DJP
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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:
For what it’s worth my original comment was meant to be more about the moralism than boxing. The boxing discussion was interesting enough though.
However, the new front page comment is now an even worse piece about ‘human nature’! The socialist party should be presenting strong and robust arguments for socialism, not providing socialism’s opponents with low-hanging fruit.
Do I need to spell out what is wrong with these kinds of pieces or can other people see it?
One more..
This episode about what attracts working-class voters to Trump:
Thought this Facebook comment by Alex Gourevitch, author of ‘From Slavery to the Democratic Commonwealth’ – a book about the Knights of Labor, was quite good:
“If Trump really does live in the late 19th century when thinking about trade, foreign policy and national consciousness – his love of McKinley, his devotion to tariffs, belief in national industrial cooperation, etc… – then it seems to me there is an underappreciated reason for his love of tariffs. That was a period when tariffs where the major source of national revenue. The amendment making a federal income tax legal was only passed in 1913. Before then, tariffs, customs and the like were the major way of financing the federal government. This is the period that he claims the United States was the wealthiest. His mental image, or ideal, is a society in which there is no income tax. Wealthy Americans keep all that they have accumulated. He has made off-hand claims that he will pay for the tax cuts through tariffs. There is no realistic way for him to do it. But I do wonder if his ideal is the pure oligarchic return to those features of the Gilded Age. Regardless, there’s a reason (an additional reason) for the incoherence of his policy. The modern American state cannot give up its income tax. We are so wealthy, and the state so heavily involved in the economy top-to-bottom in virtue of its ability to tax that wealth, that ‘taxing’ foreign trade cannot make up the difference. We would also have to suddenly stop being the financial center of the global economy. Contemporary oligarchy and its Gilded Age variant are not compatible.”
So it looks like Starmer wasn’t able to drum up the support he was hoping for. This commentator is a small c conservative but entertaining enough to listen to
But if an agreement is reached that all parties can bear then the conflict will be over. The changes in the US administration represent a change in the balance of forces in the region. All players will be aware of that.
A bit of an aside. One of the makers of this film was an SPGB member when they made this documentary about a boxing club in Hull.
“Of course, as long as both consent”
There are already limits to what you can legally consent too. I would have thought such limits will carry on over into socialism. We are not mad marketeer “libertarians”.
“Link to the obligatory Socialist Standard article on boxing from yesteryear’
Note the difference in tone between this article and the short website front piece.
“It’s the capitaalist equivalent of the Roman arena.”
That’s a bit like thinking that everyone who plays the guitar is Elvis. Most boxing takes place in small clubs.
“I hope there will be provisions in place to stop people doing vile and harmful things, like trophy hunting, badger baiting and other such atrocities.”
I share the same sentiment. Socialism isn’t a society without rules or means of enforcing them. If the political community decided, probably by means of a vote, that there would be a ban on such types of activity then there would be. And that would entail some kind of mechanism for enforcing the ban against those that might try to get around it.
“I cannot believe some of my comrades think boxing will still exist in socialism!”
But that’s just you projecting your moral judgements onto other people.
I’m no boxing fan either, but like anything else, it will exist in socialism if people want to do it, and won’t if they don’t.
Thanks for looking up the quote.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_11_23.htm
I still don’t think it gives you the neat split you want. It says that if the trade unions, or the employees of individual enterprises, exert pressure through withdrawing their labour then that is action purely on the economic front. But if they (the trade unions) get together and put pressure on the state to bring about reforms, then that is political action. Then and now trade unions *do* engage in campaigns to change the law, get certain MPs elected etc. Saying we can support trade unions because they operate only in the ‘economic’ sphere, and not the ‘political’ just doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t seem like the right way of putting it.
The letter you quote from is about those wanting the workers movement to abstain from political action, nothing about what does or does not signify ‘reformism’. In actual fact I’m not sure if Marx ever wrote about that, didn’t the distinction come after he died? He did think that the workers movement would come to socialist understanding through engaging in political work that included campaigning for reforms. If he had lived longer and not changed his views he would have failed the SPGB membership test!
