March 2010 Socialist Standard

March 2010 Socialist Standard

Editorial

X-Factor

Regular Columns

Pathfinders Brave New Epsilons

Cooking the Books 1 Empty hope

Cooking the Books 2 Living without money

Material World CARE: International

Greasy Pole "...Less Equal Than Others...”

Pieces Together Peace Prize?; Debt Ridden Britain; The Gap Widens; "Caring" Capitalism

50 Years Ago Intermingling

Main Articles

Tony Blair and the Chilcot inquiry Does it matter whether the Iraq War was legal or illegal?

Tilting at windmills with a banjo Pete Seeger is now in his 90th year. His songs have always been better than his politics.

What is Real Democracy and How Do We Get It? In a month or so the people of Britain will be asked once again to decide which representatives of the ruling class will rule over them for the next four or five years.

Capitalism breeds inequality A recent report shows that the reformist actions of the Labour government have not been able to reverse the inequalities that capitalism generates.

Ire of the Irate Itinerant Cartoon Strip

Letters, Book Reviews, Meetings & Obituary

Letters to the Editors: Inflation and Quantitative Easing

Book Reviews: Trotsky: a biography by Robert Service; Money by Eric Lonergan; People First Economics edited by David Ransom & Vanessa Baird

Socialist Party Meetings: Clapham, Manchester & Norwich:

Obituary: Cyril Evans

Voice From The Back

Capitalism is worldwide; A Grateful Nation; Class Division; Mother of the Free

DISCLAIMER TIME

Oh shucks, I'm only 30 days late in posting this. Encourage me to be less tardy next month by clicking on lots of links . . .

You know the type. Those "completely demoralized elements, wearing showy bell-bottom pants and sporty haircuts."

Not sure if Jim D over at Shiraz Socialist is blogging with a straight face, but he's unearthed a quote from James P. Cannon for those of you who are sick and tired of always having to fall back on that old George Orwell quote from 'The Road To Wigan Pier'. You know . . . that one.

Yeah, I know the Cannon and the Orwell quotes are not like for like, but they both boil down to the same sentiment. To paraphrase Jean-Paul Sartre: "Hell is other party members."

Mattick on Trotsky

"The masses had to be led; but the leaders could lead only in accordance with their own necessities. The need for leadership of the kind practiced by bolshevism finally indicates nothing else than the need to discipline and terrorize the masses, so that they may work and live in harmony with the plans of the ruling social group. This kind of leadership in itself demonstrates the existence of class relations, class politics and economics, and an irreconcilable opposition between the leaders and the led. The over-towering personality of Leon Trotsky reveals the non-proletarian character of the Bolshevik Revolution just as well as the mummified and deified Lenin in the Moscow Mausoleum."

The above is an excerpt from the article on the political legacy of Leon Trotsky that the German Council Communist, Paul Mattick, wrote in the wake of Trotsky's murder in 1940. It has been recently added to the Marxist Internet Archive through the good work of a comrade who has been transcribing many of Mattick's forgotten texts and book reviews from Mattick's own political journals, New Essays and Living Marxism, as well as from the sadly now defunct World Socialist Party of the United States journal, The Western Socialist.

Well worth checking out.