Friday 10 May 19.30 (GMT + 1)
*WHAT IS POLITICS?*
*Guest speaker: Darren Poynton*
To join the meeting click https://zoom.us/j/7421974305
Friday 10 May 19.30 (GMT + 1)
*WHAT IS POLITICS?*
*Guest speaker: Darren Poynton*
To join the meeting click https://zoom.us/j/7421974305
The Guardian, 3 May, reports that ,‘More than 2,000 pro-Palestinian protesters arrested across US campuses.’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/02/university-protests-arrests-ucla-dartmouth
The Guardian, 29 April, reports that, pressure is being applied to the International Criminal Court not to press war crime charges against Israel.
The USA is particularly opposed to this the ICC proceeding with this.
‘US diplomats at the UN insisted that Washington regarded the ICC as independent and it would not be interfering in its decision-making process. The US and Israel do not recognise the jurisdiction of the ICC, which is vested with the task of prosecuting war crimes.
According to a report on the Axios news website, Netanyahu has appealed to Biden to intervene to stop the warrants being issued. The US is not a member of the court, but under the Trump administration it sanctioned court officials after complaining about its investigations of US military operations in Afghanistan and Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Asked about the prospect of ICC warrants, the White House spokesperson, Karine Jeanne-Pierre, said: “We’ve been really clear about the ICC investigation. We don’t support it; we don’t believe that they have the jurisdiction.”
US politicians spoke out, with the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, saying: “Such a lawless action by the ICC would directly undermine US national security interests. If unchallenged by the Biden administration, the ICC could create and assume unprecedented power to issue arrest warrants against American political leaders, American diplomats, and American military personnel, thereby endangering our country’s sovereign authority.”
Democratic senator John Fetterman warned: “It would be a fatal blow to the judicial and moral standing of ICC to pursue this path against Israel.” He said he was calling on Joe Biden to intervene as part of the administration’s ongoing commitment to Israel.’
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/apr/29/icc-possible-war-crimes-charges-israel-hamas-g7
Other news outlets are describing the American’s attitude of one of menacing bullying with the threat of retaliation by the USA if such charges are brought forth.
The Axios site headlines the story, ‘Congress threatens ICC over Israeli arrest warrants.’
https://www.axios.com/2024/04/29/icc-congress-netanyahu-israel-gaza
The Socialist Party is opposed to global capitalism and does not favour any capitalist nationalists over any other. The Socialist party deplores and condemns armed conflict wherever in the world it occurs because members of working class are always te ones to suffer the most from capitalists power struggles for competitive advantages. American capitalism has a long history of using its power to quash both internal and external opposition to the interests of its ruling elites.
That individuals possess the social conscience to oppose such grievous abuses of power is to be applauded. However, until the majority recognise that it is capitalism that is inherently responsible for such abuses against humankind and will continue to do until it is replaced by socialism is the lesson that needs to be learned most quickly.
SOYMB posted, 5 May:
Following the mayoral and local elections,
capitalism remains in power!
https://soymb.com/2024/05/flash-point-1.html
To use a social media idiom, this makes a Socialist respond SMH.
Wasn’t it Einstein who said something about insanity repeating the same actions over and over and expecting a different result every time?
The Socialist Party will continue to educate those who mistakenly believe that capitalism provides the best of all possible worlds.
Our object remains, 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.
From the Socialist Standard October1973
Yet when it was written we could not have called it a Socialist Manifesto. By Socialists in 1847 were understood, on the one hand, the adherents of the various Utopian systems: Owenites in England, Fourierists in France, both of them reduced to the position of mere sects, and gradually dying out; on the other hand, the most multifarious social quacks, who, by all manners of tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to capital and profit, all sorts of social grievances — in both cases men outside the working-class movement, and looking rather to the “Educated” classes for support. Whatever portion of the working class has become convinced of the insufficiency of mere political revolutions, and had proclaimed the necessity of a total social change, that portion, then, called itself communist.
And our notion from the very beginning was that “the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself”.
The Manifesto being our joint production, I feel bound to state that the fundamental proposition which forms the nucleus, belongs to Marx. That proposition is that in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it, forms the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the intellectual history of that epoch.
However much the state of things may have altered during the last 25 years, the general principles laid down in this Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever. Here and there some detail might be improved. The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of section II. That passage would in many respects be very differently worded today.
From the Socialist Standard November 1973
Marx and the 1st International
Marx associated himself with working-class organizations although they were not Socialist in character. In his day as today, very few workers had a Socialist policy.
The International Workingmen’s Association (the First International) was founded at a meeting in St. Martin’s Hall, London, on 28th September 1864. It was not the work of one individual, and it was not “a small body with a large head”. It was neither “an insignificant shadow” nor “a terrible menace”, as it was described by various sections of the press of the period. The First International was a transitional form of the working-class struggle for better conditions, and it was as necessary as it was transitional.
Everywhere the great mass of the working class sank into ever deeper misery to the same extent as the upper class rose in the social scale. In all the countries of Europe it is now an irrefutable fact, undeniable for every unprejudiced enquirer and denied only by those who have an interest in awakening deceptive hopes in others, that neither the perfection of machinery nor the application of science to industry and agriculture, neither the resources and artifices of communication, neither the conquests of new markets nor free trade, or all these things combined can succeed in abolishing the misery of the working class, and that on the contrary, every new development of the creative power of labour is calculated on the false bases of existing conditions to intensify the social antagonisms and aggravate the social conflict. During this intoxicating period economic progress, starvation raised itself almost to the level of a social institution in the capital of the British Empire. The period is characterised in the annals of history by accelerated return, the extended compass and the deadly effects of the social pest known as industrial and commercial crises.
And therefore the Ten-Hour Bill was not only a great practical success, but also a victory of a principle; for the first time the political economy of the bourgeoisie was defeated by the political economy of the working class.
They possess an element of success — numbers. But numbers are weighty in the scales only when they are united in an organization and led towards a conscious aim.
One day the working class must hold political power in its hands in order to establish a new organization of labour. It must overthrow the old political system which maintains the old institutions in being, unless it wishes, like the old Christians, who despised and neglected such action, to renounce “the Kingdom of the World”.
https://soymb.com/2020/05/remembering-kent-state.html
‘They’re sending a message’: harsh police tactics questioned amid US campus protest crackdowns’
‘More than 1,400 people have been arrested across the US during a week of intense police crackdowns on a sprawling campus movement of pro-Palestine student demonstrations.
As Joe Biden defended students’ free speech rights but warned them that “dissent must never lead to disorder”, colleges across the country brought law enforcement to campus to arrest dozens or even hundreds of protesters and clear away their encampments.
But the level of force with which some of these law enforcement agencies have responded to protests, which in the overwhelming majority of cases have been peaceful.’ The Guardian 4 May
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/04/police-tactics-us-campus-protest-crackdowns
Fifty four years on and students, and others, are still protesting at the killing of innocent people in armed conflicts.
In 1965, folk singer Donovan’s song Universal Soldier propounding the idea that if soldiers refused to fight for their countries ten they would be no more war.
His lyrics concluded with ,’He’s the universal soldier, and he really is to blame His orders come from far away no more They come from here and there and you and me And brothers can’t you see This is not the way we put the end to war?’
The only way to put an end to war is for you and me to realise that it’s not te universal soldier wo is to blame, it’s capitalism. And things will only change when we universally decide to replace capitalism wit socialism.
THE SOCIALIST PARTY AGAINGST ALL WAR
We keep hearing about ‘neoliberalism’ (where private firms operate with little or no government interference, meaning increased insecurity for workers) as though it were something new. It isn’t. It was practised through the 19th and a good part of the 20th century, when it was simply called the free market.
For a time governments changed tack and practised increased intervention to try and ‘tame’ capitalism – to make it less prone to crises. It didn’t work so they moved back to what they had before, except they gave it a new name: neoliberalism.
But it’s not neoliberalism that’s the problem, it’s capitalism. It’s not a change of policy that’s required, but a change of socio-economic system.
MAY DAY MEETING (ZOOM)
To connect to a meeting, click https://zoom.us/j/7421974305
MAY DAY MEETING (ZOOM)
To connect to a meeting, click https://zoom.us/j/7421974305
LONDON: MAY DAY 24
Clerkenwell Green, EC 1 (12 noon) (nearest tube: Farringdon)
Trafalgar Square (13.00)
The Socialist Party will have a stall at this event