ALB
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Further evidence that Greta has taken the NATO side in the current NATO-Russia war in Ukraine:
She’s now completely discredited.
More grist for the mill. This revealing remark by a Labourite spin-doctor to columnist Patrick Maguire in the Times on Monday;
“Which party’s manifesto will look most like 2016 Vote Leave and 2019 Tory offer?” one of Starmer’s closes aides put it to me last week. “It’s ours”
Of course it doesn’t matter what the politicians promise as while they propose, Capitalism disposes, and, once in office, they can only react to whatever the workings of the capitalist world economy throw at them.
Won’t it rather be the other way round, ie more surplus value as it grows being diverted into unproductive (of more surplus value) activities rather than the growth of these putting pressure on surplus value? Or maybe that’s just saying the thing from a different angle.
This was also discussed in two book reviews on the February 2021 Socialist Standard. Both authors reach the same conclusion that the increased productivity brought about by automation has not resulted either in more for everyone nor in mass unemployment but in more low paid and precarious jobs (sone of which of course will be productive).
Benanav writes as a declared socialist (in our sense) arguing at the end for a society of common ownership and free access. He used to be a member of the group Endnotes (https://www.akpress.org/endnotes.html
Very interesting. I’d heard of this but never looked it up. More here
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertatia
Where it says that the priest Caraccioli argued that
“every Man was born free, and had as much Right to what would support him, as to the Air he respired.”
This was in fact the original doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church (before it had to find reasons to justify private property of resources). James Connolly in his polemic against a Catholic priest, Labour, Nationality and Religion, quotes from various early Christian divines to show this. For instance, these two:
“Nature furnishes its wealth to all men in common. God beneficently has created all things that their enjoyment be common to all living beings, and that the earth become the common possession of all. It is Nature itself that has given birth to the right of the community, whilst it is only unjust usurpation that has created the right of private property.” – St. Ambrose.
“The earth of which they are born is common to all, and therefore the fruit that the earth brings forth belongs without distinction to all”. – St. Gregory the Great.”Might be worth an article on Libertatia if you’ve the time.
Here’s a more measured approach to Artificial Intelligence than that of those who say that research into it should be paused because it could lead to the creation of a superintelligence capable of making humanity extinct;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-65886125
Of course research into AI should continue even if we know that under capitalism it is likely to be misused (as it already is, as in the drone war in Ukraine). The same machine decision-making technology would be of great help in a socialist world in making decisions about the production and distribution of wealth without buying and selling.
The narrator here seems to be Thomas Sowell. Now (he must be in his 90s) a free-marketeer. In the 1960s he was a bit of a Marxist and wrote quite a good article in Economica in August 1963 on “Marxian Value Reconsidered”:
I don’t think Chomsky did anything wrong. Just asked someone he knew some financial advice. It is a bit surprising, though, that he moved in ruling class circles.
Now they arrested Sturgeon herself. With the Alec Salmon scandal too, workers in Scotland must be relieved that the separatists lost the 2014 referendum. Otherwise they might have found themselves living in a corrupt, banana republic. This should kill off that diversion for, hopefully, a long while.
The problem is not decision-making in London, but capitalism.
” There can never be a ‘mass revolutionary party’ outside of revolutionary times.”
That depends on what you mean by “revolutionary times”.
It’s a bit of an a chicken and egg problem. Are they created by the growth of a mass, revolutionary movement (or party)? — in which case it would be true by definition. Or are they created by some external circumstances such as the collapse of capitalist political rule due to defeat in a war (as in Russia in 1917 and Germany in 1919, your model for revolution) or to some other catastrophe?
We say that it is possible for a majority socialist movement to emerge under capitalism and that thus movement can, and among other things should, use the ballot box to win control of political power to dispossess the capitalist class. You say that this is impossible as, due to their brainwashing of the workers, pro-capitalists will always win elections.
I don’t see why this rules out workers contesting elections in your “revolutionary situation” (Rosa Luxemburg didn’t think so). There would be nothing to lose from doing this. The workers might even win. After all, they are the immense majority. If they lose, then that would show that the times weren’t revolutionary.
Your advice that a socialist minority should “guide” workers to a revolution when most of them are not yet socialist would be very risky and would in all probability lead to a bloodbath. I would have thought that that was the lesson of the German revolution.
To tell the truth, envisaging an armed insurrection and civil war in modern capitalist political conditions is completely unrealistic and counter-productive in convincing workers.
I think we are talking at cross purposes here. I was not using the word “vanguard party” in the sense of a party that will lead an insurrection and then take over and run the state supposedly for the workers. I was using it in the sense of a party that seeks to lead the workers, which the CWO has many times confirmed is its position. In the quotes given earlier on this thread (see #223935) the word used is “guide” (maybe it’s the sane word in Italian?). Combined with the denial that a majority of workers can come to understand and want socialism while capitalism lasts, the CWO is committed to the view that a party is needed to lead/guide the working class in an insurrection against the state.
True. after that it will dissolve itself (I think) and let the workers take over. In any event, it won’t form a government.
Our position is that the workers’ socialist party should be a mass, democratically-organised party, the socialist-minded workers self-organised to win control of political power. This achieved, there is no need for the party to continue. There can be no question of their being that anarchist bugbear if an “SPGB government”. The party can either be dissolved or merged into the democratic structure of socialist society. That’s up to those around at the time. As you say, “For us, the working class is the decision-maker. Yes, that’s right. We agree. It’s enshrined in clause 5 of our declaration of principles — that the emancipation of the working class “must be the work of the working class itself”
We agree too that socialists are workers who “have come to a realisation that capitalism offers no future and that the working class is the force that can bring about a better world, in advance of other workers.”
The question is what should be the role of a minority of socialists. Seek to guide non-socialist workers or seek to enlighten them about why capitalism can never work in their interest and that socialism is the only way out? I know, from previous public debates that our two organisations have had over the years, that the CWO denies that a socialist majority can emerge under capitalism (but only in the course of an insurrection in which a majority of workers start off as non-socialist).
One reason why the mainstream media speak with one (pro-NATO/Ukraine) voice: If a journalist doesn’t repeat the official line they get the boot:
Actually, the position Marx abd Engels took up on war and wars in their day was wrong, and we have said so for ages. See the last chapter of this Party pamphlet on “War as an aid to progress of the socialist movement?”
Actually, you are right that these days wars are not fought just over markets. They are fought over sources of raw materials and trade routes to move them and places to acquire or protect these.
This is well explained in this extract from an article in the Socialist Standard in July 1985;
“What then are the causes of international conflicts of interest and war? Some, but not many, wars are fought over markets. For example the opium wars, when British traders were able to get the government to go to war to compel China to allow the import of opium. In the modern world, markets take second place to strategic issues. The conflict between America and European countries on the one side and Russia on the other illustrates the point. It is not Russia but Japan, America’s ally which has flooded American and European markets with their cheaper products. The point was put in proper perspective by Professor Edwin Cannan in 1915:
‘Commercial interests seem to me to appear in international quarrels simply as a cover for strategic interests. Where there are not supposed to be divergent strategic interests, no amount of divergent or supposedly divergent commercial interests produces either war or preparations for war’ (An Economist’s Protest, page 26).
This exactly fits the relationship between America and Japan because the latter is held to be strategically so important to America’s control of the Pacific against Russia.The most frequent cause of conflict and war is the effort of national sections of capitalism to obtain control of needed overseas sources of food and other materials and to protect transport routes.”https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/1985/monopolyandwar.htm
Of course capitalist states only resort to war as a last resort. But they build up and maintain the most destructive weapons they can afford just in case and to negotiate from a stronger position over conflicts that could lead to war.
Looks as if Greta may have blotted her copybook in taking sides in the war, blaming Russia for the collapse of that dam before the full facts have been established;
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/thunberg-criticises-russia-over-ukraine-dam-ecocide-2023-06-09/
Of course Reuters is not neutral in this conflict and it maybe she was only saying that wouldn’t have happened if Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine, and Reuters gave this a partisan spin.
But the blame must be sought more widely than that. Capitalism is ultimately responsible for modern wars in that built into it is a competitive struggle between capitalist states over sources of raw materials, trade routes, investment outlets. markets, and strategic points and areas to protect these.
The problem is not Russia, it’s Capitalism.
