robbo203
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More slagging off of the SPGB from our resident troll, Grandpa. Plus the usual predictable uninformed codswallop like this:
Wealth is extremely concentrated, not just in Britain but everywhere in the world. That’s a by-product of capitalism. Remove it and another lot will become the capitalists, but this time they’ll call themselves the People’s Distribution Committee, or something similar. It’s human nature.
It’s difficult to know where to start with unpicking this rubbish. Is capitalism or the capitalist concentration of wealth “human nature”? Clearly, Grandpa isn’t an anthropology student. Well over 95% of homo sapiens’ existence has taken the form of egalitarian, food-sharing hunter-gatherer bands that knew nothing of money, wage labour, markets, or capital accumulation, the state, etc. Explain how that is possible if capitalism was “human nature”.
Also, not that I expect you, Grandpa, to be aware of it, but the Human Genome Project has effectively destroyed this kind of silly nonsense you put forward — biological determinism.
Yes, wealth concentration is apparent everywhere in the world, but that is because capitalism is a global system. However, to then argue that removing capitalism will mean “another lot will become the capitalists, but this time they’ll call themselves the People’s Distribution Committee” is beyond ridiculous.
How is this supposed to happen, given that people will universally enjoy free access to the goods and services they need? Free access eliminates the possibility of any leverage being exercised that would allow any individual or group to exert power over any others.
Your mode of argumentation reminds me of a grasshopper. If you want to criticise the concept of free access socialism, then stick to that. Don’t impute to us views we do not hold such as about some “People’s Distribution Committee” deciding what people should need
The argument that the majority of haves will give up what they have to the have nots is the core of why your society will never happen. What you have do is persuade the haves to share everything they’ve got, which the have nots will be very happy about and that isn’t going to happen.
You don’t listen to anything anyone else has to say, do you, Grandpa? You are the very thing you accuse the SPGB of being — a dogmatic cultist.
It has already been explained to you that common ownership means EVERYONE, including the ex-capitalist class, will own and control the means of production. What part of that do you not understand?
Your problem is you’re back to front. You start with theory as a conclusion and then try to make the pieces fit. What you don’t explain is the practicalities. Who is the distributor, who solves disagreements, how do you make people want to work, how do you persuade people to give up what they already own? What’s in it for them?
The practicalities have been explained to you umpteen times, but as usual you ignore anything anyone has to say in your usual cultist knee-jerk fashion….
If you are interested (which I doubt) there is a very useful article in this month’s Socialist Standard that more than covers the points you raise
Finally, to reiterate, it is NOT up to the SPGB to lead the workers or show them the way to socialism. We know full well that the SPGB is pretty much a minuscule political party. But so what?
There is no correlation between the validity of an idea and the amount of support it attracts. As I pointed out to you earlier, 500 years ago 99.9% of the population believed the sun revolved around the earth rather than the other way round.
If we followed your way of thinking, we would still be believing in a geocentric view of the universe along with a lot of other scientifically dodgy ideas
All ideas start off with only a few adherents. Some eventually become hegemonic or widely accepted. We don’t claim socialism will be accepted by the majority, but we’re clear that unless it is, it won’t happen.
We are at least honest and principled about this, and you can mock and sneer all you like (it’s frankly water off a duck’s back), but pointing out that we are a minority opinion won’t deter us from holding it. If you believe a point of view is valid, why would you not want to hold it?
You think you can just wilfully slag us off, but actually your refusal to engage in constructive debate only reflects badly only on you yourself rather than the SPGB, the target of your insults
“Marx said there must initially be a “Dictatorship of the proletariat.” Sound reasoning in an age of absolute poverty where the have nots outnumbered the haves. Fast forward to the 21st century and how do you persuade the majority of haves to give up what they own to the minority have nots without another dictatorship?”
We don´t actually advocate a “dictatorship of the proletariat”. It just shows how woefully ignorant you are of what the SPGB stands for. There might have been some justification for the idea back in the 19th century, but not today, as this article spells out
As for your point about us having to persuade the majority of haves to “give up what they own to the minority have-nots without another dictatorship”, this is so ludicrous it just makes my mind boggle that you can come up with this sort of stuff.
Anyways….
1) It’s not up to us to “persuade” the working class to embrace socialism. We are not a leadership-based organisation asking workers to follow us. It’s up to you, Grandpa, and millions of others like you, to do something about it if you want to change society. We can’t do it for you
2) The differentiation between “haves” and “have-nots” has to do with the ownership of the means of production — capital. Contrary to what you claim, capital ownership in a country like the UK is EXTREMELY CONCENTRATED and has become even more so in recent decades. See this
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth
3) The daftest part of your above comment is the claim that “the majority of haves will give up what they own to the minority have-nots”. This clearly shows you have no understanding of what socialism or common ownership means. Common ownership means EVERYBODY gets to own the means of production — not just the few, as is the case today. And by “everybody” is meant ALSO the ex-capitalist class.
Ironically, while you have been busily slagging off the SPGB as a cult, you yourself show all the signs of a cultish mindset. Your refusal to answer the very reasonable points made in response to your various outlandish claims shows you are not willing to be guided by reason, only by what your emotional attachment to certain political dogmas lets you think.
Pity, because I thought initially you might be a lot more open-minded and amenable to constructive debate than you actually are…
Grandpa
It is true what others here say. You blithely ignore the points made in this debate and just carry on regardless.
An example is your absurd claim that the various so-called socialist regimes “abandoned capitalism”. When we use the term capitalism, we use the Marxian definition of this as a synonym for a system of generalised wage labour
You were presented with a list of quotes from people like Lenin who explicitly argued for instituting state capitalism. But instead of addressing this point, which effectively refutes your claim about the “abandonment of capitalism”, you just ignore it.
Likewise, your absurd characterisation of a post-capitalist society as being dependent on individuals being entirely driven by altruistic motives. You argue that workers are driven by self-interest, and that this makes such a society unattainable. If that is the case, why then do workers continue to support a capitalist society that exploits them and works against their interests? It would surely be in their interests to overthrow such a society and establish a socialist society in which they are no longer exploited.
Again, we have no response from you. Zilch. Why is this?
Of course, we understand all too well that support for a socialist society is minuscule (though not zero, as you suggest). What is the point of pointing this out if it’s not just to gaslight us?
However, I’m afraid that’s not going to work on us. You don’t judge the validity of an idea by the degree of support it attracts. Its validity rests on logic and empirical observation.
500 years ago, 99.9 per cent of the population believed that the sun revolved around the earth. To question this dogma, the few brave souls who advanced a heliocentric view risked being burnt at the stake.
Your position in this debate is structurally equivalent to that of the Church authorities in that debate. You presume to have a crystal ball that has revealed to you with absolute certainty that socialism is not on the cards — that is, a utopia. Many others have said similar things, including that it was impossible—out of the question—that human beings would ever one day fly. It’s against our “human nature”, innit?
I prefer to go along with what Oscar Wilde said on the subject:
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at. Progress is the realisation of Utopias
But Grandpa is obviously stuck in a groove he’ll never get out of. So is it worth persisting?
I hope so, Howard. At least it provides an opportunity to deal with the kind of knee-jerk opposition to the concept of a socialist society that is unfortunately very widespread…
“As Marx wrote, capital comes into the world “dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” More than societies who abandoned capitalism put into mass graves?
Grandpa, Far from abandoning capitalism, the Bolsheviks explicitly embraced it
“Reality tells us that state capitalism would be a step forward. If, in a small space of time, we could achieve state capitalism, that would be a victory.”
Vladimir Lenin, addressing the Central Executive Committee, April 29th 1918“State capitalism would be our salvation. If we had it in Russia, the transition to full socialism would be easy, would be within our grasp, because state capitalism is something centralised, calculated, controlled and socialised, and that is exactly what we lack.”
Vladimir Lenin, addressing the Central Executive Committee, April 29th 1918
“Evolution in the direction of state capitalism, there you have the evil, the enemy, which we are invited to combat.
When I read these references to such enemies in the newspaper of the Left Communists, I ask: what has happened to these people that fragments of book-learning can make them forget reality? Reality tells us that state capitalism would be a step forward. If in a small space of time we could achieve state capitalism in Russia, that would be a victory.
How is it that they cannot see that it is the petty proprietor, small capital, that is our enemy? How can they regard state capitalism as the chief enemy? They ought not to forget that in the transition from capitalism to socialism our chief enemy is the petty bourgeoisie, its habits and customs, its economic position. The petty proprietor fears state capitalism above all, because he has only one desire—to grab, to get as much as possible for himself, to ruin and smash the big landowners, the big exploiters. In this the petty proprietor eagerly supports us”
REPORT ON THE IMMEDIATE TASKS OF THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT TO THE SESSION OF THE ALL- RUSSIA C.E.C
APRIL 29, 1918“While the revolution in Germany is still slow in coming forth, our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it.”
— Lenin, The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government (1918)There’s a lot there robbo, but briefly …
Because we live in a society with a capitalist economy. Other economic systems have been tried and failed; communism, planned economies, mixed economies. That doesn’t mean capitalism is perfect, but it’s the best of the bunchWell, there you go – you’ve just gone and shot yourself in the foot as far as your claim to be an ‘Old Skool’ socialist is concerned. Not only are your mindset and values, pro-capitalist; you have just now admitted your preference for capitalism as a socioeconomic system.
Not that we recognise those “other economic systems have been tried and failed; communism, planned economies, mixed economies”. All of these other economic systems are variants of capitalism since they are all characterised by generalised wage labour and commodity production.
We in the SPGB advocate for communism aka socialism in its classical Marxian (non-Leninist) sense. It amuses me when pro-capitalist advocates claim that what we are advocating for cannot be realised -cannot exist – because “communism has been tried and failed”. If it has been “tried” then clearly it must have existed. Either you acknowledge communism can exist or you agree that what existed in these places was NOT communism. Its one or the other.
Let’s talk reality.
If you’re working and your salary was suddenly tripled, would you still want an equality based society where everyone shares what you now have? Ditto if you won the lottery? There are some who are altruistic by nature, but they’re few and far between.
Once again, this is a classic example of your complete lack of sociological imagination which leads you to uncritically project onto a future post-capitalist what you experience in a capitalist society. You are also, incidentally, once again repeating the same mistake I pointed out to your earlier – namely the false notion that socialism depends on people being 100% altruistic.
No society is driven by purely egoistic or purely altruistic motives. Every conceivable human society entails a mixture of both – even capitalism depends on altruism to some extent.
It is not simply altruistic values that cause me to want socialism. Its also in my self-interest as a worker to want socialism.
I note that you have completely evaded my question relating to your claim that people are “inherently greedy”. If this is the case, why then do workers like yourself continue to support a socioeconomic system – capitalism – that exploits you and extracts an economic surplus from you. This system operates against your own interests and yet you claim people are inherently greedy. These two claims cannot be reconciled.
Of course, if my salary were to be tripled tomorrow I wouldn’t object to that though since we are talking about “reality” here – meaning capitalist reality – that is not a particularly realistic scenario, is it?
But, in any case, so what? How does this in any way negate my advocacy of a post-capitalist society? There is no wage labour in a post-capitalist society so your question is totally superfluous or meaningless.
It is in the self-interest or class interests of workers to establish a socialist society and, by extension,it is also in their interests to keep such a society in good working order. Who would want to revert back to a society based on class exploitation?
But Grandpa you’ll say, ‘in our society you won’t need money.’ I won’t? Does that mean I get my cottage in the countryside and a Rolls Royce? And they all lived happily ever after? But hold on a minute, who said ‘No you can’t, because you don’t need it.’ Woah, who are you to tell me what I need or don’t need?‘We’re the People’s Committee who decide what you get and only we have a cottage and a Rolls Royce as we have unanimously decided we need it and you don’t.’ Isn’t that how it always ends?
Again, this shows your misunderstanding of what a socialist society is about and what it entails.
I gave you a simple example of how such a society would function. Take a free public drinking water fountain. Nobody is stopping you drinking as much water as you need but by the same token there is no point in you taking more water than you need (greed), is there? There is more than enough water to go round for everyone to help themselves to what they need without money entering the picture at any point.
Socialists maintain that this would be true of needs in general in a socialist society. We have long had the technological capacity to provide enough. Even in capitalism today, enough food is produced to feed 10 billion people (though 40% of it is wasted). There are millions upon millions of empty housing units (60 million in China alone!) to solve the housing problem virtually overnight.
In addition, most work today in a capitalist money economy is socially useless and will disappear in a socialist society. A small example would be the entire financial sector. All that currently wasted labour and resources will redirected towards socially useful production. We can both substantially increase useful output while at the same time, cut the average working week significantly as well as reduce the adverse environmental impact of our productive activities.
This is only possible if you make the shift from production for market sale to production solely for use. In other words, only in a socialist society will we be able to properly and efficiently harness the productive potential that already exists to meet human needs.
Finally, you introduce another argument. What if everybody desires a “Rolls Royce”, say?
Well, in the first place, I wouldn’t call this a “need”. It is more accurately described as a want. Needs and wants are not the same thing. A need grows in intensity the longer it is left unmet. The opposite is true of a want.
That you should want a Rolls Royce is a reflection of the kind of society we live in in which status is linked to material consumption. Having a Rolls Royce is indicative of high status in this society and this is why you want such a thing.
Needless to say, status based on material consumption would be completely meaningless in a free access society. The only way you could earn the respect of your fellows is through what you contributed to such a society, not what you took out of it.
That said, while it is true that a socialist society could produce enough to meet everyone´s basic needs, it is also true that it is unlikely that it could produce all that we might want. Providing everyone with a Rolls Royce for example will be out of the question.
So goods pertaining to basic needs for food, housing, education etc would be provided on a free access basis while other goods – particularly those on the luxury end of the spectrum – could well be subject to some form of rationing.
Socialists have never denied this but I make this point to simply illustrate that that we are talking about two distinct classes of goods in a socialist society: free access goods and rationed goods.
Obviously the allocation of resources would be biased in favour of the former since these relate to our much more important basic needs.Your characterisation of this as involving some “People’s Committee” who decide what you get is of course a typical caricature that one might expect if you are thinking of some kind of authoritarian state capitalist regime. I don’t see it like that at all.
Quite apart from the fact that in a free access society the only one who decides what you get in the case of most goods is you yourself – not some committee – I think this completely distorts or obscures the democratic character of a post capitalist society.
To the extent that some goods may need to be rationed in a socialist society, you need to have some basic metric upon which to base your rationing system. I have developed the idea of a “compensation model” of rationing based on the assessed quality of housing stock in a community.
I wont expand on it in detail here – this post is already too long – but if you are interested, the scheme is discussed in more detail here
I would only add that this scheme is eminently practicable because it is something that is already used by local authorities today for the purpose of levying council taxes. Obviously, we would not be talking about taxes in a post-money socialist society but some of the administrative procedures this entails could certainly be adapted and used in a socialist society.
People are inherently greedy, it’s why our society is run by capitalists and the greediest get to the top.
In that case, explain why the working class still supports a social system that systematically exploits them by extracting surplus value from them and thus operates directly against their interests. That hardly makes the working class sound “greedy”, does it? Since the working class constitutes the vast majority, you would think that makes them more representative of what human beings actually are than the tiny capitalist class that you call the greediest of the lot.
While you are at it, please also explain why, for 95% plus of our time on this planet, our species lived in food-sharing, egalitarian, nomadic hunter-gatherer bands. Again, what is “greedy” about such food-sharing behaviour?
If anything is likely to be INHERENT as a behavioural pattern, it is this Palaeolithic outlook (which would flatly refute your claim that human beings are “inherently greedy”). See Marshall Sahlins’s work, “Stone Age Economics: The Original Affluent Society”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society
Pointing this out does not mean I think our “human nature” aligns with a Palaeolithic lifestyle or outlook. On the contrary, the only useful thing one can say about “human nature” is that, apart from being social animals, we are also highly adaptable and can live in a wide variety of social systems. This is because these different social systems involve LEARNT behaviour, not INHERITED behaviour.
This is what makes your whole argument so silly and so ahistorical and shallow. Greed is human behaviour, but it is LEARNT behaviour. We are not “inherently” greedy. We are taught to behave greedily, and this crucially depends on the kind of society we live in.
In capitalism, “greed” is baked into the system because, apart from anything else, status acquisition is linked to material consumption and status competition is a zero-sum game. Hence “greed”.
Your problem, Grandpa, is that you don’t realise the great extent to which you have actually been indoctrinated into a capitalist mindset. Your whole mindset and values reek of a pro-capitalist outlook and ideology, but you don’t see it.
You may pretend to be an “objective” observer commenting on what you believe to be objective facts. But you are not. You have been conditioned to think the way you do, but you can also be conditioned out of it by being a little more flexible in your thinking. There is hope for you yet. LOL
“Then there’s free access. Would people really contribute according to their abilities and take only what they need? Who is going to decide what each individual needs, or do eight billion people each decide for themselves? What happens when resources are scarce, people disagree about priorities, or some people simply don’t want to contribute? Does everyone really get what they each think they need, or do we sink to the lowest common denominator in the interests of equality?
Advocating a society based on common ownership and free access is one thing. Explaining how it would actually function is another.”
These are the kinds of stock arguments socialists often encounter from people unfamiliar with the case for free-access socialism/communism. They rest on all sorts of highly dubious assumptions.
Human beings are depicted as inherently “greedy”, implying that a socialist society is unattainable because it somehow requires us to abandon this ingrained trait we have and become virtuous angels driven by purely altruistic motives. I have encountered this same stock argument time and time again….
If only it were true that workers were more strongly motivated by self-interest and class interests than they currently are! It seems to be a case of inordinate altruism on their part that they allow a system of capitalist exploitation to continue at their expense.
The point that needs to be made is that any and every form of human society depends on a mixture of both egoistic and altruistic motives. That includes socialism as well.
It is not just altruistic values that would allow a socialist society to function but also egoistic values – or, if you prefer, “enlightened self-interest”.
It is in the interest of workers to establish a socialist society and, therefore, by extension, to ensure that it works. Grandpa seems to think workers are inherently greedy and therefore free-access socialism will break down at the first opportunity. This shows a complete lack of sociological imagination on his part – a tendency to project the consumerist values of capitalism onto a socialist society.
I don’t drink more water than I need from a public water fountain, just because it’s free and plentiful. In capitalism, status equates with material wealth, and so you can understand why it is today that someone like the Sultan of Brunei is said to possess a collection of 7000 cars. What’s the point of such stupidity in a free-access society?
Such a society will not be a perfect society — there is no such thing as a “perfect society” — but it will be a damn sight better than what we’ve got today.
There will be trade-offs. While we certainly have the means to meet all our basic needs, we may well have to rein in some of our more extravagant wants, assuming we even continue to want them. Having our basic needs met takes the edge off wanting more.
In the more affluent Western countries, most workers’ basic needs are more or less met today. The problem is not so much quantitative as qualitative — the growing sense of insecurity, for example. This is what we should focus on more. The quality of life. This is where free access socialism scores heavily over contemporary capitalism.
There are other aspects of the so-called human nature argument against socialism that are likewise untenable. For example, the claim that we are intrinsically lazy and that no one will work if they can just help themselves to whatever they want is just so laughably inept when you look at the argument up close.
Even today, most work is done completely outside the money sector. Furthermore, would a working class that has knowingly and intentionally established a socialist society go about undoing the very thing that it had striven so hard to establish? I don’t think so. Needless to say, the movement to establish such a society will bring about a sea change in values and outlook.
The point I finally want to make is that, given that these kinds of objections that people like Grandpa make are quite commonplace, might there not be a case for the SPGB to publish a pamphlet explicitly focused on the human nature argument? I know we have pamphlets in stock, like “Are We Prisoners of Our Genes?”, but they don’t address the arguments in the direct, explicit way required.
A new pamphlet dealing explicitly with the human nature argument and its two main subcategories — the “lazy person argument” and the “greedy person argument” — would be a welcome addition to the stock of literature
“Castro and Mao were nationalists? Really? You mean like Mussolini, Franco and Hitler? The same Castro that allied itself with the USSR during the Cuban crisis, or the Mao that aided communist North Korea in the Korean war?”
Nationalism does NOT preclude capitalist states (in this case, Cuba, China, Italy, Spain and Germany) from cooperating with other capitalist states or, indeed, riding roughshod over, or even conquering, other capitalist states.
The basic spatial unit is the nation-state, and this is what the pseudo communists of Cuba or China relate to and identify with.
The Soviet Union, which is the prototype of the pseudo-communism you go on about, made no bones about promoting nationalist values (the SPGB as a genuine communist aka socialist organisation completely repudiates nationalist values and the death cult of nationalism). Stalin talked about the glorious Soviet Motherland etc etc…
State capitalism, such as in Cuba or the Soviet Union, I would argue, is particularly closely associated with bourgeois nationalism — even organically connected with it — because of the centrality of the state in the economic affairs of the so-called “nation-state”
What the SPGB says it is and what it actually is are two different things. Of course it’s going to distance itself from failures. My point was that what Pol Pot wanted and what you’re suggesting are the same thing.
This demonstrates you are not listening at all. You are just determinedly plugging your own pre-set rigid views regardless of what anyone says to the contrary
No, what the SPGB want and what Pol Pot wanted are emphatically NOT the same!
Did Pol Pot want a moneyless, wageless, classless, and stateless society in which individuals voluntarily give according to their abilities and freely take according to their needs?
NO, HE (AND THE KHMER ROUGE) DID NOT!
You might say he wanted, and achieved, at least part of the above — the bit about getting rid of money — but even that is disputable and, as I patiently explained to you, the mere absence of money does NOT in itself denote a communist society. The aristocratic, large-scale Inca civilisation didn’t use money, but you wouldn’t call that a communist society, would you?
I don’t care two hoots if Pol Pot imagined himself to be some kind of communist wanting to bring about a communist society. A communist society didn’t materialise under the Khmer Rouge. Period. If anything, it was a reversion to a pre-capitalist society rather than a progression to a post-capitalist one. Actions, not pretty words, count.
Throughout its history, the SPGB has been very insistent on the need for a majority to understand and want communism, aka socialism. It cannot possibly be imposed on workers from above by some kind of Leninist vanguard.
The SPGB´s outlook is completely and utterly different from the authoritarian vanguardism of the Khmer Rouge regime, and to try to suggest otherwise is dishonest or ignorant or both
GrandpaGB
I would echo the sentiments that others have expressed here. Sorry, but you haven’t got a clue (yet) what the SPGB is about. Since you’ve visited this site, it’s worth being a little more open-minded and receptive to what this organisation is saying.
I won’t repeat what others have already said, but I’ll make two simple points in response to some of what you have said.
Firstly, this thing about so-called “communist” Cambodia under Pol Pot, you should know very well that the SPGB does not consider this regime remotely “communist”. Shallow commentary points to the alleged absence of money under the Khmer Rouge as proof of its “communist” character.
Even if it were true that the regime was a moneyless one, the mere absence of money does not equate with communism (and by communism I mean the Marxist definition of communism as a synonym for socialism and not how the Washington Consensus defines “communism” – it seems you are going along with the latter definition and disregard the former).
For us the mere absence of money does NOT signify Marxian communism. The Inca Empire was a large-scale aristocratic-based society that operated without money. By your dodgy logic, it could be construed as a “communist” social formation. Needless to say, this would be risible.
Apart from that, the claim that Cambodia abolished money is highly questionable. See, for example, this
But Marxian communism, as (opposed to your preferred Washington version) stands for an awful lot more than the mere absence of money. Communism means a moneyless, wageless, classless and stateless alternative to all forms of capitalism.
The Soviet Union was very clearly a capitalist social formation since it was based on those twin core features that define capitalism — generalised wage labour and commodity production. The Soviet Union was a state capitalist social formation, in other words.
Whether the Khmer regime can be called state capitalist is debatable, but it most certainly was NOT a post-capitalist communist society. It was a class-based statist society in which individuals’ relationship to the means of production was grotesquely unequal.
Further, Marxists hold that a communist society cannot be achieved unless and until the majority want it and understand it. It cannot be imposed from above by some Leninist vanguard. It is pretty obvious that the Cambodian population prior to the Khmer Rouge taking over was in no way communist-minded. So Marxian communism was out of the question.
If anything, the situation in Cambodia could be described as a lapse into a pre-capitalist state of affairs, not a post-capitalist society.
The other point I wanted to pick up on was your jibe about the lack of support for the SPGB. Of course, we acknowledge that only a relatively tiny fraction of the population supports what we advocate. It’s not a comfortable position to be in, but it won’t deter us from advocating what we believe is right.
However, I get the impression from what you are saying that you look upon the SPGB as if it were in an equivalent position to what a reformist political party — like the Labour Party or the Greens, perhaps — and that you imagine our political significance might be enhanced even if only we went about offering a more attractive programme to the electorate.
This is a complete misunderstanding of where the SPGB is coming from. We are not “offering” anything. We are not making any kind of “promises” to the electorate whatsoever. We have zero interest in “getting into power” based on a programme of reforms that would make us more electable in the electorate’s eyes.
We are ordinary workers who have concluded that we need a radically different kind of society from the one we live in, which has long passed its sell-by date and now threatens humanity with multiple crises that could even lead to our species becoming extinct in the worst case.
Yes, the SPGB has made little headway thus far—we can’t argue with that—but this failure is also a failure of our class as a whole to overthrow the yoke of a capitalist, class-based society.
The question is whether you want to keep the status quo or work with us to overthrow this system by spreading the idea of a genuine alternative. It’s that simple
Sanchez has called a snap election in Spain on 29 November 2026. I suspect PSOE are going to be hammered and the right-wing PP, possibly in alliance with the far-right Vox party, will take power. Although you never can tell.
The right-wing parties voted down the two housing bills Sanchez recently introduced. This legislation was meant to address Spain’s housing crisis, which has sparked enormous protests everywhere. Sanchez is a shrewd operator, and he may be gambling that the electorate will vote for PSOE in protest against the right-wing parties who voted against the housing bills.
We shall see how things turn out. Personally, I think the gamble will backfire (though I could be wrong) and the Right will get in. The latter have been cashing in on crisis after crisis that have been impacting Spanish politics lately. Think of the recent Ceuta crisis.
There is also the situation in Germany and France, which seems to point to a rightward drift….
In Spain, domesticated pigs with forest diets are used to make Mountain ham (Jamón Serrano), and it is a very expensive ham
This is true. I notice that in supermarkets here you can get a leg of serrano ham for about 90 euros although I understand these are grain-fed white pigs. The really expensive ones are the jamon ibérico, which tend to be free-range black pigs that feed on acorns in places like Extremadura and can cost anywhere from 600 to 700 euros per leg. Definitely not on the list of a proletarian diet. It’s more something that the posh people patronising places like the Corte Inglés supermarket would tend to buy….
Meat-eating proletarians tend to eat the cut-offs. Pork is comparatively cheap, cheaper than chicken or turkey, for example, and is mostly factory-farmed under appalling industrial conditions. There are about 32 million pigs in Spain, I believe
More bluster. This time, from the so-called Reform Party opportunists. They all play the nationalist card and use the sick and delusional death cult of nationalism for their own political ends
Another twist to the story. Bit strange given Argentina´s support for Israel
