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Came across this anti-jingo musical hall song from the 1880s. Seems appropriate for today:
“I don’t want to fight. I’ll be slaughtered if I do!
I’ll change my togs and sell my kit and pop my rifle too!
I don’t like the war, I ain’t no Briton true,
And I’d let the Russians have Constantinople.”Not a socialist view of course but a view that might spread when the austerity required to militarise Europe begins to bite.
Would the situation have changed much since Robert Michels wrote his book on political parties, based mainly on the SPD, and the formulation of his so-called “iron law of oligarchy”? Did he write annything after the war (when he eventually joined Mussolini’s fascists) on the “socialist” parties in Germany?
“Now, however, Reeves’s advisers openly admit that the high growth implied by Labour’s manifesto is a pipe dream.”
So reports Times columnist Patrick Maguire (21 March).
Implied by? No, it was promised by and proclaimed from the rooftops. If Labour was elected it was going to “grow” the economy. They thought they could control capitalism and could simply will growth.
Their excuse for failing (after less than a year)?
“‘The world is changing,’ one says. ‘Global uncertainty means growth across the world – in the eurozone, the US and the UK. — has been hit’.”
We don’t recall any proviso in their election promise that they might be blown off course.
We said they would fail (unless they were lucky and be in office when capitalism entered a boom phase of its uncontrollable economic cycle) but have to admit to being surprised at being proved right so quickly.
Without comment:
“Carlson then asks “what the hell is going with Keir Starmer saying he is going to send British troops – their entire military is smaller than the US marine corps. The country is dying economically all of those countries are dying economically.
What are they thinking ? Is it a posture and a pose ?”
Witkoff replies “I think it’s a combination of a posture and a pose and a combination of also being simplistic. There is this sort of notion that we have all got to be like Winston Churchill. Russia is going to march across Europe.
That is preposterous by the way.”This is how CND explains the position with regard to UK dependence on the US for its nuclear weapons:
Front page headline in yesterday’s Times
UK SENDS MESSAGE TO PUTIN ABOUT DETERRENT
Subheading:
“We have the nuclear weapons to cause ‘untold damage’ if attacked, warns defence secretary”.
If that’s not war-mongering, what is? Of course it’s only posturing as, unlike France, Britain doesn’t have an independent nuclear deterrent. The British nuclear missiles can’t be fired without US participation and so permission. In any event, Russia is unlikely to attack Britain in the first place.
That article has an appropriate title as the author does indeed know nothing about economics, at least not about monetary economics. He is a supporter of Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT. Which also stands, appropriately, for Magic Money Tree.
This theory claims that the government doesn’t need to impose taxes or borrow in order to finance its spending. It can simply create the money and spend it. True, the government could do this but it wouldn’t be creating new wealth only new money-tokens that could be used to buy existing wealth. The result of course would be Zimbabwe-style roaring inflation.
But to give them their due, they don’t claim that banks can create money out of thin air but only that the government can. In a sense this is true. Only the government can create money-tokens but if it wants to avoid debasing the monetary unit/inflating the currency then it needs to be careful how much it issues and try to guess how much the economy needs to maintain a stable (or slowly increasing) price level.
I noticed this from one of Indo’s comments:
“Also, Council Communism doesn’t “proposes that workers’ councils are the basic form of organizing for workers”. The Council Idea [and other related terms], as it has been called, denotes self-organization. Workers’ Councils were one of the many expressions of this and might never arise in their traditional form in the future but that doesn’t render the Council Idea obsolete, which only denotes self-organization, irrespective of form.”
If the “council idea” just means self-organisation, then we must be Councillists! After all, we say that workers should self-organise on the political field to win control of political power. In other words, into a democratically organised political party without leaders that contests elections. This in addition to self-organising on the “non-political” field (at work, in communities, etc).
But of course contesting elections is anathema to Council Communists, Left Communists, etc. This suggests that Indo’s definition of the “council idea” is too broad for his purpose.
Also, it doesn’t rule out workers self-organising in cooperatives producing for the market.
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe there are Councillists who are not dogmatically opposed to workers self-organising to contest elections.
Not quite sure what all this has to do with Glasgow COP-OUT 26.
Yes, it is reviewed in next month’s Socialist Standard out next week. We eventually found someone to read it through to the end.
Actually I had heard of him but forgot as he’s mentioned in the section on “Communism” in Raymond Williams’s Key Words.
More on him here:
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/goodwyn-barmby-first-communist
Reading a book I bought the other week in a secondhand bookshop — Industrialization and the Working Class by John Belchem — the author says that John Goodwin Barmby was “the first person in England to call himself a communist”.
According to his entry in Wikipedia:
“Barmby also authored the first attested writing (1841) of communist in English; having translated it from communiste in French while claiming he first spoke the word in 1840 in Paris, France, the same year he went there to meet the advocates of le communisme as had been written in at least a French article and pamphlet by then, the former by Étienne Cabet and latter by both Théodore Dézamy and Jean-Jacques Pillot. By his claim, he first discussed “communism” with some followers of François-Noël Babeuf, describing them as “some of the most advanced minds of the French metropolis”. He introduced Engels to the French communiste movement. They founded the London Communist Propaganda Society in 1841 and in the same year the Universal Communitarian Association. Barmby founded the Communist Chronicle, a monthly newspaper later published by Thomas Frost.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Goodwyn_Barmby
The claim is not that he first coined the word in English but that he was the first to call himself a communist. Not necessarily the same of course.
I’d never heard of him before.
More NATO “democracy”. After Rumania another NATO state bans an opposition presidential candidate:
Despite regular evidence from the financial pages showing that banks do need deposits, whether from individuals or from other financial institutions, to be able to lend, the myth persists — and not only amongst open currency cranks — that banks can create the money they lend from thin air.
Yesterday. Close Brothers, which is a financial institution specialising in financing loans to buy a car, reported half yearly results:
One factor in the loss was a reduction in its net interest margin (the difference between the rate of interest paid to those who lend it money and the rate it charges borrowers). This is the source of a lending institutions’ income and, after paying running costs, of their profits.
“The group’s net interest margin reduced by 30 basis points to 7.2 per cent from 7.5 per cent.”
It is forecast to fall further this year to 7 per cent, so reducing its income.
Another reason is a fall in deposits from other financial institutions:
“Corporate and council treasurers are already voting with their feet. They pulled a net £700 million of their deposits from Close last year, reducing its non-retail deposits by 22 per cent.” (Today’s Times).
The obvious question to put to those who claim that banks don’t need deposits to make loans is: why would this matter?
Another scrap of paper torn up:
“Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia say they’re pulling out of the Ottawa Convention, a treaty banning anti-personnel landmines, citing the growing military threat from Russia.”
Added to the Harry Young Marxist Internet Archive article on the old “International Marxist Group” (IMG) manifesto for the February 1974 General Election:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/young-harry/1974/smash_elections.htm
