DJP
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There has been a large blowback against this in republican controlled areas. Have you not seen what has been happening in the town hall meetings?
The original question was why didn’t Slyvia Pankhurst join or contact the SPGB, not whether she had any shared viewpoints. I just gave a good reasons why she wouldn’t have needed or wanted to.
Obviously she had some shared viewpoints, but the same is true of a lot of people and organisations of that time, and now.
Pankhurst was one of the UK representatives of “left communism” and so didn’t share the same political views as the SPGB. Why would she need to contact them or mention them?
Guy Aldred, if he counts as well-known, did in its beginning years nearly join the SPGB.
More Alex Gourevitch reposting, hopefully of interest and use:
“I agree with Corey Robin. And add that Bernie taking up the fight against oligarchy puts the Dems in a pickle. I still think a major reason that the critique of Trump as oligarchic, rather than fascist, was less popular is that it was and is much more difficult for the Democrats to sustain. It exposes them too much. They are themselves so tied to elements of the oligarchy that it is hollow criticism of the opposition. Obama’s first act post-presidency was to take a vacation at Richard Branson’s private island. Nancy Pelosi uses her inside political knowledge to beat the S&P 500. She does so frequently that there is now an indexed fund specifically designed to track her trades and there are accounts called things like “Nancy Pelosi Stock Tracker.” Failed first Gentlemen Doug Emhoff went off and got a job at a high-end corporate law firm. Bloomberg tried to buy his way into a presidential nomination, Bill Gates is 100% Team Blue. Now start looking at Senators, Governors and so on. Lesser Evilism – whether of the ‘anti-fascist’ variety, or more broadly of the anti-Republican – has always allowed Dems to paper over the central class cleavages of the party, especially with respect to who leads and who follows.”
Corey Robin –
“While it’s freezing everywhere and the Democrats are running for cover, Bernie Sanders is heading out to Iowa and Nebraska to build grassroots support to take on “the oligarchy.”
Two points, one personal and one political.
Personally, there’s a huge leadership vacuum in the Democratic Party and Bernie’s one of the very people going out to talk to voters, in public rallies and and communities, not about personalities or his campaigns (he’s already said that’s over), but about ensuring that the message of social democracy doesn’t disappear. Remember how people mocked him for his monomaniacal focus on “the billionaires” as *the* problem, how out of touch and 1930s-ish it seemed? Doesn’t seem so out of touch now, does it? Where the establishment leaders of yesterday continue their private meetings with hedge funders and Hollywood celebrities, Bernie’s out there, doing what good organizers have always done: talking to working-class people. There was always a lot of shit thrown at him by people claiming he thought he was a messiah or a martyr or whatever, and the truth is, he’s remained pretty true to his basic mission, whatever you may think of it, which is not about himself but about the causes he’s fought for his entire life. Doing the work, as people like to say.
Politically, I think we really need to start developing our account of this “oligarchy” Sanders is talking about. To me, it’s one of the more promising developments in our political language. It’s got deep roots in the American tradition (I wrote about this in a review last year of Fishkin’s and Forbath’s The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution, which I really recommend). I think it holds more political potential than other frameworks people have used.
As I’ve said a number of times, the great reform movements in this country always identified their opponent as a tangible social malignancy. Not just a government deformation but a comprehensive warping of polity and economy. The abolitionists didn’t run against the Democrats, they ran against the “slaveocracy.” The New Dealers didn’t run against the Republicans, they ran against “the economic royalists.” The Jacksonians (who called themselves and were called “The Democracy”) ran against The Monster Bank, not the Whigs.
Oligarchy is just such a fusion of polity and economy. But we’ve got to name it more specifically, not just in one person or party, but in its comprehensiveness. I don’t know what that name is. But it’s something we’ve got to start figuring out.”I don’t “saying things as they are” is a good description of Trump! The whole MAGA thing is based on a lie.
The Zoe Baker book was reviewed in the Standard too right?
Paul Raekstad has a YouTube channel which I’ve probably already mentioned
“What’s this hard on that some Party members seem to have for Russia and Putin?”
I don’t understand how you could not.
“Starmer declared for nuclear war.”
This is not news. Any state that holds nuclear weapons has to say that they would use them if necessary.
“we should use aspects of the social superstructure to show people the socio-economic base, which is the capitalist mode of production.”
I actually don’t think the ‘base-superstructure’ analogy is that useful, and I think it should be dropped. But that’s something for another day and another thread.
This quote from Malatesta comes to mind. Swap “anarchy” for “socialism”
“At bottom Kropotkin conceived nature as a kind of Providence, thanks to which there had to be harmony in all things, including human societies.
And this has led many anarchists to repeat that “Anarchy is Natural Order”, a phrase with an exquisite kropotkinian flavor.
If it is true that the law of Nature is Harmony, I suggest one would be entitled to ask why Nature has waited for anarchists to be born, and goes on waiting for them to triumph, in order to destroy the terrible and destructive conflicts from which mankind has already suffered.
Would one not be closer to the truth in saying that anarchy is the struggle, in human society, against the disharmonies of Nature?”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/malatesta/1931/peter-kropotkin.html
“Can it be explained how the current website ‘snippet’ is ‘low-hanging fruit?”
Hopefully, I did that in the comment above?
I appreciate that writing in a short space is a hard thing to do, and don’t want to disparage those that have been trying.
“all subjects can be talked about.”
I agree with that. But to anyone with a half-skeptical eye – articles like this just look like willful blindness. The article mentions the RNLI, well for a counter-example, look at what happens to refugee crossings in the med!
The trouble with saying that certain human behaviours, are “natural” is that it just gives your opponent an easy knockdown, they can just refer to some other type of human activity and say that is “natural” too.
The article says “Humans help each other whenever they can. That’s why socialism will work.” But clearly, that is not empirically true. Humans don’t always help each other – and sometimes they go to great effort to cause pain death and suffering. As well as having a potential to co-operation, human beings have a potential to hostility and domination. These are just as ‘natural’.
Instead of saying how certain behaviours that are beneficial to socialism are ‘natural’ (and presumably by extension those that are not beneficial ‘unnatural’). Would it not be better to explain how the structure of capitalism would incentivise anti-social behaviours and discourage freely co-operative ones?
There’s nothing wrong with the topics of these articles, I like the topics, they just need some minor tweaks to avoid some simple and common objections.
Like I said before on the front page of the website. The heading is “Nasty, brutish and short”. You might need to scroll down if you are viewing on a phone. If it’s not displaying on your screen I’m not sure what to suggest.
The front page is this:
