ZJW
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While waiting for Robbo to eventually write a piece about it, the so far only published reaction to ‘Forest and Factory The Science and the Fiction of Communism’ has been this: https://www.black-lamp.com/posts/the-cart-before-the-horse-on-labor-time-accounting-the-immediate-nature-of-the-transition-to-communism-and-scientific-utopias
I found it very unfocused. (Seems to be a labor-voucher enthusiast.)
Harry Cleaver has a new book (2025) … or is it?
https://brill.com/display/title/70910
Chapters can be read online there further down the page at the per-chapter ‘download PDF’s.
Book title:
The Fragile Juggernaut —
Marx & Engels on Capitalism, Class Struggle and CrisisRe Alan’s https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/topic/do-we-need-the-dialectic/page/25/#post-97766 above from 11 years ago, this professor Lanza has just co-written — as vehicle for his views — a science-fiction novel with Nancy Kress.
On that page is posted ‘How socialism can organise production without money – Adam Buick and Pieter Lawrence ‘
Three days ago a person bearing the handle ‘RJ7’ posted a three-paragraph comment, starting: ‘While I am sympathetic to the idea of getting rid of money, and its cousin “labour time”, there seem to be several practical issues, which prevent that ideal being implemented in any group of people larger than maybe 100.
Robo wonders: ‘I wondered if anyone has had any interaction with them’.
From the looks of that quote given by h.moss, just more leftist flotsam.
Me, what I ‘wonder’ is why nothing ever came of the notion expressed by ALB (here: https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/topic/two-ex-socialists-go-funny/page/6/#post-249333): ‘This is the sort of discussion — and the sort of people we should be discussing with […]’. regarding the article linked to in that thread titled ‘Forest and Factory: the Science and the Fiction of Communism’. This was nearly one year ago now.
(Of the two writers (the one less responsible for the criminally repellent writing style, I believe) one can be contacted like so: https://designformanufracture.com/about .)
old-music.alt
A microtonal piece by Nicolà Vicentino (16th century). The octave is divided into 31 notes.
Internationalist Perspective (ie Sander and others) report on three internationalist anti-war meetings/conferences, one of which was Prague: https://internationalistperspective.org/capital-beats-the-war-drums-pro-revolutionaries-gather-against-it
(This may be the seventh or eighth commentary I’ve seen about Prague by anarchists, left-communists etc. Five months ago now and they keep coming!?)
Regarding the third event, in Poznan, which IP didn’t go to, the following caught my attention:
‘So we would have liked to participate in this year’s camp, despite some misgivings [1] but it wasn’t possible.’
Here’s the footnote:
[1] ‘For example, the invitation to the event announced that there would be a ‘care team’ with the responsibility to make sure that there would be no sexism at the camp and with the power to decide that people can no longer participate. Seriously, comrades? We need a sex police? In its wokish zeal the same text also reminds people to use the right pronouns and refers, as a guide for correct behavior, to a book titled “Männlichkeit verraten” (“Betraying masculinity”). What an awful perspective! Even if it is meant provocatively rather than literally, it’s a bad slogan. Never should we urge people to betray what they are (race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, etc). Conflating masculinity with sexism and patriarchy, like conflating ‘whiteness’ with racism, is not only wrong and demagogic but also counter-productive if our aim is class unity and thus the rejection of bourgeois ideological traps like identity politics.’
Astounding.
Well, Don Jr seems to have failed miserably. Marco Rubio!
As to social media:
How some Harris-supporters deal with the shocking percentages of multi-ethnic votes for Trump ( see https://reason.com/2024/11/08/how-the-gop-became-a-more-multicultural-party )?
Like this:
And if that weren’t demonstrative enough, here’s a paragraph from an article on Jazeera.
‘This has prompted traumatised supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris, who had been handpicked to replace the unpopular, ageing incumbent, Joe Biden, to accuse American voters of racism to sexism. “It’s misogyny from Hispanic men, it’s misogyny from Black … who do not want a woman leading them,” insisted one TV anchor, adding that there “might be race issues with Hispanics that don’t want a Black woman as president of the United States.” The hateful tribal rhetoric has also included social media posts calling for any people of mixed race who failed to vote for Harris to be deported and for intensification of the genocide in Gaza due to Arab-American rejection of Harris over her support for the continued provision of weapons to the brutal apartheid state committing it.’
See what Harris-supporter Greg Hatfield wrote:
https://x.com/NobleQAli/status/1854604563384614915“Donald Trump Jr. Vows to Keep ‘Neocons and Warhawks Out’ of Father’s Cabinet: ‘No More Endless Wars’ ‘:
Moo wrote:
‘In my opinion, Trump won because Americans blame Biden for the cost-of-living crisis (due to the myth that governments control the economy, when it’s the other way ’round). Also, protectionism sounds good to workers, even though its an issue that only concerns the capitalist class. ‘Agreed.
Moo also wrote:
‘That Trump positions himself as a racist & xenophobe, & yet, he greatly increased his share of the vote from ethnic minorities.’
Well, *anti-Trump media* so position him, yes. But if you watch/read FOX or Newsmax it’s another story. You say he’s (anti-black) racist, and they come back with ‘Is that so? Then, what about his Platinum Program during his first term?’ And then there are all these Republican black congressmen (or other electees) oozing out of the pores that support him, not to mention the black reporters or anchors on Fox or Newsmax.
As for the anti-migrant thing, it is very easy to be taken in by it. Here is Bannon just after getting out of jail. Government encouragement of mass immigration as a deliberate policy to depress wages, especially of blacks and latinos. ‘The system is rigged against the working class […] we’re going to move past the politics of race with an intermediate stop in the politics of gender which is being forced
on everybody right now we’re going to get to what is important and that’s the politics of money’ etc. Amorphously pretty convincing stuff.(You can stop listening at about 14:30 unless you want to hear him take questions from the press and go on about election-cheating and the like.)
If all Trump/Vance speeches had been written by Bannon, there’d have been no talk of illegal Haitians eating US-passport-carrying dogs and cats (among several other classic Trump statements) and they would have won by a much bigger margin than a mere 50.4% to 48% (so far, according to AP).
In fact, in his victory speech Trump even bragged of support by, among others, Arab-and-Muslim Americans:
‘They had some great analysis of the people that voted for us. Nobody’s ever seen anything like that. They came from, they came from all quarters. Union, nonunion, African American, Hispanic American, Asian American, Arab American, Muslim American, we had everybody and it was beautiful. It was a historic realignment. Uniting citizens of all backgrounds around a common core of common sense.’
An actually rather bizarre speech for Trump in so far as it was marked by lack of gratuitous offensiveness, and reference to migrants was both scant and benign.
Speech transcript:https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-victory-speech-full-transcript-1981234
As a further challenge to some people’s imagination there’s the Arab-American / Muslim vote:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/dearborn-arab-americans-trump-party
And a couple days before the election, the exemplary
self-described ‘extremely liberal’ Democrat Arab-American who not just voted for Trump but campaigned for him:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZqC8q6bpl0&t=168s to 3:37 and then off it, about 50 seconds or so in all.)and also about her, the first three paragraphs here: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/2/why-many-arab-voters-in-michigan-are-flocking-to-trump-ahead-of-us-election
Moo wrote:
‘According to BBC News, 48% of Hispanic-Americans & 50% of Asian-Americans voted for Trump! Can you imagine! ‘
What is the challenge to the imagination supposed to be?
In addition:
‘Trump about doubled his share of young Black men – which helped him among key Democratic voting group. About 3 in 10 Black men under the age of 45 went for Trump, roughly double the number he got in 2020.’ (from https://apnews.com/article/election-harris-trump-women-latinos-black-voters-0f3fbda3362f3dcfe41aa6b858f22d12)
Obviously such voters are not Guardian etc readers or they’d have ‘known better’, eh?
