DJP
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Jordan – thanks for taking the time to read my links. I think there is something in the arguments you mention. There’s a few things I disagree with though..
money’s definitely a social construct. it’s not real. it didn’t exist before humanity.
So capitalism is not real either? Phew there’s a relief!
“Real” doesn’t mean existing before humanity, or “physical”. Money, capitalism, The World Socialist Party of America, patriarchy; all of these things are real they just exist, as Grace-Chappell says a few lines on, “as the reality of historical and social formations. They don’t have the reality of the natural kinds that science is concerned with, like Panthera Tigris Tigris and H2O and tungsten. But whoever said that the only real kinds of things were the natural kinds?”
Also, I don’t think language works how you seem to think it does, it doesn’t work like geometry. A definition is not an argument, it’s not the kind of thing that has a truth value or is falsifiable. Circularly in definitions is not uncommon, or really a problem, look in a dictionary. But now we’re talking about philosophy of language..
The thing with the transgender debate is it *is* a struggle of the meaning of words and concepts, and struggles over the meaning of words and concepts of this kind are political struggles.
Perhaps posting a bunch of links isn’t a particularly useful thing to do, but I found these articles useful in the past…
https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/openfordebate/2020/11/30/is-jk-rowling-transphobic/
https://www.philosophersmag.com/interviews/219-sophie-grace-chappell-talks-sex-and-gender
Jordan. For starters, if the “RadFems are right about everything” then Marx is wrong about the nature of capitalism. You can’t have it both ways…. You’re making yourself look foolish here, in more ways than one.
High-risk people in the UK can already get Vitamin D for free from the NHS:
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/people-at-higher-risk/get-vitamin-d-supplements/
(I know David Harvey did a guide/help for understanding Volume 1 but I couldn’t find anything similar or any guide to understanding Volume 3 so I’m a bit confused).
There are problems with the Harvey guides, see here:
https://critisticuffs.org/texts/david-harveyA useful, though unfinished, guide to all three volumes could be this one by Simon Clarke:
https://libcom.org/library/reading-guide-capital-simon-clarkeCapitalism is production for profit NOT human need.
The “not” here seems a bit odd. If a capitalist produces useless things, things that do not satisfy a need, nobody will buy them. Capitalism does produce things that satisfy human needs, but it only produces to the extent that there is a profit to be made. In the case of covid vaccines, the state has had to step in to ensure that it is profitable for the companies to do so. If it hadn’t done so the functioning of capitalism as a whole would have been affected, that’s why the state is a necessary component of the whole system. In this case the interests of the working class (to not get struck down by a debilitating disease) and the interests of capital (to have a workforce that can continue working) allign.
I didn’t have the stomach to look, so could be wrong, but the original article has a quote from them saying that they regularly post “against Boris Johnson’s Covid policies”
To hazard a guess I think it most likely the SWP temporarily fell foul of an algorithm, because of their anti covid stuff. That’s how Facebook works, it’s mostly robots doing things, not humans. TBH I think they’re trying to make a drama out of this to gain publicity and support.
But do you really think that being kicked off Facebook is the same thing as government censorship? Surely freedom of the press also involves the freedom of a press to decide what it does not wish to publish?
If anything it shows the importance of not over-relying on private or corporate platforms that might not share our agenda.
I know they can try again, but that was not the point, I was talking about fascism
Of course the US far-right is not the same as the German National Socialists, but then neither were the Italian Fascists or Spanish Nationalists.
But I think there’s enough of a family resemblance to make a comparison valid. The far-right is deeply embedded in a section of US politics and they’re not going away on the 20th January. Liberal-democracy is not the end of history, and history isn’t the ever-forward march of ‘progress’. Unfortuantely, I think we have to take seriously the threat these people could represent.
Capitalism was not fully developed in 1930s Germany? Strange idea to have.
There’s already been other attempts at seizing federal buildings by right-wing extremists in the US. There seems to be a certain level of complicity towards them within the police forces. So why presume they’re unable to get more organised in the future?
This suggests that, at that time, the antivax movement had leftwing support. I don’t know why. Something new imposed by the state?
When I was researching the history of the Socialist League in Norwich I was surprised to find references to ‘anti-vaccinists’ too. If I recall correctly some members were involved in raising funds for a couple that had refused to pay a fine – I’d have to look through my notes to get the exact story.
But don’t kid yourself, there are still people on the ‘left’ today who are anti-vaxxers, including members of the SPGB.
“We cannot live under a Marxist government.”
Seems the spectre of cammunism still plays a very strong role in the national psyche. I guess that’s a feature of conservatism though, you have to be preserving things against something, even if it is little more than the bogeyman.
If you think there’s a singular line of action that is correct in all circumstances, then fine. (That’s idealism, but not the same kind of idealism that is the opposite of materialism as our confused Trotskyist thinks). I don’t think that, you have to leave possibilities open.
For people to be able to vote for socialism it requires a free political system, something which shouldn’t be taken for granted..
