robbo203
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Roberto
I came across this, if it is any help…
https://www.dialogoglobal.com/texts/grosfoguel/Grosfoguel-Decolonizing-Pol-Econ-and-Postcolonial.pdf
Isn’t he supposed to be a critic of both neoliberal globalisation and nationalist fundamentalism? It is depressing the extent to which the Left is infested with nationalist (that is, capitalist) ideology
Well that source is definitely not a well-respected political science journal! I question its usefulness.
And the examples they give definitely show that there definitely is some kind of family resemblance between what Trump is doing and all-out fascism, even if you don’t want to call it that.
DJP
I have never heard of the “American Spectator” before but I dont think it has any connections with the UK-based “Spectator” magazine. I am just curious as to why you say it is “definitely not a well-respected political science journal”.
I wouldn’t dispute that there is a family resemblance between what Trump is doing and all-out fascism, but that doesn’t necessarily make the Trump regime a fascist regime. A deeply authoritarian, anti-democratic and reactionary regime, yes, but a fascist regime? Hmmmm
If the Trump regime is a fascist, then perhaps the Democratic Party is as well….
Spotted this on FB, a post from Labour Heartlands. Copied and pasted it here for people not on FB. Things don’t look good for Your Party….
””””””””””””””””’
“Remember when I called it last week, and half of Facebook lost its mind because they couldn’t smell the coffee burning?
Well… here we are.
Zarah Sultana has now been openly invited by the Green Party leader to jump ship, exactly as predicted.
🔥 So let me repeat it clearly: barring divine intervention from the liberal gods, Sultana is heading for the Greens. And the signs aren’t subtle.
While Your Party publicly tears itself apart, Sultana’s been quietly cosying up to someone who represents everything Your Party was supposedly built to challenge: Zack Polanski, the leader of the Greens.
This is the same Green Party she dismissed in July as “not radical enough,” too compromised, too establishment.
Yet according to the New Statesman, they’re “WhatsApping again.” They’ve been seen deep in discussion at Portcullis House. They sat on friendly panels at TWT. And Polanski himself told The News Agents:
“I like Zarah. Come join the Green Party.”
Not exactly coy, is he?
Now look at Sultana’s recent behaviour:
She unilaterally announced Your Party ten minutes after Corbyn said he didn’t agree to co-leadership and wanted a delay.
She launched her own membership portal, raised £800,000, and collected 22,000 members’ data without approval.
She accused Corbyn and the Independent Alliance MPs of running a “sexist boys’ club.”
Both sides threatened legal action.
She’s in it to win it, but only if she’s calling the shots…
“Team Zarah” has been operating as a parallel organisation ever since.
This isn’t coalition-building. This is exit-strategy testing in real time.
And the Liverpool conference (29–30 Nov) will be the flashpoint. Delegates chosen by lottery will vote on a constitution written to favour Corbyn’s faction, while Sultana controls roughly £800,000 of party funds. If the room doesn’t swing her way? If she doesn’t get the authority she wants?
Well… she already has the justification prepared.
She’ll say Your Party cannot be changed. She’ll say it’s a “sexist boys’ club.” She’ll say she has no choice but to take her supporters somewhere more “progressive.”
And she’ll walk – likely in January – straight into the Greens’ open arms.
Polanski would bite her hand off.
He’s said it publicly.The Greens need MPs. They need profile. They need someone who can speak to younger voters and Muslim communities. Sultana gives them everything they lack, overnight.
Imagine the headlines by spring:
“Greens gain star socialist MP as Sultana defects.”Just in time to front their May local election campaign.
After all… the Greens love joint leaders.
They’re just so progressive like that. 😉”Your Party: The People’s Money Ivory Towers and Empty Coffers
#yourparty
Thomas
Maybe the Ukraine war might end sooner than we think, and all this ridiculous warmongering bluster and posturing by various warmongering elites will fizzle out in the rush to take advantage of investment opportunities – in both Ukraine and Russia
Anyway, here´s the latest bit of news on the subject I came across this morning
Also this
The party still silent on the approaching European, and probably global, war.
Well, personally, I am sceptical that there is an “approaching” European war. It may happen, but it is unlikely in my opinion. To a large extent, I think all this warmongering is just nationalistic bluster. Most workers have the common sense (even if the politicians are bereft of such faculty) to realise that if Russia were seriously intent on “invading Europe”, then the prospects of it doing so seem pretty remote if, after 3-4 years of military conflict, Russia has only managed to secure about a fifth of the territory of Ukraine.
Anyway, for the duration of the war, Europe has already been involved in providing personnel and armaments on the ground in Ukraine.
I think the fact that we find increasing movement in the direction of wanting to get Russia to agree to a ceasefire is significant. The war has been costly for Europe (and Russia, too, of course), and the proles are getting restless.
Apart from that, I suspect the next wave of elections will bring to power political parties that are less committed to continuing the war. Farage and his cronies spring to mind (Farage having been accused of being a Kremlin sympathiser). The same is true of other parts of Europe. Madam von der Leyen´s days are numbered
I told him that even Lenin admitted that state-capitalism is not socialism.
Did he, though?
I think he talked of state capitalism in two different ways. The state capitalism of the capitalist state and the state capitalism of the so-called “proletarian state”, which he seemed to conflate with “socialism”. He also talked of big banks constituting nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus and workers being employees of the state in “socialism”
I think the clearest indication of this conflation of socialism with state capitalism by Lenin was in his 1917 work, The Impending Catastrophe:
“For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/11.htm”
More electoral victories for the Greens. Could it mean potential YP supporters gravitating to the Greens?
It appears that internal dissent is hindering the growth of YP. Here´s the latest news
I suspect more people are going to gravitate towards the Greens as a result
“Greens neck and neck with Labour, new poll shows, as voters turn away from Starmer”
Extraordinary. Particularly the bit about Corbyn´s Party beating the Tories into sixth place….
“Nigel Farage – if the predictions are right – will not only be prime minister in a few years but will be one with the biggest Commons majority ever. A poll by communications firm PLMR with Electoral Calculus – and shared first with the Daily Mail – suggests Reform would get 445 MPs if an election was held right now. The threshold to win an outright parliamentary majority is 326 MPs. For context – looking back at recent landslides – in 1997 Tony Blair’s Labour won 418 seats, in 2019 Boris Johnson’s Tories won 365, and in 2024 Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour won 411.
If the PLMR poll is correct, Labour would be reduced from 411 to 73 MPs, the Lib Dems would drop from 72 to 42 MPs, and the Tories (hold your breath!) would fall from 121 to just 7 seats – beaten even by Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party into sixth place. Ouch! Now, for the caveats. This poll assumes no tactical voting. With such voting – over one-third of Labour voters could hold their noses and vote Conservative to keep Reform out – and Farage could be deprived of his majority”.
Just been scrolling Twitter. Quite extraordinary, the nationalistic messianic response, with some posts getting hundreds of thousands of likes. Quite a few with Kirk being embraced by Jesus who sheds a tear: Absolutely cringeworthy, but it’s all part of the sakes patter from the Christian nationalist movement that is making hay while the sun shines
Came across one or two rather good responses, including this one
I came across this quite useful article that looks at the different theories of banking in a historical context
Useful article on the economic problems lying ahead for Chinese capitalism on Marxist Crisis Theory FB page
https://www.facebook.com/groups/457920714226660
Overproduction in China: A Crisis of Capitalist Imbalance After the Housing Bubble
Since the collapse of the real estate bubble in 2022, Chinese capitalism has witnessed a massive redirection of investment from property development—formerly a central engine of growth—toward high-tech industry. Electric vehicles, batteries, artificial intelligence, and computing power have become the new destinations for surplus capital, supported by political incentives, public lending, and the promise of technological prestige.
But instead of initiating a new phase of expansion, this shift has triggered a classical crisis of overproduction. Competition between firms—and between local governments—has led to a proliferation of productive capacity that has outpaced both domestic and global demand. As President Xi Jinping recently asked, “When it comes to new projects, it’s always the same few things: AI, computing power, and new energy vehicles. Do all provinces need to develop these sectors?” The rush to occupy these politically favored industries has resulted in massive duplication.
Production is rising, because that is what capital does: each firm invests to gain market share. But demand—although growing—has not grown enough to absorb the surge in supply. The result is a downward spiral in prices, structural deflation in industrial sectors, and collapsing profits. In June 2025, industrial profits fell 4.3% year-on-year, following a 9.1% decline in May. Since October 2022, producer price inflation has remained in negative territory. State-owned giants like Guangzhou Automobile Group and JAC expect record losses in the second quarter.
This is the phenomenon known in China as neijuan—“involution”—where each economic actor, in order to survive, is forced to invest, innovate, and cut prices, even as this leads to the degradation of the sector as a whole. Ports are filled with unsold electric cars, AI chips lie idle in data centers, and some firms are producing at a loss just to keep operations going.
In the past, Beijing managed to contain overcapacity in traditional sectors like steel, coal, and cement thanks to its control over large state-owned enterprises. But today the landscape is more fragmented: many of the overproducing firms are private or hybrid entities, less subject to top-down administrative control.
According to Morgan Stanley, more than 70% of China’s current industrial deflation is driven by non-commodity goods, compared to just 36% during the 2015–2016 downturn. This signals a shift in overcapacity from upstream sectors (raw materials) to downstream ones (consumer goods and tech). HSBC analysts add that excessive investment in the “new three” industries—solar, batteries, and EVs—is now a key destabilizing force.
From a Marxist standpoint, the crisis is a textbook manifestation of the contradiction between the development of productive forces and the limits of the capitalist market. The issue is not that demand hasn’t grown—it has—but it hasn’t grown enough relative to the scale of supply. Capital doesn’t produce for need, but for the realization of value. And when value can’t be realized due to market saturation, crisis erupts.
Beijing’s response—curbing “disorderly” competition, regulating capacity, and strengthening the domestic market—reveals both awareness and the limits of state intervention within a capitalist framework. As Capital Economics notes, “The state can build factories, but it cannot manufacture efficiency.” In Marxist terms, it cannot override the law of value or the compulsion to compete that governs capitalist production.
The root of the problem is that China’s current model still prioritizes supply growth over demand expansion. Local governments compete by offering subsidies and protections to attract capital and boost tax revenues, which fosters local protectionism, industrial duplication, and chronic overcapacity.
Solving this dilemma requires more than administrative reform: it calls for a fundamental rebalancing of the economy toward consumption, wages, and social security. But this would mean confronting class relations, fiscal priorities, and the very logic of accumulation that powered China’s economic “miracle.”
As Marx predicted, crises don’t arise from scarcity, but from excess: too many commodities, too much capital, and too little real purchasing power. Unless China changes course structurally, it risks being trapped in a deflationary spiral generated not by policy failures, but by the inner logic of capital itself.SPEW too, via its front organisation TUSC, has decided to “enter” the new party.
…………………………………..It’s wishful thinking, I suppose, but does this mean we can we can look forward to SPEW dissolving as a political Party and thereby relinquishing its claim to be the “Socialist Party”? Can one political party exist inside the shell of another and still function as an independent party?
