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Age of Anger by Pankaj Mishra

This book is a tour de force. It sets out the facts of the present situation and why the radical right is on the rise. It also deals with the historical precedents of violence and intolerance and seeks to explain the appeal of terrorism.

For these reasons it is essential reading for anyone who is concerned about the state of the world in this "age of anger". It does not seek to provide a solution to the problems it outlines.

The Argumentative Indian

Amartya Sen explores the role of argument in a wide range of spheres in Indian life.
Respectful dialogue is a more effective way of dealing with differences than simply demonising or denouncing an opponent. He praises the idea of secularism but he contrasts the Indian view of secularism (which also exists elsewhere) which involves treating other religions with respect with the view which seeks to suppress religion. He cites the French ban on religious dress for muslim girls as an example but the world is full of them.

The author is no Socialist but it is very telling for a Socialist to read his view that the inequalities of religion, gender, sexuality and caste are all exacerbated by the inequalities of class. He cites inter alia the fact that India has had a female head of state whereas France, Japan and the USA have never done so. The position of the affluent women is fundamentally different from the position of working-class women. I first heard this line of argument from the UK Socialist Party's Peter Taaffe in 1969.
He points to India's continued status as a united country and a democracy in which power goes from one party to another without violence as two examples of the power of argument.

It is a thought-provoking work. It is also easy to read and enjoy.

 

 

Often cheaper on eBay

Things are often cheaper on eBay but it pays to check:

Amazon price 

eBay price

That really is an extraordinary difference. It pays to shop around!

Review of "More Brevity" in Ingenu/e magazine

Review of "More Brevity" in Ingenu/e magazine

Tories and Racism

The Commons Committee on Standards has attempted to clean up the disgusting image of MPs. They have proposed that racism and misogyny are unacceptable and vicious personal attacks on other ‘honourable members’ should be toned down. 

Oh dear, Conservative MPs have protested that this is an attack on their freedom of speech and democracy itself. The right to vote for racists is central to their ideology and misogyny is in their DNA. 

Leading the charge of the right brigade is Sir Desmond Swayne. He has said it is ‘dangerous and should not appear in the final version.’

If you thought the Tories could not sink any lower, oh yes they can. 

 

 

Courtesy of Peter McMillan

West Sussex Socialists

This article in The Socialist is by Sarah Welch, West Sussex Socialist Party

The link is here 

In 2019-20, the former chief executive of the Tory council in West Sussex received a £265,000 exit package. Financial statements for 2020-21 reveal three more large payouts.

The executive director for adults and health received £110,473. The former director for communities received £88,358. And another received £34,000.

In total, 43 exit deals cost the council £1.1m in 2020-21. The cost for 2019-20 was roughly the same for almost double the number of exit packages at 81.

There have been large payouts to recruitment agencies. Hamptons Resourcing received £173,400 and McLean Partnership received £249,423.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Millions of pounds of taxpayers' money just wasted.

We are waiting to hear what cuts are being made to our service, adult social care. We think it will be over £2 million. The council constantly tells us that it has no money, and has "difficult decisions to make".

In 2018, I was part of a campaign group fighting to keep my son's centre open. We attended one of the council committee meetings. When they adjourned for lunch and we walked through the dining area, we saw their five-star buffet, including waiter service and wine.

Our local paper, Chichester Observer, has pointed out that the only other West Sussex residents in receipt of free food are some school children dependent on their parents' benefit levels. They only receive £15 supermarket vouchers a week in school holidays.

The council's gluttony is an insult to the people who have just had their Universal Credit cut, and all those that have been forced to use food banks. It's yet another example of the greed and mismanagement at the top.

We need an end to cuts, and democratic workers' control to run the services that we all need.

Dodgy

The Tories should not be called ‘dodgy’ by Zarah Sultana. 

I withdraw the word ‘dodgy’, how about ‘suspect’/‘crooked’/‘shifty’/‘dicey’ or ‘knavish’?  Just call them ‘Tories.’ 

 

Remembrance Sunday

"Dulce et Decorum Est pro Patria Mori" was a phrase they taught public school boys. "It is sweet and fitting to die for your country." or better yet get your servants to go off and die on your behalf obviously.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge. 

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. 

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . 

.
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. 

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Wilfred Owen
8 October 1917 - March, 1918
--

http://derekmcmillan.com/

 

 

Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition in the May 2022 elections. Dave Nellist writes:

"Last week, Unite's policy conference in Liverpool took a major step to challenging pro-austerity councils and budgets. A motion proposed by the union's local authority section leadership included:

"Conference is therefore extremely concerned, disappointed and our members are angry that Labour Councils continue to make cuts and privatise our services. We also note the negative role played by Labour councillors on the boards of organisations which tender for services.
Conference agrees that Unite must now adopt a policy calling on Labour Councils to set legal, balanced no cuts needs based budgets."

Unite throws down the gauntlet. And TUSC, which has led the way in calling for no cuts, needs-based budgets, is now preparing the widest challenge of anti-austerity candidates for May 2022. 

Those local elections, scheduled to take place on Thursday, May 5th 2022, are for all 32 unitary councils in Scotland and the 22 single-tier authorities in Wales. In England, there are scheduled elections for all 32 London borough councils, 34 Metropolitan district councils, and 82 district councils.

Also on the same day, there will be Mayoral elections in Watford and the London boroughs of Hackney, Lewisham, Newham and Tower Hamlets. The South Yorkshire Metro-Mayor position established in 2018 is also up for election in May 2022.

The local elections in Scotland, Wales, London and Birmingham – and Harrogate, Huntingdonshire, Newcastle-under-Lyme and South Cambridgeshire – are ‘all-up’ contests, with every councillor up for election, usually in multi-seat wards. Most other elections will be for one-third of the councillors in single-seat contests but some may be ‘all-up’ elections following ward boundary changes or council reorganisation.

Of the 202 councils holding elections next May, 88 are currently Labour-led, with Labour holding an overall majority or are the largest party in a coalition administration.

There are still ongoing boundary reviews and council re-organisations to be factored in, but a current estimate is that May 2022 will see 6,751 councillors elected in 3,949 wards, a bigger electoral test in terms of local council seats to be contested than in 2021.

TUSC agents, and potential TUSC agents, are invited to this important briefing meeting on Wednesday which will deal with some of the practical organisational tasks needed for the People's Budget campaigns and the preparation for the 2022 elections.

More information on People's Budgets and full listings of the 2022 elections are available at:
https://www.tusc.org.uk/txt/450.pdf (Preparing a People's Budget)
https://www.tusc.org.uk/txt/451.pdf (Campaign Pack)
https://www.tusc.org.uk/txt/448.pdf (Directory of Elections)."

 

 

Today on eBay

Today I found a number of my books being sold second hand on eBay.

The link is here

Three bookshops are now selling my books on eBay and then there is "Socialist Books" who sell online but not through eBay.

 

Brevity

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/165026072152 

You can't get too much Brevity.

Positive feedback for Brevity on eBay

 

Killing of David Amess

Sir David Amess was assassinated today. The motives of the killer are not yet known.

However, assassination will only gather sympathy for right-wing Tories. Individual terrorism (if that is what this is) is politically naive. The police can use it as an excuse for repression.

Famously the Narodniks achieved their highest ambition by assassinating the Tsar. The result? Another Tsar and a wave of vicious reaction ensued.

Marxists oppose individual terrorism. Trotsky pointed this out over 100 years ago. The link is here

 

 

 

Sizewell C

Sizewell C is expensive, costing £20+ billion, which could be invested in renewables such as offshore wind or hydrogen storage. The government said it was necessary to rob the poor of £20 off Universal Credit but there are billions to be thrown away on nuclear death traps.

This is not the time to be wasting money on a dangerous project.

Some people in Worthing object to the  windfarm because in their minds it is an eyesore. At least it does not have the potential to blow us to kingdom come.

The ground around Chernobyl is still poisoned 35 years after the nuclear catastrophe. Is that what we want?

 https://www.facebook.com/socialistreviews

 

Vigil

"We are here to start a nuclear war. Don't waste our time with one bloody death." is the attitude of the officers on HMS Vigil towards the hapless detective DCI Silva in the opening episodes of this BBC series.

The contempt of the military officers towards the police and towards the people of Scotland and civilians in general is made clear.

On paper the nuclear subs are there to defend the public. In practice the sinking of a trawler is just a nuisance to be hushed up and who cares if the rank and file die?

The people of Scotland resent the fact that the Westminster government has pinned a nuclear target on their backs. Any government and any terrorist group who wants to attack the Trident subs will endanger Scottish lives. Perhaps that is just the way the Tories like it.

This is the background to a story which has all the hallmarks of "Line of Duty" and it is every bit as gripping.

The idea of a murder mystery set on a submarine is the ultimate "locked room" mystery and this is an excellent detective story.

Vigil is well worth a watch.

Parody in George Orwell's 1984

Although George Orwell was a Socialist, 1984 and the concepts it includes have been used to frighten people away from Socialist ideas.

In fact, 1984 contains a number of parodies based on experience of life in Great Britain.

Here are three of them. There are many more.

1) The Ministry of Truth is a parody of the BBC World Service. During the war the BBC projected a consistently positive attitude summed up as "my country right or wrong". The slogan is an unacknowledged borrowing from the British Union of Fascists.

If the past was inconvenient it was "reinterpreted". Of course the outright falsification of the Ministry of Truth would be above and beyond BBC practice. That is the point of parody.

b) The Junior Anti-Sex League was a parody of the Scouts and Guides. Julia was an example of the ineffectiveness of their message of clean living. She was employed for a while in the production of the vilest pornography for the more degenerate elements of the working class, "the proles".

c) Newspeak was based on a trend in language. The Communist International became the "Comintern" while the "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" was regularly shortened to "Nazi". In the process, Orwell believed, ideas were excluded from the labels.

Syme, in 1984, believed that dissent would eventually be made impossible by "Newspeak" because the language for different opinions would no longer exist.

It is an interesting idea but as I said above, it is a parody.

You can find many other parodies in 1984.

Money money money

Now that Richie Rishi is talking about making pensioners pay for the pandemic, it is worth recalling the real wealth distribution in society.

The 2020 Credit Suisse Global Wealth report makes for interesting reading.

Released at the end of October last year, it revealed that the top one percent of households globally own 43 percent of all personal wealth, while the bottom 50 percent own only one percent.

Successive governments have done nothing to alter this state of affairs. 

Trotsky on Lenin

This is an excellent book. I think Trotsky's writing ability is often underestimated as is his devotion to the truth. This is not an outpouring of adulation. It is more a detailed political analysis. 

You can learn a lot about the Russian revolution and its genesis from this book and it is easy to read.

The translation is by Max Eastman and it is a work of literature in its own right.

Anatomy of a Writer

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