At the Parting of the Ways, by Hermon Titus
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Corporate Governance and Impossibilism
CRESC Working Paper Series Working Paper No. 48 Corporate governance and impossibilism Ismail Erturk, Julie Froud, Sukhdev Johal. Adam Leaver, David Shammai, Karel Williams CRESC, The University of Manchester January 2008 For further information: Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK Tel: +44 (0)1908 654458 Fax: +44 (0)1908 654488 Email: [email protected] or [email protected] Web: www.cresc.ac.uk The authors acknowledge the support of the ESRC under a Business Engagement Scheme award where CRESC and KPMG are partners. David Shammai works for KPMG and Karel Williams is co- director of CRESC. Ismail Erturk, Julie Froud and Adam Leaver teach at Manchester Business School while Sukhdev Johal teaches at Royal Holloway Management School. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and not the organizations they work for . CRESC Working Papers Corporate Governance and Impossibilism Corresponding Author: Karel Williams ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) 178 Waterloo Place The University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL United Kingdom Fax: +44 (0)161 275 8986 Tel: (mobile UK) 0777 55 14173 [email protected] Abstract This paper presents a mixed methods analysis of proceduralised corporate governance as a technical practice which is “ impossibilist” because it not only inflates expectations but sets fundamentally unattainable objectives. An initial review of the systematic empiricist literature shows how disappointment with corporate governance is justified empirically because changes in procedure and new mechanisms (such as the insistence on more independent NEDS) have little ascertainable positive effect on shareholder value and firm performance. -
Green Questions
Debating Green Strategy—6 lola seaton GREEN QUESTIONS s time rolls on and the ipcc’s deadlines for reducing the rise in global temperatures get closer, the prospect of climate catastrophe looms larger, and the problem of how to avert it becomes ever more pressing. This is the question that has Abeen under discussion in recent numbers of nlr. The debate has fea- tured interventions from a number of distinct positions, on both sides of the Atlantic and across different political generations. Herman Daly, a pioneer in the field of ecological economics, was quizzed on his pro- gramme for a steady-state system by Benjamin Kunkel, n+1 founding editor and author of Buzz. Canadian environmental historian Troy Vettese argued for a pollution-shrinking ‘half-earth’ project of natural geo-engineering and eco-austerity. Taking the opposite tack, the radical economist Robert Pollin called for massive global investment in renew- able energy. In the current number, uk-based scholar-activists Mark Burton and Peter Somerville reply with a defence of ‘degrowth’. Still to come are contributions from an eco-feminist perspective and from the global South.1 At this mid-point in the debate, it may be helpful to pause and take stock. As well as putting forward their own solutions, the contributors have responded—sometimes with assent, but often in the form of rebuttals or correctives—to each other’s. The result of this direct engagement is that, reading the texts in sequence, one feels one has witnessed a con- versation. Yet, in a conversation stretched across twelve months and congealed in text, the latest voices can become the loudest—having both the opportunity to respond to everything that has come before, and the privilege of going temporarily unanswered. -
Revolution, Not Reform
Revolution, Not Reform Revolution, Not Reform by Jordan Levi Published by: The World Socialist Party of the United States P.O. Box 44024, Boston, MA 02144 September, 2019 ISBN 9781097623600 Dedicated to Earth and all of its offspring past, present, and future. May we make it through these trying times with sound reason. “In modern agriculture, as in the urban industries, the increased productiveness and quantity of the labour set in motion are bought at the cost of laying waste and consuming by disease labour-power itself. Moreover, all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a prog- ress in the art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time, is a progress towards ruining the lasting sources of that fer- tility. The more a country starts its development on the foundation of modern industry, like the United States, for example, the more rapid is this process of destruction. Capitalist production, there- fore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth-the soil and the labourer” -Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 1, Chapter 15, Section 10 Table of Contents Acknowledgments ...................................................................... 7 Foreword ...................................................................................... 9 Preface ......................................................................................... 11 Introduction: Dystopia ............................................................ -
Latin America: Muddy Road Ahead
No. 21 • LATIN AMERICA ISSUE• $2OO H EMPLOY LIS M O EN B T world A socialist review Journal of the World Socialist Movement in the United States Latin America: Muddy Road Ahead INSIDE a pre-socialist left? ¡viva la revolución! looking for socialism (in all the wrong places) brazil repeats history is cuba socialist? changing geopolitics review of build it now Latin America’s pre-socialist Left he hot issues in Latin America today are the self-deter- balization, they do not understand that concept either, because mination of nations and anti-imperialism. Both concepts globalization is only the wide spread of the capitalist mode of Tare false, because they drag the working class into the production, which is creating the proper conditions for a new trap of nationalism. Class struggle is not mentioned by any of society. They think that the spread of poverty, hunger and the political leaders, and the Left is not mentioning it either, unemployment is caused by globalization only, but they do not despite the fact that there is not any kind of homogeneity of say that it is a by-product of the capitalist system itself, and interests within any nation; every nation has antagonistic inter- that all those consequences are very normal for capitalism. As ests between the rulers and the working class. for [neo]liberalism, that concept is totally incorrect, because On a practical level, there is a lot confusion going around liberalism does not exist anymore; today the state is participat- in Latin America regarding leaders like Chávez, Castro and ing more in the economy than in prior years. -
1 Socialist Standard March 2020
Socialist Standard March 2020 1 Editorial Towards a Disunited Kingdom? The turmoil of the Brexit process has of the 2008 financial crisis, many workers It must be noted that the electoral exacerbated the fissures within the UK, turned away from the mainstream successes of the SNP and Sinn Féin do not which threaten to tear it apart. The capitalist parties. In Scotland, this helped always reflect support for their respective Scottish National Party leader, Nicola the SNP to secure a majority in the 2011 aims of an independent Scotland and a Sturgeon, seized on the fact that the elections for the Scottish Parliament and a united Ireland, but more often a deep majority of Scottish voters opted to landslide in the 2015 General Election. dissatisfaction with the political status remain in the EU, and is demanding a The Irish border has been in contention quo. Nevertheless, these parties will use second independence referendum. The since 1921. However, with the repression their increased leverage to push for their border between the North of Ireland and of the Civil Rights movement in the aims. the Irish Republic which appeared to be North of Ireland in the late 1960s, Irish Do the working class have any invisible since the Good Friday agreement republicanism experienced an upsurge interest in whether or not the United became a stumbling block in the Brexit of support. In the 1980s Sinn Féin was Kingdom remains intact? Or should negotiations. Sinn Fein wasted no time in able to capitalise on the outrage that they, as the Left urges them to, support pressing for a border poll which they hope the British government’s response to the an independent Scotland and a united will lead to the reunification of Ireland. -
The Knoxmaxton Affair
Socialist Studies The KnoxMaxton Affair Socialist Studies No.8 Book Review Spanner & The SPGB The Socialist Party Refuses to Debate The KnoxMaxton Affair (How james Maxton M.P., lifelong member of the Independent Labour Party and opponent of the Socialist Party of Great Britain was, in 1987, dressed up afresh by the Claphambased Socialist Party to appear as “the personification of Socialism”). The Independent Labour Party (I.L.P.) The I.L.P, formed in 1983, had established a dominating influence over the Labour Party at the time of the Labour Governments of 1924 and 192931. Twothirds of the Labour MP’s were members of the I.L.P., including Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and many other Ministers. The I.L.P. was a reformist organisation aiming to establish state capitalism (Nationalisation). It claimed to be socialist but what it meant by socialism was set out in its pamphlet “SOCIALISM AT WORK IN QUEENSLAND”. This described the actions of the Labour Government in Queensland in taking over sugar mills, cattle farms, butcher shops, etc. The pamphlet contained this statement: “Workers of Great Britain and Ireland, the policy of the I.L.P. is identically the same as the policy of Ryan’s Socialist Government of Queensland. And what has been done in Queensland can be done in Great Britain and Ireland”. The I.L.P. helped to form the Labour party and was affiliated to it until 1932. It disaffiliated in that year over the issue of the right of I.L.P. members of Parliament to be allowed, on occasion, to vote against Labour Party policies. -
The Bolshevik Revolution and Our Socialist Opposition 1917 2017
Socialist Studies The Bolshevik Revolution and our Socialist Studies No 105, Autumn 2017 Socialist Opposition 1917 2017 The Russian Revolution: A Soviet Bulletin of June 1917 The Bolshevik Revolution and The Origins Of Bolshevism From Our Archives The Russian our Socialist Opposition 1917 Revolution 2017 Bolshevism or Socialism? The SPGB On Leninism and the Legacy of 1917 From Our Archives The Turmoil in When Lenin’s small band placed themselves at the head of Petrograd protests, they came to power promising “Peace, Land Russia – WHERE WE STAND, AUGUST 1991 and Bread! “They also promised “All Power to the Soviets!” In short, they deluded the hungry workers with promises they would not keep. While Lenin and his clique proclaimed this was a Socialist revolution, the Socialist Party of Great Britain argued it could not be. At first the Party’s writers and speakers were hampered by lack of reliable information, as the media information in wartime was unreliable, biased by wartime censorship as well as the usual capitalist bias. Initially, the SPGB had welcomed these revolutionaries – they would at least take Russia’s workers out of the WWI bloodbath! But, even with limited information, it was clear that the essential preconditions for Socialism – an advanced, capitalist, class system and a classconscious, wageslave working class, democratically organised for the overthrow of the wages system and the establishment of Socialism: these simply could not and did not exist in wartorn Russia. The first indepth SPGB assessment was an article The Revolution in Russia – Where it Fails (SOCIALIST SYANDARD, August 1918). -
1 Socialist Standard February 2021
Socialist Standard February 2021 1 Introducing the Socialist Party The Socialist Party advocates a society developing Russian capitalism under a where production is freed from the one-party dictatorship. Both failures have artificial constraints of profit and given socialism a quite different -- and organised for the benefit of all on the unattractive -- meaning: state ownership basis of material abundance. It does not and control. As the Socialist Standard have policies to ameliorate aspects of pointed out before both courses were the existing social system. It is opposed followed, the results would more properly to all war. be called state capitalism. The Socialist Standard is the combative The Socialist Party and the World monthly journal of the Socialist Party, Socialist Movement affirm that capitalism published without interruption since is incapable of meaningful change in 1904. In the 1930s the Socialist Standard the interests of the majority; that the explained why capitalism would not basis of exploitation is the wages/money collapse of its own accord, in response to system. The Socialist Standard is proud widespread claims to the contrary, and to have kept alive the original idea of continues to hold this view in face of the what socialism is -- a classless, stateless, notion’s recent popularity. Beveridge’s of the natural world can have limited wageless, moneyless society or, defined welfare measures of the 1940s were effect and run counter to the nature of positively, a democracy in which free and viewed as a reorganisation of poverty and capitalism itself. equal men and women co-operate to a necessary ‘expense’ of production, and Gradualist reformers like the Labour produce the things they need to live and Keynesian policies designed to overcome Party believed that capitalism could be enjoy life, to which they have free access slumps an illusion. -
The War in Libya
Socialist Studies The War in Libya Socialist Studies No 80, Summer 2011 The Arab Awakening 20 Years of Reconstituted SPGB Do Workers Cause Inflation? The War in Libya Marx and the Machinery of Government Socialism The Labour Government Connection. SPGB and the question of reforms Blair's War For Oil Until recently, Colonel Gaddafi was a friend of Western capitalism, feted by former Labour Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Reform or Revolution Gordon Brown while his son, Saif, whose LSE doctorate was Govan Workers Forum: 1931 monitored by Professor David Held, now writing Ed Milliband’s No 'Right to Work' Under Capitalism political manifesto, and signed off by the Labour peer, Lord Desai, Socialism and Work was a close confidant of Lord Mandelson. In 2005, the Labour government licenced the sale of £29.5m worth of “military Problem of Production & Distribution transport aircraft” to Libya; and in 2009 and 2010 again Commodity Struggle or Class Struggle authorised the sale of “bombing computers” and “military aircraft equipment” (PRIVATE EYE 18th March 2011). In return lucrative oil deals were forged with the Libyan Oil Corporation and BP with a major exploration and production agreement in March 2007. Following the uprisings across Libya in February 2011, Gaddafi’s regime, with a track record of brutality, torture and repression, became once more a pariah State with the ironic spectacle of British Typhoon jet fighters (cost in use of £80,000 per hour) destroying British military equipment bought by the Gaddafi regime, though not before his secret police had used on protestors an assortment of “antiriot shields, body armour, antiriot guns, crowd control ammunition, smoke ammunition, tear gas/irritant ammunition” purchased from British arm manufacturers via Serbia (loc cit). -
1 Socialist Standard March 2021
Socialist Standard March 2021 1 Introducing the Socialist Party The Socialist Party advocates a society developing Russian capitalism under a where production is freed from the one-party dictatorship. Both failures have artificial constraints of profit and given socialism a quite different -- and organised for the benefit of all on the unattractive -- meaning: state ownership basis of material abundance. It does not and control. As the Socialist Standard have policies to ameliorate aspects of pointed out before both courses were the existing social system. It is opposed followed, the results would more properly to all war. be called state capitalism. The Socialist Standard is the combative The Socialist Party and the World monthly journal of the Socialist Party, Socialist Movement affirm that capitalism published without interruption since is incapable of meaningful change in 1904. In the 1930s the Socialist Standard the interests of the majority; that the explained why capitalism would not basis of exploitation is the wages/money collapse of its own accord, in response to system. The Socialist Standard is proud widespread claims to the contrary, and to have kept alive the original idea of continues to hold this view in face of the what socialism is -- a classless, stateless, notion’s recent popularity. Beveridge’s of the natural world can have limited wageless, moneyless society or, defined welfare measures of the 1940s were effect and run counter to the nature of positively, a democracy in which free and viewed as a reorganisation of poverty and capitalism itself. equal men and women co-operate to a necessary ‘expense’ of production, and Gradualist reformers like the Labour produce the things they need to live and Keynesian policies designed to overcome Party believed that capitalism could be enjoy life, to which they have free access slumps an illusion. -
Object of the Socialist Party of Great Britain
Socialist Studies SPGB: Principles and Policy Socialist Studies No.3 Socialist Party's AntiMarxist Friends Declaration of Principles: Clause 4 OBJECT OF THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community. A System of society alludes to the sum total of human relationships and is meant to distinguish us from those who seek to organise cooperative colonies, islands within a sea of capitalism. Socialism is not a colony, not a kibbutz but a system of society in the sense that capitalism, feudalism, and chattel slavery must all be characterised as systems of society. The term “common ownership” should not be confused with such phenomena as state ownership or “public ownership” terms used under capitalism to designate a more direct ownership of certain industries by the capitalist class as a whole. Common ownership implies the absence of ownership and we specify that this common ownership is to apply to the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth. We do not speak here of someone’s personal belongings as some not too discerning opponents of our case delight in inferring. “Democratic control” should speak for itself but the point must be made nevertheless, that in a society wherein the means and instruments of wealth production and distribution are commonly owned it is difficult to conceive of control other than democratic. In order to rule out all possibility of misunderstanding it is necessary to indicate some of the consequences of establishing the socialist system of society summarised above. -
Class Struggle in Any Depth
https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ Theses Digitisation: https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/research/enlighten/theses/digitisation/ This is a digitised version of the original print thesis. Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW A Critical Contribution to an Understanding of the Nature of Soviet Society s j with Special Reference to Working Class Self-Assertion I I' © Neil C. Fernandez June 1995 Institute of Russian and East European Studies A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Social Sciences in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy ProQuest Number: 10391333 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10391333 Published by ProQuest LLO (2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author.