KAZ
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Yuck! How vile. Of course we should be dismissive of Corbynistas. What kind of goddamn Spugubber are you? It’s the wanky Labour Party. To say nothing of green whingers. The “relationship between their politics and capitalism” is quite simple. They accept capitalism as a given, meaning their whining, puking and simpering is quite useless. What about the poor? What about the environment? Capitalism screws the poor. Capitalism screws the environment. Fuck capitalism. This sort of simplicity and oppositionism is why the MLs are thriving.
Yes indeed. An excellent analogy which goes further since the utopian socialists had different ideas about the final outcome also (so far as such things were made plain). To extend it to anarchists has a point but in modern terms is stretching it a bit. Freedom, so far as it exists anymore, are pretty much social insertionists these days, more class struggle than idpol bungle.
How far has Shitegeist deviated from Fresco? My recent exchange on Faecesbook suggests not very far. Or rather far enough for their bhoy to throw up his hands in horror at my accusations of elitism and technocracy. Despite it being blatantly obvious. Old Stalinists usually do that as well. Which kind of leads back to the Seventh. What class, or subsection of the working class if you prefer, do they represent? I am thinking that although utopian style they might couch their propaganda in all-inclusive terms, that professionalism thing is going to appeal to professionals. Or would be professionals anyhow.
Technological determinism. Meh. Surely we should be able to assess from our own experience and knowledge that technological advance is totally unrelated to social advance. We are more alienated from each other, less cooperative, than we were forty years ago. I think it no coincidence that the less developed areas of Spain were more communist during the revolution.
Big fish in small ponds. Well. There is a very very big hole being dug next to the small pond right this very moment. When they connect, we all get to escape. Then all sorts of possibilities open up for the little fish (because none of us is actually big at all).
KAZ has put his finger on another difference. They are “Utopian” moneyfreers who appeal to all people of good will while we are class-struggle moneyfreers. They are Robert Owen. We are Karl Marx. Still we do have the same objective and Owen wasn’t that bad.
Lumme lawks!
That wasn’t my point at all. Indeed, you’ve just demonstrated why concentrating purely on the superficial similiarities (moneylessness) and differences (class) is erroneous.
Libertarian communists and Frescoists do not share a common goal. They are technocrats who aim at a society run by professionals – something thoroughly anti-socialist. Free access to them is a product of technological advance a la Star Trek. To the libcomma, universal distribution is a consequence, and a fairly minor one at that, of common ownership and control.
Obviously, I’ve swallowed the Seventh whole but fuck these guys. Collaboration my arse. My current lot did some “round-tables” with some nearly theres. And now we have to not answer the door when they ring. I kid you not. When the left communists turn up we hide behind the settee and pretend no one’s at home. God knows what the Shitegeisters would be like if you encouraged them.
And Robert Owen was that bad. He was an appalling person with an appalling history of fucking good workers about. The original labour bleeder.
Howdy!
Not really the place but kind of connected since the MFP is its political wing. Has the esspeegeebee ever properly analysed Zeitgeist? I know there’s this:
but by focusing on class it misses most of the serious flaws of Shitegeist.
Or a thread on this? Maybe it’s there. Let me go find the search button.
Your forum ain’t got no thumbs up signs otherwise you’d get one for that. What about the wimmin though?
And James Connolly used the phrase as well:
The “labour fakir” full of guile,
base doctrine ever preaches,
And whilst he bleeds the rank and file
tame moderation teaches.
Yet, in despite, we’ll see the day
when, with sword in its girth,
Labour shall march in war array
to seize its own, the earth.That’s from Songs of Freedom that is. Dated 1907.
The SLP, under De Leon, had always been wrong on the union question. In 1896 they had set up “socialist” unions in opposition to the pure and simple unions of Samuel Gompers but they did give the working class movement such expressive phrases as “labour fakir (or faker)” and “labour lieutenants of the capitalist class”.
Who did done say that? It do be one of them Soshy blokes. Back in ’68. Knew I’d got it from somewheres.
Yeah, obviously the Scrotey isn’t referring to mendicant wonderworking monks. Just saying (badly) that is the derivation of the term (ultimately from the Arab word for poverty). The street or circus fakir used the “mysticism of the east” to sell his wares. Some even put on fake turbans and smeared their face with brown to give that impression. MW is an American dictionary and this supports my theory that the term “Labour Fakir” is a De Leonism. I question whether “fakir” used to refer to a seller of nostrums or a trickster was in widespread use in England even at that time. However, I do not have a handy Edwardian around to interrogate.
“Fakir” is I believe a De Leonism. Short for Labour fakir. A wordplay on fakir – popularly an Arab wonder worker (although a faqr is actually an ascetic Sufi monk). Sarcastically playing on the resemblance to faker as you say. De Leonisms. No one gets them. Because they’re shite. Or it could be a phonetically rendered cockney swearword. Which would be appropriate given his post Rebellion activities.
Oh yeah and Lehane was probably responsible for the pages of the EC minute book what have been stuck together. Something in there he didn’t like I reckon. That or someone found the Party porn stash. This is not so bad as it sounds as Edwardian porn shows naked lady ankles. Only gensec to have his name engraved on the party seal he was.
Howdy! Backslidery reformist trollboy here. No idea where the writer got their info on Lehane. Lehane was vocal *for* the expulsion of the industrial unionists. Indeed so much that he wanted to have the Bexley branch minutes censored (after they had been expelled on his jackboot orders). And when the EC refused to do this, he wanted to have them removed (expelled and shot) as well. His lot got the boot instead. Bit like the Peckham dispute of 1914-15, when a newsagent signing a petition against restrictions on paperboy’s hours led to everyone who wasn’t in favour of him being charged and expelled were themselves charged and expelled. And then anyone who wasn’t in favour of those blokes being charged and expelled were themselves threatened with being charged and expelled. And so ad infinitum. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t the editor of the Socialist Standard either. Anyway. SPGB dispoots. At least it weren’t about transies in the toilets back then. Have you got any transies? You could gender the toilets just so your jolly femmos could have something to talk about. The slightly nicer upstairs one for ladies. The slightly more unpleasant downstairs one for laddies. And transies. Unless they’re f to m. In which case, they have to go upstairs. You’ll need a toilet committee.
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ALB:
Isn’t this just a really good reason not to do elections? It’s all very well saying that a socialist representative would be answerable to the party, but, in real life, there are two problems. 1. Any representative is ultimately responsible to h** constituents, not just those who voted for h** – they are not party delegates. 2. It would be totally impractical for h** to constantly refer back to the party on every issue.
This would be a really good reason for doing the Sinn Fein tactic (recently rejected – I keep my hand in lad!). If the representatives are only elected for the purpose of closing the place down (I could go for that) then these sort of problems are completely meaningless. And surely that’s what they are, really, for.
Robbo
It’s not a matter of whether cops can be class conscious (or have socialist consciousness which is quite another thing altogether). Clearly they can. It’s what the role of the police is. This “radical transformation” of yours is a magicwand: “But in our not-semi-state, the police will be totally different.”
You clearly have not understood the idea of substitutionism. This has nothing to do with the class composition of the party, but concerns the existence of the party itself. Trotsky himself, naturally, never drew this conclusion. However, it is inherent in the ‘Party Idea’ – that the working class can be organised into a party.
KAZ
“In the interest of intellectual honesty, I should point out that, though we didn’t intervene in the argument between the ACG and CWO over the “semi-state”, our position would have been closer to that of the CWO. After all, we argue that the working class should take over control of the state (via elections and parliament), lop off its undemocratic features, and use it to dispossess the capitalist class and coordinate the introduction of socialism. You could even describe this residual state as a “semi-state” if you wanted (but we’re not going to as this is Lenin’s term). And of course, once socialism had been established, it would disappear, with any useful administrative parts being incorporated into the democratic administrative of socialist society.”
Eee! Well. So SPGB semi-state disappears. Like ferret up trouserleg. What happens if them democratically controlled and communally owned cops and tanks prove administratively “useful” to the “working class” (or rather to the SPGB members substituting for them “via elections and parliament”)? Call me a sceptic but frankly I’m doubtful, very doubtful indeed.
