Socialist Voice – CPOI February 13, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture, Economy, European Politics, Irish Politics, The Left, US Politics.trackback
The latest edition of Socialist Voice from the CPOI is now out. Available to download in the following link: Socialist Voice File.
Here’s a quote from the main article.
The Irish state has been forced by the EU and IMF to establish a Fiscal Advisory Council, composed of outside
“fiscal referees.” A number of other EUmember-states were ordered by theEuropean Commission, as part of the new “European semester” system, to create their own fiscal councils.
The whole point is to take fiscal policy out of the political arena. It is also clear that EU leaders are now intent on surgically removing fiscal policy from the realm of democracy, even if they haven’t yet quite agreed on how it should happen.Just as a decade ago it became the intellectual fashion to remove monetary policy from the democratic realm, because “the market demanded it,” today it is the fashion to argue that voters are too stupid to know what is fiscally best for them. Better to leave such decisions to “experts,” “technocrats,” who know what the markets demand.
And here’s the contents. Well worth a look.
1. Economic policy is “too important” for voters to have a say
2. Household charges and water charges
3. Heaven on Millionaires’ Row
4. Explaining work-place sit-ins
5. Progress of the Trade Union Left Forum
6. Practise what you preach!
7. The drumbeat of war with Iran
8. Spring revolution, or Western connivance?
9. Haïti: the unforgiven land
10. “The greatest competition of ignorance and idiocy I’ve ever seen”
11. Radharc documentaries at the Irish Film Institute
12. A Train in Winter
Poisonous dishonesty from the moribund Stalinist Pensioners Party of Ireland on the history of non-payment campaigns.
And… We’re off!
Though in fairness I was intrigued by some of the analysis on that topic.
There’s was nothing remotely intriguing about it. Just bitter, sneering, drivel.
The Stalinist Pensioners Party has some cheek making false insinuations about the main socialist parties being run from London, given that they spent most of the 20th Century as little more than Moscow’s mouthpiece in Ireland. As for the ins and outs of previous non-payment campaigns, the CPI was already moribund by the time of the anti-water tax campaign, let alone the anti-bin tax campaign, and has no first hand knowledge of those campaigns at all. It’s sniping from the sidelines of the crudest and most sectarian sort.
Fortunately, this photocopied rag has a circulation of about twenty, and the remnants of the CP are too lazy to actually intervene into household tax campaign meetings, so this website is about the only place anyone will ever encounter their smears.
And the Irish Left Review too.
It’s like having a guest column from Grandpa Simpson. Every article should really start with the worlds “Back in Nineteen Dickety Two…”
“Fortunately, this photocopied rag has a circulation of about twenty, and the remnants of the CP are too lazy to actually intervene into household tax campaign meetings”
A CPI member has been active in the Meath CAHWT to date and his involvement has been very welcome, both in terms of leafletting and speaking at the Kells public meeting.
In general I’d be more inclined to read Socialist Voice than the SP paper.
As for the piece on the CAHWT, the point it makes about potential or actual opportunistic abuse of the campaign is a perfectly valid concern and should not be dismissed out of hand. Witness that piece the other day on the Tomas O’Flaharta blog, the one concerning the SWP circular. Also the Navan meeting which we were involved in last week had a whiff of SP ambush about it which will need to be aired at this week’s local organising meeting…
As perhaps the only person in the country not from a traditional Official family to join the Workers Party in the last ten years, I think that we can probably take it for granted that you are a man of unusual and distinctive tastes, LATC.
I’m glad to hear that one solitary CPI member is involved in a local campaign somewhere. That’s already more of a contribution than they made to the last two mass non-payment campaigns.
As for what you regard as the article’s “valid concern”, the CPI did not raise this “concern” in a fraternal or reasonable manner, nor do they do so as people who are widely involved in the campaign. They raise their “concern” in an extremely nasty article, which smears the people who are actually driving the campaign and engages in fearmongering, and they do it as hurlers on the ditch. That doesn’t deserve any response bar contempt.
I don’t dismiss the possibility of opportunistic behaviour in the campaign. I’m all too familiar with the SWP’s approach to campaigns like this, and they need to be watched like hawks. However, the SWP, for all my criticisms of them and for all of their tendency to argue for wrongheaded or electorally focused approaches, are actually involved in the campaign and doing some work. Which makes them a thousand times preferable to the CPI.
“Just bitter, sneering, drivel.”
You could never be accused of not having a sense of humour anyway
If you read more Sluggerotoole Mark, you’d know that there was a snide remark made there about the fact that several of the new WP reps announced at the WP NI regional conference were from non-traditional backgrounds for WP members. Do try and keep up with the slur du jour!
Good to see the CPI and the Shinners spinning the same line. Hurlers in the ditch!
A chicken in every pot…
I have to confess I found the two references to Romney’s Mormonism without linking it to specific policy positions very strange. Without that, it looked just as though it just was making fun of Mormonism, especially when there was no mention of Gringich’s Catholicism or Paul’s being a Baptist.
Ah come on Mark – there is no need to be so hard on the old dears – you’ll hurt their feelings – you should be going down to the bookshop and helping them sort out their knitting and making sure there is 52 cards in the deck for solitaire.
Curious how so many ‘left wingers’ are so evidently anti-elderly and are so dismissive of people of a certain vintage….suspect it has something to do with the old not quite having the same energy to go on the endless, ad hoc ‘demos’ and rallies called by the ultra left.
Well whether it’s a left wing thing or whatever it is illuminating to see how easily name calling can overtake a strong critique.
There are oddities about the original article and its analysis but it’s a bit depressing to see the rhetoric employed on here.
By the by, there are people in various left formations, we all know who they are, who are solid socialists and most likely only a year or two away from being pensionable. And there are others less high profile who are long past pension age still fighting the good fight. Though as a comrade of mine who is in his early 60s pointed out at his age he’s a bit leery of going on marches for fear they turn nasty and he can’t run as fast as he used to away from batons.
There’s no dismissal of pensioners at all, only of Stalinist pensioners, who, I think you’d both agree, make up a very narrow and unrepresentative section of the pensioner population.
Pensioners played a very important role in the bin tax campaign and before it the water tax campaign, and can be expected to play a very important role in the household tax campaign. The Stalinist pensioners of the CPI however played no significant role in any of those campaigns and will play no significant role in this one. Their “contribution” consists of a cynical and quite vicious article, and they are therefore getting the response they deserve.
Well I’m sure every pensioner feels all the better for that.
“There’s no dismissal of pensioners at all, only of Stalinist pensioners”
I think this means that when Mark P is Commissar for Social Protection, to qualify for the pension you will have to
A. be over 66 years of age
B. sign a form stating that the Comintern’s orientation towards the Kuomintang was a disastrous betrayal of the Chinese proletariat
For too long now, hard working trotskyist tax-payers have been subsidising the lavish life styles of stalinists – pensions, medical cards, even bus passes. This scandal has to stop, and Mark P is the man to stop it!
Mother Jones,-born 1937 Inchigeela, west Cork,-court martialled West Virginia, 1913, sentenced to 20 years for attempted murder. Sentence commuted due to public campaign, went on to organize for another 10 years.
As an old age pensioner belonging to the Communist Party of Ireland I am tempted to reply to Mark P. – who ever he may be.I have been a communist for over 50 years.
However I find his contribution abusive and slanderous unlike most of CLR contributors. Instead I will go and talk to the Connolly Youth Movement members.
And you were all chums before
Anger at the ‘Socialist Voice’ piece on the CAHWT is understandable.
But the initial vitriolic name calling response to it does not belong to the style of this blog and it should not be associated with the new politics that the ULA is hopefully supposed to represent!
Better to have a reasoned demolition of its deliberate nastiness. And, I’m afraid, it does make some serious points of criticism.
+1
There is no purpose served by producing a polite “reasoned demolition” of a poisonous article by a tiny and irrelevant group of sectarians, who make no contribution to the struggle they are attacking. Particularly when the article concerned has no noticeable circulation beyond this blog.
As for “representing” the ULA, I’ve made it clear many times that I do not represent the ULA or the Socialist Party when I comment here.
Is it possible to give the ‘poisonous’ stuff a break.
By the way, I don’t understand your latest references re the leaflet and this blog. What relevance does that have? I’ve stated before that it is put up on the Irish Left Review as well.
Why would I give the poisonous stuff a break? It’s a malicious piece, aimed at undermining support for a campaign.
And my reference to this blog was entirely about the circulation of the CPI’s publication – which is negligible in the world off line.
Look on the bright side lads. At least Mark and Tom are not going to torture one another into confessing to being Japanese or French or Zionievite spies and then have one or other murdered in the basement ….. Not saying they would not like to if they had a chance
I think you’ll find Tumbles that the political movement best known for torturing people in this country is the one you seem to support, and there was nothing theoretical about the Nutting Squad, was there?
had a look at this today to see what all the fuss was about. think your easily offended mark and give way more than you got.
@ shea – spot on!!!
the ferocity of the SP response is interesting the headline ‘ CP accused of thoughtcrime’ springs to mind.
For someone with a capacity to dish it out the SP comrades seem to have difficulties accepting criticism.
as to the offstage remark by tumbles – well torture and accusations of working for a foreign intelligence service- i wouldnt go there if I were you
Poor old Tumble’s book still hasn’t been reviewed by AP/RN…is it true that they are replacing him with Roddy for the sport?
As for the CPI v the SP- pots and kettles spring to mind.
Perhaps a bit of fraternalism wouldn’t go amiss in relation to everything you discuss. And even if others don’t reciprocate, so what?
Treacy’s book is sold out apparently apart from whatever few copies remain on the shelves. Cheaper paperback be even bigger seller one would imagine
Ah Tumbles, please tell us what the big bad Militant T done to you to cause you to be so bitter. After all, you were a member before you ‘ discovered ‘ Republicanism (a la candid camera.)