Young Master Smeet
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Quote:Moreover, what our critics dislike most about us – how we organise ourselves – is crucial to our ability, as Jones puts it, to punch above our weight. Our version of democratic centralism comes down to two things. First, decisions must be debated fully, but once they have been taken, by majority vote, they are binding on all members. This is necessary if we are to test our ideas in action.Secondly, to ensure that these decisions are implemented and that the SWP intervenes effectively in the struggle, a strong political leadership, directly accountable to the annual conference, campaigns within the organisation to give a clear direction to our party's work. It is this model of democratic centralism that has allowed us to concentrate our forces on key objectives, and thereby to build so effectively the various united fronts we have supported.
That is, a strong leadership can manoeuvre and shift quickly, and build alliances that may well be repugnant to their membership. Coupled with the capacity to provide the apparatus to gerry build an organisation, that is what enables the SWP to intervene and control.The most fascinating aspect of this debate is it shows us how the SWP conceive of themselves. Most importantly, is their fundamental denal of the democratic principle that a minority should be able to try and turn itself into a majority, minorities should just remain defeated, is their view…
To keep banging on, ISTR, he was in favour of the gradual abolition of slavery (essentially, in the same sort of vein as a Labour reformist).As a politician from Illinois, he'd have been aware at how important the Mississippi was to enabling that landlocked state to trade (he had once worked on a paddle steamer), that would have motivated his defence of the union stance (when an Illinois state legislator, he had been part of a Whiggish faction which nearly bankrupted the state on public navigation works).I'd recommend Gore Vidal's Lincoln, which uses documented events, and, IIRC, manages to keep a certain mystery around the internal workings of Lincoln's mind during the great dramas.http://www.gorevidalpages.com/2011/05/bookslut-on-gore-vidals-lincoln.html
Another one, quickly, because I think Marx is on the money here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1862/03/03.htm
Quote:Lincoln is not the product of a popular revolution. This plebeian, who worked his way up from stone-breaker to Senator in Illinois, without intellectual brilliance, without a particularly outstanding character, without exceptional importance-an average person of good will, was placed at the top by the interplay of the forces of universal suffrage unaware of the great issues at stake. The new world has never achieved a greater triumph than by this demonstration that, given its political and social organisation, ordinary people of good will can accomplish feats which only heroes could accomplish in the old world!He was, from the accounts I read, considered a non-entity who could be played by Great Men like Seward, but he adroitely used the powers of his office to achieve his ends.
And of course, Uncle Charlie made short work of claims the war wasn't about Slavery:http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/10/25.htm
Uncle Charlie wrote:The question of the principle of the American Civil War is answered by the battle slogan with which the South broke the peace. Stephens, the Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy, declared in the Secession Congress that what essentially distinguished the Constitution newly hatched at Montgomery from the Constitution of Washington and Jefferson was that now for the first time slavery was recognised as an institution good in itself, and as the foundation of the whole state edifice, whereas the revolutionary fathers, men steeped in the prejudices of the eighteenth century, had treated slavery as an evil imported from England and to be eliminated in the course of time. Another matador of the South, Mr. Spratt, cried out: "For us it is a question of founding a great slave republic." If, therefore, it was indeed only in defence of the Union that the North drew the sword, had not the South already declared that the continuance of slavery was no longer compatible with the continuance of the Union?Famously, the International Working Men's Association wrote to Lincoln on his re-election (drafted by Marx)
Quote:We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority. If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery…They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm and here is the letter on Lincoln's assassination: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1865/johnson-letter.htm
Lincoln was a moderate of the abolitionist cause, but there is no doubt that he wanted slavery to end: defence of the union was a strategic position, given the unpopularity of the war. He was the son of small farmers who had been forced to leave Kentucky because they had been out-competed by slave plantations.Despite his public pronouncements, we have his actions. He prosecuted the war (to the point of sacking his generals, and directing military operations himself) despite unpopularity and opposition, and the idea that there could be some conciliation with the South (His Secretary of State, Seward, apparently had a plan for some sort of Carribbeanwards Imperial expansion as a way of alleviating the problem of slavery).The strike against slavery had actually come sooner, when Kansas had become a free state, both sides knew slavery had to expand or die.Irrespective of his undoubted racism, and whether he was an avid abolitionist or not, he did make personal political choices that did end slavery, he could have been a severe block on such a process had he chosen to be so.
And, just to keep plugging at an idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_System_ModelAttribution: Nick Green at the English language WikipediaOf course, such a model is recursive, and each stage is replicated in subordinate and superordinate units of an organisation. Now, such models exist, and can be used by use to create a classless society, but the iterative 'hierachies' would have to be used…
TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:A good point YMS and as I always say I wouldn’t want someone taking out my appendix who was not ‘authorised’ to do so. However, what if the ‘authorised’ person started to remove healthy lungs instead of an unhealthy appendix and an ‘authorised’ captain started to deliberately sink the ship. What then? Take it up with your branch? Failing that then take it to conference? Or would another mechanism be required? If so. which one?Well, if someone started taking out my lungs without authorisation, I suspect there'd be damn all I could do about it, since I'd be unconconscious with my lungs hanging out. You are right, though, that taking the matter to a proper democratic channels would be the correct way to deal with and remove/sack an aberrant official, however, like your evil surgeon, if the captain were trying to sink the ship during a storm, or similar emergency, there'd be no way to remove him through nice channels (and I doubt you'd necessarily notice, again, until it were too late).The point is, yes, officials would be subject to democratic appointment and dismissal, and there would have no interest separate from the group they were serving, and by and large we would have to show self discipline by sticking by the democratically and agreed rules of the activity/workplace/organisation.Of course, now isn't the time to come up with details Laws of the Sea Under Socialism, or guidebooks for medical practitioners, at best we can come up with general principles.
And here's Kautsky:http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1892/erfurt/ch04a.htm
Kautsky wrote:It is true that socialist production is irreconcilable with the full freedom of labor, that is, with the freedom of the laborer to work when, where and how he wills. But this freedom of the laborer is irreconcilable with any systematic, co-operative form of labor, whether the form be capitalist or socialist. Freedom of labor is possible only in small production, and even there only up to a certain point. […] Freedom of labor has come to an end, not only in the factory, but wherever the individual worker is only a link in a long chain of workers. It does not exist either for the manual worker or for the brain worker employed in any industry. The hospital physician, the school teacher, the railroad employee, the newspaper writer – none of these enjoy the freedom of labor; they are all bound to certain rules, they must all be at their post at a certain hour.Or, put anyother way, once you've chosen to commit to a project, obligations apply. We could take the option of not having advanced industry, but once we do, we'll need to have ways of transmitting one way signals (which is another way of saying hierarchical)…
Blithering nonsense. In socialism, there will have to be safety officers who, if not obeyed, will mean a worker will have to leave the site. There'll still be captains of the ship, who will have to be obeyed at sea. The difference is, they will be chosen from among the crews and will have no material benefit to their position, no more than the captain of a Sunday football team. The difference being, chiefly, that there will be limits to their authority, but authority they will have and authorities there will be.
Robot waiters, in China. They have over 20 in one restaurant, and they can work non-stop for five hours at a time..'Nuff said:http://www.thestar.com/ajax/photoplayer/1315323
Speaking of 3D printers…http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20972018
Quote:imagine if this cut of meat, just perfect for your Sunday dinner, had been made from scratch – without slaughtering any animal. US start-up Modern Meadow believes it can do just that – by making artificial raw meat using a 3D bioprintesee, we don't need the real world any more, we'll make our meat in nice clean factories, and no horses involved (obviously, the recent horse scandal is just food adulteration by profit seeking once again). There might be fun ethical debates about VAT grown flesh, but the idea that we can produce meat by cutting the land use, and possibly turning the land over to either re-wilding (build some vertical farms while we're at it) or redesignate for vegetables or biofuel crops, is quite exciting. Remember, meat farming is a massive source of greenhouse gasses. The possibility of making all communities food secure is quite exciting.
Quote:Are they votes that we would want if they have a straight choice between voting socialism or reforms and choose the latter?Not really, but it clarifies the vote we got back last year. And if those people might come to us at a later stage, so we know there's a "fringe" if you will, who we can speak to.
Ian Bone has ben doing his 'memory of the class' routine again, and reminds us of the Limerick Soviethttp://ianbone.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/limerick-workers-occupy-hmv-shop-shades-of-the-limerick-soviet/http://www.limericksoviet.com/
Quote:The Limerick Soviet (Irish: Sóivéid Luimnigh) was a self-declared soviet that existed from 15 to 27 April 1919. At the beginning of the Irish War of Independence, a general strike was organised by the Limerick Trades and Labour Council, as a protest against the British army's declaration of a "Special Military Area" under the Defence of the Realm Act, which covered most of Limerick city and a part of the county. The soviet ran the city for the period, printed its own money and organised the supply of food. [1]Congrats on a good fight, and a not too bad result, 1.3% is our trend result. I suspect if TUSC hadn't have been there we'd have attracted some of their voters, so it's interesting to see the effect of a head-to-head like this (at the GLA election they didn't contest the seats, that may be why we did slightly better last year). Albeit in Labour heartlands, that is a thumping swing to them, a a body blow for Lib-Dems.According to die-hard Labour loyalist Luke Akehursthttp://labourlist.org/2013/01/a-gesture-of-great-political-and-organisational-self-confidence/Labour are looking to retake Bermondsey, and the sort of people who've abandoned the Liberals in Brixton are the same sort as will abandon them there.
Quote:A NEW scheme to put long-term unemployed to work as council workers is being planned by the Government.Up to 3,000 people on the dole for more than two years will be put to work at street cleaning, cutting grass and carrying out road worksWhile such a scheme might not be too bad, in and of itself, it will have to be managed in a way so as not to remove the stick of unemployment. The work won't be meaningful, nor will it be useful work, if that threatens the profits of a commercial firm that would want to do the work.
