ALL STRIKES CANCELLED EXCEPT BRIDGEWATER

[borders]

Freedom is a myth whatever political ideals you may have but every communist state I know of is oppressed beyond belief. If you really DO want the equivalent of the KGB banging on your door whenever they like, then perhaps giving up the job and taking a slow boat to China may the answer.

It’s not long before any discussion about the fight for a better society raises the questions: “What do you mean by socialism?” “Is it the same as communism?” Communism has a long pedigree as a vision of society where property is held in common and a just social order prevails. After the dominance of Stalinism turned communism into a dirty word, most left wingers preferred to be known as socialists. a new socialist society can be created and run by the working class in the interests of the working class. But many people argue that this is impossible. They point to the lack of democracy, equality and freedom in the countries which used to or still do call themselves socialist.

They look at the terror, police repression and gulag camps of the Soviet Union under Stalin. They see repression and poverty in North Korea today. In Castro's Cuba, even though there are welfare services and literacy programmes, there are still no free elections or freedom of expression. Opponents of Marxism say this shows that socialism is fundamentally undemocratic, and will always lead to terror and dictatorship.

None of these regimes are genuinely socialist. Indeed their rulers have tried to eliminate those who stood for genuine workers' control and democracy. In Russia Stalin entrenched his rule by wiping out the generation which had made the revolution through his show trials, executions and slave labour camps. Similarly in North Korea dissent is not tolerated. THE RICH and powerful always want to put us off the idea of revolution. They have consciously promoted the argument that in Russia the revolution led to terror and dictatorship, that Lenin led to Stalin. This idea has been encouraged for decades and by a wide range of people. Writers who supported the old Stalinist rulers of Russia continually promoted the argument that Lenin led to Stalin.

They wanted to make people believe that the tyrannical regime that dominated Russia was justified as a continuation of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Conservative opponents of revolutionary socialism also repeated the idea that Leninism and Stalinism were the same thing. They wanted, and still want, to give the impression that any attempts to create a socialist society inevitably lead to the destruction of freedom. There is no real evidence to back this up.
Lenin always said that communism/socialism would only work on a world wide scale and that it could not work in one country alone.

[borders]

a quick history lesson------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------How was the Russian Revolution defeated?

The Russian Revolution of October 1917 was greeted across the world with enormous popular enthusiasm. In the midst of the bloody slaughter of the First World War the workers' and soldiers' councils had taken control of the country. The new soviet government took Russia out of the war, instituting far-reaching reforms. Factory committees took over enterprises. The peasants won the land. Legislation gave women the most advanced freedoms anywhere in the world.

The new government called on workers and oppressed peoples all across the world to join their revolution. No genuine socialist could fail to support this brilliant endeavour.

From the beginning, however, the infant socialist regime faced immense problems. The White armies launched a brutal civil war, backed by every major capitalist government. Russia had lost more soldiers in the First World War than any other power. Now, in the civil war, the death toll was even higher. Poverty stalked the land. Five million people died of typhus.

The very working class that had led the 1917 revolution was decimated, as Russia's cities depopulated. Many of the best and most committed working class activists died defending their revolution, leaving others to run the new social organisations.

In the very process of winning the civil war, the regime was inwardly corrupted. Bossing replaced popular democracy in more and more spheres of life. Surveying the scene in 1920, Lenin, who was brutally honest, said, "Ours is a workers' and peasants' state suffering from serious bureaucratic degeneration."

If the revolution did not spread, Lenin and his comrades repeated again and again, they would be defeated. Russia's revolution remained isolated. Within Russia the "bureaucratic degeneration" Lenin had described deepened. In the mid-1920s Stalin, who was by then the ruling party leader, abandoned the Bolsheviks' previous internationalism. Now, he declared, "socialism in one country" was possible and desirable.

Until the late 1920s Lenin's description fitted Russia more and more precisely. But at the end of the 1920s Stalin set an entirely new course. It was necessary, he declared, for Russia to "catch up and overtake" the major capitalist countries.

The new policy was enshrined in the Five Year Plans. This programme of crash industrialisation involved a ferocious assault on the people's conditions. Where real wages had risen during the 1920s, now they were slashed. Where the peasants had won the land in 1917, now forced collectivisation of agriculture meant it was seized back from them. Egalitarianism was officially declared an anti-socialist policy.

In the name of "socialist construction", Stalin led a counter-revolution from above. Every remnant of the popular democracy of 1917 was systematically expunged. Forced labour camps were set up, with millions of slave workers. In the purges of the 1930s Stalin's political police arrested and murdered every significant communist who represented the real memory of 1917.

Tragically, many communists and even Labour Party members around the world believed Stalin's lies, defending the disastrous conditions in Russia as socialism.

On the left, those who opposed Stalin struggled to make sense of what was happening. Stalin's most prominent opponent, Leon Trotsky, still held on to Lenin's 1920 formula, calling Russia a "degenerated workers' state". For Trotsky, the existence of state-owned property meant Russia retained something socialist, even if in a highly perverted form. Trotsky denied a new ruling class had emerged in Russia.

[borders]

it is interesting to note that leading up to Hitler taking power before WW2, Germany had 6 1/2 million members of the Communist Party .they could have mobilised and maybe defeated the facsists but as they looked for guidance from Russia, Stalin was only concerned about Russia and he choose to remain silent.

[Tman]

I thought you'd moved away from that sort of silly putdown as an answer.
You made a statement re the relative ages of the various systems; surely you must have something to back up what you said?
More of a genuine query than a silly putdown. Not being funny but you do seem to have a wee bit of trouble following a fairly simple thread.

Unfortunately, questioning the intelligence (rather than answering the question) is a sad tactic, and one which people usually grow out of before adolescence.
You made a point, a weak point, and one which to me is empty and nonsensical, so I asked you to continue.
Can you expand on the original point, or do we now leave it that your only answer is simple abuse?

The "Japanese stuff" is way off-topic, but your refusal to "teach me" is duly noted.

[baldrick]

This is all irrelevant twaddle as Capitalism is what we have and what you're stuck with. 50,000 jobs lost is because its a shrinking business, you know, like the telegram.

If it's a shrinking business why are all these capitalist businesses (TNT, DHL, UPS, FedEx, Business Post, DX Hayes, etc)
all so keen to get into it ?

[baldrick]

Many of the posts above seem to hinge on pay being the solution to getting a good service. What rot. Pay alone isn't the answer and dreams of a leftie utopia are just that - dreams. Not mine either, thankfully.

But our masters tell us that high pay is necessary to recruit, motivate and retain the best quality people.
That is when they mean themselves - City brokers and bankers (lol), company directors, politicians, and the like.
Of course they don't mean it when it comes to the majority of the workforce, where lowering pay and conditions
makes us more efficient, apparently.
But as Andy has said, the more experienced staff are leaving, and being replaced by staff (and no offence
intended to them) who usually over the last few years (in MCs anyway) came in as casuals, went on to PT,
and then maybe FT.
I can't comment on deliveries, where things may well be different, but in MCs a lot of the people who started
as casuals were people who were unable to get permanent employment elsewhere. Why else would anyone want
casual employment in RM ?
They were given very little training, and RM ways of working, refined over 350 years were 'dumbed down'
with 'Improved Working Methods', Unigrade and simplified sorting to accomodate the changing nature
of the workforce.That has led to the situation we are in today described (though somewhat exaggerated)
by Tman.
And I'm not having a go at my colleagues but at those at the top who have caused this. :lfo :cfo

[axeman]

Just imagine working under the likes of mr t (i'm always right ) and thats why royal fail is badly managed with people like this theres no hope

[Tman]

You'd always have a place in "my" company, Agent. Anyone who can be so easily programmed to produce the same response day after day must be a natural for repetitive tasks.

[Night Tonic]

lol

[axeman]

Lol just like the repeated adoration for everything lateone or crazier wise up in your old age repetition is how the world works slight deviations but none the less repetitive

[dvbuk55]

You'd always have a place in "my" company, Agent. Anyone who can be so easily programmed to produce the same response day after day must be a natural for repetitive tasks.

Like playing with mechanno ? Is this the new sequencer? You'll need a lot of hot air for this one, still no problem for you.

[Tman]

Looks to be a nice model, but you don't need any hot air for it as it's a steam engine. The goldy-coloured cylinder on the right is called a boiler, and it supplies all the steam pressure required to run.

Stirling engines on the other hand, run on hot air, but they barely generate enough motive power to actually do any productive work. How long have you been in RM now, old feller...?

[norbert]

This is all irrelevant twaddle as Capitalism is what we have and what you're stuck with. 50,000 jobs lost is because its a shrinking business, you know, like the telegram.

If it's a shrinking business why are all these capitalist businesses (TNT, DHL, UPS, FedEx, Business Post, DX Hayes, etc)
all so keen to get into it ?

quite ! - it'll probably not work - then someone else will come in and RM will be the minority shareholder - interesting

[pcb]

Steam engine invented by the Egyptians specifically by Hero or Heron of Alexandria the machine was called aeolipile. But what does this have to do with capitalism? Capitalism is what we have got so we should just except it. It was not the demands of the workers who caused this depression it was greed of those at the top. Those very bankers who have just been given a 500 Billion pound (soon to be Euro) tax payers bung. Now they just sit on it then along comes the business men saying " you have to stop the minimum wage from rising because it will kill business".
It is the workers who pay for the folly of greed men who believe that regulation is best left to those who are being regulated as long as it is not a public utility.

[dvbuk55]

Looks to be a nice model, but you don't need any hot air for it as it's a steam engine. The goldy-coloured cylinder on the right is called a boiler, and it supplies all the steam pressure required to run.

Stirling engines on the other hand, run on hot air, but they barely generate enough motive power to actually do any productive work. How long have you been in RM now, old feller...?

Too long Tman - ready for the long rest Happy New Year Actually reading the post I realise how closely I am allied to a Stirling Engine