know whether or not you are a naive realist (which Wikipedia says is “the idea that the senses provide us with direct awareness of objects as they really are”). I just thought you might be in view of your seeming rejection of any active role for the mind in understanding the world of reality.
Of course atoms exist but not as separate entities on their own but as part of the whole world of reality which humans have labelled “atoms”.
We are not talking about particular sciences but the theories of what science is, the philosophy of science if you like. Personally, I wouldn’t go along with saying that there is a “Marxist astronomy” any more than there is Marxist physics or Marxist chemistry as opposed to “bourgeois astronomy”. But I don’t think the author meant it in that sense.
I wouldn’t have thought Pannekoek or Marx would have accepted it either.
The author does clear up one thing for you:
“Pannekoek understood material reality to be a ‘continuous and unbounded stream in perpetual motion’”.
Are you saying it isn’t? If Marx is too much for you try Heraclitus:
“He viewed the world as constantly in flux, always “becoming” but never “being”. He expressed this in sayings like panta rhei (“Everything flows”) and “No man ever steps in the same river twice.” This changing aspect of his philosophy is contrasted with that of the ancient philosopher Parmenides, who believed in “being” and in the static nature of reality.”
To return to your original question; What kind of materialist are you: a Heraclitan or a Parmenidesan?
Are you denying material, physical reality, and saying it’s all in our minds?
No, of course not. Where did you get that idea from? Just because I mentioned that the mind has a role in understanding the real world? But even the view you seem to espouse — naive realism — accepts that the mind has a role even if only as a camera or mirror.
Here’s the case for dialectical materialism as distinct from 18th century French and 19th century German mechanical materialism:
