Author: hallblithe

‘.. applying palliatives, not curing the malady.’

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 ‘Charity workers could walk out on strike for the first time in the 270-year history of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) as a simmering row over pay, alleged union-busting and rising executive wages reaches boiling point.   Union members at the enlightenment charity, which once counted Karl Marx and Nelson Mandela as members, are being balloted for strike action by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) over a below-inflation pay offer, with the result expected this week.’

The RSA’s full name is telling: The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Reading the list of recipients of the Society’s Albert Medal is similarly revealing.   Scientists feature prominently, but the list is also peppered with parasites including Prince Albert’s wife, their eldest son, two great grandsons, QE2, etc., plus Field Marshal Jan Christian Smuts and Winston Churchill. 

The IWGB have every right to be angry that bosses’ pay at the RCA rises 170% while staff are offered just 4%, but should remember: ‘Trades Unions work well as centres of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerrilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system’   (Marx, Value, Price & Profit, 1865).

Capitalist China

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 ‘THE REAL THREAT FROM CHINA IS THAT THEY’RE BETTER AT CAPITALISM THAN US’  (Popular Resistance.org, 30 August, 2023).

 In his Report of an Investigation into the Peasant Movement in Hunan (1927), Mao admitted that the coming revolution would not be socialist: ‘To overthrow these feudal forces is the real objective of the revolution.’    That same year we stated: ‘.. Does any intelligent observer believe for one moment that Irish, or Polish, or Indian, or Egyptian, or Chinese capitalists are one whit less brutal in their exploitation of their workers than are British, or German, or American, or any other Imperialist capitalist class?    The Chinese workers will be no better off when they have exchanged British and Japanese for Chinese masters…’.    Four years earlier Sylvia Pankhurst wrote: ‘Socialism means plenty for all. We do not preach a gospel of want and scarcity, but of abundance. Our desire is not to make poor those who today are rich, in order to put the poor in the place where the rich now are. Our desire is not to pull down the present rulers to put other rulers in their places’ (Socialism, Workers’ Dreadnought, 28 July 1923). Does this sound familar? What follows is almost prophetic: ‘…We do not call for limitation of births…’!

Defending the Realm

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 Sir Mark Peter Rowley,  Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, opined recently:

 “there are very few causes policing should be attached to” and said he will not tolerate officers taking the knee, flying rainbow flags or adorning their uniforms with badges that support environmental causes. However, he added that, “wearing a poppy in the autumn is perfectly proper”.

The well paid Knight’s role is defending the status quo.   In reply to him and in the absence of a socialist sonnet, this seems appropriate:

The Muted Mockery of Poppy (Cock) Day 

The ribbons arrayed the honours displayed

The medals jingling on parade

Echo of battles long ago

But they’re picking sides for another go. 

The martial air, the vacant stare

The oft-repeated pointless prayer

“Peace oh’ Lord on earth below”

Yet they’re picking sides for another go. 

The clasped hands, the pious stance

The hackneyed phrase “Somewhere in France”

The eyes downcast as bugles blow

Still they’re picking sides for another go. 

Symbol of death the cross-shaped wreath

The sword is restless in the sheath

As children pluck where poppies grow

They’re picking sides for another go. 

Have not the slain but died in vain?

The hoardings point, “Prepare again”

The former friend a future foe?

They’re picking sides for another go. 

I hear Mars laugh at the cenotaph

Says he, as statesmen blow the gaff

“Let the Unknown Warriors flame still glow”

For they’re picking sides for another go. 

A socialist plan the world would span

Then man would live in peace with man

Then wealth to all would freely flow

And want and war we would never know.

(James Boyle, 1971).


Socialismo-Mondial

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Who is the greenest Green of them all?

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 Diana Johnstone,  who was press secretary of the Green Group in the European Parliament from 1989 to 1996, is a likely contender for this one sentence paragraph:

‘The plain truth is that planned obsolescence has been the dominant policy of the Western elite toward the working class since the neoliberal power seizure of the 1980s.’

D. H. Lawrence was better informed and in one of his poems compared the mosquito and capitalist:

The mosquito knows full well, small as he is

he’s a beast of prey.

but after all

he only takes his bellyful,

he doesn’t put my blood in the bank.

We work, they take and pass on. Some of today’s capitalists have many centuries of legalised theft behind them. The richest families in Florence have been at it for the past 600 years. This fact was confirmed recently by two economists doing useful work for a change. Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti studied the records of Florentine taxpayers in 1427 with those in 2011 and after comparing the family wealth to those with the same surname today, concluded the richest families in Florence six centuries ago remain the same now.

Capitalism is an obsolete system.  The establishment of socialism means the end of capitalism worldwide and the parasitical 1 percent.


The BBC on us

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 Tiny socialist party amasses £2.6m in reserves.

This is the title of a new article on the BBC NEWS website.   Such occurrences are very rare even during elections in which socialists campaign, leaving us to agree with Oscar Wilde when he stated ‘the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about’. 

You might be wondering how come a socialist party that wants to abolish money seems instead to be amassing it.   You may as well ask why, if we’re so concerned about the depredations of modern capitalist production, we don’t try to help by living in unheated caves and eating grass.

The article is wrong in one detail. Nobody in our Party pays ‘fees’, or any kind of compulsory dues. Members can choose to pay donations, the amount being up to them. Just like with all our tasks and activity, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to.

A bit different from most other organisations you know, we think you’ll agree.

CHILE: MYTH AND REALITY

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The 1973 coup against democratic socialism in Chile still matters – there, in Britain and beyond

This recent article perpetuates a fifty year old myth.   Facts should still matter: the term ‘democratic socialism’ is a tautological misnomer, and in her book Democracy and Revolution: Latin America and Socialism Today D. L. Raby writes “with a president voted in by only 36 per cent of the electorate and a coalition which only briefly achieved a little more than 50 per cent (in April 1971), there was no real mandate for revolutionary change.”

Read more here.



Chinese Capitalist Party

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Vijay Prashad is a historian, journalist, and political commentator. He is the author of 40 books, including one reviewed last year in the Socialist Standard.   During an interview for the Harvard Political Review published yesterday, he was asked ‘… I’m interested in what you make of the state of the left or, more precisely, the state of Marxism today and in the era post the fall of the Soviet Union’  to which VP replied  ‘I mean, it’s interesting — the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, but the largest political party in the world today is a Marxist party, and that’s the Communist Party of China. It’s got 96 million members. There are more Chinese Communists — that is to say, party members — than the population of Canada. So when people say Marxism died in the rubble of the Soviet Union, I say, well, maybe you’re just talking about Europe and maybe North America.’

In our review of his Struggle Makes Us Human. Learning from Movements for Socialism, we said ‘The Bolshevik state… authoritarian and oppressive from its very beginnings, bore no relation to socialism (a democratically organised stateless and leaderless society of free access to all goods and services). In the same way, Cuba, Vietnam, China and Venezuela, all of which the author is a strong supporter of, are essentially ‘top-down’ regimes integrated into the world capitalism system of markets, trade, money and wages, buying and selling. And they are more oppressive than more ‘liberal’ capitalist states in that they keep a closer check on their populations and in some cases don’t even offer them meaningful elections to vote in..’.


​Unmentioned in either the interview or review is the fact that Vijay Prashad is a fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China.   Oh, the irony!   Has  this self-described Marxist forgotten that the socialism Marx envisaged involved the ‘abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production’ (Communist Manifesto)?

Mao stated in 1949 ‘China must utilize all the factors of urban and rural capitalism that are beneficial and not harmful to the national economy and the people’s livelihood, and we must unite with the national bourgeoisie in common struggle. Our present policy is to regulate capitalism, not to destroy it.’

 That wages have increased since Mao’s day is not in doubt. The 1% in China and the US, unlike the vast majority of us, are doing very nicely – even during the latest pandemic…

‘China’s super-wealthy got $1.5trillion richer during pandemic that began in Wuhan, with one analyst saying: ‘The world’s never seen this much wealth created in one year’ (Daily Mail, 20 October 2020).
‘Since the onset of Covid-19 in early 2020, the combined wealth of the 650 American billionaires has increased by nearly $1 trillion’ (Alternet, 1 December 2020).

‘Xi’s government has cracked down on young people who apply Marxist analysis too critically to abuses of labour allowed under China’s system of state capitalism’ (Financial Times, 28 June, 2022).   But this should not worry VP as he, unlike Marx (‘The existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery’  – Vorwärts, August 1844) and Engels  (‘The more it [the state]   proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head’  – Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 1880) or us ( ‘We are not concerned with State capitalism. We are concerned with Socialism. Socialism is the negation of capitalism. Consequently State capitalism cannot be the ideal of any Socialist. Ergo those who preach State capitalism or collective exploitation are not Socialists’ – Socialist Standard, December, 1906).
is a supporter of the status quo.

POVERTY’S NO JOKE: EVA TORF JUDD AND WORKING CLASS MEMORY (Zoom)

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 Tomorrow’s evening meeting;

Friday 18th August 19.30 (GMT + 1) Zoom

POVERTY’S NO JOKE:  EVA TORF JUDD AND WORKING CLASS MEMORY (Zoom)

Speaker: Darren O’Neil





The Executive Committee of the Party deeply regret to announce the death of Comrade Eva Torf Judd, who was a victim of a recent air raid.

Comrade Judd had been a member of the Party since 1935 and was well known to the London membership.

Born in London of Lithuanian immigrants, her early childhood, which she remembered vividly, was spent in the dingy Metropolitan borough which bears the pleasant name of Bethnal Green. Later, Comrade Judd emigrated with her parents to the U.S.A., and it was there that her interest in Socialism was developed.

Before the last war; whilst living in Boston, Mass., she took part in the struggle for Trades Union rights for the garment workers of that city. But it was in San Francisco, during the post-war years, that she first played an active part on the political field by lecturing at the Labour College.

Although not agreeing entirely with the I.W.W., Comrade Judd gave lectures on Socialism for that organisation in San Francisco and Seattle. Also she addressed many meeting in other cities in the U.S.A.

Returning to London after a sojourn of nearly 25 years in the U.S.A., our late comrade made contact with the Socialist Party, whose members welcomed her valuable assistance in the work of spreading Socialist knowledge. During her residence in London she addressed many successful outdoor meetings for the Party and was a shrewd and lively contributor at Party Conferences.

From 1938 until the time of her death she was active in the Party’s cause in Southampton, in which town she met her tragic end.

About two years ago the MSS. of her autobiography was completed, and, in the opinion of those who have read it, it deserves a niche in the records of working-class literature.

To her husband in Southampton, England, and her daughter Judith in Los Angeles, Calif., the Executive Committee, on behalf of her comrades and many friends in the Socialist Party, express their deepest sympathy. Comrade Judd was another good comrade we are sorry to lose.

H. G. Holt

Promoted by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UN.

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