ZJW
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The (really, media-led it seems) long-term obsession foisted upon anglophones about the Académie française is bizarre.
With the exception of (superficially) laissez-faire English, *all* languages that come to my mind have some sort of official regulatory body. Some of them concern themselves only with lexicon (or a limited aspect of which, say, Norwegian — both Bokmaal and Nynorsk — translations of recent technical terms coined in English), others also with pronunciation, not to mention syntax (grammar).
This applies to languages big and small, oppressor and oppressed. Irish Gaelic … Breton … .
(I say ‘superficially’ because the formal lack of such a body for English has of course in no way stood in the way of Geordie etc etc being stigmatised.)
I will repeat here what I pointed out in #200677 in 2020:
‘[T]here are two ‘Chris Wright’s. There is that dumb one, and there is also this very good one: https://libcom.org/library/stupid-regulators-greedy-financiers-or-business-usual-chris-wright ‘
The ‘dumb one’ means that reformist promoter of cooperatives whose name has come up on this forum from time to time. The article I linked in the post above to is by the good one.
(And I still recommend his critical summary/review of the book by Mattick Jnr. )
Replying to DJP’s #243461
DJP:
I’m a bit confused. The book, says AK Press, is a by a Zoe Baker. The thesis, on which I understood you to say it’s based, is by an Oscar Addis . The same person?
In any case, I read the Oscar Addis thesis some six to ten months ago and only retain what may be a caricature memory of it: that it contrasts anarcho-syndicalists pursuing reforms vs insane anti-reform insurrectionalist-immediatists.
Your reading was doubtless more useful/positive than what I recall of it. What did you get out of it?
I am replying to ALB’s #184610, the speculative last sentence of which is: ‘I think Marx would have been influenced by Moritz Hess (as he then was) who, the following year, published an article advocating communism as a moneyless society’
Ok, today in the forum Almamater wrote:
‘The SPGB said this about Kautsky in 2002 : Marx learned his socialist ideas from the communist workers he met when he lived in Paris in 1843 and 1844.’
It was very likely this in 2002 (but what issue/what article of SS?) that gave me the idea that — as I said in my https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/topic/zionism-and-anti-semitism/page/5/#post-184594 — that ‘The fact of the matter is that Marx got his initial communism from Frenchmen […].
But what what is the textual or biographical etc evidence or proof for it?
Nothing to do with the present war. It’s the ‘intellectual property’ thing.
It’s blocked in Russia as well, and has been since 2018. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis . (Also click the link there for ‘shadow libraries.)
Thanks for telling me that, ALB. It had not occurred to me that it might be blocked in the UK.
Try this, which is the same thing but with .se rather than .ru as the domain:
https://sci-hub.se/10.1163/156920606777829140(A so-called ‘mirror site’.)
If for some reason even this is blocked, tell me, and I will simply email the pdf to you (an 18 PDF-page article), and anyone who wants it can get it from you.
I should have said:
1) I’m posting this not to advertise the perhaps not too interesting book but rather the great critical review of it. The review could well have been titled ‘Marxist Anti-Leninism: Stupid vs Intelligent’.
(Though, there are parts starting from ‘What about today?’ that are a bit heady for a person of my modest political-cognitive capacities.)
2) If you (DJP?) think you have read the review before, maybe you haven’t. It’s not entirely the same version as posted to libcom. This is the 2006 version printed in Historical Materialism. The one on libcom was the original from 2003.
Lizzie can read in full the article from which TM quotes, here:
According to right-populist T Carlson, Trump is being persecuted because he’s anti-war: https://twitter.com/i/status/1668747661028081664 . (13 minutes)
‘Criticise our wars and you are disqualified’.
The People’s Party that Movimiento mentions: https://www.peoplesparty.org .
Along with the Libertarian Party it is part of this left-right coalition against continued US support for the Ukraine side in the war:
Rage Against the War Machine: ( https://rageagainstwar.com/demands )
Thank you ALB, that is certainly very clear.
Now, no pertinence to your clarification of the SPGB’s practice and position as against that of others, purely regarding the history of the Mattick group being called a ‘party’, the Roth book (online here: https://shorturl.at/cqrCE ) has come to mind, and looking in it:
‘The colleagues from the Proletarian Party [ie a ‘left split’ from Keracher’s party that joined the Mattick people -ZJW] wanted an identifiable organisation: thus the United Workers Party (UWP) was formed. […] Mattick was agnostic about the name, taking his lead from Canne Meijer and the Dutch colleagues who already referred to themselves as a ‘Group of Council Communists’ in order to avoid the party-designation. This same collection of people were variously referred to as the Workers League, the left wing of the Proletarian Party, and the United Workers Party, depending on exactly when the commentator had been informed of the latest developments.’
[…]
‘By the end of 1935, the group no longer referred to itself as the United Workers Party, preferring instead the nomenclature adopted by the Dutch colleagues, Groups of Council Communists. The UWP had never been a political party as commonly understood and its name had caused many ‘needless misunderstandings’.75.’
Footnote 75 reads ‘‘Please Notice’, ICC, January 1936, p. 9’. And that ‘Please Notice’ can be seen in that issue of International Council Correspondence which is here on the Pannekoek Archive site: http://aaap.be/Pdf/International-Council-Correspondence/International-Council-Correspondence-2-02a.pdf .
[…] why don’t you tell the SPGB what it is doing wrong? […]
Excellent point!
Lizzie:
1) How would you ‘fix’ or change the SPGB?
2) Better yet, what ostensibly socialist/communist group (either marx- or anarchist- based) do you find yourself in agreement with?
How are these post-anarchist/post-marxists? https://swiderstand.blackblogs.org/ueber-uns
“Not that there’s anything to disagree with”
If the blurb is accurate, there’s plenty to disagree with.
“… as people engage in activity, they simultaneously change the world and themselves… the means that revolutionaries propose to achieve social change have to involve forms of activity which transform people into individuals who are capable of, and driven to, both overthrow capitalism and the state and build a free society.”
This hasn’t worked in the past, it isn’t working now and there’s no reason to suppose that it will be more successful in the future.
ALB here https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/topic/a-comrade-of-may-1968/#post-206377 framed the matter basically as revolution preceding ideas vs ideas preceding revolution. I.e. the SPGB notion of majority-socialist-consciousness necessary *before* revolution can occur, *not* something that comes about through/during class struggle and/or the act of revolution itself.
Amusingly, the Western Socialist in 1948 published an article by Pannekoek in which he says: ‘The strikers themselves may not be aware of it — neither are most socialists– they may have no intention to be revolutionary, but they are. And gradually consciousness will come up of what they are doing intuitively, out of necessity; and it will make the actions more direct and more efficient.’
‘[1] It probably does but [2] engagement in campaigns for “immediate demands” is dubious too:’
As to ‘1’, how so?
As to ‘2’, but what are ‘immediate demands’? Do you take this to specifically mean political demands (ie reformism)? Because, unless there is some conventional usage to the contrary, to me, this could just as well refer to ‘economic demands’ (over wages, work conditions etc).
(Anyway, even if ‘immediate demands’ are political(-reformist) ones, this has no necessary bearing on vanguardism or not … or has it? )
… and most importantly, what is the difference between what Mattick wrote and what Pannekoek is quoted as saying? I don’t see it.
Does Leon regularly read this forum? If not, someone will please call his attention to what appears under the asterisks (which I have already posted under China Miéville’s not too good list of ’50 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Works Every Socialist Should Read’ ( https://shorturl.at/izEHU ) .
I also call to his attention the book (review of which, actually) already linked to in post-#243351 : Review: “Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune 2052-2072” by M.E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi
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According to the Encyclopedia of Science-Fiction, James Cooke Brown wrote a ‘sf novel, ‘The Troika Incident: A Tetralogue in Two Parts’ (1970), [in which] astronauts from the USA, France and the USSR are shot forward by a century. There they discover a Utopia – built on lines that combine Edward Bellamy and William Morris, […]’
Readers of this forum with an interest in planned languages will know James Cooke Brown as the inventor of Loglan, (whose uglier successor is Lojban). As for use of this language in his novel, according to another source: ‘ “In the story, the futuristic society uses a language called Panlan. But the blurb on the book jacket called it Loglan”, says an associate’s reminiscence about him.’
