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What you want to say – 23rd April 2014 April 23, 2014

Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.
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As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.

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1. Joe - April 23, 2014

I was walking home around midnight last night from a sports club meeting. And the place was literally crawling with people putting up election posters. It made me wonder. There must have been hundreds of people across Dublin alone last night doing that job.

I remember Eoghan Harris, talking about depression, and saying that there was no depression that a general election wouldn’t snap him out of. Elections energise those of us who are interested. Another acquaintance of mine is long-time, old-time FG and he says what motivates him to get working at election time is seeing FF posters up on the polls.

So for the next few weeks I’ll be looking at posters on poles, hoping for canvassers to call, doing a small few leaflets myself and speculating and predicting and watching and hoping. Finglas Cabra where I live and vote has seven seats. Three SF candidates and I think three FF. Seems to me that’s an underestimation by SF and an overestimation by FF. If FF wanted a seat surely they’d run one candidate and put everything behind them… or is their focus more medium term, put three out there, see who does best, select them for future contests? Speculation, mon amour.

And the added bonus is that I live on the border of Finglas Cabra and Ballymun Whitehall. So I get to see the posters and the runners in the two constituencies. Bliss… well blissish inanyway. And walking into town this morning I see the Inner City posters. Ciaran Cuffe is standing for the Greens… he’s new to that area, no?… and who is this Éilis Ryan independent with the impressive síneadh fada?

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Joe - April 23, 2014

And I’ve just heard the fierce exciting news that Bernie Hughes is standing as a United Left candidate in Finglas Cabra. Bernie is in the ISN which is affiliated to United Left now apparently. United Left has Clare Daly and her people and Joan Collins and her people too.
So Bernie and Cieran Perry are now locked in mortal combat to see who will get my number one.
Ah Jeebus, I shoulda stood myself, I’m the only one I can trust on the national question. But then again I wouldn’t trust myself on not selling out to mealy-mouthed, liberal, do-gooder reformism.

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sonofstan - April 23, 2014

Cuffe does live in the area and has for a few years now. His was the only election leaflet I found on my mat on returning to Dublin after an absence of over a month – lots of fairly on the ball local stuff, and zero mention of any previous. Why’s that now?

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Mark P - April 24, 2014

I genuinely hope that Cuffe comes to my door, the prick.

So far we’ve only had Christy Burke and Eilis Ryan to the door. Burke’s leaflet was leftish, but as he left SF to their right I’m rather deeply skeptical. Ryan’s leaflet was also leftish but in that wishy-washy-community-sectory-NGOish way. That language makes my gorge rise, but her limited platform seemed pleasant enough. Anyway as neither of them were pushing anything obnoxious I restrained my eagerness to roar abuse.

Is there any straightforwardly socialist candidate around here?

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2. CL - April 23, 2014

The Post-Crash Economics Society (PCES), at the University of Manchester, has produced an analysis of the failings in economics education and set out a road map for reform.
“Economics education is monopolised by a single school of thought commonly referred to as neoclassical economics. Crucially, very few economists working within this mainstream predicted the Financial Crisis. Afterwards many concluded that the best predictions came from those economists that had been marginalised by the mainstream.”
http://www.post-crasheconomics.com/economics-education-and-unlearning/

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Gewerkschaftler - April 24, 2014

Thanks for the link CL. The revolt from below in economics departments is one cause for hope in this crisis.

Having just scrolled through their report it seems like a thorough piece of work and essential reading for anyone thinking of studying the subject. The situation in German economics departments is even worse, as far as I can make out.

Iv’e been reading a bit about the history of political economy in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and one is struck by how much more diverse and inventive the discipline was before the second world war.

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3. RosencrantzisDead - April 23, 2014

This made me laugh.

It also appears to have happened about midnight last night.

On an -entirely- unrelated note, can anyone vouch for your attendance at this ‘sports club meeting’, Joe?

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Joe - April 23, 2014

🙂 🙂 I am shocked, shocked I say, RiD, that you should question my bona fides in this matter. Yes, lots of people can vouch for my attendance at the meeting – the other people who were at the meeting and others I met when I had a cup of tea after. What are you insinuating? What are you getting at?

It’s so unfair. A chap muses about putting himself up as a candidate – just idly muses – and, immediately, he comes under attack from anonymous internet warriors about whether he really was or wasn’t at a “sports club meeting” he claims to have attended.

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4. roddy - April 23, 2014

Joe,isnt it shocking how few on the left can be trusted anymore to ape the Cruiser on the national question!

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5. Tomboktu - April 23, 2014

Is anybody else here reading Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century?

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CL - April 23, 2014

I’ve got a copy. Haven’t begun to read it yet. Its a heavy tome. Might be one of those books if you put it down might be difficult to pick it up again. But its being reviewed everywhere.
“Capital is for Piketty a so-called factor of production that captures a return, the usual notion of bourgeois economics.” Not, as in Marxism economics a relationship in production.
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2014/andrews220314.html
“I believe in private property,” he said in the interview. “But capitalism and markets should be the slave of democracy and not the opposite.” The usual naivety of social democracy.
http://www.southwillard.com/news

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Michael Carley - April 24, 2014

There is a short (relatively) article by Piketty in the current New Left Review, which might be a good start (I don’t have the book so I might be wrong). It might be on the NLR website, but it’s down at the mo, so I can’t check.

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Gewerkschaftler - April 24, 2014

I’d be interested to read what you think of it, Tombuktu.

I’ve read that some of the data is useful.

But that this book is getting so much traction is I think symptomatic – possibly of the fact that some of Capital’s more thoughtful political representatives are still casting around for ways to mitigate the present crisis.

I’d imagine it will fuel some rhetoric from ex-social democratic parties, but I can’t see even his limited recommendations being implemented anywhere within actually existing capitalism any time soon.

But perhaps there’s more to the book?

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Tomboktu - April 24, 2014

Will do, but I’m away for a few days and did not bring it with me. I wonder if it is being paid attention to by anybody outside those who knew the facts already anyway, and if therefore the splash is simply all of that group taking about the same thing at the same time. So for example, you could point as a useful small development the fact that the Irish Times gave a quarter page in the business section on a Friday to an article about it, but if it didn’t make anybody new aware of the level of inequality, then…

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6. ado perry - April 23, 2014

Cieran Perry and Bernie Hughes are running a Vote 1-2 pact. Good news all round.

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Disappointed in Dublin Central - April 25, 2014

Similar 1-2 pact on the cards in North Inner City …NOT.

http://www.thejournal.ie/gary-gannon-election-poster-1432219-Apr2014/

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7. doctorfive - April 24, 2014

Some interesting bits of the Irish Times podcast on rise of the independents

One point made is that the 22% in the polls will encourage other independents & outsiders to run and this could end up fragmenting the vote allowing the parties back in anyway.

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8. Mark P - April 24, 2014

Lawrence & Wishart have directed the Marxist Internet Archive to take down volumes 1 to 10 of the Marx – Engels Collected Works. They thus join Pathfinder, which zealously guards copyright on various of Trotsky’s writings, in the publishing category marked “shitheads”.

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doctorfive - April 24, 2014

Must be demand

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Mark P - April 24, 2014

Yes. I suspect that the parasites hope to feed by licensing digital editions to universities etc.

Trotsky and Gramsci are other writers that parasitic “left” publishers make a buck from.

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doctorfive - April 24, 2014

Few comments from the MIA facebook;

L&W own all post-1991 English translations of Marx and Engels, and all translations of Gramsci.

The real irony is that it isn’t actually going to do anything to enhance their sales either – their customers are academic libraries! The interesting thing is that the Karl Dietz Verlag, which publishes Marx, Engels and Luxemburg in German, has a quite different attitude. They point out typos to us and have even given us copies of the books to ensure that we use the up-to-date post-1989 footnotes!!! The difference is that Karl Dietz Verlag belongs to to the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, which is the political education foundation connected to DIE LINKE

The texts originally in English and the German originals are out of copyright – new translations are possible – but it’s a huge task

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Mark P - April 24, 2014

Truly infuriating.

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Michael Carley - April 24, 2014

Gramsci is out of copyright (I’ve translated some of the early journalism) but the Prison Notebooks are held by the Gramsci Foundation, so the only way to get them in Italian is the Einaudi edition, and I assume the publishers and editor hold the copyright on that.

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9. Copyright and the Marxists Archive | The Cedar Lounge Revolution - April 25, 2014

[…] noted by Mark […]

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10. Aonrud - April 25, 2014

Got a leaflet in my door from the NI Conservatives’ Ben Manton today. No big surprise: “We are for businesses, for residents and for the people of Belfast” (presumably, in that order).

Curious though that one of the 3 bullet-points is this:
“Campaigning for spaces for arts and crafts”. Which sounds almost nice, until the very odd detail underneath: “Designate suitable open spaces outside the city centre for stall holders to create businesses, facilitating ambition in the community.” Whatever about reducing the arts to business, and a stall-appropriate product at that, I’m really not sure what this is supposed to mean…

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11. Jolly Red Giant - April 25, 2014

Some news from the South African election – and the growing support for the Workers and Socialist Party.

The Gauteng Civic Association, which organises in the Pretoria townships of Atteridgeville and Mamelodi, has agreed to affiliate to WASP.

The residents of the desperately poor informal settlement ‘The Hills’, just next to Atteridgeville, have asked for WASP’s assistance to campaign to force the municipality to provide running water, sanitation and electricity.

The Congress of South African Non-Racial Civic Movements (COSANCOM) in the townships around Johannesburg – Alexandra, Tembisa, Freedom Park and Soweto – have been campaigning on behalf of WASP

In the Vaal, the Working Class Coordinating Committee (organised in ten Vaal townships) called for a WASP vote and is working hard to campaign for the party.

The Bekkersdaal community – famous for its militant struggle for basic services and its call to boycott the elections – is reversing that position and giving its support to WASP.

In the Western Cape, the shack dwellers’ movement AbahlalibaseMjondolo has decided to join COSANCOM and WASP.

In the Free State, Cape Town, Tembisa, Klerksdorp, Krugersdorp, Witbank, Rustenburg and elsewhere, WASP is working closely with Numsa members to turn out the vote for WASP.

In the Gauteng goldfields, WASP supporters are active in the townships and hostels around the mines campaigning at many shafts including Kusaselethu, KDC East, KDC West, Anglo Gold Ashanti and Westonaria shafts.

On the East and West Rand – the industrial heartland of the country – WASP supporters are campaigning at the huge factories. WASP’s presidential candidate – Moses Mayekiso – is still recognised by workers here after his many years as a metalworkers’ trade union organiser in the area.

Initial projections were suggesting that WASP might win one seat – but estimates are being revised upwards as the impact of WASP is being reflected in growing support for WASP in the townships and the workplaces. Like all elections, predictions are difficult but WASP is having a major impact in the election.

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12. Starkadder - April 28, 2014

Fenner Brockway died today, 26 years ago. Time to remember
his anti-WWI campaign:

http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/brockway.htm

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