A paper of Marxist polemic and Marxist unity weekly Can Yanis Varoufakis beat n Letters and debate workern European convention the EU Commission, IMF and n Wolf Hall - power politics ECB? The odds are against n Marxism and art NoLeomar 1045 Conejos Thursday February 12 2015 Towards a Communist Party of the European Union £1/€1.10 Did free speech allow the Nazis to come to power? 2 weekly February 12 2015 1045 worker LETTERS Letters may have been and the difference between the two is no families in mixed clan groupings. In before. The assertion that the proletariat, shortened because of more than the difference between speech central Asia, 30,000 years ago, bands of Miners in contrast to all previous class struggles, space. Some names bubbles of various shapes in a comic foragers came together and hunted from Dave Douglass has forgotten nothing, pursues its battles not in order to establish may have been changed strip. Note, for example, that the notion a common ‘base camp’, where in that but by equal measure has learnt class domination, but to abolish all class of ‘truth’ would be impossible without cold climate somebody also invented nothing. Speaking on behalf of all domination. It is not a mere phrase … Distorted language. (For this view, see the very the method of keeping meat frozen in “battle-hardened, class-conscious It is an illusion, then, to think that the Chris Knight gives a completely interesting book by Wolfram Hinzen and large dug-outs (Finlayson, 2009). This coalminers”, he criticises our errors proletariat can create economic power distorted picture of Noam Chomsky’s Michelle Sheehan, The philosophy of ‘Gravettian’ culture, in achieving a and misjudgements during the miners’ within capitalist society. It can only view on the origin of human language. universal grammar Oxford 2013.) surplus which was location-specific, 1984-85 Great Strike (Letters, February create political power and then transform Knight claims that Chomsky is “arguing Note that the human language faculty became more settled - an innovation in 5 2015). Basically what they amount to (aufheben) capitalist property.” that humans are so utterly different also consists of subsystems which in safety which it probably wasn’t hard to are: If Macnair were to be honest, he from apes or monkeys that the question themselves are not devoted to language, convince the majority to accept. Same 1. Calling for the widening of the would have to admit that he not merely of evolution is irrelevant” (‘What can and which we share with other animals. with herding and agriculture - examples strategic battle between the Thatcher disagrees with Luxemburg, but indeed chimpanzees teach us about human One of them is memory, the other a of which were associated with and government and the National Union agrees with Bernstein - and not Marx. nature?’, February 5). capacity to categorise the outside world. therefore owned by some leading family, of Mineworkers by drawing in other Macnair has no use for Marx’s writings This is utter nonsense. Evolution is, Then there are the perceptual and motor like those of Abraham or Odysseus. sections of the working class. on the 1848 revolution, such as The of course, very relevant, and Chomsky systems, which are used to externalise Separate human societies probably 2. Thinking that a national strike ballot class struggles in France 1848-50, the has never denied it. Humans and apes linguistic expressions: hearing and developed differently and attained would have been advisable. ‘Address to the central committee of or monkeys and, in fact, all the species speech as the most common of them, an evolutionary advantage over other 3. Attacking the idea that nationalised the Communist League’, and The 18th of ‘higher’ vertebrates are very similar. sight and signing for deaf people, groupings, even without war. It is now industries were somehow ‘ours’. Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, nor for Taking a more abstract viewpoint of and even touch for deaf-blind, as, for accepted that Neanderthals were not Comrade Douglass says “we” had much of Marx’s and Engels’ Communist theoretical biology, the same is true of all example, the fate of Helen Keller shows. killed off by homo sapiens but died a strategy - indeed, he says “we”, with manifesto or Marx’s later political the living organisms: the existing forms One of the major tasks of linguistic out on their own. Down the millennia the help of brick-throwing anarchists, writings, such as The civil war in France of life have developed from earlier ones. inquiry is to sort out which component there have been losses and gains with “were winning”. Actually, of course, and Critique of the Gotha programme, This is evolution, an observational and, parts in the human faculty of language each development, but the sociable comrade Douglass is speaking on behalf on which Luxemburg, Lenin and Trotsky after the discovery of the genetic code, are specifically devoted to language, human can be convinced to accept that of no-one except himself. That aside, based their perspectives. But the 1848-50 also an undisputable descriptive fact of and which of them are shared with other a loss in one area is a gain in comfort or maybe he should take a little time to writings were dismissed by Kautsky as nature. physiological functions. security, especially if the arrangement think through a few problems with his those of Marx and Engels “before they The fact that humans have a specific Chris Knight’s story on the origin of is endorsed by compelling religion endlessly repeated account. turned 30”, on the basis of which Kautsky capacity - the faculty of language - does human language is sympathetic, but it and power-politics. In needing to be 1. The miners lost in 1984-85. They said sneeringly that the “communist not make us “utterly different”, any is just that - a story with no scientific convinced though - by mythologies and were left isolated by the TUC and theoreticians” like Lukács produced more than the capacity for echolocation basis. The greatest problem with tales new visions, by ideology - the human Labour Party misleaders. a “series of absurdities” in a “childish in some species of bats separates them like that is that they don’t analyse the animal shows that they are not inevitably 2. If you cannot get people to vote for game” (‘A destroyer of vulgar Marxism’, from the rest of nature. The sophisticated structure of human language at all. committed to one path. In being able to you, it is unlikely they will be willing to 1924). This is what Macnair accuses me ability of migratory birds to navigate, Such an analysis requires hard scientific change their mind, they show they are fight for you. That there were so many of doing. It is consistent with Macnair’s the behaviour of social insects, and all work. But without such an analysis it is not fleshy robots. scabs in Notts, the NUM’s second approach, which Luxemburg called the the specific properties of the various impossible to present any even slightly Our job now is to convince the largest area, was a huge problem. revisionist “opportunist method.” species of living creatures have evolved, reasonable account on how nature gave human animal that it would be better 3. Arguments about coal (and steel) Macnair adopts the Bernsteinian ultimately, from unicellular organisms. us the wonderful ability to organise our - more sociable, more self-satisfying being ‘ours’ came from the top. revisionist method of the supposed The tough question is how. thoughts and make them understandable - to try something other than living in Leaving aside Arthur Scargill, I am sure linear-progressive development of Chris Knight refers to the version to our fellow humans. an increasingly broken-down society, comrade Douglass has heard of Mick “evolutionary socialism”, in which of a lecture in Delhi (January 1996), Hannu Reime under the vampires of capital and the McGahey, George Bolton, Pete Carter, the “movement is everything and the where Chomsky writes about a “strange Helsinki mythologists of national community. Emlyn Williams and Kim Howells. goal nothing” because the movement cosmic ray shower [which] reorganised Mike Belbin They equated nationalisation with absorbs the goal, and thus Macnair the brain, implanting a language organ Losses and gains email common ownership and their dream of like Bernstein identifies the goal with in an otherwise primate brain”. This is In his discussion of the basis for human a British road to socialism. the movement rather than recognising, not science, Knight writes, but a slightly nature, I’m glad to see Chris Knight is Check your facts Jack Conrad as Marxists did, the real contradictions disguised biblical miracle account of focusing on the bonobos, those smaller In his article, ‘A well-ordered militia’ London that emerge between means and ends, human origins. relatives of the chimps. I also find myself (February 5), Jack Conrad, defending practice and theory, and social being He fails, however, to mention that convinced by his speculation about the the classic Marxist idea of the workers’ Bernsteinian and consciousness in capitalism. This Chomsky calls his “cosmic ray account” differences between the two primate militia, cites what he refers to as the I would not call Mike Macnair’s demands a dialectical approach to the a fairy tale. The whole point of the groups being down to the difference in “second stanza” (actually it’s the fifth) historiography “garbage”, as he labels struggle for socialism that Macnair passage is ironic: because of the lack of food habitat. of ‘The Internationale’. mine (Letters, January 29), because dismisses, as Bernstein and Kautsky evidence, all accounts on the origin of Of course, there is another difference May I point out that the English it is as good as far as it goes.