What you want to say? Open Thread, 7th September 2011 September 7, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Dr. X had an interesting idea a few weeks back….
Far be it from me to tell you how to run this site, but I think we could learn from a habit of the New Zealand left site The Standard.
Every few days, or at least once a week, they have an ‘open mike’ thread, which does what it says on the tin. Here’s how they put it:
“Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner).
Step right up to the mike…”
Sounds like a good idea…
I like pie.
(just thought I’d break the ice
Me too, and that was a nice thing to do…
I agree it’s a beautiful number. I mean, just look at it:
3.14195
Right so…..
This is something I’ve been pondering doing for a while, and this is the right time of year, and this is probably the most likely forum, so:
Like a lot of people, I’m pretty sure I’m a Marxist in certain important respects, but I’m also shockingly badly read when it comes to a number of key texts, and they are forbidding enough to make solitary study uninviting – so I’d like to try and set up a reading group, and one, as far as possible, not consisting (solely) of academics or students, and meeting outside an academic environment.
My proposal is to read the Grundrisse over the year – October to April, say,- meeting at two weekly intervals, somewhere convenient. I’m picking the Grundrisse because, a) it is less well known than Capital and therefore it might be a new challenge to those familiar with the more canonical work, and b) because, fortuitously, a group in that London appears to be doing the same thing, with a possible offshoot in Cali, and so mutually beneficial sharing of resources might ensue. However, if a sufficient number of people want to do something else, I’m totally amenable to looking at other texts. Here is the link to the London group: http://readingrundrisse.wordpress.com/
The format I have in mind is roughly this: at an initial meeting we divide up the text into manageable fortnightly chunks, and thereafter, each week, one person presents a short account/ analysis to start the meeting followed by discussion, focusing first on the meaning of the selected section, but, broadening out over the course of a couple of hours. We’d have a rotating chair, and all comments would be addressed through the chair – normal rules of good manners and listening to other people would apply.
If you’re interested, you can email me in the first instance at grundrisse.dublin_at_gmail.com
I should mention that I’m not available on Tuesday evenings between now and Xmas so it would need to be Mon/Weds or Thurs.
That’s a great idea. Is this an online or real world reading group?
“UN report slams policy reaction to crisis”
http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0906/unctad-business.html
UN says “austerity” is a nuts effort to bow to the markets which will snooker national economies (a feature not a bug for the markets?).
“Union official faces fury of his ‘spoilt’ ESB members”
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/union-official-faces-fury-of-his-spoilt-esb-members-2862004.html
IMPACT and SIPTU bureaucrat assholes see an angle to get at Ogle with assistance from their frenemies in the Indo.
Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Secret Loans
Morgan Stanley Borrowing
Two weeks after Lehman’s bankruptcy in September 2008, Morgan Stanley countered concerns that it might be next to go by announcing it had “strong capital and liquidity positions.” The statement, in a Sept. 29, 2008, press release about a $9 billion investment from Tokyo-based Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc., said nothing about Morgan Stanley’s Fed loans.
That was the same day as the firm’s $107.3 billion peak in borrowing from the central bank, which was the source of almost all of Morgan Stanley’s available cash, according to the lending data and documents released more than two years later by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. The amount was almost three times the company’s total profits over the past decade, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Mark Lake, a spokesman for New York-based Morgan Stanley, said the crisis caused the industry to “fundamentally re- evaluate” the way it manages its cash.
“We have taken the lessons we learned from that period and applied them to our liquidity-management program to protect both our franchise and our clients going forward,” Lake said. He declined to say what changes the bank had made.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-21/wall-street-aristocracy-got-1-2-trillion-in-fed-s-secret-loans.html
Great stuff both those comments. Very useful.
Can someone explain the difference between the SP and the SWP? I’d read plenty of calls for parties to put aside their differences and form a united left front, but I’m shocking ignorant about what those differences actually are. Are they purely historical, or are there significant ideological or policy differences?
They’re differences of approach and organisation as much as anything. You can see them being played out in the debates within/about the ULA presently. The SP favours a narrower, more focused and explicitly socialist platform and the SWP prefers a fuzzier, broader-front approach. Outsiders would tend to regard the SP as dogmatic and the SWP as opportunistic. While those are unsubtle stereotypes, they do make a good starting point for an appreciation of the the differences between the parties.
In broader ideological terns, there are cleavages on matters such as the nature of the USSR (“degenerated workers’ state” vs. “state capitalism”), but nothing any normal person need concern themselves with.
“nothing a normal person need concern themselves with.”
Gave me a much needed laugh. Thanks DD.
are there significant ideological or policy differences?
It depends what you mean by “significant”.
Roughly, the SP recruits people who are prepared to see things through quite a narrow ideological and organisational prism, whereas the SWP recruits people who think they are.
In my case, I didn’t join the SWP when the membership card was being pushed across the table at me because I didn’t, and don’t, like their position on the North which is a bit too sneaking regarder for my tastes. I joined the SP, a few years later, because I found them effective (they had just been leading members of the water charges campaign) and the kind of group I felt comfortable in. They also get on well with anarchists which is something I like in a Trotskyist outfit. I’m still a member, though in the UK now.
There also tends to be a difference in the membership: crudely the SWP recruits more amongst students, whereas the SP has quite a few active trade unionists. This is not a criticism, but an observation based on my experience.
There are also some ideological differences based on different analyses of the nature of the Soviet Union.
The SWP set up front after front after front after front group with nobody (or very few) behind that front apart from themselvesand consistently deny the obvious when questioned about it. The SP don’t.
The Socialist Party and the SWP have a lot in common. But less than Fine Gael and Labour and Fianna Fail have with each other, yet people seem less surprised to find that the right wing parties exist independently of each other.
Some of the differences between the two are practical, some theoretical, some to do with approach. Some of the political disagreements mattered more in the past than they do now. Here are a few of those distinctions, in no particular order:
1) They had for many years quite different views on the North, with the SWP calling for a vote for Sinn Fein and offering “critical but unconditional support” to the IRA. The Socialist Party has always opposed terrorism and instead argue for working class unity. Over the years, the SWP have moved closer to the SP’s view (you won’t for instance find them cheerleading for the dissidents), but on individual issues they still tend to be more instinctively republican.
2) On other national questions and wars abroad, you can see a sort of similar divide. The Socialist Party for instance is very critical of groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, while the SWP is very enthusiastic about them.
3) They have different, albeit both hostile, analyses of the Stalinist regimes, with the SWP regarding them as capitalist (“state capitalist”) while the Socialist Party regarded them as countries where capitalism had been abolished but a bureaucracy held power (“degenerated/deformed workers states”). This is obviously a much less relevant disagreement than it once was.
4) They disagree about the significance of programme. This is quite a big and complex issue and I don’t have time to go into it now, but this is partially where the difference in perception Dublin Dilettante talks about above comes from – the idea that the Socialist Party are political rigid, while the SWP are politically opportunist.
5) There used to be a noticeable sociological difference, with the SWP recruiting a lot of students and the Socialist Party almost none at all, but again this isn’t really true any more at least amongst younger members of either party.
6) Perhaps the single most visible difference to the outsider is that the SWP prefers to carry out much of its work through single issue campaigns which it controls behind the scenes. These campaigns don’t have a life of their own and this is probably the single biggest factor in creating the (sometimes overblown and irrational) dislike of the SWP which is common on the left. This is not to say that other left groups (and for that matter mainstream political parties) never do this, but the SWP almost make a point of pride of it.
7) The Socialist Party are much keener on talking about socialism and the working class, while the SWP prefer to operate in a fuzzier, softer, less threatening way (eg People Before Profit). This is linked to very different conceptions of how to build support for left wing ideas.
There’s lots of other stuff too, but that should give you a sense of it.
Thanks Mark, this is informative. Probably not much hope for the long term future of ULA given these quite significant differences.
That’s a good comprehensive run-down Mark P. In your opinion are cultural differences greater than ideological ones between the two groups?
Chet:
If the ULA is to work it will involve people who disagree with each other much more profoundly than the Socialist Party and SWP do with each other. There’s nothing I’ve outlined above which should prevent the two organisations from cooperating in a wide range of spheres.
WbS:
I think that the cultural and political differences are intertwined. The SWP’s preference for party controlled single issue campaigns, for instance, is both an issue of politics and an issue of organisational culture.
I forgot to mention that there are some significant structural differences between the two parties as well, the most well known of which is the SWP’s ban on “factionalism” for nine months of the year.
It never struck me to ask before, but what’s the situation with factions inside the SP?
They are rare, but there is a right to form them.
Good to know for when I join
That is similar to my view but I would add that my experience is that SWP and SP members tend to get on very well on campaigns and simply reserve the right to disagree on each other’s party positions, although that is not quite so true in London.
Admittedly, here in Bath, one friend of mine (ex Troops Out and squaddie) has pointed out that I often have arguments with English SWPers where I am anti-Provo and they are pro.
Thanks – this has been the single most informative post on the contemporary Irish far left I’ve read, as an outsider.
Anyone know the membership numbers for both groups?
[...] Zeit, kommt Rat – there’s a Grundrisse reading group starting up in Dublin for those with an interest. For anyone who doesn’t already know, David [...]
Wikileaks appear to be going down in flames. I have pretty compulsively followed the story in all its detail. This comment is pretty funny / sad: http://julianassangefanciersguild.tumblr.com/post/9060598651/wikileaks-legislation-rap#comment-303155883
I like “edited version”, at the bottom
Maybe we don’t get a laugh out of the same things ejh. This one is a more serious roundup of pretty much the same story: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/09/02/wikileaks/index.html
Debtocracy – interesting Greek documentary on the debt crises and the EU online with subtitles at
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xik4kh_debtocracy-international-version_shortfilms#from=embediframe
Two great blogs.
1)What’s left- intelligent commentary from Canadian communist Stephen Gowans
http://gowans.wordpress.com
2) Reports from the Economic Front
Often brilliant political-economic analyses from US academic, Martin Hart-Landsberg
http://media.lclark.edu/content/hart-landsberg/
Liked the article including the breakdown of iPhone components from Martin Hart-Landsberg. Looks like the only country outside Asia to include a significant bit of the manufacturing action is Germany.
2
Definitely useful to know. Thsnks Justin.
Yes, that article on ipods was a real eye-opener, especially as it came amid the simple-minded hymns of praise which followed Jobs’ retirement. Hart-Landsberg wrote a very interesting piece recently which said that fast food workers are engaged in exactly the same kind of activity as production line workers in a factory. Of course, it’s kind of obvious when you think about it but I had never thought about “service” workers in that way before.
I guess it doesn’t really affect the trade deficit, but then Apple slaps on $200 in profit on each fetish object even after you disentangle the mobile contracts. This is presumably offshored in convenient tax havens like Ireland to minimise corporation tax.
OpenMike is on every day at The Standard. The authors on the site write about what they want to – which isn’t everything. For everything else there is OpenMike.
It is great as a moderator on a political blog – it immediately identifies those deliberately doing the various forms of diversion trolling in the other posts because they have no excuse.
These days it is frequently one of the most popular posts both in terms of page views and comments
Thanks for the heads up Iprent.
Hmmm, hadn’t thought of it that way but I can see the appeal.
I’m a bit surprised, but very happy and very interested in how people are using this thread. Definitely going to be a regular.
Works best on a threaded forum like this and the standard. Good place as an author to pick ideas to write about as well.
Same daily format in the European Tribune.
The German constitutional court has decide that that participation in the European Financial Stability Fund is not unconstitutional.
The tone of the judgement was something like “This is a political issue and for the German Parliament and not one which the courts should be involved in”. Which is interesting given the widespread attempts to write a ‘balanced budget’ into constitutions. Taken with the Swiss decision to peg the Frank against the Euro, it suggests that the Euro is more likely to survive at least this year in its present form.
The End of Loser Liberalism, a free e-book by Dean Baker, may be of interest to those who are interested in figuring out how economic policy might be driven in a progressive direction, since just standing gawping at the horror of it all does not seem to be working that well. The book is US-based, but the principles are fairly universal.
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/books/the-end-of-loser-liberalism
Quote:
Another quote from the book, in light of the fact that parents who send their children to Irish schools end up spending several hundred euro on textbooks every year:
Does this ebook mention if this noncopyright material is relevant to specifically Irish contexts, though? (I do agree that extorting hundreds of euro from parents to pay for textbooks is inconsistent with the principle of free education).
There are differences between the SWP and the SP to be sure, but generally they have two traits in common, viz.; a) a heavy dependence on theory, some of it going back into mid-19th century marxian writings, and some of it hinging on political developments in the Soviet Union early 1920s, largely Trotsky’s writings; and b) insistence on frenetic commitment by individual members, many of whom burn themselves out within a year or two. These two organizations are certain of their beliefs and strategies. They have a determined contestational attitude towards all other left groups. The mass of the voting Irish public doesn’t care much for theory or heavy personal commitment. Outside Dublin local issues such as hospitals and factory closures are what gather votes. Localism outprofiles class and macroeconomic matters in people’s minds. I wouldn’t read much theory into the election of 5 ULA candidates to the Dail, although I was glad that they were elected.
That’s why both organisations support struggles when they emerge and actively organise campaigns of their own to try and get as much wider involvement as possible.
The theory is vital for understanding the point of all this activity and puttiing it in a wider framework, but it is not the primary way of appealing to the public by either party. Explicit theory is something that comes later as a means of contextualising struggle and understanding its wider significance. That’s why you won’t find many references to Trotsky or Lenin in election leaflets or campaign material, but you do find their basic ideas, applied to concrete situations.
A rigorous theoretical background does not impede political activity – in fact it is vital for activity to make sense – so long as it is applied to concrete situations and is not merely abstract.
This is a pretty foundational idea of Marxism known as praxis. But you can see it at work in terms of any political ideology. The most obvious example at the moment is the internalisation of neoliberalism by the media and general public. Not many people have read Friedman of Hayek, but everyone ‘knows’ efficiency, flexibility and competitiveness are ‘good things’ that can be applied to pretty much any social context, from education to work to the health system.
It’s true that ‘the mass of the voting Irish public doesn’t care much for theory or heavy personal commitment’, but once you get a large critical mass of people who do, then all you really need is genuine support from the rest.
Many people simply have too many personal commitments to be heavily involved in political activity on a regular basis, but everybody has a, conscious or not, political outlook that can be changed and allegiances that can shift.
Re: the SP.
They may sincerely believe they are followers of the Prophet Trotsky, but in practice they’re really an Old school, Old Labour, Left Reformist party, aren’t they?
I’m only half joking, by the way.
No.
That’s a view which is held primarily by people who think that a defining feature of Trotskyism is shouty infantile ultraleftism. The category of people who hold this view includes shouty ultralefts themselves and some people who are irritated by shouty ultralefts, but they are both wrong.
Come on man, trolling’s no fun if you won’t rise to the bait.
Sorry to be dragging this topic back up but it seems to me this blog, while full of excellent commentary on the Irish left and other socio-economic topics, ignores the issue of emigration.
If the left is going to build an organisation strong enough to fight the austerity consensus and hegemony, it will need the input of the young unemployed, recent graduates who can’t find work, and students, the same demographic who drove the Arab Spring. Currently that age group is being driven out of the country at an accelerating rate, and the left seems to be too preoccupied with campaigns like the household charge’s one to do any campaigning or activism on the issue.
Nobody cares about the young because they don’t vote, they can leave if things get tough and we expect their parents to take care of them if they don’t. We don’t really think of them as citizens or even people but rather as things that are in the middle of becoming something else, be it useful or threatening.
Emigration isn’t the topic it once was because the world is a much smaller place than it was during the 80s. The internet, (relatively) cheap flights and an expectation that return will be possible make the experience a different one. Gone is the belief in a job for life. A ryan air flight to or from London often costs the same as a train ticket from Dublin to Cork. People are more optimistic about going abroad for work these days, but I’m not sure how well placed that optimism is.