July 2011 Socialist Standard

July 2011 Socialist Standard

Editorial:

Britain's care home crisis

Regular Columns

Pathfinders: Fission confusion

Cooking the Books 1: Good capitalism, bad capitalism?

Cooking the Books 2: Profits before petitions

Material World: Money - a waste of resources

Halo Halo: Why a socialist world won't be paradise

Greasy Pole: Calm down and listen

50 Years Ago: Britain and the Common Market

Main Articles

Is the crisis over? Whatever happened to the financial crisis?

Democracy and Capitalism Can capitalism and democracy co-exist?

The archbishop is right “We are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted” (The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams).

Pedalling in ever-decreasing circles A look at the old Clarion Cycling Club

Anyone know a lifestyle anarchist? Keep a look-out for people who are chock-full of undirected, ill-informed revolutionary gusto, but empty of any desire to organise their views into a coherent critique of the world.

What environmentalists are up against The continuing deforestation of the Amazon.

Letters, Book Reviews and Meetings

Letters to the Editors: Reformist charities; World War Two; Plain English

Book Reviews: Property is Theft! A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology. Ed. Iain McKay (AK Press 2011); Marxism and World Politics. Contesting Global Capitalism. Ed by Alexander Anievas (Routledge 2011)

TV Review: Choosing To Die

Film Review: Jumping The Broom

Action Replay: Ring-Fenced

Socialist Party Meetings: Clapham, Glasgow, Birmingham & Manchester:

Voice From The Back

All Right For Some; The Middle Class Myth; A Dog's Life; The Class Divide; Law and Disorder

Rosa by Jonathan Rabb (Random House 2005)

Pimm bobbed his head as if conceding the point. He then took a towel and wiped his face. When he spoke, it was with a focus that was wholly unexpected: "The reason so many of you Reds are Jews, Herr Spartakus, is that a Jew is told to create heaven on earth. The next world, messiahs, fear of hell - never really been the point, has it? The Jew is meant to do it here, now. And the ones who get tired of waiting become Reds because for them, socialism is heaven on earth. The perfect world, and with no God telling them what to do this time. Everyone just as good as the rest. Everyone looking out for the rest. The Red can't tell you how you're supposed to get there - in fact, all he can tell you is what you're not supposed to do and what won't be there - but, still, he thinks he can build it. Sounds familiar, does it?" Pimm paused. "Your Red never loses what makes him a Jew; he simply shifts his focus." Pimm held Jogiches's gaze and then he turned to Hoffner. "You've get my help, Inspector, not because it's good for business, or because the devil I know is better than the devil I don't, but because even if nothing else of what you're saying is true, I have no interest in having one more lunatic tell me what my elimination is part of his grand plan." He shouted to the door. "Zenlo." The man appeared instantly. "We're going east. Tell the boys."

Pimm a Jew and a political one at that, thought Hoffner: the world was full of surprises. At least this one was working in their favour.

The Original Howard Kirk

One of those, 'wish I said/wrote that' quotes:

"Like the spotty, overweight and paralytically shy, radicals would rather not be the way they are. They regard themselves as holding awkward, mildly freakish opinions forced upon them by the current condition of the species, and yearn secretly to be normal. Or rather, they look forward to a future in which they would no longer be saddled with such inconvenient beliefs, since they would have been realised in practice. They would then be free to join the rest of the human race. It is not pleasant to be continually out of line. It is also paradoxical that those who believe in the sociality of human existence should be forced on this very account to live against the grain. To the cheerleaders for Life, it seems unwarrantably ascetic. They do not see that the asceticism, if that is what it is, is in the name of a more abundant life for everyone. Radicals are simply those who recognise, in Yeat's words, that 'Nothing can be sole or whole / That has not been rent.' It is not their fault that this is so. They would rather that it was not." [Terry Eagleton]

Well, apart from the "Like the spotty, overweight and paralytically shy . . ." bit; only so much self-awareness in one post thank you very much, comrades. Let's take it one post at a time.

Debsian Ed also liked the quote. I know that 'cos I nicked it from him. Not sure about some of the comments generated by his post. I'm thinking that 'Snowball' protests a tad too much. And 'JimJay' and his ultra-leftists. Who are these fucking radicals who supposedly "denounce pay rises for nurses"? Don't tell me it's your local aged SPGBer. That urban myth sprang up around about the same time as the one about a young Charlie Chaplin being the entertainments officer of the old Elephant and Castle branch of the SPGB. I'm guessing JimJay's ultra-leftists wandered in from Joseph Conrad's 'The Secret Agent'.

But there is a hell of a lot of truth in Eagleton's quote. The day after the revolution, I'll be tending Rosa's geese whilst listening to early Talking Heads on my iPod.

Rupert, Bear With Me

I sometimes wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the day at the thought of Rupert Murdoch deleting my Socialist Standard MySpace page.

The fear's not so much from losing the page itself. These things happen, and I'd either start the page again or channel my energy into something more productive . . . maybe counting the cracks in the sidewalk outside our apartment building.

No, the real tragedy would be that there are some real gem-like articles that I have both cut-and-pasted and transcribed onto the page in the past two years, and if the page was to disappear into the cyber-aether one morning that'd be a lot of one finger typing that would have gone to waste.

With that in mind, I set up Socialist Standard@MySpace as a back-up blog a few months back, but with over 600 articles, book reviews and other ephemera to cut and paste it's taking longer than I thought to fully back up the page. The good news is that I'm about 2/3's of the way there in transferring the material, and that when it's all up to date it will be a good extra resource for impossibilism on the net.

Other plusses are that the label system that blogger provides means that it will be easier to access - say - all the Pathfinder columns from the Socialist Standard, and the exhaustiveness of blogger's search facility. For all the visibility that MySpace can provide, it's a pain for burying away archived articles. Once an article disappears off your main page, it's nigh on impossible to locate it again. The back up blog will allow me - and others - to find old articles, and I will now also be able to locate the original article on MySpace via the hyperlink provided. (Just click on the title of any post.)

As I've stated, it's a rather slow and laborious process transferring over from one site to the other, so I'm having to do it in stages. Being the contrary swine that I am, I'm picking months at random and I've just finished backing up the month of December 2006. Linked below are a few articles from that month that deserve a wider audience:

From the LibCom website: The Actor and the King by Ret Marut - a short story

A Jim Plant article from the SLP newspaper, The People: Luxemburg in China?

A 1974 paper from the old Aberdeen group of the SPGB: Marx v Lenin - What Kind of Revolution

From the WSPUS MySpace page: Class Politics in the USA - Interview with WSPUS and Union Activist

A Steve Coleman talk from the SPGB's 1998 Summer School: Is The Socialist Party Marxist?

Book Review from the July 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard. Jack Fitzgerald reviews Karl Kautsky's 'Foundations of Christianity': The Origins of Christianity

From the WSM Website: Shelley: a socialist poet

Editorial from the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard: Professional Revolutionaries

You'll notice that the articles cherry picked are not from the Socialist Standard from that particular month. Nothing against the December 2006 issue. It's a fine issue: I've been known to carry spare copies around with me.

No, it's just that articles from current Standards are easy enough to access and the purpose of the back-up blog is to ensure that the older, quirkier stuff is saved (and cited) for posterity.

More months to follow. Watch this space.

May Day - a link or three

Happy May Day, and all that. The day when workers (should be) celebrating their strength as a class, and when Liverpool (should be) dumping Chelski out of the Champions League. A couple of links to throw your way:

May the First - Workers Day Alan J. does the honours at his Mailstrom blog with a reprinting of this piece on May Day from the Socialist Standard from a few years back. Still relevant . . . and then some.

Rosa Luxemburg's 'What are the Origins of the First of May?' Rosa Luxemburg: still relevant . . . and then some.

Mondo MayDay 2007 Larry states that his blog carries: "The most complete preview of MayDay 2007 worldwide anywhere on the web". And who am I to argue?

World Socialist Party May Day Statement - May Day 2007 Shamelessly nicked from the WSPUS MySpace page.

Wofür? Der Text eines Flugblatts anläßlich des 1. Mai 2007 Two years of being a smart alec - who always came bottom in the exams - and all round pain in the arse to Ms Allen means that I can't read this May Day statement. However, I have to give it a plug nonetheless, as it is penned by Norbert, a good comrade from Frankfurt who has set up a German language blog promoting the politics of the WSM and the IWW.

And before I forget, I have to agree with Matt that it's nice to see Socialist Courier blog carrying an image to mark May Day that is not more outdated than Alan J.'s record collection.

And don't forget, May 1st is also International Shalamar Day. So be sure to sit back and listen to this plastic piece of genius, whilst singing the praises of Howard, Jody, Jeffrey and the International Working Class.