Corbyn and the Media Trap 2 Weekly June 16 2016 1111 Worker Letters
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
A paper of Marxist polemic and Marxist unity weekly June 23 referendum: a n Labour and media workern Beppe Grillo’s M5S rotten choice between n Durham miners two Tory posh boys n Victor Serge review No 1111 Thursday June 16 2016 Towards a Communist Party of the European Union £1/€1.10 Corbyn and the media trap 2 weekly June 16 2016 1111 worker LETTERS Letters may have been class to guarantee full employment, of the family, private property and inaccurate, but they were basically in Derby. The EU does not protect shortened because of the NHS), and the big thing that the state does go further, adding a true. It is a provable historical fact that worker rights because it was the space. Some names is different about this period is discussion of how things then changed the Nazi regime (though not Hitler sacrifices of the Tolpuddle Martyrs may have been changed the existence of an apparently - which might also be instructive - of personally) approved of Zionism and the formation of trade unions and economically and technologically how such ancient collectivities gave before World War II. They shared the worker associations that increased the Positive impact thriving USSR (think the panic way to another kind: the private- wish to prevent the assimilation of bargaining power of the working class I write in response to Arthur Bough’s engendered in the west by Sputnik - property, hierarchical kind. In other Jews, and the claim that Jewishness is in the UK. letter (June 9), responding to my my mother, as an academic librarian, words, how we got from there to not primarily a matter of religion. The Greek people have been intervention (Letters, June 2) in was sent off to learn enough Russian here. We need not accept every detail Ken’s (inaccurate) claim that Hitler forced onto starvation rations by the the ongoing polemic between him to catalogue accurately the Soviet in the Origin to see the wisdom of had supported Zionism “before he greed of the EU and its controllers in and Mike Macnair, which has been science publications that Leicester accounting for such a transition of went mad” and decided to exterminate the international banker cartels. The broadly about the nature of social University Library had decided how Eden was spoiled. This, after all, the Jews may seem to Toby as implying treachery seen by Jeremy Corbyn democracy and its usefulness in to start buying). This difference is is the point of historical materialism: that in the (alleged) earlier phase and his trade union enforcer, Len the advancement of working class reflected in Eric Hobsbawm’s use of how we got where we are. Hitler “was quite a reasonable bloke”; McCluskey, should not be ignored, control of society. the phrase ‘The Golden Age’ for the It may beOrganised by Big Ride but this presupposes that support for following the ‘Workers’ independence I shall confine myself to a broad- period, because of these gains. For Palestine: www.redspokes.co.uk/ Zionism is necessarily reasonable - a from Europe day’ on June 23. brush response to what I see as the Whatever we now think - or we thebigride. that the private-property belief not shared by Ken (or by me). The Rail, Maritime and Transport two main points raised in Bough’s think that workers in the west on ‘father-right’ societies developed as Clearly, Ken was deprecating Zionism union under the leadership and letter (anything more would entail the whole then thought - about the separate clans (as with Abraham in by associating it with Nazism, not guidance of the sadly departed Bob something longer than I imagine balance of positive and negative Genesis, or the Greeks) - an alternative exculpating Hitler by associating him Crow was not a rightwing capitalist the Weekly Worker would be willing qualities of the USSR, the idea that social organisation that came to replace with Zionism. lackey of the UK and EU elite. It to print in its letters section). I shall its existence had no effect whatsoever or conquer the more collectivist kind Moshé Machover was actually the representative of also not engage in a point-by-point on the attitude of western capital to in an evolutionary play-off. Or that email hardworking railway workers. analysis of areas where I think its own labour force is laughable: the the collectivist tribes themselves The enemy inside our ranks are the that Bough has misunderstood my power of capital had been overthrown were transformed, once they began White coats turncoats like Corbyn who come from intended meaning in a letter that in a large portion of the globe, which to store a surplus - as the Gravettians Maren Clarke claims that my attack a far more privileged background I wrote rapidly and in a possibly raised the potential for the growth of central Asia did by freezing meat on Marx’s theory of value is absurd than working class council house over-concise style that was at points of the idea in western working class (their social organisation incidentally (Letters, June 9). To me, what is absurd lads like myself and the many trade perhaps open to misconstrual. consciousness that the overthrow of being both settled and sending out is using the labour theory of value to union members I am proud to call To take Bough’s most theoretical capital was possible. Put alongside bands of hunters). Of course, we know explain the present crisis of capitalism. my friends. In 1970 the Equal Pay passage first: his last two paragraphs this the presence of mass communist of more recent social formations, in That was brought on by the peaking of Act became law and survived even seem a pretty good summary of part parties in many countries in western which property was and is held in a global oil production, leading to rising the Thatcher government. It was not of the argument of Capital Vol 1, as Europe, the programmatic closeness collectivist ‘communist’ fashion, but energy prices, which trigger recession because of the EU and its invisible it might be wilfully misinterpreted of the Labour Party left in this where this doesn’t guarantee equality. and the temporary collapse of these and non-existent worker protections by a bourgeois economist, so that it country to the CPGB’s British road to Furthermore a larger society same prices. that the equal pay principle survived. would support the idea that, although socialism programme, the perceived constructed of an alliance of clans My criticism of the labour theory It was because of the resistance that surplus value is extracted from need in the US for anti-communist may have meant that the loyalty of of value suggested it was a ‘time’ would be organised by the trade workers under capitalism, this is all to witch-hunts; then the idea that members to their own particular theory of value, which argues that the union movement in the UK. the good, because economic growth western capital was not influenced family or ‘nation’ led to one clan labour time spent making something A ‘workers’ Europe’ is a false through the accumulation of capital in its political behaviour within it gaining dominance over the others, determines its value. I argued that and forlorn objective because the benefits everyone equally, workers own states by the existence of the even if within it men and women that time is a mental abstraction, and I international and European class elite and capitalists alike. However, USSR seems naive. The USSR, from were more equal than they were later. understand that most people, including who created the EU, and who draw Bough completely sidesteps the the point of view of western capital, Remember, Cleopatra became ruler of scientists, believe in the reality of 99.99% of its collective benefits, will rest of the argument of Capital - ie, represented the apogee of latent Egypt because of her membership of time. But, whether you believe in not permit it to be transformed into everything that suggests that the revolutionary action lying ‘behind’ the right family. time or not, to argue that labour time an association of workers and trade need for capital to accumulate (and the social democracy of its own Thinking of Egypt, we can also determines the value of anything is unionists mutually working for their at times not accumulate) stands in working class. note how religious ideas might have purely arbitrary and subjective. own providence. opposition to the interests of workers One also has to think of the helped in the development of class Marx derives value from abstract We don’t need the banker and leads to periodic economic crisis, experiences of the first half of the society: a ruler who asserts closeness labour time. But abstract labour time institutions of the EU to do that; we unemployment, etc. 20th century. Capitalism was widely to god - whether Abraham, Pharaoh or is a mental construct. That is the can do it through pre-existing worker The rest of Bough’s letter seems seen as leading to two world wars Louis XIV - is in a stronger position to meaning of the term ‘abstract’. Real networks and through the digital to assume that I and Macnair are and the depression: socialism/ tell others what to do. labour is concrete and the dialectical transformation of communication. asserting that all gains within communism was widely seen as Way back when, the evolutionary opposite to the abstract labour from I am in regular contact with people capitalism by the working class are offering a way out of, or guarantee of advantage of a bonding religion which Marx derives value.