Young Master Smeet
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Alan, I can’t see a name on that article, but it reads horribly like the sort of thing I would write…
I’m always wary of joining in these sorts of campaigns: the right can enjoy them just as much, after all, in a fascist dictatorship, there are o corrupt MPs.
Lets remember, payment of MPs was a chartist demand, and MPs do need to earn enough to be independent.
Lets not forget, that free school meals is a means tested benefit: why not free food for all children? Let’s not get played by Labour’s “The Poor are always with us” schtick.
To borrow BD’s scenario, a little, let’s imagine an Orgreave style situation, but where it’s clear that police are targeting (or at least are more violent towards) black strikers. Structurally, non-black strikers benefit from being less beaten. Absolutely, it’s not their fault, but pointing out it’s not their fault isn’t the solution: solidarity and steps to protect black colleagues is.
And not just because it divides the workers, but the hidden premise of the existence of the wages system: no one talks about discrimination against black capitalists nor women billionaires: they may face hostility, discrimination from being allowed to join certain clubs or exclusion from certain levers of power, etc.
To the extent that these discussions highlight that equal doesn’t mean ‘the same’ and trend towards the idea of solidarity and ‘to each according to their need’, they ae useful, and we should be putting that message out.
“As someone who lost a father, a grandfather and two great grandfathers to industrial deaths, I find the idea of white privilege as a bit of a joke, was being white any privilege at the battle of Orgreave, or when the police turned whole swaiths of the North East into a police state during the big strike?”
This is the whole point: the miners were oppressed because of their class, not because of their “race” or any constructed position in a racial hierarchy.
Very effectively explained here:
What is white privilege?
We asked @JohnAmaechi, psychologist, best-selling author and former NBA basketball player to explain it for us.
👉 https://t.co/t7LIENTnPn pic.twitter.com/mQrYX6Y0N1
— BBC Bitesize (@bbcbitesize) August 5, 2020
According to this ‘White privilege’ is simply the absence of impediment on grounds of race.
Given we want a society where the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all, I’d have said this was our bread and butter.
A spot of direct action in New York:
Wow so this morning the Brooklyn Housing Court woke up to its doors spray foamed and bike locked shut, and then this document was released in a telegram room. It looks like people are not tolerating evictions any more. pic.twitter.com/PdKJsQwinF
— Read Let This Radicalize You (@JoshuaPHilll) October 16, 2020
I think there is mileage in looking at who is weaponising Islam and why: the money spent on propaganda, and finding suitable agents (I listened to a fascinating audio doc on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the way in which young radicalised kids were being used, they’re very good at finding vulnerable kids).
And, of course, those in France who weaponise Islam to sow division and otherise Muslims.
Well, if this is to be believed:
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2020/Pres/Maps/Oct14.html#item-4
Big business will give the Dems a huge war chest to take enough states to make the compact real.
It doesn’t require a constitutional amendment to get rid of the electoral college.
An interstate compact can do the job.
Currently,
“The National Popular Vote bill will take effect when enacted into law by states possessing 270 electoral votes (a majority of the 538 electoral votes). As of July 2020, it has been enacted into law in 16 jurisdictions possessing 196 electoral votes, including 4 small states (DE, HI, RI, VT), 8 medium-sized states (CO, CT, MD, MA, NJ, NM, OR, WA), 3 big states (CA, IL, NY), and the District of Columbia.
The bill will take effect when enacted by states possessing an additional 74 electoral votes.”
https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/state-status
If Trump wins, it’s likely he’ll have lost the Senate, which will mean some of the tricks he’s used up till now won’t work (they’ll start demanding he fills the vacant posts).
Rodshaw: Mattick saved me some typing:
Instead the central banks—in the case of the US, the Federal Reserve—simply expanded their liabilities (“printed money”<sup>8</sup>) to buy bonds, both Treasuries and private debt, such as mortgage-backed bonds, from private financial institutions. This at once injected money into the financial system and raised bond prices, which by lowering bond yields pushed investors towards the stock market. Basically, none of this costs business anything, while the rise in stock prices disproportionately benefits the small super-wealthy minority who disproportionately own stocks, so there is no motivation to raise prices—especially under the deflationary conditions of a global business slowdown—producing an inflation-free expansion.<sup>9</sup>
(9. This is not quite correct, since the prices of assets traded within the financial system, such as stocks, real estate, and art are wildly inflated.)
There is inflation, in stock and bond values, and a complete dislocation between stock market prices and reality.
And, don’t forget, Orwell’s copyright expire at the end of this year… All of his works enter public domain in the UK.
Maybe it helps to look at the modern world.
The Gulf monarchies: now, these are very much embedded in a world capitalist system, and they are very much defined by their take of absolute rent (and I think the difference between absolute and differential is useful on this debate, btw) they extract from capitalist enterprises. Now, they get their income partly through that rent, and partly through their ability to get nominated to important jobs.
The personal relations, most significantly to the monarch, predominate. Where, for us, hiring your idiot nephew is considered an outrage and immoral, in feudal situations it is immoral to prefer someone competent to your idiot nephew (or, more specifically, the idiot nephew of your patron).
Even where a gulf aristocrat runs a capitalist business, they do so because and through that network of personal relations.
