Choice: Mayor or New Labour?
Andy Richards (The trouble
with elected mayors, SR 58) does
not understand the political
dynamic in Tower Hamlets
and is attempting to impose
a 'one size fits all' assessment
of the mayoral experiment on this specific situation. Tower Hamlets Respect have made their motivations for campaigning for a mayor clear (see http://bit.ly/6zl8Dj and http://bit.ly/5AKFYQ). No possible form of local democracy would be properly democratic. Two are on the
One maintains the power of unelected Labour bureaucrats over the council. The other smashes this corrupt hold of officials over ordinary people and contains the potential for a more genuinely representative leadership. Winning 50%+ 1 of the electorate is no minor thing. I hope Socialist Resistance can recognise that in this concrete situation, to be neutral on such a matter, allowing Labour to continue to have their undemocratic way, is not an option. George Spiritual booze Andrew Johnson's review of Terry Eagleton's book Reason, Faith and Revolution (Patiently deciphering religion, SR 57) left me angry. The central theme of the review could be preached by an Anglican or Roman Catholic priest: "The major concerns of theology are with questions such as justice, truth, love, solidarity and what it means to live a good life ... but the answers to them cannot be deduced by science ... [because]
reason is not all there is."
Non-miraculous Darwinism
finally ended theological
consideration as scientific
arbiter, even in the descent of
the human species. Christian
theology changed tack, redefined itself and now fights a
rear-guard action (apparently
endorsed by Johnson) of
"recognising that metaphysical
propositions cannot be either
proved or disproved by science".
This is way of denying science
the necessary authority to
refute religion is the line of the Templeton Foundation's prize
for "research or discoveries
about spiritual realities". One
winner, John Polkinghorne,
said "Contemporary science is all about trying to answer the 'how', religion examines
the meaning and purpose of life." It appears Johnson and Polkinghorne share a common To a scientific socialist, justice, truth, love, solidarity and what it means to live a good life are all explainable, and will be explained by the scientific study of human kind and human society. In fact, the first steps towards explaining these phenomena in terms of optimising the chances of survival of the individual, their offspring or the group, have already been made. Johnson ends his review with the claim that socialist criticism of religion "must seek to fuse the struggle for reason and progress with the subjective drive towards truth, justice and equality, which—like a commitment to reason itself-does not simply spring from reason, but is a subjective moral choice". All scientific socialists should reject his claims: that the drive
LETTERS
towards "truth, justice and
equality", "commitment to
reason" and "subjective moral
choices" are non-rational. To
what can we attribute these
factors which lie outside
"reason"? The church says:
the God-given conscience or
soul. Socialists should offer an
alternative. The ABC of Marxism is
materialist to the core. It says
consciousness is determined
by the material and social
environment, not non-rational
factors. Capitalism is the
last refuge of religion. Once
socialism is established this 'spiritual booze' as Lenin aptly branded it, will soon expire on the garbage heap of history. John Roberts Struggle, not regroupment In An assessment of the Respect conference (SR 58) Alan Thornett says "They [left blocs in Europe] were all successful because they drew together all, or most, of the existing left and then reached out to others from there." No, their uneven success to date is because they are something real in the class struggle, and not a telephone directory of the Far Left. That also prevents the regurgitation of petty sectarianisms characteristic of this article. SR's desire to see all the 'Left' in one big tent falls at the very first hurdle; if No2EU had a mass base, other breaks to the Left of Labour would be obliged to respond to them. But it doesn't—as seen by its pitiful electoral results. Krupskaya
page 33 of the scan
intellectual, a friend OBITUARY As François Sabado explains here, our comrade Daniel Bensaid, who had been seriously ill for several months, died this morning. After a private funeral, the NPA will organise a public tribute in the Mutalité in Paris on Sunday 24th January from 2.30pm to 6pm. The following month (on February 9th) a memorial meeting will be held in London for those who knew Bensaïd and admired his work. For more information about these meetings, or to send messages to them, please email bensaid. memorial@ ecosocialism.org