robbo203
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Lunacy. Trump is re-elected and life becomes exponentially worse for labour, not to mention the planet. Your argument is that “if I don’t get my way, I’m not voting”. Let me say to you that you will never get your way and you will always have the enemy in power with that juvenile attitude, at least in the US. Time to grow up.
Nice try at completely evading the point LT and then you have the nerve to call AJ a “Trumper” for attacking the so called Democrats and their record in office. As if we dont equally attack Trump and all other representatives of capitalism.
The irony is that it is with attitudes such as the one you have expressed here that we will always have the enemy in power. The “enemy” is capitalism and its ruling class and here you are openly soliciting support for one faction of its ruling class, Wall Street’s favourite son – Joe Biden.
Of course we will “never get our way” – bring about socialism – while fellow workers like you continue to succumb to this pathetic self-defeating lesser evil argument you peddle here. This is a merry-go-round going nowhere which you want us to remain perpetually stuck on. Lesser evils ALWAYS prepare the ground for greater evils to emerge in due course and vice versa. That is the nature of capitalist politics: it is cyclical. That is because all capitalist politicians will inevitably fail to serve the interests of the working class and will inevitably disillusion and disenchant their supporters. You can’t operate capitalism in any other way.
So it looks like you’ve got the capitalist government you’ve wanted LT. It seems very likely that Biden will indeed shortly become the next President. I hope you are thrilled at the prospect
Trump will disappear into the history books but what of the workers under a Biden capitalist regime? Why do you think millions upon millions of them have just supported Trump for whatever deluded reason? They voted for Trump because they were screwed over by the previous Democratic Party regime (they would have been equally screwed over had it been the Republicans in power)
And so the merry-go-round will continue going round. A Biden government will simply prepare the ground for another populist Trump-like figure to emerge as workers become increasing disillusioned with Biden as they assuredly will.
Make no mistake about it – you are contributing to this farce of perpetuating capitalism by your support of the apparent less-evil option . Come back in four years when hopefully you will have learnt the lesson that it had all been a complete waste of time, when the merry-go-round goes round one more time and some Trump Mark two figure assumes power
You, LT, and others who think like you will have to bear a direct responsibility for that outcome by voting now for what you consider to be the lesser evil
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief fascist advisor, is talking about beheading Fauci and Wray for “not getting with the program”.
Bannon is an irrelevant nutcase headed for oblivion. Why do you attach so much importance to these people?
In other words, you are saying “vote Trump” and make a statement, which is equivalent to cutting your nose off to save your face. No one said that Biden will represent labour. Far from it. But there are no choices for labour on the ballot. You don’t get it. Whining about that fact gets you nowhere at best. Btw, you still haven’t said who you would vote for.
“Vote Trump”????? How on earth did you arrive at such conclusion? Surely, its pretty obvious what the socialist response is . You dont vote for ANY capitalist party or politician – neither Trump nor Biden. If there is no socialist on the ballot, dont vote or spoil your ballot.
At least that way you dont put yourself in the ridiculous position of urging workers to vote for Biden and then whinging when the Biden regime starts behaving as every capitalist government must when you have actively connived in putting this regime in power. Such unprincipled opportunism is a sure fire way to lose any credibility among workers who will suffer the consequences of a Biden regime just as they did under the Trump regime
If you think Trump is better than Biden or even equal to Biden, then you haven’t been paying attention over the last 4 years.
LT
It is not a question of worse of whether Trump is better or worse than the forthcoming Biden regime. You are completely missing the point here.
Even if a future Biden regime is marginally better than the previous Trump regime it will screw the workers over big time. In fact this is one of the reasons why Trumpist populism become as prominent as it did (and this wont disappear with the disappearance of Trump himself). Workers, particularly those in the American rustbelt , felt they had been badly let down by the “Establishment” and the Democrats. Trump cynically played his anti-establishment card for all that it was worth and it worked up to a point precisely for that reason
This basic resentment of workers towards what is called the Establishment will not disappear under Biden and will in all likelihood increase in intensity. If you cannot see that this presents a massive problem for those on the Left who urged us to vote for Biden on the grounds that he would be – allegedly – the lesser evil then its is difficult to know what else to say.
Having urged workers to “vote Biden” how are are you then going to present yourself as a credible critic of the regime once it inevitably starts screwing the workers over as it will from Day One. You got the government you actively campaigned for and the workers will neither forget or forgive you for that
Wanna-be fascist leader Trump has now told his brown shirt stooges that he has no plans to concede even if the path to victory is blocked. Those claiming that Trump represents labour are fascists trying to portray themselves as socialists.
LT
I dont think anything is going to come of this. Wild and fanciful speculations on the part of some on the Left of a “fascist” coup by Trump are going prove completely unfounded. He may double down on the threat of litigation in some states but he is increasingly looking like he is finished and defeated. I think the CNN anchor person, Anderson Cooper, put it in a nutshell:
“That is the President of the United States, the most powerful person in the world, and we see him like an obese turtle on his back flailing in the hot sun, realising his time is over.”
As we speak more and more prominent members of the Republic Party are distancing themselves from Trump appalled by his demented and unsubstantiated ravings of widespread electoral fraud. Barring some unexpected miraculous turn of events the Trump regime is over. Its history.
The problem now for all those Leftist who urged us – unlike the WSM – to vote Biden as the supposed “less evil” is – how are they are going to reconcile this with the fact that we are almost certainly going to have in place a thoroughly obnoxious new capitalist administration headed by Biden that will screw over the workers just as ruthlessly and cynically as the previous Trump administration did.
Those leftists who fell for the phony “lesser evil” argument are now going to find their credibility much diminished once they start whining about the very regime that they had urged us to vote for!
ZJW
This bit from the above article was interesting:
<b>The Israeli embassy in Berlin also released a statement over social media on October 8 referencing the International Holocaust Rememberance Alliance, or IHRA, definition of antisemitism </b><b> that considers anti-Zionism a form of antisemitism: </b>
“There should be no tolerance for the delegitimization of Israel and antisemitism in Germany today. Hosting a workshop whose title already negates Israel’s livelihood is an embrace of antisemitism.
The IHRA working definition for antisemitism adopted by the federal government cites the denial of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination as an example.
This series of events falls under this definition and should be recognized for what it is: anti-Zionist and antisemitic.”Two questions arise which should perhaps be put to pro-Zionist groups to explain
- What about non Jewish citizens of the Israeli state? Can there be such a thing as an non-Jewish citizen in the Israeli state if that state is literally help to be the embodiment of the “Jewish people’s right to self-determination”? Also, how is this different from South Africa’s apartheid project when “South Africa” was perceived to be the embodiment of the political aspirations of white people only while Blacks where urged or compelled to fulfil their own political aspirations in the black homelands comprising a small fraction of the area of South Africa
MORE SIGNIFICANTLY…
2. What is the view of these Zionist groups towards socialists who oppose ALL nationalisms whatsoever and the delusional concept of a “people’s right to self determination” expressed in the form of a nation state? Since by definition this does not discriminate between people or different ethnic groups, how can socialist opposition to Zionist nationalism be construed as “anti Semitic” when it equally opposes every other kind of nationalism as well and works instead towards the creation of single world without borders or states
I would be really interested to hear how some pro-Zionist group might go about responding to these two questions. Perhaps we should test the water…
MPs getting a taste of their own medicine
The word itself, Religion, is not synonymous with belief, or faith. To the Romans and the Hindus it is closer to social behaviour. Rites are its centre, not belief. Even Judaism, the first of the three great monotheistic religions, was and is about social norms and behaviour, not faith. In fact, only Christianity, and especially the rite-denying evangelical variety, holds faith as religion’s definition.
It is interesting that the word “religion” derives from the latin word re-ligare meaning to re-bind or re-connect (like the “ligament” which joins the muscle to the bone). The great 19th century sociologist, Emile Durkheim, looked on religion from this perspective. He argued that society was essentially a moral order and religion traditionally served as the “vehicle” par excellence for diffusing a sense of moral solidarity among individuals, thus facilitating the functional well-being of society as a whole.
This original meaning of the term perhaps helps to explain the occasional characterisation one comes across of the state-sanctioned atheism of some countries, like North Korea, as constituting the “official religion” of the country in question. In this sense the term is stripped of any supernatural connotations, such as belief in a God or an afterlife, and is rendered virtually synonymous with the concept of social solidarity.
In his analysis of the religious rituals of the Australian aborigines which, he argued, were based on a simple kind of religion called “totemism”, Durkheim attempted to show that the real purpose of such rituals was to revitalise and reinforce the collective consciousness of the participants. In short, to dramatise and strengthen the moral bonds between them in order to create a more cohesive social unity and counteract the effects of dispersal and isolation arising from a hunter-gatherer way of life.
Traditional religion, argued Durkheim, played an essentially symbolic role as the “concentrated expression of the whole collective life”. Behind the ritualistic facade, it was actually society that was the real object of religious devotion. By prostrating themselves before a deity in the act of worship, individuals unwittingly or inadvertently betrayed their sense of absolute dependence on society itself.
And just as religion was intrinsically social so, conversely, was society also in a sense a religious phenomenon insofar as it was predicated upon the collective conscience. The transcendent all-encompassing nature of this consciousness was precisely what vested it with sacred qualities, that necessarily separated it from the profane world of routine daily life and commanded a sense of reverential awe. Of course, in societies undergoing modernisation (and along with that, secularisation) the influence of traditional religion has tended to decline. However, this did not necessarily herald the break up of society as such in Durkheim‘s view; what was required was the development of “rational substitutes” for traditional religious ideas which would nevertheless serve as functional equivalents of the latter by illuminating the direct dependence of individuals on society hitherto mediated by religious representations.
Thus did he carve out an important role for the discipline of sociology in the development of modern society, no doubt earning the gratitude of Sociology Departments everywhere ever since!
BD
Googling this geezer you mentioned – Jorge Mario Bergoglio – I was astonished to discover the following:
Pope Francis did spend a short time working outside of the church, including as a chemical technician and nightclub bouncer. However, the seminary was ultimately his calling. He became ordained in 1969.
While working in the church can be a path to wealth, most consider Pope Francis a modest man. He is far less extravagant than some previous popes, so his net worth may be lower than his predecessors.
However, Pope Francis’ net worth is still substantial. Some estimate his personal net worth to be near $25 to $28 million. However, some believe that number is much smaller or even substantially larger. Pope Francis does have control over certain Vatican assets, though these do not apply to his net worth.
Might need it in case the two individuals start to bully someone else.
That’s out of order. Try be a bit more impartial and look at some of the numerous appalling comments made by the person who was supposedly “bullied” and who was simply being criticised for making those comments. No one pushed him – or wanted to push him – out the forum; he jumped
I do not think you have understood what I have said. I was not referring to the SPGB, the SPGB is not the movement, is the whole working-class movement and all the organizations involved in this type movement
You could have fooled me. In the context of what you wrote coupled with your constant niggling insinuations about TM it was perfectly reasonable to infer you were talking about the SPGB. Read again what you wrote and see for yourself
I take care of mine, you even brought shit about me in this forum in regard to the WSPUS that is not your fucking business either
When people start the WSPUS a bunch of Stalinists then, sorry, but I will make it my business to call them out on that, whether you like it or not. I dont take kindly to my American comrades being smeared like that. In the same way I called you out for the undemocratic manner in which you moderated the WSM forum by banning certain people like the anarcho-capitalist McDonagh from what was supposed to be an open public forum. If you find it embarrassing to be reminded of that then – tough! From the way you go on about yourself as if you are some sort uber class warrior to which the rest of us should look up to, you need to be taken down a peg or two tbh
“Infiltration”, “agents” …You cannot infiltrate a party which is not secretive, but open and honest. This is Stalinist talk. Everything about Marcos makes me think of Bolshevism.
Indeed TM
I would love to know what lies behind this piece of fantasy paranoia:
I was a member of a companion party. I do not want to give too many explanations because I have seen too many agents infiltrated in this movement, those are as dangerous as any member of the capitalist class
Will all those comrades working as covert agents for the capitalist state please raise your hand NOW! The notion that a tiny organisation of socialist revolutionaries which, moreover, is as transparent as glass as far as its inner workings are concerned , poses such a mortal threat to global capitalism at this point in time such that the capitalist state feels the need to despatch not just one but “many” agents to work secretively within this movement – though in a sense enormously flattering – is, sadly, ludicrously out of touch with reality
On the contrary, Wood (and Brenner originally) argue that ‘capitalist’ social relations emerged in the English countryside, amongst very large landowners and tenant farmers (because of very specific, long term, political and socio-historical reasons, dating back to the pre-Norman period, and developed by the Normans, and exacerbated by the Black Death). That is, the ‘commercial bourgeoisie’ were not the source of ‘capitalism’.
Yes I for one would go along with this. Ellen Meiksins Wood & Brenner’s “agrarian-origins-of -capitalism” seems to me to be the most plausible explanation for the rise of capitalism
The big question, however is why did this process first make itself felt in England? Alan MacFarlane provides us with some useful clues by flagging up those basic preconditions that would need to be met in order to effect a transition from feudalism to capitalism.
Firstly , citing Maine’s view that Feudalism “mixed up or confounded property and sovereignty“, he notes that in classical feudalism “Political power and economic power were both delegated down the same chain” and were embodied in the person of the feudal lord vis-a-vis his subjects. However, for capitalism to emerge, a first precondition that needs to be met is that the economy needed to be granted significant autonomy from the political sphere. As MacFarlane puts it: “It must be set free. If economic relations are merely a sub-aspect of devolved power, capitalism cannot emerge” (Alan Macfarlane, <u>Europe and the Rise of Capitalism</u>).
A second precondition for capitalism to emerge is that the political system has to be reasonably integrated and centralised – though this may well offend the sensibilities of market libertarians who dogmatically insist on counter-posing markets to states. The modern centralised state, contends MacFarlane “is a necessary concomitant to capitalism” (op cit) in the sense that it was only through the actions of such a state that the necessary structural changes could be pushed through to bring about, or expedite, the emergence of capitalism.
As many commentators have noted, England was significantly more centralised and uniformly administered than any of its continental counterparts at this time – a legacy, no doubt, of the Norman Conquest. Thus, Marc Bloch notes: ‘England was a truly unified state much earlier than any continental kingdom’ (Bloch, M. 1965: <u>Feudal Society</u>, 2nd edn). By contrast, France, for instance, around this same time, was still comparatively variegated and regionalised in its form of administration.
According to Brenner, it is this significant difference in ruling class organisation between England and the rest of Europe that proved decisive and allows us to see why capitalism first took root in the former. It was precisely because there was a relatively centralised state in England, to begin with, that the English Lords, paradoxically were able to “take their surplus individually, in a decentralised manner, from the peasantry in a highly effective way, where, by contrast, in both western and eastern Europe, lords, politically organised on only a local basis, remained weak and vulnerable” (<u>http://www.marxists.org/archive/harman/2006/xx/wbrenner.htm</u>). Meaning the English Lords enjoyed the support of the central state in taking the course of action they took.
This helps to explain the differential outcome of the “Feudal crisis” of the 14th century following the Black Death which decimated the labour force throughout Europe:
The response in most of western Europe was to strengthen embryonic absolutist states, which integrated an ever greater part of the ruling class into highly organised systems of centralised taxation and officeholding. The response in eastern Europe, over a long period, was to reorganise what had been exceedingly loosely organised feudal classes into provincial and national estates. These provided the intra-lordly cohesion to make it possible for eastern European lords to impose a new tighter serfdom on their peasants. So in both western and eastern Europe, due to earlier developments in each region, the lordly response to feudal crisis was to restructure so as restrengthen surplus extraction by extra economic means, in England lords did not have that option. They could, however, secure their positions if they could take over the land of their now free tenants – and this is what they did. (Brenner, op cit).
To put it differently, the English lords were driven by circumstances to respond to the feudal crisis in a manner quite different to their continental counterparts (and were enabled to do so by their relationship with the central state) by taking the initiative in introducing new kinds of enforceable contractual relationships with the peasants which were more purely economic in form. In this they had the support of the central state that stood to benefit from such move.
The agrarian-origins-of-capitalism school has often been contrasted with the trade-based or “commercialisation” school represented by the likes of Paul Sweezy, James Blaut and others who focus on such things as the huge profits derived from slave trade some of which went to finance early industrial development and also conspicuous consumption in the form of stately homes etc. I dont think this latter school of thought provides a sufficiently convincing explanation as to how capitalism got off the ground but I wouldn’t dismiss altogether what it has to say on the matter.
I think you are bending the stick too far the other way, Robbo. Of course you don’t have to have read Marx to join the Party but you do have to have read Party pamphlets and other literature and these do reflect the labour theory of value, the materialist conception of history and that socialism will come about as a result of the class struggle of the working class.
Again, this is news to me that to ” join the Party …you do have to have read Party pamphlets and other literature”. When was this stipulation introduced? One might say it advisable to have read this literature but it is not a requirement
Once in, members are entitled to express what views they like
Exactly! Although I would qualify that by saying within broad limits established by the minimal criteria for membership . I am getting sick and tired of hearing snidey comments implying to the effect that if you express certain views you must be a “right wing reactionary” infiltrating the Party or if you think the class composition of late feudal society or early capitalism was more complex than the Marxian two class model this means you must somehow be “rejecting the class struggle”.
This sort of talk needs to stop
