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Post by Admin on Jun 9, 2020 13:49:07 GMT
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Post by Admin on Jun 10, 2020 13:41:08 GMT
THE LION AND THE UNICORN: SOCIALISM AND THE ENGLISH GENIUS www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-lion-and-the-unicorn-socialism-and-the-english-genius/As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me. They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are “only doing their duty”, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life. On the other hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any the worse for it. He is serving his country, which has the power to absolve him from evil. One cannot see the modern world as it is unless one recognizes the overwhelming strength of patriotism, national loyalty. In certain circumstances it can break down, at certain levels of civilization it does not exist, but as a positive force there is nothing to set beside it. Christianity and international Socialism are as weak as straw in comparison with it. Hitler and Mussolini rose to power in their own countries very largely because they could grasp this fact and their opponents could not. Also, one must admit that the divisions between nation and nation are founded on real differences of outlook. Till recently it was thought proper to pretend that all human beings are very much alike, but in fact anyone able to use his eyes knows that the average of human behaviour differs enormously from country to country. Things that could happen in one country could not happen in another. Hitler’s June Purge, for instance, could not have happened in England. And, as western peoples go, the English are very highly differentiated. There is a sort of backhanded admission of this in the dislike which nearly all foreigners feel for our national way of life. Few Europeans can endure living in England, and even Americans often feel more at home in Europe.
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Post by Admin on Jun 12, 2020 16:32:32 GMT
To Defeat Coronavirus Disaster Capitalism, We Need a Socialist Shock Doctrine by Joe Duffy 12th June 2020
“Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”
This oft-quoted mantra from Milton Friedman, the godfather of neoliberalism, is particularly chilling at a time of unprecedented global mayhem.
As many, notably Naomi Klein and Antony Loewenstein, have powerfully argued, reactionary responses to societal shocks have been instrumental in accelerating the inter and intra-national upward transfer of wealth and power in recent decades.
As well as fearing for our loved ones during the UK government’s unhinged handling of Covid-19, many of us on the left are also alarmed about how modern-day neoliberals will manipulate this crisis.
There is a long historical record of destructive corporate responses to societal ruptures. Klein’s seminal work, The Shock Doctrine, lays bare the interrelation between crises (imposed and natural), the undemocratic imposition of extractive neoliberalism, and the rise of a doctrinarian belief in privatisation.
In nations spanning the globe, crises ranging from earthquakes to CIA and MI6-backed coups have been instrumental in annihilating leftist organising and protecting profits at immense human cost.
In the UK, we are seeing an embryonic form of this neoliberal template. Under the cover of the pandemic and the commendable global uproar created by the Black Lives Matter protests, the Conservative government is already introducing a disaster capitalist privatisation agenda.
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Post by Admin on Jun 17, 2020 12:19:00 GMT
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Post by Admin on Jun 17, 2020 18:46:08 GMT
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Post by Admin on Jun 18, 2020 18:53:26 GMT
World Socialist Movement en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Socialist_MovementThe World Socialist Movement (WSM) is an international organisation of socialist parties created in 1904 with the founding of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB). The member parties share a common classical Marxist worldview and an adherence to socialism defined as a distinct economic system from capitalism. As a result, the parties of the WSM are held in sharp contrast to social democratic political parties and Marxist–Leninist movements. In contrast to social democratic parties, the WSM parties do not pursue social and economic reforms to capitalism, nor do they seek political office in electoral politics and they do not focus on so-called progressive causes, believing such actions to be irrelevant to their fundamental goal of socialism. In contrast to Marxist–Leninist communist parties, they do not subscribe to the theories of imperialism, vanguardism and democratic centralism, believing such practices to be antithetical to the realisation of socialism. The WSM defines socialism as a moneyless society based on common ownership of the means of production, production for use and social relations based on cooperative and democratic associations as opposed to bureaucratic hierarchies. Additionally, the WSM includes statelessness, classlessness and the abolition of wage labor as characteristics of a socialist society—characteristics that are usually reserved to describe a communist society, but that both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels used to describe interchangeable with the words socialism and communism.
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Post by Admin on Jun 18, 2020 22:05:49 GMT
“As the writer Andre Vltchek has assessed, ’Anti-communism is a fundamentalist religion, now followed by billions.’ The claims that support this religion are believed through a sense of faith, and the religion’s endgame is appropriately an apocalyptic one; we’re meant to accept whatever catastrophic events that capitalism produces, no matter how deadly and destructive, because to choose the side of communism would be to choose ‘the condition of Evil.’ “It’s a fundamentally nihilistic position, one that rationalizes the continued descent into corporate-engineered doomsday as the price we must pay for fighting communism. It can’t be the view that defines this century. We must work to advance the struggle for anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and communist liberation, which involves countering the lies of those who stand against these goals.” The dishonest nihilism of anti-communist propaganda medium.com/@rainershea612/the-dishonest-nihilism-of-anti-communist-propaganda-d98895c3635
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Post by Admin on Jun 21, 2020 14:24:28 GMT
www.marxist.com/www.marxist.com/about-us.htmIn Defence of Marxism - launched in 1998 - has become one of the world's foremost sources of Marxist theory, analysis on current events and the history of the revolutionary workers’ movement. This has been achieved thanks to the consistent effort of thousands of Marxists throughout the world in dealing with the burning problems and opportunities for the revolutionary movement arising from the crisis of the capitalist system and the development of the class struggle internationally. In doing so, we have consistently defended the Marxist method and revolutionary ideas against the deluge of falsifications and slanders by the bourgeois media. In Defence of Marxism is not just a website. It is the organ of the International Marxist Tendency, now organised in more than 30 countries. To find out more about us, read what we stand for in the brief document Why we are Marxists. You can also read more about the origins of the Marxist tendency in Ted Grant's book History of British Trotskyism. For a detailed analysis of our ideas regarding the world situation today and the tasks facing revolutionary Marxists, please read our document on World Perspectives 2018 If you agree with our ideas and the need to fight for a revolutionary Marxist alternative within the working class movement, please join us, or see the Contact Us section for details of how to join the struggle for socialism in your country.
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Post by Admin on Jun 23, 2020 20:33:29 GMT
50 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Works Every Socialist Should Read Author China Mieville lays out a list of 50 science fiction and fantasy works he feels every socialist ought to read. portside.org/2017-11-18/50-sci-fi-fantasy-works-every-socialist-should-readWhen I became a socialist I was also studying Sociology and Philosophy academically. I experienced something that seems to be a trend among many (though assuredly not all) folks who delve into these worlds: a sudden loss of interest in fiction. Over time I only read non-fiction work and discovered something missing. Reading fiction again had a major impact on me, stimulating parts of my brain that had laid mostly dormant (or only experienced anything through film and TV shows). I feel invigorated from diving back in and also feel better equipped to deal with issues as a socialist (and as a sociologist and a philosopher). I recommend Mieville’s recommendations because he is himself a fantastic science fiction author. There is a fantastic interview with him at the website of the International Socialist Review. He is the author of such fantastic works as The City & the City, Kraken and his new book that I’m holding in my hand in eager anticipation, Embassytown. Enjoy!
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Post by Admin on Jul 1, 2020 17:57:19 GMT
The ABCs of Socialism www.jacobinmag.com/store/product/18Packed with great essays and dozens of illustrations by Phil Wrigglesworth, The ABCs of Socialism is a perfect primer on socialist thought.
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Post by Admin on Jul 4, 2020 11:42:14 GMT
Reading Marxist theory isn’t just for highfalutin academics — just ask the millions of workers whose ideas about the role they could play in changing the world were transformed by both study and practice. No, Studying Marx Is Not Elitist BY JEREMY GONG jacobinmag.com/2020/07/karl-marx-study
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Post by Admin on Jul 4, 2020 12:15:24 GMT
“These injustices won’t be rectified until the U.S. and its surrounding settler states are abolished, allowing the colonized to determine their own destinies. This goal isn’t opposed to Marxist-Leninist revolution, but works according to the material conditions of the continent; Lenin wrote that ‘The article of our programme (on the self-determination of nations) cannot be interpreted to mean anything but political self-determination, i.e., the right to secede and form a separate state.‘ Since we’re in a continent whose indigenous nations have been dismembered by genocidal colonization, and the colonized groups are still being subjected to a myriad of violent policies by the settler states, decolonization is the correct way to make a revolution here reflect Lenin’s interpretation of Marxism.” A socialist revolution isn’t legitimate if it isn’t anti-colonial medium.com/@rainershea612/a-socialist-revolution-isnt-legitimate-if-it-isn-t-anti-colonial-b1bcfe4a6bcc
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Post by Admin on Jul 4, 2020 15:57:19 GMT
JULY 4, 2018 Eugene Debs: The Mission of Socialism is Wide as the World In an Independence Day speech in 1901, socialist leader Eugene Debs declared: “I like the 4th of July. It breathes a spirit of revolution. On this day we reaffirm the ultimate triumph of Socialism. It is coming as certain as I stand in your presence.” BY EUGENE DEBS inthesetimes.com/article/21257/fourth-july-eugene-debs-socialism-flag-independence-dayOn July 4, 1901, socialist leader Eugene Debs gave a speech in Chicago, Il. in which he said: “It is Socialism or capitalism; as capitalism declines, Socialism follows it, so it is only a question of time.” Here we reprint the speech in full. Ladies, Gentlemen, and Comrades: It is our good fortune, if we can boast, no other, to live in the most marvelous age of all the centuries, not contemplating the material progress of our time, which overwhelms and bewilders by its extraordinary achievements. Improvements have been accomplished as if by magic and we behold with wonder and awe the march of human conquest. The forces of nature which terrified primitive man, and before which the ancient world bent in superstition, have to a large extent been conquered and are the subject servants of man’s desire. In this march of progress the brain and heart have been expanded, the one shedding light and the other life, without which civilization would turn back upon its axis. Fortunately for man, everything is subject to change, and all change tends to the development of the race and the advancement of human institutions. Institutions crumble in this march of time. All of them have their periods of gestation, of birth, of development, maturity, decline, decay, and death. All of them come in their order. They fulfill their mission, they give birth to their offspring, and they pass away. A little over a century ago the inhabitants of this country were not citizens. They were ruled by a foreign king. They petitioned for relief. Their petitions were disregarded. They objected to taxation without representation. Their protests were scorned. Finally they revolted. They issued the Declaration of Independence and enunciated the proposition that men are created equal. But the founders of this republic had only vague conceptions of democracy. The working class as we understand it today were not represented in the Constitutional Convention. The founders of the republic in declaring that men were created equal evidently meant themselves alone. They did not include the negro, who had been brought here against his will and had been reduced to a state of abject slavery. The institution of chattel slavery was already securely established at that time. It was founded in iniquity, yet it did not seemingly disturb the consciences of the founders of the republic. This institution was in conflict with the spirit of the Declaration, with the genius of free institutions, and yet it was incorporated in them. It steadily grew in power, and in course of time it controlled the country and the courts and the life of the people. On this day, commemorating the 4th of July, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was issued. Thousands of orators all over this broad land will glorify the institutions under which we live. In pride they will point toward Old Glory and declare that it is a flag that waves over a free country. In these modern days we hear very much about that flag and about the institutions over which it waves. I am not of those who worship the flag. I have no respect for the stars and stripes, or for any other flag that symbolizes slavery. It does not matter to me what others may think, say, or do. I propose to preserve the integrity of my soul. I will give you a transcript of my mind and tell you precisely what I think. Not very long ago the President of the country [William McKinley], in the attitude of mock heroics, asked who would haul down the flag. I will tell him. Triumphant Socialism will haul down that flag and every other that symbolizes capitalist class rule and wage slavery.
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Post by Admin on Jul 4, 2020 20:39:30 GMT
A new set of translations of the great socialist poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht reminds us that the greatest of writers often lived through the darkest of times. Bertolt Brecht in Dark Times By Owen Hatherley tribunemag.co.uk/2020/06/red-library-brecht
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Post by Admin on Jul 5, 2020 20:26:18 GMT
More than 150 years ago, when the corporation as we know it today was still new, Marx saw in it both the essence of capitalism and a prefiguration of socialism: “The abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself.” Karl Marx and the Corporation BY J. W. MASON www.jacobinmag.com/2020/07/karl-marx-capital-corporation-production-socialismLet’s begin at the beginning. Capital, for Marx, is not a thing, it’s a social relation, a way of organizing human activity. Or from another point of view, it’s a process. It’s the conversion of a sum of money into a mass of commodities, which are transformed through a production process into a different mass of commodities, which are converted back into a (hopefully greater) sum of money, allowing the process to start again. Capital is a sum of money yielding a return, and it is a mass of commodities used in production, and it is a form of authority over the production process, each in turn. When we have a single representative enterprise, managed by its owner and financed out of its own retained profits, then there’s no need to worry about where the “capitalist” is in this process. They are the owner of the money, and they are the steward of the means of production, and they are the master of the production process. Whatever happens in the circuit of capital, the capitalist is the one who makes it happen. This is the framework of Volume 1 of Capital. There, the capitalist is just the personification of capital. But once credit markets allow capitalists to use loaned funds rather than their own, and even more once we have joint-stock enterprises with salaried managers in charge of the production process, these roles are no longer played by the same individuals. And it is not at all obvious what the relationships are between them, or which of them should be considered the capitalist. This is the subject of Part V of Volume 3 of Capital, which explores the relation of ownership of money as such (“interest-bearing capital”) with ownership of capitalist enterprises.
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