ALB
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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.
Interesting article from New Zealand which raises a problem for lesser-evilists — from an ant-war point of view, was Biden really their lesser evil?
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO2306/S00064/when-did-progressives-become-warmongers.htm
To adapt one of our slogans in Britain, “The Problem is not the Republicans, it’s Capitalism” or maybe, in line with how we amended ours, “The Problem is not the Republicans or the Democrats, it’s Capitalism”.
Finally got round to listening to this, till the end (I wonder how many do to a discussion lasting that long). It was disappointing.
Trends in world capitalism were discussed such as the retreat from “neo-liberalism” back to a degree of economic nationalism, as instanced by the US’s ridiculously named Inflation Reduction Act (as if inflation could be reduced by legislation). This Act and the policy behind it was seen as aimed at doing down not just China, but also Germany and South Korea. More trade wars were predicted.
The recent rise in the price level everywhere and the attempt to combat it by raising interest rates was also discussed. This wouldn’t work but would kill off hundreds of “zombie capitalist” firms (firms which survived by making only enough profit to pay their interest commitments). The massive amounts of central bank money created by quantitative easing together with low interest rates had just led to a huge rise in the price of financial assets.
There was some loose talk about this money having been created “out of thin air” not just by central banks (true enough) but also by private banks (not true or possible).
Mattick revived the theory that most of this money didn’t go into productive investment as the rate of profit from this was not high enough and so went into financial speculation. In fact he thought that capitalism would not be able to escape from its current contradictions which would end in its not too distant collapse into a 1930s type depression and/or a world war.
It was mentioned that Mattick has a book called “The Return of Inflation” coming out in September. We will need to get a review copy to see if and how he elaborates on this.
https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/the-return-of-inflation
The low point came when a questioner asked what the panel thought was the alternative to financialized capitalism. In introducing it, the moderator said it might take 4 hours to answer. Actually they took only 4 seconds with Mattick saying “communism, anarchism, socialism” without going into detail and they moved on to the next question.
What they could and should have said (if they believed it, as there is evidence that Mattick does) was a world in which finance and money would be redundant because there would be common ownership of resources and production directly to meet people’s needs. I’m guessing that they didn’t for fear of being mocked, as we have been here, for proposing something most people think is unrealistic.
We haven’t finished yet with Popper and his view that historical materialism is unscientific because it makes no falsifiable predictions. By coincidence I was in the middle of reading his autobiography when this came up on the thread and was surprised when I came across him declaring that Darwin’s theory of evolution was unscientific, because it didn’t make any predictions about the course evolution would take that could be falsified.
Apparently, he later retracted this. Logically, he ought also have retracted his criticism of historical materialism as unscientific. But he never did. But the fact that he himself once thought that Darwinism was unscientific shows that his theory of science cannot be the whole story.
Actually, historical materialism does make predictions that can be falsified. For instance, that given world capitalism pre-and non- capitalist societies can only develop through capitalism — they cannot leap from feudalism to socialism. Another socialist view that has been confirmed many times.
What, then, is the framework within which the problems facing humanity in general and the working class in particular can be constructively and lastingly solved? Or isn’t there one, even in a million years?
Nobody can deny, or is denying, that workers and their dependents (ie most people) accept and put up with capitalism because they can see no practicable alternative or don’t think they can do anything about it. But that is not the same thing as saying that they consider to be in their interest or to their benefit.
It can in fact be shown that it isn’t. I think we can even go as far as to say that, irrespective of what they or anyone else thinks, it is not in their interest. This is not elitist or patronising but a demonstrable objective fact. A socialist world is, as a matter of fact, the only framework within which the problems facing humanity in general and the working class in particular can be constructively and lastingly solved. That is a matter of fact, not just of opinion.
Apparently this is a private not a government initiative, by a group advocating UBI, and which has not yet obtained funding (see p. 47). Which means that the results, if the project takes place, will not commit government to doing anything.
