ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:So why cant you find an excuse for Lennon’ support for the IRA?
Actually, the article, after setting out Marx’s defence of his position, ends up saying we still think he was wrong:
Quote:But whatever Marx and Engels supported, we in the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the World Socialist Party of Ireland do not agree that Socialists should support, or should have supported, Irish Nationalism any more than they should support nationalism anywhere else.Basically, I’m on your side. I don’t think that the fact that Lennon supported the IRA detracts from the socialist sentiments expressed in “Imagine” or should stop us using it to spread socialist ideas.
TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:Karl Marx supported Irish independence but I am sure we would find some defense.You’re right. We did, actually. It’s just been added to the Socialist Standard archive here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1972/no-820-december-1972/marx-and-engels-ireland
They should choose a better name than “minimalism” then. If we say to people they’ll have to “minimise” their consumption in socialism we’ll get even less far than we do now. I agree, though, that the concept of “ownership” will come to be replaced by that of “use”.
Surely the issue is (or should have been) not whether or not John Lennon was a socialist (clearly he wasn’t) but whether or not his song “Imagine” expressed socialist sentiments. I think it does. Anyway, I’m going to have it played at my funeral.
jondwhite wrote:The practical suggestions here of flags/banners, poster/placards are great and well worth us doing.This question of flags and banners needs more thought. What is the idea? That we take part in the “march” with them? As it’s a trade union event I don’t see any objection in principle, but is it practical and the best use of our resources? This would mean that the 20 or so members and sympathisers likely to turn up would have to group together (which past experience suggests won’t be easy to bring about) and stay together, isolated from the other participants except those immediately next to us (who could well be some Trot or Maoist group). In other words, not do what we usually do at these events: scatter ourselves along the route to hand out leaflets.We will have a stall in Hyde Park so a few flags and banners could be displayed there, but then there’s the question of the wording (and the colour: using red doesn’t find unanimity amongst members), presumably they’d say something like “Abolish the Wages System” and/or “From according to their ability, to each according to their needs”?
She was better singing that than “Abide with me” at the opening ceremony. Maybe “Imagine” will become the new Olympic hymn. That really would be a “legacy” of the Games but I don’t think “Imagine No Religion” will go down too well in Saudi Arabia, the USA, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, etc, etc. I don’t suppose it was shown on Saudi TV but I wonder what they thought about it in America where being an atheist is worse than being a communist.
gnome wrote:That was a really nice platform; whatever happened to it, as I’m certain it’s not at Head Office now? Stolen by the renegades, perhaps?No, it was stored with an attendant at the underground car park at Hyde Park. When he was away once, his replacement cleared everything out including our platform. There were 2 of them. Don’t know what happened to the other one or where it was stored but neither left our possession.
ALB wrote:Not very often that we hear about abolishing the wages system on the radio or TV.Actually, it’s becoming a weekly event. A comrade phoned me last night to say he’d just seen the Party platform at Hyde Park with “Abolish the Wages System” on TV. I just checked and it’s 1hour 20 minutes into the film “London – The Modern Babylon” shown on BBC2 yesterday evening at 9.30. Can be seen again here:http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00smkqn/London_The_Modern_Babylon/Is anybody copying these for posterity?
West London branch were also out this afternoon, in Kingston covering a local anti-cuts demonstration (why do they call it “Tory austerity” when it’s capitalist austerity?). Only about 20 there but we sold a couple of Standards and got talking to some people and then went for a drink.
Keep calm. Things are in hand. Here’s the leaflet that’s been prepared:
Quote:A future that works?The market system works. But not for us. It works for the handful of people who own industry or land. Most of them are doing well and getting richer. For them, the present system works, through our hard work.For us, the workers, it doesn’t. The real value of wages has shrunk. Housing is becoming more unaffordable for many, rents are rising and benefits are being cut. Unemployment is at staggering proportions, especially among young people.The truth is being revealed across the world: that the system is run in the interests of those who own it. For governments, repaying debts to those who got wealthy from our work is more important than us receiving education or health care.For us, the future won’t work so long as we depend on an economy based on the market with the private or state ownership of the means of living.In our workplaces we co-operate. We don’t charge our colleagues for our time: we work together. It’s just that we work together for our employers. If we owned the land and all the places of work ourselves, we could work together to make all the things we need, without buying and selling and without an employing class.The alternative is voting for parties that support the market system: parties that inevitably have to accept the existence of poverty and unemployment.While we build a movement to bring about a better future, it’s important that we use trade unions to defend ourselves and get the best deal we possibly can under the present system. We must ensure democratic control of trade unions, and not follow charlatans and adventurers to glorious defeat. We should rely on ourselves, not leaders.If we want to transcend the defensive position forced upon us by the pressures of the profit system then a vision beyond capitalism has to be on the agenda.That future we call Socialism, a future where we would have common and democratic ownership of the resources of the world. A future that will work if the majority of us want it and are prepared to work for it using democratic struggle to create a world of common wealth.We’re having 15,000 printed. This is ambitious but 20 October co-incides with our Autumn Delegate Meeting so, with delegates from outside London, we’re expecting twice the usual number of members who normally turn out for demonstrations like this.We’ll have a literature stall in Hyde Park but arrangements have not yet been made to get leaflets to members who will be at the start on the Embankment but it’s still two months away.By the way, the late comrade Eddie Grant always said that socialists never march. Only soldiers do that. We walk or amble.
colinskelly wrote:PS. anymore background on R.R. La Monte? I have had a brief search and come up with some interesting-looking book titles but not much general information.I remember reading a book of his on socialism and was going to check if it was in the Party library, but I see it can be read in full on the internet here along with some of his other writings.All I know is that he was a prominent leftwing member of the (reformist) Socialist Party of America and an editor of the International Socialist Review (we’ve got copies of this in our Library but not in the lending section).What I didn’t know till I read his article on War on the internet was that he adopted a pro-War position on WWI denouncing Marxism and international socialism and taking up an anti-German and American patriot position, as can be seen from this excerpt:
Quote:It would hardly appear necessary to say that in my humble judgment the proper course for such American Socialists as are still affiliated with the Socialist party is to get out of it as quickly as may be and give their whole-hearted support to the Government of these United States in its splendid fight to “make the world safe for democracy.” For myself I am proud to say I have not paid one cent of dues to the Socialist Party since the German Socialists voted for the war budget on August 4th, 1914; I voted for Woodrow Wilson for President in the election of 1916; I resigned from the Union Against Militarism when it began to attempt to hamper our government by a peace agitation after we had broken off diplomatic relations with the Kaiser’s government; promptly on its organization I enlisted as a private soldier in the Connecticut Home Guard, the only military organization in which my age permitted me to enlist, and I am now serving as a sergeant in the Home Guard, doing my part to protect my neighbors from the violence of well-meaning if feeble-minded pacifists, and releasing the regular militia for service against the enemy that “our” Party has been so zealously aiding. I further confess that I have so far given way to what this magazine stigmatizes as “vulgar patriotism” as to buy a Liberty Bond; and should there be further loan issues I have every intention of being vulgar again.No wonder that from this point on he disappears from working class history. Deservedly.
It’s ok, one of the books that a studious Socialist in the past would have had on their bookshelf (it was published in 1908).One drawback is Untermann’s introduction of the concept of “secondary exploitation” in a footnote on p. 195-6:
Quote:after the wage workers have been exploited by the industrial capitalists in the sphere of production, they may have to submit to a secondary exploitation on the hands of the merchant in the sphere of circulation, because the merchant may not only have to buy his commodities from some industrial capitalist, who sells his commodities above their price of production, but may himself make an extra profit under favorable market constellations by selling at a still higher price than he would ordinarily, quite aside from adulterations, etc., which permit him to sell a product of small value at the price of the genuine articles. This fact of secondary exploitation, which I maintain in harmony with Marx, has given to some misinterpreters of Marx, for instance to La Monte, an opportunity to claim, that the admission of this secondary exploitation would be equivalent to transforming the Socialist Party from a revolutionary organization into a reform organization. This is practically the same faulty logic, which cannot reconcile the program of immediate demands with the revolutionary platform of International Socialism.Party writers and lecturers on Marxian economics agreed with R. R. La Monte’s criticism. After all, if the workers have already been fleeced at work by the employing capitalist, how could they be fleeced again? They could be swindled by shopkeepers of course, but if this became general it would exert an upward pressure on wages since the employer would not be getting the full value of the worker’s labour-power.Untermann’s riposte to La Monte could have been aimed at us.
Here’s a couple more articles from the Socialist Standard Archives pages on this site:www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1910s/1914/no-118-june-1914/passing-de-leonhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1990s/1990/no-1029-may-1990/american-marxistMembers and others should make use of the Archives page here :http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/archiveIt contains articles going back to 1904 and is a mine of interesting historical and theoretical stuff. The Search function works too.On our relations with what one member once described as “our political cousins” in the SLP here and in America they were never good. Ill-tempered polemics continued right up until the 1960s. Here’s a typical example:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1910s/1918/no-162-february-1918/slp-anchors-dragging-reviewThe main difference was over the relative importance of economic and political action. They said that economic action was more important. We said that this was syndicalism and that the workers had hardly any economic power under capitalism, hence the imperative need to first get control of political power. Any attempt to “take and hold” the means of production without this (or as an afterthought, as the SLP taught) would end in disaster. The other differences (eg on Russia, labour-time vouchers, internal democracy) are set out in the 1969 article Marcos mentioned.As to the Socialist Party of America, we didn’t think much of them either:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1910s/1913/no-101-january-1913/pseudo-socialist-vote-usBut members have still maintained a soft spot for Eugene Debs:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1980s/1985/no-975-november-1985/trade-unionist-extraordinary-eugene-debsThe pre-WWI Socialist Party of Canada we liked (they took the same position as us on the primacy of political power). Some of their early articles can be found on the SPC’s site at:http://www.worldsocialism.org/canada/under “Our Rich History of Social Analysis”. More can be found on this Canadian Labour History site:http://www.socialisthistory.ca/Docs/docs.htm#PreComThat should keep you going!
