ALB
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“Since I was a child, I have always had many Jewish friends. They say that Zelensky is not Jewish, but a disgrace to the Jewish people.” (Putin)
https://tass.com/politics/1634177
I wonder what he thinks of Macron and Blinken who also support a regime he considers Nazi?
I hadn’t realised that she had taken up an anti-Russia stance right from the start. That’s understandable in the sense of condemning any side that starts a war. But to say, a year and a half later, that the Russian attack on Ukraine was “unprovoked” is another matter. It is taking sides.
What was going on before Russia invaded was that both Russia and NATO were provoking each other in the course of which the West called Russia’s bluff. . .
She has also taken the Ukrainian line that Russia blew up that dam. But we don’t know yet who did or what really happened. Even some pro-NATO commentators are withholding judgment. Apparently she knows better.
She could have taken the more cautious approach taken in this article, but she hasn’t:
https://www.leftvoice.org/sabotaged-dam-in-ukraine-a-reactionary-act-no-matter-the-culprit/
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?”
