jondwhite
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According to this statementhttp://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2014/01/27/international-socialist-network-seymour-and-others-split-over-race-play/Richard Seymour and China Mieville and 6 others, who were characterised as a right bloc, have split from the IS Network.
One of the interesting things about Euromaidan is it exposes the bias of Russia Today which some of the more credulous in Britain had assumed might be an alternative to the mainstream news agencies.http://rt.com/news/war-gear-ukraine-riot-084/I may be mistaken, but I get the impression they are trying to paint most of the protesters opposed to the government as violent or fascists.
Podcast #4http://internationalsocialistnetwork.org/index.php/downloads/327-a-letter-from-domestic-extremists-podcast-4
There is also this reporthttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/shark-tanks-kevin-oleary-says-35-billion-people-in-poverty-is-fantastic-news-9077070.html
Quote:Kevin O'Leary, an investor on the US version of Dragons' Den, Shark Tank, was shockingly upbeat about the world's poor during a TV interview this week.Acceptable responses to an Oxfam report stating that the world's 85 richest people hold the same amount of wealth as it's 3.5 billion poorest include 'shocking', 'despicable' and 'probably ought to do something about that'.But not for businessman O'Leary, who responded during US show The Lang and O'Leary Exchange: "It's fantastic, and this is a great thing because it inspires everybody, gets them motivation to look up to the one per cent and say, 'I want to become one of those people, I'm going to fight hard to get up to the top.Workers should have no illusions, this is the rhetoric of the 1% and although some 1%ers like George Soros and Bono express concern (sincere or otherwise), workers should stop listening to the 1% and ask themselves what their interests are. The problem is not that capitalists are nasty or deluded, and that capitalists should be nice, respectful and sincere, the problem is capitalism per se.
A comment on urban75
Quote:IS Network peeps still haven't been told who has resigned since November, not least those who were on the Steering Cttee., & how many have gone. But I guess transparency always has its limits. I noticed things becoming more opaque as time goes by. The strangely named Politics Conf. in October had no attendance figure, unlike the two previous National General Meetings (86 at founding in April, then 50 in June). The minutes of SC mtgs. now don't even say who attended, & how many were there. And the minutes are politically useless coz contributions by individuals are not attributed. Of course it's progress to tell the public ('the class') that something is going on – unlike the secret CC of the SWP – but please be transparent, to both fellow ISN members if not 'the class': your political reputation is at stake. Remember, the Bolsheviks (& the Mensheviks) never, ever had an internal bulletin. Never. That institution only came about in 1921 – as the civil war was ending. The Solidarity [USA] member Bustelo made all this explicit last March in his 'Lenin Was Not a Leninist': http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=7727 What's particularly troubling is that there's no evidence any ISN member cares. But it is, after all, a network, just like a soccer supporters' club. There's never been an attempt to instigate any collective discipline. Peeps just get together to do whatever, be they as women or disabled, or to make a podcast (worth listening to: Oliver Cromwell Cox in the current one; Cox is all there, but after 1 hr the last 15mins is missing). And if the women's group want to tell anyone else what's happening they do, but there's no requirement upon them, or any other fraction of 'the unity'. Likewise about any branch activity. (Surprisingly there has never been a strategy, with milestones, on branch-building.) It's organisational neoliberalism: laissez-faire, let's act. That's really learning from the class enemy. From the ISN's report of last Saturday's unity mtg. with SocRes, ACI & Wkrs. Pwr. it seems those on top are Tim & Kris, & Tom's left having private chats with Terry. In fact no-one knows if Tom, the Principal, & Me Olde, let alone anyone else, are even still members. So it goes. (Should have added that it is to the ISN's credit to alert its website readers that an opposition has arisen during the ISO's pre-conference period. Those who think it a mistake to mention what's happening in the ISO really have a truncated appreciation of what participatory discussion (& decision-making) is all about. If they could read Russian they would be astonished at what went on in the pages of Pravda pre-1928. Yes, ISN members came out of the SWP, but they live in a quite developed liberal democracy. Learn from the class enemy: open discussion is pretty innocuous, it takes a lot more than talk to upset the regime. But open discussion is essential in any healthy organisation: only the rulers need fear openness – & even in groups of 40 people there are rulers, albeit sometimes subject to re-call.)The bit about consensus is so tortuous, someone unfamiliar with the SWP would be none the wiser as to how they operate.Consensus is pretty simple, really, you persuade people then they agree with you, then you work with them. If they don't agree with you, and you can't persuade them, what is the basis for revolutionary socialists to work with? It doesn't deny you an audience, unless the only way you want to operate is through fronts with mendacious objectives where leading parties impose their interpretation on those who don't agree with them whilst using secrecy to pretend everyone agrees.
One of the key members of the steering committee of RS21 is Pat Stack who wrote tendentiously for the SWP in 2011
Quote:For Marxists the key to changing the world is the ability of the class conscious minority to win over the vast majority to act in their own interests.This is what we mean by leadership.This is not an important person giving orders or making grand pronouncements, but the most advanced sections of the class winning the majority.For many anarchists such concepts of leadership are seen as elitist.Yet in reality it is much more elitist for a self-appointed group of activists to carry out actions regardless of whether they are taking wider forces with them.Leadership does however mean battling for ideas.In every struggle there will be arguments about the way forward and about the right demands—and out of such conflicts comes clarity.Consensus in such situations can only mean one of two things.Either we work only with those who already agree with us, cutting ourselves off from the wider audience we want to draw into struggle. Or we only travel at the pace of the most cautious, limiting our ability to carry the struggle forward.Apart from the blatant lies like when the SWP invaded the BA talks in 2010 or the bombarding of protests with SWP placards regardless. Contrast this with Engels
Quote:The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in forand Stack continues
Quote:Revolutionary Marxist parties are not like mainstream political parties.They are not concerned about winning elections…They are organised democratically and they act in a centralised way.Democracy in a revolutionary party means the coming together of members to understand the world and debate a strategy.It is vital to the possible success of the party.And the centralism—unity in action—that comes out of this democracy is essential against a highly centralised and powerful class enemy.For anarchists, the question of organisation remains a largely unanswered one.Historically, organisation is either rejected outright or attempts to build it have floundered because of its loose and confused nature, or conversely because of the building of conspiratorial and elitist formations.and finally
Quote:When it comes to questions of leadership, organisation and the state, the superficially attractive appeal of anarchism fails to provide a coherent strategy to change the world.http://socialistworker.co.uk/art/24912/Is+anarchism+more+radical+than+socialism%3F
More hand-in-glove agreements between industry and government over shale gas are reported in the guardian todayhttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/17/emails-uk-shale-gas-fracking-opposition
Quote:Green Party MP Caroline Lucas said: "This is yet more evidence of the creepily cosy relationship between Decc and big energy. Apparently it's not enough to give fracking companies generous tax breaks, the government also has to help them with their PR. Instead of cheerleading for fracking, the government should be working with community and renewable energy to move us towards a low carbon future."An article in Socialist Standard claimed "These people don’t know what they’re talking about."I went over to the green party website and downloaded their policy on fracking from herehttp://greenparty.org.uk/policies.html
That humans will extract energy from the earth in a modern efficient way likely to involve some fossil fuels to some degree for the foreseeable future might be a valid objection to some green political thought generally.That this may involve fracking if it can be made safe (many of fracking's opponents could agree with this) is speculation that is not based in current science or technology. Until there is any evidence to suggest 'safe fracking' (ie. where a leak will not irreversibly contaminate a water table) is possible we should not be bandying this industry PR notion around. To guess at what technology might be used in the future looks silly or dictatorial, since current technology does not always fix itself (as was stated in the SPGB pamphlets) – many technologies can end up as dead-ends, defunct or whatever.The effect of fracking now aren't hard to discern. The effects consists of observations that can be made both by environmentalists and socialists (whether some like the fact this overlaps or not);it is energy inefficient, but lately has become cheaper than other fossil fuel extraction. Gasland has figures for how much clean water is used, but to say it in capitalist terms, clean water is too cheap a commodity for the fracking process and its consequences.it is pollutive of the airif wells leak, the water table is contaminated. Its not clear that water tables can be decontaminated.What's unique to the socialist case, is any discussion of adverse negative effects are also maligned becauseboth the interests of industry and government (who are likely to be in a better position to assess the science) are in minimising the criticismThis is systemic because capital runs government and industry whereas greens think you can run capital and its just the fault of bad governments or evil capitalists and you need good governments and nice capitalists.
There couldn't be safe fracking for use not profit no matter how regulated because the technology does not exist to make fracking safe. No technology exists to stop oil well shearing which contaminates the water table. Socialists criticise the technology-fix perspective and do not rule in energy sources on principle, as made clear in previous SPGB pamphlets including Ecology and Socialism.
Turns out the blog is related to the group as it now carried the launch statementhttp://revolutionarysocialism.tumblr.com/post/73406060020/revolutionary-socialism-in-the-21st-centuryit'd be interesting to know who is on the steering committee
It's not harmful because its profitable, or because die-hard greens say so, or even because Nimbys say so. Just as its not harmless because it is claimed to be a new technology, in fact this is the principal bandwagon getting pushed to the tune of millions of industry pounds and now government bribes to local councils. Please ask yourselves why this public relations exercise is necessary?Its harmful for the same reasons radioactive waste is polluting, because no technology exists to stop oil well shearing which contaminates the water table. This deprives residents of clean water for those who can't afford it. Many critics make this point, and it doesn't mean they're against the principle of extracting energy from the earth for human benefit in a modern efficient way.As even pro-fracking Cameron stated last August, if fracking was proposed for his constituency in Oxfordshire, residents would be consulted. You can read between the lines on that one but it doesn't sound like an unequivocal green light you might expect from a fracking supporter to me.
Subsequent posts on the topic have suggested Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century is just an interim name. I agree that it has connotations with Chavez.
