robbo203
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I dont wish to ruin peoples’ appetites but this caught my attention on reading about the prospects of Britain becoming a vassal state of the Great American empire…
Johnson has previously sought to downplay fears about a US trade deal weakening UK food and agricultural standards.
Under US food standards, products can contain certain amounts of foreign bodies, including maggots, insect fragments and mould.
For example US producers are allowed to include up to 30 insect fragments in a 100-gram jar of peanut butter; as well as 11 rodent hairs in a 25-gram container of paprika; or 3 milligrams of mammalian excreta (typically rat or mouse excrement) per each pound of ginger.
Johnson has recently sought to downplay such fears by insisting that he would demand the US would meet UK standards instead as part of any deal.A few more snippets of evidence to prove the point . Like Engel’s letter to Bebel, dated 18-28 March 1875, sharply criticising those anarchists who accused him and Marx of being statists:
The people’s state has been flung in our teeth ad nauseam by the anarchists, although Marx’s anti-Proudhon piece and after it the Communist Manifesto declare outright that, with the introduction of the socialist order of society, the state will dissolve of itself and disappear
So for Engels socialism would be a stateless, meaning communist society
Then there is Sylvia Pankhurst’s article entitled “The Future Society” originally published in One Big Union Bulletin, 2 August 1923:
The words Socialism and Communism have the same meaning. They indicate a condition of society in which the wealth of the community: the land and the means of production, distribution and transport are held in common, production being for use and not for profit.
It is worth mentioning, also, that among the Russian social democrats, too, prior to their break up into the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions, this particular interpretation of “socialism” likewise prevailed. A key text called A Short Course of Economic Science, written by A Bogdanoff, talked of socialism being “the highest stage of society we can conceive”, in which such institutions as taxation and profits will be non-existent and in which “there will not be the market, buying and selling, but consciously and systematically organised distribution”. This book appeared in 1897 and a revised edition, published in August 1919, was used as a textbook in schools and study circles of the Russian Communist Party
Interestingly, Stalin, himself, in this early period likewise talked of socialism in this fashion. For instance, in his Anarchism or Socialism (1906) he wrote that “Future society will be socialist society. This means also that, with the abolition of exploitation, commodity production and buying and selling will also be abolished and, therefore, there will be no room for buyers and sellers of labour power, for employers and employed — there will be only free workers“. In socialism, argued Stalin, “Where there are no classes, where there are neither rich nor poor, there is no need for a state, there is no need either for political power, which oppresses the poor and protects the rich. Consequently, in socialist society there will be no need for the existence of political power”. It was this same Stalin who, in the 1930s, asserted that the Soviet Union was now a fully-fledged “socialist state” controlled by the working class when he had previously excluded both the state and classes from his conception of socialism.
There can be little doubt that it was Lenin and the Bolsheviks who were primarily responsible for this shift in the meaning of socialism although it has to be said that people like Kautsky too were responsible
Has RobinC’s very modest ten-minutes-a-month on the web obligation been taken up by many? But we’d never know because most members won’t even spend five minutes a month on this forum, will they?
I routinely and as a matter of habit, post links to articles and pamphlets on this site. I think some Indian comrades do the same. If even 20-30 members did the same it could make a huge difference in terms of hits on this site and elsewhere.
Its not a lot of effort at all – I suggested 10 minutes a month.
Why dont members and sympathisers here spread the word and get other people involved. SPGB Branches should actively consider this proposition at their next branch meeting
London bureau
E-mail: LondonBureau@rttv.ru
16th Floor Millbank Tower
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Telephone +44 749 5649 8989Is someone on the Publicity Committee on this forum? Perhaps these details can be forwarded to the Committee. RT often goes on about free speech and recent news items have included critical commentary on Antifa’s attack on Anthony Ngo and leftist attacks on “little AOC” Not surprising for a right wing outfit like RT
They might however be surprised by the SPGB’s position on free speech and our opposition to the counter-productive and elitist “no platform” policy of some on the Left
This has just been published on the Areo website https://areomagazine.com/2019/07/02/is-anti-zionism-a-form-of-anti-semitism/
There’s more where that came from, i.e. Steve Coleman. For instance, “in the mean time.”
Could you elaborate, Adam?
The article linked to might be of interest. Its the usual platitudinous wishy-washy well-meaning left capitalist crap. I get a lot of this sort of stuff in my email in-tray, subscribing as I do, to various newsletters from entities such as the Next System project which is linked to Democracy Collaborative. Its quite frustrating because there is no feedback or comment facility and I would love to be able to comment
Don’t know much about the subject but according to Wikipedia….
“According to his friend, theologian Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, More once seriously contemplated abandoning his legal career to become a monk.[15][16] Between 1503 and 1504 More lived near the Carthusian monastery outside the walls of London and joined in the monks’ spiritual exercises. Although he deeply admired their piety, More ultimately decided to remain a layman, standing for election to Parliament in 1504 and marrying the following year.[12]:xxi
More continued ascetic practices for the rest of his life, such as wearing a hair shirt next to his skin and occasionally engaging in flagellation.[12]:xxi A tradition of the Third Order of Saint Francis honours More as a member of that Order on their calendar of saints.[17] “I was a bit puzzled on reading the minutes of the first meeting that Veronica and Shane were listed as non members in attendance. I hadn’t realised that they had left the SP. Does this mean they might be re-joining?
Hi, I’ve not been following the Election tbh. I’m on a site, where at least 3 people are engaged in constant vitriol and derision of the party and myself.
What site is that, James? Its always good to have reinforcements and I’m game
Hi ErichMorris
That is not quite the position of the SPGB that you have outlined. The position of the SPGB is that it solicits support only on the basis of maximum revolutionary programme and does not proactively advance a platform of reforms to attract such support – what is called reformism. The historical evidence is overwhelming that once you start doing the latter you can be absolutely certain that the revolutionary goal of socialism will be side-lined and eventually forgotten about
However it is also the position of the SPGB that once the socialist movement is strong enough and socialist delegates start being elected to parliament, that these delegates (or rather the Socialist Party as a whole) will consider reforms advanced by the various capitalist parties (but never by the Socialist Party itself) on their merits and to the extent that these benefit the working class.
We do not take the dogmatic and absurd view that no reforms can ever be of benefit to workers; it just that we do not propose such reforms ourselves for the reason given. Insofar as particular reforms are judged to be of benefit to workers, socialist delegates in parliament will be instructed by the Party organisation to vote in favour of them. In other words, our relationship to reforms will be reactive rather than proactive
I think this is a sensible pragmatic position to take which preserves intact the revolutionary credentials of the Socialist Party. I honestly cannot see any other alternative from a socialist point of view…
John
I think the question of the individual is relative rather than absolute. Yes, there is no such thing as a “non determined” being but it is going too far to say therefore that the “individual does not exist” – unless you chose to define the individual as a “non determined being” which is a quite unrealistic definition, in my view. That is the bourgeois atomistic view of the free floating individual which you are attacking but there are other ways of looking at the individual
You say “We are all cells, and like all cells, live and function in relation to one another and the society we compose”. But to pursue this metaphor, just as a body wouldn’t exist without cells meaning the existence of a body implies the existence of these cells, so human society could not exist without the existence of the empirical individuals that comprise it (which emphatically does not mean human beings predated society and got together to create society in Lockean fashion via the so called “social contract”)
The real question that needs to be posed is what is the relationship between the individual and society and surely the answer to that is that it is a two way or dialectical relationship. Individuals are not merely determined but also determine albeit within constraints set by the nature of the society they live in
Plekhanov’s work , <b>On the Role of the Individual in History</b>, remains for me one of the best expositions of this point of view
https://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1898/xx/individual.html
