ZJW
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Here, discussion on the book includes intervention by Reynolds himself:A discussant there understood his book to mean ‘Given all the gee-whiz technology of small-scale automated production (like “3-D printers” for plastic goods) — perhaps people will choose a deliberate reformation of social relations.’But Renolds says no:‘I […] do not argue that people will simply choose to abandon capitalism and the wage labor system in favor of distributed production on a communist basis. I instead argue that the communistic tendencies inherent in new forms of production are trapped within the fetters of the old system, much as capitalism’s full flowering required a transformation of the entire society. This is why the recommendation in my book is not for people to buy 3D printers, but to organize for social revolution.’
Re #175811
- That Portland member left the WSPUS sometime in 2015.
2. The WSPUS’s abandoned website gives a very poor impression; it should be taken down. (But no doubt there is no one who will attend *even* to this, not mention keeping it updated.) Any worthy material on it (articles from the old Western Socialist etc) that is not already to be found elsewhere should be reproduced elsewhere.
3) Rather than following in the footsteps of the Australian party, (or of the SLP in the US), honorable suicide should be considered: formally disbanding. Party archives, rather than sitting in someone’s basement or garage, should be transported to the SPGB (or possibly the Canadian party) or given to some university.
Marcos:
With regard to your #154273:
1) I understand your clarification.
2) You say ‘During their [Marx and Luxemburg’s] time the belief was that anti-semitism was a feudal conception,’ […].
Can you tell me in what writings by Luxemburg she dealt with the Jewish Question, or in what secondary literature it has been reported? Obviously you had read things I have not; I have found only scattered remarks by her. I would like to consult her views. Thanks!
I can’t claim it’s all desperately interesting, but for reference sake:‘What Comes Next?: A forum on the end of the two-state paradigm’ : https://mondoweiss.net/forum-state-paradigmSome fifteen worthies (among the better known: Richard Falk, N Finkelstein, N Chomsky, ………) give their views about what might/could happen.(Under present conditions that is. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that doing away with Capital and the State might be the best solution, everywhere.)In neither Chrome nor Firefox does ‘Hi ZJW’ appear. Fortunately automatic log-out seems to occur after closing all tabs.
This problem is no doubt because I still use XP. This this can affect display in browsers.
Still, it’s odd. A few weeks back I could still log out.
CJ Hopkins: ‘Beware the Trumpenleft!’ :
It is exactly as ALB says.And here is a letter from Nicholas Williams touching on the matter: http://www.cornwall24.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=3896 (Second item on that page.)Who is Nicholas Williams? A Celtic linguist and one the main factional leaders in the extremely acrimonious Cornish Revival movement. For our purposes here, the main point of his letter is to show how independence, and also Roman Catholicism, has ill-served Irish Gaelic (and that an independent Cornwall would be of no benefit to the Cornish language but more likely the opposite; though, one might point out, Bretagne in a centralised Fance has done Breton no favors either. Breton is in much worse repair than Irish Gaelic, with a good number of neo-speakers using a form of the language phonologically, lexically, and syntactically incomprehensible to a small body of dying native speakers. This is similar to, but even more severe than, the problem of what’s sometimes called in Ireland ‘urban Irish’ vs native Irish; about which: http://www.gaelport.com/default.aspx?treeid=37&NewsItemID=3726 ; and pp 260~269 of https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/opus4-ubp/frontdoor/deliver/index/docId/691/file/celtic_languages_in_contact.pdfAs for the non-nationalist, seminally Protestant role in the Gaelic language revival, watch this excellent documentary from 2003. In Irish Gaelic with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCDyCiikEjc&feature=youtu.be&t=22 . (Of course the word ‘Gaeilge’ (‘Gaelic’) is consistently translated in the subs as ‘Irish’!)
‘Gaelic’? ‘Irish’? Irish nationalism has come to stigmatise the word ‘Gaelic’ in one specific context: You must never refer to the ‘Irish language’ as ‘Gaelic’ or ‘Irish Gaelic’, either. (Though for American etc audiences concessions may be made.) You can speak of ‘Gaelic football’, ‘Gaelic’ this and ‘Gaelic’ that, and (absurdly) even ‘Scottish Gaelic’ but never ‘ [Irish] Gaelic’. Such use is deemed ‘condescending’, ‘pejorative etc. And here from no less than the ‘Communist’ Party of Ireland: ‘The connotations attached to names derive from the way in which they are used, and by whom. To Irish minds, “Gaelic” is what foreigners call Irish, often with negative attitudes, and this gives it a connotation in Ireland that is completely negative.’ No doubt the real motor behind the attributions of bad connotation is this idea: ‘We are the Irish Nation; our language is thus called “Irish”, and nothing else.’Now *in* Gaelic what is the language called? (1) There exist no such words in Gaelic as ‘Éireannais’, ‘Éirinnis’, or ‘Éiris’ (which, if they existed, would translate to ‘Irish [language]’. (2) *in* Gaelic the language is called — from Munster, to Connacht, to Ulster, to Scotland — the very same thing, variously pronounced (as the anglophonic ear will hear it) as GALE-in, GALE-guh, GALE-ik, and GAL-ik (spelled ‘Gaelainn’, ‘Gaeilge’, ‘Gaeilic (Gaedhilg)’, and ‘Gàidhlig’ .(Of which, all the forms used in Ireland formerly contained the silent ‘dh’ before being eliminated in the spelling reform after WW2 — and thus doing harm to the orthographically clear etymological commonality between the language on the two sides of the Moyle Straits ) .But Pan-Gaelicists in Ireland are happy to use the word ‘Gaelic’. For example, Ciarán Ó Duibhín: http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/~oduibhin/alba/ouch.htm .Those with interest in the history of thwarted Pan-Gaelicism may read with profit ‘Linguistic Pan-Gaelicism: A Dog that Wouldn’t Hunt’ atAnd by Michael Roberts there is this:
I don’t know what happened to the spaces between lines that should be there. Tried editing it. No good. Makes the thing very confusing to read.
General recommendations for uncles:First, never, never give a 12-year old, a 120-year old, or anyone in between, the terrible book by Le Guin. An economy of scarcity or near scracity (Environmentally-determined? Not clear ) coupled with stifling social conformism, quasi-religion, and un-explained bureaucratism. If the White House Announcement on ‘Socialism’ for some reason had dealt with real socialism they probably would have quoted from this book to prove how awful ‘real socialism’ would be.Here are some good choices that come to mind:Pieter Lawrence: The Last ConflictHogan: Voyage from YesteryearRichard Montague: Within the SystemRichard Montague: Frank Faces of the DeadSOLFED: Fighting for Ourselves: Anarcho-Syndicalism and the Class Struggle.The Lawrence book is simply excellent.I have never set eyes on the books by Montegue, can’t get them. But someone on this forum must have read them. Well? All I know is that his non-fiction is certainly great, so perhaps his fiction as well. (Like P Lawrence.)Hogan’s book, although unintentionally so, is socialist-communist to the core. A communist and leaderless society of abundance. And a very good story, after a boring start. The only problem is that near the beginning I recall there are sexual references or innuendo that might not be suitable for a 12-year-old. (But I have no idea what 12-year-olds are like nowadays, especially in an exotic land like the UK, if that is where the hypothetical niece or nephew is so domiciled.)The book by Solfed is not a joke. These A-Sers are, need I mention?, communists, not collectivists. It is very well written (perhaps by J Kay of libcom??), and after reading could well serve as basis for discussion with niece or nephew of What is Not to be Done. (I am surprised to see that the book was never reviewed in the SS.)Introduction
1. The mainstream workers’ movement
2. Radical currents in the workers’ movement
3. Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20th century
4. Capitalism and class struggle since World War II
5. Anarcho-syndicalism in the 21st-century
EndnotesIf I am up to the arduous challenge I will try to make coherent and detailed remarks on both the Walt Auerbach piece in the CWO-allied publication and on the Party’s pamphlet ( which latter I am just starting). In my impatience, a question for Marcos: You said that the Party’s pamphlet ‘takes a much better stand [than] Marx, Engels, and Rosa Luxembourg on the Jewish Question ‘. Please explain: What do you find wrong with their stand
? I would like to consider your reply as I read the pamphlet.I hope that the one on zionism/anti-semitism will be considerably better than this semi- potboiler that the CWO thinks highly of —
https://intransigence.org/2018/07/09/zionism-and-marxism/
— and that it will not contain favorable references to the useless historical-idealists Postone/Frankfurt School.
Hopefully it is written by Stefan or has considerable input from him.
Last but not least, it is to hoped that it is put on line, soon.
CWO translation of short Nuevo Curso article ‘Bolsonaro and the Crisis in Brazil’:
https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2018-10-09/bolsonaro-and-the-crisis-in-brazil
(edit: For the following, I typed the url, just as for the link above, but it has turned into an an (advert-looking) image file? Why? How is this to be avoided?)
Original Spanish at:
https://nuevocurso.org/por-que-gano-bolsonaro-en-brasil/
