CWU and The Green Party

[borders]

I have just looked back at some of my posts from 2008 and the debate I and others had with Tman and somebody called Night Tonic . made me laugh actually , duffle coats and all !! I think both points of view have their merits. the rich have got richer and like Tman said then , the left have not been able to mount any real sort of alternative that the working class could get behind. all these ism's , nobody really gives a toss .....

[Tman]

Blimey, where's the old firebrand Borders gone to?
As for your last sentence, isn't that the cause of the inexorable rise of UKIP?

[borders]

the fire has dwindled to a mere flicker there is no doubt Ukip is appealing to some of the working class.

[jetblack]

like Tman said then , the left have not been able to mount any real sort of alternative

Well, I can agree with him on that much at least

Of course, part the reason they are unable to offer an alternative is because Marx/socialism has become a dirty word. Its a type of anglo Macarthyism. There is no Left anymore - the Right (wing media) have been successful in their relentless attempts at convincing us that the free market mechanism is the be all and end all, and that the cream always rises to the top in the land of the free etc etc etc.

For the record I blame it on Neil Kinnock - how the Labour Party of 1984 wasn't behind the National Union of Mineworkers I will never know.

Still, I suppose he paved the way for Tony Blair



Give us electoral reform (STV PR) in the UK and I'll start up my own party - I'll call it the "This land is my land, this land is your land Party". Tman and the right wing hegemony machine will call me a red under the bed commi Marxist and the US will impose economic sanctions .

Nonetheless, I'll make a start by taking (back) into public hands all the public utilities and natural monopolies that have been handed over to the City over the last 30 years. I would abolish private education provision for the well off to try to create a level playing field for the children. I would introduce a consumption tax and a progressive income tax. I would introduce cryptocurrency and bitcoin - thereby, in one fell swoop, doing away with the finance capitalists usurious and debt based economy. I would reverse the current backdoor and insidious attempts at privatising that most loved and British of institutions, the NHS. I would introduce legislation to ensure that an Australian born US citizen billionaire is unable to wield any political influence within the UK. There would be widespread Land reform legislation to end an anochronistic feudal system whereby the majority of the land in the UK is still in the same small number of hands that it was 200 years ago. I would bring an end to austerity and the ordinary working man and woman having to pay for the establishments profligacy. I would end private funding of political parties, on democratic grounds - and voting would be done via the blockchain. I would end zero hours employment contracts and employment agencies.

I would be loathed by TPTB, in the same way they loathe Putin - when he took over Russia was being run by the mob, as the UK is (effectively) now. The US would be sending in CIA agent provocateurs - and God help us if I dare nationalise our oil reserves.
But maybe, like Putin, by the people I would be respected.

Things have got so bad in this country that this post alone has probably got me flagged up at GCHQ - hi there

[bustedflush]

Because Socialism is a doomed concept. By its very nature it condemns people to poverty in the medium to long-term. It can be sustained only by nations that have natural resources to sell off that are far in excess of the needs of their usually small populations. Norway being a good example. Capitalism creates wealth, and to have capitalism you have to have freedom of invention, ideas and choice. Even Marx acknowledged that. Capitalism isn't perfect, far from it but was the trigger for much of the world's invention, trade and ideas and had been around for millennia. Socialism is a relatively recent ideal, and has doomed nearly every country that has tried it to economic turmoil. People are led to expect more out of the system than they put in, and the shortfall is met by borrowing which socialist leaders happily do to buy their votes.

Greece, Spain and other countries are now paying the price for this. This is why the EU is so dangerous, as its fundamental aim is to level wealth across a Euro Superstate irrespective of where the wealth originates, but disguised as a 'free market'. It is anything but.

[Tman]

Of course, part the reason they are unable to offer an alternative is because Marx/socialism has become a dirty word. Its a type of anglo Macarthyism. There is no Left anymore - the Right (wing media) have been successful in their relentless attempts at convincing us that the free market mechanism is the be all and end all,

The old Cult of Victimhood again.
It's not died a death because of how it's been portrayed or treated in the media, but something far more basic, it's died a death because it no longer attracts or offers anything to most of those at the "bottom of the heap", and to the "students" of political movements and /or theories, it's shown itself to be wholly unworkable over any length of time.
Please don't come back with a list about "zero hours contracts", "below minimum wages" and all the other unacceptable practices under our current (nominally capitalism) system, as those are separate issues and do not buttress any pro-socialism argument.

[borders]

good luck with that one Jetblack .
I don't believe any kind of Socialism , and it would not be perfect , would have any chance of working unless it was International. Countries would need to openly Co-operate not compete against each other. you mentioned Norway , I believe they have gone back to a right wing coalition Government . the pressure from a predominately right wing voice in all the places of power is too great for any lone country that decides to run its country along Socialist ideas.
however, is there any chance of that happening ? I would say not a cat in hell's chance. I believe history and the human nature tells us that....

[jetblack]

it's died a death because ....

When you say "it" has died a death, could you be a little more specific. Because if you are talking about state owned enterprises why is it, for eg, that Deutsche Bahn[ is able to buy up UK infrastructure, EDF is possibly the UK's/Europes largest single player in the electricity market, while this :-

is able to generate electricity for millions of Chinese homes.

Countries would need to openly Co-operate not compete against each other.

You are, of course, correct on that.

It would be a start, I suppose, if trade unions within the same country could co-operate.

[Tman]

That EDF etc have been allowed or encouraged to buy up power generation and distribution in the UK is a travesty.
That the totalitarian state of China decrees to build a massively eco-damaging hydro-electric installation with almost certainly no voices of dissent or opposition isn't commendable in any way, either.
So how do either of those unrelated (other than they involve electricity) cases you cite "prove" anything regarding the general abandonment of socialist etc principles, or that such principles should be re-embraced as still worthwhile?

[jetblack]

All are state owned enterprises.

[Tman]

So what's your point?

[jetblack]

So what's your point?

Socialism is alive ,well and prospering in other countries worldwide - so much so that they are buying up the UK as we speak.

Public ownership of natural monopolies (such as Royal Mail) is only anathema here in the UK because people like you are more than happy to roll over and have their bellies tickled by the very same people that are bleeding you dry.

Marx called it "false consciousness" I believe

[Tman]

Socialism is alive ,well and prospering in other countries worldwide - so much so that they are buying up the UK as we speak.

A meaningless statement and bordering on the oxy-moronic. Do you believe the French and German governments to be socialist, other than in name?

Public ownership of natural monopolies (such as Royal Mail) is only anathema here in the UK because people like you are more than happy to roll over and have their bellies tickled by the very same people that are bleeding you dry.

Now you've personalised the argument based on an assumption of what "people like me" would do (in your opinion), but as you don't know me from a bar of soap, it doesn't really help with your point, does it?
I don't really see what "people like you" or "people like me" could/would have done to prevent the sale of RM; clearly "people like you" felt strongly about it, but I can't say I noticed much in the way of organised opposition other than a couple of token union marches in London. Did "people like you" mobilise yourselves to stop the sale, or didn't the "people like you" really care that much either?

Marx called it "false consciousness" I believe

Yebbut, as previously said, Marx was the original "psycho-babbler". Come to think of it, most of his stuff was ultimately meaningless sound-bites, too...

[jetblack]

Now you've personalised the argument ....but as you don't know me from a bar of soap, it doesn't really help with your point, does it?

Yes - you are right - apologies.

I don't really see what "people like you" or "people like me" could/would have done to prevent the sale of RM

Well, I'll tell you what you might have done that might have helped, albeit in a very small way - you could have stopped trying to convince working people on union forums that Marx was a fraud, and that his solutions (the common ownership of the means of production) have been proven to be wrong [due to in large part, well, to Stalin and Pol Pot]. It aint helping mate. And its talk like that that leads to the apathetic fatalistic resignation that the RM sale was overwhelmingly met with.

Yebbut, as previously said, Marx was the original "psycho-babbler".

You haven't read him Tman - and so you have absolutely no idea of that which you ridicule. Which, frankly, without wishing to personalise this thread,is itself ridiculous.


I've laid my cards on the table - told you of some of my solutions to the problems I see. What are your solutions ? Lets see your vision, hey.

[Tman]

I don't have a "vision". I'll leave that to the prophets, bone-chuckers and soothsayers, thanks.
I have merely a pragmatic opinion formed by historic and current events, and with no dogmatic agenda.
Feel free to pick sentences and paragraphs (certainly out of context) to quote from Marx's work with the added "but I've read it and you haven't" reasoning, but that could be done with any quack handbook and self-help tripe ever written (and of course it's the standard riposte of the religious nut, too ) .
It doesn't prove pertinence, accuracy or meaning to the given work.
Wherever Marx's quackery (written incidentally in a time of universal quackery....talking to the dead, moving objects by thought, healing physical ailments using electric shock, daily drinks of p*ss,the list goes on) has been tried as a political model it's absolute failure meant it's rapid degrading into just another police state/dictatorship.
After all, how many nominally communist countries have you ever heard of where foreigners attempted to get in, to take advantage of the "workers' Utopia"?
You may as well face facts, it's been tried, didn't work in any shape or form and discarded as a valid political system, and all the endless "ah yeah buts..." and book quotes ain't gonna change that.