Tomorrow’s evening meeting;
Friday 25th August 19.30 (GMT + 1) Zoom
A general discussion on HUMAN NATURE
Religion and the cat’s tail
The 22nd August is designated by the United Nations, ‘Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief’.
‘There are continuing acts of intolerance and violence based on religion or belief against individuals, including against persons belonging to religious communities and religious minorities around the world, and the number and intensity of such incidents, which are often of a criminal nature and may have international characteristics, are increasing’.
https://www.un.org/en/observances/religious-based-violence-victims-day
In 2020 the day was designated, by various ex-Muslim organisations, ‘International Apostasy Day’.
The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain is calling for people to ‘doodle on religious texts’ and post the results to social media for the purpose of, ‘ defending freedom of expression and the right to apostasy and blasphemy by subverting religious texts’.
They comment, ‘Whilst we might not agree with burning Qurans and books (usually associated with a long history of state and religious censorship against dissent), we nonetheless recognise the right of individuals to express their abhorrence to bad ideas and the persecution and murder of freethinkers and apostates.
On Apostasy Day, join us in celebrating blasphemy and apostasy as rights by subverting and doodling on the Quran, Bible, Torah, the Vedas or any other religious texts to proclaim. It is important to reiterate that burning, murdering, torturing, persecuting human beings are violence and hate, not burning the Quran or religious texts’. Further, ‘Ideas are not sacred, human beings are’.
The Socialist Party’s views on religion are a matter of public record or can be easily ascertained by reference to articles in the Socialist Standard or to Party pamphlets.
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlet/socialism-and-religion/
How the Gods Were Made by John Keracherhttps://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/product/how-the-gods-were-made-by-john-keracher/
‘The fundamental idea of religion is a belief in the persistence of life after death. Originally, and in essence throughout, religion is a belief in the existence of supernatural beings, and the observance of rites and ceremonies in order to avert their anger or gain their goodwill. “Corpse worship,” as it has been tersely called, “is the protoplasm of religion.”’. (SaR)
The right to peaceful protest of any kind should be sacrosanct (no pun intended). Unfortunately there are many examples where this is not, and has not been, the case. The actions called for by CEMB does appear to be the equivalent of tying a firecracker to a cat’s tail.
Whilst not decrying the motives, or the right of anyone to participate in this protest, it has to be asked, what will this achieve? It seems highly unlikely that those to whom these texts, rightly or wrongly, holds some value, will feel compelled to renounce their inculcated beliefs because of this.
Is the defacing of religious texts, or of any book, a pointless exercise? Put simply, yes. The obvious solution to religious fanaticism of any kind, can only be the general realisation that religions are a form of dominance over the masses that benefit those pushing the fairy tales as a means of power over the various adherents. And that the social system which continues to encourage the divisions caused between various religious groups and organisations profit the asset-owning class, not the vast majority who give up the possibility of the material gains that come from living in a money-free, class-free society.
When capitalism is replaced by Socialism religion will have had its day.
As Karl Marx wrote, ‘The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then finally vanish, when the practical relations of every-day life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellow men and to Nature’. Capital Volume One.
That actions have consequences, and not necessarily the ones intended, is lately demonstrated by the recent events in Sweden which have led to that State instantiating a raise in the level of threats facing the country from ‘high threat’ to ‘heightened threat’.
The Swedish prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson said, ‘“There is no reason to intentionally offend someone else, because it actually risks threatening Sweden. Calm and realising the seriousness of the situation is my message.”
Addressing future planned Qur’an burnings, he said the government was looking at its public order laws, but also cautioned: “Everything that is legal isn’t [necessarily] appropriate”’.
Spain: Food staple becoming unaffordable
It’s reported that, ‘Spanish authorities are sounding the alarm over olive oil prices, which continue to rise and may eventually turn this Mediterranean staple into a “gourmet product,” the newspaper El Mundo reported, citing sources in the Ministry of Agriculture.
Olive oil from Andalusia soared to €8.20 ($8.90) per liter last week, marking the highest price ever recorded for Spanish olive oil, according to data from Mintec, representing a 115% year-on-year increase. Meanwhile, the price surge continues.
“The market takes it for granted that prices will keep rising until at least the end of the year,” the outlet noted, adding that extra virgin prices are expected to reach €10 per bottle by autumn.
Shelf prices for olive oil in a number of Spanish supermarkets have already surged to €8.50 per litre making the product almost unaffordable for middle-class households, the outlet said.
The Spanish olive oil sector is currently grappling with mounting concerns regarding availability in the coming months following the severe drought that Spain has been experiencing since last summer.
In the agricultural year of 2022-2023, olive oil output in Spain more than halved to 675,000 tons, representing a 54.7% slump year-on-year. This made the country’s current output volume the worst so far this century, the outlet wrote, citing data from the Agriculture Ministry.
The July report from the Spanish government also revealed a significant reduction in stocks, which declined by approximately 73,000 to 75,000 metric tons last month’.
CHILE: MYTH AND REALITY
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.
Spain: Food prices on up and up
It’s reported that, ‘Food prices in Spain soared by 30.8% in July compared to the same month in 2019 before the outbreak of Covid-19, El Mundo reported on Friday, citing the latest data from analytics firm Funcas.
Overall prices more than doubled in the EU’s fourth largest economy, surging by 54.4% over the past two decades, figures show. Food prices alone surged by 79.3% over the same period.
Among the products that saw the steepest price rises over the past year were sugar (44.2%), potatoes (38.8%), rice (22%), canned fruits (19.4%) and confectionery (18.2%). Milk rose by 17.6%, pork by 15.8%, eggs by 12.8%, and fresh fruits by 11.6% in the same period, according to the data.
Olive oil jumped by 115% year-on-year, marking the highest price increase ever, according to data from Mintec.
Spanish food inflation was driven by a number of factors, such as soaring energy, fuel, and fertilizer prices, as well as a shrinking supply of certain commodities on the global market, Funcas said.
A prolonged drought, which Spain has been experiencing since last summer, also contributed to the rising food prices. Severe weather conditions are now threatening the global olive oil supply, with prices spiking around the world.
In the coming months the price surge will continue in Spain, according to El Mundo, with overall inflation expected to reach 5% in December’.
Chinese Capitalist Party
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)
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
ANIMAL FARM: Workers and animals of the world arise!
George Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM was first published in England on 17th August, 1945.
(9) Animal Farm (HD Remastered) English – YouTube
George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’. This is a good and amusing satire on the process that has taken place in Russia since 1917 up to the time of writing, 1945. Orwell portrays the 1917 Revolution by a rebellion of the animals on a farm in which they turn out the human owner and take over the farm themselves. The pigs take on the leadership of the new order and the old boar, Comrade Napoleon, by astute manoeuvring called “tactics” becomes the great chief. The process of hoodwinking the working animals whilst steering the rebellion away from its original course until the animals are dumbfounded to find that they are working harder and are poorer fed than in pre-rebellion days and that in all other respects the system is the same as ever, is well described.
“Comrade Napoleon” is, of course, a caricature of Stalin, whilst ex-comrade Snowball, represents Trotsky. Other characters are easily identified. There is the horse, Boxer, who has a cure for all problems by working harder and whose motto is “Comrade Napoleon is always right.” He finally works himself to a weak and useless condition, and the pigs send him off to the knacker’s yard.
In the space of a couple of hours reading, George Orwell has described by his satire what other writers have failed to describe as adequately in hundreds of stodgy pages. His animal characters are often wise but funny, instance the donkey, Benjamin, who has lived for many years and who, when told that God had given him his tail to whisk away the flies, replied that he could well do without the tail and the flies. Good for the holiday, both of them. Just as good if you have had the holiday or even if you do not get one.
W. Waters
UK: Misery continues
It’s reported that ,’The unemployment rate in Britain has reached its highest level in nearly two years, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported on Tuesday, adding that the spike was mainly driven by an increase in the number of people unemployed for up to six months.
According to the ONS, the number out of work increased to 4.2% compared to 4% recorded in the three months to the end of May, as the amount of job vacancies dropped by 66,000 to 1.02 million.
Meanwhile, wages have risen, with private-sector wage growth increasing to 8.2%, more than a key measure of inflation. Average weekly earnings, excluding bonuses, hit an annual growth rate of 7.8%, reaching record highs.
However, the growth was outpaced by the rate of price rises in Britain, meaning an effective pay cut for its working population.
The country remains in the grips of a severe cost-of-living crisis, with a higher inflation rate than other major European countries. Annual inflation in the UK currently stands at 7.9%, the highest among G7 nations’.
Socialist Sonnet No. 110
Capitalism, Your Name is Misery
Inflation is officially falling
As unemployment rises in its place,
Each is misery, with a different face,
But both aspects are equally galling.
All pay increases will be quickly lost,
And are, at best, a temporary mask.
Yet, the most pertinent question to ask
Is surely, why should living have a cost?
After all, there’s wealth enough to go round,
Created by workers for such a small
Allowance as wages, instead of it all:
So, reasons for radical change abound.
Abolish money and inflation’s gone,
Once the battle for socialism’s won.
D. A.